Persia gave the world its first true superpower. Two and a half thousand years ago the Achaemenid Empire stretched from the Indus to the Aegean — the largest empire humanity had yet seen — ruled with a tolerance and sophistication that astonished its neighbours. From Cyrus the Great to the Islamic conquest to the nation we now call Iran, this is one of history's great continuous civilisations. This course traces its sweep. (It deepens our world-history library across the Middle East and Central Asia.)You'll begin with the whole story — millennia of Persian and Iranian history in one overview — then meet Cyrus the Great and the rise of the Achaemenid Empire, relive the famous wars with Greece (the clash behind the legend of the 300), and finish by asking when, and why, Persia became Iran. Honest note: this is a brief introduction to an immense, contested history; popular tales like the '300' Spartans at Thermopylae are heavily romanticised, and this course points to the real history behind the myth.
For millennia, the greatest empires in the world made the exact same fatal mistake. They marched onto the Iranian Plateau with swords drawn, absolutely certain they could wipe this civilization off the face of the earth forever. The Macedonian phalanxes of Alexander the Great invaded here. Ruthless Roman legions marched here. Arab armies swept in under the banners of a new religion. And the ferocious Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan tore through, leaving behind nothing but towers of skulls. Any other nation would have vanished permanently after suffering such a catastrophic number of blows. They would have dissolved into the genetic and cultural melting pot of history, just as it happened with the Babylonians, the Hittites, or the Assyrians. But with Iran, something [music] entirely inexplicable took place. Time and time again, despite losing on the battlefield, losing their capitals, [music] and enduring occupation, the Iranians did something no one else in the world could do. They absorbed their conquerors. Just a few decades would pass, and the brutal invaders would begin speaking the Persian language, building Persian architecture, adopting their state bureaucracy, [music] and even wearing their clothes. Again and again, the East essentially digested the West and the nomads. How has Iran managed, from antiquity right up to the present day, to force every major world power to reckon with it? How did they preserve their identity? And how did it happen that great Persia, a country with a 5,000-year history, voluntarily abandoned [music] its legendary name, forcing the entire world to call it Iran? This is the story of how a single nation invented the concept of time we live in today, turned geopolitics >> [music] >> into a holy war between light and dark, and learned how to lose battles in order to ultimately win eternity. To understand the depth of this civilization, we need to rewind time far back. Traditionally, the Western world considers Mesopotamia, meaning Sumer and Babylon, or ancient Egypt to be the cradle of civilization. >> [music] >> In this world view, Iran is often sidelined, and that is a massive historical injustice. Evolution took its natural course here. 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals [music] dominated these lands, only to be replaced by Cro-Magnons 36,000 years ago. But, the real revolution began later. Archaeologists have discovered urban-type settlements on Iranian territory, like the Jiroft culture and the Sialk Ziggurat, dating back 6 to 7,000 years. Ceramic vessels from the 4th millennium before Christ irrefutably prove one of the oldest civilizations on the planet evolved right here, standing shoulder to shoulder with Mesopotamia and China. The first major geopolitical player in these lands was Elam, a state in the southwest of modern Iran with its capital in the city of Susa. The Elamites were so powerful that by the 26th century before Christ, they were practically dictating their will to the Sumerians. But, the most mind-blowing event happened in the [music] 23rd century before Christ, when the Akkadian king Naram-Sin went to war with Elam. The conflict didn't end with a simple truce. A written treaty was signed. It guaranteed Elam's independence [music] on the condition that they aligned their foreign policy with Akkad. Think about that. This is the first documented international treaty in human history. The Iranian space stood at the very origins of global diplomacy. Genetically, however, the Elamites were closer to the people of Mesopotamia. The people we call Iranians [music] today arrived here later. Sometime between the 20th and 15th centuries [music] before Christ, nomadic tribes began descending onto this mountainous plateau from the north, from the steppes of Central Asia and the Caucasus. They belonged to the giant family of Indo-European nations, representing its distinct Indo-Iranian branch. Amazingly, their ancient language was a direct relative of Latin, Greek, and the languages spoken across all of Europe today, including English and Spanish. Settling on these lands, they began calling themselves Aryans, meaning noble, and named their new homeland Airyanem Vaejah, the land of the Aryans. Over time, this word morphed into the familiar name we know as Iran. They mixed with the ancient culture of Elam and split into powerful alliances, the most famous of which became the Medes and the Persians. It was right here, in these harsh mountains and deserts, that the primary weapon of the Iranians was born. It was not chariots, nor was it special bows. It was ideology. Long before the emergence of Christianity and Islam, a religion was born on [music] the Iranian plateau that turned human consciousness upside down, Zoroastrianism. For the ancient Iranian, life was not simply a series of meaningless accidents [music] or a cyclical changing of seasons. The universe was perceived as the battlefield of a total uncompromising war between Ahura Mazda, the transcendent God [music] of light, truth, and order, and Ahriman, the spirit of absolute evil, lies, and darkness. And most importantly, Zoroastrianism clearly mapped the geography [music] of this evil. The realm of darkness was considered to be the nomadic expanse [music] of Eurasia, Turan, from which devastating raids were constantly launched. To be Iranian meant to be a warrior of light. Their entire culture, poetry, [music] and statehood were built on the idea of actively assisting the forces of good. This concept [music] gave the nation phenomenal unity, but Zoroastrianism [music] did something even more massive. This tradition was the first [music] in history to declare time does not move in a circle. Time is linear. The world had a beginning, creation, and it will have an inevitable end, a final battle between light and dark, a purification of the world by fire and a last judgment. [music] How did this idea conquer the world? When the Persians conquered Babylon in the 6th century before Christ, they liberated the Jews who were languishing there in captivity. [music] Judaea became a province of the Persian Empire for two centuries. During this period of close contact, [music] Jewish thinkers adopted from the Zoroastrians the culture of anticipating the end of times, linear time, [music] and the final judgment. Later, this doctrine flowed into Christianity and Islam. Prominent philosophers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, acknowledged [music] that Iran played the key role in discovering linear time, the coordinates within [music] which we still think today. The first truly great state of the Aryans was Media, [music] formed in 670 BC. The Medes did not last long, but they managed to destroy the formidable Assyrian Empire. Their hegemony was cut short by their own relatives, the Persians. In 550 BC, a man [music] named Cyrus the Great, half Persian, half Mede, united his two peoples, the tribes of the Persians and the Medes. Out of this union, he began building what historians would call the Achaemenid Empire, the first superpower in history. Cyrus was different from the tyrants of the past. When conquering Lydia, the Greek city-states of Asia Minor or Babylon, he did not destroy their temples, nor did he enslave their populations. He built an empire on respect. [music] His successor, Darius I, expanded the borders from Egypt to the Indus Valley. Nearly 50 million people, half the population of the Earth at that time, lived under Persian rule. Darius divided the country into 20 [music] administrative districts called satrapies, introduced a unified tax system, minted gold coins known as darics, and laid down a network of roads along which the fastest state [music] postal service in the world raced. But history does not forgive weakness. In an attempt [music] to secure the empire from the nomadic darkness, Cyrus the Great ventured [music] into Central Asia to wage war against the Massagetae tribe, and there the greatest emperor met his end. The battle was so brutal that the Persian army was annihilated. According to Herodotus, the leader of the Massagetae, Queen Tomyris, seeking revenge for [music] the death of her son, ordered her men to find the body of Cyrus. She cut off his head and threw it into a leather sack filled to the brim with human blood declaring, "You thirsted for blood. Now drink your fill." Despite this tragedy, the empire lived on. We are used to thinking that the famous Greco-Persian Wars, the ones with the 300 Spartans, [music] crushed the Persians. That is a Western myth. Yes, the Greeks defended their independence, but for the giant Achaemenid Empire, losing a couple of fringe cities was like a mosquito bite. The Persians simply changed tactics. They began funding first Athens, then Sparta, pitting the Greeks against each other. Ultimately, in 387 BC, the exhausted Greeks were forced to sign a humiliating treaty on the terms of the Persian king Artaxerxes. What the Persians could not take with a massive army, they bought. Persia became the undisputed master of Greece without firing a single shot. The real catastrophe came later. The Achaemenid Empire grew to such massive [music] proportions that a weak central government could no longer control dozens of different nations. A young, [music] ambitious king from Macedonia took advantage of this, Alexander. In 330 BC, Macedonian phalanxes ruthlessly crushed the Persian army. >> [music] >> Alexander burned the magnificent Persepolis. It seemed the thousand-year history of Iran was finished. From the ruins of the Achaemenids arose the Hellenistic Seleucid state ruled by Greeks. And that is exactly when the Iranian [music] survival mechanism kicked in. Eastern culture began to methodically [music] devour its western conquerors. Alexander himself started wearing [music] Persian clothes and adopted Persian court etiquette. The policy of Hellenization choked on the thick ancient Iranian worldview. In the 3rd century before Christ, the Parthians, an Indo-Iranian [music] tribe, kicked the Greeks out and created the Parthian Empire. The Parthian ruler Mithridates the first proclaimed himself king of kings and the successor to the Achaemenids. For five centuries, the Parthians, [music] relying on highly mobile cavalry and the famous Parthian shot, successfully stood their ground against [music] the Roman Empire itself, dealing crushing defeats to the legions in the Middle East. Then, in the year 224, a new golden age arrived. The Sassanid dynasty took [music] power, hailing from the Pars region, the homeland of the first Persians. They created a fiercely centralized state where Zoroastrianism became the official state doctrine. Society was divided into strict castes, priests, warriors, bureaucrats, and commoners, establishing an ideal meritocracy. Sassanid Iran was a superpower that waged grueling [music] wars for almost 400 years, first with Rome and then with Byzantium for for over Mesopotamia and the Caucasus, but these centuries [music] of endless warfare bled Iran dry. By the mid-7th century, the Sassanid Empire was a bleeding giant. A new, [music] unprecedented force emerging from the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula capitalized on this, the Arab Caliphate. In 651, the Persian capital fell and the last Shah of the Sassanid dynasty was treacherously murdered. All of Iran fell under Arab rule. The era of the Umayyad Caliphate began. The Arabs brought a new religion, Islam, and a new language. Zoroastrianism, which had fueled the Iranian spirit for millennia, began to fade. For any other culture, this would have meant the total erasure of identity, just as it happened with Egypt or Syria, which became permanently Arabized. [music] But, the Persians did it again. Various Arab rulers tried to force the Persians to abandon their roots completely. Yet, having suffered military defeat, the Iranians struck back culturally. The Islamic Caliphate, especially under the Abbasids, >> [music] >> began to rely heavily on Persian bureaucrats, scholars, and poets. Arab caliphs [music] adopted Persian methods of governance. The Farsi language did not just survive, it outlived dozens of empires. And the greatest scientific treatises and poems continued to be written in it. After the Arabs, a true apocalypse crashed down upon Iran. In the year 1220, Genghis Khan arrived from the steppes of Central Asia. The Mongols did not just [music] conquer territories, they slaughtered entire cities and wiped thousand-year-old irrigation systems off the face of the earth. It seemed Iran would turn into a pasture for nomads. But when the grandson of Genghis Khan, Hulagu, founded a Mongol state here called the Ilkhanate, something incredible happened. The harsh conquerors, used to living in yurts, suddenly embraced Islam. They made the Persian language the language of the state. They began building grandiose Persian mosques with blue domes, funding local scholars and poets. At the end of the 14th century, history repeated itself. Tamerlane stormed into these lands. He erected pyramids out [music] of severed human heads. Yet at the same time, he stood in awe of Persian culture. He took the best Iranian artisans back to his capital, and his descendants, the Timurids, sparked a true Persian renaissance, turning their courts into centers of exquisite miniatures and poetry. For almost 300 years, Iran was a boiling cauldron where political power belonged to fearsome Mongols and Turks. But upon taking the Iranian throne, within a couple of generations, they irrevocably became Persians. The Iranian cultural code completely reprogrammed its invaders. And then, out of this 300 year cauldron of tribes and dynasties, a man named Shah Ismail [music] emerged in 1501. He reunited the country [music] and founded the Safavid state. It was the Safavids who [music] made Shia Islam the state religion of Iran, forever separating it culturally and politically from the rest of the predominantly Sunni Islamic world and the Ottoman Empire. Iran once again forged its rigid, unique identity. By the 19th century, under the Turkic Qajar dynasty, Iran entered a period of severe crisis. Following devastating wars with the Russian Empire, the country permanently lost the territories of modern-day Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. By the early 20th century, on the eve of the First World War, Iran had become a backdrop for the Great Game, the geopolitical standoff between the British and Russian Empires. The country was effectively carved into spheres of influence. The British pumped Iranian oil, while Russian troops stood in the north. Later, the Soviet Union even tried to create a communist republic in northern Iran. The country was suffocating under the weight of colonial powers, but Iran would not be Iran if it didn't find a way out. In 1925, Reza Shah Pahlavi came to power as the result of a military coup. He charted a hardline course toward industrialization and modernization. And in 1935, [music] he made a move that shook global diplomacy. For centuries, the entire Western world had called this country Persia. This word, derived from the Greek name for the Parthos region, was associated in Europe with fairy tales, carpets, backwardness, and exoticism. Reza Shah declared, "Enough." He sent an official directive to all embassies. "From now on, the country must be called by its true, ancient name, the very one they had called themselves for millennia, Iran, the land of the Aryans." This was not just a linguistic whim. It was a statement. We are not an exotic colony. We are a modern, powerful nation with ancient roots, and you will reckon with us. The history of Iran is always a history of radical [music] pivots. In the 20th century, the country found itself on the global chessboard, caught between the interests of superpowers. Decades of political turbulence and [music] foreign interference ultimately led to the country exploding in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The monarchy fell. Iran became a theocratic republic, and relations with the West were severed. And today, we witness a stunning historical paradox. In the mind of modern man, two completely different states [music] exist simultaneously. The word Iran triggers in most people images of geopolitical tension, harsh sanctions, conflicts, and grim news reports. Meanwhile, the word Persia, ironically, has not disappeared at all. It has acquired a romantic, almost mythical aura. Persia is associated with lost grandeur, refined poetry, flying carpets, and fairy-tale empires. Two names, one land, and a constant, relentless struggle over exactly how it will be remembered. Over its 5,000 year history, this culture developed the ultimate mechanism for survival. When clashing with Macedonians, Arabs, or Mongols, they did not disappear. They absorbed their conquerors, reshaping them to fit their own [music] mold. They stood at the origins of civilization and invented the time in which we live. But perhaps their greatest battle is taking place right now, because sometimes, hidden behind the simple name of a country is a quiet, invisible war. A war between who we were in the past, who we are today, and how the world wants to see us.