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Further
information: Persia
The Persian Empire was a series of Iranian empires that ruled
over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland, and
beyond in Western Asia, Central
Asia and the Caucasus.
The most widespread entity considered to have
been a Persian Empire was the Achaemenid
Empire (550330 BC) under Darius and Xerxes (or Xerkes) famous in antiquity as the
foe of the classical Greek states (See Greco-Persian Wars) a united Persian kingdom
that originated in the region now known as Pars
province (Fars province) of Iran.
It was formed under Cyrus
the Great, who took over the empire of the Medes, and conquered
much of the middle east, including the territories of the Babylonians,
Assyrians, the Phoenicians,
and the Lydians.Cambyses, Son
of Cyrus the Great, continued his conquests by conquering Egypt. The
Persian Empire is thought to have been taken over by Alexander the Great, however the Persian Empire
arose again during the Parthian and Sassanid
dynasties of Iran
followed by Iranian
Muslim dynasties like Safavids, up to modern day Iran.
Most of the successive states in Greater
Iran prior to March 1935 are collectively called the Persian
Empire by Western historians.
Virtually all the successor empires of Persia were
major regional and some major international powers in their day.
History
Median Empire
Main
article: Medes
The Medes are credited with the foundation of
the first Iranian empire, the largest of its day until Cyrus the Great
established a unified Iranian empire of the Medes and Persians, often referred
to as the Achaemenid Persian Empire, by defeating his grandfather and overlord,
Astyages the shah of Media. The Median capital was Ecbatana, the
modern day Iranian city of Hamedan. Ectbatana was preserved as one of the capital cities
of the Achaemenid Empire, which succeeded the Median Empire.
According to Herodotus, the conquests of Cyaxares the Mede
were preceded by a Scythian invasion and domination lasting twenty-eight years
(under Madius the Scythian, 653-625 BC). The Mede tribes seem to have come into
immediate conflict with a settled state to the West known as Mannae, allied with
Assyria. Assyrian inscriptions state that the
early Mede rulers, who had attempted rebellions against the Assyrians in the
time of Esarhaddon and Assur-bani-pal, were allied with chieftains of the Ashguza
(Scythians) and other tribes - who had come from the northern shore of the Black Sea
and invaded Armenia
and Asia
Minor; and Jeremiah and Zephaniah in the Old Testament agree
with Herodotus that a massive invasion of Syria and Philistia by
northern barbarians took place in 626 BC. The state of Mannae was finally
conquered and assimilated by the Medes in the year 616 BC.
In 612 BC, Cyaxares conquered Urartu, and with
the alliance of Nabopolassar the Chaldean, succeeded in destroying the
Assyrian capital, Nineveh;
and by 606 BC, the remaining vestiges of Assyrian control. From then on, the
Mede king ruled over much of Iran,
Assyria and northern Mesopotamia, Armenia and Cappadocia.
His power was very dangerous to his neighbors, and the exiled Jews expected the destruction
of Babylonia
by the Medes (Isaiah 13, 14m 21; Jerem. 1, 51.).
When Cyaxares attacked Lydia, the kings of Cilicia and Babylon
intervened and negotiated a peace in 585 BC, whereby the Halys was established
as the Medes' frontier with Lydia.
Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon married a daughter of
Cyaxares, and an equilibrium of the great powers was maintained until the rise
of the Persians under Cyrus.
Median Kings were:
Modern research by a professor of Assyriology,
Robert Rollinger, has questioned the Median empire and its sphere of influence,
proposing for example that it did not control the Assyrian heartland.[4]
Achaemenid Empire (550 BC330 BC)
Main
article: Achaemenid Empire
Achaemenid empire at its
greatest extent.
The earliest known record of the Persians comes
from an Assyrian
inscription from c. 844 BC that calls them the Parsu (Parsua, Parsuma)[5]
and mentions them in the region of Lake Urmia
alongside another group, the Mādāyu (Medes).[6]
For the next two centuries, the Persians and Medes were at times tributary to
the Assyrians. The region of Parsuash was annexed by Sargon of Assyria around
719 BC. Eventually the Medes came to rule an independent Median Empire, and the
Persians were subject to them.
The Achaemenids were the first to create a
centralized state in Persia,
founded by Achaemenes
(Haxamani), chieftain of the Persians around 700 BC.
Around 653 BC, the Medes came under the
domination of the Scythians, and Teispes (Cipi),
the son of Achaemenes, seems to have led the nomadic Persians to settle in
southern Iran around this time eventually establishing the first organized
Persian state in
the important region of Anan
as the Elamite
kingdom was permanently destroyed by the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal
(640 BC). The kingdom
of Anan and its
successors continued to use Elamite as an official language for quite some time after
this, although the new dynasts spoke Persian, an Indo-Iranian tongue.
Teispes' descendants may have branched off into
two lines, one line ruling in Anshan, while the
other ruled the rest of Persia.
Cyrus II the Great (Kuru) united the separate
kingdoms around 559 BC. At this time, the Persians were still tributary to the Median Empire ruled
by Astyages.
Cyrus rallied the Persians together, and in 550 BC defeated the forces of
Astyages, who was then captured by his own nobles and turned over to the
triumphant Cyrus, now Shah
of a unified Persian kingdom. As Persia assumed control over the
rest of Media and their large empire, Cyrus led the united Medes and Persians
to still more conquest. He took Lydia in Asia Minor, and carried his arms eastward into central
Asia. Finally in 539 BC, Cyrus marched triumphantly into the ancient city
of Babylon.
After this victory, he set the standards of a benevolent conqueror by issuing
the Cyrus
Cylinder, the first charter of human
rights. Cyrus was killed in 530 BC during a battle against the Massagetae
or Sakas.
Cyrus's son, Cambyses II
(Kambūjiya), annexed Egypt to the Achaemenid Empire. The empire then reached its
greatest extent under Darius I (Dāryavu). He led conquering
armies into the Indus River valley and into Thrace in Europe. A punitive raid against Greece was halted
at the Battle of Marathon. A larger invasion by his
son, Xerxes I
(Xayāra), would have initial success at the Battle of Thermopylae. Following the
destruction of his navy at the Battle
of Salamis, Xerxes would withdraw most of his forces from Greece. The
remnant of his army in Greece
commanded by General Mardonius was ultimately defeated at the Battle
of Plataea in 479 BC.
Darius divided his realm into twenty-three
satrapies (provinces) supervised by satraps, or
governors, many of whom had personal ties to the Shah. He instituted a
systematic tribute to tax each province. He took the advanced postal
system of the Assyrians and expanded it. Also taken from the Assyrians was
the usage of secret agents of the king, known as the King's Eyes and Ears, keeping him informed.[citation needed]
Darius improved the famous Royal Road
and other ancient trade routes, thereby connecting far reaches of the empire.
He may have moved the administration center from Fars itself to Susa, near Babylon and closer to the
center of the realm. The Persians allowed local cultures to survive, following
the precedent set by Cyrus the Great. This was not only good for the empire's
subjects, but ultimately benefited the Achaemenids, because the conquered
peoples felt no need to revolt.
Persian and Median soldiers with
Farvahar in
center.
It may have been during the Achaemenid period
that Zoroastrianism reached South-Western Iran, where it
came to be accepted by the rulers and through them became a defining element of
Persian culture. The religion was not only accompanied by a formalization of
the concepts and divinities of the traditional (Indo-)Iranian pantheon, but
also introduced several novel ideas, including that of free will, which is arguably Zoroaster's
greatest contribution to religious philosophy. Under the patronage of the
Achaemenid kings, and later as the de-facto religion of the state,
Zoroastrianism would reach all corners of the empire. In turn, Zoroastrianism
would be subject to the first syncretic influences, in particular from the
Semitic lands to the west, from which the divinities of the religion would gain
astral and planetary aspects and from where the temple cult originates. It was
also during the Achaemenid era that the sacerdotal Magi would exert their
influence on the religion, introducing many of the practices that are today
identified as typically Zoroastrian, but also introducing doctrinal
modifications that are today considered to be revocations of the original
teachings of the prophet.
The Achaemenid Empire united people and kingdoms
from every major civilization in south West Asia
and North East Africa.
Hellenistic Persia
(330 BC250 BC)
Main
article: Seleucid Empire
The Achaemenid dynasty never managed to conquer Greece, but often supported one side or
the other in wars between the individual Greek states.
However, the Achaemenid Empire's weakness was exposed to the Greeks in 401 BC,
when a rebel prince, Cyrus the Younger, hired thousands of Greek
mercenaries to help secure his claim to the imperial throne (see Xenophon, Anabasis). This
army (known as the Ten thousand) marched all the way into the heart of Persia and back
again. This demonstrated the military problems of the Achaemenid forces when
dealing with the highly effective Greek phalanx. (A densely packed unit of men
armed with long pikes or spears)
Philip II of Macedon managed to unify most of
Greece and the balkans under his control, and decided to take advantage of
Achaemenid weakness when, after the death of Artaxerxes (Artaxaηrā) III Ochus in 338
BC, the Persian Empire had no strong leader. On Philip's death in 336 BC, his
son and heir Alexander continued the attack on the Empire.
He turned out to be one of the greatest generals in history. The Achaemenid
monarch, Darius
III was an aged man with a reputation for bravery gained in his youth, but in
the event was no match for Alexander. Against the highly professional
Macedonian standing army, Persia,
the greatest empire of the age collapsed in only eight years.
Alexander landed in Asia
Minor in 334 BC. His armies quickly swept through Lydia, Phoenicia,
and Egypt, before defeating Darius III
at Gaugamela (331 BC) and capturing the capital at Susa. The last Achaemenid resistance was at
the "Persian Gates" between Susa
and near the royal palace at Persepolis. The Achaemenid Empire was now in Alexander's
hands.
Eastern Hemisphere, 323 BC.
Along his route of conquest, Alexander founded
many colony cities, often named "Alexandria".
For the next several centuries, these cities served to greatly extend Greek, or
Hellenistic,
culture in Persia.
Alexander's empire broke up shortly after his
death, and Alexander's general, Seleucus I Nicator, tried to take control of Persia, Mesopotamia, and later Syria and Asia Minor.
His ruling family is known as the Seleucid
Dynasty. However he was killed in 281 BC by Ptolemy
Keraunos before he could conquer Greece
and Macedonia.
Greek colonization continued until around 250
BC; Greek language, philosophy, and art came with the colonists. Throughout
Alexander's former empire, Greek became the common tongue of diplomacy and
literature. Trade with China had begun in Achaemenid times along the so-called Silk Road;
but during the Hellenistic period it began in earnest. The overland trade
brought about some fascinating cultural exchanges. Buddhism came
in from India,
while Zoroastrianism traveled west to influence Judaism.
Incredible statues of the Buddha in classical Greek styles have been found in Persia and Afghanistan, illustrating the mix
of cultures that occurred around this time (See Greco-Buddhism),
although it is possible that Greco-Buddhist art dates from Achaemenid times
when Greek artists worked for the Persians.
Although recently discovered cuneiform evidence
(e.g., the Babylonian Chronicles from the Hellenistic
Period) show how much continuity there was in the Eastern civilization, it can
not be denied that the Seleucid kingdom began to decline after about a century.
The eastern provinces of Bactria and Parthia broke off in 238 BC. King Antiochus
III's military leadership kept Parthia
from overrunning Persia
itself, but when he tried to intervene in Greece,
his successes alarmed the burgeoning Roman
Republic. Roman legions began to attack the kingdom. At the same time, the
Seleucids had to contend with the revolt of the Maccabees in Judea and the expansion of the Kushan
Empire to the east. The empire fell apart and was conquered by Parthia and Rome.
Parthians (250 BCAD 226)
Main
article: Parthia
Parthia.
Metallic statue of a Parthian prince
(thought to be Surena),
AD 100, kept at The National Museum of Iran, Tehran.
Its rulers, the Arsacid
dynasty, belonged to an Iranian tribe that had settled there during the
time of Alexander. They declared their independence from the Seleucids in 238
BC, but their attempts to unify Iran
were thwarted until after the advent of Mithridates I to the Parthian throne in
about 170 BC.
The Parthian Confederacy shared a border with Rome along the upper Euphrates River.
The two polities became major rivals, especially over control of Armenia. Heavily-armoured
Parthian cavalry (cataphracts) supported by mounted archers proved a match
for Roman legions, as in the Battle
of Carrhae in which the Parthian General Surena defeated Marcus Licinius Crassus of Rome. Wars were
very frequent, with Mesopotamia serving as the battleground.
During the Parthian period, Hellenistic customs
partially gave way to a resurgence of Iranian culture. However, the area lacked
political unity, and the vassalary structure that the Arsacids had adopted from
the Seleucids left the Parthians in a constant state of war with one seceding
vassal or the other. By the 1st century BC, Parthia was decentralized, ruled by
feudal nobles.
Wars with Romans to the west and the Kushan Empire to
the northeast drained the country's resources.
Parthia, now impoverished and without any hope of recovering its
lost territories, was demoralized. The kings had to give more concessions to
the nobility, and the vassal kings sometimes refused to obey. Parthia's last
ruler Artabanus IV had an initial success in
putting together the crumbling state. However, the fate of the Arsacid Dynasty
was doomed when in AD 224, the Persian vassal king Ardashir revolted. Two years later, he took Ctesiphon,
and this time, it meant the end of Parthia. It also meant the
beginning of the second Persian Empire, ruled
by the Sassanid kings. Sassanids were from the province
of Persis, native to the first Persian Empire, the Achaemenids.
Sassanid Empire (226651)
Main
article: Sassanid Empire
The Sassanid
Persian Empire .
Persia and its neighbors in AD 600.
The Sassanid Empire or Sassanian
Dynasty (Persian: ساسانیان, pronounced [sɒsɒnijɒn])
is the name used for the fourth imperial Iranian
dynasty, and
the second Persian Empire
(226651). The Sassanid dynasty was founded by Ardashir I
after defeating the last Parthian (Arsacid) king, Artabanus
IV (Persian: اردوان Ardavan) and ended when the last Sassanid Shahanshah
(King of Kings), Yazdegerd III (632651), lost a 14-year struggle to
drive out the early Islamic Caliphate, the first of the Islamic empires.
Ardashir I led a rebellion against the Parthian
Confederacy in an attempt to revive the glory of the previous empire and to
legitimize the Hellenized form of Zoroastrianism
practised in southwestern Iran.
In two years he was the Shah
of a new Persian Empire.
The Sassanid
dynasty (also Sassanian, named for Ardashir's grandfather) was the first
dynasty native to the Pars province since the Achaemenids; thus they saw
themselves as the successors of Darius and Cyrus. They pursued an aggressive
expansionist policy. They recovered much of the eastern lands that the Kushans
had taken in the Parthian period. The Sassanids continued to make war against Rome; a Persian army even
captured the Roman Emperor Valerian in 260.
The Sassanid Empire, unlike Parthia, was a
highly centralized state. The people were rigidly organized into a caste system:
Priests, Soldiers, Scribes, and Commoners. Zoroastrianism was finally made the
official state religion, and spread outside Persia proper and out into the
provinces. There was sporadic persecution of other religions. The Eastern Orthodox Church was particularly
persecuted, but this was in part due to its ties to the Roman
Empire. The Nestorian Christian church was
tolerated and sometimes even favored by the Sassanids.
The wars and religious control that had fueled
the Sassanid Empire's early successes eventually contributed to its decline.
The eastern regions were conquered by the White Huns
in the late 5th century. Adherents of a radical religious sect, the Mazdakites,
revolted around the same time. Khosrau I was able to recover his empire and
expand into the Christian countries of Antioch and Yemen. Between 605
and 629, Sassanids successfully annexed Levant and Roman Egypt
and pushed into Anatolia.
However, a subsequent war with the Romans
utterly destroyed the empire. In the course of the protracted conflict,
Sassinid armies reached Constantinople, but could not defeat the Byzantines
there. Meanwhile, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius had
successfully outflanked the Persian armies in Asia Minor
and attacked the empire from the rear while the main Iranian army along with
its top Eran
Spahbods were far from battlefields. This resulted in a crushing defeat for
Sassanids in Northern Mesopotamia. The
Sassanids had to give up all their conquered lands and retreat.
Following the advent of Islam and collapse of Sassanid
Empire, Persians came under the subjection of Arab rulers for almost two
centuries before native Persian dynasties could gradually drive them out. In
this period a number of small and numerically inferior Arab tribes migrated to
inland Iran.[7]
Also some Turkic
tribes settled in Persia
between the 9th and 12th centuries.[8]
In time these peoples were integrated into
numerous Persian populations and adopted Persian
culture and language while Persians retained their culture with minimal
influence from outside.[9]
Conquest
of Persia
by Muslims
Main
article: Islamic conquest of Persia
Further
information: Samanids
The explosive growth of the Arab Caliphate
coincided with the chaos caused by the defeat of Sassanids in
wars with the Byzantine Empire. Most of the country was
conquered between 643 and 650 with the Battle of Nihawand marking the total collapse of
the Sassanids.[10]
Yazdgerd
III, the last Sassanid emperor, died ten years after he lost his empire to
the newly-formed Muslim
Caliphate. He tried to recover some of what he lost with the help of the Turks, but
they were easily defeated by Muslim armies. Then he sought the aid of the
Chinese Tang
dynasty. However, the Chinese help did not avail and Arab muslims
ultimately defeated the Chinese forces in the battle
of Talas, a century after Yazdgerd's
death. The Umayyads would rule Persia
for a hundred years. The Arab conquest dramatically changed life in Persia. Arabic
became the new lingua franca, Islam eventually replaced
Zoroastrianism, and mosques were built. A new language, religion, and culture
were added to the Iranian cultural milieu.
In 750 the Umayyads were ousted from power by
the Abbasid
dynasty. By that time, Persians had come to play an important role in the
bureaucracy of the empire.[11]
The caliph Al-Ma'mun,
whose mother was Persian, moved his capital away from Arab lands into Merv in eastern Iran. In 819, Samanids carved
out a semi-independent state in eastern Persia to become
the first native rulers after the Arabic conquest. Despite having roots in
Zoroastrianism theocratic nobility, they embraced Islam and propagated
the religion deep into the heart of Central
Asia. They made Samarqand, Bukhara and Herat their capitals and revived the Persian
language and culture. The Samanid rulers displayed tolerance toward
religious minorities as Zoroastrian clerics compiled and authored major religious
texts, such as the Denkard, in Pahlavi. It was approximately during this age,
when the poet Firdawsi
finished the Shahnameh,
an epic poem retelling the history of the Iranian kings. This epic was
completed by AD 1008.
Persia in AD 900 AD, divided between the Samanids, Saffarids,
and Abbasids.
In 913, western Persia
was conquered by the Buwayhid, a Deylamite tribal confederation from the shores of the Caspian Sea.
They made the city of Shiraz their capital. The Buwayhids destroyed Islam's
former territorial unity. Rather than a province of a united Muslim empire, Iran became one
nation in an increasingly diverse and cultured Islamic world.
Turco-Persian
rule (10371219)
Main
article: Seljuq dynasty
The Muslim world was shaken again in 1037 with
the invasion of the Seljuk Turks from the northeast. The Seljuks created a
very large Middle Eastern empire. The Seljuks built the fabulous Friday Mosque
in the city of Isfahan. The famous Persian mathematician and poet, Omar
Khayyαm, wrote his Rubaiyat during Seljuk times.
In the early 13th century the Seljuks lost
control of Persia to another
group of Turks from Khwarezmia,
near the Aral
Sea. The Shahs
of the Khwarezmid Empire later ruled.
Mongols and their successors (12191500)
Main
articles: Ilkhanate
and Timurid dynasty
Mosques with Persian names and
designs in Afghanistan, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan
and India
illustrate just how far east Persian culture extended due to their conquests.
The actual architectural domed design of Mosques were borrowed from the Sassanid era,
which then spilled into the Muslim world.
In 1218, Genghis
Khan sent ambassadors and merchants to the city of Otrar, on the
northeastern confines of the Khwarizm shahdom. The governor of Otrar had these
envoys executed. Genghis attacked Otrar in 1219, Samarkand and
other cities of the northeast.
Genghis' grandson, Hulagu Khan,
finished the invasions that Genghis had begun when he defeated Khwarzim Empire,
Baghdad, and much of the rest of the Middle East
from 1255 to 1258. Persia
temporarily became the Ilkhanate, a division of the vast Mongol
Empire.
In 1295, after Ilkhan Mahmud
Ghazan converted to Islam, he forced Mongols in Persia to convert Islam. The
Ilkhans patronized the arts and learning in the fine tradition of Iranian
Islam; indeed, they helped to repair much of the damage of the Mongol conquests.
In 1335, the death of Abu Sa'id, the last well-recognized
Ilkhan, spelled the end of the Ilkhanate. Though Arpa Ke'un
was declared Ilkhan his authority was disputed and the Ilkhanate was splintered
into a number of small states. This left Persia vulnerable to conquest at
the hands of Timur the Lame or Tamerlane, a Central Asian
conqueror seeking to revive the Mongol Empire. He ordered the attack of Persia
beginning around 1370 and robbed the region until his death in 1405. Timur is
known for his brutality; in Isfahan,
for instance, he was responsible for the murder of 70,000 people so that he
could build towers with their skulls[citation needed]. He conquered
a wide area and made his own city of Samarkand
rich, but he failed to forge a lasting empire. The Persian
Empire was essentially in ruins.
For the next hundred years Persia was not
a unified state. It was ruled for a while by descendants of Timur, called the Timurid
emirs. Toward the
end of the 15th century, Persia
was taken over by the Emirate of the White Sheep Turkmen (Ak Koyunlu). But
there was little unity and none of the sophistication that had defined Iran during the
glory days of Islam.
Safavid Persian Dynasty (15001722)
Main
article: Safavid Dynasty
Naghsh-i Jahan Square is one of the many
monuments built during the Safavid era.
Persian art and architecture
reached an apex during the reign of the Safavid dynasty.
The Safavid
Dynasty hailed from the town of Ardabil in the
region of Azarbaijan. The Safavid Shah Ismail I
overthrew the White Sheep (Akkoyunlu) Turkish rulers of Persia to found a new native Persian
empire. Ismail expanded Persia
to include all of present-day Azerbaijan,
Iran, and Iraq, plus much of Afghanistan.
Ismail's expansion was halted by the Ottoman
Empire at the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, and war with the
Ottomans became a fact of life in Safavid Iran.
Safavid Persia was a violent and chaotic
state for the next seventy years, but in 1588 Shah Abbas I of Safavid ascended to the throne and
instituted a cultural and political renaissance. He moved his capital to Isfahan, which quickly
became one of the most important cultural centers in the Islamic world. He made
peace with the Ottomans. He reformed the army, drove the Uzbeks out of Iran and into modern-day Uzbekistan,
and (with English help) recaptured the island of Hormuz from the Portuguese. Abdur Razzaq was the Persian ambassador
to Calicut, India, and wrote
vividly of his experiences there.[12]
The Safavids were followers of Shi'a Islam, and
under them Persia (Iran) became the largest Shi'a country in
the Muslim world, a position Iran
still holds today.
Under the Safavids Persia enjoyed its last
period as a major imperial power. In 1639, a final border was agreed upon with
the Ottoman Empire with the Treaty of Qasr-e Shirin; which delineates the
border between the Republic of Turkey and Iran and also that of between Iraq and Iran, today.
Persia and Europe (17221914)
An 18th century Persian astrolabe.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the natural philosophy and mathematics
of ancient
Greeks were furthered and preserved within the Muslim world. During this
period, Persia
became a centre for the manufacture of scientific instruments, retaining its
reputation for quality well into the 19th century.
In 1722, the Safavid state collapsed. That year
saw the first European invasion of Persia
since the time of Heraclius: Peter
the Great, Emperor of Imperial
Russia, invaded from the northwest as part of a bid to dominate central Asia. Ottoman forces accompanied the Russians,
successfully laying siege to Isfahan.
The Russians conquered the city of Baku and its
surroundings. The Turks also gained territory. However, the Safavids were
severely weakened, and that same year (1722), the Afghans
launched a bloody battle in response to the Safavids' attempts on trying to
forcefully convert them from Sunni to Shi'a sect of Islam. The last Safavid shah was executed, and
the dynasty came to an end.
The Persian empire
experienced a temporary revival under Nader Shah
in the 1730s and 1740s. Nadir checked the advances of the Russians and defeated
the Afghans, later recaptured all of Afghanistan. He also launched
successful campaigns against the nomadic khanates of Central
Asia, and the Arabs of Oman. He also recaptured the territories
lost to the Ottomans and invaded the Ottoman
Empire. In 1739, he attacked and looted Delhi, the capital of
Moghul India. When
Nadir Shah was assassinated, the empire was ruled by the Zand
dynasty. Iran
was left unprepared for the worldwide expansion of European colonial empires in the
late 18th century and throughout the 19th century.
Persia found relative stability in the Qajar
dynasty, ruling from 1779 to 1925, but lost hope to compete with the new
industrial powers of Europe; Persia found itself sandwiched between the growing
Russian Empire in Central Asia and the expanding British
Empire in India.
Each carved out pieces from the Persian empire that became Bahrain, Azerbaijan,
Turkmenistan,
Armenia, Georgia and Uzbekistan
amongst other previous provinces.
Although Persia
was never directly invaded, it gradually became economically dependent on Europe. The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 formalised
Russian and British spheres of influence over the north and south of the
country, respectively, where Britain and Russia each created a "sphere of influence", where the colonial
power had the final "say" on economic matters.
At the same time Mozzafar-al-Din
shah had granted a concession to William Knox D'Arcy, later the Anglo-Persian
Oil Company, to explore and work the newly-discovered oil fields at Masjid
Soleiman in southwest Persia, which started production in 1914. Winston
Churchill, as First Sea Lord to the British Admiralty,
oversaw the conversion of the Royal Navy to oil-fired battleships and partially
nationalized it prior to the start of war. A small Anglo-Persian force was
garrisoned there to protect the field from some hostile tribal factions.
See also: The
Great Game
World War I and the interbellum (19141935)
Eram Garden,
built in the Qajar
era is an example of Persian architecture of that time.
Persia was drawn into the periphery of World War I
because of its strategic position between Afghanistan
and the warring Ottoman, Russian,
and British
Empires. In 1914 Britain
sent a military force to Mesopotamia to deny the Ottomans access to the Persian
oilfields. The German Empire retaliated on behalf of its ally by
spreading a rumour that Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany had converted to Islam, and sent
agents through Iran to attack the oil fields and raise a Jihad against British
rule in India.
Most of those German agents were captured by Persian, British and Russian
troops who were sent to patrol the Afghan border, and the rebellion faded away.
This was followed by a German attempt, to abduct Ahmad
Shah Qajar. This was foiled at the last moment.
In 1916 the fighting between Russian and Ottoman
forces to the north of the country had spilled down into Persia; Russia gained the advantage until
most of her armies collapsed in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917. This left
the Caucasus
unprotected, and the Caucasian and Persian civilians starving after years of
war and deprivation. In 1918 a small force of 400 British troops under General Dunsterville moved into the
Trans-Caucasus from Persia in a bid to encourage local resistance to German and
Ottoman armies who were about to invade the Baku oilfields.
Although they later withdrew back into Persia, they did succeed in
delaying the Turks access to the oil almost until the Armistice. In
addition, the expeditions supplies were used to avert a major famine in the
region, and a camp for 30,000 displaced refugees was created near the
Mesopotamian frontier.
In 1919, northern Persia was occupied by the
British General William Edmund Ironside to enforce the
Turkish Armistice
conditions and assist General Dunsterville
and Colonel Bicherakhov contain Bolshevik
influence (of Mirza Kuchak Khan) in the north. Britain also
took tighter control over the increasingly lucrative oil fields.
In 1925, Reza
Shah Pahlavi seized power from the Qajars and established the new Pahlavi
dynasty, the last Persian monarchy before the establishment of the Islamic
Republic. However, Britain
and the Soviet
Union remained the influential powers in Persia into the early years of the Cold War.
On March 21, 1935, Iran was
officially accepted as the new name of the country. After Persian scholars' protests
to this decision on the grounds that it represented a break with their
classical past and seemed to be unduly influenced by the "Aryan"
propaganda from Nazi Germany. In 1953 Mohammad Reza Shah announced both names
"Iran" and "Persia"
could be used..
Significance of
history of Persia
The role of Persia (Iran) in history is
highly significant; In fact, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
considered the ancient Persians to be the first historic people and
stated thus: "In Persia first arises that light which shines itself and
illuminates what is around...The principle of development begins with the
history of Persia; this constitutes therefore the beginning of history".[13]
And Richard Nelson Frye further verifies:
"Few
nations in the world present more of a justification for the study of history
than Iran."[14]
Timeline
Persia in fiction
- The Persian Empire is
the seat of power for the sultan Shahryar, husband of Scheherazade
in the 1001 Nights
though the tales themselves span from China to the Middle East and even
parts of North Africa.
- Prince of Persia is a puzzle and
action-based video game series set in a mythological version of Ancient
Persia.
- The historical fantasy The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate
by L. Sprague de Camp is set in Babylon during the
last few years of Xerxes I reign.
- The historical novel Creation by Gore
Vidal, about a Persian diplomat who travels the known world studying
religious beliefs on behalf of Darius the Great.
- The Prince of Nothing books by R.
Scott Bakker, set in a fictional land that draws influence from
Hellenistic Greece,
Scythia,
and the Persian Empire.
- Gates
of Fire, by Steven Pressfield and 300 by Frank Miller, about the Battle
of Thermopylae.
- Mary
Renault's second book in her trilogy on Alexander the Great. The
Persian Boy, narrated by Bagoas set during Alexander the Great's
reign of Persia.
- Robert E. Howard's short story The Shadow of the Vulture,
featuring Red Sonya, is set in the Safavid
Dynasty, as she seeks vengeance on an Ottoman
sultan. It was published in The Magic Carpet
Magazine, a magazine that was known for their stories set in the
Orient.
- Godless Man, by Paul
Doherty - An historical mystery, set during the reign of Alexander the
Great (who is also a major character). Telamon, friend and physician of
Alexander, must unravel the threatening murders by a high-ranking Persian
spy only known as "the Centaur". Second part of a trilogy.
- Hadassah:
One Night With the King by Tommy
Tenney, tells the story of Esther, Queen of Persia.
- Gardens of Light by
Amin
Maalouf
- Persia:
The Land of the Magi or the Home of the Wisemen by Samuel K. Nweeya
- The Sassanid Persian
Empire was featured as the ally of Byzantium
in the jointly written six book long Bellisarius Saga by David
Drake and Eric Flint.
- The Battle of Thermopylae, part of the
Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, is dramatically retold in Frank Miller's comic
book (and subsequent film) 300
and features such historical figures as Persian King Xerxes I
and Spartan
King Leonidas
I.
- Jamshid
and the Lost Mountain of Light by Howard
Lee - A children's book which draws heavily from Persian mythology
- Historical fiction Roxana Romance by A.
J. Cave chronicles the life of Roxana, wife
of Alexander the Great, after the fall of the
imperial Achaemenids.
Posted by Cindi Epona'Bri at 11:52 PM
http://arabiamagick.blogspot.com/2008/09/persian-empire.html
