The Evening Ceremony Marking the Publication of ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’ was performed

12/8/2024 22:17

The evening ceremony marking the publication of ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’ was held on Monday evening, 9th of October, at the Ferdowsi Hall of Khānay-e Andīshmandān-e ʿEulum Insānī (the Humanities Scholars House) in Tehran – Iran by Bukhara Magazine in cooperation with the Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia.

CGIE: The evening ceremony marking the publication of ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’ was held on Monday evening, 9th of October, at the Ferdowsi Hall of Khānay-e Andīshmandān-e ʿEulum Insānī (the Humanities Scholars House) in Tehran – Iran by Bukhara Magazine in cooperation with the Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia.

Winning Eḥsān Yār-Shāṭir and Iraj Afshār’s approval and welcome

The ceremony, which was conducted by ʿAlī Dihbāshī, the chief executive officer and editor-in-chief of Bukhara Magazine, started with Kāẓim Mūsavī Bojnurdī’s speech. As the CEO of the Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia (CGIE), he stated: “The Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture is one of the extremely valuable scientific projects which has been initiated by the CGIE. Folklore is the part of a society’s culture which is often but not always transmitted orally from one generation to the next. For instance, I can mention the poems or sayings which are written on the walls of public buildings or places of worship and even on the back of motor vehicles.”

He continued: “As many of the Iranian or non-Iranian social scientists have affirmed, folklore cannot be defined thoroughly in one sentence; however, considering what I mentioned earlier, if we wish to give a concise definition of it, we can say that every society has a culture which is divided into two parts: the official culture and the unofficial one. Folklore is literally the unofficial culture of a society and contains myths, legends, tales, jokes, riddles, poems, melodies, proverbs, lullabies and whatever which is related to the popular literature to an extent.”

“Additionally, folklore includes the rituals, ceremonies and beliefs associated with birth, marriage and death; it also encompasses the public gatherings to celebrate Nowruz, Shab-e Yaldā, ʿEid al-Fitr, ʿEid al-Aḍḥā and other tradititions such as Nazri Food, Nazar (amulet) and offering animals as a sacrifice to God, etc.” Mūsavī Bojnurdī added.

The CEO of the Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia pointed out: “What was said about the folklore is by no means exhaustive and largely covers its most significant types only; all in all, folklore reflects the national identity of a country and as a nation with rich history, we preserve our integrity through our folklore in the four corners of Iran. Despite the fact that every single tradition is followed differently from one region to another, for example the traditions connected to weddings or Nowruz, they are all maintained almost similarly and this fosters national solidarity and promotes our unity.”

He went on to say: “For over 90 years, the Iranian researchers have been collecting and recording different types of the Iranian folklore in rural and urban areas. Some years ago, we came to the conclusion at the CGIE that the compilation of an encyclopedia of the Iranian Culture was not only essential but also urgent because our folklore is an accurate mirror of our fears, worries, anxieties, values and delights as a nation; this issue is of great significance at the present time, since our sworn enemies have been interfereing with our national identity under the pretext of defending the rights of this ethnic group or that one in order to provoke divisions among the Iranians and violate our territorial integrity.”

This cultural manager stated that the entries of this encyclopedia illustrate that all Iranian people, from Azarbaijan to Khorasan, from Khorasan to Baluchistan, from Baluchistan to Khuzestan, Lorestan and Kurdistan and the central regions, share a common history and culture and concluded by saying “the fact that the Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture met with the late Eḥsān Yār-Shāṭir’s approval and received the late Iraj Afshār’s welcome confirms that it is a step in the right direction.”

Protector of the Ethnic Groups’ and Ordinary People’s Culture

The ceremony continued with a message from a highly accomplished anthropologist, ʿAlī Bolūkbāshī, who had not been able to attend this gathering due to a health problem; this message which was read by Aḥmad Masjid-Jāmʿeī, the CGIE’s deputy director, is as follows:

This ceremony, as a series of evening ceremonies held by Bukhara Magazine, marks the publication of ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’ and a huge number of intellectuals, authors and enthusiasts have joined together to pay homage to its editorial board. This reference work is the first encyclopedia of folklore and the Iranian popular culture in the history of Iran, which is being published through the determined efforts of Kāẓim Mūsavī Bojnurdī, the esteemed CEO of the Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia. I, therefore, concentrate my speech on the history of the folklore studies.

In the not-too-distant past, the upper class, elites and well-educated people were thought to have a monopoly on science, culture and art and the lower class were assumed to be illiterate and uncultured. Accordingly, the people in the society were classified under two groups: ‘the cultured and educated upper class’ and ‘the uncultured and uneducated lower class’. It was not until the development of anthropology and folklore studies in Europe that these thoughts and assumptions were proven to be false since the research studies conducted by the scientists in these new fields made it known that ordinary people in the working class in every society, regardless of their school education, possess a fair share in science, culture and art which places them not in a lower status but in a higher one with regard to their profound and efficacious method of managing the life challenges.

As said by Rashīd Yāsimī, who played a pioneering role in the folklore studies in Iran, when scientists realized that ordinary people have an in-depth knowledge of the past in their heart, “they began to focus their searches more on the human spirits than the celestial bodies” and “begged them to share their knowledge” since they regarded them as virgin and untouched lands with hidden intangible treasures from past civilizations, on which new cities had been developed.

Sadeq Hedayat, who was familiar with the folklore of the Western world and European culture, began to study Iranian folklore in the early 1930s; having fallen under the influence of the dominant opinions of the elites in that period, he got a negative impression of the ordinary Iranian people’s culture at first and wrote a number of critical articles on them. In the preface of his book “Nīrangestān” which was published in 1932, Hedayat described the beliefs and customs of the public as a collection of “illusions and superstitions” and called them “ludicrous beliefs”, albeit he made a distinction between them and those “national Iranian festivals” such as Mihragan, Sada, Chahārshanba Sūrī and Nowruz. In fact, he compiled “Nīrangestān” with the purpose of showing that ordinary people’s beliefs were worthless, archaic and superstitious. This book has an equivocal and ambiguous title. Althogh he named it after “Nīrangestān”, a section of a nask (book) of Avesta which is about the Zoroastrian traditions, customs and ceremonials, he intended to indicate that ordinary people believed in a tissue of lies and what they practiced was out of their ignorance. A decade later, having studied the European research findings on the folklore and familiarized himself with Arnold van Gennep, a French ethnographer and folklorist, best known for his studies of the rites of passage of various cultures, Hedayat changed his previos viewpoints and expressed admiration for the Iranian folklore in the introduction of an article entitled “Folklore or the Public’s Culture” he wrote in 1943; he also regarded the Iranian folklore as a “national treasure”, placed emphasis on its superiority over the Western folklore in terms of richness and advised on the compilation and preservation of the traditional stories and culture of the Iranian people. This prominent Iranian author emphasized that “history must include the everyday life customs and traditions as well as the melodies, superstitions and legends of people living in every age” because he believed that “by the compilation of folklore, we can assess people’s influence at any time and help them demonstrate more resilience to the life challenges and improve their living conditions in general”.

People’s extensive reliance of on oral communication rather than the written word in the past on the one hand and the researchers’ negligence in conducting a search for any memoirs or manuscripts on ordinary people’s culture and a comprehensive study of them on the other, brought discredit upon the value of the public culture in many parts of Iran and led to its abandonment and death. Nevertheles, through the determined and strenuous efforts of the late Dr. Iraj Afshār and his ethnographic approach to find, introduce and publish a series of manuscripts on the folklore and local culture in Iran, we have many invaluable sources of information on historical ethnography and our folklore at present. Many of his contemporaries had neither seen such handwritten cultural works nor had they considered them a worthwhile resource to be studied or printed.

Dr. Afshār immediately edited, printed and published whatever old and dusty books and treatises relating to the Iranian folklore he laid his hands on since he believed they reflected some facts about the material and spiritual lives of the ordinary people and showed their beliefs, customs and traditions. Although some conservative literary men criticized him and considered “the publication of those shallow books and treateses to be a complete waste of time, paper and money”, he praised those short treatises for their wealth of information on “the individual, cultural, social and industrial life of the people in our motherland” and viewed them as credible evidence for proving that culture, science and art had not been monopolized by the upper class and the elites. According to him, we can broaden our knowledge of the culture and everyday life of the men and women in the street by studying these types of books, as such details are rarely found in literary works, poetry books and even historical texts.

These detractors can be counted among the succeeding descendants of the same type of the literati who believed that the upper class had a monopoly on culture, science and art and looked down on the written works about the ordinary people’s culture; as a result of their narrow vision, a large part of culture, knowledge, art, social lifestyle, way of thinking and beliefs of the average Iranian in the past has remaind unknown.

‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’, whose seventh volume is to be launched as part of this evening ceremony, includes articles on oral and written traditions of all the Iranian people, no matter their ethnic group, language or religion. This encyclopedia takes a candid and cordial approach to all the angles and dimensions of the ordinary Iranian people’s social and cultural life, from their everyday life activities inside and outside home to their participation in religious, national or ethnic gatherings and all of their life events from the cradle to the grave.

This encyclopedia has entered the Iranians life and people take pleasure in reading its articles, since it is an open book to them; moreover, most of the articles in this encuclopedia have been written by scholars and experts and edited by an expert and specialist editor. Hence ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’ is considered to be an invaluable resource and a useful reference for all the Iranian culture and Persian folklore enthusiasts.

On the whole, this encyclopedia can safeguard our ethnic culture and our folklore as they are the beating heart of a several-thousand-year-old nation and as long as this heart keeps beating, high spirits, survival and cultural growth are pumped like blood into the vessels of our society and keeps it dynamic and vibrant; the circulation of this fluid of life in the society empowers the people and increases their power to defend themselves against the unwelcome interference of the alien cultures and the intrusion of the ousiders.

Here I feel obliged to remember and give honour to my old friend and colleague, the late Dr. Asghar Karīmī; he joined the scientific council and the editorial staff of ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’ in 2011 and cooperated with Dr. Muḥammad J ͑afarī Qanawātī in writing, editing and compiling the articles of some of the volumes of this encyclopedia until he succumbed to Coronavirus in 2021. The collaboration between these two intellectuals, who were both graduates in anthropology and oral or folk literature, added weight to this encyclopedia. May God rest his soul.

To conclude, although my knowledgable friend, Dr. Qanawātī, edits the articles of this encyclopedia scrupulously, I would like to advise him to take four significant approaches in folklore studies into his consideration; these approaches which are universally accepted by many folklorists in the world are as follows: 1. An aspect of culture in the general context of the society’s culture which, along with the official culture, applies in a variety of forms and contents to the everyday life of all people from different age groups and ethnic, religious and professional backgrounds. 2. The cultural achievements with historical backgrounds, which have survived and been reproduced throughout the history. 3. Explicable issues which can be transferred and disseminated from one cultural region to another. 4. The behaviour which form the material and spiritual lifestyle of the people and sets their actions with the current social norms and standards in a society in terms of psychological and moral principles.

May God bless all the staff who are working on this encyclopedia

Having read the message of the director of “Anthropology Department” at the Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, Masjid-Jāmʿeī drew the audience’s attention to some important points: Firstly, unlike many of the other research projects, the editorial staff of ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’ are not from Tehran only; they come from the four corners of the country and the data submitted by non-staff members are also checked and edited. Secondly, the establishment of “Anthropology Reference Library” at the CGIE is the next best thing in parallel with the commencement of the project. And finally, new phenomena such as the cinema have also been taken into account especially if they are valuable in terms of folklore. The CGIE’s deputy director concluded by saying that on the whole, particular attention has been given to the culture of Iran which is larger and more diverse than its geography.

Critical Review

The next speech was delivered by ‘Jalāl al-Dīn Rafiʿe Far’, an anthropology professor at University of Tehran. Paying tribute to Ḥasan Ẕulfiqarī, Jamshīd Sidaqat Kīsh, Asghar Karīmī, Aḥmad Vakīlīyān, Sadiq Homayūnī and Moḥsin Mīhan Dūst as the late members of the scientific council of ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’, he said: “Several meetings were convened for the compilation, edition and the writing of this encyclopedia’s entries; there have been many debates within the scientific council and we have been faced with many different comments before the completion of every volume.”

Placing emphasis on a request from him to review the seventh volume of this encyclopedia critically, he continued his talk and said: “this volume begins with ‘folklore’ as the first and most significant entry in the whole of this encyclopedia; it has been written well but, in my opinion, it is lengthy. Furthermore, I have noticed that some points are missing from this entry, that is to say, the works of some scholars such as Maḥmūd Rūḥ al-Amīnī, Jawad Șafī Nizhād, Asghar Karīmī and Muḥammad Bahman Beigī have not been given recognition. In addition, it could have had a better format and it would be better if there had been more tables to include all the relevant works on folklore.”

This anthropology professor also commented on other entries of this volume and added; “The entry on ‘Qurʾān’, considering its sensitivity, is very well-written but the one on ‘famine’ gives unnecessary details about its natural causes. Three quarters of the entry on “Khoresht-e Qeimeh (Persian Split Pea Stew)” are about its recepie in details and vitually no attention has been paid to its importance in the Iranian culture and the entry on ‘Qame-Zani (striking the head with a sharp knife as one of Muharram rituals)’ is only limited to Qajar Period and disregards its practice in different regions of Iran.”

The need for the translation of ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’ into English

The next speaker who took the podium was ʿAlī Riḍā Ḥasan Zadeh, head of the Anthropological Research Department at the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism. At the beginning of his speech, he said that according to the American Anthropologist journal, Abū Rayḥān Bīrūnī, the Iranian scholar and scientist, is the first anthropologist in the history of the world and continued: “Iran is the second country in the Middle East, after Turkey, to have institutionalized the anthropological research studies at university; two years after the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, Cultural Anthropology was itroduced in order to prove that Turks are not the Yellow Race, but the importance of anthropology in Iran is beyond our boundaries.”

He added: “When scientific knowledge in a field accumulates, we can create an encyclopedia and that is what has beed done at the CGIE by publishing ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’; this encyclopedia acts like a bridge and does not let us make a break with the past, especially after the closure of the Centre for Anthropological Research. It illustrates three schools of thought: Kīyā, Khalīqī and Bolūkbāshī school of thought in anthropology, Hedayat, Anjawī, Mahjūb, Vakīlīyān, Ẕulfiqarī and Qanawātī school of thought in Folklore studies and the modern school of thought in anthropology. ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’ represents the Iranian people in general and not the commeners, the masses and the peoples.”

Ḥasan Zadeh went on to say that thare have been some unsuccessful attempts to make an encyclopedia in the field of anthropology thus far, for example even at the Anthropological Research Department at the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, we have not been able to take any measures in particular. He admitted that “the compilation and edition of such an encyclopedia at the CGIE is a grueling and exhausting task which has been done successfully under the efficient management of Kāẓim Mūsavī Bojnurdī, the esteemed CEO of the Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia.

He concluded his speech by saying that this encyclopedia needs to be translated into English and emphasizing that it needs to be revised in its future subsequent editions soon since the Iranian society is very dynamic.

Winning the approval and welcome of the prominent scholars of the Iranian Culture and History

Muḥammad J ͑afarī Qanawātī, the editor-in-chief of ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’, was the last speaker at this evening ceremony who began his speech by expressing his gratitude to all members of staff at the CGIE, from the administration, secretariat and finance departments to the departments of printing and publication. He also showed his genuine appreciation to Mr. Majīdī, the director of the CGIE library.

He said: “In almost all the speeches delivered here, we were just reminded of the numerous sources which have been referred to in the articles and not of the librarians at the CGIE library who cooperated fully with the writers of the articles. I would like to say a sincere thank you to Mr. Mūsavī Bojnurdī who has always supported us throughout the project. I am also extremely grateful to the members of the scientific council and the board of advisors for their advice and guidance. Last but not the least, I would like to pay tribute to our late colleagues, professor Sadiq Homayūnī, Dr. Asghar Karīmī, Dr. Ḥasan Ẕulfiqarī, Dr. Ṭahmūris Sajidī Ṣabā, professor Aḥmad Vakīlīyān and professor Moḥsin Mīhan Dūst.”

J ͑afarī Qanawātī continued: “With the assistance of these eminent editors and contributers, ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’ is entering its closing stages of compilation, that is to say, the first edition of this encyclopedia will be nine volumes and so far seven out of thses nine volumes have been published. Volume seven includes some entries which have not been written punctually or have been added during the recent years.”

“It is anticipated that ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’ will contain two thousand entries and approximately 120 editors and contributers from Iran and abroad are collaborating in compiling these entries” he added.

The editor-in-chief of ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’ stated: “Contrary to expectations, this encyclopedia has fortunately gained considerable prestige among the academic and scientific communities and has won widespread approval of the prominent scholars of the Iranian culture and history; this impressive accomplishment has given us a lot of support. For instance, following the publication of the first volume of ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’, late professor Eḥsān Yār-Shāṭir wrote us a letter in which he expressed his appreciation of our work and said: “I skimmed through some of the articles of Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture and the more I read, the more I noticed how much it was missing from our lives. The Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia has indeed accomplished many formidable tasks, which are conducted by academies and universities in some countries; we owe this leading centre and its dedicated CEO, Mr. Mūsavī Bojnurdī a deep debt of gratitude.”

He concluded his speech by appreciating Dr. Rafiʿe Far and Dr. Ḥasan Zadeh for presenting subtle and scientific points in their speeches.

The evening ceremony closed with the launch of the seventh volume of ‘Encyclopedia of Iranian Culture’.