AH Challenge: Make the Persian Empire survive to the present day

Your challenge, if you choose to accept, is to write a timeling making the Persian Empire, established by Cyrus the Great, last to the present day. It must be a powerful and modern entity. Please have a detailed timeline of it. Thanks!
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Your challenge, if you choose to accept, is to write a timeling making the Persian Empire, established by Cyrus the Great, last to the present day. It must be a powerful and modern entity. Please have a detailed timeline of it. Thanks!

It's called Iran.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
It must be called Persia in this timeline, though. And it must have the extent of territory that it had under Darius the Great. If you want to add territory to the Empire, you are free to do so.

Persia is a stupid misnomer: Persia is only a province. It's like the greeks calling the entirety of Hellas Akhaia because the Romans did it.
 
Iran is a medieval name for Persia.

I have an Iranian friend, and he refers to himself ethnically as Persian. He hates Arabs and thinks of the current regime as an Arabic one. He thinks Arabs are invaders and culturally inferior.

He always was an interesting person. When we talk about his country, we rarely use the word 'Iran', and always call it Persia.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Iran is a medieval name for Persia.

I have an Iranian friend, and he refers to himself ethnically as Persian. He hates Arabs and thinks of the current regime as an Arabic one. He thinks Arabs are invaders and culturally inferior.

He always was an interesting person. When we talk about his country, we rarely use the word 'Iran', and always call it Persia.

Not all Iranians are Persian.
 

Rebel

Banned
Your challenge, if you choose to accept, is to write a timeling making the Persian Empire, established by Cyrus the Great, last to the present day. It must be a powerful and modern entity. Please have a detailed timeline of it. Thanks!

I guess you mean the Achaemedian Empire. I suppose if they retain control over the Greeks and Macedonians they could hold on for quite some time, but in the end they'll break up just like any other Empire. Perhaps we'll see a rump kingdom in core Iran, at best.
 
I guess you mean the Achaemedian Empire. I suppose if they retain control over the Greeks and Macedonians they could hold on for quite some time, but in the end they'll break up just like any other Empire. Perhaps we'll see a rump kingdom in core Iran, at best.

It must be powerful, modern, and as large as it was during the time of Darius the Great, with Macedonia and Greece added.
 
Which 'Persian' empire do you mean?

Median Empire?
Achaemenid Empire?
Seleucid Empire?
Parthian Empire?
Sassanid Empire?
Tahirid Empire?
Saffarid Empire?
Seljuq Empire?
Timurid Empire?
 

Rebel

Banned
It must be powerful, modern, and as large as it was during the time of Darius the Great, with Macedonia and Greece added.

Very, very hard to do. I suppose you could see it collapse to just Mesopotamia and its core lands after fighting the Romans-analogues before rising again and retaking most of its former lands.
 
What exactly does this POD involve?

The Persian Empire that ruled the region from the Indus to the Hellespont would have gradually deteriorated even without a Greek invasion. If the Persians destroy the Macedonians at the Granicus it will not overly affect them due to that being a simple battle on the frontier, but over time their efforts to consolidate strong local elites will undermine the center.

If the reference is simply to a powerful Zoroastrian Empire that's an easy POD: the Sassanians smash the Arabs like a little bug. The Empire won in the war with Heraclius won't last overlong but the Persians will retain a strong Zoroastrian empire set near modern Iran albeit with butterflies that make the history of the world nigh-unrecognizable.

Post-Islam the cultural differences between Persia and the states of Southwest Asia are going to be different enough that cultural hegemony would be extremely hard to achieve, especially with the legacy of a Caliphate providing a basis to unite to resist conquest from the East.
 
I mean the Archaemenid Empire.

The only dynasty with a claim at all to have lasted anything like the time you describe is the Japanese royal family and they did that mainly by being figureheads that legitimized the real rulers. The Achaemenid system did not permit that kind of continuity, and Japan is IIRC the only society to preserve intact the same dynasty from the Tang Dynasty into the 21st Century.
 
The only dynasty with a claim at all to have lasted anything like the time you describe is the Japanese royal family and they did that mainly by being figureheads that legitimized the real rulers. The Achaemenid system did not permit that kind of continuity, and Japan is IIRC the only society to preserve intact the same dynasty from the Tang Dynasty into the 21st Century.

Considering the lot of the time it was the shoguns and daiymos that held the real power.
 
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