Sasanian Rupture and Renovation

Abstract

Chapter 6 explores the development Sasanian urbanism and the dynasty’s approach to the landscape. It argues that the Sasanians quickly and dramatically reshaped Mesopotamia and the Iranian Plateau to bring it into accord with their new imperial vision, establishing new regional settlements that controlled their surrounding agricultural hinterlands militarily and economically while expanding and restructuring the imperial cities of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Their new cities brought new areas into prominence and rendered others cities and ceremonial centers obsolete, as well as trade networks that had depended on them. Cities played an integral role in building the Empire of the Iranians not only materially but conceptually.