Greetings & Dorood

Warmest greetings and salutation to all visitors. I am delighted to welcome you to "GILCANON" cove, my cyber retreat.

First post is always like the first session of class, especially for those who teach like me, it is all about briefings: introduction, objectives and scope, methodology, assessment (LOL) and so on.

My ambition, from an engineer's point of view, is to create a system with high gain, i.e the output is greater than the input. What I mean is that you, as the input of the system, being the GILCANON, would transform,

better said: evolve, after visiting the Gilcanon cove. If you learn one bit from my Blog, I call it a success.

How am I supposed to do so? In other words: my methodology, well, of course I have some things in mind but to be honest, I am not sure if it is going to pan out. You never know unless you give it a go. So let us try it out together.

We, me and you, are going to talk about anything and everything, you can email me or comment or IM for me to publish; but especially three topics are my top preferences: Medicine (diagnosis, drugs, imaging, diseases, general health and so on), Persia (history, news, politics etc.) and Electronics (engineering, maths, devices and equipment, education and so on and so forth). Of course, as I said, let us talk about anything, music, economics, industry et cetera but they are going to have to contain a scholastic weight and not just amusing. Nothing against fun and amusement but why not add on to your knowledge while enjoying it at the same time. I will try to tag the posts so you can skip ‘em if you think they are not your cup of tea.

A little about us, me and my Blog. The word Gilcanon is a portmanteau of "Gilak" and "the book of healing: the canon of medicine" by Avicenna. Gilak is the heritage of the residents of the Guilan province, northern Iran, by the Caspian sea shore. It is where I am actually from. And The Canon of Medicine is a valuable medical encyclopedia in 14 volumes, if I am not mistaken, compiled by Avicenna, the father of modern medicine, nearly a thousand years ago.

Guilan prides her 3000 year history (refer to Marlik) and her faithful, hospital, modest and particularly sophisticated Gilaks who, brought fame to not only Guilan but also their mother land, Iran. Guilan was last in the list of the Persian empire’s provinces accepting Islam from Arabs. Ergo, Guilan is the only province where Islam was not imposed rather freely accepted by Gilaks many years later. Arabs invaded Iran, after the death of the holy prophet, peace be upon him, and parallel to the ruling of the second Muslim Khalifa, Umar (Omar). Yazdegerd III, the last king of the Sassanid dynasty could not keep up with the Arab's invasion and was defeated in the battle, surrendering the empire to Arabs who carelessly ruled for nearly 200 years.

Arabs failed to pursue the army of Gils led by Muta, who himself was killed in the battle, after defeating them. The reason estimated to be the Alborz mountain range, which kept Gils and Guilan safe from invaders throughout the history, thus Gilaks were merely left untouched due to their orderly and fortunate retreat into their familiar mountainous territory.

Concurrent to Yazdegerd's defeat "Hakim Abul-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi was finishing his masterpiece, the "Shahnameh" (the letter of the king), the national Persian epic, which many genuinely believe that saved the Persian language along with a massive deal of Persian rituals; may God bless his soul.

I am neither a writer nor a poet or I am any good in interpretation. Having said that, there is this bit in Shahnameh, which is utterly patriotic, making any patriot Persian feel like pins and needles from head to toe every single time and I absolutely do not want anyone to miss this. Hence, I would try my utmost to convert it so a little commiseration I feel like to be the most important thing one can offer. Of course the original Farsi version is followed for comparison.

- As Arab fate ordained to dominate Persian land, darkness began to prevail upon the Persians' prime.

- The destiny’s path became mutated, as if the moon has lost her warmth and benevolence.

- Wine lost its magic allure and harp its divine voice, scent of flowers disappeared as the enlightenment of culture vanished.

- Respect and civility perished and art decayed, they tied up the wings of free and contemplating wisdom.

- Devilish villainies took over respect and courtesy, just as hostility and feud replaced warmheartedness.

- Now there is no need for the divine drink of wine for the hopeless inept, a deaf would not enjoy the serenity of flute.

- In the company of such unseemly vulgar beings, it would be a sin to pass around the holy Gail serving the sacred wine .

- Where drought has faded every full of life plant, to waste yet one single drop is a foul fault.

- When the king’s throne is degraded down to a clergy’s pulpit, original prestigious Persian designations, allegedly, would become substituted with Arabic identities such as Abubakr or Umar(Omar).

- Following drinking camel milk and feasting on desert reptiles, Arab now shamelessly fancies to have reached a point:

- To claim the Persian Saturn, the empire’s crown and throne, Shame on you, the doomed fate....Shame on you!

- It is the utter misfortune for our Iran to squander this way, and become the home of demons and habitat for beasts.

Frankly, as I said, I am very much open to you suggestions and comments and most of all to your material. If you think, there is anything you believe is worth sharing, I would be absolutely delighted if you kindly email them for me so I can include them in posts as soonest as possible.

Obviously, it can be in Farsi, as we all love our mother language and praise it even more.

But, I myself would rather to post the material in English for two reasons: one is that I would like to have international, especially western, readers, so I can introduce true facts about Persia and Persians and also share knowledge with our foreign mates. So if you know any foreigners, kindly refer them to our page.

Second, I prefer to gather up a group as reader friends, frankly, those who have a minimum level of education and knowledge. I assume those who are fluent in English or at least feel comfortable communicating in English, are either Persians with high level of postgraduate education or those who were raised or studied/lived in and English speaking/western country thus being exposed to a minimum level of knowledge. Honestly, I am sure those wrongfully tagged Iranians who bash up our friends in the streets or else have extremist ideologies would definitely not be able yo directly read our Blog. This sense of isolation that they have as they can not have access to our thoughts independently,gives me a good sense of dominance over them, which is quite joyful, aye!

Oh, my medium of choice is British English only for its elegance, superiority, grace and sovereignty. Although, everyone is welcome to enjoy their own medium of choice, understood by the majority.