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Friday Allow me to elaborate Dear Mr. Sanizadeh, I am truly happy that you responded to me with your letter, "Changing historical facts". I received many complementing emails and no one bothered to criticize my point of view ["Iranians always rise from ashes"] and I was a bit worried. The scope of the article simply did not allow me to elaborate more on most issues such as Pre-Islamic civilization in Iran, Iranian contributions to Islam, dawn of Farsi language and most importantly Shia Islam. I certainly do not dislike Arab people and never referred to them as barefoot. I simply mentioned the fact that they were desert dwellers. They still are for the most part. The Bedouin Arabs in Saudi Arabia are still living the same way they were more than 14 centuries ago and there is nothing wrong with that. I will try to address the points you mentioned in your response in an orderly fashion. Civilization: The culture and civilization of Pre-Islamic Iran is visible through ruins of more than 2500 years. Takht-Jamshid was burnt 2200 years ago by Alexander and buried under sand until 1920s. All is left of Ctisphone, the Sassanid capital destroyed by Arabs, is merely a half ruined arch. The only Pre-Islamic literary work that escaped from hands of Arabs is Avesta, the holy book of Zoroastrians, and the carving inscriptions on the mountains in Tagh-e Bostan and Naghsh-e Rostam. I agree with you that the glory days of Pre-Islamic Iran were during Hakhamaneshi rule. However, Sassanian rulers also created a mighty empire rivaling that of Hakhamaneshian. They were constantly in war with Romans, from west, Turks from North East, and various barbaric tribes from east over territories. Some battles were won some battles were lost as shown by rock carvings and incriptions in Taghe-Bostan. After 400 years of Sassanian rule and its downfall due to corruption and heavy taxation to wage Roman wars, many Iranians, not all, welcomed Islam. Adoption of Islam: Most Iranians converted to Islam to avoid paying the Islamic taxes that were imposed on them by the Arab rulers. Your comment: "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)." Is very true, but that does not mean that people wanted to change their religion dating back to two millennia. Specially when many Islamic concepts are drawn from Zoroastrians. Just one quick question; as you mentioned there is a lot of corruption right now in Iran, does it mean that if people topple the Islamic regime, they would convert to I don't know Buddaism, for example? Slavery (I do not want to open another can of worm) which was not tolerated by Zoroastrian in Pre-Islamic Iran was introduced to fund the spread of Islamic empire in spite of denounciation of slavery by Islam. Iranian Slaves were sold throughout the empire. There are people in Yemen and as far as Somalia and Ethiopia with Iranian ancestory. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> Contributions: Another comment of yours; "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." Depicts your sketchy knowledge of history. Arabs at no time accepted the so called "Persian Language", what ever it was! Once again, due to their inability to maintain and govern such huge empire they had to use the experience and expertise of Iranians. The language of then was Arabic with modified writing. Instead of Kuffic hand writing a more modern style was adopted. Many Iranian, or if you like "Persian", scholars like Ibn-Moghafa who changed his Iranian name to an Arabic name, refined and restructured the today's Arabic language. Ibn-Moqhafa is the person who composed Arabic grammar. Arabic was the uniting language throughout the Islamic empire, from Spain to India, that caused astonishing achievements in a short period of time. Other Iranian scholars like, Ibn-Sina, Abu-Reyhan Birooni, wrote their texts in Arabic only. Not that there was anything wrong with it but because it was the right thing to do. Please do not consider these statements as racial or hate remarks. The fact is that, when Europe was in dark ages, Islamic cultures were enjoying tremendous scientific, and cultural advancements. Islamic knowledge and science was eventually exported to Europe (North and East) through returning Crusaders which gave birth to Renaissance age. The Iranian language of then, Old Persian and Pahlavi, was primarily extinct. Resistance: During Ummayad Califs and their rules, many Iranian uprisings took effect and eventually with the help of Samanian dynasty, the Abbasid Califs replaced Ummayads in Baghdad. Samanians created a small Iranian enclave in northern Afganistan and Tajikestan and they favored the modified Iranian language, Farsi, spoken there which was a form or dialect of Old Persian. Arabic alphabet, Semitic based, was modified to serve Farsi which is an Indo European language. Letters such as p, zh, g, ch, were added to the Arabic alphabet in order to comply with Farsi requirements. Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters and 6 vowels while Farsi alphabet contains 32 characters. Farsi became a court language and many poets started composing Farsi poems. Rudaki, the father Iranian poetry, was born in Khojand in 9th century AD, current Tajikestan, and was the court poet of Samani ruler. His beautiful poems are still popular and understandable to any Farsi speaking person after 11 centuries. Farsi became a poetic, literary, language while Arabic remained the Scientific language. Omar Khayyam wrote all his scientific work in Arabic and all his poetry, Rubbaiyat, in Frasi. During Ghaznavids rule, Ferdowsi spent thirty years of his life to revive Farsi by composing his masterpiece, Shahnameh, with very few Arabic words. During this time, Monguls ravaged Iran, Massacred vast numbers of people, reduced towns to ruins and along with it the Abbasid dynasty. Since you particularly covered Arabs invasion in your letter, I would not elaborate on Monguls and other invaders. Shiism: I did not do justice to Shiism in my letter since it is a very complex subject and even in this letter I would not cover the whole matter, Just outline some factual elements. Iranian people are passionate about Profit Mohammad's descendents or the 12 Imams. The reason can be justified by the fact that Imam Hossein, Grand son of Mohammad and son of Ali and Fatemeh, married an Iranian aristocrat. Some say he married Yazdegerds daughter when she was being sold into slavery! Also, the fact that Ali forfeit his right to Califhood upon Mohammad's death in order to avoid conflict between the young Moslem community made him a hero in the eyes of Sheia Moslems. Now Shiism in Iran was very much in existence specially in Khorassan where the eighth Imam, Reza, was invited for refuge. He mysteriously died, assassinated?, in a small town which is now called Mashhad, which literally means: "place of martyrdom". In your respond: "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". Aside from the region you mentioned, where were the main Iranian populous and civilization located? Iraq was a province of Iran until the end of Safavid era, Azarbayejan was one of the most populous regions of Iran, then. Kashan was a prosperous (much more than now) town and a center for science and art and theology. Cities like Esfahan, Shiraz, etc were mostly sunni Moslems but not many people used to live in those townships. The fact remains that Iranians used Shiism as means to separate themselves from Arabs and during Safavid reign, it became the official religion to defy the Ottoman Turks. What needs to be understood about Iranian people and mentality is that we are adaptable. This is what Herodotus wrote is his depiction of "Persians". This adaptability has allowed our culture, religion, and language to survive for many centuries and it will survive for centuries to come. When new invaders arrived, Iranians complied with them and by using the new culture and language and/or religion, they made necessary adjustments to Iranian customs and through this process not only they succeeded in Iranializing the new rulers but also refining and reshaping their own culture and therefore, making it more resilient and eternal. Example, Mongul rulers not only became Moslems (sunni) but also they adopted Moslem names. Tamerlane (Teymour the Lame) in spite of being a Turk would not allow any one to speak Turkish in his court. The Pre-Islamic art in Iran was in shape of sculptures and rock carving visible through many monuments in Iran. With arrival of Islam and the fact that depiction of human and animal form was a taboo in the new religion, Iranians used other art forms such as Kashikari (Tile work) and architecture to set their mark on world civilization. Therefore, Iranian ingenuity created such marvels as Friday mosque in Esfahan and Yazd, and Imam Mosque in Esfahan. Where else in the Arabic world would you see mosques like mosques in Iran, and Central Asia? The purely ornamental form and architectural elements and the sense of use of space in these structures show, the world, of the nature of people who built them. Sometime ago PBS showed a program called: Islam, the Empire of Faith. In spite of the fact that most of the program was filmed in Iran, There was no coverage of Iran and Iranian role in shaping and universalizing Islam. What bothered me very much was some flouzy remarks made by some Islamic Culture Experts. One such person was explaining the advent of Ottoman Turks in 14th Century AD. She mentioned that when Ottomans moved from Central Asia and settled in Central Turkey, the only direction they could expand was west ward towards Europe. The reason for that being the fact that the south and the east were already a part of the Islamic world and until then no one had heard of Moslems waging war against Moslems!!!! What a croc!! What was Karbala all about in the 8th Century when Yazid killed Hossein and his followers with Hossein being grand son of Mohammed? It troubles me when I see such ignorant people try to introduce the culture and civilization of other people when their knowledge about the respective culture is so superficial. I thoroughly enjoyed your criticism and I will be looking forward to hearing more comments from you or any one else either through letters to Iranian.com or direct emails. Thank you very much.
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