Reza Shah

Similar to the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid Empire experienced a rise and fall and began its reign with the Islamic religion. Members of the Safavid tribe were the founders of a sunni sufi religious brotherhood in Azerbaijan, which was popularly fought over by other empires including the Ottoman Empire. A major differentiating factor for the Safavids was that their making of Shiite Islam the state religion of Iran made it very different from its neighboring Sunni Muslim empires. This…

greener on the other side? What does one do to move forward? In the memoir “Persepolis” Marj who is the main character, watched as her family opposed the current form of government. Her parents started to participate in demonstrations to dethrone the Shah, who was Mohammad Pahlavi, because of unfair distribution of wealth. Their actions encouraged Marj to participate in the demonstrations; although she didn’t quite know what she was getting herself into, she wanted what was best for her country.…

Australia. Follett’s “On Wings and Eagles” Ken Follett wrote ‘On Wings of Eagles’ a novel which has the background of the Iranian revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran. The Iranian revolution remains an enigma even now and does not fail to arouse the curiosity of most people even though 3 decades have elapsed. The revolution against the Shah of Iran was channeled by the religious leadership…

Ignorance is never bliss Malala Yousafzai once said, “We realize the importance of our voice once we are silenced”. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, their Congress was taken down and the army declared a state of emergency. The entire government was completely gone, the constitution was suspended, newspapers were censored, but no one rioted or questioned anything. The more things changed surrounding the protagonist Offred, the more she chose to dismiss the clear warning signs…

Persepolis is a graphic novel that centers around the life of Marjane Satrapi. Satrapi’s memoir provides an insightful point of view on the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Marjane, a typical teenager, goes through the hardships of living through a war; her story shows the evolution of a young girl. The censorship of Persepolis is quite absurd; the graphic novel has the chance to relate to, encourage, and educate a child’s mind. Throughout the world many children go through hardships, in Satrapi’s…

bringing warning to policymakers, intelligence failure is inevitable. However, why do intelligence failures occur? Within his post-mortem examining the failure of the Central Intelligence Agency 's National Foreign Assessment Center to warn of the Shah of Iran 's inability or unwillingness to respond forcefully to the Islamic revolution led by the Ayatollah Khomeini in the late 1970s, Robert Jervis calls for comparative case studies of intelligence success and intelligence failure (Jervis, 35).…

Marjane Satrapi is a talented Iranian author well known for her autobiographical graphic novel “The Complete Persepolis”. With this novel, Satrapi shows her journey as a young child thrown into the fire of war, as a teenager trying to find her own identity in a foreign country and as a young adult who feels guilty for fleeing her country in the midst of a revolution. Marjane Satrapi’s brave, assertive and strong willed personality had a lot to do with her parents, grandparents, and uncle being…

The hardline conservatives have been a mainstay as one of the most influential factions in Iranian politics. Since the inception of Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, the hardliners have successfully expanded their power in the non-elected bodies of the Iranian regime, headed by the ideological leader of their movement, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. However, the Iranians have not had nearly as much luck in obtaining control of the elected bodies in Iran. Since the Revolution, the hardliners have…

dramatically. Items from India, China, and Iran passed easily across the Asian steppes, and these contacts culturally enriched Iran. For example, Iranians developed a new style of painting based on a unique fusion of solid, two-dimensional Mesopotamian painting with the feathery, light brush strokes and other motifs characteristic of China. After Ghazan's nephew, Abu Said, died in 1335, Iran again lapsed into petty dynasties the Salghurid, Muzaffarid, Inju, and Jalayirid, under Mongol…

Khaled Hosseini is a medical doctor, writer, who is well known for his notable works, the “Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. He was born in March 4, 1965 in Kabul, Afghanistan in an affluent Wazir Akbar Khan district, and is known as a growing, thriving, cosmopolitan city in which woman and men were regarded as equals (Wikipedia). Hossein’s parents’ were both highly educated: his father worked as a diplomat at the Afghan Foreign Ministry, while his mother was a high school teacher who…