“Honor,” a translation of nāmūs, sharaf , and a number of related concepts, is a central term in the languages and cultures of Afghanistan and Iran. In spite of the amazing diversity of the two countries – in culture, ethnicity, religion, language, class, and social formations – honor bridges the historical and geographic divides, and regulates the exercise of gender power with remarkable consistency.

Nāmūs, in Persian, Dari, Tajik, and other languages of the region, is at the core of a semantic field, which includes synonyms such as ābirū , reputation, sharaf , honor, dignity, ʿiffat , ch…