About La Revue de Téhéran

La Revue de Téhéran

Overview

La Revue de Téhéran was an Iranian monthly magazine published in French in Tehran, Iran. Founded in October 2005, it was devoted mainly to Iranian culture and traditions, and it was the only Iranian magazine written in French. It was published by the Ettela'at foundation, the publisher of the Persian-language daily newspaper Ettela'at and of other scientific and cultural publications, and it appeared under the foundation's Presses Ettelaat imprint. Beyond its distribution in Iran, the magazine was distributed by subscription in France and in several other francophone countries. It published its last issue, number 178, in winter 2022, closing a run of more than sixteen years during which it served as a French-language window on Iranian history, art, literature and daily life, addressed both to francophone readers abroad and to the promotion of the French language within Iran. Its editor-in-chief was Amélie Neuve-Eglise, its format was 21 by 27 centimetres, and its ISSN was 2008-1936. Its website, teheran.ir, preserved its contents online.

Foundation by the Ettela'at Foundation

The magazine was created in October 2005. It depended on the Ettela'at foundation, which published, in addition to its daily newspaper of the same name, scientific and cultural publications. The daily Ettela'at, founded in 1926, is among the oldest newspapers of Iran and the oldest running Persian-language daily; the foundation built around it had a long tradition of publishing in more than one language, and the Revue was its French-language cultural title of the twenty-first century. The magazine was based in Tehran, where its headquarters were located, and it was published by Presses Ettelaat on a monthly basis. Its first issue appeared in October 2005, and the monthly rhythm was maintained across the whole of its life: the numbering of its final issues — number 175 in spring 2021, number 176 in summer 2021, number 177 in autumn 2021 and number 178 in winter 2022 — shows the review still appearing regularly, latterly on a seasonal pattern of numbered issues, at the end of its run.

Language and Distribution

The defining fact of La Revue de Téhéran was its language. It was the only Iranian magazine written in French, a distinction recorded by every reference source on the title, in English, French and German alike. That singularity shaped its circulation: based in Tehran, it was distributed in Iran itself, and beyond its national frontiers it was equally distributed in France and in other francophone countries worldwide, where it reached its readers by subscription. The magazine thus had a double audience. In Iran, it addressed French speakers and learners of French; abroad, it addressed the francophone public interested in Iran. Its print format was a compact 21 by 27 centimetres, and it carried the ISSN 2008-1936. Its online presence at teheran.ir, which organised its articles by issue and by author, extended that distribution to the web and remains the principal public archive of the magazine's contents.

Editorial Mission

The magazine's editorial line was explicitly one of cultural mediation. It tended to promote knowledge of Iran and of Iranian culture among a francophone public, but also to promote the French language in Iran, in a stated willingness to participate, even modestly, in the "dialogue of civilisations". Its subject, accordingly, was not current politics but Iranian culture and traditions: history, archaeology, architecture, art, literature, religion, geography and the life of Iranian society. The contents of its late issues, preserved on its website, illustrate this programme concretely — long illustrated articles on Seljuk monuments, on Persian poetry, on regional history and on minority populations, written in an accessible scholarly French. The review presented itself, and was catalogued in reference works, as a cultural magazine (genre: culturel), and its articles on the culture and traditions of Iran were its stated staple from its foundation in 2005 to its final issue in 2022.

Editors and Contributors

The editor-in-chief (rédacteur en chef) of La Revue de Téhéran was Amélie Neuve-Eglise, whose name is attached to the title in its reference records. In 2006, a year after the foundation, Élodie Bernard became a journalist with the Revue and then its correspondent in Paris, a posting recorded in the presentation of her later book Le vol du paon mène à Lhassa, published by Gallimard in 2010. The Paris correspondence embodied the magazine's two-way orientation between Tehran and the francophone world. The contributors visible in the magazine's final issues, as its website lists them by author, included Babak Ershadi, who wrote on the Seljuk heritage of Golpayegan and on the Great Mosque of Isfahan; Arash Khalili, who wrote on the Roma populations of Iran, on the Hermitage Museum's Panorama of Persia and on the Sassanid defensive wall of Gawri; Saeid Khanabadi, who wrote on Persian manuscripts in Indian libraries; and Jean-Pierre Brigaudiot, who contributed art criticism from Paris, on the Baselitz retrospective at the Centre Pompidou and on the painter Eugène Leroy. The geographer Bernard Hourcade, former director of the French Institute of Research in Iran, also appeared in its pages, with an article on the new identities of the suburbs of Tehran.

Contents: Iranian Culture in French

The magazine's website preserves the shape of its coverage in detail. Its articles were organised in rubrics, among them a monthly dossier, the "Cahier du mois", and a Culture section. The final issue, number 178 of winter 2022, carried as its dossier the province of Isfahan, described as a home of the culture and history of Iran. Its articles included a study of the Great Mosque of Isfahan, the most important Seljuk monument of the city; Babak Ershadi on Golpayegan and its Seljuk architectural heritage; Samira Fazel on Abyaneh, the red village in the foothills of the Karkas mountains; Myriam Goetz-Rahgoshay on the ecomuseum of Dr Rahgoshay at Badroud and its role in safeguarding heritage; Arash Khalili on the Roma populations of Iran; Jean-Pierre Brigaudiot on the Baselitz retrospective in Paris; and Jafar Aghayani-Chavoshi on the aesthetics of the lyric poetry of Saadi. The preceding issue, number 177 of autumn 2021, ranged from the history of Isfahan from the Sassanid period to modern times and Isfahan as a capital of Iranian craftsmanship to Farideh Firoozbakht and the House of Mathematics of Isfahan, alongside Arash Khalili's articles on the Panorama of Persia at the Hermitage and on the Gawri wall, a Sassanid defensive work in the western Zagros identified by archaeologists in 2019. Number 176, of summer 2021, carried Saeid Khanabadi on Persian manuscripts in the libraries of India and on the geography of the rivers of the Shahnameh, while number 175, of spring 2021, included a study of the film Les Hirondelles de Kaboul as a plea for the rights of Afghan women. History, heritage, literature, cinema and contemporary French exhibitions thus stood side by side in the review's French-language portrait of Iran.

Place in Ettela'at's French-Language Publishing

La Revue de Téhéran was not Ettela'at's first French-language publication. The foundation's predecessor institution had published the Journal de Téhéran, a French-language daily newspaper that appeared in Tehran from 15 March 1935 until 27 March 1979 and was the first non-Persian-language newspaper published in Iran. The Journal de Téhéran was directed in 1937 by M. Massoudi, the director of Ettela'at, its literary editor was Said Naficy, and it twice received the Cup Émile de Girardin for the best foreign newspaper published in French, in 1963 and in 1970. It ceased publication in March 1979, in the Iranian Revolution. A quarter of a century later, the Revue de Téhéran renewed, in monthly magazine form, the francophone publishing tradition that the Journal had embodied as a daily. Reference works on Ettela'at note the pairing directly: the group that published Ettela'at International, the only international daily in Persian, also published the Revue de Téhéran, the only Iranian monthly in French, as it had formerly published the Journal de Téhéran. The Revue therefore stood at the end of a long Ettela'at engagement with French-language print that stretched back to 1935.

End of Publication and Archive

La Revue de Téhéran published its last issue in winter 2022, number 178. The French reference record of the magazine is accordingly written in the past tense: it was a French-language Iranian monthly devoted to Iranian culture and traditions. No successor title replaced it, and it remains, to date, the only Iranian magazine to have been published in French — a distinction it held throughout its life and that no Iranian periodical has since taken up. Its website, teheran.ir, continued to present its articles, organised by issue from its later years and searchable by author, preserving in digital form the record of its final period, including the complete contents of its last issue. The bibliography of French-language writing on Persian literature compiled by Mohammad Javad Kamali and published by Sokhangostar in autumn 2014, cited in the magazine's French reference entry, belongs to the scholarly apparatus that documented the francophone literary culture in which the Revue worked.

Significance

The significance of La Revue de Téhéran lay in the niche it occupied alone. For more than sixteen years it was the single channel through which Iranian cultural publishing spoke directly, in French, to readers in France and the wider francophone world, and the single Iranian periodical through which the French language was itself promoted inside Iran. Its declared participation in the "dialogue of civilisations" was practised in a concrete editorial form: dossiers on Iranian provinces, studies of monuments and manuscripts, translations of attention to Persian poets such as Saadi and Sohrab Sepehri, and reports on French exhibitions for Iranian readers, all written in French from Tehran. Backed by one of Iran's oldest press foundations, edited by Amélie Neuve-Eglise, and corresponding from Paris as well as publishing from Tehran, it carried the Ettela'at group's French-language tradition — begun with a daily newspaper in 1935 — into the twenty-first century, and its closure in 2022 ended that tradition once more.

Publication Facts

La Revue de Téhéran was published in Tehran, in the province of Tehran, Iran. Its language was French, and it was the only Iranian magazine in that language. It appeared monthly, was founded in October 2005, and published its last issue, number 178, in winter 2022. It was published by the Ettela'at foundation through Presses Ettelaat, in a format of 21 by 27 centimetres, under editor-in-chief Amélie Neuve-Eglise, with the ISSN 2008-1936. It was distributed in Iran and, by subscription, in France and other francophone countries, was devoted to Iranian culture and traditions, and maintained its website at teheran.ir.