THE IRANIAN
Letters
* Persian Gulf: history's favorite
I am writing inspred by the letter in which a reader suggested that the Persian Gulf be called "Fars Gulf." There is something to be said about calling the Persian Gulf "Fars Gulf "or "Gulf of Fars." The exercise, however, is only legitimate if one could appreciate the linguistic nuances which has produced the name Persian Gulf to begin with.
The present-day name of the gulf comes from the Greek and classsical writers who, after calling it the Sea of Erythras for many decades, came to call this body of water Sinus Persicus, meaning the Gulf of Persis. Persis at the time refrred to the part of the Iranian plateau which wasc Pars, today's Fars province. There was also at the time the province of Carmania, whose remains today represent the much smaller Kerman Province, without frontage on the gulf. The term Persian Gulf is the Anglo-Saxon as well as other later European translations of Sinus Persicus or Mare Persicum (Persian Sea).
Something got lost in the translation because by the time the Europeans got around to it, the name Persis had evolved into Persia, describing the entire state governed by the state people (staatvolk) Persians, not necessarily by the people of Persis (Fars). To that extent, the Western practice lifted a provincial reference and made it into a national appellation. Given Persia (or Iran's) political, economic, and military dominance of the gulf, the appellation proved to be an inescapble label for a very long time.
In 1935, the Persian government asked the foreign diplomatic corps and media to refer to the country as "Iran." Accordingly the Anglo-Persian Oil Comanpy became Anglo-Iranian, and so forth. At the time, Iran suggested that Persian Gulf be refrred to as the "Iranian Gulf." The British government refused to go along with the suggestion because the naming of the gulf from "Persian," which also had a cultural and historical connotation, to "Iranian" was feared to signal a political and legal concession to Iran in the Persian Gulf, where Britain and Iran were locked in an interminable duel for influence.
The Iranian (Fawaris, Persian, Iranian, Ajam) and Arabian traditions however continued to call the gulf by its ancient name given to it by the Greeks. In Arabic, "Khalij-al Fars" and in Farsi/Persian "Khalij-e Fars" refer to Fars, not Fawaris (Persian), and we know that Arabs did not call Iran "Persia" or Farsistan and that Iranians never called the gulf "Iranian Gulf." To be noted the Arabic influence of "F" replacing "P" in Pars.
The problem with changing the name Persian Gulf to anything else is that if one could change that to Fars Gulf, then why not also accept the notion of the Arabian Gulf ?
In closing, it appears that during the Abbasid Caliphate, some geographer referred to the gulf as the Sea of Emerald, a name which found an echo in some literary English writings of the 19th century, and also as the Gulf of Basra. At the time of the 1979 Republican Revolution, Iran went as far as to suggest that the gulf be called an Islamic Gulf, while one of the officials of the Islamic government offerred up the Tonbs and Abu Musa to the UAE in peace!
Regardless, throughout the ages, what has survived and has also managed to beat back the use of the name "Arabian Gulf" is that irrepressible appellation "Persian Gulf," a name not born with history but fathered and raised by it.
Nobody asked, just this one person's opnion.
Guive Mirfendereski
Guive@aol.com
Related links
* Iran News
* Complete list of Iranian
online media
* Cover stories
* Who's
who
|
|