2020-01-01T09:35:00-08:00
Have you asked yourself how do Iranians read their history? Is their reading of history in general similar to our reading of it, and do they read their history in the same way we read Iranian history?!
Many questions must be asked, for many reasons, the most important of which is filling the holes that exist between the peoples of the region, and which the West is trying to create through the history that the West presents to us.
Therefore, I believe this article will be a contribution to filling those holes between Iran and the Arabs.
But the truth is……. The most important reason for writing this article is related to thinking about the history that was presented to us, observing the issues of history among peoples, and comparing them with other historical issues that exist among other peoples.
First, let me draw a general picture of the shape of the gap that exists in the region with Iran.
Two rooms next to each other in a house, but they are separate….and in each room there is a person, and the only communication between the two people is through a third person, who relays to each person what the other person in the other room said about him.
This is the essence of the gap… How?
Let me…..speak very frankly so that we can reach the utmost level of clarity, because this frankness will make us reach places we were afraid to reach, and not doing this thing before is what created those barriers and chasms.
There are nodes present in the region that were created by the history that was presented to us, and some of these nodes created a very wrong stereotype about the other.
For example, Iranian history has historical knots with the Arabs, and Arab history has historical knots with Iran…. And if we analyze the reasons for those knots……we will find a third party that is the reason, because it was the source of communication between the two chambers.
We will talk about the knots in Iranian history and we will leave talking about the knots about the Arabs, because that is not the topic of our article, and we will talk about them in another article.
The knot in Iranian history
Islam came to them from the Arabs
The Arabs overthrew their Persian civilization
The Safavids were Turkish rulers, not Persians
Shiism came to them from Arab Shiite scholars
These complexes will affect the mentality of the Iranian personality and his outlook towards the Arabs…. And for scientific honesty, we do not say that these complexes exist in the mentality of people in Iran……but they are present in only a few, especially those who were intellectually educated in the era of the Shah of Iran. The era of the Shah’s rule in Iran, Iran deliberately and systematically focused on increasing and expanding the gap between the Iranian and the Arab by infiltrating those historical nodes, by flooding the Iranian library with a large torrent of history books that revolve around those historical nodes, from the writings of Westerners and Iranians who were raised on The hand of those Western historical schools.
Therefore, we can say that these nodes are historical nodes, from which any intellectual project to program the collective mind that aims to widen the gap between Iran and the Arabs can infiltrate.
I think that there is very little translation from the Iranian language into Arabic. This is how I see it as an ordinary reader… and much of the Iranian intellectual and cultural production does not have quick translations into Arabic. Therefore, we find ourselves far from understanding the issues of the intellectual and cultural scene in Iran. Which takes place in society, so there is some difficulty in answering the questions of our article.
The truth is… I have not yet read history books written by Iranian authors… due to the scarcity of translations… However, we can answer by reading dialogues with Iranian thinkers and historians, and by View book readings of some books by Iranian historians and thinkers available on the Internet that contain quotes from their writings.
But I believe that we can answer these questions by comparing them with our reading of history and the problems and issues of history that arise for us… Why?!
I think the issue is not difficult… Iran is a country from the East and part of the region, and the problems of thought and issues of history will be the same throughout the region… The Iranian mentality is completely Eastern and there is no difference… and therefore the issues of history can be understood. Which could be presented in Iran.
It is not difficult to understand the problems of Iran’s history by comparing it to the problems of our history…. And because the time that passed us is the same time that passed through Iran, and time is one and indivisible and we have a problem with time, therefore the logic of reality will raise the issues of history related to time in Iran is naturally presented to us, and it carries the same proposition, the same logic, the same tools, and the same results.
I believe that the only country in the region that does not suffer from historical complexes in the region is Turkey… There are no such complexes in Turkish history that exist in the history of the region. In my opinion, the reason is that the Ottomans were major contributors to the manufacture of these historical knots in the region.
Therefore, let us read two books by Iranian authors, so that we realize that the problems of history that arise in Iran are the same ones that exist in ours… which is time… so that we can know others well and know ourselves well.
The book (Two Centuries of Silence) and (12 Centuries of Silence), two books that are considered among the most important historical issues raised in Iran and the region.
Through the two books, you will know the way the Iranian mind thinks about issues of history and the way it responds to them, and you will realize that it is the same mentality that exists everywhere in the region.
If you notice the names of the two books… you will realize that the essence of the problem in Iranian history is time, the problem that the mind in Iran tried to dismantle and address through these two books.
Let us review the summary of the two books.
1- Book One (Two Centuries of Silence)
This book was written by an Iranian literary critic and historian in the middle of the last century named Abdul Hussein Zarinkoub, a doctor and university professor who taught at many universities… in Iran, France, Britain, and India.
He is a literary critic and historian, and from this specialty he wrote the book (Two Centuries of Silence) to respond to the theory of the reasons for the lack of Persian literary production in the first and second centuries AH. From reading some excerpts from the book, it seems to me that this author focuses on literature by evoking history. For this reason, I find that the book attempts to address a literary topic throughout history, and is not a purely historical criticism book that discusses thinking about history alone.
I believe that this author is part of the Iranian mentality that was brought up in the Shah’s era, and is one of the results of the Shah’s era, which tried to create gaps between the Iranian and the Arab……… Therefore, the book was not objective and unscientific, but rather closer to fanatical reading that suits the atmosphere. A year imposed by the Shah… and the writer was more of a fanatic than an intellectual.
I believe that those nodes in Iranian history that we mentioned previously are the starting points of that mind, but I believe that the time gap, which lasts approximately 300 years in the history of the region, is the reason that made such a mind try to get out of the impasse of that gap on the basis of that node. Historical… The result of this book was that he presented a fanatical historical treatment without scientific logic.
This writer…may not know that the time gap exists in the entire region and not in the history of Iran…and it is logical and scientific that addressing this gap requires addressing it in the entire region and not in one part.
This book established the foundations of a theory that has become common in Iranian studies, and its conclusion is:
{The first two centuries of the entry of Islam into Persia were centuries of silence, ignorance, and cultural persecution. The theory is based on the fact that the conquerors were backward, rude, and had nothing to offer, so they fought the Persian languages and imposed Arabic by force, which forced the Persians to withdraw into literary silence for two hundred years.
This theory is nothing but a solution to get out of the impasse of the time gap that passed over Iran and the region, but he used it to serve the general atmosphere that existed in Iran during the days of the Shah.
But the author, after a while… and in submitting a new edition of his book before his death, modified much of the text of the book, admitting that it [was full of racism and errors; Because of my inability to acknowledge Iran’s mistakes or defeat Iran.
He admitted his nervousness while writing his book, but he still suffers from an inability to understand the basis of the problem…and this inability made him surrender to this history…and treat the issue as a defeat.
Linguistic oppression theory
{The conquerors were cruel. They fought the Persian, and imposed Arabic with strict laws.}
I believe that this theory is not limited to Iran, as it exists in the entire region……. The Yemenis spoke the Himyarite language, Iraq spoke a Sumerian or Babylonian language, the Levant spoke a Phoenician language, and Misr spoke a Pharaonic or Coptic (Greek) language. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya spoke a Berber language.
All of these people are nothing but a similar image of this Iranian mind that formulated this theory. Or in other words, they are only one mind, because this mind, which has surrendered to this history, is the reason behind this inability to explain reality, so it surrendered to this history and made it present fanatical theories that try to explain reality, but are devoid of logic, objective scientific thinking, and evidence.
For example, regarding the theory of this Iranian writer… the truth… there is no literature or evidence about the existence of an ancient Iranian language, before the so-called Islam of Mecca.
There is reality and history… and in the face of this… the writer’s mind fell into a dilemma resulting from two facts.
The first: the absence of literary or scientific texts written in ancient Persian.
Second: Most of the Persian literary production appeared in the current modern Iranian language, which contains 70 percent Arabic vocabulary.
These two facts disturbed the mentality of the Shah of Iran (an American policeman), who tried to create a rift with the Arabs because they would lead to a conclusion that said: It was Islam that gave the Persian language its literary, mystical, and philosophical depth.
Let me quote to you some excerpts from an article read in this book, by a journalist named Ahmed Fal El-Din. Although I do not agree with most of his comments on topics related to history, I will consider them as responses from within the structure of the mind surrendered to this history:
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To get out of this dilemma, the author assumed the existence of fine but lost literature. In his book, the man gathered dozens of pages to prove that the Arabs fought the Persian languages, which forced the Persians to remain silent about literary production, and for those languages to disappear. But he does not provide evidence, but rather writes funeral prose, such as:
“At a time when the pahlavi tones of Berbar and Nagisa were filling the Sassanian court with sweet sounds, the Arabic tongue – in the mouths of the Arabs – was stiffer and more miserable than the burning sand… If an echo echoed in the desert, it was the thief’s hideout! Their words did not carry any direction or emotion, their poetry centered around the facilitator and camel organs, and the Iranian languages were full of meanings, philosophy and beautiful pronunciations. Iranians read religious books, sang songs of heaven, wrote stories about their kings… and appreciated the beautiful word.”
After pages of this type, the author concludes one of his chapters by saying: “Can we imagine that the Arabs would leave the books of the Zoroastrians, for example, without burning?!” So that justifies the referral to an imaginary.
There is a confession recorded by the author in the introduction to his book that reveals the fictional side of his hypothesis on which he based his book. He wrote that he composed it under the anesthesia of the Shahnameh epic, and that he was writing its pages while his ear could hear the echo of its enchanting battles and take in its picturesque images. But facts are one thing, and the Shahnameh is another thing, according to historians’ agreement.
Ancient Persian… between reality and imagination
One of the funny pieces of evidence that the author presents to justify the absence of poetry from Persian in the two centuries following the Islamic conquest is that the Persians were afraid of writing poetry under Islamic rule. This is because Persian poetry will talk about wine and women, and these are forbidden matters in Arabic poetry.
But facts are one thing, racial bias is another.
Therefore, Persian did not witness an entry into the world of poetry, literature, and thought until it was fertilized by the Arabic language, as Richard Fry believes (a man known for his love for Iran, to the extent that the fanatical Iranian nationalist awarded him the medal “Iran Dosteh” (Friend of Iran) and recommended that he be buried in Isfahan, which is what he achieved. With permission from President Ahmadinejad.
Fry emphasized that “the prominent difference between Pahlavi (Old Persian) and New Persian is the enormous presence of Arabic in the latter. This factor is what made Persian a global language with refined literature, something that Pahlavi lacked. It was undoubtedly Arabic that gave Persian its richness that led to its literary renaissance in the field of poetry in particular. Serious Persian was born at the hands of Persian Muslims who were proficient in Arabic but had a special love for their language.”
Islamic Persian
Rather, Fry – and other researchers – point out that translation from Arabic is what created Persian as we know it today. “The literary renaissance began in the court of the Samnites, and it is necessary to emphasize that the beginnings of Persian prose were a translation from Arabic, such as the translation and interpretation of Al-Tabari’s history.”
Perhaps the case of Persian is similar to the case of Arabic, in that Islam was the factor in its revival and establishment, as it is the language of sciences, literature, and arts. The Persian renaissance “was a renaissance based on Islam, so the old regime had died.”
The researcher is not surprised by the existence of this type of biased hypotheses against Islam and the Arabs, as this phenomenon is nothing but a successor to a popular ancestor that appeared and then disappeared, and the Persians – before and after that – remained one of the living peoples of Islam that fought for it with the sword and the pen.
This type of populism is very isolated in Iranian society, just like ancient populism, which Katouzian asserts was an intellectual fad in a limited group of intellectuals, not a widespread popular phenomenon.
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I finished..
Now, if you notice the summary of the issue that this book discusses, they are the same issues that are currently being raised in the region and are carried by groups that adopt imaginary identities that are at odds with reality and claim that those identities were prior to this imaginary history… identities based on language and religion.
If you notice that the idea [We are not Arabs, but our Arabs are Islam] is the summary of this history that was written for the peoples of the region… and it is the basic function for which this history was written… to strip the peoples of the region of their reality in favor of imaginary worlds that exist on paper.
But the funny point in the Iranian issue… is that the Arab believes that the Iranian is Persian and his language is Persian… but the Persian believes that he has been Arabized and his tongue has become Arabic.
This thing makes you wonder why.
If we observe the reality of the region… we will find that in every country in the region there are minorities that carry a religious book written in a language other than the language of most of the country’s population, and according to the history that was written for the region… this history has placed all those minorities chronologically, historically and religiously ahead of the majority. Which carries a religious book written in Arabic.
For example… you will find Zoroastrians, numbering 20 thousand in Iran, who carry a religious book written in the Pahlavi language, and before that it was written in the ancient Iranian language, which is a (difficult) language, and they speak the Iranian language… and the history that was written for Iran and for us claims that this The religion existed before Islam, and the language of their religious book was the language of ancient Iran before Islam
Exactly the same scene in most countries of the region…. There are minorities who carry a religious book written in a language different from the language of the majority of the people, and the history that was written for the region claims… that the language of their religious book and their religion was chronologically prior to the language and religion of the majority of the people.
Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Misr…etc
I think that this observation saves you from reading history books, to realize that this thing is not a reality that is the product of a natural historical movement, but rather a reality that is the result of the movement of a force that interacts with political borders, and it is the one who wrote this history…… It is the one who created this reality and this history. .
Why ?!
There is a natural reality…and a natural reality movement…and there is a new reality in the region…that targets the Arabic language…and aims to prevent collective awareness from reaching the essence of the problem and realizing the natural reality movement that has taken place. Over thousands of years, it shaped this region.
For example, in the Iranian case
■ There are 20,000 Zoroastrians in Iran…. Is this the number of a religion that lived 3,000,000 years ago?!
This is an illusion…. This is a new reality
■ Also.. If you notice, the Pahlavi language is the language of the Zoroastrian book, but it is a second language after a language called Old Persian.
According to history…the Zoroastrian religious book was written in the ancient Iranian language for 800 years, then an Iranian ruler decided to replace it with another language called the Middle Iranian Pahlavi language and made it the language of the Zoroastrian book in 300 AD.
Is it reasonable that a religious book replaces its language without any reason? Is it reasonable that a faith replaces the language of the text of its sacred religious book?! …….And how did an ancient language disappear without any reason?! …But the language of the religious book preserves the language of society and prevents its extinction.
This is an imaginary world
■ If you pay attention to the Pahlavi language, you will find that it is a difficult language and no one speaks it in Iran except the Zoroastrians… and it is the language of their religious texts, and there is no ancient written archive for it in which it was written… and it is a difficult language for a Zoroastrian to learn. A language that is not living… but the language of a religious book.
You find this situation in Iraq, Misr, and the Levant……… There are religious languages that belong to religious minorities and are dealt with within the scope of religion and are not a living spoken language.
This thing…makes you feel that there is something in the region that targets the Arabic language through this innovation of an old reality and the creation of a new reality to justify a written history.
Even Iran has not been spared from this deceptive new reality… because the Iranian language contains 70 percent vocabulary in common with Arabic.
Why ?!
I believe….that this history, its basic purpose, and understanding of this new reality will not be able to be comprehended with a mentality like the mentality of this Iranian writer (Abdul Hussein Zarinkoub) and those who have the same mentality as him, except in Iran or the region, unless the problem is solved: Why are there two religious books? With the same topics and in two different languages (the Qur’an and the Old Testament) in the region, and both of them say that it is revealed from the Creator?! ……Answering the question so that the natural movement of history that took place in the entire region is understood and all this history that was written for the peoples of the region is well understood and the problem of this time gap is solved.
I will stop here………and in the second part we will continue the rest of the discussion about the problem of silence in Iranian history.