Abbas Kiarostami's filmmaking draws on the aesthetics of modern Persian poetry, especially the poetry of Forough Farrokhzad and Sohrab Sepehri. In his films, Kiarostami, impacted by Sepehri and Farrokhzad's “de-politicized” poetry, “de-experiences” our perception of reality. Kiarostami aestheticizes everyday life by employing non-manipulative film stylistics. In films such as Through the Olive Trees and Where Is the Friend's House? he uses a minimalist approach by employing amateur actors and children, depth of field, and minimal camera work to enhance Sepehri's philosophy of novel outlook. Through a masterful intermingling of poetic discourse with his film sensibilities, Kiarostami has achieved a profoundly humanist approach to cinema. Kiarostami mixes the two genres of documentary and fiction to remind the audience of the artificiality of constructing a factual point. To attain this goal, he sometimes uses an ironical and witty cinematic language that is harshly self-critical and self-reflexive. Kiarostami is a poet/philosopher who “writes” his poetic films with camera.

This article explores the relationship between academic studies concerning Iran in Meiji Japan (1868‒1912) and Orientalism in Western scholarship. Many researchers who have limited their definition of Iranian studies to the professional works published since the 1930s have concluded that there is an indirect relation between Iranian studies in Japan and Orientalism. In contrast, this paper takes it in a wider sense to mean all academic studies regarding Iran. The paper focuses on two such important proto-academic fields regarding foreign countries in Meiji Japan: geography and international politics. It concludes that the pioneering Iranian studies scholars in the Meiji period were not totally immune to Orientalism on the one hand but, on the other, that their research on Iran was less closely connected to imperialism than the Western scholarship that Edward Said famously critiqued.

The article examines the parameters of the irregular army in Qajar Iran, including its assembly, numbers, and provisions, as well as the army's organizational structure: its administration and the divisions of the ad hoc forces (provincial militia and tribal cavalry) and of the standing forces (the shah's bodyguard and artillery corps). Until the creation of the so-called regular army units in Iran at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the irregular army was regarded as the only military force in the service of the Qajar dynasty. Despite the existence of a “regular army,” irregular forces, particularly tribal cavalry, continued to play a significant role in Iran's military system throughout the nineteenth century. By understanding the features of the irregular army—its role in Qajar society, its organizational and social structures, its ethnic composition, and other characteristics—we can better understand the character of the state itself.

On his return to Qom on March 7, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini announced during a remarkable speech the intention to create a ministry having as its main task amr bi'l ma'ruf wa nahi ‘an al-munkar, or to promote the good and forbid the bad. What is so astounding about this is the fact that a government institution charged with this task has long since ceased to exist. Moreover, the charge of amr bi'l ma'ruf has been historically associated with an official known as muhtasib. In view of the planned resurrection of this office, a historical analysis of the functions of the muhtasib and his office, the hisba or ihtisab, would seem to be in order.

Before describing the historical development of the function of muhtasib, two questions are posed. The first is: Does a direct relationship exist between pre-Muslim officials such as the Byzantine agoranomos and the Muslim muhtasib?

The present and past progressive tenses in Persian are the only tenses in which both the main verb and the minor verb dâštan “to have” receive agreement marking. Morpho-syntactically, Persian progressives show the similar properties of both Aspectual Complex Predicates and Serial Verb Constructions. The question that this paper addresses is: are Persian progressive tenses Aspectual Complex Predicates or Serial Verb Constructions? By presenting the morpho-syntactic and semantic analysis of Persian progressives, and highlighting the main properties of Aspectual Complex Predicates and Serial Verb Constructions, the paper shows that, despite the similarities between these verbal constructions and Aspectual Complex Predicates, Persian progressives are instances of Serial Verb Constructions where neither a complementizer nor a conjunction separates the two verbs and the complex describes a single conceptual event.

This study examines the Jamshid of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and its later reception, specifically the Islamic refashioning of Jamshid in fourteenth-century Shiraz, as evidenced in the ghazals of Hāfez (d. 1389), and the lyric poetry of Khvāju-ye Kermāni (d. 1352 or 1360), and ʿObeyd-e Zākāni (d. 1371). Hāfez, Khvāju, and ʿObeyd used literary devices such as talmih (allusion) and ubi sunt to both engage with and reshape the past, and this refashioning of the past was employed to legitimize their patrons’ authority to rule from Shiraz. The article culminates in an exploration of the mytho-political dimensions of the conflation of Jamshid with Solomon and the intimate association of this composite figure with Fars in the Ilkhanid and post-Ilkhanid periods. Poetry is treated here as a productive force that both shapes and is shaped by the socio-political circumstances of its composition, performance, and reception. In order to locate the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century reconfiguration of Jamshid within its geo-mythological context, use has been made of the concept of lieu de mémoire as a means through which to unpack the trans-historical cultural impact on Shiraz of the ancient Achaemenid and Sasanian ruins that surround the Islamic city; ruins that have for more than two millennia embedded a sense of proximity to history in the land and peoples of Fars.

The period of reasonably free and vigorous political party activity in Iran was remarkably brief when viewed in the perspective of the very long history of that ancient land. Beginning slowly after the abdication of Reza Shah in 1941, party activity became steadily more intense until August 1953 when it was suddenly suppressed. But as brief as this period was, these twelve years witnessed patterns of political party development which deserve comparison with the experience of other developing states.

The term “developing” has been in vogue throughout the post-World War II era. But for all that the term remains a vague one. Why Iran with its recorded history of over twenty five hundred years should be classified as “developing” while the United States with a history of less than two hundred years should be classified as “developed” is not immediately obvious.

There is, in France, a pronounced awareness of an “Iranian world” that can be identified in terms of cultural, linguistic, ethnic (Aryan peoples) or geographic (highlands, cold winters) characteristics common to the civilizations of all Iranian-speaking peoples living in Afghanistan, Iran, Kurdistan or south central USSR, in particular, Tajikistan. This “world” stands in contrast to the Arab, Indian and Turkish ones. The notion of a Middle East extending from Casablanca to Kabul does not exist in French. Newspapers usually refer to the Moslem lands to the south and east of the Mediterranean as the “Arab world,” as if Turkish- and Persian-speaking peoples were peripheral minorities therein.

Owing to its colonial and military heritage, France has long given special importance to the Maghrib (Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria), the Near East (Lebanon and Syria, in particular) and, as a result of the Napoleonic campaigns and Champollion's expeditions, Egypt.

During the Constitutional years (1906–11) the legal status of the Jews and some other religious minorities improved, even if only to a limited extent. Can one assume that this change in the legal status of the Jews reflected changes in the public's actual treatment toward the Jews in reality during the days leading up to the Constitutional Revolution in 1906? To an extent, the answer is in the affirmative. The present article argues, however, that the real life situation of the Jews in the years leading up to the Constitutional Revolution was still often one of abuse and occasional persecution. To prove this contention, section I of the article presents some such cases. Section II establishes some of the reasons for the attacks on the Jews—not only religious, but also economic and socio-political ones, as well as briefly suggesting certain recurring paradigms surrounding it. Section III looks at one case study from November 1905 in the city of Shiraz. Finally, this preliminary research ends with some concluding remarks.

Metallic yarns, particularly those wrapped with gold and silver, have been used throughout much of recorded history to create fabrics and garments of surpassing beauty which exemplified splendor and opulence. Extant examples are valued not only for their beauty, but also for their historical significance. The physical assessment of these fabrics usually includes a visual examination to ascertain the weave structure and fibre colors. Optical microscopic examination can add to this information, but it is limited at higher powers of magnification by an increasing loss of depth of field.

A decade ago, amidst general enthusiasm for nation-building activities, Samuel Huntington raised the question of whether political institutions might not decay as well as grow. Although he provided but a few guidelines to symptoms of institutional decay, he did introduce a healthy measure of skepticism into the literature on political development. This skepticism is particularly warranted in the case of representative institutions.

Throughout much of the Middle East, the life of both political parties and legislatures at the national level have tended to be more formal than real. Institutionbuilding has been attempted at the local level, too, although local politics has received far less attention from students of comparative politics. This essay discusses the roles of political representatives at the local level and the impact of the political milieu upon the way in which these roles are shaped and interpreted by their occupants.

After emigrating from Ottoman territory to Safavid Iran in the mid-sixteenth century, the Shiite scholar Husayn b. ‘Abd al-Samad al-‘Amili wrote an eloquent letter-cum-travel account describing his experiences to his teacher Zayn al-Din al-‘Amili who had remained in Jabal ‘Amil. A manuscript of this fascinating document has now come to light and been edited twice, in 2001 and 2003. An analysis of the undated letter shows that it was written in 961/1554 and describes a journey that occurred earlier that same year. Husayn's statements do not spell out the exact cause of his flight from Ottoman territory but suggest that he was wary of being denounced to the authorities and felt that his academic career was severely limited there. He evidently supported Safavid legitimacy wholeheartedly, though he harbored misgivings about the moral environment in Iran and had sharp criticisms for Persian religious officials.

By the time the Fifth Development Plan was adopted in 1973, Iran had already experienced more than three decades of governmental efforts towards economic development. These efforts first started in the early 1920s and culminated, in the postwar period, in the country's First Development Plan. Before discussing the second and subsequent plans, it will be useful to review the main features of the initial efforts at planning in Iran.

The development policies of the government during the reign of Reza Shah (1925-1941) did not constitute development planning as the term has come to be understood in the postwar economic literature. The prewar policies were restricted to partial investment programs for the public sector only, with little consideration concerning the activities of the private sector. Furthermore, even the public sector programs did not reflect any explicitly defined set of policy objectives.

The article examines the history of the relationship between the Iranian and the Russian monarchies during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Drawing on a broad range of hitherto unexplored sources in Russian, the article analyzes Russian attitudes towards the Qajars, for whom the Romanov tsars were at the same time the most important ally and the biggest threat. The article focuses on the symbols and ceremonies by which the monarchs represented their relations, and by which they expressed symbolic competition, recognition and domination. The article thus opens a new perspective on Russia's influence on the Qajars and also raises questions about the comparative history of both monarchies.

Why did Turkey and Iran fail to become close partners in the 1970s even though they had compelling reasons to do so? This article argues that mutual distrust between Turkish and Iranian leaders, domestic turmoil in the two countries, and diverging geostrategic priorities undermined Ankara and Tehran's efforts to deepen their relations. While the shah of Iran saw his country as the policeman of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, successive governments in Turkey continued to look west for their security. As economic and political turmoil engulfed the two countries, leading to a revolution in Iran in 1979 and a coup in Turkey in 1980, Iranian and Turkish leaders could not forge a lasting partnership.

Today, the term “Ziegler carpet” is synonymous in the trade with a type of late nineteenth century Persian, made-for-export weaving categorized as decorative (figs. 1 - 2). The Ziegler enterprise in Sultanabad (now Arak) was the earliest known effort to organize carpet manufacture in Iran with foreign capital. This Manchester-based firm operated initially as a commission house, representing European manufacturers in the export and sales of printed cottons in the Near and Middle East; they subsequently developed extensive commercial interests in Iran, including investments in opium and other cash crops. Shortly after their first agency was established in Iran in 1867, Ziegler's expanded into the manufacture and trade of Persian carpets; and the company played a significant role the tremendous increase in carpet exports from that country during the late nineteenth century — the so-called Persian carpet “boom”.

This article focuses on Persian linguistics with the emphasis on grammar and word formation in the twentieth century. After presenting a brief overview of the history of the study of grammar in Iran, I discuss the recent trends in linguistics from diachronic to synchronic aspects. In Persian diachronic linguistics, we will see that most works focus on the reading, and deciphering of the old texts. In synchronic studies, there are three main stages: 1) traditional linguistics, 2) structural linguistics, and 3) generative or formal linguistics. I show how each one of these stages affects Persian linguistics in the twentieth century. Finally, I conclude the article by looking at the current state of Persian linguistics and the future prospects for the field.