The posts in this weblog are mainly about history, heritage, language, art, and culture of Persia (that is named Iran since 1934). Persia is, therefore, equal to Iran, and Persian is equal to Iranian. Note that Persian is a nationality not an ethnicity. Pars (or Fars) is the major ethnicity in Persia but there are also Persian Kurds or Arabs. Similarly, the official language in Persia is Persian (Farsi is the local name and may not be used internationally). For more details please read my posts.
My first post in English
This is the first post I am putting on this page. You may ask why an English page for Fakhredin Blog was needed. The truth is that I have received a serious comment that why I wrote the whole blog in
Persian language. The issue was actually about my aim of having a blog. I started the
Persian page of Fakhredin Blog in March 2004. My main aim was to write about the issues which I find interesting in daily life. In practice, most of the posts ended up to be about
Persian history and
Persian culture. I became more and more interested in
World Heritage, and the role of
Persia in it. This leaded me to the discussion of tourism industry in Persia, what has been done, and what is not still OK. I noted several times that we live in an era in which "information" is the key for any progress.
As you see, talking about information, it was not just to limit my blog to Persian readers. In fact, I realized that most of those information regarding Persian history or heritage is already well known for Persians themselves. If we, as Persians, do or do not appreciate that is another story. Nonetheless, it is of extreme importance to open those discussions to a broader audience. Let me give you an example:
You may recall the act of
National Geography Society regarding the name of
Persian Gulf, and the consequent reactions which forced the Society to withdraw. We all know that it was not the beginning, nor the end, of such matter. The
conflict about the name of Persian Gulf is continuing very seriously. Several exhibitions and conferences are organized in Persia, but unfortunately the audiences were only Persian people. As
Pejman Akbarzadeh noted several times in his articles in
Shargh Newspaper: Persian people already agree! We do not need to convince them!! We need international act for this issue. You may like to read
this article by Pejman in Shargh Newspaper (it's in Persian language).
Similar disputes are currently ongoing regarding
Persian poets and
Persian scientists. Certain people are claiming that some Persian poets/scientists were Turkish or Arab. I will try to discuss this matter in detail later. In short, you can just imagine if Germans start claiming
Van Gogh to be a German painter, and not Dutch!
For this reason, and many others, I decided that an English page is of importance. I hope I will continue posting in both languages, and I look forward for many comments from you.
Deo Volente!
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