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.

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.

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.

This paper aims to describe and explain the different morphosyntactic and semantic features of some double verb constructions in Persian, an Indo-European language mainly spoken in Iran. It is argued that these double verb constructions are not instances of serial verb construction, but instances of emerging aspectual verbs with varied degrees of grammaticalization. It is argued that numerous factors lead to grammaticalization of these verbs, including context, the semantic class of the verbs, and their frequency. A corpus-based analysis shows that these aspectual verbs have been grammaticalized in different ratios during the last one hundred years, demonstrating ongoing change in the Persian language.

The Āl-i Burhān, who held the religious leadership (ṣadāra) of Bukhara from the end of the fifth to the middle of the seventh century A.H. (eleventh to thirteenth century CE) and were the religious and secular leaders of the city, are known to us through a number of studies by Bartold, Qazvīnī, and Pritsak.1 However, at least two other pieces of information about this family's background are available in two recently published books that were not available to these scholars. The first book is al-Qand fī ḏikr ʿulamāʾ Samarqand (henceforth al-Qand) by ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad al-Nasafī (461‒537 A.H./1069‒1142 CE), and the other is Laṭāʾif al-aḏkār li-l-ḥużżār wa-l-suffār fī al-manāsik wa-l-ādāb (henceforth Laṭāʾif) by Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (511–566 A.H./1117‒1170 CE), the greatest religious leader (ṣadr) of this family in the sixth century A.H. (twelfth century CE).2 The latter, precisely because it was written by the greatest and most powerful member of the family, contains some firsthand information about the family itself and the scholars of Bukhara that appears to be unique, and the former provides the most detailed extant information about the scholars who lived in Samarqand or visited that city until the mid-sixth century A.H. (twelfth century CE). Al-Qand also incidentally contains some information about the first ṣadr of the Burhān family, which has neither been seen elsewhere nor noticed by scholars since the publication of the text in 1999.

The success story of Alborz High School was due to a number of factors. The legacy of Dr. Jordan and other of its American founders had set unusually high standards of teaching, behavior, discipline and conduct. Dr. Mojathedi managed to maintain those standards through dedication and hard work, even though there was occasional friction between him and students and teachers. Almost all the students, some of them from the upper echelons of society, came from educated and cultured homes, had performed well at their primary schools, were well-motivated, loved their school, ran various cultural programs by themselves, and included notable writers, poets, artist and athletes. Teachers generally maintained discipline, good humor and high standards, and included stars of altogether different varieties such as Zeinolabedin Motamen, Dr. Mahmud Behzad and Mostafa Sarkhosh.

The Kurdish novel emerged in 1935 and, towards the end of the twentieth century, established itself as a literary genre with a significant quantity and quality. However, until the last decade of the previous century the Kurdish novel was entirely dominated by Kurdish men and there is no single novel written by a Kurdish woman. During recent years, however, Kurdish women novelists have contributed to the development of this genre. This article aims to assess Kurdish women's novel-writing and, through analyzing and discussing their style and themes, tries to find out their main characteristic generic features. An attempt is made to see if there are thematic and stylistic differences between Kurdish novels written by the women and their male counterparts.

This article examines the development of a Marxian frame for the critique of religion in twentieth century Iranian political thought by Taqi Erāni and Bizhan Jazani. It argues that, following Marx, Erāni and Jazani understand religion to be a superstructural relic from an earlier stage of human development which will gradually and inevitably withdraw from collective human life as a consequence of the material dialectics of history. It further shows that Erāni and Jazani consider religion to be instrumental in sustaining relations of oppression, and they view with skepticism attempts to reform religion or to use religious faith as an instrument for mass mobilization in revolutionary struggles.

Religious authority in the Shi‘ite world is often claimed and justified by drawing on national ideologies. Examining the relations between the ruling religious elite in Iran and Lebanese Shi‘ite party of Amal and followers of the Lebanese Shi‘ite scholar Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, this article shows how the latter two actors seek to break official Iran's hegemonic claim to lead the Shi‘ite world through parody and critical narratives about the history and society of Iran. This politics of religious authenticity is not limited to debates among Shi‘ite scholars but also involves other actors such as political party members, students of religion, and pilgrims as they take part in shaping claims to seniority and authenticity in Shi‘ite tradition.

Seven years ago, a political report published by Echo of Iran raised the issue of the difficulty with which the Iranian political elite distinguishes between criticism and subversion. There is still only a hazy boundary separating treason from the lesser evil. Just one example of this level of debate was the suggestion by the “opposition” Mardom Party Newspaper that to attribute administrative misdemeanors to either ministers or to the Imperial Inspectorate was to commit treason.

One of the distressing effects of the failure to make this distinction in contemporary Iran is that a generation may appear which is loyal to the monarchy but which holds attitudes counter-productive to the espoused long-run political goals of the Shah. The attitudes to which I refer include the rejection of policy-oriented political activity and a flexible bargaining stance in the resolution of social problems. This writer met a number of young people in Iran who saw general disorder as the only alternative to the tight rein with which the Shah attempts to guide political activity.

Rawls formulates liberalism according to two conceptions of reasonable and rational, which, tied to two particular notions of society and person, define the basis of liberalism in Rawlsian thought. This article argues that Mehdi Haeri Yazdi's important work, Hekmat va Hokumaat, should be considered as a work of liberal theory, and shows how it endorses liberal conceptions of the reasonable and the rational. The main elements of Ha'eri's liberalism are his thesis that philosophy has priority over jurisprudence, his doctrine of contract based upon concepts of agency contract (aqd-e vekalat) and joint private ownership (malekiyat-e shakhsi-ye musha), and his defense of individualism against the alleged collectivism of Rousseau.