Towards One World: Ancient Persia and the West

Asia in Europe and the Making of the West #2

by Warwick Ball

The 2nd volume in a series that examines the spread of cultures from the East into Europe. The Persian Empire was the first major eastern power to actually extend its borders into Europe. The Persians came in the 6th century BC as a great power seeking to incorporate parts of southeastern Europe as provinces into a centrally ruled and administered empire. While Persia's foothold in Europe was tiny, distant, and brief, and the contact is usually viewed in terms of conflictthe Greco-Persian wars, the conquests of Alexander, the numerous wars between Rome and IranEuropes interaction with ancient Persia was neither short-lived nor conflicting: it was the beginnings of a complex relationship between East and West that continues to this day. This book explores that relationship in detail.

Genres: History, Greece, Ancient History, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2010

About the author

Warwick Ball is an Australian-born near-eastern archeologist.

In the past 30 years, Ball has mainly excavated in Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

Ball was formerly director of excavations at The British School of Archaeology in Iraq. He is the editor of the scholarly journal Afghanistan. His publications include the volume The Monuments of Afghanistan, History, Archaeology and Architecture, I.B. Tauris, London 2008. The book consists of exceptional photography of numerous rare archaeological sites no longer well accessible today for reasons of security.

He currently resides in Scotland.

Reviews

[Jenny Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book sheds light onto the many ways the concept of Persia has been twisted by historians into an archetype of a despotic, corrupt "Not-West" to fulfill the needs of Westerners. The author's reinterpretation of the Greek-Persian wars and his point that many Ionian Greeks fought with the Persians against Athenians, Macedonians etc throughout the life of the Persian empire intrigued me. So did his point that all we know about Alexander comes from sources writing hundreds of years after he died who had reasons of their own for seeing him as a Greek hero. Ball sees Alexander as a destructive barbarian whose "conquest of the world" was in fact a coup of the Persian empire and the taking over of regions that the Persians had already conquered and that the heroic aspects associated with him were grafted on, centuries after he lived by Greeks who were in dire need of a cult figure after the Roman conquest--which he suggests may have led to the destruction of contemporaneous sources that might have cast Alexander in a less flattering light.

The interaction between the Parthian and Sassanian empires (and in fact the very existence of the latter) was news to me and of great interest.

However, towards the end of the book the author attempts to link Zoroastrianism and the Manichean religion that flourished n the Persian sphere of influence with Christianity, and in particular the Cathars, in a way that was too diffuse to be convincing and makes very vague claims that many of the key themes of Christianity may have come from Zoroastrianism. This is quite possible, but the way these ideas were presented was too scattered and vague to be compelling and at times it seemed as if the author had lost his way through the text.

I don't know enough about the many topics this author covers to know how original he is being here or to what extent to trust what he says or the sources (almost all secondary) on which he draws. That made it especially disappointing not to be able to find any reviews of this book anywhere on the web that might help put its theses into context. I was left wondering if this was a gem of a book that had suffered from being published by a mediocre small press that wasn't able to get it publicity or whether it was the work of a crank that could only be published by such a press.

That said, I am glad I read it and would recommend it to anyone interested in Classical history and culture.

[Yasin Çetin · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. Troya Savaşı ile Doğu-Batı arasında bir ayrım oluştu mu?
2. Doğu-Batı arasında keskin bir ayrım var mıdır?
3. Anadolu Pers döneminde neden gelişmiş olabilir?
4. Pers-Anadolu etkileşimi nedir?
5. Persler Anadolu'yu 200 yıl nasıl idare ettiler?
6. Anadolu'da geriye neler bıraktılar?
7. Pers-Yunan etkileşimi nasıl oldu?
8. Yunanlar, Pers gücünü nasıl karşıladı?
9. Pers etkisi Yunanları nasıl etkiledi?
10. Persler, Anadolu'dan ve Yunanistan'dan nasıl etkilendiler?
11. İskender, İran'ı işgali ne anlama geliyordu? Bu dönemde nasıl bir etkileşim yaşandı? İskender sonrası neler oldu?
12. Part ve Sasaniler ile Pers gücü nasıl canlandı?
13. Persler sonrası Anadolu'da nasıl bir Iranistik bir etki vardı? Pontus ve Kommagene krallıkları ne ifade ediyordu?
14. İran dini düşüncesi, düşünce dünyasını nasıl etkiledi? Batının ruhban sınıfı İran maguslarına mı dayanıyordu? Düalistik düşünce İran'dan mı yayıldı?
15. İlk tek dünya düşüncesi İran'a mı aitti?
16. Manicilik, Zerdüştlükten ve diğer inançlardan nasıl etkilendi ve dünyayı nasıl etkiledi?
Ve buna benzer bir çok soruyu irdeleyen, bazen ufak abartılara kaçan ama akılcı, okunaklı bir kitap.

[Graeme · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warwick Ball challenges popular prejudices about the differences between the civilisations of East and West and notions of European exceptionalism. He explores the interactions between Iranian and European cultures and the influence of Persia on Western thought.

The book would have benefited from a more attentive and exacting editor.

[Erman Celik · Rating 5 out of 5]

it changed my view and I hope to read other books of this writer.

[H.Onur Kuşkaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ayrıntı Yayınları tarafından sunulan dört ciltlik bir dizinin -"Avrupa'daki Asya ve Batı'nın Şekillenişi"- ikinci kitabı olan bu eser, Tek Dünyaya Doğru Antik İran ve Batı adını taşıyor. Kitabın ilk bölümünde Troya Savaşı üzerinden yapılan Doğu-Batı tahliline eleştiri getiriyor yazar ve bu bağlamda Pers-Yunan, Yunan-Yunan mücadelesini inceliyor. Daha sonra İskender, Roma ve farklı Pers devletlerinin mücadelesi ve son bölümde de Zerdüştlük ele alınıyor. Serinin iki kitabında da W.Ball'ın saha araştırmaları dolayısıyla bölgeye hakimiyeti göze çarpıyor. Şiddetle önerilir.