Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes Read Online Free PDF

mobile castles are cumbersome, so the Parthians had another cavalry corps as well, lightly clad men riding naked horses. As a battle tactic, the light cavalry sometimes pretended to have been routed; in the hot middle of the fighting, they would suddenly turn tail and race away. The army they were fighting would break ranks and chase after them, losing all order as they clamored, “Get ’em, boys; they’re on the run; let’s finish ’em!” whereupon the Parthians would suddenly wheel around and fire into the disorganized rabble their opponents had become, annihilating them in minutes. This was later known as a Parthian shot, and when you hear the phrase “parting shot,” you may actually be hearing a corruption of the phrase “Parthian shot.” 2
    The Parthians were originally nomadic herders and hunters from the mountains northeast of Persia, but once they appropriated the frame of the old Persian Empire, they became, for all practical purposes, Persians. (Their name, Parthian, is probably a corruption or variation of “Persian.”) This empire endured for centuries without leaving much of a trace, because they took little interest in art and culture, and mobile castles get recycled for scrap metal once the warriors inside them die.
    While they lasted, however, the Parthians protected and promoted trade, and caravans moved freely within their borders. The Parthian capital was known to the Greeks as Hecatompylos, “the hundred gated,” because so many roads converged there. In the bazaars of Parthian cities, you could probably hear gossip from all quarters of the empire and the societies it bordered: the Greco-Buddhist kingdoms in the east, the Hindus to the south of them, the Chinese of the further east, the waning Greek (Seleucid) kingdoms in the west, and the Armenians to their north. . . . The Parthians had little social intercourse with the Romans, unless fighting counts. The civilizational blood that made the Parthians Persian didn’t get across that border, and so again the Mediterranean and Middle worlds diverged.
    Around the time the Parthians began their rise, China was unified for the first time. In fact, the glory years of China’s seminal Han dynasty coincide almost exactly with the period of Parthian dominance. In the West, the Romans began their great expansion near the beginning of the Parthian era. Just as Rome was beating Carthage for the first time, the Parthians were taking Babylonia. Just as Julius Caesar was tearing up Gaul, Parthian power was peaking in the Middle World. In 53 BCE the Parthians crushed the Romans in a battle, capturing thirty-four thousand legionnaires and killing Crassus who, along with Caesar and Pompey, had been coruler of Rome. Thirty years later, the Parthians dealt Mark Antony a stinging defeat and established the Euphrates River as the border between the two empires. The Parthians were still expanding east when Christ was born. The spread of Christianity went little noticed by the Parthians, who favored Zoroastrianism in a lukewarm sort of way. When Christian missionaries began trickling east, the Parthians let them in; they didn’t care very much about religion, one way or another.
    The Parthians always operated on a feudal system, with power distributed down through many layers of lords. Over time, imperial power leaked away into this ever more fragmented feudalism. In the third (Christian) century, a provincial rebel overthrew the last of the Parthians and founded the Sassanid dynasty, and this quickly expanded to occupy all the same territory as the Parthians and a little more besides. The Sassanids didn’t alter the direction of cultural change; they only organized the empire more effectively, erased the last traces of Hellenic influence, and completed the restoration of the Persian fabric. They built monumental sculptures, enormous buildings, and imposing cities. Zoroastrianism enjoyed a huge resurgence—fire and ashes, sunlight and darkness, Ahura Mazda and