The Persian Empire

by Kia, Mehrdad;

  After the death of Alexander and the partition of his short-lived empire among his generals, Hyrcania became a province of the Seleucid Empire, which was founded by the Macedonian commander Seleucus between 312 and 302 BCE. Seleucid rule over Hyrcania was, however, short-lived. The Seleucid control over northern and eastern Iran was extremely tenuous. For much of its reign, the capital of the Seleucids was Antioch in Syria (present-day southern Turkey), far away from northeastern Iran. The Seleucids were also frequently occupied with wars against Ptolemaic Egypt. It is not surprising that the Seleucids began to lose control over the eastern provinces of their empire after a mere half century (Strabo: 11.7.2–3).

  Sometime between 250 and 239 BCE, two important rebellions erupted against the authority of the Seleucid monarchy. The satrap of Bactria, Diodotus, and the governor of Parthia, Andragoras, revolted and proclaimed their independence. Then in 238 BCE, Arsaces (Arshak), a leader of the Parni (Aparni), a branch of the Dahae confederacy, invaded Parthia and defeated and killed its ruler, Andragoras. Not long after, Arsaces “made himself master of Hyrcania” (Justin: XLI.4.8–9). The Greek geographer and historian Strabo wrote that Arsaces was a Scythian chief who emerged as the leader of the Parni, a group within the Dahae confederacy. In his account of Alexander’s campaigns in Central Asia, Arrian mentioned the Dahae (Daae) as a nomadic group living in close proximity to the Jaxartes River (Syr Darya) in Central Asia. By 250 BCE, the Parni had established themselves on the shores of the Atrek River. A short time later in 247 BCE, Arsaces I was crowned king in Asaac. This event marked the beginning of the Arsacid era. The exact location of Asaac is unknown, but some scholars have suggested that it was located near the present-day town of Quchan in the upper Atrek River Valley in northeastern Iran (Debevoise: 10–11).

  With the conquest of Parthia in 238 BCE, the Arsacids came to be known as Parthians, or as those who hail from Parthia, a name the Greek and Roman authors used when referring to them and their empire. The conquest of Parthia and Hyrcania by Arsaces I alarmed the Seleucid ruler, Seleucus II (r. 246–225 BCE), who organized a campaign to reimpose Seleucid control over eastern Iran. In 231/230 BCE, Seleucus II marched against the Arsacids. Though the Seleucid forces attacked and occupied Hyrcania, they could not hold the region for very long. The campaign was inconclusive and failed to neutralize the threat posed by Arsaces I. When the Seleucid army returned west, Arsaces restored his control over northeastern Iran. Once again during the reign of Antiochus III (r. 223–187 BCE), the Seleucids tried to reassert their suzerainty over the eastern provinces of their empire. In 209 BCE Antiochus led his army into Iran, seizing Media and using it as the base to attack Hyrcania and Parthia. The Seleucid army first attacked Hecatompylos, or Sad Darvazeh (City of a Hundred Gates), in Shar-e Qumis near present-day Damghan in northern Iran. He then crossed the Alborz mountain range into Hyrcania, seizing the capital of the province. Arsaces II, the son and successor to Arsaces I, made a tactical retreat and acknowledged Seleucid sovereignty. From Hyrcania and Parthia, Antiochus III moved east against Bactria. The Seleucid victory in Iran, however, proved short-lived.

  Parthia and Hyrcania continued to serve as the territorial base from which the successors of Arsaces expanded their kingdom and eventually established a vast and powerful empire. The Arsacid monarch Phraates I, who ruled from 176 to 171 BCE, began the slow process of breaking out of the geographical confines of northeastern Iran, extending the territory of the Parthian state to the regions lying to the south of the Alborz mountain range. The Arsacids defeated the Mardi, a tribal group who lived in the eastern regions of the Alborz, and expanded the boundaries of their state from Parthia to the lands west of the Caspian Gates. When Phraates I died, he was succeeded by his brother, Mithridates I.

  Mithridates I, who ruled from 171 to 139/138 BCE, transformed the Arsacid state from a small kingdom in present-day northeastern Iran into a major empire that came to rule a vast territory extending from Central Asia to Syria. Building on his brother’s military successes, Mithridates embarked on an ambitious campaign to expand the territory of the Arsacid kingdom even farther. The exact dates of Mithridates’s impressive conquests are uncertain. However, it seems that his first major victory was achieved against the Greco-Bactrian kingdom based in Bactria in present-day northern Afghanistan. According to Strabo, the Parthians took away “the satrapy Turiva and that of Aspionus” from Eucratides, the ruler of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom (Strabo: 11.11. 2). Mithridates I then pushed westward and conquered Media sometime in 148 or 147 BCE. The Parthian armies then moved into Mesopotamia and captured Babylonia, including the city of Seleucia, by 141 BCE. Before he could complete his conquest of Mesopotamia, however, Mithridates I was forced to shift his focus to the eastern borders of his kingdom, which had been breached by invading nomadic groups from Central Asia. In the absence of their king, Parthian armies continued their military operations in southwestern Iran and southern Mesopotamia, defeating the Elymaeans in southwestern Iran and seizing the important city of Susa, which had served as the winter capital of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. The impressive victories of Mithridates I forced the Seleucid monarch Demetrius II to respond by attacking Mesopotamia and Iran. The campaigns of Demetrius II against Mithridates I proved to be disastrous for the Seleucid monarch, who was defeated and captured by the Parthians in 139 BCE. The humiliated Demetrius was sent to Mithridates I in Hyrcania, which served as the home base and a safe retreat for the Arsacid monarch. In spirit of mercy and compassion, Mithridates treated the defeated Seleucid king “with the respect due unto a king” (Justin: XXXVIII.9.1–2). The Parthian monarch also arranged for a marriage between Demetrius and his daughter Rhodogune. Despite such gestures, Demetrius tried to escape captivity twice, but on both occasions he was captured and sent back to Hyrcania. After the defeat of the Seleucids, the Elymaeans, who had formed an alliance with Demetrius, paid a high price for their disloyalty when Parthian forces plundered their temples. Between 139 and 132 BCE, Parthian armies swept through southwestern Iran and southern Iraq, including the important city of Babylon. After a long and successful reign of nearly 44 years, Mithridates I, who had assumed the title “great king,” died in 139 or 138 BCE, leaving behind a vast and powerful empire for his successors. In his Natural History, Pliny wrote that the Parthians possessed “in all eighteen kingdoms,” one of which was Hyrcani (Pliny: 6.29.112). In his short account of the overland trade route between the Levant and India during the reign of the Arsacid dynasty, Isidore of Charax mentioned Hyrcania as one of the provinces of the Parthian Empire lying on the main trade route beyond the Caspian Gates. The author stated that there were 11 rest stations for the traveling caravans in Hyrcania (Isidore of Charax: 7).

  Hyrcanians played an important role in the political and administrative structure of the Parthian Empire. For example, a certain Hyrcanian, Himerus, served as the governor of Babylonia during the reign of the Arsacid monarch Phraates II (r. 139/138–128 BCE). Throughout the Parthian period, Hyrcania served as a safe retreat for Arsacid monarchs who were facing a serious challenge to their rule.

  During the reign of the Sasanian dynasty (224–651 CE), Hyrcania, called Gorgan (the land of wolves), was a province of the Persian Empire. Gorgan was the name of the province as well as the name of the region’s main urban center. The Sasanians who ruled their empire from Ctesiphon, south of modern-day Baghdad, viewed Gorgan as an important strategic region of their empire. According to the historian Tabari, after defeating the last Arsacid king, Artabanus IV, in 224, the founder of the Sasanian dynasty, Ardashir, embarked on the conquest of the former provinces of the Parthian Empire. Gorgan was one of the provinces that Ardeshir seized and incorporated into his kingdom (Tabari: 2.584). Ardashir’s son and successor, Shapur I (r. 239/240/241/242 –270/272 CE), mentioned Gorgan as one of the provinces of the Sasanian Empire in his inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam near Persepolis in southern Iran (Frye: 371). In the fifth century CE, the northeastern frontiers of the Sasanian Empire were repeatedly breache
d by the Hephthalites, who defeated and killed the Sasanian monarch Peroz in 484 CE. The Hephthalites invaded Khorasan and may have reached the boundaries of Gorgan, but the extent of their penetration into the territory of the province is unclear. During the reign of the Sasanian monarch Khosrow I Anushiravan (r. 531–579 CE), the Sasanian armies defeated and destroyed the Hephthalites in collaboration with the Western Turk state, which had occupied the region north of the Oxus River (Amu Darya). To protect Gorgan and Khorasan from further nomadic incursions from Central Asia, Khosrow I built a defensive wall in Gorgan. The Great Wall of Gorgan, which extended for nearly 125 miles (200 kilometers), was the second-longest wall in Asia after the Great Wall of China. In recent excavations, archaeologists from Iran and the United Kingdom have discovered a section of the wall that was buried in the Caspian Sea.

  See also: K&Q, Arsacid/Parthian: Arsaces I; Gotarzes II; Mithridates I; Phraates I; K&Q, Sasanian: Khosrow I Anushiravan; Peoples: Achaemenid Empire; Arsacids; Sasanian Empire

  Further Reading

  Arrian. The Campaigns of Alexander. Translated by Aubrey De Sélincourt. New York: Dorset, 1986.

  Bivar, A. D. H. “The Political History of Iran under the Arsacids.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 3(I), edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 21–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

  Colledge, Malcolm A. R. The Parthians. New York: Praeger, 1967.

  Debevoise, Neilson C. A Political History of Parthia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938.

  Diodorus Siculus. Translated by C. H. Oldfather. London: William Heinemann, 1933.

  Frye, Richard Nelson. The History of Ancient Iran. München: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1984.

  Gilmore, John, ed. The Fragments of the Persika of Ktesias. London: Macmillan, 1888.

  Herrmann, G., and V. S. Curtis. “Sasanian Rock Reliefs.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2002, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/sasanian-rock-reliefs.

  Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey De Sélincourt. London: Penguin Books, 2003.

  Isidore of Charax. Parthian Stations: An Account of the Overland Trade Route between the Levant and India in the First Century B.C. The Greek text, with a translation and commentary. Translated by Wilfred H. Schoff. Philadelphia: Commercial Museum, 1914.

  Justin. The History of the World. Translated by G. Turnbull. London, 1742.

  Kent, Roland G. Old Persian. New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1950.

  Kiani, Mohammad Yusuf. “Excavations on the Defensive Wall of the Gorgan Plain: A Preliminary Report.” Iran 20 (1982): 73–79.

  Lecoq, P. “Aparna.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 1986, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/aparna-c3k.

  Lozinski, B. P. The Original Homeland of the Parthians. The Hague: Mouton, 1959.

  Pliny. Natural History. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967.

  Quintus Curtius Rufus. The History of Alexander. Translated by John Yardley. London: Penguin Books, 2004.

  Sauer, Eberhard W., Hamid Omrani Rekavandi, Tony J. Wilkinson, and Jebrael Nokandeh. Persia’s Imperial Power in Late Antiquity: The Great Wall of Gorgan and the Frontier Landscapes of Sasanian Iran. British Institute of Persian Studies Archeological Monograph Series, Book 2. London: Oxbow Books, 2013.

  Schippmann, K. “Arsacids II: The Arsacid Dynasty.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 1986, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/arsacids-index#pt2.

  Strabo. The Geography of Strabo. Translated by Horace Leonard Jones. London: William Heinemann, 1930.

  Tabari. Tarikh-e Tabari, Vol. 2. Translated from Arabic into Persian by Abol Qassem Payandeh. Tehran: Asatir Publications, 1984.

  Khwarazm. See Chorasmia

  Parthia

  An Iranian-populated region corresponding with present-day northeastern Iran. Parthia was a province of the Achaemenid Empire (r. 550–330 BCE) and after 238 BCE the home base for the newly established Arsacid dynasty, which would create a powerful empire that incorporated vast territories in present-day Iran, Central Asia, and Mesopotamia. The territory of Parthia as a province corresponded with present-day northeastern Iran or, more precisely, the northern region of Khorasan and the southern regions of Turkmenistan. The Persian Achaemenid kings, including Darius I and Xerxes I, mentioned Parthia as one of the provinces of their empire. In Old Persian, the name of the province was Parthava. In his inscription at Bisotun near Kermanshah in western Iran, the Achaemenid monarch Darius I (r. 522–486 BCE) mentioned Parthia as one of the provinces of the Persian Empire, which had revolted against him after he seized the throne in 522 BCE (Kent: 122–124). Parthia was frequently mentioned with Hyrcania, leading scholars of ancient Iran to conclude that Hyrcania (Varkana) was administered as a subprovince of Parthia. According to Darius I, Parthia and Hyrcania revolted and joined a certain Fravartish (Phraortes), who had raised the flag of rebellion in Media (Kent: 124). Darius’s father Vishtaspa (Hystaspes), who was at the time stationed in Parthia, fought the rebels in two separate battles and finally managed to suppress them (Kent: 124–127). This passage indicates that Hyrcania was directly influenced by events in Parthia, to the east, and Media, the neighboring province to the southwest.

  Parthians fought in the Achaemenid armies. Herodotus mentions Parthians as one of the groups that participated in the armies of Xerxes I when the Persian monarch invaded Greece. Their commander was a certain Artabazus (Herodotus: 7.66), who was most probably the governor of Parthia since, according to Herodotus, “the satraps led their contingents to battle” (Debevoise: 6). According to Arrian, the Parthians together with the Hyrcanians and Tapurians formed a part of the cavalry force, which Darius III, the last Achaemenid monarch, had mobilized against Alexander and his Macedonian army in the Battle of Arbela in 331 BCE. These forces were under the command of Phrataphernes, the governor of Parthia and Hyrcania (Arrian: 3.8, 3.11; Quintus Curtius Rufus: 4.12.11). After the defeat of the Achaemenid army at Arbela, Alexander seized Susa and Persepolis. In pursuit of Darius III, who had fled to Ecbatana, Alexander then advanced to Media, but by the time he arrived at the Persian summer capital, Darius III had departed the city. Alexander’s next targets were Hyrcania and Parthia. Arrian described Hyrcania as a country that “lies on the left of the road to Bactria,” with one side of it “bounded by high wooded hills” and its plains extending to the Caspian Sea, which was called the Hyrcanian Sea (Arrian: 3.23, 5.25). As the Macedonian conqueror entered the province, several high-ranking Persian commanders who served in Darius’s army, including Phrataphernes, the satrap of Parthia and Hyrcania, arrived in Alexander’s camp and surrendered (Arrian: 3.23). Alexander continued with his march, seizing the chief Hyrcanian town of Zadracarta, “the site of the royal palace,” that has been identified by some scholars as modern-day Gorgan, formerly known as Astarabad, and using Parthia as a land bridge to invade Aria in present-day northwestern Afghanistan (Arrian: 3.23–3.26). During the short reign of Alexander, “Parthia was reunited with Hyrcania” (Debevoise: 7).

  After the death of Alexander and the partition of his short-lived empire among his generals, Parthia changed hands several times before it became a province of the newly established Seleucid Empire, which was founded by Seleucus, one of Alexander’s generals, after 305 BCE. Seleucids began to lose their control over the eastern provinces of their empire, however, after a mere half century (Strabo: 11.7.2–3). The incessant military campaigns against the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt exhausted the Seleucid treasury and diverted the attention of its rulers from the eastern provinces of their empire. The city of Antioch, which served as the capital of the Seleucid kings, was situated on the western borders of the empire and a long way away from Iran and Central Asia. Sometime between 250 and 239 BCE, two important rebellions erupted against the Seleucids. Diodotus, the satrap of Bactria, and Andragoras, the governor of Parthia, revolted and proclaimed their independence. As the Seleucid Empire in the east began to disintegrate, Scythian groups from Central Asia pushed south. By 250 BCE one of these, the Parni o
r Aparni, had established themselves on the shores of the Atrek River. A short time later in 247 BCE, the leader of the Parni, Arsaces, was crowned as king in Asaac (Asaak). The exact location of Asaac is unknown, but some scholars have suggested that it was located near the present-day town of Quchan in the upper Atrek River Valley in northeastern Iran (Debevoise: 10–11). The Greek geographer and historian Strabo stated that Arsaces, the founder of the Arsacid dynasty, was “a Scythian” who “with some of the Däae (I mean the Aparnians, as they were called, nomads who lived along the Ochus), invaded Parthia and conquered it” (Strabo: 11.9.2–3). In 238 BCE, Arsaces took advantage of the chaos in the eastern provinces of the Seleucid state and invaded and conquered Parthia. Andragoras, the ruler of Parthia, was killed, and his kingdom emerged as the new operational base for Arsaces I. With the conquest of Parthia, the Arsacids came to be known as Parthians, or those who hail from Parthia, a name the Greek and Roman authors used when referring to them and their empire. Sometime after his conquest of Parthia, Arsaces also seized Hyrcania on the southeastern shores of the Caspian Sea (Justin: XLI.4.8–9).