The Iranian Constitutional Revolution 1906-1911

Abstracts and biographies below shown alphabetically by surname of author.

From Mullah to Goya: The Art and Politics of Mullah Nasreddin

Janet Afary, Purdue University, US

In 1906, a sophisticated satirical newspaper called Mullah Nasreddin (1906-1931) began publication in Tbilisi (present-day Georgia) and immediately captured the imagination of the Muslim world. The founder and editor of Mullah Nasreddin, Jalil Mamed Qulizadeh (1862-1932), was a celebrated playwright. His wife, Hamideh Khanum, was an early Azeri feminist. The glossy eight-page weekly Mullah Nasreddin had full-page lithographic cartoons. It propagated a new and more liberal discourse on Shi'i Islam and was the first newspaper in Iran and the Shi'i world to reinterpret Quranic verses in light of modern gender concerns. Through stories and poems, the paper challenged the conservative social and political practices of the orthodox clerics and the prevalent Western colonial discourses. Mullah Nasreddin was a boundary crosser that embodied ambiguity and ambivalence, thereby creating a rejuvenated and oppositional Shi'i Muslim culture. This power-point presentation will trace the prints of Mullah Nasreddin to the etchings of the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. The last part of the presentation explores some of the major issues of the Constitutional Revolution as they were discussed in the pages of the paper.

Janet Afary is an Associate Professor of History and Women's Studies at Purdue University, Indiana. She received her MA from Tehran University and her PhD in Modern Middle East History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of The Iranian Constitutional Revolution: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism(1996), which was also translated and published in Iran in 2000 and co-author of Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (2005). Dr. Afary was awarded year-long fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS). She has co-edited three volumes and published numerous articles, many of which have also been translated or reprinted in the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Czech Republic, Iran, Japan, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and Britain. Dr. Afary is the current President of the International Society for Iranian Studies (2004-2006) and the former president of the Coordinating Council for Women in History of the American Historical Association, and the Association for Middle East Women's Studies.

Abbas Amanat is Professor of Modern Middle East History at Yale University where he has been teaching since 1983. He earned his degrees at Tehran University and at the University of Oxford. Among his publications are Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran (1989) and Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy (1997). His edited volumes include Cities and Trade: Consul Abbott on the Economy and Society of Iran (1983); Crowning Anguish: Memoirs of Taj al-Saltana from the Harem to Modernity (1993) and more recently Imaging the End: Visions of Apocalypse from Ancient Middle East to Modern America (2002). His forthcoming book, In Search of Modern Iran: Authority, Identity and Nationhood will be published by Yale University Press. He is currently writing a biography of Qurrat al-'Ayn (Tahira) and a study of nonconformity in the Persianate world. Among his articles are 'The Resurgence of Apocalyptic in Modern Islam' in Encyclopaedia of Apocalypticism (1999) and more recently 'Mujtahids and Missionaries: Shi'i Responses to Christian Polemics in the Early Qajar Period' in Religion and Society in Qajar Iran (2004). His recent contributions to Encyclopaedia Iranica include 'Constitutional Revolution: Intellectual Background', 'Hajji Baba of Ispahan', 'Historiography: Qajar Period' and 'Historiography: Pahlavi Period.' His forthcoming articles include 'Memory and Amnesia in the Historiography of the Constitutional Revolution'. He was the Editor-in-Chief of Iranian Studies (1992-1998), Consulting Editor of Encyclopaedia Iranica since 1984 and General Editor of the Persia Observed series (Mage Publishers).He served as the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Yale Center for International and Area Studies between 1992 and 2005. He has recently been elected as Fellow of the Carnegie Scholar Program for 2006-2008.

 

The Movement for Constitutionalism in Iran and its Trans-Caspian Connections

Touraj Atabaki, International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands

In the historiography of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, the study of the reformist movement in Iran has been treated as a receptive movement crafted by the ideas originating from nineteenth century Europe, the Ottoman Empire or the Caucasus. However, what has been largely neglected is the impact of the Iranian constitutional movement on the neighbouring countries. In the corresponding trend, in Soviet historiography, the study of the reformist movement of the early twentieth century in the Caucasus and Central Asia, had been generally treated as an isolated, self-contained movement, confined within the geographic borders of Baku, Tbilisi and Bukhara, or at most within the Southern region of the Tsarist Empire, Turkistan. The occasional reference to the cross-regional dimension of these reform movements in such studies, if ever, was merely to its association with the political reforms exercised during the same period by the Russians or Tatars in the different parts of the Tsarist Empire. Here too, what has been largely overlooked is the bond between the reform movement in the neighbouring countries such as Iran and the corresponding movements in the Caucasus and Central Asia during the late nineteenth/early twentieth century.

However, a closer study of the impact of the constitutional movement in Iran in the Caspian region reveals that the Persian publications originating from the Iranian constitutional movement were widely circulated in the Caucasus and Central Asia and enlightened circles on both sides of the Caspian Sea enthusiastically followed the endeavours of their Iranian counterparts in implementing changes and reforms in their country.

In the present study, while considering the consequences, which the social and political changes in Russia had on the reformist movement in Iran, the Caucasus and Central Asia, I shall examine the impact, which the Iranian Constitutional Revolution had on the reformist movement of the early twentieth century in Central Asia. Furthermore, the paper shall sketch the possible routes, which made such impact possible.

Touraj Atabaki is Professor of Modern History at the University of Amsterdam and Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History. He studied Theoretical Physics (BSc, MSc) and History at the National University of Iran and at the University of London. He taught at Utrecht University, where he also acquired his MA and PhD. Touraj Atabaki holds the chair of 'Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia' at the department of History of the University of Amsterdam and is in charge of the department of Middle East and Central Asia at the International Institute of Social History. He has published numerous articles on Iran, the Caucasus and Central Asia. His books include Azerbaijan: Ethnicity and the Struggle for Powers in Iran (1993); Beyond Essentialism. Who Writes Whose Past in the Middle East and Central Asia? (2003); Post-Soviet Central Asia (1998); Men of Order, Authoritarian Modernization in Turkey and Iran, with Erik Jan Zurcher (2004); Central Asia and the Caucasus: Transnationalism and Diaspora with Sanjyot Mehendale (2005); Iran and the First World War: Battleground of the Great Powers (2006);The State and the Subaltern: Society and Politics in Turkey and Iran (forthcoming). His current work focuses on ethnic issues in contemporary Iran, historiography of everyday life and comparative subaltern history in Iran and the former Soviet South.

 

Qavam al-Mulk's Political Asylum in the British Consulate in Shiraz (1911)

Mohamed Ibrahim Bastani Parizi, Iran

This paper will examine Qavam al-Mulk's seeking asylum in the British consulate in July 1911 and the bast of the people of Shiraz in the imamzadehs of the city in July 1911. It is based on the personal documents of the head of the Judiciary, who was the mediator between the consulate, Qavam al-Mulk and Saulat al-Dauleh Qashqa'i. It will analyse the roles of these personalities, the activities of the Qashqa'i tribal forces,  the loss of life and material damage inflicted on the town, the negotiations between the governor and disputants, the final arrangements for Qavam al-Mulk's exit from the consulate, and the part played by Qavam al-Mulk's wife, Liqa' al-Dauleh, during this period of two years. New documentation will be presented and illustrations shown.

Mohamed Ibrahim Bastani Parizi was born in 1925 in Pariz in the province of Kerman and educated in Sirjan, Kerman, and Tehran, where he completed his PhD. He has taught in Kerman, and since 1959 has been at the Faculty of Literature and Humanities of Tehran University, at first as editor of its periodical and then as a member of the teaching staff in the History Department of that Faculty. His publications are legion, ranging over the whole spectrum of Iranian history and literature, geography, editions of texts and translations. In the sixty-four years since he published his first article in a local Kerman newspaper, he has written well over a thousand articles and some sixty-one books, at least fourteen of which have been devoted to some aspect of the history and culture of Kerman. Amongst the most important of his publications are Muhit-e siyasi va zindagani-yi Mushir al-Dauleh (1962), Siyasat va iqtisad-e 'asr-e safavi (1969), and Tarikh-e Kirman (Vaziri) (1973). In addition to his prolific academic and scholarly work, he has also a volume of poetry and is a renowned essayist.

 

The Rise of the Raushanfikr in the Constitutional Period - An Overview

Mangol Bayat, Germany

The origins of the modern intellectuals in Iran in the early twentieth century can be traced back to centuries-long tradition of dissent within the Shi'i institutions of higher learning. In a brief historical survey, this paper argues that the political-economic climate prevailing in pre-modern Iran up to the late nineteenth century, rather than religio-cultural characteristics, deprived the Iranian intellectuals from the necessary environment to establish autonomous academic and cultural institutions. Their struggle to disengage speculative thought from theology was successfully undertaken only with the advent of the Revolution, when political reformers gained ground.

Constitutionalists formed a complex composite of beliefs, but they all shared a conviction, rooted in the eighteenth century European Enlightenment, that religious leaders' functions in the public domain had to be curtailed. From Jamal al-Din 'al-Afghani' to Dehkhoda, from Taqizadeh to the Moshir al-Dauleh, from the radical revolutionaries to the moderate liberal monarchists, the pious constitutionalists to the secular nationalists, the aristocrats and the middle class, all shared common personal and intellectual traits that helped them coordinate their efforts in reshaping the political culture and redefining the New Iran.

Domestic reactionary forces and foreign intervention both helped release the raushanfikrans' political energies and severely hampered the effective application of the legislative reforms they advocated. But their greatest contribution was to prove irrevocable, the de facto and de jure desacralization of political power in Iran.

Mangol Bayat studied in Tehran, Cairo, London and the USA. She received her BA from the American University in Cairo, her BA Honors from London University and her PhD from the University of California at Los Angeles. She is an independent Scholar who has taught at UCLA, Pahlavi University, Harvard, MIT, the University of Iowa, and the University of Bonn as well as having been a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Dr Bayat has also been the recipient of the International Research and Exchange Program (IREX) Fellowship and of the DFG (German Research Foundation) Fellowship. She has published Mysticism and Dissent: Socioreligious Thought in Qajar Iran (1982, 2002), and Iran's First Revolution, 1905-1909 (1992). Her research focuses on the historical interaction of religious ideas and politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Apart from her two books studying doctrinal dissents in the Qajar period and assessing the role of religion in the first phase of the Constitutional Revolution, among other topics she has published critical analyses of Ayatollah Khomeini's velayat-e faqih, Ayatollah Taleghani's political thought, and Ali Shariati and his impact on the Islamic Revolution. She has also published a groundbreaking study of the role of women in the Constitutional Revolution. She is currently completing an in-depth critique of the second majles and its leadership, to be published as a sequel to her Iran's First Revolution.

 

Struggles Within: The Impact of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution on the Iranian-Armenian Community

Houri Berberian, California State University in Long Beach, US

Scholarship on the Armenian community of the early twentieth century and its participation in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution has focused almost primarily on the important political, intellectual, and military role of Armenians. Recently, there has been some interest in pursuing different angles by examining how the Armenian revolutionary role has been remembered by Armenians themselves and how the Revolution and the parallel development of an inclusive nationalism have influenced or been an integral part of Iranian-Armenian identity formation.

Building on my previous work on Armenian participation in the Revolution, which sought to demonstrate the contribution and impact of the Armenian political and intellectual elite who attempted to influence the direction of the constitutional movement, this study seeks to explore the impact of the Revolution on the Armenian community. Did re-examination of political culture and opening up a space of public criticism lead to an examination and criticism of communitarian politics? To what degree did efforts in the name of constitutionalism, anti-imperialism, and nation-building affect the struggles and conflicts within the Armenian community? Based on previously unexamined documents from the National Archives in Yerevan, Armenia, this study explores the growing conflict over communal political control in community boards and schools and the role of intra-communal conflict in shaping the Armenian community during the Revolution. This study's importance lies in its departure from the conventional narrative described above as it moves to a new direction by demonstrating that the Armenian community was not shaped in a vacuum. Indeed, it was influenced by a movement that it itself saw as so significant as to risk its relatively secure and comfortable status in order to take part in the formation of a new nation. Moreover, this study provides a more accurate, albeit less homogeneous and pristine, representation of a community that was at times conflictual and dissenting.

Houri Berberian is an Associate Professor of History at California State University, Long Beach and the Director of the Middle Eastern Studies minor program. She received her BA from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988 and her MA and PhD in Middle Eastern and Armenian History from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1993 and 1997, respectively. She is the author of several published and forthcoming articles, including 'Traversing Boundaries and Selves: Iranian Armenian Identities during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution' in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and Middle East (2005); 'Armenian Women and Women in Armenian Religion' in Encyclopaedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (2004); the prize-winning 'Armenian Women in Turn-of-the-Century Iran: Education and Activism' in Iran and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Nikki R Keddie (2000); 'The Dashnaktsutiun and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1905-1911' in Iranian Studies (1996); 'Armenian and Iranian Collaboration in the Constitutional Revolution: The Agreement between Dashnakistsand Majles Delegates, 1908' an annotated translation with introduction in The Modern Middle East: A Sourcebook for History (forthcoming); Armenians and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911: The Love for Freedom Has No Fatherland (2001). She is currently working on two projects: one on issues of Iranian-Armenian identity and memory and the other, a co-authored work with Sebouh Aslanian, tentatively titled 'The Cosmopolitans: A Commercial Biography of the Sheriman Family of Julfa and Venice'.

 

Erin and Iran Resurgent: Ireland and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911

Mansour Bonakdarian, Hofstra University, US

This paper explores the crossroads of Iranian and Irish nationalist politics and ideologies during the time of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, which coincided with an intensified phase of parliamentary Irish nationalist campaign for Home Rule within the confines of the British empire as well as the rise in militant separatist Irish nationalist agitations and expanded activities by other nationalist organizations, such as the newly-founded Sinn Fein.

While after the conclusion of the 1907 Anglo-Russian Agreement a number of parliamentary Irish nationalists emerged as outspoken defenders of the Iranian Revolution in opposition to Russian and British intervention in Iran --John Dillon in particular-- the more militant Irish nationalists in Ireland and in diaspora communities were initially ambivalent or even dismissive in their reception of the Iranian Revolution-- despite their fervent advocacy of other revolutionary and nationalist movements in places such as India, Egypt, and elsewhere. Examples of this are the Irish-American John Devoy's Clan na Gael republican nationalist paper, The Gaelic American (New York), which initially dismissed the Iranian Revolution as a British-orchestrated affair, or Arthur Griffith's Sinn Fein (Dublin), which simply disregarded the outbreak of the Iranian Revolution. In the meantime, a number of individual Irish nationalists committed to an 'internationalist' platform, such as the socialist Frederick Ryan and his close associate William Maloney (who would be stationed in Iran as a Reuters reporter during the Revolution), provided highly sympathetic accounts of the Iranian Revolution; with Ryan drawing parallels between Iranian and Irish nationalist struggles and criticizing what he considered as the fatuous firsthand account of the Iranian nationalist struggle appearing in a 1910 book by two Irish journalists, Joseph Maunsell Hone and Page L Dickinson.

For their part, whereas Iranian nationalists acknowledged the activities of parliamentary Irish nationalists on their behalf, they were largely silent on the Irish Question in comparison with Indian, Egyptian, and other nationalist struggles in the British empire and elsewhere. While some contemporary European commentators, including Hone and Dickinson, attributed this fact to Iranian nationalists' apprehension that references to the Irish nationalist struggle would alienate British public opinion, which Iranian nationalists hoped to cultivate in support of their constitutional/nationalist objectives, this paper argues that the dearth of Iranian nationalist allusions to Ireland was also indicative of the fundamental limitations of mainstream Iranian definitions of 'imperialism' and their particular delineations of 'nation'.

Among other themes, this paper examines the coverage and varied representations of the Iranian Revolution by various Irish nationalist groups; the impact of the confluence of 'Irish Orientalism' and the Gaelic Revival on Irish nationalist representations of Iran; the role played by nationalists from other regions of the world, Indians and Egyptians in particular, as well as international socialist organizations and other movements (including theosophy) in cultivating Irish nationalist advocacy of the Iranian Revolution; direct and indirect contacts and collaborations between segments of Iranian and Irish nationalists; and the scope and limitations of internationalism in heterogeneous Iranian 'nationalist' conceptualizations of imperialism and nation.

Mansour Bonakdarian specializes in British, Imperial, and Transnational History, with a particular focus on Ireland, India, and Iran. He received his PhD in British History from the University of Iowa in 1991 and is currently a Visiting Fellow at Hofstra University. Bonakdarian's publications have appeared in journals such as Iranian Studies, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and Radical History Review, and as article-length entries in the Encyclopaedia Iranica and in the form of book chapters, including his essay on 'British Suffragists and Iranian Women, 1906-1911' in Ian C Fletcher, Philippa Levine, and Laura Mayhall, eds. Women's Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation, and Race (2000). He is the author of Britain and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906 - 1911: Foreign Policy, Imperialism, and Dissent (2006). His current projects include a collected volume of essays (with Ian Christopher Fletcher) on the First Universal Races Congress (London, 1911); uses of empathy in cross-cultural/cross-racial encounters and epistemologies and a monograph on the confluences of nationalism, internationalism, and transnationalism in India, Iran, and Ireland from 1905 to 1919 (with cross-references to Egypt).

Houchang E Chehabi studied Geography at the University of Caen and International Relations at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris before going to Yale University, where he earned his PhD in Political Science in 1986. He then taught at Harvard University and UCLA, and in 1998 became a Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University. He is the author of Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini (1990); and Sultanistic Regimes with Juan Linz (1998). His articles have appeared in Daedalus, Diplomacy and Statecraft, Government and Opposition, International Journal of the History of Sport, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Iranian Studies, Political Science Quarterly, and several edited volumes. Currently his main research interest is the cultural history of Iran since the nineteenth century.

 

The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, State-building and the Politics of Military Reform

Stephanie Cronin, University College Northampton, UK

The relative success of military modernization in the Ottoman Empire had led to the army officers of the Committee of Union and Progress playing a leading role in the establishment of constitutional rule in the Empire in 1908. In Iran, by contrast, the construction of a national army capable of asserting Iran's sovereignty and defending its borders was a task which had to be carried out by the constitutional regime itself. The link between the possession of a national army and the establishment of effective constitutional government was clear. This paper will discuss the dynamic relationship between constitutionalism and military reform, especially the attempts of the first and second majles to address the task of creating an army, culminating in the establishment of the Government Gendarmerie by the Democrat-dominated government in 1910. It will assess both the difficulties facing the constitutional authorities, the various solutions they offered, and the degree of success they achieved. It will in particular use the issue of military reform to explore the tensions between the state-building dimension and the democratic dynamic of the revolutionary process.

The paper will incorporate into its discussion an analysis of the effect of the constitutional upheavals on the Iranian Cossack Brigade, the incubator of the future Pahlavi regime. The paper will suggest a more nuanced view of the Brigade than simply a tool of royal despotism and Russian imperialism, arguing that nationalist ideas penetrated more deeply into its ranks than is conventionally understood, its Russian commandant struggling to maintain control in the early years of the Revolution.

The Constitutional Revolution has conventionally been subsumed within the 'catastrophist' perspective which has dominated views of late Qajar Iran. According to this perspective, the revolutionary period ended in constitutionalist defeat, ushering a decade of political anarchy and national collapse which was only ended by the coup of 1921.

This paper will challenge this perspective. It will argue that the Revolution's state-building efforts, far from ending in futility, were of enduring significance and crucial to Iran's subsequent political history. Two institutions created by the Revolution, the majles and the Government Gendarmerie, not only survived the Russian ultimatum of 1911, but entered on a period of expansion and vitality, making important contributions to the nationalist struggle during the First World War, stabilizing radical political activity and providing it with a focus and with political and military instruments. Both the majles and the Government Gendarmerie also played important roles in shaping political and military developments in the 1920s, constituting an element of continuity between the state-building efforts of the constitutional and early Pahlavi periods.

Stephanie Cronin received her BSc from the London School of Economics and her MA and PhD from SOAS. She has taught at SOAS and at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge and is now Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow, University of Northampton. She is the author of The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran, 1910-1926 (1997) and Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and the New State (2006). She has edited three collections: The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Reza Shah, 1921-1941 (2003); Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran: New Perspectives on the Iranian Left (2004) and Subalterns and Social Protest: History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa (2006). She is a member of the editorial boards of Iranian Studiesand Middle Eastern Studies, a member of the advisory council of Qajar Studies, and Assistant Editor of Holy Land Studies. Her current work focuses on subaltern responses to modernity in Iran. She has recently published 'The Tehran Crowd and the Rise of Reza Khan: Popular Protest, Disorder and Riot in Iran' in International Review of Social History (2005) and is completing a new book entitled Shahs and Subalterns: Urban Politics and Popular Protest in Iran.

 

Letters to the Editor - Newspapers of the Diaspora and their Role in the Rise of National Consciousness

Mansoureh Ettehadieh, Nashr-e Tarikh-e Iran, Iran

From 1876 to the Constitutional Revolution a number of newspapers were published outside Iran, where they enjoyed comparative freedom of expression. These were Akhtar, Hekmat, Habl al-Matin, Soraya and Parvaresh. Qanun was not a newspaper strictly put as its articles were more akin to political pamphlets. These papers were generally moderate, their dominant ideologies being secularism, nationalism and a belief in modernism, Islam and the unity of Moslems taking a secondary place.

These newspapers published editorials and discussed political events on domestic and foreign affairs. But they were much more than that. In this article it is argued that apart from providing information, the importance of these newspapers and one that has not attracted much attention is the fact that they acted as a public forum of discussion for the Iranians of the diaspora who in a growing number, wrote to them sometimes from as far away as Japan or the US. They were generally merchants or traders, students, emigres, diplomats, pilgrims, or travellers. Far from home and often homesick, they felt responsible for the homeland, vatan and expressed their opinions tentatively at first and more freely later. Sometimes another person replied and a correspondence ensued.

No doubt these writers were partly influenced by the liberal thinkers and reformers who had expressed their more theoretical ideas on reform for the past fifty years. However, by adding their individual arguments and observations of the countries they lived in and by comparing these with the conditions at home they helped to popularize the idea of reform and created a burgeoning public opinion and national consciousness. By analyzing the contents of these letters we shall obtain a general view of the range of ideas discussed, their weakness and strength and their resonance on the course of the Revolution.

Mansoureh Ettehadieh obtained her PhD in 1979 from Edinburgh University. She taught History in the department of History in Tehran University from 1963 to 2000. She is the founder of the publishing house Nashr-e Tarikh-e Iran, which specializes in the history of the Qajar period. She is the author of Peydayesh va Tahavol-e Ahzab-e Siyasi Mashrutiyat (The Origin and Development of Political Parties in the Constitutional Revolution) (second edition, 2002); Majles va Entekhabat az Mashruteh ta Payan-e Qajariyeh (Parliament and Elections from the Constitutional Revolution to the End of the Qajar Period) (1996); Zendegani-ye Siyasi Reza Qoli Khan Nezam al-Saltaneh (The Political Career of Reza Qoli Khan Nezam al-Saltaneh)(2000); editor of the second and third volumes, Reza Qoli Khan Nezam al-Saltaneh, Surat-e Jalesat-e Dowlat-e Movaqat(The Proceedings of the Provisional Government) (2000); Reza Qoli Khan Nezam al-Saltaneh, Mokatebat va Moraselat (Correspondence and Documents) (2000); Inja Tehran Ast, Majmueh-ye Maqalat dar Bareh-ye Tehran (a collection of essays on social and economic conditions of Tehran) (1998). Shehas also written two novels Zendegi Bayad Kard (We Have to Live) (1997); and Zendegi Khali Nist (Life is not Empty) (1999). She is currently engaged in working on a recently acquired booklet, which is the register of Sheikh Fazlallah Nuri and contains over 1400 transactions. The subject matter of these transactions cover a wide range of social and judicial questions of great importance for the social history of the late Qajar period and are being analyzed and prepared for publication.

 

Considerations on the Concept of Rights in the Iranian Constitutional Laws of 1906-1907

Ali Gheissari, University of San Diego, US

This paper will examine the development of the concept of rights in legal thought in Iran in the early twentieth century. It will point out that the general framework of constitutional rights as outlined in the Constitution of 1906 prepared the ground for more particular legislation in civil law, which took place from the late 1920s onwards. Iranian legal reforms in the twentieth century would not have been possible without such constitutional framework. It has been argued that the Iranian Constitutional Laws of 1906-07 drew on both modern Western sources as well as Persian traditions –which in turn consisted of the Shari'a laws and the corresponding local customs or Urf. From a political point of view this Constitution called for a transformation of the absolutist state into a constitutional government, and thus a transformation of subjects into citizens with recognized rights and responsibilities. However, in the realm of legal theory there was a more explicit tension as to whether it would be possible, or desirable, to mix different legal paradigms. Fresh ground was broken early in this debate by parliamentary proceedings during the first and second majles, followed by new legislation and commentaries by a generation of law experts during the early Pahlavi period. Although the Pahlavi state provided, as it were, a 'window of opportunity' for legal reform and institution-building, in practice its autocratic style was a reversal of constitutional principles and procedures which ultimately contributed to the erosion of its legitimacy and led to the revolution of 1979 that in turn resulted in a new theocratic constitution. However, in Iran the Constitution of 1906 had an enduring legacy on legal thought, language and institutions; a legacy which, in spite of its significance, has remained understudied. Through a close reading of a wide range of primary sources, such as constitutional proceedings and parliamentary debates, legislation and commentaries, this paper will examine the legal dimension of the Constitutional Revolution with the concept of rights at its core.

Ali Gheissari is Professor of History at the University of San Diego specializing in the Intellectual and Political History of Modern Iran. He studied at the Faculty of Law and Political Science, Tehran University, and at St Antony's College, Oxford. He has held visiting appointments at Tehran University, the Oriental Institute at Oxford, UCLA, and Brown University. Selected publications are: Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty, with Vali Nasr (2006); Iranian Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century (1998); Persian translation of Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Ethics, with Hamid Enayat (1991); 'Poetry and Politics of Farrokhi Yazdi' in Iranian Studies (1993); 'Truth and Method in Modern Iranian Historiography and Social Sciences' in Critique (1995); 'Critique of Ideological Literature: A Review of Intellectual and Doctrinaire Writings in Iran' in Iran Nameh (1994); 'Modernity and Nationalism in the Literature of the late-Qajar and early-Pahlavi Iran (1921-1941)' in Iran Nameh (2000); 'Iran's Democracy Debates', with Vali Nasr, in Middle East Policy (2004); 'Despots of the World Unite! Satire in the Persian Constitutional Press: Introducing Majalleh-ye Estebdad, 1907-1908' in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2005); 'Merchants without Frontier: Trade, Travel, and a Revolution in late Qajar Iran' in Roxane Farmanfarmaian ed. War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and Present (forthcoming, 2007).

 

Whose Revolution(s)? Contending and Converging Stakeholders in the Movements of 1906-11 and their Interpreters

Joanna de Groot, University of York, UK

This paper focuses on two themes: first it will argue for the plural, fragmented and complex composition of the participants, issues and activities involved under the umbrella of a Constitutional Revolution in Iran between 1906 and 1911; second it will examine the relationship between differing interpretations of what might be the most significant aspects of the Revolution and emphasis on, or neglect of, particular actors, interests, or ideas. It is both a contribution to debates on the Constitutional Revolution and a commentary on the historiography of those debates, while drawing attention to the links between the two.

The first theme revisits Foran's model of a 'cross-class alliance' and deconstructs it. I suggest that notions of convergence and alliance between different groups and interests involved in the Revolution need to be offset by an appreciation of their relative autonomy. Popular and educated activism and aspirations, Tehran-based and regional movements, religious and secular ideologies, or gender 'national' and 'communal' interests and identities each had their own dynamics and social bases failing to recognise or support one another as often as they came together. Just as moments of convergence underpinned the achievements of the Revolution so divergence or even competition among diverse elements limited its impact and potential.

The paper connects this underestimation of the dislocated character of the Revolution to a historiography which has consistently sought to establish its overarching direction and results or discover a connecting theme linking its various participants. Thus it turns to analyse some prevalent interpretations of the movements and outcomes of events between 1906 and 1911, showing how their particular analytical emphases involve foregrounding some of those participants and the marginalising others. It argues that a view which balances perception of overall themes with an appreciation of diversity and incompatibility will enrich our understanding of the Constitutional Revolution.

Joanna de Groot obtained her BA and DPhil at the University of Oxford, writing her doctoral dissertation on the region of Kerman in the later nineteenth century. Since then she has written and taught on nineteenth and twentieth century Iranian History with particular reference to gender issues and political cultures. Her published pieces include Religion, Resistance and Revolution in Iran c.1870-1980: Narratives of Contest and Change (2006); 'Brothers of the Iranian Race: Manhood, Nationhood and Modernity in Iran c.1870-1914' in Masculinities in Politics and War (2004); 'Co-existing and Conflicting Identities: Women and Nationalisms in Twentieth Century Iran' in Nation, Empire, Colony (1998); and 'Dialectics of Gender: Women, Men, and Politics in Iran c.1890-1930', in Gender and History (1993). Her main interests are in gendered analyses of past cultures, politics and societies in Iran, colonial and other cultural encounters of different peoples especially in the Middle East and India, and the uses of 'orientalism' as a category of analysis for the visual and verbal material which records such encounters. She is a member of the History department, the Centre for Women's Studies, and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York (UK).

John Gurney was the University Lecturer in Persian History at Oxford University until last year, and is now an Emeritus Fellow at Wadham College. His scholarly interests are Safavid and Qajar history, and he has recently completed, with Dr Mansur Sefatgol (Tehran University), a regional study of the great famine of 1871-72. He is currently working on a biography of Edward Granville Browne.

Farhad Hakimzadeh is Chief Executive of the Iran Heritage Foundation, a UK registered charity that was establish by him and a few like-minded Iranians in 1995 to promote the cultural heritage of Iran. The Foundation has increased its activities substantially in these ten years and is now the partner of choice for many of the major museums and universities in Western Europe and North America when it comes to the organization and execution of projects dealing with the history and culture of Iran. He received his BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his MBA from the Harvard Business School.

 

Two French Consuls in Tabriz Observe the Consequences of the Mashruteh for the People of Azerbaijan

Florence Hellot-Bellier, CNRS, France

Pierre Bergeron (in 1906) and Alphonse Nicolas (from 1907 to 1917) were French consuls in Tabriz where they witnessed the Constitutional Revolution. Alphonse Nicolas was born in Iran where his father was himself a French consul. He lived in Iran during his youth and he regarded the Iranian language as his mother tongue. He was sent by the French Foreign Ministry at first to Tehran in 1898, and then to Tabriz, where he not only observed the Constitutional Revolution first hand, but was also able to read about it in the local newspapers and to discuss it with the local population. His many diplomatic dispatches to the French Foreign ministry almost take on the form of a personal diary. He also kept some Persian newspapers which can be found in the 'Fonds Nicolas'. At last he made use of the French Lazarist missionaries' reports to describe and comment on the Constitutional Revolution in Western Azerbaijan, especially in Urmiyeh.

Alphonse Nicolas's observations and first hand accounts, not only allow us to follow the course of the Constitutional Revolution in Azerbaijan, but provide us with invaluable information concerning different sections of Azerbaijan's  population, especially regarding Azerbaijan's Christian minority, during the first years of the Revolution. The Assyrian and Armenian people of Iran received parliamentary seats in the new majles, but did they really want to be considered as minorities? Did the Constitutional Revolution issue a new identity to these groups?

Florence Hellot-Bellier is a member of the CNRS team Mondes Iranien et Indien in Paris and also teaches History in a secondary school. She studied Persian language and Persian civilization at INALCO and Paris III University where she works on her PhD about the Assyro-Chaldeans of Iran during the period 1896-1919.She has carried out research into the settling of Assyro-Chaldean Iranians in Iraq and in Syria after the First World War. In her investigations about the degree of protection provided by French diplomats to the Christian people of Iran, she collaborated on a forthcoming book the role and activities of French diplomats in Tehran and Iranian diplomats in Paris, which is forthcoming. She is now focusing her attention on the French consul in Tabriz, Alphonse Nicolas, who was acting consul during the Mashruteh, the Russian occupation of the town and the beginning of the First World War. Her publications, which relate to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, include: 'L'Ambulance Francaise d'Urmia (1917-1918) ou le Ressac de la Grande Guerre en Perse' in Studia Iranica (1996); 'La Fin d'un Monde: Les Assyro-Chaldeens et la 1e Guerre Mondiale' in Chretiens du Monde Arabe. Un Archipel en Terre d'Islam (2003); 'Le Rapport des Inscriptions Syriaques a la Connaissance de l'Histoire des Chretiens d'Ourmia' in F Briquel Chatonnet, M Debie, A Desreumauxeds.Les Inscriptions Syriaques (2004); 'Republique Islamique d'Iran: Minorites Religieuses ou Communautes Religieuses?' in Geopolitique (2004); 'The Western Missionaries in Azerbaijani Society' in Robert Gleave ed. Religion and Society in Qajar Iran (2005).

 

Baha'i Schools and the Beginnings of Modern Public Education in Iran

Kaveh Hemmat, University of Chicago, US

The first two decades of the twentieth century saw a rapid expansion in modern elementary and secondary education in Iran, marking its emergence in Iran as a mass phenomenon. Among these were a number of schools founded and managed by the Iranian Baha'i community, including the Tarbiyat boys' and girls' schools in Tehran, as well as similar schools in cities and villages throughout the country. These schools often preceded the establishment of government schools in their respective localities, and included among their students the children of such pre-eminent figures as Abdo'l-Hossein Mirza Farmanfarma and Reza Shah Pahlavi.

The history of these schools was affected by and reveals the way in which issues of gender, education and 'East-West' affairs were understood and dealt with at that time, not only by Baha'is and Iranians, but by Americans as well. The Baha'i schools benefited from a cooperative effort between American and Iranian Baha'is which was accorded a great deal of importance by the Baha'i community of that time, and by its leadership. American directors and teachers worked at the schools in Iran, which were however, not 'missionary' schools, but were primarily managed and run by Iranians. The schools' curriculum, philosophy and educational priorities, which especially emphasized the importance of girls' education, and which were in dialogue with the literature and debates on women's issues in Iran at that time, are valuable sources of information on how issues of Iranians confronted questions of gender and education during the Constitutional Revolution period.

Finally, written accounts of former students reveal an emphasis in the school on spirituality and prayer that constitutes part of the response of an Iranian religious community, still relatively close to its Islamic, Shi'i roots, to questions of religion, identity and discipline that confronted Iranians during the post-constitutional years. This paper explores the history of the Tarbiyat and other Baha'i schools in Iran, in the context of the international Baha'i community, and in relation to all of these issues.

Kaveh Hemmat was born in Tehran, Iran, but has spent most of his life in the US. After graduating from high school, he spent a year in the Republic of Niger before starting college at the University of Chicago. As a college student, he completed coursework in Persian Literature and in Middle Eastern History, and received his BA in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department, along with a double major in Mathematics, in 2001. After spending a year in Cairo studying Arabic, Kaveh returned to the University of Chicago to begin his PhD studies in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department. He helped coordinate the Middle East History and Theory Conference and Workshop during the academic years of 2002 to 2004. He completed his MA in 2004, on the Tarbiyat schools and other Baha'i schools in Iran, which were part of a trend both in the modernization of primary and secondary education in Iran, and in the spread of modern education to new regions of the country. His areas of interest include modern and early modern Iranian history, modernization, gender, the Shi'i ulama, Sufism and Islamic intellectual history. His publications include an encyclopaedia entry on 'Tahereh Qorrat al-'Ayn' in the Encyclopaedia of Women in World History, and a book review for the National Women's Studies Association Journal (forthcoming).

 

A Comparison between the Concept of Mashruteh in Tabriz and in Isfahan

Rasool Jafarian, Library of Iranian History, Iran

Unlike the issue of a republic at the end of the Qajar period or the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the meaning of the Constitutional Revolution was more difficult to define precisely for contemporaries, because it was a term that had only recently entered the political vocabulary of the time. Moreover, it meant different things to different groups in different places. The geographical dimension has often been ignored. Iran, situated between Turkey and Europe, India and the Arab lands, was influenced from all directions – from the Ottoman empire, with the introduction of Western thought and social democratic ideas via the Caucasus, through the 'atabat and ideas prevalent in Iraq and Egypt, and from Indian newspapers and publications that had a wide currency in the south of the country. Each of the major geographical divisions had its local specificities, and these were also reflected in the great amalgam of different ideas current in Tehran at the time. An attempt will be made in this paper to distinguish these distinctive elements and by using unpublished tracts and rasa'il of the ulama in different areas, compare and analyze the different interpretations in Tabriz and Isfahan, and assess the contribution of each to the understanding and interpretation of the concept of Mashruteh.

Rasool Jafarian studied at the Hozeh Elmiyeh Qum where he also received his PhD in 2005 in Islamic History. He is currently Director of the History Department of the Pazhooheshgahe Hozeh va Daneshgah institute in Qum and manager of the History of Iran and Islam Library in Qum. His research interests include the Shi'i world, the Safavid era and contemporary Iran. He has published extensively, including the following books: Tarikh Tashayoh Dar Iran (1997); Safaviyeh Dar Arseye Din, Siasat Va Farhang (2000); Maghalat Tarikh (13 volumes) (1997-2006).

 

Poetry of the Constitutional Revolution

Homa Katouzian, University of Oxford, UK

The Constitutional Revolution saw a flowering of young poets who wrote mostly on social and political subjects and published them immediately in newspapers and political tracts. Their poetry was unmistakably fresh and modern, often experimenting with modified classical and neo-classical structures, innovating new figures of speech and literary devices, and sometimes using colloquial, even folksy, words and expressions.

Persian poetry having been the main vehicle throughout its long history of literary and social expression, discharging sentiments, moralizing,  disparaging and lampooning, came into its own as the most effective instrument used in popular campaigns for constitutionalism, law, freedom and even nationalism, and against arbitrary rule, backwardness and corruption. Through their works the poets campaigned for the movement, opposed Mohammed Ali Shah during the struggle between him and the first majles, struggled against the Lesser Arbitrary Rule after Mohammad Ali's coup, celebrated the conquest of Tehran and the fall of Mohammad Ali, showed disillusionment shortly afterwards, and displayed anger and frustration at the Russian ultimatum and the dismissal of Morgan Shuster in 1911.

The poets whose poetry will be recited in the Persian original are as follows:

Ali Akbar Dehkhoda, Seyyed Ashraf al-Din Gilani, Poet-Laureate Bahar, Abolqasem Aref-e Qazvini, Iraj Mirza, Abolqasem Lahuti and Adib al-Mamalek-e Farahani.

Homa Katouzian is a social scientist, historian, literary critic and poet. He is the Iran Heritage Foundation Research Fellow at St Antony's College, and a member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, as well as an honorary fellow in the department of Politics at the University of Exeter and editor of Iranian Studies. He obtained all of his university degrees in England and became Lecturer in Economics at the University of Leeds, 1968-69, and Lecturer (later Senior Lecturer) in Economics at the University of Kent at Canterbury, 1969-1986. He has held a number of prestigious international fellowships and faculty positions. He was a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 2001, a Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of California at San Diego in 1990, a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of California at Los Angeles, in 1985, an Economic Consultant for UNCTAD, UN, Geneva in 1982, a Visiting Associate Professor of Economics at Mc Master University in Hamilton, Ontario in 1977-78, and a Visiting Iranian Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford in 1975-76. He has published widely in English, in other European languages, and in Persian. His publications include: Iranian History and Politics: The Dialectic of State and Society (2003); Sadeq Hedayat: The Life and Legend of an Iranian Writer (1991 and 2002); State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (2000); Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran (1990 and 1999); Musaddiq's Memoirs (1988); The Political Economy of Modern Iran (1981); and Ideology and Method in Economics (1980).

 

An Elitist Account of Drafting the Iranian Constitution of 1906: A Comparative Study of 'Ein al-Saltaneh's, Mostashar al-Dowleh's and Katouzian Tehrani's Reports

Mohsen Khalili, Ferdowsi University, Iran

The Iranian Constitutional Revolution was a turning point in Iranian history, distinguishing the modern from the pre-modern history of Iran. A newly adopted term, constitution, or as it is known in Persian, Mashruteh, with its theoretical and practical implications, symbolizes such a new phase in the Iranian history, as it does in the West. A constitution regulates the relations between the rulers and the ruled, with the intention of securing the citizenry's rights. In the process of drafting the Constitution of 1906, however, only the elite were involved. This is evident from a comparative study of accounts on the process, written by Qahraman Mirza 'Ein al-Saltaneh, Mirza Sadeq Mostashar al-Dowleh and Mirza Mohammad Ali Khan Katouzian Tehrani, who highlight their own concerns, at the expense of those of the public, as if people were the passive recipients of the decisions made by the elite.

Mohsen Khalili is Assistant Professor in Politics at Ferdowsi University of Mashad, since September 2002. He received his BA, MA and PhD in Politics from Tehran University. His research interests include the contemporary history of Iran, particularly the history of Iranian constitutional law, comparative government and Iranian foreign policy. His publications include: 'Ravabet-e Majma-e Tashkhis-e Maslahat va Qove-i Mojriyeh' in Hoqooq-e Asasi (2005); 'Jahani Shodan va Tasmim-Giri dar Ravabet-e Khareji' in Fasl-Name-i Motale'at-e Bein-al-Melali (2005); 'Nezarat bar Hosn-e Ejra-i Siasat-ha-i Koli Nezam' in Hoqooq-e Asasi (2004); 'Akhbar-e Naseri va Mozaffari dar bab-e Haqayeq-e Afzal' in Fasl-Name-i Motale'at-e Melli (2003);'Baz-Nama-i-e Asl-e 44 Qanoon-e Asasi' in Majmoo'-i Maqalat-e Hamayesh-e Eqtesad va Entekhabat, (2005), and 'Characteristics of a Revolutionary Foreign Policy from the Viewpoint of the Constitution Experts' in Discourse (2005).

 

On the Periphery: The Bakhtiyari Tribes, Oil, and the Constitutional Revolution, 1905-1911

Arash Khazeni, Claremont McKenna College, US

In 1908, the D'Arcy Oil Syndicate, a British company with the exclusive rights to develop petroleum resources in Iran made the first commercial discovery of oil in the Middle East at Masjid-e Sulaiman in the winter quarters of the Bakhtiyari tribes. A year later in 1909, Bakhtiyari tribesmen descended from the Zagros Mountains and marched into Isfahan and Tehran in support of the Constitutional Revolution, playing a major part in the ousting of Muhammad Ali Shah Qajar and the restoration of the parliament. Based on tribal histories, memoirs, Persian newspapers, and British archival materials, this paper traces the connections between these incidents. What effects did the discovery of oil in the Bakhtiyari fields have upon the emergence of the tribes in the Revolution? Were the Bakhtiyari subsidized by the British in the march against the pro-Russian Shah or was tribal revolutionary consciousness forged in resistance to Western imperialism in the cauldron of the Anglo-Persian oil fields? Was Bakhtiyari tribal power in the Revolution one of the first glimmers of the politics of oil in the Middle East? This paper suggests that the Constitutional Revolution coincided with the transformation of the Bakhtiyari land. It also traces the encounter between tribalism and the nation, exploring how tribal identities and interests appeared under the banner of Mashrutiyat (constitutionalism). During the Revolution, the Bakhtiyari brought the politics of the periphery to the nation, while carrying national politics into the black tents of the Zagros Mountains.

Arash Khazeni was born and spent much of his youth in Tehran, Iran. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and earned an MA and PhD from Yale in the History of the Modern Middle East. Since 2003, he has been an Assistant Professor of History at the Claremont Colleges in California, where he teaches an array of courses on the Middle East, with a focus on Iran and Afghanistan. He is currently working on a book length project, based on his thesis, entitled Opening the Land: Ethnicity and Empire on the Margins of Iran, 1800-1911 which explores tribe and state interactions and environmental transformations on the periphery of Iran during the Qajar period. He has also begun research on another project on the Turkmen steppes and the frontiers of Central Asia. His publications include: 'The Bakhtiyari Tribes in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution' in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (2005); 'Hazarajat' in Encyclopaedia Iranica (2003); 'Helmand River' in Encyclopaedia Iranica (2003); 'Herat-Historical Geography' in Encyclopaedia Iranica (2003).

 

Mashrutiyat, Mesrutiyet, and Beyond: Parallels and Intersections in the Constitutional Revolutions of 1905‑1912

Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, US

Every country's history is unique. However, not every aspect of every country's history is unique. In order to identify which aspects of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution are specific to Iran's history and culture, we must view the event in comparative perspective. As it happens, the comparative perspective was provided by a series of similar events that occurred in a variety of countries during the same time period, beginning with Russia's 'October Revolution' in 1905, the Second Ottoman Constitutional Revolution (Ikinci Mesrutiyet) of 1908, the First Portuguese Revolution of 1910, the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1911, and the Chinese Revolution of 1911-1912. A comparative perspective is particularly useful for these constitutional revolutions because they constitute a single international event, a 'wave' of democratization: a set of transitions to democracy in a certain space of time that are structurally similar to one another. This paper would like to suggest that the parallels among the constitutional revolutions of the decade before First World War set them apart from other movements of the same period, and from later movements of the same type. It will mention three parallels in particular: the movements' trajectory, the movements' social basis, and the movements' relationship to the world system. Within each parallel, the paper examines the specificity of Iran's Constitutional Revolution, in comparative perspective: the second chance that the Iranian Constitutional Revolution gained through its defeat of the coup of 1908-1909; the alliance of modern intellectuals and modernist religious scholars in the social basis for the Iranian Constitutional Revolution; and the Great Power rivalry that complicated foreign intervention in Iran, as compared with the other constitutional revolutions of the same period.

Charles Kurzman is Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in the USA. His primary research interests focus on the interaction between democratic and revolutionary Islamic movements. His research on the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was published in the American Sociological Review and other leading academic journals, as well as in a book, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (2004). His work on liberal and modernist Islamic movements has included the editing of anthologies on Liberal Islam (1998) and Modernist Islam, 1840-1940 (2002). He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Democracy Denied, 1905-1915, which examines the role of modern-educated intellectuals in democratic revolutions in the decade before the First World War in Russia, Iran, the Ottoman Empire, Portugal, Mexico, and China. In addition, he is currently launching a project on barriers to mobilization faced by radical Islamist movements in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries.

 

Comparison and Analysis of Charitable Endowment in the Twentieth Century

Elham Malekzadeh, Al Zahra University, Iran

Vaqf or religious endowments are an Islamic tradition of long standing which continue to this day. It is a philanthropic act in the name of Islam for the benefit of the needy or religious scholarship or worship. In fact, it could be said that vaqf performed some of the duties which should have been performed by the government.

With the onset of the Constitutional Revolution, attitudes changed. The government was expected to take care of the poor and the orphans, to provide health care and education, as well as famine relief, etc. There was also a new sense of responsibility amongst the public. With the rise of nationalism and the modern trends modelled on Western society, there was a new attitude towards charitable endowments.

Whereas the nature of vaqf was religiously inspired, the new charitable acts were undertaken in the name of the homeland vatan and for the sake of the hamvatan. This new feeling of responsibility is discernable in the building and endowing of new schools, hospitals, dispensaries, orphanages, etc.

This paper examines for the first time the legal and social aspects of this development and the ensuing results. The sources are deeds of endowment in the Sazeman-e Asnad-e Melli and Sazeman-e Ouqaf, besides the articles and letters written to this effect in the newspapers.

Elham Malekzadeh received her MA in History from Azad University in 1997, where she also teaches History, while pursuing a PhD at Al-Zahra University. Her research interests center around women's endowments and philanthropic work from the Qajar period to the present era. She also works on the socio-political condition of women during the Ilkhanid period. She was the recipient of the Best Researcher Award in 2004/2005. Her publications include: Asnad-e Daneshjuyan-e Irani dar Urupa 1313-1307 with Dr Navai (2003), Tarikh-e Ravabet-e Iran va Veniz with Dr Navai (2005); Ruznameh-ye Khaterat-e Nasir al-Din Shah with Dr Navai (2005); Sargozasht-e Safarian (2003); Omur-e Khayriyyeh dar Doreh-ye Qajar (2006).

Vanessa Martin is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has written three books, Islam and Modernism: The Iranian Revolution of 1906 (1989); Creating an Islamic State (2000); and The Qajar Pact: Bargaining, Protest and the State in Qajar Iran (2005). She has edited two volumes, Women, Religion and Culture in Iran (2001); and Anglo Iranian Relations since 1800 (2005). She is the Series Editor and Chair of the Publication Committee of the British Institute of Persian Studies, and is a member of the Editorial Board of the Royal Asiatic Society.

 

Writing in Tehran: The First Freedom of Press Law

Pardis Minuchehr, University of Pennsylvania, US

Iran's first press freedom law appeared as the result of the insistence of many constitutionalists to add an amendment to the Fundamental Constitutional Laws. The ratification of the amendment [supplement/motammam], which took place in October 1907, became a celebratory instance for the new journalists who referred to it as, Eid-e Zohur-e Matbu'at. This paper examines the role of newspapers in particular, and writing in general, during the early phase of the constitutional era in Iran. In the course of this research, I question how newspapers perceived of themselves in the new cultural and social transformation of Iran, what kind of writings and genres developed, and what were the political and social reactions and responses to such writings. Some of the earliest press trials, such as that of Sultan al-Olama Khorasani, the editor of Ruh al-Qodos, Mirza Jahangir Shirazi, the editor of Sur-e Esrafil, as well as the editor of Mosavat, have been recounted in the famous Mohakemat (Trials) paper edited by Majd al-Eslam Kermani. This paper will hence examine the politics of press trials and explore how censorship rules operated and affected the dominant constitutionalist discourse.

Pardis Minuchehr teaches Persian Language, Literature and Film at the University of Pennsylvania.  She has completed her dissertation, Homeland from Afar: The Iranian Diaspora and the Quest for Modernity (1908-1909) at Columbia University, and has been a post-doctoral fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Her research explores issues of modernity, and the development of various concepts, during the early years of the twentieth century in Iran. Her publications include 'The Ulama of the Atabat and the Constitutional Press' in Robert Gleave ed. Religion and Society in Qajar Iran (2005).

 

Modernization and Modernity in Iran's Urban Music Tradition in the Wake of the 1906 Revolution

Alireza Miralinaghi, Iran

Iranian musical life was profoundly affected by the Constitutional Revolution, and some musicians took a very active part in the revolutionary movement.  This paper examines the mutual impact of the Constitutional Revolution and developments in the urban music of Tehran and Tabriz, the two cities that were both politically and artistically in the forefront of events.

I will first briefly discuss the forms and functions of urban music and the social roles of musicians before the Revolution. I then show that in the course of the Revolution some musicians supported constitutionalism and others, whose livelihoods depended on court patronage, allied themselves with despotism.  With the triumph of the Revolution, the forms and functions of urban music changed.  Where music had until then been enjoyed in private, public concerts now appeared. Where most music had been improvisational, compositions now became more frequent. The performance style of musicians also became more personal, as individuation increased. I will analyze these changes by distinguishing the two concepts of modernization and modernity, as proposed by Dariush Ashuri.

The paper focuses on three key figures in post-1906 revolutionary musical life: the tar and setar player and composer Darvish Khan (1872-1926); the poet, lyricist, and singer Aref Qazvini (1882-1933); and the theoretician, composer, and tar player Alinaqi Vaziri (1887-1979). The lecture will be supplemented with contemporary recordings.

Alireza Miralinaghi is a Music Researcher and Historian, as well as being a santur player and an expert on radif. His many responsibilities and positions include: Supervisor of the department of Music and Art History in the World of Islam and Shi'ite Encyclopaediaand Director of the 'Professional Music Knowledge' programme of Radio Farhang in Iran. In addition to his two books Mousighi Nameh Vaziri (1999) and 150 Years of Iranian Music -  A Chronology (1994-2004), he has published in excess of 70 articles in Persian encyclopaedias, periodical and monthly musical magazines, including: 'Berksheli Mehdi', 'Badizadeh Javad', 'Banan Gholamhossein', 'Bigjehkhani Gholamhossein' all in Islamic Encyclopaedia (1999-2005); 'Khandan-haye Honari dar Iran: Farahani' in the Journal of Islamic Culture (2006).

 

Plays during the Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911

Ali Miransari, Iran

As the Revolution unfolded, its mores, vernacular, and cultural expressions swept the land of Iran. No revolution can do less, and the mark left on forms of articulation testifies to the depth that Revolutions run. As constitutionalism was a Western phenomenon, it is unsurprising that plays, imported from the West, should become the most effective vessels for the new ideas and ideals. The plays produced in this period present an uncomplicated understanding of constitutionalism. They portray a vivid drama, in which a battle rages between the light, i.e. the constitutionalists and darkness, i.e. those in opposition. The plays in this period do not follow the motto of arts for arts' sake. Rather, art is at the service of politics. Consequently, the plays resemble journalism or even pamphleteering. In a highly politicised world art could not remain autonomous. Nor could plays deal with the inner discourses of the individual when collective actions and symbols were predominant. In short, the message of the plays in this period is blatantly, unapologetically, and stridently political. As the perception of the playwright is that the play should be functional, its complexity, character development, and nuances are kept to the minimal.

Ali Miransari received his MA in Persian Literature from Tehran University, and has been working at the Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia since 1996 and the Encyclopaedia of Iransince 2000. His research interests include contemporary Persian literature (late Qajar to Pahlavi era intellectuals, movements and ideas) as well as dramatic Persian literature. He has published more than 150 articles in the Great Islamic Encyclopeadia, the Encyclopaedia of Iran and numerous Persian periodicals. His book publications include Records of Iran's Contemporary Literary Notables (5 volumes) (1997-2004); Selected Records of Drama in Iran (2003); Letters of  Malak-o Shoara Bahar(2001); Shahnameh, Bahar's Commentary on the Shahnameh, edited introduced and indexed by A Miransari (2001); Two Travel Accounts by Nima Youshij (2001); Bibliography of Nima Youshij (1996); Bibliography of Attar (1995); Bibliography of Nasir Khosrow (1994); Bibliography of Khajou Kirmani(1991).

Hossein H Moghaddam, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. He received his DPhil from Oxford and has taught contemporary history and politics of Iran as well as Persian language and literature at the Faculty of Oriental Studies since 1997. He received his BA and MA in Political Science from the Imam Sadeq University and taught international relations and Iranian foreign policy and constitution government at the Faculty of Political Science. His research interests include Iran's contemporary foreign policy as well as the study of political and religious discourses in Iran's modern history. He has written extensively on the question of the Threefold Islands of the Tunbs and Abu Musa. His publications include 'Anglo-Iranian Conflict over the Disputed Islands in the Persian Gulf: Constraints on Rapprochement' in the Anglo-Iranian Relations since 1800 (2005), 'The Sea of Persia and Its Islands' in Iran's Comprehensive History (2006). He is currently carrying out research on 'The Human Rights and Islamic Sharia Law: Iran's Future Challenge'.

 

Municipal Administration (Baladyeh) in the Constitutional Era

Reza Mokhtari-Esfahani, President's Document Center, Iran

Revolutions face both positivist and negativist processes, in as much as a great part of the former institutions are revised or rejected. The Constitutional Revolution followed the same pattern. The revolutionaries restricted the royal authority, and the majles and civil institutions, determining the relations between the people and the state, were created. The municipality was a remnant of the former system that underwent reform, and municipal councils were introduced to institutionalize participation in civil administration. These councils were democratic and elective, founded on a municipal code approved by the first majles in 1907. The municipal office had been known as Ehtesabiyeh prior to the Constitution and, since the reign of Naser al-Din Shah, it had been responsible for the cleaning and lighting of the streets in large cities. But the first majles formulated and approved a code which emphasized the democratic and civil form and content of the municipalities' responsibilities. This paper will discuss the municipal constitution and councils in the constitutionalist era, the main impediments and obstacles relating to them, and the defects and merits of the municipal codes of the first and second majles. The main focus of the paper will be the role of the municipal councils and their elections. By use of a wide range of unpublished material and the press of the period, the membership, organization, social and class status of the members of municipal councils will also be considered.

Reza Mokhtari-Esfahani is a Researcher. He received his MA in History (Islamic period) from Beheshti University with a dissertation entitled The Fifth Majles of  the National Council, a study of the constitutional failure and the rise of Reza Shah relying on the interior forces such as parties and social classes. His research work includes: 6 years in the Presidential Documents Center, cooperation in the Encyclopaedia of the Contemporary Elite, Center of Islamic Revolution documents and the Radio Development and Research  Center affiliated to the IRIB. He is the author of Documents on Municipal Councils, Merchants and Quilds (1921-1940) (2001);Documents on Religious Societies and Associations of the Pahlavi Era (2002); Governmental Reports on the Socio-economic Situation of Iran in 1931 (2004); Documents on the Socio-cultural Societies and Institutions during the Reign of Reza Shah (forthcoming); Radio and Politics in Iran (forthcoming); The Memoirs of Mohammad Pishgahifard - The non Declared Facts of the Islamic Revolution in Isfahan (forthcoming); The Memoirs of Dr Abdolhossein Navai (forthcoming). Among his articles are 'Mirza Hassan Khan Ejlalolsaltaneh' and 'Mirza Mohammad Eslambolchi' in Encyclopaedia of the Contemporary Elite (2005), and 'A Critical Study of the Book: The Historiographical Currents in Contemporary History' in The National Studies Quarterly (2003).

 

The Baha'is of Iran: The Constitutional Revolution and the Creation of an 'Enemy Within'

Moojan Momen, Northill Biggleswade, UK

There has been a great deal written on the role of minorities in the Constitutional Revolution. In particular, Bayat (Iran's First Revolution) has written extensively and convincingly of the important role of the Azalis in the Revolution. In this paper, it is proposed to look at the part played by the Baha'i community of Iran in the Constitutional Revolution. In 1890-1906, it was emerging as a dynamic and progressive element in Iranian society. Evidence is presented from unpublished Baha'i sources, and reports of diplomats, travellers and missionaries to demonstrate that the Baha'is had a discourse on modernity, constitutionalism and social reform, involving democracy, the advancement of education and raising the social role of women, that was attractive to many Iranians, especially in that it offered a native and culturally more sympathetic pathway to modernization and that the religion was gaining converts especially among the more educated and enlightened parts of society -- while there was a much larger constituency that, while not converted, was much influenced.

Despite Bayat's work on the major role played by the Azalis in the Revolution, this paper will advance the thesis that when the anti-constitutionalist ulama attacked the Constitution by asserting that it was the work of Babis, it was not the Azalis to which they referred but the Baha'is (the Baha'is being still called 'Babis' by the generality of Iranians at this time). The main evidence advanced for this is the fact that the Azalis concealed their beliefs and argued their case based on the Qur'an and Islam, while the Baha'is not only had their own discourse on constitutionalism and social reform, but they were also taking practical steps such as electing their ruling councils, building schools and advancing the social role of women.

Despite the constitutionalist reformers and the Baha'is being so close to each other ideologically, however, in the end, the Revolution itself had almost no overt Baha'i support and with many of the constitutionalists inimical towards the Baha'is. Published and unpublished sources are used in this paper to demonstrate the role of the ulama and the Azalis in creating an atmosphere of hatred against the Baha'is - creating an 'enemy within'. As a result of the activities of the ulama and the Azalis, the Baha'is were excluded from the Constitution itself, thus creating the legal background for the scapegoating and persecutions of the Baha'i community that continued up to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The paper ends with some reflections on what that exclusion has meant, not so much for the Baha'i community, but the damage that it has done to the Iranian nation itself.

Moojan Momen was born in Iran, but was raised and educated in England, attending the University of Cambridge. He is an independent scholar and has a special interest in the study of the Baha'i Faith and Shi'i Islam, both from the viewpoint of their history and their doctrines. In recent years, his interests have extended to the study of the phenomenon of religion. His principal publications in this field include: Introduction to Shi'i Islam (1985); The Babi and Baha'i Faiths 1844-1944: Some Contemporary Western Accounts (1982); and The Phenomenon of Religion (1999). He has contributed articles to Encyclopaedia Iranica and Encyclopaedia of the Modern Islamic World as well as papers to academic journals such as International Journal of Middle East Studies, Past and Present, Iran, Iranian Studies and Religion. He is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.

 

Crafting Constitutionalism: An Iranian Secular Modernist Project

Nahid Mozaffari, New York University, US

In his political and satirical writings in Sur Esrafil and Soroush, Ali Akbar Dehkhoda embarked on what he considered to be a primary task of the educated intellectual of the time: the elaboration of the meaning of constitutionalism (takmil-e ma'ni-ye mashrutiyat). Well versed in the discussions of constitutionalism in Europe, Dehkhoda and his colleagues understood that if the constitutional movement were to be viable in Iran, it needed an effective support base. The exact meaning of mashrutiyat had to be crafted through interaction, dialogue, and adaptation to Iranian conditions and contexts.

How did Dehkhoda as a prime example of the 'men of the pen' articulate new ideas to his various audiences? How did he combine the unfamiliar new constructs with the more familiar ways of thinking to communicate with large audiences? What role did language play in this communication?

The political philosophy which emerges from the pages of Sur Esrafil and Soroush amounts to an Iranian secular modernist project containing elements of European Enlightenment and social democratic thought. It bears interesting resemblances to Montesquieu's discussions in L'esprit des lois, particularly in the areas of the philosophical definitions of natural law and cultural relativity, and in the critique of despotism and reactionary clergy. But what is interesting is not so much the registration of particular elements of influence from West to East, but the manner in which the process of understanding, interpretation and translation into the Iranian historical and cultural context is conducted.

Dehkhoda attempts to arrive at an Iranian definition of constitutionalism by associating its core elements with concepts such as rights (hoghugh), progress (taraghi), freedom (horriyat, azadi), equality (mossavat), and dignity (sharaf), which he defines in new ways.This redefinition and encoding of unfamiliar concepts in culturally familiar terms for larger audiences is done successfully by using a variety of genres and modes of communication, from satire and street language, and frequent use of Persian proverbs to logical argumentation in both Western and Islamic configurations. Particularly notable is Dehkhoda's use of the carnivalesque in the Charand Parand column which suspends the application of normal rules and hierarchies, allowing for serious yet accessible critique.

Though this modernist project was not successful in immediate political terms, it did succeed in providing a culturally grounded alternative to the religious discourse of the time, and in entering the socio-political discourse far beyond the constitutional period in Iran. Grappling with different versions and interpretations of an Iranian modernist project continues to this day.

Nahid Mozaffari received her PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. She has taught Middle Eastern History at Cabot University in Rome, Italy, and at the New School for Social Research in New York. She is currently an adjunct Professor and a research Scholar at New York University in Paris. Her research interests include the history of constitutional movements in the region, intellectual history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and colonial history. Her research on Ali Akbar Dehkhoda's essays in the constitutional press is being revised for publication in 2006. Nahid Mozaffari has worked as a consultant for PEN American Center and International PEN for many years, and has edited Strange Times My Dear. The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature (2005).

 

Letters to the Editor: Readership and the Public Sphere in the First Constitutional Era

Negin Nabavi, University of Pennsylvania, US

The Constitutional Revolution, dated between 1906 and 1911, is generally viewed as having symbolized the beginning of the modern era of Iran. Not only was this the first time that a constitution was written and parliamentary democracy put to the test in Iran, but it was also the first time that new ideas were formulated and absorbed into the political culture of the country. In the studies that have been done on the Constitutional Revolution in Iran, it is generally recognized that the pre-revolutionary Persian press did play a role in propagating some of the ideas that led to the 1906 Revolution. However, little has been written on the impact that the post-revolutionary press may have had in giving shape to a new constitutional order, and influencing public opinion. Yet a cursory glance at the constitutional press points to a changing journalistic culture since they made much effort to appeal to a wide readership. For example, they used simple, everyday language, made themselves available at more competitive prices and increasingly adopted the policy of having single copies sold on the street. Among the tasks that they set themselves was to 'open the eyes and ears of the people', and act as 'mirrors reflecting the opinions of the people'.

This paper will therefore explore the neglected issue of readership. Who read the newspapers? Why did they read, and what did they expect from the press? Can one talk about the emergence of a public sphere at this time in Iran, and if so, what part did the press play in its reconfiguration? These are some of the questions that this paper will address by focusing on the 'open letters' that appeared in the pages of three influential newspapers of the first constitutional era, namely the Tehran Habl al-Matin, Sur-e Esrafil, and Mosavat, published between spring 1907 and summer 1908.

Negin Nabavi is a Visiting Fellow at the Middle East Center, University of Pennsylvania. She obtained her DPhil from Oxford University in 1997, and was Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University between 1998 and 2005. Her books include Intellectuals and the State in Iran: Politics, Discourse and the Dilemma of Authenticity (2003) and an edited volume, Intellectual Trends in Twentieth Century Iran: A Critical Survey (2003). Her current research project focuses on the Constitutional Press in Iran.

 

Surrogate Enemies:  Assyrians in Kasravi's Account of the Constitutional Revolution

Eden Naby, US

From being the major Christian minority in the area between Lake Urmiyah and the Turkish border, by 1921 the Assyrians had all but been wiped off the map in their traditional villages in Iran.  Forgotten in modern Iranian history is this painful episode associated with the genocide against Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Yet the fate of Iran's Assyrians may have been shaped to a great extent by the major historian of the Constitutional Revolution, Ahmad-e Kasravi.

Kasravi branded Assyrians the surrogate enemies of Iran's move toward representative government.  Regarded ever after as Tsarist Russian collaborators, the Assyrians underwent further cruelties during World War II in large part because they had become tainted in the major writing about the Constitutional Revolution. Despite the considerable reluctance on the part of most Iranian Assyrians to follow the Russian lead during the first two decades of the twentieth century, social and political forces rising from a long history of Persian-Russian confrontation in the Transcaucus region, together with their position as a Christian minority subject to constant insecurity due to the lawlessness in the Iranian borderlands, forced alliances with groups regarded as anti-Muslim. While this part of the history is known from a variety of sources, less has been elucidated regarding Kasravi's demonizing of Assyrians due to their role in witnessing to Turkish and Kurdish atrocities committed in the broader region.  In his ferocious attack on particular Assyrians (and on American missionaries) Kasravi nears denial of the ethnic cleansing that took place.

Was his position solely that of a nationalist Iranian inveigling against 'friends' of the enemies of the constitutional movement to which he was devoted?  Was he, as an Azari Turk, sympathizing with fellow Muslim Turks in Urmiyah and beyond who felt displaced by Christians then succeeding in new professions such as medicine, photography, printing and regional trade?  Did the material success of the returning migrant workers from Russia and America so irritate the general Muslim population of the region that Assyrians became not just the focus of their envy but the surrogate enemies of both Islam and the Constitutional Revolution?

Kasravi's writings about Assyrians, quoted uncritically by subsequent Iranian writers about the period and the region, are subjected to analysis in light of both Assyrian language sources, contemporary Persian sources, and outside materials such as missionary archives and especially the original documentation in the 'Blue Book.' For the first time, these sources will be tapped to discuss Assyrians and the Constitutional Revolution.

Eden Naby is a specialist on the Modern Middle East with a concentration on the area from Iraq to Central Asia. She was trained at Columbia University where she earned her PhD in 1975. She has published extensively on the Assyrians, as well as the Afghans, Turkmens, Uighurs and Kurds. She has conducted NEH seminars for college teachers on religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East at Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her book Afghanistan: Mullah, Marx and Mujahid, co-authored with the late Ralph H Magnus (2002), is a seminal source on modern Afghanistan and particularly useful for its analysis of that country's ethnic and religious minorities. Dr Naby is a native Assyrian from Iran. Her recent articles include: 'A Memorial to an Assyrian Refugee, 1922' in The Modern Middle East: A Sourcebook for History (2005); 'The Afghan Diaspora: Reflections on an Imagined Country' in Central Asia and the Caucasus: Transnationalism and Diaspora (2005); 'The Assyrian Diaspora: Cultural Survival in the Absence of State Structure' in Central Asia and the Caucasus: Transnationalism and Diaspora (2005); 'Assyrian Nationalism in Iraq: Survival under Religious and Ethnic Threat' in Nationalisms Across the Globe (2005); 'Will the Indigenous Christians of Iraq Survive?' in Europe Infos (2004); 'From Lingua Franca to Endangered Language: The Legal Aspects of the Preservation of Aramaic in Iraq' in The Margins of Nations: Endangered Languages and Language Rights (2004); 'Almost Family: Assyrians and Armenians in Massachusetts' in Armenians of New England: Celebrating a Culture and Preserving a Heritage (2004).

 

French Consular Reports on the Constitutional Revolution in Tabriz, 1906-1909

Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam, Marc Bloch University - Strasbourg, France

Yann Richard, CNRS, France

One has only few direct reports from non-Iranian witnesses on the Constitutional Revolution in Iran. For this reason, the reports of the French Consulate in Tabriz, sent to the Quai d'Orsay from December 1906 to February 1909, are an important and yet unpublished source. This period covers not only the first parliamentary elections but also the breaking of relations between Mohammad Ali Shah (1907-09) and the constitutionalists (coup d'etat and shelling of the majles, June 1908) and especially the Tabriz resistance which resulted in the restoring of the constitutional regime.

These documents show unique information on many daily topics, like the role of women in some local issues. Some of the telegrams of the Iranian revolutionaries, quoted and translated here into French, don't even exist in Iranian historiography, despite the work of Kasravi and others. Neither in the Blue Book of the British, nor in the Orange Book of the Russians, can this information be found. No other collection of documents by non-Iranian observers, gathered on the spot (Browne was corresponding with a lot of informers but was not there at that time) has ever been published.

Louis Alphonse Nicolas (1864-1939), author of these reports, had studied at the Ecole des Langues Orientales in Paris. He had excellent relations with the Iranian nationalists and shared their political ideas and opposition to absolutism. As a French Consul in Tabriz (1906-18), he kept himself constantly informed about the political situation locally and in Tehran.

The French had at some stage been the model of some Iranian revolutionaries who had been disillusioned by the British, but French sources on this period have scarcely been used up to now. Despite a dismissive statement in Shuster's book, French diplomacy was active in Persia throughout this period. French interests in Persia were limited but they had key positions in the administration and in the educational system.

This paper will introduce briefly the reports of the French Consulate in Tabriz and will show their importance for the study of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution during the reign of Mohammad Ali Shah (1907-09).

Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam finished his PhD in Oriental Languages and Civilizations at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris) in 2002, after studying History in Iran (Universities of Yazd and Tehran). His thesis, entitled Les Missions Archeologiques Francaises et la Question des Antiquites en Perse (1884-1914), got the Best Dissertation of the Year Award from the Foundation for Iranian Studies and was published as: L'Archeologie Francaise en Perse et les Antiquites Nationales (1884-1914) (2004). He then became a post-doctoral research fellow at the Portuguese Ministry of Education and the 'Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia' (FCT) in Lisbon (2003-05). From September 2006 he will be Assistant Professor at Marc Bloch University in Strasbourg (France). His research deals with the relationship between Iran and Portugal in the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries through Persian documents kept in the Portuguese National Archives (Torre do Tombo). Author of books and articles concerning Safavid and Qajar periods, Dr Nasiri-Moghaddam is presently post-doctoral Researcher of CNRS, Monde Iranien et Indien in France and is currently preparing a publication about The Constitutional Revolution in Tabriz as Reflected in French Consular Reports (1906-1909). This study is financially supported by the Institut fuer Iranistik in Vienna (Austria). He has furthermore published the following editions and compilations: Mohammad-Taher Bastami's Fotuhat-e Fereydunia (conquest of the North-East of Iran in the beginning of the seventeenth century by Fereydun Khan during the reign of Shah Abbas Safavid,1587-1629) with S Mir-Mohammad Sadeq (2001); Mohammad-Ali Khan Ghafour's Ruznama-ye safar-e Kharazm (account of trip of an Iranian ambassador in Chorasmie in the nineteenth century) (1994); Mohammad-Ebrahim b Zeyn al-Abedin Nasiri's Dastur-e shahriaran (history of the first five years of the reign of Shah Sultan Hossein Safavid,1694-1722) (1994); Gozida-ye asnad-e darya-ye Khazar va manateq-e shomali-e Iran dar jang-e jahani-e avval (Selection of the Documents on the Caspian Sea and Northern Regions of Iran during the First World War) (1995), Gozida-ye asnad-e siasi-e Iran va Afghanestan. Mas'ala-ye Harat dar 'ahd-e Mohammad Shah Qajar (Selection of the Documents on Relationships between Iran and Afghanistan. The Question of Herat under the Reign of Mohammad Shah Qajar,1834-48) (1995).

 

The Evolution of Provincial Administration 1907-1914

Morteza Nouraei, Isfahan University, Iran

This paper seeks to examine the growth and functioning of local institutions and councils set up after the Constitutional Revolution in 1906, and the problems they encountered in implementing their objectives.

The constitutional regime wanted, first and foremost, to raise the standards of conduct of the persons and institutions carrying out various socio-political functions, and to turn them into behavioural models for Iranian society. At the same time, the new situation created a need for government departments that could enable policy makers to manage the affairs of reform. This resulted in changes to the old system as well as the establishment of new departments. For instance, the existing security and revenue systems were improved. The administrative changes caused serious conflict between the parliament and the Court at the centre from the beginning. Outside of Tehran, in the provinces, awareness and understanding of the Constitution and the circumstances surrounding it varied in depth as the new system was gradually institutionalized.

The scope of the responsibilities and functions of the new local councils (majles-e eyalati) was especially unclear. Their role in some areas was in conflict with that of official departments, such as the Governor General's office. This paper is a comparative endeavour to explore this subject in the different provinces of Iran during the period 1907-1925. In particular, the paper tries to examine to what extent the new type of institution was capable of responding to the demands of its era.

For the research into the topic, three types of sources have been examined:

1. Local diaries which are available in the FO248 series of the PRO (e.g. Meshed Diary and Isfahan Diary).

2. Correspondence between local officials and Tehran, such as the Karguzari reports (both available in the Iranian National Archives).

3. Local press reports.

Morteza Nouraei received his BA from Isfahan University in 1987, his MA from Beheshti University in 1990, and his PhD from Manchester University in 2000. His PhD thesis was entitled Mashshad Between 1890 and 1914: A Socio-historical Study. He is currently Assistant Professor and member of the Scientific Board of the History Department at Isfahan University. His research interests are the modern and contemporary history of Iran as well as the local and oral history of Isfahan, Mashad and Bushire. His publications (mostly in Persian) include 'The Evolution of Tribal Legitimacy in Iran (thirteenth century)' in The Journal of the Faculty of Letters and Humanities of Isfahan University (1994); 'Political Thought of Sheikh Mohaniniad Khiyabani' in Journal of Foreign Policy (1995); Historical Sociology of the Region of Bashagard (1997); 'Future History and Documents' in Journal of Tarikh-e Mo'aser-e Iran (2003); 'An Introduction to the Philosophy of Oral History and its Function in Historiography' in Journal of Ganjine-ye Asnad (2003); 'Roknolmolk Endowments (vaqf) in Isfahan' in Journal of Ganjine-ye Asnad (2004); 'Robbery on the Routes of Isfahan 1900-1925' in The Journal of the Faculty of Letters and Humanities of Isfahan University (2004); 'Ordinary People and British Culture' in Anglo-Iranian Relations Since 1800 (2005); 'The Role of Karguzar in Foreign Relations' in Journal of Royal Asiatic Society (2005); The Role of Local Officers in Anglo-Iranian Relations (2006).

 

The Iranian Constitutional Revolution through Japanese Eyes

Michael E Penn, The Shingetsu Institute, Japan

This paper examines Japanese awareness of, and reactions to, the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in the years during which it was taking place; that is, the years 1906 to 1911. In order to understand the nature of Japanese perceptions in this period, extensive use is made of contemporary Japanese newspapers and other periodicals. At this time there were newspapers like the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun and Jiji Shinpo that dedicated a significant amount of their text to the coverage of international events. They are rich resources for understanding the Japanese political debates and international perceptions of that time. This paper specifies how the Japanese elite portrayed Persia at this time.

Japan played an indirect but significant role in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. It was the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 that created the political space that allowed the Revolution to take place. Many commentators noted the more assertive public mood in Persia that followed the Japanese victory at Tsushima and the moral effect on other 'Orientals' of modern Japan's rise to power.

Additionally, the other major European power involved in Persia at this time – Great Britain – was a formal ally of Japan throughout this period. There was actually some discussion among British leaders about introducing Japanese troops into the region to help cope with the political upheavals and a possible resurgent threat from Russia. There was also a British proposal to open a Japanese consulate in the country.

Finally, some Japanese travellers had visited Qajar Persia as early as 1880, and there were a handful of Japanese who had first-hand knowledge of this region. Indeed, we actually have specific accounts of Japanese visitors to Persia in the period of the Revolution, and British testimony about how enthusiastically they were received by their Persian hosts. This paper concludes with these accounts.

Michael E Penn is a native Californian who has lived in Japan for the past nine years. He holds a BA in History from the University of California Santa Barbara and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Originally, he focused his studies on the art, culture, and politics of modern Iraq. However, since moving to Japan in 1997, the focus of his studies shifted to modern Japanese relations with the Islamic world. For more than six years Mr Penn has worked as a fulltime Foreign Lecturer at the University of Kitakyushu. In 2004, he founded the Shingetsu Institute for the Study of Japanese-Islamic Relations (http://www.shingetsuinstitute.com). In 2005, he was also appointed to serve as an External Evaluator of Akita International University. Mr Penn has published one book and more than a dozen academic articles, including: Shingetsu Bibliography of Japanese-Islamic Relations (2005); 'Islam in Japan: Adversity and Diversity' in Harvard Asia Quarterly (2006); 'East Meets East: An Ottoman Mission in Meiji Japan' in Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle Eastern Studies(2006); 'First Contact: The Story of the Zadkia' in Japanese Studies (2004); 'Modern Japan's Encounter with Islam: Research on Early Japan-West Asian Relations' in East Asia Research (2004); 'Japanese Educational Manga and the Representation of Islam' in Bulletin of Showa Pharmaceutical University (2000).

 

Individual and National Identity in the Novel

Soad Pira, Nashr-e Tarikh-e Iran, Iran

The ideology of constitutionalism opened a new way of expression in Iranian literature and gave rise to the appearance of the novel. Influenced by social and cultural objectives, the older literary forms underwent a complicated process of transition resulting in a new form of literary output. Some of the questions addressed in this paper on the development of the novel before and after the Constitutional Revolution will be the extent to which it achieved its aim in reaching a kind of individual self knowledge and national identity.

I shall limit my talk to the description of four novels, Amir Arsalan, by Naqib al-Mamalek and Ketab-e Ahmad by Abd al-Rahim Talebof, based on Rousseau's Emile, both written during the Naseri period, and Shams va Toghra by Mirza Mohammad Baqer Khosravi, and Eshq va Saltanat, by Musa Kabudar Ahang, which appeared during and after the Constitutional Revolution.

In Amir Arsalan the meaning of this individual-national identity is vague or non- existent, whereas Ketab-e Ahmad is influenced by a Western model and stands between the older type story and the modern novel. Although Shams va Toghra and Eshq va Saltanat are more in the form of the modern novel they are imitations of the European model and though they attempt to give a view of an individual-national identity, they are vague and not well defined, a weakness which can be said to continue to the present day.

Soad Pira received her BA in Sociology from Islamic Azad University in Tehran in 1994. She began working at Nashr-e Tarikh-e Iran in 1990 and was trained as editor of manuscripts and documents,primarily of the Qajar period. She has published numerous articles and edited and translated several books (all in Persian), including: John Company's Last War, by Barbara English, translated with Mansoureh Ettehadieh (2004), Cities andTrade: Consul Abbott on the Economy and Society of Iran 1847-1866, translated with Mansoureh Ettehadieh (2006); Safar Nameh-ye Kerman va Baluchestan by Firuz Mirza Farman Farma, with Mansoureh Ettehadieh (2001); The Collected Documents, Correspondence and Memories of Firuz Mirza (Nosrat al-Dowleh), with Mansoureh Ettehadieh (1999); 'Matboate Tanz dar Iran: 1324-1320' in Iran Encyclopaedia (2006); 'Matboate  Caricatur  dar Iran: 1324-1320' in Iran Encyclopaedia (2006); 'Gozaresh Matboate Iran: 1330-57' in Iran Encyclopaedia (2006); 'Ferqeye Domocrat Azarbayejan' in Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam (2006), 'Mosadeq' in Islam of Turkish Encyclopaedia (2006); 'Naser al-Din Shah' in Islam of Turkish Encyclopaedia (2006).

 

The Iranian Constitutional Revolution as Lieu(x) de Memoire: Sattar Khan

Anja Pistor-Hatam, Christian-Albrechts-Universitaet, Germany

It was Maurice Halbwachs who first spoke of the importance of social memory (memoire collective), claiming that the past is remembered, construed or imagined within a frame of collective representations. According to Halbwachs, historical interpretations and patterns of perceptions are shaped by a combination of the individual and the social memory. Past events are built into memory by a collective need to create meaning, by the traditions and perceptions coming from different social milieux. Pierre Nora for his part argues that social memory (milieux de memoire) is replaced by places of memory/remembrance (lieux de memoire), unavoidably composed of two dimensions: a material dimension (space and time) and a symbolic memory (memory of the past). Lieux de memoire, says Nora, have to be reconstructed as well as deconstructed to show that memory has its own history and to bring to light the demystifying potential of the history of memory. Against Nora's claim that history (as a science) is in opposition to memory, even aiming at memory's destruction and suppression, Aleida Assmann sees history and memory as two means of remembrance that do not forcibly suppress and exclude one another. History, therefore, exists as science and as memory.

Drawing inspiration from the above-mentioned authors as well as Jan Assmann and Paul Ricoeur, Etienne Francois and Hagen Schulze in the foreword to their three-volume Deutsche Erinnerungsorte (German places of memory/remembrance) define loci memoriae as being places of material as well as immaterial existence. Such places of memory/remembrance may consist of mythical personages, events, buildings, historical monuments, terms, books, works of art etc. Place, therefore, is to be understood as a metaphor or a topos, each one of these places being situated in a real, social, political, cultural or imagined space. Places of memory/remembrance, as these authors further elucidate their concept, turn into places of memory/remembrance because of the symbolic function they possess. They are long-lasting focal points of collective memory and identity.

On the one hand, the Iranian Constitutional Revolution may have become such a long-lasting focal point of Iranian collective memory and identity in total. On the other hand, particular events, individuals, regions, cities or buildings may have been singled out as symbols of the Constitutional Revolution, its supporters and its enemies (e.g. Tabriz, Sattar Khan, the majles, Mohammad Ali Shah). Does a standardized or uniform memory of the Constitutional Revolution exist or has it been/is it (still) the object of a dispute among different traditions of remembrance? In what way did these focal points of Iranian memory and identity alter according to the ways they were perceived, appropriated, used and communicated in ever changing historical and political settings? Moreover, how are the science of history - research on the Constitutional Revolution by foreign scholars and Iranians in Iran and abroad - and those major forms of the collective memory accessible to the historian related? Based on the aforementioned theoretical framework, these and other questions shall be discussed as part of a new analytical approach to study the Iranian Constitutional Revolution as lieu(x) de memoire. In this context, Sattar Khan and Baqer Khan present themselves as examples for mythical personages as places of memory/remembrance, whose symbolic function has an effect until this day. Perceived as a local hero in Azerbaidjan, Sattar Khan, for example, is still remembered as one of the champions of the Constitutional Revolution all over Iran. Schools, streets, municipal districts and restaurants are named after him. Apparently, Sattar Khan is memorized as a person in a real political and historical place. At the same time, he is turned into a place of memory/remembrance because he possesses a symbolic function that turns him into a long-lasting focal point of memory and identity. Recently, he has also taken up space in the Internet, becoming part of virtual reality.

Anja Pistor-Hatam received her MA in Middle Eastern Studies at Freiburg University in 1988. A year later, in 1989, she began to work at the same university as a Lecturer while doing research for her dissertation project at the same time. After having obtained her PhD in Middle Eastern Studies, she spent a year as a freelance collaborator with the Centre for Turkey Studies at the University of Essen. From 1993 until 1996, she was employed as a Lecturer and collaborator at Heidelberg University. Within the scope of an interdisciplinary research project (Transformations of the European Expansion from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century ) that was financed by the German Research Council, she pursued her research on debates on modernization conducted in Persian newspapers, which were printed in the Ottoman Empire. From 1996 until 1998, she held a scholarship from the German Research Council to finish her habilitation thesis (Nachrichtenblatt, Informationsboerse und Diskussionsforum: Akhtar-e Estanbul (1876–1896) – Anstoesse zur fruehen persischen Moderne, Muenster - Hamburg - London 1999 (2000)). In 1999, she qualified as a professor and was appointed on a temporary position as a Professor for Middle Eastern Studies at Kiel University and received tenure at the same University in 2003. Her major research interests are the history and intellectual history of the Middle East, mainly Iran and the Ottoman Empire (including the Arab provinces) in the nineteenth and twentieth century. She has published (and edited) a variety of books and articles on different aspects concerning (intellectual) history, travelogues (Persian and Ottoman Turkish), the Shi'ite religion, translation studies, and Ibn Khaldun, including: Iran und die Reformbewegung im Osmanischen Reich. Persische Staatsmaenner, Reisende und Oppositionelle unter dem Einfluss der Tanzimat (1992); Presse und Oeffentlichkeit im Nahen Osten, with Ch Herzog and R Motika(1995); 'Sheikh Ubaidullah's Revolt and the Kurdish Invasion of Iran – Attempts at a New Assessment' in The Journal of Kurdish Studies (2001–2002); 'Fuerbitte und Gedenken: Stationen schiitischer Wallfahrt im Irak' in Heilige Orte in Asien und Afrika (2006); 'Ein‚ fruchttragender Same in der Salzwueste: Zum Todestag des Djamal od-Din Asadabadi (1838/39–1987)' in Die Welt des Islams (forthcoming); 'Merchants, Pilgrims, and Refugees: Iranian Shi'ites in the Ottoman Empire' in Religious Refugees in Europe, Asia and the Americas –Sixth to Twenty First Centuries (forthcoming).

 

Germany and the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911

Anna Poghosyan, Humboldt University, Germany

This paper discusses the role and policy of Germany in the Persian Constitutional Revolution mainly based on the archives of the German ministry of Foreign Affairs. The so-called 'peaceful' penetration of foreign capital into Persia and its transformation into a semi-colony began at the end of the nineteenth century. That is to say, Persia became a country that depended economically and politically on the Great Powers. Germany, which at the beginning of the twentieth century occupied one of the significant positions in the world from a military and economic point of view, led an active policy to penetrate into the Near and Middle East in order to gain economic and political superiority in that region, and, like Russia and Great Britain, to have a share of Persia. Persia had become the scene of economic competition between Great Powers. Russia and England divided Persia into zones of influence in order to protect their economic and political interests in the region. None of these two countries were prepared to allow Germany into these zones. Germany's establishment on the political and mainly economic scene appeared to be a serious danger to English and Russian hegemony, and established it as a third power in Persia. In Germany's plans, Persia had very important economic and strategic significance (mainly for the Baghdad Project). And certainly, Germany could not refer indifferently to such a historically and politically important phase of Persian history, as the Persian Constitutional Revolution. Both the Persian and Russian press published comments on Germany's past actions and aims at that time. The semi-official journal (Novoye Vremya) foresaw a mushroom-like growth of German influence, headed by a bank, a steamer concession on Lake Urmiyeh and the extension of the Baghdad Railway, which had already given Germany 'decisive influence in the markets of Asia Minor'.

In opposition to Anglo-Russian positions, Germany made great efforts to convince the Persians that Germany was geographically very far from Persia and consequently could not have any colonial purposes. Germany led its diplomacy according to the following principles: 'Persia is an independent country, and that is why it must be open to everybody' or 'Persia is for the Iranians', using the nationalist sentiments and anti-imperialistic spirit of the Iranian people against Great Britain and Russia. The German agents tried to create the impression that Germany encouraged the Persian constitutional and national movements and was interested in strengthening Persia's economic and political independence. But there were many inconsistencies in German policy during the turbulent years of the Revolution which it is the intention of this paper to explore and analyse.

Anna Poghosyan is a PhD candidate in the department of History at Humboldt University of Berlin, were she is completing her doctoral work on German-Persian Relations in 1873-1919. She completed her previous studies at Yerevan State University, department of Oriental Studies. Her main research interest is in international relations (especially Persian-German relations), cultural history of politics and minority rights. Her publications include The German-Persian Treaty of Friendship, Navigation and Commerce of 1873 (forthcoming).

 

The Circulation of Reformist Discourse in Persian and Arabic Periodicals Preceding and during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911

Kamran Rastegar, University of Edinburgh, UK

This paper examines points of contact between Arab and Iranian reformist thinkers in the years before and during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. It does so by examining two issues. First, the role of Iranian periodicals located in Egypt in the development of constitutional discourse is discussed – while historical and literary scholarship has directed attention to the importance of exilic Iranian publishing to the development of political and cultural reformist and revolutionary discourses central to the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, much of this work has focused on Istanbul, and to a lesser extent on Western Europe and India. Very little research has focused on the active Iranian press in the Arab world (particularly Egypt), including periodicals such as Chehrenama, Hekmat and Parvaresh. Through archival research carried out in Cairo at the Egyptian National Library (Dar al-Kutub), this paper presents a critical reading of several articles from the Iranian exilic press in Egypt showing the impact of Egyptian reformist thought on the publishers of these periodicals. The second area discussed will be that of the representation of the Iranian constitutional struggle in Arabic publications, in particular Jurji Zeydan's al-Hilal. Through this comparative examination of reformist discourse at the turn of the twentieth century, this paper aims to show that the development of these ideas in both the Arab and Iranian contexts was contingent upon the cultural and political influence and inspiration of other regional struggles. In addition, by looking more closely at the issue the Iranian exilic press in Egypt, this paper hopes to illuminate a body of texts less often considered in scholarship on the topic.

Kamran Rastegar is a Lecturer in Arabic and Persian at the University of Edinburgh. Having received his PhD from Columbia University in 2005, he has previously taught in the departments of Comparative Literature at Brown University and Hofstra University in the USA. He researches the cultural histories of the modern Middle East and Europe, with a particular interest in social value discourse on literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He also researches on topics relating to contemporary cinemas of Iran and the Arab world. His article 'Literary Transactions and the Changing Value of Alf Layla wa Layla for Modern Arabic, Persian and English Readers' has been published in the Journal of Arabic Literature (2005), and an article on the question of literary value around the Persian and English readerships of James Morier's Adventures of Hajji Baba Ispahani in Iran is forthcoming. A monograph on literary modernity and inter-literary exchanges between English, Arabic and Persian literatures, titled The Literary Abacus: Transactions in Modern Arabic, Persian and English Literatures, is also forthcoming.

Yann Richard studied Philosophy and General Linguistics in Lyon before his first two years stay in Tehran in 1970-72. Through the writings of Henry Corbin, he was drawn into the study of Islamic Iranian philosophy and started his orientalist studies in Tuebingen (Germany). Fellow of the French Research Institute in Tehran, 1975-80, he witnessed and experienced the turmoil of the Revolution and involved himself in the study of modern religious trends and contemporary history of Iran. Research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique since 1981, he became Professor for Iranian Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris). His main publications include Entre l'Iran et l'Occident. Adaptation et Assimilation des Idees et Techniques Occidentales en Iran (1989); Intellectuels et Militants de l'Islam Contemporain edited with Gilles Kepel (1990); L'islam Chi'ite: Croyances et Ideologies (1991); Shi'ite Islam: Polity, Ideology, and Creed, translated by A Nevill (1995); L'Iran au XXe siecle edited with J P Digard and B Hourcade (1996, 1998).

 

American Presbyterian Missions and Howard Baskerville of 1907-1909 Tabriz - The Internationalization of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution

Thomas M Ricks, US

This paper argues that the untimely death of the American school teacher, Howard Baskerville left two types of legacies; a positive one of American ideals in the 'hearts and minds' of Iranians, and a mixed one of heroism and foolish daring for American missionaries and diplomats. He frankly embarrassed many of the missionaries and the foreign diplomats in Tabriz and Tehran. Overall, the siege of Tabriz was a watershed. By 1908, the Revolution had become more than a local and then regional affairs. The mashruteh had become an international event for both missionaries and the diplomats alike.

The internationalization of the Revolution was underway, as far as the American Presbyterian missionaries in Tehran and Tabriz were concerned, in the early years of the Revolution. From 1907 on, Tabriz increasingly became the focus of national and international attention in its struggle against royal reaction and local brigands. The siege of Tabriz from 1908 to 1909 which ended with the death of the Princeton University graduate, Howard Baskerville, was a turning point. Divided into pro-and anti-Baskerville parties, the American missionaries debated the wisdom of his actions for the next four decades while the US State Department saw in Baskerville's death portents of an uncertain future in defining US foreign policies and interests