Iranian society underwent various transformations influenced by Western culture as part of its process of modernisation. This was driven by the state’s, intellectuals’ and the emergent middle class’s efforts to push cultural change. However, despite a century of such modernisation, a populist backlash accelerated the rise of religious leaders and the Shiʿite tradition before, during and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. For this important reason, the link between cultural change and modernisation need further examination in the Iranian context. This paper posits the preliminary hypothesis that modernisation as a means of cultural change did not transform Iranian culture in large measure due to the lack of nationwide education. A majority of Iranians remained devoted to the Shiʿite faith and traditions of Islam. This paper examines the importance of education in cultural change in the Qajar and Pahlavi eras, deploying aspects of Riane Eisler’s cultural transformation model to evaluate cultural change influenced by Western culture in Iran.

Wojciech Biberstein-Kazimirski is a fascinating, non-typical scientist, who has nevertheless been forgotten by Polish historiography. Count Tytus Działyński immediately saw great potential in him and generously funded his studies. The trust of the Działyński family was passed on from father to son and Jan Działyński also supported the work of Kazimirski, who was certainly the greatest Polish orientalist. Kazimirski was an active patriot of the Polish insurrection. He took refuge in France where he made a respectable career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 19th century. He was awarded French citizenship and made an officer of la Légion d’honneur. He distinguished himself as a remarkable linguist and published works in a dozen languages, including the most famous French translation of the Qu’ran of all time and his French-Arabic dictionary, which are still considered among the best today. He was also an expert in oriental manuscripts. He was appreciated by the two Czartoryski princes, and the two Shahs of Iran of his time. Aft er his death, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs erected a beautiful bust on his tomb that can still be admired. However, despite all this, there is not a single accurate biography about him. On the contrary, most notices and articles do not even get the most basic things right about him, such as his name, his origin, or his religion.

The paper presents how the pluralism of relations in the early Muslim sources concerning the memory the Qādisiyya narrative is problematic for reconstructing the event of the battle by modern scholars. Specific studies of the early Islamic sources concerning the Battle of Al-Qādisiyya lead to the conclusion that it is certainly easier to interpret the functions of particular topoi than to determinate the facts about the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya. The main, unsolved questions related to the Qādisiyyah narrative are the uncertainty of the date of the battle, the size of the Muslim and Persian forces that fought in the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya as well as some contradictions and different presentations of the battle. Scholars have undertaken many attempts to make the conflicting accounts more coherent but in fact, they only made some speculations or, at the best, case scenario – explanations made on the basis of limited and uncertain evidence. For these reasons, the paper contains the suggestion to avoid an undue emphasis on the importance of the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya and to replace this term by the more general expression “the Mesopotamian campaign 634–637.” The critical evaluation of the Muslim sources leads to a more general description of the Battle of Al-Qādisiyya as an element of the campaign (stage 634–637) whose unambiguous evaluation is impossible.