Talk:Persia/Archive 2

Archive 1

Persian nation vs Persian Empire
I am not sure where this will lead and I haven't thought it completely through myself. Firstly - I like the article. Secondly though I think there is somewhat sloppy language in use. The article starts out on the premise that Persia is a historical nation with a more or less defined geographical area (actually relatively small area), then it moves fairly straight to the Persian empire(s). I think the objection from the troll and edit warrior who was recently stopped does have some substance -despite his lack of style. While the empire was (and in its modern form Iran still is) closely wedded to the nation of Persia and its language and culture, there is a distinction possible and also probably useful. Persia/persian as a word is kind of swimming and blurring all across the encyclopaedia (see for example the article on Al-Khwarizmi, scientist from Khiva/Khwarizm, unclear primary language, living in Baghdad, citizen of the Baghdad Caliphate etc. or similar background of Rumi. I therefore suggest to use kind of dump the term "Persia" and use more the two terms Persian nation (describing the relatively small and geographically circumscript nation) and the term Persian Empire for the larger picture. I think this might be both clearer and give more justice to the various ethnic groups closer or more distant in culture and language to the Persian nation but fully integral part of the Persian Empire in most or all its incarnations. As said above I am not sure whether this is possible and really useful, but at the moment it seems to me this way. Refdoc 23:31, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't know why, but I personally consider the idea of a *Persian nation* offensive, if used for people after the Arab invation of Persia. Some other people may share this, so it may be good to avoid it. But as a country or empire, it's fine with me.


 * But getting to the technicalities, what is a nation? The nation article says "A nation is a group of people sharing aspects of their language, culture and/or ethnicity".
 * Language: Are people who speak Persian a part of the Persian nation? Is the child of some foreign parents who come and live in Tehran and start to speak Persian at home a part of the Persian nation?
 * Culture: Are there people who share a certain Persian culture? If yes, what are its common elements?
 * Ethnicity: Is there a Persian ethnicity? I have Arab, Turkic, and central Iranian parentage, and so do many modern Iranians (with different mixes of ethnicities course). The country/empire/region has been a melting pot for centuries, where everyone passed, from Mongols to Arabs.


 * Further down the nation article, more aspects of looking at the idea of nation are discussed which gives me more reasons to avoid the term. Merriam-Webster also gives a definition for the term which may be helpful.
 * BTW, as for Al-Khwarizimi, Donald Knuth, one of the important scholars on him, insists on calling him "Persian". I don't know exactly why.
 * -Roozbeh 00:28, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No, I did not intend to be offensive, sorry for that. But I am confused by the fairly different uses across various articles. In a away I am looking for a way to differentiate when necessary the equivalent of say British vs English/Scottish/Irish, the former to denote the Island group + the Empire, the second denoting its constituting nations/ethnicities etc. But maybe this is simply not possible and also not necessary. Refdoc 01:13, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hey, thanks. I am UNBELIEVABLY happy to finally have a dialogue. Here's my thoughts: I guess the current article's underlying philosophy is that the "ethnic" Persian state of Cyrus and Darius has maintained a certain continuity right up to modern-day Iran. During that time, Persia has indeed been a "melting pot." Greek, Arab, Turkish, Mongol, Central Asian, and other cultures have affected Iranian culture so htat the Iran of today is certianly nothing like the Persia of Darius. Obviously this is true. But I believe there are many evidences of continuity as well: So with that in mind, I would suggest that "Persia" in this article describes neither a "nation" nor a specifically defined area nor a political entity, but rather a common identity thta has stood for different things at different times. I would suggest 2 concrete things that we can do for the sake of clarity. By the way, I don't like the Persian Nation article one bit either. It reads like something written by an ignorant 19th-century ethnologist. And hey, I understand how sensitive terminology can get. I am not intimately connected to this topic like most of you are. I'm just a German-Illinoisan who wanted this article to be good.
 * Non-Persian monarchs such as the Khwarezmids and the Qajars called themselves Shahs, the same title as the ancient monarchs.
 * The great Persian work of history Shah Nama was written during Buwayhid times, when no "Persians" had ruled Persia for 300 years.
 * Iran is still called Iran, from Aryan, even though the "Aryan" people no longer exist.
 * (1) We need to clearly explain the main POV of the article right at the beginning. Right now that POV is one of the continuity of the Persian identity throughout the turbulent ages of history.  If that POV is fair, then we just make a new introduciton.  If not, then this article does need some significant changes.
 * (2) We add to the existing article to make it more fair to "minority" groups; that is, ethnicities other than "Persian." For example, the Safavids came from Azerbaijan.  THe article mentions this, but it could be made a bigger deal of.  We could further emphasize that most of hte Persian Shahs were not Indo-European.

Well, as I said, this conversation fills me with joy and warm fuzzies. Fishal 18:12, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

And now I have changed the intro. I think it's at least a step in the direction of making everyone happy. But I admit it sounds awkward at this point. So go to work, everybody! --Fishal 01:29, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Persian Empire redirects here? This doesn't make sense. Persian Empire should deal with 648 BC-330 BC exclusively. A "Persia" article of the present kind is trying to do too many things at once. This article should be at History of Persia maybe, and Persia itself a disambiguation page. It's very confusing to click on Persian Empire and end up on this page. Statements like "As an empire and civilization, Persia began in the 7th century BC with the rise of the Achaemenid dynasty and has endured to the present day. This civilization was established by ethnic Persians but very soon spread to other groups by force and by cultural diffusion. Persian culture is one of the cultures with the longest historical continuity. are impossible to defend as from the npov. dab (&#5839;) 10:32, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wars with Byzantine
The break down of Roman Empire happened long after Parthians. They shared borders with the Roman Republic and Imperial Rome. 152.2.22.170

Percentages in Iran
What was once written many decades ago (c. 100 years ago), that the Persians in Iran comprise 51% of the population is an outdated data. That estimation was made when the Metropolitan Tehran had 1 million inhabitants. Right now it has 15 million. A great majority of these inhabitants are Persianised Azaris, Kurds, Gilaks etc. during the recent history. The latest official statistical data of Iran based on a population concensus states that 86.4% of the people in the metropolitan Tehran speaks Persian as his/her mother tongue and considers himself/herself of Persian ethnicity. This process is not confined to Tehran and has been in progress in whole of Iran in the last century. Recent university theses which deal with these changes estimate the Persians of Iran to be around 70% of the population now.


 * A few questions:
 * Why do you think the 51% population estimate is outdated and belongs to 100 years ago? It is based on the CIA statistics from http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ir.html#People.
 * How does a 70% of Persians of Iran get deduced from a 86.4% of them in Tehran?
 * Do you know and could you cite any official statistics from Iranian sources about the matter?
 * Would you please cite a few of those university theses?
 * roozbeh 13:19, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)


 * I am not the person who wrote the above note but I would like to add to this discussion if I may. Firstly, I tend to agree with the statements made above and to my mind they are reasonable and even conservative figures.  I myself have many relatives both in Tehran and other cities, of Gilaki, Kurdish and Azeri origin who have been "Persianized", to borrow the term used here, for several generations now and my own mother is one such example.  Regarding CIA World Fact Book, I must say it is not a bad reference, but it is far from accurate, particularly about Iran where they do not have direct contact.  Many of its figures about Iran have remained unchanged for the past serveral years.  Regarding "How does a 70% of Persians of Iran get deduced from a 86.4% of them in Tehran?" I must say that if you read the sentence immediately before the "70%" sentence, it indicates that "This process is not confined to Tehran and has been in progress in whole of Iran in the last century".  Personally, I find that statement to be reasonable and credible.

I cited the CIA Factbook in the article and put up a Disputed notice on the main Demographics of Iran article. Fishal 06:40, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Achae?menids
It's late and I'm a book editor. So, when I saw that half of the article spoke about "Achaemenids" and the other half had "Achemenids", I unified the spelling without a second thought. Later, I started to doubt, as I'm not too familiar with the English tradition of Greco-Persian names. If you believe I was wrong, kick me and change it to "Achemenids" (though the dynastic article was with "-ae-", I guess), just carry it through the whole article, please. --Oop 23:31, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Congratulations!!
What a good, easy to read, well written for an average joe article!!!

All of histrory's articles should be like that. Simple, rich in history but not to many details.

Images
Public domain images here. --[[User:Brian0918|brian0918 talk]] 01:28, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

timur & copyright
1) Was Timur the Lane a Mongol as the present article states? The folks over at Timur the Lame seem to think he was a Turk (though a descendent of a general who served for Gengis Khan's son).

2) How do we know the images brian0918 mentions, from the New York Public Library are public domain? Did NYPL so authorize Wikipedia?

slava 06:05, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I believe he claimed descent from Genghis. I believe. But I'll do some looking into it. For now, I'll change the language from "another Mongol" to "another conqueror connected with the Mongol Empire." Fishal

Factual accuracy
Im putting the dispute tag up. For the following reasons:

In the Islam and Persia section:


 * "Arabic became the new common tongue"...."An entirely new language, religion, and culture were imposed on Persia."

Please provide reference for that. As far as I know, Arabic became the langauge of the governing administration, not the common folk. The common tongue remained Persian. The official language became Arabic. And even that was only for 200-300 years.


 * "It was a Persian, al-Khwarizmi, who first devised algebra in 810".

Kharazmi did not devise Algebra. He further developed it. A correct statement would be: "Khwarazmi became the father of Algebra because of his impact on the field, the name Algebra itself coming from the name of his treatise". We have to be more careful in stating such things. Furthermore, Karaji, Kashani, and Khayam also had direct impact on the field.

However it isn't incorrect to say "The Persians developed, if not actually discovered, the field of trigonometry". I can even quote Z. Sardar in "Introducing Mathematics" in making this claim.


 * "The poet Firdawsi wrote Shah Nama, an epic poem telling the history of the Persian kings, in 1008."

It would be better to say "The poet Ferdowsi finished the Shah Nama... He actually finished what Daghighi had started earlier before being murdered. And even Daghighi himself was not the first in line to write the Shah Nama. There were 2 or 3 other poets who made unsuccessful attempts.

--Zereshk 04:44, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I wrote what you are objecting to, and I'm overjoyed that someone is finally scrutinizing my work. I am not an expert on Persia, not remotely. I wrote this article from a general book of world history because, well, look at what the article looked like on 28 March 2004. Since I don't have an in-depth working knowledge of Persia, you can see that the way I worded some things was misleading. I will not dispute you on any of your points. Clearly you are knowledgeable about Persia in a way that I am not. Please, change away! Fishal 07:17, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Oh, PS-- would it be fair to say that while Arabic never became the language of the people (and still isn't today), Persia did enter into a world where Arabic was the international common tongue?
 * I went ahead and changed the statements that you were concerned about. Fishal 07:30, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * You have to spell out exactly what you mean by international common tongue. I would use the term lingua franca.--Zereshk 23:08, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Fishal, I have been off Wikipedia for a long time and must say this article has made HUGE steps forward. Congratulations! Refdoc 23:34, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The Kamelia shojaee.jpg image at the top of the article is essential
Somebody took that image off the page, claiming it wasnt related. I put it back. Here's why:

That image is relevant to the topic. The article is about "Persia"; i.e. all it's aspects, it's definition, its identity. And one essential part of the Persian identity is its art. It's their philosophy. It's part of their way of looking at life. As the Persian proverb goes: "Honar nazd e Iranian ast o bas" ("Art is possessed by the Persian").

Without her art, the Persian is not well represented. And this is not a POV statement. It is a fact. That is why I provided the quote, which I can provide similar dozens of more of.

The article is not, a mere historical events acount. We already have a page for that.--Zereshk 01:39, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I do agree with Zereshk and was a bit taken a back by the delete. There might be a case for chosing a different piece of of art or whatever, but there is really no way around that art and handicraft are major sources of the Persian identity Refdoc 11:10, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A much better representation of Persian art would be something like a pic of one of the Isfahan mosques rather than this piece of art which is, quite frankly, pop art. --Amir 12:24, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What's wrong with pop art? Just because it's not "high culture" doesn't mean it's not culture. Fishal 15:44, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I guess I understand the point that it may be "pop-art", but in many ways it's a good image, because it shows that the art movement in Iran is moving forward, the image is actually a modernist miniature, to put it loosely. That is, it clearly shows that Persian art is not stuck in a mold defined during the Safavid era; it continues to evolve and change.

I will however be adding some really super nice images in the near future; I have some awesome pictures of Persian art and architecture not found elsewhere. Most of them come from slides that I made from field photography in Iran. I just have to find the time to scan them.--Zereshk 22:49, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Fishal, I hope u dont think Im being rude or anything if i didnt reply to any of your messages. Keep up the great work!--Zereshk 22:17, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Also, make sure you see "Isfahan The Movie" that I have linked at the bottom of your article. I think it's brilliantly made.--Zereshk 02:18, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * it should be removed on grounds of copyright violation alone. What was your argument that it constitutes fair use again? Where did you make that argument? Also, it may be appropriate at the top of Iranian art, but certainly not at the top of Persia, let alone at the top of Persian Empire. dab (&#5839;) 10:37, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dab,


 * 1) On whose behalf are you accusing me of copyrights violations? Please show me one website where this image is used. Just one. I dont know how you can accuse me of copyright violations when I have the original and am the first person on the web to take a picture of it and use it here.
 * 2) The image indeed is very appropriate for the page "Persia" because the term "Persia" is a cultural entity. Culture is the optimal way to represent Persia, unless you wish to get political about it. "Persian-ness" is a glue, a cultural glue, that historically bonds the Iranian lands together. What did the Indian Mughals display their Persian-ness with? Art. What did the Turkic Tamerlane display his Persian-ness with? Art. (look at the Persian poetry on the walls of mosques in Samarkand). The mongols? Art (which is a subset of culture). Look at the "Persia" page. All you see is manifestations of art in different epochs. What do you think the apple and the flowers in the image are signifying? Those are symbols of Norooz, a central belief and practice of Persia, the Persepolis relief shows the origins of Persia, the style of the woman depicted is Qajari: the origins of modern Persia, and the popart style signifies ongoing progression and evolution of the Persian culture. I dont think I need to argue this. However it is not my fault that the page "Persian Empire" redirects to Persia. It should probably go somewhere else.--Zereshk 19:15, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think both of the current lead images are pretty poor. If this were an article on Persian art you might have a point &mdash; but it is not. A geographical image would be a better idea at the top of the article. -- Solipsist 19:57, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Solipsist, I fully disagree. It is obvious you dont know what Persia really is. The images are in fact excellent.--68.47.172.80 20:28, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A map cannot be used to describe Persia, because you would need 800 different maps. Persia is not some ancient bunch of people in the Bible.

Please first learn what Persia really is before making poor statements.--Zereshk 00:54, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Zereshk, I think it is great to see the number and quality of pictures you have put in to the various articles. But do have a look at the captions/image comments from other people's point of view - it was a more than a fair comment by DAB - even if less then politely made to ask about the background of your "fair use" assertion. "Fair use" appears to be a minefield of US american case law and clear explanations are therefore what is required. People are actually combing through the picture archive and pop up all over the place to ask the same question of anyone who has put a picture in without enough explanations. If your pictures are your own simply write - "my own picture, supplied under GFDL" or whatever. But please do not shout. To bolden the characters counts as shouting. Refdoc 01:32, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

But I do think this is not a reason to start shouting


 * Shouting?! I just wanted to make sure he reads it. When we used to debate on CNN's forums, shouting was sually shown with capitalized fonts.


 * I'll fix it.--Zereshk 02:02, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)