عطاءالله حسنی

During the Qajar era, criticizing traditional education in Iran, scholars have sought to change the method of education, its contents and materials .These changes were achieved through educational planning and writing textbooks for new educational materials. Under the influence of modernization in the country, educational planning, materials, and textbooks changed in the modern schools of Mazandaran. In this research, changes in the development of educational programs and materials have been studied using historical documents and reliable sources. According to the recently discovered documents, Mazandaran schools in the early years of their establishment used the educational curriculum and textbooks taught in Tehran schools; while after the establishment of the Ministry of Education and the approval of the Education Constitution, they gradually followed the ministry’s program. These documents show that the ecological, climatic and geographical situation of Mazandaran have been influential in school planning.

Nationalism has been one of the influential concepts in the contemporary history of Iran. This concept, which was introduced to the writings of some thinkers from the middle of the Qajar period, became one of the intellectual pillars in the form of the discourse of liberal nationalism. In the unsettled social and political situation in Iran during and after World War I, the discourse of liberal nationalism faced a crisis of meaning. Hence, the need arose for an alternative discourse that tends to solve the existing problems and produce new meanings. In this situation, the theory of the formation of a powerful central government was proposed and the discourse of authoritarian nationalism was elaborated to solve the solutions.  This study, based on Laclau and Mouffe's theory of discourse analysis, seeks to answer the question of what was the articulation, concepts, and process of identifying the discourse of authoritarian nationalism in the history textbooks during the Reza Shah period. This study, by examining the textbooks of this period, shows that the ruling power, by articulating the concepts and components of authoritarian nationalist discourse attempted to strengthen the foundations of the Pahlavi government.

One of the methods of studying historical events is discourse analysis. Throughout the modern history of Iran, the concept of nationalism has continued to exist in various forms with ups and downs. This concept was articulated in the discourse of "liberal nationalism" that began and eventually became the hegemonic discourse before the Constitutional Revolution.   With the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty, textbooks were used in the state discourse.  The ruling power used the discourse of authoritarian nationalism to justify the foundations of government and marginalize other discourses which clearly was expressed in the official history textbooks. Based on Laclau and Mouffe's theory of discourse analysis, this study seeks to see how the concepts, and process of identifying the discourse of liberal nationalism in the textbooks were expressed during the Reza Shah. Examining the textbooks at the time, this study argues that the concepts and components of the discourse of liberal nationalism remained around the central sign of the Iranian nation and the ruling discourse.

Addressing grievances in order to establish justice in society was one of the most important tasks of governments in many parts of the world, including Iran. Since the government was in charge of dealing with grievances and the most important feature of Safavid Iran was the strengthening of the government by all possible means, this study intends to take a descriptive-analytical approach based on historical methods and use of resources Libraries and documents, to answer the question, what was the process of dealing with grievances in Safavid Iran and what changes took place during the life of this government? The answer to this question is directly related to the establishment and gradual consolidation of this government. It seems that the treatment of grievances in the Safavid era was initially small, fragmented and less structured due to the general instability of the government structure. In the period of Shah Abbas I, this institution took the path of consolidation and in the period of his successors, it was stabilized in a way and crystallized in the form of " Divan-e Edalatbonyan".

The Armenians of Isfahan played an active role in Iranian culture in the Safavid era. After migrating from Julfa and the Caucasus and settling in Isfahan during the reign of Shah Abbas I, they intended to preserve their culture and identity through their educational system. Features and dimensions of their education and their place in the educational system of that era are topics to which researchers have not paid much attention up to now. In this article, these topics are discussed based on the data collected from reliable books and documents. The results indicate that the Armenians of Julfa, in order to preserve their religion and beliefs, established their educational system with the support of the Safavid government of that time; meanwhile the churches and schools were running educational affairs, and some schools were built in the grounds of the churches. Thus, religion was the prominent subject in the Armenian educational system, yet some non-religious sciences were taught too, especially commerce. Of course, the presence of different Catholic sects in Isfahan influenced the competition between them.

The military plays the main role in creating, stability and continuity of a government. The structure of Safavid's army had been formed by various groups such as Qizilbāsh amīrs, governors of province and Third Forces (Caucasian elements), etc. In the late Safavid's era (1677-1722), the conflict between different military groups in the pursuit of authorities, interests, superiority and military conquests broke out and in confrontation with political crisis, sprang from local and foreign events, caused to the weakness of performance and function of the military organization in a way that one can name it as a political factor of instability in the late safavids. This study seeks to analyze and explain the impact of the conflicts of the military forces on the political instability in the late Safavid era through a historical method and based on Historical sources.

Following late Qadjar era political and social changes, problems related to women and girls, especially those related to education, dress code, teenage marriage, and polygamy, were noticed by the elite and activists who were involved in social issues. Educating girls which was mainly on the basis of basic religious subjects, hardly contributed to the girls education in Iran then. Because of this, some women active in social affairs, tried to establish modern girls’ schools in Iran. In this study the researcher tries to represent the historical girls’ school establishment process in Mazandaran by examining primary sources from “constitutional revolution” to the end of Qadjar dynasty. In Mazandaran of Qadjar era, some women such as Molouk Kia in Barforoosh (today called Babol) and Fatemeh Vakili in Sari pioneered to establish the first girls’ school in Mazandaran. These schools have greatly contributed to the women and girls increasing role in scientific and social activities.

The cannon, as a heavy, collective, expensive weapon, requiring training in the use and expense of construction, maintenance, and deployment could only be in the hands of the central government. Historical evidence suggests that the use of this modern weapon has been a decisive and accelerating factor in controlling centrifugal forces, suppressing local rogue rulers, and consolidating and expanding central sovereignty. As a result of the expansion of central government authority over all the Safavid territory gained through the shelling of the cannon, the reign of Shah Abbas I was accompanied by the least internal strife, and this resulted in great victories in the frontier battles (the conquest of Yerevan by Shah Safi and the conquest of Kandahar and the defense of it three times against the Mongolian government of India), which also relied on artillery fire. With the emergence of signs of weakness of the Safavid rule and the start of widespread border revolts, although the gunners have always been part of the army, their incapability in effectively use artillery in the fortress war (face to face war) led to the overthrown of the  government army and eventually, the collapse of the Safavids.  In the repression of local rulers if the "fortress war" took place, the destructive power of the bullets and the sound of cannon shattering would defeat any resistance, but in the " fortress war and face-to-face" wars, in the Safavid period, sufficient skill was used. The artillery was not effective and decisive. The research method is descriptive-analytical and based on library studies

: Love is the missing phenomenon in today’s world, which is full of conflicts. Nowadays, some groups around the world are caught in their ideological and ethnic asabiyyah [with its negative - ethnocentric bias - meaning], and rebellious selfishness. They, with a sense of domination and greed, prepare ground for destruction of natural environment, deterioration of humane soul, and squandering the efforts of scientists in reducing human suffering. Of course, this is not a new phenomenon. In the past, there were many people doing such malicious actions. Unlike them, there were, and are now, those who thought about health and happiness of human being. Bigotry and ethnocentrism acted as the pushing force for the first group. But, motivations of the other group were love and sacrifice. It seems that, the prevailing of humanist and nature-loving thought to be a solution to this problem. Sufis and mystics, far back, for nurturing the human sense in themselves and their disciples, made themselves to purify their sensuality by combating ignorance, anger, hatred, wrath, pride, enmity, envy, jealousy, infidelity, and hypocrisy. They replaced those sins by loving human beings and nature and through this prepared themselves to accept God’s love. Modern man, in order to break the boundaries of asabiyyah and selfishness and dissemination of humanitarian senses is in need of such roles; models who, sometimes, sacrificed their lives for their cause. Dara Shikoh – the Timurid prince of India- was among these activists.

Little research has been administered regarding the various aspects of Iran’s social history; one of the reasons being probably the scarcity of sources which has encouraged extremely few people to undertake investigation in this area. Although few sources exist on the topic of the social history of Iran, there has been no real hindrance to conducting research, because once proper information about social events has been drawn from political chronicles, supplemented by sources contemporaneously written (such as lexicons, literary and jurisprudential texts and even books on agriculture etc.) as well as travelogues and relevant documents, one can undertake desirable investigations in the domain of social history and its ancillary branches.
By taking an analytical perspective toward the historical sources from the Safavid period, the present article intends to examine the rural sociography in these sources.

Opium is a narcotic substance that has been used throughout history as a drug. In case of continuous use, habituation to humans is inevitable. Opium was used mostly for medical purposes in pre-Safavid Iran. In the ninth century AH and head of the Safavid were few People from upper strata of society or the people were dependent on them opiate drug addicts. Since the start of the fifth decade of the tenth century AH, there was a perceptible change in the consumption of opium in Iranian society. The purpose of this article is that by using historical descriptive and analytic method, clears this change by the end of the first period of the Safavid and its social consequences. Survey of data obtained from various sources shows that Intoxicant prohibition decree of Shah Tahmasb, gradually increased opium addiction and this rise caused new social consequences and a basis for addictions of people in later periods; in other words as a substitute to opiate intoxication banned in Shah Tahmasb’s decree, has played a greater role-In the field of consumables- in changing Iranian lifestyles.

One of the areas in which the National Legislative Assembly legislated was the issue of drug and addiction. The first law passed in this area, that is the law of limitation of opium, is especially important because after passing this law in the Parliament, a new era concerning drug and addiction began. In this research, legal procedures related to drug and addiction from 1910 to 1928, are investigated using a historical approach and archival documents and sources. The results show that the important role of opium in government revenues and its budget has caused the Parliament and government to consider it a valuable resource. Therefore, they tried to control it in favor of government treasury as much as possible. In this period, in order to prevent drug contraband to the country, the law of prohibition of drug importation to Iran was passed by the Parliament in 1923 for economic reasons. This law didn’t mention anything about domestic opium products and made Iran’s economy more dependent on opium. In all codes of conduct passed by the government and related ministries, a special attention was paid to the revenue aspect of opium and they were not concerned about drug users and the question of it being crime or not. Finally, the first law withholding drugs and addiction and considering it a crime was passed in 1925.

The Safavid era went through a variety of social changes. One of these changes was addiction to opium. In the pre-Safavid era, this narcotic was mostly used for medical purposes. In the Safavid era, opium addiction became pervasive and was regarded as one of the defining characteristics of the society’s lifestyle, especially during the end of the Safavid dynasty. The prevalence of this phenomenon has not been studied so far. Hence, this study was conducted using domestic and foreign resources while focusing on their historical trend through three stages of beginning, middle and final eras of the Safavid dynasty. According to the findings of this study, the changes regarding opium over the whole Safavid era do not follow the same pattern and have increased.

When writing history, one has essentially to avoid using concepts and terms anachronistically. Some historians and history scholars, intentionally or unintentionally, do this and put in use the newly generated terms and titles to refer to old times; hence, distorting historical facts. Historians of the Safavid period were accustomed to this phenomenon. Using the term “Kizilbash” for the events of first decades of the Safavid era by the historians of post-Isma’il I period, has led to misunderstanding of social and political history of that time. “Kizilbash,” was a contradictory term in that period. This term, being pejorative, had no legitimacy among Iranians. So, it was not accepted and put into use by them. The coinage and use of this term generated a sphere of hostility between Iranians and their neighbor states. This article, based on historical method of research and primary sources, aimed to investigate the “Kizilbash” phenomenon, as the core of this hostile sphere, to find out the causes and roots of the problem. Findings asserted that “Kizilbash” was a term derogatorily applied by safavids’ enemies. So, Shah Isma’il I and his statesmen did not use it. This term, for the first time, was appeared in Habib Al-siyar which began to be written at 927 AD and was finished after Shah Isma’il I’s death in 930 AD.

From a socially enlightened point of view, the educational programs offered to the masses should not be guided by the traditional gender bias and principle of inequality. The society which follows a socially progressive strategy must draw dividends from the knowledge and abilities of all members whether male or female. The people themselves must choose their educational paths based on their individual preferences. When contemplating the educational texts of medieval Iran and Safavid Persia, it becomes clear that the masters of tutelage had two distinct objectives for the instruction of men and women. The present study, by applying the historical method and by making extensive use of primary and secondary sources, strives to explore the diverse dimensions of this canonical problem. This enquiry demonstrates that the absence of women from the society and their lack of effective engagement in the socioeconomic sphere, along with their powerlessness in making strategic decisions on matters pertaining to the public domain were the direct consequences of the isolationist methods utilized in the education of women. This was partially accomplished by barring women from attending schools, and subsequently imposing upon them an isolated and passive existence in the society. This societal construct was further perpetuated by educational models that encouraged, nay demanded men to adopt and protect this maladaptive tradition. Despite all systemic obstacles and in the face of cruel odds, when the conditions permitted, the genius of many Safavid women flourished and contested the confines of their limited social spheres. Nevertheless, these accomplishments were often restricted to the woman’s personal domain and did not thrive in the grand socio-cultural realm.

During the history inhabited areas have always been attacked by desert residents and nomadic races. Iran has not been an exception, since it has always been attacked by nomad races of its borders` margin. Among those attacks we can point out Turkmen`s attack around northern and eastern north borders. Their attacks to residential areas and captivating villagers who live in northern and eastern north of Iran were among substantial problems during Qajar age for Iranians of Khorasan area, especially central government of Iran; a problem whose range of effect lead to first years of constitution period. The aim of the research has been investigating constancy reasons and factors of the problem, the way of its happening and policy of Qajar against attacks of Turkmens. Based on historical method, in this research the way of capturing Turkmens, fate of captives and military and political activities of Qajar were criticized and investigated to solve the problem. The research findings indicate that predicaments, originate from violent policies of Qajar and malice of Turkmen attackers. Although signing contract of Akhal in 1881 and addition of some parts of Turkmen lands to Russia domain reduced level of Turkmens` attack, hostilities were not removed and attacks of Turkmens continued.

What has been inferred from the references and sources, is that by the advent of Seljuqids, Abbasid Caliphate was severely weakened and lost its political position in many Islamic territories. This study is to answer the issue that unlike many researchers beliefs, Abbasid Caliphate was not considered as a weak,shaky political system versus Buwayhid rulers and at the start of its relations with Seljuqids it could improve the political position of caliphate for various reasons. This study has been directed based on the historical and analytical data and its results show that the two last caliphs of Buwayhids era al-Qader Billah (381-422) and al-Qaim Beamrellah(422-467), were among those who made a lot of efforts to regain the caliphate's lost identity, as we can observe the revival of caliph's authority, at least in Iraq territory.

Tamerlane، through his three sporadic invasions of Persia (Iran)، India، Syria، Egypt، and Asia Minor، provoked crisis and caused a number of changes in the regions’ political، social، cultural and economic structures. One of his moves was fighting a war with Yildirim Bayezid. This particularly deconstructive war، which can well be considered as a major landmark in both regional and worldwide turmoils that ensued، deserves a close study and extensive research. Applying a historical method and making use of primary sources، the researcher of the present study has attempted to identify the causes and effects of such a historic event. Findings indicate that expansionist measures of Yildirim Bayezid to rush to seize the territory of neighboring Muslim Beyliks and to overrun Kastamonu، his allied emirate، as well as Amasya، Sivas، and Kayseri – all of which disturbed the structural order of the region’s political units and heightened people’s dissatisfaction with him، thus leading to the formation of the circle of opponents abroad – paved the way for the alliance between the opponents and Tamerlane. On the other hand، forming a coalition of Persian Sultans against Tamerlane and assuming its leadership as well as storming into Arzanjan exposed Bayazid to Tamerlane’s blind rage and his territory to his full-scale invasions. In fact، ambassadors who came to the court of Tamerlane from Europe، statesmen who tried to incite his desire for revenge and Bayazid’s scribes and secretaries whose provocative remarks were directed at Tamerlane all contributed to inducing him، a man with more than thirty years of experience in successive victories، to the war’s point of no return

The causes of Yousuf Khan Mostashar al-Dowleh's intellectual transformation, the nature of the laws he had in mind, the intellectual bases of these laws and his attitude towards the Western constitutional systems are the problem issues connected with the present research, which have been analyzed through the historical method by focusing on the primary sources. Mostashar al-Dowleh was an Iranian intellectual during Nasser al-Din Shah's era whose familiarity with the Western constitutional systems led him to find out that the secret behind the progress of European governments was because of their laws and legal systems, and the reason behind Iran's backwardness was the lack of these factors. He considered transforming the political system of Iran as necessary. The form of government he suggested for Iran of that era was a constitutional monarchy whose laws were taken from the Declaration of Human Rights mentioned in the preamble to the French Constitution and was within the framework of Islamic sharia.

The kind of hat used by mystic groups، known as “Kolah-e Tark” or “Taj-e Sufiana” has always had a special status and function. Since the first centuries of Islam up to the Safavids era، Taj or Kolah-e Tark has undergone a major change both formally and conceptually. The purpose of this article، using the historical method of research، is to understand and explain the mentioned changes and their historical causes and factors. The findings of the research shows that the Kolah-e Tark was initially used as an ordinary headwear، but in the course of time، its form and concept changed and became a sign for abrogating the evils، a religious or sectarian motto، a component of social and political identity، as well as a pretext under which pro-Safavid militants and groups were humiliated by the Ottomans and Uzbeks.