About Barrasiha-ye Tarikhi

Barrasiha-ye Tarikhi

Overview

Barrasiha-ye Tarikhi (Persian: بررسی‌های تاریخی, "Historical Studies") was a Persian-language bimonthly magazine of history, Iranian military history and Iranian studies published in Tehran, Iran, from 1966 to 1978. It was affiliated with the Army of Iran and was published under the Supreme Commanders' Staff (Setad-e Bozorg-e Arteshtaran), the headquarters staff of the Iranian armed forces. Over thirteen years of publication it issued 79 numbers — 77 regular issues and two special issues — containing, in total, 803 articles and some 1,500 historical and political documents. Although it was an army publication, produced under military supervision and printed at the Army printing house, its pages were written largely by civilian scholars, and it drew contributions from some of the most prominent Iranian historians, philologists and archaeologists of the Pahlavi period. Its combination of military sponsorship and academic authorship made it a distinctive institution in the historical publishing of late Pahlavi Iran, and selections from it were translated into English and French and distributed to Iranologists and foreign universities.

Origins under the Supreme Commanders' Staff

Publication of Barrasiha-ye Tarikhi began in the Iranian year 1345, corresponding to 1966. Its first and second issues appeared together in a single volume in Shahrivar 1345 (August–September 1966). The magazine was an organ of the Supreme Commanders' Staff: the HathiTrust library catalogue records its publisher as the Sitad-i Buzurg-i Artishtaran (Supreme Commanders' Staff), through its Public Relations Department (Idarah-i Ravabit-i Umumi), in Tehran, and classifies it among periodicals on the history of Iran. The journal thus belonged to the official publishing apparatus of the Iranian armed forces rather than to a university or a private publisher, and its existence reflected the armed forces' institutional interest in the documented history of Iran and of its military. From the outset, however, the journal was designed as a scholarly review rather than a service magazine: its subject was research, and its characteristic contents were research articles and the publication of historical documents.

Governance and Editorial Board

The journal's governance joined senior military authority to academic review. An honorary presidium (hey'at-ra'ise-ye eftekhari) was formed with the membership of the Minister of War, the Chief of the Supreme Commanders' Staff and the President of the University of Tehran, and it met in annual sessions to determine the magazine's policy line. The members of the journal's board of directors were army generals (omara), and board meetings were held once every two months to supervise the printing of the articles. Day-to-day scholarly control rested with an editorial board. The responsible manager and editor-in-chief was chosen from among senior officers with higher education and with published works in the historical field. Under the magazine's statute, the head of the history department of the University of Tehran and two historians, together with a professor of archaeology, a professor of Persian language and literature and a professor of law, were invited to take part in the editorial board's sessions, which were held once a fortnight to examine the submitted articles. This structure — an honorary board of the state's most senior military and academic office-holders, a directing board of generals, and a working editorial board mixing officers with university professors — was the framework within which every issue was prepared.

The Editors

Three editors-in-chief succeeded one another over the journal's life, each of them an army colonel with scholarly credentials. The first was Colonel Dr Jahangir Qaemmaqami, who directed the magazine from its foundation until 1349 (1970). He was succeeded by Colonel Yahya Shahidi, who held the editorship until 1355 (1976). The third and last editor was Colonel Mohammad Kashmiri, who remained in charge until Bahman 1357 (February 1979), the month of the Iranian Revolution, when the journal's publication came to an end. Qaemmaqami also appeared in the journal as a contributing scholar in his own right. The succession of the three colonel-editors, spanning the whole run from 1966 to the eve of the revolution, gave the magazine an unusual continuity of military-scholarly direction, and the Ferdowsi School of Persian Literature's survey of Persian journals for Iranian studies lists all three names as the journal's editors-in-chief in its bibliographic record.

Contributors

During its thirteen years of publication, many of Iran's leading researchers, historians and men of letters cooperated with the journal. The Persian Wikipedia's account of the magazine, based on the Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam, names among its collaborators Ebrahim Pourdavoud, the pioneering scholar of ancient Iranian and Zoroastrian studies; Abbas Zaryab Khoyi; Mohammad-Taqi Mostafavi; Hossein Mahboubi Ardakani; Mohammad-Amin Riahi; Mohammad-Ebrahim Bastani Parizi, the prolific historian of Kerman and of Iranian social history; Iraj Afshar, the dean of Persian bibliography and manuscript studies; and Mohammad-Javad Mashkour. The Ferdowsi School's survey adds Bahram Farrevashi and Rashid Yasemi to the list of contributing scholars, and also records Jahangir Qaemmaqami among them. The presence of scholars of this standing — university figures rather than serving officers — explains the journal's academic reputation. In total, the contributions published across the run amounted to 803 articles together with 1,500 historical and political documents, a body of printed primary and secondary material that was large by the standards of Iranian scholarly periodicals of the period.

Scope and Contents

The journal's contents ranged far beyond military history narrowly understood. Its research articles covered history in general; military organisation and military bibliography; historical documents and firmans (royal decrees); historical and geographical monographs; the culture and civilisation of Iran before and after Islam; and, further, religion, literature, ethnology, archaeology, art, numismatics, insignia and court ceremonial; and, finally, Iran's political, military, cultural and commercial relations with other countries. Some of these articles, the Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam notes, possessed a special scholarly standing. The Ferdowsi School's survey summarises the scope more briefly as Iranian studies, the history of Iran and historical documents, and the HathiTrust catalogue likewise classifies the journal under the history of Iran. The publication of documents was a defining feature: decrees, firmans and historical-political papers printed in its pages made the journal a source collection as well as a review, and its monographic articles on places and institutions served geographical as well as historical scholarship. Its military character was expressed less in narrow service reporting than in this documentary and institutional approach to the Iranian past.

Format, Printing and Circulation

Barrasiha-ye Tarikhi appeared once every two months, six issues a year. Each issue was printed in a format of 24 by 17 centimetres and ran to between 200 and 300 pages, making each number a substantial volume rather than a slim review; the HathiTrust catalogue similarly describes the run as illustrated volumes of 24 centimetres. In all, 77 regular issues and two special issues were published, 79 numbers in total. The circulation in the journal's thirteenth year was 3,100 copies. The magazine was printed at the printing house of the Army, in keeping with its institutional home in the Supreme Commanders' Staff. Its physical scale — several hundred large pages per issue, six times a year, for thirteen years — represented a considerable and sustained investment by the armed forces in historical publishing, and it helps to explain the volume of material, more than 800 articles and 1,500 documents, that the run accumulated.

Translation and Distribution Abroad

The journal was also projected beyond Iran's borders. The Ministry of Information and Tourism had Barrasiha-ye Tarikhi, published under the supervision of the Supreme Commanders' Staff, translated into English and French, with the assistance of the Ministry of Culture and Art and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and distributed the translations among Iranologists and foreign universities. The first translated issue appeared in Shahrivar 1350 (September 1971), and by 1357 (1978) three translated issues had been printed and published. This translation programme placed the army's historical journal within the cultural diplomacy of the Pahlavi state: its Iranian scholarship, including its editions of historical documents, was deliberately made available to the international community of Iranian studies in the two principal Western languages of that scholarship. The foreign distribution also accounts for the journal's presence today in overseas library collections, where catalogues such as HathiTrust record the Tehran original.

Final Years and End of Publication

The journal continued on its bimonthly rhythm through the 1970s under Colonel Yahya Shahidi and then, from 1976, under Colonel Mohammad Kashmiri. Its thirteenth year of publication, with a circulation of 3,100 copies, fell in 1357 (1978–79), the final year of the Pahlavi monarchy. Kashmiri remained editor until Bahman 1357 (February 1979), and publication ended with the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the institutional order — the monarchy, the imperial armed forces and their Supreme Commanders' Staff — within which the journal had been created and sustained. The Ferdowsi School's survey dates the run 1966–1978, while the Persian reckoning of its last editorial period extends to February 1979; in either reckoning, the journal did not survive the revolution, and no further issues followed the 79 numbers of the original run. It is therefore treated throughout this profile in the past tense, as a closed publication of the pre-revolutionary period.

Archives and Legacy

The journal's afterlife has been archival. The Persian Wikipedia article on the magazine rests on the Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam (Daneshname-ye Jahan-e Eslam) and on the journal's archive formerly held by the Library of the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majlis Library) in Tehran, preserved through the Wayback Machine. The complete series of the magazine is also available in the digital collections of the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt at Halle-Wittenberg in Germany, through which the Halle digital library offers the run to researchers outside Iran. Within Iran's digital humanities infrastructure, the Ferdowsi School's survey records archives of the journal on both the Ensani portal of the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies and the Noormags magazine database. These holdings preserve the journal's particular legacy: a thirteen-year, army-published but scholar-written record of Iranian historical research, notable for the 1,500 documents it put into print and for the standing of the civilian academics who wrote alongside its officer-editors.

Publication Facts

Barrasiha-ye Tarikhi was published in Tehran, in the province of Tehran, Iran. Its language was Persian. It appeared bimonthly, six issues a year, from 1966 to 1978, with its final editor in post until February 1979. It published 79 issues in total, comprising 77 regular issues and two special issues, in a format of 24 by 17 centimetres with 200 to 300 pages per issue, printed at the Army printing house, and reaching a circulation of 3,100 copies in its thirteenth year. It was affiliated with the Army of Iran and published by the Supreme Commanders' Staff through its Public Relations Department. Its editors-in-chief were, in succession, Jahangir Qaemmaqami, Yahya Shahidi and Mohammad Kashmiri. Its scope covered Iranian studies, the history and military history of Iran and the publication of historical documents, and three translated issues in English and French were distributed abroad from 1971.