In my paper titled “The Relationship Between Persians and Greeks in Ancient Iranian Sources,” I explore how two great civilizations— the Persians and the Greeks—viewed, contested, and influenced each other throughout antiquity. My aim is to understand not only their political and cultural encounters but also how each side constructed its own intellectual legitimacy through religious and philosophical discourse.
Greek classical texts, especially those of Herodotus, offer some of the earliest depictions of Persian culture and Zoroastrian belief. These accounts, while invaluable, are often shaped by Greek interpretive frameworks that reduce Persian spirituality to exotic curiosity or, more pointedly, to sorcery (Gk. mageia), a term derived from the Persian Magi themselves. In contrast, the Pahlavi-Pazand corpus of late antiquity presents a bold counter-narrative: according to these Iranian sources, Greek civilization was itself indebted to Persian wisdom. Following Alexander’s conquest, the Greeks allegedly seized and translated Persian scientific and philosophical works, destroying the originals to conceal their derivation, according to these texts.
My paper argues that the Sasanian translation movement must be seen not as a passive adoption of Greek thought but as an active act of intellectual reclamation. The Sasanids’ engagement with Greek philosophy was a means of reconstituting a Persian Book of Wisdom—a corpus in which religion and philosophy were inseparable. Texts such as the Dēnkard reflect this synthesis by identifying philosophical inquiry with spiritual pursuit. This fusion is evident in specific Pahlavi doctrines, such as the direct parallel between the macrocosm (cihān-i vuzurg) and the microcosm (cihān-i kōdak), or in the integration of the four cosmic elements with the four bodily humors. Most strikingly, Dēnkard VI directly quotes portions of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (without attribution), fully embedding Greek ethical thought within a Zoroastrian moral framework.
The paper also highlights the emergence of a distinctive ‘literature of doubt’ following the crises of Alexander’s invasion and, later, the Islamic conquest. I argue that the Zoroastrian response to this intellectual and spiritual doubt evolved significantly. While earlier texts such as the Ardā-Vīrāf-nāme sought to resolve doubt through mystical journeys and visionary experiences, the ninth-century Škand-Gumānīg Wizār (Doubt-Dispelling Explanation) explicitly employs logic, comparative religion, and philosophical reasoning to defend the faith. This shift demonstrates philosophy’s new role as a necessary tool for theological defense and reconstitution.
In the early Islamic period, Persian works largely vanished—either through the devastations of conquest or through migration toward India. Ibn Khaldūn notes that many of Iran’s artifacts and manuscripts were lost or destroyed. Nevertheless, during the Abbasid age, Persian scholars once again became central actors in knowledge production. The re-compilation of the Dēnkard around the same time as the establishment of Bayt al-Hikma reveals a deliberate attempt to revive Persian intellectual heritage. Through these efforts, Greek philosophy reached the Muslim world—but through Persian mediation and reinterpretation.
By tracing Persian perceptions of the Greeks in ancient sources, this study reveals a deeper intellectual dialogue—one in which Iran asserted its cultural sovereignty while simultaneously shaping the global transmission of philosophy. While Persian texts are replete with Greek philosophical concepts, Greek sources show almost no reciprocal philosophical engagement with Persian thought. This one-way intellectual traffic suggests that the Pahlavi narrative of “reclaiming stolen wisdom” functioned as a powerful ideological strategy: it allowed Sasanian and post-Sasanian scholars to adopt and legitimize foreign philosophical tools as inherently Persian. Ultimately, this paper situates Persia not as a cultural periphery of Greece but as a dynamic center of its own philosophical and theological creativity—one whose legacy continued well into the Islamic and post-classical worlds.
Bir yanıt yazın