Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2025 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized

Persian Gulf Flap As If We Did Not

Juan Cole 11/24/2004

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email

Persian Gulf Flap

As if we did not have enough life and death issues to deal with, the Iranian state is now keeping National Geographic out because it identifies the Persian Gulf as also the Arab Gulf.

As with most disputes about what to call something, this argument is silly. The Persian Gulf was called that in English after Greek and Latin writers of the ancient world. The ancient Iranians who moved into Elam around the ninth or eighth century BC were called Parsumash in the ancient Assyrian tablets, and appear to have called themselves Pars as well as Iran (=Aryan). They gradually took over Elam in southwestern Iran and it became known as Pars. To this day, it is called the province of Fars (Arabic does not have a “p” so when Iranians became Muslim and started using the Arabic alphabet, they tended to replace the “p” with an “f”).

Since the Iranians had the most extensive navigation system in the Gulf at that time, the Greeks and Romans tended to call it the Persian Gulf or the equivalent in those languages.

There is a neat symmetry here. The Europeans called Iran “Persia,” using the part (Pars) to describe the whole. The Muslims called Greece “Yunan” or Ionia, using this coastal region of Anatolia, once populated by Greeks, to name the whole.

The rise of nationalism has complicated this naming system. First, Reza Shah insisted from 1933 that all Western newspapers call the country Iran, not Persia. But then shouldn’t it become the “Iranian Gulf?” Why keep “Persian” only for this purpose? Then the rise of Arab nationalism led some Arab intellectuals to insist that it is the “Arab Gulf,” properly speaking. OK, but Westerners have been calling it “Persian” since at least Herodotus.

I say we just call it “The Gulf” and be done with it. Other possibilities exist, but all of them are contentious.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

Support Independent Journalism

Click here to donate via PayPal.

Personal checks should be made out to Juan Cole and sent to me at:

Juan Cole
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
USA
(Remember, make the checks out to “Juan Cole” or they can’t be cashed)

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter to have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.
Warning! Social media will not reliably deliver Informed Comment to you. They are shadowbanning news sites, especially if "controversial."
To see new IC posts, please sign up for our email Newsletter.

Social Media

Bluesky | Instagram

Popular

  • When Politics Leaves Reality Behind
  • Antisemitism Awareness Act – Protecting Jews from What?
  • Trump, the Suez Canal, and the end of Eisenhower's World Order
  • The Real Evil Empire May Surprise You
  • American Psycho: Trump's Delusional Crusade Transforms America into a Pariah State

Gaza Yet Stands


Juan Cole's New Ebook at Amazon. Click Here to Buy
__________________________

Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires



Click here to Buy Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Click here to Buy The Rubaiyat.
Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2025 All Rights Reserved