Reclaiming Airyanem Vaejah: Zarathustra, Ariyai and the Northwestern Homeland of the Iranians (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798275560398)

This book is a reclamation of the oldest Iranian memory-a reconstruction of Iran's forgotten northwest, where mountains, rivers, and ancient texts converge to reveal the true homeland of the early Iranians and the birthplace of Zarathustra. Challenging long-standing assumptions that placed the origins of the Iranians in the far eastern steppes, this work turns instead to the highlands surrounding Lake Urmia, Atropatene, Media, and Arran: a world of volcanic peaks, deep winters, and pastoral valleys that shaped the earliest Iranian spiritual imagination.

Drawing on the Avesta, the Bundahishn, the Vendidad, classical Greek geographers, early Islamic historians, Armenian and Caucasian sources, and modern archaeological and linguistic scholarship, the book unveils a remarkable convergence. The ancient texts describe a homeland of fierce winters, mountain sanctuaries, and snow-fed rivers. The Bundahishn locates Airyanem Vaejah-the first Iranian land-bordering Adarbaijan. The Vendidad places Zarathustra's revelation beside the Daraja, a river descending from Mount Sabalan. Medieval writers like Kazwini, Yaqut, Abulfeda, and al-Shahrastani preserve traditions that situate the prophet firmly in the region of Urumia, Atropatene, and Ray. Classical authors portray Media's tribes and priestly Magi as mountain dwellers of the western Iranian world. Archaeology reinforces these testimonies: Hasanlu, Haftavan, Godin Tepe, and Tall-i Bakun reveal long cultural continuity stretching from the Caucasus into Fars, without evidence of intrusive steppe migration.

The book also explores the ancient region of Arran-as a possible early "Iran" whose name echoes the ethnonym Arya. Its climate, rivers, toponyms, and Zoroastrian survivals align closely with descriptions of Airyanem Vaejah. The ecological setting of northwest Iran, with its harsh winters and sacred high places, provides the only landscape that matches the environmental memory preserved in the Avesta and Pahlavi books.

Engaging with Indo-European homeland debates, the book presents the growing body of scholarship-from Gamkrelidze and Ivanov to Heggarty and others-that locates the Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Iranian heartlands south of the Caucasus and within the Armenian-Azerbaijani-northwestern Iranian corridor. This framework explains the cultural and linguistic arc that links the early highland societies of the Zagros and the Urmia basin to the later Persians who emerged in Fars, carrying with them patterns of architecture, ritual, and pastoral life deeply rooted in the northwest.

Through textual analysis, archaeology, climatology, linguistics, and historical memory, the book argues that the origins of Iran and Zarathustra lie not in distant steppes, but in the mountains and waters of the land between Sabalan, Sahand, and Lake Urmia. It is here, in this world of long winters and sacred fires, that the Iranian identity first took shape-and where the earliest voice of Iranian spirituality first spoke.