Alexander the Great

Alexander got enough support of the Macedonian nobility and with 20 years he became established as the King of Macedonia. As there’s a rumor going round that Alexander died, the Thebans started 335 b.c. a rebellion against Macedonia, which ended quite quick with the totally destruction of the city and the enslavement of their inhabitants.

334 b.c. Alexander III passed the Hellespont, defeated the Satraps and captured the whole territory of Minor Asia. In every district he appointed Macedonian ruler. He moved on to Cilicia, where he fought in Issos 333 b.c. the first big battle against the Persian king Darius III, defeated him and put him to flight. After month of siege he also took over Tyros and Gaza and conquered peaceful Egypt. 331 b.c. He founded Alexandria in Egypt and in the same year he moved forward till north of Mesopotamia. Near Gangamela he defeated a second time the Persian King Darius III and occupied Babylon, Susa, Persepolis and Elebetana. Soon after, Dareios got killed from his own followers.

Alexander the Great moved on with his troops till to the borders of nowadays Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tadschikistan and Uzbekistan. He founded another Alexandria Basra near where the river Euphrates flow in the Persian Golf. He married Roxana a sogdian noble. He integrate more Iranian and took over Persian customs. In 327 BC his campaign to India started. On their way they defeated several Indian royal houses, but as they arrived to the Indian river Hyphasis and couldn’t see an end, the army refused to continue. Alexander leaded the troops with a new built fleet down the Indus where they arrived 325 BC near Pattala to the Indian Ocean. Here they formed two groups, to return on different ways back to Babylonia. The first group went through Archosia, an other group moved further with the boat to nowadays Kuwait, where the river Euphrates flows and the third group with the leadership of Alexander reconnoitre the deserts of Gedrosiens, nowadays Belutschistan.

As Alexander returned to Babylon, where some of his district rulers set up on their own and escaped now. In 331 b.c. Antipatros the ruler of the European part had to suppress a revolt of Sparta and an alliance of some other parts of Peloponnese, what succeeded in 324 b.c. At the same time broke out a mob of the troops in Opis near the Tigris which Alexander suppressed with determination and severity quite quick.

The capital of his empire should have been Babylonia, but everything turned out quite differently. Alexander felt ill and died 323.b.c. with fever in an age of 33 years old in Babylonia. If he could have kept his empire with this size for a long time its difficult to imagine, I have my doubts. But he respected from the beginning local traditions and political structures. He organized marriages between Macedonian district rulers and Iranian women and just occupied important political and military positions with Macedonians.