A central controversy in the economic history of Iran revolves around the nature of the changes that occurred in the nineteenth century: was there an economic “decline” or, on the other hand, can one see the “beginnings of modernization” in the long reign of the Qajar dynasty from 1800 to 1925? Did living standards rise or fall? Did the level and type of consumption improve or deteriorate for the majority of the population? And were the dominant trends positive or negative within the subsectors of peasant agriculture, tribal pastoralism and urban production and trade? The Qajar period has found a number of good historians but has been plagued by problems of conceptualization and interpretation. Two very different judgments have arisen: on one side, Nowshirvani, Gilbar and Nashat have advanced analyses highlighting progress, in terms of “commercialization of agriculture,” “modernization of institutions,” “rise in per capita incomes,” and so forth. On the other, Issawi, Bharier and Keddie have painted more sober portraits emphasizing “relative economic stagnation and very slow development,” especially compared with Egypt and the Ottoman empire.

Khaqani's opening verse in his famous qaṣīda of Ivan-i Mada'in has a recognizable resonance in the works of many Persian writers, poets, and historians of pre-modern times who tried to make sense of the events and upheavals of the past. For them ‘ibrat, which in this context may loosely be translated as a grievous sense of historical consciousness, was the essence of the past. It made them see in the ruins of the once mighty empire, or the records of kings of bygone times, the never-ending cycle of the rise and fall of worldly powers. The Sassanian arch of the palace of Ctesiphon in the above verse was a powerful metaphor for the believer and the skeptic alike.

In modern Persian historical accounts, for all intents and purposes, this sense of ‘ibrat was lost to the multitudes, if not to a handful of the adept.

Ever since Minorsky published his introduction and commentary on the Safavid manual of administration Tadhkirat al-Mulūk, which has become a classic in the field, scholars have come to agree on the tribal character of the state that was founded by Shah Esma`il. In fact, it is through the military force of the Turkmen tribes, the Qezelbash, that Shah Esma`il was able to accede to the throne, thus inaugurating a period of relative stability for Iran that lasted more than two centuries. Iran owed its ability to resist the recurring and alternating attacks by the Ottoman Empire and the Uzbegs to Qezelbash power as well.

Initially mobilized by religious fanaticism, the military strength of the Qezelbash became a double-edged sword for the Safavid rulers with the waning of unconditional Qezelbash devotion to the shah. Though they were indispensable to the defense of the empire's frontiers, the Qezelbash amirs, with their unbridled despotism and the resulting turmoil, never ceased to be a prime source of concern for the rulers.

Intellectual biography as a discipline assumes that the life and thought of an individual can shed light on an epoch. In some cases such a claim is justified, especially where the epoch is obscure and the thinker genuinely representative of the culture of a profession in a city or region. I shall argue the validity of this principle with regard to eighteenth century west-central Iran and Mohammad Mehdi Niraqi (d. 1794), a prominent Imami Shi˓i religious scholar who wrote prolifically and authored a huge three-volume work on ethics. Most of his voluminous writing remains in manuscript, but enterprising scholars in Najaf published the book on ethics, Jāmi˓ as-sa˓ādat (Compendium of Happiness), and it has recently been reissued in Beirut.

The political turmoil of eighteenth century Iran at least partially explains the difficulty modern historians have in understanding its cultural history between the fall of the Safavids in 1722 and the rise of the Qajars around 1785.

The Iranian Revolution, while similar to other modern revolutions in many aspects, has resulted in several innovative social policies which have not been pursued as seriously by other revolutionary governments. In this paper we will study one political innovation that has significant consequences for economic development. Taking advantage of its near monopoly on higher education and complete control over public sector employment, the Iranian government has set up a complex system of political screening and filtering for admission to colleges and universities, as well public sector employment.

This filtering process is complemented by a quota system which further enables the government to control the accessibility of higher education and public sector employment to various social groups. As would be expected, public reactions to these discriminatory policies are diverse. The beneficiary social groups offer justifications for this policy while those who are damaged by it express resentment in private circles.

The first substantial study of the Arabic autobiography, Franz Rosenthal's “Die arabische Autobiographie” appeared in 1937 and has yet to be superseded. Rosenthal mentions most of the autobiographies well known to historians and literary scholars of the Middle East, including al-Ghazāli's (d. 505/1111) spiritual biography, al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl, Usāmah ibn Munqidh's (d. 584/1188) Kitāb al-i'tibār, famous for its humorous anecdotes about the behavior of the Crusader Franks, Ibn Khaldūn's (d. 809/1406) autobiography, included at the end of his voluminous history Kitāb al-‘ibar and since published separately, al-Suyūṭī's (d. 911/1505) al-Taḥadduth bi-ni'mati ‘Llāh, and a number of others. The first autobiographical text known in Arabic is ascribed to Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-'Ibādī (d. 260/873), the famous translator of Greek scientific works. It is included in the biographical dictionary of Ibn Abī Uṣaybi'ah (d. 668/1270) and described as “Treatise on the Trials and Tribulations which Befell Him” (risālah fīmā aṣābahū min al-miḥan wa ‘sh-shadā'id).

To some, it might seem frivolous to speak of village games when issues such as freedom and democracy, factions and socio-political configurations of a larger order loom in Iran. However, this paper hopes to demonstrate that these games, by their very frivolity, reveal and help resolve tensions not only in the village, but ones that lie at the very core of society. The village might have been where they were observed, but such events can become a window to basic questions such as how society continues in spite of tension and conflict.

The games were observed over Nawruz, the Persian new year which coincides with the vernal equinox, during fieldwork conducted between 1976 and 1979 on the mystical roots of the modernization of the Isma'ilis of Iran. The data, in the form of films of the games and notes from observations and interviews, was collected in villages north of the town of Birjand, southern Khurasan.

Since its establishment in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has attempted to bring about a cultural revolution, aimed at replacing the old value system with new norms, building an ideal society based on Islamic criteria, and creating a New Islamic Person. In fact, one of the most important slogans of the postrevolutionary period has been: “Our revolution is a revolution in values.” Recognising the importance of the school in the process of character formation, the Iranian government has assigned the task of bringing about a revolution in values to the educational system.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Islamic Republic's efforts to create a new generation of committed and doctrinaire Muslims through the study of socialization in schools. Socialization in this context is defined as “the process by which people learn to adopt the norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors accepted and practiced by the ongoing system.”

During the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century in Tabriz, the political and cultural capital of medieval Persia, a remarkable congregation of Sufi poets assembled whose society, fellowship, and fraternity in Sufism, made them all members of one literary movement in Persian poetry, known as the ‘School of Tabriz’. In presenting the literary accomplishments and the mystical outlook of this School to a wider audience, the present article attempts to introduce the least known member of this school, namely, the Sufi gnostic poet, ‘Abd al-Rahim Khalvatī (Mashreqī), whose poetic oeuvre and biography has, to date, been completely neglected by Persian literary historians, both east and west.

Among the demands formulated by the ˓ulamā and the tujjār (merchants) who took bast in the shrine of Shah ˓Abd al Azim in December of 1905 was the establishment of an ‘Edālat Khāneh (House of Justice).

The significance of the House of Justice was that it proved to be the prototype for what later became the Majles-e Shūrā-ye Mellī (National Assembly). Paradoxically, this also proved to be obstructive to its becoming a focus for scholarly attention, in the sense that it was soon superseded by the Majles itself, which began to function in the summer of 1906. The role of addressing public grievances was in fact the basic function of the Edalat Khaneh. However, the basic engraving on the society that the Majles was a substitute for the Edalat Khaneh is well illustrated by the fact that during the early period of the Majles over 1000 petitions and complaints were addressed to it.