The last two decades have seen the construction of an Iranian “national cuisine” in cookbooks published outside Iran, while the post-revolutionary migration of Iranians from their country has led to the opening of Iranian (also called “Persian,” especially in the United States) restaurants all over the world. The menus of these restaurants evince a certain uniformity. Main dishes fall into three categories: chilawkabāb (white rice with grilled meat, widely considered the “national” dish); stews (khūrish[t]s) with white rice (chilaw); and colorful rice concoctions incorporating meat, legumes, vegetables, and occasionally fruits (pulaws). The total comes to a maximum of about twenty dishes, which one could be forgiven for taking to be the corpus of traditional Iranian cuisine. The similarity of restaurant menus everywhere suggests a basic culinary cohesion, while “tradition” implies that Iranians’ eating habits have undergone minimal change over a long period of time. Both propositions need to be qualified.

Da (Mother): Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseini, as Recorded by Seyyedeh A‘zam Hoseini was published by Sureh-ye Mehr, the official publisher of the Artistic Center of the Islamic Development Organization, in 2008. According to the publishers, it became the biggest seller in the shortest period in Iranian publishing history. This article analyzes the conditions of production, distribution and reception of that work, and compares it to the canon of other contemporary Iranian war narratives. It argues that the unusually wide and varied reception of a traditional discourse of sacrifice, nationalism and revolutionary fervor was facilitated by the fashionable format of the woman's memoir, in addition to a formidable propaganda machine.

Confronted with the task of writing a chapter on “History as Literature” for the volume on Persian historiography in the new History of Persian Literature, I found myself asking, “What does this title mean? And what might it imply?“ In medieval Islamicate societies, “history” (Arabic ta˒rīkh, Persian tārīkh) referred both to a specific discipline and to works dealing with the objects of that discipline. If, as written works, histories may be broadly classed as “literature” (for which neither Arabic or Persian had a corresponding term until the modern period), this might suggest that historians placed style over substance, or/and that history is “imaginative writing” and may, as such, contain an element of “fiction.” Indeed, as I shall note below, recent research on Arabic historiography (which poses somewhat different problems, in the main, than does Persian) has argued that many of the “historical” accounts which appear therein are, in fact, “fiction” passed off as history.

This article examines the impact of modernization and Westernization on the clerical community in Iran between 1925 and 1941, and discusses briefly the reactions and attitudes of various factions and strata of the ulama toward the modernization efforts of the state. The study also demonstrates that the clergy's reaction to modernization was not one of outright opposition and resistance. While the clerical community as a whole rejected Westernization, its reaction to the government's modernization policies varied greatly.

The process of modernization in Iran was accompanied by a considerable degree of change in social stratification. New social classes and occupational groups emerged and the power of the old and traditional elites declined. In contrast to popular assumptions, the ulama as a traditional elite showed a remarkable degree of adaptability in response to modernization and social change.

Social life in Qajar Iran was segregated by both gender and class. Parallel to social life were social pastimes and amusements which were generally segregated in the same manner. Foreign travelers to Iran, in true Orientalist fashion, frequently mention that people had few amusements. This paper will discuss various amusements and diversions, ranging from outdoor activities such as hunting and shooting, to physical and intellectual games, to high drama such as passion plays (ta‘ziya) and folk performances as well as street performers, puppeteers and mimicry, dancers and musicians, and to activities promoting leisure and enjoyment. It attempts to cover as many activities as possible, but it will also show that there was such a wide choice of amusements that it is, in fact, difficult to discuss them all.

The poet Muhtasham Kāshānī (d. 1588) is today known primarily for his strophic elegy on the martyrdom of Imam Husayn at Karbalā, but such devotional poems make up only a tiny fraction of large oeuvre. Far more substantial are two works of a very different tenor, Nuql-i ‘Ushshāq (The Lover's Confection) and Risāla-yi Jalāliyya (The Glorious Epistle). Using an innovative combination of prose and poetry, these works tell the story of the poet-narrator's stormy affairs with, respectively, an upper-class courtesan and a footman attached to a nobleman's house. As part of the larger literary movement known as the maktab-i vuqū‘ or “realist school,” these purported autobiographical accounts of Muhtasham's amorous adventures reveal a sophisticated culture of eros and desire that differs strikingly from the usual representations of the state of literature and the arts under Shah Tahmāsp. After situating these works in their historical, literary, and cultural contexts, the article turns to a close analysis of an extended passage from each work to show how Muhtasham integrates lyric poetry, narrative, and setting to depict the pursuit of desire in the urbane world of early modern Persia.

The significant changes in the social, economic, and political conditions of Iran in the late Qajar era both precipitated and necessitated changes in cultural production. One way to better understand these shifting paradigms is through an examination of print culture. ᶜAbbas Mirza, the governor of Azerbaijan and a Qajar prince, has been credited with promoting and supporting the printing industry in Iran. In 1812, he oversaw the establishment of a printing house in Tabriz, and it was largely due to his influence that Tabriz became an important center of publishing. Jan Rypka noted that the first “printing business” in Iran was set up in Tabriz in the year 1824-25 but he believed the press to have been operational for only a decade before lithography overtook the printing enterprise. ᶜAbbas Mirza sent a group of students to England to study, the most notable being Mirza Salih Shirazi who was a student at Oxford University.

The under-appreciated role of the press as a tool of public diplomacy was rooted in its origins as a Qajar state project in the nineteenth century, but also cultivated by a shared impulse of Iranian journalists and statesmen to represent Iran effectively in the court of world opinion. Moreover, foreign governments often reacted to the Iranian press generally, not just the official newspapers and not just newspapers produced in Iran, as a forum though which to advance or protect their interests in Iran. The Pahlavi state integrated the press as part of a larger state-run mass communication policy in the 1930s that would eventually include new technologies such as radio, and retained public diplomacy as an essential purpose of the media. This study draws upon archival material, press accounts, and memoirs.

Against the background of language policy research on Iran, and drawing on insights from recent scholarship on the role of translation in language policy, this article calls into question the claim that “Persianization” of non-Persian peoples is the main element of language policy in Iran. In so doing, the article examines closely the role of translation as enacted in two legal instruments: the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Law of Parliamentary Elections. The study illustrates that although official communication between Iranian authorities and citizens is a prototypical example of monolingualism and non-translation, voluntary translation happens between Persian and non-Persian speaking individuals, acting as a viable and cost-effective bottom-up alternative for the inclusion of non-Persian speaking peoples, far more effective than an impractical, top-down language policy reform implicitly found in the “Persianization” claim.

The Arab conquest of the Sasanian empire (633-651 A.D.) provided the Iranian peoples with their first extensive contact with Islam. Prior to this, encounters between Zoroastrians and Muslims had generally been restricted to the lower reaches of the Mesopotamian plain. More importantly, this conquest installed Islam as the religion of the new rulers, replacing Zoroastrianism, referred to as the good religion (Phl. weh dēn) by its followers, which had enjoyed royal favor under the Sasanians. The conquest of the Sasanian empire resulted in large numbers of Arabs entering and eventually settling on Iranian territory. The presence of these Arabs on the Mesopotamian plain and Iranian plateau, and their eventual settlement there, naturally resulted in coexistence and social interaction between Muslims and the native Zoroastrians. This interaction would initially have been slow, as the Arab troops were confined to military garrisons (Ar. Amşār).

This article offers a chronology of climate events in Iran over the last millennium to challenge traditional chronologies of the Iranian past based on politics, war, and economics. Using insights gleaned from the historiography of climate in Iran, and from neighboring regions, especially the Ottoman Empire, four episodes of climate cooling show how climate-induced environmental processes affected more people for longer in Iran than did the policies of the empires ostensibly ruling over them. Thus, the article aims to put climate more squarely on the agenda of historians of Iran so that the conjectures advanced here can be confirmed, revised, or discarded through future empirical research. Moreover, the article seeks to bring Iran into wider conversations in environmental and global history.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 saw the mobilization and cooperation of a variety of groupings that were brought together by their shared determination to overthrow the Shah. However, it was not only opposition to the Pahlavi regime, but also suspicion of and disdain for that regime's Western backers that united these revolutionary groups. Religious leaders (ulama), merchants (bazaaris), intellectuals and students alike all espoused the strong anti-Western sentiments that had been developing in Iran over the previous two decades. But what particular factors can be seen to have encouraged the adoption of these sentiments in the lead-up to the revolution, and in what ways were they articulated and subsequently put into practice by the leaders of the new regime? This article suggests that various domestic and international influences can be seen to have shaped the emergence of Iran's revolutionary discourse of “economic independence.” In particular, the paper argues that a peculiar blend of Shi'i concepts of social justice and Marxist-Leninist discourses of class struggle and anti-imperialism not only informed the economic outlook of Iran's burgeoning revolutionary movement during the period 1953–79, but was also enshrined in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic.

In the 18th century, rather remarkably, Iran formed a navy. Up to that time the shahs of Iran had relied on other powers to maintain security in the Persian Gulf. The dominant naval power in the gulf during the 16th century was Portugal, while the Dutch, and to a lesser extent the English, were supreme during the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries. Because Iran's southern borders were safe and secure after the conquest of Hormoz in 1622, it did not need a navy. Hence, Iran relied for a time on the Dutch and the English to maintain security in the gulf.

English naval assistance in the conquest of Hormoz set the pattern for the next century. This reliance on other powers for maintenance of security in the gulf proved to be a workable policy as long as there was no real threat to Iran's coastal borders in the south.

The history of Iran is still told very much in terms of events on center stage. A common enough lament: the intrigues at court, the deeds—edifying or otherwise—of the ruler and his entourage, the marching of armies and squashing of revolts, the rise and fall of dynasties, these seem to be the main stuff of history. When recognized for what it is, the tossing of waves, we blame the sources for the fact that we can't see below the stormy surface. There is some truth in this, of course; the main narrative histories are notoriously palace-centered or, later, camp-followers. The regions of Iran tend to come into focus only when they are, in fact, briefly transformed into centers. An example of this is Sistan, one of the few provinces to be the subject of detailed modern studies. Even then, it tends to be the same sort of story, writ small.

This article is actually an outline of history of anthropology in Iran. In part, it traces the development of the field and the problems that some of its practitioners have been endeavoring to overcome. In part, it recounts some of the experiences of the author and the frustrations she and others encountered in trying to broaden the scope of the permissible range of study of anthropology.

Triumphant or turbulent, cultures are at once symbolized by and constituted from their arts and sciences. Literature celebrates, as law canonizes, the grand ideals of a living culture. Traditional or transitional, societies and their institutional structures of authority find elaborate expressions in the literature they produce.

This volume of Iranian Studies is devoted to an examination of the modern Iranian writer and contemporary Persian literature in their dialectical, interaction with a transitional Iranian culture and society. Its focus is on a revolutionary literature within a revolutionary social context. The term "revolutionary" is used here in its fundamental cultural sense, embracing both the social and the political.

This paper is devoted to a sociological examination of the problem of "commitment" in modern Persian literature. To reach for the political nature of the problem, it traces the formation of the intelligentsia in modern Iranian society.

The Seljuk and Khwarazmid periods witnessed a growing relationship between Sufism and the state in the central Islamic lands. This link grew even stronger during the Ilkhanid Mongol period when there was an immense rise in the influence of Sufi masters in court circles, so much so that, in many ways, some Sufi figures became the primary religious authorities in Ilkhanid Iran. At the same time, there also appears to have been a blurring of the philosophical line separating Sufism from Shi'ism.

The family of wealthy Sufi masters from Bahrabad in Khurasan has attracted the attention of modern scholars on account of their involvement with the highest levels of the Ilkhanid state machinery and their association with the Kubrawi order and its influential figures, such as Najm al-Din Kubra, Sayf al-Din Bakharzi, and ‘Ala’ al-Dawla Simnani.