ess importance than the Scythians.
             After the fall of the Medes to the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, the early Afghan people no longer had an enemy to fight, and the Achaemenids did not wish to make war on the people of Afghanistan. Instead, the Achaemenids, under the rule of Cyrus the Great in mid sixth century BC, offered the Afghans the opportunity to become apart of their empire with ample benefits for a small fee. They would have their own ruler, known as a hyparch, and they could continue as a sovereign people as long as they gave a small annual tribute to the Persian king at Persepolis. In return, they would receive protection from the Achaemenids and from any future conquests. Officially, they were under the control of the Achaemenids as the provinces of Bactria and Arachosia; unofficially, they were self-governing.
             Why would the Achaemenids, conquerors of most of the known world, allow the people of Afghanistan an almost self-rule situation, when other more powerful nations like Egypt and Babylon, had fallen to its power? One reason is due to their reputation as formidable warriors; it was easier to have them as a type of vassal state rather than conquer it in a pyrrhic victory. The Scythian and Bactrian warriors, though very nomadic and considered barbaric by the historian Herodotus, were feared by many. To take them on in open warfare could have proven disastrous. Solving the situation with an olive branch rather than the sword proved to be a very effective answer for the question on Afghanistan.
             Other historians, however, have contended that the Scythians, by the time of the Achaemenids, had long since migrated to Southern Russia and the Ukraine, and then Eastern Turkey, and therefore, the Persians would not really have needed to deal with the Scythians in the region of Afghanistan. Instead, the Persians were dealing with Indo-Iranians and Indo-Aryans known as the Margianians, a more civilized people w...