Iran Jasmin cultural tour and Travel Agencey

Iran cultural tour

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Per·sia (pûr'zhə, -shə) pronunciation
also Persian Empire A vast empire of southwest Asia founded by Cyrus II after 546 B.C. and brought to the height of its power and glory by Darius I and his son Xerxes. Eventually the empire extended from the Indus River valley in present-day Pakistan to the Mediterranean Sea before Alexander the Great conquered it between 333 and 331 B.C.
Persia (pûr'zhə, –shə) , old alternate name for the Asian country Iran. The article Iran contains a description of the geography and economy of the modern country and a short account of its history since the Arab invasion of the 7th cent. This article is concerned with the history of the ancient Persian Empire, in which present-day Iran has its roots.

Origins of the Persian Empire

The speakers of Iranian languages may have migrated into that part of Asia as early as 1500 B.C. Presumably they were originally a nomadic tribe who filtered down through the Caucasus to the Iranian plateau. They apparently subjugated peoples already there and mingled with them, but their dominance of particular areas is recorded in the place names Parsua and Parsumash. The Assyrian rulers were by the 9th cent. B.C. sending expeditions against them, and the recurrence of those campaigns is evidence of the strength of the early Persians.

The Achaemenids

By the 6th cent. B.C. the early Persians were established in the present-day region of Fars and were benefiting from the decline of Elam. Fars (or Persis to the Greeks) was a recognizable district of the Assyrian Empire (see Assyria) like the neighboring but greater Media. The Persian rulers, claiming descent from one Achaemenes, or Hakhamanesh (see Achaemenids, were associated with the Medes, who created a strong state in the 7th cent. Cyaxares, son of Phraortes, founder of Median power, was one of the kings who brought about the fall of Nineveh (612 B.C.) and broke the hegemony of the Assyrians. The Persian ruler of about the same time, Cambyses I, was vassal to Cyaxares. According to Herodotus he married the daughter of the Median ruler Astyages (Cyaxares' son), and his son Cyrus was thus also grandson of Cyaxares; this account has been branded by some scholars as a pious attempt to falsify genealogy.