پژوهش نامه انتقادی متون و برنامه های علوم انسانی
پیاپی 100 (اسفند 1400)

Hussain ibn Musa ibn Jafar is a famous Alawi person who transmitted some Hadiths from his father Imam Musa al Kazim and his brother, Imam Ali ibn Musa al Rida (A.S). This lofty position and proximity to the Imamate line, caused the construction of some attributed Sepulchers to him in many cities, of which Tabas, located in the east of Iran, has more fame. Ali Akhavan Mahdavi has written a book on this important personality, his life, and his real place of burring. The present study aims to examine the book critically, therefore, tries to introduce and examine the book, then discusses some problems in it and presents suggestions regarding both the form and the content. So, we prepare our study with the use of a descriptive-analytical approach and of course a special usage of the main historical sources to which compare the contents of them. In conclusion, the author reached some important innovations in comparison with similar sources and studies, and it is completely clear by analyzing the content of hadith and genealogy books. Examination of the Akhavan Mahdavi's book showed that although this book has many advantages and has been effective on subsequent works written on this subject, but shortcomings such as lack of research background and critique of sources, the author's little use of Hadith and Rijal sources are among the cons. Some of the author's citations have diminished the book's credibility.

The Murji'ah was one of the political-intellectual groups that in the first century of Islam, by avoiding judging the beliefs and positions of the active factions in the field of politics and society, entered the arena of existence in the turbulent Muslim society. It seems that the dual function of the Murji'ah in history - compromise and confrontation with the government - and consequently the two-sided judgment about them, the duality in their thought and, better, the ambiguous nature of the word Murji'ah and its specific definition of faith, that is, the two main pillars of reference thinking go back. For this reason, the term Murji'ah has been used for a range of different intellectual and political currents and sometimes contradictions, and even in the case of Kharijites and Shiites. The central issue of the present study is what the type of confrontation and reaction of the Murji'ah difference in compromising and confronting the Umayyads was? The aim of this study is to show how the Umayyads used this dual Murji'ah approach to legitimize themselves. This research has been organized with a critical approach to previous research and with a descriptive-analytical view.

A considerable part of our knowledge about Iran and its relations with other neighboring civilizations has been based on Greek and Roman texts and sources, some of which have been translated into Persian with acceptable quality. However, there is important information about ancient Iran in the historical texts and archaeological findings discovered in the Far East, especially China. A small number of them have been translated into Persian, which contains errors. Therefore, considering the importance of historical texts and archeological data related to Iran in China, the present article intends to first examine the works related to ‘Iranian-Chinese Relations’, in order to pathologize the Persian translations of these texts and research on Iran-China relations. Then, it seeks to criticize the part related to ancient Iran in the book “Ancient Texts on China-Iran Relations”. The most important outcome of this study is the weakness of translators and editors in translating Chinese texts and research into Persian, which in some cases, these weaknesses are the result of important mistakes of the authors of the research in the West.

Given that the book “The History of Iranian Studies in Russia” is one of the most recent works in the field of Iranian studies in Russia, the author was expected to critique the achievements of Russian Iranologists with an analytical approach; especially for the fact that, during the communist era, the Russians attached special importance to Iranian studies in line with the plans and policies of the ruling Soviet party. Because in the Soviet period, Iranian studies were based on the course of historical one-line theory and the proof of historical determinism. These works had a great impact on the intellectual, political, and social atmosphere of Iran in recent decades. As a result, the critique of the Russians' record in this field could have opened new perspectives in the field of Iranian studies (Iranology), while the book under review provides a brief and hasty record of the trend of Iranology in the three-hundred-year history of this science in Russia. One of the most important reasons for the dispersion of the book’s contents was to choose a general title for the present study. So, the indicators studied by the author cover a wide range of topics and contents in the field of Iranian studies in Russia. The indicators studied in the present book should be included in the scope of encyclopedia research. The present article tries to critique and analyze the topics and indicators of the present book by the method of content analysis and scientific critique.

“Advice Paradigm, Iranian Thought Beyond Decline and Continuity”, the book of Iranian thought strives to combine the writings of the ancient and Islamic periods in a single pattern; includes and analyzes “the two dilemmas” and “the four implications”. The question is what the model of the authors of the paradigm of advice is; for explaining the epistles of Iranian history and to what extent it is sufficient for the theoretical studies of this group of historical sources? The findings of the research, which have been done using a critical approach and the historical explanation method, show that the basis of the ideas of the book is based on a predetermined framework, and is influenced by the reproduced Iranshahri theory of the contemporary period. In a critical evaluation, what is expected is the possibility of proposing a different model for reading the texts of the Political Epistles.

The Qajar dynasty, which seized political power in Iran at the beginning of the thirteenth century AH, had a tribal origin, but despite extensive research, its origins remain unclear. Clarification of this tribal origin can help to better understand the issues of Qajar history, and the book "Historical Origin of the Qajar Tribe" has been written for this purpose. Since the study and explanation of this historical origin from three perspectives of ethnic genealogy can be explained, the evolution of the identity and endeavors of the tribe during the centuries, and the study of the historical conditions, and the leaders of this tribe were changed to a king of Iran during this period, the question is, which perspective that the author has explained the origin of the Qajar tribe through has been able to clarify the origin of the Qajar tribe. This study shows that the author of this work combines the first two fields and despite the importance of the subject and the multiplicity of sources, which is one of the advantages of the book, due to methodological, literary, and content errors in neither of the above two areas, he has not able to clarify the origin of the Qajars.

The era of Ilkhanid's rule, according to historical requirements, was accompanied by the growth of Persian historiography. Numerous historiographical works that appeared in the Ilkhanids realm and on the other hand in the realm of the Mamluks have strengthened the record of Islamic-Iranian historiography and eased the way for understanding the history of this era. Among them, Wassaf, a literate-historian who has used a different method in presenting historical interpretations in literary style and historical structure played a special role. The book "Life, Time and Historiography of Wassaf" is important because it deals with such a historian and has been studied for this reason. The critique of this book is done by the distinction between the two concepts; explanation and interpretation, as well as differing concepts of historian and history-researcher, further the attention to both negative and positive approaches, pursues this goal to show that there is a difference between understanding of history and historiography and current interpretive understanding of the historian’s explanation, should not be considered historiography.

By Adopting a critical approach to reading text, the present article examines and evaluates the book "Historiography and its Developments in Iran and the World", a joint work of Hossein Mirjafari and Abbas Ashouri-Nejad. The book reviewed in this article, which is dedicated to Payame Noor University as a textbook on "Historiography and its Developments in Iran and the World" as a sourcebook at the undergraduate level in history, is no exception to this rule. Academic textbooks are expected to meet the required scientific standards. Despite the authors' efforts to compile a documentary on historiography, this book has some drawbacks including lack of a detailed table of contents, index, typographical errors, poor writing and grammar, the indentation of some sentences, poor citation and documentation, lack of separation of sources in the bibliography, etc. In terms of the content, formal considerations and lack of explanation of terms and concepts, improper use of first-hand sources, unbalanced volume of the sections, the existence of clichéd content, etc. are also observed. The author of the article tries to review and evaluate the book and explain its strengths and weakness, to present his suggestions to the authors and the textbook publishing council in order to increase the scientific-educational aspect of this book and its structured quality.

The issue of legitimacy in the history of Iran is one of the issues that has attracted the attention of historians in recent decades. One of the most recent of these works is "the evolution of the foundations of the legitimacy of the monarchy from the Mongol invasion to the rise of the Safavids." This work examines the evolution of the foundations of the legitimacy of this period in the context of a pervasive crisis of legitimacy in the form of multiple models, emphasizing that with the fall of the caliphate and the arrival of the Mongol element, the complexity of the foundations of legitimacy doubled and new inspiring foundations. It was raised for legitimacy. In addition, after the fall of the Ilkhanate, almost all special orders and organizations were damaged. Governments, with numerous features and characteristics, used various legitimizing models to justify their sovereignty. Thus, governments faced a crisis of legitimacy on the issue of the foundations of legitimacy. This article aims to critically review the above work. This study shows that the crisis of legitimacy was a major issue in the period under review, but the patterns of legitimacy were by no means based on a single pattern, but on a multifaceted, composite, and simultaneous pattern, but important indicators such as the Iranian idea of ​​monarchy; Farah Izadi and Farah Kiani were ignored. The work is weak in terms of methodological foundations and definition of concepts and has not been able to conceptually design a comprehensive multidimensional model for the period.

The book “Iranian Thought History: Thought, Culture and Religion of Iranians in Ancient Times”, written by “Azarmidokht Farhikhte Vala”, has been published by Nāmeh-ye Ferdosi publication. This book is one of a few ones that has aimed to write the history of thoughts in ancient Iran. Relying on “the most exact data from literary sources”, the author has tried to compile the scattered data and reports related to Iranian culture, thoughts, and worldview in the ancient period. This paper aims to review and study of the book in terms of content, structure, and methodology in order to find out how successful the author was to benefit the sources. The research method is descriptive-analytical with a critical approach, considering essential guidelines to prepare critical papers for Pažuhešnāme-ye Enteqadi-ye Motun va Barnāmeha-ye olum-e Ensāni “Critical Studies in Texts and Programs of Human Sciences”.

The compilation of the cultural history of the Islamic world on the one hand requires mastery of cultural theories and definitions, texts and sources and critique and study of the study history of cultural and civilizational history of the Islamic world in its various cultural and civilizational fields and on the other hand requires a clear definition and provide a clear model for understanding culture. The cultural history of the Islamic world, due to its vastness and diversity, has not yet been seriously considered and all the writings that have allegedly arisen due to the lack of definite definitions and frameworks have addressed only some aspects of this issue and have failed to understand its generality. This article examines the form and content of the book of the cultural history of the Islamic world written by Boroumand Azamipour with a descriptive and analytical method. As a result, the author of the work relies on the common approach in writing such works and adopting a common view of the history of Islamic sciences and civilization due to the lack of a clear definition of the concept of cultural history. Therefore, the cultural history of the Islamic world has been reduced to the history of science and education.

In addition to the role of textbooks in conveying information and understanding the curriculum, they can effectively socialize and institutionalize social values. Textbooks and their illustrations have a lasting effect on learners’ attitudes and behavioral patterns by inducing content and concepts. One of the categories worth studying to understand these functions is how gender is reflected in textbook images. Therefore, in the present study, the images of elementary school books of the Pahlavi period have been examined in terms of gender and gender roles. This descriptive-analytical study aims to evaluate the role of textbook images in redefining gender roles and gender modeling of learners. The findings of this study show the effect of the presence of gender stereotypes in terms of the role and position of the two sexes in the family and the social system. The gender structure of the textbook images of the Pahlavi period indicates the limitation of the presence of women in the historical, political, scientific, and intellectual fields.

Research on the situation of women during the Mongol rule, due to the different views that the Mongols had about the position of women in politics and society, is one of the important fields of research on the history of Iran that has attracted the attention of some scholars. However, despite the importance of this field, compared to other fields, a small number of coherent and problem-oriented research in this field has been done and published. Therefore, the publication of the book “Women in Mongol Iran”, which was originally the author's doctoral dissertation, deserves to be introduced, reviewed, and evaluated. The author claims that he has addressed this issue due to the lack of in-depth study in this important field, and therefore, this article seeks to evaluate the achievement of this aim in this book. The present article, in a descriptive-analytical method and with a critical approach, addresses the question: to what extent has the author's achievements been able to achieve a fundamental and deep understanding of women in Mongol Iran? It seems that the author has been successful in achieving his specific goals and, in addition to some content and form, has provided a solid achievement and foundation for further research in this field.

Persian translation of "Ibn Khaldon And History' - a book by Mohammad Talbi (1921- 2017);  a Tunesian historian and thinker - provide a fortune to Iranian for getting familiar with the author and his thoughts.  Although Talbi wrote various works in the field of Muslim thought and history during his life, but a few of his works are translated into the Persian language. Talbi has several articles on Ibn Khaldon life and his Moghaddameh but Ibn Khaldon And History is a single book of  Talbi that has been translated and published in the Persian language. After reviewing Ibn Khaldun thought, Talbi asks about the purpose of history. This question inevitably leads to other issues, and finally, Talby comes to the answer: History is inevitably constantly moving towards civilization. Talbi named this prosses: “Sonnat Allah”. The survey aims to provide a critical assessment of the book and its translation. The most important issue that has been criticized is Talbi Eurocentric historiography.

The subject of this article is the evaluation and critique of “The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History” edited by Touraj Daryaee. The critic believes that this work, despite having valuable information, has formal and content problems, including the references and bibliography of the articles which are not uniform, the articles are not balanced, the content of the articles does not follow a single pattern, it has not dealt with some important historical periods, some articles are non-historical and very specialized, the idea of Iran as a central idea has been neglected and finally, the book needs to be reviewed in terms of the translation. The type of collection of articles with a common theme has a single agenda in terms of form and content, but this collection lacks such a feature in various ways. The book is also caught in the crossroads of academic writing and attracting non-specialist audiences. The greatest drawbacks of this work as mentioned above can be considered the negligence of the study of some expected and important historical periods, which has undeniably damaged the credibility of the book.

Our awareness of Parthian Iran has been growing in recent decades. The concise but prolific book "Principles of Parthian History" by German archaeologist Klaus Schipmann was published in 1980. The main issue of this article is the content and form critique of the book and the views of its author. The book is reviewed based on analytical and critical methods. The chapter on political history, especially its political and legal analysis in the report on relations between Rome and Iran, is one of the brilliant chapters and a turning point of the book. The annoying tightness of the social, artistic, and economic sectors and the author's refusal to provide additional information and explanations are among the book's weaknesses. Other shortcomings of the book include the lack of images, the lack of related maps, and the author's refusal to provide excerpts from the text of coins, inscriptions, and written sources. The book has a high-quality typeface, page layout, and binding. In the field of translation, in addition to the difficult and sometimes formal prose of the translator and some errors in the names of the persons, some vague equations as well as the incorrect chronology of events, the book receives an acceptable score.

The issue of underdevelopment has always been one of the research attractions for researchers. Underdevelopment has been one of the main concerns of Iranian reformers and thinkers, at least since the early Qajar period, which has led to various findings and perspectives on its cause, as well as offering various solutions to overcome it. Numerous books and works have been written on this subject, but one of the books that has recently been published in this regard is Etiology of Iran’s underdevelopment. The study of the book shows that this work can be criticized from three aspects: form, methodology and content, and the purpose of this research is to clarify the weaknesses and shortcomings of the book in the mentioned domains. All in all, it seems that the book doesn’t have any special innovation and it has not been able to open a new scientific horizon in this field.

“Kashf Al-Salsala‘An Wasf Al-Zalzala” by Al-Suyuti (d. 911 A.H.) is the most comprehensive book written about the earthquake in Islamic culture. In this article, Suyūti's explanation of this natural phenomenon and his reports on earthquakes of the Islamic period are examined. This book is a collection of everything that Muslim scholars before him, from narrators and commentators to historians, have said and written about earthquakes. In this book, both the causes of earthquakes and an annual list of earthquakes that occurred in the Islamic era are discussed. Suyūti's explanation of the earthquake is not a scientific and natural explanation but a religious and supernatural explanation. Referring to narrative and interpretive sources, he seeks the truth and the origin of the earthquake in the image of Qaf Mountain, an idea that had pre-Islamic mythological roots and took on a religious and Islamic dress among the Medieval Muslims. Suyūti also considers the cause of the earthquake to be the result of the wrong and improper actions and behaviors of the servants, citing narrations from the beginning of Islam. The Suyūti chronological list of earthquakes that occurred in the post-Islamic period contains data on the number and severity of earthquakes and their human, social, and natural consequences, which can be used to study the social history of Medieval Muslims.