From Achaemenids to Nadir Shah: Debunking the myth of a ‘pacifist’ Persia

The ongoing war in West Asia has raised a storm on social media over the complicated history of the country now known as Iran. It all began when one X handle talked about Persia being a 5000-year-old civilisation that has never attacked another country unprovoked. Revisionist history lessons are a dime a dozen on social media, but this one has sparked off a fierce debate on the history of Iran’s expansionist tendencies down millennia.

Keeping aside the absurdity of a civilisation as ancient as Iran being completely pacifist in nature, this particular posturing – to drive home the current narrative of Israel being the sole and perpetual aggressor in the region – is simply not backed by history. Ancient Iran had a series of powerful empires that left their mark on antiquity. Then as now, imperial power is seldom acquired or advertised through peaceful means, and the more expansionist it is, the more brutal its footprint. Chroniclers of Indian history have recorded that footprint in blood.

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Social media in India is understandably focusing on the Delhi massacre by Nadir Shah, who not only carried away the Peacock Throne but also killed 30,000 people for good measure after his victory at the battle of Karnal on February 24, 1739. A contemporary eyewitness account titled Bayan-i-Waqai by one Khwaja Abdul Karim describes the six-hour dance of death which saw areas like Chandni Chowk, Dariba Kalan, Fatehpuri, Faiz Bazar, and the Lahori, Ajmeri, and Kabuli gates piled high with dead bodies.

So brutal was the carnage that many families killed themselves, including their women and children, rather than face the savagery of the Persian soldiers. All over the city, even in its famed gardens, lay dead bodies, and for weeks afterwards, the gutters overflowed with blood, and the stench of death hung like a shroud over Delhi. Nadir Shah’s blood-soaked footprint has been likened by contemporary chroniclers to another invader who came via Kabul – Amir Timur.

But Nadir Shah is just the most recent invader whose baleful gaze turned from Persia to India. One of the oldest accounts of India – full of fanciful and imaginary embellishments – comes from a chronicler called Scylax of Caryanda, who was employed by Achaemenid Emperor Darius the Great to not only reconnoitre the route that his army could follow to invade India but also write a colourful, racy account about it.

Scylax’s Periplus includes details like men sleeping on their long ears or tiny people using their giant feet as umbrellas, but his real job was to chart out the route that the Achaemenid army could take to conquer Gandhara, Punjab and Sindh. This region became the emperor’s 20th satrapy and one of his richest as well, paying 360 talents of gold dust as tax every year.

The Behistun inscription mentions 23 countries, including "Gandhara", which the emperor subdued and controlled (the list included Persia, Elam, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, Phoenicia, Ionia, Armenia, Cappadocia, Bactria, Sogdia, and Scythia, among many others). For 6th century BCE Persia, conquest of half the civilised world of antiquity was a critical part of its positioning as a glittering regime second to none.

Interestingly, the inclusion of northwest India into the Achaemenid empire led to the appointment of Indians in the imperial army. That’s how war elephants entered the Persian garrisons, and it was these fearsome beasts that terrified Alexander in the battle of Gaugamela two hundred years later. In fact, Indian soldiers fought alongside Persian garrisons when Darius’ son Xerxes took on King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans in the Battle of Thermopylae. The Persian invasion of Greece led to the burning of Athens, though, ultimately, Xerxes’ campaign was thwarted by the Greeks.

Nor is this expansionist focus peculiar to the Achaemenid empire alone. A century and a half before Darius the Great, another Persian emperor left his military footprint over the civilised ancient world – Ashurbanipal. Between 667 and 640 BCE, he conquered Egypt, Elam, Babylon and Arabia and left a pretty impressive account of his campaigns for posterity. A series of reliefs from his palace at Nineveh – now, predictably enough, in the British Museum – show defeated kings being humiliated and tortured.

The most violent of these documents the Battle of Til-Tuba, in which the Assyrians routed the Elamites, killing the retreating enemy with maces and axes and beheading their king. This detailed depiction of military might was necessary not only to document an important victory but also to ensure that Ashurbanipal could, legitimately, declare himself the King of the World.

Persia’s military might and its civilisational positioning brought it into conflict with the Roman Empire as well, and between the first and seventh centuries CE, the two powers fought an on-again, off-again war. As political muscle shifted to the Byzantine Empire and Persian power moved to the Parthian/Sasanian rulers, Armenia and Mesopotamia became war zones and the main fault lines for conflict. The continued face-offs ended after 700 years when the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah in 636 CE decimated the Sasanian Empire and opened the door for Islamic conquest of Persia.

Interestingly, north-west India continued to have Persian footprints, with history recording Indo-Parthian kingdoms like that of King Gondophares, who ruled Gandhara, Punjab and Sindh in the first century CE. His capital was Takshashila, and Sanskrit texts refer to him as a Pahlava monarch. He was followed by successors like Abdagases, Gondophares II or Sarpedones and Orthagnes or Gondophares III, all of whom were weak enough to have been largely ignored by history.

The point about this somewhat rambling history lesson is that Persia’s very long and very rich history has enough military imprint to make its ancient empires rival some of the most well-known political powers in antiquity. Like ancient Rome or Alexander’s Macedonians or Pharaonic Egypt, imperial Persia was built on military might. To assume otherwise is not just illogical; it’s also historically incorrect.

(Nandini Sen Gupta is a freelance writer and author of several books. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)