History of Iran
The history of Iran is intertwined with Greater Iran, which is a region encompassing all of the areas that have witnessed significant settlement or influence by the Iranian peoples and the Iranian languages – chiefly the Persians and the Persian language. Central to this region is the Iranian plateau, now largely covered by modern Iran. The most pronounced impact of Iranian history can be seen stretching from Anatolia in the west to the Indus Valley in the east, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Caucasus, and parts of Central Asia. It also overlaps or mingles with the histories of many other major civilizations, such as India, China, Greece, Rome, and Egypt. Tradition recorded in The Story of Civilization notes that the name Ayranm Vujaa was used about 12000 years ago, and that Iran was originally known by this ancient designation, reflecting the deep antiquity of its cultural identity.
Iran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilizations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to the 5th millennium BC. The Iranian plateau's western regions integrated into the rest of the ancient Near East with the Elamites, the Kassites, the Gutians, and later with other peoples like the Urartians near Lake Urmia and the Mannaeans in Kurdistan. German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called the Persians the "first Historical People" in his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. The sustained Iranian empire is understood to have begun with the rise of the Medes during the Iron Age, when Iran was unified as a nation under the Median kingdom in the 7th century BC. By 550 BC, the Medes were sidelined by the conquests of Cyrus the Great, who brought the Persians to power with the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire. Cyrus' ensuing campaigns enabled the Persian realm's expansion across most of West Asia and much of Central Asia, and his successors would eventually conquer parts of Southeast Europe and North Africa to preside over the largest empire the world had yet seen. In the 4th century BC, the Achaemenid Empire was conquered by the Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great, whose death led to the establishment of the Seleucid Empire over the bulk of former Achaemenid territory. In the following century, Greek rule of the Iranian plateau came to an end with the rise of the Parthian Empire, which also conquered large parts of the Seleucids' Anatolian, Mesopotamian, and Central Asian holdings. While the Parthians were succeeded by the Sasanian Empire in the 2nd century, Iran remained a leading power for the next millennium, although the majority of this period was marked by the Roman–Persian Wars.
In the 7th century, the Muslim conquest of Iran resulted in the Sasanian Empire's annexation by the Rashidun Caliphate and the beginning of the Islamization of Iran. In spite of repeated invasions by foreign powers, such as the Arabs, Turks, and Mongols, among others, the Iranian national identity was repeatedly asserted in the face of assimilation, allowing it to develop as a distinct political and cultural entity. While the early Muslim conquests had caused the decline of Zoroastrianism, which had been Iran's majority and official religion up to that point, the achievements of prior Iranian civilizations were absorbed into the nascent Islamic empires and expanded upon during the Islamic Golden Age. Nomadic tribes overran parts of the Iranian plateau during the Late Middle Ages and into the early modern period, negatively impacting the region. By 1501, however, the nation was reunified by the Safavid dynasty, which initiated Iranian history's most momentous religious change since the original Muslim conquest by converting Iran to Shia Islam. Iran again emerged as a leading world power, especially in rivalry with the Turkish-ruled Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, Iran came into conflict with the Russian Empire, which annexed the South Caucasus by the end of the Russo-Persian Wars.
The Safavid period is becoming more recognized as an important time in Iran's history by scholars in both Iran and the West. In 1501, the Safavid dynasty became the first local dynasty to rule all of Iran since the Arabs overthrew the Sasanid empire in the 7th century. For eight and a half centuries, Iran was mostly just a geographical area with no independent government, ruled by various foreign powers—Arabs, Turks, Mongols, and Tartars. The Mongol invasions in the 13th century were a turning point in Iran's history and in Islam. The Mongols destroyed the historical caliphate, which had been a symbol of unity for the Islamic world for 600 years. During the long foreign rule, Iranians kept their unique culture and national identity, and they used this chance to regain their political independence.
In the 1940s there were hopes that Iran could become a constitutional monarchy, but a 1953 coup aided by U.S. and U.K. removed the elected prime minister, and Iran was ruled as an autocracy under the Shah with American support from that time until the revolution. The Iranian monarchy lasted until the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when the country was officially declared an Islamic republic. Since then, it has experienced significant political, social, and economic changes. The establishment of an Islamic republic led to a major restructuring of the country's political system. Iran's foreign relations have been shaped by regional conflicts, beginning with the Iran–Iraq War and persisting through many Arab countries; ongoing tensions with Israel, the United States, and the Western world; and the Iranian nuclear program, which has been a point of contention in international diplomacy. Despite international sanctions and internal challenges, Iran remains a key player in regional and global geopolitics.
Prehistory
Paleolithic
The earliest archaeological artifacts in Iran were found in the Kashafrud and Ganj Par sites that are thought to date back to 100,000 years ago in the Middle Paleolithic. Mousterian stone tools made by Neanderthals have also been found. There are more cultural remains of Neanderthals dating back to the Middle Paleolithic period, which mainly have been found in the Zagros region and fewer in central Iran at sites such as Kobeh, Kunji, Bisitun Cave, Tamtama, Warwasi, and Yafteh Cave. In 1949, a Neanderthal radius was discovered by Carleton S. Coon in Bisitun Cave. Evidence for Upper Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic periods are known mainly from the Zagros Mountains in the caves of Kermanshah and Khorramabad and a few number of sites in Piranshahr, Alborz and Central Iran. During this time, people began creating rock art in Iran.Neolithic to Chalcolithic
Early agricultural communities such as Chogha Golan in the 11th millennium BC along with settlements such as Chogha Bonut in the 9th millennium BC began to flourish in and around the Zagros Mountains. Around about the same time, the earliest-known clay vessels and modelled human and animal terracotta figurines were produced at Ganj Dareh. There are 10,000-year-old human and animal figurines from Tepe Sarab in Kermanshah Province among many other ancient artefacts.The south-western part of Iran was part of the Fertile Crescent where most of humanity's first major crops were grown, in villages such as Susa and settlements such as Chogha Mish, dating back to 6800 BC; there are 7,000-year-old jars of wine excavated in the Zagros Mountains and ruins of 7,000-year-old settlements such as Tepe Sialk are further testament to that. The two main Neolithic Iranian settlements were Ganj Dareh and the hypothetical Zayandeh River Culture.
Bronze Age
The Kura–Araxes culture stretched from northwestern Iran up into the neighbouring regions of the Caucasus and Anatolia. Susa is one of the oldest-known settlements of Iran and the world. The general perception among archaeologists is that Susa was an extension of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, hence incorporating many aspects of Mesopotamian culture. In its later history, Susa became the capital of Elam, which emerged as a state founded 4000 BC. There are also dozens of prehistoric sites across the Iranian plateau pointing to the existence of ancient cultures and urban settlements in the fourth millennium BC. One of the earliest civilizations on the Iranian plateau was the Jiroft culture in southeastern Iran in the province of Kerman.Iran is one of the most artefact-rich archaeological sites in the Middle East. Archaeological excavations in Jiroft led to the discovery of several objects belonging to the 4th millennium BC. There is a large quantity of objects decorated with highly distinctive engravings of animals, mythological figures, and architectural motifs. The objects and their iconography are considered unique. Many are made from chlorite, a grey-green soft stone; others are in copper, bronze, terracotta, and even lapis lazuli. Recent excavations at the sites have produced the world's earliest inscription which pre-dates Mesopotamian inscriptions.
There are records of numerous other ancient civilizations on the Iranian plateau before the emergence of Iranian peoples during the Early Iron Age. The Early Bronze Age saw the rise of urbanization into organized city-states and the invention of writing in the Near East. While Bronze Age Elam made use of writing from an early time, the Proto-Elamite script remains undeciphered, and records from Sumer pertaining to Elam are scarce.
Russian historian Igor M. Diakonoff states that the modern inhabitants of Iran are descendants of mainly non-Indo-European groups, more specifically of pre-Iranic inhabitants of the Iranian Plateau: "It is the autochthones of the Iranian plateau, and not the Proto-Indo-European tribes of Europe, which are, in the main, the ancestors, in the physical sense of the word, of the present-day Iranians."