[3] The modern historian Rudi Matthee explains that in Zoroastrianism wine was a symbol of liquid gold as well as the moving fire of the radiant sun.
[9] According to the French traveller Jean Chardin, who was in 17th-century Safavid Iran, drinking was mainly done in order to get drunk fast hence the appreciation of Iranians for strong wines.
[10] Echoing Reinhold Lubenau's writings on late 16th-century Ottoman Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), Chardin reported that "Iranians would recoil while drinking, treating alcohol like a medicine to be swallowed rather than enjoyed".
[10] Unlike the ancient Greek symposium tradition, where alcohol was considered a substance to brighten up the ambiance, it was firmly entrenched as part of the lifestyle of the elite.
[12] People who drank alcohol were usually from higher social ranks, the elite (khass), whereas abstemiousness was most prevalent among the middling classes, who were simultaneously known for their piousness.
[12] The upper classes drunk as they believed they were entitled to, that is, enjoying alcohol as a 'right', a privilege traditionally bestowed upon the elite in Islamic lands.
[12] Thus, in turn, as Matthee explains, the drinking of wine "became a metaphor for the ardent feelings of the lover for the beloved in the imaginary world of (mystical) poetry".
[13] In 2011–2012, the Iranian Traffic Police withdrew the driving licenses of 829 drivers, including 43 women, who had failed to pass alcohol and drug tests.
[15] The 2010 study Substance Use Among Migrants: The Case of Iranians in Belgium notes that alcohol is acquired illegally in three different ways: it is purchased from ethnic minorities (particularly Armenians), produced in homes by adding fermenting agents to non-alcoholic beer, or smuggled into the country, largely through Iraqi Kurdistan.