Region
Media
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Media, the land of the Medes, lay in what is now north-western Iran, with Ekbatana as its political centre, though its borders shifted over the centuries. Unusually for a region, its name stands in black rather than red. The Greek historian Polybius praised it as the most important province of Asia, rich in people and famous for its Nisaean horses, and the geographer Strabo claims that its north-western part alone sent the Persian Great King four thousand mules, three thousand horses and a hundred thousand sheep every year. A list of places compiled in Ravenna calls it the homeland of Media.