به نام خداوند جان و خرد

کزین اندیشه برتر برنگذرد

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ازمند امدند و سیل اسا

در کفی تیغ و در کفی یاسا

تنگ چشمان گول نابخرد

چاروازادگان صـحرا گرد

بدسگالان کژ نهاد پلشـت

دوزخی چهرگان سفله زشت

غولهای پلید ناهنجار

اژدها وش ددان خونخوار

خیل دیوان دل سپرده به ریو

تا به گردونشان رسیده غریو

بدگهر تیره ای انیرانی

خواستاران جنگ و ویرانی

کرده اغشته تیغ ها با زهر

ارزومند فتح ایرانشهر

به گمانی که تهمتن خوابست

نقش ایران فتاده بر ابست

یا یل تیزچنگ سرکش ؛ گیو

رفت و پردخته شد جهان از نیو

یا که بیژن ؛ هژبر رزم اگاه

سرنگون اوفتاده اندر چاه

یا که ارش به تیر پرتابی

نیست شد زیر گنبد ابی

یا که شد بیدرفشت جادو چیر

بر نبرده سوار یکه ؛ زریر

یا که اسفندیار پهلو مرد

و ان نهال دلاوری پژمرد

با خیالات خام و سودایی

کرده پا در رکاب خودرایی

اتش افروز و جانشکار و جسور

مست خودکامگی ز جام غرور

مردمانی نبرده بهره ز هوش

زندگی کرده در کنار وحوش

همچو اهریمنان خوف انگیز

تاختند اسب فتنه با چنگیز

کینه ها توختند و خون راندند

خشک و تر هرچه بود سوزاندند

بی خبر زانکه ارش و بیژن

گیو و اسفندیار رویین تن

یا زریر سوار و رستم زال

و انهمه شیر سرکشیده ز یال

از کیومرث نامدار سترگ

تا به بهمن ؛ یلان خرد و بزرگ

سربسر نام گوهری فردست

که ستیهنده تر زهر مردست

گوهری ابدیده در کوره

خون تاریخ و روح اسطوره

گوهری با تباری از فرهنگ

بسته بر خصم شرزه چون پالاهنگ

گوهری شبچراغ گمراهی

مطلع افتاب اگاهی

گوهری پرورنده ی پاکی

فره ای ایزدی و افلاکی

گوهری نخلبند اندیشه

کرده در خاک معرفت ریشه

جنگ ان بدرگان خشم اور

جنگ خرمهره بود با گوهر

چالشی دیگر از گذشته ی دور

بین پروردگان ظلمت و نور

کهنه پیکار اهریمن رایی

با سبک روحی اهورایی

کارزاری که جز سیه روزی

بدگمان را نبود از ان روزی

گیر و داری که گوهر فرهنگ

زد بر ان مهر نام و داغ ننگ

مهر نامی که تا به جاویدان

می درخشد به تارک ایران

داغ ننگی که تا به رستاخیز

می کشد تار شرم ان چنگیز

(این شعر که به توسط شاعر معاصر ؛ محمد پیمان ؛ سروده شده پیوست مقاله ای بوده است . نگاه کنید به : البرز ؛ پرویز ؛ « سیری در شعر اجتماعی وانتقادی عصر مغول » ؛ مجموعه مقالات اولین سمینار تاریخی هجوم مغول ؛ ج۱ ؛ ص۸۲-۸۱)

 

By: R.S.

 

It is sad that in this age and day, there are people actively working to create ethnic discord, tension and animosity between groups of people due to language, religion or etc.         

 

This article clearly shows that the recent book by Alireza Asgharzadeh is unscholarly, un-academic and racist.  The book by Alireza Asgharzadeh titled: “A. Asgharzadeh, Iran and the Challenge of Diversity: Islamic Fundamentalism, Aryanist Racism, and Democratic Struggles , Palgrave Macmillan (June 12, 2007) )” is full of conspiracy theories and based upon pseudo-scholars who support conspiracy theories.  The book is incoherent and inconsistent in terms of putting forward the racist thesis of the author.  The aim of the current article is to examine the book and show the multitude of inconsistent argument, historical revisionism and selective amnesia of quoting sources by Alireza Asgharzadeh.  The current article only examines some of the falsehood and historical forgeries perpetuated by Alireza Asgharzadeh.  Had the writer of this article attempted to expose the falsehood of every single argument of Alireza Asgharzadeh, the article would simply be more than 1000 pages.  But sufficient examples are given to show that Alireza Asgharzadeh is himself an extremely racist person, supports pan-Turkism and is a historical revisionist.

 

 An important note should be made that Alireza Asgharzadeh uses the term Azerbaijani and Turk equivalently.  Thus when the author of this  article states statements such as: “X does not have anything to do with Turkic culture”, it does not mean that “X does not have anything to do with Azerbaijani culture”.  But since Alireza Asgharzadeh uses the term interchangeably, the author of this article will take a note of this.  Also some of the language used in this article might seem a bit straight forward, but when any Iranian who has not been tainted by anti-Iranian ideologies like pan-Turkism reads the book of Alireza Asgharzadeh, the response will naturally be straight forward.  After the complete response, the author will give his suggestion and strategy on confronting pan-Turkism which has risen due to the ignorance of the Islamic republic and its lack of interest in Iranian nationhood and also due to foreign influence as will be shown.  Also the author wishes to express that he has nothing against the citizens of any neighboring country including Turkey or Azerbaijan republic and does not judge humans based on their background which they have not chosen.  But there is not a shadow of doubt that there are expansionist groups in these countries which actually inhibit mutual regional development and have expressed their desire to separate NW Iran from Iran.  Thus some of the comments of this article should be seen in this defensive light.  Note: This article might be expanded slightly in the future to take into account several other falsehoods created by pan-Turkist chavaunists.

 

Three revisionist writers quoted heavily by Asgharzadeh. 6

Naser Pourpiar 6

Brenda Shaffer 13

Mohammad Taqi Zehtabi 17

Medes. 29

Parthians. 35

Other pseudo-scholars mentioned by Asgharzadeh. 35

Racist Websites. 35

Javad Heyat 36

Sadiq Mohammadzadeh. 36

Alireza Nazmi Afshar 36

Historical Turco-Iranian Encounters. 38

Irano-Turkish Relations in the Late Sasanian Period. 46

Persian language among Turkish dynasties. 52

Oghuz attack on Azerbaijan during Ghaznavids. 54

Negative view of Turks by the Ottomans. 57

Are Azeri’s Turks?. 59

Assimilation and Pan-Turkism in the republic of Azerbaijan and Turkey. 66

Pan-Turkist claims on Iran in the 19th and early 20th century and selective historical amnesia by Alireza Asgharzadeh. 73

Iranian nationalism in the 19th century caucus. 74

Ottomon spreading of Pan-Turkism.. 74

Response to many of the false claims of Alireza Asgharzadeh. 93

Some Introductory material from Alireza Asgharzadeh. 93

Falsification of Iran’s history by Asgharzadeh. 98

Official Language of Iran and Asgharzadeh’s hiding of the truth. 107

Bogus Census of Demographics of Iran by Asgharzadeh. 110

Another Bogus figure. 118

Mamalek Mahrooseyeh Iran does not mean what Alireza Asgharzadeh claims. 119

Babak Khorramdin, an Iranian who fought against the Caliphs and their Turkish soldier 121

Foreign Interference. 123

British meddling in Khuzestan. 123

Ottomon interference and pan-Turkism.. 124

USSR interference and Pishevari: 124

Saddam Hussein and Khuzestan. 126

The republic of Azerbaijan. 126

The West 127

Cartoon issue. 131

Response to Vaziri and Joya Sa’ad Blondel 138

Yes the majority of Iranians have been victims. 141

Elamites survived 2000+ years of Aryan presence but wiped out after the Arab and Seljuqid invasionsl 141

Persepolis. 147

Dede Qorqod not related to pre-Islamic Iran. 162

Two unreliable writers does not equal many Iranian historians!! 164

Cuneiform and Greek and Old Persian. 164

Cyrus, the Old Testament and the passing away of Cyrus. 166

Asgharzadeh’s mis-information and falsification of the Avesta. 194

Ferdowsi, Shahnameh and Pan-Turkism.. 214

Omission of important sentences from sources. 241

Arya/Pars. 252

Rezashah/Khiyabani/Khazal/Ferqeh. 266

Pan-Turkists, Ferqeh and Kurds. 299

Nazi Germany and the Muslim World. 306

Arran and Azerbaijan. 311

Misrepresentation of Aref Qazvini and Shahryar 333

Afghanistan and Iraq. 336

Conclusion: 336

 

Three revisionist writers quoted heavily by Asgharzadeh

 

Three people Asgharzadeh quotes heavily are Naser Pourpirar ,  Mohammad Taqi Zehtabi and Brenda Shaffer.   Both the political background and revisionist and outright manipulation of these three writers is discussed in Section I.  Of course, if Brenda Shaffer is reading this, she might want to skip over the Naser Pourpirar section, since Naser Pourpirar is heavily used by Asgharzadeh.  At the same time, since she gave a positive review of a Pourpirar based book, she might want to read what kind of sources she is supporting and is it really in her countries (Israel’s) interest.

 

Naser Pourpiar

 

 

http://www.naria.blogfa.com/Photo/n/naria.jpg

 

(Picture taken from his blog: www.naria.blogfa.com)

 

 

The scholarly background of Naser Pourpirar is unknown.  The current author has examined Pourpirar’s weblog (www.naria.blogfa.com) and Pourpirar has never admitted at having more than a diploma and this claim is confirmed by different sources.  Of course not having more than diploma is nothing unworthy and the author only looks at the arguments of Pourpirar and not academic credentials.  But it should be noted that Pourpirar does know any ancient languages like Old Persian, Middle Persian, Soghdian, Elamite, Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Urartuian, Old Armenian, Parthian and etc.  But yet he has been heavily quoted by Asgharzadeh in pages

 

Alireza Asgharzadeh has quoted and mentioned Pourpirar in pages 8, 30, 49-52, 55, 57, 62, 79-81, 178, 198, 206, 236 and 237 of his book.  The false arguments quoted by Alireza Asgharzadeh from Pourpirar will be examined when we actually examine the book of Ali Reza Asgharzadeh in Section 4 of this article.

 

So far we have shown that the academic background of Pourpiar is unknown.  Indeed Pourpirar is famous for his anti-Semitic rhetorics and calling modern day universities as a center that propagate Jewish and Christian lies.

 

All the materials we quote are directly from Pourpirar’s writing and weblog.

 

Pourpirar's revisionism begins with the event of Purim, recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther. He believes that that Purim was a genocide committed against the native population of Iran by the Achaemenid Shah Darius I of Persia and his Jewish allies. He claims that:  after the great genocide committed by Jews in Purim, the land of Iran was completely wiped out of human beings until the beginning of Islam.

 

http://www.naria.blogfa.com/85084.aspx

 

Exact Persian:

 

از آن جا که وسعت نسل کشی یهودیان، در ماجرای پلید پوریم، سرزمین ایران راکاملا از سکنه خالی کرده بود، پس از ظهور اسلام، این سرزمین با ورود مهاجرینی از تمام همسایگان و از همه سو، به تدریج دارای کلنی های کوچک انسانی شد که کم ترین پیوند بومی با ایران کهن نداشتند و از مراتب و مناسک و فرهنگ و زبان و پوشش و باورهای پیشین سرزمین های اصلی خویش پیروی کرده اند. در این جا عمده ترین سئوال هویت شناسانه می پرسد کدام یک از مجموعه های زیستی پراکنده در سراسر ایران، در موقعیت های نخستین و کنونی و به چه دلیل و نشانه و تشابه، دنباله ی بومیان ایران کهن اند و چه همخوانی ماهوی در تولید و فرهنگ، میان ساکنان پس از اسلام و اقوام ماقبل پوریم وجود دارد؟

 

 

 

According to Pourpirar above: a few historic sites which are said to be Parthian, are indeed either clearly related to Greeks or are modern forgery. He claims all inscriptions which are said to be Sassanid are modern forgeries. He also believes that historical personalities such Mazdak, Mani, Zoroaster, Babak, Abu Moslem, Salman the Persian  were also invented by modern Jewish historians.

 

 

Actual quote of Pourpiar to one of his followers:

http://www.naria.blogfa.com/post-34.aspx

 

 

آقای یشایایی در آن مذاکره ی دراز مدت تلفنی نیز یادآور شدم که قتل عام مردم و محو تمدن و هستی شرق میانه، در ۲۵۰۰ سال پیش در ماجرای تاریخی پوریم، از نظر مورخ قابل دفاع تر از این دروغ نویسی و جعلیاتی است که مورخین و باستان شناسان یهود در تولیدات تاریخی قرن اخیر آورده اند، و برای پر کردن خلاء دراز مدت هستی در منطقه ی ما ، که حاصل گستردگی قتل عام پوریم بود، افسانه های اشکانیان و ساسانیان و زردشت و اوستا و مزدک و مانی را بر هم انباشته اند، جاعلانه کتیبه های ساسانی حک کرده اند، برای کورش در یک کشتزار چغندر، با دزدی از مصالح مسجد مسلمین، شهرک پاسارگاد ساخته اند، صدها خیانت دیگر در پراکندن اسراییلیات در میان اسناد فرهنگی مسلمین مرتکب شده اند که حاصل آن تولید شکاف و ایجاد تفرقه و دشمنی در میان مسلمین بوده است و گفتم که آن سبوی به شدت محافظت شده ی پوریم به همت تحقیقات مجموعه ی «تاملی در بنیان تاریخ ایران»، از دست یهودیان رها شده و شکسته است و اینک خردمندان منطقه ی ما از محتویات متعفن آن باخبرند.

 

 

He claims that all the history of Iran between Purim till modern day Safavids are forgeries.  Regarding reliability of Iranian dynasties he says: ‘So everyone should know that the builders of the false historical and social lies of the last two thousand years between Purim till the Safavids were the Jews.  They wanted to hide their genocide and thus used lies by fabricating history.’’

 

Exact quote:

 

پس بدانید که سازنده ی تحرک اجتماعی دروغین، در دو هزار سال فاصله ی میان پوریم تا صفویه یهودیان اند، قصد اختفای نسل کشی کهن خویش را داشته اند و در این مورد از شگرد دروغ بافی غول آسا و غیر قابل مقاومت پیروی کرده اند ( پورپیرار/ مدخلی بر ایرانشناسی ... ( ۳۸ ) مورخ )۸/۱۲/۸۵(

 

 

The anti-Iranism of Pourpirar is so extreme that he praised Saddam Hussein as the "Great Arab hero" and the "symbol of resistance”.  Yet Asgharzadeh says about Pourpirar: Naser Poorpirar (or Pourpirar) is a very intelligent historian, and a very complex character.

 

See:

(Mazdak Bamdadan, “Jomhuriye Islami va Hoviyat Melli-e Ma”, Friday the 27th of Azar, 1383 (Pesian Hejri Calendar))

 

Of course Alireza Asgharzadeh does not mind, as long as Pourpirar throws some curses here and there against Medes, Achaemenids, Parthians, Sassanids and the Aryan (this term will be discussed in part 4) heritage of Iran.

 

 

Some more examples of Pourpirar’s revisionism from his own writing.

 

با اين توضيح کوتاه، اينک به کلمه‌ی "اورمزد" در کتيبه‌ داريوش بازمی‌گرديم که ترکيبی است توصيفی از دو واژه‌ی "اُو=اور" و "مزَد=مزدا". جزء اول اين ترکيب از واژه‌های شناخته شده و بسيار مصطلح غرب ايران و بين‌النهرين [ميان‌رودان]، به معنای شهر و سرزمين است... جزء دوم واژه ترکيبی اُرمزد، يعنی "مزد" همان کلمه‌ای است که در فارسی جديد بدل به مُزد شده است که خاورشناسان به غلط آن را "Muzd" می‌نويسند. اين کلمه در اوستايي "ميژد" آمده است که با مژده امروزين بسيار نزديک است» (دوازده قرن سکوت، ص124، سطر 22به بعد) و سپس «... و بدتر از آن متکی به متن اوستاست، که تدوین آن به همین اواخر در هند و با واژگان گجراتی باز می گردد» (همان، ص 134-135. (

 

 

Here Pourpirar on one hand is claiming to be an expert in Old Persian and saying Ahura Mazda in the Old Persian Inscription is wrongly interpreted by western scholar and it means land and country-reward.  He tries to base his idea on the wrong interpretation of the Avesta version Mizhd (which has no etymological relationship to Avesta/Old Persian Ahura Mazda).  But at the same time, 10 pages later, Pourpirar says: ‘’and worst than that is to rely on Avesta, which was recently compiled in India with Gujarat words”.   So Pourpirar relies on a non-liguistic amateurish reading of an Avesta word to misinterpret Old Persian, but later on he wants to show that Avesta was a recent creation of western scholarship!  Where-as linguist today are uniform that had it not been for the Avesta, Old Persian would not have been deciphered and anyone versed in history knows that cuneiform writing was deciphered through Old Persian.   For example we quote the Encyclopedia Encarta:

 

‘’

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761563112/Cuneiform.html

The task of deciphering the Persian cuneiform was made easier by existing knowledge of Pahlavi, a later Persian language.

The decipherment itself took well-nigh half a century, and would probably have been impossible altogether had it not been for two scholars who made significant if unwitting contributions to the process by publishing studies which, though not concerned at all with the Persepolis cuneiform inscriptions, proved to be a fundamental aid to the decipherers. One of the scholars was the Frenchman A. H. Anquetil-Duperron, who spent much time in India collecting manuscripts of the Avesta, the sacred book of Zoroastrianism, and learning how to read and interpret Old Persian, the language which it was written.  His relevant publications appeared in 1768 and 1771, and gave those attempting to decipher the Persepolis cuneiform inscriptions some idea of Old Persian, which proved most useful for the decipherment of Class I of the trilinguals once it had been postulated-because of its prominent position in the inscription that it was Old Persian.

 The other scholar was A. I. Silvestre de Sacy, who in 1793 published a translation of the Pahlavi inscriptions found in the environs of Persepolis, which although dating centuries later than the Persepolis cuneiform inscriptions revealed a more or less stereotyped pattern that might be assumed to underlie the earlier monuments as well.

‘’

 

 

Another example of Pourpirar’s revisionism.

 

http://commenting.blogfa.com/?blogid=naria&postid=307&timezone=12642

 

آقای سالح. سلسله ی هخامنشی از یک نظر به سلسله ی پهلوی در زمان ما شبیه است، از داریوش اول آغاز و به فرزندش خشایارشا ختم می شود. در اسناد موجود هخامنشی، مثلا در مجموعه ی کتیبه ها، چنان که با هیچ سال شماری آشنا نباشند، هرگز به تاریخ گذاری مسلسل برنخورده ایم. بنا بر این کشف این که مثلا خشایارشا در چند سال قبل از مسیح سلطنت اش را آغاز کرده ناممکن است. احتمالا حدس های کنونی در باب سال ظهور و سقوط سلاطین هخامنشی را با اسطرلاب تعیین کرده اند.

 

Here Pourpirar is saying that the Achaemenids are like the Pahlavids of our time.  They start with Darius I and their dynasty is ended by his son Xerxes.  There was no Achaemenid Kings after this.

 

A recent and funny theory proposed by Pourpirar is that Salman Al-Farsi, the companion of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH&HP) and Mazdak, the reformer of Zoroastrian religion are creation of Jews. 

 

http://mr-torki.blogfa.com/post-66.aspx

   

In his book, Poli bar Gozashteh (A bridge to the past), the 3rd volume, Pourpirar writes:

 

 

اينك به وظيفه تبعيت از حقيقت و خرد و نيز به قصد انسداد اين راه به ظاهر بازگشوده و هموار كرده يهود كه به نيت ايجاد شكافي وسيع تر در شرق ميانه، در اين گرماگرم نبرد يهود و مسلمانان، به تامل در بنيان باورهاي ديرين پرداخته ام و مقصدم هجوم به دو بت سنگي ايراني است كه يكي را از پيش و ديگري از پس اسلام در راه مسلماني ايرانيان غلطانده اند. دو حكيم و مصلح و خردمند دروغين، مزدك و سلمان كه به سعي قلم هايي، اينك بر تارك تاريخ ايران چون دو ابوالهول نشسته اند، سنجش صحت و يا نادرستي اسناد و شناسنامه معرفي اين دو، راه را براي به آزمايش طلبيدن ديگر عناصر پرآوازه اين گونه افسانه ها باز مي كند

 

"اينك به وظيفه تبعيت از حقيقت و خرد و نيز به قصد انسداد اين راه به ظاهر بازگشوده و هموار كرده يهود كه به نيت ايجاد شكافي وسيع تر در شرق ميانه، در اين گرماگرم نبرد يهود و مسلمانان، به تامل در بنيان باورهاي ديرين پرداخته ام و مقصدم هجوم به دو بت سنگي ايراني است كه يكي را از پيش و ديگري از پس اسلام در راه مسلماني ايرانيان غلطانده اند. دو حكيم و مصلح و خردمند دروغين، مزدك و سلمان كه به سعي قلم هايي، اينك بر تارك تاريخ ايران چون دو ابوالهول نشسته اند، سنجش صحت و يا نادرستي اسناد و شناسنامه معرفي اين دو، راه را براي به آزمايش طلبيدن ديگر عناصر پرآوازه اين گونه افسانه ها باز مي كند

 

 

 

 

It would take the author too long to discuss all the wild theories of Pourpirar’s.  But his anti-Persianism, anti-Iranic stance and anti-Semitic stance and the admiration of Alireza Asgharzadeh and other pan-Turkists for him proves that Alireza Asgharzadeh under the cover  of anti-racism is nothing but a pan-Turkism nationalist trying to weaken the Iranian and Persian identity of Iran.  Indeed enough books and articles have already debunked the revisionist theories of Pourpirar although anyone sane would not such a person seriously.  Let alone someone that is trying to publish an academic book but then again Alireza Asgharzadeh is just a lecturer at a university which is a position below assistant Professorship.  Thus perhaps the university he is affiliated with does not care what sort of non-scholarly material is used by their affiliates.

 

About the background of Pourpirar, not too much is certain except that he lacks academic credential in ancient Iranian history and does not have knowledge of any ancient languages of Persia.  What is clear is that his original name was not Naser Pourpirar but Naser Bana-Konnandeh.  He was a former member of the Tudeh party as told in the memoirs of Kiyanoori.

 

 

خاطرات نورالدين كيانوري» (انتشارات روزنامة اطلاعات، تهران، 1382) در صفحات 516 و 517، كيانوري (دبير كل وقت حزب توده)، ناصر بناكننده (پورپيرار) را اينگونه معرفي مي‏كند:

 

ناصر بنا كننده، كه «پورپيرار» امضا مي‏كرد، پس از اخراجش از حزب در سال 1358 به علت خوردن پول حزب و كلاهبرداري از شركايش در انتشارات «نيل» و بالاكشيدن حق التأليف آقاي محمود اعتمادزاده (به آذين)، با نام مستعار «ناريا» به انتشار جزوه‏هايي عليه حزب و بدگويي به شخص من، كه دستور اخراج او را داده بودم، پرداخت.

آشنايي من با بناكننده در آلمان صورت گرفت. او، حدود يك سال پيش از پيروزي انقلاب، به برلين غربي آمد و به ياد ندارم به وسيله چه فردي [؟!] تقاضاي ديدار با ما را كرد. او در اين ديدار ادعا كرد كه با هوشنگ تيزابي همكاري داشته و وسايل چاپي را كه هوشنگ با آن اولين جزوه‏هاي به سوي حزب را منتشر كرده در اختيار هوشنگ گذاشته است. خود او حروفچين چاپخانه بود و بعداً با شراكت دو نفر ديگر يك بنگاه انتشاراتي تأسيس كرده و با كلاهبرداري از همه ثروت قابل ملاحظه‏اي اندوخته بود. او در اين ديدار ادعا كرد كه نقشه‏اي براي ترور شاه دارد. او اين نقشه را چنين شرح داد كه خيال دارد زميني در جاده نياوران ـ كه شاه معمولاً از آنجا با اتومبيل به كاخ ييلاقي‏اش مي‏رود ـ خريداري كند و از آن زمين نقبي تا وسط خيابان حفر كند و در آنجا بمب نيرومندي كار بگذارد و هنگام عبور اتومبيل شاه از آن نقطه بمب را منفجر كند. او نظر مرا درباره اين طرح خواست. اولين نتيجه‏گيري من درباره او اين بود كه يا ديوانه است و يا پرووكاتور. غير عملي بودن اين طرح را توضيح دادم و گفتم كه به جاي اين نقشه‏هاي غير عملي بهتر است كه با امكاناتش به تكثير نشريات حزب در ايران بپردازد. به اين ترتيب، اولين ديدار و آشنايي ما به پايان رسيد.

پس از بازگشت به ايران و آغاز فعاليت حزب، [ پس از پيروزي انقلاب اسلامي ] بناكننده به دفتر حزب آمد و حاضر شد چاپ روزنامه مردم را در برابر پرداخت هزينه آن عهده‏دار شود. اين كار به او محول شد. پس از چندي شعبه انتشارات حزب، كه مسئول آن محمد پورهرمزان بود، به من گزارش داد كه با تحقيق روشن شده كه صورت هزينه چاپ روزنامه و كتب، كه بناكننده ارائه مي‏دهد، بسيار بيش از نرخ عادي است. به همين علت پورهرمزان خواست كه از دادن انتشارات حزب به او خودداري كنم. من موافقت كردم. اين تصميم، بناكننده را سخت عصباني كرد و من اطلاع يافتم كه او به اتاق پورهرمزان ـ در دفتر حزب ـ رفته و به شكل توهين آميزي با او صحبت مي‏كند. من از اتاق خود در طبقه بالا به اتاق پورهرمزان در طبقه پائين رفتم و شاهد برخورد اوباشانه او شدم. بلافاصله مأمورين انتظامات حزب را خواستم و گفتم كه او را از دفتر حزب بيرون كنند و ديگر راه ندهند. عليرغم اين مسئله و عليرغم انتشار جزوات توسط او عليه حزب، آقاي طبري به روابط «دوستانه» و «رفيقانه» خود با اين فرد فاسد ادامه داد و با او مكاتباتي داشت كه بعداً توسط بناكننده مورد سوء استفاده قرار گرفت. ناصر بناكننده پس از مدتي به علت ارتباط با مأمورين سياسي بلغارستان توسط جمهوري اسلامي دستگير و به زندان اوين فرستاده شد . او در دادگاه انقلاب ادعا كرده بود كه هميشه مخالف حزب بوده است! نمي‏دانم به چه مدت محكوم و كي آزاد شد.

 

Partial English translation of Kiyanoori:

 

Naser Bana-Konnandeh, who signed his name as Pourpirar was dismissed from the party (Hezb Tudeh) in 1980 due to stealing the funds of the party and the money of his business partners in the NIL publishing house. Afterwards he started to go against the Hezb and started publishing articles against me.

My acquaintance with Bana-Konnadeh took place in Germany. One year before the revolution, he came to West Berlin and I am not sure which contact it was that set up a meeting between us… In the meeting he said he has a plan for the terror of the Shah. His plan was to buy a piece of land near Niyavaran road, the road where the Shah’s automobile usually traveled on for access to his summer palace. Through this land, he described that he will dig a hole underground, and connect the hole all the way through the middle of the road and place a powerful bomb in the hole and when Shah’s car goes through that exact spot, he will detonate the bomb. Bana-Konnandeh wanted my opinion on this. I thought that he was either crazy or a provocateur. The plan’s non-practical nature was apparent to me and I explained that it was not practical and it would be better for him to publish the manuscripts of the Tudeh party. Thus, through this meeting, we became acquainted.

After coming back to Iran (after the victory of the revolution), Bana-Konnandeh came to the office of the Tudeh party and offered to publish the newspaper titled “Mardom”(People). After a while it became apparent to us that he was overcharging highly for the newspapers and books he is publishing on the parties behalf. Thus Pur-Hormozan, head of publication branch of Tudeh Party , conferred with me and it was agreed that we should not use the services of Bana-Konnandeh anymore. This decision made Bana-Konnandeh extremely angry and I heared a report that he went to the office of Pur-Hormozan in the party’s headquarters and had insulted him severely. I went upstairs to Pur-Hormozan’s room and saw at first hand the uncivil manner of Bana-Konanndeh. Immediately I called upon the party’s security member and ordered that Bana-Konnandeh is not to be allowed anymore in the headquarters of the party. Despite this matter and despite his reaction, which he started to publish against the party, Ehsan Tabari (a high ranking communist member) continued his relationship with this corrupt person and wrote letters to Bana-Konnandeh. The letters were used later on by Bana-Konnandeh to his advantage in order pursue his point of view. Bana-Konnandeh after a while later was arrested by the Islamic Republic for contacting political leaders of Bulgaria and was sent to Evin prison. In the revolutionary court, he claimed that he was against Tudeh since the beginning! I am not sure how long he was jailed and when he was released.

 

 

For responses to Pourpirar, one can refer to:

http://www.azargoshnasp.net/Pasokhbehanirani/main.htm

 

The following books have been published in response to Pourpirar's historic revisionism:

 

*The glorious Millenaries  هزاره های پرشکوه  by Dariush Ahmadi

(داریوش احمدی ، هزاره های پرشکوه، موسسه فرهنگی انتشاراتی گرگان، خيابان انقلاب، خيابان فلسطين جنوبى، مؤسسه‌ى فرهنگى - انتشاراتى فروهر، تلفن 66462704)D. Ahmadi, Hezarehaye Por Shokooh,  Foruhar Publishing House, 2007 

 

See also the book's weblog: http://www.azargoshnasp.net/Pasokhbehanirani/main.htm

 

*Twelve centuries of splendor دوازده قرن شوه by Amir Limiai and Dariush Ahmadi  (

امير نعمتي ليمايي - داريوش احمد، دوازده قرن شکوه، انتشارات اميد مهر، 1383، 120 صفحه، مركز پخش كتاب: تهران، خيابان انقلاب، خيابان فخررازي ( روبه‌روي دانشگاه تهران )، نبش فاتحي داريان، انتشارات معین)

http://www.azargoshnasp.net/Iran/shokoohdavazdahbakhshyek.htm

 

 

*Cyrus and the Bible by Houshang Sadeghi

 

( کورش و بابل   هوشنگ صادقی - کوروش و بابل، موسسه انتشارات نگاه، فروشگاه: تهران- خ 12 فروردین، شماره 21، طبقه همکف، تلفن 66480379)

 

http://www.azargoshnasp.net/Pasokhbehanirani/kurushbabolsadeghi.htm

 

*The Veracity of ancient Persian and Arya  اعتبار باستان شناختی آریا و پارس by Mohammad *Taqi 'Ataii and Ali Akbar Vahdati <ref>محمد تقي عطايي و علي اكبر وحدتي، اعتبار باستان شناختي آريا و پارس، شيرازه

 

http://www.azargoshnasp.net/Iran/etebaarbaastaanshenaasi.htm

 

*The glorious Millenaries: an website with collection of articles in response to Pourpirar http://ariya.blogsky.com

 

It should be noted that Javad Heyat, Sadiq Mohammad Zadeh and many other pan-Turkists have heavily praised Pourpirars theories and given it space in their pan-Turkist journals (Varliq : An Azeri magazine published freely in Iran showing Azeri Turkic is not banned as pan-Turkists claim).  The humorous thing is that no one really takes Pourpirar seriously except pan-Turkists and the reason pan-Turkists take Pourpirar seriously is due to the fact that they simply can not bear the creativity and dynamasim of Iranian civilization and its contribution to humanity.

 

Brenda Shaffer

 

Brenda Shaffer maintains a webpage here:

http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/person.cfm?item_id=312

 

 

 

http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/BCSIA_content/images/Brenda_Shaffer.jpg

According to her website:’’ Brenda Shaffer is a post-doctoral fellow at the International Security Program and the former Research Director of the Caspian Studies Project at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Dr. Shaffer's main research interests include political, social, and security trends in the Caucasus and Central Asia, with emphasis on the Republic of Azerbaijan; the Azerbaijani minority in Iran; ethnic politics in Iran; Iranian nuclear program and security policy; Russian-Iranian relations; Iranian foreign policy, with emphasis on Iran’s policy in Central Asia and the Caucasus; U.S.–Iranian relations; energy and politics, especially in the Caspian region, and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. She is also interested in the impact of newly established ethnic-based states on co-ethnics beyond those states' borders as well as the effect on collective identity of political borders that divide co-ethnics.  Dr. Shaffer received her Ph.D. from  Tel Aviv University for her work on "The Formation of Azerbaijani Collective Identity: In Light of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Soviet Breakup." She has worked for a number of years as a researcher and policy analyst for the Government of Israel and reads a number of languages, including Turkish, Russian, Azerbaijani, and Hebrew. She has served in the Israel Defense Forces. Dr. Shaffer has published in a number of scholarly journals and newspapers, including and an article in Current History entitled, “Is there a Muslim Foreign Policy?” and “Iran at the Nuclear Threshold,” (Arms Control Today   November 2003). Dr. Shaffer's op-ends have appeared in a number of newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, and the Boston Globe. She is the author of the books: Partners in Need: The Strategic Relationship of Russia and Iran (the Washington Institute for Near East Policy) and Borders and Brethren: Iran and the Challenge of Azerbaijani Identity (MIT Press, 2002). Dr. Shaffer is also the editor of  Limits of Culture: Islam and Foreign Policy (MIT Press, 2006). She frequently is consulted by government for a and international organizations on policy in the Caspian region.

From the above it becomes apparent that Brenda Shaffer does not know Persian or Arabic, the main two languages of the region.  Specially with regards to classical history and culture, she has no access to primary sources since she lacks the necessary linguistic background.  Indeed, virtually almost all the primary sources about the history of Azerbaijan before the 20th century are in Persian and Arabic.  Perhaps if she had witnessed Naser Pourpirar’s writing at first hand, she would not have been smiling like the above picture.

 

It also becomes apparent that she is a policy analyst for the government of Israel and has served in the Israeli military.  This author does not involve himself with modern politics, but it does not take a genius to note that the government of Israel and the Islamic republic of Iran are not exactly best of friends, although this is not the case for the Jewish and Iranian people.  Indeed Persian Jews are one of the oldest Jewish communities and even the Jews of the caucus, including those of the modern day republic of Azerbaijan, speak a Persian dialect called Tati. 

 

But due to the political differences between Iran and Israel, it would be natural for people like Brenda Shaffer to make the short term mistake of supporting the anti-Semitic and anti-Iranian writings of Pourpirar and Asgharzadeh and supporting separatist tendencies in Iran.  Heck it doesn’t matter for Brenda Shaffer if Pourpirar is anti-Semite or Asgharzadeh has clear pan-Turkism tendencies (as to be demonstrated later in this article), what matters is that all three of them will work together to weaken the national identity of Iran.   Also it is interesting that Alireza Asgharzadeh constantly belittles colonialism where as Brenda Shaffer fits exactly into the definition of neocons.  And Pourpirar believes everything evil is due to Jews.  I guess when it comes to anti-Iranism, we have what is called “strange bed fellows”.

 

Now going back to Brenda Shaffer.  Some of her recent articles clearly show that she is concerned about Iran’s nuclear program,  the rest of the stuff like pan-Turkism and Pourpirar etc.. are just means and tools to put pressure on the Iranian government.

 

http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/publication_list_by_person.cfm?item_id=312

 

For example:

Shaffer, Brenda. "Leaning on Iran Not to Make Nukes: A Test for the World." The International Herald Tribune (22 September 2003).

 

Shaffer, Brenda. "U.S. Policy in the South Caucasus in the Second George W. Bush Administration." Proceedings of the International Conference on the Prospects for Cooperation and Stability in the Caucasus. Conference Paper, IstanbulFoundation for Middle East and Balkan Studies, 1 March 2005.

 

Shaffer, Brenda. "If Iran is Not Checked, Nuclear Terror is Next: America Needs a Plan." The International Herald Tribune (9 August 2004).

 

Any reader can judge that Brenda Shaffer does not care about Iranians and Azerbaijani Iranians.  But to sow the seed of ethnic discord through the likes of Alireza Asgharzadeh is a strategy to weaken Iran and thus in this era, Pourpirar, Asgharzadeh and Shaffer are united in their hatred for Iran and Iranians.  For Brenda Shaffer, it is a way to put pressure on the Iranian identity and hence the Iranian government.  We will discuss foreign interference in fomenting ethnic discord in a later section of this article.

 

According to the prestigious Harpers Magazine, in the article “Academics for Hire” by Ken Silverstein,  May 30, 2006.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/05/sb-followup-starr-2006-05-30-29929

 ‘’ In defending his own program Starr wrote in one email, “fyi: Harvard's Caspian Studies Program receives a lot of money from both the oil companies and from some of the governments.” I share Starr's concerns here, and since I briefly mentioned Harvard in my original story, and since several readers asked for more details, let me provide it here. As I had previously reported, the Caspian Studies Program (CSP) was launched in 1999 with a $1 million grant from the United StatesAzerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (USACC) and a consortium of companies led by ExxonMobil and Chevron. The program's other funders include Amerada Hess Corporation, ConocoPhillips, Unocal, and Glencore International.

The website of the USACC describes the Caspian Studies Program as a “joint venture” that unites Harvard's “world-renowned faculty and intellectual resources with the pragmatic talents, experience and potential of the USACC members. The Program is a unique opportunity to raise the profile of the Caspian region in the United States [and] increase the understanding of the U.S. policymaking and business communities of the region's problems.”

CSP offers “executive training programs for Azerbaijani leaders,” which bestows upon its students the title of USACC Fellows. USACC, says the website, “is proud to note that a number of young and highly-skilled Azerbaijanis have been able to benefit from these fellowships and emerge as new leaders of their country.” I'd wager that, upon entering the government, the Fellows are only too happy to help out the oil companies and other corporations that paid for their education. The CSP issues Policy Briefs, and one of its first was “Energy Security: How Valuable is Caspian Oil?” Very valuable, as it turns out, and thus, the brief suggests, the United States should make nice with Caspian governments.

Harvard's program is led by Brenda Shaffer, who is so eager to back regimes in the region that she makes Starr look like a dissident. A 2001 brief she wrote, “U.S. Policy toward the Caspian Region: Recommendations for the Bush Administration,” commended Bush for “intensified U.S. activity in the region, and the recognition of the importance of the area to the pursuit of U.S. national interests.” Shaffer has also called on Congress to overturn Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, which was passed in 1992 and bars direct aid to the Azeri government. The law has not yet been repealed, but the Bush Administration has been waiving it since 2002, as a payoff for Azeri support in the “war on terrorism.”

The American historian Ralph E. Luker echoes Silversteins article, saying:

“Silverstein's second article also implicates Harvard historian Brenda Shaffer, who is research director of the University's Caspian Studies Program, in similar apologias. These programs appear to be largely funded by regional regimes, American oil and industrial investors in the region, and right-wing foundations in the United States.”( http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/25951.html History News Network)

 

 

Brenda Shaffer’s book:’’  Borders and Brethren: Iran and the Challenge of Azerbaijani Identity” and her plagiarism has been covered in the reviews by Dr. Touraj Atabaki and Dr. Evan Siegel (who she thanks in the introduction of her book, but what is interesting is that Professor. Siegel wrote one of the most critical and harshest reviews after the book was published).  Here are the addresses for the reviews:

 

http://www.azargoshnasp.net/recent_history/atoor/bookreviewsiegel.htm

http://www.azargoshnasp.net/recent_history/atoor/atabakishaffer.pdf

 

Evan Siegel strongly criticizes the book for being full of mistakes; inaccuracies; misinterpretation and misquoting sources and the book's failure to provide documentations to support Shaffer’s observations.   For example he writes: ‘’ Shaffer portrays the 1920 revolt of Sheikh Mohammad Khiabani along the lines of the scholarship emanating from Caucasian Azerbaijani academia, although with less control of the facts. For instance, she claims that the sheikh’s journal, Tajaddod, was bilingual, when it was actually in Persian only.  She mentions that the sheikh’s party had a branch in Azerbaijan, but does not mention its paper’s full title (which is mentioned in the sources she uses)—“Azerbaijani, an Inseparable Part of Iran.”  Along the same lines, the author mentions that the sheikh changed the name of the province he now ran to Azadestan, but neglects to provide the context that both friend and foe give: this change was adopted because the Caucasian Azerbaijanis declared their republic to be the republic of Azerbaijan, and the sheikh was thereby repudiating their northern neighbor’s invitation to join them.  There is no record that “Khiabani decreed the right to use the Azerbaijani language in the province.   Such a decree would have been met with incomprehension, since the language had never been banned.’’

 

Evan Siegel concludes: "Brethren and Borders is a highly political book on an emotional subject which needs careful, dispassionate analysis. Its chapters on the historical background is full of inaccuracies. Its chapters on current events and trends include a few interesting observations which don’t appear in the literature, but most of it is readily available elsewhere."

 

Recently I read an article where she considered Farhand from Khusraw o Shirin of Persian romance (and it is originally a Persian Sassanid romance not Turkish) as an Azeri!  Everyone knows Farhad was from Kermanshah and at that time, Azeri ethnic group was not formed today.  This example is sufficient to show the depth of her lack of knowledge with regards to Iran.  Thus as the Harper magazine accurately describes it, Brenda Shaffer is a scholar for higher who does not care about scholarly integrity.  So Brenda Shaffer as shown is paid and financed by foreign governments.  Interestingly enough, pan-Turkists have even distorted the works of Brenda Shaffer when translating her book into Persian:

 

دروغ اندر دروغ- تحریف  آمار برندا شیفر (مدافع پان ترکیستها در غرب) به قلم خود پان ترکیستهای نابکار 

 

Interestingly enough, recently in a forum I saw a report about another writer.  Charles van der Leeuw, who wrote the ''Azerbaijan: A Quest for Identity'' This work is a propaganda piece which is considered nothing more than propoganda. It received harsh reviews. A review for example: ''This combination of carelessness and inaccuracy is characteristic of the book as a whole...'' the review also traces mistakes that some of which any newbie not even well versed in the subject will find and trace. The reviewer after citing some of those writes: ''His interpretation resembles the one developped by Azerbaijani nationalists in the Soviet Era:...'' (Muriel Atkin, Russian Review, Vol. 60, No. 4. (Oct., 2001) p. 663-62.)

 

Here another review on his other work titled : Storm over the Caucasus: In the Wake of Independence. The reviewer writes: ''Rather than filling any void in the study of the Caucasus, van der Leeuw has managed to produce one of the poorest books ever written on the region in recent years...'' ''Van der Leeuw's apparent lack of Khnowledge about existing sources is one possible explanation for the numerous flaws found in his volume... '' (Hovann Simonian, Central Asia Surver (2000), 19(2) 297-303.)

 

Here, another review: ''Merely to lost the technical (to say nothing of the much more crucial factual) mistakes occuring here would take up the space normally allotted to a whole review, and so all I can do is suggest a flavour of what is in store for the reader.'' (George Hewitt, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 62, No. 3. (1999), pp. 593-594).

 

He lived in Baku since 1992 supporting the pipeline construction, his work: Oil and Gas in the Caucasus & Caspian: A History, Palgrave Macmillan (September 2, 2000) is a propaganda work.  Thus Shaffer and van der Leeuw are financed by powerful oil lobbies and governments and they are not unbiased academic scholars.

 

Mohammad Taqi Zehtabi

 

A pan-Turkist revisionist quoted by Alireza Asgharzadeh is Mohammad Taqi Zehtabi.  Some of the very absurd but non-ingenious theories of Mohammad Taqi Zehtabi, published in his book are discussed in this section.  The reason the theories are non-ingenious is that such theories have been put forth by pan-Turkists of Turkey since the advent of Ataturkism.

 

 

The political background of Zehtabi is not 100% clear although like Brenda Shaffer and Pourpirar, he comes from a deeply rooted ideological-political background. The connections with political pan-Turkism is undeniable.  According to an Iranian newspaper:

 

قابل ذکر است که محمود پناهیان(یکی از عضو بلند پایه فرقه تجزیه طلب دموکراسی) پس از فرار به شوروی ، در سالهای دهه 1350 شمسی در یک ماموریت از باکو به بغداد اعزام شد و در آنجا ضمن همکاری با رژیم بعث عراق به تاسیس یک گروه سیاسی به نام «جبهه ملی خلقهای ایران» دست زد و شعبه هایی از ان به تبلیغ قوم گرایی در آذربایجان، کردستان ، بلوچستان و خوزستان ایران پرداخت. مدتی بعد، محمد تقی زهتابی چهره شناخته شده پان ترکیست (که در شاخه جوانان فرقه دموکرات فعالیت داشت)، به پناهیان پیوست و در بغداد رادیوی گروه او به تبلیغ اندیشه های پان ترکی پرداخت و در دانشگاه بغداد نیز تدریس کرد. وی پس از سقوط شاه به ایران بازگشت و به ترویج افکار پان ترکی در تبریز مشغول شد، و همو بود که با تکیه بر نوشته های پان ترکی و تاریخ نگاری تخیلی محافل پان ترکی باکو و استانبول-انکارا، و سر هم بندی حوادث پراکنده تاریخی و تحریف انها تلاش کرد و کتابی به نام «تاریخ باستان ترکهای ایران» را از چرندیات پان ترکی ترکیه رونويسي كرد، که اصولا آذربایجان را از حوزه تمدن ایران خارج می کرد و به جهانی پان ترکی متصل می ساخت.

 

 

That is Zehtabi was part of the youth organization of the Stalin created Ferqeh party of Pishevari (more on Ferqeh will be discussed in this article).  He was either exiled from Baku for his pan-Turkism activities to Baghdad or was sent there for special reasons.  He worked with the Ba’athist regime in Baghdad under the organization “Jebhe Melli Khalgh-haayeh Iran” (The united front of Iranian peoples) which worked to increase ethnicism in Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Baluchistan and Khuzestan.  He joined Mahmud Panahiyan (a high member of Ferqeh in Baghdad) and worked in the radio program of the group, spreading pan-Turkism and also started teaching in Baghdad.  After the fall of the Shah, he moved to Tabriz and started spreading pan-Turkism political and historical revisionist.  Either way, Zehtabi’s academic background is obscure and his political background is shadowy.

 

According to Alireza Asgharzadeh, Zehtabi is ’’A well-respected Azeri scholar Mohammed Taqi Zehtabi has published a two-volume history book that traces the indigenous history of Iranian Turks well over 6, 000 years back, challenging thus the legitimacy of the dominant group's denial of indigenous history for the Turks in Iran’’(pg 177).    It is not clear where the mark “well-respected” came from, but if it means well-respected in modern academia and scholarship, the claim is certainly not true.  The first part about the claims of 6000 years backs of Turkish history in Iranian Azerbaijan is easily dismissed by reliable scholars and sources.  

 

For example Professor Tadsuez Swietchowski (who is fairly Pro-Azerbaijani source) states:

 

What is now the Azerbaijan Republic was known as Caucasian Albania in the pre-Islamic period, and later as Arran.  From the time of ancient Media (ninth to seventh centuries b.c.) and the Persian Empire (sixth to fourth centuries b.c.), Azerbaijan usually shared the history of what is now Iran.  According to the most widely accepted etymology, the name “Azerbaijan” is derived from Atropates, the name of a Persian satrap of the late fourth century b.c. Another theory traces the origin of the name to the Persian word azar (”fire”‘) - hence Azerbaijan, “the Land of Fire”, because of Zoroastrian temples, with their fires fueled by plentiful supplies of oil.

 

Azerbaijan maintained its national character after its conquest by the Arabs in the mid-seventh century a.d. and its subsequent conversion to Islam. At this time it became a province in the early Muslim empire. Only in the 11th century, when Oghuz Turkic tribes under the Seljuk dynasty entered the country, did Azerbaijan acquire a significant number of Turkic inhabitants. The original Persian population became fused with the Turks, and gradually the Persian language was supplanted by a Turkic dialect that evolved into the distinct Azerbaijani language. The process of Turkification was long and complex, sustained by successive waves of incoming nomads from Central Asia. After the Mongol invasions in the 13th century, Azerbaijan became a part of the empire of Hulagu and his successors, the Il-Khans. In the 15th century it passed under the rule of the Turkmens who founded the rival Qara Qoyunlu (Black Sheep) and Aq Qoyunlu (White Sheep) confederations. Concurrently, the native Azerbaijani state of the Shirvan-Shahs flourished.

(Swietochowski, Tadeusz, AZERBAIJAN, REPUBLIC OF,., Vol. 3, Colliers Encyclopedia CD-ROM, 02-28-1996)

 

 

 

Professor Vladimir Minorsky also states:

 

‘’ In the beginning of the 5th/11th century the G̲h̲uzz hordes, first in smaller parties, and then in considerable numbers, under the Seldjukids occupied Adharbayjan.  In consequence, the Iranian population of Adharbayjan and the adjacent parts of Transcaucasia became Turkophone.

(Minorsky, V.; Minorsky, V. "Ad̲h̲arbayd̲j̲an " Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman , Th. Bianquis , C.E. Bosworth , E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2007.)

 

 

Professor Peter Golden who has written the most comprehensive book on Turkic people, in his book (An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples by Peter B. Golden. Otto Harrasowitz (1992)).  Professor Golden confirms that the Medes were Iranians and Iranian languages like Talyshi/Tati speakers are being absorbed into Turkish speakers.  Considering the Turkic penetration in the caucus and the Turkification of Iranian Azerbaijan, Professor Golden states in pg 386 of his book:

 

Turkic penetration probably began in the Huunic era and its aftermath. Steady pressure from Turkic nomads was typical of the Khazar era, although there are no unambiguous references to permanent settlements. These most certainly occurred with the arrival of the Oguz in the 11th century. The Turkicization of much of Azarbayjan, according to Soviet scholars, was completed largely during the Ilxanid period if not by late Seljuk times. Sumer, placing a slightly different emphasis on the data (more correct in my view), posts three periods which Turkicization took place: Seljuk, Mongol and Post-Mongol(Qara Qoyunlu, Aq Qoyunlu and Safavid). In the first two, Oguz Turkic tribes advanced or were driven to the western frontiers (Anatolia) and Northern Azarbaijan(Arran, the Mugan steppe). In the last period, the Turkic elements in Iran(derived from Oguz, with lesser admixture of Uygur, Qipchaq, Qaluq and other Turks brought to Iran during the Chinggisid era, as well as Turkicized Mongols) were joined now by Anatolian Turks migrating back to Iran. This marked the final stage of Turkicization. Although there is some evidence for the presence of Qipchaqs among the Turkic tribes coming to this region, there is little doubt that the critical mass which brought about this linguistic shift was provided by the same Oguz-Turkmen tribes that had come to Anatolia. The Azeris of today, are an overwhelmingly sedentary, detribalized people. Anthropologically, they are little distinguished from the Iranian neighbors.

 

 

 

According to Professor Xavier De Planhol:

“Azeri material culture, a result of this multi-secular symbiosis, is thus a subtle combination of indigenous elements and nomadic contributions, but the ratio between them is remains to be determined. The few researches undertaken (Planhol, 1960) demonstrate the indisputable predominance of Iranian tradition in agricultural techniques (irrigation, rotation systems, terraced cultivation) and in several settlement traits (winter troglodytism of people and livestock, evident in the widespread underground stables). The large villages of Iranian peasants in the irrigated valleys have worked as points for crystallization of the newcomers even in the course of linguistic transformation; these places have preserved their sites and transmitted their knowledge. The toponyms, with more than half of the place names of Iranian origin in some areas, such as the Sahand, a huge volcanic massif south of Tabriz, or the Qara Dagh, near the border (Planhol, 1966, p. 305; Bazin, 1982, p. 28) bears witness to this continuity. The language itself provides eloquent proof. Azeri, not unlike Uzbek (see above), lost the vocal harmony typical of Turkish languages. It is a Turkish language learned and spoken by Iranian peasants.”

 

 

It is interesting to note that the Oghuz Turks who turkified Azerbaijan linguistically were not themselves pure Turks according to Mahmud Kasghari.

Turkology-expert N. Light comments on this in his Turkic literature and the politics of culture in the Islamic world (1998):

"... It is clear that he [al-Kashgari] `a priori´ excludes the Oghuz, Qipchaq and Arghu from those who speak the pure Turk language. These are the Turks who are most distant from Kâshghari's idealized homeland and culture, and he wants to show his Arab readers why they are not true Turks, but contaminated by urban and foreign influences. Through his dictionary, he hopes to teach his readers to be sensitive to ethnic differences so they do not loosely apply the term Turk to those who do not deserve it. ..."

 

N. Light further explains:

"... Kashgari clearly distinguishes the Oghuz language from that of the Turks when he says that Oghuz is more refined because they use words alone which Turks only use in combination, and describes Oghuz as more mixed with Persian ..."

 

Thus Alireza Asgharzadeh simply ignores well established academics and relies on a revisionists like those of Zehtabi and Pourpirar  to sketch the history of Iran.  The reason is that the recorded history of Iranian Azerbaijan had nothing to do with Turkic groups until the Oghuz tribes (although it should be mentioned that Babak Khorramdin fought against Turkish soldiers of the Abbassid Caliphas who were mercenaries and slaves from central Asia and Khazaria).  Even after the influx of Oghuz tribes, Turkification was not completed until the mid Safavid times.  For example Evliya Chelebi, the Ottoman traveler records that the Women of Maragheh speak Pahlavi.  The name Azerbaijan, itself going back to the Persian satrap Atropates is unrelated to the Turkic languages.

 

Interestingly enough, Zehtabi’s thesis are the anti-thesis of that of Pourpirar, since Pourpirar believes there was no living in creature in Iran after Purim till the beginning of Islam and the Sassanids, Parthians, Achaemenid dynasties are forgeries.  Where-as Zehtabi in a funny attempt at historical revisionism attempts to present the Parthians, Scythians, Medes, Elamites, Sumerians, Manneans, Lulubis, Gutis, Urartuians.. as Turks.

 

 

Let examine some of the claims of Zehtabi himself.  Zehtabi’s main source is actually the book about “Medes” from I.M. Diakonoff and also 19th century scholarship re-manufactured.    The same sort of 19th century sort of scholarship that Alireza Asgharzadeh condemns in his book.  Zehtabi not only falsifies facts in his book, but he also distorts the words of I.M. Diakonoff which he relies heavily on. 

 

 

The term ''Turanian'' was formerly used by European especially in Germany, Hungary, Slovak ethnologists, linguistics and romantics to designate populations speaking non-Indo-European, non-Semitic and non-Hamitic languages. (See: Abel Hovelacque, The Science of Language: Linguistics, Philology, Etymology , pg 144) and specially speakers of Altaic, Uralic and Dravidian languages.  Marx Muller classified the Turanian language family into different sub-branches.  The Northern or Ural-Altaic division branch compromised Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Samoiedic, and Finnic.  The Southern branch consisted of Dravidian languages like Tamil, Malay and other Dravidian languages.  The languages of the Caucus (Georgian, Chechen, Lezgin..) were classified as the ''scattered languages of the Turanian family”.  Muller also began to muse whether Chinese belonged to the Northern branch or Southern branch.   (See: George “van” Driem, Handbuch Der Orientalistik, Brill Academic Publishers, 2001.  pp 335-336).

 

 

The main relationship between Dravidian, Uralic and Altaic languages are basically poorly defined as typological.  According to Encyclopedia Britannica: ''Language families, as conceived in the historical study of languages, should not be confused with the quite separate classifications of languages by reference to their sharing certain predominant features of grammatical structure.''("language." Encyclopedia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 27 Apr. 2007)

 

Today languages are classified based on the method of comparative linguistics rather than their typological features.  According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Max's Muller proposal ''efforts were most successful in the case of the Semites, whose affinities are easy to demonstrate, and probably least successful in the case of the Turanian peoples, whose early origins are hypothetical''(religions, classification of." Encyclopedia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopedia Britannica Online).  Today the linguistic usage of the word Turanian is not used in the scholarly community to denote classification of language families. The relationship between Uralic and Altaic, whose speakers were also designated as part of the Turanian people in 19th century European literature is also disregarded today.

 

Pan-Turkists like Zehtabi use the wrong term “Agglutinative language ethnic groups”(Qowmhaayeh Eltesaghi Zaban)  in order to rewrite Turkic history.  They do not have the necessarily linguistic background to understand what these terms actually mean. 

Agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view.  The term is not used to denote language family let alone ethnic groups.  For example the following languages all have agglutinating features (some less and some more):

 

1)      Uralic

2)      Altaic

3)      Dravidian

4)      Aborigine languages of Australia

5)      Basque language

6)      African languages like Bantu

7)      South, North West, North East Caucasian languages

8)      North American languages including Nahuatl, Salish..

9)      South American native languages

 

 

 

According to the linguistic definition:

‘’Agglutinative is sometimes used as a synonym for synthetic, although it technically is not. When used in this way, the word embraces fusional languages and inflected languages in general. The distinction between an agglutinative and a fusional language is often not sharp. Rather, one should think of these as two ends of a continuum, with various languages falling more toward one end or the other. In fact, a synthetic language may present agglutinative features in its open lexicon but not in its case system: for example, German, Dutch.’’

 

For example even Indo-European languages show agglutinating features. 

 

In English we have many words which agglutinate (extend) to form other words.  If we take the simple word - argue - then we can agglutinate it to - argument - by sticking on a -ment suffix.  We can further agglutinate this word with other suffixes viz.: -ative giving argumentative - and even further to - argumentatively by adding a further -ly suffix.
For example in Persian one can make the long word: نوکاروارسراداران

No(New)+Kar+Van (Caravan) Sara(Place) Dar (holder)+an (plural).

 

Thus pan-turkist take one small feature in many languages and claim that these languages are Turkic.

 

This method of falsifying language families has been discussed in the following Persian Article:

http://www.azargoshnasp.net/recent_history/pan_turkist_philosophy/sumd/buqalamoonsumeri.htm

 

and in the article:

On the Idea of Sumerian-Uralic-Altaic Affinities (CA 1973)

 

Which was written as a response to a Hungarian nationalist by professional linguists.  It is not bad to present the response of Professional linguist to the likes of Zehtabi.

 

Professor Mridula Adenwala Durbin:

“The division of languages into agglutinating and inflectional refers to only one segment of the total structure of language, namely morphology. Compar­able morphology between two languages is not necessarily an indicator of their genetic affiliation”

(Comments: Current Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 1971) pg 216) 

Professor William H. Jacobsen

“The typological characteristic of being agglutinative, from which the argument starts, is so poorly defined as to be of little significance, as one can immediately see from its application to Caucasian languages as well as to Uralic and Altaic languages. The general structure of Sumerian is really quite different from that of Uralic in many ways. For example, in Uralic languages verb in­flection   is   exclusively   by   suffixes, whereas in Sumerian the verb complex contains, in addition to suffixes, prefixes of several different position classes, expressing pronoun objects of various kinds, as well as modal and lexical concepts. The stem in Sumerian, but not Uralic, may be reduplicated to express such categories as plurality and and intensity. In any case, typological features are at best heuristic, not pro­batory of distant relationships.

(Comments: Current Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 1971) pg 218)

 

Professor Johann Knobloch: 

“For example, the Indo-European language, Tocharian, is agglutinative like Sumerian and Hun­garian; yet no one would relate Tocharian with these two languages. “

(Comments: Current Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 1971) pg 219)

 

 

Professor W.P. Lehman:

“One of the clearest results of historical linguistic studies is the finding that genetic relationships have only minor correlations with typological characteristics. For example, the Indo-European language, Tocharian, is agglutinative like Sumerian and Hun­garian; yet no one would relate Tocharian with these two languages. If CA wants to present ideas on historical linguistics for discussion, it might review the generally held conclusions about possible correlations between genetic relationships and typological charac­terizations rather than this very dubious statement.”

(Comments: Current Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 1971) pg 219)

 

Professor Joe E. Piece:

 “The term "agglutinative" is only one of a large number of typological labels that can be applied to languages. The notion goes back at least to Friedrich and August von Schlegel (1808, 1818, cited repeatedly in Home 1966), and it can­not be considered an absolute term, but only a relative one. Presumably echoes of this 19th-century typology simply continue to appear in brief popular treatments of the Sumerian language such as those mentioned”

(Comments: Current Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 1971) pg 221)

 

Professor H.K. J. Cowan:

“As to the former: terms like "ag­glutinative, " "isolating," and "flexional" are rather dubious and do not indicate any genetic relationship. Finnish, for instance, is often regarded as typically "agglutinative, " but here we find what may be regarded as "flexional" forms, such as vesi 'water' (nominative) , but vetta (partitive) and veden (genitive); sido-n 'I bind,' sido-t 'thou bindest,' sito-o 'he binds,' etc. (Jespersen 1950: 79). Chinese is often thought to be typically "isolating," bu tKarlgren (1920) has shown that Proto-Chinese was "flexional." English, "flexional" by origin, seems on its way to "isolation." Therefore, even if we accept the terms as justified for typological classification they say nothing about genetic relation­ship”

(Comments: Current Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 1971) pg 222)

Professor Istvan Fodor:

“The similarity of the grammatical structure of the languages compared has no relevance at all for a common origin if the congnateness of the contrasted grammatical morphemes (of similar or different function) cannot be shown by stable sound laws.  Modern English, with its many monosyllabic roots and little formal modification is, is more like Modern Chinese(which was not always monosyllabic) with regards to some structural features than it is like Anglo-Saxon or Latin or Russian.  In any case, major structural linguistic types are not numerous and the 3000 or more languages of the world can be divided into a few groups independently of their origin.  Furthermore, one Sumerologist (Kluge 1921) is that of the opinion that Sumerian cannot be compared structurally with the Finno-Ugric stock, but should instead be compared with Hamitic and many Sudanic languages.  By the way, meinhoff(1914- 1915) made the first observation concerning some Sumerian and African(Bantu and Hamitic) structural and lexical parallels.”(CA vol 17 No. 1  , March 1976)”(Istvan Fodor Current Anthropology, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 115-118)

Professor. Gerard Caluson:

“I have reached as result of many years of study of a good many languages regarding the time-honoured but now discredited trichotomy of agglutinating, flexinal and isolating languages.  It seems to me that these are, at most, stages through which languages may, perhaps must, pass over the centuries, and that they way in which a language is categorized depends primarily on the characteristics which are selected as decisive.  English is now, for example, regarded as an isolating language, but it is conceded that it was earlier a flexional language and that traces of this still survive in the cojungation of verbs.  But if attention is concentrated on such groups of words as “parent, parenthood,” , “man, manly, manliness”, and “rest, restless and restlessness” it is hard to deny it the status of an agglutinating language in the classical sense of the term.”

(Gerard Clauson Current Anthropology, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Oct., 1973), pp. 493-495)

 

 

‘’The division of languages into agglutinating and inflectional refers to only one segment of the total structure of language, namely morphology.  Comparing morphology between two languages is not necessarily indicator of their genetic affiliations.  For example African languages like Bantu, Swahili, Dravidian languages like Tamil, Malay, Aboriginal Australian languages, the language of native Americans, the Caucasian languages like Georgian, Laz, Chchen, the Indo-European language like Tocharian as well as to a lesser extent German, Uralic and Altaic languages and Polynesian languages  are all agglutinating, but they are placed in different language groups.   For example, the Indo-European language, Tocharian, is agglutinative like Sumerian and Hungarian, yet no one would relate Tocharian with these two languages.’’

 

‘’ I have reached as result of many years of study of a good many languages regarding the time-honored but now discredited trichotomy of agglutinating, flexional and isolating languages.  It seems to me that these are, at most, stages through which languages may, perhaps must, pass over the centuries, and that they way in which a language is categorized depends primarily on the characteristics which are selected as decisive.  English is now, for example, regarded as an isolating language, but it is conceded that it was earlier a flexional language and that traces of this still survive in the conjugation of verbs.  But if attention is concentrated on such groups of words as “parent, parenthood,” , “man, manly, manliness”, and “rest, restless and restlessness” it is hard to deny it the status of an agglutinating language in the classical sense of the term.”

 

‘’ The typological characteristic of being agglutinative, from which the argument stats, is so poorly defined as to be of little significance, as one can immediately see from its application to Caucasian languages as well as to Uralic and Altaic languages.  Sumerian is really quite different from that of Uralic in many ways.  For example, in the Uralic

Languages verb inflection is exclusively by means of suffixes, whereas in Sumerian the verb complex containing, in addition to suffixes, prefixes of several different position classes, expressing pronoun objects of various kinds, as well as modal and lexical concepts.  In any case, typological features are at best heuristic, not probatory of distant

Relationships. (William H. Jacobsen, J.R., Vol 12. No 2)’

 

 

‘’ The similarity of the grammatical structure of the languages compared has no relevance at all for a common origin if the cognateness of the contrasted grammatical morphemes (of similar or different function) cannot be shown by stable sound laws.  Modern English, with its many monosyllabic roots and little formal modification is, is more like Modern Chinese(which was not always monosyllabic) with regards to some structural features than it is like Anglo-Saxon or Latin or Russian.  In any case, major structural linguistic types are not numerous and the 3000 or more languages of the world can be divided into a few groups independently of their origin.  Furthermore, one Sumerologist (Kluge 1921) is that of the opinion that Sumerian cannot be compared structurally with the Finno-Ugric stock, but should instead be compared with Hamitic and many Sudanic languages.  By the way, meinhoff(1914-1915) made the first observation concerning some Sumerian and African(Bantu and Hamitic) structural and lexical parallels.”(CA vol 17 No. 1  , March 1976)’’

 

Furthermore, Sumerian uses liberally both suffixes and prefixes in its morphology. In this sense, it differs from other Asiatic agglutinative languages like Ural-Altaic (Uralic and Altaic), Dravidian, Japanese and Korean, which use almost exclusively suffixes in the conjugation of the verb and declension of nouns and pronouns.

 

John Hayes, University of California, Berkeley who wrote a recent book titled:

 

 “Sumerian”  2nd printing June 1999, Languages of the World/Materials 68,
LINCOM EUROPA, Paul-Preuss-Str. 25, D-80995 Muenchen, Germany.

In the introduction he says:


”Sumerian has the distinction of being the oldest attested language in
the world. Spoken in the southern part of ancient Mesopotamia, the
Iraq of today, its first texts date to about 3100 BCE. Sumerian died
out as a spoken language about 2000 BCE, but it was studied in the
Mesopotamian school system as a language of high culture for almost
two thousand more years. A language-isolate, Sumerian has no
obvious relatives.  Typologically, Sumerian is quite different from
the Semitic languages which followed it in Mesopotamia. It is
basically SOV, with core grammatical relationships marked by affixes
on the verb, and with adverbial relationships marked by postpositions,
which are cross-referenced by prefixes on the verb. It is split
ergative; the perfect functions on an ergative basis, but the
imperfect on a nominative-accusative basis.  Because Sumerian is an isolate,

 and has been dead for thousands of years, special problems arise in trying to elucidate its
grammar. There are still major challenges in understanding its
morphosyntax, and very little is known about Sumerian at the discourse
level. This volume will describe some of the major questions still to
be resolved.”

 

 

Unlike Turkish, Sumerian is an Split-Ergative language.  Pahlavi (and Miiddle Iranian in general) was split-ergative, like modern Kurdish.  In Middle Iranian (as in Middle Indo-Aryan [and modern Hindi, Punjabi,Rajasthani, Marathi and Sindhi]), the original Indo-European past tenses (imperfect, perfect, aorist) had been abandoned in favour of a construction involving the past participle passive.  For transitive verbs, this means that "I hit him" was replaced by "He (was) hit by me", resulting in an ergative construction, with the object in the direct (nominative) case, and the subject in the indirect case (old genitive in Iranian, old instrumental in Indo-Aryan).

 

Zehtabi’s fallacy is like calling Sumerian language as Kurdish, because Sumerian language shares with Kurdish the split-ergative features.  And then from the split-ergativity feature of Kurdish, calling both Kurds and Sumerians :”Split-ergative ethnic groups”.  As absurd as this would sound, this sort of non-technical and absurd argument is sowed by pan-Turkists and taken seriously by the likes of Alireza Asgharzadeh to distort Irans history! And also falsely and ridiculously attempt to show Turks had 6000 years of history in Iran!  Actually even Sumerians where from about 5000 years ago so I guess in such wild theories so I guess for pan-Turkists Turks are the oldest group in the world.

 

The people claimed by Zehtabi to have been Turks include Scythians, Parthians, Medes, Sumerians, Elamites, Mannaeans, Urartuians, Hurrians and dozens of groups.  It is interesting that Alireza Asgharzadeh also supports these assertions about Medes.  So the case of the Medes needs to be discussed in details.  Some of these groups like Elamite and Sumerian are not classified in the same language family (for example Elamite and Sumerian are both considered language isolates), but yet Zehtabi claims all of them were Turks!

 

 

Many pan-Turkists on the internet too claim that Sumerian and Turkish are related.  They bring examples of faulty wordlists.  For example a pan-Turkism by the name of Polat Kaya has brought a Sumerian-Turkish list:

http://www.compmore.net/~tntr/sumer_turk1of5.html

 

Just examining the first word: “All”.. the author through a series of sound changes believes that the Sumerian word all is related to the Turkish words “Tamam” and “Har Kas” and “Hami”.  The approach has multiple problems, the least of them being that the word Tamam is Arabic and the word “Hars Kas” and “Hami” are Persian.

 

The author Polat Kaya also in another article claims that the words “Genocide, Holocaust, annihilation, cancellation, abrogation, eradication, homicide..” are not Latin words but Turkish words.

http://www.compmore.net/~tntr/cide.html

 

 

Such words lists comparing Sumerian to other modern languages have been brought by other sort of nationalist groups:

 

Sumerian and PIE

 

Sumerian and PIE 2

 

Sumerian and proto-Indo-European Lexical Equivalence - Latvian Comparison 1

 

Sumerian and proto-Indo-European Lexical Equivalence - Latvian Comparison 2

 

Lexical Correspondences between Sumerian and Dravidian

 

Sumerian si-in and Old Tamil cin: A study in the Historical Evolution of the Tamil Verbal System

 

Sumerian :TAMIL  of the First CaGkam

 

Sumerian and Basque

 

Austric relationship of Sumerian Language

 

But are not taken seriously by scholarship. 

 

An example of Zehtabi’s scholarship:

 

http://www.golha.net/urmu/tarix/045.htm?u=Hamed

 

زبان خوزی-ایلامی، نه تنها در قرون اولیهء اسلامی وجود داشته، بلکه حتی امروز نیز متکلمان آن در خوزستان و اطراف شهر شوش که پایتخت ایلامیان بوده است به حیات و بقای خود ادامه میدهند.

 

Translation:

The language of Khuz-Elami, not only did not die out during the first centuries of Islam, but even till today it’s speakers are leaving  near the city of Shusha which was the capital of Elamites!

 

Thus Zehtabi’s false claims that Elamite is not a dead language and its speakers may be found near the city of Shusha.

 

 

Therefore as can be seen, both Zehtabi and Pourpirar have zero reliability and credibility but Alireza Asgharzadeh uses them for the majority of histography in his work.   Also there is nothing ingenious about Zehtabi’s work as he has just recycled pan-Turkism historical revisionism of Turkey.  For example the Turkish pseudo-scholar Tankut in a two volume book much like Zehtabi’s pushes historical revisionism to new levels:

 

‘’ He Turkifies Sumerian, Hittite, reckons the races of the Euphrates and India as

"among the principal races of these (Turkish) yurts."

Alongside Sumerian and Indian inhabitants, the Akkadians, Elamitcs, Anzani, Kassitcs, Carians, Protohittites, Hittites, Mitanni, Hurians, Luwians, Saka,

"...each one of these peoples used a similar language and were Turkish by race."

 As for the great family of Semitic languages it too was Turkish:

"As there is no independent Semitic tongue so there is not an independent Arab language. Each one of these in its turn, from Sumerian and Akkadian... are languages born of ancient Turkish.”( Speros Vryonis, Jr., Turkish State and History
Clio Meets the Gray Wolf , Institute for Balkan Studies; 2nd edition (September 1992), The
, pg 85)

 

Even recently, the Turkish cultural minister claimed that the Prophet of Islam was a Turk and the news was posted all over the internet:

 

Former [Turkish] Minister of Culture Namik Kemal Zeybek has claimed that the Prophet Muhammad was a Turk.

Speaking at a conference on “The New World Order and Turkey” held at the Alanya Turkish Hearth, Namik Kemal Zeybek said that the most important nation in the world’s eight thousand years of history are the Turks, and that it was the Turks that taught civilization to humanity.

Claiming that the roots of the Turkish Nation extend back to the Sumerians, Zeybek said that “Our Prophet Muhammad’s origins also go back to the Sumerians. Consequently, the Prophet Muhammad was also a Turk.”

 

Medes

 

Zehtabi through the manipulation of I.M. Diakonoff’s work tries to prove that the Medes were actually Turkic speakers.  This position is also taken up by Alireza Asgharzadeh.  But Diakonoff is very clear that the Medes were Aryans.

 

«تنها مورد استعمال مجاز اصطلاح آريايي درباره اقوامي است كه در ازمنه باستاني خود، خويشتن را آريا مي ناميدند. هنديان[12] و ايرانيان (پارسيان)[13] و مادها[14] و اسكيت ها[15] و آلان ها[16] و اقوام ايراني زبان آسياي[17] ميانه خود را آريا مي خواندند»

(ا. م. دياكونوف: «تاريخ ماد»، ترجمه كريم كشاورز، انتشارات علمي و فرهنگي، 1380، ص 142، سطرهاي 5 تا 9).

 

Translation:

 

The only correct usage of the term Aryan is for ancient groups that called themselves Aryans.  Indians, Iranians (Persians), Medes, Scythians, Alans and other Iranian groups of Central Asia (Diakonoff then gives reference to Parthians) called themselves Aryans.

 

It does not get clearer than this, yet Zehtabi claims Medes, Scythians, Parthians (see the same page of Diaknoff where Aryan Parthian names are discussed)  are Turks.

 

Professor. Diakonoff gives a background on his writing of the book of Media and he clearly states as he always had maintained that the Medes were Iranians.

 

http://www.srcc.msu.su/uni-persona/site/ind_cont.htm

 

I.M. Dyakonoff. (1915- 1999)

Publisher: «إâًîïهéٌêèé نîى» (European House), Sankt Petersburg, Russia, 1995

700 copies

ISBN – n/a

 

The book of memoirs

 

Last Chapter (After the war)
pp 730 - 731 

Our faculty at the University, as I already mentioned, was closed "for Zionism". There was only one position left open (“History of the Ancient East") which and I have conceded to Lipin, not knowing for sure then, that he was an (secret service - AB) informer, and was responsible for death of lovely and kind Nika Erschovich. But Hermitage salary alone was not enough for living, even combined with what Nina earned, and I, following to an advice from a pupil of my brother Misha, Lesha Brstanicky, [signed a contract and] agreed to write "History of the Media" for Azerbaijan.


All they searched for more aristocratic and more ancient ancestors, and Azerbaijanis hoped, that Medes were their ancient ancestors.

 

The staff of Institute of history of Azerbaijan resembled me a good panopticon. All members had appropriate social origin and were party members (or so it was considered); few could hardly talk Persian, but basically all were occupied by mutual eating (office politics - AB). Characteristic feature: once, when we had a party (a banquet) in my honor at the Institute director’ apartment (who, if I am not wrong, was commissioned from a railway related-job), I was amazed by fact that in this society consisted solely of Communist party members, there were no women. Even the mistress of the house appeared only once about four o'clock in the morning and has drunk a toast for our health with a liqueur glass, standing at the doors.
 
The majority of employees of the Institute had very distant relation to science. Among other guests were my friend Lenja Bretanitsky (which, however, worked at other institute), certain complacent and wise old man, who according to rumors, was a red agent during Musavatists time, one bearer of hero of Soviet Union medal, arabist, who later become famous after publication of one scientific historical medieval, either Arabic, or Persian manuscript, from which all quotes about Armenians were removed completely; besides that there were couple of mediocre archeologists; the rest were [Communist] party activists, who were commissioned to scientific front.

 

Shortly before that celebrations of a series of anniversaries of great poets of the USSR people started. Before the war a celebration of Armenian epos hero of David of Sassoon anniversary took place (epos’ date was unknown, though). I caught only the end of the celebrations in 1939 while participating in the expedition, excavating Karmir Blur [in Armenia]. And it was planned an anniversary of the great poet Nizami celebration in Azerbaijan. There were slight problems with Nizami - first of all he was not Azeri but Persian (Iranian) poet, and though he lived in presently Azerbaijani city of Ganja, which, like many cities in the region, had Iranian population in Middle Ages.  Second, according to the ritual, it was required to place a portrait of the poet on a prominent place, and whole building in one of the central areas of Baku was allocated for a museum of the paintings illustrating Nizami poems.

Problem was that the Koran strictly forbids any images of alive essences, and nor a Nizami portrait, neither paintings illustrating his poems never existed at all.

So Nizami portrait and paintings illustrating his poems were ordered three months before celebrations start.  The portrait has been delivered to the house of Azerbaijan Communist party first secretary Bagirov, local Stalin. He called a Middle Ages specialist from the Institute of History, drew down a cover from the portrait and asked:
- Is it close to original?
- Who is the original? - the expert has shy mumbled. Bagirov has reddened from anger.
- Nizami!
- You see, - the expert told, - they have not created portraits in Middle Ages in the East...

All the same, the portrait occupied a central place in gallery. It was very difficult to imagine more ugly collection of ugly, botched work, than that which was collected on a museum floor for the anniversary.

I could not prove to Azeris, that Medes were their ancestors, because, after all, it was not so. But I wrote "History of the Media", big, detailed work.   Meanwhile, according to the USSR law a person could not have more than one job, so I was forced to leave (without a regret) Azerbaijan Academy of sciences, and, alas, the Hermitage, with its scanty earnings. For some period I worked at Leningrad’s office of History museum…

 

(It should be noted that Diakonoff here considers Azeris as equivalent to a Turkic group, where-as in this author’s opinion, Azeri’s have a considerable Iranic heritage and thus the Medes and their civilization are part of the broader Iranic heritage).

 

http://www.srcc.msu.su/uni-persona/site/authors/djakonov/posl_gl.htm

 

Original Russian:

 

В Университете нашу кафедру, как я уже говорил, закрыли «за сионизм». По специальности «история Древнего Востока» оставили одну ставку – и я уступил ее Липину, не зная еще тогда достоверно, что он стукач, и на его совести жизнь милого и доброго Ники Ерсховича. Но на одну эрмитажную зарплату было не прожить с семьей, даже с тем, что зарабатывала Нина, и я, по совету ученика моего брата Миши, Лени Брстаницкого, подрядился написать для Азербайджана «Историю Мидии». Все тогда искали предков познатнее и подревнее, и азербайджанцы надеялись, что мидяне – их древние предки. Коллектив Института истории Азербайджана представлял собой хороший паноптикум. С социальным происхождением и партийностью у всех было все в порядке (или так считалось); кое-кто мог объясниться по-персидски, но в основном они были заняты взаимным поеданием. Характерная черта: однажды, когда в мою честь был устроен банкет на квартире директора института (кажется, переброшенного с партийной работы на железной дороге), я был поражен тем, что в этом обществе, состоявшем из одних членов партии коммунистов, не было ни одной женщины. Даже хозяйка дома вышла к нам только около четвертого часа утра и выпила за наше здоровье рюмочку, стоя в дверях комнаты. К науке большинство сотрудников института имело довольно косвенное отношение. Среди прочих гостей выделялись мой друг Леня Бретаницкий (который, впрочем, работал в другом институте), один некий благодушный и мудрый старец, который, по слухам, был красным шпионом, когда власть в Азербайджане была у мусаватистов, один герой Советского Союза, арабист, прославившийся впоследствии строго научным изданием одного исторического средневекового, не то арабо-, не то ирано-язычного исторического источника, из которого, однако, были тщательно устранены все упоминания об армянах; кроме того, были один или два весьма второстепенных археолога; остальные вес были партработники, брошенные на науку. Изысканные восточные тосты продолжались до утра. Незадолго перед тем началась серия юбилеев великих поэтов народов СССР. Перед войной отгремел юбилей армянского эпоса Давида Сасунского (дата которого вообще-то неизвестна) – хвостик этого я захватил в 1939 г. во время экспедиции на раскопки Кармир-блура. А сейчас в Азербайджане готовился юбилей великого поэта Низами. С Низами была некоторая небольшая неловкость: во-первых, он был не азербайджанский, а персидский (иранский) поэт, хотя жил он в ныне азербайджанском городе Гяндже, которая, как и большинство здешних городов, имела в Средние века иранское

 

население. Кроме того, по ритуалу полагалось выставить на видном месте портрет поэта, и в одном из центральных районов Баку было выделено целое здание под музей картин, иллюстрирующих поэмы Низами. Особая трудность заключалась в том, что Коран строжайше запрещает всякие изображения живых существ, и ни портрета, ни иллюстрацион картин во времена Низами в природе не существовало. Портрет Низами и картины, иллюстрирующие его поэмы (численностью на целую большущую галерею) должны были изготовить к юбилею за три месяца.

Портрет был доставлен на дом первому секретарю ЦК КП Азербайджана Багирову, локальному Сталину. Тот вызвал к себе ведущего медиевиста из Института истории, отдернул полотно с портрета и спросил:

– Похож?

– На кого?... – робко промямлил эксперт. Багиров покраснел от гнева.

– На Низами!

– Видите ли, – сказал эксперт, – в Средние века на Востоке портретов не создавали...

Короче говоря, портрет занял ведущее место в галерее. Большего собрания безобразной мазни, чем было собрано на музейном этаже к юбилею, едва ли можно себе вообразить.

Доказать азербайджанцам, что мидяне – их предки, я не смог, потому что это все-таки не так. Но «Историю Мидии» написал – большой, толстый, подробно аргументированный том. Между тем, в стране вышел закон, запрещающий совместительство, и мне пришлось (без сожаления) бросить и Азербайджанскую Академию наук, и, увы, Эрмитаж с его мизерным заработком. Некоторое время работал с Ленинградском отделении Института истории, созданном на руинах разгромленного уникального музея истории письменности Н.П.Лихачсва, а одно время числился почему-то по московскому отделению этого же Института истории."

I guess Zehtabi did not have access to this 1994 published writing of Diakonoff and even if he did, he probably would have considered Medes to be Turkic anyways.

 

Diakonoff is very clear in his article in Cambridge history of Iran, published in 1985:

‘’It is pretty certain that pastoral tribes with subsidiary agriculture who created the archeological Srubnya(Kurgan) and Andorovo cultures of steppes of Eastern Europe, Kazakhistan, and Soviet Central Asia in the 2nd millennium B.C. were the direct precursors of the Scythians and the Sacae, i.e. of the “Eastern” Iranians.  But this means that the division of the tribes speaking Indo-Iranian (Aryan), into Indo-Aryan and Iranians, must have antedates the creation of these two archeological cultures.  It also means that the ancestors of the speakers of Indo-Aryan and “Western” Iranian idioms(Median, Persian and Parthian) must have reached the south-western part of Central Asia and Easter Iran already earlier, by the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C.  During the 2nd millennium a considerable part of the population of the Iranian Plateau must already have spoken Indo-Iranian languages, perhaps even Old Iranian languages.’’

 

Thus Zehtabi’s manipulation of Diakonoff’s scholarly writing shows a clear lack of disrespected for academic scholarship.

 

Indeed classical authors have stated very clearly that the Medes are Arian.

 

Herotodus (7.62) : The Medes had exactly the same equipment as the Persians; and indeed the dress common to both is not so much Persian as Median. They had for commander Tigranes, of the race of the Achaemenids. These Medes were called anciently by all people Arians.

 

Herodotus for example records the word Spaka (dog) in Median.  Interestingly enough this is related to the  modern Persian Sak/Sag, Talyshi Sipi.  Indeed one of the phonetic differences between Old Persian and Median is the transformation of sp->s.  So where-as the Median word for horse is Aspa, the old Persian is Asa.  Both terms are seen in Old Persian inscriptions. 

 

 

Strabo in his geography clearly states (15.8):

 

‘’ the name of Ariana is further extended to a part of Persia and of Media, as also to the Bactrians and Sogdians on the north; for these speak approximately the same language, with but slight variations."

 

The idea that the Medes had any relationship with the discredited theory of Turanian language is a 19th century idea proposed by some Orientalists of the 19th century.  The reason was that the  Elamite trilingual inscription of Bistun was not yet deciphered, and the Old Persian reading was at an early stage and some Orientalists were not sure about the nature of the Elamite inscription and had guessed it was Median.  Zehtabi does not discuss this fact in his book and just cherry picks the 19th century authors that suits his revisionist agenda. 

 

Indeed to quote a website describing mid 19th century research:

 

At the very beginning of the deciphering adventure, when Grotefend, Rawlinson, Westergaard and de Saulcy wrote about the language of the so-called second kind, they did not know they were dealing with Elamite. They named it Median. Why was Elamite called Median? Which is the link between a written language and his name, and the people who spoke it? How did Median become today Elamite?

As soon as the first kind was connected to the language of Avesta, which was known since the second half of the 18th century and supposed to be located in Bactria, it was named Old Persian and therefore located in Persia. Then the languages of the second and third kind could be related to «the neighbouring countries of ancient Media and Susiana». As to the language of the second kind, the name 'Median' was preferred, even if Westergaard was aware that doing so, he disregarded the testimony of Strabo «who plainly tells us –I am quoting Westergaard- that the Medes and Persians spoke nearly one and the same language». It was in 1844 and Westergaard referred to Rawlinson as 'oriental scholar'.

http://digilander.libero.it/elam/elam/second_column_speech.htm

 


Thus Zehtabi simply rehashes obsolete or false theories and other pan-Turkists like Asgharzadeh, simply quotes revisionist works in their books.

 

On some of the other Median words that have survived and clearly show the Iranian nature of the language, one may refer to:

 

Kent, Roland G. (1953). Old Persian. Grammar, Texts, Lexicon, 2nd ed., New Haven: American Oriental Society.  pp. 8-9.

 

 

"Ancient Iran::The coming of the Iranians". Encyclopedia Britannica Online. (2007).

 

Schmitt, Rüdiger (1989). Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: Reichert. 

 

"Ancient Iran::Language". Encyclopedia Britannica Online. (2007).

 

And many other references can be found through google books.

 

http://books.google.com/books?q=%22medes%22+%22Iranian+people%22&btnG=Search+Books

 

It should be mentioned that many scholars including Vladimir Minorsky have connected the Medes with Kurds.  Besides the common Indo-Iranian language, some of the oldest Kurdish writings are preserved by Armenian church documents.  In these documents, Kurdish is explicitly called the “Median Language”.  See here for an example:

 

Language of Medians

David Mackenzie (1959)

 

Parthians

 

There is sufficient manuscripts from Parthian, the Parthian calendar, Parthian inscription of Nisa, Tang Sarvak, …etc. to show that Parthians was Iranian language.

For example, see:

Schmitt, Rüdiger (1989). Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: Reichert. 

Some other scholarly references are given here:

 

http://www.azargoshnasp.net/history/Parthians/parthianmain.htm

 

Since the examples of Parthians are much more than Median, the author will simply refer to the above sources and other modern references:

http://www.parthia.com/

 

http://books.google.com/books?q=Parthian+%22Iranian+tribe%22&btnG=Search+Books

 

 

Other pseudo-scholars mentioned by Asgharzadeh

 

Racist Websites

 

Asgharzadeh’s list of unreliable pseudo-scholars and racist websites goes on.  He cites websites like:

http://www.shamstabriz.com/index.htm

 

The site is full of articles expressing hatred against Armenians, Kurds and Iranians.  For example:

 

http://www.shamstabriz.com/tabrizly-kord1.htm

 

Talks about kicking Kurds out of their native land although as shown in the above, the Medes are native inhabitants of Azerbaijan.  Same with Armenians.  Yet Alireza Asgharzadeh’s racist mind does not know any limit in pursuing his pan-Turkist ethnic agenda

 

 

Javad Heyat

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

 

جواد هيئت در يکي از کتابهايش مي نويسد:"سلطان محمود غزنوي به علت علاقه اي که به زبان فارسي داشت دربارش مرکز شعراي فارسي زبان مانند منوچهري ، فرخي ، اسدي طوسي ، فردوسي و غيره بود و براي اشاعه زبان فارسي در ايران و هندوستان از هيچ اقدامي فرو گذار نکرد. زبان فارسي را در قلمرو حکومت خود رسمي کرد و به گفته مورخين چهل و پنچ هزار معلم براي ياد دادن فارسي به مناطق مختلف ايران گسيل داشت...." ((جواد هيئت، سيري در زبان لهجه هاي تركي، تهران، نشر نو)

 

Translation: Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi because of his strong liking of the Persian language had many Persian poets at his court including Manuchehri, Farrokhi, Asadi Tusi and Ferdowsi and for the spread of the Persian language, he did all he could.  He made Persian official in his court and according to historians, sent out 45000 Persian teachers to different parts of Iran!

 

Interestingly enough, Ferdowsi was not a court poet.  But more interestingly, Dr. Heyat does not provide any source for his absurd claim that Sultan Mahmud sent 45000 Persian tutors to different parts of Iran.  It should be noted that Javad Heyat runs a pan-Turkist journal in Iran called Varliq where the writings of pseudo-scholars like Purpirar and Zehtabi are given prominence.  More interestingly the journal is written in large part in Azerbaijani yet pan-Turkists claim Azerbaijani Turkic is banned in Iran!

 

 

Sadiq Mohammadzadeh

 

Another pan-Turkism pseudo-scholar, revisionist and falsifier is Sadiq Mohammazadeh.  Interestingly enough, just like Javad Heyat and Zehtabi, Sadiq Mohammadzadeh was also educated in a pan-Turkism country (Turkey).  The following is a sufficient example of the absurd beliefs of Sadiq Mohammadzadeh:

 

« البته‌ زبان‌ اوستايي‌ خود يك‌ زبان‌ التصاقي‌ است‌ و 70% از مخزن‌ واژگان‌ اوستايي‌،تركي‌ است‌ كه‌ براي‌ شرح‌ اين‌ موضوع‌ فرصت‌ و مجالي‌ ديگر لازم‌ است‌.»

 

Of course Avesta is an agglutinative language and 70% of the vocabulary of Avesta is Turkish.  This fact can be explained in another opportunity.

 

Alireza Nazmi Afshar


Alireza Nazmi Afshar is another pan-Turkism separatist.  Alireza Asgharzadeh mentions a very interesting comment in baybak.com (a distortion of the Persian name Babak Khorramdain in order to turn an ancient Persian figure into a Turkic figure)

 

http://www.en.baybak.com/?p=266

 

Alireza Asgharzadeh writes:

’ Dr Alireza Nazmi-Afshar, a well-known Azerbaijani activist, warns the Azerbaijanis that the independence of South Azerbaijan from Iran will eventually lead to the independence of Kurds from Turkey, which in his view, would be disastrous to the Turks all over the world. As he puts it,

The Azerbaijanis’ demand for independence from Iran, no matter how reasonable and rightful, will legitimize similar demands on the part of PKK Kurds in Turkey and Dashnak Armenians in Qarabagh… Is this really what we want? By saying this perhaps I will be accused of Pan-Turkism. But if this kind of responsibility towards other Turks and their national interests…is Pan-Turkism…then I am a Pan-Turkism. I am a Pan-Turkism. I am a Pan-Turkism.’’

Interesting enough, the ulterior motive of Alireza Asgharzadeh by agreeing with Alireza Nazmi Afshar is shown.  They know that there are more Kurds in Turkey (20 million+) than Azeris in Iran (despite the pan-Turkism wild claim of 30 million Azeris, it will be shown below how pan-turkists like Asgharzadeh and Nazmi Afshar manipulate statistics and the actual number of Turkic speaking groups is at most 20% of Iran.) and this will cause major headaches for their backers. 

 

A response to one of Alireza Nazmi Asher’s manipulation of ethnic populations in Iran has been given here:

 

http://www.azargoshnasp.net/Pasokhbehanirani/moshtaaghaandighalim2.htm

 

It should be noted that West Azerbaijan (75% Kurdish), Qazvin (mainly Persian), Hamadan (a mixture of different ethnic groups with Azeri’s being 25%), Arak (mainly Persian), from Astara to Rasht (mainly Talysh and Gilak speaking) have been included in the pan-Turkist expansionist map of Nazmi Afshar and supported by Pan-Turkists like Asgharzadeh.  Indeed the fact that West Azerbaijan province is a predominantly Kurdish province has created much headaches for pan-Turkists since it forms a natural border against expansion from Turkey.

 

Thus Asgharzadeh knows that Turkey and Azerbaijan republic will be put in poor shape if Azeris separate.  So he is careful to spread pan-Turkism gradually.  He wants Kurds and Armenians to be taken out first before dealing with the rest of Iranians.  Unfortunately for Alireza Asgharzadeh, that West Azerbaijan and Eastern Turkey is virtually all Kurdish and as he points out, ultimately Turkey will be a big loser in the pan-Turkism again.   Armenia also has shown that is not going to watch for another genocide.   Thus the dream of the pan-Turkism grand union will not be coming any time soon and the Pan-Turkists like Nazmi Afshar and Asgharzadeh will just have to dream about the fake ethnic maps they draw:

http://www.azargoshnasp.net/Pasokhbehanirani/moshtaaghaandighalim2.htm

Another pan-Turkist by the name of Reza Beraheni who also reviews Asgharzadeh’s book was recently very distressed by an accurate map from the BBC and tried to use false statistics in order to enlarge the number of ethnic Azeris:

http://www.azargoshnasp.net/Pasokhbehanirani/pasokhbehberahani.htm

 

All these pan-Turkists have land claims on Iran and any means necessary is used in order to achieve them.  Weather hiding under words such as “racist, anti-racist, colonialism, democtratic struggles” or fascist words like those of Grey wolf)

 

 

 

Historical Turco-Iranian Encounters

 

In this article, we do not deal extensively with Historical Turco-Iranian relations.  It is this author’s belief that these historical encounters had both positive and negative impacts.  But Iranian civilization lost much more where-as Turkish civilization gained from these encounters.  Nevertheless as stated in the beginning, the author does not judge any person by their background.  The discussion brought in this section is historical and should be viewed only in the context of history.  The reason an overview of this historical material is necessary is exactly because the likes of Zehtabi/Purpirar/Asgharzadeh would want to rewrite history.  But that is futile attempt and history can not be changed.  Thus it is important to give a sketch and outline of Turco-Iranian encounters from scholarly materials for two reasons.  The first reason is that many people are not aware of the relationship between these two groups before the 19th century and the era of pan-Turkism.  The second reason is that any reader who is interested in dealing with pan-Turkism (as exemplified by Alireza Asgharzadeh, Zehtabi, Nazmi Afshar and etc.) and Iran should know when Turks came to Iran (the author will refer to the likes of Asgharzadeh, Zehtabi, Afshar and etc. as Turks, but Iranian Azeris who are aware of their Iranian heritage and are not anti-Iran are referred to as Iranian Azerbaijanis). 

 

Most scholars believe Turo-Iranian encounters date back to the Sassanid times.  According to C.E. Bosworth, a well known historian who has written multitude of books and articles on Islamic dynasties, ’’In early Islamic times Persians tended to identify all the lands to the northeast of Khorasan and lying beyond the Oxus with the region of Turan, which in the Shahnama of Ferdowsi is regarded as the land allotted to Fereydun's son Tur. The denizens of Turan were held to include the Turks, in the first four centuries of Islam essentially those nomadizing beyond the Jaxartes, and behind them the Chinese (see Kowalski; Minorsky, “Turan”). Turan thus became both an ethnic and a geographical term, but always containing ambiguities and contradictions, arising from the fact that all through Islamic times the lands immediately beyond the Oxus and along its lower reaches were the homes not of Turks but of Iranian peoples, such as the Sogdians and Khwarezmians.’’.( Encyclopedia Iranica, "CENTRAL ASIA: The Islamic period up to the mongols", C. Edmund Bosworth)

 

Similaly he states:

‘’ The collapse of the native Iranian dynasties of the north-east (Iranian regions of central asia) was followed within a few decades by a major migration of Turkish peoples, the Oghuz, from the outer steppes.’’(C.E. Bosworth, The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World (A.D. 1000-1200) in Camb. Hist. Iran V)

 

One of the calamities brought by Turks against the indigenous Iranian Civilizations of Central were the total erasable of Soghdians and Khwarzmians as well as Iranian nomads like those of the Alans, Sakas and etc.  

According to Bosworth:

‘’At the opening of the 5th/11th (Islamic and Christian dates respectively) century, the Iranian world still extended far beyond the Oxus, embracing the regions of Khwarazm, Transoxiana (called by the Arabs Ma ward9 al-nahr, "the lands beyond the river"), and Farghana. In pre-Christian and early Christian times the Massagetae, the Sakae, the Scyths, the Sarmatians, and the Alans—all Indo-European peoples— had roamed the Eurasian steppes from the Ukraine to the Altai.’’ (C.E. Bosworth, The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World (A.D. 1000-1200) in Camb. Hist. Iran V).

 

Indeed Rene Grouse consider the constant attacks on Iranian civilization from the Altaic nomads of central wonders: “For us it is very hard to imagine why the civilization of Iranians after so many calamities did not come to an end”.  See below:

رنه گروسه («ايران ونقش تاريخی آن» ترجمه غلامعلی سيار - مجله هستی - تابستان ۱۳۷۲، ص 105) نیز به حمله بیابانگردان آسیای میانه به ایران اشاره می کند و در پايان نكته ي مهمي را نيز متذكر مي گردد:

« ... لکن در سال ۱۳۸۳ ميلادی تيمور لنگ با نقشه قبلی اين ايالت (= سيستان) را منهدم کرد، به اين طريق که - بار ديگر تکرار می کنم- شبکه آبياری را که عامل باروری زمين بود نابود ساخت و قنوات را کور کرد و در نتيجه، آنها به مرداب مبدل شدند و با برکندن درختان و نيستانها و درختان گز که مانع پيشروی کوير در اراضی مزروعی می شدند اين اراضی به شنزار مبدل نمود.  هيات علمی هاکن(Hakckin) فيلمی که از ساروتار (Sar-Otar) برداشته نشان می دهد که چگونه تاتاران زمين را نابود کرده، نهر آبی که آن را مشروب می کرد مسدود ساخته و آن منطقه را به صحرايی بی آب و علف مبدل کرده اند...و بدين طريق يکی از انبارهای غله ايران تهی از همه چيز گشت تا اين که بعدها قنوات سابق از نو تعبيه شوند. برای ما تصور اين نکته دشوار است که چگونه عمر تمدن ظريف ايرانی، پس از چنين فاجعه هايی به سر نيامد».

 

 

 

 

Victor Hugo, the French philosopher also had a negative view of the nomadic attack on civilization: ‘’ Wherever the Turkish hoof trods, no grass grows.’’.  This author neither condemns or condones such a statement in its own time (not today) but demonstrates that similar examples exist in Persian.

 

In Persian the word Tork-taazi ( Turkish attack) became equivalent to pillage/massacre.

 

Like other civilizations that suffered from invaders and expansion (those of Greece, Armenia....), Iranians poets and writers have also shown hostility to the nomadic encroachment.   We will bring examples of these from Persian literature.  Such excerpts clearly show that Iranians suffered from nomadic Turkic invasions:

 

قطران تبريزی نيزدر بسياری از چکامه هايش ترکان را شايسته سرزنش دانسته و انان را سخت نکوهش کرده است .

نمونه هايی از ان ابيات در ذيل می ايد :

اگر بگذشت از جيحــون گروه ترکمانـــان را // ملک محمـــــــود کــاو را بود زابل کان در سنجر

....

زمانی تازش ايشان به شروان اندرون بودی // زمانـــی حملـــه ايشان بــــه اذربايگــــان انــدر

نبود از تازش ايشان کسی بر چيز خود ايمن // نبود از حمله ايشان کسی بر مال خود سرور (شهرياران گمنام، 1377، ص۱۶۰)

شده چون خانه زنبور با غم از ترکان // همی خلند به فرمان ما چو زنبورم (همان، ص۱۹۷)

قطران در يکی از سروده هايش به هنگام ستايش يکی از فرمانروايان بومی اذربايجان عامل عدم پيشرفت کار او را حضور ترکان برشمرده است :

گر نبودی آفت ترکان به گيتی در پديد // بستدی گيتی همه چون خسروان باستان ( همان، ص۱۹۷)

قطران در بدگويی و مذمت ترک تباران چنان سخن گفته که حتی انان را موجب ويرانی ايران زمين برشمرده و اين مفهوم به روشنی از بيت زير که در ستايش اميری از اميران اذربايجان سرايش يافته برمی ايد :

اگر چه داد ايران را بلای ترک ويرانی // شود از عدلش ابادان چون يزدانش کند ياری ( همان، ص۱۹۷)

اين شاعر اذربايجانی در يکی ديگر از چکامه هايش که در قالب قصيده سروده است ترکان را خونخوار و جرار و غدار و مکار خوانده است :

کمــــر بستند بهــــر کيــن شه ترکان پيکاری // همـــه يکـرو به خونخواری همه يکدل به جراری

يکی ترکان مسعودی به قصد خيل مسعودان // نهاده تن به کين کاری و دل داده به خونخواری

....

چــه ارزد غـدر با دولت، چه ارزد مکـر با دانش // اگـرچـه کــــار ترکان هست غــداری و مکــاری( همان، ص۱۷۲)

 

بنابراین چنان که ملاحظه گرديد، یک شاعر برخاسته از آذربایجان در زماني پیش از ترک زبان شدن آذربایجان، حسي بسیار منفی نسبت به ترکان اغوز آن دوران داشته است.  حال به چه دلیلی این بخش از تاریخ ایران و آذربايجان را جناب رزمی نادیده می گیرد؟

سعدی شيرازی که نزديک به سی سال سير و سفر در در اين سوی و ان سوی سرزمينهای اسلامی کرده بود، علت خارج شدن خود از ايران زمين را نا به سامانی های بر امده از خشونت ترکان بر شمرده است :

ندانی کــــه مـن در اقاليم غربت // چـــرا روزگاری بــکـــــــردم درنــگــــی

برون رفتم از ننگ ترکان که ديدم // جهان درهم افتاده چون موی زنگی

همــــه ادمی زاده بودند ليکــــــن // چـو گرگــان بخونخوارگی تيزچنگی

چــو باز امـدم کشور اسوده ديدم // پـلـنگـــــان رهـــا کرده خوی پلنگی (گلستان سعدی، ص۳۸)

 

عنصری سمرقندی درباره ترکان اغوز و ویرانی های آنان در سمرقند می نویسد:


بر سمرقند اگر بگذري اي باد سحر
نامه اهل خراسان به بر خاقان بر
نامه اي مطلع آن رنج تن و آفت جان
نامه اي مقطع او درد دل و سوز جگر
نامه اي بر رقمش آه غريبان پيدا
نامه اي در شكنش خون شهيدان مضمر
نقش تحريرش از سينه مظلومان خشك
سطر عنوانش از ديده محرومان تر
ريش گردد ممر صوت از او گاه سماع
خون شود مردمك ديده از او وقت نظر
تا كنون حال خراسان و رعايا بوده ست
بر خداوند جهان، خاقان، پوشيده مگر
...
كارها بسته بود بي شك در وقت و كنون
وقت آن است كه راند سوي ايران لشكر
باز خواهد ز غزان كينه كه واجب باشد
خواستن كين پدر بر پسر خوب سير
....
قصه اهل خراسان بشنو از سر لطف
چون شنيدي ز سر رحم در ايشان بنگر
اين دل افگار جگر سوختگان مي گويند
كاي دل و دولت و دين از تو به شادي و ظفر
خبرت هست كه از اين زير و زبر شوم غزان
نيست يك تن ز خراسان كه نشد زير و زبر
خبرت هست كه از هر چه در او خير بود
در همه ايران امروز نمانده ست اثر
بر بزرگان زمانه شده دونان سالار
بر كريمان جهان گشته لئيمان مهتر
بر در دونان احرار، حزين و حيران
در كف رندان, ابرار اسير و مضطر
شاد، الا به در مرگ نبيني مردم
بكر جز در شكم مام نبيني دختر
مسجد جامع هر شهر ستورانشان را
پايگاهي شده، ني نقشش پيدا و نه در
خطبه نكنند به هر خطه غزان، از پي آنك
در خراسان نه خطيب است كنون نه منبر
كشته فرزند گراميش اگر نا گاهان
بيند از بيم خروشيد نيارد مادر
بر مسلمانان زان شكل كنند استخفاف
كه مسلمان نكند صد يك از آن بر كافر...
رحم كن رحم كن بر آن قوم (=ايرانيها) كه جويند جوين
از پس آن كه بخوردند ز انبان شكر
رحم كن رحم كن بر آن قوم كه نبود شب و روز
در مصيبتشان جز نحوه گري كار دگر
رحم كن رحم كن بر آنها كه نيابند نمد
از پس آن كه ز اطلس شان بودي بستر.....

 

خاطرات نجم الدين رازي معروف به دايه نیز گواه خوبی در اين باره است.  وي يکي از رهبران مهم صوفيه و نثر نويس پخته اين روزگار است که تا سال 653 زنده بوده است. او شاگرد نجم الدين کبري است که در حمله مغولان به خوارزم در ميدان جنگ کشته شده است. مهم ترين اثر وي، کتاب مرصاد العباد است که راه هاي سلوک عرفاني را به زبان پارسي دري شرح داده است. دربخشي از اين متن به حمله ترک و مغول و گريز خود اشاره کرده است. با هم اين بخش را مي خوانيم:
«در تاريخ شهور سنۀ سبع و عشر و ستمائه (617) لشکر مخذول ِ کفار تتار استيلا يافت بر آن ديار ، و آن فتنه و فساد و قتل و اسر و هدم و حرق که از آن ملاعين ظاهر گشت، در هيچ عصر و ديار کفر و اسلام کس نشان نداده است و در هيچ تاريخ نيامده الا انچه خواجه(پيغمبر) عليه الصلوة و السلام از فتنه هاي آخر الزمان خبر باز داده است و فرموده: لا تَقومُ السٌاعة حتي تُقاتِلوا التٌُرک صغارَ الاعين حُمرَ الوجوه ذلف الانوف کان وجوههم المجان المطرقة ، صفت اين کفار ملاعين کرده است و فرموده که ، قيامت برنخيزد تا آنگاه که شما با ترکان قتال نکنيد، قومي که چشم هاي ايشان خرد باشد و بيني هايشان پهن بود و روي هاي ايشان سرخ بود و فراخ همچون سپر پوست در کشيده. و بعد از آن فرموده است: و يکثر الهرج، قيل: يا رسول الله! ما الهرج؟ قال:القتل ، القتل. فرمود که قتل بسيار شود. به حقيقت، اين واقعه آن است که خواجه عليه الصلوة و السلام به نور نبوت پيش از ششصد و اند سال باز ديده بود. قتل ازين بيشتر چگونه بود که از يک شهر ري که مولد و منشـأ اين ضعيف است و ولايت آن قياس کرده اند ، کما بيش پانصد هزار آدمي به قتل آمده و اسير گشته. و فتنه و فساد آن ملاعين بر جملگي اسام و اساميان از آن زيادت است که در حٌيز عبارت گنجد... عاقبت چون بلا به غايت رسيد و محنت به نهايت و کار به جان رسيد و کارد به استخوان...اين ضعيت از سهر همدان که مسکن بود به شب بيرون آمد با جمعي از درويشان و عزيزان در معرض خطري هرچ تمام تر ، در شهور سنۀ ثمان عشر و ستمائه به راه اربيل و بر عقب اين فقير خبر چنان رسيد كه كفار ملاعين..به شهر همدان آمدند و حصار دادند و اهل شهر به قدر و وسع بكوشيدند و چون طاقت مقاومت نماند - كفار دست يافتند و شهر بستند و خلق بسيار كشند و بسي اطفال را و عورات را اسير بردند و خرابي تمام كردند و اقرباي اين ضعيف را كه به شهر بودند٬ بيشتر شهيد كردند.
باريد به باغ ما تگرگي
وز گلبن ما نماند برگي»

افلاکی شاگرد مولانا جلال الدین از زبان مولانا نقل میکند:

همچنان حکايت مشهورست که روزي حضرت شيخ صلاح الدين (منظورش صلاح الدين زرکوب است) جهت عمارت باغ خود مشاقان ترکي بمزدروي گرفته بود; حضرت مولانا فرمود که افندي یعنی خدواند صلاح الدين در وقت عمارتي که باشد مشاقان رومي بايد گرفتن و در وقت خراب کردن چيزي مزدوران ترک;  چه عمارت عالم مخصوص است بروميان و خرابي  جهان مقصودست به ترکان; و حق سبحانه و تعالي چون ايجاد عالم ملک فرمود ..گروه ترکان آفريد تا بي محابا و شفقت هر عمارتي که ديدند خراب کردند و منهدم گردانيدند، و هنوز مي کنند و همچنان يوما بيوم تا قيامت خراب خواهند کردن...

 

غم مخور از دي و غز و غارت

وز در من بين کارگزاري

(ديوان شمس)

 

آن غزان ترک خون ريز آمدند

بهر يغما بر دهي ناگه زدند

دو کسي از عيان ده  يافتند

در هلاک آن يکي بشتافتند

(مثنوي)

در دیوان سلطان ولد از سلجوقیان ایرانی-تبار و ایرانی-شده خواسته میشود که سلسله متعصب ترکان قرمانی را نابود کنند.  سلسله قرمانی که بر ترکیت خود تعصبات خاصی داشته زبان دربار خود را ترکی کزده بودند و گویا با ادیبان و شاعران فارسی گوی میانه ای نداشتند.  از آثار مولانا و سلطان ولد و تمامی نویسندگان طریق مولوی در نیمه اول قرن چهاردهم میلادی (برای نمونه افلاکی) چنین بر می‌آید که آنان بکلی مخالف عصیان‌های ترکمن‌های آناطولی بر علیه سلجوقیان بودند.  در مکتوبات مولانا و دیوان سلطان ولد و مناقب افلاکی، پیروان مولویه نسبت به ترکمانان قرامان اوغلو و اشرف اوغلو دشمنی نشان داده و آثار مختلف به جای گذاشته‌اند.

 

بعد از مرگ محمد‌بیک قرامانلو و شکست ترکمانان، سلطان غیاث‌الدین مسعود دوم به قونیه آمد و بر تخت نشست.  سلطان ولد سه منظومنه درباره جلوس و تهنیت او سروده و اظهار وجد و سرور کرده است.  او در یکی از منظومه‌ها از سلطان درخواست می‌کند که نسبت به ترکانی که از پیش سلطان فرار کرده و از ترس جان به کوهها و غارها پناه برده‌اند، ترحم نکند و جمله را به فصاص رسانیده و زنده نگذارد.

 

به دولت شاه شاهانی به صولت شیر شیرانی

همه ترکان ز بیم جان شده در غار و کُه پنهان

چو نبود شیر در بیشه رود از گرگ اندیشه

پلنگ اکنون بشد موشی، چو آمد شیر حق غٌران

چو ماران رفته در کُه‌خا در آن بیشه به انده‌ها

همه چون روز می‌دانند که خواهی کوفت شرهاشان

همه در گریۀ ناله، بخون در غرق چون لاله

گهی بر موت خود گریان، گهی بر خوف خان و مان

چو رنجوران بی‌درمان به‌شسته دستها از جان

به اومیدی طم کرده که بوک از شه رسد غفران

گذشت از حد‌این زحفت مکن شاها توشان رحمت

حیات خلق اگر خواهی بکن آن جمله را قربان

لکم اندر قصاص خلق حیات و این شنو از حق

قصاص چشم چشم آمد به داندان هم بود دندان

حیات اندر قصاص آمد جهانرا ازین خلاص آمد

نبودی هیچکس زنده برین گر نامدی فرمان

خوارج را مهل زنده اگر میرست اگر بنده

که خونی کشتنی باشد به شرع آیت قرآن

ولد کردست نفرین‌ها برون از چرخ و پروین‌ها

که یارب زین سگان بد ببر هم جان و هم ایمان

 

(لازم به ذکر است که فریدون نافذ اوزلوک مترجم دیوان سلطان ولد به ترکی، در نخستین بیت منظومه فوق، به جای «همه ترکان» لغت خوارج را گمارده است.  ایشان به این اقدام بی‌مورد تحرق آشکار، حس کینه و نفرت سلطان ولد را نسبت به ترکان پرده‌پورشی کرده و از چشم خوانندگانی که فارسی نمی‌دانند پنهان داشته است).

 

 

سلطان ولد در منظومۀ دیگر که ار پیروزی سلطان مسعود بر ترکان سخن رانده است.

 

ترکان عالم سوز را از غار و کوه بیشه‌ها

آورده در طاعت خدا چون شاه ما مسعود شد

 

 

ناصر شمس معروف به کافرک غزنین:

تا ولایت به دست ترکان است

مرد آزاده بی زر و نان است

 

خاقانی شیروانی می سراید:

آشنای دل بيگانه مشو / آب و نان از در بيگانه مخور

 نان ترکان مخور و بر سرخوان /  با ادب نان خور و ترکانه مخور

خون خوری ترکانه کاین از دوستی است//
خون مخور ، ترکی مکن ، تازان مشو //
کشتیم پس خویشتن نادان کنی//
این همه دانا مکش ، نادان مشو//

نظامی گنجوی در لیلی و مجنون می سراید:

تُرکی صِفَت وَفای ما نيست // تُرکانِه سُخن سِزای ما نيست// آن کز نَسَبِ بُلَند زايد// او را سُخن بُلند بايد// به نِفرين تُرکان زَبان بَرگُشاد

 

در اسکندرنامه نیز دوباره به بی وفایی ترکان اشاره میکند:

 // که بی فِتنِه تُرکی زِ مادَر نَزاد//زِ چينی بِجُز چينِ اَبروُ مَخواه //ندارند پِيمان مردم نِگاه // سُخن راست گُفتند پيشينيان // که عَهد و وَفا نيست در چينيان // همه تَنگ چِشمی پَسنديده اند// فَراخی به چَشمِ کَسان ديده اند// خبر نی که مهر شما کين بُوَد// دل تُرکِ چين پُر خَمُ و چين بُوَد// اگر تُرکِ چينی وَفا داشتی // جهان زيرِ چين قَبا داشتی

و این دو شاعر  (خاقانی و نظامی) فردوسی بزرگ را چندین بار ستاییده اند.  برای نمونه از خاقانی: شمع جمع هوشمندان است در دیجور غم// نکته ای کز خاطر فردوسی طوسی بود// زادگاه طبع پاکش جملگی حوراوش اند// زاده حوراوش بود چون مرد فردوسی بود//

و نظامی گنجوی گوید: سخن گوی پیشینه دانای طوس// که آراست روی سخن چون عروس//

 

 

سنائی غزنوی که بارها از طرف مولانا و سلطان ولد و پدر مولانا بهاالدین ولد و یکی از دیگر آموزگاران برهان الدین ترمذی ستاییده شده است در مورد ترکان می‌گوید:

 

می‌نبینید آن سفیهانی که ترکی کرده‌اند

همچو چشم تنگ ترکان گور ایشان تنگ و تار

بنگرید آن جعدشان از خاک چون پشت کشف

بنگرید آن رویشان از چین چو پشت سوسمار

سر به خاک آورد امروز آنکه افسر بود دی

تن به دوزخ برد امسال آنکه گردن بود پار

ننگ ناید مر شما را زین سگان پر فساد

دل نگیرد مر شما را زین خران بی‌فسار

پاسبانان تو اند این سگ پرستان همچو سگ

هست مرداران ایشان هم بدیشان واگذار

..

زشت باشد نقش نفس  خوب را از راه طبع

گریه کردن پیش مشتی سگ پرست و موشخوار

اندر این زندان  بر این دندان‌زنان سگ‌صفت

روزکی چند ای ستمکش صبر کن، دندان فشار

تا ببینی روی آن مردمکُشان چون زعفران

تا ببینی روی این محنت کشان چون گل انار

گرچه آدم صورتان سگ‌صفت مستولی‌اند

هم کنون بینند کز میدان دل عیاروار

جوهر آدم برون تازد بر آرد ناگهان

از سگان آدمی کیمخت خر مردم دمار

..


تا ببینی موری آن خس را که می‌دانی امیر

تا بینی گرگی آن سگ را که می‌خوانی عیار

 

 

یکی از ریشه تعبیر عرفانی مفهوم ترک (غارتگري) را می توان در این چند بیت خواجه عبدالله انصاری جست:
عشق آمد و دل كرد غارت
اي دل تو بجان بر اين بشارت
تركي عجب است عشق داني
كز ترك عجيب نيست غارت
بنابراين مي توان گفت كه تركان اصيل چنان به تاراجگري و ويرانگري شهره و انگشت نما بوده اند كه در ادب و عرفان ايراني، تركان به نماد ويراني وتاراج مبدل مي شوند، به طوري كه در زبان فارسي به تهاجم و غارتگري «ترك تازي» گفته مي شود.

 

حتی عبدالرحمان جامی که یکی از شاعران بزرگ بوده است و در زمان سلاطین ترک-تبار میزیسته، این شعر را سروده است:

این شنيدستي که ترکي وصف جنت چون شنيد این

گفت با واعظ که انجا غارت و تاراج هست ؟
گفت ني ، گفت بدتر باشد زدوزخ ان بهشت
کاندرو کوته بود از غارت و تاراج دست

شاعري به نام قاسم و متخلص به مادح كه حماسه جهانگيري را محتملا در پايان سده ششم هجري سروده درباره تركان غز مي گويد:

«همه پهن رويان كوتاه قد
همه رويشان بود بي خط و خد
همه تنگ چشمان بيني دراز
همه بد دهانان و دندان گراز
همه تندخويان و با كين و خشم
به مال يتيمان سيه كرده چشم
همه تيره راي و همه بدگمان
كمر بسته در غارت مردمان
...
»

حمدالله مستوفي، مورخ نام‌دار سده‌ي هشتم قمري، در منظومه‌ي خود به نام «ظفرنامه» توصيفي گويا از جنايت‌ها و ويران‌گري‌هاي مغول (لازم به ذکر است که اغلب سربازان و قبایل اتحادیه امپراتور مغول ترک تبار بودند)  در زادگاه خود، شهر «قزوين» ارائه كرده است:
مغول اندر آمد به قزوين دلير // سر همگنان آوريدند زير // ندادند كس را به قزوين امان // سر آمد سران را سراسر زمان // هر آن كس كه بود اندر آن شهر پاك // همه كشته افكنده بُد در مغاك // ز خرد و بزرگ و ز پير و جوان // نماندند كس را به تن در روان // زن و مرد هر جا بسي كشته شد // همه شهر را بخت برگشته شد // بسي خوب‌رويان ز بيم سپاه // بكردند خود را به تيره تباه // ز تخم نبي بي‌كران دختران // فروزنده چون بر فلك اختران // ز بيم بد لشكر رزم‌خواه // نگون درفكندند خود را به چاه // به هم برفكنده به هر جايگاه // تن كشتگان را به بي‌راه و راه // نماند اندر آن شهر جاي گذر // ز بس كشته افكنده بي‌حد و مر // ز بيم سپاه مغول هر كسي // گريزان برفتند هر جا بسي // برفتند چندي به جامع درون // پر اندوه جان و به دل پر ز خون // چو بودند از آن دشمن انديشه‌ناك // فراز مقرنس نهان گشت پاك // به مسجد، مغول اندر آتش فكند // زمانه برآمد به چرخ بلند // به آتش سقوف مقرنس بسوخت // وز آن كار كفر و ستم برفروخت.

 

Despite the constant attacks on Iranian civilization by Turkish nomads and today by the likes of Ali Reza Asgharzadeh and other pan-Turkists, the influence of Iranian civilization on Turkish civilization is undeniable, irrefutable and extremely heavy.  Numerous books have written on this matter.  Iranian civilization ultimately had a heavy influence in brining culture to Turks and to a large extent Iranizing many Turkic groups and dynasties.

 

A good source on pre-Islamic influence of Iranian civilizations on Turks is written by the Turkologist Annemarie Von Gabain in : (Irano-Turkish relations in the late Sasanian period," in Camb. Hist. Iran III/1, 1983, pp. 613-24).

This source may be obtained here:

Irano-Turkish Relations in the Late Sasanian Period

Professor. Annemarie Von Gabain

 

In the source above, we read:

 

“There are many borrowings from Middle Iranian in Turkish culture to be mentioned.  Although the Turks learned writing soon after the foundation of their empire, their oldest inscription, as we have seen, was in Sogdian, the lingua franca of the time and in the Sogdian script, as is shown in the inscription near Bugut.  Only with the beginning of the nationalism at the start of the 8th century did the Kok-Turks, and later the Uigur Qaghans in the 9th century, write their inscription in their own language alongside a version in Chinese or Chinese and Sogdian.  The script used for these inscriptions, the so-called Kok-Turks “Runic” writing, was a lively adaptation, perhaps by a Sogdian, of cursive Aramaic, and indeed the Sogdian, “Uigur” and Manichaen scripts can all be attributed to the ephigraphical inventiveness of Sogdians.

 

 

From this large number of Middle Iranian elements in fundamental Uigur Buddhism it is clear that it was neither the Indians nor the Chinese but the Sogdians who first brought about the conversion of the Turks to their religion.

 

 

Nestorian Christianity must have been preached to the Turks not only by Syriac monks but also by Sogdian missionaries, for many Christian texts both in Syriac and in Sogdian have been found in the village of Bulayiq (in the oasis of Turfan), together with a few Turkish fragments.

 

Manichaeism came to the Uigurs through the Sogdians of Ch'ang-an.

 

 

In the middle of the 9th century, the Uigur Qaghan of the steppe, with the intention of introducing the nomad Turks gradually to the sedentary life, gave orders for a number of Chinese as well as of Sogdians to build him a "rich town".  To a Central Asian people the concept of "town" was specifically Iranian, being represented by kent ( < Sog. knhh), although it is also covered by a genuine Turkish word balt'q.

 

A Chinese source reports on Turks: "The Turks themselves are simple-minded and short-sighted, and dissension may have been roused among them. Unfortunately many Sogdians live among them who are cunning and insidious; they teach and instruct the Turks."  (Sergey G. Klyastorniy and Vladimir Aronovic Livsic, "The Sogdian Inscription of Bugut Revised," Acta Orientalia Hungarica, 20 (1972), pp. 69-102.)

 

As we can see the Soghdians, an Iranian people, made major contributions to Turkish civilization and brought Christianity, Buddhism, Manichaeism to Turks.  The role of Iranians in brining Islam to Turkish and Iranizing many nomadic Turkic dynasties is well know and will be expounded upon later.

 

Mahmud al-Kasbgari, a central Asian  Turkish philologist of the eleventh century, who quoted

the Turkish proverb tats'iz tiirk bolmas, bass'iz bork bolmas, "without Iranians, the Turks amount to nothing, without a head, a cap is nothing."( Mahmud al-Kasgari, Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Diwan Lughat at-Turk, 3 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1982-5, I, p. 273, II, p. 103.

 

Furthermore, al-Kashghari reports that because the Oghuz had mingled a lot with the Persians, they had forgotten many of their own words and had replaced them with Persian words.  (Mehmed Fuad Koprulu's , Early Mystics in Turkish Literature, Translated by Gary Leiser and Robert Dankoff , Routledge, 2006, pg 149)

 

 

Unlike racists like Alireza Asgharzadeh, there are Turkish speaking scholars who have wide fame and are known to be more balanced.  Mehmad Fuad Koprulu also speaks about the pre-Islamic and post-Islamic Iranian influence on Turks:

 

‘’On Pre-Islamic influence, one must mention Soghdians who influenced Eastern Turks greatly. 

Because of their geographical location, the Turks were in continuous contact with China and Iran from very ancient times. The early Chinese chronicles, which are reliable and comprehensive, show the relationship of the Turks with China fairly clearly. The early relationship of the Turks with Iran, however, only enters the light of history - leaving aside the legends in the Shahname — at the time of the last Sasanid rulers. After the Turks had lived under the influence of these two civilizations for centuries, Iran, which had accepted Islam, gradually brought them into its sphere of influence.  Even during the development of the Uighur civilization, which was the {Turkish civilization} most strongly influenced by China, the attraction of the Turks to Iranian civilization, which had proven its worth in art, language, and thought, was virtually unavoidable, especially after it was invigorated with a new religion.

 

Even before it drew the Turks into its sphere of influence, Iranian civilization had had, in fact, a major effect on Islam. With respect to the concept of govern­ment and the organization of the state, the Abbasids were attached not to the traditions of the khulafa al-rashidun {the first four caliphs} but to the mentality of the Sasanid rulers.  After Khurasan and Transoxiana passed into the hands of native Iranian — and subsequently highly Iranized Turkish — dynasties with only nominal allegiance to the Abbasids, the former Iranian spirit, which the Islamic onslaught was not able to destroy despite its ruthlessness, again revealed itself. In the fourth/tenth century, Persian language and literature began to grow and develop in an Islamic form. This PersoTslamic literature was influenced, to a large extent, by the literature of the conquerors. Not only were a great many words brought into the language via the new religion, but new verse forms, a new metrical system, and new stylistic norms were also adopted in great measure from the Arabs. Indeed, almost nothing remained of the old Iranian syllabic metrical system, the old verse forms, or the old ideas about literature. Still, the Iranians, as heirs of an ancient civilization, were able to express their own personality in their literature despite this enormous Arab influence. They adopted from the carud meters only those that suited their taste. They created or, perhaps, revived the ruba'i form {of verse}.   They also introduced novelties in the qasida form {of verse}, which can be considered an old and well known product of Arabic literature, and in the ghazal {lyric "love song"}.  Above all, by reanimat­ing {their own} ancient mythology, they launched an "epic cycle" that was completely foreign to Arabic literature.  These developments were on such a scale that the fifth/eleventh century witnessed the formation of a new Persian literature in all its glory.

 

The Turks adopted a great many elements of Islam not directly from the Arabs, but via the Iranians. Islamic civilization came to the Turks by way of Transoxiana from Khurasan, the cultural center of Iran. Indeed, some of the great cities of Transoxiana were spiritually far more Iranian than Turkish. Also, the Iranians were no strangers to the Turks, for they had known each other well before the appearance of Islam. For all these reasons, it was the Iranians who guided the Turks into the sphere of Islamic civilization. This fact, naturally, was to have a profound influence on the development of Turkish literature over the centuries.  Thus, we can assert that by the fifth/eleventh century at least, TurkoTslamic works had begun to be written in Turkistan and that they were subject to Perso-Islamic influence. If Iranian influence had made an impact so quickly and vigorously in an eastern region like Kashghar, which was a center of the old Uighur civilization and had been under continuous and strong Chinese influence, then naturally this influence must have been felt on a much wider scale in regions further to the west and closer to the cities of Khurasan. But unfortunately, ruinous invasions, wars, and a thousand other things over the centuries have destroyed the products of those early periods and virtually nothing remains in our possession. Let me state clearly here, however, that such Turkish works that imitated Persian forms and were written under the influence of Persian literature in Muslim centers were not widespread among the masses. They were only circulated among the learned who received a Muslim education in the madrasas {these colleges of Islamic law began to spread in the fifth/eleventh century}.

 

….

 

{As they emigrated to the west,} the Oghuz Turks who settled in Anatolia came into contact with Arab and Muslim Persian civilization and then, in the new region to which they had come, encountered remnants of ancient and non-Muslim civilizations. In the large and old cities of Anatolia, which were gradually Turkified, the Turks not only encountered earlier Byzantine and Armenian works of art and architecture, but also, as a result of living side by side with Christians, naturally participated in a cultural exchange with them. The nomadic Turks {i.e. Turkmen}, who maintained a tribal existence and clung to the way of life they had led for centuries, remained impervious to all such influences. Those who settled in the large cities, however, unavoidably fell under these alien influences.

At the same time, among the city people, those whose lives and livelihoods were refined and elevated usually had extensive madrasa educations and harbored a profound and genuine infatuation with Arab and Persian learning and literature. Thus, they cultivated a somewhat contemptuous indifference to this Christian civilization, which they regarded as materially and morally inferior to Islamic civilization. As a result, the influence of this non-Muslim civilization on the Turks was chiefly visible, and then only partially, in those arts, such as architecture, in which the external and material elements are more obvious. The main result of this influence was that life in general assumed a more worldly quality.

If we wish to sketch, in broad outline, the civilization created by the Seljuks of Anatolia, we must recognize that the local, i.e. non-Muslim, element was fairly insignificant compared to the Turkish and Arab-Persian elements, and that the Persian element was paramount/The Seljuk rulers, to be sure, who were in contact with not only Muslim Persian civilization, but also with the Arab civiliza­tions in al-jazlra and Syria - indeed, with all Muslim peoples as far as India — also had connections with {various} Byzantine courts. Some of these rulers, like


the great 'Ala' al-Dln Kai-Qubad I himself, who married Byzantine princesses and thus strengthened relations with their neighbors to the west, lived for many years in Byzantium and became very familiar with the customs and ceremonial at the Byzantine court. Still, this close contact with the ancient Greco-Roman and Christian traditions only resulted in their adoption of a policy of tolerance toward art, aesthetic life, painting, music, independent thought - in short, toward those things that were frowned upon by the narrow and piously ascetic views {of their subjects}. The contact of the common people with the Greeks and Armenians had basically the same result.

{Before coming to Anatolia,} the Turks had been in contact with many nations and had long shown their ability to synthesize the artistic elements that thev had adopted from these nations. When they settled in Anatolia, they encountered peoples with whom they had not yet been in contact and immediately established relations with them as well. Ala al-Din Kai-Qubad I established ties with the Genoese and, especially, the Venetians at the ports of Sinop and Antalya, which belonged to him, and granted them commercial and legal concessions.'' Mean­while, the Mongol invasion, which caused a great number of scholars and artisans to flee from Turkistan, Iran, and Khwarazm and settle within the Empire of the Seljuks of Anatolia, resulted in a reinforcing of Persian influence on the Anatolian Turks.   Indeed, despite all claims to the contrary, there is no question that Persian influence was paramount among the Seljuks of Anatolia. This is clearly revealed by the fact that the sultans who ascended the throne after Ghiyath al-Din Kai-Khusraw I assumed titles taken from ancient Persi