Persia (region)

Persia (from Latin Persa(e), and east from Greek Περσίς and Περσική; demonym: Persian) is a historical region located southwest of modern Iran (now Fars province). The Persians are believed to have initially migrated from Central Asia or, more likely, from the north through the Caucasus. They would then have migrated to the present-day region of Persia at the beginning of the first millennium BC. The name of the country Persia is directly derived from the Old Persian Parsa.

History

The First Empire

Before the rise of the Persian nation, the Middle East had been plagued by wars. The focus of these wars was the aggressor and militaristic people of Assyria. The Assyrians constantly launched campaigns against the surrounding towns, looting, slaughtering and deporting the towns or their ruling classes at least. This caused great human and economic deterioration in the entire area, including Assyria, which became depopulated due to the serious casualties suffered in the wars. Finally Assyria began to weaken, its enemies united in a great coalition, defeated it and by the year 610 a. C. the Assyrians had been totally subdued. The new situation revealed four new axes of power: in present-day Iran and eastern Turkey, the Medes; in Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine the Neo-Babylonians; in North Africa the Egyptians, who were trying to extend their influence to Palestine and Syria; and in the area of Turkey, different states, with Greek influences. These states encompassed varied populations, not all of them submissive to the new order.^{[citation needed]} There were still wars, but not as bloody as the Assyrian campaigns. The biggest problem was that, despite having a nominal government, they were disorganized. Many of these governments were intolerant and overtaxed. The Persians were a group of peoples with their own identity that lived in the south of present-day Iran, being subject to the rule of the Medes, but with a certain degree of self-government.

Persian Expansion

In 559 B.C. C. assumes the throne of Persia Cyrus II, of the Achaemenid dynasty. Until that time the Persians were nominally subjects of the Medes. With Cyrus this changed, as he made the country independent and then launched a war of conquest against his former masters. Despite having defeated them, Ciro allowed them to continue holding positions and maintain some autonomy. He then dedicated himself to conquering the areas of Central Asia and the border with India, where cities were founded and fortifications built to protect the Empire against attacks by Central Asian nomads. Persian forces then went on the offensive in Asia Minor and subjugated the kingdom of Lydia, whose king was the famous Croesus. This area together with Ionia was populated by Greeks or had Greek influence, which made the population rebellious. After a period without wars, the Persians attacked Babylon, taking over all of Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine. The Persians freed the Palestinians from their Babylonian captivity and in many areas they were welcomed as liberators. After these campaigns Cyrus II died and Cambyses succeeded him on the throne, who conquered Egypt for Persia. Egypt never accepted Persian rule, so conspiracies and uprisings were frequent. On several occasions it rose up and managed to regain its independence for some time. Also the Greek areas of Asia Minor revolted between 499 and 494 BC. C. (Ionian revolt) with the help of the Greeks from Europe, especially from Athens, which led the Persians to try to eliminate the Greek threat on two occasions, failing miserably. After the defeat in Greece, the Greeks with their limited resources went on the offensive, attacking at some points or supporting the rioters at others, without damaging the Achaemenid Empire too much. The Persians cleverly promoted the rivalry between Athens and Sparta.

The Persians came to occupy territories from northern Greece to the Indus River and the Amu Darya, including Thrace, Egypt, the Near East, Asia Minor, and the Caucasus.

Timeline

• 559: Cyrus II; he is crowned king of Persians.
• 549 to 546: After the Persians rise they conquer Media.
• 546: Cyrus conquers Asia Minor, takes Sardes and makes Creso king of Lydia a prisoner.
• 539: The Persians conquer Babylon.
• 530: Changes II is the new king.
• 525: The Persians conquer Egypt.
• 522: Revolt in Libya against the Persians. Darius I is proclaimed king.
• 516: Campaigns of Darío in Tracia.
• 499: Revolt in Jonia against the Persians.
• 498: Caria and Cyprus uprising.
• 494: Submission of the Carios and taking of Mileto, the main city of Jordan.
• 490: First medical war, the Greeks reject the Persian invasion in the battle of Marathon.
• 486: Death of Darius while preparing a campaign against the Greeks. Upload in the Nile delta. Jerks, your son, assume the throne.
• 480: Second medical war, the Greeks manage to endure five days, but the Persians manage to cross the passage of the Thermopiles and come to Athens to reduce it to ashes.
• 479: Babylon is unsuccessful, thirty thousand Greeks, of whom ten thousand Spartans, intercept the Persians in Platea; a battle that will begin the fall of the Persian Empire.
• 465: King Jerks is killed; he assumes Artaxerxes I government.
• 459: The Athenians launch an expedition to liberate Egypt, but the Persians triumph over Flor.

The Fall of the Persian Empire

The Persians had no military rivals thanks to their large army, except the Greeks who were superior in their tactics. The Greeks had against them the great political fragmentation. In Greece, power was divided among city states, while Persia was a vast, totally unified empire. Persian kings cleverly promoted disputes between Greek states to prevent any one from having hegemony. But finally that happened.

Around 350 B.C. C., Filipo II, the king of Macedonia, undertook an expansive policy of his kingdom, organizing a very professional regular army and creating weapons and tactics even superior to the classic Greek tactics. Thanks to this he managed to unify large areas of Greece by incorporating them into his kingdom and subjecting the rest of the Greek cities with the exception of Sparta to his mandate with a certain degree of autonomy. Philip forced the Greek states to cease fighting, placed Macedonian garrisons at strategic points, and formed a league of Greek states that would form an army to invade the Persian Empire. When everything was ready Philip was assassinated. Then his son Alexander took the throne. The invasion had to be delayed in order to subdue the Greek states that, after Philip's death, tried to regain their independence. Alexander managed to dominate them and in the year 334 a. C. he crossed into Asia Minor and defeated the Persians at Granicus. The Ionian cities resisted the Greek invasion which would be amazing 150 years ago. Alexander, after taking those cities, took most of Asia Minor with little resistance. A year later all the power of the Persian army faced him in the battle of Issus and again the Persians were defeated; After this, Syria, where the Phoenician cities held out, Palestine and Egypt, where the Greeks were welcomed as liberators, fell into Greek power. In the year 331 B.C. C. the Greeks entered Mesopotamia, despite the fact that the Persian king Darius offered them peace, they rejected it. The Persians faced the Greeks in the historic battle of Gaugamela with a renewed army but were defeated once more, and King Darius was assassinated by the nobles. The Greeks took Babylon and the cities of Susa, Persepolis and Ecbatana, Persepolis being burned to avenge the destruction of Athens during the Persian invasion of Greece. The Persians continued to resist with guerilla-style warfare in the northern and eastern parts of Iran and Central Asia, but the Greeks eventually managed to invade those areas as well, crushing the last pockets of resistance. Despite the fall, the Persian state resurfaced and disappeared several times throughout history and its legacy extends to the current state of Iran.

Politics

Features of Persian Administration

The system of government was a hereditary absolute monarchy where the king was considered the anthropomorphic form of god on earth. The king had to be the best warrior, as well as the best hunter. He had a personal army: the "Immortals".

Persian governments were characterized by their military despotism; the emperor's authority was absolute, he was defended and supported by the Immortals.

The Persian government brought many novelties in political and economic matters for the time; among them:

• Religious tolerance and local customs.
• Maintenance of local administrative structures.
• Division of the territory in Satrapías that were audited every year being punished the Satrapa if the population was not happy with its management.
• Tax subtraction of trade and general lowering of all taxes.
• Simplification of trade through construction of navigable roads and canals in addition to the territorial unification that made travel less dangerous.
• Creation of currency reserves at different points of the empire, and dissemination of credit.
• Creation of garrisons distributed by the empire that responded only to real authority.
• Creation of a unified weight and measurement system.
• The local administration focused on maintaining public roads and works, combating crime and productivity in agriculture.

All these measures produced a boom in trade throughout the empire, greatly encouraging economic development, which managed to put some areas that originally rejected them and were unruly like the Ionian cities on the Persian side.

Regarding the administration system of the provinces, called satrapies, these were made up of three officials: a general, a secretary and the head of the province.

Each one played a role so that there was no corruption in their colonies. In addition, a Royal Inspector used to spend every certain period of time to verify that everything was in order within the province, and then inform the king about the matter.

Army

The Persian army was characterized by two things: skill and marksmanship. The personal army was made up of battle-trained soldiers called the 'Immortals'. It was an army of 12,000 men; They were called that because every time one fell it was replaced by another from the reserve; and horse archers, were a specialty of the Persians that required exceptional coordination and skill, combining archery with cavalry. He was heterogeneous. The king's guard were “The Ten Thousand Immortals”. There were battalions of spearmen, archers, and cavalry, as well as mercenaries.

In the education of children, which lasts from five to twenty years, they only teach them three things: horseback riding, shooting the bow and telling the truth.

Heroto, CXXXVI.

The organization of the provinces allowed the rapid and efficient recruitment of troops.

Areas hostile to the Persians

The areas that most rejected the Persians were Ionia, Egypt, Mesopotamia and Media. The Ionians had a different idiosyncrasy, based on the Greek city-state model, in the early years they constantly revolted against the Persians but later with the economic boom they became loyal subjects of the empire. In Media the Persians also suffered revolts, due to the fear of having turned from masters into servants, but the Persian policy of tolerance paid off, and spirits were appeased. In Babylon the population remembered the old days of glory and therefore the city rose up. This city was the agricultural and industrial nucleus of the empire and before the uprising the repression was so brutal that Babylon never rose again. In Egypt the causes of the uprising are similar, in addition to having the support of the Greeks. Egypt revolted repeatedly, being reconquered by the Persians after a while.

The weakness of the Persian Empire

The main weakness of the Persian Empire was its military organization. Despite having an army and fleet unmatched in numbers, their organization and tactics were weak. The army was made up of an elite nucleus that was the personal guard of the emperor, also called the Immortals, and later elements of all the dominated peoples were added to these; there were no standard units but it was a very heterogeneous army. This army almost lacked tactics to fight in formations. This was in contrast to the Greek armies which were in many cases highly disciplined and experienced and also had far superior combat tactics and equipment to the Persians. In this way, a small number of Greeks could keep at bay a Persian contingent several times larger, as was demonstrated in the battle of Thermopylae where seven thousand Greeks, 300 of them Spartans, the best Greek soldiers commanded by their king Leonidas kept at bay. to an army of two hundred thousand Persians (according to Herodotus) during the medical wars.

Persian culture

In the same way as in agriculture and trade, the Persian Empire played a leading role in the material development of its civilization. The concept of imperial art existed, a situation that implied that the artistic manifestations should reflect the beliefs and interests of the imperial authorities and created the tincture.