مجله مطالعات ایرانی
پیاپی 15 (بهار 1388)

Shahname is an epic text with a mythical background. In some parts of this epic-mythical book is found historic accounts and most important of them is in Sasanian period which has been considered less by the scholars of Old Persian history due to its literary and narrative aspects. Whereas the reference of the contents of this part mostly dates back to the compiled Khoday Nameh (letter of God) of Sasanian period, and in this respect has a careful originality and authenticity. One of the Shahnameś historical advantages about the study of Sasanian is pointing to the Iranan day and month of coronation of some kings, which apparently are not found in other sources. These Sasanian kings and the beginnig date of their sovereignty based on Shahname consist of: Baram Gor (V): seventeenth of Azar, Anuširvan (Xosrow I): twentith of Xordad, Hormozd (hormoz IV): sixth day of a month not mentioned in Shahname, Bahram Chobin (VI): eleventh of Azar and Shiruye (Ghobad II): Dey (8th, 15th, or23th?) of Azar. Noldeke has presented in the Iranian and Arab History book in Sasanian period the day and month of coronation of these Sasanian Kings in Christian calendar. However, these dates and their mapping into the Iranian calender and comparative chronology tables of Prof. Birshak are not in conformity with Shahname’s references.

The present paper is designated to study the judicial system of the ancient Iran before Islam. The objective of this study is to investigate the structure of justice administration in Iran and the role of Iranians in this important part of human civilization in the ancient era. To begin with, judicial system of Hakhamaneshi, Ashkanian and Sasanian eras, regarded as the coherent governments, are studied. Despite the broad historical spectrum of this era, this paper studies fundamental features of judicial system in each era focusing on its primary subjects and provides the opportunity to compare the systems putting them together. The results revealed the fact that Iran's judicial system in ancient era enjoyed relative progress, coherent and coordination which is particularly significant considering the conditions of that time. Likewise, investigations demonstrate the undeniable impact of ancient Iranians on justice and fairness in human civilization history, the fact that has wielded significant influence over establishing Iran's judicial system in accordance with the instruction of the true religion of Islam even after the arrival of Islam to Iran and its wise and unbiased acceptance by Iranians.

Divan in Pahlavi texts are invisible, immortal and bodiless creatures that are in non-existence. Creation of Divan is the same as Ormazdi's in Minavi era. Their creation is composed of Divan Div Ahreman, Sardivan and those who are the source of destructiveness and extinction. This Ahreman creation is in direct contradiction to Ahura one composed of Ormazd, Emshaspand & Gods. In Pahlavi texts, Hezarandiv – known and nameless – are mentioned after Divan Div and Sardivan that can be categorized into five groups of old Gods, enemies and invaders, human reprehensible characteristics, abnormal humans and destructive elements of nature. Based on these texts, human fights against Divan in his soul and body through good spirit and believing in Mazdisnaism. By the end of the world, all minor Divs will be ruined by Soushian's prayers and Sardivan will be extinct by Emshaspandan, while greediness Dive will be either killed by Soroush or hurled into the hell along with Divan Div Ahreman.

The Arabia Land is not a suitable place for development of civilization and urbanization due to its climatic conditions. That is why Arabs have been desiring to set forth to flourishing and prosperous lands such as Iran and Rome since many years ago. Immigration of Arabs to Iran started from many years before Islamic era and reached its zenith when conquering Iran. The conditions deteriorated in the time of Shapour Zolektaf who banished most of Arabs into Iran after defeating their tribes. Immigrants settled in all over Iran including Kerman, Fars, Azarbaijan, Khorasan, Yazd, Qom and other important cities. They highly undermined the aesthetic of names as they gave Arabic names to the states, so much so that it is not possible to identify the semantic bases of the names of cities through present pronunciation. Arabs had many reasons and motives for immigrating to Iran. Among them are acquiring wealth and welfare, exploiting God's resources and blessings, and political and religious motives.

Mire Nowroozi was one of the national Iranian festivals that was celebrated magnificently on the occasion of Nowrooz, and has been represented in Persian literature including Hafez’s lyrics. Commentators on Hafez have talked much about this festival. However, none of them has understood the being philosophy of this festival and the contradictions can be found in their writings about this festival. Here the author has attempted to look deeply into this ancient festival from different angles to unveil it's underlying construct. Contrary to views of the public and some Hafez’s commentators, this was not a festival for mere fun and amusement; however it was an expectant celebration that our ancestors held magnificently to consummate the expectancy of nature.Thus, all the ceremonies of this festival are ritual and significant. By the end, the author has thrown a brief look at some celebrations, like Mire Nowroozi, in the mythology of other nations.

This article is a step to identify mythical and wonderful creatures noted in Garshasb Name and Koush Name.These creatures are a compound of human and animal consisting of stories, strange and marvelous beliefs, out of mind birth and appearances in Iranian texts and myths as well as other nations. This article firstly explains briefly about human-animal and proceeds to classify and divide them into different groups. Then, it considers the remaining samples and their traces.

Dr. Shafiei Kadkani is a prominent poet, researcher and literary figure in Iran whose poems are brimful of components of Iranian culture, civilization, religion, history and art, most of which are as a result of his meticulousness in Iran culture, literature and history for several years. Furthermore, his close relation with Persian Language, either as an instructor or a literature researcher, has highly enriched his poetic depiction. In this paper, Dr. Shafiei Kadkani's poetry has been studied in four primary subjects of language, religion, culture, and history along with their subsets in order to identify various aspects of Iranian elements in his poems.

The precedence of city and city construction in Iran has a story as long as civilization. Some parts of our today Iran has been within the boundaries of the ancient civilization of Bein-Al-Nahrein, but this land – every part of this Land – had an history as old as Bein-Al-Nahrein. The ancient areas which have been probed in the south west, west, Northwest, centre, south east and the east of Iran have reached the history of city construction to the fourth millennium before the death of Christ (B.C). In this Article the researcher has pointed to the beginning of the human life and has brought some evidences by far has been found from Paleolithic and Neolithic eras. The change of primitive life to rural life and then to urban life and origin of first cities in Iran and specially in south eastern Iran near present Kerman province in the areas like Yahya hill, Eblis Tal, shahded and Halil civilization indicate the antiquity and long history of this country. Meimand city can be considered as the first place that humans chose to live in. Other areas like Kerman, Bam and Sirjan have experienced the precedence of urban life before Achamenian. Therefore in our present Kerman province, an advanced civilization had been established in four points close to each other which has been a linking circle and an inter connection among Bein-Al-Nahrein, Chinese civilization, Send and Mavara-Al-Nahre. The existence of ancient cities indicates a brilliant civilization in the past so that knowing and making known this civilization will give identity to the new generation. For this reason it is necessary that a strong connection be made between the past and present so that a better understanding can be obtained.

The aim of this research is to consider Sogdian manuscript M801 which comprises three out of five commandments of the Elect. These commandments are to be found in Chinese, Turkish, Middle Persian and Sogdian references, but none has all commandments and their details altogether. Since the names of commandments are somewhat allusive, the details of this Sogdian text help us understand them better. The introduction of this paper will talk about manuscript of M801and other references included in those five commandments. Then it will be followed by transliteration, transcription and translation of Sogdian text with a survey and analysis of texts as well as a conclusion.

Ghotbaddin Shirazi is the 7th and 8th century scientist and mystic (A.H.). Spending some time practicing medicine in Shiraz, he left this city in the 2nd half of the 7th century and set forth to Maragheh to acquire the current science and knowledge of his era. There, he was in attendance on Khajeh Nasiraddin Tousi and achieved such a rank that became a member of Ilkhani Observatory and read books about philosophy, astronomy and medicine to Khajeh. Then, to acquire mystical cultures, he went to non-Arab Iraq, Baghdad and Rome in the service of many mystics and Gnostics. He was also in attendance on Molana Jalaladdin Balkhi and Sadreddin Gounavi in the last days of his life and learnt principles of mysticism. Besides acquiring detailed knowledge of his era such as medicine and astronomy, Ghotbaddin was well acquainted with the philosophy of Eshroghi and Mashai so much so that he can be regarded as a great exponent of this field. He was high-ranking both in mysticism and religion, living in an era when mystical, ascetic and gnostic thoughts were fully spread. He can be considered as one of the famous men developed a new method of governing on the basis of mystical thoughts which is novel and interesting. He wrote an encyclopedia named "Doratol Taj Leghoratol Dabaj" containing intellectual, narrative and literal knowledge of the era as an emulation of Abu Ali Sina's Alaei encyclopedia. Emulated by Abu Ali Sina's Alaei encyclopedia and following the scientific philosophy of Khajeh Nasiraddin Tousi, Ghotbaddin developed new thoughts about concordance between bases of monarchy and caliphate thought. In this paper, we will mention some aspects of the conceptual basis of Ghotbaddin, justifier of concordance between monarchy and caliphate.

Bahmannameh is considered as a national epic verse consists of a main part of Bahman's life, Esfandiar's son, and his combats against Zal dynasty. This one thousand-couplet collection composed in the late 5th century or beginning of 6th century is an emulation of this great epic work like other epic works after Shahnameh. Although Bahmannameh could not manage to bring about cultural revolutions like Shahnameh, and depicted combats which are not considered national and glorious, it is worth studying as it is a part of great Iranian national epic which contains pure Persian words and expressions as well as simplicity and fluency. In this paper, we aim to study the features of this national epic verse as well as comparing it with Shahnameh.

Veis-O-Ramin is the prominent work of Fakhradin Asad Gorgani, the 5th century versifier. In Dehkhoda's point of view, this Iranian myth is one of the oldest romantic stories translated from Pahlavi to Persian Language. From among the characters of this verse, the priest plays a significant role. He is a man of negative and undeveloped personality behaving irrational. In this paper, we aim to study the priest's personality and psychological factors of his behavior based on Yung's analytical psychology. Young classifies the human's personality into the conscious and unconscious minds. He believes that the unconsciousness mind consists of individual and collective one. Moreover, collective unconsciousness involves qualities called Archetype. Shadow, Anima, Animus and Self are considered as the most important Archetypes emerged in human mind and affect their behavior. In this paper, negative Anima has been considered as the most effective factor in priest's behavior prevents his relation with Self as a personal growth factor. Irritability, hesitation, fear of incidence, appealing to evil deeds, irrationality, effeminacy, and being tricked by women are some features of negative Anima seen somehow in priest's personality and behavior.

This study comprehensively studies the role of myth in Persian literature and design of Iranian carpet. It is possible to explicitly name the art of Persian literature and Iranian carpet as "myth-oriented art" because of the close and strong relationship with myth and mythical concepts. Hand-woven carpets, rugs, and mats and myth are classified into plant, animal, building, integrative and geometrical designs (common and genuine designs of the Iranian carpet) in conformity with classification of carpet primary designs and their mythical fundamental concepts. Most of the mythical figures are created as plants and animals. Drawing and designing these designs on the carpet conforms the concepts interpretation of their mythical equals in Persian literature. According to Eric Forum, myths and most of ancient legends are dreamlike whose meanings are implicit. Extraordinary deeds of mythical heroes and characters as well as strange occurrences have caused figurative mythical interpretations. These constructive myths are also manifested in personal and world view of the carpet weaver. Myths of heaven, descent, immortality, and worship are all familiar manifestations apparent to the soul of the weaver and make his power of imagination more creative. Artists of carpet design depict these myths as designs of mythical multi-layered concepts rooted in Persian literature, using different colors and loops.

The word "Div" is among those words which have various denotations in Iranian languages. In some cases, it is used to denote odd beings, so much so that readers of unbelievable tales (stories) are engrossed in descriptions of the beings, researchers are in doubt and some may disbelieve them. On the other hand, as it is mentioned in religious and mythical texts and repeated in medieval centuries chronicle texts, Iranian's life is blended with both physical and spiritual fight against Divan. As the frequency of these stories are numerous, we cannot regard them all imagination of story writers. So it seems necessary to look up new and believable denotations for the word "Div" in a different view. Such an endeavor is not rare among Iranina scientists since some great men such as Ferdowis and Gardizi have recommended contradictory denotations for the term. In present paper, a number of believable denotations for the term "Div" are discussed.

The precious book of "Beihaghi’s History" is one of the few books which not only From literature point of view but also From other sciences like history and geography is important and reliable.In this way is one of the best refrences to solve some of the problems and obscure points about ancient time specially Ghaznavian’s era. While studying this book we come across with some unusual words or combinations, which need some attention and description e.g. the word "coin" which some authors describe it as "siahdari" and others describing it as "sepahdari”. The present study tries to evaluate these two words and select the better one.In this study, first the position of Beihaghi’s history and its unsolved questions are described. Then the word "siahdari" with word "sepahdari" from phonetic transition point of view and from Ghaznavian status views are composed. The position of corps in this era and the method of their payament are considered in this study too. In this study, the signs, and symbols on the coins of this era are evaluated too. Finally taking these facts into consideration, a final conclusion and a better management are presented.