The history of cosmetics in the Iranian world has suffered from neglect, perhaps because the subject has been deemed to be too frivolous for serious research. Yet, not only does the study of cosmetics shed light on the evolution of taste in fashions and canons of beauty, but more importantly it gives additional information on trade relations and cross-cultural influences. Conversely, the history of trade relations helps Us to clarify some elusive issues in the history of cosmetic fashions.

In this article, a brief introductory section on the Iranian concept of haft qalam ārāyish (or “the seven items of cosmetics“) will be followed by a historical overview of the evolution of cosmetics in antiquity and the relevance of fashions in the Mediterranean world to those in pre-Islamic Iran. In the Islamic period the focus will be on the haft qalam ārāyish in Iran and in regions under the influence of Irano-Islamic culture.

This essay on Qajar architecture in Isfahan is part of a more general investigation of urbanism, politics, and the shape, iconography, and meaning of the city in the nineteenth century. Aspects of architecture and the phenomenology of urban construction will be discussed within a broader thematic inquiry on Qajar Isfahan in two parts. The first discusses the various historical images of the city while the second will focus on the major trends of Qajar architecture in Isfahan within this context.

Research on Qajar art and architecture in Isfahan has been largely guided by an inquest on the former Safavid capital as a center of high politics and culture. This narrow focus accounts for historiographies and interpretational lacunae in the study of Qajar architecture in Isfahan. The following discussion hence is a first exploration of the city's architectural structures and one that frequently raises more questions than answers.

During the years of the constitutional revolution and the Great War, Iran experienced a widespread and general reassertion of tribal power and by 1921 much of the country was under tribal control. Riza Khan's seizure of power, however, inaugurated a transformation in the relationship between the center and periphery in Iran. For the new regime and for the nationalist elite which supported it, the suppression of the tribes was an indispensable element of their larger project: the construction of a modern, centralized state, with a culturally homogeneous population. Their agenda was clear: the destruction of the autonomy and feudal authority of the tribal leaderships was to be closely followed by the subjection of the tribal populations to the unmediated power of the modernized state and their integration into settled society. From the very moment of seizing power in Tehran, the new regime embarked on a sustained effort to establish its military and administrative hegemony over the tribes.

A generation ago, British feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham (1974) asked why women were “hidden from history“—and helped to found the field of women's history. Years later, Gayatri Spivak (1988) asked, “Can the subaltern speak?“—and added a new dimension to the field of subaltern studies. Throughout, Marxists have inquired into the relationship between the sexual division of labor and the mode of production, although Engels’ cogent commentary about the state, the family and reproduction (and the “world-historical defeat of the female sex“) was subsequently eclipsed by analyses that focused on capital and (the male working-) class. These questions are used to frame my paper, which examines the history and historiography of working-class women in Iran.

The field of Iranian historical studies is growing, but one is struck by the paucity of studies on working-class women, the dearth of data on women workers, and the absence of working women's voices in the major English-language studies of social, economic, and political history (e.g., works by Lambton, Issawi, Bharier, Keddie, Abrahamian, Ladjevardi, Bayat).