He standardized weights and measures across the empire, and also introduced a single monetary system, based on a two-tier gold and silver coinage. Specific policies of the Achaemenid kings, particularly Darius the Great, also favored trade. Furthermore, in the Zagros mountain passes, through which major trade routes passed, brigandage was suppressed to a degree never before achieved, at least under the firm government of the early Achaemenids. International business houses could operate on a larger scale than hitherto. A single legal and administrative framework meant that commercial transactions between members of different nationalities could be undertaken with confidence that, if any disputes arose, they could be dealt with by the same courts operating the same law. The huge size of the empire meant that millions of people lived generally in peace together, under one rule. So far as trade was concerned, the Achaemenid empire probably provided more favorable circumstances than any before it. Where previously only nomads could graze their herds, sizable farming settlements were now able to develop. The Achaemenid government encouraged the construction and restoration of qanats through generous tax incentives. This largely resulted from the increased use of the qanat, an underground water channel which carried water from hills to plains and which allowed large areas of land in arid landscapes to be irrigated and turned over to productive cultivation. The kings took seriously the Mesopotamian royal tradition of looking after the irrigation system in which agriculture there depended, and this period also seems to have seen a major spread of irrigation in Iran. Irrigation, on which much agriculture depended within the empire and especially in Mesopotamia and Iran, received much attention from the government, at least under the early kings. Their numbers may well have been boosted by time-expired soldiers being allotted land, and some state land was also given over to soldiers serving in military garrisons, to enable them to be self-sufficient. Individual peasant farmers also owned much of the land. In some places gangs of slaves worked the land.īy no means all the land was in the hands of large landowners. These estates were farmed by tenants, or worked directly by hired labor. The empire was covered with huge estates, owned by the monarchy and Persian nobility, and in some parts, the temples and even business houses. EconomyĪgriculture provided the economic base of the Persian empire, and this benefitted from improvements under the Achaemenids. In the less settled times of the later Persian empire, however, the irrigation systems of Mesopotamia seem to have experienced some neglect, and this will have led to the condition of the peasantry there deteriorating. For the most part they were spared the upheavals that war brings, and taxation was probably no heavier than in other periods. It is hard to compare the condition of the peasantry with that in other periods of ancient history. The vast majority of the population of the empire lived by farming, as in all pre-modern societies. Iran itself, the imperial homeland but hitherto on the margins of the civilized world, became much more urbanized than before, as did the lands to its east. Linked to this development was the spread of urban settlement outside those regions such as Mesopotamia, Syria and Asia Minor which had experienced this for millennia. Some merchants and bankers became very wealthy indeed, and became large landowners. This was the result of the expansion of trade and banking (see below). With its very productive agriculture and comparative proximity to the Iranian homeland, this region must have been regarded as highly attractive for Persian landowners.Īnother social development was the expansion, already seen under the late Babylonian kings, of the merchant classes. Mesopotamia in particular seems to have been the location for vast estates. The extensive estates of the Persian ruling class thus came to be scattered throughout the empire, from Egypt and Asia Minor to Bactria. He kept much for himself and the royal family, but he also distributed much of it to his high officials and members of the Persian nobility. When the Persians conquered a kingdom, some of the vanquished kings’ and nobles’ estates were confiscated and taken over by the Persian king. The first was the spread of a Persian or Iranian landowning class. However, there were some trends within the empire which were felt throughout the empire. Because the Persian Empire (often called the Achaemenid Empire) embraced many nations and cultures, each with its own distinctive social structure, it is impossible to speak of “society” in the singular.