Persian Texts Research Articles

ABILITY TO ANIMATE PERSIAN TYPOGRAPHY IN COMPARISON WITH ENGLISH TYPOGRAPHY

Text is the main component of the animated typography. Moving typography works primarily focus on the visual aspects of the work, but the visual aspect of the text also allows the rules of the text to form which ultimately influence the transmission of the concept of the verbal dimension. The foundations of the visual arts in animated typography, as in other arts, exist in the sense that if the text were to make a structural change, it would undermine its visual dimensions. Understanding the features and dimensions of Persian text in accordance with English text for the purpose of forming animated typography is one of the essentials for acquainting with the visual and visual principles of Persian animated typography. Understanding these rules is effective in creating powerful and dynamic compositions and prevents text alienation in the animation, text was not intrinsically animated, the next move being added to the text. Accordingly, it is necessary to know the principles and principles of animation. The general question of this research is whether from the visual arts perspective, the visual aspect of Persian writing has a place for use in the design of animated typography. If so, what are the differences and commonalities of Persian and English animated typography? This research is a comparative study based on the principles and principles of typography and deals with the similar function of animating English typography. The purpose of this study is to identify the diversity of Persian typography structures for animating and to compare their visual function with English animated typography in order to emphasize the existence of completely different possibilities in the creation of compositions in these two types of writing for animation. It is expected that the study of Persian and English typography and their function in animated layout conclude that attention should be given to the effect of how text is used, the types of face types and their function in the structure of Persian animated typography, as in English animated typography. Also, it affects the power of conveying meaning and sense to the recipient. Overall, the works typified by Persian typography appear to be more structurally diverse than English letters, enabling them to be more dynamic, resulting in a greater variety of sensations in composition and animation

The Persian Writings on Vedānta Attributed to Banwālīdās Walī

The Mughal court was the main sponsor of Persian works on Vedānta, broadly conceived, from the late sixteenth until the mid-seventeenth century. Thereafter, the audience for such works shifted outside the court. Several Hindus literate in Persian composed or circulated Vedāntic writings. This article surveys three hitherto neglected Persian texts treating Vedānta that appear to have been composed independently from court sponsorship. All three are attributed to Banwālīdās Walī (d. 1674). They comprise the Gulzār-i ḥāl [Rose-garden of ecstatic states], which is itself a translation of the Prabodhacandrodaya; a translation of the Rāma Gītā, which is a dialogue between Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa from the Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa; and the Om-nāma [Book of Oṃ], a poem loosely based on the Yogavāsiṣṭha that incorporates Vedāntic themes. In general, Indo-Persian authors such as Walī associated Vedānta with a non-dualist doctrine, even when they did not specifically refer to Advaita Vedānta. The article discusses the approaches to translation that these texts take. It also reflects on the functions of these Persian translations in a context where conveying the meaning of the source texts was not the only motive.

Beyond Orientalism: When Marceline Desbordes-Valmore carried Saʿdi’s Roses to France

This article follows a thread of translation and intertextual dialogue, taking us from the thirteenth-century Persian poet Saʿdi to the nineteenth-century French poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. It reads Desbordes-Valmore’s poem ‘Les roses de Saadi’ (1860) with the two passages from Saʿdi’s Golestān from which it was inspired, shedding new light on the poem’s metapoetic subtext. The original Persian text is compared to two French translations that were circulating at the time when Desbordes-Valmore was writing. This analysis of the Golestān’s reception forms the basis for the argument that Desbordes-Valmore recast in secular terms Saʿdi’s discourse on poetic language, emphasizing the continuity, rather than difference, between her concerns and Saʿdi’s. The case of Desbordes-Valmore thus reveals a forgotten facet of nineteenth-century French engagements with Middle Eastern culture: one of identification and literary influence, which existed alongside the processes of “othering” for which the period is better known.

Roʾyā-ye Ṣādeqe (The True Dream): Indictment of the Shiite Clerics of Isfahan, an English translation with facing Persian text

The True Dream is a scathing condemnation in the form of a satirical play of what was perceived as major ills besetting late nineteenth-century society in Qajar Iran, such as corruption in the political and religious establishment, bigotry, and lawlessness. Given that during the Qajar period—not surprisingly—the text could be published only anonymously, the question of what actually constituted the original text as well as that of its authorship remained somewhat shrouded in mystery. In fact, it was not until after the end of Qajar rule when, in 1933, the journal Armaghān published a version that—notwithstanding some arguable defects—served as a textual foundation for Bahram Choubiné’s 1986 edition (Intishārāt-i Mardi-i Imrūz) and established the identity of its authors with reasonable certainty. In his introduction to this new parallel-text edition, which contains an English translation facing the Persian text, Ali Asghar Seyed-Gohrab accurately and diligently chronicles the genesis of the text itself and the history of its edition (19). He starts his introduction by pointing out the importance of this particular text as an instructive example for the interaction between history and literature (1), and mentioning the stir it created when it was first published in 1900–1901 (19). Before addressing the question of authorship (1), he briefly yet robustly touches upon the status of dreams in Islamic religious and intellectual tradition as a privileged access to truth (1). I would have wanted to see a few words concerning dreams as a topos and a metaphoric device in literature, particularly since, at the end of the introduction (19–20), he makes a number of very helpful observations on other literary characteristics of the text like the resurrection theme as a recurring motif in Islamic literature and its use of satire in connection with elements of stage drama. This would have further elaborated on the effective history of The True Dream in the environment of its time. But, then again, even a rigorously researched and translated text such as this has room for minor improvements. Seyed-Gohrab goes on to give information on the two main villains of the drama, the governor of Isfahan Ḍill al-Sulṭān, son of the Qajar ruler of the time Nāṣir al-Dīn (r. 1848–96), and the town’s senior cleric Āqā Najafī (1–2). Then, in the context of his discussion of the immoral and criminal acts they were accused of in The True Dream, he highlights their persecution of real (or suspected) followers of Bahāʾism (2). A little elaboration on the tenets of the Bahāʾī doctrine would have been in order, especially for readers less familiar with Iranian and Islamic studies to gain insight into the theological aspects of the conflict between the Shi‘ite establishment and Bahāʾism. But to be fair, Seyed-Gohrab’s remarks help readers understand that Bahāʾism was also used by representatives of the religious establishment as a convenient argument against those they saw as a challenge to their influence, notably reformers. Most of the introduction is an insightful presentation of the ideas of the three authors, who, interestingly, were themselves clerics (3–17). I would have liked to see remarks elucidating the ideas of Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī, who is mentioned as an acquaintance of Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn (5), and what similarities or differences may have existed between the two thinkers. What makes Seyed-Gohrab’s depiction of the three authors especially palpable is his use of contemporary—sometimes even eyewitness—sources and, in the case of Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn, the recollections of his son, the famous novelist Muḥammad ʿAlī Jamālzāda.Seyed-Gohrab’s discussion of the literary characteristics of The True Dream in the context of Persian literary history is the primary merit and advantage of this new edition compared to Choubiné’s edition. In his introductory remarks, Choubiné, whom Seyed-Gohrab refers to in his introduction, elaborates on the other topics Seyed-Gohrab addresses. Unfortunately, however, Choubiné’s observations, since they are in Persian, are lost on readers unfamiliar with this language, and Choubiné’s decision to translate the text of The True Dream into German and French rather than English may not have been the best in terms of accessibility for an international scholarly readership. Sen McGlinn‘s conscientious English translation opposite the Persian text and explanations for potentially unclear terms and contexts now makes The True Dream readable for students and researchers of Iranian history, society, politics, and literature. Exploring this text is rewarding indeed, for it voices many of Iran’s internal grievances that lay at the root of the country’s Constitutional Revolution. This is a good example of how an otherwise lesser-known text can come to world attention through conscientious scholarship and translation. The Iranian studies series at Routledge has a history of filling important vacuums in the field and this monograph is in line with that reputation.

Roʾyā-ye Ṣādeqe (The True Dream): Indictment of the Shiite Clerics of Isfahan, an English translation with facing Persian text

Roʾyā-ye Ṣādeqe <i>(The True Dream)</i>: Indictment of the Shiite Clerics of Isfahan, an English translation with facing Persian text

The Effect of Iranian Regimes on Persian Language and its Vocabulary

This study tackles some of the most important historical stages of Persian language under the dominance of regimes that governed Iran during different periods from the past to the present. Also, the study addresses how the nature of the regime and its political orientation have influenced the Persian language, its vocabulary, grammar, syntax, morphology, and literature. The study deals with the ancient Persian language (Pastan), which was used before the Islamic conquest and then the middle Persian (Miyan) which was used till the Arabs and Muslims invaded the Persian Empire, and the modern Persian language (the contemporary Persian language. The study provides different examples, indications and models showing the influence of the ruling regime on the Persian language in its different historical stages. Also, the research demonstrates the different languages that affected Persian such as Arabic, Turkish, French and the languages of the neighboring or foreign countries. The study includes Persian prose texts from the above-mentioned periods that reflect the influence of the regimes on the language by borrowing foreign words. Moreover, the study showsthe delay in the codification of the Persian language and its dictionary which opens the doors widely for all these forces to influence the Persian language. Keywords: Pastan ،Miyan ،Dariyah or Modern.

The Problem of the Formation of Philosophical Prose in Persian

The article discusses the problem of the formation of philosophical prose in the Persian language. The first section presents a brief excursion into the history of philosophical prose in Persian and the stages of formation of modern Persian as a language of science and philosophy. In the Arab-Muslim philosophical tradition, representatives of various schools and trends contributed to the development of philosophical terminology in Farsi. The author dwells on the works of such philosophers as Ibn Sīnā, Nāṣir Khusraw, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Aḥmad al-Ghazālī, ʼAbū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī and gives an overview of their works written in Persian. The second section poses the question whether the Persian language proved able to compete with the Arabic language in the field of science. The author examines the style of philosophical prose in Farsi, considering the causes of creation of Persian-language philosophical texts and defining their target audience. The article presents viewpoints of modern orientalist researchers as well as the views of medieval philosophers who wrote in Persian. We find that most philosophical texts in Persian were written for a public who had little or no knowledge of the Arabic language, yet wanted to get acquainted with current philosophical and religious doctrines, albeit in an abbreviated format. The conclusion summarizes and presents two positions regarding the necessity of writing philosophical prose in Persian. According to one point of view, Persian-language philosophical works helped people who did not speak Arabic to get acquainted with the concepts and views of contemporary philosophy. According to an alternative view, there was no special need to compose philosophical texts in Persian, because the corpus of Arabic philosophical terminology had already been formed, and these Arabic terms were widely and successfully used, while the new Persian philosophical vocabulary was difficult to understand.

Algorithm for Persian Text Sentiment Analysis in Correspondences on an E- Learning Social Website

By 2000, sentiment analysis had been only studied based on speech and changes in facial expressions. Since then, studies have been focused on text. Concerning Persian text mining, studies have been conducted on the methods for extracting properties for classification and examination of opinions on social websites with an aim to determine text polarity. The present research was aimed to prepare and implement an algorithm for Persian text sentiment analysis based on the following six basic emotional states: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust. In this research, sentiment analysis was carried out using the unsupervised lexical method. Lexicons are divided into four categories, namely the emotional, boosters, negation, and stop lists. The algorithm was written in six different ways using different properties. In the first method, the algorithm was capable of identifying an emotional word in a sentence. The sentiment of the sentence was determined based on the given emotional word. However, it should be noted that the text itself is also important for sentiment analysis because in addition to the emotional words, other factors (such as boosters and negating factors) are also present in the sentence and affect the text sentiment. Hence, the algorithm was enhanced in the subsequent methods to detect the boosters and negating words. Results of running the algorithm using different methods indicated that the algorithm accuracy increased with an increase in the number properties involved. In the sixth method, an algorithm capable of identifying emotional, boosters and negative words was applied to two data samples including sentences written by typical users and sentences written by university students on an electronic learning social website. The accuracy of the algorithm with 100 data samples from typical users and 100 data samples from university students was 80% and 84%, respectively.

Kalila and Dinna by Nasrullah Munshi (review)

Reviewed by: Kalila and Dinna by Nasrullah Munshi Albrecht Classen Nasrullah Munshi. Kalila and Dinna, trans. from the Persian by Wheeler Thackston. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 2019. 187 pp. Recent scholarship has begun to explore more specific lines of contact between India, the Middle East, and Europe during the late Middle Ages. One most impressive example of global literature already at that time was Nasrullah Munshi's Kalila and Dinna, which made its way to medieval Europe and was available in numerous different translations. It was based on the Indian Pañcatantra. This collection of animal stories in the ancient fable tradition served exceedingly well as a kind of "mirror for princes," and the didactic approach was obviously highly welcomed by, and useful to, aristocratic circles in many different cultures. Despite many adaptations and modifications, in essence, Kalila and Dinna exerted a deep influence on many East and West cultures and can certainly be regarded as a prime example of global literature. There could be many ways of making this enormously influential collection of fables better known to modern audiences, such as translating it into a modern language, and here into English. Wheeler Thackston draws from the Persian translation created by Abu'l-Ma'ali Nasrullah around 1120, although that one was subsequently replaced several times by newer and more expansive Persian versions, such as the one by Husayn Va'iz Kahifi (late fifteenth century) and by Abu'lFazl (again ca. 100 years later). On the basis of either the Arabic or the Persian version, medieval European poets such as Rabbi Joel, Giovanni da Capua (John of Capua), Agnolo Firenzuola, Anton Francesco Doni, and Anthonius von Pforr created their own rendition, and those in turn became the sources for a variety of early modern translations into a range of other languages. The original collection often was also called Bidpai Fables, but in Nasrullah's version, we only hear of the Brahman and Raja of India who debate with each other about ethical conflicts and issues. Comparing the many different translations, it proves to be rather complicated and highly confusing to distinguish the 'original' from subsequent renditions. Thackston translates in essence Nasrullah's version, published by Mujtabā Mīnuvī-Ţihrānī in 1983 (in a previous [End Page 221] footnote [6], listed as published in 1964), but he also draws from the Arabic version edited by Louis Cheikho (1905, rpt. 1981), whereas he deletes many quotations of Arabic poetry included by Nasrullah. The issue of authenticity of the available text thus remains rather murky, so it proves to be helpful that Thackston begins with a concordance of the tales as they appear in the ancient Sanscrit (Pañcatantra), in Syriac, Arabic, medieval Persian (Nasrullah) and late medieval Persian (Kashifi). In short, there is a lot of confusion, and the present English translation does not necessarily clarify this complicated situation. The translator offers first Nasrullah's preface, then the preface by Ibn alMuqaffa and the one by Buzurjmihr Bokhtagan, who is introduced only in a footnote as advisor to the Persian kings Kavadh I (d. 531) and Chosroēs I Anoshirvan (d. 579). This can only be the physician named Burzoë whom Thackston mentions at the beginning of this book as the author of the Middle Persian translation, but how can it be that here we face his preface, whereas Thackston claims that Burzoë's work has been completely lost (ix)? This is then followed by the latter's testament, but we do not learn anything about the critical edition. Thereupon follows the body of the text, but there are no explanatory notes, no references to relevant scholarship, and we are missing a bibliography or an index. It would have been extremely important if Thackston had made transparent his translation method, that is, whether he rendered the Middle Persian text literally, or more freely. In fact, the translator took quite a bit of liberty in dealing with his source text, eliminating passages that are "insolubly problematic." He follows here the model of Kashifi who had already deleted them, which leads Thackston to the conclusion that "these places in the text were already corrupt in his time" (xvi). The general reader might...

Negotiating Female Authorship in Eighteenth-Century India: Gender and Multilingualism in a Persian Text

AbstractIn the last years of the eighteenth century, an Indian woman authored a work in Persian intended for the entertainment and guidance of students of that language. EntitledMiftāḥ-i Qulūb-i Mubtadiyān(‘The Key of the Hearts of Beginners’), the work comprised of stories from vernacular oral traditions as well as extracts from well-known Persian poetic, historical and ethical works. Although the work was translated into English in 1908 by Annette Beveridge, it has received no serious scholarly attention. Drawing upon recent scholarship offering new ways of thinking about India's multilingual literary past, this article examines the intersection of multiple vernacular and generic traditions as translated and manifested inMiftāḥ-i Qulūb al-Mubtadīyān. While vernacular languages followed different, and in relative terms, more limited routes of circulation and exchange in comparison with cosmopolitan languages such as Persian, their paths of movement were no less significant. Through a close reading of this work and its context, this article seeks to understand how Bībī Ḥashmat al-Daula crafted a distinct, cosmopolitan voice for herself through her deployment of both Persianate and regional Indian traditions.

Variance-based Features for Keyword Extraction in Persian and English Text Documents

This paper address automatic keyword extraction in Persian and English text documents. Generally, for keyword extraction in a text, a weight is assigned to each token and words having higher weights are selected as the keywords. We have proposed four methods for weighting the words and have compared these methods with five previous weighting techniques. The previous methods used in this paper are term frequency (TF), term frequency inverse document frequency (TF-IDF), variance, discriminative feature selection (DFS), and document length normalization based on unit words (LNU). The proposed weighting methods are based on using variance features and include variance to TF-IDF ratio, variance to TF ratio, the intersection of TF and variance, and the intersection of variance and IDF. For evaluation, the documents are clustered using the extracted keywords as feature vectors, and K-means, expectation maximization (EM), and Ward hierarchical clustering methods. The entropy of the clusters and pre-defined classes of the documents are used as the evaluation metric. For the evaluations, we have collected and labelled Persian documents. Results show that our proposed weighting method, variance to TF ratio, has the best performance for Persian. Also, the best entropy is resulted by variance to TD-IDF ratio for English.

The Syro-Persian Texts in Manuscript 398 of the Chaldean Cathedral in Mardin

Abstract Besides Syriac texts, manuscript 398 of the Chaldean Cathedral in Mardin contains texts in Greek, Armenian, Georgian, Persian, Turkish, and Arabic in Syriac script. This article provides an edition, translation, and philological commentary of its three Persian texts on the basis of this and other witnesses: (1) a Trisagion, also in Mardin 10; (2) an Annunciation hymn with a dialogue between the Angel Gabriel and Mary, partly also in manuscript 94 of the Chaldean Diocese of Alqosh; and (3) a short Palm Sunday hymn, also in Alqosh 94, Deyrulzafaran 197, and Mingana Syr. 184 and 520, previously published on the basis of the Mingana manuscripts only.

India beyond the Ganges: Defining Arakanese Buddhism in Persianate colonial Bengal

In the late eighteenth century a Scotsman returned from Bengal with one of the largest private libraries of Persian texts collected in the Subcontinent. Among those manuscripts were several volumes of translations of Arakanese and Pali texts into Persian, as well as quasi ethnographic accounts on Buddhism as it was practiced in what is seen today as the frontier region between South and Southeast Asia. In this article I look at this archive and the historical moment that surrounds its making in the perspective of the development of Buddhist studies. This large corpus of texts happened to be a false start in the history of the study of Theravāda Buddhism, but it constitutes a unique source to learn about local forms of Buddhism on the eve of the fall of the Arakanese kingdom and the integration of its religious institutions within the Burmese sangha. While discussing a selection of texts from this vast corpus, I pay special attention to the culturally layered transmission of knowledge on Arakanese Buddhism via the work of Bengali munshīs (i.e., Persian secretary). I argue that this layered transmission caused the almost immediate obsolescence of this corpus as a source of information in the early colonial context. However, for the cultural historian, those Persian texts contrast with the then emerging institutionalised orientalist discourses and offer a new vantage point for the study of Arakanese Buddhism.

Efficacy of pumpkin oil (a Persian medicine product) in the treatment of chronic insomnia: A randomized double-blind clinical trial

Context: According to Persian medicine text, there are some topical herbal remedies for insomnia such as pumpkin oil as a nasal drop. Aims: To evaluate the effect of pumpkin oil (a Persian medicine product) in patients with chronic insomnia. Methods: This study was conducted as a randomized double-blind clinical trial on pumpkin oil efficacy in 74 patients with chronic insomnia. The participants received two drops of intranasal pumpkin oil or placebo every night for two weeks. The effects of pumpkin oil and placebo on the pattern of sleep and sleep quality were assessed at baseline and at the end of two weeks of treatment by Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) questionnaires. Results: The scores of the ISI questioner were statistically different between groups after two weeks of intervention and patients in the pumpkin oil group had fewer scores for ISI questioner (p&lt;0.001). The reduction of the total score of the Pittsburgh questioner was 10.08 ± 3.21 in the pumpkin oil group and 0.28 ± 0.98 (p&lt;0.001) in the control group. Conclusions: Pumpkin oil could have a significant positive effect on the quantity and the quality of sleep in patients with chronic insomnia.

Spiritual Practice in the Arabic Hagiography of the Chinese Ǧahrīya Sufi Order

The hagiography of the Chinese branch of the Naqšbandīya order of Islamic mysticism called ğahrīya has been recorded, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in some Arabic and Persian language texts. These include stories about the founder of the Sufi order, Ma Mingxin (d. 1781), and his successors in the first few generations and many of the literary units revolve around the contemplative discipline declared obligatory for the followers of the brotherhood. Ma Xuezhi gives a description, in his Kitāb al-ğahrī, of the works which include practices believed to have been transmitted to Mingxin during his sojourn on the Arab peninsula. Besides offering a positivist approach description of the practices on the basis of the hagiographical writings, some codicological reflections will also be included in the presentation.

Literary Forms, Techniques, &amp; Methods of Study

Literary Forms, Techniques, & Methods of Study Christopher T. Begg 1837. David M. Carr, "Criteria and Periodization in Dating Biblical Texts in Parts of the Persian Period," Dating Biblical Texts, 11-18 [see #2364]. Employing literary, historical, and linguistic criteria, C.'s programmatic essay distinguishes between biblical texts produced early in the Persian period and those from later in that period. C. observes that literary texts from the beginning of the Persian period would be less likely to feature an emphasis on pentateuchal traditions (particularly Priestly pentateuchal traditions), less inclined to reflect Persian sponsorship (and perhaps more likely to feature extravagant hopes for a return to a sovereign Israel), and more likely to be written in archaic Hebrew. By the end of the Persian period and the beginning of the Hellenistic period, there appear texts with a more explicit emphasis on Persian sponsorship, links to the combined Pentateuch (with an increasing emphasis on Priestly traditions), and the occasional breakdown of archaic Hebrew literary dialect, including more mixing of Aramaic and other (especially Persian) isoglosses. Against this background, C. asks who might have been responsible for the Persian period texts found in the Hebrew Bible and finds it more likely that priests were the authors of most of the Hebrew textual materials in Persian-period Yehud (as opposed to a scenario in which both priests and non-priests shared a transferred control over major normative texts across this period). He concludes that a consistent differentiation feature across the Persian period appears to be the move from remnants of scribal diversity and old literary standards at the outset of the period to some breakdown of those scribal standards with the emergence of Priestly domination over scribalism toward the end of the Persian period. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 1838. [Matt 1:1-17, etc.] Bernard Gosse, "The 42 Generations of the Genealogy of Jesus in Matt 1:1-17, and the Symbolism of [the] Number 42, Curse or Blessing in the Bible and in Egypt," StBSlov 10 (2018) 142-51. The genealogy of Jesus given in Matt 1:1-17 features 42 generations, thereby highlighting a number, which in the ANE and in the OT symbolizes a curse which does not [End Page 603] exclude the possibility of blessing. In the OT, the number is so used in the story of the succession of the kings in the Books of Kings and Chronicles (see the 42-year "curse of King Ahaziah" in 2 Chr 22:2), the Psalter (see the 42 psalms making up the Elohistic Psalter in Psalms 42–83, which raise the question of what is to happen thereafter), and the story of Balaam in Numbers 22–24 (where there is mention of 42 sacrifices for purposes of cursing that are ultimately oriented to blessing). This feature has parallels outside the OT as well, particularly in Egypt, in the Book of the Dead and the division of Egypt into 42 nomes. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 1839. [Judges 13; 1 Samuel 1–2] Paola Mollo, "Did It Please God to Kill Them?" Hen 36 (2014) 86-105. M.'s article provides a literary comparison of the birth account of two famous and complex characters of the Bible: Samson (Judges 13) and Samuel (1 Samuel 1–2). She analyzes their birth stories in terms of their respective structures, motifs, concepts, and wording. In many cases, the two accounts directly mirror one another, while in others certain shared elements are transformed, or even stand in sharp opposition from one to the other. M. devotes special attention to the literary techniques employed in the two texts, by means of which they play with conventional elements and create intertextual allusions. M.'s final considerations about the narrative logic behind the two stories provides a comprehensive interpretation of the elements of contrast between them. Her article concludes by calling attention to a particularly intriguing parallel between them which she seeks to elucidate in light of the dynamic of similarity and difference at work in and between the two stories. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 1840. [Judges 17–18] José Luis Sicre...

Efficacy of topical herbal remedies for insomnia in Iranian traditional medicine

Pharmacognosy Research,2019,11,2,188-191.DOI:10.4103/pr.pr_163_18Published:April 2019Type:Short CommunicationAuthors:Elham Haghjoo, Asie Shojaii, and Mohammad Mahdi Parvizi Author(s) affiliations:Elham Haghjoo1, Asie Shojaii2, Mohammad Mahdi Parvizi3 1Research Institute for Islamic and Complementary Medicine; Department of Traditional Medicine, School of Persian Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehra, IRan. 2Research Institute for Islamic and Complementary Medicine; Department of Traditional Pharmacy, School of Persian Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IRan. 3Molecular Dermatology Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, IRan. Abstract:Background: Insomnia is one of the most prevalent sleep disorders which affect the quality of life. Due to high prevalence of this disease and the side effects of sedative drugs, people tend to use herbal remedies. There are some oral or topical prescriptions in Persian medicine texts for the treatment of insomnia. The aim of this study was to investigate topical treatments for insomnia in Iranian traditional medicine (ITM) and comparing them with current therapies in modern medicine. Materials and Methods: In this study, ITM textbooks including the Canon of Medicine, Teb‑e‑Akbari, Kholasat al‑Hekmah, Makhzan al‑Advieh, Exir‑e‑azam, Al‑Aghraz al‑Tibbia, Val Mabahess al‑Alaiia, Sharh-al-Asbab-val-Alamat, Tohfa‑al‑Momen, and Qarabadeen‑e‑Kabir were searched to investigate effective topical therapies for treating insomnia. Further, relevant studies on these topical remedies were searched at databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, and ScienceDirect from the beginning till June 2018 and the results were presented as tables. Results: There are some herbs which have been recommended in ITM for the treatment of insomnia in topical dosage form such as ointment, lotion, nasal drop, and oil. The most important herbs used in these topical dosage forms were lettuce, violet, almond, pumpkin, and water lily. Some of these herbal therapies including lettuce and violet have been studied in clinical trial for insomnia. Conclusion: Findings of the present study showed that according to ITM texts, there are some effective topical herbal remedies which can be used in treatment of insomnia with less adverse effects. Keywords:Efficacy, Herbal medicine, Insomnia, Iranian traditional medicine, Topical.View:PDF (439.09 KB)

Mapping the political landscape of Persian Twitter: The case of 2013 presidential election

The fallacy of premature designations such as “Iran's Twitter Revolution” can be attributed to the empirical gap in our knowledge about such sociotechnical phenomena in non-Western societies. To fill this gap, we need in-depth analyses of social media use in those contexts and to create detailed maps of online public environments in such societies. This paper aims to present such cartography of the political landscape of Persian Twitter by studying the case of Iran's 2013 presidential election. The objective of this study is twofold: first, to fill the empirical gap in our knowledge about Twitter use in Iran, and second, to develop computational methods for studying Persian Twitter (e.g., effective methods for analyzing Persian text) and identify the best methods for addressing different issues (e.g., topic detection and sentiment analysis). During Iran's 2013 presidential election, three million tweets were collected and analyzed using social network analysis and machine learning. The findings provide a more nuanced view of the political landscape of Persian Twitter and identify patterns in accordance with or in contrast to those identified in the English-speaking Twittersphere around the 2013 presidential election. Persian Twitter was dominated by micro-celebrities, whereas institutional elites dominated English discourse about Iran on Twitter. The results also illustrate that Persian Twitter in 2013 was predominantly in favor of reformists. Finally, this study demonstrates that sentiment analysis toward political name entities can be used efficiently for mapping the political landscape of conversation on Twitter.

A Persian Account of the Religious Customs of the Magh (Arakanese) from Early Colonial Bengal

The document presented in this article is a quasi-ethnographic account of the religious customs of the Magh (i.e. Arakanese), which was most probably collected on the basis of firsthand observations made in the region of Chittagong, in southeastern Bengal, sometime in the 1780s, or early 1790s. The commissioner of the document is John Murray-MacGregor (1745–1822), a Scottish officer of the British East India Company, who remained in Bengal for about three decades and brought back with him one of the largest private collections of Persian manuscripts, as well as some bilingual Sanskrit–Persian texts, and twenty-two bundles of Pali and Arakanese manuscripts collected in eastern Bengal.

Multifractality and non-Gaussianity of eye fixation duration time series in reading Persian texts

There is growing evidence that cognitive processes may have fractal structures as a signature of complexity. It is an ongoing topic of research to study the class of complexity, and how it may differ as a function of cognitive variables. Herein, we explore the eye movement trajectories generated during reading different Persian texts. Features of eye movement trajectories were recorded during reading Persian texts using an eye tracker device. We show that fixation durations, as the main components of eye movements reflecting cognitive processing exhibits multifractal behavior. This indicates that multiple exponents are needed to capture the neural and cognitive processes involved in decoding symbols to derive meaning. We test whether multifractal behavior varies as a function of two different stimuli including fonts, and familiarity of the text for readers during four different reading procedures concerning silent and aloud reading and goal-oriented versus non-goal-oriented reading. We find that, while mean fixation duration is affected by some of these factors, the multifractal pattern in time series of eye fixation durations did not change significantly. Our results suggest that multifractal dynamics may be intrinsic to the reading processes, and the lognormal distribution properly describes the statistics of the fixation duration time series for all the stimuli in our reading experiments.