Conference Program | August 4

Panel 90: The Politics of Iran’s Domestic Economy and Global Economic Relations

• Farian Sabahi University of Turin, Italy
• Hadi Esfahani University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US
  Iran and the Global Economy
• Esfandyar Batmanghelidj Columbia University, United States
  Sanctions, Smuggling and the Cigarette: The Granting of Iran OFAC Licenses to Big Tobacco

Panel 91: Gender, Sexuality, and Literature since the Nineteenth Century

• Dominic Brookshaw Stanford University, United States
• Ali Mir-Ansari Center for the Great Encyclopaedia of Islam, Tehran, Iran
  The Writings of Taj-Mah Afaq al-Dawlah: Poetry and Prose
• Sahar Allamezade-Jones University of Maryland, United States
  ‘Eshqi’s Ideal Woman: A Study of the Representation of Women in “Kafan-e Siyah,” (The Black Shroud) and “Seh Tablow (The Three Tableaux)
• Ana Ghoreishian University of Arizona, United States
  Exhuming the Erotic: A New Critical Look at the Erotic Poetry of Iraj Mirza Jalal al-Mamalek

Panel 92: Empowerment and Marginality in Early 20th–Century Public and National Spheres and Discourses

• Heidi Walcher School of Oriental and African Studies, UK
• Negin Nabavi Montclair State University, United States
  Coffeehouses and the Emergence of Public Space in Early Twentieth Century Iran show abstract

  The Constitutional Revolution in the early part of the twentieth century is considered to have been one of the three critical moments in modern Iranian history, alongside the 1951-1953 oil nationalization movement and the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Not surprisingly, therefore, the constitutional revolution has attracted much scholarly attention with many works published on it. However, amidst all that has been written on the constitutional era, rarely have studies considered the development of this period as constituting an emerging public sphere where a broader public could interact and discuss issues of common and shared concern more effectively. This paper focuses on this understudied aspect of the constitutional period, and explore the ways in which the constitutional experiment laid the grounds for various kinds of public space to develop on the one hand, and on the other, to explore the changes that it brought about in the function of different urban spaces. More specifically, this paper will consider the case of the coffee-house, a space other than the tavern and the mosque which served as a gathering-place primarily for men, and which is thought to have been in existence since the Safavid period. Building on the pioneering study of coffee-houses by Rudi Matthee, and making use of constitutional newspapers, travelogues, memoirs, and police records, this paper will discuss the changing functions of coffee-houses at the time of the constitutional movement. It will, more specifically, consider the kind of place that coffeehouses had become by the early twentieth century, and speculate on how the excitement of the constitutional movement and changing times may have contributed to both the activities within the coffeehouse as well as the kind of people who frequented them.
• Beeta Baghoolizadeh University of Texas at Austin, United States
  Women’s Education in the Early Twentieth Century Press show abstract

  This paper discusses the portrayal of women in the constitutional press. Using Rūznāmah-ʼi Qānūn, Ṣūr-i Isrāfīl, and Dānish as examples of the Iranian press, this paper identifies two distinct approaches to women’s education. Qānūn and Ṣūr-i Isrāfīl, liberal newspapers from the constitutional period, were written by men and intended for the male elite. Dānish, a paper run by women, presented women’s education as crucial for running an efficient household and avoided rhetoric aimed at the society at large. By comparing these newspapers, this study uses women’s education as a means to examine how journalists of the constitutional press handled discussions of European society and lifestyle, especially in relation to women’s rights.
• Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi California State University, Fullerton, United States
  The Tarbiyat Girls’ School of Tehran: Cultivating a Bahā’ī, American, or Nationalist Iranian Education?

Panel 93: Ancient and Middle Persian Languages

• Khodadad Rezakhani London School of Economics, UK
• Mostafa Younesie Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
  Comparative Exploration of the Verb “Be” in Ancient Iranian Greek Inscriptions
• Helen Giunashvili G. Tsereteli Institute of Oriental Studies, Georgia
  Studies on Pahlavi Syntax

Panel 94: Identifying Persian Culture in Anatolia under Achaemenid Rule (I) (sponsored by the Soudavar Foundation)

• Christopher Tuplin University of Liverpool, UK
• C. Brian Rose University of Pennsylvania, US
  Achaemenid Gordion
• Vasilica Lungu Romanian Academy of Sciences, Bucharest, Romania
  Pierre Dupont and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Lyon, France
  Achaemenid Cups: Questions of Production and Distribution
• Askold Ivantchik Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France
  Arrowheads: Tracks of the Achaemenid Army?

Panel 94: Zoroastrian Traces, Motifs, and Inspirations: Folk Religion, Folk Culture, and Revivalism

• Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis The British Museum, London, UK
• Shervin Farridnejad Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany
  On the Anthropomorphism and Theriomorphism of Zoroastrian Iconography in Sasanian Iran
• Mehmet Alici Istanbul University, Turkey
  A Non-Zoroastrian Nowruz Celebration: The Anatolian Nevruz Feast show abstract

  As an ancient-rooted and a living spring-new year festival, Nowruz has influenced all nations and religious traditions that had encountered the Iranian plateau and were neighbors of the Iranian plateau. In this study, I will deal with the similarities and differences between the Zoroastrian-based Nowruz and the non-Zoroastrian Anatolian Nowruz feast. The main idea is to demonstrate the impact and influence of Zoroastrian-Iranian Nowruz on Anatolian communities and to uncover roots of Nowruz which has varied influence on all Anatolian communities, especially Kurds and Zazas moreso than Turks. Additionally, this paper tries to clarify how Nowruz become a non-Zoroastrian festival and to debunk claims that Nowruz is an ancient Turkic spring feast, not to dedicate Anatolian Nowruz to Turks. Every community or ethnicity relates to Nowruz using different concerns in Anatolia. For instance, Turkic tribes that had emigrated from Central Asia to Anatolia interestingly related the Nowruz feast to their origin myth. According to that myth, they were secluded in the Ergenekon area and they had tried to melt the iron mountain. Whenever they had saved themselves, the time of salvation had become a commemorative day. Meanwhile, this day coincided with the first day of the spring season and was celebrated as a New Year and salvation day. Instead of that, they have surprisingly called this feast as Nowruz. Moreover, they embraced Nowruz and claimed it as a Turkic feast. After the Islamizing of Anatolia, especially under Ottoman rule, Nowruz had been celebrated as a semi-official feast and the spring feast had been, and still is, called ‘Nowruz’ in various dialects, such as Sultani Nevruz, Navrez, Navsarız, Mevris, Gulnavriz and so on. Nowruz is celebrated in the Anatolian lands as a non-Zoroastrian festival. However, it has a deeply interesting relationship with the Zoroastrian Nowruz. It will be demonstrated how Nowruz has became as a non-Zoroastrian celebration in Anatolia giving examples such as the table of seven symbolic foods or ‘Haft-Sin,’ the germination of plants bringing to mind the rebirth of nature in Zoroastrian tradition and so on. Historically, Nowruz had been celebrated by Kurds, Turcomans and other communities that have lived in Anatolia. However, Anatolian Nowruz has been celebrated semi-officially and has been alleged as a Turkic feast in recent decades. They have forged on anvil to represent the mythical salvation. Therefore this study will deal with the transformation period of Nowruz from being a cultural celebration to its turn into a legal, official festival.
• Richard Foltz Concordia University, Canada
  Contemporary Neo-Zoroastrianism: Revival or Reaction?

Panel 95: Bābī and Bahā’ī Studies

• Todd Lawson University of Toronto, Canada
• Stephen Lambden University of California, Merced, United States
  The Tafsir Sura Yusuf-Qayyūm al-Asmā’ of the Bāb as the Kitāb al-Ḥusayniyya show abstract

  The first major writing of Sayyid `Alī Muhammad Shirazi, the Bāb (d. 1850 CE), dating from mid. 1844 CE., was a several hundred page, neo-Qur’ānic Arabic text variously known as the Tafsīr Sūra Yūsuf (`Commentary on the Surah of Joseph’, Q.12), the Qayyūm al-asmā’ (Self-Subsisting [Deity] of the [Divine] Names) as well as the Kitāb al-Ḥusayniyya. This work expresses something of the intertextual centrality of the messianic figure of the occulted, soon to “return” third Imam Ḥusayn (d. 61/680). He is the eschatological type of the Biblical-Qur’ānic Joseph. In this paper, aspects of the Bāb’s own messianic, Ḥusaynid persona will be sketched and analyzed in the light of Ḥusayn-related themes and motifs in his complex, multi-faceted, early baṭīnī (“esoteric“) Tafsīr work.
• Armin Eschraghi Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany
  The King and the Mahdi: the Bāb's Views on Political and Religious Authority
• Moojan Momen Independent Scholar, UK
  Who was a Bahā’ī in Qajar Iran?
• Siyamak Zabihi-Moghaddam Independent Scholar, Israel
  The Massacre of Bahā’īs in Yazd in 1903 show abstract

  The massacre of the Baha’is in and around the town of Yazd in 1903 was one of the most severe incidents of religious persecution and mob violence in recent Iranian history. In the course of five weeks, close to a 100 Baha’is were brutally murdered. In spite of its significance, the episode has largely been ignored by scholars. The existing literature emphasizes the role of the Shi‘i clergy as the instigators of the massacre. This study focuses on the role played by Zill al-Sultan, the governor of Isfahan and father of Jalal al-Dawlih, the governor of Yazd. It argues that he had a vested interest in the crisis and that he deliberately took steps which prolonged its duration.

Panel 96: Sources in Safavid Studies (II): Art and Craft

• Sussan Babaie The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK
• Michael Chagnon New York University, United States
  “Cloath’d in Several Modes”: Ethnic Description in Later Safavid Painting
• Amy Landau Johns Hopkins University, United States
  Armenian Textual Sources for the Study of Seventeenth-Century Safavid Art and Architecture
• Jake Benson Curator, Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation and Dar al-Kutub Manuscript Project, Cairo, Egypt
  Naqsh Bar Āb: The Transfer of Paper Marbling Techniques between India, Iran and Turkey
• Aslihan Erkmen Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
  A Unique Illustrated Tazkira of Shaykh Safi al-Din at the Aga Khan Museum Collection

Panel 97: Identifying Persian Culture in Anatolia under Achaemenid Rule (II) (sponsored by the Soudavar Foundation)

• Christopher Tuplin University of Liverpool, UK
• Alexander von Kienlin Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland
  Hybrid Architectural Styles in Western Anatolia: A Persian Impact?
• Latife Summerer University of Munich, Germany
  Searching for Persian Tombs in Anatolia
• Frédéric Maffre University of Bordeaux, France
  Cities and Coins: Tracing the Iranians in Western Asia Minor
• Abolala Soudavar Independent Scholar, United States
  Mithraic Societies: The Lasting Impact of Cyrus’ Conquest of Asia Minor show abstract

  Recent studies have favored a theory by which Mithraic societies in the Roman world are considered as homegrown and independent of any Iranian counterpart. I have tried to prove the contrary. In this presentation, I shall try to show that the starting point of these societies in Anatolia was Cyrus’ conquest of Lydia. I shall then show how these societies went underground to eventually re-emerge under the Romans in a form that was much opposed to the orthodox Zoroastrianism that prevailed in Iran. Their reemergence necessitated a sanitization process that allowed them to survive in a new political and religious environment. Most interestingly, one can trace down these societies to their Anatolian avatars and compare them to their Iranian counterparts.

Panel 98: Women, Power, Sexuality, Religion, and Desire in Contemporary Iran

• Nayereh Tohidi California State University, Northridge, United States
• Sharare Shahrokhi San Jose State University, United States
  Iranian Feminists: Theoretical Challenges
• Suzanne Levi-Sanchez Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, United States
  Iranian Women: Movements, Marriages and Bodies
• Fatemeh Masjedi Zentrum Moderner Orient, Germany
  Female Religious Leaders in Qom
• Tahereh Aghdasifar Emory University, United States
  Repressive Liberation: Iranian Female Desire and U.S. Sexual Exceptionalism

Panel 99: The Mathnawī of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī

• Roxane Haag-Higuchi University of Bamberg, Germany
• Alan Williams University of Manchester, UK
  Mowlavi's Mystical Poetics in the Mathnawī
• Sahba Shayani University of California, Los Angeles, United States
  A Key to the Sublime: An Analysis of Khwāb in Rūmī’s Mathnawī -i Ma'navī
• Maryam Hoseini Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran
  Archetypal Patterns in Mathnawī’s Stories: the Cases of “The King and the Slave Girl,” “The Story of a Prince to whom the Real Kingdom Displayed itself,” and “The King who Liked his Three Sons”
• Eliza Tasbihi Concordia University, Canada
  Unity in Multiplicity: The Story of Daqúqi in Rūmī’s Mathnawī show abstract

  One of the enigmatic tales in the Mathnawi is that of Daquqi (III: 1878 – 2305). This tale describes the latter’s encounter with the seven abdaal. The present paper will explore the spiritual journey of Daquqi, who spends most of his life looking for the hidden friends of God, eventually meets them and then loses them again by making an inappropriate supplication in his thoughts during the prayer. Through the encounter of the One (Daquqi) and the Multiple (the seven abdaals or hidden friends of God), Rumi tackles the notion of wahdat dar kidhrat Unity in Multiplicity. Looking at how Rumi understands wonders “aja‘ib” in regard to the spiritual journey, I aim at examining the symbol and metaphor of wonders, which appears in the form of numbers, and natural elements in the story of Daquqi.

Panel 100: Borderlands, Encounters, Genealogies: Historical Sources and (Thirteenth to Sixteenth Century)

• Evrim Binbaş Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
• Ayfer Karakaya-Stump College of William and Mary, United States
  The Making of the Qizilbash in Ottoman Anatolia According to Newly Discovered Qizilbash/Alevi Sources
• Kazuo Morimoto University of Tokyo, Japan
  A Thirsty Market in the East: Ibn ‘Inaba and His Sayyid Genealogies show abstract

  This presentation examines the career of Ibn ʿInaba (d. 1424), the author of the most well-known sayyid genealogy ʿUmdat al-talib, and puts him in the contexts of the discipline of sayyid genealogies and the post-Mongol Persian historiography. How Ibn ʿInaba established himself as a specialist of sayyid genealogies in Iraq; how he sold his knowledge in Iran and Mawaraannahr; and how his works distinguished – or did not distinguish – themselves from previous works in the field are among the questions posed. Special attention will be paid to his Persian genealogies comprising the whole of humanity as they represent a juncture between the genre of sayyid genealogies and that of post-Mongol Persian universal-history writing.
• Florian Schwarz Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
  Borderland Histories: Writing and Re-Writing Chronicles in Sixteenth-Century Northwestern Iran

Panel 101: State and Society under the Pahlavis: From Re-Crafting History to Commemoration, Negotiation, and Dissent

• Ata Hoodashtian Management Institute of Canada, Montreal, Canada
• Parisa Zahiremami University of Toronto, Canada
  Iranian National Identity and the Ferdowsi Millennium Celebrations of 1934
• Serhan Afacan Leiden University, Netherlands
  Dialectics of State-Society Relations during the Reza Shah Period: Petitioning as a Way of Negotiation
• Katja Foellmer Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany
  Revival of the Past: (Re-)Construction of History in Twentieth-Century Modernizing Iran show abstract

  In 20th century Iran the question of the past as an ideal construction of religion, monarchy and society was intensively discussed in regard to the notion of Iran as a modern nation state. The paper will discuss the role of popular and intellectual communication and state propaganda in Iran in the Pahlavi era in relation to the (re-)construction of history. It will first give a brief review of the principles of the use of pre-Islamic Iranian past as a means of separation in the classical period up to Qajar rule. The conception of Iranian history and particularly the role of pre-Islamic heritage and religion will be discussed afterwards considering the idea of Iranian nation, the criticism of Islamic religion and media development in Pahlavi time.
• Mari Nukii Waseda University, Japan
  Organizations and Social Movements in the Tehran Bazaar after World War II

Panel 102: Comparative Approaches to the Modern Narrative Traditions of Iran and the Arab World

• Michael Beard University of North Dakota, US
  Amy Motlagh American University of Cairo, Egypt
• Amir Moosavi New York University, United States
  Martyrs & Martyrdom in Literature of the Iran-Iraq War and the Lebanese Civil War
• Hanan Hammad Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, United States
  From Orientalism to Khomeinism: Persian Studies in Egypt throughout the Twentieth Century
• Kamran Rastegar Tufts University, United States
  Comparative Modernities: Cultural "Rebirth" in Iran and the Arab World
• Guilan Siassi American University of Paris, France
  The Spectral Promise of Home: Encrypted Memories and Transgenerational Haunting in Shahrnush Parsipur and Assia Djebar

Panel 103: US-Iran Relations: National Narratives and Missed Opportunities

• Tuğrul Keskin Portland State University, United States
• John Tirman Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
  The US-Iran Relationship: National Narratives and Missed Opportunities—Introduction and Method
• Hussein Banai Brown University, United States
  Becoming Enemies: US-Iran Relations During the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988
• Malcolm Byrne George Washington University, United States
  New Evidence on the 1996 Khobar Towers Attack and its Impact on US-Iran Relations
• Mahsa Rouhi University of Cambridge, UK
  The Confrontation over Iran’s Nuclear Program, 2001-2012

Panel 104: Transnational Influences and Affinities and Nationalist and Modernist Trajectories in the Early Twentieth Century

• Farzin Vejdani University of Arizona, United States
• Evan Siegel Independent Scholar, United States
  Mullah Nasr od-Din between Iranism and Turanism
• Filiz Dığıroğlu Marmara University, Turkey
  A Contribution to the Ottoman Intellectual Life: Iranian Second Hand Booksellers, Typographers in Dersaadet
• Alexander Jabbari University of California, Irvine, United States
  Iran without India: Nationalism and the 'Indian Style' in Bahar's Sabkshenasi

Panel 105: Literary and Historical Authorship from the Tenth to the Seventeenth Century: Erudition, Authority, Patronage, and Self-Representation

• Christine van Ruymbeke University of Cambridge, UK
• Domenico Ingenito Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, UK
  The (Iranian) King's Two Bodies: Courtly Elegies against Biological Death
• Rachel Milstein Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
  The Voice of the Poet: Points of View in Persian Painting show abstract

  Literary theories of narratology teach us that various groups of rhetoric devices help the reader trace the identity of the person, whose point of view is expressed in any given part of the narrative. These points of view, named focalizors by contemporary critics, bring to light otherwise hidden levels in the literary work. In this paper I suggest that visual focalizors exist in Persian painting as well and that their presence lead the beholder to a more profound and enriching reading of the pictorial narrative. A prominent place in this poetic artifice is reserved to the image/voice of the author, who is sometimes disguised as a court musician. A representation of a poet in the guise of a singer is explicable in light of the description of court poets in Nizami-i'Arudi's Chahar Maqala. An example of such a poet-musician is the mythological singer Barbad, whose images indeed appear in illustrated Shah-nama manuscripts. Other, and even more telling cases, depict a member of the court reading aloud a written text or handing a manuscript to his royal patron. In certain double-page compositions, this poet/reader and his ruler are seen on one folio, the hero of the text on the facing folio. The double role of the poet as a spokesman of the ruler and as his critic often appears in illuminated frontispieces. In many other cases, however, the poet entrusts his point of view to other personae in, and around the scene, thus enabling the beholder to watch the episode from several points of view. Some of these points of views seem surprisingly subversive, especially when they contradict the message transmitted by other signifying systems, such as the composition. A good case-study of this poetic means is the recurrent depiction of royal courts, in which the hierarchy is emphasized by the composition; another point of view by the focalizor.
• Julia Rubanovich Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
  The Medieval Persian Author on Guard: In Defense of Authorship show abstract

  The extensive and carefully elaborated regulations specified by Rashid al- Din Fazl Allah (ca. 645-718/ca. 1247-1318) in a preface to one of his theological works, concerning the precautions to be taken for the sake of conservation and distribution of his rich literary-historical legacy, reveal a high degree of authorial self-consciousness in the second part of 7th/13th – early 8th/14th centuries. Rashid al-Din's vehement authorial attitude furnishes a vantage point for examining the rising awareness of medieval Persian litterateurs regarding the proprietary rights on their compositions from the inception of Neo-Persian literature in the first half of the 4th/10th century till the 7th/13th century. I hope to address the following cluster of questions in my paper: a) what are the “perils” faced by the medieval author while sending his composition to a free sail in the ocean of literature, in that he loses control over its circulation and possible modification? b) what are the means and devices that the medieval author might conceive of to guard his “progeny” of external menaces, thus promising his work the fortune that he had envisaged in the process of its composition? c) how does the author craft his authorial (and authoritative) relationship vis-à-vis his patron? d) how does the medieval author deal with a delicate issue of his own creative individuality versus the Creator? The examination of these questions will be carried out on the basis of authorial metanarrative statements, located mostly in dībāchas and khātimas to medieval compositions. I shall look into various literary genres, both prose and poetry, and shall make an effort to elucidate – albeit briefly - the evolvement of the concept of authorship in early medieval Persian literature.

Panel 106: Literary Criteria and Intertextuality in Modern Persian Literature

• Leila Pazargadi Nevada State College, United States
• Hamid Rezaeiyazdi University of Toronto, Canada
  Nation of Poets: A Study of the (Arrested) Development of Modern Iranian Novel
• Roxane Haag-Higuchi University of Bamberg, Germany
  The Medium is the Message: Story-Telling and Writing as a Subject of Intertextual Reference in Modern Persian Literature show abstract

  This paper focusses on Abu Torab Khosravi’s short story Divan-e Sumanat (2nd ed. 2001) and Hushang Golshiri’s short novel King of the Benighted (1990). Both works contain intertextual markers in their title and use devices of intertextuality as central means for the production of meaning. By scrutinizing the techniques of literary references employed in these texts, this paper tries to show that intertextuality is used as an instrument to discuss story telling and writing as the crumbling basis of Perisan culture.

Panel 107: (P) Gender, Transgression, Victimization, and Retribution

• Shahla Talebi Arizona State University, United States
• Shaghayegh Fathalizade Independent Scholar, Iran
  Prostitutes in the Qajar Era

Panel 108: Post-9/11 US Foreign Policy toward Iran

• Mansoor Moaddel Eastern Michigan University, United States
• Tuğrul Keskin Portland State University, United States
  American Foreign Policy toward Iran and Turkey in the Post-September 11 Era: A Comparative Analysis of the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran (Abadgaran) and the Justice and Development Party in Turkey
• Leila Piran George Washington University, United States
  Iranian-Americans' Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy: Transnational Advocacy or Nationalist Resurgence?

Panel 109: New Literary and Historical Perspectives on Bābī and Bahā’ī Communities in the Qajar Era

• Franklin Lewis University of Chicago, United States
• Alyssa Gabbay University of Washington, United States
  Prophecy, Poetry and the Legitimization of the Bābī Faith in Nineteenth-Century Iran show abstract

  This paper looks at the significance of poetry in the development and the legitimization of the Babi Faith in 19th-century Iran. Focusing on statements attributed to Sayyid Ali Muhammad (d. 1850), known as the Bab, it seeks to demonstrate how his interpretations of poems by Hafiz constituted both continuity of and rupture with Islamic tradition in a manner that resembles his readings of the Qur’an. These readings invariably point to the advent of a messianic figure identified with the Bab himself. Among the questions to be examined are: How does the Bab’s attitude toward poetry represent the adaptation of a new religion to the particular needs and temperament of a recipient country? How did poetry help legitimate the nascent faith?
• Mehrdad Amanat Independent Scholar, United States
  Bahā’ī Converts Memoirs: The Voice of the Subaltern
• Saghar Sadeghian University of Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III, France
  Bast at the Russian Consulate of Isfahan, 1903: A Closer Study of the Event in Light of the Documents

Panel 110: Zoroastrian Traces, Motifs, and Inspirations: Folk Religion, Folk Culture, and Revivalism

• Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis The British Museum, London, UK
• Shervin Farridnejad Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany
  On the Anthropomorphism and Theriomorphism of Zoroastrian Iconography in Sasanian Iran
• Mehmet Alici Istanbul University, Turkey
  A Non-Zoroastrian Nowruz Celebration: The Anatolian Nevruz Feast
• Richard Foltz Concordia University, Canada
  Contemporary Neo-Zoroastrianism: Revival or Reaction?

Panel 111: Friendship in Persianate Societies and Cultures: Forms, Practices and Significances

• Helmut Puff University of Michigan, United States
• Emma Flatt University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, United States
  “As Long as Men are Alive, Friends are Indispensible to Them”: Definitions of Friendship in Indo-Persian Prescriptive Literature
• Kathryn Babayan University of Michigan, United States
  The Unfolding of the Self/Friend in Early Modern Isfahan show abstract

  My paper investigates the diffusion of subjective forms of knowledge in early modern Isfahan, before print culture, through the circulation of friendship-letters and single-page paintings. As the Safavi imperial state extended its control into the hitherto lightly regulated sites of quotidian experience, Isfahan, experienced shifts in the ways friendship and desire were socially practiced. I see transformations in both epistolary practices and in the practices of friendship as parts of a “civilizing process” where books on conduct were mobilized to regulate desire. It is through this critical link between civility, friendship, and letter writing that I explore the unfolding of early modern subjectivities in Isfahan.
• Mana Kia Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
  Khān and Adīb: The Symbiosis of Power and Prestige show abstract

  Drawing on their own writings, as well as contemporaneous tazkerahs, this paper examines the mid-18th century friendship between “Faqir” Dehlavi and “Valeh” Daghestani, against the background of other such relationships between a powerful noble (khan) and learned man (adib) in Mughal India. For a khan, the prestige of companionship with the learned could negate the ethically dubious associations of military actions and political power. Symbiotically, tutelage of and patronage by powerful men could provide the adib the means of perfecting and spreading their knowledge. That this and many such relationships were undertaken by individuals originating in Iran and India challenges us to consider to what extent this idea of friendship, and the notions of ethical prestige and power it embodied, was part of a shared Persianate culture.

Panel 112: Isfahan and Beyond: Royal and Ordinary Lives in Cities from the Safavid to Early Qajar Periods

• Sholeh Quinn University of California, Merced, United States
• Yukako Goto Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan
  Safavid Subcenters and Their Functions
• Houri Berberian California State University, Long Beach, United States
  The Lives of Julfan Armenian Women and Early Modern Laws show abstract

  This study seeks to uncover the world of early modern Julfan women, unfathomed by European travelers and unexplored by scholars, through an analysis letters, petitions, and wills written or dictated by women in Julfan Armenian and a published lawcode in classical Armenian, compiled in the 1760s and used by the Armenian community in Astrakhan, Russia, where Julfans made up a significant portion of the Armenian population and relied on Julfan customary law. The sources point to a significant array of legal and economic rights and roles for women than our European observers could have imagined. Moreover, the many similarities between the Armenian laws and shari`a indicate obvious yet surprisingly little-studied connections or encounters between the two.
• Armin Yavari Independent Scholar, UK
  Paradise Regained: the Eclipse and Re-Ascent of Isfahan’s Fortunes, 1722-1825 show abstract

  Nowhere are the misfortunes of eighteenth century Iran more visibly inscribed than on the history of Esfahan. From the heady decadence of the Safavids through to the punishing struggle between the Zands and the Qajars, the city underwent a dramatic transformation, cast from thriving metropolis to monolithic ruin. That Esfahan descended not into the obscurity that claimed many of its predecessors, but revived and grew is owed in great measure to the intervention of two of its governors: Haji Mohammad Husayn Khan Sadr-Esfahani Nezam ed-Dauleh and his son, 'Abdallah Khan Amin ed-Dauleh. This paper introduces the architects of Esfahan's downfall, the principal disasters that befell it, and considers how the Sadr-Esfahanis led the subsequent renewal, redevelopment, and rebirth of the city.

Panel 113: European Documentation, Construction, and Reconstruction of Iran in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century: Analogies and Disparities

• Jennifer Jenkins University of Toronto, Canada
• Sibylle Wentker Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
  Persian History in the Eyes of 19th-Century European Historians: The Example of Austria show abstract

  Over time, Persian History has attracted many disciplines including Classical Philology, Archeology, Art History and General History. This paper explores the tendencies of historical writing about Persia in terms of style, periods discussed and embedded mindsets of 19th -century historians. The analysis focuses on the reknown Austrian orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856). Besides his important works on Persian poetry he wrote a History of the Il-Chans in Persia and translated the complex and ornate Tarikh-e Wassaf. By analysing Hammer-Purgstall’s commentaries, this paper will shed light on the prevailing scholarly tastes in Persian History of the period.
• Corien J.M. Vuurman Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen (HAN University), Netherlands
  Early European Photography of the Achaemenid Monuments in Persepolis
• Szántó Iván Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
  Imre Francsek (1891- 1952): An Architect in Early Pahlavi Iran show abstract

  In the wake of the Great Depression of 1929, many Central European engineers and architects were forced either to give up their profession or to restart their career in an environment less affected by the economic crisis. Experiencing a construction boom which was triggered by the newly-exploited oil revenues, Iran under its new and energetic Pahlavi dynasty became a desirable destination for many. Among the architects who made their fortune in Iran in the 1930s we find Imre Francsek, a Hungarian with a considerable, but completely forgotten, contribution to the architecture of his native land as well as Iran. As a newcomer he was forced to accept all commissions available; this explains his remarkable versatility. He was active in municipal and imperial enterprises, while at the same time he was also involved in private entrepreneurship. His output covers virtually all aspects of architecture ranging from civic buildings and refurbishments to administrative and industrial projects which he carried out in many corners of the country from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf. Although for the most part he relied on local workforce, in many instances he employed his many fellow-countrymen who came to Iran about the same time. Based on archival material, this paper thus serves as a case study as much as the reconstruction of a particular career.

Panel 114: Myth and History in Iranian Theater: From Historical Page to National and International Stage

• Ali M. Ansari University of St. Andrews, UK
• Saeed Talajooy University of Cambridge, UK
  Theater as History: The Constitutional Revolution in Iranian Theater
• Proshot Kalami Loughborough University, UK
  Persia on the Stage: Interweaving of Palimpsestic Layers of Language and Identity in Beyzaie’s Theater
• S. Alexander Briggs Loughborough University, UK
  “Let Us Now Await the Verdict …”: Interweaving Performance Cultures through Bahram Beyzaie’s Death of Yazdgerd

Panel 115: Local Life, Agency, and the State in Rural Iran before and after the 1979 Revolution

• Yuko Suzuki-Monatte Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France
• Menahem Merhavy Tel Aviv University, Israel
  Rural Iran in Pahlavi Eyes: From Romanticism to Exoticism
• Linda K. Jacobs Independent Scholar, United States
  An American Archaeologist in an Iranian Village in the 1970s
• Eric Lob Princeton University, United States
  Jahad-e Sazandegi: From Inception to Merger (1979 - 2001)

Panel 116: Perspectives on Persian Art in Istanbul Collections (ILEX-sponsored panel)

• Olga M. Davidson Boston University, United States
• Sheila Canby The Metropolitan Museum, New York, United STates
  The Demimonde in Safavid Painting
• Charles Melville Cambridge University, UK
  The “Big Head” Shāhnāma and its Unique Features
• David Roxburgh Harvard University, United States
  Artistic Production in Herat, Shiraz, Tabriz and Baghdad: the 1450s and 1460s show abstract

  Art historians have understood the mid-1400s as a fulcrum in the history of art of the book and court patronage. The 1450s-60s were hardly ideal for artistic production: these decades witnessed rapid exchanges of territories, short regnal periods, assaults on centers of cultural production, all of which precipitated the movement of artists and calligraphers from one court to another and the dissemination of libraries. This paper examines the historical fulcrum, described vaguely as a “modified cultural continuity,” through the patron Pir Budaq (d. 1466), son of Jahanshah, and governor in Shiraz and then Baghdad. The paper presents manuscripts from his library and pieces together a picture of the formation of early Turkmen art of the book.
• Marianna Shreve Simpson President, Historians of Islamic Art Association, United STates
  In the Beginning: The Earliest Dated and Illustrated Shāhnāma of Ferdowsi (TSMK H.1479)
• Laura Weinstein Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, US
  Ottoman Form, Dakani Words: A Calligraphy Album from the Deccani Sultanate of Golconda

Panel 117: Religious Manifestations and Transformations in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

• Riza Yildirim TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkey
• Farida Stickel University of Zurich, Switzerland
  Converting Iran: Religious Policy under the Early Safavids
• Walter Posch German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), Germany
  Sufi Path and Noble Lineage: Some Remarks on the Life of İbrahim Gülşeni
• Sarah Morrell Indiana University, United States
  Muhammad, Safi al-Din and the Eschaton: Visual Millenarianism in a Late 16th-Century Manuscript of the Safwat al-Safa
• Ata Anzali Rice University, United States
  Some Reflections on the Early Developments of the Dhahabiya Sufi Order

Panel 118: Education, Science, and Occult in the “Islamicate” World of Eleventh to the Fifteenth Century

• Lloyd Ridgeon University of Glasgow, UK
• Hadi Jorati Yale University, United States
  The Lost Legacy of Omar Khayyam's Mathematical Writings
• Kaveh Niazi Columbia University, United States
  Risāla-i Mu’īnīyya and al-Tadhkira fī ‘ilm al-Hay'a: A Comparative Study of the Chapters on the Configuration of Heavenly Bodies
• Mahdi Farhani Monfared Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran
  Educational Development under the Timurids: A Comparative Inquiry into Samarqand and Herat
• Matthew Melvin-Koushki University of Oxford, UK
  Thinking a New Age: The Role of Occult Philosophy in Early Fifteenth Century Iran and Anatolia

Panel 119: Desire in the City: Exploring Shahrâshûb (Şehrâşûb) and Shahrangîz (Şehrengîz) in Poetry and Manuscript Illustration

• Sooyong Kim Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
• Dominic Brookshaw Stanford University, United States
  Shahrangîz Meets Shahrâshûb: Commonalities and Divergences in Two Early Sixteenth-Century Persian City-Disturber Panegyrics
• Selim Kuru University of Washington, United States
  Şehrengîz is Not Şehrâşûb: Trials and Tribulations of Two Genres in Two Languages
• Oya Pancaroglu Boğaziçi University, Turkey
  Market Conditions and the Settings of Love in the Romance of Varqa va Gulshâh
• George Dedes School of Oriental and African Studies, UK
  Lâmi'î’s Şehrengîz-i Borusâ: the Coming of Age of an Ottoman Genre?

Panel 120: Iran and Afghanistan in Twentieth-Century International Affairs

• Mary Yoshinari University of Toronto, Canada
• Eden Naby Independent Scholar, United States
  Iran’s Embassy in Istanbul and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919
• Solaiman Fazel Indiana University, Bloomington, United States
  Afghanistan’s Reformation Failure, 1919-1929: A Social and Political History
• Mikiya Koyagi University of Texas at Austin, United States
  The End of the Transnational Imagination of Easternism: The Irano-Japanese Relations, 1900-1945
• Pham Thi Thanh Huyen Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran
  Iran’s Participation in the International Commission of Control and Supervision of the Vietnam Peace Accord, 1973-1975

Panel 121: Preserve, Archive, Digitize Art: Memory Issues in Iranian World

• Camille Perreand L'Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA), Afghanistan
• Liliane Anjo Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
  Capturing Scenes of Theater: An Insight on the Trends and Issues Raised by the Digital Recording of Dramatic Arts in Iran
• Nathalie Matti Paris 8 University, France
  The Internet Access to Iranian Audiovisual Archive’s Images and Its Effects on Actors’ Somatic Experience
• Ariane Zevaco Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
  Works on Old Music: In Pursuit of Authentic New Trends in Iran and Tajikistan
• Agnès Devictor Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse, France
  Policies of Digitization of War Films in Iran and Afghanistan

Panel 122: Identity and the Creation of Identity: Sasanian Self-Characterization and the Creation of the Persianate World (sponsored by Iran Heritage Foundation)

• Carlo Cereti Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
• Touraj Daryaee University of California, Irvine, United States
  From Oxus to Euphrates: Sasanians and the Creation of the Persianate Culture
• Khodadad Rezakhani London School of Economics, UK
  Iranian East and the Sasanian Kai: East Iranian Influences on the Sasanian Royal Identity
• Sara Mashayekh Independent Scholar, United States
  The Changing Identity of the Sasanian Monarchy
• Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis The British Museum, London, UK
  Dynastic Claim and Political Identity: From the Parthians to the Sasanians

Panel 123: The Shomal in Historical Perspective (Safavid Period)

• Rudi Matthee University of Delaware, United States
• Rula Abisaab McGill University, Canada
  The Safavid Shahs, the Mujtahids and Peasant Revolts in Astarabad
• Alberto Tiburcio McGill University, Canada
  Toward a Historiography of Plagues in Northern Iran
• Sinem Arcak University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, United States
  Picturing Conquest in the Ottoman-Safavid Wars (1578-1590)
• Nazak Birjandifar McGill University, Canada
  Religion in Gilan during the Safavid Period show abstract

  This paper discusses the religious conversion of the diverse religious groups in Gilan during the Safavid period. Once the Safavids came to power in the sixteenth century, they declared Twelver Shi'ism as the official religion of the state. This paper will look at how the mostly Zaidi Shi'ite and Sunni population of Gilan converted to the state-sponsored Twelver Shi'ism. The conversion of the Gilanis began with the conversion of their rulers, who despite their tendency to maintain a semiautonomous status under the Safavids, became the agents of change and conversion in the province. Eventually by the seventeenth century Twelver Shi‘ism supplanted Zaidism in Gilan.

Panel 124: Iran and Cultural Introspection of Identity in the Age of Globalization

• Hossein Mesbahian University of Tehran, Iran
• Simin Fasihi Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran
  Iran’s Intellectual Encounter with “Identity” in the Qajar Era
• Soheila Torabi Farsani Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran
  Iran’s Mercantile Encounter with “Identity” in the Pahlavi Era
• Sara Shariati University of Tehran, Iran
  Religion in Civil Spheres: A Case Study of the City of Tehran
• Mojtaba Mahdavi University of Alberta, Canada
  Post-Islamist Trends in Post-Revolutionary Iran: Contextualizing Identity Politics show abstract

  Today’s Iran under the Islamist state represents the most complex forms of post-Islamism in the Muslim world. The unintended consequences of the Islamic Republic have empowered and enlightened the public, transformed the people from subjects to citizens, and in effect have undermined the intellectual, political and social foundations of the Islamist state. Today’s Iran is on the brink of a “post-Islamist” turn, as the first post-Islamist civil society in the Middle East is in the making, underneath of the Islamic Republic. Over the past one and a half centuries, modern Iran has been a pioneer of progressive political changes in the Middle East, the home to the first constitutional revolution (1906–11), the first nationalist and parliamentary democratic movement in the post–World War II period (1950–53), and the first anti-despotic revolutionary change (1977–79). Iran is home to the first civic social movement in the Middle East, known as the Green Movement (2009–present). The past three historical democratic waves introduced Iran to the rule of law and constitutionalism, democratic nationalism, and anti-despotic revolutionary change with elements of an Islamic discourse. The current Green Movement is marked by a new historical era toward post-Islamism in Iran. Post-Islamism in post-revolutionary Iran signifies the paradoxes of the Islamist state. This paper examines the 'nature' and the 'diversity' of post- Islamist trends in the country. I first briefly 'conceptualize' and 'contextualize' post-Islamist discourses in Iran and then analyze the 'sociopolitical origins' of three trends of post-Islamism in postrevolutionary Iran: quasi/semi post-Islamism, liberal-post-Islamism, and neo-Shariati’s post-Islamist discourse. The conclusion/findings (based on fieldwork and context analysis) problematizes the fate and future of Iran’s post-Islamist trends in the context of identity politics.

Panel 125: Translating Modern Persian Poetry: Notes and Reflections on Current Work

• Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak University of Maryland, United States
• Daniel Rafinejad University of California, Los Angeles, United States
  Translating Akhavān-e Sāles’s “The Tale of the Petrified Kingdom”
• Samad Alavi University of California, Berkeley, United States
  Crystalline Words: Shafi‘i-Kadkani’s Socio-Spiritual Poetry in Translation
• Zuzanna Olszewska St. John’s College, University of Oxford, UK
  Translating Contemporary Afghan ‘Ghazal-e Now’

Evening Program: Dinner Cruise on the Bosphorus (Sponsored by Iran Heritage Foundation)

Registered participants are required to sign for up this event on the first day of registration, as there are only 400 seats available. Transportation from the hotel to the cruise ship and back will be provided.