Names of the land of Iran

According to historical documents, evidence, proofs, oral culture, archaeological discoveries and linguistics, it can be said that  5 names have been used for the land of  Iran.

Names of the land of Iran:

1. Arta, Aratta, Erata, Eritrea (Erythian)

2. The Medes

3.  the Jam , Ajam

4.   the Persia and its equivalents in different languages

5. Iran (Ariana, Iraq, Arak, Elam)

All the above mentioned names has been used for nomenclature of the Persian gulf also.

** Arta, Aratta, Erata, Eritrea (Erythian) was used before the Achaemenes and usually were names of smaller place of the Iranian plate. According to Herodotus the Persian was named by their neighbors as Erataen , Dr.Majidi and Dr Ajam believe that there is a connection between the term Errata  , Arata and Eritra . Erythraean Sea was the term applied by Greek and Roman geographers to the Persian gulf and then to  Indian Ocean. we are assured by Agatharchides that it means, not Red Sea, but Sea of King Erythras, a Persian legend a king in the Hurmuz strait.The Greeks themselves derived the name from an eponymous King Erythras, knowing that the waters so described were deep blue . Agatharchides had written of the origin of the name Erythraean Sea on the book (De Mari Erythraeo, § 5) in a story about the Persian king Erythras:"There was a man famous for his valor and wealth, by name Erythras, a Persian by birth, son of Myozaeus..... the glory of the Island ascribed to him by the popular voice because of these his deeds, that even down to our own time they have called that sea, infinite in extent, Erythraean Sea" . His home was by the sea, facing toward islands which are not now desert, but were so at the time of the empire of the Medes, when Eryrhras lived. In the winter-time he used to go to Pasargadae, making the journey at his own cost; and he indulged in these changes of scene now for profit, and now for some pleasure of his own life. On a time the lions charged into a large flock of his mares, and some were slain; while the rest, unharmed but terror-stricken at what they had seen, fled to the sea. A strong wind was blowing from the land, and as they plunged into the waves in their terror, they were carried beyond their footing; and their fear continuing, they swam through the sea and came out on the shore of the island opposite. With them went one of the herdsmen, a youth of marked bravery, who thus reached the shore by clinging to the shoulders of a mare. Now Erythras looked for his mares, and not seeing them, first put together a raft of small size, but secure in the strength of its building; and happening on a favorable wind, he pushed off into the strait,(Hormuz) across which he was swiftly carried by the waves, and so found his mares and found their keeper also. And then, being pleased with the island, he built a stronghold at a place well chosen by the shore, and brought hither from the main-land opposite such as were dissatisfied with their life there, and subsequently settled all the other uninhabited islands with a numerous population; and such was the glory ascribed to him by the popular voice because of these his deeds, that even down to our own time they have called that sea, infinite in extent, Erythraean. And so, for the reason here set forth, it is to be well distinguished (for to say Erýthra thálatta, Sea of Erythras, is a very different thing from Thálatta erythrá, Red Sea); for the one commemorates the most illustrious man of that sea, while the other refers to the color of the water. Now the one explanation of the name, as due to the color, is false (for the sea is not red), but the other, ascribing it to the man who ruled there, is the true one, as the Persian story testifies."

Agatharchides,." See under §§ 4, 23, and 27. [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Periplus_of_the_Erythraean_Sea/Notes]

== The Medes ==

According to the Histories of Herodotus, there were six Median tribes in west and central Iranian platu.Thus Deioces collected the Medes into a nation, and ruled over them alone. Now these are the tribes of which they consist: the Busae, the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii, and the Magi.

The six Median tribes resided in Media proper, the triangular area between Rhagae,(Tehran ) Aspadana and Ecbatana. In present-day Iran, that is the area between Tehran, Isfahan and Hamadan, respectively. Of the Median tribes, the Magi resided in Rhagae, modern Tehran. They were of a sacred caste which ministered to the spiritual needs of the Medes. The Paretaceni tribe resided in and around Aspadana, modern Isfahan, the Arizanti lived in and around Kashan (Isfahan Province, and the Busae tribe lived in and around the future Median capital of Ecbatana, near modern Hamadan. The Struchates and the Budii lived in villages in the Median triangle.

**Persia

Persia has two different meaning a narrow and limited as the people of the province of the Fars. Second is a wide and expanded meaning in this context it refer to multination’s also  means a great land that was under the cultural influence of Achaemenes and Sasanian empire.

The Greeks (who had previously tended to use names related to "Median") began to use adjectives such as Pérsēs (Πέρσης), Persikḗ (Περσική) or Persís (Περσίς) in the fifth century BC to refer to Cyrus the Great's empire (a word understood to mean "country"). Such words were taken from the Old Persian Pārsa – the name of the people from whom Cyrus(the Sun) of the Achaemenid dynasty emerged and over whom he first ruled (before he inherited or conquered other Iranian Kingdoms). The Pars tribe gave its name to the region where they lived (the modern day province is called Fars/Pars), but the province in ancient times was bigger than its current area  In Latin, the name for the whole empire was Persia, while the Iranians knew it as Iran or Iranshahr .

In the later parts of the Bible, where this kingdom is frequently mentioned (Books of Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah), it is called Paras (Biblical Hebrew: פרס), or sometimes Paras u Madai (פרס ומדי). according to the book Documents on the Persian Gulf's name p.p 22-36 The Arabs likewise referred to Iran and the Persian (Sassanian) Empire as Bilād Fāris, in other words "Lands of Persia", which would become the popular name for the region in Muslim literature also they were using Bilād Ajam as an equivalent or synonym to the Persia. The Turks also were using bilad (Belaad) e Ajam an equivalent or synonym to the Persia and Iranian almost from oldest text that remained in Arabic, in Quran and jaheliya also the word Ajam were used to refer to Persian.

A Greek folk etymology connected the name to Perseus, a legendary character in Greek mythology. Herodotus recounts this story, devising a foreign son, Perses, from whom the Persians took the name. Apparently, the Persians themselves knew the story, as Xerxes I tried to use it to suborn the Argives during his invasion of Greece, but ultimately failed to do so.

On the 25th December 1934 the Persian Ministry for Foreign Affairs addressed a circular memorandum to the Foreign Diplomatic Missions in Tehran requesting that the terms "Iran" and "Iranian" might be used in official correspondence and conversation as from the next 21st March, instead of the words "Persia" and "Persian" hitherto in current use. The decree of Reza Shah Pahlavi affecting nomenclature duly took effect on 21 March 1935.

** Iran

The modern Persian name of Iran  means "the land of Aryans ". It derives immediately from the 3rd-century Sasanian Middle Persian ērān .

In the geographic sense, ērān was also distinguished from ērānšahr , the Sasanians' own name for their empire, and which also included territories that were not primarily inhabited by ethnic Iranians

The word ērān is first attested in the inscriptions that accompany the investiture relief of Ardashir I ( r. 224–242) at Naqsh-e Rustam . In this bilingual inscription, the king calls himself "Ardashir, king of kings of the Iranians , The old Iranian * arya- is attested as an ethnic designator in Achaemenid inscriptions as Old Persian ariya- , and in Zoroastrianism's Avesta tradition as Avestan airiia- / airya , etc. It is "very likely" that Ardashir I's use of Middle Iranian ērān / aryān still retained the same meaning as did in Old Iranian, ie denoting the people rather than the empire.

the inscription "the Mazda-worshipping ( mazdēsn ) lord Ardashir, king of kings of the Iranians" that appears on Ardashir's coins was likewise adopted by Ardashir's successors. Ardashir's son and immediate successor, Shapur I ( r. 240 / 42–270/72) extended the title to "King of Kings of Iranians and non-Iranians In his trilingual inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht , Shapur I also introduces the term * ērānšahr . Shapur 's inscription includes a list of provinces in his empire, and these include regions in the Caucasus that were not inhabited predominantly by Iranians . inscriptions of Kartir, a high priest under several Sasanian kings. Kartir's inscription also includes a lists of provinces, but unlike Shapur's considers the provinces in the Caucasus an ērānšahr . which is a description of various provincial capitals of the ērānšahr , and includes Africa and Arabia as well.

Both ērān and anērān appear in 3rd century calendrical text written by Mani . The same short form reappears in the names of the towns founded by Sasanian dynasts, for instance in Ērān-xwarrah-šābuhr "Glory of Ērān (of) Shapur". It also appears in the titles of government officers, such as in Ērān-āmārgar "Accountant-General of Ērān", Ērān-dibirbed"Chief Scribe of Ērān", and Ērān-spāhbed " Spahbed of Ērān".

the term is presumed to have been a Sasanian-era development. The mid -5th-century BCE Herodotus (7.62) mentions that the Medes once called themselves Arioi . The 1st century BCE Strabo cites the 3rd-century BCE Eratosthenes for having noted a relationship between the various Iranian peoples and their languages: "[From] beyond the Indus [...] Ariana is extended so as to include some part of Persia , Media , and the north of Bactria and Sogdiana ; for these nations speak nearly the same language. "( Geography , 15.2.1-15.2.8). Damascius ( Dubitationes et solutiones in Platonis Parmenidem , 125ff) quotes the mid-4th-century BCE Eudemus of Rhodes for "the Magi and all those of Iranian ( áreion)) lineage ". The 1st-century BCE Diodorus Siculus (1.94.2) describes Zoroaster as one of the Arianoi .

In early Islamic times

The terms ērān / ērānšahr had no currency for the Arabic-speaking Caliphs, for whom Arabic al-'ajam and al-furs ("Persia") to refer to Western Iran (ie the territory initially captured by the Arabs and approximately corresponding to the present- day country of Iran ) had greater traction  than indigenous Iranian usage . Zoroastrian.: 327 Accordingly, while the Arabs were generally quite open to Iranian ideas if it suited them, this did not extend to the nationalistic and religious connotations in ērān / ērānšahr , nor to the concomitant contempt of non-Iranians, which by the Islamic era also included Arabs and " Turks ".

The rise of the Abbasid Caliphate in the mid-8th century ended the Umayyad policy of Arab supremacy and initiated a revival of Iranian identity. This was encouraged by the transfer of the capital from Syria to Iraq, which had been a capital province. in Sasanian, Arsacid and Achaemenes times and was thus perceived to carry an Iranian cultural legacy. Moreover, in several Iranian provinces, the downfall of the Umayyads was accompanied by a rise of de facto autonomous Iranian dynasties in the 9th and 10th centuries.

 

The Denkard , a 9th-century work of Zoroastrian tradition, uses ērān to designate Iranians and anērān to designate non-Iranians. The Denkard also uses the phrases ēr deh , plural ērān dehān , to designated lands inhabited by Iranians. A single instance in the Book of Arda (Artta) Wiraz (1.4), also preserves the gentilic in ērān dahibed distinct from the geographic Ērānšahr. However, these post-Sasanian instances where ērān referred to people rather than to the state, are rare, and by the early Islamic period the "general designation for" the land of the Iranians was [...] by then ērān (also ērān zamīn , šahr-e ērān ), and ērānī for its inhabitants.

The existence of a cultural concept of "Iranianness" (Irāniyat) is also demonstrated in the trial of Afshin in 840, as recorded by Tabari. Afshin, the hereditary ruler of Oshrusana, on the southern bank of the middle stretch of the Syr Darya , had been charged with propagating Iranian ethno-national sentiment. Afshin acknowledged the existence of a national consciousness ( al aʿjamiyya ) and his sympathies for it. "This episode clearly reveals not only the presence of a distinct awareness of Iranian cultural identity and the people who actively propagated it, but also of the existence of a concept ( al-aʿjamiya or Irāniyat ) to convey it.

== Ajam**

Ajam is an Arabized  word meaning, none Arab ,today it  refers to someone whose mother tongue is not Arabic. During the Arab conquest of Persia, the term was used to refer to Persian  and Iranians.

according to the book Documents on the Persian Gulf's name pp 22-36 The Arabs likewise referred to Iran and the Persian (Sassanian) Empire as Bilād Fāris (Arabic: بلاد فارس),which means"Lands of Persia", and using Bilād Ajam (Arabic: بلاد عجم) as an equivalent or synonym to the Persia. the Turks also were using bilad (Belaad) e Ajam as an equivalent or synonym to the Persian and Iranian ,in Jahiliyyah and also in Quran the word Ajam were used to refer to Persian. the word Ajam had been used in different concept and meanings throughout the history. words usually have a simple meaning at first, but over the time, other meanings and concepts are added to it, especially when the words were borrowed from other languages. Ajam has never meant dumb in Arabic; using it in a derogatory sense is a later concept. Ajam was first used for people of Persia in the poems of pre-Islamic Arab poets; but after the advent of Islam it also referred to Turks, Zoroastrians, and others. Today, in Arabic literature, Ajam is used to refer to all non-Arabs. An alternate etymology derives the term from the mythological Persian Shah Jamshid.supporter of this alternate etymology Dr. Boromand in the Kerman magazine No 13 and 14, 1993 in the article titled" etymology of the word Ajam and also in his book "Jamshid Jam" and Dr. Ajam in the book "Documents on the Persian Gulf's name" page 22-44 had explained how the word Jam(shid) had changed to Ajam in Arabized process. explained that the word Jam & Jamshid was very famous in Arabic literature of pre Islam , Ajam in fact had a root in the Persian word Jam Jamshid The stories of "Jam and Jamshed and the word Molouk Ajam (Persian emperor) were well known to the Arabs before Islam and the word Molouk Ajam (Ajam Persian kings) and Molk e Ajam(Persia) were used in poems of famous 7 Arab poets of Jahiliyyah (pre Islam). the famous Arab figures:

Nadr ibn al-Harith had written a book about the stories of the Molouk of Ajam (persian kings)Rustam Rustam and Jamshid and Fereydun and presented it to the new Muslims claiming it is more important than the stories of Quranf Quran of Muhammad.

Al-A'sha another famous Arabic Jahiliyyah (pre Islam) poet from Najd, had written poems describing Ajam/Persian king (Molouk Ajam) one of the Al-A'sha poem is:" أَوْ عَاتِقًا مِنْ أَذْرُعَاتٍ مُعَتَّقًا مِمَّا تَعَتَّقَهُ مُلُوكُ الأَعْجَمِ". For the first time in the Umayyad period, the derogatory use of the word Ajam applied to the Persians. but during Abbasid and after The word Ajam was used for the Persians not only for humiliating but also a source of pride, as some Arabs even in The pre-Islamic period proudly narrated the glorious stories of the Molouk(kings) of Ajam and the Molk of Jam (Persia).the Arab poets Yaqut al-Hamawi and Al-Mutawakkil wrote: "I am the son of the honors Offspring of Jam(jamshid) holder of the glory legacy of Molouk Ajam (Persian kings).انا ابن المکارم من النسل جم و حائز ارث ملوک العجم

 according to the book  it is very natural that in Arabicizing the words sometimes A is added to the words like (Asfehan) Isfahan in Arabic from the Persian word "SEPAHAN . As the book Documents on the Persian Gulf's name explained during the period Iranian Intermezzo native Persian Muslim dynasties the word Ajam and Persian both were used to refer to Iranian. Many Arabic sources refer to Persian language as Ajami language or Ajmo. Persian is the official language in Iran as "Parsi" and "Farsi", in Afghanistan as Parsi and Dari, and Tajiki in Tajikistan, Persian in Bahrain is called "Ajami" and in Kuwait "Ayami" . In classical Arabic, especially in the first centuries of the Islamic period, the Persian language was called "the language of the Ajam" لسان العجم, and the Iranian people were called the "Ajami" and the persian gulf was called Ajam Gulf, in many books and deed, Tafsir al-Zahak The oldest commentary on Quran wrote on page 524 " In Surah An-Nahl, verse 103, the word Ajami refers to Salman Farsi and says Ajami is the Persians. also Arabic word for dictionary is mo'jam (moajam) that means definition of the non Arabs(ajam) word. According to The Political Language of Islam, during the Islamic Golden Age, 'Ajam' was used colloquially as a reference to denote those whom Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula viewed as "alien" or outsiders. The early application of the term included all of the non-Arab peoples with whom the Arabs had contact including Persians, Byzantine Greeks, Ethiopians, Armenians, Assyrians, Mandaeans, Arameans, Jews, Georgians, Sabians, Samaritans, Egyptians, and Berbers.

During the early age of the Caliphates, Ajam was often synonymous with "foreigner" or "stranger. In the Western Asia, it was generally applied to the Persians, while in al-Andalus it referred to speakers of Romance languages - becoming "Aljamiado" in Spanish in reference to Arabic-script writing of those languages - and in West Africa refers to the Ajami script or the writing of local languages such as Hausa and Fulani in the Arabic alphabet.[citation needed] In Zanzibar ajami and ajamo means Persian which came from the Persian Gulf and the cities of Shiraz and Siraf. In Turkish, there are many documents and letters that used Ajam to refer to Persian. In the Persian Gulf region and also the Turks people still refer to Persians as Ajami, referring to Persian carpets as sajjad al Ajami (Ajami carpet), Persian cat as Ajami cats, and Persian Kings as Ajami kings