Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/589

 561 PE E S I A PERSIA, or IRAN. In modern political geography these two terms are synonymous ; the kingdom which we call Persia the Persians themselves call Iran. But each of the words has a somewhat complicated history, a brief sketch of which will best explain the connexion between the several subjects which, in an encyclopaedic treatment, naturally demand notice under one or other of the names which head this article. Persia, or rather Persis (Greek exclusively Hepcm), is the Latinized form of a name which originally and strictly designated only the country bounded on the N. by Media and on the N.W. by Susiana, which of old had its capital at Persepolis or Istakhr, and for almost twelve centuries since has had it at Shiraz. This country and its people were anciently called Parsa (now Pars or Fars). The oldest certain use of the name is in Ezekiel (xxvii. 10, xxxviii. 5). The Greek form Ilepcrcu, with e for a, which all Euro pean languages follow, seems to have come from the lonians, who disliked to pronounce a even in foreign words. Thus Ilepcrai would stand for Il^pcrai, which in turn stands to Parsa as Mv/Soi. to Mada. The name of Persian was naturally extended to the great monarchy of the Achcemenians who came forth from Persis ; and so again, when a second great empire, that of the Sasanians, arose from the same land, all its subjects began to be called Persians, and Persis or Persia was sometimes used of the whole Sasanian lands (Ammianus, xxiii. 6, 1). The prevalent language of this empire (see PAHLAVI) had a still better right to be called Persian, for it seems to have had its basis in the language of the old Persis. The same thing is true of the so-called New Persian, which has been a literary language for the last thousand years. Historically, then, the term Persian is fitly applied to the two great empires which rose in Pars or Persis the form Persis will be used in this restricted sense throughout the present article and not unfitly to the modern state which embraces Persis and its sister lands, and in which a descendant of the ancient tongue of Persis is still the official and literary language. The name Iran, on the other hand, was originally of much wider signification than Persia, and the whole upland country from Kurdistan to Afghanistan may, in accordance with the native use of its ancient inhabitants, be called the Iranian upland. The inhabitants of this upland, together with certain tribes of the same race in adjacent lands, shared with their near kinsmen in India the name of Aryans (Ariya, Airya of the Avesta ; Sk. Arya). King Darius calls himself &quot; Persian son of a Persian, Aryan son of an Aryan,&quot; and Herodotus (vii. 62) knows &quot;Apiot as an old name of the Medes. The ancient nobles affected names compounded with Arya, Ariyaramna ( Aptapa/^v^s), Ario- barzanes, and the like. The lands of the Aryans, as a whole, were called Ariyana (Airiyana of the Avesta) ; Eratosthenes and after him Strabo and others are cer tainly wrong in limiting Apiav/j, Apiavoi, to eastern iran (Afghanistan, Baluchistan, &C.). 1 Ardashir, the first Sasanian, is called on coins and inscriptions &quot;king of the kings of Eran,&quot; his son Shapiir or Sapor is &quot;king of the kings of Eran and not-Eran.&quot; Now Ardashir, as well as his son, had non- Aryan subjects, the main population of Babylonia and other provinces being of Semitic race ; Eran and not-Eran therefore must here be used not ethnographically but in a definite politico- geographical sense. The official name of the empire, how ever, was always Eran, and the great officers of state had such titles as Eran-Spahpat, &quot;general of Eran,&quot; Eran- Anbarakpat, &quot;store-master of Eran.&quot; 2 For the last 500 years most Persians havej^ronounced Iran instead of Eran (more recently also fr6n, trim), and this is the official title of the kingdom which once had Ispahan, and now has Teheran, as capital. Modern Iran, or Persia, does not embrace nearly the whole Iranian upland, still less all men of Iranian nationality, that is, all who speak an Iranian dialect akin to Persian. On the other hand, the modern kingdom of iran has many subjects who are not Iranians ethnographically, but come originally from Central Asia or Arabia, and speak Turkish or Arabic. PART I. ANCIENT IRAN. SECTION I. MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. leVII. The Babylonian Berosus, writing soon after Alexander the Great, states that at a very early time, which we must place somewhat over two thousand years before Christ, the Medes conquered Babylonia, and that eight Median kings reigned thereafter in Babylonia for a space of 224 years. 3 This is an early instance of the occupation of the rich low lands by warlike tribes of the neighbouring highlands ; and indeed the contrast between the plain of the Euphrates and Tigris, peopled mainly by Semites, and the tableland of the Iranians, surrounded by lofty mountains, is a very important factor in the whole history of wide regions of Asia. But it is, to say the least, not certain whether Berosus means the Iranian people afterwards called Medes. The expression might have a merely geographical significa tion, and it is at all events possible that at that distant period tribes of different descent dwelt in the land. In any case, we have here no Iranian empire, but only a Babylonian dynasty founded by foreigners. Be this as it may, it is certain that at an early period there were regular monarchies of some size even in the distant Iranian lands. Unmistakable traces lead us to 1 Less careful writers, like Pliny, confuse Ariana with Aria, properly Haria, the land of Haraiva, the later Haruv, Hare, Hari ; Arabic Herat. assume an old empire in Bactria the Iranian land far to the east, in the region of the Oxus, beyond the great table land which must have developed a tolerably high civiliza tion. But we have no exact information about it. The series of the great Iranian monarchies begins for Medes. us with the Median empire of Ecbatana. Unfortunately we possess but little trustworthy information about its history, being almost wholly dependent on what two Greeks, Herodotus and Ctesias, who wrote long after the fall of the kingdom, report from the mouths of Orientals. These two authorities differ so widely that their statements are to a great extent mutually exclusive. Nevertheless careful investigation has shown that many of the state ments of Ctesias (which are only preserved through the medium of later writers, like Diodorus) rest on the same basis as those of Herodotus. This common basis included an artificially arranged chronology. 4 According to Herod- 2 Sasanian inscriptions in Chaldaic Pahlavi still show the ancient form Arian (JX HX), and Greek inscriptions of the older kings have the genitive pi. Apiav&v. But the corresponding common Pahlavi inscriptions and the coins already show the form Eran (JST X), fol lowing an established law of phonetic decay. 3 The information is preserved by Eusebius, who took it from Alex ander Polyhistor ; see Eusebins, Chronicon, ed. Schoene, 25. 4 See Hupfeld, Exercitationes Herodotese Spec. II. : sivc de vetere Medorum regno, Rinteln. 1843. XVIII. 71