124
The Persistence of Iran’s Old Traditions
January 20, 1933
Let us go now to Persia, the country whose soul is said to have come to India and found a worthy body here in the Taj. Persian Art has a remarkable tradition. This tradition has persisted for over 2000 years— ever since the days of the Assyrians. There have been changes of governments and dynasties and religion, the country has been under foreign rule and under its own kings, Islam has come and revolutionized much, but this tradition has persisted. Of course it has changed and developed in the course of ages. This persistence, it is said, is due to the connection of Persian Art with the soil and scenery of Persia.
I told you in the previous letter of the Assyrian Empire of Nineveh. This included Persia. About 500 or 600 years before Christ, the Iranians, who were Aryans, captured Nineveh and put an end to the Assyrian Empire. The Persian-Aryans then built for themselves a great empire from the banks of the Indus right up to Egypt. They dominated the ancient world, and their ruler is often referred to in Greek accounts as the “Great King”. Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes are the names of some of these “Great Kings”. You may remember that Darius and Xerxes tried to conquer Greece, and suffered defeat. This dynasty is called the Achaemenid dynasty. For 220 years it ruled a vast empire till Alexander the Great of Macedon put an end to it.
The Persians must have come as a great relief after the Assyrians and the Babylonians. They were civilized and tolerant masters, allowing different religions and cultures to flourish. The huge empire was well administered, and there was a network of good roads to facilitate communications from all parts. These Persians were closely related to the Indo-Aryans, those who had come to India. Their religion—that of Zoroaster or Zarathustra—was related to the early Vedic religion. It seems clear that both had a common origin in the early home of the Aryans, wherever this may have been.
The Achaemenid kings were great builders. In their capital city of Persepolis they built huge palaces—they did not build temples—with vast halls supported by numerous columns. Some ruins can still give an idea of these enormous structures. Achaemenid art seems to have kept contact with Indian art of the Mauryan period (Ashoka, etc.), and influenced it.
Alexander defeated the “Great King” Darius and ended the Achaemenid dynasty. There followed a brief period of Greek rule under Seleucus (who had been Alexander’s general) and his successors, and a much longer period of Hellenic influence under semi-foreign rulers. The Kushans sitting on the Indian borderland and stretching out south to Benares and north in Central Asia were contemporaries, and they also were under Hellenic influence. Thus the whole of Asia west of India was under Greek influence for more than 500 years after Alexander, right up to the third century after Christ. This influence was largely artistic. It did not interfere with the religion of Persia, which continued to be Zoroastrianism.
In the third century there was a national revival in Persia and a new dynasty came into power. This was the Sassanid dynasty, which was aggressively nationalistic and claimed to be the successor of the old Achaemenid kings. As usually happens with an aggressive nationalism, this was narrow and intolerant. It had to become so because it was wedged in between the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire of Constantinople on the west, and the advancing Turkish tribes on the east. Still, it managed to carry on for more than 400 years, right up to the coming of Islam. The Zoroastrian priesthood was all-powerful under the Sassanids, and their Church controlled the State and was intolerant of all opposition. It was during this period that the final version of their sacred book, the Avestha, is said to have been prepared.
In India at this time the Gupta Empire flourished, which was also a national revival after the Kushan and Buddhist periods. There was a renaissance of art and literature, and some of the greatest of Sanskrit writers, like Kalidas, lived then. There are many indications that Persia of the Sassanids had artistic contacts with India of the Guptas. Few paintings or sculptures of the Sassanid period have remained to our day; such as have been found are full of life and movement, the animals being very similar to those in the Ajanta frescoes. Sassanid artistic influence seems to have extended right up to China and the Gobi desert.
Towards the end of their long rule the Sassanids became weak and Persia was in a bad way. After long warfare with the Byzantine Empire both were thoroughly exhausted. It was not difficult for the Arab armies, full of ardour for their new faith, to conquer Persia. By the middle of the seventh century, within ten years of the death of the Prophet Mohammad, Persia was under the rule of the Caliph. As Arab armies spread to Central Asia and North Africa they carried with them not only their new religion, but a young and growing civilization. Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt were all absorbed by Arabic culture. The Arabic language became their language, and even racially they were assimilated. Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo became the great centres of Arabic culture, and many fine buildings arose there under the impetus of the new civilization. Even today all these countries are the Arabic countries and, though separated from each other, they dream of unity.
Persia was similarly conquered by the Arabs, but they could not absorb or assimilate the people as they had done in Syria or Egypt. The Iranian race, being of the old Aryan stock, was further removed from the Semitic Arabs; their language was also an Aryan language. So the race remained apart and the language continued to flourish. Islam spread rapidly and displaced Zoroastrianism, which ultimately had to seek shelter in India. But even in Islam the Persians took their own line. There was a split, and two parties arose, two branches of Islam—the Shias and the Sunnis. Persia became, and still is, predominantly a Shia country, while the rest of the Islamic world is mostly Sunni.
But though Persia was not assimilated, Arab civilization had a powerful influence on her; and Islam, as in India, gave new life to artistic activity. Arab art and culture were equally affected by Persian standards. Persian luxury invaded the households of the simple children of the desert, and the Court of the Arab Caliph became as gorgeous and magnificent as any other imperial Court had been. Imperial Baghdad became the greatest city of the day. North of it in Samarra on the Tigris the Caliphs built for themselves an enormous mosque and palace, the ruins of which still exist. The mosque had vast halls and courtyards with fountains. The palace was a rectangle, of which one side was over a kilometre in length.
In the ninth century the Empire of Baghdad decayed and split up into a number of States. Persia became independent, and Turkish tribes from the East formed many States, eventually seizing Persia itself and dominating the nominal Caliph of Baghdad. Mahmud of Ghazni arose at the beginning of the eleventh century and raided India and threatened the Caliph, and built for himself a brief-lived empire, to be ended by another Turkish tribe, the Seljuqs. The Seljuqs faced and fought long, and with success, the Christian Crusaders, and their empire lasted for 150 years. Towards the end of the twelfth century yet another Turkish tribe drove out the Seljuqs from Persia and established the kingdom of Khwarizm or Khiva. But this had a brief life, for Chengiz Khan, indignant at the insult offered to his ambassador by the Shah of Khwarizm, came with his Mongols and crushed the land and the people.
In a brief paragraph I have told of many changes and many empires, and you must be sufficiently confused. I have mentioned these ups and downs of dynasties and races, not to burden your mind with them, but to emphasize how the artistic tradition and life of Persia continued in spite of them. Tribe after tribe of Turks came from the East, and they succumbed to the mixed Perso-Arabian civilization which prevailed from Bokhara to Iraq. Those Turks who managed to reach Asia Minor, far from Persia, retained their own ways and refused to give in to Arabic culture. They made Asia Minor almost a bit of their native Turkestan. But in Persia and adjoining countries, such was the strength of the old Iranian culture that they accepted it and adapted themselves to it. Under all the various Turkish dynasties that ruled, Persian art and literature flourished. I have told you, I think, of the Persian poet Firdausi,
who lived at the time of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. At Mahmud’s request he wrote the great national epic of Persia, the Shahnama, and the scenes described in this book lie in pre-Islamic days, and the great hero is Rustam. This shows us how closely tied up were Persian art and literature with the old national and traditional past. Most of the subjects for Persian paintings and beautiful miniatures are taken from the stories of the Shahnama.
Firdausi lived at the turn of the century and the millennium, from 932 to 1021. Soon after him came a name famous in English as it is in Persian—Omar Khayyam, the astronomer-poet of Nishapur in Persia. And Omar was followed by Sheikh Sadi of Shiraz, one of the greatest of Persian poets, whose Gulistan and Bustan schoolboys in Indian maktabs have had to learn by heart for generations past.
I mention just a few names of the great. There is no point in my giving you long lists of names. But I wish you to realize that the lamp of Persian art and culture was shining brightly right through these centuries from Persia to Transoxiana in Central Asia. Great cities like Bokhara and Balkh of Transoxiana rivalled the cities of Persia as centres of artistic and literary activity. It was at Bokhara that Ibn Sina or Avicenna, the most famous of Arab philosophers, was born at the end of the tenth century. It was in Balkh 200 years later that another great Persian poet was born, Jalaluddin Rumi. He is considered a great mystic, and he founded the order of the dancing dervishes.
So in spite of war and conflict and political changes the tradition of Perso-Arabian art and culture continued to be a living one and produced many masterpieces in literature, painting and architecture. Then came disaster. In the thirteenth century (about 1220) Chengiz Khan swept down and destroyed Khwarizm and Iran, and a few years later Hulagu destroyed Baghdad, and the accumulations of long centuries of high culture were swept away. I have told you in some previous letter how the Mongols converted Central Asia almost into a wilderness, and how its great cities were deserted and became almost devoid of human life.
Central Asia never fully recovered from this calamity; and it is surprising enough that it recovered to the extent it did. You may remember that after Chengiz Khan’s death his vast empire was divided up. The part of it in Persia and round about fell to Hulagu, who, after having had his fill of destruction, settled down as a peaceful and tolerant ruler, and founded the dynasty of the Ilkhans. These Ilkhans for some time continued to profess the old Sky religion of the Mongols; later they were converted to Islam. Both before and after this conversion they were completely tolerant of other religions. Their cousins in China, the Great Khan and his family, were Buddhists, and with them they had the most intimate relations. They even sent for brides all the way from China.
These contacts between the two branches of the Mongols in Persia and China had considerable effect on art. Chinese influence crept into Persia and a curious blend of Arabic, Persian, and Chinese influence appears in the paintings. But again the Persian element, in spite of all disasters, triumphed. In the middle of the fourteenth century Persia produced another great poet, Hafiz, who is still popular even in India.
The Mongol Ilkhans did not last long. Their last remnants were destroyed by another great warrior, Timur, of Samarqand in Transoxiana. This terrible and most cruel savage, about whom I have written to you, was quite a patron of the arts, and was considered a learned man. His love of the arts seems to have consisted chiefly in sacking great cities like Delhi, Shiraz, Baghdad, and Damascus and carrying away the loot to adorn his own capital, Samarqand. But Samarqand’s most wonderful and imposing structure is Timur’s tomb, the Gur Amir. It is a fit mausoleum for him, for there is something of his commanding presence and strength and fierce spirit in its noble outlines.
The vast territories that Timur had conquered fell away after his death, but a relatively small domain, including Transoxiana and Persia, remained for his successors. For a full hundred years, right through the fifteenth century, these “Timurids”, as they were called, held sway over Iran and Bokhara and Herat, and, strangely enough, these descendants of a ruthless conqueror became famous for their generosity and humanity and encouragement of the arts. Timur’s own son, Shah Rukh, was the greatest of them. He founded a magnificent library at Herat, which was his capital, and crowds of literary men were attracted to it.
This Timurid period of 100 years is so noteworthy for its artistic and literary movements that it is known as the “Timurid Renaissance”. There was a rich development of Persian literature, and large numbers of fine pictures were painted. Bihzad, the great painter, was head of a school of painting. It is interesting to note that side by side with Persian, Turkish literature also developed in the Timurid literary circles. This was also the period, to remind you again, of the Renaissance in Italy.
The Timurids were Turks, and they had succumbed largely to Persian culture. Iran, dominated by Turks and Mongols, imposed its own culture on the conquerors. At the same time Persia struggled to free herself politically, and gradually the Timurids were driven more and more to the east and their domain became smaller round Transoxiana. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Iranian nationalism triumphed, and the Timurids were finally driven out from Persia. A national dynasty, the Safavi or Safavids, came on the Persian throne. It was the second of this dynasty, Tahmasp I, who gave refuge to Humayun fleeing from India before Sher Khan.
The Safavi period lasted for 220 years from 1502 to 1722. It is called the golden age of Persian art. Isfahan, the capital, was filled with splendid buildings and became a famous artistic centre, especially noted for painting. Shah Abbas, who ruled from 1587 to 1629, was the outstanding sovereign of this dynasty, and he is considered one of Persia’s greatest rulers. He was hemmed in by the Uzbegs on one side and the Ottoman Turks on the other. He drove away both and built up a strong State, cultivated relations with distant States in the West and elsewhere, and devoted himself to beautifying his capital. The town-planning of Shah Abbas in Isfahan has been called “a masterpiece of classical purity and taste”. The buildings that were made were not only beautiful in themselves and finely decorated, but the charm of the setting enhanced the effect. European travellers who visited Persia at the time give glowing descriptions.
Architecture, literature, paintings, both frescoes and miniatures, beautiful carpets, fine faience work and mosaics, all flourished during this golden age of Persian art. Some of the fresco-paintings and miniatures are of an amazing loveliness. Art does not, or should not, know national boundaries, and many influences must have gone to enrich this Persian art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Italian influence, it is said, is evident. But behind all there is the old artistic tradition of Iran, which persisted through 2000 years. And the sphere of Iranian culture was not confined to Persia. It spread over a vast area from Turkey on the west to India on the east. The Persian language was the language of culture in the Moghal Courts in India, and in western Asia generally, as French used to be in Europe. The old spirit of Persian art has left an immortal emblem in the Taj Mahal at Agra. In much the same way this art has influenced Ottoman architecture as far west as Constantinople, and many a famous building grew up there with the impress of Persian influence.
The Safavis in Persia were more or less contemporaneous with the Great Moghals in India. Babar, the first of the Indian Moghals, was one of the Timurid princes of Samarqand. As the Persians had gained strength they had driven the Timurids away, and only parts of Transoxiana and Afghanistan remained under various Timurid princes. Babar had to fight from the age of twelve among these petty princes. He succeeded, and made himself ruler of Kabul, and then came to India. The high culture of the Timurids at the time can be judged from Babar, from whose memoirs I gave you some quotations in a previous letter. Shah Abbas, the greatest of the Safavi rulers, was a contemporary of Akbar and Jehangir. Between the two countries all along there must have been the most intimate contact. For long they had a common frontier, Afghanistan being part of the Moghal Indian Empire.
125
Imperialism and Nationalis
m in Persia
January 21, 1933
You are entitled to have a grievance against me. I have given you sufficient provocation by rushing backwards and forwards in the various corridors of history. After having reached, by many different routes, the nineteenth century, I have suddenly taken you back a few thousand years and jumped about from Egypt to India and China and Persia. This must be aggravating and confusing, and I have no good answer to the protest which I can almost hear you making. The reading of M. René Grousset’s books suddenly started many lines of thought in my head, and I could not help sharing some of them with you. I felt also that I had neglected Persia in these letters, and I wanted to make some reparation for this omission. And now that we have been considering Persia, we might as well carry on her story to modern times.
I have told you of the old traditions and high accomplishments of Persian culture, of the golden age of Persian art, and so on and so forth. On looking at these phrases again, the language seems rather flowery and somewhat misleading. One might almost think that a real golden age had come to the people of Persia, and their miseries vanished away and they lived happily, like people in fairy-tales. Of course no such thing happened. Culture and art in those days, as even now to a large extent, were the monopoly of a few; the masses, the average person, had nothing to do with them. The life of the masses, indeed, from the earliest days, has been a constant struggle for food and the necessaries of life; it has not differed greatly from the life of the animals. They had no time or leisure for anything else; sufficient and more than sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof; how could they think or appreciate art and culture? Art flourished in Persia and India and China and Italy and the other countries of Europe as a pastime for the Courts and the rich and leisured classes. Only religious art to some extent touched the life of the masses.
Glimpses of World History Page 73
