Shorts

A Aryaian writes:

As an Iranian diplomat during the Shah era (now retired) I visited all Arab countries in Africa and I am very familiar with their language and culture.

According to Qatari-based Aljazeera, Moroccan musicians in cooperation with UNESCO plan to celebrate the great Iranian musician "ZIRYAB" (ZARYAB in Persian) in order to promote the old traditional North African melodies. That is fine, but they call "ZARYAB" a famous Arab musician! Well, as I don't mind if a poor needy man take a few dollars from me, I excuse the Arabs attributing great famous Iranian men and women to themselves.

Meanwhile, I am not surprised if the very corrupt UNESCO accepts this historical lie as a fact without doing any research; recall how they so callously changed the most historic name of the Persian Gulf to Arabian after receiving petro-dollar from Arab sheikhdoms. These poor Arab Bedouins have no proud culture and history of their own, and just try to create a proud history for themselves by stealing from others.

Anyway, The Umayyad Caliphate in Andalus/Andalusia (Iberian Peninsula, Spain) was created by an Iranian warrior named Tariq Ben Ziyad who crossed the Strait of Gibraltar (Jabal Tariq) which still carries his name. When this brave Iranian warrior crossed to other side of the Morocco; he set fire to all of his warships and said to his followers: The sea is behind you, and the enemy in front of you: There is nothing for you, by God, except for truth and strength of character.

Then, an Iranian musician named ZARYAB left the court of the Abbasid Caliph Mamun for Andalus/Andalusia.

In Arabic, there is very famous melody called (MAQAMAT UNDOLESIE) which still carries Persian names such as SIGA (se gah), CHIGA (chahar gah), DIST (dasht), MIHIR (mahoor) and many more.

Decades ago, in order to preserve and restore our classical pure melodies, I suggest to the National Iranian Radio Television (NIRTV) to send our best Iranian composers to Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Morocco in particular and also to Turkey, who got these tunes from Arabs during its 500 years of Ottoman occupation and colonization.

Unfortunately, we have never had a nationalist government to reincarnate our pure Iranian identity, so no wonder if NIRTV just ignored my suggestion.

-- "The Virtuosos of Ziryab for R'Chid Regragui"
-- "Ambitious first Moroccan and African musicians"