Aria (historical region)
Aria (also Areia , old Persian Haraiva ) is the ancient name of a historical landscape in Central Asia , which largely corresponds to the present-day Afghan province of Herat . The region was named after the river Areios or Arios , today's Hari Rud . It was inhabited by an Iranian people who lived in this area around 1500 BC. Chr. Settled. The word "Aria" is a Greek name derived from ancient Iranian and means something like "noble" or "pure". It corresponds to the term “(home of) the Aryans ” , which was later reinterpreted in Europe for ethno-political reasons .
According to Richard Frye , this region is the country of origin of the Indo-Iranian-speaking Aryans . Here these branched out into:
- Ancestors of the Medes and Persians who migrated to the west and south-west
- Ancestors of the later Sanskrit peoples in India , who migrated towards the southeast via the Hindu Kush
- Ancestors of the Bactrians and Sogdians , who migrated to the east and northeast
- many other groups that migrated north, such as the ancestors of the Parthians , the later Ossetians , Sarmatians and Alans
Under the Achaemenids , "Aria" with its capital "Artacoana" (today's city of Herat ) was incorporated into the Persian Empire and divided into its own satrapy . After the conquest of the empire by Alexander the Great and the subsequent fall of the Greek Seleucids , the triumphal march and the founding of the empire of the later Parthians began from here . After the Arab conquest of Persia, the region belonged to the core area of the eastern Persian province of Khorasan . The region has been part of the national territory of Afghanistan since 1848 .
Web links
- Rüdiger Schmitt: Aria (historical region) . In: Ehsan Yarshater (Ed.): Encyclopædia Iranica , as of: August 12, 2011 (English, including references)
- Wilhelm Tomaschek : Areia 1 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 1, Stuttgart 1895, Col. 619 f.