Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located within South Asia and Central Asia. It has a population of approximately 32 million, making it the 42nd most populous country in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan in the north and its territory covers 652,000 km2, making it the 41st largest country in the world. The land served as the source from which the Kushans, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Khiljis, Hotaks, the political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak and Durrani dynasties in the 18th century. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a state in the Great Game between British India and the Russian Empire. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, King Amanullah unsuccessfully attempted to modernize the country and it remained peaceful during Zahir Shahs forty years of monarchy. A series of coups in the 1970s was followed by a series of wars that devastated much of Afghanistan.
The name Afghānistān is believed to be as old as the ethnonym Afghan, the root name Afghan was used historically in reference to a member of the ethnic Pashtuns, and the suffix -stan means place of in Persian. Therefore, Afghanistan translates to land of the Afghans or, more specifically in a historical sense, the modern Constitution of Afghanistan states that he word Afghan shall apply to every citizen of Afghanistan. An important site of historical activities, many believe that Afghanistan compares to Egypt in terms of the historical value of its archaeological sites. The country sits at a unique nexus point where numerous civilizations have interacted and it has been home to various peoples through the ages, among them the ancient Iranian peoples who established the dominant role of Indo-Iranian languages in the region. At multiple points, the land has been incorporated within large regional empires, among them the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, and the Islamic Empire.
Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by culture and trade with its neighbors to the east, west. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Neolithic, urban civilization is believed to have begun as early as 3000 BCE, and the early city of Mundigak may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. More recent findings established that the Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up towards modern-day Afghanistan, making the ancient civilisation today part of Pakistan, Afghanistan, in more detail, it extended from what today is northwest Pakistan to northwest India and northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley site has found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. There are several smaller IVC colonies to be found in Afghanistan as well, after 2000 BCE, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia began moving south into Afghanistan, among them were many Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians.
These tribes migrated further into South Asia, Western Asia, the region at the time was referred to as Ariana
Hamun Lake
Lake Hāmūn or Hamoun Oasis is a term applied to wetlands in endorheic Sīstān Basin on the Irano-Afghan border. The Hamun is fed by seasonal water tributaries, the main tributary is the perennial Helmand River. In modern times, and prior to the existence of the dams for agricultural irrigation, in Iran term Daryācheh-ye Sīstān is used, with similar meanings, for lake Hāmūn-e Helmand. It is located in Afghanistan which forms on the Sīstān marshes west of the Dasht-e Mārgow desert where the Helmand River forms a dendritic delta. Water flows in a circular fashion through a string of starting with Hāmūn-e Puzak in the northeast, sweeping into Hāmūn-e Sabari. It used to cover an area of about 4,000 km2 with dense reed beds, area was thriving with wildlife animals and migratory birds. A trapezoid shaped basalt outcropping, known as Mount Khajeh, rises up as an island in the middle of which used to be Hāmūn Lake and the northeastern edge of Hāmūn-e Helmand. Its flat-topped peak rises up 609 meters above sea level with a diameter 2-2.5 km, the area has important archeological remains.
The ruins of an ancient Achaemenid city Dahan-e Gholaman are near the Hāmūn Lake 31. 508625°N61. 753551°E /31.508625,61.753551, in 1975 the Hāmūn-e Helmand, together with Hāmūn-e Sabari, was designated a Ramsar site. In the past five millennia, people around Hamoun Oasis for the most part lived in harmony with the wetlands, specific culture formed around the Hamoun with a way of life suited to the desert wetlands. They fashioned long reed boats to navigate the waters and erected squat. Their livelihood was based almost entirely on hunting, soon irrigation schemes began to snake their way throughout the basin. Farther west, revolving Afghan governments constructed large dams that diverted water from the reaches of the river. Precipitation variability in the Hindu Kush results in alternating periods of flooding in the Helmand and droughts and this occurred several times in the 20th century, when only the uppermost of the lakes remained flooded. Landsat satellite imagery show how dramatic decrease in precipitation resulted in decrease of snow-covered area in the Helmand Basin, by 2001, Iran and Afghanistan were experienced for the third consecutive year an extreme drought that was so severe that the Hamoun dried out completely.
Sīstāns population, swelled by refugees from war-torn Afghanistan, has severely affected by water shortages. Irrigation channels have run dry and agriculture has come to a standstill, combination of drought and the massive irrigation proved to be a shock to the wetlands. Within five years period once fertile wetlands rapidly deteriorated, the wetlands have been replaced mostly by lifeless salt flats and decaying reed stands
Ammianus Marcellinus
Ammianus Marcellinus was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from Antiquity. Ammianus was born between 325 and 330 in the Greek-speaking East, possibly in Syria or Phoenicia and his native language was most likely Greek, he learned Latin as a second language, and was probably familiar with Syriac as well. The surviving books of his cover the years 353 to 378. Ammianus served as a soldier in the army of Constantius II and Julian in Gaul and he professes to have been a former soldier and a Greek, and his enrollment among the elite protectores domestici shows that he was of middle class or higher birth. Consensus is that Ammianus probably came from a family. He entered the army at an age, when Constantius II was emperor of the East, and was sent to serve under Ursicinus, governor of Nisibis in Mesopotamia. He returned with Ursicinus to Italy when Ursicinus was recalled by Constantius to begin an expedition against Claudius Silvanus, Silvanus had been forced by the allegedly false accusations of his enemies into proclaiming himself emperor in Gaul.
Ammianus campaigned in the East twice under Ursicinus, on one occasion he was separated from the officers entourage and took refuge in Amida during the siege of the city by the Sassanids of shah Shapur II, he reportedly barely escaped with his life. He accompanied Julian, for whom he expresses enthusiastic admiration, in his campaigns against the Alamanni, after Julians death, Ammianus accompanied retreat of the new emperor Jovian as far as Antioch. He was residing in Antioch in 372 when a certain Theodorus was thought to have identified the successor to the emperor Valens by divination. Speaking as an eyewitness, Marcellinus recounts how Theodorus and several others were made to confess their deceit through the use of torture. He eventually settled in Rome and began the Res Gestae, the precise year of his death is unknown, but scholarly consensus places it somewhere between 392 and 400 at the latest. Modern scholarship generally describes Ammianus as a pagan who was tolerant of Christianity and he was not blind to the faults of Christians or of pagans, he observed in his Res Gestae that no wild beasts are so deadly to humans as most Christians are to each other.
And he condemns his hero Julian for excessive attachment to sacrifice and he presumably completed the work before 391, as at 22.16. The Res Gestae was originally composed of books, but the first thirteen have been lost. The surviving eighteen books cover the period from 353 to 378, as a whole it is extremely valuable, constituting the foundation of modern understanding of the history of the fourth century Roman Empire. Although criticised as lacking literary merit by his biographers, he was in fact quite skilled in rhetoric. His work has suffered terribly from manuscript transmission, aside from the loss of the first thirteen books, the remaining eighteen are in many places corrupt and lacunose
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy was a Greek writer, known as a mathematician, geographer and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in the city of Alexandria in the Roman province of Egypt, wrote in Koine Greek, beyond that, few reliable details of his life are known. His birthplace has been given as Ptolemais Hermiou in the Thebaid in a statement by the 14th-century astronomer Theodore Meliteniotes. This is a very late attestation and there is no reason to suppose that he ever lived elsewhere than Alexandria. Ptolemy wrote several treatises, three of which were of importance to Byzantine and European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest, although it was entitled the Mathematical Treatise. The second is the Geography, which is a discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the treatise in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. This is sometimes known as the Apotelesmatika but more known as the Tetrabiblos from the Greek meaning Four Books or by the Latin Quadripartitum.
The name Claudius is a Roman nomen, the fact that Ptolemy bore it indicates he lived under the Roman rule of Egypt with the privileges and political rights of Roman citizenship. It would have suited custom if the first of Ptolemys family to become a citizen took the nomen from a Roman called Claudius who was responsible for granting citizenship, if, as was common, this was the emperor, citizenship would have been granted between AD41 and 68. The astronomer would have had a praenomen, which remains unknown and it occurs once in Greek mythology, and is of Homeric form. All the kings after him, until Egypt became a Roman province in 30 BC, were Ptolemies, abu Mashar recorded a belief that a different member of this royal line composed the book on astrology and attributed it to Ptolemy. The correct answer is not known”, Ptolemy wrote in Greek and can be shown to have utilized Babylonian astronomical data. He was a Roman citizen, but most scholars conclude that Ptolemy was ethnically Greek and he was often known in Arabic sources as the Upper Egyptian, suggesting he may have had origins in southern Egypt.
Later Arabic astronomers and physicists referred to him by his name in Arabic, Ptolemys Almagest is the only surviving comprehensive ancient treatise on astronomy. Ptolemy presented his models in convenient tables, which could be used to compute the future or past position of the planets. The Almagest contains a catalogue, which is a version of a catalogue created by Hipparchus
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus or Diodorus of Sicily was a Greek historian. He is known for writing the monumental universal history Bibliotheca historica, much of which survives and it is arranged in three parts. The first covers mythic history up to the destruction of Troy, arranged geographically, describing regions around the world from Egypt and Arabia to Greece, the second covers the Trojan War to the death of Alexander the Great. The third covers the period to about 60 BC, meaning library, acknowledges that he was drawing on the work of many other authors. According to his own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily, with one exception, antiquity affords no further information about his life and doings beyond in his work. Only Jerome, in his Chronicon under the year of Abraham 1968, Diodorus of Sicily and it was divided into three sections. In the next section, he recounts the history of the world from the Trojan War down to the death of Alexander the Great, the last section concerns the historical events from the successors of Alexander down to either 60 BC or the beginning of Julius Caesars Gallic Wars.
He selected the name Bibliotheca in acknowledgment that he was assembling a composite work from many sources. His account of gold mining in Nubia in eastern Egypt is one of the earliest extant texts on the topic, pappus of Alexandria wrote a Commentary on Diodoruss Analemma. The now lost Analemma applied geometrical constructions in a plane to solve some astronomy related problems of spherical geometry and it contained, for example, a discussion of sundial theory. They are boasters and threateners and are fond of pompous language, pliny the Elder Strabo Acadine Ambaglio, Franca Landucci Gattinoni and Luigi Bravi. Diodoro Siculo, Biblioteca storica, commento storico, introduzione generale, aspects of Greek History 750-323 BC, A Source-based Approach. Library of History, Loeb Classical Library, Diodorus, G. Booth, H. Valesius, I. The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian in Fifteen Books to which are added the Fragments of Diodorus, Diodori, Peter Wesseling, L. Rhodoman, G. Heyn, N. Eyring. Bibliothecae Historicae Libri Qui Supersunt, Nova Editio, Diodorus Siculus, the manuscripts of the Bibliotheca Historica
Indus River
The Indus River, called Sindhū or Abāsīn, is a major south-flowing river in South Asia. The total length of the river is 3,180 km which makes it one of the longest rivers in Asia and it is the longest river and national river of Pakistan. The river has a drainage area exceeding 1,165,000 km2. Its estimated annual flow stands at around 207 km3, making it the twenty-first largest river in the world in terms of annual flow, the Zanskar is its left bank tributary in Ladakh. In the plains, its left tributary is the Chenab which itself has four major tributaries, the Jhelum, the Ravi, the Beas. Its principal right tributaries are the Shyok, the Gilgit, the Kabul, the Gomal. Beginning in a spring and fed with glaciers and rivers in the Himalayas. The Indus forms the delta of present-day Pakistan mentioned in the Vedic Rigveda as Sapta Sindhu, the river has been a source of wonder since the Classical Period, with King Darius of Persia sending his Greek subject Scylax of Caryanda to explore the river as early as 510 BC.
In Pali, Síndhu means river and refers to the Indus River in particular, the word Indus is the romanised form of the ancient Greek word Indós, borrowed from the old Persian word Hinduš which is in turn borrowed from the Sanskrit word Sindhu. Megastheness book Indica derives its name from the rivers Greek name, Indós, the ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indói, literally meaning the people of the Indus. The country of India and the Pakistani province of Sindh owe their names to the river, Rigveda describes several mythical rivers, including one named Sindhu. The Rigvedic Sindhu is thought to be the present-day Indus river and is attested 176 times in its text –95 times in the plural, more often used in the generic meaning. In the Rigveda, notably in the hymns, the meaning of the word is narrowed to refer to the Indus river in particular. The Rigvedic hymns apply a feminine gender to all the rivers mentioned therein, Sindhu is seen as a strong warrior amongst other rivers which are seen as goddesses and compared to cows and mares yielding milk and butter.
The Indus River provides key resources for Pakistans economy – especially the breadbasket of Punjab province, which accounts for most of the nations agricultural production. The word Punjab means land of five rivers and the five rivers are Jhelum, Ravi and Sutlej, the Indus supports many heavy industries and provides the main supply of potable water in Pakistan. The ultimate source of the Indus is in Tibet, the river begins at the confluence of the Sengge Zangbo and Gar Tsangpo rivers that drain the Nganglong Kangri, the Indus flows northwest through Ladakh and Baltistan into Gilgit, just south of the Karakoram range. The Shyok and Gilgit rivers carry glacial waters into the main river and it gradually bends to the south, coming out of the hills between Peshawar and Rawalpindi
Sistan and Baluchestan Province
Sistan and Baluchestan Province is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. It is in the southeast of the country, bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan, the province is the largest in Iran, with an area of 181,785 km² and a population of 2.5 million. The counties of the province are Chabahar, Qasar-qand, Hirmand, Khash, Nikshahr, Sarbaz, Zabol, Zaboli and Zehak. The population comprises the Baluch who form a majority in the province, followed by the large minority. Smaller communities of Kurds, the expatriate Brahui, and other resident and itinerant ethnic groups such as the Gypsies are found in the province, the province comprises two sections, Sistan in the north and Baluchestan in the south. In the south and west of Sistān and Balūchestān, in the far north of Sistān and Balūchestān, the people are mostly Persians and speak a dialect of the Persian language known as Sistani/Seestani, similar to the Dari Persian language in Afghanistan. Many scholars and literary personalities have sprung up from this part of Iran, amongst which are Farrukhi Sistani, Yaqub bin Laith as-Saffar, ayatollah Sistani is from Sistān, though he currently resides in Najaf, Iraq.
In the epigraphs of Bistoon and Persepolis, Sistan is mentioned as one of the territories of Darius the Great. The name Sistan, as mentioned above, is derived from Saka, during the Arsacid Dynasty, the province became the seat of Suren-Pahlav Clan. From the Sassanid period till the early Islamic period, Sistan flourished considerably, during the reign of the second caliph of Islam, Omar ibn Al-Khattab, this territory was conquered by the Arabs and an Arab commander was assigned as governor. The famous Persian ruler Yaqub-i Laith Saffari, whose descendants dominated this area for many centuries, in 916 CE, Baluchestan was ruled by the Daylamids and thereafter the Seljuqids, when it became a part of Kerman. Dynasties such as the Saffarids, Samanids and Seljuqids, in 1508 CE, Shah Ismail I of the Safavid dynasty conquered Sistan, and during the reign of Nader Shah there was further turmoil. The province today is the most underdeveloped and poorest of Irans provinces, the government of Iran has been trying to reverse this situation by implementing new plans such as creating the Chabahar Free Trade-Industrial Zone.
It has weekly trains for Kovaitah, recently a railway from Bam, Iran to Zahedan has been inaugurated. There may be plans to build lines from Zahedan to Chabahar. Sistan Province has two passenger airports, Zahedan Airport Chabahar Airport Port of Chabahar in South of province is the main port to be connected by a new railway to Zahedan in future. Industry is new to the province, efforts have been done and tax and financial motivations have caused more industrial investment, new projects, new producing jobs and improvement of industry. The most important factories are, – Khash cement factory with production of 2600 tons cement daily, factories under construction, – Cotton cloth and fishing net weaving factories and the brick factory can be named as well
Muslim conquest of Persia
The Muslim conquest of Persia, known as the Arab conquest of Iran, led to the end of the Sasanian Empire in 651 and the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion in Iran. The rise of Muslims coincided with a significant political, economic, once a major world power, the Sasanian Empire had exhausted its human and material resources after decades of warfare against the Byzantine Empire. The internal political situation quickly deteriorated after the execution of King Khosrau II on February 28,628, ten new claimants were enthroned within the next four years, highlighting the political instability of the Sassanians prior to the Muslim invasion. Arab Muslims first attacked the Sassanid territory in 633, when general Khalid ibn Walid invaded Mesopotamia, following the transfer of Khalid to the Byzantine front in the Levant, the Muslims eventually lost their holdings to Sassanian counterattacks. The second invasion began in 636 under Saad ibn Abi Waqqas, the Zagros mountains became a natural barrier and border between the Rashidun Caliphate and the Sassanid Empire.
Due to continuous raids by Persians into the area, Caliph Umar ordered an invasion of the Sasanian empire in 642. By 651, most of the centers in Iranian lands, with the notable exception of the Caspian provinces. Many localities fought against the invaders, none were successful, in fact, although Arabs had established hegemony over most of the country, many cities rose in rebellion by killing the Arab governor or attacking their garrisons. Eventually, military reinforcements quashed the insurgency and imposed Islamic control, the Persians began to reassert themselves by maintaining Persian language and culture. Regardless, Islam was adopted by many for a multitude of reasons including by threat and extortion, for political and economic reasons, Islam would become the dominant religion late in the medieval ages. The most significant work was probably that of Arthur Christensen, and his L’Iran sous les Sassanides, published in Copenhagen, however recent scholarship, both Iranian and Western, has begun to question the traditional narrative.
Another important theme of Pourshariatis study is a re-evaluation of the traditional timeline, since the 1st century BC, the border between the Roman and Parthian empires had been the Euphrates River. Most battles, and thus most fortifications, were concentrated in the regions of the north. The only dangers expected from the south were occasional raids by nomadic Arab tribesmen, both empires therefore allied themselves with small, semi-independent Arab principalities, which served as buffer states and protected Byzantium and Persia from Bedouin attacks. The Byzantine clients were the Ghassanids, the Persian clients were the Lakhmids, the Ghassanids and Lakhmids feuded constantly, which kept them occupied, but that did not greatly affect the Byzantines or the Persians. In the 6th and 7th centuries, various factors destroyed the balance of power that had held for so many centuries, the Byzantine clients, the Arab Ghassanids, converted to the Monophysite form of Christianity, which was regarded as heretical by the established Byzantine Orthodox Church.
The Byzantines attempted to suppress the heresy, alienating the Ghassanids, the Lakhmids revolted against the Persian king Khusrau II. Numan III, the first Christian Lakhmid king, was deposed and killed by Khusrau II in 602, after Khusraus assassination, the Persian Empire fractured and the Lakhmids were effectively semi-independent
Curtius Rufus
Curtius Rufus was a Roman professional magistrate of senatorial rank mentioned by Tacitus and Pliny the Younger for life events occurring during the reigns of the emperors Tiberius and Claudius. In all probability he is to be equated with the first-century Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus, knowledge of Curtius Rufus’ life is a collection of isolated sources. No continuous history of the written by Plutarch and other biographers exists. The author of a history of Alexander has none of his own. Much can be inferred from the sources that do exist. Curtius Rufus is a name formed according to the Roman naming conventions. The Romans had a 3-name system, but for ordinary use they curtailed it to one or two elements, the three names must not be thought to apply to any but free Roman citizens. Due to the almost continuous expansion of the territory of Rome from the early Republic, one name sufficed for them, although freedmen might take the name of their patrons. In this category were gladiators, men originally sentenced to death, there were but few living losers.
Curtius Rufus omits the praenomen, or first name. If the magistrate is to be identified with the historian, it must be Quintus, under the Republic spelled Quinctus, “the Fifth. ”As the Romans used the name in different generations, it may originally have had a numerical significance. The indispensable portion of the name was the nomen, “name, ” the name of the gens, “clan. ”All males of the gens Curtia were named Curtius, and all females Curtia. This convention presented somewhat of a problem in distinguishing multiple Curtii, but the third name and it might have nothing to do with any convention. Over several hundred years of this system the cognomen often became an extension of the nomen for distinguishing lines within the gens, an important man would name the line, such as the Curtii Rufi. These conventions must influence the interpretation of certain remarks made by Tacitus and Tiberius regarding Curtius Rufus’ family background, a man with the name and associations possessed by Curtius Rufus is not likely to have been a commoner, or of humble birth.
However, there was a circumstance of which men were aware, but refused discussion, that is, it fell under the category of taboo. Of it Tacitus says, Of the birth of Curtius Rufus and he does not say that Curtius was the son of a gladiator, but repeats that as slander, while affirming that he will not tell the truth. As he is not known for his irony or his hypocrisy, the slander denies that the future consul was of the Curtii, a major accusation, since the Curtii were nobles from one of the earliest families at Rome
Shahr-e Sukhteh
Shahr-e Sūkhté, spelled as Shahr-e Sukhteh and Shahr-i Shōkhta, is an archaeological site of a sizable Bronze Age urban settlement, associated with the Jiroft culture. It is located in Sistan and Baluchistan Province, the part of Iran, on the bank of the Helmand River. In July 2014 it was placed on the World Heritage List of UNESCO, the reasons for the unexpected rise and fall of the Burnt City are still wrapped in mystery. Covering an area of 151 hectares, Shahr-e Sukhteh was one of the world’s largest cities at the dawn of the urban era, in the western part of the site is a vast graveyard, measuring 25 ha. It contains between 25,000 and 40,000 ancient graves, the settlement appeared around 3200 BCE. The city had four stages of civilization and was burnt down three times before being abandoned in 1800 BCE, the site was discovered and investigated by Aurel Stein in the early 1900s. Beginning in 1967, the site was excavated by the Istituto italiano per lAfrica e lOriente team led by Maurizio Tosi, after a gap, work at the site was resumed by the Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization team led by SMS Sajjadi.
New discoveries are reported from time to time, most of the material discovered is dated to the period of c. The discoveries indicate that the city was a hub of trading routes that connected Mesopotamia and Iran with the Central Asian and Indian civilizations, shahdad is another related big site that is being excavated. Some 900 Bronze Age sites have been documented in the Sistan Basin, Helmand culture of western Afghanistan was a Bronze Age culture of the 3rd millennium BCE. Scholars link it with Shahr-i Sokhta and Bampur sites and this civilization flourished between 2500 and 1900 BCE, and may have coincided with the great flourishing of the Indus Valley Civilization. This was the phase of Periods III and IV of Shahr-i Sokhta. Thus and Helmand cultures are closely related, Jiroft culture flourished in the eastern Iran, and the Helmand culture in western Afghanistan at the same time. In fact, they may represent the cultural area. Mehrgarh culture, on the hand, is far earlier. A recent discovery is a unique marble cup, which was found in 29, in January 2015, a Bronze Age piece of leather adorned with drawings was discovered In December 2006, archaeologists discovered the worlds earliest known artificial eyeball.
It has a form and a diameter of just over 2.5 cm. It consists of light material, probably bitumen paste
Herodotus
Herodotus was a Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire and lived in the fifth century BC, a contemporary of Socrates. The Histories is the work which he is known to have produced. Despite Herodotus historical significance, little is known of his personal life and his place in history and his significance may be understood according to the traditions within which he worked. His work is the earliest Greek prose to have survived intact, of these only fragments of Hecataeuss work survive yet they allow us glimpses into the kind of tradition within which Herodotus wrote his own Histories. In his introduction to Hecataeus’s work, This points forward to the ‘folksy’ yet ‘international’ outlook typical of Herodotus. Yet, one scholar has described the work of Hecataeus as “a curious false start to history” since despite his critical spirit. It is possible that Herodotus borrowed much material from Hecataeus, as stated by Porphyry in a recorded by Eusebius. But Hecataeus did not record events that had occurred in living memory, unlike Herodotus, Herodotus claims to be better informed than his predecessors by relying on empirical observation to correct their excessive schematism.
For example, He argues for continental asymmetry as opposed to the theory of a perfectly circular earth with Europe. Yet, he retains idealizing tendencies, as in his notions of the Danube. His debt to previous authors of prose ‘histories’ might be questionable, this point is one of the most contentious issues in modern scholarship. It is on account of the strange stories and the folk-tales he reported that his critics in early modern times branded him “The Father of Lies”. Even his own contemporaries found reason to scoff at his achievement, the Athenian historian Thucydides dismissed Herodotus as a “logos-writer”. Moreover, Thucydides developed a historical topic more in keeping with the Greek world-view, the interplay of civilizations was more relevant to Greeks living in Anatolia, such as Herodotus himself, for whom life within a foreign civilization was a recent memory. Modern scholars generally turn to Herodotus’s own writing for reliable information about his life, supplemented with ancient yet much sources, modern accounts of his life typically go something like this, Herodotus was born at Halicarnassus around 484 BC.
His name is not mentioned in the tribute list of the Athenian Delian League, the epic poet Panyassis – a relative of Herodotus – is reported to have taken part in a failed uprising. Herodotus expresses affection for the island of Samos, and this is an indication that he might have lived there in his youth. So it is possible that his family was involved in an uprising against Lygdamis, leading to a period of exile on Samos, Herodotus wrote his Histories in the Ionian dialect, yet he was born in Halicarnassus, which was a Dorian settlement
