User talk:Aucaman

This page is yours. Feel free to say whatever you want. Constructive feedbacks would be more than appreciated. --Aucaman 12:21, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Archives
Oct 31 2001 – 5 March 2006

Persian Jews

About your edit: How is Iranian revolution a POV? --Kash 22:52, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

If it is not, then why is it mentioned in the article? all you did was change the heading! --Kash 01:52, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Again, you seem to miss the point, the article is written for everyone to read, headings such as 1979 doesn't make sense, if it was just the Jews in Iran, and the article is about Persian Jews, it seems pretty relevant that Iranian revolution should be used as the heading of the related section. And whats more silly is that you have renamed it as a 'POV', I doubt any contributers who put that is a Jewish Persian (from Iran, or outside!) --Kash 02:02, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Are Afghan Jews really relevant to Persian Jews? --Kash 02:29, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Turkish people

I think the matter is resolved now, but thanks for your suggestion anyways. --Khoikhoi 06:28, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Aryan is historical reality

According to the The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:

It is one of the ironies of history that Aryan, a word nowadays referring to the blond-haired, blue-eyed physical ideal of Nazi Germany, originally referred to a people who looked vastly different. Its history starts with the ancient Indo-Iranians, Indo-European peoples who inhabited parts of what are now Iran, Afghanistan, and India. Their tribal self-designation was a word reconstructed as *arya- or * rya-. The first of these is the form found in Iranian, as ultimately in the name of Iran itself (from Middle Persian r n ( ahr), “(Land) of the Iranians,” from the genitive plural of r, “Iranian”). The variant * rya- is found unchanged in Sanskrit, where it referred to the upper crust of ancient Indian society. These words became known to European scholars in the 18th century.

As the dictionary correctly asserts Aryans means the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-Europeans.

Let us review some of the old sources that explicitly establish why Iran (the land of Arya) and Iranians are Aryans (Iranians) and why the Academia still uses this terms for the Indo-Iranians. Herodotus in his Histories remarks that: “These Medes were called anciently by all people Arians; “ (7.62). So here we have a foreign source that refers to part of the Iranians as Arya.

Native sources also describe Iranians by this ethnonym. Old Persian which is a testament to the antiquity of the Persian language and which is related to most of the languages/dialects spoken in Iran including modern Persian, Kurdish, Gilaki and Baluchi makes it clear that Iranians referred to themselves as Arya.

The term "Ariya" appears in the royal inscriptions in three different context: As the name of the language of the Old Persian version of the inscription of Darius the Great in Behistun; as the ethnic background of Darius in inscriptions at Naqsh-e-Rostam and Susa (Dna, Dse) and Xerxes in the inscription from Persepolis (Xph) and as the definition of the God of Arya people, Ahuramazda, in the Elamite version of the Behistun inscription. For example in the Dna and Dse Darius and Xerxes describe themselves as “An Achaemenian, A Persian son of a Persian and an Aryan, of Aryan stock”.

Note that first they describe their clan (Achaemenid) and then tribe/group (Persian) and then their ethnicity Arya. So here we have good references that both the Medes and Persians referred to themselves as Aryans. The Medes and Persians were people of western Iranian stock. Western Iranian languages and dialects including Kurdish, Persian, Baluchi have their roots in the Old Persian and Median languages and are prevalent languages of Iran today. The OP inscriptions date back approximately to 400-500 B.C. Concurrently, or even prior to Old Persian, the word Airya is abundant used in the Avesta and related Zoroastrian literature whose origin lies with the eastern Iranian people.

The Avestan airya always has an ethnic value. It appears in Yasht literature and in the Wideewdaad. The land of Aryans is described as Airyana Vaejah in Avesta and in the Pahlavi inscription as Eran-wez. The Avesta archer Arash (Arash-e-Kamangir) is called the hero of Airya people. Zoroaster himself is described from the Airya people. The examples of the ethnic name of Airya in Avesta are too many to enumerate here and the interested reader is referred to the following site: Avesta.org.

Let us now briefly touch upon some more pre-Islamic evidence. The ostraca (an inscribed potsherd) from Parthian Nisa time period (approx. 2100 years ago) provides us with numerous Parthian names related. Parthian, like Persian, is a Western Iranian language. Some of the names of the people at that time that begin with prefix Arya are given by:

Aryabaam-Aryabaanuk, Aryabarzan- Aryabozhan- Aryaxshahrak- Aryanistak- Aryafriyaanak- Aryasaaxt- Aryazan

The etymology of such names is fairly known. The documents from Nisa as well as other Parthian documents prove that the Parthians employed the Zoroastrian calendar. The names of the months back then is exactly what we use today with a slight modification in pronounciation:

Farwartin- Artewahisht- Harwataat- Tir- Hamuraat- Xshahrewar- Mihr- Aapaaxwini- Aatar- Dathush- Wahman - Sapndaarmard

Strabo, the Greek geographer and traveler of the Parthian times also mentions the unity of the various Iranian tribes and dialects:

...and the name of Ariana is further extended to a part of Persia and of Media, as also to the Bactrians and Sogdians on the north; for these speak approximately the same language, with but slight variations.

Moses of Khorenat’si the Armenian historian of 5th century A.D. also denotes the Parthians, Medes and Persians collectively as Aryans. So ancient neighboring people have consistently referred to Iranians as Aryans. Both Armenian and Greeks are Indo-Europeans but only Indo-Iranians have been known as Aryans throughout history.

From the Parthian epoch we transition into the Sassanid era. Ardeshir the first, the founder of the Sassanid dynasty, on the coins minted during his era describes himself as "Shahan shah Aryan" (Iran). Where Aryan exactly means the “land of the Arya” which is synonymous with land of Iranians. His son Shapur, whose triumphs over his enemies are the stuff of legends minted coins with the inscription: “Shahan shah aryan ud anaryan” (The king of Kings of Iran and Non-Iran). The reason for anaryan is that he expanded the empire beyond the Aryan lands.

The trilingual inscription erected by his command gives us a more clear description. The languages used are Parthian, Middle Persian and Greek. In Greek the inscription says: “ego ... tou Arianon ethnous despotes eimi” which translates to “I am the king of the Aryans”. In the Middle Persian Shapour says: “I am the Lord of the EranShahr” and in Parthian he says: “I am the Lord of AryanShahr”. Both AryanShahr/EranShahr here denote the country of Iran.

The name IranShahr has been widely referenced after the Arab conquest by many authors including Tabari the great historian and Abu Rayhan Biruni the great scholar. So the word Eran actually is derived from Arayanam of the Avesta and it means the place Ary/Er (Parthian and Middle Persian respectively). As the suffix “an” denotes a place holding for example Gil+an means the land of the Gil (Gilak) who are an Aryan ethnic group of modern Iran. It was mentioned that Darius the Great referred to his language as Aryan.

The Bactrian inscription of Kanishka the founder of the Kushan empire at Rabatak, which was discovered in 1993 in an unexcavated site in the Afghanistan province of Baghlan clearly refers to this Eastern Iranian language as Arya. Interestingly enough, Bactrian (Bakhtari) was written using Greek alphabets.In the post-Islamic era one can see a clear usage of the term Aryan (Iran) in the work of the 10th century historian Hamzeh Esfahani. In his famous book “the history of Prophets and Kings” he writes: “Aryan which is also called Pars is in the middle of these countries and these six countries surround it because the South East is in the hands China, the North of the Turks, the middle South is India, the middle North is Rome, and the South West and the North West is the Sudan and Berber lands”.

What has been touched upon so far is just some of the evidence that clearly establishes that Iran and Aryan are the same and furthermore that Iranians have always referred to themselves as Arya in history. The term "Arya" has never been applied to other branches of Indo-European people. This term exclusively denotes the Iranians and Indians. The eminent linguist Emile Benviste asserts that the Old Iranian Arya is documented solely as an ethnic name. Aryan denotes a cultural-linguistic community. Racial anthropology on the other hand points to the fact that Iranians as well as many other Aryan speakers like Kurds and Afghans are part of Caucasoid Mediterranean subtype commonly referred to as Irano-Afghan.

Look up the word Aryan in Enclycopedia Iranica.

--Ali doostzadeh 03:55, 8 March 2006 (UTC)