Frye says that he has also been involved with teaching Near Eastern religions like Manichaeanism and Zoroasterianism. Currently he teaches a course in Sogdian language, the language of people residing near the Soviet-Chinese border, the History of Pre-Islamic Central Asia, and middle Persian (300 to 700 A.D.) language.
Persian Culture
His expertise in Persian studies led Frye to leave Harvard temporarily to become director of the Asia Institute at the University of Shiraz in Iran from 1967 to 1975. And it was while he was working at the Institute, coordinating programs for Middle Eastern students, that he collected much of the information with which he currently performs his own research on ancient Persian culture, including scrolls and reproductions of inscriptions which are more than 1500 years old.
"Most of the things hangind over there," says Frye, referring to several yellow parchments in his office, "are Imperial inscriptions about a victory against the Romans or they are dictates from the Emperor or a lot of times, they are funerary inscriptions."
Frye says that he collected his scrolls, which are relics from Zoroasterian religious rites, on an archeological expedition through the deserts of Iran.
"When you find the [funerary] inscriptions you make a latex imprint of the stone, and then you have to hold it up to the light or to a mirror to read, because it is backwards," Frye says. "The scrolls can tell you a lot about the customs and history of an area."
Because information about the ancient Middle East is so limited, Frye says that he must rely on ancient pottery, tools, spears, and even coins to gain information about Persia and Central Asia.
"You have to use everything," he says, "inscriptions, coins, Greek scrolls, Chinese scrolls, anthropology, history, government, East Asia, the Middle East, Russia--you name it--you have to use anything you can get."
His work on inscriptions and ancient coins led to Frye's recent publication of The History of Ancient Iran in 1984.
Crimes and Killings
Frye, an ancient historian, does have views on Middle Eastern problems of today.
"History is made by fanatics," he says. "Particularly the history of Central Asia. When I first taught a class on Central Asian history here, I asked the students what they knew about the area, and Ghengis Kahn was what everyone anwered. He killed hundreds of people. What we remember are the crimes."
In fact, the emphasis on this crime and killing mode of historical analysis, Frye believes, is the root of many problems in the Middle East today.
"This is the way we teach history," he says. "We emphasize people who kill. I saw a world where there was peace, and now it is gone. The Pakistanis hate the Indians; the Jews hate the Arabs. There is the whole Iran-Iraq conflict. There is no gain."
And Frye says he feels that until the Middle East resolves its problems with fanatics and hatred, it will cease to progress with the rest of the world.
"The study of the Middle East is a tremendous field," Frye says. "I have been burdened by it, but I have also been fascinated by it. I am retiring next year, and [Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukranian History Omeljan] Pritsak is retiring next year--but we are the only two who are actively engaged [in keeping the study of the area popular]."
Frye says that he will continue to promote Middle Eastern studies after his retirement, as he wishes to maintain his committment to the area, but adds that he hopes future generations of teachers and researchers will want to study the region, as well.
"We have to pass the teaching on. And you just wish you could pass on the feeling," Frye says. "I'm very ambivalent about how that will work, but you just have to have humor and hope."