نشریه مطالعات تاریخی جنگ
سال پنجم شماره 4 (زمستان 1400)

One of the salient features of the Cold War was the cultural rivalry between the Eastern and Western blocs. To dominate different countries, instead of pursuing a direct policy and using military force, the Soviet Union and the United States sought to penetrate the civil society through cultural instruments and by focusing on people’s thought. In this campaign, the United States managed to dominate the civil society of developing countries by means of music, film, fashion, book publishing, and by instilling the idea of ​​democracy and liberalism, and thus became the hegemonic power. In the field of publication, Franklin Book Program, by establishing numerous branches in many developing countries, transformed the book publishing industry, and managed to influence the civil society of these countries and capture the cultural arena. The findings of the present descriptive-analytical study, based on historical documents, show how the US hegemony in Iran was developed by relying on the publishing industry. In addition, this research sees the activities of the Franklin Book Program in Iran and the world in the context of a macro-cultural competition in the international sphere.

Safavid chronicles are full of narratives of wars, and domestic and foreign military conflicts of the Safavid government. War finds a special place in the historiography of this period, so much so that if an event did not lead to a military conflict, historians would not consider it worthy of being recorded, and its emergence inside historical texts was improbable. Therefore, the narration of the war was of special importance and required an appropriate narrative structure to represent the event and convey the goals behind the narration to the audience. By adopting a descriptive-analytical method and constructing a model of theories related to narration, this research tries to illuminate war narration in Safavid historiography and the goals of historians in recording wars. The results show that, by selecting narrative elements, suppressing or highlighting some components of these elements, historians present a war narrative that aims to represent the Safavid territorial claims, the legitimacy of their rule and actions in war zones and disputed areas.

The important Treaty of Kars, signed between the governments of Turkey, the Soviet Union, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia on October 13, 1921, led to the transfer of Nakhjavan to the Republic of Azerbaijan. After the First World War, the Armenians first took political-military steps to annex Nakhjavan to the fledgling Republic of Armenia. However, all their efforts failed due to the presence of strong rivals such as the Soviet Union and Turkey. As a result, the Treaty of Kars not only created a new political unit in the Caucasus, but also from a geopolitical point of view, led to the formation of a new political geography in northwestern Iran. The present descriptive-analytical study, using a historical method based on library and archival documents, mainly aimed to show how the sequence of the events of the early years of World War I influenced the formation of the political unit of Nakhjavan. Therefore, this study concerns the possible impact of the First World War on the political developments in Nakhjavan, from the Batum treaty to the Kars treaty. Although Soviet and Turkish governments were politically and militarily weak due to the consequences of the First World War, the research findings show that the common interests of both fledgling countries paved the way for starting their influence in South Caucasus by handing over Nakhjavan to the Republic of Azerbaijan to keep their further control of the region.

One of the topics that increasingly draw the attention of rulers and modernists during the Qajar period and after the defeats of Iran by Russia concerned the military and weapons. During this period, they came to the conclusion that in order to compensate for Iran's backwardness, Western scientific and technological advances must be achieved. One of the countries that received special attention after the Constitution was the United States. The present descriptive-analytical study by relying on the press and unpublished documents, sought to shed light on the tools and elements through which the Iranians become acquainted with US military weapons, and the effect this knowledge had on the Iranian military arena. The findings of the study indicate that the Iranian press and political representatives in Washington at that time reported extensively on the country's armed and military achievements and developments, convincing many Iranian politicians and modernists that the United States was the right model for Iran to consider and, and to prefer this country to other European countries to buy military weapons, recruitment of specialists and advisers, and sending students to study in military fields.

Geography as the place of developments and history as its time have reciprocally interacted with each other and have been considered as a complement to each other in the course of historical developments. If we deem war as a determining factor in the course of human evolution, the factor of geography deserves attention because it has played a significant role in the fate of wars. In this regard, one of the most influential geographical factors in battles has been climate change. Atmospheric developments affect the time of events, the way of organizing forces, the process of battles and most importantly, the outcome of some of them. Consequently, conducting any research regardless of the role of geography in victories and defeats will be insufficient. Therefore, the present descriptive-analytical study aimed to give insight into the impact of atmospheric events on the military developments in the Ghaznavid and Seljuk era. The findings indicate that atmospheric developments have played a decisive role in the fate of the Ghaznavid and Seljuk wars. This role is manifested in the effect of climate on the performance of weapons and combat forces, the role of snow and cold in casualties of forces and changes in war tactics, the effect of hot and thirst in the power losses of the troops, the military effects of rain and flood in the crippling of the troops and the function of atmospheric phenomena in the reproduction of superstitions

The conquests of the early Islam are considered among the important events, the consequences of which have left important effects on the material and spiritual lives of Muslims. On the other hand, the impact of these prominent events on the field of hadith studies cannot be ignored. Therefore, the present research tried to examine the question of the effectiveness of the actions of the caliphs, as influential events in the history of Islamic government, in hadiths, and the role played by the conquests in the creation of the hadith of "I have been ordered to fight against the people". It should be mentioned that the historical course of the works about the conquests shows the great attention scholars have paid to them. However, the lack of hadith studies about the origin of the aforementioned narration reveals the necessity of addressing it. Therefore, in this article, an attempt has been made to overcome some of the existing shortcomings by answering the question of the effects of conquests on the contexts of the creation of narrations. By adopting a theoretical approach, this descriptive-analytical study reached the conclusion that through the theory of the justice of the Companions of the Prophet, as an example of the kalāmi belief of Sunnis, we can witness the range of forged or replicated narrations. In other words, the effects of evens and kalāmi beliefs on writings, including replicating narrations, are undeniable, and were explicated in this study via a number of examples. Reproducing the wars of the Prophet (PBUH) and the Caliphs by generations following the Companions of the Prophet, in order to justify the conquests as an example of the primary wars and also to strengthen the theory of "justice of the Companions of the Prophet", has more than ever provided the grounds for the origin of the narration.