Brian Spooner

Towards a Generative Model of Nomadism

The anthropological study of nomadism should be approached via cultural ecology and by the generative method. A preliminary generative model is presented, consisting of a series of seven rules. The first five are derived from the literature and are concerned with group formation. The last two are proposed by the writer with a view to making the articulation between group formation, social ecology and social organisation.

Politics, Kinship, and Ecology in Southeast Persia

The Iranian plateau is an ideal area for investigating the relationship be? tween ecological and sociological factors because of its stark aridity, on the one hand, and its historical role as a meeting place of ethnic and cultural movements on the other. The part of the plateau which forms the southeast corner of Persia is particularly interesting from this point of view. Over an area of some 200,000 square kilometers the great majority of the population, which numbers about half a million and includes both peasants and nomads, call themselves Baluch. Most, but not all of them, speak a dialect of Baluchi as their native tongue, and practically all adults speak it as a lingua franca. However, their political and social organization shows important variations, and there are striking geographical variations in the country they inhabit. It is unusual to find such wide variations among people who consider themselves one society. This paper shows how the variations in political and social organization in the area may be related to variations in human ecology. I wish to demonstrate that in this area of Persia, where political leadership relies on an income from settled agriculture, there is a definite social differentiation into classes and cognatic values are given to kin relationships, whereas leadership which relies primarily on nomadic pastoralism works through a structure of agnatic kin relationships without class differentiation.1

Iranian Kinship and Marriage

This paper is an attempt to distinguish and discuss the Iranian (as distinct from the Turkish, Arabic and Islamic) elements in the present pattern of kinship and marriage practice in Persia in their historical context. This will entail also a discussion of what can be known of the pre-Islamic Iranian system. Disciplines Anthropology | Social and Behavioral Sciences This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_papers/136

The Function of Religion in Persian Society

Observations on the religious aspect of rural life made during residence and travel in the north, east and south of Persia between 1959 and 1962. Disciplines Anthropology | Social and Behavioral Sciences This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_papers/139

City and river in Iran: urbanization and irrigation of the Iranian plateau

If viewed in full historical perspective, Isfahan may reasonably claim to have been the most important city on the Iranian plateau. It is also the most studied. However, although its unique historical monuments may possibly have (compared with the historiography of other great cities) received scholarly attention commensurate with the citys historical role, relatively little attention has been paid to its social and ecological history. Why did Shah cAbbAs choose Isfahan for his capital? What are the geographical factors that distinguish the city of Isfahan from the rest of the plateau? What were their implications for the social and political history of the city? More specifically, what was the role of the river, the Zayandah Rud, in the growth of the city? Is it profitable to seek a cause and effect relationship between the organization of irrigation for the agricultural base of the regions economy and the political and economic development of the city? More generally, are the discussions raised by these questions relevant to the investigation of the development of other cities of the Iranian plateau? That is, what can be learned, from studying these questions, about general processes of urbanization and the interrelation of technological and cultural change?l

Introduction. Persian as Koine: Written Persian in World-historical Perspective

Persian emerged as the common language of court life and administration in the Islamic world east of Baghdad in the 8th and 9th centuries (2nd and 3rd centuries into the Islamic era). The process began in Khurasan, the large historical region of southwest-central Asia, which besides the northeast quadrant of modern Iran included most of modern Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, and northern Afghanistan. Persian radiated out from the pre-Islamic cities that became new power centers, filling the vacuum left by the declining political (as distinct from symbolic) role of the Caliphate in Baghdad. Persian spread to its greatest extent five centuries later, under Mongol and Turkic administrations, when it stretched from the Balkans in the west to southern India in the south and along the trade routes into central China in the east. A century later, it began to give way to the rise of vernacular languages—first in the west, where the use of Ottoman Turkish increased in the 15th century. It finally declined significantly in the east in India in the 19th century, where the British replaced it formally with Urdu and English in 1835. Over the past century and a half Persian has undergone a process of functional transformation, passing into the status of a classical language, as locally people began to write in Pashto, Sindhi, Urdu, and other vernaculars in the peripheral territories of the Islamic world. In the 20th century, at the expense of losing its unitary identity and universally standard form, Persian achieved the modern status of national language in three countries—in Afghanistan, (where it was renamed dari), in Iran (as Fārsi), and in Tajikistan (where it was renamed tajiki, or tojiki when transliterated from Cyrillic). It is still spoken widely in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and the southern littoral of the Persian Gulf, and continues to flourish among post-revolutionary diaspora communities in America, Asia, and Europe. Disciplines Anthropology | Near Eastern Languages and Societies | Reading and Language | Social and Behavioral Sciences This book chapter is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_papers/86

Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order

Foreword Preface Contributors Note on Transliteration and Referencing Introduction: Persian as Koine: Written Persian in World-historical Perspective -Brian Spooner and William L. Hanaway PART I. FOUNDATIONS 1 New Persian: Expansion, Standardization, and Inclusivity -John R. Perry 2 Secretaries, Poets, and the Literary Language -William L. Hanaway 3 The Transmission of Persian Texts Compared to the Case of Classical Latin -A.H. Morton PART II. SPREAD 4 Persian as a Lingua Franca in the Mongol Empire -David Morgan 5 Ottoman Turkish: Written Language and Scribal Practice, 13th to 20th Centuries -Linda T. Darling 6 Persian Rhetoric in the Safavid Context: A 16th Century Nurbakhshiyya Treatise on Insha -Colin P. Mitchell PART III. VERNACULARIZATION AND NATIONALISM 7 Historiography in the Sadduzai Era: Language and Narration -Senzil Nawid 8 How Could Urdu Be the Envy of Persian (rashk-i-Farsi)! The Role of Persian in South Asian Culture and Literature -Muhammad Aslam Syed 9 Urdu Insha: The Hyderabad Experiment, 1860-1948 -Anwar Moazzam 10 Teaching Persian as an Imperial Language in India and in England during the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries -Michael H. Fisher PART FOUR. THE LARGER CONTEXT 11 The Latinate Tradition as a Point of Reference -Joseph Farrell 12 Persian Scribes (munshi) and Chinese Literati (ru). The Power and Prestige of Fine Writing (adab/wenzhang) -Victor H. Mair Afterword Glossary Index

Kūch u Balūch and Ichthyophagi

An enquiry into the present condition of the Persian province of Baluchistan, its antecedents and potentialities Disciplines Anthropology | Social and Behavioral Sciences This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_papers/138

Balochi: Towards a Biography of the Language

The Baloch, speaking a language classified by linguists as Northwest Iranian, are generally thought to have arrived from the northwest in what is now southeastern Iran and western Pakistan in waves between 1000 and 1500 AD. Balochi is known in the literature of area studies and linguistics as a series of dialects, for the most part mutually intelligible, differing mainly in vocabulary and the degree of influence from neighboring languages, mainly Persian. The history of the Baloch and their language over the past four centuries makes Balochi an interesting case for modern language policy studies. This chapter reviews the history of the Baloch: how they arrived in their current locations and the significance of the configuration of their modern communities. Along the way it points to consequences for the evolving status of Balochi. The chapter concludes with a summary of what can be said of current policy regarding Balochi. Keywords:Balochi; Iranian; Persian