Wine in Iranian History: From the Public Sphere to Private Enjoyment

Rudi Matthee, Unidel Professor of Middle Eastern History, University of Delaware

BA and MA in Arabic and Persian Language and Literature, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands; study in Iran, 1976-77, and Egypt, 1981-83; Ph.D. in Islamic Studies, UCLA, 1991. Taught at the University of Denver, 1991-93 and, since 1993, at the University of Delaware. Author of The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (Cambridge UP, 1999), recipient of prize for best non-Persian language book on Iranian history, from the Iranian Ministry of Culture; honorable mention British-Kuwaiti Friendship prize for best book on the Middle East published in UK; The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500-1900 (Princeton UP, 2005), recipient of 2006 Albert Hourani Book Prize, from the Middle East Studies Association of North America; and of the Saidi Sirjani Award for best book on Iran in 2004-05, from the International Society for Iranian Studies); Iqtisad va siyasat-i khariji-yi `asr-i Safavi, trans. and ed. Hasan Zandiyeh (Tehran, 2008); and Persia in Crisis: The Decline of the Safavids and the Fall of Isfahan, forthcoming, I.B. Tauris, 2010. Co-editor of Iran and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Nikki R. Keddie (Mazda, 2000); of Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics (University of Washington Press, 2002); and of Portugal and Iran in the Safavid period, forthcoming, Peeters, Louvain, 2010. Published some forty articles on early modern Iranian history. Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 2002-03. President of the Association of Persian-Speaking Societies, 2003-2005 and 2009-11. Member editorial board of IJMES; consulting editor for Encyclopaedia Iranica.