مجله

What it means

مجله (majalleh) is the Persian word for magazine. It covers any periodical that is not a daily newspaper: weeklies, monthlies, quarterlies, glossy fashion titles, dense literary reviews, and academic journals. The distinguishing line against روزنامه (ruzname, newspaper) is frequency and format: a روزنامه comes out every day on thin newsprint, a مجله comes out less often on better paper.

Iranians buy magazines at the same kiosks that sell newspapers (روزنامه‌فروشی, ruzname-forushi), and the same shelves carry everything from political weeklies to motherhood monthlies to satire magazines that have survived multiple closures.

The real Iranian magazines

زن روز (Zan-e Ruz, Woman of the Day), launched 1965, is the country’s longest-running women’s magazine. دنیای تصویر (Donya-ye Tasvir, World of Image) covers cinema. نگاه نو (Negah-e No, New Look) is a heavyweight literary and intellectual quarterly. هفت (Haft, Seven) was the influential cinema-and-arts monthly edited by Masoud Mehrabi until its 2009 closure. تجارت فردا (Tejarat-e Farda, Business Tomorrow) is the leading business weekly. ایران‌شناسی (Iranshenasi) is the academic Persian-studies journal.

Satire magazines have a complicated life in Iran: توفیق (Towfigh) ran from the 1920s through 1971 and shaped Iranian political humor; گل آقا (Gol Agha), founded 1990 by Kioumars Saberi Foumani, was the post-revolution successor and the most widely read humor magazine until Saberi’s death in 2004.

How to use it

in majalleh har mah dar miad.

This magazine comes out every month.

این مجله هر ماه در میاد.

mamanam abone-ye majalle-ye zan-e ruz-e.

My mom is a subscriber to Zan-e Ruz magazine.

مامانم آبونه مجله زن روز است.

too in majalleh ye maqaleh-ye khub darbare-ye sinama-ye iran khundam.

I read a good article about Iranian cinema in this magazine.

توی این مجله یه مقاله خوب درباره سینمای ایران خوندم.

Where it comes from

Majalleh is Arabic-origin, from the root j-l-l (ج ل ل, glory, grandeur), which also gives جلال (jalāl, splendor) and جلیل (jalil, exalted). In classical Arabic مجلة meant a book or scroll of importance, a bound collection of writings. As the press developed in the nineteenth-century Arab world, the word was repurposed to name the periodical magazine, and Persian borrowed it in that modern sense. The doubled ل is preserved in spelling but pronounced lightly. Compare to روزنامه (ruzname), a pure Persian compound for the daily newspaper, set against مجله as the Arabic loan for the periodical magazine.

In our voice

The Iranian magazine scene is smaller than it was in the 1970s, squeezed by economics and by licensing pressure, but it is still alive. Buying a مجله is one of the small, ordinary acts of cultural participation in Iran. The titles people pick reveal a lot about who they are: the cinema crowd reads one set, the women’s-rights crowd another, the conservative families a third.

References

• Dehkhoda, مجله
• Vajehyab, مجله