Marco Polo's encounter with Kublai Khan, which Italo Calvino made the framework for his exploration of the fantastic in urban life, stands as a useful parable for the nature of the interaction of West and East in the period between 1200 and 1700, when myriads of Europeans produced journals and accounts of their journeys into the rest of the world.

By all accounts the departure of the shah from Iran in January 1979 was met by most Iranians with the expectation of greater freedom for both the individual and the group. For a number of minority groups, this included the expectation of greater cultural and political autonomy. Initially, the new regime appeared to be sympathetic to such expectations, but by the summer of 1979 violent conflicts were erupting between the central government and members of several tribal, regional, and ethnic minority groups. While the central government appears to have contained the ethnic and regional autonomy movements, officials and analysts have continued to express concern over the possible fragmentation of Iran, and autonomy movements are viewed by many as a significant obstacle to the consolidation of the new regime and/or a threat to its stability.

In Iran and India religious philanthropy has been a feature of Zoroastrian piety as well as providing the means by which both communities have prospered throughout their respective histories. In Iran an elaborate structure for the regulation of charitable donations was already in place during the Sasanian period and laid the foundation for the laws governing pious foundations, awqāf, after the Islamic conquest. The increased interaction between Iranian Zoroastrians and Parsis from the mid-nineteenth century onwards led to the expansion of the Tehran Zoroastrian community and the rise of a wealthy merchant class which in turn enabled philanthropic activity to flourish. This development will be discussed here with reference to a particular vaqf, that of the first ārāmgāh or Zoroastrian cemetery to be established in Tehran in the early twentieth century. The case of Qasr-e Firuzeh spans three successive governments in Iran and gives an insight into the management of a charitable endowment within different political contexts.

This article seeks to develop an interpretation of ornament as geometric pattern that embodies metaphysical intent in Iranian monuments of the fifth/eleventh century. The proposed argument elucidates cultural meaning relevant to a particular time and specific place, with implications for broader application.1 Reading geometric patterns as visual commentary, this approach relates the presence of patterns in art accompanied by a Qur'anic inscription to both the practice of pattern-making and the contemporary discourse concerning mathematics, philosophy, and the Islamic sciences in Iran. Particular emphasis is placed on the use of a passage from the Qur'an (59:21–24) inscribed on the tomb towers at Kharraqān, in which the Qur'anic term, amthāl, is taken literally to refer to the patterns executed on the monuments.

This article analyzes two-dimensional images documented in the work of fourth/tenth century mathematician Abu al-Wafā' Būzjānī, which appear in his treatise, On Those Parts of Geometry Needed by Craftsmen. These images record three-dimensional tessellations of the sphere, geometric constructions, which may have served as a basis for architectural monuments and the interior design of domes in Islamic Iran. Such designs were very likely the result of collaborations among mathematicians and artists. As explained here, the construction of the icosahedron on a sphere, as presented in Būzjānī's treatise, is not mathematically correct. But the construction of the spherical dodecahedron is precise. Būzjānī's studies of the sphere as a three-dimensional form deserve further consideration as an important component in the development of mathematical thinking.

The purpose of this essay is twofold; to present an argument on the role of communication in the processes of modernization that goes substantially against the dominant views of the last two decades, and to illustrate that point of view by the example of Iran. The article was written at a moment of enthusiasm, in January-February of 1979, when the Iranian revolution looked like one of the most unanimous, nonviolent and liberating social revolts of modern history, enjoying widespread domestic and international support. Alas, that rare historical opportunity was spoiled by division and rancor in the revolutionary leadership.

In a Beautiful Essay, Titled “Justify My Love,” Daniel Boyarin writes, “From almost the first sentence in my first preparatory course in reading the Talmud, I was charmed—in the full antique sense of the word.” So much so that he did not notice that “they [the characters central to the Talmudic narratives] were all men, or that the texts were primarily addressed to me just because I was a Jewish man. I failed to see the exclusions and oppressions that those facts encode and mystify.” Gradually, feminist awareness of these oppressions and exclusions, Boyarin explains, made his life disturbing and untenable, eventually producing a new endeavor, which he calls “to justify my love, that is, both to explain it and to make it just.”

The dilemmas eloquently written about in this essay are in many ways those I have navigated since, as a teenager, I fell in love with the seduction-temptation episode in the Joseph/Yusuf story.

Zoroastrian theology's emphasis on living the good life; the encouragement to create material wealth with the accompanying social obligations to put it to good use, explains the immensely extensive welfare system put in place by the Parsi community in India. Following the Arab conquest of Iran, the diminution in numbers and stature of the Zoroastrians in the ancestral land and the subsequent Parsi settlement in India, meant the marginalization of a people whose forebears once ruled a mighty empire. Once the Parsis acquired financial success, they put in place a community-wide network of benevolent institutions. This was followed by extending a muscular benevolence to the Zoroastrians of Iran, which evolved into a highly structured undertaking to ensure the safeguarding of the community from virtual extinction. Thus, Zoroastrian philanthropy was as much a reaffirmation of religious traditions as it was a means of self-preservation.

In their narratives of the rise of the Safavid dynasty, many Safavid chroniclers include accounts of either one or two dreams of Shaykh Safi al-Din (1253-1334), founder of the Safavid order. A historiographical reading of the various renditions of the dreams serves several important purposes: it gives insight into the historical methodology of the Safavid chroniclers, it indicates changing religious perspectives in Safavid Iran, and it demonstrates the patterns of political legitimacy that evolved from the reign of Shah Isma'il (1501-1524) to the reign of Shah ‘Abbas I (1587-1629). This paper will thus examine six versions of Shaykh Safi's dreams and show how interpretations of the dreams changed over time, based on evolving religious and political attitudes.

Scholars have long been aware of the importance of dreams in Islamic history, and have outlined the many religious and political functions of dream episodes in historical and philosophical texts.

The economic history of Iran is a subject that has barely begun to receive the attention it deserves. Articles and parts of books on particular aspects of the subject appeared as early as the nineteenth century, but it is only since World War II that there have been extensive and serious studies in English, and these are still few and far between. Prof. Lambton's book Landlord and Peasant in Persia deserves to be singled out as a major pioneering study, and recently there has appeared Professor Charles Issawi's edited volume, The Economic History of Iran 1800-1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). This book brings together an outstanding collection of articles, excerpts, and sources, many of them translated from Persian, French, German, Russian, and Italian, that provide a basis for an understanding of the economic history of Iran in the nineteenth century.

The concept known in Shiᶜite jurisprudence as wilāYat al-faqīh has been interpreted in various and contending ways over the course of time. In order for us to examine these differences, we need to establish a few points. First, although the Qurᵓanic revelation bears principally on issues of morality and piety, early Muslims deemed it essential to relate these issues to practical matters in the exercise of authority. Second, rulership in the Islamic community (ummah) was a prerogative of the Prophet, whose mode of governance was to blend the approximately six hundred verses of the scripture that dealt with social affairs with the customary law (ᶜurf) of Western Arabia. After the Prophet's death, it was necessary to add to this mix a third ingredient, namely, the interpretation, by those knowledgable in the law, of how the Prophet would have met unanticipated contingencies.

Qajar Iran (1785-1925) began with notions of beauty that were largely gender-undifferentiated; that is, beautiful men and women were depicted with very similar facial and bodily features. Sometimes the only way one can tell who is male or female is through style of headgear. Other times it remains very difficult to tell if we are looking at a man or a woman.

In written sources, the same adjectives, such as moon-faced (māh ṭalᶜat), rose-faced (gul rukhsar), cypress-statured sarv qāmat or sarv qad), ruby lips (laᶜl lab), bow-eyebrows (kamān abrū), or alternatively crescent eyebrows (hilāl abrū), black-scented hair (mushgīn mū), narrow-waist (miyān bārīk or kamar bārīk), narcissus-eyed (nargīs chashm), etc., are used to describe male and female beauty.

Board games were played in many parts of the ancient world and so it is very difficult to attribute the origin of any board game to a particular region or culture. Board games have been found in ancient Mesopotamia, the oldest from the city of Ur, but one must also mention the game of Senet in ancient Egypt. Often board games were placed in the tombs of the pharaohs and sometimes the dead are shown playing with the gods, for example one scene shows Rameses III (c. 1270 B.C.) playing with Isis to gain access to the nether world. The importance of this image lies in the depiction of the cosmological and religious significance that ancient peoples attributed to board games—they were not just games played for pleasure. Reference to board games in Persia can be found as early as the Achaemenid period, where, according to Plutarch, Artaxerxes played a board game with dice.

In this paper I shall describe briefly the background and setting of professional storytelling (naqqāli) in present-day Iran. Then I shall examine some aspects of how the craft of storytelling is transmitted, particularly with respect to how a young man becomes a storyteller and what aspects of storytelling are seen as important. Finally, I shall examine how this transmission relates to the way in which storytellers actually construct their performance.

There are two separate, but related, aims in the paper. Through a comparison of the stories told and the literary works used as their source, I shall demonstrate that the Iranian national legend remains creative today. More generally, I shall demonstrate that the abstract values expressed as important to a craft may disregard those very elements which make a craftsman successful and which breathe life into the craft.

Since 1979, Iran has witnessed important socio-economic and institutional changes and has been affected by significant economic and political upheavals. These years have witnessed a succession of oil booms and busts, external war, trade sanctions and of course, more recently, heightened internal strife within the state. After 25 years, however, Iran's political outlook seems opaque to most observers and the economic record is equally lacklustre with many Iranians experiencing a considerable retrogression in their living standards by regional and international standards.

In a sense, the history of science deals with the creation and development of scientific ideas and theories concerning scientific discoveries or even failures. Its focus is on scientific discovery and its forerunners, and it generally ignores areas where two methodologically divergent and geographically separate scientific traditions clash, especially when no new discoveries have resulted therefrom.

One such area is the clash between modern European and traditional Islamic sciences. For this reason, the introduction of modern science into the Islamic world and its challenge to traditional scholars has not attracted the attention of historians of science either from within or without. Books on the history of science dealing with the Islamic world, and more particularly with Iran, rarely cover the field beyond medieval times, thus showing a tangible research deficit.

This article examines cultural attitudes on race and African slavery in late Qajar chronicles prior to abolition in 1929. In contrast to previous scholarship, Qajar textual sources reveal that elite cultural attitudes were relevant in structuring the social conditions of enslavement in Iran. Visual depictions and narratives about African eunuchs and concubines naturalized the violent acquisition and use of the Other. Slave narratives also bear witness to how such views of African corporeality determined the social worth of eunuchs and concubines in the domestic sphere.

Since the mid-1980s, Israel, thGawdat Bahgate United States, and other Western powers have accused Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons capability. Iranian officials have categorically denied these accusations and claimed that their nuclear program is designed for civilian purposes. This essay examines the history of Iran's nuclear program since the late 1950s and analyzes the forces that shape the country's nuclear policy. These forces include perception of security threats from Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, and the United States; domestic economic and political dynamics; and national pride. The following section will discuss the European and Russian stance on Iran's nuclear ambition as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency's efforts to reach a compromise that would satisfy the international community's concerns and Tehran's demands. The essay concludes with some predictions on how Iran's nuclear program is likely to evolve in the next few decades.