Why are there so few primary sources for pre-islamic persian

>>1556150
Most of it probably got lost with the sack of baghdad i'd imagine,the sack of baghdad was the equivalent of greece being nuked of the earth during its prime and having socrates and all those fancy philosophers wiped of history.

>>1556150
You know the romans burned down the library at Alexandria too

>>1556207
everyone and their mum burned down the library at Alexandria. Shit was razed like five times

>>1556207
Only when the Semitic Christfag religion took hold. Even then, they only burn a small % of the books from memory

Well, at least we still have the Shahnameh. That's good enough.

>>1556150
It was mostly kaffir stuff so it's okay phamillia, inshallah.

>>1557652
iranians usually don't talk like this. salafist mindset never took hold the way it did in arab/sunni countries.

>>1556150
it was the muzzies, they value anything before muhammad as impure or some shit. All because it threatens their view of only one god or muhammad being best

>>1556150
Persian are like Mayans (But Mayans fell because of lack of water).
All they wrote is lost and burnt

>>1558548
But that's not universally true at all. Otherwise why the fuck would they care so much about Greek philosophy?

>>1558651
>persians and andalusians
>giving a shit about islam really

Really convenient how gulf arab sunnis take credit for the science and philosophy done by the people they forcibly converted.

A lot of them were burned and looted. Others were left untranslated or lost. Iran was in a lot of turmoil and repeatedly ruled by foreigners after Sassanids. By the time it became an Iranian stable country again they only had a short time and were an underdeveloped state before falling to Khomeni.

>>1558683
It wasn't just Persians and Andalusians that indulged in Greek philosophy. Can we honestly stop projecting 21th century politics into history? Besides, Arabs largely acknowledged and complimented Persian scholarship, there is even a hadith about it.

>>1558710
>Besides, Arabs largely acknowledged and complimented Persian scholarship, there is even a hadith about it.

It's funny because early muslim arab aristocracy, being only a generation or two past eating rats in the desert, largely left compilation of the quran, hadiths, et al to the persian scholars they were dependent on. So, no shit.

Arabic grammar and orthography were also apparently a fucking mess until sorted out by persians as well.

In a fucking silly way, Iranians are responsible for a lot of this religion they're so prone to viewing as a foreign import.

>>1558739
>In a fucking silly way, Iranians are responsible for a lot of this religion they're so prone to viewing as a foreign import.
So basically the same thing that happened with Christianity and Jews?

Why are Indo-Europeans so superior, bros?

>>1556150
It's because the Persians had an oral tradition, and didn't take to writing histories the way more Hellenized groups did outside of royal initiative. There's little evidence of the Arabs burning down any archives, especially since it would make writing works like the Shahnameh nearly impossible if Muslim Persian historians didn't have access to Sassanid texts.

The Mongols did a number on things, but it's mostly due to the decline in Sassanid/Zoroastrian culture which meant a decline in preserving texts and traditions that were not already translated and incorporated into Muslim Persian culture, followed by a lack of extensive archaeology that might uncover very old primary texts stuffed into the corner of some old library somewhere in the Middle East in general, and finally a lack of historians who can read and translate not only ancient Persian script, but also later Persian and Arabic translations, and publish them in English.

>>1558739
It's irrelevant. It was Arab administration, network and infrastructure that created the platform. There were Arab scientists and writers as well that followed and built upon Greek philosophy.

Yes, Persians were impressive scholars and contributed greatly to "Islamic"poetry, literature and linguistics. People back then didn't care greatly about ethnicities and nationalities. Identities were bound to language, family and perhaps region. It was a combined effort and trying to rip it apart now is entirely due 21th century politics.

If your argument is "Arabs were filthy Bedouins thus they literally did nothing", then that's largely pointless as well. Mohammed was a city boy and early caliphates draw their elements largely from settled Arabic cities in Hejaz, not Bedouins which stayed Bedouins for centuries to come, only providing manpower and soldiers early in the Islamic conquest.

>>1558841
>It was Arab administration, network and infrastructure that created the platform

Based almost wholly off the Sassanid/Byzantine sportscar they jumped into and immediately had to ask how to even drive it.

This "Arabs were great administrators" meme has got to die. It only looks that way because they were too unlearned to know how to do anything else, and too lazy to WANT to do anything else.

>>1558739
>largely left compilation of the quran, hadiths, et al to the persian scholars they were dependent on

This assumes the Arabs wanted to compile the Quran and Hadiths, rather than either project actually being the brainchild of a new generation of Arabized Persian, Greek, Jewish, and even some Turkic elites who had grown up in or around Arab households absorbing their religious customs.

And that's the thing: by the third or fourth generation 'Arab' began to lose meaning as a strict ethnicity and began to resemble what the term Roman had come to mean. This also goes towards the OP question and what >>1558764 talked about, where pre-Islamic Persian history, like Arab history and religion, were mostly oral traditions that the new Arabized-Persian and Arabized-Greek bureaucratic elite began to compile into written text for the propagation of a new Imperial identity: being Muslim in a Caliphate.

>>1556221
The Romans burned it down before Christianity existed

>>1556150
>>arabsburntitall
>I mean REALLY?
>>mongolsburntitalltoo
>REALLY?
Anon. If you don't like the truth, there is nothing I can do for you

>>1558565
>All they wrote is lost and burnt
What. The Gathas, a bunch of Sassanid texts, etc...

No, a lot of what we have was preserved. Modern Zoroastrianism is still very similar to Sassanid times.

Also, the Shahnameh does preserve a lot of our folklore.

>>1560529
I'm a practicing Zoroastrian (no joke) and even I think what you say is bullshit. Only a small fraction of our folklore, theology, etc. survive. Sure we have the core texts for performing yajna but all the philosophy from times of Sassanians are gone, its as if we have the core 60% of the religion only.

Don't talk about this if you don't actually know what modern Zoroastrians do, please.

>>1557639
No its not, fuck you.

>>1560882
>if we have the core 60% of the religion only.
That is what I meant.

>No its not, fuck you.
Doesn't seem like you're actualizing Zarathustra's here, asshole.

>>1556150
Well, you've got
>Alexander (RIP Achaemenid)
>Arabs (RIP Sassanid)
>Mongols
>Timur
>Countless Turkic warlords

Well, considering that the destruction the Mongols inflicted on Iran is pretty much equivalent to carpet-bombing it with nukes, yeah the "Mongols burnt it down" argument makes sense.

The Mongols had no problem with building entire pyramids out of human skulls, I doubt they would care about the value of some tomes.

There are accounts of the Mongols throwing books from the Baghdad library into the Tigris until the water turned black, so I guess there's no reason to believe that they would spare Persia too.

Furthermore, all the shit that the Mongols put Persia through was repeated by Timur, so everything that the Mongols missed was probably burnt down too.

Perhaps if archaeology in Persia had started in 1100 AD instead of 1900 AD, there would be a lot more recorded stuff. I guess we'll never know for sure.

>>1558984
im not really exactly learned about this subject so can you prove your point? not the other guy btw

Do you think Iranians in Pars region look phenotypically different from pre-Islamic times? Are there any images depicting Persians, beside the mosaics of Persian women in Bishapur dating to Sassanid times?

Also, I recently wrote this on Zoroastrianism's henotheism, so I do think we did preserve a fair amount.

Also, I don't see the problem with bringing back Zoroastrianism in a more revisionist, modernist way.

>>1563013
>Also, I recently wrote this on Zoroastrianism's henotheism, so I do think we did preserve a fair amount.
Forgot to give the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism#Zoroastrianism

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21KB, 236x355px

>>1563004

Contrary to what people would think, regular conquest doesn't change genetics all that much.

There are plenty of murals of Achaemenid and Sassanid era Iranians, and their facial features pretty much mirror modern Iranians today. Their skin, hair ,and eye color has likely not changed much too.

I don't have the post, but I remember two posts in particular that showed that Italians and Greeks share something like 95% of their DNA with their ancestors, so I assume a similar number applies to Iran.

Genetic studies seem to support that by virtue of modern Iranians being genetically closest to South Caucasians and Anatolian Turks.

One interesting hypothesis is that the original Persians weren't even "pure" Indo-European, instead they were a mix between the indigenous population living in Iran and the Indo-European nomads who invaded the Iranian Plateau. This is shown by the difference in R1a haplogroup between Iran (which is like 20%) and Afghanistan/Tajikistan (which is like 50-60%).

As for the murals, this one in particular displays Persian archers from Achaemenid times.

>>1560882
Did you convert or were you born zoroastrian? Just asking out of interest btw

>>1563075
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_peoples#Genetics

They have 10% semite DNA mostly in the form of actual semites like assyrians jews and arabs living there. The rest is med, caucasian and general indo-european.

>>1560882
To be completely honest that's also attributable to the early Zoroastrians believing that writing stuff down is evil.

>>1563244

>Zoroastrians believing that writing stuff down is evil.

>What is the Avesta

>>1560882
Parsi or some retarded Persian diaspora kid who wanted to get "close to his roots"?

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forgot pic

>>1564234
>>1564228

Well lets put it this way:

Would you rather have the 420% Persian Zoroastrian wannabe autist?

Or the "YA ALI YA HOSEYN YA ZAYNAB" Shia Islamist?

If all Iranians were like the Spurdo in your pic then Iran would probably be a pretty chill place desu senpai.

>>1564279
Fortunately Iranians dont seem so religious at all

>... no more than 1-1½% attend Friday prayers, and lots of those who do are dragooned into being there. Three years ago one cleric said that 73% of Iranians did not even say their daily prayers.[8]

>According to Zohreh Soleimani of the BBC, Iran has the lowest mosque attendance of any Muslim country; only 2% of adults attend Friday services.[9]

>>1564311
The idea of Iran becoming Buddhist would be awesome.

>>1564425

Fun fact: Iran during the 6-7th century, prior to the Arab invasions, was actually rapidly becoming Christian.

IIRC one of the later Sassanid emperors married a Christian Armenian, and both the Sassanid nobility and the lower class were rapidly converting away from Zoroastrianism to Nestorian Christianity, likely to escape the corruption and caste system created by the clerics.

Basically if the Arabs hadn't invaded Iran would likely have become Christian by about 800 AD.

>>1564478
Parthians were the best imo. They made a lot of contributions to Greco-Buddhism, and it would have been better if Iran became Buddhist.

>>1564478
Should have stayed zoroastrian. Or manichaiestic.

>>1564495
Honestly, Materialist Zurvanism is aligned with the contemporary trends in modern Western philosophy unlike traditional Mazdaism or Manichaeism.

Why is it that people over look the major Judaism that was taking place pre-Islamic Persia? Like it was pretty serious, there was Judaic universities which were very popular.

>>1556150
They're mostly oral and whatever was written down was destroyed.
>REALLY?
Yes really.

>>1564510
Well, they seemed to have thrived centuries later so much so they dominated lower Mesopotamia just prior to the Romans beginning to campaign in the Levant.

>>1564530

What did it say? It's deleted now.

>>1564655
I forget now lol

>>1556165
>during its prime
but the caliphate was waning and completely degenrated by this point. Infact it was the primary reason why no one rushed to the cities aid as expected.

>>1564478
>Fun fact: Iran during the 6-7th century, prior to the Arab invasions, was actually rapidly becoming Christian.

Actually it continued to convert to Christianity, with churches spreading across Iran and well into Central Asia under the height of the early Caliphate. The Arabs helped spread Christianity, ironically, and only later did Islam take over as the elite of Khorasan multiplied and rapidly spread a new Persian-Muslim culture under the Abbasids.

>>1556150
>REALLY?
yeah really
you'd be surprised how much the Mongols burned.

>>1556150
>mongolsburntitalltoo
They pillaged and destroyed a lot. They routinely sent people back to the bronze age. There's a reason why horror stories found their way to Britain.

>arabsburntitall
Nope, nothing compared to the former.

>>1564234
>not wearing the Lion flag shirt
>wearing le islamic republic flag shirt
No true diasporic Persian.