This study explores the perspectives of female Iranian students living in both Iran and the UK concerning violence against women. A qualitative approach, in the form of in-depth interviews, was carried out with 21 participants. Drawing on Stark’s concept of “liberty crime” the research found that the participants, regardless of their country of residence, perceived violence against women (VAW) as denying the opportunity for equal personhood by stripping away the victim’s sense of self. However, the scope of what was considered to be liberty crime was affected by the individual participants’ religious beliefs and their degree of acceptance of the Iranian state’s gender ideology. The research highlighted the extent to which different forms of VAW are interlinked and combine in order to control and subjugate women irrespective of their country of residence.

The following article discusses the development of ancient Iranian studies, namely the important philological, archaeological, religious, and historical discoveries in the twentieth century and how they have changed our views of ancient Iran and its impact on modern Iranian identity. The essay also previews the use and abuse of ancient Iranian studies by the state and their focus on the newly discovered Achaemenid Empire at the cost of Arsacid and Sasanian dynasties.

When Presbyterian missionaries entered Iran, they did so with the intention of introducing modern, Western civilization to the country. Regarding themselves as “servants of God sent to render service to man,” they favored a future for Iran in education, society, and politics much like what they foresaw for America: a nation that would be Christian, scientific, vigorous, cooperative, and democratic. In the inter-war years, it seems, they sought to achieve this vision by supporting Reza Shah's military dictatorship.

This seeming pro-Pahlavism can be explained, in part, by Jesus‘ exhortation to “render … unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's” (Matt. 22:21). Serving but one God—that of Abraham, Isaac, Moses, and Jesus—the missionaries had to contend with two “caesars.” While they were patriotic Americans, loyal to the United States, they lived and worked in Iran, and therefore served at the pleasure of the Iranian government.

Iranian villages generally contain two distinct social classes: (1) peasants who cultivate land they own and/or rent, and (2) landless non-farmers who engage in various commercial, service, and labor activities appropriate to an agricultural economy. Peasants generally employ one term to designate all landless villagers; the most widely used is “khwushnishin.” Although for peasants this term is useful, it poses some difficulty for the social scientist since khwushnishins do not comprise a homogeneous class, but rather are a collectivity of diverse occupational groups sharing in common only a landless status. Included among the khwushnishins are some of the wealthiest, as well as some of the poorest, of all villagers. In terms of economic and social stratification, one can identify at least three separate groups of khwushnishins. In this paper I propose to describe these three groups and analyze their unique roles in the villages.

This article examines state repression in the Iranian bazaar during the anti-profiteering campaign from 1975–1977. While many have argued that the anti-profiteering campaign helped spark the revolutionary mobilization of the bazaar itself, this article posits that scholars should also consider the notion that the campaign helped to foster popular support for the revolutionary movement as a whole. Given the bazaar's ties to middle and lower classes of Iranian society, as well as their status as the country's “economic barometer,” this article presents the theory that the anti-profiteering campaign played a role in generating popular discontent against the former regime in the period just prior to the 1979 Revolution.

This paper maps how American popular culture came to terms with the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran through a study of Hussein Khosrow Vaziri. Vaziri, better known by his moniker, “The Iron Sheik,” was active in professional wrestling in the 1980s and remains to this day one of the most well-known Iranians in American cultural memory. Through an analysis of his character and how he has been represented in the popular media, I argue that he was chiefly utilized as a figure through whom Americans could cope with the devastating blow that the Revolution caused to American power. I argue that this reaction continues to this day, albeit focusing not on Iran but on the current political tensions involving the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Social hierarchy in Iran, as in other modernizing nations, has undergone major changes in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, contemporary patterns of social hierarchy are rooted in the traditions of inequality that prevailed during the Qajar era. In provincial Iran, these traditions of hierarchy and inequality were structured in part by the form of political authority. In the nineteenth century, many provincial regions were ruled by local notables who maintained varying degrees of independence from the royal court. Along with leading landowning families, merchants, and clergy, they formed the elite of provincial society. The culture of social hierarchy was also shaped by traditional Islamic and Persian views of society and by the meaning attributed to the distribution of wealth, power, and prestige in Iran.

Da (Mother): Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseini, as Recorded by Seyyedeh A‘zam Hoseini was published by Sureh-ye Mehr, the official publisher of the Artistic Center of the Islamic Development Organization, in 2008. According to the publishers, it became the biggest seller in the shortest period in Iranian publishing history. This article analyzes the conditions of production, distribution and reception of that work, and compares it to the canon of other contemporary Iranian war narratives. It argues that the unusually wide and varied reception of a traditional discourse of sacrifice, nationalism and revolutionary fervor was facilitated by the fashionable format of the woman's memoir, in addition to a formidable propaganda machine.

The revolution in Iran stands out as a striking exception to other Middle Eastern coups of the twentieth century. While the latter have mostly been of a military-putsch type, in Iran, an apparently stable regime was toppled by a civilian, predominantly clerical, leadership capable of calling forth mass participation on a vast scale, neutralizing the army, and forcing the shah into exile. This religious leadership was strong and resourceful enough to weld its components together and to overcome ideological barriers that elsewhere, and in other circumstances, would have precluded joint action. But in Iran—where political cooperation among divergent groups has been a recurrent feature for the past hundred years—the clergy, the National Front, other middle-of-the-road liberals, and the left were able to make common cause. Reviewing the period from 1890 to the mid-1960s, Nikki Keddie writes: “Although it is a truism that politics makes strange bedfellows…the alliance between much of the religious leadership of Iran and the most advanced Westernized political activists is virtually without parallel either in the Islamic or the non-Islamic world.”

When Aqa Mohammad Shah Qajar overthrew the Zand dynasty and established himself on the Persian throne in 1794, large parts of the country were in the hands of tribal chieftains and local leaders. Aqa Mohammad himself had to fight several campaigns to assert his control over the provinces. Under his successors, further campaigns were waged to extend or, more frequently, to maintain or reassert central authority. In the second half of Naser al-Din Shah's reign (1848-1896), the authority of the central government appeared to observers to be more firm than in the early part of the century. But the hold of the center over the provinces, and particularly over the outlying areas, remained precarious. Any weakening of the center, deterioration of the financial situation, or other setback could potentially upset whatever delicate balance had been achieved between the center and the provinces and lead to a reassertion of provincial autonomy.

During the medieval period iran produced one of the richest repertoires of local histories in the Islamic world. Ibn Funduq, the author of the local history of Bayhaq studied here, enumerates 15 local histories of Khurasan alone. These include three local histories of Marv by al-ᶜAbbas b. Musᶜab b. Bishr, Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad b. Sayyar (198-268/814-881), and Abu'l-ᶜAbbas b. Saᶜid al-Maᶜdani (d. 375/986). (al-Sakhawi calls Musᶜab b. Bishr's work a “history of (the city).“) To these Ibn Funduq adds two local histories of Herat by Abu Ishaq Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Yunis (?) al-Bazzaz and Abu Ishaq Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Saᶜid al-Haddad. (Sakhawi, apparently confused, attributes both histories to Abu Ishaq Muhammad b. Yasin al-Harawi al-Haddad); a Tārīkh-i Bukhārā va Samarqand by Saᶜd b. Janah; two histories of Khwarazm by al-Sari b. Dalwiya and Abu ᶜAbdallah Muhammad b. Saᶜid respectively; a history of Balkh by Abu ᶜAbdallah Muhammad b. ᶜAqil al-Faqih;

Among the newest developments in the ethnography of Iran is research on Iranians living outside of Iran. The large post-revolutionary Iranian diaspora raises many interesting issues and questions, including to what extent Iranian culture can be maintained abroad and how effectively displaced Iranians can function within host societies. Several features of the Iranian diaspora also make this population attractive for testing general theories concerning migration and adaptation. In addition, the conditions that led to the Iranian diaspora of the last 25 years also made it difficult for anthropologists to carry out research in Iran, enhancing the attractiveness of studying Iranian populations outside of Iran.

The transformation in the structure of classes and of power in the past two centuries in Iran, as in many Third World countries, can be seen as: (1) a change from a relatively decentralized structure of power in which several different groups and localities shared power to one in which power is concentrated in the center and is backed by a modernized army and bureaucracy, (2) a change from primarily vertical divisions in society, in which the most homogeneous groups--tribes, ulama, towns, and religious communities--comprise both rich and poor, to a division based on more horizontal class lines. These two changes go together and form part of the transformation often referred to under such rubrics as “modernization,” “westernization,” or “the impact of the West,” although none of these terms is fully satisfactory. This paper attempts to outline the basic lines of these two sociopolitical changes in modern Iran and also to assess recent sociopolitical developments there.

Against the background of language policy research on Iran, and drawing on insights from recent scholarship on the role of translation in language policy, this article calls into question the claim that “Persianization” of non-Persian peoples is the main element of language policy in Iran. In so doing, the article examines closely the role of translation as enacted in two legal instruments: the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Law of Parliamentary Elections. The study illustrates that although official communication between Iranian authorities and citizens is a prototypical example of monolingualism and non-translation, voluntary translation happens between Persian and non-Persian speaking individuals, acting as a viable and cost-effective bottom-up alternative for the inclusion of non-Persian speaking peoples, far more effective than an impractical, top-down language policy reform implicitly found in the “Persianization” claim.

Shortly after the investiture of Shah Isma'il (r, 907-30/1501-24) in Iran as the first Safavid monarch, Twelver Shi'ism was declared the religion of the new empire. Shah Isma'il and succeeding monarchs seemed determined to convert Iran from Sunnism to a literate urban version of Twelver Shi'ism, distinct from the folk religion of the Turkoman nomads. The process of conversion to Shi'ism is best understood within the larger political framework of Ottoman-Safavid relations, as an attempt to demarcate Safavid territory against Ottoman encroachments and insulate its inhabitants from Sunnite leanings. To disseminate the Shi'ite creed and apply Islamic law (sharī'a) in accordance with the Shi'ite school (madhhab), the shahs invited the Shi'ite ulama from Arabic-speaking territories such as Iraq, Bahrain, and Jabal ‘Amil (in present-day Lebanon) to reinforce their counterparts in Persia. Among these, the contribution of the scholars of Jabal ‘Amil became especially notable as they successfully cultivated Safavid patronage and reaped unprecedented socio-economic power.

Tobacco was ‘discovered’ by Christopher Columbus when he reached the Caribbean islands. The Carib Indians used tobacco, both for its medicinal and pleasurable properties and for ceremonial purposes. The result was tobacco's conquest of the world, which began with its introduction to Europe (France in 1556; Portugal, 1558; Spain, 1559, and England, 1565). The Portuguese soon also introduced it in India, probably around 1580. Tobacco is said to have been introduced to the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul) about 1601, but this probably happened much earlier. Its introduction into Iran, via India and/or Turkey, most likely occurred in the late 1590s. One source states that tobacco came to Iran in or around 1605. However, tobacco was certainly known before that time in both the Ottoman and Safavid Empires, since Anthony Sherley used tobacco when he arrived at the Orontes River (al-ᶜAsi) in Syria (part of the Ottoman Empire) on his first journey to Iran in 1598 and, as a tobacco addict, he certainly would have taken it with him to the latter country.

One of the most important contemporary Persian prose chronicles of Nadir Shah's life is the Tārīkh-i ‘ālam-ārā-yi Nādirī (The World-Illuminating History of Nadir). Its author, Muhammad Kazim Marvi, served Nadir as a financial officer, and appears to have witnessed many of the events that he depicts. Completed after Nadir's death in 1160/1747 but before the last Afsharid ruler fell in 1210/1796, the AAN offers one of the most detailed contemporary accounts of Nadir's career. Several scholars, including N. D. Miklukho-Maklai and Muhammad Amin Riyahi, have begun to investigate the historical context of the work, discussing such issues as the date of its composition and its relationship to other accounts of the period. This article will attempt to build upon their work by focusing on what Muhammad Kazim's account of Nadir's career may reveal about his views on kingship and legitimacy.

During the last 65 years, European, American and Russian historians have often tried to study the reasons which led to the Allied invasion of Iran on 25 August 1941. For a long period, the main obstacle was the limited access to official documentary sources. Gradually, British and Russian archives started to declassify their documents concerning the events of August 1941. That, in turn, caused a new wave of publications on this topic. Unfortunately, even with newly available sources, modern researchers were frequently unable to grasp the whole picture, emphasizing only one reason for the invasion or even exaggerating its importance. This paper attempts to analyze the most common explanations of the reasons for the occupation of Iran offered by different historians and try to find out which of these causes impelled the Allies to invade Iran. The research paid special attention to existing Russian primary and secondary sources on the issue which are less well known to English readers. Important information found in them allows events related to the Allied occupation of Iran in 1941 to be described from a relatively new angle.

It is surprising, somehow, to witness the degree to which the concept of national character doggedly maintains its intuitive appeal in the social sciences. Despite widespread criticism of the use of the concept as the basis for studying human societies, few researchers find themselves able to deny that different societies seem to have a distinctive “feel” to them, and it is a rare field worker indeed who doesn't speak, informally at least, of the members of a society in which he has worked in terms of collective “psychological” characteristics. Widely used anthropological concepts such as “ethos,” “value system,” and even “culture” itself reflect this feeling in differing degrees. The inherent intuitive appeal of the national character concept persists, then, despite our best efforts to repudiate it.

In trying to understand this phenomenon, it seems a vain effort to return once again to the question: “Do national characters exist?”. In place of this well-worked exercise, I feel it more profitable to turn away from the natives and focus on the epistemology of the observer.