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Thursday
May 24, 2001

Changing historical facts

Mr. Farahani's letter about Aryans and Arabs ["Iranians always rise from ashes"] seems to include many inaccurate and odd points. It is important to be proud of one's heritage and culture, but extending it into such kind of racial dogma that even changes the facts of history is unimaginable. It also undermines a nation's ability to discover the roots of its problems and to solve them in a practical way.

For example, Mr. Farahani says "[After the Arab invasion] for two hundred years the Iranian language was practiced in secret." Well, in fact right after capturing Iran, the Arab rulers adopted Persian language for administrative book keeping and accounting purposes in Iran, simply because all of their civil officers and book keepers were Persians. Only after a long time the books were converted to Arabic upon insistence of an Iranian official who himself undertook the job of translation.

As for destruction of cities, institutes and libraries, may I remind Mr. Farahani that the Jondi-Shapour University, for example, was open and active until Ninth century A.D. and many of its graduates served in the Abbassid court. I will also be glad to know the names of the major cities and locations of the libraries that were destroyed, if there was any.

Also a list of scientific achievements of Iranians for one thousand years of Ashkani and Sassanid rules would help.

Most of the glory and progress of Iranian nation were achieved during Hakhamaneshi rule, and very little until a millennium after when Islam arrived. It has been pointed by historians that if the Iranians had been "already enjoying more than a millennium of history, culture, civilization, and science" as Mr. Farahani claims, there would have been no way for a group of barefoot Arabs to defeat such a mighty empire in war.

The historical fact is that at the time of Arab invasion, Iran was already suffering under the religious Sassanid government, practically run by corrupted Zoroastrian clerics (pretty much similar to the current situation in Iran). There is little doubt that the majority of Iranians were so fed up by their misery that were more than glad to embrace the invading army which brought in a religion of social equality, and to get rid of the zoroastrian clerics. Later on when the Arabic empire became as corrupted as the old Sassanid, the Iranians did not hesitate in kicking them out either.

Another little comment to be corrected in Mr. Farahani's article is about the myth of Iranian Shi'ism. It is an established historical fact that a majority of Iranian cities and towns were sunnis until Safavid. There were a few Shi'i centers in Iran, including Azarbayejan, Qum-Kashan region and the small town of Mashhad (at that time). But the main Shi'i strongholds were in Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain until the Safavid conquered Iran. So the claim that Shi'ism is an Iranian version of Islam is nothing but a myth.

Regards,

Amir Sanizadeh

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