By Kevin T. van Bladel
 
Current scholarship doubts that there was much, if any, written Middle Persian literature in the Sasanian Persian Kingdom (third to seventh century CE), but plentiful sources attest that such skepticism is unwarranted. Most Middle Persian written literary works from that time were lost because specific institutional and environmental conditions did not favor their survival—not because “ancient Iran” was an overwhelmingly “oral society” that rejected written literature.