The Medes, a Western Iranian people, arrived from what is today Kurdistan sometime around the 700s BC and came to dominate most of ancient Afghanistan.They were an early tribe that forged the first empire on the present Iranian plateau and sister-nations with the Persians whom they initially dominated in the province of Fars to the south. Median control of parts of far off Afghanistan would last until Cyrus the Great, prince of the Persians, assassinated and ultimately replaced his Median emperor father-in-law from rule.