The origins of the Persian or Iranian empires goes back some 2,500 years when the Persian king Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, which was the first of the Persian empires. Cyrus the Great went on to conquer Babylon without a fight in 539 BC. Cyrus also allowed the Jews to return home to Judea from their exile in Babylon and encouraged them to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem (Ezra 1:1-8). Cyrus died in battle in 530 BC while fighting the Massagetae, another Persian tribe who inhabited the steppes of Central Asia. Several years after Cyrus, Darius I became the third Persian king of the Achaemenid Empire. During his reign Darius began to build the city of Persep, which the Greeks would later call Persepolis meaning, “City of the Persians.” Darius it seems ruled the Achaemenid Empire quite well. Tablets discovered in Persepolis reveal how complex and sophisticated the governing system was that Darius established. Roughly speaking, Darius did well in bringing and keeping the empire together.
Though there were not many military conquests during his reign, Darius did venture into Greece starting in 512 BC. Darius conquered Thrace and Macedonia, but was defeated by the Greeks at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. These events would go on to usher in what the Greeks called the Persian Wars. For the Persians, the more important conflict was a revolt in Egypt that occurred in 486 BC, but before he could attend to this matter Darius died. Darius in turn was succeeded by his son Xerxes, who like his father set his eyes on Greece. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Xerxes brought nearly two million troops with him on his quest to conquer Athens in 480 BC. Though his forces overran mainland Greece, Xerxes suffered losses a year later at Salamis and Plataea, which canceled out his previous gains. However, Xerxes did manage to crush revolts in Egypt and Babylon. Besides wars, Xerxes also oversaw many construction projects at Susa and Persepolis. Xerxes is also mentioned in the Old Testament book of Esther, where he is identified as Ahasuerus.
Xerxes was succeeded by his son Artaxerxes in 465 BC. And it was during the reign’s of kings Xerxes and Artaxerxes that many of the Jews returned to Jerusalem after their captivity in Babylon. During this time the wars between Greece and Persia continued. The fighting stopped however with the Peace of Callias in 449 BC, which marked the end of the Greco-Persian Wars. But in the reign of Artaxerxes II (404-359 BC) there were further wars with the Greeks. The war between Greece and Persia would come to its apex when the Persian king Darius III faced the most famous of Greek rulers: Alexander the Great. Alexander began his war against Persia in the spring of 334 B.C. In the following year Alexander encountered the main Persian army, commanded by king Darius III at Issus, in northeastern Syria. The Battle of Issus, in 333 BC, was a great victory for Alexander. Then in 330 BC Alexander forced his way to Persepolis, the Persian capital. After plundering the royal treasuries and taking other rich booty he burned the city and thus completed the destruction of the ancient Achaemenid Empire.
Spiritually speaking, Iran gave birth to a man who founded a religion that is still practiced to this day even after 2,500 years. The man and the religion that bears his name is none other than Zoroaster, also known as Zarathustra. It is widely believed that Zoroaster was indeed a historical figure and not just a legend. Tradition tells us that Zoroaster was born in a place called Ragha, which has been identified with Rayy, a site near modern Tehran. Zoroaster would later leave his home, due to the persecutions he suffered from his people who did not accept his religious teachings. After traveling extensively he was welcomed by King (Kavi) Vishtaspa, who also converted to his faith. The conversion of Kavi Vishtaspa is supposed to have occurred 258 years before Alexander’s conquest of Iran. This means that Zoroaster lived ca. 628-551 BC. Vishtaspa was also the name of the father of the Persian king Darius I, which lines up with this dating. Thus Zoroaster must have lived close to the rise of the first Persian Empire.
The cosmology of Zoroaster was centered between two deities. One, Ahura Mazda known as the lord of wisdom, was the good creator god of truth and light. The other was Ahriman, the personification of darkness, evil, and falsehood. In this dualism Ahura Mazda and Ahriman struggled for supremacy. At the beginning of time, the twin spirits of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman created “life and non-life,” with the one who “followed the lie” chose to create the worst of things, while the other holier spirit chose to do works of righteousness. So too was man given free will to choose between good thoughts and righteousness, or bad thoughts and deception. Zoroaster’s powerful conceptions of Ahura Mazda, the cosmic struggle of good and evil, man’s free will and ability to choose his actions, and the ultimate reward bestowed upon the virtuous who persevered in the face of adversity has made a lasting influence on Iranian religion and culture as well as other cultures that came in contact with it.
Returning to the politics of Persia, we see that after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BC, the Greek Seleucid Empire took its place, until 247 BC when the Parthian Empire ruled ancient Iran. The Parthian Empire would then be succeeded by the Sasanian Empire, also called the Neo-Persian Empire, which was the last kingdom of the Persian Empire before the rise of Islam, and it governed from 224 to 651 AD. Nearly a millennium after the death of Zoroaster, Greece and Persia were at war once again. Now at the time of this Persian invasion beginning in the seventh century AD, Greece was now Christian and had expanded into what was known as the Byzantine Empire, and had incorporated several other states under its umbrella which where not ethnically Greek. For in 602 AD, the Persian king, Khosrow Parviz invaded Byzantine territory, and in 613 he captured Damascus, in 614 Jerusalem, and in 616 his armies occupied both Egypt and Asia Minor. In this moment of crisis the Byzantine Empire was saved by Emperor Heraclius who, after five years of brilliant fighting, defeated the Persians and drove them from Greco/Roman territory.
Around the time that the Persians returned home from their battles with the Christian Greeks, a new religion was springing up from the sands in the deserts of Arabia. This new faith would be known as Islam and Muhammad was the messenger of that faith. Muhammad and his companions went on to conquer and unify much of Arabia under Muslim rule. After the Muslim conquest of Persia in 651 AD, the fall of the Sasanian Empire of Iran followed and as a result the Zoroastrian religion also fell into decline. However, Iranians have maintained certain pre-Islamic traditions, including their language and culture, and have integrated them with Islamic laws. The Islamization of Iran would bring deep transformations within the cultural, scientific, and political structure of Iran’s society. The blossoming of Persian literature, philosophy, medicine and art became major elements of this newly formed Muslim civilization. Integrating a heritage of civilization going back over a thousand years, and being at the “crossroads of the major cultural highways,” contributed to Persia emerging at the forefront of what culminated into the “Islamic Golden Age.”
References:
Axworthy, M. Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran. (New York, NY: Basic Books Inc., 2008).
Daniel, Elton. The History of Iran. (Westport, Connecticut: The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations, 2001).
Glubb. S.J. A Short History of the Arab Peoples. (New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Books, 1995).