JOURNAL OF CRITICAL LITERATURE AND HUMANITIES
Year:2019 | Volume:18 | Issue:10 (62)|Papers Count:16

Islamic Society in the 3rd and 4th Hijri centuries is important due to the dominance of the Buyid dynasty, Iranian and Shiite rulers in the Sunni Abbasid caliphate system, so this matter has received the consideration of Iranian scholars, Orientalists, and Islamologists. The research and compilation about this period of history requires the accurate recognition of the Islamic society, Iranian society as well as the views of Sunnis and Shiites. For this reason, the Mottahedeh’ s book, which takes approaches about the two components of loyalty and leadership, emphasizing the Buyid, deserves translation and critique. The present critique pertains to the content of the book in the original language. Since the translation of the book is important in the proper transmission of the concepts of history, culture, and the correction of the deficiencies in the original text, it evaluates two existing translations of the book by matching them with the original text as well as adapting the two translation texts. Result shows that lack of proper understanding about the Islamic society, the Iranian customs and culture, and the Buyid encountered problems in the text, despite the innovation and creativity in choosing social discussions. Although the translators of the first translation have not provided enough explanations to address the deficiencies of the content of the book, due to their consistency with the scientific expertise of the author, they have been able to provide more a reliable translation.

Torath is said to be a collection of literary and historical heritage that has been inherited from our ancestors and naturally written with their condition. Throughout history, due to changes made in the language, sometimes writing has become different from generation to generation, and therefore it is difficult to understand the writings of the predecessors. The longer the text is older, the more difficult it is. In addition, the problem will be doubled when such texts should be translated. It is clear that all people cannot go to the original texts and have to use their translations. This is where the role of the translator as a mediator emerges. The translation will become more and more true and influent to the extent that the translator translates in a field that he has capability and has a mastery in the language of origin and destination.

History, historiography, and historical knowledge are some of the favorite topics of postmodern scholars in the West and some of their exponents in Iran. Postmodernist ideas emerging from hermeneutical thought were a movement against positivist, deterministic, and objectivist views, especially in the humanities. The postmodern thinkers have defined history differently. In their view, any description of the events of the past is in the form of an interpretation of them, and the past is never fully and accurately recognizable. But the reality is that accepting and applying the hermeneutic postmodernist perspective in history means getting absolute skepticism and the destruction of the bases of the historical knowledge and its rejection. Hence, in this research, this devastating and relativistic view has been critically criticized on the basis of some of the main postmodern texts. The research findings indicate the postmodern hermeneutic view of history contains contradictions which do not allow the researchers to accept the history of this view.

Today, the discussion of method and methodology is one of the important measures of science in any field of science. Perhaps now, without knowledge of the method and methodology the claim of science in every discipline is questioned. In doing so, the present study criticizes three published works in the field of research method in the history, namely Research Method in Historiography by Dr. Jahangir Ghaem Maghami, An Introduction to Research Method in the History by Dr. Alireza Mollaiy Tavani and Method of Research in History by Dr. Hassan Hazratiand, evaluating the method and methodology and its relation with thinking in the history. This critique reveals the implications of adopting a positivist approach in the history. The adoption of the methodological patterns of natural sciences in history, weakening the position of criticism, Undermining the position of thought in history, ignoring the role of the historian as at least part of the process of producing history, etc. are the consequences of adopting a positivist approach in history. Accordingly, it is the current research strategy that arrangements are to be considered by that, thinking in history becomes the dominant position. The present article aims to establish a distinct relation between history and thought, and there is a definition and interpretation of history and historical methodology, advocating strengthening thinking.

The rapid generalization of educational technology can be seen as a revolution in education. Accordingly, the forthcoming, not too distant, in the "Council for the Study of Texts and Textbooks" seems to be the focus on examining the content of electronic textbooks along with printed books. The initial step in criticizing electronic content is identifying features, functions, and requirements of an electronic syllabus. The purpose of this research is to review the requirements and the production of academic electronic content in the field of history. This is an attempt to get an idea of how these works are appropriately criticized. A part of these studies is about how to use multimedia facilities in electronic content to teach history at the university. Based on this, the main issue of this study is how to align history teaching with the capabilities, methods, and tools of education in the electronic education system and electronic content. This study was conducted using descriptive-analytical method. This study showed that the nature and content of the history courses are very much aligned with e-learning. The data from this research can be a useful tool for developing a critique of electronic content, especially in the field of history.

In this article, the explanatory and interpretative function of the book of "Politics of Knowledge in the Islamic World: The Convergence of Knowledge and Ideology in the Seljuq Period" has been criticized from two positive and negative aspects. The cultural status of the Islamic society, especially from the standpoint of knowledge and its relationship with the political institution in the Seljuq period, is one of the privileged and less known aspects of Islamic culture and civilization. The author of the book, using the theories of Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault, has examined the relationship between the two institutions of politics and knowledge in the Seljuq period. Some outstanding notes of the book were the importance of subject and its different productions of it, fluent and understandable translation, focus on an important, complex and new topic in the research, explanation and interpretation of the subject using a variety of historical and geographical sources. However, many imperfections can be found such as the failure to provide an understandable description of the subject, inappropriate generalization, and inattention to the historical research method, some intermittent themes in the original text, and some inappropriate equivalence, and topic and editing errors in translated text.

As the concern and ambiguity that a historian has extracted from the subject under study and attempts to explain and interpret it, this issue can be articulated in two ways: one aspect of the issue that is strongly intertwined with the subject and past time considerations is how the issue is realized. This aspect involves the disability and the process of realization of the issue and can be considerable in the light of the knowledge and expertise of the historian and other specialist historians in the age of study, but the causal aspect of the issue that deals with the cause of it is a category specifically associated with the subjective knowledge and ideas related to the considerations of the historian’ s life and shows the status quo of the historian’ s ecosystem whether in design or in response. The applied aspects of the knowledge of history and the interplay of past and present in the research of the historian, and the interdisciplinary nature of his research emerge in this aspect of the issue. This aspect, according to the historian’ s past-oriented or modernist approach to the design, directs the reason for historical research. In this article, with a brief reflection on the status of the issue and the nature of its design, we examine the two approaches in explaining and designing the issue, and we reflect on their relevance to the effectiveness of historians’ research achievements.

The present research introduces and criticizes the book ''Tazkera-al Khavas'', written by one of the scholars and historians of the seventh century, called Shams Aldin Yusof Ibn Qeazveghli, known as Sebt Ibn-Juzi. Since he has a special method and approach in the report of Ashura and the incidents about it, analyzing his report brings forth remarkable points for the other researchers. Furthermore, the author uses sources in the report of Ashura that are not available now; therefore, expounding his report, not only gives the historian scholars a relative awareness of the structure and contents, but also prepares the ground to reproduce the other works of historians.

As long as the researchers of the Safavid history are concerned, the name of Roger Mervyn Savory is a historian whose name is well known and familiar to all. He is a author whose name has repeatedly been a led in the majority of works full of replicas in the Safavid history. His career has led Safavids studies, especially in Iran, under his control, and the Iranian and Orientalism researchers in this field repeatedly cite him. In the minds of some researchers, Savory is known as a powerful researcher and distinguished Safavidologist, and he has even become himself a reference point for the Safavid history. He has also been introduced by such frequent and repeated writings about himself. However, his accurate and impartial examination of his writings does not prove it. His most important writings are based on the book of the history of the Alamara-i Abbasimi, which was complemented by other researchers of contemporaries. His information and views on the history of the Safavids are one-sided, influenced by the official Safavid sources, and are supposedly exaggerated. This article aims to prove some sources of Savory's insight in a documented way that his writings are non-investigative. He has more to transcribe the sources of Safavid history.

In the studies related to Ancient Iran, the lack of data including classical historians’ texts, parchments, inscriptions, as well as thearcheological and literary evidence documents make the historians face problems in analyzing precisely. Translation of a classical work related to a special period has an importance that the historical data will be interpreted in other ways. Thus, it is clear that translation of classical Greek and Latin works have double importance. In addition to a complete focus on the historical period of the text, it is worthwhile to see that the translator tries to be completely loyal to the text with a full knowledge of author’ s style. In this research, it aims to give the ways in order to prevent translator and researcher’ s mistakes by comparative studies of two ancient historians from ancient Greece and Rome, Herodotus Halicarnassus and Plutarchus Chaeronea.

This article aimed to investigate Vedad-al-Ghazi's views, the author of the book entitled as "Kissaniah Sect". This study was based on descriptive-analytic approach and was documented upon the references. Since Vedad-al-Ghazi was proficient in Arabs literature, he could successfully exploit traditional Arabic references and hand-written documents about Kissaniah Sect. He has used Kissaniah's poems and the opposite views to analyze dark points of Kissaniah's history and has gained important creativities in this regard. To investigate the ambiguous points related to Kissaniah, he has proposed some speculations which are not in accordance with history. He has mentioned that Abdellahibn Saba was a real person, contrary to the doubts about his historical existence. He has also argued many Sabiah's activities. He has not investigated Ali's (PBUH) statements about his son, Mohammad. Furthermore, he has assigned many activities done by Ghaliah to Mokhtar himself. Vedad-al-Ghazi has ignored to investigate holy Quran verses and Prophet Mohammad's statements to describe the concepts of Rajath and Al-gayba.

The aim of this article is to critically review “ The Ghaznavid and Seljuq Turks: Poetry as a Source for Iranian History” . Using Farrokhi and Mo῾ zziʼ s poem as the historical source for Ghaznavid and Seljuq period is the fundamental aim of this book and its advantage beside the historiography source. So, the present article tries to answer such questions: How much the writer of this book succeeds to cover that aim? And, to what extent has it applied the scientific methods properly? Through a critical lens and analytical view, it will prove that this valuable study covers its objective, but it neglects methodological points, and writing instruments; besides, some references and argumentations in few parts of this book are under the question.

The main purpose of this article is to analyze and criticize the ideological ideas of the historiography of Shah Isma'il I Safavid in the book of Iran in the Safavid Era by Ali Akbar Velayati. This book is organized in 656 pages, in one introduction and five chapters, with the aim of examining Iranian history during the Safavid Era. Before attempting to enter the main part of the article, the author has tried to draw up a record of the use of ideological approaches in the history of the Safavid Era. In this way, there are two general and ideological critical and formal approaches that can be explicitly taken from political or religious ideas behind both. From the author's point of view, the history of Iran in the Safavid Era is based on works that can be considered as ideological official works. Given the importance of the Safavid history in two types of critical and official ideological historiography, the author has tried to identify and extract the official ideological agenda in the book, focusing on the period of Shah Isma'il I. In this way, the author, while criticizing the sources of study data, has tried to classify events that have undergone ideological readings based on first-hand resources and then analyze according to the identified agenda.

The book ‘ Nixon, Kissinger and Shah: Relation between Iran and the U. S. A in Cold War’ is a very marketable book in Iran’ s market. There are very important claims about the nature of Iran’ s relations with the U. S. A. The main claim is this question whether Shah acted independently toward west in the political area. Did Shah alter relations of ruler – obedience in Nixon’ s period and oblige U. S. A to follow Iran’ s regional politics? Studying about the importance of this claim and its critique of that are the main purposes of this article. This article concludes several phases of relation between Iran and the U. S. A in decades 1950 until 1970. Shah used international’ s opportunity that altered nature of Iran’ s relation with the U. S. A in several phases and played different roles. But, these operations did not alter the nature of the relations between Iran and the U. S. A. because when this relation altered the context and international’ s opportunities, the relations between Iran and the U. S. A would come back the to ruler – obedience.

Jó zef Wolski’ s works on the Arsacid history and culture have led to a new approach which has shed new light on the unknown and ambiguous aspects of the Arsacid Empire. For him, the first step in reconstructing the picture of Arsacid period in the framework of the Ancient Persian history is reexamining and revising the ideas long held by historians of this period. The method implemented is to extract Wolski’ s basic vision and approach out of his key writings. To this end, many of his most important papers were translated or summarized. Among the most important achievements of this study in introducing his works is that the Persian domestic sources gained prominence and were changed into canonical works. To do so, a systematic criticism of Greek and Roman sources related to the Arsacid Empire was done. Moreover, the most fundamental strategy of the author under discussion was to find the ideological links between Arsacid and Achaemenid traditions. To unravel these links, he brings forth the hypothesis concerning Arsacid Iranism. Although not fully successful, his ideas were instrumental in modifying the negative opinions towards the empire.

This article focuses on the critique of the book "The Crafters and Their Business Life in the Safavid Period: Essays in the Socio-Economic History of Iran" by Mahdi Kavani. This work was considered as the first independent book on the subject. The author influenced the views of the nineteenth-century thinkers of Western Europe, exploring some of the social developments in this age and trying to prove that the Safavid government was preventing the formation of powerful independent autonomous merchants, and consequently, the economic dynamism of this period. This work is organized in six sections and 31 sub-sections. After the first part, which includes the general introduction of the work, the section examines and analyzes the dimension of the effect and then introduces the author and translator. But, the most important part of this review is the background of the research on guilds in Iran and beyond, and analyzing the effect of the content. The latter section is presented in two parts: introspection and outsourcing critique. This critique is the first output of the "Review of the Impact of the Research on Social History" which has been reorganized in the framework of the Council for the Study of Texts and Humanities Books.