What Do We Know About Persia? (Part I)

WASHINGTON (Fair Observer) -- Iran, formerly Persia, has a fascinating history. It was the ancient world’s superpower for two centuries and rose to international prominence several times since then. It is one of the world’s oldest civilizations, with a history of settlement dating back past 11,000 BC. Around 6,000 BC, it was the place where gold, silver, copper and some other metals were first discovered. Around 2,000 BC, Aryan tribes moved into the region, which made the country known as Ariana or Iran, meaning “the land of Aryans.”

The Aryans moved into the region of Persis or Parsa, in the southwest of Iran. The region is known in the Western languages as Persia, and its people, Persians. The Persians were united as a nation by the year of 625 BC. A century later, they had conquered the whole of the Iranian plateau.
In time, from its capital of Persepolis, the Persian Empire extended its rule into three continents, covering Eastern Europe, North Africa and Central Asia. At its peak, it was the greatest empire that had yet existed in history, and it remains to this day the largest empire ever as a percentage of world population. It extended from Egypt in the west to India in the east and from much of Ukraine in the north to Yemen in the south.
Cyrus founded the world’s first biggest empire, Persia, stretching from modern-day Syria through Turkey to India’s borders.
Persia was later temporarily captured by the Greeks and rivaled the Roman Empire, which failed many attempts to subdue its eastern neighbor. Iran was only finally conquered by the Arabs in the 7th century.
What emerged was quite exhilarating. Iran produced some of the world’s greatest intellectuals, and they changed the world forever. These included Ibn Hayyan (known in the Latin West as Geber, died in 815), Khwarazmi (Lat. Algorismus, d. 850), the Banu Musa brothers (800-850), al-Farabi (Lat. Alpharabius, d. 870), Razi (Lat. Rhazes, d. 925), al-Balkhi (d. 934), Al-Sufi (Lat. Azophi, d. 986), Ibn Sina (Lat. Avicenna, d. 1037), Al-Biruni (d. 1048), Umar Khayyam (d. 1131), Al-Tusi (d. 1274), Qotb al-Din Al-Shirazi (d. 1311) and Kamal al-Din Al-Farisi (d. 1319).
Each of these great individuals left a permanent mark on human intellectual progress. Al-Farabi’s influence on the West is well known. Among others, he influenced Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), the famous theo-philosopher who would come to be the most influential thinker in the Catholic Church.
Without their ongoing influence, transmitted to Europe over centuries via conduits such as Moorish Spain and Venetian trade, the Renaissance could have looked very different.
As late as the 17th century, Mulla Sadra (d. 1636) expanded theo-philosophy by a combination of reasoning, spirituality and meditation.
As for the poets, Iran produced poets like Rumi (d. 1273), Saadi (d. 1291) and Hafiz (d. 1389) who deeply influenced world literature and philosophy.
There is substantial evidence that much of the scientific progress credited to the Westerners was earlier developed by the Persians. For instance, a mathematical formulation in astronomy credited to Copernicus is identical to that of al-Tusi, who preceded him by about 300 years. Umar Khayyam, famous for his Rubaiyat, was also a polymath. Evidence is emerging that Rene Descartes (d. 1650) plagiarized much of his scientific work from Khayyam who preceded him by over 500 years.
Nevertheless, all that glory vanished in 1747 with the death of Nader Shah. Nader was the last monarch to rule a united Persian Empire and became famous by defeating the Mughal Empire in India in 1739 and ransacking Delhi, capturing the incredible peacock throne. After him, the country fell into a period of anarchy, fracturing into a number of states. Rebels assumed autonomy in Afghanistan and Bahrain. The Ottomans grabbed some territories. Much of the Caucasus regions declared independence, while Nader’s Afsharid dynasty was reduced to a tiny rump state.
From 1796, the Qajar clan took power and initially unified the remnants of the empire. Later under British influence, the Qajar dynasty lost Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia and some other notable territories to Russia. When the dust settled, Iran was intact but had lost almost all of its empire in West and Central Asia.