Introduction

These monologues are the tales of their author’s worries and concerns. They mainly concern history, languages and Iran. They are not necessarily always going to be about Iran, certainly not exclusive to the modern, political Iran. Iranology, the study of Iran, takes you far beyond modern Iran, and not only includes the lands that make the ‘cultural Iran’, but by extension takes you all throughout Afro-Eurasia. So, read and enjoy, without prejudice that is

What is History?

E.H. Carr asked that question many years ago, and gave a sufficient answer as well; others also have made an attempt to do so . However, this is not a place for me to discuss their descriptions and discussions, although it certainly warrants my own interpretation of the question.

History is not the tale of dull dates, names, treacherous rivalries and pointless wars. It is also not a story, as many would like to say, nor is it an absurd tale of past mistakes and silliness of the far-gone. History is the account of the lives of those who lived their lives to the fullest, and then left them for us. That is the most significant point of history: the life of the passed ones now belong to us; a sort of figurative reincarnation. What they did, what they achieved or failed to achieve, what they set-up and what they destroyed, they all directly affect us. History is not the tale of the past that does not imply to us, it is our lives yesterday, ten years ago, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago…! After all, in the long scope of life, the whole history of civilised man, 10,000 years, is but a blink of the eye.

History has no breaks either, nor does it have an end, despite what some like to believe . No part of history, or history of any event or people, ever stops before “another” history starts. Peoples, cultures, languages, traditions, even religions, get absorbed to one another, they influence each other and introduce new notions to old traditions, but they never cease to exist. Huns didn’t enter “history” to ravage parts of Europe and then “disappear” from it. They existed before being mentioned in the European books, and their descendants continued to exist after their dominance was terminated. Certainly their memory was long standing among people far from them, as apparent by the frequent mention of Huns in Scandinavians sagas . So, Huns ceased to have their own country, but they did not cease to exist. This attribution of historical survival to the possession of a “nation-state” is the first mistake many make about history.

History also belongs to everyone, not only to those who wrote it. “Europeans created history and then put it into good use” . More accurately, Europeans created the profession of historiography, and then used it successfully to manipulate accounts of events and to promote their own ideas . The Euro-centric view of history, one that seas history as a linear development of “civilisation” with an almost moral mission, is called Tunnel Vision of History . This vision pictures history as a west-bound virtual “Orient Express” that starts in Egypt and Mesopotamia, stops at Greece and Rome to take a cargo of some much needed wisdom , passes through Medieval and Renaissance , to arrive at the enlightenment and Industrial Revolution Europe, maybe even continuing to the modern day United States . In this history, other people are only mentioned when they come into contact with the Europeans. Thus we get to know the Chinese, Indians, Africans, even Persians and Ottomans, only when they are either colonised, defeated, or “discovered” by Europeans. Most of what we learn today as history is written from a European perspective , or at least has an angle that only justifies studying it because of its importance to the development of Europe. Even terms like near-, middle-, and far-east suppose this: near, middle, and far in relation to Europe!

So, here we want to look at a history that belongs to everyone and is not centred on any particular region, religion, culture, or people. A history that has no core and no periphery, and has not stops. A history in which the production of porcelain in India affects the national economic output of people in Lithuania. A history that belongs to all of us.

Carr, Edward H. “What is History?”, Vintage Books, 1967
Toynbee, A. “A Study of History”, Oxford, 1987
Fukuyama, Francis. “End of History and the Last Man”, Avon, 1993
Byock, Jesse L. “Saga of the Volsungs”, UC Press, 1990
Braudel, Fernand. “A History of Civilisation”, Penguin, 1995
Importance of controlling history, or at least written history, is best domenstarted by George Orwell in his futuristic novel, “1984”
Blaut, James. “The Colonizers’ Model of the World”, Guilford Press, 1993
For the misplacement of this figurative cargo, see Bernal, Martin. “The Black Athena, The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. Vol. I: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785-1985”, Rutgers University Press, 1989.
Frank, Andre Gunder. “Re-Orient”, UC Press, 1998
Wolf, Eric. “Europe and the People Without History”, UC Press, 1997