Parthian Empire | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 247 BC–224 AD | |||||||||
 The Parthian Empire in 94 BC at its greatest extent, during the reign of Mithridates II (r. 124–91 BC) | |||||||||
| Capital | Ctesiphon,[1] Ecbatana, Hecatompylos, Susa, Mithradatkirt, Asaak, Rhages | ||||||||
| Common languages | |||||||||
| Religion | |||||||||
| Government | Feudal monarchy[9] | ||||||||
| Monarch | |||||||||
• 247–211 BC | Arsaces I (first) | ||||||||
• 208–224 AD | Artabanus IV (last) | ||||||||
| Legislature | Megisthanes | ||||||||
| Historical era | Classical antiquity | ||||||||
• Established | 247 BC | ||||||||
• Disestablished | 224 AD | ||||||||
| Area | |||||||||
| 1 AD[10][11] | 2,800,000 km2 (1,100,000 sq mi) | ||||||||
| Currency | Drachma | ||||||||
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| History of Iran |
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Timeline Iran portal |
The Parthian Empire (/ˈpɑːrθiən/), also known as the Arsacid Empire (/ˈɑːrsəsɪd/),[12] was a major Iranian political and cultural power centered in ancient Iran from 247 BC to 224 AD.[13] Its latter name comes from its founder, Arsaces I,[14] who led the Parni tribe in conquering the region of Parthia[15] in Iran's northeast, then a satrapy (province) under Andragoras, who was rebelling against the Seleucid Empire. Mithridates I (r. c. 171 – 132 BC) greatly expanded the empire by seizing Media and Mesopotamia from the Seleucids. At its height, the Parthian Empire stretched from the northern reaches of the Euphrates, in what is now central-eastern Turkey, to present-day Afghanistan and western Pakistan. The empire, located on the Silk Road trade route between the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean Basin and the Han dynasty of China, became a center of trade and commerce.
The Parthians largely adopted the art, architecture, religious beliefs, and regalia of their culturally heterogeneous empire, which encompassed Persian, Hellenistic, and regional cultures. For about the first half of its existence, the Arsacid court adopted elements of Greek culture, though it eventually saw a gradual revival of Iranian traditions. The Arsacid rulers were titled "King of Kings", claiming inheritance of the Achaemenid Empire; indeed, they accepted many local kings as vassals, although the Achaemenids would have had centrally appointed, albeit largely autonomous, satraps. The court did appoint a small number of satraps, largely outside Iran, but these satrapies were smaller and less powerful than the Achaemenid potentates. With the expansion of Arsacid power, the seat of central government shifted from Nisa to Ctesiphon along the Tigris (south of Baghdad), although several other sites also served as capitals.
The earliest enemies of the Parthians were the Seleucids in the west and the Scythians in the north. However, as Parthia expanded westward, they came into conflict with the Kingdom of Armenia, and eventually the late Roman Republic. Rome and Parthia competed with each other to establish the kings of Armenia as their tributaries. The Parthians destroyed the army of Marcus Licinius Crassus at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, and in 40–39 BC, Parthian forces captured the whole of the Levant except Tyre from the Romans; Mark Antony led a Roman counterattack. Several Roman emperors invaded Mesopotamia in the Roman–Parthian Wars of the next few centuries, capturing the cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon. Frequent civil wars between Parthian contenders to the throne proved more dangerous to the Empire's stability than foreign invasion, and Parthian power evaporated when Ardashir I, ruler of Istakhr in Persis, revolted against the Arsacids and killed their last ruler, Artabanus IV, in 224 AD. Ardashir established the Sasanian Empire, which ruled Iran and much of the Near East until the Muslim conquests of the 7th century AD, although the Arsacid dynasty lived on through branches of the family that ruled Armenia, Caucasian Iberia, and Caucasian Albania.
Native Parthian sources, written in Parthian, Greek and other languages, are scarce when compared to Sasanian and even earlier Achaemenid sources. Aside from scattered cuneiform tablets, fragmentary ostraca, rock inscriptions, drachma coins, and the chance survival of some parchment documents, much of Parthian history is only known through external sources. These include mainly Greek and Roman histories, but also Chinese histories, prompted by the Han Chinese desire to form alliances against the Xiongnu.[16] Parthian artwork is a means of understanding aspects of society and culture that are otherwise absent in textual sources.
- ^ Fattah, Hala Mundhir (2009). A Brief History of Iraq. Infobase Publishing. p. 46. ISBN 978-0-8160-5767-2.
One characteristic of the Parthians that the kings themselves maintained was their nomadic urge. The kings built or occupied numerous cities as their capitals, the most important being Ctesiphon on the Tigris River, which they built from the ancient town of Opis.
- ^ Skjærvø 2004, pp. 348–366.
- ^ Canepa 2018, p. 6.
- ^ a b Green 1992, p. 45
- ^ Chyet, Michael L. (1997). Afsaruddin, Asma; Krotkoff, Georg; Zahniser, A. H. Mathias (eds.). Humanism, Culture, and Language in the Near East: Studies in Honor of Georg Krotkoff. Eisenbrauns. p. 284. ISBN 978-1-57506-020-0.
In the Middle Persian period (Parthian and Sasanian Empires), Aramaic was the medium of everyday writing, and it provided scripts for writing Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, and Khwarezmian.
- ^ De Jong 2008, p. 24, "It is impossible to doubt that the Parthians were Zoroastrians. The evidence from the Nisa ostraca and the Parthian parchment from Avroman suffice to prove this, by the use of the Zoroastrian calendar, which was restricted in use, as it had been previously, to communication with Iranians only, yielding to the Seleucid calendar whenever the Parthians dealt with non-Zoroastrians. There are indications, however, that the practice of Zoroastrianism had reserved a large place for the cult of divine images, either those of ancestors in the Fravashi cult, or of deities, and for the existence of sanctuaries dedicated to named deities other than Ahura Mazda, and including deities that are of a non-Avestan background. The Parthian god Sasan is a case in point, but better evidence comes from Armenia, where alongside Aramazd and Anahit, Mher and Vahagn, the West Semitic god Barshamin, and Babylonian Nane were worshipped, as well as the Anatolian Tork and the goddess Astghik of disputed origins."
- ^ Brosius 2006, p. 125, "The Parthians and the peoples of the Parthian empire were polytheistic. Each ethnic group, each city, and each land or kingdom was able to adhere to its own gods, their respective cults and religious rituals. In Babylon the city-god Marduk continued to be the main deity alongside the goddesses Ishtar and Nanai, while Hatra's main god, the sun-god Shamash, was revered alongside a multiplicity of other gods."
- ^ Koshelenko & Pilipko 1996, p. 149-150, "Buddhism was practiced in the easternmost reaches of the Parthian Empire."
- ^ Sheldon 2010, p. 231
- ^ Turchin, Peter; Adams, Jonathan M.; Hall, Thomas D (December 2006). "East-West Orientation of Historical Empires". Journal of World-Systems Research. 12 (2): 223. ISSN 1076-156X. Archived from the original on 17 September 2016. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
- ^ Taagepera, Rein (1979). "Size and Duration of Empires: Growth-Decline Curves, 600 B.C. to 600 A.D.". Social Science History. 3 (3/4): 121. doi:10.2307/1170959. JSTOR 1170959.
- ^ From Greek Ἀρσάκης Arsakēs, from Parthian 𐭀𐭓𐭔𐭊 Aršak.
- ^ Waters 1974, p. 424.
- ^ Brosius 2006, p. 84
- ^ "roughly western Khurasan" Bickerman 1983, p. 6.
- ^ Ball 2016, p. 155