Iranian StudiesPub Date : 2024-03-21DOI: 10.1017/irn.2024.11
James Barry
{"title":"The Armenian Community and Changing Iranian Perceptions of Minority","authors":"James Barry","doi":"10.1017/irn.2024.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2024.11","url":null,"abstract":"Until a decade ago, it was unusual for officials in the Islamic Republic to use the word aqaliat (minority) to refer to ethno-linguistic minorities or Muslim sect minorities. Efforts to cast Sunni Muslims as a minority, or Azeri speakers, were treated with hostility, as the state, following a specific proclamation on ethnicity and sectarianism by Ayatollah Khomeini, viewed these concepts as divisive to the ummah and ultimately a threat to national security. Aqaliat was instead reserved for non-Muslims, specifically those recognized as minorities in the constitution: Assyrian, Chaldean and Armenian Christians, and Zoroastrian and Jewish Iranians. It is therefore worthwhile to examine how one such minority community, Iranian Armenians, has reacted to these changes.","PeriodicalId":502882,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"81 S363","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140223068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Iranian StudiesPub Date : 2024-03-18DOI: 10.1017/irn.2023.76
Sarah Eskandari
{"title":"Tohfeye Ziyarat (Souvenir of Pilgrimage): Religious Mobility and Public Health in Late Qajar Iran, c. 1890–1904","authors":"Sarah Eskandari","doi":"10.1017/irn.2023.76","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2023.76","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, long-distance pilgrimage to Islamic holy sites expanded and quickened, resulting in the spread of cholera among travelers. The necessity of taking circuitous routes to holy cities both inside and outside Iran significantly exacerbated the spread of cholera. Although potential factors such as inadequate public health infrastructure and ineffective quarantine measures contributed to the dissemination of cholera, overall religious mobility in the form of pilgrimage primarily factored behind cholera's spread. Analyzing the influence of religious mobility and rituals sheds light on how pilgrims, as contagions, dealt with the pandemic and the treatment they received from authorities, members of host societies, and individuals within and outside Iran during the cholera pandemics of the1890s and early 1900s.","PeriodicalId":502882,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"347 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140232946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Iranian StudiesPub Date : 2024-03-14DOI: 10.1017/irn.2023.72
E. M. Balıkçıoğlu
{"title":"Quatrains of Many Receptions: A Survey of Perceptions of ‘Omar Khayyām in Ottoman and Turkish Translations","authors":"E. M. Balıkçıoğlu","doi":"10.1017/irn.2023.72","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2023.72","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores the wide range of responses to Persian polymath and poet ‘Omar Khayyām (d. ca. 526/1132) in Ottoman and Turkish literary sources. A great number of intellectuals, past and present, translated Khayyām's famed quatrains into Turkish, albeit with differing motivations regarding subject, style, message, and literary reception. Social critics like Abdullah Cevdet employed Khayyām's quatrains as a vehicle for proving that liberal and progressive mindsets were accommodated in classical Islam. On the other hand, literary scholars like Rıza Tevfik [Bölükbaşı], Ḥüseyin Dāniş, and Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı chose to focus on the intellectual origins of Khayyām's thought, as well as on his connections to Islamic philosophical traditions. In the first decades of the Turkish Republic, there was another wave of interest in Khayyām's quatrains related to prosody, message, and what his legacy and poetic disposition represented with regard to the Islamic past. Whereas poets like Yahya Kemal and Âsaf Hâlet Çelebi regarded him as a paragon of libertine lyrics and Sufi mysticism, Turkish leftist intellectuals such as Nâzım Hikmet, Sabahattin Eyuboğlu, and A. Kadir set him as a socialist or materialist humanist who was a staunch critic of religious bigotry and fanaticism.","PeriodicalId":502882,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"8 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140243680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Iranian StudiesPub Date : 2024-03-14DOI: 10.1017/irn.2023.77
Nozhat Ahmadi, Mohammad Amin Keikha Shahinpour
{"title":"Ottoman Policies Regarding Shah Ismāʿīl II as Seen through Ottoman Documents","authors":"Nozhat Ahmadi, Mohammad Amin Keikha Shahinpour","doi":"10.1017/irn.2023.77","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2023.77","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Relations between Iran and the Ottoman Empire during the Safavid era were never free of tension, even when there was peace between the two states. In peacetime, both powers secretly and closely monitored the other's movements, either in anticipation of or in preparation for attacks. Due to the destruction of Safavid archives, there is little documentary information in Iranian archives about Iranian-Ottoman relations in the period, forcing us to rely mainly on chronicles and travelogues. However, the Ottoman Mühimme Defterleri (Registers of Important Affairs), which contain a copy of all royal decrees and orders, are a very valuable source for the study of these tense and unstable relations from the Ottoman perspective. According to these registers, upon the coming to power of Shah Ismāʿīl II, the Ottoman government publicly upheld and respected the terms of the Amasya Peace Treaty, while secretly looking for a pretext to resume war against Iran. The question is, however, why the Ottomans did not attack Iran immediately after Ismāʿīl II's accession to the throne. Was it due, as some sources claim, to the bravery Shah Ismāʿīl had previously shown in action against the Ottomans? By examining and analyzing the Mühimme Registers of this period, the authors of the present paper demonstrate that the Ottomans had plans to invade Iran and occupy parts of its territory at the beginning of Ismāʿīl II's accession, but their military campaign was thwarted by the lack of opportunities during the short period of the Safavid king's rule.","PeriodicalId":502882,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"2 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140244686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Iranian StudiesPub Date : 2024-03-04DOI: 10.1017/irn.2024.10
Mohadeseh Salari Sardari
{"title":"Andre Godard and Maxime Siroux: Disentangling the Narrative of French Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Iran","authors":"Mohadeseh Salari Sardari","doi":"10.1017/irn.2024.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2024.10","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper investigates the impact of two French architects, Andre Godard and Maxime Siroux, in early twentieth-century Iran using postcolonial methodology to challenge the reductive prevailing narrative of these architects as representatives of Western imperial powers. Furthermore, this paper argues for the existence of a distinct local modernism in Iran, highlights the enduring presence of Iranian architectural traditions throughout different historical periods, and argues against the narrative of modern architectural works in Iran as simplistic hybrids of pre-Islamic Iranian architecture and Western modernism. In addition, this research underscores the role of Iranian intellectuals in shaping the cultural and social movements that led to the broader modernization of Iran and modernism in Iranian architecture.","PeriodicalId":502882,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"9 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140266813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Security-Development Nexus and the Jina Mahsa Amini Protests in Iran's Border Provinces","authors":"Eric Lob","doi":"10.1017/irn.2024.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2024.3","url":null,"abstract":"Even before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iran's border provinces, which contain Arabs, Azeri Turks, Baluch, Kurds, and Turkmen, were marginalized and securitized by the state. These processes and outcomes have created a vicious cycle and self-fulfilling prophecy within the context of the so-called security-development nexus. Iran's peripheral provinces border Iraq and Turkey in the west and Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east. They are located far from Tehran in the inaccessible and inhospitable terrain and climate of mountains and deserts. This geography and topography partially explain why these provinces have been traditionally neglected by the state. Beyond the geographic remoteness and topographic inaccessibility of these provinces, their ethno-religious demographics and marginalization-based grievances, including those that existed during the shah's industrial and urban-focused development drive before the revolution, have fostered local opposition to the state. Most recently, between 2022 and 2023, this opposition has culminated in the Jina Mahsa Amini or Woman, Life, Freedom protests.","PeriodicalId":502882,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"191 1‐2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140417934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Underground: The Secret Life of Videocassettes in Iran. Blake Atwood (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021). 252 pp. ISBN 9780262542845","authors":"Mahsa Salamati","doi":"10.1017/irn.2024.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2024.8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":502882,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"134 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140423391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Nation-State and the (Re)Construction of Religious, Ethnic and Gender Relations","authors":"A. Kian","doi":"10.1017/irn.2024.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2024.4","url":null,"abstract":"Nationalism, nationhood, and ethnicity, as Eric Hobsbawm argued, are social processes constructed essentially from above, yet cannot be understood unless also analyzed from below.1 Inspired by European Orientalism, the intellectual advocates of Western-oriented nationalism attempted to establish a new Iranian identity based on Persian language and Iran's pre-Islamic past.2 This made Iranian nationalism an attractive ideology for some political elites, and was later endorsed by the Pahlavi dynasty (1925–79) when nationalist ideology replaced Iranianness with Persianity. In this conception, there was no room for the ethnic diversity of a nation-state that is the heir of an ancient empire. The elites’ aspirations to uniformity put pressure on members of ethnic groups to conform their way of life to a new model of Iranianness, Persianized and pro-Western. Every nonconforming element was regarded as a sign of backwardness and possible threat to the modern nation and its territorial integrity.","PeriodicalId":502882,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"83 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140440026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reorienting Modernism in Arabic and Persian Poetry, Levi Thompson, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023, 231 pages. £75.00. ISBN: 978-1-009-16447-4","authors":"S. Alavi","doi":"10.1017/irn.2024.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2024.1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":502882,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"216 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140483931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}