In spite of the invasions Greek, Arab, Turkish, Mongolian and the Western cultural influence, the ages of Iran succeeded in protecting their identity, within the framework of a State which has known to preserve its autonomy for more than twenty-five centuries.

Of Elamites in Sassanides

The civilization of Elamites, contemporary among those of Sumer and the Assyrians, was one of most brilliant current territory of Iran (wedge-shaped writing, bronzes of Luristan) before the arrival of the first Aryan tribes at the end of the II E thousand-year-old front J. - C.

Mèdes established their kingdom in the north of Zagros (Ecbatane), and Persians, with the dynasty of Achéménides, were established more in the south, around Suse. Cyrus the Large one seized the kingdom mède in 550 av. J. - C. and built the empire then vastest and most powerful, of Asia Mineure Greek in Bactriane, after having taken Babylon into 539 and delivered the Jews, including one great number settled in Persia.

The Kings of Kings, whose religion was the Zoroastrianism, had as capitals Suse, Pasargades, Persépolis, Ecbatane and Sardes. The apogee of the Empire achéménide was reached under the reign of Darius the Large one (522-486 av. J. - C.).

In spite of the catch and the fire of Persépolis (330 av. J. - C.) then the conquest of Persia by Alexandre the Large one, the Greek sovereigns Séleucides protected civilization from the area by seeking a synthesis between the cultures Persian and Hellenic.

The dynasty of Parthes (or Arsacides), come from the east, seized the power in 247 av. J. - C., and was posed as a restorer civilization achéménide. Its authority, with kings like Mithridate I er, was exerted during almost five centuries between Arménie and Bactriane.

It is however under the kings (shahs) sassanides (224-641 apr. J. - C.) that Iran knew a new apogee and saw the reinforcement of the culture and Iranian nationalism; this empire, which extended from Mésopotamie in Indus, ran up against the Roman Empire, Byzance and Huns.

In this powerful State and managed well, whose capital was Ctésiphon, in Mésopotamie, there were for a long time many Christians nestoriens, but the power was with the hands of a clergy zoroastrien, cut population, which contributed to its loss when started the Arab conquest.

Caliphates omeyyade and Abbasid with the Mongolian invasions

The armies sassanides were defeats with Nehavend into 642, but the provinces Persians of the new empire always kept their identity, even a certain autonomy. Persia was consequently integrated in the caliphates omeyyade and Abbasid, which used massively the civils servant of the Empire sassanide.

In 945, the Iranian dynasty Shiite of Bouwayhides seized Baghdad, but it was reversed by invaders, the nomads Turkish seldjoukides, Sunnits, which were already numerous in the armies of the Abbasid caliphate and which took Baghdad in 1055: since then, the history of Persia was dominated by the presence of soldiers, of nomads, administrators Turkish, whom one distinguishes until our days from the Persan ones, of Fars.

The Mongols of Gengis Khan invaded Persia in 1219, then dominated it as from 1256, when fell the fortress from Alamut, last refuge of the sect of the Assassins. The systematic massacres and the devastations operated by the Mongols ruined for several centuries town civilization Persian and villager: the nomadism developed, accentuating the opposition between the Turks and the Inhabitants of Tajik, i.e. the Persan ones. It was only into 1295 that Ghazan Khan, sovereign ilkhanide descendant of Gengis Khan, converts with Islam, made the official religion again and restored the authority of the State of it.

The last turco-Mongolian invasion which devastated Persia was that of the tribes of Tamerlan, between 1381 and 1404. In spite of political chaos, the Timurides sovereigns then undertook to restore the country by supporting the trade and the intellectual and town life.

The Séfévide dynasty

In 1501, a group of Shiite tribes turcomanes, Kizil Bash (“red Heads”), took Tabriz; their chief, Ismaïl, were made crown shah and imposed everywhere in Iran Shiite Islam. It was the beginning of the Séfévide dynasty and the rebirth of a really autonomous Iranian State.

Under Shah Abbas (1588-1629), Ispahan, “Half of the world”, became capital. With safety, prosperity returned, of the caravanserais were built along the new roads, of splendid mosques and of the palates were built in all the cities; the prestige and the prosperity of the kingdom attracted the tradesmen and the foreign embassies. This period, one of most brilliant of the history and civilization Persians, was completed dramatically in 1722 when the Afghans took and plundered Ispahan.

The chief of a Turkish tribe of Khorasan drove out the invader and seized the power in 1736 under the name of Nadir Shah. After having taken and plundered Delhi in 1739 - and paid in Persia a treasure, whose celebrates it throne of the peacock of Large Mogul -, it made transfer its capital to Mechhed. With his death in 1747, Karim Khan, the chief of the Zend tribe, took the control of the country; he did not take the title of shah, but that of vakil (lieutenant) and, until its death in 1779, ensured a few decades of peace starting from Chiraz, its capital.  

Qadjars

The tribe turcomane of Qadjars arrived then at the power after a new civil war: Aga Mohammad Khan made small town of Teheran its capital in 1786 and was made there crown. The dynasty of Qadjars will control Iran until 1925. The reign of Fath Ali Chah (1797-1834) was marked by the beginning of the direct influence of the great powers in Persia.

After the failure of an alliance with Napoleon in 1807, and two wars against the tsar, Qadjars lost, with the profit of Russia, the provinces of the Caucasus and the north of Araxe (treated of Tourkmantchaï, 1828). Great Britain, for which Persia was before a a whole walk of its empire of the Indies, beat the armies of Mohammad Chah (1834-1858) and imposed in 1856, with the treaty of Paris, the recognition by Iran of Afghanistan and the loss of the province of Harat.

The long reign of Aldine Nasir Chah (1848-1896) inaugurated the modernization of the country, with creation in 1848, by the reforming minister Amir Kabir, of the first scientific school (Dar Al-Fonun), the voyages of the sovereign in Europe, and the reorganization of the administration and the trade entrusted to foreign monopolies, of which most powerful was that of the baron Reuter. This policy caused violent oppositions in the clergy and the new middle-class influenced by the Western liberal ideas (revolt of the Tobaccos, 1891).

A revolution shook Persia in 1906 and imposed on Aldine Muzaffar Chah (1896-1907) a Constitution and a Parliament. In 1907, Russians and British divided Persia in two zones of influence and intervened directly in its interior matters; the Parliament was suspended in 1909, and Ahmad Chah, eleven years old, replaced his father Mohammad Ali.

Modern Iran

The First World War accentuated chaos: from 1915 to 1921, the revolutionary movement of Djangalis controlled the province of Gilan and accepted during some time the support of the Russian Bolsheviks, who however signed a treaty with Iran, allowing the new strong man of the country, colonel Riza Khan, which had just seized the power in Teheran (February 21st, 1921), to crush the rebellion.  

Supported by the British who feared the communist influence in a country in the grip of disorder, Riza Khan was made proclaim shah in 1925, and was crowned on on April 25th, 1926 under the name of Pahlavi, which is that of the language of old Iran. He undertook on the model of Atatürk, with energy and often brutality, the modernization of the country, in a nationalist spirit. He created true ministries and an administration with the assistance of American advisers, the university of Teheran (1935), a national army and either tribal.

To break the social systems in place, he fought against the clergy and the chiefs of tribes, prohibited the port of the veil for the women. To allow the industrialization of the country, from now on called officially Iran, Riza Chah ordered the construction of roads and of railroads (Transiranien of Caspian to the Persian Gulf in 1938), developed the relationships to outside but abolishes (1928) the foreign monopolies.

The oil, whose Iran was oldest and the principal producer of the Middle East, brought to the country increasing incomes, but this sector escaped the government which perceived only royalties granted by all-powerful Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, become property of the British Admiralty.

To escape the traditional supervisions, Iran approached Germany then: this one took an influence growing in the economy, and ensured 45 % of the Iranian trade in 1940. Fearing for its supply oil and the empire of the Indies, Great Britain decided, with the USSR, to invade Iran and forced Riza Chah to abdicate with the profit of his/her son Mohammad Riza, on on August 25th, 1941.

During the Second world war, the Allies passed by Iran to supply the Russian face, then contributed to eliminate, in 1946, two transitory socialist Républiques of Kurdistan and Azerbaïdjan, created by nationalist militants and the Tudeh Communist party. The popular reaction to these foreign interventions carried to the power, in 1951, Mossadegh, leader of the National front, liberal party and nationalist. Combined with the Communists and with the support of the monks led by the ayatollah Kashani, it nationalized Anglo-Iranian Oil Company which, in reprisals, ceased any production immediately, adding an economic crisis to the political disturbances.

With the assistance of the British, the United States organized, on on August 23rd, 1953, a coup d'etat directed by the Zahedi general: this one returned the power to Mohammad Riza Chah, which had been exiled but which gradually took again in hand the political situation: integration of Iran in the military pact of Baghdad (Cento) in 1955, creation of the Organization of the national security (Savak) in 1957, signature of a military agreement (1962) with the United States, which will play from now on a central role in the country and will not be foreign with the launching of the economic and social development policy implementation in 1963.

The “white revolution of the shah and the people”, whose keystone was the land reform, accelerated, under the direction of the Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda, the economic expansion in a political climate of despotism. Still reinforced by the increase in the oil price in 1973, this industrial upheaval caused a social crisis and cultural in the liberal youth of the big cities, in the workmen of communist obedience, and especially in the clergy, which will take the head of the opposition quickly.

The paradoxical alliance of the liberal intellectuals close to the National front, the left parties, the mullahs, and finally to the army, allowed the development of a popular revolutionary movement which began in January 1978, after the bloody repression of a demonstration Qom, and succeeds, on on February 11th, 1979, with the inversion of the shah (which died in Cairo on on July 27th, 1980) and with the return of the spiritual leader of the Shiite community, the Khomeyni Imam, exiled since fifteen years.  

The Islamic Republic of Iran

The new Islamic Republic of Iran, founded on on April 1st, 1979 and largely dominated by the personality of her founder, concentrated the power in the hands of a new political community directed by the only clergy, which made carry out the principal representatives of the former regime, imposed a strict Islamic morals, organized repression against all the opponents and practiced a resolutely anti-Western policy.

Abol Hassan Bani Sadr, elected president of the Republic in January 1980, was deposited in June 1981 under the pressure of the religious extremists, which involved a larval civil war (assassination of new president Mohammad Ali Radjai, physical elimination of the opponents like the Mujaheddin of the people and militants of the Tudeh Communist party).

Iran was quickly insulated because of its policy savagely anti-American (catch as hostages of the American diplomats during 444 days) and of its islamist activism (military intervention in Lebanon), and had to counter, as from September 1980, the invasion of the oil province of Khuzistan by the Iraqi army. This very fatal conflict, which was to end only in July 1988, disturbed the production of oil seriously and worsened the deep economic crisis and cultural which accelerated the exodus of many frameworks and intellectuals.

After the death of the Khomeyni Imam, in June 1989, the government adopted a more pragmatic policy to undertake the rebuilding of the country (desislamisation of the banking system, fights against corruption) under the direction of the new president of the Republic, Akbar Hachemi Rafsandjani, and of the new “Supreme guide of the Revolution”, Ali Khamenei.

The war of the Gulf, in 1991, made it possible Iran to recover the occupied territories by Iraq, while a new policy of opening developed in the Occident and towards Turkey and Saudi Arabia. But the United States always shows Iran to animate international terrorism, and chair it Clinton signed, in August 1996, a law penalizing the companies which invest in this country.