Persiaor contemporary Iran has very long and rich history. Until 1979 there had been a monarchy rule, an almost uninterrupted feature of Iranian government for nearly 500 years. The tradition of monarchy itself is even older.
In the sixth century B.C. Iran's first empire the Achaemenid Empire was already established. It had an absolute monarch centralized rule a highly developed system of administration aspirations of world rule and a culture that was uniquely Persian even as it borrowed absorbed and transformed elements from other cultures and civilizations.
Although Alexander the Great brought the Achaemenid Empire to an end in 330 B.C. under the Sassanids (A.D. 224-642) Iran once again became the center of an empire and a great civilization.
