Download or read book Transportation Technology in Iran 1800 1940 written by Willem M. Floor and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only 100 years ago the main means of transportation in Iran was by quadruped. Transportation & Technology in Iran, 1800-1940 is an in-depth, illustrated, four-part study of the subject.
Download or read book Transportation Technology in Iran 1800 1940 Chapar Carts Carriages Automobiles Bicycles Motor Cycles Lodgings Sewing Machines Typewriters Pianos written by Willem Floor and published by Mage Publishers. This book was released on 2023-08-21 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only 100 years ago the main means of transportation in Iran was by quadruped. Transportation & Technology in Iran, 1800-1940, by renowned Iranian studies scholar Willem Floor is an in-depth, illustrated, four-part study of the subject. Until the 1920s Iran had no more than 700 kilometers of roads suitable for motor vehicles, which situation greatly impeded Iran's economic development. Caravans traveled 40 km/day, though travelers in a hurry could cover 150 km/day when using the courier system (chapar), which is the subject of part 1. Wheeled transportation, (in part 2 of the books) was rare and limited to only a few parts of country due to the lack of roads. This situation underwent change when carriages became popular in urban areas and on the few modern roads after 1890. Motorized transportation grew in importance after 1921 and really took off in the 1930s, with the construction of a new road network. As a result, newer, more powerful trucks reduced the cost of transportation significantly, thus lowering the cost of retail goods. The increase of motorized transport also meant that car dealers, import rules, mechanics, garages, supply of spare parts, and gasoline distribution as well as traffic regulations had to be created ex nihilo; All these processes are detailed in the book. Like cars, bicycles and motorcycles also were increasingly used as of the 1920s, thus increasing choice in people's mobility. More road traffic also implied that travelers needed places to spend the night and eat. The change from caravanserais to guest-houses and hotels is discussed in part 3. These changes in transportation methods did not come alone, for other modern tools of change such as the sewing machine and the typewriter also made their appearance and had a major impact on people's availability and use of time. Finally, the piano made its entry onto the Iranian musical scene, and although not perfectly in tune with the traditional Iranian musical system, it is now as much part of music making in Iran as the tar and santur (part 4 of the book). All these changes and new technologies did not happen overnight or without problems, and slow adoption initially was limited to the upper-class. However, with falling prices and changing needs and policies these new technologies eventually reached a larger public and the idea that they once were 'exotic' and 'out of reach' is now inconceivable to Iranians. The studies in this book provide a new vantage point and understanding of the transfer of modern technology for scholars of the social-economic and cultural history of the Middle East.
Download or read book Persian Pleasures written by Willem M. Floor and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pleasure/keyf in the form of food, drink or drugs, is the subject of this book, which looks at how their consumption has played a key role in social interaction in Iran for the past 2,500 years and how this has evolved over time, shaped by changes in Iranian society and Persian culture as a whole. Food has always been about more than just fuel: a meal is a feast for the senses, as well as an occasion to relax and be sociable, aspects that the many foreign travelers to Iran have commented upon over the centuries. One of the opening chapters allows us to see Iranian food and customs through foreign eyes in a fascinating overview of the subject. A further insight into Iranian food from the past is offered by the work of the fifteenth-century Persian poet Boshaq, nicknamed At'ameh/the Gourmet. Long before cooking became a television phenomenon in America, he decided that food made a good subject for poetry and his poems reveal what would have been on the menu for the well-to-do Iranians of his day. Drinking together was even more of a social event in Iran than sharing food, in particular when enjoyed with regular companions and in the comfortable surroundings of a familiar social venue. The next two chapters look at the rise of the coffeehouse in the seventeenth century, important as a meeting place for various social, artisanal or political groups, to discuss ideas, swap news, or play chess and other games. We then see how, by the nineteenth century, Iran had transitioned from a country of coffee drinkers to a nation of tea drinkers and learn how coffeehouses turned into teahouses without even changing their name. In the seventeenth century, tobacco from the New World was introduced to Iran and quickly became a passion, not to mention another pastime that could be enjoyed in the relaxing environment of the coffeehouse. Chapter seven takes an intriguing look at tobacco cultivation and Iranian smoking customs and paraphernalia through the ages, from the traditional water pipe to the modern cigarette, while an extensive later chapter provides wide-ranging analysis of the use of psychoactive drugs in Iran from the earliest times to the present in the most detailed study of the subject available to date. Iranians were also once a nation of wine drinkers, and a substantial section of the book is devoted to tracing the history of wine production and consumption in Iran from its peak in imperial times to its gradual decline as Iranian society became more Islamic. Although alcohol and certain drugs have been considered unlawful in Islamic Iran at different periods, they have been tolerated to some extent because of the enjoyment and sociability they offer and because physical intoxication was/has been regarded by the Sufis as akin to the spiritual rapture experienced when in communication with the divine. The Islamic ban has even been seen as non-Qur'anic by some. As a means of banishing melancholy arising from a sense of alienation felt by Iranians through the ages, sociability has always been very important, today more than ever, enhanced by the pursuit of keyf in all the forms presented here. Carefully researched and full of fascinating detail, Persian Pleasures takes a fresh look at a complex topic, with findings that, despite the apparent familiarity of their subject matter, may surprise the reader and give abundant food for thought.
Download or read book The Rebel Bandits of Tangestan written by Willem M. Floor and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hinterland of Bushehr on the Persian Gulf-Tangestan, Borazjan, Dashti, and other districts-was populated by a disparate and poor people, who were at constant war with each other. It was not only neighbors who fought and preyed on each other, but also close family members, and even fathers and sons. The traditional chiefs were heavily engaged in smuggling, in rustling cattle and sheep, in raiding villages and caravans, and in land grabs. They opposed any interference with their traditional authority and way of life, whether it was by the central or local government or a neighbor. They were not concerned that their peasants were oppressed, but rather that it was government officials who oppressed them, leaving fewer pickings for the chiefs. If they saw an advantage in collaborating with the government they did so, in particular when that was harmful to their neighbors, with whom they often had a blood feud. The rule of the game was that everything could and should be sacrificed for personal gain. The cost to others be damned. After a modernizing government was established in Iran in 1921, it wanted to impose law and order, and bring to heel chiefs, who had been unruly for centuries and only paid taxes under threat of arms. As of 1925, a disarmament campaign tried to collect arms during the winter months and impose the rule of law. Although in 1931 many chiefs were arrested and banished to other parts of Iran, the petty chiefs and rebel bandits resisted at every occasion. To counter the growing anarchy, in 1941 the military allowed all banished chiefs to return to their traditional districts and tried to use them to keep law and order. The returned chiefs then used the army to bolster their own position vis a vis their rivals and to weaken the measure of control that the central government had over their area. Despite the disarmament and pacification drives that the army engaged in, by mid-1940, the Tangestanis, Dashtis and Dashtestanis were still a source of trouble. Nevertheless, the military operations had left their mark on the area, for by 1950, the chiefs in the three regions, although not lacking in influence, were merely landowners. The Rebel Bandits of Tangestan is a deep dive into early-twentieth century history of an oft-neglected region of Iran and the Persian Gulf. It is a fascinating and well-researched account that reveals unknown details that will be rewarding to scholars and general readers alike.
Download or read book When They Broke Down the Door written by Fatemeh Shams and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The power of poetry to map the human heart has been a hallmark of Persian culture for at least a thousand years, and Fatemeh Shams wields it unforgettably. As a member of the Iranian diaspora living in the West, her voice is often one of anguished separation, and many of her poems touch on politics, but as translator Dick Davis says in his introduction to this volume, her approach is "inward and personal rather than public and propagandistic." Frequently, her focus on the individual extends to erotic passion - "It was night, your hands were full of moonlight . . ." - or addresses its obverse, of loneliness: "I sleep in my own corpse's arms . . ." Whether she is writing in free verse or in traditional literary forms, her remarkable technical abilities and the strength of her feelings always shine through. Shams's verse makes real for us her vision of the world as only poetry can. Introduced and Translated by Dick Davis. Original Persian text faces the English translations of the poems.
Download or read book The Mirror of My Heart A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women written by Rabe`eh Balkhi and published by Mage Publishers. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the very first Persian poets was a woman (Rabe’eh, who lived over a thousand years ago) and there have been women poets writing in Persian in virtually every generation since that time until the present. Before the twentieth century they tended to come from society’s social extremes. Many were princesses, a good number were hired entertainers of one kind or another, and they were active in many different countries – Iran of course, but also India, Afghanistan, and areas of central Asia that are now Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Not surprisingly, a lot of their poetry sounds like that of their male counterparts, but a lot doesn’t; there are distinctively bawdy and flirtatious poems by medieval women poets, poems from virtually every era in which the poet complains about her husband (sometimes light-heartedly, sometimes with poignant seriousness), touching poems on the death of a child, and many epigrams centered on little details that bring a life from hundreds of years ago vividly before our eyes. This new bilingual edition of The Mirror of My Heart – the poems in Persian and English on facing pages – is a unique and captivating collection introduced and translated by Dick Davis, an acclaimed scholar and translator of Persian literature as well as a gifted poet in his own right. In his introduction he provides fascinating background detail on Persian poetry written by women through the ages, including common themes and motifs and a brief overview of Iranian history showing how women poets have been affected by the changing dynasties. From Rabe’eh in the tenth century to Fatemeh Ekhtesari in the twenty-first, each of the eighty-four poets in this volume is introduced in a short biographical note, while explanatory notes give further insight into the poems themselves.
Download or read book Faces of Love Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz written by Mohammad Hafez-e Shirazi and published by Mage Publishers. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Persian Gulf written by Willem M. Floor and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the Persian Gulf during the eighteenth century is still little known. This gap is now being filled by the historian and renowned scholar Willem Floor, first with publication of The Persian Gulf: A Political and Economic History of Five Port Cities, 1500-1730, and now with The Persian Gulf: The Rise of the Gulf Arabs, The Politics of Trade on the Persian Littoral, 1747-1792. This study tells the fascinating story of the shift in trade from the lower to the upper Gulf, while there was also a partial shift of trade from the northern Persian coast to the southern Arab coast. It tells of the departure of first the Dutch then the British trading companies, and the rise of the local rulers who began to dominate political developments, whether it was the Imam of Oman in Masqat, the Qavasem in the Strait of Hormuz, the Ka'b in the Shatt al-Arab, Sheikh Naser in Bushire and Bahrain, Mir Mohanna in Dashtestan and at the head of the Gulf, and the 'Otobis at Kuwait, Bahrain and Zubara. And finally it tells of how, because of a lack of interest by the Persian and Ottoman governments in the region, the Bombay fleet of the East India Company increasingly used their naval power to protect commercial interests in the Gulf, which paved the way for a similar role played by the British Royal Navy in the nineteenth century.
Download or read book The History of Hospitals in Iran 550 1950 written by Willem M. Floor and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aplace for the sick (bimarestan) had existed in Iran since the mid-sixth century, but such institutions never developed into real hospitals, except for a few instances during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Thereafter, until the twentieth century, their number was small and declining, and merely served as alms houses (dar al-shafa) for sick and poor pilgrims, which was why they were attached to mosques and religious schools (madrasehs). There was no major change in this situation until the mid-1880s. It was then that changes began to occur through the establishment of dispensaries, and later, hospitals. Four main groups were involved: the government of Iran, the government of (British) India and its affiliates, and American and British missionary organizations. Each had their own disparate policy objectives. Although the first Iranian government hospitals preceded the ones established by American and British missionaries, the services they offered were limited. They did not include surgery, which was the comparative advantage of the foreign hospitals. In addition, the latter offered better trained physicians, nurses, modern medical methods of treatment, and the use of medical instruments and devices. As a result, these Western hospitals had an important impact on the training of Iranian physicians and nurses. They also introduced modern methods of medical treatment, surgery techniques and medicines. Furthermore, they made it more acceptable for Iranian patients to seek treatment in a hospital, an institution not traditionally viewed as a place to heal but rather as a place to die. Despite their increasing role in providing medical care, the urban-based hospitals were too few in number, and not geared to address Irans public health issues. In particular, they could not meet the medical needs of the countrys mainly rural population. Nevertheless, the hard work and sacrifice of the staff of these modern hospitals laid the groundwork for Irans much needed and comprehensive public health infrastructure and health policies. These were further developed in the 1930s and grew in speed and size during the 1950s. This book, together with Willem Floors companion volume, The Beginnings of Modern Medicine in Iran, are essential histories for anyone interested in the inceptions of Irans modern health care system.
Download or read book German Sources on Safavid Persia written by and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For this book, Willem Floor has selected and translated into English thirteen German sources reporting on events in Iran from 1580 to 1722. One of these sources has never been published before; four of them are complete books, while the others only have sections dealing with Iran. Most of these sources are unknown to scholars either because they are hard to find or because the Gothic script and obsolete words makes them difficult to read, even for German scholars. Ten are travel books: six largely about Bandar Abbas and Qeshm. Three of the authors narrate their encounters with Persia and Persians, from Azerbaijan down to the Persian Gulf and Qandahar. One is a fragment of a diary with very interesting information, and the last two were written to inform the interested reader about Iran, its geography, its people, its economy and its type of government. In fact, the last book was especially written to apprise the public about current events in Iran in 1722, providing breaking news on the Russian invasion of Persia with background information for context. These translations provide much new information for scholars interested in Safavid Persia. They also shed light on how Europeans viewed Persia and Persians, and how they were able to learn about them without having to travel there.
Download or read book Studies in the History of Medicine in Iran written by Willem M. Floor and published by Mage Publishers. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on the plague and cholera in Iran. As well as quarantine, influenza, medical infrastructure, geophagy, and early steps toward veterinary medicine in Iran.
Download or read book Another Birth written by Forugh Farrokhzad and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edition statement from translator's note.
Download or read book Crowning Anguish written by Tāj al-Salṭanah and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life of Taj al-Saltana, daughter of the ruler of Iran, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, epitomized the predicaments of her changing era. Overcoming her limited edu-cation within the harem walls, Taj chronicled a thirty-year span in the life of a generation that witnessed a shift from traditional order to revolutionary flux. It is as though she had chosen this moment to recall her personal history--a tale filled with "wonder and anguish"--in order to record a cultural and political leap, symbolic of her time, from the indulgent, sheltered, and often petty world of her father's harem to the puzzling and exposed, yet emotionally and intellectually challenging world of a new Iran.Now almost one hundred years later Taj's memoirs are relevant and qualify her not only as a feminist by her society's standards but also in comparison with feminists of her generation in Europe and America. Beyond her fascination for the material glamors of the West at the turn of the twentieth century--fashion, architecture, furniture, the motorcar--she was also influenced by Western cul-ture's painting, music, history, literature and language. And yet throughout this time she kept her bond with her own literary and cultural heritage and what she calls her "Persianness."
Download or read book The Artist and the Shah written by Dust-Ali Khan Mo`ayyer al-Mamalek and published by . This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To the task of chronicling the waning years of Persia's Qajar court, Dust-Ali Khan "Mo`ayyer al-Mamalek" (1876-1966) brought matchless gifts. On his mother's side, he was the grandson of Naser al-Din Shah, ruler of Qajar Iran from 1848 to 1896; on his father's side, he was the descendant of a family of assayers and masters of the royal mint with roots in the Safavid era (1501-1736). He was also a painter and writer with a keen eye for atmosphere and detail. Throughout his long life, he kept journals of the rarefied and sometimes turbulent world in which he moved. Some of those records were incorporated by him into autobiography or descriptions of his grandfather's court-its modes of governance, festivals, royal hunts, palaces and gardens, life in the harem, and much more. The Artist and the Shah is the product of a seven-year labor of love by Manoutchehr Eskandari-Qajar, a dedicated historian of the Qajar era, to not only translate two of Dust-Ali Khan's memoirs but also to gather together 280 photographs from public archives and private collections. Most of the photographs are presented here for the first time in their proper context. Illuminated with the words of Dust-Ali Khan, they provide a uniquely intimate view of an era now long vanished.
