A great civilization should never be overlooked by historians who maintain sincerity in their study and assessment of humanity
~Ismail Butera
The Myth Of Mythical Persia
Whenever the name Persia comes up in a conversation it usually conjures in people's minds images of domed palaces and flying carpets, miniature paintings of lavish color, perfumed women and poets squatting on luxurious carpets composing verses of exquisite beauty for the ears of listeners, comparing lovers to goblets of wine or sweetmeats and dainty treats. While these descriptions may have some truth to them, for indeed Persian culture was known to be highly refined and ecstatic love poetry a feature of that culture, 'Persia' remains exotic and foreign for the westerner. Persia, or as it is known nowadays as Iran, is a Middle Eastern country with a Muslim majority regarding religion so therefore, Persians must be closely related to Arabs or Turks. Yet people are amazed to find that Farsi, the language spoken by Persians, is actually distantly related to English, not Arabic or Turkish and is classified as a member of the Indo European family of languages. Geography indeed played a role in the sense of the perceived 'distance' of western civilization from Persian culture. The closest that Persia/Iran came to being somewhat understood by the West was in the 20th century when Reza Shah Pahlavi ruled the country and initiated many 'western' institutions such as voting and a fine education system that put Tehran University on the list of the top centers of learning in the world. Yet despite the alliances and the ties, Iran/Persia remained strange and exotic to most westerners. The 1979 Iranian revolution which ousted the Shah and brought about an Islamic government didn't help build the bridges the Shah tried to erect during his reign. In fact, as Iranians turned inwards under a theocratic government, they inadvertently shut the door of understanding on the rest of the world, though many if not most Iranians were and are unhappy with their current government. Today, Iran is seen as foreign, exotic and out of the realm of the similar in many if not all social aspects. They have become the 'other', referred to as 'they' while Iranians themselves live under a medieval rule by priests who frown on the glory of their pre Islamic past while praising the doings and deeds of 7th century Arab conquerors who ironically brought an end to ancient Iranian civilization. This is indeed unfortunate because this was not always the case if we go back far enough in history, and certainly very frustrating for the proud Iranian people, who endeavor at every chance to reach out, asking the world to ponder for a moment true history, where it was noted how their ancestors played a gigantic role in the human story.
Persia is one of the great civilizations of the ancient world. While people think of Iran as an Islamic nation today the name Iran actually denotes 'Aryan', a people and a language that gave birth to an entire family of languages. The Aryans, according to Persian legend came from a place known as Aryano Vaejo, the homeland of the Iranians, likely located on the plains of southern Russia. These Indo European speakers moved south in remote times and settled in what is now Iran, giving the land its name. Some went further into India and intermarried with the people they found there giving birth to the great Vedic civilization. Some of course traveled west and begat most of the languages spoken in Europe today, whether members of the Latin, Germanic or Slavic language families or those interesting individual languages such Lithuanian, Armenian, Greek and Albanian. All of the 'Aryan' languages share many similarities in vocabulary and etymological roots, grammar and in forming sentences. The once nomadic tribes who settled in the Iranian plateau began to build cities and create a culture and a civilization, bringing forth the world's first truly monotheistic religion based on the teachings Zoroaster who taught that humans should endeavor to think good thoughts, speak good words and perform good deeds and be beneficial, caring and responsible members of society. This society grew and became powerful and eventually became an empire, conquering many lands in Central Asia and the Middle East. Under the legendary Cyrus The Great ancient Persia was the most powerful entity in western Asia. Cyrus created the first universal declaration of human rights in history, guaranteeing equality for all citizens of the empire regardless of ethnicity or religious beliefs. He liberated the Hebrews from their long Babylonian Captivity and rebuilt their destroyed temple, thereby influencing Judaism and eventually Christianity and Islam with Zoroastrian/Persian spiritual beliefs and cosmology, not to mention the many Gnostic groups who flourished in the first few centuries AD with the typical Persian explanation of the eternal cosmic battle between good and evil in the world, exemplified by Light combating Darkness until a day of judgement will come and Ahura Mazda represented by the Light will rule forever. The influence of Persian culture on Abrahamism and the Middle East and surrounding regions in general since these ancient times was enormous and this influence would continue for many centuries even millennia afterwards, down into the medieval Islamic era when Persians rather than the founding Arabs would be at the helm of Islamic academic thought and theology.
Early Sarmatian royal couple
The Foundations of Scholarly Prejudice
So when did the Persians become the exotic, strange and somewhat 'dangerous' outsiders that we in the West know so little about? In 492 BC the mighty Persian empire was extending its borders into southeastern Europe beginning with an invasion of Greece. Virtually heretofore undefeated, the Persian force faced a small but determined army of Greeks and were themselves soundly defeated. Subsequent invasions followed over time and were repulsed by the hardy and disciplined inhabitants of this rocky land with the names of many battles going down into the realm of legend- namely Thermopylae, Plataea and Salamis, gaining notoriety as turning points in 'saving' Greek civilization from the incursions of barbarians, a theme that was oft repeated in Greek song and story as well as in the study of history. Just as Theseus preserved civilization from the incursions of an army of Amazons in mythology, so the Greek armies preserved their civilization from outsiders, according to the Greek mindset of the age which despite its own greatness looked down on women and foreigners. The English word barbarian is from the Greek varvaros, meaning a non Greek. These victories were viewed as near miracles and their accounts and memory were embedded in the mind of every Greek who was taught that his civilization, based on the assumption that human beings were at the center of the cosmos, was superior in every way to the cultures of others. Greek/Hellenic civilization was unique for its time in that it allowed for artists and thinkers to produce differing and opposing opinions for the purpose of debate and discussion- there were those Greek scholars, writers and artists who did not see women or foreigners as beneath them and they expressed these thoughts, questioning their own society and the values it held. But by and large it became the norm to see the outsiders, in large part represented by the Persians who dared to invade and try to conquer Greece, as inferior and dangerous. When Alexander set out to conquer his empire he declared war on the Persian empire, citing that these Persians no longer followed the inspiration of their former emperor Cyrus and therefore he was commissioned by the gods themselves to set things aright. Persia was already beset with internal conflict and when Alexander met the huge force of Darius at the battle of Guagamela in 331 BC he won a great victory that went down in history and legend as a triumph of West over the East. Darius fled the field and was eventually killed by his own officers, many of whom had already displayed their displeasure with their king. Alexander had the generals executed, then treated the king's family with respect, earning the admiration of the populace. He noted the bravery and fighting abilities of Darius' soldiers and incorporated them into his own force, then marched on to conquer the rest of the then extensive Persian empire. In so doing he attempted to unite West and East, in imitation of Cyrus. But like Cyrus's dream of a unified humanity, Alexander's dream died with him. His heirs argued and fought over his conquests like dogs fighting over a bone, and his dynasty slowly withered away.
Fragment from the Alexander Sarchophagus
Though conquered by many foreign invaders over the course of time, the history of Iran has shown that this remarkable nation always renewed itself. This is evident if one studies the conquest by the Arabs in the 7th century which resulted into the conversion of the population to Islam, then on to the development of Sufism which stood at the very opposite pole to orthodoxy, then on to the establishment of Shi'a Islam. This was followed by disastrous Mongol invasions yet Iran somehow reemerged as an important and vibrant culture. Both forms and versions of Islam, Sufism and Shi'ism challenged the status quo and within these groups there were nearly as many scholars who agreed or debated arguments about philosophy and religion and their application to life and society as there were philosophers who argued and differed in ancient Greece. Many of these philosophers were native Persians while others were Persian citizens from Turkish, Tatar or Mongol origins, all working and speaking as Persians alongside Armenians, Syriac Christians and Jews. Persia both adapted and inspired, and created new forms of morphed ideology that went on to inform and enlighten. In the area of government, new dynasties emerged that toppled the old and recreated ancient Persian greatness time over time, again and again.
The Confidence Of Rome
Greek civilization was overshadowed and taken over by the their cultural students and heirs, the Romans. The prejudices and mindsets of the Greeks became those of the Romans though the Romans built an empire, something the ancient Greeks never did with the sole exception of Alexander of Macedon. Rome too imitated the inclusiveness of Cyrus The Great, proclaiming all citizens to be equal citizens of the empire. They incorporated native subject peoples into their military who could rise to fame and notoriety, even becoming generals and in some cases, emperors. Rome rose to become the might of the world, or what we might call the then known western world. Having conquered the Mediterranean and all of western Europe, Rome had no rivals to their claim as supreme ruler of the world. Other than keep a watch out for barbarians on the northern frontier or the occasional forays of steppe peoples into the Balkans, Rome proudly boasted she had no counterpart. There was one exception though, and that competition came in the form of Persia. Rome ruled everything in the Middle East up to and at times including the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, the very cradle of civilization. Beyond these natural borders lay a huge empire that stretched into the plains and deserts of Central Asia, controlling the precious trade route that Alexander opened up to the West centuries earlier, that fabled Silk Road. King Ardeshir assumed the throne in 224 AD, having defeated and ousted the last of the Parthian rulers. He was the first of the Sassanian dynasty and called himself Shahinshah, the king of kings. This huge empire was now known as Iranshahr, the realm of the Iranic peoples. Under Ardeshir Iranshahr reaped untold wealth and income from the merchants who crossed along the Silk Road and other land routes that went north into Russia, south into Indostan and collected tribute from dozens of subject nations. Rome through barter and trade received spices from India and beyond through the Persian Gulf in what is now Iraq and through Yemen and the Red Sea, which of course was a trade route coveted by Persia as well. Noting the might and power of their eastern competitor Rome as a successful imperialist empire sought to secure control of these trade routes as well. The historian Will Durant noted in his 'Lessons Of History' that when two nations or empires compete for the same resources they either come to an agreement or go to war for control of those resources. Rome and Persia would indeed go to war, in fact many times for many centuries, from before the 1st century AD to the 7th which saw the rise of the Arab Umayyad dynasty and Islam.
Rome was successful on so many fronts and as a virtually undefeated power was as confident in their military as the Persian legions were in their earlier invasion of Greece centuries before. Rome had defeated Hannibal in the Punic war, that dangerous man who threatened Rome itself, and it was the Roman general Scipio Africanus who brought Carthage to her knees. Rome went on to conquer Greece and the neighboring lands of the fierce Illyrians and Thracians. They would go on and conquer Gaul and Britain, invade Germania and colonize Dacia which would become Romania, named for the many Roman colonists who settled there donating their Latin tongue. Each Roman soldier, consul, senator and general knew the stories of old and delighted in the tales of Greek military prowess in the defense of their homeland centuries before when Persia invaded, seeking to subdue their motley collection of city states. The Romans as heirs of the Greeks perceived of themselves to possess unsurpassed martial skill and bravery and superior physiques, as well as unquestionable discipline in implementing strategy and tactics. Ancient Greek sources, including respected scholars such as Herodotus speak of the 'inferiority' of the Persians both physically and militarily- highly glorified and propagandized accounts indeed that were read and studied by learned Romans. If the small armies of Greek city states could defeat superior forces the mighty Romans should be able to bring Persia to her knees with little effort. Herein lies the problem with ignorance, which is manifested in overconfidence, witnessed over the course of the centuries throughout the long saga of history. Again quoting Will Durant we learn, regarding the high point of civilizations, that 'nothing ruins like success', which breeds a nearly blind overconfidence which is nurtured by decadent laziness and greed, eventually leading to failure.
Marcus Licinius Crassus was one of those overly confident Romans when he set out at the head of a huge force to conquer Persia. He would learn to his detriment how over confident he was at the battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, fought in the very heart of the Fertile Crescent. Crassus marched his Roman legions eastward, a force which numbered some 40,000 men. The Romans were largely an infantry force, foot soldiers who knew how to successfully defend their positions or move forward to attack at the command of their consuls and officers, hence their reputation for being the most effective military in the world. The Persian force that came to meet them however was much different. Their numbers were less, approximately 9,000 horse archers and 1,000 cataphracti; armored warriors who rode upon their armored mounts, covered in mail and scale or plate armor literally 'from head to hoof'. There were also some foot soldiers in their ranks as well- lightly armed Paighan and the heavier Deylami as well as Kamduran, the quick foot archers who could move about the field as swiftly as the Roman legionnaires could. But the Persians relied on their cavalry to be the very heart and foundation of their military. This was due to the reality of warfare on the steppes, so different from the battles fought in the mountain valleys, meadows and fields of Europe or northern Africa. The Persians had to deal with nomadic tribes such as the Huns or Turkic and Scythian enemies who were mounted on swift horses utilizing short, powerful composite bows that shot arrows so powerfully they would on occasion pierce armor. The tactics of these steppe warriors was to charge forth in groups of several hundred and release a torrent of arrows blotting out the Sun, then turn tail enticing their enemies who thought them retreating to follow, all the while shooting arrows at them as they turned in their saddles, which became known to the Romans as the famous Parthian Shot. Just beyond some ridge or hill was the the bulk of the steppe army lying in wait who would fall on the unsuspecting pursuers and cut them to pieces. The Persians wisely incorporated such warriors and their equestrian techniques into their military long ago and this style became a hallmark of the Persian military, as Crassus was about to discover to his dismay.
Rome would engage in many wars in the succeeding centuries with the Persian empire. They would study and learn the Persian tactics like they learned from defeats earlier in their history, and this ability to adapt was an admired talent of the Romans. They would fight battles and wars, win some and lose a few, but the wars would continue, becoming ever more devastating to the people of the Fertile Crescent region who would lose faith in both the Persians and Romans. For them, these two entities were like two old dogs competing for some dry, forsaken bone and they were tired of both of them. During the reign of Shapur I he overhauled the Persian army and in 260 AD defeated another Roman attempt to bring down Persia at the Battle of Edessa, with the emperor Valerian, another foolish dreamer like his predecessor Crassus who sought glory against these 'barbarians' of the east, leading the Roman forces. The Romans were surrounded by mounted Persian archers who inflicted death and chaos with their volleys of arrows, then were crushed and slaughtered with a charge of the heavy cataphracti. Valerian was defeated and taken prisoner, the only Roman emperor to ever have died in captivity. Shapur supposedly had him flayed alive and ordered statuary erected throughout the empire depicting Valerian on his knees chained like a dog, being held by Shapur as his master, or Valerian on all fours being used by the Persian emperor as a stepping stool so as to help him mount his horse.
Religion & Reform
All this while, changes were happening in both Persia and Rome in matters of religion. Persian Zoroastrianism was for the most part inclusive and tolerant, going back to the time of Cyrus. But during Shapur's reign new faiths and ideologies began to sprout up at about the time this same phenomenon was occurring in the Roman empire in the region that both Rome and Iranshahr vied for, the Middle East. Mithraism, a new cult from Persia started to take form and started to become popular among the Roman masses. Various forms of Christianity and Gnostic religions were sprouting. Shapur took a liking to one such mystic named Mani, a teacher and self proclaimed prophet who preached a version of dualism that was seen as a challenge to the Magi, the priestly class of the Persian Zoroastrian faith who were developing a version of their own, Zurvanism. These priests saw Mani as a threat to their power and after his supporter Shapur I died the new ruler Bahram had him imprisoned and tortured and the man died while in prison. The king had his body cut in half and displayed on the city walls at the capital of Ctesiphon. So ended the age of tolerance and inclusiveness the Persian empire was known for as Christians, Manichaeans and others who refused to submit to the power and word of the Magi were persecuted, a factor that would affect the decline of support among the peoples of the Fertile Crescent in the future when the Arabs would come and conquer in the name of a new faith, Islam. These persecuted people would open the gates of their cities to the new conquerors and openly applaud the destruction of Persia.
Rome saw the unifying power of the new state religion of Persia and imitated their foes, creating a well organized Christianity as a state religion so as to unite their empire and consolidate their power. Manichaeism, persecuted in Persia, and Mithraism were two religions that were making headway in the Roman world. These and other 'Persian' faiths could not be tolerated for the Romans feared them to be cover for Persian intrigue, infiltration and the weakening of the empire so the Romans created a formally codified Nicaean Christianity as a bulwark against what they saw as dubious Persian religions that might be used to undermine the state. During this time Rome and Persia continued their wars that devastated the Fertile Crescent, adding to the already deeply held hatred and resentment felt by the subject peoples of the Middle East who had to endure pillage, rape and starvation due to the constant presence of both armies.
The Power That Checked the Expansion Of Rome
Extending from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers into Asia and commanding either directly or through local rulers everything virtually up to the great Wall of China, this mighty and extensive realm was known as Iranshahr, the realm of the Persian Sassanian kings. Rome had tried for several centuries to penetrate that realm but to no avail. In the meantime, with a nearly continuous state of war with Rome the military became stronger. The Persians incorporated armored elephants into their ranks, and archers mounted on armored camels had an advantage to aim well and shoot their arrows while keeping a distance between them and the Roman infantry. But the cream of the army of Iranshahr was the mailed, heavy cavalry known as the cataphracti. Imagine yourself as a foot soldier on the battlefield standing in rank with your fellow legionnaires, watching the approach of a thousand or more of these impressive horsemen and their mounts, knowing well that if you are in the front ranks you may well become a casualty of the battle, and if you're not killed you will likely be maimed or wounded severely either by the slash of a sword, a thrust from a lance or crushed under the hooves and weight of horse and armor. The Romans eventually learned how to deal with these inevitable cavalry charges by placing in front of their ranks caltops which were small, three pointed sharp spikes that would hinder the hooves of horses and camels. Yet despite these developments the army of Iranshahr struck fear still into the hearts of their adversaries and kept the Romans at bay for seven centuries, much as the ancient Greeks kept the Persians out of Europe in their time. The organization of the Persian army was as complex as the Roman with its generals and officers, all of whom were answerable to their spahbed commander who in turn answered directly to the Shahinshah himself. Under the early kings such as Darius, the army that invaded Greece was huge in numbers and made up of soldiers from across the then Persian empire. However, there was little cohesion in that mass at the time. Under Ardeshir and other Sassanian kings the Persian military underwent a reformation and every unit whether native Persian or subject was expected to perform as a team. The efficiency of the army of Iranshahr fascinated even the Romans themselves who noted that they were fighting an enemy that was at least as organized as they were. Rome's enemies for centuries were not always organized and disciplined standing armies. Here in the east however, the Romans met their match.
An interesting note about the Persian military of the time is the mention of women warriors. In the plains of the steppes women Scythian women fought like the men did. Among the eastern Turkic peoples women rode and fought in battle and among some tribes a woman could not marry until she killed at least three of her enemies in hand to hand combat. Such stories remind us of the ancient greek and Roman accounts of the Amazons, said to live there on the steppes, women who enslaved men and ruled in a type of matriarchy. Persia was long already a cultured nation where women were supposed to heed their husbands and fathers, but the tradition of the woman warrior of the steppe was not forgotten. In fact, rather than via mere mythology and folklore, there is an actual long list of female warriors in ancient Iranian history who achieved fame and notoriety on the battlefield. Ateshbod Pantea was a commander of the Immortals, the elite unit of the Persian army. Sura was a second commander, a sephabod during the pre Sassanian Parthian dynasty, described as a military genius. The Achaemenid dynasty had a unit of female warriors who were known for their ferocity. Later, when the Arabs would invade Persia they would face resistance from the likes of Banu, the wife of the warrior hero Babrak Khoramdin, Azad Deylami, Apranik, the list goes on. These women fought and many chose death rather than submission to the invaders. There were certainly such female warriors riding against the Romans in their time, who thought the idea of women in the military unsavory and revolting, just as the Arabs would when they arrived to conquer Iran in the 7th century and impose their religion and their social values that would lock women out of public life in Iran up to our own time.
Female Persian warrior, drawing by Gambargin
The Waning Of The Ancient World
The constant wars and ongoing destruction of the Fertile Crescent region for so many centuries and the lack of tolerance of both Persian and Roman (now known as Byzantine) religious authorities for other faiths that did not accept the state religions of their respective empires tried the patience of the local inhabitants so much that when the Arabs arrived with their new religion, Islam, the locals simply opened the gates of their cities and welcomed them in. Non Muslims in general were not forced to adopt the new religion but were rather offered the choice to keep their faith by paying a special poll tax known as jizya. This enabled them to practice their faith and exempted them from military service, though their hatred for the intolerant Byzantines and the Persians by the 7th century saw some locals enlisting themselves in the armies of the caliphate for which they were exempt from even paying the jizya itself. Christian auxiliaries supported the Ummayad army at the battle of Yarmouk which destroyed the Roman/Byzantine force, and in the invasion of Iranshahr Christian, Manichaean and Sabaean mercenaries willing assisted in the campaign. For a time the caliphs offered protection to the former subjects of the two mighty empires that bled each other to death for several hundred years and laid waste the region that was home to a literal plethora of faiths. This time, it was ego and greed that manifested in war that destroyed two powerful empires, weakening them to the point that when the Arabs burst forth from the desert a new paradigm entered the scene as the Byzantines receded behind the safety of their walled cities and Persia would fall to the swords of the sons of he desert.
The Arab conquerors contributed to the mystery and the sense of the 'other' that was already the Western understanding of the Persian realm. The Arab clans of the Hejaz, the region of Mecca where Mohammed lived and preached in the southwestern portion of Arabia, bound themselves together into a confederation before Mohammed was born, in order to serve the Romans as mercenaries and auxiliaries for which they would be paid handsomely. A confederation, according to the historian Tom Holland as he describes in his Shadow Of The Sword, was known in the Aramaic language as a quraysa, which in Arabic and Muslim circles became known as Qureish. This is said to be the name of the family or clan to which Mohammed belonged, the Qureish, but in reality the Qureish were the quraysa or the confederation of powerful clans who swore to support the Romans against the Persians, as long as the price was right. This they did for many decades, sending troops to fight in the many Roman wars against Persia while amassing Roman gold and silver. When Roman power and influence began to decline in Arabia the clans, at first fighting with one another in a civil war that Muslim scholars happily choose to forget known as Al Fitna, the blood soaked victors created a dynasty, the Umayyad, uniting the Arab tribes after the death of Mohammed in 632 AD with the promise of gold and silver, fueled by the heat of jihad blessed by the God of Abraham. These Meccan families who swore allegiance to this confederation/quraysa burst out of the desert to seek their own glory and empire, taking full advantage of the power vacuum created by the weakening of both Rome and Persia. The Arab desire to conquer Persia was inflamed with the now well known Greco/Roman notion that they were continuing the work of Alexander centuries before, conquering the evil Persians and bringing that empire to its unholy knees. This they achieved successfully after many decades of resistance on the part of the Persian nobility, who fought bravely to the end, but the conquerors did not offer the vanquished the choice to pay the jizya. Instead they offered Zoroastrians the choice to convert or die, and die many did. The wholesale massacres that saw the slaying of thousands of Persians were numerous, though seldom mentioned in later Muslim texts out of obvious shame. During the early campaign Umayyad poets and bards praised Allah, their swords and their swift horses for their magnificent victories and for the ability to slay the 'fire worshipping unbelievers' and send them to the flames of Hell. The bloody details of the destruction of Persia is mysteriously absent from most history books. Once an awe inspiring empire and brilliant civilization, the diamond of nearly half the world, Iranshahr disappeared from history. The Arab conquerors, full of hate and animosity for their newly conquered subjects added to the already popular mystery and western prejudice held about Iran, that other nation, that exotic far off land that teased the imagination but seldom the intellect of overly prejudiced scholars. As Islamic scholars eventually adopted ancient Hellenistic science, mathematics and knowledge to pass on to western Europe, they transmitted the ancient prejudice of the Greeks and Romans as well, reinforcing the ancient negativity regarding the Persian culture. Zoroastrianism, known incorrectly to the Arabs and Muslims as the religion of the fire worshippers, virtually disappeared in Iran. Those who managed to survive the destruction and the terrible massacres fled en masse to India where they live today known as Parsis (Persians) practicing their religion as they did for centuries before. Many others for whom the old religion no longer served its purpose intermarried with local Indostanis, Afghans, Chagatay Turks and Uzbek town folk, imprinting upon these folk various elements of their language and culture as well as their genes. Islamic civilization itself reaped untold benefits from Persian scholars who translated and transformed the teachings of Zoroaster to create Sufi mysticism, softening the strict and rigid Abrahamic desert religion and turning it somewhat into a faith of tolerance and understanding among disparate groups of people. The struggle between Islamic orthodoxy with its legality and rules stands in sharp contrast to this tradition of dervish mysticism, and this struggle is an ongoing one in Islam to this day.
Legacy
It has been one of the great unfortunate facts of history that East and West, namely Persia and Rome, did not eventually meld and understand one another better. In all actuality, Persian culture and thinking were more akin to European modes of thought than to any of the other eastern mindsets. Their kings ruled as European kings did, they governed as Europeans governed and like their counterparts in Europe the Persians came up with universal rights and a semblance of equality and justice for their subjects and did so centuries before Europeans ever did. Ancient Greece had slaves to perform work and city projects, but slavery was unknown in ancient Persia and workmen were paid a salary. Women were treated better than their Greek sisters, and Persia was a bastion of high culture and stylistic fashion that gave the world of vanity cosmetics and aromatic scents, as well as many cooking techniques that found their way to the high cuisines of renaissance Italy and France. The art of stuffing vegetables are known in French cuisine as 'aux farsi', in the Persian style, likely developed by Armenian chefs in the kitchens of the nobles of Iranshahr. Candy making and sweets such as the almond paste called marzipan have Iranian origins. It is the irony of history and the reality of the political and social spectrum that Iranians would be separated from their fellow Aryans, so that the two would become rivals and enemies rather than what they really are, cousins from the same family. Rome took much from Persia, as they learned that these were not the barbarians they were led to believe they were. The Roman saying 'en vino veritas', meaning in wine is truth, became so Roman that the saying in Latin is attributed to them with hardly a nod towards the origin of the saying which is none other than Persia. Impressed by the devotion and loyalty of the subjects, spahbed commanders and minsters of the Shahinshah a Roman ambassador once questioned how he was able to get all his officers to act as one body so efficiently. The Shahinshah replied that when he sought advice and council he would invite the members of his court to a drinking party where the wine would flow copiously. He would ask them questions about matters of state, the military, aspects of governing. Then he would send them all home in a drunken stupor. A few days later he invited them all back and asked each of them, one by one the same question he offered to them at the drinking party. If the individual answered the same as he did when he was drunk his majesty would thank him and follow his advice, but if the response was different the Shahinshah would have that minster immediately put to death. "In wine there is truth" he said. This became a famous saying among the Romans who were obviously impressed with the not-so-naive Persians, whom they realized were capable rulers and a people to think of rather seriously.
It is important now in this age of the internet where information is readily available to us at our fingertips, on our desktops and our smartphones, that we endeavor to understand those great civilizations that have bore the brunt of prejudice and misunderstanding brought about by wars and political endeavors upheld by the mighty and the powerful for their own selfish desires. How many of us would follow Crassus or Valerian to war today? How many of us would willingly brag about ourselves being better than others, stronger than others, braver than others knowing well that the nation in question has produced fine examples of scholastic endeavor, strong personalities and brave souls? To willfully ignore the history of such a civilization as that of Iran is unfair to the descendants and heirs of that civilization as well as being unfair to ourselves and our own young students of history who seek, as youth have always sought since time immemorial, the truth of the past. The time has come to put away the prejudices of the past and embrace instead the historical reality of that past, and the promise of a brighter future.
The ruins of Persepolis, known as the Takht E Jamshid
Copyright Ismail Butera, 2021
