Chess Quest : : Jiroft Game Boards

Jan Newton
November, 2005 (revised - January 15, 2007)

(click to enlarge)

Two "eagle" boards
from
"Persian Journal" article

On February 6, 2005, an article appeared in the online version of the "Persian Journal"(1) announcing fabulous archeological finds in Iran:

"Five ancient game boards have been identified among the items taken back from illegal excavators of the historical site of Jiroft, Halilrood area of Kerman, indicating that people of the area enjoyed playing games some five thousand years ago.

"Three of these game boards look like eagles, one looks like a scorpion with human head, and the other is a flat board, and all have 12 or 18 holes with similar sizes.

"The discovery site of the boards, Halilrood, is considered one of the richest archeological sites of the world where ancient objecs and architectural remains have been found by both archaeologists and looters. More than 700 sites have so far been identified in a 400 kilometer long area of the Halilrood River bank.

"According to head of the archeology team of Jiroft, Yusef Madjidzadeh, the holes in the boards, which count to 12 or 18 and their similarity in size indicating that they were most probably used as games by the ancient residents of the area.

"It is not yet sure how the boards were exactly used [...] however, the equal numbers of the holes and the holes all being in one size show that they were games most probably played with some sort of beads.

"Jean Perrot, a world-known archaeologist and a retired expert of Louvre Museum who has also studied the boards [...said that] boards similar to these, plus some beads, have previously been discovered in the historical sites of Mesopotamia, and their form and structure shows that ancient people used them as games to entertain themselves."

The Map

click to enlarge

(Image, right) shows the relative position of the Jiroft area along the course of the Halil River (also called Halil Roud, Halilroud and Halilrood) in modern-day Iran, located roughly midway between the Sumerian civilization to the west (between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers) and the Indus civilization to the east (in modern-day Pakistan). If the alleged dating of the Jiroft civilization is confirmed, it would have co-existed for a time with the Sumerian and Indus civilizations.

(click to enlarge)

A Game of Twenty Holes...

This Aseb board is from the Oriental Institute Museum, OIM 371, dated to c. 1570-1069 B.C.

As archeologist Jean Perrot noted in the Persian Journal article, the
lay-out of the "holes" on the"eagle" game boards is highly suggestive of the twenty squares game boards excavated by Woolley in Sumer, the so-called "Royal Game of Ur." The lay-out of the "holes" on the "eagle" boards is also identical to the lay-out of some twenty squares boards used in ancient Egypt, where the game, known as "Aseb," was sometimes put on the other side of case-style Senet boards. Notice that there is a block of 3x4 "holes" across the top part of the "eagle" game board (wings and chest) (an image from the "What Was Jiroft?" article, below) and, counting upward from the base of the tail, there are 8 "holes" that meet the bottom of the center row in the 3x4 block, for a total of 20 "holes." The Aseb board is laid out in a similar manner - a block of 3x4 playing spaces at the "top" of the board with a "tail" of 8 spaces trailingfrom the center row - total spaces: 20. This Aseb board is from the Oriental Institute Museum, OIM 371, dated to c. 1570-1069 B.C.

Counting the Holes...

The Persian Journal article noted: "Three of these game boards look like eagles, one looks like a scorpion with human head, and the other is a flat board, and all have 12 or 18 holes with similar sizes." (Emphasis added).

As already noted, the "holes" on each of the two "eagle" game boards depicted in the Persian Journal article produces a count of 4 on the left wing; 4 on the right wing; and 12 down the center of each bird; total: 20. How can such an obvious discrepancy be explained? These are the possibilities that occurred to me (there may be more): (1) There is a translation problem from the Persian into English; (2) The archaeologist was talking about some game boards other than those depicted in the Persian Journal article; (3) The archaeologist does not know how to count (I discounted this possibility). I looked for more images of Jiroft game boards to see if I could find any with 12 or 18 "holes."

Searching for Further Information...

Here's an image (left) of what may be the "scorpion with human head" game board mentioned in the Persian Journal article. The scorpion-man board has 16 "holes": 3 on the left arm; 3 on the right arm; 2 across the pectorals; 2 on the "belly;" and 6 on the "tail;" total: 16. This is not a game board with either 12 or 18 holes, so perhaps this is not the "scorpion with human head" board referred to in the Persian Journal article. It should be noted, however, that this board is identified as a Jiroft board in two separate sources.(2)

I also searched online for an image of the "flat" game board described in the Persian Journal article, but did not find any. My search was not in vain, though, because in reading many articles I learned a great deal about the Jiroft discoveries.

"What Was Jiroft?"(3) in the September/October 2004 online edition of Saudi Aramco World was very informative. The article includes an archive of several artifacts looted from the Jiroft area that were subsequently recovered by Iranian authorities. It also provides an overview about ancient Jiroft and its recent history. In this article I learned that Yusef Madjidzadeh, the archeologist in charge of the Jiroft excavations, considers Jiroft "...just as important and as extensive as Sumerian civilization." Some articles published by or from Iranian sources claim that writing first originated in the Jiroft area and then spread to Elam and Sumer(4), that Jiroft was a "lost paradise" and that Jiroft was the center of civilization in the ancient world.(5)

Other articles reported on the extensive illegal trade of antiquities from the Jiroft area. In fact, as the timeline (below) illustrates, illegally excavated artifacts from Jiroft were being offered for sale shortly after the first tomb was discovered, in January, 2001. A July, 2004 article reported that the Iranian government had made an official demand upon the government of Great Britain for the return of certain artifacts that had been confiscated by the British authorities.(6) "The Art Newspaper" reported in its online edition in January, 2004:

"A group of some 80 Jiroft artifacts was known to be on offer in London last year with a price tag of £600,000. An important group, seen by the author of this article, is now being offered for sale in a prominent London gallery."(7)

Note the reference to "last year" - meaning, then, sometime in 2003 that "some 80 Jiroft artifacts" had been offered for sale; and in January, 2004 an "important group" of Jiroft artifacts was also offered for sale.

The caption in the photograph of Jiroft artifacts from "The Art Newspaper" article suggests an extreme age for at least some of them: "The objects discovered at Jiroft date from between the fourth and third millennium BC." According to other online articles about Jiroft, however, artifacts have generally been dated from approximately 2500 to 2000 BCE, the mid-3rd millennium BCE.

Note the "eagle board" with "holes" in the image from "The Art Newspaper." It has 15 holes (not 12 or 18, and certainly not 20).

Excavations "officially" began in the Jiroft area in February, 2003, overseen by archeologist Yusef Madjidzadeh. He has been a busy man. In addition to overseeing the excavations, Madjidzadeh has held several press conferences and made himself available for quotes in articles about Jiroft discoveries. Either before excavations began or shortly thereafter, Dr. Madjidzadeh cooperated in the production of at least three magazine articles about Jiroft and, evidently in his spare time, he produced his own book on Jiroft after only six months on the job.

January, 2001:	Flooding in the southwestern Iranian province of Kerman reveals "an ancient tomb". Inside, a "hoard of objects" decorated with highly distinctive engravings of animals, mythological figures and architectural motifs is found. Jiroft is discovered.
Within a few weeks after the initial discovery in January, 2001:	"Officials from Iran's Ministry of Culture, vastly outnumbered by local people, watched hopelessly as thousands systematically dig up the area. The locals set up a highly organized impromptu system to manage the looting: each family was allocated an equal plot of six square-meters to dig." As far as I have been able to determine from online reports, it has not been explained how or why the "officials from Iran's Ministry of Culture" were in the area. Presumably, news of the discovery of the ancient tomb and it's "hoard of objects" had made its way to Tehran, and the central government authorities had dispatched these officials. Clearly, they were in no position to intervene to stop the wholesale looting that was going on around them. The most troubling question is why the national police were not rapidly mobilized to halt the looting that was taking place once (one assumes) the central government authorities were informed of what was happening by the Ministry of Culture officials.
January, 2001 - February, 2002:	Ongoing massive illegal excavations continue and export of artifacts from Jiroft area is taking place. Sometimes, entire Iranian villages are involved in the organized pillaging.
February, 2002:	The Cavalry arrives - 13 months late. Police from the central government arrive to secure the Jiroft area. Some 2,000 objects are confiscated from locals in Jiroft and other hoards of the ancient artifacts ready to be shipped overseas are seized in Tehran and at Bandar Abbas. At this point, as reported in various online news sources, organized looting had been going on for over a year before the central Iranian government moved in to stop it. It is not reported how many police or soldiers were involved in these raids, or how they managed to secure an area that, I later learned, extends for some 400 kilometers along the Halil River! No official explanation has been tendered, as far as I am aware, as to why it took so long for the central government to act to preserve what is arguably Iran's greatest national treasure or why, after more than a year of non-stop illegal excavations, a mere 2,000 objects were recovered by the Iranian police. We know from other reports, though, that many looted artifacts - and many fraudulent artifacts manufactured "a la Jiroft" - had, in the meantime, made their way to international markets and been sold to the highest bidders, amidst persistent rumors that certain well-placed Iranian officials were getting a "cut" of the lucrative trade.
February, 2003:	Approximately two years after the discovery of Jiroft, official excavations begin, overseen by Yusef Madjidzadeh. "A day late and a dollar short" is an American expression that fits the Jiroft story perfectly. Again, I question why it took two years after Jiroft was discovered for official excavations to get underway.
April, 2003:	Article about Jiroft discoveries appears in "Archeologia, No. 399, April, 2003.
August, 2003:	Six months after official excavations began, Madjidzadeh produces a book about Jiroft containing images of "some" of the illegally looted Jiroft artifacts that had been confiscated by the Iranian government. The book is released at a conference in Tehran ("Jiroft: The Earliest Oriental Civilization", Organization of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Tehran, 2003).(8) Jiroft "officially" comes to the notice of professional archaeologists and historians. By the official timeline, Madjidzadeh had only been on the job for some 6 months and yet he managed to produce a catalog on Jiroft artifacts! I suspect that this "catalog" had been a work in progress long before official excavations began. Note that it was not a catalog of documented finds from the officially sanctioned Jiroft excavations. It was, instead, a catalog of illegally excavated Jiroft artifacts that had been confiscated by the Iranian government. By definition, these artifacts (including the Jiroft game boards), ripped from their original archaeological context by treasure hunters, have no legitimate provenance; at best, we can only guess as to their age and original context. Basically, in terms of archaeology, they are worthless. But Dr. Madjidzadeh has no problem affixing dates to them anyway. This is bad archaeology. In the meantime, artifacts allegedly from Jiroft continued to be offered for sale in public auctions outside of Iran - fetching hundreds of thousands of euros. Who ultimately profited from the illegal sale of these antiquities (some of which are almost certain to have been frauds)?
October, 2003:	Full issue devoted to Jiroft discoveries appears in "Dossiers d'Archeologie, No. Double 287, October, 2003 (double issue exclusively devoted to Jiroft).
May, 2004:	"Rocking the Cradle", an article by Andrew Lawler, appears in "The Smithsonian" Magazine: "Discoveries made during a dig in southeastern Iran have convinced archaeologist Yusef Madjidzadeh that a desolate valley here was once home to a thriving - and literate - community. He calls it nothing less than 'the earliest Oriental civilization.' It's a dramatic assertion, but if he's right, it would mean the site, near Iran's Halil River, is older than Mesopotamia, a thousand miles to the west in what is today Iraq and long acknowledged as one of the earliest civilizations. Confirmation would overturn our understanding of the critical period when humans first began to live a literate urban life. It would also give sudden prominence to this forgotten corner of Iran." Madjidzadeh says that perhaps 100,000 artifacts were looted from Jiroft during one and one-half years and, as the article makes clear, the looting continues with little intervention by the Iranian government. Hmmm...100,000 less the 2,000 or so artifacts the authorities confiscated during the February, 2002 crack-down. What happened to the others?

The Forgeries...

- from Muscarella -

As if the systematic rape of ancient Iranian antiquities committed under the eyes of an Arab-centric government weren't bad enough, in August, 2005 a review of Madjidzadeh's book, Jiroft: The Earliest Oriental Civilization, by Oscar White Muscarella of the Metropolitan Museum of Art(9), was published in the online edition of the "Bulletin of the Asia Institute," in which Muscarella blew the lid off an even bigger problem. He summarized the events surrounding the discovery of the Jiroft area, the wholesale illegal looting of Jiroft artifacts by locals, and subsequent events; he also discussed the extremely lucrative trade in fraudulent antiquities. Then, Muscarella gave his impressions of several of the recovered looted artifacts that were published in Madjidzadeh's book.

Muscarella divided those artifacts into three categories: (a) probably ancient; (b) probably a forgery; and (c) "problem" pieces (in other words, perhaps real/perhaps not). Muscarella concluded that at least some of the artifacts featured in Madjidzadeh's book are probably forgeries!

He classified as a "problem" piece a "double-headed eagle plaque" (image, left, identified as Fig. 20. Catalogue, p. 123, Madjidzadeh), that reminds me of the "eagle" game boards in the Persian Journal article. (Note that Muscarella does not identify this artifact as a game board, but as a "plaque.") It has 16 "holes."

Muscarella also concluded that "three raptor plaques" (game boards?) published on pages 130, 131 and 132 of Madjidzadeh's book, are "probably ancient":

For the three raptor plaques, pp. 130, 131, 132, the only iconographical and formal parallels - almost exact, even to the use and position of inlays - are the 8th century AD Visi- and Ostro-gothic brooches, which naturally generate doubts (I anticipate articles on the proto-Sumerian Ostrogoths migrating [slowly] from their homeland, "Jiroft/Aratta.") The first two plaques are quite close, but all three derive from different hands. The raptors' heads and beard positions of the first two are close to those of pp. 92-94 (a masterpiece: perhaps the same motive occurs on a fragment of a vessel from Uruk where two snakes are attacked by two, not one as the authors states, raptors, Lindenmeyer and Martin 1993, 161 and pl. 68, no. 1102). These plaques are probably ancient, unique, artifacts (otherwise we have a really first-rate forger's work before us): but for the record, I shifted them from here to problem pieces, section "c," below, and back, several times.

Unfortunately, no images of the "raptor plaques" were published in Muscarella's online review, so I do not know what they look like, or whether they have "holes."

To recap, the Persian Journal article referred to five Jiroft game boards: "three of these game boards look like eagles, one looks like a scorpion with human head, and the other is a flat board, and all have 12 or 18 holes with similar sizes."

Description of Board	Number of "Holes"
Two (of three) "eagle boards depicted in Persian Journal article	20 "holes"
Third "eagle" board - unidentified	unsubstantiated
Human-headed scorpion, depicted in "What Was Jiroft" article, footnote 2, and January, 2004 "The Art Newspaper" article, footnote 7	16 "holes"
Flat board - see below	36 spaces (2 sections of 18 spaces each) formed by intertwined serpents

The Flat Game Board...

I located a "flat game board" recovered from illegally excavated Jiroft loot. I found it in an unexpected place: a catalog from the Asia Society's exhibit "The Art of Contest," held at the Society's museum in New York from October 14, 2004 through January 16, 2005.(10)

This board (image, right) was identified as one of the illegally excavated artifacts of Jiroft:

"A recent publication by Yusef Madjidzadeh has focused attention on the fruits of the substantial unofficial "excavations" that have been carried out in the city of Jiroft, about three hundred kilometers southeast of Kerman in southeastern Iran. These operations have concentrated mostly on a series of very extensive cemeteries dating from roughly the mid-third millennium BCE. Among the rich hauls from these graves are specimens of two types of stone gaming boards made of chlorite. One is a slight variant of the well-known ancient game of twenty squares, best known from the famous examples discovered in the Royal Cemetery at Ur by Sir Leonard Woolley. (Footnote omitted)

"The other type takes the form of a low table with simple legs some twelve centimeters in height.(11) The layout of this board consists of three parallel rows of twelve round playing cells, formed by the carved and inlaid coils of four snakes. In addition, there is an empty central space across the center of the board, which divides the playing track into two wings. The piece is certainly a gaming board, even though no dice or pieces have been identified during its recovery, and that is involves a race game seems inescapable."

I believe that this is the "flat board" referred to in the Persian Journal article, even though it contains many more than "12 or 18 "holes." This board consists of two sections of 18 "holes" each, for a total of 36. The 18 "holes" in each half of the board are created by two intertwined serpents. Each corner of the image contains close-ups of the four serpents' heads.(12) To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps Madjidzadeh was looking at half of this board and that's where he got "18 holes" from.

Footnotes:

1. The Persian Journal article was found at http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_5630.shtml; as of January 7, 2007, it is still available online.
2. "What Was Jiroft?", Volume 55, Number 5, September/October 2004, http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200405/what.was.jiroft..htm. Click on the "View artifacts" box for a selection of miniatures, that includes the human-headed scorpion game board. What appears to be an identical image of the scorpion-man game board was also in "The Art Newspaper" article, see footnote 7, below.
3. See footnote 2.
4. I do not recall that any of the online Jiroft articles discussed evidence for proto-writing in other civilizations from the same time-frame, such as Egypt, Sumer, China and Indus. As I understand the current state of research, proto-writing may date back to c. 4000 BCE in Egypt, and possibly to that same date in Sumer. A claim that writing originated in the Jiroft area would have to trump that date, but so far there is no supporting evidence.
5. The news service of The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies (CAIS) recently published some comments by Madjidzadeh:
Jiroft is the Missing Link of Ancient Civilizations: Madjidzadeh, 13 January 2007, http://www.cais-soas.com/News/2007/January2007/13-01.htm:

LONDON, (CAIS) -- Iranian archaeologist Professor Yusef Madjidzadeh believes that Jiroft is the missing link of the chain of civilization and says it has such a significant civilization that he would be proud to be named an honorary citizen of the ancient site.

In a seminar entitled "Jiroft, the Cradle of Oriental Civilization" held in Kerman on Thursday, he said, "The history of civilization in Jiroft dates back to 2700 BCE and the third millennium civilization is the missing link of the chain of civilization which archaeologists have long sought.

"We do not deny the Mesopotamian civilization, but we believe that the Jiroft civilization is of equal importance to the Mesopotamian. The only difference is that the Mesopotamian civilization had cultural continuity while the Jiroft civilization suffered from ups and downs for natural reasons. Thus it emerged in a certain period and was buried at a later time."

Located next to the Halil-Rud River in the southern province of Kerman, Jiroft came into the spotlight nearly five years ago when reports of extensive illegal excavations and plundering of the priceless historical items of the area by local people surfaced.

Since 2002, five excavation seasons have been carried out at the Jiroft site under the supervision of Professor Madjidzadeh, leading to the discovery of a ziggurat made of more than four million mud bricks dating back to about 2200 BCE.

Many ancient ruins and interesting artifacts have been excavated by archaeologists at the Jiroft ancient site, which is known as the "archeologists' lost heaven".

After the numerous unique discoveries in the region, Madjidzadeh declared Jiroft to be the cradle of art. Many scholars questioned the theory due to the fact that no writings had yet been discovered at the site, but shortly afterwards his team discovered inscriptions at Konar-Sandal Ziggurat, which caused experts to reconsider their views on Jiroft.

During the seminar, Madjidzadeh elaborated on the latest theories about ancient Jiroft while showing slides of a number of artifacts discovered in the region.

"The artifacts show that the region had advanced industries and art. The bas-reliefs and engravings on the artifacts show that the region had at least a 500-year history of art before the objects were created," Madjidzadeh said.

He has held regular programs to educate the local people on the importance of ancient Jiroft in order to discourage illegal excavations and smuggling of artifacts from the region.

"Almost all of the people who once were the smugglers of these artifacts are now helping teams of archaeologists working in the region," Madjidzadeh explained.

Last December, he suggested that archaeologists use the term Proto-Iranian instead of Proto-Elamite for the pre-cuneiform script in use at several sites. He argued that the inscriptions recently discovered at Konar-Sandal and at some other ancient sites in Iran are older than the oldest inscriptions, like Inshushinak, found at Elamite sites.

6. "Iran Pressed UK to Probe Jiroft Ransacked Artifacts," Netiran, July 14, 2004, http://www.netiran.com/?fn=nwt(609,28).
7. "The Art Newspaper," article by Edek Osser, January, 2004: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11491. The link to this article no longer works, the site has gone to a "pay to view" archived articles. However, I did print out the article when I was doing my initial research for this feature. If you want further information, please contact me.
8. "Jiroft kohantarin tamaddon-e sharq = Jiroft the earliest oriental civilization." Tehran: Vezarat-e Farhang va ershad-e eslami, 2003/1382, 248 pages, ill., cartes, phot.; 30 cm. cote IEI, AA 1150, information from http://www.ivry.cnrs.fr/~iranweb/Bibliotheque/Data2003.htm. According to Muscarella (see footnote 9), this book was first published in June, 2003.
9. "Jiroft and 'Jiroft-Aratta'," Oscar White Muscarella, Bulletin of the Asia Institute, August, 2005, http://www.bulletinasiainstitute.org/vol15.html, (PDF file). The online version of the Bulletin of the Asia Institute can be found at http://www.bulletinasiainstitute.org.
10. The Asian Games: The Art of Contest website can be found at http://www.asiasociety.org/arts/asiangames/. The image of the flat game board from Jiroft was scanned from the exhibit catalog's article in Section 7, "The World Conqueror Emerges: Backgammon in Persia", by Irving Finkel, pages 89-95, Asian Games: The Art of Contest, edited by Colin Mackenzie and Irving Finkel, 2004, ISBN 0-87848-099-4.

11. Madjidzadeh, "Jiroft," pgs. 108, 192, as cited in Asian Games catalog, p. 95. Ulrich Schadler and Anne Elizabeth Vaturi presented a paper featuring this board at a Symposium hosted by "Board Games Studies" in Oxford, England, on April 30, 2005. The board is also mentioned in an online article by David Parlett on the history of backgammon: http://www.gameaccount.com/backgammon/popHistory.do;jsessionid=F028115489E7AC4D87340D168F001B03

"If this story (repeated with variations in an 11th-century Arabic "Book of Kings") establishes at least literary credentials for the Persian origin of Backgammon, it is perhaps reinforced by some recently discovered archaeological remains from Jiroft in south-eastern Iran. These include a low table whose surface is a gaming board consisting of three parallel rows of twelve circular playing cells formed by the coils of four snakes. An empty space in the centre, dividing the track into two wings, gives the whole thing the appearance of Duodecim Scripta, the three-row Roman ancestor of Alea/Tabula. If its tentative dating to the mid third millennium BC is accepted, it looks very much as if the ancestor of Backgammon goes back some 5000 years."

12. Compare the Jiroft flat game board to the wooden board with intertwined serpent design forming 20 playing spaces (laid out in a pattern identical to the "Royal Game of Ur" boards discovered by Woolley) discovered at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the "Burnt City" in far southwestern Iran, near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan), dated to c. 2400 BCE. See "The Serpent Game Board of Iran: Much Ado About - Nothing...,"   http://www.goddesschess.com/chessquest/twentysquares.html.

Some Articles about Jiroft:

"Rocking the Cradle", by Andrew Lawler, Smithsonian Magazine, May, 2004, "In Iran, an archaeologist is racing to uncover a literate Bronze Age society he believes predates ancient Mesopotamia..." http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues04/may04/iran.html
"Iran Presses UK to Probe Jiroft Ransacked Artifacts," Netiran, July 14, 2004, http://www.netiran.com/?fn=nwt(609,28)
"What Was Jiroft?", Saudi Aramco World, September/October 2004, Volume 55, Number 5, http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200405/what.was.jiroft..htm
"Five ancient game pieces discovered among artifacts illegally excavated in Jiroft," MehrNews.com, February 5, 2005, http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=155236
"Jiroft and 'Jiroft-Aratta'", a review article by Oscar White Muscarella, in Volume 15 of the Bulletin of the Asia Institute, published August, 2005, http://www.bulletinasiainstitute.org/vol15.html
"Jiroft: A Lost Kingdom of...?" http://ewas.us/jiroft.htm, by Ewa Wasilewska, Ph.D., Associate Professor/Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of Utah
Magazine articles about Jiroft not available online:
"Iran:Decouverte d'une brilliante civilisation; Un tresor culturel vieux de 5000 ans", Archeologia, No. 399, April, 2003
"Jiroft: Fabuleuse decouverte en Iran," Dossiers d'Archeologie, No. Double 287, October, 2003
Conventions:
Dr. Madjidzadeh's name has been spelled in various ways in online and printed sources. For the sake of consistency, I have spelled his name throughout this article as "Yusef Madjidzedeh" and changed it as necessary.