My big fat Persian gulf
When
it comes to maps which draw lines of identity around the people
of a nation you must apply more than just rules of cartographic
practice
February 23, 2005
iranian.com
Between
the Arabian Peninsula and Iran, on top of the greatest pool of
oil reserves in the world, through the Strait of Hormuz is the
extension of the Gulf of Oman, an inland sea of some 233,000
km (989 kilometeres long) ending at the Arvand/Shatt al-Arab
river, which carries the waters of the Euphrates and the Tigris,
and separates Iran from Saudi Arabia and provides the coastline
to United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait,
Iraq, and Iran; collectively called the Persian Gulf States and
home to more than 118 million people. This inland sea is what
the people
of Iran have always called the "Persian Gulf".
In a flashback to the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" in which
the father of the bride prides in the fact that he can prove
the origin of every word is in Greek, the origin of the name
"Persian Gulf" is in the ancient Greek name "Persious Sinus"
given to this body of water by the Greek geographers Strabo and
Ptolemy who interestingly called the Red Sea, Sinus Arabicus
(Arabian Gulf).
Some years later, when the Romans took over from the Greek
as the dominant force in the region, they too chose to reflect
the significance of Iran, or I should say Persia, when naming
this body of water: "Aquarius Persico". Move forward in history
again to the time when the Muslim Arabs conquered Iran in 7th
century AD and even they referred to it as "Bahr al-farsi".
So with the brief exception of a short while in the 17th century
when due to the importance of Basra as a trading port the Gulf
was named "Gulf of Basra", Iran and this body of water
have remained one for over a thousand years. Even as recently
as 1984 all 22 Arab nations in the United Nations signed the
formal recognition by the United Nations of the "Persian Gulf",
in addition the United States Board of Geographic Names has considered
"Persian Gulf" as the legal name for this body of water since
1917.
When I recently asked you to vote for the Iranian person of
the year many of you voted for the National Geographic stating
that because it had "mislabeled" the "Persian
Gulf" as "Arabian
Gulf" it had created a unity amongst the Iranian people.
This is an interesting point which I want to explore further
in this short essay, and try to find out why Iranians want it
called the "Persian Gulf", why the Arabs want it called
"The Arabian Gulf", and how the National Geographic got stuck
in the
middle
But first I must point out that on November 22nd 2004,
when Iran officially banned the circulation of National Geographic
magazine and its reporters from Iran, it did so not because
the magazine has "mislabeled" its map but because it had included "Arabian
Gulf" as a secondary name for the "Persian Gulf" in
its 8-pound, $165, 8th Edition "Atlas of the World" after
its map makers noticed that some U.S. military agencies use the
name Arabian Gulf for the body of water on Iran's southwestern
shore.
What is interesting is that with the exception of the
time after the Iranian Revolution of 1979 when the likes of Ayatollah
Khomeini, Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, and Revolutionary Judge
Sadegh Khalkhali, reportedly suggested the use of the "Islamic
Gulf" (the
idea was abandoned after Iran was invaded by its Muslim neighbor
Iraq), this is
the first
time Iran's government has taken an official stance.
In your letters to me a few of you were very quick to state
that the real fault here is that of the Americans and the British
whose government agencies and corporations want to see the name
changed to the Arabian Gulf because then they would feel legitimized
to deal with the more cooperative Arab nations in the purchase
of oil and leave Iran entirely out of the negotiations.
To some extent you are correct. Some of the first references
to the Arabian Gulf in the US press came after the Standard Oil
of California found oil on the Arabian side of the Gulf, and
as many of you pointed out the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC)
and press have been one of the only international press agencies
referring to this water way as simply "the Gulf" over
the last three decades, signaling an unwillingness to accept
Iran as a legitimate power over this water way.
 In fact, the British have been far more involved in this situation
than the Americans, so perhaps "Dai Jan Napelon" Iran's favorite
TV character was right when he said, "it is always the fault
of the British!" It is a little know fact that the first person
to suggest calling this body of water the "Arabian Gulf" was
Sir Charles Belgrave, the British adviser to the rulers of Bahrain
in the early 1930s. Although Belgrave's suggestion fell on deaf
ears, a few years later in 1951, a British MI6 officer named
Roderick Owen wrote a book titled "The Golden Bubble of
the Arabian Gulf", which was basically a piece of literary
propaganda for the benefit of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company which
was facing hard times during Mossadegh's Nationalistic Iran.
If Owen's book was the seed for change then Nasser's Egyptian
Regime was the fertilizer when in 1968 Nasser began a global
campaign to the change the name "Persian Gulf" to "Arabian
Gulf" and handed the running of the campaign to the Ba'ath regime
in
Iraq (herein lies the seeds of the Iran-Iraq war) who at the
time had the financial backing of United Arab Emirates due to
a close alliance with Abu Dhabi.
As the Iranian uproar began, the National Geographic at first
responded with this statement; "It has been the society's
cartographic practice to display a secondary name in parentheses
when the use of such a name has become commonly recognized."
But after it received over 5,000 emails from angry Iranians,
and realized the power of 70,000 Iranian online petitioners and
bloggers signing "The Persian Gulf Will Remain Persian" petition.
Also Iranians "google" bombs
directed any search for "Arabian Gulf" to a site constructed
by Iranians which demanded the correction of the said maps. Iranians
won; with sheer national pride they united to make sure their
history was credited correctly.
 What
the editors of National Geographic did not realize was that
when it comes to maps which draw lines of identity around the
people
of a nation you can't simply apply the rules of cartographic
practice and forget that maps are about history too. To the
people of Iran, who are of Indo-European decent, the name "Persian
Gulf" is symbolic of the historical memory of a great civilization
spanning 7,000 years, a history which was their identity long
before oil was found and Americans and the British stepped
on their shores; and for that identity they will unite long after
the oil has dried up and both the Americans and the British
have
left.
In the words of Geoffrey Kemp, director of regional strategic
programs at the Nixon Center in Washington, this battle for identity
dates back "to Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar and Darius the Great
back before the birth of Christ and before Islam appeared on
the scene."
About
For more about Buddahead, aka Raman Kia, and his band, visit buddaheadmusic.com
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