Publication of Historical Maps of the Persian Gulf in Tehran
9/12/05
By
Pejman
Akbarzadeh, (Persian Gulf Organization's Rep. in
Tehran)
According to historical and geographical documents and United
Nations directives, the name of the waterway between the
Persia
(Iran) and the
Arabian Peninsula is the Persian
Gulf. Since the 1960s, with the rise of Arab nationalism,
serious efforts to change the historical name of this waterway began. These
efforts and the Persians resistance in the face of it, in the autumn of 2004,
reached a peak when the National Geographic Society published a fake term in
parenthesis below the name Persian Gulf. After a
few months of heavy protests by Persians (Iranians), followed by partial
success, the 18th Tehran International Book Fair devoted a pavilion for
presenting the historical maps of the Persian Gulf
(see article). An extensive
report of this event,
written by this author, was published in the Persian-language daily "Shargh"
(No.486, May 27, 2005/ 7
Khordad 1384. For this occasion, albeit with a few months delay, a
precious book containing 123 historical maps of the Persian
Gulf region has been published by the Sahab Geographic and Drafting
Institute in
Tehran.

These maps were selected from over 2,300 maps and documents from several
museums, universities, libraries and private collections in Sahab archive.
The maps published in this book are in chronological order. The first map
is a clay tablet from ancient Babylonia belonging to 2000
to 3000 B.C. In this map, whose original is at the
British
Museum,
Babylon and
Assyria can be seen surrounding the Persian
Gulf. Among other notable maps in this book are: the naval map of
the world by Bochartus (1500-500 B.C.); the map of Jazirat al-Arab (Arabian
Peninsula) by Ptolemy (87-150 A.D.); map of the Persian Sea by Istakhri
(1325 A.D.); map of the Seven Seas by Biruni (1430 A.D.); map of the Persian
Empire in the Safavid era, by Claudius (1700 A.D.); and the map of the eastern
part of the Persian Gulf, produced by the British Naval Force in 1795, with
which the book ends.
In
some of the maps, in which the Persian Gulf represents
part of the whole map, such as in maps of Asia and the
Middle East, the image of the region under consideration
is enlarged below the main map. In addition to high quality, all the maps
possess precise descriptions in both English and Persian, including the original
name of the map, its cartographer, and the date of the drawing. A separate and
bilingual index of the maps published in this collection appears at the end of
the book.
This work was compiled by the Geographical Research Department of the
Sahab Institute, headed by Mohammad Reza Sahab, in cooperation with Farhad
Tehrani, Javad Safinejad, Houshang Ghassemi, and Ali Akbar Mahmoudian. M. R.
Sahab has written a bilingual preface to this collection which contains
interesting information about the history of
the
Persian Gulf, how names came to be forged for this waterway, and the result of
Persians efforts against it. Sahab writes: “In spite of the positive actions
which have been taken by the people and government of
Iran in the past
47 years, unfortunately we have always acted sporadically. Only when we have
been assaulted, have we reacted. However, by taking
advantage of their petrodollars, some Arab governments have attempted to
forge new names for the Persian Gulf. While they have
been busy with such efforts, our activities have mostly been within the country,
without much international effect.”