Reviews

Religions of the Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Exchange from Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century , Richard C. Foltz, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. 186 pp., ISBN 0–312–21408–1.

Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco‐Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ^cAbbasid Society (2nd‐4th/8th‐10th centuries) , by Dimitri Gutas, London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

A Short History of the Isma^cilis. Traditions of a Muslim community , Farhad Daftary, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998, viii + 248 pp. (Islamic Surveys).

Napoleon and Persia: Franco‐Persian Relations under the First Empire , Iradj Amini, Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers, 1999, 228 pp.

Napoléon et la Perse: Les relations franco‐persanes sous le Premier Empire , Iradj Amini, Paris: Fondation Napoléon, 1995, 254 pp.

A Literary History of Persia , Edward G. Browne, 4 volumes, reprinted Iran‐books / Ibex Publishers, Bethesda 1997.

The Divan‐i Hafiz , H. Wilberforce‐Clarke, reprinted Iranbooks/Ibex Publishers, Bethesda, 1998.

Modern Persian Prose Literature , Hassan Kamshad, reprinted Iranbooks/Ibex Publishers, Bethesda, 1996.

Borrowed Ware: Medieval Persian Epigrams ,Dick Davis, trans., Washington, D.C.: Mage, 1997, 203 pp.

Asemun Rismun , Iraj Pezeshkzad, Bethesda, Maryland: Iranbooks,1997, x +300 pp., includes biographical reference and index, ISBN 0–936347–79–1.

La belle rivale de Farah et les jeux du destin , Anna‐Lisa Vafa, Paris: Les Editions la Bruyère, 1998, 103 pp.

The Arrest of Hoveyda: Stories of the Iranian Revolution , Saïdeh Pakravan, Costa Mesa, California: Blind Owl Press (an imprint of Mazda Publishers), 1998, 134 pp.

A World Between: Poems, Short Stories, and Essays by Iranian Americans , edited by Persis M. Karim and Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami, New York: George Braziller, 1999, xxvii + 254 pp.

The Sands of Oxus: Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadriddin Aini , trans., with an introduction, by John R. Perry and Rachel Lehr, Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 1998, 275 pp., illus., maps, ISBN 1–56859–078–4.

Tajikistan:The Trials of Independence , eds. Mohammad‐Reza Djalili, Frédéric Grare, and Shirin Akiner, Richmond (UK): Curzon Press, 1998.

Central Asia meets the Middle East , David Menashri, ed., London & Portland, OR.: Frank Cass & Co Ltd., 1998, ISBN 0–7146–4600–8 (cloth), 9–7146–4129–4 (paper), xiii + 240 pp., map, index.

Arab‐Iranian Relations , Khair El‐Din Haseeb (ed.), Beirut/London: Centre for Arab Unity Studies/Brítish Academic Press, 1998, 564 pp., $59.50 (hardcover).

The Armenians of Iran: The Paradoxical Role of a Minority in a Dominant Culture , ed. Cosroe Chaqueri, Cambridge: Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1998, 408 pp., photographs.

Women and the Political Process in Twentieth‐Century Iran , Parvin Paidar, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, xvi+401 pp.

Secularization of Iran: A Doomed Failure? The New Middle Class and the Making of Modern Iran , Azadeh Kian‐Thiébault, Paris, France: Diffusion Peet‐ers, Travaux et mémoires de l'Institut d'études iraniennes, numéro 3, 1998, 296 pps.

An Islamic Utopian: a political biography of Ali Shari^cati , Ali Rahnema. London and New York: I.B. Tauris (St. Martin's Press), 1998. xiii, 418 pp., bibliography, index, ISBN 1–86064–118–0.

Persian Painting ,Sheila R. Canby, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993, 128 pp., 43 color and 44 black‐and‐white illustrations, map, bibliography, index, ISBN 0–500–27730–3.

Early Persian tilework: the medieval flowering of kashi , Douglas Pickett, Madison, Teaneck, and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 1997, 211 pp.

The Persian Garden: Echoes of Paradise , Mehdi Khansari, M. Reza Moghtader, and Minouch Yavari, Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers, 1998, 169 pp.     

The Unstable People of a Tumultuous Land: Persia Through the Eyes and Feet of Hajji Baba of Isfahan

For the English interested in Persia in the nineteenth century, James Morier's Adventures of Hajji Baba of Isfahan was a crucial text, as it also was for Iranians who read its groundbreaking Persian translation almost half a century later. The text provided a persuasive understanding of Persia that has endured in the western imagination. This paper begins with the framing narrative and shows how the frame story sets the stage for a convincing literary portrait of Persia and Persians. Then it analyzes the image of Persia constructed in this book through the characterization of Hajji Baba as representative of Persians, and the geopolitical portrayal of the country that emerges from the account of his travels.     

The Twins Stanza,Y 30.3

The Gāthic stanza Y 30.3 has always been at the center of various interpretations and controversies in Western scholarship on Zoroastrianism. Those who believe they have discovered in the Gāthās a monotheistic religion armored with an ethical dualism have made this stanza one of the pillars of their thesis. The so-called Twins stanza shows, according to this view, that the good and evil primordial spirits exist as a result of their choice between Good and Evil, which preserves not only the absolute goodness of the supreme god but also his uniqueness. More recently Kellens and others following him have given a completely different reading of the stanza. According to their account, this stanza is a speculation on the hidden processes of ritual. What the poet expresses in Y 30.3 is not a dualism, ethical or otherwise, but a psychology of the process by which man makes his choice of ritual conduct. Aside from the question of coherence, one must ask whether these accounts are borne out by the text they claim as their basis. This article addresses these two questions.