Iranian Studies

Persian language and literature have a presence of about one thousand years in the Indian subcontinent. The growth of this language is indebted to Ghourid rulers whose mother tongue was Persian. However, we should not be negligent of the significant role of great Iranian Sufis and mystics such as Ali Ibn Othman Hojviri, Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti and Sayyed Ali Hamadani. The necessity of a research about the continuation and growth of Persian language in Pakistan is due to the questions as when this language and literature found its way and what is their importance in this country, as well as to what extent they have influenced Urdu and eventually their effects on Iranian studies. The research method is based on the review of historical documents with emphasis on numerous manuscripts kept in national and private libraries in Pakistan. The outcome of this research shows that the strength and solidity of Urdu is in critical need of more manuscript sources and stone-print documents for better understanding of spiritual culture, historical and public identity of Pakistan and seriously demands preservation of the ancient heritage of this region and production of new sources for the modern history and culture of Pakistan. Persian language and its heritage no doubt have a great share in this regard.

This article examines the theme of cultural imperialism through a case-study of change in nineteenth-century intellectual discourse. It analyzes an Iranian intellectual discourse, which is known, according to the Persian nomenclature, as the discourse of “misery” (badbaxti). The article shows that throughout the nineteenth-century, the perception of Iranian intellectuals changed, rather drastically, from self-confidence to self-immiseration. This argument is grounded in a close textual contrast between two representative texts. Mirza Saleh Shirazi’s Safar-nāme (1815), representing confidence, is contrasted with Siyāḥat-nāme-ye Ebrāhim Beyk or “The Travel Diary of Ibrahim Beg” (1895), which articulated the idea of an incomparable Iranian misery. The author of  Siyāḥat-nāme-ye Ebrāhim Beyk captured this discursive transformation when he wrote: “there is no country on the face of the planet today more miserable than Iran.” The discourse of misery had profound consequences well into the present. Self-immiseration entered popular culture in the Pahlavi period (1925-1979) and intensified in the Islamic Republican period (1979-present). The discourse of misery has captivated modern Iranian consciousness, without necessarily corresponding to social reality.