Persia: Ancient Soul of Iran (Nat Geographic Magazine)

[pinto]

An interesting look at Iran today juxtaposed with it's Persian Empire history. There's more to it than the latest Ahmadenijad headline, the clerics' overarching role and the country's relationship with the West. The author also makes good note of Iran's Mossadegh period. - pinto


Photograph by Newsha Tavakolian

Persia: Ancient Soul of Iran
A glorious past inspires a conflicted nation.

By Marguerite Del Giudice

What's so striking about the ruins of Persepolis in southern Iran, an ancient capital of the Persian Empire that was burned down after being conquered by Alexander the Great, is the absence of violent imagery on what's left of its stone walls. Among the carvings there are soldiers, but they're not fighting; there are weapons, but they're not drawn. Mainly you see emblems suggesting that something humane went on here instead—people of different nations gathering peace­fully, bearing gifts, draping their hands amiably on one another's shoulders. In an era noted for its barbarity, Persepolis, it seems, was a relatively cosmopolitan place—and for many Iranians today its ruins are a breathtaking reminder of who their Persian ancestors were and what they did.

The recorded history of the country itself spans some 2,500 years, culminating in today's Islamic Republic of Iran, formed in 1979 after a revolution inspired in part by conservative clerics cast out the Western-backed shah. It's argu­ably the world's first modern constitutional theocracy and a grand experiment: Can a country be run effectively by holy men imposing an extreme version of Islam on a people soaked in such a rich Persian past?

Persia was a conquering empire but also regarded in some ways as one of the more glorious and benevolent civilizations of antiquity, and I wondered how strongly people might still identify with the part of their history that's illustrated in those surviving friezes. So I set out to explore what "Persian" means to Iranians, who at the time of my two visits last year were being shunned by the international community, their culture demonized in Western cinema, and their leaders cast, in an escalating war of words with Washington, D.C., as menacing would-be terrorists out to build the bomb.

You can't really separate out Iranian identity as one thing or another—broadly speaking, it's part Persian, part Islamic, and part Western, and the paradoxes all exist together. But there is a Persian identity that has nothing to do with Islam, which at the same time has blended with the culture of Islam (as evidenced by the Muslim call to prayer that booms from loudspeakers situated around Persepolis, a cue to visitors that they are not only in a Persian kingdom but also in an Islamic republic). This would be a story about those Iranians who still, at least in part, identify with their Persian roots. Perhaps some millennial spillover runs through the makeup of what is now one of the world's ticking hot spots. Are vestiges of the life-loving Persian nature (wine, love, poetry, song) woven into the fabric of abstinence, prayer, and fatalism often associated with Islam — like a secret computer program running quietly in the background?

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/08/iran-archaeology/del-giudice-text

[dtotire]

1. Good Article

Thanks for posting it.

[Muttocracy]

2. wow, learned a lot new including this about the U.S.:

"Oil was at the root of a 1953 event that is still a sore subject for many Iranians: the CIA-backed overthrow, instigated and supported by the British government, of Iran's elected and popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh had kicked out the British after the Iranian oil industry, controlled through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later BP), was nationalized, and the British had retaliated with an economic blockade. With the Cold War on and the Soviet bloc located just to the north, the U.S. feared that a Soviet-backed communism in Iran could shift the balance of world power and jeopardize Western interests in the region. The coup—Operation TP-Ajax—is believed to have been the CIA's first. (Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., Teddy's grandson, ran the show, and H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the father of the Persian Gulf war commander, was enlisted to coax the shah into playing his part. Its base of operations was the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the future "nest of spies" to the Iranians, where 52 U.S. hostages were taken in 1979.) Afterward, the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was returned to power, commercial oil rights fell largely to British and U.S. oil companies, and Mossadegh was imprisoned and later placed under house arrest until he died in 1967."

[MasonJar]

3. Well, at least they did not murder him like we did Saddam. If Hussein

was a criminal, he should have been tried at the Hague. Bush did NOT want that. What happened to the elected leader of Iraq was another of Bush's many crimes.

[truth2power]

4. We might as well have murdered him...

The CIA planned and participated in the violent overthrow of his democratically elected government.

Several months later, Mossadegh was convicted of treason by a <American puppet> military court. He spent 3 years in solitary confinement, followed by house arrest for the remainder of his life.

The US Government has NEVER been interested in promoting democracy anywhere in the world. Capitalism, yes. Democracy, no.

* * * *

edit> sorry. I see that JoeIsOneOfUs included this info in his post. That's what I get for not reading it in its entirety. :blush:

[slipslidingaway]

5. Thanks for posting. n/t

[On the Road]

6. I Would Really Like to Visit Iran

Do not get the sense it's a dangerous place, even now.

[14thColony]

7. I want to ski Iran!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/feb/24/iran.skiing

My girlfriend's half Iranian but she's made clear that if I go I go alone...bummer.