The umayyads faced many challenges in consolidating their authority in the years after the first fitna (35–41 H. /656–61 C.E.). Among these were frequent revolts by Kharijites. While the Umayyads suppressed most of the revolts with little trouble until the second fitna (60–72/680–92), the ideological foundations of Kharijite resistance and the wide sympathy it enjoyed had serious consequences. It undermined the informal traditions upon which the caliphate was based. This was not simply a problem for the caliph in Damascus but more critically for governors exercising authority in distant provinces where caliphal influence proved weak and opposition movements propagated with relative ease.

While little is known of Kirman's history during this period, one of its governors, al-Hakam b. al-ᶜAs, addressed these challenges in the fifties/mid 670s by appealing to an inchoate absolutism. He promulgated legends on his coins linking himself and his government to God.

Jean-Pierre Digard's recent delightful and informative article on the Persian long-haired cat has stimulated me to write this short note to complement his contribution to the feline discussion. Digard and others before him have thrown doubt on the denomination “Persian” of the long-haired cat. Many reasons, all of them quite reasonable, have been adduced to make this point. I would like to offer some additional information, which is not available in Digard's article and will further muddle this issue. Apart from discussing the background of Persian cats—broadly along the lines of Digard's exposé—I will show that long-haired cats, although they may also have been from Kurdistan or Bukhara, were an article of export from Isfahan and other towns in Iran throughout the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Also, the data adduced show that the Persian cat was different from the Angora cat.

The last two decades have seen the construction of an Iranian “national cuisine” in cookbooks published outside Iran, while the post-revolutionary migration of Iranians from their country has led to the opening of Iranian (also called “Persian,” especially in the United States) restaurants all over the world. The menus of these restaurants evince a certain uniformity. Main dishes fall into three categories: chilawkabāb (white rice with grilled meat, widely considered the “national” dish); stews (khūrish[t]s) with white rice (chilaw); and colorful rice concoctions incorporating meat, legumes, vegetables, and occasionally fruits (pulaws). The total comes to a maximum of about twenty dishes, which one could be forgiven for taking to be the corpus of traditional Iranian cuisine. The similarity of restaurant menus everywhere suggests a basic culinary cohesion, while “tradition” implies that Iranians’ eating habits have undergone minimal change over a long period of time. Both propositions need to be qualified.

Cultural diffusion of a partially non-literate kind is intrinsically hard to demonstrate and document. The poles between which cultural currents flow across geographical space are not the simple loci of “high” and “low” cultures or of superordinate and subordinate civilizations. Aspects of elite culture trickle down, features of vernacular culture bubble up, to confound and subvert the orderly progression of literary and religious history beloved of conventional scholarship. And, of course, the key occasions of transfer are usually absent from the record.

One such current that is, however, sufficiently documented in general and specific terms to be accepted nem. con. as truly remarkable in volume, longevity and global efficacy is the overwhelmingly one-way traffic of seminal commodities, artifacts and ideas that flowed westward from the South Asian subcontinent between at least 300 B.C.E. and 1400 C.E. Along this stream, from the Punjab via the Iranian plateau and adjacent waterways to Mesopotamia, Syria, the Mediterranean and western Europe, were borne the Gypsies, the game of chess, the mathematical concept of zero and the notation with which to use it, the literary device of the Frame Story, and a flood of stories to stock it.

Hushang Golshiri's Āyinah-hĀ-yi DardĀr is not an easy read. Its possibilities do not present themselves without effort, and, on first reading the novel does not generate a very positive reaction. In fact, for reasons that will be discussed later, the first reading brings up seemingly negative points about this work. It is essential to underline these seemingly negative points because when one takes into account the technical structure of the novel, those same negative points change into the elements which give Āyinah-hĀ-yi DardĀr its strength. To provide a context for the description of these elements, we should begin with a short summary of the story.

Āyinah-hā-yi Dardār is a quasi-travelogue. Ebrahim, the narrator, is a writer who rehearses the elements of his travelogue chiefly through writing about the process of writing the travelogue. He talks about his trip to a few European countries and retells parts of stories he has read to different Iranian communities residing abroad.