From Aryanem Vaejah to Iran: The Historic and Etymologic Adventure of a Concept from Zoroaster to Early Islamic Era

Abstract

This study discusses the evolution of the concept of Iran in the historical process starting from its etymological origin until early Islamic era. Aryanem Vaejah, a region where the Aryan race lives and mentioned in religious literature, especially in Avesta, has transformed over time into Ērān/Iran with some phonetic changes. Along with indicating a region, this concept also refers to an ethnic origin and a religious context in relation to the people residing in this location. The framework of this concept, which was constructed in a mythological discourse, attained a meaning set that expanded from the Persians to the Sasanians. Although it contains geographical, political, national and religious dimensions, the concept is little used to refer to the ancient past of the Persians, instead it gained this four-layered semantic structure with the Sasanians. The semantic world of Iran and its derivative terms (Ēr(ān), An-Ērān, Ērānšhar), in which the Sasanian empire found its existence on the political frame with ethno-religious intonation, lost its context with the Islamic conquests. So, this lost simultaneously occurred with the loss of political ground of this conceptual framework, which was used extensively by the Sasanians, after the Islamic conquests. The voices of the words of the defeated political power lowered with the domination of Islam, and instead of the Iranian conceptual framework stated in the early Islamic records, the concepts such as ʿAjam and Fars/Furs began loudly to be voiced. This study examines the etymological adventure of the concept of Iran, whose conceptual structure has changed and transformed in the process. The data of the religious literature consisting of the Avesta and its interpretation of the Sasanian period known as the Zand and the royal inscriptions, and classical sources from Persians to Sasanians are the main sources of this study.