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( Medes)
The Medes were an ancient Iranian people[1][2][3][4][5][6] who lived in the northwestern portions of present-day Iran, roughly the areas of present day Kurdistan, Hamedan, Tehran, Lorestan, Azerbaijan, Esfahan and Zanjan. This area was known in Greek as Media or Medea (??d?a, Old Persian Mada;[7][8] adjective Median, antiquated also Medean). Under Assyrian rule, the Medes were known as Madayu.[9] They entered this region with the first wave of Iranian tribes, in the late second millennium BC (the Bronze Age collapse).[10] By the 6th century BC, after having together with the Chaldeans defeated the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Medes were able to establish their own empire,[7] that stretched from southern shore of the Black Sea and Aran province (the modern-day Republic of Azerbaijan) to north and Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and which included many tributary states, including the Persians, who eventually supplanted and absorbed the Median empire in the Achaemenid Persian Empire.[7] The Medes are credited with the foundation of the first Iranian empire, the largest of its day until Cyrus the Great established a unified Iranian empire of the Medes and Persians, often referred to as the Achaemenid Persian Empire, by defeating his grandfather and overlord, Astyages the king of Media. The Medes are presumed to have migrated from Eurasian steppes southward to the Zagros mountains during the second millennium BC.[11]
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