Iran has one of the oldest histories in the world, extending more than 5000 years, and throughout history, Iran has been of geostrategic importance because of its central location in Eurasia and Western Asia. Iran is a founding member of the UN, NAM, OIC, OPEC, and ECO. Iran as a major regional power occupies an important position in the world economy due to its substantial reserves of petroleum and natural gas, and has considerable regional influence in Western Asia. The name Iran is a cognate of Aryan and literally means "Land of the Aryans." (Full article...)
The grey heron (Ardea cinerea) is a long-legged wading bird of the heron family, Ardeidae, native throughout temperate Europe and Asia, and also parts of Africa. It is resident in much of its range, but some populations from the more northern parts migrate southwards in autumn. A bird of wetland areas, it can be seen around lakes, rivers, ponds, marshes and on the sea coast. It feeds mostly on aquatic creatures which it catches after standing stationary beside or in the water, or stalking its prey through the shallows.
Standing up to 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) tall, adults weigh from 1 to 2 kg (2 to 4 lb). They have a white head and neck with a broad black stripe that extends from the eye to the black crest. The body and wings are grey above and the underparts are greyish-white, with some black on the flanks. The long, sharply pointed beak is pinkish-yellow and the legs are brown. (Full article...)
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The Cyrus Cylinder, obverse and reverse sides, and transcription
The text on the Cylinder praises Cyrus, sets out his genealogy and portrays him as a king from a line of kings. The Babylonian king Nabonidus, who was defeated and deposed by Cyrus, is denounced as an impious oppressor of the people of Babylonia and his low-born origins are implicitly contrasted to Cyrus' kingly heritage. The victorious Cyrus is portrayed as having been chosen by the chief Babylonian god Marduk to restore peace and order to the Babylonians. The text states that Cyrus was welcomed by the people of Babylon as their new ruler and entered the city in peace. It appeals to Marduk to protect and help Cyrus and his son Cambyses. It extols Cyrus as a benefactor of the citizens of Babylonia who improved their lives, repatriated displaced people and restored temples and cult sanctuaries across Mesopotamia and elsewhere in the region. It concludes with a description of how Cyrus repaired the city wall of Babylon and found a similar inscription placed there by an earlier king. (Full article...)
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King of Kings was a ruling title employed primarily by monarchs based in the Middle East. Although most commonly associated with Iran (historically known as Persia in the West), especially the Achaemenid and Sasanian Empires, the title was originally introduced during the Middle Assyrian Empire by king Tukulti-Ninurta I (reigned 1233–1197 BC) and was subsequently used in a number of different kingdoms and empires, including the aforementioned Persia, various Hellenic kingdoms, India, Armenia, Georgia, and Ethiopia.
The title is commonly seen as equivalent to that of Emperor, both titles outranking that of king in prestige, stemming from the late antiqueRoman and Eastern Roman emperors who saw the Shahanshahs of the Sasanian Empire as their equals. The last reigning monarchs to use the title of Shahanshah, those of the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran (1925–1979), also equated the title with "Emperor". The rulers of the Ethiopian Empire used the title of Nəgusä Nägäst (literally "King of Kings"), which was officially translated as "Emperor". Sultan of Sultans is the sultanic equivalent of King of Kings. (Full article...)
The Baháʼí Faith has three central figures: the Báb (1819–1850), executed for heresy, who taught that a prophet similar to Jesus and Muhammad would soon appear; Baháʼu'lláh (1817–1892), who claimed to be that prophet in 1863 and had to endure both exile and imprisonment; and his son, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá (1844–1921), who made teaching trips to Europe and the United States after his release from confinement in 1908. After ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's death in 1921, the leadership of the religion fell to his grandson Shoghi Effendi (1897–1957). Baháʼís annually elect local, regional, and national Spiritual Assemblies that govern the religion's affairs, and every five years an election is held for the Universal House of Justice, the nine-member governing institution of the worldwide Baháʼí community that is located in Haifa, Israel, near the Shrine of the Báb. (Full article...)
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Sasanian-style coin of Peroz I Kushanshah, minted at Herat. Obverse: King with Pahlavi legend around. "The Mazda-worshipping lord Peroz the Great Kushan Shah". Reverse: Peroz standing at left, holding an investiture wreath, facing Anahita rising from her throne.
Coin of Arsaces I. The reverse shows a seated archer carrying a bow, with the Greek legend reading "ΑΡΣΑΚΟΥ" (right) and "[AYT]OKPATOP[OΣ]" (left), meaning [coin of] "Arsaces autocrator".
Arsaces I (/ˈɑːrsəsiːz/; from Greek: Ἀρσάκης; in Parthian: 𐭀𐭓𐭔𐭊Aršak) was the first king of Parthia, ruling from 247 BC to 217 BC, as well as the founder and eponym of the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia. The leader of the Parni, one of the three tribes of the Dahae confederacy, Arsaces founded his dynasty in the mid-3rd century BC when he conquered the satrapy of Parthia (now shared between Turkmenistan and Iran) from Andragoras, who had rebelled against the Seleucid Empire. He spent the rest of his reign consolidating his rule in the region, and successfully stopped the Seleucid efforts to reconquer Parthia. Due to Arsaces' achievements, he became a popular figure amongst the Arsacid monarchs, who used his name as a royal honorific. By the time of his death, Arsaces had laid the foundations of a strong state, which would eventually transform into an empire under his great-grandnephew, Mithridates I, who assumed the ancient Near Eastern royal title of King of Kings. Arsaces was succeeded by his son Arsaces II.
Literary sources are very scarce on Arsaces, and exclusively come from contradictory Greek and Roman accounts written centuries after his death. As a result, his reign is sparsely known. His existence was even questioned by modern scholars, until new studies and archaeological findings confirmed his identity in the 1960s. (Full article...)
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A map depicting the major areas of conflict during the Battle of Salamis
To block the Persian advance, a small force of Greeks blocked the pass of Thermopylae, while an Athenian-dominated allied navy engaged the Persian fleet in the nearby straits of Artemisium. In the resulting Battle of Thermopylae, the rearguard of the Greek force was annihilated, while in the Battle of Artemisium the Greeks suffered heavy losses and retreated after the loss at Thermopylae. This allowed the Persians to conquer Phocis, Boeotia, Attica and Euboea. The allies prepared to defend the Isthmus of Corinth while the fleet was withdrawn to nearby Salamis Island. (Full article...)
Vardanes I was a king of the Parthian Empire from 40 to 46 AD. He was the heir apparent of his father Artabanus II (r. 12–40), but had to continually fight against his brother Gotarzes II, a rival claimant to the throne. Vardanes' short reign ended when he was assassinated while hunting at the instigation of a party of Parthian nobles . (Full article...)
The engagement at Thermopylae occurred simultaneously with the naval Battle of Artemisium: between July and September 480 BC. The second Persian invasion under Xerxes I was a delayed response to the failure of the first Persian invasion, which had been initiated by Darius I and ended in 490 BC by an Athenian-led Greek victory at the Battle of Marathon. By 480 BC, a decade after the Persian defeat at Marathon, Xerxes had amassed a massive land and naval force, and subsequently set out to conquer all of Greece. In response, the Athenian politician and general Themistocles proposed that the allied Greeks block the advance of the Persian army at the pass of Thermopylae while simultaneously blocking the Persian navy at the Straits of Artemisium. (Full article...)
The Azadi Tower (Persian: برج آزادی, Borj-e Āzādi; translated: Freedom Tower), previously known as the Shahyād Āryāmehr (Persian: شهیاد آریامهر; English: King Memorial Tower), is the symbol of Tehran, the capital of Iran, and marks the entrance to the city.
...that Russia won the 1804–1813 Russo-Persian War, because of its superior technology, despite Persia upscaling its efforts at the end of the war, and declaring it a holy war?
...that, in connection with the 7th-century Turkic conquest of Aghvania, the invaders were reported "to suck the children's blood like milk"?
In the Caucasus, the Qajar dynasty permanently lost much territory to the Russian Empire over the course of the 19th century, comprising modern-day eastern Georgia, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. Despite its territorial losses, Qajar Iran reinvented the Iranian notion of kingship and maintained relative political independence, but faced major challenges to its sovereignty, predominantly from the Russian and British empires. Foreign advisers became powerbrokers in the court and military. They eventually partitioned Qajar Iran in the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention, carving out Russian and British influence zones and a neutral zone. (Full article...)
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The Letter of Tansar (Persian: نامه تنسر) was a 6th-century Sassanid propaganda instrument that portrayed the preceding Arsacid period as morally corrupt and heretical (to Zoroastrianism), and presented the first Sassanid dynast Ardashir I as having "restored" the faith to a "firm foundation." The letter was simultaneously a declaration of the unity of Zoroastrian church and Iranian state, "for church and state were born of the one womb, joined together and never to be sundered."
The document seems to have been based on a genuine 3rd-century letter written by Tansar, the Zoroastrian high priest under Ardashir I, to a certain Gushnasp of Parishwar/Tabaristan, one of vassal kings of the Arsacid Ardavan IV. This original missive was apparently written not long after Ardashir had overthrown Ardavan, and Tansar appears to have been responding to charges levelled at Ardashir, and the delay in accepting Ardashir's suzerainty. Representative of those charges is the accusation that Ardashir "had taken away fires from the fire-temples, extinguished them and blotted them out." To this, Tansar replies that it was the "kings of the peoples [i.e. Parthians' vassal kings]" that began the practice of dynastic fires, an "innovation" unauthorized by the kings of old. A similar response appears in Book IV of the 9th century Denkard. (Full article...)
The Iran–Iraq War, also known as the First Gulf War (Arabic: حرب الخليج الأولى), was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. Active hostilities began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 by both sides. Iraq's primary rationale for the attack against Iran cited the need to prevent Ruhollah Khomeini—who had spearheaded the Iranian Revolution in 1979—from exporting the new Iranian ideology to Iraq. There were also fears among the Iraqi leadership of Saddam Hussein that Iran, a theocratic state with a population predominantly composed of Shia Muslims, would exploit sectarian tensions in Iraq by rallying Iraq's Shia majority against the Baʽathist government, which was officially secular and dominated by Sunni Muslims. Iraq also wished to replace Iran as the power player in the Persian Gulf, which was not seen as an achievable objective prior to the Islamic Revolution because of Pahlavi Iran's economic and military superiority as well as its close relationships with the United States and Israel.
The Iran–Iraq War followed a long-running history of territorial border disputes between the two states, as a result of which Iraq planned to retake the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arab that it had ceded to Iran in the 1975 Algiers Agreement. Iraqi support for Arab separatists in Iran increased following the outbreak of hostilities; Saddam disputedly may have wished to annex Iran's Arab-majority Khuzestan province. While the Iraqi leadership had hoped to take advantage of Iran's post-revolutionary chaos and expected a decisive victory in the face of a severely weakened Iran, the Iraqi military only made progress for three months, and by December 1980, the Iraqi invasion had stalled. The Iranian military began to gain momentum against the Iraqis and regained all lost territory by June 1982. After pushing Iraqi forces back to the pre-war border lines, Iran rejected United Nations Security Council Resolution 514 and launched an invasion of Iraq. The subsequent Iranian offensive within Iraqi territory lasted for five years, with Iraq taking back the initiative in mid-1988 and subsequently launching a series of major counter-offensives that ultimately led to the conclusion of the war in a stalemate. (Full article...)
During his 40-year tenure, Rafsanjani amassed a large amount of power serving as the speaker of parliament, Commander-in-Chief during the Iran–Iraq War, President, and chose Ali Khamenei as the supreme leader of Iran. (Full article...)
The Second Herat War (late March 1856–26 October 1856) was the invasion of the surrounding realm of Herat and the successful siege of its citadel by the Qajar army led by Hesam o-Saltaneh, Soltan Morad Mirza. The 1856 siege was part of the concerted Qajar effort to compensate the recent territorial losses in the Russo-Persian Wars of 1804–1813 and 1826–1828 by reconquering western Afghanistan, which had historically been a part of Persia's domain. The conflict was also a part of the broader Great Game between the British Empire and the Russian Empire.
The Persian expedition into Herat was contrary to an agreement with the United Kingdom signed by Naser al-Din Shah in January 1853. According to this agreement, the Persian Government would refrain from sending troops to or interfering in the internal affairs of Herat. The siege was a major point of contention in the breakdown of Anglo-Persian relations and eventually became the catalyst for the Anglo-Persian War. After successfully capturing Herat, British agents were either expelled from Persia or left on their own accord. Despite dispatching Farrokh Khan Ghaffari to negotiate a diplomatic solution, the British were already preparing military action against Persia by July 1856. The British would inevitably issue a declaration of war on Persia from Calcutta on 1 November 1856. The Persian army would continue to occupy Herat and would only leave in compliance with the Treaty of Paris that ended the Anglo-Persian War. However, the Persian government managed to install Sultan Ahmad Khan as the puppet ruler of Herat prior to the ratification of the peace treaty with Britain. (Full article...)
The fortified site, which is located on a hill created by the outflow of a calcium-rich spring pond, was recognized as a World Heritage Site in July 2003. The citadel includes the remains of Adur Gushnasp, a Zoroastrianfire temple built during the Sassanid period and partially rebuilt (as a mosque) during the Ilkhanid period. This temple housed one of the three "Great Fires" or "Royal Fires" that Sassanid rulers humbled themselves before in order to ascend the throne. The fire at Takht-i Soleiman was called Adur Gushnasp and was dedicated to the arteshtar or warrior class of the Sasanid. A 4th century Armenian manuscript relating to Jesus and Zarathustra, and various historians of the Islamic period, mention this pond. The foundations of the fire temple around the pond is attributed to that legend. Takht-E Soleyman appears on the 4th century Peutinger Map. (Full article...)
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The Assembly of Experts (Persian: مجلس خبرگان رهبری, romanized: majles-e khobregân-e rahbari), also translated as the Assembly of Experts of the Leadership or as the Council of Experts, is the deliberative body empowered to appoint the Supreme Leader of Iran. All directly elected members must first be vetted by the Guardian Council.
All candidates to the Assembly of Experts must be approved by the Guardian Council whose members are, in turn, appointed either directly or indirectly by the Supreme Leader. The Assembly consists of 88 Mujtahids that are elected from lists of thoroughly vetted candidates (in 2016 166 candidates were approved by the Guardians out of 801 who applied to run for the office), by direct public vote for eight-year terms. The number of members has ranged from 82 elected in 1982 to 88 elected in 2016. Current laws require the assembly to meet at least twice every six months. (Full article...)
The Battle of Manzikert of 1071 is widely regarded as the turning point against the Byzantines in their war against the Seljuks. The battle opened up Anatolia for further Turkish migrations and settlements. The Byzantine military was of questionable quality before 1071 with regular Turkish incursions overrunning the failing theme system. Even after Manzikert, Byzantine rule over Asia Minor did not end immediately, nor were any heavy concessions levied by the Turks on their opponents – it took another 20 years before the Turks were in control of the entire Anatolian peninsula and not for long either. (Full article...)
... that Russia launched an Iranian satellite into orbit just three weeks after Putin and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei vowed to cooperate against the West?
... that the film Critical Zone was shot in secret by Ali Ahmadzadeh without permission from Iranian authorities?
April 24–April 25, 1980 – Operation Eagle Claw, a commando mission in Iran to rescue American embassy hostages, is aborted after mechanical problems ground the rescue helicopters. Eight United States troops are killed in a mid-air collision during the failed operation.
I found that many Americans did not even know that a country named Iran existed, let alone what it was like. Even among the diplomatic corps and among well-educated people, there was a vagueness about who the Iranians were or what the culture was, a tendency to confuse Iran with Iraq or to mistakenly assume that Iran is an Arab country simply because it is an Islamic nation. This fuzziness about the world outside is unique to America; among the intelligensia of European countries, for example, there is generally a higher level of awareness and information regarding cultures other than their own.
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