Iranian Nationalism is the term given to describe a political movement that has been in existence in the Iran for thousands of years to maintain Iranian identity by keeping Iranian culture and
Iranian languagesThe Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily, Indo-Iranian. They are spoken by the Iranian peoples. Avestan is the oldest recorded Iranian language....
and oppose
cultural assimilationCultural assimilation is a political response to the demographic fact of multi-ethnicity which encourages absorption of the minority into the dominant culture...
in the long
history of IranHistory of Iran has been intertwined to the history of a larger historical region, Greater Iran, which consists of the area from the Euphrates in the west to the Indus River and Jaxartes in the east and from the Caucasus, Caspian Sea, and Aral Sea in the north to the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of...
.
History
First recorded history of the
Iranian nationalism dates back to the reign of Darius the Great (r. 29 September 522-October 486 BCE). In
Naqsh-e Rostam inscriptionNaqsh-e Rustam is an archaeological site located about 12 km northwest of Persepolis, in Fars province, Iran. Naqsh-e Rustam lies a few hundred meters from Naqsh-e Rajab....
Darius emphasizes on his Persianhood and declares his Aryan lineage to the ancient world:
- I am Darius, the Great King, King of Kings, King of countries containing all kinds of men, King in this great earth far and wide, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage.
The second surviving account is of the greatest of the Iranian national epic poet
FerdowsiHakīm Abu'l-Qāsim Firdawsī Tūsī , more commonly transliterated as Ferdowsi , was a highly revered Persian poet...
who dedicated his life to preserve the national identity, language and heritage of Iran by writing
ShahnamehShāhnāmé is an enormous poetic opus written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi around 1000 AD and is the national epic of the Persian-speaking world...
, a
PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
national epicA national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation; not necessarily a nation-state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with aspirations to independence or autonomy...
and masterpiece. Shahnameh introduced many
national heroesIranian national heroes have got a wide range in Iranian culture and literature.They have also a chronological variety from pre-isam era to present time.including:*Abu Muslim Khorasani, Liberal activist against Umayyad dynasty....
who fought to keep their country standing.
Patrick ClawsonPatrick Lyell Clawson is an American economist and Middle East scholar. He is currently the Deputy Director for Research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and senior editor of Middle East Quarterly....
writes:
- "Since the days of the Achaemenids, the Iranians had the protection of geography. But high mountains and vast emptiness of the Iranian plateau
The Iranian plateau, also known as the Persian plateau is a geological formation in Southwest Asia and Southern Asia. It is the part of the Eurasian Plate wedged between the Arabian and Indian plates, situated between the Zagros mountains to the west, the Caspian Sea and the Kopet Dag to the north,...
were no longer enough to shield Iran from the Russian army or British navy. Both literally, and figuratively, Iran shrank. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Azerbaijan, Armenia, much of Georgia were Iranian, but by the end of the century, all this territory had been lost as a result of European military action. Iran translated her territorial losses into a sense of both victimization and a propensity to interpret European action through the lens of conspiracy. This in turn has helped shape Iranian nationalism into the twenty first century."
Modern nationalism in Iran dates back to 1906, when an almost bloodless constitutional revolution created Iran's first parliament.
Reza ShahNot to be confused with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, his son.Rezā Shāh, also Rezā Shāh Pahlavi , , was the Shah of the Imperial State of Iran from December 15, 1925 until he was forced to abdicate by the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in September 16, 1941.In 1925, Reza Shah overthrew Ahmad...
, helped shape Iranian nationalism by infusing it with a distinctly secular ideology, and diminishing the influence of Islam on Iran. In addition, Reza Shah sought to change the names of various towns to honor pre-Islamic Persian kings and mythological heroes, and to continue to reduce the power of the mullahs by seeking to modernize Iran. The Pahlavi dynasty thus was set irrevocably down the road towards infusing the country with a form of secular nationalism, a path that would eventually bring it into conflict with the country's clerical class.
Iranian nationalism was a deciding force in the 1951 movement to
nationalizeNationalization, also spelled nationalisation, is the act of taking an industry or assets into the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being state...
Iran's oil wealth.
Further reading
- Richard W. Cottam, Nationalism in Iran, University of Pittsburgh Press, ISBN 0-8229-3396-7