Although theater forms as we know them in ancient Greece (circa 490 B.C.) and India (from the first to the fifth centuries A.D.) did not exist in Iran, some fascinating rituals and entertainment evolved into various dramas and performances.

Archeologists believe that certain figurines, seals, and stamps from western Iran dating to 4000 B.C. (depicting men with ibex-horned heads, hairy bodies, wearing shoes with turned-up toes and carrying wide collars receding down the back into bird tails) could represent ibex gods or “masters and protectors of game” or “mythical sorcerers playing the part of animals or humanized animals.” It is possible, however, that they were masked men, half sacred, half profane, who served as we shall see later on, as entertainers.

In October 522 B.C., a magi who had usurped the Iranian throne was killed by Darius of the Achaemenian dynasty, thus beginning a general massacre of the magis.

During the last third of the nineteenth century, Isfahan was the third largest city in Iran after Tehran and Tabriz. As was the case everywhere else in Iran, the process of economic linkage with Europe was beginning to have an impact on Isfahan, too. But the city was also caught in its own history and geography. It had lost its role as the center of political power in Iran and had experienced 150 years of sorry decline. In 1860 a German traveler noted:

It seems that not until 1880 was the population slowly increasing again.

Comprising some 900 pages in the Furughi edition, the works of Sa'di include a variety of genres. The Kulliyyat (Complete Works) opens with six “Risalahs” (Homilies), containing orthodox religious and moral teachings. The homilies precede the worldly and anecdotal “Gulistan” (Rose Garden) and the more profound and spiritual “Bustan” (Orchard)--Sa'di's best known works. Next are the “Qasa'id” (Elegies, or Odes) in Persian and Arabic, the “Marasi” (Thronodies), and the “Mulamma'at” (Bilingual poems in Persian and Arabic). The “Tarji'at” (Strophe Poems), the “Tayyibat” (Sweet Poems), the “Badayi’” (Cunning Odes), the “Khavatim” (Gems), and “Ghazaliyyat-i qadim” (Old Sonnets)--altogether 300 pages in the Kulliyyat--consist mostly of love poems, covering the whole gamut of this emotion from the secular love of women and boys to the mystical love whose object is union with the divine. Miscellaneous shorter pieces appear at the end of the Kulliyyat under the headings “Sahibiyyah,” “Masnaviyyat” (Couplets), “Qata'at” (Short Poems), “Ruba'iyyat” (Quatrains), and “Mufradat” (One-liners).

My earlier article on this subject (Iranian Studies XVI, 1-2, Winter-Spring 1983) concerned the situation up to the summer of 1981, i.e., the time of Bani-Sadr's dismissal and the first major bombing of the clerical leaders. This article, based on another visit I made to the village in 1983, describes the attitudinal changes that had occurred during the two intervening years.

For the most part, there appeared to be increasing pressure to adhere strictly to the “Islamic” code of dress and public behavior. Not only were there now a permanent contingent (of varying size) of mainly locally derived pasdar in the village, and a hezbollahi (i.e., fanatic, in the usage of the liberals) bakhshdar who served to enforce such behavior, but the members of the newly established village council and also government employees served the same function. Even school children were requested to tell their mothers to wear proper hejab.