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Persian Empire Contents: Introduction ARMY physical features Population Religion Wealth End of the Persian empire

Introduction:

The Persian Empire was an empire that stretched from India to Europe from 550 B.C.E. to 331 B.C.E. It was ruled by a series of monarchs. An empire is defined as a geographically extensive set of states or peoples that are ruled either by a monarch or by an oligarchy, a small group of ruling elites. Although they gained power by conquering local people, the Persian Empire marked a period of peaceful rule and extensive trading for much of the Middle East.

Army:

The Achaemenid Empire (559 BC–330 BC) was the first of the Persian Empires to rule over significant portions of Greater Iran. The empire possessed a “national army” of roughly 120.000-150.000 troops, plus several tens of thousands of troops from their allies.

The Persian army was divided into regiments of a thousand each, called hazarabam. Ten hazarabams formed a haivarabam, or division. The best known haivarabam were the Immortals, the King’s personal guard division. The smallest unit was the ten man dathaba. Ten dathabas formed the hundred man sataba.

physical features:

The Iranian shore is mountainous, and there often are cliffs; elsewhere a narrow coastal plain with beaches, intertidal flats, and small estuaries borders the gulf. The coastal plain widens north of Būshehr (Bushire), Iran, and passes into the broad deltaic plain of the Tigris and Euphrates and Kārūn rivers. Cliffs are rare on the Arabian shore of the gulf, except around the base of the Qatar Peninsula and in the extreme southeast around the Strait of Hormuz, where they form the spectacular coast of the Musandam Peninsula. Most of the Arabian shore is bordered by sandy beaches, with many small islands enclosing small lagoons.

Population: By share of population, the largest empire was the Achaemenid Empire, better known as the Persian Empire, which accounted for approximately 49.4 million of the world's 112.4 million people in around 480 BC – an astonishing 44%.

Religion: The vast majority of Persians practice Shīʿite Islam. Before the Muslim conquest of Persia in the 7th century ce, most Persians followed Zoroastrianism, based on the teachings of the ancient prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra), who lived during the first half of the 1st millennium bce.

Wealth: The Persian Empire obtained much of its wealth as a result of its prolific crops. Even some of the most urban cities in the empire relied on agriculture. Barley was the main cereal staple of Persian agriculture, being easily grown in most areas of the empire. However, there were a great many other crops grown throughout differing regions. Wine production also became one of Persia's more common commodities. Government programs worked towards expanding agricultural production in the empire. Government money was invested in improving irrigation, the quality of the crops, and the latest farming techniques.

End of the Persian empire: Reasons for its decline and fall. After the death of Darius, his son Xerxes ruled until 465 B.C. Xerxes was a cruel but weak king who was also defeated by the Greeks in the Persian Wars. During Xerxes' reign, the Persian Empire declined.