cultural history

Coins, regardless of their role as a medium of exchange, can play an important part in the economy and trade of governments. Additionally, the inscriptions and designs on coins can reflect territorial, political, cultural, and economic changes within a country throughout history. This is why the study of coins and, consequently, the use of numismatics today can be of great help to professors, researchers, and scholars in various historical fields, even for those specializing in specific historical periods, to better examine and refine the transformations in political and dynastic history, economic history, cultural and religious history, as well as the historical geography of dynasties and governments over time. This research aims to explore how numismatics can be used in historical research and studies to shed light on certain ambiguities that researchers may encounter when examining pivotal moments in history. The findings of the research indicate that numismatics, depending on the manner and method of coin minting in different historical periods, can provide significant assistance to historians in conducting their studies accurately. Numismatics can contribute to the precise chronology of the reigns of kings, the identification of potential claimants, rivals to power, and rebels against the central government, as well as the historical extent and political-geographical boundaries of the territories of ruling dynasties. Moreover, it can help in understanding the duration of the prevalence of various scripts and languages in different historical periods, identifying customs, rituals, and religious ceremonies of each historical era, and analyzing the nature and causes of economic rivalries among neighboring and competing states, along with the economic scope of their coins. Such contributions of numismatics offer valuable insights to historians for conducting their studies comprehensively.

The cultural history of Arran during the 4th and 5th centuries AH is one of the significant topics that has received little attention in the historical sources of that period, and as a result, it has not been adequately addressed in contemporary historical research. This study, written using a historical method with a cultural history approach and by referencing literary sources from this period, examines the cultural transformations in Arran during these two centuries. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the process of weakening of the dominant Arabic culture in Arran and the various aspects of the revival of indigenous culture and the spread of Iranian culture in its place. The findings of this study, while correcting and complementing some previous research, show that the Sajid, Salarid, Rawadid, and Shaddadid dynasties, from the beginning of the 4th century to the middle of the 5th century AH, expelled the governors appointed by the Abbasid Caliphate and established semi-independent states in Arran, thereby ending the hegemony of Arabic culture and language. This led to the consolidation of the region's indigenous language and traditions, on the one hand, and the spread of Iranian culture and the Persian Dari language, on the other. Additionally, the Shahnameh (Book of Kings) culture became prevalent, and ancient names such as Shapur, Anushirvan, and Manuchehr appeared alongside Islamic names like Fazl and Ali. Festivals such as Nowruz, Mehregan, and Sadeh were celebrated alongside Eid events in Islam

The history of mentalities is an approach that emerged from the historiography of the Annals school and can be seen as influenced by the approach of cultural history, but it was not limited to this framework and found many ramifications and branches. Today, the history of spirits and the history of emotions are in fact the fruit of the history of mentalities, and each is gradually finding an independent mechanism. The main axis of the history of mentalities, launched by Febvre and Bloch, two of the founders of the annals school, is the study of the impact of culture on other aspects of life. The main assumption of the historians of this historiographical approach is that there are grand cultural plans on which the members of a society largely agree, and that individuals act culturally within their boundaries. While praising the comprehensive approach of this history, which includes the various social classes without distinction, critics have taken aim at the coercion and imposition associated with this assumption. The history of mentalities undoubtedly offers a novel picture of the past by focusing on the sometimes invisible and largely neglected role of culture in political, economic and social actions. This essay aims to familiarize Iranian historians with new approaches to historiography. It takes a descriptive-analytical approach and draws on first-hand sources from historians of the history of mentalities as well as reliable sources of study to provide definitions of the history of mentalities, introduce famous historians and works of this school, and finally suggest some criticisms of it.

Cultural history is one of the types and branches of historical knowledge that was gradually formed and expanded during the 20th century. Cultural history specifically refers to becoming “culture” a subject in history or having a culturalist approach to history. The emergence and evolution of cultural history took place during different stages. Today, the dominant form of this type of historical knowledge is “New Cultural History” (NCH), which emerged during the 1980s and soon became one of the most prosperous research fields in history, but despite having the attribute “new”, this kind of knowledge of history was based on classical contexts and foundations, without being aware of which, knowledge of new cultural history will not be possible; With this description, in this article, without entering into the controversies related to the description and explanation of the concept of new cultural history, we are looking for an answer to the main question, which are the most important fields and classical foundations of new cultural history? Based on the findings of the research, the classical foundations of modern cultural history can be identified both from the epistemological and methodological aspects; from the aspect of epistemology, the new cultural history is based on the basic distinction that was established in the 19th century between natural sciences and the spiritual / cultural sciences. From the methodological point of view, the new cultural history is based on interpretative-hermeneutic methods that were theorized by cultural science theoreticians from the end of the 18th century and throughout 19th century. Also, great cultural historians in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, such as Burckhardt, Huizinga, Weber and others, wrote classic works in cultural history, which all provided a historical background for the emergence of new cultural history.

Criticizing the cultural structure of “marriage” in the traditional linguistic sphere and providing a new definition of it was the concern of a number of modernist writers of Iran during the Qajar era. These authors recognized new writing formats as an efficient tool for this purpose. The focal issue of the upcoming research, which is written with the approach of cultural history and focusing on “language” as a tool for cultural change and modernization, is the analysis of the attempt of these modernists to break into olden cultural structures based on marriage and the foundational criticism of these structures by focusing on “the right to choose”. By writing works in emerging literary formats, modern writers introduced into critical literature the issue of marriage and emphasizing the choice as a “right”; In this context, the “translation” factor had a central contribution; sphere of thought of Iran, influenced by the life of modernists in modern environments such as Europe, Caucasus and Istanbul, was exposed to the translation/localization of the works of prominent figures in the field of critical literature to make it easier to pass this difficult path through the translation. The results of the analysis of the content of these texts indicate that the critical representation of traditional marriage has been one of the main aspects of this critical attitude. Trying to break into the accepted authority of the family as a cultural unit in the classic model of marriage, criticizing structures such as honor/shame and cultural units that dominate the category of choice such as relatives and criticizing the dominance of the financial/status attitude over this right, are among the most important components of this activity. The second aspect of this approach is looking at the positive function and proposing an alternative cultural model emerging from modernity based on the right to choose and emphasizing the individual's role in marriage.

Cultural history is one of the nascent branches of historical sciences that looks at cultural issues from the perspective of history. In this model, which was established after the collapse of political history authority and the emergence of new historical and philosophical approaches, culture as a social heritage is the main subject of a historiographical approach; Among these, one of the most important and ironically neglected fields of study is art historiography, which has a history of more than two centuries in recording the artistic heritage of the world, including Iran; Accordingly, this article is based on the case study of four works of art historiography (two in world art and two in Islamic art) with the aim of identifying the importance of these works to the categories of cultural history in the writing of art history, and to Determine the extent of these historians' attention to the context and cultural contexts of art in Iran and the neglected cases. The article is organized with a qualitative and descriptive-analytical approach and the findings indicate that these works were not the same in regard to cultural categories in the analysis of Iranian art; In terms of quantity, due to the focus of the two books by Gombrich and Gardner on world history, a small volume is devoted to Iranian art in these two collections.  This finding is especially important because Ernst Gombrich himself is one of the pioneers of writing the cultural history of art, but it seems that his approach has been influenced by the very small and limited amount of his attention to the history of Iranian art. The most manifestations of cultural elements are also evident in the book of Islamic Art (Irwin), which can be analyzed by considering the intellectual trends and observing the cultural and social context of Islamic societies in the writing of art history by this historian.

The psychohistorical approach to the study of history is an interdisciplinary approach that was born in the middle of the 20th century in America and despite the difficulties and limitations it faced, it gradually managed to take a codified form. Of course, this birth led to many controversies, both theoretically and methodologically, among historians, psychologists, social scientists, and humanities and experimental scientists in general; One of these controversies is related to the link between the psychological matter and the cultural matter; A problem that appears on the way to build a bridge between individual behavior and collective behavior, or to put it better, a bridge between life history, which is more focused on psychological matters, and cultural history, which is more focused on cultural and social contexts. It is the undeniable role of universality that makes people share fundamental experiences despite their cultural differences in contexts and times. As this rule helps us in understanding the subject, it also helps in understanding the past. Based on this, the present article tries to discuss a methodological perspective for the study of cultural history by exploring the psychohistorical approach (not as a complete and alternative approach to other approaches, but as a complementary approach that can bring new insights to the study of history). In this context, an attempt is made to use the conceptual possibilities of psychoanalysis, sociology, and philosophy by focusing on critical history in order to be able to talk about a methodological perspective about a historical understanding of culture. In this framework, the ontology of the subject and having an epistemological perspective about the mechanisms of psychological action finds a close relationship with historical mechanisms and dynamism. This intersection has been deeply considered by psychologists such as Freud, sociologists such as Durkheim, and philosophers such as Nietzsche; With these words, the present article tries to show how the historiography model of approaches based on psychohistory can be expanded and developed, and presents a methodological perspective that can go beyond the duality of micro-macro matter and propose a form of cultural history that In order to be critical, it should be based on an ontological understanding of the subject and the subject's experience.

Creating precious architectural and artworks is an important socio-cultural act. Consequently, the act of preserving those resources could be considered a socio-cultural action. In general, preserving historic resources is studied as a humanist and modern act; however, historically, and particularly in the pre-modern era, there are instances of the same socio-cultural actions, which, if not entirely, at least in some parts, ties to the modern approaches of preservation.

This paper, in a descriptive-analytical method and with a concentration on social history, examines some of the existing examples and historical records of preservation actions. The main question of this research is how the preservation of historic resources as a socio-cultural action could be analyzed through social history. This question is important because the preservation of historic resources is not only a modern approach but a social and cultural response, which in many cases is for political and religious purposes. Thus, it could enlighten some parts of the cultural and social life of the people in pre-modern Iran.

while it confirms the continuousness of society’s attention to historic resources over time for several reasons, including value, national and religious interest, cultural and social beliefs, and political motivations, it also creates public awareness and, subsequently, social advocacy for the conservation and preservation of historic resources, or in some cases, the opposite, destruction of cultural and historical resources for the same reasons.

The art of the Middle East has received the attention of the media, museums and art institutions in the context of the political developments of the 21st century. However, the art of this region cannot be reduced to political history, but the cultural history of the art of the Middle East shows another aspect of the formation mechanism of this art movement. Cultural history shows how the artists of this region try to get out of the alienating view of the West. In this paper, the following question is pursued: How can Middle Eastern artists overcome the dualism of self/other or the otherness of the West in the face of Middle Eastern art? It is shown how the transition from the post-modern to the trans-modern paradigm has created a context for crossing self/other dualism in the experience of artists. Results of analyzing the content and themes of the works of regional artists indicate that some of the contemporary artists follow a new path in the contemporary art of the Middle East by using indigenous, local and traditional meanings in their works.

In the history of thought, thinkers can be divided into two groups. The first group is those who put forward creative ideas and theories in areas of the humanities. The second group is those people who expand the ideas and thoughts of the first group. The main question of the present article is whether Gambridge theory has had a new and original idea in cultural history? The present article argues that the infrastructure of Gambridge's thoughts  are  based on Popper's methodological individualism, attacking the opposite paradigm and methodological totalitarianism has rejected hegemony, including Hegel's theory and the corresponding cultural history, and the "principle of causal necessity." Hence, it seems that Ernest Gambridge is not an original and among the first group thinker. He is a historian who has developed the ideas of his co-thinkers - Russell and Popper. However, some thinkers in the second half of the twentieth century went through the methodological dichotomy of totalitarianism and methodological individualism, and with a dialectic of the two, became more comprehensive in their study of social science issues. The present article concludes that in the cultural history in question, Gambridge, by classifying people as inferior and superior, fell into the same trap into which the totalitarian Hitler regime - which is heavily criticized by Gambridge. This kind of view of cultural history is another kind of totalitarianism that Gambridge claims to be fighting. In reality, Gambridge is a preacher of totalitarianism in a different way and with less self-awareness.

Research in the field of social and cultural history in our country has been scant compared to its origins, the west, especially when it comes to case studies and implementation of findings of this field of science on the works of historiography. Using the descriptive-analytical method and analytically studying the text of Eskandar beik Munshi’s Tarikh-e Alam Aray-e Abbasi , this article seeks to answer the question that to what extent are the social and cultural themes used in his historiography, and how he applies them? The purpose of this article is to take a step towards the analytical study of the Iranian Muslim historiography works, in order to extract and explain the themes that are important today in the field of social and cultural history. According to the results of this study, Munshi, in his historiography, pays attention to various aspects of social and cultural history, including religious and theological disputes among governmental and religious actors, habits and interests of different segments of society, personality and moral characteristics of people and groups arising from their ethnicity and culture, the role of women in society, the characteristics of the ideal ruler and government, the superstitious beliefs of the king, the courtiers and the people, as well as some other topics that are studied today under sciences such as cultural anthropology and psychology. Munshi also pays special attention to social and cultural events and considered them to be among the most important issues that should be the subject of historiography.

The Emergence of Cultural history in the 1970s and 1980s and its subsequent dominance was in part a response to the perceived limitations of the social history. In describing the behavioural tendencies of social groups and emphasizing normative behaviour, often in the abstractions of numbers and charts, social historians had moved beyond an elite-dominated political paradigm but had ignored both the uniqueness of individual experience and the ways in which social life is created through politics and culture. By bringing more marginal practices out from the shadows, cultural historians expose the presumed hegemonic assumptions to which social historians had previously been tied. But cultural history, in the absence of theories about ordinary experience as supplied by economists, sociologists and psychologists, even by biologists, has begun seriously to erode historical knowledge about large slices of human experience. We, cultural historians, have never needed social historians more than we do today. We need to ask searching questions about the theories that have become the commonplace of cultural analysis. We need to make explicit the connections between the theory and the historical behaviour. But most of all, we need to return to that aspect of social history which asked sharply put questions and communicated them through the manner in which the research was organized.

Cultural history is an interdisciplinary approach that seeks to interact with the two main fields of the humanities, i.e. history and culture. Cultural history is a thriving branch that has expanded since the 1970s. In fact, it can be said that cultural history is formed in the context of a set of discourse developments in the field of history, social theory and the concept of culture. Research in the field of cultural history of Iran is more difficult than the other fields of study due to the dispersion of the sources and scarcity of the information. The approach of folk literature is a way to recreate the events of cultural history because of its connection with the people's lives and the breadth of its territory and the richness of its social themes. Folk poetry, as one of the important pillars of popular literature, reflects various manifestations of the material and spiritual life of the individuals in society, and therefore has a special place in the study of cultural history. Given this position, the present article, by analyzing the themes and contents of some folk poems of the Qajar era, examines the contribution of these poems in reflecting the levels of thought, ideas and various aspects of social life of the people of that time. The findings of this study indicate the capacity of folk poetry in the Qajar period to recreate events, narrate the neglected aspects of cultural and social life as well as the lifestyle of the people. They also represent the traditional and religious ideas and critical protest actions in the Qajar society.

In classical cultural history, the elites were considered to be agents of culture and politics, and thus, in this type of historiography, the cultural-political flows derived from ordinary people were not considered independent streams from the produced culture of the elite.However, one of the most important orientations of the new cultural history is the change in the subject matter of the study from elite to subalterns and ordinary people.The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of how, in the new cultural history, ordinary people and subaltern strata have become agents in construction of culture and politics.To answer this question, first, the position of classical cultural history on the issue of political agency and its application in the book "History of Culture in Italy" is examined. Then, in order to illustrate how this new cultural historiography has come to this orientation, while describing the stance of this approach, the book "The Cheese and the Worms: The cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller" is being studied as one of the classical texts of this stream. In order to achieve this goal, with the "exploratory" approach, "comparative method" was used to discover the possibility conditions of this agency.

One of the important issues in the field of “historical theology” is the analysis on the nature of the term “book”. Ignoring the structural change in the history of Islamic civilization is one of the backgrounds for misinterpreting the term “book” and thus misunderstanding the analysis of the heritage of Islamic civilization. Paying attention to this restructuring prevents the formation of incorrect analyzes on various topics in the history of Islamic culture, such as “Hadith writing”, “prohibition of writing”, “inventing Hadith”, “Hadith communities”, etc. in the first centuries of Islamic civilization, which it is strongly criticized by Orientalists. By establishing, interpreting and explaining the view of the applicable-mediating nature of the “Book” along with its “spoken-written” nature in the first centuries of Islam, this article aims to criticize the prevailing view of the analysis of the history of Hadith, in order to correct and promote of arguments in the field of historical theology. This article also strengthen the hypothesis that the prevailing view on the analysis of the history of Hadith, which has been influenced by the approach of orientalists, has deviated sharply from the standard model of “Book” in the earlier centuries.

Based on the traditional system of human sensory classification, photographs are considered to belong to the visual sense, and they are regarded merely as visual document, but in the process of understanding and interpreting of the photograph, all that is narrated in the photo is not visible, and the other human senses also are involved in the text analysis. In the social history of the senses, the position of human senses such as olfaction, touch, hearing, and taste in the encounter and analysis of the historical text is studied and investigated by historians. Therefore, in the present discussion, the photograph as a historical document is the point of interference of "what is seen" with the senses that are understandable but invisible. olfaction is one of the main senses that is directly related to reception of memories from the past and it is nostalgic, thus, it is closely associated with the concept of ‘memory work’ in the photograph analysis area and with the meaning association especially in social photograph area that is related to human everyday life. Therefore, based on the social history of senses, work of memory is investigated in the photographs that are as a document from the olfactory history in the social context.
Research questions: The main question is how can the smelling sense be read in the photograph context and, accordingly, how a deeper understanding of the past that is represented by the photograph is obtained? In addition, this question can also be asked that whether in the process of perceiving a photograph, in addition to the visual sense, what is a function of other senses, and so what is the significance of human emotional-based analysis in interpreting social photographs? based on the research questions, it can be assumed that social photographs, due to their inherent connection with the historical past and narration, can closely be associated with the perceptions from the past, which can be perceived through olfaction sense, feelings such as nostalgia and deep retrieval of memories; the olfaction by its close connection with the rebirth of nostalgic memories and thoughts is always implied by a priori familiarization. In this research, the cultural and social history of the smell and its relation to the analysis and interpretation of social photographs were dealt with. It was concluded that olfaction, along with the visual sense that is base of the photograph historical documentary, provides complex perception in the understanding of what is present in the photograph. Paying attention to the olfactory sense in the photograph understanding connects the “memory work” and perception of objects, things, situations and the individuals present in the photograph with the experienced conditions where the audience of the photo lived in and basically had an ancestral understanding of them, and thus, a more vivid understanding of the text of the photograph is obtained.

The question of the present article is that what proportion can be established between two branches of knowledge of cultural history and oral history and how they can be used to develop knowledge system in the new historiography? In order to detailed explanation and analysis, for each knowledge, three broad field of ontology, epistemology and methodology can be separated.

The aim of the authors is a comparative study and representation of the character of teachers in villages in the works of urban and rural writers. In most of the stories there is a positive approach towards teachers especially those who endure the discomfort of teaching in retired villages. But since the late 1960s / 1340s stories have been written that teachers had negative character. The aim of this research is to analyze the characterization of teachers in stories related to villages and the reason for writing stories with a negative view towards teachers during that juncture. The hypothesis is that this dual representation is influenced by the difference in the homeland and origin of writers. By reviewing stories and the life of their writers one can identify the characteristic of two urban and rural discourses and find the reason for the emergence of each of these dual representations. 34 stories have been studied in this research which has teacher character.

Social history is considered as one of the majors of history investigating a broad area relevant to the various aspects of human's life and culture as well as the structure, the procedure and the consequence of human's deed. This branch of historical studies has studied the history of inferiors and their social roles after too much attention to the political history including the history of superiors and rulers. The social history is not of specific definition and restriction and there exists numerous individual ideas towards its inclusion circle, identity, bases, and origin. Also it has been presented a number of researches around various dimensions of social history such as the way of relationship of social history with the other areas of history. For instance, what is the relationship between social history and political, economic history? What are the interaction and diversity of social history and cultural history? How is its interaction with sociology and its concepts? What is the position of social history among the areas of historical studies? What are the sources of study in social history and what are the aspects of commonality and diversity of it with the sources of other majors? This article is to investigate the stated issues.