Cyrus the Great establishes the Achaemenid Empire | World History | Khan Academy

As we enter into the 6th Century BCE, the dominant power in the region that we now refer to as Iran was the Median Empire. The Median Empire, I'll draw the rough border right over here, was something like that, and you can see the dominant region of Media right over here. But by the middle of that century, they are going to be overthrown, and they're going to be overthrown by one of their subject kingdoms, and that is the Persians.

Right over here on this map, it's called Persus, but that region is called Pars or Fars, and even today in modern Iran, that region is called Fars. The king of Pars was Cyrus the Great, and in 550-549 BCE, he's able to overthrow the Median Emperor, who happens to be his grandfather. He then establishes what history views as the first real Persian Empire. The whole reason why we even call it a Persian Empire is because Cyrus the Great was from Pars. Persian is really referring to the idea that the ruler, the dynasty that gets established, was coming from Pars.

It turns out, and I talk about it in other videos, the Persians did not view, did not refer to themselves as Persians. They viewed themselves more as the Aryan people. In a lot of ways, Iran or Aranam Asia, and these types of words are more accurate for how the Persians viewed themselves. But needless to say, in 549, Cyrus the Great is able to conquer the Median Empire. He keeps going, and what he establishes, this Empire, this dynasty, is called the Achaemenid dynasty.

You might wonder why it is called the Achaemenid dynasty instead of say the Syed dynasty. That's because Cyrus claims descent from Achaemenes; he is part of that family. Achaemenes is this semi-legendary patriarch that lived 100-150 years before Cyrus the Great, and so I will draw a dotted line from Achaemenes to Cyrus. Cyrus then goes on to conquer several of the major empires of that time in the mid-540s BCE.

So we are right around there. He conquers the Lydian Empire right over there, which is on the western half of the Anatolian peninsula in modern-day Turkey. Then he sets his sights on the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and in 539, he's able to conquer the Neo-Babylonian Empire. From a biblical perspective, that's relevant because when he takes Babylon, he frees the Jews from the Babylonian captivity and he resettles them in Jerusalem.

He works with them to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, and especially Solomon's Temple, which is now called the Second Temple on the Temple Mount. Cyrus the Great is viewed by history as one of the great rulers of all time, often referred to as a model ruler, someone who really takes the interest of his people at heart. So, Cyrus was able to conquer a lot of what you see here in green, but not all of it, and especially he was not able to get to Egypt. That would be left to his son, Cambyses.

So in 530, Cyrus dies and Cambyses takes over. Just so you read what this timeline, and I made this timeline really to help myself understand the various Shah and Shah or king of kings of Iran, Cyrus the Great was the Shah and Shah king of kings, and then Cambyses II was the next one. This timeline up here shows who is in charge.

From 550-549 all the way to 530, I have it yellow, and that's because Cyrus the Great was in charge of what is called the Achaemenid Empire, or this first great Persian Empire. What I have down here is the best information I could find on the lifespans of these people, and when I have these dotted lines at the beginning, that's when it's unclear when these people were born. So, there's different accounts that Cyrus the Great might have been born in 575 BCE; he might have been born closer to 600 BCE, and so that's why I have these dotted lines.

Similarly, we don't know exactly when Cambyses II was born, but we do know that he took control in 530 BCE. That's why you see Cambyses II; you see this line right over here turn blue. Cambyses ends up dying in 522, so let me actually, this should be like that. There you go, he ends up dying in 522, but before he dies in 522, he is able to conquer Egypt in 525 BCE.

So right around there, and you can imagine that while he's conquering Egypt, let me keep drawing this family tree. So now we have Cambyses II, he goes off, makes his real goal to conquer Egypt, and that's a big deal. Remember, this is ending thousands of years of the rule by the native pharaohs. These now foreign rulers start calling themselves the Pharaohs of Egypt as well, but they get put into Egypt becomes part of the Persian Empire because of Cambyses.

You can imagine with the Shah and Shah, with the King of Kings often doing conquest in Egypt, it leaves a little power vacuum back in the center of the Empire, and this is when things get a little bit sketchy. Cyrus does have another son. The other son is called Bardiya, so let me write this down. So there's another son called Bardiya, and then there’s this other character known as Darius, soon to be known as Darius the Great.

Darius is not a direct descendant of Cyrus the Great, but he is part of his family. He's a distant relative; he is part of the Achaemenid dynasty, a part of he claims descent from Achaemenes, and he was the lance-bearer for Cambyses II. So while Cambyses is out here in Egypt, leaving that power vacuum, someone who claims to be Bardiya takes control of the Empire or is trying to take control of the Empire.

Now, some accounts say that this is really Bardiya; this is really the other son of Cyrus the Great, and so there would be some legitimate claim to the throne. But there are other claims, especially the ones that Darius was later able to spread, that no, this was not the real Bardiya; this was a fake Bardiya, that the real Bardiya had actually been killed by Cambyses II before, and that this person proposing to be Bardiya was this fake usurper, this Zoroastrian priest named Gaumata.

Once Cambyses is on his way, he tries to come back in order to reclaim the throne or in order to get rid of this usurper, whether it was the real Bardiya or not. But on the way, he dies, and once again, it’s under dubious circumstances. Cyrus the Great, how he died, not clear. Cambyses II also dies under dubious circumstances, and then this Bardiya actually becomes the Shah and Shah for real. He obviously has claims to it while Cambyses is there, but once Cambyses dies, he is the Shah and Shah.

Well, Darius doesn't like this. He has his own imperial ambitions. He gets some other nobility together and says, "No, no, no, no, this Bardiya isn't the real Bardiya; he's a usurper. Let's go kill that guy." They kill him, and then it's an interesting story. Herodotus has a fairly dubious account of how Darius was able to convince the other noble people why he should be the Shah and Shah, the emperor, but they are able to get rid of Bardiya.

We still do not know whether it was the real Bardiya or whether it was the fake Bardiya, but then Darius takes power in 522 BCE, and he's known as Darius the Great because he continues to spread; he continues to conquer more and more for the Persian Empire. This map right over here, this is the Persian Empire in 500 BCE under Darius the Great, and it's near its maximum extent. It's a pretty incredible empire.

It's worth noting it's big by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s at this time the population is on the order of 50 million people. Based on the accounts that I've seen, that's almost half of the world population at that time. No empire in history, as far as we can tell, has ever had such a large fraction of the world's population under its control, and so that gives you a sense of, I guess you could say how great or how large an empire this was.

Now, Darius the Great is also famous, especially from a Greek perspective, for going after the Greeks. You had these Greek revolts in these towns on the west coast of the Anatolian Peninsula; they revolted against their Persian overlords, I guess you could say, and they did that with the help of the Athenians. So Darius didn't like this. In the 490s, he starts going after the Athenians. This is the beginning of the Greco-Persian Wars.

He is unsuccessful and dies in the 480s, and then his son—this is actually a relief of Darius the Great right over here from Persepolis—his son tries to continue to take over in the second Greco-Persian Wars, and he too is unsuccessful. It's worth noting a lot of this history that we get, especially of Cyrus the Great and the early Persian Shah, the history we get is from the Greeks, so it’s worth taking it with a grain of salt because, as you can see, they were rivals.

To say rivals is a little bit unfair to the Persians because the Greeks were more of a thorn in the side—a thorn in the side of a large empire. The Greeks were this group of city-states; they weren't even a unified empire, while you had here the Persian Empire controlling almost half of the world's population. So the Greeks were more of a thorn in the side, but we get our history from them, or a lot of our history from them.

Once you have Xerxes, then after Xerxes, you have Arta Xerxes right over here, and then you have a little bit of a squabble for the throne. Darius II—there's one thing that you see over the over 200 years of Achaemenid rule—is that most people after Darius the Great are named either Xerxes or Darius—the third or fourth, or Darius II or III at least; not the fourth.

It can get a little confusing, but the reason why I even did this for myself to see when all of these people lived and when they ruled is to have a good sense of what was going on and how Darius II lived at a different time than for example Darius I or Darius the Great.

The other thing worth mentioning because you'll hear this in various history classes when you talk about the Persian Empire is the great cities of the Persian Empire. Cyrus the Great establishes the capital at Pasargadae right over here. Here you have Cambyses establish a capital at Susa. Susa is one end of the great Royal Highway that goes from Sardis all the way to Susa right over there.

You have Darius the Great establish a capital at Persepolis—this, and that’s the Greek name for it, literally referring to "Persian City." This is a relief from Persepolis right over here. Now, the end of the Achaemenid Dynasty comes when that famous thorn in the side, Greece, actually unifies under Philip of Macedon. Here, we're talking about the mid to early to mid-4th Century BCE, and his son, Alexander, becomes this great conqueror.

Alexander the Great is able to conquer the entire Persian Empire, famously taking it away from Darius II. We talk about that in another video or in several videos in some detail. But Alexander the Great has this vision of a one nation, of these people, kind of their cultures mixing together, and there’s a significant amount of cultural mix between the Greeks and the Persians.

But then Alexander dies, and his empire splits. Most of the Persian Empire goes under the control of Seleucus, who is one of Alexander's generals. You have the Seleucid Empire, which is really foreign rule of Persia. That will continue for a while until eventually, the Parthians, which is once again another state or region of the Persian Empire, takes control to establish the Parthian Empire, which is one of the rivals to Rome.

It's worth mentioning, and I mentioned this in the video on ancient Persia, that under Persian rule, Cyrus and the various Shahs were famous for delegating their authority. When you have such a large empire, you can't control all of it yourself. Each of these regions had their own, I guess you could say, governors, and those governors were called satraps, and the regions were called satrapies.

Anyway, I will leave you there. Oh, the other thing that Cyrus the Great is really known for is the spread of the Zoroastrian faith. We talk about the Zoroastrian faith in other videos, and Zarathustra, who is the kind of the prophet of the Zoroastrian faith, lived someplace between 1500 BCE and might have even lived shortly right before, almost near the time of Cyrus the Great. But it was really Cyrus the Great who helps spread this great ancient faith.