Published in 1933, Walther Hinz's detailed study on the short and turbulent reign of Safavid Shah Ismacil II (984-85/1576-77), which he likens to that of Ivan the Terrible, has yet to be surpassed. Although Hinz consulted many Safavid chronicles then in manuscript, including a number which have yet to be published, his discussion of a major facet of the period's history, Shah Ismacil II’s religious policies, is based primarily on the account of Iskandar Beg Munshi in Tārīkh-i cālam-ārā-yi cAbbasī, which he essentially paraphrases. Hinz concludes that Shah Ismacil II’s pro-Sunni policies, including primarily his prohibitions against cursing the Companions of the Prophet and his attempt to remove the Shicite credal statement cAlīyun walī Allāh “cAli is the ally of God” from the coinage, resulted not from political expediency but rather from personal conviction. In the end, these policies failed. Realizing that he could not win over the Qizilbash and that he himself was in grave danger, Shah Ismacil rescinded his decrees, had his pro-Sunni ṣadr and advisor, Mirza Makhdum Sharifi, placed under house arrest, and reconfirmed his commitment to Shicism before the end of his short reign.

The specific sense that the word xratu- possesses in the Gāthās has not received the attention it deserves. As this article will show, this specific sense points to the eschatological foundation of Zoroastrianism. Eschatological concerns did not first develop in the frame of an established “monotheistic” religion; rather, Zoroastrianism arose from those concerns. The xratu- has a strictly eschatological function in the Gāthās. The noun retains this semantic capacity not only in the Young Avestan but also in the Middle Persian Zoroastrian texts. Iranian languages share the noun with Vedic and (archaic) Greek, where it has the basic meaning of the mental capacity to achieve proposed goals, hence practical intelligence, resourcefulness, or efficacy. If this is in fact the general sense that xratu- has in Iranian, as will be briefly pointed out, the specifically eschatological meaning that it acquires in the Gāthās must indicate the type of religious discourse to which these compositions belong. The noun may, further, have developed its eschatological meaning before the time of the Gāthās and already become a technical term. In this case, it would be legitimate to ask whether there are traces in the Gāthās that point to the institutional background of the term. There do indeed seem to be such traces. The term seems to have been used in the technical sense of the mental power to attain the divine sphere in the daēva cult.

Addressing the Arabic and Persian scientific traditions in eastern Islamic lands, this study focuses on the nature and place of demonstrations in optics and mechanics, sub-disciplines of geometry. A focus on the comparative context of demonstrations facilitates clearer understanding of local coordinates that affected the development of these fields, which are shown to have had distinct, and sometimes opposite, cases of transmission and application in Islamic and European lands. Sample demonstrations are presented in an appendix to highlight the concept and terminology of “mithāl” to identify shifts from geometrical to experimental methods in the case of optics, and from physical productions to model duplications in the case of mechanics.

Alongside the burgeoning secular ideas on people and state during the Constitutional Revolution, a movement seeking a modern Islamic state, governed according to the shari'a, also emerged. This article studies the evolution of that movement in Isfahan, first by contrasting the experience of two brothers of very different ages, Aqa Najafi Isfahani and Haj Aqa Nurullah Isfahani, and examining the way the younger became receptive to the Pan-Islamic ideas then current in the Middle East. Second, the article considers in particular the political theory of Aqa Nurullah, which was influenced by his practical experience of institutional innovation in Isfahan. He argued that constitutionalism was implicit to Islam and saw it as generating wealth for Muslims. He also advocated many of the features of later Islamism, including the desire for a strong army.

Contemporary Iranian cinema has enjoyed wide success on the international scene—winning awards at film festivals, receiving praise by critics, and being screened in many countries around the world. But this success has another side to it: at home in Iran, the movie theater attendance is in decline and a range of players, including individuals, policymakers and government entities continue to meddle in shaping its future. Throughout the twentieth century and during the two decades of post-revolutionary successes abroad, Iranian cinema developed its own unique style and aesthetic. A cinema which was sometimes nurtured and financially encouraged by the government, yet at other times censored or banned by it. This paper provides a brief survey of the history of Iranian cinema since the 1900s in order to reveal the paradoxical issues both propelling and bedeviling its development and the role of principal actors involved in fashioning an Iranian national cinema.

Research in Iranian social and economic history is still relatively unknown. This situation is puzzling in view of the social and economic research in Arab and Turkish history, particularly from 1955 onwards. in the past ten years, social and economic research in these two areas of Middle East history have produced some excellent results. But similar research in Iranian history has not developed. This state of affairs is disappointing when we recall the words of Vladimir Minorsky in his "Foreword" to the Tadhkirat al-mulūk in 1943:

This article is an exploration of the interconnected legal ties between Christians and Zoroastrians in the early Islamic era. Drawing from the writings of the Christian authors Ishobokt, Simeon, and Henanisho, Payne describes how East Syrian bishops appropriated laws of marriage, inheritance, and property from Iranian jurisprudential traditions as a means of transferring wealth intergenerationally and extending their judicial authority. Payne thus explores the ways in which the Christians of Iran were influenced by the Iranian legal system and culture and in the seventh century CE.

This article presents a detailed criticism of Darioush Bayandor's book Iran and the CIA. Bayandor argues that certain Shi'a clerics, rather than the US Central Intelligence Agency, were the main actors responsible for overthrowing Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in August 1953. Bayandor presents no major new evidence to support this claim. He gives too much weight to certain statements, draws unwarranted inferences from others, and discounts or disregards a wealth of evidence that conflicts with his account. He overemphasizes the role of civilian crowds in the overthrow of Mosaddeq and underemphasizes the role of Iranian military units organized by the CIA. And he fails to acknowledge the importance of US and especially British efforts to foment opposition to Mosaddeq before the coup.

The Turkmen inhabit a portion of the Central Asian steppe extending cast from the Caspian Sea to the Amu Darya, a region divided among three countries--Iran, Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union. The central part of this area is the Kara Kum, or “black sand,” a vast, largely uninhabited desert. The majority of the Turkmen are concentrated in two somewhat more fertile regions bordering the Kara Kum. One area consists of the banks of the Amu Darya; the other is a long strip of plains and low mountains, lying south of the Kara Kum and separating it from the Iranian Plateau (see Map below). The Turkmen number about a million and a half, with approximately a million living in the Soviet Union, and roughly a quarter of a million each in Iran and Afghanistan.

In less than twenty years, Nadir Shah built an empire across Iran, India, and Central Asia. When he took the throne on the Mughan steppe in 1148/1736, Nadir confronted the problem of how to legitimize his reign after two centuries of Shi'i Safavid rule. He attempted to solve this problem, in part, by challenging Iran's Twelver Shi'i identity.

Nadir proposed to the Ottomans that Twelver Shi'ism be considered a fifth school of Sunni Islam, to be called the Ja'fari madhhab after the sixth Imam, Ja'far al-Sadiq. In exchange for Shi'i renunciation of such practices as sabb (the ritual cursing of the first three caliphs), Nadir proposed that the Ottomans give this Ja'fari madhhab all the privileges enjoyed by the four Sunni schools, and that a fifth pillar be erected in the Ka'bah in Mecca to commemorate it. He asked that the Ottomans allow him to appoint the leader of the annual ḥajj caravan from Iran.

The Royal Harem is Perhaps One of the Most Misunderstood Institutions of the Perso-Islamic social order. The myths surrounding the harem originated primarily in the West, fomented to a great extent by European travelers over a period of several centuries. As is well known, the Islamic empires, at their zenith (beginning around A.D. 1500), attracted numerous European merchants and traders, as well as assorted adventurers, emissaries, and missionaries. Many of them took up residence in these countries, some for a short time, some for many years. They toured cities, saw the countryside and became acquainted with the local people. In several instances, some made their way into the royal courts. Many of these travelers kept extensive notes about their journeys and left careful sketches of the various aspects of the society with which they came in contact. Often, upon their return home, many made their narratives available at court and sometimes to the public.

By analyzing linguistic utterances between teachers and students in a Persian heritage language class in the United States, this research study sought to illuminate what kinds of linguistic resources were used by these speakers to show different attitudes, moods and emotions. Furthermore, this study demonstrated possible functions of these linguistic markers and the way they were utilized to influence another party.

This paper discusses the attempted resumption of paramount Qashqa'i leadership upon the fall of the Pahlavi regime in 1979. Paramount Qashqa'i leaders had been exiled from Iran following their support of Prime Minister Mosaddeq in the early 1950s and had, since then, either remained in exile or returned to Iran to live under political restrictions. In early 1979, those in exile returned to Iran and joined the others in resuming positions of regional and national political power.

These questions are central to the discussion and analysis: What was the nature of Qashqa'i leadership both before and during Pahlavi rule, and how and why had it changed under the Islamic Republic of Iran? How had changes in Iran affecting the Qashqa'i people between 1953 and 1979 affected the attempted resumption of paramount leadership? How had the nature of the Iranian state changed during these periods? How are Qashqa'i leaders best characterized? Are they “tribal” or national-minority leaders, or are they better seen as regional and national powers? How is Qashqa'i leadership different from other kinds of political leadership in Iran, in particular that of other tribes and national minorities, and why?

The colonization of the Muslim lands and the increasing political and commercial influence of the Christian West during the last 200 years shocked Muslim leaders. In response to the agonizing problems that increasing incursion by the West brought to the Muslim lands, there arose three groups of intellectuals. The traditionalists believed that the situation was transitory and that traditional Islam would eventually triumph. The ultramodernists sought salvation through uncritical and wholesale imitation of the West.

Among the prominent advocates of this last approach one can count Afghani, Abduh, Gokalp, Iqbal, and probably Kasravi, the Iranian social reformist. Kasravi seems to stand out among them in two important respects. First, unlike his predecessors, he formulated his ideas in a systematic way, tracing “problems” to their roots and advocating explicit “remedies.” Second, Kasravi never shifted strategy to suit the occasion as did his predecessors who, by so doing, confused their followers.

This article examines the importance of the political thought and praxis of politico, ‘reformist’ strategist and intellectual, Saʿid Hajjarian, and his rethinking of the post-revolutionary Iranian state’s sources and bases of legitimacy in the 1990s and 2000s. It also provides an exposition and assessment of a number of his recommendations for the realisation of ‘political development’ (towseʿeh-ye siyāsi) in the post-revolutionary order and their contribution to the discourse of eslāhāt during the presidency of Hojjat al-Islam Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005). Moreover, it attempts to situate Hajjarian within a broader spectrum of reformist political opinion and its proponents within the Islamic Republic of Iran’s political class.

In the first surviving portrait of Fath ᶜAli Shah (r. 1797-1834) as the Qajar sovereign, painted in 1213/1797-98, just after his accession, the young shah appears with a turban-like cap decorated with a plumed jiqqa (aigrette, fig. 1). The so-called Kayanid crown, a creation of his uncle and predecessor, Aqa Muhammad Shah Qajar (1785-97), is missing. In contrast to most other royal portraits of the later years, here in this majestic work by the master painter, Mirza Baba Shirazi, the shah poses on what appears to be a platform throne covered with a carpet, though at the time there was no Qajar royal throne in existence. The absence of the crown and the throne, the most conspicuous symbols of kingly authority, made the young Fath ᶜAli Shah a crown-and-throne-less king (bī tāj va takht), a synonym for utter powerlessness in the Persian political culture.

The document translated below is a will written by cAbbās Mīrzā, the Heir Apparent, in July, 1830, three years before his death in Khurasan. This will is important because of its style and content. Written in a hasty manner, and originally in Persian, in some places it gives the impression of having been translated from Āzarī Turkish. The author has paid little attention to grammatical rules and literary embellishments. The force of the document derives from the author's deep feelings of hope (for future military success), sorrow (for past defeats), and uncertainty and worry (for the destiny of his children). References are made to the political events and personalities of the times, not directly, but in connection with the author's personal concerns. On the whole, cAbbās Mīrzā's major preoccupations in this document are to justify past errors, to be buried as a man of God, and to be remembered as a national hero.

The toponym Kerend has a long history. This study explores the appearance of Kerend in pre-modern sources, beginning with the toponym Karintaš in the late second millennium BC. Kassite, Elamite and Assyrian rivalry for control over the central western Zagros mountains is discussed and the survival of the name in later antiquity is investigated. A derivative of the name appears in Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography and in the Parthian Stations of Isidore of Charax, as well as in the late Antique Cosmographia of the Anonymous Geographer of Ravenna. A homonymous name from the area east of the Caspian Sea is also discussed, as are several unrelated names occurring in other sources (Achaemenid Elamite, Armenian).