Malek National Library and Museum

by Gennady Kurin

Located on the grounds of the National Garden in the Topkhane district of Tehran, The Malek National Library and Museum (Ketābkhāna va mūza-ye melli-ye Malek) is a must-see not only for researchers but also anybody visiting Iran’s capital. While the museum holds an extensive collection of various artifacts, coins, artworks and carpets, the tens of thousands of Islamic manuscripts, many of which are rare and some unique, make the library one of the largest depositories of its kind in Iran.

Malek 1
The entrance to the Malek Library

History

The institution was established over seventy years ago on the initiative of Hosayn Malek, who died in 1972 at the age of 101. The center was initially located in his father’s house in Tehran, until 1966 when it was moved to a new building in what was then the central part of the city. In his twenties, Hosayn Malek, the grandson of a high ranking Qajar officer, traveled to Khorasan with his father, where he had a chance to get acquainted with some of the most beautiful art works of Islamic world. It was during this trip that he made a decision to acquire his own collection of manuscripts and establish a library. Hosayn Malek’s passion for other kinds of artifacts and artworks came in later years. In 1937 he decided to donate and endow his collection of precious objects and manuscripts to Astan-e Qods-e Razavi (a charitable foundation managing the shrine of Imam Ali Reza) for public use. It is a little difficult to determine when or how the different pieces from this extensive collection were acquired. What we do know is that at the time of Hosayn Malek’s death the value of his endowments was estimated to be over several million dollars. In recent years Hosayn Malek’s daughter, Ezzat Malek Soudavar, has made another significant donation to the center of arts works and Quranic manuscripts that further enriched the already extensive collection.

Collections

The center is divided into two sections: On the ground floor there is a museum and on the first floor there is a reference library and computer room.

The museum has well-presented collections of visual arts, paintings (European and Iranian), lacquered pen cases from the Qajar era, coins, an impressive collection of Qurans (including a part of Quran in Kufic script on a parchment leaf, ascribed to Imam Hassan Mojtaba), and other calligraphic masterpieces. The library has two reading rooms. One room has a number of volumes on subjects ranging from medicine and biology to geography, politics, history, and religious sciences. As of 2007, the library had approximately 70,000 printed books but this figure maybe slightly outdated. The library has been rapidly expanding and new books are constantly being added to the collections. At the time of visit stuff members regularly came in with trolleys stuffed with books. It is worth browsing through the shelves. The second reading room, also a computer room, holds all of the catalogs, periodicals, magazines, and a few shelves at the very back on subjects like mathematics, computer science, accounting or general English.

The center holds over 19,000 manuscripts dating from the tenth to the twentieth century. The manuscript collection is divided in two groups. The first includes philosophical, literary, historical and scientific works, most of which are either rare or unique. In particular, the staff members take great pride in the extensive collection of scientific works of Avicenna (Ibn Sina). The second group of manuscripts includes books from all over the Islamic world, many fine examples of Persian calligraphy and miniature (e.g. Shahnamas produced for the Safavid or Timurid kings) are kept here. The majority of works is in Persian, but one can also find works in Arabic and some in Ottoman Turkish.

The manuscripts in the collection are of great variety, but the overwhelming majority originate from Iran and its neighbors (i.e. do not expect to find many works related to North Africa, whereas there is quite a lot on Central Asia and India). At the same time one can easily find works by late Qajar intellectuals, medieval Islamic histories, as well as dynastic chronicles from the Ilkhanids to the Qajars, hermeneutics and other religious subjects as well as a lot of poetry. The oldest manuscript in the collection dates back to the fourth century of the Islamic era. Of particular interest are local histories of different provinces or cities of Iran (e.g. Kerman, Lorestan, Kordestan, Tabriz, Orumie…) and the travelogues (safarnama) of Hajj pilgrims and Persian and European travelers (inside and outside of Iran).

A coin from the Malek museum's collections
A coin from the Malek museum’s collections

Research Experience

The Malek Library is one of the easiest institutions to access and use in Iran. The library’s convenient and easy-to-reach location, friendly and helpful staff (some of who speak English), well-functioning software (albeit only in Persian), free WiFi, and very comfortable reading rooms make the Malek Library one of the best research institutions in Iran. The building has elevators and is relatively maneuverable in a wheelchair. The reading rooms are very spacious and never seem to be too crowded. The rooms, however, can get quite chilly as a consequence of the powerful air conditioning systems.

There is a fourteen-volume catalog of the library’s manuscript collection–thirteen volumes of which have been prepared by Iraj Afshar and Muhmmad Daneshpazhuh while the most recent volume is a work of Seyyid Muhammad Hussein Hakim–available for reference in the main reading room. Catalogs for other Iranian libraries and archives, as well as for research institutions in Turkey and Europe are also available. The catalog provides some details on the manuscripts in the collection, including the date of acquisition and place and date of copy. The catalog is well organized and easy to use. The entries appear accurate, but the librarian has informed me that there are occasional mistakes, which will be corrected in an updated version of the catalog to be at the end of this year (Since my visit to the library a new edition, plus a new volume (14th) have been published). There is no electronic catalog available on the library’s computer workstations yet. Ottoman and Arabic manuscripts are covered in the first volume of the catalog and are organized alphabetically, for the small number of works in these two languages. Volumes two to four contain descriptions of Persian manuscripts which are grouped according to subject, e.g. history, literature, science and medicine as well as law and fiqh, and within those groups are also arranged alphabetically. Volumes five to nine contain anthologies and collections while the rest, ten to fourteen are volumes of indices organized by authors, copyists, dates, manuscript names, etc.

Generally speaking, the whole collection has been cataloged and digitized. Researchers request to view manuscripts by submitting the appropriate catalog numbers to the librarian, who then uploads the manuscript to one of the library’s workstation computers. The whole process takes no more than an hour. The quality of the digitized documents varies, but is generally quite decent and the computer interface is user-friendly. Although the quality of the digitized documents is fair (with some variations), all of the manuscript images are slightly obscured in the lower-right (or lower-left) corner, where the library has placed a digital watermark. Viewing original documents is more complicated and one needs to negotiate with the different members of staff and make good use of personal charisma.

Depending on the number of manuscripts that a researcher requests, the process of obtaining a CD with the reproductions usually takes between two to five working days (the center is open 6 days a weeks). Personally, I’ve not experienced any inconvenience while working at this library except perhaps for the rather arbitrary opening-closing hours (it is better to call the library before leaving home).  Generally speaking the best tip is to wake up early, go to the library and stay there until it closes as opposed to trying to combine a visit to the library with something else. Tehran simply is the city where it is often difficult to plan things.

Malek Library Museum-001
The interior of the Malek museum

Access and Reproductions

The center is officially open Saturday to Thursday from 8.30 to 16.30 during summer, and 9.00 to 17.00 during winter. We recommend calling before every visit to confirm that it is open. The museum and library (including computer room and reading rooms) are open to the public and registration is required. However, those who plan to request reproductions on CD or a viewing of the manuscripts need to bring a passport and an introduction letter (ma‘rifatnama). Letters of introduction may be written by academic supervisors or departmental chairpersons (no specific format). They may also be obtained from the International Center for Persian Studies (ICPS), known as the Dehkhoda Institute. The Dekhoda letter of introduction is also accepted by all other major libraries, archives and research centers in Iran. As for the difficulty of the process, other than having to run around the premises getting signatures of different members of staff (takes no more than an hour) everything is pretty smooth and easily accessible. I have been told by a member of staff that taking pictures of manuscripts is not allowed. Reproductions of manuscripts cost 2,000 Rials per pdf page (approximately 7 U.S. cents) and generally take up to five days to be prepared.

Transportation and Food

The Malek Library and Museum is located in downtown Tehran, only five minutes away from Imam Khomeini metro station (Red metro line). Metro is by far the most convenient transportation option in Tehran (the traffic is pretty congested during most hours) and the center is best reached by metro. Tehran is certainly not known for its delicious street food but there a few places to have lunch or dinner around the center, including a couple of fast food places on Ferdowsi avenue and some decent cafes and lokma kebab on Mirza Kuchek Khan street, both are relatively cheap and within walking distance. Packing your own lunch might also be an option, as there are some really nice gardens and parks in the area. The archive itself is located inside a massive garden complex although there doesn’t seem to be too many places to sit in the garden.

Malek Sign-001

Contact information

Managing Director:

Seyed Mohammad Mojtaba Hosseini 

Mailing address:

Melal-e Mottahad Street, Bagh-e Melli, Imam Khomeini Avenue, Tehran, P.O. Box: 111555/547

Internet site and email:

www.malekmuseum.org (The Persian site has more options and information than the English version)

info@malekmuseum.org

Phone:

0098 21 66726613, 53 (operator)

0098 21 66751291 (Public relations)

Fax:

0098 21 66705974

Resources and Links

Online catalog

An article about the library’s collections and history, a little outdated but still useful

Some information on the compilation of catalogs

Catalogs:

فهرست نسخه‌های خطی كتابخانه و موزه ملی ملك (14 ج)، نگارش سیدمحمّدحسین حكیم، قم، كتابخانه تخصّصی تاریخ اسلام و ایران، 1393 خ

 فهرست کتابهای خطی کتابخانه ملی ملک وابسته به آستان قدس رضوی (1-13 ج)، زیر نظر ایرج افشار، محمد تقی دانش پژوه؛ با همکاری محمد باقر حجتی و احمد منزوی، تهران:کتابخانه ملی ملک، 1380 – 1352 خ  

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Gennady Kurin is currently a doctoral student at Cambridge University researching Ottoman-Safavid relations and borderlands

Citation: Gennady Kurin, “Malek National Library and Museum”, HAZINE, 3 Nov 2014, https://hazine.info/maleklibrary/

The Museum of Textbooks (Jordan)

By Hilary Falb Kalisman

The Museum of Textbooks or “Matḥaf al-Kitāb al-Madrasī” is a unique resource for historians interested in education, not only in Jordan, but also in Palestine, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The museum is located on the grounds of the secondary school for boys in Salt, approximately twenty miles from Amman and houses textbooks used in Jordan, but written and published throughout the region.  These textbooks mainly date from the 1920s through the present but also include a few Ottoman-era works, as well as documents relating to Jordanian education, particularly at the Secondary School for Boys.

 

One of the graduating classes of the boys secondary school in Salt
One of the graduating classes of the boys secondary school in Salt from 1941

History

The Textbook Museum originated in 1982, when its purpose and plans for establishment were outlined in the Government Gazette. It falls under the authority of the Ministry of Education. The Jordanian Ministry of Culture attributes the concept to Dr. Sa‘id al-Tel, Minister of Education in 1982. As the museum fell under the authority of the Ministry of Education, its original purpose was to collect textbooks used in the schools of Jordan and Palestine since 1921, as well as ministerial documents relating to the history of education in Jordan. These regulations were amended in 2006 and stipulated a number of significant changes to the museum’s central mission. Specifically, the museum planned to archive all educational material issued by the Ministry of Education and contribute to research on educational affairs by collecting and preserving educational documents regardless of their source, as long as they had been used in Jordan. Moreover, the museum planned to augment its public outreach through permanent exhibits on educational affairs, curriculum, and textbooks from Jordan and abroad, The museum opened in its current building in 2008.

Textbook Museum Facade 1
The museum from a distance…

 

Collection

The Museum contains a wealth of material relating to government-sponsored education in Jordan, as well as Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Iraq, particularly during the Mandate era.  Its main interest, as is clear from its title, is in collecting schoolbooks used in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan from the early 1920s through the present day. Collectively, the museum and the school’s archive contain a variety of documents relating to education in Jordan. The documents pertaining to Boys’ School in Salt are also notable due to the school’s significance, as it was the only full high school in Jordan during the Mandate period.

As of 2012, there was no catalog. Textbooks are displayed on glass shelves, and arranged in cabinets organized by the decade they were published, although sometimes this can lead to confusion, as a later edition of a textbook may be located in the decade of its original publication. As Jordan did not produce its own textbooks for much of the Mandate period, its government relied on works from the rest of the Middle East, particularly Egypt and Syria, even for subjects such as civics. This means that researchers interested in education throughout the Arab world can find textbooks and pamphlets at the museum, particularly those dating from before the 1950s. After this period, most works were published in Jordan. The textbooks include all subjects taught in Jordan’s curriculum: history, Arabic language and grammar, English, religion, geography, elementary science, ethics, civics, and mathematics. The majority of the textbooks are written in Arabic, but there are many works in English that were used to teach the English language such as elementary readers and introductory histories.

The interior of the one-room museum is surrounded by framed documents in display cases. Researchers interested in education, and governance, in Jordan and Palestine should take care to look at these documents, which include diplomas from the Arab College of Jerusalem, exam certificates and results from Palestine and Jordan, and letters from the Department or Ministry of Education in Jordan to employees of the secondary school, generally focusing on nationalism and exhibitions of Arab unity. For example a 1923 letter written by the director of education describes the nationalist activities of teachers in the district of Ajlun.

The school possesses an archive documenting its own materials, although the classification status of these materials fluctuates depending on the date of the documents, as well as the schedule (and disposition) of the principal. These materials are housed in the school’s main building, and one should take care to meet with the principal first if one is interested in these materials. Documents on school attendance, teachers’ salaries, and student grades are contained in binders and on CDs, although I was not given access to the electronic materials. Recent documents are more difficult to access than those from the Mandate-era. Inside the school are photographs depicting its teachers and students from the beginning of the school through the present.

Since my visit, the Museum has created a Facebook page, and there is an informational video on YouTube (in Arabic).

 

The Research Experience

Few researchers, particularly foreign researchers, make use of this archive although that appears to be changing. This means that researchers may often find themselves alone with the employees of the museum. They speak little English, but are kind, friendly and very willing to help to the best of their ability. They are also quite interested in the research and life of researchers; be prepared to chat, eat, and drink while you work. There are tables and folding chairs set up, giving the researcher a surface on which to place the books, and to photograph them. The museum has no central heating, but is comfortably cool in the summer. There are restrooms, which generally work, including a western style toilet (at least in the ladies’ room), but bring your own toilet paper.

The school is very much a working school. This means that if you venture to seek documents from the school’s archive, you will be subject to the rhythms and interests of school life at a boys’ high school. When I was there, students were protesting the lack of central heating, which meant that every few minutes the principal and various teachers were dealing with the head of the student council throughout the morning while I was photographing documents.

Schoolchildren on a tour of the museum
Schoolchildren on a tour of the museum

Access

The Museum is open from approximately 8:00 until 14:00 or 15:00, depending on the availability of the museum’s employees. It is not open on Friday or Saturday.

It is useful to bring a letter of introduction from your university, and your passport, although these things are not necessary to use the Textbook Museum. I also found it useful to mention that I had heard of the Museum from a previous researcher. Feel free to mention my name as well.

It is more difficult to use documents from the school archive. I was initially allowed to photograph these documents, but a few days later I was refused. I was lucky in that the Minister of Education visited the school and Museum while I was there, and took the PR opportunity to give me permission to view the documents. My advice is to be polite, and persistent. However, most researchers will probably be more interested in the textbooks that are explicitly accessible to all.

 

Reproductions

The museum allows researchers to photograph all the materials within the museum without charge. In 2012, there were no facilities for photocopies, although the principal does have a photocopier that can be used for certain school documents.

Textbook 1
One of the museum’s textbooks, this a basic reading trainer from the 1980s

Transportation and Food

The museum is approximately a twenty-minute drive and thirty to forty-five minute bus ride by bus from Amman.

The best way to get to the museum by public transport from Amman is to take a minibus in front of the University of Jordan. These small buses will have “al-Salt” written in Arabic on the side. There will also be a man yelling “al-Salt, al-Salt” from the door of the bus. It costs .5 JD, passed up to either the shouter or the driver during the ride. The ride takes approximately thirty minutes, depending on traffic and the number of stops to pick up passengers. The bus makes several stops along the way, but the al-Salt bus station is the final stop. The bus actually stops just above the station, coming from Amman.

To get to the museum, which can be seen up the hill, go towards the town but take a left, and continue winding up the hill. There are now signs pointing to the museum. If confused, ask for directions to the “al-madrasa al-thanawiya lil-banin.” Enter the main gate of the school and continue straight. The museum is on the right, down the hill. The boys and staff members are generally happy to give directions as well. To get back to Amman, retrace your steps but this time enter the bus station (a large parking lot of buses at the bottom of the hill) and take either one of the larger or smaller shared buses towards “al-Jami‘a” (the University of Jordan). As in Amman, there will be men shouting where each bus is traveling. Smaller buses often leave more quickly, and both are the same price. The bus towards “al-Jami‘a” stops in front of the university, by the Burger King.

There are grocery stores, and several restaurants in al-Salt, but little within a five minute walk of the school. As the museum’s hours are limited, it is best to pick up a snack on your way, which you are allowed (encouraged) to eat as you research. There is an open-air produce market in the main street of the town, which generally has fresher and cheaper produce than in Amman.

Miscellaneous

Salt also boasts a museum, in the Abu Jaber House, on the history of Salt that is well worth visiting. Its informational displays are well-researched, clear and new. This museum includes a prominent section on education, and has maps of Salt’s historic trail that includes directions to various architectural and cultural sites.

 

Header

Contact information

Director: الأستاذ عمر العمايرة

Phone number: 0096253552118 (taken from here)

Facebook page

Resources and Links

-There is no catalogue available. Books are arranged in cabinets by decade.

For further information on the museum in English, see Professor Laurie Brand’s account of her research:

There is an informational video on the museum on youtube

The ministry of culture also has two segments of its website on the mission and regulations of the museum here and here 

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 Hilary Falb Kalisman is a doctoral candidate in the History Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the relationships between government-sponsored education and political culture in the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth century Middle East. 

Citation information: Hilary Falb Kalisman, “The Museum of Textbooks (Jordan)”, HAZINE, 9 Oct 2014, https://hazine.info/museumoftextbooks/

Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran

Written by Christopher Markiewicz

Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran (WWQI) is a digital archive of materials related to the social and cultural history of Iran during the Qajar period. The archive seeks to aid scholarship on women’s history and gender history by making freely available online a vast array of writings, photographs, financial and legal documents, artwork, and everyday objects contained in private and public collections around the world. In this way, the project seeks to assemble a digital archive of Iranian culture during the long nineteenth century (1796-1925) with a focus on women and issues of gender.

Two women in European dress from the Olga Davidson Collection - feature image
Two women in European dress from the Olga Davidson Collection.

Background and History

The idea for a digital archive of Iranian material on women’s history originated in the early 2000s. In 2009, Afsaneh Najmabadi, along with four scholars of Iranian history (Nahid Mozaffari, Dominic Brookshaw, Naghmeh Sohrabi, and Manoutchehr Eskandari-Qajar) were awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to assemble a digital archive of documents from a number of private collections and public institutions. The original idea for the project arose from an awareness of the state of Iranian archival resources and of the possibilities afforded by emerging digital technologies. Firstly, the project members recognized the need for assembling an archive for Iranian history in the absence of extensive institutional archival collections. In contrast to the large state archives for the Ottoman Empire, which are preserved by various state institutions in Turkey and the Middle East, no analogous institutional archives exist for Iranian history prior to the twentieth century. Despite this lack of formal institutional archiving, the project members knew of the existence of significant numbers of documents from the nineteenth century that have been preserved in the private collections of families throughout Iran. Secondly, the development of high quality digital technologies made possible the establishment of a virtual archive composed of disparate collections held in various locations. Rather than construct a physical archive on the basis of a state’s backing, the project has endeavored to collect (or “fabricate” in the words of Najmabadi) within a single website a digital archive of material from around the world.

The project has focused on women in nineteenth-century Iran for several reasons. First of all, the archive seeks to address a lacuna in Iranian social history with regard to women and gender issues. The absence of more scholarly work on women’s history for Iran is surprising considering the relatively rich material produced by women or related to women from the period which sheds light on the daily lives, social relationships, and cultural activities of Iranians during the Qajar era. Moreover, much of the material preserved in private family collections—including marriage contracts, diaries, and photographs—provides a detailed and unique view of women’s worlds. In this way, the nature of the archival material preserved in disparate private collections demands scholarly attention to aspects of women’s history.

WWQI website homepage.
WWQI website homepage.

Collection

Initially the project envisioned an archive of 3,000 images. By April 2013, the collection had grown to more than 33,000 images. The majority of the archive’s images are owned and held by forty-three private collections. In addition to these collections, WWQI has partnered with ten public institutions to make available a number of other documents and objects on the project’s website.

In general, the private collections consist of individual families’ records and therefore reflect the eclectic documents and material objects preserved by a single family over the course of several generations. In some instances, the private collections consist of the personal archives of a local notable, such as a mujtahid or kadkhuda, and consequently contain an array of financial and legal material that had been entrusted by a number of families to the local leader for safekeeping. The images found within the private collections usually range from documents of legal significance, such as marriage contracts and sales of property to documents of a more intimate world, such as photographs, diaries and letters, as well as antiquated objects of daily use. Assembling this digital collection from a disparate array of smaller collections enables scholars to develop a more thorough understanding of various social phenomena. For instance, WWQI has managed to gather and make available more than 300 marriage contracts from Muslim, Jewish, Armenian, and Zoroastrian communities. This sort of collecting allows for more systematic approaches to issues such as kinship and family. Similarly, the inclusion of large numbers of photographs invites researchers to examine relatively underused historical sources. Unfortunately, given the nature of these private collections, which are largely the holdings of relatively prominent families, the archive mostly reflects the interests and priorities of the urban upper class. WWQI is aware of this shortcoming and is working to alleviate the imbalance by actively soliciting archival contributions from families with significant rural ties.

The other major source for WWQI’s image archive is provided by a number of public institutions in Iran and abroad. These institutions range from important libraries, such as the Majlis Library in Tehran and Tehran University Library, to academic institutions, such as the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History and the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies. The documents provided by these institutions tend to include state-produced material, published documents, and art objects. In this respect, the collection contains a number of journals and educational pamphlets, as well as legal documents.

The project has at least two great virtues. Firstly, by including objects of material culture (photographs, art, and instruments), the archive invites historians to practice their craft in new ways. For instance, the inclusion of large numbers of photographs from different families living in the same period enables researchers to read images not only as solitary documents from which evidence is extracted but as a comprehensive storehouse of social information which evoke an image of the age. Similarly, objects may yield equally surprising insights. Professor Najmabadi recounted one such experience while interviewing a family in Yazd. Despite initially doubting the usefulness of the family’s possessions, one family member returned to the conversation with kitchen ladles in hand, upon which had been engraved generations of family birthdays.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the archive’s digital nature allows for the relative ease of its expansion. As contributors to the collection maintain all of their rights of ownership, the archive need not engage in complicated arrangements to transfer and preserve material. In this way, the growth of the archive is only limited by individuals and institutions’ willingness to share images of their collection for scholarly use.

Curtain tassel from the Bahman-Bayani collection.
Curtain tassel from the Bahman-Bayani collection.

Research Experience

Researchers may search and access the archive’s collections through its website. The website is nicely designed with an easy to navigate interface and is fully functional in both English and Persian. Moreover, all of the documents within the collection are clearly and effectively labeled. While the site provides a platform to search and browse the archive’s collection, all of the images are digitized and hosted by Harvard University Libraries, so users are linked to Harvard’s library page once they have located a particular document that they would like to view.

There are three ways to locate material using WWQI’s site. The site has a simple search function located on the homepage which allows researchers to identify material according to names of people or places, the type of document (e.g. letter, marriage contract), or subject (e.g. politics and government, clothing and dress, kitchen ware). As it is hard to know how subjects are defined within the collection, it is probably best to browse the list of subjects provided from a link on the homepage.

Users may also locate material by browsing within particular collections. Here users will get a good idea of wide variety of disparate holdings that collectively constitute the project’s archive. This function will be of particular use to those interested in surveying the range of material preserved and donated by a single family.

Lastly, users may browse the archive’s holdings. This method is probably the most effective way to become familiar with the wide range of material available on the site. Users may narrow their browsing to a reign within the Qajar period or browse within a particular document genre (audio files, manuscripts, letters, etc.). In addition to these two subfields, users may also browse according to person, place, or subject, as well as view all of the archives materials which have been either translated or transliterated into Latin letters.

Acknowledgement:

I would like to thank Professor Najmabadi who provided me with a copy of a paper she presented on the project at Brown University in October 2013. Most of the details in this article originate from this paper.

20 January 2014

Christopher Markiewicz is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago where he studies fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Islamic history.

Cite this: Christopher Markiewicz, “Women’s Worlds of Qajar Iran,” HAZINE, 20 January 2014, https://hazine.info/2014/01/20/qajar-women-archive/