Probably my
favorite world leader would be
Antiochos III Megas, ruler of the Arche Seleukeia from 222 to 187 BC(E). It's not that he was a universally perfect ruler - in fact, he is perhaps best known for losing two great battles of the classical age, those of Raphia (217) and Magnesia (190), the latter of which cemented Rome's ascendancy in the Mediterranean and nearly erased all of Antiocho's prodigious gains.
What I find most impressive about Antiochos was what he managed to do successfully. Upon his ascension, the Arche Seleukeia was a total mess; the Pahlavan and Baktrians had basically overrun the eastern quarter of the empire, the Ptolemaioi had successfully managed to invade Babylonia in the previous years, usurpers dotted Asia Mikra, and the imperial finances were in a terrible state. Once he dumped his terrible ministers, chief among them being Hermeias, though, he reorganized the empire, successfully subdued Asia Mikra, and forced the Baktrians and the Pahlavan to come to heel, winning the Battle of the Areios River against Euthydemos in audacious fashion against the best cavalry in the world, the kataphraktoi that he later adopted for his own use. He reversed the outcome of Raphia twenty years after the fact with the victory at Panion, which ended Ptolemaic suzerainty in Ioudaia and Syria forever. It was he who came closest to reestablishing the borders of the empire of Alexandros (well, he and his illustrious predecessor, Seleukos I Nikator), with his expedition into Greece.
But essentially what we have here is a fairly enigmatic figure who was one of the greatest and most powerful rulers of his time and who wasn't universally successful and learned from his mistakes. It was only on the outcome of the events of a single day that sent the edifice of his life's work, the reestablishment of the Arche Seleukeia, tumbling down. And even then, the empire was still extant afterwards, putting up a highly respectable resistance to the Pahlavan up to the final expedition of Antiochos VII Sidetes that reclaimed Mesopotamia and Media, if only ephemerally.
Other rulers I rate pretty highly include
Herakleios, Eastern Roman Emperor, who brilliantly repelled the Sassanid Persians from their invasion in the early seventh century. In 622, the year Herakleios began his campaigns, the Sassanian armies stood on the Bosphorus. Seven years later, after an epic series of campaigns fought in such locales as the old battlefield of Issos, where Alexandros had defeated Darius III a millennium prior; Armenia and Atropatene, where Herakleios played a dangerous diplomatic game with the Khazars; a march to Aspandana (Esfahan), the deepest reach by a Roman army into Iran; and finally culminating with an epic battle at the ruins of Nineveh, where Herakleios personally slew the royal general Rhahzadh - after all that, Herakleios utterly defeated the Sassanid armies, but demanded no territorial cessions, in a spirit of clemency and a wish for the same excellent Roman-Persian relations that had persisted during the later reign of Mauricius. It stains his image terribly to have been the emperor on watch when the Muslim Arabs began their tide of conquest; had he not had the dropsy, perhaps the advance spearheaded by the genial Arab general Khalid ibn al-Walid would have been ********.
I'm also a pretty big fan of
Mithridates I the Philhellene, who set the Pahlavan back on track to being a Great Power after the successes of Antiochos Megas. The military victories and fiscal reorganizations of
Friedrich II of Prussia put him pretty high up there, too; his epic engagements, the crowning achievement of which was the Battle of Leuthen, were just plain
awesome.
Taizong of Tang is almost a required entry, too; the victories he scored, first under Gaozu and later as Emperor himself, are simply stunning, and the contrast that can be made between his reign and the autocracy of the Sui that preceded him is nothing short of striking. To round out the list, I suppose I'll include
al-Mansur, the vizier who led the Caliphate of Cordoba at the turn of the millennium - he came close to reversing the tide of the reconquista, although to achieve his victories in the short term he made some very serious decisions, like the importation of Berber mercenaries that, like the use of the Turks as a military 'caste' in the Abbasid Caliphate, became a major political problem later on and facilitated the creation of the Almoravid state.
Out of modern rulers in power right now...I am a pretty big fan of Felipe Calderon in Mexico.
Yo he said 'was'.
I just hope the PRI doesn't come back into power anytime soon.
