Braindroppings

On the contrary, I found your post quite fascinating.

I have picked up on what you're saying too. One example that I can think off top of my head is that I have been watching this BBC (?) documentary series on the history of the English language and what struck me was the down to detail information collected from the English language's younger years. There are scores of educated people who have learned to speak different variants of the Old English. I don't even know how the Persian was spoken 20 years ago (I am exaggerating of course to get the point across).

BTW can you fill us in with a summary of your research once in a while? That should be interesting.

This is not at all boring! I find it very curious that so little is known about Medieval Iranian history. Ancient history I can understand might be very difficult considering the destruction caused by invaders such as the Mongols. However, there must be many written documents that survive in Iran that date back 500 or more years. I know that for centuries great libraries have existed in Europe that preserve old books and documents. Are there not similar libraries in Iran? Also, there must be a number of aristocratic families that date back many generations in Iran. Do these families have their own libraries or archives of preserved documents that could be used for historical research?

Btw, I have a new post in the works. Look for it later today or tomorrow. It is about my new hobby that is taking up probably too much of my time! :)

I completely relate to what you are saying about your subject. I have also been dealing with very much the same issues. A few years back it was much more intense, the fact that the tradition of arts and letters in Iran is on one hand so bloated, and upon closer examination so empty and fluffy. I am beginning to be able to deal with it, but a few years back it was really hitting me hard and making me very depressed because I found myself confronted with such a poor tradition of intellectual exchange that seemed too much to overcome, and the more I tried to push it, the more it seemed that I was isolating myself. The level of research that needed to be done was too low for European standards and so high for the Iranian history of the spirit which effectively cut a big chasm between what I was doing what is actually there. At the same time this together with a concerted effort on the part of the neo-reformollahism to exclude me from Iran and denounce me as out of touch and an quintessential outsider forced me to give up, but at any given moment, all that I read in the western philosophical tradition could only find relevance if applied to the Iranian one. One has to learn to be comfortable with being posthumous, because after the reformation, there needs to come still sense and sensibilities, enlightenment, classicism, romanticism, realism etc. and only then one may begin to enter the 20th century. This is further enforced by the decided spirit of wanting to prolong reform even after its death, as the IR intellectual socialogist Dr. Ahmad Sadri wills it: reform is dead, long live reform. As for me, there may really be no way of going home again, even if I sell my soul to the political correctness and prudence and look away from the fascism in progress under the cover of reform.

Still, I think you are doing quite alright because although no one else is doing your kind of research, there seems to be a possibility for you to do it solo. Carry on.

Best,
Amir

Thank you all for your comments. I am glad that the post was actually useful.

David: the problem is not the lack of primary sources. Yes, we have many written sources, as well as quite a bit of primary material. The problem is in "modern" research.

What I mean is, there are not enough people doing research on these primary material and interpreting them in order to better understand the history of Medieval Iran. Primary sources can be studied in many lights. Chaucer's works have been used to draw conclusions not only on the literature of Medieval England, but also for purposes of economy, sociology, political science, and even history of science.

Basically, my fellow historians of Medieval Europe, are disecting and studying the same material as their predecessors, but they are using new methodologies to try to understand the history better.

On the other hand, not enough people are doing the same with the material available for the history of Iran. Basically, the problem is not the lack of primary material, it is the lack of modern historians with new methodologies to understand these primary material better.