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FRANCE v. ADMINISTRATIVE AND MILITARY CONTACTS WITH PERSIA The motives for Franco-Persian administrative and military contacts between the French Revolution of 1789 and the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, their implementation and their impact on Persia will be examined here. Although in France after the Revolution there was interest in…

FRANCE vi. PERSIA AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION The French Revolution inspired many generations of Persian commentators who described it directly or obliquely in terms of what they regarded as its salient characteristics such as sedition (fetna), corruption (fesād), a general disturbance by the populace (balwā-ye ʿāmm), insurrection (šūreš), the great…

FRANCE vii. FRENCH TRAVELERS IN PERSIA, 1600-1730 The Diplomatic context and the French presence.The accession of the Safavids rekindled Persia’s political and religious conflict with the Turks, inducing Shah Esmāʿil to enter relations with the West. As a result the Persians became enemies of their co-religionists, the Turks, and the…

FRANCE viii. TRAVELOGUES OF THE 18TH-20TH CENTURIES 18th Century travelogues. After the fall of the Safavids in 1722, Persia was plunged for a long period into political anarchy, civil war, and economic and social insecurity. As a result there were fewer Western residents and visitors to Persia in the latter…

FRANCE x. FRENCH LITERATURE IN PERSIA In the last two centuries, French literature has had a significant impact on modern Persian literature. The new trends in Persian literature in the beginning of the 20th century are closely related to social and political changes which began in Persia under Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah…

FRANCE xi. PERSIAN ART AND ART COLLECTIONS IN FRANCE French collections, both public and private, contain hundreds of Persian works of art. Some of these reached France during the Middle Ages, notably after the Crusades, and were kept in the treasures of several churches around the country. But most of…

FRANCE xii(a). IRANIAN STUDIES IN FRANCE: OVERVIEW From the origins to the end of the 19th century: The primacy of language studies. Until the end of the 18th century there were only a few limited sources of information on Persia available in France: Saʿdī’s Golestān through Latin and French translations;…

FRANCE xii(b). IRANIAN STUDIES IN FRANCE: PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD Partly because of the long tradition of philological studies in France which produced a succession of outstanding scholars of international repute and partly because of close historical and institutional connections through the two Délégations Archéologiques Françaises established in Persia and Afghanistan, the French…

FRANCE xii(c). IRANIAN STUDIES IN FRANCE: SOCIAL SCIENCES AND MODERN PERSIA Beginnings. The history of French scholarship on modern Persia particularly in the field of social sciences was shaped by major external factors including the overall political relationship between the two countries and the radical changes which took place in…

FRANCE xiii. INSTITUT FRANÇAIS DE RECHERCHE EN IRAN The Institut français de recherche en Iran (IFRI) was established in its present form and under the above name in l983, although in Persia it is usually referred to as Anjoman-e īrān-šenāsī-e farānsa dar Īrān. Since then it has been concerned with…

FRANCE xv. FRENCH SCHOOLS IN PERSIA French schools, along with their American, British, German, and Russian counterparts, were the main channels through which modern elementary and secondary education were brought to ethnic minorities and middle class Persians for almost a century extending from the 1830s to 1920s (Table 1). They…

FRANCE xvi. LOAN WORDS IN PERSIAN The gradual entry of a large number of loan words into Persian from European languages and most notably from French began in the 19th century and continued through the 20th century as part of the process of modernization of culture and society in Persia….

FRANCE xvii. Persian Community in France The emergence of a Persian community in France can perhaps be traced back to 1272/1855-6, when Farrok Khan Ḡaffārī, Amīn-al-Molk, later Amīn-al-Dawla (q.v.) was sent to Paris as the shah’s envoy (īlcī-e kabīr). During his embassy, a group of forty-two Persian students, who became…

FRANKLIN BOOK PROGRAM (Moʾassasa-ye entešārāt-e Ferānklīn), an American non-profit corporation seeking to aid development of indigenous book publishing in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The program in Persia (the first after Egypt) was the largest of the seventeen around the world and was the most varied…