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.

The Iranian Revolution, while similar to other modern revolutions in many aspects, has resulted in several innovative social policies which have not been pursued as seriously by other revolutionary governments. In this paper we will study one political innovation that has significant consequences for economic development. Taking advantage of its near monopoly on higher education and complete control over public sector employment, the Iranian government has set up a complex system of political screening and filtering for admission to colleges and universities, as well public sector employment.

This filtering process is complemented by a quota system which further enables the government to control the accessibility of higher education and public sector employment to various social groups. As would be expected, public reactions to these discriminatory policies are diverse. The beneficiary social groups offer justifications for this policy while those who are damaged by it express resentment in private circles.

The Seljuk and Khwarazmid periods witnessed a growing relationship between Sufism and the state in the central Islamic lands. This link grew even stronger during the Ilkhanid Mongol period when there was an immense rise in the influence of Sufi masters in court circles, so much so that, in many ways, some Sufi figures became the primary religious authorities in Ilkhanid Iran. At the same time, there also appears to have been a blurring of the philosophical line separating Sufism from Shi'ism.

The family of wealthy Sufi masters from Bahrabad in Khurasan has attracted the attention of modern scholars on account of their involvement with the highest levels of the Ilkhanid state machinery and their association with the Kubrawi order and its influential figures, such as Najm al-Din Kubra, Sayf al-Din Bakharzi, and ‘Ala’ al-Dawla Simnani.

This is a study of the national sacralization of Hafiz as the “emblem of the manifestation of the Iranian spirit.” This sacralization began with E. G. Browne in 1902 but reached its definitive formulation in Abd al-Hosein Hazhir's monograph Hafiz-tashrih in 1928. For a nation to have a purchase on itself it must provide for a convocational experience. Shortly after the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, an ascending intellectual elite in Iran set out to do just that by fashioning a heterodox cult of the veneration of Persian poetry by recasting pre-modern texts, authors and their tombs into a national scripture authored by national prophets buried in sacred grounds which culminated in Hafiz as the “seal of its prophets.”

Although the first Persian language newspaper was published in Iran 170 years ago, Iranian journalism is a twentieth century creation, indeed a product of the 1906 Constitutional Revolution. The press played a significant part in the revolution, especially by promoting the demand for the rule of laws enacted by parliament, rather than decrees issued by the king or the religious leaders. Once a constitution had been declared, many journalists felt relieved of all restrictions and engaged in bitter, personal attacks on their opponents, including the monarch and his family. Many papers also opposed a press law that was passed soon after the revolution, arguing that it was meant to suppress their newly-gained freedom. Five more press laws have been passed in Iran since then, but the debate over press freedom and the rule of law in the country does not appear to be anywhere near resolution.

Despite the Eisenhower administration's strong support for the Pahlavi monarchy, tensions simmered under the surface of Mohammad Reza Shah's relationship with the United States throughout the 1950s. Following the Qarani coup attempt and the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, the shah sought to diminish the Soviet threat to his regime and reduce his dependence on the United States by exploring Moscow's offer of a non-aggression treaty. Drawing on American, British, and Iranian sources, this article provides the first detailed history of these secret Soviet–Iranian negotiations that ended in disastrous failure for the shah in February 1959.

The significant changes in the social, economic, and political conditions of Iran in the late Qajar era both precipitated and necessitated changes in cultural production. One way to better understand these shifting paradigms is through an examination of print culture. ᶜAbbas Mirza, the governor of Azerbaijan and a Qajar prince, has been credited with promoting and supporting the printing industry in Iran. In 1812, he oversaw the establishment of a printing house in Tabriz, and it was largely due to his influence that Tabriz became an important center of publishing. Jan Rypka noted that the first “printing business” in Iran was set up in Tabriz in the year 1824-25 but he believed the press to have been operational for only a decade before lithography overtook the printing enterprise. ᶜAbbas Mirza sent a group of students to England to study, the most notable being Mirza Salih Shirazi who was a student at Oxford University.

The poet Muhtasham Kāshānī (d. 1588) is today known primarily for his strophic elegy on the martyrdom of Imam Husayn at Karbalā, but such devotional poems make up only a tiny fraction of large oeuvre. Far more substantial are two works of a very different tenor, Nuql-i ‘Ushshāq (The Lover's Confection) and Risāla-yi Jalāliyya (The Glorious Epistle). Using an innovative combination of prose and poetry, these works tell the story of the poet-narrator's stormy affairs with, respectively, an upper-class courtesan and a footman attached to a nobleman's house. As part of the larger literary movement known as the maktab-i vuqū‘ or “realist school,” these purported autobiographical accounts of Muhtasham's amorous adventures reveal a sophisticated culture of eros and desire that differs strikingly from the usual representations of the state of literature and the arts under Shah Tahmāsp. After situating these works in their historical, literary, and cultural contexts, the article turns to a close analysis of an extended passage from each work to show how Muhtasham integrates lyric poetry, narrative, and setting to depict the pursuit of desire in the urbane world of early modern Persia.

This article examines the impact of modernization and Westernization on the clerical community in Iran between 1925 and 1941, and discusses briefly the reactions and attitudes of various factions and strata of the ulama toward the modernization efforts of the state. The study also demonstrates that the clergy's reaction to modernization was not one of outright opposition and resistance. While the clerical community as a whole rejected Westernization, its reaction to the government's modernization policies varied greatly.

The process of modernization in Iran was accompanied by a considerable degree of change in social stratification. New social classes and occupational groups emerged and the power of the old and traditional elites declined. In contrast to popular assumptions, the ulama as a traditional elite showed a remarkable degree of adaptability in response to modernization and social change.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is seriously challenged by a secularizing intellectual force from within. It may seem ironic for such a movement to appear in a clerical-dominated regime, initially thought by many to embody the victory of religion and tradition over secularism and modernization. But the Iranian revolution came in the wake of at least a century of exposure to secular ideas and institutions, an experience whose impact continued to be discerned during and after the revolution by observers who could see beyond the rhetoric of Islamism.

Confronted with the task of writing a chapter on “History as Literature” for the volume on Persian historiography in the new History of Persian Literature, I found myself asking, “What does this title mean? And what might it imply?“ In medieval Islamicate societies, “history” (Arabic ta˒rīkh, Persian tārīkh) referred both to a specific discipline and to works dealing with the objects of that discipline. If, as written works, histories may be broadly classed as “literature” (for which neither Arabic or Persian had a corresponding term until the modern period), this might suggest that historians placed style over substance, or/and that history is “imaginative writing” and may, as such, contain an element of “fiction.” Indeed, as I shall note below, recent research on Arabic historiography (which poses somewhat different problems, in the main, than does Persian) has argued that many of the “historical” accounts which appear therein are, in fact, “fiction” passed off as history.

Social life in Qajar Iran was segregated by both gender and class. Parallel to social life were social pastimes and amusements which were generally segregated in the same manner. Foreign travelers to Iran, in true Orientalist fashion, frequently mention that people had few amusements. This paper will discuss various amusements and diversions, ranging from outdoor activities such as hunting and shooting, to physical and intellectual games, to high drama such as passion plays (ta‘ziya) and folk performances as well as street performers, puppeteers and mimicry, dancers and musicians, and to activities promoting leisure and enjoyment. It attempts to cover as many activities as possible, but it will also show that there was such a wide choice of amusements that it is, in fact, difficult to discuss them all.

The under-appreciated role of the press as a tool of public diplomacy was rooted in its origins as a Qajar state project in the nineteenth century, but also cultivated by a shared impulse of Iranian journalists and statesmen to represent Iran effectively in the court of world opinion. Moreover, foreign governments often reacted to the Iranian press generally, not just the official newspapers and not just newspapers produced in Iran, as a forum though which to advance or protect their interests in Iran. The Pahlavi state integrated the press as part of a larger state-run mass communication policy in the 1930s that would eventually include new technologies such as radio, and retained public diplomacy as an essential purpose of the media. This study draws upon archival material, press accounts, and memoirs.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 saw the mobilization and cooperation of a variety of groupings that were brought together by their shared determination to overthrow the Shah. However, it was not only opposition to the Pahlavi regime, but also suspicion of and disdain for that regime's Western backers that united these revolutionary groups. Religious leaders (ulama), merchants (bazaaris), intellectuals and students alike all espoused the strong anti-Western sentiments that had been developing in Iran over the previous two decades. But what particular factors can be seen to have encouraged the adoption of these sentiments in the lead-up to the revolution, and in what ways were they articulated and subsequently put into practice by the leaders of the new regime? This article suggests that various domestic and international influences can be seen to have shaped the emergence of Iran's revolutionary discourse of “economic independence.” In particular, the paper argues that a peculiar blend of Shi'i concepts of social justice and Marxist-Leninist discourses of class struggle and anti-imperialism not only informed the economic outlook of Iran's burgeoning revolutionary movement during the period 1953–79, but was also enshrined in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic.

One of the least-studied eras of Iranian history is that between the invasion of Changiz Khan (Genghis Khan) in the early 13th century and the establishment of the Safavid Empire early in the 16th. This was a time of unprecedented political upheaval when much of the Iranian world became subject to rule by Mongols and Turks. The period between the collapse of the (Mongol) Il-Khan dynasty in 1335, however, and the consolidation of the empire of Timur (Tamerlane) in the 1380s was an age of regionalism par excellence and one of cultural florescence. The most important of the minor dynasties that flourished at this time were the Muzaffarids in Fars, Iraq-i ‘Ajam and Kirman (1314-93), the Jalayirids in Iraq, Kurdistan and Azarbaijan (1336-1432), and, in Khurasan, the Karts at Herat (1245-1389) and the Sarbidars at Sabzavar (1336-81).

The Arab conquest of the Sasanian empire (633-651 A.D.) provided the Iranian peoples with their first extensive contact with Islam. Prior to this, encounters between Zoroastrians and Muslims had generally been restricted to the lower reaches of the Mesopotamian plain. More importantly, this conquest installed Islam as the religion of the new rulers, replacing Zoroastrianism, referred to as the good religion (Phl. weh dēn) by its followers, which had enjoyed royal favor under the Sasanians. The conquest of the Sasanian empire resulted in large numbers of Arabs entering and eventually settling on Iranian territory. The presence of these Arabs on the Mesopotamian plain and Iranian plateau, and their eventual settlement there, naturally resulted in coexistence and social interaction between Muslims and the native Zoroastrians. This interaction would initially have been slow, as the Arab troops were confined to military garrisons (Ar. Amşār).