PERSIAN EMPIRE

 

PERSIAN EMPIRE

500 BC ambassadors from all over the enormous Persian Empire came to a meeting in Persepolis to pay tribute to the mighty Shahanshah Darius I.

333 BC Persepolis was in ruins and Alexander the Great conquered the empire.

Persia was one of the greatest earliest empires and had its peak around 500 BC.

Today, it is called Iran, since 1935. The reason for it is that Aryans who came from India and the Near East settling there in about 1500 BC. It was the Greeks writing most of the ancient history books called the country Persis and its people Persians.

The Aryans were made up by two groups. The Medes and the Persians. The Medes were first in control but in 550 BC Cyrus the Great overthrew Media. He was the founder of the Achaemenid dynasty. He conquered Lydia, Anatolia and Babylon. In 539 BC he included Syria and Palestine.

Cyrus was a great soldier and humane. He treated the people he conquered kindly. He released the Jews from captivity in Babylon and allowed them back into Jerusalem to worship in their temple.

However, his son Cambyses was right the opposite. After he conquered Egypt in 525 BC his soldiers desecrated Egyptian holy places which made the Persians very unpopular.

529 BC Darius became king. He was a very clever ruler of the huge empire which stretched from Asia Minor to Afghanistan and India. He organized it into 20 satrapies or provinces; ruled by satraps (governors) demanding each to raise an army. Darius had a permanent bodyguard of 10,000 men, The Immortals.  The land belonged to the king but was lent out to individuals and they had to provide men for the army – 21 hectares for a bowman; more for a horseman or a charioteer.

It was an efficient tax system and an excellent road and postal network made this all possible.

Darius took the official title of Shahanshah (king or kings) and moved his capital from Ecbatana to the newly built splendour of Persepolis.

Darius I, established a fast communications through the empire.  He built a Royal Road 2698km long stretched from Sardis to Susa with 111 post stations where messengers changed their horses. A courier could make the journey in one week while camel caravans took three months.

Darius commissioned an early version of the Suez Canal; a 200km canal between the Red Sea and the Nile. He also had hilltop fire-towers built to flash urgent news across the empire.

Persia got into regular conflict with the Greek city states. Darius I and his successor, Xerxes who invaded the Greek mainland, were defeated several times. The economy started to decline and the dynasty started to struggle among the later Achaemenids, continued to weakened the empire.

334 BC Alexander the Great started to invade and conquer the Persian empire. He destroyed the capital Persepolis in 333 BC. In the same year the last Achaemenid, Darius III, was murdered.

Persian Religion was called Zoroastrianism, after their prophet, Zoroaster (Zarathustra). He lived in the 6^th century BC. Zoroastrians believed in one god, Ahura Mazda. They worshipped him in fire temples. Priests were called Magi.

When the last dynasty of the Persian empire. the Sassanids, fell to the Arabs in 650 AD they were converted to Islam. One community fled to India. Their descendants, known as Parsees, still follow the religion of Zarathustra.