Plans are at hand to register the village on UNESCO World Heritage List.

New constructions have been banned in the historic Abyaneh village in Isfahan province, the Persian daily Iran quoted director of Abyaneh Cultural Heritage Research Base as saying. Speaking on the sidelines of Iran’s 70-Year Anthropology Confab in Kerman (Feb. 18-20), Azim Riahi Dehkordi stated that construction activities are prohibited in the historic city until the village’s comprehensive plan is prepared.
The official stated that the decision was made by Isfahan Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Department and will be in force until the plan is worked out.
He explained that a number of residents of Abyaneh have in a letter commended the department for its initiative.
Riahi Dehkordi elaborated that inhabitants of Abyaneh had earlier complained about unbridled constructions threatening their historic village.
Sitting 40 km off Natanz and on the slopes of Mount Karkas, the lush village was registered on the National Heritage List in 1975.
The facades of the rural buildings have been covered with red clay obtained from a nearby mine. Locals are noted for their determined respect and commitment to their age-old traditions.
Efforts are underway to inscribe the village as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Archeological studies have begun at the ancient Gohar Tappeh (Gohar Hill) in Behshahr, Mazandaran province with the cooperation of an anthropological team from Warsaw University.
IRNA quoted head of Gohar Tappeh Research Base as saying the Polish team is headed by Arkadiusz Soltysiak, an anthropologist with the Department of Historical Anthropology of Warsaw University.
Ali Mahforouzi noted that the team is to conduct studies on humans buried at the site and compare them with the current inhabitants of the region.
He added that the unearthed skulls will also be photographed.
The expert said that causes of child and under-40 deaths will be assessed in the course of anthropological researches as well.
Studies on dietary habits and diseases of early humans who inhabited Gohar Tappeh are also on the agenda, Mahforouzi stated.
The official said that arrows, daggers, ornamental items, stone beads, human and animal statuettes, sling and clay pots were retrieved during excavations at the site.

Noted author of children’s books Mehdi Azar Khorramshahi known as Azar Yazdi was born in 1921 in Yazd. His ancestors were among Zoroastrians who converted to Islam.
He learned to read and write from his father and later continued his studies on his own. In 1944, he left his hometown and came to live in Tehran. Azar Yazdi worked as a construction worker and a simple laborer in sock-weaving workshops, publishing houses and bookshops. He worked for noted publishing houses like Amir Kabir, Ashrafi and Etella’at.
A pioneer of children’s literature in the country, he began his writing career in 1956 by authoring the first volume of the acclaimed eight-volume ’Good Stories for Good Children’. The third volume of the book received a UNESCO prize in 1966. Children Book Council also selected volumes four and five as the Book of the Year in 1966 and 1967. His ’Child of Adam’ was designated the Book of the Year in 1968.
Other storybooks written by Azar Yazdi include ’Stories of Molavi’s Masnavi’, ’Stories of Golestan and Molestan’, ’Naughty Cat’ and ’Simple Stories’.
Iranian Luminaries Association paid a tribute to the renowned figure of children’s literature during a ceremony held on Feb. 18.

Persian language refresher course is underway at National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad, Pakistan for professors of Persian language and literature.
The classes opened on Feb. 20, IRNA reported.
Thirty-five researchers, experts studying works by Pakistani poet and writer Mohammad Iqbal Lahori, university professors from international Islamic universities and higher education centers in Islamabad and Rawalpindi are attending the course.
Speaking at the inaugural ceremony, head of NUML’s Persian Department, Muhammad Sarfraz, said the exchange of professors between two the countries would help promote Persian language and literature.
It also helps strengthen cultural and academic relations between the two neighboring states, he said.
Sarfraz expressed satisfaction with the presence of noted Persian language professor of Tehran University Rouhollah Hadi in the course, and commented measures were taken to promote Persian language in recent years.
Meanwhile, caretaker of Iran Embassy’s Cultural Department said that valuable programs had been implemented in the past three years to promote Persian language and literature.
Mehrdad Rakhshandeh stated that the department tries to keep in contact with Persian language and literature professors and researchers based in Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
Persian literary texts, prose, poems, literary criticism and history of literature were instructed during the five-day course.

Golestan Palace dating back to the Qajarid Era in Tehran

A visitor viewing an artwork at the biennial

irst Hand Printing Biennial kicked off at Tehran’s Contemporary Art Museum on Feb. 20, CHN reported.
A host of university professors, artisans and senior officials attended the opening ceremony.
Hand-printed works by renowned international painters namely Pablo Picasso, Raphael, Paul Cezanne, Goya and Eugene Delacroix are being displayed at the exhibition which is the museum’s last event in the current Iranian year (ending March 20).
Speaking at the ceremony, secretary of the exhibit said the event is organized in three separate sections.
The first section is devoted to showcasing works by 20th century artists, Ahmad Vakili stated.
Works by Iranian masters of hand printing are on display in the second section, he noted, adding hand-printed works dating back to the Qajarid Era have been placed in the third section.
He recalled that first manual printing press was brought into the country in 1828. Works created by Iran’s early printer including Aliqoli Khoei can be viewed at the exhibit.
Vakili further said that Japanese woodblock printing and 23 lithographic works from India are also demonstrated.
The Indian works stretch back 170 years, the official noted.
Meanwhile, an exhibition of artworks by noted contemporary sculpture Ahmad Nadalian is also part of the event.

Three ancient jars dating back to the Ilkhanid Era (1256-1380) were found in Maragheh, East Azarbaijan province, caretaker of the city’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Department said.
Alireza Pashaei told IRNA that reckless digging conducted for construction purposes during which part of stratigraphic layers were damaged, led to the discovery of the jars.
The historical jars are assumed to have been used for storage of food, he added.
Only one of the jars has remained intact with the other two shattered to pieces, the official said.
Pashaei noted that potsherds stretching back to Ilkhanid and Seljuqid (1029-1194) eras were discovered at the area.
Predicting that more jars might be retrieved from the area, the official stated that the authorities ordered that construction operations be brought to a standstill.
The 240,000-strong city boasts 300 historical venues and natural sites.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) called for adopting “national and regional language strategies“ to “build a harmonious environment for all the world’s languages“ to preserve them from extinction, Kuwait News Agency reported.
Director-General of UNESCO Koichiro Matsuura issued a statement on the occasion of International Mother Language Day on February 21, in which he indicated that “Education uses less than a quarter of all languages.“
He stressed the importance of the mother language as it is “in the mother tongue that we utter our first words and express individual thoughts best,“ and that it is “the medium for learning respect for oneself, one’s history and one’s culture and, above all, for others and their differences.“
According to Matsuura, in a world in which the global and the local are entwined and must interact harmoniously, the concepts of “mother tongue“ and “multilingualism are becoming structurally complementary.“
He noted that UNESCO is working on promoting multilingualism especially in “the education system by encouraging the recognition and acquisition in at least three levels of language proficiency for all; a mother tongue, a national language and a language of communication.“
According to Matsuura, over 50 percent of the 6,000 languages spoken worldwide “are likely to die out“ while some 96 percent of these languages are spoken by 4 percent of the world’s population.

Sections of an ancient Greek theater were discovered during construction work in an Athens suburb.
Until now, only two such buildings were known in the ancient city where western theater originated more than 2,500 years ago.
Fifteen rows of concentric stone seats have been located so far in the northwestern suburb of Menidi, according to Vivi Vassilopoulou, Greece’s general director of antiquities.
“Another section appears to lie under a nearby road,“ she told The Associated Press.
“(The remains) were discovered during excavation work, supervised by archeologists, for a new building,“ Vassilopoulou said. “But it is still very early to offer any conclusions.“
The structure has not yet been dated, and further details are expected to emerge following a full excavation.
Menidi is thought to be built over the ancient village of Acharnae, the largest of a string of rural settlements outside ancient Athens. Ancient writers mention a theater at Acharnae, but no traces of it had been found until now.
The village was linked with Dionysos, the ancient god of theater and wine, as the Athenians believed that ivy--his sacred plant--first grew there.
Built in semicircular tiers on hillsides, ancient theaters were monumental, open-air structures that could seat thousands of spectators.
Theater first emerged as an art form in late 6th century BC Athens, where ancient playwrights competed for a prize during the annual festival of Dionysos--in whose cult the art originated.
The works of Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes were performed in the theater of Dionysos under the Acropolis.
Originally a terrace where spectators sat on the bare earth above a circular stage, it was rebuilt in stone during the 4th century BC and could sit up to 14,000 people.