Iranian Calendar
Today
Iranian Calendar (IC)
جمعه، ۱۷ بهمن ۵۰۲۵
Friday, 17 Bahman 5025
Gregorian
جمعه، ۶ فوریه ۲۰۲۶
Friday, 6 February 2026
Solar Hijri (SH)
جمعه، ۱۷ بهمن ۱۴۰۴
Friday, 17 Bahman 1404
Conversion
Leap year — 366 days, position 9 of 33
Iranian Calendar (IC)
جمعه، ۱۷ بهمن ۵۰۲۵
Friday, 17 Bahman 5025
Gregorian
جمعه، ۶ فوریه ۲۰۲۶
Friday, 6 February 2026
Solar Hijri
جمعه، ۱۷ بهمن ۱۴۰۴
Friday, 17 Bahman 1404
The history of institutions thus emerges from the accumulation of biographies. The individual choices of selves and the uncontrollable and fate-laden events they experience are ultimately combined in a narrative texture called biography and create an integrated meaning system. Similarly, it is from the sustained interaction of these self-founded selves that social outcomes emerge, and history is a narrative parallel to biography which formulates and encodes these behavioural options, action choices, and fortunes and destinies at the social level and unites them in a coherent narrative format.
Every institution has its own specific history. Every family, tribe, company, ministry, city, and neighbourhood creates its own specific history, which is rarely contemplated and recorded. That is, alongside the extensive scope of history and its dominion over micro and macro identity narratives, 'history writing' and 'history thinking' are rare and scarce matters. Institutions usually generate history and float in it without this history being formulated in a written texture and being considered the subject of reflection and the source of the generation of considered meaning.
Similarly, writing macro history is difficult and slow to achieve. Only societies that have a long life, a complex and multi-layered hierarchical structure, and a long precedent achieve the fortune of obtaining a macro and coherent history and using it as a centre of gravity for organising identities and directing the biographies of their members. Otherwise, what we often see are oral, ephemeral, and divergent histories that narrate the stories of families, dynasties, churches, and companies and, at most, are recorded in the form of scattered documents or bureaucratic records and accounting data.
Iranian civilisation, which is the oldest living civilisation on Earth, is also the origin of recording history. Both writing macro history and thinking about its meaning began in the Iranian realm, and until millennia later, it was not realised in other living civilisations of today (European and Chinese civilisations). The Iranian realm, beyond producing the oldest texts about the history of courts, the history of dynasties, the history of cities, and the history of religions, has also produced the oldest and most enduring narrative about the history of a nation and a civilisation.
It is because of this deep-rooted and well-structured nature of history that in this geographical territory, exceptionally and unreplicably, the Iranian civilisational sphere and the Iranian nation and the Iranian state are more or less one, and in a major part of history (for twenty centuries over the past twenty-six centuries) only one state has ruled over the entire Iranian civilisational sphere and represented only one nationality. This convergence and unity of nationality (which is a cultural identity), state (which is a social institution), and civilisation (which is the macro level of the extension of the social system in time-space) has been a factor that has made writing history and thinking about history possible and necessary.
The story is the same regarding the starting point of history. Histories are all established upon a single time axis, although they deliver different narratives of it and cover different rhythms and different scopes of time-space. For this reason, the biography of a self always mixes with the biographies of others and combines with them. Selves combine their identity, which is tied to their biography, with the biographies of their parents, their ancestors, their friends, and their compatriots, and thus they go back in time from the moment of their own birth. So much so that the biography of many people is a narrative that begins years and sometimes centuries before they were born. From the time their father and mother became acquainted, from the era of a certain ancestral family's migration from one city to another, or from the time of the life of a certain renowned person who lived sometimes centuries before.
History is also like this. Institutions are born from each other, lean on each other, and receive inheritance from each other. For this reason, the history of every nation is ultimately considered the continuation of the histories of nations before it. Families and dynasties fashion real or fabricated genealogies for themselves, and companies and organisations search for their backgrounds in older institutions. The Sasanians considered themselves the continuation of the Achaemenids, and the Samanids and Buyids counted themselves the continuation of Bahram Gur and Manuchehr Pishdadi, because history is also open in the past axis and can refer to previous institutions, organisations, and nations and include its enjoyment of their heritage in its narrative of itself.
So it became clear that history and biography are narratives open to the past and future and, in a sense, boundless and endless. Narratives that inconsistently reflect the necessity and inevitability of their own end, but as long as they exist do not give it the opportunity to appear, and when its presence is realised, they themselves depart from the midst. History in this framework resembles a line that is open from both sides and, according to the very precise ancient Iranian expression, has one foot in eternity (azal) and one foot in perpetuity (abad).
On one side, we have azal, which is the transformed form of the Pahlavi phrase 'asar', meaning headless and lacking a beginning. On the other side, we have abad before us, which is also the simplified form of another Pahlavi word – 'apad' – meaning footless and lacking an end. History in this way is an eternal and perpetual matter, meaning it has neither beginning nor conclusion. History, in the precise meaning of the word, floats in Zurvan Akāranak – that is, in boundless time. Both in its discursive and narrative-centred meaning, which indicates the possibility of expansion and generalisation to the past and points to the impossibility of referring to a terminal point in the future; and in its real and objective meaning, which emphasises the experiencing, writing, and reading of all histories in an unchanging 'now' and in an eternal and perpetual position.
Iranian civilisation is the oldest civilisation on Earth, and it is astonishing that it has endured until today. If we look at the history of institutions, the history of identities, and the history of nations, it is only Iran that has always existed, and the institutions constituting it in the present are the direct continuation of institutions many of which date back five thousand years to the dawn of the emergence of writing and urbanisation. The families, cities, cultural and artistic structures, and mythological elements and identity codes of Iranians are the most enduring and stable sociological and cultural structures on Earth, and for this reason, the history they have created is, in the precise meaning of the word, eternal and perpetual. That is, from the beginning of the formation of writing on Earth, the first narratives that were written about families, cities, and wars belonged to the Iranian realm, and the body of innovations and evolutionary leaps in organising history and creating a coherent narrative of collective identity were also taken in the Iranian realm.
Alongside Iranian civilisation, of course, Egyptian civilisation also had a starting point simultaneous with Iran. But that historical territory produced much simpler history that remained limited only to court narratives and ultimately was forgotten with the extinction of this civilisation. Chinese and European civilisations have also created remarkable innovations and accumulation of history. But the truth is that the complexity, diversity, and scope of the histories that emerged in these civilisations have only in the past three or four centuries reached the level of histories written in Iranian civilisation, and until the pre-modern era, we have had a striking gap in the field of historiography between Iran and other civilisations.
Iranian civilisation is important in the history of history in that it invented the idea of the beginning and end of history. This conception of history as a line segment (and not a headless and footless line) first appeared in the compositions of Zoroaster, namely the Gathas, and quickly in Avestan texts turned into a general framework for understanding history. It was Zoroaster who for the first time set aside the short and successive cycles of the coming and going of kings and dynasties and spoke of the history of all existence, and since he saw a comprehensive rationality and moral struggle between two forces of good and evil ruling over the world, he considered this history of existence purposeful and goal-oriented.
This invention meant that the history of existence should be regarded as homologous with biography, and this matter, while today it seems obvious, in Zoroaster's time, namely in the late second millennium BCE, counted as an entirely far-fetched and innovative matter. Because in that era, the 'self' as an ontological axis had not yet gained credibility, and there was no narrative at work to tie the history of societies to the individual actions of selves. History in that era arose from the actions of special selves who were either gods or god-like kings. Humans in the general sense of the word had no place in this perspective at all, and for this reason, historical narrative in the pre-Zoroastrian era worked in two parallel branches: either like the inscription of Ur-Nammu and the account of the Battle of Qadesh, it reported the masterworks of kings, or like the Enuma Elish and Gilgamesh, it described the actions of gods and demi-gods. Of these two, the first is part of history and the second fits within mythology, but it is important to know that at that time these two were understood as parallel and intertwined. What created this situation was the 'medium-term' nature of history. That is, history was essentially summarised in cycles whose unit of rotation was the generation and encompassed a repetitive and local loop.
Zoroaster's astonishing innovation was that on one hand, he targeted the history of existence and formulated it with the eternal struggle of two Ahuraean and Ahrimanic forces, and on the other hand, he related the result and purpose arising from it to the actions of individual humans. In this way, the concept of human in the precise meaning of the word was born in history, and selves who each had personal biographies achieved this opportunity and credibility to play a role in the history of existence.
This role could be as a wise warrior in the front of Ahura Mazda or as an unwise and deceived helper in the wing of Ahriman. But in any case, Zoroaster said that history, like the life of people, has a beginning and has an end, which arises from the wisdom of the law ruling over existence. That is, three thousand years before Hegel, it was Zoroaster who for the first time spoke of reason flowing in history and for the first time envisioned irreversible periods and a beginning and end for it.
The history of existence in the Zoroastrian framework extended to twelve thousand years and thus had a similarity with the twelve months of the solar year. This history began with the separation of Angra Mainyu from Spenta Mainyu and was similar to the battle of two champions at a specific time. One of these two, who was Ahura Mazda – meaning the wise lord – because he knew the law ruling over existence, namely Asha, ultimately triumphed over the other – Ahriman, meaning the harmful spirit – and humans were the main key to his superiority, because they constituted the essential substances of wisdom established in the material world (giti) and were the valuable and powerful allies of the benevolent Lord who was only established in the spiritual realm (minu). For this reason, in the Zoroastrian view, the important turning points of history are marked by the biographies of great humans such as Jamshid, Zoroaster, and Keyumars, and future history is also marked by the coming and going of three saviours, and ultimately the ending of history is the result of the action of the human who is called the saviour (Saoshyant).
Until before Zoroaster, history was a local, cyclical, headless and footless matter, independent of the collective actions of humans. After him, however, the conceptual horizon of history completely changed. Writing cosmic history, which at the beginning of the task was done in a religious texture and therefore close to mythological narratives, soon with the expansion of the Zoroastrian religion also linked to political and social histories. Seven centuries after Zoroaster, the first comprehensive state whose philosophical apparatus and discursive system borrowed from him managed to unite the entire territory of Iranian civilisation in the form of a unified country, and this was the starting point of the birth of the unified country of Iran.
Right at the beginning of the work, when Darius the Great wrote the Bisotun inscription, he both observed the wise and humanist Zoroastrian perspective in his narrative and showed remarkable precision in narrating events, and for the first time, with neutrality, he only referred to events and showed meticulousness in mentioning the exact day, month, year, and location of their occurrence. After that, this framework has been observed until today, and it is in this texture that we see event-recording histories like Tarikh-i Guzida alongside reflection-laden histories like Tarikh-i Beyhaqi, and the importance of guarding the historical memory of predecessors has been considered so important that Mas'udi reports that in the year 303 Hijri, in Estakhr, in the house of one of the survivors of the old aristocratic Sasanian families, he saw a huge and large book that contained descriptions of the cities and provinces and ancient kings of Iran. This book was illustrated and contained the image of twenty-seven Sasanian kings, two of whom were women.
It is this background that has made Iranian society one of the most historically minded societies on Earth. A specific form of historical-mindedness that differs from the modern model and encompasses the preservation of personal biographies alongside the narrative of the collective fate of peoples. It was in this civilisational texture that the idea of history was formed as a line segment, not a headless and footless line, and took shape in the Iranian realm based on three assumptions: the historical nature of all existence, the rule of reason over history, and the fundamental importance and impact of human actions in shaping this history.
The Zoroastrian theoretical apparatus, which recognised bounded time for the first time and insisted on its distinction from boundless time, was essentially a philosophical apparatus that later crystallised in the form of a religious system, and its reflections were formulated as mythological narratives. It was in this philosophical apparatus that it became clear that the time that people use at the social level is not eternal and perpetual and has a specific beginning and end, and for this reason, it is based on the format of personal biographies. This bounded time, which has a collective rhythm and is used to coordinate people's actions in institutions, is a substitute and derivative of that pure foundational boundless time, which is still praised and valued in Iranian culture in the form of the now, the present, and the moment.
But that bounded time inevitably needs points for marking and a starting point for counting history. In the pre-Zoroastrian world, those temporary cycles of the coming and going of kings or memorable recurring events such as a certain flood or a certain war were what were used for historical reference. But these were local and transient events and had application in the absence of the concept of the history of existence. When the matter of the history of existence is raised, macro and great starting points are also needed to seat events of global importance in the seat of reference. In this framework, year counts are no longer limited to a few decades and may be counted hundreds and thousands of years based on a historical origin.
Thus from the Achaemenid era onwards, we have efforts to determine the origin of history. The Achaemenid state was the first literate state that had chosen the Zoroastrian theoretical apparatus for formulating its politics. Centuries before that, the Balkh state had probably been the initial origin of politics in the Zoroastrian system. But it appears that this political territory was non-literate and its geographical scope of expansion was also limited. The Achaemenids, however, were both literate and had inherited the deep-rooted tradition of Elamite and Akkadian scribal arts, which at that time was the most enduring and stable tradition of historiography in the world, and its language and writing had more than two thousand years of antiquity. Beyond this, the Achaemenids had the entire known urbanised world of their time under their command. That is, in the precise meaning of the word, the newly emerging state of united Iran – which at that time was called Pars – was considered the representative of world history. This state encompassed all the ancient civilisations of the Iranian realm and Egypt and had digested the historiographical tradition of both and its territory was also global.
For this reason, this hypothesis seems plausible that the idea of determining the origin of world history took shape in the Achaemenid era. The first document we have in this field that insists on determining a history-making event is the Bisotun inscription. It is apparent that Darius the Great considered the year 522 BCE, in which the greatest war of the ancient world took place, the origin of history and regarded his victory in it as an ontologically significant event. So much so that he counted himself and his six accompanying champions as identical with the Amesha Spentas and the Ahuraean who triumphs over Ahriman.
However, we also have other data that show that apparently an older historical origin also existed in the Achaemenid era, and that is the time of Cyrus's entry into Babylon, which coincides with the conquest of the only remaining part of the Iranian territory and the political unification of the entire Iranian civilisational sphere.
In books that I have written in the 'Iranian Civilisation History' series, based on evidence and documents, I have shown that for centuries after the era of Cyrus, Iranian historians considered the time of the founding of the united country of Iran, namely the day of Cyrus's entry into Babylon, the origin of history. In this regard, we have powerful evidence that has been recorded in several renowned historical works. Abu Rayhan Biruni in Athar al-Baqiya writes that Zoroastrians in his time said that Zoroaster was inspired 258 years before Alexander the Accursed's attack on Iran,[^1] and according to Zoroastrian sources, the age of the Iranian prophet at this time was forty years. Mas'udi, who lived about a century before Biruni, also recorded such a report with this same number of 258 years.
[^1]: Biruni, 1923: 14.
Another narrative that is compatible with Biruni and Mas'udi's report is read in the Bundahishn, which says that King Gushtasp, after accepting the Zoroastrian religion, ruled for ninety years. After him, Bahman son of Esfandiar sat on the throne, who ruled for 112 years. His successor was Homai daughter of Bahman, who had the crown and throne at her disposal for thirty years. After her, Dara son of Homai with twelve years, and after him, Dara son of Dara (Darius III Achaemenid) ruled for fourteen years.[^2] Interestingly, the sum of these years amounts to that same 258 years.
[^2]: Bundahishn, chapter 36, paragraph 8.
We read a figure close to this in other historical reports as well. For instance, the Arda Viraf Nameh[^3] also considers the time between Alexander and Zoroaster to be three hundred years, and Mas'udi has also quoted a similar number.[^4] This latter number was probably obtained from adding again the age of Zoroaster at the time of his inspiration (forty years) to an older number that had such a remainder from the beginning.
[^3]: Arda Viraf Nameh, first chapter; paragraphs 1-4.
[^4]: Mas'udi, 3526.
From these numbers, it emerges that a thousand years ago in Biruni's time, Zoroastrians believed in a historical origin that went back to the era of Cyrus the Great (sixth century BCE) and equated it with the time of Zoroaster's birth. We know from other sources – especially based on the very ancient language of the Gathas – that Zoroaster's time of life was not this time and he probably lived around the year 1200 BCE, certainly in eastern Iran. That is, this report that Zoroaster relates to the time and place of the Achaemenids is certainly incorrect. But this report has been repeated so much that we must seek to decode its meaning.
If we look at these dates, we see that we have the time of Zoroaster's inspiration (258 years before Alexander), to which the number 40 years (the prophet's age at the time of his mission) has been added once or twice, and numbers like three hundred years have been derived from it. In the meantime, we have two specific interesting data points. First, that Cyrus the Great (with whose era this period coincides) according to the narrative of Justinus and Cicero and some folk narratives about Dhul-Qarnayn was crowned at the age of forty. That is, in the year 560 or 559 BCE, he became the king of Anshan in place of his father Cambyses. Cyrus conquered the entire territory of the Iranian realm about twenty years after this date, and on the seventh of Aban month (October 29) of the year 539 BCE, he entered the city of Babylon with his army without war and bloodshed, and this was the first time that a conqueror entered Babylon in this manner and established a stable dynasty there, and incidentally, this was the date when the entire territory of the Iranian realm became politically unified. That is, the date of the founding of the country of Iran should be considered this very day.
Now, if we look at the number 258 years that has been repeated many times in these reports, we encounter three possibilities. First, we know that Alexander the Accursed entered the city of Babylon as a conqueror on 29 or 30 Mehr (October 20-21) of the year 331 BCE, and insisted that exactly the same ceremonies be performed for his entry into Babylon that we read about in historical narratives about Cyrus's entry into Babylon. The Persian satrap of Babylon at that time, after the defeat of Darius III in the Battle of Gaugamela, saw resistance as futile and opened the gates of Babylon to Alexander, and the Macedonian conqueror entered this city precisely by imitating Cyrus's behaviour, at a time that more or less coincided with the anniversary of this event, and its week-long gap is negligible considering the primitive Macedonian chronometry at that time.
Interestingly, Alexander's entry into Babylon took place exactly 208 years after Cyrus's entry into Babylon. In Greek narratives, there is confusion about the timing of Cyrus's life, and they have often written Cyrus's age at the time of his entry into Babylon as forty or fifty years. Which is, of course, incorrect. Cyrus was probably close to sixty years old at this time. Nevertheless, the important point is that in the ancient world, they considered about a small century (fifty years) as the time gap between Cyrus's birth and his great victories. That is, one possibility is that the number 258 arose from adding the 208 years between Cyrus and Alexander's entry into Babylon, which has been added together with the fifty years of Cyrus's hypothetical age at this time. This hypothesis seems plausible because in later periods, a similar number was once again added to 258 years, and some have written this same gap between Zoroaster and Alexander as three hundred and something years.
The second possibility is that the number 258 years relates to the gap between Cyrus's entry into Babylon until the time of this city's destruction by Antiochus the Seleucid. Antiochus I, whose mother Apama was the daughter of Spitamenes, the rebel satrap of Sogdia and from the Achaemenid family, and whose father Seleucus I was considered among Alexander's close associates, achieved the Seleucid crown and throne in the year 281 BCE following his father's death, but immediately faced the rebellion of the people of Babylon. He managed to suppress the stubborn rebellion of the people of Babylon by the following year and completely destroyed that place.
Until before this date, the Macedonians who ruled in Babylon (Alexander and Seleucus I) considered themselves 'Persianised' and treated the people of the city kindly and endeavoured to observe the tradition of Iranian politics. Antiochus, however, transferred the centre of gravity of his activity to Assyria and adopted the plundering behaviour of other Macedonian commanders. In this way, if we look at the world from the view of historians based in Babylon, 258 years is the precise time gap that Iranian politics in its first period of establishment in this city endured. This period delivers the gap between Cyrus's conciliatory entry into Babylon and the founding of Iranian politics and the destruction of this city by the Macedonians and the first fall of this politics.
But another hypothesis, which also has more probability, is that this time relates to the period of Achaemenid monarchs' rule over Babylon. Considering that Zoroaster was inspired at the age of forty, and that the traditional date of 258 years before the appearance of Alexander has often been mentioned for Zoroaster's birth, we reach the conclusion that between Alexander and Zoroaster's hypothetical inspiration there were 218 years. Interestingly, this period exactly equals the gap between the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus until the coronation of Seleucus in Babylon (311 BCE), which was the starting point of Seleucid chronometry. Therefore, it appears that traditional history considered the time of Zoroaster's birth simultaneous with Cyrus's entry into Babylon and the founding of the country of Iran. An interpretation that probably has roots in the chronometry of Babylonian scribes and has recorded the time gap between two important events in the history of the Iranian realm and has gradually generalised it to other important events.
From Alexander's behaviour upon entering Babylon, which Seleucus and Ptolemy also later repeated when entering this city, it becomes clear that two centuries after Cyrus, the memory of his entry into Babylon and the unification of the Iranian realm was still prominent in minds and this event was considered important and history-making. From Mas'udi and Biruni's report, it also becomes clear that even two thousand years later, these events and time gaps still mattered and were a point of reference. Although at this time, apparently some Zoroastrian writers had assumed Cyrus and Zoroaster to be one.
So in the Achaemenid era, we have two probable historical origins. One is the time of Cyrus's entry into Babylon, and the other is the internal wars of the year 522 BCE. From the latter, we also have the Bisotun inscription at hand, which is manifestly a historically minded and history-making text. In the books 'Political History of the Parthian Empire' and 'History of Buddhist Wisdom' that I have written, I have shown that the inscription of Ashoka, king of the Maurya dynasty (282-232 BCE), which was written in the middle of the third century BCE and three centuries after this event, manifestly refers to Bisotun, and Darius's discourse is manifestly repeated in it. The Maurya dynasty formed after the collapse of Achaemenid power in the south-eastern provinces of the Iranian realm and played an important role in expelling the Macedonians and resisting them, and it was also the first Buddhist state in the world. This political territory, contrary to popular belief, was not Indian and was considered the direct continuation of Iranian politics and represented a part of the remaining territory of Greater Persia, and its centre of power was also located in today's Pakistan and Afghanistan, not within the Indian subcontinent.
In the Achaemenid era, beyond these two historical origins (Cyrus's entry into Babylon and Darius's victory), which are political and state-related, we probably also had a religious historical origin, and that was the time of Zoroaster's birth or inspiration. This point of reference also remained for millennia but gradually lost its precision. It appears that the time of Zoroaster's inspiration at the age of forty and King Gushtasp's conversion to him had more importance for Zoroastrians and was assumed as the origin of history. Because in the histories of the Islamic period, we see numerous references to this event, of which Biruni, Mas'udi, and Arda Viraf Nameh texts have recorded versions.
But interestingly, these sources, when referring to the time of Zoroaster's inspiration, do not point to its real time – the twelfth century BCE, which is also very distant – and instead refer to the era of Cyrus. One of the reasons for this matter was probably that Cyrus considered himself identical with the Zoroastrian saviour (Saoshyant). In the book 'Cyrus the Liberator', I have described this theory with abundant evidence and documents that (a) Cyrus's politics had a manifest and fundamental break with the politics common in his time, and (b) enjoyed a completely distinct philosophical apparatus and discursive system, which (c) had a Zoroastrian framework and portrayed Cyrus as the promised saviour in the Zoroastrian religion. The use of political propaganda for Cyrus among the peoples of lands that came under his dominion and their strange support for him, who was busy conquering their territory, arises from this. Cyrus's ascetic ethics and successful emphasis on win-win and popular methods were also the outcome of this theoretical framework and were a promise that was being fulfilled.
In this way, the fact that later historians combined Cyrus and Zoroaster is not so far-fetched. Because Cyrus claimed to be a Saoshyant, and the Saoshyant was regarded as a form of Zoroaster's revived self. However, we have this point that the gap between Cyrus and Zoroaster is about seven hundred years, and in the history-centric Zoroastrian worldview, the appearance of the Saoshyant was considered to be a thousand years after Zoroaster. Therefore, Cyrus probably made some manipulation in the history of Zoroaster's life, and in that era, when the eastern half of the Iranian realm was still non-literate, probably the difference between seven hundred years and a thousand years was not very tangible, and both were perceived as a very long time. Especially since we see a similar manipulation later in the Sasanian era as well.
Mas'udi in his history has referred to this astonishing point that when Ardashir Babakan came to power, he gathered historians and Magi and asked them to distort the history of the Parthians, which had endured for more than five centuries, and consider it 266 years. They did so and kept this action of theirs as a secret not to be told among themselves, until seven centuries passed and one of them spoke of this secret with a friend, and he revealed this to Mas'udi.
About the intense enmity of the Sasanian and Parthian families, abundant legends have been written in recent books. But if we look at historical documents, we find that these assumptions have been baseless. Ardashir Babakan was essentially the son-in-law of the Parthian family and had a wife from this lineage, and his eldest son and crown prince, Shapur I, was also Parthian through his mother. The Parthian family also remained satraps of the Armenian and Georgian region for two centuries during the Sasanian era, and were both subject to the Sasanian shahs and received help from the Sasanians at the time of Roman attacks. Therefore, this crude notion that Ardashir ordered the reduction of years from their kingship to diminish the prestige and glory of the Parthians is incorrect.
But in this situation, why did such a strange action occur? And why were such specific and precise numbers increased and decreased? In my view, by reviewing Ardashir Babakan's political claim, one can understand that here too we are dealing with another claim of saviourhood. Ardashir Babakan, exactly like Cyrus and Arsaces, who was the founder of the Parthian dynasty, claimed to be the Saoshyant and had risen to purify religion and repel Ahrimanic forces. However, he too, like others, was grappling with this problem that the history-centric and mathematical Zoroastrian worldview supposed thousand-year periods between the appearance of every two Saoshyants, and Ardashir was not located at such a point in history. The gap between Ardashir and Cyrus the Great was seven and a half centuries. Nevertheless, interestingly, he did not try to resolve his problem by straightening this time gap and supposing a seven-century gap. He might have been able to claim that the main gap between the appearances of Saoshyants was seven or eight hundred years. As the gap between Cyrus and Zoroaster had been, and this equalled the gap between himself and Cyrus. But he did not do so. Rather, he reduced a specific number from the history of the Parthians. His bold manipulation of history presumably took place in conditions where a specific time for the history of Zoroaster's inspiration existed in people's minds and the thousand-year gap also seemed untouchable. Ardashir was firmly established on the throne of sovereignty around the year 224 CE and at that same time ordered the rewriting of the calendar. Consequently, the Magi at his command considered the period of the Parthians' rule to be 266 years, which was 206 years less than reality. From this, it emerges that the desirable time for being positioned at the 'turn of the millennium' was around the time of Christ's birth. That is, apparently, people thought the time of Christ's birth was one (or according to Greek assumptions, several) millennia distant from the era of Cyrus. Interestingly, around the time of Christ's birth, we have strange commotion in the world of religion and politics, and a large number of statesmen and religious figures claim saviourhood. The most famous and at the same time the most unsuccessful of them is, of course, Jesus of Nazareth himself, who was immediately killed by the Romans after this claim. But he inscribed his name and mark on this historical juncture.
Precisely in this same era, we face an astonishing list of those who claim saviourhood and sanctity. In this same era, we also see numerous religious figures such as Apollonius of Tyana, one of the Pythagorean philosophers of Cappadocia, Simon Magus, and Bar-Jesus the Magus, whose epithet was Elymas (Elamite) and who competed with Paul the Apostle – all of them are people who lived contemporaneously with Christ and claimed saviourhood and had biographies similar to Christ, and interestingly, all of them were born in the geographical territory of the Iranian realm and had connections with the Magi.
But this list is not limited to these people. The most successful figure among them is Octavius Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, who transformed this state into a centralised global power. Augustus manifestly had a religious claim, claimed divinity, established temples with specific priests for this cult of emperor worship, and established an organisation that became the basis for consolidating the later Christian Church. He was doing this around the time of Christ's life, and this is compatible with the turn of the millennium we have in mind.
But the strangest figure in this regard is Nero, the Roman emperor, who came to power about fifty years after Augustus, and he too is known for his bold programmes for social reform, his boastful and exaggerated religious claims, and abundant followers who worshipped him like a god; so much so that after his death, at least four people claimed to be his reincarnation and claimed the crown and throne of Rome. Nero, as expected, was intensely hated by Christ's followers and made abundant efforts in slaughtering and tormenting these rivals. The reference to the number 666 and its attribution to the Antichrist goes back to him. Because Nero's name in the old Abjad calculation equals 666, and as we understand from the Revelation of John, this number belongs to the Antichrist who claims to be the Messiah but lies. In this way, precisely at the time we expect, in a large geographical expanse, we see the claim of the end of the millennium and its far-reaching political consequences.
In this way, there was a general memory that placed the history of Zoroaster's inspiration about a thousand years before Christ's birth, and essentially, the point-marking of time based on the 'birth of Christ' arose from this. Ardashir Babakan, too, despite having entered this field two hundred years late, insisted on being positioned at this same turn of the millennium, and for this reason, made such a bold manipulation in the history of the Parthians. The dynasty he founded endured for more than 450 years and became one of the longest dynastic royal families in all of Earth's history. For this reason, his manipulation of history was also seated, and many later historians benefited from his model for calculating the history of the beginning of the millennium. A famous and unexpected example of it is that about a thousand years after Ardashir, al-Mahdi al-Abbasi, when he wanted to consider himself an end-time saviour and thus provide legitimacy for the Abbasids, enjoyed the support of Iranian astronomers and scholars, and it was the Magi and scholars from the Nawbakhti family who determined the time of his coronation and the suitable time for founding the city of Baghdad.
From reviewing these data, it emerges that we had a religious historical origin older and more powerful than Cyrus's entry into Babylon and Darius's victory in the internal wars, in which texture Cyrus and Darius themselves defined themselves. Earlier in other writings, I have shown that the confusion about the dating of Zoroaster's lifetime is baseless and groundless, and the available data clearly show that Zoroaster lived in a time around the year 1200 BCE somewhere in western Iran.[^5]
[^5]: Vakili, 1393 (a): 281-284.
Ardashir's manipulation of history becomes meaningful when we suppose that in his time, the Magi considered the time of Zoroaster's life around 1018 BCE, and for this reason, by reducing 206 years from the age of the Parthians' rule, he endeavoured to place the time of his coronation in Nowruz 224 CE exactly a thousand years after Zoroaster's inspiration. Earlier in other writings, I have shown that probably this date, namely 1018 BCE, which in the historical memory of the Magi was considered the starting point of Zoroastrian history, related to the time of Sina's positioning in the city of Ray and the compilation of the Avesta. The documents related to this transfer of the centre of gravity of the Zoroastrian religion from the nomadic tribes of eastern Iran and Balkh to the cultural centre of Ray have been well described by Dr Parviz Azkaei in the book 'The Sage of Ray'. Based on this, it appears that Sina, who was three or four generations (that is, slightly more than a century) distant from Zoroaster, transferred this religion to Ray, which was an important commercial centre, in the early eleventh century BCE, and the first compilation of Avestan texts and the emergence of the text of the Seven Chapters (Haft Hat) and the gradual emergence of the Yasnas should be considered in this same time frame and after it, whereby Zoroaster the historical figure is placed in that same twelfth century BCE that is also compatible with our other data.
From this, it becomes clear that the hypothetical time of Christ's birth was eighteen years distant from the turn of the millennium. In practice too, from about thirty years before Christ until fifty years after him, we see claimants of saviourhood abundantly in the Roman territory, and this shows that the legend of the Saoshyant did not have remarkable temporal precision in this territory and was placed in a time range of 30 BCE - 50 CE. But the main tradition of this dating presumably was Iran, and Ardashir Babakan manifestly had remarkable control over this matter.
Therefore, one can suppose with a good coefficient of confidence that in the time of Ardashir Babakan, the Zoroastrian Magi believed that Zoroaster was inspired in the year 1206 BCE, and this is also compatible with dates arising from the Avestan text and historical linguistic evidence. But the important point latent in it is that the emergence of the first philosophical apparatus about humans and history in Zoroaster's time incidentally also led to the birth of the first origin of world history, and this origin mattered so much that until a thousand and two hundred years later, great Iranian and Roman kings were organising their political claims based on it.
In later periods as well, other great dynasties that ruled over the Iranian realm defined different other starting points for history. When Seleucus entered Babylon with eight hundred foot soldiers and two hundred cavalry in the year 312 BCE and conquered that place,[^6] he imitated a copy of Cyrus's entry into Babylon and considered that day the origin of Seleucid history. We know that the Macedonians at this date had neither an independent history nor indigenous literacy. That is, essentially, the history of the Macedonian region begins in the fifth century BCE and in the capacity of a province in the Achaemenid Empire. For this reason, it is clear that this 'determining the origin of history' was not a matter arising from Greece and Macedonia but was an indigenous tradition in the Iranian realm that took shape based on imitating Cyrus's entry into Babylon. The Seleucids maintained this historical origin until the end of their short period of rule.
[^6]: Grainger, 1990: 56-72.
Simultaneous with the formation of the Seleucid state in the south-eastern corner of the Achaemenid territory, the Maurya state was founded, which also had its historical origin based on the coronation of its first king in the same manner. The local states of this region used this same historical origin for two or three centuries afterwards. For instance, from the local state of Kalinga, whose founder was a warrior named Kharavela (खारवेल) (170 BCE), several inscriptions remain, the most famous of which are the Hathigumpha inscriptions near Bhubaneswar. In this inscription, it is stated that the text was written in the thirteenth year of Kharavela's reign and in the year 165 based on Mauryan history.[^7] The Mauryan historical origin was the time of Chandragupta's coronation. He, who was probably the Achaemenid satrap of the Indian province and the defender of this territory against the Macedonian attacks, was crowned in the year 321 BCE after repelling Alexander's attack, and therefore this origin remained valid in that region for a century and a half afterwards.
[^7]: Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XX.
Another historical origin that we see in the Alexandrian tumult era belongs to the dynasty of Scythian-Tokharian kings based in eastern Iran. The first emir from this lineage who completed the Scythian-Tokharian dominion over northern India was named Azes. He sat on the throne in 48 or 46 BCE and ruled until 25 BCE, and on his coins, in the manner of the Achaemenids, he called himself 'Great King Azes' (in Greek: Basileus Basileon Megalo Azo: BASILEOS BASILEON MEGALOU AZOU). Azes purged northern India of the remains of Macedonian emirs and founded the historical origin known as Azes, which was the basis of the dating of later Scythian kings for several centuries. Falk has recently discovered an inscription that was dated to both Azes and Greek dates and shows that this historical origin was established by Azes himself, and the first Azes year equals the Greek (Seleucid) year 128, and thus the time of Azes's coronation was 45 BCE.[^8]
[^8]: Cribb, 2005; Falk and Bennett, 2009: 197-216.
Another important figure who defined a historical origin around this time was the greatest Kushan king, namely Kanishka, who came to power in 127 CE after his father Vima Kadphises and ruled until 151 CE.[^9] His capital was also Purushapura (Peshawar). He considered the date of his coronation the origin of history, and later Kushan kings also followed this rule. After the destruction of the Kushans, the Gupta dynasty, which came to power in Mathura, still maintained this same dating. In this way, Kanishka's historical origin endured for three centuries after him.
[^9]: Falk, 2001: 121-136.
We have other evidence at hand that shows that the leaders of the Dahae-Parni and Scythian-Tokharian groups, who revived Iranian authority and expelled the Macedonians, were generous in determining a beginning for dating and simply took the year of the coronation of their important kings as the starting point of their calendar. We know of at least one Balkh history that begins in 155 BCE, alongside dating based on the coronation of Azes and Kanishka, and we also know that the Scythian satraps of the Ujjain region observed another chronometry whose starting point was the year 78 CE.[^10]
[^10]: Bivar, 1383: 296.
But the most enduring historical origin in the post-Achaemenid era was established by the Parthians, although we have scant data about it. One sample of Parthian coins that are dated belongs to Balash IV, on which the letters ΔΞΥ are inscribed, and this can be translated as 464. The conventional interpretation of this number is that here reference is made to the Seleucid historical origin, and therefore they point to the year 152-153 CE. But as I have discussed in the book 'Political History of the Parthian Empire',[^11] the Seleucids were not an important dynasty in the power equations of the Alexandrian tumult era and only held the south-western fringe of the Iranian realm. Therefore, it is somewhat strange that the Parthian shahs, after four hundred years, based their calendar on the chronology of the Seleucids, who on one hand had been their old enemy and on the other hand were not considered important or renowned in the history of the Iranian realm.
[^11]: Vakili, 1393 (b).
If from the era of Balash IV (140-191 CE), during which these coins were minted, we go back 464 years, we return to the middle years of the fourth century BCE. We happen to be positioned in a very important historical period that has global-level importance and is much, much more important and standard than the conquest of Babylon by Seleucus I (the origin of Seleucid history). That is the collapse of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander and his death, which occurred in 323 BCE. In this case, the Parthians had taken the basis of their history from the last year of the last Achaemenid king (and not the first Seleucid king).
In this way, on one hand, it becomes clear that the Parthians on their coins also repeated their claim of inheriting from the Achaemenids, and on the other hand, the dating of their coins in its current form is incorrect. In recent years, tablets have been discovered in Mesopotamia that confirm this understanding and show that the Parthians not only paid no attention to Seleucid history but considered their historical origin (the first of Nisan) Nowruz of the year 247 BCE, and this was probably the same date that Arsaces I sat on the throne in Damghan and Gorgan.[^12]
[^12]: Wolski, 1383: 71.
It should not go unmentioned that the Parthians' claim that they are the direct continuation of the Achaemenids has been well documented by Iranian historical sources. Tha'alibi, who called the founder of this dynasty Ashkan, has considered him the son or heir of Dara the Elder or the son of Kayarash son of Kay Qobad.[^13] Interestingly, Tabari[^14] and Tha'alibi[^15] have also considered Ashk I the son of Dara the Great, and Habib al-Siyar and Mojmal al-Tawarikh also consider Arsaces I (Ashkan) the successor of Darius III (Dara the Younger or Dara son of Darab).[^16] This means that the historians of the Islamic period, on one hand, praised Darius III with the title Great, and on the other hand, considered the tumult of the post-Alexandrian era only one generation and considered Arsaces I only one generation after the extinction of the Achaemenids.
[^13]: Pirnia, 1311, vol. 3: 2557.
[^14]: Tabari, 1362: 496.
[^15]: Tha'alibi, 1385: 214.
[^16]: See: Khwandamir, 1333, vol. 1: 219 and Mojmal al-Tawarikh wa al-Qisas, 1346: 32.
From these data, it becomes clear that after the collapse of the Achaemenid state and in the era of Alexandrian tumult, various dynasties and kings emerged in different corners of the Iranian realm, all of whom followed a similar tradition for determining the origin of history. Whether they were natives of northern India, Macedonians in Anatolia and Assyria, or newly arrived Scythians, they considered the founding of their dynasty and the establishment of their state the origin of history, not the ephemeral cycles of the successive coming and going of kings.
It is apparent that all of these were indebted to an ancient Iranian tradition for determining the origin of history. In the Achaemenid era, the custom of determining the origin of history based on the time of a dynasty coming to power or a history-making event at this rank had been in vogue, and the older custom of counting years based on the reign of the established king had become obsolete. This method was undoubtedly the invention of the Achaemenids, and as we said, probably its main origin was Cyrus's entry into Babylon. In China and Rome, for centuries afterwards, the same custom of counting the years of the sovereign king's reign was still in vogue, and this long-term method of keeping time and marking history remained in the exclusive domain of the Iranian civilisational sphere for a long time. It was in this texture that chronometry based on the time of the established king's reign was limited only to a limited sphere and the realm of bureaucratic documents.
Religious datings have also always been in vogue in the meantime. In that same Sasanian era, we also have the emergence of the Manichaean historical origin, which was measured by the time of his martyrdom, and at least in the Hijaz, we know of a kind of local dating tradition that related to the entry of the idol Hubal into Mecca. Hubal, whom the people of Hijaz knew by the title Allah, is the same ancient moon god (Sin) of Semitic peoples, whose name appears in the inscriptions of northern Arabia alongside other gods such as Dhu al-Shara.[^17] This idol was probably initially a Canaanite god that one of the leaders of the Banu Khuzaah tribe named Amr ibn Luhay al-Khuzai brought from Canaan to Mecca.[^18] This person was one of the tribal leaders of Mecca who is known as the founder of the idol worship religion of Hubal and appeared so important in the eyes of the people of Mecca that they took his entry into Mecca as the origin of history for a long time. We have had similar other local datings in the Islamic era as well, such as the famous example we see in the announcement of the Resurrection by order of Hasan II Ismaili in Quhistan, which was the historical origin of the Ismailis of Iran for a long time.
[^17]: Jaussen and Savignac, 1907: 169.
[^18]: Hamdani, 1373: 52-54.
Nevertheless, after the collapse of the Sasanian state, two parallel political and religious histories became institutionalised in the Iranian realm that had their own specific divergences and convergences. After Yazdegerd III's death, many Iranians continued the Yazdgerdi history and extracted the chronometry based on the established king's coronation from its bureaucratic texture and considered it an enduring historical origin, and this was an action that Shu'ubis manifestly supported and was done in opposition to Islamic datings.
Nevertheless, the history that was seated after the collapse of the Sasanians was the Hijri historical origin, which was based on one of the important events of Islamic history, namely the transition from the religious and doctrinal stage to the political and governmental stage. The Hijri history, however, was interpreted with two different solar and lunar narratives, and gradually the solar year merged with the Yazdgerdi year, and the Hijri chronology became limited to the lunar texture. This chronometry system endured for more than a thousand years and is still used in many Islamic countries. Although alongside it, the solar year or the naming of months in the Iranian manner has also always had currency in the Iranian realm.
Based on the evidence we have brought, what I defend in this essay – namely, the use of a real historical origin that coincides with the real starting point of history – has had a long precedent in the Iranian realm and has been the general model of understanding bounded time in our civilisation. Reference to a four-thousand-year period for history at the beginning of the Islamic era had remarkable currency in historians' texts, and this manifestly referred to the starting point of history. One example of it we see in 'Kitab al-Manaqib al-Mazidiya fi Akhbar al-Muluk al-Asadiya', which Abu al-Baqa al-Hilli Ibn Numa (died 19 Farvardin 627 H / 4 Dhu al-Hijjah 645 Q), the teacher of Allameh Hilli, wrote,[^19] and in it he says:[^20] 'Until the last of them, Yazdegerd son of Shahriyar, God distance him, was killed in the year thirty-one of the Hijra, whilst persisting in his infidelity. And it is narrated that the duration of their kingship was from the era of Jayumarth son of Yafith son of Noah, peace be upon him, until this Yazdegerd was killed, four thousand years, which was not interrupted except by the time of the muluk al-tawa'if (regional kings), and the duration of their kingship, as previously mentioned, was five hundred and eleven years. If this narration is correct, then they ruled for three thousand and five hundred years or so, and God the Glorious knows best. Among what is narrated about the extent of their kingship is that to Anushirvan, in one single day, more than twenty kings from among the minor kings came to him obediently, and messengers of the great kings came to him: Qaysar, king of the Romans; Farsab, king of India; the Great Khaqan, king of the Turks; the ruler of Sarandib; and the ruler of the ships of India, also in obedience, and with them burdens and gifts, and the great king of India made peace with him over a ninth of what his divers extracted of pearls...'
[^19]: This source was found and shown to me by my dear friend Mr Ali Khorshidi in confirmation of this essay.
[^20]: Hilli, 2000, vol. 1: 49.
Abu al-Baqa al-Hilli here correctly says that from the beginning of history (the era of Keyumars/Jayumarth) until the end of the Sasanian era (the killing of Yazdegerd III), there was a gap of about four thousand years, and in the meantime, he has also correctly considered the length of the Parthian period (muluk al-tawa'if) to be 511 years. About the extent of Iran's territory (which in the book's title is identified with the lion label), he has also mentioned that for Anushirvan the Just, twenty-one kings brought tribute and tax, and among them he has also mentioned the king of India and Qaysar of Rome. It is noteworthy that Hilli is a renowned jurist who lives in the Atabat and writes in Arabic, and this means that national consciousness was not a specific and ephemeral matter, and there was a general consensus about the temporal and spatial vessel of history and the position of Iranian civilisation in its midst, which based on historical documents is also correct, and is incompatible with the modern fabricated narrative about Hellocentrism and Eurocentrism of historical course and its shrinkage to the limit of the history of Christianity.
Problem Statement
In past centuries, the French after the French Revolution and the Russians after the October Revolution endeavoured to change the origin of history and make it 'scientific', which of course resulted in a very belated historical origin from the water, which had no backing except ideological fervour, and with the subsiding of that fervour, it was quickly obsoleted. China too, which practically during the twentieth century was transformed into a suppressed and crushed civilisation under the pressure of modernity (both with the dominion and plunder of colonialists and with the slaughter and destruction of communism), ultimately accepted the origin of Christian history. In this way, such is the case.
But the story of determining the origin of history in Iran has never concluded and has not been a finished matter. During this same past hundred years, the solar Hijri history with ancient Iranian months was once again revived from the constitutional era onwards and pushed the lunar chronology to the margins. In the final years of Mohammad Reza Shah's reign, an effort was made to introduce a new historical origin whose foundation was the modern ideology of the established monarchy, and ultimately it led to no result and was completely obsoleted with the Islamic Revolution. Nevertheless, during the past decades, as public media have taken on a two-way character and collective thinking has become popular in social networks, efforts to invent alternative historical origins are seen here and there, many of which are unscientific and baseless as well. Alongside these, of course, one must also mention the currency of Christian chronometry, especially in scientific texts, which particularly in the decades after the Islamic Revolution – perhaps as a reaction to the government's insistence on using lunar chronometry – has found currency among the middle and university class.
Iran is the only living civilisation that has a history as long as all of world history. That is, it is the only social system and the only cultural and identity system that has existed from the dawn of the transition to sedentary life and has produced the first cities, writings, and texts, and is still alive and flourishing. For this reason, choosing a precise and correct historical origin for organising the data archived in this civilisational sphere is necessary. The accumulated meanings in the Iranian civilisational sphere only combine with each other in a meaningful way, and the personal biographies of Iranian selves only benefit from this vast and deep history, in conditions where a comprehensive and rational framework rules over the concept of history, and one of the signs of this point is the presence of a historical origin that is functional and defensible in terms of rationality.
The truth is that at present, none of the existing dating systems is satisfactorily functional. Yazdgerdi history, which also has no currency, relates to a historical nostalgia and is the date of the coronation of a young king (Yazdegerd III) who fought bravely against the Arab invaders but ultimately failed in preserving the foundation of Iranian politics. Hijri history also has a belated and unreasonable positioning, and in the five-thousand-year extent of Iranian history, it places the origin fourteen hundred years ago, and it is obvious that the historical origin of a five-thousand-year-old civilisation cannot be placed three thousand five hundred years later than the beginning of its historical archive. Hijri history is, of course, very useful and valuable for the chronology of Islamic history. But it is not the origin of the history of Iranian civilisation, which has had an undeniable existence and dazzling impact in world history thirty-five to thirty-six centuries before this origin. The lunar Hijri history, which essentially has no compatibility with the cosmic rotation of the Earth and the rotation of the seasons and is an unscientific chronometry specific to nomadic desert societies, has little application for urban purposes and has constantly created ambiguity and confusion in the course of history. Because every month may occur in any season and any time of the solar year over successive centuries.
Christian history too, which at present is the most universal origin of history, essentially has no scientific basis and is a conventional agreement in the air. There is no precise historical witness and evidence about the year of Jesus of Nazareth's birth at hand, and the only thing that can be said in this regard is that Christ was born in a time before the year four before the birth of Christ! Because they have considered his birth concurrent with the era of the rule of Herod the Great, the Roman-installed king in Judea, who ruled from 37 to 4 before the birth, and therefore the current date of Christ's birth is certainly incorrect. As we said, this date is essentially in the time range when the Zoroastrian millennium was coming to an end and represents the decades when Iranian and Roman claimants of saviourhood emerged in different corners.
In this way, when facing the necessity of determining a historical origin for Iranian civilisation that accomplishes its organising function for the historical memory of peoples, we face this difficulty that today's starting points have no functionality for this purpose. Both the Hijri origin and the Christian origin are positioned in the second half or final third of Iranian history, and although the Hijri origin has a solid and clear historical basis, the more current Christian origin lacks even this positive feature.
The result is that Iranians, based on three necessities, must choose a new historical origin for themselves. These necessities are: (1) the necessity of accommodating all the events of the history of Iranian civilisation on a uniform and clear time axis, in such a way that the relation of events to each other is specified at first glance with a specific number without calculation, guesswork, and confusion, and (2) this origin should be positioned at the starting point of history, not that we should have two categories of numbers that paradoxically refer to historical events before the origin of history and, for instance, are counted with the label of before birth or before migration. Finally; (3) the necessity of delivering a single, transparent, and unifying axis for all of world history. Because it is only Iran that has a history as long as world history, and all historical events in all other civilisations can be equated based on Iranian chronology.
The antiquity of Iranian civilisation means that if we determine its origin of history rationally at the beginning of its history, all the histories of other civilisations, which are all younger (or with the exception of ancient Egypt) contemporaneous with it, are organised and regulated in proportion to it. This truth, that precise solar chronometry also has an Iranian origin, leads to this result that this history chronology is also precise and correct in terms of calendar and has more credibility than lunar chronometries or traditional Christian chronometries, whose starting points have constantly changed or, due to incompatibility with the complete solar year, their months have moved forwards and backwards in the year.
In this way, if this origin is chosen functionally, it will fulfil these functions: (1) It delivers a chronology by which one can encode and consolidate the relation and sequence of historical events on its axis with only one number and without prefix and suffix, and (2) It removes the artificial and colonised breaks that are supposed in Iranian history (before and after birth, before and after Islam), and (3) It shows the antiquity of Iranian civilisation and the antiquity of the chain of events leading to the historical now of Iranians.
First) Seventh of Aban (October 29) of the year 539 BCE: The day of Cyrus the Great's entry into the city of Babylon, and the time when the territory of Babylon also joined the political expanse under Persian command, and thus the united country of Iran was founded, and the entire geographical territory of the Iranian realm for the first time came under the command of one shah and under the command of one state. This is the historical starting point of the country of Iran.
Second) Nowruz (March 21) 247 BCE: The date of the coronation of Arsaces I, the founder of the Parthian Empire, which is the beginning of Iran's history in the capacity of 'a country among other countries' and shows the revival of Iranian politics.
Third) Nowruz and Yalda of the year 1 CE: This date has traditionally been equated with two important Christian feasts (the annunciation of birth and the pregnancy of Holy Mary in Nowruz and Christ's birth in the Yalda festival). Since Christianity and this origin have become universal today, and Christianity has also been one of the important religions in the history of Iranian civilisation and has taken root from this same territory, the importance of this origin must be officially recognised. Although it has a mythological nature, not historical, and indicates the juncture of the 'turn of the millennium' and the era of the appearance of claimants to the role of Saoshyant.
Fourth) 18 Shahrivar (September 9) of the year 1 Hijri: This date has had remarkable importance in the evolution of Islam and the historical fate of Iran and is the starting point of Hijri history. Both in the form of lunar chronometry for religious functions and in the form of solar chronometry, it can maintain its importance in the future as well.
These are the only dates that have had currency in past years or have been proposed and have a historical basis. There is no doubt that everyone is free, based on their attachment to Islam or Christ or Iranian dynasties, to choose any of these variables for themselves. But they must pay attention to this point that their desired historical origin is positioned in the middle of Iranian history and not at its beginning. Beyond these cases, other historical origins either, like the Manichaean and Buddhist starting points, have no following today, or like dates that have become famous with the label Aryan and Mithraic and similar to these, are not documented and scientific and do not refer to a historical event. Nevertheless, all these probable and current deep-rooted histories have a striking flaw, and that is that they are not positioned at the starting point of Earth's history and Iran's history. That is, if we want to choose a historical origin worthy of this name, presumably it should be positioned at the starting point of history and at the point of the appearance of the first written documents.
With this account, the starting point of history is not an arbitrary and wilful matter that is chosen depending on people's nationality or religion. 'The origin of history' in this absolute sense of it means the moment when history (meaning written document) appeared for the first time. It is with the formation of the first written documents and the art of literacy that history sets foot in the arena of bounded time, and historical narrative in the sense whose discussion has passed becomes possible and gains independence from biographies. About the origin of writing and literacy too, we have clear and transparent documents at hand. That is, the question of what the origin of history is? It is a clear and scientific question that points to the moment of the emergence of literacy and writing, and it can be answered with historical documents and archaeological evidence. On this basis, two junctures can be considered for the starting point of history, both of which relate to Iranian civilisation and thus merge the origin of world history and Iran.
First: The oldest sign of literacy, which crystallises in the form of the oldest manifestation of writing and conventionally meaningful signs. On this basis, the oldest written texts first emerged around the year 3500 BCE in the geographical region of Elam-Mesopotamia, and its first signs were symbols that were placed inside bullae (clay balls carrying financial symbols), and its oldest traces have been found in Chogha Mish in Khuzestan. Approximately at this same time, we had the first signs of pictographic writing in Kish and probably Jiroft as well. Therefore, in a general sense, history begins in 3500 BCE, although the texts of these early dates are still unreadable to us.
Second: From around the year 3000 BCE, we see an explosion in literacy and the rapid expansion of urbanisation throughout the Iranian realm, which is especially manifest in the western and southern half of the Iranian realm. Sumerian and Elamite cuneiform pictographic writing evolves in this time range, and for the first time, we see patterns of the standardisation of writing. Still, long texts are absent and only appear in the twenty-seventh century BCE simultaneously in Iran and Egypt.
Among these two options, the latter seems more suitable for determining the origin of history for several reasons. First, literacy in the more current sense of the word essentially became popular at this time, and before this, we only see scattered signs of it. Second, other sociological patterns that are connected with the becoming historically minded of human groups – especially the formation of the city – begin at this time. The third point, which deserves attention functionally and operationally, is that this date has a coincidence with the ancient Zoroastrian calendar that has resulted in several later historical starting points. That is, the Magi considered the time of the consolidation of the Zoroastrian religion around 1000 BCE, which is two millennia after the starting point we have in mind. As we said, Zoroaster the historical figure probably lived one or two centuries before this time, but the Magi place the date of the religion's consolidation at this time, and considering the millennial nature of the Zoroastrian perspective, it is interesting that this time is positioned precisely two thousand years after the formation of the first cities.
Since the Christian calendar is based on this same magian dating and is today the most famous and current origin of history on Earth, considering 3000 BCE has this benefit that current Christian dates can be simply converted to the Iranian historical origin by adding three thousand years to them. In this way, the negativity of years before birth disappears, and years after birth also retain their three right-hand digits unchanged.
The result is that the best option for determining a historical origin that is truly positioned at the starting point of history is to place this time in 3000 BCE. In this case, this year (1398 solar Hijri and 2019 CE) becomes 5019. Cyrus enters Babylon on the seventh of Aban of the year 2461 (3000 - 539), Arsaces I the Parthian is crowned in Nowruz of the year 2753 (3000 - 247), and the migration of the Prophet of Islam begins on the eighteenth of Shahrivar of the year 3622. This date also needs no prefix or suffix and is simply a chronology that counts events from the beginning of the appearance of history, and therefore has a global nature, whilst its Iranian origin is also apparent and can function as Iran's specific national chronology. Because beyond the geographical origin of history, which is positioned in the Iranian realm, among the contemporary civilisations of Earth, there is no other civilisation whose history begins simultaneously with the global historical origin. In this way, relying on an objective and archaeological model, it both carries Christian history within itself and reminds of the antiquity of a civilisation that formulated the legends of choosing the Christian origin a millennium before the birth of Christ.
Sherwin Vakili - Tehran, Thursday 01/06/5019!
Pirnia, Hassan, Tarikh-e Iran, Tehran, 1311.
Tha'alibi, Abu Mansur Abd al-Malik Mohammad, Ghurar Akhbar Muluk al-Furs wa Siyarihim, Paris edition, 1900.
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