Persian kings

“ For more than five centuries after Alexander, the empire of Persia suffered from foreign despotism and internal dissensions, but during this long period of political unrest, the Sassanian kings were able to collect a large proportion of the old writings, even though the literature which was thus restored consisted chiefly of fragments ”

“ The modern kings of Persia have palaces in many parts of their dominions, whither they resort for the climate or for the chase. To these palaces are attached villages, in which provisions are collected for the use of the court as soon as the motions of the King are decided. [28] —For a graphic description of the Persian mode of hunting the antelope, with hawks as well as dogs, see Sir John Malcolm’s Sketches of Persia. ”

“ The Persians were ruled by independent chieftains, or petty kings, who acknowledged fealty to Media; so that Persia was really a province of Media, as Burgundy was of France in the Middle Ages, and as Babylonia at one period was of Assyria. The most prominent of these chieftains or princes was Achaemenes, who is regarded as the founder of the Persian monarchy. To this royal family of the Achaemenidae Cyrus belonged. His father Cambyses, called by some a satrap and by others a king, married, according to Herodotus, a daughter of Astyages, the last of the Median monarchs. ”

“ Thus the Empire of the Greeks, which at first brake into four kingdoms, became now reduced into two notable ones, henceforward called by Daniel the kings of the South and North. For Ptolemy now reigned over Egypt, Lybia, Ethiopia, Arabia, Phœnicia, Cœlosyria, and Cyprus; and Seleucus, having united three of the four kingdoms, had a dominion scarce inferior to that of the Persian Empire, conquered by Alexander the great. All which is thus represented by Daniel: [2] And the king of the South [Ptolemy] shall be strong, and one of his Princes [Seleucus, one of Alexander's Princes] ”

“ I had goloshes on over my boots, and rode off with one of B⸺’s servants to the house of the Eyn-ul-Molk (eye of the state) ; such titles, not being hereditary ones, are usual among the statesmen and great officials of Persia.
“The Sword of the State,” “The Pillar of the Kingdom,” “The Shadow of the King,” are all titles in actual use; they are sufficiently high-sounding and poetical even to satisfy a Persian’s sense of dignity.
No sooner is a prince born, than the king proceeds to give him a title, which as he grows in dignity and years is often changed for a higher one ”

“ The Persian empire extended over all the East—Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Parthia, Babylonia, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Bactria, and other countries—the one hundred and twenty provinces of Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus, from the Mediterranean to India, from the Euxine and Caspian Seas to Arabia and the Persian Gulf—a monstrous empire, whose possession was calculated to inflame the monarchs who reigned at Susa and Babylon with more than mortal pride and self-sufficiency. ”

“ The Persians were quick to learn, and gladly appropriated to themselves the civilization of Nineveh and Babylon; but luxury and dissipation will unnerve the strongest empire, and after a time the designing beauties of the harem became the rulers of weak and wicked princes, and though Persian magnificence lasted from Darius to the last Persian king, their final failure was due to their own corruption as much as to the forces of Alexander the Great. ”

“ During the last two thousand years, whose history we possess, Persia has been repeatedly overrun by foreign conquerors, and the sequel of each conquest has been the same, namely, that the influence of climate and of luxurious Persian habits has relaxed the energies and the original virtues of the invaders, and disposed them in turn to fall victims to another conquering people. ”

“ The universal conquests of the Persians, rapid, but transient, acted on the age with all the violence of the elemental powers of nature. Sudden and rapid, like a wind-storm, they invaded and subdued all other states and kingdoms;—the expedition of Xerxes into Greece was a real inundation of nations—and as the [279] destructive fire, after blazing on high and desolating and consuming all things around, sinks quickly again—it was so with the Persian empire. The dominion of the Persians exerted no very permanent influence on those other nations whose civilization was anterior to their own. ”

“ The monarch governed by no council, and the laws centered in the principle that the will of the king was supreme. The only check which he feared was assassination, and he generally spent his life in the retirement of his seraglio, at Susa, Babylon, or Ecbatana.
The Persian empire was the last of the great monarchies of the Oriental world, and these flourished for a period of two thousand years. When nations became wicked or extended over a large territory, the patriarchal rule of the primitive ages no longer proved an efficient government. ”

“ His reign of twenty-nine years was one constant succession of wars, in which he was uniformly successful, and in which [pg 096] success was only equaled by his magnanimity. His empire extended from the Indus to the Hellespont and the Syrian coast, far greater than that of either Assyria or Babylonia.
Degeneracy of the Persian conquerors. The result of the Persian conquest on the conquerors themselves was to produce habits of excessive luxury, a wide and vast departure from their original mode of life, which enfeebled the empire, and prepared the way for a rapid decline. ”

“ But with hardly any exceptions they had been the merest puppets, now in the hands of Turkish ministers, now under the protection of practically independent dynasts. The real rulers of Persia during the years 874–1231 were, as we have seen, the Samanids, the Buyids, the Ghaznevids, the Selyuks, the Salgharids and the Khwarizm shahs. We now come to a new period in Persian history, when the numerous petty dynasties which succeeded the Seljuks were all swallowed up in the great Mongol invasion. ”

“ The new Persian empire. The widespread military insubordination was all the more dangerous since new and more aggressive foes began to threaten the integrity of the empire. In 227 A. D. the Parthian dynasty of the Arsacids was overthrown by the Persian Ardaschir (Artaxerxes) who founded the dynasty of the Sassanids. The establishment of this new Persian kingdom was accompanied by a revival of the national Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, and of the Persian claims to the eastern Roman provinces. In 231 the Persians drove the Roman troops out of Mesopotamia and penetrated Cappadocia and Syria. ”

“ If in late autumn and mid-winter a small Greek army, without maps or guides, could make its way for a thousand miles through Asia, and encounter no foe over whom it could not easily triumph, it was clear that the fabric of Persian power was rotten, and would collapse on the first serious attack. ”

“ In the East an Aryan Power overthrew the last of the Assyrian-Babylonian dynasties; but these Persian conquerors became assimilated to the conquered nations. Fundamentally their empire was of the same type as its predecessors. The Persian sway, however, extended not only into Egypt but over the partly Hellenised Asia Minor; and the Ionic revolt, in the first year of the fifth century B.C. brought the spirit of the East and the spirit of the West into fierce collision. The great king hurled his hosts against defiant Hellas; at Marathon and at Salamis, Athens shattered his army and his fleets. ”

“ Yes, Persia has indeed fallen into a pit, and we must pull her out, but the pit is not simply one of political difficulty, it is the pit of Muhammadanism, Persia’s most real difficulty, and we must annex Persia for the King of Kings. ”

“ Persia was the dominant Power in Western Asia. Alexander's great empire became broken up into separate kingdoms, which were finally absorbed in the Roman Empire, and this ultimately extended to the Tigris. Soon after the most civilized portions of the three continents had been reduced under one empire, the great event took place which forms the dividing-line of history, the birth of Christ and the spread of Christianity. In A.D. 226 a protracted struggle began between the newer Persian Empire and the Romans, which lasted till the advent of Mahomet, and the conquests of the Arabians. ”

“ After a journey of nine months through Persia, I am strongly of opinion that if the Empire is to have a solid and permanent resurrection, it must be through the enterprise of Persians, aided it may be by foreign skill and capital, though the less of the latter that is employed the more hopefully I should regard the Persian future. ”

“ The Greeks had believed that the whole vast space enclosed between the Black Sea, Caucasus, Caspian, and Jaxartes on the one hand, and the Arabian Desert, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean on the other, was bound together into one single centralized monarchy, all the resources of which were wielded by a single arm. They now found that even towards the heart of the empire, on the confines of Media and Assyria, there existed independent tribes which set the arms of Persia at defiance ”

“ Did you never observe how great is the property of the Spartan kings? And their wives are under the guardianship of the Ephori, who are public officers and watch over them, in order to preserve as far as possible the purity of the Heracleid blood. Still greater is the difference among the Persians; for no one entertains a suspicion that the father of a prince of Persia can be any one but the king. Such is the awe which invests the person of the queen, that any other guard is needless. ”

“ There have been periods in the world’s history when the religion of the Pārsīs threatened to dominate over all others. If Persia had won the battles of Marathon and Salamis, and thus succeeded in the final conquest of Greece, the worship of Ormazd might have become the religion of the whole civilized world. Persia already ruled over the Assyrian and Babylonian empires; the Jews were under her power, and the sacred monuments of Egypt had been mutilated by the Persian soldiery. ”

“ The present dynasty, which is of Turkoman origin, dates from 1789.
The achievements of the Persians in art, literature and religion are by no means contemptible, but somewhat mixed and cosmopolitan. Owing to its position, the Persian state, when it from time to time became a conquering empire, overlapped Asia Minor, Babylon and India, and hence acted as an intermediary for transmitting art and ideas, sending for instance Greek sculpture to India and the cult of Mithra to western Europe. ”

“ The kingdom of Persia, which rose last, in Cyrus, became more eminent than that of the Medes.
2. He saw this ram pushing all about him with his horns (v. 4) , westward (towards Babylon, Syria, Greece, and Asia the less) , northward (towards the Lydians, Armenians, and Scythians) , and southward (towards Arabia, Ethiopia, and Egypt) , for all these nations did the Persian empire, one time or other, make attempts upon for the enlarging of their dominion. And at last he became so powerful that no beasts might stand before him. ”

“ The Story of Ali Aba and the Forty Robbers Destroyed by a Slave
The Story of Ali Khujeh, a Merchant of Bagdad
THE STORY OF BEDER, PRINCE OF PERSIA, AND JEHAUN-ARA, PRINCESS OF SAMANDAL, OR SUMMUNDER. Persia was an empire of such vast extent, that its ancient monarchs, not without reason, assumed the haughty title of King of kings. For not to mention those subdued by their arms, there were kingdoms and provinces whose kings were not only tributary, but also in as great subjection as governors in other nations are to the monarchs. ”

“ Its influence, extending for centuries over Western and Southern Asia—from the frontiers of Affghanistan to the Levant, from the Persian Gulf to the shores of the Ægean Sea—was potent in modifying a vast population, destined to give birth to many civilised States. From its loins proceeded the empire of Persia,—which was, in fact, in all respects only a modification of the empire which it supplanted ”

“ The feeling of the Persian towards his king is one of which moderns can with difficulty form a conception. In Persia the monarch was so much the State, that patriotism itself was, as it were, swallowed up in loyalty; and an unquestioning submission, not only to the deliberate will, but to the merest caprice of the sovereign, was, by habit and education, so ingrained into the nature of the people that a contrary spirit scarcely ever manifested itself. In war the safety of the sovereign was the first thought, and the principal care of all. If the king suffered, all was lost ”

“ It is the common possession of their age, their nation, and the culture which it had attained; and marks in the most striking fashion the contrast of the relative values of Persian and Greek civilisation and political institutions. A handful of Greeks bid splendid defiance to the sovereign of the enormous Persian empire, to the sheer bulk of his army, and to all the intrigues of his satraps. It was the victory of Greek subtlety and skill over the rigid and mechanical organisation of Persia, of Greek science over the intellectual poverty of the East, of Greek tactics over Persian confusion ”

“ This prince had been set aside in favour of his next brother, Abbass Meerza, who had been selected to be Veli Ahed, or heir-apparent, to the Persian throne. The law of succession to the crown of Persia is not the same as that which regulates the inheritance of the royal and princely families of Turkey and Egypt. ”

“ History, however, has some splendid exceptions to this rule, and Persia has had three successive periods of intellectual prosperity,—three times has the national spirit awakened as from a torpor, and for a season it has gleamed like a star in the Orient, but three times it has either died out, or been crushed beneath the storm of conquest. ”