<!--QuoteBegin-dhu+Mar 30 2007, 03:58 AM-->QUOTE(dhu @ Mar 30 2007, 03:58 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Persian influence on Greece </b>
http://www.livius.org/ia-in/influence/influence01.html[right][snapback]66315[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The page at the link mentioned states this embarassing mistake (or is it wilfull deceit?):
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Another reason is that the impressive Greek collection of literary, scientific and other texts has survived, whereas there is no such collection from Persia. (The collection of religious texts known as the Avesta dates from the fifth or sixth century CE.)<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Ignorance, propaganda, misinformation Alert!
(1) It is a widely-recognised fact that Alexander burnt down the Persian library, which was the greatest library of the ancient world. (I think the islamics have been rightly accused of burning down the rebuilt libraries of Persia in the later period.) This is one of the several things Alexander has been disparaged for.
The Zoroastrians lamented that single copies of many Zoroastrian religious writings on ancient traditions had perished, and they forever afterwards held this terrible event as a blackmark against the Greeks. It seems the later Greeks on the other hand became rather sorry about what had happened in Alexander's time and tried to make some recompense by copying out some more accessible Zoroastrian literature for their Alexandrian library - those books that they were allowed to copy of course.
A little incompetent googling for the above turns up the following. Someone in a South African(?) forum has pasted the following from some source:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Herodotus's description of Iranian religion includes recognizably Zoroastrian features, including exposure of the dead and divination. The Achaemenid emperors or shahs acknowledge their devotion to Ahura Mazda in inscriptions; however, they maintained local religions in Babylon and Egypt, and helped the Jews to return to Canaan, showing remarkable tolerance. According to later traditions, many of the Zoroastrian sacred texts were lost when Alexander the Great destroyed Persepolis and overthrew the Achaemenids in the 330s BCE.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->There are mistakes in the above - these traditions about Alexander's destruction of Zoroastrian sacred texts were not of later times. And it makes no mention of how Alexander destroyed what was only about the largest library of the times. Such a monumental fact has been left out altogether.
Previously had jumbled up the order of the following two excerpts:
Here's some support for the islamoterrorism against books.
Islamic destruction of Persian libraries are mentioned in this Iranian site (though it is confusing the Faithful Arabians with general Arabians):
http://www.iranpoliticsclub.net/library/en...ears1/index.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->[image caption] Ruins of Ctesiphone, once the mighty capital of Sassanid and the most glorious city of the known world.
Imagine a city, the capital of Persian Empire drowned in luxury, jewelry, glorious buildings, structures, palaces and dams, a city so rich and so wealthy full of so many structures that the whole world was envious of it! Ctesiphone University, Library and Theatre were world famous. Ctesiphone was a cultural city and center for global scholars, philosophers, scientists and artists. Imagine such city, and then picture a group of savages from Deserts of Arabia, promised by caliphate that if you win, you can take whatever you want, steal everything that you can, rape as many Persian women as you can, kill as many Persian men as you can, kidnap as many underage young girls and boys as you can and ship them back to Arabia to become slaves, over all, you can do as you please with Persians as long as you make sure to send caliphate and Arab Court's share, back to Arabia. And if you die, you will go to heaven and Allah will grant you 70 Huri virgins, couple of pearly white boys, rivers of milk and honey and every other luxury that you can desire! It's a win win situation! Arabs of desert grasped this offer without thinking twice! What did they have to lose? They had nothing to lose to begin with!
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The Book Burnings</b>
The book burnings started, they practically burned all our books in the glorious world famous Persian Library of Ctesiphone. The Persian documented history, science, literature, poetry, music and scripture of centuries and millenniums were burned to ashes by Arabo-Muslim. The only book needed in Islam is Quran, so they burned everything else! The book burnings continued for days and weeks!<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Like I said, christoislamism is the same religion: christians hated books because they were pagan/anti-christian - except for the babble. Islamics hated any book that wasn't the koran. And Persia wasn't the only target of islam. Like the christos, they also took it out against the Alexandrian libraries, destroying the last library of antiquity in that region. (The christians had destroyed all the earlier ones)
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A1.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->After Hypatia's murder the scholars left en masse and Alexandria became steadily less stable. It was overrun by those monks who evolved into the Copts and who were opposed to scientific and classical knowledge. Some time later, Alexandria revolted against Constantinople. It splintered into two factions contending between two Patriarchs, and eventually Alexander's city fell to Moslem conquerors who, of like mind to their Christian predecessors, had the last of the library burned in 686 CE - as fuel in the bath-houses.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Though I'm not a fan of Alexander to begin with, nevertheless his case is different from christoislamania. Alexander burnt the Persian library to quell and humiliate the 'stubborn' Persians. It had nothing to do with his thinking books were 'evil', in fact, he encouraged libraries.
(2) Every encyclopaedia I have at home (though they are all dated from either the late 70s, some time in the 80s or the early 90s) all state that Persian religion and religious literature (I am assuming they are referring to the Avesta) date from 6th century BCE at the latest. Some postulate much earlier dates. Where does the 6th century CE come from? Were the Persians mysteriously unable to write down their religious literature until a century before the islamania arose?
And why were the Zoroastrians suffering national sorrow over the Zoroastrian religious books destroyed by Alexander - a number of which they had no second copies of - if there was no Zoroastrian literature until the miraculous 6th century? Is this site - livius.org - accusing the Zoroastrians of lying, or the Greeks of lying about their account of it?
I hate quoting from wackypedia, but I'm too lazy to put in the CD to that source of (only) slightly less propaganda - Encarta. Ignoring the publicity for the as-yet-unknown 'Aryans', it states:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Islamic_p..._of_Afghanistan
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Avesta is believed to have been composed possibly as early as 1800 BCE and written in ancient Ariana (Aryana), possibly the earliest name of Afghanistan which indicates an early link with Iranian tribes to the west, or adjacent regions in Central Asia or northeastern Iran in the 6th century BCE.[1]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So much of even this little bit is wrong, but my point is, not even
wackypedia leaps to the claim of 6th century CE.
Anyway, after these two <i>huge</i> mistakes in that first page about 'Persian influence on Greece' at Livius.org, I lost all interest in reading further. It's this kind of christoislamic-centred nonsense that does away with even the little goodwill more literate people try to show toward the ancient Persians.
http://www.livius.org/ia-in/influence/influence01.html[right][snapback]66315[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The page at the link mentioned states this embarassing mistake (or is it wilfull deceit?):
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Another reason is that the impressive Greek collection of literary, scientific and other texts has survived, whereas there is no such collection from Persia. (The collection of religious texts known as the Avesta dates from the fifth or sixth century CE.)<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Ignorance, propaganda, misinformation Alert!
(1) It is a widely-recognised fact that Alexander burnt down the Persian library, which was the greatest library of the ancient world. (I think the islamics have been rightly accused of burning down the rebuilt libraries of Persia in the later period.) This is one of the several things Alexander has been disparaged for.
The Zoroastrians lamented that single copies of many Zoroastrian religious writings on ancient traditions had perished, and they forever afterwards held this terrible event as a blackmark against the Greeks. It seems the later Greeks on the other hand became rather sorry about what had happened in Alexander's time and tried to make some recompense by copying out some more accessible Zoroastrian literature for their Alexandrian library - those books that they were allowed to copy of course.
A little incompetent googling for the above turns up the following. Someone in a South African(?) forum has pasted the following from some source:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Herodotus's description of Iranian religion includes recognizably Zoroastrian features, including exposure of the dead and divination. The Achaemenid emperors or shahs acknowledge their devotion to Ahura Mazda in inscriptions; however, they maintained local religions in Babylon and Egypt, and helped the Jews to return to Canaan, showing remarkable tolerance. According to later traditions, many of the Zoroastrian sacred texts were lost when Alexander the Great destroyed Persepolis and overthrew the Achaemenids in the 330s BCE.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->There are mistakes in the above - these traditions about Alexander's destruction of Zoroastrian sacred texts were not of later times. And it makes no mention of how Alexander destroyed what was only about the largest library of the times. Such a monumental fact has been left out altogether.
Previously had jumbled up the order of the following two excerpts:
Here's some support for the islamoterrorism against books.
Islamic destruction of Persian libraries are mentioned in this Iranian site (though it is confusing the Faithful Arabians with general Arabians):
http://www.iranpoliticsclub.net/library/en...ears1/index.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->[image caption] Ruins of Ctesiphone, once the mighty capital of Sassanid and the most glorious city of the known world.
Imagine a city, the capital of Persian Empire drowned in luxury, jewelry, glorious buildings, structures, palaces and dams, a city so rich and so wealthy full of so many structures that the whole world was envious of it! Ctesiphone University, Library and Theatre were world famous. Ctesiphone was a cultural city and center for global scholars, philosophers, scientists and artists. Imagine such city, and then picture a group of savages from Deserts of Arabia, promised by caliphate that if you win, you can take whatever you want, steal everything that you can, rape as many Persian women as you can, kill as many Persian men as you can, kidnap as many underage young girls and boys as you can and ship them back to Arabia to become slaves, over all, you can do as you please with Persians as long as you make sure to send caliphate and Arab Court's share, back to Arabia. And if you die, you will go to heaven and Allah will grant you 70 Huri virgins, couple of pearly white boys, rivers of milk and honey and every other luxury that you can desire! It's a win win situation! Arabs of desert grasped this offer without thinking twice! What did they have to lose? They had nothing to lose to begin with!
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The Book Burnings</b>
The book burnings started, they practically burned all our books in the glorious world famous Persian Library of Ctesiphone. The Persian documented history, science, literature, poetry, music and scripture of centuries and millenniums were burned to ashes by Arabo-Muslim. The only book needed in Islam is Quran, so they burned everything else! The book burnings continued for days and weeks!<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Like I said, christoislamism is the same religion: christians hated books because they were pagan/anti-christian - except for the babble. Islamics hated any book that wasn't the koran. And Persia wasn't the only target of islam. Like the christos, they also took it out against the Alexandrian libraries, destroying the last library of antiquity in that region. (The christians had destroyed all the earlier ones)
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A1.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->After Hypatia's murder the scholars left en masse and Alexandria became steadily less stable. It was overrun by those monks who evolved into the Copts and who were opposed to scientific and classical knowledge. Some time later, Alexandria revolted against Constantinople. It splintered into two factions contending between two Patriarchs, and eventually Alexander's city fell to Moslem conquerors who, of like mind to their Christian predecessors, had the last of the library burned in 686 CE - as fuel in the bath-houses.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Though I'm not a fan of Alexander to begin with, nevertheless his case is different from christoislamania. Alexander burnt the Persian library to quell and humiliate the 'stubborn' Persians. It had nothing to do with his thinking books were 'evil', in fact, he encouraged libraries.
(2) Every encyclopaedia I have at home (though they are all dated from either the late 70s, some time in the 80s or the early 90s) all state that Persian religion and religious literature (I am assuming they are referring to the Avesta) date from 6th century BCE at the latest. Some postulate much earlier dates. Where does the 6th century CE come from? Were the Persians mysteriously unable to write down their religious literature until a century before the islamania arose?
And why were the Zoroastrians suffering national sorrow over the Zoroastrian religious books destroyed by Alexander - a number of which they had no second copies of - if there was no Zoroastrian literature until the miraculous 6th century? Is this site - livius.org - accusing the Zoroastrians of lying, or the Greeks of lying about their account of it?
I hate quoting from wackypedia, but I'm too lazy to put in the CD to that source of (only) slightly less propaganda - Encarta. Ignoring the publicity for the as-yet-unknown 'Aryans', it states:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Islamic_p..._of_Afghanistan
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Avesta is believed to have been composed possibly as early as 1800 BCE and written in ancient Ariana (Aryana), possibly the earliest name of Afghanistan which indicates an early link with Iranian tribes to the west, or adjacent regions in Central Asia or northeastern Iran in the 6th century BCE.[1]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So much of even this little bit is wrong, but my point is, not even
wackypedia leaps to the claim of 6th century CE.
Anyway, after these two <i>huge</i> mistakes in that first page about 'Persian influence on Greece' at Livius.org, I lost all interest in reading further. It's this kind of christoislamic-centred nonsense that does away with even the little goodwill more literate people try to show toward the ancient Persians.