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PERSIA

INTRODUCTION: HISTORY & LOCATION OF PERSIA

The history of Iran, commonly also known as Persia in the Western world, is intertwined with the history of a larger region, also to an extent known as Greater Iran, comprising the area from Anatolia, the Bosphorus, and Egypt in the west to the borders of Ancient India and the Syr Darya in the east, and from the Caucasus and the Eurasian Steppe in the north to the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman in the south.

Iran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilizations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 7000 BC.The southwestern and western part of the Iranian Plateau participated in the traditional Ancient Near East with Elam, from the Early Bronze Age, and later with various other peoples, such as the Kassites, Mannaeans, and Gutians. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel names the Persians as the first Historical People. The Medes unified Iran as a nation and empire in 625 BC. The Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC), founded by Cyrus the Great, was the first of the Persian empires to rule from the Balkans to North Africa and also Central Asia, spanning three continents, from their seat of power in Persis (Persepolis). It was the largest empire yet seen and the first world empire.The First Persian Empire was the only civilization in all of history to connect over 40% of the global population, accounting for approximately 49.4 million of the world's 112.4 million people in around 480 BC. They were succeeded by the Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Empires, who successively governed Iran for almost 1000 years and made Iran once again as a leading power in the world. Persia's arch-rival was the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire.

The Persian Empire proper begins in the Iron Age, following the influx of Iranian peoples. Iranian people gave rise to the Medes, the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires of classical antiquity.

Once a major empire of superpower proportions,having conquered far and wide, Iran has endured invasions too, by the Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and the Mongols. Iran has continually reasserted its national identity throughout the centuries and has developed as a distinct political and cultural entity.

The Muslim conquest of Persia (633–656) ended the Sasanian Empire and was a turning point in Iranian history. Islamization of Iran took place during the eighth to tenth centuries and led to the eventual decline of Zoroastrianism in Iran as well as many of its dependencies. However, the achievements of the previous Persian civilizations were not lost, but were to a great extent absorbed by the new Islamic polity and civilization.

Iran, with its long history of early cultures and empires, had suffered particularly hard during the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. Many invasions of nomadic tribes, whose leaders became rulers in this country, affected it negatively.

Iran was once again reunified as an independent state in 1501 by the Safavid dynasty, which converted Iran to Shia Islam as the official religion of their empire, marking one of the most important turning points in the history of Islam. Functioning again as a leading power, this time amongst the neighboring Ottoman Empire, their arch-rival for centuries, Iran had been a monarchy ruled by an emperor almost without interruption from 1501 until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when Iran officially became an Islamic republic on April 1, 1979.

Over the course of the first half of the 19th century Iran lost many of its territories in the Caucasus (which it had been ruling intermittently encompassed for millennia), comprising modern-day Eastern Georgia, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, to its rapidly expanding and emerged neighboring rival the Russian Empire, following the Russo-Persian Wars between 1804–13 and 1826–8.

The Iranian plateau and Persia, which are bounded by the Zagros mountains to the west, the Amu Darya river to the north (per its antique definition), Afghanistan, the Pamirs, and the Indus Valley to the east, and the Persian Gulf and arid Baluchistan to the south, have historically been subject to a series of indigenous dynasties with a long intervening epoch of foreign regimes originating primarily from Central Asia and the Arabian peninsula. Persia's exposure to the Eurasian steppe to the north and north-east has left it prey to opportunistic states and steppe peoples seeking to exploit commercially or martially the commercial zones of the former Silk Road (e.g. Khorasan and Merv) as well as the resources and commercial centrality of the Persian Gulf and the western cities (e.g. Isfahan and Tehran). From the Ummayad Caliphate of the 7th century to the Afghan Afsharid Dynasty of the 18th, Persia seldom experienced regimes formed by native inhabitants.

Since the influx of primarily Turkic-speaking peoples in the peripheral regions of Persia in the Medieval period, the geographical definition of Persia has germinated a contentious debate, fiercely kindled by the rise of Central Asian nation-states in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse. Tajikistan, which bears a politically-differentiated register of Persian, may indeed be considered a geographical constituent of "Persia," divorced by the inertia of an incipient Tajik nationalism. Afghanistan, while bearing numerous languages from divergent families, nevertheless maintains a significant presence of the Persian language and cultural institutions, including the celebration of Nowruz, or the "Persian New Year." Whether these regions are constituted in the definition of "Persia" depends on the mode of analysis adopted by the geographer. While these regions are culturally, historically, and linguistically linked to Persia, religious and national definitions tend to diverge from a narrative of cultural commonality.

The expansion of the Indo-European languages and culture according to the Kurgan Hypothesis, c. 4000-1000 BCE. In the eastern Eurasian Steppe, Iranian languages (themselves a constituent of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages) predominated. This linguistic unity belied the cultural contrast between the primarily sedentary Persians and the pastoral steppe peoples, who were often subjugated by the early Persian dynasties. By the High Middle Ages, most of Central Asia and the central Eurasian steppe had been ethno-linguistically altered by the arrival of the Turkic peoples from Mongolia and the eastern Eurasian Steppe. Much of the region, however, is still united by the architectural, literary, and musical traditions of Persia. Image courtesy of Dbachmann on Wikipedia. THE PERSIAN EMPIRE

The Persian Empire is one of a series of imperial dynasties centered in Persia (modern–day Iran). The first of these was the Achaemenid Empire established by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC with the conquest of Median, Lydian and Babylonian empires. It covered much of the Ancient world when it was conquered by Alexander the Great. Several later dynasties "claimed to be heirs of the Achaemenids". Persia was then ruled by the Parthian Empire which supplanted the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire, and then by the Sassanian Empire which ruled up until the mid-7th century.

While many of these empires referred to themselves as Persian, they were often ruled by ethnic Medes, Babylonians, or Parthians. Iranian dynastic history was interrupted by the Arab conquest of Persia in 651 AD, establishing the even larger Islamic caliphate, and later by the Mongol invasion.

The main religion of ancient Persia was the native Zoroastrianism, but after the seventh century, it was replaced by Islam.

The Safavid Empire was the first Persian empire established after Arab conquest of Persia by the Shah Ismail I. Safavids ruled Persia independently from the Arab and Ottoman Sunni [clarification needed] caliphates by making Shia Islam Persia's official religion, who became Persia's classical rival, like the pagan Romans and Christian Byzantines had been before. Since 1979 and the downfall of the last Persian monarchy Pahlavi dynasty during the Iranian Revolution, Persia has had a Shia Islamic theocratic government named the Islamic Republic.

WEALTH OF PERSIA The Persians themselves traditionally relied on barter rather than coinage but upon their conquering of the Lydian Kingdom in the mid-sixth century BC, they quickly adopted the innovative concept of coinage. The Persians found themselves frequently in conflict with Greek city states and needed to employ Greek mercenaries who expected to be paid with coins, resulting in the demand for the production of a consistent coinage. Not wanting to retain the designs of the defeated Lydian King Croesus, the Great King Darius I transitioned the Lydian gold stater into a new denomination, the “daric”, named after him. The Greeks would often colloquially call these coins “toxotai”, archers, after their iconic design. The daric became the first ancient gold coin to enter into widespread, international use and was one of the most recognizable coins of the ancient world, including being the earliest coin mentioned in the Old Testament. The Persian King is depicted in a “running kneeling” position which represented an early approach for portraying motion on coinage. The core design remained largely unchanged for the 185 years during which darics were minted, emphasizing the conservative nature of the type. The Persians put a focus on the purity of the metal - between 98-99% gold - rather than the artistry of the coin. This resulted in the vast majority of darics being of a very crude style. However, some rare examples like this one are elegantly engraved in a fine, naturalistic style, showing a significant improvement in the depiction of the king thanks to a brief artistic recovery. Alexander the Great conquered the Persians in 329 BC but the daric would outlive the Empire, continuing to be struck under Alexander and his successors until it was eventually fully replaced by Alexander’s stater around 300 BC. Achaemenid Empire, Time of Xerxes II to Artaxerxes II, c. 420-375 BC. Daric (Gold, 16x14mm, 8.37 g), Sardes. Persian king moving to right, crowned, wearing robes and in the running-kneeling position, with quiver over his shoulder, holding transverse spear ending in a ball in his right hand and bow in his left. Rev. Oblong irregular incuse. BMC 84. Carradice Type IIIb, pl. XV, 50-51. Jenkins 34. A superb example, beautifully struck in high relief and unusually nice. Good extremely fine. From the Robinow collection, Morton & Eden 24 October 2011, 154, acquired from D. Gorny in Munich, 3 April 1989. (Cited from: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/the-wealth-of-the-persian-empire.255779/)