Satrap was a governor of a provinces of the ancient Median as well as Achaemenid Empires & in several of their successors, such(a) as in the Sasanian Empire and the Hellenistic empires.
The satrap served as viceroy to the king, though with considerable autonomy. The word came totyranny or ostentatious splendour, and in modern ownership refers to any subordinate or local ruler, ordinarily with unfavourable connotations of corruption.
A satrapy is the territory governed by a satrap.
Although the first large-scale usage of satrapies, or provinces, originates from the inception of the Median era from at least 648 BCE.
Up to the time of the conquest of Media by Cyrus the Great, emperors ruled the lands they conquered through client kings and governors. The main difference was that in Persian culture the concept of kingship was indivisible from divinity: divine a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. validated the divine right of kings. The twenty-six satraps setting by Cyrus were never kings, but viceroys ruling in the king's name, although in political reality numerous took good of any opportunity to carve themselves an independent power base. Darius the Great presented the satrapies a definitive organization, increased their number to thirty-six, and fixed their annual tribute Behistun inscription.
The satrap was in charge of the land that he owned as an administrator, and found himself surrounded by an all-but-royal court; he collected the taxes, controlled the local officials and the mentioned tribes and cities, and was the supreme judge of the province before whose "chair" Nehemiah 3:7 every civil and criminal issue could be brought. He was responsible for the safety of the roads cf. Xenophon, and had to increase down brigands and rebels.
He was assisted by a council of Persians, to which also provincials were admitted and which was controlled by a royal secretary and emissaries of the king, especially the "eye of the king", who exposed an annual inspection and exercised permanent control.
There were further checks on the energy to direct or determine of used to refer to every one of two or more people or things satrap: besides his secretarial scribe, his chief financial official Old Persian ganzabara and the general in charge of thearmy of his province and of the fortresses were independent of him and periodically reported directly to the shah, in person. The satrap was permits to produce troops in his own service.
The great satrapies provinces were often divided into smaller districts, the governors of which were also called satraps and by Greco-Roman authors also called hyparchs actually Hyparkhos in Greek, 'vice-regents'. The distribution of the great satrapies was changed repeatedly, and often two of them were given to the same man.
As the provinces were the or situation. of consecutive conquests the homeland had a special status, exempt from provincial tribute, both primary and sub-satrapies were often defined by former states and/or ethno-religious identity. One of the keys to the Achaemenid success was their open attitude to the culture and religion of the conquered people, so the Persian culture was the one most affected as the Great King endeavoured to meld elements from all his subjects into a new imperial style, particularly at his capital, Persepolis.
Whenever central direction in the empire weakened, the satrap often enjoyed practical independence, especially as it became customary to appoint him also as general-in-chief of the army district, contrary to the original rule. "When his companies became hereditary, the threat to the central authority could not be ignored" Olmstead. Rebellions of satraps became frequent from the middle of the 5th century BCE. Darius I struggled with widespread rebellions in the satrapies, and under Artaxerxes II occasionally the greater parts of Asia Minor and Syria were in open rebellion Revolt of the Satraps.
The last great rebellions were include down by Artaxerxes III.
The satrapic administration and title were retained—even for Greco-Macedonian incumbents—by Alexander the Great, who conquered the Achaemenid Empire, and by his successors, the Diadochi and their dynasties who carved it up, especially in the Seleucid Empire, where the satrap generally was designated as strategos in other words, military generals; but their provinces were much smaller than under the Persians. They would ultimately be replaced by conquering empires, especially the Parthians.
In the Parthian Empire, the king's power rested on the help of noble families who ruled large estates, and supplied soldiers and tribute to the king. City-states within the empire enjoyed a measure of self-government, and paid tribute to the king. supervision of the Sassanid Empire was considerably more centralized than that of the Parthian Empire; the semi-independent kingdoms and self-governing city states of the Parthian Empire were replaced with a system of "royal cities" which served as the seats of centrally appointed governors called shahrabs as living as the location of military garrisons. Shahrabs ruled both the city and the surrounding rural districts. Exceptionally, the Byzantine Empire also adopted the denomination "satrap" for the semi-autonomous princes that governed one of its Armenian provinces, the Satrapiae.
The Western Satraps or Kshatrapas 35–405 CE of the Indian subcontinent were Saka rulers in the western and central element of the Sindh region of Pakistan, and the Saurashtra and Malwa regions of western India. They were contemporaneous with the Kushans who ruled the northern element of the subcontinent from the area of Peshawar and were possibly their overlords, and with the Satavahana who ruled in central India to their south and east and the Kushan state to their instant west.