Persian Gulf Defended of Its Name

Registering Persian Gulf in UNESCO

Persian Gulf Defended of Its Name

The 6^th meeting of international committee of Intangible cultural heritage was held in Bali, Indonesia from 22^nd to 29^th November 2011. Director of the committee; professor Amman Virakart Kusoma from Indonesia and deputies from Albania, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Morocco, and Spain were present at there. The members of the committee were from Albania, Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, China, Croatia, Cuba, Cypress, Czech Republic, Granada, Indonesia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Oman, Paraguay, Korea, Spain, Venezuela, and Iran.

In this meeting, Iran could register the name of Persian Gulf and even its Iranian islands in the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), therefore we can count 2011 as a good year for Persian Gulf. On the 1^st day of May when the closing ceremony of the 7^th Persian Gulf national conference in Bandar Abbas was companied with presenting the stamp, book and symbol of Persian Gulf, nobody believed that in less than six months it is registered in UNESCO.

The presented document form Iran declared the knowledge of boat-building and sailing boat-building which are not made anymore. All of countries even all the Arabic ones were agree about this issue which indicates the sailing knowledge of Iranians was related to Persian Gulf and accepter the document.

Before the meeting, mentioning to the name of Persian Gulf in the books which were published in the field of archeology was not easy because most of times it made Arabs angry, but it is obvious that the trend will be changed after the registering the name of Persian Gulf in UNESCO. In this document Iran could introduce sailing knowledge and abilities of Persian Gulf. Moreover, the knowledge of boat-making and sailing boat making, related rites of the sea like the spring of hunters, Shooshis, and other knowledge like Iranian astrology were registered too.

Iranian team started the history of sailing from pre-Islam era. Actually the story was started with the ancient story of "Wayo" or "Way"; the god who Iranians trapped it in dry lands and at the seas with sails and used its power. The document was completed with the pre-Islam documents like linguistic facts, archeology, coins, seals, and …

The number of Intangible cultural heritages of Iran in UNESCO index is now nine and the number of other Iranian sites in universal index is 22. Previously Iran could register heritages like "Norouz", "Ta'ziye", "North Khorasan Bakhshi Music", and "Traditional skill of making Kashan Carpet in Fars"

Translated by Somayyeh Qazizadeh

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