Historical Sciences Studies

Abstract The historical geography of Islamic Iran, as a specialized field concerned with the transformation of places, regions, networks, and spatial relations in the past, has often been limited to the identification of place-names, the delimitation of territories, and the reconstruction of routes and cities. Focusing on the third to eighth centuries AH, this article examines how historical geography can move geographical texts from the level of description to the explanation of historical processes. In this study, the “spatial turn” refers to an approach that regards space and place not as neutral backgrounds, but as historical and social phenomena that shape power, economy, identity, and narrative. The article seeks to redefine the position of historical geography within the study of Islamic Iran and to propose a model for the critical and spatial analysis of sources. It employs a historical-analytical method based on a comparative reading of the works of Ibn Khurradadhbih, al-Yaqubi, al-Istakhri, Ibn Hawqal, al-Muqaddasi, Hudud al-Alam, Yaqut al-Hamawi, and Hamdallah Mustawfi. The theoretical framework draws on the concepts of the production of space, Thirdspace, relational place, and genius loci, while historical GIS is treated as a tool for linking spatial and temporal data, reconstructing networks, and analyzing spatial change. The findings show that each source represents a particular form of historical geography, ranging from administrative and regional to urban, mnemonic, and fiscal. Historical geography becomes an explanatory and specialized approach when data extraction, source criticism, spatial analysis, and the explicit recording of data reliability are applied simultaneously.

Abstract   Spragens's theory of crisis is presented to understand political ideas in the form of dividing the text of thought into propositions focused on the crisis, the causes of the crisis, the solution to the crisis, and an ideal society without crisis. The present study, by utilizing this theory, attempts to understand the dominant thought in the book The Ideology of the Iranian Constitutional Movement written by Fereydoun Adamiyat, using a library method and the method of content analysis. The assumption of this study is that the historian of thought and society, which carries the changes in thought, practically acts as a political theorist by analyzing and selecting reports. Therefore, by relying on the commonality of both fields of political thought and history in relying on the text, it is possible to reread the Adamiyat's The Ideology from the perspective of Spragens' theory. The achievement of this study shows that Adamiyat, like a political thinker, also believed in the existence of a crisis in the society he narrated in his work. This crisis had manifested itself in political, social, and economic forms, and Iranian society was suffering from it on the eve of constitutionalism. Adamiyat considers the causes of this crisis to be Absolutism, i.e., the absence of the rule of law and the Iranian society's lack of a legislative assembly and an efficient government based on the law, and he considers constitutionalism to be the way out of it, relying on the creation of a legislative assembly and the establishment of a government based on the spirit of Iranian nationality. An analysis of the work's themes shows that Adamiyat's ideal society is a modernized Iranian society in the Western style, in which the concepts of people, rights, and freedom are given authority and a structure based on law, a parliament, and an efficient government are put into practice.