Key Achievements and Failures of Alexander the Great in Handling the Persian Empire

HISTORY ESSAY

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Alexander the Great: What were the key achievements and failures of Alexander in his
handling of the Persian Empire?
Alexander the great was certainly one of the greatest kings in the world history. He was the
Macedonian king who started his voyage with a dream of conquering the whole world.
Alexander won many battles and created an empire that stretched from Balkans to today’s
Pakistan. In this stretch of his empire he captured many great empires that existed from
centuries. His life has been story of successes but there are some failures also attached with
him. In the eyes of Persian history he was not great. This is because his approach to handling
the Persian Empire was questioned by many of the historians (Ansari, 2012). The triumph by
the Western historians was not recognised by the historians from Persia. This is because they
believe that the narrative that was created about him in other parts of the world was not so
true.
Persia was considered to be one of the biggest centres for world economic and politics.
Before being conquered by Alexander, it was considered to be a one of the most prosperous
places on this earth. It was also a place of art and architecture but the invasion by Alexander
has created a ruin of it. The ruins of Persepolis speaks three major stories i.e. it was built by
Darius the Great, inflated by his son Xerxes and destroyed by Alexander. Even though the
fact doesn’t change that Alexander conquering Persian Empire was on the greatest military
invasion in the world’s history still the way that he handled the empire was not something
that can triumphed about. Darius and his son Xerxes did the ill-fated invasion of Greek in
which they were defeated badly. Western history considers this assault by the Alexander as a
justified retaliation against the Persians (Jarus, 2017). The example of Persepolis was a
benchmark that showed that Alexander did not handled Persia carefully. Alexander did this to
take the revenge of what Persian king Xerxes did to Acropolis. Persians condemns Alexander
because he did not handle and respected their cultural and religious sites. They destroyed
Zoroastrianism’s (Ancient religion of Iranians) emblem. For the priests in this religion, this
destruction was treated as a calamity. It was first of its kind where both civilisation and
culture was brought to grounds in the form of destruction of the city.
Winning Persia was itself a biggest achievement as it was one of the prominent places in the
world and holds a status of strong empires. Many rulers from time to time tried to capture this
part but were failed. In the conquest towards winning the whole world, it was considered to

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be as the one of the major milestones. For winning Persia, he had to win three battles namely
the battle of Gaugamela, Battle of Issus and Battle of Granicus. Despite of the limitations in
the numbers of forces from the side of Alexander and the naval superiority of the Persian
Empire, it was Alexander who was victorious in the battle. However, it was also the fact that
Persian Empire was highly unstable and lacked in terms of the unity in various aspects. It was
not that winning Persia created a strong empire in that region but it also created a name of
Alexander in different parts of the world. This created a fear in the minds of people against
the Alexander (Brosius, 2003). This helped them in their future military invasions as the
moral of the other forces came down after hearing the name of Alexander.
Second example in this regard is the fact that kings in both the civilisation before Alexander
had great respect for each other and their cultures. This trend was not followed by Alexander
who wanted to bring Greek culture to Persia destroying the already prevalent culture at that
place. This is the reason why he has been termed as feckless and reckless youth whose only
goal was destroy Persia. Even though he ordered for repairing of the destruction his image
did not improved. He builds many of the Greek monuments in different parts of Persia. It was
an achievement in terms of the fact that since Persia was understood to be the gateway of
modern day Asia hence bringing the Greek culture in this country helped them to improve its
strength in other parts of the world. It is said many a time that for incorporating ideas into the
minds of people is easier when someone destroys their own cultural beliefs (Olbrycht, 2010).
Another example in this regards can be seen by the fact that what Alexander did was to bring
uniformity in the ways things was being carried out in the Persia. Persian people was not very
much organised and was very much uncultured at the time when Alexander attacked the
empire. This helped them in making them more civilised and attracted towards
modernisation. The political situation was also not very much stable as the things were not
maintained in a proper manner. Alexander brought centralised bureaucratic framework where
provincial governments was their priority. Alexander did not only killed high-ranking Persian
noble and put their own people at the bureaucratic framework. Alexander did not only bring
the changes in the bureaucratic framework but the changes were also noticed in the trade
(Warry, 2013). It was achievement of Alexander that they formed bigger and better armies
and these armies were trained in a better manner. Alexander was able to build an
infrastructure at the place which gave them support in their future operation in different parts
of the world.