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Adadi Tower, Tehran
Gilbert Sopakuwa. (Photographer). (2017). Azadi Tower II, Tehran [digital image]. Retrieved from flickr. Used CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Books
Women, Power and Politics in 21st Century Iran
This book examines the women's movement in Iran and its role in contesting gender relations since the 1979 revolution. Looking at examples from politics, law, employment, environment, media and religion and the struggle for democracy, this book demonstrates how material conditions have important social and political consequences for the lives of women in Iran and exposes the need to challenge the dominant theoretical perspectives on gender and Islam.
Media, Culture and Society in Iran: Living with Globalization and the Islamic State
By exploring topics such as the Internet, print press, advertising, satellite television, video, rock music, literature, cinema, gender, religious intellectuals, and secularism, this unique and wide-ranging volume explains Iran as a complex society that has successfully managed to negotiate and embody the tensions of tradition and modernity, democracy and theocracy, isolation and globalization, and other such cultural-political dynamics that escape the explanatory and analytical powers of all-too-familiar binary relations. Featuring contributions from among the best-known and emerging scholars on Iranian media, culture, society, and politics, this volume uncovers how the existing perspectives on post-revolutionary Iranian society have failed to appreciate the complexity, the paradoxes and the contradictions that characterize life in contemporary Iran, resulting in a general failure to explain and to anticipate its contemporary social and political transformations.
The History of Iran
This comprehensive survey of Iran's historical development covers everything from its origins in ancient empires to its status as a modern nation-state. Iran is a vast country with a storied, ancient past, a great diversity of cultures and ethnicities, and a location in arguably the most unstable area of the world. Iran's history over the last two centuries--developing as a modern nation-state, freeing itself from foreign domination, and asserting its influence in both the region and the world--has been particularly fascinating. This title gives an overview of Iranian history written for a general audience. It is intended to acquaint readers with the important events and personalities that have shaped that long history. In this second edition of The History of Iran, the author has thoroughly revised the original content and has added two new chapters, one of which is dedicated to Iran in the 21st century. Particular attention is paid to explaining the forces that led to the revolution of 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as the controversies of its domestic and foreign policies. Provides a chronological survey of key events in Iranian history up to the present day An annotated bibliography surveys historical literature on Iran, including web resources
Islamic Architecture in Iran
The architecture of the Islamic world is predominantly considered in terms of a dual division between 'tradition' and 'modernity' - a division which, Saeid Khaghani here argues, has shaped and limited the narrative applied to this architecture. Khaghani introduces and reconsiders the mosques of eighth- to fifteenth-century Iran in terms of poststructural theory and developments in historiography in order to develop a brand new dialectical framework. Using the examples of mosques such as the Friday Mosques in Isfahan and Yazd as well as the Imam mosque in Isfahan, Khaghani presents a new way of thinking about and discussing Islamic architecture, making this valuable reading for all interested in the study of the art, architecture and material culture of the Islamic world.
The Golden Age of Persian Art, 1501-1722
The era of Safavid rule (1501-1722) saw the finest flowering of the arts in Iran. In a time of dynamic religious and political developments, painting and textiles attained new heights of brilliance and opulence and architecture flourished with the growth of cities.
Text and Image in Medieval Persian Art
Focusing on 5 objects found in the main media at the time - ceramics, metalware, painting, architecture and textiles - Sheila S. Blair shows how artisans played with form, material and decoration to engage their audiences. She also shows how the reception of these objects has changed and that their present context has implications for our understanding of the past. Greater Iranian arts from the 10th to the 16th century are technically some of the finest produced anywhere. They are also intellectually engaging, showing the lively interaction between the verbal and the visual arts.
Facts In Brief
Iran is a mountainous, arid, and ethnically diverse country of southwestern Asia. Few countries enjoy such a long cultural heritage as does Iran, and few people are so aware of and articulate about their deep cultural tradition as are the Iranians. Iran, or Persia, as a historical entity, dates to the time of the Achaemenids (about 2,500 years ago), and, despite political, religious, and historic changes, Iranians maintain a deep connection to their past. Although daily life in modern Iran is closely interwoven with Shiʿi Islam, the country’s art, literature, and architecture are an ever-present reminder of its deep national tradition and of a broader literary culture that during the premodern period spread throughout the Middle East and South Asia.e language.
The capital city of Tehran is a metropolis at the southern foot of the Elburz Mountains that is famed for its handsome architecture and verdant gardens.
Iran is a unitary Islamic republic with one legislative house. The country’s 1979 constitution put into place a mixed system of government, in which the executive, parliament, and judiciary are overseen by several bodies led by the clergy.
President: Masoud Pezeshkian
Supreme Leader: Ali Khamenei
"Iran." Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 21 Mar. 2025. academic-eb-com.utk.idm.oclc.org/levels/collegiate/article/Iran/106324. Accessed 31 Mar. 2025.
Books about music
Reverberations of Dissent: Identity and Expression in Iran’s Illegal Music Scene
Beneath the ever-changing and unstable political climate of Iran lies a rich youth culture centered around rock music. Reaching beyond a social, historical and political overview of music, Bronwen Robertson looks deeper and seeks to decipher how members of the underground scene invent and express different versions of 'being Iranian,' through the production and distribution of their music. Robertson spent a year undercover in Tehran conducting research and interviews within this complex and fascinating culture. While the author explores each individual's relationship to their music, she also demonstrates how the underground scene as a whole becomes an expression of collective and anti-authoritarian identities. Robertson discusses concepts ranging from inspiration and ingenuity to the notion of being 'global,' and how these musicians perceive their political and artistic impact. This illuminating work demonstrates that rock music, a global genre, gains significance as it is performed in a local context, disrupting pre-conceived notions of what it means to be 'Iranian.'
Music and Song in Persia (RLE Iran B)
This book is the first full-length analysis of the theory and practice of Persian singing, demonstrating the centrality of Persian elements in the music of the Islamic Middle Ages, their relevance to both contemporary and traditional Iranian music and their interaction with classical Persian poetry and metrics.
Iranian Music and Popular Entertainment: From Motrebi to Losanjelesi and Beyond
The word motreb finds its roots in the Arabic verb taraba, meaning 'to make happy.' Originally denoting all musicians in Iran, motrebi came to be associated, pejoratively, with the cheerful vulgarity of the lowbrow entertainer. In Iranian Music and Popular Entertainment, GJ Breyley and Sasan Fatemi examine the historically overlooked motrebi milieu, with its marginalized characters, from luti to gardan koloft and mashti, as well as the tenacity of motreb who continued their careers against all odds. They then turn to losanjelesi, the most pervasive form of Iranian popular music that developed as motrebi declined, and related musical forms in Iran and its diasporic popular cultural centre, Los Angeles. For the first time in English, the book makes available musical transcriptions, analysis and lyrics that illustrate the complexities of this history. As it presents the findings of the authors' years of ethnographic work with the history's protagonists, from senior motreb to pop-rock stars, the book reveals parallels between the decline of motrebi and the rise of 'modernity.' In the twentieth century, the fate of Tehran's motrebi music was shaped by the social and urban polarization that ensued from the modern market economy, and losanjelesi would be similarly affected by transnational relations, revolution, war and migration. Through its detailed and informed examination of Iranian popular music, this study reveals much about the values and anxieties of Iranian society, and is a valuable resource for students and scholars of Iranian society and history.
Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's Iranian Pop Music
Los Angeles, called Tehrangeles because it is home to the largest concentration of Iranians outside of Iran, is the birthplace of a distinctive form of postrevolutionary pop music. Created by professional musicians and media producers fleeing Iran's revolutionary-era ban on "immoral" popular music, Tehrangeles pop has been a part of daily life for Iranians at home and abroad for decades. In Tehrangeles Dreaming Farzaneh Hemmasi draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Los Angeles and musical and textual analysis to examine how the songs, music videos, and television made in Tehrangeles express modes of Iranianness not possible in Iran. Exploring Tehrangeles pop producers' complex commercial and political positioning and the histories, sensations, and fantasies their music makes available to global Iranian audiences, Hemmasi shows how unquestionably Iranian forms of Tehrangeles popular culture exemplify the manner in which culture, media, and diaspora combine to respond to the Iranian state and its political transformations. The transnational circulation of Tehrangeles culture, she contends, transgresses Iran's geographical, legal, and moral boundaries while allowing all Iranians the ability to imagine new forms of identity and belonging.
Music of a Thousand Years: A New History of Persian Musical Traditions
Iran's particular system of traditional Persian art music has been long treated as the product of an ever-evolving, ancient Persian culture. In Music of a Thousand Years, Ann E. Lucas argues that this music is a modern phenomenon indelibly tied to changing notions of Iran's national history. Rather than considering a single Persian music history, Lucas demonstrates cultural dissimilarity and discontinuity over time, bringing to light two different notions of music-making in relation to premodern and modern musical norms. An important corrective to the history of Persian music, Music of a Thousand Years is the first work to align understandings of Middle Eastern music history with current understandings of the region's political history.
The Dastgah Concept in Persian Music
The tradition of Persian art music embodies twelve modal systems, known as dastgahs. Each dastgah represents a complex of skeletal melodic models on the basis of which a performer produces extemporised pieces. The dastgahs revolve around unspecified central nuclear melodies which the individual musician comes to know through experience and absorption. It is a personal and elusive tradition of great subtlety and depth. Through extensive research, including interviews with leading musicians and recording over one hundred hours of music, Hormoz Farhat has unravelled the art of the dastgah. In his study Professor Farhat analyses the intervallic structure, melodic patterns, modulations, and improvisations within each dastgah, and examines the composed pieces which have become a part of the classical repertoire in recent times.
