What is Iran

 Read a short history of Iran in the TOI a couple of days back and I could not but agree how necessary such a piece is at this stage. For one, there are a lot of misconceptions about Iran. The most commonly-held misconception is that Iran is Arabic-speaking which, of course, is not true. The Official language of Iran is Persian whose grammar is different from Semitic languages like Arabic, though most Iranians use a lot of Arabic-derived vocabulary in their speech. But fewer people are aware of the fact that about a dozen languages are spoken in Iran apart from Persian - Kurdish, with its dialects Kurmanji and Sorani on the north-west, Balochi, Sistani and Brahui on the trination border with Pakistan and Afghanistan and Arabic, itself, which is spoken by roughly 3% of the population in the south-western region of Elam where it might have replaced a now-extinct language called Khuzestani, a possible descendant of Elamite that might have survived until the 10th century AD. Then, there are the dialects used by the Luri and Bakhtiari tribals in the south, Bandari spoken along the southern coast and the Dari dialect which was invented by and used by Irani Zoroastrians so that their talk remained incomprehensible to the Muslims who lived around them. And of course, there was an Armenian Christian population in a few cities that spoke Armenian. But there are many more serious misunderstandings about Iran.

For one, Iran was the Persia of yore - once upon a time, a classical civilization like Ancient Greece and Rome. And they had an enormous empire, too. When the Arabs invaded in the early 7th century AD, they could defeat the 19-year old Sassanian emperor Yazdegerd III with surprising ease and his extensive empire fell to the Arabs within a couple of decades. But as noted scholar of Iran, Mary Boyce writes, it took over three centuries for the whole of Iran to convert from Zoroastrianism to Islam and she attibutes the struggles of the proselytizers to the fundamental differences that existed between Zoroastrian and Islamic philosophy which made it difficult to peddle a sort of syncretic faith that lay midway between the two.

* Firstly, the Zoroastrian festivals were joyful occasions which mandated celebration with a lot of fraternizing, eating and drinking. They were the very antithesis of Islamic holidays which involved fasting and sometimes, mourning.

* Iran, or rather its predecessor, Persia was famous for its wine which was produced in large quantities in the cool climate of northern Iran. The classical Persian words for wine were "meh" (Indo-European, cognate with Skt. madhu and Eng. mead) and "badeh". Poems of Rumi, Omar Khayyam are replete with allusions to wine and wine-drinking. The Islamic regime might have banned alcohol in the country but until quite recently, it was part of their tradition.

* And then, Iran and Persia are not one and the same as is commonly believed. The official name of Iran until 1935 was Persia, named after the ancient Greek name for the province from which rose the first great Iranian empire known to them and might have later been used to denote the whole of the empire itself.

* Cats and dogs:- Zoroastrians venerate dogs to the extent that it is capital offense to even offer bad food to a dog. There is a whole chapter devoted to dogs in the Vendidad and if Ratan Tata was involved in causes involving stray dog welfare, by doing so he was only fulfilling his duty as a pious Zoroastrian apart from being a considerate human being. According to Charles Allen, dogs were also held in high regard by Vedic Hindus though Wendy Doniger disputes this in her "After the War: The Last Books of the Mahabharata". In Greek mythology, a four-headed dog, Cerberus, guarded the gates to the world of the Dead. Similarly, as part of Parsi funerary rites, a ritual named Sagdid is performed wherein a dog with two spots above its two eyes is made to look at the face of the deceased. Cats, on the contrary, were regarded by Zoroastrians as "khraftras", creatures of Angra Mainyu that ought to be killed in order to gain religious merit. The situation is the opposite in Islam which regards dogs as unclean animals which are not to be kept as pets while its okay to keep a pet cat.

These differences shaped Iranian culture and mentality and there are many Iranians who hate Arabs right upto the present-day. The conversion of Iran to Shiite Islam was probably an expression of defiance against the Arabs who were mostly Sunni Muslim.

The name Iran derives from the Avestan "Airyanem Vaejah" or "expanse of the Aryans" and they have a culture with strong Indo-Aryan influences right from the Vedic period. But so far as genetics is concerned, Iran, especially northern Iran, was conquered by the Turks during their east-to-west migrations to Turkey where they eventually established their Ottoman empire. Iran still has a considerable population of Turkomans and was ruled by the Seljuk Turks for sometime. Then the Mongols came in the 12th century. They devastated much of Iran leaving whole cities depopulated. The Mongols invasions might have altered the demographics of the country and many age-old Sassanian cities were left in ruins. So, apart from the Indo-Iranian, there has been a considerable addition from outside from the gene pool, from the Turks, the Mongols, the Arabs and not to mention, the neolithic people who, archaeology has proved, arrived in southern Iran long before the Medes or Persians did, and who probably, founded the Elamite state.

Recently, there was news in circulation that the last Crown Prince of Iran had supported the Israeli invasion and had appealed to Israel for help in overthrowing Ayatollah Khameini's regime. Are there many Iranians who wish to ally with the Israel or the US? I'm not so sure! There isn't much antipathy in Iran towards the American people and Jews, Israeli or non-Israeli. But the Iranian psyche is shaped by a deeply marked distrust of the West, the US as well as the UK. In recent times,, the British supported Reza Khan's rebellion against the last Qajar king, Ahmad Shah in the 1920s in order to offset Soviet influence and also to carve out a friendly state which could be a launchpad for a counteroffensive by White Russians. Reza Shah duly complied and founded the Pahlavi dynasty. And during the Second World War, when he made overtures to the Nazis, Reza Shah was deposed and exiled and his son, Muhammad Reza Shah placed on the throne. Muhammad Reza Shah is the reason why the Islamic Revolution of 1979 took place. His was a dictatorship heavily supported and sponsored by the CIA leading Iranians to loathe Americans even more. So, if the US or Israel or any other foreign power claim to be working to liberate Iranians, I doubt if the Iranian people would trust them.

A look at Iran's history reveals that many of its problem have deep historical roots. The Sassanians, the last Zoroastrian dynasty that ruled Iran from 226 to 651, were known for being devout Zoroastrians to the point of being fanatical and some Sassanian emperors even went to the extent of persecuting religious minorities and people of Zoroastrian sects deemed to be heretical. They were especially intolerant of the Georgians and Armenians who had recently adopted Christianity. What more they inhabited the territory that straddled the Sassanian Empire's borders with the Roman Empire and Sassanian monarchs of the fourth and fifth centuries did not consider them trustworthy. The second Sassanian emperor, Shapur I who ruled from 240 to 271 and who is famous for his battle exploits - capturing a Roman Emperor (Valerian) alive and holding him prisoner, an event which has been immortalized in the life-size Naqsh-i-Rostam sculpture, became a trusted companion and patron of the prophet Mani and he protected Manichaeans in his kingdom as long as he was alive. His successor Bahram I was, however, a pillar of orthodoxy and on the command of Kerdir, the high-priest of Iran, killed Mani and displayed his lifeless body at the gates of the Sassanian capital Ctesiphon. Now this Kerdir was infamous (more like the ayatollahs of today) for issuing a edict prohibiting Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism throughout the Sassanian empire.