Ajam Media Collective
Culture, history, and politics from across Ajamistan: West, Central, and South Asia
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Latest posts
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Ajam Podcast #48: Muslim Warrior Queens of the Persianate Deccan
In her new book, Sarah Waheed narrates the histories of Chand Bibi, a sixteenth-century warrior queen of the Deccan, the south-central region of India. Waheed writes of her journey searching for traces of Chand Bibi both as a historian and as a woman raised in Hyderabad, in the…
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What Could Be Stranger Than You and I: A Ghazal by Rumi
Years ago, I was asked to give a toast at a friend’s wedding. I decided to translate some lines by Maulana, also known as Rumi, gifting the couple love as he’s so masterfully caught it. To call literature “timeless” is a cliché. And yet this thirteenth-century poem seems to…
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Carried By Voices: The Living Legacy of Lucknow’s Bedam Shah Warsi
Voices carry the Urdu verses of Bedam Shah Warsi from qawwali gatherings at the shrines of Awadh in Northern India to digital screens around the world. Drawing on metaphors from Sufi traditions that extend across the Persianate world, his poetry reflects a tradition where love…
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Chavushi: Taking the Path of No Return with Mehdi Akhavan-Sales
The Iranian poet Mehdi Akhavan-Sales (1929-1990) first published "Chavushi" in his 1956 collection "Zemestan" ("Winter"). "Zemestan" received widespread acclaim and firmly established Akhavan’s status as one of Iran’s leading modernist poets, enduring to this day as a masterwork…
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Reel Bad Iranians: How Hollywood Paved the Way for War
Before Iranians were killed, they had to become killable. Shows like Homeland and Tehran did precisely that. While an early generation of Hollywood films built an image of Iran as fanatical, backward, and savage, recent Israeli shows not only rehearse their dehumanization; they…
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We Just Wanted to Make Our People Happy: Iran’s Team Melli at the World Cup
Iranians have rallied behind Team Melli for decades. So why did they recently become the target of delegitimization campaigns? Ashkan Hashemipour explores their history and shows how despite the noise online, Team Melli remains a source of unity at stadiums and around the world.…
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Gardening with the Times: Horticultural Innovation in Nineteenth-Century Tehran
Persian gardens have long been a potent symbol of Iranian cultural identity, imagined as a timeless, unchanging tradition. But photographs of the gardens of Tehran in the 19th century reveal a landscape of horticultural innovation, colored by the array of international…
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How the Lion and Sun Became a Royal Symbol in Switzerland
This article is part of the Unexpected Persianate series exploring overlooked, hidden and unconventional echoes of Persian culture, language, and aesthetics in the present. It is published in collaboration with the Association… View Post The post How the Lion and Sun Became a…
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Tarhonya, Tarkhineh: The Persian Roots of Hungary’s Most Hungarian Food
The Persian roots of tarhonya, the quintessential Hungarian dish, highlight the contradiction inherent to this version of nationalism. The dish did not cross the Ural mountains into Europe with the early Hungarian tribes. Rather, it arrived in the 16th century with the Ottoman…
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The Birth of the Assyrian Flag: Modern Pride for an Ancient Nation
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 in Iran to Chicago and Sydney, it is a reminder of identity for millions…