PERSIA

PERSIA. Under Cyrus the Great and later rulers, the Persian Empire (539–332 B.C.) was the first of the great world empires of the ancient, eastern Mediterranean world. Followed by Alexander the Great’s successors, and then Rome (q.v.), ancient Persian dominion provided a pattern, soon to be established as normative government, of tolerance of local customs and religions. The recovery of Persian independence from the Seleucid successors to Alexander in the 2nd c. B.C. led to the situation that prevailed throughout Roman and early Byzantine rule: an unstable border region, roughly along the lines of the modern borders between Syria (q.v.) and Iraq. It experienced occasional battles and, more rarely, all-out warfare. The revived Persian Empire of the Sassanid dynasty (3rd-7th c. A.D.) provided an important shelter for dissidents from the imperial church, in particular the great, Syriac-speaking Church of the East. (See Assyrian Church.) Safe from the machinations of Constantinople (q.v.), the eastern Syrian Church was free to develop its own institutions and to spread as far as India and China along the trade routes protected by the Shahs.