The Archaeology of the Discourse Pertaining to the Fall of the Sasanian Empire (The Interplay of Discursive Regimes during the Transition from Ancient Iran to the Age Following the Arab Invasions)

Grounded in Foucault's The Order of Discourse, this article performs an archaeology of the discourse on the Sasanian Empire's collapse. Its central aim is not to unearth the historical causes or consequences of this fall, but to analyze the formation and confrontation of competing "discursive orders" about the event itself, and their role in redefining modern Iranian identity.

The findings reveal that the ubiquitous question, "Why did the Sasanians fall?" is itself a "discursive statement" within an antiquarian discourse, expressing an "allegiance to a specific truth." This dominant discourse, through its embeddedness in subjectivities and its "apparatuses of exclusion," has naturalized a hegemonic narrative of "pre-Islamic glory versus post-Arab decadence," systematically erasing evidence of continuity and interaction.

In response, a "counter-discourse"—represented by thinkers like Motahhari, Meskoob, and Eslami Nadooshan—challenges this order by recovering excluded elements such as institutional continuity, cultural resistance, and the Persian language's role. Ferdowsi's Shahnameh is pivotal, functioning not as mere literature but as a foundational "discursive event" and a model for "identity resilience."

Thus, Iranian identity's resilience depends on "discursive openness" and the ability to redefine itself through novel cultural re-articulation, rather than solidifying around hegemonic narratives of historical lament. By creating an "epistemological rupture" with traditional causal historiography, this article seeks to open avenues for analyzing power and resistance in studies of the Sasanian collapse and Iranian identity.