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 February 18, 2000 Parliamentary Elections in Iran Resulted in a clear victory for the groups associated with President Khatami's reform programs. The electorate was allowed to reject the forces of authoritarianism and conservatism through a free election, and the media and the experts considered this event to have historic significance. It seemed that the result of the elections convinced more and more people that democratic transition is possible in Iran through the reform of the system without first dismantling the Islamic republic. But soon after the elections there was a crackdown which included the closing down of a large number of newspapers and the arrest of a few prominent journalists, lawyers, and other political activists thus obscuring the future path of the Iranian polity. How are we to understand the character of this polity and is it possible to make educated guesses about its future?

From 1927 to 1932, wide-reaching negotiations took place between Reza Shah’s court minister, ‘Abdolhossein Khan Teymurtash, and the British Legation in Tehran, the aim of which was to resolve all outstanding issues and to normalize relations between the two countries on the basis of a general treaty. This article examines these Anglo-Iranian negotiations with a particular focus on the thorniest issues—Iran’s territorial claims in the Persian Gulf, particularly its claims to sovereignty over Bahrain, Abu Musa and the two Tunb islands. Though an agreement was never reached, an examination of the content and conduct of these negotiations offers some valuable insights into the unique features of Iranian nationalism and Iranian ambitions in the Persian Gulf during the Reza Shah period.

In this intervention, we discuss the ongoing protest movement and the quasi-revolutionary situation in Iran with the goal of offering contextual as well as background analysis. Our objective is to examine the current wave of revolutionary politics in the frame of a longer history, that is, the one of the “unaccomplished” 1979 revolution. We do not argue that the current movement is in continuity with the so-called Islamic revolution; rather, we ask what afterlives of the 1979 revolution and successive waves of mobilizations reverberate within the current situation. We do so from a political transformative vantage point, which we understand as inherently feminist, in that we refuse to recognize any hierarchy between the struggles, the issues, and the demands as expressed by the protesters. Indeed, we understand liberation as a collective project resulting from the intersection of struggles, demands, and issues. Following this line of reasoning, we interrogate the current moment along three thematic axes: the social composition, the prospects for political convergence, and the genealogy, or the ideational connection, of the current struggle with those of the past.

The article overviews the earliest Pashto texts, mostly poetic, in which the incipient forms of literary criticism can be traced as authorial self-reflections related in Persian classics to the self-praise genre (fakhriyya) and explanations of reasons for composing works (sabab-i taʾlīf). Under close examination are the seventeenth century verses of the poets affiliated with the Roshānī religious community and the writings of Khushḥāl Khān Khaṫak (d. 1689). Analyzed texts prove that through the rudimentary discourse on a variety of literary criticism topics, Pashtun authors of early modern times declared and justified the presence of emerging literature in Pashto within the Persophone cultural space of Mughal India, articulating simultaneously their commitment to the proliferation of literacy and Islamic book culture among their countrymen.

Despite the nature of American influence in postwar Iran, and despite the fact that Iranian studies has grown into a flourishing field in the United States, scholars have not explored the field's origins during the Cold War era. This article begins with the life of T. Cuyler Young to trace the critical genealogy within the field as it developed, in cooperation between American and Iranian scholars, during the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. It proceeds to analyze two cohorts of American scholars whose political inclinations ranged from liberal reformism to revolutionary Marxism. As revolutionary momentum swelled in Iran in the late 1970s, critical scholars broke through superpower dogmas and envisioned a post-shah Iran. However, Cold War teleologies prevented them from fully grasping Iranian realities, particularly Khomeini's vision for Iran. This article argues that the modern field of Iranian studies in the United States was shaped by multiple generations of critical voices, all of which were informed by historically situated encounters with Iran and expressed through a range of methodological and theoretical perspectives.

The coincidence of the appearance of two Circassian women as wives of ambassadors on the Anglo-Persian diplomatic and political stage has generated more than passing interest in academic and lay literature. Though the story of Sir Robert Sherley and Lady Teresia Sherley is better known in British circles, and has even generated renewed interest with two simultaneous exhibitions in 2009 in London, the story of Fath Ali Shah's Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Abol Hassan Khan, has not received sufficient attention, and has certainly not been fully explored in the context of the politics of Regency England. The present article revisits key moments of the life of the Sherleys and of Abol Hassan Khan and Delaram, his Circassian wife, but goes beyond the retelling of their journeys to focus on how the latter two's visit to England generated bawdy depictions in the popular press and became the vehicle for political satire quite unconnected to their persons.

Despite being one of the pioneers of Iranian cinema's “new wave” in the 1960s, Daryush Mehrjui has maintained his position in the cinema as an influential filmmaker. He is still capable of making films which are both popular with public audiences and highly acclaimed by Iranian critics. Mehmaneh Maman (Mum's Guests), a social comedy he made in 2004, is one such film which has received little critical attention outside Iran. In this paper, the representation of “the nation” in Mum's Guests and the latter film's reception by local critics is contrasted with that of Ejareh Neshinha (The Lodgers, 1986); another popular social comedy which Mehrjui made almost two decades earlier. This comparison aims to examine the differences between the two films in the light of theories of postmodernism and globalization. It is argued that Mehrjui's representation of the nation in Mum's Guests demonstrates a more conscious acknowledgment of differences based on class, gender, ethnicity and religion; and a more inclusive approach to marginalized sections of Iranian society. The collapse of boundaries between “the local” and “the global,” as well as that of “high-art” and “low-art” are other key elements of Mehrjui's more recent film. The two films also differ in terms of their portrayal of themes such as happiness and solidarity, political/ideological conflict, and science and consumerism, which are explained with reference to the impact and consequences of globalization.

This article explores the process leading to the Afghan government's decision to implement a prohibition and eradication of opium in the northeastern province of Badakhshan. It explores why Daud chose Badakhshan, the impact of the opium ban on the people of Badakhshan and the future of opium production and trade, as well as the evolution of drug control in Afghanistan under the Musahiban dynasty. Ultimately, the ban was launched because it allowed Daud to garner international praise and financial support, while enforcing eradication in an area inhabited by ethnic minorities ensured that the Afghan government's coercive strategy would not generate resistance from rural Pashtun tribes historically opposed to these types of state intervention.

In the majority of Islamic countries, the art of painting has been restricted to non-figural and geometric designs in the public sphere, and strictly limited to small-scale narrative illustrations of manuscripts in the private sphere. By contrast, Qajar Iran witnessed the development of large-scale figural painting. Such a decisive break with Islamic tradition—where religious and social beliefs were primarily expressed through textual and calligraphic means—indicates that Iran possessed a distinctive, strongly visual culture. Nevertheless, Qajar painting has been perceived in the past as an offshoot of European easel painting.

In fact, Qajar painting, most particularly during the reign of the second ruler Fath ᶜAli Shah (1797-1834), represents the culmination of a long-standing indigenous tradition of imagery in both monumental painting and sculptural formats, primarily utilized for the decoration of palaces, exemplified by the bas reliefs and sculptures of the Achaemenid palace of Persepolis. Wall painting predated and subsequently coexisted with the better known traditions of decorative and manuscript painting.

In the late nineteenth century, Qajar Iran, like its neighbor the Ottoman Empire, faced the dual challenges of colonialism and modernity. This paper considers the role of art education and art production in its response to these forces, focusing on the leading court painter of the late Qajar period, Mirza Muhammad Ghaffari, Kamal al-Mulk (1848–1941), whose career bridged the late Qajar period and the early twentieth century. Early in his career, Ghaffari was recognized as the leading exponent of academic painting, yet by the constitutional period his art had evolved into a style representing contemporary Persian life, a style which was informed by nationalistic discourses current in intellectual and political circles. This paper's consideration of the evolution of his style from a European modernism to an authentic Iranian modernism includes Ghaffari's training as a painter, the role of photography in the development of his style, his travel to Europe, and parallels with the art and career of the Ottoman painter Osman Hamdi.

In this paper, we discuss the impact of Jürgen Habermas' ideas on Iranian intellectuals who live in Iran. The upshot of the paper is that in present day Iran, where the society is going through a significant transitional period, various intellectual groups have reacted differently towards the ideas of the German philosopher-sociologist. While the orthodox left-wing (ex-Marxist) intellectuals and the conservative right-wing writers have, by and large, tended to ignore his views, a younger generation of the left-wing intellectuals and a number of the Muslim intellectuals with left-wing/socialist tendencies, have tried, each in their own ways, to ‘adopt’ Habermas' ideas in pursuit of their own projects/research programs.

My aim in this lecture shall be to situate the world of color within the traditional context of the Islamic culture of Persia; to explore the conceptual motivations that provoked its intense crystallization and saturation during the Safavid era; and to ultimately follow this world of color as it is annihilated into nothingness within the presence of Absolute Light. We will therefore witness the conceptual birth, life and death of color as a cyclical yet timeless, metaphysical expression of the Absolute within the world of phenomenal forms.

As a key primary source for the history of the eleventh-century Isma‘ili majlis, the Fatimid chief missionary al-Mu'ayyad fi al-Din al-Shirazi's autobiographical Sira offers a prime opportunity to consider the application of centralizing features of the Fatimid state in eleventh-century Buyid Shiraz. Previous studies on the Fatimid majlis have raised questions about an Isma‘ili core curriculum as well as the intended audience/s of Fatimid da‘wa teachings. This article situates al-Mu'ayyad's memoir in the broader context of the Persian and Arabic historiographical traditions in order to provide new insights into the transmission of Isma‘ili doctrines in different social settings outside of Fatimid Cairo. It concludes that Abu Kalijar's study sessions with al-Mu'ayyad suggest that Qadi al-Nu‘man's Kitab Da‘a'im al-Islam was used as a core text for introducing some of the main principles of Fatimid religio-political rule in addition to Isma‘ili doctrines to non-Isma‘ili audiences.

A collocation can be defined as a sequence of words which co-occur more than would be expected by chance. Collocations impose constraints on how words can be used together. An idiom is an expression whose meaning cannot be deduced from the literal definitions and the arrangement of its parts, but refers instead to a figurative meaning that is known only through common use. In this paper I will attempt to expand on these notions. For further clarification, I will compare and contrast some examples from English and Persian.

The Date of the Composition of Husayn Vaᶜiz-i Kashifi's Anvār-i Suhaylī is uncertain. It is conjectured that it must have been completed at the end of the ninth/fifteenth century, probably about the time that he wrote another famous work, the Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī. Since Kashifi died in 910/1504-05 “at a ripe old age,” this implies that he had probably already reached an age of experience and wisdom when he started to recast the collection of fables known as Kalīla wa Dimna.

This is not the place to go into detail about the rich and varied history of these fables, and of their adoption in most cultures of the ancient world. It will suffice to recall only the stages of the history of this text that are directly related to the late fifteenth- century Timurid version studied here.

The Pancatantra, the Sanskrit text on which Kalīla wa Dimna was based, was probably composed in Kashmir by an unknown Brahmin around 300 A.D. By using fables which had animals as the main characters, the text aimed at informing youths, who were destined for government posts, about the laws governing political life.

The Persian wine production myth centers on the relationship between a male vintner and his female vine and her daughters, the grapes. This myth, the earliest extant examples of which are found in qasīdas by the Samanid poets Rūdakī and Bashshār Marghazī and which was much developed by Manūchihrī and his contemporary Farrukhī, contains images of femininity, the mother–child bond, separation, violence, execution, and ultimate redemption. The grape harvest comes in the late summer and culminates in the Mihragān festival, a celebration focused on the grape and grape wine, at which poems containing versions of the wine production myth were recited. The present study maps the evolution of this myth over the span of a century through a close reading of eleven poems with specific reference to variations in narrative structure.