Making History in Iran: Education, Nationalism, and Print Culture 9780804792813

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M A K I NG HISTORY I N IR A N

M A K I NG HISTORY IN IRAN Education, Nationalism, and Print Culture FA R Z I N V E J D A N I

STA N FOR D U N I V ER SIT Y PR E SS STA N FOR D, CA LIFOR N I A

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2015 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vejdani, Farzin, author. Making history in Iran : education, nationalism, and print culture / Farzin Vejdani. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8047-9153-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Nationalism and historiography--Iran. 2. Historiography--Political aspects--Iran. 3. Iran--History--Study and teaching. 4. Iran--Historiography. I. Title. ds271.5v45 2014 955.0072--dc23 2014025921 isbn 978-0-8047-9281-3 (electronic) Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/14 Minion

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

vii



xi



Note on Transliteration and Dates Introduction

1



1 Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History

17



2 Schools, Citizenship, and Revolution

35



3 The State, Education, and the Standardization of History

59



4 The Women’s Movement, the Press, and Exemplary Biographies

97



5 Writing the Local into the National

117

6 A Nation of Poets

Conclusion

145 167

Notes

177

Bibliography

225

Index

255

AC K NOW L E D GM E N T S

A book that addresses the institutional and personal entanglements of historians cannot fail to note many debts of gratitude. I have benefited from the insights, support, and advice of many friends and colleagues over many years of research and writing. Institutional support facilitated the research and writing of this book. Generous funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Yale Center for International and Area Studies allowed me to collect many of the primary sources for this project. I also thank the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation for awarding me the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. The University of Arizona’s Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Professorship along with a junior sabbatical afforded me the time to write the final version of the manuscript. I would also like to thank Ryerson University for its financial support. I presented portions of this work at Yale University, Cornell University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Arizona. I am indebted to those who attended and provided me with thoughtful questions, comments, and suggestions. I thank the staff at the interlibrary loan offices of both Yale University and the University of Arizona for making every effort to obtain rare printed sources for me. The library staff at Columbia University, Princeton University, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and Cambridge University granted me access to their rare book, periodical, and manuscript collections. Just as printing had an enormously transformative effect on the availability of texts in late Qajar and early Pahlavi Iran, the more recent digitization of primary sources has similarly changed how historians do research. I drew extensively from the online digitized Persian collections of the Majlis Library in Iran, the Digital Library of India, and the Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran Digital Archive. Many of the texts I found in these collections are unavailable in any European and North American library.

viii   Acknowledgments

I owe Fereshteh Kowssar an enormous debt of gratitude for providing me with a copy of the unpublished memoirs of her grandfather, Sayyid ‘Ali Nasr. His memoirs offer a rare glimpse into the life of an early generation of Iranian history teachers. During my several research trips to England, I had the good fortune of meeting with John Gurney, who guided me through the labyrinth of Edward Granville Browne’s collection of letters and provided me with invaluable references and sources to further my understanding of Browne’s inter­ actions with Iranian literary figures. Charles Melville secured funding from Pembroke College, Cambridge that afforded me the opportunity to read these letters more carefully. Abbas Amanat has proved to be an engaging interlocutor and dedicated mentor. He shared his vast knowledge of Iranian historiography and pushed me to dig deeper into the topic, for which I am very grateful. I am indebted to Jay Winter for helping me to see the broader historiographical significance of my project and for introducing me to the world of European cultural history. I also thank Nile Green, Ali Gheissari, and Houchang Chehabi for carefully reading and commenting on the entire manuscript. Their suggestions were invaluable in reframing the project and making it more readable. I am similarly thankful to Stanford University Press Editor-in-Chief Kate Wahl for providing useful feedback at every stage of the revision process. I thank my friends and colleagues for their support and intellectual camaraderie over the years: Kamran Scot Aghaie, Touraj Atabaki, Julie Bowring, Dominic Brookshaw, Gerry Cadeva, Kioumars Ghereghlou, Farshid Kazemi, Ranin Kazemi, Afshin Marashi, Afshin Matin-Asgari, Norma Mendoza-­ Denton, Sholeh Quinn, Mitra Sharafi, Sunil Sharma, Mohamad TavakoliTarghi, and Nathan Wilkinson. Arash Khazeni has been both a dear friend and a mentor to me. I cannot thank him enough. At the University of Arizona I have benefited greatly from the friendship, advice, and support of Anne Betteridge, Julia Clancy-Smith, Susan Crane, Linda Darling, Richard Eaton, Adam Geary, Benjamin H. Irvin, Steve Johnstone, Fabio Lanza, Minayo Nasiali, Yaseen Noorani, David Ortiz, Jadwiga Pieper-Mooney, Brian Silverstein, Charles Smith, and Kamran Talattof, and Doug Wiener. Aomar Boum deserves special thanks for always lending an ear, offering good advice, and most important, being a loyal friend. The following friends and colleagues generously read and commented on various chapters of the book: Assef Ashraf, Laura Tabili, Serpil Atamaz, Devika Bordia, Aslı Iğsız, Arash Khazeni, Eden McLean, and Leah Mancini-Khaghani.

Acknowledgments  ix

Finally, I thank my family and loved ones for their unfailing support and encouragement. My partner, Safaa Blila, kept me company during the seemingly countless hours spent revising this text. She was, and continues to be, a source of happiness in my life. My greatest thanks go to my parents, ­Farzaneh and Ehsan Vejdani, for always being there for me. I recall growing up in Italy and later in northern British Columbia in the 1980s with the 1979 Iranian Revolution casting a long shadow on our lives. Despite my parents’ painful separation from friends and family in Iran and the disorienting experience of immigration, they ensured that I had a childhood filled with joy. They stopped at nothing to make certain that I had every opportunity to pursue my education and my dreams. Without their love, this book would not have been possible.

NOT E ON T R A NSL I T E R AT ION A N D DAT E S

This book adopts a modified version of the International Journal of Middle East Studies transliteration guide without the use of diacritical marks. Diphthongs are transliterated aw and ay. Names with assimilated vowels are generally left separate, except names with Allah in them, for example, Nasrullah instead of Nasr Allah. Dates in the lunar Arabic calendar (hijri) are abbreviated as H. while dates in the Persian Islamic solar calendar are abbreviated as Sh. (shamsi ). Most Persian personal names have been transliterated except in bibliographical references to a work written in a language other than Persian.

M A K I NG HISTORY I N IR A N



INTRODUCTION

B Y T H E M I D -N I N E T E E N T H C E N T U RY , the Qajar king Nasir al-Din Shah employed a growing number of historians at his court. Having been established only in the closing years of the eighteenth century, the Qajar dynasty felt the need to display its legitimacy through a number of cultural activities, not the least of which was history. On the surface, the relationship between the king and the historian fit a familiar pattern of patronage found in Muslim imperial courts. Much like poets who wrote panegyrics for the sovereign, historians at the court glorified the reigning dynasty in exchange for an official title, a steady stipend, and continuing imperial largesse. The Qajar imperial court thus became a magnet for talented literary and scholarly minds seeking to historicize Qajar imperial splendor. Below the surface, the status of historians and the meaning of their craft were beginning to change. With the advent of print technology in Iran, histories now took the form of portable and easily reproducible texts, in contrast to their more ornate and beautifully handwritten predecessors. The opening of modern schools likewise led to novel pedagogical uses of history. While court historians often played pioneering roles in both the promotion of print and the opening of schools, these transformations had unforeseen democratizing effects on who wrote histories and why. On February 19, 1922, ‘Abd al-Husayn Malik al-Mu’arrikhin, whose title literally meant “king of historians,” petitioned the Ministry of Education, bitterly complaining about the state of education and his own fate as a historian. A scion of a famous family of Iranian court historians, he lamented the “ruin

2  Introduction

and misfortune” that had befallen Iran since the 1906 Constitutional Revolution and blamed it all on corrupt ministers who filled important posts with unqualified and unworthy members of their own entourage. Malik al-Mu’arrikhin named names: the Minister of Education, Mirza Mumtaz al-Dawlah, had appointed the “heretical” Baha’i A‘lam al-Sultan Tarchi as his Head of Personnel, and Mirza Ahmad Khan, who “did not know Persian and Arabic” and had a “well-known unsavory past,” as his Minister of Endowments. The historian painted a bleak picture of the daily goings-on of the ministry in which employees “were reading newspapers and smoking cigarettes for lack of things to do” and “if they decided to write a couple of pages in the course of a full day, this would be full of mistakes.” At this point in the petition, Malik al-Mu’arrikhin appealed to his own illustrious lineage, stating “for 150 years, myself, my father, and my grandfather have rendered service to the education of the nation,” an allusion to the multivolume nineteenth-century Persian history The Abrogator of Histories (Nasikh al-Tavarikh), penned by his grandfather, court-historian Muhammad Taqi Sipihr, and continued by himself and his father. He ended the petition by asking the ministry for a salary of 100 tumans a month or a position at the Ministry of Education so that he could finish his many ongoing history projects. If he was denied his demands, he threatened, he would take his books abroad, where he could find a publisher and make a proper living.1 It is tempting to take Malik al-Mu’arrikhin at his word about the condition of former court historians and governmental ineptitude, but a more skeptical reading of his petition suggests the breakdown of a system of imperial patronage for history writing. After all, the “king of historians” was now a mere petitioner at the gate of the Ministry of Education. Modern educational institutions had replaced the court as the main site for the funding, production, and circulation of history. New social groups outside of court circles had joined in the new pedagogical mission of the state, much to his chagrin. Ironically, Malik al-Mu’arrikhin did not demand a return to the old system of court patronage; he merely wanted the Ministry of Education to act as his new patron. These institutional and social transformations in the writing of history affected how various strata of Iranian society understood the past. Prior to these changes, many would look to the medieval epic poet Abu al-Qasim Firdawsi’s Shahnamah—the “Book of Kings”—for historical and mythical narratives of pre-Islamic kings and heroes. Nomads might turn to tribal lore and genealogies transmitted orally from generation to generation. Pious Muslims would hear tales of Abrahamic prophets, hagiographies of the Prophet Muhammad,

Introduction  3

and in the case of the majority Shi‘i population, stories of the Imams told from the pulpit, in religious schools, and from the mouths of wandering storytellers in public squares and coffeehouses. Finally, higher-ranking government officials, the literati, and urban notables connected to the imperial court could read officially sanctioned chronicles legitimizing the ruling dynasty. By 1900, the emergence of new institutions and medias for the production, circulation, and contestation of history began to reshape fundamentally the understanding of the past. This book provides a novel perspective on the relationships between institutions, the position of individual historians within a particular field of cultural production, and the contours of a specific historical discourse. It argues that the complex sets of interactions among a wide cross section of ­Iranian society—scholars, schoolteachers, students, intellectuals, women activists, government officials, and poets—were crucial in defining Iranian nationalism through the writing of history. To tell this story, I draw on published histories, textbooks, school curricula, pedagogical manuals, poetry, periodicals, memoirs, unpublished letters, and speeches. The story begins at the Iranian imperial court, where certain officials embarked on translating and publishing histories of Iran and other countries. By the turn of the twentieth century, two further interconnected transformations structured new modes of writing history: first, the formation of a public sphere through the proliferation of voluntary associations, newspapers, and independent publishers facilitated the writing of publically oriented histories; second, the significant expansion of modern schools—often autonomous from the state—increased the potential readership of histories, particularly in the form of textbooks. Starting in the early 1920s, however, the state increasingly dominated the press and the schools, thereby creating more standardized nationalist narratives. If an underlying principle united much of early twentieth-century I­ ranian historiography it was the need to emphasize continuities over ruptures. By stressing continuities, historians sought to authenticate Iran as a single and unsevered geographical entity existing from time immemorial.2 Faced with evidence that conflicted with their nationalist logic—evidence emanating from the ethnic, geographical, and linguistic diversity of the past and the present—these historians redoubled their rhetorical efforts to assert the homogeneity of the nation in both time and space. They therefore wrote local histories as a means of symbolically integrating diverse provinces, cities, and tribes into a single nationalist rubric, and they wrote literary histories to demonstrate that poets,

4  Introduction

philosophers, and littérateurs preserved a “national spirit” during periods of political fragmentation. The centralizing state increasingly forced contending visions of history into a standardized narrative by the late 1920s and 1930s. In light of these trends, I pose a series of interconnected questions: How did patronage networks, schools, and state cultural institutions shape the writing and pedagogy of history? How did the writing of local, literary, national, and world histories inform and define Iranian nationalism? What were the social profiles of Iranian historians and what bearing did these have on their understanding of the past? And finally, how did the marginalized—women, religious minorities and heterodox movements, and tribal and ethnic groups—represent themselves in history and how were they represented by official discourses?

Nationalism Beyond the “West” and the Colonies Unlike the dynastic, tribal, or religious historiography common to many ­Persian-speaking societies, modern historiography assumes the existence of a nation as an ontological reality and the primary category through which to study the past. Challenging this assumption, several scholars have shown that nationalism is a relatively recent invention.3 Eric Hobsbawm argues that nationalisms were “invented traditions,” by which he means “a set of practices” intended “to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.”4 Others have shifted attention away from the question of whether or not the nation was fabricated, focusing instead on the “style in which they [communities] are imagined.”5 In Benedict Anderson’s famous formulation, nationalism originated in the Americas and Europe but was later “pirated” by other parts of the world.6 Anderson’s account of the origins and spread of nationalism elicited an incisive criticism from postcolonial scholar Partha Chatterjee: “If nationalisms in the rest of the world have to choose their imagined community from certain ‘modular’ forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine?”7 Chatterjee claims that anticolonial nationalism instead created its own “inner,” “spiritual” domain of sovereignty— meaning language, religion, and family life—as a site for asserting difference in relation to the colonizers, although in the “outer” domains of statecraft, modular nationalism persisted.8 Building on Chatterjee’s critical insights, Dipesh Chakrabarty has identified the need to “provincialize Europe” by finding ways of speaking about non-Western societies outside of the “clichéd and shorthand

Introduction  5

forms” of Western social science categories that take European history as a universal model.9 Chatterjee’s emphasis on language and religion as the “authentic” locus of communal identity vis-à-vis a universalistic political understanding of the nation-state and Chakrabarty’s contrasting of the universalizing tendencies of Western social science to the multiplicity of non-Western experiences both operate on a false binary between a romantic notion of an “authentic” nonWest and a single and totalizing “West” rooted in the Enlightenment.10 The debate on nationalism all too often revolves around the neat dichotomy between the colonizer and colonized and the West and non-West. The question of how to speak of nationalism outside the colonizer/colonized paradigm in places such as China, Turkey, and Iran poses a serious challenge to historians and social scientists. To break this methodological impasse, this book situates Iranian nationalist historiography within a comparative framework not only in Western and colonial contexts, but also in non-Western and non-colonial countries so as to highlight the particularities of the Iranian case.

Nationalism and Historiography Studies comparing Iranian nationalism with the “Western” experience often reproduce the teleological assumptions of the modernization paradigm in which non-Western nations lagged behind their Western counterparts on the same linear path to development.11 To varying degrees, studies of nationalism in Iran address historiography, whether as a “derivative discourse” of European Orientalism, a series of narratives emerging out of a broader Indo-Iranian Persianate world, or repositories of territorially bound and racial conceptions of Iran. ­Mostafa Vaziri argues that Iranian nationalists passively and uncritically appropriated European Orientalist conceptions of Iran as a nation.12 Recent scholarship reveals that Iranian nationalists were active agents in the “refashioning” and “invention of national selves” in relation not only to Europe but also to India.13 Employing the insights of borderland studies, Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet emphasizes the crucial place of territorial nationalism and frontiers while critiquing the idea of “imagined communities” for not elaborating on how land, because of its “palpable” and “physical” nature, “lent a certain materiality” to how the nation was imagined.14 According to Afshin Marashi, Iranian nationalism converged through the interactions of state and society, with the state acting as the “agent of that common and sharply delineated culture.” In his view, print capitalism, state monuments, changes in public spaces, museums, and

6  Introduction

rituals of commemoration helped forge the Iranian nation.15 These recent studies treat Iranian historiography as a nationalist narrative and tend to downplay the location of individual historians within a particular set of social networks and institutional contexts.16 Given the overall absence of professionalization among historians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, those who wrote histories are often categorized as intellectuals who championed modernity in a “traditional” environment.17 Whereas the category of intellectual is useful in that it is sufficiently broad to capture the range of activities in which leading Iranian historians were engaged, it is too narrow a category to encompass all those who wrote and translated histories. Not all Iranian historians were “intellectuals” per se; many were teachers, educators, statesmen, clerics, religious seminaries, poets, bureaucrats, and journalists. Peter Novick’s assessment of the prevailing approaches to American historiography ring true for late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iran, in which a handful of “great men” of historiography are given attention over the many other practitioners of history: Practically all the work that has been done in the history of historical thought is biographical: studies of an outstanding individual historian, or at most of two or three outstanding individuals. Even historiographical works in historiography which are not explicitly biographical typically devote themselves to no more than a dozen major figures. If, when dealing with the outside world, historians have repudiated the “great man theory of history,” there appears to be a residual great man theory of historiography.18

Surveys of Iranian historiography often betray objectivist assumptions by lamenting the lack of full utilization of primary sources (particularly archival ones), the absence of “scientific” methods, and the ideological use of history by amateur historians.19 Reacting against these objectivist readings of historiography as constituting either success or failure (mostly failure), recent historians have attempted to explore the relationship between history, nationalism, and ideology. Ali Gheissari has criticized an earlier generation of historians for their “formalist” understanding of the development of Iranian historiography—an understanding that neglects the broader political and intellectual milieu and merely decries the lack of a “scientific” approach without reference to how “scientific” language itself can be ideologically driven.20 Scholars have filled many of the lacuna in the study of historiography, including the “paranoid style” of certain Iranian historians, architectural historiography, Marxist historiography, Islamist

Introduction  7

historiography, gender and sexuality in historiography, and the role of history in crafting and imagining the nation.21 This book builds on this scholarship by engaging with recent studies of education and professionalization to shed light on the institutional contexts for the production and circulation of history.22 Histories of education provide us with detailed accounts of state pedagogical projects and the ways in which Iranians “translated” Western ideas of education according to their own contexts.23 Closely related to these education histories are studies of class formation.24 The salaried middle class, which included civil servants, doctors, lawyers, engineers, managers, and teachers, emerged in the aftermath of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. The middle class relied on new educational institutions for their consecration and professionalization.25 In his study of early twentiethcentury Aleppo, Keith Watenpaugh characterizes historicist thinking as hegemonic among the middle class because they were most concerned with using the past to “inform” the present and “shape” the future.26 Cyrus Schayegh’s astute observation about medical professionalization is equally applicable to the professionalization of historians: “One consequence of science’s focus on application and education in Iran was that the gap between Iranian modernizing professionals and the general modern middle-class public was much smaller than the differences in Europe between scientists and the bourgeois public.”27 Similarly, in the field of history, professional historians and “the middle-class public” were not worlds apart. In fact, historians came from a range of socioeconomic and occupational backgrounds irreducible to a single class.

History at the Intersection of the Court, the School, and the Public Situating Iranian nationalist historiography within a comparative framework brings into sharp relief the methodological challenges associated with such a study. In trying to understand the specific trajectories of historiography in Iran, it is not enough merely to measure it by a European yardstick or to lump it uncritically with the “non-West” and colonized world. Three prevailing approaches to historiography—as professionalization, as state ideology, and as a colonial and communal contestation—will be considered before elaborating on the method adopted here. The first approach traces the formation of an academic community, the institutions associated with it, and the means by which professional historians differentiate themselves from “amateur” historians.28 In the Egyptian context,

8  Introduction

Yoav Di-Capua has argued that professionalization occurred through training in both European and Egyptian institutions of higher learning, and via the creation and use of a state-patronized ‘Abdin archives in the 1920s.29 In early twentieth-century Iran, however, professional research did not center on a state archive, and the University of Tehran did not immediately train doctoral students to be university professors. A second approach construes historiography as ideology. In states where an authoritarian ruler took a personal interest in the crafting of an official version of history, this method is warranted.30 In interwar Turkey, for example, nationalist historiography was the ideological handmaiden of Kemalism. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic, interacted intellectually with the historians who articulated the Turkish History Thesis (Türk Tarih Tezi), which held that the Turks were the ancestors of all civilizations. The Turkish state promoted the Turkish History Thesis through the official Turkish Historical Foundation (Türk Tarih Korumu), the 1931 History Congress, and the journal Tarih.31 In contrast, Atatürk’s analogue in Iran, Riza Shah, played no similar significant role in directing Iranian nationalist historiography, nor did the Iranian state establish official institutions or journals dedicated exclusively to the propagation of a particular vision of history, although Riza Shah did have an impact on Iranian nationalist discourse more generally. In colonial India, the specter of colonial domination and communal violence loomed large in the writing of national history.32 The tension between British colonial historians and their Indian counterparts over how they narrated the Indian past has led Ranajit Guha to comment, “Since the Indian past had already been appropriated by colonialist discourse for reasons of state, its reclamation could only be achieved by expropriating the expropriators.”33 In many colonial contexts, historiography is often framed as a contestation of the past between the colonizers and the colonized, especially given the colonial domination of educational institutions. But because Iran was never formally colonized, its nationalist historiography cannot be cast within a colonizer/­ colonized binary. Although anti-imperialism constituted one motivation for the writing of history in Iran, it was by no means the only consideration. For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most Iranian historians had no specialization or formal training in history as a discipline. Historians generally did not embark on an archive-centered project of bringing to light new sources while keeping abreast of cutting-edge historiographical trends that might give them a corporate sense of identity vis-à-vis “amateur”

Introduction  9

historians. Nor were they firmly incorporated into a state-driven propaganda program of proposing new theories of world history with journals and conferences dedicated to history at their disposal. Unlike historians in such places as colonial India, Iranian historians were not rewriting national histories vis-à-vis European colonial historiography. What methods best address the case of Iranian historiography given its unique set of circumstances? Questions posed by two social theorists, Pierre Bourdieu and Jürgen Habermas, are useful starting points for an alternative framework for studying Iranian historiography. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the field, or the space through which individuals take a series of positions corresponding to their social backgrounds, is constructive in unpacking the relations between individual historians, institutions, and prevailing historical discourses.34 Historians in Iran operated within a field of historiographical production in which their position within institutions and in relation to dominant discourses is crucial to making sense of their particular reading of history. Two clear examples of such institutions are the imperial Qajar court bureaus and the schools: the socioeconomic background of authors, their patronage networks, and the consequent ideological constraints had a direct bearing on how they narrated history. This book builds on Bourdieu’s insights by historicizing the field and demonstrating how differing political contexts can potentially constrain and enable various types of historical discourse.35 The critical scholarship on the public sphere as articulated by Jürgen Habermas and his interlocutors may similarly be fruitfully applied to the study of Iranian historiography.36 According to Habermas’s initial formulation, the European bourgeoisie came together in the eighteenth century as private individuals to create the public sphere. The public sphere was an autonomous space of intellectual exchange and intended for the “rational” articulation of a range of positions, often dealing with state activities but not beholden to its coercive influence and authority. Newspapers were crucial to the public sphere; they went from being mere instruments for reporting the news to being a medium for shaping public opinion. Subsequent critics pointed out the shortcomings of Habermas’s single and undifferentiated bourgeois public sphere. Nancy Fraser has argued instead that there have always been a host of “subaltern counterpublics” consisting of “nationalist publics, populist peasant publics, elite women’s publics, and working class publics.”37 At the heart of this and similar critiques is a question insufficiently addressed by Habermas in his initial work: How do power and social position

10  Introduction

affect the public sphere? For Habermas, the ideal bourgeois public sphere is autonomous from state power, and the appeal to reason becomes an equalizing force between the various protagonists partaking in a particular debate. But in practice it is highly questionable as to whether or not individuals and collectivities every fully transcend their social locations when engaged in public debate. It might be more instructive to follow Craig Calhoun and put Habermas’s concept of the public sphere into dialogue with Bourdieu’s idea of the field. In other words, studies of the public sphere must make reference to the position of writers in relation to multiple fields of power.38 Before exploring the particularities of the public sphere in Iran, it should be noted that printing was central to the new forms of history writing examined here. Beginning with the increase of publishing at the Qajar court in the latter half of the nineteenth century, histories appeared in printed form, either as separate books or as serialized articles in a newspaper or magazine. The rise of printing therefore coincided with new forms of history writing associated with the modern state, education, and the public. For much of the nineteenth century, the Qajar court dominated Persian printing through its publishing of books and later gazettes and newspapers within the borders of Iran.39 ­Despite its wider adoption in the early nineteenth century, print technology was not immediately popular. Besides being prohibitively costly, the earliest printing presses produced texts in moveable type resembling the simple naskh script. Given Iranians’ aesthetic preference for the more flowing nast‘aliq script, the market for printed books was hardly guaranteed by the mere introduction of the new technology.40 Instead, it took several decades for printed books to rise in popularity. The invention of lithography, which allowed for the reproduction of nast‘aliq texts at a cheaper cost, initiated what Nile Green has called the “Stanhope Revolution” in Persian print.41 Lithography allowed printing to occur outside of government circles, thereby contributing to the formation of a public sphere. Although there are no reliable histories of book print runs, by the late nineteenth century printed books produced in Iran were in relatively high ­circulation.42 In its earliest stages, because of the costs involved, printing was largely the domain of the state. As new, less expensive print technologies such as lithography were developed, independent presses emerged for other purposes. Foremost among these were educational uses. Iranian modern schools, in contrast to contemporary religious seminary schools, required their students to read printed books. In the Islamic maktab and madrasah schools, a

Introduction  11

higher premium was placed on the oral recitation of books and on face-to-face inter­actions between teachers and students. As part of their advanced studies, seminary students often hand-copied their texts. Modern schools operated on a wholly different logic. Students still interacted with their instructors in class, but teachers delivered a single lesson to a group of students who listened rather than providing one-to-one instruction for each student. Another considerable difference between modern schools and Islamic seminary education was the expectation that students in the modern schools would read the printed text in private rather than in the group setting of the classroom. In a sense, modern schools created consumers for printed texts.43 Because history was an integral part of the modern school curriculum, there was a growing demand for printed history textbooks. In conformity with prevailing cultural tastes, the earliest history textbooks were lithographed. By the 1910s and early 1920s, however, most textbooks—and most printed books in general—were produced using moveable type. This was in part because moveable type presses became cheaper and previous aesthetic tastes came to play less of a role in consumption patterns. In the 1920s, as the state invested more in a system of standardized education, subsidies ensured relatively low prices for state-sponsored textbooks. A growing market for the consumption of books alongside increasing literacy meant that independent publishers, who now often benefited from the same technological tools as the state, could publish and circulate printed books for relatively low prices.44 The formation of the public sphere in Iran enabled new modes of historical writing insofar as a broad spectrum of political and social movements employed history to craft a genealogy for their present-oriented programs. Representatives of these movements utilized a range of historical genres, including biographies and local, literary, tribal, regional, national, and religious histories. As a result, a striking feature of Iranian periodicals was the abundance of serialized histories and biographies in both scholarly journals and more popular newspapers and magazines. Scholarship on the public sphere and on the field share an underlying concern with autonomy. The formation of a public sphere assumes that its participants enjoy a level of autonomy so as to debate openly and critique without fear of state censure. Bourdieu’s study of the field was even more explicit than the scholarship on the public sphere in its focus on autonomy: the level of autonomy enjoyed by a cultural field relative to state power or market forces has a direct bearing on the positions individuals take within it.45 In light of this, how does autonomy, at the level of both indi-

12  Introduction

viduals and institutions, have consequences for how history is written? What strategies do those who find themselves in a dominated position utilize either to contest or to integrate themselves into hegemonic state narratives of history? And how did the state’s relationship with historians change over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? A fundamental challenge to studying historiography in Iran is how to define the historians in the late Qajar and early Pahlavi periods given their occupational diversity. Iranian historians represented the full gamut of literate groups, from court notables, poets, chroniclers, religious clerics, secretaries, government officials, and journalists to students and teachers. Paradoxically, the absence of professionalization among historians opened up the writing of history to a wide cross section of society. In America, by the 1920s and 1930s the views of professional historians became less relevant to the reading public because educators replaced them as the authors of school textbooks, and popular historians replaced them in the public realm. In Iran, the case was different: historians, professional or not, were writing and translating history textbooks for an increasing number of students and a growing reading public.46 History teachers came to have enormous influence over the articulation of Iranian grand narratives, even if by the interwar period their social status and opportunities for further upward social mobility, along with that of most teachers, had diminished considerably. History, in the sense discussed in this book, constituted a “science.” Iranians writing history usually invoked “the science of history” (‘ilm-i tarikh) in order to differentiate their works from earlier chronicles. The science of history entailed a “scientifically authenticated and authorized” version of the past in the service of “legitimizing political and cultural values” and being “instrumentalized for national purposes.”47 Among the key questions that Iranian historians hoped to address through the science of history were the reasons for the rise and fall of nations on a global scale. Whereas in earlier periods the word history often appeared in Persian book titles in the plural, as histories (tavarikh)—­literally, “dates”—most of the printed histories surveyed here spoke of only a singular history (tarikh). This shift away from a plurality of histories, or a multitude of dates often brought together annalistically, suggests a transformation in the understanding of history toward a mode of inquiry constituting a single, objective, and scientifically accessible truth.48 As part of this process, Iranian historians were typically “integrative” nationalists. Ervand Abrahamian argues that I­ ranian integrative nationalism entailed overcoming the linguistic, religious, tribal, and

Introduction  13

ethnic diversity of Iran.49 Using similar language, Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski claim that Egyptian “integral nationalists” focused on historical continuities and saw the relationship between Arabs and Egyptians after the Islamic invasions as one of symbiosis rather than conflict.50 Iranian nationalists subscribed to an integrated vision of history, in both time and space, that not only emphasized continuities between the pre-Islamic, Islamic, and modern periods, but also incorporated various localities—provinces, cities, and towns—into a broader Iranian narrative through local histories.

g The many voices of Iranian historians can be understood only through their institutional and public entanglements. The Qajar court’s creation of the Translation and Publication Bureaus in the mid-nineteenth century marked a break with previous patterns of court patronage for official chroniclers. The court charged government officials with the task of translating and composing histories not only to bolster the legitimacy of the Iranian imperial monarchy, but also to seek out autocratic top-down models for modernization in the biographies of European monarchs. By the late nineteenth century and especially as a result of the 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution, historians outside the court gained a measure of autonomy from the patronage and authority of the Qajar state. This autonomy was reflected in their selection of histories on revolution, anti-imperialism, and democracy for translation into Persian. By far the most significant institutional development came with the proliferation of modern schools in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Although the state fully supported this endeavor, many schools opened through the initiative of private education pioneers. The relatively autonomous character of most of these schools and educational associations—which often received no funding from the state—facilitated the writing of diverse historical narratives rarely seen in later periods when the state standardized education. Constitutionalist historians highlighted the civic function of history, emphasizing the centrality of the “people” and the “nation” as agents of political change instead of monarchs and their ministers. This relative educational autonomy was short-lived. In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, the Ministry of Education sought to monopolize all forms of education as part of a broad state program of centralization and standardization. The establishment of the Teachers’ Training College in 1919 heralded a new era in which the state professionalized teachers and system-

14  Introduction

atically imposed standardized curricula on private, foreign, and state schools. Primary and secondary schools, colleges, and the University of Tehran as well as military colleges, adult classes, and government propaganda institutions all provided the state with media for circulating statist nationalist narratives throughout society. As autonomous educational institutions became fewer, and with the professionalization of teaching, historical narratives became more uniform by the late 1920s and 1930s. Whereas men dominated the writing of histories at the imperial court and in schools, feminists carved out a significant niche for themselves in writing histories in the press. The women’s press of the late 1910s and 1920s became a site for the articulation of histories promoting female education, rights, and political involvement. Facing fierce resistance to their reforms, feminists were compelled to rewrite the history of Muslim women to prove the compatibility of their proposed social reforms with Islam. The Pahlavi state forcibly shut down most women’s newspapers by the late 1920s. In exchange, the state granted women more legal rights and officially sponsored girls’ education. The few women writing histories in the 1930s reflected this bargain with the state: they erased from their histories the agency of the women’s movement in bringing about these changes by ascribing all impetus for reforms to the fatherly figure of Riza Shah. In most histories produced at the imperial court and for schools, the histories of tribes, provinces, and cities were usually excluded. Local historians felt it necessary to symbolically integrate the local into the national. Local histories written during and shortly after the constitutional era (1906–1911) cast local populations as defenders of constitutionalism against domestic and foreign threats as evidence of their civic patriotism. During the 1920s and 1930s, when nationalist anxieties about secessionism and regional autonomy prevailed, local historians sought to discredit decentralist visions of history and politics. As a result, histories of the provinces, particularly where autonomist or secessionist movements had once flourished, became preoccupied with proving the uniform Iranian national character of provincial populations. Finally, urban histories unabashedly celebrated the Pahlavi state’s modernization program by depicting provincial cities as containing dilapidated monuments, narrow streets, and structural economic problems before the state transformed it through restoration programs and the expansion of schools, government buildings, banks, and modern roads. Literature, especially poetry, was a crucial dimension of early twentiethcentury Iranian national self-fashioning. Yet pride in Persian poetry did not

Introduction  15

necessarily entail a territorialized definition of literature. Through the press debates, epistolary exchanges, and writing of literary histories, nationalists recast Persian literature as a geographically bound concept. By doing so, they excluded contributions from and cross-fertilizations with peoples beyond the boundaries of the modern Iranian nation-state. Transnational debates about the Persian literary canon, centering around the English scholar Edward Granville Browne, were crucial to hardening nationalist conceptualizations of ­literature. During the interwar period, educators wrote literary histories as a means of showing continuities in Iranian history despite political domination by “foreign” rulers. In this way, literary histories mirrored local histories in their integrative function, albeit in time rather than in space. Trends in the writing of history cannot be divorced from their institutional, material, and public contexts. Far from being the domain of a select few “great men,” a relatively broad cross section of literate Iranians wrote histories for divergent purposes ranging from the legitimization of state rule, the reform and modernization of society, and the promotion of official nationalism to the endorsement of a revolutionary cause, the assertion of collective citizenship rights, and the advancement of women’s rights. Not all voices were given the same weight: the fact that certain segments of the population were excluded from histories based on race, ethnicity, gender, or religion was partly a function of the political situation, the autonomy of schools and printing, and the career opportunities available to aspiring historians. The writing of history in Iran did not have a single self-evident teleological purpose; instead, it reflected the diverse dispositions of its practitioners as they navigated and responded to the political, social, and cultural dislocations of their time.

1

PAT R O N A G E , T R A N S L AT I O N , AND THE PRINTING OF HISTORY

O N O C T O B E R 5 , 18 81 , the court historian, translator, and publisher I‘timad al-Saltanah brought a recently completed section of an encyclopedic biographical dictionary, Namah-i Danishvaran, into the presence of Nasir al-Din Shah. Initiated by I‘timad al-Saltanah’s predecessor, I‘tizad al-Saltanah, Namah-i Danishvaran was a project beyond the scope of any single historian: a team of scholars with a range of specializations researched and composed individual entries before its compilation and publication. On this occasion, Nasir al-Din Shah expressed his dissatisfaction with the entries presented to him: “Only this much is written each month?” He felt that the project’s progress had been “too little and light.” I‘timad al-Saltanah tried hard to maintain his composure as his blood boiled at the king’s slight. Responding to the shah, he said, “You used to give the Late Prince I‘tizad al-Salatanah 100 tumans for the composition of this book and now you have made it 60 tumans! In that time you were supposed to receive four sections but it never arrived. Now you have seven sections regularly delivered to you every month.”1 I‘timad al-Saltanah supervised the most extensive series of history books published in nineteenth-century Iran. Unlike previous court chroniclers, he benefited from a capable group of scholars who helped him with the intellectual labor of translating and composing histories and other works deemed useful for state purposes. As his encounter with the shah suggests, I‘timad alSaltanah still took direct orders from his patron and relied on him directly for the funding of official histories. But this patronage relationship overlapped with

18   Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History

novel institutional developments: I‘timad al-Saltanah also headed the Publication and Translation Bureaus (Dar al-Intiba‘at and Dar al-Tarjumah), which were instrumental in facilitating new forms of history writing. The Qajar imperial court was the primary site for the translation of ­European-language histories into Persian in nineteenth-century Iran. ­Because chronicles were typically composed at the Qajar court, the court constituted a long-standing site for the writing of history.2 To clarify how and why certain works were translated and not others, it is not enough merely to state that translation was a conduit for Western “influence” or a means for Iran’s “­modernization.”3 Instead, patronage, the social position of the translator, and the intended audience for translation must be taken into account.4 Patronage served as a “constraint on the choice and development of both form and subject matter” of translation.5 At the imperial court, translators selected histories with the dual purpose of legitimizing the Qajar dynasty and providing individual rulers with exemplary models for top-down modernization in the form of biographies of European autocrats. The imperial court astutely avoided translating histories that were unflattering to the Qajar dynasty. Despite the Qajar court’s best efforts, such critical translations did appear in British India, where diasporic Iranians were unfettered by Qajar print censorship. Over the course of the early twentieth century, changes in the Iranian political system altered the patterns of patronage for the writing of history. Independent patrons and translators found themselves in a unique position to select novel historiographical themes for publication in the aftermath of the 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution. Historiographical translation went from being an imperial court practice that primarily reinforced the status quo to being a subversive and revolutionary activity harnessed by Iranian constitutionalists intent on drawing on the political resources and competencies of other revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggles.

Qajar Court Chronicles For much of Islamic history, with the exception of court chroniclers, historians did not generally constitute a separate professional class; instead, a wide range of literate figures—clerics, poets, Sufis, and government officials—wrote histories as an ancillary activity.6 This openness of history as a field of knowledge may explain why even with the spread of modern schools and print culture, a large segment of the literate population continued to write histories. History (tarikh), especially in its pre-twentieth-century Persian usage, could encom-

Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History   19

pass prophetic traditions, biographical dictionaries of learned figures, annalistic court chronicles, and local and tribal histories. Qajar court chronicles continued a longer tradition of historiography common among many Muslim societies that incorporated tribal, dynastic, and religious narratives for the purposes of legitimization. Two of the most prominent court chronicles of the mid-nineteenth century draw attention to some of the major features of historical writing before the widespread adoption of print and modern schooling. Serving as a sequel to a fifteenth-century chronicle surveying Iranian and Islamic history until the Timurid period (ca. 1370–1507), Riza Quli Khan Hidayat’s chronicle, The Nasirean Garden of Purity (Rawzat al-Safa-yi Nasiri), covered Iranian history from the end of the Timurids until the time in which it was written, in the mid1800s.7 Another court historian, Muhammad Taqi Lisan al-Mulk Sipihr, composed a similarly lengthy Persian chronicle, The Abrogator of Histories (Nasikh al-Tavarikh).8 Both authors relied on earlier chronicles as their primary source for events in the distant past, but when addressing more recent events, they drew on “eyewitness accounts, official correspondence, and reports, as well as their own recollections.”9 Stylistically these chronicles were annalistic, beginning each year with the Persian New Year (Nawruz). Topically they covered “royal campaigns, frontier skirmishes and civil unrest, diplomatic exchanges and treaties, royal and official birth and death registers as well as popular uprisings, heresies, natural calamities, and oddities.”10 The organization of The Abrogator of Histories by volume presented Abrahamic prophetic narratives alongside dynastic ones. For instance, the first volume covered the period from Adam until Christ, and the second covered the Christian era until the emigration of the Prophet Muhammad in 622. The next four volumes dealt exclusively with the history of early Shi‘ism, with an entire volume dedicated to each major Shi‘i figure—Imam ‘Ali, Fatimah, Imam Hasan, and Imam Husayn. A single volume also elaborated on the intervening period until the beginning of Qajar rule in the late eighteenth century.11 Both chronicles conveyed overlapping understandings of religious, dynastic, and tribal legitimization. Unlike earlier Iranian dynasties, such as that of the Safavids, the Qajars did not claim hereditary descent from the Shi‘i Imams as a form of religious legitimization; nonetheless, the Qajars did refer to themselves as defenders of Islam and of Shi‘ism in particular. As a monarchy, the Qajars drew on pre-Islamic Iranian understandings of kingship and considered themselves to be shahs. Finally, the Qajars likewise appealed to tribal descent

20   Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History

from the Turco-Mongolian tribes by adopting the title emperor (khaqan).12 This rather eclectic and loose set of categories by which chroniclers legitimized a ruling dynasty were reconfigured and replaced by competing, though not entirely unfamiliar, understandings of history with the advent of print capitalism, the articulation of new modes of historical thought, and the rise of nationalism.

Translating at the Imperial Court Translation at the late nineteenth-century Qajar court both shared continuities with and differed from earlier efforts at other Muslim courts.13 In earlier periods, monarchs, governors, and urban notables at Muslim courts provided the crucial funds to sustain translation activity. Translations at Muslim courts were intended to prove the universal character of a dynasty and therefore its legitimacy. At the ‘Abbasid court in the ninth century, for instance, Greek, Syriac, and Pahlavi texts were translated into Arabic to show that the ‘Abbasids’ legitimacy extended far beyond a specific claim relevant only to Muslim subjects. They consequently invoked a Sasanian model of universal kingship, in which appropriating all knowledge via translation was a sign of universal authority.14 The urge for imperial universality took on unique features among the Mongol Ilkhanids, who, unlike the ‘Abbasid dynasty, lacked a religious lineage in which to anchor their right to rule. Instead, the Ilkhanids acted as patrons to one of the most ambitious universal histories, one that relied on a range of Persian translations from other languages, including Chinese. Teams of scholars in both the “host” and “recipient” languages collaboratively translated the texts. Drawing on the Chinese imperial model, the Ilkhanids established an institution for the writing of history that in part comprised a group of translators. Under the direction of Rashid al-Din Fazlullah, court littérateurs collectively authored the Ilkhanid universal history, The Compendium of Histories (Jami‘ al-Tavarikh).15 When Muslim rulers aimed at winning the loyalty of their non-Muslim subjects, translation could function as a gesture of imperial goodwill. The Mughal dynasty translated a fair number of Hindu Sanskrit texts into Persian, particularly under the rule of the latitudinarian emperor Akbar.16 F­ollowing his invasion of India in 1740, Nadir Shah followed a similar strategy by having a team of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars translate their respective scriptures into Persian in order to promote interconfessional cooperation.17 By the early nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire and Egypt pioneered translation movements through modern institutions linked to emerging print

Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History   21

technologies. Founded in 1821, the Ottoman Empire’s Translation Bureau (­Tercüme Odası) mainly trained diplomats and translators, especially Muslim translators who could replace Christian Phanariot Greeks.18 Many of the leading Young Ottoman intellectuals and literary figures who were active in the latter part of the nineteenth century had strong connections to the Translation B ­ ureau. Their familiarity with European languages facilitated direct engagements with new modes of thinking.19 The modernizing Egyptian reformer Muhammad ‘Ali took a personal interest in the biographies of European modernizers and autocrats such as Peter the Great, Catherine II, Napoleon I, and Charles XII. He therefore commissioned translations of their biographies into Ottoman Turkish as models for his own reformist enterprise. At the institutional level, the scholar Rifa‘ah al-Tahtawi headed Egypt’s School of Languages (Madrasah al-Alsun), where he commissioned translations of more than a thousand foreign works, including many of a historical nature, into Ottoman Turkish and Arabic.20 Qajar court translations shared with earlier Muslim court efforts the patronclient relationship and the goal of legitimizing the dynasty. The adoption of print technology and the formation of new institutions for the translation and writing of history signaled novel instrumentalizations of the past through the search for exemplary models of top-down state modernization. It was through the mid-nineteenth-century Publication and Translation Bureaus that a group of scholars collectively translated, adapted, and composed new histories of Iran. The Minister of Publications, I‘timad al-Saltanah, supervised several translations of European histories, commissioned and composed numerous local and dynastic histories of Iran, and was in charge of state-run newspapers.21 As Juan Cole has pointed out, I‘timad al-Saltanah “used Iranian history for conservative purposes” and championed “the royal absolutism of the Qajar empire.”22 Having considered the various court meanings and uses of translation, it is worth reflecting on the selection process involved. The highly selective nature of translation sheds light on the strategic decisions through which the “foreign text . . . [was] inscribed with domestic intelligibilities and interests.” The process of inscription therefore involved “a choice of certain domestic discourses over others.”23 Seen from this perspective, the history of translation is not the story of the “influence” of the original text and its “diffusion” into a foreign language. Instead, the reasons for its translation and its function should be sought in the “host” society. In light of this understanding, what historical texts did the Qajar court choose to translate and why? First, court translators focused on European

22   Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History

histories of pre-Islamic Iran as a means of bolstering the Qajar dynasty’s imperial claims, a continuation and adaptation of long-standing modes of imperial legitimization. Second, translators took a keen interest in the lives of European autocratic reformers who could serve as models for Qajar monarchs embarking on modernization. Qajar court historians took a keen interest in past Iranian empires and imperial historiographical models. In the early nineteenth century, the Qajar court commissioned the poet Fath ‘Ali Khan Saba to compose a verse history of the dynasty in the style of the medieval epic poem The Book of Kings (­Shahnamah).24 Subsequent court chronicles drew on the Shahnamah as a source of pre-Islamic Iranian dynastic history, despite its mix of myth and history.25 Prior to the translation of full-length European histories into Persian, I‘timad al-Saltanah composed a work on the Ashkanids, a pre-Islamic Iranian dynasty, claiming that the Qajars were their descendents without much compelling evidence.26 Dubious genealogical lineages were staples of Muslim empires; in other chronicles, the Qajars were cast as descendents of Genghis Khan, a recurring legitimization strategy favored by earlier Turco-Mongolian dynasties.27 Because the Mongols traced their origins to Central Asia, the Qajar chroniclers’ choice of the Ashkanids pointed to a new territorialized concept of legitimacy that more fully appropriated the geographical logic of the nation-state.28 When the same court translators, working under I‘timad al-Saltanah, translated a history of another pre-Islamic Iranian dynasty, the Sasanians, the purpose may have been more subversive. In the preface to his translation of George Rawlinson’s The Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy, a history of the ­Sasanians, translator Muhammad Husayn Furughi considered “the history of the ­Sasanian kings [muluk-i Sasani]” to be necessary because he believed them to be “the true Iranian kings [padishahan-i haqiqi-yi ‘ajam].”29 By claiming that the Sasanians were authentic (and by implication that the Ashkanids were not), Furughi displayed an increasing awareness of European racial categories that distinguished between “true” Iranian dynasties and “inauthentic” foreign ones. By giving preference to the Sasanians, Furughi may have been insinuating that the Qajars, like the Ashkanids, were “inauthentic” and “foreign.” Qajar translators did not restrict their interests to the distant Iranian past; they also turned to European-language histories of more recent events in Iran. Nasir al-Din Shah commissioned the governor of Kurdistan, Abu a­ l-Qasim Nasir al-Mulk Qaraquzlu, to translate an eighteenth-century English history of Nadir Shah.30 I‘timad al-Saltanah, who was well aware of English histories of the ­Qajars,

Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History   23

took the time to familiarize himself with these sources of information about Iran’s recent past. Given his lack of literacy in English, he sought the assistance of a young man named Mirza Rahim, son of Qajar official Hakim al-Mamalik, who knew the language. Secretly I‘timad al-Saltanah resented the young man’s knowledge of English. In his diary he remarked on his meeting with Mirza Rahim to read these histories of the Qajars: “How great is learning. This piece of shit who is less than dirt has an advantage [shirafati] over me because he knows English and I do not. I [therefore] need him.”31 Despite I‘timad al-Saltanah’s awareness of English histories of the Qajars, he apparently chose not to translate these works, in all likelihood because they portrayed the Qajars in a negative light. Because translations of histories of Iran were intended to legitimize Qajar rule, translations of unflattering works were antithetical to the court’s objectives. Iranian translators similarly sought knowledge about parts of the world they knew less about, such as the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa, in an effort to bolster Qajar imperial claims and to appropriate new forms of geographical knowledge. As the cases of the ‘Abbasids and the Ilkhanids illustrate, imperial courts sometimes claimed mastery of knowledge over the known world as emblematic of their own universal legitimacy. Translations of European histories, travelogues, and geographies contributed to a new sense of what constituted the known world beyond prevailing geographical ideas about the “seven climes.”32 In a history of the Americas, I‘timad al-Saltanah explicitly linked the discovery of this region to the geographical, mathematical, and natural sciences while simultaneously praising the Nasir al-Din Shah for promoting modern forms of learning.33 Subsequent translations brought further attention to unfamiliar histories and travelogues of the Americas and Central Africa.34 Complementing this legitimizing function, translators selected biographies of European modernizing autocrats. Historical and legendary anecdotes formed a crucial part of the Persian genre of advice literature otherwise known as “Mirror for Princes,” a genre of belles lettres that included poetry, vignettes, and maxims that served as practical advice for rulers or potential r­ulers.35 ­According to Claude Cahen, Muslim historiography was “a variation on Mirrors for Princes from the Sasanian tradition” insofar as events were given didactic significance.36 Because of their increasing awareness of European modernization, Qajar state officials no longer turned exclusively to the pre-Islamic Iranian past or to the Islamic past in general for models of exemplary behavior for kings. Instead, they put forward biographies of modernizing European autocrats as paradigmatic figures for Iranian monarchs to emulate.

24   Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History

Court officials and translators chose biographies of European autocrats as models for Qajar kings because they felt that past Iranian and Islamic models would not inspire the competencies desired for state centralization and modernization. As Lawrence Venuti has observed, “the very impulse to seek a community abroad suggests that the translator wishes to extend or complete a particular domestic situation, to compensate for a defect in the translating language and literature, in the translating culture.”37 Qajar-era translations of biographies of European autocratic monarchs provided models for Iranian kings who were keen to emulate European reformist monarchs. In fact, Nasir al-Din Shah’s early reformist prime minister, Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir, commissioned a translation of a biography of Napoleon for the shah in the hopes that it would motivate him to embark on similar top-down reforms.38 Subsequent biographies of other European autocratic rulers, including Peter the Great, Charles XII, and Wilhelm I, were similarly meant to provide Qajar monarchs with appropriate models for their reforms.39 The twin goals of Qajar court translation, imperial legitimization and ­models for autocratic modernization, enabled a host of translations from European languages. Court patronage limited the autonomy of translators in their selection of texts. Translators systematically ignored European historians who were critical of the Qajar dynasty and those that celebrated European constitutionalism and its revolutionary heritage, because these histories were potentially subversive in an autocratic context.

Translation Between Provinces and Empire Persian translations of European historical texts were by no means the sole domain of the Qajar imperial court. Europeans wrote less-than-flattering histories of Iran that were not unknown in Iranian court circles but remained untranslated. John Malcolm’s History of Persia was a case in point. Amir Kabir, who commissioned a number of other translations of histories, knew of Malcolm’s History but consciously avoided having the text translated because of its negative assessment of the Qajars as a dynasty in decline.40 Here, attention to patronage sheds light on why certain texts were translated and not others: a Persian translation of Malcolm’s history was produced in British India, where translators were unconstrained by Qajar imperial sensibilities and where the ruling British had inherited a Persian literary and bureaucratic tradition from their Mughal predecessors. Although the official language of administration in India

Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History   25

shifted from Persian to English and Urdu in 1837, Persian continued to be taught and read there through the early twentieth century.41 The translation of Malcolm’s history was the outcome of a British mission to Iran in the 1860s for the purpose of establishing a telegraph line connecting India to Great Britain through Iran. While en route to India, the head of the mission, Major General Frederic Jon Goldsmid, was the guest of the governor of Kirman, Muhammad Isma‘il Khan Vakil al-Mulk. Enjoying the governor’s hospitality, Goldsmid asked him how he could repay him. In response, Vakil al-Mulk requested a Persian translation of Malcolm’s History of Persia. His reasons for requesting such a translation were apparently as much personal as intellectual: the governor’s father had been a close friend of John Malcolm when the latter lived in Iran in the early nineteenth century. Upon his return to India, Goldsmid commissioned Mirza Isma‘il Hayrat to translate the work so that it could eventually be sent to Kirman as a gift. Five years later Hayrat completed the translation, but by then Vakil al-Mulk had already passed away.42 The biography of Mirza Isma‘il Hayrat, the Iranian translator of Malcolm’s history, sheds further light on how alternative sites of Persian translation emerged in British India. Hayrat was a Ni‘matullahi Sufi who traveled to the Ottoman Empire, where he learned French from a Christian priest. Later he embarked on extended travels through Egypt, the Hejaz in the western Arabian Peninsula, and Yemen but soon found himself being accused of espionage by the British. The British authorities exiled him to Bombay, where he secured a job as a translator for the Bombay administration and later as a teacher in Elphinstone College. His translation activities seem to have extended beyond administrative and pedagogical circles; in the 1880s he assisted A. C. Talbot in the translation of a number of English works, including Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The Baptist Mission Society paid for these publications and thereby continued a long history of collaboration among individual Ni‘matullahis and Christian missionaries in translating works into Persian. Even though Hayrat’s translation of Malcolm’s history was initially conceived of as a gift to the governor of Kirman, it became part of the Persian curriculum in British Indian schools.43 The British had earlier commissioned translations of English histories of India into the vernacular Bengali as part of the colonial project at Fort William College, so it is conceivable that the translation of Malcolm’s history was similarly meant to “vernacularize” British historiography for Elphinstone College.44 The role of Vakil al-Mulk in initiating the translation of Malcolm’s history indicates that provincial courts were capable of intellectual dispositions at odds

26   Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History

with those in the capital. Vakil al-Mulk’s request for a translation of an unflattering history of the Qajar dynasty may point to his critical stance toward the central government. The translation of Malcolm’s history has certain parallels with the Persian translation of James Moriere’s Hajji Baba of Isfahan, an early nineteenth-century satirical novel that lampooned Qajar society. Although the English text was meant to mock Iranian social mores, the Persian translation was a critique of Qajar society intended to spur greater reforms. This might explain the apparent popularity of the translation of Moriere’s novel in Iran, where it enjoyed wide circulation in the late nineteenth century.45

History in an Emerging Public Sphere Concurrent with the translation of history at the imperial court and abroad, several individuals wrote histories from a position of relative autonomy. On the surface, they shared with Qajar officialdom a concern with pre-Islamic history. Unlike the court historians, however, their purpose was not to legitimize the Qajar dynasty; in fact, these historians emphasized the significance of the Iranian nation over any particular dynasty. The minor Qajar prince Jalal al-Din Mirza, the itinerant poet Fursat al-Dawlah, and the exiled Babi-Azali freethinker Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani wrote histories for an emerging public sphere rather than for the court or on behalf of the court.46 By doing so, they anticipated history writing during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, when voices long stifled by press censorship published national histories on a much larger scale. The Qajar prince Jalal al-Din Mirza arguably wrote the first comprehensive Iran-centered nationalist history in the nineteenth century. Namah-i ­Khusravan may have grown out of his own educational experiences at Tehran’s Dar al-­ Funun (Polytechnic Institute), where he regularly interacted with European instructors and gained a level of familiarity with the French language. Although he was a prince and benefited early in life from an elite education, Jalal al-Din Mirza was by no means a darling of the imperial court. He was a close associate of the dissident Mirza Malkam Khan and his secret circle of Freemasons in ­Tehran. Even though this circle enjoyed Nasir al-Din Shah’s favor in the early 1860s, the shah soon became convinced that they were plotting the overthrow of the government. The shah disbanded the Freemasons, but anonymous broadsheets criticizing the government appeared in Tehran, leading former members of the group either to flee abroad or, in the case of Jalal al-Din Mirza, to take

Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History   27

refuge (bast) at the Shah ‘Abd al-‘Azim shrine until he was pardoned.47 It was at this stage that Jalal al-Din Mirza turned to writing history. Unlike the court historians, who wrote mainly for the court and a limited circle of elites, Jalal alDin explicitly stated that his Namah-i Khusravan was intended for “the people but especially for children.”48 As such, he wrote history for “the people,” not as a courtier reaching out to the people but as someone who saw history as pedagogically useful to the public. Ironically, Jalal al-Din Mirza’s history was never formally adopted as part of the Dar al-Funun’s curriculum, perhaps because of his dissident past. Nonetheless, it stood out as a significant attempt at writing a nationalist narrative informed by European sources by someone not beholden to the Qajar court. The poet, artist, and educator Muhammad Nasir Fursat al-Dawlah wrote a history of the province of Fars informed by his own travels, European archaeological findings, myth, and history.49 He was prompted to write Asar-i ‘Ajam by an unnamed British official who wanted descriptions and sketches of archaeological sites in Fars. Fursat al-Dawlah sent his findings to Parsi philanthropist and educator Manekji Limji Hataria with the hope that he would pass it on to the British official, but Manekji’s unexpected death prevented this from happening. The governor of Fars, Husayn Quli Khan Nizam al-Saltanah, commissioned Fursat al-Dawlah to undertake this project once again, although the book was published in Bombay rather than in Iran.50 Fursat al-Dawlah’s artistic talents enabled him to include more than fifty sketches of historical sites in Iran (mainly in Fars Province) in the pages of Asar-i ‘Ajam.51 Similar to Jalal al-Din Mirza, Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani wrote a grand narrative of Iranian history from its mythic pre-Islamic origins to the Qajar ­period.52 The book was completed in 1890, but the first volume was published in Iran only after the Iranian Constitutional Revolution.53 Kirmani’s intended audience was unclear, although the book’s publication under the auspices of Minister of Education ‘Ala al-Mulk might indicate that it too was meant as a textbook.54 The published volume dealt with a relatively politically safe topic: Iran’s quasi-mythical pre-Islamic past. A lengthy introduction to Kirmani’s history, presumably written by someone else well after the original version, served as a corrective to the historical inaccuracies in the main body of the text.55 K ­ irmani drew not only on traditional Persian sources but also on translated Greek and Latin sources. Both Kirmani and his predecessor Jalal al-Din Mirza were representatives of a trend in Iranian historiography that notoriously cast the coming of Islam as a negative development for Iran and, perhaps

28   Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History

more significantly, centered Iran as the main agent of history.56 What made his negative depiction of the Arabs and Islam all the more surprising was the fact that he was asked by the Pan-Islamist figure Jamal al-Din al-Afghani to write such a history in the first place.57 Unlike Jalal al-Din Mirza, however, ­Kirmani betrayed heterodox leanings in his history by representing the fifth- and sixthcentury Mazdakite movement in a sympathetic light, claiming that they were the originators of ideas about “liberty and equality” (azadi va musavat) that brought about European progress.58 Jalal al-Din Mirza, Fursat al-Dawlah, and Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani’s relative autonomy from court patronage foreshadowed new modes of history writing and translation in which the glory of the Iranian nation replaced the Qajar dynasty’s legitimacy as the central preoccupation of historians.

From “Mirror for Princes” to “Mirror for Nations” The 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution further transformed the patterns of patronage and the topical, geographical, and temporal focus of the works chosen for translation. Translation was no longer primarily an activity restricted to court circles or to the occasional Iranian abroad or in the provinces; instead, pro-constitutionalist patrons sustained an independent print culture. As patronage became more autonomous from the court, translators wrote less for kings and more for a reading public seeking analogies to their own political situation. As André Lefevere points out, “change in a literary system is also closely connected with patronage.”59 In Iran, changes in patronage impacted the historiographical “system”: by the constitutional era (1906–1911), translators were less concerned with providing top-down models for modernizing kings and instead focused on providing the reading public with strategies for making sense of the revolution. The revolution opened new spaces for “anti-imperial, crossborder strategies” as constitutionalists looked to the exemplary successes and failures of other revolutionary and anti-imperial movements to expand their repertoire of resistance.60 Constitutional-era translations looked to the histories of three broad geographical regions: Western Europe, the Islamic Middle East (especially the Ottoman Empire), and East Asia. Translations of sympathetic European accounts of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution similarly became occasions for creative “textual transactions” between Iranians and their European counterparts. According to Kamran Rastegar, the process of “textual

Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History   29

transaction” transformed the “social function of literature” through “translation, appropriation and circulation of textual materials across cultural boundaries.”61 In the case of literature, translation altered “the predominant systems of legitimation and evaluation of literature.”62 If until the revolution translation largely reinforced the vision of the history promoted by the court, historians now employed history as a publically oriented practice that legitimized the constitutionalist cause. The Persian translation of Edward Granville Browne’s short 1909 pamphlet A Brief Narrative of Recent Events in Persia became the catalyst for a textual transaction contributing to the two most influential sympathetic accounts of the revolution, one in English, by Browne, and the other in Persian, by Nazim al-Islam Kirmani.63 Having read this translation, Nazim al-Islam ­Kirmani set out to “correct” the “English doctor” (Browne) by publishing what became a classic source for the history of the Constitutional Revolution, History of the Iranian Awakening (Tarikh-i Bidari-yi Iranian). Nazim al-Islam, who had already produced a serialized account of the revolution in the news­ paper Kawkab-i Durri in 1907, now amplified and expanded the text in light of Browne’s work.64 Nazim al-Islam’s account was rich with details, including his reproduction of telegrams, letters, speeches, declarations, poems, newspaper articles, and anonymous “night letters” (shabnamah) critical of the Qajar state. When Browne revised and expanded his account several years later, he fully acknowledged his debt to Nazim al-Islam’s history and made ample use of it as a source.65 These intertwined histories of the Constitutional Revolution—the most significant of their time—set the tone for subsequent accounts.66 This exchange was not the case of a European Orientalist crafting a “master” narrative of the revolution that was subsequently slavishly imitated by Iranian authors.67 ­Instead, translation allowed for an exchange between Iranian and European authors who had similar readings of the revolution. Such exchanges show that translation did not occur in a political and social vacuum; given the range of European accounts of the Constitutional Revolution, from the sympathetic to the harshly critical, the decision to select only sympathetic accounts for translation betrays the clearly pro-constitutionalist orientation of their patrons and translators.68 In contrast to previous court translators, constitutionalists looked to Europe for models of parliamentary democracy and revolution instead of modernizing autocracy.69 Constitutionalists were ambivalent toward Europe: on the

30   Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History

one hand, they selected for translation works that dealt with the history of constitutionalism, democracy, and revolution in Europe; on the other hand, they sought histories that showed the predatory nature of European imperialism and colonialism.70 Both types of history provided a repertoire of strategic possibilities for Iranian revolutionaries. Just as the nineteenth-century Qajar court translated biographies of European monarchs as modern “Mirrors for Princes,” Iranian constitutionalists looked to European constitutional and revolutionary histories as “Mirrors for Nations” that could render these “pasts” “usable” in their own contemporary contexts.71 Iranian dissidents abroad saw analogies between their situation and earlier European democracies during what came to be known as the Lesser Tyranny (1908–1909). During the Lesser Tyranny, the absolutist monarch Muhammad ‘Ali Shah bombed the Iranian parliament, which led to a civil war and the fleeing of many Iranian revolutionaries to foreign capitals such as Istanbul, London, and Paris. The start of the Lesser Tyranny coincided roughly with the death of prominent reformer and critic of the Qajar dynasty Mirza Malkam Khan.72 After Malkam’s death, his son Firiydun Malkam joined the circle of constitutionalists in Paris, where he was inspired to co-translate a history of the English parliament leading up to the execution of antidemocratic seventeenthcentury English monarch Charles I, who had famously precipitated the English Civil War through his antagonism toward the parliament.73 The publication of this book—which incidentally was paid for by Firiydun Malkam’s inheritance— reflected the search for a historical analogue to Muhammad ‘Ali Shah’s bombing of the parliament in 1908. In translating a work about Charles I, Malkam and Jalal Saqafi had in mind Muhammad ‘Ali Shah, because both monarchs’ actions caused a civil war over the fate of constitutional democracy. Their history was meant to serve as a blueprint for Iranians confronted with their own Charles I. Persian translations of histories of the French, Russian, and Portuguese revolutions similarly served as exemplary models for political action.74 Closer to home, constitutionalists sought lessons from the history of the Ottoman Empire, which underwent a revolution in 1908 just as Iran experienced its counterrevolution. Muhammad ‘Ali Shah’s contemporary autocratic monarch, Sultan Abdülhamid II, attempted a coup but failed and was subsequently deposed.75 Through their writing activities, translators sought to create solidarities between Iranian, Ottoman, and Armenian constitutionalists against autocratic rulers in both Iran and the Ottoman Empire. Unlike earlier Qajar court biographies, which functioned as exemplary models for kings, a rare biography

Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History   31

from the constitutional period was an antimodel. The leader of the Bakhtiyari tribe, Sardar As‘ad, who was known primarily for marching on Tehran in the summer of 1909 and leading the constitutionalist forces who deposed Muhammad ‘Ali Shah, was also the patron of a number of histories and a translator in his own right.76 He translated a French biography of Sultan Abdülhamid II by Pierre Quillard into Persian in 1909.77 Given Quillard’s sympathy with the plight of the Armenians under Sultan Abdülhamid II, it is telling that S­ ardar As‘ad chose to translate this particular work and have it published in 1909, the high point of Iranian, Ottoman, and Armenian constitutional cooperation. ­Sardar As‘ad’s time in Paris might have been an opportunity for him to develop friendships with Ottoman Armenian opposition groups residing there.78 The timing of this biography corresponded roughly to the fall of both Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II and Iranian Muhammad ‘Ali Shah, two monarchs similarly hostile to constitutionalism. Sardar As‘ad’s translation at that crucial juncture in both Ottoman and Iranian history indicates that Iranian constitutionalists drew on the example of a foreign despot to understand and defeat their own.79 Through their engagement with Pan-Islamic ideas, translators situated Iran within a broad history of Muslim countries. In the midst of the 1911 constitutional crisis, ‘Abd al-Husayn Mirza Qajar translated Jurji Zaydan’s History of Islamic Civilization (Tarikh-i Tamaddun-i Islami).80 The translation of this history of Islamic civilization, ironically authored by a Christian Arab, was part of a more general enthusiasm in Iran for Pan-Islamic solidarity. Commissioned by a member of the Iranian parliament, Aqa Mirza Ibrahim Qumi, and approved by the Ministry of Education, this translation may have been intended as a textbook.81 The Minister of Education stated that the translation occurred “when the dark horizon of the domains of Iran was enlightened by the light of the sun of justice and constitutionalism” and pointed out the significance of “one of the respected members of the holy parliament” arising to have such a work translated.82 Several years later, in 1914, during a period of heightened Ottoman-Iranian solidarity in the face of common European imperialist enemies, ‘Abd al-Baqi Mustawfi similarly translated Ottoman historian Farid Bey’s history of the Ottoman Empire.83 Qavim al-Saltanah’s translation of Leon Vial de Riviere’s account of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt may have been a warning to Iranians that a failure to self-strengthen through constitutionalism would inevitably end in European occupation.84 Regional solidarity was not limited to the Islamic Middle East; events in East Asia were particularly inspiring to Iranian nationalists seeking models of

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anti-imperial resistance. This was particularly the case with the Japanese defeat of the Russians in the 1905–6 Russo-Japanese war, a war that demonstrated the ability of an “Eastern” country to defeat a European imperial power.85 Russian antagonism toward Iranian constitutionalism made the Japanese example particularly relevant.86 China’s 1900 Boxer Rebellion captured the imagination of the Iranian historians who translated the colorful firsthand account of the British traveler Arnold Henry Savage Landor.87 The Minister of Publications during the late Muzaffari period, Muhammad Nadim al-Sultan, translated the French Orientalist Guillaume Pauthier’s history of China.88 Nadim al-Sultan’s earlier extensive travels through India may have made him particularly sensitive to events transpiring elsewhere in Asia.89 Iranian historians of the early constitutional era looked to the histories of European countries for analogues to their own experiences. Given the antiimperial character of the Constitutional Revolution, many historical translations looked to non-European imperial contexts for inspiration. Histories of East Asia, the neighboring Ottoman Empire, and other predominantly Muslim countries provided Iranian historians with a repertoire with which to understand and struggle against their domestic and international enemies. These presentist concerns with the utility of history largely dominated the Iranian public sphere during the early constitutional period.

g With the onset of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, historiographical translation shifted from a dynastic concern with imperial legitimization, ­Iranian kingship, and European authoritarian models of reform to a set of constitutional and revolutionary preoccupations with anti-imperialism, democratic struggles, and popular mobilization. This change was far from abrupt: over the course of the late nineteenth century, Iranians—often dissidents, travelers, or marginal Sufi and dissident figures—were instrumental in composing histories and translations from a position of relative autonomy from the imperial court. The case of Hayrat’s translation of Malcolm’s history reveals how Iranian translators working outside the country could expose a wider Iranian reading public to critical histories of the Qajars. Similarly, histories written by Iranians who were not employed by the imperial court stressed the primacy of the nation over the dynasty. By 1906, the Constitutional Revolution made the publically oriented function of history even more apparent. Economic transformations in patronage fa-

Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History   33

cilitated the formation of a thriving public sphere: as members of the imperial court lost their role as the main patrons of translations and chronicles, a more diffuse network of independent pro-constitutional patrons of print activities took their place. The field of historiographical translation became increasingly autonomous from state power as a result of the space opened by the revolution, and translators looked for lessons, models, and analogues abroad. Not only did the patrons of historical translations change with the burgeoning of printing, but so did the audience: the people and the nation replaced the king and his court as the intended primary consumers of these texts. In order for the “people” to become the rightful consumers of such histories, a further institutional transformation beyond the relative autonomy of printers would have to take place. The proliferation of schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries increased the number of potential participants in the reading, translating, and writing of histories. Because many of these schools were private, their institutional autonomy had a democratizing effect on printing similar to that of the dissolution of strict state censorship regimes. It was often the same men who moved in court circles who set up or supported these new independent pedagogical endeavors in the run-up to the Constitutional Revolution. The monopoly on the writing of history held by the imperial court gave way not only to independent publishers but also to history teachers, principals, and pedagogues invested in an alternative vision of history as a “useable past.”

2

S C H O O L S , C I T I Z E N S H I P, AND REVOLUTION

O N J U LY 16 , 19 0 9 , Iranian constitutionalist forces unceremoniously deposed the authoritarian Muhammad ‘Ali Shah. A year earlier, Muhammad ‘Ali Shah had restored autocratic rule when he bombed the parliament (majlis) and killed many prominent constitutionalists. He thereby interrupted the constitutionalists’ bold program for restructuring the Iranian government, economy, judiciary, and education system. The constitutionalists refused to be deterred so easily; they vowed to push forward with their envisioned changes, with or without the blessing of Muhammad ‘Ali Shah. They therefore found it expedient to replace the deposed Shah with his young and pliant son, Ahmad Shah. The state even appointed Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi as his private tutor, perhaps in the hope that Ahmad Shah would not follow in his father’s footsteps. ­Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi was a particularly qualified royal tutor because he and his father, Muhammad Husayn, were well-respected former court translators and teachers in modern schools. Together they had written and translated a wide array of textbooks, especially of a historical nature, for Iranian schools over the course of the previous decade. Reflecting on four years of lessons, Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi assessed the young shah’s mental capacity as “average.” He provided a vivid if somewhat unflattering account of the shah’s behavior during their encounters: “He was fat and corpulent from childhood. He would eat his food with great pleasure during break time. He paid attention to economics from an early age. Sometimes he would count the money in his pocket during class.” In addition to teaching

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him economics, Muhammad ‘Ali also taught Ahmad Shah many of the topics that the constitutionalists felt were necessary for citizenship—“Persian and ­Arabic literature, history and geography, mathematics, French and all the modern sciences.” Compared to his great grandfather, Nasir al-Din Shah, Ahmad Shah played a minimal role in the patronage of historians; by a cruel twist of fate, it was the young shah who had to listen to a historian’s directives. Ahmad Shah became bored with structured study, which might explain why he abandoned it altogether once he was a bit older. At the very least, his French lessons facilitated his pastime of vociferously reading police novels.1 Perhaps this was a fitting end to the education of the last Qajar shah, a man who would be deposed in 1925 while in exile in the land of his beloved police novels. In 1941, Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi took the reins of power as prime minister when the next shah, Riza Pahlavi, was deposed by the Allied Forces. Historians remember Furughi for his political career—he was an active parliamentarian, a Minister of Foreign Affairs, and a trusted bureaucrat in the service of Riza Shah during the 1920s and 1930s.2 In a sense, he had served as a tutor for Riza Shah as well, familiarizing the new monarch with the inner workings of the government and helping him formulate educational and cultural policies. His political career, however, has largely overshadowed his role as a historian. Beginning from the closing years of the nineteenth century, Muhammad ‘Ali and his father created a lasting legacy by shaping how a young generation of Iranians understood the past and the nation’s role within it. They were at the center of changes in education, citizenship, and the writing of history over nearly two decades, from 1898–1919. If the Iranian imperial court formed a major and early institutional context for the translation, publication, and circulation of historical works, it was in the modern school where history became a discipline with a captive audience. Iran’s education system expanded considerably in the early twentieth century, with minimal state intervention and oversight; the relatively autonomous nature of education in turn had implications for the writing of history. Despite enjoying official state sanction in their pedagogical efforts at the turn of the century, pioneering educators supported the 1906 Constitutional Revolution. Their historiographical narratives contained striking continuities in tone, structure, and underlying assumptions about the nation, the people, and the merits of constitutionalism. The 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution was a major event in modern Iranian history that brought an end to an era of top-down Qajar reforms and

Schools, Citizenship, and Revolution   37

ushered in a short-lived period of greater bottom-up political participation. This largely political periodization of Iranian history has often been super­ imposed on the study of Iranian educational institutions.3 Histories of Iranian education take the revolution as the natural endpoint for patchy and unsuccessful education reforms of the nineteenth century but also consider it to be the start of equally fitful and failed efforts of the parliament to bring about a functioning standardized education system.4 Often ignored in such accounts is how pre-revolutionary education networks informed and shaped revolution-era education. This seems counterintuitive, because schools are typically thought of as conservative state institutions through which hegemonic norms, attitudes, and habits are reproduced.5 But as E. Thomas Ewing has pointed out, “Pedagogy can be both conservative and radical, just as revolutions can be liberating and repressive.”6 The Iranian education system at the turn of the twentieth century was largely decentralized—first because of the laissez-faire attitude of the reigning monarch, Muzaffar al-Din Shah (1896–1907) and second because of the transformative effects of the Constitutional Revolution, which lasted through the First World War and into the immediate postwar era. The relative autonomy of educational institutions and its employees directly affected the crafting of historical narratives. After the Constitutional Revolution, historians reread the Iranian past through a revolutionary telos. History textbooks were a nationalist genre par excellence: unlike court chronicles and religious histories, the subject of history was neither the dynasty nor the tribe nor the religious community; instead, it was the people and the nation. Although most history textbooks shared underlying nationalist assumptions about the nature of history, in the absence of a centralized education system to oversee curricular development, educators were free to write histories as they saw fit. The histories’ experimental nature, in terms of both form—prose, verse, or a mix of the two—and content, ranging from emphasis on the parliament and the rule of law to the centrality of education, reflected contending visions of citizenship in a revolutionary era.

The Expansion of State and Private Schools After the coronation of Muzaffar al-Din Shah in 1896, there was considerable expansion of state and nonstate primary and secondary schools. Prior to his rule, the state-sponsored Dar al-Funun employed many foreign instructors to purvey European knowledge (mainly of a technical variety) to future bureau­

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crats, military men, doctors, and scientists.7 With the exception in 1888 of the short-lived Tabriz Rushdiyah School, indigenous efforts to establish private schools were few and far between.8 Foreign private schools—French and American ones in particular—generally followed their own curriculum and catered to non-Muslim Iranian populations.9 In contrast, the Muzaffari-era private schools, referred to usually as “national” (milli) schools, were intended primarily for Muslim students.10 National schools thus signified the popularization of modern education beyond court, bureaucratic, and religious minority circles. What accounts for the spread of private schools under Muzaffar al-Din Shah? His late father, Nasir al-Din Shah, saw a literate population as potentially subversive and began to associate the Dar al-Funun with dangerous European political ideas that could potentially undermine his authority.11 Muzaffar alDin Shah’s attitude differed greatly from his father’s: as the crown prince and governor of the province, he had supported modern education in A ­ zerbaijan. As king, Muzaffar al-Din Shah surrounded himself with bureaucrats and statesmen who were committed to advancing modern education.12 His reformminded prime minister, Amin al-Dawlah, encouraged the formation of a committee to oversee the founding of modern schools in Iran.13 But none of these factors explains why private individuals instead of the state spearheaded the expansion of the education system. In other words, why did Muzaffar al-Din Shah and his coterie not insist on instrumentalizing a centralized education system to legitimize state rule? The economic situation in Iran, particularly at the court, provides a partial answer. Battered by decades of foreign concessions, Western economic penetration, a lack of effective state tax and revenue collection, and a lavish lifestyle enjoyed by the upper echelons of the Qajar court, the Iranian state coffers were thoroughly depleted by the time Muzaffar al-Din Shah came to power.14 In 1896, Muzaffar al-Din Shah seemed relatively uninterested in disrupting the delicate Iranian economy, with its powerful poles of vested political and economic interest solidified by patronage and kinship networks extending throughout the country. The shah’s attitude toward governance can be characterized as laissezfaire; this attitude in turn provided space for reformists to voice their opinions on how best to bring about modernization. Even if the shah and those around him wanted to create a large-scale education system, they lacked the financial means to do so. Consequently, the de facto compromise reached between independent educationalists and the state was to allow the opening of private schools with explicit state backing, which would allow the state to claim partial

Schools, Citizenship, and Revolution   39

credit for the spread of schools while not having to bear the full burden of its cost. The state’s financial dilemma may explain why it even allowed the heterodox Baha’i community to establish schools for Iranian students of all confessional backgrounds.15 To supervise the expansion of modern education, the state created an institutional interface between itself and the proponents of private schools. Formed in 1898, the Education Committee (Anjuman-i Ma‘arif ) was not an official state institution; rather, it was “the first organized, non-governmental attempt to promote education reform in Iran.”16 Anjumans—voluntary associations, clubs, or groups—proliferated during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, particularly as they became critical nodes around which political groups formed.17 In the pre-revolutionary period, anjumans were literary and/ or civic institutions characterized by the practice of collective deliberation and self-regulation.18 The Education Committee was composed of social groups invested in ­promoting education: members of the foreign service, individuals who had studied abroad, reform-minded clerics (‘ulama), wealthy merchants, physicians, and other prominent notables.19 The Minister of Education, Nayyir al-Mulk, represented the state’s interests on the Education Committee. Even though internal rivalries eventually hampered the proper functioning of the committee, it succeeded in substantially increasing the number of primary and secondary schools during its short existence.20 The Education Committee’s broader objective was to create a new segment of society capable of spearheading administrative and legal reforms through the promotion of universal compulsory education.21 In pursuing its goal, it engaged in a number of complementary activities, such as the creation of a public library; the offering of adult classes; the publication of an official newspaper, the Ruznamah-i Ma‘arif; and the establishment of a print enterprise, the Book Printing Company (Shirkat-i Tab‘-i Kitab). The Ruznamah-i Ma‘arif published the proceedings of the discussions held by the Education Committee, while another journal, Tarbiyat, published articles about education.22 Of the state schools established during the Muzaffari era, none was quite as significant as the Political Science School (Madrasah-i ‘Ulum-i Siyasi), the first major government institution of higher learning since the Dar al-Funun.23 The school’s objectives were more specialized than those of the Dar al-Funun: it was meant to train administrators and diplomats rather than military officials. Through the persistence of Qajar bureaucrat Nasrullah Mushir al-Dawlah and his son, Hasan Pirniya, Muzaffar al-Din Shah allotted 4,000 tumans from

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revenues produced by state-owned turquoise mines in Khurasan to fund the new school.24 It was at the Political Science School that the father and son duo of Muhammad Husayn Furughi and Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi wrote the most widely read history textbook of early twentieth-century Iran.

The Furughis and the Writing of a People-Centered Narrative Muhammad Husayn Furughi and his son Muhammad ‘Ali were towering educational figures in late Qajar Iran. A student of the Political Science School recalled that “of every four textbooks that was published at the time, two of them were compositions and translations by Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi and his father.”25 Scholar Mujtaba Minuvi fondly recalled reading the Furughis’ history textbook in primary school, stating its “first sentence had become like a proverb for us: ‘Our country is Iran, we are Iranian, and our forefathers were Iranians.’”26 Isa Sadiq, a future educationalist, likewise read the Furughis’ history textbooks as a young student.27 The Furughis crafted a grand narrative of Iranian history that became foundational for subsequent historians. As employees of the Publication and Translation Bureaus, the Furughis not only were equipped to read French- and English-language histories, but also had significant experience translating and composing histories at the imperial court under the supervision of I‘timad al-Saltanah. Later in the nineteenth century, the Political Science School commissioned the Furughis to translate and compose history textbooks. The relative autonomy of Muzaffari-era schools— even a state school such as the Political Science School—allowed the Furughis to subtly advocate constitutionalism in two ways: first, through a selective translation of French textbooks with a liberal constitutional bent; and second, through the employment of subtle narrative strategies to envision a new people-centered history. The process of selecting texts for translation was rarely devoid of ideological considerations. The Furughis had a spectrum of European history textbooks from which to choose, not the least of which were composed by French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges. Remembered as the mentor of Émile Durkheim, Fustel de Coulanges was a positivist historian who famously stated that “history is a science” and gave precedence to the study of social institutions over study of the individual.28 His successor and dedicated pedagogue Ernest Lavisse composed numerous history textbooks as well.29 Instead of selecting the works of these authors for translation, the Furughis chose to translate the textbook of

Schools, Citizenship, and Revolution   41

another French historian, Charles Seignobos.30 Characterized as “a republican, a democrat, [and] an outspoken freethinker,” Seignobos believed strongly in the subjective dimension of historical reconstructions.31 The ­Furughis’ choice of the work of a democrat and freethinker in turn-of-the-century Iran may seem incongruous: after all, Iran was still a monarchy and few wrote openly about the need for democratic institutions. In order to understand why the Furughis felt an elective affinity for Seignobos, it is important to understand Muhammad Husayn Furughi’s own position in relation to the field of power. Muhammad Husayn Furughi occupied a liminal position in the field of Qajar cultural production, both at the court and in the education system. On the one hand, he had a close relationship with those in political power by virtue of being an employee of the court; on the other hand, he entered this field as an outsider—namely, not as a Qajar aristocrat, prominent notable, or even a bureaucrat, but as a merchant. This liminal position may explain why, despite being a Qajar bureaucrat, Muhammad Husayn Furughi supported constitutional change and moved in circles critical of the ruling dynasty.32 For instance, he associated with prominent Pan-Islamic activist Jamal al-Din al-Afghani during the latter’s stay in Tehran. Muhammad Husayn’s other notorious friends included liberal reformist Mirza Malkam Khan, whose London-based newspaper Qanun was renowned for its criticisms of Nasir al-Din Shah.33 When government agents accused Muhammad Husayn of having written articles for Qanun, he took refuge in Mirza ‘Ali Asghar Amin al-Sultan’s stable until the shah pardoned him.34 Aside from the political dimension of Muhammad Husayn’s arrest, rumors circulated about his heterodox religious affiliations. According to I‘timad al-Saltanah, Muhammad Husayn moved in Babi circles: “It is widely believed that for some time the house of Mirza Furughi was a Babi gathering place. The reason that he escaped [by taking refuge at a stable] was not because of his writings but perhaps because his home became such a gathering place.”35 On an earlier occasion, I‘timad al-Saltanah chastened Muhammad Husayn for publishing the satirical verse of a poet named Naji because of its supposedly atheistic undertones. He ordered all the copies of the poetry to be burned.36 Muhammad Husayn Furughi’s affiliations with subversive political figures and heterodoxy sheds light on the subtle pro-constitutionalist message of his coauthored textbooks. When he sat down with his son Muhammad ‘Ali to pen an Iranian history textbook, they walked a fine line between sufficiently praising the ruling dynasty while introducing people-centered narratives. The Furughis took the nation—namely Iran—as the subject of history. As a collec-

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tive agent, the “people” (mardum) embodied the nation and were given a distinctively central role in comparison to the part they played in past histories.37 Dedicating the history simultaneously to Muzaffar al-Din Shah and to the ­Iranian people, the Furughis hoped to “create enthusiasm among that appreciative nation and angelic-minded people.”38 They narrated conflicts between Iran and Greece and later between Iran and the Ottomans as being between distinct peoples rather than between empires or dynasties.39 Perhaps more significant, they judged rulers according to their treatment of their people. Hasan-i Sabbah, a medieval Isma‘ili leader, was said to have caused “the people of Iran” to be caught “in the grips of instability and anxiety,” leading to his eventual downfall.40 More recent monarchs were similarly evaluated: eighteenth-century monarch Nadir Shah disturbed the “people of Iran” before being executed, whereas the next major ruler, Karim Khan Zand, was praised for wanting “the masses of the people [‘umum-i mardum] . . . to live in peace and repose.”41 Beyond these subtle discursive shifts into emphasizing the people, the ­Furughis projected modern political concepts into Iran’s distant past, most notably constitutionalism, parliamentarianism, and democracy. They recast the Ashkanid dynasty, a nomadic confederation, as a constitutional monarchy. This reading of the Ashkanids was not without precedence; I‘timad alSaltanah made similar claims in his earlier court history of the Ashkanids.42 The ­Furughis further popularized this idea by embedding it in textbooks intended for a broad student population: “The monarchy of the Ashkanid kings was constitutional [mashrutah], meaning that the king did not have absolute sovereignty [ikhtiyar-i mutlaq] in administering the affairs of the country and an assembly [majlis] similar to a consultative assembly [majlis-i shura] of lords and nobles [buzurgan va nujaba] would sit together and consult on the important [affairs] of the country.” The Furughis stressed the power of the elected “governors and government officers” to “depose and establish kings” on occasion. They described how, under the Ashkanids, “the king did not have absolute sovereignty”; instead, it was “the nobles and the lords of the Parthians [who] had complete power.” These nobles and lords, according to the Furughis, “were independent to such a degree that they could be considered shahs, except that they had to pay tribute to the king of kings and in war time they had to establish troops for him.”43 The Furughis’ account of the Ashkanids decentralization should be read alongside the Qajar state’s own lack of centralization. Lauding the “lords and nobles” who served as a check on the Ashkanid king’s power took on greater

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significance in an era when Muzaffar al-Din Shah granted the “nobles” around him greater autonomy to experiment and implement reforms. Despite still being bound to official state dynastic discourses, the Furughis managed to insert pro-constitutionalist ideas into their history. This reading of history would be made explicit and intensified with the outbreak of the Constitutional Revolution a mere seven years later.

Learning the Lessons of Citizenship in the Age of Revolution Educationalists such as the Furughis overwhelmingly supported the 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution.44 Given this support, the state did not purge the old guard of educationalists on ideological grounds, nor was a radical change in narratives found in history textbooks.45 Indeed, pre-revolutionary educationalists and constitutionalists often shared political objectives. Before the revolution, secret societies and associations viewed education and constitutional reform on a continuum. In May 1904, fifty-seven individuals who frequented the National Library met in the outskirts of Tehran to form the Revolutionary Committee. Shortly thereafter, Nazim al-Islam Kirmani, another educator, founded the Secret Society (Anjuman-i Makhfi), which advocated both the spread of education and constitutionalism.46 The members of both associations were paradoxically education reformers close to the state and dissidents conspiring for radical change. The Iranian parliament supported education reforms and understood the need to inculcate and reproduce constitutional values in the next generation of Iranians. A previously unutilized 1911 report prepared for the Ministry of Education provides further evidence of education expansion in the years immediately following the revolution.47 Although limited to Tehran, the report stated that in the school year 1909–1910 there were 76 boys’ schools and 47 girls’ schools, totaling 123 primary schools. In the same school year, there were 8,344 male students and 2,187 female students, totaling 10,531 primary school students in Tehran.48 When it is kept in mind that the number of modern schools, both primary and secondary, opened in Tehran between 1890 and 1906 totaled roughly 23, the appearance of 123 primary schools by 1909–1910 becomes all the more impressive.49 The parliament supported the increase of schools championed by earlier reformers but also pioneered new directions. It invested significantly in state schools even though it suffered from financial pressures. With the advent of

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new freedoms of association, private citizens funded their own schools, continuing the precedent set in the late 1890s. The revolution created a space for a women’s movement capable of funding its own girls’ schools despite the lack of state financial support.50 The significant increase in textbooks written during the revolutionary period pointed to greater state and public support for education. The revolution provided greater autonomy for educational institutions and, by extension, for historians and history teachers. Independent patrons sympathetic to education reform commissioned translations of history textbooks. Constitutional-era historians viewed history as having culminated in a revolutionary catharsis: it held the key to understanding how events were unfolding in the present. What precisely was the relationship between education and citizenship given this new revolutionary context? Educators used the language of citizenship to elaborate on the obligations binding on every Iranian. In his report for the Ministry of Education, Mustafa Mansur al-Saltanah argued that “civilized governments” promoted primary education as “one of the necessities of citizenship.”51 He pointed out that, in the past, Iran did not “count public education [ta‘limat-i ‘umumi] as a national necessity,” although he dated the start of this process with Muzaffar al-Din Shah and said that it continued and intensified with the Constitutional Revolution.52 Constitutional-era civics textbooks provide the most explicit blueprint for what the state expected of its citizens. In a 1912 civics textbook, the author argued that it was imperative for parents to “train children with good behavior [and] place them in schools.”53 Among the recurring goals of the Iranian parliament, therefore, was to establish compulsory and free education for all citizens, in spite of the financial barriers to such an ambitious program.54 In the absence of standardization and strict state control of education, textbooks reflected notions of citizenship as diverse as the ideas promoted by the constitutionalists themselves. Most of those who wrote history textbooks after the revolution were former members of the Education Committee or one of the schools established under its auspices. The diversity of these textbooks spanned both form and content: some were written in prose, others in verse, and still others blended the two. Several textbooks included a didactic question-and-answer format to guide students to the intended “moral of the story.” Finally, the reading of the Constitutional Revolution found in these texts ranged from the messianic to the rationalistic and legalistic. These textbooks narrated the origins of the revolution in ways that differed substantially from later histories that traced those origins to intellectuals and activists such as Mirza Malkam

Schools, Citizenship, and Revolution   45

Khan and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. In contrast, constitutional-era textbooks attributed the revolution to the spread of education in the early Muzaffari ­period.55 Educators viewed schools as motors for political change rather than as conservative institutions. How educators made sense of the significance of education after the revolution, especially as it pertained to citizenship, was best exemplified in Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi’s revised Iranian history textbook. In 1908, just one year after his father had died, Muhammad ‘Ali revised and updated their coauthored history of Iran, renaming it The Illustrated History of Iran.56 Writing in the new revolutionary context, he made explicit many of the implicit themes of the original work, such as praise for “the people” and a constitutional form of government. The way in which Furughi used the category “the people” was a considerable shift from its use in the pre-constitutional period: if previously rulers were seen as rising or falling according to their treatment of the people, now the people were cast as agents of history demanding constitutionalism rather than simply calling for a more just monarch. Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi’s candid judgments of recent Qajar statesmen were indicative of his newfound autonomy from political pressure. Such judgments would hardly have been imaginable prior to the revolution. Furughi blamed “those seditious toward the government [mufsidin-i dawlat] and the traitors of the nation [kha’inin-i millat]” for overthrowing the reformist prime minister Amin al-Dawlah by spuriously accusing him of being a “republican” ( jumhuritalab).57 According to Furughi, the people resolved to establish a constitutional government “because of the excessive laziness of the courtiers and the extreme tyranny and oppression of the ministers and nobility, especially the tyrannical oppression of [Prime Minister] ‘Ayn al-Dawlah.” Furughi then described how “the oppressed masses” took refuge at the English consulate, declaring that “until the tyranny of despotism is not dispersed and the shadow of constitutional rule [saltanat-i mashrutah] is not cast upon the heads of Iranians, we will be willing to sacrifice our lives.”58 Furughi enumerated deeper underlying causes for the revolution beyond the immediate political grievances that sparked it. One of these causes was education reform: “From the beginning of the rule of Muzaffar al-Din Shah the breeze of freedom [nasim-i azadi] wafted . . . and [in the service of] the greatest cause of progress, he established several national [private] school divisions.” Furughi then described how it was through those schools that “the general public [‘ammah-i nas] were accordingly made aware that progress, civilization,

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wealth, and prosperity are tied exclusively to knowledge.”59 Furughi ended his revised history by noting that “still the revolutions [inqilabat] have not been completely calmed,” suggesting that the task of realizing constitutional ideals remained unfulfilled. Despite this, he was optimistic because the “Iranian parliament” was active in “services to the government and nation” and the constitutional movement was centrally concerned with spreading an understanding of the “law [qanun]” to the “elites and masses [khavvas va ‘amm]” through “newspapers and schools.”60 Reinforcing Furughi’s reading of the revolution, The Illustrated History of Iran included a set of study questions prodding students to realize history’s civic function. The questions betrayed a presentist concern—that is, they invited students to consider the contemporary utility of history: “How would you compare the current government of Iran with the government of the Safavids? What is the purpose of reading history? What is the value, for us, of reading the history of the Safavid dynasty?”61 The purpose of these questions was to encourage readers to think about the teleological lessons to be drawn from history. The lesson no longer ended primarily with the promotion of the cult of knowledge that was so popular among Muzaffari-era Qajar reformers, and the focus was shifted to the civic lessons to be learned from c­ onstitutionalism. A disproportionate number of the questions (more than twenty) asked students to elaborate on various facets of constitutionalism despite the relatively few number of pages dedicated to the Constitutional Revolution in the textbook.62 These questions reveal how Furughi refashioned his narrative to fit a constitutional teleology. Students were asked to “explain the meaning and the circumstances of [the Constitutional Revolution’s] origins.” After a series of more detailed questions about the nature of the parliament, the textbook asked, “What is the condition of the country and the educational and scientific affairs in Iran today?” and “What is the life, prosperity, and progress of a nation based on?” Furughi wanted students to define “responsibility” (masuliyat) and to explain how to be responsible. After asking students to enumerate “which countries on earth are constitutional,” which are “republics,” and which are “despotic,” the book asked, “Which country in the world is strongest and most wise in the world today?” To motivate students to reflect on the prosperity of nations, it asked the following questions in quick success: “What is the cause of the decline of Iran? What are the barriers to Iran’s progress? How can these barriers be removed? What is the duty [taklif ] of each Iranian? What is the responsibility of the Iranian child?”63 Students would not be able to answer these

Schools, Citizenship, and Revolution   47

questions without supplementary lessons on constitutionalism, which suggests that Furughi expected teachers to facilitate a lengthy and detailed discussion of constitutionalism in the classroom. Moving well beyond the explicit information provided in the textbook, these questions reinforced the interconnections between Iranian civic duty, constitutionalism, the progress of the nation, barriers to this progress, and the role of education in ensuring such progress. ­Although Furughi abandoned a career in education for parliamentary politics, his textbook spread notions of civic duty, constitutionalism, and freedom through the narration of history.64 Mahmud Miftah al-Mulk, Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi’s contemporary, similarly used history as a vehicle for conveying civic lessons. An employee of the Foreign Ministry, Miftah al-Mulk was in charge of telegraphic encryptions.65 Prior to the revolution, he had a reputation for offending the moral sensibilities of Muslim clerics by throwing Western-style garden parties. In the factional debates that raged within the Education Committee, he sided with the prime minister and the Minister of Education, Nayyir al-Mulk, suggesting that Miftah al-Mulk also represented Qajar state objectives in this nongovernmental body.66 In 1898, he started the education journal Ma‘arif and opened the Iftitahiyah School (named after himself, iftitah being from the same Arabic root as miftah) as part of his role on the Education Committee. Due to the Education Committee’s infighting, however, the Iftitahiyah School closed down two years later.67 Unlike Muhammad Husayn Furughi, Miftah al-Mulk was not a dissenting insider in the Qajar bureaucracy; instead, he upheld the status quo, whether absolutist or constitutionalist. In 1907, he published a mixed prose and verse Iranian history textbook, The Summary History.68 Writing in the first year of Muhammad ‘Ali Shah’s reign, Miftah al-Mulk appealed to constitutional discourse early in the text, describing the new monarch as “the reviver of the laws of justice and the destroyer of the traces of tyranny and despotism.”69 Although he adopted a reverent tone toward Muhammad ‘Ali Shah in one of his poems, he clearly indicated that the shah’s status depended on his constitutional credentials: “The national parliamentary order [nizam-i majlis-i milli] attained perfection through him / he became a support and refuge for the blessed nation [millat-i marhumah] [that is, Iran].”70 Miftah al-Mulk considered his history to be relevant beyond the monarchy because, he believed, it was “a service to the government, the nation, and the world of humanity.”71 For him, as for Furughi, history was a prerequisite for citizenship insofar as “the science of history” was “among the necessities for [proper] upbringing and civilization.”72 Miftah a­ l-Mulk drew

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on verses from the Shahnamah and on summaries of other literary works so as to “refine [students’] manners, encourage their natural enthusiasm and inclinations, and simplify the matter of teaching and learning.”73 Emerging from the same circles as Miftah al-Mulk was Mirza Hasan Khan Tafrishi Mantiq al-Mulk, a member of the Education Committee and founder of the Sharaf-i Muzaffari School.74 In 1913, he published Mantiqi’s History, a grand narrative of Iranian history.75 Mantiq al-Mulk credited Muzaffar al-Din Shah for “establishing the bedrock of civilization and progress” by spreading “science and learning” throughout Iran.76 Like other historians, he credited the late shah for “having brought about justice and constitutionalism” and for securing “freedom and liberty.”77 Mantiq al-Mulk considered history to be useful for the nation’s present as well as its future. By understanding the past, one could understand the under­lying “laws” of history and “judge” the current conditions of its people. Elaborating on the “benefit of history” (fa’idah-i tarikh) in almost talismanic terms, he described the historian as “like someone who had from the beginning of the earth’s existence seen all the manners and customs and the signs and traces of every people, examined all the events and occurrences, known all the benefits of all the sciences and arts, and witnessed the harm and calamities of ignorance and lack of knowledge.” He believed that the historian could, “with the power of knowledge and understanding[,] solve all obscure problems,” and he compared “historical knowledge” to “a crystal ball [ayinah-i gitinama] that purifies the mind of man to understand the causes and effects for the appearance and rise of every power and glory and the fall of every government and people.” His use of juridical language in discussing the task of the historian was unique and reflected a telling application of legal discourse to the understanding of history. Mantiq al-Mulk characterized history as “essential knowledge” composed of “philosophical judgments,” adding that “the Europeans, especially the French, judge the condition of their people and nation based on historical judgments [muhakamat-i tarikhiyah] with geometrical evidences and proofs [adallah va burhan-i hindisi].”78 Mantiq al-Mulk stressed these legal dimensions of constitutionalism, saying that in addition to establishing “a national consultative assembly” (majlis-i shura-yi milli), Muzaffar al-Din Shah passed “just laws in line with divine precepts [ahkam-i ilahiyah], and ensured and perfected human felicity” because this was the primary means for securing “progress, civilization, politics, and religion.”79 Mantiq al-Mulk conceived of “political history” as that of “civilized peoples of the world obeying and conforming to established laws and politi-

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cal order [tanzimat-i muqarrarah-i siyasi].”80 He was more insistent than other contemporary historians on categorizing history as a series of laws informed by “judgments of the philosophy of history.”81 Among the extended circles of the Education Committee was Muhammad ‘Ali Nazim al-Islam Kirmani, a teacher turned pro-constitutional activist and an early chronicler of the revolution. He was a “principal” (nazim) and instructor at the Islam School, which was established by reformist cleric Muhammad Tabataba’i during the Muzaffari era.82 Like Muhammad Husayn Furughi, both Tabataba’i and Nazim al-Islam had connections with dissidents: Muhammad Tabataba’i’s father was a member of Mirza Malkam Khan’s Freemason circle while also associating with Jamal al-Din Afghani and the latitudinarian cleric Shaykh Hadi Najmabadi.83 Tabataba’i founded the Islam School with the goal of providing children from orthodox Shi‘i families with a modern education.84 Ironically, Tabataba’i appointed a principal who had even more heterodox connections than he did: Nazim al-Islam studied with two of the most influential Babi-Azali freethinkers of the late nineteenth century, Mirza Aqa Khan ­Kirmani and Shaykh Ahmad Ruhi.85 Before turning his attention to history, Nazim al-Islam composed several textbooks on Islamic doctrine that were consistent with the religious aims of the school.86 After the revolution, he abandoned his educational pursuits for political activism. In his chronicle of the revolution, History of the Iranian Awakening, he alluded to having started writing a history textbook at around the time when his former teacher Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani and Muhammad Husayn Furughi published similar works.87 After the forced closure of the Iranian parliament in 1911, he returned to his original plan to compose a comprehensive history of Iran, culminating in a textbook published three years later.88 The overwhelming majority of those who wrote history textbooks after the Constitutional Revolution came from the extended networks of the Education Committee. They crafted pro-constitutional narratives emphasizing the rule of law, the centrality of the people to history, and the connection between education, civic duty, and revolution.

Versifying History The Constitutional Revolution witnessed creative experimentation with the forms of history writing. Verse histories became a popular albeit short-lived form through which to convey lessons about the past. Persian verse histories,

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often modeled on the Shahnamah, had a long history in Muslim societies, particularly among dynasties ruling in Iran, Central Asia, and India. The Qajars and later the Pahlavis patronized such histories well into the twentieth century.89 Outside of court circles, rhymed poetry, known as Nasib al-Sibyan, served as a mnemonic aid to seminary students learning Arabic vocabulary and Islamic ­legal terminology. Finally, poeticized history textbooks date as far back as Napoleonic France.90 Iranian historians believed that history was pedagogically useful in conveying the “scientific” lessons of the past to young readers. The pioneers in writing verse histories were two provincial figures, Adib Qasimi Kirmani and Ashraf al-Din al-Husayni Nasim-i Shumal.91 Adib Qasimi Kirmani was a peripatetic educator, government employee, and publisher. During the early years of the revolution, he was employed at the Dar al-Funun in Tehran. In 1911/1912, he founded and taught at a primary school in Kirman. At the same time, he was involved in local printing, before serving in the Ministry of Justice (Vizarat-i ‘Adliyah).92 When teaching in Tehran, Adib Qasimi composed The Telegraphic History as a primary school verse history textbook.93 Like several contemporary historians, Adib Qasimi considered Muzaffar al-Din Shah to be a just king by virtue of his granting a constitution: “From his justice he decreed a constitution / so that the world would become filled with justice and equity.”94 He considered learning about history to be a necessary precursor for citizenship: “The most necessary and important of the sciences [‘ulum] for school children is the science of history [‘ilm-i tarikh].” He added that because his book was “not lengthy . . . children will delight in memorizing it.” He continued: “children are more inclined toward memorizing poetry rather than prose, especially if the poetry is simple and eloquent.”95 Nearly four years later, Adib Qasimi’s contemporary, journalist and revolutionary poet Ashraf al-Din al-Husayni Nasim-i Shumal, wrote a similar verse history, Ashraf ’s Verse Introductory History. Born in Qazvin, Nasim-i Shumal spent significant portions of his life in Iraqi Shi‘i shrine cities, and eventually settled in Rasht, where he published a popular eponymous satirical news­paper, Nasim-i Shumal.96 In 1911, the paper was forced to close down. Three years later he moved to Tehran in the hope of reviving it.97 Mirza Muhammad Khan Yiganah, a military man whose father, Sardar Mu‘tamid Gilani, was a member of parliament, funded the publication of the verse history, indicating the relevance of private patronage for the writing of textbooks.98 For Nasim-i Shumal, history, and knowledge in general, was a civic duty: “Those who are knowledgeable and educated are well aware that the cause for

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the salvation [nijat] and prosperity of each people and the reason for the safety of every nation is in knowing the science of history.” Nasim-i Shumal viewed history as a future-oriented science: The science of history is the first of sciences, Perhaps today it is the best of sciences. The man who knows history does not err, He does not make brainless statements. That which is remembered in the world is history [yadigar tarikh ast], That which is useful is history.99

Nasim-i Shumal made the bold claim that “any nation that does not know the history of its forefathers will soon disappear” because “the links and the continuity of their own people’s character and nationality [qawmiyat va vataniyat] would cease to exist.”100 He therefore argued that Iranians “should study the science of history quickly,” adding that “there is no other duty for the individual Iranian/except for acquiring knowledge at every moment.”101 Nasim-i Shumal’s understanding of the Constitutional Revolution echoed the themes of justice, freedom, and the rule of law. For instance, he began his account of the revolution by posing the question, “Who gave us the c­ onstitution?” then responding, “Muzaffar [al-Din] Shah the just and with a generous heart / gave the exemplary constitution to the nation.”102 In response to the question, “What is a constitution?” he responded by adapting a famous poem by Sa‘di by insisting on the liberating potential of the rule of law: The constitution was a law of justice [qanun-i ‘idalat], Which makes law an expression of freedom. Because of law, tyranny is lifted, Because of law, the people find repose. There is no greater thing to worship than law, It does not interfere in the affairs of anyone.103

He juxtaposed the freedom afforded by the constitution with the domestic and foreign threats to its proper functioning. After narrating Muhammad ‘Ali’s coup against the constitution, Nasim-i Shumal recounted the reopening of the parliament in 1909: “The door of the parliament flung open once again / That house of safety opened for the people / But to what use since there was calamity, war, and destruction / On the night of Monday that door was closed once again.”104 The note of despair at the end of the poem was an allusion to the

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­ ussian ultimatum in 1911 and the subsequent closing of the parliament. He R praised the reigning king, Ahmad Shah, for reopening the parliament shortly before the publication of his book.105 Verse history textbooks differed from both Persian epic poetry and Islamic pedagogical verse by assuming the existence of a nation. Although the verse history textbook failed to become a mainstay of subsequent Iranian historiography, it pointed to the creative experimentation in the forms of historical writing afforded by the autonomy created by the revolution.

World Histories, Civilization, and Universal Ideals While national histories of Iran structured the narratives of the revolution and citizenship in classrooms, world histories helped locate Iran’s place among nations. Modeled on the French histoire universelle, world histories (tarikh-i ‘umumi) claimed to cover the entire scope of human history.106 On the surface, world histories appeared to transcend the logic of the nation-state but in fact reinforced the nation by assuming it was the natural “space within which history occurs.”107 Implicit in the idea of world history was that some countries were nations by virtue of possessing a history, but others were not and therefore awaited integration into world history through colonialism. By translating and composing world histories in Persian, Iranian historians of the constitutional era posited that Iran was a nation-state comparable to European ones—independent, worthy of respect, and therefore not subject to the “civilizing” mission of outsiders. Complementing the civic function of histories of Iran, world histories located Iran firmly within the “civilized” world. Those who translated, adapted, and composed world histories were generally educators and government officials working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Many young Iranians traveled to France for their studies, which affected the pedagogical orientation of Iranian translators and historians.108 Two such figures illustrate this point well: ‘Ali Nazim al-‘Ulum was the principal of the ­Muzaffari-era ‘Ilmiyah School and ‘Ali Riza Mutarjim al-Saltanah was an instructor of French and history at the Dar al-Funun.109 A graduate of the ­Muzaffari-era Political Science School, Husayn Bihruz wrote a world history textbook while attending to his duties as First Deputy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.110 Independently wealthy patrons funded the composition of world history textbooks during the revolution. For instance, Sardar As‘ad’s kinsman ­Bakhtiyari leader Murtiza Quli Khan Bakhtiyari was the patron of a transla-

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tion of Lame Fleury’s 1836 ancient history textbook for children.111 But the most notable patron of textbooks appears to have been Jamshid Sa‘id al-Dawlah Tunakabuni, a man from a wealthy landowning and pro-constitutional family who patronized a series of textbooks named The Jamshidian Foundation (Asas-i Jamshidi).112 Sa‘id al-Dawlah conceived of the series—published just after the closing of the Iranian parliament in 1911—in response to proposed parliamentary education reforms. The first book of this series was a translation of ­Ernest Lavisse’s French-language world history, Histoire générale.113 Lavisse was a freethinker with an anticlerical bent. His textbooks, written in a crisp and lucid style, were ideally suited for translation.114 In his lengthy preface, Sa‘id al-Dawlah claimed that the Persian translation of Lavisse’s textbook was the first comprehensive world history translated into Persian in Iran, although he acknowledged that the earliest Persian translations of world histories were published in India.115 The book covered the history of the world in five parts and included fifteen chapters. At the end of each part, Sa‘id al-Dawlah added an appendix on the history of Iran that was not found in Lavisse’s original text.116 These appendixes reinforced Iran’s status as a nation with an important role in world history. In his textbook series, Jamshid Sa‘id al-Dawlah Tunakabuni prioritized the teaching of history because he viewed history as particularly well-suited to the ideals of constitutionalism and civilization. He began by describing the constitutional period as an “auspicious age when the sun of learning is shining on the horizon of the country of Iran and the generality of the nation [‘umum-i millat] is seeking knowledge” before praising “the glorious Ministry of Education” for having “passed strong laws” and for making “the responsibility of studying clear and binding.” He therefore resolved “to render service in the path of education” by commissioning “a series of textbooks for the youth of this beloved country.”117 After pointing out that he intended to prepare a series of textbooks dealing not only with history but also with mathematics, chemistry, and physics, he expressed his specifically civic rationale for starting with history: “Because world histories are customary among civilized nations and are more needed and because I saw that copies of it in this country are rare and nonexistent, I began by publishing it.”118 He viewed the publication of a translation of world history as complementary to the Furughis’ earlier textbook on Iranian history: “the study of history is the most important and beneficial of studies and because the specific history of Iran [tarikh-i khususi-yi Iran] was written before by scholars like the late [Muhammad Husayn Furughi] Zuka al-Mulk . . .

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and copies of it are widespread, I felt what needed to be printed now and what would be of use and value is a ‘histoire générale’ [histuvar jiniral]. . . .” 119 During the revolution, patrons, translators, and authors of world histories considered their textbooks to be a means of promoting “civilization” and progress in Iran, and a means of joining the community of “civilized countries.” Translations were made exclusively from French textbooks and reflected the social background of their translators, who, because of their connection either to the diplomatic service (which required French as a primary language) or to modern schooling in Iran or abroad, tended to look to the French pedagogical tradition as a model for Iranian education.

Sayyid ‘Ali Nasr: A Student and Teacher of History The life of Sayyid ‘Ali Nasr, a student and teacher of history, elegantly illustrates the transformations in education of the opening years of the twentieth century. Nasr was simultaneously a product of early Muzaffari-era schools and a teacher in the constitutional period before embarking on a career in the government. Few of the constitutional-era educators were quite as prolific in writing history textbooks as the young Sayyid ‘Ali Nasr. Born in Tehran in 1894 to a family of descendents of the Prophet Muhammad (sayyids), he received his earliest education in an Islamic primary school (maktab). His eldest brother, Valiullah Nasr, was an instructor at the modern ‘Ilmiyah School. Using his connections, Valiullah had his younger brother transferred from the Islamic primary school to the Sharaf School at the age of six.120 Nasr excelled in the classroom, was a model student, and even had a textbook named after him.121 He earned high grades at the Sharaf School, which eventually gained him entry to the ‘Ilmiyah School. There he studied under Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi, Persian instructor ‘Abd al-‘Azim Qarib, and the principal, Muhammad Safi Nazim al-‘Ulum.122 Nasr studied simultaneously at several schools during these years. In addition to his studies at the ‘Ilmiyah School, he also studied classical Islamic learning at the Sipahsalar School while also advancing his French skills at the Alliance School,123 where he received top honors in the sciences and commendations in the fields of history and geography.124 After completing his studies there, Nasr became a full-time teacher, dividing his time between a number of schools, including the Islam School, while also tutoring a number of prominent Qajar statesmen in French.125 In his memoirs, he described how teachers spent

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their days frequenting the bookshop of Shaykh Hasan, where they would recite humorous poetry to one another. On hot summer days, teachers would enjoy a refreshing swim at one of the local public baths (hamams). At the Qajariyah School, he taught history, which, judging from the salary he received, was his lowest paying job (he received only ten tumans per month). In contrast, he received fifteen tumans per month for geometry, and thirty for French and natural sciences at the other schools.126 Despite low monetary remuneration for teaching history, Nasr personally placed a high premium on the topic by dedicating much time and effort to writing history textbooks.127 His former teacher at the ‘Ilmiyah School, Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi, may have inspired him to translate Charles Seignobos’s history of ancient Greece (Yunan) for the Political Science School.128 Nasr had thoroughly internalized both the constitutional discourse and the pedagogical spirit of late Qajar educationalists when he dedicated the translation “to the sons of the nation.”129 He made use of his extensive teaching experience by handsomely illustrating the translation with images and including a lengthy chronological table at the end of the book.130 Nasr recounted a conversation with an unnamed friend who convinced him of history’s value for future Iranians. Nasr’s account of their conversation about the value of history embodied the overlapping civic, civilizational, and futureoriented understanding of history that was prevalent among constitutional-era nationalists. Nasr’s friend addressed him saying: Do you know that the foundation of the civilization and progress of every nation rests on certain principles that include history, because if a nation does not know the histories of its forefathers it cannot plan the affairs of its progeny? In reality the past is to a degree the mirror of the future. Good and wise people will see the form of the future in the past. The study of history is therefore necessary, even incumbent, and the cause of perfection for everyone. It is with reference to this that there is an expression[:] “the spreading of the science of history has a direct relation with progress.” 131

Responding positively to his friend’s appeal, Nasr translated The History of Greece because it was “taught in schools in France.” Nasr’s conversation with his friend demonstrates that many believed that by gazing backward, the true student of history could anticipate the future and ensure the progress of the nation. A year later, Nasr composed his Illustrated World History, in which he insisted on the right of Eastern nations to equal standing with Western ones

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on the world historical stage.132 He described history as a “house in which all of humanity is a stakeholder and partner. Such and such Eastern group [ta’ifah] and such and such Western tribe [qabilah] both have the right to inhabit it. . . .” Nasr viewed the East and West’s “separation from one another” as a result of “shortsightedness.” He argued that “humans are the branches of humanity” and he denied that color, language, and character accounted for “essential differences” among them. For Nasr, history was not defined by recounting events, because “there are thousands of similar events that have taken place in the time of the bygone generations.” Instead, he asserted that history’s function was to “reform the future” (islah-i ayandah) and was therefore a “necessary obligation” (farz-i ‘ayn).133 Nasr’s Illustrated World History focused heavily on Iran’s place in the world. In his reading of recent events, the Iranian nation was the primary agent of revolution: it was “the nation” who “joined hands with the ‘ulama in protesting” for a constitution “outside of the Masjid-i Shah in 1905.” When Muzaffar al-Din’s efforts to “mollify the nation” were insufficient, “the seminary students and guilds” (tullab va asnaf ) took refuge in protest. As a result of the nation’s protest, “the Shah was forced to bestow a constitution.”134 Nasr’s description of Muzaffar al-Din Shah differed from that of most of his contemporaries: he was far more forceful in emphasizing that the “nation” was the agent compelling the shah to grant a constitution, rather than depicting the shah as a just king naturally disposed toward constitutionalism. In his account of the 1908 coup, he described the counterrevolutionaries as lewd persons (alvat) who chanted, “we do not want a constitution.”135 The undeniable heroes of his narrative, the pro-constitutionalist fighters (mujahids) along with certain princes and nobles, were responsible for deposing the anti-constitutionalist Muhammad ‘Ali Shah. Once again, Nasr considered these actions to be a reflection of the nation’s collective agency: “After the nation was triumphant and victorious, a general amnesty was granted.”136 Nasr’s initial enthusiasm for education collided with the financial realities of being a full-time teacher. In 1912, just after his most productive phase of textbook publishing, the main school at which Nasr was teaching, the Nizamiyah, closed down. Fatigued from years of intense study and teaching, Nasr decided to abandon education for a government position.137 His decision to work in the bureaucracy instead of remaining a teacher was indicative of the upward socioeconomic mobility of those who had a modern education during the first decade after the revolution. Along with his administrative duties, Nasr continued to be involved in Iranian cultural life, as a playwright and founder of the Nasr Theater.138

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g As a consequence of the political and cultural opening experienced under the early rule of Muzaffar al-Din Shah, modern schools proliferated throughout Iran. In Tehran, the group of like-minded reformers who formed the Education Committee supervised the expansion of both private and public modern schools, which provided a new institutional setting for the production and circulation of historical narratives in the form of textbooks. Benefitting from a captive audience, educators like the Furughis composed history textbooks that subtly introducing readers to constitutionalism and limited government in the guise of ancient Iranian history. The Furughis and others involved in promoting modern education cannot be characterized as mere supporters of the political status quo. In addition to their education efforts, many educators joined secret associations that insisted on a constitutional form of government as a solution to Iran’s political, economic, and social problems. After 1906, these same individuals became defenders and proponents of the Constitutional Revolution because they viewed education and revolution as intertwined processes on the road to progress. For them, history became a necessity for citizenship and the cultivation of constitutional values. As a result, history textbooks did not necessarily reproduce absolutist values; instead, they spread constitutionalist and revolutionary ideals to students. This revolutionary potential was rooted in the autonomy of schools and in the freedom of those in their employ to write history according to their own vision of the past. The school’s relative autonomy in a revolutionary context meant there were a diversity of perspectives on history. In fact, history textbooks were a barometer for understandings of the revolution itself, from those views that stressed its legal dimensions to those highlighting its democratic-popular aims. H ­ istorians generally shared enthusiasm for the revolution and considered the study of history to be an extension of the revolutionary’s pedagogical imperative to promote citizenship and civilization. Historians of the constitutional era used a shared set of categories: “the people” and “the nation” became the main subjects of history, in stark contrast to previous court histories, in which kings and dynasties took center stage, or religious histories, in which the agency of prophets and God were paramount. As Nasr’s experiences suggest, those who benefited from a modern education possessed skills that the state badly needed in its growing bureaucracy. Over the following decades, the state became increasingly involved in sponsoring,

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regulating, and standardizing education. If early educators were upwardly socially mobile, many of those who came of age in the interwar period tended to become professional teachers and educators. Professionalization coincided with a political cost: histories were no longer seen as embodiments of a revolutionary message of democratic change; if anything, they now upheld a statist status quo.

3

T H E S TAT E , E D U C AT I O N , A N D T H E S TA N DA R D I Z AT I O N OF HISTORY

I N 1910 , a fourteen-year-old boy named ‘Abbas Iqbal became an apprentice carpenter in the Karbala’i ‘Abbas ‘Ali bazaar of Tehran. His father, a humble bathkeeper from the village of Ashtiyan, had sent the young Iqbal to the bazaar in the hope that he would find a steady and practical livelihood. Given the political and economic uncertainties of the early 1910s, particularly with the forced closure of the parliament and the unleashing of centrifugal forces throughout the country, such a hope appeared perfectly sensible. Despite the best efforts of the Iranian parliament to promote universal compulsory education, such opportunities were still few and far between for the majority of the urban poor and lower middle classes. Much of the population was yet to be convinced of the practical use of education, because a modern bureaucracy, judiciary, and education system were only beginning to take shape. Why would parents risk sending a son to school and losing badly needed income if they were poor? Yet Iqbal’s ambitions ran counter to such practical considerations. From his stall in the bazaar, he watched boys his age stream into the Aqa Shaykh Hadi primary religious school for their daily lessons, wishing he could join them. One day he worked up the nerve to ask the master carpenter to reduce the hours of his apprenticeship so he could study at the school; his master agreed—thus altering Iqbal’s life trajectory. By a stroke of good fortune, the Iqbal family had an affluent philanthropic neighbor by the name of Sayyid Murtiza Najmabadi. One day, while visiting his neighbors, Najmabadi found young ‘Abbas and his brother dutifully practicing

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their calligraphy lessons. Impressed by their perseverance, Najmabadi decided to enroll the children in his Shirkat-i Gulistan School at his own cost. Iqbal excelled in his studies in just three years, which convinced Najmabadi to secure Iqbal a sought-after spot at the oldest and most venerated modern school in Iran, the Dar al-Funun. At this school, Abu al-Hasan Furughi, the brother of Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi and a friend of Najmabadi, took a liking to the precocious Iqbal and even furnished a monthly stipend for his education. By 1916, Iqbal finished his secondary studies before accepting a position as a history and geography instructor at the Dar al-Funun. He also took a part-time job at the school library, where he deepened his lifelong love of books and cultivated many strong friendships with the leading scholars who frequented it. Just over two decades later, ‘Abbas Iqbal’s name became synonymous with the field of professional history. His numerous critical editions, translations, textbooks, and original works of scholarship won him much praise among his peers at home and abroad.1 Iqbal’s coming of age as a historian coincided with the state’s effort to centralize and standardize education. After the First World War, the Teachers’ Training College, and later the University of Tehran, trained cadres of ­teachers who could teach in primary and secondary schools. By the late 1930s, the Pahlavi state created cultural institutions, most notably the Organization of Public Instruction (Sazman-i Parvarish-i Afkar) and the Institute for Speeches and Sermons (Mu’assasah-i Va‘z va Khitabah), both of which employed history for propagandistic ends. State educational institutions professionalized a generation of historians. Unlike earlier polymaths who worked in multiple occupational contexts, interwar historians were almost exclusively students and teachers. As a result, there was greater differentiation in the intellectual division of labor among younger historians in comparison to their predecessors. Social mobility influenced who embarked on a career as a history teacher and for how long. Many young Iranians with degrees from European or American universities were upwardly socially mobile when they returned home. Meanwhile, those who stayed to be educated in Iran tended to fill positions in primary and secondary schools within the country. As Benjamin Fortna has observed, “universal education and literacy were the vehicles through which the state was to pursue its aim of both creating and then shaping national identity and loyalty,” particularly through the “tools” of the “teacher and the textbook.”2 The state’s standardized blueprint for the teaching of history found expression in curricula, pedagogical man-

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uals, and t­extbooks. Pedagogical manuals served as barometers for how the state ­expected history teachers to behave in the classroom and for the lessons it expected students to learn from the past. A careful examination of educational curricula and textbooks provides insights into how periodization became a means for explaining the progress and decline of nations. As part of the broader explanations for progress and decline, textbooks used the categories of race, civilization, and religion to show why certain periods of Iranian history were more prosperous than others.

Educational Institutions and the Making of the History Teacher State institutions were the main nexus for the production, circulation, and disciplinary practices of history in the interwar period.3 State educational institutions, in particular, simultaneously enabled an increase in the number of people writing and reading about history while also limiting the historian’s autonomy. On the one hand, the state expanded the number of schools, provided history teachers with stable employment, and commissioned and funded the publication of new textbooks. On the other hand, the state limited historians discursively by insisting on a standardized curriculum and promoting a statecentered perspective. In 1919, the Teachers’ Training College began to set the standards for teaching history at the primary and secondary school levels.4 Education Minister Ahmad Khan Badar Nasir al-Dawlah created the Teachers’ Training School (Dar al-Mu‘allimin)—which later became the Teachers’ Training College (Dar al-Mu‘allimin-i ‘Ali)—in an effort to streamline education while bringing it firmly under state control.5 Over the next two decades, such schools were responsible for training a generation of teachers capable of filling posts in education, the bureaucracy, civil service, the military, and the private sector. Working independently from official state institutions, a group of I­ranian parliamentarians established the Education Commission (Kumisiyun-i Ma‘arif ) in 1923/1924 (1302 Sh.).6 The Education Commission was an informal institution reminiscent of the earlier Education Committee.7 Sulayman Mirza, a former Education Minister, founded the commission with the help of several prominent late-Qajar educational and cultural figures.8 The Education Commission hired young educated Iranians to produce textbooks; several went on to become professional historians, educators, and even politicians. Unlike the previous generation of historians, few of these young Iranians had been exposed to

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both modern and Islamic education systems. Several of them—such as ‘Abd al-Husayn Hazhir and Ghulam Husayn Zirakzadah—straddled the world of education and politics, although an increasing number, such as Rashid Yasami, Nasrullah Falsafi, Fakhr al-Din Shadman, and Husayn Farhudi, became lifelong educators and in some cases professional historians. The Education Commission translated and published primary school readers and primers, lesson manuals for instructors, literary readers, and history textbooks. It took great interest in translating the famous French textbook series of Albert Malet and Jules Isaacs. The choice of the Isaacs-Malet series was reminiscent of the Furughis’ pioneering translations of the textbooks of Charles Seignobos nearly a quarter of a century earlier. Both the Furughis and the commission took French history textbooks as a model, albeit in differing institutional contexts: whereas the Furughis translated as a father and son team, the Education Commission had significantly more resources and was able to hire an entire cadre of young translators.9 An episode in the translation of a French history textbook into Persian illustrates the persistence of informal patronage networks alongside modern institutions. In the summer of 1928 there was a gathering of writers and literary figures at the house of parliamentarian and future prime minister Muhammad Musaddiq. At the gathering, Musaddiq expounded on the significance of the French work of history La cité antique by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges.10 Musaddiq praised the work as a masterpiece, for its fine attention to detail and its exhaustive use of sources. He suggested to the gathering that the book be translated into Persian. Nasrullah Falsafi, a twenty-seven-year-old history and geography teacher present at the gathering, volunteered to do so.11 Musaddiq, a man of independent wealth, donated his government salary to educational pursuits, including Falsafi’s translation. Musaddiq drew up a contract promising to pay six qirans per page translated.12 According to one account, Musaddiq visited Falsafi every few days carrying a bag filled with fifty tumans—his government salary—that he gave to the young Falsafi. When the young translator informed his patron that there was no need to pay him before the publication of the translation, Musaddiq responded, “You are a translator, researcher, and scholar. Respect for learning is necessary and I myself should bring the author’s salary [haqq-i ta’lif ].” Not only did Musaddiq pay for the publication of the translation with his own money, but he also distributed all copies of it for free.13 After reading the translation of the text as it was being prepared for publication, Musaddiq wrote to Falsafi, saying, “it is the best memento [yadigari] that

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you could leave and in truth it could not be translated any better than you have done.”14 This episode illustrates how the relationship between an independent patron and a translator influenced the choice of which books were to be selected, translated, and published well into the 1920s. The question remains, however, of why Musaddiq choose La cité antique. Musaddiq’s Swiss French legal education may partly explain his elective affinity for Fustel de Coulanges’ history of antiquity. Fustel De Coulanges was a forerunner to modern sociology and a crucial link between the pioneering figures of the sociological approach—including Montesquieu and August Comte—and its formalizer, Émile Durkheim. Fustel de Coulanges considered history to be a science of society, stating famously that “history is a science: it does not imagine; it simply sees, and in order to see clearly, it needs reliable documents.” In La cité antique, he elaborated on his positivistic worldview through his study of ancient institutions.15 In his brief preface to the translation, Falsafi traced the transition from early nineteenth-century European chroniclers of events who focused on “political intrigues” (dasa’is-i siyasi) to modern romantic historians who underscored “the social life, spirit, morals, and lifestyles” of those living in the past. 16 But Falsafi was critical of the romantic school of historians—which included Augustin Thierry, Jules Michelet, Lord Macaulay, and Thomas Carlyle—for relying too heavily on their “personal taste and guesswork” in making historical judgments. According to Falsafi, the real heroes of historiography were “the positivists” (muhaqqiqin), who from the second half of the nineteenth century onward based their judgments on the close study of primary sources and monuments, thereby giving history a “scientific aspect” ( janbah-i ‘ilmi).17 The break with earlier forms of patronage became more pronounced with the founding of the University of Tehran in 1935. The University of Tehran expanded the avenues available for professional historians. Building on the groundwork of the Teachers’ Training College, it was more pedagogically oriented than research driven in its early years; the doctoral program of the Faculty of Arts was established only in 1937.18 The first doctoral students admitted into the program included some of the leading literary scholars and professors of the next generation, such as Zabihullah Safa, Parviz Natil Khanlari, and Muhammad Mu‘in. At the time of its founding, the University of Tehran employed a handful of history professors and instructors (most of whom were foreign-educated), including Aminah Pakravan, instructor of the history of fine arts; Rizazadah Shafaq, professor of history and general philosophy; ‘Abd al-Husayn Shaybani, professor of

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world history; Sa‘id Nafisi, professor of the history of Eastern nations, Greece, and Rome; and Rashid Yasami, professor of Iranian history after Islam.19 The roughly 150 students who received a bachelor’s degree (lisans) from 1931 through 1941 produced numerous theses on the histories of understudied topics that reflected the contemporary concerns of a rising professional class.20 Students often wrote more than one thesis, and they were not of any standard length: some were as short as six pages while others were hundreds of pages long.21 Many of the topics chosen were formulaic and perhaps even drawn from a list of prompts: the French Revolution, the history of the Afghan invasion of Iran, the causes and consequences of the first World War, a comparison of the Treaty of Paris with the Treaty of Versailles, and the reasons for the decline and fall of one or another dynasty. Iranian students writing in the late 1930s, however, concerned themselves with otherwise neglected topics, such as local and economic histories, both of which were seen as immediately useful for the material, social, and moral reform of the country. Theses on local histories or geographies explored towns, cities, provinces, and regions such as Isfahan, Kashan, Yazd, Kerman, Hamadan, Riza’iyah (Urumiyah), Tabriz, Mashhad, ­Sistan, Gilan, Kurdistan, Tabaristan, Kermanshah, Mazandaran, Azerbaijan, and the Persian Gulf.22 Students also wrote economic histories of trade, customs, industries, and agriculture. Highly specialized studies dealt with the history of coal, oil, irrigation, and the production of silk, carpets, tobacco, opium, cotton, and grains. Riza Shah’s project to expand Iranian transportation and railroads inspired several theses as well.23 When these theses are compared to the revolutionary histories translated immediately after the Constitutional Revolution and to the tone of revolutionary-era textbooks, it is striking how much more specialized students became in their historical interests. Despite state promotion of women’s education, only four history and geography graduates were women. They all graduated in 1939 or later, suggesting that they were among the earliest graduates from the group of women admitted into the university in 1936.24 None of these women became professional historians, nor did any of them write on women’s history, with the exception of one thesis on the life of Queen Victoria and British court culture.25 Two male students wrote theses on women’s lives—one on Shahrbanu, daughter of the last Sasanian king; and another on the shrine of Imam Reza’s daughter, Ma‘sumah—but they were exceptional in doing so.26 Iranian students sent abroad during the 1920s and 1930s similarly formed a potential segment of the population who could become professional historians

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or history teachers. Their career trajectories constitute an illuminating vector with which to understand the lack of professionalization of Iranian historians. Building on the efforts of the 1911 parliament, the early Pahlavi state sent a large number of Iranian students abroad.27 In so doing, the state’s objective was to produce an educated middle class capable of serving in the variety of modern bureaucratic, legal, military, educational, scientific, and medical institutions, especially in the absence of an Iranian university.28 Although most of the students were from upper-class backgrounds, a significant number benefitted from substantial government aid.29 Students typically traveled to Europe for their degrees, yet some also graduated from American institutions. The year 1928 marked the largest dispatch of Iranian students abroad—640 in all. The state intended a sizeable percentage of them (35 percent) to become teachers, but fewer did so than expected. Although some filled important teaching positions upon their return, becoming a history professor was not a favored career path. A study of students sent abroad during 1928–1933 did, however, reveal that they contributed greatly to the writing and translating of textbooks.30 Contrary to the often repeated claim that Iranians of the interwar period were narrowly obsessed with the pre-Islamic Iranian past, students abroad wrote on a range of periods from antiquity to the present. If anything, they shared the pragmatic orientation of their peers studying in Iran by choosing topics of immediate applicability to the Iranian present. Theses and dissertations dealing with the ancient past, such as a thesis on Iran’s pre-Islamic monetary history and another on Sasanian law, were therefore rare.31 Many of the theses and dissertations written by Iranian students abroad addressed historical topics of immediately possible utility to the modern Pahlavi state, such as legal, economic, diplomatic, and education history. Students writing on the legal and constitutional history of Iran may have had legal reforms in mind. Although he belonged to an earlier generation of students abroad, Muhammad Musaddiq set the stage for later Iranians to write on aspects of Shi‘i law. In 1914, he wrote a thesis on wills in Shi‘i law, with a lengthy introduction to the history and sources for Islamic law.32 Given the enthusiasm of many Iranian reformers to find ways to standardize Islamic law by refashioning it along European lines, Musaddiq’s topical focus would have immediate resonance with interwar-era students who wrote on similar aspects of contracts and wills in Shi‘ism.33 Other students focused on the intersection between law and governance; one student felt that the relatively recent constitutional history as it pertained to representative government deserved greater

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attention, while another surveyed how the history of the European capitulation system in Iran related to the status of foreigners in the country.34 Students trained at American universities assessed Iranian education through a historical lens. By the interwar period, some Iranian reformers favored the American education system as alternative educational model to the French system.35 ‘Isa Sadiq, the future Minister of Education, greatly appreciated the American education system’s emphasis on morality in contrast to the French model.36 His own thesis, written at Columbia University’s Teachers College, was the earliest of its kind to tackle the history of Iranian education with an eye to reform.37 Throughout the remainder of the 1930s, a number of Iranian students followed in his footsteps by writing on facets of Iranian education at American universities.38 Several Iranian students similarly wrote on economic and financial history, with the goal of addressing contemporary challenges. In their theses, they addressed the history of finance, monetary issues, industrialization, and banking institutions.39 Rather than becoming economists or economic historians, these students served as government officials, politicians, and technocrats. Some even became major political figures: ‘Ali Amini, who wrote on the history of foreign monopolies in Iran, became Iran’s prime minister in the early 1960s; Karim Sanjabi, who wrote on Iranian agrarian policy, became Muhammad Musaddiq’s Minister of Education in the early 1950s.40 A number of students wrote on diplomatic history, particularly on the relations between Iran and the West, perhaps with the intention of becoming diplomats. This was, after all, the career path of many students of history of the previous generation.41 Future Iranian educator ‘Ali Akbar Siyasi wrote a broad survey of Iranian-Western relations roughly from the rise of Islam ­onward.42 Other theses dealt with more specific time frames, such as the medieval, S­ afavid, or near contemporary periods.43 Others focused on the theme of European domination over Iran. Anglo-Iranian relations inspired two figures associated with the Education Commission—Ahmad Sa‘idi and Fakhr al-Din Shadman—to devote entire dissertations to the topic.44 Students writing on more purely academic historical topics with no clear “utility” to Pahlavi reforms curiously did not become professional historians. Mustafa ‘Abbasi wrote on the emergence of Iranian nationalism but did not pursue an academic career in Iran.45 The most prominent and skilled historian of the late 1930s generation of students was Ghulam Husayn Sadiqi, who wrote early Islamic Iranian history. He became a politician under Prime Minister

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Muhammad Musaddiq, although later in life he did teach sociology at the University of Tehran.46 The tendency to write on other topics related to the early history of Islam in Iran was evident in a dissertation on Iranian “national” sentiment under “Arab domination,” and in a thesis on “Iranian” Sufism.47 Some students focused on later periods of Islamic Iranian history; for example, Yahya Armajani, an Iranian convert to Presbyterianism, wrote on the Saffarid history, and Mahdi Bahrami wrote on late Timurid ceramics.48 Students with European and American degrees typically had greater opportunities to obtain government employment upon their return to Iran. The lack of potential university postings for recent graduates with history degrees, the absence of official archives serving as centers for research, and the nonexistence of official historical associations were all factors impeding the immediate professionalization of history as a discipline. As a result, the writing of history remained largely in the domain of educators and their students.

History, Propaganda, and the State Consistent with the pedagogical mission of the state, the Pahlavi state created cultural and propagandistic institutions in the mid-1930s with the goal of mobilizing public support. Two such institutions, the Institute for Speeches and Sermons and the Organization for Public Instruction, underlined the importance of history. Both institutions harnessed the expertise of professional historians for explicitly propagandistic ends. Established in 1936, the Institute for Speeches and Sermons taught oratory based on a “scientific” foundation to “youths . . . who were seeking to become preachers and people of the pulpit.”49 It was a branch of the University of Tehran’s Faculty of Rational and Traditional Sciences (Danishkadah-i Ma‘qul va Manqul) and included leading educators in its membership.50 The state wanted to “ensure that [sermons and speeches] were not used for wayward causes.”51 Even though the Institute was short lived (it existed for two years officially and another year unofficially), it was an important instance of how the Pahlavi state used history and historical thinking as a means of “modernizing” Muslim clerics.52 The Institute’s stated objectives were threefold: first, to organize meetings on speeches and sermons; second, to arrange for public conferences dealing with “historical, moral, health, literary, and social [issues], and the principles of modernism [usul-i tajaddudkhwahi], nationalism and monarchism;” and third, to teach modern history. By focusing on modern history, the Institute aimed at

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“[teaching] the importance of the modern era of Iran to students in universities, elementary, and middle schools.” The focus on modern history complemented the state’s objective of using history for future-oriented purposes.53 As part of the Institute’s program, it commissioned a number of textbooks, set up classes, and held yearly exams for students.54 Because the conventional curriculum for Muslim religious students did not include history as a separate branch of knowledge, the state’s inclusion of national history in its clerical curriculum constituted a bold intervention in Islamic education. The Institute commissioned Nasrullah Falsafi to compose two short works on the pre-­Islamic and Islamic history of Iran. What was particularly striking about Falsafi’s history of Iran “after the rise of Islam” was the absence of early Islamic history: the narrative began with the “Iranian” Tahirid dynasty instead of starting with the Islamic invasion of Iran and then moving on to the Umayyad period.55 Presumably students covered the history of early Islam in the part of their curriculum dealing with religious biographies, which itself was a modern adaptation of the “biographies of learned men” (‘ilm al-rijal) taught in Islamic seminary schools. Nevertheless, the excising of Islamic history from Iranian history was significant for its separation of national and religious history, a separation rarely seen in other textbooks. The Institute commissioned Rashid Yasami to write a study of historical methods.56 Benefiting from state funds, the text was distributed free of charge to Iranian students.57 In the preface, Badi‘ al-Zaman Furuzanfar praised ­Yasami’s work as the first of its kind. Furuzanfar emphasized the social utility of history as “the guide to the future” (rahnuma-yi ayandah) and “the cause of the expansion of thought and the protection of humanity from mistakes and blunders in social life.”58 In the book, Yasami claimed that “in Iran, it is almost as if there is no critical history [tarikh-i intiqadi]”—a sweeping indictment of Persian ­Islamic historical writing.59 Drawing on various Western philosophers, including Rousseau, Kant, Bergson, and the Scottish philosophers of the Enlightenment, Yasami summarized the various methodological approaches to history particularly, those that took stock of the often-ignored material, social structural, and economic dimensions of history.60 Shortly after the founding of the Institute for Speeches and Sermons, the Pahlavi state created the Organization for Public Instruction, in 1938.61 Its first president was a law professor at the University of Tehran, Ahmad Matin-­Daftari, who intended the Organization to evolve into a political party similar to the Turkish People’s Party.62 Modeled on European propagandistic organizations,

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the Organization harnessed a range of cultural mediums—including speeches, print, theater, radio, and cinema—to spread nationalist fervor and respect for the monarchy among ordinary citizens.63 In one speech, Rashid Yasami addressed the utilization of history as a means of forming and defining public thought.64 According to Yasami, history was the medium through which Iranians came to love their nation: “Why do we love Iran? Because we know it. How do we know it? Through history.”65 He believed that historical knowledge could galvanize Iranian patriotism. For him, Iran’s supposedly continual and unbroken history benefited from “a hidden heavenly spirit,” which he connected to the ancient Zoroastrian concept of farrah. He claimed that ancient Iranians considered “the Aryan race in general and the Kiyanids in particular” to have possessed “heavenly assistance” (farrah-i izzadi) that was the moving force behind their progress.66 The presence or absence of farrah depended precisely on national unity: so long as Iranian society was moving with “one mind,” they would have access to this “heavenly assistance.”67 Yasami believed that Iran was unique among ancient nations in having a continual history from antiquity to the present day. Accepting a mélange of Eurocentric assumptions, he cast China as so radically different from other nations that it constituted “another world.” Channeling Hegel, he argued that India was “without history” while “Babel, ­Assyria and others” had their connection to the past severed.68 He concluded by declaring, “so it is only Iran which is a faithful memorial of humanity (yadigar-i ba vafa’-yi bashariyat), whose ancient personality has not been torn asunder, and whose life water still runs, not having been severed from its stream.”69 ­Yasami subscribed to a teleological vision of human existence in which the purpose of life was to evolve progressively to higher degrees of perfection and in which the measure of a nation was the degree of freedom it had attained.70 Despite his use of Aryanism in his recounting of Iranian history, he was not a proponent of anti-Semitism. In fact, he dedicated an entire section of his speech to the relationship between Jews and Iranians in antiquity, speaking highly of the “Semitic” religion as one of “the greatest ancient monotheistic religions” and a “cornerstone of world civilization”71 He similarly drew a favorable comparison between ancient Iranian, Greek, and Roman histories, in part to situate Iran within a broader European context.72 Returning to the present, Yasami brought the vision of farrah full circle by connecting it to the contemporary monarch of Iran, Riza Shah, who was moved by a similar spirit of progress.73 The Organization for Public Instruction and the Institute for Sermons and Speeches spread nationalist historiography among religious seminaries

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and the public at large. Both institutions provided a forum for one professional historian, Rashid Yasami, to promote his methodological and theoretical understanding of history in the service of propagating Pahlavi ideology. The establishment of both institutions and the historical works they produced signaled the Pahlavi state’s use of history beyond the regular school system; it marked a turn toward using history as propaganda. State institutions—both pedagogical and propagandistic—were responsible for the education and training of historians and the transmission of historical narratives to a broad segment of the population.

Habitus and the Teaching of History The Ministry of Education provided history teachers with blueprints in the form of pedagogical manuals on how best to convey their lessons. These manuals elaborated on the ideal teacher’s habitus, a concept referring to modes of behavior, habitual tendencies, and manners transmitted through formal and informal education and schooling.74 In the classroom, teachers were expected to employ performative storytelling and visual aides.75 The authors of these manuals shared developmentalist assumptions about students, including the supposition that age and mental capacity determined appropriate classroom activities. Riza Fahimi, ‘Isa Sadiq, Rashid Yasami, and ‘Ala al-Din Pazargad wrote manuals meant to develop the ability of students to make critical historical judgments while inculcating in them an abiding love for the nation. In a series of articles, Riza Fahimi laid out the challenges associated with teaching history to children, as well as the preferred strategies to overcome them. Using a single period of Iranian history—namely Alexander the Great’s conquest of Iran—Fahimi argued that the same historical episode should be taught differently according to the age and mental capacity of the students, divided into three groups. When teaching students in the first group, aged seven to nine, the teacher was to avoid “summary . . . without explanation” because young students were not capable of understanding the “purpose and spirit” of the conquest. Instead, the teacher should convey that it was the “bravery of Alexander,” the “social order” and “internal conditions” of Greek society, and the “competence of [its] leaders” that was the “cause of [Greece’s] glory” rather than merely discuss the “expanse and extent of land” conquered by Alexander’s army.76 Fahimi expected students in the second group, aged nine to eleven, to understand the causes of the Iranian defeat and thereby develop their analyti-

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cal skills. He claimed that students at this age “were interested in descriptions of war and more inclined toward [learning about] battles,” so teachers should organize their lessons around major battles in order to illustrate broader analytical principles. He believed that “the task of history teachers” was “to prepare students for life based on past events” and to stir up their nationalist sentiment.77 Students in the third and final age group, aged eleven to thirteen, should understand both the “ethical and philosophical” aspects of history while also paying greater attention to specific dates and details. Fahimi wanted these students to understand the link between Alexander’s greatness and his promotion of trade and public goods, not to mention his effective strategy of fostering unity among Iranians and Greeks through intermarriage.78 Fahimi considered the ideal teacher to be well spoken, animated, effective at using visual aids, and capable of asking meaningful questions in class. He argued that maps, images, and drawings should be utilized sparingly and in stages so as to avoid overwhelming students. Effective oratory was likewise crucial for attracting the attention of students to the underlying purpose of history.79 Questions were to come at the end of the lesson so that the content would still be fresh in their minds. Fahimi provided a fictional dialogue between teacher and students to show how a lesson should proceed: Teacher: What race did the Parthians descend from and what type of lifestyle were they accustomed to? You, Husayn Khan. Student: The Parthians lived in Khurasan and descended from ancient races. They lived like savages. Teacher: Which of today’s tribes [tava’if ] do they resemble the most? Student: The Turanians. Teacher: Yes, but today the Turanians are almost indistinguishable from the Turcomans, whose name you always hear and who always wear long colorful clothes. They are seen in every street and bazaar. You have noticed that they have long sleeves and very large lambskin hats. They usually have small bright eyes and tuftlike beards. The ancient Parthians are of these same people who worshipped idols instead of God and prophet. They would make a living through theft and highway robbery. Their only skill was in archery and [horseback] riding. . . . Teacher: What is the name of [such-and-such] a person? You, Mirza ‘Ali. Why are you silent? It is clear that during the reading you were not paying attention. How disappointing! I am forced to ask someone else. . . . You, Muhammad. Student: Ashk.

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Teacher: Your answer is correct but your responses are always too brief. . . . Teacher: What was the name of the king of the Seleucids? You, Mirza Husayn. Student: Sir, the name is somewhat difficult to pronounce. Teacher: Yes. Pay attention to the board. (The teacher writes the word Dimitrius on the board and asks the students to pronounce it.) . . . [Upon hearing an incorrect response to a question the teacher responds]: Oh dear! (‘ajab). How disappointing. Notice how all of your classmates know [the answer], they have raised their hands and are ready to respond. Mirza Taqi, you answer. . . .80

The fictionalized teacher shamed students deemed to be lazy, inattentive, or insufficiently thorough, as a disciplinary tactic. He conflated the contemporary Turcoman population (and in the process racially caricatured them) with the ancient Parthians in order to aid students in visualizing the ancient dynasty. ‘Isa Sadiq wrote two pedagogical manuals pertaining to the teaching of history. Early in his career as an educator, he published a manual on how to teach history that emerged out of a speech he had delivered for teachers, inspectors, and Ministry of Education employees in 1919. In this speech, he claimed that history had three functions. First, it developed students’ ability to make critical judgments on events and historical personages. Second, it conveyed the ethical struggle between good and evil and between justice and oppression. Sadiq argued against a whiggish interpretation of history, one in which history was the uninterrupted march of progress. Iranian history alternated between periods of decline and progress. Finally, he contended that history had a civic function because it demonstrated the need for “unity and cooperation” for the prosperity of the nation.81 Sadiq elaborated on his pedagogical ideas while teaching at the Teachers’ Training College in the mid-1920s. The Ministry of Education commissioned Sadiq to write a pedagogical manual that included a lengthy section on teaching history. He believed that teachers should instill in their students strong emotional reactions toward particular historical figures who were “praised and glorified and [therefore] loved while others were criticized and made to be ugly and [therefore] detested.”82 Sadiq argued that narratives of national resilience created affective bonds among Iranians: What more effective moral lesson [dars-i akhlaqi] and greater cause of hope is there for a student in our schools than knowing that after Iran had been conquered by Alexander and divided during a period of five centuries of foreign

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domination, it became free once again under Ardeshir Babakan. In the aftermath of the Arab conquest and [consequent] civilizational changes, it did not lose its nationality. It found independence after two hundred years through [the establishment of] various dynasties like the Saffarids and Samanids. And likewise after the Mongol conquest and the destruction of the country, its unity and life were renewed by Shah Isma‘il the Safavid.83

Intimately linked to such narratives of national resilience was the desire to create a maternal love toward the nation: “the history of our country should be described like a mother to whom we are bound and attached and from whom we cannot be separated.”84 Elaborating on the ideas of Jules Michelet and Ernest Renan, Sadiq believed that history was transmitted from generation to generation through the family.85 Despite his emphasis on the affective, moral, and ethical dimensions of history, Sadiq simultaneously insisted on history being a neutral and objective enterprise devoid of “partisan and personal prejudice.” His immediate justification for insisting on a strictly neutral approach to history was the fear of political fragmentation and “dissension among the children of the nation.” 86 He firmly denounced xenophobia: “Indeed history should create love of nation [hubb-i vatan] but not alongside hatred of foreigners.” Sadiq reconciled the tension between his championing of affective nationalism, on the one hand, with his insistence on historical objectivity, on the other, by claiming that objectivity would vindicate the historical reality of Iran as a nation.87 He further argued that historical objectivity would paradoxically lead students to understand the relativity of values, ideas, and actions by gaining a historical perspective.88 Sadiq, like Fahimi, believed that Iranian teachers could bring history to life by embodying a particular habitus in the classroom. He called on Iranian teachers to perform their lessons, particularly for younger students: “Just as popular storytellers [naqqals] steal the hearts of their listeners and excite and captivate the audience when reciting the story of Rustam and Isfandiyar, [making them want to] listen to stories, the instructor of history must also attract the attention of the student and make them interested in listening to their explanations.”89 The invocation of the techniques of popular storytellers as a paradigmatic model for conveying historically objective facts was indicative of how Iranian nationalists appropriated popular folk techniques to their own modernist ends. By the time students reached middle school, however, Sadiq felt, the “tricks” (hilahha) used by primary school teachers were no longer ­necessary.90 He advocated the use of maps and geography to provide an

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image of the spread of “civilization” and “barbarism” during various historical periods.91 He further suggested that instructors should take their students on field trips to historical monuments and museums to give then a concrete, living embodiment of their abstract historical lessons: “If historical monuments are shown to students and if that which is said in class is repeated in front of a monument, and they begin to feel it, the past becomes embodied and [historical] figures come to life before them.”92 After the publication of Sadiq’s manual, in the late 1930s there were a series of reappraisals by Rashid Yasami and ‘Ala al-Din Pazargadi of how to teach history. Yasami argued that history, if taught correctly, had the ability to make students independent thinkers not bound by “external” authorities.93 He criticized those who taught and wrote histories in a boring manner, because history’s ultimate goal was to inspire “love and affection for [one’s] country” and not just to memorize names and dates.94 Yasami put the onus on the teacher to make history interesting by relying on the blackboard, maps, and pictures, and by asking useful questions.95 Writing a year later, ‘Ala al-Din Pazargadi adopted a developmentalist schema similar to Fahimi’s but for students between the ages of four and eighteen. What distinguished Pazargadi from Fahimi was the former’s greater emphasis on stamps, local histories, plays, historical cinema, classroom debates, and the formation of history clubs as other techniques for promoting history.96 Pedagogical manuals laid out the ideal of how Iranian history teachers should act in the classroom. They were expected to use a range of available resources and techniques at different stages as means of captivating their students. The techniques adopted in these manuals closely paralleled the logic of history curricula.

Curricular Logic and the Framing of the Past The Iranian state’s history curriculum framed the study of history for primary, secondary, and college students.97 The periodization of history itself followed a curricular logic: history was generally taught over a three-year cycle and therefore was divided into three discrete periods. Because history was taught at all levels of standard education as well as in more specialized schools, such as m­usic, religious, and military schools, it is worth examining how and why history was incorporated into such a diverse spectrum of educational contexts. The earliest standardized nationwide curriculum was the 1919 five-year primary school curriculum of the Teachers’ Training College. The history cur-

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riculum included advice for instructors to “teach the relationship between geography and history,” and to use “pictures and images to teach historical ­issues” in addition to “tell[ing] many historical stories, especially about historical personalities like Rustam, Dariush, and Nadir [Shah].”98 In 1927, the Ministry of Education issued its own standardized primary school history curriculum, which differed from the earlier version insofar as history was introduced only in the third year and lasted for four years. The curriculum was divided into two repeating cycles. In the third year, history was taught in a very general fashion from the pre-Islamic dynasties, both mythical and real, to the emergence of Islam, continuing until the rule of the ‘Abbasid ruler Ma’mun. In year four, students learned about the Saffarid dynasty (the first “Iranian” dynasty after the rise of Islam) and continued to the decline of the Qajars and the rise of the Pahlavi regime. Years five and six repeated the two preceding years but in greater detail and without the pre-Islamic mythical narratives.99 A final major revision of the primary school curriculum occurred in 1937 with a new emphasis on fostering rationality over mere memorization. Echoing pedagogical manuals, teachers were told to show children “the relationship between the past and the present” while “cultivating their rational powers.”100 The Ministry of Education issued a six-year curriculum for middle schools in 1924. Three years later, a state official suggested revising the history curriculum on the basis of common problems encountered by teachers. For example, they spent too much time covering material from the early years of the curriculum, leaving little time to teach the later years. Also, many history teachers believed that the history curriculum was exceedingly repetitive.101 In 1924, the Ministry of Education published a similar curriculum for the Women’s Teachers’ Training College, the equivalent of a middle school program but tailored for the college.102 In 1928 the Ministry of Education released a six-year middle school curriculum for boys that contained greater detail than the previous version.103 Further, the curriculum was divided into two parts: the first part constituted mandatory courses for all male high school students and the second part had separate tracks for those specializing in the humanities and the sciences, respectively. This curriculum was revised five years later with input from the historians Nasrullah Falsafi and Badi‘ al-Zaman Furuzanfar. The revised program placed greater emphasis on the “style of politics of prominent figures and kings” of the modern era, perhaps so as to highlight history’s utility for the present.104 Several features immediately stand out about how history was taught in these primary and secondary school curricula of the 1920s and 1930s, First,

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there was no consistent periodization of history into ancient, medieval, and modern units. The medieval period of Iranian history, for instance, might start with Islam, the Seljuks, and the Mongols, and the modern period could be demarcated by the Safavid, Afshar, and Qajar dynasties, depending on the ­curriculum. Second, the widely accepted claim that the Pahlavi state was fixated predominantly with the pre-Islamic period finds little supporting evidence in the official curriculum: students not only learned the history of early Islam but also spent most of their time studying history after the rise of Islam. Third, although world history was an official part of the curriculum, the geographical concentration of this history was on Iran, the Near East, Europe, and to a much lesser extent, North America. India, China, Southeast Asia, and Latin America were, with very few exceptions, almost completely ignored. Fourth, although there was no difference in the content of history taught to boys and girls, there was a difference in the amount of time dedicated to the study of history according to gender. Because schools were divided along gender lines, the Ministry of Education issued different official curricula for boys and girls schools. For instance, primary school girls were not taught history in the third year as were their male counterparts; instead, they learned about history in years five and six, when they studied what boys learned in years three and four.105 Behind this difference may have been the assumption that girls should dedicate most of their time to domestic topics instead of to more academic ones such as history, geography, and literature. Reflecting this patriarchal attitude, official history textbooks almost never included women in their pages. Fifth, later curricula framed Iranian history more in terms of racial categories than had previously been the case. They also adopted European and American racial categories and imported contemporary discourses of the “Yellow Peril,” or fear of the deleterious effects of the migration of “yellow-skinned” peoples. The curricula of specialized schools indicate the wide-ranging resonance of history with other disciplines. In some cases these schools looked to primary and secondary school curricula for their history content. For instance, the School of Art (Hunaristan-i Musiqi) followed the middle school curriculum when it came to history and geography.106 Most specialized schools tailored their history courses with content specific to the school’s thematic concentration. History represented a useful form of knowledge, applicable beyond its primary and secondary school curriculum boundaries. Students at the College of Law (Madrasah-i ‘Ali-yi Huquq ) and the Political Science and Economics School (Madrasah-i ‘Ulum-i Siyasi va Iqtisadi) who were concentrating in ad-

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ministrative studies were expected to study two hours of “political history,” “the history of agreements,” “the history of economic theories,” and “diplomatic history.”107 The School of Music (Madrasah-i Musiqi) included one year for the study of the history of music and another year for the study of Iranian history. 108 The ­Women’s Government Conservatory (Hunaristan-i Dawlati-yi Banuvan) included a course on the history of clothing.109 The Business High School (Dabiristan-i Tijarat) students had to take a two-hour exam on “economic history.”110 Although for the most part students in agricultural schools did not study history, the Agriculture School (Dabistan-i Kishavarzi) curriculum included readings of classical Persian histories.111 Following a mainly thematic logic, the Technical School (Madrasah-i Fanni) taught courses on the history of buildings in Egypt, Chaldea, Assyria, and Greece.112 Adult night school classes emphasized the biographies of great figures from Iranian and Islamic history, along with the political history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and classes for the elderly were similarly focused on the biography of individual Iranians and Muslim figures (especially the Prophet Muhammad).113 In 1934 the Ministry of Education drafted a curriculum for students of the religious sciences at the intermediate and higher levels. Their stated goal in so doing was to inculcate nationalist sentiment in religious seminarians. ­Despite the curricular emphasis on Islamic history, seminaries were still expected to learn Iranian history during the first three years of the intermediate school cycle.114 Religious sciences students in middle school studied Iranian history (albeit in summary form) alongside the history of Islam and the biography of the Prophet.115 The Institute for Sermons and Speeches taught the history of Iran and the world as well as the history of sects and confessional groups (milal va nihal ).116 Sunni seminaries were exempt from having to learn the history of Shi‘ism: instead, they studied the history of Iran and the biographies of the “rightly-guided Caliphs.”117 At the college level, the curriculum for the Faculty of Rational and Traditional Sciences included the study of the history of Arabic literature, the history of sects and confessional groups, the history of the religion of Islam, the history of philosophy, the history of Persian literature, and the history of Iran and the world.118 Military colleges promoted history as an integral part of cadets’ education.119 In the program published for the 1938–1939 school year were four stated objectives for learning about military history: familiarity with the military history of Iran, application of “the principles of war . . . to various battle situations,” “gaining strategic and tactical objectives for the enlightening of students’ minds,”

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and understanding the “spiritual conditions of war and the mental capacities of the commander when confronted with the realities of the battlefield.”120 The military cadet curriculum included two years of military history courses. The first year of the program consisted of specific military examples from the pre-Islamic period, such as Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, Alexander’s conquest of the Achaemenid Empire, and similar examples of battles and wars during the Ashkanid and Sasanian periods. The Arab conquest of the Sasanian army, the Mongol invasion, the Safavid Empire’s wars, Nadir Shah’s eighteenthcentury wars, the early nineteenth-century Russo-Iranian and Anglo-Iranian wars, and other military engagements up to and including the “period of the His Majesty [Riza Shah] Pahlavi and the revival of Iran,” were taught as part of Iranian military history. Examples from the rest of the world covered European military history, including the Russo-Turkish War, the Transvaal War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Balkan War.121 Military history in the second year had a decidedly modern focus, implying that to truly learn the lessons of military history, the near present contained more useful lessons than the distant past. The first part of the second-year history curriculum was spent examining the causes of World War II and the associated battles in Europe, and the second part explored the war in “Eastern countries” such as Russia, Turkey, Iran, the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, and the Turkish war of independence. The final section looked at contemporary wars such as the Russian invasion of Poland and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia.122 Not only was history an integral part of primary, secondary, and higher education, but it was also taught in more specialized schools throughout Iran.

Standardizing History Textbooks As part of its broader effort to standardize education, the Ministry of Education commissioned a number of Iranians to write history textbooks. Benjamin Fortna’s analysis of late Ottoman and early republican Turkish textbooks are equally applicable to the case of Iran: “The seemingly insatiable demand for teachers and textbooks meant that many could now make, or substantially augment, a living by writing. On the other side of the equation, the growing ranks of young readers constituted a market that publishers were quick to exploit.”123 These textbooks—both original works and translations—fell into the categories of Iranian, world, Islamic, military, and literary histories. Thematically there was often a great deal of overlap between these genres. Many histories of

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Iran contained both diachronic and synchronic sections: the diachronic section centered around a chronological narrative of rulers and their battles, wars, and conquests while the synchronic section treated the broad sweep of literary, artistic, intellectual, and scientific developments over the course of a given period. Literary histories followed a similar structure, although the emphasis was on literature rather than on politics. Pahlavi-era history textbooks stressed continuities and state stability over revolutionary ruptures. As Michel de C ­ erteau has observed, “stable societies allow history to favor continuities and tend to confer value of a human essence upon a solidly established order.” 124 Similar to Iran’s program, the Egyptian history curriculum in the early 1920s “involved the correlation of strong central government rule—be it pharaonic, monarchical, or parliamentary—with national sovereignty.”125 During the interwar period, state officials set out to update Iranian history textbooks. One such official, Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi, wrote a letter in 1928 to scholar Muhammad Qazvini, expressing his hope to fulfill this vision. He wanted to write a history that included “contemporary knowledge and sources” in the “spirit, style and taste of [modern] scholars of the world” for “advanced middle school students and those studying at institutions of higher learning.” He also envisioned a more ambitious project, a comprehensive history of Iran that, given limitations in time and money, would have to include the collaboration of younger Iranian scholars such as ‘Abbas Iqbal and Mujtaba Minuvi.126 Although Furughi was unable to write such a history himself, the Ministry of Education ensured that others did so. In 1928, the Ministry of Education turned to Hasan Pirniya, Hasan Taqiza­ dah, and ‘Abbas Iqbal to write a comprehensive history-of-Iran textbook for advanced secondary school and college students. Each author would be responsible for a specific period of Iranian history: Pirniya would write on ancient pre-Islamic Iranian history, Taqizadah would cover roughly the rise of Islam until the Mongol invasion, and Iqbal would focus on the period from the Mongol invasion to the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. The project to standardize Iranian history had mixed results; all three of the authors published portions of their comprehensive history, but the book was never completed as originally envisioned. Toward the end of a long career in politics, Hasan Pirniya wanted to write a history textbook on ancient Iran.127 The idea for such a book came to Pirniya in the early 1920s while he was serving alongside Ahmad Sa‘idi on the Education Commission. Pirniya, who was still active in parliamentary politics, had asked

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Sa‘idi to critique his policies. Sa‘idi steered the discussion elsewhere, suggesting that Pirniya should take a break from politics and instead focus on nonpolitical service to the country. In response to Pirniya’s inquiry as to what type of service might be beneficial, Sa‘idi stated, “The existence of two accurate and useful books are necessary for our country, one in history and the other in geography.” Pirniya agreed to write a history of ancient Iran and added, “I sincerely hope that this book would also be taught in schools,” expressing a conviction that history should be pedagogically relevant.128 Pirniya’s son, Abu al-Hasan Pirniya, relayed that when he was a child his father admonished him, saying that “if a nation does not know of its own history and has no cognizance of it, slowly it will lose its essential pride.”129 Published in 1928, Hasan Pirniya’s textbook Ancient Iran has been described as the first “genuinely modern Iranian national history textbook,” although there were plenty of “modern” precedents to Pirniya’s textbook dating from the Qajar period.130 The originality of Pirniya’s work, in contrast to previous textbooks covering ancient Iranian history, rested primarily in his having been well-informed of the latest European scholarship and archeological findings.131 Pirniya organized his narrative into a diachronic chronological section and a synchronic “civilizational” one. He defended his choice by appealing to the practice of “the scholars of the science of history” who believed “that mentioning historical events and recounting the names of kings and prominent men alone [was] . . . not sufficient for understanding a country’s past and knowing the spiritual condition of the people.”132 Several authors reviewed Pirniya’s Ancient Iran shortly after its publication. These reviews, none of which were printed, reveal the ambivalence that some Iranians felt toward openly airing criticism of a powerful political figure. As part of its publication process, the Ministry of Education had three reviewers vet Ancient Iran: Malik al-Shu‘ara Bahar, Valiullah Nasr, and Ahmad Sa‘idi. Nasr noted that the text was too advanced for a high school level and should instead be taught at institutions of higher education. Bahar’s comments were even more critical, but they were never conveyed to Pirniya for fear that he would take offense.133 Shortly after the publication of Ancient Iran, literary figure Sa‘id Nafisi stumbled across it while at the Majlis printing house. He read the book quite carefully, produced copious notes, and intended to have a review of the book published in the popular newspaper Shafaq-i Surkh. He ultimately refrained from doing so, fearing that his slightly critical comments would be appropriated by Pirniya’s political enemies.134

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Despite the reticence of his reviewers, Pirniya insistently solicited reviews of his textbook. He heeded the criticism that Ancient Iran was too dense by subsequently publishing a condensed version (nearly half the length) intended for the “first [three-year] cycle” of high school.135 In the early 1930s, Ahmad Sa‘idi arranged for Pirniya to meet Muhit Tabataba’i, an instructor who had taught ancient Iranian history, so he could receive further feedback. At first, Muhit Tabataba’i hesitated to critique Pirniya’s history, because of the oversensitivity of men of letters to his criticisms of their textbooks in the past. Pirniya and Tabataba’i’s discussion, as recounted by the latter, illustrates the spectrum of ideological positions with respect to the use of history for political ends. Pirniya started by asking Tabataba’i, “Why are you so against discussions of wars and the conquests of generals?” to which he responded, “We are living in an age in which we middle school teachers must, through teaching history and geography, turn the spirit of the students, who are prone to hatred and being affected by the World War, toward world peace and tranquility.” Tabataba’i continued this line of thinking, which accepted the existence of nationalism but denied its xenophobic excesses: “So long as we, the Greeks, the Russians, the Arabs, and the Turks continue to encounter . . . the existence of boundaries, an acceptable identity, and independence in political relations in the history of the world, we must not aggrandize past events, which were the result of ignorance, heedlessness, hostility, greediness, the trespasses of bygone generations, and the causes of rancorous hatred in the mirror of history and relate this to the contemporary generation, who is in need of friendship and good relations more than enmity and battle.” Pirniya was amused by Tabataba’i’s response and turned to Sa‘idi, who was also present, saying, “If in the future there is a need to send someone to a peace conference or congress, this guy [refering to Tabataba’i] should be sent because he prefers seeking peace over national pride and strives for the preservation of peace.” To this sarcastic remark, Tabataba’i responded, “I am not [a] political [person], I am [interested in] culture [ahl-i siyasat nistam farhangi hastam].”136 Tabataba’i’s comments were quite prescient: Pirniya’s focus on war, battles, and military stratagems in antiquity were likewise seen in many later textbooks that embodied a militaristic vision of history. In addition to approaching Pirniya, the Ministry of Education had also approached noted Iranian political figure Hasan Taqizadah in the fall of 1928 with the task of writing part of a history of Iran, from the rise of Islam to the present, suitable for middle school students. Because Taqizadah became preoc-

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cupied with other tasks, his book was delayed. Therefore, he instead settled on writing a less ambitious book on Iranian history, from the rise of Islam to the Mongol invasion. It was only at the prompting and insistence of Mr. Parviz of the Tehran Library that Taqizadah was convinced to publish what little he had prepared of his textbook. The book began by examining “the condition of Iran and neighboring countries at the time of the appearance of Islam.”137 Similar to other historians of the period, Taqizadah was primarily concerned with the causes of the decline and fall of the Sasanian dynasty. He examined the histories of Iran, the Romans, and the Arabs as context for the rise of Islam. The book itself did not even end with the coming of the Mongols but ended instead in the late Umayyad and early ‘Abbasid era.138 Of the three figures contacted by the Ministry of Education to compose a textbook, ‘Abbas Iqbal was the youngest but also the most experienced educator. He published several textbooks on Iranian history in the 1930s that were expanded and refined versions of his earlier world history textbooks.139 All three of the histories that the Ministry of Education commissioned in 1928 remained incomplete. Pirniya’s Ancient Iran was missing a section on the Sasanian period, Taqizadah’s textbook From Parviz to Genghis ended earlier than it should have, and Iqbal published only one volume of his Comprehensive History of Iran.140 Despite the state’s use of disciplinary forms of knowledge production to shape historical consciousness, its commissioning of textbooks ended in half-completed works of enormously varying lengths, all written in distinctive styles and employing different methodological presuppositions.

Explaining the Rise and Fall of Nations The history textbooks of the 1920s and 1930s shared a preoccupation with explaining the causes of the progress and decline of nations. These explanations found expression in the logic of periodization, in which race, civilization, and religion became crucial to understanding why a given nation succeeded or failed. In the early years of the twentieth century, history textbooks often had a constitutional teleology: key terms such as revolution, constitution, and the people were fleshed out to inform emerging understandings of citizenship. By the interwar period, however, the democratic and constitutional meaning of history gave way to an emphasis on national unity and political centralization. Race, civilization, and religion became constitutive historical categories that necessarily defined Iranian collective identity against its perceived Others.

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The modern periodization of history in Europe followed a tripartite division of ancient, medieval, and modern. The logic of the history curriculum for primary, secondary, and college students became a significant means of framing the study of history because it too was typically divided into three periods. Periodization was by no means consistent from textbook to textbook, which points not only to a pragmatic concern with how to organize the study of history for the purpose of teaching, but also to differing interpretations of why a nation progressed or declined in any given period. Any act of periodization carries with it certain assumptions about continuities and ruptures. A new period assumes a significant rupture in the collective history of a nation, region, or civilization. As Donald Kelly has pointed out, “systems of periodization . . . apply ideas of evolution and ‘modernization,’ if not decadence and decline.”141 Periodization is therefore always “implicitly teleo­logical, if not providential or diabolical.”142 The rupture was usually political; however, it usually accompanied a “civilizational” turning point as well. Two examples from Iranian textbooks illustrate this point. In many textbooks, the Arab conquests marked the end of the Sasanian dynasty and therefore the end of antiquity in Iran. The conquests coincided with Muslim political domination and were followed by the gradual conversion of Iranians to Islam. Other textbooks started the medieval period in Iran with the Mongol conquests, citing literary and religious decline as a rationale. World histories navigated two spatial and temporal registers: the history of the Iranian nation and the history of the rest of the world. The terms ancient, medieval, and modern corresponded to normative judgments about a particular period more generally. For instance, the ancient period corresponded to a presumed golden age in a given nation’s history. The medieval period, by contrast, was a term synonymous with decline, while the modern period indicated the triumph of progress and renewal. What constituted the modern period was particularly contested and formulated in a variety of ways. This indeterminacy in periodization suggests that multiple readings of Iranian history were still possible despite state pressures for standardization. ‘Abbas Iqbal’s World History constituted the single longest narrative of ­Iranian and European history written in Persian in the 1920s. His periodization of Iranian and world history reflected the periodization published by the Teachers’ Training College and the Ministry of Education. The first volume dealt with human history from prehistory to the end of antiquity. It was divided into the history of the ancient East—including Egypt, Chaldea, Assyria, Phoenicia, and

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Achaemenid Iran—and the history of the ancient West (namely Greece). Iqbal considered Alexander’s conquests of Iran to mark the end of antiquity. He, like the Furughis before him, included the “mythical” history of pre-Islamic Iran alongside the “real” Achaemenid history. The second volume continued the narrative from the time of Alexander’s successor states, the period of the Seleucids through the reign of the Ashkanids and Sasanians until the rise of Islam, the Arab conquests of Iran, and the rise of the Umayyad and ‘Abbasid dynasties, while the “world history” segment dealt with the history of Rome. This periodization was significant because it did not place undue emphasis on the Arab conquests as the cause of decline in Iran. The third volume of World History began with the Tahirids and Saffarids, or the era of the presumed Iranian political reassertion against the Arabs, and carried on until the fall of the Mongol dynasty in Iran. In terms of European history, Iqbal subscribed to the commonly accepted periodization of the European Middle Ages, meaning from the time of the invasion of the Gauls until the fall of Eastern Rome in 1453. The fourth and final volume overlapped somewhat with the previous one: it began the narrative from the time of the Seljuks and continued to the Qajars. The history of Europe included the crusades and the origins of major Western European countries—France, Germany, and England—and continued to the contemporary era. As part of his contribution to Iranian education, ‘Abd al-Husayn Shaybani composed a three-volume history of the Middle Ages for the secondary schools and for “advanced studies” (rishtahha-yi ‘ali), intended for the Teachers’ Training College and later used by the University of Tehran.143 Shaybani accepted the common definition of the Middle Ages in Europe as running from the end of the fourth century—namely the breakup of the Roman Empire—until the end of the fifteenth century.144 He made adjustments when periodizing Iranian and Islamic history by ending part one in the eighth century, marking the fall of the Umayyad dynasty and the rise of the ‘Abbasids. Part two ended the narrative in the thirteenth century, roughly coinciding with the Mongol invasions. Part three ended in the late fifteenth century, when the Safavid dynasty was slowly establishing itself.145 Shaybani could therefore be said to be trying to square the circle of European and Iranian-Islamic periodizations by rejecting the commonly accepted definition of medieval as meaning a period of decline when it came to the history of Iran and Islam. Historian ‘Izzat Pur provided simultaneous definitions for Iranian and European periods of history but used more than three periods in his schema. For

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Europe, he categorized “ancient history” as ending in 396; “medieval history” covered 396–1453, “modern history” spanned 1453–1789, and “contemporary history” included 1789 to the present.146 ‘Izzat Pur subdivided Iranian history into five eras roughly corresponding to the European schema: first, “from the 8th century before Christ until the Arab conquest of Iran”; second, “from the Arab conquest until the Mongol calamity 1220/1 (617 H.)”; third, “from the Mongol calamity until the establishment of the Safavid dynasty”; fourth, “from the establishment of the Safavids until the Iranian revolution and the constitutional decree 1907 (1324 H.)”; fifth, “the constitutional period from 1907 until now.”147 Although his history dealt with the ancient period, it was quite significant that ‘Izzat Pur chose the Constitutional Revolution as the turning point for contemporary Iran instead of Riza Khan’s 1921 coup. By doing so, he prioritized the constitutional mass movement over the rise of a modernizing autocrat, suggesting a level of interpretive independence even in the late 1930s. In his military history textbook, Jamil Quzanlu subscribed to a familiar four-part periodization. In his dating of military modernity, he differed with other textbook authors who dated the modern period as beginning with the Iranian Constitutional Revolution or the rise of Riza Khan. Instead, he considered the reign of eighteenthcentury monarch Nadir Shah, the last monarch to expand the borders of Iran significantly into South Asia and Asia Minor, as the marker of Iranian military modernity.148 By the interwar period, Iranian historians increasingly engaged with European race theories, with the goal of locating themselves within world racial hierarchies. These racial hierarchies placed the “white race” at the top and the “black race” at the bottom. When writing world histories, Iranians internalized race theories by casting themselves as whites alongside Europeans.149 Scholars have often drawn attention to the anti-Arab (and thus anti-Semitic) element of Iranian national historical narratives.150 Official statist narratives found in textbooks demonstrate that the Arabs were not represented as the main enemies in Iranian history; in fact, they were usually categorized as white alongside Iranians, Europeans, and Jews. There was instead much more anxiety about the “yellow race,” which in this context meant the Mongols and the Turks. In the introductory section to his World History, ‘Abbas Iqbal provided a definition of race as differences “in terms of height, the condition of the skull, types of face, [skin] color, lips and nose.” Moving beyond these physical differences, he added, “their degree of feeling, intelligence, and talent are not the same.”151 Iqbal then provided a racial hierarchy from top to bottom: white,

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yellow, black, and red. He placed the white race at the top of this hierarchy, describing them as possessing a high “mental capacity.” Whites were not exclusively “Aryans”: he included Semites (meaning both Jews and Arabs) in this category as well. He then discussed the yellow race in somewhat more ambivalent terms: “Some of the branches of this race, like the white-skinned race, are capable, smart, and clever [presumably the Chinese and Japanese]” while the Turks and Mongolians were considered to be the “barbaric” branches of the “yellow” race. These anxieties about the “yellow” race should be seen within the context of European and American fears of the “Yellow Peril.” Iranian historians adapted this anxiety as a historical analytical tool to explain Iranian decline at the hands of the “barbaric” branches of the “yellow race.”152 Iqbal similarly appropriated the Aryan migration thesis, in which the Aryans were considered the forefathers of many nations, in order to situate Iran among the “advanced” nations of Europe and America: “Iranians, Indians, Greeks, ancient Romans, and most contemporary nations of Europe and America were descendents of these Aryans and most call the Aryan race the Indo-European race.”153 Despite Iqbal’s inclusion of European racial theories in his history, he claimed that the category of race had severe limitations. His tacit assumptions about how best to categorize humans replicated some of the same tensions and contradictions present in European racial theories, which vacillated between giving precedence to race on the one hand and language on the other.154 In the same breath, however, he questioned the solidity of racial boundaries, recognizing that they were by and large ahistorical. He argued that “boundaries between individual humans do not exist that can distinguish them completely from one another,” believing that “these divisions are merely to simplify the work of the learned scholars of natural history and geography.” For him, “this classification [race]” had “more to do with outer attributes of the body, natural conditions, and geography rather than history.”155 In place of race, he believed that language was more historically relevant: “The generality of peoples whose language is derived from one root are considered as part of one family and are named by this same shared language.” His ideas about language were intertwined with his understanding of race. The “white race” consisted of both the “Aryan race”—defined as “all the tribes [tava’ifi] whose linguistic origin is the same as the ancient Iranian language”—and the “Semitic tribes,” who were speakers of Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. He concluded by saying that “the white race is divided into two major branches: the Aryan branch including the Iranians, Indians, and people of the Caucasus and all the

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inhabitants of Europe (except for the Ottomans, Hungarians, Finlanders, and others) and the other [Semitic] branch includes the Jews and the Arabs and the Phoenicians, Assyrians, and ancient Chaldeans.”156 Iranian historians used the category of civilization far more often than the category of race when discussing progress and decline. Civilization encompassed the scientific, literary, religious, and artistic accomplishments of settled, agrarian, and urban societies. Historians contrasted this urban civilization against the presumed barbarism of nomadic and pastoralist societies. Finally, they often defined civilization as toleration toward conquered peoples, particularly when it came to religious beliefs. ‘Abbas Iqbal credited ancient Iranians with rendering “services . . . to the history of world civilization” by bringing about unity, order, and an end to constant war; establishing a just system of government; spreading civilization and humanity; ensuring people’s safety and freedom so they could pursue learning; and promoting a learned religion.157 He attributed the success and longevity of the Achaemenid dynasty for close to two centuries in part to its toleration of conquered people: “The Iranians did not interfere with the religion and customs of conquered nations and they would leave everyone free in their own affairs and were content so long as they collected taxes, [obtained] armies, and [gained] obedience to the Shah.”158 This toleration led Achaemenid king Cyrus to leave “behind good traces . . . in the Greek histories and in the Torah” because of his “kind treatment of the people.”159 The connection of religious toleration to state prosperity and success was extended to both ethnically Iranian and “foreign” dynasts ruling over Iran. Another history teacher, Riza Pazuki, celebrated the dynasties of Genghis Khan, Mönke Khan, and Shah ‘Abbas for their religious toleration.160 Conversely, religious intolerance was enumerated as one of the causes of civilizational decline. Describing the increasing prominence of legalistic forms of Islam during the rule of Timurlane, Pazuki stated, “The police administration and dry prejudice [ta‘assub-i khushk] toward religion was a large part of the disappearance of scientific and literary thought [afkar-i ‘ilmi va adabi] of the Iranians.”161 Historian ‘Ali Asghar Shamim admired Nadir Shah’s religious policies for their political pragmatism. He rejected the view of some historians that Nadir Shah was trying to spread Sunnism in Iran and instead insisted on viewing the monarch as a political pragmatist who prioritized “political expediencies” (masalih-i siyasi) in order to make “the foundation of his rule strong.”162 Shamim considered the next ruler of Iran, Karim Khan Zand, to reflect the broader religious sensibilities of the Iranian ­population: “[Karim Khan

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Zand] Vakil was a religious man but in religious matters he was not prejudiced and did not see religious beliefs as having political goals and ends like the kings at the end of the Safavid period.”163 Karim Khan, as a Shi‘i and an Iranian, was characterized as authentically religious, generally tolerant, and averse to mixing political goals with religious beliefs. Historians often defined civilization negatively by contrasting it to nomadic dynasties and peoples. Iqbal’s characterization of nomads as the enemies of civilization and his attempt to trace for this group a long genealogy as barbarians opposed to Iranian civilization should be understood against the backdrop of state efforts of centralization and the settling and suppression of tribes. Iqbal combined civilizational, racial, and religious justifications for considering the Ashkanids to be “like other simple and violent yellow-skinned nomadic people” who were supposedly devoid of “skill in civilization and progress” and lacking “true religion.”164 He laid the blame for Iranian decline after the rise of Islam at the feet of Turks and Mongols, drawing parallels between them and the Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire that inaugurated the Middle Ages in Europe. He called the Turks and Mongols the “eternal enemy” of Iran.165 Iranian historians creatively sought to resolve the contradictions between racial and civilizational explanations for progress and decline. Iqbal deemed certain “Iranian” dynasties to be “civilized” despite being “foreign.” In the case of the Seleucids and the ‘Abbasids, he pointed out their partial Iranian descent through matrilineal ties, and therefore considered the Seleucids “half-Iranian.” Similarly, he claimed that the ‘Abbasids had the support of the Iranians because the “[Caliph] Ma’mun was counted as Iranian on his mother’s side,” but also because “he was familiar with Iranian customs [adab-i irani].”166 As the latter statement indicates, the criteria for “civilization” were not only about partial ­Iranian descent but also about the degree to which these “foreign” dynasties internalized Iranian characteristics. In the case of the Turkmen Seljuks, Iqbal argued that so long as settled nomads shared the urban hostility toward nomads, they should be considered civilizationally Iranian: “The Seljuks are among the ranks of the good sultans of Iran because they quickly accepted Iranianism [Iraniyat] and they withdrew from violence and nomadism [badaviyat].” He praised them for “having spread Persian literature and defended Iran against other Turks,” but he considered “their domination over Iran” to set a “bad precedent for other Turks” who followed in their footsteps through continued violence.167 Riza Pazuki, in his textbook on medieval Iran, was similarly at pains to reconcile contradictory historical explanations for decline. He believed that it

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was the Turkish and Mongolian “superstitions” and “fanaticism” that brought about Iran’s “decline and waning” and hindered it from “borrowing easily from European civilization or taking the path of progress like those countries.” 168 He concluded that the Mongol and Timurid conquests led to the retardation of Iranian culture, civilization, literature, and sciences.169 On the other hand, he was forced to confront the fact that during this period of supposed decline there were many notable Persian-language poets and historians: “The two-­hundred-year period of Mongol history . . . despite being one of the worst periods of history of Islamic domains generally and the Iranian domains specifically, is an important period in the history of the civilization and literature of Iran because the effect of the Mongol misfortune had not yet manifested ­itself.”170 The credit for this literary and cultural brilliance was ascribed to ethnically Iranian figures instead of to the “foreign” Mongol rulers. In describing the literary brilliance of the Ilkhanid period, for instance, Pazuki lavishly praised Iranian minister Rashid al-Din Fazlullah and others like him as having taken “important steps” in ensuring that this period was “among the most brilliant literary periods of Iran.”171 Alongside race and civilization, religion formed another crucial means of articulating Iranian nationalism. Iranian religion—whether in the form of ­Zoroastrianism or Islam—was orthodox, civilized, and a source of national unity. By contrast, inauthentic religions in Iran were cast as heterodox, superstitious, and causes of disunity.172 Iranian history textbooks often adopted a pietistic tone and operated on the assumption that all students were Iranian Shi‘is. When describing the Sunni-Shi‘i split, Iqbal stated that “Abu Bakr became the Caliph and usurped the right of ‘Ali bin Abi Talib, peace be upon him, who according to the belief of us Shi‘is [emphasis added] is the immediate successor of the Prophet.”173 Hasan Taqizadah adopted similar language when referring to the biography of the Prophet Muhammad as “the biography of his holiness the noblest prophet.”174 ‘Abdullah Razi, writing in the late 1930s—during the supposed height of rabid anti-Arab and Islamic sentiment among Pahlavi intellectuals—said, “Before mentioning the names of the learned figures of Shi‘ism, we thought that we would mention the names of the blessed Imams, peace be upon them all, in order to bless and consecrate the pages of this short book.”175 Iranian historians were careful not to conflate Islam with the unpopular Umayyad dynasty, because they considered Islam to be a positive historical force, one that evinced the equality of believers rather than an ethnic hierarchy that elevated Arabs over Iranians.176 These historians also insisted on pointing

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out that many ethnic Iranian poets and philosophers writing in Arabic made an enormous contribution to Islamic civilization.177 Iqbal provided a common nationalist assessment of the ‘Abbasid period and its civilization: “All Muslims [meaning non-Arabs as well as Arabs] have had a part in [the shaping of] Islamic civilization, but Iranians have played a more prominent role than every­one else.” He believed this was the case because they “took charge of the main institutions of Islamic governance” and “were also direct promoters of science and literature or experts and teachers.” He concluded by saying that “the majority of the learned figures among the clerics, philosophers, and poets who wrote in Arabic during this period of Islamic civilization were Iranians.”178 Iqbal simultaneously created a genealogy for the “authentic” religions of Iran that progressed in stages from orthodox forms of Zoroastrianism to Sunnism and finally to Shi‘ism. In his historical construction of Iranian religious history, he maintained somewhat contradictory positions with regard to the question of religious purity. When speaking of Zoroastrianism, he viewed contact and interactions with foreign elements as a corrupting force. When addressing Islam in the Iranian context, however, he celebrated such interactions by employing the language of Islamic Iranian civilization, particularly during the ‘Abbasid period. Iqbal implied that Iranian and Arab Islam of the ‘Abbasid period were tolerant and open to reason whereas later Turkish Islam embodied fanaticism and hostility toward Iranian Shi‘ism.179 Historians discussed Shi‘ism as a distinctly Iranian national phenomenon. Beyond the assumption of an Iranian Shi‘i readership of these histories, authors championed orthodox religiosity—whether Zoroastrian or Islamic—against heterodoxy. They defined orthodox religiosity as a state-sponsored religion that brought about unity, progress, and civilization, and categorized heterodoxy as a persistent challenge to the state in the form of such diverse movements as the Manicheans, Mazdakites, Isma‘ilis, and more recently, Babis and Baha’is. ­Heterodoxy was cast as a political threat to national unity and as an artificial and inauthentic expression of religiosity. Ironically, supposedly tolerant secular Iranian historians discussed heterodoxy—past and near present—with no less disdain than mainstream Shi‘i ‘ulama discussed heterodoxy. For Iqbal, nomadic “superstition” barred Iranian progress: “That which sped up the decline of Iran and day by day closed the doors of progress was the superstition and false beliefs (khurafat va awham) resulting from the Mongol and Turkish conquests. . . . ”180 Iqbal viewed Turco-Mongolian “superstitious” folk culture and fanaticism, supposedly essential features of this people, as the insidious driving

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force behind cultural retardation and a lack of openness to Western ­civilization. Historians blamed heterodoxy for national backwardness in more recent centuries as well. ‘Ali Asghar Shamim, whose late 1930s textbook on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Iran was used well into the 1960s, considered the uprisings of the Isma‘ili Agha Khan, the Naqshbandi Sufis of Khurasan, and the Babi movement as “new seditious uprisings” ( fitnahha-yi jadid).181

The Military and the Strong Man Savior of Iran The militaristic ethos of Riza Shah and his officers permeated educational structures and coalesced with the technocratic-oriented government bureaucracy, especially by the 1930s. Military history textbooks were meant to convey useable lessons to cadets. They were often dry, factual, and strictly chronological battle narratives with little to no discussion of the social, literary, and cultural dimensions of history. As a former Cossack brigade soldier, Riza Shah promoted conscription and expansion of the military. Although attention has been paid to various facets of his military career and to the development of the military in general, less attention has been paid to the impact of Iranian military culture on educational institutions.182 Military colleges expanded greatly in Iran during the first half of the twentieth century. The Military College (Danishkadah-i Afsari), established in 1922, and the military preparatory colleges founded in 1935, spread military education throughout the country.183 With the implementation of mandatory conscription and the building of a substantial standing army, military colleges gained broader social relevance. Military history textbooks were meant to create “a usable past” capable of conveying strategic lessons for Iranian military cadets. They therefore focused squarely on strategies of conquest and moved in sequential and linear fashion through history, from battle to battle and from war to war, making no allowance for nonmilitary trends. These narratives excised the literature, religion, and culture that had otherwise come to be such an integral part of Iranian textbooks. Three authors and translators of military history textbooks—Muhammad Nakhjavan, Ghulam Husayn Muqtadir, and Jamil Quzanlu—were embedded at the intersection between the military and the education system.184 Muhammad Nakhjavan Amir Muvassaq authored military histories of World War I, the Crimean War, the Turkish War of independence, and the Russo-Japanese war.185 The son of a Cossack officer, Nakhjavan studied at the Dar al-Funun

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before completing his studies at a Russian military academy during the Tsarist era. He returned to Iran, where he entered the Cossack division and taught military studies at the Cossack barracks. He served in several military campaigns in the run-up to Riza Khan’s rule in 1918/1919 and 1920/1921 (1297–1299 Sh.).186 Whereas Muhammad Nakhjavan addressed the history of non-Iranian countries, Ghulam Husayn Muqtadir was a pioneering military historian of Iran. His numerous textbooks touched on a wide range of topics, including the pre-Islamic Iranian military history—especially of Iran and Rome, but also of the Arab and Mongol invasions, continuing to the later rule of Shah ‘Abbas and Nadir Shah.187 Muqtadir’s student Jamil Quzanlu became a prolific author and instructor of military history and geography. He exemplified wider interests than those of his former teacher; his histories dealt with the general military history of Iran, the Russo-Persian wars of the early nineteenth century, and the Turkish war of independence against the Greeks and the Allies.188 Quzanlu’s most significant work, The Military History of Iran, covered Iranian military history from 550 BCE until 1797.189 He utilized “military principles and expressions” in narrating “a comprehensive account of events” pertaining to military operations.190 He viewed history as replete with “lesson[s] and example[s]” (‘ibrat va sarmashq ) for soldiers because it divulged “many of the secrets and unknown [aspects] of events, tribal lives, and the primal conflicts of humanity.” He placed history within the realm of modern sciences capable of shedding light on otherwise seemingly mysterious forces.191 These textbooks reflected an increasing trend toward the application of military logic to historical events, with the aim of extracting useful strategies for students expected to defend the nation on the battlefield. The instrumentalization of history for militaristic ends spilled over into the textbooks of the late 1930s. These textbooks elevated the history of warfare and conquests above that of “civilization,” a phenomenon that coincided with the increased prominence of technocrats in the governing circles of Riza Shah.192 In assessing Genghis Khan’s rule, Pazuki expressed appreciation for the Mongol ruler’s intelligence, competence, and foresight, although he prefaced this with more critical remarks: “There is no doubt that Genghis Khan is to be considered one of the most bloodthirsty and merciless conquerors [who] brought about the deaths of many innocent people in cities.” He added a caveat to this assessment: “he should not be likened completely to an unskilled barbarian, because conquering that many countries and administrating them is not possible

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without possessing intelligence, worthiness, skill, and competence.” He further defended Genghis Khan by stating, “He was no less bloodthirsty and merciless than neighboring countries and tribes,” and he concluded by saying, “If [we] are to judge him fairly from this perspective, it [the killing] was necessary to a degree because as some of the events in the course of his life show, he also practiced perfect restraint and indifference to killing populations, and unlike some other world conquerors (such as Timurlane, Nadir, and Agha Muhammad Khan), he did not show hatred and anger or bloodlust in the course of his conquests. . . . ”193 Pazuki’s assumption that brutality and killing were justified in the pursuit of political objectives as long as they were not motivated by bloodlust resonated with the Pahlavi military ethos. In line with the military culture of the time, Pazuki considered Genghis Khan’s strict insistence on military order and the rule of law through the Mongol code of law ( yasa) as key reasons for his success.194 The ideal of territorial unity—which should be understood against the backdrop of Riza Shah’s centralization efforts—became the yardstick by which ‘Ali Asghar Shamim judged another conqueror, Nadir Shah: “Nadir, in the course of ten years, conquered all the above-mentioned [divisive] forces and once again established a single Iranian government.”195 For Shamim, Nadir Shah was responsible for having expelled foreigners from the “soil of Iran,” leading to his “election” to rule by the people at the plains of Mughan.196 S­ hamim’s assessment of Nadir Shah was almost Carlylian in its emphasis on the role of a strong leader in shaping history. Nadir Shah was praised for his “military personality,” his “attention to establishing the territorial unity of Iran and the expulsion of foreigners,” and his making “the name of the [Iranian] nation reach the ears of [all] corners of the earth.”197 The valorization of military geniuses of the past such as Genghis Khan and Nadir Shah reflected the official state discourses that lionized Riza Shah, whom historians often cast as the savior and modernizer of Iran.198 The optimism and hope that educators had previously projected onto the Constitutional Revolution were now projected onto Riza Shah. For Shamim, the rise of Riza Khan in 1921 (1299 Sh.), which conveniently coincided with a new century in the Iranian solar calendar, marked “the beginning of the modern history of Iran” (aghaz-i tarikh-i jadid-i Iran).199 Shamim’s dating of the modern Iran reflected a new teleology in Iranian h ­ istoriography— one in which the Constitutional Revolution waned as the defining turning point in Iranian history and was replaced by Riza Khan’s rise to power.

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‘­Abdullah Razi similarly considered his rise as the starting point of modern Iranian history. Comparing the monarch to the poet Firdawsi, Razi considered Riza Shah a modern-day reviver of Iran just as Firdawsi was a reviver of the Persian language and past in his own age.200 He argued that the shah redressed the historical wrongs committed against the legacy of Firdawsi by holding a millenary celebration in his honor and “preparing a resting place befitting the great master of speech.”201 Rashid Yasami’s primary school history textbook described Riza Shah’s rise to power in nearly messianic terms.202 He painted a picture of Iran as “­utterly weak and debased, the tribes had become hostile, the cities were in the hands of the evil ones, the villages burned, the treasury empty, the military dispersed and some provinces occupied by foreign forces.” It was at that moment when “suddenly the sun of good fortune of Iran shone: His Holiness Riza Shah Pahlavi occupied Iran on February 9, 1921 (3 Esfand 1299 Sh.) and took the reins of affairs in his competent hands” before ascending to the throne.203 Yasami, like many other early Pahlavi historians, created a teleological historical narrative in which contemporary Iran was a revival of the nation’s glorious past.

g By the early 1920s, the state had become the driving force behind educational expansion. On the one hand, this allowed for the teaching of history to become a stable profession for a growing number of Iranians. On the other hand, greater state control over education constrained what teachers and students could write. Unlike in the constitutional period, individual patrons and autonomous educators found fewer opportunities to write a diverse range of histories. Furthermore, the state actively appropriated historiography as part of its nation-building project through military schools, religious education, and state propaganda. State blueprints for standardized education culminated in pedagogical manuals for teachers. In these manuals, teachers were expected to embody a pedagogical habitus involving storytelling, the use of visual sources, and the instilling of national virtues in young students. Over the course of the interwar period, the social composition of those who were writing and teaching history began to change as well. Students who wrote history theses both within and outside of Iran often had the goal of obtaining government and bureaucratic posts. Those with a foreign degree—usually meaning those who were affluent enough to afford to study abroad—came back to occupy these sought-after government posts, while those trained within the

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country typically became less socially mobile and were locked within lowerpaying teaching posts in primary and secondary schools. Despite a significant number of graduates who studied history, there were few opportunities for the professionalization of history as a discipline because state pedagogical and propagandistic imperatives trumped academic aspirations. The textbook was therefore a persistent medium for the articulation of historical narratives among teachers, educators, professional historians, and amateurs alike. Unlike the previous generation’s concern with citizenship, revolution, and the people, interwar Iranian history textbooks were predominantly concerned with race, civilization, and religion as explanatory factors in the progress and decline of nations. All these trends occurred against the backdrop of an increasingly militarized state run by a strongman monarch whose reputation rested on his promise to strengthen the central state. The enforcement of conscription and the spread of military colleges meant that military history became a set of useful lessons for those embarking on a career in the army. Historians glorified the head of this army, Riza Shah, as the savior of a homogenous and singular nation. By doing so in textbooks, they often rode roughshod over the diversity of the rest of the population. Even though tribes and ethnic and religious minorities were occasionally mentioned in these textbooks (and almost always in a negative context), women were almost always completely absent. Iranian women turned not to schools but to the press as their preferred means for articulating their collective place in history.

4

T H E W O M E N ' S M O V E M E N T, THE PRESS, AND EXEMPL ARY BIOGRAPHIES

S HO R T LY A F T E R T H E F O R M AT IO N of the Nationalist Women’s Association (Jami‘at-i Nisvan-i Vatankhah) in 1923, newspaper hawkers in the streets of Tehran loudly proclaimed the publication of a misogynistic printed facsimile, The Wiles of Women (Makr-i Zanan). The Wiles of Women set its sights on mocking and discrediting the Nationalist Women’s Association and the Iranian women’s movement more generally. Since the 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution, such associations had become a significant medium for mobilizing women on issues ranging from education and anti-imperialism to demanding collective legal rights from the government. Reacting to this attack on them in print, members of the Nationalist Women’s Association bought as many copies of The Wiles of Women as possible before converging on Tupkhanah Square. In a dramatic public display of self-assertion, they set fire to their copies of The Wiles of Women, sending a clear message to their opponents that they refused to be intimidated. When the head of this association, Muhtaram Khanum Iskandari, had to answer for this act before the police, she defended their actions, saying, “We did this act to defend the honor of your mothers and sisters. Like all human beings, we possess reason. We are not deceitful [makkar].”1 Although this episode ended in the burning of their opponents’ polemic, Iranian feminists usually defended their agenda with ink rather than fire. They employed history, and especially biography, to craft genealogies for feminist agendas in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Rhetorically, their techniques resembled those of Christine de Pizan, the ­fifteenth-century author of The Book of the City of Ladies. In her response to

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a misogynistic tract, de Pizan gathered famous women from history to populate the fictional City of Ladies, a symbolic refuge from the slanderous views of male authors. Through the invocation of three virtues—Reasons, Rectitude, and Justice—de Pizan brought to life a cast of historical and mythical female characters who made a case for the recognition of women’s role in society. These women included warriors, queens, sovereigns, literary figures, and saints who embodied these three virtues.2 Iranian women’s biographies in news­papers and magazines constituted an early twentieth-century version of the City of ­Ladies, one populated mostly by Eastern and Muslim women who championed alternative gender roles against their misogynistic interlocutors. Unlike histories produced at the court and for schools, women’s histories appeared almost exclusively in the press. Published in short, serialized form, these histories and biographies have escaped the attention of studies of early twentieth-century Iranian historiography as well as women’s and gender studies. By focusing on printed monographs, the scholarship on Iranian nationalist historiography has overwhelmingly assumed that in the early twentieth-century history was written exclusively by men.3 On the other hand, scholars of w ­ omen’s and gender studies in Iran have examined such diverse themes as sexuality, feminism, education, religion, and the press, but have ignored women as writers of history.4 The Iranian women’s press constituted a “subaltern counter­public”— namely “parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs.”5 Through the press, women circulated historical narratives and biographies of exemplary women as a means of redefining and rearticulating women’s roles in education, politics, and society. Iranian women sought to inscribe women into histories usually produced and inhabited by men. Women’s histories overwhelmingly focused on the status of women in Islamic history and underlined transnational solidarity between contemporary Muslim women. The Iranian women’s movement was part of a broad wave of near-contemporary movements in the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, French Syria and Lebanon, and India.6 Through counterhegemonic historical narratives, Iranian feminists endeavored to demonstrate that the reforms they espoused were grounded in history rather than unprecedented “heretical” innovations. In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, when women’s suffrage gained traction internationally, the press even broached the controversial issue of women’s suffrage through historical narratives of past women sovereigns. By the late 1920s, the waning of a vibrant women’s press and

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the official state promotion of a women’s reform program changed the tone of women’s histories dramatically: they no longer focused primarily on Islam but shifted attention to the Pahlavi state’s modernizing reforms. This shift heralded a new chapter in the women’s movement in which women erased their collective agency in deference to the fatherly figure of Riza Shah.

Women’s Voluntary Associations and the Press The proliferation of associations (anjumans) for women overlapped with the flowering of the women’s press in the early twentieth century. From the 1906 Constitutional Revolution onward, the term anjuman came to signify local and provincial bodies of informal and formal governance, guild and workers’ associations, confessional representative bodies, and literary associations. Each group promoted a collective agenda: women’s associations were outspoken advocates of establishing schools for girls, educating women about public health and hygiene, and elevating the social status of women. They held women’s meetings, founded orphanages, engaged in charitable activities, and published newspapers.7 Individual women wrote articles in general newspapers for much of the twentieth century.8 Especially by the late 1910s, women felt compelled to publish newspapers specifically for women as an extension of their associational activities. In a sense, women’s associations formed a triad of feminist activity alongside founding schools and publishing newspapers and magazines. By establishing schools for girls, they helped shape the sensibility of girls and young women who would potentially join the ranks of their cause and serve as an audience for their publications.9 Early pioneers and members of such associations were usually women from middle- and upper-class backgrounds. They were raised in aristocratic, bureaucratic, and clerical families that were interested in bringing about social change while also having the requisite literacy to write for the press. Those with aristocratic or bureaucratic connections included Muhtaram Iskandari, daughter of a Qajar prince; Nur al-Huda Manganah, daughter of a Qajar revenue official; Masturah Afshar, from a family of Azerbaijani notables; and Muzayyan alSaltanah, daughter of a chief medical advisor at the Qajar court. Those hailing from more religious backgrounds included Sadiqah Dawlatabadi, from a family of Shi‘i clerics with Babi affiliations; and Fakhr Afaq Parsa, from a religious family of modest means. Women’s associations were not restricted to Tehran, although certain women, such as Dawlatabadi and Parsa, came to T ­ ehran from

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Isfahan and Mashhad, respectively, after facing intense opposition to their activities there. Even as late as 1927, pro-Communist Rawshanak Nawdust formed a women’s organization and newspaper in Rasht.10 When and why did the writing of history become a central preoccupation of the women’s press? Early women’s newspapers lacked history articles. The two earliest women’s newspapers, Danish and Shikufah, published primarily on public health and hygiene issues, news of women’s activities abroad, and coverage of girls’ educational efforts. They carefully avoided overt political discussions, fearing political backlash. Danish was published around the time of the 1911 Russian Ultimatum that effectively shut down the Iranian parliament. Shikufah, although it started printing in 1913, published most of its issues during the early years of World War I, until it closed in 1916, by which time the Russians and British occupied the north and south of Iran, respectively.11 Only in the postwar era did Iranian women begin writing and reflecting on history in the press. The burgeoning of the women’s press in the 1919–1926 period coincided with the confluence of a number of factors. First, by 1919 women had participated in numerous public mobilizations in the form of protests, sit-ins, and demonstrations.12 Through these actions, they became more politically selfconscious and assertive. Second, girls’ schools, which had spread significantly after the Constitutional Revolution, included history in their curricula, creating a broader audience for serialized history in the press. Third, the postwar Wilsonian ideal of self-determination and increasing demand worldwide for women’s suffrage galvanized and emboldened the Iranian women’s movement, which now saw the struggle increasingly in transnational and historical terms. Fourth, the postwar period witnessed a general revival of serious press debates about the future direction of the country as wartime scarcity and occupation subsided. An overwhelming sense of optimism prevailed: many Iranian women felt it was their moment to steer educational, legal, and social reforms into the future. Finally, Iranian women used history as a response to clerical opposition to their activities by showing the Islamic pedigree for their proposed reforms.

Correcting Misrepresentations and Seeking Exemplary Women Postwar Iranian feminist editors and journalists justified the inclusion of a history and biography section in their newspapers on two grounds: they claimed that women had been excluded from male-centered histories, and they asserted that women had played a central role in history. With the aim of correcting un-

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fair characterizations of women, they set out to prove that historically women had been significant agents. Joan Wallach Scott has observed that early American female historians stressed “women’s positive contribution to the building of societies and cultures” in order to question “the presumed passivity or irrelevance of women” and “their invisibility in the historical record.” These women believed that “visibility would confer humanity, making self-evident the terms on which equality ought to be practiced.”13 Iranian feminists similarly viewed historical examples of women’s moral rectitude, educational capacity, and eloquence as evidence for the viability of their reformist agenda. Echoing educators’ claims about the centrality of education to citizenship, the Nationalist Women’s Magazine (Majallah-i Jami‘at-i Nisvan-i Vatankhah) claimed that its “historical section” included “knowledge that is essential and obligatory for everyone.”14 The Mashhad-based newspaper Women’s World (Jahan-i Zanan) believed that “by returning to histories and biographies of famous and well-known men and women,” readers would see how both men and women possessed praiseworthy “character, customs, and manners.”15 The underlying purpose was to prove “the equality of women in terms of thought, character, knowledge, and attributes.”16 History, according to the editors of the Isfahan newspaper Women’s Voice (Zaban-i Zanan), had a pedagogical and future-­oriented function: “the beauty of history is its ability to derive a future lesson [‘ibrat] from the negative aspects of the past and to make from its positive aspects an example.”17 The women’s press drew attention to the general absence or negative representation of women in the existing historical record. The Nationalist ­Women’s Magazine argued that “from ancient times most people have considered women to be abased and [have] looked at her with disgust and hatred.”18 One author who signed with the initials M. B. claimed that in thirteen and a half centuries “no mention was made of Iranian women except in a negative way.”19 Women’s World sought to rectify misrepresentations of women by relying on credible historical sources: “What can be extrapolated from a close study of historical texts is that women are regarded as agitated and rotten. . . . In truth, these are not authentic beliefs and cannot be proved by documented sources.”20 In another article, Women’s World went even further by arguing that women “played the key role in every [historical] episode.”21 These sentiments were echoed by an anonymous author who contended, “it is women who from the beginning of time until now are the source [mansha] of all historical events,” adding that “no important event has occurred in the world unless women have been ­involved.”22 Women’s World ­attributed the popularization of historical knowledge to women’s

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role as the transmitters of oral legends. When authors wanted to write on a “scientific, moral, or historical” issue, instead of “writing an extensive history” or similar scholarly work, “they inevitably had to present most of these issues in the form of a legend or novel.” Women were collectively responsible for popularizing such histories in the form of legends: “In general women are the masters of legends.”23 Having justified the need to include women in history, the women’s press included multiple histories and exemplary biographies in its pages. The topics and figures chosen for such histories reveal the women’s movement’s agenda, which included equality, the right to education, and recognition as socially significant agents. By publishing their biographies and serialized histories in the women’s press, Iranian women articulated subaltern counternarratives with which to contest the hegemony of patriarchy, particularly in the realm of religious discourse.

The Women’s Movement Between the Nation, Islam, and Transnational Solidarities Despite the centrality of nationalism in framing many works of history during the early 1920s, little emphasis was placed on the specific history of Iranian women in the press; instead, serialized histories and biographies overwhelmingly dealt with Muslim and “Eastern” women in general.24 These histories of the recent past employed a comparative method that emphasized analogies between the experiences of Iranian women and Muslim women in neighboring countries. Like their counterparts elsewhere, Iranian women represented themselves as the very embodiment of the nation, but this nationalism did not preclude turning toward non-Iranian women as exemplars. A woman named Irandukht published the most extensive press discussion of pre-Islamic women. She argued that ancient Iran enjoyed prosperity because of its recognition of women’s rights: “one of the general means of the progress and civilization of ancient Persian [Furs-i qadim] was the recognition of the rights of women and their participation in the individual and social life of ancient Iranians.”25 She further elaborated that “historians [arbab-i tarikh] noted the good [moral] character and elevated status of men and women of ancient Persia.”26 She connected this respect for women to the basic tenets of ­Zoroastrianism through “one of the special prayers of ancient Persia . . . that praised women.”27 Irandukht believed that this inherent respect

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for women in Zoroastrianism and pre-Islamic Iran manifested in the elevated “social status” of the contemporary “Zoroastrians of India.”28 Aside from this article, however, few feminists wrote on pre-Islamic Iranian women. Why did the history of pre-Islamic Iranian women receive so little attention in the women’s press? Such histories could have served as powerful means of articulating the goals of the women’s movement by reading them back into the distant “national” past. Instead, Iranian women overwhelmingly preferred to translate and write histories of Muslim women in general. As Deniz Kandiyoti has pointed out, “that feminists and traditionalists are equally concerned with appropriating the ‘true’ message of Islam indicates that all parties believe it to be the only legitimate ideological terrain on which issues pertaining to women can be debated.”29 Debates on the original role of women in Islamic history called into question prevailing patriarchal norms bolstered by appeals to religious doctrines. For instance, Iranian women writers claimed that seclusion and veiling were foreign and non-Islamic accretions to “authentic” Islam that could be identified historically. Having categorized popular Islamic practices as “inauthentic,” Iranian feminists could then call for a return to “authentic” Islam through necessary reforms. Simultaneous to their rereading of early Muslim women’s history, they closely followed the recent history of their counterparts in Muslim countries such as Egypt, Syria, the Ottoman Empire/Turkey, and Afghanistan who similarly contested prevailing gender norms. This engagement with other Muslim women implies that the women’s movement understood itself not only as a national phenomenon, but also as a transnational and international movement. In her discussion of nineteenthcentury international women’s movements, Susan Pedersen has argued that “feminism is shown to have been, from its inception, a deeply international movement; although national parties and politicians routinely tried to coopt or contain the movement, those international ties were never entirely severed.”30 Iranian women frequently adopted a transnational frame in which the category of Muslim women often took precedence over the category of women in general. They connected with other Muslim feminists in the region through translations of histories and biographies found in the women’s newspapers of Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, and Syria. Iranian women wrote in a distinctly nonsectarian mode: they did not emphasize the centrality of Shi‘i women over their Sunni counterparts, nor did they shy away from holding up early Sunni women as exemplary figures. They saw themselves as involved in an analogous contestation of the dominant narratives of Islamic history, irrespective of sec-

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tarian affiliation. Feminist polemics against Muslim clerics might explain their scant attention to sectarian differences. Many Muslim clerics resisted women’s reforms on doctrinal grounds, claiming that they contradicted the spirit of ­Islamic law.31 Because the realms of Islamic law and education were predominantly male spheres to which even literate women had only limited access, Iranian women provided a narrative counter to that of the clerics through reinterpretation of Islamic history. The construction of this counternarrative, however, came at a high price: opponents of the women’s movement accused many feminists of being irreligious, atheistic, or Babi. The specter of being labeled Babi—a term made synonymous with heresy—haunted pioneering women journalists and editors of the late 1910s and 1920s.32 Ever since mid-nineteenth-century Babi poet ­Qurrat al-‘Ayn Tahirah had publicly removed her face veil in 1848, many people feared that women were secretly conspiring to promote unveiling.33 According to Negar Mottahedeh, “cryptic references to Qurrat al-‘Ayn Tahirih’s unveiling represented the act as a sign of Iran’s degeneracy in the hands of foreign and European powers. . . .”34 The women’s press felt the need to rebut accusations that they were Babis leveled by their opponents. For instance, M. Q. Adib railed against those who repeatedly accused members of the women’s movement of being Babi, arguing that Iranian feminists’ platform was in line with the shari‘ah while their enemies mixed superstition with religion.35 The lives of several early twentieth-century Iranian feminists point to how opponents of the women’s movement equated their ideas and acts with heresy. Sadiqah Dawlatabadi, a prominent feminist from, as mentioned earlier, a Babi background and founder of the newspaper Women’s Voice, faced constant harassment because of her heterodox affiliations and political dissent.36 She was forced to shut down her newspaper, in part because she published an article critical of the government of Prime Minister Vusuq al-Dawlah.37 Fakhr Afaq Parsa, editor of Women’s World in Mashhad, closed her newspaper due to ­harassment she faced after publishing a letter to the editor that criticized sermons and popular Shi‘i mourning rituals. The governor of Khurasan, Qavam al-Saltanah, thought it prudent for Fakhr Afaq Parsa and her husband to leave the province, because he feared for their safety.38 Because of an article in ­Women’s World that said the “veil of superstition” should be lifted, people began to spread rumors that Parsa was “irreligious” (bidin) and an “infidel” (kafir).39 During her exile in Qum, Parsa’s personal effects were plundered when she was preparing to move, because the neighbors said “these possessions belong to

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the irreligious” and therefore “plunder is acceptable” (gharat halal ast).40 In the early 1920s, a preacher accused the Nationalist Women’s Association of calling women to unveil, resulting in its founder, Muhtaram Iskandari, becoming the target of a crowd that hurled stones at her.41 Given such sustained opposition and charges of heresy, Iranian women were often compelled to prove their Islamic credentials. They wrote histories in order to impress upon their audience two interrelated points: first, that leading women in Islamic history were educated, eloquent, and intelligent; second, that Muslim women had historically enjoyed certain rights but had lost them due to a deviation from “true” Islam. According to the women’s press, this deviation was inextricably linked to the decline of Islamic civilization and the present condition of Muslim women. The women’s press, almost from the very beginning, cited the Islamic tradition (hadith) that “knowledge is necessary and incumbent upon every male and female Muslim” as a religious justification for women’s education. But beyond this, they made little attempt to ground their arguments in scripture and doctrine; instead, proponents of women’s education turned to history to make a compelling case. For instance, a music teacher named Mawlud believed that the Prophet Muhammad ended pre-Islamic Arabian barbarism by encouraging women’s education.42 Others pointed to educated Muslim women in the distant past as evidence of the need for women’s education. Nur al-Huda Manganah described the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter Sadiqah Kubra as an “­exemplar of eloquence” and as having “surpassed all the companions [­sahabah] of the Prophet” in knowledge.43 Citing another example, Manganah argued that Sakinah, daughter of Imam Husayn, embodied the tradition that “knowledge is incumbent and necessary” through her poetry.44 The editors of another newspaper considered Asma, daughter of one of the companions of the Prophet, “an eloquent and well-spoken woman possessing noble and precise thought.”45 Bringing this historical example to bear on the present situation, the article ended with a rhetorical question: How could present female readers best implement the Prophet Muhammad’s injunction to Asma that women must “act well toward their husbands”? Their response was that this could be accomplished only through “studying the science of ethics and education [akhlaq va tarbiyat].”46 Biographies of exemplary females from later periods of Islamic history functioned as similar justification for women’s education in the present. W ­ omen’s World praised fourteenth-century Muslim woman Fatimah Bint ‘Abbas (d. c. 1314)

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for her command of Islamic jurisprudence ( fiqh) and her eloquence while debating Muslim clerics and jurists (‘ulama va fuqaha).47 Traditionalist scholar Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328) had initially wanted to prevent Fatimah from preaching, but after dreaming of the Prophet Muhammad, who told him that “Fatimah was an upright woman,” he abandoned his opposition.48 This tale of a traditionalist cleric ending his opposition to a learned woman because of the prophet Muhammad’s endorsement conveyed a warning to contemporary traditionalist clerics who opposed women’s education. Iranian women insisted that Islam afforded women certain rights, although these rights were left somewhat undefined. They firmly believed that Islam was (and should continue to be) responsible for positive transformation in the living conditions of women. The most frequently recurring example of the “­barbaric” treatment of women in pre-Islamic Arabia was the burying of infant girls alive. F. L. Hidayat credited Arab prosperity in early Islamic history to the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings on women.49 While Iranian women interpreted early Islamic history as confirming their drive for women’s rights and education, they also sought to identify the causes for decline in later periods. Masturah Afshar explicitly linked decline to ignorance: “the cause of the overthrow [izmihlal], decline, and destruction of Islamic nations today is . . . ignorance.”50 The early Muslim empires of the Umayyads and the ‘Abbasids were often blamed for decline. Women’s World claimed that it was the lack of Umayyad attention to “religious proscriptions” to educate women that resulted in the decline of Islam.51 It blamed the U ­ mayyads for spreading a libertine lifestyle at the court, where “beautiful maidens and handsome boys” became the playthings of men while “wine and liquor” contributed to the low social status of women.52 Women’s World adapted this article from an unnamed Egyptian newspaper, which indicates the transnational linkages between Muslim feminists through translation. Unlike many contemporary Arabic newspapers, this Egyptian news­paper did not place Arab nationalist pride in the Umayyad legacy above critiques of patriarchy. In contrast, the Gilan-based Messenger of Women’s Prosperity (Payk-i Sa‘adat) blamed the later Abbasid dynasty for women’s subjugated social position. An interview with the queen of Afghanistan, Soraya Tarzi, included her view that the purdah, the seclusion and veiling of women, was an un-Islamic ‘Abbasid-era innovation.53 Shifting from the distant to the recent past, Iranian feminists compared their situation to that of neighboring Muslim countries where women’s reforms

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had been successfully adopted. The women’s press assumed that such reforms were in line with Islam and therefore equally applicable to Iran. Comparisons with other Muslim countries underscored similarities and glossed over differences in ethnicity, sectarian affiliation, and political system, reinforcing a sense of broad regional solidarity. Maryam Raf ‘atzadah, for example, pointed out that Afghanistan, a Sunni Muslim country, had embarked on an ambitious series of reforms, particularly in the field of education. She asked rhetorically, “Aren’t these Muslims? Don’t they have greater Islamic zeal than we do?” She cited the Afghan Newspaper The Guidance of Women (Irshad al-Nisvan) of Kabul as evidence of educational reforms and as a “lesson” (‘ibrat) for Iranians, adding in a condescending manner, “I see that this recently civilized state is ahead of the 6,000-year-old Iranian civilization in every respect. . . .”54 Masturah Afshar, on the other hand, looked not to Afghanistan but to Muslims further West: “Turkish and Arab scholars, thinkers, and learned figures . . . have proven that the general cause of ignorance, calamity, and abasement of Islamic nations is Muslim women who today are debased and lowly and are deprived of human rights [huquq-i bashariyah].”55 In discussing this issue, she quoted the famous Turkish poet Abdülhak Hamit Bey, who claimed that “the women of a nation are the measure of the degree of its progress.”56 Afshar, who had lived in Tiflis prior to being in Iran, mentioned that the Shaykh alIslam of the Caucasus had once delivered an impassioned speech at a gathering of twenty-five girls in which he produced many “legal [shar‘i] and historical proofs showing that from its origins the religion of Islam has not blocked the progress and elevation of women.”57 Afshar’s placement of “historical proofs” on par with Islamic legal ones suggests the importance given to historical interpretation in challenging the hegemony of Islamic legal constructions of woman’s social roles. Afshar also praised the reforms of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V Reşat, especially his passing of the Family Rights Law.58 After describing these and other women’s reforms in Turkey, Afshar expressed hope that “all of the progress of women of Iran would also be based on the holy commandments of the true religion of Islam.”59 She called on Iranian clerics to champion the cause of women, insisting that “the women of Iran, like Turkish women and other Muslim women, should enter society and obtain human rights so long as they understand their ancient customs and . . . national character well and take steps toward the royal road of progress in line with their ancient and praiseworthy attributes and customs.”60 Afshar invoked the role played by women in other

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Muslim countries—whether in the early centuries of Islam or in the more contemporary period—as a justification for women’s rights. For Iranian feminists of the 1910s and 1920s, Islam framed the writing of women’s history. Through a counterhegemonic reading of Islamic history, they sought to create a historical precedence for their women’s rights and education program. Transnational solidarity with women in other Muslim countries implied the interchangeability of Muslim women’s experiences, showing how progressive measures in one Muslim country could be adopted universally in others. The emphasis on transnational women’s experiences became a subtle yet powerful means of promoting controversial reforms in education, law, and even electoral politics.

Women’s Suffrage as Citizenship Tales The women’s movement’s demand for education and rights could be construed as apolitical and domestically oriented, especially because women’s education focused on topics such as housekeeping, cooking, family budgeting, and ­sewing.61 Less clear, however, is the extent to which Iranian feminists wanted to participate in electoral politics. Whether or not they sought the right to vote in the 1910s and 1920s has been subject to debate. According to Camron Michael Amin, Iranian women did not pursue suffrage prior to the fall of Riza Shah in 1941.62 In making this judgment, Amin relies on explicit references in the women’s press as evidence. But a close reading of women’s biographies, histories, and coverage of suffrage movements in other countries suggests a more complex picture. Iranian women’s calls for political participation in the press adopted the idiom of biography. The general non-Western enthusiasm for the Wilsonian ideal of self-determination and the resurgence of suffrage movements in Europe, North America, and Australia in the postwar era formed the international context for these discussions. The case for women’s suffrage in Iran was made in two interconnected ways: first, the press reported on recent examples of women asserting themselves politically and demanding the right to vote; second, the press included biographies of women sovereigns—particularly in the “East”— who provided historical precedents for women’s involvement in ­politics. ­Coverage of women’s political involvement in neighboring Muslim countries was similarly meant to impress on the reader women’s political acumen and capabilities in the present.

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The Iranian women’s movement’s discussion of electoral politics occurred alongside coverage of the Wilsonian ideal of self-determination. Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points became a rallying call for many non-Western nations seeking political independence and autonomy from European colonial ­powers.63 Even if Iran was not formally colonized during the war, nationalists feared Britain’s political domination in the aftermath of the war and therefore sought representation at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference to ensure the nation’s sovereignty.64 The liberatory potential of demanding national self-­ determination dovetailed neatly with the women’s movements in these same countries that were seeking the right for women to vote.65 A Persian biography of Woodrow Wilson’s wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, claimed that she was capable of taking on “all of the responsibilities of the president of America”66— further evidence of how the Wilsonian ideal of self-determination and the call for women’s political rights were expressed through the medium of biography. In nearby Egypt, the popular demand for representation at the Paris Peace Conference led to the formation of the Wafd party. Women played a pivotal role in the Wafd party, a fact that caught the attention of the Iranian women’s press. Marilyn Booth argues that the Egyptian press represented Safiyah ­Zaghlul, wife of the Wafd Party’s founder, Sa‘d Zaghlul, and a noted activist in her own right, as an emblem of Egyptian national unity rather than as a primarily Muslim woman.67 But in the Iranian press, Safiyah Zaghlul embodied aspirations for a more robust role for women in politics irrespective of nationality. An author with the initials P. A. who wrote in The Messenger of Women’s Prosperity praised Safiyah Zaghlul for her role as “guardian of the party.”68 Egypt was not the only source of regional inspiration for Iranian feminists. The Women’s Journal translated Syrian parliamentary debates on the right of women to vote and become candidates for election that were originally published in the Syrian newspaper Al-Jami‘ah al-Suriyah.69 Very quickly, however, The Women’s Journal (Namah-i Banuvan) received harsh criticism from those who accused it of advocating women’s right to vote. The editors expressed seemingly contradictory responses to these criticisms: on the one hand, they distanced themselves from the pro-suffrage implications of the piece; on the other hand, they continued to publish articles on various suffrage movements abroad. ­Deflecting such criticism, The Women’s Journal claimed that it was not endorsing the right to vote but merely calling for “moral renewal” and “education” for women. It went so far as to say that in the absence of these two conditions, the right to vote was dangerous.70 To reinforce this position, the

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paper included an article by Maryam Raf ‘atzadah that said Iranian women were currently too superstitious to vote and therefore required further education (implying that women would someday be capable of voting so long as they had the requisite amount of education).71 In the very same issue, the editors published a notice about Ottoman woman Halide Edip Adivar’s apparent appointment to the Ministry of Education, a translated article by the Syrian Adib Sahib that made the case for women’s right to vote, and coverage of the International Women’s Congress, where fourteen participating countries had granted women suffrage.72 In some instances, women’s newspapers came quite close to calling for women’s suffrage explicitly. Women’s Voice asked readers to imagine how recent elections would have turned out differently if Iranian women could vote. It suggested that women would never vote for a despotic candidate but would instead vote for a “rational” and “pro-constitutional” candidate. Because Persian lacks gendered pronouns, whether or not such an ideal candidate would be a woman was left somewhat ambiguous.73 Reading such criticisms of the government alongside women’s biographies and histories reveals sophisticated articulations of citizenship bolstered by historical narratives. Of all the contemporary Muslim women who attracted the attention of the Iranian women’s press, none was quite as prominent as Ottoman-Turkish novelist and activist Halide Edip. In the early 1920s it was widely rumored that the Ottoman government had appointed her Minister of Education.74 ­Women’s World dwelled on the exemplary nature of her story: “the biography of the aforementioned [Halide Edip] was published as a source of pride and honor or for chastising and awakening Muslim women. . . .” 75 The editors, however, considered the excessive adulation of Edip as unwarranted in light of history, “because we know of many women who each individually administered the affairs of government with strong and steely opinions, who established their own government, who ruled, and who, in their own time, even [in comparison to] . . . men, were the best [source of] pride.”76 Women’s World then turned to a pre-Islamic Arab female sovereign to contrast with Halide Edip: Zenobia, the third-century queen of P ­ almyra.77 The newspaper did not choose an Iranian “national” figure such as the pre-Islamic Sasanian queens Purandukht and Arizmidukht to contrast with H ­ alide Edip, because nationalism was not the exclusive preoccupation of Iranian feminists who were writing history. Instead, it was an Arab woman who became the embodiment of female sovereignty. Zenobia was described not only in terms

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of her “beautiful face” and “pearl-like teeth,” but also in terms of her “physical strength” and “wide-learning.”78 The biography detailed how she transformed Palmyra from a Roman tributary into a state spanning Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Asia Minor.79 It ended by appropriating her as a universal female figure: “Zenobia and her likes are among the rare women which all nations should take pride in!”80 As Marilyn Booth has argued in the case of a 1923 biography of Zenobia in the Egyptian press, “biography drew exemplarity from Zenobia’s public persona, at a moment in which Egyptians were poised for constitutional government, Egyptian women were making forthright political demands for themselves, and optimism about the country’s political future prevailed.”81 Similarly, in Iran the post-First World War period was one of hope and enthusiasm after a lull in constitutionalist activities. The subtext of this Persian biography is clear: it was meant to contrast Halide Edip and Zenobia as potential models of ­women’s involvement in politics. Although Edip supposedly held a political post, Zenobia was the sole sovereign. Reading this article alongside another brief article in the same issue that detailed the right of women to vote and become candidates in several states in the United States, Australia, and Finland, among other places, the implication for contemporary Iranian women becomes apparent: the article ended by contrasting these exemplary women with their Iranian counterparts, saying that “In Iran, women have not even been given the right to choose [or elect] [intikhab] a husband!”82 The juxtaposition of Zenobia and Halide Edip, of a past sovereign with a current political figure, conveyed to the Iranian reader the potential recognition of women as full and equal citizens in the realm of electoral politics. ­Iranian women in the early 1920s clung to the hope that armed with education and women’s rights they might someday participate fully within electoral ­politics. As these examples illustrate, the women’s press was far from consistent in presenting a demand for women’s suffrage. Ambiguity was part of their subaltern strategy of circulating the idea of women’s political rights while disavowing an explicit commitment to this goal. As Booth has pointed out in the case of the Egyptian women’s press, “rejecting a political role for themselves, journals offered biographies that reinserted an interest in women’s political rights around the world. At the same time, largely eliding the issue of political demands, these magazines articulated no rearguard action; they did not need to actively deny that women wanted political right, as some later magazines did.”83 Iranian women writing during roughly the same period similarly used

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biographies and history to “reinsert” the issue of women’s political rights into broader public debates. Because the women’s press constituted a counterpublic, its call for suffrage was oblique, allowing for a “rearguard defense” against possible attacks. The use of language and historical allegories therefore constituted a central component of the strategies of those advocating a redefined political role for women.

Pahlavi State Cooptation and the Writing of Women’s History The coronation of Riza Shah in 1926 ushered in an era of increasing press censorship and therefore an overall decrease in the number of newspapers, journals, and magazines. The women’s press was no exception to this trend; the state closed down women’s newspapers despite its cooptation of parts of the women’s agenda. Many individuals who were part of the women’s movement in the late Qajar era became supporters of the state-sponsored Pahlavi program of women’s reform by the late 1920s and 1930s. These reforms had implications for women’s historiography as the emphasis on earlier periods of history disappeared almost entirely, as did the centrality of Islam. Two relatively lengthy histories of women—one focusing on Iranian women and one on women internationally—highlighted a more presentist orientation in women’s historiography. Unlike late Qajar-era women’s histories, these new Pahlavi-era histories were predicated on the erasure of the recent past of the Iranian women’s movement. Why did such a shift in the writing of women’s history occur? First, the position of women reformers changed in relation to state power. Because Riza Shah was anxious to promote women’s education and their greater involvement in public activities—positions that had already been advocated earlier but not necessarily implemented—many reformist women were willing to lend their support to the state. By doing so, they went from occupying a subaltern counter­hegemonic position to a more hegemonic one. The women’s movement’s change in position ironically entailed collective amnesia about their recent past. Two prominent Pahlavi-era reformers, Sadiqah Dawlatabadi and Hazhar T ­ arbiyat, ascribed the realization of women’s reforms solely to Riza Shah, at the expense of recognizing women’s agency. By doing so, these two authors probably intended to deflect potential harsh criticisms by locating the impetus for reform in Riza Shah.84 Sadiqah Dawlatabadi’s brief history of Iranian women appeared in response to the 1932 visit of Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore.85 Tagore was a

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champion of women’s rights in India, where through popular songs, poetry, and other writings he called for redefining Indian women’s social roles. Dawlatabadi’s brief history was published a year later in the women’s newspaper The World of Women (‘Alam-i Nisvan).86 Writing almost exclusively about the recent past, she organized the piece thematically rather than strictly chronologically. ­Dawlatabadi preferred educational, literary, and legal topics over economic and political ones for her history. She wrote the history of Iranian women recently educated in Iran and abroad, their role in forming associations, their print activities, and their writing of poetry.87 The one exception to her presentist orientation, however, was a passing reference to the Arab legacy in Iran. Dawlatabadi blamed the Arabs for “religious upheavals” (inqilab-i mazhabi) that brought about Iran’s “ruin” (viran).88 Dawlatabadi, like those who wrote a decade earlier, employed a comparative perspective throughout her history. She compared women’s rights and freedoms in Iran favorably to those in Europe because the former were rooted in Islamic law (qanun-i Islam).89 She simultaneously praised the advancement of European women in education and the sciences.90 When it came to the issue of veiling, she preferred Iranian policies to Turkish ones, observing that in Iran women were given the choice to unveil or not, whereas in Turkey the state mandated unveiling in certain cases.91 Ironically, the Iranian state embarked on an even more robust unveiling campaign several years later.92 If Sadiqah Dawlatabadi occasionally made comparative remarks, Hazhar Tarbiyat’s history of women was explicitly international in scope. She situated Iranian women within an international movement for women’s rights. Her history was published as a “treatise” (risalah), although she intended this work to be the kernel for a full-length history entitled The History of the World of Women (Tarikh-i Jahan-i Zanan) that never saw the light of day.93 After briefly considering women’s advances in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ­Tarbiyat placed the fundamental transformation of women’s roles squarely within the twentieth century. Focusing on the First World War, she recounted how women played significant public and leadership roles in factories, farms, and households when men went to the warfront.94 Continuing on the theme of women and war, she singled out for praise the English woman Florence Nightingale for her humanitarian deeds during the Crimean War.95 Tarbiyat described women as historical agents undergoing a simultaneous international transformation: “In the twentieth century, many transformations and changes appeared in the individual and social condition of women, and

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her body and soul progressed and developed quickly under the good influence of these changes.”96 Having defined women as a universal subject of history, Tarbiyat’s history was then organized by nation, starting with England and continuing with America, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, Holland, Austria-Hungary, Yugoslavia and the Balkan countries, Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal, Japan, China, India, Turkey, and Egypt. She hailed the Women’s International Congress (Kungrah-i Bayn al-Milali-yi Zanan) for bringing together women from all over the world.97 In the final section of the treatise, Tarbiyat placed the history of Iranian women alongside the histories of other women’s movements. Unlike her narrative of women in other countries, Tarbiyat’s account of women in Iran revolved around a single figure: Riza Shah. She painted a bleak picture of pre-Pahlavi Iran as a dark place for women. Despite women’s attempts to start newspapers, she reflected, “their hands and feet would be strongly bound in chains and they would not succeed” because of “ignorance and prejudice.”98 Echoing the sentiments of early Pahlavi-era Iranian history textbooks, Tarbiyat cast Riza Shah as women’s “savior” (naji) through his progressive reforms.99 The section dealing with the history of Iranian women was titled “The Seventeenth Day of [the Month of ] Day” (Ruz-i Hiftahum-i Day, January 7, 1936)—an allusion to the day Riza Shah ordered mass unveiling in Iran—which she referred to as a “new and historic day.”100 In aggrandizing this day and making it the turning point for women’s history in Iran, Tarbiyat partook in the erasure and trivialization of the Iranian women’s movement. She ended her treatise with a bold but dubious statement about the uniqueness and grandeur of the Iranian women’s movement: We in this work [maqal] have seen and considered the history of all of the [women’s] movements of all countries and in no place in the world have we seen a movement as important . . . and a transformation this great and as worthy of respect and praise which came about in such a short period of time ­

and with such ease and facility. Therefore the women of Iran are continually thankful toward their crowned and powerful father, his holiness [Riza Shah], who saved us. . . .101

The characterization of Iranian women’s rights as having come easily ignored the continual efforts of women as a collective to push for those rights and ascribed all agency to the “crowned and powerful father.” By a strange twist, the Iranian “City of Ladies” had become dependent on a dominant crowned father.

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g In the late 1910s and early 1920s, women constructed counterhegemonic historical narratives as part of their reformist agenda. The political fragmentation of the immediate postwar era, a revived domestic press, and the international enthusiasm created by Wilsonian ideals led Iranian women to debate vigorously their rights and their role in society and politics. Women’s associations brought together mostly middle- and upper-class women, who published newspapers and magazines to advance their cause. In the press they published histories and biographies of exemplary Muslim and “Eastern” women to prove that their proposed reforms were not contrary to Islam or to broader societal values because there were powerful historical precedents for their goals. Most of the Iranian women’s histories written in the late 1910s and 1920s were done so in the context of a weak state and a relatively free press. ­Although this situation allowed for a degree of autonomy for newspapers, it also meant that female journalists and editors were vulnerable to attacks by their opponents. Riza Shah’s ascent to power ironically heralded the attenuation of ­women’s historical writing. As the state increasingly co-opted much of the women’s reformist program—most notably including girls’ education and the granting of increasing legal rights—the task of articulating historical narratives for these reforms lost its urgency. Instead, histories became a means of contrasting women’s new status to an increasingly bleak past. In both instances, the relation of the women’s movement to the field of power is worth noting. Initially, Iranian feminists made their case from a subordinate position through a subaltern counterhegemonic public. Although they were often restricted in what they could openly say, they retained a level of institutional autonomy, both in forming their own associations and in establishing nonstate schools. The Pahlavi state forcibly disbanded women’s associations and brought private schools under the purview of the Ministry of Education. Much of the rhetoric and ideals of the women’s movement now became used by the state and thus hegemonic; this did not mean, however, that feminists were in a purely dominant position. Once co-opted, many women felt compelled to erase their own collective agency in bringing about reforms by replicating the statist discourse of attributing all agency to Riza Shah. This act involved doing symbolic violence to themselves in order to enjoy the benefits of a dominant position, much like provincial dwellers change their accents once in the capital city so as to avoid being marked as different and

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therefore subordinate.102 In fact, Iranian women’s experiences paralleled those of province dwellers: both groups sought to locate themselves within the dominant discourse of nationalism and to assert their rights as citizens of a modern state. Only by subsuming their difference within the homogeneity of the nation could they achieve recognition.

5

WRITING THE LOCAL I N T O T H E NAT I O NA L

I N J A N UA R Y 1 9 2 5 , Riza Khan, the soon-to-be shah, sent military forces marching into the southern Iranian province of Khuzistan. His objective was to undermine the regional autonomy of Shaykh Khaz‘al, leader of the Arab Ka‘b tribe and Shaykh of Muhammara. In less than a year’s time, Riza Khan succeeded not only in imposing military rule in the province, but also in capturing Khaz‘al and placing him under virtual house arrest until his death in 1936. Khuzistan was one of many provinces in Iran that had enjoyed de facto autonomy for well over a decade. Riza Khan defeated many leaders of provincial autonomous movements throughout the early and mid-1920s, with the goal of re-establishing the central state’s authority over the entire country. Long after Riza Khan’s defeat of the likes of Shaykh Khaz‘al on the battlefield, the specter of provincial autonomist movements haunted Iranian historians. One such historian was Ahmad Kasravi, who witnessed the drama between Riza Khan and Shaykh Khaz‘al unfolding before his own eyes while serving as a judge in Khuzistan. As a champion of the rule of law, Kasravi managed to raise the ire of Khaz‘al and his supporters in local government circles. He fared no better in his relationship with Riza Khan, because he resented the meddling of Riza Khan’s military officers in the local judiciary. This resentment led to his recall to Tehran shortly after the arrival of army troops.1 Kasravi’s experience of this turbulent episode found expression in his obsession with answering the question of why Khuzistan seemed prone to rebellion. His answer came in the form of a history of Khuzistan in which he implicated tribalism, heterodoxy, and European imperial interests as the main culprits.

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At the heart of the dilemma faced by local historians was the question of how to deal with ethnic, tribal, linguistic, and religious difference within the nation.2 Their solution was to advocate “integrative nationalism,” in which national unity subsumed all regional diversity.3 This process of integrating the local into the national was by no means uniform: some historians sought the roots of national authenticity in an ancient Iranian past, others in racial and linguistic purity, while still others looked to recent political history and the role of particular localities and peoples in “defending” Iranian soil against domestic and international threats. Beginning at the time of the 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution, local historians used the language of nationalism to authenticate the local. One of their main discursive strategies was to show how a particular local population was the defender of the nation against domestic or external threats or both. For instance, local historians writing before 1926 typically focused on the recent past, when local populations, such as the Bakhtiyaris, Tabrizis, Mashhadis, Shirazis, and Isfahanis, were the main agents in anti-imperialist and constitutionalist struggles. Regionalist movements of the early to mid-1920s provided alternatives to a Tehran-based vision of Iranian nationalism. These alternatives ranged from tribal autonomy within a loosely national framework, such as those in Kurdistan and Khuzistan, to regionalist federalist movements that foregrounded a particular set of reforms found in the provinces, such as those in Azerbaijan and Gilan. With the rise of the centralizing state of Riza Shah, fears of re-emerging regionalism loomed large in local historiography. Local historians, who often were from provincial backgrounds themselves, therefore sought to bury possibly competing nationalisms of the early to mid-1920s. The centralizing and homogenizing strands of Pahlavi nationalism expressed themselves in two historiographical tendencies: the first highlighted the authentically Iranian nature of provinces such as Gilan, Kurdistan, and Khuzistan while castigating autonomist movements within each province as aberrations; the second stressed the positive urban transformations spearheaded by the Pahlavi state through the restoration of monuments and the proliferation of schools, roads, and urban institutions in cities like Yazd and Isfahan.

Local Histories, Citizenship, and the Nation Local historians writing about Tabriz, Mashhad, and the Bakhtiyari tribe during and immediately after the Constitutional Revolution cast local populations

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as the defenders of the constitution. These local histories presented a vision of nationalism in which citizenship entailed the defense of the constitution in the formed of armed resistance. Muhammad Baqir Vijuyah published the earliest constitutional-era chronicle of a single event: the Tabriz uprising during the 1908–1909 Lesser Tyranny. The text interwove his personal reminiscences with telegrams written by various notable figures and lithographed images depicting battles. Vijuyah covered four months of the uprising from the distinct perspective of the Vijuyah neighborhood in Tabriz. His position, like those of most other contemporary historians of the revolution, was staunchly pro-constitutionalist, although he came from an atypical social background: he was a colored cloth dealer (qadak furush) from humble beginnings who later became a wealthy merchant. Apparently self-educated, he wrote the history in his old age.4 As a merchant, Vijuyah wrote glowingly about the commercial activities of his fellow Tabrizis, whom he described as primarily artisans and traders. He praised them for keeping their shops open during the four months of the Tabriz uprisings. He considered Tabrizis to be almost universally pro-­constitutional, even those in the ostensibly pro-absolutist neighborhoods of Surkhab and Shuturban. Vijuyah justified the Tabrizi constitutionalist uprising of 1908 on two grounds: first, they were defending the “rights” (huquq) of the nation; second, they were following the religious dictates of high-ranking Shi‘i clerical authorities who resided in Najaf.5 Similar to the opponents of the w ­ omen’s movement, the enemies of constitutionalism in Tabriz tried to discredit democracy as a heretical innovation incompatible with Islam. Throughout his narrative, Vijuyah noted that pro-absolutists unfairly accused constitutionalists of being “heretical” Babis and hence argued that their lives and property were no longer protected by Islamic law.6 He depicted two tribes, the Shahsavans and the Qaradaghis, as opportunistic royalist collaborators who plundered and pillaged pro-constitutionalist neighborhoods, an assessment that betrayed an urban mistrust of tribal populations.7 Muhammad Husayn Adib Hiravi Khurasani’s History of the Tus Uprising was a near-contemporary account of the 1912 Russian bombing of a Shi‘i shrine, Astan-i Quds-i Razavi, located in Mashhad. Similar to Vijuyah, Adib Hiravi was a pro-constitutionalist historian from the city about which he wrote. The history included dated entries on specific events (presumably from the author’s own observations and notes), copies of telegrams and foreign consular reports, excerpts from contemporary newspapers, and interviews with other eye­witnesses.

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Adib Hiravi wrote his history in 1920 with the benefit of eight years of hindsight. Earlier in his life he had studied Arabic and Islamic law and jurisprudence (usul va fiqh) with the famed literary figure Adib Tusi. By the time of the Constitutional Revolution, he had become a teacher in the modern schools.8 Adib Hiravi vilified the Russian troops that were occupying Iran. The Russians had disarmed the local Mashhad police and rendered them ineffectual. But the biggest offense the Russians committed—the very reason that the events of 1912 inspired a separate history to begin with—was their bombing of the shrine of Imam Riza. Adib Hiravi described how the Russians pillaged some of the valuable belongings in the shrine and surrounding bazaars in their pursuit of the constitutionalists who were taking refuge there. He even provided statistics on the number of bullets and cannonballs fired at the shrine during this encounter. The villains of his narrative were two royalist anticonstitutional figures: Sayyid Muhammad Yazdi Talib al-Haqq, a charismatic exiled preacher, and Yusuf Khan Harati, a highway bandit. Talib al-Haqq delivered fiery speeches claiming that “constitutionalism is infidelity [kufr], a constitutionalist is an infidel [kafir], and a democrat is a Babi.”9 Both men attacked newly established institutions such as the judiciary, the police, and the modern administrations (idarat); they wanted instead the traditional system of neighborhood justice (biglarbigi ).10 They cursed newspaper editors and requested that the local newspapers be shut down.11 Adib Hiravi ended the narrative by recounting the fate of those implicated in the bombing of the shrine, as if to suggest their divine chastisement: both Harati and Talib al-Haqq were killed shortly after this episode. Meanwhile, Russian commander Radku, who led the troops in Mashhad, met his death in Iran during World War I.12 Whereas Vijuyah and Adib Hiravi wrote the histories of the cities, other historians wrote collaboratively about the Bakhtiyari tribe.13 Published in 1909, The History of the Bakhtiyaris was a break with previous local histories because of its preoccupation with historically defining the local in terms of the central components of nationalism, ranging from race, language, geography, and politics to religion. Fourteen authors and translators, including a female translator named Mademoiselle Hajib, collaborated in the writing of the text.14 The head of the tribe, ‘Ali Quli Khan Sardar As‘ad, was the chief source, patron, and supervisor of the text. Former court chronicler ‘Abd al-Husayn Lisan al-Saltanah Sipihr, who was also known by the title Malik al-Mu’arrikhin, wrote significant portions of the narrative as well.15 As a member of a notable Bakhtiyari family, Sardar As‘ad had a private tutor in Persian and Arabic early in life; he

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also studied European thought (apparently on his own) because “in those days there was no trace of modern learning among the Bakhtiyaris.”16 In 1900/1901 he traveled through India and Egypt en route to Europe, where he paid “special attention to the scientific, historical, and political aspects of Europe” for the benefit of his country. With the onset of the 1908 counterrevolution, Sardar As‘ad used his considerable personal wealth to mobilize the growing community of Iranian exiled constitutionalists against the autocratic Muhammad ‘Ali Shah.17 He returned to Iran and led the B ­ akhtiyari tribe in a triumphant march on Tehran that toppled the shah in 1909. Sardar As‘ad’s special love of history, “particularly Western histories,” may have inspired him to patronize and contribute to The History of the B ­ akhtiyaris.18 The text drew not only on Persian, Arabic, and European sources, but also on oral tribal traditions.19 The inclusion of oral traditions gave the history a unique ethnographic dimension.20 The history lacked a simple structure: in certain places it was chronological, bordering on annalistic when it broke into sections narrating the events of given years, but in other places it digressed to consider a wide array of topics, including tribal genealogies, European and Persian travelogues, explanations of rituals, and etymological discussions. Richly illustrated with lithographic images and stone inscriptions, and photographs of Bakhtiyari leaders and tribesmen, it stood out as a unique text in its time. Unlike most subsequent regional and local histories, it provided a more multilayered perspective when it came to explaining the supposedly “unruly” behavior of this tribe toward the state. In its discussion of two important Bakhtiyari leaders, ‘Ali Murad Khan and Asad Khan Shirkush, The History of the Bakhtiyaris differed from contemporary Qajar court chronicles that cast the two men as mere rebels (yaghi); instead, it valorized them as strong independent rulers.21 The authors’ inclusion of numerous translations of European sources did not signal passive deference to Western scholarship: they decisively critiqued Orientalists’ essentialist views of the tribe. Commenting on precisely such views expressed by the English historian of Iran Sir John Malcolm, they pointed out that since Malcolm wrote his book, Bakhtiyari “customs have changed a lot” and “overall customs among the tribes are different and are in many ways contradictory such that every tribal confederacy (il ) has a custom and every tribe (ta’ifah) has a distinct law (qanun) and every tribe has different clans (­tirahha) and every clan’s law differs from every other branch.”22 In this passage, the authors displayed the cultural confidence to critique negative or essentializing representations by pointing out the heterogeneous, complex, and

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dynamic nature of tribal life against the static, simplistic, and reductive representation of a European historian of Iran.23 The History of the Bakhtiyaris nationalized the tribe by invoking its racial, linguistic, geographic, and racial characteristics. After recounting a series of contending theories of the origin of the Bakhtiyaris—including one that claimed they were racially Greek—the authors strongly affirmed the tribe’s Iranian origin: “Let there be no mistake that their customs, manners, origins, nobility, language, and speech demonstrate that they are pure Iranians [­Iranian-i khalis].”24 They argued that the Bakhtiyari dialect and its customs were pure because “this tribe is Sasanian in origin and Iranian racially” and “their language did not mix with Arabic and Turkish and their character and mores are [in line with] Iranian nobility and authenticity.”25 The authors represented Bakhtiyari women as embodiments of Iran’s ancient past by claiming that they wore “the same clothing as [women of] the Sasanian era.”26 Despite these appeals to an ancient past, The History of the Bakhtiyaris simultaneously Shi‘ized the tribe (and thus nationalized it) by stating, “the Bakhtiyari tribe was Shi‘i before Shi‘ism was widespread in Iran.”27 In a manner paralleling nationalist discussions of geographical boundaries, the authors described the “boundaries of Bakhtiyari” (hudud-i Bakhtiyari) as the “Chahar Mahal of Isfahan and Luristan in the North, the [Zagros] mountains of Kuhgiluyah from the East, Khuzistan from the West, and Bihbahan in the South.”28 Beyond using these forms of justifying the Bakhtiyaris’ belonging to the nation, The History of the Bakhtiyaris also made the pre-eminent role of the Bakhtiyaris in the march on Tehran in 1909 the basis for asserting the tribe’s credentials as national citizens. The preservation of the heroic tale of the Bakhtiyaris’ role in the Constitutional Revolution was in part a motivation for the composition of the history: “the recent services of this glorious tribe’s khans to the new government are the best memorial of their goodness in the history of Iran.”29 The Bakhtiyaris’ political support for the Constitutional Revolution was a means of authenticating their national pedigree: “Today we see with our own eyes the Iranian-ness of that glorious tribe which has not abandoned [its] ancient path and has not failed in preserving its nation [vatan] and the independence of its people [qawmiyat].” The text continued by stating that “a certain Sasanian bravery and pride is seen in them [that is, the Bakhtiyaris] that is not evident in other groups.”30 The tribe’s central place in defending the constitution against the despotic Muhammad ‘Ali Shah was made the basis for its claim to citizenship.

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In contrast to these constitutionally oriented histories, two books from the 1910s and 1920s provided comprehensive histories of Isfahan that were less driven by recent constitutional events. Both authors were themselves active constitutionalists, but their histories signaled a retreat from politics. Given the strength of local patriotism in the “Republic of Isfahan,” both works were at pains to explain the particularities of the Isfahani character.31 Published on the eve of the First World War, Hasan Jabiri Ansari’s The History of Half of the World and All of the World included not only major events in Isfahan but also lengthy sections about important individuals and districts associated with the city.32 Born in Shiraz in 1870, Ansari served as a state bureaucrat in turn-of-the-century Isfahan, during which time he became intimately familiar with historical issues; one of the main tasks he performed in the bureaucracy was to translate “Arabic newspapers and histories.”33 He was, however, unhappy as a translator and described the monotony of his tasks as “diminish[ing] the soul and burn[ing] the mind.”34 Having suffered in a very deep and personal way at the hands of representatives of the Qajar state, he threw in his lot with the constitutionalists in 1906. He harnessed his secretarial and administrative skills in the service of the revolutionary cause by writing for the Isfahan Provincial Council (Anjuman-i Ayalat-i Isfahan). His love of writing appears to have outweighed his love of politics; elected as a representative to the Iranian parliament, he declined the offer and instead established a local newspaper, Ganjinah-i Ansar. To escape the wrath of Muhammad ‘Ali Shah, who during the Lesser Tyranny intended to have him executed, Ansari fled to Iraq, where he took the opportunity to study Islamic sciences before returning to Iran the following year wearing a cloak and a turban. He once again found himself changing vocations: instead of being employed as a cleric, he was appointed by Hasan Mudarris, a prominent cleric and politician, to be a judge at the Isfahan Penal Court.35 Due to the opposition of the Russian consulate, Ansari was forced to retire. He found no other employment except “to write [books] on morals, customs, literature, and history.” After failing to realize his career ambitions, he was overcome by melancholy and loneliness, describing himself as an “imprisoned bird.”36 But it was this loneliness that motivated him to write a history of his beloved Isfahan. Ansari was intimately familiar with Iranian and Arabic literary traditions and aware of European historical writing, and he possessed a certain cosmopolitan sensibility born of his many travels. He drafted the text quickly, in “two or three months,” drawing on “Arabic and Persian histories.”

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While ­focusing on the history of Isfahan in the main body of the text, he narrated “the important events of the world” in the footnotes.37 In one of his notoriously long footnotes, he claimed that “the scholars of the craft of history [ fann-i tarikh] know that history is clearer the greater its scale.” As a result, “the history of a large government” was “written more than a history of a province [­tarikh-i mamlikati]” and the same principle applied for the “history of a county [ayalati]” and that of a “greater district [vilayati khasah].” With this schema in mind, Ansari wanted to write a detailed history of “the greater district of Isfahan.”38 He covered the history of Isfahan from its mythical preIslamic past to the Constitutional Revolution; wrote separate biographies of Isfahani poets, clerics, and calligraphers; and composed a short section on the agricultural “districts of Isfahan” (bulukat-i Isfahan).39 Ansari challenged certain stereotypes about Isfahanis in his history while reproducing others. He refuted the stereotype that Isfahanis were stingy by citing a story from the travels of Ibn Battutah in which his Isfahani hosts outdid one another in hospitality until one burned “silk instead of firewood.” From this anecdote he concluded, “This is clear evidence that stinginess and generosity are individual human characteristics in each land and not the result of the environment [khak u abi].”40 But he was not always this critical of negative representations of Isfahanis: he related common medieval tropes about the Isfahanis being “crafty” (zirak) because the Arabic numeric value (abjad) of the word zirak and of the word Isfahani was the same.41 Discussing the religious dynamic of Isfahan, Ansari did not succumb to the nationalist tendency to Shi‘ize his locality by either glossing over the Iranian Sunni past or claiming that Iranians had always been somehow crypto-Shi‘is. Instead, he was forthright about Iran’s religious history: “Until just after 900 [H., that is, before the rise of the Safavids] the official [religious] order of the people of Isfahan was Sunnism.” He explained that “the Buyids had claimed to be Shi‘is” but were “Zaydis [a branch of Shi‘ism] and they did not oppose the [Sunni] Caliphs.” In his view, under the Seljuks “the Isma‘ili heretics” had “repelled people away from Shi‘ism.” It was only when Shah Isma‘il conquered Isfahan that “he made the Sunnis explicitly Shi‘is.” Turning to local sectarian divisions, Ansari considered “the conflict between Hanafis and Shafi‘is,” two schools of Sunni Islamic law, to have been a largely persistent local conflict that transmuted later “into the conflict between Haydaris and Ni‘matis,” two Sufi orders.42 By seeing this conflict as an essentially local one, he downplayed its religious significance.

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Given Ansari’s bureaucratic experience, he paid special attention to the administration of Isfahan and its relationship with the court bureaucracy in Tehran. Adopting a view from the provinces, he criticized the “Tehran auditors” (muhasibin) for failing to come to Isfahan in order “to see if the register of crown and noble properties were in line with reality” while praising Nasir ­al-Din Shah and his prime minister, Amir Kabir, for visiting Isfahan to ensure the proper running of the administration there.43 He was somewhat circumspect when it came to criticizing longtime governor of Isfahan Zill al-Sultan, choosing instead to blame certain sycophantic yes-men in the governor’s retinue for convincing him that “we must make Isfahan look like a ruin so that no one will desire to steal it.”44 Sayyid ‘Ali Al-Jinab, Ansari’s contemporary, was a journalist-historian par excellence whose local history of Isfahan provided detailed geographic, economic, and statistical information that was lacking in many other histories. During the Constitutional Revolution, Al-Jinab was editor of an eponymous newspaper, Al-Jinab, published in Isfahan. In the midst of the post-1921 coup era, he penned a thorough and unique local history entitled ­Al-Isfahan.45 In the writing of his history, he consulted a range of Persian, Arabic, and even French sources.46 He adopted an unconventional approach to the periodization of local history by first discussing the periods of prosperity (abadi) in Isfahan before switching to periods of destruction (kharabi).47 Al-Jinab’s periodization of prosperity and destruction was not fixated on uncritically praising certain dynasties at the expense of others: he credited Safavid Shah Abbas with bringing about prosperity while blaming later Safavid shahs for destroying the city. Similarly, he viewed governor Zill al-Sultan as a positive figure in contrast to the Qajar dynasty, which he blamed for destruction in other periods. Unlike the authors of many other subsequent histories of cities, Al-Jinab did not place overwhelming emphasis on dynasties and rulers or on literary figures and urban notables. His work focused on an array of underrepresented topics ranging from climate, earthquakes, and irrigation systems; local weights, measures, and currencies; and exact information on the geographic location of the city.48 He coupled his geographic knowledge with a rare statistical rigor by including census records on the number of households and the population of Isfahan, statistics on locally traded commodities, numbers of artisans organized by guilds, a chronological list of newspapers and their editors, and figures on students attending each school in the city.49 Al-Jinab described in copious detail both the urban neighborhoods of Isfahan and the agricultural

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districts (bulukat) surrounding it, paying specific attention to the religious buildings, hamams (bathhouses), caravanserais (inns), schools (traditional and modern), and bazaars.50 Al-Isfahan similarly provided information on the inhabitants of the city and its environs, albeit in more qualitative terms. In an ethnographic section on the character and customs of Isfahanis, Al-Jinab characterized Isfahanis as brave and hospitable but also potentially superstitious and fanatical—a trait he tied to widespread illiteracy.51 He listed “the environment [ab u hava], the political environment [muhit-i siyasat], social relations [mu‘ashirat], the ease and difficulty of [one’s] livelihood [sakhti va asani-yi ma‘ash], and the percentage of literate people relative to the population” as factors explaining the ­Isfahani “character.”52 His discussion of local religion adopted a scholarly tone. He began with the history of the worship of natural forces—an unusual starting point for most religious histories written in Persian at the time—before moving on to the history of monotheistic faiths such as Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam (Sunni and Isma‘ili and Twelver Shi‘i forms), and the Babi movement in the city.53 Two strands of local historiography dominated during the 1906–1926 ­period. The first strand elaborated on the role of local actors in the Constitutional Revolution and the anti-imperialist movements. These histories depicted local populations as heroes defending the constitution against domestic and foreign enemies. The second strand sought to explain the uniqueness of the local population by exploring its geography, environment, social relations, religion, economy, literature, and culture. Both strands of historiography took the nation for granted in their discussion of the local.

The Specter of Regionalism In the aftermath of foreign occupation and the First World War, the early to mid-1920s was the high point for regionalist movements in Iran. Regional forces articulated “provincial narratives” as alternatives to state-centered nationalism that ran the gamut from a more federalist notion of Iran to full-blown regional autonomy based on ethnic and tribal identities.54 Regional movements emerged in Gilan, Azerbaijan, Khuzistan, and Kurdistan, often benefiting from foreign support. Ironically, the high point of regionalism was a low point in the writing of local histories: none of the major regionalist movements appear to have published local histories to bolster their political and cultural programs. The age

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of regionalism did, however, shape the underlying anxieties of local historians about threats to the unity of Iranian nationalism in the following decade. All four major regional movements challenged Tehran’s dominance in articulating Iranian nationalism. Some, like the Jangal and Khiyabani movements, operated largely within the framework of Iranian nationalism but voiced major grievances against the central government. In the later phase of their movement, the Jangalis adopted a socialist ideology—one they hoped to spread to the rest of Iran—whereas the Khiyabani movement asserted the unique role of Azerbaijan in Iranian constitutional politics as grounds for greater provincial autonomy. The ethnically and tribally based movement of Arab Shaykh Khaz‘al in Khuzistan and the Kurdish movement of Isma‘il Simqu, however, called for greater autonomy and even independence from the Iranian state by appealing to regionalist discourses and drawing on support from foreign states—Britain and Turkey, respectively. Although none of these movements succeeded in gaining autonomy or independence, nationalists feared the resurgence of provincial and tribal movements into the late 1920s and 1930s.55 Almost all of the provincial histories of this period dealt with a region or population involved in a recent autonomist movement. These histories were meant to counter the perceived threat to a uniform understanding of the nation posed by regional forces. Provincial histories identified local populations as ethnically Iranian while casting their rebellious leaders as traitors, opportunists, and thieves. Ahmad Kasravi’s The Five-Hundred-Year History of Khuzistan exemplified a state-centered nationalist ideology.56 He wrote this history with the aim of providing historical background for British-backed Arab tribal chief Shaykh Khaz‘al and his autonomist movement in Khuzistan. Kasravi’s provincial history of Khuzistan linked regional tribalism to religious heterodoxy as twin centrifugal forces threatening national unity. Unlike previous historians who championed a local movement as authentically national, Kasravi crafted a narrative of regional chaos wherein various powerful religious and tribal movements consistently opposed the authority of the central state at the expense of the “innocent” majority of provincial inhabitants.57 During World War I, Shaykh Khaz‘al enjoyed relative regional autonomy given the weakness of the Iranian parliament and the foreign occupation of many parts of the country. After the war, he hoped to formalize this autonomy into full-blown independence, but his ambitions were crushed by Riza Khan’s troops.58 Despite Kasravi’s tensions with Riza Khan’s troops, Kasravi was far from sympathetic with Khaz‘al’s regionalist tendencies and his ambitions for an independent “Arabistan.”

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In light of his experiences during this turbulent episode in Khuzistan’s history, Kasravi sought to explain the historical roots of regional rebellions. His answer came in the form of a history. Like most of his other historical works, his history of Khuzistan was originally published in serialized form in his journal Payman.59 Kasravi’s considerable linguistic skills allowed him to draw on Persian, Arabic, and English source materials, in addition to the testimony of his contemporaries, in the writing of this book.60 Kasravi concluded that the Khuzistanis’ tendency toward rebellion was rooted in heterodoxy and tribalism. He considered his history to be “the story of the Musha‘sha‘is [a heterodox Shi‘i movement] and the Ka‘b [tribe]” alongside the more recent history of Khuzistan.”61 He organized the history around heterodoxy, tribalism, and the recent events surrounding Shaykh Khaz‘al’s movement.62 His rationale for cover­ing five hundred years of the history of Khuzistan was intimately intertwined with the thesis of his book: that Shaykh Khaz‘al’s tribal “unrest” ( fitnah) had its origins in the fifteenth-century messianic movement of the Musha‘sha‘is, who possessed “leadership of the tribes of Khuzistan until it was transferred to the Ka‘b [tribe].”63 Kasravi spent a significant portion of his history exploring the life and religious ideas of the founder of the Musha‘sha‘is, Sayyid Muhammad Musha‘sha‘. Although Kasravi stated that the objective historian “must not speak of [his own] beliefs,” when it came to Sayyid Muhammad, he was unable to restrain himself, describing the messianic leader as a “liar,” “contentious,” and “hypocritical.”64 He elaborated on the internal contradictions of the movement’s religious ideas, its inconsistencies with Islamic orthodoxy, and its “extremist” claims of divinity. He depicted Muhammad Musha‘sha‘ and his successors as murderous and plundering opportunists masquerading as religious figures.65 Kasravi’s use of fitnah—a religiously loaded term used to refer to strife within the Muslim community—to anachronistically label all movements that “threatened” nation-state unity. He blamed the Musha‘sha‘is “continuous pillage and plunder” for destroying Khuzistan, which was, “in the early Islamic centuries . . . among the most prosperous regions of Iran.”66 Kasravi’s history of the Ka‘b tribe differed considerably from the history of the Bakhtiyaris insofar as he had little appreciation or sympathy for the complexities of internal tribal dynamics, for the reasons for tribal resistance to the central state, or for their practices and beliefs. Discussing the conversion of the Ka‘b tribe to the Musha‘sha‘ branch of Shi‘ism, he claimed that the Ka‘b’s “religion [kish] was none other than stealing and highway robbery.”67 He described

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the Ka‘b tribe as opportunistically taking advantage of the central state’s weakness: “This was the eternal custom of the Ka‘b [tribe] and others like them, that when they saw the weakness of the central government, they would become obstinate, but when the government became strong and sent troops to them, they humbled themselves.”68 Kasravi embraced reductive European representations of the Ka‘b tribes when it suited him polemically, but he also noted the growing presence of Europeans in Khuzistan with alarm, citing their significant archeological excavations and interest in oil as two examples of their imperialist designs.69 Kasravi sided with the central state in Iranian history when discussing uprisings in the region. He adopted a sympathetic tone when narrating the downfall of the Musha‘sha‘is at the hands of the founder of the Safavid state, Shah Isma‘il, saying, “this act of his, the overthrowing of the Musha‘sha‘is, was a very good one.”70 He ended his book on a triumphant note, describing how the Iranian state defeated the regional leader, Khaz‘al, and thereby restored state unity.71 His opposition to provincial forces was part of a broader tendency within Iranian historiography to promote the central state’s perspective against that of its peripheries. If Kasravi painted a negative picture of Khuzistan as a continuous source of rebellion and challenge to the Iranian central state, he had a markedly more positive tone when writing the recent history of his home province of ­Azerbaijan.72 His underlying purpose was to prove the essential Iranian character of the province. Following a constitutional-era strand of local historiography, he defined Azerbaijan as Iranian by virtue of its central role in the Constitutional Revolution.73 Kasravi asserted the universal truly “Iranian” character of the Azerbaijanis while giving prominence to the specific ­Azerbaijani— and to a lesser extent the Gilani—trait of being brave and freedom-loving defenders of Iran against domestic despotism and foreign imperialism. Like his history of Khuzistan, Kasravi serialized his history of Azerbaijan in Payman in the 1930s.74 Kasravi’s history of the province was structured as a tragedy: it began by telling the story of how Azerbaijanis heroically took up the defense of the constitution against the despotic Muhammad ‘Ali Shah in 1908– 1909, and ended by narrating the downfall of Shaykh Muhammad ­Khiyabani, the well-intentioned but naïve leader of the movement for Azerbaijani autonomy. Like many other regional histories dealing with an area where autonomist movements once thrived, Kasravi’s history of Azerbaijan had both a domestic and an international audience. Domestically, he argued, “the d ­ estiny

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of ­Azerbaijan lay with the rest of Iran.”75 Internationally, he was engaged in a polemic against Northern Azerbaijani nationalists who insisted that Iranian (Southern) Azerbaijan and Northern Azerbaijan formed one nation.76 By narrating the events of Iranian Azerbaijan to the exclusion of events in the North, Kasravi was taking aim not only at voices calling for a unified Azerbaijan that were emanating from across the border, but also at those who might support regional autonomy from within the state’s border. Above all else, Kasravi’s histories were morality tales. He claimed to tell “the story of seeking justice against oppression, liberty against injustice,” adding that “courage is among the praiseworthy qualities; we must propagate it amongst the masses, and this cannot be done but through writing the stories of the courageous and [our] appreciation of them.”77 Not only was his history intended for the people, but it was one in which the “people” (mardum) and the “masses” (tudah) were the protagonists in Iranian constitutional history. Perhaps one of the constantly recurring “morals” of the Constitutional Revolution was how the road to hell was paved with good intentions: “The history of the Iranian constitution contains the clearest moral lessons about how even those with the best intentions can cause the utmost harm.”78 If The Eighteen-Year History of Azerbaijan should be read as a morality tale, the moral of the story is that Russian and Ottoman occupation and local and national disunity conspired to negate the ideals of progress, unity, and constitutionalism. Kasravi lionized the role of Azerbaijanis as defenders of the Iranian constitution. Speaking generally of the opposition of Iranians to the dismantling of the parliament, Kasravi gave pride of place to the Azerbaijanis: “In the brave uprisings and uproar, all the cities of Iran were tranquil but . . . in Azerbaijan the uproar of the people was more brave.”79 He cast the Azerbaijanis as the protectors of Iran against foreign invaders, recounting their special role in fighting against the Russian occupation.80 But they were not beyond reproach. Kasravi accused 143 local prominent Azerbaijanis of being “traitors” for “send[ing] money to the [Russian] consulate,” citing this as an “undeniable fault.”81 As a rule, he was critical of all foreign occupation and interference in Iranian politics, even that of the supposedly sympathetic Ottomans who called for Iranian-Ottoman unity under the banner of Pan-Islam: “This clearly demonstrates that whenever foreigners . . . came to the country, they displayed nothing but force and tyranny.”82 Kasravi’s history of Azerbaijan included a number of parallel judgments on the people of the northern province of Gilan. He considered Gilanis to be similarly distinguished in their defense of the Iranian constitution. Speaking

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of the early uprisings of constitutionalists against the despotic rule of Muhammad ‘Ali Shah, Kasravi said, “It should be said that since the movement for liberty arose in Iran, after Azerbaijan, Gilan was the second place in which the people understood [liberty’s] meaning.”83 Kasravi believed that the Gilanis were “great companions for the liberty-seekers of Azerbaijan” because they “made sacrifices on the path [of freedom].”84 Kasravi drew further parallels between Azerbaijan and Gilan when describing the advent of autonomous movements. The Jangal movement of Gilan (1915–1921) led by Mirza Kuchak Khan began as a response to political disintegration and foreign occupation. Kasravi was sympathetic to the anti-imperialist impulse of the movement but denounced it for becoming the instrument of Ottoman Pan-Islamic propaganda.85 He was similarly sympathetic to the contemporary Azerbaijani leader Shaykh Muhammad Khiyabani for having “good intentions for Iran,” but he blamed those around him, such as Mirza Taqi Raf ‘at, for exerting a pernicious influence. Kasravi criticized Khiyabani’s use of the Azeri language instead of Persian in his official newspaper, which led to his deportation from the province.86 He drew parallels between Khiyabani and Mirza Kuchak Khan, both well-intentioned anti-imperialist figures who made a series of tragic decisions resulting in their ultimate demise.87 Kasravi considered most Iranian tribes to be anti-constitutional plunderers and raiders. He had a low estimation of the Shahsavan tribe as unruly and treacherous collaborators with the Russians who brought much destruction to Azerbaijan.88 He made sweeping generalizations about the Kurds being “accustomed to plunder and raiding,” adding that they “would always sit and wait for an opportunity to come out and plunder any prosperous place [abadi].”89 ­Furthermore, he believed that whenever “the Kurds found the opportunity, they would be disobedient to the government.”90 Kasravi claimed that the Kurds and the Lurs saw themselves as “the enemies of . . . [the constitution] and were definitely the supporters of [the anti-constitutionalist] Muhammad ‘Ali Mirza and Salar al-Dawlah.”91 Kasravi cited the Kurdish alliance with Russian troops at the beginning of the First World War as further evidence of their treachery.92 For him, the embodiment of Kurdish opportunism was the leader of the Kurdish Shakak clan, Isma‘il Simqu, particularly because of his Russian and Ottoman allegiances and his plundering of local Christian populations.93 When Simqu later called for an independent Kurdistan, Kasravi saw the hand of foreign agents behind it.94 In one of his trademark interrogatory tirades, he questioned Simqu’s claims for autonomy, asking rhetorically, “Is he going to

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make the Kurds ready for a life of freedom and purpose with a conference? Is he going to write a constitution for Kurdistan? Is he striving to remove the divisions among the Kurds?” He responded with an unqualified no and enumerated how Simqu and his men were instead busy “plundering villages” and “destroying sown fields.”95 Kasravi believed that the Kurds were incapable of articulating a sophisticated national movement; instead, they sought immediate material gratification through pillage. Kasravi did concede an exception to this rule: the Kurdish Sanjabi clan was said “to have displayed Iranian pride from the beginning of the World War.”96 Kasravi’s harsh judgment of the tribes mirrored his negative characterization of the clerics of Azerbaijan as a reactionary force.97 He mocked their acceptance of the Russian claim to be “protectors of Islam” against the “atheists” (la mazhaban), meaning the constitutionalists.98 The reasons for Kasravi’s disdain for clerics were as much ideological as personal: peppered throughout The Eighteen-Year History of Azerbaijan were short personal vignettes, including how they had chased him out of Tabriz because of his progressive views.99 Kasravi’s history was a moral tale—albeit tragic—about the heroic constitutional struggles of Azerbaijan against the despotic central Iranian government, the reactionary clerics, and the imperialist Russian and Ottoman occupying forces. Whereas Gilan and Azerbaijan were showcased as model provinces that were essentially defending Iran and promoting freedom, Kurdish and ­Shahsavan tribes were its regional antithesis, incapable of understanding freedom and constitutionalism, treacherously allying themselves with the foreign imperial enemies of Iran, and cynically plundering and raiding prosperous regions, sometimes under the banner of independence. For Kasravi, some Iranians were more authentic than others, more capable of defending the ideals of independence and freedom, and therefore the embodiments of liberal views. Echoing many of the conclusions made by Kasravi, ‘Abbas Kadivar, a librarian and amateur historian, covered the history of Gilan from its ancient origins to the Constitutional Revolution.100 His history of Gilan included two prefaces, one by Ahmad Kasravi and the other by ‘Abbas Iqbal, both of which argued that Gilan was authentically Iranian in terms of race, language, and geography.101 Utilizing a wide range of European-language, Persian, and Arabic sources, The History of Gilan was a political history organized mainly around provincial governors.102 Iqbal’s and Kasravi’s more lively prefaces put forward largely geographical explanations for the “peaceful” nature of the plain-dwelling Gilanis and for the “warrior” mentality of the mountain-dwelling Daylamites.

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‘Abbas Iqbal considered the Gilanis and Daylamites to be “two branches of Aryan Iranians.”103 He distinguished between the two groups on geographic grounds: as noted, the Gilanis, as “plain dwellers,” were generally of a “peaceful nature,” while the “mountain dwellers” of neighboring Daylamistan were “battle hungry and brave.”104 Iqbal proceeded to historicize these characteristics, showing how successive dynasties since antiquity were at pains to control the “unruly” Daylamites.105 Ahmad Kasravi’s preface likewise pointed to the rugged terrain and the history of resistance among the Daylamites, but he refrained from making a geographical determinist explanation, citing the fact that Arab Muslim invaders had conquered other mountainous regions but were unable to do so in Daylamistan.106 A common theme in both prefaces was the Daylamite spirit of resistance in the face of foreign forces (particularly the Arabs) that ultimately led to their making common cause with the Isma‘ilis against the Arab ‘Abbasids. In contrast to Ahmad Kasravi, the historians ‘Ali Asghar Shamim and Rashid Yasami presented the Kurds as authentic Iranians and defenders of Iran against foreign invaders throughout history.107 Writing partly with an international audience in mind, Shamim and Yasami shared the goal of proving that Kurds were Iranians rather than Arabs or Turks. They invoked language, religion, race, and geography rather than recent history of the Kurds of Iran to make their nationalist claims. Shamim and Yasami wrote their histories less than two decades after Riza Khan crushed Isma‘il Simqu’s Kurdish movement for autonomy in the early 1920s.108 In the winter of 1929, the Pahlavi state reacted with similar vehemence in putting down the uprising of Kurdish leader Mulla Khalil.109 Although the state suppressed regional uprisings, forcibly settled nomads, and incorporated the local population into the nation through institutions such as the army and education, nationalists such as Shamim and Yasami culturally integrated the Kurds into the nation through historiography. Internationally, the nationalist aspirations of certain Kurdish groups in the aftermath of the First World War posed a challenge to Iranian, Turkish, and Iraqi nationalists. Because Kurds were denied an independent state after the Treaty of Versailles, nationalists in all three countries competed to integrate and indigenize the Kurds into their respective nationalist ideologies.110 Shamim and Yasami’s histories constituted an Iranian response to this competing form of nationalism. ‘Ali Asghar Shamim was a history teacher and author of numerous history textbooks. In Kurdistan, Shamim drew on seventeen historical, ethnographical, and geographical sources in European, Arabic, and Persian languages,

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including an unpublished manuscript by Hujjat al-Islam Shaykh Muhammad ­Mardukh, who had traveled through Kurdistan and provided detailed information about villages.111 Shamim wrote his book in response to “foreign” theories calling into question the Kurds’ Iranian pedigree: “The author’s intent in writing this book is to shed light on the geography of the tribes of Kurdistan, elucidate the true race of the Kurdish peoples, and explain [their] political history.” He wanted to “refute the beliefs and views of misguided researchers who have concealed the political goals and ambitions of their governments through scholarship.” According to Shamim, these “misguided scholars” engaged in “colonial politics” by claiming Kurds “have no racial kinship to Iranians.”112 He feared that colonial powers such as the Europeans, but perhaps also Turks and Arabs, would use the racial origins of the Kurds as a pretext for political domination. Shamim relied heavily on the works of European scholars who claimed that Kurds were racially Iranian and dismissed those who did not, such as ­nineteenth-century German scholar Peter Lerch.113 The basic thrust of Lerch’s argument was that the Kurds descended from the ancient Chaldeans and were therefore Semites and not Iranians. Lerch’s claim rested largely on the similarity between the word Kardu (Chaldeans) and Kurd.114 Shamim drew on the judgments of three other European scholars—Martin Hartmann, Theodor Nöldeke, and Franz Heinrich Weissbach—who denied such a link and instead argued that the Kurds were Iranians.115 Medieval Islamic genealogies traced the origins of the Kurds back to Arab tribes, but Shamim discounted these as “fabricated lineages.”116 Appropriating the logic of “race studies” (nizhadshinasi), he reproduced the “scientific studies” of two major race theorists, Ernest Chantre and Eugène Pittard, in which Kurds were of above-average height at 1.68 meters, or roughly 5.5 feet, and possessed “big eyes, hairy black eyebrows, long faces, thin noses, small lips and mouths,” in addition to being generally “strong and powerful” and “exceptionally smart and clever.”117 He believed that the Kurds of mountainous regions spoke a pure Persian dialect relatively untouched by the polluting influence of outsiders: “the eloquent Kurdish dialect, or to put it another way, authentic and simple Kurdish [kurdi-yi asl va sadah], can be found only among the tribes of the high mountains of Western Iran, such as the tentdwelling people of the territories of Uraman and Marivan [Kurdish regions], just like we can find simple and pure Gilaki . . . among the mountain dwellers of Western Gilan . . . and words and expressions of the Tabari language . . . among the difficult-to-cross valleys of the Alburz mountain ranges.”118 Like other local historians, Shamim subscribed to romantic understandings of mountain-

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dwelling peoples as authentic Iranians speaking pure Persian dialects. Faced with the reality that most Kurds adhered to Sunnism rather than Shi‘ism, Shamim sidestepped the issue by characterizing them as “liberal and broadminded” (azadmanish va azadmashrib) in religious matters and more concerned with “preserving their customs, rituals, and beliefs” instead of carefully following religious laws.119 When he did speak in greater detail about Kurdish religiosity, he blamed the prevalence of Sufism, with its otherworld­liness, as a primary cause of economic backwardness and drug addiction.120 Turning to the role of Kurds in Iranian history, Shamim cast them as an obedient warrior tribe resisting foreign domination.121 He celebrated them as fierce nomads who were willing to “obey and sacrifice for their own government” and renowned for their “bravery, valor, and hospitality.” Although he viewed such characteristics as “specific to most Iranian nomadic tribes and clans,” he claimed that “the Iranian Kurds are stronger and more advanced in warfare and bravery than other tribes of this country.”122 For Shamim, Kurdish pride in being Iranian explained their resistance to Arab and later Turkish and Mongolian invaders.123 He lamented the deleterious linguistic effects of these conquests: “The appearance of continual attacks by Arab and Turkish peoples on the territories of Kurdistan has shamefully led to some of the words of the sweet Kurdish language being replaced by Arabic and Turkish words.”124 The history of Ottoman-Iranian rivalry over border areas heavily populated by Kurds and the contemporary simmering tensions between the early Pahlavi state and the Turkish Republic led Shamim to write extensively about the Ottoman treatment of the Kurds.125 He emphasized the racial and cultural resilience of the Kurds against Ottoman Turkish domination and assimilation efforts: even with “heavy pressures from the leaders of the Ottoman government to change Kurdish customs, manners, and language,” the Kurds preserved “their racial particularities” and the Ottoman state’s attempt to “dissolve and dissipate [them] into the numerous Turkish tribes” was likewise a failure.126 Describing the 1925 Shaykh Sa‘id Kurdish rebellions in Turkey, Shamim viewed them as yet another instance of Kurds resisting Turkification.127 His deafening silence on similar Kurdish uprisings in Iran, most notably Simqu’s rebellion in the early 1920s, speaks volumes to his nationalist bias and selectivity: when Kurds rebelled abroad, it was an assertion of “their racial particularities”; when they rebelled in Iran, such instances were conveniently ignored. Written close to a decade after Kurdistan, Rashid Yasami’s history similarly intended to prove the Iranian-ness of Kurds. Yasami came to many of the same

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conclusions as Shamim, particularly on the question of the race and language of the Kurds.128 The Ministry of Education commissioned him to write his history so as to “prove the heartfelt connection of Kurds to Iran.”129 As a Kurd, a committed Iranian nationalist, and a professor of history at the University of Tehran, Yasami was aware that his laudatory account of the Kurds would be viewed as “self-praise,” but he stated that this was unavoidable when speaking of a people possessing such “nobility and dignity.”130 Yasami set out to write a new form of local history, one that not only narrated events but also focused on the racial origins of a people in relation to the broader nation: “in our opinion, the history of the Kurds should not be written as part of . . . the biography of . . . such and such commander and . . . such and such lord (bigzadah); instead, the real history of this people should be written according to its relationship with its racial origin and its portion in the pride connected to the entire nation of Iran.”131 Yasami criticized giving undue attention to political history while neglecting explanations of how specific segments of the population—such as the Kurds—fit into the nationalist categories of race, language, geography, and religion. To this end, he demonstrated familiarity not only with contemporary European scholarship and popular theories of race science, but also with cutting-edge theories of nationalism.132 In contrast to Shamim, Yasami hesitated in employing race science to prove the Iranianness of the Kurds: “if we want to categorize these many peoples according to race science, the result of our work will be that we will encounter many contradictions because there are many differences in terms of the shape and size of skulls.”133 Although he discussed the findings of race scientists, his ultimate justification for the Iranian-ness of Kurds rested in history. Yasami was uniquely aware of the recent pedigree of the Persian term for nation—millat. Tracing the use of millat, he observed: In the past the followers of one [religious] law were called a millat, like the Christian millat and the Jewish millat. In recent centuries, the meaning of nation [nasiyun] in Europe was established and transferred to the East. The word millat came to be used in a political and social way. For instance, it was said the millat of Iran, the millat of China, so the meaning of millat in the political sense which it has today is new and has been transferred from a religious and legal meaning.134

He likewise charted European debates on the term, noting the lack of consensus because, for some, “possessing nationality means having one religion, one lan-

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guage, one race, one blood, or one government.”135 Despite addressing all these various aspects of identity—particularly language, race, and religion—when it came to identifying the ultimate determining factor in nationalism, Yasami turned to affective bonds rooted in history. Although he believed “that the Kurds have no difference from other Iranians in terms of race, language, and religious beliefs,” ultimately they were “part of the Iranian nation because they share the core principle of nationality [asl-i ‘umdah-i milliyat] and that is the unity of feelings and affections that have arisen as a result of shared historical experiences.”136 But what exactly were these “shared historical experiences”? Yasami answered this question in a fashion very similar to Shamim’s by describing Kurds as defenders of Iranian territories against outside invaders. He dedicated two full chapters to showing how the Kurds defended the Iranian “homeland” from antiquity to the Safavid period.137 Yasami rejected outright that an independent Kurdish state at various points in history was grounds for a separate state in the present. If this was sufficient justification for secessionism, he argued, then other inhabitants of Iran—the “Tabaristanis, Gilanis, Farsis, Khurasanis, and ­Zandis”—who had also at various stages controlled independent states, should likewise be considered non-Iranians. He added that because no one would doubt that these groups shared Iranian ancestry, the Kurds were also Iranian.138 The works of Shamim and Yasami sought to authenticate Kurds by incorporating them into a single grand narrative of Iranian nationalism. They differed from Ahmad Kasravi in their assessment of the Kurds, but they had remarkably similar strategies for casting certain local populations as defenders of the nation. Shamim and Yasami romanticized the Kurds as being proud and warrior tribesmen consistently defending Iran throughout history, while Kasravi focused on recent political history and insisted that defense of the constitution was the true prerequisite for citizenship.

From a Ruin to the Modern City Pahlavi-era historians of cities held up urban centers as the embodiment of both Iranian civilizational continuity and modernization. Elements of previous urban histories remained—the focus on prominent buildings and monuments, the biographies of local notables and poets, and basic geographical features. But by the 1930s there was a new emphasis on the state’s transformation of the city from a ruin (virani) into a site of prosperity (abadi). As a result, local histories incorporated the state’s urban modernization discourses.

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The typical Iranian city included mosques, cemeteries, bazaars, public baths, walls, and fortifications.139 Nasir al-Din Shah initiated urban reforms in Tehran along Western lines in the late nineteenth century, but other major Iranian cities were slower in undergoing similar changes.140 During the 1920s and 1930s, Pahlavi reforms affected most aspects of the urban landscape in fundamental ways: the development of the road system connected major cities, intensified commercial interactions, and made significant changes in the urban layout; state support for textile workshops and industries changed how labor was organized in urban spaces;141 public health measures led to the creation of hospitals; and the expansion of the education system resulted in a greater number of schools concentrated in cities.142 Architecturally, administrative buildings, such as police headquarters, offices of the Ministry of Justice, and the Iranian National Bank, incorporated modern European and pre-Islamic Iranian motifs.143 Local histories of Yazd and Isfahan celebrated the juxtapositions of the past and the present in these buildings as physical embodiments of urban revival and modernization. In these local histories, there were tensions between defining the local as authentically national while mapping out its defining features. ‘Abd al-Husayn Ayati focused on the changing landscape of Yazd with its new roads and its educational, governmental, and judicial buildings.144 He underscored the city’s continuities with the Iranian past from antiquity to the present by discussing the religious, economic, and literary sensibilities of ­Yazdis in history. Unlike provincial histories that mostly expressed tensions and anxieties about regional movements, Ayati’s history celebrated the state’s urban renewal projects.145 The son of a Muslim cleric, ‘Abd al-Husayn Ayati abandoned Islam and his clerical training when he embraced the Baha’i Faith. He spent the next twenty-odd years as a staunch propagator of his newly adopted faith, traveling widely through Iran, Russian Turkistan, the Caucasus, the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Palestine, France, England, and even America.146 After the death of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, the spiritual head of the religion, Ayati became a Muslim once again.147 When Ayati returned to Iran in 1924, he did not continue his former profession as a cleric; instead, he chose to embark on modern educational and cultural pursuits. He, like many historians of his era, was a secondary school teacher by profession but with broader cultural interests such as editing a monthly literary periodical, Namakdan, and participating in the Literary Association of Yazd (Anjuman-i Adabi-yi Yazd).148 Ayati’s experience as the semi-official historian of the Baha’i Faith undoubtedly served him well in writing a local history of Yazd. He published his history

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at the encouragement of fellow members of the Literary Association of Yazd.149 He all but ignored modern Iranian and European scholarship and instead drew almost exclusively on Persian and Arabic chronicles.150 The themes found in The History of Yazd reflected the lifelong preoccupations of its author: his writing on the presumed piety of Yazdis reflected his own religious background and upbringing; his concern with the role of women in society was intertwined with Baha’i and Pahlavi modernist projects; his ample attention to Persian poets, both medieval and contemporary, mirrored his own life as a poet; and finally, his extensive coverage of modern educational institutions echoed his occupation as a school teacher. For Ayati, history was a reflection of the national spirit: “History is like a clear and polished mirror which shows the beauty of each people without any defect and shortcoming.”151 Ayati considered history to be both a “science” (‘ilm) and a “craft” ( fann), unlike many other historians who insisted on it being only a science.152 According to Ayati, history was not a science like mathematics with universal laws; rather, history was made up of “revolutions and changes” that were specific to the particular contexts in which they occurred.153 He made further distinctions: social or “civilizational” (madani) history included “world histories” (tarikh-i ‘umumi) dealing with “all of humanity” and “particular histories” (tarikh-i khususi) dealing with “a people, nation, race, or country.” He considered The History of Yazd to be a “specific history” of a “specific history”— namely a local history embedded within a broader national history.154 Ayati rooted the significance of Yazd’s history in its antiquity and religious significance for Iranians as a “holy city and a pilgrimage site for the Zoroastrians of other regions.”155 He believed that Yazdis were essentially religious even after their conversion to Islam, when “the people of Yazd memorized the Qur’an and became more Muslim than the Arabs because the environment [ab u hava]” compelled them to do so. He claimed that Yazdis “were so zealous that a group of Iranians who had not accepted Islam were unable to live there.”156 Faced with the fact that Yazdis were largely Sunni Shafi‘is for much of early Islamic history, Ayati argued that the Shafi‘i School and Shi‘ism were largely indistinguishable.157 He identified Shi‘ism with the Shafi‘i school not only to Shi‘ize (and thus Iranianize) the early Yazdis, but also to Iranianize Shafi‘i adherents elsewhere in Iran, such as the Kurds: “If the Yazdis showed a tendency toward the Shafi‘i School during the early [Islamic] centuries, this is because Shafi‘i is very close to Shi‘ism just as the people of Iranian Kurdistan are Shafi‘i and their differences in terms of beliefs are very slight in relation to Shi‘ism.”158 Ayati subscribed to

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a nationalist form of Islam that was hostile toward heterodoxy. This lent him the opportunity to distance himself from his own earlier heterodox affiliations. Like Kasravi, he considered the Musha‘sha‘is’ “preaching” [tablighat] to be “a blow against national unity” and a cause for the spreading of a form of “heresy” (ilhad ).159 Ayati was equally suspicious of popular Islamic practices in Yazd, branding the Muharram tradition of carrying the nakhl—a wooden structure constructed for the commemoration of the martyrdom of the Shi‘i Imam Husayn—as an “innovation” that had its roots in “Indian practices” rather than in authentic Islamic teachings. Reflecting his own modernist interpretation of Islam, he praised Riza Shah’s banning of this ceremony.160 Beyond noting their religiosity, Ayati also viewed Yazdis as “expert in the three fields of farming, crafts [sana‘at], and commerce” from time immemorial.161 In support of his claim he provided biographies of pioneering contemporary Yazdi entrepreneurs such as Husayn ‘Ali Hirati and Ustad Ghulam San‘ati.162 He likewise took a great interest in the architectural sites that defined the cultural landscape of the city. Peppered throughout his account were stories related to the building, patronage, and fate of Yazd’s monuments and architectural structures—accounts that colorfully punctured political and literary vignettes. After listing the numerous mosques and schools built in the eighth Islamic century, Ayati stated that he believed this penchant for urban architecture was a typically Yazdi characteristic: “While there was a similar disposition for buildings . . . in all areas of Iran during those times [the seventh through ninth Hijri centuries], clearly in Yazd its intensity was more than in other regions.”163 His interest in buildings and their patronage led him to devote a significant portion of his narrative to women. In a section on women’s contributions to Yazd, Ayati created a long genealogy of women acting as patrons for buildings and promoters of prosperity, such as Mihr Nigar, daughter of pre-Islamic king Anushirvan, and Arsalan Khatun and Fatimah Khatun of the Seljuk era.164 He was especially fascinated by the female Seljuk ruler Turkan Khatun, whom he described in glowing terms as a “skillful and politically astute woman” who expertly “took the reins of government” and managed to avoid a potentially devastating war with the Ghaznavid ruler Sultan Mahmud.165 As a poet, Ayati viewed poets as the personification of the Iranian national spirit. He saw poetry as a having an abiding value in “modern civilization,” where “it is valued as a form of national independence.”166 He provided biographies of major local poets—both past and present—including himself. His

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own biographical entry masked his heterodox past: he noted that his former pen name, Avarah (the Wanderer), reflected his peregrinations in more than eighteen countries, but he failed to mention the missionary rationale for these voyages or the fact that ‘Abdu’l-Baha had given him the title.167 His criterion for including and canonizing poetry in these biographical entries was his insistence on prioritizing meaning over form: he selected only poetry that he considered to have “historical significance.”168 Ayati ended his book with a description of Riza Shah’s visit to Yazd as a pivotal moment inextricably linked to the Iranian imperial tradition. After enumerating the visits of Shah Isma‘il II, Nadir Shah Afshar, Karim Khan Zand, and Fath ‘Ali Shah to Yazd, he argued that Riza Shah’s “imperial procession” to Yazd in 1930 marked a moment of “progress in the modern age from which all of Iran has benefited.”169 He narrated the Shah’s visit as a symbolically charged ritual that brought together the local and the national. Riza Shah’s stay in the city coincided with rain, which in the parched climate of Yazd was hailed as the “rain of mercy” by the city’s inhabitants. Ayati maintained that the significance of the rain was not lost on the people, who said that “Yazd will be saved from drought during his imperial rule and Yazd will become a Pahlavi rose garden in the complete sense.”170 For Ayati, Riza Shah was a savior capable of transforming Yazd from a neglected water-deprived city into a flourishing verdant “rose garden” through modernist reforms. Written in a similar vein, Husayn Nur Sadiqi’s Isfahan celebrated Pahlavi urban transformations and architectural preservation efforts in another one of Iran’s major cities.171 A native of Isfahan, Nur Sadiqi drew on an extraordinary number of sources ranging from histories, travelogues, and anthologies to yearbooks.172 His inspiration to write a local history of Isfahan emerged partly out of his educational experiences: during a Teachers’ Training College student-teacher trip to Shiraz and Isfahan in spring 1936, he became increasingly curious about the history of Isfahan and its monuments. Noting that none of his peers had thought to write a complete history of their hometown, Nur Sadiqi proposed to his advisor at the Literature Faculty, Rashid Yasami, that he write his thesis on the history of Isfahan.173 Reflecting on his childhood, Nur Sadiqi recalled how buildings in Isfahan had become dilapidated and how other children would use nails to deface intricate tiles while the supposed caretakers of those buildings were looking on.174 He continued to show concern for these buildings into his teens, remarking that he “saw that day by day these monuments were being destroyed” and he felt “greatly saddened and pained.” It

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was only with the rise of Riza Shah that “special attention” was paid “to ancient buildings and monuments” in the city.175 Isfahan was organized into four thematic chapters: history, geography, buildings and monuments, and poets and urban notables. Nur Sadiqi considered the Daylamites, Seljuk, Safavid, and Pahlavi periods to be prosperous ones in Isfahan’s history, whereas the Mongol, Timurid, Afsharid, and Qajar periods brought decline.176 He praised the Seljuk Alp Arsalan for having made Isfahan “prosperous” through the construction of buildings and gardens; Safavid Shah ‘Abbas was even more lavishly extolled, not only for constructing the buildings but also for causing “a change in [Isfahan’s] character and removing the laziness of its inhabitants” by making them “industrious.”177 He compared Riza Shah favorably to Shah ‘Abbas because, under the former, Isfahan had “reached the greatest stations and [was] more beautiful and exquisite than at any other time.”178 Nur Sadiqi viewed buildings and monuments as defining features of a city’s prosperity. He said of Isfahan that “building and carpentry in this city is distinct from other parts of the country.”179 Although Isfahan was not as ancient a city as Yazd, Nur Sadiqi noted continuities between the pre-Islamic and Islamic pasts by pointing out that Masjid-i Jam‘ah-i ‘Atiq was a pre-Islamic Iranian building that had been converted into a mosque.180 As an aspiring educator, he paid particular attention to both old and new schools built around the city. He painted a familiarly bleak picture of the state of Isfahani’s Islamic seminary schools before the rise of Riza Shah and was thankful that the Ministry of Education had expelled the “old superintendents and supervisors” of the monuments because he feared (somewhat overdramatically) that without their intervention, after “several more years the valuable buildings and monuments of Isfahan would have been completely destroyed and ruined.”181 Speaking of the modern schools built mainly under Pahlavi rule, he described the Sa‘di High School and the poem by Hasan Jabiri Ansari inscribed on it. The poem encapsulates Nur Sadiqi’s own appreciation for Riza Shah’s reforms, particularly as it related to women: No king like Riza Shah, from the earth to the seventh heaven, Has made a steed charge in the path of knowledge and learning. If you want proof look to education, whether of men or women, [Look to] the female students, the stars, with their heads held high.182

Nur Sadiqi also wrote short biographies of Isfahani poets, including contemporary figures such as Vahid Dastgirdi and Jalal al-Din Huma’i, thereby canonizing local Persian poetry in the final section of the book.183

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As someone writing at the dawn of Iranian industrialization, Nur Sadiqi took pride in Isfahan’s industrial and entrepreneurial strides. He viewed ­Isfahanis as having “a tendency toward competition and vying with one another,” seeing it as “one of the best factors for development and progress” and “the reason that the city of Isfahan is becoming a manufacturing city.”184 He provided biographies of local industrialists Muhammad Husayn Kaziruni and ‘Ala al-Mulk, who were the first to introduce modern factories and industries into the city, illustrating the supposedly innate commercial talents of Isfahanis.185 Seen together, The History of Yazd and Isfahan represented a new form of urban history characterized by developmentalist narratives in which Riza Shah transformed the city, preserved its ancient monuments, and added to its modern character by promoting the creations of schools, factories, and modern structures.

g Iranian local histories of the early twentieth century were firmly embedded within nationalist discourses. Those who wrote immediately after the 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution highlighted the role of local populations in constitutionalist struggles as evidence of their rightful status as citizens; in subsequent decades, other historians appealed to language, race, geography, and religion as markers of local Iranian-ness. The rise of several autonomist movements in the early 1920s brought about diverse visions of nationalism, ranging from social democrat and decentralist ones to calls for local autonomy and independence along ethnic and tribal lines. Regional movements haunted interwar Iranian historians who subscribed to a state-centered nationalism. To incorporate the local into the nation, they went to great lengths to downplay regional differences and to show how local populations embodied Iran and had defended it against outside invaders in the past. Local histories of cities similarly invoked nationalist discourse, but their focus was more on the urban transformations brought about by the Pahlavi state. Urban histories fixated on the ruptures of recent history, contrasting how certain Iranian cities were in “ruin” before Riza Shah transformed them into economic, administrative, educational, and cultural sites of “prosperity.” ­Similar to how early Pahlavi-era female historians considered Riza Shah to be the “savior” of Iranian women, contemporary urban historians viewed Riza Shah as the “savior” of the city through his championing of urban change against a “backward” set of social forces. The provincial city came to stand in

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for the nation itself: it embodied the modernity presumed to be lacking in the country’s hinterlands. The challenge posed by Iran’s regional diversity paralleled the difficulty of creating an unbroken genealogy for the nation. Periods in which “foreign” ­rulers, such as the Arabs, Turks, and Mongols, dominated Iran required national­ists to devise strategies for explaining these apparent ruptures in the nation’s past. One move was to indigenize “foreign” rulers who embodied an “authentically” Iranian spirit; another was to search for continuities beyond the realm of the political. It is for this reason that nationalists turned to literature, and to poetry in particular, for a sense of cultural continuity even in periods of perceived political rupture and fragmentation.

6

A NAT I O N O F P O E T S

O N F E B RUA RY 7, 19 2 2 , Cambridge Professor Edward Granville Browne turned sixty. In recognition for his years of scholarship in the field of Iranian literature and history, Cambridge University held a celebration in his honor. His European colleagues attended the celebration and marked the occasion by presenting Browne with a Festschrift, a memorial volume of essays. But Europeans were not the only ones to commemorate his achievements: Iranians expressed their appreciation by sending Browne a series of gifts, including his portrait drawn by a notable Iranian artist, pictures of ancient Iranian archeological sites, a fine carpet, and sixteen poems in his praise by leading literary figures. At first glance, this outpouring of Iranian gratitude seemed out of place given rampant anti-British sentiment. During the early days of the 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution, many looked to Great Britain as a natural democratic ally against the despotism of the Qajar monarchy. The 1907 Anglo-­Russian agreement, which essentially divided Iran into British and Russian spheres of influence, quickly changed this enthusiasm for British support of Iranian democracy. The advent of World War I meant that Iran, despite having declared neutrality, became a battleground between the Entente and Central powers. The postwar settlements did little to allay Iranian nationalist anxieties. With the redrawing of the map of the Middle East to include British mandates in Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq, many Iranians feared that they were next because the 1919 Anglo-Persian Agreement appeared to grant the British de facto mandatory powers. And although this agreement was opposed and eventually ­defeated in

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the aftermath of popular protests, the prospect of British domination was still real, particularly since Russia’s position as a possible balancing force had been severely weakened by revolution and civil war. Given such a context, why were Iranian nationalist poets calling Browne “the Firdawsi of the Age”? The commemoration of Browne’s legacy was part of a broader process of national canonization in which Iranians promoted the likes of Hafiz, Firdawsi, and Sa‘di as part of the “national cult of Persian poetry” and embodiments of the “Iranian spirit.”1 A state-sponsored 1934 international millenary celebration commemorating the epic poet Abu al-Qasim Firdawsi’s birth constituted a ritual enactment of this national cult.2 It has been argued that Browne was a romantic Orientalist and that his Iranian admirers were nothing more than slavish imitators of his ideas.3 This mode of reasoning is quite popular in studies of literary canonization in non-European contexts: a towering European figure is credited with having canonized the literature of a non-European country while local nationalists uncritically accepted this canon out of a sense of inferiority to Western knowledge production.4 Such accounts ignore the following set of questions: Was the process of literary canonization a straightforward case of one-way “influence” or were the judgments of European literary historians informed by contemporary non-European perspectives? Why did nationalists choose to appropriate certain European historians of their “national” literature while ignoring others? In the case of Browne, his canonization of Iranian literature was the product of a reciprocal epistolary exchange between himself and many Iranian and Indian interlocutors. The nationalization of literature in Iran took place partly through these transnational epistolary encounters. Far from being “a pure emanation of national identity,” national literatures were “constructed through [international] literary rivalries.”5 Through the course of these rivalries, many Iranian nationalists found elective affinities with Browne precisely because he envisioned a territorially bound conceptualization of Iranian literature that challenged facile characterization of Persian literature as in decline. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the politics of Persian canonization was often played out through the writing of Persian biographical dictionaries (tazkarahs). Poets and literary figures in Iran contested the legacy of “fresh speech” (tazahgui), or what came to be known as the “Indian style” (sabk-i hindi) of Persian poetry, on the grounds that it fell short of classical models established by such poets as Hafiz, Sa‘di, and Firdawsi.6 Because this process of contesting canons began prior to the advent of nationalism, it suggests a hardening of literary geographies that is partly explained by the de-

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creased cultural exchange between Iran and India from the eighteenth century onward. In his voluminous Persian biographical dictionary, mid-nineteenthcentury Qajar court chronicler and poet Riza Quli Khan Hidayat expressed contempt for poets who write in the “Indian style.”7 By the early twentieth century, national literary histories displaced Persian biographical dictionaries as the preferred medium for canonization. The impetus for writing literary histories came from two directions. Browne’s multivolume literary history of Iran, A Literary History of Persia, sparked epistolary exchanges with a range of Iranian and Indian interlocutors. Concurrently with this transnational exchange, Iranians wrote literary history textbooks for an expanding national education system. As Pascale Casanova has argued, “literary institutions, academies, school syllabuses, the canon” became “instruments of national identity” as “the idea of dividing up national literatures on the exact model of political units” became widespread throughout the world.8 Initially Iranian literary history textbooks were typically adaptations of biographical dictionaries, but by the 1920s and 1930s, these textbooks employed a national historical frame.9

A Persian Republic of Letters Browne’s A Literary History of Persia along with his The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia owed much to his encounters with Iranian and Indian literary figures. In contrast to face-to-face exchanges in literary associations and poetic gatherings, Browne relied heavily on letters to inform his scholarship. His dependence on letters instead of in-person interactions was partly a function of Browne’s geographical isolation from Iranian literary figures: he visited Iran only once in his life, although he remained curious about all aspects of its literature, history, and politics for the rest of his life.10 Browne’s copious transnational epistolary exchange constituted a Persian “Republic of Letters,” a community of scholars and writers not bound by the constraints of territory. According to Dena Goodman, the Republic of Letters in France “depended on two fundamental inventions of the modern world—the printing press and the postal system.”11 She finds that the “individual letters” of this Republic were “structured by deference” and characterized by a “sense of equality that structured relations among citizens.”12 This is because the Republic of Letters involved a “reciprocal exchange based on a model of friendship that contrasted markedly with the absolute state, corporative society, and the family.”13 The

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same reciprocity and assumption of equality typify Browne’s correspondence with Iranians and Indians on literary and political issues. The presumed equality that constituted the Republic of Letters was best exemplified in Browne’s friendship and correspondence with his closest scholarly collaborator, Muhammad Qazvini. Born in Tehran, Qazvini was the eldest son of Shams al-‘Ulama ‘Abd al-Rabbabadi, a Qajar court historian. He received a traditional Islamic education with some of Tehran’s leading clerics and later with a friend of his father’s at the court, Muhammad Husayn Furughi. Furughi encouraged the young Qazvini to study European learning and hired him as a tutor for his two sons, Muhammad ‘Ali and Abu al-Hasan. In return, Qazvini received French lessons from Muhammad ‘Ali, who became a lifelong friend. Qazvini departed for Europe in 1904 to visit his brother Ahmad with the intention of exploring the wealth of Persian and Arabic manuscripts in London. It was in London where the brothers met Browne. Taking an instant liking to ­Qazvini, Browne insisted that he edit the medieval Persian history The History of the World-Conqueror (Tarikh-i Jahangusha’i).14 A year later Qazvini moved to Paris, where he could access the most important manuscripts of this text. The Constitutional Revolution compelled him to abandon his editing work for political activism.15 His obsession with accurate details and footnotes also stymied his progress, explaining why it took him nearly a quarter of a century to publish the entire text.16 As part of the Gibb Memorial Trust, Browne commissioned many other critical editions, often in collaboration with Qazvini.17 Qazvini and Browne maintained a lengthy correspondence on scholarly and political matters for the duration of their friendship. In their more scholarly letters, they discussed Browne’s edition of an early Babi chronicle and manuscripts of two other important medieval Persian histories.18 As his friendship with Qazvini demonstrates, Browne’s literary networks overlapped with his political ones: during the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, he corresponded extensively with Iranians while researching his account of the revolution that was meant to mobilize European public opinion in favor of the revolutionary cause.19 In The Persian Revolution, his main goal “was to allow the voice of the Persian people to be heard by his European audience.”20 Browne allowed Iranians to speak for themselves by appropriating their literary judgments even if these flew in the face of contemporary received scholarly wisdom in Europe. His scholarship was eclectic insofar as he synthesized Persian literary dictionaries, modern European and Indian scholarship, and contemporary Iranian literary judgments.

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Browne sought models for his literary histories in the scholarship of his contemporaries. He was particularly inspired by two literary histories—John Richard Green’s A Short History of the English People and Jean Jules Jusserand’s A Literary History of the English People—both of which were meant to be “popular” rather than strictly elite narratives.21 He likewise admired the Ottoman literary history of his close friend and colleague E.J.W. Gibb.22 Browne, who edited and published the remaining volumes of Gibb’s literary history after his death, commented on the relationship between his own project and that of his friend: “I should be happy to think that I could ever produce half so fine a work on Persian poetry as he has done on [Ottoman] Turkish.”23 As a multilingual scholar, Browne appreciated Shibli Numani’s Urdu-language history of Persian literature, citing it extensively and praising it as a great critical work of scholarship.24 ­Numani in turn cited Browne’s scholarship in later volumes, suggesting that their views on Persian literature developed in dialogue with one another.25 In addition to seeking models in other literary histories, Browne directly invited several Iranians and Indians to edit his work. For instance, his friend Muhammad Qazvini, the young student Husayn Kazimzadah, and the Parisbased Dr. Ahmad Khan all read and corrected The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia.26 For the fourth volume of his literary history, Browne translated and included the comments and corrections of scholar-activist Hasan Taqizadah in the form of an errata and addenda to his text.27 Browne solicited comments from two of his former Indian students at Cambridge—poet and Muslim intellectual Mohammad Iqbal and scholar Mohammad Shafi—for the third volume of A Literary History of Persia.28 Browne’s most significant literary engagements came in the form of letters. He largely deferred to contemporary Iranian literary judgments, in part because he considered Persian biographical dictionaries unreliable sources for canonization, because their authors could include and exclude poets on the basis of personal friendships, biases, and rumors of heterodox affiliation. 29 Browne relied instead on the judgments of those who were well-versed in what he deemed to be a living tradition: “From the well-read and intelligent Persians the European student of their language can learn many things not to be found in books, at any rate in books to which he has access, while their taste and judgement, even if at times he cannot wholly agree with them, are almost always suggestive and deserving of consideration.”30 Browne believed the final volume of his literary history to be the most original one, partly because it drew most heavily on the insights of his Ira-

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nian correspondents.31 His assessment in this volume of the decline of Persian poetry under the Safavids was based on a lengthy letter from Muhammad Qazvini dated 1911, a letter he translated and included in the book.32 Since Qazvini was not always responsive to his questions relating to his literary history, Browne also sought the advice of two other Iranians: Istanbul-based man of letters ­Husayn Danish and Hasan Taqizadah.33 He asked both of them for an explanation of why Shi‘ism spread in Iran under the Safavids, and for an exposition on the origins of the Shi‘i passion play (ta‘ziyah). Danish and Taqizadah’s responses indicated the diversity found within Iranian nationalism. With respect to the question of the spread of Shi‘ism, Taqizadah believed that the majority of Iranians were Shi‘is of one kind or another (Isma‘ili, Ahl-i Haqq, or Twelver) prior to the rise of the Safavids. The fall of the ‘Abbasid Sunni Caliphate, according to Taqizadah, enabled Iranians to cease dissimulation (taqiyah) and express their Shi‘ism openly until it inevitably became the official sect of Iran under the Safavids.34 In contrast to Taqizadah, Danish recast the question of Iranian conversion to Shi‘ism in racial terms. He argued that Iranians were partial toward Shi‘ism because of their eternal enmity toward the Semitic race, meaning the Arabs. Because Shi‘i Imam Husayn was supposedly married to Sasanian princess Shahrbanu, this made his descendants, the subsequent Shi‘i Imams, Iranians as well.35 Browne presented Danish’s account of the Iranian conversion to Shi‘ism but shed the latter’s racial logic.36 In assessing late Timurid ­poetry, Browne enlisted the help of a young Iranian student at Cambridge named Mirza Bihruz (later known as Zabih Bihruz), whom he described as “a young man of great promise and ability, well read in both Arabic and Persian literature.” Despite Bihruz’s young age and specialization in mathematics rather than literature, Browne translated and summarized Bihruz’s rather lengthy essay on the poets Nizami and Jami for the literary history.37 Browne’s canonization of Qajar poets synthesized the insights of written Persian sources with those gleaned from his epistolary exchange. He began by consulting Riza Quli Khan Hidayat’s biographical dictionary, Majma‘ al-Fusaha, from which he compiled a list of near-contemporary poets. He then turned to man of letters Yahya Dawlatabadi to aid him in evaluating these poets’ literary merits. Finally, Browne canonized poetry renowned for its style but that also conveyed meanings easily captured in translation.38 In so doing, Browne started with Iranian literary tastes before superimposing his own criteria.39 Although he deferred to Iranian tastes in many respects, Browne departed from prevailing Iranian literary tastes on several occasions. This was nowhere

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more pronounced than in his appraisal of epic poet Firdawsi’s Shahnamah. He complained of its “inordinate length,” the “monotony of its metre,” and its supposedly untranslatable nature. He compared this work unfavorably to the Arabic mu‘allaqat literature and to Persian romantic and lyric poetry.40 Aware of his own bias against this text, Browne enumerated reasons for the popularity of the Shahnamah: it was a source of national pride and a “monument to [­Iranian] national greatness,” it was an ancient text lacking excessive Arabic words and therefore important for philological reasons, it stressed “Aryan” over “Semitic” elements, and it was an important text for understanding folklore and mythology.41 He was critical of certain Iranian nationalists, such as Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani, who lionized Firdawsi while blaming mystical Persian verse for causing Iranian vice and backwardness. He called Kirmani’s views “a monstrous exaggeration of the real facts” but cited them nonetheless because he saw in such opinions “a [recent] demand for patriotic poetry and for a note of greater sincerity and higher purpose in verse.”42 Even though Browne generally reproduced Iranian critiques of the “Indian style” of Persian poetry, he made a notable exception by praising one of its representatives, poet Sa’ib Tabrizi.43 Browne’s most striking departure from the judgments of his Iranian contemporaries was discernible in his sympathy with heterodox and nonconformist movements. The exclusion of nonconformists from the Iranian literary canon may be understood at least in part as the result of a general nationalist hostility toward “heretical movements,” particularly the Babis and Baha’is.44 Browne constructed a historical genealogy for nonconformist movements that turned traditional religious heresiology on its head: instead of representing these nonconformist movements as aberrations to be abhorred, he made them into an expression of Iranian “genius” and authenticity.45 Browne’s main scholarly antagonists were European Orientalists. He called into question their negative characterizations of near-contemporary Persian literature in his The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia.46 The book brought together Browne’s literary and political interests and marked the beginning of his disillusionment with activism.47 Browne argued that contemporary Iranian poetry had considerable literary merit and thus positioned himself against those Orientalists who believed that Persian poetry had ended with Jami in the fifteenth century. In a speech delivered in 1912, he favorably described contemporary Iranian poetry, drawing surprised reactions from the crowd. He mused on the meaning of this reaction and its political significance: “This determined me to devote some attention to the refutation of a pernicious

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error chiefly attributable to the rarity of intimate relations between the literary worlds of Europe and Asia, but fostered and encouraged to some extent by those who desire for political reasons to represent such Asiatic peoples as the Persians as entirely decadent and degenerate, whereas in fact they have during the last eight years shown a vitality which, under happier circumstances, had it been unimpeded by malignant external forces entirely beyond the control of the Persian people, would, I am firmly convinced, have ultimately effected the  moral and material regeneration of the country.”48 Browne was clearly aware of the nexus between cultural representation and imperial politics. His critique of this imperial outlook took the form of scholarship that recognized the worth of contemporary Iranian literature. To further substantiate his position, he examined the vibrancy of the Iranian press as a response to those who would belittle it in the English Times newspaper.49 The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia was the culmination of the type of “intimate relations” between “literary worlds” that Browne felt would cultivate better mutual understanding between Europeans and Asians. In fact, the entire first half of the text on the history of the Iranian press was an adaptation of Muhammad ‘Ali Tarbiyat’s unpublished Persian manuscript on the topic.50 When ascertaining details about certain constitutional-era papers, Browne relied on the expertise of Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi.51 In the section of the book that deals with poetry, Browne acknowledged that he had selected some of the poetry “at random” from various Persian newspapers, but he added that much of it came from his “Persian friends and correspondents.”52 Taqizadah, for instance, forwarded various poems to him, in addition to offering to write brief biographies of its authors.53 In turn, Browne solicited Taqizadah’s opinion on a list of poets he hoped to include in the book.54 A student named Husayn Kazimzadah similarly sent Browne a rather lengthy compilation of poems by Malik al-Shu‘ara Bahar, ‘Arif Qazvini, Murtiza Farhang, Ashraf Gilani, Hisam al-Islam (Danish), Ibrahim Purdavud, and Ja‘far Khamanah’i.55 In some cases, poets themselves would forward their works to Browne, suggesting that his network drew the attention of those who were not necessarily in direct contact with him.56 The Republic of Letters constituted a novel mode for canonizing Persian literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Iranian nationalists and Browne shared a politically anti-imperialist stance and an appreciation for Persian poetry that resulted in collaborative networks for the writing of literary history.

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Commemorating Browne, Critiquing Imperialism The anti-imperialist thrust of Browne’s scholarship captured the imagination of Iranian nationalists in the 1920s who felt the need to commemorate his life. Earlier in the twentieth century, another Western figure, young American “martyr” of the Constitutional Revolution Howard Baskerville, similarly commanded the respect of Iranian nationalists. But that Browne, as an Englishman, became such a sympathetic figure at the height of anti-British sentiment in the early to mid-1920s was all the more remarkable.57 It should be kept in mind that Iranian nationalists did not feel the need to commemorate the vast majority of the many contemporary European and American authors on Iran, especially in such dramatic terms. Far from being slavish imitators, Iranian nationalists appropriated Browne’s legacy for clear strategic reasons, much like they chose to translate the histories of European authors for specific purposes depending on the context. Among the most prominent reasons for their appropriation of Browne was his lifetime of political activism against British and Russian policies toward Iran, and his writing of a comprehensive literary history of Iran. In a letter to Browne at the height of the constitutional struggle against Muhammad ‘Ali Shah, Hasan Taqizadah remarked that Browne was to Iranians what Lord Byron was to the Greeks.58 As a young student in Europe during the First World War, ‘Isa Sadiq effusively praised Browne for having “revived Persian literature.”59 Sadiq wrote several poems celebrating Browne’s love of Iran and even set these poems to music with his spike-fiddle (kamanchah).60 Two events in particular became occasions to commemorate Browne: his sixtieth birthday, in 1921, and his death in 1926. For Iranian nationalists involved with both events, Browne’s love for and service to Iran, was the exception rather than the rule when it came to European attitudes toward their country. They praised Browne while simultaneously articulating powerful indigenous critiques of imperialism and Orientalism. The most significant body of poetry praising Browne came on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in 1921.61 In the preceding two decades, Iranian nationalists had little reason to celebrate anything related to England: the 1907 Anglo-Russian Agreement, the British occupation of southern Iran during the First World War, and the ill-fated 1919 Anglo-Persian Agreement had galvanized anti-British sentiment in Iran. The commemorative poetry dedicated to Browne contrasted British foreign policy with his services to Iran. ‘Isa Sadiq feared being reproached for celebrating Browne’s birthday given Iranian hos-

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tility toward the British.62 In his poem, Yahya Dawlatabadi placed Browne’s friendship with Iran outside the realm of what he considered normal BritishIranian interactions: “Whatever oppression the English choose to commit/ Iran will never abandon Browne.”63 Another poet, Malik al-Shu‘ara Bahar, conveyed a similar sentiment: “If there ever was an act of generosity by the ­English ­people/To the people of the East, he [Browne] alone is it.”64 Addressing Browne’s scholarship, Vahid Dastgirdi said of him, “The father of the East had not seen a first-rate scholar such as him/The mother of the West had not given birth to an Orientalist [mustashriq] of his stature.”65 Iranian poets cast Browne as the reviver of Persian literature in the contemporary period. Muhammad ‘Ali Tarbiyat articulated this idea many years earlier in the preface of Browne’s The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia: “I must express the debt of gratitude and thanksgiving incumbent on me to my friend Edward Browne . . . to whom all Persians and those who use the Persian language, the whole community of Islam, and all lovers of Justice throughout the world owe a deep debt of gratitude, both on account of his fruitful services in rendering accessible to the public and reviving the memory of the works, literatures and histories of the Muhammadan nations, especially the Persians, and of his great and continued efforts, inspired by a love of Justice, in defending, both by speech and writing, in England particularly and in Europe generally, the rights of the down-trodden peoples of Islam against their cruel oppressors.”66 The poet Saburi made a striking, if not somewhat hyperbolic, parallel between Browne and Firdawsi as both being revivers of Persian literature: “You and Cambridge and Britain/Are like Tus, Firdawsi and Asia.”67 Saburi’s designation of Browne as the “Firdawsi of the Age” referred to his A Literary History of Persia and his patronage of critical editions of Persian manuscripts.68 ­Muhammad Nijat similarly saw Browne’s efforts as having “given life” to “Iranian poetry and prose,” while the poet Hushyar gave this revival an almost apocalyptic tone, proclaiming, “works of [Iranian] literature were facing destruction” and it was through Browne’s texts that they “gained new life.”69 When Browne died in 1926, there was an outpouring of grief in Iran among littérateurs and politicians. Two separate memorials were held in Iran to reflect on his legacy. The first memorial was held on Saturday, January 16, 1926, at the Talar-i Su‘udiyah building under the auspices of the Minister of Education, Mirza Yusuf Khan Mushar Kufayl; the president of the Literary Association (Anjuman-i Adabi), Muhammad Hashim Mirza Afsar; and an unnamed parliamentary representative. Among the speakers were two of Browne’s friend,

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Hasan Taqizadah, who spoke of Browne’s literary and political services, and Yahya Dawlatabadi, who described Browne’s character. The Education Ministry and the Literary Association sent separate telegrams to Cambridge University and to Browne’s mother. Both messages were read aloud at the meeting.70 The meeting ended fittingly with a poem written by Hasan Badi‘, a member of the Literary Association, memorializing the English scholar.71 The second memorial, held two days later at the Grand Hotel in Tehran, was organized by ‘Ali Akbar Davar, the Minister of Public Works. In addition to talks given by a member of the Radical Party (Hizb-i Radikal ) and Mirza Ahmad Khan Shari‘atzadah, a speech was delivered by ‘Isa Sadiq in French.72 After giving an account of Browne’s political activism, Sadiq noted the importance of The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia as a response “to the calumnies that were published against Persia in the foreign press” and as a demonstration of Iran’s “national genius” that “also manifested itself in a new genre of patriotic poetry and a new genre of prose.”73 Cognizant of the political significance of Browne’s work on poetry, Sadiq characterized A Literary History of Persia as his “most important work,” which “occupied forty years of his life.” He saw Browne as the first to write such a “complete book . . . on Persian literature” in which he consulted “hundreds, or should I say thousands, of books in Persian, Arabic, Turkish, English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian as well as Hebrew and Syriac.” Echoing the sentiments of the poets who had commemorated Browne’s life just four years earlier, he stated, “This history of Persian literature is a monument that will live so long as the world exists, and this alone would have sufficed to provoke our gratitude toward him who composed it.”74 Muhammad Qazvini penned a lengthy obituary for Browne in the Berlinbased Persian journal Iranshahr. In it, Qazvini criticized European Orientalists while commemorating Browne. He said of Browne that he “was one of those beautiful and rare phenomena of Nature” because “what can be stranger than this, that a gentleman belonging to a foreign nationality” and being “one of the most eminent of scholars and writers of that nation should be championing the cause of our country, and be ranged against his own people and country purely for the sake of our country throughout the whole of his life-time, and criticize and find fault with their actions?”75 Qazvini put forward three reasons why European Orientalists occasionally gave sympathetic accounts of Iranian history, although he maintained a critical perspective of their apparent esteem: the first was for knowledge’s own sake; the second was for personal reasons such as fame and academic recognition; and the final was “for the sake of doing service

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to the history and languages of common Aryan stock.” Qazvini perceptively remarked that the real motivation behind such Orientalist studies was an attempt “to exalt the general status of the Aryan race as against the Semitic peoples and especially the Jews.”76 Qazvini recognized that Orientalist accounts of Iran were usually unsympathetic: “if you were to delve deeper down into their hearts, [they] would be found to cherish a feeling somewhat akin to hostility, contempt and even disparagement towards that nation, as if these were ingrained in their c­ onstitution.”77 He argued that this hatred of Iranians was rooted in the European education system in which students learned about the Greco-Persian and Perso-Roman wars. The bias of these Greek and Roman historians of antiquity transformed itself into “quasi-hostile” sentiments against Iranians evident in Orientalists’ “casual remarks and stray observations.”78 Qazvini cited German Orientalist Theodor Nöldeke as a case in point. In a study on Iranian history, Nöldeke claimed that Iranians were by nature dishonest and therefore their historical works were usually filled with contradictions. He had commented, “One can also learn a good many things concerning ancient Persians from Haji Baba by Morier!”79 Qazvini gave this example to show how Browne stood above “even the remotest comparison” with any Orientalist when it came to expressing “sincere love and genuine friendship towards Persia.”80 Browne’s legacy continued to be relevant in Iran well into the 1920s and 1930s. Many of the ideas that emerged from the exchange between Browne and his Iranian and Indian interlocutors circulated widely through Iranian state educational institutions as centralization and standardization became more pronounced.

The State, Literary History Textbooks, and the National Canon Given their close proximity, when Iranian literary figures engaged one another, they did not rely on letters as the geographically isolated Browne did. Instead, they formed literary associations and journals in which they discussed and debated many aspects of literature and literary history both face-to-face and in print. These literary exchanges, which overlapped with and paralleled those with Browne, largely took place outside the constraints of state power. Many of the ideas forged in the 1910s and early 1920s in these literary circles and associations became central to the state’s official educational policy on literature by the late 1920s and 1930s.81 Canonization took place through a number of mediums: literary associations, journals, transnational literary exchanges, state-­sponsored

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commemoration ceremonies, and literary histories. With the emergence of a centralizing state concerned with a more standardized curriculum, literary histories took on a special significance at all levels of schooling in Iran. Although Browne wrote a highly influential Iranian literary history in English, Iranians began the process of writing similar literary histories in Persian from the mid-1910s onward. Unlike Browne’s literary history, which ultimately had a European audience in mind, these Persian-language literary histories were concerned with promoting a national canon for a generation of young students. André Lefevere has persuasively argued that literary historians reconstruct canons “to make them fit in with the dominant, or one of the dominant, ideological and poetological currents of their time.”82 Literary canonization relied institutionally on academies, universities, and schools for survival and articulation through literature courses.83 History textbooks became a major medium for the canonization of Iranian literature. The earliest attempts at writing such textbooks merely modified biographical dictionaries. But by the late 1920s, a number of scholars, many of whom had associated with Browne, produced literary textbooks similar in organization to his literary histories. Muhammad Husayn Furughi and ‘Abd al-Azim Qarib Garakani, both Persian literature instructors at premier modern schools in Iran, wrote the earliest literary history textbooks in Iran. In discussing Persian literature, they foregrounded the Iranian nation at the exclusion of Indian and Central Asian Persian poetry. Unlike Browne, they organized their works as chronologically ordered biographical entries of poets. This suggests enduring continuities between earlier literary historical genres, such as the biographical dictionary, and the initial literary history textbooks. Muhammad Husayn Furughi wrote a history of Persian literature from the early Islamic period to the fifteenth century, ending with the life of the poet Hafiz. Muhammad Husayn’s sons, Muhammad ‘Ali and Abu al-Hasan, compiled, edited, and published his incomplete notes “on the biographies of ancient poets” posthumously. In their preface, they claimed that their father had “intended to write a history of Persian literature in the style of European literary books” in order to “lend some beauty and elegance to the literature of this age, renew the literary life of Iran, and decrease our shame among learned nations who have compiled the history of literature and learning in their own language.”84 Although he had intended to write a “European”-style literary history, Muhammad Husayn Furughi’s text had more in common structurally with Persian biographical dictionaries because it consisted of chronologically ordered

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biographies of major Persian poets accompanied by samples of their poetry.85 Unlike previous Persian biographical dictionaries, the text did cite a number of modern literary studies, including Jules Mohl’s edition of and introduction to the Shahnamah, and I‘tizad al-Saltanah’s biography of the poet Daqiqi in the newspaper Ruznamah-i Azad.86 Furughi shared with Browne the conviction that “no language has remained pure and simple in its primal state,” and he considered Persian mixing with Arabic “not the cause of weakness of reproach” but rather a “proof of its strength.87 A near-contemporary of Furughi, language and literature instructor Mirza ‘Abd al-‘Azim Qarib Garakani, published a literary history as part of a larger Persian literature textbook. Born into a family of government auditors (­mustawfiyan) in Garakan, Qarib studied traditional Islamic sciences alongside being a student at the Dar al-Funun, where he also learned French. He decided to deviate from the career path of his forefathers by becoming a teacher at the Tehran ‘Ilmiyah School in 1899/1900 (1317 H.) and later at the Dar ­al-Funun and the Teachers’ Training College.88 At these schools, he taught Persian, which according to him was looked down upon: “the most insignificant and unimportant teacher was the Persian teacher.”89 In the classroom, Qarib was notoriously stern, temperamental, and prone to emotional outbursts.90 He was best known as the father of Persian grammar: his textbooks were the most widely used in Iran at the time.91 His name became so synonymous with Persian grammar as to become proverbial. When someone wanted to point out a blatant grammatical mistake, they would say so-and-so’s “Mirza ‘Abd al-‘Azim Khan is not working.”92 The companion piece to his grammar book was Literary Pearls, a literary anthology and history textbook.93 In making an argument for the centrality of literary histories, Qarib claimed that “the firmest national bond is the language of the inhabitants of each country,” and he warned that those who neglected their language risked “not leaving a trace in history [literally ‘the page of the world’ (safhah-i ‘alam)].”94 He went on to draw a connection between being a civilized nation and spreading one’s language: “Today the civilized nations of Europe spare no effort and cost in . . . spreading their language and in opening primary schools.” He then lamented, “we Iranians do not strive to spread our own language in our own country and nation,” and then observed that those in “many of the provinces of Iran . . . do not understand and know Persian despite [the fact] that Iranians are all of one race and origin but because of conflicting languages we are leagues apart and are as foreigners to one another.”95 Qarib

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believed that language and literature had an integrative function by bringing non-Persian speakers into the Iranian nationalist fold. He organized his history of Persian literature in a manner similar to that of Furughi’s by presenting biographies of individual poets alongside samples of their poetry. He covered the history of Persian poetry from the Samanid period until the life of Hafiz. Both Furughi and Qarib saw a need for “modern” literary histories, but their textbooks had more in common with biographical dictionaries in terms of their organization. The synthesis of a biographical approach with a political periodization owed much to the Iranian encounter with Browne’s scholarship. Ahmad Kasravi recognized Browne’s importance but exaggerated his influence when he asserted that the English scholar singlehandedly spurred an Iranian literary movement. This movement, he claimed, was obsessed with Persian poetry and literature from the early 1910s and led to the formation of literary associations and the publication of literary journals and other publications.96 Sa‘id Nafisi recounted how, when he was a young student, Browne’s name was on many people’s lips, which inspired him to read Browne’s The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia.97 Browne’s connection with ‘Isa Sadiq captures his significance for a younger generation of educational reformers. Much has already been said about Sadiq’s enthusiasm for American pedagogy during his memorable yearlong stay at C ­ olumbia University.98 But less has been said about Sadiq’s years in Cambridge under Browne’s tutelage, when he rethought the teaching of Iranian literary ­history. Born in Tehran on June 5, 1894, Sadiq came from a family of government secretaries dating back to the reign of Nadir Shah on his father’s side and to a line of Islamic jurists (mujtahids) on his mother’s side. As a child, he attended the modern Adab and Kamaliyah Schools, but his father abruptly removed him from the latter school fearing the mounting opposition to modern schools on religious grounds. Through Sadiq’s uncle’s intervention, he was allowed to return to the Kamaliyah School two years later.99 When Sadiq reached the age of fifteen, his father became increasingly unsettled by his son’s desire to continue his education and admonished him to instead become a merchant and find a wife.100 The angry father tore up Sadiq’s books and forbade him to study any further, but once again Sadiq’s uncle intervened, allowing him to resume his studies at the Dar al-Funun.101 In 1911, the Iranian parliament dispatched students abroad for further education. Sadiq was among this select group.102 Despite his love of European learning, he was dismayed by the racism and anti-Muslim sentiments he en-

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countered in France. During the war, he traveled to England and became enamored of Cambridge while serving as a Persian teaching assistant to Browne. He favored Cambridge over French universities because of its pastoral and cheerful pedagogical setting and its emphasis on morality and extracurricular activity, the very antithesis of the regimented French model.103 Sadiq, who was in England during the height of the First World War, wrote a number of newspaper articles and letters to the editor, eliciting a negative response from the British government, including from Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey.104 The War Office contacted Browne and pointed out the “objectionable nature of some of [Sadiq’s] correspondence.”105 Browne then scheduled a meeting with Sadiq to explain why, after the outbreak of the war, he became disillusioned with the efficacy of activism and therefore concluded that his time was better spent writing the third volume of his literary history. He told Sadiq that his letters and articles would have no effect except to lead to Sadiq’s expulsion from the country. Browne pleaded with him to concentrate on teaching Persian.106 Sadiq promised to abstain from writing about political issues for Browne’s sake, although after returning to France he continued to be politically active.107 In the long run, Sadiq heeded Browne’s advice. When he returned to Iran in 1918, he was quickly recruited by then Education Minister Ahmad Badar Nasir al-Dawlah.108 Sadiq then worked in Gilan starting in 1918/9 (1297 Sh.), during the domination of the Jangal movement. The Jangalis were unsuccessful in convincing him to set up a provincial education system under their auspices. 109 Upon returning to Tehran, Sadiq worked for the Education Commission until he was transferred to the Ministry of Education in 1926/1927.110 Reflecting on his experience as Browne’s teaching assistant, Sadiq believed that Persian literature was not taught properly in Iran.111 His interactions with Browne shaped his thinking in other ways as well. When Sadiq was teaching at the Dar alFunun and acting as a subdirector of the Board of Education, he put forward Browne’s suggestion to create a historical society dedicated to Iranian history from the Safavids to the present, although nothing ever came of it.112 The Education Minister took the initiative to have Browne’s A Literary History of Persia translated into Persian. ‘Ali Asghar Hikmat, an inspector for general education, commissioned Rashid Yasami and three others to translate Browne’s four-volume literary history. The Minister of Education contacted Browne directly on July 12, 1925, congratulated him on the publication of his literary history, and requested permission to translate the work into Persian.

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In response, Browne wrote one of his last letters to Iran before his death. After thanking the Minister, he tried to dissuade him from having Browne’s work translated: “While I have published four volumes of the literary history of Iran during these past twenty years, it is, in my opinion, in no wise worthy of translation into the Persian language.” He believed that his scholarship in English was best captured by the expression “in the land of the blind, the oneeyed man is king.” Browne considered his own “knowledge regarding Persian literature in the West” as sufficient, but added that “it is of no profit to the scholars and littérateurs of Iran since whatever I have attained [in learning on this topic] I obtained from them either orally or through writing [katban] and culled from their harvest.” He proposed that “one of the great literary personages of Iran” should write a literary history “according to the modern principles [­usul-i jadid ] and investigation, readings, and criticisms,” adding that such a book would be “of greater value especially for the people of the Europe.” 113 In this letter, Browne explicitly acknowledged the oral and epistolary nature of his accumulated knowledge on Iranian literature. In spite of Browne’s letter, Yasami translated the fourth volume of A Literary History of Persia in a matter of a few months. When Hikmat left his post, Yasami’s new supervisor took less interest in the translation, which languished “forgotten in a room for more than ten years.”114 In the meantime, Nasrullah Sayfpur Fatimi, apparently unaware of Yasami’s work, translated parts of the same volume.115 Yasami’s translation appeared in print only when Hikmat became Education Minister in the mid-1930s.116 In that same year, Yasami also produced a history of contemporary Iranian literature to serve as a companion to his translation. This history surveyed literary developments since Browne’s death117 and provided biographies and samples of poetry; the last twenty pages or so were dedicated to prose works, including histories, plays, prose literary texts, newspapers, magazines, yearbooks, and pedagogical manuals.118 By the late 1920s, Iranians started writing literary histories with an explicitly political periodization. They employed a broader definition of literature to include not only poets but also religious scholars, philosophers, mystics, and scientists.119 The three scholars mainly responsible for writing original Iranian literary histories in this period were Jalal al-Din Huma’i, Rizazadah Shafaq, and Badi‘ al-Zaman Furuzanfar. All three were deeply familiar with the classical tradition of Persian literature, but they were also the products of a modern education, either in Iran or abroad. These authors appropriated different aspects of Browne’s literary histories, but their intended audience was clearly different

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than Browne’s: whereas Browne wrote to educate and disabuse the European reading public of certain prejudices toward Persian history and literature, these three men wrote to instill a sense of nationalistic pride through state education. In writing their literary histories of Iran, they shared an emphasis on the resilience of a distinctly indigenous Iranian literary culture even in times of “foreign” political domination. Jalal al-Din Huma’i wrote the earliest literary history textbook in Iran that explicitly linked literature to political, social, and cultural trends. Born in ­Isfahan to a family of poets and calligraphers, Huma’i received his most rigorous education at home: his father made him read pages from the nineteenth-­ century history Namah-i Khusravan and from Sa‘di’s Bustan and Gulistan. In 1909, Huma’i began attending the modern Qudsiyah School, where he learned mathematics and some history and geography. He also studied at Nimavard, a traditional Islamic madrasah with which he was connected for close to twenty years. Suffering from relative poverty, he taught at both schools while also being employed as a scribe. As a traditional Islamic teacher, he was by all accounts quite popular, retaining a large number of students until the late 1920s.120 It was then that Huma’i left Isfahan for Tehran in the hopes of entering the circle of scholars that included the poet Adib Pishavari and the cleric Mirza Tahir Tunakabuni. In Tehran, the Ministry of Education offered him teaching posts in several Tabriz high schools. During the course of his three-year stay in Tabriz, he wrote The History of Iranian Literature.121 Huma’i intended to write a five-volume literary history of Persian literature from the pre-Islamic period to the present but only managed to publish the first two volumes. His periodization of Iranian literature was remarkably similar to Browne’s, with the exception that for Huma’i the 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution marked the fifth and latest era in Iranian literary history. Huma’i believed that he was helping in the “revival of national sources” (ihya-i ma’asir-i milli) by writing such a work.122 He differentiated his literary history from past biographical dictionaries by saying that “literary history has a wider meaning than just the biographies of several poets and writers, which cannot be considered true literary history.”123 His definition of literature encompassed not only poetry and prose, but also music, the sciences, proverbs, crafts, festivals, and calendars.124 Central to his approach to literary history was the significance of “context” (muhit)—political, social, material, spiritual, natural, and racial.125 Drawing on Arab historian Jurji Z ­ aydan’s definition of literary history, he argued that a nation’s “literary history” was

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“the history of the minds of each nation’s individuals and its influence on their selves, morals, and customs.”126 Huma’i emphasized the Iranian contribution to Islam through the composition of Arabic texts.127 He consulted Arabic secondary sources, particularly Jurji Zaydan’s The History of Arabic Literature (Tarikh Adab al-Lughah ­al-‘Arabiyyah), demonstrating that he bore no animus against contemporary Arab scholars. In fact, he differentiated between Islam as a religion and Arabs as invaders in the early Islamic centuries by arguing that Iranians embraced Islam sincerely but suffered under tyrannical Umayyad Arab governors.128 Huma’i was by no means a language purist. He considered Persian to have been mixed with other languages from pre-Islamic times that had Semitic and Turanic elements and he made no condemnation of such a mixture in his section on ancient Persian languages.129 In contrast to Huma’i’s literary history, Rizazadah Shafaq’s History of Iranian Literature was a more organized and systematic literary history.130 Born in Tabriz, Shafaq began his studies at the modern Parvarish School before entering the American Memorial School. He witnessed the Constitutional Revolution in his teens and regularly contributed to constitutionalist newspapers. His pro-constitutionalist activities brought him into conflict with the Russian authorities, forcing him to flee to the Ottoman Empire. In Istanbul he put his education to good use by teaching history and literature at the local Iranian School (Madrasah-i Iranian) while simultaneously pursuing his education at the University of Istanbul. In the midst of the First World War, he was admitted to the American Robert’s College in Istanbul before pursuing a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Berlin. His educational qualifications made him an ideal candidate for a teaching post at Tehran’s Teachers’ Training College upon his return to Iran in the late 1920s. Here he taught history, the history of literature, and general philosophy. Education Minister Yahya Qaraguzlu asked Shafaq to write a literary history textbook for middle school students as a companion to Badi‘ al-Zaman Furuzanfar’s anthology of Persian literature.131 Shafaq spent two years researching the topic and consulting original works of poetry and secondary sources before publishing the textbook.132 His linguistic breadth in Arabic, Turkish, French, German, and English made his book a synthetic work. Although he was almost certainly influenced by German scholars of Persian literature, most notably Hermann Ethé, whose literary history he later translated into Persian,

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Shafaq also corresponded with Browne during his student years in Istanbul and praised his literary history.133 Shafaq believed that the “importance and value of literature” was that it was a “proof of an exalted civilization” and that it had moral, ethical, historical, religious, and exemplary value.134 His literary history examined the important poets and learned figures of each dynasty. He included a brief discussion of the pre-Islamic Persian scripts before covering Persian literature up to the end of the Qajar era. His assessment of Arab influence on Iran echoed those of Browne and Huma’i: although Iranians were dominated by the Arabs, they “accepted Arab knowledge [ta‘limat] according to their own temperament and tastes and they spread their own civilization among the Arabs, especially after the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate.”135 Shafaq celebrated the Iranian contribution to Arabic literature and the revival of the Persian language as signs of Iranian national resilience.136 Unlike many Iranians, who wrote disparagingly about Persian poetry produced in India or ignored it altogether, Shafaq dedicated a section, albeit short, to Persian literature in India. His acknowledgment of Persian literature produced in India may have been inspired by Rabindranath Tagore’s visit to Iran in 1932, during which time literary connections between Iran and India were celebrated rather than denigrated.137 Emerging from circles similar to those of Huma’i and Shafaq, Badi‘ al-­ Zaman Furuzanfar was a prominent literary historian and anthologist. Born in Bushruyah, Khurasan, into a family of clerics, he left for Mashhad as a teenager to study Persian and Arabic literature and Islamic sciences with the poet Adib Nishapuri and several prominent clerics. In 1922 he moved to Tehran, where he taught a range of topics, including Islamic law, Arabic, logic, and Persian literature, at several notable modern educational institutions, such as the Dar al-Funun, the College of Law (Madrasah-i ‘Ali-yi Huquq), and the Teachers’ Training College. As a young literary scholar and as a provincial outsider to Tehran literary circles, he bravely critiqued the senior scholar Muhammad ­Qazvini, thus provoking a rebuttal by the latter’s friends and colleagues.138 The Ministry of Education commissioned Furuzanfar to compile suitable poetic specimens into a literary anthology. The Ministry wanted him to provide historical context for each poet, to exclude poetry with “immoral” themes, and to select poems with strong “content” and not just pleasing “form.”139 In addition to his literary anthology, Furuzanfar also wrote a literary history that was based on his lecture notes for the Teachers’ Training College.140 He organized his literary history around major dynasties as did his predecessors Huma’i and

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Shafaq. He celebrated the achievement of Iranians writing in Arabic during the Samanid, Ghaznavid, and Seljuk periods.141 He considered the Seljuk adoption of Persian as the court language a form of reverse cultural hegemony that mitigated the effects of Turkish political domination over Iranians: “Despite the fact that the Seljuks did not have much prejudice toward their own language, it can be said that while on the surface they were victorious, in spirit they were conquered by Iranian civilization.”142 Furuzanfar was adamant in differentiating Iranian artistic forms from their presumably Arab models. He noted the differences between Persian and Arabic meters (‘aruz) and claimed that what the Arabs meant by poetry was “mostly limited to the desert and mountain” whereas the defining feature of Persian literature was its philosophical ­sensibility.143 Furuzanfar differed from Browne in his positive assessment of Firdawsi, even going so far as to elevate the latter’s magnum opus to the status of the Qur’an: “The Shahnamah was spread to all points of Iran and like the Qur’an they circulated it hand to hand; to quote Ibn al-Asir, . . . ‘the Shahnamah is the Qur’an of the Iranians.’”144 The literary history textbooks of Huma’i, Shafaq, and Furuzanfar constituted institutionally sanctioned canonizations of Iranian literature. More than regular history textbooks, these literary histories stressed Iranian national resilience through literature in periods of “foreign” political domination by Arabs and Turks.

g Over the course of the early twentieth century, literary histories replaced biographical dictionaries as the dominant medium for canonizing Persian ­literature. Already by the eighteenth century, literary anthologists and biographers subscribed to increasingly territorial understandings of the nature of poetry. Later nationalists would draw on these understandings when making exclusivist claims about the cultural ownership of literature by one nation over another. Iranian, Indian, and European scholars contributed to the writing of literary histories through a transnational Persian Republic of Letters in which letter writing was a dominant mode of intellectual exchange. The case of E ­ dward Granville Browne and his Iranian interlocutors calls into question crude characterizations of Western “knowledge production” influencing native non-Western nationalists in a straightforward and simple manner. Far from being the intellectual labor of a single man working in isolation, Browne’s literary histories were the culmination of exchanges of ideas, manuscripts and sources,

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and readings of literature and history with many Iranian and Indian literary figures and scholars. Browne’s literary histories became models for interwar Iranian nationalists writing for new state educational institutions. The selection of Browne as a model was far from coincidental. As a defender of Iran against European imperialist and Orientalist charges of backwardness, he argued that Iran possessed a resilient culture capable of adapting to modern challenges just as it had in the past. For this reason, Iranian nationalists appropriated Browne, using his birthday and death as occasions to critique European imperialism while commemorating his defense of Iran against its would-be colonizers. By publishing textbooks, literary anthologies, critical editions, and state-sponsored celebrations of literary figures such as Firdawsi, the state made literary nationalism a central component of its cultural policy. In their textbooks, Iranian literary historians stressed the role of individual poets, intellectuals, and writers who embodied an Iranian national “spirit” in times of chaos and transition. Nationalists appropriated authors from the early centuries of Islam who wrote in Arabic but were from Iran or who were native Persian speakers. They likewise viewed poets writing in Persian, often at the imperial courts of ethnically Turkish sovereigns, as evidence of Iranian national resilience despite foreign domination.



CONCLUSION

B Y T H E 19 4 0 S , Iranians increasingly encountered novel articulations of the past as literacy rates soared throughout the country. The expansion of institutions of higher education meant academic history became the domain of an educated and specialized few, but this did not prevent the circulation of popular histories. Four distinctive features characterized history writing in the formative years, 1860–1940. First, the social profile of the “historian” varied greatly and was difficult to define with a tidy notion of professionalism; second, the autonomy of individuals and institutions, particularly vis-à-vis the state, partly explains the timing for the emergence and popularity of certain genres of history; third, the nation became the primary category for writing history through translations, transnational engagements with foreign scholars, and the writing of world histories; finally, a broad cross section of Iranians employed history to delineate the criteria for citizenship while simultaneously excluding populations on the basis of race, civilization, and the military defense of the “nation.”

Autonomy, Patronage, and the State In the absence of Iranian institutions of higher education for much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the vast majority of Iranian “historians” earned their livelihood outside of a university structure. Historians occupied multiple fields of cultural production and lacked a uniform professional identity. The education they received varied widely: some received an almost

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exclusively religious education, most had a mix of both religious and modern schooling, and by the late 1930s a younger generation typically attended only modern schools in Iran and abroad. The intermediary position of most historians between religious and modern education might explain why they did not advocate a radical rejection of the past even when they were supporters of the Constitutional Revolution or Riza Khan’s 1921 coup. Being a historian was oftentimes a temporary calling tied to other forms of work. Occupationally, the first generation of historians at the court included poets, government officials, princes, translators, and men of letters. Starting in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, journalists and activists also became historians. In subsequent decades, journalist-historians, a category of writers concerned with drawing out parallels between the past and present events in the press, wrote histories as part of broader political and social activities. Early history teachers, translators, and court historians went on to fill important government posts in no small part because of their sought-after linguistic and analytical competencies. As literacy and education became more commonplace, bureaucratic positions, particularly at the upper echelons, were usually reserved for those with foreign degrees. The pull of the bureaucracy left a smaller pool of students who were trained at the Teachers’ Training Colleges or the University of Tehran to become career teachers of history and, later, professional historians. Many history teachers in the 1920s and 1930s suffered from inadequate pay, relatively low social status, and fewer opportunities for upward social mobility. Professionalization brought the benefits of a higher demand for history teachers and relative job security, but these came at a price: historians were now much more beholden to the state and therefore less able to write historical narratives as they saw fit. History as a practice attracted a diverse population from a host of regional backgrounds. The lives of four Iranian literary historians illustrate this point: Rashid Yasami was from Kirmanshah, Jalal al-Din Huma’i was from Isfahan, Rizazadah Shafaq was from Azerbaijan, and Badi‘ al-Zaman Furuzanfar was from Khurasan. The geographical diversity of Iranian historians might explain the prevalence of published provincial histories: Ahmad Kasravi wrote about his home province of Azerbaijan, ‘Abd al-Husayn Ayati focused on his ­native Yazd, and Rashid Yasami, an ethnic Kurd, explored the history of Iranian Kurds. Tehran did, however, act as a magnet for those in the provinces who went on to write histories, first via the imperial court and later via the Tehran Teachers’ Training College and the University of Tehran.

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The social profile of Iranian historians sheds light on their relative autonomy in writing and teaching about the past. The autonomy of historians rested on the material foundation of their intellectual labor: the imperial court, individual patrons, and informal and formal institutions both enabled and constrained the writing of certain types of history. Funding for translators, writers, and publishers allowed for new discursive practices of history to come into being. At a broader institutional level, modern schools and later universities created a demand for both textbooks and history teachers, who might otherwise have found employment only at the imperial court. On the flip side, this material support entailed reciprocal expectations: funders instrumentalized history to serve their ideological interests. The state was not the only entity funding the publishing of historical works; voluntary associations and private individuals played an important role as well. Starting from the late 1890s, informal or semi-informal institutions such as the Education Committee and the Education Commission commissioned historical translations and modern textbooks. During and even after the Constitutional Revolution, wealthy individual patrons, such as Jamshid Sa‘id al-Dawlah, Sardar As‘ad, and Muhammad Musaddiq, allocated private funds for the composition and translation of several histories. The characterization of historiography as purely the ideological handmaiden of the state is therefore misleading and oversimplistic. The weakening of governmental authority afforded historians a greater deal of autonomy from institutional constraints. Muzaffar al-Din Shah’s reign (1896–1907) witnessed educational reform and private initiative, partly because of the state’s financial restrictions. By breaking the authority of the central government, the Constitutional Revolution significantly amplified the ability of private patrons and voluntary associations to support individual historians in the writing and publishing of histories with relatively little state oversight and censorship. Periods of greater autonomy created the space for social reformers and revolutionaries to justify their objectives through history. Translations, for instance, went from being a predominantly imperial court activity focused on top-down authoritarian reformers and studies of the Iranian imperial tradition, to a public and revolutionary activity emphasizing the history of revolution, democracy, and anti-imperialism. Newspapers, journals, and magazines, which were often official organs of voluntary associations, became mediums for the broader circulation of historical narratives in a reformist vein. As the case of the women’s press demonstrates, voluntary associations drew heavily on his-

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torical and biographical narratives to make a case for women’s education, social rights, and political involvement. By the late 1930s, the Pahlavi state considerably centralized and standardized public education and implemented a more rigorous censorship regime. Educational centralization began in earnest with the formation of the Teachers’ Training College in 1919. Students gaining diplomas at this and similar institutions of higher education abroad found employment as history teachers at all levels inside Iran. During the 1920s and 1930s, the state managed to disseminate a uniform educational curriculum, commission state-approved history textbooks, and train teachers to embody a certain habitus in the classroom. The formation of state cultural and propagandistic institutions presented a more uniform and ideologically driven vision of history meant to reach out to the population beyond the classroom. Historians could now make a living by teaching and writing histories, although they were circumscribed in what they could say and write, particularly if they were critical of the state, monarchy, or orthodox religiosity. Pahlavi state censorship likewise curtailed the subversive possibilities of historical narratives in the press.

Citizenship, Exclusion, and the Nation Given the significance of these internal dynamics, it is no longer sufficient to claim that “Western” historiography diffused uniformly throughout the “nonWest.” This mode of explanation says little about why historians in countries like Iran appropriated certain historiographies while ignoring others at particular moments in time. Historians selected foreign-language histories for engagement according to their perception of what was needed in their “host” communities rather than passively imitating Western models. Translation was a key mechanism for this exchange. When the court commissioned translations, histories served the broader objectives of glorifying Iranian kings and providing the present king with authoritarian models for top-down modernization. After the Constitutional Revolution, Iranian revolutionaries broke from the constraints of the court and instead chose democratic and anti-imperial themes for translation. Iranian educators consciously chose to translate French textbooks rather than British and Russian ones, despite the latter two countries’ political domination of Iran. By doing so, they circumvented British and Russian cultural hegemony by preferring the more “neutral” French textbooks.

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Through these exchanges, Iranians internalized the idea that nations rather than dynasties or tribes were the principal actors in world history. According to the logic of modern world histories, non-nations lacked history and merely awaited incorporation into world history through conquest. By insisting that Iran had a history and was thus a nation, Iranian historians argued against European characterization of Iran as a backward country in need of colonial ­overlords. Nowhere was this fear of history becoming a pretext for conquest more pronounced than in Iranian literary history. Transnational literary encounters led to the territorialization and nationalization of literature. Iranian nationalists wrote literary histories to assert that Iran was a nation of poets, unlike Turks and Arabs, whose cultures, they claimed, were derivative. They also set out to prove, with the help of Edward Granville Browne, that Iranian literature was not a relic of the past but instead a vibrant and ongoing practice, one fully capable of expressing modern preoccupations. As Iranians began to see their country as a nation, they saw themselves no longer as subjects of the Shah but as citizens of a state. The Constitutional Revolution popularized the ideals of citizenship through participatory institutions and by championing rights such as education. History textbooks of this period inculcated the rights and obligations of citizens by rereading the past in light of contemporary events. Education became a core component of citizenship: students were expected to know their nation’s history and its place within the world. Most official textbooks, however, excluded women from the history of the nation. In fact, the Iranian women’s movement established girls’ schools using private funds whereas the state failed to lend girls’ schools much in the way of financial support until the early 1920s. But it was in the women’s press that they asserted their rights through historical and biographical narratives. Local histories championed the right of subnational communities to citizenship by virtue of their martial defense of the nation. Constitutional-era histories of the Bakhtiyaris, the Azerbaijanis, and the Gilanis stressed their political role in defending the constitution against domestic and imperial opponents. Later, historians of the Kurds used a similar strategy, although they discussed earlier instances of the Kurds defending Iran against “foreign” invaders. The implication of these military defenses, in both the distant and the recent past, was that these groups should be recognized as citizens of the nation by virtue of their willingness to shed blood in its path. Despite these discursive possibilities, local historians had to come to grips with regionalist movements that threatened unitary and hegemonic understandings of the nation-state. Given

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the modernizing plans of the late Qajar and early Pahlavi states, the modern city—typified by industry, roads, schools, and monuments—became emblematic of the nation. City histories crafted an ideal of belonging to the nation in a number of ways, ranging from defense of constitutionalism to traditions of learning, the restoration of historical monuments, and the implementation of modern development. In these histories, urban dwellers were contrasted favorably to nomads in outlying areas. The Pahlavi state was credited with restoring decaying monuments and creating the conditions for modern buildings, industries, and schools. Whereas some Iranians used history as a way of claiming citizenship rights, others used it for exclusion and for fomenting animosity toward particular groups. Many works of history excluded Iranian populations along racial, civilizational, and religious lines. Historians considered Iranians to be “white” while Turks and Mongols were categorized as members of the “yellow” races. They blamed Turks and Mongols for introducing superstition to Iran and for being the cause of decline and backwardness. With few exceptions, historians cast tribes as barbaric forces holding back the progress of the nation. Heresy was the religious analogue to racial and civilizational backwardness. Historians singled out the Mazdakites, Manicheans, Isma‘ilis, Musha‘sha‘is, Babis, and Baha’is for causing disunity by challenging state-sanctioned religious orthodoxy.

From Comparative to Connected Historiographies This book has drawn on numerous studies of nationalist historiography throughout the world during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries so as to understand similar processes within Iran. A comparative assessment of the writing of history in Iran suggests several avenues for research and synthesis. Comparisons of history-writing practices and narratives may occur on the basis of language, religion, and state formation, although each of these have their own heuristic strengths and weaknesses. In many instances, comparative insights give rise to possibilities for writing connected histories.1 A comparative study of historiography based on language would bring Iranian experiences into dialogue with those in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and India.2 What such analysis would facilitate is an appraisal of the keywords used in modern Persian historiography. Did authors writing histories in such geographically diverse regions utilize the same Persian keywords for concepts such as “science of history” (‘ilm-i tarikh), ancient (‘atiq), medieval (qurun-i vusta),

Conclusion  173

modern (jadid), and contemporary (mu‘asir)? How do the connotations of such terms vary in different locations? Such studies of the Arabic historiography are more readily available, in part because there were several iterations of Arab nationalism throughout the twentieth century that would facilitate such analysis.3 In the absence of a similarly widespread political project of “Pan-Persianism” or “Pan-Iranism,” such connections are less obvious. Comparative questions about historiography in Persian may lead to understandings of interconnected historiographical processes. Given the circulation of Persian books throughout Iran, Central Asia, and India, it is quite likely that authors and translators of histories in Persian were reading one another’s works. In order to draw such connections, further studies of Persian printed books, irrespective of state boundaries, would be required. Comparing historiography across Muslim societies constitutes a broader scope than merely language. After the rise of nationalism in Muslim societies, historians grappled with how to square a national identity with a religious one. For Arab historians, this usually posed less of a problem: by conflating Arabs with authentic Islam, Arab nationalist historians—irrespective of whether or not they were Muslims—often depicted Islam as a product of the Arab national “genius.” In non-Arab Muslim societies, historians had to adopt other strategies for incorporating Islam into a nationalist narrative. Iranian historians under­scored the unique contribution of ethnic Iranians to Islamic civilization, created a genealogy for Iranian mysticism, and distinguished Shi‘ism as a particularly well-suited form of Islam for Iranians. Turkish nationalist historians similarly defined Turkish Islam as distinct from both Iranian and Arab versions. Once again, comparative questions give way to interconnected insights: Arab, Iranian, and Turkish historians often blamed the influence of the other nation on their own for decline, heterodoxy, and superstition. Broadening the basis for comparison might shed further light on how nationalist historians in Muslim societies understood the coming of Islam to their region as an explanatory factor for periods of progress and decline. The use of language and religion as a basis for comparing historiography is not without its shortcomings, not the least of which is the nature of the state in which it was being written. Comparing histories written in Persian, for instance, runs the risk of ignoring the institutional settings for the production of h ­ istory. Whereas Iran and Afghanistan maintained political independence, albeit tenuous at times, Tajikistan and India were colonized by the Russian and British empires, respectively. Given the centrality of the education system for the pro-

174  Conclusion

duction and circulation of modern history texts, historians had to contend with colonial state power in composing their narratives. A colonial c­ ontext had implications for transregional connections as well: translations from E ­ nglish into Persian were quite common in India but less so in Iran, where writers often chose French histories for translation instead of English or Russian histories of the main imperial powers in the region. This partly reflected the considerable differences in how direct colonization shaped cultural spheres such as education and printing. Historians in independent states such as Iran and Afghanistan had more of a choice in selecting what works to translate than those in India or Tajikistan, who were inhibited by the political projects of colonial administrators, especially if they wrote on anti-imperialist topics. Precisely for this reason, comparisons with other countries that have significant Muslim populations, many of which were colonized over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, may highlight more differences than similarities. Instead, comparing Iran with countries in a similar position internationally—namely, politically independent, modernizing in the realm of education, yet consistently threatened by the prospect of being colonized by strong imperial powers—will in all likelihood be more germane to understanding the nuances of how history was written in non-European societies in analogous circumstances such as the Ottoman Empire, the early Turkish Republic, and China. Beyond these comparative questions, future studies of historiography could pose the question of how and why modern historians narrate a single world-historical event impacting many regions. World conquests, whether by Alexander the Great, the early Muslim Arabs, or Genghis Khan and his successors, lend themselves particularly well to such analysis.4 In all three cases, nationalists from diverse geographical regions made sense of such events as fundamentally altering their nation’s past for better or for worse. Similarly, comparing how historians wrote about the spread of religions allowed for unique transregional perspectives on the meanings ascribed to religion in relation to the nation.

R E F E R E NCE M AT T E R

NOTES

Introduction 1.  Turabi Farsani, Guzidah-i Asnad, 91–92. 2.  For the landmark study of how nationalists conceive of the nation as a “geo-body,” see Thongchai, Siam Mapped. 3. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism; Kedourie, Nationalism. 4.  Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” 1. 5. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 5–6. 6. Ibid., 81. 7. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, 5. 8. Ibid., 6, 26. 9. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 4. Italics in original. 10.  Thomas Blom Hansen points out that postcolonial authors have ignored the romanticist dimensions of modernity. Instead, these authors have depicted modernity as a “flat and historically undifferentiated” enterprise characterized by homogenizing, universalizing, and rationalistic tendencies. Hansen, “Inside the Romanticist Episteme,” 75. 11.  Writing in the 1960s, Richard Cottam viewed Iranian nationalism as an imperfect version of a Western ideal. Amin Banani followed a similar logic in his study of Iranian modernization, particularly when it came to institutions. Cottam, Nationalism in Iran; Banani, The Modernization of Iran. 12. Vaziri, Iran as Imagined Nation. Vaziri fundamentally misreads Benedict Ander­ son by using his notion of “imagined” to mean that the “content” of nationalism is “invented” or “fabricated,” a reading that Anderson himself disavows. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6. Vaziri’s argument weds this misreading of Anderson with Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism as a system of political, economic, and cultural domination through representation of the non-West. Said, Orientalism. 13. Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran. 14. Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions, 7. 15. Marashi, Nationalizing Iran, 5–6. 16.  For a notable exception, see Azimi, “Historiography in the Pahlavi Era,” 423–29. 17. Vahdat, God and Juggernaut; Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals. For studies dedicated to prominent Iranian intellectuals of this period, see Andisheh, “‘Abbas Iqbal Ashtiyani”; S. Ansari, “Life, Works, and Times”; Staley, “Intellectual Development of Ahmad Kasravi”; Varedi, “Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi”; Shayigan, Iqbal va Tarikhnigari.

178   Notes to Introduction

18. Novick, That Noble Dream, 7–8. 19.  An influential Iranian historian of the latter part of the twentieth century, Firidun Adamiyat, wrote a pioneering article precisely in this vein. Adamiyat, “Problems in Iranian Historiography.” Firuz Kazemzadeh and Hafez Farman Farmayan similarly assessed the shortcomings of Iranian historiography and called for more archive-based histories. See Kazemzadeh, “Iranian Historiography”; and Farmayan, “Observations.” Farmayan gave an interview to Nancy Gallagher in which he further elaborates his views on Iranian historiography. Gallagher, “The Evolution of an Iranian Historian.” 20.  Gheissari, “Truth and Method.” 21.  See in particular the valuable book chapters covering these themes and more in Atabaki, Iran in the 20th Century; Melville, Persian Historiography. For an important recent contribution to the relationship between nationalism and historiography in twentieth-century Iran, see A. Ansari, Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran. 22.  Timothy Weston’s study of Beijing University similarly examines the interface between intellectual and institutional histories. Weston, The Power of Position. 23. Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran. For a valuable study of the role that the idea of translation plays in the study of Iranian educational reform, see Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in Qajar Iran, 184. For an older study written from the perspective of the modernization school paradigm, see Arasteh, Education and Social Awakening in Iran. 24.  Ali Alaghband’s study of the public school teacher focuses on a later period than what is dealt with here. He provides little specific information on schoolteachers according to their specializations. See Alaghband, “The Public School Teacher in Iran.” 25. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions. For other useful studies of class structure in Iran, see Ashraf, “Historical Obstacles” and “The Roots of Emerging Dual Class Structure.” For an important study of class formation and the professionalization of the medical field, see Schayegh, Who Is Knowledgeable, Is Strong. 26. Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East, 130–31. 27. Schayegh, Who Is Knowledgeable, Is Strong, 24. 28. Boer, History as a Profession; Keylor, Academy and Community. 29.  Di-Capua, “The Professional Worldview of the Effendi Historian.” Di-Capua fully elaborates on this perspective in Di-Capua, Gatekeepers of the Arab Past. 30.  Napoleon was an early example of an authoritarian ruler who took a personal interest in the writing of histories and, more specifically, history textbooks as a means of exerting ideological influence. See Burton, Napoleon and Clio. 31. Vryonis, Turkish State and History, 57–78; Poulton, Top Hat, Grey Wolf, and Crescent; Mengüç, “Historiography and Nationalism”; Cagaptay, Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism. For a detailed study of historiography from the late Ottoman to the early Republican period, see Akbayrak, Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e Tarih Yazımı. 32.  For an overview of these debates, see Lal, The History of History. For a discussion of the intersection between history and communalism, see Chatterjee, “History and the Nationalization of Hinduism.”

Notes to Introduction and Chapter 1  179

33. Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony, 194. See also Prakash, “Writing Post-­ Orientalist Histories.” 34.  Bourdieu and Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 17–19. 35. Gorski, Bourdieu and Historical Analysis. 36. Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere; Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere. 37.  N. Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 116. For a similar critique focused on the queer counterpublic, see Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics.” 38.  Calhoun, “The Public Sphere in the Field of Power”; Crossley, “On Systematically Distorted Communication.” 39.  Afshar, “Book Translations.” 40.  Proudfoot, “Mass Producing Houri’s Moles,” 177, 180. 41.  N. Green, “Persian Print and the Stanhope Revolution.” 42.  This assessment is based on a careful reading of Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi. 43.  For two studies that effectively discuss the differences between Islamic seminary education and modern schools along with the impact of print on writing and reading cultures, see Khalid, Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform; and Messick, Calligraphic State. 44.  A recent volume exploring the history of bookselling, including the selling of textbooks, is Afshar and Azarang, Kitabfurushi. 45. Bourdieu, Field of Cultural Production, 40–41. 46.  Novick argues that interwar professional American historians lost control of how history was taught in the country’s classrooms. See Novick, That Noble Dream, 185. 47.  Fuchs, “Conceptions of Scientific History,” 157. 48.  By the late eighteenth century, the philosophy of the Enlightenment began to replace the plural connotation of the German term for history with a singular one. In other words, history became an increasingly abstract concept connoting “the sum of all individual histories.” For an important discussion of this transition, see Koselleck, Futures Past, 194–95. 49.  Abrahamian, “Kasravi.” 50.  Gershoni and Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 101–10. According to Gershoni and Jankowski, Egyptian integral nationalists of the interwar period drew on ideas emanating from fascist Europe and embodied an “aggressive chauvinism.” Ibid., 108. In Iran, integrative nationalism was not necessarily linked to chauvinism; instead, it arose at the turn of the century through history textbooks and continued to be, with certain modifications, the dominant narrative in the education system.

Chapter 1: Patronage, Translation, and the Printing of History 1.  I‘timad al-Saltanah, Ruznamah-i Khatirat, 118–19. 2.  For a discussion of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Qajar chroniclers, see Amanat, “Legend, Legitimacy and Making a National Narrative,” 296–308. 3.  For examples of this approach, see Vaziri, Iran as Imagined Nation; Lewis, Emergence of Modern Turkey; Berkes, Development of Secularism in Turkey.

180   Notes to Chapter 1

4. Lefevere, Translation. As Lawrence Venuti has observed, “Because translating traffics in the foreign, in the introduction of linguistic and cultural differences, it is equally capable of crossing or reinforcing the boundaries between domestic audiences and the hierarchies in which they are positioned.” He continues: “If the domestic inscription includes part of the social or historical context in which the foreign text first emerged, then the translation can also create a community that includes foreign intelligibilities and interests, an understanding in common with another culture, another tradition.” Venuti, “Translation, Community, Utopia,” 491. 5. Lefevere, Translation, 16–17. 6.  The scholarship on Islamic historiography is vast. For important surveys, see Robinson, Islamic Historiography; Rosenthal, History of Muslim Historiography. Stephen Humphreys has examined the differences between Arab and Iranian historiographical traditions within the Islamic world by comparing the Mamluk historian al-Maqrizi and the Iranian historian Bayhaqi. Humphreys, Islamic History. For more specific studies of early Persian historiography, see Meisami, Persian Historiography; and Waldman, ­Toward a Theory of Historical Narrative. For an analysis of Persian history writing in the Safavid period, see Quinn, Historical Writing During the Reign of Shah ‘Abbas. A recently published edited volume discusses Persian historiography in a more comprehensive fashion for a full range of historical periods. Melville, Persian Historiography. 7.  R. Hidayat, Rawzat al-Safa-yi Nasiri. For further background on Hidayat, see Losensky, “Hedāyat, Reżāqoli Khan.” 8.  Lisan al-Mulk, Nasikh al-Tavarikh. 9.  Amanat, “Historiography viii. Qajar Period.” Amanat further elaborates on these two chroniclers in Amanat, “Legend, Legitimacy and Making a National Narrative,” 314–23. 10.  Amanat, “Historiography viii. Qajar Period.” 11.  Commenting on Persian court chronicles, Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi observes that these historical narratives shifted between prophetic religious history and pre-­Islamic Iranian dynastic history: “The pedagogical value of the pre-Islamic history gave rise to a bifurcated narrative structure best exemplified in medieval Persianate historical writings. Instead of reconciling the pre-Islamic with the Biblico-Qur’anic and Persian mytho­ historical accounts, most Persianate historians and chroniclers framed their work into two autonomous ecclesiastic and ethnographic narratives with similar points of inauguration and termination. One chapter would recount the history of prophets from the Creation of Adam to the messengership of Muhammad. The succeeding chapter would narrate the annals of pre-Islamic Persian kings from Kayumars—often viewed as a descendent of Noah—to the conquest of Persia by the Muslim armies. The termination of both narratives signaled Islam’s moral and political superiority.” Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran, 85. 12.  For a discussion of the Qajar adoption of the title khaqan, see Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 10. 13.  For an overview of Qajar-era book translation, see Afshar, “Book Translations.” 14. Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, 28–60. 15. Allsen, Culture and Conquest, 83–102.

Notes to Chapter 1  181

16.  Mujtabai, “Persian Hindu Writings”; Shukla, “Persian Translations of Sanskrit Works”; Ernst, “Muslim Studies of Hinduism?” 17. Tucker, Nadir Shah’s Quest, 76–77. 18.  See Somel, Modernization of Public Education, 93; Berk, Translation and Western­ isation; Darakçıoğlu, “Rebuilding the Tower of Babel.” 19. Mardin, Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, 11, 207–8. The Young Ottomans, who formed a secret society in 1865, were critics of the Ottoman state’s absolutist form of government, its capitulations to the European powers, and its uncritical and selective adoption of European-style reforms. 20. Crabbs, Writing of History, 68–73. 21.  For more on his activities, see Mehrdad Kia, “Inside the Court”; and Amanat, “E‘temād-al-Salṭana.” 22.  Cole, “Marking Boundaries, Marking Time,” 46. 23.  Venuti, “Translation, Community, Utopia,” 482. 24. Saba, Divan. For a discussion of this work, see Aryanpur, Az Saba ta Nima, 1: 24–26. 25.  Mirkhwand and Hidayat, Tarikh-i Rawzat al-Safa. 26.  I‘timad al-Saltanah, Durar al-Tijan. 27. Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 11. For other works demonstrating the significance of descent from Genghis Khan as a means of imperial legitimization, see Manz, Rise and Rule of Tamerlane; and Tucker, Nadir Shah’s Quest. 28.  In this respect, there are certain parallels between this phenomenon and the attempts of later Turkish nationalists to trace their genealogy back to Hittite dynasties rather than to Central Asian Turks. See Özkırımlı and Sofos, Tormented by History, 90–91, 136. 29.  For the passage quoted here, see Rawlinson, Tarikh-i Salatin-i Sasani, 1: 5. For the original work, see Rawlinson, Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy. 30.  J. Fraser, Tarikh-i Nadir Shah, 5–7. For further details about the translation of this work, see Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi 1: 278. 31.  I‘timad al-Saltanah, Ruznamah-i Khatirat, 211. 32.  This is not to say that the late Qajars were not aware of other parts of the world before the advent of modern European geographical texts. Muslim writings about geography discussed not only lands with predominantly Muslim populations, but also Europe, Africa, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. European explorations into sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas did, however, force Iranian authors to reconceptualize what constituted the world as a geographical concept. 33.  I‘timad al-Saltanah, Tarikh-i Inkishaf-i Yangi Dunya, 2. 34.  The only other history to deal directly with the Americas is what appears to be a translation of Franz Boas’s work on the Eskimos. Boas, Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay; Boas, Tarikh-i Iskimu’i. For Henry Stanley’s travelogue to Africa and its translation, see Stanley, How I Found Livingstone; and Stanley, Safarnamah-i Stanli Bih Afriqa. 35.  Najm-i Sānī, Advice on the Art of Governance; Meisami, Sea of Precious Virtues; Kaykāvūs ibn Iskandar, Mirror for Princes.

182   Notes to Chapter 1

36.  Cahen, “Notes sur l’histriographie,” 82, quoted in Fouchécour, “Iran viii. Persian Literature (2) Classical.” 37.  Venuti, “Translation, Community, Utopia,” 483. 38. Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 130. Riza “Misiyu” Rishar (Monsieur Richard Jules), a French convert to Islam and an Iranian government official, translated a biography of Napoleon, the reformer-king par excellence, into Persian. Laskaj, Tarikh-i ­Sunnat-i Sint Hilin. See also Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi 3: 160–61. 39.  From the French historiographical tradition, Voltaire, author of a number of biographies of European kings, was particularly popular at the Qajar imperial court. Musa Jibra’il translated Voltaire’s History of the Russian Empire Under Peter the Great and History of Charles XII, King of Sweden in the 1840s, and several decades later Mirza ‘Ali Quli Zarrabi Kashani translated Voltaire’s The Age of Louis XIV. Voltaire, Tarikh-i Pitr-i Kabir and Lu’i-yi Chahardahum. In the early Muzaffari period, this trend continued: Muhammad Tahir Mirza Iskandari translated Édouard Simon’s biography of the German emperor Wilhelm I. Simon, L’Empereur Guillaume; Simon, Tarikh-i Guiyam-i Avval. 40. Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 130. 41. Brass, Language, Religion and Politics, 129. 42. Malcolm, Tarikh-i Iran. For the English text, see Malcolm, History of Persia. 43.  For more on Hayrat, see Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran, 5; and Browne, Press and Poetry of Modern Persia, 160. For a list of his works, see Mushar, Fihrist-i K ­ itabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 1: 584–86. Hayrat apparently also translated John Malcolm’s work on central India into Persian. See Malcolm, Memoir of Central India and Tarikh-i Sir Jan Malkum. For a passing reference to this translation, see Khan, History and Historians of Rajasthan, 5. Hayrat’s translation of Malcolm’s histories may have been part of his duties as an instructor at Elphinstone College since the books could be used as textbooks. ­Clements Markham’s contemporary English history of Iran was apparently not translated during this time. Markham, General Sketch of the History of Persia. M. E. Yapp discusses the significance of both Malcolm and Markham at length. See Yapp, “Two British Historians of Persia.” See also Lambton, “Major-General Sir John Malcolm.” For Hayrat’s collaboration with Talbot, see Talbott, Translations into Persian. For earlier collaborations between Iranian Ni‘matullahis and missionaries in early nineteenth-century Iran, see N. Green, “Journeymen, Middlemen”; Amanat, “Mujtahids and Missionaries.” 44. Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony, 177. 45. Rastegar, Literary Modernity, 126–44. 46.  For more on the mid-nineteenth-century Babi messianic movement and its successor movements, Azalism and the Baha’i Faith, see Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal; and MacEoin, Rituals in Babism and Baha’ism and Sources for Early Babi Doctrine and History. 47.  Namah-i Khusravan was published in three volumes in Iran. See Jalal al-Din Mirza, Namah-i Khusravan. For a discussion of his biography and writings, see Amanat and Vejdani, “Jalāl-al-Din Mirzā”; and Amanat, “Pur-i Khaqan.” 48.  Jalal al-Din Mirza, Namah-i Khusravan, 1: n.p. 49.  For a short discussion of Fursat al-Dawlah’s text, see Dabirsiaqi, “Āṯār-e ‘Ajam.”

Notes to Chapter 1  183

See also Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions, 44. For the general context of European and Iranian travelers and archeologists of the ancient ruins in Fars Province, see Mousavi, “Persepolis in Retrospect.” For a passing discussion of Fursat al-Dawlah’s connection with Iranian intellectual Shaykh al-Ra’is, see Cole, “Provincial Politics of Heresy and Reform,” 119–20. For a general introduction to the life of Fursat al-Dawlah, see Kasheff, “Forṣat-al-Dawla.” For a sophisticated analysis of Fursat al-Dawlah’s significance as a local historian of Shiraz, see Manoukian, City of Knowledge, 13–22. 50.  Fursat al-Dawlah, Asar-i ‘Ajam. Unlike Jalal al-Din Mirza, Fursat al-Dawlah did not write his history in “pure Persian,” but he took a keen interest in the ancient Iranian languages, which he learned by studying with German linguist Oskar Mann. Eventually Fursat al-Dawlah composed a grammar of the cuneiform script that was among the first serious scholarly works on the subject written in Persian. He also composed pure Persian poetry, often when addressing pre-Islamic themes. Kasheff, “Forṣat -al-Dawlah.” 51.  For a brief discussion of Fursat al-Dawlah within the artistic context of Qajar painting, see Floor, “Art,” 130, 148. During the early years of the Constitutional Revolution, he collaborated with journalist Mirza Jahangir Khan. Fursat al-Dawlah was also interested in education reform. An advocate and strong supporter of the Constitutional Revolution, he was appointed the first director of the Department of Education in Shiraz in 1908. He carried out his duties with great energy, establishing modern schools throughout the province and providing an itinerant teacher for the benefit of tribal children. 52.  The standard work on Kirmani’s life and thought is still Adamiyat, Andishahha-yi Mirza Aqa Khan-i Kirmani. For more on Kirmani’s Babi-Azali proclivities, see M. Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent. For a brief summary of Kirmani’s intellectual views, see Vahdat, God and Juggernaut, 36–42. For his contribution to literary criticism, see Parsinejad, History of Literary Criticism in Iran, 67–93. 53.  M. Kirmani, Ayinah-i Sikandari. 54.  M. Kirmani, Ayinah-i Sikandari, preface. As with Namah-i Khusravan, it is unclear whether this book was ever actually used in a classroom setting. 55.  See M. Kirmani, Ayinah-i Sikandari, 1–7. The Achaemenids were mentioned in these introductory pages but the main body of the text did not mention this dynasty, although there does appear to be a mention of the Medes. Ibid., 10. 56.  Amanat, “Historiography viii. Qajar Period”; M. Bayat “Āqā Khan Kermāni.” 57.  M. Kirmani, Ayinah, 8, 22, 579–80. 58. Ibid., 522–23. 59. Lefevere, Translation, 23. Lefevere explores how translations of Western works of literature into Chinese led to the crumbling of the Chinese literary system. Ibid., 25. 60. Boehmer, Empire, the National, and the Postcolonial, 5. 61. Rastegar, Literary Modernity, 6. 62. Ibid. 63. Browne, Brief Narrative of Recent Events in Persia; Browne, Tarikh-i Zahamat-i Millat. 64.  See the original preface of N. Kirmani, Tarikh-i Bidari-yi Iranian (1910–12). 65. Browne, The Persian Revolution.

184   Notes to Chapter 1

66.  For a further elaboration of the exchanges between these two authors, see ­Amanat, “Edward Browne and ‘The Persian Revolution of 1905–1909.’” 67.  For the argument that Browne was the author of the “master narrative” of the revolution, see Matin-Asgari, “Academic Debate on Iranian Identity,” 181. 68.  Close to a decade later, an Iranian in India translated a nearly contemporary account of the revolution by Morgan Shuster, an American advisor serving the Iranian government as treasurer-general. See Shuster, Strangling of Persia and Tarjumah-i . . . Tarikh-i Iran. The brutalities of the Russian and British occupations of Iran during World War I similarly became a popular historiographical topic. A group of pro-German Iranian exiles and activists residing in Berlin translated a sympathetic English-language work that outlined crimes committed by Russians and the British against Iranians during the war. Brandes, Jinayat-i Rus va Inglis. Iranians translated Browne’s and Shuster’s sympathetic accounts while ignoring David Fraser’s more negative narrative. D. Fraser, Persia and Turkey in Revolt. 69.  Perhaps the only exception to this general trend was a translation by Zia ­al-Din Munshi of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia commissioned by Sardar As‘ad. See Xenophon, Sirusnamah. A member of the official cadre of state translators, ‘Ali Riza Mutarjim al-­ Saltanah Amir Tuman, similarly translated portions of the early modern travelogue of Jean Chardin, focusing on the latter’s account of the coronation of the Safavid Shah Sulayman. Chardin, Sharh-i Tajguzari-yi Shah Sulayman. 70.  Palmira Brummett has explored how the French and Iranian revolutions served as an exemplary model in the Ottoman press, particularly through satirical cartoons. Brummett, Image and Imperialism, 73–112. 71.  The concept of the usable past is elaborated in Bouwsma, A Usable Past. 72.  For an extensive yet thoroughly unsympathetic biography, see Algar, Mirzā ­Malkum Khān. 73.  Malkam and Saqafi, Tarikh-i Guzidah. For more on the background to this text, see Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 4: 839–40. 74.  Muhsin Dabir Mu’ayyad and Sayyid ‘Ali Nasr both produced translations of French revolutionary histories, although I have not been able to locate the original author of either work. See Dabir Mu’ayyad, Shurish-i Faransah. ‘Ali Nasr’s translation was undated. Given its direct relevance to the political situation, it was in all likelihood composed during or shortly after the Constitutional Revolution. ‘Ali Nasr, Inqilab-i ­Faransah. ‘Abd al-Husayn Ravari Kirmani translated Khalil Sa‘adah’s Arabic account of the Russian Revolution. See Sa‘adah, Tarikh-i Shurish-i Rusiyah. For further elaboration, see Amanat, “Historiography viii. Qajar Period.” For a little known work on the history of the Portuguese Revolution, see Qavim al-Saltanah, Shurish-i Purtugal. 75.  For a discussion of the exchanges between Iranian and Ottoman constitutionalists, see Vejdani, “Crafting Constitutional Narratives.” 76. Khazeni, Tribes and Empire. 77.  The original work in French was by Georges Dorys (a pseudonym). Dorys, ­Abdul-Hamid intime. Although Pierre Quillard wrote the preface, the author of the text itself is not clear. For the Persian translation, see Dorys and Quillard, Tarikh-i

Notes to Chapters 1 and 2  185

­Zindigani-yi Sultani. According to Quillard, Dorys was of Greek origin and had intimate connections to administrators and political figures in the Ottoman government. Ibid., 6. 78.  Pierre Quillard mentions in his introduction the massacre of 300,000 Armenians. Ibid., 4. An Iranian Armenian, Arshak Khan Ajudan Humayun, composed the preface to the translation. Ibid., 1–4. 79.  Also inspired by the Ottoman revolution and its potential lessons for Iran, ‘Ali Akbar Qavim translated a work by Arab intellectual Jurji Zaydan on the revolution in the Ottoman Empire. Zaydan, Inqilab-i ‘Usmani. 80. Zaydan, Tarikh-i Tamaddun-i Islam. For a biography of Zaydan, see Philipp, Gurgi Zaidan. 81.  See Zaydan, Tarikh-i Tamaddun, vi. 82. Ibid., 4. 83. Farid, Kitab-i Ahsan al-Tavarikh. 84. Riviere, Mu‘ashaqah-i Napuli’un. 85.  Muhammad Baqir Mantiqi translated the history of the Russo-Japanese war in two volumes. See Mantiqi, Tarikh-i Aqsa-yi Sharq. Beyond this translation, Mirza ­Husayn ‘Ali Tajir Shirazi versified the history of the Russo-Japanese war in his famed Mikadunamah. Tajir Shirazi, Mikadunamah (1907). Little is known about this enigmatic poet. ‘Ali Mir Ansari republished the work in 2006 with a critical introduction. Tajir Shirazi, Mikadunamah (2006). 86.  See Esenbel, “Japan’s Global Claim to Asia”; Aydin, Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia; Rajabzadeh, “Japan as Seen by Qajar Travelers”; Ha’iri, “European and Asian Influences”; Worringer, “‘Sick Man of Europe.’” 87. Landor, Tarikh-i Jang-i Chin. For the original work, see Landor, China and the Allies. Landor also produced a travel narrative of his peregrinations from Holland to Calcutta, a large segment of which also dealt with Iran. See Landor, Across Coveted Lands. 88. Pauthier, Tarikh-i Chin. This was a translation of Pauthier’s Chine. Khanbaba Mushar did not identify the original author of this work. Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 4: 276. 89. Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 3: 36.

Chapter 2: Schools, Citizenship, and Revolution 1. ‘Aqili, Zuka al-Mulk Furughi, 241–42. 2.  For an important discussion of Furughi’s political role, see Azimi, Quest for Democracy in Iran, 80, 84, 118–19, 122–23. 3.  For a critique of political periodization in the writing of Iranian history, particularly of the Pahlavi period, see Schayegh, “Seeing Like a State.” 4.  For a study of education reforms ending with the Constitutional Revolution, see Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in Qajar Iran. For a study covering the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that makes similar assumptions about the rupture between the pre- and post-constitutional periods, see Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran.

186   Notes to Chapter 2

5.  The emphasis on reproduction in education is often attributed to the works of Pierre Bourdieu, although this attribution oversimplifies his ideas by focusing on only a selection of his works. For one such work dedicated to reproduction in education, see Bourdieu, The State Nobility. 6.  Ewing, “Shaking the Foundations of Education,” 3. Arguing along similar lines, Véronique Bénéï has observed that “the perception of citizenship and education (schooling in particular) as state-centered strategies of social control and state-led projects serving the hierarchical structures of social reproduction . . . and of capitalist inequality does not do justice to the crucial role played by ordinary citizens.” Bénéï, “Manufacturing Citizenship,” 8. 7.  Ekhtiar, “Dar al-Funun.” 8. Rushdiyah, Savanih-i ‘Umr. 9.  For Jewish schools, see Cohen, “Iranian Jewry.” For American missionary schools, see Rostam-Kolayi, “From Evangelizing to Modernizing Iranians”; and Zirinsky, “A Panacea for the Ills of the Country.” For French schools in Iran, see Natiq, Karnamah. For Armenian schools, which were created in part to counteract the influence of Christian missionary schools, see Berberian, Armenians and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 42–44. 10.  For discussions on the distinction between private “national” and public “state” schools in Iran, see Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform; and Rostam-Kolayi, “Origins of Iran’s Modern Girls’ Schools.” 11. Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 415–46; Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform, 96. 12. Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform, 159–60. 13.  Farmayan, “Amīn-al-dawla, Mīrzā ‘Alī Khan” and “Portrait of a Nineteenth-­ Century Iranian Statesman”; Amin al-Dawlah, Khatirat-i Siyasi. 14. Afary, Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 34–35. For an overview of Iranian economic history, see Issawi, Economic History of Iran. 15. Shahvar, Forgotten Schools. 16. Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform, 187. For more on the Anjuman-i Ma‘arif, see Mahbubi Ardakani, Tarikh-i Mu’assasat-i Tamadduni, 1: 369–97; Anwār, “Anjoman-e Ma‘āref.” For the perspective of a contemporary member of this organization, see Y. Dawlatabadi, Hayat-i Yahya, 1: 185–98, 311. 17.  M. Bayat, “Anjoman i. Political.” 18.  Hanaway, “Anjoman i. Literary.” 19.  For a list of the original seven members and those who joined later, see Anwār, “Anjoman-e Ma‘āref.” 20. For a member of the committee’s account of this internal wrangling, see Ihtisham al-Saltanah, Khatirat-i Ihtisham al-Saltanah, 333. For Dawlatabadi’s account of the eventual dissolution of the committee and the failed efforts to replace it with the Educational Council (Shura-yi Ma‘arif ), see Y. Dawlatabadi, Hayat-i Yahya, 1: 300–312. 21. Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform, 182. 22. Ibid., 190; Anwār, “Anjoman-e Ma‘āref.”

Notes to Chapter 2  187

23.  For an in-depth study of the Political Science School and subsequent connected institutions, see Tafrishi, “Madaris-i ‘Ali-yi Huquq va ‘Ulum Siyasi.” 24. Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform, 170–73; ­Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran, 59. For more on Hasan Pirniya’s role in the school and a list of teachers who taught there, see Bastani Parizi, Talash-i Azadi, 79–83. 25. Intizam, Khatirat-i Nasrullah Intizam, 135. 26. ‘Aqili, Zuka al-Mulk Furughi, 296–97. 27. Sadiq, Yadgar-i ‘Umr, 1: 14–15. 28. Boer, History as a Profession, 244–45. 29. Ibid., 298. 30. Seignobos, Histoire de la civilisation ancienne and Tarikh-i Milal-i Qadimah. Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi also cotranslated Seignobos’ history of ancient Rome with his father. Seignobos, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar-i Dawlat-i Qadim-i Rum. 31. Boer, History as a Profession, 295. 32.  Q. Ghani, Yaddashtha-yi Duktur Qasim Ghani, 7: 98, 822; Kasheff, “Forūgī, Moḥammad-Ḥosayn Khan Ḏokā’-al-Molk.” 33. Kirmani, Tarikh-i Bidari-yi Iranian (1978), 80, 82. Muhammad Qazvini also provided a brief account of Muhammad Husayn Furughi’s life in Browne, Persian Revolution, 404–5. 34.  I‘timad al-Saltanah, Ruznamah-i Khatirat, 748–50, 754, 756, 784; Q. Ghani, ­Yaddashtha-yi Duktur Qasim Ghani, 9: 788. 35.  I‘timad al-Saltanah, Ruznamah-i Khatirat, 748–49. A later Baha’i source appears to corroborate the Furughis’ Babi affiliations by suggesting that Muhammad Husayn Furughi’s son Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi considered himself a leader of the Babi-Azalis. Ishraq Khavari, Qamus-i Tawqi‘ 113, 34. 36.  I‘timad al-Saltanah, Ruznamah-i Khatirat, 396. 37.  Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi makes this point about Iranian nationalist historiography in general. Tavakoli-Targhi, “Tarikhpardazi va Iran-ara’i.” 38.  Furughi and Furughi, Dawrah-i Ibtida’i, 389, 407. 39. Ibid., 13, 357. 40. Ibid., 204, 226. 41. Ibid., 331–33, 337. 42.  I‘timad al-Saltanah, Durar al-Tijan, 1: 106, cited in Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran, 84. 43.  Furughi and Furughi, Dawrah-i Ibtida’i, 83. 44.  This was the case also, for example, with Yahya Dawlatabadi, Nazim al-Islam Kirmani, Muhammad Tabataba’i, ‘Ali Nazim al-‘Ulum, Husayn Bihruz, and ‘Ali Nasr, to name only a few. 45. Sohrabi, Revolution and Constitutionalism. 46. Afary, Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 41–43. 47.  Mansur al-Saltanah, Rapurt-i Saliyanah. This report is particularly important given the lack of statistical information on constitutional-era schools. Menashri pro-

188   Notes to Chapter 2

vides some statistics on student numbers, but not on schools, dating from 1922. Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran, 110, 121. 48.  Mansur al-Saltanah, Rapurt-i Saliyanah, 24–29. Secondary and higher education in Tehran was limited to the Dar al-Funun, the Political Science School, and the Military School. For relevant statistics detailing the number of students, see ibid., 32, 36. A proper study of education in the provincial centers such as Rasht, Hamadan, Tabriz, Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad, and Kirman (not to mention smaller towns) would further complicate the general assumption of educational stagnation during the revolution. 49. Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform, 178–79. 50.  Rostam-Kolayi, “Origins of Iran’s Modern Girls’ Schools.” 51.  Mansur al-Saltanah, Rapurt-i Saliyanah, 4. 52. Ibid., 7–8. 53. Qummi, Ta‘limat-i Madaniyah, 32–34, cited in Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions, 185. 54.  For a discussion of the parliamentary laws and debates regarding education, see Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran, 77–79. 55. Browne, Persian Revolution; Kasravi, Tarikh-i Mashrutah-i Iran. 56.  Furughi and Furughi, Tarikh-i Musavvar-i Iran. 57. Ibid., 3: 141–42. For more on Amin al-Dawlah’s brief but productive tenure as prime minister in the run-up to the revolution, see Afary, Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 33–34. 58.  Furughi and Furughi, Tarikh-i Musavvar-i Iran, 3: 143. 59. Ibid., 3: 145. 60. Ibid., 3: 147. 61. Ibid., 3: 50. 62.  Only five pages dealt with the constitutional period. Ibid., 3: 143–47. 63. Ibid., 3: 152–54. 64.  Furughi’s textbooks continued to be reprinted into the early Pahlavi period. 65.  Ihtisham al-Saltanah, Khatirat-i Ihtisham al-Saltanah, 269–70. 66.  Mahbubi Ardakani, Tarikh-i Mu’assasat-i Tamadduni, 1: 373. 67. Ibid., 1: 260, 373; Ihtisham al-Saltanah, Khatirat-i Ihtisham al-Saltanah, 326; Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform, 164. 68.  Miftah al-Mulk, Khulasat al-Tavarikh. The text appears to have been composed in 1906 (1324 H.). See ibid., 7. 69. Ibid., 2. In the same passage, he also praised ‘Ali Asghar Amin al-Sultan. 70. Ibid., 6. 71. Ibid., 3. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid., 4. 74.  For Mantiq al-Mulk’s role in the Sharaf-i Muzaffari School, see Mahbubi A ­ rdakani, Tarikh-i Mu’assasat-i Tamadduni, 1: 379. 75.  Mantiq al-Mulk, Tarikh-i Mantiqi. The title of the book was a play on words and could also be translated as A Logical History. In addition, Mantiq al-Mulk was the author

Notes to Chapter 2  189

of a textbook on teaching children. Mantiq al-Mulk, Mu‘allim al-Atfal. He also composed a romance on the adventures of the son of Amir Arsalan. See Marzolph, Narrative Illustration, 235. For a full listing of his works encompassing mathematics, geography, language, religion, and the natural sciences, see Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 2: 650–51. 76.  Mantiq al-Mulk, Tarikh-i Mantiqi, 4. 77. Ibid., 3. 78. Ibid., 8. 79. Ibid., 5. 80. Ibid., 7. 81. Ibid., 1. 82.  For more on the role of Nazim al-Islam in the Islam School, see N. Kirmani, ­Tarikh-i Bidari-yi Iranian, 1: Preface. For more on Nazim al-Islam in general, see Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform, 169; and Ittihad, Pazhuhishgaran-i Mu‘asir-i Iran, 4: 308–11. 83. Mursilvand, Hajj Shaykh Hadi Najmabadi. 84. Afary, Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 48–49. 85.  For an in-depth analysis of Nazim al-Islam’s heterodox Babi connections, see Amanat, “Memory and Amnesia.” 86.  N. Kirmani, Shams al-Tasarif. He also wrote a textbook on the principles of religious beliefs at the request of his patron, Muhammad Sadiq Tabataba’i. N. Kirmani, Usul-i ‘Aqa’id-i Darsi. For a list of other textbooks composed by Nazim ­al-Islam Kirmani, see Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 5: 602–4. 87.  N. Kirmani, Tarikh-i Bidari-yi Iranian, 1: 7–8. 88.  N. Kirmani, Tarikh-i Iran. See also Sultanifar, Fihrist-i Kutub-i Darsi, 82. 89.  An early Indian example of this was entitled Jurjnamah. The most notable example from the late nineteenth century was Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani’s Namah-i Bastan. For the early Pahlavi period, see Nawbakht, Shahnamah; and Sayyah, Pahlavinamah. 90.  Abbe Gaultier produced rhymed histories in the form of questions and answers. See Burton, Napoleon and Clio, 39. This form of rhymed history bears a striking resemblance to the works of Ashraf al-Din al-Husayni Nasim-i Shumal. 91.  In addition to texts of Adib Qasimi Kirmani and Ashraf al-Din al-Husayni ­Nasim-i Shumal, the poet ‘Abd al-Rajjaq Kha’if Qummi also produced a history textbook intended for primary school students, although it is unclear whether this was written in verse. See Qummi, Tarikh-i Iran Dawrah-i Muqaddamati. 92.  A. Kirmani, Kulliyat-i Asar, iix, x–xii. Nazim al-Islam mentions him on two occasions but does not provide much information. N. Kirmani, Tarikh-i Bidari-yi Iranian, 2: 329–30, 427. 93.  A. Kirmani, Tarikh-i Tiligrafi. The full text of this work is reproduced in A. Kirmani, Kulliyat-i Asar. Adib Qasimi was also one of the few authors to write in the local Kirmani dialect and to assemble a dictionary of terms from that region. For more on his collected works, see Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 4: 901–2. 94.  A. Kirmani, Kulliyat-i Asar, 347. He also praised Muhammad ‘Ali Shah for being a just king. Ibid., 364–65.

190   Notes to Chapter 2

95.  A. Kirmani, Kulliyat-i Asar, 367. In a poetic appendix to his text, Adib Qasimi elaborated on the importance of learning for children. See ibid., 366. 96.  For more on the satirical poetry of Nasim-i Shumal, see Javadi, Satire in Persian Literature; and Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals. 97.  Nasim-i Shumal, Tarikh-i Muqaddamati-yi Iran. For collections of his poetry, see Nasim-i Shumal, Kulliyat; Javidanah-i Sayyid Ashraf al-Din; and Divan-i Kamil-i Nasim-i Shumal. 98.  Nasim-i Shumal, Tarikh-i Muqaddamati-yi Iran, Preface. 99. Ibid., 2–3. 100.  Ibid., Preface. 101. Ibid., 4. 102. Ibid., 75. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid., 79. 105. Ibid., 80. 106.  For the origin and development of the concept of universal histories in Europe, see Guha, History at the Limit of World-History. For a thought-provoking analysis of the subtle changes made in the writing of “universal” histories in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Griggs, “Universal History.” Griggs’s basic thesis is that the new universal histories made Europe the main agent of the narrative, thereby marginalizing non-European cultures—especially Christian ones—that had formerly figured so prominently. 107.  Hill, “National Histories and World Systems,” 180. For two excellent studies of world histories in China, see Mazur, “Discontinuous Continuity”; and Culp, “‘Weak and Small Peoples.’” 108.  See Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran, 71. 109. Mutarjim al-Saltanah, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar-i Yunan and Tarikh-i ­Milal-i Mashriq. It is quite possible that these two history textbooks were translations of a French work. Mutarjim al-Saltanah’s latter book on the history of antiquity is included on a list of books composed by Iranian authors used in the Dar al-Funun. See Ekhtiar, “The Dar al-Funun,” 315. In addition to these two works, Mutarjim al-Saltanah translated Jean Chardin’s account of the coronation of the Safavid Shah Sulayman and parts of Gulliver’s Travels. See Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 4: 568. Miftah alMulk, whose history of Iran has already been discussed, was also the author of a world history. Miftah al-Mulk, Tarikh-i ‘Umumi. 110. Bihruz, Tarikh-i ‘Umumi. Bihruz also composed a primary school book on the Persian alphabet and a modern geography textbook. See Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 2: 709; and Sultanifar, Fihrist-i Kutub-i Darsi, 86–87. 111. Fleury, Tarikh-i Qadim and L’Histoire ancienne racontée aux enfants. Nasaq wanted the textbook to impress on young Iranian readers the causes for the “decline and progress of past peoples.” Fleury, Tarikh-i Qadim, 189. 112.  There is very little mention of Jamshid Sa‘id al-Dawlah in the existing primary and secondary sources on this period. For a reference clarifying the familial connec-

Notes to Chapter 2  191

tions between Jamshid and the more well-known constitutional-era figure Muhammad Vali Sipahdar, see Khal‘atbari, Yaddashtha-yi Sipahsalar-i Tunikabuni, 189. For the family background, see ibid., 20–63. For a biography of Muhammad Vali Khan Sipahdar focusing on his role in the Constitutional Revolution, see Safa’i, R ­ ahbaran-i ­Mashrutah,  1: 287–313. For a passing reference to the father, see Fakhra’i, Gilan dar ­Junbish-i ­Mashrutiyat, 124. 113. Lavisse, Histoire générale and Asas-i Jamshidi Tarikh-i ‘Umumi. The translation was edited and published by Mu’ayyid al-Dawlah Tahmasb Mirza. 114.  For a good summary of his life and his contribution to the field of history in France, see Boer, History as a Profession, 281–86. 115.  Karim Khan Mu‘avin Nizam claimed that the Persian translations made in India were only partial. He did not mention these books by name. See Lavisse, Asas-i Jamshidi Tarikh-i ‘Umumi, 482. 116. Sultanifar, Fihrist-i Kutub-i Darsi, 88. 117.  Tunakabuni, “Preface,” in Lavisse, Asas-i Jamshidi Tarikh-i ‘Umumi. 118.  Ibid. Apparently only one other volume published in this series pertained to ethics. See Mu‘avin Nizam, Asas-i Jamshidi Akhlaq-i Jamshidi. 119.  Tunakabuni, “Postscript,” in Lavisse, Asas-i Jamshidi Tarikh-i ‘Umumi, 382–83. After the publication of Asas-i Jamshidi, there appears to have been a lull in the printing of world histories. The next world history was published in Iran nearly a decade later. Vaqqar al-Mulk, Tarikh-i ‘Alam Mukhtasar. Sayyid ‘Ali Tabrizi Hijazi Vaqqar al-Mulk had served as a secretary and translator at the court of Muzaffar al-Din Shah and later as a teacher and employee at the Iranian consulate in Bombay. He also published a work on India that was in part a travelogue. For a full listing of his works, see Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 4: 192. 120.  Nasr, “Az Tarikh-i Zindigi-yi Khanivadah,” 1–2. 121.  The name of the book was Kitab-i ‘Ali. 122.  Nasr, “Az Tarikh-i Zindigi-yi Khanivadah,” 3. 123. Ibid., 4. 124. Ibid., 5. 125.  He taught French and natural sciences at the Political Science School, French at the Military School (Madrasah-i Nizami ), and geometry at the Aqdasiyah School. He also tutored Husayn ‘Adl al-Mulk, Farajullah Dabir A‘zam, Yusuf Mushar A‘zam, and Mahmud Mahasib al-Mamalik in French. See ibid., 6. 126. Ibid. 127. Ibid., 6–7. Like his former teacher Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi, Nasr was well versed in both the sciences and history, although it was Nasr’s scientific textbook that was particularly popular and remained a classic for several decades. See Nasr, ‘Ilm alAshya. He wrote a middle school textbook of Iranian history until the time of Ahmad Shah and a history of the French Revolution in the context of world history. Nasr, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar-i Iran and Khulasah-i Tarikh-i ‘Alam. The latter work is a rare instance of a textbook dating from the First World War, when there were almost no educational publications.

192   Notes to Chapters 2 and 3

128. Seignobos, Tarikh-i Yunan. For a full listing of ‘Ali Nasr’s works, see Mushar, ­Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 4: 430–31. Nasr, “Az Tarikh-i Zindigi-yi Khanivadah,” 6. 129.  Nasr, “Preface,” in Seignobos, Tarikh-i Yunan. 130. Ibid. 131.  Nasr, “Preface,” 2–3. 132. Nasr, Tarikh-i ‘Umumi-yi Musavvar. 133. Ibid., 3. 134. Ibid., 210–12. 135. Ibid., 215. 136. Ibid., 221. 137.  Nasr, “Az Tarikh-i Zindigi-yi Khanivadah,” 9. 138. Ibid., 19–23.

Chapter 3: The State, Education, and the Standardization of History 1. Ittihad, Pazhuhishgaran-i Mu‘asir-i Iran, 5: 40–43. 2. Fortna, Learning to Read, 19. 3.  D. A. Jeremy Telman’s application of the insights of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault on institutions and practice to the discipline of history has informed the following analysis. See Telman, “George G. Iggers.” 4.  For a detailed discussion of French school teachers during roughly the same period, see Siegel, Moral Disarmament of France. 5.  Nava’i, “Dar al-Mu‘allimin-i ‘Ali”; Keyvani, “Education—Teachers’ Training Colleges.” For more on the Women’s Teachers’ Training College, see Yazdani, “Ta’sis-i Dar al-Mu‘allimat”; Bamdad, From Darkness into Light, 58–61. 6.  For a discussion of the Education Commission’s importance as an institution for the production of modern histories, see Azimi, “Historiography in the Pahlavi Iran,” 424–25. 7.  Afshar, “Book Translations,” 280. 8.  These figures included Muhammad Musaddiq (Musaddiq al-Dawlah), Hasan Pirniya Mushir al-Dawlah, his brother Husayn Pirniya Mu’tamin al-Mulk, Muhammad Tadayyun, Yahya Dawlatabadi, and Mahdi Quli Hidayat. Other founding members included former Minister of Education Ahmad Khan Badar Nasir al-Dawlah, Mahmud ‘Ala Mir (Ihtisham al-Saltanah), and Mirza Isma‘il Murtiza’i Mumtaz al-Dawlah. Malet and Isaacs, Tarikh-i Milal-i Sharq va Yunan, preface. 9.  For a discussion of the significance of this series in the French context, see Siegel, “‘History Is the Opposite of Forgetting’”; and Shapiro, “Fixing History.” 10.  Fustel de Coulanges, La cité antique. 11.  Zarnigar, “Yadi az Danishmand-i Girandqadr,” 252. Born in Tehran, where he attended the Aqdasiyah School, the French Alliance School, and later the Dar al-­Funun, Falsafi worked for some time in the Ministry of Post and Telegraph and the Justice Ministry before serving in the Ministry of Education and eventually becoming a history professor at the University of Tehran. Zarnegar, “Falsafī, Naṣr-Allāh I. Biography”; ­Ittihad, Pazhuhishgaran-i Mu‘asir-i Iran, 7: 495, 508.

Notes to Chapter 3  193

12.  Zarnigar, “Yadi az Danishmand-i Girandqadr,” 253. 13. Ittihad, Pazhuhishgaran-i Mu‘asir-i Iran, 7: 490–91. 14.  Zarnigar, “Yadi az Danishmand-i Girandqadr,” 253. 15. Boer, History as a Profession, 242–46. 16.  Fustel de Coulanges, Tarikh-i Tamaddun-i Qadim, alif-bah. 17.  Ibid., bah. 18.  In fact, the University of Tehran’s new Faculty of Arts (Danishkadah-i Adabiyat) incorporated the former Teachers’ Training College. Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran, 144–51; Matthee, “Transforming Dangerous Nomads,” 129; Sadiq, Yadigar-i ‘Umr, 2: 86–94. 19.  Mahbubi Ardakani, Tarikh-i Tahavvul-i Danishgah-i Tihran, 225–26. 20.  In the following analysis, I have used a list of graduates and their thesis topics included in Bisharat and Bani Adam, Fihrist-i Risalahha-yi Tahsili. It is difficult to ascertain for certain the number of history and geography graduates because of the inclusion of theses missing a first name but possibly authored by someone with the same name mentioned elsewhere in the catalogue. My figure of 150 is therefore conservative and excludes individuals writing on historical topics in adjacent fields such as literature, foreign languages and literature, and antiquity studies. 21.  For instance, Fathullah Amir Hushmand’s thesis on “the burning of Tehran” was only six pages whereas Mansur Bazargan’s thesis on the Iranian cultural domination over the Arabs was 205 pages. See ibid., 570–71. 22.  Many of these theses had a geographical or historical-geographical focus: Muhammad Abtahi, Jughrafiya-yi Tarikhi-yi Isfahan [Historical geography of Isfahan] (1936); Majd al-Din Ahmadi Kashani, Tashkilat-i Kashani [Kashani organizations] (1937); Mahmud Mahini, Jughrafiya-yi Tarikhi-yi Yazd [Historical geography of Yazd] (1934); Firiydun Kamyar, Ahamiyat-i Sarzamin-i Kirman az Nuqtah Nazar-i Siyasi va Iqtisadi [The importance of Kirman from a political and economic standpoint] (1936); Muhsin Shamsi, Awza‘-i Tabi‘i, Siyasi, Iqtisadi, Tarikhi-yi Vilayat-i Hamadan [The natural, political, and economic condition of the District of Hamadan] (1939); ‘Abd alKarim Sadiqiyani, Awza‘-i Tabi‘i va Siyasi va Iqtisadi va Tarikhi-yi Riza’iyah [The natural, political, economic, and historical condition of Riza’iyah] (1938); Ibrahim Zargham, Tabriz Jughrafiya-yi Tabi‘i Siyasi va Iqtisadi Tarikhi-yi An [Tabriz: Its natural, political, historical, and economic geography] (1936); Kazim Muzini, Jughrafiya-yi Mashhad [Geography of Mashhad] (1940); Riza Ma‘rifat, Jughrafiyat-i Sistan [Geography of Sistan] (1935); ‘Abd al-Husayn Purqasimi, Jughrafiya-yi Tabi‘i va Siyasi va Iqtisadi-yi Gilan [The natural, political, and economic geography of Gilan] (1938); Muhammad ‘Ali Ganj ‘Alizadah, Jughrafiya-yi Kurdistan Tabi‘i Siyasi Iqtisadi [The natural, political, and economic geography of Kurdistan] (1937); Hasan Rahavard, Jughrafiya-yi Tabaristan, Tabi‘i Siyasi Iqtisadi [The natural, political, and economic geography of Tabaristan] (1939); Abu al-Khayr Hishmatpur Dawlatshahi, (Jughrafiya-yi Tabi‘i va Siyasi va Iqtisadi-yi Kirmanshah [The natural, political, and economic geography of Kirmanshah] (1938); Mahdi Partuvi, Iqtisadiyat-i Mazandaran [Mazandaran’s economies] (1937); Qurbanda’i Layliabadi, Ilat-i Azarbayjan [Tribes of Azerbaijan] (1934); and Mahmud Maghruri,

194   Notes to Chapter 3

Awza‘-i Jughrafiya va Tarikh-i Khalij-i Fars [The geographical and historical condition of the Persian Gulf] (1937). 23.  A representative sample (though by no means exhaustive) of these theses includes Majd al-Din Ahmadi Kashani, Panbah-i Jahan [The world’s cotton] (1938); Parvin Amin Natiqi, Rah va Ta’sir-i An dar Iqtisadiyat [Roads and their impact on economies] (1939); Husayn Buzurg, Naft dar Dunya [The world’s oil] (1938); Javad Haydari, Ravabit-i Tarikhi va Tijarati-yi Iran va Rusiyah [Iran’s historical and commercial relations with Russia] (1935); Mahmud Khatami, Abyari va Ahamiyat-i An dar Dunya [Irrigation and its importance in the world] (1940); Muhammad Dirakhshish, San‘at-i Abrisham [The manufacturing of silk] (1938); ‘Ali Muhammad Ruhani, Abyari dar Iran [Irrigation in Iran] (1936); Baqir Sayyid Ahmadiyan, Rah-i Ahan [Railroad] (1935); Mahdi ‘Aziman, Qali-yi Iran va Bazar-i Tijarati-yi An dar Dunya [Iran’s carpets and its commercial market in the world] (1938); Abu al-Qasim Qiblah, Tasir-i Falahat dar Awza‘-i Iqtisadi-yi Iran [The impact of agriculture on Iran’s economic condition] (1939); Mustafa Kururiyan, Tijarat dar Iran [Commerce in Iran] (1938); Bahman Karimi, Tanbaku dar Iran [Tobacco in Iran] (1931); Asadullah Muhammadi, Awza‘-i Gumruki-yi Iran [The condition of customs in Iran] (1936); Ahmad Nur Azar, Zughal Sang dar Iran [va?] sa’ir-i Mamalik [Coal in Iran and other countries] (1935); Ahmad Navim, Taryak [Opium] (1931); and Ahmad Nurbakhsh, Tarikhchah-i Qalibafi San‘at-i Qalibafi dar Iran [History of traditional carpet weaving in Iran] (1936). 24. Bamdad, From Darkness into Light, 100. 25.  Qudsi Khwajah Nuri, Zindigi-yi Vikturia va Basat-i Farhang dar Zaman-i U [The life of Victoria and the cultural context of her era] (1939). 26. ‘Ilmi, Shahrbanu (1934); Majid Zahiri, Tarikh-i Sahan-i Hazrat-i Ma‘sumah [The history of the Shrine of Hazrat-i Ma‘sumah] (1937). 27.  For a recent discussion of the students sent abroad and their lives in Europe during the First World War, see Dilfani, “Muhassilan-i Irani dar Urupa.” 28. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 135–65; Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran, 152. 29. Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran, 130–31. 30. Ibid., 127, 131–32, 136–37. 31. Kian, Introduction à l’histoire; Nasr, Essai sur l’histoire du droit persan. 32. Mosaddeq, Le testament en droit musulman. 33. Docteur-Zadeh, De la validité des contrats; Samiy, Étude critique et comparative. 34. Mochaver, L’Évolution du gouvernement représentatif; Matine-Daftary, La suppression des capitulations en Perse. 35.  For a study of the American impact on Iranian higher education, see Copeland, “American Influence.” 36. Sadiq, Yadigar-i ‘Umr, 2: 24; Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran, 138–9. For a lively survey of Sadiq’s time in America and his vision of Iranian education, see R. Mottahedeh, Mantle of the Prophet, 54–68. 37. Sadiq, Modern Persia.

Notes to Chapter 3  195

38.  Mahdi Nakhustin also wrote on educational history at Cornell University. Nakosteen, “Development of Persian Education.” This was a much lengthier and complete work than that of his predecessor, ‘Isa Sadiq. ‘Ali Khani wrote on a similar topic while attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kani, “Reconstruction of Persian Education.” Armad ‘Ali-Abadi wrote a more focused study on Iranian higher education at New York University. Ali-Abadi, “Higher Education in Iran.” 39.  Hishmat al-Saltaneh, La Perse économique; Mushar-Ghadimi, Les finances publiques de la Perse; Yaganegi, “Recent Financial and Monetary History”; Kia, E ­ ssai sur l’histoire industrielle de l’Iran; Ghavami, Le prêt à intérêt en Perse; Sotoudeh, L’Évolution économique de l’Iran; Ehtécham, La situation économique et historique; Homayoun, La Banque nationale de l’Iran. 40. Amini, L’Institution du monopole; Sandjabi, Essai sur l’économie rurale. Both later wrote political memoirs. Amini, Matn-i Kamil-i Khatirat; Sanjabi, Darbarah-i Umidha va na umidha. 41.  Unlike most of the other figures surveyed here, Muhammad ‘Ali Hikmat studied Ottoman-Safavid diplomatic relations. Hekmat, Essai sur l’histoire des relations politiques. 42. Siassi, La Perse au contact de l’Occident. 43. Afschar, La politique européenne en Perse; Bayani, Les relations de l’Iran avec l’Europe occidentale; Sadre, Relations de l’Iran avec l’Europe. 44.  Saidi, “Anglo-Iranian Oil Dispute”; Shadman, “The Relations of Britain and Persia.” At least one author looked at Russian relations with Iran. Sardari, Un chapitre de l’histoire diplomatique de l’Iran. 45.  Abbassi, “Rise of Nationalism in Persia.” 46. Sadighi, Les mouvements religieux iraniens. For a series of articles dedicated to Ghulam Husayn Sadiqi, see Sadiqi, Yadnamah-i Duktur Ghulam Husayn Sadiqi. For a discussion of his work and its significance to Pahlavi historiography, see Abbas Amanat, “Historiography ix. Pahlavi Period.” 47. Azizi, La Domination Arabe; ‘Aliabadi, L’Illumination dans le mysticisme de l’Iran. In America, Muhammad I‘timad Muqaddam wrote on the Indo-European origins of the Iranian New Year. Moghadam, “Indo-European Origins.” 48.  Armajani, “Critical Study and Translation.” For more on Armajani and his conversion to Christianity, see Zirinsky, “Onward Christian Soldiers.” For the study of Iranian ceramics, see Bahrami, Recherches. 49. Hikmat, Si Khatirah, 386. For a survey of the early history of this institution, see Kuhistani, “Mu’assasah-i Va‘z va Khitabah.” 50.  For a longer list of membership and a picture, see Hikmat, Si Khatirah, 385–86. 51. Razi, Tarikh-i Iran, 867. 52.  Kuhistani enumerates a number of reasons for the short-lived nature of this institution, including the similarity between its function and that of the Faculty of Rational and Traditional Sciences, its lack of sufficient funds, its hurried planning and organization, the overall Pahlavi policy of emphasizing security and the military over cultural issues, and finally the clerics’ unreceptive response to measures deemed to

196   Notes to Chapter 3

be an e­ ncroachment on their authority to train religious preachers. See Kuhistani, “Mu’assasah-i Va‘z va Khitabah,” 104–5. 53. Ibid., 102. 54. Ibid., 103. 55. Falsafi, Tarikh-i Iran Pish az Islam and Tarikh-i Iran Ba‘d az Islam. In addition to Nasrullah Falsafi’s histories of Iran, a brief history of logic was written by Muhammad Tadayyun as a textbook for that institution. Tadayyun, Usul-i Khitabah. 56. Yasami, A’in-i Nigarish-i Tarikh. 57.  Ibid., alif. 58.  Ibid., bah. 59. Ibid. 60.  It was Yasami’s interest in such topics that may explain why a number of Iranian undergraduate students wrote their theses at the Faculty of Literature on material and economic history. 61.  For the pedagogical function of this organization, see Marashi, Nationalizing Iran, 104–9; and Kian-Thiébaut, Secularization of Iran, 85–86. 62.  Matin Daftari, Khatirat-i Yik Nukhust Vazir, 164. 63.  Its official print organs included two journals, Iran-i Imruz and Arya. Dilfani, Farhangsitizi dar Dawrah-i Riza Shah. For the plays, poetry, and speeches published by the Organization, see Sukhanraniha-yi Sazman-i Parvarish-i Afkar. 64.  Yasami, “Parvarish-i Afkar.” Nasrullah Falsafi also wrote a theoretical work on the impact of history on education for the Ministry of Education. The title of the work, The Impact of History on Public Instruction, suggests that it too was meant for the Organization for Public Instruction. Falsafi, Ta’sir-i Tarikh dar Parvarish-i Afkar. 65.  Yasami, “Parvarish-i Afkar,” 3. 66. Ibid., 9. 67. Ibid., 11. 68. Ibid., 6. Ranajit Guha has critiqued Hegelian notions of world history, particularly the claim that India was without history. Guha, History at the Limit of World-­ History, 9. 69.  Yasami, “Parvarish-i Afkar,” 4. 70. Ibid., 16–19, 28–29. 71. Ibid., 43. 72.  For Greece, see ibid., 51–54. For Rome, see ibid., 55–59. 73. Ibid., 60. 74.  For the application of Bourdieu’s idea of habitus to historians, see Telman, “George G. Iggers,” 153. 75.  William Clark has remarked on how, through lecturing, European academics were “required to enact a persona in a theatrical space.” Clark, Academic Charisma, 83. The manuals analyzed here similarly called on teachers to “enact” a particular persona. 76.  Riza Fahimi, “Ta‘lim-i Yik Dars-i Tarikh dar Kilasha-yi Mutifavatah-i Madaris-i Ibtida’i,” Usul-i Ta‘limat 1, no. 2 (1920): 22. 77. Ibid., 23.

Notes to Chapter 3  197

78. Ibid., 24. 79.  Riza Fahimi, “Yik Dars-i Tarikh-i ‘Amali,” Usul-i Ta‘limat 1, no. 3 (1920): 5. 80. Ibid., 6. 81.  ‘Isa Sadiq, “Tarikh va Tariqah-i Tadris-i An,” Armaghan 1, no. 9&10 (1920): 52–56. 82. Sadiq, Usul-i ‘Amali-yi ‘Ilm-i Tarbiyat, 130–31. 83. Ibid., 131. 84. Ibid., 132. Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi argues that matriarchal tropes prevailed in Iranian nationalist narratives of the constitutional period but faded in subsequent generations. It appears in the case of Sadiq, however, as though matriarchal tropes had an enduring significance. See Tavakoli-Targhi, “From Patriotism to Matriotism.” 85. Sadiq, Usul-i ‘Amali-yi ‘Ilm-i Tarbiyat, 132. 86. Ibid., 133. 87. Ibid., 133–34. 88.  As an example, he discussed how incest and the related notion of pure bloodlines subscribed to by the Sasanians were not in line with contemporary customs and norms, but that it was important to understand this phenomenon on its own terms. Ibid., 134. 89. Ibid., 141. 90. Ibid., 142. 91. Ibid., 137. Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet discusses the importance of maps in pedagogical settings. Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions, 196–97. 92. Sadiq, Usul-i ‘Amali-yi ‘Ilm-i Tarbiyat, 138. Sadiq lamented the condition of historical monuments in Iran and praised the efforts of Arthur Pope and the Society for National Heritage (Anjuman-i Milli) to establish a museum and protect ancient sites. Ibid., 139. For more on the Society for National Heritage, see Grigor, “Recultivating ‘Good Taste.’” 93.  Rashid Yasami, “Tadris-i Tarikh,” Amuzish va Parvarish 9, no. 4 (1939): 9–10, 13–14. 94. Ibid., 12. 95. Ibid., 14. 96.  ‘Ala al-Din Pazargadi, “Chigunah Tarikh Ra Bayad Tadris Kard,” Amuzish va Parvarish 10, no. 1 (1940): 6–14. 97.  These curricula often included notes on how history should be taught, thus complementing pedagogical manuals for history. For instance, teachers were expected to give in-class written assignments on history to students every fifteen days and then grade them, with corrections. Dastur-i Ta‘limat-i Shish Salah, 34. 98.  The full text of the program is reproduced in Nava’i, “Dar al-Mu‘allimin-i ‘Ali,” 52. 99.  Tahir Ahmadi, “Sayr-i Tahavvul-i Barnamah-i Tahsili,” 43–44. 100. Ibid., 36–37. 101. Ibid., 32, 39–42. 102.  Yazdani reproduces the full text of this curriculum. See Yazdani, “Ta’sis-i Dar al-Mu‘allimat,” 70–71. 103.  Dastur-i Ta‘limat-i Shish Salah.

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104.  Tahir Ahmadi does not include the full text of this and the revised history curriculum. For his analysis, see Tahir Ahmadi, “Sayr-i Tahavvul-i Barnamah-i Tahsili,” 42–44. 105.  Salnamah-i Ihsa’iyah (Tihran: Rawshana’i, 1928), 172–73. 106.  Salnamah-i Ihsa’iyah (Tihran: Rawshana’i, 1932), 61. See also Salnamah va Amar (Tihran: Sahami, 1936), 773–81. 107.  Salnamah-i Ihsa’iyah (Tihran: Firdaws, 1927), 32–33; Salnamah-i Ihsa’iyah (1928), 106–7, 237–38. 108.  Salnamah-i Ihsa’iyah (1928), 236–37. 109.  Salnamah va Amar (Tihran: Firdaws, 1938), 284. 110.  Salnamah-i Ihsa’iyah (Tihran: Sahami, 1933), 32–33. 111.  Salnamah va Amar (1936), 902. 112.  Salnamah va Amar (1938), 174–75. For the architectural historiography of the early Pahlavi period, see Safamanesh, “Architectural Historiography.” 113.  Salnamah va Amar (Tihran: Sahami, 1935), 108–18; Salnamah va Amar (1938), 213–22. 114. Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran, 51–53. 115.  Salnamah-i Ihsa’iyah (1933), 54–55; Salnamah-i Ihsa’iyah (Tihran: Rawshana’i, 1930), 92–95. 116.  Salnamah-i Ihsa’iyah (1933), 46–47; Salnamah va Amar (Tihran: Sahami, 1935), 38–40, 118–19. 117.  Salnamah-i Ihsa’iyah (1933), 104–6. 118.  Salnamah va Amar (1936), 520–26. 119.  For examples of the Military College program and its curricula dealing with history, see Salnamah va Amar (1935), 131–34; and Salnamah va Amar (1936), 681–92, 788–89. 120.  Danishkadah-i Afsari, 6. 121. Ibid., 8. 122. Ibid., 9. 123. Fortna, Learning to Read, 9. 124. Certeau, Writing of History, 48. 125.  Salmoni, “Historical Consciousness for Modern Citizenship,” 186. 126.  M. ‘A. Furughi, Maqalat-i Furughi, 1: 318–20. 127.  For Pirniya’s contribution to Pahlavi historiography, see Azimi, “Historiography in the Pahlavi Era,” 370–77. 128.  Ahmad Sa‘idi, cited in Ittihad, Pazhuhishgaran-i Mu‘asir-i Iran, 5: 123–24. 129.  Abu al-Hasan Pirniya, cited in ibid., 5: 121. 130.  For instance, see Marashi, Nationalizing Iran, 102–4. 131.  Pirniya was in close contact with German archeologist Ernst Herzfeld, whom he thanked in the preface to Ancient Iran for his advice regarding ruins of the Medes and maps of the Achaemenid Empire. Pirniya, Iran-i Bastani, iii. 132.  Ibid., i–ii. 133.  Ahmad Sa‘idi, cited in Ittihad, Pazhuhishgaran-i Mu‘asir-i Iran, 5: 123–24.

Notes to Chapter 3  199

134.  Sa‘id Nafisi, quoted in ibid., 5: 128. 135. Pirniya, Tarikh-i Iran-i Qadim. 136.  Muhit Tabataba’i, quoted in Ittihad, Pazhuhishgaran-i Mu‘asir-i Iran, 5: 125. 137. Taqizadah, Az Parviz ta Changiz, 3. 138.  Ibid., preface. 139. Iqbal, Tarikh-i Mufassal-i Iran . . . ta I‘lan-i Mashrutiyat and Tarikh-i Mufassal-i Iran . . . ta Inqiraz-i Qajariyah. 140.  Bastani Parizi, Talash-i Azadi, 553. 141.  Kelly, “Ideas of Periodization in the West,” 23. 142. Ibid., 24. For a parallel discussion of periodization in Arabic historiography, see Khalidi, “Reflections on Periodisation in Arabic Historiography.” 143.  Minister of Education ‘Ali Asghar Hikmat encouraged Shaybani to compose this history. Vahid al-Mulk, Tarikh-i Qurun-i Vusta, 3: 3–4. 144. Ibid., 3: 2. 145.  In a modern history textbook (apparently a companion to Shaybani’s medieval history), ‘Abbas Iqbal similarly considered the rise of the Safavids to be a turning point as well. The book was organized into two parts: the first section narrated the rise of modernity in the West, the second section addressed the causes of decline in Iran and the attempt by Iranians since the Safavid period to import modernity to Iran. Iqbal, Tarikh-i Tamaddun-i Jadid. 146. Pur, Tarikh-i Naw, 3–5. 147. Ibid., 9–10. 148. Quzanlu, Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Iran. 149.  For instance, Mirza Hasan Khan, an instructor of history and geography, composed a history of the ancient world for primary school students in their fifth year. Hasan Khan, Tarikh-i Qurun-i Qadimah-i ‘Alam. Like ‘Abbas Iqbal, Hasan Khan emphasized the supposed racial superiority of white Aryans over various other races. He also formulated an eclectic and creative reading of religious history by drawing on Qur’anic stories to discuss the history of the Israelites, but then apparently disavowed Islamic sources by accepting the historicity of the crucifixion of Christ as per mainstream European Christan doctrine. Sa‘idi, “Muqaddamah’i,” 44, 46. 150.  Zia-Ebrahimi, “‘Arab Invasion’ and Decline.” 151. Iqbal, Dawrah-i Tarikh-i ‘Umumi (1345 H./1926), 15–16. 152.  Iqbal may have drawn some of his ideas from the later works of Joseph-Arthur Comte de Gobineau on China. For a fruitful discussion of Gobineau’s ideas on China, see Blue, “Gobineau on China.” The idea of the “Yellow Peril” had its roots in the European opium and “coolie” trade of the nineteenth century. For a discussion of its origins and development, particularly in the American context, see Lyman, “‘Yellow Peril’ Mystique.” 153. Iqbal, Dawrah-i Tarikh-i ‘Umumi (1345 H./1926), 120. 154. Trautmann, Aryans and British India, xii–xiii. Like Iqbal, ‘Izzat Pur defined races primarily in terms of skin color, although he was much more reticent in ascribing moral qualities to these races. He considered the original inhabitants of Iran as belong-

200   Notes to Chapter 3

ing to both the “yellow” and “white” races. In his description of the “white” race, he summarized contending theories of their geographical origin without much comment. Pur, Tarikh-i Naw, 7–8. 155. Iqbal, Dawrah-i Tarikh-i ‘Umumi (1345 H./1926), 17. This is not to say that Iqbal ignored the importance of geography in his world history. As an instructor of both history and geography, Iqbal was particularly sensitive to a geographical definition of Iran instead of a purely political or dynastic one. The first section of the World History dealt with “the natural condition of the Iranian plateau,” defining it as natural boundaries bound by Mesopotamia, Sind, the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Jaxartes and Oxus (jayhun va amudarya) rivers. Ibid., 119. 156. Ibid., 17–18. 157. Ibid., 161–62. 158. Ibid., 156. 159. Ibid., 129. 160. Pazuki, Tarikh-i Iran, 41, 61, 223, 340. 161. Ibid., 267. 162. Shamim, Tarikh-i Iran, 80–81. 163. Ibid., 138. 164. Iqbal, Dawrah-i Tarikh-i ‘Umumi (1343 H./1924), 28, 30–31. Iqbal elaborated on this position and made it explicit in another passage in which he summarizes debates about the ethnic identity of the Ashkanids; that by “yellow-skinned people” he meant Turkic peoples: “Regarding the origin and race [asl va nizhad] of the Ashkanids there are conflicts among historians. The opinion of Copter [Qubtir?] is that they are of the yellow race and in many ways he considers them similar to the Turcomans of today and some also believe that they were white skinned.” Ibid., 6. 165. Iqbal, Dawrah-i Tarikh-i ‘Umumi (1305 Sh./1926), 194–95. 166. Ibid., 121. 167. Ibid., 177–78. 168. Pazuki, Tarikh-i Iran, 385. 169. Ibid., 154. Pazuki repeated the claim that the Mongol and Timurid conquests led to the decline of Iranian civilization. See ibid., 267, 385. 170. Pazuki, Tarikh-i Iran, 154. 171. Ibid., 110. 172.  For lengthier elaborations on the significance of Islam in Iranian nationalist historiography, see Aghaie, “Islam and Nationalist Historiography”; and Vejdani, “Place of Islam.” 173. Iqbal, Dawrah-i Tarikh-i ‘Umumi (1343 H./1924), 105. 174. Taqizadah, Az Parviz ta Changiz, 32–39. 175. Razi, Tarikh-i Iran, 343. 176.  In Iraq, a country with substantial Shi‘i and Sunni Arab populations, the legacy of the Umayyads and the ‘Abbasids had sectarian implications. Bashkin, ““When Mu‘awiya Entered the Curriculum.” 177.  See for example, Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi’s claim that classical Arabic texts

Notes to Chapter 3  201

by Iranian authors were part of Iranian literature. M. ‘A. Furughi, Payam-i man bih ­Farhangistan. The fact that Iranian authors saw Arabic prose texts composed by ethnic Persians as part of the Iranian literature may be part of the reason that the Farhangistan, the Persian Language academy, failed to purify Persian of Arabic words as effectively as the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu) purified Turkish of Persian and Arabic words. 178. Iqbal, Dawrah-i Tarikh-i ‘Umumi (1343 H./1924), 125. 179.  For instance, Iqbal made the point that Turkish Islam was “fanatical” Sunnism and Iranian Islam was Shi‘ism. He did, however, credit Mahmud of Ghazna with having introduced “the Islamic faith [a’in-i muhammadi] and Persian literature [adabiyat-i farsi]” to the Indian subcontinent through his conquests. Iqbal claimed that by paying attention to sciences and literature, Mahmud was turning his back on “the Turkish nature,” which “requires violence.” He further questioned Mahmud’s motivation for promoting learning by claiming that his true intention was to compete with the Samanid courts. In the final analysis, he credited Mahmud’s ministers at the court for pushing him in the direction of promoting learning. Iqbal, Dawrah-i Tarikh-i ‘Umumi (1305 Sh./1926), 154–55. 180. Iqbal, Dawrah-i Tarikh-i ‘Umumi (1310 Sh./1931), 148. 181. Shamim, Tarikh-i Iran, 270–75. 182.  For an overview of the origins and development of the modern Iranian military, see Cronin, Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State. For a broad overview of Iranian military history, see Ward, Immortal. 183.  Matthee, “Transforming Dangerous Nomads,” 125–26. In 1922 a group of officers were sent abroad to receive training in France. See Kian-Thiébaut, Secularization of Iran, 80. 184.  Beyond the works of these three authors, several others wrote military history textbooks. Nonmilitary authors writing on military topics during this period were relatively rare. For instance, the Tehran- and Beirut-educated ‘Ali Javahir al-Kalam composed a history of Muhammad ‘Ali’s reforms toward the end of Riza Shah’s rule. ‘Ali Javahir al-Kalam received a master of arts in judicial sciences (‘ulum-i qaza’i). He apparently had no connection to the Iranian military. Javahir al-Kalam, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar-i Misr. For a short biography and a list of works, see Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 4: 175–77. Several high-profile Iranian generals wrote Iranian military histories. General Ḥasan Arfa‘ composed a military history of the Soviet Union. Arfa‘, Tarikhi Nizami-yi Ittihad-i Jamahir-i Shuravi. For his autobiography, see Arfa, Under Five Shahs. See also Azimi, “Arfa‘, Ḥasan.” Yavar Khudadad translated a number of French military textbooks, one dealing with military history in antiquity and another on the Franco-Prussian war. Khudadad, Tarikh-i Nizami-yi ‘Ahd-i Qadim and Jang-i Faransih va A ­ lman. Sarhang Sharaf al-Din Qahramani was a Russian-educated military man who was known for his learning. He translated a history of the Czarist government and Muhammad ‘Ali Shah in addition to writing a military history of the Kurdish chief Simitku (Simqu) and his autonomist movement. Mamontov, Hukumat-i Tzar va Muhammad ‘Ali Mirza; Qahramani, Khatm-i Gha’ilah-i Simitku. ‘Abd al-Husayn Hijazi

202   Notes to Chapter 3

also produced a history textbook on the war between Russia and Poland, presumably the Russian invasion of Poland under Stalin, for the second year of military college. Hijazi, Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Jang-i Rus va Lahistan. Sipahbud ‘Abdullah Hidayat studied at the Military Academy of Mushir al-Dawlah (Madrasah-i Nizam-i Mushir al-Dawlah) before traveling in 1923/4 (1302 Sh.) to Paris, where he completed his military studies. After three years in France he returned to Tehran and became the commander of the artillery. Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 3: 1007. He combined his interest in military history with historical cartography in a number of textbooks he produced during the 1930s. Hidayat, Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Takammul-i San‘at-i Jang; Naqshahha-yi Tarikh-i Nizami; and Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Jangha-yi ­Napuliyan. Sartip Muhammad Daftari wrote a general survey of military history from antiquity to modern times for the Iranian Military College. Daftari, Tarikh-i Nizami. He was educated in France and spent a considerable amount of time in Afghanistan, where he was awarded the Star of Afghanistan (sitarah-i Afghanistan). 185. Nakhjavan, Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Jang-i Bayn al-Milal; Turkiyah-i Imruz; Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Jang-i Rus va ‘Usmani; Jang-i Turkiyah va Yunan; and Jang-i Rus va Japun. 186. Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 5: 859–62. See also C. Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah, 156. 187. Muqtadir, Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Iran pas az Ghalibah-i ‘Arab; Tarikh-i Nizamiyi Iran . . . dar Zaman-i Khusraw-yi Avval Anushirvan; Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Iran . .  . dar Dawrah-i Sasaniyan; Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Iran Jangha-yi Dawrah-i Sasaniyan (­Tihran, 1936); Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Iran; Tarikh-i Nadir Shah va Shah ‘Abbas; Jangha-yi ­Haftsadsalah-i Iran va Rum; and Jang dar Kuhistan. See Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 4: 688–90. 188.  Quzanlu wrote several Iranian military histories along with a history of the Turkish war of independence. Quzanlu, Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Qushunkishi; Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Jangha-yi Iran va Yunan; Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Jang-i Istiqlal; Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Jang-i Iran va Maqduni; Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Jang-i Iran va Hind; Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Jangi ‘Arab ba ‘Ajam; Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Iran; Jang-i Iran va Rus; Jang-i Iran va Afaghanah; Jang-i Duvvum-i Iran va Rus; and Jang-i Dahsalah. For a list of Quzanlu’s books, see Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 2: 393–95. 189. Quzanlu, Tarikh-i Nizami-yi Iran, dal. 190. Ibid. 191.  Ibid., n.p. 192.  For instance, ‘Abbas Parviz’s world histories were written for both regular high schools and military high schools. He excised entirely the civilizational sections found in previous history textbooks. Parviz, Tarikh-i ‘Umumi va Iran. 193. Pazuki, Tarikh-i Iran, 41. 194. Ibid., 42–49. 195. Shamim, Tarikh-i Iran, 6. 196. Ibid., 29–30. For a discussion of this event, see Tucker, Nadir Shah’s Quest, 38–44. 197. Shamim, Tarikh-i Iran, 69–71.

Notes to Chapters 3 and 4  203

198.  Touraj Atabaki points out the parallels with Iranian religions, including Zoroastrianism, Shi‘ism, and the Babi movement, in which a single messianic savior figure is assigned all agency in history. See Atabaki, “Agency and Subjectivity in Iranian National Historiography,” 72–73. Kaveh Bayat discusses how official history credited Riza Shah with all of the reforms undertaken during his rule. K. Bayat, “Pahlavi School of Historiography,” 114. 199. Ibid., 318. 200. The Shahnamah was clearly understood in nationalist terms: “The Shahnamah is a flame from the fire of nationalism which was burning in the heart of the poet of Tus [i.e., Firdawsi].” Razi, Tarikh-i Iran, 361. 201. Ibid. 202. Yasami, Tarikh-i Iran, np. This appears to be a reprint of the Yasami textbook by the same name published in 1923–1924, mentioned earlier. For an important discussion of the “myth of Riza Khan,” see Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions, 174–78. 203. Yasami, Tarikh-i Iran, 90.

Chapter 4: The Women’s Movement, the Press, and Exemplary ­Biographies 1.  Shaykh al-Islami, Zanan-i Ruznamahnigar va Andishmand-i Iran, 152; Qavimi, Zanan-i Mashhur-i Iran, 118. 2. Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies. 3.  There is, for instance, no mention of women in Mostafa Vaziri’s discussion of early twentieth-century Iranian historians. Vaziri, Iran as Imagined Nation. A more recent collection of essays on historiography similarly ignores women who wrote histories in the early twentieth century. Atabaki, Iran in the 20th Century. One paper in this volume mentions this blindspot in Iranian historiography but does take the further step of showing that women did in fact write histories in the early twentieth century and were not merely the objects of historiographical “amnesia.” Kia, Najmabadi, and Shakhsari, “Women, Gender, and Sexuality.” 4. Paidar, Women and the Political Process; Amin, Making of the Modern Iranian Woman; Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches; Sedghi, Women and Politics in Iran; KashaniSabet, Conceiving Citizens and “Patriotic Womanhood”; Sanasarian, Women’s Rights Movement in Iran; Afary, Sexual Politics in Modern Iran; Ringer, “Rethinking Religion.” 5.  N. Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 123. 6.  For the Ottoman Empire, see Frierson, “Unimagined Communities” and “Women in Ottoman Intellectual History”; Atamaz-Hazar, “Reconstructing the History”; Demirdirek, “In Pursuit of the Ottoman Women’s Movement.” For Egypt, see Baron, Egypt as a Woman and Women’s Awakening in Egypt; Booth, May Her Likes Be Multiplied. For interwar French Syria and Lebanon, see Thompson, Colonial Citizens. For India, see Minault, Secluded Scholars. 7.  For women’s anjumans during the Constitutional Revolution, see Afary, Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 177–208; and M. Bayat, “Women and Revolution in Iran.” 8.  For women who contributed to constitutional-era newspapers, see Najmabadi, “Crafting an Educated Housewife,” 107–15. 9.  Rostam-Kolayi, “Origins of Iran’s Modern Girls’ Schools.”

204   Notes to Chapter 4

10.  For further biographical information on these and other pioneering members of women’s associations, see Amin, Making of the Modern Iranian Woman, 40; Bamdad, From Darkness into Light, 62–80; Paidar, Women and the Political Process, 92, 97–98; and Sedghi, Women and Politics in Iran, 77–83. 11.  For a valuable discussion of both newspapers, see Amin, Making of the Modern Iranian Woman, 56–59, 117–18, 166; and Khosravie, Zaban-i Zanan, 121–34. 12.  For an examination of the public role of women during the Constitutional Revolution, including in pro-constitutional resistance in Tabriz, see Afary, Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 194–97. 13. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, 192. 14.  “Avvalin Qadam,” Majallah-i Jami‘at-i Nisvan-i Vatankhah 1, no. 1 (1924): 1. 15.  “Zanan-i Nami,” Jahan-i Zanan 1, no. 1 (February 4, 1921): 14. 16. Ibid., 16. 17. “Tarikh,” Zaban-i Zanan 2, no. 29 (1920): 1. 18.  “Ma va Muhit-i Huchigari,” Majallah-i Jami‘at-i Nisvan-i Vatankhah 1, no. 2 (1924): 3. 19.  M. B., “Izhar-i Qadrdani,” Majallah-i Jami‘at-i Nisvan-i Vatankhah 1, no. 5&6 (1924): 43. 20.  “Zanan-i Jahan,” Jahan-i Zanan 1, no. 2 (March 4, 1921): 28–29. 21.  “Vala-Maqami-yi Zan,” Jahan-i Zanan 1, no. 3 (April 4, 1921): 54. 22.  A. N., Namah-i Banuvan 1, no. 2 (August 16, 1920): 6. She went on to add that “it is women to whom the progress of prosperity of every country is bound, so please observe how much Iran is behind in terms of progress and civilization [taraqqi va t­ amaddun]; it is because the learning and intelligence of women is considered to be a great sin.” Ibid. 23.  “Vala-Maqami-yi Zan,” 53. 24.  There were a few exceptions. Some authors were explicitly critical of Arabs, such as one woman who changed her name to Sasan Kiarash out of her love for “pure Persian” and her “hatred of Arabs” (kin-i ‘arab). Majallah-i Jami‘at-i Nisvan-i Vatankhah 1, no. 5&6 (1924): 8–9. Maryam Raf ‘atzadah suggested that it was women who conveyed to children their sense of national pride by making them aware of their descent from the Kiyanid and Sasanian dynasties. Maryam Raf ‘atzadah, “Ma dar chih Khiyalim va Falak dar chih Khiyal ast,” Namah-i Banuvan 1, no. 7 (January 14, 1921): 8. 25.  Irandukht, “Guldastah Bisharat,” Namah-i Banuvan 1, no. 4 (September 20, 1920): 4. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29.  Kandiyoti, “Islam and Patriarchy,” 23. Similarly, Margot Badran has pointed out how for the “first two-thirds of the twentieth century, the reforming, revitalizing doctrine of Islamic modernism accorded space for feminism within the framework of the religious culture and provided a congenial climate for its evolution.” Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation, 11. 30.  Pedersen, “Comparative History and Women’s History,” 96.

Notes to Chapter 4  205

31.  For resistance to women unveiling, see Chehabi, “Banning of the Veil.” 32.  This was probably particularly the case with Sadiqah Dawlatabadi, who came from a prominent Babi family. She was the brother of reformer and later constitutionalist activist Yahya Dawlatabadi. The attacks on her newspaper might have been connected to this “heretical” affiliation. 33. Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal, 295–331. 34.  N. Mottahedeh, Representing the Unpresentable, 8. 35.  M. Q. Adib, “Izdivaz dar Iran,” Majallah-i Jami‘at-i Nisvan-i Vatankhah 1, no. 7&8 (1924): 23, 31. 36.  For the most thorough and synthetic biography of Sadiqah Dawlatabadi to date, see Khosravie, Zaban-i Zanan. For the period discussed here, see especially ibid., 137– 215. This chapter includes an important discussion of women’s newspapers in the 1910s and 1920s, including Dawlatabadi’s own newspaper, Women’s Voice. For a discussion of her Babi affiliation and the stigma attached to it, see ibid., 139–47. For an in-depth analysis of Women’s Voice, its context, and its themes, see ibid., 177–212. 37.  Sadr Hashimi, Tarikh-i Jara’id va Majallat-i Iran, 3: 6–10. 38.  Shaykh al-Islami, Zanan-i Ruznamahnigar va Andishmand-i Iran, 108. 39. Ibid., 118. 40. Ibid., 119–20. 41. Ibid., 147. 42. Mawlud, Namah-i Banuvan 1, no. 4 (September 20, 1920): 4. 43.  Nur al-Huda Manganah, “Luzum-i Tarbiyat-i Nisvan,” Majallah-i Jami‘at-i ­Nisvan-i Vatankhah 1, no. 1 (1924): 8. 44. Ibid. 45.  “Zanan-i Nami,” 16. The editors praised Asma’s service to Islam and included some accounts of her addressing the Prophet. These accounts were taken from the second volume of the nineteenth-century Persian biographical dictionary of women, Khayrat al-Hisan. Ibid., 16–17. 46.  “Zanan-i Nami,” 17. 47.  “Zanan-i Nami,” Jahan-i Zanan 1, no. 2 (March 4, 1921): 26. 48. Ibid., 27. 49. F. L. Hidayat, “Akhlaq va ‘Atifah va Ittihad,” Majallah-i Jami‘at-i Nisvan-i Vatankhah 1, no. 1 (1924): 11. See also “Ma va Muhit-i Huchigari,” 3–4; and “Nisvan-i Siyah-ruz-i Ma,” Majallah-i Jami‘at-i Nisvan-i Vatankhah 1, no. 2 (1924): 9. 50.  Masturah Afshar, “Jihalat Dushman-i Haqiqi-yi Milal-i Islamiyah Ast,” Namah-i Banuvan 1, no. 10 (March 18, 1921): 2. 51.  “Luzum-i Ta‘lim-i Zanan,” Jahan-i Zanan 1, no. 1 (February 4, 1921): 8. 52.  “Zanan-i Jahan,” Jahan-i Zanan 1, no. 1 (February 4, 1921): 5. 53.  “Khulasah-i Musahabah ba ‘Uliya Hazrat Malakah Suraya,” Payk-i Sa‘adat 1, no. 4&5 (June 1927): 123. 54.  Maryam Raf ‘atzadah, “Luzum-i Tarbiyat-i Zanan,” Jahan-i Zanan 1, no. 5 (September 1921): 94–95. 55.  Afshar, “Jihalat Dushman-i Haqiqi-yi Milal-i Islamiyah Ast,” 2.

206   Notes to Chapter 4

56. Ibid., 2–3. 57. Ibid., 3. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., 5. 60. Ibid. 61.  Najmabadi, “Crafting an Educated Housewife in Iran.” For a more comprehensive study of domesticity as it relates to citizenship, see Kashani-Sabet, Conceiving Citizens. 62. Amin, Making of the Modern Iranian Woman, 40. 63. Manela, Wilsonian Moment. 64.  Bast, “Putting the Record Straight.” 65. Booth, May Her Likes Be Multiplied, 39, 239. For Egyptian women’s call for suffrage in the early 1920s and 1930s, see Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation, 207–20. 66.  “Zan-i Mistir Vilsun Ra’is-i Jumhuri-yi Amika,” Namah-i Banuvan 1, no. 2 (August 16, 1920): 8. 67. Booth, May Her Likes Be Multiplied, 226. Beth Baron has examined Safiyah Zaghlul’s representation as the “Mother of the Egyptians.” See Baron, Egypt as a Woman, 135–61. 68.  P. A., “Mard va Zan,” Payk-i Sa‘adat 1, no. 2 (December 1927–January 1928): 62. In the same article, the author pointed out that the Austrian head of parliament was a woman. 69.  “Muzakarat-i Majlis-i Shura-yi Shamat Raji‘ Bi-intikhab-i Zanan Bi-majlis-i Shura-yi Milli,” Namah-i Banuvan 1, no. 2 (August 16, 1920): 1–4. 70.  “Su Tafahum ya Muntaha-yi Badbakhti,” Namah-i Banuvan 1, no. 3 (September 3, 1920): 1–2. 71.  Maryam Rif ‘atzadah, “Akhaz-i Huquq Far‘-i Liyaqat Ast,” Namah-i Banuvan 1, no. 5 (October 11, 1920): 7–8. 72.  “Nukhustin Vazir-i Ma‘arif az Zanan,” Namah-i Banuvan 1, no. 3 (September 3, 1920): 3; Adib Sahib, “Huquq-i Nisf-i Bashar Paymal Mishavad Namah-i Banuvan,” ­Namah-i Banuvan 1, no. 3 (September 3, 1920): 4–5; “Kungrah-i Bayn al-Milali,” ­Namah-i Banuvan 1, no. 3 (September 3, 1920): 6. 73. “Intikhabat,” Zaban-i Zanan 2, no. 23 (May 1, 1920): 1. 74.  This was not, however, the case. Edip commented on how this rumor was used by opponents of Mustafa Kemal’s government to discredit him. Adivar, Turkish Ordeal, 147. 75.  “Zanan-i Nami-yi Jahan,” Jahan-i Zanan 1, no. 5 (September 1921): 100. This is not to say that Halide Edip’s efforts were completely discounted. For instance, another article praised Halide Edip and Ottoman nurses working under her during the Anatolian war. “Zanan-i Parastar dar Sufuf-i Jang,” Jahan-i Zanan 1, no. 5 (September 1921): 104. The original article was from the Syrian newspaper Al-Jami‘ah al-Suriyah. 76.  “Zanan-i Nami-yi Jahan,” 100–101. 77.  There is a debate about Zenobia’s ethnic identity. In the early Islamic sources, such as the works of historian Al-Tabari of the ninth and tenth centuries, she is depicted as an “Arab,” but according to near-contemporary sources of her time, she was an Ara-

Notes to Chapters 4 and 5  207

maic speaker. For an important discussion of Zenobia in the Islamic sources, see Powers, “Demonizing Zenobia.” 78.  “Zanan-i Nami-yi Jahan,” 101. Other articles also discussed Zenobia and the Queen of Sheba. One author elaborated on the role of pre-Islamic women who engaged in administrative positions, such as the Queen of Shiba (Bilqis) and the Zenobia in Syria. “Zanan-i Jahan,” 4. 79.  “Zanan-i Nami-yi Jahan,” 102–3. 80. Ibid., 104. 81. Booth, May Her Likes Be Multiplied, 70. 82.  “Zanan-i Jahan,” Jahan-i Zanan 1, no. 5 (September 1921): 105–6. Kashani-Sabet reads this passage as evidence of women asserting their domestic right to choose their own husbands. Kashani-Sabet, Conceiving Citizens, 64. But the opposite reading suggested here is just as plausible given that this article was primarily about elections and domestic political issues. 83. Booth, May Her Likes Be Multiplied, 162–63. 84.  There are certain parallels between the strategies employed by Pahlavi-era women and those employed by the Babis during the Constitutional Revolution. In both instances, fear of being labeled as heretics led to attempts to demonstrate their mainstream credentials. See Amanat, “Memory and Amnesia.” 85.  Marashi, “Imagining Hāfez.” 86.  The text of this article is reproduced in S. Dawlatabadi, Sadiqah Dawlatabadi, 256–60. 87. Ibid., 257–60. 88. Ibid., 256. 89. Ibid., 259. 90. Ibid., 256–57. 91. Ibid., 259–60. 92.  Chehabi, “Banning of the Veil.” 93. Tarbiyat, Zan dar Qarn-i Bistum, n.p. 94. Ibid., 1–2. 95. Ibid., 3. 96. Ibid., 4. 97. Ibid., 28–31. 98. Ibid., 31–32. 99. Ibid., 32. 100. Ibid., 33. 101. Ibid., 35. 102. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 46–49.

Chapter 5: Writing the Local into the National 1. Kasravi, Zindigani-yi Man, 227–28. 2.  In many ways, local historians’ encounter with diversity paralleled those of Iranian folklorists. Fazeli, Politics of Culture in Iran; Vejdani, “Appropriating the Masses.”

208   Notes to Chapter 5

3.  Ervand Abrahamian uses the term integrative nationalist in reference to Ahmad Kasravi, who undertook a project of integrating various segments of Iranian society—ethnic, linguistic, and religious—into a broader nationalist narrative. This chapter argues that the integrative nationalist paradigm was not unique to Kasravi. See Abrahamian, “Kasravi.” 4. Vijuyah, Tarikh-i Inqilab-i Azarbayjan (1976), 7–8. 5. Vijuyah, Tarikh-i Inqilab-i Azarbayjan (1909), 57, 146. 6. Ibid., 28, 65, 115, 158–59, 167–68. 7. Ibid., 58, 103. 8.  Adib Hiravi, Kitab-i Inqilab-i Tus. The version cited here is Adib Hiravi, Inqilab-i Tus (2009). 9.  Adib Hiravi, Inqilab-i Tus, 85. 10. Ibid., 85, 91. 11. Ibid., 86–91. 12. Ibid., 136. 13.  Sipihr and Sardar As‘ad, Tarikh-i Bakhtiyari (1909). The edition used and cited here is Sipihr and Sardar As‘ad, Tarikh-i Bakhtiyari (1982). 14. Khazeni, Tribes and Empire, 13; Sipihr and Sardar As‘ad, Tarikh-i Bakhtiyari, 11. 15.  Safinizhad, “Muqaddamah,” in Sipihr and Sardar As‘ad, Tarikh-i Bakhtiyari, dal, sizdah. 16.  Sipihr and Sardar As‘ad, Tarikh-i Bakhtiyari, 576–77. 17. Ibid., 580–81. 18. Ibid., 576. 19.  For the list of books used, see ibid., 2–3. For the use of oral sources, see ibid., 141–42. For another Bakhtiyari source that draws much more heavily on oral materials, see Bakhtiyari, Yaddashtha va Khatirat-i Sardar Zafar Bakhtiyari. The scholar Muhammad Qazvini also contributed to this collaborative history by translating two letters by the Mongol ruler Arghun Khan to the French monarch Philip IV dating from the thirteenth century. See Sipihr and Sardar As‘ad, Tarikh-i Bakhtiyari, 648–54. The letters do not pertain to Bakhtiyari history but reveal the authors’ desire to include in the book recently discovered archival material related to Iranian history. 20.  For Bakhtiyari marriage rituals and general customs and manners, see Sipihr and Sardar As‘ad, Tarikh-i Bakhtiyari, 203–4, 429–54. 21. Ibid., 473–81, 486–88. For a relevant discussion, see Khazeni, Tribes and Empire, 31–32, 46–47. A similar bias against tribes is seen in Ottoman official documents. ­Kasaba, A Moveable Empire, 113–14. 22.  Sipihr and Sardar As‘ad, Tarikh-i Bakhtiyari, 448. 23.  Mostafa Vaziri completely ignores the element of critique that coincided with the appropriation of Western sources by various Iranian nationalists. See Vaziri, Iran as Imagined Nation. 24.  Sipihr and Sardar As‘ad, Tarikh-i Bakhtiyari, 7. The book appealed not only to Persian and Islamic sources who supported this claim, but also to the Greek historian Herodotus, who was cited as saying, “the Bakhtiyari are of ancient Iranian racial origin.” Ibid., 3.

Notes to Chapter 5  209

25. Ibid., 6. 26. Ibid., 198. Sardar As‘ad was critical of tribal gender norms, stating that “among the bad customs of the tribes is that they do not give inheritance to daughters and I have strived hard so that this custom might be abandoned but until now I have been unsuccessful.” Expressing faith in the transformative power of education, he hoped that “through modern schools this ugly custom will be abrogated.” Ibid., 204. A female member of the Bakhtiyari tribe also wrote her memoirs. See Bakhtiyari, Khatirat-i Sardar Maryam. 27.  Sipihr and Sardar As‘ad, Tarikh-i Bakhtiyari, 8. 28. Ibid., 23. Tarikh-i Bakhtiyari also commented on the geography of its capital, Malmir. See ibid., 57. 29.  Sipihr and Sardar As‘ad, Tarikh-i Bakhtiyari, 17. 30. Ibid., 8. 31.  For a discussion of the “Republic of Isfahan” and the city’s strong sense of distinct identity, see Walcher, In the Shadow of the King, 314–18. 32.  Jabiri Ansari, Tarikh-i Nisf-i Jahan. 33.  His father, ‘Ali Ansari Amin al-Vuzara, was a “professional secretary” (dabir-i pishah) and a literary figure from a line of government “accountants and secretaries” (mustawfiyan va munshiyan) from Isfahan. After having been stationed in Shiraz and marrying a member of the local nobility, Amin al-Vuzara returned with his family to Isfahan as part of Mas‘ud Mirza Zill al-Sultan’s retinue when in 1874/1875 (1291 H.) the latter was appointed governor of that province. Ansari studied with his father from an early age; when his father passed away when Ansari was seventeen, he was placed under the tutelage of his uncle, the prominent bureaucrat Habibullah Mushir al-Mulk Ansari. Ibid., 162. 34. Ibid. 35.  For a biography of Hasan Mudarris, see Jahanbakhsh, “Sayyid Hasan Mudarris.” For Hasan Mudarris’s political role in the early Pahlavi period, see Martin, “Mudarris.” 36.  Jabiri Ansari, Tarikh-i Nisf-i Jahan, 163. 37. Ibid., 1. In reality, these “world” events were mainly concerned with Islamic history and Iranian Islamic history. See Lambton, “Persian Local Histories,” 230. 38.  Jabiri Ansari, Tarikh-i Nisf-i Jahan, 1. 39. Ibid., 88–157, 164. Ann Lambton has extensively used the geographic sections of this work in her survey of the river Zayandah Rud. See Lambton, “Regulation of the Waters.” 40.  Jabiri Ansari, Tarikh-i Nisf-i Jahan, 9. 41. Ibid., 3–4. 42. Ibid., 23. 43. Ibid., 57–58. 44. Ibid., 61. 45. Al-Jinab, Kitab al-Isfahan. 46.  He included works by the following authors: William Jackson, William Ouseley, Mas‘udi, Al-Tabari, Ibn Athir, Al-Tha‘alabi Hamdullah Mustawfi, Chardin, Al-Bustani,

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Jurji Zaydan, Yaqut Hamavi, Ibn Khallikan, Ibn Battuta, Sardar As‘ad, and Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani. He also cited the following sources: Islamic hadith, Rawzat al-Jannat, and Mu‘ajam al-Buldan. He even included a lengthy translation of Frenchman Jean ­Chardin’s account of Safavid Iran. 47.  For the prosperous periods, see Al-Jinab, Kitab al-Isfahan, 192–218. For the periods of destruction, see ibid., 219–31. 48.  For climate, weather, rainfall and earthquakes; irrigation systems (including ­qanats and canals); locally used weights, measures, and currencies; agriculture and ­metals; and exact information on the geographical location of Isfahan, see Al-Jinab, Kitab al-Isfahan, 21–32, 83–89, 126–39. 49. Ibid., 60–72, 77–82, 103–26, 184–89. 50. Ibid., 54–72, 139–84. 51. Ibid., 72–76. 52. Ibid., 72. 53. Ibid., 32–53. 54.  Prasenjit Duara discusses the articulation of “provincial narratives” in China in 1920–1923 that coincided with similar narratives in Iran. Duara argues that “power politics and authoritative language enabled the hegemonic, centralizing nationalist narrative to destroy and ideologically bury the federalist alternative in the history of modern China,” an insight equally applicable to the case of Iran, where a similar study of these decentralist movements has yet to be written. See Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation, 178. 55.  For a recent examination of how tribal politics had continued relevance throughout the interwar period, see Cronin, Tribal Politics in Iran. 56. Kasravi, Tarikh-i Pansadsalah-i Khuzistan (1933). The edition cited hereafter is Kasravi, Tarikh-i Pansadsalah-i Khuzistan (2002). 57.  Given the generally negative picture painted in Tarikh-i Pansadsalah-i Khuzistan, Kasravi was at pains to distinguish between the religious and tribal leaders of Khuzistan, who were depicted as divisive and opportunistic, and the Khuzestani people in general. He said of Khuzistan, “I saw much kindness from its people.” Kasravi, Tarikh-i ­Pansadsalah-i Khuzistan, 7. Aside from this rather vacuous statement, he did not focus on the Khuzistanis as a people as he did on the Azerbaijanis in his history of Azerbaijan. 58.  For a general history of Khuzistan, see M. Ansari, “The History of Khuzistan.” See also Siyadat, Tarikh-i Khuzistan. 59. Kasravi, Tarikh-i Pansadsalah-i Khuzistan, 6. 60. Ibid., 4–5, 7. Kasravi published a separate volume on the Musha‘sha‘is. ­Kasravi, Musha‘sha‘iyan. For more on the Musha‘sha‘is, see Ranjbar, Musha‘sha‘iyan; Luft, “Musha‘sha‘”; Arjomand, Shadow of God, 76–77. 61. Kasravi, Tarikh-i Pansadsalah-i Khuzistan, 4. 62.  The book was divided into three parts, on the Musha‘sha‘iyan, the history of the Ka‘b tribe, and the recent history of Khuzistan beginning with the movement of Shaykh Khaz‘al. 63. Kasravi, Tarikh-i Pansadsalah-i Khuzistan, 4, 6.

Notes to Chapter 5  211

64. Ibid., 26–27. 65. Ibid., 8–46. 66. Ibid., 102. 67. Ibid., 152. 68. Ibid., 176. See also ibid., 181–82. 69. Kasravi, Tarikh-i Pansadsalah-i Khuzistan, 236–41. He believed the 1856–57 ­Anglo-Iranian war was a wake up call for the Qajars not to leave Khuzistan province “without troops and artillery.” Ibid., 219. 70. He did, however, decry Safavid violence more generally. Kasravi, Tarikh-i Pansadsalah-i Khuzistan, 46. 71. Ibid., 285. Kasravi’s sympathy for centralizing forces was evident in his other works. He opposed the movement of Shaykh Khiyabani in Azerbaijan during the early 1920s that had similarly called for regional autonomy and opposed the central government. 72.  The edition used here is Kasravi, Tarikh-i Hijdahsalah-i Azarbayjan (2005). 73.  Tarikh-i Bakhtiyari likewise explored the central role of the Bakhtiyari in the Constitutional Revolution alongside discussions of race, language, geography, and religion, but The Eighteen-Year-History of Azerbaijan completely ignored most of these elements as defining features of Azerbaijanis, instead focusing almost exclusively on constitutional politics. 74.  This history appears actually to have a much earlier pedigree. Kasravi wrote an Arabic version of what eventually became The Eighteen-Year-History of Azerbaijan that was published under the title “Azerbaijan in Eighteen Years” (Azarbayjan fi Th ­ amaniyah ‘Ashar) in the Arabic journal Al-‘Irfan in the early 1920s. Ittihad, Pazhuhishgaran-i Mu‘asir-i Iran, 4: 92. In the writing of his history of Azerbaijan, Kasravi drew on a wide array of materials and expressed surprise that his only predecessor in writing on key events of this period was British scholar Edward Granville Browne. In addition to using the constitutional histories of Browne and James Fraser, he also used the Persian translation of Morgan Shuster’s The Strangling of Persia. Kasravi, Tarikh-i Hijdahsalah-i ­Azarbayjan, 244. Kasravi mentions this book and its translation. See ibid., 141. He likewise used many Persian sources, including telegrams, letters, personal accounts by various participants in major events, and newspaper articles. As a work of scholarship, Kasravi’s contemporary history of Azerbaijan was much more thorough and focused than his history of Khuzistan and suffered less from oversimplistic characterizations of local populations, although these were not completely absent. 75.  Abrahamian, “Kasravi,” 279. 76. Shaffer, Borders and Brethren; Landau, Pan-Turkism; Atabaki, Azerbaijan and “Pan-Turkism and Iranian Nationalism,”; Asgharzadeh, Iran and the Challenge of Diversity. 77. Kasravi, Tarikh-i Hijdahsalah-i Azarbayjan, yadavari, 10. The translation cited here is from Najmabadi, “‘Is Our Name Remembered?’” 98. 78. Kasravi, Tarikh-i Hijdahsalah-i Azarbayjan, 145. 79. Ibid., 213. 80. Ibid., 222–32.

212   Notes to Chapter 5

81. Ibid., 474. Kasravi elaborated on the ill effects of Russian occupation in Azerbaijan throughout the text. See ibid., 572. 82. Kasravi, Tarikh-i Hijdahsalah-i Azarbayjan, 604. 83. Ibid., 22. 84. Ibid., 378. 85. Ibid., 653–54. 86. Ibid., 696. See also Shaffer, Borders and Brethren, 42, 52. 87. Kasravi, Tarikh-i Hijdahsalah-i Azarbayjan, 696. 88. Ibid., 357. Richard Tapper has re-examined the role of the Shahsavan during the Constitutional Revolution in order to correct the hostile accounts of both Kasravi and contemporary British newspapers. Tapper puts forward three main reasons for Shahsavan pro-monarchy actions during the Constitutional Revolution: “raiding—the reasons for the brigandization of eastern Azarbayjan in the early twentieth century; reaction—the varying assessments by the tribesmen, in terms of a monarchist and Islamic political ideology, of the appeal of various figures and forces which sought to gain their allegiance; and rivalry—the complex patterns of internal rivalries within and among the tribes.” See Tapper, “Raiding, Reaction and Rivalry,” 508–9. 89. Kasravi, Tarikh-i Hijdahsalah-i Azarbayjan, 487. 90. Ibid., 667. 91. Ibid., 164. 92. Ibid., 482–83. 93. Ibid., 585–91. 94. Ibid., 668. 95. Ibid., 667. 96. Ibid., 540. 97.  See, for example, Ibid., 334–38. 98. Ibid., 470. 99. Ibid., 544. 100. Kadivar, Tarikh-i Gilan. 101.  According to Kadivar, this work had been ten years in the making and was published at the same time as his book on the geography of Gilan. See ibid., preface; and Kadivar, Jughrafiya-yi Gilan. 102.  For the main text, Kadivar relied heavily on a range of sources, including the scholarship of Ibrahim Purdavud, Iranovitch, Amedrox, Muhammad ‘Ali Saffari, R. Vasmer, Sir Henry Rawlinson, Forbinger, Balrenberg, Ritter, Bernhard Dorn, M. H. L. Rabino, Derbika, and Aleksander Borejko Chodzko. Kadivar provided a list of Persian and Arabic sources that he had used in preparation for writing the book, including local histories, general Islamic chronicles, and travel narratives. Kadivar, Tarikh-i Gilan, 126–27. He also provided a summary of European scholarship and textual editions. Ibid., 117–25. 103.  Iqbal, “Gilan va Daylaman,” in Kadivar, Tarikh-i Gilan, alif. 104.  Ibid., bah. 105.  Ibid., bah–tayn. 106.  Kasravi, “Daylaman-Gilan” in Kadivar, Tarikh-i Gilan, mim.

Notes to Chapter 5  213

107. Shamim, Kurdistan; Yasami, Kurd (1940). The second edition of Yasami’s history has been used here. Yasami, Kurd (1990). 108. Arfa, Kurds. For a study of the impact of the Kurdish rebellions in Turkey on Turco-Iranian relations, see K. Bayat, Shurish-i Kurdha-yi Turkiyah. 109. Cronin, Tribal Politics in Iran, 116. 110.  For the attempt by Turkish nationalists to cast the Kurds as “mountain Turks,” see Nezan, “Kurdistan in Turkey,” 73–74. Interwar Arab Iraqi nationalists were less able to construct ethnic, cultural, or linguistic arguments for the incorporation of the Kurdish population. See Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 91. 111.  See Shamim, Kurdistan, 85–87. 112.  Ibid., n.p. 113. Ibid., 28. 114.  Lerch put forward this position in his 1857 treatise. See Lerch, Forschungen über die Kurden. Shamim apparently used the French edition of the text. Lerch, Recherches sur les Kurdes iraniens. 115.  Shamim’s source for this judgment appears to be the first edition of the English Encyclopedia of Islam. See Minorsky, “Kurdistan—Kurds.” 116. Shamim, Kurdistan, 33–34. 117. Ibid., 48. 118. Ibid., 52. 119. Ibid., 53–55. 120. Ibid., 63. 121.  In some ways, his characterization of the Kurds mirrored British colonial discourse about “martial races” in India. For more on the notion of martial races, see Rand, “‘Martial Races’ and ‘Imperial Subjects’”; and Streets, Martial Races. 122. Shamim, Kurdistan, 49. Shamim believed that the Kurds had less “fortitude, patience and forbearance toward hardships and difficulties” than “their racial kin such as the Lurs.” Ibid. 123. Shamim, Kurdistan, 37, 40. 124. Ibid., 51. 125. Ateş, Ottoman-Iranian Borderlands. 126. Shamim, Kurdistan, 42. 127. Ibid., 43. For a full-length treatment of the Shaykh Sa‘id rebellion, see Olson, Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism. 128.  For his chapters on race, religion, and language, respectively, see Yasami, Kurd, 100–118, 119–31, 132–38. 129. Ibid., 208. 130. Ibid., 3–4. 131. Ibid., 9. 132.  Of the European scholars Yasami cited, he was particularly fond of the scholarship of Vladimir Minorsky. See ibid., 4. Minorsky wrote a groundbreaking study of the Kurds in 1915. See Minorsky, Kurdy. 133. Yasami, Kurd, 101.

214   Notes to Chapter 5

134. Yasami, Kurd, 139. 135. Ibid. 136. Ibid., 145. Two works in particular affected Yasami’s thinking on nationalism. The first was by Bertrand Auerbach, a “social history of Austria-Hungary” that sought to define the “national spirit” of the Austro-Hungarian peoples. See Auerbach, Les races et les nationalités. The second was a work by liberal English historian Ernest Barker. Barker, National Characters. For a discussion of the term millat and its transformation in the Iranian context, see Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran, 137–40, 142. 137. Yasami, Kurd, 146–208. 138. Ibid., 9. 139.  Ehlers and Floor, “Urban Change in Iran,” 251–52. 140.  For the implications of Nasir al-Din Shah’s urban reforms for Iranian nationalism, see Marashi, Nationalizing Iran, 15–48. For an in-depth study of Nasir al-Din Shah’s transformation of Tehran, see Gurney, “Transformation of Tehran.” 141.  For the importance of roads and transportation in connecting Iran internally, see Clawson, “Knitting Iran Together.” For the economy of Iran during the interwar period, see Floor, Industrialization in Iran, 1900–1941. Mina Marefat has analyzed the architectural transformation under Riza Shah. Marefat, “Building to Power.” Twentiethcentury Iranian urban history outside the capital has also received some recent attention. For an examination of how the urban layout changed in Yazd, see Modarres, Modernizing Yazd. 142.  For a discussion of public health discourses, see Schayegh, Who Is Knowledgeable, Is Strong; and Kashani-Sabet, Conceiving Citizens. 143.  Ehlers and Floor, “Urban Change in Iran,” 258. 144. Ayati, Tarikh-i Yazd. 145.  Ayati was not the only historian to write a history of Yazd. See Tahiri, Tarikh-i Yazd. 146.  His first work of history, Al-Kavakib Al-Durriyah, was the first printed history of the origins and development of the Baha’i religion by one of its adherents. Avarah, Al-Kawakib al-Durriyah. For a brief discussion of the historiographical significance of this work, see Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal, 438. 147.  He even wrote an exposé of his former religion shortly thereafter, perhaps to prove his sincerity as a convert to Islam and to erase any suspicions of lingering heterodox sympathies. See Ayati, Kashf al-Hiyal. 148.  Namakdan ran for six years and dealt mainly with literary and poetic topics. For further details about the journal, see Sadr Hashimi, Tarikh-i Jara’id va Majallat-i Iran, 4: 309–11. For more on Ayati’s life, see Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 3: 718–20; and Afshar, “Āyatī, ‘Abd-al-Ḥosayn.” 149. Ayati, Tarikh-i Yazd, 4–5. 150.  Ayati listed a number of histories, chronicles, and literary biographies used in the writing of this history. See ibid., 18–19. 151. Ibid., 7. 152.  The understanding of history as both ‘ilm and fann is from Ibn Khaldun’s definition of history. See ibid., 7–10.

Notes to Chapter 5  215

153. Ibid., 7. 154. Ibid., 6. 155. Ibid., 16. 156. Ibid., 70. 157.  Devin Stewart has pointed out that some Shi‘is in Egypt presented themselves as Shafi‘is. See Stewart, Islamic Legal Orthodoxy. Ayati’s articulation of continuities between Shafi‘ism and Shi‘ism has more to do with his nationalism. 158. Ayati, Tarikh-i Yazd, 71. 159. Ibid., 233. 160. Ibid., 247–48. 161. Ibid., 79. 162. Ibid., 419–24. 163. Ibid., 138. 164. Ibid., 197. 165. Ibid., 87–88. 166. Ibid., 261. 167. Ibid., 276–77. For Ayati’s lengthy section on Yazdi poets, see ibid., 261–350. 168. Ibid., 269. 169. Ibid., 402. 170. Ibid., 406. 171.  Nur Sadiqi, Isfahan. Speeches by Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi, Ernst Herzfeld, and Messieur Hanibal published in the late 1920s were probably the earliest semi-historical discussions of Isfahan during the Pahlavi era. See M. ‘A. Furughi, Sih Khitabah. ‘Ali Javahir al-Kalam also produced a work on Isfahan, but it was more geographical than historical in nature. See Javahir al-Kalam, Zindah Rud. 172.  For a list of these sources, see Nur Sadiqi, Isfahan, np-yah. 173.  Ibid., jim-dal. Nur Sadiqi ultimately left the field of education to become a merchant, although he continued to contribute to local newspapers. For a brief biography and bibliography, see Mushar, Fihrist-i Kitabha-yi Chapi-yi Farsi, 2: 910–91. 174.  Nur Sadiqi, Isfahan, alif. 175.  Ibid., bah. 176. Ibid., 30. 177. Ibid., 22. 178. Ibid., 30. 179. Ibid., 50. 180. Ibid., 88. 181. Ibid., 129. 182. Ibid., 141. The poem then drew parallels between ‘Ali Asghar Hikmat, the Minister of Education, and the famous poet Sa‘di Shirazi. Ibid. 183.  See Nur Sadiqi, Isfahan, 224–30, 246–48. 184. Ibid., 174. 185. Ibid., 173–74.

216   Notes to Chapter 6

Chapter 6: A Nation of Poets 1.  For a discussion of how Hafiz became emblematic of Iranian nationalism, see Ferdowsi, “‘Emblem of the Manifestation of the Iranian Spirit.’” 2. Marashi, Nationalizing Iran, 124–32; Marashi, “Nation’s Poet.” 3.  Edward Said lists Browne as an Orientalist but fails to comment on how Browne did not fit into his sweeping and totalizing claims about the nature of Orientalism. See Said, Orientalism, 224. Mansour Bonakdarian has called into question Said’s thesis given Browne’s extensive anti-imperialist political activism. See Bonakdarian, “Edward G. Browne and the Iranian Constitutional Struggle”; Britain and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution; “Iranian Constitutional Exiles”; “Persia Committee”; and “Selected Correspondence of E. G. Browne.” See also Amanat, “Edward Browne.” Recently it has been argued that the production of knowledge about the “Orient” was far more of a joint enterprise between Europeans and their “Oriental” counterparts than has been previously recognized. The case of the supposed “discovery” of Avestan by British Orientalist William Jones demonstrates how local non-European figures played a prominent role in instructing Jones in the languages and doctrines necessary for him to make his findings. The implication of a reciprocal exchange between European and non-European scholars challenges the idea that Western knowledge production on the “Orient” was conducted in isolation. Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran; Trautmann, Aryans and British India. Similar questions may be posed about the role of Arthur Upham Pope and the canonization of Iranian art. See Rizvi, “Art History and the Nation”; and Grigor, “Framing Modernities.” 4.  Victoria Holbrook’s otherwise sophisticated study of the Ottoman literary canon among Turkish nationalists suffers from this pitfall. She rightly identifies the importance of E.J.W. Gibb in Ottoman canonization literature, but she does not give a convincing account of why Turkish nationalists accepted Gibbs’s characterizations of ­Ottoman Turkish literature and for what purposes. Holbrook, Unreadable Shores of Love. Nadia Al-Bagdadi points out how Arab literary historian Jurji Zaydan was accused of being unoriginal for “borrowing” from European literary historians of Arabic such as Carl Brockelmann and Reynold Nicholson. Al-Bagdadi, “Registers of Arabic Literary History,” 446. 5. Casanova, World Republic of Letters, 36. 6.  Bruijn, “Sabk-i, Hindī”; Hanaway, “Bāzgašt-e Adabī.” 7. Pagliaro and Bausani, Storia della letteratura persiana, cited in Hanaway, “Bāzgašt-e Adabī.” For important discussions of the “Indian style,” particularly in their eighteenth-century contexts, see Yarshater, “Indian Style”; Sharma, “Redrawing the Boundaries of ‘Ajam”; and Kinra, “Fresh Words for a Fresh World.” 8. Casanova, World Republic of Letters, 105. 9.  For a history of Persian biographical dictionaries, see Gulchin Ma‘ani, Tarikh-i Tazkirahha-yi Farsi. 10.  For his account of this trip, see Browne, A Year Amongst the Persians. 11. Goodman, Republic of Letters, 16. 12. Ibid., 18.

Notes to Chapter 6  217

13. Ibid., 2. See also Chartier, Boureau, and Dauphin, Correspondence, 80. 14.  This work was originally composed in the mid-thirteenth century by the ­Ilkhanid vizier ‘Ata-Malik Juvayni. For the English translation of the text, see Juvaini, History of the World-Conqueror. 15.  Ansari, “Life, Works, and Times,” 39–42. 16. Juvayni, Ta’rikh-i-Jahán-gushá. Qazvini refused to allow the text to be published until he had checked the veracity of names of people and places. “Muhammad Qazvini to E. G. Browne,” August 11, 1913, Browne Papers: Pembroke Box 2/7/41–42. 17.  See, for example, Samarqandi, Tadhkiratu ’sh-Shu‘ará; Hamd Allah Mustawfi ­Qazvini, Ta’ríkh-i-guzída; ‘Awfi, Lubábu’l-albáb of Muhammad ‘Awfi. Browne was involved in supervising several other editions as part of the same effort. ‘Aruzi, Chahar Maqala; al-Razi, Al-Mu‘jam; ‘Attar, Tadhkiratu’l-Awliya. 18.  These were Nuqtat al-Kaf, Jami‘ al-Tavarikh, and Rahat al-Sudur respectively. Browne published all three of these books in collaboration with other scholars. 19.  Abbas Amanat argues that Browne’s narrative of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution was involved in an “intertextual” dialogue with the texts of Iranian chroniclers of the revolution such as Nazim al-Islam Kirmani. Amanat, “Memory and Amnesia,” 42–43. 20.  Amanat, “Edward Browne,” x. 21.  J. Green, Short History of the English People; Jusserand, Literary History of the E­nglish People. 22.  It is not entirely clear which of them had the idea to write a literary history first. Gibb, History of Ottoman Poetry. For a discussion of Gibb, his history, and its relation to modern Turkish readings of Ottoman classical poetry, see Holbrook, Unreadable Shores of Love, 13–31. 23. Browne, Literary History of Persia . . . until Firdawsi, vii–viii, 389–90. 24. Browne, History of Persian Literature Under Tartar Dominion and History of Persian Literature in Modern Times, 164. 25. Nu‘mani, Shi‘r al-‘Ajam ya Tarikh-i Shu‘ara, 9. Numani’s Urdu literary history was translated into Persian and published in Iran in 1937. 26.  Browne mentions this in the preface of Press and Poetry. Browne, Press and Poetry of Modern Persia, xl. For Muhammad Qazvini’s correspondence pertaining to the corrections, see “Muhammad Qazvini to E. G. Browne,” December 12, 1912, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 1/15/66. Muhammad Qazvini delayed looking over Browne’s manuscript. “Muhammad Qazvini to E. G. Browne,” January 13, 1913, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 1/15/51; “Muhammad Qazvini to E. G. Browne,” July 15, 1913, Browne ­papers: Pembroke Box 1/15/58. For Dr. Ahmad Khan’s comments, see “Dr. Ahmad Khan to E. G. Browne,” January 6, 1914, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 1/5/6. Ahmad Khan also provided Browne with a short biography of Malik al-Shu‘ara Bahar. Dr. ­Ahmad Khan, “Malik al-Shu‘ara Bahar biography,” January 20, 1914, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 8/5/121. 27. Browne, A History of Persian Literature in Modern Times (A.D. 1500–1924), xiii–xv. 28. Browne, A History of Persian Literature Under Tartar Dominion (A.D. 1265–1502), x.

218   Notes to Chapter 6

29. Browne, A History of Persian Literature in Modern Times (A.D. 1500–1924), 224. 30.  Ibid., viii. 31.  Ibid., vii. 32.  For the original letter, see “Muhammad Qazvini to E. G. Browne,” May 24, 1911, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 2/7/105–7. For Browne’s translation of most of this letter embedded in the published text, see Browne, History of Persian Literature in Modern Times, 26–27. 33.  “Muhammad Qazvini to E. G. Browne,” August 31, 1920, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 1/16/28; “Muhammad Qazvini to E. G. Browne,” September 19, 1920, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 1/16/29. 34.  “Hasan Taqizadah to E. G. Browne,” February 8, 1921, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 2/7/120–21. 35.  “Husayn Danish to E. G. Browne,” May 27, 1921 [unpublished correspondence]. 36. Browne, History of Persian Literature in Modern Times, 17–19. 37. Browne, History of Persian Literature Under Tartar Dominion, 540–48. 38. Browne, History of Persian Literature in Modern Times, 225–26, 307. 39.  Browne discussed his criteria for selecting great Qajar poets in ibid., 226. See also Browne, Literary History of Persia . . . until Firdawsi, 389. 40. Browne, Literary History of Persia . . . to Sadi, 142–43. 41. Ibid., 143. 42. Browne, Press and Poetry of Modern Persia, xxxv–xxxvi. Ahmad Kasravi followed Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani in criticizing the Persian mystical tradition in the twentieth century. For a recent study exploring Kasravi’s criticisms of Persian mystical poetry, see Ridgeon, Sufi Castigator. 43.  This was one of the few instances in which Browne sided with Indian (and Turkish) literary tastes against Iranian ones. Browne agreed with Shibli Nu‘mani’s positive assessment of Sa’ib Tabrizi and took issue with Riza Quli Khan Hidayat’s more negative evaluation. See Browne, History of Persian Literature in Modern Times, 164, 265. 44.  For an explanation of why certain secular Iranian nationalists had a particular animus toward Babis and Baha’is, see Chehabi, “Anatomy of Prejudice” and “Paranoid Style in Iranian Historiography.” 45.  He spoke at length about “ultra-Shi‘ite sects” from “Sinbadh the Magian, alMuqanna‘ ‘the Veiled Prophet of Khurasan,’ Babak, and others,” who “caused such commotion in Persia during this period,” and about the later “Isma‘ilis, Batinis, Carmathians, Assassins, and Hurufis,” who had “the same essential doctrines of Anthropomorphism, Incarnation, Re-incarnation or ‘Return,’ and Metempsychosis.” He considered these doctrines to be “endemic in Persia and always ready to become epidemic under a suitable stimulus” after seeing them appear in his own time “in the Babi movement” and the Baha’i religion. Browne, A Literary History of Persia . . . Until Firdawsi, 311. 46.  Abbas Amanat argues that The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia was a postscript to The Persian Revolution and marked Browne’s retreat from activism into scholarly and literary concerns. See Amanat, “Edward Browne,” xviii.

Notes to Chapter 6  219

47.  As early as 1909, Browne expressed frustration at the prospect of affecting meaningful political change through activism. “E. G. Browne to Husayn Danish,” July 6, 1909 [unpublished correspondence]. Reflecting on his disaffection from politics nearly a decade later, he said, “I am completely weary of the world of politics and I have no hope unless God almighty performs a miracle and changes the hearts of the people, otherwise I see no hope for the future and I am content with the world of scholarship.” Browne and Taqizadah, Namahha-yi Idvard Brawn, 101. 48. Browne, Press and Poetry of Modern Persia, xv. 49.  Ibid., xii. 50.  Ibid., ix. Browne also relied on his own personal collection of newspapers and on the scholarship of Rabino on the topic. See ibid., ix, xi, xiv. 51. Browne, Press and Poetry of Modern Persia, 10, 50–51, 61, 94, 156, 158, 167. See also “Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi to E. G. Browne,” 4 Zi al-hijjah, Browne papers: Box 9/3/10. 52. Browne, Press and Poetry of Modern Persia, xv. For Browne’s handwritten samples of poetry culled from Persian newspapers, see “Poems,” Browne papers: Pembroke Box 2/7/109. 53.  “Poem by Abu al-Hasan Furughi sent to E. G. Browne by Hasan Taqizadah,” December 25, 1912, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 2/7/109; “Malik al-Shu‘ara Bahar,” November 17, 1913, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 8/5/61. “Hasan Taqizadah to E. G. Browne,” December 10, 1913, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 1/1/14–14a. “Hasan ­Taqizadeh to E. G. Browne,” January 20, 1913, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 1/1/22–24. 54.  Browne and Taqizadah, Namahha-yi Idvard Brawn, 72–73. 55. “Poems,” January 1913, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 4/16/1–32. Husayn ­Kazimzadah was continually sending Browne poetry from 1912 onward. See “Husayn Kazimzadah to E. G. Browne,” September 12, 1912, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 2/7/71; “Husayn Kazimzadah to E. G. Browne,” August 2, 1913, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 8/5/4; “Husayn Kazimzadah to E. G. Browne,” September 13, 1913, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 8/5/3; “Husayn Kazimzadah to E. G. Browne,” October 28, 1913, Browne ­papers: Pembroke Box 2/7/65–66; “Ja‘far Khamina’i poem,” Browne papers: Pembroke Box 8/5/7–9; “Malik al-Shu‘ara Bahar Poems,” Browne papers: Pembroke Box 8/5/18–59. “Abu al-Qasim ‘Arif Qazvini Poem,” Browne papers: Pembroke Box 8/5/62. 56.  “Ibrahim Purdavud Poems,” November 15, 1913, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 8/5/104–5. 57.  For two Persian works commemorating Howard Baskerville, see Shafaq, Bih Yad-i Amuzigar . . . Havard Baskirvil; and Kamalvand, Baskirvil va Inqilab-i Iran. 58.  “Hasan Taqizadah to E. G. Browne,” November 30, 1908, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 1/1/76–77. 59.  “‘Isa Sadiq to E. G. Browne,” December 24, 1916, Browne papers: Box Or.2016/92. 60.  For ‘Isa Sadiq’s poem written in praise of Browne, see ‘Isa Sadiq, “Vasiyatnamahi ‘Isa Sadiq,” July 1917, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 1/3/2; “[Untitled Poem],” early July 1917, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 1/3/3–4; “‘Arz-i Tashakkur az Jinab-i Prufusur Brawn,” 1 Khurdad 837 Jalali, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 1/16/83. 61.  As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Browne celebrated his sixtieth

220   Notes to Chapter 6

birthday at Cambridge on February 7, 1922, and received a Festschrift to mark the occasion entitled the Book of Wonders (‘Ajabnamah). Arnold and Nicholson, Volume of Oriental Studies. Although few Iranians attended this meeting, Zabih Bihruz, who was a Persian language instructor at Cambridge, wrote an account of it and mentioned it in a separate letter to Taqizadah. See Browne and Taqizadah, Namahha-yi Idvard Brawn, 122, 183–90. 62.  “‘Isa Sadiq to E. G. Browne,” December 18, 1920, Browne papers: Box 9/2/121–29. 63.  Yahya Dawlatabadi, “[Commemorative Persian Poems for Browne],” 3, Browne papers: Box 9/7/49. 64.  Malik al-Shu‘ara Bahar, “[Commemorative Persian Poems for Browne],” 1, Browne papers: Box 9/7/49. The poet Rawhani expressed a similar appreciation for Browne’s uniqueness. See Rawhani, “[Commemorative Persian Poems for Browne],” 5, Browne papers: Box 9/7/49. 65.  Vahid Dastgirdi, “[Commemorative Persian Poems for Browne],” 15, Browne ­papers: Box 9/7/49. 66. Browne, Press and Poetry of Modern Persia, 6. 67.  Tus was the birthplace of Firdawsi. Saburi, “[Commemorative Persian Poems for Browne],” 7, Browne papers: Box 9/7/49. 68.  Saburi, “[Commemorative Persian Poems for Browne],” 8, Browne papers: Box 9/7/49. 69.  Muhammad Nijat, “[Commemorative Persian Poems for Browne],” 13, Browne papers: Box 9/7/49; and Hushyar, “[Commemorative Persian Poems for Browne],” 16, Browne papers: Box 9/7/49. Nasim-i Shumal saw Browne as a reviver of gnosis (‘irfan). See Nasim-i Shumal, “[Commemorative Persian Poems for Browne],” 14, Browne ­papers: Box 9/7/49. 70.  For the text of the telegram, see Ta‘lim va Tarbiyat, year 7/8 (1925): 29. 71. Sadiq, Yadigar-i ‘Umr, 1: 311. The proceedings were published as a separate volume connected with the educational journal Ta‘lim va Tarbiyat. See Minuvi, Naqd-i hal, 414. 72. Arberry, Oriental Essays, 179; Sadiq, Yadigar-i ‘Umr, 1: 312. 73. Sadiq, Yadigar-i ‘Umr, 1: 8. 74. Ibid., 1: 4–5. Sadiq did not mention Shibli Nu‘mani’s Urdu-language history of Persian literature or Browne’s use of it. 75. Qazvini, Biographical Sketch, 23. 76. Ibid., 10–13. 77. Ibid., 13–14. 78. Ibid., 14–15. 79. Ibid., 16–19. Browne criticized Nöldeke’s statements, which is further evidence of his anti-Orientalist sensibility. See Browne, “Introduction,” in Adventure of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, xi–xii. For an exploration of the significance of Morier’s Hajji Baba of Ispahan in the European and Iranian context, see Amanat, “Hajji Baba of Ispahan.” Qazvini was also suspicious of the motivations of Russian scholar Vladimir Minorsky in wanting to study the Ahl-i Haqq community in Iran. See “Muhammad Qazvini to E. G. Browne,” April 2, 1921, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 1/16/36. 80. Qazvini, Biographical Sketch, 19–20.

Notes to Chapter 6  221

81.  For an overview of these literary associations, see Hanaway, “Anjoman I. L ­ iterary.” For a more detailed discussion, see Aryanpur, Az Saba ta Nima, 2: 430–36. 82. Lefevere, Translation, 8. 83. Ibid., 20. 84.  Furughi and Furughi, “Dibachah,” in M. H. Furughi, ‘Ilm-i Badi‘, 1–4. 85. Ibid., 276. Some of the final entries were in fact articles he wrote on individual poets’ lives that his sons included in the publication. See, for instance, the entries for Khayyam and Hafiz. Ibid., 310–21, 342–53. 86. Ibid., 111, 162–64. 87.  M. H. Furughi, ‘Ilm-i Badi‘, 3–5. 88. Ittihad, Pazhuhishgaran-i Mu‘asir-i Iran, 1: 208. 89. Ibid., 1: 209. 90.  Abu al-Hasan Ihtishami, cited in ibid., 1:205. 91. Qarib, Qava’id-i Farsi. Qarib’s grammar was the foundation for a later collaborative grammar by some of the leading literary figures of Iran. See Yasami et al., Dastur-i Zaban-i Farsi. Mirza Habib Isfahani, who was residing in Istanbul, was among the earliest Iranians to write a Persian grammar book. Isfahani, Dastur-i Sukhan. 92. Ittihad, Pazhuhishgaran-i Mu‘asir-i Iran, 1: 211. 93.  The first part of the fifth and final volume was a literary history textbook intended for third- and fourth-year middle school students. Qarib, Fara’id al-Adab. 94. Ibid., 5: 2. 95. Ibid., 5: 3. 96. Kasravi, Dar Piramun-i Adabiyat, 28–29. For a further discussion, see Ridgeon, Sufi Castigator, 124. 97. Nafisi, Bih Rivayat-i Sa‘id Nafisi, 224. 98.  For the memoirs Sadiq wrote about his year in America, see Sadiq, Yik Sal dar Amrika. Sadiq wrote his doctorate at Columbia University on the modern Iranian education system. Sadiq, “Modern Persia and Her Educational System.” For a vivid portrait of Sadiq’s quest for education reform, see R. Mottahedeh, Mantle of the Prophet, 54–68. 99.  Sadiq related that the words “Murtiza Khan the principal of the Kamaliyah is a Babi” were written on the side of his school, an attempt by certain religious elements to equate modern education with heresy and thereby discredit it. Sadiq, Yadigar-i ‘Umr, 1: 5–15. 100. Ibid., 1: 20–21. Sadiq’s father’s ambivalence toward education because of its uncertain prospects as a career path may have been a reflection of his own tenuous and fragile situation: he had recently been robbed of most of his worldly possessions while traveling between Isfahan and Kashan and had suffered the loss of his wife. 101. Ibid., 1: 27–29. 102. Ibid., 1: 47–50. 103. Ibid., 1: 108–11. Without providing any evidence, he claimed that Cambridge was reminiscent of ancient Iranian schools, a statement that reflected his own projection of European modernity into Iranian antiquity. Ibid., 1: 108. 104. Sadiq, Yadigar-i ‘Umr, 1: 115–16. 105.  “Colonel V.G.W. Kell to E. G. Browne,” January 31, 1917, Browne papers: Pembroke

222   Notes to Chapter 6

Box 1/16/11; “War Office to E. G. Browne,” January 26, 1917, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 1/16/9–10. 106. Sadiq, Yadigar-i ‘Umr, 1: 116–17. 107.  “‘Isa Sadiq to E. G. Browne,” January 28,1917, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 2/7/138–41. In a letter to Browne a year later, Sadiq complained, “I hate politics, but in spite of myself I spend much of my time on them [sic]!” See “‘Isa Sadiq to E. G. Browne,” May 26, 1918, Browne Papers Pembroke Box 1/6/12–13. 108. Sadiq, Yadigar-i ‘Umr, 1: 167–68. 109. Ibid., 1: 169–73, 188–89, 217–19. He wrote a lengthy letter to Browne about local politics and the problems he encountered with the Russians. See “‘Isa Sadiq to E. G. Browne,” May 14, 1922, Browne papers: Box 9/7/36–37. 110. Sadiq, Yadigar-i ‘Umr, 1: 277, 280. 111. Ibid., 1: 112. 112.  “‘Isa Sadiq to E. G. Browne,” August 27, 1921, Browne papers: Box 9/2/16–21. 113. Browne, Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran, 4–5. 114. Ibid., 5. 115.  The two translations that Fatimi produced are both from the final volume of Browne’s A Literary History of Persia. Browne, Gulzar-i Adabiyat-i Iran; Browne, ­Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran . . . ta ‘Asr-i Mashrutiyah. 116. Browne, Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran, 5. The Ministry of Education in Iran and Afghanistan both had Shibli Nu‘mani’s Shi‘r al-‘Ajam translated from Urdu into Persian as a literary history textbook. The Afghan translation by Mansur Ansari predated the Iranian one. Nu‘mani, Shi‘r al-‘Ajam and Shi‘r al-‘Ajam ya Tarikh-i Shu‘ara. 117. Yasami, Adabiyat-i Mu‘asir. See also Browne, Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran, dibachah. 118.  Yasami acknowledged his Indian predecessors, Dinshah Irani and Mohammad Ishaque, for writing histories of contemporary Persian poets. This acknowledgment suggests that Iranian literary figures were not quite so uniformly dismissive of Indian scholars of Persian as has often been assumed. Yasami also acknowledged contemporary Iranian scholars, although he noted that they wrote biographical dictionaries. See Browne, Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran, 9. For the works of Irani and Ishaque, see Irani, Poets of the Pahlavi Regime; and Ishaque, Sukhanvaran-i Iran. 119.  For a discussion of how canons may be used for institutional and nationalist purposes, see Gorak, Making of the Modern Canon, 1–2, 221. 120. Ittihad, Pazhuhishgaran-i Mu‘asir-i Iran, 8: 299–302. 121. Huma’i, Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran (1929). The version cited here is Huma’i, ­Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran (1961). Mostafa Vaziri mischaracterized this book as “unsophisticated” and lacking “proper footnoting.” Vaziri, Iran as Imagined Nation, 159. It is somewhat odd that Vaziri, who is intent on demonstrating that those who used modern Western scholarly practices were part of a larger “racist” Aryan conspiracy, would critique them for not adhering properly to precisely these “scholarly” practices. Perhaps if he had paid attention to the context of the book—namely that it was a textbook intended for a classroom setting and not an independent work of scholarship—he would have reached different conclusions.

Notes to Chapter 6 and Conclusion   223

122. Huma’i, Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran, 4, 6. 123. Ibid., 3–4, 38–39. 124. Ibid., 319–447. He was well aware of the Western literary theories and classifications that he presented alongside classical Persian and Arabic theories. For his discussion of Western theories of literature, see ibid., 30–35. 125. Huma’i, Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran, 42–49. 126. Ibid., 38. 127.  He also traced the lives of Iranians who had made a contribution to early Islamic centuries, especially the Prophet Muhammad’s Iranian companion Salman-i Farsi. Ibid., 297–318. 128. Ibid., 277–78. Huma’i was in all likelihood influenced by Muhammad Husayn Furughi, whose textbooks he cited throughout his own work. 129. Ibid., 103–5. 130. Shafaq, Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran (1933). The edition cited here is Shafaq, Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran (1962). 131.  For the original correspondence between the Ministry of Education regarding this textbook and anthology, see Mir Ansari, Asnadi az Mashahir-i Adab, 5: 304–6, 310. 132. Ittihad, Pazhuhishgaran-i Mu‘asir-i Iran, 3: 221–22. 133.  “Rizazadah Shafaq to E. G. Browne,” February 16, 1918, Browne papers: Pembroke Box 8/5/89–91. Shafaq translated the literary history of German scholar Hermann Ethé. Ethé, Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran. 134. Shafaq, Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran, 415–48. 135. Ibid., 28. 136. Ibid., 30–34. 137. Ibid., 365–68. 138.  Zarrinkub, “Forūzānfar, Badi‘-al-Zamān.” 139. Furuzanfar, Sukhan va Sukhanvaran, 9–12. 140. Furuzanfar, Tarikh-i Adabiyat-i Iran. 141. Ibid., 29, 53, 178–79. 142. Ibid., 141. 143. Ibid., 9. 144. Ibid., 93.

Conclusion 1.  For a full elaboration of the concept of connected histories, see Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories.” For a discussion of how the transnational turn contains a powerful critique of the comparative method, see Seigel, “Beyond Compare.” 2.  A forthcoming edited volume fills a major lacuna in the study of Afghan historiography, including connections between Afghan and Iranian historiographies. See N. Green, Afghan History Through Afghan Eyes. 3. Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century; Dawn, “Formation of PanArab Ideology in the Interwar Years.” 4.  For a promising example of how such a study of an important episode from the

224   Notes to Conclusion

Arab conquests might be written, see Lewental, “Qadisiyyah, Then and Now.” Anja Pistor-Hatam’s study of the Mongol conquests’ significance for Iranian historians may similarly be complemented by a broader examination of how nationalist historians in other countries viewed this event as well. See Pistor-Hatam, Geschichtsschreibung und Sinngeschichte in Iran.

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INDEX

‘Abbasid dynasty: factor in selection of works for translation, 20; feminist views on, 106; histories of, 82, 84, 88, 90; and Shi‘ism, 150; in standardized curriculum, 75 ‘Abbas I (Shah), 87, 92, 125, 142 ‘Abdu’l-Baha, 138, 141 Abdüllhamid II, Sultan of Ottoman Empire, 30, 31 Abrahamian, Ervand, 12–13, 208n3 The Abrogator of Histories (Nasikh al-Tavarikh; Muhammad Taqi Sipihr), 2, 19 Adivar, Halipe Edip, 110, 111 al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din, 28, 41, 44–45, 49 Afghanistan, women’s rights in, 107 Afsar, Muhammad Hashim Mirza, 154 Afshar, Masturah, 99, 106, 107–8, 141 Ahmad Shah, 35–36, 51–52 ‘Ala al-Mulk, 27, 143 A‘lam al-Sultan Tarchi, 2 Alexander the Great, 70–71, 72–73, 78, 84 Allied Forces, deposing of Riza Shah, 36 Amin al-Dawlah, ‘Ali, 38, 45 Amin al-Sultan, Mirza ‘Ali Asghar, 41 Ancient Iran (Pirniya), 80–81, 82 Anderson, Benedict, 4, 177n12 Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919, 145–46, 153 Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907, 153 anti-imperialism, as motive for Iranian historiography, 8 Arab conquest of Iran: as challenge to Iranian historiography, 144; histories of, 73, 83, 84, 85, 92, 163; in Pahlavi state curriculum, 78

Arabic historiography, comparative study of, 173 Arabs: characterizations of in interwar textbooks, 85, 89, 171; feminist characterizations of, 113, 204n24; histories on literary influence of, 163, 164, 165, 166; Iranian resentment of, 150; and Islam, Arab nationalist views, 173 architecture, urban: in Pahlavi urban development, 138; as topic in city histories, 138, 140, 142 Armenian constitutionalists, 30, 31 Aryanism, of Yasami, 69 Aryan migration thesis, 86 Aryan race: in interwar textbooks, 86–87, 199n149; in local histories, 133 As‘ad, Sardar, 31, 169, 184n69, 209n26 Asar-i ‘Ajam (Fursat al-Dawlah), 27 Ashkanid dynasty: histories of, 22, 42–43, 84, 88, 200n164; in Pahlavi state curriculum, 78 Ashraf ’s Verse Introductory History (Nasim-i Shumal), 50–52 associations: anjumans (voluntary associations), revolution-era proliferation of, 39; and historiography, 3; Iranian women’s movement and, 97, 99–100, 115, 169–70; literary, 138, 139, 154, 155, 156–57; proliferation after Revolution of 1906, 99 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 8 audience for history: as factor in works selected for translation, 18; founding of girls’ schools and, 100; growth of, with proliferation of modern schools, 3, 10–11,

256  Index

33, 57, 169; standardization of education and, 61, 78; transition from court to public as, 27, 33 Auerbach, Bertrand, 214n136 autonomy of historians: after Revolution of 1906, 11–12, 13, 18, 45, 169; colonial context and, 174; emerging public sphere and, 26–28; impact on historiography, 167, 169; in interwar period, decline of, 58, 61, 94, 168; before Revolution of 1906, 26–28; standardization of education and, 3, 4, 13–14, 58, 94, 170 autonomy of schools: and constitutionalist agenda, 36, 37, 40; and democratization of publishing, 3, 33, 44; post-World War I standardization and, 3, 13–14, 58 autonomy of translators, imperial patronage and, 24 Ayati, ‘Abd al-Husayn, 138–41, 143, 168, 214n146 Azerbaijan: Muzaffar al-Din Shah as governor of, 38; regional histories of, 129–32, 168, 171, 211n73–74; regionalist movement in, 118, 126, 211n71 Babi Movement, 41, 49, 90, 91, 104, 119, 120, 151, 172, 205n32 Baha’i Faith, 39, 90, 138, 151, 172 Bahar, Malik al-Shu‘ara, 80, 152, 154 Bakhtiyaris, histories of, 118, 120–22, 171 biographical dictionaries: canonization of Iranian poetry and, 146, 149, 150; as models for literary histories, 157–58, 159, 165 biographies, as tool of women’s movement, 97, 98, 100–102, 105–6, 110–11, 111–12, 115 The Book of the City of Ladies (Christine de Pizan), 97–98 Book Printing Company (Shirkat-i Tab‘-i Kitab), 39 Booth, Marilyn, 109, 111 Bourdieu, Pierre, 9, 10, 11, 186n5 A Brief Narrative of Recent Events in Persia (Browne), 29 British colonialism: Iranian historiography and, 8, 170, 174, 184n68; Iranian resentment of, 145–46, 153

Browne, Edward Granville: antiimperialism of, 153, 216n3; and canonization of Iranian poetry, 15, 146, 147, 149–52; collaboration with Iranian scholars, 148–52, 165–66; Constitutional Revolution and, 29, 184n68; correspondence with Iranian intellectuals, 146, 147–48, 149, 150, 152, 153; influence on Iranian literary histories, 159–62, 166; influences on, 149; and Iranian historiography, 211n74; Iranian support for, 145, 146, 153–56, 166, 171; memorial services in Iran for, 154– 56, 166; on non-conformist movements, 151, 218n45; political involvement of, 148, 151, 153, 155, 160, 219n47; as reviver of Persian literature, 153, 154; sixtieth birthday encomiums by Iranians, 145, 153–54, 166 Cambridge University, 145, 159–60 canonization of Iranian literature: biographical dictionaries and, 146, 149, 150; Browne’s role in, 15, 146, 147, 149–52; ideological factors in, 157; interplay of Iranian and European influences in, 146, 147–52; literary histories and, 147, 156–57, 165; mediums contributing to, 156–57; nationalism and, 15, 147, 151, 157; national literary histories and, 147; race and religion in, 151; textbooks and, 147 censorship, centralization of education and, 170 centralization and standardization of education, 79–82; and audience for history, 61; canonization of Iranian literature and, 157; and constraints on autonomy, 3, 4, 13–14, 58, 94, 170; instruments of, 60–61; nomadic tribes and, 88; pedagogical manuals and, 61, 70–74, 94; political control as goal of, 60; standard history of Iran, effort to create, 4, 79–82; state institutions as nexus of, 61; teacher habitus standardization, 70–71, 73–74, 75, 170; textbooks and, 78–82, 91, 170; and upholding of status quo, 58. See also curriculum, standardized

Index  257

Chatterjee, Partha, 4, 5 China: Boxer Rebellion, 32; Yasami on, 69 Christine de Pizan, 97–98 La cité antique (Fustel de Coulanges), 62–63 citizenship: feminist views on, 101, 110, 111; as theme across Iranian historiography, 167; as theme in constitutional era textbooks, 44, 46–47, 47–48, 49, 50–51, 53, 57, 171 city histories, 137–43; architecture as topic in, 140, 142; balance of continuity and modernization as theme in, 137, 138, 140, 141; emphasis on Iranian identity of local populations, 139, 142, 172; emphasis on Pahlavi state modernization, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143–44, 172; nationalist agenda and, 14; poetry as topic in, 140–41, 142 civilization: definition of in interwar textbooks, 87; periodization of history and, 83; prioritization of military over, in Pahlavi state, 92; progress of, as topic in interwar textbooks, 83, 87–89, 95, 172; promotion of, in constitutional era textbooks, 53–54 class formation in Iran, and historiography, 7 College of Law, 76–77 colonial contestation, as approach to Iranian historiography, 8, 9 colonialism: as context for comparative study of historiography, 173–74; Iranian world histories and, 52; Wilson’s selfdetermination principle and, 109; and writing of national histories, 8. See also British colonialism; Russia Columbia University Teachers College, 66 The Compendium of Histories (Jami‘ al-Tavarikh; Fazlullah), 20 Comprehensive History of Iran (Iqbal), 82 Comte, August, 63 constitution, local population as defender of, in regional histories, 118–22, 126, 129–32, 135–37, 143, 171 constitutional crisis of 1911, 31, 49, 51–52 constitutional era (1906-1911): educationalists and, 43; education and upward mobility in, 56, 57, 168; Europe as model during, 29–30, 32, 182n39, 184n74;

local histories in, 14. See also textbooks of constitutional era; translations in constitutional era constitutionalist agenda: in constitutional era textbooks, 18, 28–31, 43, 44, 46–47, 48–49, 53, 57; in pre-revolution textbooks, 13, 42–43 constitutionalists: deaths, in bombing of parliament, 35; deposing of Muhammad ‘Ali Shah, 35; Pan-Islamic solidarity, 31, 32; translations before Revolution of 1906, 26–28, 32 Constitutional Revolution of 1906: and anjumans, proliferation of, 39; and associations, proliferation of, 99; autonomy of historians and publishers following, 13, 18, 26–28; Bakhtiyaris’ role in, 122; and bottom-up political participation, 36–37; in constitutional era textbooks, 44–45, 45–46, 51, 57, 82; educationalists’ support for, 43, 57; Great Britain and, 145; in interwar textbooks, 85, 93; Malik al-Mu’arrikhin on, 2; and middle class, emergence of, 7; Qazvini and, 148; and regional histories, integrative nationalism in, 118–26, 208n3; revolutionary leaders, educators among, 43; translations of sympathetic accounts of, 29; and women’s associations, 97 curriculum, standardized, 61, 74–78, 170; gender differences in, 76; for middle schools, 75–76; periodization of history in, 74, 76; for primary schools, 74–75, 75–76; for secondary schools, 75–76; for specialized schools, 76–78 Dar al-Funan (Polytechnic Institute), Tehran, 26, 27, 37–38, 50, 52, 60, 158, 159, 160, 164, 188n48, 190n109 Dastgirdi, Vahid, 142, 154 Dawlatabadi, Sadiqah, 99, 104, 112–13, 205n32 Dawlatabadi, Yahya, 150, 154, 192n8, 205n32 Daylamites, 132–33, 142 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Gibbon), 25

258  Index

diversity in Iran, nationalist agenda and, 3–4, 12–13, 14–15 Durkheim, Émile, 40, 63 education: of Ahmad Shah by constitutionalists, 36; democratization of, 38; in Europe, Qazvini on, 156; limited access to, in early 20th century, 59; Nasir al-Din Shah’s fear of, 38; public’s lack of interest in, 59; reforms under Muzaffar al-Din Shah, 169; universal compulsory, as goal, 39, 59; and upward mobility, 56, 57, 60, 67, 94–95, 168 education, interwar years: militaristic ethos of Pahlavi state and, 91, 92–93; reforms of Pahlavi era, 75, 76, 112, 115, 138, 142; study abroad, 64–67; study abroad, and upward mobility, 60, 67, 94–95; teacher training colleges, 58; undergraduate areas of interest, 64, 65–67, 193–94nn22–23; at University of Tehran, 58, 64 education, Islamic: Pahlavi state intervention in, 68; traditional, 10–11, 68; women and, 105 education, before Revolution of 1906: centralized system, government’s inability to afford, 38–39; as decentralized, 37; as impetus toward Revolution, 45–46; shaping of revolution-era education by, 37 education, of women: in feminist agenda, 101, 109–10, 171; Islam and, 105; Pahlavi state support for, 75, 76, 112, 115, 142. See also schools for girls educationalists: support for Constitutional Revolution, 43; ties to political activists, 41, 49, 57 education and citizenship: feminist views on, 101; as theme in constitutional era textbooks, 44, 46–47, 47–48, 49, 50–51, 53, 57, 171 Education Commission (Kumisiyun-i Ma‘arif), 61–62, 79, 160, 169 Education Committee (Anjuman-i Ma‘arif), 39, 44, 47, 48, 49, 57, 169 Egypt: history curriculum of early 1920s, 79; integral nationalism in, 13, 179n50;

professionalization of historians in, 7–8; translation program, 20–21; Wafd party in, 109; women’s movement in, 98, 103, 106, 109, 111 The Eighteen-Year History of Azerbaijan (Kasravi), 129–32, 211n73–74 Elphinstone College, 25, 182n43 Europe: constitutionalist ambivalence toward, 29–30; histories of, 84–85; influence on interwar year textbooks, 80; Iranian students in, 65; as model during constitutional era, 29–30, 32, 182n39, 184n74; propaganda organizations, Iranian imitation of, 68–69. See also foreign influence; study abroad European Orientalists: Iranian critiques of, 155–56; and Persian poetry, 151 Faculty of Rational and Traditional Sciences (University of Tehran), 67, 77 Fahimi, Riza, 70–72, 74 Falsafi, Nasrullah, 62–63, 68, 75, 192n11, 196n64 Fazlullah, Rashid al-Din, 20, 89 feminism. See women’s movement field(s): autonomy and, 11; Bourdieu’s concept of, 9, 10, 11; of Iranian historiography, 9, 10 Firdawsi, Abu al-Qasim, 2, 94, 146, 151, 154, 158, 165, 166 The Five-Hundred-Year History of Khuzistan (Kasravi), 127–29 foreign influence: concerns about, 129, 130, 170, 171; engagement of Iranian historiography with, 148–52, 165–66, 170; French influence on Iranian translators and historians, 52, 55, 62–63, 66, 160, 170, 174; in local histories, 121, 134, 211n74, 214n136; on pedagogical theory, 7; through educational institutions, 37–38; translation of foreign works and, 18, 21, 29, 180n4 foreign private schools, 38 Fortna, Benjamin, 60, 78 Fort William College, 25 Freemasons, 26, 49 From Parviz to Genghis (Taqizadah), 82

Index  259

Fursat al-Dawlah, Muhammad Nasir, 26, 27, 28, 183nn50–51 Furughi, Abu al-Hasan, 60, 148, 157 Furughi, Muhammad ‘Ali: Browne and, 148, 152; influence on Iranian historiography, 36, 40, 54, 55; on Iranian culture, 200–201n177; on Isfahan, 215n171; literary histories by, 157; nationalist, peoplecentered focus of historiography, 40–43, 45; political career of, 47; as Publication and Translation Bureau employee, 40; textbooks by, 41–43, 45–48, 57, 79; as tutor to Ahmad Shah, 35–36 Furughi, Muhammad Husayn: association with political activists, 41; death of, 45; influence on Iranian historiography, 36, 40; literary history by, 157–58, 159; nationalist, people-centered focus of historiography, 40–43; political subversion in translations by, 22; as Publication and Translation Bureau employee, 35, 40; social position of, 41; textbooks by, 41–43, 57; as translator and teacher, 35 Furuzanfar, Badi‘ al-Zaman, 68, 75, 161, 163, 164–65, 168 Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis, 40, 62–63 Ganjinah-i Ansar (newspaper), 123 Genghis Khan, 22, 87, 92–93 geographical knowledge, as criteria for selection of works to be translated, 23, 181n32 Gershoni, Israel, 13, 179n50 Gibb, E. J. W., 149, 216n4 Gibb Memorial Trust, 148 Gilan: regional histories of, 132–33; regionalist movement in, 118, 126, 130–31, 132 Gilani, Sardar Mu‘tamid, 50, 129 Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur Comte de, 199n152 great man theory of historiography, 6 Greece, ancient, 69, 84 The Guidance of Women (Irshad al-Nisvan; newspaper), 107

Gulistan (Sa‘di), 162 Habermas, Jürgen, 9–10 habitus of history teachers, standardization of, 70–71, 73–74, 75, 170 Hajji Baba of Isfahan (Morier), 26, 156 Hamit Bey, Abdülhak, 107–8 Hansen, Thomas Blom, 177n10 Hayrat, Mirza Isma‘il, 25–26, 32, 182n43 Hidayat, Riza Quli Khan, 19, 147, 150, 218n43 Histoire générale (Lavisse), 53 histoire universelle, 52, 190n106 historians: changes in social identity of, 1, 2, 60, 94–95, 167; range of motives of, 15; range of social identities of, 6, 7, 12, 15, 167–68. See also autonomy of historians; social location of historians historians of interwar years: decline in autonomy of, 58, 61, 94; employment opportunities for, 61–62, 63–64, 67–70, 78, 94–95, 168. See also education, interwar years; professionalization of historians historical methods, Yasami on, 68 historiography: global events as focus of, 174; great man theory of, 6 historiography, Iranian: comparative and connected perspectives, 172–74; distinctive features of, 167; engagement with Western influences, 148–52, 165–66, 170; forces influencing, 4; state standardization of, 14, 58; Yasami’s critique of, 68. See also nationalist agenda of Iranian historiography; other specific topics history (tarikh): changes in public sources of, 2–3; characteristics of, Ayati on, 139; conceptions of in interwar years, 69, 73; conceptions on in revolutionary era textbooks, 44, 46, 48, 49, 51, 53, 55, 56; functions of, Sadiq on, 72; genres encompassed under, 18–19; shift from plurality to singularity of, 12, 179n48; types of, Ayati on, 139; utility of, as focus, 75. See also science of history History Congress (Turkey, 1931), 8

260  Index

The History of Arabic Literature (Tarikh Adab al-Lughah al-’Arabiyyah; Zaydan), 163 The History of Gilan (Kadivar), 132–33, 212n102 The History of Greece (Seignobos), 55 The History of Half of the World and All of the World (Ansari), 123–25 history of Iran: standardized, Pahlavi state efforts to commission, 79–82; unbroken, as source of pride, 69 History of Iranian Literature (Shafaq), 163–64 The History of Iranian Literature (Huma’i), 162, 222n121 History of Islamic Civilization (Tarikh-i Tamaddun-i Islami; Zaydan), 31 History of Persia (Malcolm), 24–26, 32 The History of the Bakhtiyaris, 120–22 History of the Iranian Awakening (Tarikh-i Bidari-yi Iranian; N. Kirmani), 29, 49 History of the Tus Uprising (Adib Hiravi Khurasani), 119–20 The History of the World-Conqueror (Tarikh-i Jahangusha’i), 148 The History of the World of Women (Tarbiyat), 113 The History of Yazd (Ayati), 138–41, 143 Huma’i, Jalal al-Din, 142, 161, 162–63, 168, 222n121 Husayn (Imam), 19, 105, 140, 150 The Illustrated History of Iran (Furughi), 45–48 Illustrated World History (Nasr), 55–56 ‘Ilmiyah School, 52, 54, 55, 158 India: Persian literature in, 164; translations of works unflattering to Qajar dynasty in, 18; translations of world histories in, 53; women’s movement in, 98; writing of national history in, 8; Yasami on, 69 Indian style of poetry (sabk-i hindi), 146–47, 151 Institute for Speeches and Sermons, 58, 67–68, 69, 77, 195–96n52 integral nationalism, in Egypt, 13, 179n50 integrative nationalism, of local histories, 118–26, 208n3

intellectuals, as historians, 6 International Women’s Congress, 110 Iqbal, ‘Abbas: career of, 60; early life of, 59–60; influences on, 199n152; Kadivar’s History of Gilan and, 132–33; on racial categories, 85–87; on Sunni-Shi‘i split, 89; textbooks by, 79, 82, 83–84, 85–87, 88, 90, 199n145, 200n155, 200n164, 201n179 Iranshahr (periodical), 155 Isfahan (Nur Sadiqi), 141–43 Isfahan, histories of, 118, 123–26, 141–43, 215n171 Isfahani, Mirza Habib, 221n91 Ishaque, Mohammad, 222n118 Iskandari, Muhammad Tahir Mirza, 182n39 Iskandari, Muhtaram Khanum, 97, 99, 105 Islam: Arab nationalist views on, 173; comparative studies of historiography across, 173; as context of Iranian women’s movement, 14, 98, 100, 102–8, 112, 113, 115, 204n29; and democracy, 119; histories of, 27–28, 31, 67, 68, 76, 77, 82, 83, 84, 87, 89, 90; Iranian contribution to, as topic in Iranian histories, 90, 163, 164, 173; law of, works on, 65; in textbooks of interwar years, 89–90, 201n179; textbooks on doctrine of, 49. See also education, Islamic; Pan-Islamism; Shi‘ism; Sunnism Islam School, 49, 54 Isma‘ilis, 172 Isma‘il I (Shah), 73, 124, 129 Isma‘il II (Shah), 141 I‘timad al-Saltanah, Muhammad Hasan: as head of Publication and Translations Bureaus, 18, 40; histories by, 42; on Muhammad Husayn Furughi, 41; supervision of court publications and translations, 17–18, 22–23; works by, 22 Jabiri Ansari, Hasan, 123–25, 142, 209n33 Jalal al-Din Mirza, 26–27, 27–28 Jami (poet), 150, 151 The Jamshidian Foundation (Asas-i Jamshidi), 53–54 Jangal, regionalist movement in, 127, 131, 160 Jankowski, James, 13, 179n50 Japan, as model during constitutional era, 32

Index  261

Javahir al-Kalam, ‘Ali, 201n184 Jews, racial categorization of, in interwar textbooks, 85 al-Jinab, Sayyid ‘Ali, 125–26 journalist-historians, 168 Judaism, Yasami on, 69 Ka‘b tribe, 117, 128–29 Kadivar, ‘Abbas, 132–33, 212n102 Kamaliyah School, 159, 221n99 Kashani-Sabet, Firoozeh, 5, 207n82 Kasravi, Ahmad, 117, 127–32, 132–33, 168, 208n3, 210n57, 211n71, 211n73–74, 212n88, 218n42 Kawkab-i Durri (newspaper), 29 Kazimzadah, Husayn, 149, 152 khaqan (emperor), Qajar dynasty adoption of title, 19–20 Khaz‘al, Shaykh, 117, 127–28, 129 Khiyabani, Shaykh Muhammad, 129, 131, 211n71 Khudadad, Yavar, 201n184 Khuzistan: histories of, 117, 210n57; regionalist movement in, 117, 118, 126, 127–29 Kirmani, Adib Qasimi, 50, 189n93 Kirmani, Mirza Aqa Khan, 26, 27–28, 49, 151, 189n89, 218n42 Kirmani, Nazim al-Islam, 29, 43 Kurdistan: regional histories of, 133–37; regionalist movement in, 118, 126, 127, 133 Kurdistan (Shamim), 133–35 Kurds: Kasravi on, 131–32; local histories on, 133–37, 139, 168, 171; and Sunnism, 135 language: in categorization of peoples, 86–87; and communal identity, 5; and comparative studies of historiography, 172–73 Lavisse, Ernest, 40, 53 law, rule of, constitutional-era textbooks on, 48–49, 51 Lebanon, women’s movement in, 98 Lefevere, André, 28, 157 legitimacy of Qajar dynasty: changed basis of, under print capitalism, 20; issues surrounding, 19–20; as selection criteria

for works to be translated, 18, 20, 21–22, 24; as theme of court chronicles, 19–20, 22; universal kingship model, 20 Lerch, Peter, 134 Lesser Tyranny (1908–1909), 30, 119, 123 Literary Association (Anjuman-i Adabi), 154, 155 Literary Association of Yazd, 138, 139 literary histories, 156–65; by Browne, 147, 149–50, 154, 155, 160–61; Browne’s influence on, 159–62, 166; and canonization of Iranian literature, 147, 156–57, 165; early biographical-dictionary style histories, 157–59; in interwar years, 79; nationalist agenda and, 3, 14–15, 162, 165, 166, 171; periodized histories, 161–65 A Literary History of Persia (Browne), 147, 149–50, 154, 155, 160–61 A Literary History of the English People (Jusserand), 149 literary journals, 156–57 Literary Pearls (Qarib), 158 literature, Iranian: Browne as reviver of, 153, 154; European characterizations of as in decline, 146, 150, 151–52, 166, 171. See also canonization of Iranian literature; literary histories; poetry lithography, development of, 10, 11 local histories: as bachelor’s theses, University of Tehran, 64; nationalist agenda and, 3–4, 13, 14. See also city histories; provincial histories Ma‘arif (periodical), 47 madrasah schools, educational practices in, 10–11 Mahmud of Ghazna, 140, 201n179 Majma‘ al-Fusaha (Hidayat), 150 maktab schools, educational practices in, 10–11 Malcolm, John, 24–26, 32, 121 Malik al-Mu’arrikhin, ‘Abd al-Husayn, 1–2, 120–21 Malkam Khan, Mirza, 26, 41, 44–45, 49 Mantiq al-Mulk, Mirza Hasan Khan Tafrishi, 48–49, 188–89n75 Mantiqi, Muhammad Baqir, 185n85

262  Index

Mantiqi’s History (Mantiq al-Mulk), 48–49 Marashi, Afshin, 5 Mazdakite movement, 28, 172 media, propagandistic use of by Pahlavi state, 68–69 Mehmed V, Sultan of Ottoman Empire, 107 The Messenger of Women’s Prosperity (Payk-i Sa‘adat; newspaper), 106, 109 methodology: field and public sphere in, 9–10; prevailing approaches to historiography, 7–9 Michelet, Jules, 63, 73 middle class: emergence of, 7; Pahlavi state’s effort to create, 65 Mikadunamah (Tajir Shirazi), 185n85 military colleges: curriculum of, 77–78; in Pahlavi state, 91 The Military History of Iran (Quzanlu), 92 military history textbooks, of interwar years, 91–94, 201–2n184, 202n188 millat, as term, 136–37 milli (national) schools, 38. See also schools, private Ministry of Education: centralization and standardization program, 13–14, 58; cooptation of private schools, 115; curriculum, 75, 77; and growth of public education, 43; Huma’i and, 162; patronage by, 1–2, 78–82, 136, 160–61, 164–65, 222n116; pedagogical manuals, 70–74; periodization of history by, 83; Sadiq at, 160 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 52 Minuvi, Mujtaba, 40, 79 Mirrors for Princes, translation as, 23–24 modernization: as goal of court-sponsored historiography, 13, 18, 22, 23–24; in Pahlavi era, city histories on, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143–44, 172; paradigm for, Iranian nationalism and, 5, 177n11 Mongol dynasty: as challenge to Iranian historians, 144; histories of, 73, 83, 84, 85, 92–93, 142; in Pahlavi state curriculum, 78 Mongols, characterization of in interwar textbooks, 86, 88, 89, 90, 172 Mönke Khan, 87 Montesquieu, 63

Morier, James, 26, 156 Mughal dynasty, court translations in, 20 Muhammad (prophet): in interwar textbooks, 89; in Qajar court chronicles, 19, 180n11; and women’s rights, 105, 106 Muhammad ‘Ali (Ottoman Egyptian reformer), 21 Muhammad ‘Ali Shah: abuses of power by, 30, 35; deposing of, 31, 35, 56; histories on, 47, 51; opposition to, 31, 121, 122, 129, 131, 153 Mu‘in, Muhammad, 63 Mumtaz al-Dawlah, Mirza Isma‘il Murtiza’i, 2, 192n8 Muqtadir, Ghulam Husayn, 91, 92 Musaddiq, Muhammad, 62–63, 65, 66–67, 169, 192n8 Musha‘sha‘is, 128, 140, 172 Muslim clerics, Pahlavi state’s efforts to modernize, 67–68 Muslims, sources of history for, 2–3 Mutarjim al-Saltanah Amir Tuman, ‘Ali Riza, 52, 184n69, 190n109 Muzaffar al-Din Shah: in constitutionalera textbooks, 44, 45, 48, 50, 51, 56; and education, support for, 37, 38, 39–40, 44, 45, 48, 57, 169; Furughis’ histories and, 42; laissez-faire attitude of, 37, 169; reforms under, 43, 48, 50, 51, 56, 57 Nadim al-Sultan, Muhammad, 32 Nadir Shah, 20, 22, 42, 78, 85, 87, 92, 93, 141 Nafisi, Sa‘id, 64, 80, 159 Namakdan (periodical), 138 Nakhjavan Amir Muvassaq, Muhammad, 91–92 Namah-i Danishvaran, 17 Namah-i Khusravan (Jalal al-Din Mirza), 26–27, 162 Napoleon, 21, 24, 31, 178n30 Nasib al-Sibyan, 50 Nasim-i Shumal (newspaper), 50 Nasim-i Shumal, Ashraf al-Din al-Husayni, 50–52 Nasir al-Dawlah, Ahmad Khan Badar, 61, 160, 192n8 Nasir al-Din Shah: critics of, 41; disbanding

Index  263

of Freemasons, 26; fear of public education, 38; local historians on, 125; Mirrors for Monarchs and, 24; patronage by, 1, 17, 22, 23, 36; reforms and, 24, 138 The Nasirean Garden of Purity (Rawzat al-Safa-yi Nasiri; Hidayat), 19 naskh script, print technology and, 10 Nasr, Sayyid ‘Ali, 54–56, 184n74, 191n127 Nasr, Valiullah, 54, 80 nast‘aliq script, print technology and, 10 nation, as concept: in constitutional-era textbooks, 52; postcolonial critiques of, 4–5; Yasami on, 136–37 nationalism: Browne’s anti-imperialism and, 153; and canonization of Iranian literature, 147, 151, 157; feminist movement and, 102; forces contributing to, 5–6; integral, in Egypt, 13, 179n50; integrative, in local histories, 118–26, 208n3; Persian language and, 158–59; in regional histories, 127–37; religious heterodoxy and, 139–40, 143; women and, 102, 204n24 nationalist agenda of Iranian historiography: after Revolution of 1906, 52, 55, 57; comparative analysis of, 5, 7; and diversity, suppression of, 3–4, 12–13, 14–15; fear of regionalist movements, 118, 126–37, 143, 171; forces influencing, 3; literary histories and, 3–4, 14–15, 162, 165, 166, 171; before Revolution of 1906, 26–28; rise of, 26–28, 167, 171; as Western concept, 4–5; world histories and, 52–54, 55–56 nationalist agenda of Pahlavi state: pedagogical manuals and, 71, 72–74; propaganda agencies and, 68–70; and regional histories, emphasis on local population as defender of nation, 118–22, 126, 129–32, 135–37, 143, 171; and regionalist movements, suppression of, 117, 127, 133; standardized curriculum and, 77; textbooks and, 81, 82 Nationalist Women’s Association, 97, 105 Nationalist Women’s Magazine (Majallah-i Jami/ayn/at-i Nisvan-i Vatankhah; periodical), 101

national (milli) schools, 38. See also schools, private nations, rise and fall of: feminist views on, 106, 107; as interest of Iranian historians, 12 Nawdust, Rawshanak, 100 Nayyir al-Mulk, 39, 47 Nazim al-‘Ulum, ‘Ali, 52, 54 newspapers: establishment of, and changes in historiography, 3; and public sphere, 9 Nöldeke, Theodor, 134, 156, 219n47 Nu‘mani, Shibli, 149, 218n43, 222n116 Nur Sadiqi, Husayn, 141–43 objectivism, in surveys of Iranian historiography, 6, 178n19 Organization of Public Instruction, 58, 67, 68–70 Orientalist frameworks: in analysis of Iranian nationalism, 5, 177n12; critiques of in local histories, 121; production of, 216n3 orthodoxy, as value in interwar textbooks, 90–91 Ottoman Empire: Kasravi on, 130; Kurds and, 135; as model during constitutional era, 30–31, 32; Revolution of 1908, 30; Translation Bureau, 21; translation program, 20–21; women’s movement in, 98, 103, 107, 110 Pahlavi state: cooptation of feminist agenda, 99, 112–14, 115–16; education reforms, 75, 76, 112, 115, 138; militaristic ethos of, 91, 92–93, 95; overseas education programs, 65; propagandistic uses of history, 58, 67–70; in standardized curriculum, 75; suppression of feminist historians, 14; urban modernization under, as subject in regional histories, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143–44, 172; urban reforms and development, 138; women’s education and, 75, 76, 112, 115, 142; women’s movement, cooptation of, 99, 112–14, 115–16; women’s rights and, 99; women’s support of, 112, 114–15, 207n84. See also centralization and standardization of

264  Index

education; nationalist agenda of Pahlavi state; Riza Shah Pakravan, Aminah, 63 Pan-Islamism: constitutionalists and, 31, 32; Kasravi on, 130, 131 Paris Peace Conference of 1919, 109 parliament: bombing of by Muhammad ‘Ali Shah, 30, 35; closure of (1910), 59; in constitutional era textbooks, 51; crisis of 1911, 31, 49, 51–52; overseas education programs, 159–60; support for education, 43–44 Parsa, Fakhr Afaq, 99–100, 104–5 Parthians, 71, 72 patronage by imperial court, 1–2, 3, 17–18, 22–23, 36, 169; as factor in selection of works for translation, 18, 20, 24; founding of Iranian university system and, 63 patronage networks in Iranian government, 38 patrons, independent: autonomy of after Revolution of 1906, 18, 32–33, 44, 50, 169; and constitutional era world history textbooks, 52–53; and criteria for selection of works to be translated, 63; in interwar years, 62–63 Payman (periodical), 128 Pazargadi, ‘Ala al-Din, 70, 74 Pazuki, Riza, 87, 88–89, 92–93 pedagogical manuals: in interwar years, 70–74, 94; standardization of education and, 61, 94 the people: as focus of constitutional era histories, 13, 27, 33, 41–42, 45, 49, 57, 82; as focus of Pahlavi era histories, 130 periodicals, Iranian, serialized histories in, 11 periodization of history: ancient period, defining of in interwar histories, 83, 84, 85; assumptions about continuities and ruptures in, 83; contemporary period, defining of in interwar histories, 85; implicit teleology of, 83; in interwar textbooks, 82, 83–85, 199n145; in literary histories, 162; medieval period, defining of in interwar histories, 83, 84, 85; modern period, defining of in interwar

histories, 83, 85, 93; in standardized curriculum, 74, 76 Persian language: areas of Iran not speaking, 158–59; literary historians on, 158–59, 163, 165 The Persian Revolution (Browne), 148 Pirniya, Hasan, 39–40, 79–81, 82, 198n131 poetry: European perception of as in decline, 146, 150, 151–52, 166, 171; Indian style of, 146–47, 151; as topic in city histories, 140–41, 142. See also canonization of Iranian literature; verse histories Political Science and Economics School, 76–77 Political Science School, 39–40, 52, 55, 188n48 political uses of history, textbooks of interwar years and, 81, 184n48 positivists, Falsafi on, 63 postcolonial theory, critique of nation concept, 4–5 pre-Islamic history: feminist views on women in, 102–3, 106, 110–11; Pahlavi preoccupation with, 76; in standardized curriculum, 75, 78; treatment of in histories, 2, 13, 21–23, 26, 27, 65, 68, 79, 84, 92, 124, 140, 142, 162 press: development of, and historiography, 3; and reformist histories, circulation of, 169; state control of, 3, 112. See also women’s press The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia (Browne), 147, 149, 151, 152, 154, 155, 159 print technology, impact on historiography, 1, 10–11 professional class, rise of, 64 professionalization of historians: as approach to Iranian historiography, 7, 8–9; and change of social identity of historians, 60; lack of, and openness of field, 12, 18–19; obstacles to, 67; overseas education and, 65; scholarship on, 7; state standardization and, 58, 95; teacher training colleges and, 58 propagandistic uses of history, by Pahlavi state, 58, 67–70

Index  265

provincial histories: diversity as challenge to, 144; emphasis on Iranian identity of local populations, 118–22, 129–32, 132–33, 133–37, 143; emphasis on local population as defender of the nation, 118–22, 126, 129–32, 135–37, 143, 171; emphasis on local uniqueness, 123–26; emphasis on positive urban transformations under Pahlavi state, 118; fear of regionalist movements in, 118, 126–37, 143, 171; integrative nationalism of, 118–26, 208n3; motives for writing of, 27, 168; nationalist agenda and, 14, 118, 143; regionalist movements’ failure to write, 126 provincial rebellion. See regionalist movements public library, establishment of, 39 public sphere: autonomy and, 11; Habermas on, 9–10; subaltern counterpublics in, 9 public sphere in Iran, formation of, 3; and historiography, changes in, 3, 11, 26–28, 32–33; print technology and, 10–11 publishers, independent, rise of, and changes in historiography, 3, 10–11, 33 Pur, ‘Izzat, 84–85, 199–200n154 Purandukht, 110 Qajar court chronicles: interest in past models for, 22; methods and style of, 19, 180n11; Qajar legitimacy as focus of, 18–20 Qajariyah School, 55 Qajar state: autonomy of historians in, 13; and Constitutional Revolution of 1906, 145; as decentralized, 42–43; histories of, 84, 125, 142; institutions of as field of historians, 9; lavish court lifestyle, 38; patronage of historians and translators, 1–2, 3, 17–18, 20, 22–23, 24, 36, 50, 63, 169; private translations of works critical of, 18, 24–26, 32; publication by, 10, 17–18 (See also Qajar court chronicles); selection criteria for translations in, 18, 20–24, 170; Translation and Publication Bureaus, 13, 18. See also legitimacy of Qajar dynasty Qanun (newspaper), 41

Qaradaghis, 119 Qaraguzlu, Yahya, 163 Qaraquzlu, Abu al-Qasim Nasir al-Mulk, 22 Qarib Garakani, ‘Abd al-Azim, 54, 157, 158–59 Qavam al-Saltanah, 104 Qavim al-Saltanah, 31 Qazvini, Muhammad, 79, 148, 149, 150, 155–56, 164 Quzanlu, Jamil, 85, 91, 92, 202n188 racial categories: in interwar history textbooks, 82, 85–87, 88, 95, 172, 199–200n154, 199n149; in interwar local histories, 133, 134, 143; in Iranian nationalism, 156; in literary debates, 151, 222n121; in Pahlavi state pedagogical materials, 69, 71, 72, 76 Raf ‘atzadah, Maryam, 107, 110, 204n24 Razi, ‘Abdullah, 89, 94 regional histories. See city histories; provincial histories regionalist movements: fear of in local historiography, 118, 126–37, 143, 171; rise of, 126; state subduing of, 117, 127, 133, 210n54 religion: and canonization of Iranian poetry, 151; and communal identity, 5; orthodoxy, as value in interwar textbooks, 90–91; in regional and local histories, 124, 126, 128, 139–40, 143; in textbooks of interwar years, 82, 89–90, 95, 172, 201n179. See also Babi Movement; Baha’i Faith; Islam; Musha‘sha‘is; Shi‘ism; Sunnism religious sciences students, curriculum for, 77 Republic of Letters, Browne’s Iranian correspondence as, 147–48, 152, 165 revolution. See Constitutional Revolution of 1906 Revolutionary Committee, 43 Riza Shah: deposing of, 36; interwar histories on, 85, 93–94, 95, 204n198; and Iranian historiography, influence on, 8; militaristic ethos of, 91, 95; Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi and, 36;

266  Index

patronage of histories by, 50; subduing of regionalist movements, 117, 127, 133; transportation projects under, 64; urban modernization under, as subject in regional histories, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143–44, 172; women’s rights reforms under, 14, 75, 76, 112, 115, 142; women’s support of, 112, 114, 115; Yasami on, 69. See also Pahlavi state Rome, ancient, Yasami on, 69 Russia: bombing of Astan-i Quds-i Razavi shrine, 119–20; as counterbalance to British influence, 146; Iranian historiography and, 170, 174, 184n68; Kasravi on, 130, 132; Ultimatum of 1911, 51–52, 100 Russo-Japanese War of 1905–1906, 32 Ruznamah-i Azad (newspaper), 158 Ruznamah-i Ma‘arif (newspaper), 39 Sa‘di, 146, 162 Sadiq, ‘Isa, 40, 66, 70, 72–74, 153–54, 155, 159–60, 197n92 Safavids: histories of, 46, 84, 85, 125, 142, 199n145; legitimacy of, 19; in Pahlavi state curriculum, 78; poetry of, 150; Shi‘ism and, 150 Saffarids: histories of, 73, 84; in standardized curriculum, 75; as undergraduate thesis topic, 67 Said, Edward, 177n12, 216n3 Sa‘idi, Ahmad, 66, 79–80, 81 Sasanian dynasty: histories of, 22, 82, 83, 84; historiography, 197n88; Mirrors for Princes in, 23; in Pahlavi state curriculum, 78; as undergraduate thesis topic, 64, 65; universal kingship model in, 20 scholarship on education and professionalization, 7 scholarship on Iranian historiography, 180n6; avenues for future research, 172– 74; filling of lacuna in, 6–7; objectivist assumptions in, 6, 178n19; women’s historiography and, 98, 203n3 scholarship on nationalism: as concept, 4–5; in Iran, 5–6

scholarship on women’s and gender studies, 98 School of Languages (Egypt), 21 schools: expansion of in interwar period, 61; social reproduction as function of, 43, 57, 58, 186nn5–6 schools, autonomy of: and constitutionalist agenda, 36, 37, 40; and democratization of publishing, 3, 33, 44; post–World War I standardization and, 3, 13–14, 58 schools, modern: and autonomy of historians, 13; educational practices in, 11; and education of historians, 167–68; and funding of historians, 2; and growth of audience for history, 3, 10–11, 33, 36, 57, 169; and historians’ role, 1; opposition to, 221n99; state nationalist narratives and, 3, 14 schools, private: and democratization of education, 38; expansion of, 37–40, 43–44, 57; as motors for change, 45; Pahlavi state cooptation of, 115; state oversight of, 39; state support of, 38–39; types of, 38 schools, religious, educational practices in, 10–11 schools, state, establishment and growth of, 13–14, 37–38, 39–40, 58, 61, 63–64 schools for girls: curriculum, 108; founding of, 44, 99, 100, 171 science of history: emphasis on single truth of history, 12; Falsafi on, 63; Iranian focus on, 12; Pirniya and, 80; Quzanlu on, 92 scientific method, Iranian historiography and, 6 seclusion of women, feminist views on, 103, 106 secret societies, before Revolution of 1906, 43 Secret Society (Anjuman-i Makhfi), 43 Seignobos, Charles, 40–41, 55, 62 Seleucids, histories of, 84, 88 self-determination principle of Wilson: non-Western nations and, 109; women’s movement and, 100, 108, 109, 115 Seljuks, histories of, 84, 88, 142, 165 Semites: Orientalist studies and, 156; in

Index  267

racial categories of interwar textbooks, 86, 87 serialized publication of histories, 10, 11, 98, 100, 102, 128, 129 The Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy (Rawlinson), 22 Shadman, Fakhr al-Din, 62, 66 Shafaq, Rizazadah, 63, 161, 163–64, 168 Shafaq-i Surkh (newspaper), 80 Shahnamah (Firdawsi), 2, 22, 48, 50, 151, 158, 165 Shahsavans, 119, 132, 212n88 Shamim, ‘Ali Asghar, 87–88, 91, 93–94, 133–35 shari‘ah, women’s rights and, 104 Shari‘atzadah, Ahmad Khan, 155 Shaybani, ‘Abd al-Husayn, 63–64, 84 Shi‘i law, study of, 65 Shi‘i population, sources of history for, 2–3 Shi‘ism: history of in Qajar court chronicles, 19; in interwar histories, 89, 90, 201n179; spread of under Safavids, 150; as topic in Iranian histories, 173 Shikufah (newspaper), 100 Simqu, Isma‘il, 127, 131–32, 133, 135 Sipahsalar School, 54 Sipihr, ‘Abd al-Husayn Lisan al-Saltanah. See Malik al-Mu’arrikhin, ‘Abd al-Husayn Sipihr, Muhammad Taqi Lisan al-Mulk, 2, 19 social location, and public sphere participation, 10 social location of historians: influence on historiography, 7, 13–15; neglect of in recent analyses, 6 social location of translators, as factor in works selected for translation, 18 standardization of education. See centralization and standardization of education state control: of press, 3, 112; of schools, rise of, 3, 115. See also centralization and standardization of education; entries under autonomy state ideology, historiography as, 8, 9 state institutions, as primary nexus for interwar historiography, 61 state power in public sphere, Habermas on, 10

study abroad, 60, 64–67, 94–95 subaltern counterpublics: in public sphere, 9; women’s press and, 98, 102, 111, 115 Sufism: Kurds and, 135; Naqshbandi Sufis, 91 The Summary History (Miftah al-Mulk), 47–48 Sunni seminaries, Pahlavi state curriculum and, 77 Sunnism: Kurds and, 135; in local histories, 124, 139; in textbooks of interwar years, 90, 201n179; women’s movement and, 103 Syria, women’s movement in, 98, 103, 109 Tabriz, histories on, 118, 119 Tabrizi, Sa’ib, 151, 218n43 Tagore, Radindranath, 112–13, 164 Taqizadah, Hasan, 79, 81–82, 89, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155 Tarbiyat (periodical), 39 Tarbiyat, Hazhar, 112, 113–14 Tarbiyat, Muhammad ‘Ali, 152, 154 Tarih (periodical), 8 teachers: employment opportunities for, 63–64, 94–95, 168, 170; habitus, standardization of, 70–71, 73–74, 75, 170; influence over Iranian historical narratives, 12; pedagogical manuals for, 61, 70–74, 94; professionalization of, 13–14, 168; training of, 58, 75, 94–95, 168. See also Teachers’ Training College Teachers’ Training College: curriculum of, 74–75; educational standardization and, 170; establishment of, 13–14, 58, 61; faculty of, 158, 163, 164; periodization of history by, 83; student pool for, 168; textbooks and manuals for, 72, 84 Teachers’ Training School, 61 Tehran: education expansion in, 43, 188n48; urban reforms in, 138 The Telegraphic History (A. Kirmani), 50 textbooks: and canonization of Iranian poetry, 147; demand for, with new schools, 3, 11; exclusion of local history from, 14; writing and translation of by nonprofessionals, 12 textbooks, before Revolution of 1906, constitutionalist agenda of, 42–43

268  Index

textbooks of constitutional era, 44–49; citizenship and education as theme in, 37, 44, 46–47, 47–48, 49, 50–51, 53, 57, 171; conceptions of history in, 44, 46, 48, 49, 51, 53, 55, 56; constitutionalist agenda in, 18, 28–31, 43, 44, 46–47, 48–49, 53, 57; constitutional teleology of, 82; diversity of, 44; nationalist agenda of, 37; proliferation of, 44; verse histories, 49–52; world histories, 52–54, 55–56, 191n119 textbooks of interwar years: and canonization of Iranian literature, 157; defining of Others in, 82, 87, 88, 89–91; emphasis on state stability, 79; European influence on, 80; historians educated abroad and, 65; on Iranian progress and decline, 82–91; military history textbooks, 91–94, 201–2n184, 202n188; nationalist agenda and, 81, 82; as outlet for historical writing, 95; periodization of history in, 82, 83–85, 199n145; and political uses of history, 81, 184n68; private commissioning of, 61–62; progress of civilization as topic in, 83, 87–89, 95, 172; racial categories in, 82, 85–87, 88, 95, 172, 199–200n154, 199n149; religion in, 82, 89–90, 95, 172, 201n179; state-centered perspective of, 61, 82, 93, 94; state commissioning of, 61, 68, 78–82; world histories, 83–84 Timurids, 89, 142, 150 Timurlane, 87 toleration, as virtue, in interwar textbooks, 87 translations before Revolution of 1906, 26–28, 32 translations by Egyptian state, 20–21 translations by Ottoman state, 20–21 translations by Qajar court, selection criteria for, 18, 20–24, 170 translations for private schools, constitutionalist agenda and, 40–41 translations in constitutional era: autonomy of translators, 18; European models and, 29–30, 32, 182n39, 184n74; Ottoman models and, 30–31, 32; selection criteria for, 18, 28–32, 170, 184n68

translations in interwar period, 201n184 translations of works unflattering to Qajar dynasty, by dissident Iranians, 18, 24–26, 32 tribal groups: characterization of, in interwar histories, 87, 88; forced settling of, 133; Kasravi on, 131–32; sources of history for, 2 Tunakabuni, Jamshid Sa‘id al-Dawlah, 53–54, 169, 190–91n112 Turkish Historical Foundation, 8 Turkish History Thesis, 8 Turkish Republic, historiography as state ideology in, 8 Turks: characterizations of in interwar textbooks, 86, 88–89, 90, 171, 172, 200n164, 201n179; views on Islam, 173 Umayyad Caliphate: feminist views on, 106; histories of, 82, 84, 89, 163, 164 United States: feminist historians in, 101; historiography, great man approach to, 6; Iranian students in, 65, 66 University of Tehran: bachelor’s degree thesis topics, 1931-41, 64, 193–94nn22–23, 193n20; establishment of, 63–64; faculty of, 66–67, 68; Faculty of Rational and Traditional Sciences, 67, 77; state nationalist narratives and, 14; teacher training at, 58, 168; textbooks for, 84 urban histories. See city histories Vaziri, Mostafa, 5, 177n12, 203n3, 222n121 veiling of women; Pahlavi state policy on, 113; women’s movement and, 103, 104, 105, 106, 113 Venuti, Lawrence, 24, 180n4 verse histories, 49–52 Wafd party (Egypt), 109 West–non-West binary, 5, 7 The Wiles of Women (Makr-i Zanan), 97 Wilson, Edith Bolling Galt, 109 Wilson, Woodrow, 100, 108, 109, 115 women: education of, at University of Tehran, 64; inheritance law and, 209n26; Pahlavi education reforms and, 75, 76,

Index  269

112, 115, 138; as patrons, Ayati on, 140; support of Riza Shah, 112, 114, 115 women’s historiography, Pahlavi state reforms and, 112–14, 115 Women’s International Congress, 114 The Women’s Journal (Namah-i Banuvan), 109 women’s movement in Iran: activism of, 97, 100; agenda of, 101, 171; amnesia about pre-Pahlavi activism, 112, 114, 115; associations and, 97, 99–100, 115, 169–70; backgrounds of activists, 99–100, 115; biographies as tool of, 97, 98, 100–102, 105–6, 110–11, 111–12, 115; feminist historians, state suppression of, 14; harassment of activists, 104–5, 115, 205n32; Islam as context for, 14, 98, 100, 102–8, 112, 113, 115, 204n29; nationalism and, 102; opposition to, 97, 100, 104–5, 109, 115; Pahlavi state cooptation of, 99, 112–14, 115–16; on reforms of other Muslim countries, 106–8; and schools for girls, 44, 99, 100, 108, 171; suffrage issue and, 108–12; transnational solidarity of, 98, 102, 103, 106, 108 women’s press: biographies of notable women in, 97, 98, 100–102, 105–6, 110–11, 111–12, 115; decline of, 98–99; in Egypt, 111; growth of, 99, 100; Pahlavi state censorship and, 112; state suppression of, 14; and subaltern counterpublics, 98, 102, 111, 115; suffrage issue and, 98, 108–12; voluntary associations and, 169–70 Women’s rights, reforms under Riza Shah, 14, 75, 76, 112, 115, 142 women’s suffrage movement, 98, 100, 108–12 Women’s Teachers’ Training College, 75 Women’s Voice (Zaban-i Zanan; newspaper), 101, 104, 110

Women’s World (Jahan-i Zanan; newspaper), 101–2, 105–6, 110 world histories: in constitutional era, 52–54, 55–56, 191n119; in interwar period, 83–84; in Pahlavi state curriculum, 76, 77 World History (Iqbal), 83–84, 85–87, 200n155 The World of Women (‘Alam-i Nisvan; newspaper), 113 World War I: foreign occupation during, 126, 127, 145, 153, 184n68; histories of, 91; Iranian historiography on, 184n68; Iranian nationalist ambitions and, 145– 46; women’s press and, 100; and women’s rights, 113 xenophobia: interwar textbooks and, 81; Sadiq on, 73 Yasami, Rashid: background of, 168; career of, 62, 64, 68, 141, 196n60; histories by, 94, 133, 135–37, 168; on history, uses of, 69, 74; Indian scholars and, 222n118; nationalist agenda and, 69, 70, 214n136; pedagogical manuals by, 70, 74; translations by, 160–61; work on historical method by, 68 Yazd, Ayati history of, 138–41, 168 “yellow” race: interwar textbooks on, 86, 172, 200n164; “yellow peril,” 86, 199n152 Yiganah, Mirza Muhammad Khan, 50 Young Ottomans, 21, 181n19 Zand, Karim Khan, 42, 87–88, 141 Zaydan, Jurji, 31, 162–63, 216n4 Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, 110–11, 206–7n77 Zill al-Sultan, 125 Zoroastrianism, 89, 90, 102–3