User:John K/Persian Empire
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Persian Empire is a term used by scholars of the ancient, medieval, and modern history of Iran and the Near East to refer to various consecutive and non-consecutive dynastic states centred around the Iranian plateau, as well as their territories and domains of cultural and political influence.
The first Persian Empire formed under the Achaemenid dynasty (550–330 BC). The Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC) was the largest empire of the ancient world and it reached its greatest extent under Darius the Great and Xerxes the Great — famous in antiquity as the foe of the classical Greek states (See Greco-Persian Wars). Arising from the region now known as Fars Province of Iran, at its height the Achaemenid Empire ruled over Greater Iran, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Egypt, as well as some territories in Europe and the Aegean Sea. The Achaemenid Empire was conquered by Alexander the Great in 334-330 BC. For the next 550 years, most of Iran was ruled first by the descendants of Alexander's Macedonian general Seleucus I Nicator, who founded the Seleucid dynasty, and then by the Parthian Arsacid Dynasty.
The Sassanid dynasty, which replaced the Arsacids in 226 AD, arose from the same region as the Achaemenids, and restored the conception of a Persian Empire. Due to Roman power in the Mediterranean, their area of rule was more limited than that of the Achaemenids, being generally restricted to Greater Iran and Mesopotamia. They ruled until the Arab conquest in the mid 7th century.
After the Abbasid dynasty took power in the mid-8th century and moved their capital to Baghdad, in Mesopotamia on the Tigris river near the old Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon, the Islamic Caliphate gradually became Persianized. When the Abbasid dynasty began to break up in the late 9th century, regional Iranian dynasties arose, many of them claiming a connection to the Sassanids and professing ambitions to restore the old Persian Empire. Later Islamic dynasties in Iran, whether of Iranian, Turkic, or Mongol origins, also sought to claim ties to the ancient Persian Empire. In the sixteenth century, the Safavid dynasty took power in Iran, and, after a period of division, reunified the country under their rule. While the country they ruled was most commonly known as simply "Persia" in the west, the term "Persian Empire," by analogy with the ancient dynasties that ruled over the same territory, was occasionally used.