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The History Of Medes / Media

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• published: 05 May 2015
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The Medes Old Persian Māda-, Ancient Greek: Μῆδοι, Hebrew: מָדַי) were an ancient Iranian people[N 2] who lived in an area known as Media (North-western Iran and south-east Turkey) and who spoke the Median language. Their arrival to the region is associated with the first wave of migrating Iranic Aryan tribes into Ancient Iran from the late 2nd millennium BCE (circa 1000 BC) (the Bronze Age collapse) through the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE (circa 900 BC). This period of migration coincided with a power vacuum in the Near East, with the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365-1020 BC) which had dominated north western Iran and eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus going into a comparative decline, allowing new peoples to pass through and settle. In addition, Elam, the dominant power in Ancient Iran was suffering a period of severe weakness, as was Babylonia to the west. From the 10th to late 7th centuries BCE, the western parts of Media fell under the domination of the vast Neo-Assyrian Empire based in northern Mesopotamia, but which stretched from Cyprus to Ancient Iran, and from the Caucasus to Egypt and Arabia. Assyrian kings such as Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal and Ashur-etil-ilani imposed Vassal Treaties upon the Median rulers, and also protected them from predatory raids by marauding Scythian and Cimmerian hordes. During the reign of Sinsharishkun (622-612 BC) the Assyrian empire, which had been in a state of constant civil war since 626 BC, began to unravel. Subject peoples, such as the Medes, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Scythians, Cimmerians, Lydians and Arameans quietly ceased to pay tribute to Assyria. An alliance with the Medes and rebelling Babylonians, Scythians, Chaldeans, and Cimmerians, helped the Medes to capture Nineveh in 612 BCE, which resulted in the eventual collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire by 605 BC. The Medes were subsequently able to establish their Median kingdom (with Ecbatana as their royal centre) beyond their original homeland and had eventually a territory stretching roughly from northeastern Iran to the Halys River in Anatolia. After the fall of the Assyrian Empire, between 616 BCE and 605 BCE, a unified Median state was formed, which, together with Babylonia, Lydia, and Egypt, became one of the four major powers of the ancient Near East. The Median Empire was transformed into the Medo-Persian Empire in 550 BCE and Cyrus the Great established the Achaemenid Empire. The established one the mightiest empires in the ancient world ruled for 150 years. They contributed a lot the rise of co-existing culture between and amongst various tribes and ethnicities. The 'Federation of Tribes' they established, was later developed into the 'Federation of States' in the modern world. A few archaeological sites (discovered in the "Median triangle" in western Iran) and textual sources (from contemporary Assyrians and also Greeks in later centuries) provide a brief documentation of the history and culture of the Median state. The Medes had almost the same equipment as the Persians and indeed the dress common to both is not so much Persian as Median. Apart from a few personal names, the language of the Medes is almost entirely unknown. However a number of words from the Median language are still in use, and there are languages being geographically and comparatively traced to the northwestern Iranian language of Median. The Medes had an Ancient Iranian Religion (a form of pre-Zoroastrian Mazdaism or Mithra worshipping) with a priesthood named as "Magi". Later and during the reigns of the last Median kings, the reforms of Zarathustra spread in western Iran.