BPlus Research
2024-2026
Research | Original Script Development
Neshat Shirazi & Pedram Vafadari
A series of research-based scripts developed for the BPlus YouTube channel in collaboration with Ali Bandari. The projects explore different questions in Iranian history, art, philosophy, and political culture, often by placing familiar subjects in a wider historical or comparative context.
Our contribution to these projects consisted of research and the development of the original scripts. The published videos were subsequently edited and adapted by BPlus as part of its editorial process.
From Renaissance Italy to the Safavid Court
2024
Research | Original Script Development
Neshat Shirazi & Pedram Vafadari
A comparative exploration of two major artistic projects of the sixteenth century: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling and the illustrated Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp. The video considers their different visual traditions while asking how art, religion, patronage, and political power contributed to the formation of cultural identity in Safavid Iran and Renaissance Italy.
The Seljuk Empire and Its Legacy in Iran
2025
Research | Original Script Development
Neshat Shirazi & Pedram Vafadari
An exploration of the Seljuk Empire and the political and cultural order that developed under its rule. The video looks at the relationship between Turkic rulers and Persian administrative culture, the changing relation between religion and government, and the ways in which Seljuk institutions and ideas continued to influence later forms of rule in Iran.
The School of Athens
2025
Research | Original Script Development
Neshat Shirazi & Pedram Vafadari
A comparison between Raphael’s School of Athens and al-Qifti’s History of the Wise, used as two different ways of looking at the intellectual traditions inherited by Europe and the Islamic world. The video follows connections between philosophy, science, and religion and asks how a largely shared intellectual past came to be remembered through different historical traditions.
Iranian History Before and After Islam
2025
Research | Original Script Development
Neshat Shirazi & Pedram Vafadari
A reconsideration of the transition from late Sasanian Iran to the early Islamic period through a new reading of Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub’s Two Centuries of Silence. Drawing on later historical scholarship, the video examines some of the assumptions that have shaped modern Iranian understandings of the Arab conquest and its aftermath.
The Magi of Christmas
2025
Research | Original Script Development
Neshat Shirazi & Pedram Vafadari
A research-based exploration of the Magi in the story of Christ’s birth, beginning with the brief account of “Magi from the East” in the Gospel of Matthew and following their transformation into the Three Kings of later Christian tradition. The project connects the story to ancient Iran, Jewish memories of Cyrus, the Parthian world, and the journey of Tiridates to Rome, while tracing the changing image of the Magi through Byzantine, Renaissance, European, and Armenian-Iranian art.
The Parthian Houses
2026
Research | Original Script Development
Neshat Shirazi & Pedram Vafadari
An inquiry into the political structure of Parthian and Sasanian Iran and the possible survival of its powerful noble families in the epic memory of the Shahnameh. By bringing historical studies into conversation with stories of figures such as Rostam, Godarz, Giv, and Bijan, the video asks whether epic literature may preserve traces of political realities that largely disappeared from later historical narratives.