Iran: Poets and Empires

Persian art has flourished for more than 2000 years, ever since the days of the Assyrian Empire of the Nineveh. Around 500 years before the coming of Christ, the Iranians, captured Nineveh and put an end to the Assyrian Empire. This dynasty that overthrew the Assyrians is the Achaemenids, whose kings are referred in the Greek texts as the ‘Great Kings’, and these Kings today are the ones who are perhaps more widely recognised than others they are Darius, Cyrus and Xerxes. Their empire flourished for 220 years until the coming of Alexander the great of Macedon.

During the time of the Achaemenids many different religions and cultures flourished, the Achaemenids are today and were then considered great builders. In their capital city of Persepolis, the grand palace is considered to be the most prime example of Achaemenid art and architecture. It was also under this dynasty that Iran’s first significant library was established at Estakhr, sadly, it was destroyed by the invading armies of Alexander.

After the conquest of Persia by Alexander, the Greeks ruled for a brief period under Seleucus, during which time the region witnessed Hellenic influences, although only artistic in nature, as the religion of Persia – Zoroastrianism – continued to flourish. After this foreign empire, came the very nationalistic Sassanid dynasty which with its aggressive nationalism was quite intolerant and narrow minded. It was during this period that the sacred book of Zoroastrians, the Avestha was finished, the book dealt with not only the teachings of the Prophet Zoroaster but also cosmology, law and liturgy.

And then comes one of the most significant turning point in Iranian history, the coming of Arabs in the middle of the seventh century. Within ten years of the death of the Prophet, Persia was under the rule of the Caliph. Like I’ve already mentioned in my post on Shia Islam in Iran and how although the Iranians accepted Islam, they did so on their own terms, similarly in terms of art and culture, although the Arabs had a significant impact, the Aryans still stuck to their own language which was then Pahlavi. And since the Arabs forbade the use of the Persian language, Arabic became the mode of literature till the ninth century following which the empire broke down into smaller pieces. And as such during this period the many famous names in Arabic literature were Persians by birth.

During this period we meet the genius of Abu Ali Sina or more commonly known as Avicenna. He was a philosopher and a doctor. Although, for him philosophy kept him busy major part of his day, in his thirst for knowledge he also delved into medicine, and it worked for him as ‘people in the eleventh century paid far more for medical than for philosophic advice.’ And by the young age of fifteen, the scholar had gained quite a reputation.

With the disintegration of the Arabic empire in Baghdad which also controlled Persia, there was a space for new rulers and here we meet a man who is common to both our history and the Iranians – Mahmud of Ghazni. His was a brief-lived empire and was soon enough replaced by the Seljuk turks who fought against the Christian Crusaders. I have been skipping through dynasties as quickly as the water escapes our fingers, but what I’m trying to show is that how even through all these very different empires, tribes and dynasties, the old culture and art of Iran has persisted, they have accepted changes, they have moulded themselves with the culture of the Arabs or the Turks, but they have always maintained a link with their old ‘national and traditional’ past. And this is most fluently portrayed in the most important piece of literature in Iranian history – The Shahnama or Book of Kings by Firdausi – this epic was finished under the patronage and time of Mahmud of Ghazni, the sixty-thousand odd lines are a celebration of the history of Persia before the coming of the Arabs and Islam.

Soon after Firdausi came Omar Khayyam, who perhaps is the most widely recognised out of all the names that I’ve mentioned here. Khayyam was not only a poet but also an astronomer from the city of Nishapur. From the few bits that I have read of Khayyam’s work, following is the one I like best, according to one biographer it reflects Omar as an, “unhappy philosopher, an atheist and a materialist,” which is of course debatable:

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the wise
To talk: one thing is certain, that life flies;
One thing is certain, and the rest is lies;
The flower that once has blown for ever dies.

In the thirteenth century came a force that changed the face of central Asia and which in a single blow swept away centuries of culture in Iran. It was the Mongols. It’s said that Central Asia never fully recovered from this misfortune. And it was in this period under constant pressure of attack from the Mongols that Jalaluddin Rumi was born. Rumi is considered to be one of the most inspiring mystics not only of his time but also for the generations to come. Attar, a Sufi master, remarked Rumi as, “There goes a river dragging an ocean behind it.” Rumi wrote his most famous ghazals under the book title - Masnavi-ye Ma'navi or Spiritual Couplets.

From here I’m going to jump directly to the establishment of another nationalist empire of the Safavids who came to power after defeating the Timurids, who had themselves defeated the disintegrating Mongol Empire in Persia. The Safavi dynasty lasted for 200 year from 1502 to 1722. This period is referred to as the golden period of Persian art. Isfahan, their capital city, became the centre for artists and was especially noted for its paintings. Shah Abbas’s planning of the city has been called a “masterpiece of classical purity and taste”.

This Iranian culture spread far and wide, from Turkey on the west to India on the east. Today we can see the influence that Persia had on India in the grandeur of the Taj Mahal. Babar, one of the first Mughal kings in India was one of the Princes of the Timurid dynasty in Persia; Persian also became the lingua franca during Akbar’s reign. From Persian we have developed our own languages – Hindustani/Hindavi – and from it came Hindi and Urdu.