Bringing together eighteen essays from Homa Katouzian, this book explores Iranian history, politics, culture and Persian literature from mediaeval times through the nineteenth century and into the contemporary period.
Beginning with an overview of mediaeval Iranian history, the book then considers developments in the nineteenth century leading to the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911, which resulted in the fall of the Qajar dynasty (1785-1925). This is followed by a comprehensive overview of the Pahlavi monarchy (1925-1979) and a new and original analysis of the Iranian Revolution of February 1979. The book also includes essays on modern and classical Persian literature, encompassing Persian poetry and politics (1919-1925), the hitherto unstudied humour in Sadeq Hedayats life and works, a critical study of Forugh Farrokhzad, a study of Persian literary devices with special reference to the great Persian classic Sadi, and a study of Sadi as a lover of beauty and advocate of human morality.
The book analyses Iran in a way that has seldom been done in one single volume the history of the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties, the two great revolutions in the twentieth century, and the unfamiliar nature of state and society in Iranian history, as well as some of the high points in modern and classical Persian literature and is vital reading for anyone interested in the Middle East.
Bringing together eighteen essays from Homa Katouzian, this book explores Iranian history, politics, culture, and Persian literature from mediaeval times through the nineteenth century and into the contemporary period.
Part I: History and Politics Introduction
1. Iran in the Middle Ages:
From the Islamic Conquest to the Rise of the Qajars
2. Arbitrary Despotism
and Taxation in Iran
3. Iran: Developments in the Nineteenth Century:
Encounters with Modernity
4. The Fall of the Qajars
5. Miracles at the
Saqqa-khaneh: Power Struggles, Bahai Pogrom and Murder of the American Envoy
in Tehran
6. Politics and Poetry in Iran: 1919-1925
7. Iran Under the Pahlavi
Monarchy
8. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 Followed by the Islamic Revolution
of 1981
9. Weststruckness: Its Trials, and Its Tribulations (With Morad
Moazami)
10. Hamid Dabashi, The Last Muslim Intellectual, The Life and Legacy
of Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Review Article
11. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Crisis
Revisited: Irans Rejection of the World Bank Intervention and the 1953 Coup
12. Of the Sins of Khalil Maleki
13. Interest Is Not Riba: A Critical Study
of Riba and Interest in Islam Part II: Modern and Classical Literature
14.
Sadeq Hedayat, Modern Iranian Fiction and the Experience of Modernity
15.
Humour in Hedayat
16. Was Forugh Farrokhzad a Sinner?
17. Sadi, Lover of
Beauty and Advocate of Human Morality
18. Sadi and the Others: The
Semi-Rhymed Prose, and Inimitable Facility Art Forms
Homa Katouzian is an economist, historian, political scientist and literary critic. He has been senior lecturer in economics at the University of Kent; visiting professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles; visiting professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego; and research fellow at St Antonys College and member of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford. His numerous books include The Persians: Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern Iran; Sadeq Hedayat: The Life and Legend of an Iranian Writer; Iranian History and Politics: The Dialectic of State and Society; and Humour in Iran: Eleven-Hundred Years of Satire and Humour in Persian Literature.
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