Relations between The Netherlands and Iran in the 1960s and 1970s were of a warm character. To understand this, we need to look not only at mutual interests, but also at the representation of Iran in The Netherlands as a "familiar other". In the context of these representations, the relations with Iran were made possible, but not just that: establishing warm relations was also considered the "right" thing to do. This research places Nederlands-Iran relations in the context of representations of Iran in The Netherlands between 1959 and 1979.

Islam’s increased presence in public consciousness stirs desire to better understand the religion and its history, but prevailing opinions of Muslims and non-Muslims, popular and scholarly alike, are currently clouded because a key web of issues remains almost entirely overlooked. The problem concerns Islam and its pre-history. Theorists stress the important functions of origin myths for developing communities and constructing identities, yet Middle East Studies lacks critical scrutiny of Muslim narratives of pre-Islam. Consequently, much current opinion skips over the vast corpus of early Muslim-era Arabic literature about pre-Islam in favour of generalising presumptions that Muslims essentially deride memories of pre-Islamic times as reprobate, pagan ‘anti-Islam’. Such views crucially misunderstand the plurality of ways earlier generations of Muslims negotiated their pre-history, and instead erect binary and essentialising distinctions that divide history into pre-Islamic and Muslim-era ‘silos’, and nudge some Muslims towards radical impressions that a purification from all ‘non-Islamic’ elements is necessary. There is pressing need to redress opinion by re-assessing pre-modern Muslim thinking about pre-Islam: by applying innovative methods to critically interpret a wide corpus of early Arabic sources, EPIC PASTS will refocus current views to see pre-Islam through Muslim eyes. During the dynamic ninth and tenth centuries when Muslim literary culture first flowered, Iraqi writers crafted formative and enduringly influential traditions about pre-Islam, but most modern historians just trawl these narratives for empirical data without source-critical apparatus. Pre-Islamic lore was primarily related through literature, but it is seldom analysed via narratological methodologies, nor are memory studies applied to probe the corpus’ compilation. Medieval Iraqis have much to tell the contemporary world about Islamic views on origins and identity, but their messages go unnoticed, and herein EPIC PASTS’ critical methodologies will identify the diachronic evolution of pre-Islam’s memorialisation and its precise functions in shaping Muslim community, identity and thought.

This project aims to organise an international research network of papyrologists and archaeologists from Leiden, Ann Arbor and Lecce. It will focus the expertise of the partners on an important but thus far partly overlooked collection of Roman-era papyrus texts from the ancient Egyptian village of Soknopaiou Nesos (Dimê), leading to the development of new research questions regarding the role of writing in ancient societies. The joint research will include the renewed study of the contents of the relevant texts from Soknopaiou Nesos, and the new study of the site’s archaeological documentation from the 1931-1932 excavations by Ann Arbor, integrated into the extensive site documentation assembled by the ongoing excavations by the University of Salento (Lecce). The Soknopaiou Nesos papyri will be virtually placed back into their original archaeological setting so that a fuller picture emerges of writing practices and attitudes to written materials in Soknopaiou Nesos than could ever be obtained by the study of texts and excavation documentation in isolation. Through the study of the papyri and their archaeological context, the project aims to set the agenda for further research in the nascent field of the materiality of written sources. The project will result in three papers (in peer reviewed journals) on the archaeology and papyri of Roman Soknopaiou Nesos, forge a network of world-class specialists in the field of Papyrology, Archaeology and Egyptology, and develop a large-scale research project on the broader topic of the materiality of written sources.

Students of the Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University specialise in one of areas of the region, i.e. Persian, Arabic, Turkish or Hebrew. These students also spend one semester in the region where they improve their knowledge of the culture as well as their language skills. While the theses and academic research of students focuses on one the issues dealing with the region, there is much room for improvement in the use of their academic skills and language skills in improving the societal impact of their research. This project aims to enhance students’ academic skills in achieving this goal.

Wie vandaag de dag het nieuws over Iran leest, kan zich nauwelijks voorstellen dat de relaties tussen Nederland en Iran tot 1979 uitstekend waren. Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi, toen Sjah van Perzië, stond hier bekend als een visionair en hervormer. Iran, toen meestal Perzië genoemd, werd gezien als een mythisch land met een eeuwenoude beschaving. Het Nederlandse koningshuis kwam graag bij de Sjah over de vloer en grote en kleine Nederlandse bedrijven deden goede zaken in Iran. Toen in de jaren zeventig meer bekend werd over de onderdrukking waarmee de Sjah aan de macht bleef, bracht dat de Nederlandse regering voor lastige keuzes. Hoe konden de relaties met Iran standhouden, nu het Nederlandse publiek zich daartegen had gekeerd? De Nederlandse regering stak de kop in het zand en hield vast aan het idee van de Sjah als verlicht despoot. Zo zag men de Iraanse Revolutie niet aankomen, met alle gevolgen van dien.