The University of Delaware’s Rudolph Matthee, a noted scholar of Middle Eastern history, is already the author of four award-winning books focused on Iran.

Now at work on two more books, the John A. Munroe and Dorothy L. Munroe Chair in History is conducting research for those projects in a setting he calls “as close to heaven as you can get for intellectual pursuits.”

Matthee is spending the semester as the Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro Member in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey.

The institute, a private academic institution that is independent of Princeton University, has a permanent faculty of about 30 scholars and accepts about 200 visiting scholars a year. Those visiting scholars apply to one of the institute’s four schools with a proposal that describes the research they plan to conduct while in residence.

Matthee, who also spent the 2002-03 academic year as an institute scholar, said the opportunity to work there offers numerous benefits.

“Once you’re accepted as a scholar, you’re there to just do your work,” he said. “There are weekly luncheons where one of the fellows gives a presentation, and there are seminars and a lot of other opportunities to interact and share ideas. It’s a very international group, so that also helps broaden your outlook.”

Matthee is working on a book that will explore the ways in which Iranians have formed their sense of national identity. His focus in particular is on the 18th century, a chaotic period when Iran was in the hands of tribal warlords while other nations were advancing politically.

“Iranians went into this period as a glorious empire and came out of it having fallen behind other nations, most notably the Russians and the British,” nations they had never considered their equal, let alone superior to them, Matthee said. He hopes to help answer how the Iranians experienced their rapid descent from a belief that their country was the envy of the world to being humiliated by upstart imperialists and how this shaped their collective sense of identity.

Iran is an ancient and rich civilization whose people have a strong sense of history, Matthee said.

He writes in his book proposal that modern Iranian nationalism centers on a “narrative of perseverance and regeneration in the face of loss and defeat.” But it also harkens back to pre-Islamic times, and in particular to Cyrus the “Great,” the Persian king who granted freedom of religion to his subjects.

The result is a self-view that blends a nostalgic sense of misunderstood uniqueness with universal humanism, Matthee said. He writes that his book should help explain the paradox of modern Iran: “a country perpetually ‘at war with the world,’ forever suspicious of the motives of foreigners, yet open to outside influence like no other society in the Middle East.”

Matthee is also conducting research for a second book, which will explore the Ottoman Empire’s religious and territorial threat to Western Europe in the 15th through 18th centuries and the role of Iran in helping to hold off Ottoman aggression.

Most historians of the period have examined it from the perspective of Rome, Vienna or Paris, Matthee said, and have overlooked Iran’s significant diplomatic and military role in seeking to forge an anti-Ottoman coalition.

More about Matthee and the IAS

Matthee, who joined the UD faculty in 1993, is a professor of women and gender studies, in addition to his chaired appointment in the Department of History.

He earned his doctorate in Islamic Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.

He is the author of The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730; The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500-1900; Persia in Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan; and, with Willem Floor and Patrick Clawson, The Monetary History of Iran: From the Safavids to the Qajars.

Matthee received the 2006 Albert Hourani Book Prize, awarded by the Middle East Studies Association of North America; the Saidi Sirjani Award, 2004-2005, awarded by the International Society for Iranian Studies; the British-Kuwaiti Friendship Book Prize, 2012; and, twice, the prize for best foreign-language book on Iran from the Iranian Ministry of Culture.

The Institute for Advanced Study was founded in 1930 to support fundamental research in the sciences and humanities. One of its first faculty members was Albert Einstein, who had an active role in developing the IAS and remained on the faculty until his death in 1955.

The four schools that make up the IAS today focus on historical studies, mathematics, natural sciences and social sciences.

Each year, about 60 percent of the institute’s visiting scholars come from outside the United States.