Every named land, sea and air battle in which an Iranian people led one side or fought in strength, from the Medes in the Assyrian records to 2026: the Persians and Medes, Parthians, Daylamites, Kurds, Lurs, Baloch and Hazaras; the Scythians, Saka, Sarmatians and Alans, Sogdians, Bactrians and Pashtuns. Where each battle was fought, against whom, who won and why, which Iranian people qualifies it and on what evidence.
Pick a period, or drag the year slider to see the battles of any twenty-five years; Play runs through them from the Medes. Each dot is a place, its area the number of battles there, and its slices the enemy of the Iranian side, starting at 12 o'clock and going clockwise; grey: Iranians on both sides. Battles in Europe, North Africa and China sit at the edge of the map, marked with an arrow. Select a dot for its battles.
The record of the Iranian side in the 1,655 battles with Iranians on one side only and a known result. Not scored: the 504 battles with Iranians on both sides, 65 air and missile strike operations, and 10 battles whose result is unknown. A battle counts for every Iranian people that qualifies it, so the rows of the table by people add up to more than the total.
The test, the same for every battle: in a field battle the side that held the field, or saw the enemy leave it that day or night, won; what happened afterwards never decides the battle. A siege was won by the besieger if the place fell and by the defender if it was raised; a siege bought off or ended by treaty while the place was still invested is a draw. Select a row to list its battles.
Select a row for the full record: date, place, sides and allies, commanders, the result and how it was decided, the Iranian peoples and why the battle counts, the Iranian force, strengths and losses, the sources, and every doubt and flag. Results are given for the Iranian side.
The 25 images of the set, made for X: the map with the number of battles per 25 years; Iran and Mesopotamia; Anatolia, Greece, the Levant and the Caucasus; Central Asia, Afghanistan and India; Europe, North Africa and China; the record; the peoples and the battles between Iranians; and the list.
A named land or sea battle, a siege with real fighting, or a named air, missile or naval engagement, in which someone of an Iranian people, a man or a woman such as Tomyris, led one side (as commander in the field or as the ruler directing the army), or in which an Iranian contingent fought in strength: about a fifth of an army, or a unit the sources single out (the Daylamite foot, the Alan horse, a Pashtun lashkar). Battles in which Iranians fought on both sides count too.
Both branches of the Iranian languages. Western: the Persians (with the Tajiks and other Dari speakers), Medes, Parthians, Daylamites and Gilaks, Kurds, Lurs and Bakhtiari, Baloch, Hazaras, Talysh. Eastern: the Scythians, Saka, Massagetae, Dahae, Sarmatians, Alans and Ossetians, Sogdians, Bactrians, Khwarazmians, Pashtuns and Pamiris. Uncertain, and marked so: the Cimmerians, Kushans and Hephthalites. Not Iranian: Turks and Turkmen, Mongols, Arabs, Armenians, Georgians, Nuristanis. "Persians" in the old sense of the set's first version is shorthand for the dominant group only.
A state counts through the people of its rulers, by descent as the sources give it, not through the land it ruled: the Achaemenids, Sasanians, Samanids and Safavids are counted, the Seljuks, Ilkhans, Timurids and Qara and Aq Qoyunlu are not, unless an Iranian contingent fought for them. So the Ayyubids count as Kurds, the Arsacids of Armenia as Parthians, the Ghurids as Persians (Tajiks). Mixed descent counts and is stated: the Mithridatids of Pontus were Persian in the male line but married Seleucid princesses, so that Mithridates VI was Persian on his father's side and Greek on his mother's, and ruled a Greek kingdom (his battles are Greek battles in Ancient Greek Battles and Battles of the Romans); An Lushan was Sogdian on his father's side and Turkic on his mother's. The Safavids were Kurdish in the male line by most accounts, from Sheikh Safi of Ardabil, and Turkoman and Greek through their mothers: Ismail I's grandmother on his father's side was a sister of Uzun Hasan of the Aq Qoyunlu, and his mother was Uzun Hasan's daughter by Despina Khatun, a Greek princess of Trebizond. Their early court spoke Turkic and their first armies were Turkmen; their battles are listed with the Persians, as the people of the Iranian state they founded. The Muzaffarids were of Arab descent and count only through their Persian troops. Disputed descents (the Orontids of Armenia and Commagene, the Bahmani sultans) are kept and marked uncertain.
From about 1800 the leader rule applies only where the army itself is Iranian: the armies of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, Kurdish, Baloch, Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara and Ossetian forces and militias. A Kurdish or Ossetian general of an Ottoman, Turkish, Soviet or Iraqi army does not make a battle Iranian; an Iranian contingent singled out by the sources still counts in any period. Townsmen count only when a source says that they fought.
504 battles had Iranians on both sides: rival Persian kings and claimants, Iranian states at war with each other, the risings of Kurds, Lurs and Baloch against Persian states, the wars of the Durranis with Persia, and the Afghan wars since 1978. They are mapped and listed, in grey, but not scored.
One test for every battle, stated in each record: in a field battle the side that held the field, or saw the enemy leave it that day or night, won, and strategic consequences never count; in a siege the besieger won if the place fell and the defender if it was raised; a siege bought off while the place was invested is a draw. The record is that of the Iranian side; 315 scored battles count through an Iranian contingent only, in an army led by others.
65 air and missile strike operations (1980–2026) are mapped and listed, as triangles, but not scored: their results rest on claims of damage, not on a field held. By their own measure 18 achieved their aim, 8 were indecisive and 39 failed.
The set grew from Where the Persians Fought, the battles of the Iranian states (1,400 of its battles are kept); its Turkic and Mongol battles were checked one by one, and 834 battles were added in research stages by people and period: the steppe Iranians, the Kurds, Iranians serving abroad, the Sogdians and Bactrians, the Pashtuns before and after 1900, the Baloch, the Tajiks and Ossetians, and the Iranian dynasties that ruled other peoples. Each stage cited its sources battle by battle; the merge removed doubles and entries without a named battle.
Each entry is rated high, medium or low: 383 are low, chiefly minor actions from a single source, modern operations whose commanders are not verified, and battles that rest on a disputed descent or on an unquantified contingent. 51 entries rest on a people or a descent marked uncertain; they are shown with a question mark in the list.
Minor actions known only from the Persian, Arabic, Chinese and Indian chronicles, many skirmishes of the Kurdish, Baloch and Pashtun risings, and small engagements of the modern wars may still be missing. Positions are often approximate, and the region alone is known for some.
The 25 images were made for X in the house style of the series, 3200 × 1800 pixels: the overview map with the number of battles per 25 years; Iran and Mesopotamia; Anatolia, Greece, the Levant and the Caucasus; Central Asia, Afghanistan and India; Europe, North Africa and China; the record; the peoples and the battles between Iranians; and the list, which gives the peoples of each battle in small letters.
Every battle with its date, war, place, coordinates, sides, allies, commanders, result and the reason for it, the Iranian peoples, how they qualify and on what evidence, the confidence of the entry, the Iranian force and its share of the army where known, strengths and losses, flags and doubts, and sources.
Sources, cited battle by battle: above all the battle, war and campaign articles of English Wikipedia, checked against the ancient and medieval authors and modern histories they cite (Herodotus, Xenophon, Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, Tacitus, Ammianus, Procopius, al-Tabari, Ibn al-Athir, the Tang histories, Ferishta, the Encyclopaedia Iranica and the Encyclopaedia of Islam among them), and for the modern wars the reports and histories named in each record.
Where the rules left room for judgement, this is how it was settled. The map, the record and the list follow the call shown; the alternative is given so that readers can weigh it.