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History of the Middle East (Part 2: Iranian Empires), Under the rule of…

- - - - In 540BCE, Cyrus conquered the Lydian Empire in Anatolia and in 539BCE he conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire, freeing the Jews and rebuilding the city of Jerusalem.
  - - - Darius the Great (550-489 BC), a distant relative from Cyrus, claims that Bardiya was an imposter and overthrows him in 522BCE.
    - - Xerxes (519-465BCE), son of Darius, led the Second Greco-Persian War (480-479 BCE), but was defeated at the Battle of Plataea.
  - - - After Greece is united under Philip of Macedon, his son, Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) attacks Persia in 334BC and is initially ignored by Darius III, but they eventually clash and Alexander ends the Achamenid empire.
- - - - Then, Seleucus took Greece from Lysimachus (281BC), thus the only other remaining general was Ptolomey with Egypt, but Seleucus was assassinated in 275 and the Wars soon came to an end.
  - - - By 222BC, the size of the empire had been halved, but Antiochus the Great (r. 222-187BC) managed to restore most of it before losing most of Anatolia at the Roman-Seleucid War (192-188BC) to the Roman Republic and then the east to revolts.
    - - In 83BC, having only Syria left, the empire was conquered by Tigranes the Great (r. 95-55BC), king of Armenia, but then recovered its independence when the Romans beat him, using it to fight one last civil war (69-63BC) before being annexed.
- - - - After his death, the empire began collapsing and when their response to a Persian revolt in 205 was another civil war, the Persians overthrew the Parthians and established the Sassanid Empire.
  - - - They then allied the neighboring kingdom of Bactria to remain independent from the Seleucids, but despite this they were annexed by Antiochus the Great until he was defeated by the Roman Republic.
- - - - Under the rule of Shapur II (309-379) the empire took advantage of a weakened Roman empire to reach its peak. After his death, the empire had 100 years of relative peace with Rome.
      - In 598, the empire managed to annex Southern Arabia after helping in a succession dispute.
  - - - At the Battle of Al-Qadisiyah (636) the Persians were beaten by the emerging Rashidun Caliphate, which proceed to conquer the empire and the next 15 years.