I.B.Tauris in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation The decline and fall of Safavid Iran is traditionally seen as the natural outcome of the unrelieved political stagnation and moral degeneration which characterised late Safavid Iran. "Persia in Crisis" challenges this view. In this ground-breaking new book, Rudi Matthee revisits traditional sources and introduces new ones to take a fresh look at Safavid Iran in the century preceding the fall of Isfahan in 1722, which brought down the dynasty and ushered in a long period of turbulence in Iranian history. Inherently vulnerable because of the country's physical environment, its tribal makeup and a small economic base, the Safavid state was fatally weakened over the course of the seventeenth century. Matthee views Safavid Iran as a network of precarious alliances subject to perpetual negotiation and the society they ruled as an uneasy balance between conflicting forces. In the later seventeenth century this delicate balance shifted from cohesion to fragmentation. An increasingly detached, palace-bound shah; a weakening link between the capital and the outlying provinces; the regime's neglect of the military and its shortsighted monetary policies combined to exacerbate rather than redress existing problems, leaving the country with a ruler too feeble to hold factionalism and corruption in check and a military unable to defend its borders against outside attack by Ottomans and Afghans. The scene was set for the Crisis of 1722. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of Iranian history and the period that led to two hundred years of decline and eclipse for Iran.

In his highly influential book The Threatening Storm, bestselling author Kenneth Pollack both informed and defined the national debate about Iraq. Now, in The Persian Puzzle, published to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis, he examines the behind-the-scenes story of the tumultuous relationship between Iran and the United States, and weighs options for the future. Here Pollack, a former CIA analyst and National Security Council official, brings his keen analysis and insider perspective to the long and ongoing clash between the United States and Iran, beginning with the fall of the shah and the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran in 1979. Pollack examines all the major events in U.S.-Iran relations–including the hostage crisis, the U.S. tilt toward Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, the Iran-Contra scandal, American-Iranian military tensions in 1987 and 1988, the covert Iranian war against U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf that culminated in the 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia, and recent U.S.-Iran skirmishes over Afghanistan and Iraq. He explains the strategies and motives from American and Iranian perspectives and tells how each crisis colored the thinking of both countries’ leadership as they shaped and reshaped their policies over time. Pollack also describes efforts by moderates of various stripes to try to find some way past animosities to create a new dynamic in Iranian-American relations, only to find that when one side was ready for such a step, the other side fell short. With balanced tone and insight, Pollack explains how the United States and Iran reached this impasse; why this relationship is critical to regional, global, and U.S. interests; and what basic political choices are available as we deal with this important but deeply troubled country.

The forgotten story of Central Asia's enlightenment—its rise, fall, and enduring legacy In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia's medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds—remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world. Because nearly all of these figures wrote in Arabic, they were long assumed to have been Arabs. In fact, they were from Central Asia—drawn from the Persianate and Turkic peoples of a region that today extends from Kazakhstan southward through Afghanistan, and from the easternmost province of Iran through Xinjiang, China. Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects. They gave algebra its name, calculated the earth's diameter with unprecedented precision, wrote the books that later defined European medicine, and penned some of the world's greatest poetry. One scholar, working in Afghanistan, even predicted the existence of North and South America—five centuries before Columbus. Rarely in history has a more impressive group of polymaths appeared at one place and time. No wonder that their writings influenced European culture from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas down to the scientific revolution, and had a similarly deep impact in India and much of Asia. Lost Enlightenment chronicles this forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise. Informed by the latest scholarship yet written in a lively and accessible style, this is a book that will surprise general readers and specialists alike.

I.B.Tauris in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation Of profound importance in late antiquity,the Sasanian Empire is almost completely unknown today,except as a counterpoint to the Roman Empire.What are the reasons for this ignorance and why does the Sasanian Empire matter? In this brilliant and highly readable new history Touraj Daryaee fills a huge gap in our knowledge of world history.He examines the Sasanians'complex and colourful narrative and demonstrates their unique significance,not only for the development of Iranian civilisation but also for Roman and Islamic history. The Sasanians were the last of the ancient Persian dynasties and are best known as the preeminent practitioners of the Zoroastrian religion.From its foundation by Ardashir I in 224 CE, the Sasanian Empire was the dominant force in the Middle East for several centuries until its last king, Yazdgerd III, was defeated by the Muslim Arabs,whose horsemen swept away his seemingly far more powerful empire in the 7th century.Theirs was the first post Hellenic civilisation in the Near East to operate on an imperial scale and its sphere of influence and contact was unparalleled-from India to the Levant and from the Arabian Peninsula to the Caspian Sea. In this concise yet comprehensive new book,Touraj Daryaee provides an unrivalled account of Sasanian Persia.Drawing on extensive new sources he paints a vivid portrait of Sasanian life and unravels the divergent strands that contributed to the making of this great Empire:religion-not just Zoroastrianism but also Manichaeaism;the economy;administration;the multiple languages and their literature as well as the Empire's often neglected social history. Daryaee also explores - for the first time in an integrated book on the Sasanians-their descendants'attempts for more than a century after their defeat to establish a second state and reveals how their values and traditions have endured,both in Iranian popular culture and in the literary tradition of the Persian language and literature,to the present day. Sasanian Persia is a unique examination of a period of history that still has great significance for a full understanding of modern Iran.

This work presents a synthetical and student-friendly introduction to Sasanian studies.

"A history of the relationship between Iran and America from the 1700s through the current day"--

The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire explores the serious and far-reaching impacts of Little Ice Age climate fluctuations in Ottoman lands. This study demonstrates how imperial systems of provisioning and settlement that defined Ottoman power in the 1500s came unraveled in the face of ecological pressures and extreme cold and drought, leading to the outbreak of the destructive Celali Rebellion (1595–1610). This rebellion marked a turning point in Ottoman fortunes, as a combination of ongoing Little Ice Age climate events, nomad incursions and rural disorder postponed Ottoman recovery over the following century, with enduring impacts on the region's population, land use and economy.

Sciolino goes behind the headlines for an intriguing, in-depth look at Iran's complex people and culture. photos. 1 map.

The New York Times–bestselling author of Black Hawk Down delivers a “suspenseful and inspiring” account of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 (The Wall Street Journal). On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Islamist students, inspired by the revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took fifty-two Americans captive, and kept nearly all of them hostage for 444 days. In Guests of the Ayatollah, Mark Bowden tells this sweeping story through the eyes of the hostages, the soldiers in a new special forces unit sent to free them, their radical, naïve captors, and the diplomats working to end the crisis. Bowden takes us inside the hostages’ cells and inside the Oval Office for meetings with President Carter and his exhausted team. We travel to international capitals where shadowy figures held clandestine negotiations, and to the deserts of Iran, where a courageous, desperate attempt to rescue the hostages exploded into tragic failure. Bowden dedicated five years to this research, including numerous trips to Iran and countless interviews with those involved on both sides. Guests of the Ayatollah is a detailed, brilliantly recreated, and suspenseful account of a crisis that gripped and ultimately changed the world. “The passions of the moment still reverberate . . . you can feel them on every page.” —Time “A complex story full of cruelty, heroism, foolishness and tragic misunderstandings.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Essential reading . . . A.” —Entertainment Weekly

At least 8–10 million Iranians out of a population of 18–20 million died of starvation and disease during the famine of 1917–1919. The Iranian holocaust was the biggest calamity of World War I and one of the worst genocides of the 20th century, yet it remained concealed for nearly a century. The 2003 edition of this book relied primarily on US diplomatic records and memoirs of British officers who served in Iran in World War I, but in this edition these documents have been supplemented with US military records, British official sources, memoirs, diaries of notable Iranians, and a wide array of Iranian newspaper reports. In addition, the demographic data has been expanded to include newly discovered US State Department documents on Iran’s pre-1914 population. This book also includes a new chapter with a detailed military and political history of Iran in World War I. A work of enduring value, Majd provides a comprehensive account of Iran’s greatest calamity.