Academic literature on the topic 'Persian Women authors'

Poetry has always been the noteworthy face of Iran's cultural identity. Persian poets and their poems have reconstructed and revolutionized both the Eastern and Western literary world. Sadly, in a male-dominated Iranian society, female literary talents had been sidelined throughout centuries. Still, there were some iconic female poets who have blended their poetical talents with very powerful mental strength to cut off all the societal limitations, taboos and prohibitions and had left their marks on Persian literature's history forever. But to attain that, they had to come across a long way. As the title indicates, the subject of this article is about the growth of some of those persistent women poets of Iran, with an emphasis on the hardships they have faced and how they overcame through those phases. In short, this article analyses the problems of women poets in the context of the socio-political environment of Iran and discuss the efforts the women poets have to made to break those barriers. The Central Library of Dhaka University, Departmental Library of Persian Language and Literature, DU and original Persian manuscripts from the authors personal collections are used as the primary resources for this article as well as online helpful websites. Social Science Review, Vol. 38(1), June 2021 Page 93-108

AbstractThe article focuses on the warning about the "strange woman" in Prov 6:20-35. This instruction alludes to the Decalogue and the commandment to instruct children in the Torah, which follows the Schma' Yisrael. As an actualizing interpretation of this tradition, Prov 6:20-35 should be related to the process of canonizing the Torah and dated in the late Persian period. The instruction is written by men and women, a group of the Judean upper class who warn against sexual intercourse with women outside normal marriage relations. In their attempt to preserve existing family ties and social status, the authors create a negative image of women: every woman who is not an obedient wife can be called a "strange" one. In view of the text's ambivalent character, a modern interpretation of Prov. 6:20-35 attentive to gender must criticize the marginalization of women, while at the same time pointing to the contribution of women to this perspective. Recognizing the positive intention of its authors, who see Scripture as a guide for daily life, can help us to maintain the basic intention and at the same time to tell another, modern midrash that treats gender relationships in a more sensitive way.

Abstract This article examines the reception of Edgar Allan Poe in modern Persian literature with regard to his fiction and theory of writing. There have been scattered pieces written on Poe’s influence on Iranian poets and writers in Persian or English, but this article aims to offer a fairly comprehensive picture of Poe in Iran in general with a focus on his influence or affinities with two leading Iranian authors, Sadeq Hedayat and Sadeq Chubak, as far as female characters are concerned. The article at first surveys how Poe was introduced into Persian literature and then it studies personal, social, political, and historical backgrounds in classical and modern Persian literature that determined men’s taking a misogynous approach. A comparative study of representative works of Hedayat and Chubak reveals conscious alignment with Poe’s ideas. Confessionary monologues, gloomy atmosphere, and the lack of proper dialogues between men and women mark their writings. The article concludes that although patriarchy has been responsible for these two writers’ failures to overcome gender stereotypes, their acquaintance with Edgar Allan Poe had its impact on aggravating such tendencies.

Purpose Entrepreneurs are networking with others to get advice for their businesses. The networking differs between men and women; notably, men are more often networking for advice in the public sphere and women are more often networking for advice in the private sphere. The purpose of this study is to account for how such gendering of entrepreneurs’ networks of advisors differs between societies and cultures. Design/methodology/approach Based on survey data from the Global Entrepreneurships Monitor, a sample of 16,365 entrepreneurs is used to compare the gendering of entrepreneurs’ networks in China and five countries largely located around the Persian Gulf, namely Yemen, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Findings Analyses show that female entrepreneurs tend to have slightly larger private sphere networks than male entrepreneurs. The differences between male and female entrepreneurs’ networking in the public sphere are considerably larger. Societal differences in the relative prominence of networking in the public and private spheres, and the gendering hereof, correspond well to cultural and socio-economic societal differences. In particular, the authors found marked differences among the religiously conservative and politically autocratic Gulf states. Research limitations/implications As a main limitation to this study, the data disclose only the gender of the entrepreneur, but not the gender of each advisor in the network around the entrepreneur. Thus, the authors cannot tell the extent to which men and women interact with each other. This limitation along with the findings of this study point to a need for further research on the extent to which genders are structurally mixed or separated as entrepreneurs network for advice in the public sphere. In addition, the large migrant populations in some Arab states raise questions of the ethnicity of entrepreneurs and advisors. Originality/value Results from this study create novel and nuanced understandings about the differences in the gendering of entrepreneurs’ networking in China and countries around Persian Gulf. Such understandings provide valuable input to the knowledge of how to better use the entrepreneurial potential from both men and women in different cultures. The sample is fairly representative of entrepreneur populations, and the results can be generalized to these countries.

It is generally recognized that the prohibition against marriage with “foreign” women in Ezra 9-10 reflects a view among the repatriated gola community in Persian Yehud that non-repatriated Jewish groups should be viewed as ethnic outsiders; the chapters draw from Pentateuchal legal traditions (especially Deuteronomy) to justify this position. Several scholars have noted that this partisan/sectarian ideology has roots in the Ezekiel tradition, which informs much of Ezra 7-Nehemiah 13. Nevertheless, a direct antecedent for identifying the homeland women as “foreign” may be found in the book of Jeremiah, which served as the hermeneutical key for the exegetical goals of Ezra 9-10. This connection was recognized by the later Aaronide authors of Ezra 1-6, who amplified and redirected the implications of this relationship by inaugurating their addition to the corpus with a reference to Jeremiah’s oracles. By so doing, they extended Aaronide hegemony over Ezra 7-Nehemiah 13, incorporating it and its exegetical engagement of prophetic material into their own priestly-scribal curriculum.

Background: Despite all the positive effects of physical activity on maternal and fetal health, its level is low among pregnant women. Various barriers seem to prevent physical activity during pregnancy. The aim of this study was to investigate and determine the barriers to physical activity during pregnancy based on a review of available literature. Methods: To review the available literature, the authors searched Persian databases, such as Iran Medex, Magiran, MedLib, and SID, and also English databases, including Scopus, PubMed, Elsevier, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, and ProQuest using the keywords of pregnant woman, physical activity, exercise, barriers, pregnancy, constraints, and attitudes individually or in combination between 2000 and 2020 and finally, 10 articles that met the inclusion criteria were reviewed. An ecological model was used to classify the reported barriers. Results: Seven quantitative articles and three qualitative articles were included in the study. Obstacles related to the intrapersonal level of the ecological model were the most reported in these studies and were classified into five areas, including pregnancy symptoms and limitations, time constraints, misunderstanding the adequacy of daily activities, lack of motivation, and maternal and fetus safety concerns. Barriers at the interpersonal level included lack of consultation and information and lack of social support and at the environmental, organizational, and political levels, climate and lack of resources were the most reported barriers. Conclusion: The present study outlined the perceived barriers to physical activity among pregnant women and highlighted the important factors that should be considered when planning interventions to increase the level of physical activity during pregnancy. Further studies are recommended to provide solutions to overcome these barriers and increase the activity of pregnant women.

This remarkable collaboration of primarily Maria Jaschok and Shui Jingjun(with contributions from nine other mostly Muslim Chinese women who areduly acknowledged), contains a wealth of information on a subject that most scholars of Muslim communities have never considered or perhaps evenimagined: the existence of bona fide women’s mosques in China. Throughpainstaking historical, archival, interview, and field research, the authors layout a convincing argument that such mosques have existed in China and continueto experience a “rapid increase” (p. 15), at least since the late Mingdynasty (sixteenth to seventeenth centuries), proliferating in northern China’scentral plains region (mainly Henan, Hebei, Shandong, and Anhui) during theQing emperor Jiaqing’s reign (1796-1820) (pp. 67-69).This work sheds light on “how women [in China] engendered and sustainedfaith, aspiration and loyalties under often challenging conditions” (p.5) – which is putting it mildly. Strenuously caught between Confucian,Islamic, and patrimonial requirements, they developed an institution of learningand cultural transmission perhaps unique to the Muslim world. While theauthors never fully address why “women’s mosques” and madrassahs developedso fully in China (and almost nowhere else), they do richly demonstratethe extraordinarily important role these religious and educational centershave played in preserving and promoting Islamic understanding amongChina’s Muslims, known as the Hui national minority (with a year 2000 populationof approximately 9.8 million, out of a total 20.3 million Muslims inChina, according to the especially accurate PRC state census).While the authors claim these women’s “prayer halls” (the Chinese termis ambiguous) and the women who lead them are fully-fledged ahongs orimams (again, the Chinese term, like the Arabic and Persian equivalents, isnot clear about the teacher’s actual status), the issue here is whether they haveany authority over men. Since they clearly do not, ahong should be taken inits more general sense of “one possessing advanced Islamic knowledge” ortraining, and does not imply institutionalized authority beyond the sphere ofwomen (and children, which in most instances includes boys). Nevertheless,it is significant that they have such organized authority, training, and separateprayer halls or mosques among themselves ...

Prominent examples of major Qur'anic characters in modern world literature include Joseph (and Zulaykha) -like characters in the 1984 Arabic novel, al-Rahīna (The Hostage) by the Yemeni writer Zayd Muṭīʿ Dammāj (d. 2000) and the fictionalised portrayal of the women around the Prophet Muḥammad in Algerian filmmaker and novelist Assia Djebar's 1991 French novel, Loin de Médine (Far from Medina). In this article I focus, rather, on a ‘minor’ Qur'anic character, al-Khiḍr (cf. Q. 18:65–82). I begin by looking briefly at the evolution of al-Khiḍr in Islamic literatures generally and then focus on his deployment in several short fictional accounts, viz. the 1995 French novella L'homme du livre (Muhammad, A Novel) by Moroccan author Driss Chraïbi (d. 2007); Victor Pelevin's 1994 Russian short story, ‘Prints Gosplana’ (Prince of Gosplan); the 1998 short story, ‘The Mapmakers of Spitalfields’, by Bangladeshi-British writer Manzu Islam; and Reza Daneshvar's 2004 Persian tale, ‘Mahboobeh va-Āl’ (‘Mahboobeh and Ahl’). I characterise the ways in which these modern authors draw on the al-Khiḍr type, persona, and legend, and go on to suggest how and why the use of al-Khiḍr in modern literature is productive and versatile.

Objectives: An increase in life expectancy results in the aging population growth. This study was designed to evaluate the efficacy and adverse events of ginseng that could be used as a herbal medicine in women with sexual dysfunction. Materials and Methods: The authors of this study searched Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Embase, Scopus, ProQuest, Google Scholar, and Persian databases without a time limitation until May 2018 and examined all the randomized clinical trials (RCTs) that compared the effect of different types of ginseng on sexual function of menopausal women as compared to the placebo controls. The Cochrane risk of bias tool was used to assess the methodological quality of the included studies. The heterogeneity was determined using the I2 index. In addition, standardized mean difference (SMD) was used instead of mean differences (MD) and a random effect was reported instead of fixed effect in meta-analysis. Results: The eligibility criteria were found in five RCTs. All the included studies were placebo-controlled. Two trials had a parallel design while three studies used a crossover design. Although four trials indicated that ginseng significantly improved sexual function, they didn’t report any treatment effect compared to the placebo group. Based on the results of meta-analysis obtained from five studies including 531 women, there was no statistically significant effect of ginseng on female sexual dysfunction (FSD) compared to the placebo control group (SMD: 0.26; 95% CI: -0.26 to 0.76). Nonetheless, there was a considerable heterogeneity among the studies (I2 = 81%; P < 0.0001). Moreover, all the included studies assessed adverse events, but in three of the RCTs, there was no significant difference between the placebo and ginseng groups. Conclusions: The evidence regarding ginseng as a therapeutic agent for sexual dysfunction is unjustifiable. Rigorous studies seem warranted in this respect.

A number of solid monographs are dedicated to Nadir Shah’s campaign in Dagestan in 1741-1743. While reviewing these studies, one can note a significant discrepancy in the estimations of the size of Nadir Shah's troops during the invasion of Dagestan in the spring of 1741. The authors provide information that specifies the army’s size ranging from “several dozen” to “one hundred and fifty thousand” men. However, they mainly cite a very limited range of sources of information provided by P.G. Butkov and L. Bazin. Meanwhile, the Foreign Policy Archives of the Russian Empire stores encrypted reports of the Russian residents at Nadir Shah’s court Ivan Kalushkin and Vasily Bratishchev. Examination of their information provides an idea ofthe number of troops of the Shah's army in the war, as well as determine the number of losses of his troops: the grand total of soldiers in the Dagestan campaign reached approximately 110 thousand people. Along with the army, there were about 40,000 service personnel and women. Of the soldiers, more than 82 thousand died in Dagestan and a small number of injured men were sent home. Most of the losses were due to combat, less – to hunger and diseases. The losses among the service personnel might have been just as large. The reports of the Russian residents at the Persian court are a very informative source, from which we can learn many interesting details not only about the number of troops, losses, but also the chronology of military events, the results of battles, about Nadir Shah’s tactics and strategy, about the problems of the military campaign, their solutions, international relations and lots of other historical information.