“There is an underlying tension between the ideology of the Islamic revolution and Iran’s pre-1979 monarchical history,” noted the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change’s (IGC) Iran experts in a 2019 study. This tension is perhaps most vivid in the legacy of Iran’s ancient Achaemenid Empire (559-330 BCE), embodied in its former capital, Persepolis, and the Pasargadae tomb of Cyrus the Great (reigned 559-529 BCE).
Shiite theocrats ruling Iran’s Islamic Republic, Iranian journalist and Middle East analyst Saeid Jafari has noted, oppose “‘archaism,’ namely nationalism that emphasizes Iran’s pre-Islamic past.” This “equals the weakening of Islam in Iranian society.” Especially “Cyrus the Great is intensely disliked by pan-Muslim fanatics” such as the late Sheikh Sadegh Khalkhali, as Iranian expatriate students of ancient Iran have noted online.
“In many ways, for the regime, Iran’s history begins in 1979,” IGC experts have noted, as Iran’s “ruling establishment has sought to cleanse Iran of its pre-Islamic and imperial past.” The IGC has compared Iran’s Islamic Republic with how the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or “ISIS sought to destroy the region’s pre-Islamic archaeological sites with bulldozers.” Likewise “in the early years of the revolution, Iran’s Islamists brought bulldozers to the Tomb of Cyrus and the ancient remains of Persepolis in attempt to erase the country’s pre-Islamic culture.”
Khalkhali led this effort of a “band of thugs” at Persepolis, the Iranian expatriate students observed. After a speech linking Cyrus to the late shah, Muhammad Rez Pahlavi, overthrown in 1979, Khalkhali directed his wrecking crew to destroy the Persepolis site. “But they were stopped in their tracks by the Iranian population,” the IGC noted.
Jafari detailed the link between Cyrus and the late shah, as “archaism…was heavily emphasized by the Pahlavi dynasty prior to the Islamic Revolution.” Unforgettable is the shah’s lavish October 12-14, 1971 Persepolis celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the Achaemenid Empire’s founding, which the shah had announced as the “biggest party on earth.” “He wanted to show the world the new face of an ancient empire, a modern and proud Iran, a nation of oil, not of Islamic mullahs,” a Swiss journalist has noted.
The New York Times in 1971 reported that the Shah greeted world leaders and celebrities at Persepolis “personally as if he were in a private salon, switching easily from French to German and Persian to English.” Nearby on October 12, the “Shah went to the hot, wind‐swept plains of Pasargadae for the solemn ceremony inaugurating the celebration” and “stood before the simple stone tomb of Cyrus the Great.” The shah “promised to safeguard the traditions of humanism and benevolence.”
Modern Iranians have emulated the shah’s reverence for Cyrus by commemorating at Pasargadae on October 29 the day on which historians believe he began his largely peaceful conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE. This unofficial Cyrus Day “has soared in popularity and grown exponentially in terms of participants over the last few years,” noted in 2016 Iranian-Canadian political analyst Shahir Shahidsaless. That year Pasargadae protesters chanted “Iran is our country, Cyrus is our father” as well as “freedom of thought cannot take place with beards” of Iran’s ruling Muslim clerics, and expressed support for the Pahlavi dynasty.
Such slogans provoked violent clashes between protesters and Iranian security forces. Authorities, who had attempted to divert traffic from the area with measures like roadblocks, arrested several Cyrus Day organizers. On Oct. 30, 2016, Ayatollah Hossein Nouri Hamedani condemned Pasargadae protesters as “counter-revolutionaries” against the Islamic Republic’s “true Islamic system.”
Subsequently in 2017 the Islamic Republic redoubled efforts to prevent Cyrus Day gatherings at Pasargadae. Authorities blocked roads and took from past event organizers written pledges to desist from future efforts. Iranians responded by posting online pictures and videos of road checkpoints, as well of people walking on foot through mountains to reach the Pasargadae compound.
In response, Iranian regime opponents condemned clerical rule for having suppressed Iranian historic national heritage. Many Iranians contrasted these restrictions with the extravagance of free taxi rides that the regime provided for pilgrims to reach Iraqi Shiite holy sites during the 40-day Arba’een period after the Ashura fast. One Iranian tweeted that “it has been clearly shown that the Islamic Republic and Iran are not the same.”
As future articles will examine in greater detail, the Islamic Republic has tried to enlist the Iranian nation in a global theocratic revolution. Yet the more conflicts and costs the ayatollahs impose upon Iranians in the name of an Islamic faith that came to Iran through Arab conquest, the more they want to declare religious independence and treasure their unique patrimony. Past memories like that of Cyrus the Great are helping beckon Iran to a new future.
mortimer says
JAHILIYYA is an Islamic term defined as the “period of ignorance” preceding Islam; in Islamic historiography, the period in Arab history that preceded the rise of Islam is regarded as the Days of Ignorance. It is a term used by Islamists to denigrate and vilify other religions and the achievements of pre-Islamic cultures.
Persia was a great empire without Islam and got on well without it. Modern Iranians could well conclude that Islam is an impediment to Iran and one which prevents it from achieving a respected place in modernity.
The top mullahs have seized most of the sources of income in Iran and control them personally now. This holds back any creativity and development that doesn’t have a religious agenda. The mullahs are running the Iranian government as a conspiracy against the interests of the Iranian citizens.
It must be heart-breaking to be a visionary person in Iran today.
FYI says
It’s Cyrus the friendly Ghost.
{He has a song,like Casparthe other friendly ghost}
Cyrus the friendly Ghost
The friendliest ghost you know.
Though mullahs might look at him in fright
The Children all love him so.
He always says hello[hello}
and he’s really glad to meetcha
wherever he may go
he’s kind to the Jews and every living creature.
Grown up mullahs don;t understand
why children love him the most
But Jews all know that he loves them so
Cyrus the friendly Ghost.
Barry Donnelly says
Prophesied by the Jewish prophet Isaiah and even called the Shepherd and Anointed of Yahweh ( Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1 ) years before his actual birth. Superior cultures love freedom and Dogs !!!
Jim says
It speaks volumes that there is no protest from the Left about the bulldozing of archaeological sites by the current criminal Iranian regime. You would think that something like that might get their attention, but apparently not.
gravenimage says
Important point, Jim.
venril says
Why would it? They’re busy doing the same thing here.
Ade Fegan says
Hail Cyrus
gravenimage says
Cyrus the Great’s Ghost Haunts Iran’s Islamic Republic
…………………..
I wish it would haunt Iranians a bit more…
But, certainly, it reminds them of their more civilized, pre-Islamic past.