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The Historians of the Constitutional Movement and the making of the Iranian Populist Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

M. Reza Afshari
M. Reza Afshari
Affiliation:
Department of History, Pace University, 861 Bedford Road, Pleasantville, N.Y. 10570, U.S.A.
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Extract

An Iranian born in 1906, when the constitution was granted, would have had to wait until he was thirty-four to find a history of what was happening at the time of his birth. Kasravi's first volume appeared in 1940 and Malikzada's in 1948. Censorship was not the cause of this strange delay. Could it be that disillusion with the outcome of the movement ran so deep in the minds of intellectuals that no one wished to relive the story by writing it? The newly established Pahlavi state tried to glorify the ancient heritage of Persia and to shift the historical landscape from the immediacy of the constitutional era to the politically irrelevant past of pre-Islamic Iran. It is somehow peculiar—and perhaps a measure of the time—that an author of the Iranian constitution, the Mushir al-Daula (Hasan Pirniya) undertook, when in political retirement, to write not a history of the constitutional movement but a monumental work on ancient Iran. Kasravi speculated about the reasons for the nonexistence of a reliable history. The opportunist elitist reformers (“carpetbaggers”) who shifted sides during the movement “were reluctant to see the history of that movement truthfully written.” The Mushir al-Daula was one of them. Kasravi complained that when he began publishing his history, the sons, relatives, and followers of these men objected to his critical historical evaluation.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , August 1993 , pp. 477 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

NOTES

Author's note: This article benefited from helpful readings by Ervand Abrahamian, Mansour Farhang, John Foran, and two anonymous readers of IJMES.

1 Kasraviī, Aḥmad expressed his views on constitutional historiography in three articles published in his newspaper Paymān from 1937 to 1940Google Scholar. See Kārwand-i Kasravī: Majmūʿa-yi Haftad u Hasht Risāla wa Guftār az Aḥmad Kasravī (A Collection of 78 Epistles and Talks from Ahmad Kasravī), ed. Zukāʾ, Yaḥyā (Tehran, 1974), 166–73, 187–97Google Scholar. When Reza Shah's new Ministry of Education commissioned a complete work on the history of Iran, the last volume, assigned to ʿAbbās Iqbāl, was to end without including the constitutional movement. See Pārīzī's, Bāstānī introduction to Ḥasan Pīrniya, Tārīkh-i Irān az Āghāz tā inqirāż-i Sāsānīyān (History of Iran from the Beginning to the end of the Sasanids), (Teran, 1969)Google Scholar.

2 On the invention of tradition, Eric Hobsbawm writes that “history which has become part of the fund of knowledge or the ideology of nation, state or movement is not what has actually been preserved in popular memory, but what has been selected, written, pictured, popularized and institutionalized by those whose function it is to do so”; Hobsbawn, Eric and Ranger, Terence, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), 13Google Scholar.

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10 The new historiography, to the degree that it reflected the modernizing ideas of the constitutional reformers, did not threaten Reza Shah's regime. Shah, Reza appreciated the anti-Qajar views of the constitutionalists of the years 1905–1911Google Scholar. See Dabir-Siyaqi, Muḥammad, Khāṭirāti az Dihkhuda wa az Zabān Dihkhudā (Remembrances of Dihkhuda as Spoken by Dihkhuda), (Tehran, 1981), 27–28Google Scholar. One can only imagine that, if there had been no dynastic change, much of this populistic history would have been published underground, with possibly different political consequences.

11 Nāmvar, Raḥīm, Barkhī Mulāḥiẓāt Pirāmūm-i Tārikh-i Mashrūṭiyyat (Some Observations on the History of Constitutionalism), (Tehran, 1979), 149Google Scholar.

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14 ʾṢaḥabī, Izzatullāh, Muqaddama-yi bar Tārikh-i Junbish-i Milli-yi Irān (An Introduction to the History of the National Movement of Iran), (Tehran, 1985)Google Scholar.

15 Ādamiyyat, Firidūn, Idfuiʾulūhi-yi Niḥżat-i Mashrūṭiyyat-i Irān (The Ideology of the Constitutional Movement in Iran), (Tehran, 1976), 362–69Google Scholar.

16 Lūṭībāzī refers to practices of a lūṭi, the neighborhood strongman who could be taken both as a folk hero or a thug bullying people to extrort things from them.

17 For a summary of that debate, see Keddie, Nikki, Religion, Politics and Society (London, 1980), 6–7Google Scholar.

18 Ādamīyyat, Firīdūn, Shūrish bar Imtiyāz-ndma-yi Rizhi (Rebellion Against the Rizhi Concession), (Tehran, 1981)Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., 24.

20 Ibid.

21 Pārizi's introduction to Pīniya, Tārīkh-i Irān az āghāz la Inqiraż-i Sāsānīyān, qāf.

22 Hidāyat, Mahdī -Qūlī, Mukhbir al-Salṭana, Ṭulūʿ-i Mashrūṭiyyat (The Dawn of Constitutionalism), (Tehran, 1985), 41Google Scholar.

23 Maḥmūd, Maḥmūd, Tārikh-i Ravābiṭ-i Siyāsi-yi Irān Bā Inglīs Dar Qarn-i Nūzdihum-i Milādi (The History of Anglo-Iranian Diplomatic Relations in the 19th Century A.D.), 6 vols. (Tehran, 1949–1950)Google Scholar. For some antipopulist and highly conspiratorial passages, see 6:1782, 1792.

24 Ṣafārʾī, Ibrāhīm, Rahbarān-i Mashrūṭa (Leaders of the Constitutional Movement, First Period), (Tehran, 1984), 210, 219Google Scholar.

25 Ibid., 185–86.

26 Ṣafārʾī, Ibrāhīm, Rahbarān-i Mashrūṭa (Tehran, 1965), 2:234–35, 230–40Google Scholar. Ṣafāʾī became an elder historian of this antipopulist trend. For his influence on others, see Amīrī, Miḥrāb, Zindigī-yi Siyāsi-yi Atābak Aʿẓam (Political Life of the Atabak A Aʿzam), (Tehran, 1968)Google Scholar.

27 Arjomand, Said Amir, “The Ulama's Traditionalist Opposition to Parliamentarianism: 1907– 1990,” Middle Eastern Studies 17 (April 1981): 179CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Abrahamian, Ervand, “The Crowd in the Persian Revolution,” Iranian Studies 2 (1969): 128–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Martin, V., Islam and Modernism, the Iranian Revolution of 1906 (London, 1989), 121–22, 137Google Scholar.

29 Turkamam, Muḥammad, ed., Majmū;ʿ a-yi Rasaʾil, ʿlāmi-hā, Maktūbāt wa Rūznāma-yi Shaikh-I Shahīd Fażlullah Nurl (A Collection of Epistles, Declarations, Correspondance and Newspapers of the Martyr Sheikh Fazlallāh), 2:165–282Google Scholar; this represents everything Tafrashi wrote on Nuri. Huma Nateq provides a summary of Tabrizi's views; Nateq, H., “Jang-i Firqhā dar Inqilāb-i Mashrūṭiyyat Irān” (The War of Sects in the Constitutional Revolution of Iran), Alifbā 3 (1983)Google Scholar.

30 Turkamam, Muḥammad, ed., Majmuʾ a-yi Rasa'il 2:247–48Google Scholar.

31 Nateq, Huma, “Masʿ ala-yi Zan dar Barkhī az Mudaūwanat-i Chap” (Women's Issues in the Writing of the Left), Zaman-i Nau 1 (October-November 1983)Google Scholar.

32 Nateq, Huma, “Ruznama-yi Qanun: Pish-daramad-i Ḥukūmat-i Islāmi” (The Newspaper Qānūn: A Prelude to the Islamic Government), Dabireh 4 (Fall, 1988): 72–73Google Scholar. See also Nateq, H., Az Mast ta bar Mast (It Is from Us to Us), (Tehran, 1979)Google Scholar.

33 ʿMʿaṣumi, Abdul ʿAli, “Mashrūta-yi Muḥammad ʿ Sāhhi wa Mashrūṭa-yi Satar Khāni” (Muhammad Ali Shah's Constitutionalism and Satar Khan's Constitutionalism), Shūrāʾ 10 (August, 1985)Google Scholar.

34 Ganjahi, Jalāl, “Khānawāda-yi Mashrūʾa, Mashrūṭa wa Vilāyat-i faqlh” (Constitutionalism and Vilāyat-i faqih), Shūrāʾ 10 (August, 1985)Google Scholar.

35 Rafsanjāni, Akbar Ḥāshimi, Amir Kabir (Tehran, 1968)Google Scholar. Today he is the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

36 For example see Bakhshayishi, Aqiqi, Ten Decades of Ulema's Struggle (Tehran, 1982), 70–71Google Scholar. This is a publication of the Islamic Propagation Organization.

37 Ministry of Education, Tārikh-i Muʾāsir-i Irān (Contemporary History of Iran), (Tehran, 1985)Google Scholar. Works by non-Islamist writers are being published; many still follow the old populist historiography while paying lip service to the leadership of the ulema. What is both remarkable and ironic is the large number of translations of recent Western works on Iran that have been published under the Islamic Republic. This will have a positive effect on the study and the writing of history. Perhaps, there has traditionally been a tendency on the part of Iranian writers not to acknowledge Western scholarly sources. The fact remains, however, that up to 1978 very few scholarly Western books on 20th-century Iran escaped censorship. Thus, much of the populist Iranian historiography developed in scholarly isolation. Adamiyyat has been the only major Iranian historian whose linguistic ability and analytical framework could have enabled him to integrate Western historical methodology and documentation (too rigorous for the populist writers) into his works. That he did not do so was perhaps due to his intellectual temperament, which may also explain his unfortunate and unjustified attacks on Nikki Kiddie. As for the larger constitutional historiography, unclassified British diplomatic documents were translated and used by Iranian writers. However, they might have added to the confusion: the populists used them, often out of context, to support conspiratorially inclined arguments. Early in the century, however, two Western writers contributed to the creation of Iranian popular historiography by their articulation of a liberal position for Iranian history. Both were often cited by Iranian writers. Browne, Edward G., The Persian Constitutional Revolution 1905–9 (London, 1910)Google Scholar and Shuster, Morgan, Strangling of Persia (London, 1912)Google Scholar.

38 See Valāyatī, ʿAli Akbar, Muqaddama-i Fikri-i Nahżat-i Mashrūtiyyat (The Conceptual Background of the Constitutional Movement), (Tehran, 1987)Google Scholar. Valāyatī is the foreign minister of the Islamic Republic. Shariʿati's use of taʿaṣṣub reflected changes in a society that had undergone more than fifty years of modernization under a forceful state. For him, taʿaṣṣub was, as Michael Fischer explains, a shield against “cultural imperialism.” The Iranians of the constitutional era had yet to develop the vision of an “assimilated men, who are emptied of their heritage”; Fischer, Iran, 155Google Scholar.

39 Muṭahharī, M., Barrasī-yi Ijmāli as Nahżathā-yi Islami (Brief Reviews of Islamic Movements), (Tehran, n.d.)Google Scholar.

40 Valāyatī, , Muqaddama-i, 131Google Scholar.

41 Ibid., 131.

42 Ibid.