“They who struggled against all odds with all the fear and courage of ordinary humans, whose names we shall never know, whose blood and tears we shall never see, whose cries of pain and hope we shall never hear, to them we are linked by a past that is never dead nor ever really past. And so, when the best pages of history are finally written, it will be not by princes, presidents, prime ministers, or pundits, nor even by professors, but by the people themselves. For all their faults and shortcomings, the people are all we have. Indeed, we are they.” -Michael Parenti, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome.
History is frequently written not by regular people, who usually don’t have the resources or the time to write, but by the elites who write about the elites. The masses are the minor characters in this drama. The official history has been and is still used as a propaganda tool to justify and maintain the position of elites and those in power. During the Shah’s government, Iranian history was presented as the history of kings and dynasties and their deeds and glories in order to propagate the notion that the monarchy is an ancient tradition in Iran and is beneficial for the people, mainly as a way to legitimize the Shah’s power.
Popular struggles and revolts were mainly ignored or presented in a less favorable manner, unless they served the state propaganda, as in the case of the history of the Iranian struggles for independence and freedom in the two centuries following the Arab conquest. This part of Iranian history was used on occasion to ferment extreme Persian nationalism and anti-Arab sentiments, especially at times when Iran was in conflict with its neighboring Arab countries.
In many countries the official history is the history taught in most schools and institutions of higher learning. In the mainstream history textbooks of the U.S., for example, the details about US foreign policy are rarely discussed. Most American students are unaware that hundreds of thousands of Filipinos died in combat or died of disease as a result of the US military actions in that country in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. They also do not know that there was a widespread anti-war movement at that time, which included people such as Mark Twain. There is also rarely any mention of fact the U.S. and 14 other countries sent troops to crush the Russian Revolution in 1918.
The 1953 CIA coup in Iran is briefly described in most textbooks, but there is rarely a mention of the suffering that three generations of Iranians had to endure because of this coup. The overthrow of Dr. Mossadeqh is described, instead, within the context of Cold War rivalries and as a mistake. But nowhere will a student find mention about the US having been in the business of overthrowing other governments as early as the mid 19th century and as late as 2004 in Haiti. The official history presents the past in a manner that hides the imperial nature of US foreign policy and the moneyed interests that lie behind it. Ignorance about the real history preserves the status quo of the moneyed elite.
But when history is “liberated,” it can be used as a tool for the progress and advancement. For centuries the Native Americans were taught that they were not civilized, that they were inferior to white people, that they were “discovered.” When many of them learned their ancestors had a remarkable civilization and that their forefathers had struggled for freedom against insurmountable odds, they began to retain and nurture their ethnic identity. Pride and empowerment has helped the Native Americans in their struggle for equality in this country.
My personal journey in learning real history started many years ago. The first real lesson was in my sixth grade history class about Mazdak and his movement. As I read more books about him, I realized how inaccurate the portrayal of him in my middle school textbooks really was. I found out that his movement is perhaps one of the greatest movements for social equality in the ancient world, larger and more influential than even the famous slave rebellion in Rome headed by Spartacus.
I continued reading alternative sources about world and Iranian history, including the instrumental book A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Perhaps one of the greatest moments in this long journey of learning came when I visited Babak’s Fortress (Ghaleye Babak) in the mountains of Azarbijan, a little more than a two-hour drive from the city of Tabriz. After a long trek up the mountain with hundreds of other visitors, I came upon the fortress. I entered its empty rooms and touched the walls as I had done in Perspolis many years before and imagined myself in the presence of my namesake, his fighters, and followers in the early 9th century. But this was no grand palace. There were no kings, queens, and servants; no highly decorated walls. This was a simple place populated with simple men and women, ordinary people of the time: peasants, shepherds, and artisans. They had gathered there for 22 long and bitter years, in their fight for independence from foreign occupation and against the betrayals of the Iranian aristocracy.
This experience instilled more pride in me as an Iranian about Iranian history and civilization than visiting Perspolis. This simple place had more to say than Perspolis or any royal tomb. This is not to say that I don’t have respect for kings such as Cyrus the Great, but there is more to be said about people such as Mazdak, Babak-e-Khoramdin, or Sattar Khan and their movements. They represent the real history of Iran, the people’s history.
Note: In the last article the there were two mistakes:
1. The accusation against Mazdak was that he wanted to make women into common property and not property.
2. Where it said “Our teacher was not in favor of defining women as property.”, it should have been: “Mazdak was not in favor of defining women as common property.”
