JOURNAL OF CRITICAL LITERATURE AND HUMANITIES
Year:2020 | Volume:20 | Issue:1|Papers Count:20

It said that the relation between history and theory is like “ the deaf dialog” . It means: there are incongrous interests between them, and maybe the interpretation itself, cause an inconsistent relation between historians and theorists. The essay explains every historian needs to have theoritical base for writting and studying of history. Then it emphasizes that for criticize of historical works, the critics must be aware of theoritical base of the text that they are critisise, also they themselves, have to adopt a specific theoritical base. So, every theoritical base relates to metahistorical field,-and it means: the historians who theorise have to attend to necessaries more than facts gathering-therefore, the most necessary debate is explanation of the relationship between critique of history and metahistory. The essay analyses different levels of historical knowledge to explain the relationship.

The Seljuks in the fifth century AH, due to the extent to which they extend beyond the borders of present-day Iran, have linked Iranian history with neighboring territories, which makes it important to examine the history of this dynasty. In this regard, the work of "Seljuks from the Beginning to the End" by Abolghasem Forouzani in seventeen chapters is an attempt to examine all aspects of the Seljuk government. The question that arises is to what extent the author has been able to analyze and explain the various aspects of the Seljuk government based on the publication objectivesof this textbook. Therefore, in this article, the critical and analytical approaches and book validity are investigated. According to the conducted research, various relevant findings can be pointed out. Despite the variety of topics covered by this work on the Seljuk dynasty, it is a highly valid resource, especially in regard to the civilization and cultural aspect, which are considered among its most significant advantages. However, the application of the narration method in this work is majorly prevalent. Using as an academic textbook, it will therefore be difficult to make an analytical understanding of the Seljuk era.

Vere Gordon Childe, Australian archaeologist and historian, was one of most spectacular figures in archaeology and history in the first half of the 20th century. He took a methodologically synthetic approach to offer particular issues which are still given attention by pre-historians and historians. In this respect, his influential book History, targeting a survey of current theories on the history and historiography, was so given attention by academics in Iran that has been translated and published for several times. In this paper, it is attempted to review the Persian version of the book and that the methodological synthetic approach taken by its author about the historical order and the variables of such interpretation on the history.

The study of marine history is one of the important research cases in History. Research in this field is scarce among Iranian academic writers. But “ The Atlas Ports and Maritime History of Iran” is compiled by a group of researchers led by two professors in the history field. Undoubted, doing such a great work requires careful consideration and the use of various specialized issues such as Historical Geography, Toponym and script analysis, Geopolitics and so on. This makes such studies difficult. This paper, by reviewing the book, shows that the strength of this work is the comprehensiveness and utilization of various sources and researches as well as the use of illustrative maps, illustrations and tables. While the dispersion and heterogeneity of the content and disaffiliation the Persian Gulf and the Oman Sea with the Caspian Sea section is Its major weakness.

One of the books published on the history of early Islamic era is by Jamal Jawdah "Socioeconomic situation of Malaali at the Beginning of Islam". This book deals with the critical ear of early Islam and treats the clash of the Omavids with the Malaali. This book has a number of shortcomings such as lack of innovation, lack of organization, having no definite conclusion, lack of proper sources, disregarding modern methods of research, etc. These drawbacks have embattled the writer and he has not been successful in explaining the socio – economic conditions of Malaali in early Islam. This paper employs logical – critical methods and in an unbiased manner deals with this book, and on the basis of library methods criticize this book and expounds some aspects of it.

L’ Histoire des relations entre l’ Iran et la France Du Moyen  ge à nos jours (The history of Iranian-French relations from the Middle Ages to the present) is a book that describes the ups and downs of the history of Iran-France relations from its starting point in connection with the French court with the Mongol kings in Iran in the Middle Ages, until 2018, when it was published in France by L’ Harmattan Publications. This book is the first work written in French by an Iranian researcher on Iran-France relations. On the other hand, in some cases, the Iranian approach towards these relations has damaged the reading of this book, and it quotes these relations in French from the Iranian point of view which includes the historical references. This can confuse the international audience with confusion and misunderstanding of time of events. The author pays more attention to the political and cultural aspects of the relations between the two countries than anything else, and has almost ignored the economic aspects of recent decades. Some writing considerations, such as spelling, grammar, and punctuation, as well as the unity of the way certain nouns are written, need to be reviewed in this work, which, if corrected, can make the book a valuable reference.

The works written in SAMANIDs period in the field of History are partly the continuation of simple writing in the late second century A. H. The prose by a number of Historians in the SAMANID Period is artifact too. The authors just tried to praise the ruler's emirs and ministers exaggeratedly. They counted them as the right kings of time. Historiography in This period was mostly based on personal observation and for this reason access to the documents belonging to this period is very important. The main question of this research is: what are the essential features of Historiography in the SAMANID Period? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the best Historical sources in this Period? This research explains the strong and weak points of Historiography in the SAMANID Period and also tries to identify the main features of Historical sources in this Period. Among the important features of Islamic Historiography in this Period, one can refer to the cultural and civilizational attitude of Historians, Holistic Historiography, The appearance of rationalist analytical and educational attitude, combining various sciences such as History, Geography, astronomy, and knowledge about different science and fields. Some other things that we can see in the Historical compilations of this period are: starting to translate ( BALAMY historiography), avoiding the methods of news compilation based on the principles and traditions of Hadith records and also appearance of new methods of Historiography ( local History like History of Bokhara). Any way, The boom of Historiography and appearance of some important Historical works in the Period of SAMANID are achieved through variety of factors in the realm of this Iranian Family.

This research by critical method based on Lalau and Muffes discourse approach has criticized the book of Discourse evolution of the report of karbala Event. The main question of this research is that discourses (emotional, transcendental, and historical) mentioned in this book based on what types are set. The conclusion indicate that the Karbala event has not been investigated as a historical and objective event so that it has not refer to the historical facts of the Karbala event, but the writers' positions in various discourses have been Checked out in the psychological aspect of the event, so the statistical measures in this book cannot be valid. That the sign and motto of the discourses under consideration is unclear, and ignores the power ratio in the incident report, and makes no mention of competing discourses in the report of the Karbala event.

This essay criticizes Beatrice Forbes Manz's, researcher of Mongol and Timurid era, interpretive approaches in the book" power, politics and religion in Timurid Iran". Manz survey Shahrokh's era history and specially relations between society and government by different viewpoint and come up with new horizons in this book. Thus, after introducing the brief of each chapter and book position on Timurid surveying arena, criticize epistemological basics and author's model theory which author interpret relations between society and government by them. The mentioned critic besides care about author's viewpoint in coming up with new horizons in Timurid historiography and provoking readers to seeing Timurid's successor's society and governments structure in different way, pays attention to her attitude about Shahrokh era history.

So far, the universe has been considered from a variety of angles. But previous studies have less criticized this book, because earlier studies mainly examined this work as a largely political act. But with the understanding and reading of the text of the book with a hermeneutical approach and based on the theory of analytical analysis, we can find other historical layers in the mindset of Escondrobg. Although the Abbasid world is a continuation of the Iranian-Islamic historiographical heritage, the main approaches of this method to historiography should be sought with the principles, foundations, and frameworks of the Islamic historiography method. However, the author, using the theory of critical discourse analysis, has tried to answer the more important issues, such as the stimulus of history, epistemological insight, appreciation, determinism, and social relations in the history of Turkmen scholarship in the Abbasid Book of Almarus, The findings of the research show that the Turkestan archbishop, though with the same approach of central theology and political heroism, explains the incidents and the motivator of history is the manifestation of the will of God on earth through the Safavid kings, but it is safe to say that in the domain Insight goes beyond the usual approaches of other traditional Iranian historians. So that his work is one of the few classical works that is partly in the field of historical sociology, with the study of the life of the Imams and Chines, Sadat and Ulema, the ministers, the Mostofians, the poets, the calligraphers, the painters, and the low levels of the Safavid community.

The approach of contemporary western historians to the term "Philhellen" on the coins of the Parthian kings has two types of interpretation. Some consider the superiority of Greek culture to Persian culture in Parthian period and it is considered as kind of unconditional and cultural surrender to Greek culture. Some other viewpoints, most of which are based on the later Western historians’ viewpoints, are that this term was used as a "political trick" by Parthian kings in order to control the Greek settlers in their territory. In this view, the use of the term on Parthian coins has not meant the unconditional surrender of Iranian culture to Greek culture, and its whole meaning hasn’ t been summed up in political goals, necessarily. What was created during helenism and especially under the influence of stoic thoughts and its Iranian roots of thought was a global approach to the concept of humanity, which was fundamentally different from that of the Greeks before. This issue was compatible with Iranians’ perception from global society that was rooted in Zoroastrian thoughts in Achaemenid period. Thus, the Parthian kings, using this interpretation, in fact, admire a kind of Greek culture that has a global and non-transcendental attitude towards human society and so that, paved the way for its absorption in Iranian culture. This paper aims to provide a moderate judgment with cultural-socialogical approach by showing the cultural difference between Greeks and Iranians in Hellenistic period and before that, using literary and archaeological evidence, with descriptive-analytical method.

Perceiving the principles of Christian arts as one of the monotheistic religions has a special significance in the studies of thought and art. In spite of the explicit prohibition of the Abrahamic religions on Image, It is important that how icons and iconography has become an essential elements of Christianity. It was expected that this book could respond part of this expectation. This article discussed some of the positive points and shortcomings of the two texts. in the framework of "Criterial Studies in Texts & Programs of human sciences Journal", from point of critical studies method has described and analyzed two book. Thus, it was noted that the translation with manipulating of the framework of the source has affected the goals of the book, meanwhile because of the lack of proper approach; questions on "the meaning of Icons" remain unresolved yet. The lack of bibliography is a fundamental shortcoming of the Persian version, and the failure to follow the standards of research has subjected the validity and effectiveness of the book. Because of the deficiencies and the mixing the content, the present translation does not seem to answer the needs of readers who have interested in this field and cannot be considered as reliable text.

“ Catalogue of handwritten manuscripts on alchemy and related sciences within Iranian libraries” by Zohre Mā ziā r and Nasibe Ranjbardā r has been published in 2013/1392, along with an introduction made by Yousof Beyg Bā bā apour. Nowadays, since the research on Islamic alchemy is in its infancy, compilation of such a catalogue could be acknowledged as a necessary reference for future studies on alchemy. But, as concluded in this paper, that contribution would not be useful in the subject, in spite of its proper title. In our view, this catalogue shall mislead the researchers in detection of manuscripts. In present critical analysis, we have remarked six major deficiencies of this catalogue. Exclusive quotation from previously published DENA catalogue without appropriate referencing to it, frequent writing mistakes and omitting significant number of manuscripts could be reported as three major defects of this catalogue.

Madness is one of the less discussed issues in the social and medical history of Muslim societies in the Islamic Middle Ages. Madness until two or three decades ago, it was mostly considered as a mental illness by medical history researchers. But with the introduction of new social approaches to medical phenomena, we are gradually seeing a stream of research that examines medical issues beyond the known boundaries of medical knowledge and in an interdisciplinary space that has produced some works. One of the few works that within this framework has extensively analyzed the history of madness in Islamic societies is Majnun: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society by Michael W. Dols. In this book, he has extensively explored the subject of insanity in three different medical, social-historical, and legal / religious perspectives, relying on a variety of sources. However, this work has some defects for a variety of reasons, including the author's partialist approach, overwhelming data on madness and being caught in the trap of a European-oriented Orientalist approach that in some cases has produced inappropriate generalizations.

What contradictions and crises made the Shogunate take countermeasures in the form of three major reforms (Kyō hō , Kansei, and Tenpō ) in early modern period Japan (Kinsei)? The author’ s critical study of the topic focused on the appellation “ three major reforms, ” their renown and confinement to three periods by the Shogunate and the explanation is within the two historical perspectives of “ Good and Bad Governance Alternation” and “ Tension and Relaxation. ” Expressing his own definition of “ reform, ” and some examples in each period, tries to criticize fairly the bad governance and its instances. The book provides its Iranian readers with new and informative content. The book review is aimed at explaining the reforms and highlighting the significance of the reforms’ socio-political potential in Japanese modernization and also stressing the importance of the historical period which was unintentionally neglected by the writer and suggesting Thomas Spragens’ s theory of crisis as an alternative for a better analysis. Thorough study of the Shogunate’ s akin and appointee reformers needs a political theory rather than a historical one. Focusing on governmental reform to prevent the dissolution of the system hindered the author’ s attention to the nature of the reform and the important consequences.

As the importance of economic history in recent years, some of Iranian and non-Iranian researchers research on the recognition of economic situation of different period of Iran history. Among non-Iranian researchers, we can call Willem Floor and Rudi Matthee who are compiled more at this ground. They relied on records and archival materials, in reviewing of the different subject of Iran economics as finance, trade, taxation and bazaar at qajar and safavid periods. The different economical subjects are full of vocabulary and skilled idioms of historic, geographic, financial and record-recognition cases, so to translate these texts from English to Farsi, having the skillful translators must be essential. At present time, the translation of texts of economic history will be done at an abnormal speed rather than past and translators try to translate the historical text as soon as possible. The question is here that who has the qualification to translate the economic history. What is the consequence in not having enough skill in translation of texts of economical history? In this paper we study translation of “ A fisical history of Iran in the Safavid and Qajar periods” by Willem Floor critically and try to find out query.

This article criticizes Gholamhossein Zargarinejad's book that named "History of Iran in the Qajar Period: The Age of Aga Mohammad Khan". The life and work of Aga Mohammad Khan Qajar is one of the controversial topics in Iranian history, there has been much research and historical novels written about him so far. Generally, bloody, cruel, and vengeful figures have been drawn in both the Pahlavi and Hslmic Repoblic-era historiography discourse and independent research. That would have been a different fate for Iran if it had not abolished Zandieh's government. Zargirinejad is one of the scholars who echoed this view in his earlier works but in his book "History of Iran in the Qajar Period: The Age of Aga Mohammad Khan", he has attempted to altered this picture with a critical reading of sources and documents and to draw completely different figures. A person whose not only rumors about his cruelty, especially the blindness of the people of Kerman or the Caucasus, but also the opposite, He was the only one among the claimants of power, including Lotfali Khan Zand, who completely thought about Iran and the revival of its historical realm. This article attempts to critically evaluate the views and views of Zargarinejad.

The book of History, Culture &Civilization of Iran in the Buyid Dynasty by Sadegh Hojjati is a detailed and relatively fluent account of the history of Iran and the Islamic world at the climax of Islamic civilization, which many scholars do not work on that period because of scarcity and Arabic linguistic references. The author appropriately organized the book into two parts: a political history (including ten chapters) and culture and civilization (including five chapters) and produced an acceptable work. But neglecting some of the earlier sources and new researchs, not addressing some of the important issues such as religious politics and other aspects of foreign associations and some of the problems of segmentation or references in many paragraphs, various errata in writing and some inadequate judgments and probably inaccurate damaged the book to some extent. This article discusses the pros and cons of this book.