TEHRAN -- Iranian scholar Mohammad Baqaii Makan has recently completed a comparative study of cultural institutions in 10 countries in Asia and Europe.
“From Golabdarreh to Hong Kong” is the outcome of his visits to the countries, he said in a press release on Sunday.
“The cultural and social conditions in Iran have been compared with the developed nations in the book, which enjoys a fictional structure,” he added.
Press, new agencies, universities, libraries, and some other institutions in the cultural fields have been scrutinized in this book.
Baqaii Makan said that the quality of the survey is more important than the number of the countries that were studied in the book.
“For example, the book shows how a country such as Hong Kong with a population of seven million enjoys a library holding over 12 million books while the Iran National Library and Archives, which is Iran’s largest library, has only 1.2 million books,” he said.
“From Golabdarreh to Hong Kong” will soon be published by the Yadavaran publishing company.
Golabdarreh is a tourist resort located in the northeast of Tehran.
Baqaii Makan is the author of “Iqbal and Ten Other Luminaries”, a comparative study of the thoughts and ideas of Pakistani poet Sir Muhammad Iqbal and those of ten other luminaries including Molana Rumi, Homer, Hermann Hesse, Suhrawardi, Sanaii and Nietzsche.
In 2006, he received the Tamgha-e-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s National Medal of Honor for his studies on Iqbal.
MMS/YAW
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