Persian History: every great king, poet and turning point, from Elam to today

Proto-Elamite writing at Susa (c. 3100 to 2900 BC)

Proto-Elamite is the oldest writing known from Iran, used for a short time in the Early Bronze Age, roughly 3100 to 2900 BC (the Encyclopaedia Iranica gives about 3050 to 2900). About 1,600 tablets and fragments are known, and most come from Susa, where the French excavator Jacques de Morgan found the first two in the late 1800s. The tablets are bookkeeping: they count goods such as goats, sheep, kids and lambs for a centrally run society. The language behind the signs is unknown. The script is largely undeciphered, although its number system is partly understood.

• More than half of the thousands of sign occurrences on the tablets are numerals, so the script is mostly accounting and only partly a way of writing words.
• The name 'Proto-Elamite' is a label based on where the tablets were found. The language behind the script is unknown, and a link to the later Linear Elamite script is uncertain.
• In 2012 the Oxford scholar Jacob Dahl began a project to publish high-quality images of the tablets online, and the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative now offers images and transliterations for most of them. Proposed decipherments, including one announced by François Desset in 2020, have not won general agreement.

Sources: Proto-Elamite administrative tablet MDP 06, 243 (P008040), Louvre Sb 15096, from Susa (Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative); Proto-Elamite tablet found at Susa by Jacques de Morgan, now in the Louvre (French Ministry of Culture); ELAM iii. Proto-Elamite (Encyclopaedia Iranica); Elam: The Ancient High Country (World History Encyclopedia); Wikipedia: Proto-Elamite script

Untash-Napirisha and the ziggurat at Chogha Zanbil (c. 1275 to 1240 BC (conventional dates))

Around 1250 BC King Untash-Napirisha of Elam founded a religious city, Dur-Untash. At its centre he raised a ziggurat of five levels, about 105 m on each side and about 53 m tall when new. It honoured Inshushinak, the patron god of Susa, and the site held shrines for many other Elamite gods. Today the ziggurat stands about 25 m high. The dates of his reign are conventional: some chronologies place him about half a century earlier.

• The ziggurat has an inner core of sun-dried mud brick, wrapped in a shell of baked brick about 2 m thick. Untash-Napirisha's brick inscriptions record that he 'rebuilt the temple of Kiriša, lady of Lyan, my goddess'.
• The city was never finished. The World History Encyclopedia says building was still under way when Untash-Napirisha died, and the Encyclopaedia Iranica calls the planned dynastic centre unfinished.
• Chogha Zanbil was the first site in Iran added to UNESCO's World Heritage List, in 1979. It came to light in 1935, when a geologist surveying for oil found an inscribed brick.

Sources: Untash-Napirisha's brick inscriptions, quoted in 'Choga Zanbil - Ziggurat' (Livius.org); ČOḠĀ ZANBĪL (Encyclopaedia Iranica); Chogha Zanbil: The 'Basket Mound' of the Gods (World History Encyclopedia); Wikipedia: Chogha Zanbil

Deioces (traditionally c. 727 to 674 BC)

Deioces, first king of the Medes (as Herodotus tells it), Medes · tradition recorded by Herodotus

Deioces is known almost only from Herodotus, who wrote more than two centuries later, and the Medes left no records of their own. In his account Deioces was a respected man of one Median town who judged disputes fairly. Herodotus gives him a reign of 53 years. Modern historians treat the story as a blend of Greek and Eastern legend. The dates here come from counting back from the rise of Cyrus and are traditional, not firm history.

How they came to power: Herodotus says Deioces gained a name for honest judging, then withdrew from the work. Lawlessness spread and the Medes asked him to be king. He asked for a palace and a bodyguard and had the fortress of Ecbatana built.

How it ended: Herodotus gives no death story. He says only that Deioces reigned 53 years and was followed by his son Phraortes.

• Herodotus describes Ecbatana as a fortress in circles: the battlements of the first ring were white, then black, purple, blue and orange, and the last two were coated with silver and gold. The palace stood in the innermost ring.
• Herodotus says Deioces made it a rule that nobody could come into his presence, that business went through messengers, and that laughing or spitting in front of the king was a disgrace. His reason, according to Herodotus, was that men of his own age and birth, who never saw him, would not be angered into plotting against him and might think him a different kind of man.
• Many scholars doubt that Deioces ruled a large state at all. Igor Diakonoff thought he was probably one of many Median lords. Whether he can be identified with Daiukku, a chief near Lake Urmia named in Assyrian records, is disputed, and the Encyclopaedia Iranica's Cyaxares entry rejects the link.

Sources: Herodotus, Histories 1.98, walls of Ecbatana (Perseus, Godley translation); Herodotus, Histories 1.99, Deioces' rules of access (Perseus); DEIOCES (Encyclopaedia Iranica); Wikipedia: Deioces

Ashurbanipal's sack of Susa (c. 647 to 646 BC)

Ashurbanipal of Assyria fought Elam several times, including the campaign against King Teumman in 653 BC and the final war of about 647 to 646 BC. After the last campaign his army sacked Susa, the Elamite capital. His own inscription says he captured the city, destroyed its ziggurat, devastated the tombs of Elam's earlier and later kings and carried their bones to Assyria. Sources date the sack to about 647 or 646 BC, and Livius puts the destruction between 645 and 640. Many historians see it as the end of Elam as an independent power, though some think the destruction was less complete than he claimed.

• In Luckenbill's translation the king says of the Elamite provinces: 'Salt and sihlu (some prickly plant) I scattered over them.' Archaeology shows Elamite cities and culture continued afterwards, so the claim of total destruction was boasting.
• The same text says the ziggurat of Susa, 'built of enameled bricks', was destroyed, and that the tombs of Elam's earlier and later kings were destroyed and 'exposed to the sun'.
• Susa came back. Darius I later built a palace there and made it one of his capitals, and Livius calls it clearly his favourite.

Sources: D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, vol. 2 (1927), sections 809 to 811: Ashurbanipal on the capture of Susa (Internet Archive); Elam: The Ancient High Country (World History Encyclopedia); Susa (Livius.org); Wikipedia: Battle of Susa

Cyaxares (c. 625 to 585 BC)

Cyaxares (Uvakhshtra), king of the Medes, Median kingdom

Cyaxares is the best attested Median king, though Herodotus is the main literary source and a Babylonian chronicle names him at Nineveh. Livius counts back from the fall of Astyages to a reign of about 625 to 585 BC. Herodotus credits him with first organising an Asian army into spearmen, archers and cavalry. He took part in the capture of Nineveh in 612 BC and then fought Lydia, in a war that ended after an eclipse.

How they came to power: Herodotus says he succeeded his father Phraortes. Livius dates the start of his reign to about 625 BC, with the caution that it 'may have' begun then.

How it ended: The date of his death is not recorded. Livius gives the end of his reign as about 585 BC, and his son Astyages followed him.

• Herodotus says the Medes lost power to Scythian invaders for 28 years, and that Cyaxares ended it by inviting the Scythians to a feast and getting them drunk before killing most of them. Livius thinks a 28-year occupation is unlikely.
• The war with Lydia ended after a solar eclipse that Herodotus says Thales of Miletus predicted. Livius dates it to 28 May 585 BC, and the peace was sealed by a marriage between Alyattes' daughter Aryenis and Astyages.
• Livius notes that decades later, in 522 BC, rebels were still claiming descent from Cyaxares.

Sources: Herodotus, Histories 1.103, Cyaxares' army reform (Perseus); Herodotus, Histories 1.106, Scythians and Nineveh (Perseus); Cyaxares (Livius.org); CYAXARES (Encyclopaedia Iranica); Wikipedia: Medes

The Medes and the fall of Nineveh (summer 612 BC)

In 612 BC an alliance of Medes and Babylonians besieged Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire. The Babylonian Fall of Nineveh Chronicle says the siege ran from the month Simanu (about May) until Abu (about August), three months, and ended with a great defeat of the defenders. The invaders carried off the booty and, in the chronicle's words, turned the city into a ruin heap. The Assyrian king Sin-shar-ishkun died at that time, and Ashur-uballit II took the throne at Harran. Within a few years the Assyrian state was gone.

• The chronicle's account of the end is short: 'They carried off the vast booty of the city and the temple and turned the city into a ruin heap.'
• Herodotus says the Medes captured Nineveh and brought Assyria under their rule except the province of Babylon. The Babylonian chronicle gives Nabopolassar's Babylonians a full part in the siege.
• Wikipedia notes that a garbled memory of the fall later fed the Greek legend of a decadent last Assyrian king, Sardanapalus.

Sources: ABC 3, Fall of Nineveh Chronicle (Livius.org); Herodotus, Histories 1.106 (Perseus); Cyaxares (Livius.org); Wikipedia: Fall of Nineveh

Astyages (c. 585 to 550 BC)

Astyages, last king of the Medes, Median kingdom

Astyages was the son of Cyaxares and the last king of Media. Herodotus gives him a 35-year reign. Livius finds nothing to contradict that, though he notes the tidy total of 150 years for the four Median kings. The Median state he ruled stretched across the Iranian plateau and into Anatolia. He was dethroned in 550 BC (554 to 553 in another chronology) by Cyrus, the king of Anshan, who then took over the Median realm.

How they came to power: He inherited the throne from his father Cyaxares, according to Herodotus. Livius places his accession around 585 or 584 BC.

How it ended: The Nabonidus Chronicle says his army revolted and delivered him to Cyrus in fetters. Herodotus says Cyrus did him no further harm and kept him in his own house until he died.

• Herodotus says Astyages dreamed that his daughter Mandane flooded his city and much of Asia. He married her to the Persian Cambyses, and their son was Cyrus.
• Livius calls the first part of Herodotus' story of Cyrus' birth (the dream, the exposed baby) 'an oriental fairy tale', but the Nabonidus Chronicle confirms how the Median reign ended.
• After Cyrus took Ecbatana, the Chronicle says he carried its silver, gold and other property back to Anshan.

Sources: Herodotus, Histories 1.107, Astyages' dream (Perseus); Herodotus, Histories 1.130, end of the Median rule (Perseus); ABC 7, Nabonidus Chronicle (Livius.org); Astyages (Livius.org); Wikipedia: Medes

Cyrus the Great (559 to 530 BC)

Cyrus II, called the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Empire, Achaemenid dynasty

Cyrus became king of Anshan in 559 BC. Around 550 BC he overthrew the Median king Astyages. About 547 BC he defeated the Lydians at Sardis, and in October 539 BC he took Babylon. Greek writers credit him with campaigns in the east, and Livius thinks the conquest of Bactria plausible. The result was the Achaemenid Empire, which ran from the Aegean to Central Asia.

How they came to power: He was the son of Cambyses I, king of Anshan, and led a revolt against the Medes. The Median king Astyages was captured after his army turned on him, and Cyrus took over the Median realm.

How it ended: He died in late 530 BC, since news of his death reached Babylon in December, and sources disagree about how. Herodotus says he died fighting the Massagetae and calls his account the most credible of many. Xenophon has him die peacefully in his palace. Cyrus was buried at Pasargadae and his son Cambyses succeeded him.

• In Herodotus' account of Cyrus' death, the Massagetae queen Tomyris found his body, pushed his head into a skin filled with blood and told him she gave him his fill of blood. Herodotus himself says there were many stories and this was the most credible.
• Accounts of what became of the Lydian king Croesus differ. Herodotus, Ctesias and Xenophon say Cyrus spared him, but the World History Encyclopedia notes that some scholars think Cyrus had him executed.
• He was buried at Pasargadae with his cloak, weapons and jewels, according to the World History Encyclopedia.

Sources: The Cyrus Cylinder, translation (Livius.org); Herodotus, Histories 1.214, death of Cyrus (Perseus); Cyrus the Great (Livius.org); Cyrus the Great (World History Encyclopedia)

The fall of Babylon and the Cyrus Cylinder (October 539 BC)

In 539 BC Cyrus defeated the Babylonian army at Opis on the Tigris, took Sippar without battle, and entered Babylon. The Nabonidus Chronicle says his general Ugbaru entered the city first, without a fight, and that Cyrus arrived on the 3rd of Arahsamna. The Cyrus Cylinder is a baked-clay barrel with an Akkadian inscription that blames the last Babylonian king Nabonidus and presents Cyrus as chosen by the god Marduk. It describes a peaceful entry and the return of gods and people to their home cities.

• Hormuzd Rassam found the cylinder in 1879 in the foundations of the Esagila temple in Babylon, though he gave conflicting accounts of the exact spot. It is about 22 cm long, and its two main fragments were reunited in 1972.
• The Pahlavi government promoted it from the late 1960s as the first charter of human rights, and a replica given to the UN in October 1971 is kept in New York. Most historians call that label anachronistic: it is a conventional Mesopotamian foundation text, and the British Museum acknowledges it does not explicitly proclaim human rights, though it calls the return of deported peoples a significant reversal of earlier Assyrian and Babylonian policy.
• Scholars have often linked the passage on returning gods to the Bible's account of Jewish return, but others dispute it because the text never mentions Jews, Jerusalem or Judea.

Sources: The Cyrus Cylinder, translation (Livius.org); ABC 7, Nabonidus Chronicle (Livius.org); Cyrus the Great (World History Encyclopedia); Wikipedia: Cyrus Cylinder

Cambyses II (530 to 522 BC)

Cambyses II, second Achaemenid king, Achaemenid dynasty

Cambyses was the son of Cyrus the Great. He added Egypt to the empire in 525 BC and was recognised there as pharaoh. Herodotus portrays him as cruel and insolent, but historians such as Briant doubt much of this, noting that many accusations trace back to hostile Egyptian sources. He left Egypt in 522 BC to deal with a revolt in Persia and did not return.

How they came to power: Cyrus died in late 530 BC. He had already named Cambyses king of Babylon and co-ruler, and the first document dated to Cambyses' reign is from 31 August 530 BC.

How it ended: He died on the way home in 522 BC, childless, reportedly from a thigh wound that went gangrenous in Syria. Herodotus says he stabbed himself by accident with his own sword, in the place where he had wounded the Apis calf, and took it as the fulfilment of an oracle. Some modern historians suspect suicide or assassination, and Darius' Behistun inscription says only that he died of natural causes (literally, his own death).

• Herodotus says Cambyses stabbed a newborn Apis calf in Memphis. But an Apis bull that died in 524 BC was about 20 years old, and Briant argues that Cambyses took part in its burial ceremony, so the story looks like hostile propaganda.
• The Egyptian official Wedjahor-Resne was ordered to compose the throne name Mesuti-Ra ('born of Ra') for the Persian king.
• Herodotus says an oracle at Buto told Cambyses he would die at Ecbatana. He took this to mean Ecbatana in Media, where he would die old, and understood only when, wounded, he asked the name of the town where he lay and heard it was another Ecbatana, in Syria.

Sources: Herodotus, Histories 3.29, Cambyses and the Apis calf (Perseus); Herodotus, Histories 3.64, Cambyses' death (Perseus); Cambyses II (Livius.org); Cambyses II (World History Encyclopedia); Wikipedia: Cambyses II

The Persian conquest of Egypt (525 BC)

In 525 BC Cambyses invaded Egypt. The Persians defeated the army of Pharaoh Psamtik III at Pelusium, in May according to the World History Encyclopedia, and went on to take Memphis. Cambyses went to Sais, where he took the titles of a pharaoh. Egypt became a Persian province, and from then on the Persian kings were counted as the 27th Dynasty. Wedjahor-Resne, an admiral of the Egyptian fleet, probably changed sides and was kept in Persian service.

• Herodotus says he saw the old battlefield, where the bones of the two armies still lay apart. Persian skulls were so thin that a pebble could pierce them, and Egyptian skulls so hard that a stone barely cracked them. He accepted the local explanation that Egyptians shave their heads from childhood and Persians wear felt hats.
• Wedjahor-Resne's statue inscription says that Cambyses came to Sais and ordered the temple of Neith purified, with the foreigners living on its grounds driven out. The king then made offerings to the goddess.
• Polyaenus, writing in the second century AD, claims Cambyses put cats and other sacred animals in his front line so the Egyptians would hold their fire. The story is not found in the earliest sources and modern historians doubt it.

Sources: Herodotus, Histories 3.12, the skulls at the battlefield (Perseus); Wedjahor-Resne, statue inscription (Livius.org); Cambyses II (World History Encyclopedia); Cambyses II (Livius.org); Wikipedia: Cambyses II

Bardiya (Gaumata) (March to September 522 BC)

Bardiya, called Smerdis by the Greeks, or the usurper Gaumata, Achaemenid dynasty · disputed

Bardiya was a son of Cyrus the Great and the younger brother of Cambyses. A man ruled the empire for a few months in 522 BC while Cambyses was in Egypt. Darius I says in the Behistun inscription that the real Bardiya had been killed in secret years before, and that this ruler was a Magian named Gaumata who falsely claimed to be Bardiya. Most modern historians doubt that account and think the man was the real Bardiya.

How they came to power: Darius says Gaumata began his revolt at Paishiyauvada on the 14th day of Viyakhna (11 March 522 BC), claiming to be Bardiya, son of Cyrus. Many provinces went over to him, and Darius says he seized the kingdom on the 9th of Garmapada (early July).

How it ended: In the traditional account a group of seven nobles led by Darius killed him in September 522 BC, at a stronghold in Media. The modern view is that Darius invented the impersonation story to justify taking the throne.

• Herodotus says the ruler sent word to every nation he ruled that it was exempt from military service and tribute for three years, which won him support outside Persia.
• In Herodotus' version, Otanes' daughter Phaidyme, a royal wife, feels in the night for the king's ears, which would expose him as the Magian impostor, and finds he has none.
• A later claimant named Vahyazdata also said he was Bardiya and rose against Darius. He was executed.

Sources: Behistun inscription, Old Persian text, column 1, lines 36 to 43 (Livius.org); Herodotus, Histories 3.67, the three-year exemption (Perseus); Herodotus, Histories 3.69, the ears of the false Smerdis (Perseus); Behistun Inscription (World History Encyclopedia); Cambyses II (Livius.org); Wikipedia: Bardiya

Darius I the Great (522 to 486 BC)

Darius I, King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, Achaemenid dynasty

Darius I took the throne in 522 BC and held it for 36 years. He put down revolts across the empire, which he recorded at Behistun, and extended Persian rule to the Indus Valley. He divided the empire into satrapies with fixed tribute, introduced the daric coin and kept Aramaic as a common administrative language. He began Persepolis and built a palace at Susa. In Greece he is remembered as the king whose army lost at Marathon.

How they came to power: Darius says he killed the usurper Gaumata and then won back an empire in revolt. Herodotus tells a different story, in which Darius' horse neighed first at sunrise among rival claimants. Historians treat that tale as dubious.

How it ended: He died in October 486 BC at about age 64, reportedly after a 30-day illness, while planning a second campaign against Greece and dealing with a revolt in Egypt. He was buried at Naqsh-e Rustam and Xerxes succeeded him.

• Herodotus says that under Cyrus and Cambyses tribute was paid as gifts, and that Darius fixed it, dividing the empire into twenty provinces called satrapies.
• His Susa foundation text says cedar came from Lebanon, gold from Lydia and Bactria, lapis lazuli from Sogdia, silver and ebony from Egypt, and ivory from Kush, India and Arachosia. Greeks and Lydians cut the stone and Babylonians made the bricks.
• The same text says his builders dug down to bedrock and packed rubble into the pit to carry the palace, 40 cubits deep in one place and 20 in another.

Sources: Herodotus, Histories 3.89, the twenty satrapies (Perseus); DSf, Darius' Susa foundation inscription (Livius.org); Darius I (World History Encyclopedia); Wikipedia: Darius the Great

The Behistun Inscription (c. 520 to 519 BC)

On a limestone cliff at Mount Behistun in Kermanshah Province, Darius I had a relief and long inscription carved after his first years as king. The relief shows him facing nine captives with their hands tied, and a tenth figure added later. The text is in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. It tells how he overcame Gaumata and a series of rebels. It is the main source for the start of his reign, written by the winner.

• The relief is about 15 m high and 25 m wide, and sits roughly 100 m above the road. The Old Persian text runs to 414 lines in five columns.
• The captions repeatedly say the rebel figures 'lied' when they claimed the kingship. Some modern scholars suspect that Darius himself was the usurper and that the story of Gaumata was his cover.
• Henry Rawlinson began copying the Old Persian text in 1835, climbing the cliff with planks and help from a local youth. His copies helped scholars decipher cuneiform. During the Second World War, Allied soldiers reportedly used the monument for target practice.

Sources: Behistun inscription, Old Persian text, column 1, lines 36 to 43 (Livius.org); Behistun Inscription (World History Encyclopedia); BISOTUN iii. Darius's Inscriptions (Encyclopaedia Iranica); Wikipedia: Behistun Inscription

The Royal Road and the satrapies (c. 520 BC onwards, under Darius I)

Darius I organised the empire into satrapies, governed by appointed satraps with fixed tribute. Joining them was the Royal Road from Sardis in the west to Susa, which Wikipedia puts at about 2,700 km and the Encyclopaedia Iranica at nearly 2,400 km. Herodotus lists 111 stages with fresh horses and riders and says the trip took 90 days on foot. Mounted couriers relayed messages along it.

• Herodotus counts 111 stages and 450 parasangs between Sardis and Susa. He gives the distance as 13,500 stades, which at 150 stades a day is 90 days.
• Herodotus says nothing mortal travels faster than these couriers, and that snow, rain, heat and darkness do not stop them. A version of the line is inscribed on New York's James Farley Post Office.
• According to Wikipedia, mounted couriers were meant to cover the route in nine days, and archaeologists believe the westernmost stretch may have been built earlier by Assyrian kings.

Sources: Herodotus, Histories 5.52, stages of the Royal Road (Perseus); Herodotus, Histories 5.53, distance in stades (Perseus); Herodotus, Histories 8.98, the royal couriers (Perseus); ACHAEMENID ROYAL COMMUNICATION (Encyclopaedia Iranica); Wikipedia: Royal Road

Persepolis (c. 518 to 330 BC)

Persepolis stands on a terrace of about 125,000 square metres in Fars. Construction began under Darius I between 518 and 515 BC. Xerxes added the Gate of All Nations and much else, and the Throne Hall was begun by Xerxes and finished by Artaxerxes I. The Apadana had 72 columns about 19 m high, and its reliefs show subject peoples bringing gifts.

• The Fortification Archive, found in the northeast of the terrace, holds roughly 30,000 small clay tablets in Elamite, according to the Encyclopaedia Iranica. They record rations for officials, workers and messengers in the reign of Darius, about 509 to 494 BC.
• Gold and silver foundation tablets were found in two boxes under the Apadana, with a coin hoard beneath them.
• Archaeologists long believed the site was used mainly to celebrate Nowruz, the Persian New Year. That view is now being revised.

Sources: XPa, Xerxes' inscription on the Gate of All Nations at Persepolis (Livius.org); Diodorus on the sack of Persepolis (Livius.org); PERSEPOLIS (Encyclopaedia Iranica); Persepolis (World History Encyclopedia); Wikipedia: Persepolis

The Ionian Revolt (499 to 493 BC)

The revolt began after Aristagoras, tyrant of Miletus, and the Persian satrap Artaphernes failed to take Naxos in 499 BC. Facing removal, Aristagoras stirred up Ionia. Athens sent 20 ships and Eretria 5. In 498 BC the rebels burned Sardis, but were then beaten at Ephesus. The Persians crushed the revolt at Lade in 494 BC and razed Miletus. By 493 BC all rebel cities had been reconquered.

• Herodotus says that when Darius heard Athens had helped burn Sardis, he asked who the Athenians were, shot an arrow into the sky praying for vengeance, and ordered a servant to remind him of them at every dinner.
• Herodotus says the Sardis fire began when a soldier set light to one house. Most houses were built of reeds, so it spread. When the Persians and Lydians gathered, the frightened Ionians withdrew to Mount Tmolus and went to their ships at nightfall.
• After the revolt Artaphernes made the cities agree to settle disputes by law, measured their land in parasangs and set tribute in proportion. Herodotus says that assessment stayed fixed down to his own day.

Sources: Herodotus, Histories 5.101, the burning of Sardis (Perseus); Herodotus, Histories 5.105, Darius and the Athenians (Perseus); Herodotus, Histories 6.42, Artaphernes' settlement (Perseus); Archaic Period, Politics: the Ionian Revolt (Foundation of the Hellenic World); Greece i. Greco-Persian Political Relations (Encyclopaedia Iranica); Wikipedia: Ionian Revolt

The Battle of Marathon (September 490 BC)

In 490 BC a Persian force sent by Darius I landed at Marathon, on the coast of Attica, to punish Athens and Eretria for their part in the Ionian Revolt. About 9,000 Athenians and 1,000 Plataeans, by the later ancient figures that modern historians accept as reasonable, met it and won. The conventional date is 12 September (the World History Encyclopedia gives 11 September, and one calendar argument would put it a month earlier). The Persians sailed away, and the next invasion came ten years later.

• Herodotus says about 6,400 foreigners and 192 Athenians died. Modern historians estimate the Persian infantry at roughly 20,000 to 100,000, with a consensus near 25,000, while ancient writers gave 200,000 or more.
• The Spartans arrived the day after the battle. According to Wikipedia they had been held back by the Carneia festival and then covered about 220 km in three days.
• The famous run from Marathon to Athens is not in Herodotus. It first appears in Plutarch, who names the runner as probably Eucles, and Lucian later calls him Philippides. Herodotus instead says that Pheidippides ran from Athens to Sparta, over 225 km, to ask for help before the battle.

Sources: Herodotus, Histories 6.117, casualties at Marathon (Perseus); The Persian Wars (World History Encyclopedia); Wikipedia: Battle of Marathon

Xerxes I (486 to 465 BC)

Xerxes I, King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, Achaemenid dynasty

Xerxes was the son of Darius I and Atossa, a daughter of Cyrus. He put down revolts in Egypt and Babylon early in his reign. In 480 BC he invaded Greece, winning at Thermopylae and Artemisium and burning Athens, before his fleet lost at Salamis. At home he completed the Gate of All Nations and the Apadana at Persepolis and continued the palace at Susa.

How they came to power: Darius chose him as heir over his elder half-brother Artobazanes, and Xerxes succeeded in 486 BC.

How it ended: His minister Artabanus murdered him between 4 and 8 August 465 BC. Another son, Artaxerxes I, then took the throne.

• Herodotus says that when the Hellespont bridge was broken, Xerxes had the strait given 300 lashes, shackles thrown into it and brands applied, and had the men who oversaw the bridge beheaded.
• His 'Daiva inscription' says one of the lands he ruled rebelled, that he destroyed a sanctuary where demons (daiva) had been worshipped, and that he worshipped Ahuramazda there. The text does not name the land, and scholars cannot say whether it was Iran, Egypt or Babylon.
• The World History Encyclopedia says Babylon revolted against him twice and that he melted down the golden statue of Marduk, but accounts of Babylonian temples destroyed are disputed.

Sources: Herodotus, Histories 7.35, Xerxes and the Hellespont (Perseus); XPh, Xerxes' Daiva inscription (Livius.org); Xerxes I (Livius.org); Xerxes I (World History Encyclopedia); Wikipedia: Xerxes I

Xerxes' invasion of Greece (480 to 479 BC)

In 480 BC Xerxes crossed the Hellespont on two pontoon bridges and advanced into Greece. Leonidas held the pass at Thermopylae for three days before the Persians used a mountain path to outflank him. Athens was captured and burned. At Salamis in September, Themistocles lured the Persian fleet into narrow waters and the Greeks sank or captured at least 200 ships. Xerxes withdrew, leaving Mardonius, who was defeated and killed at Plataea in 479 BC.

• Herodotus counts 2,641,610 fighting men and, by doubling that for support troops, a total of 5,283,220. Modern scholars usually put the whole force at about 200,000, with some estimates of 300,000 to 500,000.
• Thermopylae was not held by 300 men alone. Leonidas kept 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, 400 Thebans and perhaps a few hundred others to guard the rear, and Wikipedia says the Theban figure is uncertain.
• A canal was dug across the Mount Athos peninsula, over three years from 483 BC, ahead of the invasion.

Sources: Herodotus, Histories 7.186, total of Xerxes' force (Perseus); Herodotus, Histories 7.35, the Hellespont bridge (Perseus); The Persian Wars (World History Encyclopedia); Wikipedia: Second Persian invasion of Greece

Artaxerxes I (465 to 424 BC)

Artaxerxes I Makrocheir (Longimanus), King of Kings, Achaemenid dynasty

Artaxerxes I was the son of Xerxes and Amestris. He faced an Egyptian revolt led by Inaros and backed by Athens, which the general Megabyzus defeated by 454 BC. A treaty known as the Peace of Callias around 449 BC may have set limits between Persian and Athenian spheres, but even its existence is debated. He also received the exiled Athenian general Themistocles. The Bible presents him as a patron of the Jews.

How they came to power: Xerxes was murdered by Artabanus in August 465 BC. Artaxerxes then took the throne and, according to the World History Encyclopedia, had Artabanus and his sons executed.

How it ended: He died of natural causes between 24 December 424 and 10 January 423 BC. A civil war among his sons followed, and Darius II emerged.

• Thucydides says the exiled Themistocles wrote to the new king that he had harmed the royal house in the war but had also helped Xerxes by his message before Salamis and by the bridges being left unbroken, a claim Thucydides marks as false. He asked for a year to explain his purpose.
• Plutarch says Themistocles killed himself, while Thucydides says he died of illness and notes a rumour of poison.
• The Libyan prince Inaros led the Egyptian revolt of about 460 to 454 BC, and Athens sent help that was defeated along with the rebels.

Sources: Thucydides 1.137, Themistocles' letter to Artaxerxes (Perseus, Crawley translation); Artaxerxes I Makrocheir (Livius.org); Artaxerxes I (World History Encyclopedia)

Darius II (423 to 404 BC)

Darius II Nothus (born Ochus), King of Kings, Achaemenid dynasty

Born Ochus, he is called Nothus ('bastard') by the Greeks because his mother Cosmartidene came from Babylon. His reign saw revolts by satraps, including Pissuthnes and his son Amorges, and the war between Athens and Sparta. After Athens' collapse at Syracuse in 413 BC, he told his satraps to demand overdue tribute and to ally with Sparta. His wife Parysatis had great influence over him.

How they came to power: After Artaxerxes I died, Ochus won a power struggle among the king's sons. His half-brother Sogdianus had Xerxes II killed, and Darius later had Sogdianus executed.

How it ended: He died on 1, 2 or 3 April 404 BC, according to Livius, and his son Artaxerxes II succeeded him.

• In Thucydides' text of the second treaty between Sparta and the king, made in 412 to 411 BC, Sparta and its allies may not attack or collect tribute from lands that belong to Darius or belonged to his father or ancestors.
• Xenophon says that when Darius fell ill he sent for his younger son Cyrus. After Darius died, Tissaphernes falsely told Artaxerxes that Cyrus was plotting against him.
• Parysatis favoured the younger Cyrus over Artaxerxes and interceded when the king wanted to execute Cyrus.

Sources: Thucydides 8.37, treaty of the Spartans with King Darius (Perseus, Crawley translation); Xenophon, Anabasis 1.1.1 to 1.1.11 (Perseus); Darius II Nothus (Livius.org); Wikipedia: Darius II

Artaxerxes II (404 to 358 BC)

Artaxerxes II Mnemon, King of Kings, Achaemenid dynasty

Artaxerxes II was the elder son of Darius II and Parysatis. His brother Cyrus the Younger led a Greek and Persian army against him at Cunaxa in 401 BC. Cyrus was killed there and his revolt collapsed. In 387 or 386 BC he arranged the King's Peace, which put the Greek cities of Asia back under Persia. Egypt had revolted at the start of his reign, and the 373 BC attempt to retake it failed. A revolt of western satraps followed, which Wikipedia dates from 372 BC and Livius from 367.

How they came to power: He took the throne on 3 April 404 BC. According to Wikipedia, Tissaphernes claimed Cyrus planned to kill him at his coronation, but the event's authenticity is uncertain.

How it ended: He died in 358 BC, according to Livius in February or the first half of March. The World History Encyclopedia says he died of natural causes, and Artaxerxes III succeeded him.

• Plutarch preserves two stories about who killed Cyrus. In one the king speared him. In the other a Carian soldier struck the blow and was rewarded with the right to carry a golden cock on his spear at the head of the army.
• He is said to have had more than 115 sons by 350 wives, a figure that rests on later ancient reports.
• He is the first Achaemenid king known to have recognised the goddess Anahita, and he built her temples and set up her statues across the empire.

Sources: Plutarch, Life of Artaxerxes on Cunaxa (Livius.org); Xenophon, Anabasis 1.1.1 to 1.1.11 (Perseus); Artaxerxes II Mnemon (Livius.org); Artaxerxes II (World History Encyclopedia); Wikipedia: Artaxerxes II

The King's Peace (387 or 386 BC)

The King's Peace ended the Corinthian War between Sparta and Athens, each with allies. It is called the Peace of Antalcidas after the Spartan envoy who negotiated it at Susa with the satrap Tiribazus. The terms were read to the Greek envoys as a letter from Artaxerxes II. Persia kept the Greek cities of Asia and Cyprus, and all other Greek cities were to be independent.

• Xenophon preserves the wording of the king's letter. Tiribazus first showed the envoys the king's seal and then read it.
• The exceptions to autonomy were Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros, which stayed with Athens. Anyone who refused the peace would face the king's war by land and sea.
• Sparta became the enforcer of the peace and used the autonomy principle against rivals. Thebes had to disband the Boeotian League, and Sparta seized the Theban Cadmeia in 382 BC (Wikipedia gives 383).

Sources: Xenophon, Hellenica 5.1.30 to 5.1.36, the King's rescript (Perseus); Artaxerxes II (World History Encyclopedia); Wikipedia: Peace of Antalcidas

Artaxerxes III (358 to 338 BC)

Artaxerxes III Ochus, King of Kings, Achaemenid dynasty

Artaxerxes III, born Ochus, was the son of Artaxerxes II. After a revolt by the satrap Artabazus and a failed first Egyptian campaign around 351 BC, he crushed the revolt of Sidon, where the city was burned. He then reconquered Egypt, with the Greek mercenary leader Mentor and the eunuch Bagoas rising to prominence. Livius and the Encyclopaedia Iranica date the Egyptian conquest to 343 BC, while Wikipedia suggests 340 or 339.

How they came to power: He gained the throne in 358 BC (359 to 358 in some counts) after his brothers Darius and Ariaspes were killed or driven to suicide and Arsames was murdered. Wikipedia says he then killed most of the royal family.

How it ended: He died between 26 August and 25 September 338 BC, according to Livius. Diodorus says Bagoas poisoned him, but Livius cites the Babylonian tablet BM 71537 as contradicting that, and Wikipedia says the tablet's phrase is also used for murdered kings.

• Diodorus says the Sidonians burned their own city and that those who died in the fire, domestics included, came to more than 40,000. He reports the number as hearsay ('they say').
• Diodorus says about 10,000 Greek troops joined his army: 1,000 from Thebes, 3,000 from Argos and 6,000 from the Greeks of Asia.
• Diodorus says the Egyptian king Nectanebo fled to Ethiopia and Ochus plundered the temples, installed Pherendates as satrap and returned to Babylon.

Sources: Diodorus Siculus 16.40 to 51, Ochus in Phoenicia and Egypt (LacusCurtius); Artaxerxes III Ochus (Livius.org); ARTAXERXES III (Encyclopaedia Iranica); Wikipedia: Artaxerxes III

Darius III (336 to 330 BC)

Darius III Codomannus, last Achaemenid King of Kings, Achaemenid dynasty

Darius III was a distant member of the royal house, born around 380 BC. He had been satrap of Armenia and probably held a senior post over the royal postal service. Alexander the Great defeated his forces at the Granicus in 334 BC, which Darius did not attend. He lost at Issus in 333 BC, where his family was captured, and at Gaugamela in 331 BC, where he fled. His own courtiers killed him in 330 BC.

How they came to power: The eunuch Bagoas had murdered Artaxerxes III and then Artaxerxes IV Arses, and placed Darius on the throne in 336 BC. Darius reportedly forced Bagoas to drink his own poison after discovering a plot.

How it ended: In July 330 BC Bessus and other courtiers arrested him, and Arrian says Nabarzanes and Barsaentes struck him down when Macedonian horsemen appeared. He died before Alexander reached him, in the desert east of Rhagae (near modern Tehran). Alexander sent the body to Persepolis for burial with earlier kings.

• After Issus, Darius offered Alexander half his empire, according to the World History Encyclopedia, and Alexander refused.
• In Arrian's version of Alexander's reply, Alexander calls himself 'lord of all Asia' and tells Darius to address him as king of Asia and not as an equal. Livius notes the wording is probably not authentic.
• Bessus took the royal name Artaxerxes V. Alexander later treated himself as the avenger of Darius against Bessus, a move Wikipedia says was probably political.

Sources: Arrian, Anabasis 3.21.6 to 3.22.2, the death of Darius III (Livius.org); Arrian, Anabasis 2.14, Alexander's letter to Darius III (Livius.org); Darius III Codomannus (Livius.org); Wikipedia: Darius III

Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire (334 to 330 BC)

Alexander landed in Asia in spring 334 BC and beat the Persian forces at the Granicus in early June. At Issus in November 333 BC he fought Darius III directly. The decisive battle was at Gaugamela on 1 October 331 BC, after which Babylon, Susa and Persepolis opened to him. Darius fled and was killed by his own men in 330 BC. The Achaemenid Empire ended there, and Bessus briefly claimed the title Artaxerxes V.

• Estimates of Darius' army at Gaugamela range from 50,000 to almost a million. He had 200 scythed chariots and 15 elephants, and the elephants were never used. Alexander's army is estimated at about 40,000.
• According to the World History Encyclopedia, quoting Plutarch, Darius gladly gave up his chariot and arms in the flight and escaped on a mare that had a foal.
• The only contemporary account, a Babylonian Astronomical Diary tablet in the British Museum, dates the battle to 1 October 331 BC and says the king's troops deserted him. Greek writers instead have Darius himself turn and run.

Sources: Arrian, Anabasis 2.14, Alexander's letter to Darius III (Livius.org); A contemporary account of the Battle of Gaugamela, Babylonian Astronomical Diary (Livius.org); Arrian, Anabasis 3.21.6 to 3.22.2, the death of Darius III (Livius.org); Battle of Gaugamela (World History Encyclopedia); Gaugamela (331 BCE) (Livius.org); Wikipedia: Darius III

The burning of Persepolis (330 BC)

Alexander's army reached Persepolis in January 330 BC. Alexander seized the treasury and gave the rest of the city to his soldiers to plunder, sparing the royal palace at first. About three months later, before he left, the palaces were destroyed by fire. Diodorus, Curtius and Plutarch tell of a drunken feast at which the courtesan Thais urged the burning. Arrian says Alexander burned it on purpose, as revenge for Xerxes' burning of Athens, against the advice of Parmenion.

• In Diodorus, Alexander led a torch procession in honour of Dionysus, and Thais, an Athenian courtesan, was the first after the king to throw her torch into the palace. He says the stated motive was revenge for Xerxes' burning of the Athenian Acropolis.
• Diodorus says Alexander sent for pack mules and 3,000 dromedaries from Babylon, Mesopotamia and Susa to carry off the treasure, which Livius' translation reckons at 2,500 tons counting gold as silver.
• Modern historians suggest both accounts may hold partial truth, and that the fire may also have aimed to remove a symbol of Persian monarchy.

Sources: Diodorus on the sack of Persepolis (Livius.org); Persepolis (World History Encyclopedia); Wikipedia: Persepolis

Seleucus I Nicator (c. 312/311 to 281 BC)

Seleucus I Nicator, founder of the Seleucid Empire, Seleucid dynasty

Seleucus served under Alexander the Great and, after Alexander's death in 323 BC, became satrap of Babylonia. He lost the province to Antigonus in 316 or 315 BC, regained it, and went on to take Media and much of Alexander's eastern lands. He founded Seleucia on the Tigris and many other cities, and the Seleucid Era, a calendar that Livius counts from 312/311 BC, dates from his return to Babylonia. He is the first of the Greek-speaking kings who ruled large parts of Iran after the Achaemenids.

How they came to power: After Alexander's death in 323 BC Seleucus received the satrapy of Babylonia. Antigonus drove him out in 316 or 315 BC. In 311 BC (Iranica says 312) he returned with soldiers lent by Ptolemy, which Appian gives as 11,000 infantry and 300 cavalry, and the inhabitants of Babylon received him enthusiastically. From there he took Media and expanded east.

How it ended: In 281 BC, after defeating Lysimachus at Corupedium and crossing into Europe, he was murdered by Ptolemy Keraunos, a man he had welcomed and taken everywhere with him. Livius dates this to September 281. Appian says Seleucus was 73 and had been king for 42 years; Livius's birth year of about 358 BC would make him about 77.

• In 324 BC, at the mass wedding at Susa, he married Apama, daughter of the Bactrian leader Spitamenes (Iranica, citing Arrian). Their son, Antiochus I, was therefore half Iranian, and Seleucus made him vice-king in 292/1 BC with charge of Babylonia and the Iranian lands.
• Appian lists the cities Seleucus named: sixteen Antioch after his father, five Laodicea after his mother, nine Seleucia after himself, and four after his wives (three Apamea and one Stratonicea). Appian's translator notes, and Iranica agrees, that some of these were really founded by his descendants or by Alexander.
• Around 305 BC Seleucus crossed the Indus to fight the Mauryan empire. After an agreement with Chandragupta he gave up lands south and east of the Hindu Kush and received 500 war elephants. Iranica calls the round number somewhat suspect, but notes that Diodorus has Seleucus commanding 480 elephants at Ipsus in 301 BC.

Sources: Appian on the career of Seleucus, Syrian Wars 52-63 (Livius, Austin translation); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Seleucus; Livius: Seleucus I Nicator

The Seleucid Empire in Iran (311 to 141 BC)

After Alexander, Seleucus and his successors held Babylonia and, for a time, the Iranian plateau and Bactria. Encyclopaedia Iranica notes that Seleucid satrapies roughly matched the Achaemenid ones, and that on the plateau the kings dealt with local aristocracies rather than with cities. In Babylon they presented themselves as traditional kings and looked after the temples. Their dating system, the Seleucid Era, was still in use in the sixth century AD, says Livius. Control of the east slipped away from the mid-3rd century BC, and the Parthian king Mithridates I took Media in 148 BC and Babylonia in 141 BC.

• Babylonian records from the period survive. The Diadochi Chronicle, a fragmentary clay tablet, covers the war between Seleucus and Antigonus, and Livius estimates that probably two thirds to three fourths of the tablet is lost.
• Livius quotes the Chronicle on the start of the Seleucid Era: Seleucus told the Babylonians to count 'Year 7 of Antigonus the general as year 6 of Alexander, son of Alexander, and Seleucus the general you will count'.
• Encyclopaedia Iranica says the Seleucids lost large parts of their Iranian possessions in roughly fifteen years, from 250 to 235 BC. Later reconquest attempts by Demetrius II (140/39 BC) and Antiochus VII (130 BC) failed, and Iranica calls the loss of Iran and Mesopotamia fatal to the empire.

Sources: BCHP 3, the Diadochi Chronicle (Livius); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Seleucid Empire; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Arsacids ii (The Arsacid dynasty); Livius: Seleucid Era

Arsaces I (c. 247 to c. 211 BC)

Arsaces I, founder of the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia, Arsacid (Parthian) dynasty

Arsaces led the Parni, a nomadic people that Strabo links with the Dahae living along the Ochus river, into the province of Parthia while Seleucid power in the east was weakening. Livius dates his reign to 247 to 211 BC, and Iranica says he was probably proclaimed king about 247 BC, the widely assumed start of the Arsacid era, but ancient and modern writers disagree about the chronology. Justin says the Parthians afterwards called all their kings Arsaces. He is the founder of the dynasty that ruled Iran for almost 470 years.

How they came to power: Ancient writers gave conflicting accounts of who he was. Justin calls him a man of uncertain origin who raided Parthia and killed the Seleucid governor Andragoras. Strabo says he was either a Scythian who came with the Aparni, a branch of the Dahae, or a Bactrian who fled the growing power of Diodotus.

How it ended: Justin says he died at a mature old age after founding the city of Dara on Mount Zapaortenon. The year is not secure: Iranica has his son Arsaces II on the throne from about 217 BC, and notes that some historians think Arsaces I was replaced after two or three years by his brother Tiridates.

• Justin says the Parthians reckoned the day Arsaces defeated Seleucus as the start of their liberty.
• Modern scholars treat the story of a bandit leader with caution. Encyclopaedia Iranica says the sources on his ancestry vary irreconcilably, and that tales of humble origin and robbery are also told of Cyrus, Sasan and other founders of dynasties.
• Justin records that after Arsaces every king of Parthia took the name Arsaces, so the Greek and Roman sources often give the same name to different rulers.

Sources: Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, Book 41 (Watson translation, 1886); Strabo, Geography 11.9 (LacusCurtius); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Arsacids i (Origins); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Arsacids ii (The Arsacid dynasty); Livius: Arsaces I

The Parthian rise (c. 247 BC)

Iranica says the Parni under Arsaces entered Astauene around 250 BC and that Arsaces was probably proclaimed king about 247 BC, the event widely taken as the start of the Arsacid era. They invaded the satrapy of Parthia, southeast of the Caspian, around 238 BC, when the Seleucid satrap Andragoras died, and soon occupied Hyrcania. Strabo describes Parthia as small, wooded and poor and says Arsaces was at first weak, fighting the people he had dispossessed. The details come from later and often hostile writers. Iranica places the event within a longer story of the Seleucids losing large parts of Iran in about fifteen years.

• Strabo says Parthia had paid tribute under the Persians and then the Macedonians, and that Arsaces moved in while the Syrian and Median kings were busy elsewhere and Bactria had already revolted.
• Strabo's own sources disagreed about whether Arsaces was a Scythian or a Bactrian, and he notes that even the claim that the Dahae were Scythians was not fully accepted.
• Strabo calls Hecatompylus the royal seat of the Parthians, and Justin names Dara, on Mount Zapaortenon, as a city Arsaces founded.

Sources: Strabo, Geography 11.9 (LacusCurtius); Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, Book 41 (Watson translation, 1886); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Arsacids ii (The Arsacid dynasty); Livius: The Parthian Empire

Mithridates I (c. 171 to 138 BC)

Mithridates I, Arsacid Great King of Parthia, Arsacid (Parthian) dynasty

Mithridates I is credited with completing Parthian control of the Iranian plateau. Justin says his realm reached from the Caucasus to the Euphrates. Iranica says the Parthians conquered Media in the second half of 148 BC, and that by 12 October 141 BC his power was recognised as far as Uruk, shortly after he had himself crowned king in Seleucia. Dates for the early Arsacids vary by a few years from source to source.

How they came to power: Justin says King Phraates passed over his own sons and left the throne to his brother Mithridates, whom Justin calls a man of extraordinary ability.

How it ended: He died about 139 or 138 BC and was succeeded by his son Phraates II, according to Iranica, which says he conquered Elymais shortly before. Justin says he died in an honourable old age.

• Justin notes that Mithridates and the Bactrian king Eucratides came to power at about the same time, and that Parthia rose while Bactria declined.
• The Seleucids did not give up at once. Iranica says Antiochus VII Sidetes reconquered Babylonia and Media in 130 BC, but the people of the Seleucid garrison towns then revolted, joined the Parthians, and Antiochus was killed.
• Justin says Mithridates placed a governor named Bacasis over Media after the Parthians defeated the Medes.

Sources: Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, Book 41 (Watson translation, 1886); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Arsacids ii (The Arsacid dynasty); Livius: The Parthian Empire

Mithridates II (c. 124 to 88 BC)

Mithridates II the Great, Arsacid King of Kings, Arsacid (Parthian) dynasty

Mithridates II ruled for about 36 years and restored Parthian strength after setbacks in the east. Iranica records that he took Dura-Europos in 113 BC and used the old Persian title King of Kings from about 109 or 108 BC. During his reign Parthia made contact with both China and Rome.

How they came to power: He came to the throne around 124 or 123 BC, after the deaths of Phraates II and Artabanus I in struggles with nomads, and while Hyspaosines of Characene held much of Mesopotamia. Iranica says he defeated Hyspaosines about 122/1 BC.

How it ended: He died in 88 or 87 BC. Disorder followed, and the Armenians retook the 'seventy valleys' that Tigranes II had surrendered to him as the price of his release from Parthian custody.

• Iranica reports that around 115 BC an embassy from the Chinese emperor Wu-ti reached him and the two rulers agreed on opening the trade route later called the Silk Road, though Iranica adds that numerous routes carried goods between East and West, not only that one.
• Plutarch says that at the Euphrates the Roman commander Sulla received the Parthian envoy Orobazus and Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia, set three chairs, and sat between them. The king of Parthia afterwards put Orobazus to death for it.
• Iranica now dates that meeting to 96 BC rather than 92 BC, as had long been accepted, and says its exact outcome is unclear.

Sources: Plutarch, Life of Sulla 5 (LacusCurtius); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Arsacids ii (The Arsacid dynasty); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Tigran II

The Silk Road trade (from c. 115 BC)

Encyclopaedia Iranica reports that trade between East and West became significant after a Chinese embassy reached Mithridates II around 115 BC, and gives 114 BC as the first known date a caravan travelled from China to the west. It warns that there was no single road and that numerous routes carried goods. Livius notes that Parthia controlled the Silk Road and that tolls were one source of royal income. A Greek itinerary called the Parthian Stations shows the route across Parthian territory.

• The Parthian Stations of Isidore of Charax begins at Zeugma on the Euphrates and runs to Seleucia on the Tigris, a distance he gives as 171 schoeni.
• Isidore calls Ecbatana the metropolis of Media and the treasury, and his route continues under Parthian rule as far as Alexandropolis in Arachosia.
• A fragment of Isidore's Journey Around Parthia, quoted by Athenaeus and printed in the same volume, describes pearl divers in the Persian Gulf working from reed rafts in water about twenty fathoms deep.

Sources: Isidore of Charax, Parthian Stations (Schoff translation, 1914, parthia.com); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Arsacids ii (The Arsacid dynasty); Livius: The Parthian Empire

Orodes II (c. 57 to 38 BC)

Orodes II, Arsacid Great King of Parthia, Arsacid (Parthian) dynasty

Orodes II ruled at what Iranica calls the zenith of Parthian power, and under him the Parthians defeated Rome at Carrhae in 53 BC. Plutarch spells his name Hyrodes. Iranica dates his reign from about 58 or 57 to 37 BC, while Livius gives 57 to 38.

How they came to power: Iranica says Orodes and his brother Mithradates III murdered their father Phraates III in 58 or 57 BC and then fought each other. Plutarch says Orodes was driven out of Parthia and restored to the throne by Surena, a nobleman whose family held the hereditary right to place the crown on each new Parthian king's head, and who also took Seleucia for him.

How it ended: Plutarch says that Orodes lost his son Pacorus to the Romans, fell ill with dropsy, and was given aconite by his son Phraates, who then strangled him. Iranica notes that Cassius Dio denies this and says Orodes died of grief and old age. Livius gives 38 BC as the end of his reign.

• According to Plutarch, when Crassus's head reached the royal court, Orodes and the Armenian king were watching a performance of Euripides' Bacchae, and the actor Jason of Tralles used the head as a prop in the Agave scene.
• Plutarch says Orodes became jealous of Surena's reputation and put him to death. Livius dates Surena's death to about 52 BC and says he had become too powerful.
• Plutarch says Orodes himself devastated Armenia to punish King Artavasdes while he sent Surena against Crassus, and that Surena's own retinue was no fewer than ten thousand men, including a thousand mail-clad horsemen.

Sources: Plutarch, Life of Crassus 21, 32-33 (LacusCurtius, Loeb); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Orodes II; Livius: Arsaces XIX, Orodes II

Carrhae and the death of Crassus (6 May 53 BC)

In 53 BC Marcus Licinius Crassus invaded Parthian Mesopotamia and met a force led by Surena near Carrhae. Iranica says Surena had about 10,000 horsemen, a thousand of them mailed cataphracts, against some 42,000 Romans and dates the battle to 6 May; Livius argues instead that the Parthians were superior in numbers and quality. Plutarch gives the fullest account. Arrows rained on the Roman infantry, and when Crassus's son Publius led a counter-charge, he was cut off. Livius notes that Crassus's death left Pompey and Caesar as the two remaining great rivals.

• Surena travelled with a baggage train of a thousand camels, and two hundred wagons carried his concubines, according to Plutarch.
• Plutarch says Crassus was killed by a Parthian named Pomaxathres, but admits that others told of someone else cutting off his head and right hand, calling such details matters of conjecture rather than knowledge.
• Plutarch says the Parthians dressed a captive, Caius Paccianus, as Crassus and paraded him in a mock triumph, with trumpeters, lictors and courtesans singing mocking songs about Crassus, before a crowd in Seleucia.

Sources: Plutarch, Life of Crassus 19-33 (LacusCurtius, Loeb); Res Gestae Divi Augusti 29 and 32 (Internet Classics Archive); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Carrhae; Livius: Carrhae (53 BCE)

Phraates IV (c. 38 to c. 2 BC)

Phraates IV, Arsacid Great King of Parthia, Arsacid (Parthian) dynasty

Phraates IV's reign saw Mark Antony's failed invasion and a settlement with Augustus. Iranica says he returned the standards of Crassus, Antony and probably Decidius Saxa, plus some prisoners, mainly because he feared a Roman expedition. It calls the matter marginal for Phraates, but it became a mainstay of Augustus's propaganda. Livius credits him with building projects at Ctesiphon, a new capital on the Tigris. Iranica dates his reign about 37 to 3/2 BC, Livius 38 to 2 BC.

How they came to power: He took the throne about 38 or 37 BC after Orodes II. Iranica reports that, according to Justin and Plutarch, he began his reign by murdering his father, a son and his brothers; Cassius Dio denies that he killed his father.

How it ended: Josephus says Phraates died through the treachery of his son Phraataces, helped by the boy's mother Thermusa, an Italian slave woman sent to him as a gift by the Roman emperor and later made his lawful wife. Iranica says that in all likelihood Phraataces and Musa murdered him in 3 or 2 BC.

• In his Res Gestae, Augustus says Phraates sent him all his sons and grandsons, not because he had been beaten in war but to seek Rome's friendship through the pledges of his children.
• Iranica says Musa was a slave given to Phraates by Augustus. He first treated her as a concubine and made her his lawful wife after she bore a son, Phraataces.
• Josephus says Phraataces, brought up alone as heir, found it tedious to wait for his father to give him the succession and plotted against him with his mother's help.

Sources: Res Gestae Divi Augusti 29 and 32 (Internet Classics Archive); Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.2 (LacusCurtius, Whiston); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Phraates IV; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Phraates V; Livius: Phraates IV

Vologases I (c. 51 to c. 78)

Vologases I, Arsacid Great King of Parthia, Arsacid (Parthian) dynasty

Vologases I's reign is dominated by the long struggle with Rome over who should rule Armenia. Iranica says he crowned his brother Tiridates king of Armenia, formally making him a vassal. His forces trapped Caesennius Paetus's army at Rhandeia in 62, and the settlement that followed left Tiridates on the throne with the emperor reserving the investiture of Armenian kings to Rome. Iranica dates the reign about 51 to 77 or 79, Livius 51 to 78.

How they came to power: He came to the throne around AD 51, when the Parthian king Gotarzes died. Iranica says it is unclear whether his father Vonones ruled briefly first. In AD 52 or 53 he placed his brother Tiridates on the throne of Armenia after its king Mithridates had been murdered.

How it ended: He died in the late 70s. Livius gives 78, noting he and the emperor Vespasian died at about the same time, and Iranica gives 77 to 79.

• Tacitus reports a rumour that the defeated Roman legions were made to pass under the yoke after the surrender at Rhandeia, but he presents it as a rumour rather than a confirmed fact.
• Tacitus says the Roman besieged forces were so well supplied with grain that they burned their granaries. Corbulo's memoirs claimed instead that the Parthians were short of supplies and that Paetus swore an oath not to enter Armenia, a version Tacitus says was doubtless composed to darken the disgrace.
• Iranica says Tiridates travelled to Rome, with 3,000 Parthian horsemen in his escort, and that Nero crowned him; it suggests his kneeling speech may follow the Parthian ritual by which a king of kings invested a vassal. Livius dates the visit to about 66.

Sources: Tacitus, Annals 15.1-17 (LacusCurtius); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Armenia and Iran ii (pre-Islamic period); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Arsacids ii (The Arsacid dynasty); Livius: Vologases I

Artabanus IV (c. 213 to 224)

Artabanus IV, last Arsacid Great King of Parthia, Arsacid (Parthian) dynasty

Artabanus IV, whom some books number V, was a son of Vologases V who fought his brother Vologases VI for control of the empire from about 213. Iranica says Caracalla's war on Parthia in 216 led to a three-day battle at Nisibis in 217 that it calls clearly a Roman defeat. Civil strife and Roman wars nonetheless left the dynasty weak. Livius and Iranica both treat him as the last Arsacid Great King.

How they came to power: Iranica says he fought for the throne against his brother Vologases VI from about 213 and eventually held most of the empire.

How it ended: Ardashir, a vassal ruler in Persis, defeated and killed him. Iranica dates the decisive battle to 28 April 224, probably near modern Golpayegan; its entry on Ardashir places it on the plain of Hormozgan in Media.

• Cassius Dio, who calls the Persian leader Artaxerxes, says he defeated the Parthians in three battles and killed Artabanus.
• Iranica says that after the Nisibis battle in 217 the Romans paid Artabanus IV and the Parthian nobles 50 million denarii in cash and gifts.
• Iranica notes that Ardashir took the title King of Kings on the battlefield, though other sources date an official coronation at Ctesiphon to around 226.

Sources: Cassius Dio, Roman History, Epitome of Book 80 (LacusCurtius, Loeb); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Artabanus IV; Livius: Artabanus IV

Ardashir's revolt ends Parthia (c. 220 to 224)

Ardashir, a petty vassal of the Arsacids in Persis, began seizing territory around 220, according to Iranica. On 28 April 224 he defeated and killed Artabanus IV. Cassius Dio, writing at the time, said the situation in Mesopotamia inspired genuine fear across the Roman world. Livius says Ardashir took the Parthian capitals Seleucia and Ctesiphon in 226 (or 228). The Parthian state then collapsed, replaced by the Sasanian dynasty.

• Cassius Dio says Artaxerxes (Ardashir) attacked Hatra and breached its wall but withdrew after losing many men in an ambush.
• Dio also says Ardashir attacked Armenia, where the natives, some Medes, and the sons of Artabanus defeated him.
• Iranica says Ardashir assumed the title Shahanshah on the battlefield and had the victory carved in a bas-relief at Firuzabad. Tabari reports that he declared he had risen to avenge his cousin Dara, son of Dara, whom Alexander had fought.

Sources: Cassius Dio, Roman History, Epitome of Book 80 (LacusCurtius, Loeb); al-Tabari, History vol. V: The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen (Bosworth, SUNY 1999) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Ardashir I i (History); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Artabanus IV; Livius: Artabanus IV

Ardashir I (224 to c. 242)

Ardashir I, founder of the Sasanian Empire, Sasanian dynasty

Ardashir founded the Sasanian dynasty, which ruled Iran until the Arab conquest. Iranica reports from Tabari that he was placed in the care of the commandant of the castle at Darabgird, took over the post when the commandant died, and began extending his own power. Livius dates his reign to 224 to 241. Tabari credits him with founding or renaming cities, including Ardashir-Khurra (Gur, modern Firuzabad) and Veh-Ardashir opposite Ctesiphon.

How they came to power: Ardashir was the son of Papak, a ruler in Fars. Iranica says that after Papak rebelled against the Parthian Great King, Ardashir extended his control in Fars. He defeated Artabanus IV on 28 April 224 and took the title King of Kings on the battlefield; other sources mention an official coronation at Ctesiphon in 226.

How it ended: Iranica says the date of his death is disputed. His son Shapur was probably crowned co-monarch on 12 April 240, and the Cologne Mani Codex suggests Ardashir lived until early 242. Livius gives 241.

• Who Ardashir's father was is disputed. Tabari makes Papak the son of Sasan, another tradition says Papak's daughter was given to Sasan, and the Greek writer Agathias describes Papak as a shoemaker who let a travelling soldier named Sasan sleep with his wife.
• Cassius Dio, who calls him Artaxerxes, warned that he boasted he would win back everything the ancient Persians had once held, as far as the Greek Sea.
• Livius says the oldest relief at Naqsh-e Rajab was made for Ardashir. It shows Ahuramazda handing him the ring of kingship, with a small figure often identified as the crown prince Shapur between them.

Sources: al-Tabari, History vol. V: The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen (Bosworth, SUNY 1999) (find in a library: WorldCat); Cassius Dio, Roman History, Epitome of Book 80 (LacusCurtius, Loeb); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Ardashir I i (History); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Babak (father of Ardashir I); Livius: Naqsh-e Rajab, investiture relief of Ardashir I

Shapur I (c. 240 to 270)

Shapur I, King of Kings of Iran and non-Iran, Sasanian dynasty

Shapur I turned his father's new kingdom into a rival of Rome. His long inscription on the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht at Naqsh-e Rustam, known as the Res Gestae Divi Saporis, lists his provinces, his Roman campaigns and his fire temples. Iranica says rock reliefs show him with three Roman emperors, Gordian III, Philip the Arab and Valerian, though the identity of the figures has been disputed. Livius gives his reign as 241 to 272, while Iranica dates his death to about 270.

How they came to power: He succeeded Ardashir I and was crowned co-monarch on 12 April 240, according to Iranica. Rome declared war in 241, says Livius. Gordian III's army was defeated at Misiche in 244, and Shapur says Philip the Arab then paid him 500,000 denars.

How it ended: Iranica says he died of illness at Bishapur, probably in May 270. Livius gives 272.

• In his own inscription Shapur says that with his own hands he took Valerian prisoner (Sprengling's translation).
• Iranica says the many non-Iranians in his empire led to a new royal title, 'King of Kings of Eran and Aneran' (the Iranians and the non-Iranians), which appeared regularly in his inscriptions and became the customary title of later Sasanian kings.
• Iranica says his tolerance benefited Christians, Jews and Manichaeans, and that Mani wrote a book in Shapur's name but failed to convert him.

Sources: Shapur I's inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht, in M. Sprengling, Third Century Iran: Sapor and Kartir (University of Chicago, 1953; ISAC, free PDF); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Shapur I; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Shapur I, rock reliefs; Livius: Shapur I

Mani and Manichaeism (c. 240 to 274)

Mani was born in Mesopotamia in 216, left the baptist community he grew up in, and founded a religion that spread through the Sasanian empire. Iranica says Shapur I's tolerance allowed him to teach, and that Mani wrote a book in the king's name. Under Shapur's son Bahram I the Zoroastrian priests gained influence, and Mani was arrested at Gondeshapur. He died on 2 March 274. Accounts of the end differ: Iranica's entry on Mani says he died in prison and was not executed, while Tabari, the Acts of Archelaus and older Iranica entries say he was executed. The main Christian and Islamic sources were hostile to him.

• Iranica's entry on Mani dates his death to 2 March 274. Manichaean tradition counts 26 days in prison, chained to a guard, with three women followers serving him, and Iranica concludes that Mani died in prison and that there was no execution.
• Tabari says Bahram ordered Mani executed and his body skinned, stuffed with straw and hung from a city gate of Jundishapur, afterwards called Mani's Gate. Iranica regards the later reports of the body being mutilated, with the head displayed over a gate, as substantially correct and confirmed by Manichaean sources.
• The Acts of Archelaus, a hostile Christian text, says the king ordered Manes flayed and hung before the gate of the city, with his skin dipped in medicaments and inflated, as revenge for the deaths of the king's son and the prison keeper. It does not name the king in this passage.

Sources: al-Tabari, History vol. V (Bosworth), on Mani and Bahram I (find in a library: WorldCat); Acts of the Disputation with the Heresiarch Manes, ch. 52-55 (Ante-Nicene Fathers, New Advent); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Mani; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Bahram I

Shapur I captures the emperor Valerian (260)

In 260 a large Roman army under the emperor Valerian was defeated near Edessa, and Valerian was taken prisoner. Shapur's own inscription says he took Valerian prisoner with his own hands, along with the praetorian prefect, senators and army chiefs. The Naqsh-e Rustam relief shows a mounted Shapur seizing the hand of a standing Roman, with a kneeling Roman nearby. Iranica says the identities of the emperors on Shapur's reliefs were long disputed, but the reading that best fits his inscription has Philip the Arab kneeling and Valerian seized.

• Shapur says Valerian came against him with an army of seventy thousand drawn from twenty-nine named provinces and peoples, and that the captured chiefs were led away to Persis (Sprengling's translation).
• Iranica credits B. C. McDermot with noticing that Shapur's text fits the Naqsh-e Rustam relief: Philip the Arab kneels asking for peace and Valerian is physically taken by Shapur. That dates the relief after 260.
• Tabari writes that Shapur settled Valerian and his troops at Jundishapur. Livius says Valerian died in captivity, perhaps in 262, but gives no details.

Sources: Shapur I's inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht, in M. Sprengling, Third Century Iran: Sapor and Kartir (University of Chicago, 1953; ISAC, free PDF); al-Tabari, History vol. V: The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen (Bosworth, SUNY 1999) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Shapur I, rock reliefs; Livius: Valerian; Livius: Naqsh-e Rustam, relief of Shapur I

The Academy of Gondishapur (traditionally from the 260s; physicians moved to Baghdad from the 8th century)

Gondishapur (Jundishapur), in Khuzestan, is often described as a university and teaching hospital of the Sasanian period. Iranica says Greek- and Syriac-speaking Christian deportees took charge of medical activities there and that the role of Nestorian physicians in spreading Greek medicine cannot be disputed, but also that the physical existence of a school of medicine at Gondeshapur in pre-Islamic times remains a matter of academic debate. One Iranica entry says the hospital there was probably founded under Khosrow I, while its entry on hospitals says it was founded at an unknown date.

• Tabari writes that Shapur settled Valerian and his troops at Jundishapur, and the story that the city grew from Roman captives is part of the tradition.
• Iranica says that when Justinian closed the Athens school in 529, seven of its teachers found welcome at Khosrow I's court, and that Khosrow wrote a clause protecting them into his peace treaty with Byzantium.
• Iranica says that when the Arabs besieged Jundishapur the inhabitants surrendered on condition that no damage be done, so the hospital was spared. Later the caliph al-Mansur summoned its director, Jergis b. Jebraʾil, to Baghdad, and physicians of the Christian Bokhtishu family followed.

Sources: al-Tabari, History vol. V: The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen (Bosworth, SUNY 1999) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Humoralism; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Bimarestan (hospital); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Greece xvi, Greek ideas and sciences in Sasanian Iran; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Byzantine-Iranian relations

Kartir and the Zoroastrian church (second half of the 3rd century (to c. 293))

Kartir (Kerdir) was a prominent Zoroastrian priest in the second half of the 3rd century, known from his own inscriptions at Naqsh-e Rustam, Naqsh-e Rajab and elsewhere. Iranica says he is listed among dignitaries under Shapur I and was promoted under later kings; under Bahram II (276 to 293) he became 'state-wide' priest and judge. Scholars disagree on how far to take his claims: Iranica notes debate over whether his statement that other religions were 'struck' means a terror regime, and that the Pahlavi texts and Muslim historians do not mention him at all.

• His inscription lists groups 'struck' in the empire, including Jews, Buddhists, Brahmans, Nazarenes, Christians, Baptists and Manichaeans, according to the Posen Library translation by D. N. MacKenzie.
• Iranica says one of his inscriptions is carved on the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht below the Middle Persian text of Shapur I's famous inscription.
• Livius says a small relief of Kartir was added next to Ardashir I's investiture scene at Naqsh-e Rajab in the reign of Bahram II (276 to 293).

Sources: Kartir's inscription at Naqsh-e Rustam, translated by D. N. MacKenzie (Posen Library); Shapur I's inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht, in M. Sprengling, Third Century Iran: Sapor and Kartir (University of Chicago, 1953; ISAC, free PDF); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Kartir; Livius: Naqsh-e Rajab, Kartir relief; Wikipedia: Kartir

Shapur II (309 to 379)

Shapur II, Sasanian King of Kings, Sasanian dynasty

Shapur II ruled for about seventy years. Iranica says war with Rome began in 337 over Armenia, that he took Amida in 359 after a siege of seventy-three days, and that Julian's invasion ended in 363 with Julian dead. Jovian's treaty gave up Nisibis and other land. Iranica also records a rise in persecution of Christians, whom the king suspected of loyalty to Rome, and says it is usually blamed on Zoroastrian priests, some of whom refused to order it.

How they came to power: Livius dates his accession to 309 and says he was reportedly crowned as a baby; Iranica reports a legend that the crown was placed on his mother's womb. The sources for his early years are thin.

How it ended: He died in 379 after a reign of about seventy years.

• Ammianus says the peace of 363 was sworn for thirty years and that Jovian gave up five provinces beyond the Tigris, plus fifteen fortresses, Nisibis, Singara and Castra Maurorum.
• Ammianus says Jovian managed to get Nisibis and Singara handed over without their inhabitants, so the people could leave.
• Iranica says Shapur II demanded a double tax from Christians during the war with Rome, and dates a rise in persecution to 337.

Sources: Ammianus Marcellinus, Book 25 (LacusCurtius, Rolfe); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Shapur II; Livius: Shapur II

Yazdegerd I (399 to 420)

Yazdegerd I, Sasanian King of Kings, Sasanian dynasty

Yazdegerd I kept peace with Rome and allowed Christians to build churches and hold a church council. Iranica says Sasanian-based sources judged him a tyrant and gave him the epithet 'the Sinner', a view it says reflects the feelings of the priests and nobles, whom he tried to restrain. It adds that in his last year he changed course and ordered a persecution of Christians.

How they came to power: He took the throne in 399. The Acts of the Synod call him son of Shapur, but Iranica says it is unclear whether that means Shapur II or Shapur III.

How it ended: He died in 420 or 421. Moses Khorenats'i says he died of illness, and the widely reported native tradition has a strange horse kill him in Hyrcania. Iranica, following Noldeke, calls that a myth and says the nobility probably murdered him there. His son Bahram V, raised among the Lakhmid Arabs at al-Hira, followed him after his eldest son Shapur was killed by courtiers.

• Procopius says the Roman emperor Arcadius named Yazdegerd in his will as guardian of his infant son Theodosius, and that Yazdegerd kept the peace.
• Iranica says that on the advice of Bishop Marutha he allowed Christians to worship openly, rebuild ruined churches and travel freely among their dioceses, and convened the council at Seleucia in 410 to organise church affairs.
• Iranica says the Jewish exilarch hailed him as a new Cyrus.

Sources: Procopius, Persian Wars 1.2-6 (LacusCurtius, Loeb); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Yazdegerd I; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Sasanian dynasty

Bahram V (Bahram Gur) (420 to 438)

Bahram V Gur, Sasanian King of Kings, Sasanian dynasty

Bahram V reigned 420 to 438. His nickname Gor means onager, or wild ass, and became attached to his reputation as a hunter. He became a favourite subject of Persian poetry, from Ferdowsi to Nizami and Amir Khosrow. Iranica says most of the variants of his death look like local legends.

How they came to power: Tabari says his father Yazdegerd I sent him to be raised by the Lakhmid king al-Nu'man at al-Hira. Iranica says that after Yazdegerd's death the nobles killed his eldest son Shapur and chose a prince named Khosrow; Bahram marched on Ctesiphon with Lakhmid help, and the nobles accepted him on his promise to right his father's misrule. In the Persian tradition he won the throne by taking the crown from between two lions.

How it ended: Accounts differ. One tradition has him die on a hunt, another says he died a natural death in 438. Early historians give variants in which he sinks into a swamp or pit or drowns; Ferdowsi has him die in his sleep, while Nizami and Amir Khosrow have him vanish into a cave chasing an onager.

• One account says the name Gor came from a hunting feat in which he killed a lion and an onager with a single arrow.
• Iranica says he remitted taxes and public debts at festivals and brought thousands of Indian minstrels into Iran; Tabari says that on taking power he cancelled tax arrears said to total seventy million dirhams.
• In 421 a war with Rome ended in a treaty that gave freedom of religion to Christians in Iran and to Zoroastrians in the Byzantine empire, according to Iranica.

Sources: al-Tabari, History vol. V (Bosworth) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Bahram V Gor; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Bahram V Gor in Persian legend and literature; Livius: Sasanian kings

Kavad I (488 to 496 and 498 to 531)

Kavad I, Sasanian King of Kings, Sasanian dynasty

Kavad I reigned twice. Iranica says he came to the throne in 488, probably as a teenager, was deposed in 496 and imprisoned, and escaped to the Hephthalite court, where he was given the king's daughter as bride. He regained the throne in 498/9 with Hephthalite support. His second reign saw wars with Rome, including the capture of Amida in 503, and the Mazdakite movement, whose role scholars still debate.

How they came to power: His father Peroz died in 484 in a war with the Hephthalites. Procopius tells how Peroz was lured into a trap and died, after which the Persians chose Peroz's youngest surviving son Kavad. Iranica adds that Walaxsh in fact reigned first, until he was removed in 488; Procopius calls him Blases and says he was Peroz's brother.

How it ended: He died in 531, according to Iranica, while his army was besieging Martyropolis; Livius says 530 or 531. He had chosen his youngest son Khosrow as heir, and around 520 had asked the emperor Justin I to adopt him; Justin declined.

• Procopius says Kavad introduced a law on communal intercourse with women, which angered the common people and led to his removal from the throne.
• The Persian nobles debated killing him, but he was confined in the 'Prison of Oblivion' instead.
• In Procopius's account his wife, who visited him in prison, gave him her garment and sat in his place in his clothes, so the guards took him for her. He escaped, reached the Hephthalites, and their king gave him his daughter in marriage.

Sources: Procopius, Persian Wars 1.2-6 (LacusCurtius, Loeb); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Kawad I i (Reign); Livius: Kavad I

The Mazdakite movement (late 5th century to 528)

The Mazdakite movement, as the hostile sources describe it, preached the distribution of wealth and the sharing of women, and wanted to end the privileges of the elite. Iranica warns that the extant sources were written by the victorious anti-Mazdakites, so little is known with certainty. It says Kavad I accepted the creed in order to rid himself of the yoke of the nobility and the Zoroastrian clergy, and that scholars seriously question the historicity, or at least the principal role, of Mazdak himself.

• Iranica reports that chroniclers describe a council called by the king in 528/9 to entrap the sect's leaders, and notes that scholars disagree whether this belongs to Kawad's reign or to that of Khosrow I.
• Procopius's account of Kavad's law on communal intercourse with women does not mention Mazdak by name.
• Iranica says Kavad chose Khosrow as heir over his eldest son Kaus, ruler of Tabaristan, who had sided with the Mazdakites.

Sources: Procopius, Persian Wars 1.2-6 (LacusCurtius, Loeb); al-Tabari, History vol. V: The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen (Bosworth, SUNY 1999) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Kawad I i (Reign); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Sasanian dynasty

Khosrow I Anushirvan (531 to 579)

Khosrow I Anushirvan, Sasanian King of Kings, Sasanian dynasty

Khosrow I's epithet Anushirvan means 'of the immortal soul', says Iranica. Iranica says a tax reform begun towards the end of his father's reign was continued by him: a land survey, fixed money rates by field size and crop, and a poll tax with progressive rates. He made the 'unlimited peace' with Justinian in 532, and war broke out again in 540. A treaty of 'fifty years of peace' was signed in 562.

How they came to power: Kavad chose his youngest son Khosrow as heir over the eldest, Kaus, and the nobility followed Kavad's testament (Procopius, as reported by Iranica). Procopius says plots to put another man of Kavad's house on the throne soon followed.

How it ended: He died in 579, after a reign of 48 years. Persian tradition remembered him as a model of justice.

• Procopius says the Endless Peace of 532 was bought for 110 centenaria of gold, and a centenarium weighed a hundred pounds, so the payment was about 11,000 Roman pounds of gold.
• Iranica says Khosrow included a clause in his peace treaty with the Byzantine emperor protecting the Athenian philosophers who had taken refuge at his court.
• Procopius describes Khosrow as a man of unruly mind, strangely fond of innovations, and says plots against both rulers followed the peace.

Sources: Procopius, Persian Wars 1.21-23 (LacusCurtius, Loeb); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Khosrow I ii, Reforms; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Byzantine-Iranian relations; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Sasanian dynasty

Khosrow II (590 to 628 (interrupted 590 to 591))

Khosrow II Parviz, Sasanian King of Kings, Sasanian dynasty

Khosrow II appealed to the emperor Maurice in 590 after Bahram Chobin seized the Persian throne, and Maurice helped restore him. After Maurice was murdered in 602, Khosrow declared war, nominally to avenge his benefactor, and his generals took Syria, Jerusalem and Egypt. Iranica says his empire reached a zenith unequalled since the Achaemenids. His fall came after the emperor Heraclius carried the war into Iran from 622.

How they came to power: Iranica says that in 590 Khosrow appealed to Maurice after Bahram Chobin seized the throne. Maurice sent financial and military help in return for territorial concessions, and Bahram was overthrown.

How it ended: His son Kavad II (Shiroe) had him imprisoned on 25 February 628 and executed on 28 February, according to the Chronicon Paschale as cited by Iranica. Tabari preserves a long message from Shiroe's side listing complaints against the king, including his treatment of his father Hormizd IV and his treachery toward Maurice.

• Tabari records the tradition that the opening of the Quran's Surah 30, 'The Romans have been defeated in the nearer part of the land', refers to the war between Khosrow and Heraclius.
• Iranica says Kavad II, who held power for less than eight months, had many of his brothers killed (Tabari names eighteen sons of Khosrow) and then died, probably of the plague.
• Iranica says that in 627 Khosrow had to raise an army of slaves and foreigners, and that Heraclius devastated Ganzak and the fire temple of Adur Gushnasp.

Sources: Quran, Surah 30 (Ar-Rum), verse 2 (Quranic Arabic Corpus); al-Tabari, History vol. V: The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen (Bosworth, SUNY 1999) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Kawad II; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Byzantine-Iranian relations; Livius: Kavad II

The Roman-Persian war of 602 to 628 (602 to 628)

After the emperor Maurice was murdered in 602, Khosrow II began a war that Iranica says he declared to avenge his benefactor (it gives 603). His generals Shahrvaraz and Shahen took Mesopotamia, Armenia, Syria and Cappadocia, and Shahrvaraz took Jerusalem, whence the True Cross was sent to Persia. Wikipedia places the fall of Jerusalem in 614. From 622 the emperor Heraclius led annual campaigns, and by 627 he had devastated Ganzak. After Khosrow's execution in February 628, the new regime made peace, giving up all gains and restoring the True Cross.

• The Quran's Surah 30 begins 'The Romans have been defeated' in Pickthall's translation, a line that Muslim commentators connected with this war.
• Tabari says the Persian commander dug up the Cross himself and sent it to Khosrow in the twenty-fourth year of his reign; his editor dates the sack of Jerusalem to June 614, with three days of sacking.
• Iranica says Kavad II's government made peace in 628, less than eight months before Kavad died of what was probably plague.

Sources: Quran, Surah 30 (Ar-Rum), verse 2 (Quranic Arabic Corpus); al-Tabari, History vol. V (Bosworth) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Kawad II; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Byzantine-Iranian relations; Wikipedia: Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem

Yazdegerd III (632 to 651)

Yazdegerd III, last Sasanian King of Kings, Sasanian dynasty

Yazdegerd III came to the throne after years of civil war and short reigns. Iranica says he was enthroned in 632 at sixteen or twenty-one, a grandson of Khosrow II, and that the defence of Iraq was largely carried out by other members of the royal family and the high nobility. The Arab conquest began in his reign. After Nehavand he fled across the Iranian plateau, from Isfahan to Estakhr, Kerman, Sistan and Khorasan.

How they came to power: He was enthroned in 632, ending the succession crisis, according to Iranica, as a young grandson of Khosrow II.

How it ended: Iranica says he made a last stand at Merv, where the marzban Mahoe, who resented his financial demands, allied with the Hephthalite ruler Nezak and defeated his followers. A miller killed him as he fled. His murder is dated to 651 or 652, and his son Peroz took refuge in China.

• Iranica says his son Peroz was recognised around 661 as a vassal prince of Tsi-ling in China, but was driven out by the Arabs and died in China in 672.
• Baladhuri says the Arab commander Mujashi' pursued Yazdegerd into Kerman, where his army was wiped out at Bimand. Iranica says the force died in a snowstorm.
• Iranica describes Yazdegerd as impecunious and arrogant: he alienated the marzban of Kerman and lost the support of the governor of Sistan by demanding tax arrears.

Sources: al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan, The Origins of the Islamic State, Part II (Murgotten, 1924; Internet Archive); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Khorasan iv, the Arab conquest and Omayyad period; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Arab ii, Arab conquest of Iran

The battle of al-Qadisiyya (c. 636 (dated 634 to 637))

Al-Qadisiyya was fought in southern Iraq between an Arab Muslim army under Sa'd b. Abi Waqqas and a Sasanian force led by Rostam. Iranica says the sources conflict on the date: 636 or 637 is usual, while Parvaneh Pourshariati argues for 634 or 635. It says it is unlikely that more than 12,000 Arabs and 30,000 Iranians fought, and that the Persians outnumbered the invaders. Iranica's entry argues the conquest of Iran was not settled by this one battle, which was followed by Jalula and Nehavand.

• After three days of fighting, a dust storm blew sand into the Persians' eyes, and a lone Arab soldier found and killed Rostam, according to the account Iranica summarises.
• Tabari's account is arranged as the days of Armath, Aghwath and Imas and the Night of al-Qadisiyya. In it a wind blows the sunshade off Rustam's throne, Rustam takes shelter under a mule's litter, and Hilal b. Ullafah drags him out of the river and kills him.
• Iranica says the royal standard, the Derafsh-e Kaviani, was captured, and that memory has since telescoped the whole conquest into this one battle.

Sources: al-Tabari, History vol. XII: The Battle of al-Qadisiyyah (Juynboll, SUNY 1992; same Internet Archive item) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Qadesiya, battle of; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Arab ii, Arab conquest of Iran

The battle of Nahavand (c. 642 (dated 639 to 642))

At Nahavand, in the Zagros, a Sasanian army met the Arabs and lost. Iranica's Arab-conquest entry dates it to the summer of 642, while its Nehavand entry says the Arabic sources place it between 639 and 641. The Nehavand entry names the Persian commander as Mardanshah and the Arab one as Nu'man b. Muqarrin. The Arab-conquest entry says both died, and that the battle was a second military disaster for the Sasanians that ended concerted resistance in the Jebal and opened the Iranian plateau.

• Iranica says the course of the battle is hard to reconstruct in tactical terms, and as usual in the sources it is said to have lasted several days.
• Iranica notes that Persian forces appear to have outnumbered the Muslim armies at key battles such as Qadisiyya and Nahavand.
• Baladhuri says that after the Persians were overthrown at Nihawand most of the army went home, but Hudhayfa stayed with the Kufans and raided Azerbaijan, making peace for 100,000 dirhams in one report and 800,000 in another.

Sources: al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan, The Origins of the Islamic State, Part II (Murgotten, 1924; Internet Archive); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Nehavand; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Arab ii, Arab conquest of Iran

The Abbasid revolution from Khorasan (June 747 to August 750)

In 747 Abu Muslim raised the Abbasid standard at Sefidanj near Merv. Over the next three years Khorasani forces took the east, then moved into Iraq, where Abu'l-Abbas al-Saffah was proclaimed caliph at Kufa on 28 November 749. In January 750 they defeated the Umayyad caliph Marwan II at the Greater Zab, and Marwan was hunted down and killed in Egypt that summer. The change was more than a new family on the throne: the Abbasids drew much of their strength from the east, and Persian culture came to play a larger part at the caliph's court. Historians still debate how far the revolution was religious, how far Persian, and how far simply a movement against the Umayyads. Encyclopaedia Iranica sets out all three views.

• The Abbasid agents in Kufa hid Abu'l-Abbas and his brother al-Mansur for forty days. An Abbasid officer, Abu Salama, pushed for an Alid leader instead, until the Khorasani commanders found the brothers and recognised Abu'l-Abbas (Encyclopaedia Iranica; Wikipedia).
• Abu Muslim stayed in Khorasan while the armies fought in Syria and Iraq. His commander Qahtaba, who led the march west, died in the fighting by the Euphrates on 27 August 749, and his son Hasan took over (Encyclopaedia Iranica).
• One Umayyad prince, Abd al-Rahman, survived, travelled west for about five years and founded an Umayyad emirate in al-Andalus, with its capital at Cordoba. His line ruled there until 1031.

Sources: al-Tabari, History, vol. 27: The 'Abbasid Revolution, A.D. 743-750 (trans. John Alden Williams; scan on Internet Archive) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Abu Moslem Khorasani; Wikipedia: Abbasid revolution; Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'Islamic Conquest' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us)

Abu Muslim (747 to 755)

Abu Muslim al-Khurasani, organiser of the Abbasid revolution in Khorasan, Abbasid revolution · Khorasan

Abu Muslim is the best-known leader of the Abbasid revolution. Sources disagree about his name and origins. Encyclopaedia Iranica puts his birth between about 718 and 727, at Merv or near Isfahan, and says most sources agree that he grew up in Kufa, a centre of feeling against the Umayyads. Within a few years of reaching Khorasan he turned a secret network of agents into an army that took the whole province. Historians still argue about what drove him: religion, Persian resentment of Arab rule, or simple hostility to the Umayyads.

How they rose: The Abbasid imam Ibrahim sent him to Khorasan in 745 or 746. In 747 he raised the Abbasid banners at Sefidanj near Merv, and his followers put on black clothes. By early 748 he held Merv, and his commanders pushed west toward Iraq.

How they died: Caliph al-Mansur, who feared his power, lured him to court at al-Mada'in and had him killed on 13 February 755, at about thirty-seven. His body was thrown into the Tigris.

• When Abu Muslim raised the banners he had a fire lit as a signal to supporters in other districts, and on the second day crowds of villagers took the road to Sefidanj to join him. His followers put on black, which became the Abbasid colour (Encyclopaedia Iranica).
• In 754 he asked leave to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. The caliph's letters said he must enter Iraq with only 50 men. He set out with 8,000 and came near the capital with 1,000, a measure of how little each side trusted the other (Encyclopaedia Iranica).
• A century later the Saffarid ruler Ya'qub liked to say that the Abbasids built their rule on treachery, and he named Abu Muslim among their victims, with Abu Salama, the Barmakids and Fadl b. Sahl (Encyclopaedia Iranica on the Saffarids). Tabari gives his own account of the killing under the year 137 (754-55), headed 'An Account of Abu Muslim's Murder and the Reason for It'.

Sources: al-Tabari, History, vol. 27: The 'Abbasid Revolution, A.D. 743-750 (trans. John Alden Williams; scan on Internet Archive) (find in a library: WorldCat); al-Tabari, History, vol. 28: 'Abbasid Authority Affirmed (trans. Jane Dammen McAuliffe; scan on Internet Archive) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Abu Moslem Khorasani; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Saffarids; Wikipedia: Abu Muslim

Ya'qub al-Saffar (861 to 879)

Ya'qub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar, founder of the Saffarid dynasty, Saffarid dynasty

Ya'qub began as a coppersmith (saffar), the trade that named his dynasty, in the province of Sistan in what is now south-eastern Iran and Afghanistan. He and his brothers came out of bands of local volunteer fighters raised to defend the Sunni faith against the Kharijites. Encyclopaedia Iranica calls the rise of the Saffarids the first significant breach in the territorial integrity of the Abbasid caliphate. He had no noble birth and held no appointment from Baghdad. The Tarikh-i Sistan, a local history compiled in the mid-eleventh century, about two generations after the Saffarids fell, is one of the main sources for his life.

How they came to power: Ya'qub rose in the following of the local fighting chiefs of Sistan, outlasted his rivals, and was hailed amir by the army of Sistan in 861. He occupied Herat in 867 and, in 873, drove the Tahirids out of their capital Nishapur and captured their ruler. In 875 he took Fars.

How it ended: In 876 he advanced toward Baghdad but was beaten in April by the caliph's brother al-Muwaffaq near Dayr al-Aqul. He kept Fars and Khuzestan. He died at Gundeshapur on 5 June 879, according to Wikipedia of colic after refusing treatment. His brother Amr succeeded him.

• Tabari reports that in the battle of April 876, fought at a place called Idtarbad, Ya'qub was struck by three arrows in the neck and hands. Many on his side were reluctant to fight once the caliph himself appeared on the field. His regular troops were routed, and he withdrew with his elite, leaving behind more than ten thousand pack animals and mules, and a great deal of musk.
• Encyclopaedia Iranica tells how court poets praised him in Arabic, which he could not understand. His secretary Muhammad b. Wasef then composed a poem in New Persian instead.
• Wikipedia notes that he was so poor in youth that he sometimes ate little but bread and onions. Iranica records that he liked to say the Abbasids built their power on treachery, and named Abu Muslim among their victims.

Sources: al-Tabari, History, vol. 36: The Revolt of the Zanj (trans. David Waines; scan on Internet Archive) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Saffarids; Wikipedia: Ya'qub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar

Isma'il Samani (892 to 907)

Isma'il ibn Ahmad, amir of the Samanids, Samanid dynasty

Isma'il governed Bukhara for his brother Nasr from 874 and became ruler of all Transoxiana when Nasr died in August 892. He moved the Samanid capital to Bukhara, where it stayed. Officially he remained the caliph's governor, with the caliph's name in the Friday sermon and on the coins, but in practice he acted as an independent sovereign. He took Taraz from the Turks in 893, fought the Zaydi imams of the Caspian region, and held off Turkish raiders. Later writers called him the Just Amir.

How they came to power: In 874 his brother Nasr, who held Transoxiana from Samarkand for the caliph, sent him to govern Bukhara. After a dispute over the distribution of taxes the brothers fought, but Isma'il kept formal loyalty to Nasr until Nasr died in 892.

How it ended: Isma'il died in Bukhara on 24 November 907 after a long illness (Wikipedia; Iranica gives Safar 295/November 907) and was succeeded by his son Ahmad. A mausoleum in Bukhara is traditionally called his tomb, though Encyclopaedia Iranica notes that its style seems to belong to the later Samanid period.

• Tabari reports that Amr ibn al-Layth boasted that if he wished he could dam the Oxus with money bags and cross it. Isma'il crossed with his own men and the small landowners and village chiefs. Amr took a shortcut through a swamp, his horse became mired and fell, and his followers abandoned him.
• After Taraz fell in 893 he turned its Nestorian Christian church into a mosque, according to Encyclopaedia Iranica.
• Tajikistan names its currency, the somoni, after him, and he appears on the 100-somoni note. The country's highest peak is called Ismoil Somoni Peak (Wikipedia).

Sources: al-Tabari, History, vol. 38: The Return of the Caliphate to Baghdad (trans. Franz Rosenthal; scan on Internet Archive) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Esma'il b. Ahmad b. Asad Samani; Wikipedia: Ismail Samani

The Persian literary revival under the Samanids (c. 892 to 999)

The Samanids ruled Transoxiana and Khorasan from Bukhara. Arabic stayed the language of religion and science, but their court paid poets who wrote in New Persian, the Persian of the Islamic period, written in Arabic script. Rudaki, who died in 941, is called the father of Persian poetry by Encyclopaedia Iranica. The Persian history of the vizier Bal'ami is described as the earliest surviving book of Persian prose. A poet named Daqiqi began a verse Book of Kings and died with only a small part done; Ferdowsi took the work over and finished it in 1010, after the dynasty had fallen. The Samanid state itself ended in 999, when the Karakhanids and the Ghaznavids divided it along the Oxus.

• Rudaki's patron, the vizier Abu'l-Fazl Bal'ami, is reported to have ranked him above every other Arab and Persian poet (Encyclopaedia Iranica: Rudaki).
• The capital had a library called the Siwan al-Hikma, 'Storehouse of Wisdom', and Avicenna is named among the scholars the court drew in (Wikipedia: Samanid Empire).
• Samanid-period earthenware from Nishapur is often painted with Arabic proverbs. One plate carries the Persian phrase nush kon ('Drink!') beside the Arabic word laka ('for you') (Wikipedia: Samanid Empire).

Sources: The Persian Literature, vol. 1: Shah Nameh, Rubaiyat, Divan (Project Gutenberg #10315; introduction by R. Gottheil retells the Dakiki and Mahmud stories); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Rudaki; Wikipedia: Samanid Empire; Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'Islamic Conquest' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us)

Ferdowsi (c. 940 to c. 1020 (or 1025))

Abu'l-Qasem Ferdowsi of Tus, poet of the Shahnameh, Epic poet · Tus, Khorasan

Ferdowsi came from a village near Tus in Khorasan. He worked from older prose chronicles and finished the Shahnameh, the Book of Kings, in 1010 (a first version is dated about 994 in some accounts). It tells Iran's history from the first mythical king to the Arab conquest, in New Persian verse. The poem is often reported to have 60,000 couplets. It is regarded as the great epic of the Persian-speaking world. Scholars note that the older vocabulary and stories it carries came from Middle Persian sources and oral tradition, not from Ferdowsi's choices alone.

How they rose: He was born about 940 and began the epic around 977 (some accounts say 980-81), carrying on a project started by the poet Daqiqi, who was killed leaving only about a thousand lines. Tradition says he took the finished book to Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna, but the details come from a source written more than a century later.

How they died: He died in Tus around 1020 or 1025; Iranica thinks 1025 more probable. One account says a local preacher refused him burial in the town's Muslim cemetery, so he was buried in his own garden. A monument stands on the site; the present one was rebuilt between 1928 and 1934.

• His son died in 1006, aged thirty-seven. Ferdowsi wrote an elegy in very plain, personal language, telling the son he had gone ahead and left his father alone.
• The famous satire on Mahmud is a matter of dispute. Nizami Aruzi says only six lines survived, some manuscripts carry up to 160, and one scholar judged many of the lines spurious. Iranica adds that this does not prove the satire never existed.
• The Shahnameh was translated into Arabic in 1223 by al-Bondari, only two centuries after Ferdowsi finished it.

Sources: The Persian Literature, vol. 1: Shah Nameh, Rubaiyat, Divan (Project Gutenberg #10315; introduction by R. Gottheil retells the Dakiki and Mahmud stories); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Ferdowsi i. Life; Wikipedia: Ferdowsi

Al-Biruni (973 to about 1048)

Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, scholar of astronomy, mathematics, history and India, Polymath · Khwarazm and Ghazna

Al-Biruni was born in 973 in Kath, capital of the Afrighid rulers of Khwarazm, and spent his first twenty or so years there. When the Afrighids fell in 995 he went to Bukhara, then to the Ziyarid court in Gorgan, and later to the court of Khwarazm. After Mahmud of Ghazna took Khwarazm, he was brought to Ghazna and served the Ghaznavid sultans there for the rest of his life, probably more than thirty years. He wrote on astronomy, mathematics, mineralogy, medicine, chronology and India, mostly in Arabic. His book on India was finished about 1030, just after Mahmud's death. By 1036 he listed 103 finished works.

How they rose: He studied both the Arab sciences (law, grammar, theology) and the Greek sciences (mathematics, astronomy, medicine). After the Afrighid fall in 995 he moved from court to court, and corresponded with Avicenna, whose written exchange with him survives.

How they died: He died in Ghazna, probably soon after 1048. Recent Tashkent scholarship gives 11 December 1048, but he said he was over eighty when he wrote his last book, which would put his death after 1050, so the date remains uncertain (Encyclopaedia Iranica).

• At Nandana, in what is now Pakistan, he measured the height of a hill and the dip of the horizon to estimate the Earth's radius. Wikipedia reports that his result came within a few per cent of the modern value; he made no allowance for atmospheric refraction.
• He discussed whether the Earth turns in a book that has not survived. Wikipedia quotes him as writing that the rotation of the Earth 'does in no way impair the value of astronomy'.
• He wrote nearly everything in Arabic and, in the introduction to his Saydala, objected to using Persian for science (Encyclopaedia Iranica).

Sources: Alberuni's India, vol. 1 (trans. Edward Sachau, 1888; Internet Archive); al-Biruni, The Existing Monuments or Chronology (excerpt, Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Biruni i. Life; Wikipedia: Al-Biruni

Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (c. 980 to 1037)

Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina, physician and philosopher, Physician and philosopher · Bukhara to Isfahan

Ibn Sina was born around 980 in Afshana near Bukhara. By his own account, completed by his student al-Juzjani, he learned much of the Greek sciences on his own. After the Samanid state fell in 999 he moved through Gorgan, Rayy, Hamadan and finally Isfahan, serving rulers as physician and sometimes as vizier. His Canon of Medicine, in five volumes, was a standard textbook in the Islamic world and in Europe for centuries. His Book of Healing is a large philosophical and scientific encyclopedia. Of some 450 works he is believed to have written, about 240 survive.

How they rose: Wikipedia reports that he had memorised the Quran by the age of ten. Encyclopaedia Iranica notes that the traditional birth date of 980 is doubtful and that he was probably born a few years earlier. At about seventeen he became physician to the Samanid ruler Nuh b. Mansur, and his career grew from there.

How they died: He fell ill with colic on a trip with his patron Ala al-Dawla and died at Hamadan in 1037 (22 June, according to Wikipedia), after repeated recoveries and relapses. He was buried there.

• Told he knew nothing of Arabic lexicography, he memorised a dictionary, wrote three epistles in the styles of famous authors, and submitted them for identification to the man who had insulted him. The man did not spot the forgeries (Encyclopaedia Iranica).
• After secretly writing to the ruler of Isfahan, he was imprisoned for four months in a castle at Fardajan near Hamadan. Wikipedia says the 'floating man' thought experiment, in which a person with no senses still knows he exists, was written in that prison.
• An exchange of letters between al-Biruni and Avicenna's circle survives. It is mostly with Avicenna's student al-Ma'sumi and concerns Aristotelian natural philosophy (Wikipedia; Iranica on al-Biruni).

Sources: Ibn Sina (Avicenna), 'On Medicine' (excerpt, Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Avicenna ii. Biography; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Biruni i. Life; Wikipedia: Avicenna

Mahmud of Ghazni (998 to 1030)

Mahmud ibn Sebuktegin, Yamin al-Dawla, sultan of the Ghaznavids, Ghaznavid dynasty

Mahmud took the throne of Ghazna in 998 and ruled until 1030. Encyclopaedia Iranica calls him the first fully independent ruler of the Turkish Ghaznavid dynasty; by his death his empire stretched from north-western Persia to the Punjab. He raided India repeatedly, bringing back gold, slaves and temple treasure, and was praised in the Sunni world for it; the caliph gave him honorary titles. His court at Ghazna drew poets writing in New Persian and, after the conquest of Khwarazm, the scholar al-Biruni.

How they came to power: When his father Sebuktegin, a former Samanid slave commander, died in 997, the throne went first to a younger son, Isma'il. Mahmud defeated Isma'il in battle outside Ghazna and took the throne in 998. He then drove the Samanid slave commander Begtuzun out of Khorasan.

How it ended: Mahmud died at Ghazna on 30 April 1030 after a long illness, aged 58 or 59. His son Masud succeeded him; ten years later the Seljuks beat Masud's army at Dandanaqan.

• Al-Biruni, who lived at Ghazna and finished his book on India just after Mahmud's death, wrote that Mahmud 'utterly ruined the prosperity of the country' and that the Hindus became 'like atoms of dust scattered in all directions'. He also uses a formula of blessing for Mahmud and his father, 'may God's mercy be with them' (Sachau's preface and translation, vol. 1).
• In 1025-26 he marched across the desert to the temple of Somnath in Gujarat. The booty is said to have been 20 million dinars, and the caliph al-Qadir sent him a new honorific (Encyclopaedia Iranica).
• A famous tale says Mahmud promised a gold coin for each line of the Shahnameh but paid in silver. Iranica reports the best-known early version, which cuts a promised 60,000 dinars to 20,000 dirhams, and says many of its details are inaccurate or legendary.

Sources: Alberuni's India, vol. 1 (trans. Edward Sachau, 1888; Internet Archive); The Persian Literature, vol. 1: Shah Nameh, Rubaiyat, Divan (Project Gutenberg #10315; introduction by R. Gottheil retells the Dakiki and Mahmud stories); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Mahmud b. Sebuktegin; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Ghaznavids; Wikipedia: Mahmud of Ghazni

Nizam al-Mulk (1018 to 1092)

Abu Ali Hasan Tusi, Nizam al-Mulk, vizier of the Seljuks, Vizier · Seljuk empire

Nizam al-Mulk was born near Tus in Khorasan and rose from a modest post in the administration of the governor of Balkh to chief minister of the Seljuk empire. He served the sultans Alp Arslan and Malik-Shah as vizier from 1064. Sources differ on whether he lost office in 1091, before his death. He founded a network of colleges, called Nizamiyyas after him, in Baghdad, Isfahan, Nishapur and other cities. A manual on government, the Siyasatnama (also called Siar al-moluk), is traditionally credited to him. Encyclopaedia Iranica says it was completed only after his dismissal in 1091 and that this may explain some bitter remarks about the sultan.

How they rose: He began under the governor of Balkh and made his way up through the Seljuk administration. In 1064, when Alp Arslan was sultan, he became vizier, and he stayed in post under Malik-Shah.

How they died: He was stabbed on 14 October 1092 near Nahavand on the road from Isfahan to Baghdad by a man disguised as a Sufi. The usual account blames the Assassins, the Nizari Ismaili order; Iranica notes that Ismaili sympathisers were active at the Seljuk court and that the sultan's wife Terken Khatun is conventionally seen as the instigator of his earlier fall. Malik-Shah died about five weeks later.

• Nizam al-Mulk, 'order of the realm', is an honorific; his personal name was Hasan. Iranica says the Abbasid caliph conferred his honorifics, while Wikipedia says Alp Arslan gave him this title.
• The famous jurist al-Juwayni declared that Nizam al-Mulk should replace the unlettered and incompetent Abbasid caliph and rule the Islamic community himself (Encyclopaedia Iranica).
• A popular tale makes him, Omar Khayyam and Hasan-i Sabbah school friends. It first appeared in English in FitzGerald's introduction to the Rubaiyat. Bernard Lewis thought it unlikely on dates alone, and the story is possibly apocryphal (Wikipedia).

Sources: Nizam al-Mulk, 'On the Courtiers and Familiars of Kings' (excerpt, trans. Reuben Levy, 1929; Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University); Nizam al-Mulk, The Book of Government, or Rules for Kings (Siyasatnama, trans. Hubert Darke, 1960; Internet Archive) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Nezam al-Molk; Wikipedia: Nizam al-Mulk

Tughril Beg (1037 to 1063)

Tughril Beg (Tughril I), first sultan of the Great Seljuk dynasty, Great Seljuk dynasty

Tughril and his brother Chaghri Beg founded the Great Seljuk state together. After the victory at Dandanaqan in 1040 they divided the work: Chaghri held Khorasan, while Tughril led raiding bands west, as far as Iraq. Tughril was declared sultan in 1037 and entered Baghdad in December 1055 at the Abbasid caliph's invitation, ending Buyid control there. The caliph kept his religious office, but real power was Tughril's, and in 1058 the caliph gave him the title King of the East and the West.

How they came to power: The Seljuks were Oghuz Turkmen, and Ghaznavid weakness opened Khorasan to them. Merv admitted Chaghri as governor in 1036-37, and in spring 1038 Tughril was briefly master of Nishapur.

How it ended: Tughril died at Ray on 4 October 1063, at about seventy, without children. He had named his nephew Sulayman as successor, but Chaghri's other son Alp Arslan became sultan. Tughril is buried in the Tughril Tower at Ray.

• His name is an old Turkic word for a bird of prey, possibly the crested goshawk (Wikipedia).
• Nizam al-Mulk recalled in his Siyasatnama that when Tughril rode out in the early morning to ride or hunt, food was prepared, and when it was served in the country there was so much that all the nobles and amirs were astonished.
• Tughril and Chaghri were on cordial terms for life. Encyclopaedia Iranica's article on Chaghri notes that Tughril had no children while Chaghri had several, and that the Seljuk state was run as a partnership of the two brothers.

Sources: Nizam al-Mulk, The Book of Government, or Rules for Kings (Siyasatnama, trans. Hubert Darke, 1960; Internet Archive) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Chagri Beg Dawud; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Dandanqan; Wikipedia: Tughril

The battle of Dandanaqan (23 May 1040)

On 23 May 1040 a Turkmen force of some 16,000 under the brothers Tughril and Chaghri met the army of the Ghaznavid sultan Masud near Dandanaqan, a small town in the Qara Qum desert between Merv and Sarakhs. Encyclopaedia Iranica says the fighting efficiency of the heavily armed Ghaznavid army had been badly impaired by famine and drought. Wikipedia adds that Seljuk raiders harassed Masud's march and cut him off from the wells, and contrasts the swift Turkmens with the heavily laden Ghaznavid army, though that passage has no citation. The Ghaznavid army was decisively defeated and Khorasan passed to the Seljuks. The size of Masud's force is uncertain; the historian Bosworth thinks it was close to the Seljuk number rather than the larger figures in the sources.

• In 1035 about 10,000 Oghuz crossed the Oxus. Masud, busy in India, had to recognise their chiefs as local governors. In 1036-37 Merv admitted Chaghri as governor, and in spring 1038 Tughril briefly held Nishapur (Encyclopaedia Iranica).
• Masud fled toward India and was overthrown by his own troops while crossing the Indus in 1041, according to Iranica; Wikipedia says he was murdered in prison.
• Decades later Nizam al-Mulk wrote that although the Turkmen were disliked and numerous, they had a long-standing claim upon the dynasty, because at its inception they 'served well and suffered much'.

Sources: Nizam al-Mulk, The Book of Government, or Rules for Kings (Siyasatnama, trans. Hubert Darke, 1960; Internet Archive) (find in a library: WorldCat); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Dandanqan; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Chagri Beg Dawud; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Ghaznavids; Wikipedia: Battle of Dandanaqan

Omar Khayyam (1048 to about 1131)

Omar Khayyam, mathematician, astronomer and poet of Nishapur, Mathematician, astronomer, poet · Nishapur

Omar Khayyam was born in Nishapur, probably on 18 May 1048, a date reckoned from a horoscope recorded by a later writer. About 1074 the Seljuk sultan Malik-Shah summoned him with other astronomers to build an observatory, probably at Isfahan. He wrote a treatise on algebra that classified cubic equations and solved them geometrically, and a commentary on the problems of Euclid's postulates. The poems that made him famous are the rubaiyat, four-line verses. Scholars doubt that many of the quatrains attributed to him, or any, can be shown to be his.

How they rose: He came from an old Nishapur family. By 1074 he had a reputation that brought him to the sultan's attention, and he spent roughly 1074 to 1079 in the Seljuk service in the west.

How they died: He died in Nishapur, traditionally on 4 December 1131 (Wikipedia), though Encyclopaedia Iranica notes that the date is disputed. His disciple Nizami Aruzi reports visiting his grave in Nishapur in 1136.

• He admitted that for these cubic equations he had no arithmetical method of solution and wrote that perhaps someone after him would find one (Wikipedia). Italian mathematicians found a general algebraic solution in the sixteenth century.
• In 1906 the scholar Edward Granville Browne wrote that it is hardly possible, save in a few exceptional cases, to assert positively that Khayyam wrote any given quatrain. In 1934 the German scholar Schaeder argued that his name should be struck from the history of Persian literature (Wikipedia).
• FitzGerald's 1859 English version was at first unsuccessful. By 1929 a bibliography listed more than 300 separate editions (Wikipedia).

Sources: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, trans. Edward FitzGerald (Project Gutenberg #246; includes FitzGerald's introduction); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Khayyam, Omar i. Life; Wikipedia: Omar Khayyam

Malik-Shah I (1072 to 1092)

Malik-Shah I, sultan of the Great Seljuks, Great Seljuk dynasty

Malik-Shah ruled from 1072 to 1092 and made Isfahan his main residence; Wikipedia says he spent over half his reign there. His vizier Nizam al-Mulk stayed in office through almost the whole reign. Seljuk power reached its greatest extent under him, from Transoxiana, where in 1089 Seljuk rule reached the borders of China, to Syria. Around 1074 he gathered astronomers, among them Omar Khayyam, to build an observatory, from which came the Jalali calendar.

How they came to power: His father Alp Arslan named him heir in 1066 and died in 1072 of wounds taken on a campaign in Transoxiana. Malik-Shah's uncle Qavurt contested the throne and was beaten and captured in 1073.

How it ended: Malik-Shah died on 19 November 1092 during a hunting trip near Baghdad, aged about thirty-seven. Wikipedia says he was most likely poisoned, by the caliph or by partisans of Nizam al-Mulk, who had been murdered a few weeks earlier. He left no clear succession plan, and a dynastic crisis followed.

• In 1086-87 he led a campaign into northern Syria. Wikipedia lists Edessa, Aleppo and Antioch among the places taken, and a Cambridge history of the period notes that he left Seljuk governors in Antioch, Aleppo and Edessa.
• The Jalali calendar was inaugurated on 15 March 1079 and is named for him. The Isfahan observatory closed soon after his death (Wikipedia).
• Nizam al-Mulk's Siyasatnama, a handbook of government, was written for the Seljuk rulers. Encyclopaedia Iranica says it was finished only after the vizier's forced removal from office in 1091 and contains bitter criticism of Malik-Shah.

Sources: Nizam al-Mulk, The Book of Government, or Rules for Kings (Siyasatnama, trans. Hubert Darke, 1960; Internet Archive) (find in a library: WorldCat); Nizam al-Mulk, 'On the Courtiers and Familiars of Kings' (excerpt, trans. Reuben Levy, 1929; Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Nezam al-Molk; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Khayyam, Omar i. Life; Wikipedia: Malik-Shah I

Rumi (1207 to 1273)

Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, poet and Sufi teacher of Konya, Poet and Sufi teacher · Konya

Rumi was born on 30 September 1207, in Wakhsh in present-day Tajikistan, though his family came from Balkh. They left as Mongol forces advanced, and Rumi was about twenty when they settled in Konya in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum. He wrote in Persian. His six-volume Masnavi runs to roughly 27,000 lines, and his lyric poems are gathered in the Divan of Shams. After his death his followers founded the Mevlevi order, known for its turning ceremony.

How they rose: His father, Baha al-Din Walad, was a jurist and preacher, and Rumi took up teaching after him. Meeting the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi on 15 November 1244 changed his life.

How they died: Rumi died in Konya on 17 December 1273, aged sixty-six. Local Christians and Jews are said to have joined his funeral procession. His tomb is now the Mevlana Museum.

• Shams disappeared on the night of 5 December 1248. Accounts of what happened are disputed, and Wikipedia flags one account as coming from an unreliable source. Rumi's grief produced the Divan of Shams-e Tabrizi.
• The Masnavi was dictated to his disciple Husam al-Din over about twelve years.
• Although he spent his adult life in Anatolia, Rumi wrote in Persian, his mother tongue, with the occasional Arabic phrase and a few Turkish and Greek words.

Sources: Rumi, selections from the Masnavi (trans. C. F. Horne, 1917; Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Rumi, Jalal al-Din (index of articles); Wikipedia: Rumi

Saadi (c. 1210 to 1291 or 1292)

Saadi of Shiraz, Persian poet and moralist, Poet · Shiraz

Saadi was born in Shiraz around 1210 and died there in 1291 or 1292. Encyclopaedia Iranica dates his Bustan, a verse work, to 1257 and his Gulistan, mostly prose with verse, to 1258. These are the two most reliable dates in his life. The Gulistan has eight chapters of short stories and sayings and is one of the most widely read works of Persian prose. He also wrote hundreds of ghazals, about 700 by Wikipedia's count, mostly on love. Much of what we think we know about his life comes from his own books, which are not reliable biography.

How they rose: Orphaned as a teenager, he left Shiraz around 1223 or 1224 to study in Baghdad. Then, by his own account, he spent about thirty years travelling the Islamic world before returning to Shiraz.

How they died: He died in Shiraz in 1291 or 1292; Iranica favours 1291. His tomb was renovated under Karim Khan Zand in the late eighteenth century (Wikipedia; Iranica on Karim Khan).

• In the Gulistan he says he was taken prisoner by the Franks in Syria and made to dig earth in the ditches of Tripoli (James Ross's translation, Gutenberg). A tale of killing a temple priest in India is also attached to him. Encyclopaedia Iranica says such first-person stories are not reliable as history and that rebuilding his journeys from them is misguided, though some may rest on real events.
• A line from the Gulistan describing human beings as limbs of one body is on a carpet in a United Nations meeting room in New York, a 2005 gift from Iran (Wikipedia). In Ross's translation the lines begin 'The sons of Adam are members one of another'.
• Early European translations of the Gulistan include a partial French version by Andre du Ryer in 1634 and a Latin one by Georg Gentius, printed with the Persian text in Amsterdam in 1651.

Sources: The Persian Literature, vol. 2: The Gulistan of Sadi (trans. James Ross; Project Gutenberg #13060); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Sa'di; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Karim Khan Zand; Wikipedia: Saadi Shirazi

The Mongol sack of the Persian cities (1219 to 1221)

In 1218 the Khwarazmian governor of Otrar seized a group of merchants acting for Genghis Khan and had them executed, giving the Mongols a pretext for war. The campaign began in 1219. Bukhara fell in 1220, Samarkand in March 1220, Merv in early 1221 and Nishapur in April 1221. Encyclopaedia Iranica notes wholesale massacres at Merv and Nishapur. Medieval chroniclers gave death tolls in the hundreds of thousands or more, but Iranica says such figures cannot be taken at face value. The damage was real all the same, and the Khwarazmian empire fell.

• Juvaini reports that a man who had escaped from Bukhara was asked what had happened there and replied: 'They came, they sapped, they burnt, they slew, they plundered and they departed.' Juvaini calls it the most concise speech possible in Persian.
• Ibn al-Athir wrote that for some years he was averse to recording these events, and he called them the greatest catastrophe to befall the Muslims. He noted that Alexander's conquests took about ten years, while the Mongols overran the best and most populous part of the world in about one.
• Jalal al-Din Mangburni, the shah's son, beat a Mongol force at Parwan in 1221. Genghis Khan then defeated him on the Indus, and he fled to India.

Sources: Juvaini, History of the World-Conqueror, vol. 1 (trans. J. A. Boyle, 1958; Internet Archive) (find in a library: WorldCat); Ibn al-Athir, 'On the Tatars, 1220-1221' (Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Mongols; Wikipedia: Mongol invasion of Khwarazmia; Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'Invasions of the Mongols and Tamerlane' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us)

Hulagu Khan (1256 to 1265)

Hulagu (Hulegu) Khan, founder of the Ilkhanate of Persia, Ilkhanate (Hulaguid dynasty)

Hulagu was the fifth son of Tolui and grandson of Genghis Khan. After 1251 his brother Mongke, the Great Khan, ordered him to campaign in the Muslim lands while Qubilai took China. Hulagu took the Ismaili fortresses, captured Baghdad in 1258 and pushed into Syria. After he withdrew, the Mamluks beat his general Ket-buqa at Ain Jalut in 1260. Azerbaijan became the centre of his rule, and he was the first of the Ilkhans. He patronised the scholar Nasir al-Din Tusi, who helped to found the observatory at Maragha. His favourite wife, Doquz Khatun, was a Nestorian Christian.

How they came to power: His army set out in 1253, reached Transoxiana in 1255 and crossed the Oxus at the end of that year. In the first months of 1256 his generals took most of the Ismaili fortresses in the mountains of Kuhestan and south of the Caspian, and Alamut fell on 19 November 1256.

How it ended: He died on 8 February 1265, in his late forties or about fifty (Iranica implies a birth about 1215; Wikipedia gives 47), on the banks of the Zarrineh River, then called Jaghatu. He was reportedly buried on Shahi Island in Lake Urmia, and his tomb has never been found (Wikipedia).

• In 1262 he sent a mission to Europe seeking help against the Mamluks; a surviving Latin letter is addressed to Louis IX of France, though the mission seems to have been turned back in Sicily. In 1263 Pope Urban IV wrote that he rejoiced at Hulagu's supposed wish to be baptised. Encyclopaedia Iranica doubts Hulagu ever wanted to convert.
• In January 1263 the army of his son Abaqa was routed by the Golden Horde north of the Caucasus. Encyclopaedia Iranica says the ice broke under the fleeing troops and drowned many of them.
• Nasir al-Din Tusi, one of the scholars who had been at Alamut, became a trusted adviser and is said to have encouraged Hulagu to attack Baghdad (Encyclopaedia Iranica).

Sources: The Travels of Marco Polo, vol. 1, Book I ch. 6 on Alau and the taking of Baghdad (trans. Henry Yule; Project Gutenberg #10636); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Hulagu Khan; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Il-khanids i. Dynastic History; Wikipedia: Hulagu Khan

The Ilkhanate (1256 to 1335)

The Ilkhanate was the Mongol state founded by Hulagu in Persia. Its territory covered present-day Iran, Azerbaijan, much of Anatolia and parts of Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Georgia and Afghanistan at its greatest extent. Its capitals were Maragha, Tabriz and, from 1306, Soltaniyeh. The Ilkhans fought the Mamluks of Egypt for decades and sent embassies to Europe seeking allies. Buddhism flourished under early Ilkhanid patronage, with Christians, Zoroastrians and others also present; Ghazan converted to Islam in 1295, and Islam became the religion of the court. The dynasty paid for fine buildings, observatories and histories, among them Rashid al-Din's world history. It broke apart after the death of Abu Said in 1335.

• The paper money introduced at Tabriz in 1294, under the vizier Sadr al-Din Zanjani, was in Encyclopaedia Iranica's words a complete failure. It contributed to an economic crisis already caused by livestock deaths, mismanagement and court spending.
• Rashid al-Din, the vizier and historian who wrote the Jami al-tawarikh, was tried and executed under Abu Said, in 1318.
• Abu Said was twelve when he came to the throne and died in 1335 without sons, so there were almost no Hulaguid heirs left. The senior Mongol commanders backed rival candidates and the kingdom disintegrated.

Sources: The Travels of Marco Polo, vol. 1, Prologue and Book I on Persia and the Mongol court of Arghun and Ghazan (trans. Henry Yule; Project Gutenberg #10636); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Il-khanids i. Dynastic History; Wikipedia: Ilkhanate; Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'Invasions of the Mongols and Tamerlane' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us)

The Mongol sack of Baghdad (January to February 1258)

Hulagu directed his generals to converge on Baghdad at the end of 1257. The caliph surrendered on 10 February 1258, and the sack began on 13 February and lasted about a week. The caliph, al-Musta'sim, was executed with most of his family. Tusi, who advised Hulagu, is said to have encouraged the attack (Encyclopaedia Iranica). Hulagu's Christian wife Doquz Khatun interceded for the Christians of the city, who were spared. The Abbasid line was later revived as a figurehead by the Mamluks in Cairo. Some modern historians think the fall's role in ending a golden age of Islamic learning has been overstated.

• Marco Polo tells that Hulagu shut the caliph in a tower of his own treasure to starve, saying 'Now eat of thy treasure as much as thou wilt, since thou art so fond of it'. Other sources say he was executed, perhaps wrapped in a carpet and trampled. Polo also dates the capture to 1255, three years early.
• The much-repeated claim that books thrown into the Tigris turned its waters black comes from a much later account (a sixteenth-century historian, according to Wikipedia). The historian Michal Biran shows that large libraries reopened within two years.
• Later Muslim writers gave 800,000 to 2 million dead, and Hulagu's own letter to Louis IX claimed 2 million. The historian Peter Jackson calls such figures obviously inflated.

Sources: The Travels of Marco Polo, vol. 1 (trans. Henry Yule; Project Gutenberg); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Hulagu Khan; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Mongols; Wikipedia: Siege of Baghdad (1258); Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'Invasions of the Mongols and Tamerlane' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us)

Ghazan Khan (1295 to 1304)

Mahmud Ghazan, seventh Ilkhan of Persia, Ilkhanate (Hulaguid dynasty)

Ghazan was born in 1271, the son of Arghun. He governed Khorasan and the east, and spent years fighting a rebellious lieutenant, Nowruz. In 1295 he converted to Islam, took the name Mahmud, and defeated Baydu in the struggle for the throne. His conversion led many Mongols in Persia to become Muslim. He first pressed non-Muslims hard, Buddhists most of all, but later relaxed the pressure on Christians and Jews. The Ilkhanate was near bankruptcy; Ghazan introduced a regular tax schedule, land registers, payment of troops by land grants and curbs on abusive officials. He still kept Mongol law, the yasa, and commissioned Rashid al-Din to write a history of the Mongols.

How they came to power: Ghazan converted on 2 Sha'ban 694 (17 June 1295) at the urging of Nowruz, partly to win support from Muslim officers. He defeated Baydu, who was executed, and then executed several Mongol princes who disputed his rule.

How it ended: Ghazan died on 17 May 1304 (Encyclopaedia Iranica; Wikipedia says 11 May), aged about thirty-two, as he planned a fourth campaign into Syria. Mamluk writers said his wife Bolughan Khatun had poisoned him; Iranica says natural causes brought about his death, with heavy drinking possibly contributing.

• When Marco Polo and his companions reached Persia with the young princess Kokachin, whom they had escorted from China, her intended husband Arghun was dead, and she was given to his son Ghazan (Polo, Book I Prologue).
• An Arabic source of the 14th century reports that Ghazan considered abandoning Islam when told that his wish to marry his father's widow broke Islamic law. A compromise was found and he stayed a Muslim.
• The Armenian historian Het'um, who went with him into Syria in 1299-1300, described him as small and ugly in appearance. He launched more campaigns into Syria than any other Ilkhan.

Sources: The Travels of Marco Polo, vol. 1 (trans. Henry Yule; Project Gutenberg); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Ghazan Khan, Mahmud; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Il-khanids i. Dynastic History; Wikipedia: Ghazan

Hafez (c. 1315 to 1390)

Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafez of Shiraz, lyric poet, Poet · Shiraz

Hafez lived in Shiraz in the turbulent years between the Mongols and Timur. Almost nothing about his life is certain. Scholars generally say he was born in 1315 or 1317, though Wikipedia's infobox gives about 1325, and later biographers' notes are often unreliable. Most of his career fell under the Muzaffarid ruler Shah Shoja, and he wrote praise poems for several rulers and viziers. Encyclopaedia Iranica notes that his wine imagery and his attacks on hypocrisy and moral policing are read in more than one way, as mysticism and as satire. His Divan has been used for fortune-telling and has also been the subject of more analysis than any other Persian poet's.

How they rose: Born and raised in Shiraz, he took the pen name Hafez, meaning one who has learned the Quran by heart. His career grew under local rulers, above all Shah Shoja of the Muzaffarids.

How they died: He died in Shiraz in 1390; some sources say 1389. He was buried in the prayer hall known as the Hafezieh, and the present mausoleum was designed by Andre Godard in the late 1930s (Wikipedia).

• Families open the Divan at random, often at Nowruz or Yalda, and read the poem as a sign of what is coming. The practice is called fal-e Hafez, and his nickname is 'Tongue of the Unseen'.
• No single text of the Divan is agreed. Editions range from 573 to 994 poems, and the two most respected contain 495 and 486 ghazals.
• Wikipedia presents a tale in which Timur summoned Hafez over a verse offering Samarkand and Bukhara for a beloved's mole; Hafez replied that such generosity had made him poor, and Timur sent him off with gifts. It sits under the article's 'Legends' heading, not as verified history. The verse is in Gertrude Bell's translation (Poem V).

Sources: Poems from the Divan of Hafiz, trans. Gertrude Bell (Project Gutenberg #74883); Hafiz, 'Verses in Praise of God' (trans. C. F. Horne, 1917; Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Hafez ii. Hafez's Life and Times; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Hafez i. An Overview; Wikipedia: Hafez

Timur (1370 to 1405)

Timur (Tamerlane), conqueror and founder of the Timurid dynasty, Timurid dynasty

Timur belonged to a clan of the Chaghatayid Mongols that had become Turkified. He was born near Kesh in Transoxiana, most likely in the late 1320s (later Timurid histories say 8 April 1336). He rose in the chaos of the decaying Chaghatai khanate and became master of Transoxiana, with Samarkand as capital. Encyclopaedia Iranica notes that when he took a city he often sent its craftsmen to Samarkand before putting the rest of the people to the sword. He conquered Khorasan, Azerbaijan and the Caucasus, ended the Muzaffarid dynasty in 1393, defeated the Ottoman sultan Bayezid at Ankara on 20 July 1402 and sacked Delhi in December 1398. In Isfahan in 1387 a revolt against his tax collectors was answered by a massacre; Iranica reports an order for 70,000 heads, and Wikipedia says estimates of the dead run from 100,000 to 200,000.

How they came to power: He was proclaimed sovereign at Balkh on 9 April 1370. Around 1363 he had been hit by two arrows, in the right leg and the right hand, which left him lame and cost him two fingers. That gave him the Persian nickname Timur-e Lang, 'Timur the Lame', the source of 'Tamerlane'.

How it ended: Timur died on 17 or 18 February 1405 at Farab, far from his capital, and was buried at Gur-e Amir in Samarkand. His empire broke up soon after.

• The Castilian envoy Clavijo saw Timur order a new street cut through the middle of Samarkand. The houses in the way were pulled down and the whole street was finished in twenty days, with crews working day and night. When the displaced owners asked, through his courtiers, for compensation, Timur answered that all the land in Samarkand was his own, that he had bought it and held the title deeds, and that he would pay at once for anything wrongly taken.
• Clavijo also reports that Timur, too frail to ride, was carried in a litter each morning to supervise a mosque under construction and had cooked meat thrown down to the labourers. A chapel for his grandson that he thought too low was rebuilt within ten days.
• Ibn Khaldun met him outside Damascus in 1401. Timur questioned him closely about North Africa and asked for a written description, and Ibn Khaldun noted that Timur's right knee was lame from an arrow wound.

Sources: Clavijo, Embassy to Tamerlane 1403-1406 (trans. Guy Le Strange; extracts, University of Washington Silk Road Seattle); Ibn Khaldun's meeting with Timur outside Damascus, 1401 (English translation of his autobiography, Ballandalus); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Iran ii. Iranian History (2) Islamic period (page 3); Wikipedia: Timur; Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'Invasions of the Mongols and Tamerlane' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us)

Shia Islam made the state religion (1501)

Before 1501 Sunni Islam, mainly the Shafi'i school, was the faith of most Iranians. Twelver Shia communities lived mainly in Gilan, Mazandaran and Qom. The new shah ordered the Shia call to prayer in all mosques and the public cursing of the first three caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman, on pain of beheading. Iran had few Twelver scholars of law, so the Safavids brought in Arab jurists from Jabal Amil in southern Lebanon and elsewhere. Resistance was suppressed. Over the following century most Iranians became Shia, setting Iran apart from its Sunni neighbours, the Ottomans and the Uzbeks. Accounts of the early violence, such as a figure of 'thousands, maybe even 20,000' Sunnis killed at Tabriz, are uncertain. Ismail II undid some Shia customs, including the cursing, in 1576-77, which led to an uprising in Qazvin; his successor Mohammad Khodabanda restored Twelver Shi'ism as the official religion.

• The Shia call to prayer added the phrase 'I witness that Ali is God's friend'.
• Al-Muhaqqiq al-Karaki, a scholar from Jabal Amil who died in 1533, was the most powerful of the Arab clerics at court.
• An anonymous Venetian merchant who visited Tabriz in the 1510s describes two preachers under great elm trees there 'declaring and setting forth the new faith or Suffavean doctrine', one of whom was said to have taught the shah himself (Travels of a Merchant in Persia, ch. 7).

Sources: A Narrative of Italian Travels in Persia in the 15th and 16th Centuries (Hakluyt Society, 1873; Internet Archive); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Esma'il I Safawi; Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'The Safavids, 1501-1722' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us); Wikipedia: Safavid conversion of Iran from Sunnism to Shiism

Ismail I (1501 to 1524)

Ismail I, first Safavid shah of Iran, Safavid dynasty

Ismail was born on 17 July 1487 in Ardabil, head of a Sufi order whose followers, Turkmen warriors called Qizilbash, became the core of his army. By July 1501 he had taken Tabriz and been crowned shah, still no older than fourteen. He made Twelver Shi'ism the official religion and enforced it hard. In December 1510 his forces beat the Uzbeks at Merv, killing their ruler Shaybani Khan. In 1514 the Ottoman sultan Selim I defeated him at Chaldiran.

How they came to power: His father Shaykh Haydar was killed in battle in 1488, and Ismail grew up in hiding. Italian accounts of the time already disagree about his age and hiding place. He gathered the Qizilbash, defeated the local Turkmen rulers, took Tabriz and was proclaimed shah in 1501.

How it ended: After Chaldiran, Ismail withdrew from campaigning. Wikipedia says that the Ottomans took his favourite wife among the booty, and that he never again joined a military campaign. He died near Tabriz on 23 May 1524, aged thirty-six, and was buried at Ardabil. Accounts blame his decline on depression and heavy drinking after Chaldiran.

• The Venetian Caterino Zeno claims that the boy Ismail 'remained four years concealed in the house of a priest' on an island in Lake Van, and that the priest, who professed to be an astrologer, cast his horoscope and foresaw that he would become lord of all Asia. The 1873 editors add in a footnote that authors differ about Ismail's age.
• After the victory at Merv in 1510, Ismail is reported to have had the skull of Shaybani Khan made into a jewelled drinking cup. The story is widely repeated, but standard summaries cite no contemporary source, and accounts of what became of the body conflict.
• He wrote poetry under the pen name Khata'i, mostly in Turkish and some in Persian. Wikipedia notes that his divan was compiled under his son Tahmasp, so not every poem is certainly his.

Sources: A Narrative of Italian Travels in Persia in the 15th and 16th Centuries (Hakluyt Society, 1873; Internet Archive); Letters of Selim I and Ismail before Chaldiran, 1514 (from Feridun Bey's Munsha'at; English translation, Ballandalus); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Esma'il I Safawi; Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'The Safavids, 1501-1722' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us); Wikipedia: Ismail I

The battle of Chaldiran (23 August 1514)

On 23 August 1514, on the plain of Chaldiran in north-western Iran, Selim I's Ottoman army met Shah Ismail's Safavid army. Estimates of numbers vary widely; Encyclopaedia Iranica puts the Safavids at about 40,000. The Ottoman janissaries held the centre behind a barricade of gun-carriages, supported by artillery; the Safavids, a largely cavalry force, had no cannon. Ismail was wounded and nearly captured, and his wives and harem fell to Selim. The Ottomans entered Tabriz on 7 September but withdrew about a week later. The war between the two states went on for forty-one years, until the Peace of Amasya in 1555.

• Before the battle Selim sent Ismail a letter calling him 'the usurping Darius of the time' and offering royal favour if he repented. Ismail's reply blamed the insults on 'the opium-clouded minds of certain secretaries and scribes', and added: 'in all friendship we say, Do what you will.'
• Encyclopaedia Iranica says that on the eve of battle Ismail and his chief commander Durmish Khan rebuked officers who urged an immediate attack. The shah thought attacking an unprepared enemy was cowardly, and Iranica calls the delay a costly mistake, since it let the Ottomans prepare their defences.
• By one account Ismail sent envoys to ransom a captured wife, and Selim had their noses cut off and sent them back. Wikipedia cites Alan Mikhail's God's Shadow (2020) for this.

Sources: Letters of Selim I and Ismail before Chaldiran, 1514 (from Feridun Bey's Munsha'at; English translation, Ballandalus); A Narrative of Italian Travels in Persia in the 15th and 16th Centuries (Hakluyt Society, 1873; Internet Archive); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Calderan; Wikipedia: Battle of Chaldiran

Tahmasp I (1524 to 1576)

Tahmasp I, second Safavid shah, Safavid dynasty

Tahmasp was born on 22 February 1514 and succeeded his father Ismail I on 23 May 1524, at about ten. At first the Qizilbash chiefs ruled in his name, and they fought one another. Once he took charge, he defeated the Uzbeks and campaigned in Georgia; in a campaign of 1553 he moved more than 30,000 people, mostly women and children, from the Caucasus to the Iranian plateau, and Georgians became a new force in the administration. After the Peace of Amasya with the Ottomans in 1555 he moved the capital from Tabriz to Qazvin, farther from the Ottoman frontier; Iranica dates the decision to 1557. He was a patron of painting and left a memoir. In 1556 he issued an edict renouncing wine, music and other pleasures.

How they came to power: Ismail's death in 1524 left a ten-year-old heir. The Qizilbash chief Div Sultan Rumlu acted as his guardian, then rival Turkmen factions fought a civil war, and Tahmasp took power fully around 1533, after executing the Shamlu chief Husayn Khan.

How it ended: Tahmasp died in Qazvin on 14 May 1576. Wikipedia says he was poisoned and that a physician, Abu Naser Gilani, was blamed and put to death; other sources are less sure. His son Ismail II took the throne and, within two months, ordered a purge of the royal family.

• Anthony Jenkinson reached Qazvin on 2 November 1562 with a letter from Queen Elizabeth. The shah's advisers urged that he be sent to the Ottoman sultan 'for a present'. Instead, 'the 20. day of March 1562' the shah gave him a rich garment of cloth of gold and let him go unharmed. The English year then began on 25 March, so by modern reckoning the date is 1563.
• In 1544 the exiled Mughal emperor Humayun came to his court. Tahmasp refused him military help unless he accepted Shia Islam. Humayun agreed, and later returned to the Sunni faith (Wikipedia).
• The Hakluyt editors quote the Venetian envoy Vincenzo degli Alessandri as saying that Tahmasp 'would allow no one to be avaricious but himself'.

Sources: Early Voyages and Travels to Russia and Persia by Anthony Jenkinson and Other Englishmen, vol. 1 (Hakluyt Society; Internet Archive); A Narrative of Italian Travels in Persia in the 15th and 16th Centuries (Hakluyt Society, 1873; Internet Archive); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Tahmasp I; Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'The Safavids, 1501-1722' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us); Wikipedia: Tahmasp I

Abbas I (the Great) (1588 to 1629)

Abbas I, fifth Safavid shah, called the Great, Safavid dynasty

Abbas was born in Herat on 27 January 1571. He came to the throne in 1588 (Iranica: crowned 1 October 1588; Wikipedia gives 1587), when a Qizilbash chief, Murshid Quli Khan, put the teenage Abbas in place of Shah Mohammad. Abbas soon ruled in his own right. To weaken the Qizilbash chiefs he built a standing army of ghulams, Georgian, Armenian and Circassian converts, which Wikipedia says grew to about 25,000. In 1598 he moved the capital to Isfahan and began to rebuild it. He pushed back the Uzbeks and recovered land from the Ottomans, including Tabriz in 1603 and Baghdad in 1624.

How they came to power: He was crowned in 1588. Murshid Quli Khan expected to control him, but Abbas arranged for him to be killed after a banquet on 23 July 1589 (Wikipedia) and ruled in his own name.

How it ended: Late in life he grew suspicious of his sons. His crown prince, Mohammad Baqer Mirza, was executed on his orders, and two other sons were blinded (Iranica). He died on 19 January 1629 in Mazandaran, at Farahabad according to Wikipedia, aged fifty-seven, and was buried in Kashan.

• In 1622 he retook Hormuz from the Portuguese with the help of four English ships (Wikipedia; Iranica notes the English help).
• The English brothers Anthony and Robert Sherley arrived at his court in 1598 (Wikipedia). Anthony Sherley's book of 1613 is titled 'A True Relation of the great Magnificence, Valour, Prudence, Justice of Abas, now King of Persia'.
• Wikipedia gives around 300,000 Armenians as deported from the Caucasus in his reign, which is an estimate. Encyclopaedia Iranica says thousands of Armenian artisans were moved from Julfa in Azerbaijan to a new quarter, New Julfa, near Isfahan.

Sources: Sir Antony Sherley, His Relation of His Travels into Persia (1613; Internet Archive); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Abbas I; Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'The Safavids, 1501-1722' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us); Wikipedia: Abbas I of Persia

Isfahan, "half the world", and Naqsh-e Jahan Square (1598 to 1629)

The Persian proverb 'Isfahan is half the world' (Esfahan nesf-e jahan) is attached to the city rebuilt by Abbas the Great. Between 1598 and 1629 he built Naqsh-e Jahan Square, about 560 metres long and 160 wide. The Shah Mosque stands on the south side, the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque on the east, the Ali Qapu Palace on the west, and the Qaisariyya gate on the north leads into the bazaar. The square held daily trade, public ceremonies, Nowruz celebrations and polo matches. UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site in 1979.

• Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque was built first and was a private mosque for the royal court (UNESCO; Wikipedia).
• From the upper galleries of Ali Qapu the Safavid shahs watched polo games, military manoeuvres and horse races in the square (Wikipedia).
• Sir John Chardin, who lived in Isfahan in the late 1660s and published his travels in London in 1686, described a tall May-pole in the middle of the royal piazza with a cup of gold at the top, a prize for the first horseman who could shoot it down at full gallop with bow and arrows.

Sources: The Travels of Sir John Chardin into Persia and the East Indies (London, 1686; Internet Archive); UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Meidan Emam, Esfahan; Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'The Safavids, 1501-1722' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us); Wikipedia: Naqsh-e Jahan Square

Sultan Husayn (1694 to 1722)

Sultan Husayn, last effective Safavid shah, Safavid dynasty

Sultan Husayn was born in 1668 in the royal harem and raised there with little training in government. He came to the throne in August 1694. Contemporaries described him as devout, indecisive and kind, and reluctant to shed blood. Early in his reign, at the urging of the cleric Majlesi, about 6,000 bottles of royal wine were poured out in the Royal Square. He is remembered less for policy than for weakness: in 1709 the Afghan Ghilzai leader Mirwais Hotak rose against the Georgian governor of Qandahar, Gorgin Khan, and seized the city, and Husayn's armies failed to retake it. In 1722 Mirwais's son Mahmud marched on the capital.

How they came to power: He was enthroned on 7 August 1694 (Iranica; one source gives 6 August), with help from his great-aunt Maryam Begum and the court eunuchs.

How it ended: Husayn gave up the throne in October 1722 after the siege of Isfahan (21 October by Iranica, 23 October by Wikipedia). He was held under Afghan rule and was beheaded on 9 September 1727 on the order of Ashraf Hotak, who had taken power after Mahmud.

• The Jesuit Krusinski, who lived in Isfahan, judged Husayn good-natured but without the qualities a king needs: 'He hurt no particular Person, and by that Means injur'd all Mankind'. He also calls the king a ruler without knowledge or experience, dominated by his eunuchs.
• The rebellion began in Qandahar in April 1709, when the Afghans killed the Georgian governor Gorgin Khan in his tents (Wikipedia).
• Husayn's son Tahmasp was sent out of Isfahan in June 1722 to raise a relief army. Krusinski says he left with an escort of 500 Qajars. Little came of the plan (Wikipedia).

Sources: Father Krusinski, The History of the Late Revolutions of Persia, vol. 1 (London, 1733; Internet Archive); Father Krusinski, The History of the Late Revolutions of Persia, vol. 2 (London, 1733; Internet Archive); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Soltan Hosayn; Wikipedia: Sultan Husayn

The Afghan siege of Isfahan (March to October 1722)

In early March 1722 (8 March in most accounts) Mahmud Hotak's Afghan army routed the royal army at Gulnabad and the survivors fled back to Isfahan. The Afghans had no artillery to break the walls, so they blockaded the city. Relief efforts were poorly organised and failed; Georgia's ruler Vakhtang VI declined to help. After more than seven months of siege Shah Sultan Husayn surrendered in late October (21 to 23 October, depending on the source), and Mahmud entered Isfahan on 25 October. Wikipedia's infobox puts civilian deaths in the siege at about 80,000. Safavid rule ended in practice, and most of the Safavid princes were killed under Afghan rule.

• The Jesuit Krusinski, who lived in the city, wrote that people began to eat camels, mules, horses and asses, and that a horse's carcass was worth 1,000 crowns at the end of August.
• Later they ate dogs and cats, and boiled shoe leather. Krusinski adds that a pound of bread sold for thirty shillings in September and for above fifty in October, and that at last they came to eat human flesh.
• The size of the armies is uncertain. Wikipedia gives Mahmud about 18,000 men against about 40,000 Persians, and says both figures are unclear; Krusinski says the Afghans were less than a tenth of Isfahan's population.

Sources: Father Krusinski, The History of the Late Revolutions of Persia, vol. 2 (London, 1733; Internet Archive); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Soltan Hosayn; Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'The Safavids, 1501-1722' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us); Wikipedia: Siege of Isfahan

Nader Shah (1736 to 1747)

Nader Shah Afshar, founder of the Afsharid dynasty, Afsharid dynasty

Nader was born in Khorasan in November 1688 (some sources say 1698). He served a local governor, then rebelled against the Afghan ruler of Mashhad and became general of the Safavid prince Tahmasp II. In 1729 he defeated the Afghan Ashraf, and he entered Isfahan that December. In 1739 he marched into India and defeated the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah at Karnal. He then sacked Delhi. After the plunder he cancelled taxes in Iran for three years, though Iranica says he later reinstated them when funds ran short.

How they came to power: At a great assembly on the Moghan plain he was proclaimed shah, and he was crowned on 8 March 1736. He proposed that the Ja'fari school of law be accepted as a fifth school of Sunni Islam; the Ottomans rejected the idea.

How it ended: Nader grew suspicious in his last years. After an assassination attempt in Mazandaran in 1741 he blinded his son Reza Qoli and regretted it. He was assassinated on 20 June 1747 at Quchan in Khorasan (Wikipedia; Iranica says only June 1747), killed by a cabal of Afshar and Qajar officers, and his empire fell into civil war.

• James Fraser's History of Nadir Shah appeared in London in 1743, within four years of the Delhi campaign. It lists the Peacock Throne among the plunder, with 'nine others set with precious Stones'. The text of the surviving scan is partly garbled by OCR, so check the printed book before quoting.
• The Peacock Throne disappeared after Nader's death and was most probably dismantled or destroyed for its valuables. No structural part is proven to survive (Wikipedia).
• Nader also took the Koh-i-Noor diamond from Delhi. It is now set in the Crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and is on display in the Jewel House at the Tower of London (Wikipedia).

Sources: James Fraser, The History of Nadir Shah (London, 1743; Internet Archive); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Nader Shah; Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'The Safavids, 1501-1722' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us); Wikipedia: Nader Shah

Nader Shah sacks Delhi and takes the Peacock Throne (February to May 1739)

In February 1739 Nader defeated the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah at Karnal (24 February in Wikipedia's account of the invasion). He entered Delhi on 20 March. On 22 March, after riots killed about 3,000 of his soldiers, Nader gave the signal for a massacre. It lasted about six hours and stopped only when Muhammad Shah begged for mercy. Estimates of the dead run from 20,000 to 30,000. A Dutch East India Company agent reported some 10,000 women and children taken as slaves. Delhi was fined heavily, and Nader took the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor. He left on 16 May, returning the lands east of the Indus to the emperor but keeping those to the west.

• The Peacock Throne was made for Shah Jahan and inaugurated in March 1635 (Wikipedia gives 22 March in one place and 12 March in another). Court historian Lahori put its cost at 10 million rupees. The French jeweller Tavernier counted 108 large rubies and 116 large emeralds on it.
• James Fraser's 1743 history puts the total plunder at '70 Crores in Jewels and other Effects' and the loss to the emperor and the people at 'very near one Arrib' of rupees, an arab being a hundred crore. The scan's OCR is garbled in places, so check these figures against the printed book.
• No structural part of the throne is proven to survive. Wikipedia says rumours that its pieces went into the later Sun Throne have no evidence behind them.

Sources: James Fraser, The History of Nadir Shah (London, 1743; Internet Archive); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Nader Shah; Library of Congress Country Study: Iran, 'The Safavids, 1501-1722' (public-domain text, mirrored on countrystudies.us); Wikipedia: Nader Shah's invasion of the Mughal Empire

Karim Khan Zand (1751 to 1779)

Karim Khan Zand, Vakil al-Ra'aya, ruler of most of Iran, Zand dynasty

Karim Khan Zand was born around 1705 in the village of Pari, in western Iran, the eldest son of Inaq Khan Zand. He served as a cavalryman under Nader Shah. After Nader was murdered in 1747, he defeated rivals, including Ali Mardan Khan Bakhtiari in 1751, and became the dominant ruler of Iran except Khorasan. He did not take the title of shah but called himself Vakil al-Ra'aya, 'deputy of the subjects', a title Iranica dates to his settling in Shiraz in 1765. He made Shiraz his capital and rebuilt much of it, with a citadel, gardens, a mosque and a bazaar. His commander Sadeq Khan took Basra, which surrendered in April 1776 after a siege of about a year.

How they came to power: After Nader's death the Zand group returned to western Iran. Karim Khan beat his rivals in the following years and by 1751 was the leading power in the western part of the country.

How it ended: He died in Shiraz on 1 March 1779 after about six months of illness, probably of tuberculosis (Encyclopaedia Iranica). His death set off a struggle among the Zands, which ended with the Qajar victory over the last Zand ruler, Lotf Ali Khan, in the 1790s (Agha Mohammad Khan took Shiraz in 1792; Wikipedia dates the end of the dynasty to 1794).

• A visitor in 1786-87, William Francklin, described Shiraz as ringed by a wall 'five and twenty feet high, and ten thick' with round towers about eighty paces apart, and a dry ditch 60 feet deep and 20 wide, 'the work of the late Vakeel Kerim Khan'.
• Karim Khan repaired the neglected tombs of Shah Shoja, Hafez and Saadi (Encyclopaedia Iranica).
• Francklin, an Englishman, entered the 'noble' mosque Karim Khan built in Shiraz only by dressing as a Persian. He found the work unfinished at Karim Khan's death, with the remainder done in blue and white enamelled work in place of the planned china tile.

Sources: William Francklin, Observations Made on a Tour from Bengal to Persia in 1786-7 (1790; Internet Archive); Encyclopaedia Iranica: Karim Khan Zand; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Wakil al-Ra'aya; Wikipedia: Karim Khan Zand

Agha Mohammad Khan (1789 to 1797)

Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, first Shah of the Qajar dynasty, Qajar dynasty

Agha Mohammad Khan was the founder of the Qajar dynasty, which ruled Iran until 1925. He spent his youth as a hostage at the court of the Zand ruler Karim Khan in Shiraz, and then fought his own brothers and the last Zand princes for the country. He made Tehran his capital on 12 March 1786, was enthroned in 1789 and was crowned in March 1796. His government was small. His grand vizier was Hajji Ebrahim, and many provinces were run by tribal chiefs. Scholars describe his violence as often calculated, though sometimes simply vindictive.

How they came to power: After the Zand ruler Karim Khan died on 1 March 1779, Agha Mohammad Khan left Shiraz and took Mazandaran from his brothers. He took Isfahan in 1785 and Shiraz in 1792, and the fall of Kerman on 24 October 1794 ended the Zand resistance of Lotf Ali Khan. He named his nephew Baba Khan, later Fath-Ali Shah, as heir.

How it ended: He was killed on 17 June 1797 in his tent at Shusha, reportedly three days after he had taken the town. Accounts name three servants, two of whom he had just condemned to execution. His nephew Fath-Ali succeeded him, and he is buried in the Imam Ali shrine at Najaf.

• He was castrated as a small child, at five or six depending on the source, on the orders of Adel Shah, a rival ruler. He later spent about sixteen years at Karim Khan Zand's court in Shiraz, where he had considerable freedom, including hunting trips.
• After taking Mashhad in 1796 he had the remains of Nader Shah sent to Tehran and reburied alongside Karim Khan Zand's body.
• Sir John Malcolm, a British envoy, wrote that running antelope with greyhounds on a long silken leash was the delight of Agha Mohammad Khan, a taste inherited by the Shah of Malcolm's own day.

Sources: Sir John Malcolm, Sketches of Persia, 1827, chapter V 'Hunting and Hawking' (Project Gutenberg); Encyclopedia of World Biography: Agha Mohammad Khan (Encyclopedia.com); Iran Chamber Society: Qajar Dynasty, 1794-1925; Wikipedia: Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar

Fath-Ali Shah (1797 to 1834)

Fath-Ali Shah Qajar, Shah of Iran, Qajar dynasty

Fath-Ali Shah, known as Baba Khan before he took the throne, ruled for 37 years. His reign saw two wars with Russia, in 1804 to 1813 and 1826 to 1828, and the loss of Georgia and much of the South Caucasus. He sought help from both France and Britain, and neither delivered it. At home he made painting a tool of court display, commissioning large portraits and rock reliefs. His son and heir Abbas Mirza led the army.

How they came to power: As the nephew of the childless Agha Mohammad Khan he had been named heir years earlier. He took the throne in 1797 after his uncle's murder, and his official coronation took place in Tehran on 19 March 1798.

How it ended: He died in Isfahan on 24 October 1834, aged 62, and was buried at the shrine of Fatima Masumeh in Qom. His chosen heir Abbas Mirza had died the year before, so the throne passed to his grandson Mohammad.

• Some 25 portraits of him are known, and his very long black beard, said to reach well below his waist, is his best-known feature. Malcolm called it famous for its length and glossy black.
• He was survived by 57 sons and 46 daughters, though counts vary, and one book published in England in 1874 gave different numbers.
• He had rock reliefs of himself carved next to Sasanian ones at Ray, in Fars and at Kermanshah.

Sources: James Morier, A Journey through Persia, Armenia and Asia Minor, 1808 and 1809 (Project Gutenberg); Iran Chamber Society: Qajar Dynasty, 1794-1925; Wikipedia: Fath-Ali Shah Qajar; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Fath-Ali Shah Qajar

The Russo-Persian Wars and the Treaty of Turkmenchay (1804 to 1813 and 1826 to 1828; treaty signed in February 1828)

Russia took Georgia and then pushed south, and Iran fought back in two wars. The first ended with the Treaty of Gulistan on 24 October 1813. In the second, Russian troops took Erivan in October 1827 and reached Tabriz. The Treaty of Turkmenchay followed in February 1828, dated 10 February in the Russian calendar of the time and 22 February in the modern one. Iran gave up the Erivan and Nakhchivan khanates, accepted the Aras as the frontier and paid an indemnity of 20 million silver rubles. Russian subjects in Iran gained legal privileges, and only Russia could keep warships on the Caspian.

• The negotiator Alexander Griboyedov, a Russian playwright and diplomat, became Russia's envoy in Tehran. On 11 February 1829 a mob stormed the Russian mission and killed him and almost everyone inside.
• As an apology, the Shah presented the Shah Diamond to the Tsar, according to Wikipedia.
• Article 15 gave inhabitants of Iranian Azerbaijan the right to move to Russian territory, and Wikipedia says about 45,000 Armenians from Iran did so between 1828 and 1831.

Sources: Treaty of Turkmenchay: articles as presented by the Presidential Library of Azerbaijan; Georgian Encyclopedia: Treaty of Turkmenchay; Iran Chamber Society: Qajar Dynasty, 1794-1925; Wikipedia: Treaty of Turkmenchay

Naser al-Din Shah (1848 to 1896)

Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, Shah of Iran, Qajar dynasty

Naser al-Din Shah reigned for almost 48 years, one of the longest reigns in Iranian history. Telegraph lines, a postal service and the Dar al-Fonun college arrived in his time. He visited Europe in 1873, 1878 and 1889. He also borrowed abroad and sold monopolies to European firms, and the tobacco concession of 1890 set off a nationwide protest. He was a keen amateur photographer and left albums of his court.

How they came to power: His father Mohammad Shah died on 4 September 1848 while the 17-year-old crown prince was in Tabriz. He took the throne the next day, with the help of the minister Amir Kabir, who arranged the money for his journey to Tehran.

How it ended: On 1 May 1896 he was shot at the shrine of Shah Abdol-Azim near Tehran by Mirza Reza Kermani, a follower of the reformer Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. Kermani was later hanged. The Shah was 64, and his son Mozaffar al-Din succeeded him.

• According to the ISAW exhibition notes, he was given two early cameras by Queen Victoria and Tsar Nicholas I while still crown prince, and he learned to use them.
• In 1873 Queen Victoria made him a Knight of the Garter, the first Iranian monarch to receive the honour.
• He kept a diary of his 1873 tour of Europe, which has been published in Persian, German, French and Dutch.

Sources: Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1896: Assassination of the Shah (telegrams of 1 to 4 May 1896); E. G. Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909 (1910), chapter on the Tobacco Concession; Eye of the Shah: Qajar Court Photography and the Persian Past (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU); Wikipedia: Naser al-Din Shah Qajar

Amir Kabir (Chief minister 1848 to 1851; lived c. 1807 to 1852)

Mirza Taqi Khan Farahani, called Amir Kabir, chief minister of Iran, Reformer · Qajar court

Mirza Taqi Khan rose from a household of modest means to become the young Shah's chief minister in 1848, with the title Amir Kabir. He cut government spending, brought customs collection under central control and refused new concessions to Britain or Russia. He founded the Dar ol-Fonun college in 1851 and a government newspaper, Vaqaye-ye Ettefaqiyeh. His campaign against smallpox is credited with saving many lives. His government also suppressed the Babi movement and ordered the execution of its founder, the Bab, in 1850. Courtiers whose pensions he cut, and the Shah's mother, worked against him.

How they rose: His father was a cook in the household of Mirza Bozorg, the chief minister of Crown Prince Abbas Mirza, who noticed the boy's talent and had him taught alongside his own sons. After years in army finance, a posting to Erzurum on the Ottoman frontier and a role as tutor to the young Naser al-Din, he was named chief minister in 1848.

How they died: He was dismissed in late 1851 and sent under duress to Kashan. On 10 January 1852 he was killed at the Fin Garden there on the Shah's order. Accounts differ on the method.

• Lady Sheil, wife of the British minister, wrote in 1856 that the prime minister Mirza Taqi Khan's origin was 'very humble', his father a cook of Tabriz, yet in Persia 'obscurity of descent is not an obstacle to advancement'.
• He required officials earning more than 2,000 rials a year to subscribe to the official newspaper he founded.
• The Austrian teachers he had recruited for the Dar ol-Fonun arrived in Tehran in November 1851, after he had already been dismissed.

Sources: Lady Sheil, Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia, 1856, ch. 13 (Bahai Library Online); Iran Chamber Society: Amir Kabir (Mirza Taqi Khan); Wikipedia: Amir Kabir

The Tobacco Protest (March 1890 to January 1892)

In March 1890 Naser al-Din Shah granted Major G. F. Talbot a monopoly over the production, sale and export of Iranian tobacco for fifty years. The concession was soon sold on to a company registered as the Imperial Tobacco Corporation of Persia. Bazaar merchants, clerics and intellectuals joined in protest. In December 1891 a ruling attributed to the senior cleric Mirza Hasan Shirazi forbade the use of tobacco. The boycott that followed was widely observed, and the Shah cancelled the concession in January 1892.

• The ruling, in the translation Browne gives, said that using tobacco in any form was reckoned as war against the Imam of the Age, the hidden Twelfth Imam.
• A chronicle quoted by E. G. Browne says the Shah asked for his water pipe the morning after the ruling reached Tehran and was told the palace's tobacco had been destroyed. Wikipedia says it was reported that women of the royal household also gave up smoking.
• To cancel the contract, the Shah's government had to pay the company half a million pounds. Historians often treat the protest as a rehearsal for the Constitutional Revolution.

Sources: E. G. Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909 (1910), chapter on the Tobacco Concession and its consequences; Ali Ansari, Iran's Constitutional Revolution of 1906 (Gresham College lecture, 2023); EBSCO Research Starters: Persia Adopts a Constitution; Wikipedia: Tobacco Protest

Mozaffar al-Din Shah (1896 to 1907)

Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar, Shah of Iran, Qajar dynasty

Mozaffar al-Din Shah took a treasury that spent far more than it earned. He borrowed from Russia, partly to pay for his trips to Europe, and sold economic rights to foreign firms, among them the D'Arcy oil concession of 1901. In the summer of 1906 strikes and a mass sanctuary at the British legation forced him to agree to an elected assembly. He approved the Fundamental Law that created Iran's first constitutional order at the end of that year.

How they came to power: He succeeded his assassinated father on 1 May 1896 after about 35 years as crown prince, and he was crowned later that year.

How it ended: He signed the Fundamental Law at the end of December 1906 (30 December is the date usually given) while seriously ill, and he died in Tehran on 8 January 1907, about a week later. He was buried at Karbala. His son Mohammad Ali Shah succeeded him.

• His decree of 5 August 1906 never used the word constitution. It ordered a national assembly of royal princes, prelates, members of the Qajar tribe, government officials, nobles, landowners and tradesmen.
• He saw a cinematograph in Paris and ordered his photographer to acquire the equipment. That photographer, Mirza Ebrahim Khan Akkas Bashi, filmed him on the beach at Ostend, Belgium, on 15 August 1900, which is counted as the start of film in Iran.
• He had a weak heart and a chronic kidney infection, yet he enjoyed riding, hunting and shooting.

Sources: Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1906, Part II, Doc. 328: the Shah's decree of 5 August 1906, enclosed with Minister Pearson's dispatch; E. G. Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909 (1910), Appendix A: the Farman of 5 August 1906 and the Fundamental Laws; EBSCO Research Starters: Persia Adopts a Constitution; Wikipedia: Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar

The D'Arcy Concession and the Oil Strike at Masjed Soleyman (28 May 1901 to 26 May 1908)

On 28 May 1901 Mozaffar al-Din Shah granted the British investor William Knox D'Arcy the exclusive right to look for and sell petroleum across Iran for sixty years. Five northern provinces were left out. The Iranian state was to receive 20,000 pounds in cash, 120,000 pounds in shares of the first company and 16 percent of the annual net profits. D'Arcy's engineer George Reynolds drilled dry wells at Shardin in 1906 and 1907. Well No. 1 at Masjed Soleyman, begun on 23 January 1908, struck oil on 26 May 1908, at about 1,180 feet. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was registered in London on 14 April 1909, and in 1914 the British government decided to buy 51 percent of it. Masjed Soleyman is usually called the first commercial oil discovery in the Middle East, though a smaller find at Chiah Surkh in 1904 came earlier.

• The agreement was written in French and translated into Persian, and the French text was to prevail if the two differed.
• D'Arcy's money ran so low that in 1905 he brought in Burmah Oil as a partner.
• The gusher hit at about four in the morning, and the well tested at roughly 297 barrels a day the following day.

Sources: English text of the D'Arcy Concession, 28 May 1901, as hosted by the Mossadegh Project (a web transcription; the original was in French); Rasoul Sorkhabi, The First Oil Field in the Middle East (AAPG Explorer, 2018); Wikipedia: Masjed Soleyman; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Anglo-Persian Oil Company

The Constitutional Revolution (1905 to 1911)

Protests began in late 1905 after merchants were beaten in Tehran, and the bazaar closed. Accounts differ on who ordered the beatings: Wikipedia says two sugar merchants were punished for profiteering, while Ali Ansari names a Belgian customs official. Clerics and merchants took sanctuary in a mosque, then at the shrine of Shah Abdol-Azim, and in the summer of 1906 thousands camped in the grounds of the British legation. On 5 August 1906 the Shah ordered an elected assembly. The first Majles opened on 7 October 1906, the Fundamental Law was ratified on 30 December 1906, and Supplementary Fundamental Laws followed on 7 October 1907. Mohammad Ali Shah turned against the Majles. On 23 June 1908 the Cossack Brigade under its Russian colonel Vladimir Liakhov bombarded it. Resistance in Tabriz and the arrival of constitutionalist forces in Tehran brought him down in July 1909. The Second Majles lasted until December 1911, when it was dissolved under Russian pressure after the American treasurer-general William Morgan Shuster was ordered out. Historians still debate the movement's start and end dates and the role of the clergy, including Sheikh Fazlollah Nuri.

• The American minister cabled on 12 August 1906 that riots in Tehran had killed 117 people and that about 14,000 refugees had camped on British ground. E. G. Browne gives 14,000 or 15,000.
• The 1906 Fundamental Law had 51 articles, and the Belgian constitution served as a partial model.
• In 1906 the American minister doubted it would last, noting that Persian had no real word for constitution and that perhaps 3,000 people owned about three quarters of the land.

Sources: Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1906, Part II, Doc. 327: Minister Pearson to the Secretary of State, 12 August 1906; E. G. Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909 (1910), including the Farman of 5 August 1906 and the Fundamental Laws; Ali Ansari, Iran's Constitutional Revolution of 1906 (Gresham College lecture, 2023); Janet Afary: Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1906), from The Encyclopedia of Political Revolutions; Iran Chamber Society: Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911; Wikipedia: Persian Constitutional Revolution; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Constitutional Revolution

The Anglo-Russian Convention (31 August 1907)

Signed at Saint Petersburg on 31 August 1907, the convention settled British and Russian disputes in Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet. Its Persian articles promised to respect Persia's independence and integrity. They also marked out a northern zone where Britain would seek no concessions, a south-eastern zone where Russia would seek none, and a middle zone in between. Persia was not consulted and was informed after the signing. Many Persians had seen Britain as friendly to constitutionalism, after its legation had sheltered the protesters in 1906, and they read the agreement as a betrayal. Soviet Russia renounced it in 1918.

• The prime minister Amin al-Soltan was shot dead in Tehran on 31 August 1907, the very day the convention was signed.
• Punch printed a cartoon on 2 October 1907 showing a lion and a bear mauling a cat, which cries 'I don't remember having been consulted about this!', according to E. G. Browne.
• The text names Isfahan, Yezd and Kakhk as marking the northern zone and Birjand, Kerman and Bandar Abbas as marking the south-eastern one.

Sources: The Anglo-Russian Entente, 1907: agreement concerning Persia (Avalon Project, Yale Law School); E. G. Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909 (1910), chapter III: The Anglo-Russian Agreement as seen through Persian eyes; Ali Ansari, Iran's Constitutional Revolution of 1906 (Gresham College lecture, 2023); Wikipedia: Anglo-Russian Convention; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907

Ahmad Shah (1909 to 1925)

Ahmad Shah Qajar, last Shah of the Qajar dynasty, Qajar dynasty

Ahmad Shah came to the throne in July 1909 at about eleven, after the Majles deposed his father Mohammad Ali Shah. His uncle Ali Reza Khan Azod al-Molk served as regent, and the Shah was crowned on 21 July 1914 when he came of age. World War I brought Russian, British and Ottoman troops onto Iranian soil. The 1921 coup put real power in the hands of Reza Khan. The Shah left for Europe in 1923, citing his health.

How they came to power: He was born in Tabriz on 21 January 1898, the son of Mohammad Ali Shah. The Majles proclaimed him Shah on 16 July 1909 after his father was forced out.

How it ended: On 31 October 1925 the Majles voted to end Qajar rule, and he was not in the country. He lived in Europe and died aged 32 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris on 21 February 1930. By his will he was buried in the family crypt at Karbala.

• In July 1914 the U.S. minister in Tehran cabled that the Persian foreign ministry wanted Washington to name him special ambassador for the Shah's coronation, as other ministers had been.
• The end of his reign is dated two ways: the Majles voted to end Qajar rule on 31 October 1925, while Wikipedia's infobox gives 15 December 1925, after a constituent assembly named Reza Khan.
• On 30 October 1925 the U.S. chargé in Tehran cabled that demonstrations against the Qajar dynasty, which had the appearance of spontaneity, were becoming wider and more frequent.

Sources: Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1914, Doc. 1791: Minister Russell on the coronation of the Shah, 14 July 1914; Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1925, Vol. II, Doc. 539: Chargé Amory, 30 October 1925; Iran Chamber Society: Qajar Dynasty, 1794-1925; Wikipedia: Ahmad Shah Qajar; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Ahmad Shah Qajar

The 1921 Coup (18 to 21 February 1921 (3 Esfand 1299))

On 18 February 1921 Reza Khan led about 2,200 men of the Persian Cossack Brigade and 100 gendarmes from Qazvin towards Tehran, according to Encyclopaedia Iranica. They secured the capital on 21 February, and Iranica calls the takeover almost bloodless. Ahmad Shah appointed Zia al-Din Tabatabai prime minister and confirmed Reza Khan as commander of the armed forces. On 26 February the new government signed a friendship treaty with Soviet Russia. The Shah dismissed Zia on 25 May 1921. How far the British backed the plot is still debated. Iranica says General Edmund Ironside had chosen Reza Khan to command the Cossack unit at Qazvin and had probably encouraged the move, without being involved in the details. Reza Khan went on to become prime minister in 1923 and Shah in 1925.

• Estimates of the force that marched on Tehran differ: Iranica says about 2,200 Cossacks and 100 gendarmes, while Wikipedia's infobox says 1,500 Cossacks and 100 gendarmes.
• In January 1921 the American minister reported that British troops were leaving northern Iran, that the 1919 Anglo-Persian agreement could not be carried out, and that Tehran was about to conclude a convention with Soviet Russia.
• Ahmad Qavam, who had been jailed for refusing to recognise the new government, replaced Zia as prime minister after the Shah removed him.

Sources: Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1921, Vol. II, Doc. 575: Minister Caldwell to the Acting Secretary of State, 6 January 1921; EBSCO Research Starters: Reza Shah Pahlavi; Wikipedia: 1921 Persian coup d'etat; Encyclopaedia Iranica: Coup d'etat of 1299/1921

Reza Shah (1925 to 1941)

Reza Shah Pahlavi, first Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty, Pahlavi dynasty

Reza Shah founded the Pahlavi dynasty after rising through the Cossack Brigade. He built a national army and civil service, started the Trans-Iranian Railway, opened the University of Tehran in 1934 and curbed the power of the clergy and of tribal leaders. Dress laws required Western clothing from 1928, and by 1936 women were barred from wearing the veil. Opponents were jailed, and some died in custody. He cancelled the D'Arcy oil concession, and a new agreement with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company followed in 1933. Supporters see a modernising unifier, critics a ruler whose methods bred later unrest.

How they came to power: After the 1921 coup he became commander of the armed forces and later minister of war and, in October 1923, prime minister. On 31 October 1925 the Majles voted to end Qajar rule and put him at the head of a provisional government. A constituent assembly in December 1925 made him Shah, and he was crowned on 25 April 1926.

How it ended: After the Anglo-Soviet invasion of August 1941 he abdicated on 16 September 1941 in favour of his son. He was taken to Mauritius and then to Johannesburg, where he died on 26 July 1944. He was first buried in Cairo, and his remains were moved to a mausoleum in Rey in 1950.

• He joined the Cossack Brigade as a teenager, at 14 according to Wikipedia and at 15 according to EBSCO.
• A circular memorandum of 25 December 1934 asked foreign missions in Tehran to use 'Iran' instead of 'Persia' from 21 March 1935, the British Foreign Secretary told the House of Commons.
• President Franklin Roosevelt cabled him on 2 September 1941, after the invasion, saying the United States had asked London and Moscow about their plans and had suggested a public statement repeating their assurances about Iran's independence.

Sources: Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1925, Vol. II, Doc. 540: Chargé Amory, 31 October 1925; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1941, Vol. III, Doc. 434: President Roosevelt to the Shah of Iran, 2 September 1941; EBSCO Research Starters: Reza Shah Pahlavi; Wikipedia: Reza Shah

Persia Becomes Iran in International Use (25 December 1934 (circular), in effect from 21 March 1935)

On 25 December 1934 the Persian Ministry for Foreign Affairs sent a circular memorandum to the foreign missions in Tehran. It asked that 'Iran' and 'Iranian' be used in official correspondence and conversation from 21 March 1935, the day of Nowruz, instead of 'Persia' and 'Persian'. The British Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, told the House of Commons on 20 February 1935 that Britain's minister in Tehran had been instructed to accede. Iranians had long called their country Iran, and the change affected how foreigners wrote the name. The scholar Ehsan Yarshater says the idea is said to have come from Iran's ambassador to Germany, and he notes that the word Iran is linked to the word Aryan. In 1959 Mohammad Reza Shah said both names were acceptable in formal use.

• Sir John Simon's statement to the Commons said the circular asked for the new names 'instead of the words "Persia" and "Persian" hitherto in current use'.
• The scholar Ehsan Yarshater wrote that the suggestion is said to have come from Iran's ambassador to Germany, who was influenced by German friends.
• At first the name sounded foreign to many outsiders. Yarshater says some Westerners thought a new state had been created, and others confused it with Iraq.

Sources: Hansard, House of Commons, 20 February 1935: 'Persia (Official Name)', statement by Sir John Simon quoting the Persian circular of 25 December 1934; Ehsan Yarshater, 'When Persia became Iran', from 'Persia or Iran', Iranian Studies, 1989 (Iran Chamber Society); Wikipedia: Name of Iran

The Anglo-Soviet Invasion (25 August 1941 to 1946)

Britain and the Soviet Union invaded neutral Iran on 25 August 1941. They cited the German residents in the country, and they wanted a secure route for supplies to the USSR, which became known as the Persian Corridor, and the protection of the oil fields. The Shah appealed to President Roosevelt on 25 August. Iran agreed a ceasefire on 30 August, and fighting was over by 31 August. Reza Shah abdicated on 16 September. A Tripartite Treaty of Alliance, signed on 29 January 1942, committed the Allies to leave within six months of the end of hostilities. Britain began withdrawing on 2 March 1946, and the Soviet Union stayed until May, which led to the 1946 Iran crisis.

• Wikipedia says more than five million tons of supplies moved through Iran to the Soviet Union and to British forces in the Middle East.
• Iran declared war on Germany in September 1943, and the Tehran Conference of November 1943 reaffirmed its independence and territorial integrity.
• The occupation brought food shortages and bread riots in 1942. Wikipedia gives an inflation figure of about 450 percent.

Sources: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1941, Vol. III, Doc. 434: President Roosevelt to the Shah of Iran, 2 September 1941; EBSCO Research Starters: Reza Shah Pahlavi; Wikipedia: Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran

Mohammad Reza Shah (1941 to 1979)

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, Pahlavi dynasty

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi became Shah as a young man, under foreign occupation and spent his first decade with limited power. After the 1953 coup his position was dominant. He launched the reform programme later called the White Revolution in 1963, and by the early 1970s a CIA assessment described him as the final authority on domestic and foreign policy. In 1971 he presided over celebrations of 2,500 years of monarchy. Real GDP per capita rose sharply between 1963 and 1976, but gains were uneven. Critics point to authoritarian rule, political repression and human rights violations. Supporters point to growth, schooling and Iran's standing abroad, and views are still divided among Iranians.

How they came to power: He was born on 26 October 1919 in Tehran. He took the throne on 16 September 1941 after the Anglo-Soviet invasion forced his father to abdicate.

How it ended: Protests began in January 1978, and he left Iran on 16 January 1979, leaving a regency council. The monarchy collapsed in February. He had difficulty finding asylum, and President Sadat of Egypt took him in. He died in Cairo on 27 July 1980. He was buried at the Al-Rifai Mosque there.

• A gunman fired at him at Tehran University on 4 February 1949 and only grazed his cheek. The gunman was first labelled a communist, though evidence suggests he belonged to the Fada'iyan-e Islam.
• A May 1972 CIA assessment said he saw himself as a latter-day Cyrus the Great, and it pointed to his coronation and the 1971 celebrations of 2,500 years of monarchy as public affirmations of royal rule. The paper dates the coronation to 1966, but it took place on 26 October 1967.
• He married three times, to Fawzia of Egypt in 1939, to Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary in 1951 and to Farah Diba in 1959.

Sources: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Vol. E-4, Doc. 180: CIA Intelligence Report on Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, May 1972; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, Vol. XXII, Doc. 25: State Department background paper, 27 May 1964; UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography: Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza (Encyclopedia.com); Wikipedia: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

The Nationalisation of Iranian Oil (1951 to 1953)

In 1951 Iran nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), which operated under a concession dating from 1933. Britain responded with an embargo enforced by the Royal Navy and a freeze on Iranian accounts, and British staff withdrew from the oil fields in the autumn of 1951. In July 1952 the Royal Navy intercepted the Italian tanker Rose Mary, which scared off other buyers and effectively shut down Iranian oil exports. The British government considered using force at Abadan and decided against it. The United Kingdom took the case to the International Court of Justice on 26 May 1951. On 22 July 1952 the Court ruled that it had no jurisdiction, because Iran's 1932 declaration of acceptance covered only later treaties and the 1933 concession was not a treaty between states.

• In November 1952 a State Department memorandum reported that the British Foreign Office had said it would be disposed to attempt a coup to replace Prime Minister Mosaddegh if the United States agreed to cooperate. The memorandum concluded that agreeing at that time would weaken the chance of an oil settlement.
• The ICJ had indicated interim measures on 5 July 1951. The 1952 judgment declared that order no longer operative.
• The Court's judgment came with an individual opinion by its president, Arnold McNair, and four dissenting opinions, by Judges Alvarez, Hackworth, Read and Levi Carneiro.

Sources: International Court of Justice: Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (United Kingdom v. Iran), orders and judgment of 22 July 1952; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Iran, 1951-1954 (Second Edition), Doc. 148: Byroade memorandum, 26 November 1952; Office of the Historian: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Iran, 1951-1954 (volume introduction and documents); Wikipedia: Abadan Crisis

Mohammad Mosaddegh (Prime Minister 1951 to 1953; lived 1882 to 1967)

Mohammad Mosaddegh, Prime Minister of Iran, Statesman · Pahlavi Iran

Mohammad Mosaddegh studied in Paris and at Neuchatel, where he earned a doctorate in law in June 1913. His government nationalised the oil industry in 1951. As prime minister he faced the British embargo, a 1952 dispute with the Shah over control of the army, and mounting pressure at home. Scholars differ on his last year in office. One account holds that he halted the 1952 election once 79 deputies, enough for a quorum, had been chosen. Another says he suspended it over alleged foreign manipulation.

How they rose: On 28 April 1951 the Majles elected him prime minister by 79 votes to 12, and the Shah confirmed him. He served until July 1952, resigned in a dispute with the Shah and was reinstated.

How they died: He was overthrown on 19 August 1953. He was tried for treason, sentenced in December 1953 to three years in prison and then lived under house arrest at his estate at Ahmadabad. He died on 5 March 1967 and was buried at his Ahmadabad home.

• He became the first Iranian to receive a doctorate in law from a European university, at Neuchatel in 1913, according to Wikipedia.
• Iran won its objection at the International Court of Justice on 22 July 1952, when the Court found it had no jurisdiction over the oil dispute.
• An undated 1953 CIA planning paper, 'Factors Involved in the Overthrow of Mossadeq', judged that if a Shah-Zahedi combination put the largest crowds on the streets and a sizeable part of the Tehran garrison refused Mossadeq's orders, his overthrow would be certain.

Sources: International Court of Justice: Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (United Kingdom v. Iran), judgment of 22 July 1952; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Iran, 1951-1954, Doc. 192: Waller to Roosevelt, 16 April 1953; National Security Archive: The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup, 1953 (Electronic Briefing Book No. 28); Wikipedia: Mohammad Mosaddegh

The 1953 Coup (15 to 19 August 1953)

British and American intelligence services planned the removal of Prime Minister Mosaddegh. The British plan was called Operation Boot and the American one TPAJAX. The first attempt came on 15 and 16 August, when Colonel Nassiri tried to deliver the Shah's dismissal order, Mosaddegh refused it and had Nassiri arrested, and the Shah left for Baghdad and then Italy. Three days later, on 19 August, crowds and army units took key points in Tehran, and General Fazlollah Zahedi was installed as prime minister. The Shah returned on 22 August. Estimates of the dead run between 200 and 300. Historians still debate how decisive the foreign role was compared with domestic opposition to Mosaddegh. The US government acknowledged its part in documents released in August 2013.

• A CIA planning paper of spring 1953 described the Shah as 'vacillating, hesitating and indecisive' and noted that Zahedi's prospects depended on the Shah's support.
• The National Security Archive's summary of the CIA's internal history, written in March 1954 by Donald Wilber, says it indicates that Zahedi and his military colleagues were given large sums, at least $50,000, before the coup. The Archive also notes that an unknown quantity of CIA materials were reportedly destroyed in the 1960s.
• In May 1953 a U.S. embassy memorandum weighed four alternatives. It judged that bringing in a government willing to accept British terms would probably take the form of a military dictatorship, and it made no recommendation.

Sources: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Iran, 1951-1954, Doc. 192: Waller to Roosevelt, 16 April 1953; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Iran, 1951-1954, Doc. 206: Mattison memorandum, 19 May 1953; National Security Archive: The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup, 1953 (Electronic Briefing Book No. 28); Wikipedia: 1953 Iranian coup d'etat

The White Revolution (26 January 1963 to 1979)

The Shah announced six reforms on 9 January 1963 and put them to a national referendum on 26 January 1963. They were land reform, nationalisation of forests, sale of state factories, profit sharing for industrial workers, women's suffrage, and a literacy corps of conscripts who would teach in villages. Opposition groups boycotted the vote, and the reported result was 5,598,711 in favour and 4,115 against. The programme later grew to 18 or 19 elements, depending on the count. Landlords and many clerics objected, and Ruhollah Khomeini was arrested on 5 June 1963 after a speech, followed by several days of riots. A State Department paper of 1964 judged implementation uneven and said the reforms had cost the Shah his traditional base among landlords and conservative clergy.

• The literacy corps sent army draftees to teach in villages, and the model was later extended to health and development corps for draftees with college-level training.
• One scholarly summary says about half of rural families received no land, and about 73 percent of those who did received under six hectares.
• By the account in Wikipedia's article on the programme, literacy rose from about 26 percent to about 42 percent, and women gained the right to vote and to run for office.

Sources: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, Vol. XXII, Doc. 25: State Department background paper, 27 May 1964; Eric Hooglund, 'White Revolution (1961-1963)', Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa (Encyclopedia.com); Wikipedia: White Revolution

The 1979 Revolution (January 1978 to February 1979)

Protests began in January 1978 and grew through the year with strikes that paralysed the country. The Shah left Iran on 16 January 1979. Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile on 1 February 1979, and on 11 February the army declared itself neutral, ending the government of Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar. A referendum in the spring of 1979 approved an Islamic Republic, and a constitution adopted that year set out the Leader's role. Historians discuss causes that include economic strain, repression and the exile of Khomeini, and they disagree on the weight of each.

• On 9 November 1978 the U.S. ambassador William Sullivan sent a secret cable titled 'Thinking the Unthinkable', describing a possible sequence of events in which the Shah leaves. The historian Gary Sick called it one of the most important documents of the period.
• The Regency Council the Shah appointed was practically dissolved by 22 January 1979.
• The 1979 constitution's preamble describes an Islamic government based on rule by a jurist, wilayat al-faqih.

Sources: William Sullivan, 'Thinking the Unthinkable', cable from the U.S. Embassy Tehran, 9 November 1978 (National Security Archive); Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979, rev. 1989 (Constitute Project); HISTORY: Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran, 1 February 1979; Wikipedia: Iranian Revolution

Ruhollah Khomeini (1979 to 1989)

Ruhollah Khomeini, first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Ruhollah Khomeini was a Shia cleric and marja who opposed the White Revolution and was arrested in June 1963. He was exiled to Turkey in 1964, moved to Najaf in 1965 and was expelled from Iraq in 1978. In his 1970 Najaf lectures, published as Islamic Government, he set out the theory of rule by a jurist. He returned to Iran on 1 February 1979. Under the constitution adopted in 1979 he became Supreme Leader on 3 December 1979. His period saw the hostage crisis, the war with Iraq, the 1989 fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie and, in 1988, executions of political prisoners. Supporters honour an anti-imperialist and religious revivalist, while critics cite repression and human rights abuses.

How they came to power: He returned to Iran from Paris on 1 February 1979 and became Leader of the Revolution, the country's de facto head of state. A referendum approved the Islamic Republic, and the constitution created the office of Leader, which he took up on 3 December 1979.

How it ended: He died in Tehran on 3 June 1989. The Associated Press reported that he died of a heart attack 11 days after intestinal surgery. Estimates of his age at death vary between 86 and 89 because his birth date is disputed. He is buried in a mausoleum at Behesht-e Zahra.

• His birth certificate gives 17 May 1900, while a brother gave 24 September 1902, so even his age at death is uncertain.
• At his funeral on 6 June 1989 mourners rushed the casket and the body fell out into the crowd, and the burial had to be postponed.
• He left a 29-page political testament, and excerpts read on Tehran radio did not say how Iran should be governed after his death.

Sources: Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979, rev. 1989: Articles 5, 107, 109 to 111 (Constitute Project); Associated Press: AP Was There: Millions of mourners attended funeral of Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; HISTORY: Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran, 1 February 1979; Wikipedia: Ruhollah Khomeini

The Hostage Crisis (4 November 1979 to 20 January 1981)

On 4 November 1979 Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran. Thirteen hostages, including all the women and African-American staff, were freed on 19 and 20 November 1979, and one more, Richard Queen, was freed on 11 July 1980 for medical reasons, leaving 52. A US rescue attempt on 24 April 1980 was aborted after equipment failures, and a helicopter collided with a C-130, killing eight US servicemen. The United States severed diplomatic relations on 7 April 1980. On 24 May 1980 the International Court of Justice found that Iran had violated its obligations. The Algiers Accords were signed on 19 January 1981, and the 52 hostages were released on 20 January 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president.

• The National Archives says a group of 300 to 500 Iranian students seized the embassy, and that the action received the official approval of the Khomeini government.
• The ICJ found that the militants' first attack was not directly attributable to Iran, but that Iranian state organs later endorsed the acts and decided to perpetuate them, which made them acts of the Iranian state.
• The Court gave judgment although the Iranian Government did not take part in the proceedings.

Sources: International Court of Justice: United States Diplomatic and Consular Staff in Tehran, judgment of 24 May 1980; National Archives: 444 Days, Selected Records Concerning the Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981; Office of the Historian: The Iranian Hostage Crisis (Short History); Office of the Historian: Iran, a guide to US diplomatic relations since 1776

The Iran-Iraq War (22 September 1980 to August 1988)

Iraq invaded Iran on 22 September 1980, with air strikes on air bases and a ground invasion of Khuzestan. Causes included the dispute over the Shatt al-Arab waterway, the 1975 Algiers Agreement and fears in Baghdad that the revolution would spread. Iran regained most of its lost territory by the summer of 1982 and then fought on inside Iraq. The war included attacks on cities and on shipping, and Iraq used chemical weapons, including in the attack on Halabja in March 1988. UN Security Council Resolution 598, adopted unanimously on 20 July 1987, called for a ceasefire and withdrawal to the recognised borders. Iran accepted it in July 1988, and the war ended in August 1988. No border changed, and neither side received reparations.

• Resolution 598 also asked the Secretary-General to explore the question of entrusting an impartial body with inquiring into responsibility for the conflict.
• Death estimates differ widely. EBSCO says more than one million deaths, while Wikipedia's infobox gives 200,000 to 600,000 Iranian and 105,000 to 500,000 Iraqi military dead.
• On 17 May 1987, during the Tanker War, an Iraqi aircraft attack on the USS Stark killed 37 US sailors. Saddam Hussein apologised and said the pilot had mistaken the ship for an Iranian tanker.

Sources: United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 (1987) (Wikisource); EBSCO Research Starters: Iran-Iraq War; HISTORY: Iran-Iraq War, Summary, Timeline and Legacy; Wikipedia: Iran-Iraq War

Ali Khamenei (1989 to 2026)

Ali Khamenei, second Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Ali Khamenei was born in Mashhad on 19 April 1939. He was Iran's third president, from 9 October 1981 to 1989. On 27 June 1981 a bomb hidden in a tape recorder exploded beside him at the Aboozar Mosque, and he lost the use of his right arm. Under the constitution the Supreme Leader sets general policy, commands the armed forces and appoints senior officials. He served as Leader from 1989 until he was killed in 2026.

How they came to power: After Ruhollah Khomeini died, the Assembly of Experts chose him on 4 June 1989. He was not a marja, so the constitution was revised to remove that requirement, a revision approved by referendum on 28 July 1989, and the Assembly confirmed him on 6 August.

How it ended: Al Jazeera, France 24 (with AFP) and Euronews reported that Khamenei was killed on 28 February 2026 in a US-Israeli strike in Tehran, at the start of the war between Iran and the United States and Israel. US President Donald Trump announced the death first, and Iranian state media confirmed it early on 1 March and declared 40 days of mourning. Under Article 111 of the constitution a council of the president, the head of the judiciary and a jurist of the Guardian Council took over temporarily. A week of public funeral processions followed in July, which Al Jazeera said drew more than 15 million people. According to Al Jazeera he was buried at the Shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, his birthplace, on 9 July; Euronews and the Times of Israel, citing state media, put the burial in the early hours of 10 July. The Assembly of Experts named his son Mojtaba Khamenei as his successor, in a statement issued just after midnight on 9 March, Tehran time, according to AFP.

• The attack on him at the Aboozar Mosque on 27 June 1981 is attributed in Wikipedia's account to the Mojahedin-e Khalq. A young man posing as a journalist placed a tape recorder with a bomb on the desk in front of him.
• He was a mid-ranking cleric in 1989, and the constitution was changed so that he could become Leader without being a marja.
• The interim council that ran Iran after his death consisted of President Masoud Pezeshkian, judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei and Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, according to Euronews.

Sources: Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979, rev. 1989: Articles 107, 109 to 111 (Constitute Project); Al Jazeera: Iran confirms Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dead after US-Israeli attacks, 28 February 2026; France 24 (with AFP): Ayatollah Ali Khamenei killed in Israeli-American attack, Iran declares 40 days of mourning, 28 February 2026; Euronews: What is Iran's Assembly of Experts and who will succeed Khamenei? 3 March 2026; Euronews (with AFP and AP photos): Iran names Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader, 9 March 2026; Al Jazeera: Slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei buried at Iran's holiest shrine, 9 July 2026; Euronews (with AFP): Iran buries Khamenei as renewed fighting tests shaky ceasefire deal, 10 July 2026; Wikipedia: Ali Khamenei

The Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) and the US Withdrawal (14 July 2015; US withdrawal announced 8 May 2018; Termination Day 18 October 2025)

Iran, the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) and the European Union agreed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in Vienna on 14 July 2015. UN Security Council Resolution 2231 endorsed it on 20 July, Adoption Day was 18 October 2015 and Implementation Day was 16 January 2016. Iran accepted a 3.67 percent enrichment cap, a stockpile limit of 300 kilograms, 5,060 enriching centrifuges at Natanz and wider IAEA access. Nuclear-related UN, EU and US secondary sanctions were lifted or suspended. On 8 May 2018 a US presidential memorandum directed the end of US participation and the restoration of sanctions within at most 180 days. The administration said the deal left out missiles and regional activity and had sunset provisions. Iran said the other parties had not kept their side, and from 2019 it exceeded the limits. On 18 October 2025, the date set as Termination Day, Iran's foreign ministry said that all provisions of the agreement, including the restrictions on its nuclear programme, were 'considered terminated', according to Al Jazeera and the Times of Israel (AFP). Britain, France and Germany had triggered the snapback process in August 2025, and UN sanctions were reimposed in late September, so experts quoted in those reports called the date largely symbolic. Iran's statement said it remained committed to diplomacy.

• The deal was meant to lengthen Iran's estimated breakout time from about two to three months to about a year.
• A 'snapback' mechanism let any participant seek the reimposition of UN sanctions if Iran was found in significant non-compliance. The three European parties triggered it in August 2025.
• The IAEA detected uranium particles enriched to 83.7 percent at the Fordow site in early 2023, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Sources: Presidential Memorandum NSPM-11, Ceasing United States Participation in the JCPOA, 8 May 2018 (GovInfo); Arms Control Association: The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action at a Glance; Council on Foreign Relations: What Is the Iran Nuclear Deal?; Wikipedia: Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action; Al Jazeera: Iran says restrictions on nuclear programme 'terminated' as deal expires, 18 October 2025; Times of Israel (AFP): As 2015 deal fizzles out, Iran says it's no longer bound by 'restrictions' on nuclear program, 18 October 2025

The 2022 Protests after Mahsa Amini's Death (September 2022 to 2023)

Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman from Saqqez, was arrested by the Guidance Patrol in Tehran in mid-September 2022 over how she wore her hijab, and she died on 16 September. Eyewitnesses said officers beat her, and officials denied this. Protests began at her funeral and spread. By 20 September unconfirmed videos showed protests in at least 16 of the country's 31 provinces. Authorities repeatedly cut internet and mobile service. On 24 November 2022 the UN Human Rights Council created an independent fact-finding mission. Its March 2024 findings said that Amini had been subjected to physical violence that led to her death and that the state bears responsibility for her unlawful death, and it described a pattern of violations amounting to crimes against humanity. Iran has denied responsibility. Casualty counts differ by source.

• The UN mission counted more than 500 deaths and more than 22,000 detentions, according to the Associated Press. Iran Human Rights, an NGO, reported at least 551 killed, including 68 minors, as of 15 September 2023.
• Iranian state media, according to Reuters, reported 200 dead as of 3 December 2022, a figure well below the UN and NGO counts.
• The mission's report said Amini collapsed 26 minutes into a 're-education class' at a detention facility, and it dismissed the claim that a childhood medical condition caused her death.

Sources: Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran: Terms of Reference, under UN Human Rights Council resolution S-35/1 (Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre); UN News: UN rights body launches Iran human rights investigation, 24 November 2022; PBS NewsHour (AP): Iran is responsible for the 'physical violence' that killed Mahsa Amini, UN probe finds, 8 March 2024; Wikipedia: Mahsa Amini protests