This essay considers the institution of mehmandari, the practice of having foreigners visiting in an official capacity welcomed, accompanied, and provided for by the host country. It discusses its historical roots and engages in a comparative analysis, to find that mehmandari was most prominently practised in early modern Iran. It examines the responsibilities of the officer in charge, the mehmandar, and his supervisor, the mehmandar-bashi, arguing that, aside from serving as court-appointed hosts, these officials functioned above all as minders, tasked with monitoring the movements of envoys and to find out the real reasons for their visit. This study also discusses protocol, the practice of accommodating the visitor and his entourage and of providing them with victuals, the per diem official visitors were entitled to, and the burden this put on the local population, with all the corruption and exploitation it involved. It finally traces the institution until its very end in the early twentieth century, leaving undecided the question of whether it just faded or was officially abolished under Reza Shah.
Iranian women's sexuality and bodies have been restricted within the borders of religion, culture, and tradition; however, these borders could not silence their voice of sexuality. Daneshvar, one of the prominent Iranian female authors, voiced her female protagonist's sexuality throughout her novel A Persian Requiem. Her indirect literary methods to veil Zari's sexuality are the case study of this article. I will employ affect theory to decode these literary methods. By investigating A Persian Requiem, I discovered connections between Zari's process of sexuality and bodily voice attainment and the process of distilling flower essence. The author regulates the narrative's speed according to each level of rosewater making. Moreover, by employing affect theory, I extract Zari's process of cognitive development and achievement of self-consciousness that Daneshvar illustrates through the seven stages of Sufism (Haft Shahr-e Eshq or Seven Cities of Love), that Farid al-Din Attar, a famous poet and Sufi figure, first used in his poem collection Mantiq al-Tayr (AD 1177) (The Conference of the Birds).
Ancient cemeteries with standing stones have long been identified in several locations of the Chandir, Sumbar, and Atrak river valleys within the Turkmen territories of north-eastern Iran and southern Turkmenistan. However, the origin, chronologies, meaning and interpretation of the sepulchral standing stones remain a matter of controversy. Through the presentation of new data and material from the recently investigated cemetery of Khwajeh Narenj and similar cemeteries in north-eastern Iran and southern Turkmenistan, the authors review the possible origins and the interpretations of the sepulchral standing stones of the region and argue a link with the Mongol and Turkic people, particularly with the Garayli Turks during the Safavid and early Qajar period.
