persian empire

A few threads here have postulated what could happen in Persia and Central Asia if the Arabs fail to break through the Zagros into the core of Persia. But what happens to the Caliphates in that scenario, in particular the Umayyads? Persia and Khorasan were the power bases of the Abbasids. Are...

In 516 BCE, Darius embarked on a campaign to India and marched through Bactria to Taxila in modern-day Pakistan. Darius spent the winter of 516–515 BCE in Gandhara, preparing to conquer the Indus Valley. Darius conquered the lands surrounding the Indus River in 515 BCE. This was around the same...

In Achaemenid Egypt a rebellion began under the command of Inaros, a Libyan king living on the border of Egypt. This rebellion quickly swept the country, which was soon largely in the hands of Inaros. He requested assistance from Athens which was granted. The alliance defeated the Persianw at...

During the siege of Bahurasīr, a Sassanid emissary relayed a message from Shahanshah Yazdegerd III to the Arabs, proposing a new border along the Tigris River, with the lands to the west designated as Arab territory and those to the east as Sassanid. IOTL, this offer was rejected, and the Arabs...

I wonder what would happen if Cyrus the Great was never born and the Persian Empire never existed?

Original Map by u/--Faris-- on Reddit How would this Effect Religion in Rome and Persia? How different would the Gospels be ITTL? How does effect religion and cultures in Armenia and Ethiopia, the oldest states to adopt Christianity? How different would Christianity be?

I am studying more about the Rebellion in India against the British East India company starting in 1857. As well as other wars involving the British Empire around that time in such as the First Anglo Afghan War, the First and Second Anglo-Sikh wars, Crimean war, Anglo-Persian War, 2nd Opium war...

The move that secured the Macedonian victory at Gaugamela - a massive charge straight into the Persian center, where Darius III was - was an immensely risky gamble for Alexander. Case in point, his manouver created a gap in his army's line, one which was exploited by a detachment of Persian and...

Khosrow II, the last of the "great" Sassanid shahs (the quotes are because he was actually pretty terrible), began his reign under very inauspicious circumstances: his father, the destructively paranoid Hormizd IV, had been murdered, the empire was locked in a long, bloody and fruitless war with...

According to Runciman (1977), Heraclius I, Eastern Roman Emperor from 610 to 641, originally considered abandoning Constantinople in the war with Sassanid Persia. Constantinople had been suffering throughout the campaign against the Persians as grain was the primary source of food for the city...

The activites of Mani, founder of Manichaeism, were initially tolerated by the Sasanian authorities until the reign of Bahram I, during which he was imprisoned and was either executed or died beforehand. How plausible could it be for one of the early Sassanid shahs to not only tolerate...

OTL, the Farsi Plateu has been host to a wide array of powerful civilizations, but few of them ever spread beyond its borders. But, doing some browsing, i found this weird alternate history map of a "Persian Empire," supposedly founded in the collapse of the Medians. The map is supposedly around...

What if Cyrus the Younger survived the Battle of Cunaxa and overthrew his older brother Artaxerxes II? He had administrative experience thanks to his stint as satrap of Lydia, and, most famously, had ten thousand Greek mercenaries in his army, one of whom was Xenophon. What would he be like as...

The Battle of the Persian Gate was the Achaemenid Empire's last act of resistance against Alexander the Great. After an ambush that caused heavy casualties among the Macedonians, the Persians held the pass for a month before the invaders found an alternate path through the terrain (the battle...

The House of Karen was one of the Seven Great Houses of Iran during the Parthian and Sasanian Empires. What if they had formed a Persian Empire of their own at some point?

In October 539 BC, when Cyrus the Great conquered the Neo-Babylonian empire, he faced surprisingly little resistance, for which various explanations have been found, suggesting the unpopularity the favoritism the previous Babylonian monarch Nabonidus had for the god Sin over Babylon's...

While looking from a broad macro-historical perspective the conquests were quick and inevitable after the devastation of the war of 602-628 and the various internal crises both the Byzantines and Sassanids had to deal with afterward, Umar(RA), after defeating the Byzantines and Sassanids at...

Bahram Chobin was a general from the Mihranid clan that attempted to revolt against Hormizd IV and restore the Arsacid Empire. Around 590, after achieving a victory against the Hephthalites, he revolted and seized the throne for a year, before being deposed by Vistahm and Vinduyih, who had...

In 496 AD, the nobles of the Sassanid realm met and agreed to imprison Shahanshah Kavad I, due to several reasons, most prominent being his execution of Sukhra, and his actions regarding the emerging Mazdakist sect. Gushnaspdad proposed that he be killed, but that proposal was rejected, and he...

Horus Triumphant - an Alternate Antiquity timeline - Over the years I've had several ideas for some timelines but never really had the time to do...