By Payam Hassanzadeh Ghalebsaz – July 9, 2020 – Radio Zamaneh
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The claim that Iranians belong to the “Aryan race” is one of the central pillars of Iranian nationalist discourse. This article aims to show that such a claim is, in fact, a twentieth-century imported belief from Europe.
Aryanism in Europe lost its legitimacy after it became tied to colonial ambitions and Nazi ideology. Yet, despite the horrors and brutality of Nazi Aryanism, some Iranians still calmly refer to themselves as “Aryan”, and the myth of the “land of the Aryans” continues to flourish—even within academic circles.
This racist fervor goes so far as to fabricate its own poetic heritage and identity. A clear example is the song "Aryan Race", released in 2009, performed by Shakila and Shahriar. In the music video, it is falsely claimed that the poem/lyrics were written by Ferdowsi, the revered Persian epic poet. This is blatantly untrue—Ferdowsi never mentioned the “Aryan race.” The lyrics are actually derived from two poems by Mostafa Sarkhosh, titled "Messenger of Affection" and "House of Affection."
In this article, I will argue that the resilience and flexibility of the Aryan myth lies in the special role it plays in Iranian identity politics, as well as in the strategies Iranians have employed to manage the trauma of confronting Europe.
Aryamehr Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi: “We Became Middle Eastern by Accident!”
Hassan Taqizadeh (1878–1970) was undoubtedly one of Iran’s most prominent modern intellectuals. He often took a critical stance toward dominant political discourses in Iran. In the late 1940s, he lamented:
“It is unclear why our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which grants Iranian citizenship to foreigners who reside in Iran for just a few years, refuses to grant ‘Iranian’ status to Arabic words that have lived in Iran for a thousand years.”
He pointed out that this inconsistent approach—despite the simultaneous influx of words from French and other Western languages into Persian—was a result of the “curse” of dividing categories along racial lines: Aryan, Semitic, Altaic, and so on.
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who adopted the title Aryamehr ("Light of the Aryans")—a title with no historical precedent in Iran—declared in 1973:
“Yes, we are Eastern, but we are Aryan. What is the Middle East, anyway? You can no longer place us there. But Asia—yes. We are an Aryan Asian power whose mindset and philosophy are close to European governments, especially France.”
In a private conversation with British Ambassador Sir Anthony Parsons, the Shah added that Iranians, as “Aryans,” are in fact part of the European family, and that it is merely a geographic accident that Iran is located in the Middle East rather than among other European nations.
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| Mohammad Reza Shah drinking tea |
The claim of racial kinship between Iranians and their Aryan “relatives” in Europe remains a foundational basis for Iranian identity construction and has generated a network of cultural, political, and historical discourses. To support this kinship, nationalists often cite ancient reliefs and linguistic similarities, asserting a continuous, ancient tradition dating back to the Achaemenids or even pre-Zoroastrian Avesta peoples.
This racial discourse, which is structured around primordialist hypotheses, relies on two strategies in its identity politics:
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Self-Orientalization
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Displacement
These will be discussed further, though I consider them to be discursive rather than structural.
In fact, Iranian nationalism, as a discursive project, responded to the traumatic confrontation with the West and modernity by fabricating and promoting an inherently “progressive” image of Iranians, asserting that they have a noble destiny among the nations of the world.
In this way, it became merely a shortcut to modernity, while the modernist movement, by contrast, was a call for practical political reform and structural modernization.
From Arya to Aryan: How Latinization Became the Prelude to Racism
Before continuing, we should briefly examine the term Aryan (a translation of the English and French term Aryan) and its relation to the Old Iranian word arya (arya/ariya).
The Aryan myth divides humanity into several races, considering most Europeans—along with Iranians and Indians—as members of the Aryan race. This myth has a long history in European thought, spanning from the early 19th century through the post–World War II era. During these years, its conceptual framework and definitions underwent significant transformations. Initially, the idea belonged to the field of philology or historical linguistics, used to explain similarities among European, Iranian, and Indian languages. But it quickly acquired anthropological and then political dimensions. The political weight of Aryanism, amplified by romantic imagery, eventually asserted that the Aryan race was fated and predestined to dominate “the others”—the so-called “inferior races.” This glorification of the white male provided justification for European imperialist actions. Rudyard Kipling’s doctrine of the “white man’s burden,” urging the “civilizing” of the world, is a prominent example.
Interestingly, Arthur de Gobineau considered Iranians as a prime example of racial decline due to mixing with other races. What is even more significant is that later Iranian nationalists appropriated his racist ideas, laying the groundwork for Iranian nationalist anti-Arabism and fueling a disdain and fear among "Iranians" toward intermarriage or mixing with other regional groups, such as Afghans and Turks.
The origins of the Aryan myth are usually traced to Sir William Jones’s discovery in 1786: that Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and Persian share common roots. However, the actual term Aryan was first coined by the French Orientalist Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (1731–1806). He lived in India between 1755 and 1761, learned Persian, Sanskrit, and other Eastern languages, and published the first European translation of the Avesta (the sacred Zoroastrian texts). In a speech in 1763, he used the term aryen (French for “Aryan”) for the first time, Latinizing the Avestan word ariya by associating it with arioi—a term used in Latin translations of Herodotus to refer to the Medes. His pioneering work was limited to the Avesta and its French translation and had nothing to do with Jones’s linguistic theories. Yet this act of Latinizing ariya, when juxtaposed with linguistic theories, marked the beginning of the Aryan racial journey in Europe.
A crucial transformation occurred in 1819, when the young romantic writer Friedrich Schlegel assigned a more European meaning to Aryan. He asserted that ariya in Vedic and Avestan languages corresponded to the German word Ehre—“honor”—and conveyed notions of nobility and virtuous deeds. Schlegel thus transformed Aryan from a linguistic term to a modern racial category. This semantic shift rapidly captured the imagination of his contemporaries and laid the foundation for new theories about the European colonial domination over the East. Key figures in this wave of theorizing included Ernest Renan and Arthur de Gobineau.
Although shrouded in complex academic language, the foundations of the Aryan myth were decidedly romantic. The fusion of scientific rationalism and romanticism in the development of the Aryan myth produced three major implications:
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Linguistic affinity became equated with racial kinship, and the concept of race was romanticized.
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Research into Aryanism transformed into a genealogical search for origins. Aryanist writers were obsessed with tracing a primordial source—seeking the ancestral home of the Aryans, imagining an original tribe of "true Aryans" (possibly in contrast to subservient Semites), and attributing the genesis of all descendants to this original tribe.
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A sense of racial superiority and narcissism developed within romantic Aryanism. This logic produced an obsession with racial purity and demonized racial mixing as unnatural and degenerate.
What are Iranians? According to Google
Arthur de Gobineau saw race as the "driving force of history" and believed the decline of superior races resulted from racial mixing. Ironically, this racist hypothesis was later adopted by Iranian nationalists, laying the ideological groundwork for Iranian nationalist anti-Arabism and a broader societal fear and disgust toward mixing with other regional groups such as Afghans and Turks.
Aryanism in Iran
In the first half of the 19th century, Iran’s complacent Qajar elites were suddenly confronted with the crushing military power of Europe. The devastating defeats suffered by Iranian forces shocked many aware Iranians and prompted deep reflections on the decline of Iranian power. This traumatic encounter with Russia and Britain triggered a painful process of self-questioning that paved the way for Iran’s modernization movement. Reformists believed that modernizing the government and institutions could open the path to entering modernity and enable Iran to move in step with advanced Europe. Unfortunately, the arbitrary governance under the Qajars, combined with resistance from the clergy and court, prevented any fundamental civil reform until the Constitutional Revolution—and even beyond.
From the 1860s onward, due to this entrenchment and inertia stemming from autocratic rule, a group of radical intellectuals led by Mirza Fath-Ali Akhundzadeh adopted provocative positions on modernization. These writers re-engaged with Iran’s past and envisioned its future in new ways, laying the ideological foundations of Iranian nationalism.
Unlike their reformist peers, Iranian nationalists offered a discursive solution to Iran’s problems. Instead of proposing concrete, pragmatic reforms, they voiced idealized and abstract aspirations. Their nationalist discourse was more lamentation than program—expressing nostalgia for an imagined, glorious past that had vanished into history. They perceived Iran’s present-day condition as a dissonance from their belief in the innate superiority of Iranians—an ambitious evaluation rooted in pre-Islamic grandeur. Yet, reclaiming such a past seemed possible only through Orientalist scholarship. This led naturally to the idea that Iran was inherently progressive but trapped in an anomalous state of backwardness.
Such a narrative requires an Other to blame as the source of decline. Here, Islam—viewed as a racialized Arab cultural phenomenon—became that Other. Although this discourse ostensibly criticized the role of religious institutions, by framing them as alien, it sidestepped structural critique and reform of clerical power. As we later observe, even the Shia clergy was reorganized under this anti-Arab nationalist discourse—by emphasizing the role of Qom over Najaf, Shia Islam was repositioned as a modern, inherently Iranian version of the faith, standing in contrast to the “reactionary Arab Islam.”
This context helps explain why Iranian nationalist circles embraced Aryanism so readily. Akhundzadeh, Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, and their followers insisted on the intrinsic progressiveness of Iranians; at the same time, Aryanism exalted the internal virtues of the Aryan race—creativity, civilization, superiority, and more. Iranian nationalists often accused Arabs of causing the decline of Iran, while Aryanist ideology stereotyped the Semitic race as “dirty, greedy, servile,” and incapable of “understanding metaphysical beauty.” Intellectuals such as Jalal al-Din Mirza and Mohammad Ali Foroughi devoted themselves to “purifying” Persian of Arabic loanwords, while Mirza Malek Khan and Akhundzadeh sought to “cleanse” the language of the Arabic script—precisely when Aryanism condemned racial mixing, which Gobineau (and later the Nazis) considered the chief cause of civilizational decay.
Ultimately, this was a balm for the inferiority complex of Iranian nationalism in relation to Europe. It offered a theoretical construction that attributed European-like racial kinship to Iranians—an intellectually comforting notion precisely because it stemmed from European thought.
Self‑Orientalizing and Disjacentness
Unlike lands that were formally colonized by European powers, nationalism in Iran did not seek liberation from colonial rule. Instead, its goal was to align with Europe and the West—initially in military and political advancement, and secondarily in economic domains.
This feature is evident even in the ruling regime’s zealous embrace of a form of imperialism—sometimes promoted under the grandiose banner of reviving the Sassanian Empire by regime ideologues—and its profound interest in modern technology and military advancements.
Nationalists wholeheartedly adopted an orientalist disdain for Arabs, and in some cases even projected that disdain onto Iranians themselves. For example, Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani remarked that “Western philosophers write that we (Iranians) excel others in every negative trait.”
Self‑Orientalizing here refers to the unconditional embrace by Iranian nationalists of orientalist prejudices, along with their unwillingness to engage or debate East‑Western scholars in order to counter such essentializing views.
Iranian nationalist intellectuals lacked the inclination or will to argue against racist orientalist perspectives—even when those views targeted them as well. Instead, they internalized those biases. In their view, such prejudices were valid—but didn't apply to Iranians because of their pre-Islamic achievements. Aryanism intensified this mindset by injecting the notion of a “superior race” into the equation.
Under the facade of pride and ideological patriotism, self‑orientalizing reveals itself as a form of self-hatred. This desperate yearning for anything more than being perceived as an inferior “Eastern,” more than being a wretched Asian nation—this conviction that Iranians simply don't belong in the Middle East—are all clear manifestations of self‑hatred.
Self‑orientalizing served as a strategic shield for Iranians against Western civilizational discourses. Rather than confronting those discourses, Iranians absorbed and reinterpreted them, portraying themselves as exceptional within that overall framework.
Regarding Iranian nationalism, the concept of disjacentness is a direct outcome of Aryanism: through Aryanist racial discourse, Iran was forcibly separated from its Eastern and Islamic realities and artificially repositioned within an imaginary Western-affiliated geography. This strategy starkly reveals the inferiority complex of ideological nationalism vis-à-vis Europe. It was driven by an obsessive need to prove Iran was not backward—by invoking a proud ancient past and feeding romantic, archaistic nostalgia.
Another strategy to demonstrate that Iranians were not an inferior people involved superficial imitation of European lifestyles.
A historical example of such disjacentness in the intellectual sphere during Reza Shah’s reign was the renaming of the country in international contexts—from “Persia” (English) / “Persie” (French) to “Iran”—effective from 22 March 1935 (1 Farvardin 1314). While “Iran” is undeniably a historically appropriate name, the Pahlavi government's justification reflects a mindset of disjacentness. The decree read:
“From a racial viewpoint, since Iran is the origin and source of the Aryan race, it is natural that we should not be deprived of this name—especially at a time when, within great nations of the world, there are calls regarding the Aryan race, highlighting the greatness of ancient Iranian race and civilization, and some peoples boast of belonging to the Aryan race.”
This racist strategy of disjacentness did not end with the Pahlavi era. The self‑Westernizing mentality continues to hold the Iranian mind hostage to this day. This mindset denies modern Iran’s borders as authentic boundaries of Iranian civilization, and likewise regards ethnic groups outside official borders within the Middle East as historically and civilizationally “lesser.”
This epic, romantic, origin-based nationalism has endured under a military-authoritarian shadow and in a dream of civilizational equivalence with the awe-inspiring West—and it survives even today. Its national-heroic mythological figures are drawn from militaristic icons—like Reza Shah or Qasem Soleimani. Let me summarize: the persistence of this racist, anti-Arab nationalism in the Iranian mind stems from the lack of political and civil development in modern Iranian society.
Sources
Anidjar, Gil. The Jew, the Arab: a history of the enemy. Stanford University Press, 2003.
Zia-Ebrahimi, Reza. The emergence of Iranian nationalism: Race and the politics of dislocation. Columbia University Press, 2016.
Footnotes
[i] Aryanism
[ii] Hasan Taqizadeh, The Speech of Sayyed Hasan Taqizadeh on the Adoption of Foreign Civilization and Freedom, Vatan, Mellat, Tasahol (Tehran, Mehrgan Press, 1960 [1339 SH]), p. 36.
(Quoted with the original orthography used by Taqizadeh.)
[iii] Keyhan International, 19 September 1973, quoted in Mangol Bayat-Philipp, “A Phoenix Too Frequent: Historical Continuity in Modern Iranian Thought,” Asian and African Studies, vol. 12 (1978): p. 211.
[iv] Self-Orientalization
[v] Philology
[vi] Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)
An English novelist, poet, and journalist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907. He was born in India, and much of his work was inspired by his life there.
[vii] Sir William Jones
[viii] Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron
[ix] Miscegenation
[x] René Verneau and Émile Burnouf, cited in Léon Poliakov, Le Mythe Aryen, pp. 311 and 308.
[xi] Se Maktub (Three Treatises), pp. 263–264.
[xii] Mimicry
[xiii] Unified draft document of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dated 24 December 1934 (3/10/1313 SH).
Iranian National Archives, Prime Minister’s Office Documents, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Box 102012, File 3201.
ناسیونالیسم نژادپرستانه ایرانی: زخم رویارویی با اروپا و مسئله آریاییگرایی
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