Iran Studies – serie

This volume offers a selected range of writings that explore key themes in the intellectual, literary, social, and political history of modern Iran. Focusing primarily on the transformative periods from the nineteenth century to the present, the book brings together in-depth studies and analytical pieces that illuminate Iran’s evolving literary and political culture and intellectual currents. By placing Iranian thought in broader contexts, this collection offers an informative and insightful resource for scholars, students, and readers interested in modern Iranian history and its broader intellectual landscape.

The 19th century saw an enormous shift in the authority structure of Iranian and Iraqi Twelver Shiʿism, with the victory of a theological school (Usulism) that stressed the power of the clergy. This is well known. What is less well known is that there was a parallel development of authority in the Shaykhi school and its offshoot, the Babi sect. Here, especially in later forms of Babism, the Shiʿite claim to charismatic authority reached its limits in hyperbolic attestations of divinity. The present text is in two parts: a study of how Shaykhism bifurcated into a form close to orthodoxy next to the highly unorthodox Babi movement. Part two examines how Babism changed after the death in 1850 of its founder, the Bāb.

C.J. Edmonds published articles in orientalist journals and co-authored with Taufiq Wahby A Kurdish-English dictionary (Oxford, 1966). He published his memoirs of Iraq, Kurds, Turks, and Arabs : politics, travel and research in North-Eastern Iraq, 1919-1925 (London - New York, 1957), but his Persian memoirs remained unpublished. It tells how, after studying oriental languages in Cambridge, he became Consular Officer in Bushire, participated in British campaigns in Mesopotamia during First World War. As a Political Officer in Luristan Edmonds was in charge of the oil fields’ security and was sent to Northern Persia after the war, a direct witness of the Jangal upheaval and the 1921 coup d’Etat.

During the Safavid period, the Shi'i Muharram commemorative rites which had been publically practiced since the 7th century, became a manifestation of state power. Already during the reign of Shah 'Abbas I (1587-1629) the Muharram rituals had transformed into an extraordinary rich repertoire of ceremonies and ceremonial spaces that can be defined as 'theater state'. Under Shah Safi I (1629-1642) these ceremonies ultimately led to carnivalesque celebrations of misrule and transgression.This first systematic study of a wide range of Persian and European archival and primary sources, analyzes how the Muharram rites changed from being an originally devotional practice to an ambiguous ritualization that in combination with other public arenas, such as the bazaar, coffeehouses or travel lodges, created distinct spaces of communication whereby the widening gap between state and society gave way to the formation of the early Iranian public sphere. Ultimately, the Muharram public spaces allowed for a shift in individual and collective identities, opening the way to multifaceted living fields of interaction, as well as being sites of contestation where innovative expressions of politics were made. In particular, the construction of the new Isfahan in 1590 is linked with the widespread proliferation of the Muharram mortuary rites by discussing rituals performed in major urban spaces.

In Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge in 13th – 15th Century Tabriz, an international group of specialists from different disciplines investigate the role of Tabriz as one of the foremost centres of learning, cultural productivity, and politics in post-Mongol Iran and the Middle East. While standard accounts of Islamicate history have long presented the 13th to 15th centuries as the bottom of the decline paradigm of old, the present volume demonstrates the vibrancy and originality of the intellectual and cultural production of this period by focusing on Tabriz among other capitals of the region. The volume particularly explores the transmission of knowledge and institutional and cultural patronage in the post-Mongol period.Contributors include Reuven Amitai, Nourane Ben Azzouna, Sheila Blair, Devin DeWeese, Joachim Gierlichs, Birgitt Hoffmann, Domenico Ingenito, Robert Morrison, Ertuğrul Ökten, Judith Pfeiffer, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, F. Jamil Ragep, and Patrick Wing.

The Pahlavi Widēwdād (Vidēvdād), The Law (Serving to Keep) Demons Away, a fifth-century Middle Persian commentary on the Avestan Vidēvdād, describes rules and regulations that serve to prevent pollution caused by dead matter, menstrual discharges, and other agents. It recognizes the perpetual presence of the demons, the forces of the Evil Spirit –forces that should be fought through law-abiding conduct. In spite of its formidable textual problems, the commentary provides an invaluable quarry for the rules of the Zoroastrian community through its citation of regulations for the conduct of its members. Many topics are covered, from jurisprudence to penalties, procedures for dealing with pollution, purification, and arrangements for funerals. Viewed together, they provide the reader with an exquisite interlace of a community’s concerns.

In The Mongol Empire between Myth and Reality, Denise Aigle presents the Mongol empire as a moment of contact between political ideologies, religions, cultures and languages, and, in terms of reciprocal representations, between the Far East, the Muslim East, and the Latin West. The first part is devoted to “The memoria of the Mongols in historical and literary sources” in which she examines how the Mongol rulers were perceived by the peoples with whom they were in contact. In “Shamanism and Islam” she studies the perception of shamanism by Muslim authors and their attempts to integrate Genghis Khan and his successors into an Islamic framework. The last sections deal with geopolitical questions involving the Ilkhans, the Mamluks, and the Latin West. Genghis Khan’s successors claimed the protection of “Eternal Heaven” to justify their conquests even after their Islamization.

This book presents a translation of Bertold Spuler’s groundbreaking work on the transformation of Iran from a Persian Zoroastrian Empire to a province of the Arab Muslim Empire to a land divided by a number of Persian and Turkish kingdoms.

Il existe peu de documents originaux pour permettre aux historiens de comprendre comment le coup d’État de Seyyed Ziya et de Reza Khan en 1921 s’est déroulé. Les journaux de deux diplomates français, Georges Ducrocq (attaché militaire) et Hélène Hoppenot (épouse du chargé d’affaires) nous donnent des informations de première main sur l’opinion publique et sur les activités des Britanniques ainsi que sur la vie quotidienne avant, pendant et après février 1921. Ils donnent des portraits contrastés de quelques uns des principaux politiciens iraniens et de personnages européens aussi importants que Starosselsky, Dickson et de nombreux autres.Few original documents enable historians to understand how the 1921 coup of Seyyed Ziya and Reza Khan was staged. The diaries of two French diplomats, Georges Ducrocq (military attaché) and Hélène Hoppenot (wife of the French chargé d’affaires) give us first hand information on public opinion, on the British activities and on everyday life before, during and after February 1921. They give contrasting portraits of main Iranian politicians and of such important European actors as Starosselsky, Dickson, Norman and many others.

In Ästhetik, Politik und schiitische Repräsentation im zeitgenössischen Iran zeigt Christian Funke die Verflechtungen von Politik, Protest und schiitischer Materialität in der Islamischen Republik auf. Das Buch legt anschaulich und vielschichtig dar, wie die Proteste von 2009 und die ›Grüne Bewegung‹ mit umfassenderen Diskursen über Demokratie, Identität, Geschichte und Gegenwart sowie Religion und Politik verknüpft waren. Funkes Argument fußt auf Interviews und intensiver Feldforschung und umfasst ein breites Themenfeld von Farben über Banknoten bis hin zu städtischer Raumordnung. Funke bietet einen neuen Ansatz zur Theorie und Methodologie von Religionsästhetik und wirft ein neues Licht auf die › Grüne Bewegung‹ , indem er die islamischen Ressourcen freilegt, mittels derer sich ihr Protest artikulierte.In Aesthetics, Politics, and Shiʿi Representation in Contemporary Iran Christian Funke explores the entangled relationship between politics, protest and Shiʿi materiality in the Islamic Republic. He shows how the post-election protests of 2009 and the ‘Green Movement’ were part of larger discourses on democracy, identity, the present and the past, and religion and politics.Funke’s argument is based on extensive fieldwork and interviews. He covers a broad array of topics, ranging from the interpretation of colours to the use of banknotes to the emergence of an urban spatial order. Funke offers a novel approach to the methodology and theory of material religion and by revealing the Islamic undercurrents in the ‘Green Movement’, his book provides a new and more appropriate picture of protest and religion in Iran.

The late Professor Hossein Ziai’s interests focused on the Illuminationist (Ishrāqī) tradition. Dedicated to his memory, this volume deals with the post-Avicennan philosophical tradition in Iran, and in particular the Illuminationist school and later philosophers, such as those associated with the School of Isfahan, who were fundamentally influenced by it. The focus of various chapters is on translations, editions, and close expositions of rationalist works in areas such as epistemology, logic and metaphysics rather than mysticism more generally, and also on specific texts rather than themes or studies of individual philosophers. The purpose of the volume is to introduce new texts into the modern canon of Islamic and Iranian philosophy. Various texts in this volume have not been previously translated nor have they been the subject of significant Western scholarship.

The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere is among the first books to explore the pre-modern and early modern historical ties among such diverse regions as Anatolia, the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, Western Xinjiang, the Indian subcontinent, and southeast Asia, as well as the circumstances that reoriented these regions and helped break up the Persianate ecumene in modern times.Essays explore the modalities of Persianate culture, the defining features of the Persianate cosmopolis, religious practice and networks, the diffusion of literature across space, subaltern social groups, and the impact of technological advances on language. Taken together, the essays reflect the current scholarship in Persianate studies, and offer pathways for future research.

In Weltgeschichtsschreibung zwischen Schia und Sunna, Philip Bockholt addresses the question of how history was written in the premodern Islamic world, and offers new insights into one of the most important chronicles composed in Persian, Khvāndamīr’s universal history Ḥabīb al-siyar. Taking into account the political events which occurred in Iran and India around 1500, he examines the manuscript tradition of the work, and gives an in-depth analysis of how the author adapted his chronicle to the Shiʿi and Sunni religio-political outlook of his Safavid and Mughal overlords. Making use of new approaches in the fields of history and philology, Philip Bockholt convincingly proves how texts were transmitted and modified for various audiences during premodern times.In Weltgeschichtsschreibung zwischen Schia und Sunna untersucht Philip Bockholt am Beispiel von Ḫvāndamīrs Weltgeschichtschronik Ḥabīb as-siyar, wie Geschichte in der islamischen Vormoderne geschrieben wurde. Vor dem Hintergrund der politischen Umbrüche in Iran und Indien um 1500 analysiert er die intentionale Ebene von Historiografie und zeigt auf, wie ein Historiker sein Werk in verschiedenen Fassungen sowohl für die Safaviden als auch die Moguln an schiitische und sunnitische Kontexte anpasste. Mit der Erforschung der Handschriftentradition eines der am häufigsten kopierten Geschichtswerke der islamischen Welt legt Philip Bockholt die Techniken des Autors offen, die Darstellung von Ereignissen im Sinne des jeweiligen Patrons zu verändern, wodurch Einblicke in den Prozess von Geschichtsschreibung sowie zu Textüberlieferung und Leserschaft im Handschriftenzeitalter möglich werden.

In Modern Middle-Class Housing in Tehran – Reproduction of an Archetype, Rana Habibi offers an engaging analysis of the modern urban history of Tehran during the Cold War period: 1945–1979. The book, while arguing about the institutionalism of modernity in the form of modern middle-class housing in Tehran, shows how vernacular archetypes found their way into the construction of new neighborhoods.The trajectory of ideal modernism towards popular modernism, the introduction of modern taste to traditional society through architects, while tracing the path of transnational models in local projects, are all subjects extensively expounded by Rana Habibi through engaging graphical analyses and appealing theoretical interpretations involving five modern Tehran neighborhoods.

This volume is an annotated correspondence, of nearly forty years, between two prominent Orientalists. The letters cover a range of topics related to the Zagros Mountains, its peoples, their history, culture, and languages. They also offer a glimpse into the personal lives and careers of the two scholars, give valuable insights on the development of the field of Kurdish Studies, and to an extent outline the contours of what the two referred to as Zagrology.

In Saints hommes de Chiraz et du Fārs. Pouvoir, société et lieux de sacralité (Xe-XVe s.), Denise Aigle studies the spiritual role, but also the political one, played by the Sufi shaykhs. From the tenth century, Fārs was a a land of holiness with Shaykh Kabīr in Shiraz and Murshid al-Dīn Abū Isḥāq in Kāzarūn. This research is based on hagiographic sources, historical chronicles, literary sources and archival documents. The author shows how the pre-Islamic history of Fārs was integrated into spiritual Islam thanks to the mystical speculations of the Sufi shaykhs. The particular interest of this research is its contribution to the history of Lāristān, a region that has long remained terra incognita. Thanks to handwritten hagiographic documents preserved in several private libraries, we discover the existence and the role of spiritual masters until now totally unknown.

In Exercising Authority and Representing Rule, András Barati examines twenty-two hitherto unpublished Persian royal decrees issued by various rulers of eighteenth-century Iran and Afghanistan kept at the Āstān-i Quds-i Rażawī in Mashhad. Considering the paucity of primary sources from this period due to relatively frequent political turmoils, he aims to improve this situation by offering the transcription and translation of these original documents as well as a commentary concerning the textual elements, external aspects, and content of the decrees. Making use of previously published documents, András Barati presents the first substantial study on post-Safavid eighteenth-century diplomatics and addresses several issues related to the political, economic, and administrative history of the region in the early modern period.

This Festschrift volume presents eleven essays on Iran in honor of the eminent scholar of Iranian studies, Professor Elton L. Daniel, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. The diversity and wide range of topics and eras critically explored in this volume highlight the remarkable breadth of the honoree's scholarship and research interests on the history and culture of Iran.Contributors are: Denise Aigle, Anna Livia Beelaert, Mansour Bonakdarian, Layla S. Diba, Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, Marisa McCrone, Mahnaz Moazami, Paola Orsatti, John R. Perry, Daniel T. Potts, Yann Richard, and Farzin Vejdani.

The relationship between the Qajar rulers of Iran and the Vatican constitutes a little-known thread of diplomatic and cultural interaction, sustained by Papal correspondence, gift-giving, Apostolic Delegates and mutual respect, which spanned the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The well-being of Iran’s small Catholic population was a desideratum of Popes, from Pius VII to Benedict XV, but firmans issued by Qajar Shahs offered guarantees which were often ignored on the ground. Iran’s Catholics became unwitting pawns in the decades-long rivalry between American Presbyterians and French Lazarists, and nascent Iranian diplomacy in Europe took great care in matters concerning the Vatican.