Ancient Mediterranean and West Asian civilizations appeared very early, economic, cultural and social are relatively advanced, of which ancient Egypt as early as 4,000 years ago established a huge empire, leaving the world with immortal pyramids; the Two Rivers Valley, the Greek Peninsula also appeared very early city-state system of the country, but also created a splendid civilization. At the same time, this region is also the cradle of ancient super empires, and there have been five super empires spanning three continents in Asia, Europe and Africa, all of which have run rampant in this region for a while, but they have not lasted long before they collapsed one after another. Today, Xiaobian will introduce the following five super empires to you.
I. The Persian Empire
The Persian Empire originated in the Iranian plateau as a powerful state founded by the ancient Persians. In the sixth century BC, Persia was part of the Medes Kingdom, and Cyrus II established the Persian Empire in 553 BC and conquered the Median Kingdom three years later, becoming an extremely powerful state. In 547 BC, Cyrus II conquered the kingdom of Lydia in western Asia Minor, and then conquered Parthia, Alia, Bactria, Drangiana, Gedrosia, Arachosia, Margiana, the Central Asian River Region, Gandhara, and Cransmia to the east, making Persia a very large empire.
Images of The Second Generation
By the time of Cambyses II, the Persian Empire had conquered the Kingdom of Egypt and extended Persian power to Africa. Darius I conquered the Indus Valley, the Danube Delta, Thrace and other European regions, making the Persian Empire the first great empire to span the three continents of Asia, Europe and Africa. The territory of the Persian Empire stretched from the Pamir Plateau and the Indus Plain in the east, to the Thrace and Nile River valleys of the Greek Peninsula in the west, to the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains in the north, and to the sea in the south, with an area of 7 million square kilometers and a population of more than 50 million people, making it the largest empire in the world at that time. However, with the defeat of the Persian conquest of the Greek city-states, the Persian Empire began to decline, and was finally defeated by the Macedonian king Alexander's crusade.
Map of the Persian Empire
2. The Macedonian Empire
The Macedonian Empire, also known as the Alexander Empire, was an empire established by Alexander, the Macedonian king, also known as alexander's empire. The Kingdom of Macedonia, located in the northern part of the Greek city-states, has been unknown and has no specific historical record, and once submitted to the Persian Empire. By the mid-to-late 4th century BC, King Philip II succeeded to the throne as King of Macedonia, and after stabilizing the internal political situation, he carried out a series of political, economic and military reforms of the kingdom, strengthened the power of the monarch, formed the world-famous Macedonian phalanx, and quickly became a superpower on the Greek peninsula and freed itself from the control of the Persian Empire. The Macedonian phalanx consisted of heavy cavalry and heavy infantry, of which the heavy infantry was armed with a spear 6.3 meters long, and the formation was listed in up to 32 columns deep.
Macedonian phalanx
The role of the heavy infantry is to resist the enemy's attack, and the main role of the heavy cavalry is to attack the enemy's two wings and play a decisive role in the war. After philip II's reforms, taking advantage of the chaos in Greece, he went south to control the northern Greek city-states, further defeated the Greek anti-Macedonian alliance in Croatia, forced the whole of Greece to recognize the supremacy of Macedonia, and formed the Corinthian Alliance with the Macedonian kingdom as the core, completing the conquest of Greece. In 336 BC, Philip II was assassinated by Assassins sent by the Persian Empire at his daughter's wedding, and Alexander, who was only twenty years old, succeeded him as King of Macedonia and quickly took control of the situation. To avenge Philip II, in 335 BC Alexander decided to lead an army of 30,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry to conquer the Persian Empire to the east.
Alexander's Crusade
In the spring of 334 AD, Alexander led thirty-five thousand men and one hundred and sixty warships to begin an expedition to the Persian Empire. It is said that before leaving, Alexander gave all his possessions to his subordinates, and a general asked him: "Your Majesty has divided all his possessions, what have you left for yourself?" Alexander replied, "Hopefully, I keep hope to myself, and they give me endless wealth." "The Persian Empire was under the rule of Darius III, who was weak and politically corrupt, and soon Alexander defeated the Persian army in Asia Minor and occupied all of Asia Minor. In 333 BC, Alexander's army met a hundred thousand Persian troops led by Darius III on the plains of Issus (near present-day Hanjie, Turkey), and as soon as the two armies fought, Darius III escaped, resulting in the defeat of Persia, and Alexander captured Darius III's mother, wife, and two daughters and occupied Darius's palace. The Battle of Issus severely damaged the Persian Empire. Alexander continued to occupy Syria and Phoenicia to the east, and then south to Africa to occupy Egypt, became the Egyptian pharaoh, and built the city of Alexandria. In 331 BC, Alexander entered the Two Rivers Valley, and in Gaugamela fought with Darius III's million-strong army, Darius III escaped again, the Persian Empire collapsed, and Alexander occupied the cities of Babylon and Susa. In 330 BC, Alexander occupied the capital of the Persian Empire, Persepolis, and the Persian Empire officially collapsed.
Alexander's Empire
Alexander continued his pursuit of Darius III, eventually causing Darius III to be killed by his men, and later invaded India, returning after being frustrated, ending a decade-long crusade. With Babylon as its capital, Alexander built a vast empire stretching from the Indus Valley in the east, Macedonia and Greece in the west, the Black Sea in the north, and the Ocean and Egypt in the south, covering an area of 5.5 million square kilometers. But after Alexander's death, the empire soon fell apart, and eventually the homeland, Asia Minor, Egypt, etc. were incorporated into the Roman Empire.
Iii. The Roman Empire
The Roman Empire originated in the Roman Republic. According to legend, the Roman Republic was captured by the Greek Confederation, and the Trojan prince Aeneas fled to Italy and established the Kingdom of Alba. Aeneas's grandson Romulus established Rome and exercised parliamentary rule, known as the Republican Era. From the 5th to the third century BC, Rome defeated the city-states on the Italian peninsula and the Greek colonies, becoming a great power in the Mediterranean.
Warriors of the Roman Empire
Later, through three Punic wars, the Greek colony of Carthage in North Africa was finally conquered in 146 BC; the Macedonian War was launched, which conquered the Macedonian kingdom, controlled the entire Greek alliance, and conquered Syria to the east, initially establishing a powerful state spanning the three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa. In 27 BC, after years of political struggle, Octavian defeated Antony one after another, won the title of "Augustus" and "Father of the Fatherland" granted by the Roman Senate, and established the Roman Empire. After the establishment of the Roman Empire, it continued to wage foreign wars, successively occupying Asia Minor, Egypt, Spain, Gaul, the Rhine Valley, the Caucasus, Britain, North Africa and other regions, making the Mediterranean Sea an inner lake, becoming the most powerful country in the world at that time, with a land area of 5 million square kilometers and a population of 60 million. Under the blows of the Germanic and other barbarians, in 395 AD it split into two parts: the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire. The Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476 AD. After a brief revival by Justinian, the Eastern Roman Empire declined and was eventually destroyed by the Ottoman Empire.
Map of the Roman Empire
Iv. The Arab Empire
The Arab Empire was an empire established by the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula, who were nomadic people living in the Arabian Peninsula and had a certain blood relationship with the Jews. In the seventh century AD, the Arabian Peninsula was ruled by the Umayyad family. In 610 AD, the Prophet Muhammad began to spread Islam in the name of Allah in the city of Mecca, the number of believers increased rapidly, and many nobles became Muslims, threatening the rule of the Umayyad family, who persecuted Muhammad. In 622 AD, Muhammad was forced to flee the city of Medina, where the Muslim commune Uma was formed with the Muslim commune of Uma, based on the migration of Muslims from Mecca and the indigenous people of Medina who converted to Islam, and formulated a charter in accordance with Islamic principles as the norm for people's behavior.
Muslim warriors
In order to prevent the threat from Mecca and to protect the nascent regime, Muhammad was authorized by the Allah to command the Huma Commune and counterattacked in a defensive war, which was the prototype of the Arab Empire, which eventually occupied the city of Mecca and unified the Arabian Peninsula. In 632 AD, Muhammad died and his successor became caliph. The first caliph, Abu Bakr, suppressed armed rebellions against the Muslims, developed a strategic plan for the conquest of Persia and the Byzantine Empire, and conquered the tribes of southern Iraq and the regions of Syria and Palestine. The second caliph, Umar, launched the largest conquest of the Arab Empire, conquering vast areas such as the Sassanid Dynasty of Persia and Egypt. The third caliph, the Ottomans, conquered Khorasan in Asia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Libya in Africa. During the reign of the fourth caliph, Ali, the Arab Empire was mired in strife, and Ali was assassinated. All four caliphs were the heirs of the prophets, known as the Four Great Caliphs, a period that became a theocratic republic. During the four caliphates, the Arab Empire conquered a vast area and laid the foundation for the further development of the Arab Empire. After Ali's death, the Governor of Syria of the Maa family, Muawiyah, became caliph, established the Umayyad Dynasty with Damascus as its capital, changed the caliphate to family hereditary, ended the theocratic republican period, and made the Arab Empire enter its heyday and began a large-scale external expansion. In the east, it conquered the Afghan region and the Indus Valley, but was stopped by the Tang Dynasty and Tibet before it stopped the pace of eastward progress. In the western Arab Empire and the Byzantine Empire for a long war, occupied all the territory of the Byzantine Empire in Africa, and further occupied Tunisia, Morocco and other vast territories to the west, so that the Berbers converted to Islam, and with the Berber army across the Strait of Gibraltar conquered the Iberian Peninsula and waged war with the Frankish kingdom in Europe. In 732 AD, the Arab army was defeated by the Frankish Kingdom, ending more than a hundred years of expansion, and the empire's territory had spanned three continents in Asia, Europe and Africa, covering an area of 13.4 million square kilometers, making it the largest empire in the world. Later, the empire fell into decline and division, and finally was destroyed by the rising Mongol Empire.
Map of the Arab Empire
V. The Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire was an empire founded by the Turks. The Turks were originally a small Turkic tribe under Khwarazm in Central Asia, but after the Mongol Conquest of Khwarazm, the Turks moved west to Asia Minor, attached themselves to the Sultanate of Roma, and received a fief near the Byzantine Empire! In 1299, the Turk leader Ottoman took advantage of the division of the Sultanate of Roma to declare independence, began centuries of crazy expansion, successively occupied the Sultanate of Roma, the Byzantine Empire and other countries, and established the Ottoman Empire in the name of Ottoman, and by the end of the seventeenth century, it became a huge empire spanning three continents of Asia, Europe and Africa, covering an area of 5.5 million square kilometers! However, the Ottoman Empire soon declined as a feudal dynasty and became the target of aggression by Western powers such as Britain, France, Russia, and Austria, and was called the Sick Man of West Asia. In the 19th century, under the blows of European powers, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro and other regions of the Ottoman Empire became independent or were occupied, and the Ottoman Empire only had a small amount of territory left in the Balkan Peninsula in the capital Istanbul and its surroundings! During World War I, the Ottoman Empire joined the allies of Germany and Austria-Hungary, became a defeated country, signed the Treaty of Sèvres, and the Ottoman Empire collapsed, losing a large part of north Africa, West Asia, and the Caucasus, with an area of only 783,300 square kilometers.
Map of the Ottoman Empire