Persia was a Civilisation Long Before Islam and Rome

RESURRECTING FAITH

- Devdutt Pattanaik

he Hindi-Urdu word for wrestler—pahalvan— comes from Pahalav or Parthians, who ruled Persia nearly 2,000 years ago, and controlled trade routes that connected India to Central Asia.

Until the rise of the Arab empire in the seventh century, it was the Persians who were the masters of West Asia. Alexander fought the Persians, Romans fought the Parthians, Byzantium fought the Sasanians. Then, things changed.

Two centuries of silence followed, after the empire was overrun by Islam. The old ways were declared idolatrous and purged. The civilisation accepted the new faith but refused to erase its past entirely. It declared autonomy by pursuing a new form of Islam, one that rejected the Arab ways, and privileged the bloodline of the prophet, that gave rise to a line of religious teachers, the Imams.

But before the Imams, before Islam, Persia was the land of the Zoroastrian faith, the world’s oldest monotheistic faith, one that inspired even Jewish patriarchs with ideas such as the walled garden or paradise. It flourished during the period of the Sasanian Empire, which ruled Iran and much of West Asia from about AD 224 AD to AD 651. The dynasty rose when Ardashir I defeated the Parthian ruler Artabanus IV and established a new imperial order in Persia.