Who Are the Persians, Part IV

This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Who Are the Persian

Ardishir Rashidi Kalhur | Exclusive to iKurd.net

In the previous articles “Who Are the Persians” parts I, II and III, the appearance of the Persians as a foreign interloper amongst the Medes is recorded to have begun about 550 B.C., beginning with the rise to power of Cyrus.

The timeline of ancient Middle Eastern history shows the existence of humans living in the Kermanshah valley and the Zagros mountains dating back to around 100,000 years ago (1). The Medes history is extensive, dating back to the time of the descendants of Noah to post Abrahamic era. The Medes are considered to be cultural ancestors of the Kurdish people, still living in the same region, (Kermanshah, Mesopotamia, Taurus and the Zagros Mountains). AS far back as 1700 B.C., the Medes were first a non-organized tribes occupying the Western, South Western and North Western regions of the present country of Iran, as well as dwelling in the highlands of the Zagros Mountains. The formal establishment of their Empire however, did not begin until the early part of the 8^th century B.C., nearly two centuries before the rise of Cyrus and his army of guards which later became known as the Persians.

To substantiate the evidence of the existence of the Medes predating the Persians by at least 1200 years and more, one can refer to the “Table of Nations” (2) in the Book of Genesis 10, where the word Medes is derived from the word Madai, who was the son of Japhet, one of the three sons of Noah. However, in the “Table of Nations” there is no mention of the word Achaemenids, Pars, or Parsa, or anything related to the existence of a people, a nation or a region known as Persian (Fars), or Persia (Farsistan). It is not until later time, in the Books of the Old Testament, including the Chronicles, Ezra, Esther, Ezekiel and Daniel, where the word “Persian” enters the pages of history (3).

This lack of existence or mention of a people known as Persian or a land as known as Persia that is not recognized as a nation in the “Table of Nations”, could have been one additional reason for the deep enmity between Haman, an Amalekite Persian official, and Mordecai (4) who was an elder member of the Jewish Rabbinical and Judicial body known as The Sanhedrin (5). Haman was the vizier to King Xerxes (518-465 B.C.), who plotted to exterminate the Jews as described in the Book of Esther. The Jewish elder, Mordecai proved to be smarter than the Persian Haman by foiling his extermination plot against the Jews and convinced the King and his niece Esther, the King’s wife to execute Haman instead (6).

Lack of official recognition of “Persia” as a land, or “Persian” as a people, by the Jewish elders among whom Mordecai was a member, may have been the real source of anger of King Xerxes to initially agree to the extermination of the Jews, just to be dissuaded by the wit of Queen Esther and her uncle Mordecai. The same sentiment still exists today, namely that Persia is not a country, and the Persians are not a nation, and this has become areal political issue which manifests itself in today’s political situation between the state of Israel and Iran or at least among the Iranians who consider themselves to be “Persian”.

In the “Table of Nations”, the Medes are recognized by having their own language and genealogy. There is no mention of Persians having a language or having a biblical root in a land called Persia.

In February 2014, the author of this article along with members of other Iranian opposition groups (mostly Persian Nationalists), were invited to the White House to discuss the deteriorating political and human rights situation in Iran, under the Islamic Republic of Iran. After a full day of discussion, one member of the group of Iranian nationals addressed a U.S. official by saying that Iran should be called “Persia” again, to which I staunchly objected simply because I knew my history and that Iran is not Persia, nor are all the Iranians Persians. This incident caused me to refuse speaking Farsi with the rest of the group in spite of their collective attempts to engage me in speaking their language in addressing Iran’s political problems.

Unfortunately, this issue has turned into a heated political conflict today, not only between the states of Israel and Iran (The Jews and the Persian), but also between the cultural descendants of the Medes (The Kurds) and the Persian (The Fars), and among other nationalities living in Iran who do not consider themselves to be Persian. Needless to say that the Kurds and the Fars, are two distinct people, each with their own distinct cultures and languages called Kurdish and Farsi.

This brings us to the earlier writings by the writer of this article, that the word Persian is not a designation of a nation or a people having a distinct origin as a race or as a culture. It was further stated that the word ‘Persian’ is the plural form of the word ‘Pars’ which is simply a job title meaning ‘guard’. The plural of ‘Pars’ is ‘Parsian’ known today as ‘Sepahe-Fars (Pars)-Daraan’. These are the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), or simply the ‘Guards’. The Persian IRGC, are designated by several countries including the United States as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, whose abuse and repeated and unchecked violation of the political and human rights of the Iranian people is well documented. Needless to say, that the same was true under the previous regime of the Shah, run by the hubris and ultra-Nationalists Persians, as it will be explained later in this article.

Although many theories about the origin of the Medes and the Kurds have been postulated by the scholars of ancient history, the most plausible among them is that which is mentioned in the “Table of Nations”. After all, The Bible, in addition to being a book of sacred texts and moral guidance, it is also a book of history of peoples, places, personalities and events in the ancient times. Furthermore, to validate the biblical accounts of the Medes and the Kurds, one would need to know the present-day Kurdish language and the names of these ancient places, people and personalities of the past which are still in use within the present-day Kurdish culture. It is not uncommon, that the same people can be called by completely different names in different languages. For example, the Germans are called Deutsch by themselves, German, by English, and Aleman in Spanish, etc. In case of the Medes and the Kurds, the best explanation for the differences is that The Medes is a given Biblical name, as explained above, and the designation

‘Kurd’ is an Arabic reference to the same people with the plural of Kurd being Al-Akrad, which means the hidden and the invisible ones. This given name, Al-Akrad, is because the Medes emerged as the most powerful tribe among the Al-Akrad who were living in the hidden heart and valleys of the Zagros and the Taurus mountains range invisible to the plain desert dwellers of Arabia. By 728 BC, The Medes established their regimented government in Ecbatana (Western Iran), and from there, their expansion as an empire began to unfold as explained below.

Cyaxares I was the most accomplished victor among the Kings of the Medes, whose name in Kurdish is pronounced as “Kay-Sar” or “Khoy-Sar” meaning “Head King, or Self-Ruler”, who became the first Kaiser, and the first empire builder among the Kings of the Medes. The first tribe coming under the Mede’s rule were the neighboring tribe of the Achaemenids among whom the local ‘guards’ were appointed as border guards to defend the Medes newly established Kingdom against the Scythians. These Guards were called by their duties as “Pars” or Parsian who were also employed for other responsibilities and duties as the empire of the Medes expanded Eastward and in Western directions.

By 612 B.C., Kaysar had captured the modern-day city of Kirkuk known at the time as Arrapha. By 609 B.C., Kaysar, had captured the Asyrian Capital Ashur, and by 585 B.C., he had expanded his realm of control into the central Anatolia confronting the kingdom of Lydia. According to Herodotus, in 585 BC, in the “Battle of the Eclipse”, between the Medes and the Lydians, King Cyaxares (Kaysar), forced a peace treaty between the Medes and the Lydian King Alyattes, by which the River Hayls became the border between the Lydian Kingdom and the King Kaysar of the Medes (7). The location of the Battle of the Eclipse, appeared to have been at the site of the modern-day city of Kayseri named after King Kaysar which simply means “it belong to Kaysar” of the Medes. It is likely that the word “Kayseri” is the source of the phrase spoken by Jesus in the synoptic gospels, which says “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s…”. Caesar, being the later designation of the Roman leaders acquiring Kaysar’s name as their title (more to be explained about the Greco & Roman wars in the central and eastern Anatolia in future articles). Peace between the Lydians and the Medes lasted until the rise of Cyrus the Great, great grandson of Kaysar, who went on to cross the River Hayls to defeat Croesus, the last king of Lydia, capturing the Lydian Capital Sardis in 547 BC. Croesus was a king famous for his extreme wealth and love of gold, known for his building of the Temple of Artemis in the ancient Greek city of Ephesus. As a side note, in Greek’s Mythology, Artemis was the sister of Apollo the twin children of Zeus and Leto after whose names NASA has named the Apollo and the Artemis Programs.

Medes and Persians at eastern stairs of the Apadana, Persepolis. Photo: Courtesy/Wikipedia

To the East of their capital Ecbatana, Kaysar, had expanded the Median Empire to the Indus Valley and into the central Asia where many of the Median (Modern-day Kurdish) cultural customs such as, linguistic influences, monotheistic faith (Zoroastrianism), use of musical instruments, style of singing and wearing colorful garments are still in practice.

To maintain control over their empire, the Medes had developed a system ofsatraps(governance by an appointed governor), equivalent to the division of a modern-day political domain into provinces and states with autonomous self-rule in the image of king Kaysar who himself was a self-ruled king. This system was passed on to the Persians, Parthians and later to another Kurdish dynasty the Sasanians whose seat of power was in Kurdistan, in the Kermanshah and Mesopotamia regions.

In addition to strategic political divisions of their kingdom, the Medes established a system of roads which later became known as the ‘Royal Road’, under the influence of the interloping Persians during the rule of Darius I. The main stretch of the Royal Road was first built between Ecbatana (Capital city of the Medes), and Pars-Gade (Guards’s Base or Pasargade, a military base built by the Medes) which later became the headquarters or capital of the guards, who later became who the world knows as the Persians. The Western length of the Royal Road was from Ecbatana to the Lydian Kingdom where they dwelt at the site known today as the city of Kayseri (the city named after king Kaysar, king of the Medes, as the result of the “Battle of the Eclipse”).

On the Royal Road, the Medes, who were known for their horsemanship (8), used their horses for transportation of goods to trade among different people and places. The Royal Road served as the main vein of a postal system carrying messages from their capitals to the edges of their empire. Although it is credited to the Achaemenids period and the history of recent centuries of the Middle East and the Central Asia, it is not implausible to assume that the Medes and their army must have laid the foundations of the East-West Royal Road from Pasargade in the east to Kayseri in Anatolia in the west. The other plausible assumption is that they also build Caravanserais and in addition, later known as Chapar Khaneh along the Royal Road.

One main difference between Caravansera and Chapar Khaneh was that a Caravansera was an inn-like place along the road for a collection of traveling merchants to stop and lodge for the night, whereas, a Chapar-Khaneh was a horse exchange station for those who were the government messengers riding horses to carry official messages within the kingdom from one place to another. It is this writer’s opinion that the word Chapar-Khaneh may come from the Kurdish word Chwar-Pa Khaneh, which simply means a house for the animals, in this case, horses. In addition to horsemen carrying official messages across their empire, the Medes also hired the guards to carry messages by foot, known as ‘Pa-Dau’ (to run on foot) as couriers.

Darius the Great king of Persia. The relief stone of Darius the Great in the Behistun Inscription, Kermashan, Persia, Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat). Photo: Creative Commons/wikimedia

The other deployment of the guards by the Medes was to appoint them at checkpoints along the roads to collect taxes and keep track of who was traveling on the road and from where to where and use them to collect information as spies. These types of appointed guards were called ‘Gumashteh, or Gumashtagan’. It is also interesting to note that if the words such as car, and van, or vanette, in use today, are simply the breakup of the word Car-a-Van from the word Caravan?

Following the Medes entry into Anatolia, they hired the Persians to expand and extend the roads, and the postal systems, and appointed them to checkpoints and informers within the expanding Kingdom of the Medes. Satraps (governors) of Stans (states) within their empire stretched from Central Anatolia to Central Asia and lasted from 728 to 550 BC.

In 550 B.C., the Royal House of the Medes was overthrown by Cyrus who himself was related to the Medes by his maternal lineage. Having been raised under the tutelage of the Medes, he had mastered the art of warfare, he even amassed a stronger army which became the combination of the already established Medes army and the Guards the Persians.

Once in command of the more powerful army of the Medes and the Guards, he renewed war with the Lydians. In 537 B.C, in the Battle of Thymbra Cyrus decisively defeated Croesus the last king of Lydia and captured the Lydian capital Sardis, the modern day city of Sart in Turkey.

Following the death of Cyrus, in 530 BC, it was not his son king Cambyses II who renewed wars with the Ionians and the Greeks, but it was under king Darius who started the Greco-Persian wars from 499 BC, ending in 449 BC. In the future article “Who Are the Persian part V”, the invasion of Darius’s army into Greek’s territories, and the subsequent rise of Alexander the Great will be covered.

In essence, the reason for writing these series of articles “Who Are the Persian” is not to simply be pejorative toward the Persians, or for the purpose of correcting the accounts of history, but to bring to light deliberate attempts and the absurd falsehoods committed by a certain few historians, academicians, publishers and Persian nationalists, over the centuries, who have repeatedly tried to rename Iran as Persia in the face of a broader historical record that does not bear up their claims. This Farcicality, reached its apex in 1971, during the lavish and gaudy celebration of 2500 years of the “Persian Empire”, a bold lie told loud.

To this date, those who still remember the event after 55 years, are astonished by its financial waste, inauthenticity, in vain arrogance, and lavish extravaganza all the result of Iran getting rich quick by the huge oil revenue in the early 1970s which only benefited the upper echelon of Persian minority ruling Iran. These group were always in search of a final recognition by the world community of the existence of the “Persian nation” and as the empire builders who had inherited the history of Iran as their owns. At the same time, the non-Persian Iranian people who were living in poverty during that period, and others who knew better, that the theatrical show displayed by the Shah and his ultra-nationalist Persians could not bring legitimacy to their claim as a great nation and empire builders of the past. It is ironic that Ayatollah Khomeini who took advantage of the social, cultural and economic deterioration in Iran brought the Islamic revolution to Iran, on the basis of the same falsifications to which Mordecai refused to acknowledge some 2500 years earlier by telling Haman and King Xerxes that Persia has never been a land nor the Persian have ever been a nation. However, under the Ayatollahs, The Gurds who were called the Guard-e-Javidan (Immortal Guards), under the Shah, and IRGC, under the Ayatollahs, not only have survived, but also, operate with the same delusional intent and parody today to bring back the “Persian Empire”. Their wishful thinking is to recreate the old, “Persian empire” riding this time on the horses of Islamic Jihadism as vehicle to reach their goal. This political game by the Persians in Iran, will one day make a great theatrical satire play, and it will be funny if someone was to make a film to be called the rise of the political Hillbillies of Persia (IRGC)!, the same way the Neo-Ottomans of the recent years have tried to regain the defunct Ottoman’sterritories. They too, using Islam as mean to reach their political objectives against the West has miserably failed but not irradicated.

For historical account of the transfer of power from the Medes to the Persians reference (9) which provides additional information about the Medes and the Persians.

References:

1. Macropodia Britanica, Volume 21, 1988 Edition, Iran, Page 863
2. https://bible-history.com/old-testament/table-of-nations-genesis-10
3. The Medes And The Persians | Bible.org
4. Bible, The Book of Esther
5. MORDECAI – JewishEncyclopedia.com
6. Esther 7-10 ERV – Haman Is Hanged – So the king and Haman – Bible Gateway
7. https://www.greekboston.com/culture/ancient-history/battle-eclipse/
8. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/sargon/essentials/countries/medes/
9. The Story of Civilization, Our Oriental Heritage, Chapter XIII, by Will Durant