Two impulses, the desire to create and the desire to withdraw into oblivion and death, lie at the heart of Sadeq Hedayat's character. He was painfully sensitive to human weaknesses, loneliness, and suffering in a world that seemed all the darker through his eyes because the values against which he measured it were so demanding. He expected more of and for humanity than could be attained. A part of him sought to reject a life doomed to such imperfection, to draw back from the searing pain of a consciousness without hope.

Yet it is also through this pain of consciousness that the creative act arises. This second force, the impulse to objectify the vision of Absurdity by transforming it into art, provided for Hedayat a somewhat precarious counterbalance to the impulse of negation. For creation, however tentative, constitutes a challenge to the forces of darkness. In the very act of depicting a universe without meaning, the artist implicitly contributes meaning of his own.

Marco Polo's encounter with Kublai Khan, which Italo Calvino made the framework for his exploration of the fantastic in urban life, stands as a useful parable for the nature of the interaction of West and East in the period between 1200 and 1700, when myriads of Europeans produced journals and accounts of their journeys into the rest of the world.

By all accounts the departure of the shah from Iran in January 1979 was met by most Iranians with the expectation of greater freedom for both the individual and the group. For a number of minority groups, this included the expectation of greater cultural and political autonomy. Initially, the new regime appeared to be sympathetic to such expectations, but by the summer of 1979 violent conflicts were erupting between the central government and members of several tribal, regional, and ethnic minority groups. While the central government appears to have contained the ethnic and regional autonomy movements, officials and analysts have continued to express concern over the possible fragmentation of Iran, and autonomy movements are viewed by many as a significant obstacle to the consolidation of the new regime and/or a threat to its stability.

In a sense, the history of science deals with the creation and development of scientific ideas and theories concerning scientific discoveries or even failures. Its focus is on scientific discovery and its forerunners, and it generally ignores areas where two methodologically divergent and geographically separate scientific traditions clash, especially when no new discoveries have resulted therefrom.

One such area is the clash between modern European and traditional Islamic sciences. For this reason, the introduction of modern science into the Islamic world and its challenge to traditional scholars has not attracted the attention of historians of science either from within or without. Books on the history of science dealing with the Islamic world, and more particularly with Iran, rarely cover the field beyond medieval times, thus showing a tangible research deficit.

The social formation of Iran in the nineteenth century was marked by the predominance of a precapitalist mode of production that had lasted for centuries. A semicolonial situation, superimposed upon Iranian society by the rival colonial powers in the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, set the stage for the beginnings of “modernization” along the lines of dependent capitalism. The result was an uneven and flawed development of capitalism, leading to the emergence and growth of a dual societal type in Iran.

The dualistic character of any social formation in the transitional stage toward capitalism is attributed to the coexistence of several forms of precapitalist, as well as capitalist, modes of production.

This article seeks to develop an interpretation of ornament as geometric pattern that embodies metaphysical intent in Iranian monuments of the fifth/eleventh century. The proposed argument elucidates cultural meaning relevant to a particular time and specific place, with implications for broader application.1 Reading geometric patterns as visual commentary, this approach relates the presence of patterns in art accompanied by a Qur'anic inscription to both the practice of pattern-making and the contemporary discourse concerning mathematics, philosophy, and the Islamic sciences in Iran. Particular emphasis is placed on the use of a passage from the Qur'an (59:21–24) inscribed on the tomb towers at Kharraqān, in which the Qur'anic term, amthāl, is taken literally to refer to the patterns executed on the monuments.

Since the mid-1980s, Israel, thGawdat Bahgate United States, and other Western powers have accused Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons capability. Iranian officials have categorically denied these accusations and claimed that their nuclear program is designed for civilian purposes. This essay examines the history of Iran's nuclear program since the late 1950s and analyzes the forces that shape the country's nuclear policy. These forces include perception of security threats from Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, and the United States; domestic economic and political dynamics; and national pride. The following section will discuss the European and Russian stance on Iran's nuclear ambition as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency's efforts to reach a compromise that would satisfy the international community's concerns and Tehran's demands. The essay concludes with some predictions on how Iran's nuclear program is likely to evolve in the next few decades.

This article analyzes two-dimensional images documented in the work of fourth/tenth century mathematician Abu al-Wafā' Būzjānī, which appear in his treatise, On Those Parts of Geometry Needed by Craftsmen. These images record three-dimensional tessellations of the sphere, geometric constructions, which may have served as a basis for architectural monuments and the interior design of domes in Islamic Iran. Such designs were very likely the result of collaborations among mathematicians and artists. As explained here, the construction of the icosahedron on a sphere, as presented in Būzjānī's treatise, is not mathematically correct. But the construction of the spherical dodecahedron is precise. Būzjānī's studies of the sphere as a three-dimensional form deserve further consideration as an important component in the development of mathematical thinking.

This article examines cultural attitudes on race and African slavery in late Qajar chronicles prior to abolition in 1929. In contrast to previous scholarship, Qajar textual sources reveal that elite cultural attitudes were relevant in structuring the social conditions of enslavement in Iran. Visual depictions and narratives about African eunuchs and concubines naturalized the violent acquisition and use of the Other. Slave narratives also bear witness to how such views of African corporeality determined the social worth of eunuchs and concubines in the domestic sphere.

In Iran and India religious philanthropy has been a feature of Zoroastrian piety as well as providing the means by which both communities have prospered throughout their respective histories. In Iran an elaborate structure for the regulation of charitable donations was already in place during the Sasanian period and laid the foundation for the laws governing pious foundations, awqāf, after the Islamic conquest. The increased interaction between Iranian Zoroastrians and Parsis from the mid-nineteenth century onwards led to the expansion of the Tehran Zoroastrian community and the rise of a wealthy merchant class which in turn enabled philanthropic activity to flourish. This development will be discussed here with reference to a particular vaqf, that of the first ārāmgāh or Zoroastrian cemetery to be established in Tehran in the early twentieth century. The case of Qasr-e Firuzeh spans three successive governments in Iran and gives an insight into the management of a charitable endowment within different political contexts.

The purpose of this essay is twofold; to present an argument on the role of communication in the processes of modernization that goes substantially against the dominant views of the last two decades, and to illustrate that point of view by the example of Iran. The article was written at a moment of enthusiasm, in January-February of 1979, when the Iranian revolution looked like one of the most unanimous, nonviolent and liberating social revolts of modern history, enjoying widespread domestic and international support. Alas, that rare historical opportunity was spoiled by division and rancor in the revolutionary leadership.

Iran's geography ensures that transport is a major problem for economic activity. Much of the country is sparsely settled; the major cities are hundreds of miles apart, with some roads running through inhospitable deserts. The population centers are separated from the oceans by high mountains. There are no rivers suitable for transportation over any distance. In short, transport is overwhelmingly by land through difficult terrain.

These natural barriers provide an explanation as to why Iran's economy consisted for many centuries of a series of local or regional markets, more than a national market. Producers and merchants did not consider their natural market to be Iran but rather their local region and, beyond that, the areas to which they could easily transport their goods, which could well mean nearby foreign regions rather than other parts of Iran.

Zoroastrian theology's emphasis on living the good life; the encouragement to create material wealth with the accompanying social obligations to put it to good use, explains the immensely extensive welfare system put in place by the Parsi community in India. Following the Arab conquest of Iran, the diminution in numbers and stature of the Zoroastrians in the ancestral land and the subsequent Parsi settlement in India, meant the marginalization of a people whose forebears once ruled a mighty empire. Once the Parsis acquired financial success, they put in place a community-wide network of benevolent institutions. This was followed by extending a muscular benevolence to the Zoroastrians of Iran, which evolved into a highly structured undertaking to ensure the safeguarding of the community from virtual extinction. Thus, Zoroastrian philanthropy was as much a reaffirmation of religious traditions as it was a means of self-preservation.

Under the leadership of Sheikh Ubeidullah of Nehri, in the last months of 1880 tens of thousands of Iranian and Ottoman Kurds marched on northwestern Iran and temporarily took control of several cities. This movement, coupled with the response of the Iranian army, resulted in great violence and displacement. Despite its failure, in the limited literature on Kurds this revolt is seen as the birth of Kurdish nationalism. Using extensive and underutilized historical documents—including official correspondence from Iranian and Ottoman authorities as well as British consuls, and day-to-day reports and memoirs from American missionaries active in the region—this project suggests that Sultan Abdulhamid's (Sunni) pan-Islamist agenda, Shi'i–Sunni tensions, the rise of Armenian nationalism, and missionary activities in the region also played significant roles in the formation of this movement.

In their narratives of the rise of the Safavid dynasty, many Safavid chroniclers include accounts of either one or two dreams of Shaykh Safi al-Din (1253-1334), founder of the Safavid order. A historiographical reading of the various renditions of the dreams serves several important purposes: it gives insight into the historical methodology of the Safavid chroniclers, it indicates changing religious perspectives in Safavid Iran, and it demonstrates the patterns of political legitimacy that evolved from the reign of Shah Isma'il (1501-1524) to the reign of Shah ‘Abbas I (1587-1629). This paper will thus examine six versions of Shaykh Safi's dreams and show how interpretations of the dreams changed over time, based on evolving religious and political attitudes.

Scholars have long been aware of the importance of dreams in Islamic history, and have outlined the many religious and political functions of dream episodes in historical and philosophical texts.

The economic history of Iran is a subject that has barely begun to receive the attention it deserves. Articles and parts of books on particular aspects of the subject appeared as early as the nineteenth century, but it is only since World War II that there have been extensive and serious studies in English, and these are still few and far between. Prof. Lambton's book Landlord and Peasant in Persia deserves to be singled out as a major pioneering study, and recently there has appeared Professor Charles Issawi's edited volume, The Economic History of Iran 1800-1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). This book brings together an outstanding collection of articles, excerpts, and sources, many of them translated from Persian, French, German, Russian, and Italian, that provide a basis for an understanding of the economic history of Iran in the nineteenth century.

Qajar Iran (1785-1925) began with notions of beauty that were largely gender-undifferentiated; that is, beautiful men and women were depicted with very similar facial and bodily features. Sometimes the only way one can tell who is male or female is through style of headgear. Other times it remains very difficult to tell if we are looking at a man or a woman.

In written sources, the same adjectives, such as moon-faced (māh ṭalᶜat), rose-faced (gul rukhsar), cypress-statured sarv qāmat or sarv qad), ruby lips (laᶜl lab), bow-eyebrows (kamān abrū), or alternatively crescent eyebrows (hilāl abrū), black-scented hair (mushgīn mū), narrow-waist (miyān bārīk or kamar bārīk), narcissus-eyed (nargīs chashm), etc., are used to describe male and female beauty.

The concept known in Shiᶜite jurisprudence as wilāYat al-faqīh has been interpreted in various and contending ways over the course of time. In order for us to examine these differences, we need to establish a few points. First, although the Qurᵓanic revelation bears principally on issues of morality and piety, early Muslims deemed it essential to relate these issues to practical matters in the exercise of authority. Second, rulership in the Islamic community (ummah) was a prerogative of the Prophet, whose mode of governance was to blend the approximately six hundred verses of the scripture that dealt with social affairs with the customary law (ᶜurf) of Western Arabia. After the Prophet's death, it was necessary to add to this mix a third ingredient, namely, the interpretation, by those knowledgable in the law, of how the Prophet would have met unanticipated contingencies.