A History of Iran

by Michael Axworthy

  Few stories from the classical world are better known than that of Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander. Often the importance of the father to the success of the son is neglected in favor of the latter’s more dramatic victories. Philip was born around 380 BC, became king of Macedon in 359 BC, and immediately set about the expansion of his kingdom. One essential contribution to the success of Macedon was his creation of a new, tightly drilled infantry corps, equipped with a longer spear or pike than was normal in Greece at the time. In favorable conditions this army usually swept aside or rolled over conventionally armed infantry. Having established himself as the prime power in northern Greece and Thrace, Philip defeated the alliance of Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, and then set up the League of Corinth, which established Macedonian hegemony and effectively ended the independence of the Greek city-states, with the exception of Sparta. When Philip demanded submission of the Spartans, saying that he would come to Sparta and wreck their farms, kill the people, and destroy their city, the Spartans replied: “If.” Philip and his son left the Spartans alone—perhaps not least for the sake of the legend of Thermopylae.

  Philip had other plans in any case—plans to invade the Persian Empire. His preparations were quite open, and were justified in pan-Hellenic terms by reference to the Persian desecration of Athenian temples in the invasion of 480 BC. But in 336 BC, before Philip could put his invasion plans into effect, he was murdered. The circumstances of the murder are murky and were disputed at the time—some have suggested that Alexander and his mother Olympias were involved, but it is possible that the Persians instigated the killing.

  Alexander continued where his father had left off. He consolidated his authority in Greece, quickly crushing a rebellion in Thebes, and then, in 334 BC, crossed into Asia Minor. He defeated a Persian army at the Granicus River (near the Dardanelles), conquered the towns of the Ionian coast—including the Persian regional base at Sardis—and then marched east. The following year he defeated Darius at the Battle of Issus (on the Mediterranean coast near the modern border between Syria and Turkey), leading the decisive attack personally at the head of his companion cavalry (hetairoi). Alexander then marched south, taking the coastal cities, conquering Egypt and founding Alexandria. Moving east again, in 331 BC Alexander defeated Darius in a third battle, at Gaugamela, near Mosul and Irbil in what is now Iraqi Kurdistan. Darius left the battlefield and was killed some time after by Bessus, the satrap of Bactria.

  This is not the place to consider Alexander’s conduct of war in any detail, but his military brilliance illustrates something that may appear at first counter-intuitive—the feminine nature of military genius at the highest level. Successful high command has little or nothing to do with masculine attributes like brute force, bravado, machismo, arrogance, or even courage, except insofar as it may be necessary to advertise these from time to time to inspire the troops. Rather, it has to do with what one might regard as more feminine characteristics—sensitivity, subtlety, intuition, timing, an indirect approach, an ability quietly to assess strength and weakness (based perhaps on an intuitive grasp for the opponent’s likely behavior as much as factual information) to avoid and baffle strength, to flow around it, to absorb its force and strike unexpectedly at the weak spot at precisely the right moment. Military history shows again and again that predictable male behavior, manifest in frontal attacks and reliance on strength alone, is at best a liability and at worst catastrophically wasteful at the command level. The maximum effectiveness of military force is achieved only by the more subtle methods associated with what one might call a feminine approach. Without making any crass connection to Alexander’s bisexuality, his conduct of warfare exemplifies this well.

  Alexander continued on to Babylon, Susa, and finally Persepolis, which he burned to destruction in 330 BC after some weeks and months of celebrations. One story says that a courtesan accompanying the army, Thaïs, persuaded Alexander to destroy the palaces while he was drunk, in revenge for the burning of the Athenian Acropolis by Xerxes, and threw in the first torch herself. But it is likely that the destruction was a deliberate political act, to show that the Achaemenid dynasty was over for good. Notwithstanding the destruction of Persepolis, Alexander had been presenting himself, at least since Gaugamela, not so much as the revenger of Greece but as the successor to the Achaemenians.21 From now on he appears to have followed a deliberate Persianizing policy, encouraging his troops to marry local women and settling them in colonies. He himself married several Persian princesses, including Statira, the daughter of Darius III, and later Roxana (whose name is cognate with the modern Persian word roshan, meaning “light”), daughter of Oxyartes of Bactria. Alexander continued with his campaigns, into the farthest reaches of the former empire, wiping out all resistance, and then beyond, into India and what is now the Punjab. But his troops grew increasingly weary of the never-ending wars, and disaffected with his perceived pro-Persian policy.

  Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC, probably of natural causes, after a session of heavy drinking. The succession to his empire was left unclear, and the result was a lengthy series of wars between his generals to divide up his conquests. In these, the murderous unruliness of the Macedonians emerged with full force. Alexander’s secretary Eumenes of Cardia had some temporary success in reunifying the centrifugal elements in support of Alexander’s young son, born to Roxana after his death. But the other generals and soldiers disliked Eumenes because he was a Greek and a scholar, and in 316 BC he was betrayed and killed. Within a few years Roxana and Alexander’s son were also murdered.

  Despite his early death, Alexander’s aim—to bring Greek influence into Persia, Persian influence into Greece, and to create a blend of Eastern and Western civilizations—was realized to a startling extent. But ultimately it failed. For more than a century after Alexander’s death, Persia was ruled by the descendants of Seleucus, one of Alexander’s generals, and Greek influence persisted after that. But the kings of the Seleucid period ruled more in a grand Persian rather than a Greek style. This was arguably also the case for the Ptolemies who ruled in Egypt. When Rome rose to dominate the entire Mediterranean basin, the Roman Empire was divided between the Greek east and the Latin west—but still the style of the Greek east showed the influence of the vanished Achaemenid Empire, and in turn influenced Romans with imperial ambitions from Pompey to Elagabalus.

  Although the Iranians submitted to foreign rule—not for the last time in their history—Greek influence was ultimately passing and superficial despite the presence of colonies of Greek ex-soldiers. The Mazdaean religion persisted and consolidated, serving as a focus for hostility to the Greeks, and to the memory of Alexander.

  It is generally recognized that the historical accounts we have of Alexander and his life are partial, written mainly by authors writing at second hand and in awe of their subject. They are all Western accounts, and although there is an Eastern tradition of Alexander (Iskander) as a warrior-hero, the Zoroastrian tradition about him is very negative, suggesting a different side to the story. There is little in the Western sources about measures Alexander took to establish or consolidate his rule, but the Zoroastrian record says he killed many Magi and teachers, and that the sacred flames in many fire temples were extinguished. This may simply reflect the incidental killing and destruction of the plundering Macedonian armies. But it is likely that the Magian priests, proprietors as they were of the religion that underpinned the Achaemenian state and therefore the most likely center for any continued resistance or revolt, would have been a target for repression in any case.

  Whatever exactly happened, it is unlikely that the Iranians cooperated as submissively in Alexander’s pacification policies as the Western historians later suggested. In later Zoroastrian writings Alexander is the only human to share with Ahriman the title guzastag—meaning “accursed.”22

  2

  THE IRANIAN REVIVAL

  Parthians and Sassanids

  We have made en
quiries about the rules of the inhabitants of the Roman empire and the Indian states. . . . We have never rejected anybody because of their different religion or origin. We have not jealously kept away from them what we affirm. And at the same time we have not disdained to learn what they stand for. For it is a fact that to have knowledge of the truth and of sciences and to study them is the highest thing with which a king can adorn himself. And the most disgraceful thing for kings is to disdain learning and be ashamed of exploring the sciences. He who does not learn is not wise.

  —Khosraw I Anushirvan (according to the Byzantine historian Agathias)

  The empire established by Seleucus Nicator in 312 BC looked to be the most powerful of the successor states that emerged out of the collection of territories conquered by Alexander. It controlled Syria, Mesopotamia, and the lands of the Iranian plateau—as well as (at least in theory) other territories further east. Initially the capital was established at Babylon, and later at a new site at Seleuceia on the Tigris River. Finally it moved to Antioch on the Mediterranean Sea.

  The Seleucid kings pursued the easternizing policy of Alexander. They established Greek military and trading colonies in the east and used Iranian manpower in their armies, but their political attention was on the west—particularly on their rivalry with the other major eastern Macedonian/Greek dynasty, that of the Ptolemies in Egypt. In the east, outlying satrapies like Sogdiana and Bactria gradually became independent princedoms, the latter creating an enduring culture in what is now northern Afghanistan, fusing eastern and Greek cultures under Greek successor dynasties.

  WARRIOR HORSEMEN

  The horse-based cultures of the northeast had given Alexander problems, and the Achaemenids before him. Tribes like the Dahae and the Sakae, who spoke languages in the Iranian family group, would always be very difficult for any empire to dominate. With their military strength entirely on horseback, they were highly mobile and able, when threatened, to disappear into the great expanses of desert and semi-desert south of the Aral Sea. Within two generations of Seleucus Nicator’s death in 281 BC, one tribe or group of tribes among the Dahae—the Parni—established their supremacy in Parthia and other lands east of the Caspian. They supplanted the local Seleucid satrap, Andragoras—who around 250 BC had rebelled and tried to make himself an independent ruler in Parthia—and began to threaten the remaining territories of the Seleucids in the east. The Parni ruling family named themselves Arsacids after Arshak (Arsaces), the man who had led them to take control of Parthia. But as the Arsacids expanded their dominion, they were careful to preserve the wealth and culture of the Greek colonies in the towns. Parthian kings later used the title philhellenos (friend of the Greeks) on their coinage.

  Several Seleucid kings carried out expeditions to the east to restore their authority in Parthia and Bactria, and the Parthian Arsacids occasionally chose to ally with them or even to submit, rather than to confront them. But the Seleucids were always drawn back to the west, and in the reign of the Arsacid Mithradates I (171–138 BC) the Parthians renewed their expansion, taking Sistan, Elam, and Media. Then they captured Babylon in 142 BC and, one year later, Seleuceia itself.

  In the decades that followed, the Parthians were attacked by the Sakae in the east and by the Seleucids in the west. Fortunes swung either way. At one point in 128 BC the Parthians defeated a Seleucid army, captured it, and attempted to use the prisoners against the Sakae—only to find that the Seleucid troops had made common cause with the Sakae. Together, they defeated and killed the Parthian king, Phraates. But Mithradates II (Mithradates the Great) was able to consolidate and stabilize Parthian rule in a long reign from about 123 to 87 BC, subduing enemies in both east and west. He also took the title King of Kings, a deliberate reference back to the Achaemenid monarchy. This, along with other indicators, suggests a new Iranian self-confidence.

  Concealed behind the long struggle between the Seleucids and the Parthians lie the origins of the silk trade, which was to be of central importance for many Iranian towns and cities for more than a millennium. The initial involvement of Greeks and Greek cities in the silk business may go some way toward explaining both the survival of Greek culture in the Parthian period, and the Parthian kings’ respect for it. They were friends to the Greeks not out of aesthetic sensibility or deference to a superior culture, but because they wanted to protect the goose that laid the golden egg.1

  Mithradates had diplomatic contacts with both the Chinese Han emperor Wu Ti and with the Roman republic under the dictator Sulla. In order to establish a lasting presence in Mesopotamia, either he or his successor Gotarzes founded a new city at Ctesiphon, near Seleuceia. Ctesiphon was to continue as the capital for more than seven hundred years, though Seleuceia, on the other side of the Tigris, was often used as the center of administration, and Ecbatana/Hamadan as the summer capital.

  The Parthians established a powerful empire and ruled successfully for several centuries, but they did so with a relatively light touch, assimilating the practices of previous rulers and being content to tolerate the variety of religious, linguistic, and cultural patterns of their subject provinces. A system of devolved power (parakandeh shahi, also called muluk al-tawa‘if in later Arab sources) through satraps continued, often keeping in power families that had ruled under the Seleucids.2 Parthian scribes continued to use Aramaic, as in the time of the Achaemenids, and there appears to have been a continued diversity of religion. Names like Mithradates and Phraates (the latter a name thought to be related to the fravashi of the Avesta) show the Mazdaean allegiances of the Arsacids themselves, but Babylonians, Greeks, Jews, and others were allowed to follow their own religious traditions. As before, Mazdaism itself seems to have encompassed a variety of practices and beliefs. In Jewish tradition, the Parthians are recorded and remembered (with the important exception of the reign of one later king) as tolerant and friendly toward the Jews.3 This may reflect the fact that the rise of the Parthians in the east was helped by the prolonged struggle between the Maccabean Jews and the Seleucids in Palestine.

  The Parthians were not just crude nomads assuming the culture of their subjects for lack of any of their own—or, at least, they did not remain so. Parthian sculpture, with its own particular style that included a strong emphasis on frontality, was different in kind from any predecessor. Parthian architecture—as excavated at Nisa, for example (in what is now Turkmenistan)—shows for the first time the emergence of the audience hall or ivan, a feature to be of great importance later, in Sassanid and Islamic architecture. The Parthians exemplified the best of Iranian genius—the recognition, acceptance, and tolerance of the complexity of the cultures and influences over which they ruled, while retaining a strong central principle of identity and integrity.

  ROME’S GREAT RIVAL IN THE EAST

  The Parthians were also masters of the art of war, as they would show in the next period of conflict, with Rome. Driven on to ever-wider conquests by the ambitions of mighty patricians like Pompeii, Lucullus, and Crassus, leaders who saw conquest and military glory as necessary adjuncts to a successful political career, the Roman republic by the first half of the first century BC had taken over the eastern Mediterranean from its previous Hellenistic overlords and had begun to press even farther eastward. The Romans’ main area of conflict with the Parthians was in Armenia, Syria, and northern Mesopotamia.

  In 53 BC Marcus Licinius Crassus, a fabulously rich Roman politician who had destroyed the slave revolt of Spartacus in southern Italy in earlier years, became the new governor of Roman Syria. Hoping to make conquests in the east to rival those recently achieved by Caesar in Gaul, Crassus marched an army of some forty thousand men east to Carrhae (modern Harran)—arrogantly rejecting the advice of the king of Armenia to take advantage of his friendship and follow a less exposed northerly route. At Carrhae Crassus’s army was met in the open plain by a smaller but fast-moving force of about ten thousand Parthian horsemen, including large numbers of horse archers, supported by a much smaller force of heavi
ly armored cavalrymen on armored horses, each man wielding a long, heavy lance. The Roman force was composed primarily of armored infantry equipped with swords and heavy throwing spears, along with some Gaulish cavalrymen who were either lightly armored or not armored at all.

  The Parthians confronted Crassus with a kind of fighting that the Romans had not previously encountered, and against which they had no answer. The Roman infantry advanced, but the Parthian horse archers withdrew before them, circling around to shoot arrows into the flanks of their column. Hour after hour the arrows rained down on the Romans, and despite their heavy armor the powerful Parthian war bows frequently zinged an arrow past the edge of a shield, found a gap at the neck between body armor and helmet, punched through a weak link in chain mail, or wounded a soldier’s unprotected hands or feet. The Romans grew tired and thirsty in the heat, and their frustration at not being able to get to grips with the Parthians turned to defeatism, especially when they saw the Parthians resupply themselves with arrows from masses of heavily laden pack camels.

  At one point Crassus’s son led a detachment, including the Gaulish cavalry, against the Parthians. The Parthians pulled back as if in disorder, but their real intention was to draw the detachment away beyond any possible assistance from the main body. When the Gauls rode ahead to chase off the archers, the Parthian heavy cavalry charged down on them, spearing the lightly armored Gauls and their horses with their long lances. In desperation, the Gauls tried to attack the Parthian horses by dismounting and rolling under them, trying to stab up at their unprotected bellies, but even this desperate tactic could not save them. Then the full strength of the Parthian horse archers turned on the Roman detachment. More and more of them were hit by arrows, while all were disoriented and confused by the clouds of dust thrown up by the Parthians’ horses. Crassus’s son pulled his men back to a small hill—where they were surrounded and eventually killed, with the exception of about five hundred, who were taken prisoner.