Persia

PERSIA

In Hebrew Paras, Eze 27:10, a vast region in Asia, the southwestern province of which lying between ancient media on the north and the Persian Gulf on the south, appears to have been the ancient Persia, and is still called Pharsistan, or Fars. The Persians, who became so famous after Cyrus, the founder of their more extended monarchy, were anciently called Elamites; and later, in the time of the Roman emperors, Parthians. See PARTHIA.The early history of the Persians, like that of most of the oriental nations, is involved in doubt and perplexity. Their descent is traced to Shem, through his son Elam, after whom they were originally named. It is probable that they enjoyed their independence for several ages, with a monarchical succession of their own; until they were subdued by the Assyrians and their country attached as a province to that empire. From this period, both sacred and profane writers distinguish the kingdom of the Medes from that of the Persians. It is not improbable that, during this period, petty revolutions might have occasioned temporary disjunctions of Persia from Assyria, and that the Persian king was quickly again made sensible of his true allegiance. When Media became independent, under Dejoes and then Phraortes, Persia became also subject to its sway, as a tributary kingdom. Media having vanquished her great rival Assyria enjoyed a long interval of peace, during the reign of Astyages, son of Cyaxares. But his successor, Cyaxares the Second, united with the Persians against the Babylonians, and gave the command of the combined armies to Cyrus, who took the city of Babylon, killed Belshazzar, the terminated that kingdom 538 B. C.Cyrus succeeded to the thrones of Media and Persia, and completed the union between those countries, which appear to have been in reality but two nations of he same race, having the same religion (See MAGI and MEDIA,) and using languages near akin to each other and to the ancient Sanscrit. Previously to their union under Cyrus, Daniel speaks of the law of the Medes and Persians as being the same.The union was effected B. C. 536. The principal events relating to Scripture, which occurred during the reign of Cyrus, were the restoration of the Jews, the rebuilding of the city and temple, and the capture of Babylon, B. C. 539, Ezr 1:2 . His dominion extended from the Mediterranean to the region of the Indus. Cambyses his successor, B. C. 529, added Egypt to the Persian realm, and the supremacy of Egypt and Syria was often in contest during subsequent reigns, Ezr 4:6 . He was followed by Smerdis the Magian, B. C. 522, Ezr 4:7 ; Darius Hystapis, B. C. 521, Ezr 5:6 ; Xerxes, the Ahasuerus of the book of Esther, B. C. 485, Artabanus, B. C. 465; Artaxerxes Longimanus, B. C. 464, Neh 2:1 ; Xerxes 2., B. C. 424; Sogdianus and Darius Nothus, B. C. 424; Artaxerxes Mnemon, B. C. 404; Artaxerxes Ochus, B. C. 364; Arses, B. C. 338; and Darius Codomanus, B. C. 335, who was subdued and slain by Alexander of Macedon, B. C. 330. In the seventh century Persia fell under the power of the Saracens, in the thirteenth it was conquered by Genghis Khan, and in the fourteenth by Tamerlane. Modern Persia is bounded north by Georgia, the Caspian sea, and Tartary; east by Afghanistan and Beloochistan; south by Ormus; and west by the dominions of Turkey. Its inhabitants retain to a remarkable extent the manners and custom of ancient Persia, of which we have so vivid a picture in Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel.

Fuente: American Tract Society Bible Dictionary

Persia

Theocatic republic and former monarchy of southwestern Asia. It is thought that Christianity was preached in this region in the 1st century; the spread of the Faith, mainly through missionaries from Syria, was usually encouraged or tolerated until the 3rd century, when the Sassanian dynasty revived Zoroastrianism as the state religion of their large empire. When Christianity was adopted by Constantine and invoked on behalf of the Roman Empire, in 312 , the many thousand Christians within the rival Persian Empire who were still under the ecclesiastical authority of Antioch, were regarded with increasing suspicion of political disloyalty. They were severely persecuted, but their numbers continued to grow. The writings of Aphraates, a Christian Persian noble, remain as important evidence of the beliefs of this period. Schools and libraries at Nisibis (modern Nisibin) and Edessa (Urfa) were founded by Saint James, Bishop of Nisibis, and his pupil, Saint Ephraem, and were famous centers of Syriac culture. In the 5th century many Nestorian Christians immigrated to Persia. The whole Church in Persia became Nestorian , and it continued to flourish as such for a few centuries after the Arab conquest and the adoption of Islam by the majority of Persians. There were many monasteries, and Nestorian missionaries were sent to India , China , and Mongolia. In the 17th century colonies of Armenians and Georgians settled in Persia, and at various times since then there have been other immigrations of Christians. Those successors of the ancient Nestorians who have come into union with Rome, form the Chaldean Church. In 1935 the name of the land was changed to Iran. In 1979 the ruling monarch was overthrown and conservative Islamic clerics took power. There are perhaps 10,000 Roman Catholics in the country.

Ecclesiastically the country is governed by the archdiocese of

Ahwaz (Chaldean )

Ispahan (Roman)

Teheran (Chaldean )

Urmya (Chaldean )

and the dioceses or eparchies of

Ispahan (Armenian )

Salmas (Chaldean )

See also

Catholic-Hierarchy.Org

World Fact Book

patron saints index

New Catholic Dictionary

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Persia

The history, religion, and civilization of Persia are offshoots from those of Media. Both Medes and Persians are Aryans; the Aryans who settled in the southern part of the Iranian plateau became known as Persians, while those of the mountain regions of the north-west were called Medes. The Medes were at first the leading nation, but towards the middle of the sixth century, B.C. the Persians became the dominant power, not only in Iran, but also in Western Asia.

Persia (in the Sept. persis, in the Achæmenian inscriptions Parsa, in Elamitic Parsin, in modern Persian Fars, and in Arabic Fars, or Fâris) was originally the name of a province in Media, but afterwards — i.e., towards the beginning of the fifth century B.C. — it became the general name of the whole country formerly comprising Media, Susiana, Elam, and even Mesopotamia. What we now call Persia is not identical with the ancient empire designated by that name. That empire covered, from the sixth century B.C. to the seventh of our era, such vast regions as Persia proper, Media, Elam, Chaldea, Babylonia, Assyria, the highlands of Armenia and Bactriana, North-Eastern Arabia, and even Egypt. Persia proper is bounded on the north by Transcaucasia, the Caspian Sea, and Russian Turkestan; on the south by the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf; it is over one-fifth as large as the United States (excluding Alaska) and twice as large as Germany, having an area of about 642,000 square miles. The whole country occupies a plateau varying in height from 3000 to 5000 feet, and subject to wide extremes of climate, its northern edge bordering on the Caspian Sea and the plain of Turkestan, its southern and south-western on the Persian Gulf and the plains of Mesopotamia. The ancient Persians were vigorous and hardy, simple in manners, occupied in raising cattle and horses in the mountainous regions, and agriculture in the valleys and plains. The four great cities were Ecbatana, in the north, Persepolis in the east, Susa in the west, and Seleucia-Ctesiphon in the south-west. The provinces and towns of modern Persia will be given below.

I. HISTORY

Historians generally assign the beginnings of Persian history to the reign of Cyrus the Great (550-529 B.C.), although, strictly speaking, it should begin with Darius (521-485 B.C.). Cyrus was certainly of Persian extraction, but when he founded his empire he was Prince of Elam (Anzan), and he merely added Media and Persia to his dominion. He was neither by birth nor religion a true Persian, for both he and Cambyses worshipped the Babylonian gods. Darius, on the other hand, was both by birth and religion a Persian, descended, like Cyrus, from the royal Achæmenian house of Persia, and a follower of the Zoroastrian faith. The ancestors of Darius had remained in Persia, whilst the branch of the family of which Cyrus was a member had settled in Elam.

The history of Persia may be divided into five great periods, each represented by a dynasty: A. The Achæmenian Dynasty, beginning with the kingdom of Cyrus the Great and ending with the Macedonian conquest (550-331 B.C.); B. The Greek, or Seleucian, Dynasty (331-250 B.C.); C. The Parthian Dynasty (250 B.C.-A.D. 227); D. The Sassanian Dynasty (A.D. 227-651); E. The Mohammedan period (A.D. 651 to the present).

A. The Achæmenian Dynasty (550-331 B.C.)

Towards the middle of the sixth century B.C., and a few years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar (Nabuchodonosor) the Great, King of Babylon (605-562 B.C.), Western Asia was divided into three kingdoms: the Babylonian Empire, Media, and Lydia; and it was only a question of time which of the three would annihilate the other two. Astyages (585-557 B.C.), the successor of Cyaxares (625-585 B.C.), being engaged in an expedition against Babylonia and Mesopotamia, Cyrus, Prince of Anzan, in Elam, profiting by his absence, fomented a rebellion in Media. Astyages, hearing of the revolt, immediately returned, but was defeated and overthrown by Cyrus, who was proclaimed King of Media. Thus, with the overthrow of Astyages and the accession of Cyrus to the throne, the Median Empire passed into the hands of the Persians (550 B.C.). In 549, Cyrus invaded Assyria and Babylonia; in 546 he attacked Croesus of Lydia, defeated him, and annexed Asia Minor to his realm; he then conquered Bactriana and, in 539, marched against Babylon. In 538 Babylon surrendered, Nabonidus fled, the Syro-Phoenician provinces submitted, and Cyrus allowed the Hebrews to return to Palestine. But in 529 he was killed in battle, and was succeeded by Cambyses, the heir apparent, who put his brother Smerdis to death. In 525 Cambyses, aided by a Phoenician fleet, conquered Egypt and advanced against the Sudan, but was compelled to return to Egypt. On his way home, and while in Syria, being informed that Gaumata, a Magian, pretending to be the murdered Smerdis, had seized the throne, Cambyses committed suicide (522) and was succeeded, in 531, by Darius Hystaspes, who, with six other princes, succeeded in overthrowing the usurper Gaumata.

With the accession of Darius, the throne passed to the second line of descendants of Teispes II, and thus the Elamite dynasty came to an end. This was soon followed by a general revolt in all the provinces, including Babylon, where a son of Nabonidus was proclaimed king. Susiana also rose up in arms, and Darius was confronted with the task of reconquering the empire founded by Cyrus. In 519 Babylon was conquered, all the other provinces, including Egypt, were pacified, and the whole empire reorganized and divided into satrapies with fixed administration and taxes. In 515 the Asiatic Greeks began to rebel, but were crushed by Darius. Thence he marched to the Indus and subjugated the country along its banks. In 499 the Ionians revolted, but were defeated and the city of Miletus destroyed (494 B.C.). In 492 Mardonius, one of Darius’s generals, set out to reconquer Greece, concentrating all his forces in Cilicia; but the Persians were defeated at Marathon (490 B.C.). In 485 Darius was succeeded by his son, Xerxes I, who immediately set out to reconquer Egypt and Babylon, and renewed the war against Greece. After the indecisive battles of Thermopylæ and Artemisium, he was defeated by Themistocles at Salamis near Athens (480). During the years 479-465, Xerxes met with constant reverses; he gradually lost Attica, Ionia, the Archipelago, and Thrace, and at last was assassinated by Artabanus and Artaxerxes. The latter, becoming king as Artaxerxes I, in 464 quelled revolts in Bactria and Egypt in the year 454. In 449, the Persian fleet and army having been again defeated near Salamis, in Cyrus, a treaty of peace was made between Persia and Athens. Artaxerxes died in 424 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Xerxes II, who reigned but forty-five days and was murdered by his half-brother Sogdianus. Sogdianus reigned six months and was murdered by Nothus, who ascended the throne in 423 as Darius II Nothus (the Bastard).

In 412, Darius II compelled Sparta to recognize Persian suzerainty over the Greek cities of Asia Minor, and reconquered the cities of Ionia and Caria. On his death, in 404, Arsaces, his eldest son, ascended the throne as Artaxerxes II, and quelled revolts in Cyrus, Asia Minor, and Egypt. But in the last seven years of his reign, Egypt and Asia Minor became once more independent. He died in 359 and was succeeded by his son Ochus, known as Artaxerxes III. In this same year, the Persians were defeated in Egypt and lost Phoenicia and Cyprus (352); but in 345-340, Artaxerxes succeeded in conquering and crushing Sidon, Cyprus, and Egypt. In 338 he was murdered and was succeeded by his youngest son, Arses, who was in his turn put to death by the eunuch Bagoas (335), and was succeeded by Codomannus, great-grandson of Darius I, who assumed the name of Darius III. In 334 Alexander, the son of Philip of Macedon, began his career of conquest by subduing all Asia minor and Northern Syria. After conquering Tyre, Phoenicia, Judea, and Egypt in 332, he invaded Assyria, and at Arbela, in 331, defeated Darius and his vast army, thus putting an end to the Achæmenian dynasty. Darius III fled to Media, where he was seized and murdered by Bessus, Satrap of Bactria (330), while Alexander entered Babylon and Susa, and subdued the provinces of Elam, Persia, and Media. Bessus, the murderer of Darius, who had proclaimed himself King of Persia under the name of Artaxerxes IV, fell into Alexander’s hands and was put to death (330 B.C.).

B. The Greek, or Seleucian, Dynasty (331-250 B.C.)

With Alexander’s signal victory over Darius III at Arbela (Guagamela), in 331, the Achæmenian Kingdom of Persia came to an end. Alexander founded more than seventy cities in which he planted Greek and Macedonian colonies. But the great conqueror, greedy for sensual pleasures, plunged into a course of dissipation which ended in his death, 13 June, 323. Dissension and civil wars broke out at once in every quarter of the vast empire, from India to the Nile, and lasted for nearly forty-two years. Perdiccas, the regent of Babylon during the minority of Alexander’s son, was soon assassinated, and his power claimed by Pitho, Satrap of Media; but Pitho was displaced by a conspiracy of the other satraps, who, in 316, chose Eumenes to occupy the throne of Alexander. Eumenes was betrayed into the hands of Antigonus, another great Macedonian general, who again was obliged, in 312, to yield to Seleucus, one of the Alexandrian generals, founder of the Seleucid dynasty. He build the city of Seleucia, on the Tigris, making it the capital of the Persian, or rather Græco-Persian, Empire. The great disturbing element during the Seleucian period was the rivalry between Greeks and Macedonians, as well as between cavalry and infantry. The Greek colonists in Bactria revolted against Macedonian arrogance and were with difficulty pacified by Seleucus Nicator. But the dissatisfaction continued, and, in the reign of Antiochus II, about 240 B.C., Diodotus, Satrap of Bactria, revolted and founded a separate Greek state in the heart of Central Asia. This Kingdom of Bactria presents one of the most singular episodes in history. A small colony of foreigners, many hundred miles from the sea, entirely isolated, and numbering probably not over thirty-five thousand, not only maintained their independence for about one hundred years in a strange land, but extended their conquests to the Ganges, and included several hundred populous cities in their dominions.

The reign of Seleucus Nicator lasted from 312 to 280 B.C. His first care was to reorganize his empire and satrapies (seventy-two in number), which yielded him an annual revenue equivalent to about twenty million dollars. In 289 he removed the seat of government from Seleucia to Antioch, in Syria. But, as it was impossible to govern properly so extensive an empire from so distant a capital, he found it advisable to make over the upper satrapies to Antiochus, his son, giving him Seleucia as his capital (293 B.C.). In 280, however, Seleucus was assassinated and was succeeded by his son, Antiochus I (called Soter), whose reign of twenty-one years was devoid of interest. His second son, Antiochus II (called Theos), succeeded him in 261, a drunken and dissolute prince, who neglected his realm for the society of unworthy favourites. During his reign, north-eastern Persia was lost to the empire, and some Bactrians, emboldened by the weakness and effeminacy of Antiochus, and led by the brothers, Arsaces and Tiridates, moved west into Seleucid territory, near Parthia. Pherecles, the Seleucid satrap, having insulted Tiridates, was slain, and Parthia freed from the Macedonians. Arsaces, the brother of Tiridates, was proclaimed first King of Parthia in 250 B.C., and the Seleucid dynasty fell into decay.

C. The Arsacid, or Parthian Dynasty (250 B.C.-A.D. 216)

The founding of the Parthian monarchy marks the opening of a glorious era in the history of Persia. The Parthians, though inferior in refinement, habits, and civilization to the Persians proper, form, nevertheless, a branch of the same stock. They were originally a nomadic tribe and, like the Persians, followers of Zoroaster. They had their own customs, and were famous for their horsemanship, their armies being entirely clad in chain armour and riding without saddles. They left few records; indeed, we really know very little of the internal history of the Parthians, and would have known still less but for the frequent wars between them and the Greeks and Romans. Numbers of Parthian coins are still found in northern Persia and have been of great value to the historian who, thousands of years later, has tried to put together the disjointed history of this dynasty. Amid the faint and confused outlines which alone remain to record the career of the mighty Parthian race which for over four hundred years ruled in Persia with a rod of iron, and which repeatedly hurled back the veteran legions of Rome, we are able to discern two or three grand figures and some events that will be remembered while the world lasts.

Of these heroes of Parthia the most important was Mithridates the Great, who not only repaired the losses the empire had sustained in its conflicts with the Seleucids, but carried the conquests of Parthia as far as India in one direction, and the banks of the Euphrates in the other. Parthians and Romans met for the first time, not for war, but to arrange a treaty of peace between the two great powers of that age. Soon after his event Demetrius III, head of the Seleucian dynasty, was forced to surrender, with is entire army, to Mithridates, and ended his days in captivity. Armenia also fell under the Parthian domination during the reign of Mithridates. The coins of Mithridates are very numerous and clearly cut; the design shows the portrait of that monarch, with a full beard and strongly marked, but pleasing, features. His immediate successors were men of an entirely different stamp, and Tigranes, King of Armenia, was able, not only to revolt, but to rob Parthia of some of her western provinces. In time Phraates succeeded to the throne of the Arsacids and, by calling for aid from the Romans, caused the overthrow of Tigranes; but the haughty republic of the West granted its assistance with such ill grace that years of warfare resulted. Phraates was murdered by his two sons. Orodes, as the Latins called him (Huraodha, in the Perso-Parthian tongue) ascended the throne; but to avoid dissension it was agreed that his brother, Mithridates, should rule over Media as an independent king. It was not long before civil war broke out between the two, and in the end Mithridates was taken and put to death in the presence of his brother. In 54 B.C., the civil wars of Rome having ceased for a while, Crassus, who with Cæsar and Pompey, shared the authority in the republic, took command of the Roman armies in Asia. He needed but the merest pretext to invade and attack Parthia; the easy victories of Pompey in Armenia led him to imagine that he had but to reach the borders of the Persian Empire and it would fall helpless into his grasp. He was a brave man, and led sixty thousand of the best troops in the world, but his contempt of the enemy, and the greed of gold for which he was notorious, brought him into a terrible catastrophe. The chief general of Orodes was Surenas, the first nobleman of the empire. On 16 June, 54 B.C., the Romans and the Parthians met at Carræ, near the sources of the Euphrates. Surenas concealed the mass of his army behind the hills, allowing the Romans to see at first only his heavy cavalry. Little suspecting the actual force of the enemy, Publius Crassus, son of the general, charged with the cavalry. The Parthians, following their usual tactics, broke and fled as if in dismay. when they had drawn the Romans far enough from the main body, the entire army of Surenas re-formed, surrounded them, and cut them to pieces. After this success, the Parthians hovered on the flanks of the Roman infantry, annoying them with missiles. Of the great army which Crassus had led into Asia not twenty thousand survived, and of these ten thousand were taken captive and settled by Orodes in Margiana. Orodes himself, after a long reign, during which Parthia attained the climax of her power, was strangled in his eightieth year by his son Phraates. He was the first Parthian king to assume the title of “King of Kings”.

Phraates, his successor, removed the seat of government from the north of the empire to Taisefoon, or, as the Greeks called it, Ctesiphon, a suburb of Seleucia, which continued to be the capital until the Mohammedan conquest, more than six hundred years later. Hatra, in that vicinity, also acquired importance under the Parthian kings, who caused a splendid palace to be erected there. Phraates was eminently successful in his military operations, although steeped in crime. Besides murdering his father, he had caused all his near relations to be put to death, to ensure his own position on the throne. Phraates soon had another Roman war on his hands. Before the death of Orodes, that monarch had associated with him his son Pacorus, a soldier and statesman, who conquered Syria and ruled both there an in Palestine with a mildness which contrasted favourably with the severity of the Roman governors expelled by him. But Pacorus was finally defeated and killed by the Roman consul, Ventidius, and the territories he had captured on the coast of the Mediterranean were lost to Parthia. In the year 33 B.C. Mark Antony began a campaign against the Parthians, whom the Romans never forgave for the crushing defeat at Carræ. His army numbered one hundred thousand men, including no less than forty thousand cavalry intended to cope with the terrible horsemen on Parthia. To oppose this immense force, Phraates could collect only forty thousand cavalry; but he immediately began operations by surprising the baggage trains of the enemy, and cutting to pieces the escort of seven thousand five hundred men. Antony was at the time engaged in besieging Phraaspa. He was obliged to abandon the siege, but the pursuit of the Parthians was so vigorous that the Roman general was hardly able to reach the frontier of Armenia after losing thirty thousand of his best troops. For one hundred years after this, Rome dared not again attack Parthia; and when, in later ages, her legions repeated the attempts to penetrate into the heart of Persia, they invariably failed.

Phraates was dethroned by a conspiracy of his brother Tiridates. He fled to Tourân, or Scythia, of which we hear so often in the legendary history of Persia. There he succeeded in raising an immense army of Tatars, and, hurling the usurper from power, forced him to seek an asylum at Rome, where he endeavoured to obtain assistance from the Romans, promising important concessions in return. But his offers were declined. A century later, Trajan invaded Parthia, but, in spite of some early successes, was forced to retire to Syria. Vologeses II is memorable for his death, A.D. 148, at the age of ninety-six, after a reign of seventy-one years. During the reign of Vologeses III Western Persia was invaded by Cassius, the Roman consul. Vologeses was defeated in a great battle, and Cassius penetrated as far as Babylonia, the capital of which was Seleucia, a most flourishing city, with a population of over four hundred thousand. Cassius sacked and burned Seleucia, completely wiping it out of existence. Parthia never recovered from the effects of this last was with Rome. The dynasty which had founded the greatness of the Parthian empire had become enervated by its successes. In 216 the war with Rome was renewed. King Artabanus had put down several rivals and reduced the grater part of the Parthians under his power. Macrinus, the Roman Emperor, suffered two crushing defeats from Artabanus, and was obliged to purchase peace by paying an indemnity of 50,000,000 denarii (about $9,000,000) at the very time when the doom of Parthia was impending. With the death of Artabanus, A.D. 216, the Parthian dynasty came to an end.

D. The Sassanian Dynasty (A.D. 227-651)

The immediate causes which brought about the overthrow of the Parthian kingdom and the establishment of the dynasty of Sassan in its stead are not known. The new dynasty of the Sassanids was a more genuine representative of the civilized Iranian race than the Parthian Arsacidæ, especially as far as religion was concerned. The founder of the Sassanian dynasty, Ardashir Papakan (Artaxerxes, son of Papak), was born at Persis, in central Iran; his family claimed descent from a mythical ancestor, Sassan, and he was therefore of the priestly caste. Babek, the father of Ardashir, seems to have founded a small kingdom at Persis, and to have annexed the territories of other lesser princes, thus gradually encroaching on various Parthian provinces. Vologeses V, the last king of the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia, declared war against the rising chief, but was defeated and put to death by Ardashir A.D. 227. Thus the Parthian Empire passed into the hands of the Sassanian dynasty. The surviving Arsacids fled to India, and all the provinces accepted Ardashir’s rule without resistance. It was in fact the beginning of a new and religious movement, the new dynasty being looked upon as the true and genuine successor of the old and noble Achæmenian dynasty, and of the Zoroastrian religion.

One of the first acts of Ardashir was to send an embassy to Rome demanding that the whole of Western Asia should be ceded to him. Soon afterwards, in 230, he sought to regain the lost provinces of Mesopotamia by force of arms. The emperor, Alexander Severus, opposed the advance of Ardashir’s army, but was only partly successful. Ardashir devoted the remaining years of his reign to founding new towns, schools, and temples and to reorganizing the judicial system of the courts and the army. Everywhere were evidences of a new development of the true Iranian spirit; and it was not long before the Persian nation deemed itself sufficiently strong once more to enforce its old claims to the sovereignty of Western Asia. Sapor I, the son of Ardashir, who reigned from 240 to 273, renewed the war with Rome, first against Gordian, then against Valerian. The latter emperor was treacherously seized at a conference in 260, and spent the rest of his life in a Persian prison subject to most barbarous ill-usage. Sapor then conquered Syria and destroyed Antioch, but was finally driven back by Odenathus, King of Palmyra. After the death of Odenathus the war was continued by his widow, Zenobia, who was so elated by her success that she attempted to found an independent Syrian empire under the leadership of Palmyra, but was defeated and taken prisoner by the Romans under Aurelian.

The Third Sassanid king, Hormuz, reigned only one year; his successor, Bahram I (274-77), continued the war with Zenobia and afterwards with Aurelian. But this war terminated, without any result, at the death of Aurelian, in 275. During this period, the revival of the Zoroastrian religion became a movement of great importance. Having attained ascendancy in Persia under the early Sassanid kings, it grew very intolerant, persecuting alike heathen and Christian. It first turned against Mani, the founder of Manichæism, and his followers, under Bahram I. Mani himself, at first in favour at the Persian Court, was crucified about the year 275. Under the next king, Bahram II (277-94), Persia suffered severe reverses from the Roman Emperor Carus, the capital city, Ctesiphon, even falling into the hands of the Romans. Bahram III, son of Bahram II, reigned only eight months, and was succeeded by his younger brother, Narsi I, who renewed the war with Rome with Disastrous results. He was succeeded by his son, Hormuz II (303-10), and he, again, by Sapor II (310-81). It was in the latter reign that the Christians in Persia suffered serious persecution. During the early years of Sapor II the Christian religion received formal recognition from Constantine and there is no doubt that this identification of the Church with the Roman Empire was the chief cause of its disfavour in Persia. Moreover, there is evidence that Christianity had spread widely in the Persian dominions, and every Christian was suspected of disaffection towards the Persian king and secret attachment to the Roman Empire, the more so because even the Persian-speaking Christians employed the Syriac language in their worship. Probably this feeling of suspicion was increased by the letter which Constantine wrote to Sapor (Theod., “H.E.”, I, xxv), asking protection for the Christians resident in Persia. (See III, below.) To this period belongs Aphraates, a converted Persian noble, a writer of homilies. When Constantine was dead, and the Magi had attained complete ascendancy over the Persian king, a persecution ensued which was far more severe than any of those of the Roman Emperors.

This attack upon the Christians was but part of Sapor’s anti-Western policy. In 350 he openly declared war against Rome, and marched on Syria. The first important action was the siege of Nisibis, where the famous Jacob, founder of the school of Nisibis, was then bishop. The siege lasted seventy days, and then the Persians having build a dam across the River Mygdonius, the waters broke down the wall. The siege was unsuccessful, however, and the campaign ended in a truce. Julian, who became emperor in 362, determined to invade the dominions of Sapor. In March, 363, he set out from Antioch to march towards Carræ. From the latter point two roads led to Persia: one through Nisibis to the Tigris, the other turning south along the Euphrates and then crossing the lower Tigris. Julian chose the second of these and, passing through Callinicum, Carchemish, and Zaitham, reached the Persian capital, Ctesiphon, where he was met with proposals of peace from Sapor, but refused them. After crossing the Tigris, he burned his ships to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy; but the result was something like a panic amongst his followers. Supplies ran short, and the army entered the desert, where it seems to have lost its way. There had been no battle as yet, but almost daily skirmishes with the light-armed Persian cavalry. In one of these skirmishes Julian was slain by a javelin, whether thrown by one of the enemy or by one of his own followers has never been known. The soldiers at once elected Jovian, one of Julian’s generals, and he began his reign by making a thirty years’ truce with Persia. The Persians were to supply guides and food for the retreat, while the Romans promised to surrender Nisibis and give up their protectorate over Armenia and Iberia, which became Persian provinces. The surrender of Nisibis put an end to the school established there by Jacob, but his disciple Ephraim removed to Edessa, and there reestablished the school, so that Edessa became one more the centre of Syriac intellectual life. With this school must be connected the older Syriac martyrologies, and many of the Syriac translations and editions of Greek church manuals, canons, and theological writers. Thus were preserved Syriac versions of many important works, the original Greek of which is lost.

In spite of this thirty years’ truce, the Persians for a time kept up a petty warfare, the Romans acting on the defensive. But as age rendered Sapor helpless, this warfare died out. Sapor died in 380, at the age of seventy; being a posthumous son, he had spent his whole life on the throne. During the reigns of Sapor III and Bahram IV Persia remained at peace. In 379 the Emperor Theodosius the Great received an embassy from Persia proposing friendly relations. This was mainly due to the fact that the Persians had difficulties on their northern and eastern frontiers, and wished to have their hands free in the west. Incidentally, it may be noted that the flourishing period of the “middle school”, under the leadership of Dorotheus, and the spread of monasticism through Persia and Mesopotamia were contemporary with the disastrous expedition and peace of Jovian. The great bishop, Jacob of Nisibis, forms a connecting ling with Sapor II; he encouraged Nisibis in its first resistance to the army of Sapor; his school at Nisibis was modelled on that of Diodorus at Antioch, and he was the patron and benefactor of the monastery founded by Awgin on Mont Izla.

In 399 Bahram IV was succeeded by his younger brother Yezdegerd (399-420). Early in this reign Maruthas, Bishop of Maiperkat, in Mesopotamia, was employed by the Roman emperor as envoy to the Persian Court. Maruthas quickly gained great influence over the Persian king, to the annoyance of the Zoroastrian magi, and Yezdegerd allowed the free spread of Christianity in Persia and the building of churches. Nisibis once more became a Christian city. The Persian Church at this period seems to have received, under Maruthas (q.v.), the more developed organization under which it lived until the time of the Mohammedan conquest. (See III, below.) Later in the reign of Yezdegerd, the Persian bishop, Abdas of Susa, was associated with Maruthas, and, by his impetuosity, put an end to the good relations between the Persian king and the Christians. Abdas destroyed one of the fire temples of the Zoroastrians; complaint was made to the king, and the bishop was ordered to restore the building and make good all damage that he had committed. Abdas refused to rebuild a heathen temple at his own expense. The result was that orders were issued for the destruction of all churches, and these were carried out by the Zoroastrians, who had regarded with great envy the royal favour extended to Maruthas and his co-religionists. Before long the destruction of churches developed into a general persecution, in which Abdas was one of the first martyrs. When Yezdegerd died in 420, and was succeeded by his son Bahram V, the persecution continued, and large numbers of Christians fled across the frontier into Roman territory. A bitter feeling between Persia and Rome grew out of Bahram’s demand for the surrender of the Christian fugitives, and war was declared in 422. The conflict commenced with Roman success in Armenia and the capture of a large number of Persian prisoners; the Romans then advanced into Persia and ravaged the border province of Azarena, but the seat of war was soon transferred to Mesopotamia, where the Romans besieged Nisibis. The Persians, hard pressed in this siege, called in the Turks to their assistance, and the united armies marched to the relief of the city. The Romans were alarmed at the news of the large numbers of the Persian forces and raised the siege, but soon afterwards, when the turks had retired, there was a general engagement in which the Romans inflicted a crushing defeat upon their adversaries, and compelled them to sue for peace. Although the latter half of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century was a period of so much distress in the Eastern provinces, which were exposed to the growing ambition of Persia, it was a time of extension of the Christian Church and of literary activity. This literary and ecclesiastical development led to the formation of a Syriac literature in Persia (Syriac being the liturgical language of the Persian Church), and ultimately of a Christian Persian literature.

Towards the middle of the fifth century, the Persian Emperor Yezdegerd (442-59) was compelled to turn his attention to the passes of the Caucasus; troops of Huns and Scythians had already broken through into Iran. Peroses (Firuz), his successor, made war on the nomads of the Caspian regions, and in 484 lost his life in battle with them. Four years later the throne of Persia was occupied by Qubad I, who reigned from 488 to 531. During this reign there developed in Persia a new sect of the Fire-worshippers (the Mazdakeans), who were at first favoured by the king, but who subsequently involved the empire in serious complications. The last decade of Qubad’s reign was chiefly occupied by wars with the Romans, in which he found a good means for diverting the attention of his people from domestic affairs. During the very last days of his life Qubad was compelled once more to lead an army to the West to maintain Persia’s influence over Lasistan in southern Caucasia, the prince of which country had become a convert to Christianity, and consequently an ally of the Byzantine empire. It was during the same reign that the Nestorians began to enter more fully into Persian life, and under him that they began their missionary expansion eastwards. About the year 496 the patriarchal See of Seleucia-Ctesiphon fell into the hands of the Nestorians, and henceforth the Catholicos of Seleucia became the patriarch of the Nestorian Church of Persia, Syria, China, and India. After the death of Qubad the usual quarrels as to the succession arose, and finally ended, in 531, with the accession of Chosroes I Anushirwân whom Qubad had looked upon as the most capable of his sons. Chosroes was a champion of the ancient Iranian spirit, a friend of the priest class, and an irreconcilable enemy of the Mazdakites, who had chosen one of his numerous brothers as their candidate for the throne. During his reign the Persian Empire attained the height of its splendour; indeed, the government of Chosroes I, “the Just”, was both equitable and vigorous. One of his first acts was to make peace with Byzantium, the latter agreeing pay a large contribution towards the fortification of the Caucasian passes. In addition to strengthening the Caucasus, Chosroes also sought to fortify the north-eastern frontier of his empire by constructing a great wall, and he asserted his claims to a portion of northwestern India by force of arms, but son turned his attention once more to the West. In 531 he proclaimed a general toleration, in which not only Christians, but also Manichæans and Mazdakites, were included.

The period 532-39 was spent in the extension and strengthening of the eastern frontiers of Persia. In 539 Chosroes returned to Ctesiphon, and was persuaded by the Bedouin Al Mondar to renew Qubad’s attempted conquest of Syria. The pretext was that Justinian was aiming at universal dominion, but there is no doubt that the real reason was that Al Mondar remembered the ease with which he had once plundered Syrian territory. In 540 the Persians invaded Syria and captured the city of Shurab. the prisoners taken from this city were released at the request of Candidus, bishop of the neighbouring town of Sergiopolis, who undertook to pay a ransom of 200 pounds of gold. Then Chosroes took Mabbogh, which paid a ransom, then Beroea, and finally proceeded against Antioch itself, which was captured after a short resistance. From Antioch Chosroes carried off many works of art and a vast number of captives. On his way homewards he made an attack upon Edessa, a city generally regarded as impregnable, but was taken ill during the siege.

During Chosroes’s illness trouble occurred in Persia. He had married a Christian wife, and his son Nushizad was also a Christian. When the king was taken ill at Edessa a report reached Persia that he was dead, and at once Nushizad seized the crown. Very soon the rumour was prove false, but Nushizad was persuaded by persons who appear to have been in the pay of Justinian to endeavour to maintain his position. The action of his son wa deeply distressing to Chosroes; but it was necessary to take prompt measures, and the commander, Ram Berzin, was sent against the rebels. In the battle which followed Nushizad was mortally wounded and carried off the field. In his tent he was attended by a Christian bishop, probably Mar Aba, and to this bishop he confessed his sincere repentance for having taken up arms against his father, an act which, he was convinced, could never win the approval of Heaven. Having professed himself a Christian he died, and the rebellion was quickly put down.

Mar Aba was probably the Nestorian Catholicos from 536 to 552. He was a convert from Zoroastrianism, and had studied Greek at Nisibis and Edessa, making use of his knowledge to prepare and publish a new version of the Old Testament. This appears to have been a total failure, for the Nestorians, unlike the Jacobites, steadily adhered to the Peshito. On being appointed catholicos he established a school at Seleucia, which soon became a great centre of Nestorian scholarship. He wrote commentaries, homilies, and letters, the two former classes of work representing, no doubt, the substance of his teaching in the school which he founded. Hymns are extant which are ascribed to him. Chosroes, after his return from Syria, taunted Mar Aba with professing a type of Christianity unknown to the rest of the world. But Mar Aba did much to remove the more marked peculiarities of the Nestorian schism, especially again enforcing celibacy amongst the bishops. From time to time he held discussions with Chosroes, until on one occasion, being tactless enough not to be convinced by the arguments of the sovereign, he was sentenced to banishment. As he disobeyed the decree, he was cast into prison, where he died in 552. In 542 Chosroes claimed from Bishop Candidus the payment of the sum to which he had pledged himself as ransom for the captives taken at Shurab; but the bishop was unable to raise the money; in fact he confessed that he had only made the promise in the expectation that the Government would find part of the sum required, and this had not been done. Therefore Candidus was put to death. In the course of the same year Chosroes advanced south and attacked Jerusalem, but was repulsed by Belisarius.

Mar Aba’s foundation of a school at Seleucia seems to have suggested to Chosroes the idea of founding a Zoroastrian school similar to it and to the Christian instructions at Edessa and Nisibis. In pursuance of this plan the king opened a college at Djundi Shapur, and here many Greek, Syrian, and Indian works were translated into Persian, and the ancient laws of Persia were rendered into the vernacular dialect (Pahlavi). Meanwhile the school at Seleucia became a centre of Nestorian life. It was a period during which the Nestorians were returning to a greater conformity to the usages of the rest of Christendom. We have already mentioned Mar Aba’s restoration of celibacy, at least as far as the bishops were concerned. About the same time two distinguished monks, both bearing the name of Abraham of Kashkar, introduced reforms into monastic life which also tended towards conformity with the practices of the Church within the Roman Empire. Probably this tendency to conformity was due to increase of Greek influence observable during the reign of Chosroes, and the contact with the empire due to the invasion of Syria; nevertheless the Nestorians remained a distinct body.

Meanwhile the Catholicos Mar Aba had died, and Chosroes appointed his favourite physician, Joseph, as Bishop of Seleucia (552). Many strange stories are related of his cruelty as bishop; after three years he was deposed on a petition of the Christians of Seleucia. He lived twelve years after his deposition, and during that period no catholicos was appointed. About the same time the indefatigable Jacob Burdeana consecrated Achudemma as Jacobite bishop in Persia, and made a proselyte of a member of the royal family. Amongst the Persians it was never permitted to make converts from the state religion. The Jacobites however were of little importance so far east, where Nestorianism was the prevailing type of Christianity. After the death of Joseph in 567. Ezechiel, a disciple of Mar Aba, was appointed Catholicos of Seleucia, under whom lived the periodeutes Bodh, the translator into Syriac of the Indian tales known as “Kalilah and Dimnah”. It is noteworthy that the Nestorians were beginning to take an interest in Indian literature, an interest probably to be referred to the influence of the Djundi Shapur school.

Chosroes was succeeded by his son Hormuz (579-90). For the firs three years of his reign Hormuz was guided by the statesman-philosopher Buzurg, but after his retirement Hormuz gave himself up to every form of self-indulgence and tyranny. Under these conditions the power of Persia declined, and the land suffered invasion on the north, east, and west. To check the Byzantines, Bahram, a general who had distinguished himself under chosroes, was sent to invade Colehis, but he was defeated and recalled in disgrace. Knowing that this was equivalent to sentence of death, Bahram revolted, and succeeded in capturing Hormuz, whom he put to death. Chosroes, the king’s son, fled and was well received by Probus, Governor of Circesium, and afterwards by the Emperor Mauritius. With the help of the Romans this younger Chosroes defeated Bahram, and became king as Chosroes II. As he owed his kingdom and his wife to the Emperor Mauritius, Chosroes was devoted to the dynasty then reigning at Constantinople. Although not himself a Christian, he paid honour to the Blessed Virgin and to the martyrs Sergius and Bacchus, two saints popular among the Syrians, while his wife as an ardent Jacobite.

In 604 the Roman Emperor Mauritius was assassinated, and the Persian king resolved to attack the empire in order to avenge his benefactor. In 604 the Persians again invaded the eastern provinces and took the city of Daras. The invasion of Chosroes II was the severest blow that the Byzantine power in Asia had to endure, previous to the rise of Islam. After five years of war Chosroes II reached Constantinople. It was not a mere plundering expedition, but a serious invasion whose success clearly proved the growing weakness of the Byzantine Empire. Next year (606) the invaders reached Amida; in 607 they were at Edessa; in 608 at Aleppo; and by 611 they had conquered all northern Syria, and established themselves at Antioch. They then turned south and conquered Palestine. In 615 Jerusalem revolted, but was cruelly punished, some 17,000 persons being put to death, and about 35,000 led away captive. The fragment of the True Cross, the most precious relic of the city, was carried off. Next year (616) the Persians took Alexandria, and in 617 besieged Constantinople. Although the imperial city was not taken, Asia Minor remained in the hands of the Persians until 624.

Chosroes II was repelled, not by the Romans, but by a people who were yearly growing more powerful, and were destined ultimately to displace both Rome and Persian in Asia — the Arabs. Chosroes II had a harem of 3,000 wives, as well as 12,000 female slaves, but he now demanded as wife Hadiqah, the daughter of the Christian Arab Na’aman, himself the son of Al Mondir. Na’aman refused to permit his Christian daughter to enter the harem of a Zoroastrian, and for this refusal he was trampled to death by a an elephant, whilst Hadiqah took refuge in a convent. The news of this outrage upon an Arab provoked all the Bedouin tribes, and the Arabs revolted. Chosroes II was totally defeated, and fled to the Emperor Heraclius. This victory made a great impression upon the Arab mind, and probably led to the Mohammedan conquests.

E. The Mohammedan and Modern Periods (A.D. 651-1911)

During the reign of Yezdegerd III, the successor of Chosroes II, and the last of the Sassanian kings, the Arab invaders attacked Persia and its Mesopotamian territories more and more boldly. In 650 Khâlid, one of the Arab generals, assuming the offensive, defeated the Persian troops on the border of the Euphrates valley. The Christians of this region soon submitted to him. Then the Arabs invaded the country about the Tigris. In 634 Abu Ubaid of Taif, to whom Khâlid assigned the task of annexing Persia, was utterly defeated and slain by the Persians, who, however, were routed in 635-66 by Caliph Omar at Bowaib. Towards the close of the year 636, or in 637, they were again defeated by the Arabs, under Sa’d, at Kadisiyya. The victorious Arabs entered Babylonia and took Seleucia after a lengthy siege. Thence they crossed the Tigris and fell on Ctesiphon, Yezdegerd fleeing towards the Medo-Babylonian frontier. Meantime another army of Arabs had occupied Lower Irâk and entered Susiana. The decisive and final victory took place in 640-42 at Nehavend, near Ecbatana, when the great Persian Empire and the Sassanian dynasty were completely destroyed.

During the reigns of Omar, Othman, and Ali, the first caliphs and successors of Mohammed, as well as under the Omayyads (634-729), Persia was ruled by deputy governors; but on the accession of the Abbasides (A.D. 750), Bagdad became their capital, and Khorasan their favourite province, and thus the very heart of the former territory of the Persian Empire became the centre of the caliphate. But their rule soon became merely a nominal one, and ambitious governors established independent principalities in various parts of Persia. Many of these dynasties were short-lived; others lasted for a considerable period and were powerful kingdoms. For the next two centuries, Persia was subject to the caliphs. But in 868 an adventurer named Soffar, who had been a pewterer and afterwards a bandit, gathered a native force and expelled the viceroys of the caliph, founding a dynasty known as the Soffarides. In the beginning of the tenth century Persia was divided between the families of Samani and Dilami, the first of which reigned over eastern Persia and Afghanistan, and the second over the rest of the country. Under these dynasties Persia fell beneath the yoke of the Seljuks, and was ruled by Togrul Beg, Alp Arslan, and Malek Shah, all of whom were conquerors greatly celebrated in oriental history. Their dynasty declined and perished in the twelfth century. After a long period of anarchy, Persia fell beneath the yoke of the Seljuks, and was ruled by Togrul Beg, Alp Arslan, and Malek Shah, all of whom were conquerors greatly celebrated in oriental history. Their dynasty declined and perished in the twelfth century. After a long period of anarchy Persia was overrun and conquered by the Mongols led by Hulaku Khan, grandson of Yenghis (1258), who established the seat of his empire at Maragha in Azerbejan.

The next important event in the history of Persia was its conquest and devastation by Timur-Leng toward the end of the fourteenth century. Under his successors civil war prevailed almost continually, until in the beginning of the sixteenth century Ismail, a descendant of a famous saint, Sheik Suffi, founded the Suffavean dynasty. He died in 1523, and was succeeded by his son Tamasp, whose reign of fifty-three years was very prosperous. Abbas, who ascended the throne about 1587, was a still greater sovereign, though to his family he proved a sanguinary tyrant. After his death in 1628 the Suffavean dynasty gradually declined, and was at length overthrown by the Afghans, who conquered Persia in 1722, and ruled it for seven years with much tyranny, till they were expelled by the celebrated Nadir Shah, who ascended the throne in 1736. His reign was memorable for his success over foreign enemies and for his cruelty to his family and people. After his death in 1747 a series of revolutions occurred, and order was not fully restored till toward the close of the century, when Agha Mohammed, first of the reigning dynasty of Kadjars, became shah. His successors have been Feth-Ali (1797-1834), Mohammed (1835-48), and Nasr-ed-Din, who succeeded in 1848, being then 18 years old. Persia has been involved in three wars since the accession of this dynasty. Of these, two were with Russia, the first ending in 1813, and the second in 1828, both of them having been disastrous to Persia, which lost Georgia, Mingrelia, Erivan, Nakhrtchevan, and the greater part of Talish, the Russian frontier being advanced to Mount Ararat and the left bank of the Aras; the third war was with Great Britain, and was begin in 1856 owing to a series of disputes between officials of the Persian Government and the British minister at Teheran. After repeated victories of the british troops in the south of Persia under Generals Outram and Havelock, it was terminated on 4 March 1857, by a treaty signed at Paris, favourable to the demands of the British. In 1860 pestilence and famine devastated parts of the country; and a still grater famine in 1870 and 1871 is believed to have caused the death of two million persons. In the summer of 1873 Nasr-ed-Din made a tour of Europe. As a ruler he was energetic and severe. He was largely under the influence the Russian Court, thought for a time after the failure of his attempt to restore the Persian dominion over Herat he maintained a somewhat friendly attitude toward Great Britain. He sternly repressed revolts and conspiracies, but, through the sale of the tobacco monopoly to English speculators, he offended many of his subjects, and his unpopularity was increased by the scarcity of food in several of the provinces in subsequent years. In 1896 he was assassinated as he was entering a shrine near Teheran, and was succeeded by his son, Muzaffer-ed-Din.

The new shah introduced several reforms in his kingdom, and, aided by twelve ministers, assumed personally the government of the empire. He visited Europe in 1900 and narrowly escaped assassination in Paris. He became very friendly with Russia, to whom his friendship proved beneficial. In 1905 a revolution took place in Persia in which royal princes and mullahs took part. They left the capital and took refuge at Khum, demanding reform and a parliamentary government. The shah hesitated at first, but finally decided to convoke a Majlis, 5 August, 1906. This was opposed by the court party, but Muzaffer-ed-Din succeeded in forcing upon the reactionaries the establishment of a parliament. On 4 January, 1907, he died and was succeeded by his son, Mohammed-Ali-Mirza (8 January, 1907), who from the very first day of his reign was involved in difficulties with the Parliament. He was unduly influenced by Russia, and was at times reluctant to conform with the demands of the Reform and Parliamentary party. Unrest and antagonism were everywhere visible, and the tension was such that a political revolution seemed impending. Meanwhile Parliament was several times suppressed and reconvoked; various provinces rebelled and Teheran was at one time in a state of siege. Finally Mohammed-Ali-Mirza was forced to abdicate (1909) and was succeeded by his son, Ahmed Mirza, a boy of twelve years.

Till 1906 the Government of Persia was an absolute monarchy. The shah was assisted by a grand vizier and several ministers. His will was absolute, and that of the imams, or priests, was paramount. Today, however, it is divided into three departments, viz., the Court; the Ministerial Departments; and the National Assembly, or Parliament (Majlis). Theoretically, however, the shah is still the “king of kings” and the supreme ruler, executive, and counsellor in every department. The country is divided into five great mamlikats, or large provinces, viz., Azerbedjan, Farsistan, Ghilan, Khorasan, and Kirman (their corresponding capitals being: Tabriz, Shirza, Resht, Meshhed, and Kirman) and thirty vilayets, or smaller provinces. The present capital of the empire is Teheran. The Governorship of Azerbedjan is always given to the heir apparent, and the governors of the other provinces are appointed by the shah for a term of one year. In all large towns there are sub-governors and village masters. The latter are really the tax-collectors. The rate of taxation varies in different parts of the country. The tax on personal property is light, while the income tax is still lighter, being paid chiefly in kind. Justice is administered partly by the shah and partly by the courts and the imams.

Statistics

The area of modern Persia is about 635,000 square miles, a large part being desert; the population is about 9,000,000, one-fourth of whom are nomads. The estimated population of the principal cities is: Teheran, 280,000; Tabriz, 200,000; Ispahan, 70,000; Meshhed, 60,000; Kirman, 60,000; and Yezd, 45,000. The principal imports, which amount yearly to about 450,000,000 krans (a kran is equivalent to 7 cents of U.S.A. money), are cotton fabrics, sugar, tea, woolens, petroleum, iron and steel goods, and the precious metals. The principal exports, which amount to about 400,000,000 krans annually, are fruits, carpets, cotton, fish, rice, silk and cocoons, rubber, wool, opium, hides and skins, copper, cereals, and living animals, The modern Persians are Mohammedans. Of these, nearly seven-eighths are Shiites, and only one-eighth Sunnites. Besides, there are about 9,000 Parsis, or followers of Zoroaster, 40,000 Jews, 50,000 Armenians, 25,000 Nestorians, and 10,000 Chaldeans (Catholic). Concerning the religion of the ancient Persians, from the time of the Achæmenian dynasty down to the end of the Sassanian period, covering about twelve centuries (sixth cent. B.C.-seventh cent. A.D.), see Zoroastrianism; the official religion of the medieval and modern Persians is Mohammedanism.

II. PERSIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

The term Persian, as applied both to the people and their language, has now a wider significance than it originally bore. A more appropriate term would be Iran or Iranian. The early inhabitants of Iran were Aryans, and their languages and dialects, for the last three or four thousand years, belong to the so-called Aryan family. Even the Persian language of today, notwithstanding the immense influence exercised upon it by Arabic, is still the lineal offspring of the language spoken by Cyrus, Darius, and the Sassanian kings. This continuity, however, is broken by two great gaps, occasioned by the Greek and Parthian invasions of the one hand, and by the Mohammedan domination on the other, viz., from 331 B.C-A.D. 227; and 635 and the following years respectively.

The history of the Persian language falls, therefore, into three well-defined periods, as follows: The Achæmenian Period (550-331 B.C.), represented by the edicts and proclamations contained in the Persian cuneiform inscriptions, which, though of considerable extent, are similar in character and style and yield a vocabulary of about 400 words. The language represented by these inscriptions, deciphered by Grotefend, Sir H. Rawlinson, Hincks, Oppert, and others towards the middle of the last century, is generally called Old Persian.

The Sassanian Period (A.D. 227-651), represented by inscriptions on monuments, medals, gems, seals, and coins, and by a literature estimated as equal in bulk to the Old Testament. This literature is entirely Zoroastrian and almost entirely theological and liturgical. The language in which it is written is little more than a very archaic form of the present language of Persia devoid of the Arabic element. It is generally known as Pahlavi, or Middle Persian. Properly speaking, the term Pahlavi applies rather to the script than the language.

The Mohammedan Period (from about A.D. 900 until the present day), represented by the Persian language as it was spoken by the Persians after the Arab conquest, and after the adoption of the Mohammedan religion by the vast majority of the inhabitants of Persia. The difference between Late Pahlavi and the earliest form of Modern Persian was, save for the Arabic element generally contained in the latter, merely a difference of script. This is generally called Modern Persian, or Neo-Persian. Of Modern Persian there are many dialects spoken in different parts of Persia at the present day. The principal ones are those spoken in Mazandarán, Ghilan, and Talish in the north; Samnân in the northeast; Kashán, Quhrûd and Na’in in the centre, with the peculiar Gabri dialect spoken by the Zoroastrians inhabiting Yezd, Kirman, Rafsinjân, etc.; Siwand in the south; Luristan, Behbehân and Kurdistan in the west; and the Sistáni and Bakhtiyari idioms.

In Persian literature we recognize four epochs, comprising (1) The Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions of the Achæmenian kings. (2) The Avesta, the Sacred Books of the Zoroastrians, believed by many to date from Zoroaster’s own time (about sixth cent. B.C.). (3) The Pahlavi literature, including the contemporary Sassanian inscriptions. (4) The Post-Mohammedan, or Modern Persian, literature of the last thousand years, which alone is usually called and understood as Persian literature. To this last may be added the large Arabic literature produced by Persians. The literature of the first period is very scanty, consisting mainly of the Achæmenian inscriptions written in the simplest form of the cuneiform script; principal among which is the famous trilingual inscription of Darius the Great (521-486 B.C.), engraved in the rock on Mount Behistun, near Hamadan, and memorable in the annals of Assyriology for furnishing scholars with the real clue for describing and interpreting the Assyro-Babylonian language and inscriptions (See Assyria). Most of these Achæmenian inscriptions date from about the end of the sixth century B.C., although we have specimens as late as Artaxerxes Ochus (359-38 B.C). Very similar to this Old Persian dialect is the language in which the Sacred Books of the Zoroastrians, generally but improperly called the Zend-Avesta, are written. This Zoroastrian, or Avestan, literature is theological and liturgical in character, and its production goes back perhaps to the sixth century B.C., although in its present form it includes many later accretions and redactions, mostly of post-Christian times and coinciding with the period of the Sassanian dynasty (see Avesta). During the Parthian, or Arsacid dynasty, no literature was produced, except the few inscriptions and coins written in Greek.

The Pahlavi literature consists of inscriptions, coins, and several religious, legendary, historical, and literary productions. The inscriptions and the coins belong to the Sassanian dynasty, while the rest extends from their time till about the tenth century. Prof. West divides Pahlavi literature into three classes: (1) Pahlavi translations of Avesta texts, represented by twenty-seven works, estimated to contain about 141,000 words; (2) Pahlavi texts on religious subjects, represented by fifty-five works, estimated to contain an aggregate of about 446,000 words, mostly commentaries, prayers, traditions, admonitions, injunction,s pious sayings, etc.; (3) Pahlavi texts on non-religious subjects, represented by only eleven works, comprising in all about 41,000 words, but forming by far the most interesting part of Pahlavi literature, as they contain the record of the early legendary history of Iran and Persia, which forms the background of the great epic of Firdûsi, the “Shahnameh”, or “Book of Kings”.

The Modern, or Mohammedan, Persian literature, extends from about the tenth century A.D. till our own days, and is by far the richest of the four. The rise, development, and progress of Modern Persian literature is intimately connected with the rise, development, and progress of Arabian, or Mohammedan, religious life and literature. The beginning of the ninth century may be said to be the starting point of the modern national Persian independence and literature. The earliest writer of this period was a poet, Abbâs by name, who composed in A.D. 809 a poem in honour of the Abbasid Caliph, Ma mûn. Abbas’s first poetical effort was improved upon by men like Hanzalah, Hakim Firuz, and Abu-Salik, who began to imitate the Arabic qasîdah form of poetical composition. These were soon followed by a dozen other poets who wrote some beautiful lyric and elegiac poetry. The earliest Persian prose writer was Bal-ami, who, by order of Shah Mansûr I, translated into Persian, in 936, the Arabic universal history of Tábari (224-310 A.H.). Others translated Tábari’s great “Commentary” on the Koran from Arabic into Persian. This was followed by Abu Mansûr Muwaffak’s book on medicine and by the great philosopher, Avicenna (d. 1037), himself a Persian by birth, who wrote some of his works in Persian and some in Arabic. But the greatest of all Modern Persian poets, the forerunner and father of Modern Persian poetry, and the Homer of Persian epic — equal indeed in power of imagination, wealth of poetical descriptions, and elevated style to any old or modern poet — is Firdûsi (A.D. 940-1020), the author of the “Shahnameh” or “Book of Kings”, on which the author laboured for thirty-five years. It is about eight times as long as the Iliad and contains a lengthy detailed description of all the historical and legendary wars, conquests, heroes, traditions, and customs of ancient and Sassanian Iran. Firdûsi had many imitators, such as the author of the “Garshaspnáma”, ‘Ali ibn Ahmad Asadi (about 1066), written in 9,000 distichs; of the “Sámnáma”, in which the heroic deeds of Rustem’s grandfather are celebrated, and which equals in length the “Shahnameh” itself; the “Sahanhírnáma”, the “Farámurznáma”, the “Bánu-Gusháshpnáma”, the “Barsunáma”, the “Shahriyarnáma”, the “Bahmannáma”, the various “Iskandarnámas”, the “Bustani-Khayâl” (a romance in fifteen volumes), the “Anbiyánáma” and many other epopees, all written within the period A.D. 1066-1150.

During the last four or five centuries, several other epic writers flourished in Persia such a Mu’in Almiskin (d. 1501), who wrote in prose the epic of Hatim Tay, the celebrated Arabian chief; Hatifi (d. 1521), the author of “Timurnáma”, or the epic of Tamerlane; Kasimi (d. about 1561), Kamali of Sabawar, Ishrâfi, and the authors of the “Shahinshahnáma” and the “Georgenáma”. Romantic fiction was also cultivated with success by such writers as Nizami of Ganja (1141-1203), ‘Am’ak of Bakhara (d. 1149), author of the romance of Yusuf and Zuleikha, Jam’i (d. 1492), Mauji Kasim Khan (d. 1571), Nazim of Herat (d. 1670), and Shaukat, Governor of Shiraz, who flourished towards the beginning of the nineteenth century. The best known Persian writers of encomium and satire are: Abul-Faraj Runi, Mas’ûd ibn Sa’d ibn Salmân (about 1085) Adib Sabir (about 1085), Adib Sabir (about 1145), Jau-hari, Amir Mu’izzi (d. 1147), Rashid Watwat (d. 1172), Abd-Alwasi Jabali, Hasan Ghaznawi (d. 1169), Auhad-Uddin Anwarí, Ubaid Zakani (d. 1370), Mujir-Uddin Bailakani (d. 1198), Zahir Fairabi (d. 1202), Athir Akhsikati (d. 1211), Kamal-uddin Isfahani (d. 1237), and Saif-uddin Isfarangi (d. 1267).

Didactic and mystic poetry was very successfully cultivated by several Persian poets, principal among whom are Sheikh Abu Sa’îd ibn Abu-l-Jgaur if Jgirasab (968-1049), the contemporary of Firdûsi and the inventor of the ruba’i, or quatrain, form of poetical composition; Omar Khayyám, the famous astronomer and the celebrated author of the Rubáiyát, made famous by Fitzgerald’s translation, Afdaluddin Kashi (d. 1307), Násir ibn Khosrau (d. about 1325), ‘Ali ibn ‘Uthmân al-jullâbi (d. 1342), Hakim Sana’i of Chanza (about 1130), Jelal-uddin Rumi (1207-73), “the most uncompromising Sufic follower, and the greatest pantheistic writer of all ages”, Farid-uddin Attar (d. 1230), and many others. But the greatest and most moderate of all Persian Sufic poets was Sa’di (d. about 1292), “whose two best-known works, the ‘Bustân’, or ‘Fruit-garden’, and the ‘Gulistân’, or ‘Rose-garden’, owe their great popularity both in the East and the West to the purity of their spiritual thoughts, their sparkling wit, charming style, and the very moderate use of mystic theories”. Later didactic and mystic poets are Nizari (d. 1320), Kátibi (d. 1434), Hairati (d. 1554), Iami’ (d. 1487), Sana’i, Iraki (d. about 1309), Husaini (d. 1318), Mahmud Shabistari (d. 1320), Auhadi (d. 1338), Kasim Anvâr (d. 1434), Ahli of Shiraz (d. 1489), Hilali (d. 1532), Baha’-uddin ‘Amili (d. 1621), and many others. Like the Arabs, the Persians cultivated with immense success lyric poetry and the description and idealization of the pleasures of love, of women, of wine and of the beauties of nature. The prince of these lyric poets is Hâfiz (d. 1389). He had many imitators, such as Salmán of Sáwa (d. about 1377), Kamâl Khujandi, Muhammed Shirin Maghribi (d. 1406), Ni’mat-ullah Wali (d. 1431), Kasimi-Anwâr, Amir Shâhi (1453), Banna’i (d. 1512), Baba Fighani of Shirâz (d. 1535), Nau’i (d. 1610), and innumerable others who strove, more or less successfully, to imitate Hâfiz as well as Iamí and Nizâmi. To more recent date belong the poets Zulali (d. 1592), Sa’ib (d. 1677), and Hatif of Isfahân (d. about 1785).

Persian literature is not very rich in historical and theological works, and even the comparatively small number of these is generally based on Arabic Mohammedan historical and theological productions. Finally, it must not be forgotten that from about the eighth or ninth century A.D. till about the fifteenth some of the greatest Mohammedan theologians, historians, philosophers, grammarians, lexicographers, and philologists, who wrote in Arabic, were of Persian origin. It must also be noted that owing to the constant and intimate social, political, literary, and religious intercourse between Arabs and Persians, especially during the Abbasid dynasty, Modern Persian, especially in its vocabulary, has been very extensively affected by Arabic, so much so that a perfect knowledge of Modern Persian is impossible without the knowledge of Arabic. Persian, also, in its turn, especially during the last four or five centuries, has very perceptibly affected the Turkish language.

III. CHRISTIANITY IN PERSIA

A. From the Apostolic Age to the Thirteenth Century

The beginning of Christianity in Persia may well be connected with what we read in Acts (ch. ii, v. 9) viz., that on the Day of Pentecost there were at Jerusalem “Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and inhabitants of Mesopotamia”. These, doubtless, on their return home, announced to their countrymen the appearance of the new religion. Early ecclesiastical traditions, furthermore, both foreign and local, tenaciously maintain that Peter and Thomas preached the Gospel to the Parthians; that Thaddæus, Bartholomew, and Addeus, of the Seventy, evangelized the races of Mesopotamia and Persia, and that Mari, a noble Persian convert, succeeded Addai (Addeus) in the government of the Persian Christian communities. He is said to have been succeeded by the bishops Abrês, Abraham, Jacob, Ahadabuhi, Tomarsa, Shahlufa, and Papa, which brings us down to the end of the third century. When we read in later Syriac documents that towards the beginning of the third century the Christians in the Persian empire had some three hundred and sixty churches, and many martyrs, it is not difficult to imagine even if we discount the many legendary elements in these traditions, how vigorous and how successful the early Christian propaganda must have been in those distant regions.

Owing to the toleration of the Parthian Kings, Christianity kept slowly but steadily advancing in various parts of the empire. With the advent of the Sassanian dynasty, however (A.D. 226-641), Christianity was often subjected to very severe trials. Its chief opponents were the Zoroastrian Magi and priestly schools, as well as the numerous Jews scattered through the empire. The Sassanian kings in general espoused the cause of Zoroastrianism, which under them became once more the official religion; and, though some of this dynasty favoured Christianity, the national feeling always clung to the ancient creed. Many thousands of Persians embraced Christianity, but Persia remained the stronghold of Zoroastrianism, and there never arose an indigenous Persian Church, worshipping in the Persian language and leavening the whole nation. The Persian Church was of Syrian origin, traditions, and tendencies, and, for about three centuries, regarded Antioch as the centre of its faith and the seat of authority. When the Christian religion was accepted by Constantine (A.D. 312), it was naturally regarded by the Persian emperors as the religion of their rivals, the Romans. Religious and national feeling thus united against it, and bitter persecutions continued in Persia for a century after they had ceased in the Roman Empire. Some of these persecutions — notably that under Sapor II — were as terrible as any which the Christians of the West had experienced under the Emperor Diocletian.

Notwithstanding these obstacles, the Christian religion kept steadily growing. Towards the beginning of the fourth century the head of the Persian Church selected the city of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital of the empire, for his metropolitan see. Under his jurisdiction were several bishops, one of whom, John by name, was present at the Council of Nicæa (325). In 410, a synod of Christians was held at the Persian capital. In 420 there were metropolitans at Merv and Herat. King Yezdegerd himself sent the Patriarch of the Persian Church on a mission to the Roman emperor. Between 450 and 500 the Nestorians, persecuted in the Roman Empire, fled to Persia for protection, and in 498 the whole Persian Church declared in favour of Nestorianism. Henceforth the history of Christianity in Persia is their history. In the next two centuries the Persian Church kept steadily increasing till it rivalled, and perhaps surpassed, in extent, power, and wealth any other national Christian Church; having a hierarchy of two hundred and thirty bishops, scattered over Assyria, Babylonia, Chaldea, Arabia, Media, Khorasan, Persia proper, the very deserts of Turkestan, the Oasis of Merv, both shores of the Persian Gulf, and even beyond it, in the Islands of Socotra, and Ceylon, through the coasts of Malabar, and at last China and Tatary. Mgr Duchesne rightly observes that “the dominion of the ‘Catholicos’ of Seleucia was of no mean dimensions, and by the extension of his jurisdiction this high ecclesiastical dignitary figures in the same light as the greatest of the Byzantine patriarchs. We might almost go further and say that, inasmuch as we can compare the Persian Empire to the Roman, the Persian Church may be compared to the Church of the great western Power” (“The Churches Separated from Rome”, tr. Mathew, New York, 1907, p. 16).

The history of Christianity in the Sassanian empire shows that there has been a very active and successful propaganda among the Iranians. We read of Christians among the landlord class about Mosul and in the mountain region east of that city. Some of the Christians were of high rank. The last Chosroes was killed in an insurrection headed by a Christian whose father had been the chief financial officer of the realm. Some of the patriarchs of the Nestorian Church were converts, or sons of converts, from Magianism. While numerous, however, the Persian Christians were not organized into a national church. There were certain differences between them and the Nestorians farther west, and these differences were the beginnings of ecclesiastical independence, but the patriarchs asserted their authority in the end. Syriac was the ecclesiastical and theological language and even in Persia proper there was at most a very scanty Christian literature; even the Scriptures had not been translated into the vernacular.

It is clear that Christianity was widely diffused in Persia, that in some localities the Christians were very numerous, and that the Christian religion continued to spread after the rise of Mohammedanism. The two forces which had most to do with this spread of Christianity were commerce and monasticism. Christian merchants had a share in the wholesale trade of Asia; trade with India opened the way for the early introduction of Christianity there, and the hold which Christianity acquired on the shores of the Persian Gulf was probably due to the Indian and Arabian trade routes. The strong rule of the early Abbasid caliphs gave opportunity for the development of commerce. The position of the Christians at the capital as bankers and merchants would give them a share in this trade. Christian artisans, including goldsmiths and jewellers, would find employment in the large cities. In his account of the mission of the Nestorian monks, Thomas of Marga relates that the Patriarch Timothy sent his missionary with a company of merchants who were journeying together to Mugan (the plain of Mugan?) on the River Aras (Araxes).

Monasticism was imported into Mesopotamia in the fourth century by monks from Egypt. The legendary account of Mar Awgin, or St. Eugenius, relates that his monastery near Nisibis contained three hundred and fifty monks, while seventy-two of his disciples established each a monastery. The number of monasteries increased rapidly in the fourth and fifth centuries. In the sixth century there was a movement in the Nestorian Church against the enforced celibacy of the higher clergy and against celibate monks, but celibacy won the day, and monasticism was firmly established. The monks must have been numbered by hundreds, if not thousands, for, in addition to the numerous monasteries in Mesopotamia and the regions north of the Tigris, there were scattered monasteries in Persia and Armenia. Besides the cenobites, living in large communities, there were numerous solitaries living in caves or rude huts. These were influential enough among the Qatrayi, on the Persian Gulf, to call for a separate letter from the Patriarch Ishuyabh I. Some of these monks must have been full of real missionary zeal, although of course the prevailing and distinctive spirit of their institute was contemplative rather than missionary.

Yet, in spite of all, Christianity failed, and Islam succeeded in gaining the Iranian race. This failure of Christianity was not wholly due to the success of Islam: internal dissensions, ambition, dishonesty, and corruption among the clergy greatly contributed to the gradual dissolution of this wonderful Church. Under the Arabs, the Christians of Persia were not in wholly unfavourable circumstances. Indeed, the first two centuries of Mohammedan domination, especially under the Abbasids, were the most glorious period in the history of the Persian Church. It is true that at times the Christians were liable to excessive exactions and to persecutions but they were recognized as the People of the Book; and the Nestorians were especially privileged, and held many offices of trust. The missionary work was carried on and extended. It could not take much root in Persian soil after the Persians became Moslems, but it gained more and more influence in Tatary and China, beyond the limits of Mohammedan conquest. This was a period of comparative peace in those regions, and of the greatest missionary zeal and enterprise on the part of the Nestorians, who planted churches in Transoxiana as far as Kashgar, in the regions of Mongolia, and throughout Northern China. To attest this fact there are extensive Christian graveyards containing memorials of the Turkish race on the borders of China, and the monument of Si-ngan-fu, in Shensi, Giving the history of the Nestorian Mission in China for 145 years (A.D. 636-781). Timotheus, a patriarch of the Church for forty years, was zealously devoted to missionary work, and many monks traversed Asia. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries there were large Christianized communities. A Mogul prince, Unkh Khan, gave the name to the celebrated Prester John, and his successors were nominal Christians till overthrown by Jenghis Khan. The names of twenty-five metropolitan sees, from Cyprus in the west to Pekin in the east, are recorded, and their schools were spread far and wide through Western and parts of Central Asia.

B. From Jenghis Khan to the Present Time

The last of the race of Christian kings — probably Christian only in name — was slain by Jenghis Khan about A.D. 1202. Jenghis had a Christian wife, the daughter of this king, and he was tolerant towards the Christian faith. In fact the Mogul conquerors were without much religion, and friendly towards all creeds. The wave of carnage and conquest swept westward, covered Persia, and overwhelmed the Caliph of Bagdad in 1258. This change was for a time favourable to Christianity, as the rulers openly declared themselves Christians or were partial to Christianity. The patriarch of the Nestorians was chosen from people of the same language and race as the conquerors; he was a native of Western China; he ruled the Church through a stormy period of seven reigns of Mogul kings, had the joy of baptizing some of them, and for a time hoped that they would form such an alliance with the Christians of Europe against the Mohammedans as should open all Asia, as far as China, to Christianity. This hope did not last long; it ended in a treat of ruin: the Nestorians were too degraded, ignorant, and superstitious to avail themselves of their opportunity. After a time of vacillation the Moguls found Mohammedanism better suited to their rough and bloody work. The emperor, having decided, flung his sword into the scale, and at his back were 100,000 warriors. The whole structure of the Nestorian Church, unequal to the trial, crumbled under the persecutions and wars of the Tatars. With Timu-Leng (A.D. 1379-1405) came their utter ruin. He was a bigoted Moslem, and put to the sword all who did not escape to the recesses of the mountains. Thus did Central Asia, once open to Christian missions, see the utter extermination of the Christians, not a trace of them being left east of the Kurdish Mountains. The Christian faith was thrown back upon its last defenses in the West, where hunted and despised, its feeble remnant of adherents continued to retain, as it were, a death-grip on their churches and worship.

During the last five centuries Christianity has been simply a tolerated but oppressed and despised faith in Persia. From the invasions of Timur-Leng until the accession of Abbas the Great (1582), a period of two hundred years, its history is almost a blank. In 1603 some Armenian chiefs appealed to Shah Abbas for protection against the Turks: he invaded Armenia, and in the midst of the war decided to devastate it, that the Turks might be without provisions. From Kars to Bayazid the Armenians were driven before the Persian soldiery to the banks of the Aras, near Julfa. Their cities and villages were depopulated. From every place of concealment they were driven forth. Convents were plundered, and their inmates driven out. The captives were forced to cross the Aras without proper transports. Many women and children, sick and aged, were carried away by the swift current. Two chiefs were beheaded to hasten the progress. Women were carried off to Persian harems. Through unfrequented paths, and with untold hardships, they reached their destinations. The principal colony, five thousand souls, was settled at New Julfa, near Ispahan, where they were granted many privileges. Both Armenians and Georgians were scattered through Central Persia, and some of their descendants are villagers in the Bakhtiyari country. A colony of seven thousand was planted at Ashraf, in Mezanderan, where malaria destroyed the greater portion of them; the remnant were restored to Armenia in the reign of Safi Shah. The colony at Julfa (now known as Tulfa, on the River Zendeh) prospered greatly and became very wealthy by trade and the arts.

Under the Safavean kings, the Christians of Azarbedjan and Transcaucasia suffered much from the wars of the Turks and Persians. Both banks of the Arras were generally in the hands of the Persians. Some of the shahs were tolerant, and the Christians prospered; some overtaxed them. The last, Shah Sultan Husain, oppressed them: he repealed the law of retaliation, whereby a Christian could exact equivalent punishment from a Mussulman criminal; he enacted that the price of a Christian’s blood should be the payment of a load of grain. Julfa was subjected to great suffering at the time of the invasion of the Afghan Mahmud. It was captured, and a ransom of seventy thousand tomans and fifty of the fairest and best-born maidens exacted. The grief of the Armenians was so heartrending that many of the Afghans were moved to pity and returned the captives. When Mahmud subsequently became a maniac the Armenian priests were called in to pray over him and exorcise the evil spirit. Nadir Shah continued to oppress the Armenians, ostracized them, and interdicted their worship. On this account many emigrated to India, Bagdad, and Georgia. About eighty villages remained between Hamadan and Ispahan. Under the Kajar dynasty the state of the Christians is better known. Notices of them abound in the narrations of travellers of the period. Agha Mohammed, founder of the Kajar dynasty, sacked Tiflis and transported many Georgians into Persia. Others went to Russia. Their descendants, mostly Mohammedans, are frequently met occupying high positions in the Government.

At the time of the Russian war, early in the nineteenth century, nine thousand families of Armenians and many Nestorians emigrated from Azarbedjan. Some were induced to come back by Abbas Mirza, under the protection of the English. Those in Tabriz were exempted from taxes and had the right to appeal to the British consul. This right of protection was afterwards withdrawn, and finally, after many vain protests on the part of the Armenians, the exemption from taxes was annulled in A.D. 1894. The condition of Christians in Persia under Nasred-Din and his successors, down to the present time, will be described in the following section.

C. Catholic Missions

The history of Catholic missions in Persia is intimately connected with the various attempts made by the Nestorians, in the last nine centuries, to join the Catholic Church. In some cases, these movements were the results of efforts made by the early Franciscan and Dominican, and after them, the Jesuit missionaries. In 1233 the Nestorian catholicos, Subarjesus, sent to Pope Gregory IX an orthodox profession of faith and was admitted to union with the Church of Rome. The same was done, in 1304, by Jabalaha (1281-1317) during the pontificate of Benedict XI. In 1439 Timotheus, Nestorian Metropolitan of Tarsus and Cyprus, renounced Nestorianism, and in 1553 the patriarch John Sulaka visited Rome and submitted to Pope Julius III his profession of faith, as a result of which several thousand Nestorians of Persia became Catholics. His successor, Ebedjesus, followed his example, visited Rome, and assisted at the last (twenty-fifth) session of the Council of Trent. In 1582 Simeon Denha was elected patriarch of the converted Nestorians, henceforth called simply Chaldeans, and, owing to Turkish persecution, he transferred the patriarchal see to Urumiah in Persia. Shortly afterwards, he received the pallium from Gregory XIII through Laurent Abel, Bishop of Sidon, who was commissioned by the pope to investigate the condition of the various churches of the East. Mar Denha’s successors, Simeon VIII, IX, X, XI, and XII, all remained faithful to Rome, and fixed their patriarchal see at Urumiah and Khosrowa; Simeon IX, in fact, in a letter to Pope Innocent X, informs him that the Nestorian Units, or Chaldeans, under his patriarchal jurisdiction numbered some 200,000 souls. Simeon XI sent his profession of Faith to Alexander VII (elected 1653); and Simeon XII, to Clement X (1670). From 1670 to 1770 the relations between the Nestorian patriarch and Rome were suspended.

But in 1770 one of the successors of Simeon XII addressed a letter to Pope Clement XIV in which he expresses his intention of resuming once more orthodox and friendly relations with Rome. The successors of this patriarch, however, completely severed their relations with Rome, and transferred their patriarchal residence from Urumiah to Kotchanes, in Kurdestan, which became thenceforward the see of the Nestorian patriarchs. Meanwhile, the many thousand Nestorian Units, or Chaldeans, who remained faithful the Catholic Faith selected for themselves an independent Catholic patriarch, who was confirmed with all the patriarchal privileges by Innocent XI on 20 May, 1681. To his successor, Joseph I, was given the title of “Patriarch of Babylon”, i.e., of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the ancient patriarchal see of the Nestorian Church. In 1695 he resigned and went to Rome, where he shortly afterwards died. His successors were Joseph II, III, IV, V, and VI, all belonging to the same family of Mar Denha. They governed the Chaldean Church during the eighteenth century, and their patriarchal residence was transferred from Persia to Mesopotamia — to Diarbekir, Mosul, and Amida successively.

Beginning with the early years of this century, several Capuchin (1725) and Dominican (1750) missionaries were sent to Mosul, and through their efforts and zeal all traces of Nestorianism disappeared from the Chaldean Church in Mesopotamia. After the death of Joseph VI the Congregation of Propaganda decreed that henceforth but one Chaldean patriarch should be acknowledged. Leo XII confirmed the decree, and Pius VIII put it into execution, 5 July, 1830, by creating Mar Hanna (Yuhanna Hormuz) the sole and only legitimate patriarch of the Chaldeans. He transferred the patriarchal see from Diarbekir to Bagdad, where he died in 1838. His successor, Isaiade Yakob, who resided at Khosrowa, near Salamas, in Persia, resigned in 1845, and was succeeded, in 1848, by Joseph Audo, who died in 1878, and was succeeded by Elia Abbolionan, who died in 1894 and was succeeded by Ebedjesus Khayyat, after whose death at Bagdad, in 1899, the patriarchal dignity was conferred in 1900 upon the present incumbent, Joseph Emanuel. The official title and residence of the Chaldean patriarch is that of Babylon, but for administrative reasons they reside at Mosul, from which centre they govern 5 archdioceses and 10 dioceses, containing 100,000 souls.

The history of European Catholic missions in Persia dates from the time of the Mongolian rule, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when several embassies of Dominicans and Franciscans were sent by the popes to the Mongol rules both in Central Asia and in Persia; and although their noble efforts brought no permanent results, they paved the way for future and more successful Catholic propaganda. In the early part of the seventeenth century, political aims led the kings of Persia to contract friendly relations with Europe. This gave a new impetus to Catholic missionary enterprise, and Carmelite, Minorite, and Jesuit missionaries were well received by Shah Abbas the Great, who allowed them to establish missionary stations all through his dominion. Ispahan was made the centre, and several thousand Nestorians returned to the Catholic Church. These missionaries were soon followed by Augustinians and Capuchins, who enlarged their missionary field, extending it to Armenians and Mohammedans as well. The most distinguished of these missionaries was Father de Rhodes of Avignon, the Francis Xavier of Persia, who became the best beloved man in Ispahan. On his death in 1646 the shah himself, with his court and nobles, as well as the largest part of the population of Ispahan, attended his funeral. He was called by them “The Saint”. After his death, the city of Ispahan was created an episcopal see, the first incumbent of which was the Carmelite Thaddeus. Under Nadir Shah and Shah Sultan Husain, however, the tide turned again, and persecution followed. The missionaries were forced to flee, and thousands of Christians were compelled either to migrate or to apostatize. This was in the early part of the eighteenth century. A hundred years later missionary work recommenced, and thousands of Nestorians were converted to the Catholic Faith.

The second epoch of Catholic missionary work in Persia was begin in 1840 by the Lazarists, in consequence of the representations of Eugene Boré, a French savant and a fervent Catholic, who in 1838 was sent to Persia on a scientific mission by the French Academy and the Minister of Public Instruction. He himself founded four schools, two in Tabriz and Ispahan for the Armenians, and two in Urumiah and Salamas for the Chaldeans. Condescending to his advice and instructions, the Congregation of Propaganda confided the establishment of the new mission to the Lazarists, who were joined later on by the French Sisters of Charity. The first Lazarist missionary was Father Fornier, who arrived at Tabriz in 1840 as prefect Apostolic. He was joined in the following year by two other fathers of the same society, Darnis and Cluzel, who took immediate charge of the school founded by M. Boré and already attended by sixty pupils. Two years later, yielding to strong opposition on the part of the schismatical Armenian clergy, Darnis left Tabriz and established himself at Urumiah, while Cluzel remained at Ispahan, and Fornier in Tabriz. Cluzel was soon afterwards joined by Darnis in Urumiah, the latter having left the school at Ispahan in charge of Giovanni Derderian, a most zealous Armenian Catholic priest who was subsequently elected bishop of that see, but did not live to receive consecration.

On arriving at Urumiah, the first Lazarists found the American Protestant missionaries already well established in that city, but soon outstripped them in influence and zeal, as is shown by the fact that within two years the number of pupils in the Catholic school increased from 200 to over 400, with two churches, one in Urumiah and the other in Ardishai, the most populous village in the vicinity of Urumiah. Here again the Catholic missionaries were persecuted; owing to the intrigues of the Russian consul and the opposition of the Nestorians, they were compelled to leave their stations, while a fourth Lazarite, Father Rouge, had meanwhile arrived and established a new mission at Khosrowa. With the establishment, however, of a new French representative at the Persian Court, M. de Sartiges, the Lazarists were permitted by the Persian Government to continue their work unmolested, Father Luzel having become a great favourite with Mizra Aghasi, the prime minister. In 1863, Father Rouge died at Urumiah and was succeeded by a native Chaldean priest, Father Dbigoulim, who had joined the Lazarist Order. In 1852, Father Varèse was sent to Urumiah, and in 1856 was followed by eight French Sisters of Charity. Meanwhile, Mgr Trioche, Apostolic Delegate of Mesopotamia, sent Dom Valerga (afterwards Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem) to Khosrowa, where he built a magnificent stone church. Darnis and Cluzel soon afterwards established there a seminary to train indigenous candidates for the priesthood, teaching them Latin, French, Syriac, and Armenian, as well as theology.

Some of the seminarians became secular priests, others joined the Lazarists, among the latter being Dbigoulim, Paul Bedjan now residing in Belgium, and famous in the scientific world for his admirable edition of some twenty-five volumes of Syriac texts and literature, and Dilou Solomon. In 1852 Father Terral, a new arrival, took charge of the seminary and a few years later became superior of the mission. Besides the seminary, two other colleges were opened, one for boys, the other for girls, the latter under the care and direction of the newly arrived Sisters of Charity. To these were soon added one hospital and one orphan asylum, where all — Mohammedans, Nestorians, Armenians, and Catholics — were gratuitously admitted and cared for. This splendid work evoked the admiration of Shah Nasr-ed-Din himself, and he contributed a yearly allowance of 200 tomans ($400) towards the maintenance of the two institutions. Soon after, two more hospitals were opened, one at Urumiah and one at Khosrowa. In 1858 Father Darnis died at the age of forty-four, and in his place several new missionaries were sent. In 1862 the Lazarists established themselves permanently at Teheran under the able direction of Fathers Varèse and Plagnard, who soon built there a church and a mission house around which the European colony of Teheran gathered, and which soon afterwards became the most beautiful residential section of the Persian capital. In 1874 the Sisters of Charity established themselves at Teheran with a house, a hospital, and two schools.

The crowning event in the history of Catholic missions in Persia, however, took place in 1872, when the Prefecture Apostolic of Persia was raised to the dignity of an Apostolic Delegation, with Mgr Cluzel as its first incumbent. In 1874 he was consecrated, in Paris, Archbishop of Heraclea, and assumed the Administrator of the Diocese of Ispahan, thus withdrawing the Persian Mission from the jurisdiction of the Apostolic Delegation of Mesopotamia. On his arrival in Persia, Mgr Cluzel was immediately acknowledged by the shah, decorated with the insignia of the Lion and Sun, and officially confirmed, by a special imperial firman, as the representative of the Father of the Faithful. During the seven years of his episcopal activity in Persia, the Lazarist mission made wonderful progress with the Chaldeans and Nestorians. A great cathedral was build at Urumiah, and many new schools were opened in the neighbouring villages. Mgr Cluzel died in 1882 and was succeeded by Mgr Thomas, who built a preparatory school for the seminary of Khosrowa and successfully introduced celibacy among the native Catholic Chaldean clergy. Ill-health, however, compelled him to retire, and he was succeeded by Mgr Montety, who also had to resign for the same reason, and was succeeded, in 1896, by the present Apostolic, Mgr Lesué, titular Archbishop of Philippopoli. Under his able administration, the Catholic mission has made further progress, extending its beneficial work far beyond the limits of Persia proper, into Sina, the Tarsus mountains, and the regions of Persian Kurdistan and Armenia.

The latest statistics are as follows: Catholics of the Latin Rite, 350; Catholic Chaldeans, about 8000, with 52 native priests and 3 dioceses; Nestorians, about 35,000; Catholic Armenians, about 700, with 5 priests; Protestants, about 5000. — Catholic missions: Lazarist Fathers, 19, with 5 mission stations, churches, and chapels, 48; seminaries, 2, with 17 students; schools, 55, with 800 pupils; hospitals, 3; religious houses, 3 — 2 for men, with 18 religious, and 1 for women, with 37 sisters.

D. Non-Catholic Missions

The earliest Protestant missionaries in Persia were Moravians who in 1747 came to evangelize the Guebers, but owing to political disturbances were compelled to withdraw. The next missioner was Henry Martin, a chaplain in the British army in India, who, in 1811, went to Persia and remained at Shiraz but eleven months, having completed there, in 1812, his Persian translation of the New Testament. After many trials and much opposition, especially from the Mohammedan mullahs, or priests, he was forced to leave the country, and died at Tokat, in Asia Minor, on his way back to England. The next labourer was a German, the Rev. C.G. Pfander, of the Basle Missionary Society, who visited Persia in 1829; after some years of fruitless labour in Kirmanshah and Georgia he too had to leave the country, and died in 1869 at Constantinople. He is well known for his book “Mizan-ul-Hakk” (The Balance of Truth), in which he points out the superiority of Christianity over Mohammedanism. In 1833 another German missionary, the Rev. Frederic Haas, with some colleagues, being forced to leave Russia, entered Persia and for a time made their headquarters in Tabriz; but they also had to leave the country. In 1838, the Rev. W. Glen, a Scottish missionary entered Persia and spent four years at Tabriz and Teheran, occupied mainly in completing and revising his own Persian translation of the Old Testament. The work of all these missions was principally directed to the conversion of Mohammedans and was therefore, as such attempts have generally proved, a complete failure.

The first organized Protestant missionary attempt among the Nestorian Christians of Persia took place in 1834, when the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (Congregational) commissioned Justin Perkins and his wife, and Asahel Grant (1835) and his wife to establish a mission among the Persian Nestorians. Between 1834 and 1871 some fifty-two missionaries, we are told, were sent by the A.B.C.F.M. into Persia. Among these American missionaries were several physicians, who, by ministering gratuitously to the poor Nestorians, made some progress. In 1870 the work of the A.B.C.F.M. was transferred to the Board of Missions of the American Presbyterian Church, and the mission was divided into those of the Eastern and Western Persia, the former including Tabriz, Teheran, Hamadan, Resth, Kazwin, and Kirmanshah: the latter, the Province of Azarbedjan (Urumiah, Khosrowa) and parts of Kurdistan, Caucasus, and Armenia. The work has been, and still is, more of a humanitarian character than moral or religious. About $600,000 was expended on this mission between 1834 and 1870, a larger amount between 1870 and 1890, and about one million dollars from 1800 to the present time, i.e., over two million dollars altogether. Yet it is extremely doubtful whether any results commensurate with this vast expenditure have been accomplished. The latest statistics (1909) are as follows: Missionaries, 37 (including 6 male and 3 female physicians); 35 native ministers; 7000 adherents; 3000 communicants; 2692 pupils distributed among 62 schools, 4 hospitals. The Church Missionary Society, established in 1869, has stations in Kirman, Yezd, Shiraz, and at Ispahan. the work is mainly medical and educational. The statistics are: 33 missionaries, including 4 male and 5 female physicians; native clergy, 1; native teachers, 28; Christians, 412; communicants, 189; schools, 8, with 409 scholars; hospitals, 6. The British and Foreign Bible Society also does an extensive work in Southern Persia.

The greatest competitor of the two above-mentioned missionary societies is the Anglican mission known as “The Assyrian Mission”, which was established in 1884 by Archbishop Benson of Canterbury with headquarters at Urumiah and Kotchanes, the seat of the Nestorian patriarch, and having for its principal aim the union of the Nestorian with the Anglican Church. It is interesting to read an estimate of the work of this mission from the pen of an American Presbyterian missioner: it repudiates the name Protestant, and has for its avowed object the strengthening of the Nestorian Church to resist Catholic influences on the one hand and Protestant on the other. It has a strong force of missionaries, who wear the garb of their order, and are under temporary vows of celibacy and obedience. Its present statistics are: missionaries, 2; schools, 30, with 470 scholars, besides 12 distinctly Nestorian schools in various sections of Kurdistan. The mission originated in 1842, when “Archbishop Howley, with the assistance of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, sent the Rev. G.P. Badger to Mosul, to begin work among the mountain Nestorians. Just at that time the Kurdish Sheikh, Berd Khan, was raging in the mountains of Kurdistan. The general confusion and disorder were such that Badger had to return in despair to England within a year.” (Richter, “History of Protestant Missions in the Near East”, 1910). Thirty-four years later the Rev. E.L. Cutts was sent to Kurdistan, but left within a year. The Scandinavian Wahl, however, remained for five years (1880-85) in the heart of Kurdistan amidst great privations. After the organization of “The Assyrian Mission”, in 1886, one of its missionaries settled at Kotchhannes, some 7000 feet above sea-level, while its headquarters were established at Urumiah.

Many other small Protestant enterprises have lately sprung up in Persia, especially at Urumiah. The United Lutheran Church of America maintains a few kashas (Nestorian priests), and in 1905, sent an American missionary, the Rev. Mr. Fossum, to superintend the work. A Syrian congregation at Urumiah, having left the Russian Church, has joined this mission. The Swedish-American “Augustana Synode” employs a kasha, who has had a Lutheran training in Germany. He cooperates to some degree with the Anglicans, and has added a fourth to already existing mission printing establishments at Urumiah. For ten years Dr. Lepsius’s German “Orientmission”, maintained outside Urumiah an orphanage for Syrian fugitives from the mountains, but it is to be closed soon. The English Plymouth Brethren employ three or four kashas in the “Awishalum” Mission, named after the chief representative of the mission in Persia, Awishalum [Absolom] Seyad. There are also small missions connected with the American Dunkards, the Holiness Methodists, the American Southern Baptists and Northern Baptists, and the English Congregationalists.

The latest non-Catholic missionary enterprise in Persia was that of the Russians, in 1898. The aim of this mission is more political than educational or religious, and the extraordinary readiness with which several thousand Nestorians flocked to the Russian Orthodox Church is explained by the fact that the Nestorians were very anxious for foreign protection against the tyranny of Persia and Turkey.

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I. History, etc. — Maspero, The Passing of Empires (London, 1899); Dieulafoy, La Perse, la Chaldée, et las Sasiane (Paris, 1889); Benjamin, Persia and the Persians (Boston, 1887); Rawlinson, The Sixth and the Seventh Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World (London, 1886); De Ragozin, History of Media (London, 1892); Benjamin, History of Persia (London, 1892); Rawlinson, History of Parthia (London, 1890) (these three in the History of the Nations series); Malcolm, History of Persia (London, 1829); Barbier de Meynard, Dictionnaire géographique, historique et littéraire de la Perse (Paris, 1861); Watson, History of Persia from the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century (London, 1873); Piggot, Persia, Ancient and Modern (London, 1874); Justi, Geschiohze des alien Persiens (Berlin, 1879); Nöldeke, Aufsätze zur persischen Geschichte (Leipzig, 1887); Gutschmied, Geschichte Irans und seiner Nachbarlander (Tübingen, 1888); Justi and Horn in Geiger and Kuhn, Grundriss der iranische Philologie, II (Strasburg, 1897-1900); Christensen, L’Empire des Sassanides, le peuple, l’état, la cour (Copenhagen, 1907); Curzon, Persia and the Persian Questions (London, 1892); De Morgan, Mission scientifique en Perse (Paris, 1894); Sykes, Ten Thousand Miles in Persia (London, 1902); Jackson, Persia, Past and Present (New York, 1906).

On Persian Art: Dieulafoy, L’Art antique de la Perse (Paris, 1884); Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Persia (London, 1892); Gayet, L’Art persane (Paris, 1895); Aubin, La Perse d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 1908).

II. Language and Literature. — Hammer, Geschichte der schönen Redekünste Persiens mit einer Blütenlese (Vienna, 1818); Ouseley, Biographical Notices of Persian Poets (London, 1846); Pizzi, Storia della letteratura Persiania (Turin, 1894); Idem, L’Epopea persiana (Turin, 1887); Reed, Persian Literature, Ancient and Modern (Chicago, 1893); Chodzko, Specimens of the Popular Poetry of Persia (London, 1842); Mohl, Le Shah-Nameh of Firdousi (Paris, 1876-78); Rogers, The Shan-Namah of Fardusi (London, 1907); Dole and Walker, Flowers from Persian Poets (New York, 1901); Horn, Geschichte der persischen Literatur (Leipzig, 1901); and above all, Browne, Literary History of Persia, I (London, 1902), II (1906). — See also bibliographies to Avesta and Avesta, Theological Aspects of.

III. Christianity in Persia. — A. Earlier Periods. — Tabari, Geschichte der Persen und Araber zur Zeit der Sassanidem, ed. Nöldeke (Leyden, 1879); Barhebtæus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, ed. Abbeloos-Lamy (Louvain, 1874); Assemani, Bibliotheca Orientalis (Rome, 1719-28), especially III, pts. i, ii; Bedjan, Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum (Leipzig, 1890-99); Hoffman, Auszügeaus Syrischen Akjten persischer Märtyrer (Leipzig, 1886); Thomas of Marga, Book of Governors, ed. Gudge (London, 1893); Bedjan, Fr. Tr. Chabot, Jabalaha: Vie de Jabalaha, etc. (Paris, 1895); Wright, A Short History of Syriac Literature (London, 1891); Duval, Littérature Syriaque (Paris, 1899); Duchesne, tr. Mathew, Churches Separated from Rome (New York, 1907); Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity (New York, 1904); Labourt, Le Christianisme dans l’empire perse sous la dynastie Sassanide (Paris, 1904); Adeney, The Greek and Eastern Churches (New York, 1908); Shedd, Islam and the Oriental Churches (Philadelphia, 1904); O’Leary, The Syriac Church and Fathers (London, 1909); Wigram, An Introduction to the History of the Assyrian Church, 100-640, A.D. (London, 1910); Barthold, Zur Geschichte des Christenthums in Mittel-Asien bis zur mongolischen Eroberung (Tübingen, 1901).

B. Catholic Missions. — Annales de la Congrégation de la Mission; Chardin, Voyages en Perse et autres lieux de l’orient (Amsterdam, 1711); Mémoires des Jésuites d’Ispahan; Piolet, La France au dehors, ou Les Missions catholiques françaises au XIXe siècle, I: Missions d’Orient (Paris, 1900), 185-222; Miller-Simonis, Du Caucase au Golfe Persique (Paris, 1892); Giamil, Genuinæ relationes inter syros orientales seu chaldæs et romanos pontifices (Rome, 1900); Missiones catholicæ cura S.C. de Prop. Fide descriptæ (Rome, annual).

C. Non-Catholic Missions. — Perkins, Residence of Eight Years in Persia (Andover, 1843); Idem, Missionary Life in Persia (Boston, 1861); Guest, Story of a Consecrated Life (London, 1870); Anderson, History of the Missions of the A.B.C.F.M. Oriental Missions (Boston, 1874); Bassett, Persia: Eastern Mission (Philadephia, 1890); Wilson, Persian Life and Customs (Chicago, 1895); Idem, Persia: Western Mission (Philadelphia, 1896); Richter, A History of Protestant Missions in the Near East (New York, 1910, 279-337); Riley, Progress and Prospects of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Mission (London, 1889); Maclean and Browne, The Catholicos of the East and His People (London, 1892); Lawrence, Modern Missions in the East (New York, 1895).

GABRIEL OUSSANI Transcribed by Mary Thomas

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, February 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Persia

(Heb. Paras’, ; native Fars, thought to be either from the Zend Pars, pure or splendid, or from Farash [], a horse, that animal being abundant there; Sept. ; Vulg. Perses), the name of one of the interior countries of Hither Asia, varying greatly in application according to time and circumstances. The following account of it embraces the ancient and the modern information, with a special view to Biblical illustration. SEE PERSIAN.

I. Extent and Physical Features. The name is used in two or three senses geographically and historically.

1. Persia was strictly the name of a tract of no very large dimensions on the Persian Gulf, which is still known as Fars, or Farsistin, a corruption of the ancient appellation. This tract was bounded on the west by Susiana or Elam, on the north by Media, on the south by the Persian Gulf, and on the east by Carmania, the modern Kerman. It was, speaking generally, an and and unproductive region (Herod. 9:122; Arrian, Exp. Alex. v. 4; Plato, Leg. iii, p. 695, A); but contained some districts of considerable fertility. The worst part of the country was that towards the south, on the borders of the gulf, which has a climate and soil like Arabia, being sandy and almost without streams, subject to pestilential winds, and in many places covered with particles of salt. Above this miserable region is a tract very far superior to it, consisting of rocky mountains the continuation of Zagros among which are found a good many fertile valleys and plains, especially towards the north, in the vicinity of Shiraz. Here is an important stream, the Bendamir, which, flowing through the beautiful valley of Merdasht and by the ruins of Persepolis, is then separated into numerous channels for the purpose of irrigation, and, after fertilizing a large tract of country (the district of Kurjan), ends its course in the salt lake of Baktigan. Vines, oranges, and lemons are produced abundantly in this region; and the wine of Shiraz is celebrated throughout Asia. Farther north an and country again succeeds, the outskirts of the Great Desert, which extends from Kerman to Mazenderan, and from Kashan to Lake Zerrah.

Ptolemy(Geogr. 6:4) divides Persia into a number of provinces, among which the most important are Paraetacene on the north, which was sometimes reckoned to Media (Herod. 1:101; Steph. Byz. ad voc ), and Mardyenl on the south coast, the country of the Mardi. The chief towns were Pasargadae, the ancient, and Persepolis, the later capital. Pasargadve was situated near the modern village of Murgaub, 42 miles nearly due north of Persepolis, and appears to have been the capital till the time of Darius, who chose the far more beautiful site in the valley of the Bendamir, where the Chehel Minar, or Forty Pillars, still stand. SEE PERPSEPOLIS. Among other cities of less importance were Paraetaca and Gabne in the mountain country, and Taoce upon the coast. See Strab. 15:3, 1-8; Pliny, H. N. 6:25, 26; Ptolem. Geogr. 6:4; Kinneir, Persian Empire, p. 54-80 Malcolm, Hist. of Persia, 1:2; Ker Porter, Travels, 1:458, etc.; Rich, Journey from Bushire to Persepolis, etc.

2. While the district of Fars is the true original Persia, the name is more commonly applied, both in Scripture and by profane authors, to the entire tract which came by degrees to be included within the limits of the Persian empire. This empire extended at one time from India on the east to Egypt and Thrace upon the west, and included, besides portions of Europe and Africa, the whole of Western Asia between the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian, and the Jaxartes upon the north, the Arabian desert, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean upon the south. According to Herodotus (3:89), it was divided into twenty governments, or satrapies; but from the inscriptions it would rather appear that the number varied at different times, and when the empire was most flourishing considerably exceeded twenty. In the inscription upon his tomb at Naksh-i-Rustam, Darius mentions no fewer than thirty countries as subject to him besides Persia Proper. These are Media, Susiana, Parthia, Aria, Bactria, Sogdiana, Chorasmia, Zarangia, Arachosia, Sattagydia, Gandaria, India, Scythia, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Saparda, Ionia, (European) Scythia, the islands (of the AEgean), the country of the Scodrae, (European) lonia, the lands of the Tacabri, the Budians, the Cushites or Ethiopians, the Mardians, and the Colchians.

The name Persia is not found in the older records of the Bible, but after the Babylonian period it occurs frequently (2Ch 36:20; 2Ch 36:22; Ezr 4:5 sq.; Ezr 6:14 sq.; Est 1:3; Est 8:10; 1Ma 1:1), meaning the great Persian kingdom founded by Cyrus. The only passage in Scripture where Persia designates the tract which has been called above Persia Proper is Eze 38:5. SEE ELAM.

3. Modern Persia or Iran is bounded on the north by the great plain of Khiva, the Caspian Sea, and the Trans-Caucasian provinces of Russia; on the east by Bokhara, Afghanistan, and Beloochistan; on the south by the Strait of Ormuz and the Persian Gulf; and on the west by the Shat-el-Arab and Asiatic Turkey. It contains about 545,000 square miles, and consists for the most part of a great table-land or elevated plateau, which in the center and on the east side is almost a dead level; but on the north, west, and south is covered with a broad belt of mountain-region, here and there interspersed with tracts of desert and small fertile plains. The mountain- system of Persia has its root in the north-west corner of the kingdom, and is a continuation of the Taurus, Armenian, and Caucasian chains. The Taurus chain enters Persia a little to the north-east of Lake Van and then turns in a southeasterly direction, ramifying into numerous parallel chains, which traverse the west and south of the country, covering it for a width of from 100 to 330 miles. At its south-eastern extremity this chin joins the Jebel-Abad, which runs eastward through the center of the province of Kerman, and forms the southern boundary of the plateau. The range is generally limestone, and, like all other mountains of the same character, presents many caves and grottos. The province of Azerbijan, in the north- west, is almost wholly mountainous. On the east side of Azerbijan, a spur of the Caucasus, separated from it, however, by the valley of the Kur and Araxes, runs southwards at some little distance from and parallel to the shore of the Caspian, at the south-west corner of which it becomes more elevated, and as the majestic range of the Elburz takes an easterly direction, following the line of the Caspian coast at a distance varying from 12 to 60 miles.

On reaching Astrabad it divides into three great parallel ranges of somewhat inferior elevation, which pursue first an east, and then a south-east direction, joining the Paropamisus in Afghanistan. Many of the hills in the Elburz are covered with perpetual snow; and the highest peak, Mount Demavend, is more than 20,000 feet above the sea. The Persian mountains are mostly of a primitive character; granite, porphyry, feldspar, and mountain limestone enter largely into their composition; they also, in great part, exhibit indications of volcanic action-Demavend itself being evidently an extinct volcano; and the destructive earthquakes which are still of frequent occurrence in the north and north-west of Persia indicate the presence of subterranean fires. The Elburz on the north, the Zagros on the west, the Kerman mountains on the south, and Afghanistan on the east, are the boundaries of the Persian plateau, which ranges from 2000 to 5000 feet above sea-level, the lowest portion being the Great Salt Desert, in the north-west of Khorassan, which has 2000 feet of elevation above the sea; while the average elevation of the whole plateau above the sea is about 3700 feet. The lower level, out of which the upland rises, is called the Dushtistan, or Level Country, and stretches along the coast of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Ormuz, south of the Bakhtiyari and Kerman ranges, and also along the Caspian Sea, between it and the Elhurz. The aspect of the plateau, diversified as it is for the most part with hills and valleys, mountains and plains, is, contrary to what might naturally be expected, dreary and forbidding. The interior mountains are everywhere bare and, unrelieved by trees or shrubs, and present the appearance of huge masses of gray rock piled one on the other, or starting in abrupt ridges from the level plain. The plains are equally unattractive; and those which are not deserts consist either of gravel which has been washed down from the mountain slopes or accumulated into deep and extensive beds during some former revolution of nature, or of a hard, dry clay. To render such a country fertile requires the presence of abundant water; but, unfortunately for Persia, nature has been remarkably sparing in this respect. The whole of the east and center of the country is entirely destitute of rivers; the country south of the Kerman mountains is very meagerly supplied, the rivers, such as they are, being almost wholly confined to the western and the Caspian provinces.

Almost the whole of Khorassan, the north half of Kerman, the east of Irak- Ajemi, which form the great central plain, and detached portions of all the other provinces, with the exception of those on the Caspian Sea, forming more than three fourths of the surface of Persia, are desert. In some parts of this waste the surface is dry, and produces a scanty herbage of saline plants; in other parts it is covered with salt marshes, or with a dry, hard, salt crust, sometimes of considerable thickness, which glitters and flashes in the sunlight, forcing the traveler on these inhospitable wastes to wear a shade to protect his eyes; but by far the greater portion of this region consists of sand, sometimes so light and impalpable as to be shifted thither and thither by the slightest breeze. This great central desert contains a few oases, but none of great extent. The largest of the salt deserts of Persia is the Dasht Beyad, commonly known as the Great Salt Desert of Khorassan, which lies in the north-west of that province, and is 400 miles in length by 250 miles in breadth. Some parts of Persia, however, are of exceeding fertility and beauty; the immense valleys, some of them 100 miles in length, between the various ranges of the Kerman mountains, abound with the rarest and most valuable vegetable productions; great portions of the provinces of Fars, Khuzistan, Ardelan, and Azerbijan have been lavishly endowed by nature with the most luxuriant vegetation; while the Caspian provinces, and the southern slopes of the Elburz, are as beautiful as wood, water, and a fine climate can make them the mountain-sides being clothed with trees and shrubs, and the plains studded with nature’s choicest products.

The climate is necessarily very varied. What the Younger Cyrus is reported to have said to Xenophon regarding the climate, that people perish with cold at the one extremity, while they are suffocated with heat at the other, is literally true. Persia may be considered to possess three climate that of the southern Dushtistan, of the elevated plateau, and of the Caspian provinces. In the Dushtistan, the autumnal heats are excessive, those of summer more tolerable, while in winter and spring the climate is delightful. The cold is never intense, and snow seldom falls on the southern slope of the Kerman range. The rains are not heavy, and occur in winter and spring. The district is extremely healthy. On the plateau, the climate of Fars is temperate, and as we proceed northwards, the climate improves, attaining its greatest perfection about Ispahan. Here the winters and summers are equally mild, and the regularity of the seasons appears remarkable to a stranger. To the north and north-west of this the winters are severe; and in Kurdistan, the greater part of Azerbijan, and the region of the Elburz, the climate is quite alpine. The desert region of the center and east, and the country on its border, suffer most oppressive heat during summer and piercing cold in winter. The Caspian provinces, from their general depression below the sea-level, are exposed to a degree of heat in summer almost equal to that of the West Indies, and their winters are mild. Rains, however, are frequent and heavy, and many tracts of low country are marshy and extremely unhealthy. With the exception of the Caspian provinces, the atmosphere of Persia is remarkable above that of all other countries for its dryness and purity, a fact frequently proved by exposing pieces of polished iron to the action of the air, and finding whether or not they rust.

II. Inhabitants.

1. Classification of the Population. Herodotus tells us that the Persians were divided into ten tribes, of which three were noble, three agricultural, and four nomadic. The noble tribes were the Pasargadee, who dwelt, probably, in the capital and its immediate neighborhood; the Maraphians, who are perhaps represented by the modern Mafi, a Persian tribe which prides itself on its antiquity; and the Maspians, of whom nothing more is known. The three tribes engaged in agriculture were called the Panthialaeans, the Derusiaeans, and the Germanians, or (according to the true orthography) the Carmanians. These last were either the actual inhabitants of Kerman, or settlers of the same race, who remained in Persia while their fellow-tribesmen occupied the adjoining region. The nomadic tribes are said to have been the Dahi, who appear in Scripture as the Dehavites (Ezr 4:9), the Mardi, mountaineere famous for their thievish habits (Steph. Byz.), together with the Sagartians and the Derbices or Dropici, colonists from the regions east of the Caspian. The royal race of the Achaemenidae was a phratry or clan of the Pasargadse (Herod. 1:126); to which it is probable that most of the noble houses likewise belonged. Little is heard of the Maraphians, and nothing of the Maspians, in history; it is therefore evident that their nobility was very inferior to that of the leading tribe.

The modern population of Persia is naturally divisible into two classes, the settled and the nomad. The settled population are chiefly Tajiks, the descendants of the ancient Persian race, with an intermixture of foreign blood Turkish, Tartar, Arab, Armenian, or Georgian. To this class belong the agriculturists, merchants, artisans, etc. From having long been a subject race, they have to a large extent lost their natural independence and manliness of character, and acquired, instead, habits of dishonesty, servility, and cunning. The Tajiks are Mohammedans of the Shiite sect, with the exception of the few remaining Parsees (q.v.) or Guebres who are found in Kerman and Fars, and still retain their purity of race and religious faith. The nomad or pastoral tribes, or eylats (Qyl, a clan), are of four distinct races Tulkomans, Kurds, Luurs, and Arabs. Their organization is very similar to that which formerly subsisted among the Highland clans of Scotland, with the exception that the former are nomad, while the latter inhabited a fixed locality. Each tribe is ruled by its hereditary chief (ujak), and under him by the heads of the cadet branches (tirehs) of his family. Of the four races, the Turkoman is by far the most numerous, and forms at the present day the ruling race in Persia. The Kurds are few in number, the greater part of their country and race being hinder the sway of Turkey. The Arabs are also few in number, and at the present day can hardly be distinguished from the Persians, having adopted both their manners and language. The Luurs are of nearly pure Persian blood. The nomad races, especially the Turkomans, profess the Sunni creed; they are distinguished from the Tajiks by their courage, manliness, and independence of character; but they are inveterate robbers, and since their entrance into the country in the 10th century it has continually been distracted by civil wars and revolutions. The whole population of Persia is estimated in round numbers at 10,000,000, of whom 3,000,000 are nomads (200,000 of these being Arabs). Classed according to their religious belief, they stand thus: 7,500,000 are Shiites; 500,000 are unorthodox Shiites; 1,500,000 are Sunnites; while the remaining 500,000 are made up of Christians of all denominations (including 200 000 Armenians, 100,000 Nestorians), along with Jews, Guebres, etc.

2. Character and Customs. The government of Persia was despotic, though there seems to have been a council of state, composed perhaps of the seven princes who see the king’s face (Ezr 7:14; Est 1:14). These, after the time of Cyrus, may have been the six magnates or their representatives (his well-wishers, as he names them) who conspired with Darius against the pseudo-Smerdis, along with a prince of the royal house. The sovereign often administered judgment promptly and personally, though he was approached with tedious and stately formalities, as if in some sense he was an impersonation of Ormuzl. The council might speak faithfully, as did Artabanus to Xerxes; or they might be as compliant as when they told the same monarch that, though there was no law permitting him to marry his sister, there was a law allowing him to do as he pleased. The Spartan embassy refused to do the required homage to Xerxes, as in their opinion it amounted to religious worship. In Plutarch (Themist. 27) reference is made to the king, who was to be worshipped , as the image of God, and Curtius tells us how much Alexander coveted this deification (8:5, 11). The seven princes of the empire, seem to have been regarded also as representing the seven amshashpands who stand before the throne of Ormuzd. The sculptures at Persepolis tell the same story, and the Visparad directs prayer to to be offered to the ruler of the country (Spiegel, Eridn, p. 74). The satraps appointed by Darius are called in Hebrew , in Greek . in old Persian, as on the inscriptions, khshatrapai the X in the Hebrew form being usually inserted before the Persian khsh. A district or smaller portion of country was put under a , or prefect (Est 3:12; Ezr 8:36), the word being allied to the familiar term pacha.

This name is applied to the Persian governor west of the Euphrates (Neh 2:7; Neh 2:9; Neh 3:7); also to the governor of Judaea, as Zerubbabel (Hag 1:1; Hag 2:2; and Neh 5:14; Neh 12:26). Another term given to a Jewish prefect is the Tirshatha, applied to Nehemiah (Neh 8:9; comp. Ezr 2:63; Neh 7:65). The title probably means, as Gesenius says, your serenity, or, as we have it, most dread sovereign. The royal scribes kept a regular journal of judicial procedure, and these chronicles were deposited in the chief cities. Thus in Ezra we read of the house of the rolls, in which search was made, by command of Darius, for a copy of the decree of Cyrus concerning the Jews and Jerusalem, and the record was found in the palace at Achmetha (Ezr 6:1). In Esther occurs also this incident (Est 6:1-2): On that night could not the king sleep; and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the king. And it was found written that Mordecai had told of Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s chamberlains, the keepers of the door, who sought to lay hand on the king Ahasuerus (see also Est 10:2). When the enemies of Daniel were afraid that the king might relent towards a favorite, they pressed upon him this constitutional maxim, Sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. As the king solemnly admitted the maxim, he was again pressed with it: Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and Persians is, that no decree or statute which the king establisheth may be changed (Dan 6:15).

We are not to infer from such language that a royal decree was in every sense irrevocable, or beyond the power of modification or repeal. But the words imply that edicts could not be capriciously altered, and that the despot was bound and regulated by past decisions and precedents. The book of Esther shows, moreover, how a decree, though it could not be reversed, might easily be neutralized. The Jews marked out for assassination got warrant to defend themselves, and to become assassins in turn (Esther 8, 9). The satrapian form of administration necessitated the employment of posts and means of conveyance. A vivid picture of such an organization scribes, translators, and couriers is given in Est 8:9-10. The system is described by Herodotus (8:98). Nothing mortal, he says, travels so fast. Relays of men and horses were stationed at due distances, and license was given to the couriers to press men, horses, and ships into their service. This service was called a Tatar word meaning work without pay. Rawlinson, however, suggests other derivations. The verb came to signify to press into service like a Persian ; and Persian domination brought the wood into Palestine. Compare Mat 5:41; Mar 15:21, where the verb is rendered in the first instance compel thee to go, and in the second is applied to the soldiers forcing Simon to carry Christ’s cross. The Persian revenues were raised partly in money and partly in kind. The queen’s wardrobe and toilet were provided for by certain districts, and they were named according to the article which they were taxed to furnish one being called the Queen’s Veil and another the Queen’s Girdle. The court, according to Ctesias, consisted of an immense retinue. The only water which the king drank was that of the Choaspes; the salt on his table was imported from Africa, and the wine from Syria. Athenneus (4) depicts at length the royal etiquette and extravagance, such as we have it in the first chapter of Esther. The surveillance of the harem was committed to eunuchs, and the seraglio was often the real governing power. The residences of the monarchs of Persia (who called themselves king of kings; see Gesen. Jesa. 1:392; comp. Berfey, Pers. Keilinschr. p. 54, 57, 62) were various. Pasargada, with its royal tombs was most ancient. Persepolis rose not very far from it, and became a treasure-city. After the overthrow of the Babylonian kingdom, Cyrus, while preserving a regard for the more ancient cities of the empire, seems to have thought Babylon a more suitable place for the metropolis of Asia; but as it might not be politic, if it were possible, to make a strange place the center of his kingdom, he founded a new city. Susa, where he was still on Persian ground, and yet not far distant from Babylon. There was also Ecbatana, the Median capital. These several royal abodes seem to have been occupied by the later monarchs, according to the season of the year.

Among the people there were minute distinctions of rank and formal salutations. When two persons of equal station met, they kissed on the lips; if one was of slightly lower rank, the kiss was on the cheek; and where the difference was great, the inferior prostrated himself on the ground. They drank wine in large quantities, and often under its influence formally deliberated on public affairs. Polygamy was freely practiced. No one was put to death for a first offense, but ferocity was often shown to captives or rebels. Darius himself says of Phraortes, I cut off his nose and his ears. He was chained at my door; all the kingdom beheld him; afterwards I crucified him (Inscription at Behistun, Colossians 3). The severity of masters towards slaves was wisely restrained (Herod. 1:133, etc.). The Persian youth were taught three things , , to ride, to shoot, and to speak truth (Herod. 1:136). The Persians had made no small progress in the fine arts, especially in architecture, as the ruins of Persepolis testify. These stately and imposing ruins stand on a leveled platform, raised above several terraces the ascent being by a stair, or double flight of steps the grandest in the world, and yet so gradual in its rise that the traveler may ride up on horseback. The stones are of dark gray marble, often exquisitely polished. Colossal bulls guarded the front of the portals, and the sculptures are not unlike those of Assyria. The space on the upper platform stretches north and south 350 feet, and east and west 380 feet, and is now covered with broken capitais, shafts, etc.; of beautiful workmanship. The pillars are arranged in four divisions a central group six deep every way, an advanced body of twelve in two ranks, and the same number flanking the center (Sir R. K. Porter). The principal apartments are adorned with sculptures and bass-reliefs, such as the king on his throne and his courtiers around him, with processions of warriors, captives, and bearers of tribute. These sculptures, many of them of the period of Darius and Xerxes, verify the descriptions of Herodotus and Xenophon. The royal pleasure-gardens and hunting-grounds were named , in Greek . The original term is an old Eastern one, and it is vain to seek for a Greek derivation. The kings were passionately fond of hunting, and, as exhibited on the rock sculptures, seem to have followed the pastime in a truly Easter manner. The soldiers were armed with bows and short spears, and protected with small helmets on their heads, and steel-scaled tunics on their bodies. In war they fought bravely, but without discipline, generally gaining their victories by the vigor of their first attack; if they were strenuously resisted, they soon flagged; and if they suffered a repulse, all order was at once lost, and the retreat speedily became a rout. The old Persian dress-tight and close-fitting-was superseded under Cyrus by the more flowing Median vestments; and on the Persepolitan monuments the Persians appear in long robes, with their hair floating behind.

The Persians were a people of lively and impressible minds, brave and impetuous in war, witty, passionate, for Orientals truthful, not without some spirit of generosity, and of more intellectual capacity than the generality of Asiatics. Their faults were vanity, impulsiveness, a want of perseverance and solidity, and an almost slavish spirit of sycophancy and sevility towards their lords. In the times anterior to Cyrus they were noted for the simplicity of their habits, which offered a strong contrast to the luxuriousness of the Medes; but from the date of the Median overthrow this simplicity began to decline; and it was not very long before their manners became as soft and efeminate as those of any of the conquered peoples.

3. Language. The spoken language of the ancient Persians was closely akin to the Sanscrit, or ancient language of India (see Schultz, Handbuch der Persischen Sprache, Elbing, 1863, 8vo). We find it in its earliest stage in the Zendavesta the sacred book of the whole Aryan race, where, however, it is corrupted by a large admixture of later forms. The inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings give us the language in its second stage, and, being free from these later additions, are of the greatest importance towards determining what was primitive, and what more recent in this type of speech. The earliest form of the written characters was the cuneiform (q.v.). Modern Persian is a degenerate representative, being a motley idiom largely impregnated with Arabic; still, however, both in its grammar and its vocabulary, it is mainly Aryan; and, historically, it must be regarded as the continuation of the ancient tongue, just as Italian is of Latin, and modern of ancient Greek (see Adelung, Mithridat. 1:255 sq.; Frank. De Persidis Lingua et Genio [Norimb. 1809]; Wahl, Gesch. d. Morgenland. Sprache u. Literatur, p. 129 sq.; Lassen, in the Zeitschrift f die Kunde des Morgenlandes, VI, 3:488 sq.).

4. Religion. The religion which the Persians brought with them into Persia Proper seems to have been of a very simple character, differing from natural religion in little, except that it was deeply tainted with dualism. Like the other Aryans, the Persians worshipped one Supreme God, whom they called Aura-mazda (Oromasdes) a term signifying (as is believed) the Great Giver of Life. From Oromasdes came all blessings he gave the earth, he gave the heavens, he gave mankind, he gave life to mankind (Inscriptions, passin) he settled the Persian kings upon their thrones, strengthened them, established them, and granted them victory over all their enemies. The royal inscriptions rarely mention any other god. Occasionally, however, they indicate a slight and modified polytheism. Oromasdes is the chief of the gods, so that there are other gods besides him; and the highest of these is evidently Mithra (q.v.), who is sometimes invoked to protect the monarch, and is beyond a doubt identical with the sun. To the worship of the sun as Mithra was probably attached, as in India, the worship of the moon, under the name of Homa, as the third greatest god. Entirely separate from these their active resister and antagonist was Ahriman (Arimanius), the Death-dealing the powerful, and (probably) self-existing Evil Spirit, from whom war, disease, frost, hail, poverty, sin, death, and all other evils, had their origin. Ahriman was Satan, carried to an extreme believed to have an existence of his own, and a real power of resisting and deifying God. Ahriman could create spirits, and as the beneficent Auramazda had surrounded himself with good angels, who were the ministers of his mercies towards mankind, so Ahriman had surrounded himself with evil spirits, to carry out his malevolent purposes. Worship was confined to Auramazda and his good spirits; Ahriman and his daemons were not worshipped. but only hated and feared. SEE ORMUZD.

The character of the original Persian worship was simple. They were not destitute of temples, as Herodotus asserts (Herod. 1:131; comp. Beh. Inscr. Colossians 1, par. 14, 5); but they had probably few altars, and certainly no images. Neither do they appear to have had any priests. Processions were formed, and religious chants were sung in the temples, consisting of prayer and praise intermixed, whereby the favor of Auramazda and his good spirits was supposed to be secured to the worshippers. Beyond this it does not appear that they had any religious ceremonies. Sacrifices, apparently, were nusunal, though thank-offerings may have been made in the temples. SEE PARSEES.

From the first entrance of the Persians, as immigrants, into their new territory, they were probably brought into contact with a form of religion very different from their own Magianism, the religion of the Scythic or Turanian population of Western Asia, had long been dominant over the greater portion of the region lying between Mesopotamia and India. The essence of this religion was worship of the elements more especially of the subtlest of all, fire. It was an ancient and imposing system, guarded by the venerable hierarchy of the Magi, boasting its fire-altars where from time immemorial the sacred flame had burned without intermission, and claiming to some extent mysterions and miraculous powers. The simplicity of the Aryan religion was speedily corrupted by its contact with this powerful rival, which presented special attractions to a rude and credulous people. There was a short struggle for pre-eminence, after which the rival systems came to terms. Dualism was retained, together with the names of Auramazda and Ahriman, and the special worship of the sun and moon under the appellations of Mithra and Homa; but to this was superadded the worship of the elements and the whole ceremonial of Magianism, including the divination to which the Magian priesthood made pretense. The worship of other deities, as Tanata or Anaitis, was a still later addition to the religion, which grew more complicated as time went on, but which always maintained as its leading and most essential element that dualistic principle whereon it was originally based. SEE MAGI.

III. History. In remote antiquity it would appear that the Persians dwelt in the region east of the Caspian, or possibly in a tract still nearer India. The first Fargard of the Vendidad seems to describe their wanderings in these countries, and shows the general line of their progress to have been from east to west, down the course of the Oxus, and then, along the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, to Rhages and Media. It is impossible to determine the period of these movements; but there can be no doubt that they were anterior to B.C. 880 at which time the Assyrian kings seem for the first time to have come in contact with Aryan tribes east of Mount Zagros. Probably the Persians accompanied the Medes in their migration from Khorassan, and, after the latter people took possession of the tract extending from the river Kur to Ispahan, proceeded still farther south, and occupied the region between Media and the Persian Gulf. It is uncertain whether they are to be identified with the Bartsu or Partsu of the Assyrian monuments. If so, we may say that from the middle of the 9th to the middle of the 8th century B.C. they occupied South-eastern Armenia, but by the end of the 8th century had removed into the country which thenceforth went by their name. The leader of this last migration would seem to have been a certain Acheemenes. who was recognized as king of the newly occupied territory, and founded the famous dynasty of the Achaemenide-, about B.C. 700. Very little is known of the history of Persia between this date and the accession of Cyrus the Great, near a century and a half later. The crown appears to have descended in a right line through four princes-Teispes, Cambyses I, Cyrus I, and Carmbyses II, who was the father of Cyrus the Conqueror Telspes must have been a prince of some repute, for his daughter Atossa married Pharnaces, king of the distant Cappadocians (Diod. Sic. ap. Phot. Bibliothec. p. 1158). Later, however, the Persians found themselves unable to resist the growing strength of Media, and became tributary to that power about B.C. 630, or a little earlier. The line of native kings was continued on the throne, and the internal administration was probably untouched; but external independence was altogether lost until the revolt under Cyrus.

Of the circumstances under which this revolt took place we have no certain knowledge. The stories told by Herodotus (1:108-129) and Nicolas of Damascus (Fr. 66) are internally improbable; and they are also at variance with the monuments, which prove Cyrus to have been the son of a Persian king. SEE CYRUS. We must therefore discard them, and be content to know that after about seventy or eighty years of subjection, the Persians revolted from the Medes, engaged in a bloody struggle with them, and finally succeeded, not only in establishing their independence, but in changing places with their masters, and becoming the ruling people. The probable date of the revolt is B.C. 558. Its success, by transferring to Persia the dominion previously in the possession of the Medes, placed her at the head of an empire the bounds of which were the Halys upon the west, the Euxine upon the north, Babylonia upon the south, and upon the east the salt desert of Iran. As usual in the East, this success led on to others’ Craesus, the Lydian monarch, who had united most of Asia Minor under his sway, venturing to attack the newly risen power, in the hope that it was not vet firmly established, was first repulsed, and afterwards defeated and made prisoner, by Cyrus, who took his capital, and added the Lydian empire to his dominions. This conquest was followed closely by the submission of the Greek settlements on the Asiatic coast, and by the reduction of Caria, Caunus, and Lycia. The empire was soon afterwards extended greatly towards the north-east and east. Cyrus rapidly overran the flat countries beyond the Caspian, planting a city. which he called after himself (Arrian, Exp. Alex. 4:3), on the Jaxartes (Jihfn); after which he seems to have pushed his conquests still farther to the east, adding to his dominions the districts of Herat, Cabul, Candahar, Seistan, and Beloochistan, which were thenceforth included in the empire (see Ctesias, Pers. Exc. 5 et sq.; and comp. Pliny, H. N. 6:23). In B.C. 539 or 538 Babylon was attacked, and after a stout defense fell before his irresistible bands. SEE BABYLON.

This victory first brought the Persians into contact with the Jews. The conquerors found in Babylon an oppressed racelike themselves abhorrers of idols and professors of a religion in which to a great extent they could sympathize. This race, which the Babylonian monarchs had torn violently from their native land and settled in the vicinity of Babylon, Cyrus determined to restore to their own country; which he did by the remarkable edict recorded in the first chapter of Ezra (Ezr 1:2-4). Thus commenced that friendly connection between the Jews and Persians which prophecy had already foreshadowed (Isa 44:28; Isa 45:1-4), and which forms so remarkable a feature in the Jewish history. After the conquest of Babylon, and the consequent extension of his empire to the borders of Egypt, Cyrus might have been expected to carry out the design which he is said to have entertained (Herod. 1:153) of an expedition against Egypt. Some danger, however, seems to have threatened the north-eastern provinces, in consequence of which his purpose was changed; and he proceeded against the Massagetse or the Derbices, engaged them, but was defeated and slain. He reigned, according to Herodotus, twenty-nine years.

Under his son and successor, Cambyses III, the conquest of Egypt took place (B.C. 525), and the Persian dominions were extended southward to Elephantinb and westward to Euesperidse on the North-African coast. This prince appears to be the Ahasuerus of Ezra (4:6), who was asked to alter Cyrusn’s policy towards the Jews, but (apparently) declined all interference. We have in Herodotus (bk. 3) a very complete account of his warlike expeditions, which at first resulted in the successes above mentioned, but were afterwards unsuccessful, and even disastrous. One army perished in an attempt to reach the temple of Ammon, while another was reduced to the last straits in an expedition against Ethiopia. Perhaps it was in consequence of these misfortunes that, in the absence of Cambyses with the army, a conspiracy was formed against him at court, and a Magian priest, Gomates (Gaumata) by name, professing to be Smerdis (Bardiya), the son of Cyrus, whom his brother Cambyses had put to death secretly, obtained quiet possession of the throne. Cambyses was in Syria when news reached him of this bold attempt; and there is reason to believe that, seized with a sudden disgust, and despairing of the recovery of his crown. he fled to the last resort of the unfortunate, and ended his life by suicide (Behistun Inscription, Colossians 1, par. 11, 10). His reign had lasted seven years and five months. Gomates the Magian found himself thus, without a struggle, master of Persia (B.C. 522). His situation, however, was one of great danger and delicacy. There is reason to believe that he owed his elevation to his fellow-religionists, whose object in placing him upon the throne was to secure the triumph of Magianism over the dualism of the Persians. It was necessary for him therefore to accomplish a religious revolution, which was sure to be distasteful to the Persians, while at the same time he had to keep up the deception on which his claim to the crown was professedly based, and to prevent any suspicion arising that he was not Smerdis, the son of Cyrus. To combine these two aims was difficult; and it would seem that Gomates soon discarded the latter, and entered on a course which must have soon caused his subjects to feel that their ruler was not only no Achaemenian, but no Persian. He destroyed the national temples, substituting for them the fire-altars and abolished the religious chants and other sacred ceremonies of the Oromasdians. He reversed the policy of Cyrus with respect to the Jews, and forbade by an edict the farther building of the Temple (Ezr 4:17-22). SEE ATAXERXES.

He courted the favor of the subject nations generally by a remission of tribute for three years, and an exemption during the same space from forced military service (Herod. 3:67). Towards the Persians he was haughty and distant, keeping them as much as possible aloof from his person, and seldom showing himself beyond the walls of his palace. Such conduct made him very unpopular with the proud people which held the first place among his subjects, and the suspicion that he was a mere pretender having after some months ripened into certainty, a revolt broke out, headed by Darius, the son of Hystaspes, a prince of the blood-royal, which in a short time was crowned with complete success. Gomates quitted his capital, and, having thrown himself into a fort in Media, was pursued, attacked, and slain. Darius then, as the chief of the conspiracy, and after his father the next heir to the throne, was at once acknowledged king. The reign of Gomates lasted seven months.

The first efforts of Darius were directed to the re-establishment of the Oromasdian religion in all its purity. He rebuilt the temples which Gomates the Magian had destroyed, and restored to the people the religious chants and the worship of which Gomates the Magian had deprived them (Beh. Inscr. Colossians 1, par. 14). Appealed to in his second year by the Jews, Who wished to resume the construction of their Temple, he not only allowed them, confirming the decree of Cyrus, but assisted the work by grants from his own revenues, whereby the Jews were able to complete the Temple as early as his sixth year (Ezr 6:1-15). During the first part of the reign of Darius the tranquillity of the empire was disturbed by numerous revolts. The provinces regretted the loss of those exemptions which they had obtained from the weakness of the Pseudo-Smerdis, and hoped to shake off the yoke of the new prince before he could grasp firmly the reins of government. The first revolt was that of Babylon, where a native, claiming to be Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nabonadius, was made king; but Darius speedily crushed this revolt and executed the pretender. Shortly afterwards a far more extensive rebellion broke out. A Mede, named Phraortes, came forward, and; announcing himself to be Xathrites, of the race of Cyaxares, assumed the royal title. Media, Armenia, and Assyria immediately acknowledged him the Median soldiers at the Persian court revolted to him Parthia and Hyrcania after a little while declared in his favor while in Sagartia another pretender, making a similar claim of descent from Cyaxares, induced the Sagartians to revolt; and in Margiana, Arachotia, and even Persia Proper, there were insurrections against the authority of the new king. His courage and activity, however, seconded by the valor of his Persian troops and the fidelity of some satraps, carried him successfully through these and other similar difficulties; and the result was that, after five or six years of struggle, he became as firmly seated on his throne as any previous monarch. His talents as an administrator were upon this brought into play. He divided the whole empire into satrapies, and organized that somewhat complicated system of government on which they were henceforth administered (Rawlinson’s Herodotus, 2:555-568). He built himself a magnificent palace at Persepolis, and another at Susa. SEE PERSEPOLIS; SEE SHUSHAN.

He also applied himself, like his predecessors, to the extension of the empire; conducted an expedition into European Scythia, from which he returned without disgrace; conquered Thrace, Pneonia, and Macedonia towards the west, and a large portion of India on the east, besides (apparently) bringing into subjection a number of petty nations (see the Naksh-i-Rustam Inscription). On the whole he must be pronounced, next to Cyrus, the greatest of the Persian monarchs. The latter part of his reign was, however, clouded by reverses. The disaster of Mardonius at Mount Athos was followed shortly by the defeat of Datis at Marathon; and, before any attempt could be made to avenge the blow, Egypt rose in revolt (B.C. 486), massacred its Persian garrison, and declared itself independent. In the palace at the same time there was dissension; and when, after a reign of thirty-six years, the fourth Persian monarch died (B.C. 485), leaving his throne to a young prince of strong and ungoverned passions, it was evident that the empire had reached its highest point of greatness, and was already verging towards its decline.

Xerxes, the eldest son of Darius by Atossa, daughter of Cyrus, and the first son born to Darius after he mounted the throne, seems to have obtained the crown in part by the favor of his father, over whom Atossa exercised a strong influence, in part by right, as the eldest male descendant of Cyrus, the founder of the empire. His first act was to reduce Egypt to subjection (B.C. 484), after which he began at once to make preparations for his invasion of Greece. It is probable that he was the Ahasuerus of Esther. SEE AHASUERUS.

The great feast held in Shushan, the palace, in the third year of his reign, and the repudiation of Vashti, fall into the period preceding the Grecian expedition, while it is probable that he kept open house for the princes of the provinces, of who would from time to time visit the court, in order to report the state of their preparations for the war. The marriage with Esther, in the seventh year of his reign, falls into the year immediately following his flight from Greece, when he undoubtedly returned to Susa, relinquishing warlike enterprises, and henceforth devoting himself to the pleasures of the seraglio. It is unnecessary to give an account of the well-known expedition against Greece, which ended so disastrously for the invaders. Persia was taught by the defeats of Salamis and Platsea the danger of encountering the Greeks on their side of the AEgean, while she learned at Mycale the retaliation which she had to expect on her own shores at the hands of her infuriated enemies. For a while some vague idea of another invasion seems to have been entertained by the court; but discreeter counsels prevailed, and, relinquishing all aggressive designs, Persia, from this point in her history, stood upon the defensive, and only sought to maintain her own territories intact, without anywhere trenching upon her neighbors. During the rest of the reign of Xerxes, and during part of that of his son and successor, Artaxerxes, she continued at war with the Greeks, who destroyed her fleets, plundered her coasts and stirred up revolt in her provinces; but at last, in B.C. 449, a peace was concluded between the two powers, who then continued on terms of amity for half a century.

A conspiracy in the seraglio having carried off Xerxes (B.C. 465), Artaxerxes his son, called by the Greeks , or the Long- Handed, succeeded him, after an interval of seven months, during which the conspirator Artabanus occupied the throne. This Artaxerxes, who reigned forty years, is beyond a doubt the king of that name who stood in such a friendly relation towards Ezra (Ezr 7:11-28) and Nehemiah (Neh 2:1-9, etc.). SEE ARTAXERXES.

His character, as drawn by Ctesias, is mild but weak; and under his rule the disorders of the empire seem to have increased rapidly. An insurrection in Bactria, headed by his brother Hystaspes, was with difficulty put down in the first year of his reign (B.C. 464), after which a revolt broke out in Egypt, headed by Inarus the Libyan and Amyrtaeus the Egyptian, who, receiving the support of an Athenian fleet, maintained themselves for six years (B.C. 460-455) against the whole power of Persia, but were at last overcome by Megabyzus, satrap of Syria. This powerful and haughty noble soon afterwards (B.C. 447), on occasion of a difference with the court, himself became a rebel, and entered into a contest with his sovereign, which at once betrayed and increased the weakness of the empire. Artaxerxes is the last of the Persian kings who had any special connection with the Jews, and the last but one mentioned in Scripture. His successors were Xerxes II, Sogdianus, Darius Nothus, Artaxerxes Mnemon, Artaxerxes Ochus, and Darius Codomannus. These monarchs reigned from B.C. 424 to B.C. 330. None were of much capacity; and during their reigns the decline of the empire was scarcely arrested for a day, unless it were by Ochus, who reconquered Egypt, and gave some other signs of vigor. Had the younger Cyrus succeeded in his attempt, the regeneration of Persia was perhaps possible. After his failure the seraglio grew at once more powerful and more cruel. Eunuchs and women governed the kings, and dispensed the favors of the crown, or wielded its terrors, as their interests or passions moved them. Patriotism and loyalty were alike dead, and the empire must have fallen many years before it did had not the Persians early learned to turn the swords of the Greeks against one another, and at the same time raised the character of their own armies by the employment on a large scale of Greek mercenaries. The collapse of the empire under the attack of Alexander is well known, and requires no description here. On the division of Alexander’s dominions among his generals, Persia fell to the Seleucidae, under whom it continued till after the death of Antiochus Epiphanes, when the conquering Parthians advanced their frontier to the Euphrates, and the Persians came to be included among their subject tribes (B.C. 164). Still their nationality was not obliterated. In A.D. 226, three hundred and ninety years after their subjection to the Parthians, and five hundred and fifty-six years after the loss of their independence, the Persians shook off the yoke of their oppressors, and once more became a nation.

The Sassanian kings raised Persia to a height of power and prosperity such as it never before attained, and more than once emperilled the existence of the Eastern empire. The last king was driven from the throne by the Arabs (A.D. 636), who now began to extend their dominion in all directions; and from this. period may be dated the gradual change of character in the native Persian race, for they have been from this time constantly subject to the domination of alien races. During the reigns of Omar (the first of the Arab rulers of Persia), Othman, All, and the Ommiades (634-750), Persia was regarded as an outlying province of the empire, and was ruled by deputy governors; but after the accession of the Abbaside dynasty (A.D. 750), Bagdad became the capital, and Khorassan the favorite province of the early and more energetic rulers of this race, and Persia consequently came to be considered as the center and nucleus of the caliphate. But the rule of the caliphs soon became merely nominal, and ambitious governors, or other aspiring individuals, established independent principalities in various parts of the country. Many of these dynasties were transitory, others lasted for centuries, and created extensive and powerful empires. The chief were the Taherites (820-872), a Turkish dynasty, in Khorassan; the Soffarides (Persian, 869-903), in Seistan, Fars, Irak, and Mazanderan; the Samani, in Transoxiana, Khorassan, and Seistan; the Dilemi (Persian, 933-1056), in Western Persia; and the Ghiznevides, in Eastern Persia. These dynasties supplanted each other, and were finally rooted out by the Seljuks, whose dominion extended from the Hellespont to Afghanistan. A branch of this dynasty, which ruled in Khorezm (now Khiva), gradually acquired the greater part of Persia, driving out the Ghiznevides and their successors, the Ghurides; but they, along with the numerous petty dynasties which had established themselves in the south-western provinces, were all swept away by the Mongols (q.v.) under Genghis-Khan and his grandson Hulaku-Khan, the latter of whom founded a new dynasty, the Perso-Mongol (1253-1335).

This race, becoming effeminate, was supplanted by the Eylkhanians in 1335, but an irruption of the Tartars of Turkestan under Timur again freed Persia from the petty dynasties which misruled it. After the death of Timur’s son and successor, shall Rokh, the Turkomans took possession of the western part of the country, which, however, they rather preyed upon than governed; while the eastern portion was divided and subdivided among Timir’s descendants, till, at the close of the 15th century, they were swept away by the Uzbeksi who joined the whole of Eastern Persia to their newly founded khanate of Khiva. A new dynasty now arose (1500) in Western Persia, the first prince of which (Ismail, the descendant of a long line of devotees and saints, the objects of the highest reverence throughout Western Persia), having become the leader of a number of Turkish tribes who were attached by strong ties of gratitude to his family, overthrew the power of the Turkomans, and seized Azerbijan, which was the seat of their power. Ismail rapidly subdued the western provinces, and in 1511 took Khorassan and Balkh from the Usbeks; but in 1514 he had to encounter a much more formidable enemy to wit, the mighty Selim (q.v.), the sultan of Turkey, whose zeal for conquest was further inflamed by religious animosity against the Shiites, or Sectaries, as the followers of Ismail were termed.

The Persians were totally defeated in a battle on the frontiers; but Selim reaped no benefit from his victory, and, after his retreat, Ismail attacked and subdued Georgia. The Persians dwell with rapture on the character of this monarch, whom they deem not only to be the restorer of Persia to a prosperous condition, and the founder of a great dynasty, but the establisher of the faith in which they glory as the national religion. His son Tamasp (1523- 1576), a prudent and spirited ruler, repeatedly drove out the predatory Uzbeks from Khorassan, sustained without loss a war with the Turks, and assisted Homayun, the son of Baber, to regain the throne of Delhi. After a considerable period of internal revolution, during which the Turks and Uzbeks attacked the empire without hinderance, shall Abbas I the Great (1585-1628) ascended the throne, restored internal tranquillity, and repelled the invasions of the Uzbeks and Turks. In 1605 he inflicted on the Turks such a terrible defeat as kept them quiet during the rest of his reign, and enabled him to recover the whole of Kurdistan, Mosul, and Diarbekir, which had for a long time been separated from Persia; and, in the east, Candahar was taken from the Great Mogul. Abbas’s government was strict, but just and equitable; roads, bridges, caravansaries, and other conveniences for trade were constructed at immense expense, and the improvement and ornamentation of the towns were not neglected. Ispahan more than doubled its population during his reign. His tolerance was remarkable, considering both the opinions of his ancestors and subjects; for he encouraged the Armenian Christians to settle in the country, well knowing that their peaceable and industrious habits would help to advance the prosperity of his kingdom. His successors, shall Sufi (1628-1641), shall Abbas II (1641-1666), and shall Soliman (1666-1694), were undistinguished by any remarkable talents, but the former two were sensible and judicious rulers, and advanced the prosperity of their subjects. During the reign of sultan Hussein (1694-1722), a weak and bigoted fool, priests and slaves were elevated to the most important and responsible offices of the empire, and all who rejected the tenets of the Shiites were persecuted. The consequence was a general discontent, of which the Afghans took advantage by declaring their independence, and seizing Candahar (1709).

Their able leader, Mir Vais, died in 1715; but his successors were worthy of him, and one of them, Mahmud, invaded Persia (1722), defeated Hussein’s armies, and besieged the king in Ispahan, till the inhabitants were reduced to the extremity of distress. Hussein then abdicated the throne in favor of his conqueror, who, on his accession, immediately devoted his energies to alleviate the distresses and gain the confidence of his new subjects, in both of which objects he thoroughly succeeded. Becoming insane, he was deposed in 1725 by his brother Ashraf (1725-1729); but the atrocious tyranny of the latter was speedily put an end to by the celebrated Nadir Shah, who first raised Tamasp (1729 1732) and his son Abbas II (1732-1736), of the Suffavean race, to the throne, and then, on some frivolous pretext, deposed him, and seized the scepter (1736-1747). But on his death: anarchy again returned; the country was horribly devastated by the rival claimants to the throne; Afghanistan and Beloochistan finally separated from Persia, and the country was split up into a number of small independent states until 1755, when a Kurd, named Kerim Khan (17551779), abolished this state of affairs, re- established peace and unity in Western Persia, and by his wisdom, justice, and warlike talents acquired the esteem of his subjects and the respect of neighboring states.

After the usual contests for the succession, accompanied with the usual barbarities and devastations, Kerim was succeeded in 1784 by Ali-Murad, Jaafar, and Luft-Ali, during whose reigns Mazanderan became independent under Aga-Mohammed, a Turkoman eunuch of the Kajar race, who repeatedly defeated the royal armies, and ended by depriving Luft-Ali of his crown (1795). The great eunuch-king (as he is frequently called), who founded the present dynasty, on his accession announced his intention of restoring the kingdom as it had been established by Kerim Khan, and accordingly invaded Khorassan and Georgia, subduing the former country almost without effort. The Georgians besought the aid of Russia; but the Persian monarch, with terrible promptitude, poured his army like a torrent into the country, and devastated it with fire and sword; his conquest was, however, hardly completed, when he was assassinated, May 14, 1797. His nephew, Futteh- Ali (1797-1834), after numerous conflicts, fully established his authority, and completely subdued the rebellious tribes in Khorassan. but the great commotions in Western Europe produced for him bitter fruits. He was dragged into a war with Russia soon after his accession, and, by a treaty concluded in 1791, surrendered to that power Derbend and several districts on the Kur. In 1802 Georgia was declared to be .a Russian province.

War with Russia was recommenced by Persia, at the instigation of France; and, after two years of conflicts disastrous to the Persians, the treaty of Gulistan (Oct. 12, 1813) gave to Russia all the Persian possessions to the north of Armenia, and the right of navigation in the Caspian Sea. In 1826 a third war, equally unfortunate for Persia, was commenced with the same power, and cost Persia the remainder of its possessions in Armenia, with Erivan, and a sum of 18,000,000 rubles for the expenses of the war. The severity exercised in procuring this sum by taxation so exasperated the people that they rose in insurrection (Oct. 12, 1829), and murdered the Russian ambassador, his wife, and almost all who belonged to or were connected with the Russian legation. The most humiliating concessions to Russia, and the punishment by mutilation of 1500 of the rioters, alone averted war. The death of the crown prince, Abbas-Mirza, in 1833, seemed to give the final blow to the declining fortunes of Persia, for he was the only man who seriously attempted to raise his country from the state of abasement into which it had fallen. By the assistance of Russia and Britain, Mohammed Shah (1834-1848), the son of Abbas-Mirza, obtained the crown, but the rebellions of his uncles, and the rivalry of Russia and Britain (the former being generally successful) at the Persian court, hastened the demoralization of the country. Mohammed was compelled to grant (1846) to Russia the privilege of building ships of war at Resht and Astrabad, and to agree to surrender all Russian deserters, and Persia became thus more and more dependent on its powerful neighbor. Nazir-uddin succeeded to the throne on his father’s death in 1848; and the new government announced energetic reforms, reduction of imposts, etc., but limited itself to these fine promises, and on the contrary, augmented the taxes, suffered the roads, bridges, and other public works to go to ruin, squandered the public money, and summarily disposed of all who protested against their acts. In October, 1856, the Persians took Herat, a town for the permanent possession of which they had striven for a long series of years; and having thus violated the terms of a treaty with Britain, war was declared against them, and a British army was landed on the coast of the gulf, which, under generals Outram and Havelock, repeatedly defeated the Persians, and compelled them to restore Herat (July, 1857). Since that time treaties of commerce have been concluded with the leading European powers; and Russia, Great Britain, Turkey, France, and Italy have consuls in the chief towns, and, with the exception of Italy, are represented by ministers at the court of Teheran.

IV. Literature. The sources of information regarding the ancient Persian history are:

1. The Jewish, to be elicited chiefly from the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, of which something has been said.

2. Grecian writers. Of these, Ctesias availed himself of the Persian annals, but we have only extracts from his work in Photins. Herodotus appears also to have consulted the native sources of Persian history. Xenophon presents us with the fullest materials, namely, in his Anabasis, his Hellenica, and especially in his Cyropaedia, which is an imaginary picture of a perfect prince, according to Oriental’ conceptions, drawn in the person of Cyrus the elder. Some of the points in which the classical authorities disagree may be found set forth in Eichhorn, Gesch. der A. Welt, 1:82, 83. A representation of the Persian history, according to Oriental authorities, may be found in the Hallische Allgemeine Welfgeschichte, pt. 4. (See also Becker, Weltgeschichte, 1:638 sq.) A very diligent compilation is that of Brissonilus, De Regno Persarum, 1591. Consult especially Heeren, Ideen, 1:1; his Handbuch der G. d. S. Alterth. 1:102; and H. Brochner, Um det jodiske Folks Tilstand i den Persiske Periode (Copenhagen, 1845). A full and valuable list of the older authorities in Persian affairs may be seen in the Bibliotheca Historica of Meusellius, vol. i, pt. ii, p. 28 sq. See also Malcolm, History of Persia from the Earliest Ages to the Present Times (Lond. 1816, 2 vols. 4to); and Sir H. Rawlinson’s Memoir on the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Ancient Persia, published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, vol. 10 and 11: Polak, Persien, dus Land und seine Bewohner (Leips. 1865 sq., 2 vols. 8vo); Friedlainder, De veteribus Persarumr regibus (Hal. 1862, 8vo); Hutchinson, Two Years in Persia (Lond. 1874, 2 vols.); Markham, History of Persia (ibid. 1874). The most complete as well as recent survey of ancient Persia is given in Rawlinson’s Ancient Monarchies, vol. iii (new edition, Lond. 1871). SEE ELAM; SEE MEDIA.

Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

Persia

an ancient empire, extending from the Indus to Thrace, and from the Caspian Sea to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The Persians were originally a Medic tribe which settled in Persia, on the eastern side of the Persian Gulf. They were Aryans, their language belonging to the eastern division of the Indo-European group. One of their chiefs, Teispes, conquered Elam in the time of the decay of the Assyrian Empire, and established himself in the district of Anzan. His descendants branched off into two lines, one line ruling in Anzan, while the other remained in Persia. Cyrus II., king of Anzan, finally united the divided power, conquered Media, Lydia, and Babylonia, and carried his arms into the far East. His son, Cambyses, added Egypt to the empire, which, however, fell to pieces after his death. It was reconquered and thoroughly organized by Darius, the son of Hystaspes, whose dominions extended from India to the Danube.

Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary

Persia

Eze 27:10; Eze 38:5. “Persia proper” was originally a small territory (Herodot. 9:22). On the N. and N.E. lay Media, on the S. the Persian gulf, Elam on the W., on the E. Carmania. Now Furs, Farsistan. Rugged, with pleasant valleys and plains in the mid region and mountains in the N. The S. toward the sea is a hot sandy plain, in places covered with salt. Persepolis (in the beautiful valley of the Bendamir), under Darius Hystaspes, took the place of Pasargadae the ancient capital; of its palace “Chehl Minar,” “forty columns,” still exist. Alexander in a drunken fit, to please a courtesan, burned the palace. Pasargadae, 40 miles to the N., was noted for Cyrus’ tomb (Arrian) with the inscription, “I am Cyrus the Achaemenian.” (See CYRUS.) The Persians came originally from the E., from the vicinity of the Sutlej (before the first contact of the Assyrians with Aryan tribes E. of Mount Zagros, 880 B.C.), down the Oxus, then S. of the Caspian Sea to India. There were ten castes or tribes: three noble, three agricultural, four nomadic; of the last were the “Dehavites” or Dali (Ezr 4:9).

The Pasargadae were the noble tribes, in which the chief house was that of the Achaemenidae. Darius on the rock of Behistun inscribed: “from antiquity our race have been kings. There are eight of our race who have been kings before me, I am the ninth.” (See ELAM on its relation to Persia.) The Persian empire stretched at one time from India to Egypt and Thrace, including all western Asia between the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian, the Jaxartes upon the N., the Arabian desert, Persian gulf, and Indian ocean on the S. Darius in the inscription on his tomb at Nakhsh-irustam enumerates thirty countries besides Persia subject to him, Media, Susiana, Parthia, Aria, Bactria, Sogdiana, Chorasmia, Zarangia, Arachosia, Sattagydia, Gaudaria, India, Scythia, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Saparda, Ionia, the Aegean isles, the country of the Scodrae (European), Ionia, the Tacabri, Budians, Cushites, Mardians, and Colchians. The organization of the Persian kingdom and court as they appear in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, accords with independent secular historians.

The king, a despot, had a council, “seven princes of Persia and Media which see his face and sit the first in the kingdom” (Est 1:14; Ezr 7:14). So Herodotus (iii. 70-79) and Behistun inscription mention seven chiefs who organized the revolt against Smerdis (the Behistun rock W. of Media has one inscription in three languages, Persian, Babylonian, and Stythic, read by Grotefend). “The law of the Persians and Medes which alters not” (Est 1:19) also controlled him in some measure. In Scripture we read of 127 provinces (Est 1:1) with satraps (Est 3:12; Est 8:9; Xerxes in boasting enlarged the list; 60 are the nations in his armament according to Herodotus) maintained from the palace (Ezr 4:14), having charge of the revenue, paid partly in money partly in kind (Ezr 7:21-22).

Mounted posts (unique to Persia and described by Xenophon, Cyr. 8:6,17, and Herodotus, viii. 98), with camels (Strabo 15:2, section 10) and horses pressed into service without pay (angareuein; Mat 5:41; Mar 15:21), conveyed the king’s orders (Est 3:10; Est 3:12-13; Est 8:10; Est 8:14), authenticated by the royal signet (so Herod. iii. 128). A favorite minister usually had the government mainly delegated to him by the king (Est 3:1-10; Est 8:8; Est 10:2-3). Services were recorded (Est 2:23; Est 6:2-3) and the actors received reward as “royal benefactors” (Herodotus iii. 140); state archives were the source of Ctesias’ history of Persia (Diod. Sic. 3:2.) The king lived at Susa (Est 1:2; Neh 1:1) or Babylon (Ezr 7:9; Neh 13:6).

In accordance with Est 1:6, as to “pillars of marble” with “pavement of red, blue, white, and black,” and “hangings of white, green, and blue of fine linen and purple to the pillars,” the remains exhibit four groups of marble pillars on a pavement of blue limestone, constructed for curtains to hang between the columns as suiting the climate. (Loftus’ Chaldeea and Susiana.) One queen consort was elevated above the many wives and concubines who approached the king” in their turn.” To intrude on the king’s privacy was to incur the penalty of death (compare Herodotus, iii. 60-84 with Est 2:12; Est 2:15; Est 4:11-16; Est 4:5). Parsa is the native name, the modern Parsee; supposed to mean “tigers”. Originally simple in habits, upon overthrowing the Medes they adopted their luxury. They had a dual worship, Oromasdes or Ormuzd, “the great giver of life,” the supreme good god; Mithra, the “sun”, and Home, the “moon”, were under him.

Ahriman, “the death dealing” being, opposed to Oromasdes. Magianism, the worship of the elements, especially fire, the Scythic religion, infected the Persian religion when the Persians entered their new country. Zoroaster (the Greek form of Zerdusht), professing to be Ormuzd’s prophet, was the great reformer of their religious system, the contemporary of Daniel (Warburton 4:180, but according to Markham 1500 B.C., before the separation of the two Aryan races, the Indians and Persians) and acquainted with the Jewish Scriptures, as appears from his account of creation (Hyde 9; 10; 22; 31, Shahristani Relig. Pers.), and from his inserting passages from David’s writings and prophecies of Messiah.

He condemns the notion of two independent eternal principles, good and evil, and makes the supreme God Creator of both (and that under Him the angel of light and the angel of darkness are in perpetual conflict) as Isaiah teaches, and in connection with the prophecy of Cyrus the Jews’ deliverer from Babylon: “thus saith Jehovah to His anointed, Cyrus … I will go before thee, I will break in pieces the gates of brass … I form the light and create the darkness; I make peace and create evil.” Zoroaster taught that God created the good angel alone, and that the evil followed by the defect of good. He closely imitates the Mosaic revelation. As Moses heard God speaking in the midst of the fire, so Zoroaster pretends.

As the divine glory rested on the mercy seat, so Zoroaster made the sacred fire in the Persian temples to symbolize the divine presence. Zoroaster pretended that fire from heaven consumed sacrifices, as often had been the case in Israel’s sacrifices; his priests were of one tribe as Israel’s. In his work traces appear of Adam and Eve’s history, creation, the deluge, David’s psalms. He praises Solomon and delivers his doctrines as those of Abraham, to whose pure creed he sought to bring back the Magian religion. In Lucian’s (De Longaevis) day his religion was that of most Persians, Parthians, Bactrians, Aryans, Sacans, Medes, and Chowaresmians. His Zendavesta has six periods of creation, ending with man as in Genesis.

Avesta is the name for “Deity”. Zend is related to Khandas, “metre,” from the same root as scandere, scald “a poet,” “scan.” Mazdao, his name of Ormuzd, “I am that I am,” answers to JEHOVAH in Exodus 3. He expected a zoziosh or “saviour”. Fire, originally made the symbol of God, became, as Roman Catholic symbols, at length idolized. The Parsees observe the nirang; “rubbing the urine of a cow, she goat, or ox over the face and hands”, the second thing a Parsee does in getting up in the morning. The women after childbirth undergo it and have actually to drink a little of it! The Parsees pray 16 times a day. They have an awe of light. They are the only orientals who do not smoke. The priests and people now do not understand one word of the Zendavesta. (Muller.) The Persian language was related to the Indian Sanskrit.

HISTORY. Achaemenes led the emigrating Persians into their final settlement, 700 B.C. Teispes, Cambyses I. (Kabujiya in the monuments), Cyrus I, Cambyses II, and Cyrus the Great reigned successively. After 80 years’ subjection to the Medes the Persians revolted and became supreme, 558 B.C. Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and restored the Jews (Isa 44:28; Isa 45:1-4; Ezr 1:2-4). His son Cambyses III conquered Egypt (Ahasnerus, Ezr 4:6), but failed in Ethiopia. Then the Magian priest Gomates, pretending to be Smerdis, Cyrus’ son, whom Cambyses had secretly murdered, gained the throne (522 B.C.), and Cambyses III committed suicide. He forbade the Jews building the temple (Ezr 4:7-22, Artaxerxes). By destroying the Persian temples and abolishing the Oromasdian chants and ceremonies, and setting up fire altars, Pseudo Smerdis aliented the Persians, Darius, son of Hystaspes, of the blood royal, revolted, and slew him after his seven months’ reign.

He reverted to Cyrus’ policy, by grant enabling the Jews to complete the temple in his sixth year (Ezr 6:1-15). Xerxes (Ahasuerus) his son held the feast in his third year at Shushan for “the princes of the provinces,” preparatory to invading Greece. His marriage with Esther in his seventh year immediately followed his flight from Greece, when lie gave himself up to the pleasures of the seraglio. His son Artaxerxes Longimanus befriended Ezra (Ezr 7:1; Ezr 7:11-28) and Nehemiah (Neh 2:1-9) in their patriotic restoration of the Jews’ national polity and walls. (See DANIEL; CYRUS; MEDES; PARTHIA; AHASUERUS; ARTAXERXES.) “Darius the Persian” or Codomanus (Neh 12:22) was conquered by Alexander the Great (Dan 8:3-7).

Fuente: Fausset’s Bible Dictionary

PERSIA

The boundaries of Persia varied from era to era, but the name Persia is usually associated with the territory on the northern side of the Persian Gulf. In ancient times the north-western part of this territory (the area that bordered the Mesopotamian Plain) was known as Elam (Gen 14:1). At times the Bible makes a distinction between Elamites and Persians (Ezr 4:9), but usually Elam is simply another name for Persia (Isa 11:11; Isa 21:2; Jer 25:25; Jer 49:35-39). Regions to the north of Elam that were later closely allied with Persia were Media and Parthia (Est 1:18; Act 2:9).

Persias period of greatest power was during the reign of the Emperor Cyrus. Having come to the Persian throne about 558 BC, Cyrus proceeded to enlarge his territory, as one by one he conquered kingdoms large and small. One of his greatest triumphs was the conquest of Media. Media then became Persias strongest ally, and its leaders shared in the civil and military leadership of the expanding Persian Empire. So closely were the Medes and the Persians associated that people sometimes used their names interchangeably. The greatest victory for the Medo-Persian army came in 539 BC, when it conquered Babylon and Cyrus became undisputed ruler of the region (Isa 13:17; Isa 21:1-10; Isa 44:28; Isa 45:1; Jer 51:11; Jer 51:28; Dan 5:30-31; Dan 8:20; Dan 9:1; Dan 10:1).

Upon becoming ruler of Babylon, Cyrus quickly gave permission for all the people held captive by Babylon in foreign lands to return to their homelands. As a result many of the Jews returned to Jerusalem, where they soon began rebuilding the temple and the city (Ezr 1:1-4). They completed the temple in 516 BC, in the reign of a later Emperor, Darius (Ezr 6:14-15). (This Darius is a different person from Darius the Mede, the man who led the Medo-Persian attack on Babylon over twenty years previously; cf. Dan 5:30-31.)

When at times non-Jewish people of the region opposed and persecuted the Jews in Jerusalem, the Persian rulers protected the Jews (Ezr 5:3-17; Ezr 6:1-12; Neh 2:9-10; Est 8:9-14). The Persian government even gave the Jews funds to help carry out their program for the reconstruction of their nation and religion (Ezr 6:8-10; Ezr 7:14-16; Ezr 7:21-24; Neh 2:7-8). At times the Emperor gave his personal support to Jewish leaders who went from Persia to Jerusalem to teach and reform the Jewish people (Ezr 7:11-20; Neh 2:5-8).

The capital of Persia was Susa, or Shushan (Est 1:1-3; Est 2:3; Est 9:11; Dan 8:2). The Empire was divided into provinces ruled by Persian or Median nobles (satraps), with local people under them as governors and other officials (Ezr 4:8-10; Ezr 5:3; Ezr 5:14; Ezr 6:2; Ezr 7:21; Neh 2:9; Neh 5:14; Neh 7:2; Est 3:1; Est 8:9; Est 10:3).

Persian rule lasted about two hundred years, but the biblical narratives cover little more than the first half of this period. Several Emperors feature in the record.

Fuente: Bridgeway Bible Dictionary

Persia

A kingdom in Asia. This was the kingdom, in the government of the world, which succeeded the Babylonish, when Cyrus, king of Persia, had destroyed the Chaldean powers. (See Isa 45:1-25 and Dan 5:30-31)

Fuente: The Poor Mans Concordance and Dictionary to the Sacred Scriptures

Persia

pursha, -zha (, paras; , Perss; in Assyrian Parsu, Parsua; in Achemenian Persian Parsa, modern Fars): In the Bible (2Ch 36:20, 2Ch 36:22, 2Ch 36:23; Ezr 1:1, Ezr 1:8; Est 1:3, Est 1:14, Est 1:18; Est 10:2; Eze 27:10; Eze 38:5; Dan 8:20; Dan 10:1; Dan 11:2) this name denotes properly the modern province of Fars, not the whole Persian empire. The latter was by its people called Airyaria, the present Iran (from the Sanskrit word arya, noble); and even now the Persians never call their country anything but Iran, never Persia. The province of Persis lay to the East of Elam (Susiana), and stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Great Salt Desert, having Carmania on the Southeast. Its chief cities were Persepolis and Pasargadae. Along the Persian Gulf the land is low, hot and unhealthy, but it soon begins to rise as one travels inland. Most of the province consists of high and steep mountains and plateaus, with fertile valleys. The table-lands in which lie the modern city of Shiraz and the ruins of Persepolis and Pasargadae are well watered and productive. Nearer the desert, however, cultivation grows scanty for want of water. Persia was doubtless in early times included in Elam, and its population was then either Semitic or allied to the Accadians, who founded more than one state in the Babylonian plain. The Aryan Persians seem to have occupied the country in the 8th or 9th century BC.

Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

Persia

H6539

An empire which extended from India to Ethiopia, comprising one hundred and twenty-seven provinces

Est 1:1; Dan 6:1

Government of, restricted by constitutional limitations

Est 8:8; Dan 6:8-12

Municipal governments in, provided with dual governors

Neh 3:9; Neh 3:12; Neh 3:16-18

The princes advisory in matters of administration

Dan 6:1-7

Status of women in:

– Queen sat on the throne with the king

Neh 2:6

– Vashti divorced for refusing to appear before the king’s courtiers

Est 1:10-22; Est 2:4

Israel captive in

2Ch 36:20

Captivity foretold

Hos 13:16

Men of, in the Tyrian army

Eze 27:10

Rulers of:

– Ahasuerus

Est 1:3

– Darius

Dan 5:31; Dan 6; Dan 9:1

– Artaxerxes I

Ezr 4:7-24

– Artaxerxes II

Ezr 7; Neh 2; Neh 5:14

– Cyrus

2Ch 36:22-23; Ezr 1:1-11; Ezr 3:7; Ezr 4:3; Ezr 5:13-14; Ezr 5:17; Ezr 6:3; Isa 41:2-3; Isa 44:28; Isa 45:1-4; Isa 45:13; Isa 46:11; Isa 48:14-15

– Princes of

Est 1:14

System of justice

Ezr 7:25

Prophecies concerning

Isa 13:17; Isa 21:1-10; Jer 49:34-39; Jer 51:11-64; Eze 32:24-25; Eze 38:5; Dan 2:31-45; Dan 5:28; Dan 7; Dan 11:1-4 Babylon; Chaldea

Fuente: Nave’s Topical Bible

Persia

Persia (per’shah, or shah), Heb. Pharas, pure, or tigers? Eze 38:5. A country in Central Asia. The term is generally applied in Scripture to the Persian empire, but in Eze 38:5 it designates Persia proper. The Persian empire extended from the Indus on the east to Thrace on the west, and from the Black and Caspian Seas on the north to the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea on the south. It, at times, included Western Asia and portions of Europe and Africa. Persia proper was an unproductive country south of Media. The interior was a great plateau, having an average elevation of 4000 feet above the sea, broken by mountains and valleys and interspersed with fruitful plains. The founder of the Persian dynasty was Achmes, and it was tributary to the Medes until a revolt under Cyrus about b.c. 588, when it rapidly extended its sway over Asia Minor, and in b.c. 538 over Babylon, where the Persians came into contact with the captive Jews. Cyrus issued a decree permitting the Jewish captives to return to their own land. 2Ch 36:20-23; Ezr 1:8. A later king, called Artaxerxes in Scripture, forbade the rebuilding of the temple, but Darius Hystaspes authorized the work to go on. Ezr 4:5-24; Ezr 6:7-12. Xerxes, who was probably the Ahasuerus of the book of Esther, succeeded him, and was defeated by the Greeks, assassinated, and succeeded by his son Artaxerxes Longimanus, who was friendly to the Jews. Ezr 7:11-28; Neh 2:1-9. Only one of his successors is noticed in Scripture, Darius the Persian. Neh 12:22. After lasting about 200 years the Persian empire was overthrown by Alexander the Great, b.c. 330, and followed by the Macedonian, the third great world-empire. Dan 8:3-7; Dan 8:20.

Fuente: People’s Dictionary of the Bible

Persia

Per’sia. (pure, splended). Per’sia and Per’sians. Persia proper was a tract of no very large dimensions on the Persian Gulf, which is still known as Fars or Farsistan, a corruption of the ancient appellation. This tract was bounded on the west by Susiana or Elam, on the north by Media on the south by the Persian Gulf and on the east by Carmania. But the name is more commonly applied, both in Scripture and by profane authors to the entire tract, which came by degrees to be included , within the limits of the Persian empire.

This empire extended at one time from India on the east to Egypt and Thrace on the west, and included. Besides portions of Europe and Africa, the whole of western Asia between the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian and the Jaxartes on the north, the Arabian desert the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean on the south. The only passage in Scripture, where Persia designates the tract which has been called above “Persia proper” is Eze 38:5. Elsewhere the empire is intended. The Persians were of the same race as the Medes, both being branches of the great Aryan stock.

Character of the nation. — The Persians were a people of lively and impressible minds, brave and impetuous in war, witty, passionate, for Orientals truthful, not without some spirit of generosity: and of more intellectual capacity, than the generality of Asiatics. In the times anterior to Cyrus, they were noted for the simplicity of their habits, which offered a strong contrast to the luxuriousness of the Medes; but from the late of the Median overthrow, this simplicity began to decline. Polygamy was commonly practiced among them. They were fond of the pleasures of the table. In war, they fought bravely, but without discipline.

Religion. — The religion which the Persians brought with there into Persia proper seems to have been of a very simple character, differing from natural religion, in little, except that it was deeply tainted with Dualism. Like the other Aryans, the Persians worshipped one supreme God. They had few temples, and no altars or images.

Language. — The Persian language was closely akin to the Sanskrit, or ancient language of India. Modern Persian is its degenerate representative, being largely impregnated with Arabic.

History. — The history of Persia begins with the revolt from the Medes, and the accession of Cyrus the Great, B.C. 558. Cyrus defeated Croesus, and added the Lydian empire to his dominions. This conquest was followed closely, by the submission of the Greek settlements on the Asiatic coast, and by the reduction of Caria and Lycia. The empire was soon, afterward, extended greatly toward the northeast and east. In B.C. 539 or 538, Babylon was attacked, and after a stout defence, fell into the hands of Cyrus.

This victory first brought the Persians into contact with the Jews. The conquerors found in Babylon an oppressed race — like themselves, abhorrers of idols, and professors of a religion in which, to a great extent, they could sympathize. This race, Cyrus determined to restore to their own country: which he did by the remarkable edict recorded in the first chapter of Ezra. Ezr 1:2-4. He was slain in an expedition, against the Massagetae or the Derbices, after a reign of twenty-nine years.

Under his son and successor, Cambyses, the conquest of Egypt took place, B.C. 525. This prince appears to be the Ahasuerus of Ezr 4:6. Gomates, Cambyses’ successor, reversed the policy of Cyrus, with respect to the Jews, and forbade, by an edict, the further building of the Temple. Ezr 4:17-22. He reigned, but seven months, and was succeeded by Darius.

Appealed to, in his second year, by the Jews, who wished to resume the construction of their Temple, Darius, not only granted them this privilege, but assisted the work, by grants from his own revenues, whereby, the Jews were able to complete the Temple, as early as his sixth year. Ezr 6:1-15.

Darius was succeeded by Xerxes, probably, the Ahasuerus of Esther. Artaxerxes, the son of Xerxes, reigned for forty years after his death, and is, beyond doubt, the king of that name who stood in such a friendly relation toward Ezra, Ezr 7:11-28 , and Nehemiah. Neh 2:1-9; etc. He is the last of the Persian kings, who had any special connection, with the Jews, and the last but one mentioned in Scripture.

His successors were Xerxes II, Sogdianus Darius Nothus, Artaxerxes Mnemon, Artaxerxes Ochus, and Darius Codomannus, who is probably, the “Darius, the Persian” of Nehemiah, Neh 12:22. These monarchs reigned from B.C. 424 to B.C. 330. The collapse of the empire, under the attack of Alexander the Great, took place B.C. 330.

Fuente: Smith’s Bible Dictionary

PERSIA

2Ch 36:20; Ezr 1:1; Est 1:3; Est 1:18; Dan 8:20; Dan 10:1; Dan 11:2

Fuente: Thompson Chain-Reference Bible

Persia

an ancient kingdom of Asia, bounded on the north by Media, on the west by Susiana, on the east by Carmania, and on the south by the Persian Gulf. The Persians became very famous from the time of Cyrus, the founder of the Persian monarchy. Their ancient name was Elamites, and in the time of the Roman emperors they went by the name of Parthians; but now Persians. See CYRUS and for the religion of the ancient Persians, See MAGI.

Fuente: Biblical and Theological Dictionary