Iranian World Research Articles

Medieval Georgian Coinage

This article surveys the medieval coinage minted on Georgian lands to the Mongol age. Aimed at college-level pedagogy, it underscores the benefits of contextualizing this rich numismatic record regionally, ecumenically, and cross-culturally. The Christianization of the region named for the Caucasus Mountains, which accelerated after the royal conversions of the fourth century, heightened the isthmus’ long-standing cross-cultural condition. Meanwhile, Caucasia’s traditional socio-cultural orientation southwards, especially towards Iran, did not come to an end with the entrenchment of Christianity. Since the Iron Age, Caucasia has been an active component of the Iranic (Persianate) world. The formation of the dār al-Islām and its extension across Caucasia did not thwart the southwards orientation. In Georgian lands, Islamic types and Arabic inscriptions were commonplace on the local coinage produced by Muslims and Christians alike. The Georgian Bagratids, identifying themselves as a Christian Byzantine-like dynasty, continued to deploy Islamic types on their coinage even during its “Golden Age” in the eleventh to early thirteenth century. At the same time, the nexus of the Iranian and Persianate world, on the one hand, and Caucasia, on the other, endured and evolved. The chronological span investigated here is appropriately bookended by coins embodying imperial hegemonies whose epicenters were located in Iran (i.e., the Sasanians and the Ilkhans).

In Search of the Persianate Tradition of Taking Minutes, or How to Transfer Words to Paper

Abstract The present paper investigates the development of taking minutes and record-keeping in Mughal India and Safavid Iran from the early modern period, including protocols taken as the part of legal processes, diplomatic discussions, government administration, and leisurely gatherings, through an analysis of administrative manuals, stylized literary letters (monshaʾāt), narrative sources, and documents. This study also addresses the relationship between official writings and Sufi literature. Even prior to the import of European bureaucratic practices, the tradition of writing reports of assemblies was well established in the Persian language, though the research here demonstrates how some passages found in the chronicles are probably an embellishment of official records. The practices discussed show a commitment to keeping the account of meetings and oral exchanges in the Persianate world.

Sensory experience beyond vision: Shah Tahmasb’s sixteenth-century garden in Qazvin

In this article, we examine the grand compendium of verses composed by Abdi Beg Shirazi (1515–80/1) in the middle decades of the sixteenth century, which portrays the royal Sa’ādat-Ābād complex of the second Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasb (1524–76). Through careful reading and interpretation of these poems, both individually and as part of the larger structure of the compendium, we revisit the symbolism and mode of perception of gardens in the early-modern Persianate world. Contributing to the scholarship on the sensory turn, we argue that Shirazi’s portrayal of royal gardens as a terrestrial paradise relied on senses and experiences rather than on the formal properties of these gardens. The poet presented the garden as a set of cognitive episodes rather than visual frames. As such, Abdi Beg Shirazi’s text offers a compelling insight into the perception and reception of gardens in the early-modern Persianate world that helps expand the scope of current scholarship on the subject.

Retranslation in Mughal South Asia: The Impressive Failure of a Persian Panchatantra

Abstract This paper explores Muṣṭafá Khāliqdād ʿAbbāsī's 1590s Persian retranslation of the Panchatantra, commissioned by the Mughal emperor Akbar. Examining this text vis-à-vis other translations by Khāliqdād, other court-commissioned Sanskrit-Persian translations from Akbar's time, and the long Kalīla wa Dimna tradition in the Persianate world, this paper argues that retranslations, particularly unsuccessful ones, are where literary traditions and translation norms are most clearly negotiated and contested. Studying retranslations, as shown here, is a useful methodology for revealing tensions between different contemporaneous perspectives on what it takes to fully Persianize a text.

From the Persianate World to Multiple Worlds of the Persianate

ABSTRACT This article fleshes out two future directions for Middle Eastern studies as it puts the recent scholarship in Ottoman studies in dialogue with Alexander Jabbari’s The Making of Persianate Modernity. First, like Jabbari, who interpreted the sexual puritanism in modern Persian literary histories as a convention of Persianate modernity, the author notes that critics can analyze key claims in texts of Arabic and Turkish modernity as generic conventions rather than as facts that capture sociopolitical transformations of modernity. Second, the author argues that The Making of Persianate Modernity, which examines the “form that the Persianate takes” in modern Iran and South Asia, can serve as a point of departure for studying the diverse forms that the Persianate takes in other Middle Eastern contexts, which do not have to be subsumed to a single Persianate world. While the term “Persianate world” has served as a useful heuristic concept, critics can shift their focus to “the multiple worlds that the Persianate has taken” as they analyze communities, such as the Ottoman literati, who do not self-identify as members of a cosmopolitan Persianate community. The Persian textual heritage can cultivate multiple worlds that uphold different, and even contradictory, political ideals and aesthetic norms.

Literary Modernism and Literary Modernity in the Middle East

ABSTRACT This article puts Alexander Jabbari’s The Making of Persianate Modernity in conversation with Levi Thompson’s Reorienting Modernism in Arabic and Persian Poetry to explore the relationship between literary modernism and literary modernity in non-Western literary contexts. It highlights the authors’ parallel theoretical engagements of Michel Foucault’s “attitude of modernity” and modernists’ and modernizers’ reworkings of literary heritage through the sublation of premodern literary content and form into modern conceptions of literary history. Drawing on these parallels, the article reviews several points of convergence in contemporary Arabic literary historical analysis that limn Jabbari’s approach to the Persianate world, which crosses between Persian and Urdu, the naskh and nastaʿlīq scripts, and Iran and India. It seeks out connections in the work and thought of Jabbari’s interlocutors, such as Muḥammad-Taqī Bahār and N. M. Rashed; Iranian modernist poets Nīmā Yūshīj, Aḥmad Shāmlū, and Furūgh Farrukhzād; and the Arab “free verse” (shiʿr ḥurr) poets such as ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī and Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb. The article highlights how Jabbari’s book proves that literary historians in the Persianate world were subject to modernization discourse in making themselves modern and therefore covered up aspects of their premodern heritage that did not fit their modernizing projects.

On Sexuality and Persianate Modernity

ABSTRACT This article assesses sexuality as a crucial component of Persianate modernity in Alexander Jabbari’s The Making of Persianate Modernity. Drawing on the work of Joseph Massad, Afsaneh Najmabadi, and Michel Foucault, Jabbari argues that nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary historians erased premodern Persianate homoerotic desire to craft a “productive” vision of modernity. This erasure participated in a larger epistemic shift that located heteronormative coupling as useful for emerging nation-states. Alongside this erasure, the author points to other ruptures related to sexuality in Persianate modernity, such as the surfacing of a distinctly feminine voice that speaks of desire, the post-1980s adoption of LGBTQ+ identities by many in the modern Persianate world, and the loss of a premodern Islamic approach to romantic love understood as a disease within humoral medicine. Drawing from her own work, Kanner-Botan indicates how continuities in premodern Islamic approaches to love may serve as an additional counterpoint to the epistemic rupture caused by modern approaches to sexuality. Though the ruptures caused by modern approaches to sexuality in the Persianate world merit further research, Jabbari’s engagement with rupture counters the book’s overall focus on continuity by foregrounding the risks of nostalgia latent within the category of the Persianate itself.

The Greatest Name of God: ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as a cosmic image in Rajab al-Bursī's Mashāriq al-anwār

Abstract ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661)—a revered figure in Islamic history as both the first Shiʿi imam and the fourth caliph—serves as a significant image of sacral power in the Persianate world and beyond. ʿAlī's authority underwent a profound reimagining in the early modern era as he emerged as a captivating imperial emblem from the Timurid renaissance to the Safavid revolution, rivalling other prominent figures of political authority such as Chinggis Khan (d. 1227), and becoming a symbol of human perfection for both Sunni and Shiʿi intellectuals alike. ʿAlī transcended his role as a Shiʿi imam to assume the status of a cosmic figure, gradually becoming an ideal symbol for imperial branding. However, there is little scholarly knowledge and appreciation of his changing role in this period. This article examines how al-Ḥāfiẓ Rajab al-Bursī's (d. circa 814/1411) Mashāriq al-anwār, which has remained highly popular throughout the Persianate and Shiʿi world, contributed to the reshaping of ʿAlī's image, portraying him as the quintessential archetype of sacral power and unmatched authoritative feats.

“Eastern” Print Modernities and the Jewish Newspaper of Ottoman Baghdad

Abstract: Ha-Dover (The speaker”) (1863–1871) was Iraq’s first newspaper. Because the editor-printer Barukh Moshe Mizrahi was Jewish and since the text of the newspaper uses the Hebrew script, scholarship has analyzed it only within frameworks of European Jewish modernity. However, nineteenth-century Baghdad was a part of the Ottoman Empire’s eastern frontier. Examining Ha-Dover as an Ottoman frontier press artifact through content, materiality, and temporality points to other frames of reference as understood by Mizrahi. In addition to being a bilingual Jewish newspaper, Ha-Dover generated Ottoman civic participation through the consumption of cultural content, its lithographic form tied it closer to print products from the Persianate world, and its adoption of the nineteenth-century Ottoman Rumi calendar signified an embrace of Ottoman imperial modernity. As Ha-Dover differs from many of the other Jewish newspapers of the nineteenth century, analyzing it within a wider regional context underscores the significance of multiple models of modernities.

Prostitution and its perception as a social and economic phenomenon in Iran and the Caucasus in the late Middle Ages

The connection between the Iranian world and the Caucasus is longstanding and encompasses various areas, including history, culture, language and religion. The objective of this article is to investi-gate the prevalence and taxation of prostitution in late medieval Iran from the inception of the Mongol period (Ilkhanate) to the decline of the Safavids. Prostitution was increasingly perceived as a form of tra-de and was therefore subject to taxation in the same way as other forms of trade. Notwithstanding the efforts of secular authorities to eradicate it and in spite of the fact that in Muslim Iran prostitution was deemed a breach of Islamic law, the practice endured on a notable scale.

‘If Only That Pitiless Blade Had Pierced My Own Heart and Eyes’: Mughal Royal Women’s Grief as a Form of Political Rhetoric

Royal Mughal women have been acknowledged as powerful historical figures in the early modern Persianate world. This article provides a more concrete understanding of the extent and nuances of their power by carrying out a close reading of Mughal princess Gulbadan Begum’s the Humayunnamah, specifically her recollection of the different ways in which royal Mughal women from the sixteenth century used grief as a form of political rhetoric to undergird and even contest power within the imperial family. The Humayunnamah emerges as a pivotal text inviting a re-evaluation of the early Mughal empire as an integrated matriarchy, while also advocating for a deeper exploration of the history of emotions in the early modern Persianate context, particularly from a female-centred perspective.

“Gilanis on the Move”: Mapping an Inter-Asian Society of Shiʿi Muslim Naturalists

Abstract A mobile professional and familial network of Shiʿi Muslim naturalists emerged from Kārkiyā’ī Gilan and served royal courts across much of the Persianate world during the 16th and into the 17th centuries. While its members have been known in different historiographic contexts, they have not been studied together as a unique inter-Asian society that endured according to intrinsic logics cultivated at its point of origin and numerous trans-regional homes. Mapping this network, I argue that they promoted their own kind by whetting the appetites of Persianate courts hungry for specialists to strengthen sovereignty through the universalizing power of ḥikmat, comprised of interrelated theoretical and practical sciences that the Gilanis mastered. Their endurance not only calls into question scales of analysis that amalgamate migrant networks as “Iranians,” “Persianate elites,” or “foreigners,” which overlook such ties, but it demonstrates how shared origins superseded sectarian identity in the maintenance of such networks across time and space.

Colourants on the Persian architectural decorations from the 11th to the 15th century

AbstractOver 200 samples from colourants appeared in 50 monuments in Iran dated back to the 11th century up to the 15th century were identified using micro‐X‐ray fluorescence (μ‐XRF), micro‐Raman spectroscopy (μ‐Raman), polarized light microscopy (PLM), and scanning electron microscopy–energy dispersive X‐ray spectrometry (SEM‐EDS). Whereas red ochre, red lead, vermilion, and an organic red dye were identified as red colourants, ultramarine blue, azurite, and indigo were the blue colourants occurred in the wall decorations. In addition, atacamite was the only green pigment identified on the wall paintings and stucco decorations, and carbon black was identified as black pigment. We also show that gold leaf and tin foil have been used in gilding decorations. Furthermore, we were able to discern yellow ochre together with orpiment, natrojarosite, and crocoite in a number of architectural decorations. Moreover, we show that huntite and gypsum are used as white preparation layer of the wall decorations in Iran. Periods of emergence of particular pigments have been discussed and regional preferences in the use of certain pigments are argued. An extensive discussion is provided to compare the colourant appeared on wall decoration with those appeared on illuminated manuscripts in the Persianate world.

Оружие ближнего боя народов Северо-Западной Сибири периода средневековья как историко-культурное явление

: the article considers the various aspects of the armory tradition of the Ob Ugrians and Samoyeds of the XVI–XV centuries, reflected in folklore and historical sources: the composition of close-quarter weapon, its tactical and technical characteristics; complex of weapons as the social status of a warrior; symbolic role of individual types of weapons. The lexical parallels in the names of weapons and metals used for their manufacture are especially notable. This indicates active intercultural contacts between the peoples of the taiga Ob-Irtysh region with the Ural and Turkic tribes, which were both peaceful and conflicting in nature. Objective: to identify the originality of armory representation in Ob-Ugric and Samoyed folklore in the aspect of intercultural interaction. 150 Вестник угроведения. Т. 14. № 1 (56). 2024. Research materials: folklore collections, reference books, oral reports of informants, handwritten materials by P. E. Sheshkin. Results and novelty of the research: on the materials of Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic folklore, close-quarter weapon are correlated with historical realities, and the ways of their penetration into the folklore tradition are determined. 13 weapons are considered and systematized into 5 groups: cutting and thrusting, cutting, taper-cutting, thrusting, and impacting weapons. The involved military vocabulary of the Turkic languages testifies to the active contacts of the Ob Ugrians with their southern neighbors – the tribes of the Indo-Iranian and Iranian worlds (in particular, the names of metals). The conclusion is formulated that the southern influence left a noticeable mark on the armory culture of the Ob Ugrians and Samoyeds, but at the same time, the weapons of the taiga people are not without local originality. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time the weapons of medieval warriors are comprehended comprehensively in a regional-ethnic aspect with the involvement of folklore and historical sources, as well as linguistic data as a reflection of intercultural contacts. Unpublished materials from the handwritten heritage of P. E. Sheshkin related to early epochs (according to his periodization), where weapons combine the functions of universal hunting and combat equipment, have been introduced into scientific circulation.

The Cultural Impact of the Persian Language in and around Bidlis

AbstractIt may seem perplexing, in the beginning, to see Iranian poet Khayyām'srubaies and other Persian poems on the gravestones of Bidlis from the late nineteenth century. However, when scrutinizing Bidlis's political and cultural history, it is clear that Persian language and culture has deep, longstanding roots in this city and been integrated into high Iranian-Islamic culture in both respects. Based mainly on primary archival sources and inscriptions, I touch on the adventures and preponderance of Persian—thelingua francaof the rulers of Bidlis, a Kurdish principality located on the Ottoman-Iranian frontier—and its intellectuals after the city was integrated into the Ottoman world, and thus the decaying ascendancy of Persian.Mohammad Amin Riyāhī's book,Nofūz-e zabān o adabīyāt-e Fārsī dar qalamrov-e Osmānī, is a well-known study in this respect, but mostly focuses on the adventures of Persian in and around court circles. Another comprehensive book on the subject,The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca, illustrates the frontiers of Persian's usage in the vast geography stretching from China, Central Asia, and India to the Ottoman world. By focusing on a limited area like Bidlis, the region's most prestigious principality, this article attempts to elucidate the impact of Persian in the Ottoman-Iranian frontiers, unearthing its influence as a language of both diplomacy and literature as well as alingua francaof Bidlis intellectuals in the lands ruled by Kurdish rulers.

Migration Processes Between Russia and Iran in the Context of Deepening Cooperation under Sanctions

The article examines the situation of Iranian migrants in Russia with an emphasis on their legal and socio-economic status. The policy of the Russian world in Iran and the Iranian world in Russia is shown. The driving factors of emigration from Iran to Russia were identified, as well as the specifics of the attracting factors of Iranian migration in Russia. The types, forms and trends of migration from Iran to Russia are determined. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the changing trends of Iranian migration in Russia was assessed. A separate section is devoted to the impact of sanctions as a factor contributing to the strengthening of ties between Russia and Iran. We also consider socio-economic and geopolitical interrelations as incentives for strengthening partnership and prerequisites for migration between the countries. The results show that Iranian migrants contribute to the Russian economy and demography, especially in the education market and in sectors such as trade.

Persian orientalism: Raciolinguistic ideologies and the construction of ‘Iranianness’

AbstractThis article excavates the Eurocentric roots of Iranian nationalist discourse, which emerged from the political and intellectual trajectories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Premised on the epistemic privilege of the Persian language, a selective remembrance of the past, and forging an internal Other, I contend that this raciolinguistic ideology equated Persianness with Iranianness and naturalised Persian as both a language and a race. I begin by tracing the origin of Iranianness or Irāniyat: a concept coined by Mirza Fath'Ali Akhundzadeh and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, two influential figures in late Qajar Iran, whose writings introduced and disseminated the Eurocentric and Orientalist view of the non‐Persian Other. In the second section, I examine how the Berlin Circle, a group of Iranian nationalist intellectuals in the early 20th century, elaborated these ideas into a coherent racial and political ideology that later informed the Pahlavis' state‐building project in 1925. The last section of the article engages with the recent neologism of the ‘Persianate World’, an intellectual enterprise imbued with an Orientalist predisposition that aims to inscribe a trans‐border and transcultural quality to Persian culture far beyond its current boundaries, encompassing Eurasia and Central Asia.

Some Aspects of Iran’s Relations with the Countries of the South Caucasus after the August 2008 Crisis

The states of the South Caucasus, which have preserved historical and cultural ties with the Iranian world, inherited from the Persian Empire, are traditionally given an important place in the foreign policy priorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the interests of ensuring the national security of the country, the Iranian power elites consistently advocate the settlement of conflicts in the South Caucasus by political means and the creation on this basis of favorable conditions for the peaceful, stable and secure development of this region. At the same time, Iran shows a high interest in the development of good-neighborly relations with the South Caucasian states, based on mutual respect and observance of each other’s interests. This article examines the main directions of Iran’s foreign policy in the South Caucasus after the August 2008 crisis; the features and characteristic features of this policy, as well as the forms and methods of its implementation are revealed. Particular attention is paid to the study of problem areas in Iran’s relations with its South Caucasian neighbors, in particular Georgia and Azerbaijan. The paper notes that the implementation of Iran’s plans to achieve a leading role in solving regional problems was opposed by the United States and its Western partners, which have strong influence and positions in the South Caucasus. Nevertheless, against the background of geopolitical transformations in the region, favorable conditions arose for a significant increase in the role and place of Iran in the political processes in the South Caucasus. But in order to take advantage of them, it was necessary not to limit ourselves to mere measures to achieve a balance of power in the South Caucasus, but to more actively promote our own initiatives in this region, the authors of the study emphasize.

Printing a Transregional Ṭarīqa: Haji Imdadullah Makki (d. 1899) and Sufi Contestations from Thana Bhavan to Istanbul

Abstract This article analyzes the prominence of print in the Sufi ṭarīqa of Haji Imdadullah Muhajir Makki (d. 1899), a pre-eminent Indian Chishti-Sabri shaykh who settled in the Ottoman Hijaz after escaping North India in the aftermath of the 1857 mutiny. It explores the transregional contexts of the publication of Haji Imdadullah’s works, in the long journey of his manuscripts from Mecca to their lithographic printing in North India and their distribution through Ottoman disciples as far as Istanbul. In this study two main lines of inquiry are followed. First, how did Imdadullah participate intimately from Mecca in the editing and publication of Arabic, Urdu, and Persian books in British India, including his famed commentary and critical edition of the Masnavi-yi Maʿnavi of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273)? Second, the article follows the emergence of broader scholarly exchanges as a series of Istanbul-based Mevlevi shaykhs became invested in Imdadullah’s publications and even translated some from Persian to Ottoman Turkish. Ultimately, this article sheds light on how such Indian – Ottoman encounters in the Hijaz were catalyzed by a common investment in the Persianate disciplines of Sufi theology and classical Persian poetry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period typically seen as marking the shrinking and disintegration of the Persianate world. In so doing, the article highlights how modern Sufi discourse in Persian continued to facilitate intellectual exchange between Indian and Ottoman Sufi shaykhs through the Hijaz and formed an integral pillar of transregional Persianate print culture.

Soft Epiphanies: The Multilayered Narratives in Abbas Kiarostami's Film Close-Up (1990)

Abstract As part of the collective endeavor to explore the modalities and challenges of the narrative in the Persianate world, this article reconsiders Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up (1990), a film characterized by a special cinematographic feature. While accounting for what appears to be a story of swindling and identity theft, Kiarostami keeps the viewer in a state of uncertainty about the nature of what he sees, blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction, truth and lie, through particular narrative and cinematographic choices. Previous scholarship has focused mainly on the aesthetic implications of the staging and its effects on the viewer. The present study proposes a different type of analysis by discussing specific narrative devices from the perspective of cultural anthropology, with particular attention to the recurrence of the zāher/bāten paradigm, suggested as a cipher by Kiarostami himself early on in the film. The examination of the discursive and aesthetic mobilization of these notions brings to light a subtle game of back-and-forth between the desire to disclose deeper meanings and the will to preserve ambiguity and intimacy, allowing for “soft epiphanies” to arise.