The Entire History of IRAN in 35 minutes

The history of Iran is a 3,000-year story of survival. When invading armies marched into the Persian Empire - from the Greeks to Arab and Mongol forces - the local population didn't collapse. Instead, they slowly assimilated their conquerors. This history documentary tracks that exact process. We start looking at the region when people first settled the Iranian plateau. The narrative goes all the way through the fallout of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The earliest major power center was the Achaemenid Empire, put together by Cyrus the Great. At its peak, this administration controlled nearly half the people on Earth. During this era, Zoroastrianism took hold. The religion pushed new concepts: a final judgment day and linear time. Centuries down the line, the Sasanian military reached a point where they actually took a Roman emperor prisoner during combat.

Certain objects and choices physically shaped this history. The Cyrus Cylinder recorded one of the earliest policies of religious tolerance. Much later, the Shahnameh - a massive epic poem - essentially rescued the Persian language during a long period of Islamic rule. In the political sphere, the Safavid dynasty made a calculated move to adopt Shia Islam. That single decision mapped out the modern borders of the Middle East. Then there is the 1953 coup that ousted Prime Minister Mosaddegh. You basically cannot explain the 1979 revolution without looking at that specific regime change.

It shows how a population can live through non-stop foreign occupation without losing its native tongue.

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00:00 The Fall of Persia: The Death of Yazdegerd III
00:40 The Civilization That Refused to Die Starts
01:29 The Iranian Plateau: First Civilizations Starts
03:55 Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism
05:27 The Medes and the Fall of Assyria
06:23 Cyrus the Great
07:30 The Fall of Babylon
08:39 The Achaemenid Empire Under Darius I
10:31 The Greco-Persian Wars: The Truth
11:58 Alexander the Great
13:48 The Parthian Empire vs. Rome
15:12 The Sasanian Empire Starts
17:25 The Arab Conquest
21:08 The Mongol Invasion
23:05 Tamerlane and the Timurid Renaissance
24:11 The Safavid Dynasty and Shia Islam
26:05 The Qajar Era: Oil, Russia, and Britain
27:18 Reza Shah
28:45 The 1953 Coup and the Islamic Revolution
31:00 Iran vs. Persia
31:44 How a Civilization Survives 3,000 Years

#archaeology #history