There is, in France, a pronounced awareness of an “Iranian world” that can be identified in terms of cultural, linguistic, ethnic (Aryan peoples) or geographic (highlands, cold winters) characteristics common to the civilizations of all Iranian-speaking peoples living in Afghanistan, Iran, Kurdistan or south central USSR, in particular, Tajikistan. This “world” stands in contrast to the Arab, Indian and Turkish ones. The notion of a Middle East extending from Casablanca to Kabul does not exist in French. Newspapers usually refer to the Moslem lands to the south and east of the Mediterranean as the “Arab world,” as if Turkish- and Persian-speaking peoples were peripheral minorities therein.

Owing to its colonial and military heritage, France has long given special importance to the Maghrib (Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria), the Near East (Lebanon and Syria, in particular) and, as a result of the Napoleonic campaigns and Champollion's expeditions, Egypt.

In contrast to the situation in most countries, in German-speaking countries the study of Iran is not concentrated in one academic discipline. As a result, the attempt to “reconstruct” the history of Iranian Studies inevitably involves various disciplines. The individual results of these together form the kaleidoscopic spectrum of studies on Iranian themes in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

The only academic discipline in the German language area that includes the name “Iran” is the one called “Iranistics” (German “Iranistik”).

The origins of Iranian studies in Italy go back to the second half of the sixteenth century, when there developed a scholarly approach based on a recognition of Persian linguistic and literary evidence. The modern course of scholarly understanding was preceded, and prepared, by a process of political observation and geographical discovery of Iran, which began exactly a century before, with the accession of Uzun Hasan Aqqoyunlu (1457-1478).

Iran had then emerged as an autonomous power which on its western frontier contested the power of the Ottoman Empire. Mehmet Fatih, the conqueror of Constantinople (renamed Istanbul) in 1453, was the great rival both of Iran and of Venice for the control of traffic and commerce between Asia and the Mediterranean. Hence the Papal State, interested in the salvation of souls, and the Republic of Venice, the hegemonical maritime power of the Mediterranean's eastern basin, established close diplomatic relations and pacts of alliance first with Uzun Hasan and then with the Safavids.

One of the most striking characteristics Iranian studies in Japan is government initiative. The government has long taken the initiative in establishing institutions and programs for such study. Particularly in the 1930s, the motivation for studying Iran was partly political and strategic. Since the late 1960s, however, there has been a more economic orientation. Another characteristic is that Iranian studies have developed within the framework of scholarship on the Middle East in general. For this reason, the general trend of Middle Eastern studies, as well as that of Iranian studies, will be discussed. It is logical to divide this trend into three eras: 1) the 1930s until the end of World War II, 2) the 1950s through the 1960s, and 3) the 1970s to the present.

Up to the end of the Middle Ages, the opportunities to acquire information about the world of Islam were very few in the Low Countries. Moreover, the little knowledge which could be derived from books, from the participation in a crusade, or from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, did not reach much futher than the coasts of the Mediterranean. The Iranian hinterland of the countries inhabited by Saracens and Turks remained beyond the horizon of the Dutch, intellectually as well as in terms of actual experience

Direct contacts with Iran developed only in the early 17th century when, shortly after the establishment of an independent republic of the Netherlands, the “United Provinces,” Dutch trade began to expand to the four corners of the world. The first journey of a Dutch fleet to the East Indies and back was completed in 1597.

As a result of its union with Lithuania at the end of the fourteenth century, Poland, for about 400 years, came into the immediate neighborhood of Muslim states the Golden Horde, the Khanate of Crimea and, last but not least, Ottoman Turkey. Poland's relations with her Eastern and Southeastern neighbors, though often hostile, were not limited to wars; diplomatic and economic contacts were maintained, and Eastern provinces of the country became a territory of symbiosis and mutual cultural influence. Oriental minorities living within the borders of the Polish state--Armenians, Tatars, Karaites--assumed the role of mediators between the Christian and Muslim realms. Thus, Poland's contact with the Islamic world was relatively close in this period. Both practical and theoretical Oriental interests in Poland were focused on the Ottoman Empire, as was natural for both Poland and other European countries in this epoch of Ottoman domination of the entire Near East.

Soviet scholarship on Iran is extensive and highly organized. Just in the year 1980, 119 articles and books pertaining to Iran were published in the Soviet Union. The publications dealt with such topics as history, literature, economics, and geology (and do not include journalistic coverage of current events). The scale of Soviet scholarship on Iran since World War II is so vast that it would be hopelessly cumbersome to try to review or even list all the books and articles. This essay will attempt to provide an overview of the history of Iranian scholarship in the Soviet Union and Imperial Russia, to describe how the study of Islamic Iran in the Soviet Union is organized and oriented, and to look at a few of the most interesting works of recent years.