I recently posted an interesting article by M. A. Sepanlu titled, “Croatians and Cravats are of Iranian Origin.” The following is Dr. Kaveh Farrokh’s response to the article.
Greetings to All,
Thank you for this forward. The article is essentially correct however I must humbly chime in my 2 cents worth.
Khorvat is also North Iranic for “Fortress, settlement”, although this is now among the Alans who had been forced to migrate to the Balkans by the attacking Huns by the 4th century AD (perhaps a little earlier). Words can often diverge in meaning across time and distance, even when they are from the same language family (in this case Iranic). An excellent text for this is Tadeusz Sulimiirski’s 1970 work on the Sarmatians.
Khorvat is known as Herat in Afghanistan as these were those North Iranian Saka who were forced to take refuge in the Sassanian Empire (224-651 AD) alongisde their ethnic kin, the Medes and the Persians at the time. These had arrived there well by the time of the Hephthalite disasters of 484 AD (the death of Piruz at the hands of Hephthalite leader Kushnavaz).
Another varient of the term Khorvat is Khochen which is now Chechen in the north Caucasus, which again was settled by those Alans who had survived the Hun-Turkic assaults. Their remnants are now the Ossetians who refer to themselves as the “Ir-On” – they live in Northern Georgia and parts of South Russia. The actual Chechens today do not speak Iranic languages, but vernaculars of the Caucasus. It is also interesting that a number of Alans had converted to Zoroastrianism just as Iran (with the exception of the North of the country) had fallen to the Arabs by the 660s AD.
There are close to a toal of 60 cities and locales in Europe that have names of Iranian origin. Examples include Tarvin near Chester in England, Aireen in Normandy, France or the Don, Dniepr, and Dniester rivers. Even the term Danube is Iranic, however the actuial name is from the Celts whose language shares many similarities with Iranic:
Old Iranc for water: Don/Dan
Old Celtic for water: DanuviusThe Celtic name for Ireland is “Eire-An”. This is interesting as the Mde/Kurdish term for Aryan is “Eire”. The ancient way of saying Iran is actually “Eire-An”. There are a number of similarities between Gaelic and the Gilaki of Northern Iran as well. The ancient Celtic tongue also has the term Asura which is the equivalet of the Iranian Ahura (or Ahura-Mazda).
Serb (or Serboi) may also mean viceroy, at least according to the late Sulimirski who (in my humble opinion) was a definate authority on Sarmatian customs, history and language.
There are many Iranic words in the Serbo-Croat region, one of these being Zhupin of course. I also noticed that the Serbo-Croat language (as well as Ukrainian) has a number of linguistic similarities with Iranic languages, notably in phonology. Old Iranic words persist in many Slavi languages (e.g. Mokry=wet; Bogh=God, etc).
Many Slavic languages have Iranic style terms for numbers such as
Dva = 2 or do
Chetyere = 4 or Chahar
Pianja = 5 or Panj
Shest = 6 or Shesh
Sot/Sotka=100 or SatThere were also a number of Sassanian mercenary cavalry serving with the Roman army who settled in Europe as well during the campaigns of Belisarius.
A book is required for htis subject, but hopefully this will give you some ideas.
My Best Regards
Dr. Kaveh Farrokh