By: COLIN MITCHELL | |
i-The Development of Iranian Studies in Canada Recent decades, however, have witnessed a radical transformation in Iranian studies in Canada. The 1979 Revolution in Persia and the ensuing arrival of Iranian academics, journalists, novelists, poets, and other intellectuals into Canadian academic and artistic society has generated a greater interest in Iran and the Persian-speaking world among Canadians. This, combined with a growing number of second-generation Irano-Canadians interested in studying aspects of Iranian civilization at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, has contributed significantly to the growth of different aspects of Iranian studies across Canada from Victoria to Halifax. This expansion has been further enriched by the participation of a number of talented Iranian literati, artists, and musicians in contemporary Canadian society. The following subentries survey different Canadian contributions to the successive periods of Iranian history, literature, language, philosophy, religion, art history, and archaeology.
ii) History The Achaemenid period, and specifically the study of acculturation in the ancient Irano-Mediterranean world, has been the focus of Margaret C. Miller’s research at the University of Toronto. Her book, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century B.C.: A Study in Cultural Receptivity (Cambridge, 1997), was awarded the prix Ghirshman by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 2001. Her authoritative contribution to the Encyclopædia Iranica on “Greco-Persian Cultural Relations” (EIr. XI, fasc. 3, pp. 301-19) provides a succinct overview of the current state of research and contains references to several of her significant articles in this field. Janick Auberger, a Classicist at the History Department of the Université de Québec à Montréal, has done extensive research on the 5thcentury Greek historian, Ctesias (q.v.) of Cnidus and has gathered together the surviving extracts of his work in her authoritatively comprehensive edition, Histoires de l’Orient, (Paris, 1991). Waldemar Heckel of the Classics Department at the University of Calgary has been a prolific contributor to the study of the Alexandrian and Hellenic periods. His publications include The Marshals of Alexander’s Empire (London, 1992), and The Wars of Alexander the Great: 336-323 B.C. (Oxford, 2002).
The study of Iranian history in the Timurid and Safavid periods has been particularly prominent in the Canadian academic tradition. Roger Savory, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, has had a profound influence on the study of the Safavid period (1501-1722). His numerous books and articles on Safavid political and military history, administration, bureaucracy, and diplomacy–translated into several languages–have done much to deepen our understanding of the period, particularly in the field of political and administrative history. Following in the footsteps of his eminent teacher Vladimir Minorsky at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Savory has worked meticulously on the complex structures of officialdom and bureaucracy in the 16th century (See “The Principal Offices of the Safawid State During the Reign of Isma¿il I (907-30/1501-24),” BSOAS 23, 1960, pp. 91-105, and “The Principal Offices of the Safawid State During the Reign of Tahmasp (930-84/1524-76),” BSOAS 24, 1961, pp. 65-85). He was the principal organizer of the first academic conference in Canada on Iran (“Iranian Civilization and Culture”, Dec. 10-11, 1971). The event and the ensuing publication of the proceedings (Iranian Civilization and Culture,Montreal, 1972) heralded Canada’s formal entry into the Iranian academic world. His Iran Under the Safavids (Cambridge, 1980), a survey of the rise of and fall of the Safavid dynasty, provided undergraduate and graduate students with a succinct introduction to this important dynasty. This was supplemented by Savory’s magnum opus, his translation of the monumental Safavid court chronicle, Eskandar Beg Monπi’s T˝rik˚-e ¿˝lam ˝r˝-ye ¿abb˝si as History of Shah ¿Abb˝s the Great (I-II, PHS, Boulder, Colorado, 1979; III (index), Bib.Pers., New York, 1986).
Maria E. Subtelny of the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto has produced a number of seminal works on various aspects of Timurid civilization in eastern Iran and Central Asia. Of particular note is her historiographical emphasis on agronomy, cultivation, landscaping, and general agricultural sciences in Iran and Central Asia. Besides focusing on pious endowments (waqf), and agronomical manuals for their social and economic information, and her research on the history of learning and education in the Timurid period, Subtelny has also taken a longer and wider view of Persian history and has delineated the role of agriculture and garden landscaping as one of the principle motifs in Iranian political, social, religious, and cultural expression. Her recent research on the imagery of the garden in relation to religious and mystical poetry has been published as Le monde est un jardin: aspects de l’histoire culturelle de l’Iran médiéval, Leuven, 2002. Aspects of 16th and 17th century Safavid diplomatic and chancellery history have also been examined by Colin P. Mitchell at Dalhousie University in several articles including “Safavid Imperial Tarassul and the Persian Insha Tradition,” Studia Iranica 26, 1997, pp. 173-209, and “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Shah Muhammad Khudabandah and the Safavid Dar al-insha,” Studies of Persianate Societies 3, 2005. Edward Ingram, retired Professor of History at Simon Fraser University, produced a number of historical studies of Britain and its 19th-century relationship with Persia and the 'Great Game', including Beginning of the Great Game in Asia, 1828-1834, Oxford, 1979, and Britain’s Persian Connection, 1798-1828: Prelude to the Great Game in Asia, Oxford, 1992.
Recently, the Historical Studies Department at the University of Toronto (Missassauga) has intensified its Middle East/Iranian studies program with the addition of Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi and Shafique Virani. Tavakoli-Targhi’s contribution has been primarily focused on the Qajar and early Pahlavi periods with examinations of Iranian debates about modernity, gender, and (pre)Islamic historiography. A selection of his major publications include: Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Europology, and Nationalist Historiography, Basingstoke, 2001, “The Homeless Texts of Persianate Modernity,” in Iran – Between Tradition and Modernity, ed. R. Jahanbegloo, Lanham, 2004, “From Patriotism to Matriotism: A Tropological Study of Iranian Nationalism, 1870-1909,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34, 2002, pp. 217-38, and “Contested Memories: Narrative Structures and Allegorical Meanings of Iran’s Pre-Islamic History,” Iranian Studies 29, 1996, 149-75. Shafique Virani has earned numerous awards for his dissertation (“Seekers of Union: The Ismailis from the Mongol Debacle to the Eve of the Safavid Revolution”), including the Iranian Ministry of Culture’s 2003 International Book of the Year in the category of research. Other publications of his include “Symphony of Gnosis,” Reason and Inspiration in Islam: Theology, Philosophy and Mysticism in Muslim Thought, ed. T. Lawson, London, 2006, and “The Eagle Returns: Evidence of Continued Ismaili Activity at Alamut and in the South Caspian Region Following the Mongol Conquests,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 123, 2003, pp. 81-100. Persian culture in the Indo-Islamic context has also been much studied in Canada. Derryl MacLean of Simon Fraser University has written on religious and cultural syncretism between medieval Persia and India and Sajida Alvi (Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University) has contributed to the study of the Perso-Islamic political ethicsgenre with her edited translation and commentary in Advice on the Art of Governance: An Indo-Islamic Mirror for Princes, (Albany, 1989).
iii) Literature and Language
Professor G. M. Meredith-Owens, a Turkoligist and Persianist and bibliographer at the British Museum, joined the Department of Islamic Studies at the University of Toronto in the later years of his career. Meredith-Owens brought with him an intimate knowledge of Oriental, specifically Persian, manuscripts, and much of his time in Toronto was dedicated to enriching the existing corpus of bibliographic studies. Marta Simidchieva has examined medieval Iranian political advice literature in “Kingship and Legitimacy in Nizam al-Mulk’s Siyasat-nama, 5th/11th c.,” in Writers and Rulers: Perspectives from Abbasid to Safavid Times, eds. B. Gruendler and L. Marlow, Wiesbaden, 2004, and medieval Iranian poetics with “Kashifi’s Badayi` al-afkar (10th c. AH/15th c. CE) and Its Predecessors al-Mu`jam (7th c. AH/13th c. CE) and Hada’iq al-shi`r (6th c. AH/12th c. CE): Imitation and Innovation in Timurid Poetics,” Iranian Studies 36, 2003, pp. 509-31.
The study of modern Iranian literature has flourished under the rubric of Comparative Literature at a number of Canadian universities in recent decades. Rivanne Sandler of the University of Toronto has examined a wide array of modern Persian prose and poetry. Noteworthy studies include: “Imagination Set Free? The Poetry of Suhrab Sipihri,” Edebiyat 8, 1998, pp. 107-24, and “Literary Developments in Iran in the 1960s and the 1970s Prior to the 1978 Revolution,” World Literature Today 60, 1986, pp. 246-51. Nasrin Rahimieh of the Department of Comparative Literature, Religion, Film/Media Studies at the University of Alberta has focused particularly on contemporary writing by Iranian women, literature of exile and displacement, post-revolutionary Iranian cinema, postcolonial literature, as well as Iranian feminism and contemporary women’s movements. This interdisciplinary approach to the study of contemporary Iranian society is best seen in her Missing Persians: Discovering Voices in Iranian Cultural Heritage, Syracuse, 2001. Rahimieh has also contributed to comparative perspectives between German and Persian literature, particularly on the works of Franz Kafka and Sadeq Hedayat (see “Die Verwandlung Deterritorialized: Hedayat’s Appropriation of Kafka,” Comparative Literature Studies 31, 1994, pp. 251-69).
The field of Persian linguistics is represented by Jila Ghomeshi at the University of Manitoba. Besides recently editing a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Linguistics (46, 2001) on the syntax of Iranian languages, she has contributed articles on various aspects of Persian linguistics including “Plural Marking, Indefiniteness, and the Noun Phrase,” Studia Linguistica 57, 2003, pp. 47-74, and “Non-projecting Nouns and the Ezafe Construction in Persian,” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15, 1997, pp. 729-88.
iv) Philosophy and Religion
The interplay between philosophy and theosophy has been the domain of Hermann Landolt, most recently retired from the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. Landolt has been a leading researcher and scholar of philosophy and mysticism, providing a focus on the Illuminationists of the post-Avicennan Perso-Islamic world (particularly Sohravardi and Moll˝ S˘adr˝) and the extent to which Shi’ism and mysticism in Iran were and are shaped by eπr˝qi perceptions as described by the French philosopher and Iranologist, Henry Corbin. Notable publications by Landolt include a transcription and editing of ¿Abd Nur al-Din Esfar˝yeni’s K˝πef al-asr˝r, Tehran, 1980, as well as French translation of the same text(see Le révélateur des mystères, Verdier, 1986). He also transcribed and introduced a collection of correspondence between `Abd al-RaΩm®n Esfar®yeni and `Al®' al-Dawlah Semn®ni (Mor·id va morid: mok®tib®t-e `Abd al-RaΩm®n Esfar®yeni b® `Al®' al-Dawlah Semn®ni, Tehran, 1972). Moreover, he has been an important contributor to major encyclopedias, including The Encylopedia of Religion, Encyclpaedia Iranica, and The Encyclopedia of Islam. Another luminary of Islamic philosophy and mysticism affiliated with McGill University's Institute of Islamic Studies was Toshihiko Izutsu. Izutsu, author of the celebrated Ethico-religious Concepts in the Qur'®n (Montreal, 1966), worked closely while at McGill University with the Tehran branch of the Institute and its publishing series Wisdom of Persia to produce a number of seminal studies on Perso-Islamic theology and theosophy, including The Fundamental Structure of Sabzawari’s Metaphysics (Tehran, 1968), Manfliq va MabaΩes-e alf®˙: majmu`a-e motun va maq®l®t taΩqiqi (Tehran, 1974), and Bony®d-e Ωekmat-e Sabzav®ri (Tehran, 1980).
Twelver Shi’ism has been a field of scholarly research at a number of Canadian universities in recent years. A student of Hermann Landolt, Todd Lawson of the University of Toronto has focused on Qur’anic exegesis in the Twelver Shi’ite traditions, including “Akhbari Shi’i Approaches to tafsir,” Approaches to the Qur’an, eds. Hawting and Shareef, London, 1993, pp.173-210, “Note for the Study of a ‘Shi’i Qur’an’,” Journal of Semitic Studies 36, 1991, 279-95. He has also written several articles on Babism and the Baha’i faith including “The Structure of Existence in the Bab’s Tafsir and the Perfect Man Motif,” Studia Iranica: Cahiers 11: Recurrent Patterns in Iranian Religions from Mazdaism to Sufism. Proceedings of the Round Table held in Bamberg, Paris, 1992, pp. 81-99. Another student of Landolt, Lynda Clarke at the department of religion at Concordia University, has contributed significantly to the historical study of Twelver Shi’ism. `Abdulaziz Sachedina, a renowned specialist of shi`ite Islam (Islamic Messianism: The Idea of the Mahdi in Twelver Shi'ism, Albany, 1980, and The Just Ruler in Twelver Shi'ism: The Comprehensive Authority of the Jurist in Imamite Jurisprudence, New York, 1988) was educated at the University of Toronto, and taught at a number of Canadian universities before receiving an appointment at the University of Virgina. Shî’îsm and Constitutionalism in Iran (Leiden, 1977) by the late `Abdul-Hadi Hairi was a revised expansion of his doctoral dissertation at McGill's Institute of Islamic Studies and would go on to be a seminal text in contemporary Iranian political studies. McGill University's Institute of Islamic Studies also lays claim to the Islamicist Eric Ormsby, who contributed to contemporary understanding of the great Persian theologian and scholar, al-Ghazali, with Theodicy in Islamic Thought: the Dispute Over al-Ghazali’s “Best of all Possible Worlds,” Princeton, 1984. Political thought and philosophy in contemporary Iran has most recently been studied in depth by Forough Jahanbakhsh (Queen’s University) in her Islam, Democracy and Religious Modernism in Iran, 1953-2000: From Bazargan to Soroush, Leiden, 2000. Pre-Islamic Persian religion, most notably eastern and western manifestations of Mithraism, has been examined by Roger Beck, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, in Planetary Gods and Planetary Orders in the Mysteries of Mithras, Leiden, 1988, as well as numerous other journal articles.
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