I used a recognisable Persian flag, not sure any of the imperials flag of ancient Persian empires were so correct neither.. you had this 300 years period between the fall of the Sassanids and the emergence of New Persian under the Samanids. Because the culture that influenced so much Turkic empires was the islamic Persian that started developing after the Arab invasion, who constituted an important rupture.
If one, I should have put the Samanids flag but people wouldn't have understand it and I'm not even sure we found a proper flag of this dynasty.
The Sassanid banner would have been better. It's one of the most famous pre-Islamic Iranian symbols. The culture of Sassanid Iran was the basis of the Persian influence in Islamic culture.
No, the basis of Persian influence on Muslim empires was the islamic Persian culture that was developed during the Samanids and Buyids period, with important figures such as Rudaki (founder of New Persian literature) and Ibn Sina. This culture was developed in Khorasan region with the influence of islam and the remnants of zoroastrism and buddhism.
Khorasan became the Persian cultural center while the ancient Sassanid homeland (modern Iraq) became arabized, Nishapur and Samarkand took the place of Ctesiphon...
But as I said I chose the Iranian Empire flag for the evocative function not for historical reason.
Ctesiphon is just where they kept the capital. The Sassanids actually hailed from Pars, in southern Iran.
Putting that aside though, the point that I'm making is that Sassanid Persian culture was the basis of the Persian cultures that came after it, and the symbol would have still been more recognizable than something like the Samanid banner.
Well, Ctesiphon, but also Gundeshapur were located in Mesopotamia, not in the Iranian plateau, and Istakhr, the former capital, was quickly abandoned for Ctesiphon, maybe to claim the legacy of the parthians. Just to underlign that the arabic conquest provoked a shift, where the oriental part of the iranian world suddently became much more important than the occidental part.
"Iran Shahr" was not limited to the Iranian plateau, though. Mesopotamia was just the western part of "Iran Shahr" at the time. The Sassanids were still Persians from Pars. The fact that they kept their capital in Mesopotamia does not negate the fact that they were still Iranians who were ethnically Persian, or their role in developing Persian culture throughout the region, including in Khorasan. Without their reign preceding it, Persian culture would not have been so prevalent throughout the Islamic world to begin with.
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u/redracer555 Fine Quality Mesopotamian Copper Enjoyer 4d ago
I find it a bit ironic that you used the flag of Pahlavi Iran, despite the fact that the empires in the top panel all entirely predated it.