Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley

Common card · No. 261219

Around 535 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus the Great initiated a protracted campaign to absorb parts of northwestern South Asia into his nascent Achaemenid Empire. In this initial incursion, the Persian army annexed a large region to the west of the Indus River, consolidating the early eastern borders of their new realm. With a brief pause after Cyrus' death around 530 BCE, the campaign continued under Darius the Great, who began to re-conquer former provinces and further expand the Achaemenid Empire's political boundaries. Around 518 BCE, the Persian army pushed further into the Indus to initiate a second period of conquest by annexing regions up to the Jhelum River in present-day West Punjab. At their peak, the Achaemenids incorporated and ruled much of modern-day Pakistan into their territory. The first secure epigraphic evidence through the Behistun Inscription gives a date before or around 518 BCE. Persian penetration into the Indian subcontinent occurred in multiple stages, beginning...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Map achaemenid empire pt.svg: Ogodej derivative work: Rowanwindwhistler (talk) translator: Manlleus, CC BY-SA 4.0