Richard Frye - Persia (RLE Iran A)

RICHARD N. FRYE

Volume 5

First published under the title Iran in 1960
This revised edition published inl968

This edition first published in 2011
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1960, 1968 George Allen & Unwin Ltd

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ISBN 13: 978-0-415-57033-6 (Set)
eISBN 13: 978-0-203-83010-9 (Set)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-60841-1 (Volume 5)
eISBN 13: 978-0-203-83319-3 (Volume 5)

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BY

RICHARD N. FRYE

London

GEORGE ALLEN AND UNWIN LTD

Some people may deplore the frequent references to the past in any discussion about Iran, including the future of the country. But the past weighs heavily upon the population and it is my belief that one cannot ignore the fascinating and glorious heritage of almost three millennia, for that heritage has formed the land and people of today, so much so that even modern, economic development by foreigners can hardly succeed without a knowledge by them of the mores and temper of those to be served by that development. This is why an historical survey of Iran occupies so much of this book. I have sought to temper the list of details by some analysis, but especially by the division of chapters, not by chronology but by topic. One cannot hope to convey more than an impression of the richness of the culture of Iran in a few pages, but this unworthy morsel, to use traditional Persian language, may tempt the appetite to greater adventures.

The broad perspectives of the past can indeed help one to better understand the pressing problems of the moment, and the details of contemporary events can acquire new meaning when placed against the tableau of the history of Iran. I hope this brief survey of Irans past will provide just a small measure of that background so necessary for our understanding of the present.

NBThe transcription of foreign words is simplified with-out diacritical marks. It varies, however, as ArabicMuhammad and PersianMohammed.

Richard N. Frye

Aga Khan Professor of Iranian

Harvard University

IRAN means the land of the Aryans, what the Greeks and then the West called Persia. As is frequent in foreign designations of a land or country, the Greeks took the name from Persis, the southwestern province whence sprang their contemporaries the dynasty of the Achaemenids. Today, in English, in other European languages, and in this booklet, the two words Persia and Iran are synonymous, while the latter is the sole indigenous designation. In certain scholarly circles, however, a distinction is made between the two; Persia is the present country with the political boundaries it has had for more than a century, and Iran covers the large territory which in the past was Iranian in speech and culture. This greater Iran included and still includes part of the Caucasus Mountains, Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iraq; for Kurds, Baluchis, Afghans, Tajiks, Ossetes, and other smaller groups are Iranians. Pan-Iranian political aspirations have never been strong anywhere but a cultural solidarity is surely real among many of the Iranian peoples. While in this book we shall be concerned only with the modern state of Persia, or Iran, we should not forget that greater Iran, which has been important in understanding the primary division between east and west in Persia throughout history.

The two salt deserts, the Dasht-i Kavir and the Dash-i Lut, in the centre of the country, effectively divide it into an eastern and a western part. The eastern provinces of Khurasan and Seistan in dialect and in local customs and usages have, or perhaps had, more in common with Herat province of Afghanistan than with Fars and Azerbaijan provinces of their own land. The histories of eastern and western Iran too have been different, though the centre of power and of rule in a united country has been invariably in western Iran.

Although the two deserts are in the centre of the plateau, and are the basins for streams descending from the Elburz and Zagros mountain ranges, most of Iran is really a desert with life flourishing in oases, some of them of very large size. Our word paradise came from Persia, and it was originally a private hunting preserve of the Achaemenid king of kings. In a sense every oasis in Iran is a green paradise compared with the surrounding wasteland, and the lovely gardens within are usually separated sharply from the outside world by high mud walls. Most of the cities of Iran lie in oases and the key to life for all is water. Indeed water is the lifeblood of most of the continent of Asia, and on the Iranian Plateau the need for it is always acute. Roads patiently built in the summer or autumn are washed away in the winter or spring by flash floods, and more quarrels arise over the distribution of water than any other factor.

Another feature of the geography of Iran is the barren mountain, for rarely in the country does one lose sight of rugged peaks or hills. The mountains even more than the deserts have kept the Persians so divided that even today there is a multitude of dialects and different customs from village to village. Unlike the huge neighbour to the north where the spoken language is quite uniform from Leningrad to Vladivostok, Iran has diversity to an extraordinary degree. Outside observers have noted that the sometimes harmful individuality of the Persians is a reflection of the rugged physical landscape where they live, and environment surely has had a strong influence on the inhabitant of the plateau.