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war with one another—all these were Zoroastrian beliefs that greatly influenced Christianity.
Before the Persians (c. 4000 B.C.–550 B.C.)
Historians believe that as early as 4000 B.C., there was village life in what is now Iran, though it is not entirely clear who lived there. Perhaps these early peoples were relatives of the groups who established the Sumerian civilization to the west at about the same time. In any case, they disappeared from history in the face of a mighty invading force from the north.
These were the Aryans (AIR-ee-uhnz), a group within the larger collection of Indo-European tribes that originated somewhere in south-central Russia after 4000 B.C. Little is known about these groups, who ultimately spread out from India to Europe (hence the name “Indo-European”). In fact, the only evidence of their existence is the strong relationship between the languages of Iran, India, and Europe.
The Aryan invasion
Based on the clues historians can piece together from the linguistic (ling-GWIS-tik; language-based) evidence, it appears that in about 3000 B.C., the first Indo-European migra- tions began. Some tribes moved westward, into Europe, and some moved south into what is now northeastern Iran and Afghanistan. These were the Aryans, and between 2000 and
1500 B.C., they split into two groups. Some of their tribes moved eastward, crossing the Hindu Kush (HIN-doo KÜSH) Mountains into India, where they conquered groups living there. Some migrated southward, deeper into Iran.
Actually, the modern name of Iran is a much older one than “Persia” (PUR-zhuh). The term “Iran” comes from Aryan, whereas “Persia” refers to Fars, the area in southwestern Iran from which the Persians later emerged to rule the entire region. As for the word “Aryan,” it would come to have a sig- nificance quite removed from its original meaning, thanks to the racist notions promoted by Adolf Hitler as dictator of Nazi Germany.
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Words to Know: Persia
Assassination: Killing, usually of an important leader, for political reasons.
Communism: A political and economic system in which the government owns virtually all property in the name of the people.
Communists (cap.): Persons belonging to political parties that were usually associ- ated with the Soviet Union.
Convert (n.): A new believer in a religion.
Cremation: The burning, as opposed to the burying, of a dead body.
Cult: A small religious group, most often with highly unusual beliefs.
Deify: To turn someone or something into a god.
Dynamic: Powerful or energetic.
Dynasty: A group of people, often but not always a family, who continue to hold a position of power over a period of time.
Economy: The whole system of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services in a country.
Empire: A large political unit that unites many groups of people, often over a wide territory.
Ethnic: Relating to a group of people who share a common racial, cultural, national, linguistic, or tribal origin.
Frontier: Border.
Fundamentalist: Someone who calls for a return to the basic traditions of a religion.
Hostage: Someone who is taken captive and held in order to force someone else to meet certain demands.
Ironic: When something is intended to be one way, but turns out to be quite differ- ent from what was intended.
Islam: A faith that arose in Arabia in the A.D.
600s, led by the prophet Muhammad
(A.D. 570?–632).
Isthmus: A narrow piece of land, with water on either side, which connects two larger areas of land.
Legitimacy: The right of a ruler to hold power.
The Medes
The Aryans who conquered Iran eventually divided into groups, the most notable of which were the Medes (MEEDZ) along the Caspian Sea in the north and the Persians across the mountains to the south. For a long time, the Medes were the dominant group. Beginning in the 700s B.C., they
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Linguistic: Relating to language.
Mercenary: A professional soldier who will fight for whoever pays him.
Middle Ages: The period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance, roughly A.D. 500–1500.
Migrate: To move in large numbers. Mujahideen: Islamic “holy warriors.” Muslim: A believer in Islam.
Namesake: Someone with the same name as someone else.
Nobleman: A ruler within a kingdom who has an inherited title and lands but who is less powerful than the king or queen.
Nomads: Wandering groups of people.
Peninsula: An area of land that sticks out into a body of water.
Province: A political unit, like a state, that is part of a larger country.
Satrap: A governor in the Persian Empire. Sect: A small group within a larger religion. Shah: A king of Iran before 1979.
Shiite: Someone who belongs to the Shiite
sect of Islam, which is dominant in Iran.
Soviet Union: A country that combined Rus- sia and fourteen other nations under a Communist government from the end of World War I to the early 1990s.
Stalemate: A situation in which a conflict ends without either side being able to claim victory.
Standard: A battle flag or banner.
Symbol: Something that stands for some- thing else.
Theme: A basic idea in a story.
Theocracy: A government controlled by reli- gious leaders.
Tolerance: Acceptance of other people and their different ways of doing things.
Treaty: An agreement between nations. Uniform (adj.): Having the same form. Usurp: To seize power.
Zoroastrianism: A religion, founded in Persia, based on a belief in a continuing strug- gle between the good god Ahura-Mazda and the evil god Ahriman.
threatened the Assyrians, but from 653 to 628 B.C., the Scythi- ans controlled much of Iran.
In 625 B.C., however, a Median king named Cyaxares (kee-ax-ARE-eez) drove out the Scythians and resumed warfare against Assyria. He later joined forces with the Babylonians, and a combined force of Medes and Babylonians destroyed
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Assyria in 612 B.C. After that, the Medes and Babylonians divided the Middle East between them. For a time, the Medes controlled much of Asia Minor, including Lydia.
But a new force was rising among the Medes’ Persian cousins to the south, who were ruled by the Achaemenid (ah- kay-MEN-id) dynasty. In 559 B.C., a powerful Achaemenid king named Cyrus II [SIE-rus], whom history would remember as Cyrus the Great, came to the throne. Cyrus united the Persians against the Medes and after a long hard fight defeated them in
550 B.C. Thus was born the Persian Empire.
The Persian Empire (550–330 B.C.)
Cyrus next waged war against Lydia, defeating it and capturing its king, Croesus, in 546 B.C. After a successful cam- paign against the Ionian [eye-OH-nee-uhn] city-states of Greece, he turned his attention to Babylonia, and in 539 his armies captured Babylon. This was one of the most important events of ancient history, because now Persia controlled the largest empire that had existed up to that time. In ancient times, only the empire of the Greeks under Alexander, and later the Roman Empire, would be larger.
Equally important was the nature of Persian rule under Cyrus. Most conquerors before and since have attempted to impose their way of life on others, but Cyrus was willing to let conquered peoples maintain their religions and customs. Per- haps this was because the Persians, before they won their vast empire, possessed little in the way of culture, having been forced to live a hard existence in the rugged southern Iranian highlands. Therefore they were willing to adapt and borrow, and they allowed their new subjects to go on with their lives much as before. Thus the Assyrians and Babylonians contin- ued to worship their gods. Cyrus even restored the Babyloni- ans’ temples. He also permitted the Jews to return to Israel and begin rebuilding their temple and their holy city, Jerusalem.
Cyrus met his end in battle in 529 B.C. and was suc- ceeded by his son, Cambyses II (kam-BEE-sis). The latter man- aged to defeat the Egyptians in 525 B.C., adding that powerful nation to the growing empire. In 522 B.C. he learned that forces back home were plotting against him. On his way back
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to Persia, Cambyses died—possibly by suicide—and a general named Darius (DARE-ee-us) took the throne.
Darius becomes king
Darius I (r. 522–486 B.C.) began his reign by crushing the revolt against Cambyses, which had spread to many parts of the Persian Empire. It took a year to complete this task, after which Darius marched into northern India and added large areas of land to the empire. His biggest interests, however, lay to the west, in Greece. In 516 B.C. he marched against the Scythians to stop them from supplying the Greeks with grain.
He already controlled the Greeks of Ionia, but when they revolted against Persia in 499 B.C., this temporarily stopped him from advanc- ing against Greece. Eventually the Greeks of Athens joined their neigh-
bors in Ionia against him. The conflict came to a head in 490
B.C. with the Battle of Marathon, which ended with a Greek victory. Darius retreated, hoping to attack Greece again, but he died four years later without ever achieving his goal.
Zoroastrianism
Because he came from outside the Persian royal house, it was important for Darius to establish his legitimacy (lej-JIT- uh-meh-see), or his right to rule. He left behind a remarkable document, the Behistun (beh-hi-STOON) Inscription, a stone pillar telling of his deeds as king. According to the Behistun Inscription, Darius gained victory because he “was not wicked, nor a liar” and he “ruled according to righteousness.” His power, the Behistun Inscription indicates, came by the grace of God—and that god had a name.
Unlike Cyrus, who does not seem to have held a strong religious belief, Darius—and through his influence, much of
Darius I, walking in a procession with his attendants. Library of Congress.
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Zoroaster, engraving. Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission.
Persia—was Zoroastrian (zohr-oh-AS- tree-un). The roots of the faith went back several centuries, but the prophet who gave it its name did not appear until the 600s B.C. His name was Zoroaster (zohr-oh-AS-tur), sometimes rendered as Zarathushtra (zahr-uh- THOO-sh’truh). Zoroaster proclaimed that the god Ahura-Mazda (ah-HOOR- uh MAHZ-duh) was supreme above all other gods. The opposite of Ahura- Mazda was Ahriman (AH-ree-mahn), who was pure evil—in other words, the Devil.
In fact, the Christian idea of Satan (a name derived from a Persian word) came through the Zoroastrian influence on the Jews then under Per- sian rule. Although the Old Testament certainly discusses the nature of evil, there is little mention of a devil as such: rather, there is the Serpent who tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, and there is Lucifer (LOO-si-fur), the
leading angel, whose revolt against God is described in the Book of Isaiah. Generally, however, Judaism maintains that all things, both good and evil, come from God.
Not so with Zoroastrianism, which held that all exis- tence was a constant struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. This idea would have an enormous influence on Christianity, which likewise views the world as a battle- ground between God and his angels and Satan and his demons. It is interesting to note, then, that the “three kings,” or “three wise men,” who according to the New Testament followed a star to find the baby Jesus, were probably Zoroastrian priests.
The story of Zoroaster
The Zoroastrian holy book is called the Avesta (uh-VESS- tah), and most of it was probably written before Zoroaster’s time. Little is known about Zoroaster’s life. Some historians have doubted whether or not he really lived, but he was proba-
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bly born about 630 B.C. Like many great prophets such as the Buddha, he left his home in search of truth, and along the way, he studied the beliefs of different peoples he met. These included his neighbors in the mountains of eastern Persia, who worshiped cattle; and others, who belonged to the “cult of fire.” The latter treated fire as sacred, and indeed fire would become an important part of Zoroastrian religious services.
For a long time, Zoroaster met with very little success. It was ten years before he finally won his first convert, his cousin. Two more years passed, and he won over the king of a nearby city, who became an enthusiastic believer in the new religion. Soon Zoroastrianism began to spread, aided by wars of conquest, but it appears that Zoroaster himself was mur- dered in about 550 B.C.
He may have been killed by a group of magician-priests called the Magi (MAY-zhiy). The Magi belief system originated among the Medes, and as its name suggested, it relied on ideas of magic and evil spirits—concepts Zoroaster had been opposed to during his lifetime. After his death, however, many things happened to Zoroastrianism that probably would not have pleased its founder. Not only did the Magis’ beliefs work their way into the Zoroastrian faith, but Zoroaster himself was deified, or made into a sort of god.
The organization of the Persian Empire
As the Behistun Inscription makes clear, Darius believed that his rulership was a reflection of the heavenly order controlled by Ahura-Mazda. This basic idea, a common theme in many kingdoms, relates to the concept of legitimacy. For example, the Israelite kings were judged on the basis of whether they followed the guidance of Yahweh and his prophets; likewise the Chinese believed their emperor to be the “Son of Heaven,” whose rule would come to an end if he defied the gods.
Just as Darius believed that there were laws governing heaven and that his leadership was in line with those laws, he worked to establish an earthly order. The Persians created by far the most organized empire that had existed up to that time. Thanks to the superior military strength of the Persian army, it was seldom necessary for Darius to actually send in his troops
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to bring a group of subject peoples into line. The threat of mil- itary action was enough.
Besides, even under the less open-minded Darius, Per- sian rule was not perceived as a hardship by most of the con- quered nations. In the area of law, Darius set out to establish a system of justice that would be uniform, or the same, through- out the empire, yet would also take into account local customs. Under his legal reforms, the provinces had two types of courts: one court to administer law under the Persian legal code and one court to deal with local matters according to the local sys- tem. In theory, this is not so different from the legal system in the United States today: a person who breaks the law may be charged under the local, state, or federal laws, depending on the nature of the crime.
The system of satrapies (SA-trap-eez), or provinces, also allowed a measure of local rule. The Persian Empire was divided into about twenty satrapies, each ruled by a satrap, or governor. The satrap, who was usually a member of the royal family, had a free hand in ruling his local area, but of course he was expected to remain loyal to the emperor in Susa (SOO- suh), the Persian capital.
Susa lay at the end of the “Royal Road,” which ran for
1,500 miles from Sardis [see sidebar, “‘The Royal Road’ and the Persian Postal System”], but Darius built his palace and many other great structures at Persepolis (pur-SEP-oh-liss) to the southeast. Not only was the Royal Road a great feat of engi- neering in itself, but it made possible the world’s first real postal system. The Persians also dug a canal between the Nile River in Egypt and the Red Sea to the east.
Taxes cripple the Persian economy
As in most countries then and now, the Persians paid for these great public works through taxes on the people. Their system of taxation was relatively liberal, at least at first. Sub- jects of the Persian Empire were taxed a flat ten percent of their income, which is much less than most people in the United States pay—and far less than the ancient Egyptians, who paid fully one-third of their income to the government.
But there were unfair aspects to the tax system as well. Only subject peoples, not Persians, had to pay taxes. Further-
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The “Royal Road” and the Persian postal system
Under the emperor Cyrus (r.
559–529 B.C.), the Persians built a 1,500- mile road from Sardis in Asia Minor to the Persian capital at Susa. At the time of its building, the “Royal Road” was the longest in the world. Even compared with the interstate highways of the United States today, it is impressive. Interstate 75, which runs from the Canadian border in Michigan all the way to the southern end of Florida, is barely as long. One of the few U.S. interstates longer than the Royal Road is I-
80, which runs for nearly 2,500 miles from
New York City to San Francisco, California.
The Royal Road made possible one of the world’s first postal systems. Along it
lay some 80 stations, where one horsebound mail carrier could pass the
mail on to another, a system not unlike the
Pony Express used in the American West during the 1860s.
Mail in the Persian Empire, however, was not just for anyone: only the king and important leaders such as the satraps could use the postal system. The idea of ordinary people being able to mail letters did not take hold until the 1600s in England.
Nonetheless, the Persian messenger system was so efficient—the mail carriers did their job so well—that the Greek historian Herodotus wrote of them, “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays [prevents] these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” These lines are inscribed on the front of the central post office building in New York City.
more, the official view of taxes was that everything belonged to the king and that the people who owned houses or lands were simply “renting” them from him. Later, as taxes rose, this had a crippling effect on the Persian economy and helped to bring about the empire’s downfall.
Xerxes and the decline (486–330 B.C.)
After Darius came his son Xerxes (ZURK-seez; r.
486–465 B.C.). Though Xerxes is considered a great king along with Cyrus and Darius, he was less tolerant of the conquered peoples than his father had been, just as Darius was less toler- ant than Cyrus. In 485 and 482 B.C., he suppressed revolts in Egypt and Babylonia. In both cases he replaced the local lead-
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Leonidas, King of Sparta, leading the charge at Thermopylae.
Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission.
ers with direct Persian rule. He even carried away the Babylo- nians’ statute of their god Marduk, something Cyrus would never have done. Xerxes made clear his policies in his Daiva (DIE-vah) Inscription, which indicated that he would destroy the statues and temples of all gods other than Ahura-Mazda.
Finally, in 480 B.C., Xerxes launched the second attack against Greece that his father had hoped to make. He defeated the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae (thur-MAHP-uh-lee) and burned Athens, but his navy lost the Battle of Salamis (SAHL-uh-mis), and in 479 B.C. the Greeks were victorious. After that, Xerxes lost interest in imperial expansion and spent most of his time in his palace. In 465 B.C., he was assassinated.
Egypt breaks from Persia
Three minor kings followed, and later the Greek city- states of Athens and Sparta became engaged in the long Pelo- ponnesian (pel-uh-puh-NEE-zhun) War, which lasted from
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431 to 404 B.C.. At times the Persians supported Athens, at times Sparta, but in 412 B.C. they made a treaty with Sparta and assisted it in defeating Athens. In 400 B.C., Artaxerxes II (art-ag- ZURK-seez; r. 405–359 B.C.), again went to war in Greece, this time on the side of the Athenians, then revolting against the Spartan victors. After defeating the Spartans in 387 B.C., the Athenians and Persians signed an agreement respecting Per- sia’s control over Asia Minor.
In the meantime, however, Egypt broke away from Per- sia, and a number of satraps almost succeeded in tearing the empire apart. The biggest threat came from Cyrus the Younger, the king’s brother, who hired 10,000 Greek mercenaries (mur- sin-AIR-eez) to help him. Artaxerxes defeated him in battle but allowed many of the other rebellious satraps to remain in power. Artaxerxes III (r. 359–338 B.C.) also faced almost con- stant revolt, a sign that the empire was in decline. Although he managed to reclaim part of Egypt, the Egyptian rulers simply retreated upriver to Nubia or Kush and continued as before.
Artaxerxes III had usurped (yoo-SURP’D) the throne, and he killed off anyone who might try to claim it from him. But when it came to Persia’s more long-term interests, he was not so careful. In 338 B.C., Athens begged Persia for help in pushing back a new force threatening Greece from the west, a king named Philip of Macedon (MAS-uh-don). Artaxerxes refused to assist the Athenians, and four years later—after he was dead and a king named Darius III was on the throne— Philip’s son Alexander defeated the Persian forces in battle. After four more years, in 330 B.C., Persepolis fell to the new con- queror, better known as Alexander the Great. The Achaemenid empire was no more; a new power controlled the world.
Three Empires (332 B.C.–651 A.D.)
The career of Alexander (356–323 B.C.) was as short as it was brilliant. After conquering more land in less time than any military force had before—or ever has since—he died at the age of thirty-three in Babylon. Afterward, his generals divided his empire: just as Ptolemy took control of Egypt, Seleucus (seh-LOO-sus; c. 358–281 B.C.) won Persia, Mesopotamia, and much of the Mediterranean coast. He estab- lished the Seleucid (seh-LOO-sid) Empire in 312 B.C.
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The next two centuries were a period rich in learning and knowledge, as the Greeks absorbed the vast knowledge of mathematics and astronomy gained by the Babylonians and Indians. The Persians and others enjoyed the influence of Greek philosophy, literature, and art. The spread of Greek ideas throughout the world was called Hellenism (HELL-en-ism). In Persia in particular, the interaction of Western and Eastern ideas created great opportunities for learning.
However, the Seleucid Empire itself proved weak. Threats from all sides would bring a speedy end to it. To the northeast, in Bactria (BAK-tree-uh, now part of northern Afghanistan and southern Russia), a Greek governor named Diodotus (dee-uh-DOH-tus) broke away from the Seleucids in
238 B.C. Around 150 B.C. Menander (meh-NAN-dur), a later Bactrian ruler, invaded India. For a short time, Bactria ruled extensive lands on either side of the Hindu Kush Mountains.
Kushans take the Bactrian kingdom
Even more powerful than the Bactrians, however, were the Kushans, who were originally called Kuei-shuang-wang (KWAY shoo-AHNG WAHNG). As their name suggested, they came originally from China, where they had been displaced by the building of the Great Wall. Between 130 and 35 B.C., the Kushans took over the lands formerly controlled by the Bac- trian kingdom. The Kushans were often in conflict with the Sakas (SAH-kuhz), a Scythian tribe that had wandered down into the Bactrian areas in about A.D. 100. The Sakas established a small kingdom in India that held on until the A.D. 300s.
Another force was Rome, which dealt a fatal blow to the western portion of the Seleucid Empire by defeating it in battle in 192 B.C. But it was not Rome that ultimately replaced the Seleucids as the ruling power in Iran; the new conquerors were the Parthians (PAHR-thee-unz), a dynasty that began in
247 B.C. when it seized control of a former satrapy of the Per- sian Empire. Under the leadership of Mithridates I (mith-ri- DAY-teez; r. 171–138 B.C.), Parthian holdings rapidly expanded to include parts of Mesopotamia as well as most of Iran. One of his successors defeated the Seleucids for good in
129 B.C., ushering in nearly three centuries of Parthian rule.
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The Parthians (129 B.C.–A.D. 165)
Parthia was not an empire like Persia; it was too loosely organized for that. Mithridates II (r. 124–87 B.C.) called himself “King of Kings,” a title used by the Persian rulers and even in the twentieth century by the shahs, or rulers, of Iran. He expanded the empire to its furthest extent, bringing it into conflict with Rome in Mesopotamia. Parthia and Rome, then the two most powerful countries in the Western world, would struggle for the next two centuries. After an agreement in 95 B.C. that established the Euphrates River as its western border, Parthia ceased to expand. In 53 B.C., however, the Parthi- ans dealt Rome a humiliating blow by defeating it in Syria and seizing the Roman standards, or battle flags.
In 20 B.C. the Parthians, by then growing weaker and weaker, returned the standards to Rome. As a token of his thanks, Caesar Augustus
gave the Parthian ruler, Phraates IV (fray-AY-teez), a gift of a beautiful Roman slave girl named Musa (MOO-suh). Phraates and Musa had children together, and he agreed to allow them to be educated in Rome; but when her son Phraates V had come of age, Musa had his father murdered. Nor was this the most outrageous thing Musa did: once she had made her son king, she married him. Portraits of this strange couple appeared side-by-side on Parthian coins.
That Musa would marry her son was just further evi- dence that Parthia was rapidly spiraling to its downfall. In spite of this, the arts in Parthia, which skillfully combined Western and Eastern ideas, were flourishing. As time went on, some Parthian leaders still remained faithful to the traditions of the West (that is, Greece and Rome), whereas others rejected these traditions. One king, for instance, upon ordering his portrait for a coin, required that he be portrayed from the front, a break with the Greek and Roman tradition of depicting rulers from the side.
Caesar Augustus, engraving.
Archive Photos. Reproduced by permission.
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By A.D. 35, differences of opinion over the future of Parthia’s relations with the West led to open conflict as the city of Seleucia (suh-LOO-shuh), former capital of the Seleucids, attempted to break away and establish a Hellenized kingdom. In fact, Greek ways were on the decline, but so was Parthia itself. It came to an end with the Romans’ destruction of a later Parthian capital, Ctesiphon (TES-i-fahn), in A.D. 165.
The Sassanians (A.D. 165–637)
The Sassanian (suh-SANE-ee-uhn), or Sassanid (SA-suh- nid), kingdom originated in about A.D. 226 in the region of Fars, from which the Persians had emerged more than 700 years before. Founded by Ardashir I (AHR-duh-shuhr; r.
224–241), it was greatly expanded by his son Shapur I (shah- POOR; r. 241–272). The empire of Shapur I included not only Iran but also Afghanistan, virtually all of the Caucasus, and the coast of the Arabian Peninsula along the Persian Gulf.
Shapur went to war with the Roman Empire over Syria, which he conquered in the A.D. mid-200s. He won victories over several Roman emperors, and he even captured and killed one, Valerian (vah-LEER-ee-un). To the east, Shapur defeated the Kushans and added their lands to his empire as well.
During the late A.D. 200s, however, the kings who fol- lowed Shapur managed to lose much of what he had gained. As a result of their losses, which included Armenia and most of Mesopotamia, a number of noblemen decided to promote a new king from outside the royal family. His name would be Shapur as well—Shapur II—and he would be even more pow- erful and dynamic than his namesake. For five years, from A.D.
353 to 358, Shapur fought against the Huns from the east, who were also having an enormous impact on Rome. Facing a weakened Roman Empire, Shapur succeeded in winning back all of Mesopotamia and Armenia.
Except for Khusrau (kohs-ROW), a reformer who became king in the late 500s, the Sassanians would never again produce a figure as strong as the two Shapurs were. For two centuries, their royal house would face increasing pressure from noblemen eager to gain a share in the power, as well as from Kushans and Huns on the border. Nonetheless, Khusrau’s attempts to reorganize everything from the tax system to the
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military to the nobility—and to usher in a return to Zoroastri- anism when people were tempted by a variety of religious sects—helped stabilize the Sassanian Empire for a time.
But a later Khusrau, Khusrau II in the early 600s, was a ruthless and corrupt leader. Though he conquered vast new areas at the expense of the Byzantine Empire, he spent most of his time living it up in his palace in Ctesiphon, which was renowned for its wealth and its lavish way of life. In A.D. 628 he was assassinated, and by 651 a new, powerful force had gained control over Persia.
Persia and Afghanistan to the present day
Like most of the Middle East, Persia became part of the empire conquered by the Muslims (MUZ-limz) from Arabia during the A.D. 600s. The Persians took on the Arabs’ religion, Islam (IZ-lahm), which sent Zoroastrianism into decline, but unlike Mesopotamia and other regions, Persia did not adopt the Arabic language. Also, its people remained ethnically (ETH- nik-lee) distinct from the Arabs.
In the A.D. 1000s, Persia came under the rulership of the Turks, and in the 1300s it fell to the Mongol (MAHNG-gul) conquerors from the east. The Safavid (SAH-fuh-vid) dynasty restored Persian rule in 1502; meanwhile, the Shiite (SHEE-ite) form of Islam had established itself as the dominant faith in the country. From the 1700s onward, Persia was ruled by a variety of local dynasties, but the real power lay in the hands of Western nations, particularly Britain, as well as Russia.
Britain and Russia continued to struggle for control over Iran and Afghanistan, where their contest was called “the Great Game,” in the 1800s and early 1900s. The discovery of oil in Iran during the early twentieth century led to an inten- sified struggle and helped bring about the rise of the Pahlavi (pah-LAH-vee) dynasty in 1925. The Pahlavi dynasty played the British and the Russians, along with the Germans—who also took an interest in the region—off against one another, and helped establish Iran as a modern nation.
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Map of the Muslim world in the Middle Ages.
XNR Productions. Gale
Research.
The twentieth century
The Pahlavis ruled as shahs, or kings, but the figure known to modern history by the title “Shah of Iran” was Muhammad Reza Pahlavi (moo-HAHM-ed RAY-zah;
1919–1980), who assumed power in 1941. (In a reference to ancient traditions, the shahs also used the titles of “King of Kings” and “Light of the Aryans.”) The Shah tried to rapidly modernize his country, both by building roads, airports, and schools and by making its culture more Western. The latter aim placed him at odds with Shiite fundamentalists, who demanded that the country maintain its Islamic traditions [see sidebar, “Shiite Fundamentalism”].
Nor were the fundamentalists the only people the Shah managed to anger: he maintained a powerful secret police force and dealt severely with student groups that wanted to bring about a revolution to establish communism. The Communists had the support of the Soviet Union to the north, which in 1978 also helped bring about a Communist revolu- tion in neighboring Afghanistan.
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Once in power, the Afghan Communists began killing off their ene- mies, and their opponents—who were also Islamic fundamentalists, though not Shiites—took to the mountains to wage war against them. Meanwhile, unrest was growing in Iran. In 1979 the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (ie-uh- TOHL-uh roo-HOHL-uh hoh-MAY-nee;
1900–1989), a powerful Shiite priest, led a revolution that overthrew the Shah. The Shah fled the country and died a year later.
A number of groups, including the Communists, helped bring about the Iranian revolution. Each hoped to achieve their own aims. But the Aya- tollah’s forces rounded up all oppo- nents, killing or jailing them, and seized control of the U.S. embassy, where they held hundreds of American citizens as hostages for more than a year. Also in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in order to deal
directly with the Islamic enemies of the Communist govern- ment. The Islamic forces called themselves mujahideen (moo- ZHAH-hi-deen) or “holy warriors.” For the next decade they waged a bloody war against the Soviets.
The holding of the U.S. hostages and the Soviet inva- sion of Afghanistan had effects felt in the United States. Many Americans perceived that President Jimmy Carter (1924–; Pres- ident 1977–1981) did not handle the hostage crisis well. His response to the Afghan invasion—keeping American athletes out of the 1980 Olympics in the Soviet capital of Moscow— seemed weak at best. These events helped lead to the election of Ronald Reagan (1911–; President 1981–1989).
While the Soviets fought the mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s, Iran fought an even bigger war against Iraq (ee-RAHK) to the west. In fact, the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), which pitted the nation that had once been Per- sia against what had once been Babylonia, was the largest con-
Muhammad Reza Pahlavi’s attempts to modernize Iran conflicted with the Shiite Fundamentalists’ traditional beliefs. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.
Persia 173
President Jimmy Carter signs the Mideast Peace Treaty, Washington, DC,
1979. UPI/Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission
flict since World War II (1939–1945). It claimed more than 1.5 million lives and resulted in a stalemate—that is, a tie.
The unhappy history of the region continued even after the death of the Ayatollah and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, both in 1989. Many of the mujahideen proved to be as ruthless as the Communists they replaced, and they continued to fight amongst themselves. Iran remained a fundamentalist Islamic republic, though its leaders did begin relaxing some aspects of its system.
A Zoroastrian postscript
As for Zoroastrianism, once the religion of millions, by the late twentieth century its believers numbered in the thou- sands. The majority of them lived in India, where they were called “Parsis” in recognition of their Persian origins. In the Indian city of Bombay, they practiced unusual death rituals: instead of burying their dead or cremating (KREE-mait-ing;
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Shiite Fundamentalism
Even though it begins with the letters “F-U-N,” there is very little about fundamentalism that is fun. Religious fundamentalists are people who demand a return to the basic traditions of their religions, which tend to be rather harsh.
The Islamic religion forbids believers to eat pork or drink alcohol, but Islamic fundamentalists go many steps beyond rules such as these. Under fundamentalist law, women are supposed to wear veils and live as virtual slaves to their husbands, who have all power over them. Men may not wear neckties or shave. Movies, perfume, dancing, Western- style clothing, artwork that depicts human beings, and rock music—in fact, almost anything that does not directly relate to Islam—is forbidden.
Most Muslims around the world obser ve the prohibition against eating pork, but often in nations that are more modern, adults of legal drinking age are able to purchase alcohol. More important,
women do not have to wear veils, and some are even able to pursue careers and compete with men. At night, people dance in clubs, and teenagers are free to listen to their favorite rock groups.
The majority of Muslims belong to the Sunni (SOON-ee) sect, with which the smaller Shiite group differs over a number of issues. There are Sunni fundamentalists, as in Afghanistan, and there are also more liberal Sunnis, as in Egypt. There are also relatively liberal Shiites, but the Shiites who have attracted the most attention are the fundamentalists who took over Iran in 1979.
Under their control, Iran is a theocracy (thee-AHK-ruh-see), a govern- ment controlled by religious leaders. In Iran, a person who refuses to abide by Islamic law can be put to death. It is ironic that in the twentieth-century Iran, which in the early days of the Persian Empire was noted for its religious tolerance, would become one of the most religiously intolerant nations on earth.
burning) them, they placed dead bodies at the top of high plat- forms, which they called “towers of silence.” Vultures flew down to the towers and picked the bodies clean, a site often witnessed by visitors passing through Bombay on trains.
At the end of 1991, Zoroastrianism briefly entered headlines with the death of singer Freddie Mercury (1946–1991). Mercury, born Farookh Bulsara (fah-ROOK bool- SAHR-uh), came from a Zoroastrian family who had fled Iran because of religious persecution. After moving to England, he
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helped form a rock group, Queen, that sold millions of albums with hits such as “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975) and “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions” (1978). When Mercury died of AIDS, his family held a Zoroastrian funeral service; unlike the Parsis of India, however, they had his body cremated.
For More Information
Books
Burrell, Roy. Oxford First Ancient History. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991, pp. 80-81.
Dijkstra, Henk. History of the Ancient & Medieval World, Volume 3: Ancient
Cultures. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1996, pp. 361-78.
Dué, Andrea, ed. The Atlas of Human History: Cradles of Civilization: Ancient Egypt and Early Middle Eastern Civilizations. Text by Renzo Rossi. New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1996, pp. 52-55.
Dué, Andrea, ed. The Atlas of Human History: Civilizations of Asia: India, China and the Peoples of Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. Text by Renzo Rossi and Martina Veutro. New York: Macmillan Library Ref- erence USA, 1996, pp. 12-15.
Hartz, Paula. Zoroastrianism. New York: Facts on File, 1999.
Mannetti, Lisa. Iran and Iraq: Nations at War. New York: F. Watts, 1986. Martell, Hazel Mary. The Kingfisher Book of the Ancient World. New York:
Kingfisher, 1995, pp. 94-97.
Neurath, Marie. They Lived Like This in Ancient Persia. Illustrations by John
Ellis. New York: F. Watts, 1970.
Tubb, Jonathan N. Bible Lands. New York: Knopf, 1991, pp. 52-53.
Web Sites
Avesta-Zoroastrian Archives. http://www.avesta.org/avesta.html (April 13,
1999).
Cyrus the Great. http://www.oznet.net/cyrus/ (April 13, 1999).
“Historical Notes” (on Persia). http://www.anglia.ac.uk/~trochford/
glossary/history.html (April 13, 1999).
“Images of Ancient Iran.” http://tehran.stanford.edu/Images/Ancient/
an5.html (April 13, 1999).
“Pictures from Ancient Iran.” http://www.abadan.com/iranancient.html
(April 13, 1999).
The Saga of the Aryans Home Page. http://www.ozemail.com/au/~zarathus/
index.html (April 13, 1999).
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India 7
sia is a continent, the world’s largest; but India is com- monly called a subcontinent because of its size, its varied terrain, and the high mountains that separate it from the Asian landmass. An area of more than 1.7 million square miles (4.4 million square kilometers), it contains the modern nations of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The highest mountain ranges in the world form its northern border: the Himalayas, which separate India from Nepal and other mountain kingdoms, as well as Tibet in China, to the northeast; the Karakorams, at the place where India and Pakistan meet in the north; and the Hindu Kush, which form the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the northwest. South of the mountains is a huge strip of fertile land created by the flood plains of the Indus River in the west and the Ganges River in the east. The overwhelming majority of the subcontinent’s people live in these river valleys, because much of India—in particular the Thar Desert, which reaches between the river valleys and the vast Deccan Plateau in central and south India—is extremely dry and hot. (The rest of India, except for its mountain regions, is extremely humid and hot.) The subcontinent juts out into
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miles
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0 250 kilometers
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AFGHANISTAN
A S I A
CHINA
Ancient coastline
Ancient city
All present-day countries shown in gray
IRAN
Harappa
Mehrgarh p
PAKISTAN
Mohenjo- Daro
Ara bian
Sea
INDIAN OCEAN
T har
Dese r t
I n d i a
Deccan
Plateau
BANGLADESH
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BURMA
SRI LANKA
Map of India. XNR Productions. The Gale Group.
the Indian Ocean, with the Arabian Sea to the west and the Bay of Bengal to the east. Off the coast is the island nation of Sri Lanka.
Why India is important
Though the Indian subcontinent is less than half the size of the United States, it contains about five times as many people, or one-fifth of the world’s population. From India came two of the world’s most prominent religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, which respectively claim the third- and fourth- largest numbers of believers after Christianity and Islam. In ancient times, the peoples of the Indus Valley civilization cre- ated a culture equal to, and in some ways more advanced than, those of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Geographically, theirs was the largest civilization of their time, and their cities the most impressive—not least because they possessed the world’s first
178 Ancient Civilizations: Almanac
drainage system. The Indo-Europeans who conquered the Indus Valley, cousins of the peoples who established the cultures of Europe [see sidebar, “The Decline of the Indus Valley Civiliza- tion”], developed a highly complex civilization with an enor- mous literary and religious legacy. Under the later empires of ancient India, mathematicians developed the number system in use throughout the world today, and scientists made dis- coveries seldom equaled by Europeans before the Renaissance.
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