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A history of Modern Iran by Ervand Abrahamian, summary
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Summary History of IranIntroduction
Despite continuities, the twentieth century brought profound changes in almost all
aspects of Iranian life. At the beginning of the century, the total population was fewer
than 12 million, Tehran was a medium-sized town of 200,000. Life expectancy at birth
was probably less than thirty years, and infant mortality as high as 500 per 1,000 births.
By the end of the century, the population totaled 69 million. Tehran was a mega-
metropolis of more than 6.5 million. Life expectancy reached seventy years; and infant
mortality had fallen to 28 per 1,000.
But most importantly: the form of state changed:
-Beginning of the 20th century: Shah + household + local chiefs/landlords/clerics
-End of the 20th century: gigantic ministries + huge military force
To show the change
-The Shah called himself: Shah-in-Shah (King of Kings), Padshah (Guardian Shah),
Khaqan (Khan of Khans), and Zillallah (Shadow of God).
-Khomeini called himself: Rahbar-e Enqelab (Leader of the Revolution), Rahbar-e
Mostazafen (Leader of the Dispossessed), and Bonyadgar-e Jomhuri-ye Islam (Founder
of the Islamic Republic).
Since 1501, when the Safavids established Shi’ism as the official religion of Iran, they
and their successors, including the Qajars, used this to set themself and their subjects,
against the outside Sunni world –against the Ottomans in the west, the Uzbeks in the
north, and the Pashtus in the east.
,Chapter 1“Royal Despots”: State and Society under the Qajars
The Qajars, a Turkic-speaking tribal confederation, conquered the country piece
by piece in the 1780–90s, established their capital in Tehran in 1786, founded
their dynasty in 1796, and proceeded to reign for more than a century.
The Qajar Shah’s word was law. He appointed and dismissed all officials – from court
ministers, governors general, and tribal chiefs, all the way down to village headmen.
But, since there was no governal and administrative structure at all in the country, to
power of the Shah realistically limited itself to the capital. The shah resembled more the
French king than the Ottoman sultan.
Around 1923 the government continued to farm out taxes simply because it lacked the
administrative machinery to collect them.
The military at this time, was actually really bad, even though on paper it seemed
good.
In the main cities, the formal judicial system was divided in into shari’a (religious) and
‘urf (state) courts.
1. Shari’a = headed by clerical qazis (judges) + hereditary sheikh al-islams (heads of
Islam) dealt with civil and personal matters
2. ‘Urf = by governmentappointed hakims. dealt with offences against the state
A British diplomat observed that the Qajars were willing to leave most legal matters to
religious judges, tribal chiefs, village headmen, and guild elders so long as they retained
in theory the ultimate authority over life and death.
Lacking a central bureaucracy, the Qajars relied on local notables –tribal chiefs, clerical
leaders, big merchants, and large landlords. In most localities, whether town, village, or
tribal areas, local elites enjoyed their own sources of power as well as links to the central
court.
The Imam’s held a lot of power they received two types of taks.
1 the khoms (Imam’s share)
2 regular zakat
As heads of religious endowments (awqaf), they supervised mosques, shrines,
seminaries, and Koranic schools;
In short, the Shi’i ulama, in contrast to their counterpart in the Sunni world,
enjoyed their own sources of income. Thus they were more independent of the
central government.
To counter this, the Qajars shrouded themselves in a religious aura they
declared themselves the protectors of Shi’ism.
The imam jum’eh of Tehran married into the royal family.
Imams were really powerful
The Qajars patronized the annual Muharram ceremonies commemorating the martyrdom
of Imam Hussein.
Ashura as well as the Feast of Zahra(happiness) became important.
, The Qajars continued the Safavid tradition of treating their Christian, Jewish, and
Zoroastrian minorities as legitimate “People of the Book” – legitimate both because
they had their own holy books and because they were recognized as such in the Koran
and the shari’a. They were permitted to have their own leaders and organizations, their
own schools and tax levies, and their own laws and places of worship.
The Qajars also tapped into pre-Islamic Iranian sentiments. They patronized public
readings of the Shahnameh and even renamed the crown after the mythical Kayan
dynasty described in that epic.
Paragraph 2: Qajar Society
The Qajars governed not so much through religion and bureaucracy as through
local notables.
Physical geography (mountains and rivers) played a big role in fragmenting the
population into small self-sufficient tribes, villages and communities The population
lived in small face-to-face communities with their own structures, hierarchies, languages
and dialects, and, often, until the late nineteenth century, self-sufficient economies.
Also here peasants worked in a sort of feudal system.
A part of their harvests were tax and a part was for themselves.
Depending on the situation, peasant workers could get what they want from landlords,
or had to obey him.
Persia’s population was roughly devided into:
1. Language: Turkish, Armenian, Bakhtiyari, Kayani (an ancient Persian dialect), and Ebri
(patois spoken by the local Jews).
2. Reglion: Shi’i, Christian, Jewish, Babi, Sheikhi (another recent offshoot of Shi’ism),
and seven Sufi orders – two of whom, the Haydaris and Nematis, it blamed for the
annual disturbances.
In short, the urban wards of nineteenth-century Iran constituted communities within
communities. Some Western social scientists claim that traditional Iran lacked “civil
society.” But Iranian historians such as Kasravi could well retort that it suffered from a
surfeit of such society.
Paragraph 3: State and society
Since the Qajars lacked real instruments of coercion and administration, they survived by
systematically exploiting social divisions. They described themselves as Supreme
Arbitrators, and did their best to channel aristocratic feuds into the court. In fact,
notables sought to have a presence there by either sending vakels (representatives) or
marrying into the royal family.
The Qajars would use the differences between communties to their advantage they
would support/misuse situations that would benefit them.
For example: In other words, the Qavam family, whose founder had been a merchant-
turned-governor, served as the shah’s main counterweight against the Qashqa’is for the
rest of the century and even well into the next.
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