Ali M. Ansari - Perceptions of Iran

Ali M. Ansari is Professor in the School of History at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of several books on Iran, including Iran, Islam and Democracy: The Politics of Managing Change (2000).

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Copyright Editorial Selection 2014 Ali M. Ansari
Copyright Individual Chapters 2014 Pejman Abdolmohammadi, Robert Bartlett,
Stephen P. Blake, Touraj Daryaee, Mohammad T. Imanpour, Farhang Jahanpour, Lynette Mitchell,
David Motadel, Anja Pistor-Hatam, Elisa Sabadini, Saeed Talajooy

The right of Ali M. Ansari to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

International Library of Iranian Studies, Vol 37

ISBN: 978 1 84885 830 5

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Typeset by 4word Ltd, Bristol in Garamond

The assistance of the Iran Heritage Foundation is gratefully acknowledged

Contents

Ali M. Ansari

Ali M. Ansari

Pejman Abdolmohammadi

Robert Bartlett

Stephen P. Blake

Touraj Daryaee

Farhang Jahanpour

Lynette Mitchell

David Motadel

Anja Pistor-Hatam

Elisa Sabadini

Saeed Talajooy

Illustrations

3.1 Head of Cyrus brought to Queen Tomyris.
(Peter Paul Rubens)

6.1 Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani.
(Photograph from Encyclopdia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/113105/Jamal-ad-Din-al-Afghani-1883, accessed 21 August 2013)

6.2 Al-e Ahmed pictured with his wife.
(Photograph from Windows on Iran: Explorations of Persian culture and politics, http://windowsoniran.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/daneshvar1.jpg, accessed 21 August 2013)

6.3 Rouhollah Khomeini as a young man.
(Photograph from Iran Chamber, http://www.iranchamber.com/history/rkhomeini/ayatollah_khomeini.php, accessed 21 August 2013)

11.1 The miller and the woman playing along as their daughter plays the king as he first appeared, like a bandit or a beggar.
(Photo from Bahram Beyzaies collection)

11.2 The millers wife trying to transform the meaning of the millers confession.
(Screenshots from Beyzaie Marg-e Yazdgerd, CD, 22:23)

11.3 The millers wife bewailing her son as she plays the king.
(Photo from Bahram Beyzaies collection)

11.4 The millers wife dressing and crowning her husband as the king.
(Screenshot from Beyzaie Marg-e Yazdgerd, CD, 1:25:50)

Contributors

Ali M. Ansari (Editor) is Professor of Iranian History at the University of St Andrews. His research interests are focused on the political development of modern Iran, Irans relations with the West from the early modern period, the politics of nationalist myth and historiography. Main publications include: Iran, Islam and Democracy The Politics of Managing Change (2000, 2006 (2nd edn)); The History of Modern Iran Since 1921: The Pahlavis and After (2003); Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Roots of Mistrust (2006); and The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran (2012). He is Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute (London) and Vice President of the British Institute of Persian Studies.

Pejman Abdolmohammadi is Adjunct Professor of History and Institutions of the Islamic Countries at the University of Genoa and is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Global Studies in Rome. His PhD dissertation was published in 2009 as La Repubblica Islamica dellIran: Il Pensiero Politico dellAyatollah Khomeini. He has authored various articles on the Middle East, with particular focus on Iran and Shiism, and is a regular contributor to Italys leading review of international affairs, Limes.

Robert Bartlett is Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Medieval History at the University of St Andrews and a fellow of the British Academy. His publications include: The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 9501350 (1993), which was joint winner of the Wolfson History Prize; England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 10751225 (2000); The Hanged Man: A Story of Miracle, Memory and Colonialism in the Middle Ages (2004); and The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages (2008). He has presented two television series for the BBC: Inside the Medieval Mind (2008), and The Normans (2010).

Stephen P. Blake is Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Early Modern History, University of Minnesota. His research interests focus on the three early modern Islamic empires the Mughal, the Safavid and the Ottoman. His books include: Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal India, 16391739 (1991); Half the World: The Social Architecture of Safavid Isfahan, 15901722 (1999); and Time in Early Modern Islam: Calendar, Ceremony, and Chronology in the Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman Empires (2013). He has presented his research extensively around the world including in Iran, Turkey, India, Poland, Germany and the UK, and contributes to the Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Asian History and Modern Asian Studies, among others.

Touraj Daryaee is the Howard C. Baskerville Professor in the History of Iran and the Persianate World, and the Associate Director of the Dr Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture at the University of California, Irvine. He is the editor of the Name-ye Iran-e Bastan: The International Journal of Ancient Iranian Studies and the creator of Sasanika: The Late Antique Near East Project. His research interests are diverse and include ancient and medieval Iranian history, Iranian languages and literature, Zoroastrianism, numismatics and world history. He has published extensively in both English and Persian.

Farhang Jahanpour received his PhD in Persian Studies at the University of Cambridge, where he also served as Lector in Persian for five years. He is a former professor and dean of the Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan, and spent a year as Senior Fulbright Research Scholar at Harvard. Since 1985, he has been teaching as a part-time tutor at the Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford. Publications include Nuzhat Nama-ye Alai, an Eleventh Century Encyclopaedia of Natural Sciences, History and Literature by Shahmardan bin Abil-Khair Razi (1983) and Directory of Iranian Officials: A Guide to the Political Structure and Government Officials in Iran (1992) for BBC Monitoring. He has also translated Arnold Toynbees Civilization on Trial (1976) into Persian and recently translated from Persian into English the Memoirs of Ardeshir Zahedi (2012).

Lynette Mitchell is Professor of Greek History and Politics at the University of Exeter. Her interests are focused on Greek political history, Greek historiography and the development of Greek political thought, especially in the archaic and classical periods. She has published two monographs: