Iranian Studies
Year:2019 | Volume:9 | Issue:1 |Papers Count:11

During the Qajar dynasty (1789 to 1925), due to events such as the rise of capitalism and the globalization of economy, Iran’ s frontier opened to other countries. Kermanshah was one of the most important border cities in the country. Changes in economic infrastructure, trade boom, entry of foreign and non-native people into trade, production of export goods etc. were the economic consequences of these foreign affairs. This research adopts descriptive-analytical and library methods to study travelogues, diaries, documents, and other sources. The purpose of this study is to examine the economic changes of this state due to foreign affairs in one of the most important periods of Iranian history, namely the Qajar dynasty. The findings demonstrate that Iran’ s foreign affairs with European and Ottoman countries brought about economic developments, including the entry of non-native people living inside and outside the country into trade, which led to the monopoly of non-native families, such as the Ottoman family of Vakil ul-Dola, Tabrizi merchants, and the Jews of Baghdad. The commercial infrastructures such as markets, inns, bureaucracies, taxation, and manufacturing workshops developed. Increased production of export goods such as carpet and opium were among the other economic consequences of foreign affairs in the state.

In modern times, sign has been the center of human’ s attention and is among the topics that have undergone thorough rethinking. Qajar painting has witnessed the development of semiotic readings in recent decades. Abundantly seen in Qajar painting, bird is one of the main signs in Qajar period. Adopting iconographic interpretation, Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) relates studies on the history of art with other studies of humanities. In comparative studies, we do not always examine formal qualities of an artwork, but find relations between the work and literature, philosophy, social system, and other cultural systems of its era, whether the artist had such an intention or not. To do so, the research analyzes the key concepts of Panofsky’ s theory. Based on this analysis, the main question of the research is as follows: According to Panofsky, what is the signification of bird in the portraits of men and women of the court in the Qajar era? The content of this research is qualitative and based on descriptive-analytic methodology and the method of library data collection. The findings indicate that the norms of aesthetics of Iran in the preceding periods influenced the display and presence of bird in Qajar art. In these works, bird acts as an active and dynamic symbol that is in balance with the painting and manifested in the evolution of the final process of the portrait.

Comparative study of Indo-European poetry has been popular among Indo-Europeanists since the nineteenth century. This field, the main subject of which is the reconstruction of ancient literary texts, poetic texts, and the “ Indo-European poetic language, ” has been under the influence of modern literary theory, especially formalism. According to the formalistic definition, the main characteristic of a poetic text is the “ poetic diction” rather than its composition in metrical form. Moreover, the antithesis of a poetic speech is an ordinary text or idiomatic speech rather than prose. Indo-Europeanists argue that there is not a clear difference between poetry and prose in illiterate societies. However, for the early Avestan scholars, like Karl Friedrich Geldner, Avestan poetic texts are identical with Avestan metrical texts. In this paper, it is demonstrated that neither the meter nor the deviance in the ordinary speech is an appropriate criterion to distinguish poetic texts from non-poetic ones in the Younger Avesta, but the best criterion is comparing the poetic devices and the common poetic-text features in the Indo-European cognate languages.

Didactic writing is a valuable legacy that reflects Iranians’ wisdom. The contents of didactic texts, as the name implies, are moral, religious, political, and social advice of the elites and reformers addressed to the king. Therefore, didactic texts are an illustration of the ideal king of the Iranian elite. Didactic texts, as the crystallization of one of the most important forms of knowledge, originate from two sources, i. e. Iranian and Islamic sources. In this paper, the works of two prominent Iranian intellectuals, that is Saadi’ s Nasihat al-Muluk and Ferdowsi’ s “ Bozorgmehr” in Shahname, who have tried to revive the tenets of Iranian ruling, one using Islamic teachings and the other by referring to the ancient Iranian sources, are studied. In fact, this article seeks to find out how the Iranian and Islamic sources influenced the features of the ideal king in both practical and mental aspects. Seeking help from phenomenology and Pareto’ s elitism, one can find similarities— which reflect this influence between the texts of Saadi and Ferdowsi. These similarities reveal the historical continuity of Iranians’ conception of the characteristics of the ideal king. Thus, this paper focuses on the common points of these two historical texts written in different historical, political and religious contexts about the characteristics of the ideal king.

In various historical periods, the peninsula of Bushehr has facilitated maritime communications in the middle of the northern coast of the Persian Gulf through important ports such as Lian, Rishehr, and Bushehr. However, from the sixth to the eighth century AH, it seems that this role transferred to the new port of Khurshif located within cape Shif. The present research studies the creation, operations, and decline of this port. It demonstrates that, during the sixth century, Khurshif was created due to its geographical position; that is because it was convenient to Shiraz, Kazeroon, and the Persian Gulf. Then, during the seventh and early eighth century, it played important roles in the connection between Fars and southern Iraq, the defense of the Kish Island, and the expansion of the Murshadi path. Finally, it deteriorated due to insecurity in the southern regions of the country and the shift of the centrality of the Persian Gulf sea power to New Hormuz (Jerun). The findings highlight the geographical importance of the cape Shif and illuminate a part of the history of marine activities around the peninsula of Bushehr during the Middle Ages of Iran.

The “ clamour of Chavosh” in Hormozgan is a spiritual and mystical tune that Chavosh Khan (“ khan” means “ reader” in Persian) uses to invite people to religious meetings and gatherings including reading the Rawda or pilgrimages. To perform it, Chavosh Khan usually stands on a height and, while his hands are at his face, he sings tunes praising Imams. In the past, the “ clamour” informed people to perform preaching and sermons and was a form of delivering news as well. Considering the type of the trip a pilgrim intended to go on, he would sing poems and people would go to his house to ask for forgiveness. Now Chavosh Khani (“ khani” means “ reading. ” ) is a religious ritual in Hormozgan province. Considering the remained manuscripts of Molla Monsef and Hossein Ali Ghazaei Olyayi, it dates back to three hundred years ago and nowadays it is very common among the people. Adopting content analysis method, the present study aims at introducing the ritual of Chavosh Khani in Hormozgan through library research and field study.

As a part of urban planning and during the construction of the underground railroad of Charbagh Street, an excavation was carried out from February to May 2015 to detect the location of Jahan Nama Palace, which was destroyed in 1935. The excavation resulted in a better understanding of the Safavid governmental house, Dowlatkhana, and Charbagh Street itself. The discovered materials belong to the pre-Islamic, pre-Safavid, Safavid, and post-Safavid periods. This article studies the architecture and artifacts, which were discovered during this excavation, of Jahan Nama Palace. Although the excavation had the usual limitations, such as time, resources, and space, it provides us with a comprehensive picture of the palace, the governmental house, and Charbagh Street. In a larger view, the results also help us locate other destroyed structures of the city more accurately. The pre-Safavid findings, which at the time were out of the city walls, represent details, which were previously unknown to us, of the suburbs of Isfahan in the middle ages. The discovery of the remains of Jahan Nama Palace, together with the maps and descriptions provided by historians and travelers, provides a framework for the planning of future investigations and the identification of related features of the city in pre-and post-Islamic era. These results demonstrate the importance of such investigations for our understanding of the historical cities of Iran. The discovery of pre-Safavid structures and pre-Islamic materials also underlines the importance of this part of the Isfahan Plain during earlier periods.

In the present study, we examine the role and themes of Islamic-Iranian mysticism in the works of Alexander Kusikov, a Russian poet of the twentieth century. Kusikov is one of those poets who have been totally unknown in Iran, while his influence on the culture and literature of Iran and the East is remarkable. This research analyzes works such as “ Al-Borraq, ” which have influenced the Islamic-Iranian culture. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the effects of Iranian literature on Russian literature and the attention and efforts of Russian poets, including Kusikov, to follow the traditions and themes of classical Iranian literature. These effects are in terms of concepts, themes, poetic style, and choice of words (use of Persian words in their works). Such influences indicate the ability of writers and poets to interact with other cultures.

Nizam al-Tavarikh, the brief work of Baydawi published during the Mongols period, despite its critical time and citations by the historians’ of its age, has not drawn the attention of contemporary historians and authors. Thus, there are opposite interpretations of this work. Therefore, this research adopts a descriptive-analytic methodology to study the historical knowledge of Baydawi and Nizam al-Tavarikh’ s degree of success. The findings of the study demonstrate that factors such as his belief in Ashari theology and his position as chief judge and exegete of the Koran based on Ashari views caused fiqh, theology, and exegesis to have priority over history in his thought. However, his historiography has some important features, such as attachment to Fars as his birthplace, belief in the idea the holy and providence, consideration of history as a profitable tool for the Sharia, and use of simple language.

With the latest theories and findings regarding the historical and comparative linguistics, the rate of accuracy and plausibility of etymologies given for different words in the Iranian languages is improving as the previous suggestions are reviewed or revised and new etymologies proposed. In this research, attempts are made to converge the latest in Indo-European historical-comparative linguistics with Iranian philology and to bridge the gaps between some obscure and problematic Iranian words on the one side and their Indo-European cognates on the other. To do this, a “ radix” or primary root, here a Proto-Indo-European *sel-, is reconstructed by a “ semanto-cladistic” approach and then a number of secondary roots are hypothesized based on the existing data in Indo-European daughter languages and, in particular, in the Iranian. In the process, some of the etymologies are reviewed and, in some instances, new or alternative ones are proposed.

Social studies in Iran have focused on today’ s situation and, for various reasons, have been ignorant of historical approaches. Since the nineteenth century, due to Iran’ s extensive contacts with the West, many social macroeconomic problems have emerged, and some of them have played a crucial role in the production of social structures and social relations, hence the full understanding of today’ s major social problems needs the understanding of the complexities and evolution of historical problems up to this day. Such an understanding, however, is difficult to arrive at since identifying and describing the historical issues of each period is heavily influenced by the thinking system of the socio-political power of its time. In this research, a categorization of issues is presented based on a source containing unique data from the challenges and issues of the early twentieth century Iran. The archived documents of the Divan-e Adliyeh Aazam, based on their legal and judicial nature, provide a set of data that will answer the question as to what were the macrosocial issues of Iran in the period under consideration.