Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
This essay examines certain common themes as well as conflicting voices in two extensive sets of Persian diaries, written almost a century apart, by Mohammad-Hasan Khān Eʿtemād al-Saltaneh (1843‒96), a long-time courtier and confidant of Nāser al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848‒86) and Asadollāh ʿAlam (1919‒78) a close associate and court minister of Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1941‒79). On the whole these diaries provide significant amounts of information about the inner workings of the court and the overall institutional setup of the Iranian state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although in writing their diaries these authors did not set out to produce a literary work, and nor did they intend to chronicle a general history, each in his own way captured his respective epoch and, within their limitations of time, scope, and insight, each reflected a broad range of private and social relationships. Also each in his own way echoed older ministerial voices, reminiscent of the voice that often resonates in the “mirror for princes” genre, of part player part intimate observer, and with a certain sense of admonition and resignation, lamenting the loss of an era which they felt was slipping away as they wrote.
An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Middle East Studies Association 41st Annual Conference, Montreal (Canada), on 19 November 2007, at the panel “Authorial Models and Ancestral Voices.” My thanks are due to the Ilex foundation for organizing the conference panel and to Louise Marlow for discussing the paper. A later version was presented at UC Davis, Middle East and South Asia Studies Program, faculty and graduate students seminar, on 16 May 2012. I should record my thanks to the seminar participants and to Ali Anooshahr, Suad Joseph, and Sudipta Sen for their hospitality and fruitful conversation. I am also particularly grateful to Abbas Amanat, Mohsen Ashtiany, Mansour Bonakdarian, Willem Floor, Rasool Jafarian, Homa Katouzian, Ranin Kazemi, Donné Raffat, and Nasrin Rahimieh, as well as the two anonymous reviewers, for providing me with valuable comments and information. However, the responsibility for all shortcomings is entirely mine. All translations are my own unless stated otherwise.