West Asia, since ancient times, is the throat of the world, its geographical location is extremely superior, bordering the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, shipping can be described in all directions. On land, it is also the junction of Asia, Africa and Europe, connecting North Africa through the Sinai Peninsula, connecting the Balkan Peninsula of Europe through the narrow Turkish Strait, and then connecting the Silk Road to the East through Central Asia, and also to the South Asian India and the Eastern European Plain.
Since ancient times, West Asia has been the absolute hub of Trade between Asia, Africa and Europe, so West Asia has earned countless wealth by virtue of its natural geographical advantages and bred a powerful West Asian civilization. Therefore, since ancient times, West Asia has emerged as a great power, starting from ancient Babylon and Assyria, and there have been countless times in the history of West Asia, and the direct presentation of splendor has given birth to many superpowers that span Europe, Asia and Africa.
Next, let's briefly understand the great empires that have historically spanned the three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa.
The First Persian Empire
Persian cavalry
1. The Achaemenid dynasty of Persia
The first great empire in history to span Asia, Africa and Europe was the Achaemenid dynasty, known as the First Persian Empire. In 559 BC, Cyrus II defeated the Persian rulers the Medes and unified Persia, establishing the Achaemenid dynasty, and an era of Persians arrived.
After the unification of the Persian Empire, it immediately began to conquer and expand its territory. Beginning in 550, the Persian Empire swept through places like Khwarazm and Bactria in Central Asia, taking into account what is now western and southern Central Asia, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 539 BC, Cyrus occupied Babylon, and the Persian Empire extended its power to the Two Rivers Valley. This was followed by a further conquest of Central Asia, advancing its forces to the Amu Darya and Syr Darya valleys. At the same time, Persia began a siege of Asia Minor, and soon occupied all of the peninsula of Asia Minor, driving the Greeks out of Asia Minor.
After the death of Cyrus the Great, his son Cambyses II succeeded to the throne and continued to open the road of conquest and expansion, Cambyses first opened the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, then attacked Egypt from the coastal plain, conquered Egypt in 525 BC, attacked its capital Memphis, and took Pharaoh into captivity to Susa, but in the late reign of Cambyses II, the country was in civil strife, political instability, and did not continue to expand.
Subsequently, after Darius I came to power by force, he quelled the civil strife of the country and began a new round of external expansion, and Darius I set his sights on the West, the Greek city-states on the other side of the sea of love. Beginning in 516 BC, Darius I began an attack on Greece, and in 492 BC, Darius I sent his son-in-law Madonius to attack Thrace and Macedonia, and after taking Thrace, Persia achieved the feat of establishing the first large empire in history across Asia, Africa and Europe, and then invaded Ukraine, almost turning the Black Sea into an inland sea. However, Darius I's army then lost the attack on the Greek mainland, known as the Battle of Marathon.
After Darius I's successor, Xerxes I, took the throne, inherited the legacy of his ancestors and continued to attack Greece, but repeated defeats greatly depleted the persian national strength, and from then on, this powerful empire declined until more than a hundred years later, it was destroyed by Alexander's empire.
Macedonian phalanx
Alexander's Empire
2. Alexander's Empire
Alexander's Empire is an honorific title for the Macedonian kingdom during the time of Alexander the Great. For the most part, Alexander's empire was not the so-called Greek history, and he should be regarded as a kind of inheritance of the First Persian Empire. Its territory is also a slightly reduced version of the peak of the First Persian Empire, that is, less of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya regions of Central Asia, less of the Romanian and Ukrainian coasts, and although it adopts the Macedonian military system militarily, it administratively follows the administrative division and management system of the Persian Empire.
The Macedonians, known as barbarians by the Greek states during the Greek city-states, formed the initial form of the state in the sixth century BC, but just in time for the Persian War, Darius I occupied Thrace and Macedonia, and Macedonia was forced to attach itself to the Persian army and become a member of the attacking Greek city-states.
In the fourth century BC, due to the decline of the Persian Empire, Macedonia gradually became independent of Greece and Persia, and began a road of self-improvement reform. Philip II defeated the Greek anti-Macedonian alliance and dominated Greece, becoming the key to the rise of Macedonia, although Macedonia in this period was still suppressed by Persia, and even Philip II was stabbed to death by Persian assassins, but the rise of Macedonia was unstoppable, because Alexander came.
Alexander the Great ascended to the throne at the age of twenty, quickly quelled the rebellions of the Greek states, eliminated domestic political enemies, and in order to defeat the behemoth of Persia, Alexander built an indestructible army, and the Macedonian phalanx began a journey of astonishing history. In 335 BC, Alexander the Great assembled a force of 30,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry and launched a campaign against Persia.
At the Battle of the Granicus River, the Macedonian phalanx defeated Persia and captured the peninsula of Asia Minor in one fell swoop. At the Battle of Issus, the Macedonian phalanx defeated Darius III's 100,000 Persian elites in Syria and captured the northern part of the eastern Mediterranean plain of the Persian Empire, including damascus, a historic city in West Asia. Alexander then took advantage of the siege of Tyre to capture Egypt in 332 BC. In 331 BC, Alexander's army came to the Two Rivers Valley, that is, the core area of the Persian Empire, and at the Battle of Gaucamera, defeated hundreds of thousands of Persian main forces, and then took babylon and other large cities in one fell swoop, and the Persian Empire collapsed. Alexander then pursued the remnants of Persia, taking the Iranian plateau and advancing all the way to the Indus Valley.
A large empire spanning Europe, Asia and Africa was established in just seven or eight years, and Alexander's empire was so great that it had never been seen in the ages. However, after the death of Alexander the Great, the empire was unstable and soon collapsed.
Roman
3. Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome, the hegemon of the Mediterranean around the 2nd century BC, and around the first century AD, turned the Mediterranean Sea into an imperial lake. At the beginning of the 4th century BC, Rome basically achieved the unification of the Apennine Peninsula after defeating the Latin Confederation, and then launched three Macedonian wars, conquering Spain, Macedonia and controlling all of Greece around 168 BC. It then launched three Punic wars, conquering Carthage in 146 BC and making it a roman province.
Rome's true splendor began at the end of the Roman Republic, and with the advent of the first three giants, the era of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, the Roman Senate was no longer able to suppress the power of these military oligarchs. Caesar took Gaul in the west and captured the fertile plains of Western Europe for the Roman Empire. Then Pompey and Crassus did not idle, conquering North Africa, and then Pompey annexed Syria and Palestine.
Later, the powerful Caesar took over the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, and since then, the Mediterranean Sea has become the inner lake of the Romans. Later, Octavian abolished the Roman Senate and established the Roman Empire, which reached its maximum territory during the reign of Emperor Antony of the Roman Empire, Trajan, from Spain and Britain in the west to the upper Euphrates River in the east, from northern Africa in the south, and to the Rhine and Danube rivers in the north.
Ancient Rome was one of the most powerful empires in history across Europe, Asia and Africa, and it was also the one with the most extensive territory, and it was also the one with the greatest economic strength and influence in later generations.
Sassanid Dynasty
4. The Sassanid Dynasty of Persia
The last large non-Islamic empire in Persia, known as the Second Persian Empire, was in 224 AD when Ardashir I was in Estahel, replacing the Sabbath Empire, one of the four great powers of Asia and Europe at the time, and defeating the Kushan Empire to create a super empire in the Iranian plateau.
After pacifying all the territories of the Sabbath Empire, the Sassanid Dynasty immediately began the road of conquest and expansion, and after decades of bloody war with the Roman Empire, the Sassanid Dynasty gradually gained the advantage, first controlling the two river valleys and then gradually expanding, taking advantage of the division of the Roman Empire, capturing Armenia and other places, but also crossing the Caucasus Mountains, taking Azerbaijan and other places, which is considered to be involved in the European continent.
In the 6th century, the Sassanid Empire defeated the Eastern Roman Empire, controlled most of Asia Minor, and in 540 it made an expedition to Syria, then took the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea and took advantage of the southward trend to directly control the Nile Valley. Since then, the Sassanid Dynasty has taken the territory of three continents in Asia, Africa and Europe.
Eastern Roman Empire
Constantinople
5. The Eastern Roman Empire
On 17 January 395, the Roman Emperor Theodosius (346-395) died, and on his deathbed, he divided the empire with two sons and divided the Roman Empire. Unlike the Western Roman Empire, which quickly disappeared to the barbarians after only a few decades of existence, the Eastern Roman Empire survived more than a thousand years of turmoil and underwent a brief revival.
For the first few hundred years, the Eastern Roman Empire was in decline, and the empire's territory was gradually encroached upon, and with the rise of the Arab Empire, it soon annexed the territories along the Mediterranean and North Africa. The Eastern Roman Empire was confined to a corner of Asia Minor and Thrace.
It was not until the 9th and 11th centuries AD that the Eastern Roman Empire ushered in a revival and reached its golden age. The Byzantine Empire resisted the Papacy's request to revoke Verdios as head of the church, gained sea supremacy over the Adriatic Sea, and occupied part of Italy and most of Bulgaria.
At its peak, the Byzantine Empire occupied all of Asia Minor and the Balkans, had coastlines in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, and even swallowed Granada and the Apennines in Spain, and controlled most of the Mediterranean Sea, which was a superpower that spanned Asia, Africa and Europe.
Arab Empire
Arab cavalry
6. The Arab Empire
The Arab Empire, a super-great empire created by the Arabs on the basis of Islam, founded by the Prophet Muhammad, was a theocratic regime that united loose Arab tribes, and by the time of Muhammad's death in 632, a theocratic, unified Arab state based on Islam had emerged on the Arabian Peninsula.
Subsequently, the Arabs began a frenzied expansion in the name of jihad. The Arabs quickly defeated the Second Persian Empire, took the Iranian plateau, and then ventured into Central Asia, swept through Khwarazm and other places, and fought with the Tang Dynasty, and after defeating Gao Xianzhi with several times the superiority of troops, extended their power to the Pamir Plateau.
Then, the Arab Empire did not stop expanding, first taking Syria, and with Damascus as the administrative center, while sending troops to North Africa, the Arab cavalry quickly swept egypt through the entire North African coast, while sending a large army to attack the Byzantine Empire, taking the southern region of Asia Minor, and then sending troops to Tunisia, all the way to northern Morocco, across the sea from the Iberian Peninsula.
In the eighth century AD, at the request of the Iberian Jews, the Moors crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into the Iberian Peninsula and attacked Spain, the Moors quickly occupied most of the Iberian Peninsula with lightning speed, and in 732, the caliphate's army crossed the Pyrenees, and after being defeated by the Franks, it stopped its expansion, and a large empire spanning the three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa was thus stretched across West Asia and North Africa.
The Arab Empire spanned greatly from east to west, west to Iberia and east to the Pamir Plateau. The east-west span is second only to the later Mongol Empire.
Ottoman Empire
Contribution to Constantinople
7. The Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, rising on the peninsula of Asia Minor, was originally a subordinate tribe under the Seljuk Empire, after the retreat of the Mongols, Asia Minor and the Iranian plateau were in a multi-country melee, the Turks rose in a chaotic world, taking advantage of the division of the Seljuk Sultanate of Roma, the Turks officially established a state.
Subsequently, the Turks began a journey of expansion, launching a siege of the nearest Eastern Roman Empire, and after more than a hundred years of gradual encroachment, in 1389 they defeated the combined forces of Serbia, Bulgaria and Hungary in the Battle of Kosovo, almost taking the Balkans into their pockets. In 1453, the Turks attacked Constantinople and finally uprooted this ancient empire rooted in the Middle East for thousands of years.
The Ottoman Turkish Empire reached its peak in the 16th century, occupying the Two Rivers Valley and even taking Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula. At the same time, it attacked Syria and soon annexed Syria and Palestine and Jordan. It then continued westward, occupying Egypt and Algeria, and annexing Somalia southward, creating a super-empire that spanned Europe, Asia, and Africa.
8. Spain, France, Britain and other colonial empires
Of course, in addition to the above-mentioned Middle Eastern empires, there are several colonial empires in history that have also had such territories, such as Britain and France, such as Spain and Portugal.