Ancient Persian Origin of Bank

You can read about "History of Banking in Iran" here: http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/banking_history.ph

Many Iranian linguists believe that the word "bank" and some other related words have Persian origin, among these words I have just found about the Persian origin of the word "cheque" in the English dictionaries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheque

Etymological dictionaries attribute the financial meaning to come from "a check against forgery," with the use of "check" to mean "control" stemming from a check in chess, a term which came into English through French, Latin, Arabic and ultimately from the Persian word "shah" or "king."

Of course that etymology is wrong, and I don't how "check in chess" can mean "king", the Persian verb "chik" and Arabicized "siq" means "to sick", anyway we also read about an Arabic origin of cheque:

http://wikiislam.net/wiki/How_Islamic_Inventors_Did_Not_Change_The_World

The modern cheque comes from the Arabic saqq, a written vow to pay for goods when they were delivered, to avoid money having to be transported across dangerous terrain. In the 9th century, a Muslim businessman could cash a cheque in China drawn on his bank in Baghdad.

The fact is that Both English "cheque" and Arabic "saqq" come from Middle Persian "chak" which means "document, written evidence".

But about the word "bank", we read in wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank

The word bank was borrowed in Middle English from Middle French banque, from Old Italian banca, from Old High German banc, bank "bench, counter". Benches were used as desks or exchange counters during the Renaissance by Florentine bankers, who used to make their transactions atop desks covered by green tablecloths.

Iranian linguists believe that "bank" comes from the Persian word "bangah/bongah", this word is still used in the Persian language and means "business or financial place", the second part is the suffix "-gah" which forms words of location, but the first part is "bon" which means "fund" (bon and fund have the same Indo-European origin).