This, when Muslim forces had won many impressive battles under bin Walid's command, first against the Sassanids and then against the armies of the Eastern Roman Empire.

This plays a critical role, since at least from a western perspective, Persia's history is divided in half with thirteen hundred years before the event, with domination of the Achaemenid empire originating from Persis, later Parthians, and finally the Sassanids, and thirteen hundred years after the event with advents of multiple Persian empires.

The invaders brought with them an oriental horse, descended from the Persian empire of the Sassanids. A more elegant animal with a finer silhouette, this horse mixed with those that were predominant in Europe at the time, while their ancestors, those mounted by the Romans and Gauls, are today confined to two regions: Iceland and the British Isles, where they were taken by the Vikings.

A century or so later, the Romans were themselves dislodged by yet another Iranian dynasty, the Sassanids.

Islam, funded in the 7th century AD by the Arab Prophet Muhammad, only reached Persia after the Arab conquest of the Sassanids' Neo-Persian Empire in the 650s AD.

Under the Sassanids, Zoroastrian Iran developed what the Danish historian, Arthur Christensen, has called "a magnificent edifice." Although not on a par with Greece or Rome, it had its centers of learning, including the famed university of Jundi Shapur, today's Ahwaz, where many Christian and Greek scientists came when Byzantium's policies discouraged learning.

In its place, Imam Ruhullah Khomeini then opted for the geo-strategic expansionism of the Safawi ideology, which one prominent Saudi analyst claims to be a "16th century revival of the Neo-Persian imperialism of the Sassanids defeated by the Arabs in the 7th century AD.

The Saudis say "Safawi Iranians have never forgiven the Arabs" (Islam) for having what a Tehran analyst says "destroyed the Persian civilisation" in the 7th century AD as they defeated the Sassanid Persian Empire (see all that including the Sassanids in Google).

Older remnants are from the White Huns, Kushans and Sassanids. There are even signs of Parthians, dating back to 100 AD, he added.

Finally, it should be said that the Jewish trade was supported by the Sassanids and it was their support that placed them against Byzantine [14].

It became a battlefield between the Seleucids, the Parthians, the Romans and the Sassanids. H.Said /Mazen