Legacy of Teispian and Achaemenian Materiality

Reassessing the History and Role of Monuments in 19th-21st Century Iranian Nationalism

Authors

  • Aydin Abar Institute of Archaeology, Pre- and Protohistory, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32028/exnovo.v5i.414

Keywords:

Archaeology and Society, Nation Building, Achaemenian Monuments

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which the materiality of the Achaemenian Empire was incorporated into the narratives of different polities and political groups on the Iranian Highlands. These approaches, which have continued into the present day, have marked these sites as objects of appropriation, imposition, resistance and negotiation by various actors in different discursive arenas. The current study further deals with the question of whether there was a biographical difference between distinct sites.

References

ABDI K. 2001. Nationalism, politics and the development of archaeology in Iran. American Journal of Archaeology, 105(1): 51–76. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/507326

AFKHAMI G. R. 2009. The life and times of the Shah. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.

ALGAR H. 2011. Āḵundzāda. Accessed 19 February 2020.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/akundzada-playwright.

ALGAR H. 2012. Freemasonry in the Qajar period. Accessed 20 Feb 2020.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/freemasonry-ii-in-the-qajar-period.

AMANAT A. 1997. Pivot of the universe: Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian monarchy, 1831-1896. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press.

AMANAT A. 2017. Iran: A modern history. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv19prrqm

AP ARCHIVE 2015. Russian President Putin departs after visit to Iran. Accessed 16 March 2020.

https://youtu.be/16hJT0fXbzc.

ARVIDSSON S. 2000. Aryan idols: Indo-European mythology as ideology and science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

ASHKAN. 2011. آرامگاه کوروش کبیر به زیر آب رفت. Accessed 18 March 2020.

http://www.hjei.blogfa.com/post/43.

BALKHĪ I.-A. 2016 (1343/1964). The Fārs-nāma of Ibnu 'l-Balkhī. Warminster: Gibb Memorial Trust.

BARBARO G. 1545. Viaggi fatti da Vinetia, alla Tana, in Persia, in India, et in Constantinopoli. Venezia: Aldus Pius Manutius.

BOYCE M. 1967. Bībī Shahrbānū and the lady of Pārs. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 30(1): 30–44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00099080

CANEPA M. P. 2010. Technologies of memory in Early Sasanian Iran: Achaemenid sites and Sasanian identity. American Journal of Archaeology 114(4): 563–596. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3764/aja.114.4.563

CANEPA M. P. 2018. The Iranian expanse: Transforming royal identity through architecture, landscape, and the built environment, 550 BCE-624 CE. Oakland, CAL: University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520290037.001.0001

COOL ROOT M. 1979. The king and kingship in Achaemenid art: Essays on the creation of an iconography of empire. (Acta Iranica, 9). Leiden: Brill.

COOL ROOT M. 2015. Achaemenid imperial architecture: Performative porticoes of Persepolis, in: S. BABAIE & T. GRIGOR (eds.), Persian Kingship and Architecture. Strategies of Power in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis. London: I.B. Tauris: 1–64. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755611355.ch-001

DABASHI H. 2016. Iran: The rebirth of a nation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58775-6

DEZHAMKHOOY M. & PAPOLI-YAZDI L. 2018. The politics of the past: The representation of the ancient empires by Iran’s modern states. Oxford: Archaeopress. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvndv5br

ETTEHADIEH M. 2011. Concessions in the Qajar period. Accessed 18 Feb 2020 http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/concessions#pt2

FORAN J. 1991. The strengths and weaknesses of Iran's populist alliance: A class analysis of the constitutional revolution of 1905-1911. Theory and Society 20(6): 795–823. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00678097

FRYE R. N. 1966. The Persepolis Middle Persian inscriptions from the time of Shapur II. Acta Orientalia 30: 83–93. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5617/ao.5228

FRYE R. N. 1984. The history of Ancient Iran. München: Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung.

GHANI C. 1998. Iran and the rise of Reza Shah: From Qajar collapse to Pahlavi rule. London: I.B. Tauris. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755612079

GNOLI G. 2012. Iranian identity: Pre-Islamic Period. Accessed 10 March 2020.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/iranian-identity-ii-pre-islamic-period.

GREAVES R. 1991. Iranian relations with Great Britain and British India, 1798-1921, in: P. Avery, G. Hambly & C. Melville (eds.), The Cambridge Histry of Iran. Volume 7: From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 374–425. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521200950.012

GRIGOR T. 2004. Recultivating “good taste”: The early Pahlavi modernists and their Society for National Heritage. Iranian Studies 37(1): 17–45. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0021086042000232929

GRIGOR T. 2007. “Orient oder Rom?”: Qajar “Aryan” architecture and Strzygowski’s art history. The Art Bulletin 89(3): 562–590. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2007.10786361

GRIGOR T. 2010. Parsi patronage of the Urheimat. Getty Research Journal 2: 53–68. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/grj.2.23005408

GRIGOR T. 2015. Kingship hybridized, kingship homogenized: Revivalism under the Qajar and the Pahlavi dynasties, in: S. BABAIE & T. GRIGOR (eds.), Persian Kingship and Architecture. Strategies of Power in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis. London: I.B. Tauris: 219–254. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755611355.ch-006

GRIGOR T. 2016. Persian architectural revivals in the British Raj and Qajar Iran. Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East, 36(3): 384–397. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-3698959

GRIGOR T. 2017. Kings and traditions in Différance: Antiquity revisited in Post-Safavid Iran, in: F. B. Flood & G. Necipoglu (eds.), A companion to Islamic art and architecture. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons: 1082–1101. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119069218.ch41

GRIGOR T. 2018. ‘They have not changed in 2,500 years’: Art, archaeology, and modernity in Iran, in: B. EFFROS & G. LAI (eds.), Unmasking ideology in imperial and colonial archaeology. Vocabulary, symbols, and legacy. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press University of California Los Angeles: 121–146. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvdjrrt0.12

HÄMEEN-ANTTILA J. 2018. Khwadāynāmag: The Middle Persian book of kings. Leiden, Boston: Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004277649

HENKELMAN W. F. M. 2011. Parnakka’s feast: Šip in Pārsa and Elam, in: J. ÁLVAREZ-MON, & M. B. GARRISON (eds.), Elam and Persia. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns: 89–166. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5325/j.ctv18r6qxh.11

HENKELMAN W. F. M. 2013. Administrative realities: the Persepolis archives and the archaeology of the Achaemenid heartland, in: D. T. Potts (ed.) The Oxford handbook of ancient Iran. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 528–546.

HENKELMAN W. F. M. 2020. Practice of worship in the Achaemenid heartland, in: B. JACOBS & R. ROLLINGER (eds.), Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

HERZFELD E. 1908. Pasargadae: Untersuchungen zur persischen Archäologie. Klio: Beiträge zur Alten Geschichte 8(1): 1–68. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1524/klio.1908.8.8.1

HERZFELD M. 2002. The absent presence: Discourses of crypto-colonialism. The South Atlantic Quarterly 101(4): 899–926. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-101-4-899

HUFF D. 2008. Formation and ideology of the Sasanian state in the context of archaeological evidence, in: V. Sarkhosh Curtis & S. Stewart (eds.), The Idea of Iran. The Sasanian Era. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.: 31-59. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755696895.ch-003

JENKINS J. 2012. Excavating Zarathustra: Ernst Herzfeld's archaeological history of Iran. Iranian Studies, 45(1): 1–27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2011.594622

JONES T., MOZAFFARI A. & JASPER J. M. 2017. Heritage contests: What can we learn from social movements? Heritage & Society 10(1): 1–25. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/2159032X.2018.1428445

KASHANI-SABET F. 1999. Frontier fictions: Shaping the Iranian nation, 1804-1946. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400865079

KAZEMZADEH F. 1991. Iranian relations with Russia and the Soviet Union, to 1921, in: P. AVERY, G. HAMBLY & C. MELVILLE (eds.), The Cambridge History of Iran. Volume 7: From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 314-349. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521200950.010

LAMBTON A. K. S. 1987. Qajar Persia: Eleven studies. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.

LINCOLN B. 2010. Religion, empire, and torture: The case of Achaemenian Persia, with a postscript on Abu Ghraib. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

LORCIN P.M.E. & ROBERTS H. 2014. Imperial identities: Stereotyping, prejudice, and race in colonial Algeria. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

LUHRMANN T. M. 1994. The good Parsi: The postcolonial 'feminization' of a colonial elite. Man 29(2): 333–333. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2804477

MARASHI A. 2008. Nationalizing Iran: Culture, power, and the state, 1870-1940. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

MARCHAND S. L. 2009. German orientalism in the age of empire: Religion, race, and scholarship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

MCKENZIE D. N. 2011. Ērān, Ērānšāhr. Accessed 10 March 2020.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eran-eransah.

MERHAVY M. 2017. Cyrus day: A tradition in the making. ACIS Iran Pulse. Updates & Overviews on Iranian Current Affairs 80.

MICHAELSEN M. 2013. Wir sind die Medien: Internet und politischer Wandel in Iran. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14361/transcript.9783839423110

MILANI A. 2011. Is Ahmadinejad Islamic enough for Iran? Foreign Policy. Accessed 16 March 2020.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/04/29/is-ahmadinejad-islamic-enough-for-iran-2/.

MINORSKY V. F. 1940. A civil military review in Fars in 881/1476. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 10(1): 141–178. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00068270

MOUSAVI A. 2010. Ernst Herzfeld, politics, and antiquities legislation in Iran, in: A. C. Gunter & S. R. Hauser (eds.), Ernst Herzfeld and the development of Near Eastern Studies, 1900-1950. Leiden, Boston: Brill: 445-475.

MOUSAVI A. 2012. Persepolis: Discovery and afterlife of a world wonder. [e-book]. s.l.: Walter de Gruyter GmbH Co.KG. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614510338

MOZAFFARI A. 2014. Conceptualising a world heritage site, in: A. MOZAFFARI (ed.), World heritage in Iran. Perspectives on Pasargadae. Farnham, Surrey, Burlington, VT: Ashgate: 1–28.

NASIRI-MOGHADDAM N. 2014. Archaeology and the Iranian National Museum: Qajar and early Pahlavi cultural policies, in: B. Devos & C. Werner (eds.), Culture and cultural politics under Reza Shah. The Pahlavi state, new bourgeoisie and the creation of a modern society in Iran. London: Routledge: 121–148.

POLIAKOV L. 1993. Der arische Mythos: Zu den Quellen von Rassismus und Nationalismus. Hamburg: Junius.

POURSHARIATI P. 2009. Decline and fall of the Sasanian empire: The Sasanian-Parthian confederacy and the Arab conquest of Iran. London: I.B. Tauris. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755695270

PRIESTER K. 2003. Rassismus: Eine Sozialgeschichte. Leipzig: Reclam.

QUINTANA, E., 2011. Elamitas Frente a Persas: El Reino Independiente de Anšan, in: J. ÁLVAREZ-MON & M. B. GARRISON (eds.) Elam and Persia. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns: 167–190. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5325/j.ctv18r6qxh.12

ROLLINGER R. 2016. Extreme Gewalt und Strafgericht: Ktesias und Herodot als Zeugnisse für den Achämenidenhof, in: B. JACOBS & R. ROLLINGER (eds.), Der Achamenidenhof. Akten des 2. Internationalen Kolloquiums zum Thema "Vorderasien im Spannungsfeld klassischer und altorientalischer Überlieferungen" Landgut Castelen bei Basel, 23.-25. Mai 2007. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag: 559–666.

SAMI A. 1956. Pasargadae: the oldest imperial capital of Iran. Shiraz: Musavi Printing Office.

SCHMIDT E. F. 1953. Persepolis I: Structures, reliefs, inscriptions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

SHAHBAZI S. 1977. From Parsa to Taxt-e Jamsid. Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran NF 10: 197–207.

SHAHMORADI E. & ABDOLLAHZADEH E. 2014. Antinomies of development: Heritage, media and the Sivand dam controversy, in: A. MOZAFFARI (ed.) World heritage in Iran. Perspectives on Pasargadae. Farnham, Surrey, Burlington, VT: Ashgate: 225–253.

SHAHSHAHANI S. 2014. Pasargadae, Mâdar Soleimân and Leilâ: Placing Pasargadae within its present rural context, in: A. MOZAFFARI (ed.), World heritage in Iran. Perspectives on Pasargadae. Farnham, Surrey, Burlington, VT: Ashgate: 139–154.

SHARIFI M. 2013. Imagining Iran: The tragedy of subaltern nationalism. Lanham, Boulder, Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books.

STEBBINS L. H. 2016. British imperialism in Qajar Iran: Consuls, agents and influence in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350985599

STRONACH D. 1971. A circular symbol on the tomb of Cyrus. Iran. Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies 9: 155–158. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/4300446

STRONACH D. 1978. Pasargadae: A report on the excavations conducted by the British Inst. of Persian Studies from 1961 - 1963. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

STRONACH D. 2010. Solomon at Pasargadae: Some new perspectives. Bulletin of the Asia Institute New Series 24: 1–14.

STRONACH D. & GOPNIK H. 2009. Pasargadae. Accessed 9 March 2020.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/pasargadae.

TABARI A. 1983. The role of the clergy in modern Iranian politics, in: N. R. KEDDIE (ed.), Religion and politics in Iran. Shi'ism from quietism to revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press: 47–72.

TAVAKOLI-TARGHI M. 2001. Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, occidentalism and historiography. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403918413

TAYLOR W. M. 2014. Archaeology and useful knowledge: Pasargadae and rationalities of digging ‘real’ places, in: A. MOZAFFARI (ed.) World heritage in Iran. Perspectives on Pasargadae. Farnham, Surrey, Burlington, VT: Ashgate: 91–113.

UNESCO 2020. Pasargadae - UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Accessed 8 March 2020.

https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1106.

UNKNOWN 2009. تقدیم به آزادیخواه ایران: پاسارگاد به زير آب رفت.!!؟. Accessed 18 March 2020.

http://medi-am.blogspot.com/2009/10/blog-post_21.html.

ZIA-EBRAHIMI R. 2011. Self-orientalization and dislocation: The uses and abuses of the “Aryan” discourse in Iran. Iranian Studies 44(4): 445–472. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2011.569326

ZIA-EBRAHIMI R. 2016. The emergence of Iranian nationalism: Race and the politics of dislocation. New York: Columbia University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7312/columbia/9780231175760.001.0001

ZILBERG P. 2019. IN his majesty’s service: Semites in the Achaemenid heartland, in: D. R. KATZ, N. HACHAM, G. HERMAN & L. SAGIV (eds.), A question of identity. Social, political, and historical aspects of identity dynamics in Jewish and other contexts. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg: 23–42. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615449-002

Downloads

Published

24/05/2021

How to Cite

Abar, A. (2021). Legacy of Teispian and Achaemenian Materiality: Reassessing the History and Role of Monuments in 19th-21st Century Iranian Nationalism. Ex Novo: Journal of Archaeology, 5, 93–118. https://doi.org/10.32028/exnovo.v5i.414

Similar Articles

1 2 3 4 5 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.