فصلنامه مطالعات تاریخ فرهنگی
پیاپی 19 (بهار 1393)

The influence of Mesopotamia on the political and cultural structure of Achaemenid Kingdom is not negligible. One aspect of this influence is the imperial ideology of the Achaemenids.King Inscriptions are one the most reliable resources to study the imperial ideology In this regard, the presence of curse as a cultural motifs and as an element of those inscriptions, is a evidence of a continuous cultural and literature tradition in the imperial inscription which lasted for two millennium, from the third period of the era of the early dynasties of ancient Sumer till the end of the political life of Mesopotamia. After conquering of Mesopotamia by the Achaemenids, curse along with other political and cultural motifs used by them to illustrate the concepts of power. The aim of this paper is to show the evolution of curse in the imperial inscription of Mesopotamia, continuity and change of those motifs in ancient Persian inscriptions, and its functions in the Mesopotamian and Achaemenid Imperial inscriptions by studying the concept, scope and types of curse in the ancient Near East.

La’le as a common term in the Safavid era texts is not a new concept, but its pervasive use in that era, confirmed its high historical and social validity. Its gradual fall that occurred after the Safavids, is a evidence of its heavy reliance to the spiritual environment of that time. The question of this study is: who were la’les and what were their duties in the organizations of the Safavid state? The answer to this question, support the claim that La’les including the Ghezelbash Emirs and Harem Ghulams in the structure of Safavid state have been recognized as empiricist and influential teachers which their duty was to teach etiquette to the princes and prepared them to take responsibility in the structure of power. This special status, prepared an important opportunities for them to play role in the crucial political events, particularly in the transfer of power and monarchy to their own trained princes, and to confront domestic rebellion or foreign invasions. With this approach and by using descriptive and analytical method, the authors tried to answer the question of this study.

Lineage manipulating was one of basic policies of governments during the history of Iran – particularly during medieval centuries – which has been applied as a result of imbuing of the spirit of archaism to legitimization, pushing forward of political goals, to flee from humiliation and making balance in lineage. But despite the persistence of this issue in all these centuries and all attempts of the governments, the historical resources always faced those data by serious doubts or in the validation process those data encountered with doubts. This paper is trying to answer the basic question that what criticisms have been raised about the lineage of the governments in Iran medieval era. The result show that the terms of Iranian Historiography, historical contradictions or gaps, rulers and government theorists’ admitting, political implications of lineage manipulating policy and most importantly, the concept of lineage, in special periods of the governments’ life and finally emphasis of some political thinkers of those periods on the value of figure and not lineage as the criterion of excellence, approve this theory that the existing lineages of the governments in historical resources, in fact are manifestation and historical falsification and they are not coincide with historical facts and they were solely undertaken to advance the political interests.

The modern government of the first Pahlavid tried to apply basic changes in the idea of the old Iranism of to be Iranian in the historical horizon of this land and to create the Idea of new Iranism based on the Iranian model of Modernism. In this way, Ideological apparatuses such as education institutions and educational materials like textbooks have been used by the government. The aim of this paper is to study the focal aspects of new Iranism in government, state and nation as the three basic axes by using quantitative method of content analysis based on statistics and figures. For this purpose, 37 textbooks of history, geography and literature of first Pahlavid era have been quantitatively studied. The results show that the educational policy makers and the authors of textbooks’ most emphasis to reflect the concepts and focal evidences of new Iranism were focused on the government aspect and between the concepts related with the government, the term ‘Shah’ with 2353 repetition were the most frequent political aspect of new Iranism.

To talk about Kasravi’s religious approach is not easy, because of his diatribes against existing religions. He was neither a religious intellectual who support religious reforms nor a religious fundamentalist who talk about the return to the faith; but he was a critic of religions who claimed prophethood. So the problem is: why and how Kasravi passed the way from criticism of religions to offering a new religion? This paper by surveying in the religious discourse of Kasravi, concludes that he has considered religion a necessity as a beacon for people in all societies and all periods. But his desired religious needed the logic, reason and new science to be capable for understanding and explaining its teachings and to change consistent with historical transformations. He was claiming that existing religions have no such qualities; Thus he tried to create a new religion comply with the requirements of the era and replace it with the existing religions. ‘Pakdini’ (Pure Religious) was the name of Kasravi’s fabricated religion which introduces him as a self-appointed prophet.

After Sharivar 1320 /1941, field of activity for various groups of Iranian society such as religious forces and the Tudeh Party has been prepared. In other hand, the Mohammad Reza Shah’s fear of strengthening of Tudeh party pushed him to strengthen the religious forces instead of opposing with religious. These changes led to anew appearance of ulama in the scene of society. Beside the activity of the capital city’s ulama, their activities on other cities were also notable. This issue has more importance in the case of Isfahan, because of special status of ulama in this city.The aim of this paper is to answer this question: to which extent the ulama of Isfahan succeeded to raise the level of awareness of the people of the city and also to which extend they could do this job? The result of this study show that most cultural and social activities of ulama and religious forces of Isfahan from 1325 /1946 were dedicated and limited to confronting corruption and prostitution, campaign against Bahais and preventing the spread of ideas of Kasravi and Communism between youth. But they have not succeeded in the field of education and promoting the awareness of people as in has been expected.