Learning about Iran

I don't like that Iran funds Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. My friend there says the government is about making everyone miserable. Ali Khamenei has been a dictator for 44 years, it's never good when a fundamentalist is in charge, whatever religion. No dancing in public, among other things. You read about Afghanistan banning women singing in public. 

It's surprising, I reading Hafaz and he's an amazing poet. It's hard to imagine the same country with so many great poets would have such dolts for rulers. The film industry is amazing, I've watched 4 films recently and really enjoyed them all. 

So I'm reading A History of Iran (2008) by Michael Axworthy, even though there are some hate reviews on Goodreads. Reading Iranians movie reviews on Letterboxd, I think it's a place where people ventilate some of their hate. 

First references I looked up from the book:

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201 – 1274) was a Persian polymath, architect, philosopher, physician, scientist, and theologian.

He mentions a few ethnic groups in the book, I came up with Wikipedia list: Kurds, Gilakis, Mazandaranis, Lurs, Tats, Talysh, and Baloch. The main Turkic people are Azaris. There are also people from surrounding countries. I asked my friend which he was and he said he was of the city he lived in, Mashhad. I guess he's Persian. 

I have a huge list of Iranian poets to read (One, two). So far just read Hafez and Rumi.

Intense Shi'a clerics, supposedly only 1.4% of the people attend Friday prayers. (who knows if in the past 16 years since the book was published, if that has changed, and even where he got that information in 2008).

I found this graphic:

People on Reddit have many thoughts about this graphic.

Hajji Firuz Tepe is an archaeological site located in West Azarbaijan Province in north-western Iran and lies in the north-western part of the Zagros Mountains. The site was excavated between 1958 and 1968 by archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The excavations revealed a Neolithic village that was occupied in the second half of the sixth millennium BC where some of the oldest archaeological evidence of grape-based wine was discovered in the form of organic residue in a pottery jar.

I find it amazing that they could say that the wine might have tasted like a Greek restina.

Zoroaster might be the oldest prophet that comes down to us with a living tradition with 100-200K followers. We don't know much about Zoroaster. Not sure about when he lived, thought they think it's greater Persia, and not sure where he was born, though they say maybe Tedzen Delta in Turkmenistan or eastern Iran. Zoroastrianism lost its power as the dominant religion in Iran in 651 C.E. as Arab Muslims took over. Zoroastrianism is often talked about in its influence in other religions. I'm going to try and learn more about it so I can share more.

Xerxes went into Greece, and Alexander went into Persia, there were great battles and wars and conquests that we know little about but they probably happened even though little records come to us. It seems like the Iranians didn't really value writing, like many early cultures on the cusp. There's a great word that comes down to us, though, guzastag, which means accursed, the Persians hated Alexander, he was accursed. They all suddenly die, and their conquests end, as generals fight over the scraps. 

My friend hipped me to this music: Yaser Bakhtiari better known by his stage name Yas