Its strategic location between two continents has subjected it to invasions by many peoples, including the Assyrians (under Ashurbanipal, at around 669–627 BC, the boundaries of the Assyrian Empire reached as far as Armenia & the Caucasus Mountains), Medes, Achaemenid Persians, Greeks, Parthians, Romans, Sassanid Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Seljuks, Mongols, Ottomans, successive Iranian Safavids, Afsharids, and Qajars, and the Russians.