Kategoria BISAC: History >> Middle East - Iran

The Nasirean Ethics is the best known ethical digest to be composed in medieval Persia, if not in all mediaeval Islam. It appeared initially in 633/1235 when Tūsī was already a celebrated scholar, scientist, politico-religious propagandist. The work has a special significance as being composed by an outstanding figure at a crucial time in the history he was himself helping to shape: some twenty years later Tūsī was to cross the greatest psychological watershed in Islamic civilization, playing a leading part in the capture of Baghdad and the extinction of the generally...

Tehran, June 12, 2009. Mohsen Abbaspour, an ordinary young man in his twenties--not particularly political, or ambitious, or worldly--casts the first vote of his life in Iran's tenth presidential election. Fed up with rising unemployment and inflation, he backs the reformist party and its candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Mohsen believes his vote will count.

It will not. Almost the instant the polls close, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will declare himself president by an overwhelming majority. And as the Western world scrambles to make sense of the brazenly fraudulent election, Mohsen, along...

A FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE BOOK TO READ

Less than a decade after Washington endorsed a fraudulent case for invading Iraq, similarly misinformed and politically motivated claims are pushing America toward war with Iran. Challenging the daily clamor of American saber rattling, Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett argue that America should renounce thirty years of failed politics, diplomacy and strategy and engage with Iran--just as Nixon revolutionized U.S. foreign policy by going to Beijing and realigning relations with China.

In Going to Tehran, former analysts in both...

Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests examines the impact of the Persian Sasanian context on the Babylonian Talmud, perhaps the most important corpus in the Jewish sacred canon. What impact did the Persian Zoroastrian Empire, as both a real historical force and an imaginary interlocutor, have on rabbinic identity and authority as expressed in the Talmud? Drawing from the field of comparative religion, Jason Sion Mokhtarian addresses this question by bringing into mutual fruition Talmudic studies and ancient Iranology, two historically distinct disciplines. Whereas most research on...

As colonial rule dissolved in the 1930s and 1950s, Middle Eastern autocrats constructed new political states to solidify their reigns, with varying...

Iran stands at a critical juncture in its history. In the era of Presidents Hassan Rouhani and Barack Obama, the Islamic Republic has a unique opportunity to regain its traditional greatness as a cradle of rich civilisation and culture, with a capacity to be a very influential and stabilising regional actor.

In this incisive analysis, Amin Saikal, a leading expert on Iranian politics, traces Iran's transition from pro-Western monarchy to Islamic Republic and explores the choices open to Rouhani's moderate reformist government. The Islamic Republic has endured a difficult journey...