We are grateful and appreciative for the sincere, diligent, wholehearted, and selfless cooperation of one and one of our valued colleagues, friends, and esteemed researchers with the journal “Zarrīn Fām.” Although, last year, our country, our people, and our homeland were gripped by severe and harsh difficulties caused by the aggression, invasion, and violation perpetrated by the domineering, runaway, expansionist rulers and the American-Zionist terrorist forces, the unceasing effort, perseverance, and continuous follow-through of our friends and colleagues in the office of the journal “Zarrīn Fām” is truly worthy of praise and gratitude. They not only prevented the printing and publication of the journal from coming to a halt, but also published it in an even more refined, edited, and ornamented form than before—by means of the learned, illuminating, useful, and instructive articles of our scholar friends—making “Zarrīn Fām” even more “Zarrīn Fām.” And now, as the fourth issue of “Zarrīn Fām” passes before our eager, devoted, and knowledge-loving audience, the outcome of our friends’ splendid endeavors is what has been achieved through their steadfast collaboration in the journal’s office.
A living, ongoing, dynamic world of history, culture, society, and life remains amid the turning points and dangerous twists and trials of history, and within the crucible of hard, fearsome, and fiery days; it does not step back. It endures—solid, steadfast, resilient, courageous, steadfastly duty-bound, self-sacrificing, hopeful, creative, innovative, and judicious. It is created anew and from the beginning, for it re-creates, re-calls, and gives coherence to itself in such a stirring and powerful way that it must be born again—and thus it is.
Histories, cultures, societies, and living, enduring worlds are not born in desolation; nor do they live and persist in desolation; nor does their continuity exist in desolation. They have not arisen from nothingness. Their hands have been filled with civil and spiritual legacies on which they have relied. They are full of tradition and the heritage of art and artistry, fed by their own sources and springs. Societies, worlds, and real identities are such—authentic, genuine, and alive. Cultures and rooted, source-based identities are such. Societies and worlds that are connected to the authentic roots and sources of their traditions, to their eternal, spiritual, and exalted memories, have remained faithful. Within their very core and context, civil legacies and spiritual, exalted traditions flow. They are connected to their sources; they have preserved, firmly and securely, the threads of spiritual connection between themselves and their roots and sources. Iranian history, culture, society, and world are such a society and such a world. Without any exaggeration or embellishment, in the very heart of the fertile crescent of Western Asia and the auspicious eastern Mediterranean, Iran and Iranians are heirs and guardians of one of the oldest, most enduring, and richest reservoirs of inexhaustible treasures and stores belonging to human society and the human world—and they are counted as such.
The Persian language is one of the mediators, examples, and proofs of this invaluable heritage: an immense treasure and an inexhaustible store of civil and spiritual wealth in the living history, culture, society, and world of Iran. This language is rich, profound, and inexhaustible: in the realm of thought, philosophy, wisdom, reason, art, poetry, literature, ethics, manners of life, gnosis, illuminationism, the chivalric tradition, manly virtue, epic, and clever wit; and also in the realm of arranging society and weaving the knots of the Iranian world together; like a prophetic nation, like a living, dynamic, enduring, enduring, ongoing, and creative society and world. Like a long-standing and enduring life-environment and an ancient world—especially, and in the strictest sense, Iran as a creative, rich, and prosperous land in the golden age, and in the light of the devotion and spiritual meaning of Islam and the Qur’an—such a life-environment and such a world has been, is, and is considered.
In the sphere of architecture as well, Iranians, in the art of creating spaces, have advanced—within the realm of ancientness and continuity, rootedness and precedence, richness, variety, and innovation of all kinds of architectural styles, particularly in the sphere of sacred and religious architecture in the age of Islam and the Qur’an—by shaping, composing, ornamenting, and adorning those kind and “graceful,” “beautiful,” exalted, and magnificent sacred spaces, pushing forward toward their wonder and miraculousness. In the realm of the art of carpet weaving, too, Iranians have been outstanding creative artists and innovators of music and symphony. We hardly find and recognize any civilization, nation, society, world, or history of this sort—where Iranian history, culture, society, and world, especially the Iranian society and world in the golden age and the brilliant era of Islam and the Qur’an, were more artistically intertwined with color than by Iranian artists and Iranians themselves, who—through creative, innovative, tasteful, and eye-catching color compositions—have created colors and discovered and re-created the enigmatic secrets of colors in music and symphony.In short, the responsibility that our friends, colleagues, and fellow countrymen researchers have undertaken in the journal “Zarinfam” to introduce the hidden aspects, dimensions, and layers of this part of the inexhaustible storehouse and reserves of civilizational and spiritual heritage of human history, culture, society, and the world is certainly very grave and very weighty. May their efforts and strength be greater. Amen!
With very great thanks,
Hekmatollah Mallasalehi
May 25, 2026