Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Organic Foods in Tehran: A Mixed‐Methods Study

In Iran, despite the limited development and enforcement of certification systems, consumers’ interest in organic food is growing. However, the organic market is still emerging. Therefore, the current study investigates the factors influencing consumers’ willingness to pay for organic fresh products (fruits and vegetables), while also exploring key consumer‐driven priorities for strengthening the sector. The study employed a sequential qualitative‐quantitative approach. First, 16 Iranian experts were consulted in two rounds to identify the influencing variables, using the Delphi method. Subsequently, a mixed‐methods approach was used for data collection and analysis. This survey was conducted in 2024 among 214 consumers at vegetable markets across 22 regions of Tehran. The data was analyzed using multiple regression to determine the main influencing factors. The results showed that consumers’ willingness to pay for organic food is positively influenced by their perceptions of organic products and higher income levels. Furthermore, factors such as age, attitudes toward agrochemicals, and the perception of higher costs significantly impact consumers’ willingness to pay for organic products in Tehran. This study also highlights the role of the certification system in building consumer trust, noting that while organic production organizations exist in Iran, the certification framework remains fractured and lacks broad consumer recognition. A key contribution of this study relates to its mixed approach, providing in‐depth perspectives on consumer preferences in an expanding organic market. The qualitative findings further underscore the importance of establishing designated organic markets, reinforcing certification and labeling systems, and targeting consumer education to increase awareness and trust in organic products

Clifford Edmund Bosworth

Clifford Edmund Bosworth was a giant amongst historians of the Middle East and Central Asia, and only the likes of his direct and indirect mentors, Vladimir Minorsky (d. 1966) and V.V. Barthold (d. 1930) respectively, could parallel his staggering erudition and productive zeal in his writings on the eastern Islamic world and beyond it.1 Other colleagues have written detailed bibliographies of Edmund Bosworth’s astoundingly prolific work, and I will draw on these

Female Mystics in Mediaeval Islam: The Quiet Legacy

Abstract Historians and analysts of current affairs alike are interested in the role that women have played in Islam, including the extent to which women were the agents and creators of Islamic mysticism. We still know surprisingly little about premodern learned women, particularly from the eastern Iranian world. This article describes one female mystic, Umm ʿAlī, who flourished in ninth-century Balkh and has so far eluded modern scholarship. A historiographical study of her provides insight into how the representations of mystical women changed over time. From the earlier sources, we learn that Umm ʿAlī applied creative and interesting strategies that provided her access to the highest sources of learning. Umm ʿAlī’s case also allows for some tentative conclusions on the importance of pedigree, and the practice of strategic marriages that connect local power-holders with the ʿulamāʾ. </jats:sec

Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan

This book is about a sacred place called Balkh, in today’s Afghanistan, known to the ancient Greeks as Bactra. The book offers a new look at the medieval local history of Balkh, the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh, and analyses the creation of a sacred landscape. Fundamentally, the book argues that the example of Balkh helps us to answer the fascinating question, ‘What makes a place holy?’ It shows that sacredness of place is perpetuated through narratives, irrespective of the dominant religion or religious strand of the time. Located in the north of today’s Afghanistan, along the Silk Road, Balkh was holy to many. The Prophet Zoroaster is rumoured to have died here, and during late antiquity, Balkh was the home of the “Naw Bahār”, a famed Buddhist temple and monastery. By the tenth century, Balkh had become a critical centre of Islamic learning and Persian Sufi poetry. The book provides the first in-depth study of the sacred sites and landscape of medieval Balkh, which continues to exemplify age-old sanctity in the Persian-speaking world and the eastern lands of Islam generally. It focuses on the five centuries from the Islamic conquests in the eighth century to just before the arrival of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, the crucial period in the emergence of Perso-Islamic historiography and Islamic legal thought. It traces the development of ‘sacred landscape’, the notion that a place has a sensory meaning, as distinct from a purely topographical space. This opens up new possibilities for our understanding of Islamisation in the Islamic lands, and specifically the transition from Buddhism to Islam

Living happily ever after::fraternal polyandry, taxes and “the house” in early Islamic Bactria

AbstractThis paper is a first attempt at understanding the impact of Islam on families in eighth-century rural Ṭukhāristan (modern-day northern Afghanistan), at the periphery of the late Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid caliphate. Tukhāristan lay in the ancient region of Bactria, which became the land and city of Balkh after the Islamic conquests of the early seven hundredsad. My analysis is based on a fascinating corpus of legal documents and letters, written in Bactrian and Arabic in the fourth to eighth centuriesad, which were discovered, edited and translated relatively recently. Scholars of Central Asia have tended to discuss the region's early Islamic history within a politico-military framework based on chronicles and prosopographies written in Arabic and/or adapted into Persian centuries after the Muslim conquests. Such narrative sources describe an ideal state defined by genres of Islamic historiography, and come with the usual menu of distortions, simplifications and exoticisms. The documents under review, on the other hand, were written to serve immediate and practical uses; the evidence they offer is devoid of rhetoric, recording aspects of life and social groupings to which we would otherwise have no access. This paper argues that during the transition to Islamic rule (c.ad700–771), Bactrian and Islamic administrative systems co-existed, and significantly affected family life and marriage traditions. Specifically, it is suggested that the early ʿAbbāsid tax system eclipsed the age-old practice of fraternal polyandry here: more by default than by design.</jats:p

The Beginnings of Islam in Afghanistan

Covering the period from 709 to 871, this chapter traces the initial conversion of Afghanistan from Zoroastrianism and Buddhism to Islam. Highlighting the differential developments in four regions of Afghanistan, it discusses the very earliest history of Afghan Islam both as a religion and as a political system in the form of a caliphate.  The chapter draws on under-utilized sources, such as fourth to eighth century Bactrian documents from Tukharistan and medieval Arabic and Persian histories of Balkh, Herat and Sistan. In so doing, it offers a paradigm shift in the way early Islam is understood by arguing that it did not arrive in Afghanistan as a finished product, but instead grew out of Afghanistan’s multi-religious context. Through fusions with Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, early Abrahamic traditions, and local cult practices, the Islam that resulted was less an Arab Islam that was imported wholesale than a patchwork of various cultural practices.</p

Samarqand et le Sughd à l’époque ‘abbāsside: Histoire politique et sociale. By Yury Karev

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Samarqand et le Sughd à l’époque ‘abbāsside: Histoire politique et sociale. By Yury Karev. Studia Iranica, Cahiers, vol. 55. Paris: Association pour l’Avancement des Études Iraniennes, 2015. Pp. 372. €40 (paper).&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; </jats:p