Iran

VI

History

Archaeological evidence reveals a human presence on the Iranian plateau prior to 10,000 bc; by Neolithic times the region was evidently well settled, developing early agriculture around 7000 bc. The first Iranian civilization, which arose some 2,000 years later in lowland Khuzestan, was Elam. The plateau region remained largely Neolithic at this time and did not participate in the early civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. A powerful and long-lasting monarchy, Elam fought successively with Ur and Babylonia, before being finally extinguished by Assyria in the 7th century bc.

A

Media and Persia

While Elam dominated the Iranian lowlands, the Iranian plateau was settled about 1500 bc by Aryan tribes from central Asia who spoke Indo-European tongues. One group, the Medes, settled in the north-west and founded the Kingdom of Media, at first an Assyrian vassal state. A Median king called Khshathrita (reigned c. 675-653 bc), known to the Greek historian Herodotus as Phraortes, subjugated the other Aryan groups, including the Parsa (Persians). The Parsa had emigrated from Parsua west of Lake Orumiyeh into the southern plateau, which they named Parsamash or Parsumash. Khshathrita attempted a revolt against Assyria but failed. His successors were subjected briefly to invading forces of nomadic Scythians.

Once the Scythians had withdrawn, Media allied with Babylonia against Assyria and by 612 bc had toppled the Assyrian capital Nineveh. Within their kingdom the new religion of Zoroastrianism preached by the prophet Zoroaster was spreading alongside native pantheism. For a short time Media dominated the area of contemporary Iran and Anatolia, until the accession in 558 BC of the Persian vassal King Cyrus the Great, who was the first of the great Achaemenids. In 550 bc Cyrus toppled his masters and turned Media into the Kingdom of Persia.

Cyrus and his successors, Cambyses II and Darius I, conquered an empire reaching from Egypt and the Black Sea in the west to the Indus Valley in the east, with its capital at Persepolis. However, the defeats at Marathon in 490 bc and Salamis in 480 bc kept Greece from Persian rule. In the 4th century bc Alexander the Great struck back and added Persia to his empire. Succession struggles after his death in 323 bc were resolved by Seleucus I, first of the Seleucids, who seized Persia and Babylon.

Seleucid supremacy lasted unchallenged until around 250 bc, when a Persian Scythian nomadic group invaded Parthia, establishing a new kingdom there. Recognized as independent by the Seleucid Antiochus III, the Parthians defeated his successor Antiochus IV in around 164 bc and united the eastern Seleucid provinces under their rule. The Persian empire of the Parthians, presenting itself as successor to the Achaemenids, was centred on Seleucia on the Tigris, Ctesiphon, and Hecatompylos. At its zenith it stretched from the frontier with Rome in Armenia and along the Euphrates (fixed in 92 BC), to Indo-Parthian client states in Bactria and the Hindu Kush. Caravan traffic along the Silk Routes linked Parthia to India and China, where Parthian converts helped propagate Buddhism.

In the west the Parthian empire fought several notable wars with Rome, vanquishing such great Roman generals as Marcus Licinius Crassus and Mark Antony. Later the empire started to disintegrate. Provinces began splitting off, and more destructive wars were fought with Rome, which sacked Ctesiphon in ad 114, 164, and 193, but was unable definitively to defeat Parthia. Though recently victorious against Rome, the Parthia ruling house was finally toppled in ad 224 by a revolt led by Ardashir I, a Persian vassal king and founder of the Sasanian dynasty.

B

The Sasanians

Ardashir and his son Shapur deemed themselves successors of the Achaemenids and aimed to restore their glory, extending Parthian dominion over many eastern territories (including India), and in the west taking on Rome in Armenia and Syria. Zoroastrianism was made the Persian state religion, and Sasanian rulers took the title of “king of kings”. Intermittent wars with Rome, and with its successor, the Byzantine Empire, occurred not least because the growth of Christianity in Mesopotamia and Babylonia fostered pro-Byzantine subversion and provoked Zoroastrian persecution. Manichaeism, founded by the Persian sage Mani, was also persecuted. In the 4th century the Sasanians overran Armenia. However, towards the end of the 5th century the Ephthalites or “White Huns”, steppe nomads driven west from central Asia, ravaged the empire.

Sasanian Persia experienced a final resurgence in the 7th century under two great kings, Khosrau I and Khosrau II. Khosrau I defeated the Ephthalites in the 560s with the help of the new Turkish nation in the east. Khosrau II, though restored to his throne in 591 with Byzantine help when threatened by rebellious subjects, attacked the Byzantine Empire when the emperor was assassinated in 602. By 619 he had taken Syria, Jerusalem, and Egypt. His court was famed for its magnificence, but his wars had decisively weakened Sasanian Persia and his triumphs were short lived. By 628 the Byzantines under the emperor Heraclius had rebuilt their forces and penetrated Iran; Khosrau II had been overthrown and killed by his son. The last Sasanian king, Yazdegerd III (ruled 632-651) was driven from his throne by the forces of the Arab caliphate, and finally murdered ten years later.

C

The Advent of Islam

The fall of the Sasanian Empire to Muslim Arabs in 641 fundamentally changed Iran. The lands were incorporated into the caliphate, ruled at first from Medina and later from Damascus and Baghdad. Zoroastrianism, although officially tolerated by the new Muslim rulers, could not withstand the force of the new religion, which was backed by state authority. The number of adherents gradually decreased, and Zoroastrianism almost disappeared; today a few thousand Zoroastrians remain. Iran was henceforth a Muslim country.

Cultural influences, however, were not all one-sided; the old Iranian traditions exerted their fascination over the new rulers. The Umayyad caliphs at Damascus imitated Sasanian court etiquette, and the succeeding Abbasids at Baghdad were even more enmeshed, giving up the simple ways of the desert for the luxury of palace life. Nonetheless, Iran remained submerged in the new Arab empire of the caliphate until the 9th century, when the general Ya’qub ebn Leys rejected the Abbasid caliphs’ claims of political suzerainty and seized the fertile Iranian lowlands. After his death in 879, his successors lost power to the caliphs through internal feuding and were replaced by the Samanid dynasty of governors. However, the Iranian national spirit had been reawoken and in the 10th century the first great age of Persian literature began with the poetry of Rudaki and Firdawsi. Iranian political power followed with the advent of the Buyids, a Shiite mountain group from northern Iran. In 945 they seized Baghdad, made puppets of the Abbasids, and became rulers of Iran and Iraq. Buyid expansion ceased in the 980s, but their power endured until the advent of the Turkish Seljuks in the mid-11th century.

D

Turks and Mongols

In 1055 Baghdad was conquered by the Seljuks under Togrul Beg, and Iranian power over the Abbasid caliphate ended. The Seljuk sultans established their capital in the Iranian city of Eşfahān, where they attracted such luminaries as Omar Khayyam. Their rule was generally benign, though they rewarded their soldiers with tax-collection rights over lands which turned the latter into grasping landlords as central authority failed. After a century Seljuk power lapsed, and their empire was partitioned between former vassals and servants. Shīrāz in the province of Fars became a notable cultural centre, home to Sadi and later Hafiz. Finally, the divided region was invaded in 1220 by Genghis Khan, whose emissaries had been murdered by the Iranian sultan of the Amu Darya (Oxus) region (modern Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan). Neyshābūr within Iran, and other Iranian cities further afield such as Samarqand were sacked and their inhabitants slaughtered. The Mongols withdrew, but returned in 1256, pillaging Baghdad and slaying the last Abbasid caliph in 1258. Iran was incorporated into the Mongol Empire.

The Mongol Il-Khans proved tolerant and capable rulers, fostering the economy and administration, employing talented Christians and Jews, and growing closer to their Muslim subjects. Shiism, persecuted under the Abbasids, grew in popularity. After the 1330s the Il-Khans lost control over regional vassals, and these feuding princedoms fell to Tamerlane when he invaded in 1393. His sons, the Timurids, failed to hold Iran and Azerbaijan together, and Turkomans dominated the west after 1400. Defeated in 1473 by the new Ottoman Empire, the Turkomans finally fell in 1501 before Iranian Shiite uprisings under Sheikh Ismail I, who claimed descent from Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth caliph. He was regarded as a saint by the Iranians and proclaimed himself shah, marking the founding of the Safavid dynasty (1501-1736) and the establishment of the Shiite doctrine as the official Iranian religion.