by Mary Miller, Koinonia Institute

As discussed in Part 1 of this series, the treacherous trio of Ezekiel 38 is defined as Turkey, Iran and Russia. Historically, each of these countries enjoyed grand imperial pasts. All are ambitious. All are making a move to achieve a measure of their previous success.

The focus of Part 2 of our discussion of the ill-fated “band of brothers” described in Ezekiel 38 is Iran. Biblically and historically, the geographic region of Iran has also been referred to as Elam and Persia. It is the glory of these past empires to which Iran currently aspires.

Persia Takes Shape

The region boasts one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilizations with evidence of urban occupations dating back to 4000 B.C. The Medes are credited with unifying the region into the Persian Empire in 625 B.C.

Between 550-330 B.C. the Achaemenids were the first of the Persian empires to rule over the Middle East, Greece and Central Asia. Following the conquest by Alexander the Great, rule transferred to the Seleucids, the Parthians, and the Sassanids which governed the region for more than 1,000 years.

Historically, Persia often found itself caught up in the af-fairs of other nations—invaded and occupied at varying times by Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Brits and Russians. However, Per-sia has managed to always regain its distinct national political and cultural identity.

Islamization of Persia

A major turning point came for Persia with the end of the Sassanid Empire and the Islamic conquest. This conquest came during the 8th to 10th century and led to the decline of the prevalent Zoroastrian religion in Persia. As in previous “take-overs,” the achievements of previous Persian civilizations were not lost, but were absorbed by the new Islamic polity. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washing-ton University, is quoted as saying:

If the Achaemenian period is the golden age of Persia politically and the Sassanian period in administration, city planning and architecture, the first centuries of the Islamic period are without doubt the golden age of Iranian history in the do-main of the sciences, particularly medicine and mathematics. To this period belong those Persian scientists who stand among the foremost stars in the firmament of the history of science to this day.

By 1501, the Safavid dynasty established Shi’a Islam as the official religion of their united Persian state. Iran then became a (more…)