Muscat, the capital city of present day Oman, has had a long, and colorful history as a typical Indian Ocean port at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. International trade brought about a rich mix of various ethnic and religious groups including, besides Arabs, Africans, Baluchis, Mekranis, Sindis, Gujaratis, Persians and many others. At the turn of the twentieth century fourteen languages could be heard spoken in the city. As a result the people of Muscat tended to be more outward-looking, and tolerant of various cultures, than those of the hinterland. Nonetheless, the city remained a secondary port for most of its history.By 1750, due to anarchy in Iran and problems in Basra, Muscat became the most important Persian Gulf port, and very wealthy. This position was further enhanced by a strong Omani fleet built by the early Al Bu Sa`id rulers. By 1820, however, the Persian Gulf ports reasserted themselves and the Pax Britannica put an end to the use of Omani sea power, and Muscat started to decline. Sultan Sa`id II focused his energies on the development of Zanzibar on the African coast, but by 1868 revenues from Zanzibar and Bandar Abbas had all been lost. Furthermore, conflict between Muscat and the interior and the arrival of steam ships, which supplanted the smaller, local vessels, further sapped the city''s strength, and its prosperity. By 1900, Muscat had become a sleepy steamer port with a considerably reduced population.In Muscat: City, Society, & Trade, Willem Floor marshals a wealth of historical documents and challenges some of the heretofore accepted wisdom about the city. Those interested in the socio-economic and medical history of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf will find here a rich banquet of information.
Merchants and bankers managed much of nineteenth-century Iran''s economy and finances. The ulama-clerical leaders-who considered themselves responsible for the spiritual welfare of their flock also played an important economic role, in particular, through management of religious endowments. Numerically, however, the most important group was that of the traders and craftsmen, who were organized into guilds and who formed thirty to fifty percent of the urban population. Finally, there were the unskilled, mostly seasonal, laborers. Guilds, Merchants and Ulama analyzes the major functions and characteristics of these groups, and discusses how they each coped with the pressures of the world market to which Iran was increasingly exposed and which resulted in the disappearance of jobs reducing Iran''s economic and political independence. After 1870, Iran''s economic situation was aggravated by an influx of peasants into the main cities significantly increasing the size of permanent unskilled labor in these cities. Guilds only provided some measure of social and economic benefits and protection to its members but could not prevent major downsizing, which is detailed in a contemporary report included here in translation. Meanwhile, both the merchants and the ulama demanded government action to better protect the country''s economy and its independence. To make a bigger fist, the ulama, merchants and reformists mobilized the guilds to support their political ends. As such, the guilds provided the force that powered the political events, which resulted in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in 1906. The ulama''s interference in economic life only made matters worse. They had no grasp of economics, beyond stating that people should not be greedy. And the guilds, despite their visible role during the 1905-06 events, found themselves used, and discarded when they were no longer needed. This created the parameters for major structural change to finally take place after 1925. In Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama Willem Floor provides a detailed analysis of primary source references essential for a better understanding of the socio-economic conditions that led to Iran''s push toward modernization in the first quarter of the twentieth century.
This study illuminates the 2,500-year social history of sexual relations in Iran. Marriage, temporary marriage, prostitution, and homosexuality are all discussed, as well as the often unintended result of these relations-sexually transmitted diseases. A Social History of Sexual Relations in Iran uses travelers' accounts, Iranian and international archival sources, as well as government data, to bring together, in detail, and within the context of Iranian culture and religion, the nature, variety, and problems of sexual relations in Iran over the ages. Finally, Willem Floor summarizes the issues that Iranian society faces today¿which are not dissimilar to that of many other industrial nations¿the challenge to the male claim to dominance over women; change in the age of marriage; premarital sex; rising divorce rates; rising promiscuity; prostitution; sexually transmitted diseases; homosexuality; and street children. Willem Floor studied development economics and non-western sociology, as well as Persian, Arabic and Islamology from 1963-67 at the University of Utrecht (the Netherlands). He received his doctoral degree from the University of Leiden in 1971 and went on to work for the World Bank as an energy specialist. Throughout this time, he published extensively on the socio-economic history of Iran. Since his retirement from the World Bank in 2002 he has published numerous scholarly history books and translations, including: Public Health in Qajar Iran, Agriculture in Qajar Iran, The History of Theater in Iran, The Persian Gulf: A Politcal and Economic History of Five Port Cities, The Persian Gulf: The Rise of the Gulf Arabs, and Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin's Travels Through Northern Persia 1770-1774. --
Obeyd-e Zakani, who died in 1372 is among the great poets of Iran but little known in the West. This selection of his work is the first to be translated into English. Obeyd was a remarkable satirist and social critic who looked upon his world of extravagant indulgence and corruption with the censorious eyes of a Juvenal, and portrayed it with the cynicism and wit of a Voltaire, and the hilarious grotesqueness of a Rabelais. He used scathing stories and sardonic maxims to paint a world full of deceit, greed, lust, sycophancy, and perversion, where old values and virtues were scorned and extremes of wealth and poverty, violence and bloodshed were the order of the day.
Iran and the West is a critical bibliography of over 4000 books, articles, journals, and catalogs about Iran written in Western languages and published from 1500 up to the late 1980s. The author, scholar and collector Cyrus Ghani, who collected books for more than 40 years, has written a personal commentary for each entry. Some entries are brief factual annotations while for others such as biographies, autobiographies and books about modern Iranian history and politics, Ghani has made lengthy and erudite comments demonstrating his broad knowledge of Iranian and world history as well as his cultivated moral intelligence. Iran and the West is a useful reference book that brings together a vast array of cross-discipline writing about Iran, including some books and articles whose titles would not make them obvious candidates. It is not only an indispensable tool for scholars and researchers of Iranian studies; it also provides a wealth of fascinating information that will reward any reader who dips into it. This paperback edition has been published in two volumes: Volume 1, Books; Volume 2, Articles, Journals, and Catalogs
Contains six stories including A City Like Paradise, Childbirth, Potshards, Bibi Shahrbanu Sutra, and Daneshvar's Iran.
"Many dangers and many anxious days lie before the new Persia." Almost a century later, Edward Browne's fears and hopes have a special resonance in the minds of contemporary readers. The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909, has maintained its relevance and freshness, even after the occurrence of a revolution more intense and all-embracing than the Constitutional Revolution. Furthermore, the aspirations of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 were a distant protest against the failure of that earlier revolution. Edward Browne was a professor of Persian studies at Cambridge University who had written A Year Amongst the Persians and the four-volume Literary History of Persia. What he primarily intended to achieve in The Persian Revolution was to demonstrate to his readers that the tumultuous events they were witnessing in Iran, often with suspicion if not disdain, were in fact no less than a genuine struggle by an oppressed and impoverished nation to establish a constitutional order despite the overwhelming odds of domestic tyranny, foreign intervention, and ideological divisions. He strove to serve as a voice in the West for the Persian Constitutionalists. The Persian Revolution was more than a simple record of a revolution, for it influenced the very course of events it covered in its pages. This new edition of the book first published in 1910 features an introduction by Abbas Amanat, a professor of History at Yale University, as well as a section featuring Browne's correspondences and contemporary reviews of the book. Also included are 56 period photographs. This is an essential volume for anyone attempting to understand Persia's past and present.
"The Legend of Seyavash begins with the stuff of romance--a foreign girl of royal blood, found as a fugitive and introduced into the king's harem, gives birth to a son, Seyavash, who is raised not by his father the king, but by the great hero Rostam. Upon his return home from Rostam's tutelage, he is betrayed by his stepmother, Sudabeh, who attempts to seduce him and punishes him with a trial by fire when he spurns her. Seyavash is victorious in his trial, and goes on to successfully battle Iran's rival. Turan, concluding a truced with the Turanian king, Afrasyab, on amicable terms. But Seyavash's father, Kavus, insists that Seyavash surrender the Turanian hostages to slaughter, and with a conflicted conscience and no one to turn to, Seyavash flees to the Turanian court, where he is first given safe harbor, but is once again abandoned, murdered by the king's jealous brother. The Legend of Seyavash comes from the middle section of Ferdowsi's "Shahnameh, and presents a world of warfare between Iran and its neighbors. The epic style--with its paeans to loyalty, military prowess, and bravery, and its dichotomy between the forces of good and evil--is in full bloom. But here, as an episode of the Shahnameh which seems to receive more of Ferdowsi's attention, "The Legend of Seyavash achieves a psychological complexity, in Seyavash's struggles with his various father-figures, with his surrogate family, and ultimately with his own sense of loyalty conscience, and fate. The heroic action in The Legend of Seyavash is matched by Ferdowsi's acute and ethical insights into the individual's struggle between conscience and familial loyalty, easting Seyavash as not only an epic figures but a tragic oneas well.
In "Borrowed Ware, poet and translator Dick Davis brings together a collection of epigrams by poets from the "classic" period of Persian literature. It makes a fascinating introduction to a literature that is little known in the West, and incidentally provides insight into a vanished and extraordinary way of life. Davis's prodigious scholarship of Persian poetry has enabled him to select a wide range of poems, from both famous and little-known poets. The result is some to the best English translations of Persian poetry ever. Davis has maintained exceptional faithfulness to the original Persian while recasting the poems grace and drive in English. The book also contains a lucid and entertaining introduction, and informative notes on each of the sixty-eight poets whose work is included. Each poem is faced by the text in delicate Persian "nasta'liq calligraphy by Amir Hossein Tabnak
This book offer a broad and comprehensive survey of the state of public health, medical practice and its practitioners in 1800-1925. Based on first-hand accounts of European travellers and doctors who practised and observed medical treatment, the study provides an overview of the major diseases the population suffered and how these were treated. It also includes the available evidence logged by Iranian patients abroad and at home, as well as contemporary Persian texts that comment on public health and its practice in Iran. Floor shuns the analysis of classic Islamic medical textbooks, explaining that their medical advice was hardly ever administered and that the authors often had ideological (religious) agendas in writing these treatises. Instead, Floor investigates the commonly accepted theories of diseases, disorders, and their cures, including Islamic Galenic medicine and pre-Islamic theurgic folk medicine based on traditional herb lore and trial-and-error. The book concludes with the impact of Western medicine on the traditional medical institutions and public health in Qajar Iran. This exhaustive inquiry will enthral scholars of Iran and medicine alike.
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