Iranian merchants, artists, and scholars had an almost continuous presence in the Ottoman Empire from its very beginnings in the thirteenth century. After the Arab provinces were added to the empire in the sixteenth century, their numbers were further augmented by pilgrims on their way to the holy cities of the Hijaz and Iraq. As such, in terms of actual numbers, during any period of its history there were probably more Iranians resident in the Ottoman Empire than from any other foreign state. This assertion, however, cannot be proven empirically, for before the nineteenth century the Ottoman sultans did not recognize the Iranians as constituting a “nation” along the model they had established for the European communities resident in the empire.

The growth of Iran's economy, like that of any developing country, is dependent not only on how its natural resources are used, but also its human resources. The two together can lead to increases in both the quantity and quality of physical capital. This process does not require absolutely synchronous improvements in the way both natural and human resources are employed, but certainly changes must be parallel.

If, on the other hand, exploitation of natural resources moves forward much more rapidly, considerable physical capital can be acquired in a short time. But without ample supplies of skilled labor, capital goods may then be used inefficiently or even stand idle. This problem can be partly overcome in the short run if it is possible to hire foreigners to supplement the domestic labor in sufficient amounts and with the proper skills. On the other hand, if a nation's growing educational system turns out skilled people at rates faster than the growth in available jobs, then employment, underemployment, or migration are the immediate choices facing many workers and their families.

Although transsexuality and change of sex might be considered a matter of personal choice, they have some socio-cultural causes and consequences. This article aims to examine these through the illustration of transsexuality in Iran. To this end, firstly, sexual transition and the legal system in Iran will be explained. Secondly, the methodology will follow. This study uses the survey method with two separate samples: 1) transsexuality policy makers and 2) forty individual cases of transsexuals. The findings reveal that while the Iranian legal system does not ban transsexuality and sexual transition, transsexuals suffering from gender identity disorder do encounter some social and cultural problems both in their private lives and publicly. The paper concludes with a summary of research findings, and sets out recommendations and study limitations.

This article examines the genre of comedy in Iranian cinema and explores the various influences on its development and growth. It demonstrates how the roots of recent comedies can be traced back to pre-Revolution commercial cinema (known as filmfarsi) as well as the traditional Iranian comic theatre of taqlid. In particular, it focuses on the depictions of the Iranian diaspora in these comedies. The Iranian diaspora has been imagined and represented frequently in modern Persian culture, often satirically and humorously. More recently, Iranian comedies have provided a new space to imagine, define, criticize and redeem the Iranian diaspora.

This paper compares the divergent positioning of Afghan women in diaspora in Iran, Pakistan, the U.K., and the U.S. and in their return to Afghanistan since the fall of Taliban. Afghans comprise a diverse group in terms of ethnicity, age, class, and religion, and their experiences in diaspora vary accordingly. Afghan women in Iran and Pakistan may have relatively less access to resources, including citizenship rights, in comparison with Afghan women in the U.K. and the U.S. who may be transnational and of a higher social class. However, Afghan women in Iran and Pakistan are able to break down masculine domains more effectively than Afghan women in the U.K. and the U.S. This is because Afghan women in the West are constantly engaged in mediating between ‘Western’ values and their Afghan/Muslim cultural identities. Finally, women in Afghanistan face imported Western notions of market liberalization, governance, and gender mainstreaming, which have failed to bring about desired state building, peace, and security. For the majority of Afghan women, advancing women's rights is not just about challenging male domination; it is also about challenging imperialist domination, militaristically and economically as well as culturally. Although the main focus is on the transitions in women's lives, due to displacement and—in some cases—reintegration, I will also address how these changes have affected Afghan men. One critical theme runs through the paper: the issue of gender, agency, and identity and the ways in which women, through their positioning in diaspora and under invading forces, are also social actors.

All Cultures are Located in Place and Time. Exile culture is located at the intersection and in the interstices of other cultures. Physically placed outside its original homeland, it is mentally and emotionally both here and there, and, as a result, it is both local and global. Exile culture is not just physically, mentally, and emotionally [dis]located; it is also discursively and sociopolitically situated in a foreign land. Exile discourse, therefore, must be able to deal not only with the problem of location but also with the continuing problematic of multiple locations. Traditionally, mass media are considered as homogenizing agents that inculcate the dominant values. One of the key themes of my work in recent years, however, has been to describe and theorize about the manner in which these very media may also serve the opposite purpose by consolidating alternative values–which may be driven by differences in ethnicity, race, gender, class, nationality, religion, or politics.

The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate some features of sociolinguistic interaction and language convergence phenomena in northern Iran and Transcaucasia. In particular, I wish to explore some of the problems of language classification and the effect of sociological and geographic factors on language diversity in the extended geographic area of Iran, with the aim of offering a new and more productive model for the study of Iranian dialects and languages. Since the material that forms the basis of my discussion is the Tāti language group, I will present here a brief description of it before going on to more general questions.

Tāti, in the context of Iranian linguistics, generally refers to at least two groups of Iranian languages of different origin. The use which interests us presently refers to a group of languages of Northwest Iranian origin, generally classified as a subgroup of the Central Plateau Languages.

It has long been held that the eighteenth century was a pivotal one in the history of Imami Shi'i thought and jurisprudence in Iraq and Iran. At the beginning of this era, it is said, the previously dominant Usuli school declined, and the conservative Akhbari school came to the fore. This intellectual revolution coincided with the fall of the Safavid dynasty in Iran and the disestablishment of Shi'ism under the Afghans and then Nadir Shah. Standard accounts would have us believe that Akhbarism became dominant. Then late in the century, as the Qajars came to power, the Usuli school staged a comeback in the shrine cities of Iraq and subsequently in Iran.

This version of events, deriving from published nineteenth-century Usuli works, contains elements of truth. But an examination of manuscript sources from the period and of later biographical dictionaries suggests that the standard view needs revision.

Focusing on black women Qadam-Kheyr and Sorur in Mahshid Amirshahi’s novel Dadeh Qadam-Kheyr (1999), this article examines literary representations of the African-Iranian presence, and provides a critique of race and slavery in twentieth-century Iran. In light of the history of the Iranian slave trade until 1928, and the reconstruction of race and gender identities along Eurocentric lines of nationalism in Iran, the novel under scrutiny is a dynamic site of struggle between an “Iranian” literary discourse and its “non-Persian” Others. The “aesthetics of alterity” at the heart of the text is, therefore, the interplay between the repressed title-character Qadam-Kheyr and the resilient minor character Sorur, each registering Amirshahi’s artistic intervention into a forgotten corner of Iranian history.

The intellectual model of european nationalism had a powerful impact in the second half the nineteenth century upon Qajar intellectuals and officials, many of whom lived abroad, were fluent in some European language, or were influenced by translations of European works. These thinkers, beginning in the 1850s, were the first to attempt to “imagine” an Iranian nation. That they made this attempt is a result not only of the influence upon them of the modular nationalist experience, but also of their own encounter with the same forces of modernity that were hammering Europe itself—new media of communication, new forms of transportation, and processes of economic differentiation deriving from the rise of core industrial economies and vastly increased world trade—all of which afforded states and other institutions the resources for disciplinary technologies that reshaped the Self.

Nineteenth-century Iran witnessed the advent of a new socioreligious institution. While the theory of a divinely appointed Imam (Imām al-Manṣūb) increasingly became eschatological in nature, a highly centralized religious position came into being whose source of power was not to be found in the classical Shi'i doctrine. The position of marjaᶜ-i taqlīd is a product of several religious developments that characterized the nineteenth-century Shi'i community. The prevalence of the Uṣūlī school and the formulation of two important doctrines, i.e., aᶜlamiyyat (more knowledgeability) and vilāyat-i faqīh (the governance of the jurist) are held as three major juridical impetuses underlying the birth of the institution of marjaᶜiyyat-i taqlīd. Therefore, we will first deal with the Uṣūlī process, then the doctrines of aᶜlamiyyat and vilāyat-i faqīh, then with the qualifications of a marjᶜ, and the question of who the first marjaᶜ of the Twelver-Shi'i community was, and finally the place of marjaᶜ-i taqlīd in the political life of Shi'i Iran.

Most of the available literature on Tehran between the two world wars deals with the morphological transformation of the city and the role of the Pahlavi state in accomplishing massive urban projects. In contrast, this article focuses on the reciprocal relationship between the sociality and spatiality of the city. It demonstrates how the consolidation of the discourse of modernity resulted in the development of social and political desires for the production of new forms of social life and spaces. The article argues that the formation of the modern middle class and its alignment with the Pahlavi state’s reform projects contributed to a twofold process: first, the decline of the traditional forms of social life and spaces and, second, the production and prevalence of alternative forms. This process resulted in the establishment of social dichotomies with vast spatial manifestations and polarized the city both socially and spatially.

The complexity of the issues of youth has made this broad subject a focal theme for a large number of researchers and scholars who have looked at it from different perspectives (e.g., anthropology, sociology, psychology, and politics). Positioned in consumer culture theory, this paper is another attempt to explore a different dimension of the youth's world: cultural consumption among Iranian youth. The article, therefore, follows two objectives: First, within the context of cultural consumption among young Iranians, it seeks to demonstrate the complexity of consumption as a creative process of reflecting and constructing identities, meanings, and values. Second, it examines the impact of cultural globalization on the identity of such consumers and the varying relationships between their consumption patterns and identity construction. In so doing, the first part of the paper will concisely elaborate on consumer culture. Then, cultural globalization will be briefly defined and, within this framework, consumer culture among Iranian youth will be discussed.

In cities, towns, and villages throughout Iranian Azerbaijan ˓āshiqs (professional poet-musicians) entertain audiences in coffee houses and at weddings. ˓Āshiqs compose and perform songs in a variety of poetic forms. The longest of these forms is the oral narrative poem called the dāstān in the Azeri dialect of Turkish. In his presentation of these tales, the ˓āshiq observes a standard protocol, yet within this established format, he has room to improvise, to stretch some segments of his entertainment or to cut other parts short. It is this flexibility within the framework of an established presentation format that keeps these oral narrative poems from growing stale in the mind of the performer and in the perception of the audience.

This paper will briefly describe the ˓āshiq, his training and performance. Then, one segment of a dāstān will be analyzed to show what its components are, and how they can be manipulated by the performer.

Although the titular nation of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic was Turkic speaking and had strong cultural and historical ties with Iran, the Soviet regime constructed a national identity that was divorced from its Turkic and Iranian past. The current literature cannot provide the exact period when this construction was put forward and generally argues that the Azerbaijani identity was artificially created as part of a broader “divide-and-rule” policy that was applied to all the Turkic nations in the Soviet Union. However, this thesis by itself does not explain why this change from a Turkic identity to an Azerbaijani one happened seventeen years after the Bolsheviks assumed power in Baku, and its simple causation makes it sound more like a conspiracy theory, which had a certain popularity in the Cold War era, than a scholarly argument. By presenting a broader view, the paper explains why and when the national identity in Soviet Azerbaijan was altered from Turkic to Azerbaijani. It argues that there were many factors that induced the Bolsheviks to take this extraordinary step in 1937. In fact, the change in defining national identity in Azerbaijan was a result of a combination of developments in the 1930s in Turkey, Iran, Germany, and the Soviet Union. The article concludes that these developments left Soviet rulers no choice but to construct an independent Azerbaijani identity.

The eight sections of the present essay are drawn from the lectures I delivered at Princeton University and at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1969-1970. Because of the diverse nature of the audience I did not go into the details that would be necessary in a new approach to a traditional problem. Instead, my principal aim was to present a brief sketch of the contents of what may be called Persian mysticism, while showing at the same time the remarkable role that this variety of Islamic mysticism has played in the cultural development of Persia.

The origins of Sufism—as Islamic mysticism is generally called—presents a very controversial problem indeed, but that Persia was the cradle of early Sufism is beyond doubt. Moreover, if mysticism is taken to be—as it usually is—an expression of man's belief in direct connection with the godhead, the well-known ethical concepts of the Zoroastrians—for whom every particular deed of daily life, good or bad, is the joint product of man and either the principle of Good or of Evil—might also be considered as unconscious expressions of a pantheistic type of mysticism.

The Reza Shah period (1921–1941) continues to be one of the most understudied as well as controversial episodes in Iran's modern history. Assessments of the period tend to be politically charged and reflect the widely diverging opinions about the extent and quality of its transformative nature. They rarely involve an appreciation of the effectiveness of the measures taken in this period in relation to stated policy objectives and allowing for the circumstances and conditions of the time—something which is quite common when it comes to evaluating, say, the reforms of Peter the Great in eighteenth-century Russia or those of Muhammad ‘Ali in nineteenth-century Egypt. Instead, they frequently narrow down to a moral verdict that weighs the entire age on a retrospective scale of Iran's historical development since the mid to late nineteenth century.

Two impulses, the desire to create and the desire to withdraw into oblivion and death, lie at the heart of Sadeq Hedayat's character. He was painfully sensitive to human weaknesses, loneliness, and suffering in a world that seemed all the darker through his eyes because the values against which he measured it were so demanding. He expected more of and for humanity than could be attained. A part of him sought to reject a life doomed to such imperfection, to draw back from the searing pain of a consciousness without hope.

Yet it is also through this pain of consciousness that the creative act arises. This second force, the impulse to objectify the vision of Absurdity by transforming it into art, provided for Hedayat a somewhat precarious counterbalance to the impulse of negation. For creation, however tentative, constitutes a challenge to the forces of darkness. In the very act of depicting a universe without meaning, the artist implicitly contributes meaning of his own.