Episode 4
The Origins Of Chivalry
The first rule of Chivalry, or what is called Javanmardi in Iran, was to stay true to your contract. Cyrus could never allow slavery in his new empire because he was bound by contract to bring peace and prosperity to all of his subjects.
Pourshariati1-2: To the same measure that you are obligated to maintain this contract, to that same measure I am obligated. So if I am a Persian king, right, and I have made a contract with you and I have told you, in exchange for the peace and prosperity that I will guarantee, right, that you would live in, right, you have to give me your loyalty.
Every Persian king had to enter into this contract with his subjects before taking the throne. The contract was then sealed with a sacred oath sworn to the pagan God Of Justice, Mithra. But before the oath could be sent up to Mithra, it first had to pass through fire to be purified.
Pourshariati1-5: There developed a very close connection between Mithra and fire. And this element of taking an oath, an oath that fire guarantees its veracity, right, is reflected to this day in this Persian proverb that we have that when you're making an oath, you actually say, 'saugand mikhoram,' with the translation of which in English is, 'I eat sulfur,' right? Which is a fiery, purifying element, right? I take an oath by this fiery, purifying element, right, that I'm saying the truth and nothing but the truth.
This may have been the very spot where Cyrus swore his oath to the God Mithra over 2500 years ago. These two stone plinths were discovered inside Cyrus's palace compound, in an area known as the 'sacred precinct'. We also know that they date back to the time of Cyrus himself.
Stronach2-b: I think we can say beyond a reasonable doubt that the two-stoned plinths in the so-called sacred precinct at Pasargadae were erected during the reign of Cyrus The Great. We can say this because there is no sign of the tooth chisel or the claw chisel on the stone work of these two magnificent white-limestone plinths which would associate them with the time of Darius or some later Achaemenid king.
One stoned plinth was used for Cyrus to stand on, the other was a fire alter.
Iran1-Parsagarda4c: Cyrus would have climbed up these stairs . . . and sealed the ritual oath with the sacred fire in front of him.
Credits
ARTA
Every Persian king had to swear an oath to bring peace and prosperity to his subjects. But peace and prosperity can only come from a successful economy. The Persians and their Iranian ancestors had learned early on that what an economy needs more than anything else to succeed is law and order. This was the reason the pursuit of law and order became a religious mandate for ancient Iranians. In fact, the ancient Iranian holy book, known as the Avesta, refers to this law and order as Arta, which literally means order.
Windfuhr1-3: The Avestan word is ‘Arta’ in . . . and it is related to the word Ar, to put together, exactly as you have in ‘Ar’-tist or Art where you put things together properly, in the proper way as you imagine it. So Arta is the basic principle of putting things together therefore it is Order.
This Order, or Arta, came together perfectly only when all members of society honored their contracts. Why? because an economy depends on trade between buyers and sellers. And buyers and sellers need to enter into contracts to trade. So these contracts ensured order, which was why Iranians had a God that specialized in contracts.
Pourshariati1-1: He was the God of Contracts par excellence. And this becomes the God Mithra. And he functions as the authority in keeping order. Now one of the ways that you ensure order is by making sure that when you say to me something or I make a promise to you, I keep by that, I keep that promise, right? I maintain my contract. The oath that I make to you, the oath that two groups make to each other, right, that that oath is maintained and somebody is up there that ensures that you stay by your oath.
The reason they needed Mithra to maintain contracts was because ancient Iranians were illiterate. Since neither buyer nor seller could read or write, they could only enter into oral contracts. In other words, their contracts left no written record. Yet these oral contracts were far more reliable than any written contract. Why? because of their fear of Mithra's justice in the afterlife.
Schwartz-1a: Today, we write it down, we sign it, yeah? so there is a record of it and the record is deposited somewhere with your lawyer or with a city or whatever. That wasn’t the case in ancient-most Iran because the religion had its first developments at a time when there was no writing by the Iranian people. *There was writing elsewhere in the world that developed early - Egypt, Mesopotamia. But not yet Iran. So it becomes all the more important that there be some way that people are shown as wishing to keep contracts and if you say a God is going to punish you if you don’t, ehh, that’s something.
It was from this illiterate culture that chivalry was born. These illiterate Iranians created a booming economy based entirely on personal honor and sworn contracts. Cyrus was sworn to provide his subjects with security. And the security he provided made the Persian empire the safest place in the ancient world.
Stronach 4: The conditions of security that obtained in the empire and which facilitated trade, which of course was vital, were so effective that in fact it was said that a virgin could move from one end of the empire to the other with a pot of gold on her head and never be touched.
It was a policy of peace through strength. But security was not all that Cyrus owed his subjects. He also had to provide them justice. Why? because there can be no Order without a fair and equal justice system.
Pourshariati1-1: The ruler who is ruling over his population, maintains justice, right? He ensures through ju . . . he rules through justice, i.e. he makes sure that the society is ordered, right? Now . . . otherwise, otherwise the ruler will lose his legitimacy and Mithra will no longer, right, bestow him with his grace.
Security and justice were the two obligations of the Persian king. But in the contract between king and subject, the subjects also had obligations to fulfill.
Pourshariati1-2: If I fulfill my side of the contract and I, you know, I actually establish a peaceful realm in which you can live, you know, your life, and you rebel, you have reneged your contract to me, and then there is consequences if you break the treaty and the contract.
If the king establishes a peaceful realm, the subjects owed the king more than just their loyalty. They also owed him tribute.
PAX PERSICA
It was the tribute from the subjects that paid for the security and justice the king provided. The more security and justice the king provided, the more trade could take place. The more trade that took place, the more tribute could be paid for more security and justice. It was a cycle of prosperity which Professor Parvaneh Pourshariati has dubbed, the 'Circle Of Justice'.
Pourshariati1-2: Circle Of Justice is a political ideology. In this system you produce, the subjects ought to produce enough wealth, right, not only to sustain themselves but to sustain an army who, in turn, will protect the realm, who, in turn, can keep the majesty in power on the throne. In whatever sector of the society, they have this obli . . . they're fulfilling this productive dimension of their existence. So that's how it becomes a Circle of Justice. If you are unjust, right, towards your subjects, right, the subjects cannot produce, right, cannot maintain . . . to maintain you and your realm with an army.
It was a formula as effective as it was simple. The Circle Of Justice led to a period of peace and prosperity that lasted so long, scholars have given it a name - Pax Persica.
Brosius 1: The politics of the Achaemenid Empire sometimes referred to as the politics of Pax Persica, which means the “Persian Peace,” and what the Persian kings propagated was the idea of an empire at peace and the way that they tried to achieve that was through tolerance of other people’s cultures, religion, languages, administration and that contributed to this idea what was just said, namely that it was an empire at peace and that the lands of the empire lived without threat as long as they paid tribute, as long as they did not try to rebel from the king. But it is true to say that for about 230 years, for the duration of the Persian Empire, most of the lands of the empire were at peace.
Even the tribute of the Persians was groundbreaking.
TAXATION
WITH
REPRESENTATION
The tribute of the Persians was the original blueprint for our modern-day tax system. For the first time in history the subjects of the Persian empire received something in return for their tribute. Before Cyrus, people paid tribute just so the government wouldn't kill them or enslave them. But the tribute of the Persians was the earliest example of taxation with representation. In fact, if the king failed to deliver the security and justice that the tribute paid for, the subjects could rebel.
Pourshariati1-2: If you have reneged your contract to me, if the God in front of whom we have made this oath is Mithra, right, then the subjects, they have the right to rebel against an unjust king.
The right to rebel against a king who breaks his contract is spelled out not only in the original Iranian holy book, the Avesta, but also in the Persian Book Of Kings, or Shahnameh, written by the Iranian poet, Ferdowsi.
Pourshariati1-2: If you are not abiding by what it is . . . by the precepts of kingship, right, by all these nuances of what it is that ought to make you a king. If you are not abiding, then the heroic voice, which is the popular voice can come in and provide the context through which a rebellion, right, brings you down and you lose your kingship. And if you look at the Sassanian sections of the Shahnameh, in the historical part of the Shahnameh, this is actually what actually happens over and over and over in Iranian history in the Sassanian period itself.
The heroes who rise up against an unjust king have traditionally come out of the warrior or military ranks. The last Iranian warrior to rise up against his own king was Colonel Reza Khan, who in 1921, seized the throne from child-king, Ahmad Shah Qajar. To this day Reza Shah is hailed a hero for saving Iran from becoming just another state of the Soviet Union.
THE
PHYSICAL FIGHT
If the first rule of chivalry was honoring your contract, then the second rule was to take up the physical fight. How do we know? Because Mithra was not just a God Of Justice, he was also the God Of War.
Rose 7: He’s a warrior divinity who wields a great mace.
Windfuhr1-1: Mithra became somewhat military if not very military. He certainly has a fighting spirit, so to speak, and should inspire such a spirit in its adherents.
There can be little doubt that Mithra inspired such a fighting spirit in Cyrus. The fight for Arta was the founding principle of chivalry. The use of physical force to advance the cause of order and justice describes Cyrus to the letter.
Stronach: For the first time, on a very wide scale, Cyrus used great force to protect, not degrade, the human condition.
Using great force to protect the human condition is the textbook definition of chivalry. This combination of physical force and justice is also what makes another Iranian legend so popular - King Arthur.
Basirov 3: Cyrus being a historical figure and Arthur being a quasai historical figure of course, they shared common culture, because there is this question of honor and justice and loyalty and word of . . . value of your word.
But how could one culture be so different from anything else that had come before it? To answer that, we have to go back to a time before the world was divided between East and West.
NORTHERN WORLD
&
SOUTHERN WORLD
Before the world was divided between East and a West, there was a northern world and a southern world.
Foltz 2: Well if we go back four, five thousand years, I think we will see that the contemporary paradigm of East and West doesn’t really fit. If anything civilizational division would be more along the lines of north and south.
One of the tribes of the northern world is known today as the Indo-Europeans, because their descendents span from India all the way to Europe.
Basirov 1: There was a time obviously that there was a nomadic North – now we’re talking about Indo-Europeans of course before they settled down – and we had the settled South, which was highly rich in civilization and culture.
The southern world was far more advanced than the northern world.
Foltz 2: In other words, what we call civilization, the great early settled civilizations, which arose in the Nile Valley in Egypt, in the Tigris and Euphrates region of Mesopotamia, or in the Indus Valley region of what’s now the Indian subcontinent – Pakistan in particular – that these civilizations could be set against the pastoral nomadic societies that were living to the north of them.
The Southern world had developed writing and accounting, all the necessary tools to run a central government and field massive armies that had ruled the world since the dawn of time. All the while, the Northern world had been frozen in time and place since the last Ice Age.
Frye 1: One reason why the tribes who lived in the North remained behind and less developed than those down in the south is because it was late when they moved into the areas, which had been covered with ice and snow earlier. So the Southern tribes had a much longer period of development and those in the North had a much shorter period of development.
The Iranian people were one of those Indo-European tribes of the northern world. And the Persians were one of several Iranian tribes that happened to rise to power. In fact, the Persians were the first Indo-European tribe ever to become a world superpower.
Basirov 2: The first thing which comes to my mind about the Persian Empire is, possibly the most outstanding thing they did for the world by forming the first Indo-European World Empire and that in many ways paved the way for Indo-Europeans ruling the world ever since with perhaps two minor hiccups under Arabs and Mongols and Turks. And so from that point of view it is of great significance that they’re literally pioneers of world rule by the Indo-Europeans. This was tried by their predecessors, Medes, they failed and maybe 6/700 years even earlier by Hittites, they failed as well. But the Persians succeeded in what others failed in. And they ushered in Indo-European rule which has lasted more or less uninterrupted until this day.
The Indo-Europeans may have been more backward technologically, but they had one advantage that the southern world did not. They never developed a slave culture.
Frye 1: This is observed with nomadic societies everywhere in the world that they cannot exist really on a great culture, subculture of slavery.
Rose 1: What do you need slaves for? There’s no land to be tilled.
Foltz 4: If you accept that they’re living a very marginal existence in an environment where they can barely ensure their own survival, if you were to try to maintain slaves as well, what would you feed them? You know, I mean . . . it would be an additional liability.
This slave-less culture often made an Indo-European overlord far more preferable over a Southern slave master.
Basirov 4: Indo-European rule always ushered this in throughout the history. Hittites did the same thing in Anatolia, they were welcomed because they had this incredible reputation of humanity and justice and later on, I mean, it happened with Europeans as well. Possibly with the sole exception of Rome and Greece, but we don’t know what went wrong there of course. But they imposed this highly brutal rule. And their conquered nations didn’t like them at all.
Rome and Greece had been quick to pick up the sophisticated ways of their southern neighbors.
Foltz 4: So if we see slavery arise as an issue in the experience and histories of later Indo European peoples, I think we have to look at the specific context and see what was in place already on the ground before the Indo Europeans came.
Basirov 3: The Greeks took most of their civilization from the Phoenicians, okay, and from Egyptians.
But the Persians were the quintessential Indo-European tribe. That's because the Persians were a branch of the greater Iranian family of tribes.
THE ARYANS
The Iranians left the original Indo-European homeland, known as the Eurasian steppes, only around 1200 BCE. That's a thousand years after the Greeks left the steppes.
Foltz 1: In the case of Iranians a combination of archeological evidence with comparative linguistic and mythological evidence would suggest that they came originally from the steppelands of Central Asia, they probably migrated southwards during the 2nd millennium BCE, along the Eastern coast of the Caspian Sea into the Iranian plateau and became the ancestors of modern Iranians.
But even after arriving onto what is known as the Iranian plateau, the Iranians kept their Indo-European culture. In fact, the pride Iranians once took in their Indo-European roots was preserved in their very name.
Basirov 1: The word Iranian comes from the Avestan “Airyana,” which means Aryan really. It was translated in the 19th century as Aryan and used by every academic institution until the 2nd World War, and then it is more or less banned. You can’t use that term anymore.
You can't use that term anymore because, during World War II, Hitler and his Nazi party changed the meaning of the word Aryan to refer to the white, Caucasian race.
Foltz 3: The Nazis identified, through some German scholarship, they identified some traits that they attributed to these ancient Indo European cultures that they wanted to associate themselves with for ideological reasons. So they sought to appropriate the very term Aryan to suit their own political agenda. And of course whenever you appropriate a term to suit an agenda, you are more than likely going to be altering the meaning of that term and perhaps perverting it in some way.
The new Nazi definition of the term Aryan caused the history of Achaemenid Persia to become even less popular in the 20th century. Why? because virtually every Persian king refers to himself as an Aryan.
Basirov 1: They repeatedly called themselves, “I’m an Aryan, son of an Aryan, I’m of Persian descent.
Naghsh-e Rostam/Tang-e Bulaghi1: Here at Naghsh-e Rostam just northeast of the city of Shiraz is the burial site of four powerful Persian Kings. In his epitaph, Cyrus’ son-in-law Darius tells us in his own words: “P~rsa, P~rsahy~ puça; Ariya, Ariya ciça;” – I’m a Persian, son of a Persian; an Aryan, of Aryan descent.
The Aryans happened to be white Caucasians, but their name had nothing to do with their race. In fact, the word Aryan literally meant noble.
Jafarey 5: Aryan is a noble word and it applies to all noble people with a noble culture rather than noble race. There is no noble race. It is the culture which lowers or raises a person’s stature. So Aryan means noble and any person of any nation or any race, anybody can be a very good Aryan.
What the Aryan kings of Persia were actually saying in their inscriptions was that they were descendants of the noble culture. In other words, Aryan was the original word for chivalry or javanmardi.
Jafarey 1: The word Aryan, which is Arya in Sanskrit and Old Persian and Airya in Avesta, comes from “irr” or “erre,” which means to “go straight.” Therefore with a suffix, which it makes “erre” into Arya, it means a person who is straight, who goes straight. And therefore Noble. So Arya means noble and an-Arya or un-Arya means ignoble.
To this day someone who speaks the truth is referred to as a straight talker or a straight shooter.
Anthony1-3: Actually we still have that phrase, who . . . a straight arrow. He's a straight arrow. He goes true, he goes to the target, you know, he gets to the point, where he said he was going to go. Or where you . . . where he meant to go, doesn't deviate.
Another Iranian tribe, known as the Alans, that migrated all the way to Western Europe also called themselves Aryans.
Basirov 1: There is evidence now the entire Iranian peoples including the nomads and settled people always called themselves Aryans. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. And we also know from the last of the nomadic Iranians, who were Alans – as late as 5th/6th century AD . . . and their name Alan is a European pronunciation of the word Aryan. They did call themselves Aryans.
So distinct was Aryan culture, that an Alan from France, an Iazygian from northern England and a Persian from Persia could have immediately recognize each other as fellow Iranians simply by the way they carried themselves. But where did this noble culture come from?
COMING SOON
Episode 5
The Noble Ones