By: Khodadad Rezakhani
Introductions
The History of
Iran started as a private web
project in the summer of 1996. The
purpose of this monologue was to fill a gap that was evident at the time, the
lack of resources on the Iranian studies on the web.
The History of Iran, originally known as A Brief History of
Iran, tried to give a quick summary of the Iranian history. The initial version of the project dedicated a few paragraphs
to each period or dynasty since the reaction of the web community was not known
at the time. When the original
version was put on the World Wide Web, encouraging emails pointed out the need
to provide more details on the subject.
A revision project
was started by the author to add more details to the already existing material.
The first four chapters, covering the Iranian history from the Aryan
migrations to the early history of Islam, were rewritten.
At this point, an unfortunate incident caused the loss of iranology.com,
the original home of the History of Iran (March, 2002).
This incident gave
the author the reason to re-launch the site at a new address.
In order to re-launch, a re-design seemed necessary, and in addition to a
graphic redesign, a content change was also planned.
An important decision was made to add material about the history of Iran
before the Aryan migrations, since the original starting point was seen
unjustifiable. Two chapters, Iran before Iranians and Iranians
before Iran, are supplemented. Also,
in order to deliver an old promise, a section about the mythology and belief
systems of Iran is added.
The author has been
criticized for ending the monologue at 1941.
Other than certain considerations, it is the author’s personal belief
that anything younger than 100 years is not history, rather current affairs.
So, 1941 was only chosen as a conventional date and a “breaking”
point in the history of Iran, and the author agrees that better dates could have
been selected.
It seems worth noting
that this monologue tries to be completely nonpartisan and academic.
The method has been to concentrate more on the social history of Iran
rather than political history, although the dynasties and their rule, as a
standard of periodisation, are mentioned and their history provides the backbone
of the narrative. At points, if the details on certain parts of the history
seem deeper than others, the fault lies mainly on the lack of author’s
knowledge or the scarcity of research and books about that era. I would like to ask all the experts and researchers to assist
in making this monologue all more complete.
Certain details and points might not be present in the existing works of
historiography or disputed by many. These are the concerns and current research
subjects of the author. As with the
rest of the material, and indeed with the whole written history, these points
only reflect the beliefs and views of the author and are not necessarily facts.
As postmodernists are fund of reminding us, writing an objective,
unbiased history is not possible, and all works of historiography, including
this one, are the author’s version of what has happened many years ago.
With that note, I
wish you a happy read and hope to hear from all of the readers in their reaction
to these writings.
Khodadad Rezakhani
28 March 2002
Berkeley, California