Government-Sponsored Iranian Medical Students Abroad (1811–1935)

The first Iranian to study medicine abroad was sent to Britain by the Iranian government in 1811, during the early decades of the Qajar period (1796–1925). The second student was sent to France in 1815, along with four other students. Another group of five students, including the third student of medicine, was sent to France in 1845. Forty-two others, including five medical students, were dispatched to France in 1858. Most members of the latter group were among the first graduates of Tehran Dar al-Fonun (House of Techniques) School. Then, in 1928, during Reza Shah Pahlavi's reign (1925–41), a special act was passed by the Iranian parliament (Majlis) according to which the Ministry of Education would send 100 students abroad annually for higher education at the government's expense. The practice was suspended in 1935 with the advent of the Second World War. Between 1928 and 1935, a total of 640 students, including 125 medical students, were sent abroad. The majority of the medical students (84 percent) were sent to France. Most of these medical graduates returned to Iran and in subsequent years played a significant role in further propagation of modern medical knowledge in the country. The paper presents a brief historical account of the conditions of public health and medical education between 1811 and 1935 as well as biographical sketches of some of the best-known or most influential medical figures among these graduates.     

The Cinderella complex – narrating Spanish women's history, the home and visions of equality: developing new margins

This paper examines the development of feminism in Spain within the context of political transformations. It focuses on one particular strand of feminist thinking: 'equality feminism'. The paper traces the evolution of equality feminism and its institutionalization, supported by the production and dissemination of a feminist history of the Franquista dictatorship (1936–1939). Yet, under scrutiny such narratives maintain a silence on the social, political and geographical diversity of women's experiences prior to, during and beyond the Franquista dictatorship. Drawing on women's oral testimonies (recorded in the city of Málaga, Andalucía) the paper animates the silences of this feminist history in Spain and the limits of state feminist ideology.     

Women’s education,time use and marriage in Iran

In many parts of the world, higher education has increased female chances of paid work and reduced the economic benefits of marriage. In Iran, however, female labour force participation has remained in low rates despite considerable improvements in female education. In the absence of direct economic benefits of education for women, this paper uses data from the 2009 Time Use Survey, representing urban areas of Iran, to explore another pathway of the impact of education on transition to marriage. It is postulated that female education can lead to later marriage by changing women’s role priorities, at least in two ways. While enrolment in education is time-consuming and incompatible with requirements of marital life, higher education can increase the chances and desire for engagement in alternatives to the roles related to marriage. The findings provide partial support for both explanations. These findings not only deepen our understanding about differentials in the time use and the potential pathway of the impact of female education on marriage, but also provide important information for policy makers who are concerned with marital and fertility behaviours of the large cohort of young educated women in Iran.     

Book reviews

Traditionelle und moderne Formen der Landwirtschaft in Iran: Siedlung, Wirtschaft und Agrarsozialstruktur in nördlichen Khuzistan seit dem Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts. [Traditional and Modern Forms of Agriculture in Iran: Settlement, Economics, and Agrarian Social Structure in Northern Khuzistan since the End of the Nineteenth Century.] By Eckhart Ehlers. With a contribution by Grace Goodell, “Agricultural Production in a Traditional Village of Northern Khuzistan.” A publication of the Geographical Institute of Marburg University in the series, Marburger geographische Schriften, Vol. 64, 1975. x + 289 pp., 12 charts, DM33.

Unity in the Ghazals of Hafez. By Michael C. Hillmann. Minneapolis and Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1976. 181 pp.

Afghanistan in the 1970s. Edited by Louis Dupree and Linette Albert. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974.     

Evaluation of 2D Seismic Site Response due to Hill-Cavity Interaction Using Boundary Element Technique

This paper deals with the evaluation of two-dimensional site-effects due to the seismic interaction between hills with various configurations and underground cavities. The time-domain boundary element method is used to evaluate the site-effects of hill-cavity interaction subjected to vertically propagating in-plane SV and P waves. The presence of an underground cavity and the hill topography are expected to induce significant effects on the surface ground motion. To further examine the contribution of the amplification ratio of the hill-cavity system, a fairly simple approach, which can compute the response spectra of the hill’s surface motion above a cavity based on the real input motions, is also used to input motions.     

A Linguistic Survey of Khorasan: Implications for Language Isolation,Language Change,and Contact Linguistics

This paper describes and analyzes data from a number of Modern Iranian dialects spoken in Khorasan in the east of Iran which are unusual among the other Western Iranian languages in that they have grammaticalized a split tense-sensitive alignment in indexation, compared to other Iranian languages whose indexation splitness is sensitive to both tense and transitivity. These dialects are the former dialect of Birjand in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the present-day dialect of Ferdows, Khanik, and Se-Ghal’e. The findings are put in the context of the available data from the Classical Persian texts to show that the tense-sensitive splitness mentioned above is traceable in those texts. A number of external factors are discussed which seem to have been influential in the restructuring of the split-alignment of the former dialect of Birjand into a uniformly nominative-accusative alignment in terms of indexation as observed in the present-day dialect of Birjand. It is proposed that this restructuring is an instance of simplification. The three other dialects cited above are endangered in the sense that they can undergo the same kind of restructuring as happened to the dialect of Birjand.