- [Instructor] We're going to do in this video
is have an overview of one of the greatest empires
and really civilizations of not only the ancient world,
but of the world, and that is Persia.
And we see a map here, this is the extent of the Persian
empire at around 500 B.C.E. under Darius the Great
and in future videos we'll talk more about Cyrus the Great
and Darius the Great and the various Shah and Shahs
King of Kings of the Persian empire, but you can see
it was a massive empire.
Not only did it contain modern Iran which is really
the heart of the Persian empire, but much of the modern
Middle East including Turkey, you have Egypt here
we go into central Asia and also Afghanistan
and even parts of Pakistan.
But before talking more about how it was established
and who established it, I'm gonna dig down a little bit
into the word "Persia" because just as the ancient
Greeks did not refer to where they lived as Greece
that is a Latin idea of calling it Greece,
the Greeks referred to where they lived as "Hellas",
it turns out that the Persians did not refer
to where they lived as "Persia".
Their terms are actually much closer to ideas around
land of the Aryans, so there's, based on my research,
ideas like Aryan-Vega and Aran-Shah and Aran.
So it actually turns out that the modern name of the
country, the modern word Iran is probably more appropriate
or in some ways closer to what the region has always
called itself, what the Iranians or the Persians have
always called themselves, and called where they lived.
They referred to themselves as the Aryans and where
they lived as the Aryanan-Vega or Aran, or Aran-Shah
or some version of that and the modern version is Iran.
Now, with that said, you might say,
"Well, why did the Greeks call it Persia?"
Well, the Persian empire what we consider to be the first
true Persian empire is the Achaemenid empire, and we'll
talk in a second why do we call it even the Achaemenid,
but the Achaemenid empire emerges from a region
of Persia, I guess we can say, that in this map is
referred to as Persus, but other names for it are
Pars, and even in modern Iran there's a region called
Fars which coincides very close with it.
And since the leaders of the Persian empire, and especially
Cyrus the Great, emerged from this region, they called them
the Persians and it was the "Persian" empire that emerges
from this region which you might wanna call Pars, Fars.
Fars especially comes from Arabic where they don't
have the P sound, but Pars or Persus or whatever you wanna
call it, and that's why it was called the Persian empire.
Now, it wasn't the first empire in that region.
Before the Persian empire gets established or what
we associate with the Persian or the Achaemenid empire
of Cyrus the Great, much of this region of where we
call modern day Iran was controlled by the Medians,
and you can see Media is this region right over here.
And it was Cyrus the Great that in 549, some accounts
say 550 B.C.E., is able to overthrow the Median emperor
who happens to be his grandfather.
And that is the really dawn of the Achaemenid dynasty.
Now the next question and this was established,
let me write this down, this was established by Cyrus
the Great, he was Cyrus the II but he became Cyrus the Great
because he was able to break out and overthrow the Medians
and establish this massive empire.
And the reason why it's called the Achaemenid empire
not the Cyrid empire, is that Cyrus claims to be from
the family of the patriarch Achaemenis and a lot of
these names, these are come from Greek accounts so
that's why they sound a little bit more Greek.
But Achaemenis is a semi-legendary figure that, we're not
sure exactly when he lived, but the best accounts I could
see is near the beginning of the seventh century B.C.E.
And Cyrus the Great is from Achaemenis' family,
and so since they came to power, this first really Persian
empire, when the people talk about the Persian empire
they don't tend to refer to the Median empire, they're
really referring to the Achaemenid empire,
that's why it's called Achaemenid.
Now, in future videos we'll talk more about what happened
in the Achaemenid empire, but you can see the extent of it
was pretty significant and it lasts for a little over 200
years until they're conquered by foreigners.
And the foreigners that conquer them are the Greeks.
Philip of Macedon's son, Alexander the Great, is able to,
on some level, unify Greece and Persia.
And it's interesting because a lot of what we learn about
ancient Persia, it's accounts from the Greeks,
from folks like Herodotus, but during the time
of classical Greece, Greece was really a bit of a sideshow,
it was really this kind of thorn in the side of Persia.
Persia was really where the power was.
But as we get to the mid or the end of the fourth century
B.C.E., Persia weakens, Greece unifies under Philip
of Macedon and Alexander the Great and Alexander the Great
is able to conquer the Persian empire.
And he is short-lived, we have videos on Alexander the Great
I encourage you to watch them, his life is short-lived
and his unified empire is short-lived, but he has this
dream of mixing the cultures and really being a unified
people, but as soon as he dies his empire splits,
but the Persian empire for the most part,
is in the control of the Seleucid's.
And the Seleucid dynasty, this is essentially foreign rule
'cause Seleucus, who establishes Seleucid dynasty,
he is one of Alexander's generals, he's fundamentally
Greek, and so the rulers of the Seleucid dynasty are Greek.
And you don't get back to having Persian rule
until 238 B.C.E.
It's in 238 B.C.E. that the Parthian's emerge to conquer
the empire and so, once again you could say,
"Well, this is back to non-foreign rule."
It's really important to keep in mind, because
in it's day the Achaemenid empire was, if not the dominant,
one of the very dominant empires of the world.
At it's peak it had a population, this is roughly
under Darius the Great, and we'll talk more about him,
he was an interesting character, but the Achaemenid
empire at it's peak had approximately 50 million people.
And that's a lot of people at any time in history,
but especially at that time in history
because at that time in history there was only
a little over 100 million people in the world,
or at least that's our current estimates.
So this is actually the largest proportion of the world's
population that any empire has ever had in history,
as far as we can tell, so that gives it some claim
to being maybe the greatest or one of the greatest
empires in world history.
And then, as we get into the Seleucid and especially
the Parthian empire, you know, in the West we talk
a lot about the glory of the Roman empire,
but the Parthian's were right there beside of them, and
they kind of went back and forth but they were side by side,
the peak of the Parthian empire coincides with the peak
of the Roman empire, and they give each other space and
they went back and forth especially around the Middle East.
And you have this empire from the Parthian's you go to
the Sassanian's and eventually in the seventh century C.E.,
Islam comes into the Persian empire
and becomes the dominant religion.
And so that might make you ask,
"Well, what was the dominant religion before that?"
And the answer there is Zoroastrianism.
Zoroastrianism.
And it was really Cyrus the Great, by establishing
the Persian empire, who really spreads Zoroastrianism.
And Zoroastrianism is based on their prophet Zarathustra.
And when Zarathustra lived is up for some debate, it might
be as early as 1500 B.C.E., some people say it might
be even right before even coincident with the life
of Cyrus the Great, so there's some debate on when
Zarathustra lived, but it was a monotheistic religion,
following the one god of Ahura Mazda.
Ahura Mazda.
And it was based on these ideas of good thoughts lead
to good words and good deeds.
Other big ideas of the Persian empire is their system
of governments, of governants.
Because it was such a vast empire they delegated
the emperor, the Shah and Shah, the King of Kings,
delegated authority to the regions so each region,
each satrapy had it's governor called a satrap.
And as we see over time, some of these satraps got more
power then maybe was intended and then eventually took over.
But this was a major empire in the history of the world,
they unified people, they're famous for royal road
that connected Sardis all the way, all the way to Sousa,
as you can imagine it would have facilitated the transfer
of knowledge and the transfer of trade.
Under the Seleucid's you had huge Greek influence,
but it was two way street.
Not only did the Greeks influence the Persians,
but the Persians heavily influenced the Greeks.
So with that, in the next few videos we'll go into
even more depth on the Persian empire
and specifically the Achaemenid's.