Women's sport has always been a challenging subject in Muslim countries and Muslim women have had to face various constraints regarding their participation in sport and exercise, which also influence their attitudes to sport. This study aims to explore the attitude of Iranian female university students toward sport by survey method (N = 1,120) and qualitative interviews (N = 50). The results indicate that the majority of the participants have negative attitudes to sport, and accordingly they do not practice it. Various macro-, meso- and micro-level factors were found as perceived barriers. From the results it can be concluded that the media as a tool for raising awareness to providing role models and shaping the social values of mainstream society does not take a positive role in order to develop the culture of women's sport, and to change the attitude of female students and their social environments to sport in Iranian society.

This paper critically analyzes the Sharafnama, a history of the Kurds, written by the late sixteenth century ruler of Bitlis, Şeref Xan. Given the politically sensitive nature of the Middle East's “Kurdish Question,” the Sharafnama has become an extremely important resource through which Kurdish nationalists have sought to construct a coherent “national narrative.” This is due to the fact that Şeref Xan's book constitutes one of the few systematic histories of the Kurds written before the twentieth century. This paper moves away from nationalist inspired interpretations of the Sharafnama, which see the work as a “national(ist)” history. Instead, it posits that, although the piece can be regarded as a manifestation of Kurdish “ethno-politics,” it is necessary to look at it within the context of the relationship between the Kurdish tribal princes who ruled large areas of “Kurdistan,” on one hand, and the Ottoman and Safavid empires who competed for control of this region, on the other. In particular, it brings to the fore an often forgotten and/or ignored aspect of Şeref Xan's history, namely its pro-Ottoman bias. In this way, the article makes broader points relating to the nature of the Kurdish identity in the early modern period, and the influence of such conceptions on the later construction of the modern Kurdish identity.

On 27 June 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini declared, ‘drugs are prohibited” and their trafficking, consumption and “promotion” were against the rules of Islam and could not take place in the Islamic Republic. This ruling, although informal in nature, sanctioned a swift re-direction of Iran's previous approach to narcotic drugs, both in terms of production and consumption. As had happened in 1955, Iran seemed ready to go back to a policy of total prohibition and eradication of opiates, this time under the banner of Islam rather than that of the international drug control regime. Drugs and the politics surrounding them have been a crucial, yet neglected, aspect of the history of modern Iran that have changed the nature of the state bolstering its capacity of social intervention, while hindering its legitimacy, in the Pahlavi, as in the republican, era. By moving on “from the analysis of the state to a concern with the actualities of social subordination”, this article attempts to interpret how social subordination and state coercion were practiced and defied in the making of punishment and welfare in the social body of Iran.

Numerous observers have noted that a feminist generation of educated young women appears to be emerging in Iran, despite the anti-feminist discourse of the Iranian government. Evidence from three surveys conducted in 2000–2003 confirms and complicates these observations. Educated young women are significantly more likely to espouse feminist attitudes of various sorts than other Iranians, including educated young men. In addition, educated young women are significantly more likely to work outside the home, marry later, give birth later, have fewer children, and have more egalitarian marriages than other Iranian women. However, surprising proportions of older Iranians also espouse feminist attitudes, and a majority of respondents in one nationally representative sample of urban Iranians identify themselves as proponents of women's rights.

This paper aims to understand the consequences of US-led sanctions on two important industries in Iran: the oil and gas industry and power plant construction. Using qualitative methods and providing empirical evidence, this paper demonstrates the shortcomings of the pro-sanctions argument in the Iranian context. This paper argues that pro-sanctions literature is more inclined towards American politics; it ignores socially recurring effects such as empowering self-reliance in the target country. In the Iranian context, while sanctions regimes are beyond the control or power of industry managers, they have acted as a double-edged sword. On one hand, the sanctions have imposed extra costs on domestic companies in acquiring technological knowledge. On the other hand, they have stimulated policy-makers' determination and empowered a self-reliance doctrine amongst them.

Several works in Persian and English have detailed Iranian women's participation in social, political, and literary activities of the Constitutional Revolution. The present essay attempts to look critically at the discourses that informed, and were in turn rearticulated and transformed by, these activities. It will be argued that in the early years of the 20th century the very concept represented by the word zan was a contested one; that its homonymic ambiguity (meaning both woman and wife) signified the ambiguity of womanhood itself. Further, it will be argued that this ambiguity resided in the integration into the Constitutionalist language of two conflicting discursive elements regarding women—a contestatory rearticulation that charted the possibilities, as well as the limitations, of defining a new womanhood.

Young people play an important role in shaping Iran's politics but have only a marginal role in its economy. Youth (ages 15–29) are more than one-third of the country's population and are better educated than the generation they are replacing, while accounting for more than two-thirds of the unemployed. Demographics have thrown the marriage market out of balance, with a “shortage of men” of about 25 percent, while economic pressures have reduced the ability of youth to get married and form families. The higher education system has expanded to absorb ever greater numbers of youth but because education quality is low this has not helped in reducing unemployment. The demographic pressures have amplified since 2008 when the economy entered a period of stagnation. The economic crisis has hit Iran's youth particularly hard, especially those from lower economic backgrounds because the country's rigid formal labor market preserves jobs for older workers. The record number of youth entering the labor market has to wait longer for a regular job or has to take up part-time and informal jobs. In either case, their difficulties in marriage and family formation are intensified.

“Forced migration” is defined for the purposes of this study as the transportation of a considerable number of a population group (whether nomadic or sedentary), normally in family units and accompanied by livestock and chattels, to be permanently resettled in a region remote from their home; and undertaken as an act of policy by the ruler or his agents. It does not refer to attempts to sedentarize nomads on lands adjacent to their pastures, or to simple dispossession of lands without alternative provision.

Examples of forced migration have been noted in Iran and its imperial appendages from the earliest to the most recent times, chiefly as punishment of stubborn opponents or refractory subjects by a vigorous, centralizing monarch.

The Iraqi invasion of southwestern Iran on September 22, 1980, appears to have halted, though not reversed, one of the most intriguing experiments in modern history: Khomeini's attempt to create a Shi'ite theocracy in which the state is totally subordinated to the clergy and its powers are drastically circumscribed. What follows is an analysis of the theoretical foundations of this attempt, and of the way it has been carried out in practice.

In the chapter of Economy and Society devoted to the analysis of the church-state problem, Weber states:

The precondition for the strength of hierocratic charisma is its autonomy, an autonomy which the world religions of salvation grant in principle but which does not always find adequate institutional translation.

At the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, it may be said that Afghans began to form exilic communities in Iran rather than simply intermittent groups of seasonal migrant workers. The binding institutions of these communities, in particular the community of Shi‘a Afghans in Mashhad, were political parties and groups of mojahedin, religious centers and leaders, and cultural figures—notably poets. Poetry (both oral and written) in court Persian and local vernacular, has a long tradition in Afghanistan—much of which is shared with Iran—and continues to be the most respected and most widely practiced of the arts. It has also always had a direct, but not always approving, relationship with power and politics. Among refugees, it has been a vehicle for political commentary and incitement to jihad; for dialogue between Afghans and Iranians; and (in lyrical forms such as the classical ghazal or contemporary blank verse) for expressing subjective experience, thought, and emotion, particularly love or the pain of exile, with some license to criticize or subvert social convention. In this ethnographic analysis, I examine the role of poets and poetry in the cultural life of Afghans in Iran since 1979, focusing on the latest generation of young poets and tracing the influence of modernist Iranian literary developments on their work in the context of the gradual depoliticization of Afghan communities in exile, in particular after September 2001. I also argue that literary activities have been important in sustaining a separate ‘Afghan’ identity that has helped many young people transform their sense of marginalization to one of pride both in their non-Iranian origins and in their common heritage with Iranians.

A major ambiguity attaches to the zurkhanah, the traditional gymnasium of Iran. It is celebrated as an abode of chivalry and traditional values such as generosity, forbearance, and fair play, but it also has a reputation of harboring unruly elements on the margins of legality, men who are willing to rent their strong-arm services to whomever pays most. In this article I propose to explore this ambiguity and trace its roots in the social history of the institution. To do this, I shall first provide a quick update on the state of traditional athletics today, then expound on the paradox, and finally attempt to explicate it by discussing the identities of three social types that frequented the zūrkhānah.

The Iranian zūrkhānah, literally “House of Strength,” is the traditional gymnasium in which athletes practice a series of gymnastic and bodybuilding exercises that have been called “ancient sport,“ varzish-i bāstārī, since 1934.

The Constitutional Revolution of 1905-09 was a major watershed in Persian history. It ended the traditional system of government in which the Shah, as the Shadow of God on Earth, ruled his people without any legal and institutional limitations. And it introduced the constitutional system of government in which “the people” were sovereign, and their elected representatives made and unmade ministers, laws, budgets, concessions and foreign treaties. In this revolution the political crowd played a prominent role. An organized procession in April 1905 raised the issue whether the Shah could freely choose his administrators. A larger assembly, nine months later, initiated the demand to limit the monarch's arbitrary powers by creating a “House of Justice.” Spontaneous riots in June 1906, and the killing of demonstrators, poured a stream of blood into the wide gap between the government (dawlat) and the nation (millat). A general strike in July, and the exodus of 15,000 from Tehran into the British Legation, forced the court to grant the country a written constitution with an elected House of Parliament.

The historical accounts of pre-Islamic Iran have diverse allegorical meanings. These meanings are embedded in narrative structures that terminate in the Muslim conquest of Iran and the death of Yazdigird III (d. 31/651 or 652), the last Sasanian king. In early “Islamicate” historiography, the accounts of ancient Iran served as an allegory of the Persian (differentially identified as Furs, 'Ajam, and Majūs) submission to Islam. The narrative termination of Persian sovereignty (sal ṭanai) coincided with the commencement of Islam and the closure of the cycle of prophecy inaugurated by Adam. The co-termination of Sasanian dynastic rule and the cycle of prophecy mark the transition to a new and “superior” moral and political order—divinely sanctioned to last until “the end of time” (ākhir-i zamāri).

This article explores tales and tropes of conversion, especially conversion engendered by romantic attraction for the religious other, in the poetry of Farīd al-Dīn ‘Attār. The plot dynamics of class, gender and confessional adherence are complex, and hold important clues to the poet's theology. One particularly rich example of the encoding of religious and social boundaries can be found in a body of ghazals written about the beautiful Christian boy (tarsā-bachcha). The history of this homoerotic sub-genre is traced, and ‘Attār's treatment of the theme is explored in juxtaposition not only to earlier authors, but to other motifs of the religious other and of religious conversion, appearing in his own oeuvre, including the narrative of Shaykh San‘ān with its representation of the Christian girl beloved. The terminology of Christianity and the markers by which ‘Attār construes Christian-ness are discussed, and these symbolically amorous encounters with Christianity are analyzed as part of a larger discourse of emasculation which ‘Attār constructs around conversion, religious affiliation, and insufficient commitment to spiritual growth. Analysis of the dynamic interplay of markers of gender and class in the tales and topoi dealing with religious conversion or cross-confessional interaction will ultimately afford a perspective into ‘Attār's conception of the specific religious traditions juxtaposed to Islam, as well as his beliefs about inter-religious relations.

Fezzeh Khanom (c. 1835–82), an African woman, was a slave of Sayyed ‘Ali-Mohammad of Shiraz, the Bab. Information about her life can be recovered from various pious Baha'i histories. She was honored, and even venerated by Babis, though she remained subordinate and invisible. The paper makes the encouraging discovery that a history of African slavery in Iran is possible, even at the level of individual biographies. Scholars estimate that between one and two million slaves were exported from Africa to the Indian Ocean trade in the nineteenth century, most to Iranian ports. Some two-thirds of African slaves brought to Iran were women intended as household servants and concubines. An examination of Fezzeh Khanom's life can begin to fill the gaps in our knowledge of enslaved women in Iran. The paper discusses African influences on Iranian culture, especially in wealthy households and in the royal court. The limited value of Western legal distinctions between slavery and freedom when applied to the Muslim world is noted.

From the 12th to the 14th centuries three major Sufi orders took shape in Central Asia: the Yasavīyah, derived from Khoja Ahmad Yasavī of the town known later as Turkistan; the Kubravīyah, founded by Najm al-Dīn Kubrā in Khwarazm; and the Naqshbandīyah, named after Bahā’ al-Dīn Naqshband of Bukhārā. Of the three, the Yasavīyah remained an almost exclusively Central Asian ṭarīqah with particular appeal to the Turkic population, while the Naqshbandīyah became a truly international order active throughout the Islamic world, rising to phenomenal power and prestige within Central Asia and spreading far beyond its confines, most dynamically to India and the Ottoman lands. The Kubravīyah, however, found its greatest development outside Central Asia, and indeed, by the end of the 16th century, was almost entirely displaced in its native region by the increasingly dominant Naqshbandīyah.

This article reviews the ways in which class, status, social mobility and their cultural ramifications have been considered (or failed to be considered) in recent ethnographic studies of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It argues against the trend of privileging “resistance” to an oppressive state as a theoretical frame for documenting social phenomena in Iran: lifestyles and consumption patterns cannot be interpreted merely as signs of political rebellion because they are endowed with symbolic value as status attributes in a society whose class configurations are shifting. I present a number of sources and concepts that help to rethink these phenomena, and show how the experience of Afghan refugees living on the margins of Iranian cities illuminates both the opportunities and constraints created by the Islamic Republic's uneasy mix of political Islam, populism and neoliberalism. A focus on aspiration to upward mobility becomes a useful analytical lens that allows us to sidestep reductive dichotomies such as tradition/modernity or religion/secularism that are in practice blurred by its very pursuit.