The great empire of Persia that was erased from history

The great empire of Persia that was erased from history

The campaign launched by the ancient Greeks to slander ancient Persia (or present-day Iran) has not completely distorted the story of their astonishing achievements in two thousand years.

Lloyd Jones, an expert on the social and cultural history of ancient Persia and Greece, tells the story of a family that gave rise to the world's greatest empire.

Around 1943, the British poet and novelist Robert Graves wrote a poem titled 'A View of Persia'. It was about the Battle of Marathon which was fought between Athens and ancient Persia in 449 BC.

The battle was hailed as a glorious victory for Athens, and Marathon soon acquired legendary status in the Greek world. The expulsion of Persian warriors from Greek soil gave birth to a tale of heroic struggle for freedom against tyranny.

The matter does not end here because according to this history Europe was also born in Marathon.

Robert Graves has questioned this history in his poem and he has written this poem from the perspective of the Persians.

According to him, Marathan was no more than a minor skirmish for the Persians because it was not an attempt to conquer Greece as the story was made out and taught to school children in Europe for centuries. Between the rise of Cyrus or Dhul-Qarnain and the death of Darius (Darius I) two centuries later, the Persian Empire was the greatest power in the world.

It was an empire founded on modern infrastructure, tolerance of diverse cultures and religions, and the use of force when necessary.

Given their power for two hundred years, Robert Graves believed that the clashes with the Greeks were not as important to Persia as the Greeks made them out to be.

But they were trying to swim against the current.

Greek culture

Two hundred years ago, few people questioned how the West came to dominate the rest of the world.

In response to this question, a theory was put forward that the cause of European superiority was not Christianity or religion, as previously thought, but a cultural tradition that began in ancient Greece.

He believed that Greece discovered freedom and rationality and then Rome spread these gifts throughout Europe through conquest. According to this point, barbarians lived in all regions except Greece and Rome, and all of them Worse and more dangerous were the Persians who wanted to conquer the whole world.

From the time of the Greco-Persian Wars, a campaign was launched against the Persians with the aim of portraying them as the cruel enemies of the free world.

The matter was also complicated because the way of writing history in Persia was different from that of Greece. They used to transmit their past from generation to generation through poetry and song.

So the question is, what is the correct history of Persia? The answer lies in ancient Persian texts that provide information about the empire, from its economy, civil service to the arts.

Because of this treasure, Iran now has a platform from which to tell the story of its past.

Journey from Monarchy to Superpower

The story begins in the 6th century BC with the rise of a remarkable ruler of the ancient world we know as Cyrus II.

At that time, Persia was a small kingdom located in the southwest of present-day Iran and consisted of one of several tribes.

But before his death, Cyrus had made this small kingdom into a world superpower. In 550 BC, Cyrus, with the help of a tribal confederation of southern Iran, captured the capital of the Medes, the largest kingdom in the region at that time. .

Their next major success was against the powerful and wealthy kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor (Anatolia) whose capital city paved the way for their future conquests.

In 540 BC Cyrus had entered the great city of Babylon. Most of the information about the conquest of this city comes from the cylinders of the time of Cyrus.

After this victory, Cyrus actually became the master of a great empire. At Pasargad in Iran, Cyrus built a mausoleum and palace with an extensive garden.

According to the royal decree, all conquered nations were required to obey the laws made by Cyrus. Cyrus himself was reputed to have the support of God, who gave Cyrus the gift of balancing the world. According to Herodotus, Cyrus was killed fighting the Massagitai tribe in Central Asia. This was a major setback but it was now difficult to stop the expansion of the empire.

After him, Cambias II soon conquered Egypt as well.

Greek sources describe Cambias II as a mad dictator who oppressed his subjects and denigrated the religious traditions of the conquered peoples. But archaeological finds from Egypt paint a different picture.

They show that the king adopted a policy of religious tolerance. Texts from Memphis also confirm this. The attitude of tolerance towards religious and cultural ideas was characteristic of Persia. But if necessary, this empire of ancient Persia could also use brutal force. This is evidenced in the form of Darius, who was seen as the most successful king after Cyrus II and ruled during the height of the Persian Empire.

Ruthless and powerful

Darius usurped power from Bardias, son of Cyrus, in a bloody fashion in 522 BC, and was extremely ruthless when A series of rebellions started in his kingdom.

In a little over a year, they had managed to defeat, detain or kill the rebel leaders. He never faced another coup during the rest of his 36-year reign.

Ancient Persian texts attest to Darius' immense power and his vigorous defense.

According to one such passage, Ahura Mazda, a Zoroastrian god, gave Darius 'the kingship of a vast empire inhabited by many nations, including Persia, Media, and nations speaking various languages, covering mountains and deserts, seas, On this side and on the other side of it, and on this side of the desert and on the other side of it.

However, Darius's dominance was not only due to his military strength. He also ensured that engineering and construction projects were completed throughout the empire. In Egypt, he also built a canal between the Nile River and the Red Sea.

In central Iran, he began an extensive building program at Persepolis.

The Elamite city of Shush (western Iran) found new life when it received the status of an administrative capital.

Running an empire spanning three million square kilometers was a huge logistical challenge even for a talented ruler like Darius.

To solve this, he divided the empire into administrative provinces and gave the highest positions to a small group of Persian elites. The system of provinces was one of the main reasons why he was able to control this great empire for such a long period of time.

The infrastructure of the Persian Empire also proved to be very beneficial for him. The provinces were connected to the federation by roads.

The extent of Darius' empire is also evident from the artworks of the period, which combine different parts of the empire. But their specific aspects also convey a message of solidarity with Persia.

As a warrior and administrative ruler, Darius is remembered in the West for his harsh behavior that led to his unsuccessful invasion of Greece during the Battle of Marathon.

It was definitely Darius' dream to include Greece in his empire, but the Greek historian Herodotus's writings on the tension between Greece and Persia seem to exaggerate the resistance of Greece and the reaction of Persia.

Darius died in 486 BC and his son Xerxes took over the task of expanding the empire. Like his father, he had a hard time dealing with the Greeks.

They captured Athens in 480 BC but suffered major defeats from the Greeks both on land (Palaete and Mycale) and at sea (Salamis). They faced the reality that Greece would never be included in their empire. And so they left this dream unfulfilled and returned home.

Over the next century and a half, there were internal rebellions, Egypt's failure and repeated invasions, and a rebellion in Sidon (present-day Lebanon) was crushed.

Despite all these crises, Persian influence could not be challenged until 330 BC. Then a figure appeared in Greece who overthrew the entire Persian Empire in a few years and that was Alexander the Great. Darius III was responsible for stopping them. Failure to do so has forever tarnished his reputation.

But Darius III was a Bihar soldier and a talented ruler who emerged as a major obstacle to Alexander the Great's mission. However, they could not prevent defeat in the battles of Gomgal in 333 BC and 331 BC.

After the second defeat, Darius III fled to Hagamatana in western Iran to gather troops. From here he went to Bactria where he was killed by his cousin Ardashir V.

After the death of Darius III in 330 BC, the Persian Empire ended and a new chapter in the history of the world began, in which Alexander the Great established an empire that made even Persia seem small.

Power confined to the family

Despite rebellions, border disputes, succession battles and assassinations of kings, the Persian Empire ruled a vast territory with a diverse population for more than two decades.

The question is not why did the Persian Empire end, but how did it last for so long?

The basic answer is that the royal family maintained their control over the monarchy. The Achaemenid dynasty ran the empire like a family business.

There was a rebellion at the internal level, but no province or state could break out of it. Rather, the question was who would become the head of the family and who would sit on the throne.

Today, many important things are being revealed in the research on the Persian Empire. Since the 1930s, texts from Persian sources have been emerging. Archaeologists continue to find things that force them to change the definition of empire.

As Robert Graves says, it is now possible to explain the history of Iran against the background of Persia.