Iran has been around for a really long time (especially as Persia).
I mean, like, a really, really long time.
Actually, come to think of it, it’s been technically around for at least 50 million
years, but humans have been there for about 75,000 years, so that’s where our focus
will be.
Sorry, ancient mammals, like the [oh, god!
What is that thing?!]
After the Neanderthals left, Persia became home to many early agricultural communities,
like the 12,000-year old Chogha Golan at the foothills of the Zagros mountains.
Many people gathered around the Zagros mountains, probably because of how cool of a name they
have.
Later on, the Fertile Crescent thing happened, which western Persia was technically part
of, and what did they like to do so much there?
That’s right, building cities and empires!
Susa, a major city throughout much of Persia’s history, was founded around 4395 BC.
Susa was en par with other major cities, like Ur, Uruk, Babylon and Nineveh, in that they’re
bustling cities filled with people who are now dead.
The Neo-Assyrian Empire (so-called, because it ended 26 centuries ago) had made some incursions
into southwestern Persia, and during the age of Classical Antiquity (650-330 BC)— named
so, because all the other antiquities aren’t nearly as good as the original— the Assyrian
king Ashurbanipal sacked the city of Susa (646 BC), ending Elamite rule.
This scared the s**t out of many Persian tribes, so they decided to unite into the Achaemenid
Empire (550 BC).
Now, Ashurbanipal had effectively awoke the sleeping Persian giant— and I mean giant,
because they created an empire that stretched from Greece and Egypt to the Indus river.
That’s f**king huge!
This was about the size of Alexander the Great’s empire, but that wasn’t a coincidence, sorry,
getting ahead of myself.
The Achaemenids established a political system where conquered empires, like Egypt, could
keep their local leaders, in exchange for recognizing the Persian Shah as the above-all
ruler, which meant that the Shah would be known as the “king of kings”.
In fact, after allowing the Jewish people to finally return from Babylon, King Cyrus
(Kūruš) the Great became the only non-Jew to become Messiah.
The Persians also established a protected road network, to get between cities around
ten times faster than before.
Not long after its foundation, the Achaemenid Empire decided to invade its neighbor to the
west, Greece.
You’ll notice a distinct pattern in Persian history where Persia was never really at peace
with its western neighbors, be them Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Ottomans, Vulcans, etc.
Persia attacked the Greek city states so much, it inspired a footrace, and a Zack Snyder
movie.
Eventually, the Greeks got pretty tired of this, and after King Philip II of Macedon
conquered all of Greece, he planned to invade Persia, but he couldn’t do it, due to one
minor change of plans, in that he was now dead, so his son did it for him.
His son was Alexander the Great, who, taking advantage of the Persian navy quelling a rebellion
in Egypt, landed on the western coast of Anatolia, then proceeded toward his first fight at the
Grancius River, cut a knot in the city of Gordium, before proceeding to… and he’s
conquered all of Persia.
“Oh well, everyone but me wants to go home, so I guess now I can rule what I have.”
He said, before dying in Babylon while thinking of conquering Arabia, but not before founding
new cities, and naming all of them Alexandria.
“Hello, welcome to Alexandria Int’l Airport, how may I help you?”
“Hello, I would like to go to Alexandria.”
“Okay, gate C6, but you’ll have a layover in Alexandria.”
[Head explodes] His empire lasted about as long as he did,
though, but he only lived 32 years, and was quickly cut up, due to its sheer size.
The Seleucid Empire lasted a couple hundred years before being taken over by the Parthians.
Around that time, the Romans conquered the entire Mediterranean (and gave it its name),
and eventually became rivals so long that the Parthian Empire collapsed, and handed
the war over to the Sassanian Empire, and then the Roman Empire split up, and the eastern
half became the Byzantine Empire (to historians).
The war lasted a total of 700 years, until Persia was conquered in the 640’s by the
Rashidun Caliphate, which became the Umayyad Caliphate, which became the Abbasid Caliphate,
which lasted 500 years, until its capital, Baghdad, was conquered by the Mongols.
The Mongol Empire didn’t last nearly as long, and by 1370, the Mongol Ilkhanate became
the Timurid Empire, and then the Safavid Dynasty (1501), then the Afsharid (1736), then the
Zand (1751), then shifting into the modern era with the Qajar Dynasty (1789), which lasted
all the way up to 1925, with the Pahlavi Dynasty, also known as the Imperial State of Iran.
However, in the 50’s, Iran decided to nationalize the British oil fields in their land, so Britain
whined about it.
“Hey, America!”
“What do you want?”
“Iran’s taking over my oil fields!”
“So, what?
Maybe Iran’s just tired of your bulls**t, too.”
“No, it’s different.
It’s… much worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re having…
a…
Communist revolution!”
And, same as before with Guatemala [Sam O’Nella clip]
Unfortunately, they weren’t Communist, like, at all.
Seriously, no Communists…
well, maybe that…
[US bomb] F**k, everyone’s dead.
No, but [rewind] the government was rearranged from a democracy, to being ruled by a western-friendly,
but authoritarian Shah, vastly expanding Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi’s power.
However, most Iranians didn’t like this, at all, so, in 1979, one man named Ruhollah
Khomeini (yes, that guy) decided to start the Islamic Revolution, and overthrew the
authoritarian regime with another authoritarian regime.
During the interim government period, the Iranian Hostage Crisis happened, in which
workers from the US embassy were taken hostage, until a Canadian could rescue them, and were
returned around the time Reagan was sworn in, after the Algiers Accords.
Since then, Iran has been hit by sanction after sanction to the point where it doesn’t
actually affect their economy as much anymore.
Then there were decades of nuclear suspicions, Saddam Hussein was a dick, and general appearances
of hostilities, but Obama made a deal with them, I guess.
Yeah, Iran’s had a rough 2,000 years, I say as an Ashkenazi Jew.
Thanks for watching my attempt at a Bill Wurtz inspired video about Iran, a country I still
know barely anything of.
Anyways, if you learned something, please be sure to like, comment and subscribe for
more every Sunday, and I’ll see you in… two Sundays.
yeah, I’ll be at VidCon later this week, so, yeah.