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IRAN
The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History, ed. by Touraj Daryaee. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 414 pages. $150.
It is gratifying to see Iranian history included in the Oxford Handbook series, whose seemingly innumerable volumes mostly deal with topics like respiratory medicine, papyrology, Judaism, and economics.
The individual essays, written by well-known scholars in their respective fields, and organized according to dynasty, are generally competent and informative. Yet they mostly emphasize political history and underplay or completely ignore other aspects of life and society on the Iranian plateau. A glaring omission is economic history, which hardly receives any attention (with the exception of three pages in the chapter on the 18th century Afsharids and Zands). The same is true for the history of technology and for material history in general. Iran, especially Islamic Iran, in this volume remains a land where the mind at all times trumps the physicality of life. The chapter on the Safavids outdoes all other contributions in this regard: it is all dreamlike millenarianism, making Iran look a Sufi-inspired dispensation ruled by world-weary shahs.
While less than comprehensive in its coverage of Iranian society, the book also seems skewed in its chronological make-up. More...