Description
he dominant political system of pre‐Islamic Iran was that of the monarchy. Iranian history before the Arab conquests in the 7th century CE is a history of four empires, of different geographical extent and of different duration: the Achaemenid (550–330 BCE), the Seleucid (323–129 BCE), the Parthian (247 BCE–224 CE), and the Sasanian (224–651 CE). Three of these were “Iranian” empires, in the sense that their kings were drawn from Iranian families; the Seleucids were the only exception to this rule, for they were of Macedonian stock (although the mother of Antiochus I, the second Seleucid, was a Bactrian).