Communitarian neighbourhoods and religious minorities in Iran: A comparative analysis, in: Iranian Studies, n° 40 (2007), 5, p. 593-603. (original) (raw)

This paper analyses the urban insertion of some Iranian religious minorities, focusing on three communities, all of which lived in separated neighborhoods: Armenians of Isfahan, Jews of Shiraz, and Zoroastrians of Yazd. After a discussion on the link between non-Muslims' spatial and social isolation and Iranian culture and Shiism, the paper goes on to describe the organisation of these neighborhoods during the recent centuries and the recent -- and contrastive -- evolutions of two of them: while Zoroastrians view their quarter like a humiliating ghetto, of which they wish to go out, Armenians are proud of it, and try up till now to jealously preserve their isolation.