The empire had no boundaries
Introducing Persia, Part I

Maziyar Talaforush
July 6, 2006
iranian.com

Recent linguistic, anthropological, and archeological evidence, due to the hard work of such scholars as Nigel Tallis and John Curtis of the British Museum, Sir Richard Nelson Frye, Mary Boyce, Kaveh Farrokh and many other scholars has led to many new discoveries.

One conjecture is that the ancient cult of the dead practiced by the Scythians mixed with the festivities in which costumes were worn, occupations were exchanged (the King and the pauper exchanged places for a day), food and cookies were given-out, and fun-chaos ruled the day, burrowed by the Scythians through cross-cultural exchanges with their linguistic and genetic counter-parts, the Persians (IrAnies), had eventually led to the enduring traditions that we know today to be Halloween.

But, who were the Scythians you may ask? The answer to that is not the diluted, masked version set forth previously by Western academia, in fact, as recent excavation at Pazyryk, and Flippovak in Russia have confirmed, the answer to that question is exceedingly clear.

To be exact, we now know, these were Northeastern Iranian mobile herdsmen, who spoke an Iranian language, a subsection of Indo-European languages, and lived in the present day Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Maazandaraan, along the Caspian Sea, as well as the nearby Eurasian steppes stretching from the Western borders of China on one side, to the Ural mountains in Southern Russia, up to the lower Danube and Vistula Rivers in present day Romania and Hungry on the other side.

The Scythians did at some point allow others to join-in as allies. The religious and festive traditions aforementioned were passed on by the Scythians/Sarmatians to the Celts with whom they intermarried with and had profound influences on. According to the distinguished linguist Dr. Kaveh Farrokh (part Ossetian, part Azeri himself), who spent seventeen years researching the Sassanid and Parthian military tactics, and culture for his book Sassanian Elite Cavalry AD 224-642, “There are POWERFUL connections between Celts and Iranians [...]. The Saka [Scythians] and Persians were in regular contact so the passage of this tradition to the Celts (who had good relations with Iranians) is very possible.”

This is an iconoclastic declaration indeed--but don’t expect the majority of unenthusiastic arm-chair Irish historians with an stiff-upper-lip to rush to Dr. Farrokh's aid, or go on a bonding field research trip with him anytime soon. No thanks to the confused, and bizarre indifference of modern Iranians to their own identity, or the groundswell of anti-Persianism of some Western scholars who have done all they can to deny the influence of these ancient people on European cultures, and thanks only, and only to some valiant scholars who have placed knowledge ahead of bias, such findings, nevertheless, are only steps away from being presented, and finally accepted universally.

However, excluding the origin of Scythians that have already been firmly identified as Iranians, the above are conjectures. The rest, on the other hand, are what are known for certain, which apparently has the latest editions of encyclopedias and text books scrambling in order to get “up-to-date”. As such, a very similar circumstances to the one mentioned above played a role in which via Rome this time, the Sarmatians who were hired by Roman Emperors and stationed in Britain [Bremetenacum; modern Lancashire, England, Londinium, and Verulamium; London, and St. Albans respectively], for the first time introduced to the West the feudal customs of ancient Persia.

Along with it were the metallic war regalia that came with such customs, or vice-versa; these were the mail, mace, and lance gear that until then were exclusive to a certain noble class in the Persian Empire known as Savaaraan: the prized elite cavalry units, the Immortals, the Knights of Persia. Such warfare gears were invented by the Iranian confederacies [the Scythians], and were officially used for the first time by the Parthians [or Ashkaaniaan, a division of Scythians/Sarmatians living in the inner-Northeast of mainland Iran/Persia]. In Latin such iron-clad horsemen were known as the Cataphracts.

Incidentally, the Parthians (Rome' s only military equal and arch-enemy) where the ones who drove the Greeks out, regained imperial power over Persia, and revived the Persian language through Parthian/Parthuva (Middle-Persian: Pahlavi scriptures [no relations to the corrupt regime of the Shah of Iran during the 1925-1970s]). Now confronted with a grave threat, they frequently employed these heavy-armoured horse men during their wars with the merciless army of Rome, who up to that point had only utilized the infantry [foot soldiers].

In what is now called the 800 years Perso-Roman wars, the quicker Cataphracts (Aazaadaan, and Spardaaraan) ended-up punishing the Roman forces, setting them into a tailspin. The Parthians, who according to the Roman historian Tacitus were unusually just and tolerant rulers, sympathized with the Greek slave Spartacus, who was tortured and killed by the Roman General Marcus Crassus, and they retaliated at the battle of Carrhea, avenging the slave’s death by humiliating Crassus' army [prior to this Rome had never been defeated in a major battle].

Later-on, Persia’s third dynastic power, the more proactive, and illustrious Sassanids (the other “Super-Power” next to Rome) replaced the formidable Parthians, and the Cataphracts evolved into the heaviest cavalry of them all [Savaaraan; the predecessors of the European Knights]. Soon thereafter, within a few short years these knights captured a Roman Emperor [Valerian], defeated a second one, destroyed 1/3 of the Roman army, and nearly marched to Rome itself. In fact, Persia and its colonies were the only territories that the Roman Empire could never conquer, or keep for long (keep in mind the Roman army was immensely powerful as well, and they too had some victories, although of no dire consequences to Persia).

Nevertheless, the battle of Carrhea finally led to a rude-awaking by the Romans and allowed the burrowing of such tactics/armour by incorporating the captured Persian prisoners and alike [the Sarmatians] into their army. After Rome collapsed in 476 AD, these Sarmatian warriors stayed behind and got integrated into the British Empire and a certain barbarian confederacy known as the Franklyn Goths who were the ones that finished-off the Western Roman Empire and established what would later become Deutschland/The German Empire.

The reader may be shocked to know that the Sarmatians were most always actually led by a group of fierce women warriors, who bravely fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the men, and inspired numerous Greek mythologies known as the Amazons (from this we derive the word Amazon, or Amazonian, in Scythian, Old-Iranian vernacular; Hamazan, meaning warrior). Recently discovered burial tombs in the Altai Mountains have confirmed the bones found were in fact of Scythian women, who were elaborately buried along with exquisite hand-made artwork that includes daggers, drinking cups and other precious artifacts.

Insofar as the male warriors go, it was as such that not only the knights went-on to endure in the West, but 'Knighthood' even took a life of its own in Medieval Europe, surrounded by Romantic mythology, and other. From there, the emblem of the Persian Empire [two Lions holding a circular spear] evolved into the insignia of the British Empire.

In a literary sense too, the connection was established. The Scythians/Sarmatians who were legendry for their deep oral traditions of story telling, greatly influenced Angelo-Saxon, and Irish folklore, to the extent in which some of their legends were adapted by the British, the most famous of them being 'King Arthur ', 'The Knights of the Round Table', and ' The Camelot'; the jewels of the British literature.

Even up to centuries later, some of ancient Iran' s popular folktales such as 'The Prince and the Pauper', and 'The Three Princes of Serendip' among others, became popularized in the British and Western hemisphere. The first became a classic via the sharp pen of Mark Twain in a book by the same title; the second was immortalised by Sir Horace Walpole of London who coined the English word serendipity, a la the Persian fairy tale 'The Three Princes of Serendip'.

Other noteworthy influences include the Sarmatians' introduction of the Windmill to the Dutch, which stands as the national symbol of today' s Holland/holt land/Neitherlands. And, Fenius Farsa [Farshid] (also Phoeniusa, Phenius, Fénius; Farsaid, Farsaidh, many variant spellings): a legendary Scythian King who is a frequent part in many legends of Irish folklore. According to some traditions, he was the creator of the Ogham alphabet and the Gaelic language.

Yet, one the most visible influences of the Scythians [modern Sarmatians whose off-springs are today’s Ossetian-Alans living in North Ossetia, Georgia] is the introduction of the very Persian way of dress, in the form of pants. The word pants is derived from Italian comics, 'the Pantaloons' who popularized the term and its usage; yet, pants itself refers to trousers, which is in turn derived from guess where? Yes, ironically it is from the Scottish Gaelic word, 'triubhas' [recall the legendry account of the origin of the Gaelic language itself mentioned above].

Interestingly enough, the ancient Greeks made considerable mockery of the quote-on-quote, Men wearing pants, even depicting the Achaemenid Persians, and Scythians wearing ultra-tight pants on their artworks. Nonetheless, those Scythians who by the 1st or 2nd century AD were now called the Sarmatians, had to escape, this time due to the wrath of the Turks, the Huns, the Arabs, and the Mongols, and in fear of their lives they fled deep into Central Asia and Eastern Europe along the Carpathian Mountains and the Danube River (Romania, Ukraine, Hungry etc.).

It was these people who first introduced the pants to the Ukrainians who in turn gladly exchanged them with their own attire, as such the pants kept them warm in the bitter winters of Russia. Gradually, via Ukraine and elsewhere such as the Ottoman Turks and Hungarians, by the 16th century, the pants spread to Great Britain and it slowly became the standard norm men’s wear (and women’s too), at first being worn as pajamas (an English word of Persian origin, pA; leg plus jAma; garment). Certainly we owe a debt to these ancient Iranians in more than just one way.

And in the case of trousers, today our culture would be unimaginable without them; otherwise, men at least (although fun at college parties) would still be stuck wearing the dirty white bed-sheets with holes in them that the Greeks called Togas, or the ballerina-tutus/the mini-skirts that the Roman legionnaires wore called greeves. Now dude, that’s one rad-fashion-fad, we wouldn’t want making a come back any time soon -- do we?

Finally, I would vehemently recommend the following recently published books that shed some light on these subjects, and more,

1. From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail. By, C. LITTLETON.

2. Sassanian Elite Cavalry AD 224-642 (Elite) (Paperback)
by Kaveh Farrokh, Angus Mcbride (Illustrator)

3. The Golden Deer of Eurasia (Hardcover)
by Joan Aruz (Editor), Ann Farkas (Editor), Andrei Alekseev (Editor), Elena Korolkova (Editor)