Many Americans seem to
entertain the illusion that Iranians are Arabs. This may be due to the fact
that many people in both communities practise Islam, which I'll mention below.
Another coincidence that may have contributed to this confusion is the apparent
similarity of the names Iran and Iraq. It is true that the Persian language and
the Arabic share the same alphabet, namely the Arabic alphabet, which was
imposed upon the Iranians centuries ago. But originally Persian had its own
alphabet. Anyway, in Arabic script the names of the countries are entirely
different, 'Iraq' beginning with the letter 'ain' and 'Iran' beginning with the
letter 'alif'. The words 'Iranian' and 'Persian' are virtually synonymous, the
former being the preferred term nowadays.
The Arabic word 'Iraq'
means 'Veins' and, apparently, refers to the Euphrates and the Tigris Rivers.
But the clincher is that
the word 'Iran' is cognate with the English word 'Aryan', as the Iranians are
Aryan, that is, Indo-European, while the Arabs, as is well known, are Semitic,
so ethnologically there's a definite disjunction. The Indo-European languages,
which probably coincide in fair measure with ethnicity, are divided into Centum
and Satem groups. Centum languages further divide into Germanic, Italic, Celtic
and Greek, while Satem languages divide into Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian,
Albanian and Armenian. Thus we find among Indo-European languages such widely
divergent specimens as English, German, Spanish, French, Greek, Russian,
Persian (Farsi), Hindi and many others. There are a great number of Arabic loan
words in Persian, just as there are a great number of Latin loan words in
English, but no one classifies English as an Italic language, nor should anyone
classify Persian as a Semitic language. There are Persian loan words in Arabic
too, but etymological dictionaries of the Arabic language are scarce, if they
exist at all, and one is often left guessing which words might be from Persian.
Semitic languages are a
subgroup of Afro-Asiatic languages. Only two strictly Semitic languages
survive--Arabic and Hebrew. Extinct Semitic languages include Assyrian,
Phoenician, Aramaic and others. Among languages in other subgroups of the
Afro-Asiatic languages are Amharic, Tigrinya and Hausa of Ethiopia, Chad and Nigeria.
This ethno-linguistic
disjunction is not merely an academic hypothesis. I have met many, many Arabs
and Iranians, and there is a definite Arab look and a definite Iranian look.
It's not infallible, of course, but I think I could probably tell them apart
75% of the time.
But even more conclusive
is the historical aspect. Now we know that all ethnic groups must have sprung
from primitive human beings, so likely they're all of great antiquity. But when
we speak of 'history', we generally mean written records. And here we see that
Persians appear on the scene much in advance of Arabs.
Generally, Persian
history is said to have begun with King Cyrus the Great, who unified Persia and
conquered vast tracts of land. He is also famous for liberating the Jews from
captivity in Babylon around 538 BC, as is amply recorded in the Bible, in the
Books of Isaiah, Daniel and Ezra. The next four Persian kings were Cambyses,
Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes, all in the Bible. These names are all in the
Greco-English spellings. Xerxes, whose name is Khashayarsha in Persian,
Achashverosh in Hebrew and Ahasuerus in the English Bible, is vividly portrayed
in the Book of Esther as the rescuer of the Jews from the persecutions of
Haman, which is celebrated to this day by Jews as Purim, the Feast of Lots. All
of these kings are also famous for their exploits in the Middle East, Anatolia,
Greece and Egypt. Much later, another Persian king, Shapur I, defeated the
Roman emperor, Valerian. And their have been many, many others.
In antiquity, Persia had
various religious, such as Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, Mazdaism and Manichaeism,
all to be largely supplanted by Islam. A more recent Iranian religion is the
Baha'i faith.
As far as I know, the
Arabs enter history around 305 AD, with the Nabataean Inscriptions, but these
are scant. Their real entrance into history was the appearance of Mohammed
(570-632 AD) Arabs conquered Persia in the seventh century, spreading Islam.
Subsequently, in the 10th and 11th century, Turks took over the leadership of
Islam, so Islamic history is not strictly the same thing as Arabic history. In
the coming centuries Islam would extend its sway all the way from China and
Indonesia to Spain. But the Ottoman Empire, once the world's greatest power,
was a Turkish, rather than Arabic or Persian, Islamic Sultanate.
So Iranians are
definitely not Arabs.
The original link on the
subject can be found at:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1338091/posts
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