The Persian Empire was a glorious empire indeed! Although many European countries and western counties ignored Persia’s proper name, Iran, until the Arab conquest in 700 A. D. , many countries still do consider it a very formidable opponent. This essay will give a brief summary of the history of the Persian Empire. At around 1500 B. C. , multiple Aryan tribes settled on the northern side the Iranian plateau, the most important of which was the Medes. On the outhern side were the Persians who had emigrated from Parusa.
The Persians named that land “Parsumash”. In the late 6th century B. C. , The warrior chief, Hakhamanish, was the first prominent leader of the Persians. During his reign, the Medes dominated the Persians and a new leader rose to overthrow the Median leaders. His name was Cyrus The Great. In 546 B. C. he conquered the kingdom of Lydia and, shortly after, the kingdom of Babylonia. Doing so, he established the Persian Empire as the preeminent ower of the world.
Cyrus’s son, Cambyses II, became the heir to the throne and extended the Persian land even further by capturing Egypt. The next king, Darius I, had a canal built between the Nile River and the Red Sea. That earned him the title “Darius the Great”. Darius crushed a revolt of Ionian Greeks living under Persian rule in Asia then launched an attack against the European Greeks for supporting the rebels. His forces were tragically defeated at the battle of marathon.
He began preparing a new attack against the Greeks but died before the preparation was complete. His son, Xerxes, attempted to carryout his fathers plan but utterly failed. In the years after 446 B. C. , the Persian Empire began to decline. The end of the Persian Empire came in the form of the multiple merciful attacks made by Alexander the Great during the years of 334-331 B. C. Although the country of Persia was reestablished many years later, one can highly doubt that it was ever the same again.