Iran is rare among developing societies, in the intensity of its dilemma resulting from efforts to effect a symbiosis between two divergent traditions--cultural continuity and technological, i.e., Western, innovation. As the Shah himself sees it, “we are both adjusting the technology to our culture and our culture to the technology.” But the “adjustment” proceeds, at best, haltingly with the result that neither of the traditions is especially vital, nor entirely relevant to Iran's political goals.

In no area of contemporary Iranian life can this be more tellingly demonstrated than that of education. Where the political leadership has made a firm commitment to social, political, and economic change, the educational sector is frequently among the first to reflect this commitment. But the ambiguities, contradictions, and ambivalences of Iran's political elite is reflected in the course of Iran's educational system.

Javad Tabatabai, a leading theorist and historian of political thought in Iran, has presented a controversial theory regarding the causes of the decline of political thought and society in Iran over the last few centuries. His ideas on Iranian decline have affected the intellectual debates on modernity and democracy currently underway in Iran. Tabatabai's career-long research has revolved around this question: “What conditions made modernity possible in Europe and led to its abnegation in Iran?” He answers this question by adopting a “Hegelian approach” that privileges a philosophical reading of history on the assumption that philosophical thought is the foundation and essence of any political community and the basis for any critical analysis of it as well. This article critically engages with Tabatabai's ideas of “crisis,” and “decline” by challenging his exposition of the Persian tradition.

One of the most striking characteristics Iranian studies in Japan is government initiative. The government has long taken the initiative in establishing institutions and programs for such study. Particularly in the 1930s, the motivation for studying Iran was partly political and strategic. Since the late 1960s, however, there has been a more economic orientation. Another characteristic is that Iranian studies have developed within the framework of scholarship on the Middle East in general. For this reason, the general trend of Middle Eastern studies, as well as that of Iranian studies, will be discussed. It is logical to divide this trend into three eras: 1) the 1930s until the end of World War II, 2) the 1950s through the 1960s, and 3) the 1970s to the present.

This essay explores Bahram Beyzaie's inter-paradigmatic reformulations of Iranian dramatic forms and Shahnameh legends in plays which highlight the voice of the periphery against the center and imbue these narratives with motifs that relate them to the present. The essay first reviews Beyzaie's work with the Shahnameh and then examines the Shahnameh cycle of Jamshid and Zahhak to provide the context for in-depth analyses of Azhdahak (1959), Karnameh-ye Bondar-e Bidakhsh (The Account of Bondar the Premier, 1996), and the first episode of Shab-e Hezar-o-Yekom (The One Thousand and First Night, 2003) in which Beyzaie reconstructs the cycle of Jamshid and Zahhak.

Modern Middle Eastern cities, from Afghanistan to Morocco, have, in addition to an almost limitless variety of detail, some general characteristics in common. These common features include among many other things, the narrow, twisting, often dead-end alleys on which the houses in the older quarters are typically located. These houses are inward-oriented to a degree that contrasts markedly and in many ways with “western” urban dwellings. These alleys and houses are an integral part of a complex whole that also includes mosques, shrines, madrasahs, bathhouses and bazaars.

Other general characteristics of modern Middle Eastern cities are the new wide streets for automotive traffic that form networks around the old quarters and often are cut through them as well. Visually, these new streets and the new buildings that accompany them often contrast so sharply with the old that many people are tempted to assume the existence of radically different cultural patterns among their respective inhabitants, radical differences that are isomorphic with the differences in street patterns and architecture.

Hostility between Iran and the United States has intensified since the mid-2000s. America's allegations regarding Iran's nuclear program and its association with terrorist organizations are the main drive for this rising tension. This study focuses on the latter. Specifically, it examines Tehran's ties to militant groups in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Palestinian Territories. I argue that although American and Iranian interests in the region are very different, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

It is indisputable that the religious history both of the Safavid period and of the two centuries that preceded it remains inadequately explored. There existed in Transoxania and Anatolia, as well as the Iranian plateau, a plethora of groups and individuals with diverse tendencies and aspirations that it is difficult, in our present state of knowledge, to synthesize into a comprehensible whole. There are however a number of minor observations on Professor Nasr's presentation that I wish to make. The first is an expression of respectful disagreement, and the others are intended to direct attention to matters not mentioned in his otherwise comprehensive paper.

Professor Nasr's contention that Sufism owes its essential origin to Shiᶜism, and that therefore its suppression in the Safavid period ought to be regarded as a return to the womb that bore it, is highly contestable.

Among the factors influencing the psychology of historical individuals are the “great” cultural tradition in which he or she participates, the local expressions of this tradition, the sex roles defined by society, the traditions of one's economic class, the local child-rearing practices, and the personal history of the individual. For the Near East, the study of the influence of such factors on individuals is in its infancy, and any remarks made here will be tentative. After listing some cultural factors operative in Islamic and Iranian society, we shall look at one leader--Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī--who both reflects the interaction of some of these factors and shows some highly individual features.

Islam as a comprehensive religio-political-legal theory inculcates considerable conformity of behavior--more of behavior than of belief, unlike some religions. The central importance of religious law and of conformity to it have frequently been noted.

On 31 January 1990 the Council of Guardians of the Islamic Republic of Iran ratified an amended version of a five-year economic, social and cultural development plan set forth by the Majlis for the 1989-93 period. In its economic dimension, the proposed plan represents a major departure from the development policies preached, and to some extent practiced, under the leadership of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. One of the most noteworthy aspects of this departure is a significant decline in the role of agriculture, hitherto the “major axis” of economic development. The plan instead designates a “high priority” status to the sector. This, according to some Majlis deputies and government officials, has placed the nation back on the pre-revolutionary development path so heavily criticized by the revolutionaries in the 1970s. The post-Khomeini government, however, considers its new policy orientation a practical step, motivated by technocratic realism, to remedy decades-old economic problems.

This paper is a report on the Soviet cultural legacy in Tajikistan. It takes an in-depth look at the institutions that were created to manage artistic and cultural activities, budgeting, training and promotion under the Soviets. The paper suggests that, except for art and culture related to religion, other genres were enhanced, albeit with an emphasis on ideology. However, independence in 1992, along with the civil war that erupted immediately afterwards, had a devastating effect on art and culture in Tajikistan and on the lives of the artistic community. The paper is part of a comprehensive study of post-Soviet art and culture in Central Asia in the critical years immediately after the Soviet collapse. For this study, over one hundred interviews were conducted with officials, musicians, dancers, writers and singers, as well as visits to centers of art and culture in those republics.

The name of the Armenian-Iranian photographer Antoin Sevruguin (ca.1838-1933) is not found today in the literature of the world history of photography. Although his photographs were published in several English books about Iran during his own time, the standard Western works on the history of photography, including those covering the Near East, all fail to mention Sevruguin. He does appear, however, in Yahya Zoka's Persian-language history of photography in Iran (1997).

In 1999 the Smithsonian Institution, which houses one of the two major collections of Sevruguin's work, published Sevruguin and the Persian Image: Photographs of Iran 1870-1930. Almost simultaneously, the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, Netherlands, which houses the other collection, published a book called Sevruguin's Iran, a combined effort by the Netherlands and the Islamic Republic of Iran and containing both English and Persian text. Once again, this Middle Eastern artist has emerged in Western scholarship.