Reviews for History Challenge Level 2

The average rating for History Challenge Level 2 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-10-09 00:00:00 Keith Johnson Needless to say that E. G. Browne's monumental work, "A Literary History of Persia" come to be regarded as a classic among other literary histories of Persian literature. Its extent is broader than that of its counterpart, another classic in the field, E. J. Gibb's "A History of Ottoman Poetry.” Be that as it may, these two classics should be read very carefully and what is told in these books not be taken for granted. Because, they were more or less written under a nationalistic impetus. For instance, most of then-current Browne’s interpretations, be they historical, literary or philosophical intrinsically contain the spirit of its age and delineate the literary history from such perspective. Besides, his persona as a literary critic is not as influential as a literary historian. To name but one example, his critics do not go beyond his personal taste, saying “such and such works pleased me.” But, anyway, it provides a quasi-full background of Persian literary history and one can make use of LHP insofar as his/her interest is not deepening. As a layperson in Persian literary history, what concerned me in this volume of LHP was Safavid period, which covers almost two and a half century of Persian literature. Browne’s arguments concerning the Safavid literature are, in short, striving to maintain the reasons of literary decline of Persian literature in Safavid era, while overlooking the “old age of Persian literary tradition” which is to be discussed in Ehsan Yar-Shater’s full-fledged survey, “Safavid Literature: Progress or Decline.” Having finished the book, I have come across this review that took stock of Safavid literary history and chastised gently Browne’s arguments. I, therefore, highly recommend Yar-Shater’s article as a compensator.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-08-18 00:00:00 David Rottger در منابع فارسی این سال ها نوشته اند که ادوارد براون گرایشی به خرده مذاهب ایرانی نظیر شیخیه، حروفیه و بابیه و ....داشته است. لابد چون رساله هایی در این زمینه ها نوشته است. این که هرکس در زمینه ای غیر از میل من بنویسد، بهایی یا مرتد است، بر می گردد به دوران قبیله، یعنی پس از عهد پارینه سنگی. بهررو، بهایی یا ازلی یا باطنی یا هرچه، آثار ادوار براون، به ویژه تاریخ ادبیات ایران، هم اولین از این نوع است، و هم خواندنی ست.