A hundred years ago in colonial Bombay, on September 10, 1922, a group of Parsis established an organization called the Iran League. Meant to strengthen ties with their Iranian Zoroastrian coreligionists inside Iran, the Iran League also endeavored to recast wider economic and cultural relations between India and the country which Parsis regarded as their ancient homeland. That ancient homeland, after all, was undergoing seismic change. In the years following Reza Khan's 1921 coup and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925, Parsis watched with growing anticipation and excitement as Iran's new leader increasingly promoted a new national culture rooted in Iran's ancient past. Prominent Parsis, many of them leaders in the Iran League, fervently believed that Pahlavi Iran would herald all sorts of progressive change: improved conditions for the Iranian Zoroastrians, deeper appreciation of Zoroastrianism among Iran's Muslim majority, conditions for significant Parsi investment in Iran, and even the possibility of a mass Parsi “return” to the shah's domain, reversing the direction of centuries of Zoroastrian migration.1
{"title":"Special Issue: Parsis and Iranians in the Modern Period","authors":"Afshin Marashi, D. Patel","doi":"10.1017/irn.2022.38","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.38","url":null,"abstract":"A hundred years ago in colonial Bombay, on September 10, 1922, a group of Parsis established an organization called the Iran League. Meant to strengthen ties with their Iranian Zoroastrian coreligionists inside Iran, the Iran League also endeavored to recast wider economic and cultural relations between India and the country which Parsis regarded as their ancient homeland. That ancient homeland, after all, was undergoing seismic change. In the years following Reza Khan's 1921 coup and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925, Parsis watched with growing anticipation and excitement as Iran's new leader increasingly promoted a new national culture rooted in Iran's ancient past. Prominent Parsis, many of them leaders in the Iran League, fervently believed that Pahlavi Iran would herald all sorts of progressive change: improved conditions for the Iranian Zoroastrians, deeper appreciation of Zoroastrianism among Iran's Muslim majority, conditions for significant Parsi investment in Iran, and even the possibility of a mass Parsi “return” to the shah's domain, reversing the direction of centuries of Zoroastrian migration.1","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"158 1","pages":"3 - 7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90635042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Poetry readings are an intimate affair; they are not suitable for mobilizing the masses. But poems can capture moods and trigger emotions. They can create closeness and community, send messages and demand change. Indeed, in the case of Iran, a series of poetry reading sessions can be considered a milestone event on the country's path toward revolution.2 During ten nights of poetry reading, known as the dah shab, in October 1977 in Tehran, the country's most prominent poets and writers took advantage of a short window of opportunity that opened up for them when the Shah loosened somewhat the reins of dictatorship. Beginning on October 10, 1977, they presented their poems to thousands of listeners on ten consecutive evenings on the premises of the German-Iranian Cultural Association on Pahlavī Avenue. Poets of all political persuasions were present, united above all in their common interest of demanding an end to censorship and standing up for freedom of speech. The impressive list of participants includes such well-known names as Behazin, Simin Behbehani, Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, Houshang Golshiri, Saeed Soltanpour, and Siavosh Kasrai, along with many more.3
{"title":"Drifting toward Revolution: Kurt Scharf and the dah shab in Tehran","authors":"Olmo Gölz","doi":"10.1017/irn.2022.64","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.64","url":null,"abstract":"Poetry readings are an intimate affair; they are not suitable for mobilizing the masses. But poems can capture moods and trigger emotions. They can create closeness and community, send messages and demand change. Indeed, in the case of Iran, a series of poetry reading sessions can be considered a milestone event on the country's path toward revolution.2 During ten nights of poetry reading, known as the dah shab, in October 1977 in Tehran, the country's most prominent poets and writers took advantage of a short window of opportunity that opened up for them when the Shah loosened somewhat the reins of dictatorship. Beginning on October 10, 1977, they presented their poems to thousands of listeners on ten consecutive evenings on the premises of the German-Iranian Cultural Association on Pahlavī Avenue. Poets of all political persuasions were present, united above all in their common interest of demanding an end to censorship and standing up for freedom of speech. The impressive list of participants includes such well-known names as Behazin, Simin Behbehani, Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, Houshang Golshiri, Saeed Soltanpour, and Siavosh Kasrai, along with many more.3","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"181 - 190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74662240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
with that of the organization. Second, somewhat related to the first question and broadening the analytical lens beyond Iran, how does the IRGC’s historiography of the war compare with such projects in the United States and other countries? Although the IRGC may “not fit neatly into existing conceptual categories,” as Samuel’s book contends (20), the organization’s chronicling of the conflict may bear some similarities to the field of military history in the United States and other Western countries. As in Iran, the field in these countries tends to be largely dominated by military entities like the US Army Combined Arms Center’s Combat Studies Institute and Center of Military History, and less developed and more marginalized in other areas, particularly academia. One reason for this reality is that militaries have a vested interest in studying wars and their historical parallels, lessons learned, and best practices, to avoid repeating past mistakes and to improve current and future performance, the IRGC being no exception to this rule, as Samuel’s book makes clear. Another reason is the added difficulty for individuals and institutions outside the military and government to access classified and sensitive documents and records, assuming they exist and have not been destroyed. As is likely the case in Iran and elsewhere, military history in the West has been plagued and distorted by idiosyncratic and inherent biases, such as Euroand statecentric analysis. In sum, Samuel’s book is required reading for students and specialists of Iranian and Middle Eastern history and politics and, more generally, armed conflict, social revolution, and collective memory. It makes a significant scholarly contribution by delving into untapped sources and by offering unique insights into the IRGC, the Iran–Iraq War, and the Islamic Republic. Finally, the book raises stimulating and engaging questions about military historiography as a national project in Iran and beyond. These questions will surely prompt path-breaking research within the disciplines of history, area studies, and comparative politics in the future.
{"title":"Iranian Women & Gender in the Iran-Iraq War, by Mateo Mohammad Farzaneh. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2021. 457 pages.","authors":"Shirin Saeidi","doi":"10.1017/irn.2022.65","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.65","url":null,"abstract":"with that of the organization. Second, somewhat related to the first question and broadening the analytical lens beyond Iran, how does the IRGC’s historiography of the war compare with such projects in the United States and other countries? Although the IRGC may “not fit neatly into existing conceptual categories,” as Samuel’s book contends (20), the organization’s chronicling of the conflict may bear some similarities to the field of military history in the United States and other Western countries. As in Iran, the field in these countries tends to be largely dominated by military entities like the US Army Combined Arms Center’s Combat Studies Institute and Center of Military History, and less developed and more marginalized in other areas, particularly academia. One reason for this reality is that militaries have a vested interest in studying wars and their historical parallels, lessons learned, and best practices, to avoid repeating past mistakes and to improve current and future performance, the IRGC being no exception to this rule, as Samuel’s book makes clear. Another reason is the added difficulty for individuals and institutions outside the military and government to access classified and sensitive documents and records, assuming they exist and have not been destroyed. As is likely the case in Iran and elsewhere, military history in the West has been plagued and distorted by idiosyncratic and inherent biases, such as Euroand statecentric analysis. In sum, Samuel’s book is required reading for students and specialists of Iranian and Middle Eastern history and politics and, more generally, armed conflict, social revolution, and collective memory. It makes a significant scholarly contribution by delving into untapped sources and by offering unique insights into the IRGC, the Iran–Iraq War, and the Islamic Republic. Finally, the book raises stimulating and engaging questions about military historiography as a national project in Iran and beyond. These questions will surely prompt path-breaking research within the disciplines of history, area studies, and comparative politics in the future.","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"38 1","pages":"420 - 423"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90929471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article argues that the notion of Iranian culture employed in the public discourse of Zoroastrians allows them to tackle the dilemma of Shiʿi-dominated Iranianness without provoking Shiʿi authorities. The piece offers an analysis of ethnographic data, including detailed speech acts documented in Zoroastrians’ ritual spaces and cultural exhibitions. It explores the Zoroastrian configuration of an Iranian culture that summons and encodes pre-Islamic tropes and modern nationalist sentiments by constantly maneuvering around national, religious, and ethnic categories. This configuration's underpinning assumptions, narratives, and texts have powerful platforms in Iranian nationalist imagination. I propose that this arrangement attempts to carve out a space for Zoroastrians’ distinct identity by connecting the history of the Muslim Arab invasion of Persia to the Shiʿi hegemonic norms of Iranian culture today. It further invokes Zoroaster's indigeneity and teachings as the foundation of authentic Iranianness to establish Zoroastrians’ survival as a cultural system.
{"title":"Distinction and Survival: Zoroastrians, Religious Nationalism, and Cultural Ownership in Shiʿi Iran","authors":"Navid Fozi","doi":"10.1017/irn.2022.58","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.58","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article argues that the notion of Iranian culture employed in the public discourse of Zoroastrians allows them to tackle the dilemma of Shiʿi-dominated Iranianness without provoking Shiʿi authorities. The piece offers an analysis of ethnographic data, including detailed speech acts documented in Zoroastrians’ ritual spaces and cultural exhibitions. It explores the Zoroastrian configuration of an Iranian culture that summons and encodes pre-Islamic tropes and modern nationalist sentiments by constantly maneuvering around national, religious, and ethnic categories. This configuration's underpinning assumptions, narratives, and texts have powerful platforms in Iranian nationalist imagination. I propose that this arrangement attempts to carve out a space for Zoroastrians’ distinct identity by connecting the history of the Muslim Arab invasion of Persia to the Shiʿi hegemonic norms of Iranian culture today. It further invokes Zoroaster's indigeneity and teachings as the foundation of authentic Iranianness to establish Zoroastrians’ survival as a cultural system.","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"85 - 100"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86234575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract That Safavid Iran was scene to a boom in the occult sciences (ʿulum-i gharība) is now beginning to be acknowledged by specialists; what has yet to be appreciated is the extent to which that boom represented a smooth and conscious continuation of Mamluk, Aqquyunlu, Ottoman and especially Timurid Sunni precedent. In particular, lettrism (ʿilm-i ḥurūf), developed by the Pythagoreanizing, imamophile New Brethren of Purity as universal imperial science, was embraced by leading Safavid thinkers and doers as a primary Sunni means of Shiʿizing Iran. This occult continuity is epitomized by the oeuvre of Maḥmūd Dihdār Shīrāzī “ʿIyānī” (fl. 1576), the most prolific Persian author on lettrism of the sixteenth century and teacher to Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1621) himself. His Unveiling Secrets (Kashf al-asrār)—a passionate prosimetric paean to Imam ʿAlī as cosmic principle in strictly Akbarian-Būnian terms, like Rajab al-Bursī’s (d. after 1410) work before it—is contextualized and translated here as a case in point.
{"title":"Occult Ecumenism: Maḥmūd Dihdār Shīrāzī's Unveiling Secrets as Exemplar of Timurid-Safavid Sunni-Shiʿi Science","authors":"Matthew Melvin-Koushki","doi":"10.1017/irn.2022.62","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.62","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract That Safavid Iran was scene to a boom in the occult sciences (ʿulum-i gharība) is now beginning to be acknowledged by specialists; what has yet to be appreciated is the extent to which that boom represented a smooth and conscious continuation of Mamluk, Aqquyunlu, Ottoman and especially Timurid Sunni precedent. In particular, lettrism (ʿilm-i ḥurūf), developed by the Pythagoreanizing, imamophile New Brethren of Purity as universal imperial science, was embraced by leading Safavid thinkers and doers as a primary Sunni means of Shiʿizing Iran. This occult continuity is epitomized by the oeuvre of Maḥmūd Dihdār Shīrāzī “ʿIyānī” (fl. 1576), the most prolific Persian author on lettrism of the sixteenth century and teacher to Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1621) himself. His Unveiling Secrets (Kashf al-asrār)—a passionate prosimetric paean to Imam ʿAlī as cosmic principle in strictly Akbarian-Būnian terms, like Rajab al-Bursī’s (d. after 1410) work before it—is contextualized and translated here as a case in point.","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"27 1","pages":"277 - 307"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86905202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Unfinished History of the Iran–Iraq War: Faith, Firepower, and Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Annie Tracy Samuel (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021). xvii + 302 pp. $99.99. ISBN 9781108777674 (hardcover)","authors":"Eric Lob","doi":"10.1017/irn.2022.61","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.61","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"418 - 420"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90289884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Authority in Islam is often understood to operate as a site of negotiation. Based on textual analysis and ethnographic research, this article examines three case studies of disparate Shi'i Sufi Orders where a willing deferral of certain types of authority exists. In the first case study, the Soltanalishahi Order refer their members to an outside mujtahid for all matters relating to the shariat, therein limiting the powers of their shaykhs and qotb. The second case study looks at debates concerning the nature of the qotb's authority within a single order, particularly as it pertains to the power of touch and transmissibility of blessing (barakat) from qotb to object to person, with the order's leadership refuting the idea of charismatic embodied authority despite some of their lay members’ beliefs. Finally, the third case study addresses a group who refute the need for any centralized leadership at all and instead recognize and read the works of multiple qotbs from disparate Iranian orders. By focusing on the deferral of authority, as a type of editing, as a type of shaping, I hope to show that the refuting of certain duties is just as formative as the amassing of powers.
{"title":"And the Master Answered?: Deferrals of Authority in Contemporary Sufism in Iran","authors":"S. Golestaneh","doi":"10.1017/irn.2022.63","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.63","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Authority in Islam is often understood to operate as a site of negotiation. Based on textual analysis and ethnographic research, this article examines three case studies of disparate Shi'i Sufi Orders where a willing deferral of certain types of authority exists. In the first case study, the Soltanalishahi Order refer their members to an outside mujtahid for all matters relating to the shariat, therein limiting the powers of their shaykhs and qotb. The second case study looks at debates concerning the nature of the qotb's authority within a single order, particularly as it pertains to the power of touch and transmissibility of blessing (barakat) from qotb to object to person, with the order's leadership refuting the idea of charismatic embodied authority despite some of their lay members’ beliefs. Finally, the third case study addresses a group who refute the need for any centralized leadership at all and instead recognize and read the works of multiple qotbs from disparate Iranian orders. By focusing on the deferral of authority, as a type of editing, as a type of shaping, I hope to show that the refuting of certain duties is just as formative as the amassing of powers.","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"29 1","pages":"365 - 386"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89372513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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