Iran pathfinder

Hey all,
Last night, I finished my pathfinder on Local food, which I posted on my blog. Today all of us had to present one or two resources from our projects, and this guy did this one. It is sinfully long, but I was so amazed because I recognized what he was talking about from reading Persepolis last night.
What a great book.
Here is all the stuff. He's one strange dude, is all I can say, but I think he got together some great sites.
Sean Dougherty
LIS 4361
9/18/2008
Internet Pathfinder
Iran: its present, its past, its culture, its sport.
Iran/Persia is one of the oldest civilizations on earth. If the historians are to be believed, the region that runs from the Taurus Mountains in the west to Sind and the Hindu Kush in the east has been inhabited by ‘high’ civilization since nearly 2,000 B.C, and at least four times in this long history Iran has been a major world power, contending with the likes of Athens, Sparta, Babylon, Rome, numerous Indian dynasties, Byzantium, the Ottoman empire and Russia for prestige and power. Sadly, most impressions that most Americans get of Iran today are in the form of scowling old clerics and self-flagellating religious supplicants on parade, not of the poetry of Rumi, the ancient improvisational musical tradition that extends all the way back to Cyrus the Great, the Shah-na-meh of Fedowsi, the Cyrus cylinder (the first ever declaration of human rights in history), the glorious monuments of Ctesiphon, Persepolis, Isfahan, Bam, Firuzabad, the famed painted miniatures depicted the lives of great heroes like Rostam and the Prophet Mohammed, the religion of Zoroastrianism (a major influence on Judaism and a precursor to both Christianity and Islam), and more recent developments in film, television and other arts. Where can this ‘imbalance’ be re-dressed? Simple. The Internet, where sites of numerous kinds show off all that Iran and its long history have to offer to the world at large.
1st Group: meta-sites and history resources.
“History is a mirror of the Past, and a lesson for the future” Persian proverb
As stated before, the history of Iran is vast to say the least, with at least 4,000 years of recorded time having past since the ancestors of many modern Iranians first settled around the ancient city of Susa. Some notable meta-sites, who also devoted a lot of space to history and other cultural bits, include:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Iran. Wikipedia is always a good start, especially where Iran is concerned, as Wikipedia has a specialized Portal for all things Iranian, ranging from the history of the Savafid Dynasty to biographical articles on such notables as graphic novel artist Marjane Satrapi, actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, and film director Abbas Kiarostami. That being said, the Iran Portal of Wikipedia is subject to many of the same issues as Wikipedia as a whole, especially in regards to citations and overall quality. Generally speaking, the best articles in terms of sources are the history and cultural articles, with worst being the military and pop cultural articles. Some computers may also have problems displaying the Persian scripts often embedded in the articles.
Internet Ancient History Source Book (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/asbook05.html) a notable source hosted by Fordham University, featuring links and resources about the ancient world. Although the site is more well-known for its extensive primary-source coverage of Rome and Ancient Greece, its Iran coverage is still quite good. Also provided by Fordham University is an Islamic sourcebook, whose Persian section is at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/islam/islamsbook.html#The%20Persians. This section isn’t as good though, and items related to the famed Savafid Dynasty are non-existent.
The British Museum also has a presence with its Forgotten Empire: the World of Ancient Persia page at http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/forgottenempire/. Although just focusing on the dynasty of Darius and Cyrus, this one has wealth of images of the famous Shah-in-Shahs and the archeological sites of Persepolis and Pasargadae in a generally easy-to-use interface.
The biggest of them all is the Iranian Cultural and Information Center at http://tehran.stanford.edu/, which has literally everything one can think of where Persian culture is concerned. In addition to history, this one also features a distinct political slant, ethnographic information, image galleries, recipes (!), and loads of links. Several of the ‘literature’ links, however, were broken or out-of-date. A good site overall, though, despite some of issue it has.
Another notable ‘all-rounder’ site is the Iran Chamber Society (http://www.iranchamber.com/), with just as much as the Stanford page, but with a much better interface and more scholarly articles for your reading pleasure. Also included are biographies, links and numerous other features. This is more scholarly and up-to-date then the Stanford-hosted page, with notables in Persian history and cultural studies contributing articles and other materials for the site.
2nd Group: music
Iran’s musical tradition is among the oldest in the world, and one of the most famous of those that embrace improvisational techniques. In addition, because of the numerous invasions of Arabs, Greeks, Mongols, Turks, and others, Iran’s music embraces a wide variety of instruments and styles, creating a diversity that is only matched by the traditions of China and the four Celtic nations of Europe (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Brittany). Because of this, a separate listing for music is wholly appropriate.
http://www.kamkars.net/about_en/
Founded by master Hassan Kamkar, a Kurdish Iranian musician of some note in the years of the Pahlavi dynasty and currently lead by his grandson Ardavan, the Kamkars are a world-renowned Kurdish musical ensemble. The music of the Kurds, who are linguistically and ethnically related to the Persians, was reportedly the favored music of the court of the Sassinisid dynasty. The Kamkars site, while light on samples and downloads, has biographies, news, contact info, and other useful bits. The layout is also easy to use as well and comes with both English and Persian-language options.
www.kereshmeh.com
A specialty record label operating out of Los Angeles, California, this site is quite useful for the novice as it includes ‘quick-and-dirty’ details of various instruments, like the ancestor of the lute (and thus the guitar) called the barbat and the massive drums called damam, various traditions like the traveling bakhshi and the traditions of the eastern province of Khorasan, and profiles of artists, such as the aforementioned Kamkars, Kayhan Kahlor, and Hossein Alizadeh. The site is generally good, but might need a redesign.
www.iranianradio.com
Although its ‘bag’ is more modern pop and even Iran’s nascent hip-hop and rock and roll music scenes, this site run by Namak Magazine has a specialized stream called Sonati for traditional music, along with discussion forums, photo galleries (some from users) and some Iranian news feeds. A bit light on actual educational content, but a good site if you know what you are looking for. Some older computers, and slower internet connections, will have issues with playback and loading.
http://www.radiodarvish.com/
Another web radio site, but more heavily geared to towards the traditional end of Iranian music, and it is affiliated with the Tarschool (www.tarschool.com), a Persian music school located in California, so its pedigree is fairly good to say the least. That being said, most of the content available on Radio Darvish can also be found on some of the other sites listed, but what does recommend the site is that Persian classical music is its main focus. This alone makes it worthy of inclusion in this pathfinder. The site could use a bit of sprucing up, especially with regards to contact information and links.
3rd Group: Culture, both pop and high
As befitting a culture as old as Iran’s, resources online for Persian culture, both high and popular, are quite numerous.
http://www.beyondpersia.org
This particular non-profit, established in 2006, is a major organizer of Persian cultural events of many kinds amongst the Iranian Diaspora in California and other parts of the U.S. While site itself is rather lean on content, it does have a music feed, details of events, and profiles of participating artists, writers and musicians. The site design is a bit cluttered and it could use more ‘meat on the bone’ for those unable to attend the organization’s events, however.
http://www.persian-heritage.com/
An online and print specialty magazine available in both English and Persian, based out of New York, specializing in a much wider worldview, with many articles dealing with Iran’s recent past and the arrival of the Diaspora in both the U.S and Europe. Some articles from the magazine’s 13-year-long print run are available on the site, but several links were bad and the site is in serious need of a re-design. The articles are an interesting mix of cultural criticism, geopolitics, biographies, commentary, and reviews, all written for a fairly well-educated, but not academic, audience.
http://www.persianmirror.com/
A general meta-site, but with a focus on cultural issues and politics, and a clearinghouse for Iranian Diaspora businesses and professionals in North America and Canada. The culture content is pretty good, and with some political viewpoints as well, along with events listings and other bits. Although heavily commercial, the site has many features and articles from contributors to the less profit-driven enterprises listed above. A bit derivative, but it does illustrate the diversity of the Iranian Diaspora and Persian culture in the wider world.
http://www.persianartsfestival.org/
An event organizer out of New York, this particular group is affiliated with the New York Foundation for the Arts, and organizes a major cultural festival in New York City every year, with coverage ranging from visual arts to music and film. The best this one has to offer are a frequently updated culture blog and a massive batch of links of all kinds, but, other than the blog and links, this one is not as good as it should be.
http://www.iranheritage.org
A major player among the Iranian Diaspora of Europe, this academically oriented group is also decidedly non-political in its orientation as well, hosted a varied program of lectures, music performances, and cultural seminars in and around London and other parts of the U.K. The site itself is fairly well-designed, but is light on overall content, except for extensive details and schedules of events.
www.irandokht.com/
An interesting addition to the collection of cultural meta-sites online, irandokht.com is a meta-site on Persian culture and global current events, alone with advice, editorials, history, and pretty much everything else you can think of, but from a distinctly female point-of-view, and with more a blog-type feel to the proceedings as well. The only problem with this site is that it is very graphics heavy, and thus slower connections may have problems viewing, while the written content is a mixture of Persian and English.
http://www.iranian.com/
A similar offering to irandokht.com, but written from a broader viewpoint, and with more posts on history topics, a news ticker run by users and slightly more English-language content. The tone is also very hipster-esque, with a tag-line ‘nothing is sacred’, and has a diverse selection of blogs and extensive coverage of news, music and other topics. A bit too splashy, with a few too many distracting ads, but a good look into the minds of younger Iranians in the Diaspora in regards to their heritage and how they fit into the grand scheme of things.
Some notable Museums.
Unfortunately, the National Museum of Iran www.nationalmuseumofiran.ir, doesn’t have any English-language content, but several other museums located in Iran do, and one in particular is fairly interesting. The Reza Abbasi Museum (http://www.rezaabbasimuseum.ir/), has quite a bit of content on offer, including maps, virtual exhibits and virtual tours, but it also has an extremely annoying presentation to go alone with this, complete with a musical presentation on a loop that cannot be turned off. If this in particular is removed, this one could be a real winner.

4th group: literature and religion.
Iran’s literary tradition is relatively unknown outside of academic circles, but doesn’t make it any less influential, with the likes of Rumi, Fedowasi, and Omar Khayyam have a broader reach with their pens than many Persian governments have had with spears and guns. Persian literary influence is broad, with everything from the Old Testament to the Arabian Nights being touched by it in some shape or form. As the notable religions that Iran has either produced or influenced (Zoroastrianism, Baha’i, Islam, and Judaism) are all very much driven by the written, or spoken, word is some shape or form, sites dealing with these topics will be included in this group.
The Book of Kings: the Shah-na-meh.
Resources for the national epic of Iran are numerous to say the least. Besides the sites listed above like Iranchamber.com and the various cultural festivals, some notable sites for the Book of Kings include such diverse offerings as the (mostly) Persian-language www.shahnameh.com/, which features recorded recitations of the work and features some images of miniature paintings that often formed part of many printed editions of the Shah-na-meh during the Qajar Dynasty, but not much else for and English-language audience; www.theshahnameh.com/, an American-style comic book version focusing on the deeds of the hero Rostam, although this project seems to have petered out at only two issues, despite possessing a splashy site; and a noted meta-site at www.sacred-texts.com/, which also features extensive coverage of the Zend-Avesta, the sacred text of Zoroastrianism, and the writings of Baha'u'llah. The Sacred Text site features text files, PDFs, and other file formatted versions of numerous ancient texts and published works that are in the public domain, and its Iranian coverage is extremely good and is actually better, at least in terms of Iran’s literary traditions, then the Fordham sourcebook site. Sacred-Texts.com is a good site overall, and is a frequently cited source for many of the Wikipedia pages on Iranian literature and religion, but is a bit cluttered and not as well organized as it could be.
Rumi.
In addition to the Sacred Text site and a decent-sized presence on Wikipedia, the famous Sufi Muslim poet Rumi (1207-1273) also has several sites on the web. www.rumi.net/, a collective of poets and musicians from both the U.S and Iran who translate and perform Rumi’s poetry for a general audience. Their site is quite well designed, with lots of information on the Rumi and his religion and a link to the Rumi Network’s MySpace page, and is excellent supplemental to the more scholarly sources listed above, but it can’t stand alone.
www.forgottenbooks.org, a publisher of rare and obscure texts has a good selection of Rumi’s work in translation, all of which is either available for purchase on Amazon.com or viewable for free on Google Books. A commercially-driven site for certain, but the Google Books feature is quite useful, if somewhat prone to some of the quality control issues that Google Books generally has. The site itself is well designed and easy to navigate, with both an alphabetical listing of works and Google Search feature. The sacred text of Zoroastrianism, the Zend-Avesta, is also featured on this one in full translation from Middle Persian to English. A good site overall.
Omar Khayyam: the polymath.
Probably the most well-known Iranian in the west other then Cyrus the Great and Darius, Khayyam was a noted talent in the fields of science and literature. In addition to Wikipedia and some sites mentioned below, he has a dedicated site at www.omar-khayyam.org. This site is interestingly designed, but needs some work as brown text on a black background with some light brown highlights is not exactly the easiest thing to read. One highlight though is the extensive links to online versions, mostly from academic sites, of most of Khayyam’s body of work. A good concept with horrid execution.
Zoroastrianism: the first ‘revealed’ faith.
www.avesta.org is the heavy-weight champion in this category, despite its archaic design, as it hosts many obscure texts that don’t turn up on either Fordham Sourcebook or Sacred-Texts. The content is so extensive and the links so deep and interesting that it is easy to overlook the site’s poor presentation and lack of sourcing for most of its articles, although most come from a series of translations of Zoroastrian texts collected and translated in the mid-19th century, but out-of-print since that time. A directory, but a really good one.
www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/zoroastrian/ is a good overview site from BBC’s more culturally-oriented BBC Radio 4. This is a kind of ‘quick-and-dirty’ overview, which can be a good supplemental to the avesta.org site and Sacred-Texts.
www.religioustolerance.org is a noted ‘all-religions’ meta-site based in Canada, and features extensive coverage of Islam, and pages and essays dedicated to both Zoroastrianism and Baha’i. When this site first came to this writer’s attention it was a non-profit site with minimal ads, but it is now practically over-run with a slew of sponsored links and the like, vastly detracting from the overall presentation and authority of the site. A site in need of some cash to get rid of some very excessive ad clutter.
Speaking of Islam, the major ‘flavor’ of the religion in Iran is the Shi’a variety, which is often a cause of great confusion among most Americans, who not familiar with the many nuances and distinct schools of thought that characterize Islamic scholarship and practice. Sources on this topic are numerous, English-language content for a broader audience is rather thin on the ground, with Wikipedia being the only recourse for many sub-topics in this field. One interesting site did pop up on this user’s travels through the nets at www.shiacrescent.com. The tone is very scholarly, but the format and construction is of a blog-type flavor, with most recent post being in early October of this year, the articles themselves mostly concern points of Islamic law and debates, often acrimonious between Shi’a and Sunni Muslim scholars and government officials over almost anything one can think of in regards to religion and politics. A good supplement to this site would be a video site at www.shiaspot.com, which has a separate category for English-language media, although some material from the notorious Lebanese militant group Hezbollah is present on this one, which does give the site a distinct political slant, but this fairly well-designed site does offer some insight into Shi’a Islam’s collective ‘state of mind’ on topics of politics, culture, and social conflict in a very dicey part of the world.
Baha’i: the newest ‘revealed’ faith.
In addition to Sacred-Texts and religioustolerance.org, the best site for the rapidly growing Baha’i faith is the main site of the religion’s international umbrella organization at www.bahai.org. To say this site is well designed would be an understatement. An easy-to-read layout, RSS feed, excellent links and site navigation, and a high authority all make this one a real winner. One quibble with it is that it is trying to ‘sell’ you something on a certain level, which may turn off some users of a more theologically reactionary viewpoint.
5th Group: Sports
In sporting terms, Iran is a bit of a late bloomer, with soccer and wrestling being the society’s real sporting loves and sports in Iran in general has a large selection of articles on Wikipedia. All of the clubs that compete in the top level Persian Gulf Cup have a presence on the web, but not even the biggest club, Persepolis F.C, has any English content. Because of this, the best source on Iranian soccer on the web is at www.iranfootballonline.com, which features the national team, nicknamed Team Melli, and the Persian Gulf Cup. The site is a bit scattershot, with too cluttered a layout, but does have a lot of information and news items, along with details on competitions and the like. A good site overall, despite the design issues.
www.teammelli.com, is a site dedicated to the national team, and consists of player profiles, schedules of upcoming matches, results, match reports, and a really nifty traffic tracker. Although not an official site, most of the information is confirmed by other sources, including Wikipedia and, since most of the players on the national team play in the top leagues in Europe, their clubs’ websites. A good site, but could use a grammatical cleanup.
Other then Wikipedia, sources for traditional Iranian martial arts/wrestling, called zurkhaneh, are a bit thin, but these disciplines have a history that goes back at least to the Parthian Empire, if not before. One site with English-language content this user did come across was the official site of the International Zurkhaneh Sports Federation at http://www.zurkhaneh.com/eng/index.asp. Among some highlights are listings of rules and regulations, details on competitions, and various details about Iran itself and a fairly good ‘about us’ section. A good site, and quite educational as well.
Final group: news and current events
As Iran, because of it position in between Iraq and Afghanistan, is ALWAYS in the news, it is only fitting that this pathfinder features a separate category for news and current events in regards to Iran. Besides several of the meta-sites listed in the culture and history groups, there are such mainstream English-language sources as the Guardian newspaper (www.guardian.co.uk) and the BBC (www.bbc.co.uk), both of which have specific sections dedicated to Iran. A more quirky addition to these two would be the controversial Arabic language broadcaster Al Jazeera, whose English-language service is located at http://english.aljazeera.net/, although generally speaking Al Jazeera’s focus is more on the Arabic-speaking parts of the region, with only the occasional mention of some things relating to Afghanistan and Iran’s political horse-trading there. Along a similar vein is the official Islamic Republic News Agency, whose English-Language page is http://www2.irna.ir/en/. While it’s a sort ‘official mouthpiece’ type of organization, it is always useful when keeping tabs on what the ‘powers-that-be’ in Tehran are thinking, and a lot can be gleaned from what IRNA doesn’t report and independent organizations do report. Finally, the most unusual offering is the official blog of the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (!) at http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/. The English-language section, however, hasn’t had a new posting in almost a year, but the posts available do give an insight into the mind of a man who is something of a bogeyman among certain elements of the American political scene.

In closing, Iran’s web presence is broad and varied, but is surprisingly obscure, and it very much reflects the country’s long history and deep cultural well. As one criterion for this pathfinder was whether or not a site had English language content of some kind, so a lot of interesting stuff was left out, but the number of English-language sites with a (mostly) non-political slant is quite surprising. In the end, as much as some elements of America’s political class would seek to demonize Iran and its culture, the sites on this pathfinder offer a hearty riposte to such rhetoric. As the poet Saadi once wrote:
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.