Extensive Definition

The Medes were an ancient Iranian people who lived in the northwestern portions of present-day Iran, roughly the areas of present day Kurdistan, Hamedan, Tehran, Lorestan, Azerbaijan, Esfahan and Zanjan. This area was known in Greek as Media or Medea (Μηδία, Old Persian ; adjective Median, antiquated also Medean). Under Assyrian rule, the Medes were known as Mādāyu. They entered this region with the first wave of Iranian tribes, in the late second millennium BC (the Bronze Age collapse).

By the 6th century BC, after having together with the Chaldeans defeated the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Medes were able to establish their own empire, that stretched from southern shore of the Black Sea and Aran province (the modern-day Republic of Azerbaijan) to north and Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and which included many tributary states, including the Persians, who eventually supplanted and absorbed the Median empire in the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

Early historical references to Medes

The origin and history of the Medes is quite obscure, as we possess almost no contemporary information, and not a single monument or inscription from Media itself. The story that Ctesias gave (a list of nine kings, beginning with Arbaces, who is said to have destroyed Nineveh in 880s BC, preserved in Diodorus ii. 32 sqq. and copied by many later authors) has no historical value whatsoever; though some of his names may be derived from local traditions.

Herodotus, i. 101, lists the names of six Median tribes: "Thus Deioces collected the Medes into a nation, and ruled over them alone. Now these are the tribes of which they consist: the Busae, the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii, and the Magi." He further notes that "the Medes had exactly the same equipment as the Persians; and indeed the dress common to both is not so much Persian as Median." (7.62)

According to Herodotus, "the Medes were called anciently by all people Aryans; but when Media, the Colchian, came to them from Athens, they changed their name. Such is the account which they themselves give." --- the Medes, History of Herodotus (7.7). (Medea is the Colchian-Thracian witch of Jason and the Argonauts, in Greek myth.)

Josephus relates the Medes (OT Heb. Madai) to the biblical character, Madai, son of Japheth. "Now as to Javan and Madai, the sons of Japhet; from Madai came the Madeans, who are called Medes, by the Greeks" Antiquities of the Jews, I:6.

According to the Book of Jubilees (10:35-36), Madai had married a daughter of Shem, and preferred to live among Shem's descendants, rather than dwell in Japheth's allotted inheritance beyond the Black Sea; so he begged his brothers-in-law, Elam, Asshur and Arphaxad, until he finally received from them the land that was named after him, Media.

We can see how the Persian element gradually became dominant; princes with Persian names occasionally occur as rulers of other tribes. But the Gelae, Tapuri, Cadusii, Amardi, Utii and other tribes in northern Media and on the shores of the Caspian may not have been Persian stock. Polybius (V. 44, 9), Strabo (xi. 507, 508, 514), and Pliny (vi. 46), considered the Anariaci to be among these tribes; but this name, meaning the "non-Arians", is probably a comprehensive designation for a number of smaller indigenous tribes.

The historical record

In 715 BC and 713 BC, Sargon II of Assyria subjected them up to "the far mountain Bikni", i.e. the Elbruz (Damavand) and the borders of the desert. If the account of Herodotus is to be trusted, the Median dynasty descends from Deioces (Daiukku), a Median chieftain in the Zagros, who, along with his kinsmen, was transported by Sargon to Hamath (Haniah) in Syria in 715 BC. This Daiukku seems to have originally been a governor of Mannae, subject to Sargon prior to his exile.

In spite of repeated rebellions by the early chieftains against Assyrian rule, the Medes paid tribute to Assyria under Sargon's successors, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashur-bani-pal whenever these kings marched against them. Assyrian forts located in Median territory at the time of Esarhaddon's campaign (ca. 676) included Bit-Parnakki, Bit-kari and Harhar (Kar-Sharrukin).

Median Empire

In the second 8th century BC, the Medes gained their independence and were united by a dynasty. Traditionally, the creator of the Median kingdom was one Deioces, who, according to Herodotus, reigned from 728 to 675 BC and founded the Median capital Ecbatana (modern Hamadan, Iran).

According to Herodotus, the conquests of Cyaxares the Medes were preceded by a Scythian invasion and domination lasting twenty-eight years (under Madius the Scythian, 653-625 BC). The Medes tribes seem to have come into immediate conflict with a settled state to the West known as Mannae, allied with Assyria. Assyrian inscriptions state that the early Medes rulers, who had attempted rebellions against the Assyrians in the time of Esarhaddon and Ashur-bani-pal, were allied with chieftains of the Ashguza (Scythians) and other tribes - who had come from the northern shore of the Black Sea and invaded Asia Minor. The state of Mannae was finally conquered and assimilated by the Medes in the year 616 BC.

In 612 BC, Cyaxares conquered Urartu, and in alliance with Nabopolassar (who created the Neo-Babylonian Empire), succeeded in destroying the Assyrian capital, Nineveh, and by 606 BC, the remaining vestiges of Assyrian control. From this point, the Medes king ruled over much of northern Mesopotamia, eastern Anatolia and Cappadocia. His power was a threat to his neighbors, and the exiled Jews expected the destruction of Babylonia by the Medes (Isaiah 13, 14m 21; Jerem. 1, 51.).

When Cyaxares attacked Lydia in the Battle of Halys, the kings of Cilicia and Babylon intervened and negotiated a peace in 585 BC, whereby the Halys river was established as the Medes' frontier with Lydia. Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon married a daughter of Cyaxares, and an equilibrium of the great powers was maintained until the rise of the Persians under Cyrus the Great.

Median Kings

Deioces (Old Iranian *Dahyu-ka) 727-675 B.C.
Phraortes (Old Iranian *Fravarti) 674-653
Madius (Scythian Rule) 652-625
Cyaxares (Old Iranian *Uvaxštra) 624-585
Astyages (Old Iranian *Ršti-vêga) 589-549

Modern research by a professor of Assyriology, Robert Rollinger, has questioned the extent of the Median empire and its sphere of influence, proposing for example that it did not control the Assyrian heartland.

Persian dominance

see Persian Mesopotamia In 221 BC, the satrap Molon tried to make himself independent (there exist bronze coins with his name and the royal title), together with his brother Alexander, satrap of Persis, but they were defeated and killed by Antiochus the Great. In the same way, the Mede satrap Timarchus took the diadem and conquered Babylonia; on his coins he calls himself the great king Timarchus; but again the legitimate king, Demetrius I, succeeded in subduing the rebellion, and Timarchus was slain. But with Demetrius I, the dissolution of the Seleucid Empire began, brought about chiefly by the intrigues of the Romans, and shortly afterwards, in about 150, the Parthian king Mithradates I conquered Media (Justin xli. 6).

From this time Media remained subject to the Arsacids or Parthians, who changed the name of Rhagae, or Europus, into Arsacia (Strabo xi. 524), and divided the country into five small provinces (Isidorus Charac.). From the Parthians, it passed in 226 to the Sassanids, together with Atropatene.

Under the Sassanids

By this time the older tribes of Aryan Iran had lost their distinct character and had been amalgamated into one people, the Iranians. The revival of Zoroastrianism, enforced everywhere by the Sassanids, completed this development. Atropatene, already center of the fire cult during Parthian times (see Takht-i-Suleiman) now became the site of one of the legendary Great Fires. Under the patronage of Kartir, the 'priest of priests' of the early Sassanid kings, Arsacia/Rhagae advanced to become one of the two (the other being Ishtakhr, ancestral seat of the Sassanid priest-kings) centers of the Zoroastrian priesthood.

Median language

Strabo, in his "Geography", mentions the affinity of Mede with other Iranian languages:

Words probably of Mede origin appear in various other Iranian dialects, including Old Persian. For example, Herodotus mentions the word Spaka (dog), still found in Iranic languages such as Talyshi. Other words also thought to be of Mede origin (I.M Diakonoff, Medes) include

Farnah: Divine glory; (Avestan: khvarnah),
Paridaiza: Paradise, (as in Pardis پردیس)
Vazraka: Great, (as Modern Persian Bozorg بزرگ),
Vispa: All, (as in Avestan),
Xshayathiya (royal, royalty).

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