Persia (which changed its name to Iran in 1935) was one of the
world's first civilizations; it has evidence of Neolithic Aryan (peoples who spoke
Indo-European languages) settlements from nearly ten thousand years ago. Persians
are a non-Arab people who migrated from central Asia. According to National
Geographic, "If you draw lines from the Mediterranean to Beijing or Beijing
to Cairo or Paris to Delhi, they all pass through Iran, which straddles a region
where East meets West. Over 26 centuries, a blending of the hemispheres has been
going on here-trade, cultural interchange, friction -- with Iran smack in the
middle."
The Elamites established the first known Persian dynasty in
the third millennium BC. Another Aryan people, the Medes (the ancestors of the
Kurds of today), created a unified empire in the northwestern part of that
region around 625 BC. Cyrus the Great, who issued what some consider the
world's first declaration of human rights, overthrew the Medes and established the
Achaemenid Empire, expanding Persian control and influence from Egypt to India --
making it one of the largest empires in history. His descendants, Darius and his
son Xerxes, invaded Greece but were defeated and expelled from Europe in 479 BC.
In the next century, Alexander the Great conquered Persia and
ended the Achaemenid dynasty. After about a hundred years of Alexander's
Seleucid Empire, the Parthian and Sassanid dynasties reestablished Persian rule
until the Arab invasion in the seventh century AD. The Persians, the Kurds, the
Turks, and others then converted to Islam.
(Kee Malesky, ‘All Facts Considered –
the essential library of inessential knowledge’)