Iran Nameh

A journal of Iranian Studies

Iran Nameh is the Foundation for Iranian Studies’ quarterly journal of Iranian studies published for thirty four years from 1982 to 2016.

Explore the Iran Nameh Archives

1991-2016

Background

Iran Nameh is the Foundation For Iranian Studies’ quarterly journal of Iranian studies published for thirty four years from 1982 to 2016. While the publication  of the journal was discontinued with Vol. 30 No. 4 issue, all rights of intellectual ownership, including but not limited to the title Iran Nameh, copyright, and logo, are reserved and remain to the Foundation.

The journal was originally launched to help keep Iran’s cultural traditions alive. From 1988 on, it predominantly featured articles on contemporary Iranian issues in special issues edited by guest scholars while also providing a forum for original research on Iran’s history as well as literary and artistic heritage.

The Foundation for Iranian Studies (FIS) was one of the earliest—if not the first—manifestations of the response of Iranians in diaspora to sustain and promote the rich Iranian cultural heritage and the Persian literary tradition after the 1979 Iranian revolution. The foundation’s flagship publication, Iran Nameh, started in the fall of 1982 under the editorship of Professor Jalal Matini, who deserves high praise and gratitude for keeping the journal above the many partisan divisions in the Iranian community in diaspora. The first 26 issues of the journal, through volume VII, Number 2, prepared by him as editor and Professor Heshmat Moayyad as book review editor, focused mainly on history and culture, especially of the pre-Islamic era, to which a host of luminaries, including Ehsan Yarshater, Mohammad Jafar Mahjoub, Jalal Khaleqi Motlaq, and Zabihollah Safa, among others, contributed regularly.

The next editor-in-chief, Dariush Shayegan, a renowned philosopher who managed the journal’s volumes VII (1989) number 2 to volume XI (1993), brought with him a team of scholars and experts of the next generation, including Dariush Ashouri as executive editor, and Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak as book review editor. During Shayegan’s editorship the foundation was laid for a much greater emphasis on in-depth studies of social, political and economic issues Iranians faced after the end of the devastating Iran-Iraq war and the ways and means of addressing and resolving them. Accordingly, Iran Nameh underwent a corresponding structural and policy change in 1992 and 1993.

The editorial board of the journal was restructured to include a managing editor (Dr. Hormoz Hekmat), a permanent editor (Shahrokh Meskoob), and guest editors who were invited for each volume according to the subjects chosen for the special issues. In the 1990s and 2000s, both special and mixed issues were focused primarily on themes of special import in contemporary Iranian society—modernization, constitutional questions, civil society, economy, politics, religion, foreign policy, oil, cinema, women, and literary criticism, among others. The journal’s success in these years was owed to the contributions of the writers, guest editors, Hormoz Hekmat’s meticulous editing and command of Persian language, and the guiding attention of Shahrokh Meskoob, who for almost sixteen years, until his passing in 2005, was in many ways the soul of the journal.

Beginning with the year 2011 and volume XXVI, Iran Nameh was placed in FIS-Canada, under the editorship of Professor Mohamad Tavakoli Targhi of the University of Toronto where it was published till Winter of 2016, volume XXX, number 4. All volumes, including all specil issues, may be read gratis on the Iran Nameh site.

Throughout its publication Iran Nameh remained one of the most respected and acknowledged publications of its kind both inside and outside of Iran. For most of its publication it had a circulation of 1000, over half of which were through subscriptions by both individuals and institutions in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Russia, CIS, East Asia, South Asia, Australia, North Africa and Iran. The journal was also available at various bookstores around the world. In Iran, a complete set of its back issues was placed with a local publisher in Tehran and has been printed and distributed.