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Iran liberated by Muslims
Compiled By: Syed Ali Shahbaz
On December 20, 642 AD, Muslims decisively defeated the forces of the 29th and last Sassanid monarch of the Persian Empire, Yazdgerd III, near the western Iranian city of Nahavand, in the crucial battle called “Fath al-Fotouh” (Victory of Victories), since it ended the 416-year Sassanid rule over what is now Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, the Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, Chechen and Daghestan), and parts of Central Asia and modern Turkey.
According to the early Iranian Muslim historian, Abu Ja’far at-Tabari, Firouzan, who led the Persian army of 50,000 demoralized soldiers, was outmaneuvered by a force of 30,000 Arab Muslims. Yazdgerd fled to Khorasan where the people did not welcome him and after his failure to raise an army, he was murdered in 651 by a miller in Marv (presently in Turkmenistan).
In addition to the firm faith of Muslims, what led to the defeat of Yazdgerd was the fact that the Iranians, who were fed up with the tyranny and corruption of Sassanid kings and the irrationality of Zoroastrian tenets, enthusiastically accepted the truth of Islam, given its egalitarian values of monotheism, justice, fraternity, and equality. Soon Iranian Muslims turned into flag-bearers for promotion and spread of the divine religion of Islam, its ethereal teachings, and its scientific and cultural endeavours.
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