Higher education at Iran's state-run universities is not supported by a deeply-rooted tradition of quality assessment. For several decades, Iranian universities have not been able to monitor themselves and develop efficient, internal structures of quality assurance. The academics' attempts at internal monitoring have failed, giving way to a system of bureaucratic supervision and control. Recent changes in Iran have given rise to new concepts, including the principle of universities' self-evaluation, based on academic autonomy and scientific freedom. But the dominant tendency in Iran's political structure and administration is still toward external, bureaucratic control. The conflict between more or less advanced texts and typically solid structures is a reflection of inconsistencies within the Iranian society, pursuing its transitional stage.

The ancient Persian empires are denoted as despotic, practicing arbitrary rule while Greece, Persia's archrival during the sixth to fourth century BC, exercised rule of law. This paper uses a contract theory framework to analyze some of the geographical and environmental underpinnings of the existence of rule of law in the city-states of ancient Greece and its absence in Persia. I discuss the role of geographical conditions of land (open plains versus mountains), population pressure, proximity to the sea and form of trade (overland versus overseas) as factors conducive to rule of law in the city-states of ancient Greece and to despotism in ancient Persia. Specifically, the role of trade via land in Persia prior to the fifth century BC is compared to the role of sea trade (alongside with piracy) in ancient Greece. I argue that in ancient Persia monarchs could tax or expropriate much of the gains from overland trade, preventing the accumulation of an independent form of wealth by merchants. In Greece, sea trade alongside the practice of piracy led to gains from trade that could not be easily expropriated by the monarchs and acted as a balancing force vis-à-vis the power of the monarchs, creating a basis for rule of law in the Greek city-states.

In 2002, the European Union (EU) announced that it would enter a Trade and Cooperation Agreement with Iran. The deepening of economic and diplomatic relations between the EU and Iran was, however, linked by the Commission to progress in four areas: human rights, non-proliferation, terrorism and the Middle East Peace Process. This article argues that the current focus on efforts to find a solution to Iran's nuclear ambitions has overshadowed the dynamics of EU human rights diplomacy towards that country. Unlike diplomatic pressure on the non-proliferation issue, the EU-Iran Human Rights Dialogue did not only enjoy great support by politicians and human rights activists, but did indeed result in changes in legislation and policies aimed at the protection of human rights. Europe's multi-track strategy allowed Iranian activists and members of the legal profession to approach the notion of human rights from within the Shi'a notion of justice and rationality and thus managed to assert Islamic roots for human rights and uncovered the very secular realities of human rights violations in the Islamic Republic. The Dialogue was launched at a critical juncture in Iran's reformist movement and helped likeminded politicians, particularly the executive and parliament, to gain momentum domestically and credibility internationally. While efforts at reform were and still are often impeded by the country's competing centers of power, this article argues that efforts to promote and protect human rights in Iran must not be sacrificed for concerns over the nuclear issue.

Though Simin Behbahani's poems differ in their command of language, versatility of themes, and originality of images, they are unified from beginning to end by common traits. This poet has consistently been an advocate of individual rights, regardless of gender, class, religion, political affiliation, or ethnicity. She has transformed a conventional and mainly masculine poetic form—the ghazal. With her skillful mastery of poetic devices and techniques, she has integrated a classical genre with a modern vision, blending the old and the new, the masculine and the feminine. She has brought together the discourses of modernity and tradition, which, rather than competing in her work, complement, restructure and reconstruct each other. Hers is high art with popular appeal. This is all the more remarkable because Behbahani's adherence to the prosodic rules of the classical ghazal, her multifaceted outlook, her repeated allusions to prophets, philosophers, writers, literary characters, make great demands on her readers.

Numerous observers have noted that a feminist generation of educated young women appears to be emerging in Iran, despite the anti-feminist discourse of the Iranian government. Evidence from three surveys conducted in 2000–2003 confirms and complicates these observations. Educated young women are significantly more likely to espouse feminist attitudes of various sorts than other Iranians, including educated young men. In addition, educated young women are significantly more likely to work outside the home, marry later, give birth later, have fewer children, and have more egalitarian marriages than other Iranian women. However, surprising proportions of older Iranians also espouse feminist attitudes, and a majority of respondents in one nationally representative sample of urban Iranians identify themselves as proponents of women's rights.

Ayatollah Montazeri was a Khomeinist who came to regret being Khomeini's unabashed protegé. Though he has never abandoned the doctrine of velayat-e faqih, he has sought to reconceptualize it by furnishing it with democratic principles. In this, he has not been credible, although he has managed to portray himself as a reformer among some Iranian activists who themselves have credible reformist credentials, such as Akbar Ganji. But other reformists believe that the principles of the mandate of the jurist permit authoritarian abuses. And those among them who seek a mujtahid's support for overthrowing that doctrine would prefer to turn to the writings of Ayatollah Dr. Mehdi Ha'iri (d. 1999).

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.

Alongside the burgeoning secular ideas on people and state during the Constitutional Revolution, a movement seeking a modern Islamic state, governed according to the shari'a, also emerged. This article studies the evolution of that movement in Isfahan, first by contrasting the experience of two brothers of very different ages, Aqa Najafi Isfahani and Haj Aqa Nurullah Isfahani, and examining the way the younger became receptive to the Pan-Islamic ideas then current in the Middle East. Second, the article considers in particular the political theory of Aqa Nurullah, which was influenced by his practical experience of institutional innovation in Isfahan. He argued that constitutionalism was implicit to Islam and saw it as generating wealth for Muslims. He also advocated many of the features of later Islamism, including the desire for a strong army.

Contemporary Iranian cinema has enjoyed wide success on the international scene—winning awards at film festivals, receiving praise by critics, and being screened in many countries around the world. But this success has another side to it: at home in Iran, the movie theater attendance is in decline and a range of players, including individuals, policymakers and government entities continue to meddle in shaping its future. Throughout the twentieth century and during the two decades of post-revolutionary successes abroad, Iranian cinema developed its own unique style and aesthetic. A cinema which was sometimes nurtured and financially encouraged by the government, yet at other times censored or banned by it. This paper provides a brief survey of the history of Iranian cinema since the 1900s in order to reveal the paradoxical issues both propelling and bedeviling its development and the role of principal actors involved in fashioning an Iranian national cinema.

This article analyzes Behbahani's narrative and poetic works as they reflect different sociopolitical discourses over decades and discusses her contribution to the rise of new literary discourses in different periods. These discourses reflect the pre-Revolutionary committed and post-Revolutionary feminist literary movements and, in recent years, an emerging trend toward expression of the cultural exigencies of modernity. This new development results from efforts for renewed literary modernity, in which feminist, reformist, and civil society movements find common ground for concern. Behbahani's poem, “I Will Rebuild You, Oh My Homeland,” is analyzed to show that recent re-readings and public performances of this older piece may signify a literary shift regarding issues of modernity.

This is a study of the national sacralization of Hafiz as the “emblem of the manifestation of the Iranian spirit.” This sacralization began with E. G. Browne in 1902 but reached its definitive formulation in Abd al-Hosein Hazhir's monograph Hafiz-tashrih in 1928. For a nation to have a purchase on itself it must provide for a convocational experience. Shortly after the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, an ascending intellectual elite in Iran set out to do just that by fashioning a heterodox cult of the veneration of Persian poetry by recasting pre-modern texts, authors and their tombs into a national scripture authored by national prophets buried in sacred grounds which culminated in Hafiz as the “seal of its prophets.”

The Persian tradition of Euclid's Elements is closely connected with the Arabic transmission of the work in Iran, Central Asia and India. This tradition has multiple starting points. Naīr al-Dīn ūsī's Arabic edition had a profound impact, but it was one of several Arabic versions that served as the basis for Persian translations. At the institutional level both the Arabic and the Persian traditions flourished in different spaces—at the courts, in the madrasa, and in the sphere of collectors. Emphasizing the continued importance of court patronage, this paper explores the specifics of spatial and temporal coordinates in the transmission and transformation of Euclid's Elements in Islamic Iran.

Addressing the Arabic and Persian scientific traditions in eastern Islamic lands, this study focuses on the nature and place of demonstrations in optics and mechanics, sub-disciplines of geometry. A focus on the comparative context of demonstrations facilitates clearer understanding of local coordinates that affected the development of these fields, which are shown to have had distinct, and sometimes opposite, cases of transmission and application in Islamic and European lands. Sample demonstrations are presented in an appendix to highlight the concept and terminology of “mithāl” to identify shifts from geometrical to experimental methods in the case of optics, and from physical productions to model duplications in the case of mechanics.

This article addresses an important, usually neglected, aspect of the work of Simin Behbahani, namely her prose and fiction, mostly autobiographical writings, which should be indispensable to an understanding of her poetry. While Behbahni views her poetry to be about life in general and says that she utilizes the language of the people to compose her poems, she also finds prose a more appropriate form for writing on certain topics. With an examination of a number of her prose writings, including “An Mard, Mard-e Hamraham” [“That Man, My Companion”], “Ba Qalb-e Khod Cheh Kharidam” [“What I Bought with My Heart”], and “Kelid-o Khanjar” [“Key and Dagger”], the article explores the poet as a storyteller and the link between her poetry and fictional prose, especially in terms of her life story.

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.

Because of annual communal lamentations dedicated to Siyāvoš, he is considered to be a unique character among heroes of the Šāhnāmeh. The elements of the rituals revolving around Siyāvoš are compatible to those of vegetation deities in some other religions. Of particular interest is the cycle of birth-death-rebirth of vegetation deity that takes place according to a specific sequence of events. In the present article, the author attempts to trace conformities and nonconformities in the Siyāvoš tale as described in the Šāhnāmeh and correlates them with the life-death-rebirth cycle of vegetation deity.

Accounts of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran have tended to ignore the role of the Baha'is in that event. This paper looks at the case of Sari, capital of Mazandaran province, where the Baha'is of the city played a major part in initiating the move towards Constitutionalism and in educating people about the reforms envisaged and about the modern world. They also led the way in carrying out some of these reforms. In particular, the Baha'is established the first modern schools in the town. In this process, they were opposed by the Muslim ‘ulama in the town, who equated Constitutionalism and the Baha'i Faith, and persecuted the Baha'is of the town relentlessly for both reasons, leading eventually to the killing of five of the leading Baha'is of Sari in 1913. A brief account is also given of the attitude of the Baha'i leader ‘Abdu'l-Baha (1844–1921) towards the Constitutional Movement and the role of the Baha'is in it. This paper follows the events of the seven years 1906–13 in Sari and describes seven swings of the pendulum of power in the town alternating between the Baha'is and Constitutionalists on the one hand and the ‘ulama and the royalist forces supporting Muhammad ‘Ali Shah on the other. It points out that the neglect of the Baha'i aspect of these events by historians has led to a failure to account adequately for some of the events of these years.