The East India Company’s Farmān, 1622‒1747

The East India Company’s presence and ongoing trade in Persia was reliant on the privileges outlined in the Farmān, granted after the capture of Hormuz in 1622. The relationship between these two powers was cemented in the rights enshrined in the Farmān, which was used by both to regulate their varying needs and expectations over the course of 125 years. This article explores the Company’s records of the Farmān and how changes to its terms were viewed from both sides. As a Persian document, the Farmān gives a clear view of the attitudes of native officials and rulers to the Company and how these terms were used as a means of control.     

‘New Art History’ vs. ‘Old History’: writing art history

Abstract

The three strange poems in English which constitute the section ‘Foreign Language Verse’ in Cavafy's Unpublished Poems present problems of authorship, interpretation and preservation. Who wrote them? What are they about? Why did Cavafy, who destroyed so much, trouble to keep them? The purpose of the present note is to provide plausible, if not definitive, answers to these three questions. The poems under discussion are, ‘Leaving Therápia’, ‘Darkness and Shadows’ and the untitled poem that begins, ‘More happy thou, performing Member’.     

Jerome,Alcuin and Vergil's ‘Old entellus’

In 798, Alcuin quarreled with Charlemagne's court scholars over the calculation of the lunar saltus. In Epistola 145, an important source for this argument, Alcuin called his rivals the ‘Egyptian boys’, because they wanted to follow Alexandrian custom, which began the Easter cycle on 1 September instead of the Roman 1 January. Alcuin expressed his anger with the ‘boys’ over their violation of Roman custom by quoting aptly from Jerome's letters. Jerome's warning to Augustine in Epistola 102.2, to remember Vergil's Dares and Entellus, suggested to Alcuin that his scholarly debate with the ‘boys’ should become a boxing match. Accordingly, Alcuin became ‘old Entellus’, whom Charlemagne's young scholars had hit unfairly with their criticism. In Epistola 145, Alcuin jabbed at the weak logic of the ‘Egyptians’ and satirized their ignorance. Besides revealing Alcuin's literary techniques, Epistola 145 is important for illuminating the tensions in Alcuin's relationship with Charlemagne.     

AW. Mar∂tānō

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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AW. Martn

     

Dieter B. Kapp (ed.), Nānāvidhaikatā. Festschrift für Hermann Berger

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

‘Marriage’, ‘Massage', Metaphor and Gender in US–Iranian Relations During the 1960s

Abstract

Although they were allies, during the 1960s relations between the United States and Iran were fraught with tensions. For American policymakers, Iran was an important Cold War client and oil-supplier in a turbulent region. It was vital, therefore, to maintain a good relationship with the Shah of Iran. Indeed, United States policy was based in large part on American assessments of the Shah as an individual. This article seeks to assess how the language and metaphors used by American policymakers to describe and understand the Shah reflected and informed United States policy. Officials within the Kennedy and Johnson administrations viewed the Shah through a highly gendered lens that magnified perceptions of him as a weak, highly sensitive and irrational leader – characteristics deemed to be overly feminine. This article therefore contends that US policy towards Iran was influenced by gender stereotypes as policymakers lamented their reliance on the Shah, who they deemed to be insufficiently 'masculine'.     

Franco Venturi's ‘crisis’ of the Old Regime

This paper discusses Franco Venturi's concept of a general European ‘crisis’ in the period 1768 – 89, which is covered in volumes III, IV and V of Settecento riformatore. With this concept Venturi allied himself with R. R. Palmer, A. Sorel, J. Juarès and others who sought to explore the larger context of the Enlightenment and French Revolution. Critics of the English translation of Venturi's volumes III and IV (1989?–?91) have failed to perceive a European political crisis in this period. However, Venturi's concept also involved a birth of European public opinion, a development that has been affirmed in English, French and Italian studies more recently, despite a tendency to substitute a cultural for a political history of the Enlightenment.     

Rethinking the global heritage discourse – overcoming ‘East’ and ‘West’?

This article illustrates how Japan’s involvement in international heritage discourse, in particular since the Nara Conference in 1994, played an important role in the development of a global understanding of heritage and what it constitutes. It explores the way the Ise Shrine came to be represented as an iconic example of an ‘Eastern approach’ to heritage to become central in the paradigm shift within global heritage discourse towards acknowledging cultural diversity. In this article, however, I argue that the presentation and understanding of the Ise Shrine has perpetuated a number of misconceptions about an Eastern approach to heritage conservation. In particular, its presentation and interpretation as a cultural site devoid of its distinct religious and political significance, limits what can be learned from it. This article argues that without full recognition of the religious beliefs intimately embedded in the traditional social structures, practices and attitudes related to heritage sites, recognition of cultural diversity would remain limited.     

Zur Bedeutung von indoiranisch *nāu̯ii̯a-

Young Avestan nāuuiia-, Old Persian nāviyā, Sanskrit nāvyà-, all descending from Indo-Iranian *nāu̯ii̯a-, are usually glossed by ‘passable (only) by boat, not to be crossed without the help of a boat’. A closer examination of the contexts they occur in reveals that the meaning ‘streaming, raging’ is much more appropriate. In consequence, *nāu̯ii̯a- can not be a secondary derivative of Indo-Iranian *nāu̯- ‘ship, boat’, which is improbable for other reasons as well. It is suggested that *nāu̯ii̯a- rather represents a primary formation derived from the Indo-Iranian root *nāu̯- ‘to flow’.