درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The Sasanian Empire was one of the ancient superpowers, and for four centuries ruled over a vast region stretching from Syria and the Caucasus to Transoxiana (Central Asia) and the Persian Gulf. Sasanian Archaeology: Settlements, Environment and Material Culture, is a new book that also includes articles in this regard, edited by St. John Simpson and published by Archaeopress.

Art and literature have always been applied as a favorite way of conveying human experiences through centuries to next generations. However, sometimes they have been not used as art for art’s sake. Utilitarian literature and art have usually been abused to misrepresent facts and real human history. World War I was a catastrophic disaster for the whole world, especially for the Muslim people living in the Ottoman empire territory and neighboring regions. Since then the separated small countries have been suffering periodical catastrophes afterword. Literature and art, consequently, were affected by them. According to the attitude of the literary figures and artists toward those historical experiences and human sufferings, their productions have tried to be effective on the world’s attitude toward those events. Ararat is one of them. It is an Armenian movie that was produced in Canada and won 2003’s Canadian Film Festival first prize. The main character of this movie is an Armenian young boy who travels to the city of Van in Türkiye and remember his nation’s past experiences during World War I in the city, according to the producers’ point of view. The main episodes are the flashbacks to the war between Armenian people and Turkic troops in Van through which war crimes are depicted to arouse the audience’s hatred toward Turks in the world. The film producers have inefficiently tried to produce a show through which make the world believe that there has been a genocide by Turkic troops against Armenian people living in the region during World War I. While western world is trying to condemn all hate speeches toward other races, ethnicities and nations around the world, the production of such a film in a country which obviously declares herself as one the most democratic countries in the world does not seem so appropriate to their democratic slogans. Through this essay the researcher will try to analyze it and depict some facts that the producers have tried to misrepresent. Because it is a movie that has dealt with the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and the Armenians living in the territory before World War I. 

In recent years there has been a growing interest among historians, historical martial artists, reenactors, and those who are interested in Eastern culture as well as in Persian offensive and defensive weapons to have a more detailed study of armor. The change in the paradigm of defensive weapons throughout Western Asia (the last quarter of the 15th to the first quarter of the 16th century) has not yet been fully investigated. Reconstruction of mail-and-plate armor from a period between 1540-1650 CE is quite challenging as most museums or major private collections do not have a complete set. Based on a detailed study of existing sets of joshan armor and several technical assumptions related to the design of this type of armor, the present study tries to reconstruct a fully protective complex of a joshan armor that was worn by a noble Persian warrior. The purpose of the following article is to reproduce a Persian mail-and-plate armor from a period between 1540-1650 CE in its original size and design with its inherent properties and qualities. Different existing sets of this type of armor from museums are studied and compared to different miniatures and literary sources. Based on the collected information gained from theoretical and practical research, the article presents a historical armor design and provides advice on the practical reconstruction and production of such a set of armor. Armor masters were looking for the best combinations and ratio of plates and mail armor in one set. They were experimenting with the shapes and sizes of plates, the number of holes, diameters, geometry, and method of ring interconnections. Characteristic of the armor of this period is rather large plates and a small number of their rows (3-5 rows on the chest/back), a small overlap of the plates in a row, basically only the same standard plates are used, large mail rings (inner diameter about 10 mm).