Social-Political Structure and Administrative Organization of Median kingdom

Social-Political Structure and Administrative Organization of Median kingdom

Volume 9, Issue 2
June 2018

Pages 133-158

Abstract

Medians were a group of Indo-Iranians in middle Asia who progressed to Zagros Mountains in the early centuries of the first millennium B.C. and settled in the west and north-west of Iran plateau. The geographical expansion of their settlement was called Media. Although the ancient Mesopotamian texts from 10^th to 7^th centuries B.C. referred to several big and small castles and realms of certain governors all over the west and north-west of Iran plateau and revealed that Medians resided in Media and have a tribal life structure, Greek records referred to Median kingdom as a powerful and well-organized kingdom with developed cultural institutions and administrative organizations. Today we know that these records on organizations, cultural institutions, and administrative organizations of Medians were a display of institutions and organizations of Achaemenids era which were ascribed to Medians. Median kingdom in a long span of its transient history had a disintegrated structure and a confederation of Median tribes and people with Mesopotamian cultura in Media, with no stable cultural and political institutions and organizations. In this paper, it is discussed that how Median kingdom as a first kingdom of Iranian Arians in the west of Iran plateau was founded and the social-political structure and administrative organization of Median kingdom will be studied.

Keywords

Assyrians

Medians

Achaemenids

Political and Cultural Structures

Administrative Organizations

Subjects

Sociology and Political Science

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