America is a few centuries old, but one of the oldest civilizations is Iran, being several millennia old.
Iran has been the news, with reports of its Islamic government killing thousands.
In part one of this history of Iran, we will learn about ancient Persia, King Cyrus, the Sasanian Empire, the Abbasid Islamic Golden Age, the Mongol Invasion and Tamerlane.
Iran, or Persia, was originally known as “Elam,” which Genesis chapter 10 explained was Noah’ grandson through Shem.
Archeologists date the Kingdom of Elam to the Bronze Age, 3,000 BC.
Around 1900 BC, Abraham fought a war against Chedorlaomer, King of Elam, as recorded in Genesis 14.
In 722 BC, the ten northern tribes of Israel were captured by Assyria, and in 597 BC, Judah was captured by Babylon.
Both Assyria and Babylon, together with the Medes, were conquered by Persia between 550 to 539 BC.
Cyrus of Persia let Jews rebuild their temple in 538 BC.
The Prophet Daniel served in Cyrus’ court, and later under Darius the Great, who ruled the Persian Achaemenid Empire.
Darius’ Persian army invaded Greece but was driven back at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, remember by the Marathons races today.
His son, Xerxes I, invaded Greece in 480 BC, initially winning at Thermopylae and Athens, but losing at Salamis and Plataea.
Xerxes returned to Persia where he chose Esther as Queen.
In 334 BC, Persia was conquered by Alexander the Great.
When he died, his General Seleucus ruled Persia in 312 BC, calling it the Seleucid Empire.
A successor of Seleucus was Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who oppressed Judea, till driven out by the Maccabean Revolt, 167 BC, as remembered every Hanukkah.
Judea was independent for the next century, till 63 BC when Roman General Pompey invaded.
For the next seven centuries, Rome fought Persia, which became the Parthian Empire.
The Wise from the East who visited Jesus, Mary and Joseph are thought to be from Persia, as “magi” is a Persian word.
Parthians, Medes and Elamites were present on the day of Pentecost, as described in the Book of Acts, chapter 2.
By the third century AD, Christianity was a minority in Persia’s Sasanian Empire, whose national religion of Zoroastrianism.
The greatest Sasanian “King of Kings” was Khosrow I, who centralized power.
During his reign, 531 to 579 AD, a tributary kingdom in India invented the game of chess, and in response, the Persian Sasanian kingdom invented backgammon.
China's Tang Dynasty undermined Persia's trade dominance by redirecting Silk Road caravans further to the north.
After nearly seven centuries of war, both Rome and Persia were so greatly weakened that it allowed Muslim warriors to expand Islam rapidly.
Islamic forces captured Roman-controlled Jerusalem in 638 AD, under Caliph Umar, and in 691, Caliph Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock.
In 634 AD, Islamic forces invaded Persia under Generals Sa’d and Khalid ibn al-Walid, nicknamed the “Drawn Sword of Allah” for being undefeated in 100 battles.
They lured the Persian cavalry into the desert where horses were at a disadvantage and defeated them at the Battles of Namraq and Kasker.
As the Islamic army approached Ctesiphon, the Persian capital for 800 years. Persian Emperor Yazdegerd III sent a message:
“If you would be agreeable to peace on the condition that the Tigris should be the boundary between you and us, so that whatever is with us on the eastern side of the Tigris remains ours and whatever you have gained on the western side is yours.
And if this does not satisfy your land hunger, then nothing would satisfy you."
Commander Sa’d responded that Muslims were not hungry for land. They were fighting to convert Persians to Islam.
In 1007, Persian poet Ferdowsi completed his epic poem “Shahnameh,” the world’s longest poem by a single author, with 60,000 rhyming couplets.
It is considered the most influential book in the Persian language, being a pushback against Arabic.
In the poem, Ferdowsi has Persian Emperor Yazdegerd III utter the line:
“Damn this fate, That uncivilized Arabs are come to make me Muslim.”
In 710 AD, Persia’s new Muslim ruler, 17-year-old Muhammad bin Qasim, conquered Pakistan, executing thousands of Sindh and Punjab soldiers, and selling their families into slavery.
Islam had a moderate Golden Age during the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate, incorporating Persian culture.
Scholars studied Greek classics, such as the Persian Avicenna, 980-1037, who wrote 450 works on science, math, medicine and philosophy, even suggesting paradise may not be sensual but spiritual.
His milder views were brought to an abrupt halt by Ghazali, who lived in the Abbasid capital of Baghdad.
Considered the most influential Muslim after Mohammed, Ghazali insisted Muslims only study the Qur’an.
The Abbasid Islamic Golden Age completely ended when Mongols invaded.
Mongols attacked Oghuz Turks, a semi-nomadic people who settled in Turkestan.
A sub-group, the Seljuk Turks, migrated further west to Persia and Babylon - Iraq, where they were hired by the Sunni Caliph of Baghdad as mercenaries.
Converting to Sunni Islam, Turks invaded the Byzantine Empire, which called for help from Catholic Europe who sent the Crusades.
Beginning in 1206, Genghis Khan’s 100,000 Mongolian warriors began conquering from China through Central Asia.
They invaded Persia in 1219; conquered Moscow in 1237, sacked Kiev in 1240, then Poland and Hungary, 1241, creating the largest contiguous land empire in history.
In 1258, Genghis Khan’s grandson, Hulegu Khan, destroyed the Muslim Caliphate in Baghdad, massacring the entire city.
Believing it was taboo for royal blood to touch the ground, Mongols rolled the last Abbasid Caliph, al-Musta'sim, in a carpet trampled by horses.
Hulegu Khan hunted down Ismaili killers in the mountains of Persia called hashashins, because they smoked hashish, from which came the word "assassin."
They had sent 400 killers to assassinate Hulegu’s brother, Mongke Khan.
Marco Polo, in 1271, traveled from Venice, Italy, through Persia on his way to China, where he worked as an emissary for Kublai Khan.
The Mongol invasion of Persia gave Christians temporary relief from persecution until 1295, when Mongol Ilkhanate rulers converted to Sunni Islam and destroyed churches.
In 1383, Tamerlane, the Sunni Muslim warlord, combined Mongolian severity with Islamic fanaticism, killing 17 million from Persia to Moscow.
In 1386, Tamerlane conquered Isfahan, once Persia’s greatest city, building towers with severed heads of 200,000.
President Truman remarked December 22, 1950:
“Our laws are founded on ... Moses, and elaborated on by Jesus Christ, whose Sermon on the Mount is the best ethical program …
The people we are in controversy with … are inheritors of the program of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, who were the greatest murderers in the history of the world.”
Tamerlane’s descendant, Babur, founded India’s Sunni Muslim Mughal Dynasty in 1526.
In part 2 of Iran's history, we will learn about the Safavid Dynasty, Persia's switch from Sunni to Shi’a, Shah Abbas the Great, and trade with Britain’s East India Company.
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