August 2025 - Ajam Media Collective
All words are © Ajam Media Collective, and all photographs are as well unless otherwise noted.| Ajam Media Collective
All words are © Ajam Media Collective, and all photographs are as well unless otherwise noted.| Ajam Media Collective
What is the most unexpected place where you’ve encountered the Persianate? We want to hear about it! View Post The post Call for Submissions: The Unexpected Persianate appeared first on Ajam Media Collective.| Ajam Media Collective
Bukhara, Uzbekistan was once a living, breathing city. Now it is rapidly becoming something else. State-led gentrification is reshaping its ancient quarters. Family-run bathhouses, teahouses, and workshops are giving way to boutique hotels and luxury spas. The city still looks like Bukhara. But it no longer feels like home for many who've built their lives there.View Post| Ajam Media Collective
Amid the wave of expulsions from Iran, Afghans have mobilized mutual aid to support deportees. These networks fill a crucial need and highlight the foundational role that grassroots solidarity plays in Afghanistan’s society. View Post The post Solidarity at the Border: Afghan Mutual Aid Networks Mobilize Amid Mass Deportation appeared first on Ajam Media Collective.| Ajam Media Collective
Each Iranian flag signifies a specific history and ideology, representing the political divides of the 90 million Iranians in Iran and 5 million Iranians in diaspora. At recent protests, many members of the Iranian diaspora were unsure what flag they should use. So what do each of Iran’s flags represent? And why do they provoke such strong emotions? View Post| Ajam Media Collective
Karachi’s Zoroastrian community draws its visual vocabulary and cultural ancestry from Gujarat, India, and not from Iran, because the community traces its origins through the Parsi migrations of the Qissa-e-Sanjan. But new archaeological evidence suggests Zoroastrian presence in Sindh from far earlier, dating to an imperial Sasanian presence. What would a re-imagining of Zoroastrian community history in relation to these findings look like?View Post| Ajam Media Collective
The billowing clouds of pastel blooms that extend across the photographic archive of modern Afghanistan speak to more than just a redeeming cultural quirk in the face of tragic national history. They are the result of globalization and the colonial encounter and yet, as is often the case with quotidian elements of material culture, they rapidly became fundamentally of the place. View Post| Ajam Media Collective
In this episode, Belle interviews James Gustafson, Associate Professor of History at Indiana State University, about his new book. In The Lion and the Sun (and our podcast episode), Gustafson presents an overview of Iran’s environmental history from the Safavid Empire (1501-1722) to the rise of Reza Khan in the 1920s. View Post| Ajam Media Collective
Explore these vintage Nowruz postage stamps from Iraq to Tajikistan and how different countries celebrate the arrival of spring!| Ajam Media Collective
In this episode, Belle interviews Dr. Annika Schmeding, Senior Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and a Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), about her first book, Sufi Civilities: Religious Authority and Political Change in Afghanistan (Stanford University Press, 2023). In Sufi Civilities (and in our podcast episode), Schmeding examines how contemporary urban Sufi communities in Afghanistan deal with violence and transition. She addresses how th...| Ajam Media Collective
A decade before the 1979 revolution, Indo-Pakistani author Qurratulain Hyder visited Iran to accompany the Pahlavi royal family as she prepared a biography of former Empress Farah Pahlavi. The text she prepared was lost forever; but an article she wrote years later in the throes of the uprising casts a harsh light on her journey through the royal family's curated image of modernity and progress.View Post| Ajam Media Collective
Azeri folk music remains a living, breathing cannon; music-making within Azerbaijan and in Azeri transnational communities remains informed by traditional melodies, which are constantly being creatively reworked. Old folk melodies become vessels for new story-telling through experimentation with Western musical forms, and new lyrics appended to the folk melodies, sometimes in languages different than that of the traditional version altogether. View Post| Ajam Media Collective
