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Research dossier · History & Society

Ardashir I

Founder and Shahanshah of the Sasanian Empire from 180 to 242

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Ardashir I, also known as Ardashir the Unifier, was the founder of the Sasanian Empire, the last empire of ancient Iran. After defeating Artabanus IV, the last King of Kings of Parthia, on the Hormozdgan plain in 224, he overthrew the Arsacid dynasty and established the Sasanian dynasty. Afterwards, Ardashir called himself King of Kings and began conquering the land that he called Ērānšahr, the realm of the Iranians.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ardashir I” is founder and Shahanshah of the Sasanian Empire from 180 to 242. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ardashir, Founder and Shahanshah, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current 69-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Ardashir, Founder and Shahanshah is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “founder and Shahanshah of the Sasanian Empire from 180 to 242” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ardashir I”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ardashir I primary sources, Ardashir I archive and Ardashir research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ardashir I”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Ardashir I” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.