Persian Daily Life Essay

Persian Essay

Routines and Behaviors

Max Livant

The term “Persia” was adopted by all western languages through the Greeks and used as the official name for Iran by the western nations up until 1935. This essay will discuss the daily life of how the Persians lived such as their language, routines, home life, technology, art and more.

The Persian language is one of the oldest languages in the world. It is still in use today. This language was generally known as “Farsi” which was the Arabic form of “Parsi” because there is no “P” sound in Arabic. There have been many different names for the Persian language depending on the country it is spoken in. It is widely known as one of the most powerful literary traditions with many Persian poets.

Persian families were very large and the father’s word was the law of the family. Poor children worked with their parents at a young age. Noble children were raised by their mothers until the age of 5, and then slaves would raise them. The children would often not see their father until they were adults. The boys would be trained to ride horses and use a bow and arrows. Girls were trained to run the house hold and raise a family. Wealthy women would spend the majority of their time at home. Persian homes would have pointed roofs with porches that faced the sun. Poor families had one-roomed houses, whereas the noble families had rooms for women and rooms for men.

Persia is fairly centrally located on the globe, so it has served as a fusion point between eastern and western arts and architecture. The vast geographic region of Persia has been extremely pivotal in the development of all Persian arts. Persian art includes a wide variety of arts including modern art, calligraphy, miniature – painting and glasswork. The most prominent architectural work, which is still seen today, is the work of the Achaemenids hailing from Persis. Persian cinema has also reached critical acclaim internationally as well as Persian music and literature.

Persian people had many mannerisms and rules to live by adopted from other cultures as well as creating some themselves. They had a love of truth as many Greeks did, loyalty to the king, avoided debt, respected nature and many other ways of living. Loyalty to the king was of the most important to the Persians. The king was seen as all government and was respected and obeyed, it was almost like ancient patriotism towards there government.

The clothes the Persians wore was determined on ones social class. The ordinary dress of the poorer class, whether agricultural or nomade, was probably the tunic and trousers of leather. The upper classes seem generally to have adopted the Median costume, which was so prevalent at the Court. They wore long purple or flowered robes with loose hanging sleeves, flowered tunics reaching to the knee, also sleeved, embroidered trousers, tiaras, and shoes of a more elegant shape than the ordinary Persian. This made it easy to distinguish between the wealthy and the poorer classes of people.

Lastly, the Persians have invented some of the most vital tools and technologies that helped shape our world today. They are credited with the invention of the brick in 6000 BC and the windmill in 1700 BC. There have also been theories that the Persians invented algebra and trigonometry, however the Arabs have been said to be the ones behind those mathematical findings. It is still unclear because of how closely linked the cultures are. They were the first people to ever distill alcohol, made tremendous contributions to the worlds of science and medicine and came up with some of the first theories on the speed of light and gravity.

The Persian people, to say the least, are truly some of the most important people to ever have lived. So many things have been adopted from there culture and are still in use today. It is important to make the distinction and connection from the Persian ancient civilization to our world now, and to see how we have used their findings today.  It is incredible what these people created and how they spread out geographically into many countries and cultures, constantly growing and building what we know as our world today.