The Rise and Fall of Government in Sassanid Era: A Case Study of the Letter of Tansar and Ahd-e Ardeshir

According to some theories of the philosophy of political history، civilization is formed when collective challenges and disputes about a public issue is resolved in a non-hostile way. Formation of civilization is highly related to government and bureaucratic structures، which themselves are established based on philosophical-religious، mythical، cultural-intellectual and concrete structures. In this way، politics can be regarded as the art of making things possible using power technologies. The present paper aims to study the Iranshari (''Iranian'') politics in Sassanid era. From this point of view، the aspects and dimensions of Iranshahri’s theory of government is explained through the semantic content analysis of two famous books of political advice، namely Ahd-e Ardeshir and Letter of Tansar. In doing so، linear and orientalist theories were put aside and Iran was considered an ancient civilization with valuable political heritage. The primary research question was: What were the intellectual causes of the rise and fall of the Sassanid dynasty? According to Iranshahri’s theory of government، there were two periods of rise (Ahd-e Ardeshir) and fall (Letter of Tansar) in the Sassanid era. The present paper attempts to investigate the curve of evolution in order to identify the political techniques involved in the rise and fall of the Sassanid dynasty.