An ancient people living to the SW of the Caspian Sea, often wrongly identified with the Persians. At their peak in the 7th-c and 6th-c BC, they conquered Urartu and Assyria, and extended their power as far west as C Turkey. In the E they ruled most of Iran. Their empire passed to the Persians c.550 BC.
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The Medes (Kurdish Medya, Mêdî or Mad, Modern Persian مادها, Mādḥā) were an ancient Iranian people, who lived in the north, western, and northwestern portions of present-day Iran, and roughly the areas of present day Tehran, Hamedan, Azarbaijan, north of Esfahan, Zanjan, and Kurdistan. By the 6th century BC, the Medes were able to establish an empire that stretched from Aran province (the modern-day Republic of Azerbaijan) to north and Central Asia and Afghanistan, and which included many tributary states, including that more famous country which eventually threw off the yoke of overlordship, then supplanted and absorbed the Medean empire, the Achaemenid Persian Empire of Cyrus the great, Darius I and Xerxes I fame.
The Medes are credited with the foundation of Iran as a nation and empire, and established the first Iranian empire, the largest of its day until Cyrus the Great established a unified empire of the Medes and Persians, often referred to as the Achaemenid Persian Empire, by defeating his grandfather and overlord, Astyages the shah of Media. Until that point, all Iranians were referred to as Mede or Mada.
Medes in ancient times intermarried with other Iranians, especially Persians. Thus many modern Iranians are descendants of the Medes.
The six Mede tribes in Herodotus
Herodotus, i. 101, lists the names of six Mede 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.
Herodotus also mentions 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) "These Medes were called anciently by all people Aryans; --- the Medes, History of Herodotus (7.7).
Early historical references to Medes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.
Josephus relates the Medes (OT Heb. from Madai came the Madeans, who are called Medes, by the Greeks" Antiquities of the Jews, I:6.
Other ancient historians including Strabo, Ptolemy, Herodotus, Polybius, and Pliny, mention names such as Mantiane, Martiane, Matiane, Matiene, to designate the northern part of Media.
We can see how the Iranian element gradually became dominant;
The Medes, people of the Mada, (the Greek form Μῆδοι is Ionic for Μᾶδοι), appear in history first in 836 BC. His successors undertook many expeditions against the Medes (Madai).
At this early stage, the Medes were usually mentioned together with another steppe tribe, the Scythians, who seem to have been the dominant group.
An Assyrian military report from 800 BC lists 28 names of Mede chiefs, but only one of these is positively identified as Iranian.
Sargon in 715 BC and 713 BC subjected them up to "the far mountain Bikni," i.e. If the account of Herodotus may be trusted, the Medes' dynasty derived its origin from Deioces (Daiukku), a Mede chieftain in the Zagros, who was, along with his kinsmen, transported by Sargon to Hamath (Haniah) in Syria in 715 BC.
In spite of repeated rebellions by the early chieftains against the Assyrian yoke, the Medes paid tribute to Assyria under Sargon's successors, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, whenever these kings marched in with their fierce armies. Assyrian forts located in Median territory (Zagros Mtns) at the time of Esarhaddon's campaign (ca.
Furthermore, inscriptions from Assyrians, Urartians, Mannaeans and from other neighbours of Medes refer to Medes as Kuti or Kutu (and similar names) as an alternative name.
Mede Empire
In the second half of the 7th century BC, the Medes gained their independence and were united by a dynasty. The kings who established the Mede Empire are generally recognized to be Phraortes and his son Cyaxares. They were probably chieftains of a nomadic Mede tribe in the desert and on the south shore of the Caspian, the Manda, mentioned by Sargon, and they likely founded the capital at Ecbatana. The later Babylonian king Nabonidus also designated the Medes and their kings always as Manda.
According to Herodotus, the conquests of Cyaxares the Mede were preceded by a Scythian invasion and domination lasting twenty-eight years (under Madius the Scythian, 653-625 BC). The Mede 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 Mede rulers, who had attempted rebellions against the Assyrians in the time of Esarhaddon and Assur-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 Armenia and 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 with the help of Nabopolassar the Chaldean, succeeded in destroying the Assyrian capital, Nineveh; From then on, the Mede king ruled over much of Iran, Assyria and northern Mesopotamia, Armenia and Cappadocia.
When Cyaxares attacked Lydia, the kings of Cilicia and Babylon intervened and negotiated a peace in 585 BC, whereby the Halys was established as the Medes' frontier with Lydia.
About the internal organization of the Mede Empire, we know that the Greeks adopted many ceremonial elements of the Persian court, the costume of the king, etc., through Media.
Persian dominance and assimilation
In 553 BC, Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, rebelled against his grandfather, the Mede King Astyages, son of Cyaxares; Thus were the Medes subjected to their close kin, the Persians. and many noble Medes were employed as officials, satraps and generals. After the assassination of the usurper Smerdis, a Mede Fravartish (Phraortes), claiming to be a scion of Cyaxares, tried to restore the Mede kingdom, but was defeated by the Persian generals and executed in Ecbatana (Darius in the Behistun inscr.).
Under Persian rule, the country was divided into two satrapies: the south, with Ecbatana and Rhagae (Rey near modern Tehran), Media proper, or Greater Media, as it is often called, formed in Darius' organization the eleventh satrapy (Herodotus iii.
When the Persian empire decayed and the Cadusii and other mountainous tribes made themselves independent, eastern Armenia became a special satrapy, while Assyria seems to have been united with Media;
Under the Seleucids
Alexander the Great occupied the satrapy of Media in the summer of 330 BC.
While southern Media, with Ecbatana, passed to the rule of Antigonus, and afterwards (about 310 BC) to Seleucus I, Atropates maintained himself in his own satrapy and succeeded in founding an independent kingdom.
Under the Arsacids
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;
From this time Media remained subject to the Arsacids or Parthians, who changed the name of Rhagae, or Europus, into Arsacia (Strabo xi.
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.
Median language
Strabo, in his "Geography", mentions the affinity of Mede with other Iranian languages:
"The name of Ariana is further extended to a part of Persia and of Media, as also to the Bactrians and Sogdians on the north; for these speak approximately the same language, with but slight variations." (Geography, 15.8)Words probably of Mede origin appear in various other Iranian dialects, including Old Persian. Other words also thought to be of Mede origin (I.M Diakonoff, Medes) include
Farnah: Divine glory;
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