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GREAT BRITAIN xv. BRITISH SCHOOLS IN PERSIA This article will outline the major educational efforts of the British missionaries in Persia from 1871. The British schools in Persia were primarily founded by missionary organizations, most notably the Church Missionary Society (CMS). In 1869, the missionary Robert Bruce and his wife,…

GREECE : Relations with the Persian Empire. i. Greco-Persian Political Relations ii. Greco-Persian Cultural Relations iii. Persian Influence on Greek Thought iv. Greek Influence on Persian Thought v. Greek Influence on Philosophy  See FALSAFA. vi. The Image of Persia and Persians in Greek Literature vii. Greek Art and Architecture in…

GREECE i. GRECO-PERSIAN POLITICAL RELATIONS First contacts. Immediately after subjugating the Medes, and thus taking the initial step in creating an immense empire that stretched from Eastern Iran and Central Asia to the Aegean Sea, the founder of this empire, Cyrus II (called “the Great” by the Greeks), started his…

GREECE ii. GRECO-PERSIAN CULTURAL RELATIONS   1. INTRODUCTION The cultural impact of contact with Greece on Persia is discussed below (sec. vii). Here the evidence for receptivity to Persian culture in Greece, the North Aegean, and West Anatolia is addressed, including receptivity on the part of the non-Greek peoples of…

GREECE iii. PERSIAN INFLUENCE ON GREEK THOUGHT   IRAN AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY   The idea of oriental, and especially Iranian, origins of Greek philosophy was endowed by antiquity with a legendary aura, either by declaring that Pythagoras had been Zoroaster’s pupil in Babylon (a city where neither of them had…

GREECE iv. GREEK INFLUENCE ON PERSIAN THOUGHT After the conquest of Ionia (OPers. yauna-, Mid. Pers. and NPers. yūnān “Greece”), Lydia, and other regions of Asia Minor by Cyrus II (558-29 B.C.E., q.v.), the Persians came into close contact with the Hellenes, their skilled artisans, renowned physicians, artists, statements, men-of-arms,…

GREECE ix. GREEK AND PERSIAN ROMANCES   Three Persian verse romances of the 11th century (Faḵr-al-Din Gorgāni’s Vis o Rāmin, Ayyuqi’s Varqa o Golšāh, and the fragmentary Wāmeq o ʿAḏrā of ʿOnṣori) stand out as significantly unlike other Persian verse romances (see below), and they share enough features with the…

GREECE vi. THE IMAGE OF PERSIA AND PERSIANS IN GREEK LITERATURE The image of Persia in Greek literature is highly stylized and may not be considered as a reflection of actually experienced cultural contacts (for a comprehensive treatment see Miller). Greece’s perception of the Persians was initially influenced by her…

GREECE vii. GREEK ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN IRAN The influx of elements of Greek art into Persia during the Achaemenid period was primarily the result of the importation of artists and artisans from Hellenized Asia Minor and rarely due to a direct supply of objects. After Alexander, more or less…

GREECE viii. GREEK ART IN CENTRAL ASIA, AFGHANISTAN, AND NORTHWEST INDIA The emergence of Greek art as a phenomenon following the expedition of Alexander the Great was a major cultural event in Central Asia and India. Its effects were felt for almost a thousand years, down to the early Islamic…

GREECE x. GREEK MEDICINE IN PERSIA INTRODUCTION The question of Greek medicine in Iran is closely bound up with the history of Greco-Arabic medicine, which developed with the impetus of the “translation movement” between the 8th and the 10th centuries when all of the Greek knowledge in medicine, science, and…

GREECE  xii. PERSIAN LOANWORDS AND NAMES IN GREEK The Greeks came into direct contact with speakers of Iranian languages when Cyrus II conquered the Lydian empire in 547 B.C.E., thus becoming the ruler of most of Asia Minor and its Greek population. However, the possibility of linguistic borrowings in prehistoric…

GREECE xiii. GREEK LOANWORDS IN MIDDLE IRANIAN LANGUAGES Notwithstanding many centuries of at times intensive contact and confrontation between the Greco-Roman/Byzantine and Iranian worlds from Achaemenid through Sasanian times and even beyond, the number of loanwords borrowed from Greek into the pre-Islamic Iranian languages is far less impressive than the…

GREECE xiv. GREEK LOANWORDS IN MEDIEVAL NEW PERSIAN It stands to reason that the number of borrowings from Greek into Persian should vary according to genres of texts and to disciplines of learning. Thus in contrast to Islamic religious scholarship (exempting the Koran’s Greek loanwords, which naturally passed into Persian)…

GREECE xv. ANCIENT GREEK BORROWINGS OF PERSIAN HERBS AND PLANTS OF MEDICINAL VALUE It is well attested that the ancient Greek city-states (poleis) and the Persian Empire had continuous commercial contact which influenced the ordinary life of both parties. In addition, it is quite probable that these contacts also concerned medical…