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Persia - Land of Emperors and Kings begins in the 6th century BCE with the eponymous Achaemenid Emperor Cyrus the Great, and spans over 2500 years of fascinating history. After Cyrus, Darius I extended the empire from the Aegean Sea in the west to the shores of the Indus River in the east. He built the iconic city Persepolis which was wantonly destroyed by Alexander of Mesopotamia. The tumultuous history of Persia witnesses the collapse of Hellenism, the rise of the Parthians and the zenith of Zoroastrianism during the Sassanid rule. The cataclysmic event of Persian history occurred in the 7th century when the invading Arabs introduced a new faith and a new language, whose Arabic script was readily adopted by Persian scholars. The fabled cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, Isfahan and Shiraz evolved as the cultural capitals of the Persian empire. We meet the savants Imam Bukhari, Avicenna, and Al Biruni in Central Asia, and Persia's beloved poets Hafiz, Saadi, Omar Khayyam, Rumi and Ferdawsi, whose prose and poetry kindled the love of Persians for their culture and their fragrant language. The narrative concludes with the fall of the Pahlavi monarchy in 1979.