Identification and analysis of environmental conditions associated with the emergence and development of political parties in generals and different types of parties in particular, are important to an understanding of the problems and prospects of representative government in emerging nations. This paper presents a study of the genesis and development of political parties, their possible prototypes, and their functional substitutes in Iran.

This study is based on fieldwork undertaken in Badakhshān province of Afghanistan in 1968 for the purpose of collecting musical data. A summary of the basic musical styles and instruments current in the area can be found in the,author's Instrumental Music in Northern Afghanistan.

The focus of the present article is the type of Persian verse set to music by the folk singers of Badakhshān. Principally, this includes a description of the texts of the most common folksong form of the region, the felak, drawn from singers of the Faizābād (central), Darwāz (northern), Shughnān (northeastern), Wākhān (eastern) and Keshrn (western) regions of Badakhshān province.

Yesterdays they changed my room. Am I completely cured now? Will I be free to leave next week as the superintendent promised? Have I been sick at all? For one year, they wouldn't give me a pen and paper which I wanted more than anything else. I always thought about the many things I would write once they gave me a pen and paper. Yesterday, without asking, they brought me paper and a pen...something I longed for so much...something I waited for so long. But what's the use? Since yesterday, I have been able to write nothing, no matter how hard I try. It's as though someone were holding me back, as though my arm were paralysed. Now, as I read over the garbled lines which are etched into the paper, the only words I can make out are... “three drops of blood.”