This is a bit of a cheat because I didn't see these places in this order - but it makes sense to group them together this way.
In the 7th century BC the king of one of the Persian Tribes, Achaemenes, created a unified state in Southern Iran, thereby giving his name to what became the First Persian Empire
. By the time his great-grandson ascended the throne in 559BC it was already a potent force, Cyrus the Great, as he became known, rapidly built up a huge military force and killed his grandfather, the king Astyages of the Median empire, at Pasargadae north of Shiraz. Within 11 years Cyrus had conquered much of modern Turkey, modern Pakistan, and the Babylonians. He built his palace at Pasargadae. He was finally defeated, though, by Tomyris - queen of the Massagetae who had warned him that unless he agreed to her commands "bloodthirsty as thou art, I will give thee thy fill of blood.' (see Herodotus!)
Cyrus was entombed just outside his palace at Pasargadae.
Little remains of the palace, and it lies in a flat, dry and dusty plain - but the channels and pools that were used to carry water to his gardens are still visible, and the tomb is largely intact. When Alexander the Great conquered the area he told his soldiers to leave the tomb untouched and he was furious when he learnt later that it had been plundered
.
Cyrus' son, Cambyses, continued to grow the empire capturing most of Ehypt and coastal regions as far as Libya. But family infighting left the empire in some disarray until a distant relative of Cyrus, Darius I, took over and put it all back together. The complex at Persepolis was created to serve as the ceremonial and religious hub of the empire. But in 490 BC Darius' armies were defeated in the famous battle at Marathon and Darius died in 486, then his son Xerxes was defeated at Salamis in Greece and the empire went into a decline and was finally finished by Alexander who lived at Persepolis for several months but it was then consumed by fire - no-one knowing if it was deliberate or accidental.
Nesrby are the tombs of Darius himself, Darius II, Xerxes I and Artaxerxes I.
See the pics!
Traces of Persian Empires
Tuesday, October 07, 2014
Shiraz, Iran
Other Entries
-
1Still betrays its trading past
Sep 0730 days priorShymkent, Kazakhstanphoto_camera10videocam 0comment 0 -
28 hours of train for 1 building
Sep 0829 days priorTurkestan, Kazakhstanphoto_camera8videocam 0comment 3 -
3Cities can be boring
Sep 1423 days priorKarakol, Kyrgyzstanphoto_camera22videocam 0comment 4 -
4Dashing over the mountains
Sep 1720 days priorOsh, Kyrgyzstanphoto_camera17videocam 0comment 3 -
5I climbed Sulamain-Too
Sep 1918 days priorOsh, Kyrgyzstanphoto_camera22videocam 0comment 1 -
6Land of the Daewoo
Sep 2017 days priorTashkent, Uzbekistanphoto_camera7videocam 0comment 1 -
7Samarkand, In the footsteps of Timur
Sep 2215 days priorSamarkand, Uzbekistanphoto_camera19videocam 0comment 0 -
8The Holy City of Bokhara
Sep 2611 days priorBukhara, Uzbekistanphoto_camera23videocam 0comment 1 -
9Khiva - Disneyland of the Silk Road
Sep 298 days priorKhiva, Uzbekistanphoto_camera12videocam 0comment 0 -
10A night in the desert by a big gas fire
Oct 025 days priorKonye-Urgench, Turkmenistanphoto_camera16videocam 0comment 4 -
11Ashqabat - the empty city
Oct 034 days priorAshgabat, Turkmenistanphoto_camera9videocam 0comment 1 -
12The Desolation that was Merv
Oct 043 days priorMerv, Turkmenistanphoto_camera7videocam 0comment 1 -
13The Holiest City in Iran
Oct 052 days priorMashad, Iranphoto_camera7videocam 0comment 0 -
14Traces of Persian Empires
Oct 07Shiraz, Iranphoto_camera11videocam 0comment 0 -
15Shiraz - of poets and gardeners
Oct 081 day laterShiraz, Iranphoto_camera14videocam 0comment 0 -
16People - including me
Oct 092 days laterEsfahan, Iranphoto_camera17videocam 0comment 1 -
17Esfehan - Half the World
Oct 103 days laterEsfehan, Iranphoto_camera10videocam 0comment 3 -
18Tehran, city of 11 million, or is it 14
Oct 136 days laterTehran, Iranphoto_camera11videocam 0comment 0 -
19A long train ride
Oct 1811 days laterAnkara, Turkeyphoto_camera6videocam 0comment 1
2025-02-13