Throughout the text, I used a simplified version of the International Journal of Middle East Studies (Persian language) transliteration guidelines. For the hamza I have used ’, whereas for ayn I have used ‘. I avoid diacritics and I have used the spelling of popular places as they are in use inside Iran. Names of people and place known in Western languages are translated with the most common form, e.g. Khomayni is Khomeini. For names such as ‘Ali, I have dropped the ‘, since this is not generally pronounced in Persian. Local dialects (and slang) are transliterated as close as possible to the original pronunciation. The ezafeh is written as -e after consonants and as -ye after vowels and silent final h. The tashdid is transliterated by doubling the letter.