Persian Empire: History, Kings and Legacy (with the Persian Names)

The Persian Empire usually means the Achaemenid Empire (هخامنشیان, Hakhâmaneshiyân), founded by Cyrus the Great around 550 BCE in what is now Iran. At its height under Darius I it stretched from Egypt and the Balkans to the Indus River. It lasted about 220 years, until Alexander the Great conquered it in 330 BCE.

Later Iranian dynasties, above all the Parthians and the Sasanians, also ruled empires from the Iranian plateau, so “the Persian Empire” can mean more than one state. This guide covers the Achaemenids in detail, then the later empires in brief, and then something most history pages skip: the Persian names Iranians use for these kings and places today, and the words from this era that still live in Persian and English. You can hear each name with the Listen buttons and test yourself at the end.

The Persian Empire at a glance

Before the empire: Medes and Persians

The Persians were an Iranian-speaking people who settled in the southwest of the Iranian plateau, in the land the Greeks called Persis and the Persians called Pârsa. That name lives on in the province of Fârs (فارس) and in the word Fârsi itself. In the 7th and early 6th centuries BCE the strongest Iranian power was Media (ماد, Mâd), with its capital at Ecbatana, today’s Hamadan. In 612 BCE the Medes and the Babylonians destroyed Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. The Persians were at that time under Median overlordship.

Cyrus the Great: the founder (about 559 to 530 BCE)

Cyrus II (کوروش, Kurosh) Listen was a local Persian king who rose against the Median king Astyages around 550 BCE and took over the Median realm. In a few decades he built the largest state the world had known:

• Media, about 550 BCE: the old Iranian power became part of his kingdom.
• Lydia, in western Anatolia, in the 540s BCE: Cyrus defeated its famously rich king Croesus and took Sardis. The Greek cities of the Ionian coast came under Persian rule.
• Babylon, in 539 BCE: the great city fell, and with it Mesopotamia and the lands to the west.

After taking Babylon, Cyrus had a clay cylinder inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform, now known as the Cyrus Cylinder (منشور کوروش, manshur-e Kurosh) Listen. It presents him as a king who restored temples and let deported peoples return home. The Hebrew Bible also remembers Cyrus warmly, because he allowed Jewish exiles to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. The cylinder was found in Babylon in 1879 and is in the British Museum. Modern writers sometimes call it the first charter of human rights; historians prefer to read it as a royal text in an old Mesopotamian tradition, but its message of tolerance is real and it matters a great deal to Iranians today.

Cyrus built his capital at Pasargadae (Pâsârgâd), where his simple stone tomb still stands. He died in 530 BCE on a campaign in Central Asia. For his life, the cylinder and the tomb in more depth, read our full guide to Cyrus the Great.

Cambyses and Darius the Great

Cyrus’s son Cambyses II (کمبوجیه, Kambujiye) conquered Egypt in 525 BCE. After his death in 522 BCE the empire fell into revolt, and a nobleman from another branch of the family, Darius I (داریوش, Dâriyush) Listen, seized the throne. He spent his first year crushing rebellions and then told his version of events in the huge Behistun (Bisotun) inscription (بیستون), carved high on a cliff near Kermanshah in three languages: Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. Because it repeats one text in three scripts, it helped 19th-century scholars decipher cuneiform.

Darius ruled from 522 to 486 BCE and is the king who turned conquests into a working state. You can read a short text about him in Persian in our reading lesson on Darius the Great, and a famous moral tale about him in Saadi’s story of Darius and his horse-keeper.

How Darius ran the empire

• Satrapies. The empire was divided into provinces, each governed by a satrap (ساتراپ, sâtrâp) who collected tribute and kept order. Royal secretaries and inspectors, called “the king’s eyes and ears” by Greek writers, reported back to the court.
• The Royal Road. A highway of roughly 2,700 kilometers (about 1,700 miles) ran from Sardis in western Anatolia to Susa. Herodotus counts 111 stations along it, where fresh horses and riders waited. A traveler on foot needed about three months; royal couriers, riding in relays, carried messages in about a week. Herodotus’s praise of these riders, that neither snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness stops them, is carved on the old General Post Office in New York.
• Coins and standards. Darius introduced a gold coin the Greeks called the daric (دریک, darik) and standardized weights and measures.
• Canal and building. He completed a canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea and began building Persepolis around 518 BCE.
• Tolerance as policy. Local peoples kept their languages, laws, religions and often their own elites, as long as they paid tribute and stayed loyal. Aramaic served as the common written language of administration across the west of the empire.

Persepolis: the ceremonial capital

Persepolis is called تخت جمشید (Takht-e Jamshid, “the throne of Jamshid”) Listen in Persian, after a legendary king of Iranian myth. Built on a great stone terrace near today’s Shiraz by Darius, Xerxes and their successors, it is famous for the Apadana audience hall and its stairway reliefs, which show delegations from across the empire bringing gifts to the king, and for the Gate of All Nations built by Xerxes. Nearby, at Naqsh-e Rostam (نقش رستم, Naghsh-e Rostam), the tombs of Darius I and three later kings are cut into the cliff. Persepolis became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. Our longer guide, Persepolis: the ancient city of Persia, covers the site and visiting.

Xerxes and the wars with Greece

Darius’s first move against mainland Greece ended at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE. His son Xerxes I (خشایارشا, Khashâyârshâ) Listen, who ruled from 486 to 465 BCE, led a much larger invasion in 480 BCE. His army won at Thermopylae and burned Athens, but the Persian fleet lost at Salamis that same year, and the land army was defeated at Plataea in 479 BCE. Greek historians, especially Herodotus, made these wars the center of their story, which is why the Persian Empire is often seen in the West through Greek eyes. For the Persians, Greece was one frontier among many, and the empire stayed rich and powerful for another 150 years.

Herodotus also describes an elite infantry corps of 10,000 men that the Greeks called the “Immortals,” because any soldier who fell was immediately replaced.

The fall of the Achaemenid Empire

Later kings, including Artaxerxes I and Artaxerxes II, held the empire together through court intrigue, revolts in Egypt and constant diplomacy with the Greek cities. In 334 BCE Alexander of Macedon (اسکندر, Eskandar) crossed into Asia. He beat Persian forces at the Granicus (334 BCE), defeated Darius III at Issus (333 BCE) and again at Gaugamela (331 BCE). Persepolis was burned in 330 BCE, and Darius III was killed that year by his own officers. After Alexander died in 323 BCE, most of the old Persian lands passed to the Seleucid dynasty founded by one of his generals.

Later Persian empires in brief

The Parthian Empire (about 247 BCE to 224 CE)

The Parthians, or Arsacids (اشکانیان, Ashkâniyân) Listen, came from the northeast of Iran and gradually took the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia from the Seleucids. Their capital Ctesiphon (تیسفون, Tisfun) stood on the Tigris near modern Baghdad. For centuries they were Rome’s great rival in the east: in 53 BCE they destroyed a Roman army under Crassus at Carrhae. Their mounted archers, who could shoot backward while riding away, gave English the phrase “a Parthian shot” (often heard as “a parting shot”). The Parthian period lasted almost 500 years, longer than any other Iranian dynasty of antiquity.

The Sasanian Empire (224 to 651 CE)

In 224 CE Ardashir I (اردشیر بابکان, Ardeshir-e Bâbakân), a ruler from Pârs, defeated the last Parthian king and founded the Sasanian dynasty (ساسانیان, Sâsâniyân) Listen. The Sasanian kings called themselves “king of kings of Iran” and made Zoroastrianism a state religion. Shapur I (شاپور, Shâpur) captured the Roman emperor Valerian in 260 CE, a scene carved in rock at Naqsh-e Rostam. Under Khosrow I (خسرو انوشیروان, Khosrow Anushirvân) in the 6th century, the empire was at a high point of power and learning; the great arch of the palace at Ctesiphon, طاق کسری (Tâgh-e Kasrâ), still stands in Iraq. Exhausted by long wars with Byzantium, the empire fell to the Arab Muslim armies after the battles of Qadisiyya (about 636) and Nahavand (642). The last king, Yazdegerd III, died in 651.

And after?

Later Iranian states, such as the Safavid empire (1501 to 1736), are sometimes also called Persian empires. Iran remained a monarchy until 1979. The country was known in the West as Persia until 1935, when the government asked foreign countries to use its own name, Iran (ایران). Our guide to Farsi vs Persian vs Dari vs Tajik explains how the names Persian and Farsi relate.

Timeline of the Persian empires

The Persian Empire in Persian: names and words

If you learn Persian, you will meet these names constantly: in school books, street names, baby names and the news. Iranians use their own forms, which often sound quite different from the Greek-based English ones. In Persian, “the Achaemenid Empire” is usually شاهنشاهی هخامنشی (shâhanshâhi-ye hakhâmaneshi) Listen, and the general word for empire is امپراتوری (emperâturi) Listen.

Words from the empire that are still alive

• Shah. شاه (shâh) Listen goes back to the Old Persian royal title, xshâyathiya. The full title “king of kings” survives as شاهنشاه (shâhanshâh). Chess still carries it: “checkmate” comes, through Arabic, from Persian شاه مات (shâh mât).
• Paradise. An Old Iranian word for a walled garden or enclosure was borrowed by Greek as paradeisos; Xenophon used it for the parks of Persian kings and nobles. From there it reached English “paradise.” The same root gives modern Persian پردیس (pardis) Listen, used today for a park, a campus or a cinema complex, and, through Arabic, فردوس (ferdows), “paradise,” the root of the poet Ferdowsi’s name.
• Satrap. Old Persian xshaçapâvan, “protector of the realm,” became Greek satrapes and English “satrap.” Persian books write it ساتراپ (sâtrâp).
• Magi and magic. The Old Persian word for a priest, magush, gave Greek magos, Latin magus, the “Magi” of the Christmas story, and English “magic.” In Persian it is مغ (mogh) Listen, a word that appears in classical poetry.
• Iran and Persia. Darius called himself “a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan” in his tomb inscription. Pârsa gave the Greek Persis and our “Persia” and “Persian”; the Iranian word ariya is the ancestor of ایران (Irân) Listen.

Old, Middle and modern Persian

The Achaemenid kings wrote Old Persian (فارسی باستان, fârsi-ye bâstân) in a cuneiform script of its own, used mainly for royal inscriptions. The Sasanians wrote Middle Persian (فارسی میانه, fârsi-ye miyâne), also called Pahlavi, in a script derived from Aramaic. Modern Persian grew out of Middle Persian and has been written in the Arabic-based Persian alphabet since the 9th and 10th centuries. That continuity is one reason Iranians feel so close to this history: the language of the Shahnameh is a direct descendant of the language of Darius.

Why the Persian Empire still matters to Iranians

For many Iranians, the Achaemenids are a source of deep pride, and Cyrus in particular is a symbol of fair and tolerant rule. Families visit Pasargadae and Persepolis, children are named Kurosh, Dâriyush and Khashâyâr, and in late October some Iranians gather at Cyrus’s tomb on an unofficial Cyrus the Great Day; our Persian news reading on Cyrus the Great Day is a good practice text.

Interestingly, the Achaemenids were largely forgotten in Iran’s own later tradition. Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, finished around 1010, tells of legendary kings such as Jamshid and Fereydun and then of the Sasanians, but Cyrus and Darius I do not appear in it. Knowledge of them came back mostly through Greek and biblical sources and, from the 19th century, through archaeology and the decipherment of the inscriptions. The Persian festival of Nowruz is far older than Islam, and many Iranians connect it with the gift-bearing delegations on the Persepolis stairways, though that link is not proven.

If you want to read about this history in Persian, the texts in our Farsi Reading series cover Iranian history, monuments and culture at intermediate level, and the Iran quiz is a good next step.

Common questions

Who founded the Persian Empire?

Cyrus the Great (کوروش بزرگ, Kurosh-e bozorg) founded the Achaemenid Persian Empire around 550 BCE, after defeating the Median king Astyages. He went on to conquer Lydia and, in 539 BCE, Babylon.

How long did the Persian Empire last?

The Achaemenid Empire lasted about 220 years, from around 550 BCE to 330 BCE. If you count the later Iranian empires, the Parthians ruled for almost 500 years (about 247 BCE to 224 CE) and the Sasanians for over 400 (224 to 651 CE).

How big was the Persian Empire at its height?

Under Darius I it reached from Egypt and Thrace to the Indus Valley, an area often estimated at about 5.5 million square kilometers. It was the largest empire the world had seen up to that time.

Is Persia the same as Iran?

Yes. Iranians have long called their country Iran (ایران); “Persia” comes from Pârs, the southwestern homeland of the Achaemenids, through Greek. In 1935 the Iranian government asked other countries to use the name Iran.

Who destroyed the Persian Empire?

Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid Empire between 334 and 330 BCE, defeating Darius III at Issus and Gaugamela. The last ancient Persian empire, the Sasanian, fell to the Arab Muslim conquest in the 7th century.

What language did the ancient Persians speak?

The Achaemenid kings spoke Old Persian, the ancestor of Middle Persian and of today’s Persian (Farsi). The empire’s administration also used Elamite and, above all, Aramaic.

More in our Iran section: History of Iran, era by era, from the Achaemenid Empire and the Sasanians to today.

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