📜 Post with us on Reddit
📝 Create a new article
🏭 Create a company page
🇬🇧 - in English
🇫🇷 - en Français (FR)
🇵🇹 - em Português (PT)
🇩🇪 - auf Deutsch (DE)
🇯🇵 - 日本語で (JA)
Sponsored articles

You can edit almost every page by Creating an account and confirming your email.

Shahrivar (journal)

From EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki

Shahrivar  
DisciplinePolitical theory, Iranian studies, cultural criticism, diaspora studies
LanguagePersian (Farsi)
Edited byMohsen Banaei
Publication details
Publication history
2018–present
Publisher
Shahrivar Quarterly
FrequencyQuarterly
Standard abbreviations
Shahrivar
Links
  • [shahrivar.org Journal homepage]

Search Shahrivar (journal) on Amazon.

Shahrivar (شهریور, lit. Benevolent Dominion) is a Persian-language political and intellectual quarterly journal published by and for the Iranian diaspora. Established in 2018,[1] it serves as a platform for theoretical and political discourse among Iranian intellectuals, writers, researchers, and political activists living outside Iran. It is regarded as one of the most significant intellectual journals of the contemporary Iranian diaspora, and consciously continues the tradition of Iranian émigré intellectual publishing inaugurated nearly a century ago by the Berlin-based Kaveh magazine.

The journal was founded by Saeed Bashirtash, an Iranian political activist and public intellectual based in Brussels, Belgium.[2] The editor-in-chief of the journal's second period (2023–present) is Dr. Mohsen Banaei.[3]

Name and Symbolism

The name Shahrivar (from the Avestan Xšaθra Vairya) refers to one of the Amesha Spentas (Holy Immortals) in Zoroastrian theology. The name simultaneously signifies "Good Governance," "the Ideal Kingdom," and "the Land of Wishes." In the Avestan tradition, this divine being is the guardian of justice, equity, and Asha (cosmic order). The journal's founders chose this name to embed their foundational aspirations within the pre-Islamic Iranian cultural heritage: the pursuit of good governance through a secular parliamentary democracy grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the well-being of all Iranian citizens, social justice, and equality before the law.

The word Shahrivar also corresponds to the sixth month of the Iranian calendar — the month in which the state killing of Mahsa Amini ignited the 2022 national uprising across Iran.

In an interview on the Iran's Future programme, Mohsen Banaei elaborated on the Zoroastrian resonance of the name in relation to the journal's political mission: in Avestan cosmology, Shahrivar is the Amesha Spenta who simultaneously guards good sovereignty (shahrivar-e nik), protects the just ruler, and champions the cause of the poor and the dispossessed. Banaei identified this triple symbolism — good governance, protection of the just ruler, and social welfare — as emblematic of the journal's centre-left orientation and its aspiration for an Iranian social democracy akin to the welfare states of advanced nations.[4]

History

First Period (2018–2022)

The journal was founded in 2018 (1397 in the Iranian solar calendar) and published eight issues in its first period.[5] Its inaugural issue focused on the theme of laïcité (secularism and the separation of religion and state), edited by guest editor Hassan Behgar.[6] During this phase it addressed themes including exile and diaspora, federalism, the Taliban's return in Afghanistan, Islam and politics in Iran, and the history of Iranian intellectualism from the Constitutional Revolution to the Islamic Revolution.

Second Period (2023–present)

Inspired by the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising that erupted in Iran in September 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini in government custody, the journal relaunched in its second period beginning with Issue 9.[7] The second period is under the editorship of Dr. Mohsen Banaei. In its founding statement for this new phase, the editorial board announced its intent to address the discourses and questions of Iran's freedom movement with a forward-looking perspective, going "beyond the politics of the day."

Editorial Orientation

Shahrivar operates from an Iranian nationalist, secular, and liberal democratic standpoint. It is committed to a secular parliamentary democracy based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Iranian cultural identity and the reclamation of pre-Islamic Iranian civilizational heritage, social justice, and the equality of all Iranian citizens before the law.


Discourse Construction

A central declared purpose of Shahrivar is what Banaei terms gofteman-sazi (گفتمان‌سازی) — the systematic construction of political and intellectual discourse. Writing in the editorial statement for Issue 9, Banaei stated: "Our goal is to address the discourses and questions of Iran's freedom movement with a forward-looking perspective, beyond the politics of the day."[4]

Banaei identifies the 1979 Islamic Revolution as having debased a generation of core political concepts — among them liberty, intellectual, revolution, social justice, and democracy — reducing them to hollow or distorted slogans. The journal's mission is to restore conceptual rigour to these terms by subjecting them to serious theoretical analysis. Issue 9 was accordingly devoted to the concept of freedom (آزادی) in Iranian political thought, drawing parallels with how the Constitutional Revolution-era thinker Abdolrahim Talebov Tabrizi had already articulated a sophisticated understanding of freedom that was largely ignored by his contemporaries.[4]

The Audience Pyramid

Banaei describes the journal's target readership using a four-tier pyramid model. At the apex are "Level 1" readers — analysts and intellectuals who consume primary theoretical content and produce secondary analysis from it. Their output reaches "Level 2" readers, who reformulate the ideas in shorter formats; and so on down to "Level 4" readers who distil ideas into brief social-media posts. Banaei argues that the relatively small size of the Level 1 readership is inconsequential because these readers act as multipliers, propagating ideas through the lower tiers. The journal targets the Level 1 apex.[4]

Archival and Documentary Role

The journal is also conceived as a documentary archive of the intellectual climate of the Iranian diaspora. Banaei notes that future historians researching this period will find in Shahrivar a systematic record of how Iranians engaged with ideas of freedom, democracy, national identity, and governance in the years following the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.[4]

Shahrivar and the 7 Aban Front

Shahrivar has close ties to the 7 Aban Front (جبهه هفت آبان), an Iranian opposition political organization founded in Brussels in 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini and during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. The journal's founder and publisher, Saeed Bashirtash, serves as chairman of the 7 Aban Front, while Mohsen Banaei, editor-in-chief of Shahrivar's second period (2023–present), is a member of the organization. In a video published through the 7 Aban Front's official YouTube channel, Banaei describes Shahrivar as serving as the theoretical and intellectual arm of the political movement represented by the front — a platform for longer-form political and intellectual reflection that operates alongside and in support of the front's political activities.[8]

Banaei has nonetheless emphasised that Shahrivar is not the official organ of the 7 Aban Front. Some members of its editorial board are not members of the Front, and the journal publishes contributions from writers with no affiliation to the organisation. Critical analysis of ideas associated with the Front or Iranian nationalism is explicitly welcome within the journal's pages, though the journal does not publish operational political criticism of party activities, which Banaei considers outside its remit as a theoretical publication focused on discourse construction.[4]

Issues and Topics

As of 2025, Shahrivar has published fourteen issues:

Issue Title / Theme Year
1 Laïcité (Secularism and Separation of Religion from State) 2018
2 Khuzestan 2020
3 Islam, Politics, Iran Spring 2021
4 On Exile Summer 2021
5 Afghanistan and the Return of the Taliban 2021
6 Federalism Spring 2022
7 Russia Autumn 2022
8 Iranian Intellectualism: From the Constitutional Revolution to the Islamic Revolution Spring 2023
9 (Second Period) The Concept of Freedom in the Iranian Political Sphere Winter 2023
10 Anatomy of the "57ers" (proponents of the 1979 Islamic Revolution) Winter 2023–24
11 In Defense of Generation Anti (Generation Z) Spring 2024
12 We and the Children of Israel Summer 2024
13 The Iranian Diaspora: A Homeland Beyond Borders Autumn 2024
14 Of the Lion's Roar and the Sun's Radiance Spring 2025

Contributors

Shahrivar brings together Iranian intellectuals, scholars, authors, and political analysts based across Europe and North America, with contributors writing from Germany, France, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, and other countries. Notable contributors include:

  • Saeed Bashirtash – Founder and director of Shahrivar; political activist and public intellectual
  • Mohsen Banaei – Editor-in-chief (Second Period), writer and intellectual
  • Shahla Shafiq – Iranian-French novelist and sociologist
  • Nasser Karami – Political analyst and researcher
  • Parviz Dastmalchi – Researcher and journalist
  • Farangis Bayat – Historian and researcher
  • Mehdi Khalaji – Scholar and former seminary student
  • Babak Amir-Khosravi – Historian and political activist
  • Dariush Biniaz – Author and literary critic
  • Shokuh Mirzadegi – Writer and poet
  • Golineh Atai – Iranian-German journalist and Russia expert (ARD)
  • Iraj Eshraghi, Kazem Kordvani, Bijan Khalili and others


Articles (Neveshtarha)

The "Articles" section (نوشتارها) is the main content section of the quarterly journal, publishing analytical and research articles across politics, culture, history, and philosophy. As of 2025, over 166 articles have been published in this section. Contributors include:

Interviews (Goftogouha)

The "Interviews" section (گفتگوها) features in-depth conversations with Iranian scholars, intellectuals, and analysts. Interviewees to date include:

  • Golineh Atai – Iranian-German Russia expert
  • Saeed Bashirtash – founder and director of Shahrivar
  • Nasser Karami – political analyst and researcher
  • Ali Meysam Nazari
  • Mohammad Ali Bahmani Qajar – Iranian historian
  • Shahla Shafiq – Iranian-French sociologist and writer
  • Kazem Kardavani – scholar and intellectual
  • Parviz Dastmalchi – researcher and journalist
  • Touraj Daryaee – Iranologist and professor
  • Hamid Nozari

Free Writings (Neveshte-haye Azad)

The website includes a section called "Free Writings" (نوشته‌های آزاد), which publishes articles and opinion pieces by writers who are not necessarily regular contributors to the quarterly journal. This section broadens participation beyond the core editorial circle. Contributors to this section include:

  • Dara Kamyar (دارا کامیار)
  • Mohammad Ali Gheibi (محمدعلی غیبی)
  • Jalal Heydarinezhad (جلال حیدری‌نژاد)
  • Javid Mousavi (جاوید موسوی)
  • Amirhossein Fatouhi (امیرحسین فتوحی)
  • Changiz Amiri (چنگیز امیری)
  • Nasser Karami (ناصر کرمی)
  • Iraj Lahrasabi (ایرج لهراسبی)
  • Omid Ebrahimi (امید ابراهیمی)
  • Mariwan Visi (مریوان ویسی)
  • Sam Matini (سام متینی)


Shahrivar and the Tradition of Kaveh Magazine

Shahrivar explicitly situates itself as a spiritual heir to Kaveh — a landmark Persian-language journal published in Berlin from 1916 to 1922. Kaveh was one of the founding organs of modern Iranian political and cultural thought in Europe. Its principal figures included:

Like Kaveh a century before it, Shahrivar seeks — from beyond Iran's borders — to sustain and develop discourses of national renewal, secular modernism, and Iranian cultural identity.

The Journal as an Intellectual Gathering of the Iranian Diaspora

A defining characteristic of Shahrivar is its function as a forum — an intellectual assembly of diaspora Iranians engaged in common questions about Iran's future. Its contributors are based in Germany, France, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries. The journal holds that the Iranian diaspora is an active "rear front" of the freedom movement — capable of shaping discourse and preparing the ground for a post-Islamic Republic Iran.

See also

  • Kaveh (magazine)
  • Seyyed Hassan Taqizadeh
  • Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh
  • Hossein Kazem-zadeh Iranshahr
  • Iranian diaspora
  • Mahsa Amini protests
  • Woman, Life, Freedom

References

  1. ↑ "Shahrivar – Issue 1 (Laïcité)" (PDF) (in فارسی). Shahrivar Quarterly. 2018. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  2. ↑ "Shahrivar – Issue 1 (Laïcité)" (PDF) (in فارسی). Shahrivar Quarterly. 2018. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  3. ↑ "Shahrivar – Issue 13: The Iranian Diaspora: A Homeland Beyond Borders" (PDF) (in فارسی). Shahrivar Quarterly. 2025. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Banaei, Mohsen (2024). گفتگو با خانم شهران طبری درباره نشریه اینترنتی شهریور، محتوا و اهداف آن [Interview with Shahran Tabari on the internet journal Shahrivar, its content and goals] (in فارسی). Mohsen Banaie (YouTube). Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  5. ↑ "Shahrivar – Issue 1 (Laïcité)" (PDF) (in فارسی). Shahrivar Quarterly. 2018. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  6. ↑ "About Us – Shahrivar" (in فارسی). Shahrivar Quarterly. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  7. ↑ "About Us – Shahrivar" (in فارسی). Shahrivar Quarterly. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  8. ↑ Shahrivar Quarterly — Editor's Explanation (in فارسی). 7 Aban Front (YouTube). Retrieved 2026-06-20.




This article "Shahrivar (journal)" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Shahrivar (journal). Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.


Retrieved from "https://en.everybodywiki.com/index.php?title=Shahrivar_(journal)&oldid=6550745"
License CC BY-SA 3.0
Powered by MediaWiki