I imagine that Michael Axworthy’s brief for this book ran something like this: Write a one-volume history of Iran, from as early as possible up through as close to the present as is practical. (The hardback edition was published in 2008; the edition that I have was published in 2010 and has an epilogue that discusses events through late 2009.) It should be roughly 300 pages long, accessible to the educated public, and not overly annoying for specialists. Axworthy appears to have been an excellent choice for such a brief. He was a British diplomat for 14 years, ending with two years as head of the service’s Iran section. At time of publication he was Director of the Centre for Persian and Iranian Studies at the University of Exeter. He wrote a biography of Nader Shah, a man who rose from local strongman to ruler of all Iran in the first half of the 1700s and extended its influence past Kabul into Transoxiana in the north and Delhi to the east. Axworthy is an expert, but not entirely an academic, and he fulfilled his brief admirably.

By design, Axworthy’s history is primarily political; that is, its main concern is who ruled what territories at what times. He considers other aspects of history — most notably religion and literature — but they are clearly subordinate to tracing the thread of who held power in the Iranian lands (and nearby territories) through the centuries. He begins with what linguistic and genetic evidence can tell historians about the people of the area in times before written records. The Iranian languages are Indo-European, indicating that their speakers came into the Iranian plateau “from what are today the Russian steppes … in a series of migrations and invasions in the latter part of the second millennium BC.” (p. 1) The Elamite empire is known to have pre-dated the Iranian invasions, and archeological evidence has shown that people have lived in the area for many millennia. “From the very beginning then, the Idea of Iran was as much about culture and language—in all their complex patterns—as about race or territory.” (p. 3)

Axworthy has barely introduced the peoples—Medes, Persians, Parthians, Sogdians, and others—who first enter the historical record through Greek accounts before he turns to the importance of religion in Iranian history with a sketch of what can be known about the prophet Zoroaster. From linguistic and textual evidence, Axworthy concludes that Zoroaster lived around 1200 or 1000 BC, roughly the time of the Iranian invasions. “Other evidence supports the view that Zoroaster did not invent a religion from nothing. Instead, he reformed and simplified pre-existing religious practices (against some resistance from traditional priests), infusing them with a much more sophisticated philosophical theology and a greater emphasis on morality and justice.” (p. 6) Axworthy notes that “Modern Zoroastrianism is much more strongly monotheistic, and to make this distinction more explicit many scholars refer to the religion in this early stage as Mazdaism,” after Ahura Madza “the creator-god of truth and light.” (p. 7) Though this religion dates back three thousand years — and further, considering how it incorporated existing beliefs and divine beings — its influence continues in present-day Iran in large and small ways. Large: The dualism present in Zoroastrian thought shows up again and again in religious revelations and developments in Iran. Small: “The names of several of these archangels—for example Bahman, Ordibehesht, Khordad—survive as months in the modern Iranian calendar, even under the Islamic republic.” (p. 7)

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