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On the Construction Date of the Derbend Fortification Complex
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The paper discusses several aspects of the history of one of the great architectural and fortifying undertakings of the Sasanian period, namely the Derbend defensive wall. Comparing all the available data on the time of this construction, the author draws a picture of the key historical events of the 6th century A.D., the complicated relations of the Sasanians with their neighbours, and the phenomenon of the so-called Northern tribes, against whom, strictly speaking, the Derbend fortification complex was erected. The article gives a convincing answer to the problem of the construction date of the Derbend fortification complex, rightfully called the Great Caucasian Wall.
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The Autonomous State in Iran: Mobility and Prosperity in the Reign of Shah 'Abbas the Great (1587-1629)
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Among the Safavid Shahs, 'Abbas I (1587-1629), was the chief architect of the modern Iranian state. He consolidated the state by securing the borders, establishing a central administration and bureaucracy, fortifying the economy and creating a standing army responsible not to the tribal heads but to the king as the head of the state. He turned the kingdom into a cohesive and stable monarchy. The state, with the Shah on top, using the new bureaucracy and the coercive force, reached a level of autonomy in which it was fortified by a direct access to financial resources. While bureaucracy was an instrument for regime enhancement and control, the army played the crucial role of system maintenance and was the guarantor of the Safavid rule. To achieve this objective, the state used: 1) social mobility of displacing the Qizilbash element, in favour of Caucasians, Persians and ordinaries; 2) land ownership mobility through transferring toyūls to crown estate; and 3) financial mobility.
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'Ideal Scheme' or 'Passing over the Rainbow': Transmission of the Georgian Cultural Identity among the Fereydani Gorjīs
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Conceptualising Fereydani Georgians, who have lived in Iran for almost 400 years, I have always found myself asking how such groups manage to survive as groups at all and why these kinds of people strive to maintain their sense of identity or retain their cultural memory? I place the concept of identity at the heart of the analysis. Therefore, this article explores the main aspects of identity maintenance and transmission through the presentation of a number of ethnographic materials based on my own research among Fereydani repatriates now living in Tbilisi.
I try to show how certain traditions, rituals, customs, etc. are transmitted from generation to generation in the place where the environment is not native, and how such cultural artefacts express the elements of identity.
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Georgian laqe, an 'addle egg' in Kartvelian
Review of a Georgian Etymology- + Show Description - Hide Description
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The paper deals with the revision and correction of the etymology of GEORGIAN laqe “rotten, addle egg”, which the late Prof. Georgij Klimov considered Kartvelian in his Etymological Dictionary. On the basis of an extensive areal study it can be concluded though that the term is not genuinely Kartvelian but must stem from a non-Kartvelian source, which is most likely Persian. The subsequent spread to other regional languages such as Turkish, Armenian, Kurdish, Ossetic, Lezgian, etc. will be also discussed.
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Conditional and Other Functions of Forms in /-(zα(.))r/ in Abkhaz
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Protases ('if'-clauses) in the North West Caucasian language Abkhaz are mostly marked by either /-r/ or /-zα.r/, depending on the tense and/or type of verb (Stative or Dynamic) concerned. The article presents examples of this conditional usage and the role of protasis-type forms in both temporal and interrogative expressions as well as in complementiser-function. The complementisers in question share the semantic feature of irrealis with conditionals. A rhotic element is also found in the non-finite form of the Future I tense, in the Masdar (verbal noun), and in such converbs as the Purposives, the Resultative and the Future Absolute. The article attempts to link the semantic notions of futurity, potentiality, indefiniteness or general irrealis to the rhotic element and asks what might have been the historical development resulting in the forms attested today and thus their original morphological segmentation.
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TABARICA II
Some Mazandarani Verbs- + Show Description - Hide Description
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This paper studies the Tabari verbs bāutεn 'to say', baitεn 'to seize', hākεrdεn 'to do', and daptuniεn 'to throw'. It proposes that the past stem of 'say' is derived from the Old Iranian *gaub- rather than the commonly assumed root *wač-. It postulates also that the nasal element in the present stem kεn- 'do' is not exclusively due to the integration of the old participial formant *-ant-, but also because the stem is an offspring of a nasalised Old Iranian present stem, as is the case with Persian kun-. The verb 'throw', largely extinct but appearing in various forms in the 19th-century documentations, is subjected to a comparative analysis against some other Iranian languages.
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A New Locative Case in Turkmenistan Balochi
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The Balochi dialect spoken in Turkmenistan possesses a case which is not seen in most other Balochi dialects. It has local/directive function, and its marker is a suffix that shows the oblique case marker suffixed to the genitive ending. The “locative” is also found in the Balochi dialect of Afghanistan, but here, the local deixis appears to always refer to a person. I argue that the locative may be interpreted within a typological framework implying that local deixis referring to persons is blocked in some languages. Instead, these languages use periphrastic constructions of the type “at a person's [place]”, as do English (e.g. at the baker's) and Old Georgian, among others. In Turkmenistan Balochi, areal influence from Russian and Turkmen, which have a separate locative case, may have played a role in the generalisation of the locative to include inanimates as well.
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Iran's Contributions to Human Rights, the Rights of Women and Democracy
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Most scholars generally pre-suppose that the concept of democracy is the exclusive creation of classical Greece and a token of the West to the rest of the world. This concept has originated mainly due to the fact that much of the ancient Iranian history was only known through classical Greek writings before the ever-increasing archaeological finds and decipherments of ancient Near Eastern primary sources, which have shed a very different light on the subject.
This paper attempts to alleviate and restore a few of the more vital recurring misunderstandings, misinterpretations and misconceptions in this field, and endeavours to present them in a more realistic historic and historiographic perspective in the light of the latest available scholarship.
Beginning in 2200 B.C. Old Elamite Kingdom, was the first manifestation in the world of a structured and, at times, democratically elected heads of state based on matriarchal right of descent. Beginning in Elam and continuing at least to the beginning of the Islamic period, no ancient peoples, including the Greeks and the Egyptians, have surpassed the practice of the rights of women, and the equality of men and women as in Iran. In early 7th century B.C. Iran, the pronouncement by Zoroaster, through Avestan literature, was the first manifestation of the rights of women and unequivocal equality of gender in all aspects and positions of society. In the second part of the 7th century B.C. Media, we encounter the ratification by popular vote of the first constitution for a democratically elected confederated empire, headed by Dioces, who was the first recorded popularly elected emperor. In 539 B.C., we come upon the declaration of the first generally accepted Charter of Rights of Nations by Cyrus the Great. In 522-486 B.C., in the reign of Darius the Great, appeared the first confirmation of a written entrenched democratic constitution. In the 4th century A.D. (or earlier) Sasanian Iran, the first appearance of an advanced system of Common Law based on well-documented jurisprudence was materialised. And finally, the confederated system of government in Iran, which survived the vicissitudes of history and changes of several dynasties, remained in force one way or the other to become the most enduring system of government in world history spanning a period of two-and-half millennia.
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Christian Armenia, Islamic Iran: Two (Not So) Strange Companions
Geopolitical Stakes and Significance of a Special Relation ship- + Show Description - Hide Description
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This articles aims to present and analyse the healthy relationship between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Armenia. Although focusing on the current geopolitical stakes and realities of the relationship, this article will also use history and the perceptions it has built to understand today's situation. Based on a long common history, this relationship inscribes itself in a complex geopolitical regional situation where international and local actors interact. These ties between both countries, although poorly explored, are particularly significant in the fields of politics, economy, energy, and culture. The study of this relationship offers a new outlook of the geopolitical complexity of this part of Eurasia, and presents both actors, Armenia and Iran, in a new light.
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Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins
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Everyday Islam in Post-Soviet Central Asia
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Va⋅fe Xalīje Fārs dar naqšehāye tārīxī [Description of the Persian Gulf in the Historical Maps]
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Medieval Manichaean Book Art. A Codicological Study of Iranian and Turkic Illuminated Book Fragments from 8th–11th Century East Central Asia
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Yadernyj faktor v rossijsko-iranskix otnošeniyax [The Nuclear Factor in the Russian-Iranian Relations]
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