This study illuminates the 2,500-year social history of sexual relations in Iran. Marriage, temporary marriage, prostitution, and homosexuality are all discussed, as well as the often unintended result of these relations--sexually transmitted diseases.

A Social History of Sexual Relations in Iran uses travelers’ accounts, Iranian and international archival sources, as well as government data, to bring together, in detail, and within the context of Iranian culture and religion, the nature, variety, and problems of sexual relations in Iran over the ages.

Finally, Willem Floor summarizes the issues that Iranian society faces today--which are not dissimilar to that of many other industrial nations--the challenge to the male claim to dominance over women; change in the age of marriage; premarital sex; rising divorce rates; rising promiscuity; prostitution; sexually transmitted diseases; homosexuality; and street children.

Abbas Qoli Khan Bakikhanov was an Azerbaijani writer, historian journalist, linguist, poet and philosopher born in 1794 near Baku. Bakikhanov's Bagh-e Eram is the first work about the Caucasus written by a native son, which critically assesses and analyzes the history of this multi-ethnic region. Furthermore, his book provides a great deal of detailed information about the Caucasus of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries not previously available.