The Medes and the Fall of Assyria: How Highland Warriors Destroyed the World's Greatest Empire
- Hojîn Rostam
- 2 hours ago
- 10 min read
Introduction
In 612 BCE, the largest city in the world burned. Nineveh — the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, seat of the greatest military power the ancient world had ever seen — was stormed and sacked by an alliance of Medes and Babylonians. The Assyrian king Sin-shar-ishkun died in the siege. Within three years, the last remnants of Assyrian resistance were crushed at Harran. An empire that had terrorised the Near East for centuries was finished.
The force that led the destruction of Assyria was the Median kingdom — an Iranian-speaking power from the highlands of western Iran, led by King Cyaxares. For Kurdish historical consciousness, this is one of the most significant events in ancient history. The Medes are the most widely cited ancestors of the Kurdish people, and the fall of Nineveh has been symbolically connected to the Newroz celebration — the lighting of fires to mark the overthrow of tyranny. Whether the Kurdish-Median connection is as straightforward as some nationalist narratives claim is debated by scholars, but the destruction of Assyria by a highland Iranian-speaking people from the Kurdish geographical heartland is a historical fact that no one disputes.
Contents
Who Were the Medes?
The Medes were an Iranian-speaking people who inhabited the western Iranian highlands, centred on the region known as Media with its capital at Ecbatana (modern Hamadan, Iran). They first appear in Assyrian records in the ninth century BCE, when Assyrian kings began conducting military campaigns into the Zagros highlands. The Medes spoke a Northwestern Iranian language — the same linguistic branch to which Kurdish belongs today.
According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Medes were composed of six tribes and were first unified as a kingdom under Deioces in the late eighth century BCE. His son Phraortes expanded Median power but was killed in battle against the Assyrians around 625 BCE. The Scythians then dominated Media for a period before Phraortes' son Cyaxares overthrew Scythian rule, reorganised the Median military, and launched the campaign that would ultimately destroy the Assyrian Empire.
The Medes left no substantial written records of their own — no royal archives comparable to those of Assyria or Babylon have been discovered. Our knowledge of Median history comes primarily from Herodotus, from Babylonian chronicle texts, and from Assyrian records of their interactions with Median tribes. Some scholars have even questioned whether the Median 'empire' existed in the traditional sense, suggesting that it may have been a looser confederation rather than a centralised state. But their role in the destruction of Assyria is firmly documented in contemporary Babylonian sources.
Assyria and the Medes: Centuries of Conflict
The earliest Assyrian reference to the Medes dates from the reign of Shalmaneser III (858–824 BCE), who recorded campaigns into the 'land of the Medes.' Over the following two centuries, Assyrian kings repeatedly raided Median territories, exacting tribute, deporting populations, and attempting to control the strategic mountain passes between Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau. The Medes resisted continuously but were unable to mount a unified challenge while they remained a collection of competing tribal chieftains.
The Assyrians deliberately exploited Median disunity, playing tribes against each other and installing pro-Assyrian rulers. In 672 BCE, the Medes participated in a failed revolt against Assyria. This long history of Assyrian violence against the highland populations — the raids, deportations, tribute demands, and political manipulation — created the conditions for the eventual Median-Babylonian alliance that would bring the empire down. The destruction of Assyria was not a surprise attack; it was the culmination of generations of highland rage.
Cyaxares and the Reorganisation of the Median Army
Cyaxares (reigned c. 625–585 BCE) was the architect of Assyria's destruction. After overthrowing Scythian domination of Media, he undertook a military revolution that transformed the Medes from a tribal confederation into a formidable fighting force. According to Herodotus, Cyaxares reorganised the Median army along professional lines: instead of tribal militias where each warrior used whatever weapon he was most skilled with, he created a regular army modelled on the Assyrian and Urartian military systems, divided into strategic units of spearmen, archers, and cavalry.
This reorganisation was decisive. The Medes had always been fierce fighters, but without professional structure they could not sustain the kind of prolonged campaign necessary to break Assyrian power. Cyaxares gave them that structure — and then directed it against the empire that had brutalised his father's generation. He also forged alliances with the Babylonians under Nabopolassar, the Scythians, and other anti-Assyrian forces, creating the coalition that would bring Assyria to its knees.
The Fall of Assur (614 BCE)
The first major blow came in 614 BCE, when the Medes attacked and captured the city of Assur — the original homeland and religious heart of the Assyrian state. The Babylonian chronicle records that the Medes conquered the city on their own, without Babylonian assistance. The Median forces massacred the inhabitants and destroyed the temples. Nabopolassar arrived after the city had already fallen; according to the chronicle, the Babylonian king met Cyaxares at the ruins, and the two sealed their alliance with a marriage pact — a union between the Median and Babylonian royal families.
The fall of Assur was psychologically devastating for the Assyrian state. Assur was not just a political capital — it was the city of the god Ashur, the supreme deity of the Assyrian pantheon. Its destruction signalled that the cosmic order underpinning Assyrian imperial ideology had collapsed. The highland peoples whom the Assyrians had spent centuries trying to subjugate had torn out the spiritual heart of the empire.
The Fall of Nineveh (612 BCE)
Two years later, in 612 BCE, the Median and Babylonian armies converged on Nineveh itself. The city was one of the largest in the world, covering approximately 750 hectares, and it was heavily fortified. The Assyrian king Sin-shar-ishkun mounted a fierce defence. According to various ancient accounts, the siege lasted approximately three months.
The Babylonian chronicle records that the Medes played a major role in the city's fall. When Nineveh was finally breached, the allied forces sacked and destroyed it with extreme thoroughness. The Assyrian king died in the siege — ancient tradition says he perished in his burning palace. The city's great library, its temples, its palaces, and its administrative infrastructure were devastated. The archaeological record confirms that Nineveh was extensively depopulated in the decades following its destruction.
The fall of Nineveh sent shockwaves across the ancient Near East. The biblical prophet Nahum devoted an entire book to celebrating the city's destruction. For the peoples who had suffered under Assyrian rule — including the highland populations of the Zagros — it was a moment of liberation. For the Medes, it was the event that transformed them from a regional power into one of the masters of the ancient world.
The Siege of Harran and the End of Assyria (609 BCE)
After the fall of Nineveh, a remnant Assyrian force under Ashur-uballit II retreated to the city of Harran in upper Mesopotamia. Egypt, which had been allied with Assyria, sent forces to support the Assyrian holdout. But in 609 BCE, the Medes and Babylonians besieged Harran and took the city, forcing Ashur-uballit to flee. A subsequent Egyptian-Assyrian counterattack failed to recapture Harran. With this final defeat, the Neo-Assyrian Empire ceased to exist as a political entity.
The Median Empire After Assyria
Following the destruction of Assyria, the spoils were divided. Babylon took Mesopotamia and the Levant. The Medes took the Assyrian heartland and the highlands to the east. Cyaxares then expanded Median power westward into Anatolia, where the kingdom bordered Lydia. A war between the Medes and Lydians ended with the famous Battle of the Eclipse in 585 BCE, when a solar eclipse during battle prompted both sides to agree to peace.
At its greatest extent under Cyaxares, the Median realm stretched from eastern Anatolia to central Iran — an area of approximately 2.8 million square kilometres. The Medes held a pre-eminent position in the Near East until 550 BCE, when the Persian king Cyrus the Great — himself partly of Median descent through his mother — defeated the last Median king Astyages and absorbed Media into the new Achaemenid Persian Empire. Even after their political independence ended, the Medes retained a prominent position within the Persian system: Median nobles served as officials and generals, the Persian court adopted Median ceremonial customs, and the Persian kings continued to use Ecbatana as a summer capital.
The Medes and Kurdish Identity
Of all the ancient peoples discussed in relation to Kurdish origins, the Medes have the strongest claim. The linguistic connection is the most important evidence: Kurdish is a Northwestern Iranian language, and the Median language also belonged to the Northwestern Iranian branch. This means Kurdish and Median share a common linguistic ancestor in a way that the pre-Iranian Gutians and Lullubi do not. The Medes are not just geographical predecessors of the Kurds — they are linguistic relatives.
Medieval Armenian and Syriac Christian writers routinely used the terms 'Mede' and 'Kurd' interchangeably when referring to the peoples of the Zagros highlands. This literary tradition, spanning centuries, reflects a continuous perception among neighbouring cultures that the Kurds were the historical successors of the Medes in the same territory. The burial site of Cyaxares himself has been identified by some scholars with the rock-cut tomb at Qyzqapan in the modern Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
However, the connection is not without complications. The heartland of Media proper — the region around Ecbatana (Hamadan) — does not precisely correspond to the modern Kurdish-speaking zone, which lies further west and north. Some scholars argue that Kurdish is derived from Median, while others maintain that Kurdish descends from a related but distinct Northwestern Iranian dialect. The debate is further complicated by the fact that no Median texts survive, making direct linguistic comparison difficult.
What is beyond serious dispute is that the Medes were an Iranian-speaking people who inhabited the highlands adjacent to and overlapping with the territory that became Kurdistan, who spoke a language closely related to Kurdish, and who demonstrated a pattern of highland military power that resonates deeply with later Kurdish history. Whether the Medes are the direct ancestors of the Kurds or one of several closely related Iranian-speaking groups that contributed to Kurdish ethnogenesis, they represent the strongest ancient connection in the Kurdish historical narrative.
Legacy
The fall of Assyria at the hands of the Medes is one of the great turning points of ancient history. It ended an empire that had dominated the Near East for three centuries and created a new political order that would lead directly to the rise of the Persian Empire. For Kurdish national consciousness, 612 BCE carries symbolic weight comparable to 1776 for Americans or 1789 for the French: it is the moment when the ancestors proved they could not only resist an empire but destroy one.
The Newroz celebration — observed on the spring equinox across Kurdistan — draws part of its symbolic power from this history. The mythological narrative of the blacksmith Kaveh (Kawa) who rises against the tyrant Zahhak and lights a fire on the mountaintop to signal liberation echoes the historical reality of Median highland warriors destroying Assyrian tyranny. Whether or not the myth is directly connected to 612 BCE, it draws on the same deep pattern: the mountain people rising to overthrow the lowland oppressor.
Key Events and Timeline
c. 858–824 BCE — Shalmaneser III makes earliest Assyrian reference to the Medes in his campaign annals
c. 700 BCE — Deioces unifies the Median tribes and establishes the capital at Ecbatana
672 BCE — Medes participate in a revolt against Assyrian domination
c. 625 BCE — Phraortes killed in battle against Assyria; Cyaxares overthrows Scythian domination and becomes king
616 BCE — Nabopolassar of Babylon defeats the Assyrian army and launches invasion of Assyria
614 BCE — Medes under Cyaxares capture and destroy Assur; Median-Babylonian alliance sealed
612 BCE — Medes and Babylonians besiege and destroy Nineveh; Assyrian king Sin-shar-ishkun killed
609 BCE — Siege of Harran; last Assyrian king Ashur-uballit II defeated; Neo-Assyrian Empire ceases to exist
585 BCE — Battle of the Eclipse ends war between Medes and Lydia; Median Empire at greatest extent
c. 550 BCE — Cyrus the Great defeats Astyages; Media absorbed into the Achaemenid Persian Empire
Frequently Asked Questions
Who were the Medes?
The Medes were an Iranian-speaking people who inhabited the western Iranian highlands, centred on the city of Ecbatana (modern Hamadan). They spoke a Northwestern Iranian language related to Kurdish. Under King Cyaxares, the Medes led the coalition that destroyed the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 612 BCE and established one of the major powers of the ancient Near East.
Were the Medes ancestors of the Kurds?
The Medes are the most widely cited ancient ancestors of the Kurds. The strongest evidence is linguistic: both Kurdish and Median belong to the Northwestern Iranian language branch. Medieval Armenian and Syriac writers used 'Mede' and 'Kurd' interchangeably. However, some scholars argue that the core Median homeland around Hamadan does not precisely overlap with the modern Kurdish-speaking zone, and that Kurdish may descend from a related but distinct dialect rather than directly from Median.
How did the Medes destroy the Assyrian Empire?
King Cyaxares reorganised the Median army into a professional force and formed an alliance with the Babylonians under Nabopolassar. In 614 BCE, the Medes captured the ancient Assyrian capital of Assur. In 612 BCE, the combined Median-Babylonian forces besieged and destroyed Nineveh, killing the Assyrian king. By 609 BCE, the last Assyrian holdout at Harran had fallen.
Is Newroz connected to the fall of Nineveh?
The Newroz celebration has been symbolically connected to the Median victory over Assyria. The mythological narrative of the blacksmith Kaveh who overthrows the tyrant Zahhak and lights a fire of freedom resonates with the historical destruction of Assyrian power by the Medes. While the direct historical link is debated, both the myth and the history draw on the same deep pattern of highland resistance against lowland oppression.
What happened to the Medes?
Around 550 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus the Great defeated the last Median king Astyages and absorbed Media into the Achaemenid Empire. The Medes retained a prominent position within the Persian system, serving as officials, generals, and administrators. Their language and cultural influence continued in the Zagros highlands, where it contributed to the formation of the Kurdish and other Northwestern Iranian-speaking peoples.
References and Further Reading
Herodotus — The Histories, Book I (Median history and the rise of Cyaxares)
Gadd, C.J. — The Fall of Nineveh: The Newly Discovered Babylonian Chronicle No. 21901, British Museum, 1923
Encyclopaedia Britannica — Battle of Nineveh
Diakonoff, I.M. — Media, in Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 2, 1985
Dandamayev, M.A. & Medvedskaya, I.N. — Media, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2006
TheCollector — Medes: The Ancient People Who Took Down the Assyrian Empire, 2025
Hassanpour, A. & Sheyholislami, J. — Kurdish Identity, Discourse and New Media, 2012
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