The paper consists of six parts. The first part discusses the major reasons for the presence of a conventional sociopolitical Baloch culture in Iran. The second part presents a profile of the Iranian Baloch elites, dividing them into four major groups: the Sunni clerics or molavis, tribal chiefs, the educated, and the wealthy. The third discusses the challenging relationship which exists among the Baloch elites. The fourth describes the elites' attitudes towards the Baloch society's norms. The fifth determines the elites' orientation towards state and politics. And finally the paper ends with conclusions.

This article examines four mystical treatises by the Safavid scholar Fayd al-Kāshānī (d. 1090/1679). Of the four, al-Kalimāt al-Maknūna (“the Hidden Words”) serves as the basis for the three other versions, al-La'āli', Qurrat al-‘Uyūn, and al-Kalimāt al-Makhzūna, composed at different times for different audiences. Comparison of their structure and content reveals changes that occurred in Kāshānī's presentation of the thought of Ibn ‘Arabī and Mullā Sadrā. Kāshānī's later emphasis on Shi‘i hadith sources says much about the context in which he wrote and perhaps more about his later assessment of the place of sufi cosmology, Islamic philosophy, and scripture in scholarly and popular circles.

In contemporary Iran, many shops are under the “shop-lease contract with sar-qofli.” In this contract, sar-qoflisar-qofli, a strong usufructuary right supported by intangible assets such as the shop’s reputation, is given to the tenant. The “shop-lease contract with sar-qofli” originated from a traditional merchants’ custom in Iran’s business quarters. After the 1979 Revolution, the Law of Lessor–Lessee Relationships, which provides a legal framework for the practice of “shop-lease contract with sar-qofli,” was completely revised, since Islamic jurists regarded haqq-e kasb o pisheh o tejārat as problematic. Haqq-e kasb o pisheh o tejārat, the legal designation of sar-qofli, was based on a heterogeneous value concept introduced into the Iranian legal system from abroad during World War II. As a result of this revision, another alternative for asset management was granted to shop owners. Nevertheless, “shop-lease contract with sar-qofli” remains the most widely employed form of lease in Iran’s property lease market.

Iran's rich repertoire of narrative literature of oral origin, ranging from single-scene situation comedy through fairytale to the lengthy heroic epic, can certainly be appreciated for its intrinsic literary merits and entertainment value. Both compilers and patrons, however, of what are in effect folktale collections, have from ancient times adopted a utilitarian attitude to their material, a classic instance being the political science course that King Dabshalim (or Devasarma) took from Professor Bidpai in the form of animal fables. In one form or another, the practical autocrat and his obliging philosopher have continued to vet Persian literature through the centuries, insisting that myth and folktale be used as parables to leaven works ostensibly of devotional or moral instruction (as of Rumi or Sa'di) or of historical narrative.

Reza Attaran is one of the most successful stars of the Iranian popular cinema. This article explores the social circumstances, performative components, and political consequences of Attaran’s popularity and stardom, and the evolution of comedy and satire in the Iranian media after the 1979 Revolution. Analyzing the contextual elements and media texts over the last twenty-five years, the article argues that Attaran actively reflects a complex interaction between the social, political, and artistic demands of each period, best represented through his contribution to the television sketch comedies in the 1990s, and the lowbrow comedies and highbrow absurd films in the 2010s. The trajectory of Attaran’s stardom demonstrates the mechanism by which he serves the maintenance of the status quo.

Even before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iran's border provinces, which contain Arabs, Azeri Turks, Baluch, Kurds, and Turkmen, were marginalized and securitized by the state. These processes and outcomes have created a vicious cycle and self-fulfilling prophecy within the context of the so-called security-development nexus. Iran's peripheral provinces border Iraq and Turkey in the west and Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east. They are located far from Tehran in the inaccessible and inhospitable terrain and climate of mountains and deserts. This geography and topography partially explain why these provinces have been traditionally neglected by the state. Beyond the geographic remoteness and topographic inaccessibility of these provinces, their ethno-religious demographics and marginalization-based grievances, including those that existed during the shah's industrial and urban-focused development drive before the revolution, have fostered local opposition to the state. Most recently, between 2022 and 2023, this opposition has culminated in the Jina Mahsa Amini or Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

Poetry readings are an intimate affair; they are not suitable for mobilizing the masses. But poems can capture moods and trigger emotions. They can create closeness and community, send messages and demand change. Indeed, in the case of Iran, a series of poetry reading sessions can be considered a milestone event on the country's path toward revolution.2 During ten nights of poetry reading, known as the dah shab, in October 1977 in Tehran, the country's most prominent poets and writers took advantage of a short window of opportunity that opened up for them when the Shah loosened somewhat the reins of dictatorship. Beginning on October 10, 1977, they presented their poems to thousands of listeners on ten consecutive evenings on the premises of the German-Iranian Cultural Association on Pahlavī Avenue. Poets of all political persuasions were present, united above all in their common interest of demanding an end to censorship and standing up for freedom of speech. The impressive list of participants includes such well-known names as Behazin, Simin Behbehani, Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, Houshang Golshiri, Saeed Soltanpour, and Siavosh Kasrai, along with many more.3

This paper seeks to advance the existing scholarship on Persian secretary and belles-lettrist, ʿAbd Allāh Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 139/757) and his Risāla fī ’l-Ṣaḥāba (Epistle Concerning the Entourage). It argues that the Risāla, addressed to the second Abbasid caliph al-Manṣūr, set out to tackle the political ills of the caliphate, especially the crisis of political legitimacy. As the first documented articulation of the Islamic polity, the Risāla made a series of recommendations, including a proposal for legal codification that attempted to reinvent the caliphate by reuniting the institution's political and legal authority at the expense of private jurists (fuqahāʾ). The paper illustrates how Ibn Muqaffaʿ’s solution relied on a creative integration of Iranian and Islamic ideas of statecraft and legitimate rule. Ironically, this creative integration may have played a part in the Risāla’s failure to garner necessary support to effect change.

In 2015, the quincentennial commemoration of the Portuguese arrival on the island of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf (1515–1622) revealed the underlying presupposition among Iranians that the Portuguese presence on the island was the harbinger of a long-term pattern of western imperialism. This analysis questions the accuracy of this narrative by advancing a new interpretative framework that does not reduce the holding of Hormuz to simply another dark episode of European colonial history. Circumscribed and limited in aim and reach, Lusitanian activities on Hormuz cannot be brought under the generic rubric of “orientalism,” which is embedded in European colonial tradition, and which, by extension, buttresses Iranian nationalist sentiment about the Persian–Portuguese entanglement. This research demonstrates that Portuguese objectives diverged from the eighteenth and nineteenth century rationalist scientific traditions of the British, French and Germans professing a civilizing mission as a rationale for colonial policies. Whereas the Portuguese operated from a worldview that combined profit, dynastic pride and religious rhetoric, the Portuguese mission to Hormuz was not guided by a grand discourse of civilizing the “other.” While there was a complex interplay of commercial interests and brutal methods on this strategic entrepôt, Portuguese ambitions in Hormuz were confined and elusive, and at best a matter of tribute-taking. The present paper charters some of these complex interactions.

Azerbaijani national identity emerged in post-Persian Russian-ruled East Caucasia at the end of the nineteenth century, and was finally forged during the early Soviet period. After the fiasco of the short-lived independence period of 1918–20, Azerbaijan became Soviet. Soviet power then instrumentalized Azerbaijan for political and ideological penetration into Iran by galvanizing local separatist movements. Azerbaijani Iranology was shaped within Soviet oriental studies and put into service of Azerbaijani nation-building. Exiled Iranian communists found asylum in Baku, joined local research institutions, wrote the first Persian academic and school textbooks, and contributed to the translation of classic Persian poetry into Azerbaijani. Soviet Azerbaijani Iranologists were sent as translators to the Soviet missions to Iran and Afghanistan. After Azerbaijan regained independence in 1991, its Iranological infrastructure was represented by several departments at the National Academy of Sciences and the Iranian Studies Program at Baku State University. While the number of Persian classes at schools during the last three decades diminished, a new generation of post-Soviet Iranologists—those who studied in Iran—emerged. While Soviet Azerbaijani Iranologists never created a solid bilingual dictionary of Persian, several Persian–Azerbaijani and Azerbaijani–Persian dictionaries were published in the 2010s. Post-Soviet Azerbaijani Iranology is still trying to find its place within humanities in the transitional nation.

This paper investigates the usage and frequency of what is referred to as K-suffixes in three Balochi dialects, namely Koroshi, Coastal and Sistani Balochi. It shows that K-suffixes are most likely the reflexes of earlier evaluative morphology, traditionally termed “diminutives,” and are characterized by a high degree of multi-functionality. While in Coastal and Sistani Balochi evaluative functions continue to dominate, they have been largely lost in Koroshi Balochi, and the suffix is now used to indicate definiteness. The development appears to have been spearheaded by female speakers, and its frequency is also dependent on genre and speech situation. Data is taken from an extensive corpus of spoken Balochi narratives and from a questionnaire with thirty-six speakers. The results suggest that evaluative morphology can develop into definiteness marking, with the development passing over a stage of combination with deictic markers. The paper concludes that the development of definiteness marking can proceed down a pathway that is distinct from the one normally assumed for demonstrative-based definite marking, though the endpoint may be similar. This is the first detailed documentation of this process for any Iranian language, and one of the few well-documented cases of a non-demonstrative origin of definiteness marking worldwide.

The establishment of the colonial universities in India was a watershed moment for the history of Persian studies on the subcontinent. Despite the rise of English and vernacular literatures in the nineteenth century, Persian remained an essential language of instruction in colonial colleges, with generations of Indian students studying Persian to pass university examinations. By closely studying university calendars and courses, this article demonstrates that the colonial universities created and sustained an ecosystem for Persian studies throughout the colonial period, as Orientalists and increasingly Indian Persianists continued to invest in Persian instruction and curricular development. The breadth, diversity, refinement, and expansion of Persian college curricula—which included texts from the classical Persian canon and contemporary literature written by Iranians and Indians—testify to the continued fluidity and dynamism of Persian studies throughout the period. Such a phenomenon demonstrates that the debates and engagement around the Persian language in colonial India contradict its depiction as an obsolete or entirely classical language, and also that colonial college curricula influenced which texts were edited, compiled, printed, translated, and commented upon.

This paper sheds light on Ismāʿīl al-Qasṛī, his scholarly and pietist networks, Sufi genealogy, and its later transmission. Other than his debated role in Najm al-Dīn Kubrā's initiation into Sufism, very little is known on this understudied yet significant Sufi from Khuzistan. The paper argues that Ismāʿīl al-Qasṛī and his western Iranian Sufi genealogy was the primary, rather than secondary, initiatory chain claimed by Kubrā, his associates, and the later heritage. Besides, al-Qasṛī's robe continued to be transmitted beyond Kubrā's Sufi chain, and received multiple names in the absence of a prominent, eponymous master to claim it. Also introducing the figures in al-Qasṛī's, and hence Kubrā's, spiritual genealogy, the paper discovers the overlooked yet decisive impact of Iranian masters, most notably the famous pietist of the Fars area, Abū Isḥāq al-Kāzarūnī, on Sufism in the later tradition.

The world-wide expansion of multinational corporations and the concomitant rise in direct foreign investment have recently received considerable attention from economists. A continuing controversy has existed over the costs and benefits of foreign investment to both the capital-exporting and the host countries. The conflict between the interests of foreign capital and the "national" interest is particularly noticeable in the underdeveloped countries. While many of these countries have opted for the "free enterprise" path to economic growth, they lack the technical and administrative expertise, as well as political will, to explore alternatives to the foreign investment as an instrument for gaining access to the industrial countries' technological know-how and markets. At the same time there is a gradual realization that the alleged benefits of foreign investment are not automatic and that the costs may be substantial.