قصص من بلاد فارس

#### When Edward Said coined the concept of “Orientalism” in his widely acclaimed 1978 book that bears his name, and excluded Aeschylus and Herodotus from creating it, he may have been right, but the truth is that he left out other Greek names. Ctesias is not the least important. * Ctesias the Cinidae was born around 451-441 BC in Cnidos, Asia Minor - then part of the Achaemenid Empire - to the distinguished Asclepiade family of physicians. Ctesias was a physician, and he personally cared for the great King Artaxerxes II and his family. This long service gave him access to a wealth of information, as well as many rich oral traditions, about the lands encompassed by an empire that extended from Cyprus and Lebanon to parts of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, and the Indus Valley itself - at least nominally. After his return to Greece, Ctesias likely completed a series of works of which only fragments have survived: most notably the ironic Relations of India (Indica) and, above all, the History of Persia (Persica). The Histories of Persia, which lies on the dividing line between emergent historiography and what would later become the novel, is a major source for understanding not only the history and culture of Achaemenid Persia, but also how the Greeks represented the Persian other and, by contrast, how they saw themselves.