William S. Burroughs and HASSAN SABBAH

Hassan-i Sabbāh

Hassan-i Sabbāh (Persian: حسن صباح Hasan-e Sabbāh, 1050s-1124) was a Persian Nizārī Ismā'īlī missionary who converted a community in the late 11th century in the heart of the Alborz Mountains of northern Iran. The place was called Alamut and was attributed to an ancient king of Daylam. He founded a group whose members are sometimes referred to as the Hashshashin or Assassins.

William S. Burroughs

WSB: Hassan I Sabbah never made any attempt to extend power. He kept what he had-one or two fortresses. And he certainly was not a puritanical man.

Very little is actually known about Hassan I Sabbah. But it was a unique phenomenon.

In my books, then, Hassan I Sabbah seems to be a kind of model for a man who rebels against the control system and who sets up his own counterforce.  (From An Interview with William S. Burroughs April 4, 1980, New York City  by Jennie Skerl)

Xerxes by George Frideric Handel

Xerxes I

Xerxes I of Persia (English: /ˈzɜrksiːz/), Persian: خشایارشا Ḫšayāršā, IPA: [xʃajaːrʃaː], Hebrew: אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ, Modern Aẖashverosh Tiberian ʼĂḥašvērôš), also known as Xerxes the Great, was the fifth Zoroastrian king of kings of the Achaemenid Empire.

Handel's "Xerxes", Houston Grand Opera

Xerxes is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It was first performed in London on 15 April 1738. The Italian libretto was adapted by an unknown hand from that by Silvio Stampiglia for an earlier opera of the same name by Giovanni Bononcini in 1694. Stampiglia's libretto was itself based on one by Nicolò Minato that was set by Francesco Cavalli in 1654. The opera is set in Persia in 480 BC and is very loosely based upon Xerxes I of Persia.

The opening aria, "Ombra mai fù", sung by Xerxes to a tree (Platanus orientalis), is set to one of Handel's best-known melodies, and is often played in an orchestral arrangement, known as Handel's "largo" (despite being marked "larghetto" in the score). (From Wikipedia)

An Interview with Mahmoud Dowlatabadi



Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

Mahmoud Dowlatabadi (Persian: محمود دولت‌آبادی) (born 1940 in Dowlatabad, Sabzevar) is an Iranian writer and actor. He is known as a realist writer of stories of rural life, in which he largely draws on his own experiences.

He was born in Dowlatabad, a village in the Sabzevar, north-western part of the Khorasan Province, Iran, and spent his youth helping his father with farming and tending the flocks, and reading tales of Persian folklore. He attended high school in Tehran but failed to attain a degree. He later joined the Anahita Drama Group. In 1975, he was arrested and spent a year in prison.

Dowlatabadi started writing in the 1960s and has published several novels, novellas, short story collections and plays for theatre. Hist first story, The Pite of Night, was published in 1962 in the Anahita Literary Magazine. Other significant works include his 1968 novel The Tale of Baba Sobhan, which was made into a motion picture by Masud Kimiai entitled "Khak" (Earth/dust; 1972) and his magnum opus, Kalidar, which he wrote between 1977 and 1984. (From Wikipedia)

The Man who Changed the World (BBC)

Ayatollah Ruhollah Mostafavi Moosavi Khomeini

Militant Islam enjoyed its first modern triumph with the arrival in power of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979. In this series of three programmes, key figures tell the inside story.

Former US president Jimmy Carter talks on television for the first time about the episode that, more than any other, led American voters to eject him from the presidency. Iran's seizure of the US embassy in Tehran and the holding of its staff for 444 days took more and more of Carter's time and energy. His final days in office were dominated by desperate attempts to secure the release of the embassy hostages. Those who sat in the White House with him, planning how to rescue the hostages, how to negotiate their release and, finally, wondering whether anything could be rescued from the disaster, all tell their part in the story.

Other contributors include former vice president Walter Mondale, ex-deputy secretary of state Warren Christopher and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. The other side of the story is told by top Iranians: Ayatollah Khomeini's close adviser, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri; his first foreign minister, Ebrahim Yazdi; his negotiator with the US, Sadeq Tabatabai; and the founder of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Mohsen Rafiqdoust. (From BBC)

LES ZOURHAEH by Charies Brabant (French)

Varzesh-e-Bastani (ancient sport):

A rigorous and comprehensive physical exercise session of 60 to 90 minutes, consisting of different kinds of physical activities appropriate for the homogeneous age groups of 16 to 60-70 year old. These exercises were practiced under special customs and rituals established over hundreds of years. Each session of Varzesh-e-Bastani comprises: 1-Warming up, 2- main body of physical exercises, and 3-warming down.

 

Morshed:

Is an experienced Bastanikar who, at the same time, is a well-educated man who also has some talents in music. He is especially competent in providing the different rhythms that are needed for directing the various exercises of a Varzesh-e-Bastani practice session. He does this job by chanting the epic poems and coupletsand by playing the Zarb and Zang (see below) that he has at hand. Some times there are two Morsheds who in harmony with each other direct the practice session. (From Zoorkhaneh and Varzesh-E-Bastani By Ali Mohamad Amirtash)

  

Iran Illustrations by Olivier Kugler

Olivier Kugler

 

Olivier Kugler is the overall winner of V&A Illustration Awards 2011 for his depiction of a truck driver’s journey across Iran, featured in French quarterly reportage magazine XXI.

Rendered in Kugler's familiar sketchbook style, the 30-page illustrated journal tells the story of the illustrator's trip with Massih, a truck driver Kugler met in Tehran and accompanied for a four-day journey carrying bottled water down to a small island in the Persian Gulf.

Bushehri Music and Dance in Louvre Museum: A Performance by Shanbehzadeh Ensemble



Persian Gulf Coast in Bushehr



Bushehr (Persian:بوشهر /Būšehr/), pop. 165,377 (in 2005), is a city on the southwestern coast of Iran, on the Persian Gulf. It is the chief seaport of the country and the administrative centre of Bushehr province. Its location is 28° 59' N, 50° 49' E, about 1,281 kilometres (796 mi) south of Tehran. The local climate is hot and humid.  (From Wikipedia)



Shanbehzadeh Ensemble

Shanbehzadeh Ensemble (Persian: گروه شنبه زاده) is an Iranian folk band, formed in Bushehr in 1990. The band offers a rare aspect of the traditional music and dance of the Persian Gulf, more specially of the province of Bushehr, south of Iran and bordering Persian gulf.

The principal instruments of the ensemble are the neyanbān (bagpipe), neydjofti (flute), dammām (drum), zarbetempo (percussion), traditional flute, senj (cymbal) and boogh (a goat’s horn). The Ensemble has delighted audience in Iran, Europe and North-America. (From Wikipedia)

Tehran Today (1977) by Khosrow Sinai

 



Khosrow Sinai



Khosrow Sinai (Persian: خسرو سینایی , born 19 January 1941 in Sari, Iran) is an Iranian film director. His works are usually based on social documentations. He was the first Iranian film director to win an international prize after the Islamic revolution in Iran. He is also known as an Iranian scholar and has been awarded the prestigious 'Knights Cross of the Order of Merit of the Polish Republic'.

A picture of University of Tehran around the time Sinai's film was made

Forgotten Iran (1971) – a film by Claude Lelouch

French Director Claude Lelouch

Claude Pinoteau and Claude Lelouch shot their documentary just after the Persepolis Celebrations in 1971. They decided to address the urban transformations and cultural emancipation that the country was subject to by the early seventies. (From Wikipedia)

Welcome to Tehran - a journey by Rageh Omaar

Rageh Omaar

Welcome to Tehran (1 x 90 min) is an observational documentary that sets out to look at the region and its people not through politicians, officials and analysts but through the eyes of ordinary Iranians.

Omaar has visited Tehran - the region's capital - once before as a news reporter, filming the incendiary demonstrations and recording the uncompromising statements from officials since the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

But his experiences of being in the city never left him.

He says: "There is an energy and vitality to the place that is completely different from the usual images we in the West have of it. And that's why I wanted to return."

In making the film, Omaar tried to see Iran from the inside by visiting people's homes and travelling through a rich variety of neighbourhoods and districts of the city.

Omaar and Producer/Director Paul Sapin struggled for a year to get the right kind of access which gave them the freedom to fully explore these rarely filmed areas.

The film is told as a journey through Tehran but also as a very personal essay by Omaar as he digs deeper into this complex and fascinating society.

Omaar's journey takes him under the skin of the city and he meets with local people who share with him their personal stories and feelings about the current state of affairs in Iran.

There are stories of taxi drivers; wrestlers; business women; people working with drug addicts and the country's leading pop star and his manager - the Simon Cowell of Iran - who drove Omaar around Tehran in his Mercedes-Benz.

Paul Sapin says: "Iran has become a closed society to the West and it is a real challenge to produce a genuine documentary in this region due to problems with access for Western journalists, but wherever we went, we were met with warmth and hospitality.

"Iran is not the austere, humourless place we're led to believe and that was certainly Rageh's experience." (From BBC)

Timothy Winter: The life and works of al-Ghazali

Al-Ghazâlî

Al-Ghazâlî (c.1055–1111) was one of the most prominent and influential philosophers, theologians, jurists, and mystics of Sunni Islam. He was active at a time when Sunni theology had just passed through its consolidation and entered a period of intense challenges from Shiite Ismâ’îlite theology and the Arabic tradition of Aristotelian philosophy (falsafa). Al-Ghazâlî understood the importance of falsafa and developed a complex response that rejected and condemned some of its teachings, while it also allowed him to accept and apply others. Al-Ghazâlî's critique of twenty positions of falsafa in his Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahâfut al-falâsifa) is a significant landmark in the history of philosophy as it advances the nominalist critique of Aristotelian science developed later in 14th century Europe. On the Arabic and Muslim side al-Ghazâlî's acceptance of demonstration (apodeixis) led to a much more refined and precise discourse on epistemology and a flowering of Aristotelian logics and metaphysics. With al-Ghazâlî begins the successful introduction of Aristotelianism or rather Avicennism into Muslim theology. After a period of appropriation of the Greek sciences in the translation movement from Greek into Arabic and the writings of the falâsifa up to Avicenna (Ibn Sînâ, c.980–1037), philosophy and the Greek sciences were “naturalized” into the discourse of kalâm and Muslim theology (Sabra 1987). Al-Ghazâlî's approach to resolving apparent contradictions between reason and revelation was accepted by almost all later Muslim theologians and had, via the works of Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126–98) and Jewish authors a significant influence on Latin medieval thinking. (From Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)



Timothy John "Tim" Winter (Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad)



Timothy John "Tim" Winter (born 1960), also known as Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad, is a British Muslim researcher, writer, columnist and teacher. His profile and work have attracted media coverage both in the Muslim World and the West. Conversant in both traditional Islamic scholarship and Western thought and civilization, Winter has made contributions on many Islamic topics. (From Wikipedia)