Iran - Andrew Burke [7]
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But, they’re not just leaving to find work, are they? My friends here tell me a lot of the strict old laws about how people dress and what they say have come back. Newspapers and bookshops are being closed, editors and dissidents sent to jail, the Majlis even passed a bill promoting Islamic fashion. Is that what young people want from the Islamic Republic?
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For two sides of political debate in Iran, see and contribute to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s blog at www.ahmadinejad.ir, and search for dissident Akbar Ganji’s manifesto for the alternative view.
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‘You must remember that this country is not all black and white. Yes, it is 30 years since the revolution and most of us want to move on. But a lot of less influential people, like my cousin who lives in a village, have better lives thanks to the revolution. Though I am worried. These crackdowns are taking us back 10 years. Even some ayatollahs in Qom are saying that arresting women for showing a bit of hair, all in the name of the Islamic Revolution, is ridiculous and will only turn more people away from Islam. But, what can we do? We must solve our own problems – we certainly don’t need George Bush to solve them for us – and we must hope that the Guardian Council will allow good candidates to run in the next elections. That is all we can do.’
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History
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THE ELAMITES & MEDES
THE ACHAEMENIDS & THE FIRST PERSIAN EMPIRE
ALEXANDER THE GREAT & THE END OF PERSEPOLIS
THE PARTHIAN TAKEOVER
THE SASSANIANS & THE SECOND PERSIAN EMPIRE
THE ARABS & ISLAM
THE COMING OF THE SELJUKS
GENGHIS KHAN & TAMERLANE
THE SAFAVIDS & THE THIRD PERSIAN EMPIRE
NADER SHAH & KARIM KHAN ZAND
THE QAJARS & THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION
THE PAHLAVIS
THE REVOLUTION
THE AFTERMATH OF THE REVOLUTION
THE IRAN–IRAQ WAR
AFTER KHOMEINI
KHATAMI & THE REFORMISTS
IRAN TODAY
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Historians are still debating when the first inhabitants settled in what is now Iran, but archaeologists suggest that during Neolithic times small numbers of hunters lived in caves in the Zagros and Alborz Mountains and in the southeast of the country.
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THE ELAMITES & MEDES
Iran’s first organised settlements were established in Elam, the lowland region in what is now Khuzestan province, as far back as the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. Elam was close enough to Mesopotamia and the great Sumerian civilisation to feel its influence, and records suggest the two were regular opponents on the battlefield. The Elamites established their capital at Shush and derived their strength through a remarkably enlightened federal system of government that allowed the various states to exchange the natural resources unique to each region. The Elamites’ system of inheritance and power distribution was also quite sophisticated for the time, ensuring power was shared by and passed through various family lines.
The Elamites believed in a pantheon of gods, and their most notable remaining building, the enormous ziggurat at Choqa Zanbil, was built around the 13th century BC and dedicated to the foremost of these gods. By the 12th century BC the Elamites are thought to have controlled most of what is now western Iran, the Tigris Valley and the coast of the Persian Gulf. They even managed to defeat the Assyrians, carrying off in triumph the famous stone inscribed with the Code of Hammurabi, a battered copy of which is in the National Museum of Iran, the original having been carried off to the Louvre in Paris.
About this time Indo-European Aryan tribes began to arrive from the north. These Persians eventually settled in what is now Fars province, around Shiraz, while the Medes took up residence further north, in what is today northwestern Iran. The Medes established a capital at Ecbatana, now buried under modern Hamadan,