Dear Sir/Madame,
Having recently come across your new PC Game "Civilization IV" and coming from a Persian (Iranian) background I was tempted to see how the "Persian Empire" would be depicted in this new edition of the game (
http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/home.htm ). I was shocked and offended as any other Iranian would be to find many factual errors in the description of the "Persian Empire" and of Persians/Iranians. These factual errors have also been brought up and discussed on this Civilization Fan's Forum:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=132327
Seeing that your games are being used as educational tools to many teachers around the world (
http://www.firaxis.com/community/teacher.php ) and that you yourself have professed dedication to what you've named "stealth education", which I believe is an excellent idea if implemented correctly, I wouldn't have expected to find a major factual mistake such as the ones below.
These are excerpts from the "Civilization IV" Firaxis Games:
-"In a series of decisive battles between 633 and 642, the Arabs conquered and destroyed the Persian Empire; since this time, Persia (modern Iran) has largely belonged to the Arab world. The customs and religion of ancient Persia were destroyed and the population absorbed into the surrounding Islamic culture; only a few remnants survive today."-
In the above paragraph Iran is labeled an Arab country which is not true and has no factual base. Iranians are Indo-Europeans as you have yourself explained in the beginning of your introduction but in the end you switch to claiming that Iranians are part of the Arab world and thus Arabs. This is nothing less than offending to anyone that is from Iran. Also the Arab occupation was not the end of Persia, the Arabs were defeated and Iranians began ruling their Empire with several disruptions by Afghan/Mongol Invasions (we are not Afghans or Mongol's either simply because these people invaded us for a short historical period).
The next sentence is also offending and un-true:
-"The customs and religion of ancient Persia were destroyed and the population absorbed into the surrounding Islamic culture; only a few remnants survive today."-
It is true that the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism was dealt a major blow by the Arab invasion. Persia was "islamized" but Persians never abandoned their own culture and customs to that of the Arabs. Iranians have always celebrated their pre-islamic customs and traditions such as their New Year (Norooz, approximately March 20th and it is recognized by over forty US States as Persian Heritage day), "Fire Feast" (Chaharshanbe Soori) and many more. Iranians do not share the culture or language of the Arabs; the only thing that is shared is the religion of islam. In fact, Iranians are shia muslims and most (99%) of the Arabs are sunni muslims, two different sects.
We are not asking you to rewrite history, but rather present it as it is - in a short and concise manner like you've aimed to; and I am certain Firaxis does not want to jeopardize Civilization's historical accuracy. Misrepresenting history will only lead to more ignorance in our world.
One individual has gone about correcting this and his edited version is presented below- note that most of the original text is kept in place and only those sentences that were false have been corrected.
There are many Iranian organizations that have dealt with similar issues in the past such as the Persian Gulf Task Force (
http://www.persiangulfonline.org/ ) and MarzePorGohar (
http://www.marzeporgohar.org/index.php?l=1 ) who together with a coalition of various other organizations, parties, and media were able to convince National Geographic to withdraw the fictitious name of "Arabian Gulf" which they have put underneath the name of the Persian Gulf on their atlases.
We all hope that we can rectify this problem in a professional manner as soon as possible, and with that improve Firaxis Games' image and efforts in "stealth education".
Yours sincerely,
SAMPLE EDITED TEXT:
"The term Persia has been used for centuries, chiefly in the West, to designate a region of southern Iran formerly known as Persis or Parsa; the name of the Indo-European nomadic ‘Aryan’ people who migrated into the region about 1000 BC, eventually supplanting the Assyrians and Chaldeans. The Persian Empire, in its peak, stretched from India to Egypt and the Greek mainland. The first mention of the Parsa occurs in the annals of Shalmanesar III, an Assyrian king, in 844 BC. Cyrus II (559-529 BC), also known as Cyrus the Great, was heir to a long line of ruling kings in Persia and was the founder of the Persian Empire; he was called the father of his people by the ancient Persians. In 550 BC, Cyrus, the Prince of Persia, revolted against his maternal grandfather, the Median king Astyages, and welded the Persians and Medes together into one powerful force. Cyrus consolidated his rule on the Iranian Plateau and then extended it westward across Asia Minor. In October 539 BC, Babylon, the greatest city of the ancient world, fell to his Persian forces. Cyrus also oversaw the construction of a series of great roads to link together the territories that he had conquered. Although Cyrus was a great military conqueror, he was also a fair ruler; he allowed and funded the Jews’ return from Babylon to their homeland in Palestine. Upon his invasion of Babylon, he had his decrees written on a clay cylinder known as the cylinder of Cyrus. This cylinder is considered the first universal declaration of human rights in history. His dynasty, known as the Achaemenids, ruled Persia for two centuries.
Following the death of Cyrus' heir, who added Egypt to the empire, Darius I (522-486 BC), a leading general and one of the princes of the Achaemenid family, proclaimed himself king following the suppression of a number of provincial rebellions and challenges from other pretenders to the throne. Darius was in the mold of Cyrus the Great - a powerful personality and a dynamic ruler. To consolidate his accession, Darius I founded his new capital of Parsa, known to the Greeks as Persepolis ("Persian City") and expanded the ranks of his personal bodyguard, the Immortals. The elite force consisted of exactly ten thousand men and drew its name from the fact that no matter how many men were lost, the Persian Emperor would always pay the cost to restore the Immortals back to their original strength. Although Darius consolidated and added to the conquests of his predecessors, it was as an administrator that he made his greatest contribution to Persian history. During his reign, political and legal reforms revitalized the provinces and ambitious projects were undertaken to promote imperial trade and commerce; coinage, weights and measures were standardized and new land and sea routes, including the earliest Suez Canal, explored and established.
Such activities, however, did not prevent Darius from following an active expansionist policy. Campaigns in the east confirmed gains made by Cyrus the Great and added large sections of the northern Indian subcontinent to the list of Persian-controlled provinces. In 502 BC, Persian-controlled Ionian provinces in Asia Minor started to revolt supported by the Greek city states. Darius moved against the city states and defeated the revolution (afterwards allowing democratic government in the states). He then invaded mainland Greece in 492 BC. Thrace, Macedonia and Eretria were taken, but the Persian army was defeated at the Battle of Marathon and retreated back to Asia. Xerxes (486-465 BC), son and successor of Darius I, was determined to continue the Persian conquest of the west and is best known for his massive invasion of Greece from across the Hellespont in 480 BC, a campaign marked by the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea. Although successful in the pacification of Egypt and suppression of a Babylon revolt, his defeat by the allied Greek city-states spelled the beginning of the decline of the Achaemenian Empire. In Xerxes' last years, he squandered the once-enormous treasury he had gathered through trade and taxation by launching vast construction programs, most never finished.
The death of Xerxes was the final turning point in Achaemenian influence. Occasional flashes of vigor and ability by some of Xerxes' successors were too infrequent to prevent eventual collapse. The final act was played out during the reign of Darius III (336-330 BC), who was defeated at the Battle of Granicus (334 BC) by Alexander of Macedon, who in April 330 BC burned down Persepolis in a drunken rage. Darius, the last Achaemenian, was murdered by his own officers in the summer of the same year while fleeing the Greek forces. In the struggle for power after Alexander's death, Seleucus I brought under his control the Persian provinces of Alexander's empire. But this unity was short-lived, as the Parthians, another Iranian tribe, retook the empire. The Romans and Parthians struggled against one another for centuries over control of Mesopotamia, with the Parthians usually holding onto most of the Fertile Crescent. The Parthians introduced a new tactic by combining archers and cavalry, hence ‘The Parthian Shot’. They used this to defeat Krassus of the Roman Triumvirate at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC. But in 224 AD the Parthians, who had grown weak, were overthrown by a new Sassanid dynasty that revived many of the customs of the Achaemenids, such as the Zoroastrian religion. The Sassanids fought a series of debilitating wars with the Byzantine Empire in the 6th and 7th centuries, even taking the Roman Emperor Valerian prisoner. These wars, however, weakened the Persian Empire when the Arabs exploded onto the scene. In a series of decisive battles between 633 and 642, the Arabs conquered and destroyed the Persian Empire. After several hundred years of Arab rule, Persia was restored to Persian rule in 1501 with the Safavid Dynasty. During the ensuing centuries, Persia was invaded by the Mongols, Russians and Timurids, yet managed to keep its unique culture and language, and made significant contributions to the arts and sciences. In 1935 Reza Khan Pahlavi, the Shah of Persia, formally requested that the international community call the country by its native name, 'Iran', which means ‘Land of the Aryans’."
