This paper surveys some wood carvings belonging to four mosques in the villages of Firizhand, Quhrud, Abyana, and Barzuk. Carved between the years 700/1300-1 and 705/1305–6, they consist of architectural elements such as doors, columns, and capitals. The recently found woodwork evidence from the demolished Jamiʿ mosque of Barzuk reveals that this building and its decorations were executed by a multiskilled artist, who was most likely a descendant of Abu Zayd. Moreover, the newly discovered columns from the Masjid-i ʿAli in Quhrud show that, in contrast to what was previously thought, the current building is not contemporary with its dated door and was erected in later centuries. Interestingly, these wooden mosques were built during the last years of Ghazan Khan's rule and witness his order to construct mosques in all the villages of the country. This woodwork offers significant insight into the artistic and cultural situation of the early fourteenth century.

Mohammad Ali Mojtahedi occupies a prominent place in the development of modern education in Iran. Yet, though not a politician, his influence exceeded far beyond education into the social and political life of contemporary Iran. Deeply convinced of the central role of education in development, his career made important contributions to changes in the landscape of modern education in Iran at both high school and university levels. Within this context, the paper traces the outlines of Mojtahedi's life and work from his birth in 1908 in the city of Lahijan in the northern province of Gilan, up to his death in 1997 in southern France. The paper's most seminal contribution covers the events of the period between the summer of 1964, when Mojtahedi was director of Tehran Polytechnic, and his dismissal in February 1967 by the shah as the head of Aryamehr (now Sharif) University which were closely related to the unsuccessful attempt on the shah's life in April 1965.

Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Iranian banking system and practices have changed significantly. Shortly after the revolution, according to a decree by the Revolutionary Council, banks and insurance companies were nationalized. In 1980 and 1982 legislation was passed to convert all banking practices to Islamic interest-free banking. Despite such significant developments in the Iranian banking system, this area of research has not been given its due attention by the scholars in the field. It is the purpose of this study to describe the process of post-revolutionary change in the Iranian banking system and outline the new trends in credit rationing practices after the revolution.

It will be argued here that the Islamization of the banking system did not result in the so-called abolition of interest from the financial system; in practice the banking system continues to pay interest—now called “profit“—to savings account depositors, and standard interest-bearing financial contracts continue to be utilized by the banks under new Islamic terms.

The purpose of this article is to explore and analyze Iran’s “Republican Moment” of 16‒19 August 1953, arguably the last concerted effort to abolish the monarchy and establish a republican order in the county prior to the Revolution of 1978‒79. By drawing on a broad range of primary source materials that have thus far remained relatively understudied by existing scholarship, such as the political press of those crucial days, the essay will attempt to shed light on a number of significant domestic developments which impacted the outcome of the actual coup of 19 August 1953. A further attempt will be made to explain the importance of calls in favor of the Republic and the premier Mohammad Mosaddeq’s refusal to take heed of them. The paper will also explore the diverse origins of the Republican platform and its impact on both the urban crowd and the political elite.

The Iranian constitutional movement of the early twentieth century involved various segments of Iranian society. Intellectuals, enlightened members of the bureaucracy, religious leaders, merchants and the urban population, each to a greater or lesser extent participated in this reform movement. Naturally their political attitudes, objectives, and interests differed. The intellectuals, who were secular in outlook and influenced by liberal Western ideas, hoped for the establishment of a constitutional form of government. A small group of reformers in the government sympathized with these men and were in close contact with them. Indeed, it is difficult to distinguish between the former and the latter since most of the intelligentsia were also a part of the ruling class. Perhaps one of the best examples is Mīrzā Malkam Khān Nāẓim al-Dawlah (1834-1908), who represents the attitude of a liberal thinker as well as a reformist member of the bureaucracy.

Ardeshir Mohassess has often been called Iran's leading caricaturist and graphic artist. Yet, as the powerful images on the following pages show, neither appellation fully describes the breadth, depth, and complexity of his art and vision.

The artist himself also defies simple description. Through his art one sees him as a man of sharp and angry perception who wields his sarcastic pen mercilessly--decapitating bodies, twisting them into unnatural shapes, turning the world upside down, all in an attempt to expose the bitter truth that lies, he seems to feel, under the banal surface of everyday reality. In person, Mohassess is a remarkably sensitive, humble, and mild mannered artist with a philosophic sense of humor which focuses, not on the foibles of particular individuals, but on what he finds to be pathetic or absurd in the human condition.

In modernist Persian literature there are at least two important features shared by the majority of contemporary Iranian poets and writers, namely, experimentation with form and social commitment in content. Experimentation with novelistic technique, narrative voice, and colloquial and literary language characterizes the works of such authors as Sadeq Chubak, Ebrahim Golestan, and Hushang Golshiri in fiction; and a continuing search for new means of poetic expression pervades the poetry of Ahmad Shamlu, Yadollah Ro'ya'i, and Ahmad Reza Ahmadi, among others. Furthermore, the content of this literature is almost always implicitly and often explicitly engagé, with engagement or social commitment broadly defined to include the author's choice of subject matter and conscious or subconscious treatment of the shortcomings of society and of the hardships of the individual or the masses.

Nader Ebrahimi (b. 1936), one of the most prolific yet least studied writers of the 1960s and 1970s, is by no means an exception in this regard.

In general terms, the history of the Kurds in the medieval period—or at least those described as being Kurdish in our sources—has attracted relatively little attention within western academia. Moreover, those scholars who have thought to comment on the subject have in general relied on the work of the eminent Russian orientalist Vladimir Minorsky. Hence there has been very little re-examination of the Arabic sources which Minorsky consulted. This article constitutes a first attempt to re-examine some of the “historical orthodoxy” regarding the meaning and nature of the term Kurd in the Middle Ages. More precisely, it aims at questionning the work of those scholars who argue that, due to its ambiguous usage, the term Kurd in the medieval period did not denote an ethnic people. This paper argues that in fact the very ambiguity surrounding the term is indicative of its ethnonymic value and through an examination of the meaning of the term Kurd in this era we can gain a greater understanding of conceptions of ethnic difference in Arabo-Muslim sources.

An important event in the early modern history of india was Nadir Shah's conquest, culminating in the battle of Karnal and the sack of Delhi in the spring of 1739. During this campaign, Nadir looted a huge part of the Mughal treasury, including the fabled Peacock Throne and the Kuh-i Nur diamond, and was responsible for the deaths of thousands of citizens of Delhi in a great slaughter carried out by his army. Historians of India have viewed this invasion as a crushing blow from which the Mughal dynasty never truly recovered, paving the way for European power to become established on the subcontinent in the next few decades. It has been remembered by some Iranian historians as Nadir's crowning military achievement, after which he denied his country the benefits of his victory, wasting away the final years of his reign in an orgy of terror and blood.

My earlier article on this subject (Iranian Studies XVI, 1-2, Winter-Spring 1983) concerned the situation up to the summer of 1981, i.e., the time of Bani-Sadr's dismissal and the first major bombing of the clerical leaders. This article, based on another visit I made to the village in 1983, describes the attitudinal changes that had occurred during the two intervening years.

For the most part, there appeared to be increasing pressure to adhere strictly to the “Islamic” code of dress and public behavior. Not only were there now a permanent contingent (of varying size) of mainly locally derived pasdar in the village, and a hezbollahi (i.e., fanatic, in the usage of the liberals) bakhshdar who served to enforce such behavior, but the members of the newly established village council and also government employees served the same function. Even school children were requested to tell their mothers to wear proper hejab.