This book presents a translation of Bertold Spuler's groundbreaking work on the transformation of Iran from a Persian Zoroastrian Empire to a province of the Arab Muslim Empire to a land divided by a number of Persian and Turkish kingdoms.

Robert G. Hoyland is professor of Middle East history at NYUs Institute for Study of the Ancient World and Oxford's Oriental Institute. He has published a number of books and articles on the Middle East in the late antique and early Islamic periods, including Seeing Islam as Others saw it (Princeton, 1997) and Arabia and the Arabs (London, 2001).