Iran Summons Turkish Envoy over President Erdogan’s Comments

[yavar]

 

[yavar]

 

[-blitzkrieg-]

The Sassassians referred to it as Eranshahr or simply Eran, and this was indeed the official name of the country.

the middle persians f*dup all the names.. they changed aryan to iran and sindh to hindh..the name was an invention.. just like your article states.
the real name was always aria..all the people in this region were aryans..even mauryans were aryan but today they are called iranic people...as an exonym they are referred as iranic...how ironic.. not just them all peopel in the region are called iranic.. a word that was an invention of sassanid king was used by historians to shove a title into peoples heads

 

[nahtanbob]

There was also a time when we ruled Persia from Lahore regardless how short lived it was. but we dont talk about it becuase it doesnt matter in todays world.Some Iranian folks here should stop using history to justify themselves as a leader of the iranic world.Using your own logic Iran has no right to remind a country like tajikistan ,afghanistan,pakistan or iraq of their glorius cyrus rule . .It doesnt help..It started the day you took the name 'Iran' instead of persia..
View attachment 695342

When was Persia ever ruled by an Indian ruler ?

Persia to Iran name change happened in 1940

It would be ideal if the Turks and Persians put aside their differences to counter the Gulf Arabs I mean out of all Muslim countries they are generally the most cultured but too bad geo politics,arrogance pervades in both Tehran and Ankara

Why waste energy fighting the Gulf Arabs ?

 

[-blitzkrieg-]

When was Persia ever ruled by an Indian ruler ?

Persia to Iran name change happened in 1940

Lahories are not indian people

 

[nahtanbob]

Lahories are not indian people

Until creation of Pakistan it was part of India. When was Persia ever ruled by anyone from Southasia ?

 

[SalarHaqq]

the middle persians f*dup all the names.. they changed aryan to iran and sindh to hindh..the name was an invention.. just like your article states.

the real name was always aria..all the people in this region were aryans..

Languages evolve over milennia, including how words and names are pronounced in those languages. None of the idioms that survived continuously over such long periods of time remained completely static (whether Hindi, Greek, Arabic, Chinese etc).

So the name Eranshahr, or its contracted form Eran / Iran, is what the more ancient name Airyana Vaeja naturally evolved into with the advent of Middle Persian during late Antiquity. The author of the article only identifies the first documented use of that particular form. But both acception and ethymology of the names Iran and Airyana Vaeja are the same, i. e. both mean "land of the Aryans" and stem from the same semantic root. Sassanid kings did not invent something new.

even mauryans were aryan but today they are called iranic people...as an exonym they are referred as iranic...how ironic.. not just them all peopel in the region are called iranic.. a word that was an invention of sassanid king was used by historians to shove a title into peoples heads

The Mauryan dynasty and other inhabitats of the subcontinent (except for the Baluch and Pashtuns) are considered as Indo-Aryan not Iranic people, in accordance with the ethno-linguistic classification, which differentiates between Iranian and Indo-Aryan (or subcontinental) branches of the Indo-European language family.

Iranian can't be an exonym when Iranians themselves have been using the term for ages (even if we stick to the contemporary pronounciation and exclude ancestral forms of the same term, we'd trace it back to the Sassanian period, which is still more than fifteen centuries ago). Persia is (was) the exonym, as that's how the western world, based on ancient Greek texts, used to refer to Iran.

____

When was Persia ever ruled by an Indian ruler ?

Persia to Iran name change happened in 1940

They didn't operate any name change. For more than two and half milennia, Iranians have been referring to their country as Iran, or by ancient forms of the same name, which literally means "land of the Aryans".

Explained in more detail here (scroll down to where Blitzkrieg is quoted):

Iran Summons Turkish Envoy over President Erdogan’s Comments

Iran missed the oppurtunity to send troops into the conflict zone when armenia and azerbaijan where fighting to create a safe zone (we could do so by international law, since we had rockets hitting our soil). if Iranian troops would be there now erdogan wouldn't talk big and would chose his word...

defence.pk

What happened in 1935 (rather than 1940), was that the then ruler of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi, requested foreign delegates and the League of Nations to use the correct name, that is Iran instead of Persia. The western world's habit of using the exonym Persia goes back to ancient Greek authors. Iranians themselves never named their country Persia. The latter was merely a province of the empire. But even that region was referred to with other names at times. For example, inscriptions attributed to Cyrus I refer to the area as Anshan (an Elamite, pre-Indo-European name ethymologically unrelated to Persia).

 

[aryobarzan]

@SalarHaqq ..Good morning my friend..Since we are on the subject of Iran history and "names" ..Did you hear or know anything about this:

I heard way back during the early days that revolution was under way a team of archaelogists from Ireland who were in Iran by the invitation of Shah working on a project had to be called back ....from what I heard this team was investigating the prehistoric connections between "Iranian" and "Irish" people ..notice the name "Iran" and "Ireland" both start with (sound "EIR")...also the connection between "Gaelic language" of scotland vs the "GIlac" language of northern Iran....is it possible that there is a direct connection between these two groups.

 

[Surenas]

Explained in more detail here (scroll down to where Blitzkrieg is quoted):

Iran Summons Turkish Envoy over President Erdogan’s Comments

Iran missed the oppurtunity to send troops into the conflict zone when armenia and azerbaijan where fighting to create a safe zone (we could do so by international law, since we had rockets hitting our soil). if Iranian troops would be there now erdogan wouldn't talk big and would chose his word...

defence.pk

What happened in 1935 (rather than 1940), was that the then ruler of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi, requested foreign delegates and the League of Nations to use the correct name, that is Iran instead of Persia. The western world's habit of using the exonym Persia goes back to ancient Greek authors. Iranians themselves never named their country Persia. The latter was merely a province of the empire. But even that region was referred to with other names at times. For example, inscriptions attributed to Cyrus I refer to the area as Anshan (an Elamite, pre-Indo-European name ethymologically unrelated to Persia).

There does appear to have been a nation called Persia in antiquity though, and while its usage and popularity in the western world did originate in ancient Greece, its existence predates the Greeks. The Assyrians were the first to mention the presence of a Persia (they called it Parsu) in 9th century B.C. among the various dominions that bordered it.

Also, Darius' Behistun inscription is full with reference to Persia, pointing out the prominent role it enjoyed in the empire:

Behistun (3) - Livius

www.livius.org

Its first sentence:

''I am Darius, the great king, king of kings, the king of Persia, the king of countries, the son of Hystaspes, the grandson of Arsames, the Achaemenid.''

 

[SalarHaqq]

There does appear to have been a nation called Persia in antiquity though, and while its usage and popularity in the western world did originate in ancient Greece, its existence predates the Greeks. The Assyrians were the first to mention the presence of a Persia (they called it Parsu) in 9th century B.C. among the various dominions that bordered it.

Also, Darius' Behistun inscription is full with reference to Persia, pointing out the prominent role it enjoyed in the empire:

Behistun (3) - Livius

www.livius.org

Its first sentence:

''I am Darius, the great king, king of kings, the king of Persia, the king of countries, the son of Hystaspes, the grandson of Arsames, the Achaemenid.''

Naturally, the existence of the Persian tribe or 'qom' is a given (for the period in question I would tend to employ this latter term rather than nation; as for today, I would speak of a native lingual community, again avoiding the term nation, which ought to be reserved for Iran). I didn't intend to question it.

Politically however, when Darius underscores he is the king of Persia, he is referring to his title as the local sovereign of this particular region of the empire - not to his function of emperor. This is evidenced by the fact that he does not say 'shahanshah' (emperor) of Persia but 'shah' of Persia. Thus in his mind, Persia wasn't the name of the imperial state, but of a province or a region of the empire, which of course played an important role, if alone for being the birthplace of the ruling Achaemenid dynasty.

This cumulation of royal titles is comparable to the manner in which, say, the heir apparent to the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is, at the same time, granted the title of Prince of Wales since the 14th century CE.

But it shouldn't obfuscate the fact that even in Achaemenid times, Iranian emperors, the ruling class and the people were clearly conscious about Iranianness as a racial, cultural, linguistic and civilizational reality at a bare minimum. Now the question arises whether Iranian identity, which definitely existed back then, also had a political dimension to it or whether this latter quality was introduced by the Sassanians.

To be sure, even assuming that the label(s) through which the political identity of the Achaemenid empire expressed itself didn't include the term Iranian - which I disagree with, but let's go by that hypothesis for a second, both its rulers and subjects certainly were not calling it 'Persian empire' either. So in what exact terms was the political identity of the empire supposed to have been formulated?

Herzfeld, Shahbazi and other scholars highlighted the conception of Achaemenid political identity in terms of Iranianness.

But here you will notice that among those who argue against the prevalence of an Iranian political identity during the Achaemenid and Median periods, the most prominent ones usually happen to be members of or persons ideological sympathetic towards either zionism, freemasonry and/or the Haifan Bahai organization (a zionist and globalist current propped up by the British imperial regime in the 19th century). Note that even these authors will refrain nonetheless from denying the existence of an explicitly Iranian cultural and linguistic consciousness at that time (and earlier as well).

We could mention the main editor of the Encyclopaedia Iranica, Ehsan Yarshater, who is affiliated with the Haifan Bahai organization. Or the fact that the among those who make donations to the Encyclopaedia Iranica, one will even find associations of members of the Isra"el"i armed forces.

When during the 1950's a minor debate of sorts took place in Iranian intellectual circles about the soundness of Reza Khan's 1935 request that foreign states should align their naming practice on prevailing Iranian customs, Yarshater illustrated himself as a proponent of the 'Persian' nomenclature.

Incidentally, one of the zionist regime's major French sayans (diasporic agents of influence / 'nofoozi's) Bernard-Henri Lévy, known for his systematic promotion of every illegitimate and illegal war launched by NATO, and known also for his staunch support of Kurdish "ethno"-separatism, calls Yarshater a "good friend".

Yarshater and his scholarly disciples' more sophisticated tendency to valorize an open and nationality-neutral universalism supposedly practiced by emperor Cyrus I and his dynastic successors, all the while of minimizing the relevance of the common Iranian identity, and thereby indirectly favoring concurrent contemporary "ethno"-separatist ones - in conformity with the zionist agenda expounded upon by the likes of Bernard Lewis and Oded Yinon, at the non-academic level of someone like Lévy, morphs into misplaced moralistic-political commentary abusively equating Iranian identity with nazism under the pretext of Reza Shah's cooperation with Germany, which as we know was essentially of an economic nature but which Lévy misconstrued as ideological and Aryan-racialist.

In parallel, Lévy has been full of praise for his projected image of 'Persia' and its culture, the chief characteristic of which is claimed to be the sort of tolerance which led to the purported "liberation of Jews from Babylonian captivity" as well as the authorization granted to his Jewish subjects to settle in Palestine and rebuild their temple... This, in line with Yarshater et al.'s more coherent albeit equally questionable interest in what they present as Achaemenid universalism, in which Iranian political identity is supposed to have played no role, is conducive to the idea of a dissolution of Iran into the zionist-led, messianic one-world regime or universal Republic planned by globalist elites.

Lévy's ill-informed, essentially propagandistic take on Iranian history, which he gave expression to in a famous episode just a couple of years ago stirred much controversy, provoking protests in France and beyond including by the Iranologist community.

In this perspective, the promotion of a Persian identity over the Iranian one, by both high level academics (often Bahais and zionists) as well as more activist mainstream commentators (again, essentially zionists), serves two complementary purposes:

1) To faciliate Tel Aviv's and Washington's policy aiming for the balkanization of Iran along so-called "ethnic" lines, so as to rip apart Iranian territorial integrity and national sovereignty. In short, to target the nation-state, this "lock" which happens to form a solid obstacle to the establishment of the zionist-, masonic- and bankster-led universal Republic, and which one of the Rothschild oligarchs prominently claimed must be blown to pieces.

Iran, so the "ethno"-separatist groups will argue, is in fact "Persia" and should be considered as such. They people falsely present the idea and historic reality of a unified Iranian nation-state as an "artificial" one. Persia is presented as the country of so-called "ethnic" Persians only. Immediate corrolary: the Kurdish, Lori, Azari, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Baluch, Bakhtiyari, Qashqai groups would now also have to be granted the status of actual "nations" endowed with a right to their own separate state, since "they are not Persians".

2) After the dismantling of Iran, the amalgamation of the remaining bits and pieces into the one-world regime planned by the globalist and zionist oligarchy. Remember, it is always easier to dominate and lastingly extend one's hegemony over weak, dependent, small, unstable (and mutually warring) "ethnocratic" or confessional entities rather than over strong, large, coherent, more or less genuine and stable nation-states.

As the globalist argument goes, the concept of Iran and associated Iranian identity are obstacles to universalist "values" such as human rights as well as to contemporary principles of governance, namely western-style liberal democracy. The idea of Persia, on the other hand, reminiscent as it purportedly is of Achaemenid universalist governance (and their supposed Judeophilia), will encourage Iranians to transfer their sovereignty to the planned one-world regime, give up their specificities and henceforth consider themselves "global citizens", since afterall, so the enemy claims, this is what emperor Cyrus I believed in too. Therefore they will argue that Cyrus' heritage is not a property of Iranians, but that it belongs to an equal degree to every citizen in a unified world. Staying true to the essence of Persian heritage, in this twisted acception, is synonymous with giving up one's national identity and one's religion in the end.

So mind you, "Persian nationalism" to the international powers-to-be is substantially incompatible with the continued existence of Iran as a unified nation-state. It is not supposed to strengthen Iran, but to weaken and help carve it up into smaller entities, and ultimately gobble up the resulting small and weak entities into an undifferentiated one-world universal Republic where historically rooted national and religious traditons will cease to be (safe one, and I will let everyone guess which one that is...). This would definitely destroy not just Shia and Sunni Islam (and even Zoroastrianism) as a religion but also Iran and her civilization for all times. In the words of an influential member of the zionist and globalist elites, and adviser to several successive French presidents of different political camps, Jacques Attali: "nationalism must not be left to the nationalists". Read: globalist elites must instrumentalize nationalism in the framework of their own anti-national agenda.

On a sidenote, the same Attali, a few years ago, wrote that oftentimes it is the people's fear of a threat which enables decisive strides in the political organization of governance. And that the objective of achieving more extensive global governance may best be served if people came to be terrified by something like... an epidemic.

Let us all be aware of the enemy's plots and game plan, and also of how the enemy uses semantics to advance its nefarious goals. Since semantic slides can serve as a first step towards the implementation of ambitious political agendas, in as far as they prepare the public mind for concrete changes to come on the ground, in addition to offering propagandistic tools for particular political (and terrorist) movements sponsored by those imperialist regimes which define the semantics - and are in possession of the necessary soft power and media assets to do so.

 

[-blitzkrieg-]

So the name Eranshahr, or its contracted form Eran / Iran, is what the more ancient name Airyana Vaeja Sassanid kings did not invent something new.

In the later Yašts there is only mention of airiiå and anairiiå daiŋhāuuō “Aryan” and (unspecified) “Non-Aryan lands.” Thus the term Ērānšahr was evidently an invention of the Sasanians.

Despite the usage of the royal titles, the empire was already referred to by the abbreviated form “ērān,” and the Roman west correspondingly “anērān,” very early. Both terms occur in a calendrical text from the pen of the prophet Mānī, probably first written during the reign of Ardašīr (M 7981 V I 30 f., II 24 f. ʿyrʾn, ʾnyrʾn), and in no other Manichaean Persian or Parthian has the term /ērānšahr/ been met.

In the Pahlavi books of the 3rd/9th century the early Sasanian terminology is clearly preserved, e.g., in the Kār-nāmag, where Ērān is only used in the phrase šāh ī ērān and the title ērān-spāhbed (ed. Antia, 12.16, 15.9); otherwise the country is always called Ērānšahr (3.11, 19; 15.22, etc.).

Welcome to Encyclopaedia Iranica

The Encyclopaedia Iranica is a comprehensive research tool dedicated to the study of Iranian civilization in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent

iranicaonline.org

The use of ērān to refer to the empire (and the antonymic anērān to refer to the Roman territories) is also attested by the early Sassanid period. Both ērān and anērān appear in 3rd century calendrical text written by Mani.

The Mauryan dynasty and other inhabitats of the subcontinent (except for the Baluch and Pashtuns) are considered as Indo-Aryan not Iranic people, in accordance with the ethno-linguistic classification, which differentiates between Iranian and Indo-Aryan (or subcontinental) branches of the Indo-European language family.

Mauryans were people from present day KPK (swat and chitral in particular).....It was them who introduced iranic/aryan architecture and culture to Ganga basin people. ethnicity and linguistics cant be paired up and need to be kept separate. You cant differentiate between aryan and iranic people in regards to draw boundary between two(as iran was an inverted term . like explained above).... they are particularly same.. but yes indo arian are not refined iranic/aryan like their central asian brothers where it all started.. but so are most people from present day Iran, Iraq, and Afghansitan..

Iranian can't be an exonym when Iranians themselves have been using the term for ages (even if we stick to the contemporary pronounciation and exclude ancestral forms of the same term, we'd trace it back to the Sassanian period, which is still more than fifteen centuries ago). Persia is (was) the exonym, as that's how the western world, based on ancient Greek texts, used to refer to Iran.

you yourself above admitted that people of kpk and baluchistan are 'Iranic' i would ask why pashtun areas get the title of 'iranian people ' when they were never even part of the Sassanid empire that used the word 'eran' for first time but never controlled pashtun lands...see below

but it was annexed by them later

therefore for Pashtuns the term 'iranic' is definitely an exonym.

 

[SalarHaqq]

In the later Yašts there is only mention of airiiå and anairiiå daiŋhāuuō “Aryan” and (unspecified) “Non-Aryan lands.” Thus the term Ērānšahr was evidently an invention of the Sasanians.

Despite the usage of the royal titles, the empire was already referred to by the abbreviated form “ērān,” and the Roman west correspondingly “anērān,” very early. Both terms occur in a calendrical text from the pen of the prophet Mānī, probably first written during the reign of Ardašīr (M 7981 V I 30 f., II 24 f. ʿyrʾn, ʾnyrʾn), and in no other Manichaean Persian or Parthian has the term /ērānšahr/ been met.

I take issue with this particular choice of words by the Encyclopedia Iranica, because it may suggest to readers that the idea behind the name Iran had no precedents, which is not true - and in fact the very same source will admit that this is not the case.

See here in particular:

Welcome to Encyclopaedia Iranica

The Encyclopaedia Iranica is a comprehensive research tool dedicated to the study of Iranian civilization in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent

iranicaonline.org

The idea of Iran as a religious, cultural, and ethnic reality goes back as far as the end of the 6th century B.C.E. As a political idea, we first catch sight of it in the twenties of the 3rd century C.E. as an essential feature of Sasanian propaganda (Gnoli, 1989; 1993; 1998), since it does not seem possible to trace it back any further than the reign of Ardašīr (see ARDAŠĪR i). In actual fact we cannot say that the political idea of an *ariyānām xšaθra- had ever existed before the advent of the Sasanian dynasty, though this claim has been made on several occasions (von Gutschmid, p. 123; Markwart, 1895, p. 629; Herzfeld, 1932, pp. 36-37; 1935, p. 9; 1941, p. 192; 1947, p. 700; and recently, Shahbazi, 2005, p. 105).

The inscriptions of Darius I (see DARIUS iii) and Xerxes, in which the different provinces of the empire are listed, make it clear that, between the end of the 6th century and the middle of the 5th century B.C.E., the Persians were already aware of belonging to the ariya “Iranian” nation (see ARYA and ARYANS). Darius and Xerxes boast of belonging to a stock which they call “Iranian”: they proclaim themselves “Iranian” and “of Iranian stock,” ariya and ariya čiça respectively, in inscriptions in which the Iranian countries come first in a list that is arranged in a new hierarchical and ethno-geographical order, compared for instance with the list of countries in Darius’s inscription at Behistun (see BISOTUN; Gnoli, 1989, pp. 22-23; 1994, pp. 153-54). We also know, thanks to this very same inscription, that Ahura Mazdā was considered the “god of the Iranians” in passages of the Elamite version corresponding to DB IV 60 and 62 in the Old Persian version, whose language was called “Iranian” or ariya (DB IV, 88-89). Then again, the Avesta clearly uses airya as an ethnic name (Vd. 1; Yt. 13.143-44, etc.), where it appears in expressions such as airyāfi; daiŋˊhāvō “Iranian lands, peoples,” airyō.šayanəm “land inhabited by Iranians,” and airyanəm vaējō vaŋhuyāfi; dāityayāfi; “Iranian stretch of the good Dāityā,” the river Oxus, the modern Āmū Daryā (q.v.; see ĒRĀN-WĒZ). There can be no doubt about the ethnic value of Old Iran. arya (Benveniste, 1969, I, pp. 369 f.; Szemerényi; Kellens).

So clearly, the concept of Iran and Iranian people precedes the Sassanid era, it's just that it was being referred to by a differently spelled but ethymologically related name. Therefore it would be quite a stretch to suggest that the notion of Iran is an outright Sassanid conceptual invention imagined out of nowhere and devoid of a concrete historical basis.

About the Encyclopedia Iranica, please keep in mind that this source is under considerable zionist and Bahai (equivalent, in the Iranian context, of the Ahmadiyya current) influence and will thus tend to minimize as best as it can the relevance of the name Iran, in tune with the anti-nation-state agenda of globalism and zionism.

However, Encyclopedia Iranica itself cannot deny that the concepts of Iran and Iranian people, predate the Sassanid era and reach back as far as the Avestan epoch. So its authors are reduced to trying to argue that Iran as a political concept, i. e. as the name of the imperial state, is a Sassanian legacy - which goes against the findings of established scholars like Herzfeld and Shahbazi.

But, even if we suppose that the hypothesis is accurate, it'll still leave us with a state that for 1800 years, i. e. since late Antiquity, has been called the same by its rulers and population, and whose name furthermore has semantic precedents referring to its people and lands, in both an ethnic and cultural sense many centuries earlier than the Sassanian era, i. e. for over 2500 years.

To be fair, this is as genuine and historically authentic as a national idea can get. One will have a hard time coming accross many other contemporary nations with this much of a consistency and this ancient of a historic continuity, including in the nomenclature by which they are being designated.

Mauryans were people from present day KPK (swat and chitral in particular).....It was them who introduced iranic/aryan architecture and culture to Ganga basin people. ethnicity and linguistics cant be paired up and need to be kept separate.

The culture, language and ethnicity of the Mauryans were of the subcontinental Aryan, not of the Iranian-Aryan type.

It's true that ethnicity and linguistics do not systematically align, but evidence does not point to Chandragupta and his successors either being of Iranian ethnicity or practicing a language from the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family.

You cant differentiate between aryan and iranic people in regards to draw boundary between two(as iran was an inverted term . like explained above).... they are particularly same.. but yes indo arian are not refined iranic/aryan like their central asian brothers where it all started.. but so are most people from present day Iran, Iraq, and Afghansitan..

It is possible to differentiate between subcontinental Aryan and Iranian Aryan people on the levels of language and ethnicity, notwithstanding the fact that all belong to the same broader family and are cousins so to speak.

Linguistic studies have identified Iranian and Indo-Aryan as two distinct branches according to the regular criteria and methods in use by that discipline.

Ethnically the same is true. While probably stemming from common ancestors, at some point in time an ethno-differentiation took place between the two groups of people.

At any rate, this differentiation did exist prior to the Sassanian era in the minds of the peoples in question. Proof of this is the meaning attributed to the term Aryan by Zoroastrian sources as old as the Avesta, and then by Achaemenid Iranian rulers.

Indeed, as shown in the quote above, the Avesta refers to Ahura Mazda as the god of the Aryan people. Now since by and large, Aryan tribes other than ancient Iranians did not practice Zoroastrianism, it follows that when speaking of Aryans, the Avesta was referring to Iranians and not to the other Aryans.

Also, there is no evidence that Achaemenid emperors like Darius I and Xerxes, when mentioning Aryan people or lands, were meaning to include sub-continental or other Aryans into the concept. They never cited peoples or tribes other than Iranian ones under that designation. Therefore it stands to reason that to them, and in their common use of the word, Aryan had become synonymous with Iranian.

There's an immediate logic to this, which mirrors an example provided by user Indus Pakistan in another thread: when Pakistanis speak of Muslims, depending on the context they may refer only to subcontinental Muslims, rather than to the entire Ummah. This is so because of the presence of large communities of non-Muslims in the subcontinent and/or the fact that these non-Muslim religions of the subcontinent predate the arrival of Islam.

Likewise, when ancient Iranians migrated to the Iranian plateau, non-Aryan peoples were already living there. Thus, the Iranian immigrants designated themselves by the term Aryan to mark their difference from their newfound cohabitants, i. e. the original dwellers of the Iranian plateau, who contrary to them were not of Aryan origins. But when using that term, Iranians were still referring strictly to themselves, to the exclusion of other Aryan tribes which hadn't migrated to Iran.

This is all reflected in the distinction between Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, which brings us back to a period preceding the Sassanians by numerous centuries. The former is specific to peoples from the subcontinent while the latter is specific to peoples from the Iranian plateau. Of course the Avesta and the Vedas have some similarities, but at the end of the day these texts pertain to two different religions which arose amongst two distinct sets of peoples, albeit close to each other.

Last but not least, recent genetic studies have confirmed the ethnic overlap between members of Iran's different linguistic groups. And these genetic characteristics set Iranians apart from their neighbours, including Aryan populations of the subcontinent (although of course, Iranians are closer to subcontinental peoples than to completely unrelated ethnicities). Thus, there definitely is such a thing as a distinct Iranian nation from the ethnic or genetic point of view.

you yourself above admitted that people of kpk and baluchistan are 'Iranic' i would ask why pashtun areas get the title of 'iranian people ' when they were never even part of the Sassanid empire that used the word 'eran' for first time but never controlled pashtun lands...see below
View attachment 698306

but it was annexed by them later
View attachment 698310

therefore for Pashtuns the term 'iranic' is definitely an exonym.

Well, the Sassanians did come to control much of the area. Why should the fact that it had to be conquered by them after the initial founding of their empire imply that Pashtuns aren't an Iranic or Iranian people? Genetically, the Pashtuns overlap to a large degree with other Iranians. Also, in addition to being an ethno-national identity, Iranian is also a cultural-civilizational one defined by criteria such as language (Pashtun belonging to the Iranian branch of languages), cultural heritage manifesting itself in features such as the celebration of the Noruz new year's festival (which is typically Iranian and neither common to non-Aryans, nor to non-Iranian Aryans), etc.

And brother, hundreds of years prior to the Sassanian empire, the Achaemenids and the Avesta were outlining the concept of Iranianness and highlighting a consciousness of affiliation with that culture and nation, as the quote from Iranica reproduced above will admit.

Then, when it comes to the Pashtuns, their traditional region of settlement is located at the confines of the realm of Iranian culture and ethnicity. So quite naturally, there will be cultural and other bridges between Pashtuns and their subcontinental Aryan neighbors. I would say this is normal for groups living along the borders of a cultural or ethnic geography.

 

[padamchen]

I take issue with this particular choice of words by the Encyclopedia Iranica, because it may suggest to readers that the idea behind the name Iran had no precedents, which is not true - and in fact the very same source will admit that this is not the case.

See here in particular:

Welcome to Encyclopaedia Iranica

The Encyclopaedia Iranica is a comprehensive research tool dedicated to the study of Iranian civilization in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent

iranicaonline.org

The idea of Iran as a religious, cultural, and ethnic reality goes back as far as the end of the 6th century B.C.E. As a political idea, we first catch sight of it in the twenties of the 3rd century C.E. as an essential feature of Sasanian propaganda (Gnoli, 1989; 1993; 1998), since it does not seem possible to trace it back any further than the reign of Ardašīr (see ARDAŠĪR i). In actual fact we cannot say that the political idea of an *ariyānām xšaθra- had ever existed before the advent of the Sasanian dynasty, though this claim has been made on several occasions (von Gutschmid, p. 123; Markwart, 1895, p. 629; Herzfeld, 1932, pp. 36-37; 1935, p. 9; 1941, p. 192; 1947, p. 700; and recently, Shahbazi, 2005, p. 105).

The inscriptions of Darius I (see DARIUS iii) and Xerxes, in which the different provinces of the empire are listed, make it clear that, between the end of the 6th century and the middle of the 5th century B.C.E., the Persians were already aware of belonging to the ariya “Iranian” nation (see ARYA and ARYANS). Darius and Xerxes boast of belonging to a stock which they call “Iranian”: they proclaim themselves “Iranian” and “of Iranian stock,” ariya and ariya čiça respectively, in inscriptions in which the Iranian countries come first in a list that is arranged in a new hierarchical and ethno-geographical order, compared for instance with the list of countries in Darius’s inscription at Behistun (see BISOTUN; Gnoli, 1989, pp. 22-23; 1994, pp. 153-54). We also know, thanks to this very same inscription, that Ahura Mazdā was considered the “god of the Iranians” in passages of the Elamite version corresponding to DB IV 60 and 62 in the Old Persian version, whose language was called “Iranian” or ariya (DB IV, 88-89). Then again, the Avesta clearly uses airya as an ethnic name (Vd. 1; Yt. 13.143-44, etc.), where it appears in expressions such as airyāfi; daiŋˊhāvō “Iranian lands, peoples,” airyō.šayanəm “land inhabited by Iranians,” and airyanəm vaējō vaŋhuyāfi; dāityayāfi; “Iranian stretch of the good Dāityā,” the river Oxus, the modern Āmū Daryā (q.v.; see ĒRĀN-WĒZ). There can be no doubt about the ethnic value of Old Iran. arya (Benveniste, 1969, I, pp. 369 f.; Szemerényi; Kellens).

So clearly, the concept of Iran and Iranian people precedes the Sassanid era, it's just that it was being referred to by a differently spelled but ethymologically related name. Therefore it would be quite a stretch to suggest that the notion of Iran is an outright Sassanid conceptual invention imagined out of nowhere and devoid of a concrete historical basis.

About the Encyclopedia Iranica, please keep in mind that this source is under considerable zionist and Bahai (equivalent, in the Iranian context, of the Ahmadiyya current) influence and will thus tend to minimize as best as it can the relevance of the name Iran, in tune with the anti-nation-state agenda of globalism and zionism.

However, Encyclopedia Iranica itself cannot deny that the concepts of Iran and Iranian people, predate the Sassanid era and reach back as far as the Avestan epoch. So its authors are reduced to trying to argue that Iran as a political concept, i. e. as the name of the imperial state, is a Sassanian legacy - which goes against the findings of established scholars like Herzfeld and Shahbazi.

But, even if we suppose that the hypothesis is accurate, it'll still leave us with a state that for 1800 years, i. e. since late Antiquity, has been called the same by its rulers and population, and whose name furthermore has semantic precedents referring to its people and lands, in both an ethnic and cultural sense many centuries earlier than the Sassanian era, i. e. for over 2500 years.

To be fair, this is as genuine and historically authentic as a national idea can get. One will have a hard time coming accross many other contemporary nations with this much of a consistency and this ancient of a historic continuity, including in the nomenclature by which they are being designated.



The culture, language and ethnicity of the Mauryans were of the subcontinental Aryan, not of the Iranian-Aryan type.

It's true that ethnicity and linguistics do not systematically align, but evidence does not point to Chandragupta and his successors either being of Iranian ethnicity or practicing a language from the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family.



It is possible to differentiate between subcontinental Aryan and Iranian Aryan people on the levels of language and ethnicity, notwithstanding the fact that all belong to the same broader family and are cousins so to speak.

Linguistic studies have identified Iranian and Indo-Aryan as two distinct branches according to the regular criteria and methods in use by that discipline.

Ethnically the same is true. While probably stemming from common ancestors, at some point in time an ethno-differentiation took place between the two groups of people.

At any rate, this differentiation did exist prior to the Sassanian era in the minds of the peoples in question. Proof of this is the meaning attributed to the term Aryan by Zoroastrian sources as old as the Avesta, and then by Achaemenid Iranian rulers.

Indeed, as shown in the quote above, the Avesta refers to Ahura Mazda as the god of the Aryan people. Now since by and large, Aryan tribes other than ancient Iranians did not practice Zoroastrianism, it follows that when speaking of Aryans, the Avesta was referring to Iranians and not to the other Aryans.

Also, there is no evidence that Achaemenid emperors like Darius I and Xerxes, when mentioning Aryan people or lands, were meaning to include sub-continental or other Aryans into the concept. They never cited peoples or tribes other than Iranian ones under that designation. Therefore it stands to reason that to them, and in their common use of the word, Aryan had become synonymous with Iranian.

There's an immediate logic to this, which mirrors an example provided by user Indus Pakistan in another thread: when Pakistanis speak of Muslims, depending on the context they may refer only to subcontinental Muslims, rather than to the entire Ummah. This is so because of the presence of large communities of non-Muslims in the subcontinent and/or the fact that these non-Muslim religions of the subcontinent predate the arrival of Islam.

Likewise, when ancient Iranians migrated to the Iranian plateau, non-Aryan peoples were already living there. Thus, the Iranian immigrants designated themselves by the term Aryan to mark their difference from their newfound cohabitants, i. e. the original dwellers of the Iranian plateau, who contrary to them were not of Aryan origins. But when using that term, Iranians were still referring strictly to themselves, to the exclusion of other Aryan tribes which hadn't migrated to Iran.

This is all reflected in the distinction between Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, which brings us back to a period preceding the Sassanians by numerous centuries. The former is specific to peoples from the subcontinent while the latter is specific to peoples from the Iranian plateau. Of course the Avesta and the Vedas have some similarities, but at the end of the day these texts pertain to two different religions which arose amongst two distinct sets of peoples, albeit close to each other.

Last but not least, recent genetic studies have confirmed the ethnic overlap between members of Iran's different linguistic groups. And these genetic characteristics set Iranians apart from their neighbours, including Aryan populations of the subcontinent (although of course, Iranians are closer to subcontinental peoples than to completely unrelated ethnicities). Thus, there definitely is such a thing as a distinct Iranian nation from the ethnic or genetic point of view.



Well, the Sassanians did come to control much of the area. Why should the fact that it had to be conquered by them after the initial founding of their empire imply that Pashtuns aren't an Iranic or Iranian people? Genetically, the Pashtuns overlap to a large degree with other Iranians. Also, in addition to being an ethno-national identity, Iranian is also a cultural-civilizational one defined by criteria such as language (Pashtun belonging to the Iranian branch of languages), cultural heritage manifesting itself in features such as the celebration of the Noruz new year's festival (which is typically Iranian and neither common to non-Aryans, nor to non-Iranian Aryans), etc.

And brother, hundreds of years prior to the Sassanian empire, the Achaemenids and the Avesta were outlining the concept of Iranianness and highlighting a consciousness of affiliation with that culture and nation, as the quote from Iranica reproduced above will admit.

Then, when it comes to the Pashtuns, their traditional region of settlement is located at the confines of the realm of Iranian culture and ethnicity. So quite naturally, there will be cultural and other bridges between Pashtuns and their subcontinental Aryan neighbors. I would say this is normal for groups living along the borders of a cultural or ethnic geography.

"Aryans" following a Semite and his movement.

Is there anything Aryan left in Iran anymore?

Don't make me laugh so early in the day.

Cheers, Doc

 

[SalarHaqq]

"Aryans" following a Semite and his movement.

Is there anything Aryan left in Iran anymore?

Don't make me laugh so early in the day.

Cheers, Doc

A universalist movement open to every ethnicity without distinction.

Masonry and Bahaism make a similar claim. The difference however is that whereas Islam - in its true form - is protective of national cultures much like ancient Iranian empires used to be, the two former groups project to merge all national identities into a mixed, "unified world citizenry", i. e. to culturally uproot all nations.

 

[padamchen]

A universalist movement open to every ethnicity without distinction.

Masonry and Bahaism make a similar claim. The difference however is that whereas Islam - in its true form - is protective of national cultures much like ancient Iranian empires used to be, the two former groups project to merge all national identities into a mixed, "unified world citizenry", i. e. to culturally uproot all nations.

I'm neither Baha'i nor a Mason.

The movement became "universal" because the Persians succumbed.

And then wrote the rules and the history.

If they had not, the movement would remain confined to the sands of Arabia.

Cheers, Doc