In the early years of the twentieth century, a wave of constitutional revolutions swept over the developing world, attracting the attention of European observers. One of these was the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–11. British perceptions of this “brave new world” in Iran were more nuanced and diverse than one would expect for this era, commonly portrayed as a time of jingoism and rampant “Orientalist” racism. This study identifies four broad perspectives which shaped British perceptions: the imperialist, Europeanist, liberal idealist and local pragmatist. Within the context of these perspectives, British perceptions were further shaped by different understandings of Iran—influenced by a specifically Iranian-flavored literary Orientalism, Aryanism and history—and by understandings of what constituted an authentic reform or revolutionary movement.

Understanding the determinants of attitudes toward war is important for the prevention of military conflicts and the promotion of peaceful conflict resolution. To examine American and Iranian attitudes toward war, questionnaires were administered to American and Iranian college students in the United States and Iran respectively. The results of the study revealed that American students generally have more positive attitudes toward war than Iranian students. Since most Iranians in the sample experienced eight years of war with Iraq whereas Americans never had direct experience of war, it was predicted that direct experiences of military action could explain this cross-national difference. Among Iranians those who experienced the Iran–Iraq war had more negative attitudes toward war compared to Iranians who did not have such experiences. The results further demonstrated that being authoritarian, religious and male were independently related to having positive attitudes toward war in both samples.

This article analyzes the work of the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld (1879–1948) and its influence on the writing of Iranian national history in the 1920s and 1930s. Herzfeld's life and work illuminates the relationship between Germany and Iran and between orientalist scholarship and nationalist history in the first half of the twentieth century. Through the method of what he called “archaeological history,” Herzfeld wrote an interdisciplinary history of Iran and its Aryan foundations that contested the assumptions of decades of European orientalist scholarship.

This paper surveys the history of American support for Iranian counter-narcotics policy between 1945 and 1989. In particular, it explores the general failings of Tehran's attempt to ban the domestic production and consumption of opium. The significance of this period is two-fold. First, this essay argues that American-backed efforts to combat the opium trade in Iran highlighted the detrimental effects narcotics had upon both state and society in Iran. Second, it suggests that the Iranian ban upon narcotics helped to stimulate a rise in Afghan opium production before the Soviet invasion of 1979.

Matthew Canepa's recent study of the cultural and political interactions between Rome and Sasanian Iran, has provided an opportunity to reassess Sasanian rock reliefs in light of the claims and counter claims between these two empires. Since victory over Romans meant a victory over an-Erān, and generated the most potent of all farrs, i.e. the Aryan farr, many rock reliefs were conceived to show its reflection on the king. What is most interesting, though, is the array of nuances that are incorporated in them to account for the differences that were particular to each situation.

The Jāmāspi is one of the most popular Zoroastrian texts. It was probably conceived as a kind of encyclopedia for laymen. At the beginning of the last century, it was still well-known among the Zoroastrian community of India and has reached us through various manuscript traditions: Pahlavi, Pāzand and Pārsi. A philological analysis of all the manuscript traditions suggests that there was a Pahlavi archetype of the text. Moreover, it shows clearly that the Pārsi codex M52, which represents the best preserved tradition, was the result of a collation of all the existing Pahlavi and Pāzand materials. The study of the language and the narrative pattern allows us to consider the Pārsi transcription as a mechanical transcription from a Pāzand model.

In 2005, Iran outlined its goals in economic, science and technology for the next twenty years, Sanad-e- Cheshm Andaz-e Bist Saleh (The Twenty-Year Vision Document), a working plan to raise the country's ranking to that of the first in the region. This article aims to map Iran's scientific and technological performance over five years since the ratification of the plan. Three main areas of science and technology—the percentage of GDP invested in knowledge, scientific performance and technological performance—were used to compare Iran's scientific output with a set of regional countries. The study revealed that Iran's investment in science to inspire technology (the linear model) has been able to nourish scientific performance in the form of rising publication, whereas the neighboring countries followed a more diversified pathway and inspired science from technological advances. Thus, the number of countries in the region capable of competing with and even outstripping Iran in terms of technological and hence scientific performance has increased.

The establishment of Jami‘at al-Zahra, the first official female seminary in post-revolutionary Iran, opened new possibilities for women to enter the male-dominated clerical hierarchy. The rapid growth of female seminaries increased the presence of seminary-educated women in the official religious sphere. However, as opposed to the male seminaries whose dominant role is to train mojtaheds who can issue a competent legal opinion, the primary role of female seminaries is to train educators and propagandists. Drawing on interviews, documents issued by seminaries and secondary sources, this paper concludes that in spite of the rapid growth of female seminaries, very few women reach the rank of a mojtahed, and thus, in no way weaken the male-centric seminary system in contemporary Iran.

During the last 65 years, European, American and Russian historians have often tried to study the reasons which led to the Allied invasion of Iran on 25 August 1941. For a long period, the main obstacle was the limited access to official documentary sources. Gradually, British and Russian archives started to declassify their documents concerning the events of August 1941. That, in turn, caused a new wave of publications on this topic. Unfortunately, even with newly available sources, modern researchers were frequently unable to grasp the whole picture, emphasizing only one reason for the invasion or even exaggerating its importance. This paper attempts to analyze the most common explanations of the reasons for the occupation of Iran offered by different historians and try to find out which of these causes impelled the Allies to invade Iran. The research paid special attention to existing Russian primary and secondary sources on the issue which are less well known to English readers. Important information found in them allows events related to the Allied occupation of Iran in 1941 to be described from a relatively new angle.

The article examines the parameters of the irregular army in Qajar Iran, including its assembly, numbers, and provisions, as well as the army's organizational structure: its administration and the divisions of the ad hoc forces (provincial militia and tribal cavalry) and of the standing forces (the shah's bodyguard and artillery corps). Until the creation of the so-called regular army units in Iran at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the irregular army was regarded as the only military force in the service of the Qajar dynasty. Despite the existence of a “regular army,” irregular forces, particularly tribal cavalry, continued to play a significant role in Iran's military system throughout the nineteenth century. By understanding the features of the irregular army—its role in Qajar society, its organizational and social structures, its ethnic composition, and other characteristics—we can better understand the character of the state itself.

The social history of Iran in general and that of the Qajar era in particular, has been little studied. The subject of this paper, private life in the late Qajar period, has barely been touched upon, probably because it is a subject on which there is not much primary material. There are no comprehensive accounts of people's daily lives of any class or occupation. In this article an attempt is made to give an account of the daily domestic life and activities of the household in the Qajar period. As there were major differences between the daily life and households of urban and rural areas, the discussion is limited to urban areas and Shi'i households. The article discusses the roles of the various members of the household as well as the consumption patterns of the family and those from inside or outside the household who catered to its needs.

In the late nineteenth century, Qajar Iran, like its neighbor the Ottoman Empire, faced the dual challenges of colonialism and modernity. This paper considers the role of art education and art production in its response to these forces, focusing on the leading court painter of the late Qajar period, Mirza Muhammad Ghaffari, Kamal al-Mulk (1848–1941), whose career bridged the late Qajar period and the early twentieth century. Early in his career, Ghaffari was recognized as the leading exponent of academic painting, yet by the constitutional period his art had evolved into a style representing contemporary Persian life, a style which was informed by nationalistic discourses current in intellectual and political circles. This paper's consideration of the evolution of his style from a European modernism to an authentic Iranian modernism includes Ghaffari's training as a painter, the role of photography in the development of his style, his travel to Europe, and parallels with the art and career of the Ottoman painter Osman Hamdi.

In Iran and India religious philanthropy has been a feature of Zoroastrian piety as well as providing the means by which both communities have prospered throughout their respective histories. In Iran an elaborate structure for the regulation of charitable donations was already in place during the Sasanian period and laid the foundation for the laws governing pious foundations, awqāf, after the Islamic conquest. The increased interaction between Iranian Zoroastrians and Parsis from the mid-nineteenth century onwards led to the expansion of the Tehran Zoroastrian community and the rise of a wealthy merchant class which in turn enabled philanthropic activity to flourish. This development will be discussed here with reference to a particular vaqf, that of the first ārāmgāh or Zoroastrian cemetery to be established in Tehran in the early twentieth century. The case of Qasr-e Firuzeh spans three successive governments in Iran and gives an insight into the management of a charitable endowment within different political contexts.

The Pahlavi literature of the Sasanian and post-Sasanian periods preserves not only many fragments of Pahlavi translations of lost Avestan texts, but also parallel versions of those attested in the extant Avestan manuscripts. Their differences are generally interpreted on the assumption of the existence of an underlying common Avestan text. However, the structural comparison between the Pahlavi translation of Vīdēvdād 11 in the Pahlavi text Zand ī Fragard ī Juddēwdād and its Avestan text in the Vīdēvdād Sāde and the Pahlavi Vīdēvdād manuscripts could point to the existence of two or even three different Avestan versions of the same chapter (fragard).

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about major upheavals in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Among the newly independent states, those that were endowed with energy resources set out on the path of economic growth. The energy resources in Central Asia also attracted outside powers to the region. Moreover, the status of these countries as landlocked, and Russia's monopoly over energy pipelines, led these countries to search for new partners in order to reduce their dependency. This added a new dimension to the political, economic and security equations of the region. In this article, Turkmenistan is studied as a former Soviet republic and Iran as a regional actor that has interests in the region's energy dynamics. The role of energy in the relations between Turkmenistan and Iran is examined. The article proposes that the energy factor has produced a favorable atmosphere for closer relations between the two countries. However, Tehran needs to overcome a number of challenges in expansion of its relations with Turkmenistan, the most important of which is the United States' effective opposition to any Iranian initiative in the field of energy in the region.

This article performs a reading of Shirana Shahbazi's photo-based mural The Curve (2007), an artwork that interrogates the production of knowledge based on various ideas of truth in representation. The Curve meditates on knowledge production in relation to three sites: contemporary documentary photography, the history of northern European still-life painting, and the murals of religious leaders and martyrs that adorn Tehran. The effect of these multiple citations is the creation of an artwork that cannot be comfortably contextualized either in Western art history or in contemporary Iranian visual culture. The Curve thereby anticipates and attempts to block its own assimilation into art historical and critical discourses that reduce the work of Iranian artists to static reflections of a particular geographical and political reality. The artwork thus demands a consideration of the ways in which context, as a term in contemporary global art history, is ideologically constructed within a certain network of power relationships.