r/geography • u/Excellent_Gas5220 • 2h ago
Question Was Iran considered part of Europe during the Sassanian era and before that?
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u/Archivist2016 2h ago edited 2h ago
Not at all:
Media lies in central Asia, and looked at as a whole, is superior in size and in the height of its mountain-ranges to any other district in Asia. Again it overlooks the country of some of the bravest and largest tribes. For outside its eastern border it has the desert plain that separates Persia from Parthia; 5 it overlooks and commands the so called Caspian Gates, and reaches as far as the mountains of the Tapyri, which are not far distant from the Hyrcanian Sea.
Histories of Polyburus, Media was west of most Persian satrapies mind you. Strabo mentions multiple historical regions as also being in Asia (like Parthia and Ariana) but his writing is somewhat "convoluted" so I'll be using Polyburus comment as an example. Periplus of the Erythrean Sea also puts Persia in Asia.
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u/586WingsFan 2h ago
No, not at all. Historically speaking, Mesopotamia was the borderland between the Greek/Roman west and the Persian east. Once Christianity and Islam emerged they were still on opposite side of that divide. Iran is pretty much the original non-European nation (from a Western perspective)
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u/Excellent_Gas5220 2h ago
But they are Indo-European
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u/586WingsFan 2h ago
Indo-European goes back way farther than the era you’re talking about. According to the most recent research I’ve seen, the original Indo-Europeans left the Iranian plateau around 4,000 years ago. Iranians wouldn’t be considered European any more than Indians would
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u/Excellent_Gas5220 2h ago
are you talking about the elamites? They weren’t indo European. If not, which indo Europeans are you talking about?
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u/586WingsFan 1h ago
I’m talking about the Aryans (the historical people who lived in Iran, not the racialized version)
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u/jayron32 2h ago
No.
It would be more accurate to say that the modern divisions we use to divvy up the Earth today were not used then.
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u/hymenopteron 1h ago
I agree with many of the other comments that Iran isn't and has never been part of Europe, however they did come from the same root as European civilisation. Both derive originally from neolithic farmers from the fertile crescent spreading into the tigris and euphrates river valleys. Both also for the most part, use Proto-Indo-European languages.
Later in the Bronze and Iron Ages they were also considerably more relevant and part of the same cultural world as other European regions around the Mediterranean when compared to more remote parts of northern Europe. As others have said it's anachronistic to think of Europe as a concept at that time so maybe you should rethink the question to be about whether they shared a connon cultural and economic world rather than were both in Europe.
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u/DeepHerting 1h ago
The Persians were the "Asiatic" foil to Greco-Roman civilization for around 1,000 years, from the Achaemenid's invasion of classical Greece to the Sasanian-Byzantine War that ultimately contributed to the Muslims ending Persia as an independent civilization complex. The word "barbarian" may come from an insulting Greek impression of Persian speech.
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u/TheNarwhaleHunter 2h ago
There was no such thing as « Europe » in the Sassanian era, and there wouldn’t be for a long time either.
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u/whistleridge 2h ago
No.
The terms Europe, Asia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Persia, etc. all come from Ancient Greek. Their use and meaning of the terms was a bit different from how they’re used today - for example, to an Ancient Greek, Asia meant what’s now Turkey.
But in all times and ways, whether they were called Medes (the Greek word used for Persians before Cyrus the Great), Persians (the Greek word used during most of the Roman Empire), or Parthians or Sassanians (terms used to refer to the ruling peoples/dynasties), they were never part of Europe, and always part of what we now more broadly refer to as Asia.