Fuck fuck fuck.
Can’t sleep, gotta go work in three hours.
Persians we’re pretty damn modern. They had freedom of religion more or less (rare can I find evidence of religious discrimination, Cyrus us actually listed as a gentile prophet in the old testament, how friendly he was to the Jews, like the US is now).
I’m not certain exactly when the zoroastrians entered Persia… it is one of those questions left unresolved. I can generally point to the Cult of Mithras ultimately beginning in Georgia, the Zoroastrians in China… but nobody knows exactly the spread of cultic centers, and when. My gut says to look at Issuk Kul, but it is all underwater. When and how the Persians adopted the religion is beyond me.
They had a fairly complex system of trade, they seemed to use a Millet System of sorts, with mixed characteristics of stagnant feudal agriculture mixed with a market economy, but those markets were rather limited.
We know this because the Greeks didn’t think the Persians had markets, the Persians seemed shocked and dismayed at the very concept… Yet the phonecians were part of the Persian empire, certainly used coins and ingots in trade. People had to pay taxes in coins… And the silk trade route passed through the Persian capitals, and they maintained vast treasuries.
I know they bartered a lot too, there was apparently efforts like the Romans after them to fix the price of barter items, what things were worth relative to each item.
They used paperwork in the Persian military to authorize the transfer of logistical supplies. They drafted ethnic units from conquered subentities to provide certain kinds of troops. Persia caused the barbarian invasions when they fortified the land between the caspian and black sea, blocking southern bound invasions… It worked like the Great Wall of China, much better than the Roman Limes… Which fucking kept nobody out apparently.
One of the reasons I dismiss the concept of “abrahamic religions” is because Islam is a very different beast than what Christianity came out of. The closest religions we relate to is certainly not Islam, but Judiasm, Mandaeism, the Maniceans, and Zoroastrianism… Obviously our closest link being to the Mandaean religion, via John the Baptist, then Judism. The Mandaeans are now Gnostic, but I can’t say whether they always were. Christianity has generally denounced Gnostic sects, and Gnosticism predates us. The link to Zoroastrianism is obvious, given the story of the three Magi. Jesus spoke Aramaic, and outside of Judiasm, the strongest cultural hold wasn’t Roman or Greek ideas, but Zoroastrian given the language and still present Magi priesthood.
Islam has some relations, but have much less in common with those groups I’ve mentioned. They will tolerate the Mandaeans as Sabians, to a degree (shit poor degree), the Muslims are Gnostic friendly (especially some shia sects) but if you say this to the wrong Imam, they will rationalize it as if they aren’t… And then espouse and Gnostic doctrine, out of general ignorance afterwards. So… I just at this point let them say whatever, like that former so called Gnostic that used to post on this forum, clueless about the fundamentals… no point arguing it.
What else? Persians had a very advance royal road super highway, with a pony express of sorts to deliver messages. They didn’t have heavy infantry, as Alexander showed, but did hire out mercenaries. They maintained large archives, and kept official histories, well written enough that rulers would request hearing recited for entertainment. They often entered into treatises with foreign states. Hired mercenaries from all over. They valued foreign intellectuals.
They produced on record remarkably few philosophers. Honestly… I can’t figure this shit out… Greeks in Asia Minor could easily discuss ideas with Brahmin in India, undoubtedly through the cities in Persia where their intellectuals were employed, but the persians produced very few philosophers of their own in this era. The influence of mesopotamian ideas shown brightly.
I can look at border states, like the Commagene Kingdom (between Syria and Asia Minor, small)
and see influences from both the persians and Greeks/Romans, but can also find Hittite influence… But can’t find much in Persia, which is just fucking odd. Like I said, the Persian archives were smashed, they kept historical records, but… They seemed to completely forget.
After Ctesias, Bessorus recorded some myths we now can point to the Hittites, but he was from Babylon, a priest of Marduk. (He embellished the Sardanapullas story, I can’t source his further insights, no evidence that shit happened anywhere). What did this say about the Persians? How well did they know history?
I think they… by they, I mean the Magi, made great efforts to combine various histories into a sort of synthesis… one end of the empire adopting stories from the other… And the magi existed like the medieval Catholic church, well outside the borders of the persia state (three wise men were foreign, magi from other states)… The far fantastic stories got lumped together in local myths on one end, where people didn’t understand the geography, while at the other, same process happened.
A lot of the Greek and Roman knowledge of the central Asian geography seems to of flowed through them… They general grasped the terrain just across the Caspian sea into southern khazakstan, before it got fuzzy… Then you started encountering strange mythical peoples. Before that point, place names and normal people lived, although with greek prejudice of how steppe people lived and behaved. Roman sources, via the library of Alexandria, seemed to be rather rich in both Persian and Greek accounts of India, some good, much crap.
Buddhism was apparently much welcomed in eastern Iran… They had a good deal of success, from the Persian into the parthian era, until the Islamic conquest when it obviously wasn’t much tolerated anymore.
Romans and Persians often fought, Romans eventually under the late western romans and Byzantines adopted the Persian military system. Armenia and the land between the Aegean and Euphrates often switched hands. We got the idea of court eunuchs from the parthians, who came after the persians… I don’t know if the persians had eunuchs too off hand.
They did produce some remarkable kings, but also some shitty tyrants. Especially on the Satyrap level (governor) as per the greek perspective.
They didn’t do a great job of founding cities… Greeks and Romans did much of the work in Asia Minor and Syria… Combining tribes into cities, slapping go stitutions on them… I am conjecturing at this point, but think the King of Kings… The Persian Emperor, whenever he took a area, felt if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it, and left the nations he ruled over as they were. Greeks obviously didn’t feel thus way, and tried to fortify the territory, founding city after city after city, preferably with greeks and Macedonians, but often just getting tribal hobos to stick to one spot and farm, and live within city walls and pay taxes. I can’t find any evidence the persians tried this. Persians conquered, but usually returned afterwards to their homeland.
They had various forms of landed property. Emperor didn’t own everything like some historians think. They had public works, by levy or slave labor from war (including roman legions captured). Plotinus barely made this escape when he somehow survived battle, worked his ass up the Euphrates past where I was stationed on it, back to Antioch.
Persian history is a pain in the ass to learn. I found counter to expectations, the modern Iranian regime, contrary to modern political affairs, is generally open and accurate in dealing with history, except when dealing with the origins of the Zoroastrians (many think it didn’t exist till the muddle ages, and shouldn’t be allowed, but then flip flop and can tell you anything else about Persian history, including the zoroastrian early history). I used to correspond with a few Iranian historians, tracking down early philosophers and military history. They are all offline now, for reasons beyond my understanding, guess the government banned them again.
