Aug 10

The siege of Nineveh - Iranians who dwelt in the north west of Iran

The siege of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, by the joint forces of Iran and Babylonia, started on 10 August 612 BC. Some historians believe this to be the day when Nineveh fell and Sinsharishkun, king of Assyria, was killed, but other historians think the fall of the city to have been on 10 December of the same year, after 4 months siege. Still, others write that the siege began in May 612 BC and lasted until July, when the city fell. These differences in history are the result of different calendar calculations. The fall of the city has been described by a Babylonian historian of that time and his epigraph (tablets) is kept in the British Museum in London. Sinsharishkun was the son of Assurbanipal, and was killed in his palace. Some historians have written that when the city fell he committed suicide. He ruled for 11 years.     When Nineveh was conquered the victorious forces leveled the city to the ground and sent the Assyrian people to far away places, on exile, in order to prevent the establishment of another Assyrian Empire. Nineveh, which is now partly in the middle and partly in the outskirts of Mosul, was built on the east coast of Tigris River and close to the Zagros mountain range, and for many years it was ruling over a vast area up to the Mediterranean Sea and from the other side, up to Caucasia and Anatolia. It was the characteristic of the Assyrian government to exploit and be ruthless towards other nations and take their people as slaves to work for them and bring wealth for the Assyria. At the same time, the Assyrians were well developed in the art of script and registering history and events.     The Iranians living in the northern western plateaus of Iran were harassed more than other nations, so that finally they united with the Babylonians and uprooted the Assyrians. Ancient Greek historians have named the Iranians inhabiting the west plateaus of Iran ‘Medes’ but some of them, including Herodotus, have given more explanation in this respect and write that these people, like the Persians, spoke in the Avesta and Saka (Soghdian or Tajik) languages. They called themselves Arizanti (Aryan). Besides common language, their dressing, equipment and tools, customs and habits, and ceremonies are similar to the Persians and other Iranians familly. Iranians from the west of Iran plateaus (from Ray up to Aran and in the south-west up to Elemite) built large cities, namely, Ekbatana (Hamedan) and Rhages (Rey). They made Ecbatana their capital. According to what the ancient historians have written, these people were followers of the Zoroastrian religion, and it is said that Zarathushtra (born in the north-east of Iran) started preaching from some place in the Medes inhabited region (Azarbaijan and Kurdistan). The first king of the Iranians of the west (as the Greek call, ‘Medes’) was Daiukku. The first Iranian government (government established in Hamedan), after conquering the Assyria, attacked Urartu (Armenia) in the same year (612 BC) and added it to its territory, and from that time, up to the wars between Iran and Russia in the first three decades of the 19th century, Armenia was mainly ruled by Iran.     In his book Geographika, Strabo, the father of geography science, has written that the people of Iran (whom he has named Aryana), from Soghdiana (today’s Tajikistan) up to Baktria (Balkh, Afghanistan) up to Indus River and Persian Gulf, and the Zagros range up to the east of Anatolia, speak in one language and have common customs, culture and religion. The roots of this race are from Soghdiana (today’s Tajikistan) and it seems that from the beginning they did not worship multiple gods (they did not worship idols). They are intelligent, kind and at the same time brave and accurate people.     Linguists, based on the writings of Herodotus and Strabo, and local research, and also after reading the Iranian petroglyphs and inscriptions on earthenware (brick tablets) of the Assyria, and . . . have come to the conclusion that Iranians have always had a common language and the invasions after the 7th century AD (Arabs and then the Turks and Moguls) was the cause for terms used by conquering languages to remain in some parts of Iran, same as the words and terms that have remained from the Roman language (Latin) in western Europe and French language in England. But, Iranians never lost the language of their ancestors. For example, the word ‘big’ (vazark or bozorg) comes from three thousand years ago and the Kurds use the same word, or the ancient Aryan word “Paradayada” meaning a garden in heaven, which in Iran changed to Pardis and Ferdows and in the English language became paradise. Shayatya = Shah (king), copal = sofal, which in English is pronounced as clay, ETC . DNA tests which are the most accurate tests, and towards the end of the 20th century became the base for specifying genes, has proved that 90% of the people of Greater Iran are from one race and the remaining 10% are mixed. According to scientists, one of them being the German ‘Weber’, language is not the only factor for specifying the nationality because right now many African countries, including Ghana and Kenya, speak in English, or all the Latin Americans speak Spanish, and the emigrants to Canada, Australia and USA have to learn the English language, though they are from different races and have their own specific culture.          Translation by Rowshan Lohrasbpour (Amordad-News writer)