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In the early-seventeenth century the European thirst for knowledge about other countries and cultures was growing, after all it was the Age of the Discovery. Iran was a little-known country at the time because commercial and diplomatic contacts had begun only a few decades earlier. Before 1633, when this book was written, area studies on Persia did not exist. There were some books, travelogues, or reports on wars, but none about the people, the country, the culture, or the government. To fill this gap, Joannes de Laet, a wealthy and erudite merchant and scholar, published this book in a series of country studies that included the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland (Livonia, Latvia, Prussia), Turkey, Mogol India, Brasil, and the New World (West-Indies). Because de Laet had never been to Persia, he used classical Greek and Roman authors, medieval sources (including from Arab authors), and account by the most recent travelers. He also used information from Nicolaas Hem, an employee of the Dutch East-Indies Company, who had lived in Persia since 1623 and had just returned to the Netherlands. De Laet also had contacts with Jacob van Gool (Golius) the famous professor of Arabic and Hebrew at the University of Leiden, from whom he received data from as yet unpublished Arabic texts. The book offers in a nutshell what was known about Persia at that time from published sources and enriched by first-hand information from Hem and Golius. This book was not only the first systematic and encyclopedic summary of all available information about Persia at the time, but it was also a well-informed one, even if most of the information was second hand. It also provided the framework for many later works about Persia.

For this book, Willem Floor has selected and translated into English thirteen German sources reporting on events in Iran from 1580 to 1722. One of these sources has never been published before; four of them are complete books, while the others only have sections dealing with Iran. Most of these sources are unknown to scholars.

This new bilingual edition of The Mirror of My Heart - the poems in Persian and English on facing pages - is a unique and captivating collection introduced and translated by Dick Davis, an acclaimed scholar and translator of Persian literature as well as a gifted poet in his own right.

For its subtlety, inventiveness, and dramatic force, the verse of the twelfth-century Persian poet Nezami has been compared to that of Shakespeare, and in the same way that Romeo and Juliet has become the archetypal Western love story, so Layli and Majnun occupies an equally uncontested place as the iconic love story of the Middle East.

Heydar Radjavi's memories of the 1930s and 1940s, when he was growing up in Iran (a country he describes as one that has been "in ambivalent flirtation with modernity for the past hundred years"), are a delightful and moving evocation of a vanished past. His wise, witty, gentle, and eminently humane voice is one that is irresistibly attractive, and the anecdotes he recounts have a quiet, resonant charm that stays in the mind long after the book is closed. This little book is a gem, as a memoir and as a human document.

Kermanshah was one of the most important commercial gateways to Iran and an important transit station on the trade route between Iraq and Iran. It was also a gathering point for pilgrims going to and coming back from the holy shrines of Kerbela and Najaf. Despite all this, Kermanshah has been mostly ignored by historians.

The Layered Heart  Essays on Persian Poetry is published in celebration of the poet and scholar Dick Davis, dubbed "our pre-eminent translator from Persian" by The Washington Post. Edited by Ali-Asghar Seyed-Ghorab, Associate Professor of Persian at Leiden University.

Essays on the plague and cholera in Iran. As well as quarantine, influenza, medical infrastructure, geophagy, and early steps toward veterinary medicine in Iran.

CONTAINING more than 1000 high-frequency vocabulary items as well as numerous idioms and idiomatic expressions, Book II of Persian: Here and Now has been crafted for teaching at the intermediate level - second year of Persian (Farsi) in academic programs.

CONTAINING more than 2000 words and expressions, Persian: Here and Now is a course book that provides first year students with both language and cultural proficiency.

This book discusses the political and economic history of the port of Bushehr, which by the end of the eighteenth century had become the gateway to southern Persia (Iran). It offers a detailed analysis of Bushehr''s demography, industry, health care, education, and standard of living; as well as its trade, and how politics impacted its well-being. Throughout this period Bushehr had to ward off the growing competition from other Persian Gulf ports such as Bandar Abbas. It did so successfully, enjoying growing trade and wealth, despite internal and external political problems. Because of its important commercial position Bushehr was also twice attacked and occupied by the British (1856, 1915-18). What brought the port city down finally, however, was not the British attacks and occupations, nor the occupation and looting of the city by Tangestani tribesmen (purported protectors of the constitution) in 1909; it was the expansion of the ports, roads, and railroads of the oil-rich province of Khuzestan. This caused economic decline for Bushehr, which resulted in a loss of trade and much of its population between 1920 and 1940. The World War II years did not bring much improvement to its situation either. The economic malaise contributed to a tribal uprising in Fars in 1946, in which Bushehr played an important role. However, the uprising failed, and as such was but a last spasm of a bygone era.

Hamideh Khanum Javanshir grew up in a traditional Azerbaijani society where women were relegated to playing a self-effacing and submissive role with no identity of their own and no function in society outside the home and family.

Given the importance of bread in the Iranian diet, it is surprising that its role in Iranian society has so far been ignored as a subject of study. Since ancient times, bread has been the staple diet of the peoples living in the Iranian plateau. In The History of Bread in Iran, Willem Floor, one of the foremost scholars of Iranian history, describes the beginnings of agriculture and bread-making, and the various grains and other products that were, and are, used to make bread. He then delves into the making of dough in rural and urban areas, followed by an overview of baking techniques, and the many kinds of bread that were-and continue to be-made in Iran. And, because Man does not live by bread alone, we are offered an overview of the spiritual and social aspects of bread in Iranian society. Finally, the author assesses the dietary importance of bread to the people of Iran and ends by addressing the question of how the State dealt with "the bread issue," which often determined the rise and fall of governments.

Little is known about the Arab migrants who settled on the Iranian coast between Bushehr and Lengeh in the late 1500s. They were a disparate group of small tribes of sailors, traders, fishermen, pearl divers, and cultivators. Although they were all referred to as the Bani Hula, they were not a uniform group. In fact, they were each other's fiercest competitors for access to the pearl banks. This frequently led to bloody and murderous encounters and feuds. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Arabs of Nakhilu had a fearsome reputation as pirates-which the Portuguese soon discovered to be warranted. The Bani Hula received much attention during the eighteenth century when they tried to fill the power vacuum in the Persian Gulf caused by the fall of the Safavid dynasty and the civil war in Oman. However, although they were a maritime force to be reckoned with, they had no common cause and dissipated their strength by fighting among themselves. Furthermore, they had no staying power as their political and economic base was too narrow. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and down to the early twentieth century, one of the most active groups of Hulas were those of Kangan and Taheri. Their history, told here in some detail, is emblematic for the other Hula groups. Apart from showing the violence against each other, their story also highlights how their local lineages dominated political and socio-economic life for centuries in their area, often spanning more than one or two dynasties. It was these local families that guaranteed stability, continuity, and permanence even when, at the national and international level, there was turmoil, upheaval and profound change.

The power of poetry to map the human heart has been a hallmark of Persian culture for at least a thousand years, and Fatemeh Shams wields it unforgettably. As a member of the Iranian diaspora living in the West, her voice is often one of anguished separation, and many of her poems touch on politics, but as translator Dick Davis says in his introduction to this volume, her approach is "inward and personal rather than public and propagandistic." Frequently, her focus on the individual extends to erotic passion - "It was night, your hands were full of moonlight . . ." - or addresses its obverse, of loneliness: "I sleep in my own corpse''s arms . . ." Whether she is writing in free verse or in traditional literary forms, her remarkable technical abilities and the strength of her feelings always shine through. Shams''s verse makes real for us her vision of the world as only poetry can. Introduced and Translated by Dick Davis. Original Persian text faces the English translations of the poems.

The island of Khark was an important link in Persian Gulf navigation, supplying passing ships with water, victuals, and pilots for ships sailing to and from Basra. This was why the Arabs called Khark “the Mother of Skippers” (Umm al-Rubbaniyan). Through the ages, Khark has also been a place of pilgrimage: in Sasanian times, due to the presence of an early Christian church and monastery, and in Islamic times, because of the presence of the tomb of Mohammad al-Hanafiyya. In the eighteenth century, the Dutch made the island their center of trade in the Persian Gulf, and by the nineteenth century the island was dubbed “the most important strategic point in the Persian Gulf,” reason why the British occupied it twice. Although by 1900 the island had lost its strategic importance, it acquired it again after the 1950s, when the National Iranian Oil Company decided to make Khark its main terminal for the export of crude oil. Later, chemical factories were added to the island’s economic make-up. As a result, Khark’s name is now better known around the world than it was ever previously, but the history has remained untold. This book tells the whole story, from the early archeological evidence and the Islamic and Safavid periods, to the Dutch projects in the eighteenth century and the British in the nineteenth century. And in the end, how the traditional way of life ended and industrialization began.  

In this insightful study of Iranian cultural history and national identity, the late Shahrokh Meskoob, one of Iran's leading intellectuals, reviewed the roles of three social classes, the courtiers and bureaucratic officials (ahl-e divan), the religious scholars (ulama), and the Muslim Gnostics (Sufi poets and writers), in the development and refinement of the Persian language during the past 1,000 years and gives the reader a fresh perspective on Iranian cultural heritage and the struggle to forge a distinct national identity. Dr Ali Banuazizi's foreword and interview with the author sets the stage for a fuller appreciation of this invaluable and wide-ranging contribution to Iranian intellectual history.

Throughout history, many an ambitious diplomatic initiative has slipped into obscurity, but few have been so thoroughly forgotten as the efforts of a young man named Pedros Bedik to foster an alliance between two great seventeenth century powers, Persia and the Holy Roman Empire, against the mighty Ottoman Empire that lay between them. As a related enterprise, he worked to end the separation between the Western and Eastern versions of Christianity. In 1678, he published a book--written in Latin, with a Persian introduction--intended to explain the East to the West and thus further those aims. Never reprinted or translated, it has remained virtually unknown until now. Bedik was raised in an Armenian, Christian community in Ottoman-ruled Aleppo. At the age of 16, he was sent to Rome by his mother to avoid forced conversion to Islam. For seven years he attended a missionary college there, but his theological education abruptly ended in 1668 when he was expelled for carousing. Soon after, he left Rome in the company of the archbishop of Nakhchivan, in present-day Azerbaijan. En route the two agreed to launch a project to unite the Armenian Church with that of Rome. Bedik wanted to use this plan as leverage to get European Roman Catholic support for the protection of Armenian Christians. From Armenia Bedik travelled to Iran and spent 5 years there. In his book, which is mostly about his time in there, he is aggressively Christian and scathing about Islam, but not about Iran and Iranians. And he goes to great pains to show that the Shah was more than willing to enter into a pact with the Pope and the Christian princes of Europe to jointly attack the Turks from all sides. The value of this long-forgotten book lies in Bedik's talents as a knowledgeable, linguistically-skilled and keen-eyed observer, although a highly partisan one. Its pages contain fascinating descriptions of the court, customs, and people of Iran, including such unique information as the ash-e su memorial banquet ceremony; the abbasiyaneh drinking custom; how Persians threw a party and their cooking; the Nowruz ceremonies; the various breeds of horses; the race of messengers, and the Caspian Kalmyk nomadic tribe's annual oath to the Russian tsar. Bedik eventually returned to Europe, entered the Holy Roman Emperor's service as diplomat and soldier, and was made a count. In 1683, he was appointed ambassador and sent to Iran to discuss joint military action against the Ottomans and to seek better treatment for Iran's Christians. En route, after discussions in Warsaw, he disappeared in Russia. In this book, his vital and adventurous spirit lives again.

CONTAINING more than 1000 high-frequency vocabulary items as well as numerous idioms and idiomatic expressions, Book II of Persian: Here and Now has been crafted for teaching at the intermediate level - second year of Persian (Farsi) in academic programs. Book II as in the first volume, provides students with level-appropriate, grammatical and lexical material. It also introduces them to language within the culture through a variety of relevant, comprehensible, here and now representations of mainstream Iranian culture today. The textual material and the oral/written activities of this book have been structured and developed to be "communicative" in nature. Students are asked to engage in three different modes of communication: interpretive, interpersonal and presentational. Book II of Persian: Here and Now is designed to equip second year students of Persian with competencies as stipulated in the ACTF proficiency guidelines.

Containing over 2000 words and expressions, this is a course book that provides first year students with both language and cultural proficiency. The components of the book use a communicative framework, with an emphasis on the functional constituents, to integrate both notional and structural elements in each lesson. These elements have been interwoven to produce reading units with a very natural linguistic texture. The characters in the book communicate through various real life situations enabling them to express themselves as real people in the target language. illustrated in full colour, each lesson is designed to be an open learning space for both teachers and students to be flexible within the curriculum. Instructors can creatively alter or expand the components of this book according to the class's needs and the students' interests. Furthermore, all the reading units and communicative activities also have a pedagogical side-note that makes suggestions on implementation to instructors. The book contains a glossary and a guide to the most common, basic Persian verbs (listing their past and present stems), and provides students with an audio clip for each reading unit. This book is designed to help first year students attain language competence as stipulated by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

Life at the Court of the Early Qajar Shahs, a memoir translated into English for the first time, offers a uniquely intimate look at a world veiled by privilege and power. Its author, Soltan Ahmad Mirza, was a prince-the forty-ninth son of Fath Ali Shah Qajar, who ruled Iran from 1797 to 1834. Looking back over the reigns of his father and two other shahs, he assembled a vast wealth of detail about life at the apex of Persian society: the role of the ruler, the hierarchy of the harem, court eunuchs, ceremonies, diversions, disputes, occasional violence, and-as a nexus for it all-an extraordinarily intricate web of connections by birth and marriage. Among members of the royal family, Soltan Ahmad Mirza was revered for his vivid recollections of the past. When he set about composing his memoir in 1886, he widened his own knowledge by drawing extensively on the memories of women of the court-his mother (the favorite among his father's hundreds of wives), his sisters, aunts and other residents of the harem. As a result, for the first time in any work about the period, women shine and cut sharp and sometimes-splendid figures. They are not mere appendages to the greater glory of the ruler, passively submitting to the dominant religious and patriarchal structure. Rather, they are complete persons, some of them highly intelligent and resourceful, as related in the memoir's many vignettes about their influence in court matters. This translation not only includes the complete text of Soltan Ahmad Mirza's memoir, but is augmented with a great deal of additional contextual information and ancillary materials that makes the book an invaluable source to those interested in this important era of Iranian history. Dr. Eskandari-Qajar is founder/president of the International Qajar Studies Association (IQSA), a scholarly association dedicated to the study of the Qajar era. In 2009, he joined a team of scholars at Harvard University working on the NEH-funded Women's Worlds in Qajar Iran Harvard Project. The Project's aim is to safeguard digitally and make available documents, photographs and oral history of women in the Qajar era.

Games Persians Play is a study of the history, development, and change in the games played in Iran. Iranians, young and old, rich and poor, male and female, played a large variety of games during their 2500-year history. Some games were played just to while away the time, to entertain, to keep children occupied, to liven up a social event, or to celebrate the change of seasons. Others were multi-functional such as horse games and hunting, which were both an amusement and a military training exercise. Like elsewhere in the world traditional games are disappearing and being replaced by a less varied group of modern games, in particular spectator sports. This book introduces the reader to the rich menu of games played in Iran and the changes that have taken place therein. Willem Floor is a scholar of Persian history with more than 20 books in print.