Thirty years after the end of Iran’s “War of Sacred Defense” Iran’s “military parades” are attacked, but the world still doesn’t really comprehend exactly what...
Recent excavations by Turkish archeologists near the northern Anatolian city of Amasya have unveiled the remains of a 2,500-year-old Persian Achaemenid palace, a reception hall,...
I think the label ‘traveler’ is not accurate when describing Isabella Bird. She was an explorer, writer, naturalist and photographer who was born in England....
The ancient Greeks and Romans rightly believed that magic were invented by the Persians. The 1st-century Roman writer Pliny the Elder (CE 23 – AD CE) has written that magic was first...
Rumi is one of the most celebrated literary figures whose poems cannot be confined to a particular time and place. Rumi’s poetry transcends gender, nationality,...
Every time a public figure uses the term ‘American exceptionalism’, ordinary Americans turn to my website. It’s number one for a quick answer to the...
As President Donald Trump’s rhetoric against Iran heats up again, it is worth recalling a time when the two countries had a distinctly different relationship....
The early twentieth-century invention of sabk or style as a way to periodize the Persian language has been one of the most consequential and enduring trends of...
A common tactic for intelligence agencies is the use of front companies. In books about Israeli spy agencies, the tactic is a frequent reappearance. Former...
Even in the most revolutionary thinkers, you will find the uncannily familiar. Sigmund Freud was no exception. Arabs recognised in Freud’s body of thought ideas...
History might be the best antidote to the unthinking, and pernicious, naturalisation of cisgender identity and heterosexuality. When confronted with the fact that, for most...
