Highlighting certain fallacies in a recent anthropological study of three branches of the Ni‘matu’llāhī Sufi Order in modern Iran, this review article tries to cast light on the little-understood relationship between legalistic Islam and Persian Sufism. It also attempts to clarify the connection (or rather, lack thereof) between Sufism and the Pahlavi state and the current Islamist regime, while discussing the subtle distinction between and ‘irfān in the mystical philosophies of Shi‘ite Islam. Some of the vicissitudes of three decades (1978–2008) of suppression and persecution of Sufis by the fundamentalist Shi‘ite state in Iran are also chronicled.

The history of the oil industry’s labor movement during the 1940s has often focused on the Tudeh’s ability to act overtly and rally the masses of workers. Thus, more often than not, the importance of union underground activity and the role played by the masses of ordinary oil workers during times of political and military repression, is overlooked. This article examines how the particular setting of the oil town of Abadan influenced motivations of oil workers and the dynamics between them and the Tudeh. As the article aims to show, these elements were an essential part in the ability of the labor movement in Abadan to remain viable and reemerge in force in the early 1950s as part of the oil nationalization movement.

Despite being in operation for a mere five years, the Soviet-era Tajik (Persian) journal Rahbar-i Dānish (1927–1932) was a key venue for exploring and debating the merits of Tajik literature in the context of new ideological and literary trends. Established litterateurs as well as literary newcomers published examples of their literature and literary criticism in this first Tajik monthly social, educational, and literary journal. The present article reviews the history of Rahbar-i Dānish and some of its authors to trace their influence on Tajik literature and literary criticism in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The article addresses the difficulties of creating a Soviet Tajik literature and scrutinizes the various genres featured in the literary section of the journal. Finally, it presents the trajectories of two literary newcomers, Jalāl al-Dīn Ikrām (who later became known as Jalol Ikromi) and Baḥr al-Dīn ʿAzīzī (who died in a Soviet prison in 1944), whose short stories were most prominent in Rahbar-i Dānish. This article is based on an almost complete set of the forty-five issues of the journal, published between August 1927 and March 1932.

The umayyads faced many challenges in consolidating their authority in the years after the first fitna (35–41 H. /656–61 C.E.). Among these were frequent revolts by Kharijites. While the Umayyads suppressed most of the revolts with little trouble until the second fitna (60–72/680–92), the ideological foundations of Kharijite resistance and the wide sympathy it enjoyed had serious consequences. It undermined the informal traditions upon which the caliphate was based. This was not simply a problem for the caliph in Damascus but more critically for governors exercising authority in distant provinces where caliphal influence proved weak and opposition movements propagated with relative ease.

While little is known of Kirman's history during this period, one of its governors, al-Hakam b. al-ᶜAs, addressed these challenges in the fifties/mid 670s by appealing to an inchoate absolutism. He promulgated legends on his coins linking himself and his government to God.

In the early years of the twentieth century, a wave of constitutional revolutions swept over the developing world, attracting the attention of European observers. One of these was the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–11. British perceptions of this “brave new world” in Iran were more nuanced and diverse than one would expect for this era, commonly portrayed as a time of jingoism and rampant “Orientalist” racism. This study identifies four broad perspectives which shaped British perceptions: the imperialist, Europeanist, liberal idealist and local pragmatist. Within the context of these perspectives, British perceptions were further shaped by different understandings of Iran—influenced by a specifically Iranian-flavored literary Orientalism, Aryanism and history—and by understandings of what constituted an authentic reform or revolutionary movement.

This paper explores the ways in which the Shahnameh thematizes the poet's fraught relationship with language to not only complicate our overall understanding of the epic poem but also our understanding of the language which makes the poem, and the world outside the poem, intelligible. Through a close reading of some of the prologues and epilogues that frame the Shahnameh’s tales, this essay argues that rather than helping us understand how to interpret the epic's morally ambiguous tales, the frames to Ferdowsi's tales, ironically represent a narrator who is in no position to offer us any help. Of course, the poet does give us clues as to why he and consequently we are “helpless” (bichāreh) when it comes to understanding his tales, which, in its own way, can be considered helpful. What seems to hinder understanding at every turn for the poet is, paradoxically, the very language or speech (sakhon/sokhan) that makes understanding possible in the first place.

Fars is among the largest provinces of Iran that received the most technical assistance from the American economic delegation in the 1950s. After settling in the province and during ten years of activity, the American delegation provided technical assistance in the fields of health engineering, health education, preventive medicine, nursing, medical services, and medical education. This paper explains how the technical assistance of US personnel contributed to the general health of the Fars province. The findings of this research show that after the formation of the Public Health Cooperative Organization (PHCO) in 1950, not only did most of the cities and villages of this province began to enjoy safe drinking water, but also public health improved. Additionally, the birth of children with disabilities and the spread of infectious diseases such as malaria and trachoma declined by means of preventive medicine centers and health education.

The ancient Persian empires are denoted as despotic, practicing arbitrary rule while Greece, Persia's archrival during the sixth to fourth century BC, exercised rule of law. This paper uses a contract theory framework to analyze some of the geographical and environmental underpinnings of the existence of rule of law in the city-states of ancient Greece and its absence in Persia. I discuss the role of geographical conditions of land (open plains versus mountains), population pressure, proximity to the sea and form of trade (overland versus overseas) as factors conducive to rule of law in the city-states of ancient Greece and to despotism in ancient Persia. Specifically, the role of trade via land in Persia prior to the fifth century BC is compared to the role of sea trade (alongside with piracy) in ancient Greece. I argue that in ancient Persia monarchs could tax or expropriate much of the gains from overland trade, preventing the accumulation of an independent form of wealth by merchants. In Greece, sea trade alongside the practice of piracy led to gains from trade that could not be easily expropriated by the monarchs and acted as a balancing force vis-à-vis the power of the monarchs, creating a basis for rule of law in the Greek city-states.

This paper focuses on various aspects of Alireza Espahbod’s style of painting that encrypt his work. The period considered is from the just after the Iranian revolution until the artist’s death in 2007: in these years censorship had become severe, resulting in banning prohibition on his work being exhibited. Apart from the striking symbols that recur throughout his work, it is noticeable that he favors certain visual metaphors for encryption of humanitarian and satirical meanings. The discussion also focuses on the ways in which sequences of his individual paintings create narratives, like scenes in a play or a film. Unlike some preceding modernists, Espahbod is firmly rooted in his Iranian cultural milieu, and is in a line of artists who have used surrealism, beginning with Sadegh Hedayat in the modern literary world. He also follows a much older tradition that goes back to classical poetry and miniature art, in which image and word coalesce and are interchangeable, and where literature and visual art reflect one another. He uses these older techniques to comment allusively on the dramatic events and conditions of his own time. It is argued that his work amounts to more than that of an artist who merely fought against censorship, as his art rises above it and responds to it with a positive message for his audience.

This paper is a phenomenological study of one of Simin Behbahani's better known poems, “Raqqaseh,” which is about the nightly ritualized dance of a dancing girl in a tavern. It will argue that the tavern in this poem could be viewed as a cultural container for socially dangerous representations and impulses, like the metaphoric sexualized body of the dancing girl. The tavern could also be viewed as a semiotic register for the symbolic representation of the dominant normative social discourse. By viewing the dance as performance, the communicative association of the symbolic significance of the dancing girl's body and the tavern and its audience will also be discussed. This paper will argue that the reader too is implicated in the performative function of the text.

The fact that has put Isfahan among the lasting cities and guaranteed its survival has undoubtedly been the permanent co-existence of the old and the new. The confrontation of old and new has brought about that necessary dynamism which has caused its growth, expansion and enrichment. Isfahan's favorable location in the central Iranian plateau and its plentitude of water and fertile land drew particular attention to it in times of political and cultural movements that have more often been constructive than destructive.

As far as we know, with the onset of Islam there occurred a new phenomenon that can be characterized by urban settlement and Isfahan began its dynamic development. This was also the time when local authorities, attempting to become autonomous, tried to create cities outside the borders of Mesopotamia raking with Baghdad. In the region of Isfahan, the first Islamic nucleus was established in fehe southern neighborhood of Yahūdiyyah and in a village called Khushīnān. As settlements began to grow around this new nucleus, the first real center of a town called “Isfahan” was formed at the juncture of the new and the old settlements.