The Administrative Structure of Achaemenid and Seleucid Empires in Observing Civil Rights

Abstract—The civil right is a mixture of responsibilities and duties on the shoulders of the citizens towards each other, their city and government. it also applies to the rights which must be exercised by the ruling government. However, the new debate regarding the importance of these rights among governments in the past and the amount of the value that was put on them by the governors needs to be considered with greater care. Iran during its history was invaded many times hence being a host for diverse cultures of its invaders. This country had had many Iranian and foreigner governments ruling over it each of which had a great effect on the structure of the government as well as achieving justice to ensure the continuity of upholding the law and civil rights. The objective of this research is to consider the civil rights and its variables during Achaemenian and Seleucid Empires and tries to answer this question that: Given the civil rights of the citizens in old Iran time, were the administrative structure of the Achaemenid and Seleucid Empires acted effectively in terms of civil rights of the citizens? To answer this question, we adopted a descriptive-analytic as well as documentation method by collecting information from library which led to these answers that: 1. In Achaemenian time, reign was regard as divine and observing civil rights and obtaining justice was a divine duty 2. In the meantime, sharing duties and assigning responsibilities in the Achaemenid structure and supervising each authority and governor resulted in achieving a good level of civil rights for their people. On the other hand, during Seleucid Empire Egyptian cities had its special and specific rights unlike the Iranian cities and any court case regarding Iranian and Egyptians was handled in Egyptian courts based on their own laws and judiciary system. 3. In no documents found about Achaemenid time there was no reference with regard to slavery; conversely during Seleucid time slavery was to an extent that many buildings and monuments were built using slaves; in fact, slavery was one of the main parts of citizenship in Egyptian law. So, we can safely assume that the structure of the government is essential in the continuity of civil rights.

Index Terms—Achaemenian, seleucid, civil rights, law, justice, government.

The authors are with the central branch Azad university, Tehran, Iran (e-mail: Mehrnaz_behroozi@yahoo.com, Leyla_kia@yahoo.com).

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Cite: Mehrnaz Behroozi and Leila Kochaki Kia, "The Administrative Structure of Achaemenid and Seleucid Empires in Observing Civil Rights," International Journal of Culture and History vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 页码, 2017.