Touraj Daryaee

Touraj Daryaee (Persian: تورج دریایی‎‎) (born 1967 in Tehran, Iran) is a contemporary Persian Iranologist and historian, now the Maseeh Chair in Persian Studies and Culture and the Director of the Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies at the University of California, Irvine.
His elementary and secondary schooling was in Tehran, Iran and Athens, Greece. Daryaee took his Ph.D. in history at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1999. He has taught at UCLA, and has been a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University and Resident Fellow at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. He specializes in the history and culture of Ancient Persia.
He is he editor of the Name-ye Iran-e Bastan, The International Journal of Ancient Iranian Studies , DABIR: Digital Ar, as well as the director of Sasanika Project, a project on the history and culture of Sasanians. His most famous publications include Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire and Sasanian Iran (224-651 CE): Portrait of a Late Antique Empire. Most recently he has written a book on Iranian history from the Pre-historic era to modern history. He is known for his unwavering support of Iran's former Prime Minister Dr. Mossadegh.