HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION:  A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE

Arshad M. Khan

Not so long ago, on the occasion of the Iranian new year, Nauroz, President Obama sent their

government a message of peace.  While not overtly offensive as his predecessor, he did manage to

sound patronizing and finger-wagging in the "now if you’d only behave yourself, you could have ….."

sort of way.

The Iranians hardly need to be told that Muslims have a great civilization (they know), or how they

should behave.  What they want to see are changes in our policies; not the obvious double standards

we impose across the world.

The subject of Islamic civilization, however, did strike a chord:  from the breathtakingly beautiful

architecture to the scientific and artistic achievements, it spans a spectrum without which our present

civilization would not exist.  What a pleasure it is to look at the Alhambra, the Taj Mahal and the

beautiful city of Isfahan.  Or to read the great Persian poets:  Rumi, Saadi, Omar Khayam and so many

others.  Khayam, it might be of interest to note earned his living as a Mathematics Professor at the

College of Nishapur before the poetry bug infected him.  He also played a large hand in reforming the
Muslim calendar, a process our Common Era one underwent some five centuries later.

Why does history and achievement have to be ethnocentric?  Why not plain impartial truth rather than

an attempt to cast actors as all good and all evil?  So, Alexander comes to India, then, after just one

battle with a minor king, Porus, scurries down the Indus taking an almost fatal arrow in a skirmish with

the forces of a Sindh chieftain.  And finally, the disastrous retreat across the blistering Makran

(Gedrosian) desert losing more than half the marchers.  Why not the big prize of the lush green North

India farmlands in Delhi?  Well, we are told his soldiers were homesick?  Perhaps.  Was that why they

returned to present day Iraq, and then went on to Egypt?  Or, could it be possible that having come

very close to defeat at the hands of Porus and his small force, they were afraid to go further?  No one

doubts Alexander was a great general, but even great generals over-extend themselves — think of

Napoleon in Russia!

How many people realize, by the way, that Persians actually colonized and ruled a large part of modern-

day Greece, which itself was under Turkish dominion for longer than the United States has existed?  

Do people wonder sometimes, why the Romans expanded north into northern forest rather than the

rich, wealthy agricultural lands to the East?  Was it rational?  As a matter of fact, yes, given the history.  

In 260 A.D. the Emperor Valerian was defeated by the Persians at Edessa, captured and subjected to

the tortures of the day as deterrent.  He died in captivity and was never given a grave.  The Emperor

Julian was killed by a  Persian arrow in AD 363.  Oh, yes, they tried; we just don’t hear about it.

If one reads Western Civilization courses, we get the Greeks and their philosophy, the Romans lacking

anything indigenous adopting it, and then in a massive leap across a historical chasm … the

Renaissance.  Since when did the ancient Greeks become Western when they looked constantly to the

East and the West as we know it, did not exist?  The answer, of course, is the eighteenth century and

German intellectuals who provided the bedrock for the modern story as it is told to fit a colonial mold.

Would it not be refreshing to celebrate human genius and invention across the world?  Perhaps, one

day we can have an unbiased history marking the well-springs of human civilization, the Nile, the Tigris-

Euphrates and the Indus valley; the Chinese, Indian, Greek and Islamic philosophies and cultures; all

taught in our schools with respect for the ‘other’, and, of course, without forgetting the massive

contribution in human development made by Europe and America.  From big things to little — and now I

am thinking of the incredible Benin bronzes — human ingenuity is a marvelous testament to our

common ancestry.

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