This essay considers the “great” status of Shah ‘Abbās I, the most consequential Safavid ruler, by comparing European descriptions to his portrayal in the Persian-language sources. While both depict him as energetic, resolute, and unadorned in attire and demeanor, European sources present him primarily as an empire builder while Persian-language works focus on his role as a warrior on horseback, fighting external enemies and putting down domestic revolts. Neither accounts ignore the violence that came with absolute power, but while Europeans viewed such violence as an unfortunate byproduct of power, Persian chronicles celebrate ‘Abbās as a ghāzi warrior, merciless in his efforts to root out heretics and unbelievers. The surviving image of the shah as a “great” ruler was first reported by European visitors and is primarily a composite of the way they depicted him – as a Renaissance prince and determined empire builder who remained close to his subjects and their concerns.

Environmental problems have become increasingly evident in post-revolutionary Iran. As a result, the field of environment has come to be a focus of research studies and technical management in the country. The recent proliferation of scientific analyses of the so-called environment indicates that the schemes of modern science are developing to combat the problems therein. Research findings also suggest, however, that environmental discourses and practices are not entirely reducible only to the terms of the natural sciences; distinctively, differing ideas of “nature” are drawn on to conceptualize differing schemes of environmental activities. This article explores how the materiality of national symbols brings to light particular social histories that reflect on and unfold through environmental discourses and practices encountered in Tehran.

This article challenges the dominant narrative of AI in Iran as a symbol of national success and technological sovereignty by examining its materiality. The Iranian government often underscores AI’s role in countering sanctions and securing national interests. However, this national narrative overlooks the complex realities of AI’s implementation. By examining the material endpoints of AI – such as data centers, supercomputers, and digital labor – this article reveals a fragmented vision of AI, one that is entangled with global neoliberal practices. The analysis uncovers the sociopolitical and economic forces shaping AI in Iran, arguing that it reflects both the nation’s ambitions and its vulnerabilities, offering a nuanced perspective on AI and its role in contemporary Iranian society.

The Bābīs and Bahā’īs have worked towards a gradual revolutionary conceptual and social transformation within their community which is based on a change in values and ethics. This paper looks first at the underlying transformation in worldview that has resulted in a move away from hierarchy and patriarchy, by creating social structures and pathways of action that are not led by powerful individuals, but rather are consultative and collaborative. Then, more specific examples are given of how this change in worldview played out with regard to social and religious leadership, education, and the role of women. What may be called a Bahā’ī counter-culture has thus been created. Evidence is provided of how these changes may have impacted the wider Iranian society and contributed to misunderstandings and persecutions of the Bahā’ī community.

In November 1980, a twenty-nine-year-old contract worker in Hammond, Louisiana by the name of Stephen K. Clark was arrested and charged with criminal mischief for painting a thirty-foot mural of Mickey Mouse “making an obscene gesture to Iran” on the side of Sunflower supermarket. According to the store's manager, Clark had been hired to give the store a fresh coat of yellow paint before going wildly off script. The Hammond city prosecutor told the press that Clark would face jail time if convicted for his renegade painting, which, alongside the enormous image of Mickey, featured a word balloon proclaiming “We're fed up. Hey Iran!”1 This was no one-off use of Mickey's likeness to send a message to Iran. At the dawn of the 1980s, the image and sentiment Clark felt compelled to share had become curiously popular across the United States, appearing in surprising places all over the country.

This paper revisits the usual narrative of Dāʾūd al-Qayṣarī's life, bringing to light evidence of his stay in Ilkhanid Tabriz. Recent studies mention a connection with Ilkhanid Iran, where he would have met his master ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Qāshānī, but present no substantiated details as to when and where this happened and how these events fit in his life. A document held at the Bodleian, corroborated by evidence from other manuscripts, shows that the common narrative of Qayṣarī's life (in which links with Iran are almost entirely absent) is untenable, and presents evidence of Qayṣarī's presence in Ilkhanid Tabriz. These new elements invite us to revise our perception of Qayṣarī's oeuvre, in particular the idea that it was written under the auspices of the nascent Ottoman power, and further investigate the intellectual scene in Tabriz in the last years of the reign of Abu Saʿīd and of his vizier Ghiyāth al-Dīn.

This article draws on documentary texts from multilingual archives of early Islamic Central Asia to illustrate connections between the Arabic and Middle Iranian scribal world. Here, I contend that some lesser-known evidence from Sogdia contributes new elements to current debates on the contact between Arabic and Middle Iranian scribal traditions and provides a measure of “intensity” of Arab rule in the region more generally. In particular, ostraca from various Transoxanian administrative centers provide documentary confirmation that a class of biliterate Arabic-Sogdian scribes was active in the local bureaucracy as early as the mid-8th century. When viewed in dialogue with archives from coeval Iran and Iraq, the Transoxanian evidence helps lead to a more nuanced understanding of the so-called “Pahlavi diplomatic substrate” model.

This compact book offers a closely researched account of the early years of the Qajar dynasty and state, whose political development was permanently marked by the territorial struggle with the Russian Empire in the South Caucasus in its first three decades. Behrooz's work builds on Muriel Atkin's classic Russia and Iran 1780–1928 (1980), and although unlike Atkin he does not make use of any sources in Russian, the range of Persian-language material he draws upon is much greater, and the two books complement each other well. The first two chapters effectively set the political scene, providing a review of the circumstances of Aqa Muhammad Khan's rise to power, his struggle with the Zand rulers of Shiraz, and the extensive preparations he made to secure the succession of his nephew, Baba Khan Jahanbani, the future Fath Ali Shah. These bore fruit when Aqa Muhammad Shah was murdered by his own servants in Shusha in 1797. Significantly, this took place during a campaign to subdue Qarabagh. The central figure of the book, and of the wars against Russia, is Fath Ali's son Abbas Mirza, but a particular strength of Behrooz's account is his close understanding of the family and intertribal relationships among the Qajar elite, as well as of the petty dynasties that ruled in Qarabagh, Iravan, Badkubeh (Baku), and Derbent in this period.

By examining the history of the Ahvāz pipe mill in the 1960s and 1970s, this article investigates the manner in which competing understandings of Iran's modernizing trajectory among Pahlavi officials were bound up with the material aspects of steel, such as weight, volume, and form. The mill was built to provide pipe for the First Iran Gas Trunkline, a sprawling system intended to gather, refine, and transport natural gas to Iranian cities and the Soviet Caucasus. Officials overseeing the project debated whether the mill's design should prioritize serving the pipeline project or, more ambitiously, establish a new pipe rolling industry able to serve domestic and regional markets. Argued in this article is the significance of attending to infrastructure and materiality in understanding Iran's twentieth-century history of developmentalism.

This treatise, possibly written between 541 and 557 (1147–1162), illuminates the perspectives of a subaltern group persecuted by the Nizari Ismaili hierarchy for agitating to bring about the manifestation (ẓuhūr) of their imam. Ismailis in Iran awaited the manifestation of a descendant of Nizār b. al-Mustanṣir who was killed in Cairo in 488/1095 after a failed attempt to succeed his father as the Fatimid imam-caliph. In 559/1164, the fourth ruler of the Nizari polity proclaimed the Qiyāmat-i buzurg (the Great Resurrection) and was subsequently recognized as the Nizari imam. This text records how its author construed the transference of imamate from Egypt to Iran. It structured continuities between the Fatimid and Nizari daʿwa (summons) and between communities of followers of Nāṣir-i Khusraw and Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, the founder of the Nizari Ismaili polity. If the dating is correct, then the Ḥikāyat is one of the earliest known Nizari texts and is a very early exemplar of the Nizari appropriations of the poet, philosopher, and Fatimid dāʿī (summoner), Nāṣir-i Khusraw.

This article examines five Sasanian bullae from the fire temple of Ādur Gušnasp with seal impressions depicting Aphrodite and Eros, and Aphrodite Anadyomene. It is argued that the original seal with Aphrodite and Eros likely dates from the late 1st century BCE to the early 1st century CE, reused between the 5th–7th centuries CE, while the Aphrodite Anadyomene seal is from the 2nd or 3rd century CE. Contextualizing these findings within Graeco-Roman and Iranian cultures, this article explores reinterpretations of Graeco-Roman iconography for both Zoroastrian and non-Zoroastrian audiences, as well as highlights that bullae with concave impressions of cylindrically curved objects on the reverse had once been attached to vessels, not just documents. Additionally, this article also discusses other sealings on the new bullae, some with Middle Persian inscriptions, identifying a mgw (priest) and an astrologer, providing the first attestation of the word axtar (constellation) on a Sasanian seal.