Persian history... my favourite subject of all (look at this forums history, and you'll find a couple of threads on ancient Persia I've opened)
The Persians originally were part of a great migrant groups, known as the Indo-Iranians, along with some other notorious ones like the Medes, Bactrians or those known as the "Aryans" in India.
The first traces of a people named Persians can be found in Assyrian inscriptions of the 9th century. By the 7th century, the Persians have settled down in Elam, Anzan and a region they named after themselves (Parsa), all in southern Iran.
Under Cambyses I, they united into one kingdom under one prince, and Cyrus II brought them to greatness in the mid-6th century BC. It was the beginning of the Achaemenid empire, which, at its zenith about 500 BC (its absolute one actually in 480 BC) stretched from the western border of modern-day India to Thessalia, and from the northern border of modern-day Sudan to the Syr-Darya river in Kazakhstan. The Persian-Greek dualism had no true result, the absolute power shifting between both from time to time until Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire and spread the Greek culture, named "Hellenism" by the Prussian historian Droysen, throughout the Middle East. The Persians were reduced to their original borders and had to subdue to Greek and later Parthian overlords, until in AD 224, Ardasher of Persia defeated the Parthian King Ardavan. Persian power was restored under the Sasanid dynasty, and Persia at times even subdued the Byzantine Empire (during the mid-5th to early 6th century). A Hunnic tribe, named the Hephtalites, subdued the Persians during the late 5th and early 6th century, but the Persians could eventually throw their yoke off. A new time of glory followed, and at the zenith of its power, the Sasanid empire stretched from deep Central Asia to Yemen, Oman and Syria, for a while, it even held all of Syria, Palestine and Egypt, and large parts of Asia Minor, Persian forces even reaching Constantinople.
But the Byzantines struck back, and in short time, all of Persian power was terminated, a civil war errupted, and Persia eventually fell to the Arabs.
Persia was now ruled by, in chronological order, the Arabs, local princes, a Turkish dynasty known as the Ghaznavids, Seldjuk Turks, the Khwarizmian dynasty, the Mongols and Timurids, the Safavid, Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties, and, since 1979, the country, now known as Iran, which is a more accurate description, is an Islamic Republic.
Maybe you wanna check out my site at
http://www.alexanderthegreat.de about the Achaemenids and Alexander the Great (though it's currently in German only).
Then we have the (forget their names, Medes?) who harass the Byzantiniums for a while until they are conquered by the Arabs. Then Persia goes through a few hundred years of being ruled by Arabs and then Turks, and then its independent again and becomes the Safavid empire. They last a while and are slowly beaten down by the Ottomans until no more. Persia continues as a nation into the 20th century and one of the wealthiest in Asia since the British hadn't looted nearly as much there as they had in India and China 
and then it shoots itself in the foot about 741 times and we get backwards Persia which is beginning to regain itself now finally. Brief, mostly incorrect, I like Persia and not the thieves! 
They fought the Byzantines so hard, until they weakened themselves dangerously and got overrun by the upstart Arabs fr the deserts...
