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...21st Century," will published in a future issue of FOCUS on Geography.
Part I. The Iranian Tradition of Statehood
Introduction: An Ancient State and Its Many Neighbors
Iran has functioned for at least 5000 years as a civilization and as fertile ground for the emergence of the world's first state in the modern sense of the word. The administration of Iran has historically been plagued with difficulties of exerting authority outside the main areas of population and, therefore, in fixing its national frontiers.
The word Iran means "the land of the Aryans." Politically, Iran is a country situated in southwest Asia in the part of the globe generally known as the Middle East. With a land area of 1,648,195 square kilometers, Iran is bounded by no less than 15 countries and autonomous regions, making it the country with the largest number of neighbors. Most of them at one time or another in history have been part of the famous Persian Empire (a term used by many Western historians), which disintegrated during and as a result of the Anglo-Russian "Great Game" of geopolitics that started in late 18th century and ended in World Wars I and II in the 20th century.
During World War II, the country was occupied by Anglo-Russian forces on the unsubstantiated allegation that Iran had joined with Nazi Germany; in fact, Tehran had officially declared its impartiality in the war and adequately defended that impartiality. The Allies had to invade and occupy Iran in order to turn it into a land bridge for logistic supply between Britain and the Soviet Union, and they termed it the "bridge of victory" at the end of the war. This article examines the political geography of Iran's position from ancient to modern times using ancient ideas to illuminate Iran's present-day complex position on the global stage.
Brief Geographical Background
Iran is a country in the Middle East, which is bounded by the Caspian Sea and the republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Russian Federation, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan to the north; by Afghanistan and Pakistan to the east; by Turkey and Iraq to the west; and by the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman (including the countries of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates [U.A.E.]), and the northwest corner of the Indian Ocean to the south (see map on pages 18-19). With such a large number of neighbors, Iran has had to derive a set of highly complicated border arrangements, resulting in substantial impacts to relations with all these entities.
Iran is a vast and diverse country, with only a tenth of its area under settled forms of economic use. The rest is desert, steppe, and high mountains. Until the early 20th century, the country was comprised of a set of diverse ethnic and linguistic groups unified under a federal-style system of government and sharing a common literature, social ethos and culture, and a distinct civilization. Apart from the central province, the largest single provincial region by population size is Azerbaijan, where there is a concentration of Azeri speakers of the Perso-Turkic group of languages. Other coherent areas with a regional consciousness include Kurdistan in the west, the Arab zone of the Khuzistan lowlands in the southwest, the Turkmen steppe of the northeast, and the Baluch area of the southeast (1).
Geographically, the term "Iran" covers an area much greater than the state of Iran. It includes the entire Iranian plateau, a highland region located between the Himalayas on the east and Anatolia on the west. Culturally, the term includes all peoples speaking Iranian languages, a subdivision of the Indo-European family of languages: those who speak Persian, Dari (Afghani), Dari (Tajik), Kurdish, Luri, Mazandarani, Khorasani, Guilak, Baluchi, and Azeri Turkish (a Turkish local dialect of Azerbaijan that is more Persian in words and characters than the Mongolian and/or Anatolian Turkish).
Iran as a nation today is composed of several ethnic groups, including the Kurds, Baluchis, Mazandaranis, Guilaks, Azerbaijanis, Khorasanis, and Persians, all of whom are from the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European ethnicity. There are two exceptions. The first is a few Arabic-speaking tribes of Mesopotamian origin (Mesopotamia was part of the Persian federative system for over 2,000 years), who form a small minority in the province of Khuzestan and defend their Arab identity within their Iranian nationality (as they did in the face of the Iraqi invasion of Iran during Saddam Hussein's rule). The second is a small number of Turkmen tribes who live in the Gorgan plain of Golestan Province, who also fiercely defend their identity as being part of Iran.
The Iranian Tradition of Statehood
There are unmistakable indications in the historical record that Iran was the first civilization to fashion the concept of "state," here used to mean a set of governing institutions with sovereignty over a defined territory. Although there is little doubt that the modern concepts of state and territory were developed in modern Europe, it is hard to overlook the fact that they are rooted in periods older than their 15th-century emergence in Europe.
There are indications that ancient civilizations were familiar with the notion of the state in connection with territorial and boundary characteristics, similar to modern states. References in ancient Persian literature discuss states, territories, and boundaries in a strikingly modern way, which probably influenced ancient Greek and Roman governance. A combination of traits from the ancient Greek, Roman, and Persian civilizations is said to have been a major source of contributions to what culturally constitutes the West in our time. Considering the extent to which Greek and Roman civilizations interacted with that of ancient Persia, little doubt remains about the validity of French geographer Jean Gottmann's assertion in his letter to this writer (1987) that:
Iran must have belonged to the 'Western' part of mankind, and I suspect that this was what Alexander the Great of Macedonia, a pupil of Aristotle, therefore, in the great Western philosophical tradition, found in Iran and that attracted him so much that he wanted to establish a harmonious, multi-national cooperation between the Iranians and Greeks within the large empire he was building. (2)
Verification can be found in historical events as when, upon conquering Persia in 333 CE, the Greek leader, Alexander the Great, claimed in Persepolis that he was a true successor to the Iranian leader, Achaeminid Darius III. The significance of this declaration is provided by Ferdowsi, the famous limb-century Persian poet, in Shahnameh, Book of the Kings (3). Having conquered Iran, Alexander wrote to the nobles of the country apologizing for having done away with their king, Darius III. In Ferdowsi's poetic retelling, Alexander assured them "if Dara is no more, I am here and Iran will remain the same as it has always been since its beginning" (4). He kept the existing political organization of space, modified later by his successors. Alexander also proclaimed justice to be the goal of his mission in Iran.
Eminent researcher Nayer Nouri quotes fellow expert Glover on the nature of ancient Persian civilization:
The Persians (Iranians) set new ideas before mankind, ideas for the world's good government with utmost of unity and cohesion combined with the largest possible freedom for the development of race and individual within the larger organization. (5)
Other writers, ancient and modern, confirm that the "state" was central to Iran's governance from early times. Greek historians/geographers Herodotus and Xenophon (5th century BCE) confirm that Iran's Achaemenid Dynasty (559-330 BCE) founded a federal state, a vast commonwealth of autonomous nations. This federation's founder, Cyrus (Kurosh) the Great (559-529 BCE), together with his successors, substantially expanded their new commonwealth, dividing it into many satrapies (up to forty). Each was governed by a local Satrap, a Khashthrapavan or vassal king. This was a commonwealth of global proportions, including the lands of Trans-Oxania, Sind, and Trans-Caucasus, which stretch from today's Romania east across the Middle East and North Africa.
It was also a political system of universal aspirations ruled by a Shahanshah (king of kings), hence referred to as the Shahanshahi system. The king of kings in this system was not a lawgiver but the defender of laws and religions for all in the federation (6). Glover notes the Achaemenids' "good government" and Cyrus's proclamation in Babylonia (7) stated that all were "equal in his realm." Ethnic and cultural groups enjoyed a measure of independence in the practice of their language, religion, and economies. To uphold their independence and to respect their religions, the king of kings did not lay claim to any specific religion.
Consequently, the peoples of ancient Iran's conquered territories were free to keep their religions, laws, and traditions. Upon conquering...
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