Twelver Shiʻi ruling dynasty of Iran
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When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi'ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. In Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639 (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Dr. Sinem Arcak Casale sets out to explore these two major Muslim empires through a surprising lens: gifts. Countless treasures—such as intricate carpets, gilded silver cups, and ivory-tusk knives—flowed from the Safavid to the Ottoman Empire throughout the sixteenth century. While only a handful now survive, records of these gifts exist in court chronicles, treasury records, poems, epistolary documents, ambassadorial reports, and travel narratives. Tracing this elaborate archive, Dr. Casale treats gifts as representative of the complicated Ottoman-Safavid coexistence, demonstrating how their rivalry was shaped as much by culture and aesthetics as it was by religious or military conflict. Gifts in the Age of Empire explores how gifts were no mere accessories to diplomacy but functioned as a mechanism of competitive interaction between these early modern Muslim courts. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies
When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi'ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. In Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639 (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Dr. Sinem Arcak Casale sets out to explore these two major Muslim empires through a surprising lens: gifts. Countless treasures—such as intricate carpets, gilded silver cups, and ivory-tusk knives—flowed from the Safavid to the Ottoman Empire throughout the sixteenth century. While only a handful now survive, records of these gifts exist in court chronicles, treasury records, poems, epistolary documents, ambassadorial reports, and travel narratives. Tracing this elaborate archive, Dr. Casale treats gifts as representative of the complicated Ottoman-Safavid coexistence, demonstrating how their rivalry was shaped as much by culture and aesthetics as it was by religious or military conflict. Gifts in the Age of Empire explores how gifts were no mere accessories to diplomacy but functioned as a mechanism of competitive interaction between these early modern Muslim courts. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art
When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi'ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. In Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639 (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Dr. Sinem Arcak Casale sets out to explore these two major Muslim empires through a surprising lens: gifts. Countless treasures—such as intricate carpets, gilded silver cups, and ivory-tusk knives—flowed from the Safavid to the Ottoman Empire throughout the sixteenth century. While only a handful now survive, records of these gifts exist in court chronicles, treasury records, poems, epistolary documents, ambassadorial reports, and travel narratives. Tracing this elaborate archive, Dr. Casale treats gifts as representative of the complicated Ottoman-Safavid coexistence, demonstrating how their rivalry was shaped as much by culture and aesthetics as it was by religious or military conflict. Gifts in the Age of Empire explores how gifts were no mere accessories to diplomacy but functioned as a mechanism of competitive interaction between these early modern Muslim courts. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi'ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. In Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639 (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Dr. Sinem Arcak Casale sets out to explore these two major Muslim empires through a surprising lens: gifts. Countless treasures—such as intricate carpets, gilded silver cups, and ivory-tusk knives—flowed from the Safavid to the Ottoman Empire throughout the sixteenth century. While only a handful now survive, records of these gifts exist in court chronicles, treasury records, poems, epistolary documents, ambassadorial reports, and travel narratives. Tracing this elaborate archive, Dr. Casale treats gifts as representative of the complicated Ottoman-Safavid coexistence, demonstrating how their rivalry was shaped as much by culture and aesthetics as it was by religious or military conflict. Gifts in the Age of Empire explores how gifts were no mere accessories to diplomacy but functioned as a mechanism of competitive interaction between these early modern Muslim courts. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi'ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. In Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639 (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Dr. Sinem Arcak Casale sets out to explore these two major Muslim empires through a surprising lens: gifts. Countless treasures—such as intricate carpets, gilded silver cups, and ivory-tusk knives—flowed from the Safavid to the Ottoman Empire throughout the sixteenth century. While only a handful now survive, records of these gifts exist in court chronicles, treasury records, poems, epistolary documents, ambassadorial reports, and travel narratives. Tracing this elaborate archive, Dr. Casale treats gifts as representative of the complicated Ottoman-Safavid coexistence, demonstrating how their rivalry was shaped as much by culture and aesthetics as it was by religious or military conflict. Gifts in the Age of Empire explores how gifts were no mere accessories to diplomacy but functioned as a mechanism of competitive interaction between these early modern Muslim courts. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi'ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. In Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639 (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Dr. Sinem Arcak Casale sets out to explore these two major Muslim empires through a surprising lens: gifts. Countless treasures—such as intricate carpets, gilded silver cups, and ivory-tusk knives—flowed from the Safavid to the Ottoman Empire throughout the sixteenth century. While only a handful now survive, records of these gifts exist in court chronicles, treasury records, poems, epistolary documents, ambassadorial reports, and travel narratives. Tracing this elaborate archive, Dr. Casale treats gifts as representative of the complicated Ottoman-Safavid coexistence, demonstrating how their rivalry was shaped as much by culture and aesthetics as it was by religious or military conflict. Gifts in the Age of Empire explores how gifts were no mere accessories to diplomacy but functioned as a mechanism of competitive interaction between these early modern Muslim courts. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nader's coronation ended Safavid rule and established the Afsharid dynasty that dramatically expanded Persia's borders, but at the expense of heavy taxation that funded the military ...
“I never thought there's antisemitism. It's something from the past, for my grandparents, for my mom a little, but it's not something in my generation, or my kids' generation. It's done . . . apparently, not.” Einat Admony is a chef, cookbook author, comedian, and social media star who grew up in Bnei Brak, Israel. With parents from Iran and Yemen, Einat spent her childhood in the kitchens of Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ashkenazi neighbors. Learn about her family's deep-rooted Jewish heritage in Iran and the broader Middle East. Along with her mother Ziona's journey from Iran to Israel in 1948, Einat discusses the antisemitism she's dealt with online and on the streets in the past year. Hear her stories of Jewish-Muslim coexistence in Iran and memories of spices and perfumes that inspire Einat's dishes. Her cookbooks Balaboosta and Shuk, along with her Manhattan restaurant Balaboosta, reflect a blend of tradition and innovation. “You could not have Judaism today, if it were not for the Jews of Iran,” says Houman Sarshar, an independent scholar and director of publications at the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History in Los Angeles. Sarshar highlights the historical relationship between Iran and Israel, noting that Iran was the second Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel post-1948. The conversation also touches on the challenges faced by Jews in Iran, their cultural integration, and the impact of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. —- Show notes: How much do you know about Jewish history in the Middle East? Take our quiz. Sign up to receive podcast updates. Learn more about the series. Song credits: Pond5: “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Suspense Middle East” Publisher: Victor Romanov, Composer: Victor Romanov; Item ID: 196056047 ___ Episode Transcript: EINAT ADMONY: I've been in Israel a few months ago. It's like you always feel loved, you always feel supported. It's still home. It's always going to be my home. MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-20th century. Welcome to the second season of The Forgotten Exodus, brought to you by American Jewish Committee. This series explores that pivotal moment in history and the little-known Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations. As Jews around the world confront violent antisemitism and Israelis face daily attacks by terrorists on multiple fronts, our second season explores how Jews have lived throughout the region for generations despite hardship, hostility, and hatred, then sought safety and new possibilities in their ancestral homeland. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore untold family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience from this transformative and tumultuous period of history for the Jewish people and the Middle East. The world has ignored these voices. We will not. This is The Forgotten Exodus. Today's episode: Leaving Iran. MANYA: Whether she's deviling eggs soaked in beet juice, simmering Oxtail in shawarma spices, or sprinkling za'atar on pastry dough, chef Einat Admony is honoring her family's Middle Eastern heritage. Both the places where they have lived for generations, as well as the place they have and will always call home: Israel. EINAT/Clip: Start with brushing the puff pastry with olive oil and za'atar. Have some feta all around and shredded mozzarella. Take the other sheet and just cut it to one inch strips. Now we're going to twist. Need to be careful. Now we're just gonna brush the top with the mix of oil and za'atar. Get it some shiny and glazy. This is ready for the oven. Bake at 400 until it's golden. That's it super easy, just sprinkle some za'atar and eat. MANYA: For the chef, author, reality TV star, and comedian, food reflects the Zionist roots that have been a constant for Einat, the self-made balaboosta, who is largely credited with introducing Israeli cuisine to the U.S. That love for Israel goes back generations, long before the modern state existed, when her maternal ancestors lived in the land, that until 1935 was known as Persia, but is now known as Iran. Her own mother Ziona, the third of seven siblings, was even named for the destination where Einat's grandparents aspired to one day raise their family. Returning home to the land of Zion from which Jews had been exiled centuries earlier was always the goal. When you ask her why, Einat laughs in disbelief. EINAT: Why? Why? That's homeland. I think a lot of Jewish people for hundreds of years was, that's in every prayer, it's in every Shabbat dinner evening. MANYA: The hatred directed toward Israel by Iran's regime in the form of the deadly attacks on Israel by Iran-backed terrorist groups and the Islamic Republic of Iran itself make it hard to believe that Iran was once a place where Jews and the Zionist movement thrived. But in fact, Iran's history includes periods when the wide-open roads between Iran and Israel ran two ways and the countries not only lived in harmony but worked in close partnership. Iran was the second Muslim-majority country after Turkey to recognize the modern state of Israel after its formation in 1948, and the two established diplomatic ties. Regular flights ran between Tehran's Mehrabad International Airport and Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport. SARSHAR: We cannot overlook the fact that since October 29, 539 BCE the Jewish community of Iran remains to this day the largest community of Jews anywhere in the Middle East outside the state of Israel. To this day. You could not have Judaism today, if it were not for the Jews of Iran. MANYA: Houman Sarshar is an independent scholar and director of publications at the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History in Los Angeles. He has edited a number of books, including Esther's Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews. SARSHAR: The history of the Jews in Iran begins about 2,700 years ago, when the first community of known Jews was taken to Iran. They are commonly believed to be one of the 10 Lost Tribes. And then when we fast forward to when Nebuchadnezzar came and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and took Jews into captivity. Some years after that at 539 BCE on October 29, 539 BCE, to be exact, Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid dynasty, liberated Babylon and gave Jews the permission to go back to Israel and rebuild the Second Temple. MANYA: Cyrus the Great – a Persian emperor particularly renowned among contemporary scholars for the respect he showed toward peoples' customs and religions in the lands that he conquered. According to the Book of Ezra in the Hebrew Bible, Cyrus even paid for the restoration of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. SARSHAR: This is known as the Second Temple period in Jewish history, and under the Achaemenid dynasty, Jews participated in every level of society. And a few centuries forward, around the 5th Century, we know the Jews continue to live with many freedoms, because that is the era when the Babylonian Talmud was originally produced in Iran by Rav Ashi. So, you know, there was a thriving rabbanut (rabbanite) in Iran who had the freedom and the luxury and the time to be able to produce such an important document as the Talmud, which has become the cornerstone of all jurisprudence that we know, Western law, and everything. MANYA: The advent and arrival of Islam in Iran in the 7th Century CE changed circumstances somewhat. As was the case across the Middle East, all non-Muslims became dhimmis – residents who paid a special tax and lived under certain restrictions. The situation for Jews worsened in the 16th Century when the Safavid dynasty made the Shiite creed the dominant form of Islam in Iran. Fatwas made life for all non-Shiites quite difficult. SARSHAR: And for reasons that are still open to discussion, all of these restrictions were most vehemently imposed on the Jews of Iran. And because of these restrictions, all non-Shiites were considered religiously impure. And this religious impurity, kind of like the concept of the untouchable sect in India, they were considered pollutive. MANYA: Jews could not look Muslims in the eye. They were placed in ghettos called mahaleh where they could not leave on rainy days for fear the water that splattered on them could contaminate the water supply. They wore yellow stars and special shoes to distinguish them from the rest of the population. They were not allowed to purchase property from Muslims or build homes with walls that were higher than those of their Muslim neighbors. SARSHAR: They could not, for example, participate in the trade of edible goods because, you know, fruits and vegetables and meats carried this pollution. So Muslims could no longer consume the foods that were touched by Jews. And as a result, this created a certain path forward in history for the Jews of Iran. They went into antique trades. They went into carpet trades. They went into work of textiles. They became musicians. And for the following 500 years, these restrictions kind of guided the way the Jews of Iran lived in that country, even though they had been there for thousands of years previously. MANYA: Houman said the 1895 arrival of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a Paris-based network of schools for Jewish children throughout the Middle East and North Africa, including within the mahalehs in Persia, was the first step in a series of improvements for Jews there. SARSHAR: Previous to that, Jews were not allowed to get any kind of an education whatsoever. The only teachers were the Muslim clergy, and they refused to teach anything to Jewish students. So this allowed for the Jewish community to finally start to get a Western-style education, which was very important at that time, given all of the dynamics that were going on in society with modernity. MANYA: As educational opportunities increased in the middle of the 19th Century, so did opportunities for the courtiers and elite to travel and see the Western world as it industrialized and modernized, expanding international trade and sharing wealth more widely. SARSHAR: Often they would be sent by their families to go and try to see if they can, you know, find a way to expand the family's businesses and lives as merchants, and they would come back shocked. I mean, Iran was a place where you know of mostly mud brick homes and dirt roads and people riding around on donkeys. And imagine this is all you've known. You never see women walking around the street. The only women you have ever seen with your own eyes in your life are your mom, your sister, your daughter or your wife, and occasionally, sex workers. And that's it. So all of a sudden, you know, you travel a couple of months by boat and train, and you get to Paris, and it's impossible to try to even conceive of the experience. It must have been something like the Hegelian experience of the sublime. What can the world look like? And where is it that I live in, and why isn't my country the same as this? MANYA: By the early 20th Century, the Persian people concluded the answer to that question was in the rule of law. The reason the European nations provided such opportunity for the community at-large had to do with the fact that the law of the land was not arbitrary or enforced by religion or royalty. It was embedded in a constitution – a set of laws that define the structure of a government and the rights of its citizens – a Western tenet that reduced the power of the clergy and created a parliament called the Majles. SARSHAR: They were starting to read travel journals. They were starting to understand the perspective that Westerners had on Iranians, and those perspectives were often awful. You know, the Western world believed, for example –the country was corrupt to the bone in every respect. So all of these things gradually led to a call for a constitution, the major pivot of which was the establishment of a legislature of law that would start to create a community where everyone can feel like they're equal in the eyes of the law and have something to gain by trying to improve the country as a whole. Iran became the first constitutional monarchy in the Middle East in 1906 when that revolution happened, it was a momentous event. And really, things really, really did, in fact, start to change. MANYA: In 1925, Reza Shah Pahlavi – an arch nationalist who wanted to propel Iran forward into the industrial age – took over the crown of Iran. He welcomed any Iranian citizen to participate in that agenda. SARSHAR: By now, we had a good two generations of Jews who had been French-educated by the Allianz Society. They had all gone to France at some point in their lives, so they were able to participate in this industrialization of the country, given the language skills that they had and some of the connections they had built in the Western world. MANYA: Both World Wars in Europe took a massive toll on Iran. Despite declaring neutrality, Iran was occupied by European nations that took over the nation's agriculture, treating Iran as a pantry to feed the armies. Droughts and disease worsened the toll. SARSHAR: One of the lesser-known factoids about history is that during World War I, the nation that lost the most individuals as a result of the war was Iran. Above and beyond all European nations who were at war, because of a famine that had started in Iran. The same dynamic started to happen in World War II. MANYA: With nationalist fever sweeping Europe and Iran, the Allies feared the arch-nationalist Shah would go the way of Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler in Germany. They also feared the Shah would collaborate with Hitler's Germany to provide oil for the German oil machine and cease being the pantry the Allies needed it to be. In 1941, the Western powers convinced him to abdicate the throne to his son Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. And when the war ended, Iran was able to enjoy the same economic benefits as the rest of the world at peace time. Most importantly, it was able to profit from its own oil reserves, significantly boosting Iran's national income. SARSHAR: In 1941, it was really the beginning of what is commonly referred to by the scholars of Jewish Iranian history as the Golden Age of Iranian Jewry. From 1941 until the revolution in 1978, the Jewish community of Iran saw a meteoric rise to power and social wealth. Industries such as pharmaceuticals, banking, insurance, real estate development, and other major industries, the aluminum plastics industries in Iran, all were either directly owned by the Jews of Iran or managed under their management. And during this period, really, we can say that for the first time, after 2,500 years, the Jews of Iran really started to experience the kinds of freedoms that they had not seen since the Achaemenid dynasty. And it is during this time that, you know, we see, really, that life started to change for the Jews of Iran, even though some of the age-old social dynamics were still there. The institutionalized antisemitism had not been completely wiped out. But for the most part, things had changed because Iranian society in general was also being Westernized, light speed. And many educated people had realized that antisemitism was really looked down upon, you know, that kind of prejudice was really no longer acceptable in the world at large. So many, many sections of the community really had shifted, genuinely shifted. And some, even though maybe their feelings had not changed, knew that their antisemitism was something that they needed to keep private. MANYA: At that time, Iran also became a refuge for Jews fleeing Europe and other parts of the Middle East. On June 1, 1941, a brutal pogrom in Iraq known as the Farhud, incited by Nazi propaganda, targeted Jews celebrating the holiday of Shavuot. Nearly 200 Jews were murdered in the streets. The violence became a turning point for Iraqi Jews. Thousands fled, many stopping in Iran, which became a way station for those headed to Palestine. In 1942, thousands of Jewish refugees from Poland who had fled across the border into the Soviet Union during the German invasion traveled on trains and ships to Iran. Among the refugees – 1,000 orphaned children. As Zionist leaders worked to negotiate the young Jews' immigration to Palestine, the Jewish Agency established the “Tehran Home for Jewish Children” – a complex of tents on the grounds of a former Iranian Air Force barracks outside Tehran. More than 800 orphans, escorted by adults, most of them also refugees, moved from Tehran to kibbutzim in Palestine the following year. Later, in 1948, when most Arab League states forbade the emigration of their Jews after the creation of Israel, the Zionist underground continued to smuggle Jews to Iran at about a rate of 1,000 a month, before they were flown to Israel. SARSHAR: The Zionist movement was fairly strong in Iran. It was a very lively movement. The Balfour Declaration was celebrated in all of the Allianz schools in Iran, and very soon thereafter, the first Zionist organization of Iran was established. And truly many of its founding fathers were some of the leading industrialists and intellectuals in Iranian society, in the Jewish Iranian community for the years to come. It was not unlike the kind of Zionism we see today in the United States, for example. You know, the wealthy families of the Jewish communities in New York and Los Angeles, all are very passionate about Israel, but you don't see very many of them selling their homes and packing up and moving to Israel because they just don't want to do it. They feel like they're very comfortable here. And what matters is that a state of Israel should exist, and they are political advocates of that state and of that policy and of its continued existence, but not necessarily diehard participants in the experiment itself. Iranians, after the establishment of the State of Israel, were being encouraged to move to Israel, and the Israeli government was having a lot of difficulty with that, because a lot of Iranians were seeing that life had become better for them, and they weren't as willing to leave, despite the fact that the Kourosh Project provided airplanes to get Jews out of Iran. My own great-grandmother was one of those passengers. She is buried in Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. She was one of the early citizens of Israel who went to live out the Zionist dream. MANYA: Both sides of Einat's family – her mother and father's ancestors – were among those early Israeli citizens. Einat's father was born in Tel Aviv. His parents and grandparents had come from Yemen in the late 19th Century. Einat's mother Ziona was 10 years old when in 1948, the family left Kerman, a city in southeastern Iran known for its carpet weaving and woolen shawls. They arrived in Israel with their suitcases ready to fulfill their dream. But living the dream in the new Jewish nation was not easy. After all, the day after Israel declared its independence, Arab nations attacked the Jewish state, launching the first of a series of Arab-Israeli Wars. EINAT: The story of my mom, it's a very interesting story. The family didn't have much money. There wasn't like, rich family that left, very different story. No, both of my parents come from very, I would say, very poor family. My grandpa was, like, dealing with textile. He was like, traveling from town to town with fabric. And that's what they did. They put them in what's called ma'aborot, which was like a very kind of small villages, tin houses. My mom always said there were seven kids, so all of them in one room. In the winter it's freezing; in the summer, it's super hot. But it was also close to the border, so the one window they have, they always had to cover it so at night, the enemy cannot see the light inside that room and shoot there. Also in the ma'aabarot, nobody speaks the same language. So, it was Moroccan and Iraqi and nobody speak the same dialect or the same language. So, they cannot even communicate quite yet. MANYA: Most of Ziona's six siblings did not go to school. To make it possible for Ziona, her parents placed her in a foster home with an Iraqi family in Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv. EINAT: My mom's family decided that for her, she should get education, because most of the siblings didn't went to school or anything, So they put her in a foster home. In an Iraqi home, and she didn't speak a word there. So my mom, as a 10 years old, became a kid for foster parents that live in a center in Ramat Gan, where I basically grew up. And she got education, which was great. She learned also Iraqi, which is Arabic. So she speaks fluent Arabic, but she had not an easy life in coming to Israel from a different country. MANYA: Ziona has shared many of these stories with her daughter in the kitchen and dining room as they prepare and enjoy dishes that remind them of home. When she visited her daughter at her home in upstate New York at the end of the summer, Einat collected as many stories as she could over cutting boards, steaming pots, and sizzling pans. EINAT: There's a lot of story coming up, some old story that I know, some new stories. And it's really nice, because my mom is 84, 85. So, it's really nice to capture all of it, all of it. There is a lot of interesting stuff that happened during the first 10 years when she came to Israel. That's the main, I think, I always talk about, like, how I grew up and how much food was a very substantial part of our life, if not the biggest part. You know, it's like, family can fight and this, but when it's come to the dinner, it's just change everything, the dynamic. For us, it was a big, significant part of everything. So obviously, most of these stories and memories come in while we're cooking or eating. A lot of time she used to talk about, and still talking about the smells, the smells of the flowers, the smells of the zafar (perfume). She still have the nostalgia from that time and talking very highly about what Iran used to be, and how great, and the relationship between the Muslims and the Jews back then. My grandpa's best friend was crying when he left, and he said: ‘Please don't go. Stay with us.' And he said: ‘I want to go to homeland.' So, they have a really great relationship. She's always talking, actually, about how they come for Shabbat dinner, the friends if they put the cigarettes outside of the door in Shabbat because they were observant. So cigarettes, lighter, everything, they keep it outside, in the garden, not coming inside the house. So a lot of mutual respect for the religion to each other. And I love that stories. It just showed what's happened when people take it extreme. MANYA: Einat's cookbooks and restaurant menus are filled with recipes from her own childhood and her parents' upbringing. To satisfy the appetite of her father, a former Israeli athlete, her house always had hummus and every weekend, the family made a hilbeh sauce -- a traditional Yemenite fenugreek dip made with cardamom, caraway seeds and chili flakes. Other recipes reflect her mother's Persian roots. And then there are recipes that, at first blush, seem to come out of left field, but are inspired by the Iraqi Jewish foster family that raised her mother, and the Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ashkenazi neighbors that passed through the dining room and kitchen where Einat was raised in Bnei Brak. Now a Haredi town east of Tel Aviv, it was then a diverse population of Jews from, well, everywhere. Einat still remembers standing on a stool next to the Moroccan neighbor in her building learning how to roll couscous. EINAT: One neighbor that was my second mom, her name was Tova, and she was Moroccan, so it was like, I have another Moroccan mom. But all the building was all Holocaust survivors. None of them had kids, and they were all speaking in Yiddish, mostly. So I grew up with a lot of mix. I wouldn't say, you know, in my time, it's not like our neighborhood. I grew up in Bnei Brak, and our neighborhood was very, it was before Bnei Brak became so religious like today. It was still religious, if you go really in, but we're close to Ramat Gan, and I have to say that it's, I would say, I didn't grow up with, it's very mixed, very mixed. Wouldn't say I grew up just with Moroccan or Mizrahi, I say that it's very, very mixed. And my mom same. I think a lot of her friend is like, It's my mom would speak some Yiddish. She would do Kugel on Shabbat next to the jachnun and all the Mizrahi food. You know, this is the multi-pot and one things I love in Israel. You can see in one table so many different cultures. And that's something that would have happened in my house a lot. MANYA: That amalgam of Jewish cultures is reflected in her cookbooks Balaboosta and Shuk. It also shows up in her menu at the brick-and-mortar Balaboosta, a quaint Middle Eastern trattoria on Mulberry Street in Manhattan. The name Balaboosta is borrowed from Yiddish meaning “a perfect housewife” – a twist on ba'al habayit, Hebrew for master of the house, or boss. But Einat insists that the term is no longer exclusively Ashkenazi, nor does it refer exclusively to a woman's domestic role. EINAT: An old friend, chef, asked me when I went to open Balaboosta, and I said, ‘I don't have a name.' She said: ‘What do you call a badass woman in Hebrew?' I'm like, ‘balaboosta.' She said, ‘It's a perfect name. We done.' Took five minutes to find this name, and I love it. It's really connected because for me it's so so much different things. You know, I always talk about the 20th century balaboosta. The balaboosta that outside going to work, the balaboosta that asking a man for a date. The balaboosta that it's not just like she's the housewife and the homekeeper. It's much more than that. Today, she's a multitask badass. It's much more spiritual than what it is. I think it's the one that can bond the people together and bring them together and make peace between two parties clashing. So for me, it's much more than somebody that can cook and clean. So, much, much more than that. MANYA: Einat's parents became more religious when she was 12, which of course had the opposite effect on their daughter: she rebelled. When her time came to do her mandatory service in the Israel Defense Force, she was determined not to serve in a role typically assigned to women. She requested a post as a firing instructor. But after reviewing the high school transcript shaped by her rebellious adolescence, the IDF assigned her to the Nevatim Air Base where she served as a chauffeur for fighter pilots. EINAT: Back then most women would be secretaries giving coffee to some assholes. I was trying not to do that, and somehow I got very lucky, and I was in the same division, I was in the Air Force. I had amazing time for two years. I start the military a very different person, and left a very different person. I used to hang with a lot of bad people before, really bad people. And when I get to the military, I was a driver of pilots, it's the top of the top of the top in the hierarchy in the military in all IDF. So now I'm hanging with people that have the biggest ambition ever, and I'm learning new stuff, and everything opened up, even my language changed completely. Everything. I was want to travel more than I ever want before, and I have like, crazy dreams. MANYA: To make sure the elite pilots were well-fed, the IDF bused in a group of Yemenite grandmothers to provide ochel bayit, or home-cooked meals. Einat befriended the kitchen staff and helped out from time to time. Then in January 1991, she was tapped to cook a meal that probably launched her career. The IDF chiefs of staff had convened at Nevatim base to discuss the U.S. plan to bomb Iraq during the Gulf War and what Israel would do if Saddam Hussein retaliated with an attack on the Jewish state. But they needed to plot that strategy on full stomachs. A couple of pilots served as her sous chefs. That night, the Israeli generals dined on Chinese chicken with garlic, honey, and soy. And a rice salad. EINAT: It was definitely the turning point, the military. I would say there is some values of relationship and working ethics that I wouldn't see anywhere else, and that's coming, I think because the military. They're waking up in the morning, the friendship, they're no snitching or none of this. It's to stand up for each other. There is so many other values that I grabbed from that. So when I start my culinary career, and I was in a fine dining kitchen, it was very helpful, very helpful. MANYA: After spending five years in a van driving around Germany – an extended celebration of freedom after IDF service -- it was time to get serious about a career. A culinary career made as good a sense as any. Einat worked as a waitress in Eilat and enrolled in culinary school. At the end, she marched into the kitchen of Keren, one of the first restaurants in Israel to offer haute cuisine. She got an internship, then a job. The former restaurant, run by Israeli Chef and television host Haim Cohen, is credited for reinventing Israeli cuisine. Now, as a restaurant owner and TV personality herself, Einat is largely credited for introducing Israeli cuisine to the U.S. But before she became the self-made Balaboosta of fine Israeli dining, Einat was America's Falafel Queen, made famous by two victories on the Food Network's show Chopped and her first restaurant – now a fast food chain called Ta'im Falafel. But her fame and influence when it comes to Israeli cooking has exposed her to a fair bit of criticism. She has become a target on social media by those who accuse Israelis of appropriating Palestinian foods – an argument she calls petty and ridiculous. So ridiculous, she has found the best platform to address it is on the stage of her new hobby: stand-up comedy. Cooking has always been her Zen. But so is dark humor. EINAT: I like comedy more than anything, not more than food, but close enough. EINAT/Clip: Yeah, this year was great here on Instagram, lot of hate comments, though. A lot about food appropriation, me making Arabic dishes. So let me clarify something here. I check my DNA through ancestry.com and I am 97% Middle Eastern, so I fucking bleed hummus. EINAT: It's very petty. Food, supposed always to share. Food supposed to moving forward. It's tiring and life is much more complex than to even argue and have a debate about stupid things. I'm done. OK, yes, we're indigenous.I have connection to the land. My parents, my grandparents and great grandparents have connection to that land. Okay, I get it. Now we need to solve what's going on, because there was Palestinian that lived there before, and how we can, for me, how we change the ideology, which I don't see how we can, but how we can change the ideology, convince them that they want peace. And they want…I don't know. MANYA: Needless to say, in the year that has followed the attacks of October 7, stand-up comedy has not been the balm it once was. The attacks that unfolded that day by Iran-backed terrorists that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 250 more was simply too devastating. EINAT: I was broken there, my husband was with me, I was every day on a bed crying, and then going to work, and it was like I couldn't hear music, because every music thinking about Nova and my friends and then I couldn't see babies with a mom. Everything was a trigger. It was bad. We had a disaster of October 7 and then October 8 to see the world reaction was another. It's not just enough that we going through so much grief and need to kind of contain all that emotion and crazy and anger and rage and now we need to see the world's. Like, ok. I never thought there is antisemitism. It's something from the past, for my grandparents, for my mom a little, but it's not something in my generation, or my kids' generation. It's done, apparently, not. MANYA: The lack of sympathy around the world and among her culinary peers only amplified Einat's grief. As a way to push for a cease-fire and end U.S. support for Israel, nearly 900 chefs, farmers and others in the food industry signed a pledge to boycott Israel-based food businesses and culinary events that promote Israel. EINAT: I felt very, very alone, very alone. The first few months, I felt like, wow, not one call from anyone to check on me. It was pretty sad. At the same time, I'm in the best company ever Jewish community. There is nothing like that, nothing. MANYA: Her team at Balaboosta also checked in on their Israeli boss. But they too were scared. Soon after she posted pictures of the hostages on the window of her restaurant, she confronted a group of teenagers who tried to tear them down. EINAT: I stand in front of them and I said, ‘You better move fast'. MANYA: It's no secret that Iran helped plan Oct. 7. What is not as well known is how many Jews still live and thrive in Iran. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, there were nearly 100,000 Jews in Iran. Today, Israeli sources say the population numbers less than 10,000, while the regime and Iran's Jewish leaders say it's closer to 20,000. Regardless, Iran's Jewish community remains the largest in the Middle East outside Israel. To be sure, the constitution adopted in 1906 is still in place nominally, and it still includes Jews as a protected religious minority. Jews in Iran have synagogues, access to kosher meat, and permission to consume wine for Shabbat, despite a national ban on alcohol. There's also a Jewish representative in Iran's parliament or Majlis. But all women and girls regardless of religion are required to wear a veil, according to the Islamist dress code, and Jews are pressured to vote in elections at Jewish-specific ballot stations so the regime can monitor their participation. Zionism is punishable by death and after Oct. 7, the regime warned its Jewish citizens to sever contact with family and friends in Israel or risk arrest. They also can't leave. Iranian law forbids an entire Jewish nuclear family from traveling abroad at the same time. At least one family member, usually the father, must remain behind to prevent emigration. But Houman points out that many Iranian Jews, including himself, are deeply attached to Iranian culture. As a resident of Los Angeles, he reads Persian literature, cooks Persian herb stew for his children and speaks in Persian to his pets. He would return to Iran in an instant if given the opportunity to do so safely. For Jews living in Iran it may be no different. They've become accustomed to living under Islamist laws. They may not want to leave, even if they could. SARSHAR: The concept of living and thriving in Iran, for anyone who is not related to the ruling clergy and the Revolutionary Guard, is a dream that feels unattainable by anyone in Iran, let alone the Jews. In a world where there is really no fairness for anyone, the fact that you're treated even less fairly almost fades. MANYA: Scholars say since the Islamic Revolution, most Jews who have left Iran have landed in Los Angeles or Long Island, New York. Still, more Jews of Iranian descent live in Israel – possibly more than all other countries combined. The reason why? Because so many like Einat's family made aliyah–up until the mid-20th Century. It's hard to say where another exodus might lead Iranian Jews to call home. Einat will be forever grateful that her family left when they still could and landed in a beautiful and beloved place. Though she lives in the U.S. now, she travels back to Israel at least twice a year. EINAT: It's a dream for every Jew, it's not just me. It's the safe zone for every Jew. It's the one place that, even if we have, it's not safe because there is people around us that want to kill us. It's still emotionally. You know, I've been in Israel a few months ago, it's like, you always feel loved, you always feel supported. It's incredible. And it's still home. It's always going to be my home. MANYA: Persian Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who, in the last century, left Middle Eastern and North African countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations. Many thanks to Einat for sharing her family's story. You can enjoy some of her family's favorite recipes in her cookbooks Balaboosta and Shuk. Her memoir Taste of Love was recently released in an audio and digital format. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they'd never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to ask those questions. Find your stories. Atara Lakritz is our producer. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Nicole Mazur, Sean Savage, and Madeleine Stern, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible. You can subscribe to The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can learn more at AJC.org/theforgottenexodus. The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC. You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts or Spotify to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.
A summer repeat edition of one of our favourite episodes of Roqe as we prepare to launch our new season. What was Persian music before the 20th Century? How do we assess the development of sound and musical traditions in Iran during the Safavid and Qajar eras - important influences that may be heard all the way to today? American musician and ethnomusicologist, Dr. Margaret Caton, author of the book, “A Persian Ode: Musical Life in Safavid and Qajar Iran,” joins Jian from Los Angeles for a fascinating, entertaining, and non-traditional journey through the sounds and music of Persia in the periods leading to modern Iran, examined within a broader socio-economic, cultural and political context. - This was originally posted as part of the Contemporary History of Iran series from Roqe Media.
A vibrant urban settlement from mediaeval times and the royal seat of the Safavid dynasty, the city of Isfahan emerged as a great metropolis during the seventeenth century. Using key sources, Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran (Penn State University Press, 2024) reconstructs the spaces and senses of this dynamic city. Focusing on nuances of urban experience, Dr. Farshid Emami expands our understanding of Isfahan in a global context. He takes the reader on an evocative journey through the city's markets, promenades, and coffeehouses, bringing to life the social landscapes that animated the lives of urban dwellers and shaped their perceptions of themselves and the world. In doing so, Emami reveals seventeenth-century Isfahan as more than a cluster of beautiful monuments and gardens. It was a cosmopolitan city, where senses and materials, nature and artifice, and ritual and sociability acted in unison, engendering urban experiences that became paramount across the globe during the early modern period. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
A vibrant urban settlement from mediaeval times and the royal seat of the Safavid dynasty, the city of Isfahan emerged as a great metropolis during the seventeenth century. Using key sources, Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran (Penn State University Press, 2024) reconstructs the spaces and senses of this dynamic city. Focusing on nuances of urban experience, Dr. Farshid Emami expands our understanding of Isfahan in a global context. He takes the reader on an evocative journey through the city's markets, promenades, and coffeehouses, bringing to life the social landscapes that animated the lives of urban dwellers and shaped their perceptions of themselves and the world. In doing so, Emami reveals seventeenth-century Isfahan as more than a cluster of beautiful monuments and gardens. It was a cosmopolitan city, where senses and materials, nature and artifice, and ritual and sociability acted in unison, engendering urban experiences that became paramount across the globe during the early modern period. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
A vibrant urban settlement from mediaeval times and the royal seat of the Safavid dynasty, the city of Isfahan emerged as a great metropolis during the seventeenth century. Using key sources, Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran (Penn State University Press, 2024) reconstructs the spaces and senses of this dynamic city. Focusing on nuances of urban experience, Dr. Farshid Emami expands our understanding of Isfahan in a global context. He takes the reader on an evocative journey through the city's markets, promenades, and coffeehouses, bringing to life the social landscapes that animated the lives of urban dwellers and shaped their perceptions of themselves and the world. In doing so, Emami reveals seventeenth-century Isfahan as more than a cluster of beautiful monuments and gardens. It was a cosmopolitan city, where senses and materials, nature and artifice, and ritual and sociability acted in unison, engendering urban experiences that became paramount across the globe during the early modern period. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
A vibrant urban settlement from mediaeval times and the royal seat of the Safavid dynasty, the city of Isfahan emerged as a great metropolis during the seventeenth century. Using key sources, Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran (Penn State University Press, 2024) reconstructs the spaces and senses of this dynamic city. Focusing on nuances of urban experience, Dr. Farshid Emami expands our understanding of Isfahan in a global context. He takes the reader on an evocative journey through the city's markets, promenades, and coffeehouses, bringing to life the social landscapes that animated the lives of urban dwellers and shaped their perceptions of themselves and the world. In doing so, Emami reveals seventeenth-century Isfahan as more than a cluster of beautiful monuments and gardens. It was a cosmopolitan city, where senses and materials, nature and artifice, and ritual and sociability acted in unison, engendering urban experiences that became paramount across the globe during the early modern period. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies
A vibrant urban settlement from mediaeval times and the royal seat of the Safavid dynasty, the city of Isfahan emerged as a great metropolis during the seventeenth century. Using key sources, Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran (Penn State University Press, 2024) reconstructs the spaces and senses of this dynamic city. Focusing on nuances of urban experience, Dr. Farshid Emami expands our understanding of Isfahan in a global context. He takes the reader on an evocative journey through the city's markets, promenades, and coffeehouses, bringing to life the social landscapes that animated the lives of urban dwellers and shaped their perceptions of themselves and the world. In doing so, Emami reveals seventeenth-century Isfahan as more than a cluster of beautiful monuments and gardens. It was a cosmopolitan city, where senses and materials, nature and artifice, and ritual and sociability acted in unison, engendering urban experiences that became paramount across the globe during the early modern period. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
A vibrant urban settlement from mediaeval times and the royal seat of the Safavid dynasty, the city of Isfahan emerged as a great metropolis during the seventeenth century. Using key sources, Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran (Penn State University Press, 2024) reconstructs the spaces and senses of this dynamic city. Focusing on nuances of urban experience, Dr. Farshid Emami expands our understanding of Isfahan in a global context. He takes the reader on an evocative journey through the city's markets, promenades, and coffeehouses, bringing to life the social landscapes that animated the lives of urban dwellers and shaped their perceptions of themselves and the world. In doing so, Emami reveals seventeenth-century Isfahan as more than a cluster of beautiful monuments and gardens. It was a cosmopolitan city, where senses and materials, nature and artifice, and ritual and sociability acted in unison, engendering urban experiences that became paramount across the globe during the early modern period. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A vibrant urban settlement from mediaeval times and the royal seat of the Safavid dynasty, the city of Isfahan emerged as a great metropolis during the seventeenth century. Using key sources, Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran (Penn State University Press, 2024) reconstructs the spaces and senses of this dynamic city. Focusing on nuances of urban experience, Dr. Farshid Emami expands our understanding of Isfahan in a global context. He takes the reader on an evocative journey through the city's markets, promenades, and coffeehouses, bringing to life the social landscapes that animated the lives of urban dwellers and shaped their perceptions of themselves and the world. In doing so, Emami reveals seventeenth-century Isfahan as more than a cluster of beautiful monuments and gardens. It was a cosmopolitan city, where senses and materials, nature and artifice, and ritual and sociability acted in unison, engendering urban experiences that became paramount across the globe during the early modern period. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī was one of the most important, overtly Twelver, pre-Safavid interlocutors of the theoretical strand of mysticism developed by the school of Ibn ʿArabī. He critically contributed to the development of a more precise articulation of waḥdat al-Wujūd and elucidated a project which sought to bridge the gap between Ṣūfism and Shīʿism. Yet his inclusive, synergistic contribution remains understudied, despite an increasing stream of works of varying scope and depth, both within traditional Twelver circles and in modern scholarship. In this paper I trace Āmulī's use of waḥdat al-Wujūd in his largest surviving work of Qurʾānic exegesis, Al-Muḥīṭ al-aʿẓam fī taʾwīl kitāb Allāh al-muḥkam (completed in 777/1376) which remains an under investigated yet significant contribution to esoteric exegesis (taʾwīl) of the Qurʾān. This paper will show how dependant Āmulī's esoteric method of exegesis is on the framework of manifestation and correspondence which are key presuppositions of waḥdat al-Wujūd. For Sayyid Ḥaydar, the centrality of waḥdat al-Wujūd to esoteric interpretation is such that an exegete cannot be considered of those who are firmly established in knowledge (al-rāsikhūn fī al-ʿilm), the group identified in the Qurʾān (3:7) as knowing the esoteric meaning, without a sound knowledge if its principles. Thereafter, the paper will show the explanatory power of waḥdat al-Wujūd in positing alternative meanings to the scriptural sources in specific surviving sections of Āmulī's exegesis.
The revival of Shi‘ite Sufism, after the destruction of Safavid empire, occurred during the Zand dynasty (1163-1209/1750-1794) and continued through the Qājār era. As Zarrīnkub has pointed out, the Qājār era was a time of nostalgia for the noble past. Of course, their mystical philosophy had to fit the theological standards of Shi‘ite society. The two leading Sufi orders in this revival movement were the Ni‘matullāhīs and the Dhahabīs. These two orders had much in common, as both of them highly emphasized the importance of following Islamic laws and Shi‘ite beliefs. They were known to be the propagators of Akbarian philosophy in Persia. Dhahabīs and Ni‘matullāhīs were strong promoters of the school of “Unity of Being” (Waḥdat al-wujūd). Mīrzā Muḥammad Taqī, with the spiritual title of Muẓaffar ‘Alī Shāh (d.1215/1800) is one of the most influential masters in the history of Ni‘matullāhiyya order. This Shi‘ite Sufi master is one of the most active and knowledgeable masters of the Ni‘matullāhīs during this era. He is the first master after the return of the order to Persia who wrote about its cosmological views, based on the philosophy of “Unity of Being”. In his youth, he began studying the rational and traditional seminary sciences (‘ulūm ‘aqlī wa naqlī) and became well-versed in them. Muẓaffar was more of a mystic philosopher (ḥakīm) than a jurist (faqīh), and extremely well-versed in speculative Sufism, following the school of “Unity of Being”. Muẓaffar ‘Alī Shāh's mystical poetry had in-depth mystical meanings, with heavy reliance of Ibn ‘Arabī's philosophy and terminology. Muẓaffar was very influential for the development of the Ni‘matullāhī order and as a propagator of Ibn ‘Arabī's thoughts. His beliefs about the perfect man, insān-i kāmil, were highly influenced by Akbarian (Ibn ‘Arabī's) philosophy. Muẓaffar passed away in 1215/1800. He wrote numerous books and literary papers, which are tremendously valuable for a better understanding of Ni‘matullāhī thought. Muẓaffar ‘Alī Shāh wrote poetry lamenting over his separation from his master, Mushtāq, to whom he dedicated a compendium of his poetry, calling it Diwān-i Mushtāqīyya. In this paper, we will examine two of Muẓaffar's writings: “Sea of the Secrets” (baḥr al-asrār) and “Compendium of the Seas” (majma‘ al-biḥār) which are both interpretations of the first chapter of Quran. “Sea of the Secrets” (baḥr al-asrār) is in verse form of Mathnawī and “Compendium of the Seas” (majma‘ al-biḥār) is written in prose. In these two works, Muẓaffar ‘Alī Shāh heavily relied on the chapter of Prophet Adam in Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam of Ibn ‘Arabī. He had numerous references to Ibn ‘Arabī and his writings. Muẓaffar ‘Alī Shāh explains the relationship between Nubuwwa (prophethood), Risāla (apostleship) and Wilāya (sainthood) based on Ibn ‘Arabī's teachings using his terminology like the disclosure of Attributes of Divine Majesty (jalāl) and disclosure of Attributes of Divine Beauty (jamāl). This paper investigates the importance of Muẓaffar ‘Alī Shāh for survival of the school of “Unity of Being” among practicing Shi‘ite Sufis in general and the Ni‘matullāhī Sufi in particular as one of the most important Shi‘ite Sufi orders in Iran.
نعود بالتاريخ مئات السنين، كي نحكي تاريخ منطقة استراتيجية في قارة آسيا، وكيف أثرت عليها التحولات السياسية والمذهبية لتصبح على وضعها الحالي، إيران أو إمبراطورية فارس. ندعوكم للإصغاء إلى أصوات من فلسطين من خلال الحلقات الخاصة التي نقوم بنشرها تباعًا في ضوء الأحداث الحالية: https://www.sowt.com/ar/palestineتابعوا صوت على:النشرة البريدية: https://sow.tl/newsletterإنستجرام: https://www.instagram.com/sowtpodcastsتويتر/إكس: https://twitter.com/sowtيوتيوب: https://www.youtube.com/@Sowt تيك توك: https://tiktok.com/@sowtpodcasts فيسبوك: facebook.com/SowtPodcasts لينكد إن: https://jo.linkedin.com/company/sowtتعرف على جميع برامج صوت: https://www.sowt.com/ar/podcast انضم لعضوية صوت بلس لتسمع الحلقات قبل نشرها بدون إعلانات، بالإضافة لمحتوى حصري للمشتركين: https://sow.tl/PlusAppleالمصادر:1- https://www.lse.ac.uk/International-History/Events/2021/the-shahs-imperial-celebrations-of-19712-https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sasanian-dynasty3- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mughal-dynasty4- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Genghis-Khan5- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hulegu6- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Il-Khanid-dynasty7- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Timurid-dynasty8- السياسة والدين في مرحلة تأسيس الدولة الصفوية (1501-1576)، علي إبراهيم درويش، المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات، الطبعة الأولى، الدوحة، 2012.9- Converting Persia, Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire, Rula Jurdi Abisaab. I.B. Tauris 200410- Formation of a Religious Landscape: Shiʿi Higher Learning in Safavid Iran,Maryam Moazzen. Brill 11- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Safavid-dynasty12- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ismail-I-shah-of-Iran Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
fWotD Episode 2383: Fuzuli (poet).Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.The featured article for Monday, 13 November 2023 is Fuzuli (poet).Muhammad bin Suleyman (Azerbaijani: Məhəmməd Süleyman oğlu, مَحمد سلیمان اوغلی; 1483–1556), better known by his pen name Fuzuli (Füzuli, فضولی), was a 16th-century poet who composed works in his native Azerbaijani, as well as Persian and Arabic. He is regarded as one of the greatest poets of Turkic literature and a prominent figure in both Azerbaijani and Ottoman literature. Fuzuli's work was widely known and admired throughout the Turkic cultural landscape from the 16th to the 19th centuries, with his fame reaching as far as Central Asia and India.Born in 1483 in modern-day Iraq, Fuzuli studied literature, mathematics, astronomy, and languages as a child. During his lifetime, his homeland changed hands between the Aq Qoyunlu, Safavid, and Ottoman states. He composed poetry for officials in all three empires, writing his first known poem to Shah Alvand Mirza of the Aq Qoyunlu. Fuzuli wrote most his poetry during the Ottoman rule of Iraq, which is why he is also sometimes called an Ottoman poet. Throughout his life, he had several patrons but never found one that fully satisfied him, and his desire to join a royal court was never realised. Despite wishing to see places like Tabriz in modern-day Iran, Anatolia, and India, he never travelled outside Iraq. In 1556, Fuzuli died from the plague and was buried in Karbala.Fuzuli is best known for his Azerbaijani works, especially his ghazals (a form of love poem) and his lyric poem Leylī va Macnūn, which is an interpretation of a Middle Eastern story of tragic love. He also wrote dīvāns (collections of poems) in Azerbaijani, Persian, and possibly Arabic. His style has been described as being distinguished by his "intense expression of feelings" and his use of mystic metaphors and symbols. His poetry shows influences from Persian poets like Nizami, Jami, and Hafez, as well as Azerbaijani poets like Habibi and Nasimi.Fuzuli played a role in the development of the Azerbaijani language, with his writings being described as elevating Azerbaijani poetry and language to new heights. His work has been characterised as a reconciliation of Azerbaijani, Persian, and Arabic literary practices, as well as of Shia and Sunni beliefs. He remains a popular poet in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:22 UTC on Monday, 13 November 2023.For the full current version of the article, see Fuzuli (poet) on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm Salli Neural.
In 1747, the city of Kerman in Persia burned amidst chaos, destruction and death perpetrated by the city's own overlord, Nader Shah. After the violent overthrow of the Safavid dynasty in 1722 and subsequent foreign invasions from all sides, Persia had been in constant turmoil. One well-appointed house that belonged to the East India Company had been saved from destruction by the ingenuity of a Company servant, Danvers Graves, and his knowledge of the Company's privileges in Persia. This book explores the lived experience of the Company and its trade in Persia and how it interacted with power structures and the local environment in a time of great upheaval in Persian history. Using East India Company records and other sources, it charts the role of the Navy and commercial fleet in the Gulf, trade agreements, and the experience of Company staff, British and non-British living in and navigating conditions in 18th-century Persia. By examining the social, commercial and diplomatic history of this relationship, Peter Good's The East India Company in Persia: Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century (Bloomsbury, 2022) creates a new paradigm for the study of Early Modern interactions in the Indian Ocean Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
In 1747, the city of Kerman in Persia burned amidst chaos, destruction and death perpetrated by the city's own overlord, Nader Shah. After the violent overthrow of the Safavid dynasty in 1722 and subsequent foreign invasions from all sides, Persia had been in constant turmoil. One well-appointed house that belonged to the East India Company had been saved from destruction by the ingenuity of a Company servant, Danvers Graves, and his knowledge of the Company's privileges in Persia. This book explores the lived experience of the Company and its trade in Persia and how it interacted with power structures and the local environment in a time of great upheaval in Persian history. Using East India Company records and other sources, it charts the role of the Navy and commercial fleet in the Gulf, trade agreements, and the experience of Company staff, British and non-British living in and navigating conditions in 18th-century Persia. By examining the social, commercial and diplomatic history of this relationship, Peter Good's The East India Company in Persia: Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century (Bloomsbury, 2022) creates a new paradigm for the study of Early Modern interactions in the Indian Ocean Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
In 1747, the city of Kerman in Persia burned amidst chaos, destruction and death perpetrated by the city's own overlord, Nader Shah. After the violent overthrow of the Safavid dynasty in 1722 and subsequent foreign invasions from all sides, Persia had been in constant turmoil. One well-appointed house that belonged to the East India Company had been saved from destruction by the ingenuity of a Company servant, Danvers Graves, and his knowledge of the Company's privileges in Persia. This book explores the lived experience of the Company and its trade in Persia and how it interacted with power structures and the local environment in a time of great upheaval in Persian history. Using East India Company records and other sources, it charts the role of the Navy and commercial fleet in the Gulf, trade agreements, and the experience of Company staff, British and non-British living in and navigating conditions in 18th-century Persia. By examining the social, commercial and diplomatic history of this relationship, Peter Good's The East India Company in Persia: Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century (Bloomsbury, 2022) creates a new paradigm for the study of Early Modern interactions in the Indian Ocean Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies
In 1747, the city of Kerman in Persia burned amidst chaos, destruction and death perpetrated by the city's own overlord, Nader Shah. After the violent overthrow of the Safavid dynasty in 1722 and subsequent foreign invasions from all sides, Persia had been in constant turmoil. One well-appointed house that belonged to the East India Company had been saved from destruction by the ingenuity of a Company servant, Danvers Graves, and his knowledge of the Company's privileges in Persia. This book explores the lived experience of the Company and its trade in Persia and how it interacted with power structures and the local environment in a time of great upheaval in Persian history. Using East India Company records and other sources, it charts the role of the Navy and commercial fleet in the Gulf, trade agreements, and the experience of Company staff, British and non-British living in and navigating conditions in 18th-century Persia. By examining the social, commercial and diplomatic history of this relationship, Peter Good's The East India Company in Persia: Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century (Bloomsbury, 2022) creates a new paradigm for the study of Early Modern interactions in the Indian Ocean Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In 1747, the city of Kerman in Persia burned amidst chaos, destruction and death perpetrated by the city's own overlord, Nader Shah. After the violent overthrow of the Safavid dynasty in 1722 and subsequent foreign invasions from all sides, Persia had been in constant turmoil. One well-appointed house that belonged to the East India Company had been saved from destruction by the ingenuity of a Company servant, Danvers Graves, and his knowledge of the Company's privileges in Persia. This book explores the lived experience of the Company and its trade in Persia and how it interacted with power structures and the local environment in a time of great upheaval in Persian history. Using East India Company records and other sources, it charts the role of the Navy and commercial fleet in the Gulf, trade agreements, and the experience of Company staff, British and non-British living in and navigating conditions in 18th-century Persia. By examining the social, commercial and diplomatic history of this relationship, Peter Good's The East India Company in Persia: Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century (Bloomsbury, 2022) creates a new paradigm for the study of Early Modern interactions in the Indian Ocean Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
Today I talked to Divya Cherian about her article "The Owl and the Occult: Popular Politics and Social Liminality in Early Modern South Asia" published in Comparative Studies in Society and History (June, 2023). Historians of Islamic occult science and post-Mongol Persianate kingship in the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires have in recent years made clear just how central this body of knowledge was to the exercise of imperial power. Alongside, scholarship on tantra has pointed to its diffuse persistence in the early modern period. But what dynamics beyond courts and elite initiates did these investments in occult science and tantra unleash? Through a focus on the seventeenth-century Mughal court and the Rajput polity of Marwar in the eighteenth century, this article weaves together the history of animals with that of harmful magic by non-courtly actors. It demonstrates the blended histories of tantra, Islamicate occult sciences, and folk magic to argue that attributions of liminality encoded people, animals, and things with occult potential. For some, like the owl, this liminality could invite violence and death and for others, like expert male practitioners, it could generate authority. By the eighteenth century, the deployment of practical magic towards harmful or disruptive ends was a political tool wielded not only by kings and elite adepts for state or lineage formation but also by non-courtly subjects and “low”-caste specialists in local social life. States and sovereigns responded to the popular use of harmful magic harshly, aiming to cut off non-courtly access to this resource. If the early modern age was one of new ideologies of universal empire, the deployment of occult power outside the court was inconsistent with the ambitions of the kings of this time. Divya Cherian: An assistant professor in the Department of History at Princeton University. Prof. Cherian is a historian of early modern and colonial South Asia, with interests in social, cultural, and religious history, gender and sexuality, ethics and law, and the local and the everyday. Her research focuses on western India, chiefly on the region that is today Rajasthan. She is the author of Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (University of California Press, 2023) (Indian edition: Navayana, 2023), winner of the American Institute of Indian Studies' 2022 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences. Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the Western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Today I talked to Divya Cherian about her article "The Owl and the Occult: Popular Politics and Social Liminality in Early Modern South Asia" published in Comparative Studies in Society and History (June, 2023). Historians of Islamic occult science and post-Mongol Persianate kingship in the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires have in recent years made clear just how central this body of knowledge was to the exercise of imperial power. Alongside, scholarship on tantra has pointed to its diffuse persistence in the early modern period. But what dynamics beyond courts and elite initiates did these investments in occult science and tantra unleash? Through a focus on the seventeenth-century Mughal court and the Rajput polity of Marwar in the eighteenth century, this article weaves together the history of animals with that of harmful magic by non-courtly actors. It demonstrates the blended histories of tantra, Islamicate occult sciences, and folk magic to argue that attributions of liminality encoded people, animals, and things with occult potential. For some, like the owl, this liminality could invite violence and death and for others, like expert male practitioners, it could generate authority. By the eighteenth century, the deployment of practical magic towards harmful or disruptive ends was a political tool wielded not only by kings and elite adepts for state or lineage formation but also by non-courtly subjects and “low”-caste specialists in local social life. States and sovereigns responded to the popular use of harmful magic harshly, aiming to cut off non-courtly access to this resource. If the early modern age was one of new ideologies of universal empire, the deployment of occult power outside the court was inconsistent with the ambitions of the kings of this time. Divya Cherian: An assistant professor in the Department of History at Princeton University. Prof. Cherian is a historian of early modern and colonial South Asia, with interests in social, cultural, and religious history, gender and sexuality, ethics and law, and the local and the everyday. Her research focuses on western India, chiefly on the region that is today Rajasthan. She is the author of Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (University of California Press, 2023) (Indian edition: Navayana, 2023), winner of the American Institute of Indian Studies' 2022 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences. Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the Western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
Today I talked to Divya Cherian about her article "The Owl and the Occult: Popular Politics and Social Liminality in Early Modern South Asia" published in Comparative Studies in Society and History (June, 2023). Historians of Islamic occult science and post-Mongol Persianate kingship in the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires have in recent years made clear just how central this body of knowledge was to the exercise of imperial power. Alongside, scholarship on tantra has pointed to its diffuse persistence in the early modern period. But what dynamics beyond courts and elite initiates did these investments in occult science and tantra unleash? Through a focus on the seventeenth-century Mughal court and the Rajput polity of Marwar in the eighteenth century, this article weaves together the history of animals with that of harmful magic by non-courtly actors. It demonstrates the blended histories of tantra, Islamicate occult sciences, and folk magic to argue that attributions of liminality encoded people, animals, and things with occult potential. For some, like the owl, this liminality could invite violence and death and for others, like expert male practitioners, it could generate authority. By the eighteenth century, the deployment of practical magic towards harmful or disruptive ends was a political tool wielded not only by kings and elite adepts for state or lineage formation but also by non-courtly subjects and “low”-caste specialists in local social life. States and sovereigns responded to the popular use of harmful magic harshly, aiming to cut off non-courtly access to this resource. If the early modern age was one of new ideologies of universal empire, the deployment of occult power outside the court was inconsistent with the ambitions of the kings of this time. Divya Cherian: An assistant professor in the Department of History at Princeton University. Prof. Cherian is a historian of early modern and colonial South Asia, with interests in social, cultural, and religious history, gender and sexuality, ethics and law, and the local and the everyday. Her research focuses on western India, chiefly on the region that is today Rajasthan. She is the author of Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (University of California Press, 2023) (Indian edition: Navayana, 2023), winner of the American Institute of Indian Studies' 2022 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences. Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the Western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today I talked to Divya Cherian about her article "The Owl and the Occult: Popular Politics and Social Liminality in Early Modern South Asia" published in Comparative Studies in Society and History (June, 2023). Historians of Islamic occult science and post-Mongol Persianate kingship in the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires have in recent years made clear just how central this body of knowledge was to the exercise of imperial power. Alongside, scholarship on tantra has pointed to its diffuse persistence in the early modern period. But what dynamics beyond courts and elite initiates did these investments in occult science and tantra unleash? Through a focus on the seventeenth-century Mughal court and the Rajput polity of Marwar in the eighteenth century, this article weaves together the history of animals with that of harmful magic by non-courtly actors. It demonstrates the blended histories of tantra, Islamicate occult sciences, and folk magic to argue that attributions of liminality encoded people, animals, and things with occult potential. For some, like the owl, this liminality could invite violence and death and for others, like expert male practitioners, it could generate authority. By the eighteenth century, the deployment of practical magic towards harmful or disruptive ends was a political tool wielded not only by kings and elite adepts for state or lineage formation but also by non-courtly subjects and “low”-caste specialists in local social life. States and sovereigns responded to the popular use of harmful magic harshly, aiming to cut off non-courtly access to this resource. If the early modern age was one of new ideologies of universal empire, the deployment of occult power outside the court was inconsistent with the ambitions of the kings of this time. Divya Cherian: An assistant professor in the Department of History at Princeton University. Prof. Cherian is a historian of early modern and colonial South Asia, with interests in social, cultural, and religious history, gender and sexuality, ethics and law, and the local and the everyday. Her research focuses on western India, chiefly on the region that is today Rajasthan. She is the author of Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (University of California Press, 2023) (Indian edition: Navayana, 2023), winner of the American Institute of Indian Studies' 2022 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences. Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the Western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
Today I talked to Divya Cherian about her article "The Owl and the Occult: Popular Politics and Social Liminality in Early Modern South Asia" published in Comparative Studies in Society and History (June, 2023). Historians of Islamic occult science and post-Mongol Persianate kingship in the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires have in recent years made clear just how central this body of knowledge was to the exercise of imperial power. Alongside, scholarship on tantra has pointed to its diffuse persistence in the early modern period. But what dynamics beyond courts and elite initiates did these investments in occult science and tantra unleash? Through a focus on the seventeenth-century Mughal court and the Rajput polity of Marwar in the eighteenth century, this article weaves together the history of animals with that of harmful magic by non-courtly actors. It demonstrates the blended histories of tantra, Islamicate occult sciences, and folk magic to argue that attributions of liminality encoded people, animals, and things with occult potential. For some, like the owl, this liminality could invite violence and death and for others, like expert male practitioners, it could generate authority. By the eighteenth century, the deployment of practical magic towards harmful or disruptive ends was a political tool wielded not only by kings and elite adepts for state or lineage formation but also by non-courtly subjects and “low”-caste specialists in local social life. States and sovereigns responded to the popular use of harmful magic harshly, aiming to cut off non-courtly access to this resource. If the early modern age was one of new ideologies of universal empire, the deployment of occult power outside the court was inconsistent with the ambitions of the kings of this time. Divya Cherian: An assistant professor in the Department of History at Princeton University. Prof. Cherian is a historian of early modern and colonial South Asia, with interests in social, cultural, and religious history, gender and sexuality, ethics and law, and the local and the everyday. Her research focuses on western India, chiefly on the region that is today Rajasthan. She is the author of Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (University of California Press, 2023) (Indian edition: Navayana, 2023), winner of the American Institute of Indian Studies' 2022 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences. Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the Western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion
Conservation Scientist Prof. Dr. Mandana Barkeshli looks at lacquered bookbindings made by Persian artisans in the 16th to 19th centuries. Persian artisans are known for their contributions to the field of bookbinding, with the lacquered bookbinding technique being one of their notable breakthroughs. This intricate technique involves multiple layers, each with their own materials, methods, and motifs that have been used from the Safavid to Qajar periods. Professor Barkeshli delves into the details of each layer and explores the various treatments used during manufacture, as well as providing insight into the environmental enemies of the lacquered bookbinding. Prof. Dr. Mandana Barkeshli is Head of Research and Post Graduate Studies of De' Institute of Creative Arts and Design UCSI University in Malaysia and Principle Fellow at University of Melbourne. Her current research project is titled, 'Paper Dyes Used in Persian Medieval Manuscripts: Creating a Materials Construction Digital Database'.
The Indian Ocean world has a rich history of socio-economic and cultural exchanges across time and space. Connecting the Indian Ocean World Across Sea and Land (Routledge, 2023) and its companion, Merchants and Ports in the Indian Ocean World (Routledge, 2023), explore these connections around the wider Indian Ocean world. The book examines the many overlapping linkages that existed from the early modern period and into the colonial era. It offers a clear understanding of the economic networks that extended across the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic during the 19th century. With a critical historical lens, the volume discusses themes like the opium trade in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago - the biggest opium trade market at the time; the Safavid mission to Siam; and the economic relationship between Pondicherry and West Africa, via France. Rich in archival material, this book will be of interest for scholars and researchers of Indian Ocean history, maritime history, Indian history, economic and commercial history, South Asian history, and social history, anthropology, and trade relations in general. Radhika Seshan is former head and retired professor of the Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University, and is now visiting faculty at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune, India. Her work has been primarily in the areas of economic history, particularly maritime and urban history of early modern India. Author of three books, she has edited or co-edited many others, and her most recent publication is Wage Earners in India 1500–1900: Regional Approaches in an International Context, co-edited with Jan Lucassen (2022). Ryuto Shimada is associate professor, Department of Asian History, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo. The author of The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century (2006), he has published extensively in Japanese and in English on aspects of the networks of the Indian Ocean world in the early modern age. Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
The Indian Ocean world has a rich history of socio-economic and cultural exchanges across time and space. Connecting the Indian Ocean World Across Sea and Land (Routledge, 2023) and its companion, Merchants and Ports in the Indian Ocean World (Routledge, 2023), explore these connections around the wider Indian Ocean world. The book examines the many overlapping linkages that existed from the early modern period and into the colonial era. It offers a clear understanding of the economic networks that extended across the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic during the 19th century. With a critical historical lens, the volume discusses themes like the opium trade in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago - the biggest opium trade market at the time; the Safavid mission to Siam; and the economic relationship between Pondicherry and West Africa, via France. Rich in archival material, this book will be of interest for scholars and researchers of Indian Ocean history, maritime history, Indian history, economic and commercial history, South Asian history, and social history, anthropology, and trade relations in general. Radhika Seshan is former head and retired professor of the Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University, and is now visiting faculty at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune, India. Her work has been primarily in the areas of economic history, particularly maritime and urban history of early modern India. Author of three books, she has edited or co-edited many others, and her most recent publication is Wage Earners in India 1500–1900: Regional Approaches in an International Context, co-edited with Jan Lucassen (2022). Ryuto Shimada is associate professor, Department of Asian History, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo. The author of The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century (2006), he has published extensively in Japanese and in English on aspects of the networks of the Indian Ocean world in the early modern age. Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
The Indian Ocean world has a rich history of socio-economic and cultural exchanges across time and space. Connecting the Indian Ocean World Across Sea and Land (Routledge, 2023) and its companion, Merchants and Ports in the Indian Ocean World (Routledge, 2023), explore these connections around the wider Indian Ocean world. The book examines the many overlapping linkages that existed from the early modern period and into the colonial era. It offers a clear understanding of the economic networks that extended across the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic during the 19th century. With a critical historical lens, the volume discusses themes like the opium trade in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago - the biggest opium trade market at the time; the Safavid mission to Siam; and the economic relationship between Pondicherry and West Africa, via France. Rich in archival material, this book will be of interest for scholars and researchers of Indian Ocean history, maritime history, Indian history, economic and commercial history, South Asian history, and social history, anthropology, and trade relations in general. Radhika Seshan is former head and retired professor of the Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University, and is now visiting faculty at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune, India. Her work has been primarily in the areas of economic history, particularly maritime and urban history of early modern India. Author of three books, she has edited or co-edited many others, and her most recent publication is Wage Earners in India 1500–1900: Regional Approaches in an International Context, co-edited with Jan Lucassen (2022). Ryuto Shimada is associate professor, Department of Asian History, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo. The author of The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century (2006), he has published extensively in Japanese and in English on aspects of the networks of the Indian Ocean world in the early modern age. Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
The Indian Ocean world has a rich history of socio-economic and cultural exchanges across time and space. Connecting the Indian Ocean World Across Sea and Land (Routledge, 2023) and its companion, Merchants and Ports in the Indian Ocean World (Routledge, 2023), explore these connections around the wider Indian Ocean world. The book examines the many overlapping linkages that existed from the early modern period and into the colonial era. It offers a clear understanding of the economic networks that extended across the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic during the 19th century. With a critical historical lens, the volume discusses themes like the opium trade in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago - the biggest opium trade market at the time; the Safavid mission to Siam; and the economic relationship between Pondicherry and West Africa, via France. Rich in archival material, this book will be of interest for scholars and researchers of Indian Ocean history, maritime history, Indian history, economic and commercial history, South Asian history, and social history, anthropology, and trade relations in general. Radhika Seshan is former head and retired professor of the Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University, and is now visiting faculty at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune, India. Her work has been primarily in the areas of economic history, particularly maritime and urban history of early modern India. Author of three books, she has edited or co-edited many others, and her most recent publication is Wage Earners in India 1500–1900: Regional Approaches in an International Context, co-edited with Jan Lucassen (2022). Ryuto Shimada is associate professor, Department of Asian History, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo. The author of The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century (2006), he has published extensively in Japanese and in English on aspects of the networks of the Indian Ocean world in the early modern age. Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Indian Ocean world has a rich history of socio-economic and cultural exchanges across time and space. Connecting the Indian Ocean World Across Sea and Land (Routledge, 2023) and its companion, Merchants and Ports in the Indian Ocean World (Routledge, 2023), explore these connections around the wider Indian Ocean world. The book examines the many overlapping linkages that existed from the early modern period and into the colonial era. It offers a clear understanding of the economic networks that extended across the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic during the 19th century. With a critical historical lens, the volume discusses themes like the opium trade in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago - the biggest opium trade market at the time; the Safavid mission to Siam; and the economic relationship between Pondicherry and West Africa, via France. Rich in archival material, this book will be of interest for scholars and researchers of Indian Ocean history, maritime history, Indian history, economic and commercial history, South Asian history, and social history, anthropology, and trade relations in general. Radhika Seshan is former head and retired professor of the Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University, and is now visiting faculty at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune, India. Her work has been primarily in the areas of economic history, particularly maritime and urban history of early modern India. Author of three books, she has edited or co-edited many others, and her most recent publication is Wage Earners in India 1500–1900: Regional Approaches in an International Context, co-edited with Jan Lucassen (2022). Ryuto Shimada is associate professor, Department of Asian History, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo. The author of The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century (2006), he has published extensively in Japanese and in English on aspects of the networks of the Indian Ocean world in the early modern age. Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies
Isabelle Imbert welcomes Valentina Bruccoleri, doctor in Chinese art history and postdoctoral researcher of the Marco Polo Centre for Global Europe-Asia Connections at the university of Venice. Valentina is a specialist of Chinese ceramic, and more precisely, she specialises in the artistic interactions between the Persian dynasties of the Timurid (1370-1507) and Safavid (1501-1722), and the Chinese Yuan (1279–1368) and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties. In the episode, they talk about the production and trade of blue & white porcelains and celadons, of the circulation of ceramic forms and decorative motifs and of the reception of Chinese ceramics in the Persianate sphere, all from a Chinese perspective. If you've liked this episode and want to support, buy me a coffee! Mentioned in the Episode and Further Links Follow the Art Informant on Instagram and TwitterFollow Valentina Bruccoleri on Instagram and Academia"Éléments islamiques dans la porcelaine impériale chinoise du début de la dynastie Ming (1368-1435)", 2020Ruy González de Clavijo, ambassador of Henry III of Castile to the court of Timur (1403-1406) Historia del gran Tamorlan e itinerario y enarracion del viage, y relacion de la embaxada que Ruy Gonçalez de Clavijo le hizo, por mandado del muy poderoso señor rey Don Henrique el Tercero de Castilla, 1412 (Biblioteca virtual Miguel de Cervantes)Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court of Timour at Samarcand, A.D. 1403-6, translated Sir Clements Robert Markham, 1859 (Google book)Didier, Michel, Chen Cheng, 1365-1457: ambassadeur des premiers empereurs Ming, Paris- Louvain, Éditions Peeters, 2012 (Amazon.co.uk).Rossabi, Morris, « Two Ming Envoys to Inner Asia », T'oung Pao, 1976, vol. 62, p. 1-34. (jstor)A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era As Seen in Hu Sihui's Yinshan Zhengyao, Brill, 2010. Click here for more episodes of the ART Informant. Click here to see the reproductions of artefacts discussed in the episode.
Too few people know that parts of the Arab world and Iran were once home to large Jewish communities. This Mizrahi Heritage Month, let's change the story, with the final episode of the first season of The Forgotten Exodus, the first-ever narrative podcast series devoted exclusively to the rich, fascinating, and often-overlooked history of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewry. Thank you for lifting up these stories to celebrate Mizrahi Heritage Month. If you enjoy this episode, be sure to listen to the rest of The Forgotten Exodus, wherever you get your podcasts. __ Home to one of the world's oldest Jewish communities, the story of Jews in Iran has been one of prosperity and suffering through the millennia. During the mid-20th century, when Jews were being driven from their homes in Arab lands, Iran assisted Jewish refugees in providing safe passage to Israel. Under the Shah, Israel was an important economic and political ally. Yet that all swiftly changed in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which ushered in Islamic rule, while chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” rang out from the streets of Tehran. Author, journalist, and poet Roya Hakakian shares her personal story of growing up Jewish in Iran during the reign of the Shah and then Ayatollah Khomeini, which she wrote about in her memoir Journey From the Land of No. Joining Hakakian is Dr. Saba Soomekh, a professor of world religions and Middle Eastern history who wrote From the Shahs to Los Angeles: Three Generations of Iranian Jewish Women between Religion and Culture. She also serves as associate director of AJC Los Angeles, home to America's largest concentration of Persian Jewish immigrants. In this sixth and final episode of the season, the Hakakian family's saga captures the common thread that has run throughout this series – when the history of an uprooted community is left untold, it can become vulnerable to others' narratives and assumptions, or become lost forever and forgotten. How do you leave behind a beloved homeland, safeguard its Jewish legacy, and figure out where you belong? __ Show notes: Listen to The Forgotten Exodus and sign up to receive updates about future episodes. Song credits: Chag Purim · The Jewish Guitar Project Hevenu Shalom · Violin Heart Pond5: “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Oud Nation”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Haygaz Yossoulkanian (BMI), IPI#1001905418 “Persian”: Publisher: STUDEO88; Composer: Siddhartha Sharma “Meditative Middle Eastern Flute”: Publisher: N/; Composer: DANIELYAN ASHOT MAKICHEVICH (IPI NAME #00855552512), UNITED STATES BMI Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. “Frontiers”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Pete Checkley (BMI), IPI#380407375 “Persian Investigative Mystery”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Peter Cole (BMI), IPI#679735384 “Persian Wind”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Sigma (SESAC); Composer: Abbas Premjee (SESAC), IPI#572363837 “Modern Middle Eastern Underscore”: Publisher: All Pro Audio LLC (611803484); Composer: Alan T Fagan (347654928) “Persian Fantasy Tavern”: Publisher: N/A; Composer: John Hoge “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833. ___ Episode Transcript: ROYA HAKAKIAN: In 1984, when my mother and I left and my father was left alone in Iran, that was yet another major dramatic and traumatic separation. When I look back at the events of 1979, I think, people constantly think about the revolution having, in some ways, blown up Tehran, but it also blew up families. And my own family was among them. MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in Arab nations and Iran in the mid-20th century. This series, brought to you by American Jewish Committee, explores that pivotal moment in Jewish history and the rich Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations as some begin to build relations with Israel. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience. This is The Forgotten Exodus. Today's episode: Leaving Iran MANYA: Outside Israel, Iran has the largest Jewish population in the Middle East. Yes, the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2022. Though there is no official census, experts estimate about 10,000 Jews now live in the region previously known as Persia. But since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Jews in Iran don't advertise their Jewish identity. They adhere to Iran's morality code: women stay veiled from head to toe and men and women who aren't married or related stay apart in public. They don't express support for Israel, they don't ask questions, and they don't disagree with the regime. One might ask, with all these don'ts, is this a way of living a Jewish life? Or a way to live – period? For author, journalist, and poet Roya Hakakian and her family, the answer was ultimately no. Roya has devoted her life to being a fact-finder and truth-teller. A former associate producer at the CBS news show 60 Minutes and a Guggenheim Fellow, Roya has written two volumes of poetry in Persian and three books of nonfiction in English, the first of which was published in 2004 – Journey From the Land of No, a memoir about her charmed childhood and accursed adolescence growing up Jewish in Iran under two different regimes. ROYA: It was hugely important for me to create an account that could be relied on as a historic document. And I did my best through being very, very careful about gathering, interviewing, talking to, observing facts, evidence, documents from everyone, including my most immediate members of my family, to do what we, both as reporters, but also as Jews, are called to do, which is to bear witness. No seemed to be the backdrop of life for women, especially of religious minorities, and, in my own case, Jewish background, and so I thought, what better way to name the book than to call it as what my experience had been, which was the constant nos that I heard. So, Land of No was Iran. MANYA: As a journalist, as a Jew, as a daughter of Iran, Roya will not accept no for an answer. After publishing her memoir, she went on to write Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, a meticulously reported book about a widely underreported incident. In 1992 at a Berlin restaurant, a terrorist attack by the Iranian proxy Hezbollah targeted and killed four Iranian-Kurdish exiles. The book highlighted Iran's enormous global footprint made possible by its terror proxies who don't let international borders get in the way of silencing Iran's critics. Roya also co-founded the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, an independent non-profit that reports on Iran's human rights abuses. Her work has not prompted Ayatollah Khameini to publicly issue a fatwa against her – like the murder order against Salman Rushdie issued by his predecessor. But in 2019, one of her teenage sons answered a knock at the door. It was the FBI, warning her that she was in the crosshairs of the Iranian regime's operatives in America. Most recently, Roya wrote A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious about the emotional roller coaster of arriving in America while still missing a beloved homeland, especially one where their community has endured for thousands of years. ROYA: I felt very strongly that one stays in one's homeland, that you don't just simply take off when things go wrong, that you stick around and try to figure a way through a bad situation. We came to the point where staying didn't seem like it would lead to any sort of real life and leaving was the only option. MANYA: The story of Jews in Iran, often referred to as Persia until 1935, is a millennia-long tale. A saga of suffering, repression, and persecution, peppered with brief moments of relief or at least relative peace – as long as everyone plays by the rules of the regime. SABA SOOMEKH: The history of Jews in Iran goes back to around 2,700 years ago. And a lot of people assume that Jews came to Iran, well at that time, it was called the Persian Empire, in 586 BCE, with the Babylonian exile. But Jews actually came a lot earlier, we're thinking 721-722 BCE with the Assyrian exile which makes us one of the oldest Jewish communities. MANYA: That's Dr. Saba Soomekh, a professor of world religions and Middle Eastern history and the author of From the Shahs to Los Angeles: Three Generations of Iranian Jewish Women between Religion and Culture. She also serves as associate director of American Jewish Committee in Los Angeles, home to America's largest concentration of Persian Jewish immigrants. Saba's parents fled Iran in 1978, shortly before the revolution, when Saba and her sister were toddlers. She has devoted her career to preserving Iranian Jewish history. Saba said Zoroastrian rulers until the 7th Century Common Era vacillated between tolerance and persecution of Jews. For example, according to the biblical account in the Book of Ezra, Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from Babylonian rule, granted all of them citizenship, and permitted them to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their Temple. The Book of Esther goes on to tell the story of another Persian king, believed to be Xerxes I, whose closest adviser called Haman conspires to murder all the Jews – a plot that is foiled by his wife Queen Esther who is Jewish herself. Esther heroically pleads for mercy on behalf of her people – a valor that is celebrated on the Jewish holiday of Purim. But by the time of the Islamic conquest in the middle of the 7th Century Common Era, the persecution had become so intense that Jews were hopeful about the new Arab Muslim regime, even if that meant being tolerated and treated as second-class citizens, or dhimmi status. But that status had a different interpretation for the Safavids. SABA: Really things didn't get bad for the Jews of the Persian Empire until the 16th century with the Safavid dynasty, because within Shia Islam in the Persian Empire, what they brought with them is this understanding of purity and impurity. And Jews were placed in the same category as dogs, pigs, and feces. They were seen as being religiously impure, what's referred to as najes. MANYA: Jews were placed in ghettos called mahaleh, where they wore yellow stars and special shoes to distinguish them from the rest of the population. They could not leave the mahaleh when it rained for fear that if water rolled off their bodies into the water system, it would render a Shia Muslim impure. For the same reason, they could not go to the bazaars for fear they might contaminate the food. They could not look Muslims in the eye. They were relegated to certain artisanal professions such as silversmithing and block printing – crafts that dirtied one's hands. MANYA: By the 19th century, some European Jews did make their way to Persia to help. The Alliance Israélite Universelle, a Paris-based network of schools founded by French Jewish intellectuals, opened schools for Jewish children throughout the Middle East and North Africa, including within the mahalehs in Persia. SABA: They saw themselves as being incredibly sophisticated because they were getting this, in a sense, secular European education, they were speaking French. The idea behind the Allianz schools was exactly that. These poor Middle Eastern Jews, one day the world is going to open up to them, their countries are going to become secular, and we need to prepare them for this, not only within the context of hygiene, but education, language. And the Allianz schools were right when it came to the Persian Empire because who came into power was Reza Pahlavi, who was a Francophile. And he turned around and said, ‘Wow! Look at the population that speaks French, that knows European philosophy, etc. are the Jews.' He brought them out of the mahaleh, the Jewish ghettos, and said ‘I don't care about religion. Assimilate and acculturate. As long as you show, in a sense, devotion, and nationalism to the Pahlavi regime, which the Jews did—not all Jews—but a majority of them did. MANYA: Reza Pahlavi took control in 1925 and 16 years later, abdicated his throne to his son Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. In 1935, Persia adopted a new name: Iran. As king or the Shah, both father and son set Iran on a course of secularization and rapid modernization under which Jewish life and success seemed to flourish. The only condition was that religious observance was kept behind closed doors. SABA: The idea was that in public, you were secular and in private, you were a Jew. You had Shabbat, you only married a Jew, it was considered blasphemous if you married outside of the Jewish community. And it was happening because people were becoming a part of everyday schools, universities. But that's why the Jewish day schools became so important. They weren't learning Judaism. What it did was ensure that in a secular Muslim society, that the Jewish kids were marrying within each other and within the community. It was, in a sense, the Golden Age. And that will explain to you why, unlike the early 1950s, where you had this exodus of Mizrahi Jews, Arab Jews from the Arab world and North Africa, you didn't really have that in Iran. MANYA: In fact, Iran provided a safe passage to Israel for Jewish refugees during that exodus, specifically those fleeing Iraq. The Pahlavi regime considered Israel a critical ally in the face of pan-Arab fervor and hostility in the region. Because of the Arab economic boycott, Israel needed energy sources and Iran needed customers for its oil exports. A number of Israelis even moved to Tehran, including farmers from kibbutzim who had come to teach agriculture, and doctors and nurses from Hadassah Hospital who had come to teach medicine. El Al flew in and out of Tehran airport, albeit from a separate terminal. Taking advantage of these warm relations between the two countries, Roya recalls visiting aunts, uncles, and cousins in Israel. ROYA: We arrived, and my mom and dad did what all visiting Jews from elsewhere do. They dropped to their knees, and they started kissing the ground. I did the same, and it was so moving. Israel was the promised land, we thought about Israel, we dreamed about Israel. But, at the same time, we were Iranians and, and we were living in Iran, and things were good. This seems to non-Iranian Jews an impossibility. But I think for most of us, it was the way things were. We lived in the country where we had lived for, God knows how many years, and there was this other place that we somehow, in the back of our minds thought we would be going to, without knowing exactly when, but that it would be the destination. MANYA: Relations between the Shah and America flourished as well. In 1951, a hugely popular politician by the name of Mohammad Mosaddegh became prime minister and tried to institute reforms. His attempts to nationalize the oil industry and reduce the monarchy's authority didn't go over well. American and British intelligence backed a coup that restored the Shah's power. Many Iranians resented America's meddling, which became a rallying cry for the revolution. U.S. officials have since expressed regret for the CIA's involvement. In November 1977, President Jimmy Carter welcomed the Shah and his wife to Washington, D.C., to discuss peace between Egypt and Israel, nuclear nonproliferation, and the energy crisis. As an extension of these warm relations, the Shah sent many young Iranians to America to enhance their university studies, exposing them to Western ideals and values. Meanwhile, a savvy fundamentalist cleric was biding his time in a Paris basement. It wouldn't be long before relations crumbled between Iran and Israel, Iran and the U.S,. and Iran and its Jews. Roya recalls the Hakakian house at the corner of Alley of the Distinguished in Tehran as a lush oasis surrounded by fragrant flowers, full of her father's poetry, and brimming with family memories. Located in the heart of a trendy neighborhood, across the street from the Shah's charity organization, the tall juniper trees, fragrant honeysuckle, and gold mezuzah mounted on the door frame set it apart from the rest of the homes. Roya's father, Haghnazar, was a poet and a respected headmaster at a Hebrew school. Roya, which means dream in Persian, was a budding poet herself with the typical hopes and dreams of a Jewish teenage girl. ROYA: Prior to the revolution, life in an average Tehran Hebrew Day School looked very much like life in a Hebrew Day School anywhere else. In the afternoons we had all Hebrew and Jewish studies. We used to put on a Purim show every year. I wanted to be Esther. I never got to be Esther. We had emissaries, I think a couple of years, from Israel, who came to teach us how to do Israeli folk dance. MANYA: There were moments when Roya recalls feeling self-conscious about her Jewishness, particularly at Passover. That's when the family spent two weeks cleaning, demonstrating they weren't najes, or dirty Jews. The work was rewarded when the house filled with the fragrance of cumin and saffron and Persian dishes flowed from the kitchen, including apple and plum beef stew, tarragon veal balls stuffed with raisins, and rice garnished with currants and slivers of almonds. When her oldest brother Alberto left to study in America, a little fact-finding work on Roya's part revealed that his departure wasn't simply the pursuit of a promising opportunity. As a talented cartoonist whose work had been showcased during an exhibition in Tehran, his family feared Alberto's pen might have gone too far, offending the Pahlavi regime and drawing the attention of the Shah's secret police. Reports of repression, rapid modernization, the wide gap between Tehran's rich and the rest of the country's poor, and a feeling that Iranians weren't in control of their own destiny all became ingredients for a revolution, stoked by an exiled cleric named Ruhollah Khomeini who was recording cassette tapes in a Paris basement and circulating them back home. SABA: He would just sit there and go on and on for hours, going against the Shah and West toxification. And then the recordings ended up in Iran. He wasn't even in Iran until the Shah left. MANYA: Promises of democracy and equality galvanized Iranians of all ages to overthrow the Shah in February 1979. Even the CIA was surprised. SABA: I think a lot of people didn't believe it. Because number one, the Shah, the son, was getting the most amount of military equipment from the United States than anyone in the Middle East and in the Persian Gulf. And the idea was: you protect us in the Gulf, and we will give you whatever you need. So they never thought that a man with a beard down to his knee was able to overthrow this regime that was being propped up and supported by America, and also the Europeans. Khomeini comes in and represents himself as a person for everyone. And he was brilliant in the way he spoke about it. And the reason why this revolution was also successful was that it wasn't just religious people who supported Khomeini, there was this concept you had, the men with the turbans, meaning the religious people, and the you know, the bow ties or the ties, meaning the secular man, a lot of them who were sent by the Shah abroad to Europe and America to get an education, who came back, saw democracy there, and wanted it for their country. MANYA: Very few of the revolutionaries could predict that Tehran was headed in the opposite direction and was about to revert to 16th Century Shia Islamic rule. For almost a year, Tehran and the rest of the nation were swept up in revolutionary euphoria. Roya recalls how the flag remained green, white, and red, but an Allah insignia replaced its old sword-bearing lion. New currency was printed, with portraits bearing beards and turbans. An ode to Khomeini became the new national anthem. While the Shah had escaped on an Air France flight, corpses of his henchmen graced the front pages of newspapers alongside smiling executioners. All celebrated, until the day one of the corpses was Habib Elghanian, the Jewish philanthropist who supported all of Iran's Hebrew schools. Charged and convicted as a Zionist spy. Elders in the community remembered the insurmountable accusations of blood libel during darker times for Iran's Jews. But younger generations like Roya's, who had not lived through the eras of more ruthless antisemitism and persecution, continued to root for the revolution, regardless of its victims. Meanwhile, Roya's Jewish day school was taken over by a new veiled headmistress who replaced Hebrew lessons with other kinds of religious instruction, and required robes and headscarves for all the students. ROYA: In the afternoons, from then on, we used to have lessons in a series of what she called: ‘Is religion something that you inherit, or is it something that you choose?' And so I think the intention, clearly, was to convince us that we didn't need to inherit our religions from our parents and ancestors, that we ought to consider better choices. MANYA: But when the headmistress cut short the eight-day Passover break, that was the last straw for Roya and her classmates. Their revolt got her expelled from school. Though Jews did not universally support Khomeini, some saw themselves as members of the Iranian Communist, or Tudeh Party. They opposed the Shah and the human rights abuses of his monarchy and cautiously considered Khomeini the better option, or at least the lesser of two evils. Alarmed by the developments such as Elghanian's execution and changes like the ones at Roya's school, Jewish community leaders traveled to the Shia holy city of Qom to assure the Supreme Leader of their loyalty to Iran. SABA: They did this because they wanted to make sure that they protected the Jewish community that was left in Iran. Khomeini made that distinction: ‘I am not against Jews, I'm against Zionists. You could be Jewish in this country. You cannot be a Zionist in this country.' MANYA: But that wasn't the only change. Right away, the Family Protection Law was reversed, lifting a law against polygamy, giving men full rights in divorce and custody, and lowering the marriage age for girls to nine. Women were banned from serving as judges, and beaches and sports events were segregated by gender. But it took longer to shut down universities, albeit for only two years, segregate public schools by gender, and stone to death women who were found to have committed adultery. Though Khomeini was certainly proving that he was not the man he promised to be, he backed away from those promises gradually – one brutal crackdown at a time. As a result, the trickle of Jews out of Iran was slow. ROYA: My father thought, let's wait a few years and see what happens. In retrospect, I think the overwhelming reason was probably that nobody believed that things had changed, and so drastically. It seemed so unbelievable. I mean, a country that had been under monarchy for 2,500 years, couldn't simply see it all go and have a whole new system put in place, especially when it was such a radical shift from what had been there before. So I think, in many ways, we were among the unbelievers, or at least my father was, we thought it could never be, it would not happen. My father proved to be wrong, nothing changed for the better, and the conditions continued to deteriorate. So, so much catastrophe happened in those few years that Iran just simply was steeped into a very dark, intense, and period of political radicalism and also, all sorts of economic shortages and pressures. And so the five years that we were left behind, that we stayed back, changed our perspective on so many things. MANYA: In November 1979, a group of radical university students who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seized hostages, and held them for 444 days until President Ronald Reagan's inauguration on January 20, 1981. During the hostages' captivity, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. The conflict that ensued for eight years created shortages on everything from dairy products to sanitary napkins. Mosques became distribution centers for rations. ROYA: We stood in line for hours and hours for eggs, and just the very basic things of daily life. And then it became also clear that religious minorities, including Jews, would no longer be enjoying the same privileges as everyone else. There were bombings that kept coming closer and closer to Tehran, which is where we lived. It was very clear that half of my family that was in the United States could not and would not return, because they were boys who would have been conscripted to go to war. Everything had just come apart in a way that was inconceivable to think that they would change for the better again. MANYA: By 1983, new laws had been passed instituting Islamic dress for all women – violations of which earned a penalty of 74 lashes. Other laws imposed an Islamic morality code that barred co-ed gatherings. Roya and her friends found refuge in the sterile office building that housed the Jewish Iranian Students Association. But she soon figured out that the regime hadn't allowed it to remain for the benefit of the Jewish community. It functioned more like a ghetto to keep Jews off the streets and out of their way. Even the activities that previously gave her comfort were marred by the regime. Poetry books were redacted. Mountain hiking trails were arbitrarily closed to mourn the deaths of countless clerics. SABA: Slowly what they realize, when Khomeini gained power, was that he was not the person that he claimed to be. He was not this feminist, if anything, all this misogynistic rule came in, and a lot of people realize they, in a sense, got duped and he stole the revolution from them. MANYA: By 1984, the war with Iraq had entered its fourth year. But it was no longer about protecting Iran from Saddam Hussein. Now the Ayatollah wanted to conquer Baghdad, then Jerusalem where he aspired to deliver a sermon from the Temple Mount. Meanwhile, Muslim soldiers wounded in the war chose to bleed rather than receive treatment from Jewish doctors. Boys as young as 12 – regardless of faith – were drafted and sent on suicide missions to open the way for Iranian troops to do battle. SABA: They were basically used as an army of children that the bombs would detonate, their parents would get a plastic key that was the key to heaven. And the bombs would detonate, and then the army would come in Iranian army would come in. And so that's when a lot of the Persian parents, the Jewish parents freaked out. And that's when they were like: we're getting out of here. MANYA: By this time, the Hakakian family had moved into a rented apartment building and Roya was attending the neighborhood school. Non-Muslim students were required to take Koran classes and could only use designated water fountains and bathrooms. As a precaution, Roya's father submitted their passports for renewal. Her mother's application was denied; Roya's passport was held for further consideration; her father's was confiscated. One night, Roya returned home to find her father burning her books and journals on the balcony of their building. The bonfire of words was for the best, he told her. And at long last, so was leaving. With the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Roya and her mother, Helen, fled to Geneva, and after wandering in Europe for several months, eventually reunited with her brothers in the United States. Roya did not see her father again for five years. Still unable to acquire a passport, he was smuggled out of Iran into Pakistan, on foot. ROYA: My eldest brother left to come to America in the mid-70s. There was a crack in the body of the family then. But then came 1979, and my two other brothers followed. And so we were apart for all those very, very formative years. And then, in 1984, when my mother and I left and my father was left alone in Iran, that was yet another major dramatic and traumatic separation. So, you know, it's interesting that when I look back at the events of 1979, I think, people constantly think about the revolution having, in some ways, blown up Tehran, but it also blew up families. And my own family was among them. MANYA: While her father's arrival in America was delayed, Roya describes her arrival in stages. She first arrived as a Jewish refugee in 1985 and found her place doing what she had always done – writing in Persian – rebuilding a body of work that had been reduced to ashes. ROYA: As a teen I had become a writer, people were encouraging me. So, I continued to do it. It was the thing I knew how to do. And it gave me a sense of grounding and identity. So, I kept on doing it, and it kind of worked its magic, as I suppose good writing does for all writers. It connected me to a new community of people who read Persian and who appreciated what I was trying to do. And I found that with each book that I write, I find a new tribe for myself. MANYA: She arrived again once she learned English. In her first year at Brooklyn College, she tape-recorded her professors to listen again later. She eventually took a course with renowned poet Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry was best known for its condemnation of persecution and imperial politics and whose 1950s poem “Howl” tested the boundaries of America's freedom of speech. ROYA: When I mastered the language enough to feel comfortable to be a writer once more, then I found a footing and through Allen and a community of literary people that I met here began to kind of foresee a possibility of writing in English. MANYA: There was also her arrival to an American Jewish community that was largely unaware of the role Jews played in shaping Iran long before the advent of Islam. Likewise, they were just as unaware of the role Iran played in shaping ancient Jewish life. They were oblivious to the community's traditions, and the indignities and abuses Iranian Jews had suffered, continue to suffer, with other religious minorities to keep those traditions alive in their homeland. ROYA: People would say, ‘Oh, you have an accent, where are you from?' I would say, ‘Iran,' and the Jews at the synagogue would say, ‘Are there Jews in Iran?' MANYA: In Roya's most recent book A Beginner's Guide to America, a sequel of sorts to her memoir, she reflects on the lessons learned and the observations made once she arrived in the U.S. She counsels newcomers to take their time answering what might at first seem like an ominous or loaded question. Here's an excerpt: ROYA: “In the early days after your arrival, “Where are you from?” is above all a reminder of your unpreparedness to speak of the past. You have yet to shape your story – what you saw, why you left, how you left, and what it took to get here. This narrative is your personal Book of Genesis: the American Volume, the one you will sooner or later pen, in the mind, if not on the page. You must take your time to do it well and do it justice.” MANYA: No two immigrants' experiences are the same, she writes. The only thing they all have in common is that they have been uprooted and the stories of their displacement have been hijacked by others' assumptions and agendas. ROYA: I witnessed, as so many other Iranian Jews witness, that the story of how we came, why we came, who we had been, was being narrated by those who had a certain partisan perspective about what the history of what Jewish people should be, or how this history needs to be cast, for whatever purposes they had. And I would see that our own recollections of what had happened were being shaded by, or filtered through views other than our own, or facts other than our own. MANYA: As we wrap up this sixth and final episode of the first season of The Forgotten Exodus, it is clear that the same can be said about the stories of the Jewish people. No two tales are the same. Jews have lived everywhere, and there are reasons why they don't anymore. Some fled as refugees. Some embarked as dreamers. Some forged ahead without looking back. Others counted the days until they could return home. What ties them together is their courage, perseverance, and resilience–whether they hailed from Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, or parts beyond. These six episodes offer only a handful of those stories–shaped by memories and experiences. ROYA: That became sort of an additional incentive, if not burden for me to, to be a witness for several communities, to tell the story of what happened in Iran for American audiences, to Jews, to non-Iranian Jews who didn't realize that there were Jews in Iran, but also to record the history, according to how I had witnessed it, for ourselves, to make sure that it goes down, as I knew it. MANYA: Iranian Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who in the last century left their homes in the Middle East to forge new lives for themselves and future generations. Many thanks to Roya for sharing her family's story and for helping us wrap up this season of The Forgotten Exodus. If you're listening for the first time, check out our previous episodes on Jews from Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, and Sudan. Go to ajc.org/theforgottenexodus where you'll also find transcripts, show notes, and family photos. There are still so many stories to tell. Stay tuned in coming months. Does your family have roots in North Africa or the Middle East? One of the goals of this series is to make sure we gather these stories before they are lost. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to find more of these stories. Call The Forgotten Exodus hotline. Tell us where your family is from and something you'd like for our listeners to know such as how you've tried to keep the traditions and memories alive. Call 212.891.1336 and leave a message of 2 minutes or less. Be sure to leave your name and where you live now. You can also send an email to theforgottenexodus@ajc.org and we'll be in touch. Tune in every Friday for AJC's weekly podcast about global affairs through a Jewish lens, People of the Pod, brought to you by the same team behind The Forgotten Exodus. Atara Lakritz is our producer, CucHuong Do is our production manager. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Sean Savage, Ian Kaplan, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name, for making this series possible. And extra special thanks to David Harris, who has been a constant champion for making sure these stories do not remain untold. You can follow The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can sign up to receive updates at AJC.org/forgottenexodussignup. The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC. You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed the episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.
In this episode, Isabelle Imbert welcomes Dr Esra Alhamal, doctor in design and visual artist specialised in Islamic illumination. Esra has been researching and creating biomorphic patterns for many years, as well as teaching the art of illumination in London and creating her own paint with natural pigment from a Medieval recipe. In the episode, we talk about her artistic practice, as well as her research on Safavid biomorphic pattern in architectural ceramic. She is also a fellow host of the Art Illuminated podcast, in which she interviews artists and makers working with traditional techniques. If you've liked this episode and want to support, by me a coffee! Mentioned in the Episode and Further Links Follow the Art Informant on Instagram and Twitter Follow Esra on Instagram and LinkedInRead Esra's doctoral dissertation from the University of East London (open access)Follow the Art Illuminated podcast on InstagramWebsite of Art Illuminated, home of the podcast and illumination courses Bristle and Brush, natural paint shopWebsite of Farkhondeh Ahmadzadeh, Esra's teacherFollow Ayten Tiryaki, calligraphy and illumination master, on Instagram Click here for more episodes of the ART Informant. Click here to see the reproductions of artefacts discussed in the episode.
In today's episode, Isabelle Imbert welcomes Dr Firuza Melville, director of research of Cambridge Shahnama centre for Persian Studies and eminent specialist of the Persian poet Firdausi (c. 933-1020) and his Shahnama, the book of kings telling the epic history of Iran before Islam. The text was illustrated many times, including under the reign of Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524-76). His manuscript was finished around 1535 and is considered by most as the pinnacle of Persian painting. Pages of the manuscript sometimes appear on the market, and one page will be sold at Sotheby's on the 26th October, so it is a perfect time to invite a great specialist to talk about the text, the manuscript and its history. Firuza's computer made some impromptu interventions at different points of the recording, which I couldn't remove. I apologize for the inconvenience and hope it won't be too distracting. If you've liked this episode and want to support, buy me a coffee! Mentioned in the Episode and Further LinksFollow the Art Informant on Instagram and Twitter Follow Firuza on Instagram and AcademiaThe Cambridge Shahnama Centre for Persian StudiesDatabase of the Shahnama project in Cambridge Digital Library Florentine Shahnama, oldest surviving manuscript of the Shahnama, dated 614 H./ 1217Sotheby's catalogue: Rustam recovers Rakhsh from Afrasiyab's herd, Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, attributed to Mirza 'Ali, Persia, Tabriz, Royal Atelier, circa 1525-35Pages of Shah Tahmasp's Shahnama in the Metropolitan Museum Click here for more episodes of the ART Informant. Click here to see the reproductions of artefacts discussed in the episode.
During most of modern history, Iran was a rather weak player on the world stage. It was constantly taken advantage of. Before the Safavid's sudden collapse in the early 18th century, however, Persia was not a country that you would want to mess with. Only a few other states in the world could match their power. Iran went from hero to zero in no time. In this episode, we ask ourselves how and why this happened.
Home to one of the world's oldest Jewish communities, the story of Jews in Iran has been one of prosperity and suffering through the millennia. During the mid-20th century, when Jews were being driven from their homes in Arab lands, Iran assisted Jewish refugees in providing safe passage to Israel. Under the Shah, Israel was an important economic and political ally. Yet that all swiftly changed in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which ushered in Islamic rule, while chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” rang out from the streets of Tehran. Author, journalist, and poet Roya Hakakian shares her personal story of growing up Jewish in Iran during the reign of the Shah and then Ayatollah Khomeini, which she wrote about in her memoir Journey From the Land of No. Joining Hakakian is Dr. Saba Soomekh, a professor of world religions and Middle Eastern history who wrote From the Shahs to Los Angeles: Three Generations of Iranian Jewish Women between Religion and Culture. She also serves as associate director of AJC Los Angeles, home to America's largest concentration of Persian Jewish immigrants. In this sixth and final episode of the season, the Hakakian family's saga captures the common thread that has run throughout this series – when the history of an uprooted community is left untold, it can become vulnerable to others' narratives and assumptions, or become lost forever and forgotten. How do you leave behind a beloved homeland, safeguard its Jewish legacy, and figure out where you belong? ___ Show notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here. Song credits: Chag Purim · The Jewish Guitar Project Hevenu Shalom · Violin Heart Pond5: “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Oud Nation”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Haygaz Yossoulkanian (BMI), IPI#1001905418 “Persian”: Publisher: STUDEO88; Composer: Siddhartha Sharma “Meditative Middle Eastern Flute”: Publisher: N/; Composer: DANIELYAN ASHOT MAKICHEVICH (IPI NAME #00855552512), UNITED STATES BMI Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. “Frontiers”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Pete Checkley (BMI), IPI#380407375 “Persian Investigative Mystery”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Peter Cole (BMI), IPI#679735384 “Persian Wind”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Sigma (SESAC); Composer: Abbas Premjee (SESAC), IPI#572363837 “Modern Middle Eastern Underscore”: Publisher: All Pro Audio LLC (611803484); Composer: Alan T Fagan (347654928) “Persian Fantasy Tavern”: Publisher: N/A; Composer: John Hoge “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833. ___ Episode Transcript: ROYA HAKAKIAN: In 1984, when my mother and I left and my father was left alone in Iran, that was yet another major dramatic and traumatic separation. When I look back at the events of 1979, I think, people constantly think about the revolution having, in some ways, blown up Tehran, but it also blew up families. And my own family was among them. MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in Arab nations and Iran in the mid-20th century. This series, brought to you by American Jewish Committee, explores that pivotal moment in Jewish history and the rich Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations as some begin to build relations with Israel. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience. This is The Forgotten Exodus. Today's episode: Leaving Iran MANYA: Outside Israel, Iran has the largest Jewish population in the Middle East. Yes, the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2022. Though there is no official census, experts estimate about 10,000 Jews now live in the region previously known as Persia. But since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Jews in Iran don't advertise their Jewish identity. They adhere to Iran's morality code: women stay veiled from head to toe and men and women who aren't married or related stay apart in public. They don't express support for Israel, they don't ask questions, and they don't disagree with the regime. One might ask, with all these don'ts, is this a way of living a Jewish life? Or a way to live – period? For author, journalist, and poet Roya Hakakian and her family, the answer was ultimately no. Roya has devoted her life to being a fact-finder and truth-teller. A former associate producer at the CBS news show 60 Minutes and a Guggenheim Fellow, Roya has written two volumes of poetry in Persian and three books of nonfiction in English, the first of which was published in 2004 – Journey From the Land of No, a memoir about her charmed childhood and accursed adolescence growing up Jewish in Iran under two different regimes. ROYA: It was hugely important for me to create an account that could be relied on as a historic document. And I did my best through being very, very careful about gathering, interviewing, talking to, observing facts, evidence, documents from everyone, including my most immediate members of my family, to do what we, both as reporters, but also as Jews, are called to do, which is to bear witness. No seemed to be the backdrop of life for women, especially of religious minorities, and, in my own case, Jewish background, and so I thought, what better way to name the book than to call it as what my experience had been, which was the constant nos that I heard. So, Land of No was Iran. MANYA: As a journalist, as a Jew, as a daughter of Iran, Roya will not accept no for an answer. After publishing her memoir, she went on to write Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, a meticulously reported book about a widely underreported incident. In 1992 at a Berlin restaurant, a terrorist attack by the Iranian proxy Hezbollah targeted and killed four Iranian-Kurdish exiles. The book highlighted Iran's enormous global footprint made possible by its terror proxies who don't let international borders get in the way of silencing Iran's critics. Roya also co-founded the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, an independent non-profit that reports on Iran's human rights abuses. Her work has not prompted Ayatollah Khameini to publicly issue a fatwa against her – like the murder order against Salman Rushdie issued by his predecessor. But in 2019, one of her teenage sons answered a knock at the door. It was the FBI, warning her that she was in the crosshairs of the Iranian regime's operatives in America. Most recently, Roya wrote A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious about the emotional roller coaster of arriving in America while still missing a beloved homeland, especially one where their community has endured for thousands of years. ROYA: I felt very strongly that one stays in one's homeland, that you don't just simply take off when things go wrong, that you stick around and try to figure a way through a bad situation. We came to the point where staying didn't seem like it would lead to any sort of real life and leaving was the only option. MANYA: The story of Jews in Iran, often referred to as Persia until 1935, is a millennia-long tale. A saga of suffering, repression, and persecution, peppered with brief moments of relief or at least relative peace – as long as everyone plays by the rules of the regime. SABA SOOMEKH: The history of Jews in Iran goes back to around 2,700 years ago. And a lot of people assume that Jews came to Iran, well at that time, it was called the Persian Empire, in 586 BCE, with the Babylonian exile. But Jews actually came a lot earlier, we're thinking 721-722 BCE with the Assyrian exile which makes us one of the oldest Jewish communities. MANYA: That's Dr. Saba Soomekh, a professor of world religions and Middle Eastern history and the author of From the Shahs to Los Angeles: Three Generations of Iranian Jewish Women between Religion and Culture. She also serves as associate director of American Jewish Committee in Los Angeles, home to America's largest concentration of Persian Jewish immigrants. Saba's parents fled Iran in 1978, shortly before the revolution, when Saba and her sister were toddlers. She has devoted her career to preserving Iranian Jewish history. Saba said Zoroastrian rulers until the 7th Century Common Era vacillated between tolerance and persecution of Jews. For example, according to the biblical account in the Book of Ezra, Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from Babylonian rule, granted all of them citizenship, and permitted them to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their Temple. The Book of Esther goes on to tell the story of another Persian king, believed to be Xerxes I, whose closest adviser called Haman conspires to murder all the Jews – a plot that is foiled by his wife Queen Esther who is Jewish herself. Esther heroically pleads for mercy on behalf of her people – a valor that is celebrated on the Jewish holiday of Purim. But by the time of the Islamic conquest in the middle of the 7th Century Common Era, the persecution had become so intense that Jews were hopeful about the new Arab Muslim regime, even if that meant being tolerated and treated as second-class citizens, or dhimmi status. But that status had a different interpretation for the Safavids. SABA: Really things didn't get bad for the Jews of the Persian Empire until the 16th century with the Safavid dynasty, because within Shia Islam in the Persian Empire, what they brought with them is this understanding of purity and impurity. And Jews were placed in the same category as dogs, pigs, and feces. They were seen as being religiously impure, what's referred to as najes. MANYA: Jews were placed in ghettos called mahaleh, where they wore yellow stars and special shoes to distinguish them from the rest of the population. They could not leave the mahaleh when it rained for fear that if water rolled off their bodies into the water system, it would render a Shia Muslim impure. For the same reason, they could not go to the bazaars for fear they might contaminate the food. They could not look Muslims in the eye. They were relegated to certain artisanal professions such as silversmithing and block printing – crafts that dirtied one's hands. MANYA: By the 19th century, some European Jews did make their way to Persia to help. The Alliance Israélite Universelle, a Paris-based network of schools founded by French Jewish intellectuals, opened schools for Jewish children throughout the Middle East and North Africa, including within the mahalehs in Persia. SABA: They saw themselves as being incredibly sophisticated because they were getting this, in a sense, secular European education, they were speaking French. The idea behind the Allianz schools was exactly that. These poor Middle Eastern Jews, one day the world is going to open up to them, their countries are going to become secular, and we need to prepare them for this, not only within the context of hygiene, but education, language. And the Allianz schools were right when it came to the Persian Empire because who came into power was Reza Pahlavi, who was a Francophile. And he turned around and said, ‘Wow! Look at the population that speaks French, that knows European philosophy, etc. are the Jews.' He brought them out of the mahaleh, the Jewish ghettos, and said ‘I don't care about religion. Assimilate and acculturate. As long as you show, in a sense, devotion, and nationalism to the Pahlavi regime, which the Jews did—not all Jews—but a majority of them did. MANYA: Reza Pahlavi took control in 1925 and 16 years later, abdicated his throne to his son Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. In 1935, Persia adopted a new name: Iran. As king or the Shah, both father and son set Iran on a course of secularization and rapid modernization under which Jewish life and success seemed to flourish. The only condition was that religious observance was kept behind closed doors. SABA: The idea was that in public, you were secular and in private, you were a Jew. You had Shabbat, you only married a Jew, it was considered blasphemous if you married outside of the Jewish community. And it was happening because people were becoming a part of everyday schools, universities. But that's why the Jewish day schools became so important. They weren't learning Judaism. What it did was ensure that in a secular Muslim society, that the Jewish kids were marrying within each other and within the community. It was, in a sense, the Golden Age. And that will explain to you why, unlike the early 1950s, where you had this exodus of Mizrahi Jews, Arab Jews from the Arab world and North Africa, you didn't really have that in Iran. MANYA: In fact, Iran provided a safe passage to Israel for Jewish refugees during that exodus, specifically those fleeing Iraq. The Pahlavi regime considered Israel a critical ally in the face of pan-Arab fervor and hostility in the region. Because of the Arab economic boycott, Israel needed energy sources and Iran needed customers for its oil exports. A number of Israelis even moved to Tehran, including farmers from kibbutzim who had come to teach agriculture, and doctors and nurses from Hadassah Hospital who had come to teach medicine. El Al flew in and out of Tehran airport, albeit from a separate terminal. Taking advantage of these warm relations between the two countries, Roya recalls visiting aunts, uncles, and cousins in Israel. ROYA: We arrived, and my mom and dad did what all visiting Jews from elsewhere do. They dropped to their knees, and they started kissing the ground. I did the same, and it was so moving. Israel was the promised land, we thought about Israel, we dreamed about Israel. But, at the same time, we were Iranians and, and we were living in Iran, and things were good. This seems to non-Iranian Jews an impossibility. But I think for most of us, it was the way things were. We lived in the country where we had lived for, God knows how many years, and there was this other place that we somehow, in the back of our minds thought we would be going to, without knowing exactly when, but that it would be the destination. MANYA: Relations between the Shah and America flourished as well. In 1951, a hugely popular politician by the name of Mohammad Mosaddegh became prime minister and tried to institute reforms. His attempts to nationalize the oil industry and reduce the monarchy's authority didn't go over well. American and British intelligence backed a coup that restored the Shah's power. Many Iranians resented America's meddling, which became a rallying cry for the revolution. U.S. officials have since expressed regret for the CIA's involvement. In November 1977, President Jimmy Carter welcomed the Shah and his wife to Washington, D.C., to discuss peace between Egypt and Israel, nuclear nonproliferation, and the energy crisis. As an extension of these warm relations, the Shah sent many young Iranians to America to enhance their university studies, exposing them to Western ideals and values. Meanwhile, a savvy fundamentalist cleric was biding his time in a Paris basement. It wouldn't be long before relations crumbled between Iran and Israel, Iran and the U.S,. and Iran and its Jews. Roya recalls the Hakakian house at the corner of Alley of the Distinguished in Tehran as a lush oasis surrounded by fragrant flowers, full of her father's poetry, and brimming with family memories. Located in the heart of a trendy neighborhood, across the street from the Shah's charity organization, the tall juniper trees, fragrant honeysuckle, and gold mezuzah mounted on the door frame set it apart from the rest of the homes. Roya's father, Haghnazar, was a poet and a respected headmaster at a Hebrew school. Roya, which means dream in Persian, was a budding poet herself with the typical hopes and dreams of a Jewish teenage girl. ROYA: Prior to the revolution, life in an average Tehran Hebrew Day School looked very much like life in a Hebrew Day School anywhere else. In the afternoons we had all Hebrew and Jewish studies. We used to put on a Purim show every year. I wanted to be Esther. I never got to be Esther. We had emissaries, I think a couple of years, from Israel, who came to teach us how to do Israeli folk dance. MANYA: There were moments when Roya recalls feeling self-conscious about her Jewishness, particularly at Passover. That's when the family spent two weeks cleaning, demonstrating they weren't najes, or dirty Jews. The work was rewarded when the house filled with the fragrance of cumin and saffron and Persian dishes flowed from the kitchen, including apple and plum beef stew, tarragon veal balls stuffed with raisins, and rice garnished with currants and slivers of almonds. When her oldest brother Alberto left to study in America, a little fact-finding work on Roya's part revealed that his departure wasn't simply the pursuit of a promising opportunity. As a talented cartoonist whose work had been showcased during an exhibition in Tehran, his family feared Alberto's pen might have gone too far, offending the Pahlavi regime and drawing the attention of the Shah's secret police. Reports of repression, rapid modernization, the wide gap between Tehran's rich and the rest of the country's poor, and a feeling that Iranians weren't in control of their own destiny all became ingredients for a revolution, stoked by an exiled cleric named Ruhollah Khomeini who was recording cassette tapes in a Paris basement and circulating them back home. SABA: He would just sit there and go on and on for hours, going against the Shah and West toxification. And then the recordings ended up in Iran. He wasn't even in Iran until the Shah left. MANYA: Promises of democracy and equality galvanized Iranians of all ages to overthrow the Shah in February 1979. Even the CIA was surprised. SABA: I think a lot of people didn't believe it. Because number one, the Shah, the son, was getting the most amount of military equipment from the United States than anyone in the Middle East and in the Persian Gulf. And the idea was: you protect us in the Gulf, and we will give you whatever you need. So they never thought that a man with a beard down to his knee was able to overthrow this regime that was being propped up and supported by America, and also the Europeans. Khomeini comes in and represents himself as a person for everyone. And he was brilliant in the way he spoke about it. And the reason why this revolution was also successful was that it wasn't just religious people who supported Khomeini, there was this concept you had, the men with the turbans, meaning the religious people, and the you know, the bow ties or the ties, meaning the secular man, a lot of them who were sent by the Shah abroad to Europe and America to get an education, who came back, saw democracy there, and wanted it for their country. MANYA: Very few of the revolutionaries could predict that Tehran was headed in the opposite direction and was about to revert to 16th Century Shia Islamic rule. For almost a year, Tehran and the rest of the nation were swept up in revolutionary euphoria. Roya recalls how the flag remained green, white, and red, but an Allah insignia replaced its old sword-bearing lion. New currency was printed, with portraits bearing beards and turbans. An ode to Khomeini became the new national anthem. While the Shah had escaped on an Air France flight, corpses of his henchmen graced the front pages of newspapers alongside smiling executioners. All celebrated, until the day one of the corpses was Habib Elghanian, the Jewish philanthropist who supported all of Iran's Hebrew schools. Charged and convicted as a Zionist spy. Elders in the community remembered the insurmountable accusations of blood libel during darker times for Iran's Jews. But younger generations like Roya's, who had not lived through the eras of more ruthless antisemitism and persecution, continued to root for the revolution, regardless of its victims. Meanwhile, Roya's Jewish day school was taken over by a new veiled headmistress who replaced Hebrew lessons with other kinds of religious instruction, and required robes and headscarves for all the students. ROYA: In the afternoons, from then on, we used to have lessons in a series of what she called: ‘Is religion something that you inherit, or is it something that you choose?' And so I think the intention, clearly, was to convince us that we didn't need to inherit our religions from our parents and ancestors, that we ought to consider better choices. MANYA: But when the headmistress cut short the eight-day Passover break, that was the last straw for Roya and her classmates. Their revolt got her expelled from school. Though Jews did not universally support Khomeini, some saw themselves as members of the Iranian Communist, or Tudeh Party. They opposed the Shah and the human rights abuses of his monarchy and cautiously considered Khomeini the better option, or at least the lesser of two evils. Alarmed by the developments such as Elghanian's execution and changes like the ones at Roya's school, Jewish community leaders traveled to the Shia holy city of Qom to assure the Supreme Leader of their loyalty to Iran. SABA: They did this because they wanted to make sure that they protected the Jewish community that was left in Iran. Khomeini made that distinction: ‘I am not against Jews, I'm against Zionists. You could be Jewish in this country. You cannot be a Zionist in this country.' MANYA: But that wasn't the only change. Right away, the Family Protection Law was reversed, lifting a law against polygamy, giving men full rights in divorce and custody, and lowering the marriage age for girls to nine. Women were banned from serving as judges, and beaches and sports events were segregated by gender. But it took longer to shut down universities, albeit for only two years, segregate public schools by gender, and stone to death women who were found to have committed adultery. Though Khomeini was certainly proving that he was not the man he promised to be, he backed away from those promises gradually – one brutal crackdown at a time. As a result, the trickle of Jews out of Iran was slow. ROYA: My father thought, let's wait a few years and see what happens. In retrospect, I think the overwhelming reason was probably that nobody believed that things had changed, and so drastically. It seemed so unbelievable. I mean, a country that had been under monarchy for 2,500 years, couldn't simply see it all go and have a whole new system put in place, especially when it was such a radical shift from what had been there before. So I think, in many ways, we were among the unbelievers, or at least my father was, we thought it could never be, it would not happen. My father proved to be wrong, nothing changed for the better, and the conditions continued to deteriorate. So, so much catastrophe happened in those few years that Iran just simply was steeped into a very dark, intense, and period of political radicalism and also, all sorts of economic shortages and pressures. And so the five years that we were left behind, that we stayed back, changed our perspective on so many things. MANYA: In November 1979, a group of radical university students who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seized hostages, and held them for 444 days until President Ronald Reagan's inauguration on January 20, 1981. During the hostages' captivity, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. The conflict that ensued for eight years created shortages on everything from dairy products to sanitary napkins. Mosques became distribution centers for rations. ROYA: We stood in line for hours and hours for eggs, and just the very basic things of daily life. And then it became also clear that religious minorities, including Jews, would no longer be enjoying the same privileges as everyone else. There were bombings that kept coming closer and closer to Tehran, which is where we lived. It was very clear that half of my family that was in the United States could not and would not return, because they were boys who would have been conscripted to go to war. Everything had just come apart in a way that was inconceivable to think that they would change for the better again. MANYA: By 1983, new laws had been passed instituting Islamic dress for all women – violations of which earned a penalty of 74 lashes. Other laws imposed an Islamic morality code that barred co-ed gatherings. Roya and her friends found refuge in the sterile office building that housed the Jewish Iranian Students Association. But she soon figured out that the regime hadn't allowed it to remain for the benefit of the Jewish community. It functioned more like a ghetto to keep Jews off the streets and out of their way. Even the activities that previously gave her comfort were marred by the regime. Poetry books were redacted. Mountain hiking trails were arbitrarily closed to mourn the deaths of countless clerics. SABA: Slowly what they realize, when Khomeini gained power, was that he was not the person that he claimed to be. He was not this feminist, if anything, all this misogynistic rule came in, and a lot of people realize they, in a sense, got duped and he stole the revolution from them. MANYA: By 1984, the war with Iraq had entered its fourth year. But it was no longer about protecting Iran from Saddam Hussein. Now the Ayatollah wanted to conquer Baghdad, then Jerusalem where he aspired to deliver a sermon from the Temple Mount. Meanwhile, Muslim soldiers wounded in the war chose to bleed rather than receive treatment from Jewish doctors. Boys as young as 12 – regardless of faith – were drafted and sent on suicide missions to open the way for Iranian troops to do battle. SABA: They were basically used as an army of children that the bombs would detonate, their parents would get a plastic key that was the key to heaven. And the bombs would detonate, and then the army would come in Iranian army would come in. And so that's when a lot of the Persian parents, the Jewish parents freaked out. And that's when they were like: we're getting out of here. MANYA: By this time, the Hakakian family had moved into a rented apartment building and Roya was attending the neighborhood school. Non-Muslim students were required to take Koran classes and could only use designated water fountains and bathrooms. As a precaution, Roya's father submitted their passports for renewal. Her mother's application was denied; Roya's passport was held for further consideration; her father's was confiscated. One night, Roya returned home to find her father burning her books and journals on the balcony of their building. The bonfire of words was for the best, he told her. And at long last, so was leaving. With the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Roya and her mother, Helen, fled to Geneva, and after wandering in Europe for several months, eventually reunited with her brothers in the United States. Roya did not see her father again for five years. Still unable to acquire a passport, he was smuggled out of Iran into Pakistan, on foot. ROYA: My eldest brother left to come to America in the mid-70s. There was a crack in the body of the family then. But then came 1979, and my two other brothers followed. And so we were apart for all those very, very formative years. And then, in 1984, when my mother and I left and my father was left alone in Iran, that was yet another major dramatic and traumatic separation. So, you know, it's interesting that when I look back at the events of 1979, I think, people constantly think about the revolution having, in some ways, blown up Tehran, but it also blew up families. And my own family was among them. MANYA: While her father's arrival in America was delayed, Roya describes her arrival in stages. She first arrived as a Jewish refugee in 1985 and found her place doing what she had always done – writing in Persian – rebuilding a body of work that had been reduced to ashes. ROYA: As a teen I had become a writer, people were encouraging me. So, I continued to do it. It was the thing I knew how to do. And it gave me a sense of grounding and identity. So, I kept on doing it, and it kind of worked its magic, as I suppose good writing does for all writers. It connected me to a new community of people who read Persian and who appreciated what I was trying to do. And I found that with each book that I write, I find a new tribe for myself. MANYA: She arrived again once she learned English. In her first year at Brooklyn College, she tape-recorded her professors to listen again later. She eventually took a course with renowned poet Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry was best known for its condemnation of persecution and imperial politics and whose 1950s poem “Howl” tested the boundaries of America's freedom of speech. ROYA: When I mastered the language enough to feel comfortable to be a writer once more, then I found a footing and through Allen and a community of literary people that I met here began to kind of foresee a possibility of writing in English. MANYA: There was also her arrival to an American Jewish community that was largely unaware of the role Jews played in shaping Iran long before the advent of Islam. Likewise, they were just as unaware of the role Iran played in shaping ancient Jewish life. They were oblivious to the community's traditions, and the indignities and abuses Iranian Jews had suffered, continue to suffer, with other religious minorities to keep those traditions alive in their homeland. ROYA: People would say, ‘Oh, you have an accent, where are you from?' I would say, ‘Iran,' and the Jews at the synagogue would say, ‘Are there Jews in Iran?' MANYA: In Roya's most recent book A Beginner's Guide to America, a sequel of sorts to her memoir, she reflects on the lessons learned and the observations made once she arrived in the U.S. She counsels newcomers to take their time answering what might at first seem like an ominous or loaded question. Here's an excerpt: ROYA: “In the early days after your arrival, “Where are you from?” is above all a reminder of your unpreparedness to speak of the past. You have yet to shape your story – what you saw, why you left, how you left, and what it took to get here. This narrative is your personal Book of Genesis: the American Volume, the one you will sooner or later pen, in the mind, if not on the page. You must take your time to do it well and do it justice.” MANYA: No two immigrants' experiences are the same, she writes. The only thing they all have in common is that they have been uprooted and the stories of their displacement have been hijacked by others' assumptions and agendas. ROYA: I witnessed, as so many other Iranian Jews witness, that the story of how we came, why we came, who we had been, was being narrated by those who had a certain partisan perspective about what the history of what Jewish people should be, or how this history needs to be cast, for whatever purposes they had. And I would see that our own recollections of what had happened were being shaded by, or filtered through views other than our own, or facts other than our own. MANYA: As we wrap up this sixth and final episode of the first season of The Forgotten Exodus, it is clear that the same can be said about the stories of the Jewish people. No two tales are the same. Jews have lived everywhere, and there are reasons why they don't anymore. Some fled as refugees. Some embarked as dreamers. Some forged ahead without looking back. Others counted the days until they could return home. What ties them together is their courage, perseverance, and resilience–whether they hailed from Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, or parts beyond. These six episodes offer only a handful of those stories–shaped by memories and experiences. ROYA: That became sort of an additional incentive, if not burden for me to, to be a witness for several communities, to tell the story of what happened in Iran for American audiences, to Jews, to non-Iranian Jews who didn't realize that there were Jews in Iran, but also to record the history, according to how I had witnessed it, for ourselves, to make sure that it goes down, as I knew it. MANYA: Iranian Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who in the last century left their homes in the Middle East to forge new lives for themselves and future generations. Many thanks to Roya for sharing her family's story and for helping us wrap up this season of The Forgotten Exodus. If you're listening for the first time, check out our previous episodes on Jews from Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, and Sudan. Go to ajc.org/theforgottenexodus where you'll also find transcripts, show notes, and family photos. There are still so many stories to tell. Stay tuned in coming months. Does your family have roots in North Africa or the Middle East? One of the goals of this series is to make sure we gather these stories before they are lost. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to find more of these stories. Call The Forgotten Exodus hotline. Tell us where your family is from and something you'd like for our listeners to know such as how you've tried to keep the traditions and memories alive. Call 212.891.1336 and leave a message of 2 minutes or less. Be sure to leave your name and where you live now. You can also send an email to theforgottenexodus@ajc.org and we'll be in touch. Tune in every Friday for AJC's weekly podcast about global affairs through a Jewish lens, People of the Pod, brought to you by the same team behind The Forgotten Exodus. Atara Lakritz is our producer, CucHuong Do is our production manager. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Sean Savage, Ian Kaplan, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name, for making this series possible. And extra special thanks to David Harris, who has been a constant champion for making sure these stories do not remain untold. You can follow The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can sign up to receive updates at AJC.org/forgottenexodussignup. The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC. You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed the episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.
Despite breathing life in the bid to restore Shah Tahmasp II to the throne in Persia, Nader is soon caught up in the petty intrigues of his unstable King. Resulting in Nader launching a military coup to firmly take control of the Safavid army. Modernizing and reshaping it into a ferociously effective force. Then embarking on campaign in 1729, displaying sheer strategic and tactical military brilliance to win a series of astonishing victories to dislodge the Afghan Hotaks from their occupation of Iran. Returning Tahmasp to his rightful place, but in service to Nader, the Shah in all but name. If you would like to support my podcast directly, you can kindly do so here: www.patreon.com/warlordsofhistory Check out The History of Persia podcast: www.historyofpersiapodcast.com
Under the shadow of a crumbling Safavid Iranian Empire, torn apart by rebellions, foreign heavyweights and destined to fall to the Afghan Hotak dynasty in 1722, Nader is pulled into the chaotic maelstrom. Emerging from the rubble as a rogue warlord within Khorasan until a renegade Safavid prince (Tahmasp II) appears in the region, looking to regain the empire. Nader entering his service and quickly proving himself indispensable to the Iranian Shah in exile, headlined by Nader's engineering of a stunning victory over the Abdali Afghans at the Battle of Sangan in 1727. If you would like to support my podcast directly, you can kindly do so here: www.patreon.com/warlordsofhistory Check out Based on a True Story podcast: www.basedonatruestorypodcast.com
When the Shah of the Safavid empire died in 1576, three of his sons would eventually become Shah. But the real power behind the scenes was their sister, Pari Khan Khanum, a brilliant strategist and political thinker who maintained control of the kingdom until it led to her tragic death. Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Merch! — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and pre-order its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story' See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Abbas the Great, the shah of the Safavid empire, was great military leader, reformer, and diplomat. He took a shrinking, disintegrating Persian empire and enabled it to grow its greatest extent, in no small part because of his own personal military campaigns
“The Evolution of Persian Music” - Part 19 of the Roqe Media series, The Contemporary History of Iran. What was Persian music before the 20th Century? How do we assess the development of sound and musical traditions in Iran during the Safavid and Qajar eras - important influences that may be heard all the way to today? American musician and ethnomusicologist, Dr. Margaret Caton, author of the new book, “A Persian Ode: Musical Life in Safavid and Qajar Iran,” joins Jian Ghomeshi from Los Angeles for a fascinating, entertaining, and non-traditional journey through the sounds and music of Persia in the periods leading to modern Iran, examined within a broader socio-economic, cultural and political context.
In this episode, Emily Neumeier is joined by Özlem Yıldız and Nicole Emser Marcel to discuss podcasting in the classroom, reflecting on the unique challenges and benefits of taking on a research project whose final product is geared for a more general audience—the wider public. They also offer some more practical advice and insights for listeners who are interested in using podcasting in their own pedagogy. The podcast series under discussion is forthcoming. You can visit and listen to the STELLA ONLINE: Monument Biography podcast here: https://www.stellaonline.art/monument-bio Emily Neumeier is Assistant Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at Temple University. She aims to encourage her students to explore emerging technologies in their own research and engage in public scholarship. Özlem Yıldız is a Ph.D. student in art history at Temple University in Philadelphia, focusing on cross-cultural exchanges in Ottoman and Safavid illustrated manuscripts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She holds an MA in history of Islamic art from SOAS University of London, an MA in history and a BA in political sciences from Sabancı University in Istanbul. Nicole Emser Marcel studies modern and contemporary Caribbean art at Temple University in Philadelphia. Her research interests include iconoclasm, geography, feminist theory, and religion. She holds a M.A. in Art History from American University and a B.A. in History from Xavier University. She previously taught at IUPUI in Indianapolis and worked at the National Women's History Museum in Washington, DC.
When I/we think about the early modern relationship between France and Persia, Montesquieu's 1721 Lettres persanes is a text that comes to mind immediately. Susan Mokhberi's The Persian Mirror: Reflections of the Safavid Empire in Early Modern France (Oxford UP, 2019) is a kind of a pre-history of Montesquieu's work that is, in different ways, more of a commentary on France and the French than Persia or Persians during this period. The Persian Mirror's several chapters examine a range of cultural and political texts, including letters, literature, travel writing, and material artifacts from the period, excavating the French relationship to Persia and Persian culture as both reflective and distorting. Distinct from other sites in the region, Persia fascinated the French who were also hopeful that a political alliance with the Safavid Empire might work to counter the powerful Ottoman Empire. French observers in the period lingered on different forms of affinity between France and Persia while also tracking and commenting on the cultural divide that was evident in diplomatic and other exchanges between the two powers. The book brings together analysis of the French cultural imagination of Persia with a careful reading of real-life encounters such as the visit to France by the Persian ambassador Mohamed Beg in 1715. In addition to the perceptions of a common ground between cultures and political regimes, Franco-Persian relations also included misunderstanding and conflict. Concerns about the resemblance between France and Persia morphed and grew as political critiques of despotism, political power, decadence, and inequality emerged and proliferated in the period. After the fall of the Safavid Empire, France's anxious attention focused with increasing intensity on the Ottoman Empire into the later eighteenth century. Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
When I/we think about the early modern relationship between France and Persia, Montesquieu's 1721 Lettres persanes is a text that comes to mind immediately. Susan Mokhberi's The Persian Mirror: Reflections of the Safavid Empire in Early Modern France (Oxford UP, 2019) is a kind of a pre-history of Montesquieu's work that is, in different ways, more of a commentary on France and the French than Persia or Persians during this period. The Persian Mirror's several chapters examine a range of cultural and political texts, including letters, literature, travel writing, and material artifacts from the period, excavating the French relationship to Persia and Persian culture as both reflective and distorting. Distinct from other sites in the region, Persia fascinated the French who were also hopeful that a political alliance with the Safavid Empire might work to counter the powerful Ottoman Empire. French observers in the period lingered on different forms of affinity between France and Persia while also tracking and commenting on the cultural divide that was evident in diplomatic and other exchanges between the two powers. The book brings together analysis of the French cultural imagination of Persia with a careful reading of real-life encounters such as the visit to France by the Persian ambassador Mohamed Beg in 1715. In addition to the perceptions of a common ground between cultures and political regimes, Franco-Persian relations also included misunderstanding and conflict. Concerns about the resemblance between France and Persia morphed and grew as political critiques of despotism, political power, decadence, and inequality emerged and proliferated in the period. After the fall of the Safavid Empire, France's anxious attention focused with increasing intensity on the Ottoman Empire into the later eighteenth century. Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies
When I/we think about the early modern relationship between France and Persia, Montesquieu's 1721 Lettres persanes is a text that comes to mind immediately. Susan Mokhberi's The Persian Mirror: Reflections of the Safavid Empire in Early Modern France (Oxford UP, 2019) is a kind of a pre-history of Montesquieu's work that is, in different ways, more of a commentary on France and the French than Persia or Persians during this period. The Persian Mirror's several chapters examine a range of cultural and political texts, including letters, literature, travel writing, and material artifacts from the period, excavating the French relationship to Persia and Persian culture as both reflective and distorting. Distinct from other sites in the region, Persia fascinated the French who were also hopeful that a political alliance with the Safavid Empire might work to counter the powerful Ottoman Empire. French observers in the period lingered on different forms of affinity between France and Persia while also tracking and commenting on the cultural divide that was evident in diplomatic and other exchanges between the two powers. The book brings together analysis of the French cultural imagination of Persia with a careful reading of real-life encounters such as the visit to France by the Persian ambassador Mohamed Beg in 1715. In addition to the perceptions of a common ground between cultures and political regimes, Franco-Persian relations also included misunderstanding and conflict. Concerns about the resemblance between France and Persia morphed and grew as political critiques of despotism, political power, decadence, and inequality emerged and proliferated in the period. After the fall of the Safavid Empire, France's anxious attention focused with increasing intensity on the Ottoman Empire into the later eighteenth century. Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
When I/we think about the early modern relationship between France and Persia, Montesquieu's 1721 Lettres persanes is a text that comes to mind immediately. Susan Mokhberi's The Persian Mirror: Reflections of the Safavid Empire in Early Modern France (Oxford UP, 2019) is a kind of a pre-history of Montesquieu's work that is, in different ways, more of a commentary on France and the French than Persia or Persians during this period. The Persian Mirror's several chapters examine a range of cultural and political texts, including letters, literature, travel writing, and material artifacts from the period, excavating the French relationship to Persia and Persian culture as both reflective and distorting. Distinct from other sites in the region, Persia fascinated the French who were also hopeful that a political alliance with the Safavid Empire might work to counter the powerful Ottoman Empire. French observers in the period lingered on different forms of affinity between France and Persia while also tracking and commenting on the cultural divide that was evident in diplomatic and other exchanges between the two powers. The book brings together analysis of the French cultural imagination of Persia with a careful reading of real-life encounters such as the visit to France by the Persian ambassador Mohamed Beg in 1715. In addition to the perceptions of a common ground between cultures and political regimes, Franco-Persian relations also included misunderstanding and conflict. Concerns about the resemblance between France and Persia morphed and grew as political critiques of despotism, political power, decadence, and inequality emerged and proliferated in the period. After the fall of the Safavid Empire, France's anxious attention focused with increasing intensity on the Ottoman Empire into the later eighteenth century. Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies
When I/we think about the early modern relationship between France and Persia, Montesquieu's 1721 Lettres persanes is a text that comes to mind immediately. Susan Mokhberi's The Persian Mirror: Reflections of the Safavid Empire in Early Modern France (Oxford UP, 2019) is a kind of a pre-history of Montesquieu's work that is, in different ways, more of a commentary on France and the French than Persia or Persians during this period. The Persian Mirror's several chapters examine a range of cultural and political texts, including letters, literature, travel writing, and material artifacts from the period, excavating the French relationship to Persia and Persian culture as both reflective and distorting. Distinct from other sites in the region, Persia fascinated the French who were also hopeful that a political alliance with the Safavid Empire might work to counter the powerful Ottoman Empire. French observers in the period lingered on different forms of affinity between France and Persia while also tracking and commenting on the cultural divide that was evident in diplomatic and other exchanges between the two powers. The book brings together analysis of the French cultural imagination of Persia with a careful reading of real-life encounters such as the visit to France by the Persian ambassador Mohamed Beg in 1715. In addition to the perceptions of a common ground between cultures and political regimes, Franco-Persian relations also included misunderstanding and conflict. Concerns about the resemblance between France and Persia morphed and grew as political critiques of despotism, political power, decadence, and inequality emerged and proliferated in the period. After the fall of the Safavid Empire, France's anxious attention focused with increasing intensity on the Ottoman Empire into the later eighteenth century. Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies
When I/we think about the early modern relationship between France and Persia, Montesquieu's 1721 Lettres persanes is a text that comes to mind immediately. Susan Mokhberi's The Persian Mirror: Reflections of the Safavid Empire in Early Modern France (Oxford UP, 2019) is a kind of a pre-history of Montesquieu's work that is, in different ways, more of a commentary on France and the French than Persia or Persians during this period. The Persian Mirror's several chapters examine a range of cultural and political texts, including letters, literature, travel writing, and material artifacts from the period, excavating the French relationship to Persia and Persian culture as both reflective and distorting. Distinct from other sites in the region, Persia fascinated the French who were also hopeful that a political alliance with the Safavid Empire might work to counter the powerful Ottoman Empire. French observers in the period lingered on different forms of affinity between France and Persia while also tracking and commenting on the cultural divide that was evident in diplomatic and other exchanges between the two powers. The book brings together analysis of the French cultural imagination of Persia with a careful reading of real-life encounters such as the visit to France by the Persian ambassador Mohamed Beg in 1715. In addition to the perceptions of a common ground between cultures and political regimes, Franco-Persian relations also included misunderstanding and conflict. Concerns about the resemblance between France and Persia morphed and grew as political critiques of despotism, political power, decadence, and inequality emerged and proliferated in the period. After the fall of the Safavid Empire, France's anxious attention focused with increasing intensity on the Ottoman Empire into the later eighteenth century. Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
When I/we think about the early modern relationship between France and Persia, Montesquieu's 1721 Lettres persanes is a text that comes to mind immediately. Susan Mokhberi's The Persian Mirror: Reflections of the Safavid Empire in Early Modern France (Oxford UP, 2019) is a kind of a pre-history of Montesquieu's work that is, in different ways, more of a commentary on France and the French than Persia or Persians during this period. The Persian Mirror's several chapters examine a range of cultural and political texts, including letters, literature, travel writing, and material artifacts from the period, excavating the French relationship to Persia and Persian culture as both reflective and distorting. Distinct from other sites in the region, Persia fascinated the French who were also hopeful that a political alliance with the Safavid Empire might work to counter the powerful Ottoman Empire. French observers in the period lingered on different forms of affinity between France and Persia while also tracking and commenting on the cultural divide that was evident in diplomatic and other exchanges between the two powers. The book brings together analysis of the French cultural imagination of Persia with a careful reading of real-life encounters such as the visit to France by the Persian ambassador Mohamed Beg in 1715. In addition to the perceptions of a common ground between cultures and political regimes, Franco-Persian relations also included misunderstanding and conflict. Concerns about the resemblance between France and Persia morphed and grew as political critiques of despotism, political power, decadence, and inequality emerged and proliferated in the period. After the fall of the Safavid Empire, France's anxious attention focused with increasing intensity on the Ottoman Empire into the later eighteenth century. Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/french-studies
In episode 54 of Half True History, Dan Parrella tells Pedro Lima (and Chris Crespo) about one of the funniest empires in history, the Safavid Empire! Find out about the Curly Joe of Middle Eastern empires and how they started with a lie and ended like a fart in the wind. Enjoy!
Book presented: "Iran: A Modern History" At the 146th session of the Toronto Book Club held on October 4, 2019, Dr. Abbas Amanat introduces his book “Iran: A Modern History”, and speaks about the modern history of Iran from the Safavid era to the present. "معرفی کتاب: "ایران، تاریخ دوران نوین سخنران: دکتر عباس امانت دکتر عباس امانت در معرفی کتاب از تاریخ ایران از دوران صفوی تا به امروز سخن میگوید تاریخ: ۴ اکتبر ۲۰۱۹
In our most recent public memory, images of the Prophet Muhammad have caused a great deal of controversy, such as satirical cartoons of Muhammad in French magazine Charlie Hebdo, or Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The sometimes violent backlash to these images has reinforced the popular narrative that Islam is aniconic and iconoclastic. In The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images (Indiana University Press, 2019), Christiane Gruber, Professor in the History of Art at the University of Michigan, demonstrates that there is long rich history of images of Muhammad from within the Islamic tradition. The styles, themes, and strategies used to represent the Prophet have significantly shifted and altered over time. Gruber synthesizes an extensive archive of images and leads the reader through various thematic patterns, cultural specificities, and unique examples. We are presented with a detailed overview of textual and visual representations of Muhammad that is placed within a deep understanding of the history of Islamic art. In our conversation we discussed how the iconoclasm narrative has been reinforced, the symbolic Prophet versus a historical Muhammad, why there exists no very early images, the first visual representations of Muhammad, the Prophet as king and hero, representations of Muhammad’s spiritual radiance, images in the context of fraternal Sufi communities, Safavid images and the centering of Shi’a interpretations of Muhammad, images of ‘Ali, Ottoman visual culture, embodying Muhammad through objects and relics, modern renderings of Muhammad, and public scholarship and the constraints of academic writing. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In our most recent public memory, images of the Prophet Muhammad have caused a great deal of controversy, such as satirical cartoons of Muhammad in French magazine Charlie Hebdo, or Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The sometimes violent backlash to these images has reinforced the popular narrative that Islam is aniconic and iconoclastic. In The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images (Indiana University Press, 2019), Christiane Gruber, Professor in the History of Art at the University of Michigan, demonstrates that there is long rich history of images of Muhammad from within the Islamic tradition. The styles, themes, and strategies used to represent the Prophet have significantly shifted and altered over time. Gruber synthesizes an extensive archive of images and leads the reader through various thematic patterns, cultural specificities, and unique examples. We are presented with a detailed overview of textual and visual representations of Muhammad that is placed within a deep understanding of the history of Islamic art. In our conversation we discussed how the iconoclasm narrative has been reinforced, the symbolic Prophet versus a historical Muhammad, why there exists no very early images, the first visual representations of Muhammad, the Prophet as king and hero, representations of Muhammad’s spiritual radiance, images in the context of fraternal Sufi communities, Safavid images and the centering of Shi’a interpretations of Muhammad, images of ‘Ali, Ottoman visual culture, embodying Muhammad through objects and relics, modern renderings of Muhammad, and public scholarship and the constraints of academic writing. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In our most recent public memory, images of the Prophet Muhammad have caused a great deal of controversy, such as satirical cartoons of Muhammad in French magazine Charlie Hebdo, or Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The sometimes violent backlash to these images has reinforced the popular narrative that Islam is aniconic and iconoclastic. In The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images (Indiana University Press, 2019), Christiane Gruber, Professor in the History of Art at the University of Michigan, demonstrates that there is long rich history of images of Muhammad from within the Islamic tradition. The styles, themes, and strategies used to represent the Prophet have significantly shifted and altered over time. Gruber synthesizes an extensive archive of images and leads the reader through various thematic patterns, cultural specificities, and unique examples. We are presented with a detailed overview of textual and visual representations of Muhammad that is placed within a deep understanding of the history of Islamic art. In our conversation we discussed how the iconoclasm narrative has been reinforced, the symbolic Prophet versus a historical Muhammad, why there exists no very early images, the first visual representations of Muhammad, the Prophet as king and hero, representations of Muhammad’s spiritual radiance, images in the context of fraternal Sufi communities, Safavid images and the centering of Shi’a interpretations of Muhammad, images of ‘Ali, Ottoman visual culture, embodying Muhammad through objects and relics, modern renderings of Muhammad, and public scholarship and the constraints of academic writing. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In our most recent public memory, images of the Prophet Muhammad have caused a great deal of controversy, such as satirical cartoons of Muhammad in French magazine Charlie Hebdo, or Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The sometimes violent backlash to these images has reinforced the popular narrative that Islam is aniconic and iconoclastic. In The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images (Indiana University Press, 2019), Christiane Gruber, Professor in the History of Art at the University of Michigan, demonstrates that there is long rich history of images of Muhammad from within the Islamic tradition. The styles, themes, and strategies used to represent the Prophet have significantly shifted and altered over time. Gruber synthesizes an extensive archive of images and leads the reader through various thematic patterns, cultural specificities, and unique examples. We are presented with a detailed overview of textual and visual representations of Muhammad that is placed within a deep understanding of the history of Islamic art. In our conversation we discussed how the iconoclasm narrative has been reinforced, the symbolic Prophet versus a historical Muhammad, why there exists no very early images, the first visual representations of Muhammad, the Prophet as king and hero, representations of Muhammad’s spiritual radiance, images in the context of fraternal Sufi communities, Safavid images and the centering of Shi’a interpretations of Muhammad, images of ‘Ali, Ottoman visual culture, embodying Muhammad through objects and relics, modern renderings of Muhammad, and public scholarship and the constraints of academic writing. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In our most recent public memory, images of the Prophet Muhammad have caused a great deal of controversy, such as satirical cartoons of Muhammad in French magazine Charlie Hebdo, or Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The sometimes violent backlash to these images has reinforced the popular narrative that Islam is aniconic and iconoclastic. In The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images (Indiana University Press, 2019), Christiane Gruber, Professor in the History of Art at the University of Michigan, demonstrates that there is long rich history of images of Muhammad from within the Islamic tradition. The styles, themes, and strategies used to represent the Prophet have significantly shifted and altered over time. Gruber synthesizes an extensive archive of images and leads the reader through various thematic patterns, cultural specificities, and unique examples. We are presented with a detailed overview of textual and visual representations of Muhammad that is placed within a deep understanding of the history of Islamic art. In our conversation we discussed how the iconoclasm narrative has been reinforced, the symbolic Prophet versus a historical Muhammad, why there exists no very early images, the first visual representations of Muhammad, the Prophet as king and hero, representations of Muhammad’s spiritual radiance, images in the context of fraternal Sufi communities, Safavid images and the centering of Shi’a interpretations of Muhammad, images of ‘Ali, Ottoman visual culture, embodying Muhammad through objects and relics, modern renderings of Muhammad, and public scholarship and the constraints of academic writing. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In our most recent public memory, images of the Prophet Muhammad have caused a great deal of controversy, such as satirical cartoons of Muhammad in French magazine Charlie Hebdo, or Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The sometimes violent backlash to these images has reinforced the popular narrative that Islam is aniconic and iconoclastic. In The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images (Indiana University Press, 2019), Christiane Gruber, Professor in the History of Art at the University of Michigan, demonstrates that there is long rich history of images of Muhammad from within the Islamic tradition. The styles, themes, and strategies used to represent the Prophet have significantly shifted and altered over time. Gruber synthesizes an extensive archive of images and leads the reader through various thematic patterns, cultural specificities, and unique examples. We are presented with a detailed overview of textual and visual representations of Muhammad that is placed within a deep understanding of the history of Islamic art. In our conversation we discussed how the iconoclasm narrative has been reinforced, the symbolic Prophet versus a historical Muhammad, why there exists no very early images, the first visual representations of Muhammad, the Prophet as king and hero, representations of Muhammad’s spiritual radiance, images in the context of fraternal Sufi communities, Safavid images and the centering of Shi’a interpretations of Muhammad, images of ‘Ali, Ottoman visual culture, embodying Muhammad through objects and relics, modern renderings of Muhammad, and public scholarship and the constraints of academic writing. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Episode 458 with Kathryn Babayan hosted by Nir ShafirIn the seventeenth century, the city of Isfahan flourished as the capital of the Safavid Empire. How did this vibrant and growing city shape the very nature of its inhabitants? In this episode, we speak to Kathryn Babayan about how the city’s residents learned to read its new architecture and social life and how this budding urbanity in turn developed new ways of being and belonging among its residents. She focuses specifically on anthologies, those personal collections of letters, paintings, and poems that survive today by the thousands. These anthologies, curated and preserved by urbanites over generations, are one of the finest testaments to the new subjectivities of the early modern city in the Safavid realms.« Click for More »
This episode focuses on the early modern period exploring the history of the Safavid dynasty (1501-1722); rituals and banquets at the court of Shah Abbas I (1571-1629); the architecture of Isfahan and English travellers to Isfahan. It features a discussion with Dr Sussan Babaie, Andrew W. Mellon Reader in the Arts of Iran and Islam, Courtauld Institute of Art, and Dr Jan Loop, Professor in Early Modern History at the University of Kent.
In the final part of history of Iran, we are talking about Safavid, Afsharid, Zand, Qajar and Pahlavi dynasty and at the end Islamic Republic of Iran. With this, brief History of Iran will finish. For the next episodes, according to the issue, we will discuss about history in different time in detail. Aryana Travel Agency has some group tours in few months later, you can find more information and book it here: Cyrus Group Tour
It's time to conclude the story of arguably the greatest Sultan in the history of the Ottoman Empire. Join Jack and Lauren as they discuss the siege of Vienna, a conflict with the Persians, civil war, and matters of succession on this week's episode.
Learn the basics about three major empires and their rulers!
In an exciting special episode we talk about the history behind the current Iran protests. Starting with the formation of Iran from the Safavid era we chart the introduction of Shia Islam to the region, the project of conversion, the the social structure shaped by the relationship between religious clergy and the government. We examine...
Jacob Shapiro and Kamran Bokhari discuss some recent anomalies in the Middle East and consider the relationship between sectarianism and nationalism in the Muslim world. Sign up for free updates on topics like this! Go here: hubs.ly/H06mXwR0 TRANSCRIPT: Jacob L. Shapiro: Hi everyone and welcome to another Geopolitical Futures podcast. I'm sorry that we missed last week but we're back this week and I am joined once again by Kamran Bokhari, who is one of our senior analysts. Nice to have you back Kamran. Kamran Bokhari: It's good to be back Jacob. JLS: And we're going to pick up a little bit where we left off last week, or not last week, two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, we were talking about the situation between Saudi Arabia and Qatar and we thought we'd just have a more general conversation this week about the Middle East, Islam, maybe some nationalism to throw in there. And but Kamran before we get started, we just noticed a report before we were recording that the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul, Iraq apparently has been destroyed in some kind of explosion. This mosque is important because it's where the ISIS founder and leader al-Baghdadi actually declared the caliphate years ago. You were telling me that it kind of struck you as weird. Why was it weird to you, what's going on do you think with this report? KB: We've seen ISIS and other jihadist groups attack mosques of Muslims that they don't deem to be “true Muslims” or from their point of view deviant Muslims. But this is anomalous in that ISIS would actually blow up a mosque that it has been using and it's been sort of a place from where they declared their caliphate and something that they've used. Now, it could be that there may be things or something that's in that mosque that they didn't want coalition forces to get their hands on, so they decided to go ahead and destroy the facility. But it's still very odd that they would take a risk like that because they are already on the defensive and why would they do something that could potentially cause them great backlash. JLS: Yeah, I think one of the things I was thinking about though was according to the reports Iraqi security forces were approaching the mosque and they blew it up as sort of a way to defend themselves and not let the mosque fall into enemy hands, necessarily. But I think this is an example of how ISIS has a very pragmatic ideology. We think of them as religious fanatics, and they are religious fanatics, but they also deal with things pragmatically, especially the defense of the territories and places that they defend and it's something that just popped into my head. It's also strange that fundamentalist groups like this also always seem to have an aversion to anything resembling idolatry. ISIS was famous for blowing up a lot of these antiquities in Palmyra and other places that they've been or taking the antiquities and selling them on the black market. They don't really care about big beautiful structures or things like that. I think in some ways they think of structures as something that the Saudis are building. You think about the Saudis and all the stuff they are building around the Kaaba in Mecca, that sort of comes to mind. And ISIS has always been more spartan, has always been not attached to I don't know larger images or beautiful mosques, that's not really what it's about. So yeah, don't you think it could just be a symbol of their pragmatism in general? KB: I think you are onto something here that's important. I think that what you said in the beginning is that we tend to look at these groups as very rigid in their interpretation of religious text and whatnot, which is true on one level. But on another level, they display a great deal of, for lack of a better term, pragmatism or they make things up as they go and they change interpretations and they adopt interpretations that normally would not be the case. And I think that given the way that ISIS has evolved and grown, one of the key things in their toolkit has been that you don't stick with necessarily the old formulations or understandings of religious texts. As far as buildings are concerned, I think they look at it from a utilitarian point of view. And then of course, this is war, and I think that in war they tend to be a bit more casual about things and because what is at stake is being able to protect themselves as an institution and so buildings may not necessarily be of importance. And again, we're speculating because just not a whole lot of information as to how ISIS blew this up – was it booby-trapped, were there fighters holed up there and they blew themselves up because they didn't want to get caught or wanted to achieve “martyrdom” and especially given it being Ramadan or the tail end of Ramadan. And so there are just too many unanswered questions. JLS: Well another report I wanted to ask you about Kamran, and I haven't raised this with you before but we'll see what you think about it, is that I hadn't realized this but I read a report today that there are actually a number of polio cases in Deir el-Zour in particular but also in Raqqa and other places that the Islamic State and even in other places that the Islamic State is not controlling in Syria and in Iraq right now. And for some reason that really struck me on sort of a symbolic level. I think there maybe is not a better symbol for Western science than vaccines. And in some ways vaccines have had a little bit of a troubled history in the Muslim world, right? There were all those allegations of CIA agents posing in Pakistan as doctors who were giving polio vaccines and that ruining trust in Pakistan for doctors. And Pakistan remains one of the places where polio still exists and – in part because of that distrust. And I don't think that ISIS meant for polio to sprout back up in Syria. I'm not even saying that it's really their fault. We know that you know in a lot of these war-torn places, things like basic hygiene are some of the first things to go. We're seeing a cholera outbreak in Yemen right now, which is affecting tens if not hundreds of thousands of people. But I just wonder how you react to that. On the one hand, ISIS is really staked some of its legitimacy on behaving like a state and on providing basic services and the Assad regime has done some of that too. But at the same time, I think we're really beginning to see both in Syria and some parts of Iraq and Yemen where these wars have been going on for so long, we're beginning to really see the total breakdown of bureaucracy and some of the basics that we've come to expect of 21st century society. So, I just wonder what you think about all of those things that I just threw at you and whether it was as striking to you as it was striking to me. KB: It is striking, and what's striking to me is that wherever there's a jihadist entity that is taking control of an ungoverned space and set up shop and declared an emirate or a caliphate – I mean the parallel with Pakistan is very apt – that we see these diseases that we thought had been largely eradicated from the rest of the world like polio and cholera, they begin to emerge. And obviously it has a lot to do with the lack of governance, sanitation being very poor quality, hygiene not being maintained. A lot of it just may be because of the lack of resources. And it really speaks to the idea that somehow the caliphate was a place where people should migrate to in terms of the recruits of ISIS, people who were inspired by ISIS. One of the things that ISIS was saying to people all across the world was come join the caliphate, you know, you need to come to the land where the caliphate exists. And so that's really a blow to that idea that life is so harsh and we can only speculate as to the availability of food supply and other basic services that we have taken granted for in pretty much the rest of the world. I mean even in Pakistan, even in Syria, there are places that do not have this kind of situation. In fact, these are really small pockets of territory where you have the outbreak of such diseases. In Pakistan, we did have that whole thing about the CIA and the conspiracy theory amongst the jihadists, amongst the Pakistani Taliban and their supporters that we should not allow our children to be immunized by doctors because somehow this is a CIA plot to undermine fertility or trying to gain intelligence through the dispensation of vaccines. But at the same time, it really speaks about how really primitive society and governance becomes once jihadists take over. It speaks to the lack of facilities and the lack of resources and you know utter lack of sophistication when it comes to statecraft or just dispensing basic services – collecting garbage, dealing with cleanliness, having a place where people can be treated for you know injuries or wounds. After all, one of the major enterprises of groups like ISIS and the Taliban is warfare. You would think that they would invest in hospitals. But it seems like this is the place where they were at the very least cutting corners. JLS: Yeah, that's fair enough. Well that was a curve ball to start off with but I want to take us back to something that some of our readers have written in to ask us to talk about. And there's not a better person to ask this question than you Kamran. Tell us the difference in a short group of words about what is the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, what is the big deal, why are Sunnis and Shiites always fighting each other throughout the Middle East and where does this go from here? KB: So initially when it all started, it started right after the death of the prophet. And at the time, there was nothing called a Sunni or a Shia. These were categories that developed many, many years later – many decades later and became full-fledged sects, rival sects over centuries. But at the time, the question was, who is going to succeed the prophet because the prophet himself is reported to have said that when God sent one prophet to the children of Israel and would take him away then he would be replaced by another prophet but after me there are no more prophets. And then his companions and his followers asked, “Well, prophet who will guide us and who will lead us?” And he said there will be caliphs and there will be many, some of whom you would love and they would love you and some of whom would despise you and you would despise you in return and that was sort of the end of that story. But the unanswered question was, well ok, who succeeds the prophet? So those who became later on Sunnis decided to go with an individual by the name of Abu Bakr who was the closest friend of the prophet and an associate and he was an individual of advanced age. But those who later on became Shia, and much later on, said no, the cousin of the prophet and who also happened to be his son-in-law, Ali, is most deserving of the position because he spent so much time, he's young, he's energetic, he's demonstrated his capability as a top aide and also on the battlefield. And eventually that whole dispute over time led to a divide and there was a very early civil war issue on this as well during the time of the third caliph, I would say in the '50s. Eventually, jurisprudence that differed between the two sects didn't emerge until well after, I would say 300 years after, the prophet migrated from Mecca to Medina and established the first Islamic polity. But really the sect, as in full-fledged sects, they didn't emerge – the Shia and the Sunni – in the theological sense until well into the 16th century when the Safavid Empire in Iran adopted Shia Islam as a state religion and expected people to be or subscribe to what became Shia Islam and then Shia Islam is broken down into subsects just as the Sunni side is fragmented. JLS: How would you describe the relationship in terms of its relationship to nationalism currently right now? So there are a lot of different nation-states in the Middle East: there's Iraq, there's Jordan, there's Saudi Arabia, there's Egypt. There's a certain level of national pride for the different groups that live in these states. But then the sectarian stuff when you overlay it doesn't always line up exactly with it, right? Because in Iraq there's a majority Arab population and on the one hand because of the sectarianism, they feel closer to Iran. But there are also Arabs; they're not Persians so in that sense they feel closer to Arabs and it's just this whole mess of things so what do you think is the relationship between nationalism and sectarianism? KB: So I think what you're asking is sort of the geopolitics of sectarianism because when it becomes geopolitical, when you have major states or empires as we had back in the Medieval times when Shia/Sunni – I mean the Shia/Sunni conflict is not new. It's been raging and it has assumed different forms in different time periods so the geopolitics of sectarianism, when sectarianism becomes geopolitical, it's no longer simply a religious divide. It is, no you pray differently, you believe in different things and you have a different view of collective history and shared memory. It really becomes ethnic categories so it's almost like a form of nationalism where the Shia identity becomes very primary and the Sunni identity also becomes really highly sensitized and that happens because in the here and now, especially after the late '70s and early '80s, it's because of the rise of Islamism on both sides of the sectarian divide. You have Iran becaming the first Islamist regime in the Muslim world but it subscribes to Shia Islamism or it's an Islamism or Shia variant. At the same time, you have Islamism on the Sunni side and because of this heightened religiosity, the sectarian identity has become almost the primary identity for at least those people who are waging war against each other. So Saudi Arabia looks at Iran and says we don't like Iran because they're Persians but more so because they're Shia and they want to subvert Sunni orthodoxy. And conversely when the Iranians look at the Saudis they see an entity that is trying to undermine the Shia religious creed and mind you the Shia being the minority have mostly been on the receiving end throughout the history of Islam. So there is this sense of minority status that also kicks in and therefore the Iranian identity sort of gets subdued or exists parallel to the Shia identity. Likewise, on the Sunni side, yes we're Saudis, we're Arabs and people in Lebanon are Lebanese and Iraqis have their national identity but as these nation-states are in meltdown mode and there's growing geopolitical sectarianism, it's the sectarian identity that has become the primary thing. I mean those who are fighting the Assad regime in Syria, they're largely driven by the fact that they see an Alawite Shiite conspiracy to destroy Sunnism in Syria and they're defending Sunni Islam against what they deem as a form of deviants, the Alawite Shiite creed. Same thing in Yemen between the Houthis and their opponents. And so the nation-state is still in somewhere; people haven't completely discarded it. But at the same time, because the nation-state has become weak, this sectarian identity has taken center stage. JLS: Is it fair to say that there are less subcategories of Shiites than there are of Sunnis? Like there are more Sunnis in the Middle East than there are Shiites, but would it be fair to say that the Sunni community throughout the entire Middle East is actually much more fractured and has a number of different subsets? Whereas, because maybe there are less Shiites, that camp is more unified? Or would you say there are actually, when you actually look into the camps themselves, there's actually a lot of subdivisions and internal rivalries that maybe don't even bubble up to the surface or that aren't obvious to the casual observer of news in the Middle East? KB: You are absolutely right and you have pointed to a key characteristic of this sectarian conflict that's brewing. So on the Sunni side, you have not just multiple subsects but you have, as I mentioned earlier, the nation-state or the national identity hasn't completely gone away. And you have multiple claimants who represent Sunni Islam. Saudi Arabia has since its founding tried to position itself as not just a leader of the Sunni world or the Arab world but the Islamic world in general. And in recent times with Turkey moving away from a Kemalist version of secularism to a more religious version of secularism, a more religious society not necessarily a religious state, it also sees itself as the leader of the region, the Middle East and of course the wider Islamic world. And ISIS is doing the same thing; al-Qaida claims the leadership of the Islamic world, the Sunni world as well. There is no unified coherent Sunni camp if you will. Now in contrast and in sharp contrast, because the Shia are a minority, their divisions – so the Syrians aren't mainstream, the Syrian Alawites aren't mainstream Shia. They're a heterodox offshoot of mainstream Shia Islam but yet they're close with mainstream Shiites in Iran, in Iraq and in Lebanon. Likewise, you have the Houthis who are Zaidis, who are another form of Shia Islam, which in a way from a doctrinal way is actually not so close to mainstream Shia Islam. It shares a lot more with Sunni Islam, but nonetheless, it is a form of Shia Islam, so therefore we see this alignment with Iran and that Shia camp. And so what we're seeing is a more coherent Shia camp because the Shia are a minority and they have this collective memory that they hark back to, when they have historically been suppressed at the hands of Sunni powers. And now that Sunni Islam has fragmented along multiple lines and one of the things that has really accelerated this fragmentation is the so-called Arab Spring phenomenon or what we call at Geopolitical Futures the hollowing out of the Arab world. You've written about this yourself. And so that has exacerbated the fragmentation on the Sunni side and the Shia look at this and say this is a historic opportunity and I would go on to say that if we look at the history of sectarianism in the Muslim world, it runs on a 500-year cycle. So around 1000 when the Sunni world was fragmenting, we see the rise of Shia policies such as the Fatimid empire in North Africa extending into the Levant and the west coast of the Arabian Peninsula. You had the Buyid empire in what is Mesopotamia and Persia and as time goes on other Shiite polities emerge. But then the Ottomans come back and they reclaim the Sunni center and Sunni Islam once again begins to thrive until the rise of the Safavid empire, which poses a challenge to the Ottomans, and now 500 years later today, we are once again seeing the rise of Shia Islam because Sunni Islam or Sunni Muslim territories are at war with each other. JLS: Kamran on a practical level, is there any significant difference between a Shiite country and Sunni country? Is that going mean anything for the way that particular country acts? Or are those countries just going to act in their geopolitical interest and whatever sect that country happens to be really doesn't play that much into it? I guess to even sharpen the question, does Iran act the way it does in some cases because it is a Shiite country or is that not really something that you can see? KB: At a practical level, different states, different types of states, you know operate more or less the same. You know, you have interests that are material interests and it doesn't matter whether you are Shia or whether you are al-Qaida or ISIS or Sunni or Turkey or whatever. I think that from a practicality point of view, the sect doesn't matter. You have to pursue your imperatives and deal with your constraints like anybody else and actually you're very similar to your rivals. But sect does come into play in terms of behavior, so I'll give you an example. So Iran realizes that it represents a minority sect and a minority ethnicity. They're Persians and they're Shiites in a Middle East that's largely Arab and largely Sunni. And therefore, that creates limitations and so yes they want to expand into Iraq because the majority of Arabs are Shia there. It has developed and cultivated Hezbollah because a majority of Lebanese Muslims are Shia. It's aligned with the Shia because the Alawite regime or the Alawites have dominated the Syrian regime for a long time. It's playing into Yemen to a certain extent because of the Houthis. But it can't go into Saudi Arabia just yet because that's a stronghold of very hardcore Sunni identity and ideology and they won't find so many converts there or supporters. So the Shiite and the Sunni thing does place constraints and limitations in terms of behavior. For example, ISIS only recently, a few weeks ago, was able to stage an attack inside Iran. It's been cultivating, I am pretty sure that it took a long time for it to cultivate the assets to pull off that attack on the shrine of the founder of the Islamic Republic and the Iranian Parliament. But you don't see the volume of attacks that you see even next door in a Shia majority country like Iraq and of course the list goes on and on. So I think that the sect does place constraints in how far a particular power can expand its tentacles and its influence. JLS: The follow-up question to that is I mean really this sectarian battle is focused in the Middle East mainly around the Levant, maybe extending a little bit outwards. But once you get into North Africa or once you get more to South Asia, countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh, you don't have the same type of sectarian rivalry and we see IS trying to expand outwards into these regions especially as it comes under so much pressure in the caliphate itself. Do you think that IS will have trouble finding the same type of equation that allowed it to rise in Syria and Iraq because there isn't that sectarian divide to join on or is there enough subdivision within Sunni Islam and some of these other countries that those are de facto sects already, if that question makes sense? KB: No absolutely and again this is another important point that you raise. What really made ISIS into the jihadist regime it has become, and controlling territory, having a very sophisticated military force and intelligence service and wreaking havoc all across the region and beyond even in the West, is the fact that it was able to consolidate itself in Iraq and Syria because of the sectarian divide. It exploited heavily the Shia/Sunni anxieties on both sides and created space for itself and essentially took over the leadership of first the Sunnis of Iraq because they're a minority in their country and they were disenfranchised after regime change in 2003 that toppled the Saddam regime. And then in the wake of the civil war and uprising against Assad, it tried to take over the leadership of the Sunnis who were trying to battle the Assad regime and trying to topple it. And it really gave them a boost, and exponentially, we saw the growth of ISIS. Now those things as you just mentioned do not exist in North Africa, those conditions. There aren't that many Shia beyond the Levant and beyond the Arabian Peninsula and that sort of heart of the Middle East, no matter which direction you go. You can even go into Central Asia and you won't find the same sectarian polarization, much less Southeast Asia like Indonesia and the Philippines. But I think that having said that, it may not see a major boost; it may take longer for ISIS to develop itself in a place like Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are already a saturated jihadist market if you will. Much less Bangladesh and Indonesia and Malaysia and the Philippines, but there is sufficient chaos in these other countries and internal divides within Sunni Islam and the question of who speaks for the religion. I was speaking to a journalist who's been doing a lot of work in Indonesia and she was telling me about how a version of Wahhabi Islam or Salafi Islam is really growing by leaps and bounds in a country like Indonesia, which was insulated from this ideology for the longest time. And I think that political conditions, the growing religiosity in Muslim societies across the world, these provide for that fertile ground or these are the conditions with which ISIS can latch onto and then begin to expand. So the scale may be different, the timeframe may be different, but I think that there are enough conditions on the ground in these various areas where there aren't any Shiites that will allow and become enablers for ISIS or other groups to expand. JLS: I want to ask you one more question Kamran before we wrap up and it might be an involved question but I think that it's an important one and it's one that I've been thinking about a lot. The sort of smaller version of this question is: Is it possible for nationalism and Islam to coexist? Are those two ideas that can actually be held at the same time in a person's mind and that they make sense or are they mutually exclusive? And if you zoom out a little bit, I would ask that question of all religions. Do you think it's possible for all religions and nationalism to really work in the same type of way or is it that nationalism is sort of at its core, I don't want to say atheistic because it's not that nationalism is going to say that there is no God, but nationalism is going to say that the nation is the most important thing. The defense of the nation, protection of the national interest is the most important all abiding thing that a state must provide for, whereas religion, if you really get down to it and if you want to be ideologically consistent, religion is not going to tolerate anything being the most important thing besides God. They might be willing to have the nation as a subset of that or a caliphate or something like that as a subset of that, but the most important thing is going to be God and if there is a disjuncture between what is interpreted as what God wants versus what is best for the nation, you know usually what God wants is going to win out or what God wants is going to be reinterpreted such that it is in the best interest of the nation. So we started with this strange report of ISIS potentially blowing up one of their own mosques and we've danced around the subject but I wonder if you could sort of speculate for a second about whether nationalism and religion just can't actually fit together or if they can? KB: Well I mean first of all, any religion emanates from a core text or texts that are considered sacred by the believers and those texts are simply texts collecting dust unless the believers operationalize them and it depends on the context, so there is text without context. And those contexts vary over time and we've seen historically – take the case of Islam. Islam has manifested itself in very, very diverse ways and this is not in the here and now, it all goes back to the very earliest centuries of Islam and you see rival groups practicing Islam in very different ways. Yes, there is a core belief that there is no God but God and Muhammad is his last messenger and there is something called a prayer and fasting and charity and pilgrimage and the list can continue depending on what your sectarian persuasion is. But at the end of the day, if we look at the period of the Umayyads, the first dynasty to rule over the Muslim lands and this dynasty took power very early on in 661 and they ruled until the mid-700s and then beyond that in the Iberian Peninsula. That was a dynasty that was built around a clan and it never really – yes it behaved in a religious way, it was motivated by religion but what was dominate was the power of the dynasty, the ruling clan. You had to be from the Umayyad clan. It was father, son and grandson and so on and so forth and it became an imperial dominion and therefore it became a nationalistic entity in some respect. This is obviously pre-nationalism as we understand in a modern world, post enlightenment. But nonetheless, it was not very religious as we understand religion. It wasn't solely religious. And you move through history. You have the various polities that existed. They were geographic and we had multiple competing caliphates. Some of them didn't even call themselves caliphates; they were sultanates. So the Ottomans never really referred to them on a day-to-day basis; the Ottoman emperors referred to them as Sultans. They called themselves the Ottoman Empire; there was an Ottoman identity and Islam was there but it wasn't really in the forefront. And you had divisions, so there is this sort of understanding that somehow the Middle East and the wider Muslim world has adopted nationalism because of the import-export of European thought and through the vehicle of colonialism and then decolonization. Well that's true, but it's not as if the Muslim world was united on the basis of religion. I mean you had multiple competing entities, all throughout history. So I think that nationalism exists in various forms. In the contemporary world, it exists; it manifests itself as the nation-state. The nation-state is the biggest sort of or the most profound expression of nationalism as we understand it. But nationalism has evolved over time so I don't think that Islam is somehow separate or cannot exist. I think that Islam is operationalized in different spatial, temporal settings and they can vary so who is to say which one is pure Islam and which one is veering towards more nationalism. I think it's a hodge-podge and a complex mixture. JLS: I agree with you, although I think just the last thought that I'll close on which came to me as you were talking was that, and you sort of talked in the beginning about how the main split between Sunni and Shiite really happens after the prophet passes away and some people want Abu Bakr to take over as caliph but then others want Ali to take over as caliph and one of the main reasons for Ali was that he was in the family of the prophet, right? So in some ways we might say that for the Shiites the blood has always been a little bit more important than it was in the Sunnis. I know the Umayyads were also – I mean they were a Sunni type of regime if we can even talk about Sunnis existing back then. But they were on that side of the split, right? They believed the chain went through Abu Bakr and that was the legitimate right of succession. But the Shiites think that there is something about being in the prophet's family that is very important, and there is this aspect of blood tied into the religion that maybe isn't there in Sunni Islam. KB: You are absolutely right. I would just sort of modify that quickly and say that for the Shia, leadership of the faith and the community and the Muslim community, the ummah is divinely ordained, so the imams, they are divinely ordained and they follow from the family of the prophet. Whereas Sunnis believe that this is a political position that comes about through political ways and in many ways it could be, some would argue it could be democratic, some could argue it comes with the power of who has the stronger military force. But ultimately, it's a political position for the Sunnis and a more religious position for the Shia. JLS: Yeah so if we were going to grossly over simplify, we might say something along the lines of Sunni Islam is more democratic whereas Shiite Islam tends to more nationalistic principles. KB: The Iranian government would beg to differ with us [laughs]. They would say that we have achieved a hybrid between religion and politics. We have elected officials, even our clerics have been popularly elected. I mean, they would make that assertion. JLS: Yes, but not the supreme leader, correct? KB: Not the supreme leader. Although they would argue that he could be removed by the Assembly of Experts, which is a body of popularly elected leaders or clerics. JLS: Well when they do that, we can talk about it. But in the meantime, Kamran thanks for joining us. It's always a pleasure. For listeners out there, thank you for listening. We're sorry we missed last week but we're back on and we are going to keep doing these once a week and maybe even increase them more. As always, if you have comments and critiques: comments@geopoliticalfutures.com or just leave comments here on Sound Cloud or whatever your medium you're listening to us through and we'll see you out there. Thanks.
We begin the journey of Thomas Dallam, Elizabethan organ-maker and ill-prepared ambassador to the Ottoman Sultan. This first episode, we're not actually going to get to Dallam though. We're setting the stage, introducing some of the background, and following a man named Jenkinson to Safavid Persia. Jenkinson is an interesting figure in his own right, and it's also a way to dip into the world of trade and diplomacy that Dallam was going to find himself in. Thanks for listening! If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here, my Ko-fi is here, and Paypal is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and my website is www.humancircuspodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ahmad Ashraf gives a talk as part of the The Long History of Identity, Ethnicity, and Nationhood workshop In this presentation Professor Ahmad Ashraf discusses the formation of the traditional Iranian and Persian historical narrative, focusing particularly on the period from the Islamic conquest to the Safavid era. The origin of Iran’s traditional history, a mixture of fact and fiction concerning the pre-Islamic era, can be traced to traditions relating to ancient Avestan ideas on the formation of man, the creation of kingship, and social order. These traditions were transmitted orally until the last decades of the Sassanian Empire in the seventh century, when they were formalised into a set of now-lost literary texts. Their reception in the Islamic era was conditioned by factors of random survival and particular use, notably instrumentalised during the Persian cultural revival from the tenth century onwards, when the political context of regional Iranian polities favoured such developments. Elaborating the internal variations while highlighting the comparatively early formalisation of this tradition, Ahmad notes the remarkable fact that this medieval understanding remained the commonly shared historical vision of ‘Iran’ and ‘Persianness’ all the way to the late nineteenth century. Most striking are the things left out of this vision, notably the Achaemenid shahanshahs, a point that emphasises the multiplicity of possibilities in even the most reified and apparently fixed of historical narratives.
In this episode we will be considering the great Islamic Empires of the golden age of the Mughals, the Safavid and the Ottoman Turks. An age of material prosperity and cultural splendour. The golden age of Islam.
May 2, 2014. This conference examines this period that includes not only aspects of cohesion and fracture but also renewal and reconstitution of the Persian-speaking world. The period from early modern to contemporary times features some of the defining moments in the lifespan and legacy of the Persian world. This was a period that witnessed immense interchange and connection at the height of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires. This was also a period marked by connections and contestations between the different peoples and places for whom engagement with Persian remained a crucial enterprise. Long-standing trans-regional currents and emergent local trends produced both broad similarities and stark contrasts regarding the role of Persian literary and cultural norms for different peoples and places. The participants -- Fatemeh Keshavarz, Kevin Schwartz, Amin Tarzi, Muriel Atkin, Wazhmah Osman, Pardis Minuchehr, Willem Floor and Corey Miller -- were asked to consider how connections and contestations around language, literature and culture helped define the shifting contours of the wide world of Persian at different moments and places. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6506
The roots of the Safavid philosophical tradition in some rather ill-tempered debates at Shīrāz.
with Ayfer Karakaya-Stumphosted by Chris GratienThe history of Anatolia's Alevi or Kizilbash community has long been written by outsiders who have variously portrayed them as mysterious, heretical, heterodox, or uncivilized. Alevism has been often juxtaposed with the high religion would-be orthodox Sunni practice. This historical understanding of Alevis has continued to influence the way these communities are represented in the present. In this episode, Ayfer Karakaya-Stump challenges this binary. Drawing on previously unexamined sources produced by the Ottoman Alevi community itself, she seeks a new road to understanding Alevism and the relationship of Alevi communities with the Ottoman and Safavid states, Sufi movements of the time, and the communities that surrounded them.« Click for More »
with Ayfer Karakaya-Stumphosted by Chris GratienThe history of Anatolia's Alevi or Kizilbash community has long been written by outsiders who have variously portrayed them as mysterious, heretical, heterodox, or uncivilized. Alevism has been often juxtaposed with the high religion would-be orthodox Sunni practice. This historical understanding of Alevis has continued to influence the way these communities are represented in the present. In this episode, Ayfer Karakaya-Stump challenges this binary. Drawing on previously unexamined sources produced by the Ottoman Alevi community itself, she seeks a new road to understanding Alevism and the relationship of Alevi communities with the Ottoman and Safavid states, Sufi movements of the time, and the communities that surrounded them.« Click for More »
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Safavid Dynasty, rulers of the Persian empire between the 16th and 18th centuries.In 1501 Shah Ismail, a boy of fifteen, declared himself ruler of Azerbaijan. Within a year he had expanded his territory to include most of Persia, and founded a ruling dynasty which was to last for more than two hundred years. At the peak of their success the Safavids ruled over a vast territory which included all of modern-day Iran. They converted their subjects to Shi'a Islam, and so created the religious identity of modern Iran - although they were also often ruthless in their suppression of Sunni practices. They thrived on international trade, and their capital Isfahan, rebuilt by the visionary Shah Abbas, became one of the most magnificent cities in the world. Under Safavid rule Persia became a cultural centre, producing many great artists and thinkers. With:Robert GleaveProfessor of Arabic Studies at the University of ExeterEmma LoosleySenior Lecturer at the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of ManchesterAndrew NewmanReader in Islamic Studies and Persian at the University of Edinburgh.Producer: Thomas Morris.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Safavid Dynasty, rulers of the Persian empire between the 16th and 18th centuries.In 1501 Shah Ismail, a boy of fifteen, declared himself ruler of Azerbaijan. Within a year he had expanded his territory to include most of Persia, and founded a ruling dynasty which was to last for more than two hundred years. At the peak of their success the Safavids ruled over a vast territory which included all of modern-day Iran. They converted their subjects to Shi'a Islam, and so created the religious identity of modern Iran - although they were also often ruthless in their suppression of Sunni practices. They thrived on international trade, and their capital Isfahan, rebuilt by the visionary Shah Abbas, became one of the most magnificent cities in the world. Under Safavid rule Persia became a cultural centre, producing many great artists and thinkers. With:Robert GleaveProfessor of Arabic Studies at the University of ExeterEmma LoosleySenior Lecturer at the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of ManchesterAndrew NewmanReader in Islamic Studies and Persian at the University of Edinburgh.Producer: Thomas Morris.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Safavid Dynasty, rulers of the Persian empire between the 16th and 18th centuries.In 1501 Shah Ismail, a boy of fifteen, declared himself ruler of Azerbaijan. Within a year he had expanded his territory to include most of Persia, and founded a ruling dynasty which was to last for more than two hundred years. At the peak of their success the Safavids ruled over a vast territory which included all of modern-day Iran. They converted their subjects to Shi'a Islam, and so created the religious identity of modern Iran - although they were also often ruthless in their suppression of Sunni practices. They thrived on international trade, and their capital Isfahan, rebuilt by the visionary Shah Abbas, became one of the most magnificent cities in the world. Under Safavid rule Persia became a cultural centre, producing many great artists and thinkers. With:Robert GleaveProfessor of Arabic Studies at the University of ExeterEmma LoosleySenior Lecturer at the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of ManchesterAndrew NewmanReader in Islamic Studies and Persian at the University of Edinburgh.Producer: Thomas Morris.
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The Battle of Chaldiran was fought in northwestern Persia in 1514. It was fought between the Ottomans (dominant Sunni Muslims from Turkey) and the Safavids (inexperienced Shiite Muslims from Persia). The Ottomans, who had both a numerical advantage and a technological advantage, easily won the battle. However, they chose not to continue the campaign into the Safavid capital. After this battle, the Ottomans experienced a short period of growth, followed by centuries of decline. They were eventually defeated in WWI. As for the Safavids, they experienced a long period of growth until they too were finally overcome by Afghan clans in 1722. For more information, read Worlds Together, Worlds Apart by Robert Tignor et. al. Military History Podcast is sponsored by Armchair General Magazine
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