Origins: The Medes and Persians on the Iranian Plateau

The Medes and Persians were Indo-Iranian peoples who settled on the Iranian plateau during the second and early first millennium BCE. The Medes established themselves in northwestern Iran, with their capital at Ecbatana (modern Hamadan), while the Persians occupied the region of Persis (Fars) to the south. The Median Empire, under King Cyaxares, joined forces with Babylon to destroy the Neo-Assyrian Empire, capturing its capital Nineveh in 612 BCE. The Persians, organized into tribes — among them the Pasargadae, from which the Achaemenid dynasty would emerge — lived for generations under some form of vassalage or Median influence, and the dynasty itself took its name from the legendary ancestor Achaemenes (Hakhamanish).