Median Empire
The Median Empire was an ancient empire centered on the Iranian plateau.
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History
The Medes were a tribal society that was settled in the Iranian plateau by the 1st millennium BCE. The earliest records are from the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which by the reign of Sargon II in the 720s BCE controlled all of Media.
Mythically Deioces united the Medes and established a Median kingdom.
When Ashurbanipal died in 631 BCE, the empire began to dissolve. A Median kingdom certainly emerged by this time, and Cyaxares built it into a massive empire that stretched from the Halys River in Anatolia, south to the Persian Gulf, and east into Central Asia.
Cyaxares' son Astyages was overthrown by one of his vassals, Cyrus II, in 550 BCE.
Media continued to be a provincial unit within the successive Achaemenid and Seleucid Empires. It was the Parthian Empire under Mithridates I that finally and permanently dissolved the region.