Laboratory for Contemporary Iranian Studies

Publications

• Book

  Ravandi-Fadai S.

  Slavery in the Modern Middle East and North Africa Exploitation and Resistance from the 19th Century - Present Day

  What is the nature of slavery as practiced and at times reintroduced over the past two centuries in the Middle East and North Africa? In spite of the rich regional diversity of the areas studied – from Morocco to the Indian Ocean to Iran – this anthology demonstrates clear commonalities across the super-region. These include the regulation of slavery by Islam and local traditions, the absence of a rigid racial hierarchy as in North American slavery, the management of the sexuality and reproductive capacity of female slaves, and views on identity and heritage among descendants of slaves. Authors also examine the economic and theological underpinnings of contemporary slavery and human trafficking.
  
  The book is among the first to focus on slavery across the Islamic world from the 19th century to the present – a period constituting the endgame of institutionalized slavery in the region but also the persistence of forms of de facto enslavement. Each chapter scrutinizes from a different vantage point – institutions, economics, the abolitionist movement, literature, folklore, and the moving image – creating a multi-dimensional picture of the phenomenon.
  
  The authors have mined government archives and statistics, memoirs, interviews, photographs, drawings, songs, cinema and television. Not only are Arabic, Persian and Turkish sources leveraged, but a variety of materials in minor and endangered languages, such as Soqotri, Balochi and Sorani Kurdish, in addition to European languages.

  
  
  
  
  

  L.: Bloomsbury, 2024.

• Article

  Mossaki N., Lana M. Ravandi-Fadai.

  Mustafa Barzani’s Soviet exile: Popular myths vs. Evidence in Russian archives (Part II)

  The second part of the article about case file of the Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani, preserved in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) provides information regarding his material support, in particular, the allocation of apartments, including at an address previously unknown in historical literature. The article also examines information about Mustafa Barzani and the activities of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), contained in the documents, in particular, in KGB reports. In some of them, Mustafa Barzani is characterized extremely negatively – as a reactionary and clerical leader, opposing the integration of Iraqi Kurds into Soviet society and being anti-Soviet; in another, later reference, the personality of Mustafa Barzani is already assessed in the opposite way, due to the Soviet Union's support for the Kurdish liberation movement movements in Iraq. Interesting information is presented about the contradictions in the leadership of the KDP and various aspects of relations with the communists. Considerable attention is paid to documents relating to Barzani’s interaction with his comrades, maintaining control over them, relations with Iraqi public figures, as well as Kurdish activists. Three letters from Barzani to Nikita Khrushchev are studied in detail. 

  Archive materials show that Moscow had a very high estimation of Barzani’s role, so information about him was reported to the higher tiers of power, where he was regarded as the most influential person in the Kurdish national movement. Almost every document demonstrates his unwavering adherence to the national idea and his resolve to return to Kurdistan to continue the struggle.

  Восток. Афро-азиатские общества: история и современность. 2024. No. 3. P. 45-56.

• Book chapter

  Lana Ravandi-Fadai.

  'Ask Her, She is Not Afraid To Tell You': Sexual Enslavement of Yezidi Women by ISIS: causes and aftermath

  In bk.: Slavery in the Modern Middle East and North Africa Exploitation and Resistance from the 19th Century - Present Day. L.: Bloomsbury, 2024. Ch. 10.