 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(September 2009) |
The Nisean horse, or Nisaean horse, is an extinct horse breed, once native to the town of Nisaia, located in the Nisaean plains at the foot of the southern region of the Zagros Mountains, Iran. [1]
The first written reference to the Nisean horse was in around 430 BCE, in Herodotus' Histories:
They were highly sought after in the ancient world. The Nisean horse was said[ by whom? ] to have come in several colors, including common colors such as dark bay, chestnut and seal brown, but also rarer colors such as black, roan, palomino, and various spotted patterns. The ancient Nisean horse was said to have had "not the slender Arabian head of the Luristan Culture but a more robust one that was characteristic of the great warhorse". This suggests the Nisean may have been a descendant of the "forest horse" prototype.
The Nisean, according to one source,[ who? ] was "tall and swift, and color adorned his sides. The Chinese called the breed the tien ma – heavenly horse or Soulon-vegetarian dragon. The Nisean was the most valuable horse in the ancient world. Some were spotted, like a leopard or, as golden as a newly minted coin. Others were red and blue roan with darker color.
The royal Nisean was the mount of the nobility in ancient Persia. Two gray Nisean stallions pulled the shah’s royal chariot, while four of the regal animals pulled the chariot of Ahura Mazda, the supreme god of Persia and Medea. Silver coins from the days of Cyrus the Great show him hunting lions from horseback using a spear. It is safe to assume[ according to whom? ] that courage and manageability were more important than color on these occasions, and without the stirrup, Cyrus also needed a smooth riding horse, so it is assumed that the Nisean horse also had smooth gaits.[ citation needed ]
During the reign of Darius, Nisean horses were bred from Armenia to Sogdiana. The Nisean horse was so sought after, that the Greeks (mainly, the Spartans) imported Nisean horses and bred them to their native stock, and many nomadic tribes, (such as the Scythians) in and around the Persian Empire also imported, captured, or stole Nisean horses.
Nisean horses had several traits that they passed on to their descendants. One of them was bony knobs on their forehead often referred to as "horns".[ citation needed ] This could have been due to prominent temple bones or cartilage on their forehead.The Greeks exported many horses to the Iberian peninsula, where the Nisean greatly influenced the ancestors of today's Iberian horse breeds, such as the Carthusian, Lusitano, Andalusian, Barb, and Spanish Mustang.[ citation needed ]
The Nisean horse was first mentioned in great detail by A.T. Olmstead, in his History of the Persian Empire. Pure white Niseans were the horses of kings and, in myth, gods. Cyrus the Great was so distraught, when one of his stallions was drowned while crossing a river, he had the river where the horse was drowned drained. He did not believe that anything could kill a horse so beautiful.[ citation needed ]
Olmstead also wrote that the Assyrians started their spring campaigns, by attacking the Medes for their horses. The Medes were the breeders of the first Nisean horses.[ citation needed ]
The Romans had their first encounter with the Nisean and the Parthian cataphract at the Battle of Carrhae (53 BC) when General Crassus went up against the great Parthian General Surena. After Crassus fell to the Parthians, his head and standards were presented to Orodes II. In 36 BC, Mark Antony avenged Crassus's death by ravaging the region of Media Atropatene with 16 legions. At his disposal were 100,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, drawn from as far away as Gaul and Spain. Of these, 30,000 were Roman Legionnaires. When the Parthians would not give him the battle he wanted, he ravaged Armenia, and brought back the Armenian King Artavasdes to Egypt. Among the prized possessions taken were the first Nisean horses in Rome. When Antony died, these horses fell into the hands of Augustus. According to Michael Decker in the Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, Nisaean horses were the most famous Iranian breed. [3]
Elwyn Hartley Edwards also added it is possible that the Arabs also had influence in the breeding of legendary Nisean horses, since geographically the breed theoretically was bred in western Iran of Medes. [4] Edwards further remarked the possibility that the Nisean were also infused with Arabian horse breed. [4]
Xerxes I, commonly known as Xerxes the Great, was the fourth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, ruling from 486 to 465 BC. He was the son and successor of Darius the Great and his mother was Atossa, a daughter of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid empire. Like his father, he ruled the empire at its territorial apex. He ruled from 486 BC until his assassination in 465 BC at the hands of Artabanus, the commander of the royal bodyguard.
Darius I, commonly known as Darius the Great, was a Persian ruler who served as the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak, when it included much of Western Asia, parts of the Balkans and the Caucasus, most of the Black Sea's coastal regions, Central Asia, the Indus Valley in the far east, and portions of North Africa and Northeast Africa including Egypt (Mudrâya), eastern Libya, and coastal Sudan.
Ahasuerus is a name applied in the Hebrew Bible to three rulers and to a Babylonian official in the Book of Tobit.
A satrap was a governor of the provinces of the ancient Median and Achaemenid Empires and in several of their successors, such as in the Sasanian Empire and the Hellenistic empires.
Bardiya, also named as Tanyoxarces by Ctesias, was a son of Cyrus the Great and the younger brother of Cambyses II, both Persian kings. There are sharply divided views on his life. Bardiya either ruled the Achaemenid Empire for a few months in 522 BC, or was impersonated by a magus called Gaumāta ; whose name is given by Ctesias as Sphendadates, until he was toppled by Darius the Great.
The Shetland pony is a Scottish breed of pony originating in the Shetland Isles in the north of Scotland. It may stand up to 107 cm (42 in) at the withers. It has a heavy coat and short legs, is strong for its size, and is used for riding, driving, and pack purposes.
Darius the Mede is mentioned in the Book of Daniel as king of Babylon between Belshazzar and Cyrus the Great, but he is not known to history, and no additional king can be placed between the known figures of Belshazzar and Cyrus. Most scholars view him as a literary fiction, but some have tried to harmonise the Book of Daniel with history by identifying him with various known figures, notably Cyrus or Gobryas, the general who was first to enter Babylon when it fell to the Persians in 539 BCE.
The Knabstrupper or Knabstrup is a Danish breed of warmblood horse. It is principally a riding horse, but is also used as a harness horse and as a circus animal.
Media is a region of north-western Iran, best known for having been the political and cultural base of the Medes. During the Achaemenid period, it comprised present-day Azerbaijan, Iranian Kurdistan and western Tabaristan. As a satrapy under Achaemenid rule, it would eventually encompass a wider region, stretching to southern Dagestan in the north. However, after the wars of Alexander the Great, the northern parts were separated due to the Partition of Babylon and became known as Atropatene, while the remaining region became known as Lesser Media.
The Trait Breton is a French breed of draught horse. It originated in Brittany, in north-west France, from cross-breeding of local horses with various other breeds. It is strong and muscular, and often has a chestnut coat.
The Lokai, a mountain horse bred in Tajikistan, is used as a riding horse, a packhorse, or even sometimes a light draft horse. Although small, the breed is agile and hardy. The breed was developed by crossing native mountain horses with a mixture of Central Asian and European bloodlines.
Cyaxares II was a king of the Medes whose reign is described by the Greek historian Xenophon. Some theories have equated this figure with the "Darius the Mede" named in the Book of Daniel. He is not mentioned in the histories of Herodotus or Ctesias, and many scholars doubt that he actually existed. The question of his existence impacts on whether the kingdom of the Medes merged peacefully with that of the Persians in about 537 BC, as narrated by Xenophon, or was subjugated in the rebellion of the Persians against Cyrus' grandfather in 559 BC, a date derived from Herodotus (1.214) and almost universally accepted by current scholarship.
Ferghana horses were one of China's earliest major imports, originating in an area in Central Asia. These horses, as depicted in Tang dynasty tomb figures in earthenware, may "resemble the animals on the golden medal of Eucratides, King of Bactria ."
The Gelderlander is a Dutch breed of warmblood horse. It was bred in the province of Gelderland in the Netherlands as a carriage horse capable also of farm work. It declined in popularity in the mid-twentieth century. In 1965 it was one of the foundation breeds of the Dutch Warmblood or KWPN, the other being the heavier Groninger horse from the north. It is registered in a division of the Royal Dutch Warmblood Horse Studbook, which also has divisions for the Dutch Warmblood and for the Dutch Harness Horse.
The Sardinian Anglo-Arab or Anglo-Arabo Sardo is an Italian breed of riding horse from the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. It derives from cross-breeding of local mares with stallions of Arab, Anglo-Arab and Thoroughbred stock. Breeding began in 1874; the breed was officially recognised in 1967.
The Fall of Babylon denotes the end of the Neo-Babylonian Empire after it was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire in 539 BCE. Historians also use the term Liberation of Babylonia interchangeably.
Parthia is a historical region located in north-eastern Iran. It was conquered and subjugated by the empire of the Medes during the 7th century BC, was incorporated into the subsequent Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BC, and formed part of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire following the 4th-century-BC conquests of Alexander the Great. The region later served as the political and cultural base of the Eastern-Iranian Parni people and Arsacid dynasty, rulers of the Parthian Empire. The Sasanian Empire, the last state of pre-Islamic Iran, also held the region and maintained the Seven Parthian clans as part of their feudal aristocracy.
The Achaemenid or the Achaemenian Empire, also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest empire in history, spanning a total of 5.5 million square kilometres from the Balkans and ancient Egypt in the west to the Indus Valley in the east.
The Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley occurred from the 6th to 4th centuries BCE, and saw the Achaemenid Persian Empire take control of regions in the northwestern Indian subcontinent that predominantly comprise the territory of modern-day Pakistan. The first of two main invasions was conducted around 535 BCE by the empire's founder, Cyrus the Great, who annexed the regions west of the Indus River that formed the eastern border of the Achaemenid Empire. Following Cyrus' death, Darius the Great established his dynasty and began to re-conquer former provinces and further expand the empire. Around 518 BCE, Persian armies under Darius crossed the Himalayas into India to initiate a second period of conquest by annexing regions up to the Jhelum River in Punjab.
The Parthian Empire, a major state of ancient Iran, lasted from 247 BCE to 224 CE, in which music played a prominent role. Compared to their Western rival, the Roman Empire, much less is known about the Parthians, but information on music can be gathered from a few Parthian texts, accounts from Greek and Roman writers, some archeological evidence, and a variety of visual sources. The last of these are usually from either the archeological sites and former settlements of Hatra or Nisa, and include terracotta plaques, reliefs and illustrations on drinking horns known as rhytons. Music played a role in many aspects of Parthian life, being used in festivals, weddings, education, warfare and other social gatherings. Surviving artistic records indicate that it involved both men and women, who could be instrumentalists or singers.