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Arbakah | |
|---|---|
| Born | Media |
| Died | 530 BCE Lydia, Achaemenid Empire |
| Nationality | Median |
Arbakah (died 530 BCE), also known by the Greek name Harpagos, was a Median and Persian general. He organized the Persian conquest of Anatolia.[1]
Median Empire[edit | edit source]
Rštivaigah, the last king of Media, had a dream that his grandson (the future Kūruš II) would overthrow him and ordered Arbakah to kill the newborn child. Arbakah gave Kūruš to the slave Mithradāta and ordered him to abandon it to the mountains. Arbakah sent his followers to investigate and bury the body, but Mithradāta had actually kept Kūruš alive and disguised his own stillborn child as Kūruš.[1]
Ten years later, when Rštivaigah found out that Kūruš was still alive, he invited Arbakah to a feast and secretly fed him the meat of his own son.[1]
Persian Empire[edit | edit source]
When Kūruš rebelled against the Medes in 553 BCE, Arbakah and his soldiers defected to the Persian side. In 550 BCE, the Persians overthrew Rštivaigah.[1]
During the conquest of Lydia, Arbakah sent camel-riding soldiers ahead of his main forces. The Lydians' horses stampeded when they saw the camels, and the Persians were able to defeat the Lydian infantry. He conquered the Greek cities of Anatolia by building high mounds next to their walls and then storming the cities.[1]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Grigory Bongard-Levin, Boris Piotrovsky (1988). Ancient Civilisations of East and West. https://archive.org/details/ancientciveastwest/mode/1up.