Few oil-producing economies, and for that matter few primary commodity-producing countries, have experienced as abrupt and severe a loss of foreign exchange earnings as that undergone by Iran in the period 1951–1953 following the nationalization of the oil industry and the subsequent international boycott of Iranian oil. While the literature on Iran during this period is extensive, it has focused largely on the political implications of nationalization and not so much on the economy's adjustment to the loss of foreign exchange. This article argues that the Iranian experience provides an instructive case study–admittedly an extreme one—of the ability of countries exposed to external shocks to adjust to the new realities.

The issue of woman's proper role in society is a lively one in any country today, East or West. Perhaps in no other area has the rapidity of social and economic change touched the lives and values of the average person so deeply. In the Middle East this topic is particularly sensitive because one of the most frequent criticisms leveled at Islam by Western observers is that it degrades women. Male guardianship of women, forced marriages, polygamy, the seclusion of women, and the man's unilateral right of divorce are all, in Western eyes, indications of the inferior status of women in Muslim society and of the inferiority of Islam as a religious and cultural system. Furthermore, Westerners often see it as their duty, whether as mission or strategem, to assist the Muslim woman to liberate herself from these traditional bonds, and especially to remove her veil and educate her.

Among the best books I read at this time… was Tarikh al-falak 'inda al-'Arab [The History of Astronomy among the Arabs] by Professor Nallino. I scrutinized it thoroughly, and I learned from it how the leading orientalists did their research, and how they persisted in their investigations, how they actually lived in the subject of their specialization, and how they proceeded carefully and deliberately from the simple to the complex in their research. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that I learned the methodology of research from this book.

A famous definition of power reads: In studying political organization, we have to deal with the maintenance or establishment of social order … by the organized exercise of coercive authority through the use, or the possibility of use, of physical force.

None of the editions of Hajji Baba of Isfahan nor the monographs and articles on its author, James Morier, that have come to my attention so far has made any comments on the introduction to this book. This introduction is couched in the form of a letter to the Reverend Doctor Fundgruben, Chaplain to the Swedish Embassy at the Ottoman Porte, and is dated London, 1st December, 1823. Doctor Fundgruben is characterized as being preoccupied with “hieroglyphic lore” and as the author of the book The Biography of Celebrated Mummies.