Parthia ( peo, 𐎱𐎼𐎰𐎺 ''Parθava''; xpr, 𐭐𐭓𐭕𐭅 ''Parθaw''; pal, 𐭯𐭫𐭮𐭥𐭡𐭥 ''Pahlaw'') is a historical region located in northeastern
Greater Iran
Greater Iran ( fa, ایران بزرگ, translit=Irān-e Bozorg) refers to a region covering parts of Western Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Xinjiang, and the Caucasus, where both Culture of Iran, Iranian culture and Iranian langua ...
. It was conquered and subjugated by the empire of the
Medes during the 7th century BC, was incorporated into the subsequent
Achaemenid Empire under
Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BC, and formed part of the
Hellenistic Seleucid Empire following the
4th-century-BC conquests of
Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, wikt:Ἀλέξανδρος, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Maced ...
. The region later served as the political and cultural base of the
Eastern Iranian Parni people and Arsacid dynasty, rulers of the
Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD). The
Sasanian Empire, the last state of
pre-Islamic Iran, also held the region and maintained the
seven Parthian clans as part of their feudal aristocracy.
Name

The name "Parthia" is a continuation from
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
', from
Old Persian
Old Persian is one of the two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan language, Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native ...
', which was the
Parthian language self-designator signifying "of the Parthians" who were an
Iranian people. In context to its
Hellenistic period, ''Parthia'' also appears as ''Parthyaea''.
Parthia was known as ''Pahlaw'' in the Middle Persian sources of the Sasanian period, and ''Pahla'' or ''Fahla'' by later Islamic authors.
Geography
The original location of Parthia roughly corresponds to a region in northeastern
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, though part is in southern
Turkmenistan. It was bordered by the
Kopet Dag mountain range in the north, and the
Dasht-e-Kavir desert in the south. It bordered
Media on the west,
Hyrcania on the north west,
Margiana on the northeast, and
Aria on the east.
During Arsacid times, Parthia was united with
Hyrcania as one administrative unit, and that region is therefore often (subject to context) considered a part of Parthia proper.
By the early Sasanian period, Parthia was located in the central part of the Iranian plateau, neighboring
Pars to the south,
Khuzistan to the south-west,
Media to the north-west, the Alborz Mountains to the north,
Abarshahr to the north-east, and
Kirman to the east. In the late Sasanian era, Parthia came to embrace not only central and north-central Iran, but extended to the western parts of the plateau as well.
In the Islamic era, Parthia was believed to be located in central and western Iran.
Ibn al-Muqaffa considered Parthia as encompassing the regions of
Isfahan
Isfahan ( fa, اصفهان, Esfahân ), from its Achaemenid empire, ancient designation ''Aspadana'' and, later, ''Spahan'' in Sassanian Empire, middle Persian, rendered in English as ''Ispahan'', is a major city in the Greater Isfahan Regio ...
,
Ray, Hamadan, Mah-i Nihawand and
Azerbaijan. The same definition is found in the works of
al-Khawazmi and
Hamza al-Isfahani.
Al-Dinawari, while not using the word Parthia, considered
Jibal to be the realm of the last Parthian king,
Artabanus IV.
History
Under the Achaemenids
As the region inhabited by Parthians, Parthia first appears as a political entity in
Achaemenid lists of governorates ("satrapies") under their dominion. Prior to this, the people of the region seem to have been subjects of the
Medes, and 7th century BC Assyrian texts mention a country named Partakka or Partukka (though this "need not have coincided topographically with the later Parthia").
A year after
Cyrus the Great's defeat of the Median
Astyages, Parthia became one of the first provinces to acknowledge Cyrus as their ruler, "and this allegiance secured Cyrus' eastern flanks and enabled him to conduct the first of his imperial campaigns – against
Sardis." According to Greek sources, following the seizure of the Achaemenid throne by
Darius I, the Parthians united with the Median king Phraortes to revolt against him.
Hystaspes, the Achaemenid governor of the province (said to be father of Darius I), managed to suppress the revolt, which seems to have occurred around 522–521 BC.
The first indigenous Iranian mention of Parthia is in the
Behistun inscription of
Darius I, where Parthia is listed (in the typical Iranian clockwise order) among the governorates in the vicinity of
Drangiana. The inscription dates to c. 520 BC. The center of the administration "may have been at
hat would later be known as Hecatompylus". The Parthians also appear in Herodotus' list of peoples subject to the Achaemenids; the historiographer treats the Parthians, Chorasmians, Sogdians and Areioi as peoples of a single satrapy (the 16th), whose annual tribute to the king he states to be only 300 talents of silver. This "has rightly caused disquiet to modern scholars."
At the
Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC between the forces of Darius III and those of
Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, wikt:Ἀλέξανδρος, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Maced ...
, one such Parthian unit was commanded by
Phrataphernes, who was at the time Achaemenid governor of Parthia. Following the defeat of Darius III, Phrataphernes surrendered his governorate to Alexander when the Macedonian arrived there in the summer of 330 BC. Phrataphernes was reappointed governor by Alexander.
Under the Seleucids
Following the death of Alexander, in the
Partition of Babylon in 323 BC, Parthia became a
Seleucid governorate under
Nicanor. Phrataphernes, the former governor, became governor of
Hyrcania. In 320 BC, at the
Partition of Triparadisus, Parthia was reassigned to
Philip, former governor of
Sogdiana. A few years later, the province was invaded by
Peithon, governor of Media Magna, who then attempted to make his brother Eudamus governor. Peithon and Eudamus were driven back, and Parthia remained a governorate in its own right.
In 316 BC, Stasander, a vassal of
Seleucus I Nicator
Seleucus I Nicator (; ; grc-gre, Σέλευκος Νικάτωρ , ) was a Ancient Macedonians, Macedonian Greek general who was an officer and successor (Diadochi, ''diadochus'') of Alexander the Great. Seleucus was the founder of the eponymou ...
and governor of
Bactria (and, it seems, also of
Aria and
Margiana) was appointed governor of Parthia. For the next 60 years, various Seleucids would be appointed governors of the province.
In 247 BC, following the death of
Antiochus II,
Ptolemy III seized control of the Seleucid capital at
Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes (; grc-gre, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου, ''Antiókheia hē epì Oróntou'', Koine Greek phonology#Learned pronunciation, 4th century BC until early Roman period, Learned ; also Syrian Antioch) grc-koi ...
, and "so left the future of the Seleucid dynasty for a moment in question."
[.] Taking advantage of the uncertain political situation,
Andragoras, the Seleucid governor of Parthia, proclaimed his independence and began minting his own coins.
Meanwhile, "a man called
Arsaces, of
Scythian or Bactrian origin,
aselected leader of the
Parni",
[.] an eastern-Iranian peoples from the Tajen/Tajend River valley, south-east of the
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia; east of the Caucasus, west of the broad s ...
.
[.] Following the secession of Parthia from the Seleucid Empire and the resultant loss of Seleucid military support, Andragoras had difficulty in maintaining his borders, and about 238 BC – under the command of "Arsaces and his brother
Tiridates"
[.] – the Parni invaded
[.] Parthia and seized control of Astabene (Astawa), the northern region of that territory, the administrative capital of which was Kabuchan (
Kuchan in the vulgate).
A short while later the Parni seized the rest of Parthia from Andragoras, killing him in the process. Although an initial
punitive expedition by the Seleucids under
Seleucus II was not successful, the Seleucids under
Antiochus III recaptured Arsacid controlled territory in 209 BC from Arsaces' (or Tiridates') successor,
Arsaces II. Arsaces II sued for peace and accepted vassal status,
and it was not until Arsaces II's grandson (or grand-nephew)
Phraates I, that the Arsacids/Parni would again begin to assert their independence.
[.]
Under the Arsacids

From their base in Parthia, the
Arsacid dynasts eventually extended their dominion to include most of
Greater Iran
Greater Iran ( fa, ایران بزرگ, translit=Irān-e Bozorg) refers to a region covering parts of Western Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Xinjiang, and the Caucasus, where both Culture of Iran, Iranian culture and Iranian langua ...
. They also quickly established several eponymous branches on the thrones of
Armenia
Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and '' ...
,
Iberia, and
Caucasian Albania. Even though the Arsacids only sporadically had their capital in Parthia, their power base was there, among the Parthian feudal families, upon whose military and financial support the Arsacids depended. In exchange for this support, these families received large tracts of land among the earliest conquered territories adjacent to Parthia, which the Parthian nobility then ruled as provincial rulers. The largest of these city-states were
Kuchan,
Semnan,
Gorgan,
Merv,
Zabol and
Yazd.
From about 105 BC onwards, the power and influence of this handful of Parthian noble families was such that they frequently opposed the monarch, and would eventually be a "contributory factor in the downfall" of the dynasty.
[.]
From about 130 BC onwards, Parthia suffered numerous incursions by various nomadic tribes, including the
Sakas, the
Yuezhi, and the
Massagetae. Each time, the Arsacid dynasts responded personally, doing so even when there were more severe threats from
Seleucids or
Romans looming on the western borders of their empire (as was the case for
Mithridates I). Defending the empire against the nomads cost
Phraates II and
Artabanus I their lives.
The Roman
Crassus attempted to conquer Parthia in 52 BC but was decisively defeated at the
Battle of Carrhae.
Caesar was planning another invasion when he was assassinated in 44 BC. A long series of
Roman-Parthian wars followed.
Around 32 BC, civil war broke out when a certain Tiridates rebelled against
Phraates IV, probably with the support of the nobility that Phraates had previously persecuted. The revolt was initially successful, but failed by 25 BC. In 9/8, the Parthian nobility succeeded in putting their preferred king on the throne, but
Vonones proved to have too tight a budgetary control, so he was usurped in favor of
Artabanus II, who seems to have been a non-Arsacid Parthian nobleman. But when Artabanus attempted to consolidate his position (at which he was successful in most instances), he failed to do so in the regions where the Parthian provincial rulers held sway.
By the 2nd century AD, the
frequent wars with neighboring Rome and with the nomads, and the infighting among the Parthian nobility had weakened the Arsacids to a point where they could no longer defend their subjugated territories. The empire fractured as vassalaries increasingly claimed independence or were subjugated by others, and the Arsacids were themselves finally vanquished by the
Persian Sassanids, a formerly minor vassal from southwestern Iran, in April 224.
Under the Sasanians
Parthia was likely the first region conquered by Ardashir I after his victory over Artabanus IV, showing the importance of the province to the founder of the Sasanian dynasty.
Some of the Parthian nobility continued to resist Sasanian dominion for some time, but most switched their allegiance to the Sasanians very early. Several families that claimed descent from the Parthian noble families became a Sasanian institution known as the "
Seven houses", five of which are "in all probability" not Parthian, but contrived genealogies "in order to emphasize the antiquity of their families."
[.]
Parthia continued to hold importance throughout the 3rd century. In his
Ka'be-ye Zardusht inscription
Shapur I lists the province of Parthia in second place after Pars. The Abnun inscription describes the
Roman invasion of 243/44 as an attack on Pars and Parthia. Considering the Romans never went further than Mesopotamia, "Pars and Parthia" may stand for the Sasanian Empire itself. Parthia was also the second province chosen for settlement by Roman prisoners of war after the
Battle of Edessa in 260.
Language and literature

The Parthians spoke
Parthian, a north-western Iranian language. No Parthian literature survives from before the Sassanid period in its original form, and they seem to have written down only very little. The Parthians did, however, have a thriving
oral minstrel-poet culture, to the extent that their word for minstrel – ''gosan'' – survives to this day in many Iranian languages as well as especially in
Armenian (
"gusan"), on which it practised heavy (especially
lexical and vocabulary) influence. These professionals were evident in every facet of Parthian daily life, from cradle to grave, and they were entertainers of kings and commoners alike, proclaiming the worthiness of their patrons through association with mythical heroes and rulers. These Parthian heroic poems, "mainly known through Persian of the lost
Middle Persian ''Xwaday-namag'', and notably through
Firdausi's ''
Shahnameh'',
eredoubtless not yet wholly lost in the Khurasan of
irdausi'sday."
In Parthia itself, attested use of written Parthian is limited to the nearly 3,000
ostraca found (in what seems to have been a
wine storage) at
Nisa, in present-day Turkmenistan. A handful of other evidence of written Parthian has also been found outside Parthia; the most important of these being the part of a land-sale document found at
Avroman (in the
Kermanshah province of
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
), and more ostraca, graffiti and the fragment of a business letter found at
Dura-Europos in present-day
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
.
The Parthian Arsacids do not seem to have used Parthian until relatively late, and the language first appears on Arsacid coinage during the reign of
Vologases I (51–58 AD). Evidence that use of Parthian was nonetheless widespread comes from early Sassanid times; the declarations of the early
Persian kings were – in addition to their native
Middle Persian – also inscribed in Parthian.
The old poems known as
''fahlaviyat'' mostly come from the areas which were considered part of Parthia in the Islamic period. These poems have the characteristics of oral literature and may have continued the oral traditions of Parthian minstrels.
Society
City-states of "some considerable size" existed in Parthia as early as the 1st millennium BC, "and not just from the time of the Achaemenids or Seleucids."
[.] However, for the most part, society was rural, and dominated by large landholders with large numbers of serfs, slaves, and other indentured labor at their disposal.
Communities with free peasants also existed.
By Arsacid times, Parthian society was divided into the four classes (limited to freemen). At the top were the kings and near family members of the king. These were followed by the lesser nobility and the general priesthood, followed by the mercantile class and lower-ranking civil servants, and with farmers and herdsmen at the bottom.
Little is known of the Parthian economy, but agriculture must have played the most important role in it. Significant trade first occurs with the establishment of the
Silk road in 114 BC, when
Hecatompylos became an important junction.
Parthian cities
Nisa (Nissa, Nusay) or Mithradātkert, located on a main trade route, was one of the earliest capitals of the Parthian Empire (c. 250 BC). The city is located in the northern foothills of the Kopetdag mountains, 11 miles west of present-day city of
Ashgabat (the capital of
Turkmenistan). Nisa had a "soaring two-story hall in the Hellenistic Greek style"
and temple complexes used by early
Arsaces dynasty. During the reign of
Mithridates I of Parthia (c. 171 BC–138 BC) it was renamed ''Mithradatkirt'' ("fortress of Mithradates").
Merv (modern-day Mary) was another Parthian city.
*
Asaak
*
Hecatompylos
*
Gurgan
See also
*
List of Parthian kings
*
Khwarasan
*
Greater Khorasan
Greater Khorāsān,Dabeersiaghi, Commentary on Safarnâma-e Nâsir Khusraw, 6th Ed. Tehran, Zavvâr: 1375 (Solar Hijri Calendar) 235–236 or Khorāsān ( pal, Xwarāsān; fa, wikt:خراسان, خراسان ), is a historical eastern region in ...
*
Adur Burzen-Mihr
*
Parthian shot
References
Bibliography
* .
* .
* .
* .
* .
* .
* .
* .
* .
* Olbrycht, Marek Jan (1998), Parthia et ulteriores gentes. Die politischen Beziehungen zwischen dem arsakidischen Iran und den Nomaden der eurasischen Steppen, Munich.
* Olbrycht, Marek Jan (2016), "Manpower Resources and Army Organisation in the Arsakid Empire", ''Ancient Society,'' 46, pp. 291–338 (DOI: 10.2143/AS.46.0.3167457).
* .
* Verstandig Andre,(2001) Histoire de l'Empire Parthe. Brussels, Le Cri.
* Wolski, Józef (1993), L’Empire des Arsacides (= Acta Iranica 32), Lovanii: Peeters
* .
{{Authority control
Parthian Empire
Historical regions of Iran
Provinces of the Sasanian Empire
Achaemenid satrapies
Iranian countries and territories
ja:パルティア