King of the Seven Climes

<p>In a Middle Persian text known as “Khusro and the Page” one of the most famous kings of the ancient Iranian world Khusro I Anusheruwan is called haft kišwar xawad?y “the King of the Seven Climes.” This title harkens back to at least the Achaemenid period when it was in fact used and even further back to a Zoroastrian/Avestan world view. From the earliest Iranian hymns those of the G?th?s of Zarathushtra through the Younger Avesta and later Pahlavi writings it is known that the ancient Iranians divided the world into seven climes or regions. Indeed at some point there was even an aspiration that this world should be ruled by a single king. Consequently the title of the King of the Seven Climes used by Khusro I in the sixth century CE suggests the most ambitious imperial vision that one would find in the literary tradition of the ancient Iranian world. Taking this as a point of departure the present book aims to be a survey of the dynasties and rulers who thought of going beyond their own surroundings to forge larger polities within the Iranian realm.</p><p>Thus far in similar discussions of ancient Iranian history it has been the convention to set the beginnings of a specifically Iranian world at the rise of Cyrus the Great and the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire. But in fact this notion is only a recent paradigm which became popular in Iran in the late 1960s owing to traditions of Classical and European historiography. At the same time there are other narratives that can be given for the history of the Iranian World including those that take us to 5000 BCE to sites such as Sialk near Kashan or other similar archaeological localities. As attractive as an archaeologically based narrative of local powers can be however the aim of the present work is to focus on political entities who aimed at the control of a larger domain beyond their own local contexts. As a result this book starts its narrative with Elam the influential civilization and kingdom that existed long before the Achaemenids came to power. Elam boasted a writing system and a complex culture and political organization contemporaneous with that of Mesopotamia and was made up of cities such as Susa and Anshan. As Kamyar Abdi shows in his chapter the Iranian civilization owes much to the Elamites and their worldview and conception of rulership. Thus we do not start the present narrative with 550 BCE and Cyrus but with 3000 BCE in the proto-Elamite Period when signs of a long lasting civilization on the Iranian Plateau first appeared.</p>