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June 27, 2005
Missing Film-Makers
Two Iranian film-makers, by the names of Kourosh Kar and Farshad Faraji have gone to Iraq to make a movie called "In Search of Cyrus the Great". Well, it seems like they are both missing themselves!
The news is that Kourosh Kar and Farshid Faraji (the colleague) have both been arrested by the US forces in Iraq. Mr. Kar's name is in the list of the Red Cross and his arrest has been reported by his family (who live in the US) to the officials. Mr. Faraji, however, has no such luck and apparently his situation is not at all known. He is a young film-maker with no political connexions whose sole purpose has been to make a movie about history.
I would like to ask everyone here who is an American to make an effort of calling some local officials (senators, reperesentatives, etc.) and expressing concern about the matter. The poor guy is probably waiting in a prison for someone to come and look at his file and set him free.
Please help if you can.
P.S.: Apparently I got the names and the relations wrong the first time around. Thanks to Sima for correcting me.
Posted by Khodadad at 02:55 AM | Comments (5)
June 19, 2005
Elections?
I guess all Iranians in the world are preoccupied with the issue of ongoing "elections" at the moment.
Yesterday, Iranians voted in the elections for a new president. After eight years of presidency, Mr. Khatami is now done with the office and a new person is going to replace him. The intrigues and issues regarding the matter is well beyond the scope of this weblog, but certainly occupies the minds of its writer.
At the moment, after a controversial election, Hashemi Rafsanjani (the president before Khatami) and an unknown (semi puppet) character called Ahmadinejad are the ones who have had enough votes to be cosidered "tied" and stand for a run-off. This is the first time it has happened, and it has a lot to do with a vast programme for selecting the candidates and trying to discredit the candidate most favoured by a lot of young people inside Iran, Mr. Moin.
Anyway, here are some links to news regarding this matter. I hope to write something else soon.
Iran hardliner to contest run-off
Iranian blogs take on the election
Posted by Khodadad at 12:52 AM | Comments (4)
June 13, 2005
Eaters of the Dead
Last night, my friends and I had a movie night and we watched The 13th Warrior, starring Antonio Banderas.
I am not sure if anyone has seen this film, but if you have, you surely have noticed that it was based on a Michael Crichton novel called "Eaters of the Dead". Since the idea of watching it was mine, I took it to myself to buy and read the book.
The book is based on two historical/literary sources. One is the Travelogue of Ahmad ibn Fadlan who was sent in 921 AD as an ambassador by Caliph Al Muqtadir to the Khan of the Volga Bulgars. His account is very famous and has been quoted by almost all later Islamic geographers. In the 20th century, it became particularly famous for its vivid description of a Viking funeral which included group-intercourse and burning of the dead body along with a whole Viking Longship!
The second part of the book is based on Beowulf, the famous Old English poem that should be familiar to all modern speakers of English.
Chrichton paraphrases most of Ibn Fadlan in the first half of the book and translates his description of various tribes of the Russian Steppe pretty faithfully. I know this since my term paper this last quarter was about Ibn Fadlan! So, I was very impressed by Chrichton's work!
The second half, after Ibn Fadlan's description of the Viking Burial, is the imaginitive part where Chrichton inserts Ibn Fadlan to the group of 13 Berserkers who go to help the king of Denmark. The work is done very well and the character of Ibn Fadlan is developed fully. I like the ideas that Chrichton has used, particularly the way he has humanised Bodvar Bjarki and Svipdag (the Danish version of the names of the Beowulf heroes).
The film, as usual, had taken part of the book and forsaken the rest, and it was an average film. Some interesting sections, including the burial. were depicted very briefly, while they could potentiallyhave formed one of the high points of the movie. Alas, thus is the Hollywood!
I certainly recommend Eaters of the Dead, and applaud Michael Chrichton on this book. He has even included seven pages of bibliography, and this is a novel!
Posted by Khodadad at 10:32 PM | Comments (1)
June 08, 2005
History, in depth?
These past two quarters (units of University terms here at the UCLA), I have been taking a graduate seminar class in the history of Middle Ages, concentrating on the Carolingian history (that is the dynasty of Charlemagne).
The second quarter (the one that is currently ending) is dedicated to writing a research paper on whatever subject we choose, as long as it is related to the early Middle Ages. Last night, we had to present our paper topics in the class and discuss the subject matters.
I listened to the 18 papers presented by my peers. All had interesting subjects and were well researched. However, what really captured my attention was the subjects themselves. They are extremely specific, ranging from a closer reading of the Eccelesiastical History of Bede to looking at the veneration of relics in Medieval Europe. Others were looking for the uses of fish and fishing in that time, while another one was comparing the role of religion in the Byzantine and Carolingian army. All are subjects that are eventually going to be finding their way to academic journals and contribute to our understanding of Medieval Europe.
But the last word there is the catch-word: Europe! We know so much about the Medieval history of Europe. We certainly have a clear picture of its "bigger picture" and know the big issues and matters. Subjects such as diplomatic relations between European dynasties are known and well researched. We are now in the second gear of studying the European history: closer look at the long-held beliefs and correcting some wrong statements. We are now refining our knowledge of the history of Europe and fine-tuning our research.
Then, switch to some other place in the world. Forget about Sub-saharan Africa and similar cases, where we have almost no information for hundreds of years. Even in the case of the history of well-established literate cultures such as India, China, and the Near East, our research is not anywhere to be compared with the European one.
In my own field of Ancient and Medieval Iranian history, many big issues and general, "big picture" matters are unknown. We don't have one tenth of the amount of information we have about the economy of Britain or France for Iran. Subjects that are now becoming more and more important in historical research about Europe are completely unknown in the Iranian case. Subjects such as looking at edicts and royal charters, as well as using hagiographies for historical research, are not even considered.
This particularly is true in the research done in Iran and in Persian. Other than the lack of attention to the field of history itself, many historians do not even know about the new methodology and sources for historical research. I find myself running research about subjects that have been solved for the European case a long time ago, yet in the Iranian context are neglected matters. This, other than being important for the professionals, is determinal in the general lack of attention and knowledge about history among the people.
That is why I find that I am the only first year student doing research about Medieval history of Near East in my university! No one else is doing that, while there are over 15 people working on some aspect of Medieval European history. Our lack of basic knowldge about the subject is even affecting the number of people who are not intimidated by the field.
Sorry if this was boring, but this is a frustrating issue for me, and I have to deal with it every day.
Posted by Khodadad at 12:19 AM | Comments (4)
June 04, 2005
Skjaervo
In the past four days, I have been busy with a series of three lectures about Iranian Studies. The speaker was Prof. P. Oktor Skjaervo, the famous professor of Iranian studies and the chair of the NELC department at Harvard. He was talking as the featured speaker of the 6th Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series.
All of the talks, particularly the second and the third one, were extremely interesting. They concentrated on the Iranian oral tradition and their role in the development of Zoroastrianism and in particular, Zarathushtra himself. Basically, Prof. Skjaervo, as well as Prof. Jean Kellens, believes that a person named Zarathushtra, as the prophet of Zoroastrianism, did not exist and is a myth built on older oral traditions. The evidence provided were certainly sufficient and thought provoking.
I knew about the theory from before and had talked about them with other scholars of the field. I am surely not the person to judge, but I was hoping that he presents us with something more convincing. Basically, my question has always been that even if we assume the non-existence of Zarathushtra (what difference does it make anyway), still, we have 17 poems, linguistically close-bound and belonging to roughly the same era, presenting a cohesive series of ideas (the Gathas). Even if we take the person out of the picture, what are the implications of the ideas? I hope to find out someday. I am convinced that there are two sides to the story, and although I believe Zarathushtra existed (basically, I see the matter of his existence to be of no consequence, so why not just assume that he did exist?), I am willing to explore the world of Gathas, assuming he did not exist!
Beside all of these matters, the rest of the events, including having lunch and dinner with Skjaervo himself, as well as two nights of hanging out in a bar and drinking with him, were quite fun. He is a very lively person who easily gets out of his academic skin in social situations and is quite a pleasant company. He is "cool", talkative, and engaging. I enjoyed his company immensly, and I hope he enjoyed our company as well (all of the students I mean)! I wish more scholars were like him and could come out of their shells more. It was also interesting to see him get into an argument with my advisor over some matter!
He was also quite cool about answering unusual, childish questions, or questions from those who think they know everything, just because they have just finished reading "philosophy for dummies". When asked a question about the role of Zarathushtra in today's society (something that had nothing to do with his textual analysis of the Avesta), he answered with a brief: "that's not my problem, that's yours!", which cheered everyone up!
Anyway, I had a good four days, and in a very dorkish way, I had a lot of fun!
Posted by Khodadad at 06:56 AM | Comments (4)