Fall of the Sasanian Empire and the Muslim Conquest of Western Asia
Also called: Battle of al-Qadisiyyah, Battle of Nahavand, Muslim conquest of Persia
Arab armies defeated the Sasanians at Qadisiyya (636) and Nahavand (642), and with the death of the last king, Yazdegerd III, in 651 Sasanian Persia came to an end.
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Sasanian Persia and the Byzantine Empire had fought each other into exhaustion by the early 7th century. In 636 the Arabs defeated the Byzantines on the Yarmuk River in Syria and the Sasanians at Qadisiyya in Iraq. The Sasanian capital Ctesiphon fell the next year, and after defeat at Nahavand in 642 the dynasty never recovered. Fleeing east, Yazdegerd III was killed near Merv in 651, ending a dynasty of more than four hundred years; his son Peroz took refuge at the Tang court and sought its help.
Iran became Muslim only slowly over several centuries, and some Zoroastrians moved to India (the Parsis). Persian bureaucracy, court culture and learning later flowed deeply into the Islamic civilisation of the Abbasids. The Muslim world now spanned western Asia and Egypt.