Ferdowsi’s Anti-Iranianism and Westernization!
Aydin Areta

You may be surprised by the title of this piece. What prompted me to write these lines was the number of posts and writings I received yesterday, 25 Ordibehesht, on the day commemorating Ferdowsi.

They were writings shared on social media under accusations of “racism” and hostility by the great poet of Tus toward Turks, Baluch, and Arabs. Most are circulated under the title of Ferdowsi’s “anti-Turkism” and pursue obvious aims on the part of groups whose purposes hardly require further explanation because they are too clear to ignore.

Anything capable of opening a fracture in the solidarity and unity of the peoples of the Iranian lands is welcome to such groups. If they can reduce being Iranian to being Persian, then demonstrate that something historically existed in Iran called “Persian racism,” and finally transform this into “Iranian racism,” they have achieved an important part of their aim: they plant seeds of resentment and hatred in the hearts of the people of this land so that the historical pride of one becomes the historical enemy of another. This is the best way to create distance between identities, first producing separation and then turning separation into confrontation.

In their writings they quote verses attributed to Ferdowsi such as:

“No one among the Turks possesses wisdom.”

Or:

“The Turks are fairy-faced to behold,
but in battle are wholly without skill.”

And:

“God brought ruin upon the Turks;
all their [word unclear in the Persian source] became utterly abased.”

Their selection of Ferdowsi’s verses follows a logic whose weakness and lack of logic can itself expose what they are trying, through manipulation, to conceal.

In what follows I want to show you that, beyond being “anti-Turk,” Ferdowsi was intensely “anti-Iranian” and even “Westoxicated.” Consider these supposedly anti-Iranian verses by Ferdowsi:

Ferdowsi referring to Iranians as deceitful and fraudulent:

“The Iranians are a deceitful people.”

Or accusing Iranians of speaking nonsense and breaking their word:

“If this accords with wisdom, remember it;
hold the words of Iranians as wind.”

And Rostam—himself from Sistan—calling Iranians foolish, cowardly, and lazy:

“Enraged by the Iranians’ fearlessness [source wording uncertain] and sleep,
Rostam roared like a raging lion.
He opened his tongue in abuse and said:
No one has wisdom joined to his brain.”

Or describing Iranians as servile and submissive:

“All the Iranians were servants.”

And going even further, calling Iranians devilish and demonic in character:

“This could only have been the work of Iranians;
a demon was guiding them from within.”

And accusing Iranians of oppression and injustice toward Turks and Turanians:

“You saw the wrongs of the Iranians,
what they did to the land of the Turanians.”

Or:

“What did the Iranians do to us?
One by one they bound themselves to evil.”

Or:

“From that side, seek out the evil of the Iranians,
seek out the camp of the ill-bodied people.”

And also:

“He said to the Iranians: fear the Creator
and fear the turning of the age.
The hand of heaven stretches long toward evil;
it does not return in kindness to the unjust.”

Ferdowsi, moreover, was supposedly self-alienated and Westernized: he defended the Romans and their rights against the Iranians and accused Iranians of shedding the blood of innocents, including women and children, and even of trying to bring Western civilization to ruin:

“Since Alexander departed from this world,
we have secretly suffered at the hands of Iranians—
from so much plunder, war, and conflict,
and the senseless spilling of innocent blood.”

And:

“Of the thirty-nine cities in our lands,
the Iranians turned them all into wasteland.
The plain became a pool with the blood of the nobles;
they carried away their women and children as captives.
If the Roman man has taken vengeance into his heart,
that should not surprise you.”

As you can see, depending on your intention and purpose, you can extract whatever you want from any historical text—especially from an epic literary text made up throughout of the struggles of people across history—and use it in the service of your aim.

The truth is that everything presented in these writings as evidence of Ferdowsi’s racism is, like what I have just presented above under the titles “Ferdowsi’s anti-Iranianism” and “Western orientation,” nothing more than selectively extracted pieces of boasting, battle rhetoric, or statements by characters in Ferdowsi’s stories who stand opposed to one another.

In the stories of the Shahnameh, the boundary between good and evil never passes between nations in the way these polemics try to suggest. It is they who try to portray the boundary between good and evil as the boundary between Turk and Persian. Better still for their purposes if “Persian” can be made equivalent to “Iranian,” allowing boundaries among peoples to be transformed into boundaries between nations. (Leaving aside that Ferdowsi’s Turan, and the peoples he calls Turks, border China and lie on Iran’s eastern frontiers, and do not correspond to what such writers seek to use as evidence of Ferdowsi’s supposed hostility toward Turks.)