Knowledge Commons | Persian and Persianate Studies | Activity https://hcommons.org/groups/persian-and-persianate-studies/ Activity feed for the group, Persian and Persianate Studies. Sat, 04 Apr 2026 16:16:32 -0400 https://buddypress.org/?v=10.6.0 en-US 30 hourly 2 135a83330c94d946d9c3c10e269d1755 Jake Benson started the topic The Iranian Diaspora in Southeast Asia: Old Manuscript, New Perspectives in the discussion Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/groups/persian-and-persianate-studies/forum/topic/the-iranian-diaspora-in-southeast-asia-old-manuscript-new-perspectives-4/ Wed, 01 May 2024 13:39:49 -0400 https://www.leidenspecialcollectionsblog.nl/articles/persians-of-java-re-examining-the-cultural-context-of-indonesia

]]> deae5d47040851a400fe8faa90d18376 Pasha Mohamad Khan deposited ‘Abd al-Nabī Faḳhr al-Zamānī and the Courtly Storytellers of Mughal India in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1870103/ Mon, 08 Jan 2024 03:00:07 -0500 Report on the historical details of a number of neglected storytellers in Iran and South Asia from the 16th to 17th centuries CE, including Zain al-‘Ābidīn Takaltū Khān, ‘Ināyat Allāh Darbār Khān, Fusūnī Yazdī, Mīr Muḥammad Hāshim, Iskandar Qiṣṣah-khẉān, Ḥājī Qiṣṣah-khẉān Hamadānī, Niẓām Shīrāzī, Mīr Qiṣṣah, Muḥammad…[Read more]

]]> 0 e4782db25fb97eaf866852991e597e00 Pasha Mohamad Khan deposited A Handbook for Storytellers: The Ṭirāz al-akhbār and the Qissa Genre in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1870101/ Mon, 08 Jan 2024 03:00:05 -0500 Describes the storytelling techniques of the 17th-century storyteller (qissah-khwan) ‘Abd al-Nabi Fakhr al-Zamani Qazwini in South Asia and discusses the truth/falsehood binary in the context of the qissah/dastan genre.

]]> 0 0ad078a07e302d6a57ada5e95bb556e7 Pasha Mohamad Khan deposited Preface to a Romance (1866) in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1870021/ Sun, 07 Jan 2024 03:00:07 -0500 Translation of Mīrzā Asad Allāh Ḳhān Ġhālib's 1866 Urdu preface to the dāstān Bostān-i Ḳhayāl.

]]> 0 04077749221ed4abd50bb9ad082b670d Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited The Translatability of Love: The Romance Genre and the Prismatic Reception of Jane Eyre in Twentieth-Century Iran in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1869219/ Wed, 27 Dec 2023 03:00:57 -0500 This chapter examines how twentieth century Iranian readers situated Jane Eyre within the classical genre of romance literature (adabiyāt-i ʿāshiqāna), originating from the tradition of love narratives in verse (ʿishq-nāma) pioneered by the twelfth century Persian poet Nizami Ganjevi. While romance is only one among several of the original Jane…[Read more]

]]> 0 b996be2e9332051c2a29380193111c3e Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited Translating Line Breaks: A View from Persian Poetics in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1859626/ Mon, 25 Sep 2023 18:03:22 -0400 Line breaks are arguably the defining feature of poetry, in the absence of which a text becomes prose. Consequently, the translation of line breaks is a decisive issue for every poetry translator. Classical and modern literary theorists have argued that the potential for enjambment, which we understand as the effect that makes line breaks possible…[Read more]

]]> 0 d9027704f03714b46e48b310ee24431d Nasrin Askari deposited Licit Magic – GlobalLit Working Papers 17. Persian Literary Criticism in India: Khān-i Ārzū’s Critique of Ḥazīn’s Poetry in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1847631/ Wed, 31 May 2023 02:27:11 -0400 In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when a new style of Persian poetry was developing in the Persianate world, several erudite literary critics appeared in India, whose meticulous critiques of Persian poetry was unprecedented in the long history of Persian literature. A close study of the works produced by these critics reveals their vast…[Read more]

]]> 0 5c25dc1d19115f776c0dd306fcdeee9e Jake Benson started the topic The Archived Chester Beatty Library Islamic Seals Database in the discussion Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/groups/persian-and-persianate-studies/forum/topic/the-archived-chester-beatty-library-islamic-seals-database-5/ Sat, 22 Apr 2023 09:21:37 -0400 The Archived Chester Beatty Library Islamic Seals Database:
Screen Shots and Tips For Access 
Jake Benson, Research Associate for Persian Manuscripts
John Rylands Research Institute and Library
University of Manchester
22 April 2023
Since the Chester Beatty Library reformatted its website in 2019, it regrettably removed the Islamic Seal Database,…[Read more]

]]> 09f318f0bc35d02d57d44024a8861116 Muntazir Ali started the topic Topics in the study of space and place in Central and South Asia in the discussion Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/groups/persian-and-persianate-studies/forum/topic/topics-in-the-study-of-space-and-place-in-central-and-south-asia/ Thu, 21 Jul 2022 03:51:14 -0400 I am putting together a reading list on the general topic of space and place in Central and South Asia. I am looking for suggestions (books, articles, etc.) to add to the list. Any suggestion/lead focused on the two regions (from ca. 1600 to the present) or any other work that you think is relevant to the study of space/place in the humanities is…[Read more]

]]> ab29b7a400185b32ea2370d14da112fd Aqil Visram started the topic Open Library Courses in Islamic Studies in the discussion Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/groups/persian-and-persianate-studies/forum/topic/open-library-courses-in-islamic-studies-2/ Mon, 18 Jul 2022 20:32:51 -0400 Dear members of the Persian and Persianate Studies group,

Recently, the Marvel Cinematic Universe launched its inaugural Muslim superhero series, Ms. Marvel, starring Iman Vellani. According to Forbes, Ms. Marvel “is the highest scoring Disney Plus Marvel series ever.” I was very excited by this as I’m an undergraduate student at the Univers…[Read more]

]]> a90b08e76e5a2600fa42db02ef2ac634 Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited Ajnabi, or The Xenological Uncanny in Iranian Modernism,” New Literary History (2021) in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1751838/ Tue, 14 Sep 2021 02:25:45 -0400 Within Iran, the transformation in the Islamic legal understanding of the foreign (ajnabi) into a political concept was accelerated by the encounter with Europe during the 19th century. The classical Iranian understanding of otherness as a domain fully demarcated from the self was replaced by an internalized other, resulting in what we call here…[Read more]

]]> 0 5eb12c7419fa4a0f3944a4b6a46ece8e Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited The Temporality of Interlinear Translation: Kairos in the Persian Hölderlin (Representations, 2021) in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1751831/ Tue, 14 Sep 2021 02:24:46 -0400 This article examines the temporality of interlinear translation through a case study of the rendering of Friedrich Hölderlin’s poetry into Persian. We argue that, in its adherence to the word order of the original, the interlinear crib prioritizes the temporality of the instant (kairos) over the temporality of the linear sequence (chronos). Ka…[Read more]

]]> 0 f0e69c64b277930fdd17715f5a3a2e25 Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited Watching Chekhov in Tehran: From Superfluous Men to Female Revolutionaries (Comparative Drama, 2021) in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1751828/ Tue, 14 Sep 2021 02:24:30 -0400 In the summer of 2011, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Ivanov (1887) debuted on the Iranian stage. The director and playwright Amir-Reza Koohestani (b. 1978) created a production that was faithful to the classic status of this text while also maximizing its resonance with a contemporary Iranian audience. I explore how Koohestani achieved this b…[Read more]

]]> 0 4b96f87427b039e31526a92a8f9bc70d Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited Hard Translation: Persian Poetry and Post-National Literary Form (2018) in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1739549/ Wed, 26 May 2021 02:25:01 -0400 This essay examines how translation theory can globalize contemporary literary comparison. Whereas Persian studies has historically been isolated from the latest developments within literary theory, world literature has similarly been isolated from the latest developments within the study of non-European literatures. I propose the methodology of…[Read more]

]]> 0 99e06088b170f1df21424cf3f0239bae Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited Lecture: Multilingualism as a Stimulus to Islamic Literary Theory (2019) in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1714661/ Tue, 27 Oct 2020 02:23:51 -0400 file is too large for this repository so I list the links below:
Link to lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xtDwVTndx4&t=43s
Audio: https://soundcloud.com/unibirmingham/multilingualism-as-a-stimulus-to-islamic-literary-theory

In her lecture, Gould discusses how cross-cultural encounters have generated new literary theories and new…[Read more]

]]> 0 7661c387e7f9e6962812c8e0b02d68f9 Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited Farhadpour, prismatically translated: philosophical prose and the activist agenda in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1710850/ Sun, 04 Oct 2020 02:26:53 -0400 chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Translation & Activism

]]> 0 8aafa6c29855428b3ab931113794ca8a Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited High Tide of the Eyes: Poems by Bijan Elahi in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1690685/ Thu, 11 Jun 2020 16:26:03 -0400 The hermit-poet of modern Persian literature, Bijan Elahi (1945-2010) was a modernist poet, a prolific translator of Eliot, Rimbaud, Michaux, Hölderlin, and the founder of Other Poetry, the leading avant-garde movement within Persian modernism. Elahi passed the last three decades of his life in seclusion in his house in Tehran. He stopped…[Read more]

]]> 0 a1a4a372357e65b4978d3b2a76c8c75a Jake Benson deposited The Raja of Mahmudabad Palace Library Project in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1688359/ Sun, 24 May 2020 16:25:36 -0400 Over the course of the last year the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML) and the Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park (Roshan Institute-UMD) have begun collaborating with the Raja of Mahmudabad family on the preservation of their important manuscript collection. The project will help protect the…[Read more]

]]> 0 1330b96374fcbaf48c0953b2d0d47ed2 Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited “The Persianate Cosmology of Historical Inquiry in the Caucasus: ʿAbbās Qulī Āghā Bākīkhānūf’s Cosmological Cosmopolitanism,” Comparative Literature (2019) in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1679224/ Mon, 24 Feb 2020 16:25:23 -0500 This article engages with cosmopolitan conceptions of culture that flourished in the nineteenth century Caucasus with a view to clarifying the relevance of these legacies today. I focus in particular on the polymath writer ʿAbbās Qulī Āghā Bākīkhānūf (1794–1847). As I explore Bākīkhānūf’s historical writing, I consider how the Persianate liter…[Read more]

]]> 0 a7ff547d37a2e4e08082b8837c799e6f Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited “Translation as Alienation: Sufi Hermeneutics and Literary Modernism in Bijan Elahi’s Translations,” forthcoming in Modernism/Modernity (2021) in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1657834/ Wed, 17 Jul 2019 16:25:42 -0400 In the wake of modernism studies’ global turn, this article considers the role of translation in fostering Iranian modernism. Focusing on the poetic translations of Bijan Elahi (1945-2010), one of Iran’s most significant poet-translators, we demonstrate how untranslatability becomes a point of departure for his experimental poetics. Elahi used pre…[Read more]

]]> 0 7ee1bb37b92811e32bee14bbd83fab18 Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited Bijan Elahi, “Five Scenes from Icarus” in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1640499/ Sat, 18 May 2019 16:25:43 -0400 Bijan Elahi, “Five Scenes from Icarus,” The Kenyon Review issue XLI (2019): 75-77.

]]> 0 f7c82074f39b59b3ad3643dc21b411fa Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited Three Poems by Bijan Elahi, Two Lines (2019) in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1637897/ Thu, 11 Apr 2019 16:27:29 -0400 Three Poems by Bijan Elahi in the 25th-anniversary edition of Two Lines:

"My Scent that Doesn't Pass" [بوی من که نمیآید]
"Dupin Detects" [Dupin Detects]
"Song of the Moon Hanging over the Fields of Damascus"
[معلقه‌ی ماه روی دشت‌های دمشق ]

]]> 0 058df0f608c5d9de89bbfef52b195724 Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited “Dissidence from a Distance: Iranian Politics, as Viewed from Colonial Daghestan,” The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca, ed. Nile Green (University of California Press, 2019) in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1637895/ Thu, 11 Apr 2019 16:27:12 -0400 This chapter explores the legacy of the Iranian reformer and intellectual Abd al-Rahim Talibuf (1834-1911), as viewed from Daghestan, where he passed the last decades of his life. Talibuf's eight books shaped the trajectory of subsequent Iranian intellectual history, and inspired the revolutionary constitutional movement. Talibuf’s example e…[Read more]

]]> 0 a0179457ecefafb9f7b8f68c332fef1f Sunil Sharma deposited The Production of Mughal Shahnamas in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1636098/ Sat, 23 Mar 2019 16:25:28 -0400 This paper studies the interest of the early Mughals in the Shahnameh and survey the range of illustrated manuscripts of this text produced in North India in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although there were several older copies of the Shahnameh in the imperial library, and the emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605) is said to have enjoyed…[Read more]

]]> 0 fb42caa3383870a2a47651d1a433d1b7 Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited “From Pious Journeys to the Critique of Sovereignty: Khaqani Shirvani’s Persianate Poetics of Pilgrimage,” Remapping Travel Narratives in the Early Modern World (Amsterdam UP, 2018) in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1632463/ Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:25:45 -0500 While the trope of the Islamic pilgrimage (ḥajj) is well known, the impact of the imagery and concept of travel on poetic production from the Islamic world, particularly in Persian, has not merited the same scrutiny. This chapter introduces one of the most important and yet least-studied Persian travel narratives to an interdisciplinary r…[Read more]

]]> 0 5c9e13f0c7228ab3806c56ec8fd226ab Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited “Wearing the Belt of Oppression: Khāqānī’s Christian Qaṣīda and the Prison Poetry of Medieval Shirvān,” Journal of Persianate Studies (2016) in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1631547/ Sat, 09 Feb 2019 16:38:41 -0500 This article examines how the Persian prison poem (habsiyāt) incorporated Islamic legal norms for governing non-Muslim peoples into its poetics. By tracing how Khāqāni of Shirvān (d. 1199) brought the aesthetics of incarceration to bear on Islamic legal regulations pertaining to non-Muslim communities (ahl al-zemma), I offer a new perspective on…[Read more]

]]> 0 b1ab02708347b0150bcbd17708316698 Rebecca Ruth Gould deposited “The Critique of Religion as Political Critique: Mīrzā Fatḥ ʿAlī Ākhūndzāda’s Pre-Islamic Xenology,” Intellectual History Review (Awarded the International Society for Intellectual History’s Charles Schmitt Prize) in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1631536/ Sat, 09 Feb 2019 16:38:25 -0500 Mīrzā Fatḥ 'Alī Ākhūndzāda’s Letters from Prince Kamāl al-Dawla to the Prince Jalāl al-Dawla (1865) is often read as a Persian attempt to introduce European Enlightenment political thought to modern Iranian society. This essay frames Ākhūndzāda’s text within a broader intellectual tradition. I read Ākhūndzāda as a radical reformer whose inte…[Read more]

]]> 0 a080a22e3240d209566103ef0b401e30 Sunil Sharma deposited 'The Spring of Hindustan': Love and War in the Monsoon in Indo-Persian Poetry in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1630429/ Sun, 27 Jan 2019 16:25:21 -0500 A study of the imagery of the monsoon season in the poetry of the classical poets Masud Sad Salman and Amir Khusrau.

]]> 0 d3610f1a26df52b40cdd4c32fed5cb7e Sunil Sharma deposited The Chameleonic Identities of Mohan Lal Kashmiri and His Travels in Persianate Lands in the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1630428/ Sun, 27 Jan 2019 16:25:21 -0500 A close reading of parts of Mohan Lal Kashmiri's travel account in English to Central Asia and Iran as a Persianate text.

]]> 0 18140e6ba12b190aa811d8080d014e4c Sunil Sharma created the group Persian and Persianate Studies https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1628681/ Thu, 10 Jan 2019 20:31:49 -0500 0