Five thousand years on the Iranian plateau: Elam and the Medes, Cyrus and Darius, the Royal Road and Persepolis, Zoroaster, Parthians and Sasanians against Rome, the poets who revived Persian after the Arab conquest, Timurid painters, Safavid Isfahan, Nader Shah, and the constitution of 1906.
Stop 01 · c. 3200–1100 BCE
The Stone at Susa
In 1901–02 French diggers at Susa, in south-western Iran, unearthed a basalt pillar over two metres tall. It was the law code of Hammurabi of Babylon, and it lay far from home. An Elamite king, Shutruk-Nakhunte, had carried it off as a trophy in the 12th century BCE. That theft shows Elam's power long before any Persian empire. From about 3200 BCE Elam grew around two centres, lowland Susa and highland Anshan, and its kings claimed both in their titles. Their language is traditionally thought to have no known relatives. In the 13th century BCE Untash-Napirisha raised a holy city at Chogha Zanbil, crowned by a ziggurat. Later empires would lean on Elam's scribes.
In 1901–02 French diggers at Susa, in south-western Iran, unearthed a basalt pillar over two metres tall. It was the law code of Hammurabi of Babylon, and it lay far from home. An Elamite king, Shutruk-Nakhunte, had carried it off as a trophy in the 12th century BCE. That theft shows Elam's power long before any Persian empire. From about 3200 BCE Elam grew around two centres, lowland Susa and highland Anshan, and its kings claimed both in their titles. Their language is traditionally thought to have no known relatives. In the 13th century BCE Untash-Napirisha raised a holy city at Chogha Zanbil, crowned by a ziggurat. Later empires would lean on Elam's scribes.
Elam's great blow came from Assyria. Around 647 BCE King Ashurbanipal sacked Susa and wrecked its royal tombs. By then new peoples held the highlands to the north. The Medes, speakers of an Iranian language close to Old Persian, appear in Assyrian annals as enemies from the 9th century BCE. Their town of Ecbatana, today's Hamadan, probably grew on the east-west trade route. In 614 the Median leader Cyaxares destroyed Ashur, and in 612 he and the Babylonians took Nineveh. Herodotus describes a grand Median monarchy. Many specialists now doubt it and picture a looser federation of tribes. No text has been proven to be in their own language, so we see them through others' eyes. Further south, a smaller people were stirring.
BattlesNineveh, taken 612 BCE · Ashur, destroyed 614 BCE · Susa, sacked c. 647 BCE
Around 550 BCE the Median king Astyages marched against Cyrus, ruler of Anshan. A Babylonian chronicle records the surprise: his own army rebelled and he was taken prisoner. Cyrus went on to Ecbatana and carried off its treasure. Around 547 he defeated Lydia and took its capital, Sardis. In October 539 his forces entered Babylon, the chronicle says, without a battle, after beating its army at Opis. Cyrus now held lands from the Aegean to the Hindu Kush. His clay cylinder presents him as restorer of temples, gods and exiles. The Book of Ezra adds that he let the Jews go home. He died in 530, and ancient writers disagree on how. His tomb still stands at Pasargadae.
Cyrus's son Cambyses added Egypt, then died in 522 BCE with revolt at home. A band of seven nobles killed the man on the throne, and one of them, Darius, took the crown. Darius called the dead king Gaumata, an impostor posing as Cambyses's brother Bardiya. Historians still ask whether he was the real Bardiya. By Darius's own count, he then fought nineteen battles in a single year against rebels. He made sure his story lasted. About 100 metres up a cliff at Behistun he had it cut in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, above a relief of captives roped by the neck. Next came the work of ruling: some twenty provinces, called satrapies, each under a governor.
An empire reaching from Sind to Lydia ran on news. Herodotus describes the great highway from Sardis to Susa: 111 stages with resting-places and guard-posts, about 90 days on foot. Modern estimates run from 2,500 to 2,700 kilometres. Parts of the western end may be older Assyrian work, but the Persians made it a system. Riders passed messages in relays, each man and horse covering one day's stage, which Herodotus likens to a Greek torch race. The clerks behind this have survived too. Tablets found at Persepolis, dated 509 to 493 BCE, log food and animals issued to workers, gods and travellers, mostly in Elamite and some in Aramaic. The empire's memory was kept on thousands of little lumps of clay.
Darius began a ceremonial capital on a stone terrace in Fars around 518 BCE, and his son Xerxes finished much of it. Visitors passed through the Gate of All Nations, guarded by giant bulls, on the way to the Apadana, an audience hall with 72 columns over 20 metres high. Its stairways are the empire's self-portrait. Peoples from across the realm climb them in their own dress, carrying gifts, Lydians and Armenians among them with wine. Clay records show who did the labour. Thousands of dependent labourers drew rations here, and about half of those from Anatolia were women and children. One modern count puts the treasury staff at 1,348 in 467 BCE.
Darius credited his kingdom to one god above all: Ahuramazda, the Wise Lord. That god stands at the centre of the teaching of Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, a prophet whose dates are unknown. Later Persian tradition says the 7th and 6th centuries BCE; many modern scholars prefer around 1500 to 1000 BCE. The Gathas, seventeen hymns ascribed to him, were handed down by mouth. Their heart is a choice. Each person must side with truth or the lie, and the tradition sums up the path as good thoughts, good words, good deeds. After death the soul faces judgement at the Chinvat Bridge. Fire was the god's sacred symbol. Some scholars trace ideas of heaven and hell from here into later faiths.
Alexander's campaign has its own tour here. For Persia the moment that lasted came in 330 BCE at Persepolis. Plutarch says 10,000 pairs of mules and 5,000 camels hauled the treasure away. Then the palaces burned, at a drinking party by his account, as revenge for Xerxes's burning of Athens. Ancient writers disagree on whether it was planned. Darius III died that year at his own subjects' hands. At Susa in 324, Alexander's officers were ordered to take Iranian brides. One groom, Seleucus, married Apama, a Sogdian noblewoman. After Alexander's death he won Babylon and most of Iran, founded Seleucia on the Tigris, and their son Antiochus ruled after him. Greek settlers followed, reaching as far as Ai Khanoum on the Oxus.
Around 247 BCE, though scholars debate the date, Arsaces of the Parni tribe took Parthia in the north-east. Mithridates I then seized Media and Babylonia, and by 141 BCE he was striking coins at Seleucia. Parthia now sat across the road from China. A Han delegation reached its court about 121 BCE, and silk caravans paid its taxes. A later Chinese history complains that Parthia blocked Rome from China to keep control of the trade. Rome itself came in 53 BCE. Crassus led his legions into the plain at Carrhae, where Surena's 10,000 horsemen, mostly archers, shot them down and kept shooting while riding away. Plutarch counts 20,000 Romans dead and 10,000 captured. Parthia lasted some 470 years.
In 224 CE Ardashir of Fars overthrew the last Parthian king and founded the Sasanian dynasty, which lasted about 400 years. He knew the power of the past. At Naqsh-e Rostam, the cliff of the old Achaemenid tombs, he had himself carved receiving the ring of kingship from the god Ohrmazd. Zoroastrianism became the state religion. His son Shapur I styled himself King of Kings of Iranians and non-Iranians, and he crushed Rome's eastern armies. Gordian III died on campaign, Philip the Arab was forced into a costly peace, and in 260 near Edessa Shapur captured the emperor Valerian. Beneath those same tombs, a relief shows Valerian and Philip before him on horseback. Roman captives were marched east to build his cities.
Persian memory made Khosrow I the model of a just king, Anushirvan, the Immortal Soul. He ruled from 531 to 579, set a tax by wealth, paid his cavalry from the centre and leaned on village lords called dehqans. He drove hard bargains: in 532 Justinian paid him 11,000 pounds of gold for peace, and in 540 he broke it and sacked Antioch. Ideas moved too. After Justinian's edict of 529 stopped them teaching, seven Greek philosophers came to his court. Agathias says they were disappointed and soon left, under a clause of the treaty. More lasting was a trip east. The physician Borzuya turned the Indian Panchatantra into Persian, and its fables later passed into Arabic as Kalila wa Dimna.
The rivalry ended in exhaustion. In 602 the emperor Maurice, who had helped Khosrow II regain his throne, was murdered, and Khosrow marched in the name of revenge. His armies took Jerusalem in 614 and carried the True Cross to Ctesiphon. From 618 they invaded Egypt, cutting off Constantinople's grain. In 626 Persians and Avars closed on the capital from both sides, but could not join across the Bosporus. Heraclius struck back into the Persian heartland at first with Turkic allies, and broke its army near Nineveh in December 627. Khosrow's own son deposed him and had him killed. After 26 years the frontier was back where it began, and both empires had spent their men and money.
Arab armies met that worn-out state within a decade. The conquest has its own tour here, so this is the view from Iran. Defeat at al-Qadisiyya around 636 cost Mesopotamia, Ctesiphon fell the next year, and Nahavand in 642 was the last major battle. Yazdegerd III, crowned as a boy, fled from province to province, losing friends with his demands. Near Merv in 651 he was killed by a miller, some say for his jewels. His son Peroz turned to Tang China for help that never restored him. Faith changed slowly. Islam spread over centuries, and from about 697 Arabic replaced Persian in Iraq's central tax office, while Persian stayed in people's mouths. Some Zoroastrians sailed for India.
In the 9th century Persian reappeared on the page, now in Arabic letters. Its patrons were the Samanids, an Iranian dynasty who ruled from Bukhara. At their court Rudaki became the first major poet of the new language, and Daqiqi began putting the old tales of the kings into verse, until he was killed after about 1,000 lines. A poet from Tus took up the work around 977. Ferdowsi laboured for over thirty years and finished on 8 March 1010. His Shahnameh, the Book of Kings, runs to about 50,000 couplets, from the world's beginning to the Arab conquest. By then the Samanids had gone, and he offered it to Mahmud of Ghazni, a Turkic sultan.
Turkic warlords now ruled Iran, and they hired its scholars. The Seljuk leader Tughril Beg made Isfahan his capital, and in 1058 the caliph named him King of the East and West. Under Malik-Shah and his vizier Nizam al-Mulk, an invitation went out to a mathematician from Nishapur. Omar Khayyam built an observatory at Isfahan and led it for 18 years. In 1079 he helped reform the calendar. He put the year at about 365.2422 days, remarkably close to today's figure. He also solved cubic equations using curves. The good times ended in 1092, when the vizier was murdered and the sultan died a month later. In 1859 Edward FitzGerald's English Rubaiyat made him famous as a poet.
From 1219 Mongol armies wrecked the great cities of the east, among them Bukhara, Merv and Nishapur, and Iran's population fell steeply. How they got there is told in the Mongol tour. What came next is stranger. Hulegu, Genghis's grandson, founded the Ilkhanate, ruling first from Maragheh, where an observatory brought Nasir al-Din al-Tusi together with Chinese methods. In 1295 Ghazan converted to Islam. His vizier Rashid al-Din, a physician born to a Jewish family in Hamadan, wrote a history of the Mongols, later stretched to the whole known world. Chinese motifs entered Iranian pottery, and Öljaitü raised his domed tomb at Soltaniyeh. Rashid al-Din was executed in 1318, and the state broke apart after 1335.
In Shiraz a boy learned the Quran by heart and took the name Hafez, memoriser. He grew up to write short lyric poems of love, wine and taverns, which can be read as romance, as praise, or as longing for God, and which mock religious hypocrites. In 1387 Timur's armies swept through. A popular tale has the conqueror scolding the poet over a verse and being charmed by his reply, though Hafez deplored the slaughter. Timur's campaigns killed vast numbers. His heirs built. Shah Rukh ruled from Herat, and his wife Gawhar Shad founded a great mosque at Mashhad in 1418. Ulugh Beg charted 992 stars at Samarkand, and Bihzad led Herat's painters from 1486. Uzbeks took Herat in 1507.
In 1501 a boy of about fourteen was crowned shah in Tabriz. Ismail headed the Safavids, a Sufi order from Ardabil that had become an army, backed by Turkoman tribesmen called the Qizilbash. He made Twelver Shia Islam the state religion and imposed it by force. Most Iranians had been Sunni, and over the 16th century most became Shia, a change that has lasted. He wrote poems too, in a Turkic tongue, under the name Khata'i. In 1514 Selim I brought Ottoman guns to Chaldiran. Safavid cavalry, with no artillery, broke against the cannon and carts. Ismail was wounded, Tabriz was briefly lost, and he never led a campaign again. His son Tahmasp added cannon to the army.
Abbas I took the throne as a teenager after a coup. He built a standing army of slave soldiers, mostly Georgian, Circassian and Armenian, loyal to him over the old tribes. His campaigns in Georgia brought mass death and deportation. With that power he drove back Uzbeks and Ottomans, and in 1622 he took Hormuz from the Portuguese with English help. In 1598 he moved his capital to Isfahan and began a square 560 metres long, ringed by the Shah Mosque, the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, the Ali Qapu palace and the bazaar gate. Shahs watched polo from the palace galleries. He promoted silk and carpets for trade. A Persian proverb calls Isfahan half the world.
In 1722 Afghan rebels took Isfahan and the Safavid state collapsed, while Ottomans and Russians helped themselves to its provinces. Out of Khorasan came a soldier of the Afshar tribe, Nader, born poor. He won back much of the lost ground, and on 8 March 1736 an assembly on the Moghan plain saw him crowned. In 1739 he crushed a far larger Mughal force at Karnal and marched into Delhi. When rumours of his death led to attacks on his troops, he ordered a massacre. Estimates run from 20,000 dead to ten times that. He carried home the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor. Growing suspicious, he planned to strike first at his own officers. They killed him in his tent in June 1747.
After decades of war a Qajar chief, Agha Mohammad Khan, won the country. He made Tehran his capital in 1786, was crowned in 1796 and was killed by his servants a year later. His heirs faced a stronger neighbour. The treaties of Gulistan in 1813 and Turkmenchay in 1828 gave Russia the Caucasus lands north of the Aras and special legal rights for its subjects. In 1857 Britain forced Iran to drop its claim on Herat. Naser al-Din Shah, who ruled for nearly 48 years, tried reform and sold concessions. In 1890 he gave a British major a 50-year tobacco monopoly. A cleric's ruling banned smoking. People stopped, even in the palace, and in January 1892 the shah gave way.
By 1905 the treasury leaned on Russian loans, spent partly on royal trips to Europe. That December two Tehran merchants were beaten for price-gouging, and the bazaar shut. Clerics and merchants took sanctuary at a shrine near Tehran, and in January the shah made promises. In summer about 10,000 people camped in the grounds of the British legation. The shah promised a constitution in August, and an elected assembly, the Majlis, met that autumn. On 30 December 1906 a dying Mozaffar ad-Din Shah signed, and within days he was dead. Years of struggle over it followed. Kings had ruled this land for thousands of years, and now it had a parliament. Persian, heir to Darius's inscriptions, remains an official language, in its local forms, of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.