Tag Archive for 'Persia'

The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 17

Published by davinci on November 8, 2010 in reflections on religion and religion. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

(Part 16 is here.)

The myths about David and Solomon, and in particular the latter, would continue to evolve after the Biblical accounts were set down in writing. Already in the Bible, Solomon was wealthier and wiser than all the other kings on Earth, and he was so wealthy that he made silver as common as stones in Jerusalem (1 Kings 10:14–29, 2 Chron. 9:13–28). His wisdom was greater than that of everyone in the East (I’m sure the inhabitants of India and China would’ve begged to differ, had they even heard of him or the remote and insignificant minor stretch of land that he ruled)… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

If you like this post, you might also like:

  1. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 18
  2. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 16
  3. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 2
  4. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 11
  5. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 12
0 Comments

Persia is Iran, Iran is Persia, Iran is not Iraq, and Persia is not Bosnia

Published by davinci on September 13, 2009 in personal and social issues. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

This post was inspired by the post from two days ago on the flags of the world.

I’ve always considered Reza Shah Pahlavi’s 1935 decree requesting that the country formerly known as Persia be referred to as “Iran” by foreign governments with which it had diplomatic relations to be a mistake. Naturally, once governments began to refer to the country as Iran, their citizens followed suit. This change at once led to a severing in the Western consciousness of Iran from the Persian culture of classical antiquity, and also created a situation in which the name of the country can easily become confounded with that of its neighbour and recurrent rival, Iraq, a name which entered the mainstream vocabulary of Western languages only in 1932 with the founding of the Kingdom of Iraq in that year.

Actually, in Arabic and Persian, the names Iraq and Iran sound quite different, and they are not very similar to each other when written in the Perso-Arabic script… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

No related posts.

6 Comments