Historic sites are mostly located in far-off places and the thefts are committed at night.

Many historic monuments and ancient hills in Kermanshah province have been damaged in the course of illegal excavations, ISNA reported.
Security manager of Kermanshah Cultural Heritage and Tourism Department, Arash Shambayati, explained that the plundered sites include the Arsacid Lojivaran Hill, Sassanid monuments and prehistoric caves some of which have not been yet registered as national heritage.
"Last year's illegal digging in Lojivaran Hill led to the discovery of scores of Arsacid coins, which were all stolen away by smugglers and excavators," he recalled, adding the department had called on the police forces in the city of Bisotoun to help safeguard the ancient hill against further pillage.
He added that illegal excavators had not been yet identified. "Most of these sites are located in far-off places away from the city and the thefts are committed using the dark of the night," Shambayati elaborated.
Locals in Sirkooh village claim that illegal excavators have looted a historic tombstone, and have also dug nine deep wells near a historic fortress to unearth historic relics.
Another village raided this month by smugglers is Rijab. According to locals, the raiders were armed and used metal detectors. The historic Abdollah bin Omar Mosque, one of the oldest mosques of the Islamic era, is located in this village.
The department has formulated special volunteer groups comprising local inhabitants to safeguard the monuments. "However, since the job is voluntary and no special privileges have been considered for the members, they cannot be obliged to cooperate or provide us with information," Shambayati added.
The raided sites are not registered in the cultural heritage list--a fact which makes it difficult to preserve them.

Mirdamad, the son of Mohammad Baqer Damad, also known by the titles Borhaneddin, Damad, Seyyed Afazel and Shamseddin, was a distinguished philosopher of his time. No reliable information is available about his birth date, but another scholar Seyyed Tabatabaei has asserted Mirdamad was born in 1548 in Astarabad, Gorgan.
Mirdamad is believed to have spent his childhood in Mashhad learning sciences. Despite his young age, he read indigestible books of philosophy such as Avicenna's "Shafa" and "Esharat." He later authored works in philosophy and other sciences and started teaching in Qazvin. He educated many students some of whom became prominent scholars later on, with the most famous being Molla Sadra.
According to historical documents, he was the vanguard of sciences of his time. He was an eminent scholar not only in philosophy, but also in terminology, Arabic, composition and eloquence as well as in Hadith (tradition), jurisdiction, mathematics, and Qur'anic interpretation.
After residing in Qazvin for a while, he went to Isfahan where he was warmly received by the Safavid king Shah Abbas I and his son Shah Safi.
Mirdamad traveled to the holy city of Najaf in Iraq with Shah Safi several times before he died en route to Najaf in 1647.
He enjoyed a high social clout and recognition--a situation which earned him the respect of Shah Abbas and his royal court.

Preservation of Bibi Shahrbanoo Mountain, Seljukid Citadel and Rashkan Fortress was placed high on the agenda of the cultural heritage and tourism working group of Tehran Governor General's Office, ILNA reported.
Addressing the working group's third session, deputy head of Iran Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization for preservation and restoration affairs, Qadir Afroond, said, "The three monuments have been damaged due to the presence of cement factories in Rey, south of Tehran. Immediate action is required to tackle the awkward situation, before it leads to the destruction of the historic region."
Afroond noted that the Seljukid Citadel and the Rashkan Fort used to be the seat of government during the Al-e Booyeh reign, adding "the historic relics are counted as highly valuable monuments of the Islamic era in Tehran."
He recalled that the Rey region rose to fame during 1934-36, thanks to extensive studies by American archeologist, Schmitt, in the area. However, with Schmitt's death, his reports on Rey remained unpublished forever.

Espand burning, believed to rid people of evil, is largely practiced across Iran.

Ferdows city in South Khorasan province is getting prepared for the country's first-ever Espand Festival in early September in an effort to revive local cultural traditions, said ISNA.
Head of Ferdows Culture and Islamic Guidance Department, Hamid Yousefi, said the festival would be held in cooperation with the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Department and the Governor's Office.
Yousefi added the festival would include making and burning Espand, as well as poetry, painting and photography about the traditional ritual.
Espand burning, largely practiced across Iran, is one of the main local rituals in South Khorasan, especially in Ferdows.
Espand or Esfand is the common Persian name for Peganum harmala, a perennial shrubby herb in the Zygophyllaceae or Caltrop family.
The herb seed is burned on charcoal to rid children of the evil eye throughout the area once covered by the Persian empire.
Espand seed is the richest natural source of two alkaloids, which are members of a class of drugs called Mono Amine Oxidase Inhibitors that have been used in the treatment of clinical depression and, in larger doses, to produce psychotropic effects. In moderate doses, they produce a feeling of well-being and contentment.
Espand seeds are dropped on red-hot charcoal, where they make a popping noise and give off a great deal of fragrant smoke. A rhyming spell is chanted and the smoke is swirled around the heads of children or others in a circular pattern to protect them from evil.

About 300 chain bookstores named Ketbashahr will be established by the end of the fourth development plan (2005-2010), deputy head of Ketabshahr Company said.
Ebadollah Qanbari added one such entity would be established in every city to ease public access to latest in the book market, IRNA reported.
"Close to four billion rials has been allocated to the project this year (started March 21) which will be used to create 30 bookstores," he said.
The official further said 12 chain stores had already been inaugurated in Bandar Abbas, Rasht, Bandar Anzali, Mashhad, Qazvin, Tabriz, Zahedan, Khorram Abad and Bojnourd.
He estimated the cost of launching every store at 350 million rials.
Praising the new cultural initiative, Qanbari said the priority would go to disadvantaged provinces and cities.
"Accessing latest cultural products including books and software within a short time and eliminating the need to travel to Tehran for purchasing the required books are the advantages of these stores," he said, explaining that the applicants can place an order and receive what they need within 48 hours to one week.
The project is sponsored by the Islamic Propagation Organization, he said, explaining that 1,317 books have been published by publications affiliated to the organization in the current year on various topics including religion, science, literature, history and culture.

The older central district of the city of Yazd (Photo by Hassan Ghaffari)

Mirza Koochak Khan Jangali

Gilan Cultural Heritage and Tourism Department will disburse 110 million rials to Mirza Koochak Khan Jangali's Cultural Research Foundation to fund renovation the Mirza Khoochak Khan residence, head of the department told CHN.
Mojtaba Naqavi referred to initial decisions to dole out an amount of 250 million rials to the project, "of which 140 million rials have already been paid to the foundation."
He added that the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology had also allocated 500 million rials for restoring the house.
Located in Rasht, Gilan province, Mirza Koochak Khan residence is undergoing the final stage of restoration.
Mirza Koochak Khan was born in 1880 in Rasht. He is celebrated as a national hero who sacrificed all he had to stand against the influence of foreign powers in Iran. He was one of the comrades for the Constitution Movement and later founded the Islamic Union Population. He died in 1921.

Biblical-era archeological remains, the Chinese island of Macau and a war-ravaged Bosnian bridge were among 17 cultural sites added to the UN's World Heritage list last week, abc.net.au reported.
UNESCO, the UN environmental and cultural body, also added a Belgian renaissance printing house, archeological findings in Bahrain dating from 2300 BC, the Albanian Ottoman town of Gjirokastra, and Greek and Roman era tombs in Italy.
The new sites, added at a meeting of UNESCO's World Heritage committee in South Africa's port city of Durban, bring the global list of cultural sites to 628.
Bosnia-Herzegovina grabbed a spot on the list for the first time with its historic town of Mostar, built as an Ottoman frontier town and revamped during the 19th and 20th century.
The town's Old Bridge--which includes pre-Ottoman, eastern Ottoman, Mediterranean and western European features--was destroyed in the Balkans war in the 1990s but recently rebuilt.
Also added to the list were prehistoric settlement mounds in Israel containing substantial remains of cities with biblical connections, as well as Iron Age water collecting systems, the committee said in a statement.
Bahrain also made the list for the first time with remains showing continuous human presence from 2300 BC to the 16th century.
Chinese island Macau, under Portuguese administration until 1999, was added to the list for its mix of Eastern and Western influences.
Cuba's colonial town of Cienfuegos, founded in 1819, gained a place as an example of new ideas of modernity, hygiene and order in urban planning in 19th century Latin America.
UNESCO extended five existing sites including India's colonial-era mountain railways and four buildings by Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi.
The committee added seven new natural sites earlier in the week, including the world's oldest and biggest meteorite crater, part of Japan's northernmost island and two Norwegian fjords.

Egypt demanded that institutions in Britain and Belgium return two pharaonic reliefs it says were chipped off tombs and stolen 40 years ago, threatening to end their archeological work here if they refuse, China Daily reported.
The 4,400-year-old reliefs, taken from two tombs uncovered in 1965, are currently at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Britain and the Catholic University of Brussels. A request has been sent to both seeking their return, Culture Minister Farouq Hosni said in a statement.
The demand was the latest in a series of attempts by Egypt to recover ancient treasures that were taken out of the country, either through theft or what the Egyptians have termed "imperialism." Egypt said it had approached United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to intervene on its behalf to lobby for the return of the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, the bust of Nefertiti at Berlin's Egyptian Museum and three other artifacts.
Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said he would cut off the Catholic University's excavation mission at a site in Deir al-Barsha, near the southern town of Minya, if the relief was not returned, and would suspend the Fitzwilliam Museum's "scientific relationship" with archeologists working here if the British institution did not cooperate.
The Fitzwilliam Museum said no one could immediately comment on the report. There was also no immediate comment from the Catholic University.
The reliefs came from two tombs uncovered in 1965 in a necropolis next to the Stepped Pyramid at Saqqara, outside Cairo. A third relief was returned to Egypt from the Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels last month.

The noise of the passing cars had filled up the whole house, disturbing his peace. Agitated, he took the easel, and placed it in front of the other window. Hence, a mountain and its summit started emerging on the canvas, with a river flowing down its slope. He then embellished the scene with a thin fern bush which was being woken by the call of the spring.

More than 30 million people in the world are learning Chinese as a foreign language through various ways, said a Chinese language teaching official.
"With China's rapidly growing economy and increasing international exchanges, value of the Chinese language is rising constantly," Ma Jianfei, deputy director of the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (NOTCFL), said, Xinhuanet.com reported.
"Learning Chinese is gaining a tool to engage in friendly exchanges with 1.3 billion Chinese people and the key to enter an important and vast market in the world," he said on the eve of the World Chinese Conference.
According to the office, more than 2,500 universities in 100 countries are teaching Chinese as a foreign language.
The Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan and France boast the biggest number of learners of Chinese as a foreign language in the world, judging from the number of participants in the Chinese language proficiency test.
Ma said in the United States, the number of Chinese language learners is growing the fastest compared with learners of other foreign languages.
In Asia, according to the office, there are 1.6 million Chinese language learners in the areas of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Chinese language is most popular in France among European countries, with the language also gaining popularity in other European countries.
The number of Chinese language learners is growing fast in Africa. A major TV company in South Africa has begun to broadcast Chinese language teaching program to the whole country.