Iran in World History

1980–88
Iran-Iraq war
1989
Death of Khomeini; pragmatist 
Hashemi Rafsanjani elected president
1997–2005
Reformist Mohammad Khatami is 
president of Iran
2005–2013
Conservative Mahmud Ahmadinejad is 
president of Iran
2013
Election of Hasan Ruhani as president 
of Iran

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Notes
CHAPTER 1
1. Dse 2 (Darius’s Susa fortification text, line 2), in Amélie Kuhrt, 
The Persian 
Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period
(London: Routledge, 
2007), p. 491. A similar inscription is found on Darius’s tomb at Naghsh-e 
Rostam near Persepolis (DNa 2, in Kuhrt, 
The Persian Empire
, p. 502). In 
another inscription at Bisotun, Darius boasts of being the first to put the “Aryan” 
language—i.e., Persian—into writing (DB 70, in Kuhrt, 
The Persian Empire
,
p. 149).
2. For Iranian loanwords in ancient Chinese, see Victor Mair, “Old Sinitic *M
y
ag, 
Old Persian Magus, and English ‘Magician,’ ” 
Early China
15 (1990), pp. 27–47; 
on the possibility of Indo-Iranian elements in Japanese mythology, see Michael 
Witzel, 
The Origins of the World’s Mythologies
(New York: Oxford University 
Press, 2012), pp. 64, 83, 145, 150, 175, 285.
3. 
Ā
b
ā
n Yašt
, 5:34, in Prods Oktor Skjærvø, 
The Spirit of Zoroastrianism
(New 
Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 114.
4. 
Videvdat
(
Vendidad
), 1.3 and 
Bundahishn
, 28.47.
5. The 
asvamedha
is described in 
Rig Veda
, 1.162–3.
6. Thorkild Jacobson, 
The Harps that Once . . . Sumerian Poetry in Translation
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 368.
7. His name means “camel-master,” suggesting he likely lived in southern Central 
Asia at a time after the Iranian speakers had encountered the BMAC peoples. 
(Recall that the Iranian word for “camel” appears to have been borrowed from 
the BMAC language.)
8. 
Yasna
, 49.4, in Skjærvø, 
The Spirit of Zoroastrianism
, pp. 128–9.
9. 
Second Book of Kings
, 18:11.
10. Herodotus, 
The Histories
, 1.95–102.