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13 results in Iranian Studies Series

Pearls of Meaning
  • Studies on Persian Art, Poetry, Sufism and History of Iranian Studies in Europe
  • Edited by Hans de Bruijn, Ali-Asghar Seyed Gohrab
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    07 January 2025
    Print publication:
    05 March 2020
  • Pearls of Meanings offers a collection of essays by J. T. P. (Hans) de Bruijn, leading scholar in the field of Persian studies, in which essential domains of Persian culture such as poetry and Sufism are analyzed in an exemplary fashion. While poetry plays a pivotal position in these essays, the reception of Persian literary tradition in Europe is another focus of the volume, thereby representing the studies of a generation of scholars such as A. Reland (1676-1718), C. H. Ethé (1844-1917), J. F. von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856) and E. G. Browne (1862-1926) who devoted their attention to Persian culture.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
  • An Updated Bibliography
  • Jos Coumans
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    04 January 2025
    Print publication:
    02 September 2010
  • Since the collected poems of eleventh- and twelfth-century Persian philosopher Omar Khayyám were first translated into English in 1859 by Patrick Fitzgerald, the Rubáiyát has become one of the most popular books of verse in the world. In addition to English, it has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Russian, Urdu, and many other languages. It has been published in numerous editions: precious volumes with bejeweled bindings, artist's books, scholarly and critical editions, forgeries and fake editions, making it a perfect object for both book collectors and lovers of poetry. This comprehensive volume is the first bibliography of Khayyám's classic work since the first Rubáiyát bibliography by A. G. Potter, which was published in 1929.

The Persian Whitman
  • Beyond a Literary Reception
  • Behnam Fomeshi
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    04 January 2025
    Print publication:
    11 March 2019
  • Walt Whitman, a world-renowned poet and the father of American free verse, is read by diverse audiences around the world. Literary and cultural scholars have studied Whitman's interaction with and influence in social, political, and literary movements of different countries. Despite his work's continuing presence in Iran, Whitman's reception in this country has remained unexplored, and, particularly due to contemporary political circumstances, Iranian reception of Western literature is a field still under-researched. The Persian Whitman examines Whitman's reception in Iran and explores a new phenomenon born in dialogue between the Persian culture and the American poet.

Parvin Etesami in the Literary and Religious Context of Twentieth-Century Iran
  • A Female Poet's Challenge to Patriarchy
  • Zhinia Noorian
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    04 January 2025
    Print publication:
    01 August 2023
  • Parvin E'tesami (1907-1941) is among the few Persian female poets, who has gained nationwide popularity, while her authorship was disbelieved. She is celebrated in a plethora of publications every year in Iran and beyond. E'tesami is the only female poet who has remained part of the daily lives of people in her society for about a century. Her poetry appears in school curricula both before and after the Revolution of 1979. People use her poetry on social media, particularly in critical times. It is also used in public speeches by Ali Khamenei (r. 1989-present) the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic. This book engages with E'tesami in the transformational context of the early twentieth century in Iran to investigate the controversies around her identity as a popular female poet. It demonstrates that the reason for E'tesami's paradoxical popularity was not merely her gender, but the transgression of patriarchal Iranian-Muslim gender norms.

Losing Our Minds, Coming to Our Senses
  • Sensory Readings of Persian Literature and Culture
  • Edited by Mehdi Khorrami, Amir Moosavi
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    04 January 2025
    Print publication:
    06 March 2021
  • We experience art with our whole bodies, yet traditional approaches to Persian literature overemphasize the mind, the political, allegorical, or didactic and ignore the feelings that uniquely characterize aesthetics. Losing Our Minds, Coming to Our Senses rediscovers the sensuality of Persian art across period, genre, and artist. Through readings of such well-known writers as Rumi and lesser-known artists as Hossein Abkenar, the authors demonstrate the significance of sensoria to the rich history of Persian letters.

Principles for Progress
  • Essays on Religion and Modernity by Abdu'l-Bahā
  • Edited by Sen McGlinn
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    04 January 2025
    Print publication:
    01 June 2018
  • This book presents three of the works of Abdu'l-Bahá, son of the founder of the Bahá’í Faith, dealing with social and political issues. In The Secret of Divine Civilization (1875) Abdu'l-Bahá supports the administrative and broader social reforms of Mirza Hosayn Khan, but looks mainly for organic reform through the efforts of Iranian intellectuals to waken and educate the masses. In this work, Abdu'l-Bahá gives virtuous and progressive Islamic clerics a leading role among these intellectuals, indeed most of his appeals are directed specifically to them. A Traveller's Narrative (1889/90) is an authoritative statement of the broad lines of Bahá’í social and political thinking. The Art of Governance (1892/93) was written as Iran entered a pre-revolutionary phase, and ideas that we recognise today as the precursors of political Islam were spreading. It sets out the principles underlying the ideal relationship between religion and politics and between the government and the people. In addition to presenting the first parallel text translations of these works, the Persian texts incorporate notes on variants in the early published sources. An introduction outlines the intellectual and political landscape from which Abdu'l-Bahá. wrote, and in which his expected readers lived.

Ayatollah Khomeini's Mystical Poetry and its Reception in Iran and the Diaspora
  • Diede Farhosh-Van Loon
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    19 December 2024
    Print publication:
    10 January 2023
  • There are many publications dealing with the political career of Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989), who transformed the political landscape of Iran and the Middle East after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Most of the research conducted in the West is on Khomeini's political strategies, while the influential role of mysticism in all facets of his life is ignored. This book is the first study examining Khomeini's poetry, mysticism and the reception of his poetry both in Iran and the West. It investigates how Khomeini integrated various doctrines and ideas of Islamic mysticism and Shi’ism such as the 'Perfect Man' into his poetry.

Conflict and Development in Iranian Film
  • Edited by Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, Kamran Talattof
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    18 December 2024
    Print publication:
    20 December 2012
  • The contributors to this timely volume explore the philosophical underpinnings and cinematic techniques characteristic of contemporary Iranian film. Collectively, they demonstrate how the pervasive themes of Iranian cinema 'such as martyrdom and war, traditional gender roles and their recent subversion, as well as broader social policy issues' have been addressed and how various directors, including the acclaimed Abbas Kiarostami, have approached them using a variety of techniques. Capturing the unique poetic and mystical dimensions of Iranian cinema, these essays consider the effects of the Islamic Revolution on cinema's ethical and aesthetic aspects.

Irrationalities in Islam and Media in Nineteenth-Century Iran
  • Faces of Modernity
  • Arash Ghajarjazi
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    06 December 2022
    Print publication:
    01 August 2022
  • This book deals for the first time with the cultural history of media in nineteenth-century Iran, a history that deals with how modern techniques of representation and communication were received in the Iranian Shi'a society. This reception history is examined in religious photography, military reforms, Persian passion plays, Shi'a medicine, and the burgeoning telegraphic culture. The problematic relationship between Shi'a Islam and 19th-century media is conceptualised and contextualised, especially through the lens of the first Polytechnique college (Dar al-Fonun, 1851) in Iran. This college is conceptualised as a media laboratory, where the technological sphere in Iran was fundamentally transforming. It is also contextualised in the age of reform, a period in which the Middle East was undergoing widespread social, political, and military changes. Islamic (art) history, Iranian Studies, and cultural analysis form an interdisciplinary analytic framework to create new knowledge about the historical complexity of nineteenth-century Iran.

The Necklace of the Pleiades
  • 24 Essays on Persian Literature, Culture and Religion
  • Edited by Franklin Lewis, Sunil Sharma
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    22 November 2022
    Print publication:
    08 November 2010
  • The Necklace of the Pleiades is a volume on Persian literature, culture and religion by Persian scholars from around the world. This book reflects the state of the field of Persian literary studies and will be of substantial interest not only to scholars of Iranian culture, history and religions, but of Middle Eastern and South Asian studies, as well.

    The topics of the 24 essays range from the Persian Alexander romance, to Ferdowsi's Shahnama and other epics, the poetics and imagery of the ghazal and the qasida, Mughal court poetry, Sufism, Ismaili history, Baha'i literature, Iranian linguistics, the modern writer Sadeq Hedayat, and the reception of Salman Rushdie's novel in Persian translation.

Processing Compound Verbs in Persian
  • A Psycholinguistic Approach to Complex Predicates
  • Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    22 November 2022
    Print publication:
    01 April 2014
  • Processing Compound Verbs in Persian is the first monograph investigating how Persian compound verbs are processed in the mental lexicon, through which it can be inferred how they are stored, organized, and accessed. The study examines Persian compound verbs in light of psycholinguistic theories on poly-morphemic word processing as well as linguistic theories of complex predicates.

Courtly Riddles
  • Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry
  • Asghar Seyed-Gohrab
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    19 November 2022
    Print publication:
    15 September 2010
  • This book is the first study of Persian literary riddles to appear in English, analysing a wide range of complex riddling poems systematically from the tenth to the twelfth century. In addition to the genre of riddles, the book examines the relationship between metaphors and riddles and the genre of literary description.

    Riddles belong to the oldest genre in many literary traditions. Riddles were composed at courts in the Iranian world for various purposes, such as highlighting the courtly insignia that refer to the ruler's administrative and military power. The aesthetic of puzzlement was much appreciated at courts. Through a riddle, the poet aims to demonstrate his artistic accomplishment in a short space; and at the same time he secures his social, professional and personal position at the court and in cultured circles. Literary riddles occur in the early specimens of Persian literature from the tenth century and they continue to be used in modern Iranian society.

Agreement Restrictions in Persian
  • Anousha Sedighi
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    19 November 2022
    Print publication:
    30 November 2010
  • Agreement Restrictions in Persian is the first comprehensive attempt to tackle the issue of verbal agreement in Persian from a cross-linguistic point of view. Persian is a field of research within theoretical linguistics that is yet to be sufficiently explored. This book adopts the Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1995-2004) which is at the forefront of recent theories of formal syntax and applies it to the Persian language.

    Although it is commonly believed that in Persian the verb agrees with the subject, several constructions seem to constrain this obligatory rule. Adopting the framework of Distributed Morphology, the author argues that agreement is in fact obtained with the plural inanimate subjects but a morphological rule may block the result. Unlike the previous analyses which consider the experiencer as the subject of the psychological constructions, the author argues that the psychological state is the subject of the sentence. The findings of this book not only contribute to better understanding of Persian syntax, but also have important implications for grammar theory.