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Parthia[2] (Middle Persian ???????? Ashkâniân) was an Iranian civilization originating in the northeastern part of modern Iran. The Iranian Parthian Empire existed for over four hundred years, and at its height it covered all of Iran proper, as well as regions of the modern countries of Armenia, Iraq, Georgia, eastern Turkey, eastern Syria, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Kuwait, the Persian Gulf, the coast of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and the UAE[3]. The Parthian empire was led by the Arsacid dynasty, which reunited and ruled over the Iranian plateau, after defeating and deposing the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire, beginning in the late 3rd century BC, and intermittently controlled Mesopotamia between 150 BCE and CE 224. It was the third native dynasty of ancient Iran (after the Median and the Achaemenid dynasties). Parthia had many wars with the Roman Empire. After the Scythian-Parni nomads (Assyrians called them Ashkuz)[4] had settled in Parthia and built a small independent kingdom, they rose to power under king Mithridates the Great (171-138 BC).[5] Later, at the height of their power, Parthian influence reached as far as Ubar in Arabia, the nexus of the frankincense trade route, where Parthian-inspired ceramics have been found. The power of the early Parthian empire seems to have been overestimated by some ancient historians, who could not clearly separate the powerful later empire from its more humble obscure origins. The end of this long-lived empire came in 224 AD, when the empire was loosely organized and the last king was defeated by one of the empire's vassals, the Persians of the Sassanid dynasty. Relatively little is known of the Parthian (Arsacid) dynasty compared to the Achaemenid and Sassanid dynasties, given that little of their own literature has survived. Consequently Parthian history is largely derived from foreign histories, controlled by the evidence of coins and inscriptions; even their own name for themselves is debatable due to a lack of domestic records. Several Greek authors, of whom we have fragments, including Apollodorus of Artemita and Isidore of Charax, wrote under Parthian rule. Their power was based on a combination of the guerrilla warfare of a mounted nomadic tribe, with organizational skills to build and administer a vast empire — even though it never matched in power and extent the Persian empires that preceded and followed it. Vassal kingdoms seem to have made up a large part of their territory (see Tigranes II of Armenia), and Hellenistic cities enjoyed a certain autonomy; their craftsmen received employment by some Parthians. Parthia was originally designated as a territory southeast of the Caspian sea encompasing the Kopet Dag mountain range in the north and Dasht-e-Kavir desert in the south. It was a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire from 550 BC when it was subdued by Cyrus the Great until the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great in 330 BC [6]. Following Alexander's death, the government of Parthia was given to Nicanor, at the Partition of Babylon in 323 BC. At the Partition of Triparadisus in 320 BC, Parthia was then given to Philip. Philip in turn was then succeeded by Peithon. From 311 BC, Parthia then became a part of the Seleucid empire, being ruled by various satraps under the Seleucid kingdom.
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