Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran. Lior Sternfeld (California: Stanford University Press, 2020). Pp. 208. $24.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781503613638

Abstract

plenty of original verse material into the text, usually written in Armenian or Persian script rather than in clunky transliteration, and accompanies this material with the due translations. Perhaps as impressive as his navigation of the primary sources is his engagement with the secondary literature in a number of disparate fields, most obviously those of Armenian, Persian, and Turkish literature. He is conversant further afield in Ottoman, Abbasid, and Byzantine studies. Scholars from all of these fields will find this work useful, as will Seljuq and Ilkhanid historians. Those with an interest in popular culture and performance in premodern Anatolia will especially benefit from this study. It is difficult to say that this book is about anything other than Mongol-era Anatolia. We can assume that the input of the editor or other practical considerations led to the sleepier and more Eurocentric “medieval” in the subtitle. Perhaps, though, the Mongol specifier would have been misleading, as the study devotes little space to the broader Eurasian context despite provoking questions in this regard. How, for instance, did Mongol power affect the spread and character of Persian literature in Anatolia? Why was literary Turkish emerging in the region at approximately the same time as the composition of Qipchaq and Uyghur Turkish texts in the neighboring realms of Mamluk Egypt and the Golden Horde? These questions may be best explored in other studies, although one would like to hear the author’s thoughts on the matter. Pifer’s appraisal of a great thirteenth-century Armenian poet summarizes his understanding of the opposing visions of the past that characterize the book: “to understand Kostandin [Erzinkats’i] as a poet, we would do well to place him in dialogue with his contemporaries— and not only Armenians” (174). That Pifer succeeds in doing so is a great feat in itself. He convincingly demonstrates how Anatolian poets used communal and linguistic differences to express their ideas, and thus created works in which contact and even union with the foreign were a persistent theme. Paradoxically, they even used this contact with the foreign to keep their own communal boundaries intact, a fact the author does not attempt to downplay. The literary and historical fields need more juxtapositions such as those offered in this book, and scholars should be trained to skillfully cross civilizational boundaries more often. Only then can they more fully tackle the burning question of what shared cultures are and were, and their relevance to our world today. Pifer’s work is a stimulating and valuable example of what such work looks like.