Across the most popular Hollywood productions on Iran, Iranians have appeared as threats, mobs, fanatics, and monsters. However, the new wave of Israeli-made, US-distributed shows are turning Iran its...

During the past two World Cup tournaments, the Iranian national team has faced a sustained campaign of delegitimization. This article traces how this campaign against Team Melli came to be, from its f...

Over three billion people inhabit the Indian Ocean rim and yet the decisive power in its waters lay with an external, unaccountable hegemon in Washington. How did the Indian Ocean become a geography o...

Los Angeles is the capital of the Iranian diaspora, home to at least 700,000 Iranian-Americans and an Iranian culture industry that makes its presence known worldwide. Here's your guide to visiting Te...

Chesalles harbors an improbable link to the Persianate world: in 1927 the commune adopted a new blazon, the lion and sun, to honor an eighteenth-century native whose journey carried him from these ver...

“There is no Hungarian food more Hungarian than tarhonya,” is how one lifestyle magazine describes the dish. This was exactly the type of authentic cultural experience I had set out to have as I learn...

The Assyrian flag is an embodiment of community resilience in the face of oppression, a beacon of unity for Assyrians across their indigenous lands and in the diaspora. From Nuhadra in Iraq and Urmia ...

Her voice was marked by shock and disbelief: Rafi-Nia Synagogue had been destroyed by an Israeli missile strike. I was stunned. How could a small, modest, almost invisible building tucked away in a de...

Nostalgia is easier to mobilize than to govern. But when political hopes are divorced from organized movements and instead pinned on fragile fantasies, they risk collapsing at their first encounter wi...

Over three billion people inhabit the Indian Ocean rim and yet the decisive power in its waters lay with an external, unaccountable hegemon in Washington. How did the Indian Ocean become a geography o...

“Our neighborhood was hit. But we are alive.” I woke up to this message from my friend in Iran. A message like that rearranges the meaning of language. Alive becomes a threshold, a daily confirmation,...

“Our neighborhood was hit. But we are alive.” I woke up to this message from my friend in Iran. A message like that rearranges the meaning of language. Alive becomes a threshold, a daily confirmation,...

Blacking out communications and jamming signals have become tools of power worldwide, from Iran to Gaza and beyond. But blackouts do not erase events, they shape what can be proven, mourned, and acted...

The Luli, also known as the Jugi or Mugat, are a community that lives across Central Asia, part of the wider Roma and Domari diaspora. They are ubiquitous in public spaces yet excluded from national n...

Although the Cyrus Cylinder is over 2,500 years old, much of the discourse surrounding its function has emerged only in the past century. While nationalists believe the cylinder to be a symbol of huma...

A tribute to Ajam Media Collective’s name and inspiration, this post was written by Ajam’s editors, Alex Shams, Rustin Zarkar, and Beeta Baghoolizadeh. Photographs by Preethi Nallu originally publishe...

What is the most unexpected place where you’ve encountered the Persianate? Have you ever noticed a family tradition, neighborhood landmark, a debate, a photograph, a song, or a casual turn of phrase t...

The historic city of Bukhara, Uzbekistan was once a living, breathing city. Now it is rapidly becoming something else. State-led gentrification is reshaping its ancient quarters. Family-run bathhouses...

Amid the wave of expulsions from Iran, Afghans have mobilized mutual aid to support deportees. These networks fill a crucial need and highlight the foundational role that grassroots solidarity plays i...

Each Iranian flag signifies a specific history and ideology, representing the political divides of the 90 million Iranians in Iran and 5 million Iranians in diaspora. At recent protests, many members ...

Ignoring Tehran's remarkable urban transformation over the last three decades leaves us with a simplistic, reductionist vision of this Middle Eastern metropolis. By ignoring the hard work being done b...

In 1970s Iran, revolutionary movements that opposed the authoritarian rule of the US-backed Shah championed the Palestinian cause. Solidarity posters from the time reveal how different movements recog...

Is it possible to adapt the Arabic script to Turkic languages’ sounds? Why are so many of these languages written in Latin or Cyrillic script today? Over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, ide...

Karachi’s Zoroastrian community draws its visual vocabulary and cultural ancestry from Gujarat, India, and not from Iran, because the community traces its origins through the Parsi migrations of the Q...

During the Iranian Revolution, International Worker’s Day became an ideological battleground as competing political organizations— secular and religious— organized their constituents and articulated t...

The billowing clouds of pastel blooms that extend across the photographic archive of modern Afghanistan speak to more than just a redeeming cultural quirk in the face of tragic national history. They ...

The billowing clouds of pastel blooms that extend across the photographic archive of modern Afghanistan speak to more than just a redeeming cultural quirk in the face of tragic national history. They ...

In this episode, Belle interviews James Gustafson, Associate Professor of History at Indiana State University, about his new book. In The Lion and the Sun (and our podcast episode), Gustafson presents...

Across Iran, second hand shops are known by the word Tanakura, referring to vintage clothes. But how and why did this Japanese surname enter modern Persian? The answer comes from the show Oshin, which...

Assyrians around the world this week marked the festival of Akitu this week, a spring holiday that commemorates the beginning of the Assyrian New Year 6767.