Persia: Ancient Iran

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About Persia: Ancient Iran

This pool is dedicated to the history of the ancient Iran and the “greater Iran” (or Iranshahr). Iranshahr is a cultural and historic entity defined as an “Iranian cultural continent” by Encyclopaedia iranica (Columbia University – New york). It is not limitated to the actuel iran, but correspond to the Iranian geographic plate and the surrounding territories, from east Euphrates to west Indus rivers, from north Caucasus mounts, Caspian sea and Aral sea, to South Oman and Persian gulfs. It covers the actual nations of Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and parts of Turkey, Iraq, and Pakistan.
Iranshahr is one of world’s oldest civilization land: great cultures raised there, allowing the genesis of complex and remarkable civilizations, then leading to the birth of wide empires either coexisting with or succeeding to each-other during milleniums : Civilisation of Jiroft (5000-3000 BCE) near Kerman, Proto-elamite civilization then elamite kingdom in Susiana (3300-540 BCE), median empire (730-556 BCE), first persian (achaemenian) empire (556-330 BCE), seleucid era (330-150 BCE), parthian era (190 BCE-224 CE), then second persian (sasanian) empire (224 -651 CE). These civilizations do not keep isolated but have continuous cultural, artistic, commercial, or military interactions with their neighbours and even farer. Antic commercial roads allow the diffusion of knowledge and goods untill western Europa and the far east.
Persian antiquity ends with the achievement of the muslim conquest of persia in 651 CE. This date also triggers the begining of the islamic era and the iranian middle age.