Fading Iranian identity led to Persian language decline in Caucasus

2015-9-13

According to IBNA correspondent, the First Symposium on Cultural Exchanges between Iran and the Caucasus in the Modern Era was held on Monday, August 31, 2015, in the Center for the Cultural Studies of Asia; Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies and the Center from Strategic Studies of Iran’s Ministry of Interior.

In this event, Kaveh Bayat (Historian and translator); Seyyed Saeed Jalali (PhD, Research Assistant of Center for Strategic Studies and Training Department of the Ministry of Interior); Goudarz Rashtian (faculty member of the Global Studies at Tehran University) and Elham Malekzadeh (Faculty member at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, and the Secretary of Science at the Symposium) delivered speeches.

Bayat presented an article entitled “Review of the Caucasus Cultural Conflicts in the Contemporary Period”. Referring to the newspapers of Qajar era, he said: “In the first two decades of the twentieth century, suggestions about changes in the attitudes of Caucasians were discussed in some Iranian magazines, particularly those published abroad. However, these points never exceeded simple hints and were mostly related to the decline of the status of Persian language in that region rather than to Iranian identity.”

On the other hand, Elham Malekzadeh, historian, said that she believes Nasser al-din Shah’s memoires from his travels abroad suggest that the people of that region warmly welcomed this Iranian king.