From: farhad@cwi.nl (Farhad Arbab)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian,soc.culture.arabic,soc.culture.turkish,soc.culture.afghanistan
Subject: Re: IRAN in FARSI = IRAQ in ARABIC ???
Date: 17 Aug 92 18:52:55 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.iranian
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam

In article <1992Aug15.213850.29545@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, lhermi@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Lotfi Hermi) writes:
|> 
|> I read in some history book entitled " Ajjaib al-makdur fi nawaib taymur" 
|> by a Turkish writter ( the book is about tamerlane) that the word 
|> Iran is the Farsi equivalent of the word Iraq in arabic ? any enlightment ??

This is pure nonsense.  The word Iran is a modernized pronunciation of
the word "ayarAn" which is an adjective meaning related to or that of
the Aryans.  Some 4000 years ago, mass migrations of Aryan tribes down
south brought the population to the Iranian plateau.  They consisted of
different tribes which were later unified under Cyrus the Great the
founder of the so called Persian Empire.  At least since Cyrus the
Great, the country has always been called Iran.  This was an
accomplishment by itself for Cyrus who unified various Aryan tribes,
among them the Persians and the Meds (MAdhA, of whom the present day
Kurds remain).  Cyrus himself had a mixed Iranian heritage: on the
father side, Persian and on the mother side Med.  The resulting country
was to be named not after any individula tribe, but after the common
heritage of the Meds, Persians, Parthians, etc., i.e. the land of
Aryans, or "ayarAn."  The term "Persian Empire" and the use of "Persia"
instead of Iran to some extent undermine the ancient accomplishment of
Cyrus.  The Greeks and the Romans were not very keen on such subtleties
regarding Iran, and preferred to refer to their rivals as those guys
who rule from Persia, and at one time or another were Persians (as
opposed to Meds, which also was the case), and speak Persian.  The west
then simply inherited the terms "Persian Empire" and Persia from the
Greeks and the Romans.

|> Iraq means in arabic either the root (Irq) or the nectar of Palm trees ( Araq).

I do not know much about the root of the name "arAgh" but what
you say sounds plausible to me (doesn't mean much because I am
ignorant on this subject).  An unfortunate side effect of the
recent romanization of the Turkish script is that Turkish is now
cut off from Persian and Arabic, both of which have contributed
quite significantly to modern Turkish.  As a result, roots of
most words are not easily recognizable by present generation of
Turkish speaking people.  I strongly suspect that the author of
the book you mention has fallen victim to the superficial
similarity of "Iran" and "Iraq" when written using the Roman alphabet.
In Arabic/Persian script, the two words are written very
differently and are not easy to confuse.

|> Also, history books talk about iraq arabi and iraq ajjami, and may be some
|> iranian can shed light on this .

This is true, the Arabs referred to Iran as "arAgh-e ajam" meaning the
arAgh of the ajams.  The word "ajam" essentially means non-Arab (I am
told), but my understanding is that it was almost exclusively used by
Arabs to refer to Iraninas.  Here, one must make a distinction between
the name of a country and the terms a particular people use to refer to
that country (prejudice often intended).

Note that the Arabic character of what is now Iraq is a
more recent phenomenon than its links with Iran: in more ancient times
Baghdad was certainly Iranian.  The name of the city is a derivation of
the Persian word "bagh" which means a Zorastrian priest, hinting at the
city's prominence as a Zorastrian religious center.

|> 
|> Ba Ihtiram, Tashakur'am
|> 
|> DAR BILAD ARABSTAN :Lotfi 


Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian