Transcription
In the heart of Asia, a population sweeping south from the steeplands of Russia would reshape the world and leave its own significant chapter in the compendium of history. In the ancient world, they created the largest known empire before the Romans.
Cousins to the Cians, far-removed relations to the English and the old arch-nemesis of Classical Greece, the Iranians are frequently seen as foes of the West and sometimes depicted as comic book villains. Yet, in the not-so-distant past, the Western view of them was far different. The German writer Johan Wolfgang von Goethe said of them, "When we turn our attention to a peaceful civilized people, the Persians, we must first go back to the earliest period to be able to understand more recent times."
It will always seem strange to historians that no matter how many times the country has been conquered, subjugated, and even destroyed by enemies, there is always a certain national core preserved in its character. Before you know it, there reemerges a long-familiar native phenomenon. In this sense, it would be pleasant to learn about the most ancient Persians and quickly follow them up to the present day. That is exactly what we will now do in order to better understand them as a people, their history, and as a great center of world civilization.
Now, to some, even the word "Iranian" is controversial. Many people prefer to use "Persian" instead. Some view the distinction as between an ethnic group and a state identity, which is correct in a sense but doesn't fully capture the complexity. Both terms have very ancient origins, and someone can be an Iranian of Iranian origins and yet not be a Persian.
The English word "Persian" is derived from the Greek "Persis," which the Greeks derived from Old Persian "Parsa." They were an Iranian-speaking tribal group in what is now South Central Iran's Fars Province. It probably comes from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning "axe," thus identifying them as the axe-wielders, calling to mind the famous Bronze Age weapons.
During the Middle Ages, the Persian "P" shifted to an "F," thus "Fars" comes from "Parsa." The modern name of the Iranian language is "Farsi," from the earlier "Pary." Because the Pary had gained the dominant position in ancient Iran and established the ruling dynasty, the Greeks referred to their empire as Persian. Today, the name is used as an ethnonym for people in Iran of Persian ancestry.
But in modern cultural and linguistic studies, "Iranian" can refer to any peoples descended from what was once a common ethnolinguistic grouping, thus similar to Celts or Germanic peoples. This includes Persians but also Aians, Kurds, Pashtuns, Lurs, and many other modern ethnic groups. It also includes ancient peoples like the Cians, Sarmatians, and Alans.
Because of the confusion, the term "Iranic" is sometimes used to distinguish the modern Iranian population from the ethnolinguistic grouping. But the early stages of linguistic and cultural development are common to the whole of the Iranian peoples. Arguably, "Iranian" is one of the oldest continuous ethnonyms in existence.
It appears in the Avesta, the most important surviving Zoroastrian text, and the king Ardashir I, founder of the Sasanian Empire, titled himself "King of Kings of the Arians." It was also used to refer to the Sasanian Empire, which in ancient Persian was known as "Iran Shahar." Yet its use is even older than this, for it is also found in Sanskrit, where "Aran" denotes one who speaks the language of those of the Vedas or who upholds the values of those people.
This means that it was used as a common ethnonym before the divergence of the Indic and Iranian languages, perhaps as early as 2000 BC. Now, the word "Arian" or "Aryan" was taken up in the 19th and 20th centuries by certain European scholars to describe people that we now usually refer to as Proto-Indo-European, and which some later political movements likewise adopted and used incorrectly for their racial propaganda.
However, while "Arian" may not have been used as a common Indo-European ethnonym, there is some reason to think that it originates from an Indo-European term of nobility. While earlier theories tried to link the etymology of "Arian" to "Iran," they are wrong. There is an old Gaelic cognate for "Aran," which means a free man, chief, or noble. In Proto-Germanic, it was "Aras," meaning the same.
They're thought to come from a Proto-Indo-European word "haros," which probably referred to an assembly of men, most likely a war band. This title was taken up as an ethnonym by those warriors of the Proto-Indo-Iranians to refer to themselves as free men or lords, as opposed to those that they conquered, whom they referred to as "Anaran," non-Aryans, or unfree peoples.
Linguistic studies have long determined that the Iranian languages descend from a common origin shared with European languages like English, French, German, and Russian. In some cases, it doesn't even take a linguist to tell modern Persian still possesses such visibly identifiable words with English, such as "tar," "dar," "Abu," and "lab."
Linguistic and genetic evidence shows that the origins of the Proto-Indo-Iranian culture, which first developed on the steeplands of Central Asia, were predominantly of Indo-European origin. More specifically, they seem to have developed out of an eastern movement of the Corded Ware culture, the same cultural group which spawned the ancestor of the Germanic and likely Slavic, Baltic, Celtic, and Italic languages.
Its eastward branch is known as the Fatyan-Balanov culture. They dwelt primarily in the forests of Russia and engaged in copper mining. They had basic wagons pulled by oxen and the same type of technology possessed by the Corded Ware. In genetic tests, they group together with modern Northern Europeans, and all tested carried the male haplogroup R1a, six specifically carried the R1a2-Z93 subclade, a subclade which is most prominent in South and Central Asia as opposed to Europe.
In other words, it's very likely that those of the Fatyan-Balanov culture represented the early ancestors of those who would go on to spread the Indo-Iranian languages into Central and South Asia. It may be that the Fatyan-Balanov culture, possibly mixing with other Yamna-derived groups in the region, such as the Pavka culture, who had spread still further east, formed the basis of the Sintashta culture and others in the region.
The Sintashta can be rightly praised as the earliest known culture to have developed the chariot and spoked wheel. They had massive copper mines as well as unexpectedly large fortified sites such as Sintashta and Aram. Though Sintashta is one of the most famous and impressive, other closely related Proto-Indo-European groups in the region were likely also speaking a Proto-Indo-Iranian language around the same time and played a role in the formation of the language group.
These minor pastoralists and chariot makers would expand across the central steppe and gradually make their way south, likely raiding and trading at first, but gradually winning lands and expanding their territories. It was from these people that the technology of the spoked wheel and chariot would spread further south to the Hittites, Egyptians, and Greeks, and further east into China.
These were the Aryans described in the Rigveda, the oldest source for their customs and language, dated tentatively to around 1500 BC. One of the hymns says, "For Puru, thou hast shattered Indra's ninety forts for Divo Dasa, thy boon servant, with thy bolt, oh dancer, for thy worship."
"For Aah, he the strong brought Sambara from the mountain down, distributing the mighty treasures with his strength, parting all treasures with his strength. Indra in battle helps his Aryan worshipper, he who hath a hundred helps at hand in every fray, in frays that win the light of heaven."
"Plaguing with a lawless, he gave up to Manu's seed the dusky skin, blazing where he burns each covetous man away. He burns the tyrants away, wax strong and might at dawn. He tore the sun's wheel off bright red; he steals away their speech, the Lord of power, their speech he steals away from them."
"As thou with eager speed, oh sage, hast come from far away to help, as winning for thine know all happiness of men, winning all happiness each day, lorded with our new hymns, oh vigorous indeed, save us with thy strengthening help, oh shatter of forts."
These were the Aryans riding like the wind across the steplands in their chariots, winning the cattle from the Na Aryans, the dusky skins as they call them, smashing their forts and worshipping the lightning-wielding war god, who would impart to them the strength to, as Conan would say, "crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women."
Genetic studies of the Central Asian Iranian people show many still possess a high level of steppe ancestry, which groups with modern European populations. Something one can see with the untrained eye is the Tajiks and especially the Yaghnobi, a small minority group in an isolated valley in Tajikistan who speak a lone Eastern Iranian language descended from the Sogdians, have very high rates of steppe ancestry, as high as many Central and even Northern Europeans.
They still differ from modern Europeans, however, due to the different underlying admixtures. As various groups associated with the Sintashta and then the Indo-Iranians moved south, they came into contact with another large population group with a sedentary lifestyle based on agriculture, identified as the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, or simply BMAC.
For a period, they traded and raided them, but eventually, the Indo-Iranians absorbed their entire culture in much the same way that the steppe pastoralists who moved into Europe did with the Neolithic farmers. There, they also preserved their Aryan ethnic identity, but they took on genetic elements of the other population.
Though more genetic tests need to be done for the region, the tests which we do have paint an interesting picture. The Iron Age Iranians of Central Asia had mixed extensively with the Bactria-Margiana population. This is not only represented by the overall admixture but by the introduction of the Y male haplogroup J2, which exists fairly prominently among modern Iranian populations.
This was also the case for the steppe herder population that moved into Europe, mixing with the Neolithic farmer population there, a mixture which reflects the diversity of modern Europeans north to south. While the earlier Andronovo culture still clustered with European groups, reflecting its Corded Ware ancestry, by the Cian dawn, the populations had diverged further yet still retained close affinity.
The ancient populations of the Middle East and Iranian steppe were not so far removed from the Neolithic farmers of Europe. After all, those farmers had migrated into Europe from Anatolia a few thousand years earlier. Even today, though arguably the demographics in the Middle East have shifted some during the Middle Ages, the Middle Eastern population is still, globally speaking, not really so far removed from Europeans.
Some Iranian groups have a lot of steppe admixture, and some, such as those dwelling in western parts of Iran, have fairly low amounts. Some have a high degree of R1a male ancestry from the steppe, while others have less. Yet even regions with lower percentages of steppe ancestry still have levels similar to that of Greece, southern Italy, or southern Spain and Sardinia.
The Iranian groups are culturally, linguistically, and genetically descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, just as they are also the descendants, of course, of those people in the region stretching back to the impenetrable mists of the Stone Age. There were several separate waves of southward migrations of the Aryans.
The earliest one was as far as the Indus River, which flows through what is now Pakistan, and later pushed onto the Ganges River in Northern India. The timing of this migration isn't known for certain, but it may have taken place around 1600 BC and possibly earlier. This group would become linguistically separated from the Aryans that were still dwelling north of the Hindu Kush mountains and would mark the breakdown of the Proto-Indo-Iranian language into its separate branches of Iranian and Indo-Aryan.
One can only wonder about what forces drove the Aryans to push into the harsh landscapes of Afghanistan and beyond. Some have speculated that the split was related to the rise of Zoroastrianism, with those who rejected it leaving and finding lands to the south. But this is also unlikely. Zoroastrianism likely wasn't adopted by most of the Iranians on the steppe; it was probably developed within the Yaz culture in the south of what is now Turkmenistan, where it seems that excarnations first began being practiced.
It became prominent but never the dominant religion of all Iranians, most of whom continued to practice Iranian folk religion, which Zoroastrianism ultimately based itself on, though in an extremely modified form. While the Indo-Aryans were dwelling mostly to the south of the Hindu Kush, the Iranian tribes were still roaming the steppe, where the last stage of the Andronovo culture would eventually morph by the Iron Age into the Cians or Saka.
The first Iranian movement west is likely represented by the Cimmerians. Yet it was prior to the rise of the Cians that the first Iranian speakers entered and settled in what is now northeastern Iran, starting around the south coast of the Caspian Sea, perhaps around 1400 BC. This early Iranian migration is thought to correspond to the Iron Age I period, marked by the introduction of gray and gray-black pottery from the northeast.
By 1300 BC, Iranian groups had likely already reached the Zagros Mountains in the west, and by the 9th century BC, Assyrian uniform texts were writing about the troublesome Iranian groups. The Medes had established themselves in the west along the eastern side of the Zagros. They raided Assyrians and Babylonians from the mountains.
They and other associated Iranian groups likely pushed out or assimilated earlier Indo-Aryan speakers in some of these regions south of the Hindu Kush and near the Straits of Hormuz. During the Iron Age, the modern Ptolemaic people are descendants of Eastern Iranian speakers in the region and the largest of the remaining Eastern Iranian languages to which Old Avestan belongs.
The breakup of the Proto-Iranian language likely began once the Andronovo culture began to expand. Tribes would have lost contact, and language shift would have happened. By the time of historical sources, many of the Iranian tribes had developed their own unique languages, some more related than others. Old Persian and Old Parthian were closely related, both belonging to the Western Iranian branch, along with Median, now extinct.
Some have tried to use the existence of these many different languages within the Indo-Iranian grouping as proof that this grouping is actually older than European languages like Germanic, Celtic, or Greek. This isn't the case, as we have seen. Indo-Iranian originated from an eastward migration of the Corded Ware culture. The timeline for this development is roughly the same as the linguistic developments in Europe.
The key reason why there are so many more varieties of Indo-Iranian languages is the geography and the social customs of the region. Modern Iran alone is 1.6 million square kilometers; that's roughly the same size as Germany, France, Britain, and Spain put together. Now, all of those countries speak completely different languages, yet all emerged from the same westward flow of Proto-Indo-Europeans at around the same time.
So really, what we should be comparing Indo-Iranian to is all of the branches of European languages which exist in Europe, and that diversity of languages reflects the diversity found in Indo-Iranian languages. Now, when Iranian tribes pushed into the region of Iran, riding en masse upon finely crafted chariots that threw dust across the sky, as carrying birds encircled overhead waiting to be provided their next meal, it likely made quite an impression upon the local population.
Iran was not a vacant desert but a place long populated. In the west was the ancient nation of Elam, spoken about in the Old Testament, beyond which lay the grand Empire of Babylon. This region is known as the birthplace of civilization. These barbarians from the steppes were riding straight towards the most advanced urban centers in the world at the time.
Yet they were far from unsophisticated themselves. Their crafting methods were equal to any, and their ancestors had invented the chariot. They were malleable, willing, and able to adopt technology and even aspects of culture which impressed them. But they were not willing to abandon their language or their ethnic identity.
Their religious and cultural practices evolved gradually over time, but they also didn't willingly submit themselves to an outside rule. Because they were at once so flexible but also so unbreakable, these Iranians were able to win control of massive regions and absorb the larger populations there, transforming them into Iranians.
So that by the historical period, nearly all the peoples of the territory of modern Iran could be identified as belonging to an Iranian group. The Parsa would eventually settle right alongside the territory of Elam, yet in their early years, it was the Medes who were the more numerous and powerful of the groups pushing westwards.
Since at least 1000 BC, numerous Iranian tribes had moved into the region. While we do not know the exact numbers, there must have been many based on some analysis of Iranian admixture composition. Somewhere between one-quarter and one-half of the genetic composition of present-day Iranians, depending on the ethnic group, can be attributed to the steppe migrations.
After their period of fusion with the Bactria-Margiana culture, the vast majority of the rest is that of the ancient Iranian Neolithic population. Their western steppe component generally fluctuates between 15 and 20%. The second most common male haplogroup in Iran is R1a, representing male descent from these early Iranian people, while R1b is also present in smaller numbers.
These figures are lower than among some other Iranian populations like the Tajiks, but they are significant and show that the Iranianization of the Iranian Plateau was not done through small bands of elites but through a massive population movement. Assyrian written sources around 850 BC speak about the Iranians beyond the Zagros Mountains as small decentralized kingdoms.
They received tribute from some while they sacked others. While the Iranians may have been the dominant warrior group in western Iran, they had to contend with the organized might of powerful empires. They were also resisted by local populations on the plateau itself, who received military support from the Assyrians, Elam, and Aaru, likely using them as buffers against those who they might have seen as barbarian hordes.
According to royal Assyrian records, they frequently raided and plundered Iranian towns, taking their metals, flocks, herds, and the Iranians themselves as slaves. Records for the year 740 BC show that Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria imposed a tribute upon the lands between Media and Par of nine tons of lapis lazuli and 15 tons of bronze.
This is massive but suggests that the Iranians must have been able to produce a great abundance of wealth, which surviving artifacts provide only a faint glimmer. Later Roman writers would speak of the luxury of Persia. After a few hundred years of being unable to effectively resist the strength of these well-organized advanced civilizations like the Assyrians, the Iranians would themselves move towards centralization in their own unique way.
Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, spoke of the Medes having organized the earliest grand kingdom. The first king of all the Medes founded its capital city, Ecbatana, the modern city of Hamadan, in 678 BC. The city would later serve as an important site in subsequent Iranian empires.
While some have called into question whether this Median Empire really existed, they do appear to have become more centralized and powerful around this time. The Medes, due to their proximity to Assyria and Aaru, would have been the most likely candidates for early centralization of power due to their frequent military confrontations with advanced organized forces.
Herodotus says that the Medes were very numerous and had countless tribes that they were once known as Aryans, but that they had adopted the name Medians after the woman Meda, as the Persians named themselves for Persus. Certainly, this is Greek fiction, but it reveals that beyond these tribal identifiers, there was a greater regional pan-tribal identity that of being an Iranian.
The Medes under Kayak were said to have united the peoples of Asia above the river Halas. His father, Fres, slain by the Assyrians, was avenged by the sacking of Nineveh. He was credited with the innovation of organizing all the soldiers under their own ethnic and tribal banners to increase order, cohesion, and morale.
This structure would prove the bedrock of the later Persian imperial model: multiculturalism on an imperial scale, centralized bureaucracy, but not ethnic integration. Each group would maintain its traditions and its language and would be given large leeway for self-government as long as they paid the required taxes and fulfilled the military obligations.
The Medes' great success over the Assyrians, however, would be brought to a crippling halt by the sudden and dramatic descent into the region by their distant cousins, the Cians. Having driven the Cimmerians south of the Caucasus, the Cians decided to follow them. Defying the formidable mountain range, they broke forth on the southern side of the mountains like a sudden spring melt, washing over the nations that stood before them.
The wave crashed into the stalwart Medes, cresting over their heads. The Cians conquered the Median Empire, still not satisfied; they marched onwards to Egypt but turned from their course through bribery. For 28 years, the Cians ruled over the lands of Iran.
Yet Herodotus's story about their demise should probably not be accepted uncritically. He says that Kayak invited all the Cian leaders to a banquet, got them all drunk, and then killed them—think "Red Wedding" style. Now, it's true that being a relatively small group ruling over a large one is dangerous business, but it's just as likely, if not more likely, that the Cians were absorbed into Iranian society and Kayak was allowed to live because he had submitted and was likely kept on as a suppliant king to the Cians.
Such things were common. Whatever might actually have unfolded, Kayak was said to have ruled for 40 years. He had won control over the Aaru, much of Anatolia, east as far as Transcaucasia, and all of southwestern Iran. When he died, he passed his rule to his son AAG.
To him was born a very special daughter, Mandan. He had a dream about her that so much water gushed forth from her that all of Asia was flooded. He went to a wise Magus and asked him to interpret the dream, and the priest of the Iranians told him the meaning of this dream: the child born of this woman would conquer the whole of Asia.
AAG dreaded to wed anyone, but eventually, he relented, allowing her to marry a Persian, a quiet and decent man whom he assumed to be of little concern: Cambyses, father of Cyrus, typically known as Cyrus the Great. The true story of this marriage was likely far more political, to win back control over the Persians after the Cian internum.
AAG likely married his daughter to the king of the Persians as part of a political arrangement which would see them come back under Median authority. When Cyrus gained the throne of the Persians, they were still under Median overlordship, but he had grander things in mind.
After refusing to give homage to AAG, the Median king sent out his army to crush his upstart grandson. Instead, his leading general, Harpagus, defected and encouraged his revolt. After three years of bloody battles, Cyrus captured Ecbatana, arresting his grandfather.
With one dominion, not only over the Medes but the Sogdians, Parthians, Saka, and Bactrians, most of the major Iranian peoples in Central Asia were now united under the leadership of the Persians. With this combined might, he smashed open the gates of Babylon, shackling their king Nabonidus and casting down the elevated status of the cult of Sin, the ancient Mesopotamian moon goddess, whose resultant status was, according to Cyrus, in violation of cosmic order.
"Ara," in the old Persian tongue, in her place he raised back to its rightful status the statue of Marduk. He freed the Jews from their forced exile by the Babylonians and gave permission for the rebuilding of their temple. By the time of Cyrus's death, presumably on a campaign against the steppe-dwelling Iranian Massagetae, he had forged the largest empire the world had known up to that point.
But it would not end there. His son Cambyses would take Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egypt. Though rather sinister stories are told about him by the Greek historians, their validity has been called into question. Regardless, he was clearly an effective leader but not without internal enemies.
Cambyses died on his way back from Egypt to Iranian lands. Historical accounts claim there was a rebellion with a Magus impersonating Cambyses's younger brother and trying to seize power. However, Cambyses died on the way back, and the usurper pretending to be Bardiya took the throne until, of course, the just Darius was able to take him down several months later.
The truth is more likely that Darius himself was the usurper and concocted an elaborate story to excuse his murder of the rightful king Bardiya, who had assumed the throne after the untimely death of his elder brother. Darius would reorganize the empire into satrapies, but his most well-known exploit was his attempt to conquer Greece.
Though he famously failed in that attempt, he did conquer Macedonia, the Cycladic Islands, and Naos. He put down a Babylonian revolt, fought a successful campaign against the Cians all around the Black Sea, as well as undertaking many construction projects. An inscription by him, dated to 490 BC, states, "Darius, the great king, king of kings, king of countries, son of Hystaspes and Aameen, King Darius says: This is the kingdom which I hold from the Saka who are beyond Sogdiana to Kush and from the Indus Valley to Lydia. This is what Ahura Mazda, the greatest of gods, bestowed upon me. May Ahura Mazda protect me and my royal house."
Darius's son Xerxes would try to continue his father's invasion of Greece, which likewise failed, but his expansion marked the high water mark for the empire, after which it went through a period of stagnation, repeated revolts, and gradual decline in the run-up to the rule of Darius II and the conquest of the empire by Alexander the Great.
Following the fall of Darius III, the Iranian Plateau was under Greek rule for several hundred years. Even before this conquest, however, the Iranians had been inspired by Greek art and architecture, with many Greek influences seen in the region. This intensified, of course, under the Seleucid control, and there are remains of Greek sites from this period in both Iran and Afghanistan.
Gradually, however, as the Seleucid reign weakened, the Parthians, an Iranian group of the northeast, pushed forward under Mithradates I. They won control over much of Iranian territory as well as much of Mesopotamia. Mithradates II would continue these successes, incorporating the lands of Armenia and Syria and establishing trade links with the Han Chinese, as well as undertaking many civil projects.
During the rise of the Roman Empire, the Persians were driven out of the Levant, which came under Roman rule during the Third Mithridatic War of 73 to 63 BC, and the Parthians entered a period of gradual decline. By 115 AD, the Roman Empire under Trajan launched a war into Parthia, capturing the city of Susa in 116. Yet when he died suddenly in the following year, Hadrian, his successor, chose not to pursue the conquest of Parthia.
Trajan's foray would mark the furthest east that the Romans would ever conquer. As the Parthians weakened, the Persians of the House of Sasan began to expand their power under Ardashir. His fight for control over the whole empire crystallized in the Battle of Hormozgan on the 28th of April, 224. His son Shapur would continue the expansion west, invading Roman-held Mesopotamia, leading to hundreds of years of conflict between the Romans and Sasanians in the region.
It is with the Sasanians, however, that there can be no doubt that this was an Iranian Empire in the strict sense. While in English we typically call it the Sasanian Empire or the Sasanids, its true official name was "Iran Shahr," the Empire of the Iranians. An inscription by Shapur I declares, "I am the lord of the Empire of the Iranians."
Shapur II expanded the empire into Afghanistan and Tajikistan, gaining control over the Silk Road and incorporating the local East Iranian tribes there, building cities and overseeing an Iranian cultural flourishing, with Iranian art style entering and influencing China. It was also under the Sasanians that Zoroastrianism began to be harshly imposed as a state religion.
During the fifth century, there were many tough battles with the Huns and less than stellar leadership. But under Kavad, starting in 498 and continuing under his son Khosrow, they experienced a second Golden Age, which saw further territorial expansion and a growing economy and cultural influence. Yet by the rule of Khosrow II, things were taking a bad turn.
The king had expended the Persian army and its wealth in constant campaigns against the Byzantines. The fighting had dramatically weakened both sides of the conflict. In 626, in response to a lengthy Byzantine campaign against them, Khosrow II made a massive and risky maneuver to defeat the Byzantines once and for all with the capture of Constantinople.
Together with their Slavic allies attacking from the west, they tried to surround and besiege the city. The Byzantines defeated the attempt, blocking the Iranian ships with their own navy, leaving the Slavic forces on their own. The maneuver cost the Iranians much. Khosrow was overthrown and murdered by his own son, Kavad II, who immediately sued for peace.
But then Iran descended into civil war. These events didn't pass unnoticed in the south. The power of the Arabs was swelling under the new uniting religion of Islam. Even weakened, however, the Iranians did not fall quickly or without a fight. The assault began in 632, and the complete conquest of Iran was not fully accomplished until 650, with countless battles waged at every step of the way.
With the Iranian defeat, the Arab Muslims would forever change Iranian culture. Some nobles fled further east; some went as far as China, but many others into Central Asia, such as eastern Afghanistan and Tajikistan, where they spread the Persian language and culture among Eastern Iranian people.
Even after the defeat of the Iranian state power by the Rashidun Caliphate, the Islamization and Arabization that would follow would change the vocabulary and even the pronunciation of Persian, with "Pars" turning into "Fars," for example, under the Arabic phonetic influence. The Iranian folk religion and Zoroastrianism were greatly suppressed, especially in areas that offered any resistance, with Zoroastrian manuscripts being burned and Magi being executed in some cases.
So by the late Middle Ages, almost all of Iran was Muslim. However, even today, there does remain a small Zoroastrian community. With the rise of the Umayyad dynasty, the situation in Iran became even worse. The Persian language, which had been used as a court language, was banned from being used in any official capacity, and open discrimination against Iranians was widespread.
There are reports of mass slaughters and executions of anyone who was unable to pay the taxes imposed upon non-converts. Traditional festivals such as Nowruz were banned. If the situation had been allowed to continue, it would have meant the end of Iranian identity. Many other ethnic identities in the region were wiped out by this exact same process.
Yet the Iranians held out. Under the Abbasid dynasty, they got some reprieve as the Abbasids courted ethnic Iranian support by allowing their traditional festivals again and easing language restrictions. By the 9th century, the return of the Iranians to power would begin in the far east of Iranian lands, along the snowy mountains that would China from Central Asia, which was sequestered away, almost forgotten.
A core of Iranian culture in the land which was sometimes known as Transoxania, across the Oxus River in what is now Tajikistan and in parts of northwestern Afghanistan, where 200 years previous many Iranian elites had fled before the Arab conquest, a new Iranian power bloomed. Though they too had largely converted to Islam by this time, they retained their pride in their history, heritage, and language, and they gave birth to a new Iranian state: the Samanid Empire.
Starting around 819, they gradually expanded their territory from northwestern Afghanistan to encompass areas of northwestern Iran. They were patrons of the arts and promoted the Persian language and culture. It was in the Samanid Empire, in the city of Tus, now in northeastern Iran, where Ferdowsi, the most famous Iranian poet, was born, lived, and died.
He was under the patronage of the Samanid prince, but when the Ghaznavids conquered the Samanids during the 990s, he rewrote his dedication to appeal to the new conquerors. To the west, in Central and Southern Iraq, the Buyids had thrown off the Arab rule, although they had not restored the Persian language or culture, continuing to use Arabic.
They too fell when the Ghaznavids and then the Seljuk Turks invaded, as the region fell under Turkish control. Yet as the Turks passed through the Eastern Iranian lands, they fell in love with the Persian language and culture. They adopted it as their language, of course, as the lingua franca, and used it for literature.
Thus, ironically, despite Turkish rule, the Persian language regained its dominance in Iran, and Arabic influence began to wane, save for in religious studies. In fact, the Turks also adopted many Persian words into Turkic, adopted Persian art, and many other elements of Persian culture.
In 1175, the Iranian Ghurid dynasty rose up from the mountains of Afghanistan to defeat the Ghaznavids. They managed to win territories in eastern Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and down through Pakistan and India. The Ghurids were pagan, following Iranian folk religion until they were converted to Islam in the 11th century.
They heavily promoted Persian literature and culture. However, they also played an instrumental role in spreading Islam all the way into India, out of which developed the Delhi Sultanate. Ethnic Iranian control in the region was again dashed by the Turks, then the Mongols, and then the Turco-Mongolian Timurid dynasty.
But the language and culture survived and were adopted and reinforced by each ruling group. However, it was not until 1501 that Iranians would lead a state of their own under the Safavid dynasty. Officially, they called their state the "Guarded Domains of Iran," but in practice, the land was known simply as Iran.
With the faltering of the Timurid dynasty, they began seizing territories in the north and were able to expand and eventually win all the lands of modern Iran and beyond. It was also with the Safavids that Iran became predominantly Shiite due to the promotion of the sect by the ruling dynasty.
Though there would be many conflicts with the Ottomans and other Turk groups, the Iranians managed to preserve their state. However, though they had some great leaders like Abbas the Great, eventually ineffective leadership led to their decline. Rebellions by the Pashtuns in the region of what is now Afghanistan and war with Russia saw Iran lose control of the Caucasus, which were big blows.
The Turk-Iranian warlord Nader Shah was able to restore order, repelled the Pashtuns, and had himself crowned Shah. But his death was followed by anarchy as multiple factions fought for power. One of his military officers, Ahmad Shah Durrani, would carve out an independent state which eventually became Afghanistan.
Finally, the Qajar dynasty won out in the civil war. They were ethnic Turks that had dwelt in Iran since the 11th century and supported the Safavids. Under Agha Muhammad Khan, they reconquered some of the Caucasus from Russia. However, his successful reign was ended in assassination, and Russia soon regained the territory, leading to an exodus of Iranians who were settled there.
One of those who fled would become the mother of Reza Pahlavi. Increasingly, the Qajar dynasty fell under naked foreign influence and eventually direct control. It's hard to express just how extreme these handovers were. The worst example was to Paul Julius Reuter, born Israel Beer Josafat.
Now, he became a British noble, Baron von Reuter, and is the founder of Reuter's news agency. He was given a monopoly over the railroads, tramways, but also metal mines, government forests, all cultivated land, canals, irrigation works, telegraphs, roads, mills, factories, workshops—everything. The measures were so extreme that the British government actually stepped in and said, "We don't support this."
Much of it had to be ruled back due to public pressure and opposition from various governments, but Reuter was given the exclusive rights to form the Imperial Bank of Persia in 1873. The following year, he traveled to the United Kingdom, where he was appointed a knight of the Order of the Garter by Queen Victoria.
In 1890, he signed over the ownership of the Persian tobacco industry to British Major General Talbot. This caused massive protests, with the highest clerics in Iran denouncing it and organizing a boycott of all tobacco use, which forced a reversal of the decision and for the first time showed the political strength that the Mullahs of Iran could wield.
For the king's visibly terrible rule of the Iranian state, he was assassinated in 1896. His son, Mozaffar ad-Din, inherited rule of a country his father had put deeply into debt with both England and Russia. However, he borrowed even more money from them just to pay previous debts.
After a trip around Europe paid for him by Tsar Nicholas II, he signed over even more businesses and entire sectors of the Persian economy over to foreigners. One such example is oil, which he handed over to the British businessman William Knox Darcy in 1906. His obvious selling out of the nation led to massive protests and demands for a democratic legislative body.
In the face of the protest, he agreed to make concessions and signed a constitution of Iran, which created a parliament. He died of a heart attack 40 days later, and his son Muhammad Ali came to power. Within a few weeks, he ordered the parliament to be dissolved.
He signed the Anglo-Russian agreement, which effectively divided Iran into Russian and British imperial zones. With the help and support of both Russia and Britain, he had the parliament bombed and his opposition killed. In 1909, the opposition organized a massive protest, with people streaming into Tehran from all corners of the country. Muhammad abdicated and fled to Odessa.
There, he tried to organize a military force to return to Iran in 1911 but was defeated and returned to Russia, where he died in 1924. The parliament made his son Ahmad the Shah. Little changed; the country was still under effective foreign domination. Throughout World War I, it was effectively occupied by the British, Ottomans, and Russians, with the three fighting battles within Iranian territory unhindered by any response from the government.
The British government's occupation and activities within Iran at that time is thought to have caused a famine which may have killed up to 2 million people. Following the Russian Revolution, the British even used Iran as a launching pad for a failed attack on Russia. The central government effectively did not exist, and Ahmad was described as incompetent and pleasure-seeking.
He was little different from his forbearers. He signed the Anglo-Persian agreement that again guaranteed the British access to all oil fields in the country. After the British failed attempt to overthrow the Soviet government, forces from the USSR under the direction of Leon Trotsky marched south, with the help of their sympathizers on the ground.
They established a Persian Soviet Republic in the north of Iran, and rumor was that they were assembling forces to march on Tehran and do the same. The British, fearing losing control of Iran to the Soviets because the central government was too weak to defend itself, ordered a young brigadier general of the Persian Cossacks, Reza Pahlavi, to stage a coup in Tehran with their full support.
The British supplied the money, weapons, and direction to Reza. He marched into Tehran and seized power. At first, he didn't take power directly himself; there was much talk about creating a democratic republic. But the British, who were ultimately controlling the situation, opposed it, fearing that they would lose control of Iran if nationalists were elected.
It wasn't long before Reza told the parliament to declare him the new Shah. As Shah, he set about "modernizing" Iran. He passed a law banning the wearing of traditional Persian clothing and forced people to wear western clothing. He promoted cultural values being promoted in the West and actively sought to lessen the influence of religion.
He likewise sought to force a Persianization of all ethnic groups in the country. He also did not abolish the massive foreign control and ownership Britain still had over Iran's oil, though he forced them to negotiate a slightly better deal in the mid-1930s, an act which angered the British and seemed to signal to them that Reza was no longer their useful puppet.
It wouldn't be long until they would bring about his demise. Reza was helped to power by the British, but he wanted to develop Iran into an independent power. But he knew that that would never happen if Iran remained under British control.
In the rise of Germany under Adolf Hitler, Reza saw a possible option. A third way began to develop between Iran and Germany, and a budding friendship. German specialists went to work in Iran to develop the economy and infrastructure.
With the outbreak of World War II, Reza declared Iran to be a neutral country. This was not pleasing to either the British or the Soviet Union. As soon as Germany entered the war against the USSR, Britain and the USSR sent troops to conquer neutral Iran together. The purpose was to use Iran as a gateway for British supplies to the USSR.
The British opened with a surprise attack, bombing Tehran and Kaveh, and demanding a surrender. The Soviets bombed Tabriz, Rasht, and elsewhere. Hundreds of civilians were killed, and many more wounded in indiscriminate bombing raids against civilian targets by the British and Soviet allies.
Facing massive defeats, Reza ordered the army to surrender after just four days of fighting. The British wanted to impose the heir of the failed Qajar dynasty, who had always been their faithful lackey, but he was now a British citizen who didn't even speak Persian. They therefore settled for Reza's son, Crown Prince Muhammad.
His father Reza was arrested by the British, forced to abdicate, and sent to exile in British Mauritius for nearly a year before being sent on to South Africa. Young Muhammad was used as a rubber stamp for anything that Stalin and Churchill wanted him to do. An American, Arthur Millspaugh, was put in charge of Iranian government finances.
In a book he wrote in 1946, he said, "Persia cannot be left to herself. Even if the Russians were to keep their hands off, politically Persia has never yet proved its capacity for independent self-government." That about sums up the attitude of all foreign powers involved in Iran at the time.
The rest of the modern history of Iran is beyond the scope of this video. There was the election of Mossadegh and, most importantly, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which changed the political landscape of Iran. A proud people with a glorious history cannot be kept down in the dust forever.
Although the future of Iran is uncertain and dark storm clouds hang overhead, it's my hope that the Iranian people have a bright future. I hope you liked the video, and if you did, please like, share, and subscribe, and consider supporting the channel on Patreon, PayPal, or through YouTube Super Stickers. Support helps me to make videos like this. Much thanks to all of my supporters, and as always, stay tall.