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Middle East Review of International Affairs Vol. 2, No. 3 (September 1998)
Iran: Understanding the Enigma: A Historian鈥檚 View+
By Nikki Keddie*
Most Americans came to identify
Iran only as a result of a series of events that
were negative and shocking to them--first an
Islamic revolution culminating in the
overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty in
February l979, and then the holding of
hostages at the American Embassy in
Tehran for 444 days, which ended on the
day of President Reagan's inauguration in
January, l98l. Since then relations have been
bad. A unilateral embargo on economic
relations was imposed by President Clinton
in 1995.
Some hope for easing relations
began with the election of the moderate
president, Muhammad Khatami, in 1997.
His friendly 1998 talk to Americans on
CNN, along with growing visits and athletic
relations, have improved attitudes on both
sides. The U.S. embargo and freezing of
Iranian assets remain. The United States is
blocking construction of an oil pipeline from
the Caspian area through Iran. The United
States says Iran incites terrorism, opposes an
Arab-Israeli settlement, and is building
weapons of mass destruction. Iran argues
that these charges are exaggerated.
Iran has long seen a series of great
swings and variations in political, religious,
and economic terms. If one took what
seemed to be true of Iran at different dates
one might have extremely different images.
This applies particularly to the view of Iran
from abroad. Among Americans, the
dominant picture of Iran today is of a
country ruled mainly by Islamic religious
fanatics who force women to veil from top-
to-toe, sent thousands of young boys to their
death in the Iran-Iraq war of the l980s, and
support terrorism abroad.
If one goes back to the reign of
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi l941-79,
especially during the 1960s and 1970s, the
dominant U.S. view was of a rapidly
modernizing, secularizing society allied with
U.S. values and policy objectives, except
regarding autocracy. Earlier, under the Qajar
dynasty l796-1925, Iran was seen by
Westerners as a very backward Oriental
society with very different, often irrational
values.
Historians know that an entire
society does not change so rapidly from one
condition to another. Examining Iranian
history helps one better understand these
apparent rapid transformations. Here we will
look for some features of Iranian history that
can help in doing so. Issues regarding the
past are important in modern Iranian
politics: hence we are not dealing with a
dead past but with one constructed to give
different political meanings by different
groups. Iranian nationalists, who include
most of the educated classes, often stress the
virtues of the pre-Islamic period, when Iran
had great and independent empires. Those
who identify more with Islam stress the
Islamic period and Islamic elements of
culture. Such issues as the early history of
language, culture, and religion have a
contemporary importance, with those who
stress Iranian nationalism seeing them very
differently from those who stress Islam.
Nikkie Keddie
Middle East Review of International Affairs Vol. 2, No. 3 (September 1998)
2
THE IRANIAN PAST AND ITS
INTERPRETATION: PRE-ISLAMIC
IRAN
First, we should briefly define Iran.
People in the West long called Iran, "Persia"
and think that when Reza Shah, the first
Pahlavi shah, asked foreigners to use the
name "Iran" he was requesting a change of
name. In fact, "Iran" had been the most
common indigenous name for the whole
area since pre-Islamic times, while "Persia"
was primarily a name for its southwest and
"Persian" the name of Iran's main language.
The name Persia was used by the ancient
Greeks, and hence by later Europeans, for
the ancient Achemenian empire whose best-
known rulers were Cyrus and Darius. The
word "Iran" was used especially in the
empires that ruled for a few centuries before
the seventh-century Islamic conquest of Iran
and it continued to be used later, even when
there was not a single state in the territory of
today's Iran. The Iranian national epic, the
Book of Kings, with pre-Islamic roots,
composed by the great poet Firdousi in the
l0th century, contrasts Iran with its enemy,
Turan.
Some scholars today oppose the
writing of national histories, noting that
national boundaries and nationalism are
modern phenomena, and do not correspond
with past boundaries or concepts. This is
true, but history must be divided in some
way, and national histories are one way to
do this. Unfortuately, no good short history
of Iran from pre-Islamic times to today
exists, although there are important features
that carried over and influenced Iran from
ancient times. Also, pre-Islamic Iran has
been a cultural battleground for twentieth
century Iranians.
The most obvious influential and
controversial feature is language: Persian is
an Indo-European language, which means it
is distantly related to English and French,
and more closely to Sanscrit and North
Indian Languages. A language family, like
other families, indicates a common ancestor,
and it is thought that all the languages that
branched off into Indo-European languages
were descended from one ancestral
language. Since many of these Indo-
European groups conquered or infiltrated
quite different peoples, imposing their basic
language with some influences added from
the preexisting local groups, this does not
mean that people speaking related languages
are racially close, as can be seen by
comparing the appearance of Indo-European
Scandinavians with Indo-European South
Asians. The false equation of language and
race was widespread in the west between
around 1850-1950, and some Iranians,
influenced by Western racist thinkers, took
pride in being Indo-Europeans, or "Aryans"
as they were also called until Hitler
discredited the term by putting racial theory
into horrible practice.
The Old Persian language came to
Iran, perhaps around 1500 BC, with the
migration of one branch of the Indo-
European people-- called Indo-Iranian--into
Iranian territory. The language evolved into
Middle Persian, and later, after the Arab
conquest, into New Persian. The Arab
conquest introduced a large number of
Arabic words into Persian and the Arabic
script replaced old Near Eastern Cuneiform,
but a language is considered to belong to the
family that provides its basic structure and
elementary vocabulary, and this is Persian.
Iran was the largest Middle Eastern region
to retain its former language after the
original seventh-century Arab conquest.
Iranians are hence not Arabs, as this term
today means those whose basic language is
Arabic. Many other languages are also
spoken in Iran, mainly from two groups: the
Turkic (e.g. Azerbaijani, Turcoman,
Qashqai) and Iranian subfamily, related to
Persian (e.g., Kurdish, Baluchi, Luri).
In addition to language, the pre-
Islamic Iranian empires had a rather
Iran: Understanding the Enigma: A Historian鈥檚 View
Middle East Review of International Affairs Vol. 2, No. 3 (September 1998)
3
sophisticated government structure and
supporting theories of government. Much of
this influenced the government and culture
of Islamic polities, as the conquering
Muslim Arabs had less experience with
extensive empires and organized states. In
the cultural field also, Iranians had a great
number of scholars and thinkers, and many
of the major intellectuals who wrote in
Arabic in the Islamic period came from this
Iranian cultural background--the philosopher
Avicenna is probably the best-known in the
West. Pre-Islamic Iran also had a poetic
tradition, now mostly lost, and poetry in
Persian flowered in the Islamic period--the
names of the mystical poet Rumi and the
poet and scientist Omar Khayyam are well-
known in the west. Pre-Islamic artistic and
decorative skills, perhaps best shown by the
magnificent ruins of the Achemenian palace
at Persepolis, carried on into new arts and
handicrafts in the Islamic period, with
Persian miniatures and carpets best known
in the West.
In religion, pre-Islamic Iran was
predominantly Zoroastrian, following a
religion which believed that the forces of
good and evil--characterized by two divine
figures--are conducting a long battle which
the forces of good will ultimately win. Many
of the key ideas of Zoroastrianism are
generally thought to have influenced
Judaism and, mainly through that route,
Christianity and Islam. Among these are the
figure of the devil, angels, the afterlife, and
the last judgment. (Jews were in the Persian
Empire from Achemenian times on, and
Christians from immediately pre-Islamic
Sasanian times.) Pre-Islamic Iran also knew
unorthodox and rebellious religious
movements, which have characterized Iran
from then till now. The most important was
the Manichean movement beginning in the
third century AD, where the prophet Mani
created a syncretic religion that retained the
good-evil dualism of Zoroastrianism but
changed it by saying spirit was good and
matter evil. He had a group of elect who
were celibate and pure. Some Manicheans
influenced early Islam, and Manichean
movements were important heresies in both
the Muslim and Christian world. More
radical was Mazdak in the fifth century AD,
who called for common property in goods
and perhaps communism of women.
Several features of pre-Islamic Iran
have become important for the trend of
Iranian nationalism dominant under the
Pahlavi shahs. To weaken the power of the
clergy and to provide support for a
centralized national state, these shahs and
many intellectuals glorified pre-Islamic Iran
and even Zoroastrianism, which had
previously been despised. Hence this ancient
history is not distant for many Iranians,
especially of the educated middle classes,
but is rather a model for a strong,
independent Iran, while they see the Arab-
Islamic conquest as a negative event which
brought cultural and political decline. (This
view is greatly exaggerated, as Iran's
greatest scholarly, philosophical, and literary
work took place after the Islamic conquests.)
The views of those who stress Islam are
quite different.
THE ISLAMIC PERIOD
The declining Sasanian empire was
rather easily defeated by the Muslim Arabs,
and was by far the greatest state conquered
by them (the Arabs took Byzantine territory
but not the region of the capital,
Constantinople). Conquest did not result in
forced or rapid conversion, which took place
over time in the early centuries, with the role
of Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians
theoretically, but not always actually,
protected. These religious groups, though
smaller over time, have continued to exist
down to the present. Though the first
dynastic caliphate, the Umayyads, were
largely Arab in culture and policies, the next
great caliphate, the Abbasids 751-1258,
Nikkie Keddie
Middle East Review of International Affairs Vol. 2, No. 3 (September 1998)
4
showed much Iranian influence in modes of
rule modeled on Persian practices, and in
culture. Autonomous Iranian states arose in
the ninth-eleventh centuries, but after that it
was mainly Turks, who came into the
Iranian area in great numbers from the
eleventh century on, who ruled. Even the
Mongols who conquered and ruled in the
thirteenth century had a strong Turkish
element. Among all these rulers, though,
Persian governmental practices, bureaucrats,
and culture continued to be important.
An independent Iran covering
roughly the same central area, but also more
outlying territory than today's Iran, came to
power with the Safavid dynasty (1501-
1722). Iran had known many rebellious
movements with religious ideologies in the
past, most of them related to the Shi'i branch
of Islam, and the Safavids were in this
tradition. The Shi'is were an originally
political movement of followers of Ali, the
son-in-law and cousin of Mohammad, who
felt he should be the first caliph. This
became transformed into a religiopolitical
movement of those who believed that
legitimate succession to Mohammad could
only be in Ali's line and that these leaders,
called Imams, had divine power and
knowledge. There were different branches of
Shi'ism, and in early centuries the most
revolutionary was the Sevener or Isma'ili
branch. From it came the so-called
Assassins of the 11th-13th centuries (a name
from the Arabic Hashishiyun, or hashish
users, and the origin of the word assassin).
They set up independent enclaves centering
in Iran and were known for a mode of battle
that included killing prominent leaders.
They were suppressed by the Mongols.
Their descendant today as leader of most
Ismailis is the politically quietist Aga Khan.
The other major branch of Shi'is, the
Twelvers, believed that their Twelfth Imam
had gone into hiding but would return as the
messianic mahdi. In early centuries this
belief promoted a politically quietist attitude
of waiting, but later some Twelvers became
activist. The Safavids, who started as leaders
of a Sunni Sufi (mystic) order in north Iran,
became converted to a radical type of
twelver Shi'ism--probably from radical Shi'i
followers during their exile in Anatolia
(Turkey)--and were the first to establish
Shi'ism in Iran, where it had heretofore been
a minority trend.
Although they were, like most rulers
in Iran since the mid- eleventh century,
Turks, the Safavids are often seen as
founders of the modern Iranian state. This is
because (l) they unified a large territory
comparable to modern Iran and (2) they
established a common religious base in
Shi'ism. It is, however anachronistic to
present this as a national state, and the Shi'i
religious identity, largely forced on Iranians
to distinguish them from the Sunni Ottoman
and Uzbek enemy states, was far more
important than any hints at a national
identity. Shi'ism remains a primarily
unifying force today.
Shi'ism later became largely
intertwined with Iranian national identity
down to today. Often it is impossible to say
if a trend or identification is Iranian national
or Shi'i, particularly since Iran is the only
Shi'i state as well as the only Iranian one.
This, however, has only been true since the
Safavids, and attempts to view Muslim
Iranians as always Shi'i or proto-Shi'i are
ideological, not factual.
The history of Iran's Shi'i clergy is
unique in the Muslim world and forms a
background to clerical participation in the
two major twentieth-century Iranian
revolutions--the constitutional revolution
(l905-1911) and the Islamic Revolution
(1978-79). In Shi'ism, the imams are the
source of infallible political and religious
leadership. Once the twelfth Imam was said
to be in hiding, there was no legitimate
leadership, and gradually there developed
the idea that leading clerics, through their
knowledge, could best judge the infallible
Iran: Understanding the Enigma: A Historian鈥檚 View
Middle East Review of International Affairs Vol. 2, No. 3 (September 1998)
5
will of the Imam. This led ultimately to a
kind of clerical hierarchy where leading
clerics, and sometimes a single top leader,
were seen as the source of correct belief and
action as well as the recipients of religious
taxes to be disbursed. This independent
power and wealth of the clergy began under
the Safavids, was strengthened after the
Safavids were conquered by Afghans in
1722, and became fully operative under the
Qajar dynasty 1796-1925.
Relevant to these and later political
and religious developments was Iran's
economic and ecological history. As in
much of the Middle East, Iran began as a
region in which plants and animals were
early domesticated--thousands of years ago--
and economic surpluses were high enough to
produce class specialization and a state.
Over time, as in most of the Middle East,
human use brought soil erosion and
salination and increased aridity, which
encouraged a great rise in pastoral
nomadism along with a growth in tribal
power and decline in central power. By the
l9th century, Iran was economically less
developed and politically weaker than the
industrializing capitalist West.
The Qajars had to face the growth of
Western power, represented especially by
Great Britain and Russia, neither of whom
wanted to border on the other. So they both
supported continuation of a semi-
independent dynasty which gave them many
political and economic concessions.
Ordinary Iranians suffered from European
manufactured goods underselling their
handicrafts and feared European control or
conquest. In movements against both the
Qajars and encroaching foreigners three
groups stood out: merchants and
craftspeople competing with Europeans;
some of the Shi'i clergy, who saw European
control as a menace to Islam; and a small
group of intellectuals, who believed that
Western-style modernization was the road to
economic and political strength. In Iran the
unusual strength and independence of both
the merchant and the clerical class
encouraged mass movements of greater
scope than elsewhere in the Middle East.
In 1891-92 a mass movement arose
against a monopoly on tobacco growth and
sale granted to a British subject sparked by
merchants and joined by many clergy which
led to cancellation of the concession. More
important was the constitutional revolution
of l905-11, which again combined
modernizers, merchants, and some clergy in
a mass movement that forced the shah to
grant a Western-style constitution with a
parliament. Although internal discord and
especiallya Russian invasion ended this
experiment in 1911, the constitution
remained until a new regime replaced it in
1979.
The above events are matters of
dispute between nationalists and Islamists.
Islamists exaggerate the progressive role of
the clergy, who were mostly fighting for
their self-interest, while the nationalists try
to prove the clergy never did anything in the
national interest.
Nationalist and democratic feeling
grew during the great destruction of World
War I, when Iran was used as a battlefield
by several powers, and a number of local
movements right after the war expressed
them. Reza Shah, who entered the
government after a coup d'etat in l921 and
had himself named shah in 1925,
inaugurated 50 years of super-rapid
modernization and centralization in a
country that hitherto had been decentralized,
traditional, and overwhelmingly rural or
nomadic-tribal. Culturally the Pahlavi shahs
stressed the nationalism that admired pre-
Islamic Iran, which was a way of bringing in
Western-style modernization without
alluding to its western origin. Reza Shah
was friendly to the Germans and the allied
British and Russians deposed him in l941
when he refused to lend Iran to their
wartime needs.
Nikkie Keddie
Middle East Review of International Affairs Vol. 2, No. 3 (September 1998)
6
Mohammad Reza Shah's rule (1941-
79) saw further modernization but
increasing autocracy. Oil was an increasing
issue in Iran since its discovery in l908, and
Iranians' desire to be free of foreign control
took the form of a demand for
nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company, which passed parliament just
before the leading nationalist, Muhammad
Mosaddeq, became prime minister in l951.
The Americans and British plotted against
him and overthrew him in a CIA-organized
coup in l953, after which the Shah became
increasingly autocratic.
Opposition to the Shah grew,
including liberals, liberal Muslims, the left,
and guerrilla groups, but the opposition that
could reach the most people took the form of
a modernized political Islam under the
charismatic leadership of Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, who was exiled from
Iran in 1964 after leading opposition
demonstrations. A broad opposition
movement to the shah's policies and
subservience to the United States broke out
throughout l978; Khomeini returned to Iran
in January l979, and took over in February.
In subsequent months the originally united
and diverse revolutionary movement was
taken over by pro-Khomeini clerics, and
others were increasingly suppressed.
The l979 constitution and its
aftermath did not create a dictatorship.
Power was divided between its strongest
man, the Islamic leader--Khomeini till his
l989 death and then Khamene'i-- and
governmental leaders and a parliament.
Elections continued to occur. However there
were great limits on freedom of speech and
organization and, as in many revolutions,
many were killed after the victory of what
had been, before victory, a mostly non-
violent movement.
Women's rights, at first suppressed
after considerable reforms under the
Pahlavis, have staged something of a
comeback under women's pressure. And the
victory of a moderate president in l997 is a
hopeful sign. The economy, however, has
declined greatly from its considerable earlier
records, and there is still no freedom of
political organization (something that had no
existed for most of the Pahlavi period
either). Nationalism has been largely
revived, though officially combined with
Islam, and even pre-Islamic glories are again
stressed.
Iranian history evinces a number of
recurrent trends, including: 1) The
expression of important ideas, including
political ideas, whether conservative or
rebellious, in religious form; 2) a tendency
toward one-person rule or charismatic
leadership, and 3) rapid changes in dominant
ideologies and movements, whether
religious, nationalist or social. Iran, for
example, has a long history of pre-modern
rebellions, mostly Shi'i-tinged in the Islamic
period, and also a modern history of the
most mass-based revolutions in the Middle
East. In addition, Iran had the largest
Communist party in the Middle East, the
most confrontational nationalist movement
under Mosaddeq, and then the first Islamic
Revolution. Behind these changes are some
more constant factors, such as some
continued sense of identity and of Iranian
culture, as well as mores that go far back in
time.
There have, however, been important
changes in the modern era. Though this brief
summary has dealt little with socioeconomic
change, in the modern period Iran has
changed from a decentralized society with
much power in the hand of tribal and feudal
leaders into one with considerable modern
industry and with the economic base for
national unity. Women have entered the
modern labor market and educational
institutions, even under the Islamic
Republic, in unprecedented numbers. The
rule of clerics is made possible by modern-
educated technocrats who run the economy.
This rule is far from being a return to the
Iran: Understanding the Enigma: A Historian鈥檚 View
Middle East Review of International Affairs Vol. 2, No. 3 (September 1998)
7
past, and is very much a modern
phenomenon, based largely on anti-
imperialism and a search for identity.
Non-Shi'i religions include fewer
than 10% of the population, making Iran
more religiously homogeneous than most
countries. Iran is, however, among the many
countries with great linguistic diversity, with
non-Persian languages spoken by half the
population, including large regional groups
like the Azerbaijanis, the Kurds, Arabs,
Baluchis, and several smaller groups.
Contested questions of identity are thus not
limited to the all-Iranian national and
Islamic alternatives, but now are found in
minority groups and regions, some of which,
especially after World War II and again after
the 1979 revolution, have seen struggles for
greater autonomy, with a very few
demanding independence. Some of these
minorities adhere to the Sunni branch of
Islam, which is the majority branch outside
Iran. The Sunni Turcomans, Baluchis, and
mainly Sunni Kurds have seen autonomy
struggles, while the Shi'i but Turkic-
speaking Azerbaijanis have, until now, been
better integrated for both religious and
geographical reasons.
Iranian women, as their recently
partly successful struggles to regain rights
show, have developed organizational
abilities based on often confident identities.
Veiled women in the Muslim world are too
often seen as faceless and wholly
subordinate, while Iranian women today
have more representation in education and
the professions, including writing,
journalism, and film directing, than ever
before. They are not legally equal to men,
but their struggles continue. Women
historically participated in revolts, riots, and
religious movements, and some have been
organized to further women's rights since the
early twentieth century.
Reza Shah's forced unveiling of
women in 1936 had contradictory results,
though his opening of schools and higher
education to women was more positive.
Modernized women, however, became a
symbol of subservience to the West and its
ways under Mohammad Reza Shah, and
many women, mostly veiled, participated in
the 1979 revolution. One should not imagine
that all women are chomping at the bit to
end veiling and other "Islamic" ways, and
divisions among women are as important as
among other groups. There is a trend toward
struggle and egalitarianism among today's
Iranian women, however.
+This essay was prepared for a teachers'
seminar at UCLA in August 1998 and
distributed among a group of Middle East
experts.
*
Nikki R. Keddie, professor of Middle East
History at UCLA, is a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
and has written the following books: Iran
and the Muslim World, Macmillan, 1995;
Roots of Revolution, Yale, 1981; Iran:
Religion, Politics and Society, Cass, 1980;
Sayyid Jamal ad-Din "Al-Afghani", U of
Calif. Press, 1972; An Islamic Response to
Imperialism, U. of Cal, 1968; Religion and
Rebelliion in Iran, Frank Cass, 196. Among
her many edited or co-edited works are:
Women and Twentieth Century Religious
Politics, special issue, Journal of Women's
History, Feb., 1999; Women in Middle
Eastern History, Yale, 1991; and Women in
the Muslim World, Harvard, 1978. She
founded and edited, between 1991 and 1995,
the journal, Contention: Debates in Society,
Culture, and Science.
Further Reading on this subject suggested by
Professor Keddie:
Abrahamian, Ervand, Iran between Two
Revolutions, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1982
Nikkie Keddie
Middle East Review of International Affairs Vol. 2, No. 3 (September 1998)
8
Abrahamian, Ervand, The Iranian
Mojahedin, New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1989
________. Khomeinism: Essays on the
Islamic Republic, Berkeley, U. of Calif.
Press, 1993
Afary, Janet, The Iranian Constitutional
Revolution, 1906-1911: Grassroots
Democracy, Social Democracy, and the
Origins of Feminism, New York: Columbia
University Press, 1996
Akhavi, Shahrough, Religion and Politics in
Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State Relations
in the Pahlavi Period, Albany: SUNY Press,
1980
Algar, Hamid, Religion and State in Iran,
1785-1906: The Role of the Ulama in the
Oajar Period, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1969
Amanat, Abbas, Resurrection and Renewal:
The Making of the Babi Movement, 1844-
1850, Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Press, 1989
------, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din
Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831-
1896,Berkeley, U. of Calif. Press, 1997(?)
Arjomand, Said Amir, 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
Arjomand, Said Amir, The Turban for the
Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988
Atkin, Muriel, Russia and Iran 1780-1828,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1980
Azimi, Fakhreddin, Iran: The Crisis of
Democracy, London:Tauris, 1989
Bakhash, Shaul, Iran: Monarchy,
Bureaucracy, and Reform under the Oajars,
1858-1896, London: Ithaca Press, 1978
Bakhash, Shaul, The Reign of the
Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution,
New York: Basic, 1984, and London: I.B.
Tauris, 1985
Banani, Amin, The Modernization of Iran,
1921-1941, Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1961
Bayat, Mangol, Iran's First Revolution:
Shi'ism and the Constitutional Revolution of
1905-1909, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991
Bayat, Mangol, Mysticism and Dissent:
Socioreligious Thought in Oajar Iran,
Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1982
Bayat, Assef, Workers and Revolution in
Iran, London: 1987.
Beck, Lois, and Nikki Keddie, Women in
the Muslim World, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1978.
Beck, Lois, The Qashqa'i of Iran, New
Havern: Yale University Press, 1986
Bill, James, The Eagle and the Lion: The
Tragedy of American- Iranian Relations,
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988
Bill, James A. and W.M.Roger Louis,
Musaddiq, Iranian Nationalism and Oil,
London: Tauris, 1988.
Bosworth, Edmund and Carole Hillenbrand,
Oajar Iran: Political, Social and Cultural
Change, 1800-1925, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1983
The Cambridge History of Iran, vols. 6-7,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986, 1991
Chehabi, Houchang, Iranian Politics and
Religious Modernism: The Liberation
Movement of Iran under the Shah and
Khomeini, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1990
Cole, Juan R.I., Modernity and the
Millenium: The Genesis of the Baha'i
Faith in the Nineteenth Century Middle East
Cottam, Richard, Nationalism in Iran,
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1964; revised 1979
Curzon, G.N., Persia and the Persian
Question, 2 vols, reprint London: 1939.
Dabashi, Hamid, Theology of Disocntent:
The Ideological Foundations of the
Islamic Revolution, New York, 1993.
Iran: Understanding the Enigma: A Historian鈥檚 View
Middle East Review of International Affairs Vol. 2, No. 3 (September 1998)
9
Willem M. Floor, "Traditional Crafts and
Modern Industry in Qajar Iran," Zeitschrift
der Deutschen Morgenlandischen
Gesellschaft 141 (1991), 317-52
Foran, John, Fragile Resistance: Social
Transformation in Iran from 1500 to the
Revolution, Boulder: Westview Press, 1993
Garthwaite, Gene R. Khans and Shahs: A
Documentary Analysis of the
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