April 23, 2002
Are Croatians Iranian?
April 23rd, 2002 Submitted by a Croatian friend.

Summary: The people of Croatia, a separated republic of the former Yugoslavia, are almost fully certain about their Iranian origin. The issue was reiterated in a symposium held by the Iranian cultural counsellorship in the capital city of Zagreb with the participation of prominent Croat historians and Iranologists. The report prepared by the symposium that was held on September 16, 1998, put further emphasis on the subject from various points of view and presented the documented evidence gathered by the Croat scholars.

Text: To date, 120 Croat and non-Croat university professors as well as several academics have compiled 249 research works of which many have been printed in various publications and thereby have proven that Croats are of Iranian origin.

There are many real evidences about the identity of ancient Croats which all dismiss the theory that Croats are of Slavic origin. Although research works on the Iranian origin of the Croats could not be publicized due to censorship that was widely practiced at the time of the former regime in Yugoslavia, the available documented evidences reveal that the initiator of the effort on research about the Iranian origin of the Croats lived two centuries ago.

In his thesis in 1797, the researcher made a study on the Iranian origin of the Croats and reached the conclusion that the present day Croats migrated from the western part of ancient Iran.

Following the formation of Yugoslavia in 1918, bigot Serbian Slavs known as the “wolves” collected the original copies of the research work and destroyed them in an attempt to conceal the truth about the Iranian origin of the Croats. To date, only some portions of the research work, that has been quoted in a report prepared by the academy of sciences of the former Yugoslavia in 1938, is available.

One of the articles has quoted some police reports that the government in the former Yugoslavia mounted pressures on Iranologists within the period of 1918 to 1990. The article further proves that upon official instructions by the former government, Croats had to be considered middle ages Slavs. For this same reason, all the research works conducted over the origin of the Croats were considered criminal acts and thus prohibited for a period of 70 years. All the research papers compiled by Iranologists were confiscated as documents against state interests and the researchers were imprisoned or sent to detention camps. Four researchers were killed by the Yugoslav secret police for making investigations over the issue.

However, there are other research works proving that 75 percent of the Croats are different in origin from the Slavs from the genetic point of view. On the other hand, studies show that there are less similarities between domestic livestock, poultry and plants in the old time Croatia with those in Europe, lending further proof to the fact that Croats had most probably migrated from a region close to Asia to their present area.

Former Croat homeland and their migration

A manuscript dating back to 1370 B.C. has named the present day Croats and their language as Hurrvuhe (resembling their modern name Hrvati).

In the era of the Achaemenid, especially at the time of Darius and Cyrus I, the name of the eastern Iranian province Harauvatya and the Croats of the ancient Iranian Harauvatis and Harahvaiti have been mentioned 12 times. In addition, two unearthed manuscripts belonging to the Croats living in the second and third centuries B.C. in ancient Iran have referred to the inhabitants of Horouathos and Horoathoi. In the year 418, Aryans were dubbed as Horites and Zachariasrhetor, and in 559 the Aryan horse riders were referred to as Hrvts who lived in the vicinity of Krima and Azova, and in the 7th century Croats were called as Slavs.

Other articles offered to the symposium discussed the formation of the empire at the time of Cyrus the Great, history of the Croats in ancient Iran and the Croat’s development from the time of ancient Indians to the time of their migration in the middle ages from the Caucasus through ancient Persia to the present Adriatic and the emergence of the first traces of Croats, which could be classified as follow:

Harahvaiti and Harauvati in Iran and Afghanistan
Hurravat and Hurrvuhe in Armenia and Georgia
Horoouathos in Azov and the Black Sea
Present day Croats Horvati and Hrvati along the Adriatic

First contacts between old-time Slavs and Croats of ancient Iran

Research works have been conducted on the relationship between the language spoken by the Croats and the language the present-day Slavs speak with an aim to identify possible similarities. However, the studies do not dismiss the possibility that the old-time Croats were part of ancient Iran at the time of the Persian Empire who later migrated to Europe and their language change to Slavic.

Meanwhile, studies on the Croats indicate that the old-time Slavs did not share the same race with the East European nations and that with the migration of the Croats with the Iranian origin, they established common cultural and lingual ties with each other.

Ties with old-time Slavs in the 4th century were first established in Red Croatia under the title “Sarmatskim-Horitima” and also after the 6th century in the realm of the Carpathians within the boundaries of White Croatia (meaning “great”) under the patronage of the Iranian Croats who had been turned Slav due to the large population of the Slavs.

Iranology and old-time language of Croats

Studies show that there had been various stages in which the Croats had been pressured into accepting the language of the Slavs and annexation into the former Yugoslavia. The idea was realized by the Serb nationalist Vuk Karadzic whose slogan was “Serbs everywhere”. He invited all bigot Slavist Serbs to the Vienna Congress in the middle of the 19th century for a political and lingual consensus and for adopting policies for the future of Yugoslavia. In the aftermath of the agreements reached in the gathering the pro-Karadzic Slavists launched their activities for the elimination of all signs of cultural and lingual differences between the Serbs and the Croats. To this end, they changed the history of the Croats and eliminated all the terms with Indo-Iranian roots that did not exist in the Serbian language. Such a trend continued until 1918 when Yugoslavia was formed, and continued during the Yugoslav regime.

The process for the change of the spoken language of the Croats of ancient Iran to the language of Slavs started in the 7th century and continued up to the 20th century, forcefully followed by Yugoslavia.

Mazdaism, ancient myths and religion of Croats

In addition to similarities in language, common cultural aspects can be pointed out as well. For example, reference can be made to the symbols belonging to the old-time Christians that resembled symbols of Mazdaism in ancient Iran.

A study in this connection has drawn a parallel between the language used in Bosnia and littoral states and islands of the Adriatic Sea in two separate sections. The study further elaborates how followers of Mazda in ancient Iran converted to Christianity in Europe and how Mazdaism was spread in Europe by the migration of the inhabitants of the above-mentioned areas.

Other research works have studied the influence of traditions in ancient Iran on the symbols of the roots of old Christianity from ancient times to the middle ages.

Identity of Croat tribes

Research works conducted in the past decade discuss the similarities between names and families used in ancient Iran and the names and families in present-day Croatia. Some of these studies have pointed to the roots of alphabetic letters in the Croat language and stressed that, contrary to the claims of the Slavs, the roots of those letters are totally Iranic and widely used in ancient times. Many manuscripts written with those letters date back to before the 9th century.

Research studies on the style of dress of the Croats show that they were dressed up as the Sassanid’s and most of the local costumes of women were exactly the same as those worn by women at the time of the ancient Iranian empire.

Studies on other characteristics of the Croats, such as aquatic navigation, reject the Slav presumption that the Croats were not originally sea navigators and that they learned the art from the Italians. According to the studies, there is evidence available that the Croats were acquainted with sailing even before they encountered the Slavs. It should be noted that local Croat navigators were known as “Indo-Iranian” and “Slavs” in the Adriatic.

ZAGREB, Croatia, Oct 15, 2000 (Hina)