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According to Shiʿi tradition, the seminary (ḥawza) in Najaf, Iraq is 1,000 years old. The origins of theḥawzaare closely associated with the famous scholar Shaykh al-Ṭūsī (385/995‒459/1067). This paper addresses the question of whether or not there is sufficient historical evidence to support the tradition that theḥawzaof Najaf is indeed 1,000 years old. On the basis of Arabic sources, the article argues that although Shiʿi educational institutions in Najaf were incepted a millennium ago, Najaf was rarely the locus of Shiʿi education prior to the thirteenth/nineteenth century. Based on statistical and historical analysis of Shiʿi scholars in Najaf, this paper outlines a short history of scholarly activity in one of the oldest college towns in the world. In addition to developing a working definition of the termḥawza, the paper situates the rise of Shiʿi educational systems in the broader context of the evolution of Islamic scholarly institutions, including colleges (madrasas). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper consists of six parts. The first part discusses the major reasons for the presence of a conventional sociopolitical Baloch culture in Iran. The second part presents a profile of the Iranian Baloch elites, dividing them into four major groups: the Sunni clerics or molavis, tribal chiefs, the educated, and the wealthy. The third discusses the challenging relationship which exists among the Baloch elites. The fourth describes the elites' attitudes towards the Baloch society's norms. The fifth determines the elites' orientation towards state and politics. And finally the paper ends with conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Communist University for Laborers of the East (KUTV), established in Moscow in 1921 and closed in 1938, presents a unique experiment in Soviet Orientalism. KUTV was the first communist educational institution set up specifically for students from the Orient to study their own countries in their native languages through a Marxist lens. Its purpose was not only to train teachers and revolutionaries for work in their native countries but to bring about a paradigm shift in the study of the East. Orientalism was to be freed from the imperialist prejudices of the past by redistributing the tools of Orientalist scholarship to Orientals themselves and by emphasizing contemporary social and economic history over an idealized and nationalistic antiquity. Iranians made up a strong presence at KUTV among both students and teachers, some of whom returned to Iran to spread learning and revolution, while others remained in the Soviet Union as scholars of Iran, influencing the development of Soviet Orientalism and often serving simultaneously in the Soviet political apparatus. With their students, they produced research and compiled massive collections of reference materials that formed the foundation for future Soviet scholarship and foreign policy. By the second half of the 1920s, KUTV developed into one of the most important centers of Soviet Orientalism, spawning a parallel Research Institute (NIA) that offered graduate programs and published its own periodical, Revolutionary East. With its aim of empowering the oppressed while simultaneously projecting Soviet influence, its attempt to rise above nationalist conceptions while at times succumbing to them, and the repression of its faculty in the Stalinist purges, KUTV exhibits many of the contradictions of the Soviet project itself. Among other sources, this paper uses Soviet case files on Iranian students and teachers at KUTV to shed light on their motivations and backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]