The ancient land of Persia has been officially known by its present
name, Iran, since 1935, but the two names, one from Pars, homeland of
the ancient ruling dynasties, and one from Aryan, are used synonymously
in many references. The geographic unit that forms this ancient land
comprises a plateau extending from the mountains of what was once
Babylon, the present Iraq, in the west to the plains of the Punjab in
India in the east. It is also bounded by the Persian Gulf and the
Indian Ocean in the south and by the Caucasus Mountains, the Caspian
Sea and the southern Turkmen Province of the Soviet Union in the north.
The exacting climate of the region has never been conducive to a happy
life for its inhabitants and together with the harshness of the
infertile soil and the hostile terrain has made the lot of the nomadic
peasants an extremely trying one.
The history of Persia dates back thousands of years to the time when
the old Persepolis or Parsa was the ancient capital of the Achaemenian
Empire. The greatest of their kings were Cyrus II, who ruled from 559
to 529 B.C., and Darius I (522 to 486 B.C.), who unified, consolidated
and added to the conquests of his predecessors. It was as an
administrator, however, that he made his greatest contribution to
Persian history. Several authorities confirm that the religious beliefs
of King Darius, as depicted in his inscriptions, reflect the strong
influence on him of the teachings of Zarathustra (Zoroaster) and the
subsequent introduction of Zoroastrianism as the state religion of
Persia. Persian history is, however, dominated by changes of one kind
or another, the most important being that from pre-Islamic conquests to
Islamic times as a result of the Arab conquests of the seventh century
A. D. Every facet of life in Iran is thus dominated by the impact of
Islam, a situation which has remained to the present day.