Aria (satrapy)

Aria, Old Persian Haraiva, is the ancient name of a historical landscape in Central Asia and largely reflects the current Afghan province of Herat. Named the region is based on the eponymous Iranian people, the BC einsiedelte in this area about 1500. The word "Aria" is a derived from the Old Iranian Greek name and means something "pure" as "noble" or. It corresponds to the later European ethno- political reinterpreted term " (home of ) Aryans ".

After Richard Frye, this region is the country of origin of the Indo-Iranian -speaking Aryans. Here branched this in:

• Ancestor of the Medes and Persians, which migrated west or southwest direction
• Ancestors of the later Sanskrit peoples in India, which migrated through the Hindu Kush to the southeast
• Ancestors of the Bactrians and Sogdians, which migrated to the east and northeast
• Many other groups that migrated to the north, such as the ancestors of the Parthians, who later Ossetians, Sarmatians and Alans

Under the Achaemenids was "Aria" with its capital " Artacoana " (now the city of Herat ) incorporated into the Persian Empire and divided into a separate satrapy. After the conquest of the kingdom by Alexander the Great and the subsequent fall of the Greek Seleucids started from here, the triumph and the Empire of the later Parthians. After the Arab conquest of Persia, the region belonged to the core area of ​​the province of Khorasan ostpersischen. Since 1848, the region is part of the territory of Afghanistan.