1. SHI‘ISM AND THE SAFAVID REVOLUTION (1501–1588)
1. Hasan Rumlu, Ahsan al-Tawarikh, ed. C. N. Seddon (Baroda, India: Oriental Institute, 1931), 1:60–61 (in Persian).
2. V. Minorsky, “The Poetry of Shah Isma‘il I,” Bulletin of the School of the Oriental and African Studies 10, no. 4 (1942): 1031a and English translation at 1042–43 (with my modifications).
3. Tahmasp’s farman (firman) is cited in Mirza ‘Abdollah Afandi Isfahani, Riyad al-‘ulama wa hayaz al-fudala, 5 vols. (Qom, AH 1401/1980 CE), 3:455–60. “AH,” for Anno Hegirae, refers to the year in the Islamic lunar calendar.
4. Rumlu, Ahsan al-Tawarikh, 353.
5. Iskandar-beg Munshi Turkaman, ‘Alamara-ye ‘Abbasi, ed. I. Afshar, 2 vols. (Tehran and Isfahan: Amir Kabir and Ketabforushi-ye Ta’id, 1335/1956), 1:228 (I have simplified and summarized the passage).
2. THE AGE OF ‘ABBAS I AND THE SHAPING OF THE SAFAVID EMPIRE (1588–1666)
1. Pietro Della Valle, Viaggi di Pietro Della Valle il pellegrino, descritti da lui medesimo in lettere familiari all’erudito suo amico Mario Schipano, divisi in tre parti cioè: La Turchia, la Persia e l’India (Torino, 1843), letter 4, vol. 1; translated into Persian by M. Behforuzi, 2 vols. (Tehran, 1380/1991), vol. 1, 651–52, 667–68.
3. THE DEMISE OF THE SAFAVID ORDER AND THE UNHAPPY INTERREGNUMS (1666–1797)
1. Mohammad Hashem Asaf, Rostam al-Hokama, Rostam al-Tawarikh, ed. Mohammad Moshiri, 2nd ed. (Tehran: Taban, 1352/1973), 307–17, 342.
2. Shaykh Mohammad ‘Ali Hazin, Tarikh va Safarnameh, ed. ‘Ali Davani (Tehran: Markaz-e Asnad, 1375/1996), 240–41.
3. Shaykh Mohammad ‘Ali Hazin, Divan, ed. Z. Sahebkar (Tehran: Nashr-e Sayeh, 1374/1995), 724.
4. ‘Abbas Eqbal, ed., Ruznameh-e Mirza Mohammad Kalantar-e Fars (Tehran: Yadegar, 1325/1946), 89–90.
4. THE MAKING OF THE QAJAR ERA (1797–1852)
1. J. Malcolm, Sketches of Persia, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1845), 222–23.
2. J. C. Hurewitz, The Middle East and North Africa in the World Politics, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975), 1:200.
3. A. Amanat, ed., Cities and Trade: Consul Abbott on the Economy and Society of Iran, 1847–1866 (London: Ithaca Press, 1984), xv–xvi; see also C. Issawi, ed., The Economic History of Iran, 1800–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 259.
4. Amanat, Cities and Trade, xv.
5. NASER AL-DIN SHAH AND MAINTAINING A FRAGILE BALANCE (1848–1896)
1. Statistics are based on data collected by Justin Sheil and published as “Additional Notes” to Lady Mary Sheil, Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia (London, 1856), 380–402.
2. Mirza Malkom Khan, “Resaleh-ye Ghaybiyeh,” Rasalehha-ye Mirza Malkom Khan Nazem al-Dowleh, ed. Hojjatollah Asil (Tehran: Nashr-e Nay, 1381/2002), 27; also cited in translation in A. Amanat, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy, 1931–1896(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 360.
3. Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar, The Diary of H.M The Shah of Persia during His Tour through Europe in A.D. 1873, trans. J. W. Redhouse (London: John Murray, 1874), 199–200.
4. Iraj Afshar, ed., Ruznameh-e Khaterat-e E‘temad al-Saltaneh (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1345/1966), 141.
6. THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION
1. Edward Granville Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905–1909 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), 354.
2. Ibid., 373.
3. William Morgan Shuster, The Strangling of Persia (New York: Century Co., 1912), xiv.
4. Divan-e Mirza Abolqasem ‘Aref Qazvini, ed. Sayf Azad (Berlin: Sharqi, 1924), supplement (songs), 20–21. For an earlier English translation, see Edward Granville Browne, The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 250–52.
5. Shuster, Strangling of Persia. 204.
6. Ibid., 204.
7. Mohammad Taqi Bahar Malek al-Sho‘ara, Divan-e Ash’ar, ed. M. Bahar, 5th ed. (Tehran: Entesharat Tus, 1368/1984) 1:261–62.
8. ‘Aref Qazvini, Divan, 14–25.
9. Ibid., 176–77.
10. Browne, Press and Poetry, 195–96.
11. Edward Granville Browne, A Literary History of Persia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959) 4:472–74.
7. THE GREAT WAR AND THE RISE OF REZA KHAN (1914–1925)
1. ‘A. Mostawfi, Sharh-e Zendegani-ye Man ya Tarikh-e Ejtema‘i va Edari-ye Dowreh-ye Qajariyeh, 3 vols., 2nd ed. (Tehran: Zavvar, 1343/1964), 3:215, published in English as A. Mustawfi, The Administrative and Social History of the Qajar Period, trans. N. Mostofi-Glenn, 3 vols. (Costa Mesa, CA, 1977).
2. “Agreement: Great Britain and Persia, 9 August 1919,” in Hurewitz, The Middle East, 2:182–83.
3. Ibid., 2:240–45.
4. Divan-e ‘Eshqi va Sharh-e Hal-e Sha‘er, ed. ‘A. Salimi (Tehran: Shafaq, 1308/1929), 197–98.
5. Mostawfi, Sharh-e Zendegani-ye Man, 3:601.
6. Bahar, Divan-e Ash‘ar, 1:356–58.
8. REZA SHAH AND THE PAHLAVI ORDER (1925–1941)
1. Kolliyat-e Divan-e Iraj Mirza (Tehran: Mozaffari, n.d.), 166–67.
9. CHAOTIC DEMOCRACY, OIL NATIONALIZATION, AND DENIED HOPES (1941–1953)
1. Manucher Farmanfarmaian, Blood and Oil: Inside the Shah’s Iran (New York: Random House, 1997), 184–85.
2. Mostafa Fateh, Pajah Sal Naft-e Iran (Tehran: Chehr, 1335/1956), 525.
3. W. O. Douglas, The Douglas Letters: Selections from the Private Papers of Justice William O. Douglas, ed. M. Urofsky (Bethesda: Adler and Adler, 1987), 282.
10. THE WHITE REVOLUTION AND ITS OPPONENTS (1953–1963)
1. “Letter From President Kennedy to the Shah of Iran,” August 1, 1962, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, vol. 18, Near East, 1962–1963 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1995–1996), 11.
2. “Special National Intelligence Estimate,” September 7, 1962, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, vol. 18, Near East, 1962–1963 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1995–1996), 35.
3. “Payam beh Mellat-e Iran,” Ordibehesht 2, 1323/April 22, 1944, in Ruhollah Khomeini, Sahifeh-e Imam: Majmu‘eh-e Asar-e Imam Khomeini, 5th ed. (Tehran: Moasseseh-e Tanzim va Nashr-e Asar-e Imam Khomeini, 1389/2010), 1:21–23.
4. Qom, Farvardin 26, 1343/April 16, 1964, in Khomeini, Sahifeh-e Imam, 1:415–23.
5. Qom, Aban 4, 1343/November 26, 1964, in Khomeini, Sahifeh-e Imam, 1:415–23.
6. Syrus Tahbaz, ed., Majmu’eh-e Asar-e Nima Yushij: Daftar-e Avval, She‘r (Tehran: Nasher, 1364/1985), 555.
7. Mahdi Akhavan-Sales (M. Omid), Akir-e Shahnameh: Majmu‘eh-e She‘r (Tehran: Zaman, 1338/1959), 19–25. Composed in April 1956.
8. Ibid., 79–86. Composed in October 1957.
9. Forugh Farrokhzad, ‘Esyan (Tehran, 1336/1957), 8–28.
10. Forugh Farrokhzad, Tavallodi Digar (Tehran: Morvarid, 1342/1963), 148–57.
11. Forugh Farrokhzad, Iman Biavarim be Aghaz-e Fasl-e Sard (Tehran: Morvarid, 1352/1973), 30–35.
12. Ahmad Shamlu, Ayda, Derakht, Khanjar va Khatereh, 2nd ed. (Tehran: Morvarid, 1344/1965), 125–37. Composed in February 1965.
11. DEVELOPMENT, DISARRAY, AND DISCONTENT (1963–1977)
1. Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Iran, US National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, P850017-2033.
2. Memorandum from Vernon Walters, acting director of Central Intelligence to Henry Kissinger, the president’s assistant for national security affairs, October 7, 1974. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Kissinger Papers, Box CL-152, Iran, Chronological File, 6 October–30 December 1974, Secret. The CIA agent is not identified.
12. CULTURES OF AUTHORITY AND CULTURES OF DISSENT
1. Monday 27 Bahman 1349/February 15, 1971, Yaddashtha-ye ‘Alam, ed. ‘Ali-Naqi ‘Alikhani (Bethesda, MD: Iranbooks, 1993), 2:168.
2. Hajm-e Sabz (Tehran: Rowzan, 1346/1967), 20–23.
3. Gharbzadehgi (Tehran, 1341/1962), 16.
13. THE MAKING OF THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION (1977–1979)
1. Cited in Karim Sanjabi, Omidha va Naomidiha (Hopes and despairs) (London: Nashre Ketab, 1368/1989), 441–42.
2. Ettela’at, no. 15506, 17 Day 1356.
3. 14 Aban 1357/November 6, 1978, cited at http://jamejamonline.ir/ayam/1709458624889167071.
4. Speech in Behesht-e Zahra, February 1, 1979, available at http://imam-khomeini.com/web1/persian/showitem.aspx?cid=957&pid=1042.
14. THE GUARDIAN JURIST AND HIS ADVOCATES
1. Ruhollah Khomeini, Welayat-e Faqih: Hokumat-e Islami (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1357/1978), 23–25.
2. Ibid., 30–31.
3. Ibid., 60.
4. Ibid., 6–7.
5. Khaterat-e Ayatollah Montazeri (Essen, Germany: Entesharat-e Enqlab-e Islami, 2001), 86.
6. Ibid., 30.
7. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Dowran-e Mobarezeh ed. Mohsen Hashemi (Tehran: Daftar-e Nashr-e Ma‘aref-e Enqlab, 1376/1997), 1:62–64.
8. Ibid., 105.
15. CONSOLIDATION OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC (1979–1984)
1. “Qanun-e Asasi-ye Jomhuri-e Islami-e Iran,” Markaz-e Pazhuheshha-ye Majles-e Shura-ye Islami, http://rc.majlis.ir/fa/content/iran constitution. All future references are to this source.
2. Ruhollah Khomeini, “Speech to the Deputies on the Occasion of the First Session of the Islamic Consultative Assembly,” Jamaran, 3 Khordad 1359/May 25, 1980, Sahifeh-e Imam, 12:347.
3. Enqlab-e Islami, 14 Esfand 1359/March 5, 1981.
4. Kayhan, 29 Shahrivar 1360/September 20, 1981, p. 4.
5. Ettela‘at, 10 Mehr 1360/October 3, 1981, p. 2.
6. Ruhollah Khomeini, “Decree Establishing the Executive Committee of the Cultural Revolution,” Jamaran, 23 Khordad 1359/June 12, 1980, Sahifeh-e Imam, 12:431.
16. FACING THE FOE
1. Letter to Mohsen Reza’i, Jamaran, Ruhollah Khomeini, Sahifeh-e Imam, 20:501–2.
2. “Security Council Resolution 598: Iraq-Islamic Republic of Iran,” July 20, 1987 cited in United Nations Peace Agreements Database, at peacemaker.un.org/iraqiran-resolution598.
3. “Message to the Nation on the Occasion of the Anniversary of the Bloody Massacre of Mecca,” 29 Tir 1367/July 20, 1988, Jamaran, Khomeini, Sahifeh-e Imam, vol. 21 (in http://www.jamaran.ir).
4. Hosain-‘Ali Montazeri, Khaterat, p. 302, suppl. 152 (and facs. no. 152-1).
5. Jamaran, 25 Bahman 1367/February 14, 1988, Khomeini, Sahifeh-e Imam, 21:263.
6. Montazeri, Khaterat, 303–4.
7. Fereydun Vahman, Yeksad va shast sal mobarezeh ba diyanat-e Baha’i (Darmstadt, Germany: Asr-e Jadid, 2009), 657.
8. Ruhollah Khomeini, “Vasiyat-nameh-e siyasi-elahi,” Jamaran, 19 Azar 1366/December 11, 1987, Sahifeh-e Imam, 21:391–451 (499).
17. SOCIETY AND CULTURE UNDER THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC
1. Hushang Ebtehaj (H. A. Sayeh), Siah Mashq (Tehran: Nashr-e Karnameh, 1378/1999), 11–12. The title of the ghazal in this collection is “Beh nam-e shoma” (In your name). The musical album Sepideh (Tehran: Ava-ye Shayda, n.d.) is a recording of the original concert in Iran National University (renamed Shahid Beheshti University) in December 1979.
2. Hafez, Divan, ed. Parviz Natel Khanlari, 3rd ed. (Tehran: Khwarazmi, 1362/1983), 1:344–45, no. 164. On the album Bidad by ‘Aref and Shayda Ensembles (Tehran: Del Avaz, 1364/1985), Shajarian is accompanied by Lotfi and Meshkatian, among others.
3. Bahar, Divan, 2:1322. On the album Ahang-e Vafa (Tehran: Del Avaz, 1999), Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Homayun Shajarian are accompanied by the Ava Ensemble.
FURTHER READINGS
Studies cited here cover Western languages and predominantly are in English. Scholarship in Persian is outside the scope of this survey. Works aimed at specialists are generally excluded, but some important primary sources in translation are included. Introductory literature on Iran is too extensive and easily accessible to require inclusion here. Many entries in Encyclopedia Iranica(hereafter EIr) on history and culture of the period—including personalities, events, places, and themes—provide an excellent assessment of the available scholarship.
1. SHI‘ISM AND THE SAFAVID REVOLUTION (1501–1588)
Safavid Iran has received a fair amount of modern scholarly attention since the 1930s. The Cambridge History of Iran: Timurid and Safavid Periods, vol. 6, ed. P. Jackson and L. Lockhart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), is an extensive survey of the Safavid period. Among many important contributions to that volume, see H. R. Roemer, “Safavid Period,” which provides the dynastic history. R. Savory, Iran under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), is a general history with chapters on economic, social, and intellectual aspects and relations with Europe. The rise of the Safavid state has been the subject of several studies, though most of the scholarship has emphasized the religious dimension. M. Hodgson, The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times, volume 3 of The Venture of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), especially the prologue and chapter 1; and S. Dale, The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), provide a broader context. S. A. Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shi‘ite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), is an insightful work of historical sociology utilizing a range of primary sources. A. Newman, Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), explores the foundations of the Safavid socioreligious order and the causes of its eventual downfall. See also five collections of essays on aspects of Safavid politics, society, culture, and foreign relations: J. Calmard, ed., Études Safavides (Paris: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, 1993); C. Melville, ed., Safavid Persia: The History and Politics of an Islamic Society (London: I. B. Tauris, 1996); M. Mazzaoui, ed., Safavid Iran and Her Neighbors (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2003); A. Newman, ed., Society and Culture in the Early Modern Middle East: Studies on Iran in the Safavid Period (Leiden: Brill, 2003); and C. P. Mitchell, ed., New Perspectives on Safavid Iran: Empire and Society (New York: Routledge, 2011). For the prelude leading to the rise of the Safavids, see Walter Hinz, Irans Aufstieg zum Nationalstaat im Fünfzehnten Jahrhundert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1936); and J. Woods, The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1976; new ed., Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999). They examine the century between the decline of the Ilkhanids and the rise of the Ottomans. D. Morgan, Medieval Persia, 1040–1797, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2016), places the Safavids in a broader historical perspective.
On early Safavid messianic Shi‘ism, see Mazzaoui, The Origins of the Ṣafawids: Shi‘ism, Ṣufism, and the Gulat (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1972); and J. Aubin, “L’avènement des Safavides reconsidéré (Études Safavides 3), Moyen Orient et Océan Indien 5 (1988): 1–130. K. Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscape of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2003), explores the cultural and intellectual milieu of the early Safavid era. See also S. Bashir, “Shah Isma‘il and the Qizilbash: Cannibalism in the Religious History of Early Safavid Iran,” History of Religions 45 (2006): 234–56; J. Cole, “Millenarianism in Modern Iran History,” in Imagining the End, Visions of Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 282–311. For a biography of Shah Isma‘il, we still rely on G. Sarwar, History of Shah Isma‘il Safawi (Aligarh, 1939). C. Mitchell, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran: Power, Religion and Rhetoric (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2009), explores state-sponsored rhetoric from the time of Isma‘il to the reign of ‘Abbas I. Two studies, one by J. J. Reid, Tribalism and Society in Islamic Iran, 1500–1629 (Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1983), and another by M. Haneda, Le châh et les Qizilbāš: Le système militaire safavide (Berlin: Schwarz, 1987), examine the Qezilbash oymaq system and the structure of the early Safavid armies.
The administrative history of the Safavid period is examined in two articles by R. Savory: “The Principal Offices of the Ṣafawid State during the Reign of Isma‘il I (907–30/1501–24),” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 23, no. 1 (1960): 91–105, and “The Principal Offices of the Ṣafawid State during the Reign of Ṭahmāsp I (930–84/1524–76),” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 24, no. 1 (1961): 65–85, as well as in his “The Safavid Administrative System” in Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6. W. Floor, in Safavid Government Institutions (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2001), and in his “The Ṣadr or Head of the Safavid Religious Administration, Judiciary and Endowments and Other Members of the Religious Institution,” Zeitschrift Der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 150 (2000): 461–500, further explores the subject. Three manuals of the late Safavid administration are available in English translation: Tadhkirat al-Mulūk, a Manual of Ṣafavid Administration (circa 1137/1725), Persian text and translation with extensive notes by V. Minorsky, Gibb Memorial Series (London: Luzac, 1943); Mirza Rafi‘a, The Dastur al-Moluk: A Safavid State Manual, trans. and ed. W. Floor and M. H. Faghfoory (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2006); and Mirza Naqi Nasiri, Titles & Emoluments in Safavid Iran: A Third Manual of Safavid Administration, trans. W. Floor (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2008).
The diplomatic history of the period is discussed in an early work by K. Bayani, Les relations de l’Iran avec l’Europe occidentale à l’époque Safavide (Paris: Les Presses Modernes, 1937); and L. Lockhart’s chapter in the Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6. W. Floor and E. Herzig, eds., Iran and the World in the Safavid Age (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2012), presents recent scholarship on Safavid foreign relations and the challenges of geographical and religious isolation. A. Allouche, The Origins and Development of the Ottoman-Safavid Conflict (906–962/1500–1555), (Berlin: K. Schwarz Verlag, 1983), and P. Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), are two studies on less explored Safavid-Ottoman relations.
2. THE AGE OF ‘ABBAS I AND THE SHAPING OF THE SAFAVID EMPIRE (1588–1666)
The reign of ‘Abbas I witnessed the production of numerous chronicles and court histories of a greater variety than earlier Safavid rulers, most of which remain available only in Persian. Two notable exceptions are Iskandar Beg Munshi, The History of Shah ‘Abbas the Great, trans. and abridged by R. Savory, 2 vols. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978); and Fazli Beg Khuzani Isfahani, A Chronicle of the Reign of Shah ‘Abbas, ed. C. Melville and K. Ghereglou (Cambridge: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2015). See also S. Quinn and C. Melville “Safavid Historiography,” History of Persian Historiography, ed. C. Melville, vol. 10 of A History of Persian Literature, ed. E. Yarshater (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011); and S. Quinn, Historical Writing during the Reign of Shah ‘Abbas: Ideology, Imitation, and Legitimacy in Safavid Chronicles (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000). For an introduction to the artistic efflorescence during the reign of ‘Abbas I and his successors, see B. Gray, “The Arts in the Safavid Period,” and R. Hillenbrand, “Safavid Architecture,” in the Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6. More recently, S. Canby, ed., Shah ‘Abbas and the Treasures of Imperial Iran (London: British Museum, 2009), provides an overview. K. Rizvi’s The Safavid Dynastic Shrine: Architecture, Religion and Power in Early Modern Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), uses the architecture of the Shaykh Safi al-Din shrine in Ardabil to explore the political authority and religious piety of early Safavid rulers. Two studies by D. Roxburgh—Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-century Iran (Leiden: Brill, 2001), and The Persian Album, 1400–1600: From Dispersal to Collection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005)—explore the collection and recording of material culture. For Isfahan under ‘Abbas I, see S. Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi‘ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008); S. P. Blake, Half the World: The Social Architecture of Safavid Isfahan, 1590–1722 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1999); and his “Shah ‘Abbas and the Transfer of the Safavid Capital from Qazvin to Isfahan,” in A. Newman, ed., Society and Culture in the Early Modern Middle East: Studies on Iran in the Safavid Period (Leiden: Brill, 2003). For textile arts, see C. Bier, Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart: Textile Arts of Safavid and Qajar Iran (16th–19th Centuries), (Washington, DC: Textile Museum, 1987). On the development of Nast‘aliq calligraphy, see S. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008). Two studies by M. Shreve Simpson—Sultan Ibrahim Mirza’s Haft Awrang: A Princely Manuscript from Sixteenth-Century Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) and Princeton’s Great Persian Book of Kings: The Peck Shahnama(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2015)—draw attention to Safavid patronage and the art of bookmaking.
There are several significant studies on the history of trade and economics—and by extension diplomacy—during the reigns of ‘Abbas I and his successors. For an overview, see R. Ferrier, “Trade from the Mid-14th Century to the End of the Safavid Period,” in Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6. R. Matthee, The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), is an excellent study of the political economy of the Safavid period with special reference to Safavid silk production and European trading companies. It relies on extensive archival sources. Two studies, by I. B. McCabe, The Shah’s Silk for Europe’s Silver: The Eurasian Trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India, 1530–1750 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), and S. Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), using rare primary sources to examine the vast network of the Armenian merchants of Isfahan. An in-depth study of the social history, leisure, consumption, and commodities of the Safavid era, relying on Persian and European sources, is R. Matthee, The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500–1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). M. Keyvani, Artisans and Guild Life in the Later Safavid Period (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1982), is a pioneering study with valuable appendices. Two studies—W. Floor, A Fiscal History of Iran in the Safavid and Qajar Periods, 1500–1925 (New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 1998), and more recently, R. Matthee, W. Floor, and P. Clawson, The Monetary History of Iran, From the Safavids to the Qajars (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013)—review the monetary system of the Safavid era, with special attention to the drainage of precious metals.
L. Lockhart, “European Contacts with Persia, 1350–1736,” in the Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, provides an overview of this topic. The accounts of numerous European travelers to Safavid Iran, including the Sherley brothers, Pietro della Valle, Don Garcia de Silva y Figueroa, John Chardin, Jean Thevenot, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Raphael du Mans, Adam Olearius, Engelbert Kaempfer, Pedros Bedik, and Cornelis de Bruyn, illuminate various aspects of society, culture, and politics. W. Floor and M. H. Faghfoory used Dutch archival sources in The First Dutch-Persian Commercial Conflict: The Attack on Qeshm Island, 1645 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2004). A rare account of a Safavid mission to the court of Siam appears in The Ship of Sulaiman, trans. John O’Kane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972). The portion of Evilya Çelebi’s famous travelogue related to Safavid Iran has been published as Travels in Iran and the Caucasus in 1647 and 1654, trans. and annotated by W. Floor (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2010).
The intellectual trends of the Safavid period have received a fair amount of attention. H. Corbin, En Islam iranien: Aspects spirituels et philosphiques, vol. 4, L’École d’Ispahan and Le Douzième Imâm (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), and his “Confessions extatiques de Mir Damad: Maître de théologie à Ispahan,” in Mélanges Louis Massignon, ed. H. Massé (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1956), are among pioneering studies. A. Newman, Safavid Thinkers: The Intellectual Creators of Iran’s Renaissance in the Early Modern Period (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), offers an overview of jurists, theologians and philosophers, and historians of the period. See also S. H. Nasr, “The School of Iṣpahān,” in A History of Muslim Philosophy, ed. M. M. Sharif (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1966), 1:904–32. For studies on Mulla Sadra, see F. Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975); and S. Rizvi, Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī: His Life and Works and the Sources for Safavid Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). For a translation of Mulla Sadra’s well-known work, see The Wisdom of the Throne: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mulla Sadra, trans. J. W. Morris (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). Two other translations of Mulla Sadra’s works are Divine Manifestations Concerning the Secrets of the Perfecting Sciences, transl. F. Asadi Amjad and M. Dasht Bozorgi (London: ICAS Press, 2010) and Metaphysical Penetrations, transl. S. H. Nasr (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Islamic Translation Series, 2014). The Anthologie des philosophes iraniens depuis le XVIIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours, ed. H. Corbin and J. Ashtiyani, 4 vols. (Tehran, 1971–1979), offers specimens of the philosophical writings of the period. See also H. Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdian Iran to Shi‘ite Iran, trans. N. Pearson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), chaps. 5–8. R. Pourjavady, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran: Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Nayrīzī and His Writings, is a case study of a lesser-known philosopher. H. J. J. Winter, “Persian Science in Safavid Times,” in Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, provides a general survey.
On religious trends, see R. Abisaab, Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), which examines the emergence of Twelver Shi‘ism, and the Arab-Persian clerical establishment and its relations with the Safavid state and society. Three widely read Persian works in Shi‘i theology and ethics by Muhammad Baqir Majlisi (Mohammad Baqer Majlesi), are available in English translation: Haqul Yaqeen (Haqq al-Yaqin): A Compendium of Twelver Shia Religious Beliefs, trans. S. A. H. Rizvi (Mumbai: Jafari Propagation Center, 2013); Hayat al-Qulub: Stories of the Prophets, Characteristics and Circumstances of the Prophets and Their Successors, trans. S. A. H. Rizvi (Qom: Ansariyan Publications, 2007); and Ain-al Hayat(‘Ayn al-Hayat): The Essence of Life, trans. S. T. Bilgrami (Qom: Ansariyan Publications, 2014). See also D. J. Stewart, Islamic Legal Orthodoxy: Twelver Shiite Responses to the Sunni Legal System (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1998); and A. Amanat, “Meadow of the Martyrs: Kashifi’s Persianization of the Shi‘i Martyrdom Narrative in Late Timurid Herat,” in Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi‘ism (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), 91–110.
For an overview of Safavid literature, see Z. Safa, “Persian Literature in the Safavid Period,” in the Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6; and E. Yarshater, “Safavid Literature: Progress or Decline,” Iranian Studies 7, nos. 1–2 (1974): 217–70. For poetic trends, see E. Yarshater, “Persian Poetry in the Timurid and Safavid Periods,” Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6; P. Losensky, Welcoming Fighānī: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the Safavid-Mughal Ghazal (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1998); and Losensky, “‘The Equal of Heaven’s Vault’: The Design, Ceremony, and Poetry of the Ḥasanābād Bridge,” in Writers and Rulers: Perspectives from Abbasid to Safavid Times, ed. B. Gruendler and L. Marlow (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2004). On Judeo-Persian literature of the period, see V. B. Moreen, In Queen Esther’s Garden: An Anthology of Judeo-Persian Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
3. THE DEMISE OF THE SAFAVID ORDER AND THE UNHAPPY INTERREGNUMS (1666–1797)
The eighteenth century is among the least studied in early modern Iranian history and the secondary literature on the period is thin. The seminal study of the collapse of the Safavid Empire is L. Lockhart, The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958). M. Dickson’s long review, “The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 82, no. 4 (December 1962): 503–17, provides a critique and serves as a helpful companion to Lockhart’s book. R. Matthee, Persia in Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), reassesses the demise of the Safavid Empire by putting greater emphasis on the syphoning of precious metals and the monetary crisis, military disloyalties, and administrative corruption rather than moral decay. J. Foran, “The Long Fall of the Safavid Dynasty: Moving beyond the Standard Views,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24, no. 2 (May 1992): 281–304, also explores economic factors contributing to the Safavid downfall. For a comparative perspective, see R. D’Souza, “Crisis before the Fall: Some Speculations on the Decline of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals,” Social Scientist 30, nos. 9–10 (September–October 2002): 3–30, which offers a nuanced critique of C. A. Bayly’s interpretation of the decline of the three empires in his Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World 1780–1830 (London: Routledge, 1989).
Studies on the Afghan interlude are few, primarily because of the lack of sources. There are, however, a few accounts written by people who lived through the period. Judas Thaddaeus Krusinski was a Jesuit employed in the service of the Catholic bishop in Isfahan, lived in Iran for twenty years, and witnessed the Afghan invasion. His An Historical Account of the Revolutions in Persia in the Years 1722, 1723, 1724, and 1725 (London: J. Roberts, 1727), provides an European’s perspective on the years immediately following the collapse of Safavid rule. Similarly, A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia and the Papal Mission of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries, 2 vols. (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1939; reprint: London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), is a valuable source. Mohammad Hazin’s memoirs were translated and published by F. C. Belfour, The Life of Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hazin (London: J. Murray, 1830). For the post-Safavid claimants to the throne, see J. Perry, “The Last Safavids, 1722–1773,” Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Iranian Studies 9 (1971): 59–69; and G. Rota, “The Man Who Would Not Be King: Abu’l-Fath Sultan Muhammad Mirza Safavi in India,” Iranian Studies 32, no 4 (1999): 513–35.
There are contemporary Armenian and European accounts of the rise and rule of Nader Shah. Three Armenian accounts are available in English translation: Abraham of Crete, The Chronicle of Abraham of Crete, trans. and annotated by G. A. Bournoutian (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1999); Arak’el of Tabriz, Book of History, trans. and with an introduction by G. A. Bournoutian (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2010); and Abraham of Erevan, History of the Wars: 1721–1736, trans. and annotated by G. A. Bournoutian (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1999). J. Fraser, The History of Nadir Shah Formerly Called Thamas Kuli Khan, the Present Emperor of Persia (London: A. Millar, 1742), was published while Nader was in power. William Jones translated Mirza Mohammad Mahdi Astarabadi, Tārīkh-i Jahān-Gushā-yi Nādirī to French as Histoire de Nader Chah (London, 1770). This was in turn translated into English a few years later as The History of the Life of Nader Shah (London: J. Richardson, 1773). Also useful is J. Hanway, An Historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea . . . to Which Are Added, the Revolutions of Persia during the Present Century, with the Particular History of the Great Usurper, Nadir Kouli, 4 vols. (London, 1753). L. Lockhart’s two studies on Nader Shah are important for their time: The Navy of Nadir Shah (London: Iran Society, 1936); and Nadir Shah: A Critical Study Based Mainly upon Contemporary Sources (London: Luzac, 1938). W. Floor collected Dutch East India Company reports on Nader Shah in The Rise and Fall of Nader Shah: Dutch East India Company Reports, 1730–1747 (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2009). E. Tucker, Nadir Shah’s Quest for Legitimacy in Post-Safavid Iran (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006), and M. Axworthy, Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant(London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), explore new dimensions of Nader’s life and era.
The most comprehensive study of Karim Khan Zand and his era remains J. Perry, Karīm Khān Zand: A History of Iran, 1747–1779 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), which covers his campaigns and state-building efforts. Perry also wrote the essay on the Zand period in Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). T. M. Ricks, Notables, Merchants, and Shaykhs of Southern Iran and Its Ports: Politics and Trade of the Persian Gulf Region, AD 1729–1789 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2012), is another valuable study of the socioeconomic history of the period with special reference to the Persian Gulf. For two German monographs on the Zand period, see M. Roschanzamir, Die Zand-Dynastie (Hamburg: H. Lüdke, 1970), and P. Rajabi, Iran unter Karim Han (1752–1779), (Göttingen, 1970).
T. Naff and R. Owen, eds., Studies in Eighteenth Century Islamic History (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), includes two pertinent contributions, one by A. K. S. Lambton, “The Tribal Resurgence and the Decline of the Bureaucracy in Eighteenth-Century Persia,” and another by H. Algar, “Shi‘ism in Iran in the Eighteenth Century.” For a history of the Usuli-Akhbari conflict that places the religious leaders within their social and economic context, and provides an alternative to Algar’s above chapter, see J. Cole, “Shi‘i Clerics in Iraq and Iran, 1722–1780: The Akhbari-Usuli Conflict Reconsidered,” Iranian Studies 18, no. 1 (Winter 1985): 3–34. For revival of the Sufi orders in the Qajar era, see L. Lewisohn, “An Introduction to the History of Modern Persian Sufism, Part I: The Ni‘matullāhī Order: Persecution, Revival and Schism,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 61, no. 3 (1998): 437–64.
4. THE MAKING OF THE QAJAR ERA (1797–1852)
Modern studies on Qajar Iran appeared as early as 1890s but greater attention to this period began in earnest in the 1960s. There are several collections of articles and essays that serve as general studies and introductions to the Qajar period. The chapters related to the Qajar period in Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, ed. P. Avery, G. Hambly, and C. Melville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), survey aspects of the history of the period. A. K. S. Lambton, Qajar Persia: Eleven Studies (London: I. B. Tauris, 1987), brings together her valuable articles on the Qajar era in one volume. Lambton’s pioneering Landlords and Peasants in Persia: A Study of Land Tenure and Land Revenue Administration (London: Oxford University Press, 1953) devotes several chapters to the Safavid and Qajar periods. Qajar Iran: Political, Social, and Cultural Change, 1800–1925, ed. C. Bosworth and C. Hillenbrand (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983), comprises twenty-one articles on the political, cultural, and social history of period. Religion and Society in Qajar Iran, ed. R. Gleave (London: Routledge, 2005), addresses the question of the relationship between religion and society. Two other collections of articles also provide useful introductions to the Qajar period: Society and Culture in Qajar Iran: Studies in Honor of Hafez Farmayan, ed. E. L. Daniel (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2002), and War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and Present, ed. R. Farmanfarmaian (London: Routledge, 2008).
The early history of the Qajar period, including the rise of the dynasty and the consolidation of power, remains less studied. G. Hambly’s essays in the Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7 (“Āghā Muhammad Khān and the Establishment of the Qājār Dynasty” and “Iran during the Reigns of Fath ‘Alī Shāh and Muhammad Shāh”), are the best introductions. See also EIr: “Fath-‘Ali Shah” (A. Amanat). L. Diba’s article “Introducing Fath ‘Ali Shah: Production and Dispersal of the Shahanshahnama Manuscripts,” in Shahnama Studies, ed. C. Melville (Cambridge: Centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge, 2006), 1:239–58, demonstrates how Fath ‘Ali Shah styled himself as a king along a traditional Persian model. A. Amanat, “The Kayanid Crown and Qajar Reclaiming of Royal Authority,” Iranian Studies 34, nos. 1–4 (2001): 17–30, explores Qajar legitimacy strategies through the lens of art history and material culture. A. Ashraf, “The Politics of Gift Exchange in Early Qajar Iran, 1785–1834,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58, no. 2 (April 2016), 550–76, underscores the significance of gift giving in early Qajar political culture. Ahmad Mirza ‘Azod al-Dowleh’s important Tarikh-e ‘Azodi is translated as Life at the Court of the Early Qajar Shahs, trans. and ed. M. M. Eskandari-Qajar (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2014). Two Qajar chronicles are available in translation: H. J. Brydges, The Dynasty of the Kajars (London: J. Bohn, 1833), and History of Persia under Qajar Rule, trans. H. Busse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972). R. G. Watson, A History of Persia (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1866), is partially based on Persian contemporary chronicles.
Several studies have explored the role of Iran in the entangled politics of European powers. J. B. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1795–1880 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968); E. Ingram, Britain’s Persian Connection 1798–1828: Prelude to the Great Game in Asia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); M. Yapp, Control of the Persian Mission, 1822–36 (Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham, 1960); and Yapp, Strategies of British India: Britain, Iran, and Afghanistan, 1798–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980)—all study British political, economic, and diplomatic interests in Iran and Persian Gulf. M. Afchar, La politiques européenne en Perse (Berlin: Librairie Orientale Iranschahr, 1921), is still a useful source for the diplomacy of the nineteenth century. F. Adamiyat, Bahrein Islands: A Legal and Diplomatic Study of the British-Iranian Controversy (New York: F. A. Praeger, 1955), addresses similar questions but with greater use of Persian-language sources. I. Amini, Napoleon and Persia: Franco-Persian Relations under the First Empire (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 1999), is a pioneering study of the subject.
The best known among the numerous European travelogues from the first decades of the nineteenth century are those by Edward Scott Waring, Pierre-Amédée Jaubert, Harford Jones Bridges, John Malcolm, James Morier, William Ouseley, Robert Ker Porter, James Baillie Fraser, Henry C. Rawlinson, Gaspard Drouville, Adrien Dupré, and Alfred Gardane. Translations of early Qajar travels abroad include Abol-Hassan Shirazi (Ilchi), A Persian at the Court of King George, 1809–10: The Journal of Mirza Abul Hassan Khan, ed. and trans. M. Morris Cloake (London: David and Charles, 1989); and Najaf Kuli Mirza, Journal of Residence in England and of a Journey from and to Syria of . . . Reeza Koolee Meerza, Njaf Koolee Meerza, and Taymour Meerza of Persia, trans. A. Y. Khayyat (London: W. Tyler, 1939). For a study of British diplomats, travelers, missionaries, and officers, see D. Wright, The English amongst the Persians during the Qajar Period, 1787–1921 (London: Heinemann, 1977), and his study of Persian visitors to Britain, The Persians amongst the English (London: I. B. Tauris, 1985). His collected essays appear as Britain and Iran, 1790–1980 (London: Iran Society, 2003). N. Green, The Love of Strangers: What Six Muslim Students Learned in Jane Austen’s London (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), offers an imaginative portrayal of Iranian students of the early Qajar era in 1815 England. H. McKenzie Johnston, Ottoman and Persian Odysseys (London: British Academic Press, 1998) is a biography of James Morier and provides some details on the production of Hajji Baba of Ispahan.
M. Atkin, Russia and Iran, 1780–1828 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980) studies Russo-Persian relations and the origins of the conflict in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Essays in the Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, by F. Kazemzadeh, “Iranian Relations with Russia and the Soviet Union, to 1921,” and S. Shaw, “Iranian Relations with the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” offer general introductions. Other studies include P. W. Avery, “An Enquiry into the Outbreak of the Second Russo-Persian War, 1826–28,” ed. C. E. Bosworth, in Iran and Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971), 17–46; F. Mostashari, On the Religious Frontiers: Tsarist Russia and Islam in the Caucasus(London: I. B. Tauris, 2006); and L. Kelly, Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran: Alexander Girboyedov and Imperial Russia’s Mission to the Shah of Persia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002). See also M. L. Entner, Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, 1828–1914 (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1965); G. A. Bournoutian, The Khanate of Erevan Under Qajar Rule, 1795–1828 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1992); and Bournoutian, From Tabriz to St. Petersburg: Iran’s Mission of Apology to Russia in 1829 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2014). Bournoutian has also published several collection of documents and translations of local histories, including Jamal Javanshir Qarabaghi, Tarikh-e Qarabagh, trans. and annotated by G.A. Bournoutian (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1994); Russia and the Armenians of Transcaucasia, 1797–1889 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1998); and The 1823 Russian Survey of the Karabagh Province: A Primary Source on the Demography and Economy of Karabagh in the Early 19th Century (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2011). A. Amanat, “‘Russian Intrusion into the Guarded Domain’: Reflections of a Qajar Statesman on European Expansion,” Journal of the American Society of Oriental Studies 113, no. 1 (1993): 35–56, explores responses among the Qajar elite to Russian expansion.
The history of the Qajar clerical establishment is the focus of H. Algar, Religion and State in Iran, 1785–1906: The Role of the Ulama in the Qajar Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). J. Cole, “Shi‘i Clerics in Iraq and Iran, 1722–1780: The Akhbari-Usuli Conflict Reconsidered,” Iranian Studies 18, no. 1 (1985): 3–34, provides an alternative socioreligious perspective. Essays in Authority and Political Culture in Shi‘ism, ed. S. A. Arjomand (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), also examine the institutionalization of Shi‘ism from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries and provide useful documents and primary sources. The volume includes A. Amanat, “In Between the Madrasa and the Marketplace: The Designation of Clerical Leadership in Modern Shi‘ism.” S. A. Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam, also provides a sociological reading of the Qajar hierocracy. J. Cole, Roots of North Indian Shi‘ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722–1859 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), offers a comparative perspective on the development of Shi‘ism in the early nineteenth century. M. Litvak, Shi‘i Scholars of Nineteenth Century Iraq: The ‘Ulama of Najaf and Karbala’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) is a study of patronage and scholarship and the ulama network in Iran and India. M. Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and Historiography (New York: Palgrave, 2001), employs eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Indo-Persian texts to demonstrate how vernacular forms of Indo-Iranian modernity evolved in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The development of messianic Shi‘ism and its encounter with the Qajar clerical establishment, with special reference to the Babi movement, is studied in A. Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844–1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989). D. MacEoin, The Messiah of Shiraz: Studies in Early and Middle Babism (Leiden: Brill, 2009), also traces the evolution of Shaykhism into the Babi movement and its development after 1850. For a collection of Western accounts of the Babi and Baha’i religions, see M. Momen, The Babi and Baha’i Religions, 1844–1944: Some Contemporary Western Accounts (Oxford: George Ronald, 1981). See also his “The Social Basis of the Babi Upheavals in Iran (1848–53): A Preliminary Analysis,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 15, no. 2 (May 1983): 157–83. A number of translations and edited volumes by E. G. Browne on the history of the Babis and Baha’is include A Travellers Narrative Written to Illustrate the Episode of the Bab, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891); The Tarikh-i-Jadid or New History of Mirza ‘Ali Muhammad the Bab(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1893); and Materials for the Study of the Babi Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1918). His A Year amongst the Persians (London: A. and C. Blake, 1893), provides a unique window onto the heterodox milieu of the time. See also H. M. Balyuzi, Edward Granville Browne and the Baha’i Faith (London: George Ronald, 1970). T. Lawson, Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam: Qur’an, Exegesis, Messianism, and the Literary Origins of the Babi Religion (London: Routledge, 2012) is the only detailed study of Babi hermeneutics.
5. NASER AL-DIN SHAH AND MAINTAINING A FRAGILE BALANCE (1848–1896)
The second half of the nineteenth century has received greater scholarly attention. A. Amanat, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarch, 1831–1896 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), serves as a biography and a critical analysis of the institution of monarchy in Iran. M. Ekhtiar, Modern Science and Education in Qajar Iran: the Dar al-Funun(London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); J. Lorentz, “Iran’s Great Reformer of the Nineteenth Century: An Analysis of Amir Kabir’s Reforms,” Iranian Studies 4, nos. 2–3 (Spring 1971): 85–103, and A. Amanat, “The Downfall of Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir and the Problem of Ministerial Authority in Qajar Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23 (1991): 577–99, are among the few available studies on Amir Kabir era in Western languages. Two studies on government administration and reform in the Naseri period—S. Bakhash, Iran: Monarchy, Bureaucracy, and Reform Under the Qajars: 1858–1896 (London: Ithaca Press, 1978); and A. R. Sheikholeslami, The Structure of Central Authority in Qajar Iran, 1871–1896 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997)—rely on an array of Persian and European primary and archival sources. G. Nashat, The Origins of Modern Reform in Iran, 1870–80 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), is the only book-length publication on the age of Moshir al-Dowleh.
C. Issawi, The Economic History of Iran, 1800–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), provides an overview of major trends in Iran’s economy and trade through a collection of mostly English-language primary sources. An earlier article by Issawi, “The Tabriz-Trabzon Trade, 1830–1900: Rise and Decline of a Route,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 1, no. 1 (1970): 18–27, examines an important overland trade route. A. Amanat, Cities and Trade: Consul Abbott on the Economy and Society of Iran, 1847–1866 (London: Ithaca Press, 1983), contains three substantial reports with details of urban and rural population, trade and guilds, and local crafts and industries. S. Mahdavi, For God, Mammon, and Country: A Nineteenth-Century Persian Merchant, Haj Muhammad Hassan Amin Al-Zarb (1834–1898), (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), is a study of one of the nineteenth century’s prominent merchants. W. Floor, Agriculture in Qajar Iran (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2003); Guilds, Merchants, and Ulama in Nineteenth-Century Iran (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2009); and “Tea Consumption and Imports in Qajar Iran,” Studia Iranica 33 (2004): 47–111, provide useful leads on sources and potential avenues for future research. His A Fiscal History of Iran in the Safavid and Qajar Periods, 1500–1925 (New York: Bibliotheca Persia Press, 1998), is a survey of four hundred years of Iran’s economy. A three-part study by M. Nouraei and V. Martin, “The Role of the ‘Karguzar’ in the Foreign Relations of State and Society of Iran from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to 1921,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15, no. 3 (2005): 261–77; 16, no. 1 (2006): 29–41; and 16, no. 2 (2006): 151–63, examines the evolution of this important office. On banking in Qajar Iran, see G. Jones, Banking and Empire in Iran: The History of the British Bank of the Middle East, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). On British economic interests in Iran and in the Persian Gulf, including the Karun navigation concession, see S. Shahnavaz, Britain and South-West Persian 1880–1914: A Study of Imperialism and Economic Dependence (London and New York: Routledge, 2014). See also A. Amanat, EIr: “British Influence in Persia: Qajar Period.”
Ulrich Marzolph, in his Narrative Illustrations in Persian Lithographic Books (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001), and in his numerous other publications, examines the lithographic literature and print culture of Qajar Iran. P. Avery, “Printing, the Press and Literature in Modern Iran,” in Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 7:815–69, offers an overview. At the Gate of Modernism: Qajar Iran in the Nineteenth Century, ed. E. M. Jeremiás (Piliscsaba, Hungary: Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, 2012), is a collection of essays on modernity and encounters with Europe. A seminal study on medicine in Qajar Iran is J. E. Polak, Persien: Das Land und seine Bewohner (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1865). For a study of the author and his work, see A. Gäuchter, Briefe aus Persien: Jacob E. Polaks Medizinische Berichte (Vienna: New Academic Press, 2013). F. Speziale, Hospitals in Iran and India, 1500–1950s (Leiden: Brill, 2012), is a novel study of coexistence of traditional medicine and modern hospitals.
M. Volodarsky, “Persia’s Foreign Policy between the Two Herat Crises, 1831–56,” Middle Eastern Studies 21, no. 2 (1985): 111–51, is among the few studies using Russian archives on the Herat crisis. Other studies include H. W. C. Davis, The Great Game in Asia (1800–1844), (London: Oxford University Press, 1927); P. M. Sykes, A History of Afghanistan, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan & Co., 1940); and P. Hopkirk, The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (New York: Kodansha International, 1992), which discuss the Herat crisis in the context of broader geopolitics and the emergence of the so-called Persian Question. G. Curzon’s highly informative Persia and the Persian Question, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1892) is a clear demonstration of British imperial anxieties over Iran. Studies on Russo-Persian and Anglo-Persian diplomatic rivalry in the latter half of the nineteenth century include F. Kazemzadeh’s seminal Russia and Britain in Persia, 1864–1914: A Study in Imperialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), as well as R. L. Greaves, Persia and the Defense of India 1884–1892 (London: Athlone Press, 1959); more recently L. Stebbins, British Imperialism in Qajar Iran: Consuls, Agents and Influence in the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris, 2017). Most of the scholarship on German and Austrian relations with Iran during the nineteenth century is in German, with the notable exception of B. G. Martin, German-Persian Diplomatic Relations 1873–1912 (London: Mouton and Co., S-Gravenhage, 1959). A. Yeselson, United States-Persian Diplomatic Relations, 1883–1921 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1956), is a pioneering study about the topic in the English language. Perso-Ottoman frontiers in the Qajar period are studied in S. Ateş, Ottoman-Iranian Borderlands: Making a Boundary, 1843–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Studies of new political, religious, and social trends during the Naseri period include N. R. Keddie, Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn “al-Afghānī”: A Political Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); M. Bayat’s pioneering Mysticism and Dissent: Socioreligious Thought in Qajar Iran(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1982); J. Cole, Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Baha’i Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); and H. Algar’s highly partisan Mirza Malkum Khan: A Study in the History of Iranian Modernism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). On the Jewish community in Iran and its relations with religious authorities, see D. Tsadik, Between Foreigners and Shi‘is: Nineteenth-Century Iran and Its Jewish Minority (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007).
M. Momen, The Baha’i Communities of Iran, 1851–1921, vol. 1: The Northern Iran (Oxford, UK: George Ronald, 2015), studies social history of transformation of the Babi communities into the Baha’i faith. Y. Ioannesyan, The Development of the Babi/Baha’i Communities: Exploring Baron Rosen’s Archives (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013), provides new Russian archival material on the Baha’is in the late nineteenth century. A. Amanat and F. Vahman, Az Tehran ta ‘Akka: Babiyan va Baha’iyan dar Asnad-e Dowran-e Qajar (Copenhagen: Ashkaar Publishers, 2016), is a documentary history of the Babis and Baha’is in mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman exile and in Iran. A. D. Becker, Revival and Awakening: American Evangelical Missionaries in Iran and Origins of the Assyrian Nationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015) is an excellent study of the role of the missionaries in development of ethnic nationalism.
Studies on the social history of the period include five book-length studies of cities. H. Walcher, In the Shadow of the King: Zill al-Sultan and Isfahan under the Qajars (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008), studies the politics of notables, minorities, missionaries, and European representatives during the long tenure of Zell al-Soltan. C. Werner, An Iranian Town in Transition: A Social and Economic History of the Elites of Tabriz, 1747–1848 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000), covers the first half of the century using waqf documents. J. Clark, Provincial Concerns: A Political History of the Iranian Province of Azerbaijan, 1848–1906 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2006); C. Adle and B. Hourcade, Téhéran: Capitale bicentenaire (Paris: Institute Français de Recherche en Iran, 1992), partially examines history of the Iranian capital in the Qajar period. J. M. Gustafson, Kirman and the Qajar Empire: Local Dimensions of Modernity in Iran, 1794–1914 (New York: Routledge, 2015), mostly examines urban notables of Kerman. See also C. E. Davies, “Qajar Rule in Fars Prior to 1849,” Iran 25 (1987), 125–53. On tribes and forces of modernity in the Qajar era, see A. Khazeni, Tribes and Empires on the Margins of Nineteenth-Century Iran (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010); and G. R. Garthwaite, Khans and Shahs: A History of the Bakhtiyari Tribe in Iran, 2nd ed. (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010).
N. R. Keddie, Religion and Rebellion in Iran: The Tobacco Protest of 1891–1892 (London: Cass, 1966), provides a pioneering study of the tobacco protest using a variety of sources, including the British National Archives. J. de Groot, Religion, Culture and Politics in Iran: From the Qajars to Khomeini (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), offers a perceptive study of culture and religion in the Qajar and Pahlavi periods, with an emphasis on Iran’s tradition of social protest. More recently, R. Kazemi, “The Tobacco Protest in Nineteenth-Century Iran: The View from a Provincial Town,” Journal of Persianate Studies 7, no. 2 (2014): 251–95, has contributed to our knowledge of how the protest unfolded in Shiraz. J. D. Gurney and M. Sifatgul, Qum dar Qaḥṭī-i Buzurg-i 1288 Qamarī (Qom: Kitabkhanah-i Buzurg-i Hazrat Ayatullah al-‘Uzma Mar‘ashi Najafi, 2008), brings to light an extraordinary first-person account of the Great Famine in Qom and its effects.
On the history of women and gender, A. Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), explores how Western notions of modernity spurred changes in Iranian gender and sexual norms. W. Floor, A Social History of Sexual Relations in Iran (Washington, DC: Mage, 2008), devotes sections to the Qajar period. The Education of Women and the Vices of Men: Two Qajar Tracts, trans. and with an introduction by H. Javadi and W. Floor (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010), presents a fascinating debate on the sexes in the late Qajar era. M. M. Ringer, Education, Religion and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in Qajar Iran (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2001), surveys military educational reforms, missionary schools, and modern curricula through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. V. Martin, The Qajar Pact: Bargaining, Protest and the State in Nineteenth-Century Persia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), sheds light on the nonelite, including women and slaves. On slavery in Iran and the Persian Gulf, see also B. A. Mirzai, A History of Slavery and Emancipation in Iran, 1800–1929 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017); J. Zdanowski, Slavery and Manumission: British Policy in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf in the First Half of the 20th Century (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 2012); and A. Amanat and A. Khazeni, “The Steppe Roads of Central Asia and the Captivity Narrative of Mirza Mahmud Taqi Ashtiyani,” in Writing Travel in Central Asian History, ed. N. Green (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014), 113–34.
Studies on travel literature include N. Sohrabi, Taken for Wonder: Nineteenth-Century Travel Accounts from Iran to Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) and A Shi‘ite Pilgrimage to Mecca (1885–1886): The Safarnameh of Mirza Mohammad Hosayn Farahani, ed. and trans., and with annotations by, H. F. Farmayan and E. L. Daniel (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990). Two travel diaries of Naser al-Din Shah are available in translation: The Diary of H.M. The Shah of Persia: During His Tour through Europe in A.D. 1873, trans. J. Redhouse (London: J. Murray, 1874; reprint, Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1995); and A Diary Kept by His Majesty, the Shah of Persia during His Journey to Europe in 1878, trans. J. W. A. H. Schilndler and Baron L. de Norman (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1879). Zayn al-‘Abdedin Maragheh’i’s fictional travelogue is translated as Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beg, trans. J. D. Clark (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2006).
Art and architecture of the Qajar period as of late received the deserved attention. See B. W. Robinson’s pioneering “Persian Painting under the Zand and Qajar Dynasties,” in Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 7:870–89; L. Diba and M. Ekhtiar, eds., Royal Qajar Paintings: The Qajar Epoch, 1785–1925 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999), a collection of essays accompanying the catalog of an exhibition at Brooklyn Museum; A. Amanat, “Court Patronage and Public Space: Abu’l-Hasan Sani’ al-Mulk and the Art of Persianizing the Other in Qajar Iran,” Court Cultures in the Muslim World, Seven to Nineteenth Centuries, ed. A. Fuess and J. Hartung (London: Routledge Taylor and Francis, 2011), 408–44; and M. Ritter, Moscheen und Madrasabauten in Iran, 1785–1848 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). On early photography in Qajar Iran, see P. Khosronejad, Untold Stories: The Socio-Cultural Life of Images in Qajar Era Iran (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2015); A. Behdad, Camera Orientalis: Reflections on Photography of the Middle East (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); and S. G. Scheiwiller, Liminalities of Gender and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Iranian Photography: Desirous Bodies (New York: Routledge, 2017).
6. THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION
There is a large body of literature on the Constitutional Revolution in European languages. E. G. Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905–1909 (London, 1910), is the earliest account in English conveying the voices of the Iranian revolutionaries. See the new edition with an introduction by A. Amanat (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 1995). A. Kasravi, History of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, trans. E. Siegel (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2006), is the only Persian general account of the revolution available in English translation. The multiauthored entry “Constitutional Revolution” in Encyclopedia Iranica (by A. Amanat, V. Martin, S.A. Arjomand, M. Ettehadiyeh-Nezam-Mafi, S. Sirjani and S. Soroudi) offers a succinct survey of the intellectual trends, events, a summary of the Constitution of 1906–1907 and other aspects. Modern book-length studies of the revolution include V. Martin, Islam and Modernism: The Iranian Revolution of 1906 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989), which highlights the role of the ‘ulama; M. Bayat, Iran’s First Revolution: Shi‘ism and the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1909 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), which stresses the place of freethinkers and nonconformists; and J. Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), which offers a class analysis and focuses on the role of women and the underprivileged. A collection of essays—Iran’s Constitutional Revolution: Popular Politics, Cultural Transformations and Transnational Connections, ed. H. Chehabi and V. Martin (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), and N. Sohrabi, Revolution and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran, 1902–1910 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)—provide a comparative perspective. See also N. R. Keddie, “Iranian Revolutions in Comparative Perspective,” American Historical Review 88 (1983): 579–98; and Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and Narratives of the Enlightenment, ed. A. Ansari (London: Gingko Library, 2017).
On women in the constitutional era, A. Najmabadi, The Story of the Daughters of Quchan: Gender and National Memory in Iranian History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998), portrays the plight of captives abducted and the resonance of this over time. A. Amanat, “Memory and Amnesia in the Historiography of the Constitutional Revolution,” in Iran in the 20th Century: Historiography and Political Culture, ed. T. Atabaki (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), highlights the Babi background of popular leaders of the revolution. R. M. Afshari, “The Historians of the Constitutional Movement and the Making of the Iranian Populist Tradition,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 25, no. 3 (1993): 477–94, also touches on the same issues. H. Berberian, Armenians and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1911: “The Love for Freedom Has No Fatherland” (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), discusses Armenian politicization and participation in the Constitutional Revolution. On Jewish conversions and fluid identities, especially in the late Qajar era and the early Pahlavi period, see M. Amanat, Jewish Identities in Iran: Resistance and Conversion to Islam and the Baha’i Faith (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011). D. Tsadik, “The Legal Status of Religious Minorities: Imāmī Shīʿī Law and Iran’s Constitutional Revolution,” Islamic Law and Society 10, no. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2003): 376–408, examines the legal ambivalence toward Iranian religious minorities in the constitutional period. On Jewish communities in modern Iran, see H. M. Sarshar, Esther’s Children (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2002). On Baha’i education and communities in the constitutional era, see S. Shahvar, The Forgotten Schools: The Baha’is and Modern Education in Iran, 1899–1934 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), and Shahvar’s collection of letters and reports of Russian officials, The Baha’is of Iran, Transcaspia and Caucasus, 2 vols. (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011–2012).
For the clerical attitude toward the Constitutional Revolution, in addition to the aforementioned, see “Two Clerical Tracts on Constitutionalism,” trans. H. Dabashi, in S. A. Arjomand, ed., Authority and Political Culture in Shi‘ism, which provides an overview of Shaykh Fazlollah Nuri’s anticonstitutional position. C. Kurzman, ed., Modernist Islam, 1840–1940: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), includes Mohammad Hosain Na’ini’s theory of Islamic governance, translated and edited by M. Sadri. M. M. Farzaneh, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the Clerical Leadership of Khurasani (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2015), is a study of the renowned Najaf-based marja‘s and their support for the Iranian constitutionalists. See also A. Fathi, “Ahmad Kasravi and Seyyed Jamal Waez on Constitutionalism in Iran,” Middle Eastern Studies 29 (1993): 702–13.
W. M. Shuster’s The Strangling of Persia: A Record of European Diplomacy and Oriental Intrigue (London: T. F. Unwin, 1912), reveals how British and Russian interests in Iran crushed the fledgling constitutional democracy there. See also R. A. McDaniel, The Shuster Mission and the Persian Constitutional Revolution (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1974). For an extensive study on British interests and opposition to the imperial intervention in Iran, see M. Bonakdarian, Britain and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–191: Foreign Policy, Imperialism, and Dissent (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press and Iran Heritage Foundation, 2006). A. Destrée, Les fonctionnaires belges au service de la Perse (Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1976), also examines the constitutional period. D. Fraser, Persia and Turkey in Revolt (London: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1910), is a hostile treatment of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution by a conservative correspondent of the Times of London. H Javadi, ed., Letters from Tabriz: The Russian Suppression of the Iranian Constitutional Movement, translated from the Persian by E. G. Browne (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2008), should be considered a supplement to Browne’s The Persian Revolution.
E. G. Browne, The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), is a pioneering study based on Persian sources of the role of the press in the period. See also S. Balaghi, “Print Culture in Late Qajar Iran: The Cartoons of Kashkūl,” Iranian Studies 34 (2001): 165–81. E. G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, vol. 4 (Cambridge: University Press, 1928), and B. Alavi, Geschichte und Entwicklung der modernen persischen Literatur (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1964), survey the literature of the Constitutional period. See also H. Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); S. Soroudi, “Poet and Revolution: The Impact of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution on the Literary and Social Outlook of the Poet,” Iranian Studies 12, nos. 1–2 (1979): 3–41 and also 12, nos. 3–4 (1979): 239–73; A. Bausani, “Europe and Iran in Contemporary Persian Literature,” East and West 11 (1960): 3–14; and F. Machalski, La littérature de l’Iran contemporain, vol. 1, La poésie persane de l’époque de “réveil des iraniens” jusqu’au coup d’état de Reḍā Ḫān, environ 1880–1921 (Warsaw: Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1965).
7. THE GREAT WAR AND THE RISE OF REZA KHAN (1914–1925)
The literature on the impact of World War I on Iran has received a fair amount of attention. O. Bast’s La Perse et la Grande Guerre (Tehran: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, 2002), is a valuable study of the war and diplomacy of the period. T. Atabaki, ed., Iran and the First World War: Battleground of the Great Powers (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), includes a number of important essays on the secret activities of Ottomans in Iran during the war, the Kurdish tribes along the Iran-Ottoman border, and the establishment of the Communist Party in Iran. There are three studies on Anglo-Iranian relations during World War I and the postwar era: N. S. Fatemi, Diplomatic History of Persia, 1917–1923: Anglo-Russian Power Politics in Iran (New York: Russell F. Moore, 1952); W. J. Olson, Anglo-Iranian Relations during World War I (London: F. Cass, 1984); and H. Sabahi, British Policy in Persia, 1918–1925 (London: Frank Cass, 1990). For Sykes and the South Persian Rifles, see A. Wynn, Persia in the Great Game: Sir Percy Sykes, Explorer, Consul, Soldier, Spy (London: John Murray, 2003). See also P. Sykes, “Persia and the Great War,” Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 9, no. 4 (1922): 175–87; Sykes, “South Persia and the Great War,” Geographical Journal 58, no. 2 (1921): 101–16; and Sykes, “The British Flag on the Caspian: A Side-Show of the Great War,” Foreign Affairs 2, no. 2 (1923): 282–94. F. Safiri’s doctoral dissertation, “The South Persian Rifles” (University of Edinburgh, 1976), is the only scholarly study in English on the subject (available only in Persian translation). See also C. J. Edmonds, East and West of Zagros; Travel, War, and Politics in Iraq and Persia, ed. Yann Richard (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
For a survey of the beginning of the oil exploration, see R. W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum Company: The Developing Years, 1901–1932, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); H. Nabavi, “D’Arcy’s Oil Concession of 1901: Oil Independence, Foreign Influence and Characters Involved,” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 33, no. 2 (2010): 18–33; and chapters in Khazeni, Tribes and Empires. For the Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919, see H. Katouzian, “The Campaign against the Anglo-Iranian Agreement of 1919,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 25, no. 1 (May 1998): 5–46; and W. J. Olson, “The Genesis of the Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919,” in Towards a Modern Iran: Studies in Thought, Politics, and Society, ed. E. Kedourie and S.G. Haim (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1980): 184–216. On the Khayabani revolt, see H. Katouzian, “The Revolt of Shaykh Muḥammad Khiyābānī,” Iran 37 (1999): 155–72.
On German-Iranian relations, see O. Bast, Les Allemands en Perse pendant la première guerre mondiale d’après les sources diplomatiques françaises (Paris: Peeters, 1997), using German and French diplomatic sources. See also U. Gehrke, Persien in der deutschen Orient-Politik während des Ersten Weltkrieges, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1960), and his “Germany and Persia up to 1919,” in Germany and the Middle East, 1835–1939, ed. Jehuda Lothar Wallach (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1975). See also the entry by O. Bast in EIr: “Germany, i. German-Persian Relations” and the bibliography. C. Sykes’s Wassmuss, the German Lawrence (New York: Longmans, Green, 1926), is a popular biography of this intriguing figure. On the influence of Bolshevism and European revolutionary ideologies on Iranian politics, see related essays in S. Cronin, ed., Iranian-Russian Encounters: Empires and Revolutions since 1800 (New York: Rutledge, 2013). C. Chaquèri’s The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, 1920–1921: Birth of the Trauma (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995), is the only book-length study in English of the Jangal movement and its relations with the Bolsheviks. See also P. Dailami, “The Bolshevik Revolution and the Genesis of Communism in Iran, 1917–1920,” Central Asian Survey 11, no. 3 (1992): 51–82; Dailami, “The Bolsheviks and the Jangali Revolutionary Movement, 1915–1920,” Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique 31, no. 1 (1990): 43–60; J. Afary, “The Contentious Historiography of the Gilan Republic in Iran: A Critical Exploration,” Iranian Studies 28 (1995): 3–24; and A. Arkun, “Armenians and the Jangalis,” Iranian Studies 30 (1997): 25–52. Utilizing mostly Russian sources, F. Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Transcaucasia, 1917–1921 (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951), examines the impact of the Russian Revolution on the political realities in the Caucasus. Ottoman-Iranian relations during World War I remain largely underexplored. See J. P. Luft, “The Iranian Nationalists in Istanbul during World War I,” in C. Hillenbrand, ed., Studies in Honour of Clifford Edmund Bosworth (Leiden: Brill, 2000).
On the rise of Reza Shah, see C. Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah: From Qajar Collapse to Pahlavi Rule (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998); S. Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran, 1910–1926 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997); and M. P. Zirinsky, “Imperial Power and Dictatorship: Britain and the Rise of Reza Shah, 1921–1926,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24 (November 1992): 639–63. Largely relying on British sources, they offer complementary insights into the rise of the Pahlavi order.
8. REZA SHAH AND THE PAHLAVI ORDER (1925–1941)
For an overview and introduction to the Pahlavi period, see essays in Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1991), especially chapter 6, “The Pahlavi Autocracy: Riza Shah, 1921–1941,” by G. Hambly. See also D. Wilber, Riza Shah Pahlavi: The Resurrection and Reconstruction of Iran 1878–1944 (Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1975). Two edited volumes—T. Atabaki and E. Zürcher eds., Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization under Atatürk and Reza Shah (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), and S. Cronin, The Making of Modern Iran State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921–1941 (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), explore political, social, and cultural aspects of Reza Shah’s rule. A. Banani, The Modernization of Iran, 1921–1941 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961), represents an early interpretation of modernization as the triumph of secular nationalism. S. Cronin has also written two other valuable studies on the Reza Shah period: Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and the New State, 1921–1941 (London: Routledge, 2007), and Soldiers, Shahs and Subalterns in Iran: Opposition, Protest and Revolt, 1921–1941 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Part 2 of Lambton, Landlords and Peasants, is devoted to the study of agrarian relations in the early Pahlavi era. On the most influential statesman of the period, see M. Rezun, “Reza Shah’s Court Minister: Teymourtash,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 12 (1980): 119–37.
The rise of nationalist ideology during the Reza Shah period has received ample scholarly attention. R. W. Cottam, Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964), examines the impact of nationalism on Iranian political culture. More recently, F. Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804–1946 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), draws attention to the significance of land and boundaries. F. Vejdani, Making History in Iran: Education, Nationalism, and Print Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), examines historical writing, textbooks, and educational curricula and their significance in the shaping of national identity. Vejdani’s “Appropriating the Masses: Folklore Studies, Ethnography, and Interwar Iranian Nationalism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44, no. 3 (2012): 507–26, explores the preoccupation with popular culture. A. Marashi, Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power, and the State, 1870–1940 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008), examines the role of print capitalism, state monuments, and Iran’s cultural heritage in the shaping of Iranian nationalism. His “Imagining Hafez: Rabindranath Tagore in Iran, 1932,” Journal of Persianate Studies 3, no. 1 (2010): 46–77, draws on the Indo-Iranian connection. For a survey of nationalist trends during the 1920s, see also H. Katouzian, “Nationalist Trends in Iran, 1921–1926,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 10, no. 4 (November 1979): 533–51. A. Ansari’s excellent study, The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), locates Reza Shah in the context of the “enlightenment nationalists” of the Constitutional Revolution. A. Marashi and K. Aghaie, eds., Rethinking Iranian Nationalism and Modernity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), includes a number of essays addressing the contingent nature of nationalism.
On the discourse of national identity, see also A. Ashraf, “The Crisis of National and Ethnic Identities in Contemporary Iran,” Iranian Studies 26 (1993): 159–64, and A. Amanat, “Iranian Identity Boundaries: A Historical Overview,” in Iran Facing Others, ed. A. Amanat and F. Vejdani (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 1–39. M. Vaziri’s controversial argument in Iran as Imagined Nation: The Construction of National Identity (New York: Paragon House, 1993), underscores the European conception of Iran. For the significance of archeology in the emergence of nationalist discourse, see K. Abdi’s “Nationalism, Politics, and the Development of Archaeology in Iran,” American Journal of Archaeology 105 (2001): 51–76, and Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies, 1900–1950, eds. Ann Gunter and S. Hauser (Leiden: Brill, 2004).
For early Pahlavi social, economic and cultural developments, see, for instance, P. Clawson, “Knitting Iran Together: The Land Transport Revolution, 1920–1941,” Iranian Studies 26 (1993): 235–50; M. Koyagi, “The Vernacular Journey: Railway Travelers in Early Pahlavi Iran, 1925–1950,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47, no. 4 (November 2015): 745–63; and E. Ehlers and W. Floor, “Urban Change in Iran, 1920–1941,” Iranian Studies 26, nos. 3–4 (1993): 251–75. H. Chehabi’s extensive studies on dress code and culinary practices of the period include “Staging the Emperor’s New Clothes,” Iranian Studies 26, nos. 3–4 (Summer–Fall 1993): 209–33; “The Westernization of Iranian Culinary Culture,” Iranian Studies 36, no. 1 (March 2003): 43–61; and “Dress Codes for Men in Turkey and Iran,” in Men of Order, ed. T. Atabaki and E. Zürcher (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 209–37. For the Pahlavi state and the clerical establishment up to the end of World War II, see Y. Richard, “Shari‘at Sangalaji: A Reformist Theologian of the Riza Shah Period,” in Authority and Political Culture in Shi‘ism, ed. S. A. Arjomand (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 159–77; and M. H. Faghfoory, “The Ulama-State Relations in Iran: 1921–1941,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19, no. 4 (1987): 413–32.
J. Perry, “Language Reform in Turkey and Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 17, no. 3 (1985): 295–311; and R. Matthee, “Transforming Dangerous Nomads into Useful Artisans, Technicians, Agriculturists: Education in the Reza Shah Period,” Iranian Studies 26, nos. 3–4 (1993): 313–36, offer glimpses of educational policies. S. Cronin’s 2003 The Making of Modern Iran also includes essays by H. Chehabi, J. Rostam-Kolayi, and S. Mahdavi on the banning of the veil, family law, and the expansion of women’s rights, respectively. The same volume also includes valuable essays on tribes and Reza Shah’s tribal policy by K. Bayat, R. Tapper, and Cronin herself. See also J. Rostam-Kolayi, “Origins of Iran’s Modern Girls’ Schools: From Private/National to Public/State,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 4, no. 3 (2008): 58–88. B. Devos and C. Werner, Culture and Cultural Politics under Reza Shah: The Pahlavi State, New Bourgeoisie and the Creation of a Modern Society in Iran (London: Routledge, 2014), explores the role of nonstate actors in the creation of the Pahlavi state. C. Schayegh, Who Is Knowledgeable, Is Strong: Science, Class, and the Formation of Modern Iranian Society, 1900–1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), calls attention to the intersection of science, medicine, and the emergence of a middle class in the Pahlavi period. H. Enayat, Law, State, and Society in Modern Iran: Constitutionalism, Autocracy, and Legal Reform, 1906–1941 (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2013), is a pioneering study of legal reforms and modern codifications from the constitutional era to the end of Pahlavi period.
9. CHAOTIC DEMOCRACY, OIL NATIONALIZATION, AND DENIED HOPES (1941–1953)
There is a lacuna in the social, economic, and political historiography of Iran during World War II. The causes and circumstances of the Allied invasion is studied in R. A. Stewart, Sunrise at Abadan: The British and Soviet Invasion of Iran, 1941 (New York: Praeger, 1988); C. Skrine, World War in Iran (London: Constable & Co., 1962); and F. Eshraghi, “The Immediate Aftermath of Anglo-Soviet Occupation of Iran in August 1941,” Middle Eastern Studies 20, no. 3 (July 1984): 324–51. Aspects of the politics of the period are covered in E. Abrahamian, “Factionalism in Iran: Political Groups in the 14th Parliament (1944–46),” Middle Eastern Studies 14, no. 1 (January 1978): 22–55; L. P. Elwell-Sutton, “Political Parties in Iran, 1941–1948,” Middle East Journal 3, no. 1 (January 1949): 45–62; and Elwell-Sutton, “The Iranian Press, 1941–1947,” Iran 6 (1968): 65–104. C. M. Amin “Selling and Saving ‘Mother Iran’: Gender and the Iranian Press in the 1940s,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33, no. 3 (August 2001): 335–61, looks at political cartoons during the Allied occupation of Iran.
For an overview of the Iranian left during the 1940s and early 1950s, see E. Abrahamian’s seminal study Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982); S. Zabih, The Communist Movement in Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966). See also Abrahamian, “The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Labour Movement in Iran 1941–53,” in Modern Iran: The Dialectics of Continuity and Change, ed. N. R. Keddie and M. Bonine (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), 181–202; M. Behrooz, “Tudeh Factionalism and the 1953 Coup in Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33, no. 3 (2001): 363–82; and C. Chaqueri, “Did the Soviets Play a Role in the Founding of the Tudeh Party in Iran?,” Cahiers Monde Russe 40, no. 3 (July–September 1999): 497–528. Cronin’s edited volume, Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran: New Perspectives on the Iranian Left (New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004), also deals with the historical transformation of the left.
The Azarbaijan crisis has been the subject of three studies: T. Atabaki, Azerbaijan: Ethnicity and the Struggle for Power in Iran, rev. ed. (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000); Jamil Hasanli, At the Dawn of the Cold War: The Soviet-American Crisis over Iranian Azerbaijan, 1941–1946 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006); and L. L. Estrange Fawcett, Iran and the Cold War: The Azerbaijan Crisis of 1946 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). On Kurdish autonomy and Mahabad Republic, see W. Eagleton, The Kurdish Republic of 1946 (London: Oxford University Press, 1963); and F. Koohi-Kamali, The Political Development of the Kurds in Iran (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003).
For the emergence of an independent left, see, for instance, H. Katouzian, “Khalil Maleki: The Odd Intellectual Out,” in N. Nabavi, ed., Intellectual Trends in Twentieth-Century Iran (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 24–52. A decidedly Marxist interpretation of the history of the left appears in B. Jazani, Capitalism and Revolution in Iran (London: Zed Books, 1980). Trade unions and labor movement in this period are studied in H. Lodjevardi, Labor Unions and Autocracy in Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985); and R. C. Elling, “On Lines and Fences: Labour, Community and Violence in an Oil City,” in Urban Violence in the Middle East: Changing Cityscapes in the Transition from Empire to Nation-State, ed. U. Freitag, N. Fuccaro, N. Gherawi, and C. Nafi (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015), explores the oil city of Abadan during and after World War II.
The premiership of Mohammad Mossadeq, the oil nationalization movement, and the 1953 coup have been the subject of considerable historical scholarship. For Mosaddeq’s memoirs, see Musaddiq’s Memoirs, ed. and trans. S. H. Amin and H. Katouzian (London: Jebheh National Movement of Iran, 1988). For his biography, see H. Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 1990), and F. Diba, Mohammad Mossadegh: A political biography (London: Routledge Kegan & Paul, 1986). F. Azimi, Iran: The Crisis of Democracy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), offers the most scholarly political history of the period based on extensive archival sources. Other studies include S. Siavoshi, Liberal Nationalism in Iran: The Failure of a Movement (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1988), and two collection of essays: J. A. Bill, and W. R. Louis, eds., Musaddiq, Iranian Nationalism, and Oil (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988); and M. Gasiorowski and M. Byrne, eds., Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004). The overthrow of Mosaddeq is also the subject of M. Gasiorowski, “The 1953 Coup d’État in Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19, no. 3 (1987): 261–86; and E. Abrahamian, The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations (New York: New Press, 2013). See also Y. Richard, “Ayatollah Kashani: Precursor of the Islamic Republic,” in Religion and Politics in Iran: Shi‘ism from Quietism to Revolution, ed. N. R. Keddie (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983); and M. Yazdi, “Patterns of Clerical Behaviors in Postwar Iran, 1941–1953” Middle Eastern Studies 26, no. 3 (1990): 281–307.
S. Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003); and K. Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for Control of Iran (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), provide popular yet valuable accounts. For the relationship between the United States and Iran in the years preceding the coup, see M. H. Lytle, The Origins of the Iranian-American Alliance, 1941–1953 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1987). On the oil dispute, see M. A. Heiss, Empire and Nationhood: The United States, Great Britain, and Iranian Oil, 1950–1954 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); M. Elm, Oil, Power, and Principle: Iran’s Oil Nationalization and Its Aftermath (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992); L. P. Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1955); R. W. Ferrier and J. H. Bamberg, The History of the British Petroleum Company, vol. 2: The Anglo-Iranian Years, 1928–1954 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) and vol. 3: British Petroleum and Global Oil, 1950–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); M. Farmanfarmaian, Blood and Oil: Inside the Shah’s Iran (New York: Random House, 1997); and relevant chapters in D. Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (New York: Free Press, 1991). On the American development projects in Iran, see W. E. Warne, Mission for Peace: Point Four in Iran (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1956).
10. THE WHITE REVOLUTION AND ITS OPPONENTS (1953–1963)
The political trends of the 1950s and early 1960s are discussed in L. Binder, Iran: Political Development in a Changing Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964). M. Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), also covers this period, though the thrust of his book is later decades. Two studies—M. Zonis, The Political Elite of Iran (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), and J. A. Bill, The Politics of Iran: Groups, Classes, and Modernization (Columbus, OH: Charles Merril, 1972)—offer some insight into the Iranian political and intellectual elites.
S. Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy State Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), provides an overview of the 1960s and the 1970s. M. J. Fischer, Iran from Religious Dispute to Revolution (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980) is particularly insightful for the author’s fieldwork in Qom. See also J. Foran, ed., A Century of Revolution: Social Movements in Iran (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), and especially the essay by M. Parsa, “Mosque of Last Resort: State Reform and Social Conflict in the Early 1960s,” 135–59. For the anti-Baha’i campaigns of the mid-twentieth century, see M. Tavakoli-Targhi, “Anti-Baha’ism and Islamism in Iran”; H. Chehabi, “The Anatomy of Prejudice: Reflections on Secular Anti-Baha’ism in Iran”; and A. Amanat, “The Historical Roots of the Persecution of Babis and Baha’is in Iran,” all in The Baha’is of Iran: Socio-Historical Studies, ed. S. Fazel and D. Brookshaw (New York: Routledge, 2008). See also F. Vahman, 160 Years of Persecution: An Overview of the Persecution of the Baha’is of Iran (Spanga, Sweden: Baran, 2010).
Land reform has been the subject of a number of monographs. A. K. S. Lambton, The Persian Land Reform, 1962–1966 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), is an early example. Other studies include H. Katouzian, “Land Reform in Iran: A Case Study in the Political Economy of Social Engineering,” Journal of Peasant Studies 1, no. 2 (1974): 220–39; E. J. Hooglund, Land and Revolution in Iran, 1960–1980 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982); A. Najmabadi, Land Reform and Social Change in Iran (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987); and I. Ajami, Agrarian Reform and Institutional Innovation in the Development of Agriculture in Iran (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977). For a more general assessment of economic development in Iran during the twentieth century, see J. Bharier, Economic Development in Iran, 1900–1970(London: Oxford University Press, 1971). K. S. McLachlan, The Neglected Garden: The Politics of Ecology and Agriculture in Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 1988), is an important study of the changing agriculture in Pahlavi era and the resulting environment constraints.
For literary and artistic trends in the Pahlavi era, see M. Ghanoonparvar, In a Persian Mirror: Images of the West and Westerners in Iranian Fiction (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); K. Talatoff, The Politics of Writing in Iran: A History of Modern Persian Literature (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000); I. Parsinejad, A History of Literary Criticism in Iran(Bethesda, MD: Ibex Publishers, 2003); A. Karimi-Hakkak, Recasting Persian Poetry: Scenarios of Poetic Modernity in Iran (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1995); and A. Karimi-Hakkak and K. Talatoff, eds., Essays on Nima Yushij: Animating Modernism in Persian Poetry (Leiden: Brill, 2004). For studies of Sadeq Hedayat, see H. Katouzian, Sadeq Hedayat, the Life and Legend of an Iranian Writer (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000), and the edited volume Sadeq Hedayat: His Work and His Wondrous World, ed. H. Katouzain (New York: Routledge, 2008). M. Beard’s Hedayat’s Blind Owl as a Western Novel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), locates Hedayat’s work in a broader Western context. For studies of Forugh Farrokhzad, see M. C. Hillmann, A Lonely Women: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 1987); M. C. Hillmann, ed., Forugh Farrakhzad: A Quarter Century Later (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), and D. P. Brookshaw and N. Rahimieh, eds., Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran: Iconic Woman and Feminine Pioneer of New Persian Poetry (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), contribute to our understanding of Forugh in contemporary Persian poetry. For two valuable anthologies of modern Persian prose and poetry see H. Moayyad, Stories from Iran: A Chicago Anthology, 1921–1991 (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 1992) and N. Mozaffari (and A. Karimi Hakkak), eds., Strange Times, My Dear: The Pen Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature(New York: Arcade, 2005). For a translation of some of Ahmad Kasravi’s work, see M. R. Ghanoonparvar, trans., On Islam and Shi‘ism (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Press, 1990).
11. DEVELOPMENT, DISARRAY, AND DISCONTENT (1963–1977)
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s biography has received ample attention in M. Zonis, Majestic Failure: The Fall of the Shah (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991); G. R. Afkhami, The Life and Times of the Shah (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); and A. Milani, The Shah(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Mission for My Country(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), sketches his public persona. The shah’s Answer to History (New York: Stein & Day, 1980), completed shortly before his death, is a vindication of his career and indictment of his real and imagined nemesis. An abridged edition of the secret diaries of his influential prime minister, and later the court minister, A. Alam, The Shah and I: the Confidential Diaries of Iran’s Royal Court, 1969–1977, ed. and trans., and with an introduction by, A. Alikhani (London: I. B. Tauris, 1991), opens a window onto the shah’s private life, worldview, and inner politics of the Pahlavi court. A. Saikal, The Rise and Fall of the Shah (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), gives an account of the shah’s policies and reliance on the United States. A. Milani, The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution: A Biography (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2004), is a nuanced biography of the longest-serving premier of the Pahlavi period. Ashraf Pahlavi’s Faces in a Mirror: Memoirs from Exile (New York: Prentice Hall Trade, 1980), offers the story of the shah’s influential twin sister. W. Shawcross, The Shah’s Last Ride: A Cautionary Tale (London: Chatto & Windus, 1988), is a popular account of the shah’s last days in exile.
For state and society in the late 1960s and 1970s, see, for instance, H. Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran: Despotism and Pseudo-Modernism, 1926–1979 (New York: New York University Press, 1981); R. Ramazani, Iran’s Foreign Policy, 1941–1973: A Study of Foreign Policy in Modernizing Nations (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975); and D. Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992). See also M. P. Mini, “A Single Party State in Iran, 1975–1978: The Rastakhiz Party” Middle East Studies 38, no. 1 (2002): 131–68.
For the prerevolutionary trends of the 1960s and 1970s, see E. Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); and Abrahamian, “The Guerrilla Movement in Iran, 1963–77,” in Iran: A Revolution in Turmoil, ed. H. Afshar (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), 149–74; A. Matin-Asgari, Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2001); and H. Algar, “The Oppositional Role of the Ulama in Twentieth-Century Iran,” in Scholars, Saints, and Sufis: Muslim Religious Institutions in the Middle East Since 1500, ed. N. R. Keddie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). For ‘Ali Shariati, see A. Rahnama, An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shariati (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000); M. Bayat-Philip, “Shi‘ism in Contemporary Iranian Politics: The Case of Ali Shari‘ati,” in Towards a Modern Iran: Studies in Thought, Politics, and Society, ed. S. Haim and E. Kedouri (London: Frank Cass, 1980), 155–68.
12. CULTURES OF AUTHORITY AND CULTURES OF DISSENT
The cultural patronage of the Pahlavi state in the 1960s and 1970s, specifically the use of music, architecture, visual arts, and media, is studied in T. Grigor, Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs (New York: Prestel, 2009). H. Chehabi, “Sport and Politics in Iran: The Legend of Gholamreza Takhti,” International Journal of the History of Sport 12, no. 3 (1995): 48–60, and his “Annotated Bibliography of Sports and Games in the Iranian World,” Iranian Studies 35, no. 4 (2002): 403–19, provide useful resources. Farah Pahlavi’s memoirs, An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah (New York: Miramax, 2004), are devoted in part to her patronage of cultural projects during the Pahlavi era. See also R. Gluck, “The Shiraz Arts Festival: Western Avant-Garde Arts in 1970s Iran,” Leonardo 40, no. 1 (2007): 20–28. For Persian music, see Jean During, The Art of Persian Music (Washington, DC: Mage, 1991); C. Nelly and D. Safvate, Iran: Les traditions musicales (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1966); and E. Zonis, “Contemporary Art Music in Persia,” Musical Quarterly 51 (1965): 636–48. On traditional Persian theatrical arts and ta‘ziyeh, see Peter Chelkowski, Ta‘ziyeh: Ritual and Drama in Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1979); and W. Floor, The History of Theater in Iran (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2005). On painting and sculpture, see H. Keshmirshekan, “Neo-Traditionalism and Modern Iranian Painting: The Saqqa-khaneh Scool in the 1960s,” Iranian Studies 38 (2005): 607–30.
Studies by M. Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996); A. Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998); and A. Mirsepassi, Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization: Negotiating Modernity in Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), focus on modern and contemporary intellectual and literary trends. N. Nabavi, ed., Intellectual Trends in Twentieth-Century Iran (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), also deals with intellectuals of the period. Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s influential work “Westoxification” has been translated into English, see Gharbzadegi, ed. J. Green and A. Alizadeh (Lexington, KY: Mazda, 1982), and Occidentosis: A Plague from the West, R. Campbell (Berkeley, CA: Mizan, 1984). See also M.C. Hillmann, ed., Iranian Society: An Anthology of Writings by Jalal Al-e Ahmad (Lexington, KY: Mazda, 1982).
Iranian cinema has garnered much scholarly attention. A comprehensive study is H. Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 4 vols. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011–2012). See also H. Dabashi, Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past Present and Future (London: Verso, 2001); H. R. Sadr, Iranian Cinema: A Political History (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006); S. Mirbakhtyar, Iranian Cinema and the Islamic Revolution (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishers, 2006); N. Mottahedeh, Displaced Allegories: Post-revolutionary Iranian Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); R. Tapper, The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002); Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad, Politics of Iranian Cinema: Film and Society in the Islamic Republic (London and New York: Routledge, 2010); M. M. J. Fischer, Mute Dreams, Blind Owls, and Dispersed Knowledges: Persian Poesis in the Transnational Circuitry (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); G. Rekabtalaei, “Cinematic Revolution: Cosmopolitan Alter-cinema of Pre-revolutionary Iran,” Iranian Studies 48, no. 4 (2015): 567–89; and A. Sreberny and A. Mohammad, Small Media, Big Revolution: Communication, Culture, and the Iranian Revolution (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), and P. Decherney and B. Atwood, Iranian Cinema in a Global Context: Policy, Politics, and Form (New York: Routledge, 2014) examine Iranian cinema from global and interdisciplinary perspectives.
13. THE MAKING OF THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION (1977–1979)
There is a large and diverse body of studies on the Iranian revolution. S. Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1984), is a pioneering narrative of the early stages of the revolution. R. P. Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985), masterfully places the story of a semifictional madrasa student within many episodes of the intellectual, cultural, and social history of premodern and modern Iran. Other studies include S. A. Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) and N. R. Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). F. Azimi, The Quest for Democracy in Iran: A Century of Struggle Against Authoritarian Rule (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008) is an insightful treatment of Iran’s sociopolitical history at a critical juncture. Three accessible narratives are by R. Kapuściński, Shah of Shahs (New York: Random House, 1982); Michael Axworthy, Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and J. Buchan, Days of God: the Revolution in Iran and Its Consequences (London: John Murray, 2013). Among the works highlighting specific aspects of prerevolutionary or revolutionary processes are H. Chehabi’s insightful Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), and S. Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980). See also H. Algar, The Roots of the Islamic Revolution (London: Open Press, 1983); H. Dabashi, Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran(New York: New York University Press, 1993); V. Martin, Creating an Islamic State: Khomeini and the Making of a New Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000); and A. Amanat, Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi‘ism (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005). H. Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), provides a concise introduction to Islamic political trends across a broad Muslim geographic setting.
The socioeconomic dimensions of the revolution are discussed in F. Kazemi, Poverty and Revolution in Iran: The Migrant Poor, Urban Marginality, and Politics (New York: New York University Press, 1980); C. Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); M. Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989); M. Moaddel, Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); M. M. Milani, The Making of Iran’s Islamic Revolution: From Monarchy to Islamic Republic (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988); S. Zubaida, “Classes as Political Actors in the Iranian Revolution,” in Islam, the People, and the State: Political Ideas and Movements in the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009); and A. Ashraf, “From the White Revolution to the Islamic Revolution,” in Iran after the Revolution: Crisis of an Islamic State, ed. S. Rahnema and S. Behdad (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995), 21–44. See also N. Mazaheri, “State Repression in the Iranian Bazaar, 1975–1977: The Anti-Profiteering Campaign and an Impending Revolution,” Iranian Studies 39, no. 3 (2006): 401–14.
The active role played by women in the revolutionary movement is the subject of H. Moghissi, Populism and Feminism in Iran: Women’s Struggle in a Male-Defined Revolutionary Movement (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), and G. Nashat, ed., Women and Revolution in Iran (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983). Two works by P. Paidar—Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Gender of Democracy: the Encounter between Feminism and Reformism in Contemporary Iran (Geneva: UN Research Institute for Social Development, 2001)—examine Iranian women and gender in a broader perspective.
M. Behrooz, Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999), and S. Zabih, The Left in Contemporary Iran: Ideology, Organization, and the Soviet Connection (London: Croom Helm, 1986), address the dismantling of the left after the revolution. J. Afary and K. Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), focuses on the French philosopher’s encounter with the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
14. THE GUARDIAN JURIST AND HIS ADVOCATES
Some of Ayatollah Khomeini’s works have been translated into English: Islamic Government, trans. Joint Publications Research Service of the US Government (New York: Manor Books, 1979); Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, transl. H. Algar (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981); and A Clarification of Questions: an Unabridged Translation of Resaleh Towzih al-Masael, trans. J. Borujerdi with a foreword by M. M. J. Fischer and M. Abedi (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1984). B. Moin, Khomeini: Life of The Ayatollah (London: I. B. Tauris, 1991), provides an accessible account. A. Sachedina, The Just Ruler in Shi‘ite Islam: The Comprehensive Authority of the Jurist in Imamite Jurisprudence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), is an attempt to evaluate Khomeini’s theory of governance. For a critical revision, see H. Modarressi, “The Just Ruler of the Guardian Jurist: An Attempt to Link Two Different Shi‘ite Concepts,” Journal of American Oriental Society 111, no. 3 (1991): 549–62. See also H. Enayat, “Iran: Khumayni’s Concept of the Guardianship of the Jurist,” in Islam in the Political Process, ed. J. Piscatori (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); and A. Amanat, “From Ijithad to Wilayat-i Faqih: The Evolution of Shiite Legal Authority to Political Power,” in Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi‘ism (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009). Lessons in Islamic Jurisprudence: Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr, trans. with an Introduction by R. P. Mottahedeh (Oxford: One World, 2003) provides a valuable translation and commentary on the work of a major Shi‘i scholar of the twentieth century. Essays by S. Akhavi, “Shi‘ite Theories of Social Contract,” and S. A. Arjomand, “Shari‘a and Constitution in Iran: A Historical Perspective,” in Shari‘a: Islamic Law in the Contemporary Context, ed. A. Amanat and F. Griffel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), offer new insights. S. Akhavi, “Contending Discourses in Shi‘ite Law on the Doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih,” Iranian Studies 29, nos. 3–4 (Summer–Fall 1996): 229–68; and K. Amirpur, “A Doctrine in the Making? Velayat-e Faqih in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” in Speaking for Islam: Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies (Leiden: Brill, 2006), also survey the evolving nature of the Guardianship of the Jurist in its political context.
For Hosain-‘Ali Montazeri, see Sussan Siavoshi, Montazeri: The Life and Thought of Iran’s Revolutionary Ayatollah (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017); R. Hajatpour, “Reflections and Legal Analysis of the Relationship between ‘Religious Government and Human Rights’ from the Perspective of Grand Ayatullah Muntaẓiri,” Die Welt Islams 51 (2011): 382–408; S. Akhavi, “The Thought and Role of Ayatollah Hossein’ali Montazeri in the Politics of Post-1979 Iran,” Iranian Studies 41, no. 5 (2008): 645–66; and G. Abdo, “Rethinking the Islamic Republic: A ‘Conversation’ with Ayatollah Hossein ‘Ali Montazeri,” Middle East Journal 55, no. 1 (2001): 9–24. For a selection in English of Mahmud Taleqani’s work, see “The Characteristics of Islamic Economics,” in Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives, ed. J. Donohue and J. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).
15. CONSOLIDATION OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC (1979–1984)
Few historians have yet explored the early years of the Islamic Republic. E. Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993), contains glimpses of political and ideological trends in postrevolutionary Iran, including “The Paranoiac Style of the Iranian Politics.” Other works, including R. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran: Challenge and Response in the Middle East (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Ramazani, Iran’s Revolution: The Search for Consensus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); S. Hunter, Iran after Khomeini (New York: Praeger, 1992); N. R. Keddie and E. J. Hooglund, eds., The Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Republic (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986), explore the consolidation of political power in the Islamic Republic.
The framing of the constitution of the Islamic Republic, and constitutional politics, have been the subject of A. Schirazi, The Constitution of Iran: Politics and the State in the Islamic Republic (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998). Extensive works by S. A. Arjomand on the subject include “Shi‘ite Jurisprudence and Constitution Making in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” in Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies and Militancy, ed. M. E. Marty and R. S. Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); “Authority in Shi‘ism and Constitutional Developments in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” in The Twelver Shia in Modern Times: Religious Culture & Political History, ed. W. Ende and R. Brunner (Leiden: Brill, 2000). For a comparative perspective, see also S. A. Arjomand and N. Brown, eds., The Rule of Law, Islam, and Constitutional Politics in Egypt and Iran (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013); and S. Zubaida, “The Politics of Sharia in Iran” in Law and Power in the Islamic World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003).
Elite factionalism in the postrevolutionary period has also received some scholarly attention in B. Bakhtiari, Parliamentary Politics in Revolutionary Iran: The Institutionalization of Factional Politics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996); M. Moslem, Factional Politics in Post Khomeini Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002); D. Menashri, Post Revolutionary Politics in Iran: Religion, Society, and Power (New York: Routledge, 2001); and S. Akhavi, “Elite Factionalism in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Middle East Journal 41, no. 2 (1987): 181–201.
J. A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), extensively covers American-Iranian relations from the 1940s through the Iran-Contra Affair with greater emphasis on the last years of the shah and the rise of the Islamic Republic. P. Chelkowski and H. Dabashi, Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1999), highlight the role played by graphic arts in the creation of the Islamic Republic. M. Kazemzadeh, Islamic Fundamentalism, Feminism, and Gender Inequality in Iran under Khomeini (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002), assesses the impact of Khomeini’s gender policies.
16. FACING THE FOE
Among studies of the Iraq-Iran War are S. Chubin and C. Tripp, Iran and Iraq at War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), which provides a thorough political history and the leadership on both sides of the conflict. R. Varzi, Warring Souls: Youth, Media, and Martyrdom in Post-Revolution Iran (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), is an anthropological study of the effects of the war, specifically its visual and cultural memory. Other works include F. Rajaee, The Iran-Iraq War: The Politics of Aggression (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993); and L. G. Potter and G. Sick, Iran, Iraq and the Legacies of War (New York: Palgrave, 2004). The latter volume includes an essay by S. Bakhash: “The Troubled Relationship: Iran and Iraq, 1930–1980.” For an exploration of Arab-Persian relations and notions of identity, see H. Chehabi, “Iran and Iraq: Inter-societal Linkages and Secular Nationalisms,” in A. Amanat and F. Vejdani’s Iran Facing Others: Identity Boundaries in a Historical Perspective (New York: Palgrave, 2012). On the culture of the Iraq-Iran War, see P. Khosronejad, ed., Unburied Memories: The Politics of Bodies of Sacred Defense Martyrs in Iran (New York: Routledge, 2013); and D. R. Khoury, Iraq in Wartime: Soldiering, Martyrdom, and Remembrance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
The vast body of literature on the hostage crisis includes accounts of a former hostage, C. Scott, Pieces of the Game: The Human Drama of Americans Held Hostage in Iran (Atlanta: Peachtree Publishers, 1984), and the American charge d’affaires in Tehran, B. Laingen, Yellow Ribbon: The Secret Journal of Bruce Laingen (New York: Brassey’s, 1992). G. Sick, All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran (New York: Random House, 1985); D. P. Houghton, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and K. Pollack, The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America (New York: Random House, 2004), provide readable accounts of the crisis and the many dilemmas faced by the Carter administration. W. O. Beeman, The Great Satan versus the Mad Mullahs: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), examines how Iran and the United States perceived and represented each other.
A vast literature also exists on Iran’s human rights record. E. Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantation in Modern Iran (Berkeley: University of California, 1999), and R. Afshari, Human Rights in Iran: The Abuse of Cultural Relativism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), examine various dimensions and highlight the mass executions of 1988. D. Rejali, Torture and Modernity: Self, Society, and the State in Modern Iran (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), places the Iranian case in the broader context of states’ disciplinary mechanisms. W. Buchta, Who Rules Iran: The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2000); and “Taking Stock of a Quarter Century of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Islamic Legal Studies Program Harvard Law School Occasional Publication 5 (2005), emphasize political oppression in the context of the organization of the Islamic state. The aforementioned edited volume, The Bahai’s of Iran: Socio-Historical Studies, includes two relevant essays by E. Sanasarian, “The Comparative Dimension of the Baha’i Case and Prospects for Change in the Future,” and by R. Afshari, “The Discourse and Practice of Human Rights Violations of Iranian Baha’is in the Islamic Republic of Iran.” See also M. Amanat, “Set in Stone: Homeless Corpses and Desecrated Graves in Modern Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44 (2012): 257–83. E. Sanasarian, Religious Minorities in Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), is a thorough treatment of state-minority relations focusing on the decade after 1979. Since its foundation in 2004, the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center has produced extensive and well-documented reports (available online), on a wide range of human rights violations in Iran against ethnic and religious minorities, political and nonpolitical prisoners, political dissidents, journalists, human rights activists, women’s rights groups, gays, lesbians, and transgendered men and women, as well as widespread torture, forced confessions, show trials, political assassinations abroad, press and Internet censorship, and the Islamic Republic’s intelligence apparatus.
17. SOCIETY AND CULTURE UNDER THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC
Since the onset of the Islamic Revolution, there has been a proliferation of studies concerning life in postrevolutionary Iran. For a general overview of the political, social, and economic landscape in contemporary Iran, see E. J. Hooglund, ed., Twenty Years of Islamic Revolution: Political and Social Transition in Iran since 1979 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002); S. Rahnema and S. Behdad, Iran after the Revolution: Crisis of an Islamic State (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995); and S. A. Arjomand, After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). C. Rundle, Reflections on the Iranian Revolution and Iranian-British Relations (Durham, UK: University of Durham Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 2002), focuses on postrevolutionary Iran. A. Shakoori, The State and Rural Development in Post-Revolutionary Iran (New York: Palgrave, 2001), examines development policies under the Islamic Republic. A. Keshavarzian, Bazaar and State in Iran: The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), is an important study of the bazaar network and shifting political loyalties under the Islamic Republic. F. Nomani and S. Behdad, Class and Labor in Iran: Did the Revolution Matter? (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006), explores the reconfiguration of Iran’s working class. A. Bayat, Street Politics: Poor People’s Movements in Iran (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), is a pioneering study detailing grassroots political movements in Iran from the mid- to late twentieth century, with a chapter on the squatter riots of the early 1990s.
There are also numerous scholarly works concerning the intellectual life in the post-revolutionary era, most of which highlight the question of what it means to be “modern” under the Islamic regime. See, for example, F. Jahanbakhsh, Islam, Democracy and Religious Modernism in Iran, 1953–2000: From Bazargan to Soroush (Leiden: Brill, 2001); F. Vahdat, God and Juggernaut: Iran’s Intellectual Encounter with Modernity (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002), which looks at the question of subjectivity and ideology from the perspective of sociological philosophy; and F. Adelkhah, Being Modern in Iran (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). Civil Society and Democracy in Iran, ed. R. Jahanbegloo (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012) includes a number of insightful essays. For a critical assessment of the debate of modernity versus tradition, see also S. A. Arjomand, “The Reform Movement and the Debate on Modernity and Tradition in Contemporary Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34 (2002): 719–31. The complex relationship between Islam and democracy is studied in A. Gheissari and V. Nasr, Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); A. Bayat, Making Islam Democratic (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007); Z. Mir-Hosseini and R. Tapper, Islam and Democracy in Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004); and A. Mirsepassi, Political Islam, Iran, and the Enlightenmen: Philosophies of Hope and Despair (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Democracy in Modern Iran: Islam, Culture, and Political Change (New York: New York University Press, 2011). A. Amanat, “The Study of History in Post-revolutionary Iran: Nostalgia, Illusion, or Historical Awareness?,” Iranian Studies 22, no. 4 (1989): 3–18, explores major historiographical issues in the postrevolutionary era and their earlier origins. A. Mirsepassi, Transnationalism in Iranian Political Thought: The Life and Times of Ahmad Fardid (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), is a study of a controversial student of philosophy and his influence in postrevolutionary Iran.
The role of women in the postrevolutionary era, as well as the broader issues of gender and sexuality, have received ample scholarly attention. P. Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and J. Afary, Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), provide longue duréeperspectives on women’s participation in politics and sexual politics in Iran. P. Mahdavi, Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), examines changing sexual mores. Other notable examples are N. Naghibi, Rethinking Global Sisterhood: Western Feminism and Iran (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007); Z. Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); M. Moallem, Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Politics of Patriarchy in Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); and R. Bahramitash and H. Salehi Esfahani, Veiled Employment: Islamism and the Political Economy of Women’s Employment in Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011). A. Najmabadi, Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), explores spaces of transsexuality in contemporary Iran.
Persian music and arts in postrevolutionary Iran has been the subject of a few studies. Most recently N. Siamdoust, Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017) covers culture and the politics of music in contemporary Iran. Music and Society in Iran is a valuable selection of essays and a bibliography published as a special issue of Iranian Studies 38 (2005): 367–512. See also A. Movahed, “Religious Supremacy, Anti-Imperialist Nationhood and Persian Musicology after 1979 Revolution,” Asian Music 35 (2003): 85–113; and two studies by R. Simms and A. Koushkani: Mohammad Reza Shajarian’s Avaz in Iran and Beyond (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012), and The Art of Avaz and Mohammad Reza Shajarian: Foundation and Contexts (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012). On modern sculpture, see L. Fischman and S. Balaghi, Parviz Tanavoli (Wellesley, MA: Davis Museum, 2015). On graphic arts, see P. Tanavoli, An Introduction to the History of Graphic Design in Iran (Tehran: Nazar, 2015). On painting, see H. Keshmirshekan’s “Discourse of Postrevolutionary Iranian Art: Neotraditionalism during the 1990s,” Muqarnas 23 (2006): 131–57, and “Contemporary Iranian Art: The Emergence of New Artistic Discourses,” Iranian Studies 40 (2007): 335–66.
The wave of Iranian émigrés who left after the revolution produced a corpus of memoirs and personal accounts. See, for example, A. Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (New York: Random House, 2003); R. Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004); and F. Keshavarz, Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). H. Dabashi, Iran: A People Interrupted (New York: New Press, 2007), combines a personal story with the broader political, intellectual, and social history of Iran. A fair number of accounts written by women journalists include two accounts based on firsthand observations by E. Sciolino, Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran (New York: Free Press, 2000), and R. Wright, The Last Great Revolution (New York: Random House, 2001). A. Moaveni’s insightful Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran (New York: Public Affairs, 2005) and M. Satrapi, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return (New York, Pantheon Books, 2004), offer personal narratives of postrevolutionary Iran.
Following the 2009 presidential elections and the ensuing Green Movement, those who were released from detention in the Islamic Republic wrote about their experiences. See, for example, R. Saberi, Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran (New York: Harper, 2010), and M. Bahari and A. Molloy, Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival(New York: Random House, 2010). For critical, scholarly assessments of the Green Movement, see K. Harris, “The Brokered Exuberance of the Middle Class: An Ethnographic Analysis of Iran’s 2009 Green Movement,” Mobilization: An International Journal 17, no. 66 (2012): 435–55; and C. Kurzman, “The Arab Spring: Ideals of the Iranian Green Movement, Methods of the Iranian Revolution,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44, no. 1 (2012): 162–65. Accessible accounts of the events leading up to the Green Movement is presented in S. Peterson, Let the Swords Encircle Me: Iran, a Journey Behind the Headlines (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010).
Social, economic, and environmental issues in postrevolutionary era have been the subject of a few studies. J. Amuzegar, The Islamic Republic of Iran: Reflections on an Emerging Economy (New York: Routledge, 2014), complements his earlier study The Dynamics of the Iranian Revolution: The Pahlavis’ Triumph and Tragedy (Albany: State University of New York, 1991). S. Maloney, Iran’s Political Economy since the Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), examines the adverse impact of revolution, ideology, and war on the Iranian economy and society. D. Brumberg and F. Farhi, eds., Power and Change in Iran: Politics of Contention and Conciliation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), and P. Alizadeh and H. Hakimian, eds., Iran and the Global Economy: Petro Populism, Islam and Economic Sanctions (New York: Routledge, 2014), are both valuable collections of essays that examine, among other topics, public policy, education, rule of law, institutional changes, and impact of the sanctions. R. Wright, ed., The Iran Primer: Power, Politics and U.S. Policy (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2010), is a useful collection of essays by a longtime observer that survey Iran’s domestic politics, military, opposition, economy, and regional tensions. A. Amanat and M. Tahbaz, eds., “Environment in Iran,” in Iranian Studies 49 (2016): 925–1099, provide an overview of Iran’s water crisis, air pollution, forestry and wildlife conservation, and aspects of environmental history and culture.