Reframing Persian Educational Thought Through a Historicist Lens: Philosophy, Identity, and Power Dynamics

Hossein Wikely

doi:10.33581/istoriya.v7i3.98

Authors

Hossein Wikely Faculty of Educational Studies, Department of Curriculum & Instructions, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33581/istoriya.v7i3.98

Keywords:

Persian intellectual heritage, Iranshahr tradition, historicist interpretation, cultural appropriation, religio-linguistic tolerance, power structures, underrepresented philosophies

Abstract

This qualitative research applies a Historicist perspective to investigate how Persian intellectual traditions have been obscured within modern scholarship. Using materials drawn from Greek historical writings, Arab-Islamic accounts, and secondary analyses on Persian civilization, the study conducts a thematic exploration of the power structures embedded in dominant Greek and Arab-Islamic thought that have historically overshadowed Persian contributions. By tracing these narrative patterns, the study identifies and categorizes three foundational dimensions of Persian intellectual life, emphasizing religio-linguistic tolerance, the influence of elite figures and the concept of divine Khvarenah, and the civilizational idea of Iranshahr. Historicism serves as the organizing lens, demonstrating how ancient Persians conceptualized Kherad a form of ancestral wisdom as a guiding principle for governance, cultural endurance, and the transmission of knowledge to successive traditions, including those of the Hellenistic and Arab-Islamic worlds. Through this approach, the analysis underscores the utility of Historicism for reinterpreting inherited narratives and introduces a conceptual scaffold for renewed inquiry into Persian educational philosophy and broader socio-cultural traditions.

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