Happy Nowruz/Nawriz/Navruz/Novruz/Newroz everyone! Nowruz is an ancient festival marking the arrival of Spring, celebrated across the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus, South Asia, and the Balkans. Dating back at least 3,000 years, Nowruz is a celebration of rebirth and renewal, of the end of winter and the flowering of the Earth that warm weather brings. In the Iranian calendar, this Nowruz marks the beginning of the year 1398. In this episode, Kamyar and Rustin talk reflect on the first year since Ajam's successful kickstarter, which has given the project enough funds to pay writers and launch new projects. They talk about what is to come in the new year, including a new film project and the return of the mixtapes series. The conversation then moved to the topic of Nowruz and how it is celebrated, before revisiting Ajam editor Beeta Baghoolizadeh's [2012 piece on Haji Firuz and race in Iran](https://ajammc.com/2012/06/20/the-afro-iranian-community-beyond-haji-firuz-blackface-slavery-bandari-music/). ...
In this episode, Rustin and Ali are joined by Professor Najam Haider, Professor of Religion at Barnard College, to talk about his recent book, The Rebel and the Imām in Early Islam: Explorations in Muslim Historiography. The lack of contemporary sources for the first century of the Islamic period poses many challenges for historians past and present. Engaging with many of the impasses that still animate the study of early Islam, Professor Haider proposes that one way forward is to explore the rules that governed historical writing among early Muslims as well as their intended audiences. Instead of remaining preoccupied with 19th century European standards of historical writing, such as the search for veracity, he argues that the historians of the early Islamic period worked in continuity with the traditions of Late Antiquity. They were not interested in what “really happened,” but rather, they played with known narratives to make competing claims for contemporary audiences. After a personal anecdote about his own interest in the subject, Haider walks us through the example of the seventh Twelver-Shi’i Imam, Musa al Kadhim, explaining how sources over the centuries have told and retold his biography in keeping with their own theological and political concerns. ...
In this episode, Rustin speaks with Lior Sternfeld, Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Penn State University. Dr. Sternfeld is another alumnus from the Emerging Scholarship podcast, when he joined us for a conversation about [Polish Jewish Refugees in Iran during World War II](https://ajammc.com/2015/01/22/lior-sternfeld-polish-refugees-iran/). His new book is called [Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth Century Iran (Stanford University Press, 2018).](https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=27883) Lior gives an overview of the history of the Jewish community in Iran from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Dr. Sternfeld starts by describing how the constitutional movement presented Iranian Jews with an opportunity to advocate for rights as citizens, after which they grew from a peripheral community into a prominent one that made clear impacts on daily life in Iran. Lior focuses on Jewish involvement in Tudeh Party politics and the 1979 Revolution, before ending the podcast with a discussion on the post-revolutionary period, where some 25,000 Jews continue to live. ...
