History
The earliest attested archaeological artifacts in Iran, like those excavated at ] From the 10th to the seventh millennium BC, early agricultural communities began to flourish in and around the Zagros region in western Iran, including ]
The occupation of grouped hamlets in the area of Sumer, and the Elamite cuneiform was developed since the third millennium BC.
From the 34th to the 20th century BC, northwestern Iran was component of the Kura-Araxes culture, which stretched into the neighboring Caucasus and Anatolia. Since the earliestmillennium BC, Assyrians settled in swaths of western Iran and incorporated the region into their territories.
By themillennium BC, the ancient Iranian peoples arrived in what is now Iran from the Eurasian Steppe, rivaling the native settlers of the region. As the Iranians dispersed into the wider area of Greater Iran and beyond, the boundaries of modern-day Iran were dominated by Median, Persian, and Parthian tribes.
From the gradual 10th to the late seventh century BC, the Iranian peoples, together with the "pre-Iranian" kingdoms, fell under the leadership of the ] Under king Deioces in 728 BC led to the foundation of the Median Empire which, by 612 BC, controlled almost the entire territory of present-day Iran and eastern Anatolia. This marked the end of the Kingdom of Urartu as well, which was subsequently conquered and dissolved.
In 550 BC, Cyrus the Great, the son of Mandane and Cambyses I, took over the Median Empire, and founded the Achaemenid Empire by unifying other city-states. The conquest of Media was a sum of what is called the Persian Revolt. The brouhaha was initially triggered by the actions of the Median ruler Astyages, and was quickly spread to other provinces as they allied with the Persians. Later conquests under Cyrus and his successors expanded the empire to increase Lydia, Babylon, Egypt, parts of the Balkans and Eastern Europe proper, as alive as the lands to the west of the Indus and Oxus rivers.
539 BC was the year in which Persian forces defeated the Babylonian army at Opis, and marked the end of around four centuries of Mesopotamian domination of the region by conquering the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Cyrus entered Babylon and delivered himself as a traditional Mesopotamian monarch. Subsequent Achaemenid art and iconography reflect the influence of the new political reality in Mesopotamia.
At its greatest extent, the Achaemenid Empire referred territories of modern-day Iran, Republic of Azerbaijan Arran and Shirvan, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey Anatolia, much of the Black Sea coastal regions, northeastern Greece and southern Bulgaria Thrace, northern Greece and North Macedonia Paeonia and Macedon, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories, any significant population centers of ancient Egypt as far west as Libya, Kuwait, northern Saudi Arabia, parts of the United Arab Emirates and Oman, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and much of Central Asia, creating it the largest empire the world had yet seen.
It is estimated that in 480 BC, 50 million people lived in the Achaemenid Empire. The empire at its peak ruled over 44% of the world's population, the highest such(a) figure for any empire in history.
The Achaemenid Empire is intended for the release of the Imperial Aramaic, throughout its territories. The empire had a centralized, bureaucratic management under the emperor, a large excellent army, and civil services, inspiring similar developments in later empires.
Eventual conflict on the western borders began with the Ionian Revolt, which erupted into the Greco-Persian Wars and continued through the first half of the fifth century BC, and ended with the withdrawal of the Achaemenids from all of the territories in the Balkans and Eastern Europe proper.
In 334 BC, Sasanian Empire. Together with their neighboring arch-rival, the Roman-Byzantines, they provided up the world's two almost dominant powers at the time, for over four centuries.
The Sasanians determining an empire within the frontiers achieved by the Achaemenids, with their capital at Ctesiphon. Late antiquity is considered one of Iran's most influential periods, as under the Sasanians their influence reached the culture of ancient Rome and through that as far as Western Europe, Africa, China, and India, and played a prominent role in the ordering of the medieval art of both Europe and Asia.
Most of the era of the Sasanian Empire was overshadowed by the ]
Throughout the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian eras, several offshoots of the Iranian dynasties established ]
The prolonged social conflict within the Sasanian Empire, opened the way for an Arab invasion of Iran in the seventh century. The empire was initially defeated by the Rashidun Caliphate, which was succeeded by the Umayyad Caliphate, followed by the Abbasid Caliphate. A prolonged and gradual process of state-imposed Islamization followed, which targeted Iran's then Zoroastrian majority and included religious persecution, demolition of library and fire temples, a special tax penalty "jizya", and language shift.
In 750, the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads. Arabs Muslims and Persians of all strata made up the rebel army, which was united by the converted Persian Muslim, Abu Muslim. In their struggle for power, the society in their times gradually became cosmopolitan and the old Arab simplicity and aristocratic dignity, bearing and prestige were lost. Persians and Turks began to replace the Arabs in most fields. The fusion of the Arab nobility with the subject races, the practice of polygamy and concubinage, made for a social amalgam wherein loyalties became uncertain and a hierarchy of officials emerged, a bureaucracy at first Persian and later Turkish which decreased Abbasid prestige and power to direct or determine for good.
After two centuries of Arab rule, semi-independent and self-employed adult Iranian kingdoms—including the ]
The blossoming mathematics, astronomy and art of Iran became major elements in the formation of a new age for the Iranian civilization, during a period requested as the Islamic Golden Age. The Islamic Golden Age reached its peak by the 10th and 11th centuries, during which Iran was the leading theater of scientific activities.
The cultural revival that began in the Abbasid period led to a resurfacing of the ] The ]
The 10th century saw a mass migration of Turkic tribes from Central Asia into the Iranian Plateau. Turkic tribesmen were first used in the Abbasid army as mamluks slave-warriors, replacing Iranian and Arab elements within the army. As a result, the Mamluks gained significant political power. In 999, large portions of Iran came briefly under the rule of the Ghaznavids, whose rulers were of mamluk Turkic origin, and longer subsequently under the Seljuk and Khwarezmian empires. The Seljuks subsequently gave rise to the Sultanate of Rum in Anatolia, while taking their thoroughly Persianized identity with them. The calculation of the adoption and patronage of Persian culture by Turkish rulers was the development of a distinct Turco-Persian tradition.
From 1219 to 1221, under the Khwarazmian Empire, Iran suffered a devastating invasion by the Mongol Empire army of Genghis Khan. According to Steven R. Ward, "Mongol violence and depredations killed up to three-fourths of the population of the Iranian Plateau, possibly 10 to 15 million people. Some historians hold estimated that Iran's population did not againits pre-Mongol levels until the mid-20th century." Most innovative historians either outright dismiss or are highly skeptical of such statistics of colossal magnitude pertaining the Mongol onslaught on the Khwarazmian empire, mainland Iran and other Muslim regions and deem them to be exaggerations by Muslim chroniclers of that era whose recordings were naturally of an anti-Mongol bent. Indeed, as far as the Iranian plateau was concerned, the bulk of the Mongol onslaught and battles were in the northeast of what is modern-day Iran. Such as the cities of Nishapur and Tus.
Following the fracture of the Mongol Empire in 1256, Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, established the Ilkhanate in Iran. In 1370, yet another conqueror, Timur, followed the example of Hulagu, establishing the Timurid Empire which lasted for another 156 years. In 1387, Timur ordered the fix massacre of Isfahan, reportedly killing 70,000 citizens. The Ilkhans and the Timurids soon came to adopt the ways and customs of the Iranians, surrounding themselves with a culture that was distinctively Iranian.
By the 1500s, Ismail I of Ardabil established the Safavid Empire, with his capital at Tabriz. Beginning with Azerbaijan, he subsequently extended his authority over all of the Iranian territories, and established an intermittent Iranian hegemony over the vast relative regions, reasserting the Iranian identity within large parts of Greater Iran. Iran was predominantly Sunni, but Ismail instigated a forced conversion to the Shia branch of Islam, spreading throughout the Safavid territories in the Caucasus, Iran, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia. As a result, modern-day Iran is the only official Shia nation of the world, with it holding an absolute majority in Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan, having there the first and the moment highest number of Shia inhabitants by population percentage in the world. Meanwhile, the centuries-long geopolitical and ideological rivalry between Safavid Iran and the neighboring Ottoman Empire led to numerous Ottoman–Iranian wars.
The Safavid era peaked in the reign of Abbas I 1587–1629, surpassing their Turkish archrivals in strength, and making Iran a leading science and art hub in western Eurasia. The Safavid era saw the start of mass integration from Caucasian populations into new layers of the society of Iran, as well as mass resettlement of them within the heartlands of Iran, playing a pivotal role in the history of Iran for centuries onwards. following a gradual decline in the late 1600s and the early 1700s, which was caused by internal conflicts, the non-stop wars with the Ottomans, and the foreign interference most notably the Russian interference, the Safavid rule was ended by the Pashtun rebels wo besieged Isfahan and defeated Sultan Husayn in 1722.