Introduction: leading literary – on Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak’s scholarship and service and about this collection

In the last three decades, concepts like Iran and Iranica, Persian (both in the sense of a language and in that of an ethnic group) and the Persian-speaking world, have undergone historic changes. Many “contexts,” “reciprocal influences,” and “cultural relations” that were invisible to the world at large a generation ago have now burst into our view with explosive intensity.