The Rise and Demise of the 1920-21 Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran in Gilan played like an intense drama in modern Iranian history. It provided Iran with an example of a national liberation movement and a peasant-backed guerrilla force; it introduced to the country the founders of the Iranian Communist Party, exercising social authority and power in what they considered to be a liberation movement; it offered a brief experiment with socialism which ended tragically. Its principal leader, Mirza Kuchik Khan, combined an intense radical nationalism with a strong sense of politically engaged Shi'ism, thus providing Iranian opposition movements in the twentieth century with some of their archetypal characteristics. The defeat of the republic led to the death of Mirza Kuchik Khan (1880—1921) and the continued domination of Iran by Britain.

The Omission of the Achaemenids from Indigenous Accounts of Iranian history has puzzled many and led to the assumption that the Sasanids were unaware of the Achaemenids and did not have any historical memory of them; that, if anything, the Sasanids were heirs to the Parthians. The argument put forth is that, with some exceptions, sources from the Islamic period do not really show that the Sasanids knew about the Achaemenids. Indeed, it is correct that the Islamic sources have only a vague recollection of the Achaemenids. But does the vagueness in Islamic historiography in the ninth and the tenth centuries prove that the Sasanids (A.D. 224-651) were unaware of the Achaemenids (550- 331 B.C.) during their rule? The question of why the Achaemenids, in spite of their outstanding political and military achievements, were omitted from the national tradition during the reign of the Sasanids--who originated from the same region--has remained unanswered.

More than Fifty Books, and More than 100 Academic Articles, Have appeared in English alone dealing in significant part with the Iranian revolutionary movement. This impressive output, published in just 15 years, does not reflect a similarly copious wealth of source materials. In fact, the study of the Iranian revolutionary movement is largely, one might argue, sound and fury, a lot of grand theorizing lacking a solid empirical basis. No work on the Iranian revolution has made systematic use of all forms of primary evidence that are currently available, though some are more thorough than others.

This paper discusses Western historiography of the Iranian revolutionary movement of 1977–79, which led to the fall of the Pahlavi regime in February 1979. It does not attempt to cover works on the post-revolutionary period, after the fall of the shah. In addition, it does not deal specifically with individual secondary works on the Iranian revolution.

The Royal Harem is Perhaps One of the Most Misunderstood Institutions of the Perso-Islamic social order. The myths surrounding the harem originated primarily in the West, fomented to a great extent by European travelers over a period of several centuries. As is well known, the Islamic empires, at their zenith (beginning around A.D. 1500), attracted numerous European merchants and traders, as well as assorted adventurers, emissaries, and missionaries. Many of them took up residence in these countries, some for a short time, some for many years. They toured cities, saw the countryside and became acquainted with the local people. In several instances, some made their way into the royal courts. Many of these travelers kept extensive notes about their journeys and left careful sketches of the various aspects of the society with which they came in contact. Often, upon their return home, many made their narratives available at court and sometimes to the public.

In 1911, The CZECH Folklorist Albert Wesselski Published His Two volume compilation Der Hodscha Nasreddin, still considered one of the most comprehensive and reliable collections of anecdotes on Khwaja Nasr al-Din (Turkish: Nasreddin Hoca), the most widely known protagonist of humorous prose narrative in the Near East. Wesselski chose to subtitle his work “Turkish, Arabic, Berber, Maltese, Sicilian, Calabrian, Croatian, Serbian and Greek tales and anecdotes,” thus indicating the main geographical region in which tales on Nasr al-Din are in circulation. On the other hand, the geographical outline does not suggest a lack of awareness on Wesselski's part of the fact that the Mediterranean cannot be said to monopolize the famous jester. Being familiar with problems touching on the dissemination and spread of popular tales and their protagonists, Wesselski consciously profited from a large number of publications accessible to him in various European languages.

Among The Forerunners of Modernism in Nineteenth-Century Iran Mirza Fath ‘Ali Akhundzada was probably the most outspoken in his defense of secularism and his attack on religion as the chief obstacle to social progress. His writings on these subjects, his advocacy of an improvised script—a lifetime preoccupation—and his plays with distinct social messages, have already been subjects of study. In their treatment of Akhundzada most writers have satisfied themselves with cursory content analyses of his social ideas and literary achievements. Yet the question remains: to what extent was his socio-religious criticism—what he called qirītīka (Persianized rendering of the Russian kritika)— the outcome of his exposure, directly or indirectly, to modern European thought? To what extent, on the other hand, was his blend of theological skepticism and social disquietude rooted in exposure to the lingering Perso-Islamic “esotericism” (bāṭinīya) of his time.

Much Scholarly Ink has been Spilled over the Question of What constitutes dance in different societies. Several attempts have been made to create a universal category for dance that would enable dance scholars to transcend this fundamental question and get down to the business of conducting research, secure in the knowledge that all of their colleagues understand the basic definitions of “dance.”

None of the current definitions takes into account dance and dance events in societies such as those of the Islamic areas of the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa where the term for dance (usually the Arabic word raqṣ) can possibly bear powerfully negative or, at least, ambiguous connotations. While dance, and a word to denote that activity, exists and we can perhaps come to an agreement over what constitutes dance, an even more crucial issue is what dance is not in an Islamic environment.

Patterns of Women's Employment in Iran have been Influenced BY the oil-based nature of the economy; by the policy of import-substitution industrialization which has favored capital-intensive, male-intensive industries; by cultural attitudes and gender bias which render many occupations inappropriate or off-limits to women; by women's low level of literacy, educational attainment, and skills relative to men; and by high rates of fertility. These factors have affected, and indeed limited, the supply of and demand for female labor, especially in the 1980s.

The results of the 1986 census, which came to light in 1988, seem to have prompted a number of significant policy shifts on the part of the government of President Rafsanjani and sparked debates, studies, and research projects concerning population issues, women's economic and social roles, and development strategies.

In The Early 1920s Two American Companies Battled for the Rights to develop an oil concession in northern Persia: Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (later to become Exxon) and the smaller, but none the less formidable, Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation (later to merge into ARCO). American industry was a new variable in the equation, since Russia and Britain had been the primary beneficiaries of concessions granted by the Persian government to outsiders. Ultimately neither company won out—for several reasons. The British did not welcome the new presence and sought to stymie it; the Persian press misunderstood the relationship between business and government in the U.S., leading some Persians into unrealistic expectations; and one of the competitors, Sinclair, became tangled up in scandal.