Kategoria BISAC: History >> Middle East - Iran

Bringing peace to the Middle East, and in particular resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, is one of the perennial and seemingly impossible tasks of world diplomacy. Many different peace plans have been put forward by different countries; but still there has been no breakthrough. This book, first published in 1986, examines the different peace plans for the Middle East. It discusses the particular items proposed at the time, examines how the plans were put forward and shows how they got bogged down.

Were the thirteen essays Michel Foucault wrote in 1978-1979 endorsing the Iranian Revolution an aberration of his earlier work or an inevitable pitfall of his stance on Enlightenment rationality, as critics have long alleged? Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi argues that the critics are wrong. He declares that Foucault recognized that Iranians were at a threshold and were considering if it were possible to think of dignity, justice, and liberty outside the cognitive maps and principles of the European Enlightenment.

Foucault in Iran centers not only on the significance of the great...

Collier presents a timely and fresh reexamination of one of the most important bilateral relationships of the last century. He delves deeply into the American desire to promote democracy in Iran from the 1940s through the early 1960s and examines the myriad factors that contributed to their success in exerting a powerful influence on Iranian politics. By creating a framework to understand the efficacy of external pressure, Collier explains how the United States later relinquished this control during the 1960s and 1970s. During this time, the shah emerged as a dominant and effective...

The Xi'an Stele, erected in Tang China's capital in 781, describes in both Syriac and Chinese the existence of Christian communities in northern China. While scholars have considered the Stele exclusively in relation to the Chinese cultural and historical context, Todd Godwin demonstrates that it can only be fully understood by reconstructing the complex connections that existed between the Church of the East, Sasanian aristocratic culture, and the Tang Empire (617-907) between the fall of the Sasanian Persian Empire (225-651) and the birth of the Abbasid Caliphate (762-1258).

Through...

In a Middle Persian text known as "Khusro and the Page," one of the most famous kings of the ancient Iranian world, Khusro I Anusheruwan, is called haft kiSwar xawadāy "the King of the Seven Climes." This title harkens back to at least the Achaemenid period when it was in fact used, and even further back to a Zoroastrian/Avestan world view. From the earliest Iranian hymns, those of the Gāthās of Zarathushtra, through the Younger Avesta and later Pahlavi writings, it is known that the ancient Iranians divided the world into seven climes or regions. Indeed, at some...

Iran's presidents have defined the Islamic Republic's attitudes toward the rest of the world. Never has this been more true than now.

In The Quest for Authority in Iran, Siavush Randjbar-Daemi presents an in-depth analysis of the evolution of the Iranian presidency from its inception in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution to the present day. He offers detailed narratives of each the presidents' ascent to the post and their struggles to acquire authority and maintain relevance within the political process.

The figures under consideration include the widely-admired...