Who Are the Persians?

This entry is part 8 of 8 in the series Who Are the Persian

Correcting Misconception about Iran

Ardishir Rashidi Kalhur | Exclusive to iKurd.net

In 2001, the United Nations adopted a resolution to promote Dialogue among Civilizations through the global works of the UNESCO (1). This initiative was supported by then Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami, and by the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood AK party founded the same year, led by Erdogan as its leader. The aim of both countries were to counteract the views of Professor Samuel Phillips Huntington who had published an essay in 1993, titled “The Clash of Civilizations”.

In the real-world people believe in an ideology when it is put into practice. In the eye of the world, both Iran and Turkey due to their extreme violations of human rights against their own people and regional belligerency through supporting terror groups and proxies, failing miserably as the hypocrites of civilizations who are actually promoting the clash of civilizations not working to reduce or prevent it.

On the other hand, President Trump as the believer and executioner of the “Clash of Civilizations”, with his threats to “wipe out Iran’s civilization”, has shown a cold and callus side of a leader who in the time of war will show no mercy to kill innocent and non-combatant civilians.

Taking such an extreme position, one may think that even the survival of the Western Civilization may not matter to him either. With the enormous responsibilities weighing on his shoulders and as the leader of the most powerful country on earth, himself having accumulated wealth, power and fame as his greatest priority, what really matters to President Trump and what he really wants remains a guessing game!

In the meantime, many TV journalists, political experts and war analysts have taken President Trump’s “ending Iran’s civilization” comment out of context and have conflated the “Iranian civilization” with that of the “Persian Civilization”. It is like to say that the “Indus Valley” Civilization is the same as “Hindi Civilization” in India.

Just as there are over a dozen of national groups living in India with over 1.4 billion population, so are the same number of national groups living in Iran at a smaller scale with just over 90 million, the majority of whom are not Persians.

This is the deep misconception on parts of the news media personalities and commentators who with their oratory hype use the word Iran, Iranians, Persia and Persians, in the same context not knowing that they are misinforming the public with their incomplete education about Iran.

When the well-known journalists like Farid Zakaria or Ali Velshi fail to distinguish the difference between the words Iran and Persia and Iranians and the Persians, it reveals that their understanding about Iran is more likely to have formed around the kitchen table with their Persian

friends and classmates rather than from scholarly or journalistic research about the history of Iran.

Their modern journalistic practices by the news media and commentators are equivalent to the 19^th century medical doctors using mercury as a medicine during the American Civil War to cure ailments. By today’s medical knowledge, the doctors of the 19^th century were in reality poisoning their patients rather than curing them.

With all due respect to their journalistic professions and invited expert analysts, Mr. Zakaria and Mr. Velshi and their like, are poisoning the minds of the public with outdated information about Iran rather than helping them to understand what really ails US-Iran relations.

To help correct their misconceptions, following are some key and straightforward terms and definitions and notable historical events worth remembering when it comes to the history of Iran from the ancient to the present time.

The founders of the Iranian Civilization Were Not, The Persians, They Were, The Medes. For further information about this somewhat lesser known or conveniently ignored fact, refer to The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant (2).
History of the Medes predates the history of the Persians by at least 1200 years (3)
Carving Persian Median soldiers Medes (Kurds), Iran. Photo: Creative Commons/wikimedia

The origin of the word Persian comes from the Median word Pars-yaan, which is the plural of the word Pars. It means a Guard, or an appointed watchman, especially appointed at a checkpoint or as a security guard to protect a property of a landlord. Thus, the word Persian is a Job Title and does not refer to an original or organically grown culture producing a civilization on their own. Persians were the usurpers of the Medes civilization
The Persians were the local hired guards among the tribe of Achaemenids who were a vassal to the Medes. The local language they spoke was, and is, a derivation of the Dari language (4).
During the Shah regime in 1972, the so called 2500 years celebration of the Persian Empire the guards were branded with a new image as the “Immortal Guards” (5). Unfortunately, just 7 years later during the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the top ranks of the so called “immortal guards” were executed, no longer “immortals!”.

By the order of the Persian Mullahs they were replaced by the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, with its powerful Persian “Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp” (IRGC) (6). Most famous among the Persian guard was Qasim Solaimani, and many of his successors who have been eliminated since the start of Israel and the U.S. war with Iran run by the Persian religious caste and guards.
In 330 BC, the same guards (Persians) were decimated by the army of Alexander the Great to avenge the Persians burning of the Greek city of Acropolis in 480 BC. In this ancient act of fury (The first Epic Fury against the Persians by the Greeks), and after killing the ancient guards, the Greek soldiers were gifted with ten thousand Persian women (7).

In this mass give-away party, Alexander intended to create a new generation of Greco-Persian offsprings to be allied with the Greeks in friendship and loyalty. In the eye of some Iranians the current generation of the guards (The Persians), are not Iranian, or constitute a nation but rather than an amalgamation of various gene pool, including the Medes, the Achaemenides, the Greeks, Arabs, Turks and various other septs born from guards and religious clans harems.

It is not diplomatic nor was it a dignified comment by President Trump to call the Guards (The Persians) “You Crazy Bastards” for the ancient attempt to destroy the Western Civilization stemming out of Greece originated some 3200 years ago by the Persian Tyrants in 480 BC. The present generation of multi-ethnic people living in Iran should not be held accountable for the uncivilized acts of the Persians past to present trying to destroy the Western Civilization.

The ancient capital of the Medes was located in Western Iran in the Kurdish region. The last successors of the Medes were the Kurdish Sasanian dynasty with their capital in Kermanshah and the lower Mesopotamia. Whereas the capital of the Persians became known as Persepolis (Greek’s designation for the city of Pars, or Parsian).
After the replacement of the Medes kingdom with the military culture of the Guards (The Persians), in 550 BC, under the chief Guard Cyrus, they tried to impose their Dari language on the Median (Kurdish) language and the rest of non-Persian nationalities in Iran which persists to the present-day.

In conclusion,

Iraqi Kurd Faiza Fouad takes part in a ritual ceremony in an ancient and ruined temple as she joins the millennia-old Kurdish Zoroastrian religion, Darbandikhan, Iraqi Kurdistan, October 2019. Photo: AFP

Iran is the name of a vast geographical region home to many nationalities each with their own unique culture and language and world views, that are different from that of the Persians culture which is the culture of a cult of militants known as the guards. The Kurds have been the keepers of the culture of Medes, among whose civilization comes the religious caste of the Yazidis, Magians, Zoroastrians, Manichaeism, and Yaresan.

The elaborate celebration of NuRoj (No-Roz in Farsi), with Kurdish music, and colorful clothing and a spirit of democratic tolerance for cultural diversities is a traditional practice among the Kurdish culture. Whereas such cultural practices have become prohibited among the religious-nationalist Persians due to deep penetration of Islamic ideology imposed on the Iranian people by the Persian run central government of Iran.

The United States and the Pro-Western Civilization leaders including Journalists and media commentators shall realize that Iran is not Persia, and the Iranians are not Persians. When studied

in the context of historical events, there is no “Clash” between the Western Civilizations and the Iranian Civilization rooted in the Median/Kurdish region and culture. The cult of militant Persian guards developed over centuries combined with a infused jolt of Islamic Jihadism, is where the problem lies and sooner or later it must be resolved by dialogue or by force.

In a civilized dialog, participation of two rational parties are the prerequisite. In the ascent of a rational approach to the problem, there is no reason to try to reason with irrational minds where use of force will win the day even though in the case of US-Iran relations, rational it may be to resolve the impasse by the use of force.

1. International Day for Dialogue among Civilizations | United Nations
2. OUR ORIENTAL HERITAGE – THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION: 1 | Will Durant | Book Club – Edition; Twenty-Seventh Printing
3. The Medes – the Forefathers of the Kurds
4. Persians The Border Keepers under the Medes. Battle of the Persian Border – Wikipedia
5. 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire – Wikipedia
6. Islamic Republic of Iran Army – Wikipedia
7. 324 BC: Alexander the Great Arranges Mass Wedding – History and Headlines