Parthian Turan: an Anti-Persian dynasty

Pre-publication of chapter XII of my forthcoming book “Turkey is Iran and Iran is Turkey” (the book consists of 33 chapters)

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Parthian Arsacid times in Western and Central Asia (250 BCE – 224 CE) have also been distorted enormously by colonial Orientalists, who undertook a systematic de-Turanization of the material record, and of the interpretation effort, across this period of Late Antiquity.

This evil method begins with the continuation of the use of Ancient Greek and Latin terms for an immense part of the Earth that was never Greek or Roman. The use of Ancient Greek and Latin terms for any Oriental civilization, for any part of Oriental History, for any Orientalist discipline is erroneous, deceitful and misleading; even worse, this deliberate method keeps the average reader far from the historical realities, the linguistic originality, and the proper, direct approach to the Orient, and in this case to Iran and Turan.

In reality, there is no Achaemenid dynasty; it’s called ‘dynasty of Hakhamanesian’ (هخامنشیان).

In fact, there is no Arsacid dynasty; it’s called ‘dynasty of Ashkanian’ (اشکانیان).

And the same concerns the so-called Sassanid dynasty; it’s ‘dynasty of Sasanian’ (ساسانیان). In all three dynasty names, the accent is on the last syllable.

The same concerns the names of various Oriental nations’ kings and emperors, and those of the Iranian kings of kings. There is no ‘Arsaces’! The founder of the Parthian Ashkanian dynasty is named Ashk (اشک‎, Ašk) in Middle Persian and Arshak (Aršak, ارشاک) in Parthian. By mentioning the Ancient Greek or Latin deformation of the original name of the founder of Iran’s longest dynasty, pernicious Orientalists prevent people from easily understanding the name’s Turanian origin. By this, I don’t mean that the names of all Ashkanian monarchs are of Turanian origin, but many of them truly are. About:

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/安息帝國

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/阿特羅帕特尼王國

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/哈特拉

Vologases is another case of substantially deformed (in Ancient Greek and Latin) name of Parthian ruler; it is also mistakenly vocalized by Iranologists as Walagaš. One has to have a certain background in Parthian language and Pahlavi writing to realize that the proposed term ‘Walagaš’ is a pure Orientalist reconstruction and that the name’s pronunciation was reconstructed (or rather faked) in this manner in order to dissimulate this Parthian royal name’s Turanian nature and meaning. Pahlavi Iranian – Turanian writing system was established on the basis of Aramaic, i.e. the world’s most widely used lingua franca (: international language) before the use of modern Western languages – which is due to the colonization of the world by the Western European colonial powers.

Parthian prince — statue excavated in Khuzestan and currently located at the National Archaeological Museum in Tehran (2nd c. CE)

From NW Africa to China and from Siberia to Africa’s southeastern coasts, Aramaic eclipsed by far Latin and Ancient Greek, being historically the world’s second international language after Akkadian (Assyrian – Babylonian), which was the language and writing system in which all the 2nd millennium and 1st half of 1st millennium BCE Oriental monarchs communicated among them. After the diffusion of Islam, the adhesion of many Aramaeans to the faith preached by Prophet Muhammad, and the subsequent, determinant role played by the Aramaeans in the establishment of imperial administration, letters and sciences for the early caliphates, Aramaic was superseded by Arabic. However, Arabic language was in reality an Aramaic dialect, whereas Arabic alphabet is merely a cursive derivative of the Syriac Aramaic alphabet. Actually, one has to add that, long before the Aramaeans provided imperial administration, letters and sciences to the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs, they had delivered exactly the same highly valuable services to the Achaemenid Iranians.  

But pretty much like the earliest form of written Arabic (before Islam and also during the times of Prophet Muhammad), Aramaic was an alphabetic writing system in which only consonants were written; this is so because in Semitic languages the distinction between consonants and vowels is phonetically different than in Indo-European languages. At this point, I must add that aleph (a), yodh (i or y) and waw (u) are viewed not as vowels but as consonants in the Semitic languages. Similarly to the Aramaic alphabet, all Pahlavi Iranian – Turanian writings systems involved only consonants (and several Aramaic archaisms: logograms or hozwarishn). Because of this situation, the vocalization of each word (or name) is nowadays a matter of modern scholarly reconstruction, and when preconceived schemes and Orientalist forgery can occur in this effort, the end result is totally distorted and absolutely misleading.

In the case of the imperial Parthian Ashkanian name ‘Vologases’, the erroneous Orientalist reconstruction (Walagaš) seems even to disregard the way Ancient Greeks and Romans vocalized the name. If W+l+g+š became ‘Vologases’ in Ancient Greek and Latin, then we have surely to deduce that the most probable Parthian vocalization would be Ulugaš (: Ulugash), which consists in a very common physical description that may eventually suit as personal name of Turanian military leaders and emperors (Ulugaş: ‘big eyebrows’ in Turkmen). However, biased in their methods and partial in their approaches, colonial Orientalists preferred to vocalize the Parthian emperor’s name after posterior sources in Middle Persian (Wardakhsh) and Farsi (Balash), instead of taking into consideration the contemporaneous Ancient Greek and Latin way of rendering the Parthian royal name. The end result is a ludicrous interpretation and a deplorable confusion of the average readership.

Similarly, Orodes (Urud) is another Parthian imperial name that seems possible to have had Turanian etymology. I cannot fully expand at this point, but it seems that a) several unsuccessful Turanian – Iranian tribal and royal intermarriages and b) a strong religious polarization and confrontation between Zendism (a successive form of Zoroastrianism that was the Parthian court religion) and the Magi priests of Mithraism created progressively an explosive situation that risked to bring the empire to its knees. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orodes_I_of_Parthia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthian_Dark_Age

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotarzes_I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_II_of_Parthia

Parthian administrator from Hatra (NW Iraq)

Names of historically known Parthian tribes and confederations of tribes (a fact that suggests Turanian nomadic and not Iranian settled environment) have also been obscured, misinterpreted and distorted by colonial Orientalists. The Dahae are an example; there have been many variants of this tribal name in historical sources (Daae, Dahae, Daai, Dai, Dasai, etc.). In Persian, the Dahae are known as داه‍ان‎ (Dahan); in Ancient Greek they are called Δάαι (Daae) or Δαι (Dai), and in Chinese texts, they are named 大益 (Dayi). Located in the area of today’s Turkmenistan (also known as Chorasmia / Khawarism), i.e. north of Parthia’s mainland, the Dayi were a confederation of Turanian tribes (Parni, Xanthii, Pissuri) with an evidently Turkic name (Dayı).

What a name like that may mean for a nomadic Turanian confederation is easy to grasp; they probably stated in a most marked manner that, among them and in contrast with the Iranian tribes, prevailed a system of agnatic seniority. This practice of royal or tribal succession involves a patrilineal concept of inheritance as per which the order of succession prefers the monarch’s or the tribal leader’s younger brother over the monarch’s or the tribal leader’s own sons (in case of elective succession this practice is called lateral or fraternal system of succession). This was attested among Turanians in many different periods from Siberia, Mongolia, Central Asia and China down to the Ottomans. In striking contradiction to agnatic seniority stands the practice of agnatic primogeniture. Indicatively, in 17th c. Ottoman Empire, Mustafa I succeeded his brother Ahmed I and later Suleiman II and Ahmed II succeeded their brother Mehmed IV. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parni_conquest_of_Parthia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parni

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsaces_I_of_Parthia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vologases_I_of_Parthia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthia

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_%C4%B0mparatorlu%C4%9Fu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthian_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahlavi_scripts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frahang-i_Pahlavig

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahae

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_succession#Agnatic_succession

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnatic_seniority

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primogeniture#Agnatic_primogeniture

It is interesting to note a very subtle falsification undertaken in this regard by Wikipedia: they offer entries about the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia, the Arsacid dynasty of Caucasus Albania, and the Arsacid dynasty of Iberia, which were descendants of the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia, but the entry about the Parthian dynasty is not named ‘Arsacid dynasty of Parthia’ but ‘Parthian Empire’! In addition to it, they offer an independent entry which is named ‘List of Parthian Kings’. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Parthian_kings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthian_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsacid_dynasty_of_Armenia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsacid_dynasty_of_Caucasian_Albania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsacid_dynasty_of_Iberia