File:The Portal of Xerxes at Persepolis (1906) (14779841954).jpg

Identifier: cu31924028627036 (find matches)
Title: Persia past and present; a book of travel and research, with more than two hundred illustrations and a map
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Jackson, A. V. Williams (Abraham Valentine Williams), 1862-1937
Subjects: Zoroastrianism
Publisher: New York, The Macmillan Company London, Macmillan & Co., ltd.
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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st cousin and son-in-law,as the Prophets successor in opposition to the Sunnite branchof Islam. She is in fact the chief representative of Shiism andhas been largely instrumental in the growth of this factionalmovement which divides the Mohammedan world with a bloodyschism. In Persia, moreover, within the last seventy years anew religious movement, eclectic in its character and knownas Babism, has sprung up and assumed such proportions as tomenace the universal supremacy of Mohammedanism in Iranand even to attract attention and some followers in theOccident. In art and architecture Persia is renowned for the grandeurof some of her ancient monuments and for the beauty anddecorative design of much of her later work. In both thesefields she is believed to have borrowed in early times largelyfrom Assyria and Babylon and slightly from Egypt, and lateralso from Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, as well as somewhatfrom China. Nevertheless she has dealt with the importations1 See pp. 57-69, below.
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The Phrtal of Xerxes at Persepolis RELIGION, ARCHITECTURE, AND LANGUAGE 29 freely, added much, and made the production so character-istically her own as often to bring forth a new creation; andif she has accepted gifts in artistic lines from China, it wasonly in part return for generous loans previously made toChinese art by herself. In the domain of linguistics there are a number of pointswhich are interesting to consider in connection with Persia.For the older languages I need only refer to the contributionswhich were made to comparative philology, as well as religionand history, when the Zoroastrian scriptures were discoveredand the cuneiform inscriptions deciphered. The study of thePahlavi, or Middle Persian, texts, inscriptions, coins, and gemshas yielded valuable results for general history as well as forlinguistic science. The modern language of Persia has aninterest even for the student of English who is not anIranian specialist, because the loss of inflections and theadmixtur

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