The History of Modern Day Iran
Fifteen hundred years before the arrival of Alexander the Great, a semi nomadic tribe left the region around the northern part of the Caspian Sea and began moving onto a vast plateau in what is now Iran. It happened at about 2000-1800 B.C.1
Before the nomads, Persia was inhabited by the civilization of the Elamites.2 Eventually the newcomers, a people known as Aryans (the later Medes and Persians) settled there, in an area now called Fars. The Greeks called this plateau Persis, which is where the name Persia comes from. In modern times the name Persia was changed to Iran, which comes from the word Aryanam, meaning “Land of the Aryans”.3
At first the Persian people had to compete with their rivals, the Medians. The Persians finally conquered Media in 550 B.C. under the leadership of the first and greatest king -- Cyrus the Great. After also conquering the Lydian empire and filling his treasury with money, Cyrus organized a military campaign to the ancient kingdom of Babylonia. While in Babylonia, Cyrus freed the Jews in captivity there and let them return to Palestine. Cyrus called his empire the Achaemenid, after his ancestor, Achaemenes.4
Upon Cyrus’ death, his son Cambyses became king. Even though Cambyses invaded and conquered much of Egypt and Nubia, he is most well known as being a tyrant and madman who murdered his own family. When Cambyses died, Darius I, a relative of Cambyses and a general in the Persian army, took over the throne.5
Even thought Darius’ first years on the throne were difficult, he eventually became one of Persia’s greatest rulers. During his reign Darius built many roads, established a postal system, standardized weights, measures and coinage. He also began constructing the Persian empires’ fifth capital city, Persepolis and another city, which he called Susa. Darius I ruled his empire cleverly and efficiently. He collected taxes from all the conquered people, but allowed them to keep their own customs, religions and way of life as long as they were obedient. Darius appointed local governors, called satraps, to rule the provinces of the empire and used Persian soldiers to check that the satraps did not become too powerful.6
Darius continued to expand the empire. He marched into India and took control of all the land west of the Indus River. He invaded southern Russia and southeast Europe, but he did not conquer much land. Darius also organized a military expedition to Greece where he conquered the state of Thrace.
When King Darius I died in 486 B.C., his son Xerxes soon became the new ruler. Xerxes also wanted to expand the Persian Empire, so he organized a great expedition to Greece to try and conquer the country.
According to ancient Greek historians, Xerxes built a fleet of ships in 480 B.C. and sailed to Greece. The chosen sight for battle was the Thermopylae pass. The Greek army defending the pass was led by the Spartan king Leonidas. But a Greek traitor betrayed the secret of breaking through the pass to the Persians. The Persians were able to surprise the Greek army from behind, but Leonidas ordered all but 300 hundred of his men to escape. Together with his small band of men, Leonidas defended the pass till the last drop of blood so that the rest of his army could escape. Not a single soldier from the army of 300 survived that day. After defeating Leonidas and his men, the Persian army attacked and burned to the ground the great city of Athens.7
However a few years later the Greek army defeated the Persian navy during a battle on the island of Salamis. This was their revenge for the massacre at Thermopylae. After this crushing defeat, Xerxes abandoned all his plans to take Greece.
Xerxes was the last of the great Achaemenian kings. After his death, no great rulers emerged and the country fell into ruin. Because the empire was visibly weakening, the Greeks decided to make Persia part of their empire. In 330 B.C., under the leadership of the famous general Alexander the Great, the Greeks swept through Persia and burned the magnificent city of Persepolis. They completely crushed the army of the Persians in 331 B.C. during a battle called Arbela, or Gaugamela. Persia stayed under Greek rule till 171 B.C.
After Alexander died, his generals fought one another for control of power. Finally a general named Seleucus won and defeated his rivals. But the Seleucid dynasty didn’t last long because the Parthians, who had once been part of a Persian province, declared themselves to be free of Greek rule and little by little they took the land away from the Greeks. The Parthians continued to gain power, and they eventually became strong enough to stop an invasion by the Romans at Carrhae in 53 A.D.8
But the Parthians began to weaken and in 224 A.D. Ardashir I, a Persian vassal-king, rebelled against the Parthians, defeated them in the Battle of Hormuz, and founded a new Persian dynasty, that of the Sassanids. For more then 550 years the Persians ruled again.9
Ardashir conquered several minor neighboring kingdoms, invaded India, demanding heavy tribute from the rulers of the Punjab, and conquered Armenia. A particularly significant accomplishment of his reign was the establishment of Zoroastrianism as the official religion of Persia. Ardashir was succeeded in 241 A.D. by his son Shapur I, who waged two successive wars against the Roman Empire, conquering territories in Mesopotamia and Syria and a large area in Asia Minor.10 Between 260 and 263 A.D. he lost his conquests to Odenathus, the ruler of Palmyra and an ally of Rome. The Sassanid dynasty was weakening, and soon, the Moslems took control of Persia in 624 A.D.11
The glorious days of Ancient Persia had ended. Islam spread across the Persian plateau. But the new Islamic rulers kept much of the Persian organization, art and architecture, and culture.
