Iran (Safavid to Modern)

Modern-day: Iran

Iran under the Safavid dynasty (from 1501) and its successor states is treated separately here from ancient Sasanian Persia: the Safavid conversion of a then-mostly-Sunni population to Twelver Shi'ism was a sixteenth-century political project, not a continuation of pre-Islamic Persian religion.

Content set in this region

Research Paper
Islam or Muslim Culture? Measuring the Distance Between Revelation and Practice
A historical-critical essay testing whether practices commonly defended as Islamic -- from denying women their Qur'anic inheritance shares to state corruption and the political shaping of orthodoxy -- rest on the Qur'an itself, or on later interpretation, historical tradition, absorbed local custom, and political authority defended in revelation's name.