The Medes are an ancient Iranian people who live in Iran in an area known as Media and speak a northwestern Iranian language referred to as the Median language.

Their arrival to the region is associated with the first wave of Iranian tribes in the late second millennium BCE (the Bronze Age collapse) through the beginning of the first millennium BCE.In the 7th century BCE a unified Median state is formed which together with Babylonia, Lydia, and Egypt becomes one of the four major powers of the ancient Near East.

An alliance with the Babylonians helps the Medes to capture Nineveh in 612 BCE which results in the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

The Medes are subsequently able to establish their Median kingdom (with Ecbatana as their royal centre) beyond their original homeland (central-western Iran) and have eventually a territory stretching roughly from northeastern Iran to the Halys river in Anatolia.

The Median kingdom is conquered in 550 BCE by Cyrus the Great who establishes the next Iranian dynasty—the Achaemenid Empire.A few archaeological sites (discovered in the "Median triangle") and textual sources (from Assyrians and also Greeks) provide a brief documentation of the history and culture of the Median state.

These architectural, religions temples, and literary references show the importance of Median lasting contributions (such as the Safavid-Achaemenid-Median link of the tradition of "columned audience halls") to the Iranian culture.

A number of still-in-use words from Median language are left and there are languages being geographically and comparatively traced to the northwestern Iranian language of Medlian.Besides Ecbatana modern Hamedan, the other cities existing in Media were Laodicea, modern Nahavand and the mound that was the city of Rhages (also called Rey), is on the outskirts of Shahr Rey, near Tehran.