davAzdah gharn sokoot: ketAb-e Avval barAmadan-e hakhAmaneshiAn

مرور کتاب دوازده قرن سکوت پورپیرار
http://ghandchi.com/124-Davazdah.htm

Book Review:

I do not know if any body else on SCI has read this book. This is what I call a real apology for Islamic Republic under the cloak of defending Iran from foreign aggression. The author comes up with this theory that hakhAmaneshiAn were invaders and that Iranian people lost to these invaders and the same loss occured in all subsequent pre-Islamic dynasties which he considers as invaders. Then the book claims that going for Islam was when Iranians reversed their loss and became independent from the hakhAmaneshis, AshkAnids, Sassanids, etc.

This book is really schizophrenic and makes the reality upside down and it continues to say that all admirations for hakhAmaneshis and pre-Islamic Iran has been the writings of the Jews and Jewish Middle East scholars.

Actually I should note that contrary to what this author has written, the idea of democratic state had come up before the reign of Dariush and was defeated and even though it was defeated, Iran's ancient empires were *not* monarchy per se. Even the shAhanshAhi of ancient Iran was *not* monarchy as such and it was more similar to a federal system. This is why they used the word shAhanshAh which means king of kings because each king ruled a separate territory and king of kings ruled over them all.

Although this book looks very pretentious, the author hardly knows any of the facts like what I noted above about the shAhanshAhi system. I hope more new historians with futuristic outlook and good scientific understanding of our history to come to the scene of Iranian scholarship to rebut nonsense like this book which reminded me of the Hoviyat program of Islamic Republic TV.

Sam Ghandchi, Publisher
IRANSCOPE
http://iranscope.ghandchi.com
March 1, 2002

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