Posts Tagged ‘Persian Empire’
Wild Goose Chase: Kandahar and Balkh (Current Afghanistan)
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 27, 2020
Balkh: Medium-term plan 1 (part 29 and 30)
Posted on November 28, 2008
Note: This fiction novel conjectured that a Persian Prince had indeed defeated the Macedonian Alexander, adopted his name and integrated Alexander army for grabbing the power of the Persian Empire and expand his territories.
The First Queen of the Son-God Incarnate Artax was from a district located in the north-western parts of the Empire, in Mazar Al Shareef and close to the current Central Asian States; she was not at all friendly with the usurping Monarch.
Artax made his move to establish a presence in the city of Balkh, a center for learning and commerce in north Afghanistan and close to the Central Asian Estates. He dispatched his wife, clandestinely, to her home district along with countable numbers of security officers and a regiment of the army clothed as civilians in a routine caravan trip.
She was to re-affirm the loyalty of her people and exhort youth to travel east and join Artax army.
Antrax demanded from the Queen never to be guarded by more than 6 formal soldiers and 12 soldiers in civilian attires, as front and rear guards, during her displacement throughout the district because the smaller the number of personal guards the more confidence she would convey to her people.
The Monarch told the Queen: “Good impressions are worth an entire division of an army.”
Southern Desert: Medium-term plan 2
One of his liked viziers named Khorsheed and from the southern desert region of the Empire, expressed the desire to return home and investigate the possibility of securing a base there.
The vizier was dispatched to his district, accompanied with a security officer and another regiment. The same strategy of taking firm hold of parts of the Kingdom in every direction ensured destroying the capacity of the usurping “Magnificent Khosro” to focus and concentrate his forces at one area.
In order to maintain presence in the desert region, frequent supplies were to be delivered from the sea. Consequently, it was necessary to navigate the Indus River and secure a port and ships.
The town of Deb was then the ideal port. Two old merchant ships were purchased and refurbished to play the dual task of supply and soldier carrier tanker: it was essential never to mix business with military exigencies.
The refurbished ships were not meant to belong within the business unit. These small ships received the order to just reconnoiter the Persian sea shores for unusually military and trade activities for advanced intelligence. They also had the mission to listen to the complaints of the suffering villages and towns on the shore.
Two larger merchant ships were secured in the process of taking to the sea, as back up resources and the landing of a whole regiment if needed.
Kandahar: Medium-term plan 3
At the city of Kandahar, in south central current Afghanistan, Artax appointed a women officer to be General in Chief of all the armed forces in southern Afghanistan. This tactic secured two major benefits;
First, the woman general would hold fast to the new system that secured and solidified women rights, and
Second she would allow the force the necessary time to strengthen its grip on the region: the enemy was assumed not to take that seriously a force headed by a woman and thus insure valuable time to taking hold on the mind of the population.
Slowly but surely, the vision and planning of Artax were materializing in flesh and bones around the perimeter of the Persian Empire.
As for the “pilgrimage journey” to China, Artax selected the famous chronicle Battouga to discover the wonders of China and to dispatch him the diaries: if Artax could not experience in the flesh the discoveries then Artax would share the excitement by the mind.
Marco Polo and before him Ibn Battouta (at least 8 centuries later) relied heavily on the manuscript of Battouga to plan for their famous journeys to the Rising Sun China.
On the Southern Army
The adventure of the Southern Army of Artax, led by the vizier Khorsheed, was fantastic. This brave army made a series of successful landings in fishing villages and proceeded according to master plans.
Soldiers would enter a town, plaster the scrolls of the Constitution and Bill of Rights on the walls of shrines and local institutions, read them in front of the public; install one judge accepted by the inhabitants then horde the other judges and clerics to a remote training camp for indoctrination.
Educated and learned people in the community were encouraged to disseminate the new system.
Young boys and girls were sent to schools. People bent on mischief and who took advantage of a confused central authority was apprehended to give evidence of who is the real authority in maintaining law and order.
Dangerous news arrived to Artax from his Southern Army which stopped his grandiose plans on their tracks: unless Artax assembles a strong naval force in the Persian Gulf, his Southern Army might not hold its terrain against the onslaught of the usurping Monarch.
This vast desert area along the coast requires constant supply of fresh water and food for his army that was dying of thirst and heat strokes. Artax had to advance along the Indus River which empties in the Indian Ocean.
He had to hire and stock enough ships to rescue the Southern Army or eventually to evacuate it honorably in an orderly fashion.
The lousy desert parts of his Kingdom were of no concerns to Artax anymore, though he had to support his army there in order to divert the forces of the usurping Monarch from the more critical parts of his secured bases in the Kingdom.
The rear bases of Artax stretched from the fertile lands of current Karachi in Pakistan to Goa in India.
Artax messengers were carrying orders and instructions to all armies and governors along secured routes. In every region that the King authority was entrenched, municipal elections were held and the spirit of the Constitution and Bill of Rights were disseminated, gradually but surely.
Changes in societies need time, patience and genuine zeal in convictions to make any headway.
Artax primary duties to his people was to keep close contacts, involvement, and interactions with the institutions and taking close attention to the training camps programs for the reeducation of the newer generations as to the spirit of the articles in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The dissemination of information about the new cultures in remote lands was a most important ingredient in Artax educational system.
Artax motto was: ignorance and isolation from other civilizations is the drug of choice exploited by the religious extremists who abhor civil supervision of any governing body.
Lacking a National identity? Is it a big deal?
We don’t need to unite under an identity: All national identities everywhere were invariably built and sustained on myths, historical falsehood, and faked stories.
What we need is to be unified under the banners of civil rights, human rights, sustainable environment, equitable and fair election laws and regulations, civil marriage, linked to fast communication technologies, access to social platforms, freedom of expression, laws not discriminating among genders, versatile opportunities to jobs and to applying our expertise, affordable education system, national health system…
What we need is to unite against any State invading our borders, bombing our infrastructure, humiliating us, destabilizing our society and economy.
What we need is to unify against any political current that has proven to work against democratic representations, racial demagoguery, sectarian political ideology.
What identity are we claiming?
Are we to emulate other Nations that based their “identity” on myths and falsehood?
Do you know any powerful colonial nation that gained an identity Without a strong army and suffered millions of soldiers fallen in battlefields for fictitious claims?
Youth sacrificed to institute a Nation and never taken seriously because they are viewed as just meat for the canon and a burden to a stable political system…
There are sections in Lebanon (mostly Christian Maronites) advancing the French mandatory alternative of a “Phoenician” ancestors.
Currently, there are Lebanese testing their blood for DNA evidences of any physical “Phoenician inheritance“.
A few are wary that they won’t be found to have any Phoenician stain/strain and be caste off as “strangers”. What a load of crap.
The Phoenicians ruled the Mediterranean Sea in 1,200 BC and the string of their City-States extended from southern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, up to Haifa in Palestine.
The Phoenicians were famous for maritime trade and commerce and established many trading centers around the Sea. The written language has been around for 3,000 years, but the Phoenicians in the City-State of Byblos are credited for inventing the alphabet (currently in use with slight modifications.)
Before the Phoenicians and afterward, the Near East region of the Mediterranean (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine) has been invaded by a dozen warrior empires, many invaded us repeatedly.
For example, the empires in Iraq (Akkad, Babylon, Assyria), Egypt, Persia under various dynasties (at least four of them), Greece, Roman, Byzantium, Arabic, Ottoman, and finally the colonial powers of France and Britain.
All these warrior empires didn’t build anything worth showing as representative of civilization until they invaded our region and rounded off and hoarded the educated and master craftsmen to their capitals.
We are a region of multiple identities if we have to rely on occupation empires.
How about we identify with education and craftsmanship? I love this identity. Let us focus on affordable efficient schooling system; let us encourage technical and craftsmanship schooling system; let us focus on building commercial ships; let us invest in railways and fast communication facilities; let us open up to knowledge facilities all over the world.
I love this identity; let us get to work and planning.
Another sections of Lebanese, mostly Muslim-Sunnis, would like to have an Arabic identity and pushing it too far to claiming that we are from the Arabic Peninsula. Are we Arabs? What that means?
The Islamic Arabic army that came from the Arabic Peninsula to fight the Byzantium Empire and later the Persian Empire barely numbered 7,000 men of war. The other three-forth of the army that backed and supplemented the “Arabic army” was constituted from people and tribes living in Syria, Iraq, and Jordan wanting to defeat the Byzantium unforgiving Orthodox Church and domination. How can we be descendant of the sparsely populated Arabic Peninsula?
The “Arabic identity” group would claim that our culture and civilization is Islamic Arabic. How that?
The cultural development during the Arabic Empire was shouldered by the scholars in Syria, Iraq, and Iran and they were mostly Christians. They would like to rely on the Arabic language as basis for our identity. Excellent idea.
Let us prove that the Arabic language is a viable foundation; let us infuse a new spirit in that dying language; let us translate the worthy manuscripts; let us invent new terms that have no religious connotation and spread the Arabic language as a universal language, valid to sustaining modern civilization with fresh brains and advanced sciences and technologies. I will be for it and will support it vehemently.
There are other factions wanting to claim that we are Moslems. How about the dozen minority religious sects? Are we to agree on a theocratic identity?
Turkish Ataturk cancelled the caliphate in 1925 and there is no caliphate anymore, anywhere. Tiny Lebanon has 19 recognized self-autonomous religious communities running our civil life. Let us get real.
A theocratic State will never pass and will never find unity for identity.
Should we hide behind a reality of disparate communities to establish the concept of plurality community government? Should 19 wrong identities constitute a valid identity?
What we need is to be unified under the banners of civil rights, human rights, sustainable environment, equitable and fair election laws and regulations, civil marriage, linked to fast communication technologies, access to social platforms, freedom of expression, laws not discriminating among genders, versatile opportunities to jobs and expertise, affordable education system, national health system…
What we need is to unify against any State invading our borders, bombing our infrastructure, humiliating us, destabilizing our society and economy.
What we need is to unify against any political current that has proven to working against democratic representations, racial demagoguery, sectarian political ideology.
“Sophie’s World” on Hellenism
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 14, 2009
“Sophie’s World” on Hellenism; (Dec. 11, 2009)
After Alexander of Macedonia defeated the Persian Empire around 335 BC, the entire region in the Middle East and Egypt became Hellenistic; which means the elite and public servants learned to speak and write in the Greek language and to study Greek philosophies.
Athens got a new life as center of philosophical schools, and the newly built city of Alexandria in Egypt flourished as the center of sciences and medicine.
Four major philosophical schools captured the interest of the people and had repercussions in Rome till the year 400 AC, as the Christian Church got established as the State religion after the defeat of the last Germanic Emperor in Rome.
1. The Cynics school was founded in Athens by Antisthenes, a disciple of Socrates in 400 BC. The frugality of Socrates was the guiding idea as he wondered before a stall: “So many things that I never used or needs”.
The dogma of this school is that happiness is learning to feel independent (detached) from external advantages such as material luxuries or political power.
Happiness is in the reach of everyone if he so desired, and it can be lasting. Suffering and death should not be disturbing events. Feeling concerns for other people should be overcome.
Diogenes is the best representative of the Cynics; he lived in a barrel and carried no belonging but a stick. It is reported that he asked Alexander to step aside for he was blocking the sun rays as he was asking him what he can do for him.
The Church of Rome coined the pejorative term “cynical” referring to individual who exhibits a sneering disbelief in human sincerity, with penchant insensitivity to people’s plights: The Church was competing with all the Hellenistic schools of philosophy and religions.
2. The Stoics school was founded by Zeno in Athens around 300 BC. Zeno was not Greek by origin but from the Phoenician city of Sidon, and he studied in Alexandria before he landed in Greece following a shipwreck. Socrates and Heraclitus were his favorite philosophers and he used to teach under a portico (stoa).
Zeno dogma was that each individual is a complete microcosms reflected in the macrocosms.
First, there was a universal rightness or natural law based on human and universal reason that didn’t alter with time or place.
Second, there is no conflict between spirit (ideas) and matter; this concept was coined “monism” in contrast to Plato dualism of the two worlds of ideas and matter.
Third, sickness and death are within the natural law phenomena and must be accepted since everything happens out of necessity.
Fourth, happy events and moments should be received in natural composure with no undue exhilaration.
Stoics got involved in politics and social problems.
Cicero, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca were staunch stoics. Seneca wrote “mankind is holy”; thus, considering individual dignity and well being as goal for improvement and care.
The Roman Christian Church coined the connotation stoic for individuals who do not let their feeling take over.
3. The Epicurean school was established by Aristippus, another disciple of Socrates. Epicurus founded this school around 300 BC in Athens. He developed the pleasure ethic of Aristippus and adopted the “atom soul” theory of Democritus which says that after death the soul disperses in all directions.
The story goes that Epicureans lived in gardens (safe-harbors): a notice hanged at the entrance said: “Stranger, here you will live well. Here pleasure is the highest good”
The dogma of the Epicureans was:
First, pleasurable results of an action is always counterbalanced with side effects that we need to mind of;
Second, short-term pleasurable results should be analyzed compared to the potential longer-term alternative pleasures if we control our actions;
Third, pleasure is appreciation of values in friendship, art, and self control in sensual tendencies. Epicurus summed up his doctrine in 4 “medicinal” treatments: first, the gods are not to be feared; second, Death is nothing to worry about since when we die then we no longer exist; third, Good is easy to attain; and fourth, the fearful is easy to endure.
Epicurus advice was to learn to live in seclusion. Epicureans had little concern for politics and community services. The roman Church coined a bad connotation such as “Indulge in or enjoy the moment”
4. The Neo-Platonist school was founded by Plotinus (205-270 BC) and he was from the Near East and studied in Alexandria and settled in Rome. Plotinus doctrine was influenced by Plato.
The world span two poles:
The One that constantly shines and the World that does not receive the light. The immortal soul (concept of salvation) is the world of ideas that is illuminated by the One (or God), it is “a spark from the fire”. The material world has no real existence until the light reaches it. Plotinus experienced mystical moments of fusion with the world of spirit.
The Roman Christian Church had a hard struggle with this powerfully competing school of Neo-Platonism and ended up adopting most of its concepts.
The barbaric Catholic Church
Posted by: adonis49 on: October 13, 2009
The barbaric Catholic Church; (October 13, 2009)
There is a resurgence of Islamophobia in France couched under the pretext of discovering the origins of European civilization as a combination of Greek and Christian cultures. It would be worthwhile to set the historical facts straight for any meaningful reply.
Since 325 AC to around 700 AC there was a Christian Empire dominated by Byzantium with Capital in Constantinople. This empire was to the east of the Euphrates River, crossing Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, all the way to England and including North Africa. It was basically a Mediterranean Sea Empire. To the west of the Euphrates River there was a Persian Empire, mostly under the Sassanide Dynasty. The Arabic Empire did not conquer the western part of Turkey which remained with the Byzantium Empire until 1450 when the Ottoman Sultan Muhammad 2 entered Constantinople and spread all the way to the borders of Vienna in Austria.
In around 1000 a major schism in Christianity split the Catholic Church of Rome with the Christian Orthodox Church of Constantinople. Actually, the initial Crusade campaigns had for objective to conquer Constantinople and coerce the Orthodox Church into uniting with Rome. That is what took place and Constantinople was ransacked and burned before the Crusading forces marched on toward Jerusalem. The other successive Crusading incursions had for objective to capture Egypt and free the spice routes directly to Europe without paying taxes to the Moslem Kingdoms along the maritime and land caravan routes.
Thus, from 325 to 1450 Europe was Christian. Why Greek civilization, if Europe insists on taking the source of its culture from antique Greece, was not prevalent during over 11 centuries? Why Europe remained barbaric till the 15th century? Is it because the Christian dogma of Rome was barbaric and refused other civilizations and cultures to infiltrate Europe? Certainly the Christian clerics were at least bilingual, mostly Latin and Greek, and consequently, if Greece had any culture it would have been translated into Latin. Some would give the lame excuse that the scholars in Europe, mostly the clerics, could read the Greek manuscripts in their original forms and had no need to translate any manuscripts into Latin or other live languages; this would be another proof that the Catholic Church of Rome was barbaric and refused philosophical and scientific disciplines to penetrate into Europe.
Europe experienced a demographic surge around 1000 AC; it is after getting in contact with the Near East culture and civilization (under Arabic/Islamic kingdoms) during the Crusading campaigns that culture entered Europe from the open door. Even after the total defeat of the Crusaders in 1200 the Near East culture permeation would continue via Andalusia in southern Spain. The Arabic/Moslem civilization in Spain was the main source for the transfer of sciences into Europe until the “Christian” Spanish monarchs conquered completely Spain in around 1400 and chased out Moslems and Jews from its territory.
Greece after Aristotle did not produced much in culture. It was just a brilliant century for the City-State of Athens during Pericles period, as so many glorious periods for a dozen other City-States that dotted the Mediterranean shores and the Euphrates River, from Mary, Harran, Edessee, Ugharite, Tripoli, Byblos, Beirut, Sidon, Tyr, and much later Alexandria, Antiochus, and Ephesus, and on that scholars and archeologists have to start focusing on for the origins of civilizations. The proof is that the Byzantium Empire that was established in Greece for over 11 centuries is no where mentioned as source for any worthwhile civilization.
Macedonian warriors under Alexander conquered the Near East; it is not because the Near East people, from Alexandria, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and coastal Turkey, who assimilated the Greek language and spread their own culture and civilization in the Greek language that Europe has to claim its civilization to Greece. Europe should not. It is the Near East culture and civilization that assimilated the languages of the various conquerors (Mesopotamians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs from the Arabic Peninsula, Ottomans from the Turkish Plateau, French colonialism, and English colonialism) that absorbed and disseminated the fundamental cultures and civilizations to its neighboring environment.
It is not because of the invasion of nomadic warriors from the Arabic Peninsula that Arabic civilization should be labeled Arab. Why the Mogul Empires that lasted longer than many Empires and stretched much further than many are not given any civilization? It is a shame that Europe still feels the urge to attribute civilization to military conquering warriors.
Note: The title was meant to be catchy to drive through the purpose of the topic. I have no zeal to dwell into religions of any kinds. I would like readers to refer to my recent post “Damascus saved the Greek culture”.
Adonis Diaries 