The mysteries of the ancient Iran

Above: the tomb of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae, Iran See also Chapter 10, 'Plato' in The Republic of Rumi: a Novel of Reality

According to Iqbal, the Sheep’s Doctrine is a kind of ideology that is the ploy of the defeated nations, and its most prominent example is the philosophy of Plato (427 BC – 327 BC).

In what manner was the philosophy of Plato a “ploy” used by the defeated Greeks against their conquerors, the Persians? The question has to be addressed unapologetically by anyone trying to re-write the history of civilization along the lines suggested by Iqbal.

We know that the Persian conquests had preoccupied the best minds in the ancient Greece for quite some time before Plato: “Herodotus of Halicarnassus, his Histories are here set down to preserve the memory of the past by putting on record the astonishing achievements both of our own and of other peoples; and more particularly, to show how they came into conflict.”

The position of Greeks further deteriorated in the period between Herodotus (c.484 BC – c.425 BC) and Plato, and hence “the mind of Europe” gained a valid motive for coming up with a recipe for self-destruction that could be dished out to the conquerors (Platonic ideas appear to be such a recipe if we also believe Iqbal’s other proposition that these ideas heavy influenced subsequent Persian thought, and the influence was unhealthy).

Against this backdrop, the views of Plato’s pupil and later opponent, Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), seem to be an example of the positive manner in which a civilization may respond to its woes.

Consequently, Aristotle’s pupil, Alexander the Great, appears as a classic example of the phenomenon about which Iqbal remarked in his private notebook, Stray Reflections, “A diseased social organism sometimes sets up within itself forces which have a tendency to preserve the health of the organism – e.g. the birth of a great personality which may revitalise the dying organism by the revelation of a new ideal.”

This “new ideal”, through which Alexander revitalized the diseased social organism of Greece, was of Persian origin: after having a first-hand contact with Iran, Alexander had become an avid student of Iranian statecraft, preferring it over the Greek model of city-states as well as the Egyptian cult of the Pharaohs.