Shāpur the Victorious - Epic Iranian Music

Music & vocals by Farya Faraji. Please note that this isn’t reconstructed music from the period, only modern Iranian music with an ancient theme. The text sung here is a period one, inscribed on the so called Kaba of Zoroaster during the reign of Shāpur the First, second ruler of the Sasanian Empire. Though Shāpur himself was ethnically a Persian like the rest of the Sasanian dynasty, he was ruling at a time when the Arsacids, ethnically Parthian, had just ruled over Iran for over 400 years. Due to the still lingering prestige of the Parthian language as well as the political standing of the Parthian noble houses in the Empire, inscriptions were often written in both Persian and Parthian, and this is the case with this inscription. Whilst the Persian version of the inscription is now damaged and illegible, the Parthian one is intact, and therefore the sung lyrics here are in the Parthian language; an interesting example of the multi-ethnic and multicultural reality of Ancient