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Battle of Opis
| Battle of Opis | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Persian conquest of Babylonia | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Neo-Babylonian Empire | Achaemenid Empire | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
|
Nabonidus Belshazzar  ? |
Cyrus the Great Gobryas | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
|
50,000 troops (per Herodotus) 10,000 troops (other estimates)[1] | 70,000 troops (per Herodotus) | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Heavy[2] | Unknown | ||||||||
  Opis Location within modern-day Iraq | |||||||||
The Battle of Opis was the last major military engagement between the Achaemenid Empire and the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which took place in September 539 BC, during the Persian invasion of Mesopotamia. At the time, Babylonia was the last major power in Western Asia that was not yet under Persian control. The battle was fought in or near the strategic riverside city of Opis, located north of the capital city of Babylon in modern-day Iraq, and resulted in a decisive victory for Persia. Shortly afterwards, the Babylonian city of Sippar surrendered to Persian forces, who then supposedly entered Babylon without facing any further resistance. The Persian king Cyrus the Great was subsequently proclaimed as the king of Babylonia and its subject territories, thus ending its independence and incorporating the entirety of the fallen Neo-Babylonian Empire into the greater Achaemenid Empire.
- ^ Bury, John Bagnell (1988). The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 4: Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean, C. 525 to 479 BC (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 24–25. ISBN 9780521228046.
- ^ Boardman, John "Nabonidus: Babylonia from 605–539 B.C.", in The Cambridge Ancient History vol. 3.2, p. 249. Contributor John Boardman. Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-521-22717-8
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