Marathon Races

The West and the Iranian (historical) imagination

Some years ago (30 to be precise) I was asked to be a ‘fixer’ on a children’s documentary about the battle of Salamis. As an enthusiastic PhD student keen to show Westerners the bounties of Iran I jumped at the chance to accompany the film crew to the environs of Persepolis where the producer had decided they wanted to film a scene of Xerxes and his bodyguards riding through the Persian heartlands. They had brought with them assorted ‘oriental’ costumes and were now seeking suitable candidates to play the various roles.

With a bit of local help we finally chanced upon some Qashqai tribesmen who I was pleased to find out had participated the last Shah’s great Persepolis party back in 1971, commemorating 2500 years of the Persian monarchy. It was, it seemed, a matter of great pride for them and they looked forward to reprising their roles not simply as Achaemenid warriors, but, in the case of one lucky tribesman, the King of Kings himself.

Their enthusiasm soured when they saw the costumes - complete with false beards - which they glued onto their unshaven faces without much concern about how they would get them off - and reluctantly donned the outfits which even our driver protested lacked any imperial dignity, presenting Xerxes, in his words, as little more than a beggar (Sheikh-e geddah). I managed to finally sooth nationalist sensibilities - just - and off our three horseman galloped.

As the filming concluded I chanced upon a family who asked me what was going on. I explained that it was a film about Salamis, to which he gave a nonchalant shrug and said, ‘So one of our defeats then’. I remember at the time being somewhat nonplussed by the exchange, and not a little saddened. It simply had not occurred to me that such an ancient conflict - one so remote and distant - would have such an effect.

With hindsight, I should not of course have been quite so surprised. Iranians have always had a deep veneration for their ancient roots and a century of nationalist thought has reinforced this, albeit in slightly different directions. At the turn of the 20th C most Iranians derived their understanding of their ancient past from the ‘Book of Kings’ (Shahnameh) the traditional ‘mythistory’ redacted into epic verse by the poet Ferdowsi (though in his own time he was hailed as a historian) by the early 11th C. The epic charted the ascent of man, and the establishment of the Iranian kingdom (and empire) down to its overthrow by the Muslim Arabs in the 7th C - an event famously lamented by one of its protagonists as the moment ‘the throne gave way to the pulpit’.

In this telling, the Achaemenid dynasty, so famous in the West for its clash with the Greeks and its fall to Alexander, was wiped from the record, to be replaced by myth and legend until the advent of the Sassanians (224-642 AD) when the epic entered its ‘historical’ section. Defeats by the West were therefore not high in the Iranian historical imagination - even Alexander in this rendition became a Persian prince - and the focus of the epic was on Iranian clashes with its more serious foe to the East (Turan).

In the 19th C however, with growing contact with Europeans and the beginning of archaeology in the Middle East, the Achaemenids returned in triumph. Iranian intellectuals keen to adopt the new disciplines of the West eschewed their own ‘traditional’ myths for ‘modern’ history and the old myths gave way to Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes. The old Persian capital - traditionally known as the throne of Jamshid (Takht-e Jamshid) after one of the more prominent of the mythical kings - became increasingly identified as Persepolis.

The triumph of the Achaemenids nonetheless was never complete. The Iranian historical imagination has been neither conformist nor uniform and just as Persian historians in the aftermath of the Muslim conquest maintained parallel histories of Kings and Prophets, so too today Iranians are quite content to talk fondly of both Jamshid and Cyrus. It helps of course that the figure of Cyrus the Great looms large in the Western imagination and unlike the Pharaohs for Egypt, remains a positive role model.

Indeed for Iranians seeking to engage with the West, the Achaemenids provided a perfect avenue. It situated the Iranians within the Western historical imagination, even if Cyrus the Great aside, the narrative did not favour them. It seemed indeed, that the Iranians (Persians) served in the main as the villain to the valiant Greeks, the original ‘clash of civilisation’ between freedom loving Greeks and the enslaved hordes of the East. This narrative was reinforced in the Cold War and has needless to say gained further traction after 9/11, the film ‘300’ perhaps being the best example.

Commissioned by Greek Americans in 1955 the statue of Leonidas stands guard at Thermopylae

But if Thermopylae rankles (the film elicited an official complaint from the Iranian government), what about the battle of Marathon commemorated annually in some 800 races worldwide. Ever since Baron de Coubertin invented the ‘race’ for the first Olympics in 1896, cities have literally raced to join the party, with Boston launching its own in 1897, followed by Paris (1902), New York (1907) and London (1909)¹. Indeed, Iran is perhaps unique in the world in having one of its military defeats commemorated so regularly, and widely. One can sense the melancholy and sense of resignation that might affect Iranians like the gentleman who asked about the filming.

Yet rather than seeking grievance Iranians should embrace the opportunity this all presents. De Coubertin’s justification for inaugurating the Marathon Race had little to do with commemorating a defeat - and in any case, most Iranians in 1896 would have been oblivious to the battle - but in his eyes the race served to highlight both an ethos (of Philippides in running to Athens to report the victory) and the important fact that the battle of Marathon represents a key moment in the foundation myth of the West. This is a far more important and consequential point that is often misunderstood. Persia (Iran) is far more than the villain of the piece, but is in fact midwife to the birth of the ‘West’: the implications are, to say the least, interesting.

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Setting these implications aside for the moment I have often thought how good it would be if an Iranian won one of these races - preferably at the Olympics, though it seems we are a long way from achieving that particular symbolic victory...It may be of course that a member of the diaspora has already won one of these races though I feel it would have been widely publicised had it happened. I know on the other hand that Iranians do participate and I am especially excited to hear that Anoosheh Ashoori, formerly imprisoned in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran and my good friend Simon Shercliff, formerly HMA in Tehran will be running in this years London Marathon (27th April) for Hostage International. A triumph for East-West collaboration one might say, it is also for a great cause, very much in the spirit of De Coubertin and worth supporting.

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1. The London marathon we know today started in 1981.