Culture and Cultural Politics Under Reza Shah The Pahlavi State, New Bourgeoisie and The Creation of A Modern Society in Iran

Culture and Cultural Politics Under
Reza Shah
Culture and Cultural Politics Under Reza Shah presents a collection of

innovative research on the interaction of culture and politics accompanying the
vigorous modernization program of the first Pahlavi ruler. Examining a broad
spectrum of this multifaceted interaction it makes an important contribution to
the cultural history of the 1920s and 1930s in Iran, when, under the rule of
Reza Shah Pahlavi, dramatic changes took place inside Iranian society. With
special reference to the practical implementation of specific reform endeavors,
the various contributions critically analyze different facets of the relationship
between cultural politics, individual reformers, and the everyday life of
modernist Iranians.
Interpreting culture in its broadest sense, this book brings together con-
tributions from different disciplines such as literary history, social history,
ethnomusicology, art history, and Middle Eastern politics. In this way, it
combines for the first time the cultural history of Iran’s modernity with the
politics of the Reza Shah period.
Challenging a limited understanding of authoritarian rule under Reza
Shah, this book is a useful contribution to existing literature for students and
scholars of Middle Eastern History, Iranian History, and Iranian Culture.
Dr Bianca Devos is Assistant Professor/Lecturer at the Center for Near and

Middle East Studies at the University of Marburg (Germany). Her main
fields of research are Iran’s modern history, particularly the press and early
modern entrepreneurship, and literary history.
Professor Christoph Werner holds the Chair of Iranian Studies at the Center
for Near and Middle East Studies at the University of Marburg (Germany).
His main fields of interest are Qajar history, vaqf studies, and modern Persian
literature.
Iranian Studies
Edited by
Homa Katouzian, University of Oxford and
Mohamad Tavakoli, University of Toronto
Since 1967 the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) has been a leading
learned society for the advancement of new approaches in the study of Iranian
society, history, culture, and literature. The new ISIS Iranian Studies series
published by Routledge will provide a venue for the publication of original
and innovative scholarly works in all areas of Iranian and Persianate Studies.
1 Journalism in Iran 10 City of Knowledge in Twentieth

Hossein Shahidi Century Iran
Setrag Manoukian
2 Sadeq Hedayat
Edited by Homa Katouzian 11 Domestic Violence in Iran
Zahra Tizro
3 Iran in the 21st Century
Edited by Homa Katouzian and 12 Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam
Hossein Shahidi Todd Lawson
4 Media, Culture and Society in 13 Social Movements in Iran

Iran Simin Fadaee
Edited by Mehdi Semati
14 Iranian–Russian Encounters
Edited by Stephanie Cronin
5 Modern Persian Literature in
Afghanistan 15 Iran
Wali Ahmadi Homa Katouzian
6 The Politics of Iranian Cinema 16 Domesticity and Consumer
Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad Culture in Iran
Pamela Karimi
7 Continuity in Iranian Identity
Fereshteh Davaran 17 The Development of the
Babi/Baha’i Communities
8 New Perspectives on Youli Ioannesyan
Safavid Iran
Edited by Colin P. Mitchell 18 Culture and Cultural Politics
Under Reza Shah
9 Islamic Tolerance Bianca Devos and Christoph
Alyssa Gabbay Werner
Culture and Cultural Politics
Under Reza Shah
The Pahlavi State, New Bourgeoisie and
the Creation of a Modern Society in Iran
Edited by
Bianca Devos and Christoph Werner
ROUTLEDGE
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2014
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2014 Bianca Devos and Christoph Werner
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
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without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Culture and cultural politics under Reza Shah : the Pahlavi state, new
bourgeoisie and the creation of a modern society in Iran / edited by Bianca
Devos and Christoph Werner.
pages cm. – (Iranian studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Politics and culture – Iran – History – 20th century. 2. Iran – Cultural
policy – History – 20th century. 3. Iran – Politics and government–1925-
1979. 4. Iran – Intellectual life – 20th century. 5. Iran – Social conditions –
20th century. 6. Social change – Iran – History – 20th century. I. Devos,
Bianca, author, editor of compilation. II. Werner, Christoph, 1967-author,
editor of compilation.
DS317.C85 2013
955.05’2 – dc23
2013005107
ISBN: 978-0-415-82419-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-79842-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman

by Taylor & Francis Books
Contents
List of figures vii

Notes on contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
BIANCA DEVOS AND CHRISTOPH WERNER
PART I
Intellectuals and technocrats: Key figures in Iran’s
cultural modernization 17
1 Modernization in literary history: Malek al-Sho‘ara

Bahar’s Stylistics 19
ROXANE HAAG-HIGUCHI
2 Policy or puzzle? The foundation of the University of

Tehran between ideal conception and pragmatic
realization 37
CHRISTL CATANZARO
3 Mir Mehdi Varzandeh and the introduction of modern

physical education in Iran 55
H. E. CHEHABI
4 Modernization of Iranian music during the reign of

Reza Shah 73
KEIVAN AGHAMOHSENI
5 The king’s white walls: Modernism and bourgeois

architecture 95
TALINN GRIGOR
vi Contents
PART II
The Shah: State politics and authoritarian modernization 119
6 Archaeology and the Iranian National Museum: Qajar and early

Pahlavi cultural policies 121
NADER NASIRI-MOGHADDAM
7 Depicting power: Reza Shah’s rule, cabinet politics and the

commemorative stamp set of 1935 149
ROMAN SIEBERTZ
8 Press censorship in the Reza Shah era, 1925–41 181

KARIM SOLEIMANI
PART III
Life under Reza Shah: New bourgeois culture and other
forms of practiced modernity 199
9 Drama and operetta at the Red Lion and Sun:

Theatre in Tabriz 1927–41 201
CHRISTOPH WERNER
10 “Newly hatched chickens”: Bozorg ‘Alavi on the young

literary scene of the 1930s 233
ROJA DEHDARIAN
11 Giving birth to a new generation: Midwifery in the public

health system of the Reza Shah era 249
ELHAM MALEKZADEH
12 Engineering a modern society? Adoptions of new technologies

in early Pahlavi Iran 266
BIANCA DEVOS
13 Religious aspects in communication processes in early

Pahlavi Iran 288
KATJA FÖLLMER
Index 319
Figures
3.1 Mir Mehdi Varzandeh, around 1970. Source: Private collection,

courtesy of Nushin Turan Varzandeh. 56
5.1 Reza Shah’s cabinet members and other high-ranking officials
during a horserace event in Gorgan, 1928. The central figure
with the camera is court minister ‘Abd al-Hoseyn Teymurtash;
on his right, finance minister Firuz Mirza Nosrat al-Dowleh; and
on his left, justice minister ‘Ali Akbar Davar. Source: Library of
Prince Firouz Mirza Firouz, by the permission of Shahrokh
Firouz. 96
5.2 Map of major historical sites of pilgrimage for Twelver Imami
Shi‘ism in Iran, overlaid by the modern sites of secular/civil
pilgrimage constructed between 1934 and 1979 by the SNH. As
an integral part of Iran’s modernization project, the state and the
SNH intended first to utilize and then to shift the network and
rituals of the Shi‘a pilgrimage to a different set of secular
national destinations. Source: Talinn Grigor, 2009. 103
5.3 André Godard, main and southern façade of the Archaeological
Museum of Iran (Muzeh-ye Iran Bastan), Tehran 1936–39.
Source: Private collection, photo by Farokh Khadem; courtesy
of Cyrus Samii. 104
5.4 Amjadiyeh Public Pool, Tehran 1940s. Source: Private collection,
photo by Farokh Khadem; courtesy of Cyrus Samii. 108
5.5 General view of Reza Shah’s mausoleum by architects Mohsen
Forughi, Keyqobad Zafar, and ‘Ali Sadeq, Rey 1947–51. In the
background is visible the Shah ‘Abd al-‘Azim Shrine, 9th–20th
centuries. Source: Ali Khadem Collection, courtesy of Farrokh
Khadem and Cyrus Samii. 109
5.6 Local tourist posing on the steps of Hafeziyeh’s southern
courtyard, Shiraz 1954. This kind of practice by an unveiled
woman, much less by a Christian Iranian, would not have been
tolerated before the 1938 spatial metamorphosis of the Mosalla
cemetery into Hafez’s tomb garden, nor would she have visited
the site. Here she practices tourism and citizenry in the context
viii List of figures
of a secularized space, not a religious pilgrimage.
Source: Courtesy of Seda Hovnanian. 110
7.1 1882 definitive set, 5000 Dinar, portrait of Naser al-Din Shah.
Source: Author’s collection. 151
7.2 1914 coronation set, 1 Toman, ruins of Persepolis.
7.3 1933 definitive set, 1 Rial, Reza Shah with kolah-e Pahlavi.
7.4 1935 commemoration set, 5 Dinar, allegory of education.
7.5 1935 commemoration set, 15 Dinar, allegory of justice.
7.6 1935 commemoration set, 10 Dinar, ruins of Persepolis.
7.7 1935 commemoration set, 75 Dinar, cement factory in Rey.
7.8 1935 commemoration set, 30 Dinar, Tehran airfield.
7.9 1935 commemoration set, 1.50 Rial, post and customs office in
Tehran. Source: Author’s collection. 162
7.10 1935 commemoration set, 1 Rial, railway bridge in Ahvaz.
7.11 1935 commemoration set, 90 Dinar, gunboat Palang.
7.12 1935 commemoration set, 45 Dinar, sanatorium in Sakhtsar.
7.13 1964 stamp in celebration of the opening of the Shahnaz barrage
dam (Hamadan). Source: Author’s collection. 170
7.14 1963 stamp in celebration of the Tehran Hilton.
Contributors
Keivan Aghamohseni is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology and an active

musician. He was admitted to Sureh University of Fine Arts Tehran
in 2001 where he majored in Iranian Music (B.A. 2006). In the fourth All-
Iran Students Music Festival, held in 2002, he was selected as the special
winner in the traditional Iranian music (radif) section, playing qanun. In
the same year, he became a member of the Iranian Music Protection and
Research Center. From 2006 to 2009 he studied ethnomusicology at the
University of Theatre and Music in Hannover (Germany) and received
his M.A. with a thesis entitled “Political and Nationalist Implications of
Iranian Music at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century”. Since 2009 he
has been enrolled in the Ph.D. program of this university. He recently
published “Berlin Phonogram Archive” in Mahoor Quarterly, 38 (2008)
and “The Oral Teaching System of Music in Iranian Music”, Online
Publications Section of the University of Göttingen (2008). He is currently
supervising the project “Digitalization of Persian 78 rpm Shellac Records”
at the Music Museum of Iran.
Christl Catanzaro is Lecturer for Persian language and contemporary Iranian
history at the Institute of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, LMU
University of Munich (since 1998). She studied Iranian history, Ottoman
history, the history of Eastern and South-eastern Europe, and Italian
philology at universities in Munich, Bamberg, Teheran, and Naples (Ph.D.,
University of Bamberg 1999). Her main research interests are concentrated in
the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries and cover the histories of
modern institutions, education, the Near Eastern press, and institutions
and media (especially film and internet) in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Recently, she has also been working on Ottoman–Venetian relations.
H. E. Chehabi is Professor of International Relations and History at Boston
University (Licence, Université de Caen; Diplôme, Institut d’Etudes
Politiques de Paris; M.A., Ph.D., Yale University). He specializes in Middle
Eastern politics and cultural history, and international law. Professor Chehabi
has taught at Harvard, Oxford, and UCLA, and has held Alexander von
Humboldt and Woodrow Wilson fellowships. He has published two books,
x Notes on contributors
Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of
Iran under the Shah and Khomeini (1990) and Distant Relations: Iran and
Lebanon in the Last 500 Years (2006). He has also co-edited Politics,
Society, and Democracy: Comparative Studies (1995) and Sultanistic
Regimes (1998). Professor Chehabi has written numerous articles, book
reviews, and translations.
Roja Dehdarian is Researcher and Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Ira-
nian Studies at the University of Bamberg (Germany). She received her M.A.
in Iranian Studies, Spanish and Islamic art history and archaeology from the
University of Bamberg in 2005. She is currently working on a project dealing
with the exile experience of the Iranian writer Bozorg ‘Alavi (1904–97).
Bianca Devos is Assistant Professor/Lecturer at the Center for Near and
Middle East Studies at the University of Marburg (Germany). She received
her M.A. in Islamic Studies and Economics from the University of
Freiburg in 2005 where she also coordinated the database project Digital
Persian Archive (at www.asnad.org) from 2005–7. In 2011, she completed
her Ph.D. in Iranian Studies at the University of Marburg with a thesis on
the nascence of a professionalized Iranian press during the early Pahlavi period.
She has published two books, Kleidungspolitik in Iran: die Durchsetzung der
.
Kleidungsvorschriften für Männer unter Riza- Ša-h (2006) and Presse und
Unternehmertum in Iran: Die Tageszeitung It.t.ila-‘a-t in der frühen Pahlavı--Zeit
(2012).
Katja Föllmer is Lecturer and Research Assistant at the Institute of Iranian
Studies at Göttingen University (Germany). She holds a doctorate in
Iranian studies. Her research and teaching are focused on Iranian culture in
modern times; Iranian media, communication, and identity; gender issues;
classical and modern Persian literature and satire. She took part in various
national and international conferences with papers on Iranian film, literature,
and satire and published articles in that field. In 2008 she published two
books: Satire in Iran von 1990–2000 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz) and Farid
ud-Din Attar: Die Konferenz der Vögel (translated, Wiesbaden: Marix).
Talinn Grigor (Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005) is
Associate Professor of modern and contemporary architecture in the
Department of Fine Arts at Brandeis University. Her interests are in the
relationships between architecture and (post)colonial politics, focused on
Iran and India. Her book, Building Iran: Modernism and National Heritage
under the Pahlavi Monarchs (Periscope/Prestel, 2009) traces the history of
heritage, the architectural profession, and political discourses in twentieth-
century Iran. A second book entitled Contemporary Iranian Visual Arts:
Street, Studio, and Exile (Reaktion Books, 2014) is forthcoming. She is the
author of numerous articles that have appeared in the Art Bulletin, Third
Text, Journal of Iranian Studies, Thresholds, Future Anterior, ARRIS, and
DOCOMOMO. She has received grants from the Getty Research Institute,
Notes on contributors xi
Cornell University, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, and
the Aga Khan at MIT, among others. Her present project deals with the
turn-of-the-century European art-historiography and its links to eclectic/
revivalistic architecture in Qajar Iran and the British Raj.
Roxane Haag-Higuchi is Senior Lecturer of Iranian Studies at the University
of Bamberg (Germany). She received a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at the
University of Freiburg with a thesis on historical Persian narratology
(1984). Her main fields of research are the cultural history and literature of
Iran in the Qajar and modern periods. Within this framework, she is
especially interested in phenomena of self-reflection and cultural transition
as they occur in Qajar poetry, ego-documents like letters and travelogues,
early Persian novels, and literary history.
Elham Malekzadeh is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of History, Research
Center of Humanities and Cultural Studies in Tehran. She received her
M.A. in history from Azad University in 1997 and holds a Ph.D. in history
from Al-Zahra University in Tehran for a thesis entitled “A Study of
Effective Elements in the Creation and Development of Charitable
(Welfare and Health) Institutions during the Reign of Reza Shah” (2009).
Her research interests center around women’s endowments and philan-
thropic work from the Qajar period to the present era. She also works on
the socio-political condition of women during the Ilkhanid period. She was
the recipient of the Best Researcher and Best Student Award from 2004 to
2008. Her publications include: Asnad-e daneshjuyan-e Irani dar Urupa,
1313–1307, ed. with ‘A. Nava’i (2003); Tarikh-e ravabet-e Iran va Veniz,
ed. with ‘A. Nava’i (2005); Ruznameh-ye khaterat-e Naser al-Din Shah, ed.
with ‘A. Nava’i (2005); Sargozasht-e Safariyan (2003), Omur-e kheyriyyeh
dar dowreh-ye Qajar (2006), Sam va Bahram, with ‘A. Nava’i (2008).
Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam is Assistant Professor (maître de conférences) at the
University Marc Bloch in Strasbourg (France). He completed his Ph.D. in
Oriental Languages and Civilizations at the University of Sorbonne
Nouvelle (Paris III) in 2002, after having studied history in Iran (B.A.,
University of Yazd; M.A., University of Tehran). His thesis received the
Best Dissertation of the Year Award from the Foundation for Iranian Studies
and was published in Paris in 2004 as L’Archéologie française en Perse et
les antiquités nationales (1884–1914). From 2003–5 he was a post-doctoral
research fellow at the Portuguese Ministry of Education and the Fundacao
para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) in Lisbon (2003–5). His research
interests deal with the relationship between Iran and the West (sixteenth–
twentieth centuries), the history of archaeology and art markets in Iran.
Numerous articles and books include Safar-nameh-ye sevvom-e Mozaffar
al-Din Shah be Farang, ed. (2011).
Roman Siebertz is a Senior Research Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer at the
Institute for Asian Studies at the University of Bonn. Having studied in
xii Notes on contributors
Bonn and Bamberg, he received his M.A. degree in Iranian Studies
in 1998. From 2000 until 2003 he was employed as Junior Research Fellow
at the University of Bamberg within the frame of a research project on the
political iconography of modern Iran. He received his Ph.D. in 2003 with a
thesis on the development of political propaganda in Iran since the Qajar
period, focusing on the iconography of Iranian postage stamps (Die Brief-
marken Irans als Mittel der politischen Bildpropaganda, Wien 2005). His
fields of research comprise the political and social history of Iran from the
Safavid period to the present, and the history of Iran’s relation to the West.
He is currently working on a book project dealing with the crisis of the late
Safavid state.
Karim Soleimani is tenured Assistant Professor at the Department of History,
Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. He received his B.A. and M.A. in
Iranian history from the University of Esfahan (1987) and the University
of Tehran (1990) respectively, and his Ph.D. from the University of
Bamberg (Germany) in 1998. His publications include Alqab-e rejal-e
dowreh-ye Qajariyeh (Tehran 2000) and numerous articles. His most recent
publication is Tejarat-e tanbaku miyan-e Iran va Mesr in Faslnameh-ye
‘elmi-pazhuheshi-ye ‘olum-e ensani, University of Ahvaz (2009).
Christoph Werner is Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of Marburg
(Germany). He received an M.A. (1994) and a Ph.D. (1999) in Iranian
Studies from the University of Bamberg where he also taught as Assistant
Professor from 1997 to 2002. From 2002 to 2007 he was Junior Professor
of Islamic Studies/Iranian World at the University of Freiburg. His
research interests include the social and economic history of the Iranian
World with special emphasis on the Qajar period and topics related to Persian
diplomatics and historiography, and more recently also contemporary
Persian literature. Book publications include An Iranian Town in Transition
(Wiesbaden 2000) and together with D. Zakrzewski and H.-T. Tillschneider
Die Kuǧuǧı- Stiftungen in Tabrı-z (Wiesbaden 2013). A major ongoing project
is devoted to build up a Digital Archive of Persian Documents, accessible at
www.asnad.org.
Acknowledgements
This volume arose out of an international symposium on “Culture and Cultural

Politics in Early Pahlavi Iran, 1921–51”, held in June 2009 at the Philipp
University of Marburg. Participants were Houchang Chehabi, Roja Dehdarian,
Katja Föllmer, Roxane Haag-Higuchi, Elham Malekzadeh, Afshin Marashi,
Cyrus Schayegh, and Roman Siebertz. Since Mohammad Ali Akbari and Karim
Soleimani were unable to be present at the workshop, their papers were read by
Emad al-Din Sheikh al-Hokamaee and Mohammad Abdolmohammadzadeh.
The workshop was made possible through the generous funding offered by the
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, for which we are extremely thankful, and the institu-
tional and personal support of the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies
(CNMS). In addition to the colleagues who originally presented papers and
participated in inspiring discussions, we would like to express our special
gratitude to all those who subsequently agreed to contribute articles to this
collection, namely Keivan Aghamohseni, Christl Catanzaro, Talinn Grigor,
and Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam. Our particular thanks are due to Homa
Katouzian and Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi for their readiness to include this
book in the Iranian Studies series, as well as to the editors and staff at Routledge.
Thispageintentionallyleftblank
Introduction
Bianca Devos and Christoph Werner
The reign of Reza Shah marks a crucial turning point in the history of
modern Iran, when centralized efforts were made to rebuild the state in
terms of a progressive nation. During the last decade the early Pahlavi period
has increasingly attracted scholarly attention. This development can be
ascribed to several reasons such as the quest for the roots of the revolution
of 1978–79; the sentimental glorification of the Reza Shah era (1926–41),
both inside Iran and in diasporic communities; and the ready availability
of primary source material after access to Iranian archives has finally
become possible.1 The culture and cultural politics of this period, however,
remain widely neglected. Until now, the reign of Reza Shah has been viewed
primarily through the lens of politics, international relations, and militarist or
autocratic modernism. Throughout, the political history of this period
has been at the centre of research, with an equally strong focus on tribal
politics and the military.2 At the same time, particular studies devoted to the
literature or the arts of this time rarely paid attention to the socio-political
background and the actual agendas of the state and its administrative
apparatus.3
Taking up the new stimulus provided by the concept of subaltern studies,
an increasing number of books have been published during the last couple of
years that challenge conventional historiographical approaches in writing the
modern history of Iran.4 Still, a state-centred perspective and an emphasis on
authoritarian modernization by the autocratic state remain the predominant
angle from which the 1920s and 1930s are examined.5 This might help to
explain the multitude of reforms implemented in such a short period of time,
as well as their long-term success, but fails to consider other central agents of
Iran’s modernity. Moreover, the study of the early Pahlavi period has been
dominated by generalizations and affected by black-and-white dichotomies
including admiration for Reza Shah’s modernization efforts on the one hand
and criticism of authoritarian censorship and stifling suppression of artists
and writers on the other. The overall negative evaluation of cultural life under
Reza Shah resulted in the firmly entrenched belief that the restrictive climate
prevented any positive development in theatre, press, or literature and drove
creative individuals to withdraw into academia.
2 Bianca Devos and Christoph Werner
There is a clear contradiction between the idea of Reza Shah as a basically
uncultured and uneducated boor and the notion that everything in Iran,
including the country’s social and cultural renewal, originated in Reza Shah’s
authoritarian policy. From early on, he was ridiculed by Western diplomats
and observers as a Cosack and brutish drill sergeant. Statements such as the
one by the American minister Charles C. Hart, characterizing him as an “illit-
erate peasant’s equally illiterate son,” were to stay.6 This makes it so difficult to
imagine a deliberate cultural policy in the early Pahlavi period.
This pessimistic image of culture during the years of Reza Shah’s reign
prompted us to critically analyze different facets of the relationship between
cultural politics, the educational system, and the “life-world” of modernist
Iranians. We regard the relationship between politics and culture not as a hier-
archical order where politics determine culture, but rather as a double-sided
process of interaction – cultural production influences politics and politics
shape modes of cultural representation. Since our understanding of culture is
deliberately wide and open, it includes medicine and sports, theatre, literature
and music, architecture and iconography, the press and the educational
system with schools, museums, and universities.
With special reference to the practical implementation of specific reforms this
volume goes beyond the state-centred view by acknowledging the significance of
reform-minded individuals as masterminds of modernization. It also regards
the modern middle class as a crucial agent in the reform process and sheds
light on the mass of Iranians as the main target of cultural reforms. In order
not to adopt the state’s view too easily, such an approach must use new
sources as well as new readings of the available material; the contributions to
this volume integrate primary sources from Iran to a great extent. Hence, this
volume continues the recent trend in writing the history of twentieth-century
Iran by “moving away from the state as reference point of societal action”7
and challenging the paradigm of authoritarian modernization; however, not
by focusing on subaltern forces in society, but rather by stressing the highly
significant symbiosis between the state and individual reformers and the
common people’s contribution in appropriating modern culture.
The approach taken in this volume is reinforced by some works on the
history of Iranian women. Driven by the need to re-examine conventional
male perspectives, gender-related studies considered new theoretical frame-
works for writing the modern Iranian history, re-read established sources and
made use of new source material.8 This young, but productive field of
research has resulted in a number of general histories of women in Iran and
made considerable contributions to the treatment of specific periods, among
them the early Pahlavi period.9
As a phase of profound transformation it also has significance to researchers
of Iran’s feminist movement: a vivid women’s press with periodicals like the
successful paper ‘Alam-e Nesvan (Women’s world) or the second Eastern
Women’s Congress in Tehran in 1932 promoted new concepts of gender relations
and Iranian womanhood much more frankly than before.10 A major turning
Introduction 3
point for the movement came in 1936, when the government started the
official programme of emancipation for women, the nahzat-e banovan. Under
the auspices of Reza Shah’s strong, centralized state, several demands of
women’s rights activists were put into practice, but, at the same time, all
independent women initiatives were brought to an end or put under official
control. Facing the autocratic state, many activists chose to cooperate – be it
for fear of repression or by realizing a promising opportunity for a nation-
wide implementation of their ideas.11 The most prominent reform within the
nahzat-e banovan was the compulsory unveiling (kashf-e hejab) of Iranian
women.12
It was and still is a divisive issue – among women activists at the time of its
enforcement and today among scholars.13 Often considered a symbol of Reza
Shah’s brutality, the kashf-e hejab contributed to a rather negative assessment
of his reign.14 In contrast, some historians highlighted the beneficial effects of
this measure for the emancipation of Iranian women.15 Out of this dissent a
general discussion of Reza Pahlavi’s role in Iran’s social reform process has
evolved, in which the common overemphasis on the shah’s agency has been
strongly criticized.16 We regard this debate as a very inspiring one for writing
the modern history of Iran and see it perfectly reflected in the diverse
perspectives of the contributions included in this volume.17
Features of Reza Shah’s cultural politics

Interpreting culture in its broadest sense, this book brings together contributions
from different disciplines such as literary history, social history, ethnomusi-
cology, art history, and Middle Eastern politics. In this way, it combines the
cultural history of Iran’s modernity with the politics of the Reza Shah period.
Irrespective of the discipline from which the authors come, there are several
themes consistently recurring throughout the entire volume.
One of these issues is the question of agency in Iran’s cultural modernization
during the 1920s and 1930s. The image of Reza Shah and his all-powerful
state pushing the whole nation towards progress and modernity has been
challenged more explicitly by recent research and is also questioned by the con-
tributions to this volume.18 For instance, when we look at the shah’s personal
interest in specific cultural reforms, his role as single engine of the comprehen-
sive reform program appears questionable. He turns out to be not a whole-
heartedly committed reformer, as his dedication varied from case to case:
he ardently supported the excavations in Persepolis and personally urged
the archaeologists for faster results.19 His involvement in the foundation of the
University of Tehran, however, was actually limited to his participation in the
opening ceremony, even if he certainly approved higher education in Iran.20
So, how authoritarian was Iran’s modernization during the early Pahlavi
period and who actually implemented it?
There is a general agreement that a group of elite politicians including
‘Abdolhoseyn Teymurtash, ‘Ali Akbar Davar, and Mohammad ‘Ali Forughi
were the initial driving force behind the comprehensive reform agenda. In the
cultural arena, their importance manifested itself in their membership in or
affiliation with the “Society for National Heritage” (Anjoman-e asar-e melli),
a key institution in formulating the nation’s cultural memory until the mid
1930s.21 These men unquestionably played a crucial role in the country’s
transformation towards a modern nation-state, but the circle of the architects
of modern Iran was much larger, as this volume shows. An essential group
among these modernizers was that of the intellectuals who did not necessarily
hold high-ranking public offices. In addition to prominent figures like Malek
al-Sho’ara Bahar and ‘Isa Sadiq, there were many personally committed
individuals whose ideas and individual initiatives provided the creative sparks
for later governmental programmes.22 However, in order to implement their
concepts on a national scale and to achieve long-term effects these individuals
were heavily dependent on state institutions, as the examples of Mir Mehdi
Varzandeh or ‘Alinaqi Vaziri demonstrate.23
Other members of the Iranian intelligentsia were not involved in state
politics, but due to their artistic or literary productions had a great share in
the cultural life of the 1920s and 1930s: this group includes Tehran’s young
literati like Sadeq Hedayat and Bozorg ‘Alavi or popular playwrights like
Reza Qolizadeh.24 Of course, we should not ignore the new bourgeois middle
class as a decisive factor in the process of cultural modernization. The initial
target group of governmental and non-governmental reforms, the members of
this social stratum for the most part readily integrated innovative technical
devices and new forms of entertainment into their daily life.25 And the weal-
thier ones among them commissioned pioneers of avant-garde architecture
like Gabriel Guevrekian to design and construct their private homes, thus
promoting the country’s visible change and contributing essentially to the
popularization of modern culture.26
What did “modern culture” in early Pahlavi Iran mean? The contributions
to this volume emphasize the strong influence of Western ideas on Iranian
reformers. In their conception of modernity, they heavily relied on concepts
and ideologies that were prevailing at that time in Europe, like Varzandeh
who was influenced by Social Darwinism and eugenics or Bahar who based
his literary history Sabk-shenasi on Darwin’s theory of evolution.27 Western
trends in literature, music, theatre, and architecture inspired a growing
number of creative professionals inside Iran. And on the material level, the
adoption of Western modernity manifested itself not only in official archi-
tecture or private residential houses, but also in new means of transportation
and the spread of mass consumer goods.
Principal agents of Western modernity were well-known foreign figures like
Ernst Herzfeld, Arthur Upham Pope, or André Godard who assisted the
Pahlavi state in shaping its cultural policy in the field of arts, archaeology,
and museology.28 Less known, but likewise trendsetting, were foreign physical
instructors, engineers, and physicians practising in Iran.29 The key role in this
process, however, was played by Iranians, particularly by those who had spent
Introduction 5
some time abroad and brought new ideas and a distinct awareness of a
modern way of life and material culture back home to Iran. Most chapters of
this volume point out that a stay in Europe had a trigger effect on individuals
to actively contribute to the modernization process.30
Motives for the adoption of Western culture were manifold. There certainly
was a feeling of backwardness, especially regarding technological progress,
but concerns to improve the Iranian “race” and to prevent the society from
degeneration were also determining factors in adhering to Western role
models. Important, but often overlooked is also the very individual motivation
of returnees to continue the lifestyle they enjoyed in the West, whether for
reasons of comfort or in order to distinguish themselves as avant-garde. Being
modern in the sense of being up-to-date with latest Western trends could serve
the middle class as a marker of their social status, as some of the following
articles will show.31 The aspect of entertainment played a crucial role in
popularizing modern culture and was tightly connected to the spread of new
forms of pastime activities (tafrih) and technical innovations. Gramophones
and radio popularized different kinds of music, new transportation led to the
emergence of tourism, and visiting cinemas and theatres replaced traditional
participation in religious performances.32
The frequently mentioned sense of inferiority and backwardness became a
commonly accepted motive to explain the Iranians’ adherence to Western
modernity, thus giving a very negative connotation to the country’s quest for
modernization. While reviewing the contributions to this volume, however, we
had the impression that the reforms of the 1920s and 1930s had been undertaken
in an open-minded, almost relaxed atmosphere and we could scarcely detect a
pessimistic impetus for modernization. There might be inklings of concern
about a specific Iranian identity, but not to the degree of the regularly
invoked fear of Westoxication, to be encountered from the 1960s onwards. Of
course, the fundamental question of how and to what extent to embrace
Western forms of culture was permanently debated by different groups
of reform-minded Iranians. In the course of their discussions a great number
of reformers advocated a total adoption of European models, almost the
introduction of Western culture in its pure form.
This leads to another question: Was there a distinct cultural policy of the
Pahlavi state? When we look at the actual implementation of reforms – which
many of the contributors to our volume did – we see a high degree of pragmatism,
so that Western innovations were adapted in a rather nonchalant and uncon-
cerned way. This pragmatism was characterized by many ad hoc decisions
which persons in charge of a specific cultural institution made in order to
meet a demand that was pressing at that particular moment. The develop-
ment of an Iranian system of higher education, the efforts for the protection
of national heritage, the introduction of Western forms of music or sports, the
establishment of a public health service, a modern transport system, or even
of official censorship are examples of pragmatic cultural politics, since none
of these efforts followed a coherent long-term plan.
This can be ascribed to several reasons. First of all, the state was con-
fronted with a number of already existing initiatives that had been started
privately, building on the great enthusiasm of individual modernizers. Con-
certed plans for cultural modernization by the government could be thwarted
by such projects, especially during the first decade of Reza Shah’s rule, when
the young Pahlavi state had to face more urgent problems than cultural
reform and therefore kept its involvement in this sector limited. Additionally,
due to Iran’s highly personalized power structure a decision in favour of a
specific reform or against it was very much dependent on personal antipathies
of the officeholders.
However, this pragmatism is just one aspect that characterizes the imple-
mentation of specific reforms and does not sufficiently answer the question
whether the Pahlavi state actually followed a distinct cultural policy. The answer
heavily depends on which stage of Reza Shah’s reign one considers. There is a
clear change in the state’s cultural involvement in terms of both quality and
quantity, with a striking increase during the 1930s. This second decade can be
considered as the crucial period in the enforcement of reforms aiming at a
deep transformation of the country’s society. While Stephanie Cronin regards
the years between 1925 and 1927 as the factual starting point of the strong
Pahlavi state and thereby suggests a convincing periodization with regard to
Iran’s political history,33 for the cultural history we propose an alternative peri-
odization which emphasizes the second decade of Reza Shah’s rule.34 During the
1920s, the state had still been concerned with internal power struggles, military
reorganization, and the project of national unification under a strong central
government.35 At that time, first activities aiming at cultural change, such as
the reform of men’s dress, appear rather as a test run for the newly established
administrative apparatus.36 From 1930 onwards, however, the state carried
out more and more social and cultural reforms, created fundamental institu-
tions for modernization, and took advantage of the initiated bureaucratic
institutionalization to control the public and cultural sphere.
A closer look at the period between 1930 and 1941 furthermore reveals a
concentration of important changes around the mid 1930s:37 The political
climate became more restrictive, as reflected in the decree against collectivist
ideas in 1931 or the Gowhar Shad incident in 1935; the ruling oligarchy was
exchanged, exemplified in Teymurtash’s dismissal in 1932 and the increasingly
important role of the police (shahrbani) in controlling the public sphere;38
also, the state’s general attitude became more and more xenophobic. These
trends and events had an equally strong impact on cultural life: the Society
for National Heritage was dissolved in 1934; Varzandeh withdrew from his
position in the Ministry of Education in the same year; Vaziri was dismissed
as principal of the public school of music and replaced by Gholamhoseyn
Minbashiyan in 1935; the works of the Rab‘eh group around Hedayat and
‘Alavi were censored from 1935 onwards; the latter author even went to
prison in 1937; and foreign physicians and midwives were prohibited from
practicing in Iran.
Introduction 7
Notwithstanding these changes, essential new cultural institutions were also
founded around this time: the University of Tehran was inaugurated in 1934; the
Iranian Academy (Farhangestan) for purifying the language was established in
1935; and several tombs of national symbols like Hafez were completed in the
years between 1934 and 1939.39 Also in the mid 1930s, a coronation stamp
produced in celebration of the tenth anniversary of Reza Shah’s rule set new
trends in the iconography of his reign that served the state’s propaganda purposes.
Remarkably, one of the recurrent themes in our volume is the millennium
celebration of the poet Ferdowsi’s birthday in 1934, which definitely was an
inspiring event that provided important impulses for further cultural projects.
The state gradually expanded its control over cultural and public life. This
development became apparent in the promulgation of a multitude of regulations
(nezam-namehs). In the following chapters we come across such rules as the
Regulations on Theatre and other Public Events from 1306 (1928); two byelaws
supplementing the medical law with regard to midwifery in 1307 (1928) and
1309 (1930); the Street Widening Act of 1933; the ban on rowzeh-khvani
preachments in 1935; and new statutes for cinemas in 1936 and for press
censorship in 1938 – just to mention some examples.
It is striking how many nezam-namehs were issued, especially during the
1930s, and how many aspects of life they set out to regulate. This “nezam-
nameh-ization policy” can be seen as emblematic of the Pahlavi state’s ambi-
tion to control the life of its subjects in nearly every respect. Reza Shah might
have had a personal interest in this comprehensive control in order to secure
his power. But another key factor for the radical increase in regulations was
the general concern of many Iranian reformers that, if people would not act
according to their precisely formulated instructions, the initiated moderniza-
tion would fail and possibly even bring harm to the society – or at least to
Iran’s image as a progressive nation. The need to educate the Iranian people
at large can be observed as yet another recurrent theme of this volume. In the
state’s and the modernists’ opinion people had to be instructed in order to
develop an idea of nationalism and a conscience of the nation’s history and
heritage, to provide a strong and healthy basis for future generations, to
maintain discipline and order, to present themselves in a national uniformity,
and to accept the state’s authority. The means for achieving these aims were
manifold and included textbooks, sport programmes, the periodical press, the
radio, the theatre, cinema, literature, music, stamps, and architecture. Public
instruction as a national task culminated in the foundation of the Sazman-e
Parvaresh-e Afkar (Organization for public enlightenment)40 in 1939, an
institution that centralized all prior educational efforts, but did not achieve
significant and long-term success in face of Reza Shah’s abdication only two
years later.
The contributions included in this volume focus on the actual imple-
mentation of reforms concerning modern Iranian culture and follow their
impact on different levels of state and society in early Pahlavi Iran. They have
been arranged along three different perspectives, from which they examine the
cultural modernization during this crucial period in Iran’s modern history.
Part I focuses on individual reformers whose ideas and initiatives were much
more relevant and effective for modernizing Iran’s society than hitherto
acknowledged. The chapters of Part II take up the commonly accepted per-
spective of authoritarian modernization, but also add completely new aspects
of interaction between state policy and specific fields of culture. Part III
emphasizes concrete expressions of the new bourgeois culture and takes a
closer look at daily life during the 1920s and 1930s in Iran.
Intellectuals and technocrats: key figures in Iran’s

cultural modernization
Based on the assumption that parallel to the official politics of the Pahlavi
state diverse concepts of modernity were realized by reform-minded Iranians,
providing the basis for a comprehensive cultural modernization, the first part
of this volume takes a look inside the world of those people who were rele-
vant in shaping the public discourse of modernity, but were not necessarily
actively involved in state politics. This state-supporting intellectual and tech-
nocratic elite of the 1920s and 1930s is highlighted throughout, as well as the
differences and strong competition among its members on a personal level.
Their concepts of modernity had an important effect on the modernization
politics of the state and were inevitably modified in the course of practical
implementation of certain programmes. This part also concentrates on the
educational aspect of culture and cultural politics; it examines, in a nutshell,
how to be modern in Reza Shah’s state was imagined and taught.
In Chapter 1 Roxane Haag-Higuchi focuses on the recently established
University of Tehran and addresses the question what was actually taught in
class. Analyzing Malek al-Sho‘ara Bahar’s Sabk-shenasi, the textbook for the
newly founded Ph.D. course in Persian literature in 1937, the author sheds
light on the impact that the regulation of culture could have, in this case the
standardization of a Persian literary canon. This chapter outlines Bahar’s
influential ideas, which were not totally in conformance with the official
nationalistic rhetoric, and thereby adds important new facets to the dominant
perception of the cultural modernization during the early Pahlavi period.
Christl Catanzaro, in Chapter 2, also deals with the foundation of the
University of Tehran and the overall question of how the systematic intro-
duction of modern education in Iran was carried out. Analyzing the ideas of
statesmen actively involved in this reform project, namely ‘Isa Sadiq and ‘Ali
Asghar Hekmat, and comparing their concepts with the actual implementa-
tion of the new educational system in the 1930s, this article outlines the
characteristics of an institutional process as a gradual transformation, which
can also be regarded as paradigmatic for the whole modernization process
during this period.
By portraying Mir Mehdi Varzandeh, one of the pioneers of modernity, in
Chapter 3, Houchang Chehabi sketches the history of modern physical
Introduction 9
education in Iran and its ideological concept, which not only prevailed in
intellectual circles but also in non-elite discussions of a healthy nation.
Through the adoption of Western athletic disciplines the physical fitness of
the citizenry was supposed to provide the basis for the nation’s revitalization.
Looking at the actual implementation of this reform this chapter also reveals
the limits of state power in modernizing the country.
Chapter 4 examines the fundamental and systematic change in Iranian
music achieved by the promotion of Western forms and the condemnation of
traditional Iranian music, with particular focus on the two reformers, ‘Alinaqi
Vaziri and Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan. The modernization of music under
Reza Shah is a formidable example of the dependency of modernist forces on
state support to pursue cultural activities. Keivan Aghamohseni’s contribution
also reveals that in this period Iranian music achieved a much higher social
position than it had in the past. Formerly restricted to the religious context,
music gained a foothold in the everyday life of the middle class and was
gradually converted into a consumer commodity for the masses.
Taking Tehran’s modern architecture as the most conspicuous cultural
expression of the shift from an aristocratic to a bourgeois ascendancy in the 1920s
and 1930s Talinn Grigor analyzes in Chapter 5 the formation of the archi-
tectural profession and the relationship between architects at the service of the
state and the state institutions for educating them. By assessing the profes-
sional, pedagogical, urban, and architectural policies under Reza Shah, she
outlines the changing treatment of urban space from the 1920s to the 1940s
and discusses the modernist discourse behind it.
The shah: state politics and authoritarian modernization

The second part focuses on the state and its politics and deals with the question
of how to characterize the nature of cultural politics under Reza Shah. The
authoritarian state aimed first and foremost at rationalizing, controlling, and
structuring culture through its policies, which in turn became part of cultural
production and performance. All contributions to this part focus on state
policies dependent on personal decisions by Reza Shah, but also highlight
the crucial role of single elite figures in the Pahlavi state who gave direction to the
reform agenda and its actual implementation. Several aspects of the Pahlavi
modernization program that have attracted little or no attention are taken
into account, such as political iconography in the official propaganda.
Using the example of the Iranian National Museum (Muzeh-ye Iran
Bastan), founded in 1936, Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam illustrates in Chapter 6
an important, but mostly overlooked aspect of the Pahlavi modernization pro-
gram, the connection between cultural policy and diplomacy. How did strategic
considerations regarding Iran’s foreign policy influence decisions in the cul-
tural sector? To answer this question, this chapter examines the essential role
of Western experts in reconstructing the Iranian pre-Islamic past and defining
national heritage.
Roman Siebertz explores in Chapter 7 the political iconography of stamps,
a hitherto almost completely neglected aspect of Reza Shah’s propaganda
politics. By examining the motifs used on a set of stamps issued on the occa-
sion of the tenth anniversary of Reza Shah’s coronation in 1935, the author
sums up the central symbols of the propagated cultural and national identity
of the Pahlavi regime. Moreover, the motifs shed light on the ideology and
self-conception of the Iranian elite in the 1930s, some of whose members like
Forughi, Davar, and Hekmat, as members of the government, were involved
in creating and issuing these stamps.
In Chapter 8 Karim Soleimani re-evaluates the early Pahlavi press policy
and takes a close look at institutions in charge of censoring the press. The
chapter presents a detailed chronological account of censorship under Reza
Shah and is representative of current views inside Iranian historiography that
stress the agency of Reza Shah and his elite circle in cultural politics. Considering
changing balances of influence between singular state figures like the court
minister Teymurtash and newly created state institutions, the author divides
the press censorship between 1925 and 1941 into three stages, according to
the dominant institution at different points. This chapter highlights the pro-
cess of expanding state control over newspapers and magazines and illustrates
the internal policy making of the Pahlavi state.
Life under Reza Shah: new bourgeois culture and other forms
of practiced modernity
The third part concentrates on the practical implementation of the Pahlavi
reform agenda and its effects on daily life. In addition to the state and personally
committed intellectuals and technocrats, other groups and forces participated
in the task of national modernization and education. Confronted with the actual
appropriation of new cultural modes, both the Iranian intelligentsia and non-
elite modernists were forced to re-evaluate their concepts of modernity and
adjust them to the actual situation. Consequently, discussions about desired
and undesired culture and the necessity to regulate and administrate cultural
productions were of utmost importance. Their interaction with the populace to
be educated took also place outside the framework of state institutions. With
the emergence of a new bourgeois culture, the middle class created its own new
space for entertainment, music, and communication. Taking the subjective
dimension of their cultural experiences into account, the contributions of this
part explore the self-conception of the modernist middle class and its lifestyle
in the period from the 1920s to the beginning of the 1940s. Nevertheless, we
constantly have to keep in mind that protagonists from these strata of society
remained heavily dependent on the support of state institutions if they wanted
to put their ideas and concepts successfully into practice. Here, the interaction
between cultural politics and cultural expression becomes most apparent.
In Chapter 9 Christoph Werner challenges the prevalent negative evaluations
of theatre in the early Pahlavi period, which are ascribed to the general
Introduction 11
intellectual climate of the time, the rigorous censorship under Reza Shah,
and the premise that the idea of modern theatre in the European tradition
remained widely alien to Iranian culture and public interest. He shows that
theatre had its place in the middle of society where it was appreciated largely
because of its entertaining qualities and thus served the needs of a general public.
In Chapter 10 Roja Dehdarian portrays the group of young literati around
Sadeq Hedayat and Bozorg ‘Alavi and traces their position in cultural life
during the second decade of Reza Shah’s reign. We notice their struggle with
the literary establishment, their antipathy towards the government, and their
rejection of traditional religious authority. However, it is also undeniable that
they participated in the cultural discourse of the time; and their nationalist ideas
shared common ground with the official state nationalism. This dichotomy
highlights the necessity of recognizing the heterogeneity of the discourse that
encompassed different and at times competing ideas of modernity and nation.
In the course of Iran’s “rebirth” as a modern nation the profession of
midwifery gained a special and also a symbolic relevance. Elham Malekzadeh
examines in Chapter 11 the integration of midwifery as a new profession into
Reza Shah’s health care system. Special attention is paid to the education of
future midwives, the process of establishing obstetric schools in Iran, their
curricular and examinations. By focusing on the women who were trained in
and graduated from the newly established obstetric schools, this paper opens a
completely new field of research for the early Pahlavi period, based on the
analysis of mainly unpublished material from Iranian archives.
The visible change of Iran through the rapid spread of modern technology
was a vital aspect of Reza Shah’s reform agenda. Driven by the wish to extend
its control over all parts of society, the Pahlavi state was concerned about how to
regulate the adoption of modern technology. But modernists also felt responsible
to help the common Iranian people adapt to modern life. In Chapter 12 Bianca
Devos discusses the educational efforts of both the Pahlavi state and members
of the modernist middle class to instruct Iranians on how to use the new
technologies in the “right” way. At the same time this chapter sheds light on
the actual adoption of technical devices by the mass of Iranians.
The final chapter takes a look at the historical development of communication
practices in Iran from the end of the nineteenth century until the early Pahlavi
period. In the light of fundamental changes in Iranian society caused by mod-
ernization politics Katja Föllmer describes changing modes of communication
used by traditional religious authorities, the Pahlavi state, and members of the
opposition. She also examines how communication in the 1930s was structured,
and what parameters were essential for it.
Notes
1 Mansoureh Ettehadieh (Nezam-Mafi), Kaveh Bayat, “The Reza Shah Period:
Document Collections Recently Published in Iran,” Iranian Studies 26:3–4 (1993),
pp. 419–28. First published in 1998, Cyrus Ghani’s Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah is
one of the earliest examples of the new Western interest in early twentieth-century
Iran. Cyrus Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah: From Qajar Collapse to Pahlavi
Rule (London: Tauris, 1998). A look at the Iranian book market shows that the
renewed interest in this crucial phase of modern Iranian history is also valid for
Iran. It resulted in many articles, monographs, and particularly in a multitude of
collections of edited documents from Iranian archives. For instance, the first
volume of Farhad Rostami’s Pahlavi-ha in three volumes presents a collection of
documents concerning Reza Shah and some of his wives. Farhad Rostami,
Pahlavi-ha: Khanedan-e Pahlavi be revayat-e asnad, vol. 1 Reza Shah (Tehran:
Mo’asseseh-ye motale‘at-e tarikh-e mo‘aser-e Iran, 1378/1999). Several bio-
graphies of the first Pahlavi ruler followed, for example Reza Niyazmand, Reza
Shah: Az tavallod ta saltanat (Tehran: Jame‘eh-ye Iraniyan, 1381/2002). Another
example for document collections is Mahmud Delfani, ed., Farhang-setizi dar
dowreh-ye Reza Shah (asnad-e montasher nashodeh-ye Sazman-e Parvaresh-e
Afkar), 1317–1320 hejri shamsi (Tehran: Sazman-e Asnad-e Melli, 1375/1997).
2 With her outstanding study of the Pahlavi army Stephanie Cronin opened up new
fields of research and examined the new state from a clearly elite-centred
perspective with strong emphasis on its autocratic aspects: The Army and the
Creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran: 1910–1926 (London: Tauris, 1997).
Following the trend of focusing on reform from above, Touraj Atabaki’s and Erik
Zürcher’s edited volume addresses the authoritarian modernization in Iran in
comparison with the reform program in Turkey: Men of Order: Authoritarian
Modernization under Atatürk and Reza Shah (London: Tauris, 2004). Also,
Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and the New State,
1921–1941 (London: Routledge, 2007).
3 For instance, Homa Katouzian, Sadeq Hedayat: The Life and Literature of an
Iranian Writer (London: Tauris, 1999). Jutta E. Knörzer, Ali Dashti’s Prison
Days: Life under Reza Shah (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 1994).
4 This trend has resulted in several edited volumes and monographs like Touraj
Atabaki, ed., The State and the Subaltern: Modernization, Society and the State
in Turkey and Iran (London: Tauris, 2007). Stephanie Cronin, ed., Subalterns and
Social Protest: History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa (London:
Routledge, 2008). Stephanie Cronin, Soldiers, Shahs and Subalterns in Iran:
Opposition, Protest and Revolution, 1921–1941 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2010).
5 Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah outlines the chronology of political events
resulting in the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty and is a typical example of
the state-centred view which dominated the historiography henceforth. An
impressive example of the shift in writing the history of the Reza Shah period is
Cyrus Schayegh’s monograph Who Is Knowledgeable Is Strong, in which he
evaluates the self-conception of the emerging middle class in the first half of
the twentieth century with special regard to education as a class marker.
Cyrus Schayegh, Who Is Knowledgeable Is Strong: Science, Class, and the For-
mation of Modern Iranian Society, 1900–1950 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2009).
6 Quoted in Mohammad Gholi-Majd, Great Britain & Reza Shah: The Plunder of
Iran 1921–41 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), p. 137.
7 Cyrus Schayegh, “Recent Trends in the Historiography of Iran under the Pahlavi
Dynasty, 1921–79,” History Compass 6:6 (2008), pp. 1400–406: 1401.
8 See, for instance, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men without
Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2005) for theoretical considerations. Camron Michael Amin’s
recent article is exemplary for the use of new sources. Camron Michael Amin,
“Globalizing Iranian Feminism, 1910–50,” Journal of Middle East Women’s
Studies 4:1 (2008): pp. 6–30. One of the analyzed sources is a document collection
Introduction 13
edited by Gholamreza Salami and Afsaneh Najmabadi, Nahzat-e nesvan-e sharq
(Tehran: Nashr va Pazhuhesh-e Shirazeh, 1384/2005).
9 Parvin Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth Century Iran
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Eliz Sanasarian, The Women’s
Rights Movement in Iran: Mutiny, Appeasement, and Repression from 1900 to
Khomeini (New York: Praeger, 1982). Haideh Moghissi, Populism and Feminism in
Iran: Women’s Struggle in a Male-Defined Revolutionary Movement (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1994). An excellent example for a study on the Constitutional Period
is Afsaneh Najmabadi, The Story of the Daughters of Quchan: Gender and
National Memory in Iranian History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press,
1998).
10 On the women’s press see Monika M. Ringer, “Rethinking Religion: Progress and
Morality in the Early Twentieth-Century Iranian Women’s Press,” Comparative
Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24:1 (2004), pp. 47–54 and
Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi’s Ph.D. thesis “The Women’s Press, Modern Education,
and the State in Early Twentieth-Century Iran: 1900–1930s” (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan, 2000) as well as her article “Expanding Agendas for the
‘New’ Iranian Woman: Family Law, Work, and Unveiling,” in The Making of
Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921–1941, ed. Stephanie
Cronin (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 164–89. On the congress
see Charlotte Weber, “Between Nationalism and Feminism: The Eastern
Women’s Congresses of 1930 and 1932,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies
4:1 (2008), pp. 83–106; and for a more detailed examination Sarah Dusend,
Solidarische Vernetzung, gesellschaftlicher Fortschritt und die Rolle der Frau: Die
Debatten und Ergebnisse des Kongresses der orientalischen Frauen in Teheran 1932
(Berlin: EB-Verlag Dr. Brandt, 2010).
11 Reasons for cooperating with the state are stated in Paidar, Women and the
Political Process, p. 105 and Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches, p. 206.
12 For an historical account of the kashf-e hejab see H. E. Chehabi, “The Banning
of the Veil and Its Consequences,” in The Making of Modern Iran, ed. Cronin,
pp. 193–210.
13 Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Authority and Agency: Revisiting Women’s Activism
during Reza Shah’s Period,” in The State and the Subaltern, ed. Atabaki,
pp. 159–77: 174.
14 This notion is promoted particularly in the official historiography of the Islamic
Republic, as in two document collections on the forced unveiling. Khoshunat va
farhang: Asnad-e mahramaneh-ye kashf-e hejab (1313–1322), ed. Modiriyat-e
Pazhuhesh, Entesharat va Amuzesh (Tehran: Entesharat-e Sazman-e Asnad-e
Melli-ye Iran, 1371/1992). Morteza Ja‘fari, Soghra Esma‘ilzadeh, and Ma‘sumeh
Farshchi, ed., Vaqe‘eh-ye kashf-e hejab: Asnad-e montasher nashodeh az vaqe‘eh-ye
kashf-e hejab dar ‘asr-e Reza Khan (Tehran: Sazman-e Madarek va Farhang-e
Enqelab-e Eslami, Mo’asseseh-ye Pazhuhesh va Motala‘at-e Farhangi, 1373/1994).
15 For such a positive evaluation see Shireen Mahdavi, “Reza Shah Pahlavi and
Women: A Re-evaluation,” in The Making of Modern Iran, ed. Cronin,
pp. 190–202, especially p. 194.
16 Mana Kia, Afsaneh Najmabadi, and Sima Shakhsari disapprove of Mahdavi’s
article “Reza Shah Pahlavi and Women” in their contribution “Women, Gender,
and Sexuality in Historiography of Modern Iran,” in Iran in the 20th Century:
Historiography and Political Culture, ed. Touraj Atabaki (London: Tauris, 2009),
pp. 177–97: 184.
17 Several studies on Iranian women during the Reza Shah era focus on agents of
modernization other than the state and shed light also on the relationship of
culture and politics, while discussing the nahzat-e banovan. They looked at issues
that are also subject of this volume, like state policy and public debates
concerning hygiene and education, as well as propaganda and popular culture.
Camron Michael Amin, The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman: Gender,
State Policy, and Popular Culture, 1865–1946 (Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 2002). Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Conceiving Citizens: Women and the
Politics of Motherhood in Iran (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
18 Cyrus Schayegh, “‘Seeing Like a State’: An Essay on the Historiography of
Modern Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42 (2010), pp. 37–61.
19 See Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam’s contribution in the present volume, Chapter 6.
20 See the contribution by Christl Catanzaro in this volume, Chapter 2.
21 Talinn Grigor, “Recultivating ‘Good Taste’: The Early Pahlavi Modernists and
Their Society for National Heritage,” Iranian Studies 37:1 (2004), pp. 17–46.
Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, “Historiography and Crafting Iranian National
Identity,” in Iran in the 20th Century, ed. Atabaki, p. 5.
22 See the contributions by Roxane Haag-Higuchi and Christl Catanzaro, Chapters
1 and 2 respectively.
23 See the contributions by Keivan Aghamohseni and Houchang Chehabi, Chapters
4 and 3.
24 See the contributions by Roja Dehdarian and Christoph Werner, Chapters 10 and 9.
25 See the contributions by Keivan Aghamohseni and Bianca Devos, Chapters 4 and 12.
26 See the contribution by Talinn Grigor, Chapter 5.
27 See the contributions by Houchang Chehabi and Roxane Haag-Higuchi,
Chapters 3 and 1.
28 See the contribution by Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam, Chapter 6.
29 See the contributions by Elham Malekzadeh, Houchang Chehabi, and Bianca
Devos, Chapters 11, 3, and 12.
30 See for example Roja Dehdarian’s and Roman Siebertz’s contributions, Chapters
10 and 7.
31 See the contributions by Talinn Grigor and Roja Dehdarian, Chapters 5 and 10.
32 See the contributions by Keivan Aghamohseni, Talinn Grigor, Christoph Werner,
Bianca Devos, and Katja Föllmer: Chapters 4, 5, 9, 12, and 13.
33 Cronin, Soldiers, Shahs and Subalterns, p. 6.
34 This decade has been neglected also in other fields, since research on Pahlavi Iran has
focused on the initial stage of Reza Shah’s reign. See, for example, Ghani, Iran and the
Rise of Reza Shah; Nikki Keddie, Qajar Iran and the Rise of Reza Khan: 1796–1925
(Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 1999), and Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran:
The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (London: Tauris, 2000).
35 By investigating the murder of the American consul Imbrie, Michael Zirinsky
provides a valuable insight into the consolidation process of Reza Pahlavi’s power
in the first half of the 1920s. Michael P. Zirinsky, “Blood, Power, and Hypocrisy:
The Murder of Robert Imbrie and American Relations with Pahlavi Iran, 1924,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies 18:3 (1986), pp. 275–92.
36 Bianca Devos, Kleidungspolitik in Iran: Die Durchsetzung der Kleidungsvorschriften
.
für Männer unter Riza- Ša-h (Würzburg: Ergon, 2006).
37 Several of these changes had a lasting impact on Iran’s social and cultural life.
Therefore, other alternative periodizations, which take the years following Reza
Pahlavi’s abdication into account, are conceivable and make sense for judging the
effects of cultural policy from a larger perspective, like the one proposed by Amin
for describing the women’s movement. Amin, The Making of the Modern Iranian
Woman, p. 5. Since this volume focuses on the practical implementation of cultural
politics under Reza Shah and the symbiosis between the state and other agents of
modernization, most contributions adhere to a conventional periodization
regarding the end of the early Pahlavi era.
38 For Teymurtash’s role in press censorship see Soleimani’s contribution in the
present volume, Chapter 8.
Introduction 15
39 Once the Farhangestan started a national campaign for the purification and
standardization of the Persian language, it made an important contribution to
Iran’s cultural modernization. Even if the language policy is a recurrent issue in
several chapters of this volume, unfortunately, a special chapter dedicated exclusively
to this topic could not be included. For an assessment of the Farhangestan’s suc-
cess see Ludwig Paul, “Iranian Language Reform in the Twentieth Century: Did
the First Farhangesta-n (1935–40) Succeed?,” Journal of Persianate Studies 3
(2010), pp. 78–103.
40 Among the challenges in preparing the present volume was the question of how
to translate the myriad of organizations, councils, offices, and administrative units
established and active during the early Pahlavi period. Only some of them
became known abroad under their official, usually French terms, from diplomatic
or governmental publications. In modern research, there is an often bewildering
variety of options. At one point we decided against unifying all terms; we made
sure, however, that the original Persian expressions would always be included.
The Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar is indeed one of the more tricky organizations
to translate.
Part I
Intellectuals and technocrats
Key figures in Iran’s cultural
modernization
1 Modernization in literary history
Malek al-Sho‘ara Bahar’s Stylistics
Roxane Haag-Higuchi
The educational politics of the early Pahlavi period are generally conceived of
as an integral and pivotal part of Reza Shah’s “revolution from above,” which
was to change Iran swiftly into a modern centralized nation-state. Within this
context, the foundation of Tehran University (officially inaugurated in 1934)
is certainly an enormous landmark. This university, which has been the most
influential institution of higher learning in Iran up to the present day, is
positioned as a standard bearer of modernized education and as a pioneer in
the teaching of modern ways. Research has highlighted the circumstances of
its founding: its institutional aspects, political impact, the persons involved,
and the subjects taught. The publications that deal with the foundation of this
university concentrate on the institutional, as well as on the social aspect of
cultural modernization.1 In this context, we learn about which disciplines
were implemented in the new institution, about the teachers and professors,
and about the social background of its students, but little is known about
what was taught in its classes, what the professors actually talked about in
front of their students.
As far as I know, there is only one curricular text pertaining to the found-
ing period of Tehran University that has been available on the common book
market ever since: Mohammad Taqi Malek al-Sho‘ara Bahar’s three-volume
literary history, which has become known under the title of Sabk-shenasi
(Stylistics).2 In 1937, the Minister of Culture, ‘Ali Asghar Hekmat,3 commis-
sioned a textbook for the newly established Ph.D. course on Persian literature
from Bahar, who at that time taught literature classes at Tehran University.
Bahar took on the task and wrote Sabk-shenasi, the three volumes of which
were not published until 1942 and 1947 and therefore do not, strictly speaking,
belong to the Reza Shah period. But as the work was the outcome of Bahar’s
lifelong reflections on literature and literary history, which he had previously
published separately in various articles, we can safely assume that Sabk-shenasi
is a product of the early Pahlavi period.
The complete title of the work Sabk-shenasi ya tarikh-e tatavvor-e nasr-e
farsi: bara-yi tadris dar daneshkadeh va dowreh-ye doktori-ye adabiyat is
threefold: the first part, Sabk-shenasi (Stylistics), refers to the basic theoretical
concept underlying Bahar’s study. The second part, Tarikh-e tatavvor-e nasr-e
20 Roxane Haag-Higuchi
farsi (The history of the evolution of Persian prose), offers an alternative
theoretical approach; whereas the third part refers to the work’s institutional
function: Bara-ye tadris dar daneshkadeh va dowreh-ye doktori-e adabiyat
(A textbook for the Faculty of Literature and its doctoral course).
The genesis of the work implies that it has to be read critically both as a
programmatic text for the imagined community of the Iranian nation and as a
basic text for the implementation of Persian literature as an academic discipline.
Wali Ahmadi regards Bahar’s work as crucial for the institutionalization of
Persian literature as a discipline and
contend[s] that the exemplary status of the text rests significantly on the
recognition of its particular disciplinary or institutional achievements.
[ … ] It is necessary, then, to situate and examine Sabk-shinasi precisely
within the context of a literary history bound to a national imaginary
order and the institutional politics of literary studies.4
Ahmadi considers Sabk-shenasi to be conditioned and informed by its ideological

and institutional frameworks. As a text that “was produced during the for-
mative era of the modern Iranian nation-state,”5 it supplied this state with a
stratified narrative of literary history. Sabk-shenasi was written in the service
of a state which
intended to force unity and homogeneity upon a land of infinite cultural

diversity, to inscribe the singular nation on the body of the singular state,
thus leading to a congruous nation-state. The inception of a unified nation-
state, however, necessitated the creation of a unifying culture, with
literature playing a pivotal role in the process.6
This observation is certainly true. The overall conception of Sabk-shenasi was

in line with a nationalistic approach to Iranian literary history.7 A close
reading of Bahar’s text nevertheless reveals ideas inconsistent with the neat
pattern of a national unity pursued along the lines of the supremacy of
Iranian civilization. Bahar’s idea of how to create a national identity was
incorporative rather than reductive. Although he played a significant role in
the process of the modernization of learning in Iran, Bahar tends to be over-
looked when the focus is on the modernists as dominant trendsetters in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.8 Every period that frames an
accelerated political development and displays a tendency towards enforced
ideological features will mainly be dealt with along the guidelines of these
very features. Radical approaches like Akhundov’s and his followers’ call for
the swift and total Westernization of Iranian society tend to attract general
attention. This is all the more true since the state policies of nationalism
and modernization during Reza Shah’s reign follow these patterns, and our
prevailing perception of the cultural stylization reflects the dominant political
concept and rhetoric of the time.
Modernization in literary history 21
What seems less rewarding is to examine tendencies or protagonists that do
not fit into the cluster of clear-cut ideological aspects. Their conceptual
approaches seem to be both less neatly defined and less effective in the course
of socio-political developments. Bahar belongs to a group of intellectuals and
politicians who, while being part of the nationalist discourse, nevertheless
do not fit the category of the so-called radicals/modernists, nor can they
be labelled liberal/bourgeois.9 They were “much more radical, less flexible,
more obstinate and more entrenched in the old Persian civil and religious cul-
ture.”10 Therefore, to reduce Sabk-shenasi to a strictly nationalist state-building
function would not do justice to this rich and fascinating work. Bahar’s
Stylistics intertwine the broad knowledge of a professionally trained tradi-
tional poet and “stylist” with the analytic methods of modern education. It is
a text which, with its contradictory and decelerating elements, conveys a
profound idea of the interplay between modernizing features and the cultural
inventory of a given society.
If we accept that through its institutional affiliation, Bahar’s Sabk-shenasi
had a strong impact on the “national imaginary order,”11 then we must also
acknowledge that political trends which do not fully align with the straight-
forward rhetoric of nationalism and modernization found their way into state
institutions.
In the present article, I will explore Sabk-shenasi and some of Bahar’s
articles dating from the period of 1918 to 1938 to reveal the basic lines of
his approach to the structuring of an Iranian national identity. Bahar was
not a marginal figure in the political scene of the early Pahlavi period, and it
is worthwhile examining his writings with regard to his ideas about the central
issues in the Pahlavi state-building mission, namely history, literature, and
language. How do his ideas correlate with the construction of a cultural
memory that revolves around the “lost glories” of the pre-Islamic past and
the long political deterioration brought about by foreign conquerors? How
does he deal with the issues of cultural decline affected by non-Iranian rule
and the concomitant call for “purification” of the Persian language? Which
instruments does he apply in Sabk-shenasi to stratify Iranian literary history
and turn the amorphous field into a systematic discipline? These questions
will be discussed after a brief glance at Bahar’s professional biography.
The biographical background

Mohammad Taqi Bahar’s lifetime, 1886–1951, spans all major historical
events that constitute Iran’s path towards a modern nation-state.12 He was a
child when the protests against the Tobacco Regie (1891) erupted and a young
man, active in politics, during the periods of the Constitutional Revolution
(1905–11) and World War I (1914–18). In his mid thirties, he witnessed the coup
d’état of Reza Khan and Seyyed Ziya al-Din Tabataba’i (1921), followed by the
end of the Qajar and the instalment of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925. He lived
through Reza Shah’s downfall (1941), the Allied occupation of Iran, and the
Azerbaijan crisis (1946). Bahar and his generation spent their formative years
in the unstable late Qajar period and their lifetimes embrace massive socio-
political and cultural transformations, brought about both by gradual develop-
ments and sudden changes.13 Born into a learned family in Mashhad – already
his father, Mirza Mohammad Kazem Saburi, bore the title of Malek
al-Sho‘ara (“King of Poets”) at the Shrine of Imam Reza, a title which was
later transferred to Mohammad Taqi Bahar – he became actively involved in
politics as a fervent supporter of the Constitutional Revolution. From this
time onwards, literature and politics formed an indissoluble unity in his life.
In both his political and his literary life, Bahar was extremely active, and
the experiences he had as a result of his activities from time to time verged on
the dramatic. He was an active member of the Democratic Party in Mashhad
and Member of Parliament from 1914 to 1929 and again in the 1940s (in the
fourteenth and fifteenth Majles). He barely escaped an assassination attempt
in 1925. His critical stance on Reza Khan’s rise to power and the monarchy
entailed several prison terms (in 1929 and 1933) and periods of banishment
(to Bojnurd in 1916 and to Isfahan in 1933). He published several magazines
and newspapers (Now Bahar, with several interrupted publishing runs, begin-
ning in 1910; Daneshkadeh in 1918–19; Iran 1916–23) and wrote a history of
political parties in Iran which contains a lot of autobiographic details.14 He
worked on scholarly editions of old historiographical texts, like the Tarikh-e
Sistan (printed in 1314/1935) and the Mojmal al-tavarikh va-l-qesas (printed
in 1318/1939). And, last but not least, he wrote Sabk-shenasi (Stylistics),
which may be described as his most lasting and influential work.
Several scholars have commented upon inconsistencies in Bahar’s life and
work. Bahar, one of his biographers tells us, transformed himself from a tradi-
tional panegyrist into a progressive poet during the Constitutional Revolution.
“Between 1906 and 1909 he underwent the change from provincial panegyrist,
attached to the shrine, to political songwriter, voice of the constitutionalists”15
and “his metamorphosis from ancient to modern figure was affected by
1910.”16 The two apparently contradictory standpoints of the traditional and
the modern are also combined (if not reconciled) in terms of his poetic pro-
fession: “The subject and the audience of Bahar’s poems were modern, but his
method was traditional.”17 Bozorg ‘Alavi, in his History and Development of
Modern Persian Literature, points out that there was no clear-cut shift from
one position to the other. Although he also asserts a development from the
eulogist to the engaged political poet, he points out panegyrical poems Bahar
wrote even after the Constitutional Revolution.18 ‘Alavi considers Bahar “the
greatest Iranian poet of the last centuries”19 but calls him an “emotional
person who did not adhere to ideological principles” and “basically pro-
gressive, but not a hero” in terms of poetic and political engagement.20
Aryanpur remarks that “in purely scholarly articles [ … ] he loses himself
amongst contradictory ideas [ … ].”21
Bahar’s biographers agree in their presentation of him as a person active
in politics but with contradictory views. Aryanpur’s is maybe closest to an
adequate characterization, since he implicitly refers to Bahar’s rich reservoir
of ideas. Bahar had a tremendous amount of knowledge at his command, and
as a true polymath he would look for structuring rather than limiting approa-
ches. For his chef d’oeuvre on literary history, he decided on a combination of
two branches of science: stylistics and the theory of evolution.
A novel concept: stylistics and evolution combined

Bahar’s Stylistics or the History of the Evolution of Persian Prose is a
comprehensive history of Iranian languages, scripts, and prose literature from
pre-Islamic times up to the nineteenth century. The study divides the long
history of writing in (Greater) Iran into periods according to consecutive
stylistic variations. Bahar had already promoted stylistics and categories
of style as a learned discourse in the literary community of Tehran during
the early 1930s. These were the years when the classification into the con-
secutive poetic styles of Persian literature took roots. Bahar had first dealt
with poetry when he proposed the classification system composed of Sabk-e
Khorasani, Sabk-e ‘Eraqi, Sabk-e Hendi, and Bazgasht, presented as a sig-
nificant movement of rise, decline, and return [to earlier modes of writing].
Although his history of Persian poetry has come down to us only as a
fragment,22 his paradigm has been firmly implemented in the minds of the
majority of educated Iranian people.
Bahar himself contends that following several lectures on stylistics which
he gave at the Anjoman-e adabi in Tehran, “the discourse concerning
the Khorasani, ‘Eraqi, Indian style and Bazgasht emerged within the circles
of connoisseurs and young people, who had not appreciated the old
masters before.”23 In Sabk-shenasi, Bahar transfers the model of period-
ization onto the history of prose literature. In the first volume, he proposes
four stylistic periods of literary prose: 1) a period of simple, straightforward
prose in the 4th–5th/10th–11th centuries; 2) an era of adorned prose in
the 6th–7th/12th–13th centuries; followed by 3) the period of decadent
Persian prose (8th–13th/14th–19th centuries); and 4) the “Return” movement
(Bazgasht), which started later in prose than in poetry. In the second volume
the pattern is subdivided into two further periods: a period of heightened
influence of Arabic prose in the Ghaznavid and Saljuq eras (450–550/ca.
1060–1150) is inserted between the first and second periods; and a period of
simple prose (sadeh-nevisi) is attached to the end, from the 13th/end of the
19th century onwards.
Of the two theoretical concepts combined in Stylistics, namely style and
evolution, the notion of style seems to have been more important to Bahar.
The discipline of style has an indigenous tradition in Persian rhetorics and
diplomatics: a number of features of what Bahar presents as stylistics are
reminiscent of traditional tazkerehs (poetic anthologies) and ensha’ works
(epistolographic handbooks) which, with their inherent evaluation of certain
modes of writing,24 may be described as stylistics avant la lettre. What is new,
however, is the extra-linguistic notion of style, the long-term aspect in the
analysis of stylistic changes and its combination with the theory of evolution.
In the introduction to the first volume, Bahar explains the etymologies both
of the Arabic-Persian word sabk and the Greek-rooted “style.” Furthermore,
he dwells on the definition of sabk alongside related terms such as “genre”
(now’) and “form” (surat).25 Stylistics is regarded as a well defined but trans-
disciplinary concept which combines philosophy and natural sciences on the
one hand and the literary arts, i.e. rhetoric, prosody, and literary history, on
the other. Style, in Bahar’s view, is the “mirror of the personality”:26
It has become clear from the foregoing that the style of each author or
speaker reflects his view and perception of the outside world. And since
“everybody sees the world through the window of his own eyes,” we have
to create the same intellectual milieu (mohit-e ma‘navi) for ourselves when
we study his [a specific author’s] style.27
Through his broad conception of the notion of style, Bahar attempts

to reconstruct the intellectual breeding ground of the writing mode of any
individual author: “For example, in order to comprehend Anvari’s style
one must familiarize oneself with the sciences of medicine, astronomy and
arithmetic as they were common in the sixth century.”28 It is this mimetic
reasoning that opens up stylistics to a vast range of non-literary disciplines. It
also allows Bahar to include virtually all Persian prose literature without dis-
tinguishing between fiction and non-fiction. With this inclusive approach,
Stylistics resembles conventional anthologies (tazkerehs), which also trans-
gress genre delimitations or rather do not operate in terms of modern genre
concepts.
The second keyword, introduced in the subtitle of Sabk-shenasi, is evolu-
tion (tatavvor). By the time Sabk-shenasi was published, tatavvor had replaced
takamol, a term which connotes perfection rather than diversity and which
Bahar had employed in an early article from 1918.29 In this article, he defends
his ideas against the critical remarks from the modernist camp, and the rough
outline of what later would become the full version of Sabk-shenasi can
already be perceived here. His adversaries call for a “literary revolution,” but
in Bahar’s opinion literary change can only be brought about by evolution
and put into effect when the need and the opportunity (ehteyaj va emkan) for
a change arise. This article also contains in nucleo his later discussions of
stylistic change: Sa‘di’s followers, he argues, are guilty of having changed
simple, intelligible prose into the adorned style that dominated Persian
literature in the 7th–13th/13th–19th centuries.30
Although Bahar’s conception of literary history relies entirely on the theory
of evolution, he refers only to a single textual source besides Charles Darwin:
a certain “Luis Buknir [BWKNR]”, by which name he is probably referring
to Ludwig Büchner (1824–99), a Darwinist physician whose works had reached
the Middle East in Arabic via the French translation.31 In Sabk-shenasi, Bahar
presents Darwin’s theory in brief terms, maintaining a simple analogy of
nature and language.
The actual factors effecting the alteration of words, are exactly the same
as those that bring about different species (in nature), namely development
(tahavvol), natural selection (entekhab-e tabiy‘i), struggle (tanazo‘) and
the survival of the fittest (baqa-ye ansab).32
Bahar does not reveal what made him strike on the idea of transferring
the evolutionary concept onto literary history. It had become a commonplace
by the period of the First Iranian Congress of Writers in 1946, when
“[e]ven the most traditionalist participants in the congress spoke of ‘the
evolution of literature’ and the ‘advances’ made in ‘the Soviet culture’.”33
We cannot assume that this discourse had already taken hold in the 1930s.
It is more likely that Bahar played a pivotal role in spreading it through his
academic lectures and Sabk-shenasi. His Soviet contemporary Jurij Tynianov
(d. 1943) had touched on the idea of literary evolution within the framework
of Russian formalist theory34 in the 1920s, but it is more than doubtful that
Bahar knew his work. Moreover, Tynianov’s study discussing the problem of
historical change in the synchronic approach of Russian formalism is rooted
in the strict framework of literary theory. By drawing on evolutionary theory
Bahar, however, tries to bring together all kinds of individual, social, historical,
cultural, linguistic, or literary influences on literature.
Bahar’s literary history Sabk-shenasi combines stylistics as an instrument of
synchronic analysis on the microtextual level of lexis and syntax with the theory
of evolution which merges the micro- and the macrotextual levels and provides
the diachronic quality. By bringing the two together, Bahar creates a dynamic
analytic framework for literary history and formulates a metatext which for the
first time drafts a logic for long-term developments in language and literature.
Literary history in long-term perspective

As mentioned above, the most spectacular and enduring achievement of
Bahar’s work is the periodization and the observation of long-term literary
developments, presented as the first Persian literary history of modern times.
As the text had a specific function in the nation-consolidating context,
“Bahar’s task has been how to select, canonize, or monumentalize texts which
[ … ] necessitate the continuing consolidation of Persian literature as a field of
study and a disciplinary institution.”35
In fulfilling this task, Bahar drew on the concepts of the Bazgasht literary
movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which brought about
not only a literary practice modelled after a selection of pre-Safavid poets but
also a critical reflection and wholesale rejection of the Safavid-Mughal poetic
era. The literary historians of the Bazgasht movement prepared the ground
for shaping the course of Persian literary history in a long-term perspective.36
The process or rather the act of canonization inevitably implies a certain
reduction of material. This point is particularly stressed when connected to
the formation of modern nation-states. “Nonetheless, as the modern nation-
state is inherently limited and limiting, however infinite and splendid the
reservoir of the cultural past (with all its grandeur) may be, its modern
redrawing can be necessarily selective.”37 It is beyond question that a work
that claims to restructure the entire substance of Persian literature is subject
to limitations. But the problem remains whether limitation and selectivity are
sufficient criteria to qualify such a work as a basic constituent for a modern
nation-state. An anthology or tazkereh may appear to be accumulative, but
according to its genesis and its socio-literary functions, it is in fact selective.
Julia Rubanovich, in her article on canon formation in pre-Mongol times,
describes literature with reference to Jurij Lotman as a “self-organizing
mechanism” which is subject to a constant process of stratification. The cri-
teria that dominate the discourse of inclusion and exclusion are both inherent
in the literary texts and informed by normative metatexts like tazkerehs.38
The normative function of tazkerehs does not only pertain to aesthetic stan-
dards but also to their ideological foundation insofar as they are sometimes
written in celebration of the cultural splendour of a king or dynasty (e.g.
Fazel Khan Garrusis’s Anjoman-e Khaqan, compiled in 1818, which contains
the poetical output of Fath‘ali Shah and fifteen Qajar princes).39 Conse-
quently, if we disregard the content of the underlying ideology, selectivity as
such on aesthetic, functional, and ideological grounds cannot be the crucial
feature that makes Bahar’s Sabk-shenasi a basic text for the modern narrative
of literary history. What brings us closer to the core of the problem is to
consider Bahar’s reasoning as to the mechanisms that affect developments in
literary history. In the preceding paragraph I tried to show the theoretical set
of instruments he used to inform a systematic narrative. But I have not
answered the question yet of what, according to Bahar, actually makes the
literary machinery run and brings about changes in literature.
The central notion in this context is mohit, “milieu.” Bahar conceives of
milieu as the entire material and immaterial surroundings of people: water,
air, food, and locality, as well as religious, scientific, and political ideas,
historical events, and their consequences like victories and defeats, mass
migrations etc.40 Literary reforms can only take root when they grow out of a
changing milieu. A revolution in the milieu will entail literary revolution.
Bahar strictly denies the reverse order, which was rather the point of view of
the modernists. It is against those who called for a “literary revolution” and
attacked Bahar in the literary magazine Tajaddod that he defends his own
position:41
We consider literary reforms more practicable and more useful than the
negation of what exists and the affirmation of what is imaginary or the
invention of something, the durability and superiority of which [ … ] will
be warranted by a future milieu.42
The milieu in turn is responsible for creating the conditions for people to
foster and “buy” literature. In this point, Bahar endorses solidly materialistic
views:
The progress and decline of anything human beings pursue – in particular

issues relating to the sciences, the arts or literature – have nothing to do
with the morality of a nation or with the soundness or corruption of a
society [ … ]. In short, the sciences, literature and the arts do not have
much to do with the state of mind of a society [ … ]. The only thing that
brings about progress or decline and causes such geniuses [like Sa‘di,
Hafez etc.] to appear or disappear, is the existence of customers and a
thriving market, and that’s all.43
While Bahar considers literary phenomena to arise from a changing socio-

economic environment – Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak terms his view “geographic
and historical determinism”44 – he calls for the reconstruction and conserva-
tion of the original versions of old texts. With his plea for exact editions on
scholarly grounds he dismisses earlier, dynamic forms of textual tradition.
Persian texts have been continuously rewritten, “the redaction of earlier works
had grown into one of the chief modes of prose literary production,”45 and
one of the principal indicators of canon formation. Bahar castigates earlier
authors and scribes for having corrupted most Persian texts through their
ignorance and negligence.46 There is more to this point than a simple call to
go “back to the roots.” By insisting on the need for correct original texts,
Bahar, along with his learned colleagues who engaged in these projects,
explicitly rejects the long-standing habit of adapting texts to the aesthetic
demands of the respective era. The scholarly reconstruction of texts is also a
consequence of the establishment of printing technology, which gave rise to a
new publishing culture. With printing, for the first time it became feasible to
call for standardized, “correct” versions of texts, and concepts such as original,
copy, corrupted copies, and forgeries now acquired a scholarly significance,
sometimes even with legal implications. At the same time these texts are
samples of a specific stage of the language and play a role in both correcting and
updating the collective cultural memory. The discussion of Persian language, its
state and practice, forms the heart of Bahar’s study.
Clear but not pure: the ideal use of language

Language has often been described as a central issue in the process of mod-
ernization in Iran.47 The linguistic question pertained not only to the unity of
Iran as a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual country but at the same time to the
restoration of Persian as a symbol of the nation’s identity and independence.
Bahar does not stand apart from the chorus of voices that consider the status
of the national language an indicator of the nation’s state. In an article dating
from 1938, he argues for the conservation, thorough editing, and study of old
Persian texts48 because the preservation of these books made the language
survive, which in turn affected “the persistence of the independence and
political personality of Iran.”49
The Persian language is one of those languages that [ … ] rest for their
greater part buried under the ground. One part of it has been excavated,
another part has been unearthed to a certain extent; one part has been
damaged, another part has remained sound and beautiful in the depths of
the earth. These should be unearthed by virtue of expertise and learning
and the dust of oblivion and non-existence should be wiped off their
surface.50
Language and fatherland (zaban va mihan) are closely connected through

reciprocal exchange and influence. Whenever the fatherland is conquered by a
foreign (-language) power, the mother tongue may decline, and whenever the
language is not properly maintained, the nation will decline. The 4th–6th/
10th–12th centuries saw great efforts to keep both fatherland and language
alive, but the subsequent foreign conquests destroyed the linguistic achievements
of these efforts: “And the main reason for this situation is the overthrow of
the emperors of Iranian race (padeshahan-e irani-nezhad) and the rise of the
foreign sultans (salatin-e ajnabi).”51
The lines cited above suggest a historical view correspondent to the exigencies
of Pahlavi nationalism. In this context, we have to address the problem of
the Arabic influence on Persian and, concomitant with this question in the
nationalist discourse of the twentieth century, what is generally called the
“purification” of language.
To catch up with the “civilized world”, the architects of Iranian nationalism

sought to “reawaken” the nation to self-consciousness by reactivating and
inventing memories of the country’s pre-Islamic past. The simplification
and purification of Persian were corollaries of this project of national
reawakening. Like the glorification of the pre-Islamic past, these language-
based movements helped to dissociate Iran from Islam and to craft a distinct
national identity and sodality.52
The academy Farhangestan, the main body concerned with language planning,
was established in 1935 and can be regarded as the institutional culmination
of the idea of language “purification” and as an integral part of the Pahlavi
concept of nation building. The Farhangestan and Sabk-shenasi are comparable
both in terms of institutional linkage and of their focus on language. But
whereas the Farhangestan is generally perceived as an institution that advocates
Persification,53 Bahar’s position is not so easy to grasp.
Bahar’s analysis of changing stylistic preferences over the centuries relies
for the greatest part on the introduction and use of Arabic vocabulary in
Persian prose. The evolution from simple, fluent prose towards a complex,
adorned style runs parallel to the quantity of Arabic words used in the texts –
in other words, “the establishing of the literary-aesthetic (versus referential)
function of Arabic in prose texts written in Persian.”54 Bahar draws up
painstaking statistics of how many Arabic words are used in Persian texts
during a given period of time. The amount of Arabic lexis and grammar in the
Persian sources forms Bahar’s main criterion for the construction of stylistic
epochs,55 an instance of heightened linguistic influence being tantamount to
the deterioration of the language as a whole. On the structural level of its
“plot,” Sabk-shenasi appears as “a study of the increasing (and increasingly
degenerate) Arabization of Persian prose” and its “history (or story) [ … ]
appears to have been one of unsullied pristine origins, lofty early elegance,
and increasing adulteration, corrosion, and decay.”56
Still, Bahar cannot be called a fighter for language purism and his set
of arguments is worth a more detailed consideration. As a true evolutionary
theorist, Bahar suggests that each and every cultural contact entails linguistic
blending. A language takes what it needs from the other and adapts these
elements to its own conditions: “The result of this kind of mixture is linguistic
wealth, abundance in speech, broad thinking, and competent speakers
who will be able to express the most varied meanings and intentions.”57 The
fittest, who will survive, are neither the most noble nor the purest, but rather
the ones able to adapt to new circumstances. According to Bahar, after the
Islamic conquest the Persian language was able to respond to Arabic influ-
ence in a creative way and was greatly enriched by it. Indeed, we find in
Bahar’s Sabk-shenasi many of the arguments that Bert Fragner put forward in
his Persophonie.58
A lot of Arabic words which tended to be shorter, more simple in respect

to form and rhythm (vazn) and which were better suited for common usage,
replaced these [difficult Persian] words. In particular when a lot of syno-
nyms had entered literature, the range of the Persian language expanded
considerably.59
In Sabk-shenasi, the complex of “purification” is discussed within the

framework of the development of the Persian language on the Indian sub-
continent. Linguistic research, according to Bahar, was not promoted in
Safavid Iran, but in Mogul India, which became the main producer of Persian
lexicography. Performed in the service of Persian poetry in India, etymologi-
cal research – as a result of a lack of reliable sources – often lead to false and
“constructed” results. Bahar’s criticism is directed against linguistic dete-
rioration and decline brought about by false etymologies rather than by
“foreign” influence.
The style [of the court poets] encouraged people to take up ancient Persian
words, and some of them began to prepare dictionaries. So they accu-
mulated ancient words in books, no matter whether they had understood
them or whether these words were correct or not. In order to augment
their books, they turned to Zand and Avesta and asked the Zoroastrians
for help. It is through them that constructed words found their way into
the dictionaries.60
Bahar was definitely not an advocate of the unthinking replacement of Arabic

by Persian words, and he considered the restoration of a pseudo-historical or
pseudo-archaic stage of Persian, as had been attempted in the nineteenth century
with recourse to Indian dictionaries of dubious reliability, to be detrimental to
the language and an outright mistake. He carefully distinguishes the restoration
of an earlier linguistic stage from the cultivation and revitalization of the
actual language in his own times. He does not call for the reconstruction of
the language of Ferdowsi and Hafez but for a language that functions as an
efficient means of both literary and ordinary usage as it did in the times
of Ferdowsi and Hafez. His credo rests in the communicative functions of
the language, and he opts for simplification, general comprehensibility, and
linguistic correctness, but not for “purification.”
Central to Bahar’s evolutionary argument is the notion of the “natural”
as opposed to the “constructed.” In fact, by referring to tabi‘i (natural) and
sakhteh (constructed), he modifies the long-standing opposition of matbu‘
(natural) and masnu‘ (artful/artificial), which appears in literary anthologies
as early as pre-Mongol times.61 As “natural” factors for the evolution of
languages, Bahar considers the influence of foreign words, the availability
of certain quantities of competent speakers and authors, inventions and
discoveries in other cultural, scientific, and technical fields, as well as the
emergence of new sciences; whereas conscious fabrication and propagation of
words and phrases are “artificial” and detrimental to the development of the
language.
Another central issue in Bahar’s reflections about language is how the
written/literary and the spoken/colloquial idioms (in his words zaban-e ketabi
and zaban-e bumi) relate to each other. Whilst the everyday spoken language
forms the actual basis of a living language, both idioms create a balanced
system through their mutual monitoring. The conservation of historical strata
of the language, in Bahar’s view, is not a value in itself but warrants the bal-
ance of the language system. While the colloquial is open to environmental
influences the literary language remains conservative. Whenever the equili-
brium is lost and a gap opens between the two, the language will suffer from
communicative deficiencies as has occurred e.g. in Arabic.62 Bahar considers
the problem to be virulent in Persian as well, but he recognizes that various
measures may efficiently keep it in check. These are, on the one hand, the
conservation of authoritative literary sources referred to above and, on the
other hand, the preservation of local languages and dialects.63 Moreover, a
comprehensive dictionary should register the fund of the contemporary lexis,
and contemporary literary production should narrow the gap between the
colloquial and the written idioms. These encyclopaedic ideas – at this time
‘Ali Akbar Dehkhoda was working on his Loghat-nameh – may be regarded
as a call for standardization and control. In their comprehensive quality,
however, they do not pave the way to static normativity but to the creation of
a reservoir for linguistic change.
History: the Sho‘ubiyeh movement

What makes the concept of Bahar’s Sabk-shenasi so productive and, at the
same time, so vague in methodological terms is the indissoluble connection of
literature and history or, rather, of historical events and stylistic evolution. As
we saw in the discussion of literary history, an all-encompassing milieu,
mohit, is responsible for the evolutionary changes in language and literature.
Such a close link in the formation of the historico-cultural narrative is prone
to ideological exploitation, and the project of Iranian nationalism rests for
a large part on this connection. This is why the last section will deal with a
chapter in Iranian history that has become closely linked to the idea of
cultural superiority and national identity: the Sho‘ubiyeh movement. The
emancipatory Sho‘ubiyeh movement in early Islamic history (2nd–3rd c./8th–9th
c.) is emblematic for modern nationalists, who argue in favor of an early national
consciousness. As most of its proponents were Iranians, the Sho‘ubiyeh has
often been considered proof of the persistence of Iranian culture in the face of
Arab hegemony. As such, it serves to foster the belief in a permanent, vital
core of Iranian identity.64
Bahar had already dealt with the issue of the Sho‘ubiyeh in an article
published in 1306/1928,65 and he resumed the subject in Sabk-shenasi; but
the texts differ slightly. The earlier text describes the Sho‘ubiyeh as a
“racial movement” (nehzat-e nezhadi), its initiators and supporters as people
who “considered themselves superior to the Arabs in terms of noble ancestry
and racial greatness.”66 According to Bahar, the main incentive for the
movement (which he describes mainly as a political one) rests in the false
politics of the Umayyad caliphs, who promoted the arrogant behavior and
ignorant rule of the Arab governors in the region. If they had adopted more
intelligent ways of dealing with their mavali subjects, the movement would
have remained harmless and confined to the literary spheres where it started,
instead of crossing the line to politics.67 He seems to consider the phenom-
enon to be rooted in social psychology rather than in the longing for national
identity. In Sabk-shenasi, Bahar puts forward a similar characterization of the
Sho‘ubiyeh:
It was because of [ … ] the self-importance and arrogance that some

individuals within the Arab tribes displayed towards others and some-
times [also] towards Arabs of lesser origin [ … ] that a group rose up
among the Arabs and the non-Arab muslims. They [the supporters of the
Sho‘ubiyeh] contended that prestige and honour rest on morality and
piety rather than on race and pedigree [ … ].68
Moreover, in the later text, he tones down the racial component by contend-
ing that labelling the Sho‘ubiyeh as “Ajam” and their opponents as “Arab”
does not reflect the historical realities.
During the Abbasid period, a confrontation arose between the Sho‘ubiyeh,

the so called “Ajam” (Persians) and their opponents, the so called
“Arab” tribes. [ … ] Both sides, in order to affirm their objectives, wrote
articles, treatises and books, and resulting from this great tumult two
sciences arose, the disciplines of Arabic on the one hand [ … ] while the
Sho‘ubiyeh, on the other hand, engaged in the translation of Pahlavi,
Indian and Greek books [ … ].
In these two parties, which fought each other for long years, both
Arabs and Persians were intermingled, and in this mixture, they followed
the rationale of scientific opinions rather than that of racial ideologies
(yek ‘aqideh-ye ‘elmi na yek maram-e nezhadi).69
Bahar certainly does not downplay the cultural and political achievements of
the Iranians in the centuries after the Islamic conquest, but he discusses the
question of the Iranian emancipation under Arab domination as an answer to
political suppression, not as a reaction to cultural difference and not as the
necessary result of cultural superiority. The question of “Iranian-ness” in
Bahar’s teachings, be it the emergence of independent governments on Iranian
soil or the endurance of the Persian language, is never linked to a “natural”
superiority, let alone to purity. As a true evolutionary theorist, he deals
prominently with the factor of mixtures which will yield cultural wealth.
Conclusion
Mohammad Taqi Bahar wrote one of the most enduring books of the early
Pahlavi period. Since it was commissioned for the newly established doctoral
course of Persian literature at Tehran University and conceptualized as a
textbook to teach Iranian literary history as an academic discipline to the
country’s future elite, one might expect Sabk-shenasi to reflect and substantiate
the official ideology. A text written for state purposes and on official demand
should corroborate the idea of a splendid imperial pre-Islamic history, a long
deterioration of the country’s real values and potential by the Islamic Arab
and enforced by subsequent Turkish and Turco-Mongol conquests. It should
further speak up for language “purification” and simplification. But Bahar’s
approach to Iranian history, literature, and language does not lend itself to a
simplistic construction of national identity along guidelines proposed by the
state of the first Pahlavi ruler.
In terms of history, he does not consider the Islamic conquest of Iran as a
major historical disruption but rather stresses aspects of continuity.70 The
emancipatory movement of the conquered peoples is not treated as a mile-
stone of national uprising but mainly as an intellectual movement. In terms of
language and literary history, the influence of Arabic on Persian is the main
factor in the periodization but he does not opt for the de-Arabization of the
language. Language is first and foremost a means of communication within
society, and Bahar’s criticism is directed against a number of Arabic words in
Persian that make the language lose its communicative functions. He advocates
simplification in the service of comprehensibility, not ideological “purification”
for its own and nationalism’s sake.
The system of consecutively evolving, geographically defined periods of
style he established in literary history, like every system of classification, redraws
boundaries in perception.71 But it is this approach that turns Sabk-shenasi into
the first modern literary history: Bahar explicitly presents the analytical set of
instruments he applies to analyze and systemize the vast material – stylistics
and the theory of evolution – and he discusses the reasons for doing so. We
might criticize him for the vagueness of his analytical devices, but his choice of
device was guided by an inclination towards inclusive rather than reductionist
approaches.
Within the course of modernization in Iran, Bahar may be identified with
the narrator in Jamalzadeh’s short story Farsi shekar ast:
The type who, in this century, lost the game to Europeanist and traditionalist
alike: he is modern, but his grasp of European culture does not restrict a
realistic understanding of his own society and genuine sympathy for its
people.72
As an intellectual who supported the restructuring of Iran as a modern nation-

state, Bahar belonged to a group with hybrid ideas who tried to incorporate the
perceived composite and historical identity into what was to develop into a
modern image of the Iranian nation. The incorporation of plural identities
foils the nationalist narrative which equates the Islamic conquest with the
beginning of a long degenerative period. The concept Bahar defends is one of
national and historical cohesion but not of uniformity.
Notes
1 David Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1992); Rudi Matthee, “Transforming Dangerous Nomads into
Useful Artisans, Technicians, Agriculturalists: Education in the Reza Shah Period,”
Iranian Studies 26: 3/4 (1993), pp. 313–36; Christl Catanzaro, “Zwischen Statussymbol
und Allheilmittel für alle sozialen Übel: zur Rolle der Universität Teheran beim
Aufbau der iranischen Nation,” Ph.D. dissertation (Bamberg: Bamberg University,
1999). See also the contribution by Christl Catanzaro in the present volume.
2 Mohammad Taqi Bahar (Malek al-Sho‘ara), Sabk-shenasi ya tarikh-e tatavvor-e
nasr-e farsi: bara-yi tadris dar daneshkadeh va dowreh-ye doktori-ye adabiyat, 3
vols. (Tehran: Ketabha-ye Parastu, 1321–26/1942–47; repr. 1349/1970).
3 He served as Minister of Culture from 1933–38.
4 Wali Ahmadi, “The Institution of Persian Literature and the Genealogy of Bahar’s
Stylistics,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 31 (2004), pp. 141–52: 142.
5 Ahmadi, “The Institution of Persian Literature,” p. 149.
6 Ibid.
7 This argument is elaborated by Matthew C. Smith in his article “Literary Con-
nections: Baha-r’s Sabkshena-si and the Ba-zgasht-e Adabi,” Journal of Persianate
Studies 2 (2009), pp. 194–209.
8 E.g. he is not accorded an extra chapter in Iraj Parsinejad, A History of Literary
Criticism in Iran (1866–1951): Literary Criticism in the Works of Enlightened
Thinkers of Iran: Akhundzadeh, Kermani, Malkom, Talebof, Maraghe’i, Kasravi
and Hedayat (Bethesda, MD: Ibex, 2003).
9 For a categorization of the major political tendencies that appeared after the
Constitutional Revolution see Homayoun Katouzian, “Nationalist Trends in
Iran, 1921–26,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 10 (1979), pp. 541–47.
10 Katouzian, “Nationalist Trends,” p. 544.
12 For Bahar’s biography cf. Michael B. Loraine and Jalal Matini, “Baha-r,
Moh.ammad Taqı- Malek al-Šo‘ara’,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 3 (1988),
pp. 476–79; Michael B. Loraine, “A Memoir on the Life and Poetical Works of
Maliku’l-Shu‘arâ Bahâr,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 3 (1972),
pp. 140–68; see also the list of biographical data in Mohammad Golbon’s
“Sal-shomar-e Bahar,” in Bahar va adab-e farsi, ed. Mohammad Golbon, 2
vols (Tehran: Entesharat-e Elmi va Faranghi, 1382/2003), vol. 1, p. haft-sizdah.
13 Shahrokh Meskoob lists a number of prominent contemporaries who played a
role in the discourse of nationalism in his Iranian Nationality and the Persian
Language, 900–1900 (Washington DC: Mage, 1992), p. 34.
14 Mohammad Taqi Bahar, Tarikh-e mokhtasar-e ahzab-e siyasi-ye Iran, 2 vols
(Tehran: Sherhat-e Sahami-e Ketabhya-ye Jibi, 1323/1944).
15 Loraine, “A Memoir,” p. 141.
16 Ibid., p. 150.
17 Ibid.
18 Bozorg Alavi, Geschichte und Entwicklung der modernen persischen Literatur
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1964), p. 59.
19 “Bahar, der sicherlich selber der größte iranische Dichter der letzten Jahrhunderte
gewesen ist,” Alavi, Geschichte und Entwicklung, p. 30.
20 “ … bei einem Gefühlsmenschen wie Bahar, der sich an keine weltanschaulichen
Prinzipien hielt,” ibid., p. 59. “Im Grunde ist er fortschrittlich; aber er ist kein
Held,” ibid., p. 63.
21 Yahya Aryanpur, Az Saba ta Nima (Tehran: Entesharat-e Zavvar, 1372/1993),
vol. 2, p. 335.
22 Mohammad Taqi Bahar, Tarikh-e tatavvor-e she‘r-e farsi, ed. Taqi Binesh
(Mashhad, n.p., 1334/1955); cf. Loraine/Matini, “Baha-r,” p. 478.
23 Bahar, Sabk-shenasi, vol. 1, p. yb.
24 See Julia Rubanovich’s most instructive article “Literary Canon and Patterns of
Evaluation in Persian Prose on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion,” Studia Iranica
32 (2003), pp. 47–76.
25 Bahar, Sabk-shenasi, vol. 1, pp. d and h.
26 We witness the same perception of style in Europe in early modern times, e.g. in
the Earl of Buffon’s dictum “Le style c’est l’homme mème” (1753), cf. Bernhard
Sowinski, Stilistik (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991), p. 20.
27 Bahar, Sabk-shenasi, vol. 1, p. v.
28 Ibid., p. z.
29 Mohammad Taqi Bahar, “Enteqadat dar atraf-e maram-e ma,” Majalleh-ye
Daneshkadeh 2 (1297/1918), pp. 115–24, reprinted in Bahar va adab-e farsi, ed.
Golbon, vol. 2, pp. 389–94: 394.
30 Bahar, “Enteqadat dar atraf-e maram-e ma,” p. 394.
31 Bahar, Sabk-shenasi, vol. 1, p. 174. I am greatly indebted to Professor Werner
Ende, who solved the riddle of Bahar’s BWKNR for me and kindly provided all the
relevant information. Ludwig [“Louis”] Büchner was a brother of the famous play-
wright Georg Büchner. Ludwig Büchner’s works were translated into Arabic by
Shibli-Shumayyil. Cf. my article “Der Dichterkönig und die Literaturgeschichte:
Betrachtungen zu einem dynamischen Konzept,” in Iran und iranisch geprägte
Kulturen: Studien zum 65. Geburtstag von Bert G. Fragner, ed. Markus Ritter, Ralph
Kauz and Birgitt Hoffmann (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2008), pp. 198–209: 204, n. 26.
32 Bahar, Sabk-shenasi, vol. 1, p. 176.
33 Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, “Nima Yushij: A Life,” in Essays on Nima Yushij, ed.
A. Karimi-Hakkak and K. Talattof (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 11–68: 60.
34 The respective article was written in 1927, cf. Jurij Tynjanov, “Über literarische
Evolution,” in Jurij Tynjanov, Die literarischen Kunstmittel und die Evolution in
der Literatur (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1967), pp. 37–60.
36 For the effect of the Bazgasht construct on the assessment of Persian poetry and
literary history cf. Paul E. Losensky, Welcoming Figha-nı-. Imitation and Poetic
Individuality in the Safavid-Mughal Ghazal (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 1998),
pp. 50–52; for a telling example of the reasoning of a Bazgasht literary historian
cf. the passage cited from Riza Quli Khan’s Majma’ al-fosaha, ibid, p. 50f.
38 Rubanovich, “Literary Canon and Patterns of Evaluation,” pp. 47–49.
39 Cf. Ahmad Golchin Ma‘ani, Tarikh-e tazkereh-ha-ye farsi (Tehran: Ketabkhaneh-ye
Sana’i 1363/1984), vol. 1, pp. 60–67.
40 Mohammad Taqi Bahar, “Ta’sir-e mohit dar adabiyat,” Majalleh-ye Daneshkadeh
4 (1297/1918), pp. 171–78, and 5 (1297/1918), pp. 227–35, reprinted in Bahar va
adab-e farsi, ed. Golbon, vol. 2, pp. 395–405: 399.
41 For the debate between the journals Daneshkadeh (edited by Bahar) and Tajaddod
(edited by Taqi Raf‘at) on poetic modernity see Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak,
Recasting Persian Poetry: Scenarios of Poetic Modernity in Iran (Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press, 1995), pp. 104–36.
42 Bahar, “Enteqadat dar atraf-e maram-e ma,” p. 389.
43 Mohammad Taqi Bahar, “‘Elm dar ‘ahd-e Moghol,” Majalleh-ye Bakhtar 1,
no. 3 (Bahman 1312; January–Febuary 1934), pp. 119–25, reprinted in Bahar va
adab-e farsi, ed. Golbon, vol. 2, pp. 32–39: 38.
44 Karimi-Hakkak, Recasting Persian Poetry, p. 117.
45 Rubanovich, “Literary Canon and Patterns of Evaluation,” p. 58.
46 Mohammad Taqi Bahar, “Ta‘lim-e zaban-e farsi va ketab-ha-yi ke lazem darad,”
Majalleh-ye ta‘lim va tarbiyat 7, nos 3–4 (Shahrivar 1317/August–September 1938),
pp. 1–8; reprinted in Bahar va adab-e farsi, ed. Golbon, vol. 2, pp. 407–13: 410.
47 Cf. Mohammad Ali Jazayery, “The Modernization of Persian Vocabulary and
Language Reform in Iran,” in Language Reform: History and Future, ed. István
Fodor and Claude Hagège, 6 vols. (Hamburg 1983–94), vol. 2 (1983), pp. 241–67.
48 Bahar, “Ta‘lim-e zaban-e farsi,” p. 410. He set a good example by editing the
chronicles Tarikh-e Sistan (5th/11th century; ed. 1314/1935) and Mojmal al-tavarikh
va-l-qesas (6th/12th century, ed. 1318/1939).
49 Bahar, “Ta‘lim-e zaban-e farsi,” p. 410.
50 Ibid., p. 407.
51 Ibid., p. 408.
52 Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, “Historiography and Crafting Iranian National
Identity,” in Iran in the 20th Century: Historiography and Political Culture, ed.
Touraj Atabaki (London: Tauris, 2009), pp. 5–21: 6.
53 Ludwig Paul, “Iranian Language Reform in the Twentieth Century: Did the First
Farhangesta-n (1935–40) Succeed?” Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010), pp. 78–103.
54 Rubanovich, “Literary Canon and Patterns of Evaluation,” p. 50.
55 E.g. Bahar, Sabk-shenasi, vol. 2, pp. 7–8.
58 Bert G. Fragner, Die “Persophonie”: Regionalität, Identität und Sprachkontakt in
der Geschichte Asiens (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1999).
60 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 172.
61 Rubanovich, “Literary Canon and Patterns of Evaluation,” pp. 50–58, in her
discussion of Shams-e Qeys’ al-Mu‘jam fi ma‘ayir ash‘ar al-‘ajam (compiled 630/
1232–33) and Baha al-Din Baghdadi’s al-Tavassul ila l-tarassul (compiled late
6th–12th century).
62 Cf. Mohammad Taqi Bahar, “Gerd-avardan-e loghat-e farsi,” Majalleh-ye ta‘lim
va tarbiyat 8, nos 5 and 6; 9, nos 7 and 8, pp. 9–12 (1317–18/1938–39), reprinted
in Bahar va adab-e farsi, ed. Golbon, vol. 2, pp. 413–24: 414.
63 Bahar, “Gerd-avardan-e loghat-e farsi,” pp. 415–16.
64 Ahmad Ashraf, “Iranian Identity. III Medieval Islamic Period,” Encyclopaedia
Iranica, vol. 13 (2006), pp. 507–22, with references for the nationalistic inter-
pretation of the movement and the controversial discussion of this view; cf.
Fragner, Die “Persophonie,” pp. 16–18.
65 Mohammad Taqi Bahar, “Sho‘ubiyeh,” Tufan-e haftegi 5 (25 Esfand 1306/März
1928), pp. 1–2, reprinted in Bahar va adab-e farsi, ed. Golbon, vol. 2, pp. 1–6.
66 Ibid., p. 3.
67 Ibid.
69 Ibid., p. 150.
70 Ibid., pp. 142–43.
71 Cf. Smith, “Literary Connections,” p. 200.
72 Homa Katouzian, Sadeq Hedayat: The Life and Legend of an Iranian Writer
(London: Tauris, 1991), p. 9.
2 Policy or puzzle?
The foundation of the University of
Tehran between ideal conception and
pragmatic realization
Christl Catanzaro
“The night in which the university was born” is the title of a chapter in ‘Ali
Asghar Hekmat’s memoirs where he claims that it was he who had the idea of
establishing the first modern and western style university in Iran in February
1934, only one year before the official inauguration of the University of
Tehran.1 In reality many others had come up with the same idea before him,
and some Iranians, statesmen as well as private individuals, had already taken
the first steps towards its implementation. But did a master plan for the
transformation of the existing institutions of higher education into the Uni-
versity of Tehran exist, including its extension and consolidation? In order to
answer this question the first part of this article follows the steps towards the
creation of the University of Tehran chronologically, focussing on the ideas,
concepts, and contributions of two Iranian statesmen who played pivotal roles
in its formation. The first significant player was ‘Isa Sadiq who had written
his doctoral thesis on “Modern Persia and her Educational System” at
Columbia University in 1931. Upon his return to Iran at the end of the same
year, he was employed to prepare the first draft of the university law and
appointed head of the Teachers’ College which was to become the nucleus of
the new university. The second figure was the minister of education,2 ‘Ali
Asghar Hekmat, who supervised the legislative process and presided over the
official inauguration ceremony in 1935. Analysis of the contributions made by
these two statesmen will be followed by discussion of the role played by Reza
Shah and his motives. By looking at the actual implementation of the University
of Tehran the second part of the article aims at contextualizing some character-
istics of the modernization of the educational system that were paradigmatic for
the modernization process as a whole during the era of Reza Shah.
Giving birth to the University of Tehran: espousing ideas, one baby

with many fathers, a lengthy pregnancy, and a premature child
Ideas and concepts

The idea that education, namely western-style education, was indispensable
for the progress of the nation gained currency in Iran in the course of the
38 Christl Catanzaro
nineteenth century. It became more widespread in the second half of the
nineteenth century with the emergence of a new generation of thinkers who
had acquired knowledge of western education and its advantages not only
from reading books but from their own personal experiences and education
in Europe. In their writings we find traces of French philosophers, such as
Rousseau, along with concepts borrowed from the German educationalist
Pestalozzi and the American founding fathers. Many of these Iranians tried to
combine the new western principles of education with Islam and to avoid
possible criticism of proposed reforms by citing religious works. Only few of
them dared to present their demands without recourse to Islamic values and
categories or to call for the dissociation of religion and education. At the turn
of the century the calls for new, western education became more and more
common and loud. Many of the liberal westernized intellectuals hoped that
the new constitution would above all lead to the introduction of western
education, which would then result in prosperity, order, and independence
and thus become the panacea for all social problems in Iran. The advocates
of amongst the ‘olama generally acknowledged the importance of education
but considered western education as a threat to Islamic civilization and their
own status.3
With very few exceptions, those who reflected on the Iranian educational
system were not the same as those who took the initiative and founded
schools or took other measures towards the practical dissemination of knowl-
edge and education.4 The politicians and teachers involved in the founding of
the University of Tehran and earlier institutions preceding it never referred to
the ideas of Iranian educational reformers. That the military superiority of the
West originated in the sciences, that Iran would only by adopting western
education be able to take possession of the achievements of the West, and that
the acquisition of knowledge (‘elm) would lead from darkness to light and
result in Iran’s admittance to the sphere of the civilized world (tamaddon) – all
these ideas were common knowledge.
The Teachers College as the nucleus of the University of Tehran:

the contribution of ‘Isa Sadiq
It is not possible to trace back precisely where and when – beyond the general
demand for educational reforms – the concrete idea of founding a modern
western-style university arose.5 In 1910, the Ministry of Education, which up
to this time had not made any substantial contribution to the formation of
Iranian higher education, was restructured. All institutions of higher education
established during the second half of the nineteenth century or early in the
twentieth century and aiming at the formation of physicians or the training of
military and civil servants had been the fruits of efforts by other ministries.
Gradually, all institutions of primary, secondary, and higher education in Iran
were placed under the control of the Ministry of Education, which embarked
upon the creation of a coherent Iranian educational system. It is in this
Policy or puzzle? 39
context that the foundation of the University of Tehran should be seen. It has
been said that the idea of a university was discussed in public for the first time
in a parliamentary debate in the 1920s; however, this was not pursued any fur-
ther and no practical steps were taken.6 The events leading up to the following
initiative remain equally obscure: in spring 1931 ‘Isa Sadiq received a letter
from the court minister ‘Abdolhoseyn Teymurtash in which the Iranian gov-
ernment expressed its intention to establish an institution of higher education
(still referred to as dar al-fonun) comprising a Teachers College as well as
faculties of medicine and engineering. Following an invitation by Professor
Paul Monroe, director of the International Institute of the Teachers College
of Columbia University in New York, Sadiq had moved to the United States
in order to get acquainted with the American school system and use the
opportunity to obtain a doctorate. As Sadiq remarks in his memoirs, by that
time he had already visited several educational institutions and collected a lot
of valuable information regarding the foundation of a university. Then he was
asked to ascertain the number of teachers and kinds of institutions that would
be needed and to calculate the costs involved. In order to get further infor-
mation he contacted his friend and mentor, Monroe. Finally, Sadiq made
calculations based on his inquiries and wrote a booklet, two copies of which
he sent to the court minister on 6 July 1931.7 A summary of this draft can be
found at the end of Sadiq’s doctoral thesis, “Modern Persia and her Educa-
tional System,” completed the same month. In Chapter 6 of his dissertation
he amended and specified the demands made in the booklet and proposed
further measures he considered to be important.8
After his return to Iran, Sadiq reports in his memoirs the following events:
immediately after his arrival in Tehran in October 1931 he contacted various
Iranian statesmen with whom he was familiar or friends. Among them we find
the minister of justice ‘Ali Akbar Davar; the foreign minister Mohammad ‘Ali
Forughi Zaka al-Molk; the minister of finance Sayyed Hasan Taqizadeh; and
the minister of education Yahya Khan Qaragozlu. He told them about his
journey and his impressions, experiences, and new ideas and handed every-
body a copy of his dissertation. The ministers agreed that his plan deserved
attention and seemed to be practicable. But before starting to execute such a
plan it would be necessary to get the shah’s permission through the mediation
of the court minister Teymurtash. At the end of January 1932 Teymurtash
returned to Tehran and only three days later Davar arranged a meeting with
Sadiq, who presented his plans to the court minister. Again some days later
Davar informed Sadiq that Teymurtash had passed his dissertation on to the
shah, who had then given orders to procure his employment in the Ministry
of Education. Following the shah’s approval of Sadiq’s plan he was entrusted
with its implementation. Consequently his presence was requested by the
minister of education Qaragozlu, who, based on Sadiq’s Ph.D. in educational
sciences, appointed him rector of the Teachers College and also charged him
with the structuring and centralization of the other institutions of higher
education, as well as the establishment of nascent departments and faculties.9
This version of events is the one portrayed in Sadiq’s memoirs and he
might have – consciously or unconsciously – rendered many things in a dis-
torted way. It is difficult to prove that the conversation between him and
Qaragozlu, or any of the other discussions, actually took place in the descri-
bed manner. Although indeed all the measures he pretends to have planned in
advance with the minister of education he did subsequently carry out. Under
his aegis numerous, in part radical innovations were implemented, especially
in the fields of didactics and hands-on lessons. These innovations were of
particular importance for the development of the University of Tehran,
in which the Teachers College was to be integrated. Therefore it is, at least in
retrospect, justified to call it the nucleus of the university.10
The law: the politician ‘Ali Asghar Hekmat makes an appearance

After having introduced the first innovations at the Teachers College, Sadiq
claims that he proposed to Qaragozlu to draft a law as the basis for the
foundation of a university. The minister of education agreed to his proposal
and approved the version completed by the end of November 1932; he plan-
ned to have it reviewed by a committee before it was submitted to the Council
of Ministers and the Majles by the court minister. An “unforeseeable event”
destroyed these intentions abruptly: on 23 December 1932 the minister of
court Teymurtash was dismissed; on 17 January 1933 he was placed under
house arrest; and a month later he was officially arrested, before being sen-
tenced to three years of prison on 18 March. Sadiq had always had good
relations with Teymurtash, who had acted more than once as an intermediary
for him. Whereas Sadiq nevertheless kept his eyes on the goal without sur-
rendering his zeal and persevered with the reorganization and expansion of
the Teachers College and the plans for the university, the minister of educa-
tion Qaragozlu, who had been one of Teymurtash’s oldest and closest friends,
fell into depression and lethargy. Sadiq claims to have reminded him several
times of the draft, but Qaragozlu did not react and conjured up excuses
before finally expressing the fear that the government would change in the near
future and consequently his work would fall apart. Even before the change of
government Qaragozlu was dismissed early in June for reasons of health. Prime
Minister Mehdi Qoli Hedayat Mokhber al-Saltaneh resigned in September after
more than six years in office. Teymurtash died in prison two weeks after the
appointment of the new government, when he supposedly succumbed to a heart
attack. Sadiq was the only one who did not give in – the loss of his old friends and
combatants seems not to have deterred him from pursuing of his goals.11
Hekmat becomes minister of education

On 17 September 1933 ‘Ali Asghar Hekmat was appointed minister of edu-
cation.12 Sadiq claims that the designated prime minister Forughi and Davar,
who was once more appointed minister of finance in the new cabinet, had first
offered this post to him. He rejected it because he felt that the duties of a
minister would have left but little time for the realization of his goals. As
rector of the Teachers College he believed he was in a position that would
allow him to implement the insights he had gained in thirty years of studies
and work experience. In his memoirs he intimates that this decision was not
easy for him: deeply aggrieved and saddened he returned home, unable to
sleep for the whole night because deep in his heart he would have preferred
to carry out his reform plans himself.13 He who had worked for years plan-
ning and preparing the establishment of the university felt deep regret that he
should be put in the shadow of a politician who until then had contributed
very little but – a fact that Sadiq could not know at that time – would by
virtue of his eminent position be remembered as the one who opened the
University of Tehran.14
It cannot be denied that Hekmat made a major contribution to the develop-
ment of the Iranian system of higher education during those years. But it was
only by coincidence that the founding of the University of Tehran occurred in
the first of his four consecutive terms as minister of education (the last one
ended in 1939). The idea of founding a university had already existed and been
discussed long before, and preparations for the establishment of a university
had been under way already for years, with delays and procrastinations
caused by administrative obstacles and the dismissal or resignation of those
politicians who were in favour of the idea. However, according to Hekmat’s
memoirs it was only in February 1934 that during a cabinet meeting in the
presence of Reza Shah the idea of establishing a university emerged. Talking
about Tehran’s new magnitude and splendour Prime Minister Forughi and
the other ministers surpassed each other in the glorification of Reza Shah.
As the turn came to the minister of education he – by “divine inspiration” –
argued that although there was no doubt about the positive development of
Tehran the city was still lacking a university to complete her fortune. The
shah is reported to have reflected for a moment and then said: “Very good.
Build it!” The minister of finance Davar set aside 250,000 tuman in the
budget for the following year to be assigned to the Ministry of Education for the
building of the university while Hekmat was commissioned with the construction
of the university campus.15
Hekmat and Sadiq

In Hekmat’s memoirs there is no mention of Sadiq’s draft, while in Sadiq’s
memoirs Hekmat’s merits are not recognized. This mutual neglect corresponds
with the lifelong personal rivalry and hostility between these two eminent
reformers.16 Both of them seem to have been convinced that the most important
contribution to the foundation of the university was their own. Both high-
light the phase in which they themselves had played a prominent role, and
both allude only in passing or not at all to the period shaped by their
respective rival.
Hekmat dedicates three chapters of his memoirs to the foundation of
the university. After a short description of the Bagh-e Jalaliyeh where the
University of Tehran was to be built he sets out with the night in February 1934
“in which the university was born.”17 The Teachers College is mentioned only
once in his memoirs when he writes that its nice building has been constructed
under the superintendence of the Russian engineer Markov.18 Sadiq, on the
other hand, dedicates a whole chapter of 70 pages to it, under the heading
“The Teachers College as nucleus of the university”;19 while the actual foun-
dation of the university is summarized with roughly 14 pages in a chapter
under the title “miscellaneous records.”20 This chapter begins with his stay in
the United States and half way through he arrives at the presentation of
Forughi’s cabinet where Hekmat was appointed minister of education. He
reports that Hekmat was in Europe in those days, but after returning to Iran
towards the end of October 1933 had read Sadiq’s dissertation and approved
of his considerations and suggestions. Allegedly, they agreed upon a colla-
boration which is, however, not mentioned any more later on. Sadiq’s account
gives the general impression that he had in fact taken over the responsibility
of this issue.21
The committee
In order to discuss the draft for the foundation of the university that Sadiq had
submitted in November 1932 to the then minister of education, a committee was
convened. Hekmat and Sadiq provide different versions of the composition of
this committee: apart from himself and Mohammad ‘Ali Gorgani, the director
of the state’s Department of Retirement (Edareh-ye Taqa‘od), who is also
mentioned by Hekmat, Sadiq lists four members whom he introduces exclu-
sively as instructors at the Teachers College: Gholamhoseyn Rahnama, ‘Ali
Akbar Siyasi, Rezazadeh Shafaq, and Mahmud Hesabi. According to
Hekmat, Siyasi was admitted to the committee in his capacity as head of the
bureau of higher education at the Ministry of Education, a position he was
appointed to only in November/December 1933, i.e. after the committee had
been set up. Hesabi is not named in Hekmat’s records;22 however, he includes
five members not mentioned by Sadiq: the director of the College of Law ‘Ali
Akbar Dehkhoda, two physicians holding doctoral degrees from French uni-
versities, and two members whom he subsumes under the rubric of traditional
Islamic education, i.e. instructors who had not acquired any western educa-
tion and taught at the Madreseh-ye Sepahsalar. Hekmat himself was not a
permanent member of the committee but attended its meetings by virtue of
his office whenever he was able to.
Detailed information on the timeframe of the committee as well as on the
issues of discussion is not available. Hekmat speaks of numerous meetings,
Sadiq refers to only three or four.23 Hekmat states that the assembled gentle-
men worked out a detailed plan through an open exchange of views and joint
consultation, Sadiq asserts that his draft was modified only insignificantly.24
The Majles debates
On 13 March 1934 Hekmat, in his capacity as minister of education, pre-
sented the committee’s revised draft to the Majles. He praised the fortunate
era which had already answered so many of their wishes. Now the time had
come to grace it with a university. Having obtained the permission and
backing of the shah he asked the deputies to consent to this “blessed idea”
(fekr-e moqaddas) so that the Ministry of Education could arrange as soon as
possible for the necessary preparations.25
Exactly two months later, on 13 May 1934, the first reading of the draft
took place. Most of the speakers praised the government, above all the prime
minister and the minister of education, and agreed in principle with the
founding of a university. Only one serious argument against the establishment
of a university was brought forward: Iran was still not adequately endowed
with institutions of primary and secondary education and since the Ministry
of Education had not enough money to advance both projects simultaneously,
the foundation of a university should be postponed. Interestingly enough,
nobody was troubled by the incompatibility of primary, secondary, and higher
education itself, only the financial aspect was taken into account. After the general
discussion of the draft, its 21 articles were read and discussed in parts.26
The second reading of the draft took place three sessions later, on 29 May
1934. The minutes of this session comprise 14 machine-typed, double-columned
pages. The deputies were eager to express their opinions, but despite the fact
that the articles were discussed controversially and passionately, all of them – with
the exception of one minor linguistic modification – were approved in their
original form and at the end the bill was passed with 88 out of 94 votes. The
first article of the law authorized the minister of education to establish an
institution of higher education in the fields of science, engineering, literature,
and philosophy by the name of university (daneshgah) in Tehran. The fol-
lowing articles laid out rules for the organization of the university in six
faculties, its administration by a rector, a senate, and faculty councils, its
autonomy and budget, as well as the ranks, the conditions of employment,
and the salaries of the teaching staff.27
The “Golden Label”: on Reza Shah’s motivation and role
Nationalization of education
In 1811 the Iranian government had started efforts to create an educated
national elite by sending students to Europe. Soon they had to recognize that
these measures were not sufficient to meet the growing need for specialized
personnel. Furthermore some of the students did not return or – even worse –
returned with ideas that were condemnable in the eyes of the ruling elites.
Thus, to realize the dream of a renaissance of the nation and a self-reliant
and self-sufficient Iran, the influence of foreigners was to be curtailed as far as
possible.28 The Dar al-Fonun was founded in 1851 and the new institutions of
higher education were to play a prominent role in this process: they should be
responsible for training a new generation of not only domestic, but also
domestically instructed specialists.
In addition to the secularization of the educational system this nationalistic
element was obviously the main reason why Reza Shah gave his consent to
the establishment of the university – Reza Shah, who originated from a very
ordinary family, had himself had only a very modest education and is alleged
to have detested intellectuals.29 I do not believe that the education of the
people – as Hekmat had put it in his words of thanks after the ratification
of the law by the Majles – was really as close to Reza Shah’s heart as the
education of his own children. But there is no doubt that he approved of
higher education in Iran – as Hekmat continued to state – because students
abroad did not receive a “national” education (tahsil-e melli).30 On several
occasions the shah and his heir emphasized that patriotism is the highest
precept and service to the country the foremost duty of the new university
graduates.31 The shah seems to have understood instinctively that education
was not only an important basis for economic development, but also a basic
component of nation building.32 He also realized that he needed the western-
educated specialists (whom he otherwise feared and fought as sources of for-
eign influence and possible dissidents or spies) together with the graduates
from the new University of Tehran in order to implement the measures of
modernization that served the nation’s independence.33
The circumstances of his takeover had shown clearly the importance of the
nationalist criterion for the legitimacy of Reza Shah’s rule.34 After the over-
throw of Sepahdar’s government he had promised to lead Iran into national
independence and to undertake reforms which would put an end to foreign
interference in Iran.35 Reza Shah was the strong man many had waited for,
the one who established order and bestowed new self-esteem on the country,
necessary to accomplish the reforms many had hoped for for a long time. In
his draft Sadiq had identified the education of future national leaders as the
most important task of the university.36 In the Majles debate many deputies
noticed with particular satisfaction that in future there would be no need to
send students abroad, which would make the country more independent.37
The vice dean of the Faculty of Medicine stressed that the moral and mental
education of the students had to be the primary target of the university so
that they would become scholars loyal to the shah, loving their country, and
conscious of their duty towards society.38 After decades of anarchism and
civil war many statesmen favored a strong government which could restore
the nation’s grandeur as the solution to Iran’s problems.39 A large amount of
national pride united academics and politicians, intellectuals and pragmatists
and caused them to collaborate with a shah who in many respects may not
have corresponded with their ideals of liberty and democracy.40 Men like
Firuz Mirza Nosrat al-Dowleh, ‘Ali Akbar Davar and ‘Abdolhoseyn
Teymurtash, who were educated in the West and had an unshakable belief in
westernization, finally fell victim to the power that they had helped to establish
themselves.41
Secularization of the educational system

The introduction of new juridical and educational systems in accordance with
western models initially seems to contradict nationalist tendencies. But the
spirit and purpose of these reforms are obvious: for the state that defined
itself as secular it was important to weaken the position of the ‘olama and to
curtail their juridical, educational, and charitable functions. Reza Shah
apparently recognized that he could only remain in power if he fulfilled the
intellectuals’ desire for westernization and took up the question of education.
Besides, the secularization and westernization of education could also serve to
bring about an understanding with foreign governments. They allowed the
shah to demonstrate to the western world how progressive Iran was. In order
not to be a pawn in the hands of the Great Powers anymore, Iran was not
only anxious to free itself from the direct influence of the western world, but
also desired to be accepted and treated as a Europeanized and consequently
more or less equal country.42
Highest authority
Although Reza Shah had at least two good reasons for supporting the estab-
lishment of a university, he hardly ever took the initiative himself, but only
approved the projects suggested to him. Needless to say, without his consent
it would have been impossible to establish a university;43 but his active con-
tribution to the project appears to have been extremely small. Neither in
Sadiq’s nor in Hekmat’s initiative can one detect a substantial input or distinct
involvement from the shah, although both of them sang the shah’s praises.
This praise was due to the politician who with his drastic measures had provided
law and order and guaranteed the necessary conditions for the implementa-
tion of their desired projects. After having given his general consent to the
university’s foundation, Reza Shah rarely intervened in its affairs.44 It was
pure coincidence that he was the one to choose the terrain for the university’s
new buildings, although the Council of Ministers had already passed a different
resolution.
That Reza Shah himself laid the foundation stone of the university should
not be taken as an expression of special interest, but rather compliance with
the principle of highest authority. Whenever in Iran an inauguration took
place, the shah had to affix his “golden label” to it – a principle which is still
valid today, although the authorities and labels have changed. Stories such as
the following are part of a hoard of anecdotes which surrounded Reza Shah;
it is not important whether they are true or not, but only that they obviously
were accepted unquestioned and passed on as part of the ruler’s image.
Hekmat reports that the laying of the foundation stone was almost cancelled
due to bad weather. The day before, heavy rain had rendered the ground a
sludge pit. The minister of education anxiously inquired whether the shah
intended to pay his visit under these circumstances and received the answer
that he would even come if stones were falling from the sky.45
The inauguration
The building operations began in April 1934; in January 1935 the first building
was completed. On 4 February 1935 the shah visited the new building and
affixed a commemorative plaque, an act of state in the presence of many
high-ranking officials and statesmen which is commonly interpreted as the
inauguration of the university. The ex-prime minister and educationalist
Mehdi Qoli Hedayat, who was present at the ceremony, is said to have com-
pared the historical importance of this event with the beginning of the railway
construction in Iran and to have thanked God for the ability to see this day.46
In reality, the foundation of the University of Tehran was not the creation of
a completely new institution, but merely the merging of five pre-existing
institutions with the newly established Faculty of Engineering under a
common administration.47 These already existing institutions were: the
College of Law (established 1919 and merged with the College of Political
Science, founded in 1899), which became the Faculty of Law and Political
Science; the Faculty of Medicine (launched in 1918); the Faculty of Letters
and the Faculty of Science, which had evolved out of the Teachers College
(established in 1929); and the Faculty of Islamic Studies, which by some is
regarded as a new creation,48 but, to my mind, should be considered as a
continuation of the Madreseh-ye Sepahsalar, which had been placed under
the control of the Ministry of Education in 1931 and was gradually reshaped
into a modern institution of higher education.49
The enrollment for the first academic year had already taken place
in September 1934 and teaching officially started in November when the
university campus was still a huge construction site. Courses were taught in
the locations of the former institutions of higher education which now
had become part of the university. In the academic year 1936/37 still not a
single faculty had moved into the new campus.50 Since the construction work
continued very slowly it took years before the faculties moved in, one after
the other. The modern institutions of higher education which had existed
for up to 30 years continued for quite a while to preserve a life of their own
under the common roof of the university.
Western ways of thinking meet eastern ways of acting: transfer of

knowledge versus realization by pragmatism
It is characteristic of the development of the Iranian system of higher education
that there was no forward-looking planning. It rather followed concrete needs
or reacted to acute problems. In 1934, for example, when three graduates of
the American secondary school – where contrary to other secondary schools
English was taught instead of French – began to study at the Teachers
College, an English class was instituted and ‘Abdolhoseyn Sheybani, who
taught medieval history and had worked for a while at the University of
Cambridge as assistant to professor Edward G. Browne, was put in charge of
the class. Russian language and literature were introduced in the academic
year 1936/37 when Fatemeh Sayyah returned from Russia.51 Thus it is hardly
surprising that in the study guides (rahnama, a mixture of yearbook, curri-
cula, and course descriptions) of the University of Tehran, areas and courses
of studies were listed for which no teacher was explicitly named. Certainly, it
would have been possible to find someone who had studied in Germany
among the instructors to teach German alongside his actual discipline.
This pragmatic mode of operation, which is a constituent element of the
modernization process in Iran, commonly has to face a western explanatory
model that is not consistent with it: the assumption that the foundation of
universities in Middle Eastern and Third World countries is the direct result
of a transfer of knowledge. The fact that the University of Tehran did belie
the initially high expectations and that its ambitious aims were not fully
achieved is generally explained by a lack of awareness of the difficulties gen-
erated by transferring a system of teaching from one country or culture to
another. A closer examination shows that a conscious and consistent transfer
did not occur and the Iranian reformers as well as the French, German, and
American academics who were involved in the establishment of the University
of Tehran were well aware of the problems that would arise, but were not able
to avoid or solve them immediately – and these problems were not or not
directly due to a failed process of knowledge transfer.
A comprehensive study of the faculties, the staff, the curricula, the student
body, and the administration of the University of Tehran, with special focus
on the question of whether and how the pre-existing institutions and their
fields of study had changed after their integration into the university,52 reveals
a phenomenon that from a western perspective has been determined as a
manifestation of conscious modernization efforts, but in fact was only the
result of a very specific demand for action by some individuals and its prag-
matic and swift implementation. In my opinion – contrary to the widespread
and commonly accepted notion of the decisive role of intellectuals in the
Iranian modernization process – not the intellectuals, but the pragmatists
initiated the modernization process and kept it going. The Iranian intellec-
tuals tended to create concepts of modernization that were abstract and rarely
precise or specific. Their concepts had either nothing to do with the realities
of their time or were not adapted once certain paradigms changed. The
pragmatists achieved their respective goals by observing and reflecting on
realities and did not get tired of adjusting them continuously to changing
circumstances. Each pragmatist had his quite personal and very specific con-
cept that had been shaped by his own experiences and his individual career.
These individuals who took an active part in the modernization of their
country were subject to change in the same way that the concepts of
“modern” and “modernization” did not remain static.53
In its first years of existence, the University of Tehran presents itself as a
mixture of highly diverse approaches and traditions which it is impossible to
ascribe to one closed system alone. Much is owed to French models because
of the intensive and long-lasting Iranian–French contacts in higher education.
In most of the Iranian institutions of higher education French instructors had
been employed, and since French was for many decades the only foreign
language taught at secondary schools in Iran, most Iranians who went abroad
to study decided on a university in France, mainly in Paris.54 Those among
them who returned to Iran and were employed in the Ministry of Education
or at one of the institutions of higher education resorted to their experiences
in France for their conception of laws and statutes, as well as their daily work
as teachers. As a result, many French elements like the grading system and
the names of degrees can (still) be found in the Iranian educational system.
However, the French system of higher education was not transferred as a
complete and coherent system, but in small single pieces. Moreover, in the
University of Tehran elements were combined which are strictly separated in
the French system. The most important difference to the University of Paris
was the integration of technical and artistic branches that in France were and
are still taught in the grandes écoles, that is outside the universities. The
incorporation of the Teachers College, which initially called itself École nor-
male supérieure following its French model,55 would have been a faux pas
from a French point of view.56
This is compounded by the fact that besides the elements taken from the
French system of higher education, which doubtlessly had the strongest
impact, components from other systems were integrated as well. The strong
emphasis placed on practical instruction and the establishment of clubs and
other non-university activities in order to strengthen the sense of community
were of Anglo-Saxon origin and introduced by the two lecturers of pedagogy,
‘Isa Sadiq and Asadollah Bizhan, who had both studied in the United States
and were influenced by the theories current there, especially John Dewey’s
idea of a “laboratory school” and his emphasis on the importance of experi-
ential learning, which they tried to apply in their lessons.57 If Sadiq had had
his way, the American model would have had more influence in other areas
too. Since he had studied first in Versailles and Paris and then in New York,
he was acquainted with both systems, the American and the French, from
personal experience. He had also been to England and inspected the school
system there. Finally, in his Ph.D. thesis he gave preference to the American
system. In his memoirs he also emphasizes several times the importance of his
experiences in the United States for his work as a teacher and his position as
director of the Teachers College.58 But just as the French system, the American
model was likewise not transferred as a whole, but merely in parts. Pre-
sumably it would also be possible to find evidence that the German model of
“Arbeitsschule” (activity school)59 had contributed its share to the colourful
potpourri called university. Furthermore, no theoretical and self-conscious
debate on the crucial question of which model the university should follow
ever took place. What happened to be integrated into the University of
Tehran were not abstract ideas or concepts, but concepts based on personal
experiences which were not subject to deeper reflection at the moment of their
implementation. Foreigners, Iranians with B.A., M.A., or Ph.D. degrees from
French, Swiss, German, American, or British universities, and Iranians who
had received their degrees from one of the Iranian institutions of higher edu-
cation taught at the University of Tehran side by side with instructors who
had no university or other degree at all. Since lecturers were to a large extent
free to design their lessons the way they wanted, everybody taught his subject
with the methods and contents he himself had come to know and appreciate.
The result was a kind of patchwork teaching, as colourful and variegated as
the individuals with their personal experiences behind it.
Conclusion
The success of any idea in the early Pahlavi period was highly dependent on
the support of influential statesmen with direct contact to the shah, whereas
the shah himself quite often did not play an active role. It was not the intel-
lectual reformers who drew up unrealistic concepts of how the educational
system should look, but rather the pragmatists already engaged in educational
institutions who were the motor behind the spread of western-style education
and the foundation of the University of Tehran. The foundation of the uni-
versity, if seen from this perspective, was not a turning point; it was neither
the end nor the beginning of a development, but a mere confirmation of the
actual situation at that particular moment in the long course of a develop-
ment which had begun with the establishment of the Dar al-Fonun in 1851
and still continues.60 What seems important to me is to stress that the fre-
quently made assertion that the University of Tehran was exclusively based
on a French model is not true.61 As a matter of fact, it was not based on one
single coherent model, neither the French, nor the American, nor any other
pre-existing one. As a result, a conscious and consistent transfer of knowledge
from western models did not take place and the introduction of modern
education in Iran did not follow a master plan, but was a colourful puzzle
of many, simultaneous and sometimes contradictory actions by individuals
producing singular pieces of a big puzzle mostly not yet fitting together
coherently.
Notes
1 ‘Ali Asghar Hekmat, Si khatereh az ‘asr-e farkhondeh-ye Pahlavi (Tehran:
Sazman-e Entesharat-e Vahid, 2535/1976), p. 333.
2 The minister and ministry responsible for educational issues are referred to as
“minister of education” and “Ministry of Education” respectively throughout this
article, although the names and responsibilities of the ministry changed several
times. The major Persian equivalents are Vezarat-e ‘olum, Vezarat-e ma‘aref va
owqaf va sanaye‘-e mostazrefe, and Vezarat-e amuzesh-o parvaresh.
3 For a detailed discussion see David Menashri, Education and the Making of
Modern Iran (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 27–45; Afshin
Marashi, Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power and the State, 1870–1940 (Seattle:
Washington University Press, 2008), pp. 86–109.
4 The same is true for most editors and authors of newspapers from the Mashrutiyat
period who called for the awakening of the people, but did not contribute
themselves to this objective: Christl Catanzaro, “Leserbriefe in Su-r-e Esrafil und
Ru-h ul-Qods als Forum des Informationsaustausches für die Intelligenzija der
Mašru-tiyat-Zeit,” in Presse und Öffentlichkeit im Nahen Osten, ed. Christoph
Herzog, Raoul Motika, and Anja Pistor-Hatam (Heidelberg: Heidelberger
Orientverlag, 1995), pp. 15–22.
5 Usually the Dar al-Fonun is taken as the earliest example. It should be referred to
as either a “polytechnic school” (Arasteh, p. 327), “polytechnic college” (Gurney/
Nabavi, p. 662) or “Academy of Applied Sciences” (Ringer, p. 67) rather than a
university: see Reza Arasteh, “The Growth of Higher Institutions in Iran,”
International Review of Education 7.3 (1961), pp. 327–34; John Gurney and Negin
Nabavi, “Dar al-Fonun,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 6 (1993), pp. 662–68;
Monica M. Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in
Qajar Iran (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2001), pp. 67–108. However, the debate
over whether or not and to what degree the Dar al-Fonun was an institution of
higher education is not relevant in this context.
6 According to Menashri, Education, p. 144, n. 4, this discussion is to be found in
Mozakerat-e Majles, Dowreh-ye haftom-e taqniniyeh. Unfortunately, the page he
indicates (4386) does not exist and I have not been able to locate the passage
elsewhere in the records of parliamentary debates, although the Mozakerat-e
Majles are now online at the site of the Ketabkhaneh, Muzeh va Markaz-e Asnad-e
Majles-e Shura-ye Melli at http://www.ical.ir. Professor Mansureh Ettehadiyeh
(Tehran) confirmed this information, but unfortunately the bibliographical refer-
ence she provided, an article by Changiz Pahlavan in the journal Agah, could not
be identified either. Matthee recounts that in 1918, according to the Archives du
Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (Asie, Perse 65, 2), “a number of prominent
figures in Iranian education discussed the idea of setting up a university along
French lines” without giving further details. He adds that “nothing was heard of
any further planning until 1925”; see Matthee, “Transforming Dangerous
Nomads into Useful Artisans,” p. 320.
7 ‘Isa Sadiq, Yek sal dar Amrika (Tehran: Ketabkhaneh-ye Tehran, 1311/1932; 2nd
edition 1321/1942). A summary of this book can also be found with the same title
in the first chapter of the second volume of his memoirs: ‘Isa Sadiq, Yadgar-e ‘omr:
khaterati az sargozasht (Tehran: Dekhoda Institute, 1354/1975), vol. 2, pp. 1–29.
8 ‘Isa Sadiq, Modern Persia and Her Educational System, no. 14, Studies of the
International Institute of Teachers College (New York: Columbia University,
1931), pp. 90–123.
9 Sadiq, Yadgar-e ‘omr, vol. 2, pp. 84–92.
10 Sadiq claims in his memoirs that he was charged with the mission to transform
the Teachers College into the nucleus of the university by the minister of education
Qaragozlu, ibid., p. 92. For more detailed information on Sadiq’s role as educational
reformer, see Felix Waltermann, “Die Modernisierung des Erziehungswesens von
Iran nach den Memoiren des Erziehungspolitikers Îsâ S.adîq,” M.A. thesis (Freiburg:
University of Freiburg, 1998); also Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet,
Religion and Politics in Iran (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2000), pp. 54–67.
Whereas Waltermann’s study is based on written sources and interviews with
Mirkamal Nabipour, Sadiq’s son Anushirvan Sadiq provided Mottahedeh with
additional material about his father not to be found in the printed sources on
Sadiq.
11 Sadiq, Yadgar-e ‘omr, pp. 172–77.
12 Actually, during his first term in charge of the Ministry of Education, Hekmat
was only designated as kafil, i.e. interim minister; without a minister being appoin-
ted, he acted with full authority, see Ahmad ‘Abdollahpur, Nakhost-vaziran-e Iran
(Tehran: ‘Elmi, 1369/1990), p. 161.
14 For example, in the entry “Hekmat, ‘Ali-As.g-ar” in the Encyclopaedia Iranica
(authored by EIr with an initial contribution by Abbas Milani), vol. 12 (2004),
pp. 145–49) Hekmat is introduced as the “chief architect of the modernization of
the educational system” (p. 145); whereas ‘Isa Sadiq until now has had no entry
of his own, but is mentioned as only one among many other educational refor-
mers and cited with reference to his memoirs as well as his articles and books on
education: see “Education xix. Teachers’-Training Colleges,” by Majd-al-Din
Keyvani, in Encylopaedia Iranica, vol. 8 (1998), pp. 221–23; and “Faculties of
the University of Tehran iv. Faculty of Letters and Humanities,” by Ahmad
Tafazzoli, in Encylopaedia Iranica, vol. 9 (1999), pp. 140–56. Mottahedeh, The
Mantle of the Prophet, pp. 54–67 draws a very positive picture of Sadiq and
praises him as the most important authority on Iran’s modern educational
system.
15 Hekmat, Si khatereh, pp. 333–34.
16 The personal rivalry between Sadiq and Hekmat has not been mentioned in any
written sources at my disposal, but was referred to by several persons interviewed
for my dissertation. I would like to express my special thanks to Ahmad Birashk,
the only contemporary witness I interviewed who had come to know both
Hekmat and Sadiq, not only as teachers, but also as colleagues. Menashri, who
had the opportunity to interview Sadiq, reports that his relationship with Hekmat
was tense, see Education, p. 146.
17 The heading of the chapter is “shabi ke daneshgah motevalled shod,” Hekmat, Si
khatereh, p. 333.
18 Ibid., p. 96.
20 Ibid., pp. 172–86.
21 Ibid., pp. 179–80.
22 Hesabi had formed the science department of the Teachers College in 1928, he
was the first dean of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Tehran and he
supervised the establishment of the Faculty of Engineering: see Hessamaddin
Arfaei and Fariborz Majidi, “H -
. esabi, Mahmud,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol.
12 (2004), p. 302. His particular role in the foundation of the University of
Tehran has not yet been studied in detail, but it certainly was much more
important than the memoirs of Hekmat and Sadiq suggest.
23 Hekmat, Si khatereh, pp. 353–55; Sadiq, Yadgar-e ‘omr, vol. 2, p. 180.
24 Hekmat, Si khatereh, pp. 356; Sadiq, Yadgar-e ‘omr, vol. 2, p. 180–81.
25 See the parliamentary records of the 72nd session of the 9th legislative period, 22
Esfand 1312, Mozakerat-e majles: dowreh-ye nohom-i taqniniyeh, pp. 1071–72.
26 See the parliamentary records of the 82nd session of the 9th legislative period, 23
Ordibehesht 1313, Mozakerat-e majles: dowreh-ye nohom-i taqniniyeh, pp. 1171–84.
27 See the parliamentary records of the 85th session of the 9th legislative period, 8
Khordad 1313, Mozakerat-e majles: dowreh-ye nohom-i taqniniyeh, pp. 1211–25.
Menashri argues that the Majles approved only 10 of the 21 articles and that the
bill was not passed as a whole, see Education, p. 146. This argument is obviously
due to the fact that he – as he states himself in note 12 – read only pages 1211–16
of the minutes. After the discussion of article 10 a short interruption of the
session has been recorded (item 4), then the discussion of the draft continued
(item 5, still on page 1216).
28 Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform, p. 71 recounts
that at the time of the founding of the Dar al-Fonun its main promoter, Amir
Kabir, was also “concerned about the dangerous political and perhaps cultural
impact that study in Europe had on students sent abroad.” Deringil states that at
the end of the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire, too, tried to prevent the
younger generation from studying abroad in order to “prevent the spread of
‘harmful’ ideologies”: see Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains (London:
Tauris, 1999), p. 97.
29 Thus at least the classical narrative, see Nikki Keddie and Mehrdad Amanat,
“Iran under the Later Qajars, 1848–1922,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, ed.
Peter Avery, Gavin R. G. Hambly, and Charles Peter Melville (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), vol. 7, p. 211; and Gavin R. G. Hambly,
“The Pahlavi Autocracy: Riza Shah 1921–41,” in The Cambridge History of Iran,
vol. 7, p. 232.
30 Mozakerat-e majles: dowreh-ye nohom-i taqniniyeh, p. 1225.
31 For example on the occasion of the heir’s visit to the Faculty of Law, 31
December 1936: Rahnama-ye Daneshgah-e Tehran (1318–19/1939–40), chapter VII:
1v, 2v, and 3r.
32 Marashi, Nationalizing Iran dedicates a whole chapter to the role of education in
the process of nation building, see chapter 3: “The Pedagogic State: Education
and Nationalism under Reza Shah,” pp. 86–109. In carrying out the project “to
construct an official nationalism [ … ] the Pahlavi state presented itself as the
embodiment of national culture, the bearer of a common authenticity shared by
state and society. [ … ] The state thus became the vanguard of national
authenticity, and society in turn was seen to need the moralizing leadership of a
pedagogic state,” p. 88.
33 Hambly, “The Pahlavi Autocracy,” p. 232. Joseph S. Szyliowicz, Education and
Modernization in the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973), p. 2.
34 Leonard Binder, Iran: Political Development in a Changing Society (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1962), pp. 76–83.
35 Keddie and Amanat, “Iran under the Later Qajars,” pp. 209–10.
36 Sadiq, Yek sal dar Amrika; and Yadgar-e ‘omr, vol. 2, pp. 1–29.
37 Mozakerat-e majles: dowreh-ye nohom-i taqniniyeh, pp. 1171–84.
38 Javad Ashtiyani in his address on the occasion of the heir’s visit on 5 February
1939: Rahnama-ye Daneshgah-e Tehran (1317–18), chapter II: pp. 2–3. A similar
statement was made by the representative of the student body: ibid., p. 8.
39 According to Rostam-Kolayi the same was true for the editors of and con-
tributors to Alam-e Nesvan, who “like other reformers of the period, had every
confidence that a strong, centralized state with a broad range of powers could at
last carry out reform ignored by previous rulers and long overdue.” Jasamin
Rostam-Kolayi, “Foreign Education, the Women’s Press, and the Discourse of
Scientific Domesticity in Early-Twentieth-Century Iran,” in Iran and the Sur-
rounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics, ed. Nikki R.
Keddie and Rudi Matthee (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002),
pp. 182–202: 198.
40 The American Presbyterian missionaries, too, approved of the Pahlavi dictatorship,
admired Reza Shah for his “vigour and presumed objectives,” and tolerated his
brutality because “they assumed that dictatorship was necessary under Iranian
conditions and that the shah’s rule was progressive.” See Michael P. Zirinsky,
“Render Therefore unto Caesar the Things Which Are Caesar’s: American
Presbyterian Educators and Reza Shah,” Iranian Studies 26, 3/4 (1993),
pp. 337–56: 344.
41 For a discussion of the terms modernization and nationalism, as well as the
contradictions and dilemmas caused by their combination, with special reference
to educational reforms under Reza Shah, see Matthee, “Transforming Dangerous
Nomads,” pp. 326–33.
42 Hambly, “The Pahlavi Autocracy,” pp. 230–36.
43 Reza Arasteh, “The Role of Intellectuals in Administrative Development and
Social Change in Modern Iran,” International Review of Education 9.3 (1963),
pp. 326–34: 331, with reference to Mehdiqoli Hedayat’s memoirs, affirms that
public officials during the Pahlavi reign “had been entirely dependent upon the
Shah for direction.”
44 Menashri, Education, p. 147, to the contrary, states that the shah was personally
involved in every single stage of planning, an assertion for which I have not found
any evidence.
45 Hekmat, Si khatereh, p. 338.
46 Ibid., p. 341.
47 Arasteh, “Growth of Higher Education,” p. 332 gives a less emotional and quite
short account of this event, which to my mind should be considered as one of
the most realistic: “In 1934 a law was passed to establish a university in Tehran. The
colleges which had been under the administration of the Ministry of Education,
namely the faculties of law, science, literature, theology and medicine, were put
under one administrative head, the Chancellor of the University.”
48 “Faculties of the University of Tehran” (multiple authors) in Encyclopaedia
Iranica, vol. 9 (1999), p. 140; David Menashri, “Education xvii. Higher Education,”
in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 8 (1998), pp. 216–19.
49 Christl Catanzaro, “Zwischen Statussymbol und Allheilmittel für alle sozialen
Übel – zur Rolle der Universität Teheran beim Aufbau der iranischen Nation”
Ph.D. dissertation (Bamberg: Bamberg University, 1999), pp. 59–61.
50 Rahnama-ye Daneshgah-e Tehran (1315–16/1936–37), pp. 5, 10, 13, 17, 18, 22 of
the Persian / pp. 11–12, 18, 23, 29, 31, 36 of the English part.
51 Sadiq, Yadgar-e ‘omr, vol. 2, p. 142.
52 Catanzaro, “Zwischen Statussymbol und Allheilmittel,” pp. 49–101.
53 For discussion of this topic I am much obliged to Bert Fragner, who has helped
me to place my observations in a wider context and to realize that they are not –
as I initially supposed – the exception, but the rule. Since this did not fit in the
current concepts of modernization, this fact has been neglected for quite a long
time. See also Bert G. Fragner, “World War I as a Turning Point in Iranian his-
tory,” in La Perse et la Grande Guerre, ed. Oliver Bast (Tehran: Institut Français
de recherché en Iran, 2002), pp. 443–47.
54 According to a report by the Ministry of Education, out of the 640 students sent
abroad by this ministry in 1935, 481 studied in France, 74 in England, 39 in
Germany, 21 in Belgium, 9 in Switzerland, and 16 in the United States; statistics
provided by Reza Arasteh, “Education of Iranian Leaders in Europe and America,”
International Review of Education 8. 3/4 (1962), pp. 444–50: 445, on the basis of
the Yearbook of the Ministry of Education 1935, section II, pp. 116–17.
55 For example, on the first page of the French summary at the end of the yearbook
for 1932–33: Sal-nameh-ye Dar al-mo‘allemin (1311–12).
56 Detailed information on the French educational system is to be found in the
EACEA report, “Organisation of the education system in France 2009/10,”
accessible at http://estudandoeducacao.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/franc3a7a.pdf,
pp. 148–81; for the grandes écoles and the École normale supérieure and its
distinction from other institutions of higher education, see pp. 154–55.
57 Dewey taught at the Teachers College of Columbia University from 1904 to
1930, the same institution where Sadiq and Bizhan did their Ph.D.’s. Although
they might never have met him personally – Sadiq in his memoirs does not
mention a personal encounter – both of them were influenced by Dewey’s philoso-
phy. Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet, pp. 63–34 argues that Dewey’s ideas
are noticeable everywhere in Sadiq’s writings. In Modern Persia Sadiq mentions
Dewey explicitly, pp. 98–99. He praises his theory and declares the activity school
to be “the best type of school.” For the schools in Iran he postulates that “the
content of the courses of study needs to be carefully analyzed [sic] and revised in
order to eliminate all that is dead, formal, and useless, while methods of instruc-
tion should be reformed in order to provide as much opportunity as possible for
active learning and personal participation” (p. 100). This conviction is responsible
for one of Sadiq’s most radical reforms, the implementation of hands-on lessons
in the Teachers College. Cyrus Schayegh, Who Is Knowledgeable Is Strong: Sci-
ence, Class, and the Formation of Modern Iranian Society, 1900–1950 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2009), p. 161 asserts that Columbia at the time
Bizhan was studying there (1922–29) “was at the forefront of educational psy-
chology in the United States.” According to him the “interest in Anglo-Saxon
education formed part of a crucial debate about ta‘lim and tarbiyat, factual
knowledge and moral education: [ … ] many wished to boost tarbiyat, and
Anglo-Saxon education was praised in this regard” (p. 187); the promotion of
practical education and sports was one of its most important issues (p. 188). On
the missionary schools in Iran which also had a strong emphasis on extra-
curricular activities see Michael P. Zirinsky, “A Panacea for the Ills of the
Country: American Presbyterian Education in Inter-War Iran,” Iranian Studies
26.1/2 (1993), pp. 119–37, especially pp. 129–33. It is quite obvious that these
schools also served as a model for reformist educational ideas and that nobody
had to go abroad to study foreign educational systems (Schayegh, Who Is
Knowledgeable, p. 187). But those who implemented the new ideas in Iran were
Iranians who had studied abroad and had witnessed foreign education personally.
58 Sadiq, Modern Persia, pp. 106–7; and Yadgar-e ‘omr, vol. 2, pp. 25–29, 85–86, 136.
59 Like Dewey’s concept of the “laboratory school” the concept of the “activity
school,” elaborated by Georg Kerschensteiner, which opposed the then current
“Buchschule” in Germany, is a reformatory educational concept stressing the
need for experiential learning. In his Ph.D. thesis, Sadiq argues very much in
favour of the activity school which “promotes manual skill and manual expression,”
“develops the creative power of mind,” and “promotes right reasoning and
thinking, which are essential to solving the problems of life” (Modern Persia, p. 98);
in Sadiq’s argument the distinction between Dewey’s and Kerschensteiner’s con-
cepts is somehow lost. For his actual work as an educational reformer Dewey’s
model was probably more decisive.
60 Marashi, Nationalizing Iran, p. 86, argues that education constituted an “element
of continuity” in Iran.
61 See for example Jamshid Behnam, “Tajrobeh-ye shast-saleh-ye nezam-e daneshgahi,”
Goft-o-gu (Tehran) 5 (autumn 1373/1994), pp. 99–109: 100; Szyliowicz, Education
and Modernization, p. 241. Menashri, “Education xvii. Higher Education.” Reza
Arasteh, “Growth of Modern Education in Iran,” Comparative Education Review
3.3 (February 1960), pp. 33–40: 40.
3 Mir Mehdi Varzandeh and the
introduction of modern physical
education in Iran1
H. E. Chehabi
Following the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, physical education appeared

on the agenda of Iranian reformers, who began arguing that the nation could be
revitalized only if its citizens became healthier, for which purpose they had to
be encouraged to exercise more. But it took the state almost three decades
before it showed an active and sustained interest in physical education and
sports, for it was only in 1934 that the National Physical Education Association
(Anjoman-e melli-ye tarbiyat-e badani) was founded and placed under the
patronage of Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It is a sad irony that it
was precisely as a result of this initiative that the man who had done most to
acquaint Iranians with modern physical education and Western athletic dis-
ciplines withdrew from public service. This man was Mir Mehdi Varzandeh
(1880–1982), often called the “father of modern sports” in Iran.
Biographical sketch
Mir Mehdi Varzandeh was born in 1880 in the town of Shabastar, in Iranian
Azerbaijan, a largely Turkophone province bordering Anatolia. Having lost his
parents when he was still a child, his brother, who was a merchant in Istanbul,
took him to that city and brought him up there. In Istanbul he first attended the
Iranian School, then the Rüşdiye Tophanesi, and finally the prestigious Kuleli
Askeri Lisesi, Istanbul’s premier military high school. At that school he caught
the eye of Selim Sırrı Tarcan (1874–1956), the founder of modern physical edu-
cation in the Ottoman Empire, who became his mentor.2 He attended fencing
classes at the Union Française school, and also taught physical education at the
Iranian School and the Darüşşafaka School. Encouraged by Selim Sırrı Bey,
he then went to Brussels to study physical education at the École normale de
gymnastique et d’escrime (ENGE). In 1914 he returned to Iran, stopping in
Istanbul, where, according to Varzandeh himself, he was offered the directorship
of the college of physical education in Istanbul, but refused the offer since the
position was contingent on him becoming an Ottoman subject.3 Upon his
return to Iran he immediately set out to convince the authorities of the impor-
tance of exercise and sport, and after initial setbacks was instrumental in getting
parliament to pass legislation instituting physical education in the nation’s schools.
56 H. E. Chehabi
Figure 3.1 Mir Mehdi Varzandeh, around 1970.

Source: Private collection, courtesy of Nushin Turan Varzandeh.
Sometime in the early 1920s Mir Mehdi Khan adopted the surname
Varzandeh. Family names had been officially registered in Tehran in 1918 and
became obligatory in the entire country in 1924;4 Mir Mehdi’s choice reflects
his vocation, for Varzandeh is related to varzesh (meaning both “physical
education” and “sport”), the two words being the present participle and
verbal noun, respectively, of the verb varzidan, one of whose meanings is “to
exercise.”
Varzandeh was in state service from 1925 to 1934, when he retired into
private life, for reasons that we shall see. He also founded a number of
modern sports clubs, including Iran’s first public swimming pool.5 In the mid
1950s he bought land in Shahryar, west of Tehran, and as time went on spent
more and more time tending his orchards. After his wife’s death in 1974, he
moved to Istanbul and lived with his daughter’s family.6 He died in 1982 and
was buried in the Iranian cemetery, the Seyyid Ahmed Deresi, at Üsküdar.7
Varzandeh and the legacy of traditional physical education

To appreciate the obstacles Varzandeh faced when he set out to introduce
modern sports to Iran, it is useful to look at the state of physical education in
the country before his arrival on the scene. In urban Iran, physical exercises
were carried out by male athletes, termed pahlavans, in zurkhanehs, houses of
strength (or force), which date back at least to Timurid times. The main
function of the various exercises was to prepare athletes for wrestling, then
the only zurkhaneh discipline that was competitive. The best wrestlers found
employment at Court and at the establishments of elite Iranians whom they
Varzandeh and modern physical education in Iran 57
entertained with their displays of strength and dexterity.8 Since there were no
weight classes, the most successful athletes were also the heaviest, and pahlavan
connoted someone who was, if not obese, at least bulky.
In 1874 Prince E‘tezad al-Saltaneh,9 the minister of science of Naser al-Din
Shah (r. 1848–96), asked the Dar al-Fonun school in Tehran to draw up a
manual of gymnastics and wrestling based on the traditional exercises of
the zurkhaneh. Iran was in the midst of a famine and two epidemics,10 and the
shah hoped to improve public health by encouraging physical exercise. The
Dar al-Fonun, founded in 1851 and Iran’s only modern school at the time,
employed a number of European teachers and was an appropriate setting for
such an endeavour. The general Qajar attitude to European culture was to
adapt rather than to adopt;11 taking native practices and systematizing them
for a novel purpose was in line with such an outlook. The resulting treatise,
authored by one ‘Ali Akbar b. Mehdi al-Kashani, bears the title Ganjineh-ye
koshti (Treasure of wrestling), but it was not published and zurkhaneh exercises
were never introduced in Iranian schools.12
One can only guess why the project was never implemented. One reason
may be the generally haphazard, unsystematic, and short-term manner in
which reforms were instituted in the Naseri era.13 But there is probably more
to the disinclination to introduce the ways of the zurkhaneh to the nascent
modern educational system. Contrary to the official narrative on “ancient
sport” that came into being in the 1930s, which presented the institution as a
depository of noble and chivalrous values inherited from Persia’s glorious pre-
Islamic past, zurkhanehs had a much more ambiguous reputation in Iranian
society. While many were indeed imbued with spirituality, others attracted
thuggish elements that at times terrorized neighbourhoods. Hygiene was poor,
and it was well known that homoerotic practices were tolerated in some of
them.14 In other words, they were not the type of institution from which
patriotic reformers, bent on revitalizing the Iranian nation, could draw
inspiration. It is therefore not astonishing that the pioneers of modern sport in
Iran almost completely ignored the zurkhaneh tradition and preferred to import
Western methods wholesale; in Varzandeh’s writings we do not find any reference
to Iran’s traditional exercises.
And yet, it was the tough, bulky pahlavans of the zurkhaneh and their heavy
muscle-building instruments that informed the average Iranian’s conception of
athleticism and manliness. The Swedish callisthenics taught by Varzandeh
struck traditional people as frivolous if not effeminate, and he was criticized
for making his pupils dance, dancing being considered a dishonourable
activity.15 ‘Isa Sadiq, a pioneer of modern education in Iran, wrote in his
memoirs that Varzandeh’s efforts were met with hostility by conservatives, who
called callisthenics varjeh-vurjeh (horsing around) and declared them to be con-
trary to human dignity: “But with his pleasant demeanour, wit, and sacrifice
Varzandeh was able to set up physical education classes in a few schools.”16
It took time for Iranians to take to the new exercises, and many were never
convinced. In April 1934 Robert Byron, the English traveller, was taken by
58 H. E. Chehabi
Herrick B. Young, the American librarian of the American College, to a
zurkhaneh. Young had become “aware of this institution by hearing his pupils
disparage Swedish drill in favour of it.” Byron agreed with the pupils:
The orchestra of drum, voice, and bell played throughout, slackening and
quickening its rhythm, so that the performers were visibly responding to a
musical impulse, faces and bodies were vivid with enjoyment, and the
contrast with Swedish drill, as it transforms the hope of Europe into
ranks of gesticulating automata, became even more painful to us than to
[the] Persian pupils.17
Given the powerful build of traditional Iranian pahlavans, Varzandeh was at

first not taken seriously because he was by comparison slight in stature. The
story is told that when he was introduced to the prime minister, who was tall
and expected to see someone even bigger than himself, the latter said in jest:
“It’s with this small body that you have created such a stir?” In response,
Varzandeh quoted Sa‘di’s verse Asb-e laghar miyan be kar ayad / Ruz-e
meydan, na gav-e parvari (On the day of battle a lean horse is useful, not a
fat cow). The prime minister in question was probably Reza Pahlavi himself.18
More than a decade later, Varzandeh explained how his ideals differed from
those embodied in Iran’s traditional athletic practices:
When I ask people to come to the club, they say they want to be strong.
The aim of physical education is neither to become a pahlavan, nor an
acrobat, nor a weight-lifter. What is it, then? The aim is to be healthy; have a
long life; be jovial, well humoured, clear minded, brave, and disciplined;
meaning that one should be absolutely dutiful, love one’s king and one’s
nation, and thus become a complete human being. Gentlemen: one has
to admit that technique (fann) has no homeland. All methods that the
civilized countries have accepted and from which they derive benefit,
we have to accept as well. I am not saying that the sports offered at the
Varzandeh Club are the best, but I can state with confidence that they are
the same that are practised in civilized countries.19
Modern physical education in Iran before Varzandeh

Modern European physical exercises were known in Iran before Varzandeh’s
arrival, but they were not the object of any particular state policy. At the Dar
al-Fonun, the European officers on the teaching staff made their Iranian
students exercise regularly, the school’s theatre having been transformed into
a gymnasium for this purpose.20 After 1915 a German-educated military officer
by the name of Geranmayeh introduced Friedrich Ludwig Jahn’s gymnastics
into the military school (Madraseh-ye Nezam), while in the school of the
Cossack brigade exercises were accompanied by music according to the
“Zakolski” (Sokol?) method.21
Physical education was also an important part of the curriculum of the
American School (later Alborz College). In a conscious effort to inculcate the
value of cooperative effort, insufficiently fostered, so it was believed, by tra-
ditional Iranian education, the director of the school, Dr Samuel Jordan,
concentrated on ball games:
Lack of cooperation is the lament of Persian statesmen today. The graduates

of our school are noted for their ability to “play the game.” Twenty-five
years ago athletics were unknown and exercise was taboo. … In 1912
we organized a Boy Scout camp and started hiking and mountain
climbing. … About the same time we started football, and now all over
the country the game is being played. In the college, physical education is
a regular part of the course. Each boy is required to take part in football,
baseball, basketball and other group games where team play is essential
to success. … The courses in physical education have been planned to
instil into them the necessity of cooperation, and they go forth from the
college strong to play the game of life.22
The American school for girls also taught physical education and instilled in
its graduates the importance of physical fitness: in 1911 a woman who twenty
years earlier had been one of the school’s first two Muslim graduates,23
Badr al-Duja Khanum, complained in her graduation address that because
of veiling Iranian women had been deprived of sports, for which reason most
of them were weak and unhealthy.24
The two types of physical education that were vying for supremacy in
Europe were thus both represented in Iran: the competitive athletic games
played in Britain and America, and the non-competitive gymnastics and
callisthenics favoured on the continent.25 But given the scarcity of physical
education teachers of any variety, the borders were not drawn strictly in Iran;
in fact, Varzandeh was hired to teach physical education at the American School
at a time when he was still not taken seriously by the country’s educational
establishment.26 However, these efforts to introduce physical education to
school curricula were not systematic and did not involve the Iranian state
directly. Nor were the times propitious for large-scale state involvement: in
the years following the outbreak of World War I governments in Tehran were
weak and hardly exercised effective control over the country. The political and
social backdrop to Varzandeh’s efforts is worth noting, as it explains why
some in the ruling elite gradually came to find his message attractive.
World War I and its aftermath in Iran

It is not unreasonable to assume that Mir Mehdi Khan’s return to Iran at
a time when he was already in his mid thirties was occasioned by the out-
break of the Great War, for Belgium had been invaded by German troops in
August 1914 and the Ottoman Empire was a belligerent as well. The country
60 H. E. Chehabi
Mir Mehdi found was going through very hard times. Not only were parts of
it occupied by foreign powers, but the authority of the central government
was weakening as well. Matters were made worse by the impact of the war,
in the course of which, violating Iran’s expressed neutrality, Russian and
Ottoman armies fought each other on Iranian territory; and the Young Turks,
who had taken control of the Ottoman Empire, spread pan-Turkist propa-
ganda in Varzandeh’s native Azerbaijan, while in the south the British raised
an army to counter the activities of German agents.27 The manifold disloca-
tions caused by the war and the political instability in Tehran brought about
economic disruption, penury, and famine, weakening people to the point that
when the international influenza pandemic of 1918–19 reached Iran, over a
million people died, about 10 per cent of the population.28 When the war was
over, a number of local political leaders began asserting themselves in some
peripheral provinces, leading many to fear for the very survival of the
country.29 No wonder, then, that the period following the end of the war
witnessed the birth of a virulent nationalism which sought to rebuild the state
and regenerate the nation.30 This nationalism was propagated in a number of
journals, some published in Europe (mostly Germany), and others in Iran, in
which modernist intellectuals analyzed the causes of Iran’s decline and
proposed ways to reverse it. It was generally agreed that the physical fitness of
the citizenry would have to play a major role in the revitalization of the
nation. In June 1921, Kaveh, the influential paper published in Berlin,31
wrote:
In the opinion of those who have immersed themselves in the secrets of

nations’ progress, [sport] is one of the main causes of national power,
progress, independence, civilization, national survival, and especially
chastity and seriousness of purpose, and is the origin of both individual
and social virtues. Playing ball with the hands, but especially with the
feet, horse riding, rowing, hunting, fencing, polo, and sledging … have
a huge importance in the lives of Europeans, and a direct connection
with their progress. … Without a lot of physical exercises it is impossible
for a people to catch up with the civilized nations. … There is a clear
correlation between bodies made hard by exercise and such virtues
as integrity, courage, manliness, honesty, innocence, liberality, and
chivalrousness.32
The article then explains that what is meant is not traditional zurkhaneh
exercises but such disciplines as horse riding, boating, and swimming.
Varzandeh’s message began to be heard. The great turning point came
in 1925, when a parliament dominated by the supporters of Reza Khan
Pahlavi legislated a number of reforms to modernize the state. The reform
zeal culminated in the abolition of the Qajar dynasty, whose rule was equated
with decline and degeneration, and the advent of Reza Shah’s modernizing
autocracy.
Degeneration, moral regeneration, and Swedish gymnastics
As Cyrus Schayegh has shown, improving the Iranian “race” and reversing
the “degeneracy” of Iranians was an important item on the modernists’
agenda, and a healthier life style that included vigorous physical exercise was
one of the ways this could be achieved.33 Preoccupation with “degeneracy”
was of course widespread in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
Europe,34 and vigorous physical exercise was considered the best way to
remedy it.35 Iranian modernists were influenced in their conceptualizations of
the problem by the writings of Europeans, but let us not forget that there was
a strong material basis for the anxieties of modernists. The state of public
health, for instance, was terrible: to give but one example, syphilis was wide-
spread, and it is estimated that 20–40 per cent of Tehran’s population was
infected, including many 8–10-year-old boys.36
The ideas that Varzandeh propounded in his few extant writings to improve
the general well-being of the Iranian nation clearly show the influence of the
Swedish school of gymnastics he studied in Belgium. The Swedish school was
created at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Per Henrik Ling (1776–
1839), a man who also achieved fame as a patriotic poet.37 Sweden’s decline
as a world power, exemplified by the loss of Finland to Russia in 1809, was
the impetus behind his search for ways to revive the nation’s strength. The
exercises Ling devised sought to combine the military virtues of his Viking
forefathers with the qualities of self-restraint and control demanded of citizens
in the modern age. Like other continental European proponents of gymnastics,
he had no use for competitive games, but he differed from the German Turnen
in his rejection of rings, ropes, bars, and other equipment.38 Instead, he devised
callisthenics which aimed at fostering a harmonious development of all the
body’s organs and limbs. After Ling’s death, his successors at the Central
Gymnastics Institute (Gymnastiska centralinstitutet), which he had created in
Stockholm in 1814, “were all preoccupied with the moral and physical deca-
dence that they thought characterized Sweden: exaggerated love of pleasure,
weakness, sickness, self-indulgence.”39 The resistance against competitive
sports became less fierce, and they were accepted as a complement to non-
competitive exercises. By the 1870s, Social Darwinism crept into the movement,
and with it a certain militarism. The influential director of the military division
of the Institute, Viktor Balck, believed that competitive athletics promoted
“patriotism, a sense of duty, the will to defend, [and a reduction of] social
conflict”; for Balck, athletics “became the cure for all evils that threatened
man and society: social unrest, sexual temptation, decadent entertainment,
and so on.”40
Ling’s system became popular in France in the aftermath of its defeat
against Prussia in the War of 1870, when notions of national decline were pop-
ular and led to a search for ways to halt it.41 The main institution for the training
of French physical education teachers was the École normale de gymnastique
de Joinville-le-Pont, founded in 1852, which served as a model for the Belgian
62 H. E. Chehabi
École normale de gymnastique et d’escrime, founded in 1894 in Brussels, the
school Varzandeh attended. In 1902 Clément Lefébure, an admirer of Swedish
gymnastics who had studied at Stockholm’s Central Gymnastics Institute,
became its director and replaced the previous, French-inspired system of physical
education with Swedish gymnastics, arguing that only it was capable of coun-
teracting the moral and physical degeneration which threatened the Belgian
nation and thus “regenerate the race.”42 In 1903 he published L’Éducation phy-
sique en Suède,43 and two years later a course on Swedish gymnastics which was
translated by Selim Sırrı Tarcan into Turkish.44 Varzandeh may very well have
made his first theoretical acquaintance with Swedish gymnastics through this
translation, published while he was living in Istanbul.
Enter Mir Mehdi Varzandeh

After Varzandeh arrived in Tehran in 1915, he was received by the minister of
education, whom he tried to convince of the importance of physical educa-
tion. The minister recommended him to the Ministry of the Interior, so that
he could gain employment in the Swedish-officered gendarmerie.45 But at the
gendarmerie he was told that there was no need for him.46 Not only could he
not find employment, people made fun of him for wanting to serve his coun-
try with Jimbalastik. He continued arguing his case, and gained the respect of
a number of physicians who referred their patients to him for massage ther-
apy.47 Ten students from the Alliance Française school agreed to exercise
under his supervision, but they met with such hostility and criticism that they
stopped after two months. He now went to the St. Louis school and, there
being no money, taught physical education for free for six months. At this
point a number of graduates of the Dar al-Fonun school founded a school by
the name of Sepehr, which employed him as a physical education teacher with
a monthly salary of eight tumans. Four months later, the Dar al-Fonun held its
annual celebration of education (jashn-e ma‘aref) in the presence of the min-
ister of education, Hakim al-Molk.48 Varzandeh delivered a speech extolling
sports, and then gave a demonstration with his students from the Sepehr
school. Impressed, Hakim al-Molk conferred a medal on him and appointed
him physical education teacher at state schools with a monthly salary of
40 tumans. In an official note dated 2 November 1915 the minister wrote:
Esteemed directors of state schools,

Mr. Mir Mehdi Khan, who is a graduate of the Union Française of
Istanbul and has high diplomas in the teaching of gymnastics, has been
appointed teacher of physical education at state schools by the Ministry
of Education. Therefore fix the hours of his teaching as soon as possible
so that he can start teaching.49
In the beginning, the goals were modest: two hours of physical education
per week. Varzandeh taught at a number of schools, including the military
school (Madreseh-ye Nezam) and the officers’ academy (Daneshkadeh-ye
Afsari), and continued championing the introduction of physical education
classes into school curricula. In 1919 he succeeded: physical education
officially became part of the compulsory curriculum under the minister of
education Ahmad Bader (Naser al-Dowleh).50
In 1924 Varzandeh was sent by the Iranian government to Paris, where
he studied fencing and gymnastics for over a year at the abovementioned
École de Joinville, which had received a Persian delegation in 1923.51 Upon
his return to Iran in 1925, he was named inspector (mofattesh) for physical
education at Tehran high schools, and proceeded to appoint Abolfazl Sadri as
his deputy.52 One of the measures he instituted was to suspend elementary
school classes on Monday afternoons and send pupils to the outskirts of the
city for play,53 something Lefébure had suggested for fair-weather days.54
On 29 December 1925 (8 Dey 1304) the Association of Propagators of Sport
(Hey’at-e moravvejin-e varzesh) was founded in Tehran, with the aforementioned
Naser al-Dowleh at its head. Varzandeh, Sadri, the constitutionalist statesman
Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh, and the newspaper editor ‘Ali Dashti were “consult-
ing” (moshaver) members. Under the guidance of Varzandeh, the members
exercised thrice a week. The future plans of the association included positive
eugenics, described as “improving the Iranian race,” (eslah-e nasl-e Iran) and
preventing the spread of immorality (monkerat va raza’el-e akhlaqi). To do so,
it planned to set up free spaces in the city where members of the public could
exercise. At one of the association’s meetings, Varzandeh was asked to com-
pile a survey of the capital’s athletic facilities and activities. It transpired that
there were eighteen zurkhanehs, and that thirteen private schools had regular
physical education classes taught by teachers employed by the Ministry of
Education. At the American School (the future Alborz) physical education
was taught by an American; the school of political science and the Alliance
Française had no physical education classes; and at the German Technical
School (Madreseh-ye San‘ati) Geranmayeh was teaching.55
The new dynamism generated by the advent of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925
and 1926 provided Varzandeh with forums to publish a few articles expounding
his ideas. In the summer of 1925 he wrote a short piece in the new monthly
publication of the Ministry of Education. After recounting the story of his life
and struggles so far, he suggested instituting physical education teacher-training
classes at the Dar al-Fonun school, so that with the help of these teachers the
ministry would “succeed in improving (eslah) the Iranian race (nasl-o nezhad)
and training the nervous (asabi) and bone marrow (ozvi) cells of Iranian
children so as to provide people with sound bodies and sound morals for the
future of Iran.” He further explained: “It is obvious that people whose ner-
vous system (selseleh-ye a‘sab) and mental powers (qova-ye damaghi) have
matured in accordance with sound methods, and whose bodies are fit and can
sustain all sorts of difficult activities, and whose muscles do their duty naturally,
will have a healthy mind, [enabling them to] achieve all sorts of progress and
attain their goals and ideals.”56 Here Varzandeh clearly echoes the Social
64 H. E. Chehabi
Darwinism and associated eugenics that were popular at the time in Europe
and had crept into the ideology of Swedish gymnastics.
The propagation of physical education was also high on the agenda of
Mahmud Afshar, a fiercely nationalist intellectual who proposed modernizing
remedies for Iran’s problems in his influential publication Ayandeh (Future).57
In the very first issue of this journal, which included what might be termed his
manifesto, he wrote:
Another matter that the people need and to which we hope the government
will pay serious attention is the generalization and propagation of physical
exercise and public health. … Although no one doubts the benefits and
necessity of sport, it is not as developed in Iran as it ought to be. …
Physical education must not be limited to elementary schools and should
be instituted in middle and high schools as well. … Special teachers are
needed for this, and they need to be trained. … We believe that sport is so
important for Iran that the government would render the nation a great
service if it forced all those who are on the state’s payroll to exercise. The
way to do this is to establish sports halls offering facilities for gymnastics,
tennis, and football in various points of the city, and force civil servants
to exercise by deducting membership fees from their salaries.58
Varzandeh’s and Afshar’s insistence on training physical education teachers

was heeded by the government. The minister of education at the time was
Seyyed Mohammad Tadayyon, who was a believer in physical education
(he seems to have exercised at home).59 In July 1926 the High Council of Edu-
cation (Showra-ye ‘ali-ye ma‘aref) established a Physical Education Teacher
Training College (Dar al-mo‘allemin-e varzesh) and appointed Varzandeh as
its director. The college’s two-year curriculum included nine subjects:
gymnastics, sports, pedagogy, anatomy, physiology, nutrition and first aid,
physics, scouting, and music.60
After Afshar’s opening salvo in favour of physical education, Varzandeh
contributed two articles to Ayandeh on this subject. In the first, titled “The
History of the Appearance of Sport,” he wrote that the Greeks had invented
sport, although he qualified this by admitting that before the Greeks the
Egyptians, and before the Egyptians the Indians, had some sports of their
own. What is remarkable is that in sharp contrast to many other modernists,
who found the origin of just about any cultural and civilizational phenomenon
in ancient Iran, his only reference to Iranian traditions is a negative one, making
fun of a pahlavan for telling the story of another pahlavan who was so strong
that when a wall collapsed on him it inflicted no injury on him, so that he dug
himself out with brute force, emerged from the heap, and walked away.61
A few months later he published another article, clarifying the relationship
between games and sport. He wrote that it was imperative for the education of
children to include games. “The Swedes, whose moral virtues and progressive
thoughts have astonished the world, established a school to train games
teachers in Näset, a town near Göteborg.” Since then, he averred, teachers
from the civilized countries visited this school every year, and games featured
prominently in the curricula of European elementary schools. While playing
was necessary for children, competitive games in which individuals are win-
ners should be avoided, so that the weaker should not be humiliated. Older
children could also engage in sports, but only after their bodies had been
made fit through physical education. Even then, football should be played in
schools only as a game, not as a sport.62
Having provided for the training of teachers, on 5 September 1927 the
Iranian parliament passed a law authorizing the Ministry of Education to
introduce compulsory daily physical education in public schools:63
Article 1 – The Ministry of Education is empowered to make physical

education obligatory in all modern schools.
Article 2 – Except on holidays, physical education has to take place in
said schools every day.
Article 3 – The Ministry of Education will determine the number of
hours and the times physical education [will be taught].
Article 4 – After its promulgation, this law will be applied in provincial
capitals within one year, and in the rest of the country within three years.64
The implementation of this law turned out to be fraught with difficulties.

Given the paucity of qualified teachers, in the beginning teachers of other
subjects were used. Neither they nor their students showed any enthusiasm,
and classes were often cancelled. Budgetary allowances were insufficient as
well. To enforce the law, the government decreed a few months later that two
hours be set aside for physical education in all schools.65
As a teacher Varzandeh seems to have been popular. Mehdi Bazargan, the
first prime minister of the Islamic Republic, remembers:
Mr. Varzandeh used all his skills to attract the youth to sports and games.
With his bald head, short stature, and his histrionic style he would speak
both earnestly and in jest, and he was very effective. He took his students
on hiking trips to the mountains and founded a number of sports clubs,
including Iran’s first public swimming pool.66
In addition to teaching in public schools, Varzandeh was also the private

physical education instructor to Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,
whom he taught fencing and boxing before the crown prince left for Switzerland
in 1931.
For reasons not entirely clear to me, in the 1930s the modernist press
propagated competitive Western sports more than physical education; perhaps
it had something to do with the rising nationalism and militarism of the 1930s,
which exalted struggle and competition. The widely read (and Nazi-financed)
Iran-e Bastan, for instance, published pictures of European sports events in
66 H. E. Chehabi
almost every issue. To give one example, under the heading “Different athletic
disciplines for the attention of young girls and boys of Iran – a sample of
sports and competitions from the civilized world” photos show ice hockey,
tennis, horse riding, skiing, diving, volleyball, and boxing.67
In the spring of 1934 the minister of education, ‘Ali Asghar Hekmat,
took the initiative of inviting a number of influential personalities to join him
in founding the National Physical Education Association (Anjoman-e
melli-ye tarbiyat-e badani). Hekmat was a graduate of the American mis-
sionary school in Tehran, and believed that physical education in Iran needed
to be improved;68 whether he had any concrete misgivings about Varzandeh I
do not know. The new association invited a recent graduate of Columbia
University, Thomas R. Gibson, to come to Iran and reorganize Iranian
sports. Varzandeh took umbrage, as he considered Gibson to be less qualified
than he was himself, retired from his position in the Ministry of Education,
and withdrew from state service.69 The teacher-training college he had directed
was closed down.70
Under Gibson’s guidance, callisthenics in Iranian schools were replaced
with competitive sports as well as games such as football, volleyball, and
basketball.71 Gibson, who stayed until 1938, also set up competitions between
school teams, mostly in football. Within a few months of the reorganization
of Iranian sports, 24 football teams had been formed, all of them connected
with educational establishments. To encourage the public to take these games
seriously, the tournaments were attended by the highest dignitaries of the state.72
The new approach to physical education was a victory of the Anglo-Saxon
notion of competitive games over the continental preference for non-competitive
physical exercises, the grounds for this victory having been prepared by the
Protestant missionaries. The old teacher-training college having been dissolved,
in 1938 a new institution called Daneshsara-ye tarbiyat-e badani was set up
to dispense a two-year course of study for the training of elementary and
middle-school teachers.73 It closed down after only five years because of
World War II, but its four classes graduated 138 teachers who became Iran’s
most eminent and effective physical education teachers.74
Varzandeh’s retirement from state service did not end his engagement with
health and physical education. In 1935 he published a book titled Dastur-e
varzesh-e ruzaneh (Manual for daily exercises).75 His club and its famous swim-
ming pool remained open, attracting health-conscious citizens. In the 1950s he
seems to have been the director of the Bank Melli sports club.76
Conclusion
Iranian modernists were united in their rejection of traditional Iranian athletics
as a basis for a modern physical education system. We can see this not only in
the writings of prominent opinion-making intellectuals in the interwar period, but
also here and there among non-elite people. In his reminiscences of pre–World
War II Mashhad, Gholam Hoseyn Baqi‘i writes that his uncle was an habitué
of a zurkhaneh but did not want his nephew to follow in his footsteps,
arguing:
In the past, when wars were fought with bows and arrows, bludgeons,
and swords, and warriors wrestled with each other, these kinds of exercises
were necessary and useful. But in the age of canons and rifles they have
no effect other than making one ill-shaped and arrogant. But military
sports and callisthenics, and especially swimming, are always useful, and
one can practice them even in the public bath-house.77
Baqi‘i went on to become a member of the Communist Tudeh Party, arguably

the most Westernizing organization in all of Iranian history.78
The story of the introduction of Western physical education into Iran and
the role Mir Mehdi Varzandeh played in it is also instructive in that it shows
(as if proof were needed!) that “the West” is not the monolithic entity nativist
intellectuals make it out to be.79 In Europe there was no unanimity about
what form physical education should take, as the sometimes bitter debates
between proponents of sport and physical education illustrate. It is true that
in Iran the opposition between the two concepts was far less systematic; to
this day varzesh means both non-competitive exercise and competitive sport,
while tarbiyat-e badani, a calque on körperliche Erziehung that was probably
adopted from Ottoman Turkish, denotes more the national umbrella organization
for sports than a type of bodily activity. But at the end of the day the adoption of
the Swedish method in Iran was not that different from its adoption in
Belgium: in both cases one man spent a few years at an institution teaching it,
became convinced of its superior qualities, and introduced it in his home
country upon his return, using similar arguments. The main difference was
that Belgium had a strong state that could implement the new policy, whereas
the Iranian state under Reza Shah had more pressing priorities.
The fact that Swedish callisthenics came to Iran via Turkey and Belgium is
also interesting. An Azerbaijani Iranian whose first language was Azeri Turkish,
Mir Mehdi Varzandeh was a patriot deeply committed to the betterment of
Iran, but he was also at home in Turkey, a country whose language was
familiar to him, in which he spent the early and last years of his very long life,
and where he was launched on his career by a physical educationist who was
probably his role model. This shows the sterility of nationalistic quarrels over
whether Azerbaijanis are primarily “Turkish” or “Iranian,” and suggests an
alternative conceptualization of the relationship, one in which Azerbaijanis
act as cultural mediators between two neighbouring countries that share
numerous civilizational affinities.
As for Belgium, while the part played by Belgian advisors in attempts to
reform the Iranian administration is well known,80 the cultural impulses
emanating from it have perhaps been understudied. In the field of sports, the
Institut supérieur d’education physique in Ghent, founded in 1908 with
the cooperation of the ENGE, acquired international stature as a centre for
68 H. E. Chehabi
the diffusion of Swedish gymnastics and attracted many foreign students, but
lost its international importance in the 1930s when its official language
became Dutch (Flemish).81
As a person, Mir Mehdi Varzandeh drew on multiple cultural impulses
with unselfconscious serenity. In a country deeply polarized along cultural
and political cleavages, he is one of the very few pioneers of modernity who
remains universally respected. His decency as a human being, good nature,
friendly demeanour, and seriousness of purpose are admitted by all, irrespective
of political affiliation. In recognition of his services, the street adjacent to the
southern side of the Amjadiyeh sports complex in central Tehran was named
after Varzandeh before the revolution, and, unlike most Tehran streets, it kept
its name after the overthrow of the old order in 1979. Since then, Iran’s
voluminous sports press has regularly devoted articles to him, and a com-
memorative plaque has been affixed inside the sports complex, now renamed
Shahid Shirudi.
Notes
1 I thank ‘Ali Mohammad Amirtash, Sadreddin Elahi, Willem Floor, Allen Guttmann,
Cyrus Schayegh, Farah Varzandeh, Nushin Turan Varzandeh, Maryam Wozniak,
and Ehsan Yarshater for their help in collecting material for this paper.
2 Selim Sırrı Bey had studied at the Galatasaray in Istanbul and was named gymnas-
tics teacher at that school in 1900. He then spent two years in Stockholm studying
physical education, and on his return endeavoured to reform the existing Ottoman
physical education teaching along Swedish lines. World War I interrupted his
activities, but in the new republic he founded the Terbiye-i Bedeniye Mektebi, a
teacher-training college for physical education, and in 1923 became General
Inspector of Sport. He is considered the father of modern Turkish physical educa-
tion. Herbert Riedel, Leibesübungen und körperliche Erziehung in der osmanischen
und kemalistischen Türkei (Würzburg: Konrad Triltsch Verlag, 1942), pp. 48–49.
3 The following account is based on a short biography Varzandeh dictated to one
of his relatives in Istanbul, of which I have a copy, and on a biographical sketch
published as “Yaddasht-ha-ye Mir Mehdi Khan Varzandeh mo‘allem va mofattesh-
e koll-e madares,” Ta‘lim va tarbiyat 1:6 (Shahrivar 1304/September 1925),
pp. 33–38.
4 See H. E. Chehabi, “Reforming Nomenclature in Iran: The Abolition of Titles
and the Introduction of Family Names under Reza Pahlavi,” in Converging
Zones: Persian Literary Tradition and the Writing of History, Studies in Honor of
Amin Banani, ed. Wali Ahmadi (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2012).
5 Mehdi Bazargan, Shast sal khedmat va moqavemat (Tehran: Rasa, 1996), pp. 75–76.
6 Personal Interview with Nushin Turan Varzandeh, Istanbul, 14 May 2005.
7 On which see Thierry Zarcone, “The Persian Cemetery of Istanbul,” in Cimetières et
traditions funéraires dans le monde islamique, ed. Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont
and Aksel Tibet (Ankara: Türk Tarih Basimevi, 1996), pp. 217–21.
8 The literature on the zurkhanehs is voluminous. See Sayyed Mohammad Ali
Jamalzadeh, Isfahan Is Half the World: Memories of a Persian Boyhood, trans. W.
L. Heston (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), chapter 3, “The
World of Chivalry and Manliness,” pp. 170–200; A. Riza Arasteh, “The Social
Role of the Zurkhana (House of Strength) in Iranian Urban Communities during
the Nineteenth Century,” Der Islam 36 (1961), pp. 256–59; and H. E. Chehabi,
“Zu-rkha-na,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edition, vol. 11 (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
2002), pp. 572–74.
.
9 On whom see Abbas Amanat, “E‘teza-d-al-Salt.ana, ‘Alı-qolı- Mı-rza-,” in Encyclopaedia
Iranica, vol. 8, 1998, pp. 669–72.
10 Shoko Okazaki, “The Great Persian Famine of 1870–71,” Bulletin of the School
of Oriental and African Studies 49 (1986), pp. 183–92.
11 As shown by Abbas Amanat, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah and the
Iranian Monarchy, 1831–1896 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
12 The only manuscript of this work is kept at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris,
and a critical edition with a French translation is being prepared by Philippe
Rochard. My discussion is based on his paper, “The Ganjina-ye Koshti of Ali Akbar b.
Mahdi al-Kashani,” presented at the Fourth Biennial Convention of the Association
for the Study of Persianate Societies, Lahore, 26 February – 1 March 2009.
13 Shaul Bakhash, Iran: Monarchy, Bureaucracy, and Reform under the Qajars,
1858–1896 (London: Ithaca Press for the Middle East Centre, St. Antony’s College,
1978); and A. Riza Sheikholeslami, The Structure of Central Authority in Qajar
Iran: 1871–1896 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997).
14 I analyzed this in my “The Invention of ‘Ancient Sport’ in Twentieth-Century
Iran,” paper presented at the 71st Anglo-American Conference of Historians,
London, 3–5 July 2002.
15 Ruhollah Khaleqi, Sargozasht-e musiqi-ye Iran, vol. 2 (Tehran: Safi ‘Ali Shah, n.
d), p. 106; Gholam Hoseyn Baqi’i, Angizeh (Tehran: Resa, 1373/1994), p. 136;
and Bazargan, Shast sal khedmat, p. 75.
16 ‘Isa Sadiq, Yadgar-e ‘omr: khaterati az sargozasht, vol. 2 (Tehran: Dehkhoda,
1354/1975), p. 164.
17 Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana (1937; London: Picador, 1981), pp. 186–87.
18 Hoseyn Partow Beyza’i Kashani, Tarikh-e varzesh-e bastani-ye Iran: Zurkhaneh
(1957; Tehran: Zavvar, 2003), p. 384. Beyza’i writes that this happened “34 years
ago.” His book having been finished in March 1959, the event must have taken
place in 1924 or 1925, when Reza Khan Pahlavi was prime minister.
19 Mir Mehdi Varzandeh, “Mikhvaham qavi shavam,” Iran, 9 Farvardin 1316/29
March 1937.
20 Amir Kabir’s plan to have a theatre had foundered on clerical opposition. Only
later in the century was the auditorium sometimes used by the Court for theatrical
performances. Maryam Dorreh Ekhtiar, “The Dar al-Funun: Educational
Reform and Cultural Development in Qajar Iran,” Ph.D. dissertation (New York:
New York University, 1994), pp. 284–85. See also Willem Floor, The History of
Theater in Iran (Washington, DC: Mage, 2005), p. 214.
21 Abolfazl Sadri, Tarikh-e varzesh (Tehran: Vezarat-e Farhang – Edareh-ye Koll-e
Tarbiyat-e Badani, 1962), pp. 138–39.
22 Samuel M. Jordan, “The Power Plant in Persia,” Women and Missions (Decem-
ber 1929), p. 329.
23 Mangol Bayat-Philipp, “Women and Revolution in Iran, 1905–11,” in Women in
the Muslim World, ed. Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie (Cambridge, MA: Harvard,
University Press, 1978), p. 300.
24 Iran-e Now 3 (1 July 1911), p. 3, as quoted in Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Veiled
Discourse – Unveiled Bodies,” Feminist Studies 19 (Fall 1993), p. 509.
25 See Allen Guttmann, Games and Empires: Modern Sports and Cultural Imperialism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), chapter 7, “Turnen,” pp. 141–56, for
a discussion of the various national forms the reaction against Anglo-Saxon
games took.
26 Arthur C. Boyce, “Alborz College of Tehran and Dr Samuel Martin Jordan:
Founder and President,” p. 194. Boyce wrote: “One Persian young man, not from
our school, went to Europe for study and came back with a full training in Physical
70 H. E. Chehabi
Education. The Ministry of Education would give him no opening at all in Per-
sian Schools and laughed at him for wasting his time and money in Belgium
becoming a ‘dancing master.’ Dr Jordan encouraged him by giving him a part-
time job training our students in group games and exercises. Later on, Persian
schools were glad to have him and he became a very popular Director of Athletics
and trainer of Physical Education directors for the Ministry of Education.”
27 See the various articles in Touraj Atabaki, ed., Iran and the First World War:
Battleground of the Great Powers (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006).
28 Amir Arsalan Afkhami, “Compromised Constitutions: The Iranian Experience
with the 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77:2
(Summer 2003), pp. 367–92.
29 Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804–1946
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 144–67.
30 See Rouzbeh Parsi, In Search of Caravans Lost: Iranian Intellectuals and Nation-
alist Discourse in the Inter-War Years (Lund: Dissertation Series, Department of
History, Lund University, 2009).
31 On which see Tim Epkenhans, Die iranische Moderne im Exil: Bibliographie der
Zeitschrift Kave, Berlin 1916–1922 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2000).
32 “Khiyalat,” Kaveh, n.s. 2:6 (8 June 1921), pp. 1 and 2.
33 Cyrus Schayegh, “‘A Sound Mind Lives in a Healthy Body’: Texts and Contexts
in the Iranian Modernists’ Scientific Discourses of Health, 1910s-40s,” Interna-
tional Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 37:2 (May 2005), pp. 167–88; and Cyrus
Schayegh, “Sport, Health, and the Iranian Modern Middle Class in the 1920s
and 1930s,” Iranian Studies 35:4 (2002), pp. 341–69.
34 See Robert Nye, “Degeneration and the Medical Model of Cultural Crisis in the
French Belle Époque,” in Political Symbolism in Modern Europe: Essays in
Honor of George L. Mosse, ed. Seymour Drescher, David Sabean, and Allan
Sharlin (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1982), pp. 19–41.
35 See, for instance, Eugen Weber, France, Fin de Siècle (Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press, 1986), chapter 11, “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” pp. 213–33.
36 Willem Floor, Public Health in Qajar Iran (Washington, DC: Mage, 2004), pp. 33–34.
37 On the history of Ling gymnastics see Jan Lindroth, Idrottens väg till folkrörelse:
Studier i svensk idrottsrörelse till 1915 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1974).
Since, alas, my Swedish is not what it ought to be, my discussion of Ling and
Swedish gymnastics is based on Jens Ljunggren, “The Masculine Road through
Modernity: Ling Gymnastics and Male Socialisation in Nineteenth-Century
Sweden,” in Making European Masculinities: Sport, Europe, Gender, ed. J. A. Mangan
(London: Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 86–111.
38 Guttmann, Games and Empires, p. 148.
39 Ljunggren, “The Masculine Road through Modernity,” p. 92.
40 Ibid., p. 101.
41 Gilbert Andrieu, “L’Influence de la gymnastique suédoise sur l’éducation physi-
que en France entre 1874 et 1914,” Stadion 14:2 (1988), pp. 163–80.
42 Pascal Delheye, “La Patrie régénérée? Clément Lefébure, l’École normale de
gymnastique et d’Escrime de l’Armée et la percée de la gymnastique suédoise en
Belgique 1885–1908,” in L’empreinte de Joinville: 150 ans de sport, ed. Pierre
Simonet and Laurent Veray (Paris: INSEP, 2003), pp. 335–57.
43 Clément Lefébure, L’Éducation physique en Suède (Brussels: Lamertin, 1903).
44 Méthode de gymnastique éducative suédoise: cours professé à l’École normale de
Gymnastique et d’Escrime (Brussels: Guyot, 1905). The title of the Turkish
translation was General Lefebure’ün beden terbiyesi. See Selim Sırrı Tarcan,
Hatıratlarım (Istanbul: Türkiye Yayınevi, 1946), p. 4.
45 In 1911 the Iranian government had contracted Swedish officers to set up a gen-
darmerie to police the countryside. See Markus Ineichen, Die schwedischen Offiziere
in Persien (1911–1916): Friedensengel, Weltgendarmen oder Handelsagenten einer
Kleinmacht im ausgehenden Zeitalter des Imperialismus? (Bern: Peter Lang, 2002).
46 Muhammad Madadi, in his Su’edi-ha dar Iran (Tehran: Gofteman, 2002), p. 80,
states that the Swedes did offer him employment as gymnastics teacher.
47 According to Seyyed Reza Sakkaki (a student and colleague of Varzandeh),
Varzandeh was even invited to Court to treat Ahmad Shah, reportedly showing
him physical exercises that would relieve pain induced by his gout. Personal
communication to ‘Ali Mohammad Amirtash, who conveyed it to me.
48 A fellow Azerbaijani, Ebrahim Hakimi (Hakim al-Molk) was minister in
numerous cabinets and prime minister on a number of occasions in the course of
his long political career. He had a reputation for probity and integrity. See Ja‘far
Mahdiniya, Zendegi-ye siyasi-ye Ebrahim Hakimi (Hakim al-Molk) (Tehran:
Omid-e Farda, 1380/2001).
49 A photocopy of the note (dated 10 Borj-e ‘aqrab 1333q), obtained at the National
Archives in Tehran (Ketabkhaneh-ye melli va Sazman-e Melli-ye Asnad), is in my
possession. Current file location is not available.
50 Danesh-e varzesh 2:13 (Bahman 1367/January 1989), p. 43.
51 Jean Saint-Martin, “L’École de Joinville: une pièce maîtresse dans le rayonnement
géopolitique de l’EP française entre les deux guerres mondiales,” in L’empreinte
de Joinville, ed. Simonet and Veray, pp. 47–66. On p. 51 there is a photo showing
Persian, Moroccan, and Portuguese delegations visiting the school in 1923.
52 In subsequent years Sadri would become one of the top sports functionaries of
Iran.
53 Varzandeh, “Yaddasht-ha-ye Mir Mehdi Khan Varzandeh,” p. 36.
54 Delheye, “La Patrie régénérée?” p. 347.
55 Shafaq-e Sorkh, 24 Dey 1304 (14 January 1926), p. 4, as quoted in Mehdi
‘Abbasi, Tarikh-e koshti-ye Iran, vol. 3 (Tehran: Sepas, 1998), p. 295. The thirteen
schools were Tadayyon, Aqdasiyeh, Tamaddon, Nowshiravan, Itam (for
orphans), Baladiyeh, Tarbiyat (a Baha’i school), St. Louis (Catholic), Sharaf,
Mohammadiyeh, Falahat, Zartoshtiyan (Zoroastrian), and Alliance Israélite. In
other words, four were non-Muslim, testifying to the pioneering role of minority
schools in Iranian education.
56 Varzandeh, “Yaddasht-ha-ye Mir Mehdi Khan Varzandeh,” pp. 37–38.
57 See Parsi, In Search of Caravans Lost, pp. 176–204.
58 Ayandeh 1:1 (Tir 1304/July 1925), pp. 10–11.
59 Sadiq, Yadgar-e ‘omr, vol. 2, p. 165.
60 Ta‘lim va tarbiyat 2:4 (Tir 1305/July 1926), pp. 214–18.
61 “Tarikh-e peydayesh-e varzesh,” Ayandeh 1:11 (Tir 1305/June 1926), pp. 654–57.
The anecdote is on p. 656. Varzandeh seems to have written a book on the history
of sport, but I have not found any trace of it.
62 Mir Mehdi Khan Varzandeh, “Lozum-i bazi va tarbiyat-e badani,” Ayandeh 1:12
(Mehr 1305/September 1926), pp. 749–57.
63 Ta‘lim va tarbiyat 3:7–8 (Mehr–Aban 1306/September–October 1927), p. 1.
64 Sadri, Tarikh-e Varzesh, p. 139.
65 Siamak Bigdel Chahsavani, “Die Entwicklung und der Stand der modernen
Sportarten im Iran,” Diploma thesis (Cologne: Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln,
1967/68), p. 21; and Sadiq, Yadgar-e ‘omr, vol. 2, p. 165.
66 Bazargan, Shast sal khedmat, pp. 75–76.
67 Iran-e Bastan no. 17 (5 Khordad 1312/25 May 1933), p. 7.
68 Hassan-Ali Nazari-Kangarloo, “The History and Development of Physical Edu-
cation and Sports in Iran,” Unpublished doctoral dissertation (Washington, DC:
School of Education, The George Washington University, 1976), p. 72.
69 Farah Varzandeh, personal telephone communication, 29 March 2008.
70 It is possible that his retirement was caused by the closure of the school.
72 H. E. Chehabi
71 Nazari-Kangarloo, “The History and Development of Physical Education and
Sports in Iran,” p. 73.
72 See “Akharin jashn-e mosabeqeh-ye futbal,” Ta‘lim va tarbiyat 4:2 (Ordibehesht
1313/April–May 1934), p. 117. See also Ta‘lim va tarbiyat 5:9–10 (Azar–Dey
1314/November 1935–January 1936), pp. 549–51.
73 Article 4 of the statute of the new institution laid down fifteen subjects to be
taught: Persian; foreign language; history and geography from the point of view
of generating and strengthening patriotism; psychology, pedagogy, and ethics;
history of sports and different methods of physical education; physiology; hygiene;
anthropometry and sports medicine; music; physical education for elementary
schools; organization; handicrafts; military drills; physical exercises; and scouting.
“Asas-nameh-ye daneshsara-ye parvaresh-e badani,” Amuzesh va parvaresh 8:5–6
(1317/1938), pp. 90–91.
74 Nazari-Kangarloo, “The History and Development of Physical Education and
Sports in Iran,” p. 72.
75 Shahrzad Kordbachcheh, Ketabshenasi-ye towsifi-ye tarbiyat-e badani va ‘olum-e
varzeshi (Tehran: Farr-e Daneshpazhuhan, 2003), p. 125.
76 Ahmad Mahdavi Damghani, personal communication, 22 April 2009.
77 Gholam Hoseyn Baqi’i, Mazar-e Mir Morad: Nama’i az Mashhad-e qadim
(Tehran: Gutenberg, 1373/1994), p. 70.
78 The story of his gradual estrangement from traditional religious culture and
espousal of communism is told in his autobiographical Angizeh.
79 Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph
of Nativism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996).
80 See A. Destrée, Les fonctionnaires belges au service de la Perse 1898–1915
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976) ; and Eric Laureys, Belgen in Perzië 1915–1941 (Louvain:
Peeters, 1996).
81 See Delheye, “La Patrie régénérée?” p. 356 n. 92.
4 Modernization of Iranian music during
the reign of Reza Shah
Keivan Aghamohseni
Introduction
The reign of Reza Shah is considered a turning point in the social and poli-
tical history of Iran. This period was characterized by the implementation of
a comprehensive modernization program, which left its mark on a vast
number of social and cultural aspects of Iranian life, including music. The
modernization of Iranian music during the first Pahlavi era comprised certain
attempts to free this music from its traditional form and content and bring it
closer to the structure of European classical music. One can identify intellec-
tual trends which must be considered as pro-Western rather than modernist,
because their main objective was to fully eliminate Iranian music and replace
it with European music. Also, regardless of the technical discussions about
music and whether or not the Modernizers believed in the transformation of
traditional forms of Iranian music, modernization represents certain thoughts
that tried, by way of imitation from Western societies, to give a totally new
definition of the place of music in Iranian society. In addition to pro-Western
and modernist trends of thought, Iranian music in its then prevailing structure
and form went through a natural evolution that was caused by the changing
social conditions in Iran. The present study begins with reviewing the situa-
tion of Iranian music during the late Qajar period before the reign of Reza
Shah, then discusses the modernization trends in Iranian music, and finally
reflects on the degree of acceptance of these trends by the Iranian society at
large during the Reza Shah period.
Iranian music during the Qajar period

In any review of Iranian music during the Qajar period, the Constitutional
Revolution is invariably considered as a defining moment:1 one of the causes
of this revolution was Iranian society’s growing contact and acquaintance
with Western ideas, which was accelerated by the revolution itself and influ-
enced all social and cultural aspects of Iranian society. Thus, at this point, we
shall review Iranian music during the Qajar period and post–Constitutional
Revolution period.
74 Keivan Aghamohseni
Iranian music during the Qajar period can be classified into the following
categories:
1 motrebi music
2 classical music
3 religious music
4 military marches.
Motrebi music was a kind of urban folk music during the Qajar period that
was specially used in popular rites and festivities. It used to be played in
groups and was accompanied by dances. Musicians playing in such groups were
called the motrebs. Since men and women attended separately held festivals, we
find distinct motrebi bands consisting of either men or women in this genre of
music. During the Qajar period, the women’s motrebi bands were always
greater in number and enjoyed a much higher prestige than the men’s bands.2
They could perform in privately held women’s festivities, harem celebrations,
and even in the presence of the shah. Men’s bands could only perform in
men’s private parties and certain other public ceremonies. A limited amount
of information on these bands can be found in travelogues of foreigners visiting
Iran during the Qajar period. Eugène Flandin, the French traveller, describes
how a men’s motrebi band performed during his visit:
Very wealthy Iranians have two-three motrebs perform while having

lunch. One member of the band is a vocalist, who sings uninterruptedly
in praise of love, wine, and gallantry. … [T]he concert played with their
instruments does not produce a melodious sound. Iranian music is far
behind what one could expect, mainly for two reasons: Firstly, it is scientific
rather that imitative; secondly, it is being used by ordinary and common
people who can’t do anything else; that’s why it has not been given the
value and place it deserves. There’re quite few people who figure out what
the music means and how it is played.3
The classical-music musicians constitute another category of musicians

who, contrary to motrebs, in most cases performed as solo players. These
musicians used to play on occasions other than festivities and ceremonials,
among which one might mention the private performance of music for the
shah before he went to bed, as well as private gatherings of the elite groups.4
These musicians enjoyed a comparatively higher reputation than the less-
respected motrebs.5 The classical musicians played a quite significant role in
the protection and maintenance of the repertoire of the Iranian classical
music (radif), which in its existing form mainly results from their activities
during the reign of the Qajar dynasty.
The third category of musicians was mainly performing in the genre of
religious music, playing different types of music according to the respective
ceremony such as ta‘ziyeh (the Iranian passion play), nowheh (lamentation),
Modernization of Iranian music 75
rowzeh (sermons), monajat (prayers to God), and azan (call to prayers).
Religious music in Iran was generally a vocal music, since in the Shi‘ite clergy
singing was not considered as religiously forbidden (haram) and was therefore
much more respected than instrumental music, which was regarded as haram.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries most Iranian singers
had experience in the genre of religious music and were not considered as
musicians in the eyes of the society; therefore, the term motreb was not used
in reference to them. This provided an appropriate context for the protection
and promotion of Iranian music, because the singers, active in this field, were
fully familiar with the structure of Iranian classical music.
Another group of musicians that was active played military marches. The
first phase of modernization of Iranian music took place in this field and was
marked by the establishment of a Military March Department (Sho‘beh-ye
Muzik) at the Dar al-Fonun school in 1868.6 Since the military march was
taught in its Western form by a French officer named Alfred Jean Baptiste
Lemaire, the Dar al-Fonun served as a stepping stone for the acquaintance
of Iranian students with the theory of Western music and the introduction of
certain Western instruments to Iran.7
An outstanding effect of the Dar al-Fonun was the introduction and circulation
of the French term musique in Iranian society as a substitute for the tradi-
tional expression of the naqqareh khaneh (the kettle-drum band) music, which
was in use until the 1870s. Accordingly, those performing musique were
labelled as muzikchi-ha (musicians) and local musicians, in contrast, as
motrebs. In fact, all musicians active in the field of motrebi music as well as
the classical-music performers were called the motrebs in the society at large.
During the reign of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar the division between ‘amaleh-ye
tarab for the motrebs and ‘amaleh-ye tarab-e khasseh for the classical musi-
cians was consolidated, and the terms served as a sort of evaluation of the
two categories, since the ‘amaleh-ye tarab-e khasseh received a much higher
degree of respect at the royal court. However, to what extent this distinction
was common within Iranian society is doubtful. Hence, those members of the
upper classes who decided to learn the art of music usually kept it secret.8
Upon becoming familiarized with the theory of Western music, students of
the Dar al-Fonun tried to apply what they had learnt to Iranian music.
Hoseyn Heng Afarin, one of these students, began to transcribe the Iranian
classical-music repertoire, based on the performance of Mirza ‘Abdollah, a
celebrated setar player of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in
the field of classical music.9 Within the abovementioned four categories of music
during the Qajar period, the introduction of military music in its Western form
represents the beginning of the modernization of Iranian music, which
entered the next phase simultaneously with the Constitutional Revolution.
The most significant event in the history of Iranian music during the pre– and
post–Constitutional Revolution era was the effort of musicians to separate
from performing at the royal court. There are numerous examples of such
attempts: Darvish Khan, for instance, a popular tar player during the first
decades of the twentieth century, sought asylum in the British Embassy in
Tehran to find release from the duty of serving Mozaffar al-Din Shah’s son.10
The musicians were able to leave the royal court service due to the develop-
ment of a new economic basis produced by changing social conditions during
the twentieth century. These new social conditions, such as the influence of
the growing Iranian middle class, were among the most effective factors in the
formation of the Constitutional Revolution itself.
The most important economic channels opened up to Iranian musicians in
the early twentieth century can be classified as follows:
1 possibility of gramophone recording

2 possibility of holding public concerts
3 expansion of teaching music
4 possibility of performing in modern bars, cafés, and restaurants.
The beginning of commercial gramophone recording in Iran in 1906 should

be considered as a turning point in the development of Iranian music, and
this also had a considerable impact on the Iranian musicians’ way of life.
When reviewing the period of the developing gramophone recording between
1906 and 1914, a full separation of musicians from the court can be observed,
even though the first recordings of musical works in 1906 took place under
the direct authorization of Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar.
Voice recording sessions, that began in January 1906 in Tehran, were orga-
nized by the Gramophone Company through the agency of the American
Vice-Consul, who was obliged to get the king’s personal permission for
such recording sessions, because a number of court-affiliated musicians
were involved in this kind of recording.11
During the next decade, however, the recording companies entered into direct
negotiations with the musicians. Thus, following the conclusion of a contract
with the Gramophone Company, a group of eight Iranian performers managed
to record a number of Iranian musical works in 1909. The recordings took
place in London.12 Indeed, within a short period after the Constitutional
Revolution, circumstances enabled musicians to directly enter into contracts
with foreign companies.
The next factor that transformed the situation of Iranian music after the
Constitutional Revolution was the holding of public concerts.
The typical performance of classical music in earlier times was at a private

concert, attended perhaps by several dozen persons, at the court or in the
garden of an aristocrat. … Early in the twentieth century, public concerts
were instituted in imitation of European practice. … A concert arranged
by Darvish Khan in 1906 under the aegis of a Sufi circle called Okhovvat
is still frequently mentioned as a landmark.13
As Bruno Nettl explains, public concerts were created to emulate Western
culture by both the musicians and the audience, which was mainly composed
of a middle class interested in experiencing music in public concerts similar to
those in Western societies. The new social conditions for the performance of
music led to such development in Iranian music that some researchers believe
that the formation of the pishdaramad (prelude) form originated from the new
presentation of music in public concerts.14
Recording music, the sale of gramophone records, and public performances
facilitated Iranian society’s further acquaintance with music and musicians,
strengthening their relations. This, most probably, played a significant role in
encouraging individuals to learn music. Teaching music was practiced even
prior to the Constitutional Revolution as well. According to the documents
available, most of the musicians performing in the field of classical music,
such as Mirza ‘Abdollah (setar) and Aqa Hoseynqoli (tar), had been teaching
music during the closing years of the reign of Naser al-Din Shah, though
invariably facing a number of social restrictions.15 Conditions for teaching
music improved following the Constitutional Revolution and changes in
Iranian social conditions, which provided opportunities for the musicians who
were looking for new channels of subsistence during the late Qajar period. A
fact worth mentioning in connection with teaching music in Iran is that
during the reign of the Qajar dynasty the government did not take any
initiatives to promote teaching music other than the military march. Music
education was only unofficially expanded and developed in Iran after the
Constitutional Revolution.
In addition to the abovementioned three factors, performing in bars, cafés,
restaurants, and hotels also provided a channel for musicians’ subsistence
during the late Qajar period. European-style cafés were opened in Iran in the
closing years of Qajar period; they mainly provided their services to clients
from among the middle and upper classes of Iranian society. The first café–
restaurant in Tehran and probably in Iran, called Leqante, was opened on the
southern side of Baharestan Square; it was described as:
[a] picturesque place with lovely nature and weather and a bunch of
befitting clients from among politicians and high-ranking individuals such
as those having travelled to Europe, regular governmental staff members,
writers, intellectuals and activists, more or less similar to European cafés,
where they could enjoy light music in addition to being served an afternoon
snack or supper.16
These cafés became the new places of activity and performance for the musicians.
Most of the famous musicians including Reza Mahjubi (violinist), Morteza
Mahjubi (pianist) – both coming from aristocratic families – and Darvish
Khan used to perform in such cafés.17
The post–Constitutional Revolution social conditions of Iran left their
mark on motrebi music as well. The most important outcome of the emerging
social conditions was the collaboration between the motrebs and the actors in
a dramatic species known as the ruhowzi. In fact, the formation of ruhowzi
was the result of collaborations between motrebi bands and actors who played
in ruhowzi bands, who consequently produced a joyful musical show.
The subject of ruhowzi show is the performance of music and show in

festivities such as weddings and feasts of circumcision held at private
homes and on planks covered with carpets on the water basins and used
as stage.18
As previously stated, women’s musical bands had always enjoyed a much

higher degree of importance in motrebi music, but this changed with the
advent of ruhowzi bands, and men performers were given a higher rank. This
is due to the fact that ruhowzi shows were performed in the courtyards of
private houses to an audience of both sexes: men and women could attend
and participate in such ceremonies. Whereas the public performance of music
by women was not allowed in those days, the men’s bands took advantage of
the situation and became the main players in performing ruhowzi music.19
The social origins of ruhowzi performance, like those of motrebi bands, were
in the lower classes of Iranian society.
The modern sociopolitical structure of Iranian music during the

Reza Shah period
In this section we shall review the formation of modern institutions for
Iranian music during the Reza Shah period. It must be noted that the phrase
“during the Reza Shah period” is not limited to the period of his reign, but
includes the period of his premiership, beginning from October 26, 1923 as well.
Indeed, here we shall examine the foundation of modern musical institutions
in imitation of the Western world. Some of these modern institutions were cre-
ated by the intervention of the government, a process I refer to as governmental
modernization. Other institutions were established through the efforts of the
middle class, which I call non-governmental modernization (modernsazi-ye
gheyr-e hokumati).
Non-governmental modernization
Prior to being implemented through governmental policies, musical moder-
nization was initiated by the middle class and took place in two forms:
teaching music, and the advent and expansion of gramophone records. It was
also sparked by a musician named ‘Alinaqi Vaziri, who re-opened Tehran’s
open school of music (Madraseh-ye ‘Ali-ye Musiqi) in 1924. This non-regular
school was the first educational institution where both Iranian and European
classical music were taught. A study of Vaziri’s life and thoughts shows
that he was a product of the same ideas that played a crucial role in putting
Reza Shah in power and in explaining the shah’s cultural policies during
his reign.
‘Alinaqi Vaziri’s life (1886–1979) can be divided into two periods: before
visiting Europe and after visiting Europe. He began to learn techniques of
playing tar with his maternal uncle when he was 15 years old. He was a
trainee of some of the abovementioned celebrated tar players of that period,
including Aqa Hoseynqoli and Darvish Khan.20 At the age of 17 he joined
the military service. His presence in the army proved quite fruitful as during
this time he became further acquainted with European classical music. While
learning violin and piano, he was introduced to European classical-music
notation with the help of an army officer, which was followed by a deeper
learning of European classical-music theory with a French priest in Tehran.21
One of his important musical activities prior to travelling to Europe was
the transcription of the Iranian musical repertoire on the basis of performances
by Mirza ‘Abdollah.22 In addition to his musical activities, he was a political
activist in the real sense of the word. He was in charge of the military com-
mittee of the Iranian Social-Democratic Party (Hezb-e Ejtema‘iyun-e
‘Ammiyun) during the post–Constitutional Revolution period.23 ‘Alinaqi
Vaziri left the army in 1918 and went to Paris to continue his studies in music,
theatre, and aesthetics. He then moved to Berlin to complete his studies. The
years of ‘Alinaqi Vaziri’s stay in Berlin deserve a deeper consideration, as it
was during this same period that he established connections with certain Iranian
cultural and political activists residing in Berlin and became deeply influenced
by ideas that provided the impetus for the majority of cultural policies of the
Reza Shah period. Hoseyn Kazemzadeh was the editor and publisher of the
monthly magazine Iranshahr in Berlin during those years. Kazemzadeh had
also founded a literary society where the main topics discussed included dif-
ferent aspects of politics and culture. ‘Alinaqi Vaziri established and main-
tained close relations with Kazemzadeh and his magazine during his stay in
Berlin.24 Published from 1922 until 1927, Iranshahr was one of the magazines
that promulgated the demands of the Tajaddod (Modernity) political party.25
Recruiting its members mainly from among young people educated in the
West, the party was the main supporter of Reza Shah in his efforts to seize
power, and most of its members such as ‘Ali Akbar Davar, ‘Abd al-Hoseyn
Teymurtash, and ‘Ali Forughi became major political figures during his reign.
The subjects dealt with in Iranshahr, which had a relatively considerable influence
in Iran and was distributed in 40 towns, can be categorized as follows:
Of the total of 236 articles published in the journal, 73 stressed the impor-
tance of public and secular education, 45 emphasized the need to improve
the status of women, 30 described – in favorable terms – pre-Islamic Iran,
and 40 discussed aspects of modern technology and Western philosophy.26
Most of the ideas discussed in these articles were actually realized during the
reign of Reza Shah. In addition, two other articles appeared in Iranshahr
during ‘Alinaqi Vaziri’s stay in Berlin that specifically touched on Iranian art
and music. One article, entitled “Sanaye‘-e Zarifeh” and addressing different
aesthetic aspects of the art and the artist, was written by ‘Alinaqi Vaziri
himself.27 The second article, entitled “Music and Theatre in Iran,” was
written by Morteza Moshfeq Kazemi, a student of sociology in Berlin, the
contents of which indicate the opinions of Iranian music ‘Alinaqi Vaziri had
been exposed to while in Berlin and provide a background for the musical
modernization campaign he launched upon return to Iran. In parts of the
article, the author introduces Iranian music as a saddening and boring music:
When a group of Iranians reside for a while in Europe and gradually

acquaint themselves with different aspects of European life, individually,
they acquire certain information consistent with their approach and taste.
If allowed, today, I am willing to give a description of European and
Iranian theatre based on a comparison of the same. … Iran has destroyed
her soul with her ruinous music, aimed at nothing but laziness. Music
composed after having a pipe-full opium and some bottles of spirit, cannot
think of arranging opera. … Having seen and heard several European
operas and indeclinable music, I already dare to state my hatred towards
the contemporary Iranian music. It is unfair to call it music when it
brings nothing but crying and dozing for this sorrowful nation. … What
should one say when Europeans, including the Germans, upon hearing
the contemporary Iranian music verify that it is something defective,
monotonous, and boring.28
In another part of the article, the author complains of the impotence of Iranian
music to raise national feelings and create such excitements:
So far, the Iranian music has not arranged an exciting national anthem
for us. If Iranians listen to the famous German hymn (Germany! Germany!
Above all!) as a sample anthem reflecting the Germans’ national pride
and self-importance, they will understand the real meaning of music.29
In still another part of the article the author equates musical literacy with
knowledge of Western music, referring to Iranian musicians as a number of
musically illiterate performers:
With the exception of few Iranian musicians having completed their studies
in Europe or at least in Tehran school of music (military music school), all
contemporary Iranian musicians are far away from a real knowledge of
music and cannot be changed for the better by way of encouragement
because they know nothing of the principles of composing musical pieces.30
From this intellectual context, which pushed for modernization in all aspects
of social and cultural life in Iranian society, including music, ‘Alinaqi Vaziri
returned to Iran and in the winter of 1924 – a few months after the appoint-
ment of Reza Shah as the prime minister – took the initial steps towards
establishing his own school named Madreseh-ye ‘Ali-ye Musiqi in Tehran. In
the same year, he established a musical society called the “Musical Club”
(Klup-e Muzikal); most of the intellectuals and men of letters applied for
membership. In addition to the performance of music by the orchestra of the
musical school, in this musical club ‘Alinaqi Vaziri began to explain and
elaborate on his ideas concerning art and music as well. A study of Vaziri’s
lectures shows that he was under the influence of an intellectual trend that
was supporting modernization in the form of opening Iranian society to the
Western world. On the necessity of modernization in Iranian music, ‘Alinaqi
Vaziri suggests:
In aesthetics (art) as a whole, change is a factor of progress. If change

doesn’t take place, art becomes stagnant. Old people used to say: art
imitates actual life, and takes it as an example. If this logic is considered
as a principle and with a view to the changes taken place during the
recent decade, our music has to go through a complete phase of change.31
In a lecture delivered in 1924, ‘Alinaqi Vaziri describes the situation of Iranian

music prior to the establishment of the musical school as follows:
Contemporary music consists of a series of shoddy musical compositions

used as pishdaramad, tasnif,32 and reng (dance tunes). Song was already
referred to as a kind of mourning. That’s why our music has been
restricted to the repetition of memoirs of misery plus a section of reng and
tasnif, which is absolutely sensual and leads to nothing but immorality …
Iranian music is founded on a very strong and extensive basis. However,
as an inexpert mason will construct a very bad building despite using
high-quality construction materials, the edifice of Iranian music during
the recent decades, too, has been built by inexpert musicians. Why? The
reason is that we couldn’t find expert and educated musical masters –
particularly in most recent centuries that the world was taking huge
strides along the path of progress – who could make the utmost use of
such firm foundation and high-quality construction materials.33
‘Alinaqi Vaziri and Morteza Moshfeq Kazemi, the author of “Music and
Theatre in Iran,” are of the same opinion in most cases. ‘Alinaqi Vaziri, too,
believes that parts of Iranian music are saddening and detrimental to the
human soul and morality; he considers the Iranian musician as an illiterate
person because of his non-familiarity with Western music. In contrast to
Morteza Moshfeq Kazemi, however, ‘Alinaqi Vaziri believes that Iranian
music has a sound foundation. He embarked on modernizing Iranian music
through the establishment of his music school, following his belief in the
necessity of introducing changes in it. He began to teach Iranian music from
his own perspective, which challenged prevailing standpoints in Iranian music
of the day. The most significant change sought by ‘Alinaqi Vaziri was to har-
monize Iranian music. The main problem here was the existence of rob‘-e
pardeh (a quarter note) in Iranian music. ‘Alinaqi Vaziri managed to realize
his objective by introducing a 24-part chromatic scale.34 But the scale did not
conform to a number of intervals in Iranian music. With the intention of rein-
forcing the orchestral performance of Iranian music, in addition to his efforts
towards solving the problem of harmony, he proceeded to invent a number of
new instruments as well, such as soprano tar, tuned a fifth above tar; alto tar,
which tuned a quarter lower than the ordinary tar; and bass tar, which together
with the ordinary tar formed a tar quartet.35 Indeed, ‘Alinaqi Vaziri’s inno-
vations in all aspects of Iranian music including teaching, methods of playing,
singing, and composing were oriented towards European classical music.
Such innovations by Vaziri faced reactions from traditionalist musicians.
The most important criticism came from ‘Aref Qazvini, the celebrated poet
and composer of tasnif during the late Qajar period and the first decades of
the Pahlavi period, in the form of a letter addressed to ‘Alinaqi Vaziri, published
in Nahid magazine on July 18, 1925.36
Popularization of the gramophone record was another aspect of non-
governmental modernization during the reign of Reza Shah. In fact, the
emerging middle class in Iran prepared the grounds for the resumption of
activity by gramophone record–producing companies in Iran. Gramophone
recording developed during the Reza Shah period as follows:37
1926: Recording by the Gramophone Company in Tehran, under the label

of “His Master’s Voice.”
1927: Recording by the “Polyphon” and “Odeon” companies in Tehran.
1928: Recording by the “Gramophone” (labelled “His Master’s Voice”),
“Columbia,” and “Pathé” companies in Tehran.
1929: Recording by the Gramophone Company (labelled “His Master’s Voice”)
for two rounds, and the “Polyphon” Company for one round in Tehran.
1930: Recording by the “Baidaphon” Company in Tehran.
1932: Recording by the “Parlophon” Company in Tehran.
1933: The final recordings in Iran before World War II by the Gramophone
Company under the label of “His Master’s Voice” and the Columbia
Company in Tehran.
1936: Recording of a number of Iranian musical works in Aleppo and Beirut
by the Sodwa Company.
1937: Recording of a number of Iranian musical works in Berlin by the
Odeon Company.
1939: Recording of a number of Iranian musical works in Aleppo by the
Sodwa Company and in Baghdad by the Neayemrecord Company.
The expansion of gramophone-record production in Iranian society during

the reign of Reza Shah can be classified as non-governmental because it was
not instigated by the Iranian government. However, the grounds had been
prepared indirectly by the government for the popularization of gramophone
records. In fact, the willingness of foreign companies to produce gramophone
records in Iran indicates that there already was a consumption market for
musical products in Iranian society. As a result of such policies, there was a
growing trend to construct hotels, restaurants, cinemas, and theatres, which
needed music as a consumption commodity. However, the need for music was
not only limited to modern places: gramophone records were played and
heard in most of the teahouses (qahvehkhaneh) as well.38 Iranian society, with
a growing need for the consumption of music, was considered as a suitable arena
of activity for gramophone-recording companies. Although the government did
not play a major role in the production of music, its importance was discovered
gradually, and its influence corresponded to the ever-increasing popularization
of this medium in Iranian society, leading to the adoption of new policies.
The ratification of regulations on gramophone recording by the cabinet on
May 6, 1928 was the climax of this process. According to the regulations, all
gramophone-record manufacturing companies were required to obtain special
permissions from the police department for their recording and the artists
participating in it. Moreover, a report had to be delivered, accompanied by a
description of the contents of the recording:
In the contract to be concluded between the companies and artists

for submission to the police department, mention should be made of
dastgah39 and the exact text of poems to be recited in the songs accom-
panied by the particulars of persons in charge of recording process
attached thereto, so that the police department personnel do not run into
any complications.40
With these regulations, from 1928 onwards the government pursued a policy
of controlling and censoring recording, which was unknown in the past, when
companies and artists could freely decide on the selection of artists and the
contents of recording, respectively. Gradually and in proportion to the spread
of gramophone records, the government decided not only to control this
medium, but also to use it as a means of propaganda for its modernization
policy. One important reform, which this medium was used to support, was
the compulsory removal of the women’s veil in 1936. Murmurs related to an
intended unveiling were first heard in 1929 and were reflected in gramophone
recordings in the same year. The famous female singer Qamar al-Moluk
Vaziri recorded a vocal work entitled Zan Dar Jame‘eh (Women in society)
in defence of the idea of unveiling, which was produced in Tehran by the
Polyphon Company and marketed in 1929.41 In the winter of 1936, and soon
after the removal of the veil in January 1936, the Sodwa Company recorded
another vocal work by Mr. Badi‘zadeh in Aleppo, entitled Be Yadgar-e Raf‘-e
Hejab-e Nesvan-e Iran (In commemoration of the removal of the veil by
Iranian women).42
Governmental modernization
This section deals with a number of modernization trends in Iranian music
that were realized through the intervention of the government. In fact, this
type of modernization was the direct outcome of the cultural policies of the
government of Reza Shah. His first important measure for modernizing
Iranian music was taken in the context of education. Before this measure, and
since the Qajar period, the military music school was considered part of
official education. The management of this school was offered to ‘Alinaqi
Vaziri in 1928. Upon accepting the new position and taking advantage of the
assistance provided by the then prime minister, Mehdiqoli Hedayat, and the
minister of culture in his cabinet, ‘Alinaqi Vaziri began to introduce changes
in the curriculum of this school.43
Whereas the school’s syllabus had been adopted specifically for military
music, it was given a more or less general direction after ‘Alinaqi Vaziri took
office, and several books were written on topics such as music, systematic
study of instruments, orchestras, and harmony of Iranian music. At the
beginning of 1928–29 academic year, the school was inaugurated under
the name of public school of music (Madreseh-ye Musiqi-ye Dowlati)
with nearly 40 students.44
Indeed, ‘Alinaqi Vaziri transferred his musical activities from his own school
to this officially established school under the protection of the government.
Vaziri was functioning as the principal of this school, renamed the technical
high school of music (Honarestan-e ‘Ali-ye Musiqi), until the winter of 1935;
he was then replaced by Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan on the pretext of non-
compliance with the instruction to perform music at the court supper cere-
mony held in honour of the Swedish crown prince. However, ‘Alinaqi Vaziri’s
dismissal from this position seems in fact to have been the result of changes
in Reza Shah’s cultural policies, which will be discussed in greater detail
further below.
Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan, a graduate of music in the field of violin
from Germany,45 did not believe in Iranian music at all, as his following
remark shows:
Any unprejudiced individual having heard something of scientific music

acknowledges and feels that instruments such as tar, tombak and
kamancheh cannot be compared with and equated to Western musical
instruments as the camel cannot catch up with a train in speed.46
It was on this same basis that Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan omitted the

teaching of Iranian music from the syllabus of the technical high school of
music but continued with the teaching of European classical music. This move
was diametrically opposed to the philosophy of ‘Alinaqi Vaziri, who believed
that Iranian music had a sound foundation. Inspired by European classical
music, ‘Alinaqi Vaziri was trying to reform Iranian music; Gholamhoseyn
Minbashiyan, however, was seeking to omit and eradicate Iranian music from
the curriculum. As a whole, ‘Alinaqi Vaziri and Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan
can be regarded as the symbols of modernism and pro-Western tendencies in
Iranian music, respectively.
In addition to being officially taught at a specialized level, music was also
added as a subject to the curriculum of all schools. This took place during
the premiership of Mehdiqoli Hedayat from 1927 to 1933, which was in fact the
period of stabilizing Reza Shah’s power. Most of the modernization measures
concerning Iranian music, such as the formation of the public school of music
and the ratification of teaching music as a subject in public schools, were
realized during his tenure in office. Hedayat was sufficiently familiar with
Iranian music and had contributed two valuable works in this context. One
was the notation of the Iranian music repertoire based on the performance of
Mehdi Solhi, a highly talented trainee of Mirza ‘Abdollah; and the other was
a book entitled Majma‘ al-Advar (Collection of circles47), in which Mehdiqoli
Hedayat offers a thorough review of the ideas of ancient musicologists such
as Farabi, Safi al-Din Ormavi, and ‘Abd al-Qadir Maraghi in the fields
of Iranian, Arabic, and Turkish music.48 Being an old friend of Hedayat,
‘Alinaqi Vaziri played a decisive role in convincing him to include music in
the official curriculum of public schools.
When Mehdiqoli Hedayat was prime minister and E‘temad al-Dowleh

Qaragozlu minister of culture, ‘Alinaqi Vaziri invited both of them to
the music school on a certain occasion and made a proposal concerning
the inclusion of music particularly of reciting patriotic songs in the
syllabus of schools, which was conveyed to the minister of culture by the
then musicologist prime minister in the form of an instruction to put it
into effect.49
Later on in 1933, upon the official ratification of the subject by the High
Council of Culture (Shura-ye ‘Ali-ye Farhang), ‘Alinaqi Vaziri’s book, entitled
Sorud-ha-ye Madares (School songs), was published.50 The ratification of
teaching music in schools was itself another confirmation of the proximity
of ‘Alinaqi Vaziri, the initiator of non-governmental modernization, to the
cultural policymakers of Reza Shah’s government at that historic juncture.
Indeed, the expansion of teaching music, either as a specialized topic in the
music school or as a general subject in all schools, played a decisive role in
the improvement of the Iranian social approach to music and created a far
more suitable social context for musical activities than had existed in the past,
which had its benefits for all musicians of that period regardless of their
standpoints and musical tendencies.
Another musical institution formed during the reign of Reza Shah was the
newly founded State Department for Music (Edareh-ye Musiqi-ye Keshvar),
by direct command of Reza Shah in 1938 and under the supervision of
Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan. According to a communiqué of the Ministry of
Culture, the objectives of the department can be identified as follows: “Following
communiqué no. 23519 per His Majesty’s order, a department was agreed upon
to be established in this ministry under the title of State Department for
Music, the foundations of which shall be based on the principles, rules, and
scales of Western music.”51 This same communiqué specifies the most impor-
tant tasks of the State Department for Music as the composition and publication
of musical pieces and songs; the compilation of books in accordance with the
principles and regulations of modern music; and the popularization of Western
music.52 A remarkable measure taken by this department was the publication
of the magazine Muzik-e Iran (Iran’s music). Apart from publishing this
magazine, the State Department for Music tried to popularize music in Iranian
society by holding concerts and presenting lectures.53
Besides the State Department for Music, the government established
another influential institution that was concerned with music, amongst other
things: the Organization for Public Enlightenment (Sazman-e Parvaresh-e
Afkar). Its foundation charter was ratified by the cabinet on January 2, 1939.54 It
describes the objectives of establishing this institution and the method of its
activity:
With the intention of mental development and guidance of public opinion,

a special organization is being established hereby, which shall be called
the Organization for Public Enlightenment. The organization will make
use of the following media and channels to fulfil its assignment: news-
papers, classical and public-oriented books, public lectures, theatre and
cinema, radio, music, as well as patriotic songs, etc.55
Inside the Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar a special musical committee was formed
under the supervision of Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan. As to the responsibilities
of this committee, the foundation charter suggests:
The musical committee is assigned to improve the nation’s music through

the popularization of scientific music, assist in composition of exciting
songs and patriotic hymns, and enhance the spirit of happiness, labour,
and endeavour among people.56
Considering Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan’s concurrent supervision of the

technical high school of music, the State Department for Music, and the
musical committee affiliated to the Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar, one might
imagine that the popularization of scientific music specified in the above-cited
foundation charter was meant only for the promotion of Western music.
The last institution established during the reign of Reza Shah that had a
significant influence on music was Radio Tehran, on April 24, 1940. Of
course, people could receive foreign radio programs in Iran after the gradual
arrival of radio sets in Iran from 1936 on. Some foreign radio stations,
including Radio Berlin, even began to broadcast Persian programs, which
were accompanied by the use of Iranian music records.57 Initially, Iran Radio
was under the supervision of the Organization for Public Enlightenment.58
Consequently, the selection of music played on the radio, too, was made by
the musical committee presided over by Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan, who in
this way was promoting his own pro-Western approach to music, as he did
in the technical high school of music and the State Department for Music.
That is why initially the bulk of musical programs on air consisted of Western
music. “Out of six hours of nightly programs, four hours were allocated to
music (three hours foreign music and one hour Iranian music), one and a
quarter of an hour to news and forty-five minutes to dialogues on agriculture,
geography, health, and sports, respectively.”59 Nearly one month after the
formation of Radio Tehran, the Department of Publication and Propaganda
(Edareh-ye Koll-e Entesharat va Tablighat) was established and assigned to
take care of all affairs related to news all over the country, particularly in
radio.60 This allocation of responsibilities produced a serious challenge to the
music broadcast on the radio, because the Edareh-ye Koll-e Entesharat va
Tablighat insisted on longer broadcasting hours for Iranian music while the
State Department for Music, with Minbashiyan as the person in charge of
music on radio, was against this.61 The gap was so wide that the intervention
of the then prime minister ‘Ali Mansur became necessary.62 The challenge
was sustained until the closing years of Reza Shah’s reign and could be seen
in the early Muhammad Reza Shah period as well.
Radio played a decisive role in the popularization of music in Iranian society.
The scope of the influence and development of this medium was not comparable
to that of the gramophone record at all. Radio had far more influence than
gramophone records. The government did its utmost to expand the radio
network in Iran. “Agreement was reached on the preparation of a list of
electrified towns, and the relevant municipalities were assigned to purchase and
install radio receivers in the public squares of such towns at their own expense”.63
Similar to the gramophone record, radio was used by the government as a means
of propagating pro-government ideas. Considering the hymns performed at
the inauguration ceremony of the radio and the instrumental use of music on
air, propaganda purposes become evident: “Hymns like Praise of the Shah,
Love of the Shah, and Endeavour were performed live on this occasion,
hymns that were emphasizing nationalism and the shah’s leading role.”64
As a whole, the government did not adopt consistent policies on music
during the reign of Reza Shah. Based on a review of the shaping of govern-
mental institutions dealing with music during this period, Reza Shah’s policies
on music can be divided into two sub-periods:
1 ‘Alinaqi Vaziri’s term in office from 1928 until 1935;

2 Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan’s term in office from 1935 until the end of
Reza Shah’s reign.
As explained above, ‘Alinaqi Vaziri was seeking to provide a new definition of
Iranian music from the viewpoint of European classical music. Indeed, he was
trying to render Iranian music compatible with European classical music
through its harmonization, however, without altering the principle of Iranian
music. But Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan stood basically for the omission of
Iranian music and the spread of European classical music. It does not seem
logical to attribute the abovementioned major changes in the mentality of the
administration of Iranian music only to ‘Alinaqi Vaziri’s non-compliance with
the performance of a concert at the court. Rather, it seems, this was rooted in
key changes that had occurred in the government’s cultural policies at that
historic juncture. ‘Alinaqi Vaziri’s period of office managing the nation’s music
is concurrent with the premiership of Mehdiqoli Hedayat. As mentioned
previously, Hedayat was thoroughly familiar with Iranian music and had
created a number of works in this context. Contrary to most individuals from
the ruling oligarchy, such as Teymurtash and Hasan Taqizadeh, he did not
have a purely pro-Western standpoint.
Whereas Mehdiqoli Hedayat had passed several years of his life as an

adolescent and youngster in Germany, he was familiar with Western culture,
partially liked it and criticized certain aspect of it. It seems he was the
only intellectual with such an approach among the political elite of the age
of Reza Shah. His approach towards the West was thoroughly independent,
selective, and critical.65
He believed in reforming the society’s religious affairs and traditions, but had
no intention of eradicating them. The idea of removing the women’s veil
began to spread through certain individuals from the political elite during his
tenure in office, but it was not put into action during this period. Right from
the beginning, Hedayat expressed his outspoken opposition to the unveiling
movement, but made certain proposals for the modification of the women’s
veil in order to promote their greater participation in society at large. As to
his proposed plan, he made the following remarks to Reza Shah: “My intention
of the program presented to His Majesty was that instead of the chador, an
outer garment or manteau in a befitting style be used so that the women’s full
body can be covered except their face.”66 As a whole, Mehdiqoli Hedayat was
keen to reconcile social modernization with tradition. Under such conditions
and while believing in Iranian music, ‘Alinaqi Vaziri, who sought to introduce
reforms in Iranian music from a Westward-looking standpoint, succeeded in
attracting the attention of Mehdiqoli Hedayat.
Step by step, a group of individuals from the political elite with a greater
inclination towards the Westernization of Iranian society moved closer to
Reza Shah, a measure that led to the dismissal of Hedayat.
Hedayat’s main defect, i.e., his dislike of modernity and Iran’s submission
to Europe’s superficial culture, was finally made public at a time when the
shah had decided to put into effect his plans for women’s liberation: A
prime minister who did not shave his beard, did not take his wife anywhere
unveiled … was not bearable.67
After Mehdiqoli Hedayat’s dismissal, Mohammad ‘Ali Forughi was re-appointed

as prime minister. Forughi and his colleagues were seeking to fulfil the modernist
and pro-Western attitudes of the intellectuals of the Constitutional Revolution–
era with the aid of Reza Shah.68 With the premiership of Forughi noticeable
changes in cultural policies began. These were based on the adoption of a
much stricter attitude towards religious traditions and a drive towards an
ever-faster Westernization of Iranian society. This cultural attitude, despite
Forughi’s short-lived cabinet, was the dominant attitude until the end of Reza
Shah’s reign, so that upon Forughi’s dismissal in 1936, the unveiling was put
into effect through the agency of a great number of politicians including the
then minister of culture, ‘Ali Asghar Hekmat.69 This radical attitude towards the
Westernization of Iranian society left its impression on all cultural aspects,
including music. Under such conditions, Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan’s
thoughts seemed to be more compatible with the dominant cultural policies than
those of ‘Alinaqi Vaziri. This correspondence can be seen clearly in the Ministry
of Culture’s communiqué to Minbashiyan regarding the State Department for
Music. As stated above, the reason given in Reza Shah’s order for the for-
mation of this department was to introduce changes in the music of Iran and
base it on the foundations of Western music.
Review of the degree of acceptance of various standpoints on the

modernization of music in Iranian society
This section examines how far the different standpoints on the modernization
of Iranian music, represented by Vaziri and Minbashiyan, were accepted in
Iranian society. This question becomes important only when music is viewed
not as an isolated and abstract subject but as a social category through which
human beings establish an interaction between themselves: an interaction
between the makers, performers, and providers of music in general, and the
audience. In fact, those involved in the making of music enter into an inter-
action with the audience through the music they present. Music, too, like
other social interactions taking place among human beings, takes shape under
particular social conditions. An examination of such conditions plays a very
important role in understanding music. Based on this standpoint, to under-
stand music it is not sufficient to only pay attention to its technical features;
rather, the real meaning of music lies not in its component parts but in the
reaction it provokes from the audience.
[I]t is not enough to ask What is the nature or the meaning of this work of
music? … [W]e can ask the wider and more interesting question: What
does it mean when this performance (of this work) takes place at this time,
in this place, with these participants? … [T]he nature of that work is part of
the nature of the performance, and whatever meanings it may in itself posses
are part of the meaning of the event – an important part but only a part.70
The response to Vaziri’s and Minbashiyan’s approaches to the modernization

of Iranian music can be studied on different levels. One aspect of this review
might constitute an analysis of Iranian musicians’ reception of these viewpoints.
For instance, Mehdiqoli Hedayat points out that ‘Alinaqi Vaziri’s approach to
Iranian music was not acceptable to the majority of Iranian musicians.
‘Alinaqi Vaziri wants to introduce changes in our music and compose

new tones based on radif and imitate European science of music, but this is
a very difficult job, and I can imagine that it will lead to anxiety initially
for unfamiliar ears … . In any case, there is no clear future ahead: some
people have begun to disagree with him and the older musicians are not
that much content with his method. Furthermore, ‘Alinaqi Vaziri does not
consult other musicians and goes his own way, and this can be disappointing
for those who have been the prides of the nation in this field.71
However, another approach would focus on Iranian society at large by

studying the production and consumption of music during those years. As was
said earlier, several companies began to produce gramophone records from
1926 to 1933. Whereas those companies were following their own business
objectives,72 the type and number of musical works selected for recording are
an indication of the social acceptability of those works: the greater the accep-
tance the wider the scope of sale. A study of the catalogues of the recorded works
will show which group of musical works were produced in greater numbers.
Regretfully, some catalogues, particularly those of the German companies
such as Polyphon and Odeon, are not available as a whole. Fortunately, the
catalogues of the Gramophone Recording Company, constituting a greater
portion of the musical works recorded during the reign of Reza Shah, are
fully available. This company, using the His Master’s Voice label, produced
nearly 800 tracks in Tehran within a period of five years from 1926 to 1933.73
There is no indication of the music of ‘Alinaqi Vaziri and Gholamhoseyn
Minbashiyan among these recorded works. Nearly 74 tracks have been recor-
ded from ‘Alinaqi Vaziri by German companies such as Polyphon (1929),
Baidaphon (1930), and Parlophon (1932).74 The number of works recorded
from Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan amounts to nearly 40 tracks by the Odeon
Company.75 A study of the catalogues of these companies makes it clear that
most of these recorded works belong to the category of works that have
remained mainly faithful to the structure of Iranian music. Iranian classical
music, however, had its own trend of development during this historical
period, the study of which is far beyond the scope of the present study.
An understandably outstanding fact is that compared to the works falling
within the sphere of Iranian classical music, the musical ideas of ‘Alinaqi
Vaziri and Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan were not reflected in the production
and publication processes of music in the country.
Considering this, it can be concluded that modern musical thoughts set forth
during the reign of Reza Shah were not accepted by Iranian society at that par-
ticular historical juncture. This seems quite natural, because those ideas had taken
shape very recently and needed a longer period of time for further development
in society. This judgment is applicable to that specific historical juncture only,
because conditions changed during the time lapse accompanied by the appearance
of trainees skilled in this school of thought, requiring a separate study in itself.
Conclusion
Modernization of Iranian music during the reign of Reza Shah comprised
different aspects. New musical ideas reflecting the influence of Western music
appeared, at one end of which we find ‘Alinaqi Vaziri, who sought to intro-
duce changes in Iranian music based on his Western approach, and at the
other end, we see Gholamhoseyn Minbashiyan, who wanted to eradicate
Iranian music. These intellectual trends did not receive considerable accep-
tance in Iranian society at this time. However, the project for modernizing
Iranian music during the early Pahlavi period had another aspect: giving
music a more prominent role in modern Iranian society. This was quite suc-
cessful and all the prevailing intellectual trends in Iranian music benefited
from music’s incorporation into Iranian society. Indeed, the promotion of
teaching music at school level led to an increase in music’s influence on dif-
ferent social classes. Some social strata had encountered musicians only in the
capacity of motrebs, particularly in festivities, in the recent past, but now
came into contact with the teachers of music at high schools. This played a
major role in changing social attitudes towards music and musicians. Another
indication of the modernization of the social life of music was the expanding
scope of activity for women musicians. “During the Pahlavi era Women’s
involvement in musical life steadily grew.”76 This becomes definitely clear if
we review the catalogues of musical works recorded during the reign of Reza
Shah and compare them to similar catalogues of works recorded during the
Qajar period. We come across the names of only three women singers during
the Qajar period with recorded works. However, the figure reaches 56 women
singers during the rule of Reza Shah.77 This shows that the social context had
improved a lot during this period, so that even women found better opportu-
nities to actively participate in the arena of music despite being always faced
with doubled social and cultural restrictions in comparison to men.
Notes
1 Sara Kalantari, “Tahavvolat-e musiqi-ye Iran dar ‘asr-e mashruteh,” Mahur 32
(1385/2006), pp. 25–47.
2 Sasan Fatemi, “Music, Festivity, and Gender in Iran from the Qajar to the Early
Pahlavi Period,” Iranian Studies 38 (2005), pp. 399–416.
3 Eugene Flandin, Voyage en Perse, vol. 1 (Paris: Gide et Jules Baudry, 1851),
pp. 224–25.
4 Sasan Fatemi, “Motreb-ha az safaviyeh ta mashrutiyat,” Mahur 13 (1380/2002), p. 42.
5 Ibid., p. 42.
6 Houchang E. Chehabi, “From Revolutionary Tas.nı-f to Patriotic Suru-d: Music
and Nation-Building in Pre-World War II Iran,” Iran: Journal of the British
Institute of Persian Studies 37 (1999), pp. 143–54.
7 Ruhollah Khaleqi, Sargozasht-e musiqi-ye Iran (Tehran: Marvi, 1335/1956), p. 214.
8 Mashhun, Tarikh-e musiqi-ye Iran, p. 386.
9 Ibid., p. 441.
10 Khaleqi, Sargozasht-e musiqi, p. 305.
11 Michael Kinnear, “Tarikhcheh-ye zabt-e musiqi dar Iran,” Mahur 29 (1384/2005),
p. 52.
12 Amir Mansur, “Diskugrafi va nagofteh-ha-ye safar-e London 1288 shamsi,”
Safheh Sangi 7 (1385/2006), p. 4.
13 Bruno Nettl, “Persian Classical Music in Tehran: The Process of Change,” in
Eight Urban Musical Cultures, ed. Bruno Nettl (Urbana and London: University
of Illinois Press, 1978), p. 151.
14 Khaleqi, Sargozasht-e musiqi, p. 309.
15 Sasan Sepanta, Cheshm-andaz-e musiqi-ye Iran (Tehran: Mash‘al, 1369/1990), p. 45.
16 Jafar Shahribaf, Tarikh-e ejtema‘i-ye Tehran dar qarn-e sizdahom, vol. 4 (Tehran:
Rasa, 1367/1988), p. 478.
17 Mashhun, Tarikh-e musiqi, p. 584.
18 Sasan Fatemi, “Sheklgiri-ye ruhowzi va tahavvol-e sonnat-e motrebi,” Mahur 18
(1381/2003), p. 116.
19 Fatemi, “Sheklgiri-ye ruhowzi,” pp. 115–16.
20 Habibollah Nasirifar, Mardan-e musiqi-ye sonnati va novin-e Iran (Tehran: Rad,
1369/1990), p. 40.
21 Nosrat Haddadi, Farhang-nameh-ye musiqi-ye Iran (Tehran: Tutiya, 1376/1997),
p. 365.
22 Sepanta, Cheshm-andaz, p. 46.
23 ‘Alireza Mir ‘Alinaqi, Musiqi-nameh-ye ‘Alinaqi-ye Vaziri (Tehran: Mo‘in, 1377/
1998), pp. 577–79.
24 Ibid.
25 Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
26 Ibid.
27 Mir ‘Alinaqi, Musiqi-nameh, p. 42.
28 Morteza Moshfeq Kazemi, “Musiqi va te’atr dar Iran,” Iranshahr 5–6 (1302/1924),
pp. 326–34.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
32 Tasnif is the only composed and vocal form in Iranian music.
34 Taqi Binesh, Shenakht-e musiqi-ye Iran (Tehran: Daneshgah-e Honar, 1376/1997),
p. 75.
36 Mirza Abu al-Qasem ‘Aref Qazvini, Kolliyat-e divan-e Mirza Abu al-Qasem ‘Aref
Qazvini, ed. ‘Abd al-Rahman Seyf Azad (Tehran: Sepehr, 1358/1979), p. 124.
37 Mohammad-Reza Sharayeli and Reza Samim, “Die Rolle der Musik in Iran von 1925–
41: Partizipation der Frauen und Minderheiten an iranischen Musikproduktionen”
(paper presented at the “Seminar für Iranistik,” Georg-August-University,
Göttingen, Germany, February 4, 2010).
38 Mir Hoseyn Hejazi, “Gramafun dar Iran ya bala-ye jame‘eh,” Ettela‘at, 31
Shahrivar 1307 (September 22, 1928).
39 The modal system of Iranian music.
40 Shahram Aqa’ipur, “Nezam-nameh-ye zabt-e sowt dar safahat-e gramafun,”
Safheh Sangi 2 (1384/2005), p. 22.
41 Sharayeli and Samim, “Die Rolle der Musik.”
42 Ibid.
44 Sepanta, Cheshm-andaz, pp. 135–36.
45 Ibid., pp. 144–63.
46 Ibid., p. 163.
47 In ancient musical treatises, “circle” was used in the sense of scale.
48 Khaleqi, Sargozasht-e musiqi, pp. 82–84.
49 Ibid., p. 85.
50 Ibid.
51 ‘Ali Akbar ‘Ali-Akbar-e Bayegi and Iraj Mohammadi, Asnadi az musiqi, te’atr va
sinema dar Iran: 1300–1357 h.sh. (Tehran: Vezarat-e farhang va ershad-e eslami,
1379/2000), p. 158.
52 Ibid.
53 Reza Mokhtari Esfahani, Tarikh-i tahavvolat-e ejtema‘i-ye radiyo dar Iran
(Tehran: Daftar-e pazhuhesh-ha-ye radiyo, 1388/2009), p. 158.
54 Mahmud Delfani, Farhang-setizi dar dowreh-ye Reza Shah (Tehran: Entesharat-e
Sazman-e Asnad-e Melli, 1375/1996), p. 1.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid., pp. 2–3.
58 ‘Alireza Esma‘ili, Asnadi az tarikhcheh-ye radiyo dar Iran (Tehran: Vezarat-e farhang
va ershad-e eslami, 1379/2000), p. 5.
59 Ibid., p. 8.
60 Ibid., p. 9.
61 Mokhtari Esfahani, Tarikh-i tahavvolat, p. 162.
62 Ibid., p. 163.
63 Esma‘ili, Asnadi az tarikhcheh, pp. 6–7.
64 Mokhtari Esfahani, Tarikh-i tahavvolat, p. 161.
65 Hadi Vakili, “Mehdiqoli Khan Mokhber al-Saltaneh-ye Hedayat va siyasat-e
farhangi-ye ‘asr-e Reza Shah,” Majalleh-ye daneshkadeh-ye adabiyat va ‘olum-e
ensani-yi Mashhad 128–129 (1380/2001), p. 136.
66 Mehdiqoli Hedayat, Khaterat va khatarat (Tehran: Zavvar, 1375/1996), p. 407.
67 Mas‘ud Behnud, Dowlat-ha-ye Iran az Seyyed Ziya ta Bakhtiyar: Sevvom-e
Esfand 1299-bist-o-dovvom-e Bahman 1357 (Tehran: Javedan, 1366/1987), p. 124.
68 Ibid., p. 127.
69 Ibid., p. 137.
70 Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Hanover,
NH: Wesleyan University Press and University Press of New England, 1998), p. 10.
71 Khaleqi, Sargozasht-e musiqi, pp. 82–83.
72 Amir Mansur, “Moruri bar zabt-e safheh dar safar-e Paris (1907),” Safheh Sangi
10 (1386/2007), p. 11.
73 Michael Kinnear, Safheh-ha-ye farsi-ye gramafun: 1899 ta 1934 (Tehran: Anjoman-e
asar va mafakher-e farhangi, 1386/2007), p. 227. See also, Michael Kinnear, The
Gramophone Company’s Persian Recordings: 1899 to 1934 (Victoria: Bajakhana,
2000).
75 Shahin Farhat, Kambiz Rowshanravan, and Mohammad-Reza Sharayeli, “Seyri
dar 50 sal asar-e orkestri-ye musiqi-ye irani” (paper presented at the Forty-First
Session on Iranian Music Research by the Ava-ye Mehrabani Institute, Tehran,
Iran, Azar 23, 1386/December 14, 2007).
76 Houchang E. Chehabi, “Voices Unveiled: Women Singers in Iran,” in Iran and
Beyond. Essays in Middle Eastern History in Honor of Nikki R. Keddie, ed.
Rudolph P. Matthee and Beth Baron (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2000),
pp. 151–66.
77 Sharayeli and Samim, “Die Rolle der Musik.”
5 The king’s white walls
Modernism and bourgeois architecture
Talinn Grigor
In July 1944, Reza Shah Pahlavi died in exile in Johannesburg. The majority
of his compatriots did not mourn his passing despite the fact that no other
king, perhaps with the exception of Shah ‘Abbas the Great, had managed to
alter the individual lives of so many ordinary Iranians. Reza Shah’s body was
transported to Cairo and temporarily buried in Sunni grounds in the follow-
ing October.1 With some seven years delay, it was brought back to Iran and
was ceremoniously interred in 1951 under a modernist white structure – a
new hybrid architecture that drew its vocabulary from the main tenets of the
Modern movement of Europe and the Zoroastrian fire temples of ancient
Iran. By then, the Iranian bourgeoisie, the modern middle class that had
come of age under Pahlavi rule, enjoyed its modernist villas, cinemas, swim-
ming pools, national banks, and train stations, while the rest of the nation,
regardless of class, were exposed to its historicist, yet equally modernistic,
museums, mausoleums, and governmental buildings. The avant-garde archi-
tectural vocabulary of the former was set against the invented historicism of
the latter. The evocation of the timely in the whiteness and the austerity of
avant-garde structures – villas, cinemas, leisure architecture – strengthened the
timelessness of historicist monuments – museums, mausoleums, official archi-
tecture. Both were invented as interdependent strategies to imagine the nation
into being through aesthetic tropes.
The rise of the middle-class bourgeoisie in Iran has been, by and large,
credited to the secularist and modernist ruling ambitions of Reza Shah.
Modern architecture in Tehran and in other major urban centres throughout
the country consisted of the most vivid expression of this shift from an aristo-
cratic to a bourgeois ascendancy in the 1920s and 1930s.2 The formation of the
architectural profession as a separate discipline and vocation – hence the birth
of the local architect as the paramount representative of the bourgeois class –
was a result of the modernizing and secularist policies of the early Pahlavi
period, which was instituted by the reformist ministers of the king’s first
cabinet (see Figure 5.1). After 1925, a dialectical and ambivalent relationship
developed between the architects at the service of the state and the centralist
state, which had founded institutions with the aim of producing the professional
middle class, including these same architects.
96 Talinn Grigor
Figure 5.1 Reza Shah’s cabinet members and other high-ranking officials during a
horserace event in Gorgan, 1928. The central figure with the camera is
court minister ‘Abd al-Hoseyn Teymurtash; on his right, finance minister
Firuz Mirza Nosrat al-Dowleh; and on his left, justice minister ‘Ali Akbar
Davar.
Source: Library of Prince Firouz Mirza Firouz, by the permission of Shahrokh Firouz.
This chapter traces the symbiotic dynamics between two invented archi-
tectural traditions – modernist and historicist – under Reza Shah with two
distinct aims on the larger body politics of bourgeois identity and class for-
mation. The opening of a space, a modernist tabula rasa, was often literal in
the form of radical urban renewals. On this empty space, new structures from
a novel aesthetic tradition represented and shaped the activities and identity
of the bourgeois class. The professional, pedagogical, urban, and architectural
policies established during this period of rapid change transformed the very
appearance of Iran’s modernity, enshrining it with white austere walls in
juxtaposition to ornate surfaces and Orientalist revival. Until the Iranian
Revolution of 1977–79, bourgeois architecture under the two opposing gar-
ments of avant-garde modernism and Orientalist historicism provided the
semblance of the certainty of national modernity.
Tabula rasa
In August 1927, Reza Shah’s powerful court minister admitted to the British
secretary that “Persia, after twenty years of so-called Constitutional Government,
had made little progress. Everything had to be started over again … ”.3
The king’s white walls 97
The Pahlavi “progress along modern lines” was underpinned by a modernist
impulse to erase the past – a deep desire to change and start over again –
similar to other modernist movements around the world in the 1920s and
1930s. The realization of a tabula rasa, a utopian blank slate upon which a
new Iran could be conceived “over again,” was endemic to the strategies of
Pahlavi modernization. Buildings and cities were the first to be affected by
this desire for change. The eradication of historical structures and urban
pockets meant that a newly built environment could emerge free from the burden
of history, geography, and colonialism. It also meant that a new historical con-
tinuity with the national past needed to be fabricated. Raised on this tabula
rasa, the set of structures that projected an image of timeliness appealed to
notions of progress, fashionability, masculinity, and modernity – all of which
characterized bourgeois anxieties vis-à-vis the project of modernity. The set of
monuments that represented the timelessness of the nation instead evoked
notions about venerated heritage, racial rootedness, historical longevity, and
the very validity of the nation’s claim to existence. While in opposition to
each other in stylistic discourses, the two movements in modern architectural
history under Reza Shah served the same fiction by providing a solid image of
the rise of a secular and national middle class in Iran.
In order to implement this strategy of secular and class formation, Tehran
served as the model for urban renewal projects around the country. Here, the
state transformed the urban fabric as rapidly and forcefully as it envisioned
the advent of modernity and civilization. The first symbol of this conception
of progress was the removal of the old Tehran’s fortifications.4 Between 1932
and 1937, the nineteenth-century ramparts and eleven gates were dismantled.
Quite literally space was opened up for the expansion of the capital city, while
the historical markers of Qajar power were eradicated. This also enabled the
state to disperse the class network of the traditionalist merchants in their
bazaar, the ‘olama in their mosques, and the old nobility in their residential
quarters. These three groups, which belonged to the aristocratic formation of
Qajar class structure, had clung to sections of Tehran’s urban fabric as an
important component of their political power; now they were forced to either
relocate their power base or suffer significant loss of political influence
brought about by Reza Shah’s urban renewal. While the rising bourgeoisie
moved northward for better water, air, view, and an urban clean slate, the old
aristocratic families, the clerics, and the merchants remained by and large in
their places and over the years figured less and less in the country’s political
apparatus; that is, until 1979.
The need for military accessibility in the bazaar and the religious com-
plexes set off a major urban renewal that often knocked down entire neigh-
bourhoods. At its heart Tehran centred on the Palace of Golestan and
predominantly consisted of the residential quarters and service areas of the
Qajar royal complex; approximately 30 percent of the built environment was
levelled to the ground.5 Some of the demolitions were replaced by new struc-
tures; others were left vacant, most probably because of the lack of construction
98 Talinn Grigor
time and the need for wider streets and open spaces. As part of a controlling
urbanism to decentralize dense urban centres and to bring Tehran to look like
European major cities, “1.8 square kilometres – 9 percent of the whole city”
was transformed into open squares, including wide avenues, urban squares,
and municipal parks.6 The new Ministry of Finance was erected on the site of
the royal harem with great symbolism, while the Nayeb al-Saltaneh palace
gave way to the new building of the Justice Ministry by Gabriel Guevrekian
in 1936. In a similar vein, the main barracks and royal stables were trans-
formed into the Ministry of Trade. That which was preserved, namely the
major structures of the Golestan Palace such as the Shams al-Emareh,
Khalvat-e Karimkhani, and the Emarat-e Badgir, was rendered presentable,
monumental, and heritage-like by the removal of surrounding minor and
service constructions.
Perhaps the most impressive single demolition, both in terms of scale
and symbolism, was that of the “magnificent” Takiyeh Dowlat. Erected in
1868, it is described by historians as “the brainchild of Naser al-Din himself”
and “one of the greatest edifices built under Qajar rule.”7 The complete
destruction of this state theatre was, on the one hand, notable because
the structure was a massive work of architecture that housed the royal
patronage of Shi’a rituals. Seating some one thousand spectators around a
circular stage and three-story balconies under a semi-permanent dome, it was
a hybrid of local decorative program and European building typologies, for
Naser al-Din had decreed its design after Charles Garnier’s Paris opera house
began in 1857. On the other hand, the choice to destroy the building was
highly symbolic because it was the most imposing structure raised in the
capital city by the most influential Qajar monarch for the specific purpose of
Shi’a passion plays (ta‘ziyeh) – the very performance of which the Pahlavi
state had perceived as regressive, certainly un-modern, and unfit for the
bourgeois lifestyle, and had outlawed. Ironically, Naser al-Din had erected
Takiyeh Dowlat as his marked contribution to Iran’s nineteenth-century
modernization.
Whereas much of these demolitions took place from the mid 1920s
throughout the 1930s, the legal basis of this urban renewal policy was the
“Street Widening Act,” unanimously passed by the parliament on 13
November 1933.8 While the king’s opening speech of the ninth Majles had
demanded a “rapid industrialization,” which the British felt “the country
could hardly stand,” the local deputies were pressed to approve “the Law
concerning the creation and widening of avenues and streets.”9 The case
presented to them under the rubric of preservation and modernization instead
would sanction an array of destructions with relative ease. “The false
discourse on the preservation of heritage, which was born during the Renaissance,
aims at concealing the real destruction and disfigurements” of the built
environment that now was being shaped by a bourgeois elite.10 When the state
applied the same “protection” tactics to Tehran’s residential quarters, where
ordinary people lived, the symbiotic of construction and destruction was
rendered visible. Charles Calmer Hart, the American attaché to Iran, reported
in 1931:
The municipality, urged on by the Shah, is trying to modernize the capital

of Persia so rapidly that property owners find it almost impossible to keep
up with the progress which is wiping out liberal areas of their real estate,
for most of which they receive limited or no compensation. Property
owners, besides having to give up much real estate, have been compelled
to see the demolition of their houses and to replace them at their own
expense by better structures constructed on designs prescribed by municipal
planning commission.11
Nine years later, the American embassy estimated that the number of residential
structures demolished ranged from 15,000 to 30,000. In a memo, it remarked,
“Tehran looks as if it has been destroyed by an earthquake,” further under-
scoring that “[t]he ruthlessness of its methods is bewildering to anyone not
used to the ways of modern Iran.”12 Rosita Forbes, an American traveller to
Iran in the early 1930s, similarly described Tehran as “slightly Hollywoodesque,
for the new streets looked as if they had not quite settled where they were going,
and the rows of new houses, one room deep, were all frontage.”13
Tehranis were not uncritical of what was happening to their city. The most
vocal anti-Pahlavi clergy in the parliament, Seyyed Hasan Modarres, objecting
to Reza Shah’s urban renewal, stressed during his 1925 parliament speech,
“modernization had to be distinguished from such lawless acts against the
people and their possessions.”14 In 1932, German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld,
who had supported the government cabinet in its drive for urban change and
had collaborated with many of its members, confessed to Hart: “It is a system
of ruining established authorities of old, without replacing them with anything
at all,” further adding, “Everything we see [is] a methodic destruction … .
The result is a vacuum. One day the consequences will appear.”15 Historians
have described these urban changes as “a good example of bureaucratic
reformism and mindless vandalism,” where “[t]he vandals played havoc with
community life and historic architecture at will.”16 Others characterized the
1930s Tehran as “a massive unfinished tableau worked on by several artists,”
and a mere “external Westernization” aimed at “impress[ing] foreign obser-
vers, who usually visited only Tehran.”17 The state “ripped down sections of
cities,” Cottam wrote, “ruthlessly destroyed mosques and other edifices
mellow with the charm of age, and replaced them with broad, tree-lined but
incongruous boulevards.”18
It was certainly true that, as historians Banani and Lockhart put it, “the
Tehran of 1941 bore no resemblance to the Tehran of 1921.”19 The northward
urban growth accelerated by the bourgeoisie’s desire for rapid development
resulted in an entire new city: “well-planned” with “wide streets intersecting
each other at right angles, some paved with cut granite, others with asphalt
and concrete.”20 “[I]n the construction of new streets, or the extension and
100 Talinn Grigor
widening of the old, the policy was to demolish any and all buildings –
residential, monumental, historical or whatever – merely in order to keep them
straight.”21 By design, the master plan was intended to project “a glaring con-
trast to the labyrinthal lanes of the old quarters” in southern Tehran where
the merchants and the ‘olama continued to occupy their historical urban
pockets.22 In the north, the straight streets in addition to the new squares and
parks “added to the European aspect of the capital,” as later observed. While
in the early 1930s the American diplomats could hardly see the benefits of a
hurried urban renewal, a decade later they praised the city’s “remarkable
changes since His Majesty came to the throne.”23
Streets have been widened and paved; trees have been planted to take the
place of the old ones destroyed by the alterations; modern government
buildings have been erected in various parts of the city, and a number of
small parks in local squares are being landscaped. Previous efforts, however,
are not to be compared with the present activity under the direction
of the Acting Chief of the Tehran Municipality, Mr. Gholam Hossein
Ebtehaj. … Buildings on all main streets must be at least two stories high
to add more dignity to the city.24
Despite accusations of being a vandal, Reza Shah persisted until the end of
his rule with his drive to transform Tehran into a modern capital. A year
before his exile, while taking a stroll in Tehran, he took issue with the height of
the buildings on designated streets. “Why do these ugly, one-story shops still
remain?” he asked. “I have told the military to force the owners to add another
story or have their shops destroyed. I wonder if you, a civilian, could succeed
where the army has failed?”25 He then gave the owners the two options either to
add a story to their original structure or face destruction. Reportedly, after
the incident, Tehran’s mayor, who was held responsible for this disappointment,
“plunged into the task” of mending the problem, “and within a few weeks
sections of the avenues looked as if they had been bombed from the air.”26
Notwithstanding his harsh methods, on the eve of the king’s abdication, for
those Iranians who could remember the pre–Reza Shah Tehran, the changes,
including the speed at which they had happened, “were nothing short of
miraculous,” while for those who had had the opportunity to either study or
work in cities like Paris, London, and Berlin, “the chasm between the mate-
rial progress of the West and their own country was a source of frustration
and defeatism.”27 This gulf between Iran and the West, often explicitly man-
ifested in architecture and urbanisms, would continue to be a cause of shame
and disappointment for the following generations of Iranian architects and
politicians alike. Throughout the Pahlavi era, Iran’s measures of progress
and modernity would often be observed and scrutinized in its architectural
production. The urban renewal projects in Tehran and other urban centres
throughout the country provided the utopian clean slate to build a new future
that matched the ambitions of the rising bourgeoisie.
The timelessness of historicism
In 1922, four years before Reza Shah crowned himself king of Iran, a group
of secular reformists established the Society for National Heritage (Anjoman-e
asar-e melli), the SNH.28 While the SNH’s founding members came from
diverse class and intellectual upbringings, they all were in agreement regarding
the implementation of secular, national, and heavy-handed reforms under the
new monarchy. Many of the most influential men of Reza Shah’s first cabinet
included the SNH’s prominent founders: court minister ‘Abd al-Hoseyn
Teymurtash, described as a man of “brilliancy [with] elements of madness,”
was the mastermind of the SNH.29 The prominent scholar among the group
was former prime minister Hasan Pirniya, who was to write the three-volume
History of Ancient Iran30 and is often credited with preventing Iran from becom-
ing a British protectorate in 1919. Another scholar–politician, Mohammad ‘Ali
Forughi, remained the most popular figure of the SNH. Firuz Mirza Firuz
Nosrat al-Dowleh, the sharp Qajar nobleman and minister of finance, was
instrumental in dealings with the French in the sphere of archaeology. The
Zoroastrian representative to the parliament, Arbab Keykhosrow Shahrokh,
was central to the revival of Achaemenid and Sasanian architecture in the
1930s. Justice and finance minister ‘Ali Akbar Davar assisted in financing the
SNH’s projects by his manipulation of the bureaucratic machine.
Other high-ranking politicians and founders of the SNH included former
prime minister Hasan Mostowfi; former ministers of public instruction Hasan
Esfandiyari, Ebrahim Hakimi, and Hajj Seyyed Nasrollah Taqavi; and the
politician and scholar Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh. The SNH later recruited
other men of power, such as future education and culture minister ‘Isa Sadiq,
professor and editor Sa‘id Nafisi, and future minister of public instruction ‘Ali
Asghar Hekmat. Most of these men had benefited from either a state-founded
secular schooling in Iran or a state-sponsored education in Europe, which
had convinced them of the rewards of modernization. They had often gained
social mobility by Qajar efforts to modernize. No less critical was their
exposure to western literature, etiquette, fashion, technology, and architecture,
which were often first adopted by Qajar kings as new norms of culture. In
matters of fine arts, especially architecture and cultural heritage, these highly
influential men defined the parameters of the definition of high culture and
good taste for the Iranian middle class. During its sixty years of activity, the
SNH constructed some forty national monuments, carried out over sixty
preservation projects, and erected a national museum and a public library. The
cultural scope and diversity of the SNH’s undertakings were unprecedented in
the history of Iran and were bolstered by numerous publications, lectures,
exhibitions, and contributions to the tourist industry.31
The series of national monuments that were erected by the SNH employed
historicism and eclecticism in design. Each also had a direct link to Iran’s
history in its architectural program. The major landmarks included the tomb
complex of the poet Ferdowsi (1926–34) in Tus by French archaeologist
102 Talinn Grigor
André Godard; the tomb-garden of Sufi poet Hafez (1936–39) in Shiraz
designed by French architect Maxim Siroux; the burial complex of scientist
Avicenna (1945–52) in Hamadan proposed by Iranian architect Hushang
Seyhun; the mausoleum of Nader Shah (1955–59) in Mashhad, also the work
of Seyhun; the tomb of poet ‘Omar Khayyam (1956–62) in Nishapur, a col-
laboration between Seyhun and Mohsen Forughi; and the double-tombs of
American Art Historians Arthur Pope and Phyllis Ackerman (1969–72) in
Isfahan designed by Forughi. While each was programmatically modern, its
style aimed to convey the eternity of the nation, deeply rooted in conceptions
of tradition, race, language, and culture. Therefore, even though none were
modernistic in style or iconography, intentionally so, they all served modern
structures of knowledge, organization, and experience through a juxtaposition
relationship to other sets of structures that was created to appeal to a timely
modernity. They each aimed to work as heritage, which had to be read as
venerable and timeless. While they were clearly implemented as part of the
larger project of modernity – in fact they were the project of modernity – they
were not intended to be deciphered as modernistic, timely, or fashionable.
The pseudoscientific process, or rather the semblance of scientificity, to
which these monuments were exposed, was highly consistent. The burial
places of historical figures that suited the national agenda were selected,
located, and eliminated. After the confiscation of the corpse for autopsy, a
modern building was erected on the original site, after which the relics were
interred as part of an official royal inauguration. While ordinary Iranians were
excluded from witnessing these events, state-run media covered each ceremony
in detail. The main result of this process was that historical figures were given
a physical place to inhabit in the form of modern, yet historically recognizable
tombs. Their physiognomic particularities were reconstructed based on skull
and bone examinations. This in turn served to produce each figure’s life-size
sculpture and color portrait. The modified biography and persona of these
men were circulated among the masses by means of photographs, stamps,
postcards, and coins. Each fragment endlessly authenticated the implicit
totality of the historically sanitized image invented by the SNH. Each also
reinforced the cultural discourse on Iranian middle-class identity that was at
once national, secular, and inherently bourgeois in its structural premise.
The significance of this historicist architecture lay in the way it penetrated
most aspects of modernizing efforts, while providing the image of an enduring
nation with a long history. Despite their simplicity, the monuments incorpo-
rated a complex range of modern practices under the gist of historicity. As a
component in the larger mechanism of Pahlavi public instruction, these civil sites
came to replace the Shi‘a pilgrimage destinations through a historicist stylistic
language. Religious pilgrimage became middle-class tourism (see Figure 5.2).
Autopsies of the remains of the historical figures stood as proof of the racial
superiority of the nation, while the museums adjoining the modern tomb
validated the logic of its display. The revival of both pre-Islamic and Islamic
icons and prototypes was incorporated into centuries-old lived practices. The
CASPIAN
TABRIZ SEA
TUS
NISHAPUR
i
MASHHAD
QAZV1N
TEHRAN
HAMMMN RfV i
OOM
BACHDAD
KARBALA ISFAHAN
IRAN
NAJAF
SHRAZ
0 M 100 ISA 200 Miles

PERSIAN
GULF
Figure 5.2 Map of major historical sites of pilgrimage for Twelver Imami Shi‘ism in
Iran, overlaid by the modern sites of secular/civil pilgrimage constructed
between 1934 and 1979 by the SNH. As an integral part of Iran’s moder-
nization project, the state and the SNH intended first to utilize and then to
shift the network and rituals of the Shi‘a pilgrimage to a different set of
secular national destinations.
Source: Talinn Grigor, 2009.
construction process of each tomb harbored technically sophisticated

documentation, categorization, and ordering of the national domain. Around
each monument entire towns were revitalized as the expression of progress
under the new dynasty. Furthermore, these projects provided a platform for
western scholars including André Godard, Ernst Herzfeld, and Arthur
Upham Pope to negotiate their conflicting personal and colonial ambitions.
The discourse on Iranian architecture occasioned quarrels over techniques of
preservation, authenticity of heritage, and ownership of archaeological sites.
Under the often unforgiving gaze of Reza Shah, form and style were seg-
regated along the line of the structure’s functional relation to Iranian history.
Because of their program as burial sites of historical figures and museums
that displayed Iran’s golden moments, all of the SNH’s landmarks deployed
historicism and selected revivalism as style. All of these were strategically
erected in provincial towns outside the capital city as markers of national and
cultural heritage. Within Tehran, however, the king ordered the rapid erection
of a large number of governmental and administrative buildings in impressive
104 Talinn Grigor
Figure 5.3 André Godard, main and southern façade of the Archaeological Museum
of Iran (Muzeh-ye Iran Bastan), Tehran 1936–39.
Source: Private collection, photo by Farokh Khadem; courtesy of Cyrus Samii.
revivalist street-façades: the first National Bank (Bank-e Melli, 1935) designed
by German architect H. Heinrich; the Archaeological Museum (Muzeh-ye
Iran Bastan, 1939) designed by André Godard (see Figure 5.3); the first
public library (c. 1940) proposed by Maxim Siroux; the central post office; the
Anushirvan school for girls; the Police Headquarters (1933); along with a
dozen monumental structures to house the newly established ministries. In
these works, both Iranian and foreign architects designed public monuments
that were imbedded in historicism – i.e. neo-Achaemenid, neo-Sasanian, neo-
Samanid, neo-Seljuk, neo-Safavid, etc. – while simultaneously erecting private
residential houses, leisure architecture, and military structures that rebelled
against any kind of academic and historicist tradition.
In commissions that had to fulfil the demands of historical heritage, archi-
tects complied with the historicist trends despite their general discontent with
eclecticism. In private commissions and those fulfilling contemporanity, they
had license to remain faithful to the architectural discipline and its con-
temporary global trends. In these latter bids, their bourgeois patrons insisted
on a modern built environment that matched their class ambitions. Free from
the burden of history, often with a self-Orientalist underpinning, architects
ventured into a range of imported and invented schemes that were distinct
from the historicist architectural vocabulary reserved for the SNH’s
monuments and state structures: from a minimalist art deco in the then fash-
ionable New Lalehzar Street apartments, to the austere International Style
villas tucked in the small alleys of northern Tehran. Rarely, if at all, did
Achaemenid and Sasanian revivalism find its way to these private commissions.
Revivalism under Reza Shah was a mere strategy to arrive at a modernity
that aimed to be uniquely Iranian. The modern middle class desired a time-
liness that was only possible with the presence of a timely architecture juxta-
posed to the timelessness of historicism. Being modern meant inhabiting the
modern as timely.
For the project of nation-building, the historicist style met the central need
of historical lineage as well as national symbolism. Those architects who
practiced historic eclecticism believed that their work was part of a con-
tinuous process of cultural evolution that was capable of recapturing the true
spirit of a given period in Iran’s (art) history. The various Muslim golden
ages – Seljuk, Samanid, Safavid, etc. – were recast as a purified version of an
Islam that was deeply Persian and uninhibited by colonial expansionism. The
various pre-Islamic golden ages – Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian –
were reinvented as unpolluted from Muslim-Arab influence and equally
deeply Persian in essence. In either case, these authors were in search of a
visual language that was appropriate for their age – as all modern architects
had been since the nineteenth century inside and outside the western canon of
architectural practice. In spite of the claims of its protagonists and its later
apologists, in the case of Reza Shah’s Iran, both historicism and avant-gardism
in architecture were deeply modernist practices in search of the same thing:
formulating new ways to look authentically modern, yet of a nation millennia
old. Iranian architects were not only rethinking the nature of their own rela-
tionship to Iranian history and its contemporary political currents, but also
the nature of their rather unstable affinity with the hegemonic West as the
centre of modernity’s image.
The timeliness of the avant-garde

The political elite, who gathered around Reza Shah and outlined the cultural
policies of his reign, backed a number of western architects to jump-start the
architectural profession as an autonomous national and secular institution.
However, while western professionals such as Ernst Herzfeld, André Godard,
Arthur Upham Pope, Maxim Siroux, Russian architect Nikolai Markov,
and a number of less-known German architects were influential in shaping
Iran’s architectural pedagogy and practice, they were by no means dictating
the terms of their operations in the politicized milieu of the 1930s. Despite the
prominent place reserved for them by historians, there exists enough evidence
to demonstrate that these men were often at the mercy of local scholars and
politicians, including the active members of the Society for National Heritage,
in their teachings, designs, and excavations.32 The local mediation, aesthetic
and political alike, was dominant.
106 Talinn Grigor
Active alongside these westerners were a handful of prolific and ethno-
ideologically diverse native professionals: Iranian–Armenian architect and
leading figure in architectural practice and philosophy, Vartan Hovanessian
(1896–1982); Iranian architect and son of a prominent prime minister,
Mohsen Forughi (1907–83); English-educated Iranian architect and member
of the influential Ilhani-Bakhtiyari family, Keyqobad Zafar (1910–87); Iranian
architect and member of Tehran’s city council, ‘Ali Sadegh (1908–87); Iranian
architect and editor of the first architectural journal in Iran, Architecte, Iraj
Moshiri; Iranian–Armenian architect, Paul Abkar; and German-trained
Iranian architect, Karim Taherzadeh Behzad. Avant-garde Armenian architect,
Gabriel Guevrekian (1900–970) – born in Istanbul, raised in Tehran, educated
in Vienna, working in Paris, and deceased in the United States – while only
active for four years in Iran, was appointed by Reza Shah as the chief
architect of the municipality of Tehran.33 As the general secretary of CIAM
(Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne) and a founding member of
the French architectural journal L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, Guevrekian
was the leading representative of the avant-garde in Iran.34 Almost all of
these young professionals had returned to Iran from Europe in the mid 1930s
to join the efforts of the king and his ministers to provide the nation with an
image that marched with and represented the political aspiration of the
modern middle class. That image came to shape the subsequent notions about
modernity itself.
Cultural patronage under Reza Shah was predominantly architectural and
architects played a decisive role in setting aesthetic trends and contemporary
modernist agendas. Other fields of knowledge in the arts came under the
hegemony of architectural practice and pedagogy. The fine arts faculty at
Tehran University, for instance, was conceived, constructed, and run from 1938
on by a group of architects, including Godard who provided its curricular
program and directed it until 1949. After his departure, all the subsequent
deans of the faculty were prominent and practicing architects: Mohsen Forughi
(1949–62); Hushang Seyhun (1962–68); Mohammad Amin (or Daryush)
Mirfendereski (1968–71); and Mehdi Kowsar (1971–79).35 Architecture
dominated the artistic field well into the 1970s, where in and out of the university
the visual arts (honar-ha-ye tajassomi) – painting, sculpture, graphic design,
industrial design, and art education – were separate from and subordinate to
the architecture department, structurally, pedagogically, and in terms of
status. In the modernist context of Pahlavi Iran, to be an architect, a builder,
and an engineer was more prestigious than any other discipline in the humanities.
In analyzing the transformation of residential buildings, architect Kamran
Diba notes that “architects brought modernism to Iran” by giving birth to
new spaces that fostered the nuclear family: Reza Shah’s modern middle class who
would go on to base its class identity on the appreciation of avant-garde taste.36
Young architects, trained professionally in Europe or the Soviet Union, were
the protagonists of the modern middle class. As such, they often found them-
selves in a precarious position between the heavy-handed government – with
which they often shared ideology and method of implementation – and
their own avant-garde spirit to practice without authoritarian interference.
While relying on state patronage for most of their projects, they tried to
maintain aloofness towards political plots and intrigues. The architects’
unstable in-between position was crucial to the survival of the architectural
profession as an independent practice pivotal to the nation-building project. It
produced an anxiety dealt with by many and articulated by others. In September
1946, Iraj Moshiri, the editor of the first Iranian architectural journal,
addressed this concern by declaring unequivocally, “The Architecte is purely a
technological and aesthetic publication, which cannot and does not wish to
have the slightest involvement with the world of politics.”37 Despite this
claim, however, the tabula rasa that had emerged in the early 1930s was now
shaped by these young professionals. If not fixing class ideology, they certainly
provided a space and an image to that rapidly growing social segment.
Individual architects who were committed to a secularist, bourgeois, and
modernist conception of the nation proved themselves as influential agents
of change. The public and private structures that they produced represented
a concrete expression of Reza Shah’s New Iran – Iran-e novin – which was
distinctly different in its taste and visuality from what had come before. The
services that they offered to the public and the state spoke to the professio-
nalization of the middle class, while the products that they erected were the
most conspicuous cultural and technological expressions of the paradigm
shift from an aristocratic to a bourgeois society. In 1946, Hovanessian
articulated the juxtaposition of historicism and avant-gardism in the first issue
of the first official journal of his profession: “should one imitate the past and
recreate the notable works of that era; or should one look towards the future
and adapt architectural design to the modern lifestyle.”38
The creation of a modern centralized army, upon which Reza Shah’s political
career had depended, instigated large-scale projects such as the 1394-kilometer
Trans-Iranian Railway that stretched from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf.
It not only produced a nationwide surge in construction, but also brought the
International Style (the stark minimalist modern movement of European
architecture) to some of the most remote towns and villages of the country.
The paramount example of the link between technology and avant-garde
architecture was the main train station building in southern Tehran. Other
structures rejected historicism and followed the modernist dictates of simple
forms, no ornamentation, adoption of glass, use of concrete and steel in
construction, and a futuristic aesthetics: Hovanessian’s villas in northern
Tehran for the secular elite, together with a palace for Reza Shah on the
grounds of Saadabad, as well as his School for Orphans (1935). Guevrekian’s
dozen villas, again in northern Tehran and custom-built in modernistic language,
included those for Malak-Eslami (1933), Panacki (1934), Siassi (1935), and
Khosrowani (1936).39 The modernist home was to further and represent the
modernist lifestyle – a shrine to house the accoutrements that formed the
holistic picture of modernity, of being modern.
108 Talinn Grigor
Figure 5.4 Amjadiyeh Public Pool, Tehran 1940s.

Source: Private collection, photo by Farokh Khadem; courtesy of Cyrus Samii.
Commercialization and further secular reforms generated a culture of

leisure that marked a lifestyle unique to the middle class. The flourishing of
cinemas, clubs, bars, restaurants, parks, public sports and swimming facilities,
and ski resorts celebrated architectural avant-gardism (see Figure 5.4). Private
villas and public leisure architecture in modernist language not only provided
an image of a secular class, but also enabled the ritual enactments of bour-
geois sociability. To inhabit these spaces meant to embody a specific lifestyle
with its own aesthetic and formal tropes. These spaces, predominantly
designed after the tenets of the International Style, represented unambiguous
markers of progress, of befores and afters. This aesthetic difference impreg-
nated an ethical paradigm shift. Austere white walls, unornamented facades,
large swimming pools, cantilevered roofs, large glass openings forced a spe-
cific behavior and lifestyle that went with a set of ethical values that was seen
as progressive. Those who commissioned and inhabited these spaces saw
themselves in the vanguard of the modern in Iran.
Theatre buildings loyal to the architectural doctrine of the modernist Inter-
national Style, such as Hovanessian’s Cinema Diana on Shah Reza Avenue
(nowadays the still-operating Sepideh Cinema on Enqelab Avenue) and Cinema
Metropole on Lalehzar Street, were erected as signifiers of the ultimate para-
digm of a modern society, one where technology and leisure were housed in
explicitly modernistic public, yet informal, architecture. Similarly, anticipating
European tourists to New Iran, his Hotel Darband, commissioned by Reza
Shah and erected on the slopes of the Alborz Mountains in northern Tehran,
was “to strike a new note of elegance with its accommodations, restaurant
and casino”.40 It remained “a favorite of Tehran’s high society” until the
revolution.41 In a modernist tone, Guevrekian designed Tehran’s Officers’
Club, the Military School’s auditorium for the army, and the Ministry of
Industry (1936), which was never realized. Because the white avant-gardism
of this leisure architecture was deployed by the Pahlavis as a signifier of pro-
gress, it was condemned by the most outspoken opponents of the regime. In
his 2 February 1979 speech at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, Imam Khomeini
asked his audience, “Why was it necessary to make the cinema a center of
vice?”42 – a matter-of-fact question that drew into its discursive operation not
only the content of that which was shown, but also the aesthetic of the site
where modernity manifested itself as a specific kind of an avant-garde.
The white mausoleum

Reza Shah’s own tomb was a unique architectural piece that encapsulated the
architectural discourse of his reign (see Figure 5.5). It exposed modern archi-
tecture’s peculiar relation with not only architecture’s contemporary history,
but also with Pahlavi conceptions of Iran’s present and past. The architectural
Figure 5.5 General view of Reza Shah’s mausoleum by architects Mohsen Forughi,
Keyqobad Zafar, and ‘Ali Sadeq, Rey 1947–51. In the background is visible
the Shah ‘Abd al-‘Azim Shrine, 9th–20th centuries.
Source: Ali Khadem Collection, courtesy of Farrokh Khadem and Cyrus Samii.
110 Talinn Grigor
problem was singular: how to represent a modernizing king, who aspired to
become a historical figure among a long list of historical great men? How
was the tomb’s design going to position itself vis-à-vis the segregations of avant-
gardism and historicism? Where would that fit into the formula of the avant-
garde reserved for private, leisure, and technologically advanced programs or
the historicist styles reserved for funerary, religious, symbolic, and historical
programs? The aesthetics of Reza Shah’s tomb was set in direct opposition to
those of Ferdowsi, Hafez, Sa‘di, and Avicenna in that the former projected
the images of a timely, fashionable, and hence modernist structure. White
walls, simple form, abstinence from ornament. The latter constantly repre-
sented a semblance of timelessness, of non-modernist venerable heritage, the
heritage that was the ancient nation. While the first was masculine, based on
solid structure and function, the rest were invested in the fantasies of the
Orient and ornamentation. One defined itself in opposition to the other. Both
catered to the needs of middle class identity formation (see Figure 5.6).
Figure 5.6 Local tourist posing on the steps of Hafeziyeh’s southern courtyard, Shiraz
1954. This kind of practice by an unveiled woman, much less by a Christian
Iranian, would not have been tolerated before the 1938 spatial metamor-
phosis of the Mosalla cemetery into Hafez’s tomb garden, nor would she
have visited the site. Here she practices tourism and citizenry in the context
of a secularized space, not a religious pilgrimage.
Source: Courtesy of Seda Hovnanian.
The Allied invasion of Iran in August 1941 forced Reza Shah into exile in
Johannesburg, where he died of a heart attack three years later. The return
of his body to Iran turned out to be a political controversy. On a number of
occasions, Mohammad Reza Shah had tried to convince the government to
organize an elaborate state funeral. In 1947, prime minister Ahmad Qavam
vetoed such a request.43 The ‘olama had rejected the proposition of burying
him in Qom or Mashhad. The king’s own wish to be buried in the Saadabad
palace complex was denied by clerics who took issue with the fact that Reza
Shah had already been buried in a non-Shi‘a land and therefore needed to be
interred near a Shi’a shrine within Iran.44 Rey, the city of Qajar royal burial
south of Tehran, was finally agreed upon. By order of the young king, the
construction of a mausoleum began in 1948 adjacent to the shrine of Shah
‘Abd al-‘Azim. When completed in March 1950, Reza Shah’s body, embalmed
in a coffin, was sent to Cairo to join a group of high-ranking Iranian officials,
including his son.45 After a stop in Mecca and Medina, the coffin was placed
on a special train from Ahwaz to Tehran. Reza Shah would have no doubt
wanted that. The Trans-Iranian Railway was one of the legacies of his reign –
the carrier of avant-gardism from the metropolitan center to the peripheries
of the nation. After a slow procession through the boulevards of Tehran, his
body arrived in his final resting place. On 8 May 1951, he was buried under a
simple but austere modernist structure.
Designed by three well-known Pahlavi architects – Mohsen Forughi, Keyqobad
Zafar, and ‘Ali Sadeq – the landmark evoked not only Iran’s modern leap into
the future under Reza Shah, but also its renewed bond with Zoroastrian anti-
quity. Forughi was the leading architect among the three. Born into a prominent
secular family of Tehran, he was not only a man of the Pahlavi system, but
also a product of the Society of National Heritage. In fact, his father was
none other than Reza Shah’s prime minister Mohammad ‘Ali Forughi, one of
the founders of the SNH in 1922 and its director until his forced resignation
in 1935. Described by those who worked with him as “a very gentle and kind
individual with his love for Iranian art” and by later authors as “the best-
known architect of his generation” as well as “one of the first modern Iranian
architects,” Forughi was sent by the Iranian government to and graduated
from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 1937.46 He returned
to Iran to join the literature and technology schools of Tehran University
and await the establishment of the school of architecture. He proved pivotal to the
politics of the architectural profession in the 1950s and 1960s and its relationships
to the state. When younger architects like Hushang Seyhun returned to Iran
from Europe armed with ideas influenced by major avant-garde architects, it was
Forughi and his generation that defended the grand tradition of the Beaux-Arts
while simultaneously remaining attached to Iranian ways of doing things.47
Employed by the technical office of the Ministries of Education and Finance
and the National Bank, and well connected to both Godard and Siroux, For-
ughi succeeded Godard to become the first Iranian dean of the school of
architecture, a post he held until 1962. He was also one of the founders of the
112 Talinn Grigor
Society of Iran’s Architects and a prominent member of the SNH throughout
the 1960s and 1970s. As a leading figure of these establishments, he was a vital
link between the state and the profession throughout the late Pahlavi era. His
main works included the master plan of Tehran University (1934), the faculty
of law of the university (the first major academic construction by an Iranian
architect), the Ministry of Finance, the Senate (with Heydar Ghiaï, 1959), and
the bazaar branch of the National Bank (Bank-e Melli) in south Tehran. His
skilful synthesis of historical decorative motifs and modern morphologies in
these structures, along with his personal connections to the court and to such
figures as Pope, enabled him to live up to royal and colonial expectations.
As a member of the Ilkhani-Bakhtiyari tribe and family clan, Keyqobad
Zafar was not as privileged as Forughi. Despite his training at the Royal
College of Arts in England, he initially struggled with political opposition in
order to establish himself as a respectable architect among the bourgeois cir-
cles of Tehran. Like his partner, however, he was a modernist who aspired to
simplicity in ornamentation, use of modern methods and materials, and the
articulation of geometric forms. ‘Ali Sadeq was the third partner in designing
Reza Shah’s tomb. During the most radical times in terms of urban planning
and the implementation of other secular reforms, from 1930 to 1937, he studied
in Europe and received his education from Caen University and Brussels’
Academy of Fine Arts. When he returned to Tehran, he refrained from
working for the government. Given the autocratic methods of the king during
the last years of his reign, many architects saw in the private corporate sector
a freedom that was rarely available to those architects and engineers who
worked for the state. However, he was drawn into state institutions when he was
elected to the city council of Tehran, while maintaining his private professional
practice. The final outcome of the cooperation between these three architects
became the centerpiece of the nation until it was outdone by the Shahyad
Aryamehr monument in 1971. The image that the tomb provided of the stability
of the nation and the court was pivotal to its function as symbolic architecture.48
The landmark was deployed as a part of the discourse on the endurance
and merit of the Pahlavi dynasty after Reza Shah’s demise. In his attempt to
regain power and prestige, Mohammad Reza Shah enticed potential suppor-
ters into his sphere of influence by strengthening the state bureaucracy
and court patronage. He appealed to different social strata with the public
image of a benevolent sovereign whose reign, in contrast to his father’s, would
be marked by cooperation rather than coercion. Simultaneously, through state
rituals and modernist taste-making, he appealed to the modern middle class
by establishing forms of continuity between his father’s reign and his own.
Though he never acquired divine status among his subjects during the Pahlavi
reign, an attempt was made to sanctify Reza Shah’s memory through the
architectural language of his mausoleum, in addition to other strategies of
legend-making. His tomb was one of the most symbolic markers of this rupture
and at once a link between the reigns of Reza Shah and that of his son.
Therefore so much of Mohammad Reza Shah’s effort to establish himself as
the successor to his father symbolically rotated around this monument. The
details of the design were meticulously worked out to serve this purpose of a
difference in continuity.
The site and position of the tomb helped it to gain Shi‘a sanctity, while the
architectural language and material appealed to the universalistic taste of
modernity. The religious associations of the Shah ‘Abd al-‘Azim shine and the
spiritual status of the adjoining cemetery enshrined a religious overtone to
Reza Shah’s modern mausoleum. Locally, it relied on the juxtaposition of the
building with the other Islamic shrines positioned directly behind it – Shah
‘Abd al-‘Azim, Emamzadeh Hamzeh, and Emamzadeh Taher – and in the
vicinity – Emamzadeh ‘Abd al-Hasan and Emamzadeh ‘Abdollah. This
proximity to historically significant Shi’a landmarks endowed Reza Shah’s
tomb with a sanctity that it would otherwise not have had.49 The complex
proper followed dual conceptions of centrality and directionality. It inspired a
central focus and significance – the body of the king – and at once provided
axiality for ceremonial purposes. Connected to the main building were other
smaller rooms, perhaps for administrative or exhibition purposes. The pro-
truded facades gave the impression of depth and three-dimensionality to the
structure, while the use of the chahar-taq prototype appealed to Iranian
architectural history at large.
The basic form of the Zoroastrian fire temple, the chahar-taq, which con-
sists of a dome sitting on a square room, was first used by the Achaemenids,
the Parthians, and the Sasanians for their temples and palaces and later
adopted as funerary monuments by the Samanids, the Seljuks, the Timurids,
and the Mughals. Its modern re-appropriation represented the modern nation
with a long history blind to religion, yet deeply nationalistic. Likewise, the
obvious use of the tenets of the International Style in color and material was
another aspect of its appeal to the rightful place of the nation, and its mod-
ernist king, in the ranks of the “civilized nations.” An aesthetic difference
between the Qajar past and the Pahlavi present was achieved through the
building technology, modern forms, monumental expression, and the use of
white marble and concrete as construction materials. By altering the size,
color, and material, and by keeping the main plan and elevation configuration
of the chahar-taq prototype, a link to antiquity and a break from the
immediate past was projected. In this tomb, architecture also managed to
bridge the historical importance of Reza Shah and his technological and
infrastructural achievements – his relevance for Iran’s modernity and the
modern middle class.
Yet from the outset, the structure generated admiration and criticism, pre-
dominantly of a political rather than an aesthetic nature. Or rather, political
grievances were raised on the grounds of aesthetics. As of its completion, the
communist Tudeh Party condemned the court for spending too much on a
building and a ceremony that could have been omitted, instead of helping the
poor.50 Subsequently, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the monument served
as a platform to celebrate and commemorate the modernity of the nation.
114 Talinn Grigor
During his imperial tour of the country, the young king honored the memory
of his father and his deeds each year at the tomb. Annually, Reza Shah’s
passing too was commemorated by court ministers and state officials.51
Commitment to the dynasty from all levels of society was declared at the foot
of the monument. In July 1967, Army General Fereydun Jam stressed during
his speech at the tomb of Reza Shah that “here eternally rests a captain who
raised his country from ruins and who erased the mark of shame from his
country.”52 The following March, on the occasion of the Workers Day,
representatives of that social stratum visited the tomb and paid allegiance to
the court.53 Along with Persepolis and other major heritage sites around the
country, the landmark also served as a principal destination for diplomatic
guests. Foreign visitors of all hues, sport groups, and heads of states were
invited here. Among many others, in July 1965, the German football team; in
September 1966, the general secretary of the Inter-Parliamentary Union,
André de Blonay; and in April 1968, the chairman of the Council of Ministers
of the Soviet Union, Alexei Kosygin: all paid an official visit to the tomb
during their tour of Iran.54 Each of these utterances of allegiance to the
Pahlavi state and court were reported in the state-owned mass media.
Unlike any other major upheaval since the French Revolution, cultural
heritage was by and large left alone during the Iranian revolutionary struggle
from 1977 until calm was restored in 1979. Reza Shah’s mausoleum was one
of the few monumental exceptions. The Mojahedin, who had first aimed to
sabotage the 2500-year anniversary celebrations of the Persian Empire in October
1971, eventually during the mid decade bombed the tomb.55 For the opposition,
it symbolized not only the ruling monarchy, but also the very epistemic taste that
it had promoted since 1925. The avant-garde architectural language contributed
squarely to this image of fashion as this architecture defined social status.
After the establishment of the Islamic Republic, the tomb was one of the very few
monuments that were dismantled and demolished. Since then, it has completely
disappeared not only physically and visually, but also in official and popular
narratives. During the Pahlavi era, avant-garde architecture, best represented
by Reza Shah’s tomb, acted as a billboard and projected the legitimacy of the
ruling monarchy in its operational difference. Visible to the public, avant-
garde and historicist structures functioned as binary opposites that served the
same epistemic regime of this shift from an aristocratic monarchy to an
expanding bourgeois middle class. Cultural tropes of civilization, of appearing
progressive, produced and represented that difference, a difference in taste.
Whiteness was not only central to the making of this new image as modern,
but also to the oppositional effect. It indicated the new veneer that enshrined
the new order as such. All the bodies – from clothing, to car, to hairdo, to
furniture, to houses – were enveloped in this austere minimalist whiteness.
Each, in turn, operated as a fragment in a larger system of taste and class
formation. White walls provided “a recognizable ‘look’” to the middle class.56
This was particularity poignant given the Orientalist discourse linking orna-
mentation to crime in modern times within the main architectural discussions
in mainland Europe during the first two decades of the twentieth century.57
White architecture also provided a marked departure and opposition to the
opulent buildings of Qajar kings and nobilities. For the Pahlavi elite, it further
fed the discourse on racial superiority and modern hygiene and went on to
replicate conceptions of masculinity, intellectualism, permanence, and industry.
Fashion and conceptions of fashionability had much to do with this relation-
ship between the Pahlavi bourgeoisie and architecture. To be fashionable, to be
up-to-date was a trope of the modern middle class that it used to the fullest in
all aspects of its new life(style). As architectural historian Mark Wigley notes,
“Modern architecture did not simply become fashionable. Rather it was, from
the very beginning, organized by the operations of fashion that underpinned
its very attacks on fashion.”58 Reza Shah’s Uniformity of Dress Code of 1928,
revised in 1936, which outlawed the traditional dress of men and made western
clothing and the Pahlavi cap compulsory, and more radically, forbade women
the wearing of the Islamic veil, went hand in hand with his architectural and
urban policies that aimed to create the “Pahlavi man” in its (modernist) totality.
Reza Shah’s tomb, like the villas and cinemas that he had championed,
with their unornamented white walls signaled a difference in taste that
distinguished, and shaped, the differing identity of this rising social strata under
the secular monarchy. In this symbiosis between being fashionable yet still
timeless, Iranian modern architecture divided its modernist production into
several domains, as if to relegate the contradicting responsibility of timeliness
and timelessness to different architectural functions. Iran thus reproduced
both the Saidian self as well as the other by this double invention of the
timely in the avant-garde and the timeless in historicism, thus temporarily
solving the architectural dilemma of how to embody the modern and yet
remain true to one’s conception of the traditional. While invented, both styles
helped the middle class under the Pahlavis to define itself as an independent
social stratum that was fit for the modern age. The structures that produced
and reproduced the image of a difference in taste were the architecture of the
middle class as the ultimate consumers of “good taste.”
Notes
1 For published primary sources, see Center for the Study and Publication of
Political Culture of the Pahlavi Era, Reza Shah-e kabir: Safar-nameh-ye homayuni
[Reza Shah the Great: royal travelogue] (Tehran, 1971); Mahmud Delfani, ed.,
Farhang-setizi dar dowreh-ye Reza Shah (asnad-e montasher nashodeh-ye
Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar), 1317–1320 hejri shamsi (Tehran: Sazman-e Asnad-e
Melli, 1375/1997); Sa‘id Nafisi, Tarikh-e shahriyari-ye shahanshah Reza Shah
Pahlavi (Tehran, 1344/1965); Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Reza Shah-e Kabir
(Tehran, 1950); Eqbal Yaghma’i, Kar-nameh-ye Reza Shah Kabir: bonyangozar-e
Iran-e novin (Tehran, 1971).
2 For an overview of architectural policies and practices under Reza Shah see
Kamran Safamanesh, “Architectural Historiography 1921–42,” Iran in the 20th
Century: Historiography and Political Culture (London: Tauris, 2009), pp. 121–53.
Mostafa Kiyani, Me‘mari-ye dowreh-ye Pahlavi-ye avval (Tehran: Mo’asseseh-ye
116 Talinn Grigor
motale‘at-e tarikh-e mo‘aser, 1384/2005), which includes a CD with image files.
See also Alisa Eimen, “Negotiating Cultural Identity at Tehran’s Al-Ghadir
Mosque,” in Architecture and Identity, ed. Peter Herrle and Erik Wegerhoff
(Berlin: Lit-Verlag, 2008), pp. 435–48.
3 British minister of the Foreign Office 371, 12293/E3909, Robert Clive reporting
on court minister ‘Abd al-Hoseyn Teymurtash, 26 August 1927, Tehran, Iran; see
Robert M. Burrell, ed., Iran Political Diaries 1881–1965 (Oxford: Archive Editions,
1997), vol. 8: 1927–30, p. 55.
4 The urban reforms under Reza Shah have often been compared with Haussmanian
reforms in Paris. Since I have not found any primary sources during my research
that prove that the shah’s reformists were in fact copying the French plans, I
refrain from insisting that there was a direct link between Baron Haussman’s
Paris and Reza Shah’s Tehran. However, there is no doubt about the fact that
most of the political and intellectual elite of the period had visited Paris. For a
concise and comprehensive description of the official urban policies and practices
under Reza Shah, see Donald N. Wilber, “Architecture VII. Pahlavi, Before
World War II,” Encyclopedia Iranica 1, ed. E. Yarshater (London and New York:
Bibliotheca Persica Press,), 350–51. See also Chahryar Adle and Bernard Hour-
cade, ed., Téhéran, capitale bicentenaire, (Paris and Tehran: Peeters Publishers;
Mul edition, 1992).
5 See Mina Marefat, “Building to Power: Architecture of Tehran 1921–41”, Ph.D.
dissertation (Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988), p. 76.
6 Marefat, “Building to Power”, p. 34.
7 Abbas Amanat, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian
Monarchy, 1831–1896 (London: Tauris, 1997), p. 435.
8 Eckart Ehlers and Willem Floor, “Urban Change in Iran, 1920–41”, Iranian
Studies 26 (1993), pp. 251–76: 255.
9 British minister of the Foreign Office, E 4225/47/34, 1 August 1933, Tehran, Iran;
see Robert M. Burrell, ed., Iran Political Diaries 1881–1965, (Oxford: Archive
Editions, 1997), vol. 9 (1931–34), p. 504.
10 Dario Gamboni, The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the
French Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 332.
11 US State Department Archives, Hart, dispatch 387, 891.5123/5, 20 February
1931, Tehran, Iran; quoted in Mohammad Gholi Majd, Great Britain and Reza
Shah: The Plunder of Iran, 1921 – 1941 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press,
2001), p. 162.
12 US State Department Archives, Engert, dispatch 1830, “Change in the City of
Tehran”, 891.101/3, 10 May 1940, Tehran, Iran; quoted in Majd, Great Britain
and Reza Shah, pp. 163–64.
13 Rosita Forbes, Conflict: Angora to Afghanistan, with a foreword by Brigadier-General
Sir Percy Sykes (London: Cassell, 1931), p. 105.
14 Homa Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran: Despotism and Pseudo-
modernism, 1926–1979 (New York: New York University Press, 1981), p. 120.
15 US State Department Archives, Hart, dispatch 1393, 891.00/1562, 25 March
1932, Tehran, Iran; quoted in Majd, Great Britain and Reza Shah, pp. 155–56.
16 Katouzian, Political Economy of Modern Iran, pp. 110–11
17 Amin Banani, Modernization of Iran, 1921–1941 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1961), p. 144.
18 Richard W. Cottam, Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University
Press, 1979), p. 30.
19 See Banani, Modernization of Iran, p. 144; and Laurence Lockhart, Famous
Cities of Iran (Brentford: W. Pearce, 1939), pp. 11–13.
20 Banani, Modernization of Iran, p. 144.
21 Katouzian, Political Economy of Modern Iran, pp. 110–11
Tehran,” 891.101/3, 10 May 1940, Tehran, Iran; quoted in Majd, Great Britain
Tehran,” 891.101/3, 10 May 1940, Tehran, Iran; quoted in Majd, Great Britain
25 Cottam, Nationalism in Iran, p. 149.
26 Cottam, Nationalism in Iran, p. 195.
28 See Talinn Grigor, Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage
under the Pahlavi Monarchs (New York: Periscope/Prestel, 2009); and Talinn
Grigor, “Recultivating ‘Good Taste’: The early Pahlavi Modernists and their
Society for National Heritage,” Iranian Studies 37 (2004), pp. 17–45; the journal
neglected to publish the images that accompanied this article.
29 US State Department Archives, Charles Calmer Hart, “Teymourtache Dismissed
and Great Was the Fall Thereof,” dispatch 1310, 891.44 Teymourtache, Abdol
K.K./1, 29 December 1932, Tehran, Iran.
30 Hasan Pirniya, Iran-e Bastan ya tarikh-e mofassal-e Iran-e qadim (Tehran:
Majles, 1317/1938).
31 See Talinn Grigor, Building Iran, chapters 1 and 2.
32 See Talinn Grigor, “(re)Framing Modernit(ies): American Historians of Iranian
Architecture, Phyllis Ackerman and Arthur Pope,” ARRIS 15 (2004), pp. 38–54.
33 Guevrekian was educated in Austria’s Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna; see Mina
Marefat, “Guevrekian, Gabriel,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, 2002,
available at http://www.iranica.com/articles/guevrekian.
34 On the careers of some of these architects, see Marefat, “Building to Power,”
chapter 2.
35 Nader Ardalan and Mortaza Momayyez provide two different first names for
the dean of the fine arts department and Italian-trained architect Mirfendereski.
See Mortaza Momayyez, “Faculties of the University of Tehran ii. Faculty of Fine
Arts,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, 1999, available at http://www.iranica.
com/articles/faculties-ii; N. Ardalan, “Architecture viii. Pahlavi, after World War
II,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, 1986, available at http://www.iranica.
com/articles/architecture-viii.
36 Quoted in Different Sames: New Perspectives in Contemporary Iranian Art, ed.
Hossein Amirsadeghi (London: TransGlobe, 2009), p. 113.
37 Iradj Moshiri, Architecte 1 (August/September 1946), p. 1. The first professional
Iranian architectural journal, Architecte, while only seeing six issues between
August 1946 and July 1948, nevertheless raised serious questions on various
architectural topics.
38 Vartan Hovanessian, Architecte 1 (August/September 1946).
39 See Gabriel Guevrekian Papers, University Archives, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.
40 Donald N. Wilber, “Architecture vii. Pahlavi, before World War II”, Encyclopaedia
Iranica, Online Edition, 1986, available at http://www.iranica.com/articles/
architecture-vii.
41 Cyrus Kadivar, “The General’s Widow,” The Iranian (21 February 2001), available
at www.iranian.com/history/2001/february/rahimi.
42 Quoted in Hamid Algar, Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of
Imam Khomeini (Berkeley, CA: Mizan Press, 1981), p. 258.
43 See Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
44 See Ali Ansari, Modern Iran since 1921 (London: Pearson, 2003), p. 104.
118 Talinn Grigor
45 See Donald N. Wilber, Reza Shah Pahlavi: The Resurrection and Reconstruction
of Iran (Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1975), p. 222.
46 The Iranian–Canadian architect Hossein Amanat (1942, architect of the Shahyad
Monument at Tehran’s Azadi square), in a written interview by Talinn Grigor, 2
April 2000, Vancouver, Canada. On Mohsen Forughi, see Ardalan, “Architecture
viii,” and Wilber, “Architecture vii,” as well as Mina Marefat and Richard
N. Frye, “Foru-gı-, Moh.sen,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, 2000,
available at http://www.iranica.com/articles/forugi-mohsen.
47 See Houshang Seyhoun, interview by Talinn Grigor, 29 June 2000, Vancouver,
Canada.
48 For a comparison with the Imam Khomeini mausoleum, constructed from 1989
onwards as the symbol of the Islamic Republic of Iran, see Kishwar Rizvi,
“Religious Icon and National Symbol: The Tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini in
Iran,” Muqarnas 20 (2003), pp. 209–24: 216–18.
49 “A characteristic peculiar to the architecture of power and wealth in the Muslim
world was that its order and sense appear less in formal compositions than in the
relationship of the monument of power to other monuments.” Oleg Grabar, “The
Architecture of Power: Palaces, Citadels and Fortifications,” in Architecture of the
Islamic World, ed. George Michell (New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc.,
1978), pp. 48–79: 79.
50 See Ansari, Modern Iran, p. 104.
51 “Anniversaire des funérailles de Reza Chah le Grand,” Le Journal de Téhéran
6534 (7 May 1957), p. 1; “Commémoration du décès de Reza Chah le Grand,”
Le Journal de Téhéran 8656 (28 July 1964), p. 2; Le Journal de Téhéran 8948
(27 July 1965), p. 2; “Un Glorieux Anniversaire,” Le Journal de Téhéran 9119
(22 Feb 1966), p. 2; “Commémoration du décès de Reza Chah le Grand,” Le Journal
de Téhéran 9544 (27 July 1967), p. 2; Ayandegan (5 Mordad 1347/27 July 1968);
and “La journée historique du ‘3 Esfand’: L’Iran se souvient de Reza Chah le
Grand,” Le Journal de Téhéran 11.840 (23 Feb 1975), p. 1.
52 “Commémoration du décès de Reza Chah le Grand,” Le Journal de Téhéran
9544 (27 July 1967), p. 2.
53 Ayandegan (26 Esfand 1346/16 March 1968).
54 Le Journal de Téhéran 8919 (21 July 1965), p. 1; and Ayandegan (15 Farvardin
1347/4 April 1968).
55 See Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions, p. 491.
56 Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern
Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), p. 302.
57 See, for example, Adolf Loos, “Ornament and Crime,” Programs and Manifestoes
on 20th-century Architecture, ed. Ulrich Conrads (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2001), pp. 19–24.
58 Wigley, White Walls, p. 180.
Part II
The Shah
State politics and authoritarian
modernization
6 Archaeology and the Iranian
National Museum
Qajar and early Pahlavi cultural policies*
Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam
On 18 October 1927, just two years after the accession of Reza Shah Pahlavi,
the French archaeological privilege in Iran that had been granted 43 years
earlier by Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, was abolished by a bilateral agreement.
This exclusive privilege, which had become “perpetual” in 1900 with a
renewed agreement signed by his successor Mozaffar al-Din Shah, had
allowed France to establish a beautiful collection of antiquities, exhibited in
the Louvre Museum. Nowadays, when we visit these antiquities, we wonder
in which context such an archaeological monopoly had been granted and
whether the Qajar monarchs, who signed it, had truly ignored the importance
of Iran’s heritage? Or whether by granting such a monopoly to carry out
excavations, maybe they also wanted their kingdom to benefit from its
cultural treasures by exhibiting a part of the discoveries belonging to Iran
in a National Museum of their own? In this regard, we wonder whether
an archaeological museum did exist at all in Iran during the Qajar period or
whether this institution had been created for the first time under Reza
Shah Pahlavi.
The abolition of the French archaeological monopoly is generally con-
sidered as a hallmark of the cultural nationalism of the Iranian government
during the reign of Reza Shah. However, if the purpose of this decision was to
end the grip of France on Iranian heritage, how can we explain the appoint-
ment of a French archaeologist, André Godard (1881–1965), as the head of
the General Antiquities Service of Iran (Edareh-ye Koll-e ‘Atiqat) and other
Iranian archaeological institutions for more than twenty years?
On the other hand, we know that Iran’s international policy under Reza
Shah was to look for a “third power” that could act as a counterweight to
British and Soviet pressure. To this end, Iran developed closer relations with
Germany. So, how did German archaeologists react to Godard’s nomination?
What did this French archaeologist accomplish for Persian heritage in accordance
with Reza Shah’s cultural policy?
These are the guiding questions to which this chapter tries to provide
answers in the binary context of cultural and foreign policy. For this, we will
first present briefly the history of French archaeology in Iran. Then, we will
examine the Iranian archaeological institutions before the rise of Reza Shah.
122 Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam
Finally, we will discuss the abolition of the French monopoly and its impact
on archaeology and archaeological institutions in Iran under the reign of
Reza Shah, with a particular focus on the cultural policies of the Iranian
government at that time.
A quick glance at the history of archaeology and the archaeological

institutions in Iran before the rise of Reza Shah
Archaeology and the French monopoly

Since the Renaissance, Western artists have been captivated by the mystery of
the great Oriental civilizations, and some ancient Persian sites mentioned in
Greek, Roman, and Biblical texts have attracted their attention. This fascination
was increasingly reinforced by European travellers who, for different reasons,
visited Iran between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries and described the
ancient sites in their travel accounts using illustrations and engravings.
Among these travellers, several of them brought ancient Persian objects –
results of commercial excavations carried out by the Iranians – to the West in
order to enrich their “cabinets of curiosities” or to sell them to collectors who
wanted to invest in Oriental art and archaeology.
This passion for the Orient in general and for Persia in particular is also
due to European romanticism, which in the eighteenth and the nineteenth
centuries led several Western writers, artists, and scientists to visit Persia. French
Orientalists, painters, archaeologists, and politicians such as Pascal-Xavier Coste
(1787–1879) and Eugène Flandin (1809–89) created and published beautiful
drawings of monuments and ancient Persian ruins in the first half of the
nineteenth century.1
Although these French explorers studied the western, northern, and central
parts of Persia thoroughly, the south-western areas of the country, with the
archaeological site of Susa and its 6000 years of history, escaped their attention.
It was explored for the first time in 1850 by the British geologist William Kennett
Loftus (1821–58).2 But the British scientific world, much more fascinated by the
archaeological discoveries in Mesopotamia, did not pay enough attention to
Loftus’ explorations. Thus, after a few years, he abandoned Susa and handed
it over to French archaeologists who, led by Marcel Dieulafoy (1844–1920),
carried out excavations there from 1884.3 These excavations were undertaken
in accordance with the first Franco-Persian archaeological convention, based
on the equitable sharing of discoveries, ratified in November 1884 by Naser
al-Din Shah Qajar, who had a passionate interest in art and archaeology.
Dieulafoy’s mission was brought to an end after only two years in 1886
because he had violated the convention and had taken all of his discoveries to
Paris.4 This violation interrupted the French archaeological activities at Susa
for almost ten years. Finally, on 12 May 1895, Naser al-Din Shah pardoned
Dieulafoy’s actions and signed a second archaeological convention with the
French government. This new document, still based on the equitable sharing
Archaeology and the Iranian National Museum 123
of discoveries, permitted France to carry out excavations and initiate digs all
over Iran. One year after signing this monopoly, on 1 May 1896, Naser
al-Din Shah was assassinated. This assassination again delayed the return of
French archaeologists to Iran. Finally, in 1897, instead of Dieulafoy’s mis-
sion, an archaeological delegation under Jacques de Morgan (1857–1924) was
sent to Iran. Received in audience on 19 October 1897 by the new monarch
Mozaffar al-Din Shah, Jacques de Morgan obtained a royal decree (farman)
endorsing the second Franco-Persian archaeological convention of 1895. But
Jacques de Morgan falsified the translation of this farman and violated the
archaeological convention as well by sending some of his discoveries secretly
to Paris in diplomatic bags or via the French consulate in Baghdad. Despite
his agreement with the Persian authorities to share excavated objects at the
end of each season, he stored the discoveries of his three excavation seasons in
Susa (1897–1900) in the castle built for this purpose and waited for a good
moment to transfer all of them to Paris.5 This chance arose earlier than
expected, when on 11 August 1900, Mozaffar al-Din Shah, travelling in France
at that time during his first tour to Europe, signed the third Franco-Persian
archaeological convention. This document made the French monopoly
perpetual and guaranteed France all of the discoveries from Susa, including
gold or silver artefacts for which the French delegation only had to pay the
equivalent of the respective metal weight to the Persian government. In
the rest of Iran, France could carry out excavations based on the principle of
equitable sharing of the discoveries. In 1901, counting on this third convention –
which was however not retroactive – Jacques de Morgan sent all the
archaeological discoveries excavated in Susa since 1897 to the Louvre.6
After the Constitutional Revolution in 1906, the French archaeological
privilege was threatened by a surge of national pride in Persia questioning the
exclusive role of foreigners, sentiments which were partly fanned by German
intrigues. The constitutionalists accused the French delegation of limiting
their excavations to Susa, where they were able to exercise exclusive control
and all discoveries belonged to the French government, instead of organizing
excavations also in other places. There of course, the French would have had
to share objects and discoveries equally. These criticisms had an indirect
impact on French archaeological activities in Persia. On the other hand,
between 1906 and 1908, Jacques de Morgan was involved in a financial
scandal in Paris. Although he was finally acquitted, he resigned in October 1912
and the delegation was abolished.7 Shortly thereafter, the French Organization
for Public Enlightenment sent several missions to Persia in order to explore
various archaeological sites in the four corners of the country and thus to
maintain the French monopoly. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914
prevented these missions from succeeding in their task. The War interrupted
all the French archaeological activities in Persia, and it was only after 1920
that Roland de Mecquenem, who succeeded Jacques de Morgan as head of
the archaeological mission at Susa, restarted the French excavations in this
region with reduced funding.
After the coup d’état by Reza Khan on 21 February 1921, the French
archaeological monopoly was increasingly threatened. In 1924, when Reza
Khan, then prime minister and commander-in-chief of the army, personally
led a military campaign into Khuzestan against Sheykh Khaz’al, he also visited
Susa, and to his great dismay learned about the French archaeological
monopoly. Only three years after this visit, on 18 October 1927, the French
monopoly was abolished. But before approaching this issue, let us re-examine
the history of two institutions in Iran dealing with excavations, archaeology, and
artefacts under Qajar rule, especially at the time of the French archaeological
monopoly: the Antiquities Service and the Archaeological Museum. Crucial
for an understanding of Pahlavi politics in the field of antiquities and
archaeology, however, are other institutions that were already established,
albeit in a different form, under Qajar rule. Amongst these are the Antiquities
Service, the forerunner of the present-day Sazman-e Miras-e Farhangi, and the
precursors to the National Archaeological Museum of Iran, usually considered
to have been an original invention of Reza Shah.
The Antiquities Service (Edareh-ye ‘Atiqat)

The Ministry of Sciences (Vezarat-e ‘Olum) was created in Iran as far back as
the summer of 1866, during the reign of Naser al-Din Shah. However, only
after the Constitutional Revolution this ministry was reshaped and now also
included the management of national antiquities amongst its responsibilities. In
March 1907, when the Council of Ministers was presented for the first time to
the National Consultative Assembly (Majles-e Shura-ye Melli), the Ministry of
Education (Vezarat-e Ma‘aref va Owqaf va Sanaye‘-e Mostazrafeh) consisted
of six administrative sections, including one responsible for archaeological
excavations and another for ancient monuments.8 The exact functions and
activities of these two sections are not entirely clear due to a lack of detailed
sources, but we can imagine that during the period of “minor despotism”
under Mohammad ‘Ali Shah (1907–9), when the country was experiencing
major disorder, not only was the question of antiquities not on the agenda,
but these two sections, like many others, were closed by the Shah. It was
therefore only after the second victory of the constitutionalists, in July 1909, that
the nationalist revolutionaries turned their attention towards Iran’s heritage.
With this in mind, in 1910, the Antiquities Service (Edareh-ye ‘Atiqat) was
created for the first time in Iran.9 Most studies concerned with the history of
Persian archaeological institutions report incorrectly that this service was
founded in 1918.10 However, a ministerial order from 11 May 1910, preserved
in the archives of the Cultural Heritage Organization in Tehran, reveals that
exactly at that time, Sani‘ al-Dowleh,11 the minister of education, established
the Antiquities Service under the direction of the Persian poet Iraj Mirza
Jalal al-Mamalek with the task of managing everything concerning antiquities
and excavations as well as the art market.12 Iraj Mirza placed both sections,
archaeological excavations and ancient monuments, under his authority and
already in July 1910 had expanded his scope of action by setting up branches
of the Antiquities Service in the provinces. Consequently, the Antiquities
Service, located in the building of Dar al-Fonun in Tehran, formally took
the title of Central Antiquities Service (Edareh-ye Markazi-e ‘Atiqat) with the
following functions and goals:
taxation of antiquities excavated on private lands

prohibition of illegal excavations
formalization and permanent control of commercial excavations
regularization of all cases of excavated objects by adopting the antiquity
law of the National Consultative Assembly.13
In June 1910, the Central Antiquities Service wrote a draft law of six articles
and sent it to the National Consultative Assembly to be adopted as the
Antiquities Law. The Assembly transferred the text to the commission of
public instruction, which after writing several amendments, presented it again
to the Assembly on 5 January 1911, now comprising eleven articles under
the title “bill on antiquities” (qanun-e ‘atiqat). Although this text did not run
counter to the French archaeological monopoly, it was removed by the
Council of Ministers on 13 April 1911 after the Legation of France inter-
vened and asked for the Franco–Persian archaeological convention of 1900 to
be taken into account.14
After two months, while the convention and the proposed bill on antiquities
were reviewed in the Council of Ministers, the National Consultative Assembly
again discussed this project, from 15 June 1911 onwards. The protocols of this
reading, which took place in five sessions, inform us about the views of the
deputies at that time with regard to objects found during excavations in Iran.
We can distinguish three different groups:
The ‘olama’ considered all archaeological discoveries found on private

land as treasure (kanz) that belonged to the owner and upon which the
state had no rights. Thus, according to the ‘olama’, it was not necessary to
establish the Antiquities Law in order to control excavations on private
property or to tax discoveries found on private land.
The merchants opted for the adaptation of the Antiquities Law, but
were hostile to a huge tax on antiquities so that excavators could continue
their work.
For intellectuals and scholars the ratification of the Antiquities Law was of
primordial importance. They were also the proponents of a tax on exca-
vations as well as on the purchase and sale of antiques. Moreover, they
envisioned the creation of a National Museum in order to preserve Persian
antiquities.15
On 17 June 1911, after the first reading of the bill on antiquities, the majority
of the deputies voted for this project. However, it was never applied, and was
de facto forgotten. With no law on excavated objects and with only one non-
ratified law, the administration headed by Iraj Mirza, which since September
1910 was named the General Antiquities Service (Edareh-ye Koll-e ‘Atiqat),
could neither forbid clandestine excavations nor tax antiquities in the art
market. All this led to the dissolution of the General Antiquities Service on
8 October 1911, only eighteen months after its establishment.16
As a consequence, taxation of the antiquities market and the process of
formalizing Iranian commercial excavations were suspended. According to
the administrative law of the Ministry of Education, the Sciences Service
(Edareh-ye Ma‘aref) henceforth looked after the affairs of antiquities in the
country for a period of approximately one year. During that time, the most
important event was the attempt of the Ministry of Education to try to
modify the French Archaeological monopoly.17
This attempt, although it did not succeed, further threatened the
French archaeological interests in Iran and lead Jacques de Morgan in
October 1911 to prepare a text in which he proposed the modifications
relative to the Convention of 1900. He wrote this text entitled “Projet de
Convention et Observation” for possible negotiations with the Iranian gov-
ernment. In this draft, which was never implemented, he both stated and
limited in geographical terms the excavations of the French delegation, while
protecting the absolute archaeological interests of France for a period of
99 years. However, given the circumstances of that time, it became clear that
the Persian authorities would not be satisfied with small changes. This is clear
from the fact that in October 1912 the Iranian Ministry of Education set up
a “Commission of Excavations” in order to reconsider the French archae-
ological monopoly and present modifications on the Franco-Persian conven-
tion of 1900.18 Thus, after long negotiations, on 7 December 1912, the
Commission drew up an amended text consisting of a preamble and twelve
articles. According to this draft, the original of which is kept in the Iranian
National Archives, the right to conduct archaeological excavations through-
out Iran was granted to France for a period of fifty years, subject to the
sharing of discoveries including those of Susa. In return for this privilege,
the French government would undertake to help Iran in the construction of
an archaeological museum in Tehran.19
In December 1912, the Iranian Ministry of Education sent a copy of this
modified project to the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to share it
with the French authorities, through the mediation of Samad Khan Momtaz
al-Saltaneh, then Persian plenipotentiary minister in Paris.20 However, no
trace of this document can be found in the French archives. We are therefore
unaware of the ultimate outcome of these efforts from both sides before the
First World War to reconsider and possibly modify the French archaeological
privilege. We only know that in May 1913, the Persian government took up
the idea to modify the French monopoly and hired a Belgian architect to
prepare a proposal for the reorganization of archaeological excavations
in Iran. However, following protests from the French Legation in Tehran, this
decision was cancelled and the idea of modifications of the archaeological
monopoly again came to naught.21
On 23 April 1914, Hakim al-Molk,22 then minister of education, sent a
request to the Council of Ministers asking to re-establish the Antiquities Service.
He briefly mentioned the history of the creation of the Antiquities Service
four years earlier, the success of this organization during its 18 months in
operation, and finally its discontinuation because of a lack of an antiquities
law. Hakim al-Molk concluded his letter by wishing that this Service would
be restored and that the draft Antiquities Law, suspended for several years in
the National Consultative Assembly, would be adopted.23
Hakim al-Molk’s request was welcomed by the Council of Ministers and
the Antiquities Service was re-established during the summer of 1914 under
the direction of Hoseyn Khan Amini, who replaced Iraj Mirza.24 Despite the
re-establishment of the Antiquities Service, the bill remained un-ratified and
the Service was forced to make do with its internal regulation to manage the
affairs of the country’s antiquities.
The Archaeological Museum

In France, on 27 July 1793, four years after the French Revolution, the Louvre
under the name “Museum of Arts” became the first European National
Museum.25 In Persia, about a century later, in 1876, the first Royal Museum
was created by order of Naser al-Din Shah in his Golestan Palace in Tehran.26
This creation, in the second half of the nineteenth century, shows the interest
of this sovereign in the Iranian heritage. After his second trip to Europe
(May–July 1878), Naser al-Din Shah, who was fascinated by the grandeur of
European museums, charged his brother-in-law Mirza Yahya Khan
Mo’tamed al-Molk, then minister of construction (vazir-e bana’i), to renovate
the Royal Museum.27 So, after about three years of work, the new building
was opened in 1881, still in the Golestan Palace, but in a space much larger
than the former one.28
The new premises of the Museum were so lavish and sumptuous that it was
often used for formal audiences. This is the reason why it was also called
talar-e salam (“hall of audiences”).29 Thus, the representatives of foreign
countries in Tehran, when they were received in audience by Naser al-Din Shah,
had the chance to visit the Royal Museum, of which the king was very proud.
We may mention Samuel Green Wheeler Benjamin, the envoy of the United
States in Tehran during the years 1883–85, who described the Museum as
follows:
The most imposing portion of the palace of Nasr-ed-Deen Shah is the

grand audience-chamber, which in dimensions and splendour of effect is one
of the most imposing halls in the world. The ceiling and mural decorations
are of stucco, but so were those in the Alhambra. The floor is paved with
beautiful glazed tiles, arranged in the most exquisite mosaic. In the centre
of the hall is a large table overlaid with beaten gold, and a long row of
arm-chairs are massively splendid with the same costly material covering
every inch of space.30
The following passage from Briton George Nathaniel Curzon’s famous

work on Persia shows that various items were displayed in this Royal
Museum:
[The] new Museum, a great hall or gallery, … to contain not only the
Royal Regalia, but also the vast collection of “objets d’art” and curios-
ities, which the generosity of foreign crowned heads, or his own whims,
have enabled him to amass during a reign of over forty years. This
extraordinary chamber, which with its contents alternately resembles an
Aladdin’s palace, an old curiosity shop, a prince’s wardrobe, and a
municipal museum … in which are displayed, side by side, treasures of
priceless value and the most unutterable rubbish.31
Under Mozaffar al-Din Shah’s reign the Royal Museum also contained
objects, often of poor quality, bought by the Shah during his travels in
Europe. In other words, the Royal Museum played the role of an exhibition
gallery of Western objects, as Claude Anet wrote in 1905 in his travel
account.32 Although Mozaffar al-Din Shah was less interested in archaeology
than his father, the first talks concerning the creation of a national archae-
ological museum in Tehran date back to the beginning of his reign. In
October 1897, when Jacques de Morgan was received in audience, he pro-
posed to the Shah the creation of a National Archaeological Museum in
Tehran. In fact, he very much feared “to see the Persians sell their share of
the antiquities” and wanted to preserve these objects and prevent them from
being removed; especially, because he considered the idea that France could
easily preserve its archaeological interests in Persia in the future by nominating
a Frenchman as a director of such a new museum.33 However, after a
short period, when the first three excavation seasons had led to remarkable
results, he no longer supported the creation of an archaeological museum
in Tehran and instead sought to safeguard all his discoveries for France.
Therefore, despite the Shah’s persistence in building this museum, French
diplomacy took advantage of the pro-French disposition of the Persian prime
minister Amin al-Soltan, who succeeded in making the Shah abandon his
project.34
As the diplomatic archives of the Quai d’Orsay reveal, the minister of
France in Tehran, disturbed by the surge of national pride in Iran in the
wake of the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, believed that the creation of a
small museum in Tehran that might keep and display those parts of the
excavations that could not be stored in the Louvre would be an excellent way
to ensure the French archaeological privilege.35 But Jacques de Morgan, who
considered this revolution “on the whole, only a farce,”36 was not at all
favourable to this idea:
… créer un musée à Téhéran et y mettre une partie de nos découvertes,

serait de faire renoncer à notre monopole exclusif. Ce serait ouvrir la
porte aux demandes du Chah et des Persans et faire naître de ce fait des
difficultés qui forcément tôt ou tard amoindriraient nos droits.37
The idea to create a National Archaeological Museum in Tehran, delayed

because of French interests, was taken up again in 1910 with the establishment
of the Antiquities Service. This service confiscated objects from illegal excava-
tions and sent them to the Department of Education in order to be preserved
in the museum that this service intended to build in the near future. The dis-
continuation of the Antiquities Service postponed this project once again for
several years. But in March 1917, thanks to the efforts of the minister of
education, Momtaz al-Molk,38 the first National Museum (Muzeh-ye melli-ye
Iran) was finally inaugurated in the building of this ministry situated to the
north of the Dar al-Fonun.39
Three hundred antique objects were preserved and exhibited in this museum,
which according to its statutes was open three days per week: Sunday,
Wednesday, and Friday.40 The catalogue of the museum, probably written by
Momtaz al-Molk, reveals the level of knowledge the curators had about the
antiquities in their possession: except for the weight of objects and their
source, no further information was given. In this catalogue, which was only an
inventory of the objects, neither dimensions nor ornaments were mentioned.
Moreover, the fact that inscriptions were left without being deciphered shows
the ignorance or rather the incompetence of the curators. Nevertheless, we
must not forget that the National Museum was the first of its kind and its
beautiful collection later on became the basic foundation to the Iran Bastan
Museum, which was inaugurated in 1937 in Tehran.
Archaeology and archaeological institutions in Iran under Reza Shah
The abolition of the monopoly and its consequences

The creation of the National Museum in Tehran in March 1917 by Morteza
Khan Momtaz al-Molk indirectly threatened the French monopoly. The Persian
authorities, who wished to enrich this museum, insisted strongly that the mono-
poly should not be confined only to Susa, where all discoveries belonged to
France, but that French archaeologists should excavate in other regions as well,
where the discovered objects would be shared equally between the two countries.
Almost one year after the coup d’état of 21 February 1921, led by Seyyed
Ziya’ al-Din Tabataba’i and Reza Khan, according to the official records of the
Pahlavi era, a few “intensely patriotic” men like Zoka’ al-Molk (Mohammad
‘Ali Forughi), Hakim al-Molk (Ebrahim Hakimi), and Moshir al-Dowleh
(Hasan Pirniya) gathered and “spontaneously” formed a “cultural group”
called the Society for National Heritage (Anjoman-e asar-e melli). Its aim was
to “preserve, protect and promote Iran’s patrimony.”41 To achieve this goal,
the Society concentrated its efforts in three fields: establishing a museum and
a library in Tehran; ensuring the proper registration of all artefacts and
monuments that were in need of protection as national heritage; preparing
correct records of all antiquities in possession of the government and national
organizations.42
The Society for National Heritage also organized conferences and invited
scholars, most notably among them the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld
(1879–1948) and the American art historian Arthur Upham Pope (1881–1969),
who gave various lectures for the Society. For example, in his presentation on
13 August 1925, which he delivered in French, Herzfeld outlined the impor-
tance of preserving historical monuments and their significance for the identity
of a nation, and he concluded:
Those who consider preserving national remains should also take into
account the question of excavations and discovery of antiquities, because
important historical documents and fine treasures of antiquities are buried
beneath the Iranian soil. Arrangements for excavations should therefore
complement the preservation of national heritage, and the ensuing results
should be exhibited in a National Museum to encourage public interest,
so that Iranians can take advantage of them in their present technological
development in order to revive and appreciate their civilization.43
As for Arthur Upham Pope, on 22 April 1925 he gave a lecture on “The Past
and Future of Persian Art.” The lecture was in English, translated into Persian
for a large audience, including Reza Khan and some members of the
government, the Parliament and the Society for National Heritage. Pope pre-
sented a survey of Iranian art from the Achaemenid to Sasanian and Islamic
times, and stressed the cultural, artistic, and spiritual contribution of Iran to
world civilization.44 During this lengthy speech, Pope conveyed several poli-
tically current themes and concluded his speech with this phrase: “Art is a
vital necessity of life for the Nation. … The government and the people
together must do everything possible to bring art again to life in Persia.”45
Thus, the speeches given by Herzfeld and Pope, who were both against the
French monopoly and actively present in Iran, more and more promoted the
idea among the Persian elites that the monopoly should be abolished. Under
these circumstances, the monopoly issue came up for discussion in the Iranian
Parliament (Majles), where Hoseyn ‘Ala’ and Mohammad ‘Ali Forughi
argued that the Majles had every right to withdraw concessionary privileges if
they had not been fully exploited.46 A few months after this parliamentary
debate, the formal end of the Qajar dynasty in December 1925 and the
accession of the nationalist Reza Shah, who tried to abolish all concessions
granted under the Qajars, threatened the French monopoly even further. How
did the French diplomacy respond to this situation? Official records in French
Archives reveal that the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Public
Instruction were prepared to make some sort of compromise that would
salvage at least parts of their archaeological privilege.47
By the end of 1926, Ernst Herzfeld was acting as archaeological adviser to
the Iranian government. The government officially employed him to work as
“a specialist in Oriental Studies” for three years with an annual income of
72.000 rials (then approximately £1500). As archaeological adviser, Herzfeld
requested strict controls over all antiquities to be sent abroad, including
objects discovered by the French mission at Susa. Roland de Mecquenem,
director of this mission, complained about these measures.48
Early in 1927, the Iranians appeared on the verge of appointing Herzfeld as
Director of the Antiquities Service. The French minister in Tehran, Gaston
Maugras, intervened at the last moment to thwart Herzfeld’s appointment.
He told the court minister ‘Abdolhoseyn Teymurtash that the nomination of a
German in this position could well end all hope of revising the archaeological
monopoly. Teymurtash, who valued Herzfeld’s presence in Iran as a very
strong weapon to get rid of the French monopoly, offered Maugras a way
out of the impasse: Iran would be prepared to accept a French national as
Director of the Antiquities Service in return for ending the monopoly.
Maugras strongly advised his government to accept the proposal.49
Finally, after long negotiations between the French and Iranian authorities,
Mohammad Tadayyon,50 Iranian minister of education, and Paul Ballereau,51
the French chargé d’affaires, in Tehran, signed an agreement on 18 October
1927. The French government gave up the monopoly over all excavations in
Iran which had been granted to them through the convention of 1900,
restricting it to the region of Susa where it would also be subject to the sharing of
discoveries. In return, the Persian government agreed to hire a specialist, to be
proposed by the French government, to act as Director of the Antiquities
Service, as well as of the library and the museum, which would be established
under his responsibility. This expert should carry out his duties for a period of
at least twenty years under the authority of the responsible Iranian minister.52
Shortly after the abolition of the monopoly, Herzfeld, who had not been
able to obtain the position as Director of the Persian Antiquities Service,
made plans to excavate at Pasargadae in April 1928. Accompanied by Friedrich
Krefter, a young architect from Berlin, he set out for Fars. The exploration
lasted 28 days, after which they went to Persepolis. But in the absence of any
concrete regulations, excavations at Persepolis could not be carried out. Thus,
in his capacity as archaeological adviser, Herzfeld’s first task was to convince
the Iranian government to accept and approve a general law regulating exca-
vation procedures, and then to apply such a law to the site of Persepolis. Soon
he prepared a draft law and passed it on to the court minister Teymurtash.
The latter ordered the minister of education, at that time Yahya Qaragozlu
(E’temad al-Dowleh), to prepare a text based on this draft and to present it
to the Parliament. Qaragozlu formed a committee with several high-ranking
Persian officials and European scholars, including Herzfeld, Pope, and André
Godard, a French expert who had just arrived in Iran in order to serve as General
Director of Antiquities.53 This committee prepared a draft law consisting of
twenty articles, which was ratified on 3 November 1930 by the National Con-
sultative Assembly. According to this law, which in parts was a translation of the
respective Austrian law, the Iranian government became for the first time
responsible for the conservation and preservation of all antique objects up to
the end of the Zand dynasty (1750–94). With regard to the importance of this
first law on antiquities, which is still valid in Iran, its complete translation is
given in the appendix.
The enthusiasm of members of the Persian elite for the conservation of
their cultural heritage certainly played a considerable role in its protection.
However, to protect and, more particularly, to repair the ancient monuments,
first funds and second capable artisans and adequate building materials were
needed. Mere expression of anguish and care did not protect these monu-
ments against wind, rain, and sunlight. In the budget of the Ministry of
Education, no provision at all had been made for the restoration of historical
monuments. Only in Article 9 of the Law of Foundations (owqaf), which had
been ratified in 1925, the amount of one twentieth of the revenue had been
allocated as supervision right (haqq al-nezareh) to repair historical monu-
ments and to renovate madrasas and shrines. This meagre sum could not
meet the needs for conservation and restoration.54
The abolition of the monopoly and the ratification of the first Antiquities
Law opened the doors of ancient Persian sites to all foreign archaeologists,
who for years had tried to obtain official permissions to carry out excavations.
Thus, throughout the reign of Reza Shah, in addition to France, which continued
its archaeological mission at Susa under Roland Mecquenem,55 other countries,
especially the United States, launched archaeological excavations all over
Iran. Among these missions, the Oriental Institute excavations at Persepolis
led by Ernst Herzfeld from 1931 to 1934 and by Erich Friedrich Schmidt
from 1935 to 1939 proved to be of particular significance in promoting nation-
alist feelings in Iran. Reza Shah was a strong supporter of these excavations.
He visited Persepolis for the first time as minister of war in 1922 – when he
escorted Ahmad Shah into exile to his ship at Bushehr – and he was shocked
by the deplorable state of the Achaemenid palaces. During his second visit in
1928, when he saw the Persepolis buildings, he was moved by “the glory of
ancient Iranian monarchs” with their “colossal monuments” and delighted to
learn that “such great kings have ruled Iran and left these magnificent
remains.” After the beginning of the excavations at Persepolis, Reza Shah,
who had already made the acquaintance of Herzfeld, ardently supported his
work at the site and personally ensured that the project would run smoothly.
In his third visit to the site in 1932, he told Herzfeld: “You are doing a work
of civilization here, and I thank you.” In his fourth and last visit to Persepolis
in March 1937, Reza Shah praised the work already accomplished and
encouraged Erich Schmidt to work faster to clear the entire platform.56
Other excavations carried out by foreign missions in Iran during Reza
Shah’s reign can be presented briefly in this way:
Three expeditions sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania: at Turang

Tappeh from 1931 to 1932 under Frederick R. Wulsin; Tappeh Hessar from
1931 to 1932; and Ray from 1934 to 1936, both under Erich F. Schmidt.
Under the auspices of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago,
Schmidt also dug at Istakhr from 1935 to 1939, carried out the first aerial
reconnaissance in western Iran from 1935 to 1937, and led one of the first
expeditions to Lurestan in 1934–35 and 1937–38.
The Oriental Institute in 1932 also sponsored excavations at Tall-e Bakun
(only briefly explored by Herzfeld in 1928) under Alexander Langsdorff.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art sponsored excavations at Qasr-e Abu
Nasr in 1932 and 1933–34 under J. M. Upton. Furthermore, Aurel Stein
conducted extensive surveys and some test excavations in southern and
western Iran from 1932 to 1936.
The Sino-Swedish expedition excavated at Shah Tappeh in 1933 under
T. J. Arne.
The French also expanded their activities by digging at Tappeh Giyan
from 1931 to 1933 under Georges Contenau and Roman Ghirshman;
Tappeh Sialk from 1933 to 1937 under Ghirshman; and Bishapur from
1935 to 1937 under Georges Salles and Ghirshman.57
All these missions were carried out in cooperation with the Iranian Antiquities
Service, which had been under the direction of a French expert since 1928.
Let us explore who this expert was, how he had been chosen, and what he did
as director of the Service.
André Godard at the head of Persian Antiquities and his competitors

Considering the political situation in Iran between the two world wars,
the outcome of the negotiations of 1927 was a kind of victory for France
which, against the growing influence of Germany, managed to keep its exca-
vations at Susa and to have a French national hired as Director of Persian
Antiquities. Why was it so important to hold this position? Maybe it is better
to answer this question by quoting parts of a message that the French
minister of foreign affairs sent to his colleague, the French minister of public
instruction in Paris:
J’estime, comme M. Gaston Maugras, que la seule possibilité qui s’offre à

nous de maintenir une partie de notre position traditionnelle sur le
terrain archéologique consiste à revendiquer la direction des Service
archéologiques et des fouilles pour un de nos compatriotes, en permettant
aux autres nations d’entreprendre des recherches sous son autorité et son
contrôle.58
So the directorship of the Persian Antiquities Service was important for
France because of the control it guaranteed over all archaeological activities
in Iran. And it was for this reason that the French Foreign Ministry, in its
negotiations with the Iranian government, insisted that the latter hired the
French expert for a period of 20 years. The Iranian government accepted, and
on 29 April 1928, the National Assembly in Iran voted for a bill authorizing
the employment of a Frenchman for the management of the Persian Anti-
quities.59 Then, in the same year, André Godard went to Persia to take up this
position.60 He had studied architecture at the School of Beaux-Arts in Paris,
then led an archaeological expedition in Mesopotamia from February to
December 1910. Due to the insistence of the Ottoman authorities, Godard
had remained in Baghdad to work (1910–12) as the head of the city’s
Architecture Department. Ten years later, in December 1922, André Godard
and his wife, Yedda Reuilly (1889–1977), a painter in watercolours and
graduate of the National School of Oriental Languages, were attached to the
French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (DAFA), where between
February and November 1923 they had, among other things, made plans of
caves and copied their rock drawings.
André Godard was the only candidate for the position of Director of
Persian Antiquities whose experience in the fields of Islamic art and Oriental
antiquities allowed him to endear himself to the Iranian authorities and keep up
with his German rival, Ernst Herzfeld. Herzfeld had worked as “a specialist in
Oriental studies” for three years (1927–30) and had hoped to be appointed as
the head of Persian Antiquities. But the negotiations between the Iranian and
the French governments in the context of the abolishment of the monopoly
did not allow him to achieve his goal. The great rival of Godard did not stay
long in Iran because in November 1934, when the Crown Prince of Sweden,
the later Gustav VI (r. 1955–73), and his wife unofficially visited Persepolis,
Herzfeld, without any permission from the Iranian authorities, offered them two
sculptured fragments of a Persian Immortal belonging to the eastern stairway of
the Apadana and the Central Palace. Both fragments are now in the Museum
of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm. Such a gift
was not appreciated by the Iranian government, which firmly refused the
continuation of Herzfeld’s excavations at Persepolis.61 Thus, in 1935, he was
replaced by another German archaeologist, recently naturalized as American,
Erich F. Schmidt, as field director of expeditions at Persepolis. Arthur Upham
Pope played a considerable role in his nomination. The latter was another
important rival of Godard. Among the foreign scholars who worked in Iran
during the Pahlavi era, Pope was perhaps the most influential in promoting
Iranian nationalism. From the 1920s until his death in 1969, this American
educator, author, and ardent advocate of Persian art and architecture introduced
and promoted Persian art and culture through publications, exhibitions,
congresses, lectures, and graduate-level courses. He made his first trip to Iran in
1925. Three years later, he established the American Institute for Persian (later
Iranian) Art and Archaeology in New York City. The Institute sponsored
several archaeological expeditions to Iran and a series of nine architectural
surveys from 1929 to 1939, which primarily focused on recording and pho-
tographing pre-Islamic and Islamic monuments.62 Pope’s best-known work, A
Survey of Persian Art, appeared in 1938–39. It was a massive six-volume
edition that consisted of 2817 lavishly printed pages of text (115 chapters in
69 sections), almost 1500 plates of 3500 photographs, 193 colour plates, and
1966 text illustrations. Most of the leading scholars of the day contributed to this
monumental work, which was composed by 72 contributors from 16 different
countries.63 Arthur Upham Pope was a charismatic, yet controversial figure.
He developed a close friendship with the Pahlavi family, and together with
his wife, Phyllis Ackerman (1893–1977), served as adviser on and dealer of
Iranian art for many museums and private collections.64
Godard’s nomination in 1928 in some way realized Jacques de Morgan’s
hopes. Thirty years earlier, in 1898, he had predicted that with the establishment
of a museum in Tehran under French leadership, the archaeological interests
of France in Persia would be protected.65 Thus, it was in this context that
André Godard directed the Persian Antiquities Service from 1928 to 1960, to
be renamed in June 1937 as the General Service of Archaeology (Edareh-ye
Koll-e Bastanshenasi).66 Several examples demonstrate this perspective very
clearly: after the discovery of bronzes in Luristan in 1928, Godard not only
formed a collection for the Iranian National Museum, but also brought together
a set that was acquired by the Louvre and by individuals, including David
Weill, the Parisian collector.67 Furthermore, in 1933, based on information
from Godard, Roman Ghirshman excavated over three seasons at Tepe Sialk,
which produced remarkable results.68
As the director of the General Service of Archaeology, Godard concentrated
his efforts on the task of systematically recording and preserving the country’s
ancient monuments. This was somehow a continuation of the first steps taken
by Herzfeld in this field. He also initiated the publication of Athar-e Iran:
Annales du Service Archéologique de l’Iran, published twice yearly in French
from 1936 to 1949 (with interruptions between 1938 and 1949). Some fas-
cicles were entirely devoted to pioneering studies on one topic. Each issue also
came out in a Persian edition with a translation of the French text.69 But
probably the most important accomplishment that marks Godard’s contribution
to Iranian archaeology is the construction of the archaeological museum in
Tehran, the Muzeh-ye Iran Bastan.
The Creation of the Iran Bastan Museum

On 11 May 1934, André Godard was officially asked to prepare the necessary
plans for the construction of the new archaeological museum in Tehran. This
formal request stipulated that the architectural design of the museum should
be consistent with the history of ancient Persia and Persian civilization and
culture.70 Therefore, André Godard collaborated with his friend Maxime
Siroux, an architect who had graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts in
Paris, in order to propose a plan inspired by Sassanid architecture.71 More
precisely, the pediment of the museum was modelled on the famous Taq-e
Kasra in Ctesiphon and the red burgundy colour, typical of Sasanian
architecture, was chosen for the facade of the museum building. This plan
was accepted by the Iranian authorities, in particular the Shah. It seems
that Arthur Pope played a decisive role in choosing the Sasanian front of
the Museum. Pope’s influence on Reza Shah Pahlavi resulted also in the con-
struction of other new buildings such as Qasr-e Marmar (the “Marble Palace”)
in Tehran with a tiled dome in the style of Esfahan’s Sheykh Lotfollah Mosque,
and the main office of Bank-e Melli-ye Iran (the “National Bank of Iran”)
and Tehran’s police headquarters in Achaemenid style.72
Once the plan was accepted, the museum was built on a terrain of 5500 m².
The work took about three years (1934–37) to be completed. The inauguration
of this building, which was named Muzeh-ye Iran Bastan, was held in 1937.73
It is interesting to know that in the same year, Reza Shah visited Susa for the
third time and that this visit provided the opportunity for a royal outburst
against the rapaciousness of the French “thieves” who had taken all the
treasures to the Louvre and left Iran only the cement. He had long known
about this “thievery” of course, but his words seemed carefully chosen at this
time to signal his overall displeasure to Paris.74 For several reasons, relations
between France and Iran cooled down at that particular time: according to
the French, it was the result of Tehran’s rapprochement with Nazi Germany.
But, in reality, it was rather the Franco-Soviet pact from May 1935 and the
Front Populaire taking office in France in June 1936 that frightened Reza
Shah, who already saw Bolshevism dominate the French Republic.75 In
addition, Reza Shah was angry with France because French newspapers had
criticized him and his kingdom severely for two years. A first critical article
on Iran, published in November 1936 in the Revue de France, described
the country as dirty and miserable and wished for Iran to become colonized
or turned into a protectorate. Another article, written by A. Montgon in
Le Petit Bleu, dated 21 January 1937, criticized Reza Shah as follows: “Ce
souverain qui se targue d’être moderne ne voudra pas qu’il soit dit que si l’on
gratte le chah on trouve le cosaque”.76 Following these criticisms, despite the
efforts of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an apology and the
publication of flattering articles, Reza Shah recalled the Iranian ambassador
from Paris. Diplomatic relations were thus interrupted for several months in
1938–39. Iranian students holding scholarships in France were recalled and
running contracts with France were stalled. Despite these firm decisions taken
by the Iranian government, André Godard’s contract was not cancelled and
he could continue to exercise his functions and to organize the new museum,
created despite the economic difficulties of the Iranian government.
The Iran Bastan soon became the principal Iranian archaeological
museum. The antiquities that were previously stored in the former National
Museum, created by Momtaz al-Molk in 1917, were transferred to this
new museum where up to the present day both excavated objects from the
ancient periods of Iranian history and art works from the Islamic period are
on display.
After the creation of Muzeh-ye Iran Bastan, perhaps one of the most
significant developments in Iranian archaeology during the reign of Reza Shah
was the establishment of the Department of Archaeology at Tehran University
in 1937. We were unable to find any detailed information concerning the rela-
tionship between this new department and the General Service of Archaeology.
We only know that André Godard was influential in setting up the teaching
program of this department and also that of the Faculty of Fine Arts. Students
who graduated from the Department of Archaeology collaborated with the
General Service of Archaeology. The first student to graduate in 1941 from
this department was Fereydun Tavallali (1919–85) who went on to pursue his
career in archaeology in Fars, which included the first series of excavations at
Malian (46 km north of Shiraz) – although he is better known for his literary
works. Among the early instructors at the Department of Archaeology were
also two scholars who played important roles in promoting Iranian nationalism:
Mohammad Sadeq Kiya and Ebrahim Purdavud.77
After World War II, Mohammad-Taqi Mostafavi, Godard’s assistant,
became Director of the Archaeological Service of Iran, while Godard became
Director General. Godard’s reputation was, however, soon diminished by
rumours about his involvement in the illegal trade in antiquities, especially in
the most scandalous “Ziviyeh affair.”78 He finally retired, and in 1960 left
Iran for good. He died five years later in Paris.79
Conclusion
During the second half of the nineteenth century, in an atmosphere of intense
rivalry between the great Western museums who were obsessively concerned
with access to and control over Oriental antiques, France prevailed over its
competitors by obtaining an archaeological monopoly in Persia. The two Qajar
Shahs who had granted this privilege hoped this would benefit their kingdom
with half of all archaeological discoveries being exhibited in a national
museum. Contrary to accepted wisdom, they received no money and they
did not grant this privilege as a concession; they signed the archaeological
conventions based on the allocation of equal shares of discoveries. Never-
theless, as we saw in this chapter, the mission led by Marcel Dieulafoy and the
delegation led by Jacques de Morgan, each in its own way, violated the terms
of this sharing agreement and brought all the discoveries to France. It is true
that the excavations carried out by the French missions and the studies later
accomplished on these discoveries significantly clarified the past of both historic
and prehistoric Persia and brought about a growing interest in this country.
However, as the price for this knowledge, Iran was deprived of a part of its
heritage for the benefit of the Louvre and other great French national museums.
In other words, a historical and national identity was revealed, but it was
removed, housed, and exhibited far away from its original place.
Administratively, the French monopoly delayed the creation of archaeological
organizations such as the National Museum and the Antiquities Service in Iran.
However, again, contrary to accepted wisdom, the creation of these organi-
zations does not date from the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi, because as we saw
in this chapter, they were established for the first time in Iran shortly after the
Constitutional Revolution of 1906 to protect the country’s heritage. Never-
theless, these efforts were of a fleeting nature for several reasons, including the
lack of a legal basis and funding, which prevented them from reaching their
goal. It was necessary to wait until 1925 and the rise of Reza Shah who two years
after his accession, in October 1927, abolished the French monopoly. Thus, the
new monarch plucked the fruit of a process that had already begun with the
end of the reign of the last Qajars. But this reality was never mentioned, or
even taken into consideration, in almost all of the studies concerning the
history of archaeology in Iran. Actually, because it was official Pahlavi policy
to downplay and besmirch the image of Qajar rule, the history of archaeology
and archaeological institutions in Iran were also targeted by this policy.
The abolition of the French monopoly, the ratification of the Antiquities
Law in 1930, and the measures taken thereafter opened up new horizons for
Persian antiquities, the art market, and the foreign archaeological missions
in Persia. However, we should remember that Reza Shah, who consolidated
his power by drawing on rising nationalist feelings in Iran, sparked already by
the Constitutional Revolution, was also surrounded by several patriotic intel-
lectuals who initiated the protection of Iran’s heritage with and through the
creation of the Society for National Heritage. Some of these intellectuals,
such as Hasan Pirniya Moshir al-Dowleh or Mohammad-‘Ali Forughi Zoka’
al-Molk, actually profiting from the archaeological studies conducted by the
French missions, have written substantial and memorable books on the history
of Iran and clarified considerably the ancient period of Persian culture. These
history books served as textbooks at high school level and in universities for
the next decades.
The French archaeological works in Iran enabled the Iranians to rediscover
their history, which up to that point had been interspersed with myths and
legends, in a scientific manner. This discovery reinforced nationalist sentiments
in Iran during Reza Shah’s reign, in particular among the intellectuals who
criticized more and more the invasion of the Arabs and the arrival of Islam in
Iran. In this atmosphere, it is not astonishing to realize that the governmental
archaeological institutions paid much more attention to Achaemenid and
Sasanian monuments, in comparison with Iranian heritage from Islamic times.
Moreover, since Iran did not materially benefit from the French archae-
ological monopoly, Iranian nationalist feelings were raised once more. The
Iranian intellectuals, generally educated in Europe, held the Qajars respon-
sible for yielding these cultural treasures to France for ridiculous prices, once
they saw their national antiquities displayed in the Louvre. This contempt for the
Qajars prevented them, at least during the reign of the Pahlavis, from reaching
an objective assessment of the history of archaeology in Iran. Therefore, it
was said and repeated that the Qajars gave the “concession of archaeological
excavations (emtiyaz-e hafriyat-e bastanshenasi)” to France; however, there
were no concessions, but only bilateral conventions, based on the equal division
of discoveries. Did not the agreement over the abolition of the monopoly in
October 1927, approved by Reza Shah, allow France to maintain the exclusive
privilege of the excavations at Susa, based on the equitable sharing of
discoveries? The answer to this question allows us to better understand the
cultural policies and diplomacy during Reza Shah’s reign and to erase from
our minds the clichés and ideas that do not correspond to the truth.
It is true that the abolition of the French monopoly by Reza Shah opened
up a new page in the history of archaeology in Iran. But we must also admit
that during the reign of this monarch no coherent and serious program for the
protection of Iranian heritage was ever developed, although he was such a
fierce nationalist. Witness the fate of the Society for National Heritage: in
1934, following the celebrations of the Ferdowsi’s millennium and the unveiling
of his mausoleum at Tus, the Society was suspended by Reza Shah, to resume
work only in 1943.
As a final remark, one can state that during the reign of Reza Shah the
archaeological sites, including the ruins of Persepolis and the buildings of
the Sasanian era which recalled the greatness of Iran in ancient times, were
protected and studied by foreign missions, with the cost of abandoning the
Islamic antiquities. Three factors contributed to this predicament: Reza Shah,
who regarded himself as a monarch at the head of a kingdom once ruled by
Cyrus and Darius; the Iranian intellectuals, who nostalgically looked for the
historical greatness of Iran in the archaeological sites and encouraged vigorously
the “de-Arabization” of the Persian language and Iranian culture; and finally,
the foreign archaeological missions, who, trained in the classicist tradition,
were primarily interested in ancient Persia and thus indirectly led the Iranians
to discard their Islamic heritage in favour of discovering their history before
the arrival of Islam. These three factors together strongly influenced the
cultural policy of the Iranian government during the reign of Reza Shah.
Appendix
Law concerning the preservation of national antiquities

Approved on 12 Aban 1309 [3 November 1930]:80
Article 1 – All works of art produced in Iran, whether movable or immovable,

as well as all historical sites and buildings, dating from before the end of the
Zand dynasty, are by virtue of Article 3 of the present law, considered as
national antiquities (asar-e melli) and are placed under the protection and
control of the State.
Article 2 – The State will draw up an inventory of all Iranian antiquities
currently known and identified, which are of specific historical, scientific or
artistic interest. Any further antiquities of the same kind discovered in the
future will be added to this inventory. The inventory once completed will
be printed and made known to the public.
Article 3 – The listing of property in the Inventory of National Antiquities
will be announced by means of an order from the Ministry of Education
(Vezarat-e Ma‘aref). However, property belonging to a private person will
only be listed when the owner has been notified in advance and will become
effective only when any protest the owner might raise has been considered.
The owner does not have to assume the obligations set forth in this law until
the listing of the property has become effective.
Article 4 – The owner of immovable property which, under the provisions
of the present law, may be considered as a national antiquity, as well as any
person coming to know of the existence of property of this kind must notify
the nearest appropriate government office so that the relevant authorities, as
defined in the application rules (nezam-nameh) to the present law, can decide
whether the property in question should be considered as a national antiquity
and classified as such.
Article 5 – Private individuals who are owners or in possession of properties
listed in the inventory of national antiquities can retain their right of owner-
ship or possession but may not oppose measures which the state considers
necessary for the preservation of those antiquities. If work undertaken by the
State entails expenditure, no reimbursement of that expenditure may be
claimed from the owner, nor shall the work in question in any way affect his
right of ownership.
Article 6 – The acts listed below are forbidden. Any person who performs such
acts will be tried and fined from 50 to 1000 toman. In addition, he could also be
held liable for the cost of the damage caused by him to national antiquities:
a) Destroying or damaging national antiquities, covering them with plaster or

paint, or carving designs or inscriptions on them.
b) Undertaking works near national antiquities which could damage their
structure or modify their appearance.
c) Appropriating, buying or selling items or materials belonging to listed
buildings without the authorization of the state. The repair and restoration
of buildings classified as national antiquities and belonging to private
owners may only be undertaken with the authorization of the state and
under its supervision. Any infringement is punishable as described above.
Article 7 – Privately owned movable properties considered as national

antiquities must be listed in a separate inventory, in accordance with Article 3
of the present law.
Article 8 – For each item of movable property listed in the inventory of
national antiquities, a descriptive certificate must be drawn up in duplicate,
indicating its place of origin and how it was discovered. One or more
photographs should be attached. One copy of the certificate will be kept in
the national antiquities archives and the other will be delivered free of charge
to the owner. This copy must accompany the property in every exchange of
ownership. A change of ownership in no way affects the status of the property
as a listed national antiquity.
Article 9 – If the owner of a listed property wishes to sell it to a third party,
he must notify the appropriate public authorities in writing. If the state wishes
this property to be included in a national collection, it has the right of pre-
emption but must give notice to the owner of its intention to exercise that
right within ten days of receiving the owner’s notification. If the state gives no
such notice, the owner is free to sell the property to another client. In all cases
and whatever the means by which the property has been disposed of, the
previous owner must notify the state within ten days of the transfer and
provide the name and address of the new owner.
Anyone who sells a listed property without notifying the Ministry of
Education or its representatives will be fined a sum equal to the sale price of
the property in question. In addition, the state may seize the property which
has been sold, reimbursing the purchaser the sum paid by him. Furthermore,
if the purchaser knew that the property in question was listed in the inventory
of national antiquities, but still preceded with the purchase, he shall be liable
to the same fine as the seller, unless he himself notified the state.
Article 10 – Any person happening to discover any movable property
which, according to the provisions of the present law, could be considered as
a national antiquity, even if that property was found on his own land, must
notify the Ministry of Education or one of its representatives as soon as pos-
sible. Should the relevant public authorities decide that the movable property
in question ought to be listed in the inventory of national antiquities, half of
the property discovered, or of its value as determined by assessment, shall be
due to the finder. The state may, at its own discretion, decide whether to
retain the other half or donate it to the finder.
Article 11 – Excavations and diggings to extract national antiquities are the
exclusive right of the state. The state may use this right directly, or delegate it
by special authorization, to academic institutions, societies or individuals.
Such authorization must indicate the site of the excavations, their extent and
estimated duration. In addition, the state is entitled to make probes in any
place where remains have been found, or where evidence suggests the exis-
tence of remains, or which seems likely to conceal remains, for the purpose of
discovering antiquities and determining their nature and quality.
Article 12 – Excavations whose sole purpose is to discover antiquities or to
conduct academic research are termed “scientific excavations”. Excavations
whose purpose is the sale of antiquities are termed “commercial excavations”.
Authorization to undertake scientific excavations is granted exclusively to
academic institutions. Commercial excavations in listed buildings or in listed
immovable properties are prohibited.
Article 13 – Excavations on land belonging to private individuals may be
undertaken only with the authorization of the state and with the consent of
the owner. However, the owner of a site listed in the inventory of national
antiquities or which the state, as a result of probes, has listed or is in the
process of listing in the inventory cannot withhold his consent. He is entitled
only to request an indemnity which shall be equivalent to the lowest average
rent from the land which is no longer available to him on account of the
excavations, as well as the compensation for damages caused and for expenses
incurred in restoring the land to its original state after the excavations.
Article 14 – Items discovered during scientific or commercial excavations,
at one and the same site during one and the same period of excavations, belong
exclusively to the state if the state has itself undertaken the excavations. If the
excavations have been undertaken by a third party, the state may select and
appropriate up to ten items of historical or artistic value and donate half of
the remainder to the finder, keeping the other half itself. If there are not more
than ten items altogether and if the state keeps them all, the expenses incurred
by the excavations are reimbursed to the person who provided the funds.
Buildings and parts of buildings are not covered by the above provisions
regarding sharing and the state is entitled to appropriate them in toto.
Note: One period of excavations is defined as one which lasts no longer
than a year.
Article 15 – Items discovered during scientific excavations and to which
the state is entitled must be kept in national collections and museums. They are
inalienable. Items donated to the finder become his sole property. Of the items
discovered during commercial excavations which revert to the state, the state
keeps all those of interest to museums and disposes of the others as it so
chooses. The sale of such items shall be by auction.
Article 16 – Any person infringing on the provisions of Article 10, or
undertaking excavations, even on his own property, without State authorization
or without the knowledge of the state, or exporting antiquities illegally,
will be fined from 20 to 2000 toman. In addition, the items discovered will
be confiscated by the state. Earth removal and other works of the same type
not undertaken for the purpose of finding antiquities are not subject to the
above-mentioned fines.
Article 17 – Persons wishing to trade in antiquities must obtain a state
license. A state license is also required to export antiquities. Any item listed in
the inventory of national antiquities will be confiscated by the State if any
attempt is made to export it without state authorization. The state will not
refuse export licenses for items which, under the provisions of Articles 10 and 14
of the present law, are the property of the finder, provided that they are not
listed in the inventory of national antiquities. If they are listed items, the
conditions under which they may be exported are set out in Article 18 below.
Article 18 – The state is entitled to refuse an export license for items con-
sidered as national antiquities and to purchase them at the price declared by
the person concerned in his request for an export license. If the owner refuses
to sell them at the stated price, the export license will not be granted. If the
license is granted, an export tax will be levied equal to 5 per cent of the value
determined by the state-appointed assessor. In the event of disagreement
between the owner and the assessor, the matter will be settled by a special
commission, the composition of which will be determined by the rules for the
application of the present law.
The export tax provided for by the present Article is independent of the
customs levies laid down for such items by the customs tariffs in force. The export
of items discovered during scientific excavations undertaken with the agreement
of the state and constituting the finder’s share is authorized in all cases and is
exempt from any levies and taxes.
Article 19 – The Council of Ministers will draw up and approve rules for
the implementation of this law, stating the conditions for trading in anti-
quities and the conditions for the implementation of all the provisions of the
present law.
Article 20 – Authorizations for excavations already granted which do not
comply with the present law are hereby revoked.
This law, which consists of twenty articles, was adopted on 12 Aban 1309
[3 November 1930] by the National Consultative Assembly.
President of the National Consultative Assembly – Dadgar81
List of abbreviations
ADMAE: Archives Diplomatiques du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères
(Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris)
AN: Archives Nationales (French National Archives, Paris)
BAVOKI: Baygani-ye Vezarat-e omur-e kharejeh-ye Iran (Archives of the
Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tehran)
BRMFOT: Baygani-ye raked-e Miras-e Farhangi-ye Ostan-e Tehran
(Archives of the Organization for Cultural Heritage, Tehran
Province)
IME: Iranian Ministry of Education (Vezarat-e ma‘aref va owqaf
va sanaye‘-e mostazrafeh)
IMFA: Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Vezarat-e omur-e kharejeh)
MAE: Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (French Ministry of Foreign
Affairs)
Notes
* This article is based, inter alia, on the documents of archives housed in several
locations. I thank the directors of these archives who gave me access to their
invaluable documents concerning the history of Iranian archaeology. I am grateful
to Dr. Ali Mousavi, who gave me his article about Ernst Herzfeld and provided
some references. I am particularly indebted to Dr. Willem Floor, who read an
early draft of this paper and kindly advised me on some details.
1 Eugène Flandin and Pascal Coste, Voyage en Perse, pendant les années 1840 et
1841, 8 vols. (Paris: Baudry, 1843–54).
2 William Kennett Loftus, Travels and Researches in Chaldæa and Susiana, with an
Account of Excavations at Warka, the “Erech” of Nimrod, and Shúsh, “Shushan
the Palace” of Esther in 1849–52 (London: James Nisbet, 1857). Idem., “On the
Excavations undertaken at the Ruins of Susa in 1851–52,” Transactions of the
Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom, second series, vol. V (London:
John Murray,1856), pp. 422–53.
3 Jane Dieulafoy, A Suse; journal des fouilles 1884–1886 (Paris: Hachette, 1888).
4 Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam, L’archéologie française en Perse et les antiquités
nationales (1884–1914) (Paris: Connaissances et Savoirs, 2004), pp. 45–57.
5 Ibid., pp. 91–122.
6 Ibid., pp. 135–46.
7 Ibid., pp. 169–95.
8 Mozakerat-e majles, dowreh-ye avval-e taqniniyeh (Tehran, n.d.), pp. 113–14.
9 Nasiri-Moghaddam, L’archéologie française, pp. 289–90.
10 This inaccuracy first occurred in the article by Mohammad-Taqi Mostafavi (1955),
who relied on the incorrect memories of a former employee of the Antiquities
Service. This mistake was repeated in almost all subsequent works concerned with
the history of archaeological institutions in Iran. Only Mehdi Hodjat, the former
director of the Cultural Heritage Organization of Iran, in his doctoral thesis,
written in English, did not fall into this trap and correctly stated that the Anti-
quities Service was founded in 1910. However, despite his access to the Archives
of the Cultural Heritage Organization, Hodjat neither mentioned the exact date
of the creation of this Service, nor reviewed its functions or the process of its
dissolution. See Mohammad-Taqi Mostafavi, “Talash dar rah-e khedmat be asar-e
melli va omid be ayandeh,” Gozaresh-ha-ye bastanshenasi 3 (1334/1955), pp. 367–
513: 387; Mehdi Hodjat, Cultural Heritage in Iran: Policies for an Islamic Coun-
try, Ph.D. dissertation (York: University of York, 1995), pp. 164–65; Gholamreza
Ma‘sumi, “Shamma’i az pishineh-ye bastanshenasi-ye Iran va eqdamat-e anjam
shodeh dar panjah sal-e shahanshahi-ye Pahlavi,” Barrasi-ha-ye tarikhi no. 64,
11,4 (1355/1976), pp. 53–106: 84; Sadeq Malek Shahmirzadi, “Barrasi-ye tahav-
volat-e motale‘at-e bastanshenasi dar Iran,” in Majmu‘eh-ye maqalat-e anjo-
manvareh-ye barrasi-ye masa’el-e iranshenasi, ed. ‘Ali Musavi Garmarudi
(Tehran: Daftar-e motale‘at-e siyasi va beyn al-melali,1371/1992), pp. 373–447:
408; Mahmud Musavi, “Bastanshenasi dar panjahsali ke gozasht,” Miras-e far-
hangi 2 (1369/1990), pp. 6–17: 9; Idem., “Bastanshenasi dar jahan-e eslam,” in
Danesh-nameh-ye jahan-e eslam, ed. Mostafa Mirsalim, 2nd edition (Tehran:
Bonyad-e da‘erat al-ma‘aref-e eslami, 1375/1996), pp. 493–511: 495–96; ‘Ezza-
tollah Negahban, Moruri bar panjah sal-e bastanshenasi-ye Iran (Tehran:
Sazman-e Miras-e Farhangi-ye Keshvar, 1376/1997), p. 56.
11 BRMFOT, 1289 shamsi/fayl-e 1 [ministerial decree, 1st Jomadi al-avval 1328
(11 May 1910)]. Iraj Mirza Jalal al-Mamalek (1874–1925), the famous poet in the
history of Persian contemporary literature, was the son of Gholam-Hoseyn Mirza
Sadr al-Sho‘ara, himself a Qajar court poet and descended from Fath-‘Ali Shah
Qajar, Mahdi Bamdad, Sharh-e hal-e rejal-e Iran: dar qarn-e 12 va 13 va 14 hejri,
4th edition (Tehran: Zavvar, 1371/1992), vol. 1, pp. 174–75.
12 Morteza-Qoli Khan Hedayat (1856–1911), who held the title of Sani‘ al-Dowleh,
son-in-law of Mozaffar al-Din Shah, studied in Germany from 1876 to 1891.
After the victory of the constitutionalists in Iran, he chaired the first National
Consultative Assembly until 31 August 1907. Then he assumed repeatedly the
positions of minister of education and minister of finance before being assassinated
on 6 February 1911, Bamdad, Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 4, pp. 63–69.
14 Mozakerat-e Majles, dowreh-ye dovvom-e taqniniyeh, pp. 790–93, 1107. ADMAE,
Nouvelle Série/Perse/43, f 245 [Poulpiquet du Halgouet to MAE, 11/2/1911].
15 Mozakerat-e Majles, dowreh-ye dovvom-e taqniniyeh, pp. 790–93, 844–48, 859–64,
1392–1410.
16 “E‘lan-e vezarat-e ma‘aref va owqaf,” announcement by the Iranian Ministry of
Education, dated 23 Shavval 1329/17 October 1911, published in Ruz-nameh-ye
rasmi-ye dowlat-e Iran, 25 Shavval 1329 (19 October 1911), no. 65, p. 1.
18 BRMFOT, 1291 shamsi/fayl-e 1 [IME to IMFA, 26 Shavval 1330 (8 October 1912)];
BRMFOT, 1291 shamsi/fayl-e 1 [IMFA to IME, 3 Ziqa‘deh 1330 (15 October
1912)]; BRMFOT, 1291 shamsi/fayl-e 1 [IME to IMFA, 14 Ziqa‘da 1330 (26
October 1912)].
19 BRMFOT, 1291 shamsi/fayl-e 1 [project presented on 27 Zihajjeh 1330 (7 December
1912)].
20 BAVOKI, 1330 qamari/karton-e 44/parvandeh-ye 7 [IME to IMFA, 27 Zihijja
1330 (7 December 1912)].
21 ADMAE, Nouvelle Série/Perse/44, f 160–61 [R. Lecomte to MAE, 3/5/1913].
22 Ebrahim Hakimi (1871–1959), titled Hakim al-Molk, after having studied medi-
cine in Paris (1895), became the most influential doctor at Mozaffar al-Din
Shah’s court. However, after a dosage error in medication administered to the
Shah, Hakim al-Molk did not practice medicine any longer and became inter-
ested in administrative affairs. Member of the first two National Assemblies
(Majles) of 1907 and of 1909, Hakim al-Molk was four times minister of the
public instruction between August 1915 and January 1918. He also assumed the
functions of the minister of finance, justice, foreign affairs, and court and finally
became prime minister: Bamdad, Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 1, pp. 8–10.
23 BRMFOT, 1293 shamsi/fayl-e 1 [IME to the Council of Ministers, 26 Jumadi al-avval
1332 (23 April 1914)].
24 Dr. Hoseyn Khan Amini, a former Chaldean priest who had converted to Islam,
knew many languages (Latin, Syrian, French, English, and Arabic) and was also
an expert in deciphering ancient inscriptions. After the arrival of André Godard
in 1928, Hoseyn Khan continued his activities in the Persian Antiquities Service,
while working with the French archaeologist. See Sadeq Malek Shahmirzadi,
“Eshareh’i mokhtasar bar tashkilat-e bastanshenasi dar Iran,” Asar, nos. 12–14
(1365/1986), pp. 133–60:159.
25 Grand Larousse universel (Paris, 1995), vol. 10, p. 7199.
26 Ruz-nameh-ye Iran, announcement no. 290, published 9 Rabi‘ al-sani 1294
(16 July 1876). Sani‘ al-Dowleh was the title of Mohammad-Hasan Khan, who
later obtained the title of E‘temad al-Saltaneh.
27 Yahya Zoka’, Tarikhcheh-ye sakhteman-ha-ye Arg-e Saltanati-ye Tehran va rah-
nama-ye Kakh-e Golestan (Tehran: Anjoman-e asar-e melli, 1349/1970), p. 123.
28 Ibid., p. 126.
29 Ibid., p. 122–43.
30 S. G. W. Benjamin, Persia and the Persians (Boston: Ticknor, 1887), p. 73.
31 George N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, 2nd edition (London: Routledge,
1966), vol. 1, p. 314.
32 Claude Anet, Les roses d’Ispahan: La Perse en automobile à travers la Russie et le
Caucase (Paris: F. Juven, 1906), p. 173.
33 AN, F/17/17245, dossier II [J. de Morgan to MIP, 29/10/1897].
34 ADMAE, Nouvelle Série/Perse/42, f 104 [Souhart to MAE, 19/1/1900].
35 ADMAE, Nouvelle Série/Perse/43, f 100–102 [Maximilien de La Martinière,
French minister in Tehran to MAE, 22/7/1907].
36 AN, F/17/2993/C, dossier IV [J. de Morgan to MIP, 28/1/1910].
37 AN, F/17/2993/C, dossier III [J. de Morgan to Maximilien de La Martinière, 17/8/
1907]: “To create a museum in Tehran and put some of our findings there would
be to renounce our exclusive monopoly. This would open the door to requests
coming from the Shah and the Persians, and thus give rise to difficulties which
inevitably sooner or later would lessen our rights.”
38 Morteza Khan Momtaz al-Molk (1865–1925), pageboy in Naser al-Din Shah’s
court, became an official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and obtained the post
of plenipotentiary minister in the United States (1906–8). From 4 March 1916 till
29 May 1917, he was minister of education. During this period Momtaz al-Molk
created the first national museum in Iran. He was nominated for the second time
as minister of education from 18 June till 7 August 1918. Then, Momtaz al-Molk
assumed the post of minister of justice (14 February – 14 June 1923) and that of
Director of the Russian Discount Bank (esteqrazi) in Teheran (1924). See Zahra
Shaji’i, Nokhbegan-e siyasi-ye Iran: az enqelab-e mashrutiyat ta enqelab-e eslami
(Tehran: Sokhan, 1372/1993), vol. 3, pp. 104–8, 115–17, 143–45; Bamdad, Sharh-e
hal-e rejal, vol. 4, pp. 61–62.
39 Hodjat, Cultural Heritage in Iran, p. 174. It should be observed that on the
binding of the museum catalogue, the date of creation is mentioned as Jomadi al-avval
1335/March 1917, while some studies indicate the year 1916. See Nezam-nameh
va katalog-e muzeh-ye melli-ye Iran (Tehran, 1295/1917); Sadeq Malek Shahmirzadi,
“Naqsh-e muzeh-ha dar ta‘lim va tarbiyat,” Miras-e farhangi, II, 3–4 (1370/
1992), pp. 45–48.
40 Nezam-nameh va katalog, pp. 5–6.
41 Asas-nameh-ye Anjoman-e asar-e melli (Tehran, 1301/1922). For more information
about this Society, see Talinn Grigor, “Recultivating ‘Good Taste’: The Early
Pahlavi Modernists and Their Society for National Heritage,” Iranian Studies, 37/1
(2004), pp. 17–45.
42 Kamyar Abdi, “Nationalism, Politics, and the Development of Archaeology in
Iran,” American Journal of Archaeology, 105/1 (2001), pp. 51–76: 56.
43 Ernst Herzfeld, “Asar-e melli-ye Iran,” in Majmu‘eh-ye entesharat-e qadim-e
Anjoman-e asar-e melli (Tehran: Anjoman-ye asar-e melli, 1351/1973), pp. 29–44: 44.
See also Ali Mousavi, “Ernst Herzfeld, Politics, and Antiquities Legislation in
Iran,” in Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies, 1900–1950,
ed. Ann C. Gunter and Stefan Hauser (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 445–75: 450–51.
44 Abdi, “Nationalism, Politics, and the Development of Archaeology in Iran,” p. 60.
45 Arthur U. Pope, “The Past and Future of Persian Art,” delivered 22 April 1925 in
Tehran. For the complete English text of the speech, see Jay Gluck and Noël
Siver, ed., Surveyors of Persian Art: A Documentary Biography of Arthur Upham
Pope and Phyllis Ackerman (Ashiya: SoPA, 1996), pp. 93–110: 110; also Grigor,
“Recultivating ‘Good Taste’”, pp. 31–32.
46 James F. Goode, Negotiating for the Past: Archaeology, Nationalism, and Diplomacy
in the Middle East, 1919–1941 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), p. 135.
47 AN, F/17/17245, dossier IV & mip to MAE, 30/7/1925].
48 Mousavi, “Ernst Herzfeld, Politics, and Antiquities Legislation in Iran,” pp. 454–55.
49 AN, F/17/17245, dossier IV [MAE to MIP, 10/1/1927]; Goode, Negotiating for the
Past, p. 138.
50 Mohammad Tadayyon (1881–1951) occupied the post of the minister of educa-
tion from 8 February 1927 to 8 January 1928, see Shaji’i, Nokhbegan-e siyasi-ye
Iran, vol. 3, pp. 162–63.
51 Paul Arthur Ballereau, born on 12 June 1880, student of the École des Langues
orientales, assumed from 25 October 1926 until 1 August 1928 the post of “chargé
d’affaires” at the French Legation in Tehran. See Annuaire diplomatique … pour
1929 et 1930, nouvelle série, t. XXXIX, (Paris, 1930), p. 204.
52 ADMAE, Ancienne Série/18–40/Perse-Iran/66, f 77–78 [Agreement between Iran
and France, 18/10/1927].
53 For more information about Godard and his activities in Iran, see below.
54 Hodjat, Cultural Heritage in Iran, p. 183.
55 Roland de Mecquenem and Father Jean Vincent Scheil jointly directed the French
archaeological mission at Susa until World War II, which interrupted this mission for
a few years. On 22 September 1940, Father Scheil died and was succeeded by Geor-
ges Contenau as director of publications. In 1946, Roman Ghirshman took over
the place of Roland de Mecquenem as director of the French archaeological
mission at Susa. Ghirshman was replaced in 1968 by Jean Perrot, who led the
French excavations at Susa until 1979, when they were stopped by the new gov-
ernment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thus, only the two world wars and the
Islamic Revolution in 1979 interrupted about a century of French archaeological
works in Susa.
57 Ibid., p. 59. Cf. Louis Vanden Berghe, Archéologie de l’Iran ancien (Leiden: Brill,
1966), pp. 199–201. For more information about these archaeological missions in the
Iranian archives, see Ruhollah Bahrami and ‘Isa ‘Abdi, ed., Asnadi az bastanshenasi
dar Iran: hafriyat, ‘atiqat va bana-ha-ye tarikhi (Tehran: Vezarat-e farhang va
ershad-e eslami, Sazman-e chap va entesharat, 1380/2001); also Davud Karimlu,
ed., Taraj-e miras-e melli, vol. 2 (Tehran: Daftar-e motale‘at-e siyasi va beyn
al-melali 1381/2002); also Marziyeh Yazdani, ed., Asnad-e hey’at-ha-ye bastan-
shenasi dar Iran (Tehran: Sazman-e asnad-e melli-ye Iran, 1380/2001). Moham-
mad Gholi Majd in his book entitled The Great American Plunder of Persia’s
Antiquities 1925–1941 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003)
explores the history of American involvement in Iranian archaeology during Reza
Shah’s reign, based on the US State Department archives. See the review of this
book in Iranian Studies 37 (2004), pp. 737–42.
58 AN, F/17/17245, dossier IV [MAE to MIP, 10/1/1927]: “I agree with Mr. Gaston
Maugras that the only option for us to keep some of our archaeological privileges
in Iran is to claim the directorship of the Antiquities Service and the archae-
ological excavations for one of our compatriots, allowing other nations to carry
out excavation and research under his authority and control.”
59 ADMAE, Ancienne Série/18–40/Perse-Iran/66, f 95 [Telegram of the French
Legation to MAE, 30/4/1928].
60 Raymond Lebègue, “Éloge funèbre de M. André Godard, correspondant de
l’Académie,” Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, comptes rendus des
séances de l’année 1965, pp. 453–54.
61 Herzfeld, being of Jewish descent, chose not to return to Germany in 1934
and went from Iran to London for a year, before in 1935 he was formally expelled
from his chair at the University at Berlin. He joined the Institute for Advanced
Studies at Princeton in 1936, from which he retired in 1944 at the age of 65. After
World War II, he left the US and went to Egypt where he fell ill in 1947. He was
moved to Basel, Switzerland, for medical care, where he died on 20 January 1948.
See Richard Ettinghausen, “Ernest Herzfeld,” Ars Islamica XV-XVI (1951): 261–66.
Stefan Hauser, “Herzfeld, Ernst i. Life and Work,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, online
edition, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/herzfeld-ernst-i-1.
63 Noël Siver, “Pope, Arthur Upham,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, online edition, July
20, 2005, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/pope-arthur-upham.
64 Abdi, “Nationalism, Politics, and the Development of Archaeology in Iran,”
pp. 61–62.
65 AN, F/17/17245, dossier II [J. de Morgan to MIP, 29/10/1897].
66 Sadeq Malek Shahmirzadi, “Barrasi-ye tahavvolat-e motale‘at-e bastanshenasi
dar Iran,” pp. 373–447.
67 Pierre Amiet, “A propos du centenaire des Antiquités iraniennes au Louvre,” in
Hommage à Hubert Landais: Art, objets d’art, collections – études sur l’art du Moyen
âge et de la Renaissance, sur l’histoire du goût et des collections (Paris: Blanchard,
1987), pp. 227–31: 229. For more information about David David-Weill see Les
donateurs du Louvre (Paris: Ministère de la culture, 1989), p. 183.
68 Amiet, “A propos du centenaire des Antiquités iraniennes au Louvre,” p. 229.
69 Mousavi, “Ernst Herzfeld, Politics, and Antiquities Legislation in Iran,” p. 471.
70 Ahmad Tehrani Moqaddam, “Negahi be Muzeh-ye melli-ye Iran,” Muzeh-ha 9–10
(1369/1990), pp. 2–13: 3.
71 For more information about Siroux, see Chahriyar Adle, “Maxime Siroux,”
Le monde iranien et l’islam III (1975), pp. 127–29.
72 For more on the architecture of the Pahlavi period, see Talinn Grigor’s
contribution to the present volume, Chapter 5; see also Kamran Safamanesh,
“Architectural Historiography, 1921–42,” in Touraj Atabaki, ed., Iran in the 20th
Century (London: Tauris, 2009), pp. 121–53.
73 Ma‘sumi, “Shamma’i az pishineh-ye bastanshenasi-ye Iran,” pp. 155–65.
74 Donald N. Wilber, Riza Shah Pahlavi: The Resurrection and Reconstruction
of Iran (Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1975), p. 179, quoted in Goode,
Negotiating for the Past, p. 174.
75 Mariam Habibi, L’interface France–Iran 1907–1938: une diplomatie voilée (Paris:
L’Harmattan, 2004), p. 353.
76 “This sovereign who claims to be modern, does not want it said that if you
scratch the Shah you find the Cossack,” see Yann Richard, L’Iran: naissance
d’une république islamique (Paris: La Martinière, 2006), pp. 240–41.
78 Ibid., p. 59. For more information about the “Ziviyeh Affair” see Rashid
Keykhosravi, Dowran-e bi-khabari ya gharat-e asar-e farhangi-ye Iraniyan
(Tehran: published by author, 1363/1984).
79 Mousavi, “Ernst Herzfeld, Politics, and Antiquities Legislation in Iran,” p. 471.
80 Qanun raje‘ be hefz-e asar-e ‘atiqeh [Law concerning the preservation of national
antiquities] (Tehran: Vezarat-e farhang, 1309/1930), pp. 1–7.
81 For the application of this law, the Iranian Ministry of Education adopted on 25
Bahman 1309 (14 February 1931) the respective nezam-nameh, which consisted of
36 articles. These rules were modified by the ministry and turned into 52 articles
altogether, which were again approved by the Council of Ministers on 28 Aban
1311 (19 November 1932): 1st art. (explanation, ta‘rif); 2–11 arts. (immovable
antiquities, ‘atiqat-e gheyr-e manqul); 12–17 arts. (movable antiquities, ‘atiqat-e
manqul); 18–37 arts. (excavations, hafriyat); 38–52 arts. (trade of antiquities,
tejarat-e ‘atiqat).
7 Depicting power
Reza Shah’s rule, cabinet politics and the
commemorative stamp set of 1935
Roman Siebertz
Introduction
Like all authoritarian regimes, the state of Reza Shah Pahlavi was based on
an extensive propaganda, either to convince the public of its legitimacy or to
enforce a particular way of behaviour on its subjects. In a society which still
remained to a large extent illiterate, images played an important role in dis-
seminating the official ideology. Postage stamps, whose significance and value
as a historical source have been underrated for a long period, are in this
respect one of the most illuminative class of documents that can help us to
understand how the early Pahlavi state perceived itself. Perhaps the best
example of this self-representation can be found in the motifs of a stamp set
issued in 1314/1935 in celebration of the tenth anniversary of Reza Shah’s
rule. These stamps are especially interesting because not only can they be
regarded as a representative example of official iconography, but also because
their iconography itself provides a telling story of the self-image of Iran’s
political elite during this time.
The reign of Reza Shah (1300–20/1921–41) is generally remembered both
as a period of seminal reforms, in which all fields of political, social and cul-
tural life underwent a fundamental change, and as an age of tyranny, during
which the Shah’s absolute, arbitrary, and at most times dictatorial style of
government reduced constitution and parliament to mere rubber stamps.
While the major decisions on Iran’s future development were taken by Reza
Shah and the circle of politicians in his retinue, this policy, which was going
to affect every region of the country and all strata of society, was accom-
panied by an intensive public propaganda campaign that employed all avail-
able means, i.e. new ones (like cinema and radio) as well as traditional media
such as the press and postage stamps.
In this respect, politics under Reza Shah followed a pattern that had been
established in Iran since the rule of Naser al-Din Shah (1210–75q/1848–96),1
i.e. at the same time as postage stamps were for the first time employed as
an instrument of political propaganda. The beginnings of visual political
propaganda might be traced back to the early stage of Qajar rule. Just like
Reza Shah more than a hundred years later, the new dynasty had been facing
150 Roman Siebertz
the problem to consolidate and to legitimate a still shaky rule in a pre-modern
society, a rule that moreover had been acquired not by ancestry, charisma and
the conservation of sacred traditions, but by mere violence.
One attempt to consolidate the new state was the effort to establish the
symbolic presence of the monarch in all parts of the country, for instance in
the shape of representative buildings in the bigger cities,2 or in the rock reliefs
that were carved on stone surfaces around Tehran in imitation of the style of
Sassanid inscriptions and reliefs.3 The increasingly close contacts with Europe
not only confronted the Iranian state with a new challenge of military
aggression and imperialist penetration, but also introduced the court to
modern forms of representation and interaction with the public. An early
example of this policy was the exchange of royal portraits with Western
negotiators during the days of Fath ‘Ali Shah (1183–1250q/1769–1834).4
Under Naser al-Din Shah, the incipient modernization of state and adminis-
tration, which was linked to personalities such as Mirza Taqi Khan Amir
Kabir (1222–68q/1807–52) or Mirza ‘Ali Khan Amin al-Dowleh (1260–
1322q/1844–1904), was accompanied by the introduction of new instruments
of representation and control.5 Two of the seminal reforms of Mirza Taqi
Khan were the foundation of an official newspaper6 and the establishment of
a regular mail service.7 The newspaper, a mouthpiece of the central govern-
ment, formed an effective means of communication between the court and the
educated strata of the society in the provinces.8 Its efficiency as an instrument
of propaganda was even enhanced when from 1860 onwards the official
papers also began to include illustrations of royal palaces, court festivities and
portraits of prominent Iranian and foreign statesmen.9
Stamps in Qajar Iran

Communication between the various parts of Iran, and government control
over the communication systems, was enhanced by the reorganization of the
postal service, which proved to be one of the most effective institutions of
Qajar Iran, especially after its reorganization by an Austrian expert.10 In
order to facilitate the payment and transport of mail, the officials soon took
into consideration the introduction of postage stamps, as they were already in
use in Iran’s neighbouring countries, i.e. in India, Russia and the Ottoman
Empire.11 For this purpose, a delegation was sent to Paris in 1865 to discuss
the design and printing of stamps at the imperial mint.12 The first Iranian
stamps,13 which were issued in 1869, were eventually printed in Iran itself.14
The design finally chosen for these stamps, with the royal coat of arms of the
lion and sun in the centrepiece, was strongly oriented to the design of con-
temporary coins. To some extent the function of postage stamps was identical
to that of coinage.15 By displaying the royal coat of arms, they not only
referred to the character of the postal service as an official, state-controlled
institution, but through their employment as confirmation of the payment of
the transportation fee, they also signified the authority of the state over its
Depicting power: the commemorative stamp set of 1935 151
fiscal affairs. Finally, the postage stamps, on a symbolic level, transported the
claim of the crown to absolute control over its territory and subjects. In both
functions, as a means of payment as well as a ubiquitous instrument of poli-
tical propaganda, the postage stamps fulfilled the same role that coins had
played in earlier centuries.16
The latter function as a medium that was supposed to create the symbolic
presence of Naser al-Din Shah all over Iran was emphasized by later stamp
sets issued from 1876 onwards, which, together with the royal coat of arms on
the lower (Shahi-) denominations, displayed the Shah’s portrait (Figure 7.1).17
In this way they introduced, at least in effigy, the person of the monarch
and the new institutions that to a growing extent formed the fundament of
the Qajar state to his subjects in all parts of the country.18 An indication
of this growing institutionalization of power was given by the inscription
“Post-e Dowlat-e ‘Aliyyeh-ye Iran”, that was to be found on stamps from
1260q/1880 onwards (Figure 7.2).
Figure 7.1 1882 definitive set, 5000 Dinar, portrait of Naser al-Din Shah.
Source: Author’s collection.
Figure 7.2 1914 coronation set, 1 Toman, ruins of Persepolis.

152 Roman Siebertz
With these stamps, a pattern for design and propagandistic message was
created that was to set the trend for those of the following decades, during the
reigns of Naser al-Din Shah and those of his successors, Mozaffar al-Din
Shah (1269–1324q/1853–1907)19 and Mohammad ‘Ali Shah (1251–1304q/
1872–1924).20 Unlike his predecessors, who usually had been portrayed on
stamps in unadorned clothing and with a heron’s crest as the only sign of
royalty,21 Mohammad ‘Ali Shah emphasized his claim for absolute power by
having himself portrayed on the highest denomination of the only stamp set
issued under his rule22 with the Kayani crown,23 the ancient symbol of the
Qajar monarchy. In this way, he expressed his pretension to absolute authority
by a claim to represent and to personify the institution of the monarchy that
had been founded by his ancestors.24
Such forms of self-representation, however, had become anachronistic in
face of the changes that had taken place in the political culture of Iran during
the decades before the Constitutional Revolution of 1285–1288/1906–1910. For
many intellectuals, the encounter with the West had generated an acquaintance
with the findings of oriental studies and archaeology, and especially the
re-discovery of the pre-Islamic heritage of Iranian culture as a foundation of
cultural and political identity.25 The Iran of the Achaemenid and Sassanid
periods was seen in contrast to that of the Qajar monarchy, whose rulers,
irrespective of their attempts for modernization, were regarded as incapable
and despotic and thus unable to implement fundamental social and adminis-
trative reforms that were deemed necessary to enable the country to compete
with the challenges of imperialism.26 In a fundamental change of paradigm
the state of Iran was no longer defined as the territory controlled by a
dynasty, but rather as a nation, i.e. a community of citizens that was held
together by a common culture and history.27 In the course of the Constitu-
tional Revolution, these ideas made their breakthrough as formative political
ideology, a process that was accompanied by a vivid debate in the media.
Cartoons and caricatures published in the constitutionalist press played a
crucial role in the shaping of a new public awareness. In the iconography of
the nationalist discourse, the ruling dynasty was associated with despotism
and decadence, while the symbolism of the new order was taken either
from modern Western civilization, such as images of modern technology, or
from the pre-Islamic period.28 After Iranian intellectuals, with the mediation
of Western archaeology and philology, had encountered the cultural heritage
of the Achaemenid and Sassanid eras and their country’s glorious past during
the pre-Islamic period, the architectonic reminders of that period had become
symbols of Iran’s cultural and political identity, while the past itself
had become a source of inspiration and a projection screen for nationalist
aspirations.29
This change had become evident in two sets of stamps that had been
ordered from the printing house of J. Enschede and Sons in the Netherlands
(which had been entitled with the printing of stamps by the Iranian mail since
1894)30 on the occasion of the coronation of Ahmad Shah in 1293/1914.
Among the Iranian stamps of the Qajar period, these two sets are of special
interest as they formed the first attempt to convert this new ideology on
postage stamps into a coherent iconographical system.
The iconography of the first of the two sets31 was innovative insofar as it
constituted a first attempt to find a symbolic form of representation for the
new constitutional monarchy. The Kayani crown as emblem of Qajar rule did
remain a central symbol in the motifs of all denominations, but instead of the
Shah’s portrait, it was now combined with views of the ruins of Persepolis as
a new symbol of cultural and political identity (see Figure 7.2). The legiti-
macy of monarchic rule was thus not derived any more from the king’s
person, but the ruler himself had become the supreme representative of the
Iranian nation, and the guardian of her independence and political identity.32
Even more ambitious in its attempt to create a new iconography to repre-
sent the modern state and to legitimize Qajar rule was the second stamp set
of nineteen denominations, known among collectors as the “ruler’s set” (seri-
ye salatin-e vabineh).33 Whereas the seventeen denominations of the corona-
tion set displayed three motifs, for all of the denominations of the ruler’s set
individual motifs had been chosen. The significance that was ascribed to this
set could also be seen from the accurate printing and the careful layout. A
possible inspiration for the whole set may have been a similar set that had
been issued in Russia in 1913 in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the
House of Romanov,34 and possibly there had been an intention on the Iranian
side to have the new Qajar state represent by a similar and equally impressive
series of stamps.
Just like the coronation set, the stamps of the seri-ye salatin betrayed an
obvious effort to formulate a topical concept of monarchy and statehood,
whereby the subjects of the stamps combined both traditional-conservative as
well as nationalist elements. As an attempt to provide the rule of Ahmad
Shah with a legitimacy drawn from tradition and history, the first ten
denominations presented some sort of a line of ancestors, by displaying por-
traits of the young Shah and his predecessors from the Qajar dynasty.
Remarkably enough, this line of ancestry was not just traced back to Agha
Mohammad Shah, the founder of the dynasty (who, after Karim Khan Zand,
only came third), but to Nader Shah, whom the nationalist discourse praised
as one of the great rulers of Iran, and who was credited with the restoration
of Iran’s territorial integrity after the Afghan invasion, the creation of a cen-
tralized administration and the restriction of Shi‘i clerical power.35 Another
member of the dynasty who was included in Ahmad Shah’s ancestry was
‘Abbas Mirza, the reform-minded, but prematurely deceased son of Fath ‘Ali
Shah.36 As on the stamps of the coronation set, the new role of the monarch
as supreme representative and first servant of the Iranian nation, and his
foremost task to guarantee her identity and cultural heritage, was exemplified
in the other denominations, whose motifs, with their depictions of royal
palace buildings, followed the pattern set some decades earlier by the official
newspapers with the depiction of royal palace buildings.37 In doing so, the
154 Roman Siebertz
stamps did fulfil in a traditional way the task of representing the institution of
the monarchy in a symbolic way, as the palace buildings did all over Iran.
But in this set, the illustrations also reflected the nationalist discourse, which
saw the territory and civilization of Iran symbolized by the sum of her his-
torical (and especially pre-Islamic) monuments.38 The reference to the tradi-
tion of the Iranian monarchy from ancient times was further emphasized by
having the views of those buildings on the stamps flanked by elements of
Achaemenid palace architecture, which for the second time appeared as an
iconographic element on Iranian postage stamps. Another remarkable feature
of this set is the selection of monuments. Apart from pictures of royal palaces
and the marble throne at the Golestan Palace, the stamps also gave a hint to
Shi‘i Islam as the state religion, in the form of a view of the Gowharshad
Mosque in Mashhad, and two illustrations dedicated to the parliament
building in Tehran,39 thus introducing the constitution and the sovereign
people as new and supplementary pillars of the Iranian state.
By an irony of history, however, the issuing of this set had been prevented
by the beginning of World War I, which inhibited the delivery of the total
stock of ordered stamps. The already delivered stamps remained at the Ministry
of Post and Telegraph and were for the most part destroyed some 25 years
later,40 making this set one of the biggest rarities among the stamps of Iran.
In the years to come, the war events made it impossible to think of issuing new
stamps, and right into the post-war period the Iranian postal administration
confined itself to using up the existing stocks.41
Stamps and propaganda under the rule of Reza Shah

After the turmoil created by the events of World War I and its aftermath,
a completely new situation in Iranian politics was finally created in late
1299/early 1921 with the coup d’état of Sayyed Ziya al-Din Tabataba’i and
Reza Khan against the weak pro-British government of Vosuq al-Dowleh,
which led, for the first time after at least a decade, to the emergence of a
functioning central government.42 Reza Khan quickly elbowed himself to
absolute power by pursuing a ruthless policy that was first and foremost
directed against the traditional elites, and culminated in the deposition of the
Qajars and his own coronation in 1304/1925.43
To pursue this aim, Reza Shah chose his supporters from the ranks of
the constitutional movement, who, faced with the failure of the revolution
and following the destitution of state and society during the Great War, had
become advocates of a strong government, which they regarded as the pre-
condition for the reconstruction of Iran. Some of the veterans of the movement,
such as ‘Abd al-Hoseyn Sheybani (1256–1310/1877–1931),44 political associ-
ate of the prominent constitutionalist Sayyed Hasan Taqizadeh (1257–1348/
1878–1969),45 and Qasem Sur-e Esrafil (1259–1319/1880–1940), during the
revolution editor of the influential satirical periodical of the same name,46
actively served the new regime as minister of post and telegraph. Later, another
prominent figure who found employment in the Ministry of Post and
Telegraph was Mohammad Hejazi (1319q-1352/1901–74),47 who, apart from
being editor in chief of a periodical related to modern communication,48 had
been responsible in his function as director of the national board of propaganda
(Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar) for the publishing and design of Iran-e Emruz,
a professionally made and lavishly propaganda periodical in the period before
World War II.49
In the period after the coup d’état, the modernizers had already made
extensive efforts within and outside Iran to propagate their views to a broader
public by the media. Newspaper cartoons, still the most important visual
medium in Iran, published images of factories, railway bridges or airships as
symbols of progress and modernity, and as a reminder of Western political
and technical superiority.50 The second focus of visual propaganda was the
state Reza Shah had built. In cartoons and newspaper illustrations the new
Shah was portrayed as the protector and saviour of the nation, or (in contrast to
the Qajars) as an active end energetic ruler, lending a hand in the construction of
a modern, industrialized nation.51
In spite of its impact on Iranian politics, both the change of government
and the new political iconography initially had little influence upon the design
and subjects of Iranian postage stamps. Only shortly after the coup d’état of
1300/1921 Moshir Mo‘azzam, the newly installed director of the Iranian mail,
ordered the issue of stamps with a bilingual surcharge giving the date of the
event (12 Jomada al-okhra 1336/21 Feb. 1921) printed on existing stocks of
the 1293/1914 coronation series.52 Several years later, however, in 1302/1924, a
new set of stamps was issued that displayed the portrait of Ahmad Shah,
who, at that time, still was the legitimate ruler of Iran.53 After Reza Khan had
been proclaimed as the new Shah of Iran, the postal administration at first had
to content itself to surcharge stamps of the 1924 set,54 or even remaining stamps
from the Constitutional period,55 with the bilingual inscription “Saltanat-e
Pahlavi/Règne de Pahlavi”.56
Some months after Reza Shah’s coronation, however, the first stamps
with the new monarch’s portrait were issued.57 Apart from the replacement
of the portrait, the design of these stamps did not give any indication of a
new political ideology, but was almost identical with that of stamps with the
portrait of Naser al-Din Shah that had been issued some forty years earlier.
The relevance which Reza Shah attributed to postage stamps as an instru-
ment of propaganda could, on the other hand, be seen from the fact that
some denominations of the first set issued in 1305/1926 had to be re-issued
with a revised design, because his portrait had been hard to identify due to
heavy shading on the first print.58 Other sets of postage stamps that were
issued during the following years employed the same pattern, with a portrait
of Reza Shah in uniform within an ornamental frame.59 A notable exception
was a set issued in 1308/1929, of which the highest denomination displayed
the official coronation photo of Reza Shah seated on the throne and wearing
a coronation robe.60
156 Roman Siebertz
A new iconographic element was introduced to the symbolism of stamps
in 1312/1933, when a set was printed that showed Reza Shah wearing a
Pahlavi hat.61 An insignificant detail at first glance, this portrait could also
be interpreted as a first hint of modernization politics on postage stamps.
When Reza Shah donned the headgear that had been made obligatory for
all male Iranians some years earlier,62 this reflected the present social and
political reality. By having himself portrayed with a garment that had been
intended to provide a uniform piece of clothing in place of the various
regional or tribal headdresses, and to support the creation of a sense of
common identity among Iranians, the Shah also appeared as the man who
had turned Iran from a torn country into a centralized modern national state
(Figure 7.3).
To sum up, those stamp emissions, with their emphasis on the ruler’s
personality, did visualize Reza Shah’s conception of the new Iran he had
created: “He conflated his own persona with the monarchy; the monarchy
with the state, and the state with the nation.”63
Aside from these rather conventional stamp designs, a first attempt to
create a design with a more elaborate message was seen in a set of airmail
stamps issued in 1309/1930, which showed next to the Shah’s portrait an illus-
tration of a hovering eagle, together with a depiction of Mount Damavand
(an emblem of the country’s cultural heritage due to its role in Iranian
mythology)64 in the background and in the fore a telegraph line as an emblem
of modern technology.65 For the first time since the coronation series of
1294/1915, elements of Achaemenid architecture as a symbol of cultural and
political identity were incorporated into the graphic design. Even though they
were not very innovative from an artistic point of view, these stamps, with the
symbolic reference to Reza Shah’s rule with its purported conjunction of cul-
tural tradition and technical progress, formed a first step towards the self-
representation of the Pahlavi state that was to dominate the iconography of
Iranian stamps for the decades to come.
Figure 7.3 1933 definitive set, 1 Rial, Reza Shah with kolah-e Pahlavi.
The role that was assigned to these stamps – to signify to the outside world
Iran’s aspiration to be regarded and treated as a self-conscious and rejuvenated
sovereign nation – could be seen from the fact that at an international postal
congress in Cairo in 1313/1934, the Iranian delegate was instructed by the min-
istry to hand out samples of stamps to the other delegates.66 In 1316/1937
another delegation was sent to an international postal exhibition in the United
States to represent Pahlavi Iran in shape of her stamp emissions.67 Obviously,
postage stamps were considered as an effective instrument for influencing
public opinion in favour of Reza Shah’s rule within Iran and abroad.
The stamp set of 1935

The most ambitious effort to turn postage stamps into an instrument of official
propaganda, and to disseminate the ideology of the Pahlavi state, formed the
already mentioned set of nine denominations that was issued in 1314/1935 in
celebration of the tenth anniversary of Reza Shah’s coronation. These stamps are
especially remarkable not only due to the fact that here, for the first time, an
attempt was made to deliver a coherent iconographic program, but also because
the administrative background of their publication is documented. According to
a note kept in the National Archives,68 the edition of these stamps, with the
intention to celebrate “the progresses that had been achieved in the country”,69
had been decided during a cabinet session on 4 Farvardin 1313/24 March
1934, upon an initiative that emanated from Mohammad ‘Ali Dowlatshahi,
then acting minister of post and telegraph.70 The early date of this decision,
almost a year before the actual issue date on 3 Esfand 1314/22 February 1935
(which as the anniversary of Reza Khan’s coup d’état was celebrated as the actual
beginning of the Pahlavi era), could be explained by the anxiety to have the
stamps available in time. Just like the coronation stamps of 1914, the printing
of this prestigious set had been assigned to Enschede and Sons in Haarlem.71
Furthermore, they were the last Iranian stamps that bore in Latin the inscrip-
tion “Postes Persanes” before the country’s designation as “Iran”; “Postes
Iraniennes” became obligatory from the beginning of the year 1314/1935.72 The
significance that was attributed to this set as an instrument of official self-
representation could be judged from the high triage of altogether 2,750,000
stamps, a number that was equivalent to the annual need for stamps of the
Iranian postal administration.73 The highest numbers – 1,000,000, 500,000 and
300,000 stamps respectively – were printed of the three lowest denominations.74
Given the occasion of their issue, the most striking feature of this set was
the fact that Reza Shah, i.e. the man to whom those achievements were
attributed and whose portrait had been dominating the design of Iran’s stamps
for almost a decade, did not appear on any of these stamps. In a symbolic way,
however, he was present in all the illustrations.
The respective motifs of the nine denominations of this set depicted, framed
by elements of Achamaenid architecture, allegories of justice (5 Dinar)75 and
education (15 Dinar);76 a view of the Apadana in Persepolis (10 Dinar);77 the
158 Roman Siebertz
Tehran aerodrome (30 Dinar);78 the sanatorium at Sakhtsar (Mazandaran) (45
Dinar);79 the cement factory at Shah ‘Abd al-‘Azim (75 Dinar);80 a gunboat of
the Iranian navy (90 Dinar);81 the railroad bridge over the Karun River at Ahvaz
(1 Rial);82 and the general post and customs office in Tehran (1.50 Rial).83
The achievements of Reza Shah’s rule that were glorified on these stamps
could be divided into several topics. These were social and political reform,
exemplified by the reform of the judicial and education system, the creation of a
modern communication system (airfield and railroad), industrialization, social
welfare and, finally, military and financial sovereignty. In short, the topics of
these stamps cover the central features that Ervand Abrahamian has identified
as the pillars of Reza Shah’s rule: the military, communication and taxation.84
To begin with the first topic, the two stamps dedicated to the reorganiza-
tion of the legal system and education differed distinctively from the other
denominations, with their naturalistic depictions of buildings and industrial
plants, both by their smaller format as well as by their design, with their
allegorical representations of Justitia (Figure 7.4) and Prudentia (Figure 7.5).
Figure 7.4 1935 commemoration set, 5 Dinar, allegory of education.

Figure 7.5 1935 commemoration set, 15 Dinar, allegory of justice.

Their high triage, on the other hand, indicated the significance that was
attributed to the establishment of a new education and legal system according
to Western patterns as two of the most important and lasting political and
social reforms implemented under Reza Shah. Another reason may have been
that education and legal reform had been the field of activity of two of the
most prominent cabinet members, Prime Minister Mohammad ‘Ali Forughi
(1294–1421/1875–1942) and ‘Ali Akbar Davar (1276–1316/1883–1937).
The prominent place that had been given to these two subjects on the
stamps may be explained by the fact that since the days of the Constitutional
Revolution the establishment of a secular legal and education system had
been on the agenda of the radical nationalists, who saw both measures as a
precondition for the creation of a modern national state in Iran,85 which thus
would be able to enter into contention with Western powers and to regain and
maintain Iran’s status as a self-conscious and independent state.86 Both
reforms were also seen as necessary steps to destroy traditional (and especially
tribal and clerical) structures, which were regarded as obstacles for the
aspired national renaissance.87 Aside from social and cultural progress,
the subjects gave an indirect indication of the principal objectives of those
reforms: the training of loyal state servants,88 and the formation of a police
state.89 The allegorical style of the illustrations on both stamps was strongly
influenced by the iconography of the constitutionalist press of the Mashrutiyat
period, in which the Iranian nation or abstract ideas such as justice and
enlightenment were usually depicted by symbolical figures.90 A late echo of
this symbolism could for instance be found in the title of the widely read
newspaper Nahid,91 which had an angelic figure placed protectively against a
sinister, devil-like creature before a blooming landscape with railroads and
telegraph lines as a vision of Iran’s future.
To understand the message conveyed by these two stamps correctly, it is
essential to regard their iconography in connection with the depiction of the
ruins of Persepolis on the 10 Dinar–denomination (Figure 7.6).
The relics of Iran’s pre-Islamic past had already played an important
role as symbols of national identity in the nationalist discourse, in which the
Figure 7.6 1935 commemoration set, 10 Dinar, ruins of Persepolis.

160 Roman Siebertz
Iranian nation was not only defined by political borders, but also by the sum
of monuments that could be found on her territory (as exemplified in the
stamps of the ruler’s set).92 Consequently, the title heading of Iranshahr, one
of the most influential political periodicals of the early 1920s, displayed,
among others, the tomb of Cyrus the Great and the ruins of Persepolis and
Ktesiphon.93 In contrast to the ruler’s set, the depiction of royal palaces had
in consequence of the deposition of the Qajars given way to illustrations of
factories, bridges and other modern buildings that played a similar role as
symbols of modern Iran and the resurgent Iranian nation.94
In this context, the placement of the ruins of Persepolis on the 10-Dinar
denomination, between those stamps with the allegories of justice and edu-
cation, was certainly not a coincidence. On the visual level, the Achamaenid
monuments, as an emblem of the glorious past, were framed by symbols of
progress, modernity and Westernization – “the combination of practical needs
and ancient virtues”95 typical for the ideology of the Pahlavi era. The message
conveyed by these stamps could be described as the radical reshaping of
administration and society that took place under Reza Shah, which was sup-
posed to create the precondition for a national renaissance by which Iran
would regain her former greatness.96 This strange conflation of past and
future was not only limited to these stamps, but during that period could also
be found in the architecture of the National Bank, with its copious stylistic
borrowings from Achaemenid architecture,97 or the new Ministry of Justice,
which displays even now on its façade reliefs with an allegory of justice and a
depiction of the court of Khosrow Anushiravan.98
The presentation of architecture as a symbol of power gave a further indica-
tion of the radical change that took place at that time in urban planning, with
the construction of new administrative areas in many major Iranian cities.99
In this context, apart from the need for an appropriate accommodation for
the reformed and strengthened institutions, the construction of the new gen-
eral post and customs office had been part of the architectonical re-planning
of the city area around the Tupkhaneh Square and the Golestan Palace in
Tehran with buildings that were intended to represent the new order.100
The topics and illustrations of the other stamps also mainly referred to the
ideology and iconography of the constitutional movement, in which social
and cultural development had been inseparable from technical progress. Such
ideas were avidly propagated in the periodicals published by Iranian expats
in Berlin during and after the First World War, i.e. by men who actively
supported Reza Shah’s seizure of power and under his rule played an active role
in the political and cultural life of Iran (such as Hasan Taqizadeh (1257–1348/
1878–1969) and Mohammad ‘Ali Jamalzadeh (1274–1997/1895–1997)101).
Apart from the creation of a strong centralized government, these intellectuals
considered the acquisition of modern technology as a necessary precondition to
enable Iran to withstand the challenges of modernity and the dominance of
the imperialist powers, whose position of strength was generally attributed to
their technological and scientific advance.102
Images of railroad bridges, airplanes and factories, which had represented
the promise of the modern world in the days of the Constitutional Revolution,
could be frequently found in the exile newspapers,103 which were widely
read in Iran. Against this background, the picture of the cement factory
at Rey (Figure 7.7) was for a contemporary viewer a familiar element of a
well-known iconographical code.
In a similar way, the cement factory was a first manifest sign of Iran’s
industrialization, which formed a key element of the modernization policy
under Reza Shah that was gaining momentum at the time when this stamp
was issued.104 In this respect, the factory did not only constitute a symbol of
government politics under Pahlavi rule (in which the economy to a great
extent was monopolized by the Shah himself),105 but did in addition serve as
an example of the growing industrialization. As a sign of Iran’s waning
dependency on imported foreign goods,106 it could also be interpreted as a
symbol for the newly gained freedom of action.
The aerodrome in Tehran (Figure 7.8), and the railroad bridge at Ahvaz,
together with the newly built general post and customs office, did in a similar
way exemplify steps towards modernity and sovereignty.
Figure 7.7 1935 commemoration set, 75 Dinar, cement factory in Rey.

Figure 7.8 1935 commemoration set, 30 Dinar, Tehran airfield.

162 Roman Siebertz
On the other hand, they epitomized the nature of the modernization
undertaken under Reza Shah, and the close interconnection of the central
issues of Iranian politics during that period: nationalism, the adoption of
modern technology and government control.
Knitting together the various regions and provinces of Iran by means of
traffic and communication had been a key issue of the modernization of Iran
and the creation of a powerful state since the early reforms of the nineteenth
century.107 The nationwide postal and communication system established
under Amir Kabir had formed a fundament on which his successors could
build, making the postal system one of the important institutions of the Qajar
period.108 The mail system owed its significance not least to the fact that the
governmental monopoly over the flow of information could serve as an
instrument of social control.109 This correlation between communication and
power was also to be found in the two stamps that, in the shape of aviation
and the Trans-Iranian Railroad, celebrated the newly created transportations
systems. In addition, with the customs office in Tehran and the Imperial navy,
the stamps celebrated two other symbols of regained sovereignty.
The image of the new building of the postal and customs administration
(Figure 7.9) in Tehran served the same purpose.
During the Constitutional Revolution, a permanent issue in parliamentary
politics had been the demand for the demission of the Belgian inspectors in
the Financial Department, of which the customs office and (as far as the
printing of stamps was concerned) the postal administration were a part.110
Not only was their presence seen as interference in the country’s financial
affairs, some of the Belgians were accused of the embezzlement of national
property by illegally selling postage stamps on their own account, which
was considered a flagrant violation of Iran’s sovereignty.111 Therefore, one of
the first measures of Reza Shah’s government after the 1921 coup had been
the removal of the last remaining Belgians from the Finance and Customs
Department.112 A similar political success had been the abrogation of the
capitulations for foreigners113 and the restoration of government control over
Iran’s customs administration in 1928.114 Furthermore, the industrialization
Figure 7.9 1935 commemoration set, 1.50 Rial, post and customs office in Tehran.
of Iran under Reza Shah was to a great extent bankrolled by a road tax levied
on all imported goods.115 Against this background, the image of the general
headquarters of the post and customs service not only depicted a symbol of
the strong centralized government, but also of Iran’s newly won sovereignty
over her financial and economical affairs.
The railroad bridge over Karun River (Figure 7.10) played a similar role in
the official iconography of the early Pahlavi state.
The construction of the Trans-Iranian Railroad in the first place constituted
the most spectacular part of the ongoing program of road building that was
initiated in the 1930s116 and had been an important part of the modernization
process insofar as it had made possible the industrialization of Iran.117 Even
though the extent of the constructed motor roads exceeded that of the rail-
road by its expansiveness and economic importance,118 the railway played a
special role in the public consciousness of the Pahlavi state. As an epitome of
modern technology, illustrations of railroads and railroad installations had
been a staple in the iconography of the constitutionalists and nationalists with
their admiration for science and technology. This symbolic significance was
still augmented by the fact that in the period before World War I the rivalry
between Britain and Russia in Iran had prevented any attempt to build a
railway in Iran (which may have given an advantage to the competitor),
making railroads one of the symbols of the aspired economic and political
independence. Furthermore, the fact that Iran had been able to venture the
construction of the Trans-Iranian Railroad without taking up a foreign loan,
but entirely with her own funds, made the railroad an example of autonomy
and independence119 – even though, compared to motor roads, it proved to
be a costly investment without much economical benefit.120 Having the
construction of the first nationwide railway connection realized under his
reign, and under the circumstances just mentioned, Reza Shah could claim
to have finally realized the demand for modern technology as well as for
political freedom of action.
The gunboat depicted on the 90-Dinar denomination (Figure 7.11) in much
the same way constituted an emblem of the resurgent nation.
Figure 7.10 1935 commemoration set, 1 Rial, railway bridge in Ahvaz.

164 Roman Siebertz
Figure 7.11 1935 commemoration set, 90 Dinar, gunboat Palang.

Originally established for the prevention of smuggling tea and sugar (by
whose taxation the construction of the railroad had been mainly financed),121
the navy had, from the outset, been much more than just a branch of the
armed forces. Together with the necessity to defend the country’s territorial
integrity, the control over the Persian Gulf became another issue of the
nationalist discourse, not least due to the strong British presence in the Gulf
and the imposed ban on Iran from maintaining her own naval forces in this
area during the Qajar period.122 In the Caspian Sea Russia had enjoyed a
similar position before and in fact also after World War I.123 Even though
insignificant in strength (consisting of only half a dozen small vessels),124
the new navy had proven to be an effective instrument not only to police
maritime trade and trafficking in Iranian waters, but also in order to exert an
effective control over the local rulers in the coastal areas.125 For this reason,
the navy had become an institution whose significance as a symbol of
national sovereignty was not lesser than that of the Trans-Iranian Railroad.
An early political triumph of Reza Shah had been the crushing of Sheykh
Khaz’al’s rebellion in Khuzestan, which was celebrated as a successful effort
of the central government to regain her complete control over the territory of
Iran.126 The fact that Sheykh Khaz’al (1239–1315/1860–1936) had enjoyed
British backing also gave the Shah the credit for having both successfully
restored Iran’s territorial integrity and challenged British hegemony in the
Persian Gulf.127 Already at that time, a caricature of Reza Shah entering
Mohammareh aboard a warship128 emphasized not only the Shah’s efforts
and achievements as the defender of national integrity who had restored the
nation’s pride and dignity, but also the importance of the armed forces for the
independence of Iran.129
This close relation of nationalism, modernization and a strong military, as
emblematized in the motif of the gunboat, was also inherent in the motifs of
other stamps of the set. At a closer look, the airplanes in the picture of the
Tehran aerodrome could be easily identified as military aircraft. Thus, the
image not only symbolizes the introduction of an up-to-date traffic system,
or the integration of Iran into the worldwide system of air transport (which at
that time still had been very rudimentary).130 It also gave a hint of the
importance of the newly created air force as an instrument of efficient dom-
ination especially over those areas that had not been accessible, and therefore
impossible to control, by regular military forces. In a similar way, the Trans-
Iranian Railroad, apart from its role as a national object of prestige, had been
planned and built not so much under economical as under military aspects.
Especially with its routing through the unruly tribal areas in the southwest of
Iran, it enabled the government in Tehran quickly to employ a great number
of troops from the capital to the rebellious provinces131 – one has to bear in
mind that the Bakhtiyari uprising, a trial of strength between the Shah and
the traditional elites, which had lasted several years and had led to the dis-
missal and arrest of Ja‘far Qoli Khan, was only subdued at the time when the
issue of the jubilee stamp set was decided.132
This linkage between technology, modernization, administrative reform and
Westernization was less apparent but nonetheless evident in the stamps in
praise of education, legal reform or communication. The post and customs
head office in Tehran for instance did exemplify the state’s claim for absolute
control over its citizens by supervising the distribution of information and the
traffic of goods, while the judicial reform and the new system of education in
the last analysis would secure for the state the control over their bodies and
minds. Apart from glorifying the progress Iran had made under the rule of
Reza Shah, the stamp set also displayed the instruments of power of the new
state, and gave a clear allusion to the true character of the Pahlavi state,
which was in essence not more than a royal dictatorship that rested on the
army’s bayonets, aided by “a state machine to destroy adversaries and establish
despotic rule”.133
Thus, while praising the efforts of modernization, and the apparent
achievements in this regard, the stamp set also constituted an unintended
manifestation of the actual political situation in Iran under Reza Shah, which
Mehrzad Boroujerdi has aptly defined as “Bonapartist etatism”.134 This raises
the question of the cabinet’s motivation in issuing this set, and the political
convictions and political backgrounds of those who had been involved in this
decision.
The men behind the stamps

The document itself had been signed by seven of the twelve members of the
cabinet.135 Aside from the initiator of the whole project, minister of post and
telegraph, Mohammad ‘Ali Dowlatshahi, the signatories were the prime
minister Mohammad ‘Ali Forughi;136 the minister of finance, ‘Ali Akbar
Davar;137 Mahmud Jam, interior minister;138 Mohsen Sadr, minister of
justice;139 Mostafa Qoli Bayat, minister of agriculture;140 and ‘Ali Akbar
Bahman, minister of transport.141 The list of signatories comprised virtually
all those whose portfolios had been directly related to the issues of the single
stamps. A striking point, considering the significance that was ascribed to
these stamps as an instrument of self-representation, was the absence of
166 Roman Siebertz
foreign minister, Baqer Khan Kazemi;142 ‘Abbas ‘Alamir (1271–1348/1892–
1969), minister of industry;143 and especially of the minister of education, ‘Ali
Ashgar Hekmat (1272–1359/1893–1980), who had played a pivotal role in the
educational and cultural politics of this time, especially as founder of the
Farhangestan, organizer of the Ferdowsi celebration in 1313/1934 and as first
rector of Tehran University.144
Equally conspicuous, in view of the prominent role of the military in
Iranian politics at that time, and the prominent position of military institu-
tions on the stamp set, was the missing signature of the minister of war, Ja‘far
Qoli Khan Sardar ‘Asad Bakhtiyar (1258–1313/1879–1934). His absence,
however, was easy to explain, since at the time of the session in question he
was already under arrest due to suspicion of collusion with the revolting
Bakhtiyars. He died in prison under mysterious circumstances a few days
after the decision was ratified.145 Altogether, the jubilee stamp set can be
regarded as the joint enterprise of a cabinet that had assembled some of the
most prominent protagonists of the modernization politics of the 1920s and
1930s, such as Forughi, Davar and ‘Ali Asghar Hekmat, who in some cases
had already collaborated in the past.146
In comparison to his celebrated colleagues, the minister of post and tele-
graph, Mohammad ‘Ali Dowlatshahi (1263–1313/1884–1934), who had spent
a great part of his political career inconspicuously as deputy of the Majles,
and had died from a heart attack several months before the set was issued in
Shahrivar 1313/September 1934, had not had a brilliant or commendable
career. However, his influence on the cabinet’s decision should not be under-
rated, since before his appointment as a minister, Dowlatshahi had served at
the royal court as grand marshal, a post in which he had succeeded Reza
Shah’s father in law, and therefore enjoyed a special relation to the innermost
circle of power.147 Whether the Shah himself had used his influence on the
edition of those stamps, however, has to remain a subject of speculation.
Another typical group of politicians of the Reza Shah era had been repre-
sented by Mahmud Jam (1257–1348/1257–1348) and Mohsen Sadr (1250–
1341/1871–1962). Jam, who had started his career at the court of Mohammad
‘Ali Shah, served as treasurer under Vosuq al-Dowleh (the prime minister
notorious for his pro-British stand), changed sides at the coup d’état of Reza
Khan and Ziya al-Din Tabataba’i in 1299/1921 and later became a loyal ser-
vant of the new monarch, holding several tenures as a minister and provincial
governor.148 In a similar way, Mohsen Sadr, who had begun as a sympathizer
of the constitutionalist movement, had after the coup d’état distinguished
himself as a jurist in several prominent positions.149
The minister of economy Mostafa Qoli Bayat (1267–1316/1880–1937) owed
his appointment to the fact that he had been a close assistant to Mohammad
‘Ali Forughi during his tenure as minister of economy.150 He had been
appointed minister of agriculture and executive of industry when Forughi
became prime minister in 1312/1933.151 In this respect, he could claim to have
contributed to the modernization project not only as a close follower of the
prime minister, but also through the creation of the Iranian economy. In any
case he could claim a greater role in the modernization of Iran than foreign
minister Baqer Kazemi (1271–1355/1892–1976), another protégé of For-
ughi152 and one of the typical functionaries of the Reza Shah period, who
could claim a long-standing service as minister, ambassador and later senator,
without notable distinction in any of those fields.153
In comparison to his subordinates, Prime Minister Mohammad ‘Ali Forughi,
who had been active in politics and administration since the Constitutional
Revolution, should be regarded as one of the noteworthy and influential per-
sonalities in Iranian politics of that period.154 Even though he was a man
“who combined a high degree of learning with a servile attitude towards his
political master”,155 at the same time, he had been a long-standing advocate
of the reform of the legal and educational system. As a committed partisan
and confidant of Reza Shah who, apart from several tenures as prime minis-
ter, had served as foreign minister (1310/1930), minister of finance (1303–4/
1924–25), war (1306/1927) and economy (1309/1930) and as ambassador in
Turkey (1307/1928), he had furthermore actively participated in the moder-
nization politics in all of the subjects covered by the stamps. Being a highly
educated man,156 Forughi is furthermore still remembered for his share in the
foundation of the Farhangestan and the University of Tehran.157
One of the most prolific modernizers in Forughi’s cabinet had been his
minister of finance, ‘Ali Akbar Davar (1264–1316/1885–1937), who was also
the most prominent veteran of the constitutionalist movement, and a man
whose ideology had been centred on nationalism and technical and social
modernization.158 Just as the allegory of education could serve as a symbol
for Forughi’s efforts in that field, the figure of Justitia on the 15-dinar denomi-
nation gave an indication of Davar’s personal contribution to reforming the legal
system and introducing a new law code modelled on Western patterns, which had
been the result of his tenure as minister of justice in 1306–11/1927–32.159 His
achievement, praised by modern authors as “a masterpiece of craftsman-
ship”,160 or at least for being “the most coherent attempt to rationalize
society”,161 was to prove to be one of the lasting measures of the inter-war
period. In his function as minister of finance, Davar could not only point to
the financial sovereignty of Iran, which had been achieved in the previous
years, but also to his efforts in the creation of national industry by obtaining
the needed funds and concluding trade agreements with the Soviet Union and
Germany.162
For Davar, the issues highlighted on the stamps, especially education, indus-
trialization and road building, were connected immediately with each other, and
also with national interest. Already in the early 1920s he had declared that
Until we dedicate ourselves to an economic revolution nothing will move

or change. We shall continue to suffer. We have 6,000 years of history, but
that will not translate into factories, railroads, hospitals or schools.
Schools alone without economic reforms will change nothing as long as
168 Roman Siebertz
the environment outside the schools continues to reek of poverty. There
must be some elements of prosperity before universities and libraries can
fulfil their functions when we have a least 5,000 kilometres of railways, 50
factories, 50 roads linking east and west, dams on the Karun River, and
have eradicated locusts, we can attend to the graduation of 1,000 students
from institutions of higher learning.163
In this respect, Davar could be quite content with what he and his associates
had achieved in the previous years. With the clearly visible results of their
efforts, like the development of a national industry and a network of
roads and railways that had not existed ten years ago,164 a foundation had
been created for the new educational system that he had envisaged, which, its
shortcomings notwithstanding,165 was regarded to be the basis for the
renaissance of Iran with her six-thousand-year-old culture and tradition (as
exemplified by the monuments of Persepolis depicted on the 10-Dinar
denomination). With his impeccable record as a patriot and reformer, Davar
was also able to personify the emerging modern state in a much more credible
way than other cabinet members, like Mahmud Sadr, who after the
crackdown of the first Majles had actively participated in the persecution of
arrested constitutionalists,166 or Mahmud Jam, who at the beginning of his poli-
tical life had been a loyal supporter of Vosuq al-Dowleh and the British–Iranian
agreement of 1298/1919.167
For all of them, the release of the jubilee set may have been an opportunity
to demonstrate, notwithstanding their backgrounds, their commitment to the
Iranian nation and their loyalty to Pahlavi rule. Furthermore, the references
to their efforts to build a modern nation and society also may have been
intended as a justification for their active participation in Reza Shah’s politics,
whose dictatorial and arbitrary character had been demonstrated at the same
time by the arrest of Ja‘far Qoli Khan. Therefore, this decision could also be
regarded as a vindication by public opinion and, possibly, posterity. This may
also explain the choice of the subject of the 45-Dinar denomination, the
sanatorium of Sakhtsar (Figure 7.12); this image introduced to the program
Figure 7.12 1935 commemoration set, 45 Dinar, sanatorium in Sakhtsar.

of the set the issues of public health care and social reform, which generally
had played a minor role in government propaganda of that time,168 which
was mostly focused on cultural identity and political sovereignty.
Since the sanatorium had been an individual project of Mahmud Jam,169
one may assume that in this way he may have attempted to use his attendance
and vote in the cabinet to document the manifest result of his activity as
interior minister and to distinguish himself from personalities such as For-
ughi, Davar or ‘Ali Asghar Hekmat. Mahmud Jam was not the only politician
who pointed out his personal merits. ‘Ali Akbar Hekmat, who had been
director of Tehran University and initiator of the National Museum, was
renowned for having his name written on the façade of the buildings that had
been constructed on his initiative.170 In the end, the emphasis which the
members of the cabinet had given to their individual contributions to national
progress did reflect the character of the Shah’s strategy to maintain his power
by entrusting national politics to handpicked and loyal subalterns rather than
to institutions and organizations.171
Later stamps of the Pahlavi period – The 1935 set as an

iconographic trendsetter
Among the stamps issued during the reign of Reza Shah, the jubilee set, with
its innovative and complex iconography, was to remain a unique experiment,
while the iconography of the stamp sets issued during the following years
again became more conservative and traditionalist. Most stamp designs went
on to display the monarch’s portrait framed by Achamaenid columns,172 with
the notable exception of a set issued in celebration of the Shah’s sixtieth
birthday in 1316/1938.173 For this set, a design was chosen that, in resem-
blance to contemporary British and German stamp designs (with unadorned
portraits of the British king or Adolf Hitler), dispensed with all ornaments
and confined itself to a portrait of Reza Shah in profile, with the Pahlavi
crown in the upper right corner.174
Architecture, as a symbol of Iranian statehood and cultural identity, also
remained an important element in the iconography of postage stamps. On a set
of definitive stamps, whose release had already been decided in 1318/1939175
but was delayed due to the War until 1321/1942, the Pahlavi state was repre-
sented by views of the newly erected buildings, such as railway bridges, the
Ministry of Justice and the military academy in Tehran. Two denominations
displayed views of the National Museum,176 which like the ruins of Persepolis
was supposed to symbolize the symbiosis of the glorious past and the bright
future. A similar set displaying the portrait of the young Mohammad Reza
Shah together with Safavid monuments of Esfahan, government buildings in the
capital and the Tehran railway station was issued as late as 1328/1949–50.177
A real diversification of the subjects to which postage stamps were dedi-
cated only took place in the years after World War II, and especially during
the period after the downfall of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, when
170 Roman Siebertz
the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah was compelled to legitimize itself after
having been saved only by a CIA-backed coup d’état of Mordad 1332/August
1953. From the early 1950s until the revolution of 1357/1979, a characteristic
feature of Iranian stamps was the state’s attempt to appear modern and up-
to-date by issuing postage stamps on every possible subject that gave the
Pahlavi state an opportunity to demonstrate its progressiveness and affiliation
to the modern world. Functional buildings such as bridges,178 factories179 and
barrage dams180 (Figure 7.13) were to remain a standard motif of postage
stamps during the following decades.
The definitive sets issued in the years before the revolution, whose stamps
displayed industrial plants, modern technology or historical monuments,181
pursued this tradition right into the 1970s. The design and subjects of the
various stamp sets issued on the occasion of the 2500-year celebration of the
Persian Empire, with illustrations of the ruins of Persepolis182 as well as of
modern representative buildings such as the Shahyad monument, the senate
building in Tehran or the Esfahan steel mill,183 could be placed in the
same iconographic tradition. Concerning the symbolic significance of archi-
tecture as an emblem of modernity, on the other hand, a pair of stamps issued
in celebration of the opening of the Tehran Hilton hotel184 (Figure 7.14) gave
a first indication not only of the sometimes frantic desire of the later Pahlavi
state to appear as a part of the modern Western world, but also of the tri-
vialization of public discourse and political iconography that were about to
become prevalent in the later years of Mohammad Reza Shah’s rule.
When the Iranian postal service in the 1960s followed an international
trend and joined the “everything to commemorate club”,185 issuing stamps
for every conceivable occasion, the subjects and illustrations of postage
stamps began to lose a considerable portion of their political validity and the
Figure 7.13 1964 stamp in celebration of the opening of the Shahnaz barrage dam
(Hamadan).
Figure 7.14 1963 stamp in celebration of the Tehran Hilton.

ideological coherence and complexity of their iconography, which had been a

characteristic feature of earlier stamp emissions.
Conclusion
Among the stamps of the Pahlavi era, the jubilee set of 1314/1935 remains
remarkable not only as one of the most ambitious official propagandistic
efforts, but also as an inestimable document of the political zeitgeist of the
Reza Shah period. Its significance could be measured both by the meticulous
quality of paper and printing and the remarkable artistic level of its design,
and by the fact that some of the most prominent politicians and policymakers
at that time had been involved in its emission. First of all, the illustrations on
the stamps reflected the dominant political discourse of the early Pahlavi
period, and the worldview and self-perception of the men who created a
modern state and society, and had taken advantage of this opportunity to
visualize their concept of statehood and national identity to a broader
audience. The issues that were treated on the stamps, such as the reform of
education and legislation, industrialization and transport, and the defence of
the realm as a precondition for national resurrection, were at that time neither
new nor inventive.
Moreover, the politics of modernization under Reza Shah were in essence
the continuation of intellectual and political trends that could be traced back
to the nineteenth century. The establishment of a strong centralized govern-
ment, able to exert control over the country’s natural and financial resources
in order to defend Iran effectively against foreign powers, had already been an
essential part of the reform projects during the Qajar period. In the emerging
nationalist discourse the imperative of a general transformation of state and
society according to Western paradigms did coincide with the rediscovery of
ancient Iran as the basis for a collective identity. The Constitutional Revolu-
tion of 1906–10 not only marked the transformation of Iran from a feudal
172 Roman Siebertz
state into a modern nation, but it also initiated the emergence of a new poli-
tical iconography, which combined emblems of Iranian monarchy, such as the
Kayani crown and the ruins of Persepolis, with allegorical depictions of pro-
gress and liberty, and images of modern Western technology. Since this new
symbolism had already been incorporated into the motif of Iranian stamps
just before World War I, the iconography of the jubilee set distinguished itself
less by its originality, than by effectively combining well-known political
symbols into a new and comprehensive sign system.
The selection of the illustrations from this iconographical code, such as
allegories of education and justice, a view of the ruins of Persepolis, warships
and military airplanes, and depictions of factories and railways, also gave a
direct hint to the propagandistic message of this stamp set. By depicting the
most notable achievements of the first decade of Reza Shah’s rule, the stamps
referred to the key issues of Iranian politics in the years before: the recovery
of national sovereignty and of government authority in all parts of the coun-
try, based on a modern armed force and government control of the financial
and custom affairs; the creation of an effective system of communication; and
the reform of education and jurisdiction as essential to a general reshaping of
state and society, with the immediate objective of making Iran competitive
with the modern industrialized nations, and the ultimate aim of restoring the
country’s former grandeur.
The politicians involved in the emission of this set, like Mohammad ‘Ali
Forughi, ‘Ali Akbar Davar, Mahmud Jam and Mohsen Sadr, had some good
reasons for pointing out these accomplishments, since the implemented
reforms and newly created institutions of the past years were in fact the rea-
lization of their own designs for a modern and independent Iran, which they
had formulated during the Constitutional Revolution. In doing so, they made
Reza Shah’s rule appear not as a royal dictatorship, but as the consequent
realization of the nation’s aspirations.186 This also provided an opportunity to
justify their participation in Iranian politics and enabled them to appear in
public not as lackeys of a ruthless and at times even despotic system, which
did not hesitate to employ these postage stamps in order to present its various
instruments of power.
The efforts made in various fields such as education, industrialization, the
creation of a transport network and an effective administrative system are still
undeniable. By depicting these successes, the motifs of the stamps, for better
or worse, reflected the political and social reality of Iran in the 1930s, which
was indeed characterized by a rapid and noticeable modernization of many
areas of life, and at the same time, by a growing monopolization of the Iranian
public and private life by the government. Therefore, these stamps are also a
document of the new relation between state and society, which found a
continuation not only in the reform programs of the ‘White Revolution’, but
also, and even more intensively, under the Islamic Republic. In this regard,
the jubilee stamp set set a trend for the iconography of power in Iran for
decades to come.
Notes
1 Nikki Keddie, Qajar Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah 1796–1925 (Costa Mesa,
CA: Mazda, 1999), pp. 89–93.
2 Layla S. Diba, “Images of Power and the Power of Images: Intention and
Response in Early Qajar Painting (1785–1834),” in Royal Persian Paintings: The
Qajar Epoch 1785–1925, ed. Layla S. Diba and Maryam Ekhtiar (London and
New York: I.B. Tauris, 1998), pp. 30–49: 31.
3 Paul Luft: “The Qajar Rock Reliefs,” Iranian Studies 34:1/4 (2001), pp. 31–49: 43.
4 John H. Lorentz: “Iran’s Great Reformer of the Nineteenth Century: An Analysis
of Amir Kabir’s Reforms,” Iranian Studies 4:2/3 (1971), pp. 85–103: 95.
5 On reform politics under the rule of Naser al-Din Shah, see Shaul Bakhash, Iran:
Monarchy, Bureaucracy and Reform under the Qajars, 1858–1896 (London:
Ithaca Press, 1978), pp. 83–186; on the reforms during Amin al-Dowleh’s
premiership, see ibid., pp. 214–44.
6 Ibid., pp. 306–44; Peter Avery, “Printing, Press and Literature in Modern Iran,”
in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, ed. Peter Avery, Gavin Hambly and
Charles Melville (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 7,
815–69, 815–17.
7 Feridun ‘Abdalifard, Tarikh-e post dar Iran az sedarat-e Amir Kabir ta vezarat-e
Amin al-Dowleh, 1264–1297 h.q. (Tehran: Hermand, 1996), pp. 17–20. Iraj Kiya,
Moruri bar tarikh-e post-e Iran (Tehran: Negin, 1997), pp. 100–101.
8 Mansoureh Ettehadieh, “The Early Press and the Introduction of Modern
Science in Iran,” in Amtsblatt, vilayet gazetisi und unabhängiges Journal: Die
Anfänge der Presse im Nahen Osten, ed. Anja Pistor-Hatam (Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang, 2001), pp. 15–28, 26–27.
9 On the official newspapers of that time, Sharaf and Sharafat, see E.G. Browne,
The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia: Partly Based on the Manuscript Work of
Mírzá Muhammad Àlí Khán ‘Tarbiyat’ of Tabríz (London: Cambridge University
Press, 1914), pp. 92–93, 109; and Mohammad Sadr Hashemi, Tarikh-e jarayed va
majallat-e Iran (Esfahan: Kamal, 1364/1985), pp. 3, 59–61.
10 ‘Abdalifard, Tarikh-e post, pp. 60–78 and Kiya, Moruri bar tarikh-e post,
pp. 122–26.
11 Postage stamps were for the first time issued in India in 1852, in Russia in 1858
and in the Ottoman Empire in 1863. Roman Siebertz, Die Briefmarken Irans als
Mittel der politischen Bildpropaganda (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2005), p. 22.
12 ‘Abdalifard, Tarikh-e post, pp. 39–43; and Mehrdad Sadri, Persiphila Iran Classic
Philatelic Reference, vol. 1: Qajar Dynasty (Glendora, CA: Persiphila, 2007), p. 6.
13 Mi = Michel Übersee-Katalog, vol. 9: Mittel-und Ostasien (Munich: Schwa-
nenberger, 2007), No. 1–4; SC = Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue
(Sidney, OH: Scott Publishing House, 2010), No. 1–4. For a detailed description
of these stamps see ‘Abdalifard, Tarikh-e post, pp. 16–34; and Sadri, Persiphila
Iran Classic Philatelic Reference, pp. 7–8.
14 ‘Abdalifard, Tarikh-e post, p. 45; and Sadri, Persiphila Iran Classic Philatelic
Reference, p. 7.
15 David Scott, European Stamp Design: A Semiotic Approach to Designing
Messages (London: Academy Editions, 1995), pp. 17, 25–26.
16 Siebertz, Die Briefmarken Irans, pp. 25–27. Another indication of the quick
acceptance of stamps as an expression of a claim to sovereignty can be seen in the
fact that revolutionary and autonomist movements during the Constitutional
Revolution and the following period, such as the revolutions in Tabriz under
Sattar Khan, the Azadestan Movement under Sheykh Mohammad Khiyabani
and the Jangali Movement under Kuchek Khan, all had challenged the authority
174 Roman Siebertz
of the central government by issuing their own stamps. For these issues, see
Feridun Novin Farahbakhsh, Rahnema-ye tambr-ha-ye Iran: Qajar-Pahlavi-
Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran. The Stamps of Iran: Qajar, Pahlavi, Islamic Republic
of Iran (Tehran: Nashr-e Farahbakhsh, 2009), pp. 83–86 and Sadri, Persiphila
Iran Classic Philatelic Reference, pp. 164–69, 173–76.
17 Mi 19–22/SC 27–30.
18 Mi 191–97/SC 357–63.
19 Mi 94I-109I/SC 104–19.
20 Mi 239–49/SC 434–45.
21 Peter Calmeyer, Elsie H. Peck, A. Shapur Shahbazi and Yahya D . oka, “Crown,”
in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 6, 1993, pp. 407–26: 424.
22 Mi 250/SC 445.
23 Abbas Amanat, “The Kayanid Crown and Qajar Reclaiming of Royal Author-
ity,” Iranian Studies 34:1/4 (2001), pp. 17–30, 31; and Calmeyer et al., “Crown,”
pp. 425–26.
24 Siebertz, Die Briefmarken Irans, p. 37.
25 Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804–
1946 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 41–45. Mohammad
Tavakoli-Targhi, “Refashioning Iran: Language and Culture during the
Constitutional Revolution,” Iranian Studies 32:1/4 (1990), pp. 77–101, 82–85.
26 Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1982), pp. 73–80; and Keddie, Qajar Iran, pp. 44–50.
27 Tavakoli-Targhi, “Refashioning Iran,” pp. 88–90. Keyvandokht Ghahari, Natio-
nalismus und Modernismus in Iran in der Periode zwischen dem Zerfall der Qa-ǧa--
.
ren-Dynastie und der Machtfestigung Reza- Schahs. Eine Untersuchung über die
- -
intellektuellen Kreise um die Zeitschriften Ka-weh, Ira-nšahr und Ayandeh (Berlin:
Klaus Schwarz, 2001), pp. 131–32. Anja Pistor-Hatam, Iran und die Reformbewegung
im Osmanischen Reich (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1992), pp. 198–208.
-
28 On this subject, see Mangol Bayat, “Mı-rza- Aqa- Kha-n Kirma-nı-: A Nineteenth
Century Persian Nationalist,” Middle Eastern Studies 10 (1974), pp. 36–59, 36–38.
Tavakoli-Targhi, “Refashioning Iran,” pp. 100–101; and Mostafa Vaziri: Iran as
an Imagined Nation: The Construction of National Identity (New York: Paragon
House, 1993), pp. 155–60.
-
29 Bayat, “Mı-rza- Aqa- Kha-n Kirma-nı-”, pp. 47–49; and Tavakoli-Targhi, “Refashioning
Iran,” pp. 100–101.
30 Sadri, Persiphila Iran Classic Philatelic Reference, p. 48.
31 Mi 363–79/SC 560–77.
32 Amanat, “The Kayanid Crown,” p. 19.
33 Farahbakhsh, Rahnema-ye tambr-ha-ye Iran, pp. 81–82; Sadri, Persiphila Iran
Classic Philatelic Reference, pp. 160–61.
34 Siebertz, Die Briefmarken Irans, pp. 40–41.
35 Cf. an article in Iranshahr, Aban 1292/18 October 1923, p. 104.
36 For a biography and ‘Abbas Mirza’s reform projects, see Heribert Busse, “‘Abba-s
Mı-rza- Qajar,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 1, 1982/83, pp. 79–84, passim.
37 For instance, depictions of the royal palace at Anzali, the Golestan Palace in
Tehran and the marble throne Farahbakhsh, Rahnema-ye tambr-ha-ye Iran, pp.
81–82; and Sadri, Persiphila Iran Classic Philatelic Reference, p. 160.
38 Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions, p. 102–33.
39 Farahbakhsh, Rahnema-ye tambr-ha-ye Iran, pp. 81–82; and Sadri, Persiphila
Iran Classic Philatelic Reference, p. 160.
40 Farahbakhsh, Rahnema-ye tambr-ha-ye Iran, p. 8; Sadri, Persiphila Iran Classic
Philatelic Reference, p. 161.
41 For the stamp emissions of this period, see Farahbakhsh, Rahnema-ye tambr-ha-ye
Iran, pp. 55–75; and Sadri, Persiphila Iran Classic Philatelic Reference, pp. 131–47.
42 Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), pp. 63–65; and Keddie, Qajar Iran, pp. 78–81.
43 For these events, see Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions, pp. 118–35.
Mohammad Reza Ghods, Iran in the Twentieth Century: A Political History
(Boulder, CO and London: L. Rienner, 1989), pp. 93–100. Cyrus Ghani, Iran and
the Rise of Reza Shah: From Qajar Collapse to Pahlavi Power (London and New
York: I.B. Tauris, 1998), pp. 161–372.
44 Hasan Morsalvand, “Sheybani, ‘Abd al-Hoseyn (Vahid al-Molk),” Zendegi-
nameh-ye rejal va mashahir-e Iran, vol. 4 (Tehran: Entesharat-e Elham, 1369–75/
1990–96), pp. 143–44.
45 Baqer ‘Aqeli, “Taqizadeh, Sayyed Hasan,” Sharh-e hal-e rejal-e siyasi va nezami-
ye mo‘aser-e Iran, vol. 1 (Tehran: Nashr-e Goftar/Nashr-e ‘Elmi, 1380/2001),
pp. 505–10.
46 Morsalvand, “Sur, Qasem (Sur-e Esrafil-Tabrizi),” Zendegi-nameh-ye rejal, vol. 4,
pp. 214–16. Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah, p. 291.
47 ‘Aqeli, “Hejazi, Mohammad,” Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 1, pp. 572–73.
Morsalvand, “Hejazi, Mohammad,” Zendegi-nameh-ye rejal, vol. 3, pp. 78–80.
M. Ghanoonparvar, “H - - -
. ejazı, Moh.ammad Mot.ı’-al-Dawla,” in Encyclopaedia
Iranica, vol. 12, 2004, pp. 141–43.
48 Sadr Hashemi, Tarikh-e jarayed, vol. 2, pp. 69–71.
49 “Iran-e-Emruz,” Sadr Hashemi, Tarikh-e jarayed, vol. 1, pp. 325–30.
50 Illustrations in Farangestan 1:2 (February 1924), p. 95; and Farangestan 1:5
(September 1924), p. 228; and Farangestan 1:6 (October 1924), p. 281; and
Farangestan 1:11/12 (March/April 1925), p. 553. On Farangestan, see Sadr
Hashemi, “Farangestan,” Tarikh-e jarayed, vol. 4, pp. 66–68; and Věra Kubíčková,
“Persian Literature of the 20th Century,” in History of Iranian Literature, ed. Jan
Rypka (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1968), pp. 353–418: 383.
51 As examples of these caricatures, see Nahid 7:18 (11 Shahrivar 1306/3 September
1927); Nahid 7:68 (22 Ordibehesht 1307/12 May 1928); and Nahid 7:30 (25 Mehr
1306/18 October 1927).
52 Mi 449–59/SC 635–45. See also Sadri, Persiphila Iran Classic Philatelic Reference,
pp. 140–41.
53 Mi 483–96/SC 667–80.
54 Mi 514–17/SC 703–6. The first stamps issued were surcharged taxation stamps
(Mi 508–13/SC 697–702).
55 Mi 518–33/SC 707–22.
56 On the stamps that were still in circulation the portrait of Ahmad Shah had to be
obliterated (Farahbakhsh, Rahnema-ye tambr-ha-ye Iran, pp. 67–68).
57 Mi 534–43/SC 723–34.
58 Mi 560–63/SC 740–43.
59 Mi581–95/SC 744–58, 760–70.
60 Mi 595/SC 759.
61 Mi 625–39, 687–700/SC 771–85, 827–40. The issue of this set had become
necessary because of the replacement of Kran and Shahi by the Rial as the new
currency. Handbuch der Briefmarkenkunde, vol. 2 (Berlin: Verein Handbuch der
Briefmarkenkunde, 1943), p. 637.
62 Patricia L. Baker, “Politics of Dress: The Dress Reform Laws of 1920–30s Iran,”
in Language of Dress in the Middle East, ed. Nancy Lindisfarne-Tapper and
Bruce Ingram (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1997), pp. 178–90: 181–84. Houchang E.
Chehabi, “Staging the Emperor’s New Clothes: Dress Codes and Nation-Building
Under Reza Shah,” Iranian Studies 26:3/4 (1993), pp. 209–33: 224–25. Bianca
Devos, Kleidungspolitik in Iran. Die Durchsetzung der Kleidungsvorschriften für
.
Männer unter Riza- Ša-h (Würzburg: Ergon, 2006), pp. 9–11.
63 Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran, p. 66.
176 Roman Siebertz
..
64 Bernard Hourcade and Ah.mad Tafazzolı-: “Dama-vand,” in Encyclopaedia
Iranica, vol. 6, 1993, pp. 627–31: 630–31.
65 Mi 597–613/SC 634–50. For a description of this motif, see Handbuch der
Briefmarkenkunde, vol. 2, p. 635.
66 Directive by minister of post and telegraph Mohammad ‘Ali Dowlatshahi, NA
240/212/21/15, 28 Dey 1312/9 January 1934 and 15 Esfand 1312/6 March 1934.
Marziyeh Yazdani, ed., Asnad-e post va telegraf va telefon dar dowreh-ye Reza
Shah (Tehran: Entesharat-e Sazman-e Asnad-e Melli-ye Iran, 1999), pp. 64–65.
67 Instruction by the acting minister of post and telegraph, Mohammad Hakimi,
NA 1210001/121, 8 Esfand 1315/27 February 1937, published in Yazdani, Asnad-e
post, pp. 69–70.
68 “Tasvib-nameh-ye enteshar-e tambr-ha-ye makhsus-e taraqqiyat-e mamlekat
tavassot-e hey’at-e vaziran” (Resolution on the issue of Commemorative Stamps on
the Country’s Progress by the Cabinet), NA 113012/9402, published in Yazdani,
Asnad-e post, pp. 65–66.
69 Yazdani, Asnad-e post, p. 65.
71 Farahbakhsh, Rahnema-ye tambr-ha-ye Iran, p. 97. Handbuch der Briefmarkenkunde,
vol. 2, pp. 639–40.
72 Decree issued by minister of post and telegraph Nezam al-Din Hekmat, NA
121004/656, 22 Esfand 1313/13 March 1935, in Yazdani, Asnad-e post, pp. 66–67.
73 Handbuch der Briefmarkenkunde, vol. 2, p. 641. In 1937, the postal rates for
internal mail were 10 Dinars for local letters, postcards and printed matters up to
50 grams, 30 Dinars for letters up to 10 grams (plus 15 Dinars for each additional
5 grams) and 60 Dinars for registered mail. Giorgio Migliavacca, A Concise
Postal History of Persia (n. p.: Laurel Publications, 1986), pp. 36–37.
75 Mi 640/SC 786.
76 Mi 642/SC 788.
77 Mi 641/SC 787.
78 Mi 643/SC 789.
79 Mi 644/SC 790.
80 Mi 645/SC 791.
81 Mi 646/SC 792.
82 Mi 648/SC 793.
83 Mi 649/SC 794. For a detailed description of the respective stamp designs, see
Handbuch der Briefmarkenkunde, vol. 2, pp. 641–43.
85 David Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran (Ithaca, NY and
London: Cornell University Press 1992), p. 90.
86 Ghahari, Nationalismus und Modernismus, pp. 174–227.
87 On the aims of the judicial reform see Amin Banani, The Modernization of Iran:
1921–1941 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961), pp. 73–78. Ghods,
Iran in the Twentieth Century, pp. 105–6. For the education system see Matthee,
“Transforming Dangerous Nomads into Useful Artisans,” pp. 313–36: 322–30.
88 Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran, p. 85. Menashri, Education, pp. 93–96.
89 Ibid., 70.
90 For specific examples from the early Reza Shah period see Kashani-Sabet, Frontier
Fictions, pp. 136, 138, 162.
91 On Nahid see Sadr Hashemi, Tarikh-e jarayed, vol. 4, pp. 455–59; and Kubíčková,
“Persian Literature of the 20th Century,” p. 383.
92 Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions, pp. 62–74.
93 On the publication history and the ideological orientation of Iranshahr cf. Ghahari,
Nationalismus und Modernismus, pp. 63–77.
94 Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions, p. 157.
96 Ghahari, Nationalismus und Modernismus, p. 132.
97 Walter Hinz, Iranische Reise: Eine Forschungsreise durch das heutige Iran (Berlin:
Hugo Bermühler, 1938), p. 94.
98 An illustration of this building and further information about its architecture and
its designer Gabriel Guevrekin, one of Iran’s most prominent modernist architects
of that period, can be found in Mina Marefat, “The Protagonists who Shaped
Modern Tehran,” in Téhéran: capitale bicentenaire, ed. Chahryar Adle and Ber-
nard Hourcade (Paris and Tehran: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, 1992),
pp. 95–126: 118–19.
99 Illustrations in the header of pro-constitutional periodicals like Rahnema and
Tashviq. On Rahnema and Tashviq, see Sadr Hashemi, Tarikh-e jarayed, vol. 2,
pp. 334–37, vol. 2, pp. 127–28. On urban planning and the significance of modern
architecture during the Reza Shah period, see Eckart Ehlers and Willem Floor,
“Urban Change in Iran: 1920–41,” Iranian Studies 26:3/4 (1993), pp. 251–75,
254–70.
101 Ghahari, Nationalismus und Modernismus, pp. 59–60.
102 Willem Floor, The Industrialization of Iran: 1900–1941 (Durham: University of
Durham, 1984), p. 36. Ghahari, Nationalismus und Modernismus, pp. 181–84.
103 Illustrations in Farangestan 1:2 (February 1924), p. 95; Farangestan 1:5 (Septem-
ber 1924), p. 228; Farangestan 1:6 (October 1924), p. 281; and Farangestan 1:11/
12 (March/April 1925), p. 553.
104 Parvin Alizadeh, “Industrialization,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 13, 2006,
pp. 105–25: 106–9.
105 Mohammad Reza Ghods, “Government and Society in Iran: 1921–41,” Middle
Eastern Studies 26 (1991), pp. 219–39: 222.
106 For a more detailed description of the industrialization politics during the 1930s,
see Yair P. Hirschfeld, Deutschland und Iran im Spielfeld der Mächte: Inter-
nationale Beziehungen unter Reza Schah (Düsseldorf: Droste 1980), pp. 145–46;
and Banani, Modernization of Iran, pp. 139–41.
107 Shaul Bakhash, Iran: Monarchy, Bureaucracy and Reform under the Qajars,
1858–1896 (London: Ithaca Press, 1978), p. 350. Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions,
p. 75. The same idea had been expressed by Jamalzadeh during World War I.
Mohammad ‘Ali Jamalzadeh, Der unermessliche Schatz oder Die wirtschaftliche
Lage Irans: Ǧama-lza-des Studie zur iranischen Volkswirtschaft am Vorabend des
Ersten Weltkriegs, ed. Leila Nabieva (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2006), p. 72.
108 ‘Abdalifard, Tarikh-e post, p. 60–77. Kiya, Moruri bar tarikh-e post, pp. 124–26.
109 Mehrzad Boroujerdi, “Triumphs and Travails of Authoritarian Modernization in
Iran,” in The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921–
1941, ed. Stephanie Cronin (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 146–54:
150–51.
110 Kiya, Moruri bar tarikh-e post, pp. 220–33.
111 Ibid., pp. 238–39.
112 Ibid., pp. 288–93.
113 Michael P. Zirinski, “Riza Shah’s Abrogation of Capitulations: 1927–28,” in
Making of Modern Iran, ed. Cronin, pp. 81–98: esp. 81–82 and 89–94.
114 Ghods, Iran in the Twentieth Century, p. 102.
115 Patrick Clawson, “Knitting Iran Together: The Land Transport Revolution,
1920–41”, Iranian Studies 26:3 (1993), pp. 235–50: 244.
116 Banani, Modernization of Iran, p. 133. Clawson, “Knitting Iran Together,”
pp. 241–43. Ghods, Iran in the Twentieth Century, pp. 102–3.
117 Clawson, “Knitting Iran Together,” pp. 249–50.
178 Roman Siebertz
118 Homa Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran: Despotism and Pseudo-
Modernism, 1926–1979 (London and New York: New York University Press,
1981), p. 116.
119 Banani, Modernization of Iran, p. 134. Keddie, Roots of Revolution, p. 99.
120 For a critique of the railway project see Clawson, “Knitting Iran Together”,
pp. 241–42, Katouzian, Political Economy, pp. 115–16 and Keddie, Roots of
Revolution, pp. 100–101.
122 Firuz Kazemzadeh, Russia and Britain in Persia, 1864–1914: A Study in Imperi-
alism, (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 151–52.
123 Guive Mirfendereski, A Diplomatic History of the Caspian Sea: Treaties, Diaries
and Other Stories (London and New York: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 136–38.
124 For a complete list of the vessels of the Iranian navy see Weyers Taschenbuch der
Kriegsflotten vol. 29 (Munich: F. J. Lehmann, 1935), pp. 128–29.
125 Rudi Matthee, “Transforming Dangerous Nomads into Useful Artisans, Techni-
cians, Agriculturalists: Education in the Reza Shah Period,” in Making of
Modern Iran, ed. Cronin, pp. 136–37. Hirschfeld, Deutschland und Iran, p. 161.
126 Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions, pp. 164–67.
127 Keddie, Qajar Iran, pp. 81–82. Michael P. Zirinski, “Imperial Power and Dicta-
torship: Britain and the Rise of Reza Shah,” International Journal of Middle East
Studies 24:4 (1992), pp. 639–63: 653–55.
128 Nahid 8:31 (15 Aban 1307/6 November 1928). In 1924 a newspaper article had
celebrated the acquisition of a small, old ex-German minesweeper, which was
supposed to be a patrol vessel on the Caspian Sea, with a full-page photograph.
Farangestan 1:3 (3 April 1924), following p. 115.
129 In an article in the illustrated periodical Iran-e Bastan a photograph of the gunboat,
which was almost identical with the stamp motif, was published on one page
together with images of the celebration of the northern track of the Trans-Iranian
Railway and an article titled “An Example of the Achievements of New Iran
Shahanshah Pahlavi” (Nemuneh-ye taraqqiyat-e Iran-e now dar partu-ye tavajjo-
hat-e Shahanshah Pahlavi), which summed up the ideology of Reza Shah’s rule,
with its mixture of nationalism, monarchism and militarism, declaring that ‘now,
under the protection of the Imperial government, the flag of Iran is flying every-
where as long as a single Iranian soldier is alive, and while he is bravely fighting
the enemy, by his deeds he demonstrates, [that] our name is glorious, and [that]
we must maintain our glorious name, and our way to demonstrate this is by deed
and devotion to the king’: see Iran-e Bastan 3:2 (25 Khordad 1314/16 June 1935),
p. 3. In other issues of the same volume, Iran-e Bastan published other views of
the Trans-Iranian Railway [Iran-e Bastan 3:4 (14 Tir 1314/9 January 1935), p. 10],
an illustrated coverage of the centennial of German railroads [Iran-e Bastan 3:8
(25 Mordad 1314/17 August 1935), p. 16], and a cover story entitled “What Is the
Importance and Avail of a Railroad for a Living Nation and an Independent
State?” (Ahamiyat va sud-e rah-e ahan bara-ye yek mellat-e zendeh va mamlekat-e
mostaqell chist?), Iran-e Bastan 3:11 (15 Shahrivar 1314/7 September 1935), p. 1.
130 Banani, Modernization of Iran, p. 136. On the strategic and political factors that
influenced and obstructed civil aviation in the 1930s, see Hirschfeld, Deutschland
und Iran, pp. 107, 129, 137, 170–72.
131 Clawson, “Knitting Iran Together,” p. 246. Ghods, “Government and Society,”
pp. 219–30, 221.
132 Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran, p. 93. Kaveh Bayat, “Riza Shah and the
Tribes: An Overview,” in The Making of Modern Iran, ed. Cronin, pp. 213–19.
Stephanie Cronin, “Reza Shah, the Fall of Sardar Asad, and the ‘Bakhtiyari
Plot’,” Iranian Studies 38:2 (2005), pp. 211–46: 216–42.
133 Katouzian, Political Economy, pp. 109–10.
134 Boroujerdi, “Triumphs and Travails,” p. 147.
135 For the composition of Forughi’s cabinet, see Dowlat-ha-ye Iran: az Mirza
Nasrallah Khan Moshir al-Dowleh ta Mir Hoseyn Musavi (Tehran: Sazman-e Chap
va Entesharat-e Vezarat-e Farhang va Ershad-e Eslami, 1378/1999), pp. 158–59.
136 ‘Aqeli, “Forughi, Mohammad ‘Ali,” Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 2, pp. 1107–20.
Morsalvand, “Forughi-Zoka, Mohammad ‘Ali (Zoka al-Molk)”, Zendegi-nameh-ye
rejal, vol. 5, pp. 96–108.
137 ‘Aqeli, “Davar, ‘Ali Akbar,” Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 2, pp. 654–64. Morsalvand,
“Davar, ‘Ali Akbar,” Zendegi-nameh-ye rejal, vol. 3, 182–96.
138 ‘Aqeli, “Jam, Mahmud,” Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 1, pp. 547–51. ‘Aqeli, “Jam,
Mahmud” (Modir al-Molk), Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 3, pp. 20–25.
139 “Sadr, Mohsen,” Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 2, pp. 918–24.
140 “Bayat, Mostafa Qoli,” ibid., vol. 1, p. 352.
141 “Bahman, ‘Ali Akbar,” ibid., vol. 1, pp. 325–26.
142 “Kazemi, Baqer”, ibid., vol. 3, pp. 1280–82.
143 “‘Alamir, ‘Abbas,” ibid., vol. 2, pp. 1018–19.
144 “Hekmat, ‘Ali Asghar”, ibid., vol. 1, pp. 586–88. On the significance of the
Ferdowsi millennium as part of the efforts to create a new, common cultural
identity, see Menashri, Education, p. 97.
145 Stephanie Cronin, “Riza Shah and Disintegration of Bakhtiyari Power in Iran:
1921–34,” in The Making of Modern Iran, ed. Cronin, pp. 241–68, 261–65 and
idem, “Fall of Sardar Asad,” p. 242. Sardar Asad was succeeded as minister of
war by Amir-e Lashkar Monteq Nahchevand (1261–1970/1882–1970), previously
leader of the Tehran military academy and chief of staff in the Iranian army. ‘Aqeli,
“Nahchevand, Sepahbod Mohammad”, Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 3, pp. 1614–15; and
Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah, p. 156. See also Morsalvand, “As’ad
Bakhtiyari, Ja‘far Qoli Khan (Sardar Bahador)”, Zendegi-nameh-ye rejal, vol. 1,
pp. 152–57.
146 On the cooperation of Davar and Forughi as members of the hezb-e tajaddod cf.
Ghods, Iran in the Twentieth Century, pp. 95–96.
147 ‘Aqeli, “Dowlatshahi, Mohammad ‘Ali,” Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 2, p. 684.
148 ‘Aqeli, “Jam, Mahmud,” Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 1, pp. 547–51.
149 “Sadr, Mohsen,” ibid., vol. 2, pp. 920–22.
150 “Bayat, Mostafa Qoli,” ibid., vol. 1, p. 352.
151 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 352.
152 “Forughi, Mohammad ‘Ali,” ibid., vol. 3, pp. 1107–20: 1116.
153 “Kazemi, Baqer”, ibid., vol. 3, pp. 1280–82. The same could be said about ‘Ali
Akbar Bahman (1262–1346/1883–1967), who, as an employee of the Foreign Min-
istry, had spent most of his time as ambassador in Turkey, Belgium and Egypt. Ibid.,
vol. 1, pp. 325–26. Some years later, his most significant assignment would be, as
ambassador in Cairo, to arrange the marriage between Crown Prince Moham-
mad Reza and Princess Fowziyeh of Egypt in 1939, an event that was also to be
celebrated with a set of postage stamps (Mi 741–45/SC 871–75).
154 ‘Aqeli, “Forughi, Mohammad ‘Ali,” Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 3, pp. 1107–20.
Morsalvand, “Forughi-Zoka”, Zendegi-nameh-ye rejal, vol. 5, pp. 96–108.
155 Katouzian, Political Economy, p. 109.
156 ‘Aqeli, Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 3, pp. 1118–20.
157 Ibid., vol. 3, p. 1114. On the foundation of Tehran University as the core of the
attempts to create a new elite see Menashri, Education, pp. 143–54.
158 “Davar, ‘Ali Akbar,” ibid., vol. 2, pp. 663–64.
159 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 656–57. Banani, Modernization of Iran, pp. 70–80. For the role
of Davar, see ibid., pp. 71–72.
160 Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah, p. 294.
161 Ghods, “Government and Society,” p. 225.
180 Roman Siebertz
162 ‘Aqeli, Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 2, p. 663.
163 Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah, p. 296.
164 Clawson, “Knitting Iran Together,” p. 238.
165 For a critique of the pre-war education system, which only embraced a mere ten
percent of the population, and which was still characterized by a high degree of
improvisation and experimentation on the academic level, see Banani, Modernization
of Iran, pp. 92–94; and Ghods, Iran in the Twentieth Century, p. 103.
166 ‘Aqeli, “Sadr, Mohsen,” Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 2, pp. 919–20.
167 “Jam, Mahmud,” ibid., vol. 1, p. 548.
168 For the efforts in this field, see Banani, Modernization of Iran, pp. 64–66; and
Mahmood Meskoub, “Social Policy in Iran in the Twentieth Century,” Iranian
Studies 39:2 (2006), pp. 227–52, who points out that expenditures for the health
system during the 1920s and 1930s were considerably lower than those for education
or the military: p. 228.
169 Hinz, Iranische Reise, pp. 98–99.
.
170 Abbas Milani, “Hekmat, Reza- Sarda-r Fa-er,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 12,
pp. 150–52.
171 Ghods, “Government and Society,” pp. 219–20, 227.
172 Mi 687–700, 701–15/SC 827–40, 841–70.
173 Mi 716–25/SC 870A-H.
174 Scott, European Stamp Design, p. 17.
175 “Pishnahad va erayeh-ye ‘aks-ha-ye mokhtalef jehat-e ‘aksbardari dar vasat va
hashiyeh-ye tambr-ha” (Proposals and Demonstration of Various Illustrations,
Based on Photographs, in the Centre and Frame of Stamps), Ministry of Finance,
NA 240/52/20/1, 7 Bahman 1319/27 January 1941, published in Yazdani, Asnad-i
post, pp. 75–76.
176 Mi 746–59/SC 876–909.
177 Mi 795–810/SC 915–30.
178 Mi 1026–27, 1073–74/SC 1102–3, 1152–53.
179 Mi 1109–10/SC 1196–97.
180 Mi 1111–12, 1113–14, 1147–48, 160–61/SC 1198–99, 1200–201, 1236–37, 1249–50.
181 Mi 1738–48, 1783–93, 1890–1901/SC 1820–41, 1961–72
182 Mi 1505–8/SC 1593–96.
183 Mi 1521–24/SC 1605–8.
184 Mi 1144–45/SC 1234–1335.
185 Hilary Lewis, The Stamps of Iran (Tehran: Namazi Press, 1979), p. 95.
186 Ghods, Iran in the Twentieth Century, pp. 97–98.
8 Press censorship in the Reza Shah era,
1925–411
Karim Soleimani
Introduction
The reign of Reza Shah was the result of a military coup d’état. Following the
successful coup of 3 Esfand 1299 (21 February 1921) Reza Khan gradually
extended and enforced his power. Simultaneously, he distributed many of the
important posts in the country among his colleagues in the military. In military
regimes the press has no place but to praise the dictator. Perhaps this attitude
actually contributed to the fact that during all his years in power Reza Shah
never bothered to alter or replace the press law (qanun-e matbu‘at) from the
constitutional period, issued 5 Moharram 1326 (8 February 1908). Two sup-
plementary articles, from 10 Aban 1301 (2 November 1922), which were the
result of much hard work by the members of the fourth Majles (1 Tir 1300 to
Khordad 130 /June 1921 to 30 June 1923) equally failed to attract the attention
of Reza Shah, since he, and the censoring system he had created, did not feel
the slightest need to refer to the law. During this period censorship was one of
the most important tools with which the government imagined it could
maintain order and stability. The press-censoring apparatus in the Reza Shah
era operated according to the personal taste of the person or organization at
its head during that particular period of time.
The documents available at the Iranian National Archives (Sazman-e
Asnad-e Melli-ye Iran) are the most important sources used in writing this
article. In addition, documents kept in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (Markaz-e Asnad-o Tarikh-e Diplomasi-ye Vezarat-e Omur-e Khareji) and
at the Center for Research and Presidency Documents (Markaz-e Pazhuhesh va
Asnad-e Riyasat-i Jomhuri) have contributed to this article. Most of the
documents related to this field have been studied carefully and the most
important among them have been quoted. Thus, we can show clearly how the
censorship of the press worked during the first Pahlavi era, especially in relation
to its changing aims and intentions.
Among the first measures of the coup d’état from 1921 was a publication
stop for a large part of the press. The military government announced on 17
Esfand 1300 (8 March 1922): “In the future I will break the pens of the
opposition, cut their tongues and … ”2 Although, after a while, these
182 Karim Soleimani
newspapers were allowed to begin publishing again, Reza Shah, as minister of
war, could not show restraint in face of critical papers. He ordered the editor
of the newspaper Setareh-ye Iran, Hoseyn Saba, to be tied up and whipped on
the parade ground for minor criticism. He is also said to have knocked out
the teeth of Hoseyn Falsafi, the head of the newspaper Hayat-e Javid, with
his fist and locked both him and the paper’s editor up in the garrison police
department.3
The newspaper Haqiqat had accused Sardar E‘temad, head of the arsenal,
and a number of other officers of embezzlement. In consequence, Reza Khan,
then minister of war, asked Mirza Hasan Khan Pirniya (Moshir al-Dowleh),
who was the prime minister at that time, to ban Haqiqat, but he refused.4
Consequently, the minister of war threatened the prime minister that if he
would not ban the newspaper, he would not be allowed to enter the royal
court any more. Eventually Reza Khan’s threats caused Pirniya to resign.5
The Za‘faranlu tribe had assisted the government forces in the suppression
of Colonel Mohammad Taqi Khan. When the newspaper Setareh-ye Iran
mocked and ridiculed the tribe with satirical comments, the chief editor of the
newspaper, Hoseyn Saba, was again arrested and whipped on Reza Khan’s
orders. According to ‘Ali Dashti, he “was freed after forty days or more and
began to show the whip marks which were visible on his waist and back to
visitors at his home.”6 The pressure imposed by the minister of war and his
military organization resulted in the outcry of writers: for example, Mohammad
Farrokhi Yazdi, editor of the journal Tufan, named the government of Reza
Khan “the government of camel-cow-leopard” (hokumat-e shotor, gav-palang)
and then sought refuge in the Russian embassy.7
By passing certain bills, the members of the fourth Majles (legislative
period from 1 Tir 1300 to 30 Khordad 1302; 22 June 1921 to 20 June 1923) tried
to restrict Reza Khan and the military’s obstinacy in relation to the press. On 10
Aban 1301 (2 November 1922) the Majles voted for a supplementary act con-
sisting of two articles that were added to the original press law, which had
been passed on 5 Moharram 1326 (18 Bahman 1286/8 February 1908) by the
first parliament of the constitutional era.8 In the same year, the High Council
of Education (Shura-ye ‘Ali-ye Ma‘aref) was established based on this press
law. Thus, from then on all affairs concerning the press were transferred to the
High Council of Education. From the month of Dey 1301 until the end of
1304 (December 1922 – February 1926), the High Council of Education
issued authorizations for the publication of 267 papers and 77 magazines.
From this year onwards the press was also bound to abide by the regulations
passed by the council.9
On 11 Aban 1302 (4 November 1923) Reza Khan was appointed prime min-
ister and on the same day Ahmad Shah left Iran for Europe.10 Consequently
more than ever the political and military power was centralized in the hands
of Reza Khan. The new government passed a decree that any state employee
using “the printed press to complain will be tried and punished”.11 As a result
of this order, the press was now more isolated than ever. Also in this Iranian
Press censorship in the Reza Shah era 183
year (January 1924), the first head of the Central Police Office (Edareh-ye
Koll-e Tashkilat-e Nazmiyeh), Mohammad Dargahi, was appointed to replace
the Swedish officer Carl Gustav Westdahl.12 Until 1308 (1929), when he
was replaced by General Sadeq Khan Kupal, he was in possession of an
immense amount of power, so much so that he “had gained more power than
the prime minister”.13 From then on the military played an important role
in the censorship of the press and in putting pressure on its chief editors.
The assassination of Mirzadeh ‘Eshqi is one of the most significant events
that took place before Reza Shah came to the throne. ‘Eshqi, the editor of the
newspaper Qarn-e Bistom (20th century), was a poet with socialist leanings.
He had seriously opposed the republican slogans that Reza Khan and his
supporters had begun to publicize towards the end of 1302 (March 1924) and
the beginning of 1303 (April 1924). He was fearless and inspiring in his writ-
ings. For this reason government agents “shot him on Thursday, 12 Tir 1303
(3 July 1924) at his house that was located in the Dowlat quarter, Qotb al-Din
Alley, and he died hours later”.14
The murder of ‘Eshqi caused terror among the community of intellectuals
in Iran, and since the political and security structures needed by the new
regime were not yet fully developed, cries of protest could be heard in the
press. Thus the editors of the printed press in opposition to the government
reacted and took refuge in the National Consultative Assembly in order
to put pressure on the government to find out the identity of ‘Eshqi’s
killers.15 Therefore, Mirzadeh ‘Eshqi’s murder marks the beginning of
Reza Shah’s 16-year-long reign and of his policies regarding culture and
the press.
Although the Pahlavi regime was of a military nature from the beginning,
the political, military and security structures necessary for developing a com-
plete military government only took shape gradually. For this reason the
censorship of the press in the Reza Shah era extended only step by step until
it reached a point where – in the documents available today from that
period – the discourse of sceptics of censorship turned into a discourse of
servility. The censorship of the press during this era consists of at least three
periods. The first period begins with Reza Shah ascending the throne in 1304/
1925 and ‘Abdolhoseyn Teymurtash becoming the court minister (28 Azar
1304/19 December 1925).16 During this period the Court Ministry (Vezarat-e
Darbar) was the basic foundation of press censorship. In the second period,
from the removal of Teymurtash from office (3 Dey 1311/24 December 1932)
until the establishment of the Office of Guidance in Writing (Edareh-ye
Rahnama-ye Nameh-negari), the Central Police Office was responsible for the
censorship of the press.17 During the third period, the mutual collaboration
between the Office of Guidance in Writing, with ‘Ali Dashti as its director,
and the Central Police Office helped to move press censorship along. In Dey 1317
(December to January 1938–39) the Organization for Public Enlightenment
(Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar) was established in order to extend censorship
and assist the Office of Guidance in Writing.18
184 Karim Soleimani
The first period: Censorship in the era of ‘Abdolhoseyn Teymurtash
During the first period, the censorship of the press gradually intensified and
slowly forced the media into submission. Consequently, at the beginning of
this period, elements of protest were still evident in the tone of the chief
editors. In his letters to Prime Minister Mirza Hasan Mostowfi al-Mamalek,
written in the months of Shahrivar and Mehr 1305 (September and October
1926), the editor of the newspaper Mihan, Ahmad Kasma’i, vividly expresses
his thoughts on the daily and ever growing pressures of the military, which
involved the observation of his home, and he describes the military officials’
behaviour by using the harsh expression “murderous” (jenayat-kari).19 He
accused the head of the Central Police Office of sending a policeman to
Dushan Tapeh Street to prepare a dossier of false written testimonies from the
shopkeepers and residents of this area in order to present a case against
him.20 In his third letter to the prime minister, Ahmad Kasma’i requests to
emigrate abroad, since despite firm promises to him, the inspectors of the
police have not stopped their aggression against him.21
In the first years of this period, the Ministry of the Interior, with the Central
Police Office and the bureaus under its control, and the Ministry of Education,
Charity and Fine Arts (Vizarat-e Ma‘aref va Owqaf va Sanaye’-e Mostazrafeh)
were both responsible for press censorship, but the Ministry of the Interior
actually dominated the Ministry of Education. In spite of this, the local
newspaper Alborz from Rasht was banned in early spring 1307/1928 by the
“Shari‘a supervisor” of the local office of the Ministry of Education in this
province (the nazer-e shar‘iyat of the Edareh-ye Ma‘aref of Gilan).22 How-
ever, the “Government of Gilan” in its report to the Ministry of the Interior
regarded this ban as a personal decision and one that was unacceptable due
to “public opinion” in Gilan. Regardless of this, the Gilan Office of Education
insisted on banning the Alborz newspaper.23 It can be seen in the documents
belonging to this era that even the National Consultative Assembly, the
Majles, was called in to litigate over the prohibition of newspapers. In relation
to the banning of two publications called Takht-e Jamshid and Daneshpaz-
huhan, the people of Estahbanat in Fars issued a petition protesting this ban
to the National Consulatative Assembly. Hoseyn Pirniya, the head of the
sixth Majles (legislation period from 19 Tir 1305 to 22 Mordad 1307; 10 July
1926 to 13 August 1928), followed their request through both the Ministry of
Education and the Ministry of the Interior.24
From this year on the Court Ministry directed by ‘Abd al-Hoseyn Teymurtash
became the fundamental institution of press censorship, and consequently the
sole reference point for the ban of newspapers was the minister of court
himself. However, prior to this, in addition to the Court Ministry, the Ministry
of the Interior and the Ministry of Education were also involved in censorship
and the prohibition of printed media. Before the year 1308/1929 the editors of
banned publications turned more often to the office of the prime minister
than to the Court Ministry. In one example of open disagreement between the
Central Police Office and the Ministry of Education regarding the censorship
of the press in Azerbaijan in the summer of 1307/1928, the problem ends in a
way that confirms the above hypothesis. The Central Police Office pressured
the Ministry of Education “to refrain from granting publication permits to
unsuitable people with regard to the printed press in Azerbaijan.” By referring
the subject matter to the prime minister for a final decision, the Ministry of
Education showed resistance towards the request of the nazmiyeh (the police)
and reminded it of its restricted area of authority, as defined by the press law.
According to the press law, the Ministry of Education was permitted to
examine only two characteristics of an applicant who applied for an authoriza-
tion to publish a newspaper: one was the applicant’s age; and the second was a
report from the Ministry of Justice, stating that “the applicant has not com-
mitted a misdemeanour or a crime.” Consequently, the Ministry of Education
insisted that it “cannot go beyond the limited power it has been given by the
law and if the Ministry of Education should have more to say on this matter,
then the press laws would need to be revised and new regulations would have
to be passed.”25 It is interesting to note that in this process of mediation
between the ministries, the prime minister took the side of the nazmiyeh and
added a note in the margin of the letter to the Ministry of Education that
“It should be written in reply to the Nazmiyeh … if the need arises news-
papers are to be censored.”26 In a separate letter, the prime minister
announces his opinion on the matter to the police: “With regard to the
printed press of Azerbaijan, it is advised that when the need arises you ban or
censor the press.”27
From 1308/1929 onwards, the Court Ministry’s dominance over the existing
system of censorship became complete. In previous years, the normal routine
had been that when a newspaper was banned by the governor of a province,
he would correspond with the Ministry of the Interior in the capital for the
decision to be finalized.28 However, during this period, when a provincial
governor had a problem with one or several publications in the area under his
control, the editor of the publication that was on the verge of being banned
would directly communicate with the minister of the court to prevent a pro-
hibition. Mahmud Jam, the governor of the province of Khorasan and Sistan,
had banned the newspaper Aftab-e Sharq (“Sun of the East”) for publishing
an article under the headline “The Eighth Round of Legislation”. The gov-
ernor of Khorasan, who was also the representative of the Ministry of the
Interior in this province, in theory would have needed to prepare a proper
report on the prohibition of Aftab-e Sharq and to present it to the Ministry of
the Interior. However, he refused to do so, and instead he conferred directly
with the court minister Teymurtash, presenting his report to him.29
An incident similar to what had happened in Khorasan also took place in
Mazandaran. In direct correspondence with the court minister Teymurtash,
the governor of Mazandaran asked for permission to take action against the
newspaper Tabarestan.30 Here, as well, it is interesting to note that the editor
of Tabarestan, called Sadr Ara, turned directly to the Court Ministry in order
186 Karim Soleimani
to clear up any misunderstandings and, of course, to avoid the imminent ban
of his paper.31
The influence of the Court Ministry had been extended enormously and it
was now involved in so many aspects of press censorship that most people
active in the media quite naturally held the belief that everything ultimately
depended on the exclusive opinion and decision of the court minister. Thus,
Amir Jalil Mozhdehi, the editor of the newspaper Ayineh-ye Iran, as a last
resort directly asked Teymurtash for help in order to find a solution and have
the ban on his newspaper lifted. In a pleading tone and testifying to his own
impotence his petition is a testimony to the terror and fear that existed among
the press and was created by the censorship system with the court minister as
its leader: “The best and most appropriate source for complaint is indeed the
highest rank at the Royal Court and this most noble personality [‘Abdolhoseyn
Teymurtash] as today he is the sole supporter of the press and it would be an
honour to call him the father of the press”.32
Another banned newspaper was the Ruznameh-ye Eqdam, in 1927. Once its
chief editor, the famous journalist and author ‘Abbas Khalili (1895–1971),
had received permission from Teymurtash to return from his exile in Iraq, he
praised him in a way imaginable only by those kept in captivity: “From now
on I will strive to nurture my spirit so that when I come to thank this great
being for his kindness, my thanksgiving would have arisen from a pure
soul.”33 ‘Abbas Khalili is an example of those who during that era had been
debased as human beings and whose identity was formed by absolutist political
power.
In the period when the Court Ministry ruled supreme over all other insti-
tutions in the realm of press censorship, editors of newspapers were also made
to sign a “letter of commitment” (ta‘ahhod-nameh) prepared by Teymurtash,
which made them directly responsible and accountable to him for all the
material printed in their respective papers. Abolqasem E‘tesamzadeh, the editor
of the newspaper Setareh-ye Jahan, who was unhappy with the constant inter-
ference of the police with regard to press censorship, sent a letter of complaint
to the court minister in which he asked which manner of censorship the press
was supposed to follow: should they proceed according to the “letter of
commitment” they had signed with the Court Ministry or according to the
daily expectations of the police?34
The minute regulations for the censorship of the press as defined by the
Court Ministry and as implemented by the Central Police Office were so strict
and frustrating that they left little room for journalistic activity, as can be
easily seen in the following examples:
1 A warning to all distribution managers: they are never to publish news-

papers in the morning or afternoon without the knowledge, warning or
permission of the branch officials.
2 A warning to all printing houses: they must retain their printed newspapers
until granted permission for distribution by the nazmiyeh.
3 A warning to all printing houses, editors and type-setting houses: no piece
of news or article shall be type-set without the signature of the censorship
official and if it is urgent it shall be brought to the local branch for
permission.35
The Central Police Office implemented censorship regulations with such

brutality that certain members of the press were unable to handle this
pressure. General Mohammad Hoseyn Ayrom, the supreme head of the naz-
miyeh, closed down the newspaper Nasim-e Shomal for the stated reason that
its editor had contracted “mental illnesses”. The editor’s complaint not only
had no substantial effect, but on the contrary, the verdict of the authorities
over him was confirmed.36 Mohammad Javad Hushmand, the editor of
Sa‘adat-e Bashar (“Happiness of Mankind”) wrote a letter dated 3 Shahrivar
1311/25 August 1932 to Teymurtash, complaining about General Ayrom and
the harsh treatment of the police. He announced that if this “oppression and
encroachment was not stopped” he would set fire to himself in public using
oil and gasoline.37
The Iranian government was very sensitive about reactions abroad to any
news about Iran’s internal affairs. Whenever a foreign publication published a
piece on the government’s internal policies in a positive tone, not only would
it cause delight among Iran’s politicians, but newspapers published abroad
would also receive money as a direct reward. The Iranian consul general in
India, Hasan Pirnazar, informed Teymurtash of his meeting with the editor of
the journal Hablolmatin, printed in Calcutta. In this personal meeting with
the editor and in the course of long discussions the Iranian consul persuaded
him and made him promise “not to write on matters of importance without
first hearing the opinion of his excellency [Teymurtash] and to be in total
submission to his Majesty’s sacred will.” Further on he explained: “With this
in mind I cannot imagine that your excellency should have any more worries,
and it has also been arranged that when there is a command to be given, or if
there is something to be done by the newspaper Hablolmatin or written to me
in secret or … , the representative of the editor should be summoned and
given the orders so that they can be acted upon.”38
Hasan Pirnazar also informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that as
the journal Sar Faraz, the organ of the Indian Shi‘is published in Lucknow,
provides a very positive view of the Iranian government, “an annual allowance of
at least 500 Rupees should be approved and given to them. After the closure
of Hablolmatin no other newspaper in India will be interested to write about
matters related to the Iranian government, thus it is my firm belief that urgent
special attention to this matter would prove useful.”39
While newspapers in opposition to the policies of the Iranian government,
even those outside the country, were not safe from the government’s constant
pressure and prosecution, newspapers such as Sar Faraz received financial sup-
port. If we compare this stance with Iran’s opposition to the Persian-language
journal Peykar, published in Berlin, we will be surprised to see that Iran used
188 Karim Soleimani
all its diplomatic power not only to prevent the publication of Peykar, but
also to have those in charge prosecuted.40
Among the censorship’s special sensitivities was the emerging Arab–Jewish
conflict in Palestine. The Eqdam newspaper had published a number of arti-
cles in opposition to the territorial expansion of Jewish settlers in the land of
Palestine. This position was opposed strongly by the Court Ministry since
according to the opinion of Teymurtash “publishing articles of this kind will
only result in hostility and produce certain reactions which are in opposition
with the welfare of the country and in defiance of the government’s politics. It
is necessary for the appropriate steps to be taken in order to prevent the pub-
lication of such articles and provocations on both sides.”41 After Teymurtash
had issued this guideline, it was implemented by the Central Police Office,
and General Dargahi reported to the Court Ministry on 9 Mehr 1308/1
October 1929: “With regard to the prevention of publication of articles
related to the disputes in Palestine which convey anti-Jewish and pro-Arab
sentiments, all newspaper editors have been warned not to prepare any
articles on Palestinian affairs or to express opinions.”42
The first major period in press censorship during the Reza Shah era ends
with the dismissal of Teymurtash from his post on 3 Dey 1311/24 December
1932. He was murdered in prison on 11 Mehr 1312/3 October 1933.43
The second period: Censorship in the post-Teymurtash era

In the time after the fall of Teymurtash and until the establishment of the Office
of Guidance in Writing (Edareh-ye Rahnama-ye Nameh-negari) in the summer
of 1316/1937, the Ministry of Education (Vezarat-e Ma’aref) and the Central
Police Office (Edareh-ye Koll-e Shahrbani) were responsible for the censorship
of the press. On 15 Azar 1312/6 December 1933 the Ministry of Education
requested the police to “send strict orders to the editors of all newspapers that
from now they should refrain from the publication of news and information
on matters concerning culture in both the capital and all provinces without
prior reference to and permission from the Ministry of Education.”44
During this era many publications were banned by the Ministry of Education
because they had published articles or treated topics that were not consistent
with the cultural policies of the time. The magazine Ta‘lim va Tarbiyat
(“Teaching and Education”) was interrupted by the Ministry of Education
after it had printed an article under the title “Jonbesh-e melli-ye adabi”
(The national literary movement) and the same ministry had prohibited the
publication of the same article in the newspaper Shahin.45 Following the
government’s decision, taken on 9 Khordad 1313/30 May 1934, all ministries
and independent agencies were obliged to send all their official announce-
ments to the nazmiyeh “so that the nazmiyeh could distribute them among the
printed press in a way which is appropriate.” Consequently the nazmiyeh’s
influence on press censorship by far surpassed that of the Ministry of Education
and it soon became the sole decision maker.46
The police’s area of authority and control over the press was extended in
such a way that many newspapers were banned and closed even after they had
published quite trivial and ordinary pieces. As an example, Abolfazl Tahmasebi,
the editor of the paper Ostovar-e Qom, had criticized in an article the noise
level produced by the power plant of Qom, a factory which belonged to the
municipality and thus to a state agency. Following the publication of this article,
the police of Qom announced that the newspaper would be closed down for
an unlimited period of time.47 After the exchange of many letters and missives
between Tahmasebi and leading politicians in Tehran, the prime minister
Mahmud Jam made his feelings on the matter clear in a letter addressed to the
Central Police Office (shahrbani): “With regard to the ban of the newspaper
Ostovar-e Qom it is my opinion that in case the factory is indeed bad for the
city, and the newspaper has said so, the fault of the journalist is basically that
he has published the article without the prior permission of the authorities;
for this fault I believe a ban of one month should suffice.”48 The prime minister’s
view on the ban of Ostovar-e Qom shows that the demands and expectations of
the censorship system towards the newspapers were so complicated and
extensive that the editors actually would have needed a sixth sense to be able
to predict whether the material they intended to publish would gain the
approval of the Central Police Office or not. The prime minister’s assessment
also illuminates another aspect of the press censorship regulations of the time.
The publication of any material, however insignificant, that by itself would not
merit active censorship could still be dangerous: if the editor of the publication
had refused to present an article to the authorities prior to publication, a
harsh punishment would await him, in the case of Ostovar-e Qom the ban his
newspaper for a whole month.
The unrestrained conduct of the Central Police Office in the field of press
censorship is also reflected in a letter from Khalil Now‘i, the editor of Rasht’s
paper Ma‘ishat-e melli, to ‘Ali Asghar Hekmat, the minister of education,
when he describes the unsafe conditions surrounding writers: “Basically, if
you read provincial newspapers, they write under the heading Payment of
Salaries ‘the Office of Finance has paid the salaries for the month of Dey.’
And even this does not get approval from the censoring official.” The writer
continues: “If we are in fact an inseparable part of the Central Police Office,
they can keep all the newspaper’s revenues, but pay us a salary.”49
One of the victims of the censoring system in this era was ‘Ali Dashti, the
editor of Shafaq-e sorkh and a member of the ninth Majles (1933–35). He was
arrested on 22 Farvardin 1314 (12 April 1935), a day after the end of the
parliamentary term and with it his immunity, without any explanation or
warning, and after a few days the paper Shafaq-e sorkh was banned.50
‘Ali Dashti, who had been arrested on Reza Shah’s direct orders, spent
59 days in the Qasr prison.51 He was pardoned and released from prison after
Hajj Mehdi Qoli Khan Mokhber al-Saltaneh successfully mediated between
him and the Shah.52 After his release from prison, Dashti used his pen and
tongue to support Reza Shah and tried to use his charm on him. ‘Ali Dashti
190 Karim Soleimani
was appointed as the head of the Office of Guidance in Writing from 1
Mordad 1316 (23 July 1937 onward). His colleagues were ‘Abd al-Rahman
Faramarzi, departmental head and specialist on journalism; Abolqasem
Payandeh, consultant and specialist on journalism; Mohammad Hejazi, as
the editor of the magazine Majalleh-ye nameh-negari; and a censorship agent
(sansurchi) by the name of Moharram ‘Alikhan, who was sent on their behalf
to inspect printing houses.53
The third period: The establishment of the Office of Guidance

in Writing
Although after the establishment of the Office of Guidance in Writing the
dominating power and influence of the Central Police Office in the field of
press censorship was transferred to a new authority, the police remained one
the most important pillars of censorship until the end of Reza Shah’s reign.
Newspapers were not permitted to publish any of their material without the
permission of this new authority, and the editors were obliged to send all their
writings there and to receive authorization for any publication. Romances,
historical novels and even advertisements were not exempt from censorship.54
According to the available documents at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
the idea for the concentration of censorship in all areas of culture, politics
and media originated in the summer of 1315/1936. At that time, the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs charged its embassies in Berlin and Rome to investigate the
institutions employed by the governments of these countries to communicate with
the press and the way in which they implemented their policies on the media.55
The reason given is as follows: “It is being considered that such an institution
should be established within the Ministry of the Interior or another ministry,
so that all ministries and the government would deal with the press exclusively
through this institution and that unlike now, the responsibilities for the press
would not be so divided. It is necessary that you investigate immediately the
state of affairs in your mission area and report on it.”56
The Office of Guidance in Writing was established as an institution within
the Ministry of the Interior in 1316/1937 and a constitution (nezam-nameh)
consisting of eight articles was prepared for the new agency. According to the
third article of the constitution, all ministries, governmental institutions and
the municipality (shahrdari) were bound on a daily basis to “make available
all information and news they thought to be appropriate to the Office of
Guidance in Writing and to also send the translations of foreign publications
and articles they have prepared according to their needs to the institution.”
The mentioned institution “will immediately study the news, information and
translations mentioned and return the sections which are not against press reg-
ulations or harmful to government policy or public welfare to the journalists.”57
In addition, according to the eighth article of this constitution, the Office of
Guidance in Writing was permitted to ban foreign newspapers it recognized
as harmful from entering Iran.
The range of authority given to this newly established institution was so
extensive that in addition to all ministries and offices, such as the Central
Office of Commerce (Edareh-ye Koll-e Tejarat), also banks such as the Melli
Bank and the Iranian Bank of Agriculture and Industry, and even the Ministry
of War had to present all their media information, including yearbooks,
before publication to the Office of Guidance in Writing for inspection.58
Prior to the establishment of the Office of Guidance in Writing, the Ministry
of Education was responsible for investigating and censoring “news and articles
on education” in the press all over the country. However, after the establish-
ment of the new institution, this responsibility was taken from the Ministry of
Education and transferred to the Office of Guidance in Writing. In this period,
even the Ministry of Education was forced to “send news and information
which could be printed and distributed using the press through the ministry’s
Office of Publication (Edareh-ye Matbu‘at) to the Office of Guidance in
Writing on a daily basis.59
In Ordibehesht 1317 (April–May 1938), the government tried to raise the
level of knowledge and understanding of newspaper editors by passing a reg-
ulation (ayin-nameh). Thus, in accordance with another constitution, which
had been approved by the Supreme Cultural Council (Shura-ye ‘Ali-ye Far-
hang) on 14 Tir 1317/5 July 1938, a body of three men composed of members
from the Supreme Cultural Council and the heads of the Office of Guidance
in Writing and the Office of Publication from the Ministry of Education was
formed. This body was responsible for testing the editors of the printed press
on “their literary knowledge and writing talent, and equally on their level of
understanding in scientific, social, political and moral matters”.60 This wor-
ried the editors of the printed press as some of them did not accept this
measure and decided to “kiss the pen of journalism goodbye and move
aside.”61
Despotism’s taste for variety prompted it every now and then to come up
with new ideas for establishing another agency or approving a new set of
regulations in order to tighten its grip even further on the press and the
journalists. The government hoped that with the establishment of the Office of
Guidance in Writing it could finalize the issue of press censorship. For this
reason, in every city a branch of this institution was established. However, it
seems that the Office was not able to fulfil much of the government’s expec-
tations. In 1317/1938 successive regulations with regard to the press were
approved. As they were not accompanied with the desired results either, in
1317 the government came up with the idea of establishing yet another new
institution entitled the Organization for Public Enlightenment (Sazman-e
Parvaresh-e Afkar). This institution, with the help of the Office of Guidance
in Writing, would not only finalize the censorship of the press, but it would
also be able to brainwash (with the explicit expression shostoshu-ye maghzi)
the Iranian public and influence it in favour of despotism, employing the
fields of written and oral culture by holding lectures and cultural programs
that were to be extended through all levels of society. Thus it is not without
192 Karim Soleimani
reason that according to the twelfth paragraph of its constitution, the Classical
Literature Commission (Komisiyun-e Kotob-e Klasik) of the Organization for
Public Enlightenment was made responsible for corrections in the schoolbooks
of primary and secondary schools in such a way that “national pride and
royal loyalty” (afkar-e mihan-dusti va shah-parasti) would grow substantially
in schools.62
The Organization for Public Enlightenment was established in Dey 1317
(December–January 1938–39).63 As mentioned in article six of its statutes (asas-
nameh) the organization consisted of six commissions: 1 the Press Commission;
2 the Classical Literature Commission; 3 the Commission for Public Lectures
(sokhanrani); 4 the Commission for Drama and Theatre (namayesh); 5 the
Radio Commission; and 6 the Music Commission.64 Looking at these com-
missions one can clearly understand the Pahlavi regime’s aim in establishing
such an institute: censorship should be implemented at all possible levels and
be closely tied to the Office of Guidance in Writing. Articles 7 and 8 of the
statutes of the Organization for Public Enlightenment obliged all teachers and
university lecturers across the country to undergo “the necessary training” in
guiding the thoughts of pupils, students and the elderly and to also collabo-
rate with the institution.65 According to article 13 of the statutes, the Press
Commission under the directorship of Mohammad Hejazi was charged to
“make substantial corrections in the style of letter writing, build the necessary
foundations for the publication of influential articles and interesting pictures
and also to make an effort in educating and training a sufficient number of
writers.”66 Mohammad Hejazi tried very hard to arrange the affairs of the
national press according to the aims of his institution. One of the most unu-
sual actions undertaken by his institution took place during the time of ‘Ali
Mansur’s cabinet, which was in power from 5 Tir 1319 to 5 Shahrivar 1320
(26 June 1940 – 27 August 1941).67 Esma‘il Mer’at, the minister of culture,
had asked Mohammad Hejazi to travel to the larger towns, such as Shiraz,
Tabriz, Mashhad, and Esfahan, and to investigate the situation of the local
press and existing newspapers in each city. According to the minister of culture,
who also acted as the head of the Organization for Public Enlightenment,
the newspaper editors in cities where more than one newspaper existed should
be persuaded to come together, form a joint company and publish only one
newspaper in the name of that company. They could then share profits and
losses among themselves. In case editors were not willing to work in the fra-
mework of a company, he was to proceed as follows: “After having made sure
that they are qualified, the worthiest and wisest among them must be selected
and given the responsibility of running the newspaper and the others must be
put aside.”68
The politicians of the Reza Shah era, whose main task was to fulfil his
every wish, tried very hard to control society through the expansion of com-
pulsory institutions and thus to guard Reza Shah’s reign. However, after the
Allies entered Iran’s soil, not only did this system of terror collapse, but the
Shah also left the country without even the slightest resistance.
Conclusion
At the time when Reza Shah was not yet king, but already putting journalists into
prison – or, as in the case of Mirzadeh ‘Eshqi, even murdering them – perhaps
only a small group of people could have predicted that he would one day as the
Shah of Iran employ so much skill in controlling the thoughts and pens of
journalists. Due to his extensive efforts to establish security all over the country,
many viewed him as the nation’s saviour. However, since the foundations upon
which he was made king were not right, Reza Shah always sought every oppor-
tunity to suppress criticism in the press or to turn voices of opposition into
praise. If we want to judge the success of the censorship system in terms of the
government’s immediate interest, we must admit that the censorship system in
the era of ‘Abdolhoseyn Teymurtash was more successful than in the course
of the other two periods of censorship. Although Teymurtash possessed
absolute power to act as he wanted to in the management of the press, he pre-
vented the police from implementing its full power as was the case in the follow-
ing two periods. Once, when the head of the police was not prepared to give in to
Teymurtash’s wishes easily, he received a very firm slap in his face by him.
A quick glance at the gradual decline in the number of newspapers and
magazines during the Reza Shah era reveals the level of destruction that took
place in the realm of thought and writing. Between 1921 and 1925, 344 new titles
were added to the number of existing publications.69 In 1935, in the second period
of censorship, although the number of new publications had dropped dramati-
cally in comparison to the initial years of the Reza Shah era, the number was still
considerable. According to statistics prepared by the Ministry of Education, 36
newspapers and 6 magazines were published in the provinces, in addition to
19 newspapers and 19 magazines in Teheran, resulting in a total of eighty
periodicals.70
A comparison between the above statistics and the numbers prepared in
1940 by the Ministry of Culture’s Department of Publications (Edareh-ye
Koll-e Negaresh-e Vezarat-e Farhang) reveals that by then only 20 newspapers
in the provinces and 10 newspapers with 19 magazines in the capital were in
print. Among these magazines published in Tehran, 11 titles were official
publications of government offices and institutions, such as the official maga-
zine of the judiciary.71 It is interesting to note that, according to the statistics
above, no magazines at all were being published in the provinces in 1940. In
other words, the numbers clearly demonstrate the negative impact on quantity
and quality of the press as the reign of Reza Shah advanced.
Archival Sources
Files and documents from the National Archives of Iran (Sazman-e Asnad-e
Melli-ye Iran)
National Archives of Iran 310000205/715 F1AD1, document 1683/27 Shahrivar
1305.
194 Karim Soleimani
National Archives of Iran 310000205/715 F1AD1, document 1694/7 Mehr
1305.
National Archives of Iran 310000205715 F1AD1, document 8073–23/7/1305.
National Archives of Iran 297017039/259 S1AP1, document 10956/48276–22
Farvardin 1307.
National Archives of Iran 297017008/228 S1AP1, document 18215–1
Ordibehesht 1307.
National Archives of Iran 297017008/228 S1AP1, document 942–22/2/1307.
National Archives of Iran 297017039/259 S1AP1, document 912–25 Ordibehesht
1307.
National Archives of Iran 297017224/104 S2AP1, document 4000/31099–24/6/
1314.
National Archives of Iran: Documents from the prime minister’s office

(Asnad-e nakhost-vazir)
108002/36164, document 9819/333–23 Mordad 1307.
108002/36164, document 3781–12 Shahrivar 1307.
103015/24816, document 11–29/6/1316.
103015/24816, document 18–1/7/1316.
103015/24816, document 551/6–14 Mehr 1316.
103015/24816, document 9029/3832–18/7/1316.
103015/24816, document 7797/30591–21/7/1316.
103015/24816, document 20961/T(ta)/2255–2/8/1316.
108002/36251, document 16319–26/5/1319.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Iran): The Center for Documents and the
History of Diplomacy (Vezarat-e Omur-e Kharejeh: Markaz-e Asnad-o
Tarikh-e Diplomasi)
The Center for Documents at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asnad-e qadimeh
sh1313-25-90, document 3599–7/6/1313.
sh1313-25-90, document 1561.
sh1315-25-76, document 32202–19/7/1315.
The Center for Research and Documents of the President of the Republic
(Markaz-e Pazhuhesh va Asnad-e Riyasat-e Jomhuri)
The Center for Research and Documents of the President of the Republic:
Documents from the Court Ministry (Asnad-e Vezarat-e Darbar) 4532,
document 5374/6 Mehr 1308.
document 1005/64–69 Mehr 1308.
document 10141–22 Bahman 1308.
document 712/25 Mordad 1309.
document 7343–2 Azar 1309.
document 5991–23/9/1309.
document 2/538–19 Farvardin 1310.
Notes
1 Primary sources are quoted with their archival call numbers; a considerable
number of the documents mentioned have already been published, see Kaveh
Bayat, Mas‘ud Kuhestani Nezhad, ed., Asnad-e matbu‘at, 1286–1320 h.sh.
(Tehran: Sazman-e Asnad-e Melli-ye Iran, 1372/1993), for example.
2 ‘Abd al-Rahim Zaker Hoseyn, Matbu‘at-e siyasi-ye Iran dar ‘asr-e mashrutiyat
(Tehran: Daneshgah-e Tehran, 1368/1989), pp. 86–87.
3 Mohammad Taqi Bahar, Tarikh-e mokhtasar-e ahzab-e siyasi-ye Iran (Tehran:
Amir Kabir, 1371/1992), vol. 1, p. 225.
4 Prime minister from 29.10.1300 to 27.02.1301 (17 May to 20 January 1922),
Cyrus Ghani, Bar-amadan-e Reza Khan, bar-oftadan-e Qajar va naqsh-e Englisi-
ha, transl. Hassan Kamshad (Tehran: Nilufar, 1377/1998), pp. 226–27. Also
published as Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah: From Qajar Collapse to Pahlavi
Rule (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998).
5 Zaker Hoseyn, Matbu‘at-e siyasi-ye Iran, p. 88.
6 ‘Ali Dashti, Panjah-o panj (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 2535/1976), pp. 95–97.
7 Ibid. p. 97.
196 Karim Soleimani
8 Hoseyn Abu Torabian, ed., Matbu‘at-e Iran: az Shahrivar-e 1320 ta 1326. Be
enzemam-e ahzab-e siyasi-ye Iran ba‘d az Shahrivar-e 1320 [a translation of L. P.
Elwell-Sutton’s article entitled “Political Parties in Iran, 1941–48”, first published
in the Middle East Journal no. 1 (1949), pp. 45–62] va seyri dar qavanin-e mat-
bu‘at-e Iran az sadr-e mashruteh ta zaman-e hal (Tehran: Ettela‘at, 1366/1987),
pp. 221–22.
9 Farid Qasemi, Rahnama-ye matbu‘at-e Iran, ‘asr-e Qajar, (1253q/1215sh-1304sh)
(Tehran: Markaz-e Motale‘at va tahqiqat-e rasaneh-ha, 1372/1993), p. 42.
10 Ghani, Bar-amadan-e Reza Khan, p. 303.
11 Zaker Hoseyn, Matbu‘at-e siyasi-ye Iran, p. 96.
12 Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran, 1910–1926
(London and New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 1997), p. 139.
13 Mehdi Bamdad, Sharh-e hal-e rejal-e Iran dar qarn-e 12 va 13 va 14 hejri (Tehran:
Zavvar, 1378/1999), vol. 3, pp. 242–43.
14 Morteza Seyfi Fami Tafreshi, Polis-e khofyeh-ye Iran: moruri bar rokhdadha-ye siyasi
va tarikhcheh-ye shahrbani 1299–1320 (Tehran: Qoqnus, 1368/1989), pp. 77–78.
15 Ibid. pp. 78–79.
16 Javad Sheykholeslami, So‘ud va soqut-e Teymurtash: be hekayat-e asnad-e mah-
ramaneh-ye Vezarat-e Kharejeh-ye Englis (Tehran: Tus, 1379/2000), p. 36.
17 Bamdad, Sharh-e hal-e rejal, vol. 2, p. 240. ‘Ali Karimiyan, “Edareh-ye rahnama-
ye nameh-negari ya nezarat bar sansur-e matbu‘at dar ‘asr-e Reza Shah,” Ganji-
neh-ye Asnad no. 55 (1383/2004), pp. 62–93: 70.
18 Mahmud Delfani, ed., Farhang-setizi dar dowreh-ye Reza Shah: asnad-e mon-
tasher nashodeh-ye Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar, 1317–1320 hejri-ye shamsi
(Tehran: Sazman-e Asnad-e Melli-ye Iran, 1375/1996), p. 36.
19 National Archives of Iran 310000205/715 F1AD1, document 1683/27 Shahrivar 1305.
20 National Archives of Iran 310000205/715 F1AD1, document 1694/7 Mehr 1305.
21 National Archives of Iran 310000205715 F1AD1, document 8073–23/7/1305.
22 National Archives of Iran 297017039/259 S1AP1, document 10956/48276–22
Farvardin 1307. See also Bayat, Asnad-e matbu‘at, vol. 1, p. 159.
23 National Archives of Iran 297017008/228 S1AP1, document 18215–1 Ordibe-
hesht 1307.
24 Ibid.; National Archives of Iran 297017008/228 S1AP1, document 942–22/2/1307.
See also Bayat, Asnad-e matbu‘at, vol. 1, pp. 517–19.
25 National Archives of Iran: Documents from the prime minister’s office 108002/
36164, document 9819/333–23 Mordad 1307.
26 Ibid.
36164, document 3781–12 Shahrivar 1307.
28 For the confiscation of Rasht’s Alborz newspaper see the correspondence between
the government of Gilan and the Ministry of the Interior: National Archives of
Iran 297017039/259 S1AP1, document 10956/48276–22 Farvardin 1307; and also
National Archives of Iran 297017039/259 S1AP1, document 912–25 Ordibehesht
1307. For the ban on the papers Takht-e Jamshid and Daneshpazhuhan, see the
report of the government of Fars to the Ministry of the Interior: National
Archives of Iran 297017008/228 S1AP1, document 942–22/2/1307
29 The Center for Research and Documents of the President of the Republic:
Documents from the Court Ministry (Asnad-e vezarat-e darbar) 8071, document
10141–22 Bahman 1308.
7343–2 Azar 1309.
5991–23/9/1309.
2/538–19 Farvardin 1310.
33 ‘Alireza Esma‘ili, ed., Asnadi az matbu‘at va ahzab-e dowreh-ye Reza Shah
(Tehran: Vezarat-e farhang va ershad-e eslami, 1380/2001), document no. 76/1, p. 163.
34 Esma‘ili, Asnadi az matbu‘at, document no. 43, pp. 88–89.
35 Ibid., document no. 67, p. 141.
36 Ibid., document no. 70/3, pp. 147–48.
37 Ibid., document no. 78, pp. 165–66.
712/25 Mordad 1309.
39 Esma‘ili, Asnadi az matbu‘at, document no. 72, pp. 156–57.
40 Ibid., document no. 85, 11 Farvardin 1310, pp. 186–87.
5374/6 Mehr 1308. See also Esma‘ili, Asnadi az matbu‘at, document no. 36, p. 75.
1005/64–69 Mehr 1308. See also Esma‘ili, Asnadi az matbu‘at, document
no. 36/2, p. 77.
43 Sheykholeslami, So‘ud va soqut-e Teymurtash, p. 51.
44 National Archives of Iran 297017023/243 S1AP1, document 48379–15/12/1312.
45 National Archives of Iran 297017212/802 S1AP1, document 3942–22/6/1314; and
297017224/104 S2AP1, document 4000/31099–24/6/1314.
46 The Center for Documents at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asnad-e qadimeh
sh1313-25-90, document 1561; document 3599–7/6/1313; and 802/297017212
S1AP1, document 3942–22/6/1314; and 104/297017224/104S2AP1, document no.
31099–4000–24/6/1314.
47 Bayat, Asnad-e matbu‘at, vol. 1, pp. 113–20.
48 Ibid., p. 120.
49 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 382. This letter is dated 19 Bahman 1314 (9 February 1936).
50 ‘Ali Dashti, Ayyam-e mahbas (Tehran: Keyhan, 1327/1948), p. 186.
51 Ibid., p. 187.
52 Mehdiqoli Hedayat (Mokhber al-Saltanah), Khaterat va Khatarat (Tehran:
Zavvar, 1385/2006), p. 412.
53 Karimiyan, “Edareh-ye rahnama-ye nameh-negari,” p. 70.
54 ‘Abdollah Shahbazi, Zendegi va zamaneh-ye ‘Ali Dashti, online edition (verified
13.02.2012): http://www.shahbazi.org/Articles/Dashti.pdf, p. 43.
55 The Center for Documents at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asnad-e qadimeh
sh1315–25–76, document 32202–19/7/1315.
56 Ibid.
24816, document 18–1/7/1316. See also Karimiyan, “Edareh-ye rahnama-ye
nameh-negari,” pp. 73–74.
24816, document 20961/T(ta)/2255–2/8/1316; document 551/6–14 Mehr 1316;
document 9029/3832–18/7/1316.; document 11–29/6/1316. See also Karimiyan,
“Edareh-ye rahnama-ye nameh-negari,” pp. 72–74.
24816, document 7797/30591–21/7/1316.
198 Karim Soleimani
60 Bayat, Asnad-e matbu‘at, vol. 1, p. 14.
61 Ibid., pp. 83–86.
62 Delfani, Farhang-setizi dar dowreh-ye Reza Shah, p. 2.
63 Ibid., p. 36.
64 Ibid., p. 1.
65 Ibid., pp. 1–2, 5.
66 Ibid., pp. 2–3.
67 Baqer ‘Aqeli, Nakhost-vaziran-e Iran az enqelab-e mashruteh ta enqelab-e eslami
(Tehran: Javidan, 1374/1995), pp. 474–84.
36251, document 16319–26/5/1319.
69 Karimiyan, “Edareh-ye rahnama-ye nameh-negari,” p. 70.
Part III
Life under Reza Shah
New bourgeois culture and other forms of
practiced modernity
9 Drama and operetta at the Red Lion
and Sun
Theatre in Tabriz 1927–41
Christoph Werner
In September 1927, more precisely on Saturday night, 18 Shahrivar 1306, the

new and splendid theatre hall of Tabriz, the Red Lion and Sun, was inaugu-
rated in the presence of Reza Shah himself. A large and cheerful crowd had
gathered, comprising local celebrities and outstanding members of the town’s
society. When the curtain rose, a scenic landscape depicting the mountains
and forests of Iran could be seen. It was populated by actors wearing different
ethnic costumes: Kurds, Lurs, Arabs and Qashqa’is who later on were to
join in national solidarity. The tableau also featured a lonely soldier standing
on a hill, with the Iranian flag in his hand and, slightly above him, a perso-
nification of the Mother of the Homeland. With her crown she added a serene
and solemn atmosphere to the scene. The presentation of the picturesque play
The Mother of the Homeland or the Rise of Iran’s Happiness was concluded
with a fiery and energetic speech by its director, Buyuk Khan Nakhjavani,
who called for the development of culture and arts, and raised much
applause. The second part of the evening, perhaps more to the taste of the
audience, offered a performance of Molière’s The Doctor in Spite of Himself
(Tabib-e ejbari) (Le docteur malgré lui). Reza Shah reportedly did not stay for
the final act and left early.1
The Red Lion and Sun was to remain the major venue for the lively theatre
scene of Tabriz for more than sixty years, through all the political, social
and cultural ups and downs of the Pahlavi period. With the first grand theatre
building in Iran the culture of modern western drama in Tabriz entered a new
phase. Our aim is to follow the history of this stage and the theatrical
activities in the town through the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s, looking at
troupes and ensembles, plays staged, questions of censorship and language
politics, in making an attempt to re-evaluate the role of theatre in the early
Pahlavi period as a highly creative art form that catered to the desire for
popular entertainment of a new and rising bourgeois middle class. Tabriz
shall serve as a showcase for cultural politics outside of Tehran, and theatre
as a stage where Pahlavi policies were negotiated with the personal involvement
of Reza Shah.
The inauguration scene that we re-imagined above already outlines major
topics and issues. On the one hand, we encounter an educational theatre
202 Christoph Werner
in the service of a modern nation-state that follows a distinct political
agenda and is under the patronage, if not direct control, of the autocratic
Shah himself. On the other hand, we witness a theatre in a provincial town,
catering to a burgeoning urban society that enjoys going out, loves being
seen in public, lusts for entertainment and – from the regional garrison
commanders to prominent bazaar merchants – openly professes enthusiasm
for the stage. The Pahlavi state intended to use theatre as a means to
propagate its modernist and nationalist messages. The audience, however,
loved adaptations of Molière and tragedies revolving around love and
honour lost.
This apparent contradiction in the understanding and perception of modern
theatre is not restricted to Tabriz. The inherent dangers of live performances
that are difficult to control and might always contain elements of political or
social criticism, often expressed through satire and irony, have haunted cen-
sors since the Qajar period and made theatre one of the most endangered art
forms in the Islamic Republic.
Iranian theatre in the Pahlavi period and the nativist discourse

on Iranian drama
Iranian theatre of the early Pahlavi period has not received much attention
and the space devoted to it in surveys of the history of Persian drama is
rather limited. That theatre under Reza Shah was supposedly rather dull is
ascribed to the stifling intellectual climate of the time, the rigorous censorship
and the premise that modern theatre in the European tradition still remained
widely alien to Iranian culture and public interest. The period under Reza
Shah is regarded as a time of stagnation for Iranian theatre, especially if
contrasted to the relative liberality of the Constitutional era and the years
after Reza Shah’s abdication up to the coup d’état of 1953. Widespread opi-
nion holds that few plays of literary quality were written and theatre groups
continued to be loose associations of amateurs, since no formal training for
actors existed.2 On the other hand, the Pahlavi state supported western theatre
as a modern art form and realized its educational potential. This should later
on materialize in a special sub-commission of the Organization for Public
Enlightenment (the Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar).3 The increasing presence of
women on stage has been noted as one of the few positive developments for
the theatre scene under Reza Shah.
In part, this overall negative evaluation of theatre in the early Pahlavi
period is due to a lack of primary texts and sources that has made it difficult
for both scholars of modern Persian literature and for experts of cultural
history to evaluate the period correctly. Quite recently, a number of editions
of valuable primary sources and the publication of selected plays written in
the 1920s and 1930s allow us to draw a different picture. The impetus for a
re-evaluation interestingly is initiated primarily by local historians or historians
of culture, rather than by the field of Persian literature or theatre studies.4 Not
Drama and operetta at the Red Lion and Sun 203
only in Tehran, but in many other cities an impressive number of independent
groups of actors existed, and there were troupes that regularly toured throughout
the country. New plays were written, new translations or adaptations were
made and new genres such as operettas gained ground. We realize that theatre
in the Reza Shah period was not necessarily part of an intellectual framework
of high culture, although several literary critics and renowned authors
also wrote for the theatre. Neither did it dominate the literary discourses of
modernity. But theatre had its place in the middle of society, where it was
appreciated because of its entertaining qualities. Theatre could thus be seen as
a precursor to cinema as a popular pastime, at a time when neither radio nor
television existed.
Yet there is another reason for the rather sceptical outlook on theatre in the
Reza Shah period. Those who deal with Iranian theatre or drama will have to
come to grips with two dominant narrative discourses that on the surface are
mutually exclusive, but in some instances run parallel to each other. One is a
strong nativist discourse of Iranian theatre that emphasizes the indigenous
traditions of drama and public entertainment as opposed to western, impor-
ted theatre. Religious plays (ta‘ziyeh), puppet theatre (kheymeh-shab-bazi),
folklore comedy (taqlid and ru-howzi), traditional storytelling (naqqali) and
mixed forms of entertainment including jugglers and acrobats (ma‘rekeh),
musicians and dance all fall into this category.
The other narrative is that of an enlightened European-style theatre that
draws its legitimacy from criticizing society and being in the vanguard of
progress. This discourse draws a direct line between the socio-critical theatre
of the late Qajar period and the committed theatre of the 1960s and 1970s in
Iran. Here the story begins with the first modern plays, written by Akhundzadeh
(1812–78) and Mirza Aqa Tabrizi, noting only in passing plays by Sadeq
Hedayat (1903–51) and Sa‘id Nafisi (1896–1966), before focusing on the
famous playwrights Gholamhoseyn Sa‘edi (1936–85), Bahram Beyza’i
(b. 1938), or ‘Abbas Na’lbandiyan (b. 1947).5
Quite often these two narratives are neatly separated or delegated to sepa-
rate studies. In Willem Floor’s survey The History of Theater in Iran the
initial five chapters are devoted to folkloristic or traditional forms of theatre,
while the second part of equal length covers modern, western-style theatre.
Similarly structured was the first attempt to write a larger history of Iranian
theatre in 1962, Medjid Rezvani’s Le théâtre et la danse en Iran.6 One of the
classics on Iranian theatre, Beyza’i’s Namayesh dar Iran from 1965 deliber-
ately excludes western theatre; whereas Ghanoonparvar’s entry on “Drama”
in the Encyclopaedia Iranica only refers in the opening lines to “non-western”
forms of plays and performances, before focusing on the introduction of
western plays in the late Qajar period.7 The usage of terms can also be mis-
leading: while in earlier texts the distinction between namayesh and te’atr was
clearly marked, the former denoting all forms of public performances, the
latter being exclusively used for western-style theatre, this has been changed
by Pahlavi language reform.8
Beyza’i concludes his classic study on traditional forms of Iranian theatre
with a poignant critique of the difficult encounter between the West and the
East and the resulting hybrid theatre in Iran:
In the end, everything culminates at one point, the encounter with the
civilization of the West. Starting one or two centuries ago, in the form of
aggressors, colonialists and exporters of goods the West turned against
the East. In this encounter it was astounded by the enormous sources
of the East’s traditions, mysticism and culture, and for its part it astonished
the East with the firepower of its forces, its propaganda and its industrial
civilization. … Iran, for example, developed a sense of inferiority vis-à-vis
the political, military and industrial superiority of the West, and this
feeling infected the realm of culture, the result is well known. In the case
of culture, instead of gaining something new, it swiftly gave away what it
had. … In the case of theatre, for example, at a time when the West with
its turn towards scenic liberties and innovations in performance opened
the East a way out of its own impasse, here the new generation of theatre
enthusiasts began to narrow things down, to make them complicated and
insert limitations in their imitation of the old western styles. … On such
ground, popular types of performance, just at the moment when they
wanted and could have undergone a fundamental development, were
extinguished, and if nowadays something is still left, it is in its last throes.
And what came in its place was a theatre that was not related to us any-
more … , it brought forth a theatre which neither belonged to western
theatre, nor was it an example for Iranian theatre … .9
The strong influence of imagined backwardness (‘aqabmandegi) and despotism

on the reception of western theatre are also stressed by Behruz Gharibpur in
the opening statements of his introduction to Te’atr dar Iran. When the repre-
sentatives of Iranian culture encountered the manifold expressions of Western
theatre, opera and ballet during their travels, he concludes, their mental
capacities simply proved insufficient to draw a connection between what they
saw on stage in the West and what they knew from their own country as
ta‘ziyeh or ru-howzi.10
In fact, the nativist discourse identifies Iranian theatre primarily with the
religious plays of the Shiite tradition, known as ta‘ziyeh.11 While the
close association of “true” Iranian theatre with ta‘ziyeh actually goes back to
the nineteenth century with Chodzko’s Théatre persan (1878) it has lately
been presented as an act of re-discovery. The fusion of Iranian theatre and
ta‘ziyeh has become stronger under the Islamic Republic, because it allowed a
merging of religion and theatre.12 But not only theatre and religion can be
harmonized, using ta‘ziyeh as a bridge, nationalism, religion and theatre are
equally reconciled. Since what constitutes a national theatre (te’atr-e melli)?13
In order to be able to construct a direct “national” line of theatrical tradition,
ta‘ziyeh has to be freed from its Shiite Islamic context. Once one identifies
Mithraic rituals of mourning as the oldest expression of Iranian dramatic
performance, one is able to provide a pre-Islamic precursor to the Buyid or
Safavid ta‘ziyeh rituals. This might seem far-fetched, but it is an attempt to
oppose the western claim that modern civilization began in Greece and found
its individualistic expression early on in the Greek dramatic tradition. The
origin of theatre and dramatic performances can thus be located in the
Middle East, more particularly in Mesopotamia and Iran.14
Pahlavi-period theatre under Reza Shah does not go well with either one of
these two discourses. Protagonists of the nativist discourse hate Reza Shah for
his ban on the embodiment of “Iranian Theatre” that is the passion plays of
ta‘ziyeh. They strongly condemn his cultural policy, which was opposed to
all folklore traditions that the Pahlavi monarch considered expressions of
backwardness. The modernists, secularists and leftist critics of Iranian society,
on the other hand, see only the repression of political content, the lack of social
criticism and the silencing of promising authors such as Mirzadeh ‘Eshqi
(1893–1924) and Zabih Behruz (1890–1971).15 They view the rule of Reza
Shah as the death blow to the advanced and engaged theatrical tradition that
emerged with the Constitutional movement. In the words of Mostafa Osku’i:
Involuntarily, our nation was separated from its own old national theatre
and the requirements of modernization led it to follow the master-road of
European-style theatre. It is unfortunate that its first advances on this
path were not only brought to an early halt by the Reza Khan coup
d’état, but even suffered a falloff for a period of twenty years.16
Reza Shah aimed at creating a modern and westernized Iran and consequently
tried to eliminate traditional performances that he considered vulgar, folkloristic
and backward. Instead he propagated western theatre, which he regarded as
an important tool and as a sign of an advanced civilization. Herein lies his
personal commitment to the Red Lion and Sun in Tabriz.
Theatre in Tabriz and the building of the Red Lion and Sun
As in other areas of modernization and spread of western culture, Tabriz had
taken a pioneering role in the introduction of theatre in Iran. The presence of
religious and linguistic minorities created a multicultural atmosphere that
proved to be particularly stimulating. A cosmopolitan audience that was able
to move between Armenian, Azeri-Turkish and Persian early on produced
multiple translations and adaptations. Among the first to arrange performances
of western-style theatre in Azerbaijan were Assyrians and Armenians who,
because of the missionary schools established in the nineteenth century and
their trans-national networks, were exposed to western culture much earlier
than the Muslim majority. In Tabriz it was the Armenian community
who arranged regular performances already in the 1890s with their own
theatre, the Sahneh-ye Arameneh, built in 1895. At the beginning, plays and
announcements were only in Armenian, but they soon targeted a wider
public.17 The closeness of Azerbaijan to the Caucasus also played a major role.
Many of the directors and actors at the beginning of the twentieth century were
trained in Baku or Tiflis and the early history of Persian drama in Tabriz is
closely connected with Azerbaijan through the work of the reformist Fath‘ali
Akhundzadeh and the first plays written in Persian by Mirza Aqa Tabrizi.18
My personal interest in theatre in Tabriz goes back to 1996 when I had the
great pleasure to make the acquaintance of the late Jamil Roshdi (1932–98)
and admire his wonderful collection of theatre advertisements and posters
from Tabriz.19 He had donated this collection to the local branch of the
National Archives and worked on it as an associated researcher. Only recently
parts of this collection were published by Mohammad Ranjbar-Fakhri,
drawing heavily on Roshdi’s previous work.20 Roshdi’s private collection grew
out of the memorabilia inherited from his father Mohammad ‘Ali Roshdi, the
dominant figure of theatre in Tabriz from 1919, when he first performed on
stage, up to the year 1969. Through most of this time he led his own troupe
and worked as an actor and rezhisor (director). Most of the information in
this chapter is based on this collection, which includes theatre announcements
and archival material from the Pahlavi period. Like most editions of primary
documents on the Reza Shah period, published recently in Iran, there is little
interpretation, commentary or any wider context. Quite a lot needs to be
added to earlier characterizations of the situation in Tabriz for the years
1925–41, as this overall sketch by Willem Floor demonstrates:
According to Shafi‘ Javadi, there was very little theatre activity in Tabriz
until 1941. … The problem was the actors were not fluent in Persian and
therefore they mostly played comedy pieces. Also, because most of the
people did not yet appreciate the value of theatre and many considered it
a joke.21
What was exceptional for the theatre scene in Tabriz? Or why should Tabriz
serve as a showcase for the close interaction between politics and theatre in
the Pahlavi period? In addition to the above because the cultural life in pro-
vincial cities has been overshadowed by Tehran, in particular through the
ample use made of memoirs and later developments in the capital. However,
in contrast to Tehran, the history of theatre in Tabriz from 1927 onwards can
be tied to one specific place and venue. It can be written as the history of one
particular building and only Tabriz is able to boast such a location and such a
long continuity.
With the rise of theatre in Tabriz, its growing popularity and the increasing
number of active ensembles, the need for appropriate venues became more
and more pressing. Smaller stages existed in Tabriz, such as the Armenian
theatre, the Cinema Suli, which was also used as a theatre stage, and a hall
built by Monsieur Armaniyan in 1915. But none of these was large enough
for a big audience, nor were they equipped with advanced stage technology.
The initiative to build a modern theatre in Tabriz, actually the first of its
kind in Iran, came from local notables under the leadership of the local gar-
rison’s commander. Already in 1925 the chief commander of the north-east-
ern army, the Amir Lashkar, had invited officials, merchants, notables and
guild representatives to a reception, celebrating the inauguration of the new
officers’ casino in Tabriz with a play.22 The new officer corps around Reza
Shah obviously had a liking for theatre, one of them was even active as a
playwright. Mohammad Hoseyn Khan, the head of the north-western divi-
sion, wrote the play The Conquest of Khuzestan, a pièce to celebrate the vic-
tory over Sheykh Khaz’al that had taken place a year earlier and has been
considered as a major step in the career of Reza Khan. This play, announced
as a “historical play, most exciting and based on official documents and
records”, was also performed in Tabriz in February 1926 after its initial
showing in Rasht. It shows how much theatre very early on was used as a
propaganda tool of the Pahlavi state.23
A year later, the building of the Sahneh-ye Shir-o Khorshid-e Sorkh,
the stage of the Red Lion and Sun was begun. The name might be irritating
at first, since it suggests to the outsider a British country pub rather than an
Iranian theatre.24 But the name is not as exotic as it might seem. It refers
to the Iranian “Red Cross” society that since its inception and in opposition to
the Ottoman “Red Crescent” carried the Iranian insignia of “Lion and
Sun” – at least in theory it remains a valid logo of the International Red
Cross Society up to the present day. The Iranian “Red Lion and Sun” saw its
task in these early years much more broadly defined than it is today, covering
cultural and educational activities, in addition to healthcare and hospitals.
Not only in Tabriz, but also in other cities, for example in Mashhad, the “Red
Lion and Sun” constructed conference halls that were also used as theatres.25
The Amir Lashkar of Tabriz, Amir Ahmadi, was also the head of the local
section of the “Red Lion and Sun” that as an organization of general welfare
had also arranged the creation of a large park around the Ark of Tabriz, the
ruins of the Masjed-e ‘Ali Shah. This Bagh-e Melli was very popular among
the general public of Tabriz as a place of leisure and for taking strolls, despite
the entrance fee of one qeran. This was also the location for the new theatre.
Based on architectural plans from St Petersburg, it included an audience hall,
30 meters long and 10 meters wide, with a stage of 12 meters that could
be extended if necessary to allow even the entry of a horse-drawn coach. Col-
umns placed at an interval of five metres carried a ceiling of wooden beams that
guaranteed excellent acoustics. On both sides two floors of balconies were
placed with a total of sixteen loges, every box designed for six spectators. The
walls were covered with mauve pastel wallpaper and the seats were covered
with red velvet. The spacious entrance was decorated with a huge crystal
chandelier. Altogether the theatre could accommodate an audience of up to
800 persons.
The Red Lion and Sun must have been a very impressive place that was
unique in Iran at that time. It was double the size of the Talar-e Zartoshtiyan-e
Sirus, with about 400 places, re-built in Tehran around the same time, and
easily surpassed all other venues of that time in the capital.26 Erected almost
forty years before the Rudaki Hall (or Talar-e Vahdat) in Tehran it was the
pride of the city of Tabriz and an expression of its aspirations. It continued to
be the most attractive venue in Tabriz until the building was torn down in
1980 – to make place ultimately for the large mosallah in the city centre, what
bitter irony of history.27
Cultural politics and theatre: Tabriz and the Nezam-nameh

of 1306/1928
Not long after the festive inauguration of the Red Lion and Sun the need for
clear regulations concerning theatrical activities led to the formation of a
local commission, reportedly on the direct order of Reza Shah. This com-
mission was composed of members from the police and the army (nezamiyan)
and of representatives of the performing arts. Their officially stated aim was
to strengthen and support local culture, but they were also in charge of
supervising performances based on the set of regulations, the Nezam-nameh-ye
namayeshha-ye ‘omumi, issued in February 1928 by Hoseyn Sami‘i, minister
of the interior and printed in Tabriz at the Matba‘eh-ye Omid.28 While the
Nezam-nameh was not restricted to Tabriz, it appears probable – given the
proximity to the inauguration of Tabriz’s new theatre and the personal invol-
vement of Reza Shah – that the Red Lion and Sun was both the direct cause
of these regulations and presented a test case for the Pahlavi administration.
This Nezam-nameh, one of the many administrative regulations we encounter
in the Pahlavi period, dealt with all kinds of popular entertainment. Theatre was
treated in the same way as cinema, concerts, public evening receptions, or even
conferences (konferansha) and sport events. We realize that the understanding of
namayesh as theatre alone is not valid at all; in many instances it simply
means public performance. It is also obvious that we are not dealing pri-
marily with a theatre that aims at a small circle of intellectuals, but at a wide
“bourgeois” public. All of these public forms of entertainment were defined
first on whether they were charging entrance fees or raised money for cha-
rities. All of them needed prior permission from the police, the nazmiyeh. The
program of the event had to be approved and the text of all plays to be per-
formed on stage had to be submitted beforehand, but there were also minute
details and regulations to be found. No visitor was allowed to enter armed or
even with a walking stick, actors had to take off their costumes and masks
before leaving the venue, the stage permit did not include the license to sell
alcoholic drinks, plays had to be terminated before twelve o’clock at night,
and overbooking was strongly forbidden. The audience had to be quiet: all
obnoxious noise, be it whistling, stamping your feet, clapping hands out of
place or any other movements that might be considered disturbing were not
permitted. As such regulations do not simply prohibit undesired behaviour, but
also reflect already existing or expected misdemeanours, the Nezam-nameh can
be read also as a description of common practices and habits. The success of
these rules must have been limited: two years later, in one of the more elabo-
rate posters, announcing the play Bara-ye sharaf (“For the Honour”), the
need to educate the prospective visitors is still very pronounced: “Since all
words and sentences of this play are of full importance and well worth to be
listened to, the visitors are kindly asked to take their places after the second
bell, so that they are not the cause of disturbance inside the hall and do not
deprive others of their enjoyment.”29 Still in the 1930s it was necessary to
remind the “honourable gentlemen” to observe the rules inside the hall, to
refrain from smoking, from shouting and clapping, and from anything else
that would be against the statutes (nezam-nameh) issued by the police office.30
At the same time, the “honourable ladies” were asked not to bring their
infants (atfal-e shirkhvar) along.31
No play was to be performed without an official permit. These were issued
by the Ministry of the Interior through the local Tabriz branch of the General
Office of the Police (Edareh-ye Koll-e Tashkilat-e Nazmiyeh-ye Mamlekati).
In one such ejazeh-nameh from 1310/1932 we see that printed forms were
already in use which the police simply had to fill out. The permit was issued
for the Te’atr-e Jadugar; the applicant and person responsible was the direc-
tor of the play, Buyuk Khan Nakhjavani, whom we already encountered
before. The venue (salon) was the Red Lion and Sun and the pièce in the
present example was The Dance of the Devil (Raqs-e sheytan) written by
Hoseyn Omid. The permit was standardized, other options that could be
marked included “Concerts”, “Radio Concerts” and “Balls”.32
For all these permits a complete dossier had to be prepared, including the
texts of the plays, if necessary in translation and in several copies.33 Censor-
ship remained ambiguous and worked on various levels. The authorities,
mainly the General Office for Publications (Edareh-ye Koll-e Enteba‘at) at the
Ministry of Culture, checked four categories: the artistic (fanni) side, moral
(akhlaqi) aspects, general circumstances (moqtaziyat) and, finally, whether
there was any offense to religion.34 Sometimes single words were corrected –
ahmaq (stupid) to tambal (lazy) – only rarely plays were rejected outright, and
then for reasons of quality: “Has no artistic or literary quality, can be neither
improved, nor performed.”35 In Tehran, and probably as well in Tabriz,
troupes had to sign declarations that – among other conditions – not a single
word would be changed during the actual performance and that a loge with
three seats would be reserved for the censors. Even if a play had been per-
formed already several times in Tabriz, as was the case with the highly popular
Namus, ya dar rah-e ‘eshq, the text of the play had to be submitted once again in
Tehran. Mme Tashchiyan, who together with her husband had been among
the pioneers of the Armenian theatre in Tabriz, active in the troupe Azariyan,
had to go through lengthy discussions with the authorities in Tehran in
1940.36 Censorship was, however, an acknowledged fact and it seems that
most directors knew how to deal with it: in 1938 of 51 plays submitted in
Tehran, 51 were approved and received the necessary permits. In Eastern
Azerbaijan, three out of a total of sixteen plays were rejected. As we will see
later on, this might have less to do with the contents of plays than with the
always present language question.37
Troupes and ensembles

The Red Lion and Sun was not a municipal theatre; and it neither had a
permanently employed ensemble nor an appointed director. At the beginning,
it remained under the umbrella of the Red Lion and Sun organization that
rented out the stage to financially independent troupes from Tabriz, some-
times also to groups from outside who were on tour or invited from other cities.
After 1942 foreign theatre companies came increasingly from the Soviet Union,
and after 1946 also from Turkey. In later years, especially in the 1940s, the
stage was managed independently by its own foundation or bongah, which
controlled access to the stage and made reservations for the different ensem-
bles. Quite often actors and directors competed with each other, especially if
they wanted to rent the stage and were performing for their own benefit. This
sometimes led to rivalries and angry exchanges: In 1944 the Company for
Film Production Iran (Sherkat-e sahami-ye filmbardari-ye Iran) wrote to
the Association of Actors (Hey’at-e modireh-ye aktural-e Iran) that since the
viewing of The Unknown Murderer (Qatel-e gomnam) was to be shown for
the benefit of the earthquake victims on 15 Ordibehesht, Mr. Roshdi and
Ms. Mazduri would not be permitted to use the stage for training.38
The theatre scene in Tabriz appears to have been quite open and very
flexible. Since the main stage, the Sahneh-ye Shir-o Khorshid was not related
to only one group of actors, alternative venues were always an option. Actors
moved from one troupe to the other, sometimes they were able to establish a
troupe of their own, exchanging the role of actor with that of director or
manager. Still, at certain periods, one or two troupes tended to dominate the
scene – due to an excellent leader, a harmonious set of actors or a good pro-
gram – and then became almost synonymous with the theatre. For our period,
this is without question the troupe Aryan, active from 1923 to 1941. However,
without striving to present a complete picture and discuss all the individuals
who were active on stage in Tabriz, other troupes shall be introduced as well.
The earliest attempts to produce western-style theatrical performances in
Tabriz, with translations of Othello, for example, can be dated back as early
as the 1880s and were initiated by the strong Armenian community. Contacts
with Baku and the Caucasus brought further impulses, especially in the wake
of the Constitutional period and following the war years 1914–17. The
Jam‘iyat-e Kheyriyeh (Welfare society), founded in 1291/1912, has been men-
tioned as the first theatre troupe of Tabriz, although we know very little about
their members and activities.39 It is safe to assume that we are still dealing
primarily with lay actors and irregular programs. More professionalism came
with directors trained in Tiflis who settled in Tabriz. The troupe Azariyan was
founded in 1917 by Reza Khan Qolizadeh, who had a degree in dramatic
arts. Sometimes they were also called Aktural-e Tabriz or appear under the
name of Deram-e Sanaye‘. Active at least up to 1931, Qolizadeh was simul-
taneously director (rezhisor), the person in charge of costumes and props, and
also translator and author of plays. One of his plays was called The Bus Killed
a Man (Otobus adam kosht); he also translated pieces from Armenian, such as
the very popular Baraye sharaf, originally a work by Alexander Shirvanzadeh
(1858–1935). Still, the ensemble of around twenty members was not perma-
nent, some plays were staged by other directors as well and ticket sales were
not bound to one particular office.40 The troupe used the Sahneh-ye Aramiyan
at the beginning, but shifted to the Red Lion and Sun immediately after its
completion.
Another equally well-known troupe from Tabriz at that time was the
Jam‘iyat-e A’ineh-ye ‘Ebrat, formed in 1921 by Mehdi Zahiri, also a graduate
of the Dramatic Arts School in Tiflis. An early member of this group was
Yahya Aryanpur (1897–1983), known to us nowadays primarily from his
famous work on modern literary history, Az Saba ta Nima. He contributed
also as translator.41 The career of Jabbar Baghcheh-ban also began with this
troupe. He was born in Erivan in 1885, fled to Iran after the War and began
to make a living as a teacher in Marand, before settling in Tabriz in 1920.
Together with Aryanpur he was part of an informal group of intellectuals
actively involved in the field of education; he also wrote several plays. For us,
it is important to realize that participation in theatre groups was for many
young men of Tabriz a quite honourable activity which socialized them in a
modernist and pedagogical context, shaped their literary taste and helped
them to develop an independent style. In other words, what did one do in
Tabriz as a young man with literary ambitions, eager to contribute to the
development of a modern society? You joined a drama troupe.
Theatre was indeed closely associated with other modern and social pas-
times, such as sports and arts. The Jam‘iyat-e eslah va taraqqi-ye ma’aref-e
Azarbayjan (Society for reform and progress of knowledge in Azerbaijan) was
founded in 1921 by Mohammad Rumi Majir al-Saltaneh as an association to
improve the public morale (akhlaq-e ‘omumi) and to raise the Iranian nation
to new heights. The society was active in the fields of literature, arts, sports
and theatre, declaring itself to be apolitical and completely neutral. This
umbrella organization had different branches, a sports club, a cooperative
with economic aims, a literature club that aimed at strengthening Persian lit-
erature, together with a dar al-tarjomeh (translation house) that assigned and
promoted translations, and, of course, a theatre troupe with almost forty
members called Aryan.42
The man behind Aryan, on their announcements and in official correspon-
dence Hey’at-e aktural-e Aryan, the most important theatre troupe of Tabriz
in the 1920s and 1930s, was the already mentioned Buyuk Khan Nakhjavani.
He was the director of the patriotic play shown for the inauguration of the
new theatre hall of Tabriz, and his ideological proximity to the Pahlavi regime
can be gleaned from the commemorative medal he received on the occasion
of Reza Shah’s coronation from the court minister Teymurtash.43 Like Qoli-
zadeh and Zahiri, he was a graduate of the Dramatic Arts School in Tiflis;
like many others, he had come to Tabriz after the Bolshevik Revolution in
1917. The troupe Aryan with Buyuk Khan as managing director was formally
established in 1923. It was to become the troupe that dominated the stage of
the Shir-o Khorshid for the next twenty years, set new standards and formed
the basis for any further theatrical developments. It also incorporated and
integrated most of the other troupes, directors and actors: the aforementioned
Reza Qolizadeh was associated with the troupe Aryan, as was Yahya Aryanpur.44
As the documents prove, this was not a group of laymen anymore: it was
run – certainly also for political reasons – as a well-organized association. In
fact, the German term Verein would capture the idea behind this organization
most adequately, symbolically expressed also through the badges worn on their
Pahlavi hats. Altogether the troupe featured at least forty regular members. One
had to apply for membership with the recommendation of another member
and was duly informed of acceptance or refusal within a week. Registration
required a picture and a copy of the identity card, and everybody had to
adhere to the internal statutes. Those not heeding the rules were expelled.
Women could become members as well: in January 1931 Liza Navidi applied for
membership and was accepted.45 An undated poster with pictures of the troupe’s
members shows two further women: Arshalus Ariyan and Liza Shah-Goldiyan.
Looking through the biographies of other major protagonists of theatre
in Tabriz of this time – mention should also be made of ‘Abbas‘ali As‘adi
(born 1888 in Tabriz, emigrated 1946 to Soviet Azerbaijan) and of Hoseyn
Omid (1902–72)46 – we understand that the members of Aryan and the thea-
tre scene of Tabriz formed a very closely knit community. Most of them
belonged to the emerging bourgeoisie in Tabriz (Bildungsbürgertum, to use yet
another German term) and many were involved in the management of
schools and public education, which was important, because the new high
schools provided additional venues and were points of both social interaction
and modernist commitment. Interesting to note, is the choice of names for
these troupes, which refer either to a program of moral education (“Mirror
of Good Example” – A’ineh-ye ‘ebrat) or to nationalist identifications, in
the case of Azariyan (as members of the “old Iranian” Azeris) or Aryan
(reminiscent of the Aryans).
Theatre directors were regularly involved in writing, translating and
publishing activities as well: they had journals, wrote plays, translated and
adapted dramas, wrote books on didactics and pedagogics. We can surmise
from the circumstances that theatre was not a full-time profession for many of
Aryan’s members, unless they were trained dancers or comedians. This is certainly
true for Javad Shafi‘zadeh, born 1902 in Tabriz, who started his theatre career
with Aryan: an early theatre aficionado, he was originally a graduate from the
teacher’s training college (Dar al-mo‘allemin) and continued in the statistics
department of the Ministry of the Interior. He made his first appearances on
stage with Reza Khan Qolizadeh and the Armenian Tashchiyans. In 1928 he
was sent to Khoy as the director of the Statistics Office (ra’is-e Edareh-ye
Amar) of this province – but immediately began to stage the first plays in
Khoy and later on in other smaller cities of Azerbaijan, such as Marand
and Salmas. He became a regular member of Aryan after his return to Tabriz
in 1934.47
The troupe Aryan dissolved in 1941 due to the changing political situation
and the occupation of Tabriz by the Russians, for whom the troupe Aryan, as
an organization clearly recognizable as loyally Pahlavi, was not acceptable. Its
members, however, remained visible and active until the end of the War and
the Azerbaijan crisis of 1946. Among the smaller groups that were active at
the same time as Aryan in the 1930s was the Goruh-e namayesh-e Azarbayjan
under its director Baqer Hajjizadeh. This troupe, usually announced as
Aktural-e Azarbayjan, was especially known for its elaborate productions of
operettas and exemplifies a trend towards more professionalism, larger and
more costly productions and the important role of music. The Aktural-e
Azarbayjan cooperated closely with the Armenian artists of Tabriz who,
because of the Pahlavi language restrictions, could not stage performances in
Armenian or Azeri anymore.48 As for the director Hajji-zadeh, he was per-
haps the most political among the theatre directors of Tabriz. Originally from
Tiflis, he had studied medicine and Russian before turning to a theatre career.
He spent time in prison during the Reza Shah period; after 1941 he became a
fervent Azeri nationalist who worked for the Russian occupation forces and
issued the journal Azarbayjan. As a member of the Ferqeh-ye Demokrat (the
Democratic Party of Azerbaijan), he was to become the managing director of
the nationalized Azeri theatre from 1945–46.49
With the dissolution of Aryan a number of new groups emerged, such as the
Society of Drama and Operetta Artists of Tabriz (Honarpishegan-e Deram-o
Operet-e Tabriz), the Goruh-e Namayesh-e Ferdowsi/Deram-o Operet-e Ferdowsi
and the Goruh-e Namayesh-e Iran. Of note is that the new freedom from
censorship did not lead immediately to political or critical forms of theatre.
Instead, the dominant form of entertainment, operettas and burlesques, was
now explicitly advertised in several of the troupes’ names. Actors and perfor-
mers moved frequently between these new groups. With a set repertoire and
clear expectations from the audience, the competition was strong and the
main point of distinction was the opulence of decoration and stage shows, as
well as the quality of the music and the orchestras.50 This plurality lasted only
a couple of years. In 1944, under the pressure of the Soviet occupation forces,
all theatre troupes were dissolved and their members had to join the new
theatre group of the Association of Cultural Relations between Iran and the
Soviet Union (Anjoman-e ravabet-e farhangi-ye Iran va Showravi). As part of
the Azeri nationalization politics of the Ferqeh-ye Demokrat, only a year
later, this troupe was officially transformed into a “State Theatre” and
renamed as Te’atr-e dowlati-ye Ferqeh-ye Demokrat-e Azarbayjan.51 These
political interventions had a lasting effect on the theatre scene of Tabriz,
which had to reorganize completely after 1946.
What was on stage? Literature, morality and history
The literary history of Iranian drama in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s has not
yet been written, and even plays that were published at that time as thin
booklets are not readily available and, with very few exceptions, do not exist
in modern annotated editions.52 The debate on whether the plays from this
period had any literary merit or should be discarded completely is rarely
based on the discussion of concrete texts. Judging merely by the more pro-
minent authors’ names – Hedayat, Malek al-Sho‘ara Bahar, Nima Yushij,
Sa‘id Nafisi – we should at least expect some level of literary quality. Bozorg
‘Alavi praises the early plays by Zabih(ollah) Behruz (1890–1971), which were
very popular in Tabriz in the 1930s, as the best dramas ever written in Iran.53
Aryanpur, himself a man of the stage in his youth, is retrospectively overtly
critical about the playwrights of his own time, and states disparagingly: “We
refrain from detailed descriptions of these plays since they have not much
artistic value.”54 This extremely negative view, again with a devastating
sweeping blow, is also echoed by Peter Chelkowski: “Another negative char-
acteristic of this period was the proliferation of second-rate sentimental plays.
Discouraged by the unfulfilled expectations of the Constitutional Monarchy,
playwrights of this period, like novelists of the time, were escaping into the
glory of the past. Many of the patriotic plays were so sentimental, unsophis-
ticated, and idealistic that they were suitable only for staging by high school
students.”55
Looking at the plays performed by the troupe Aryan between 1928 and
1941, their program shows an astonishing variety: there were not only come-
dies, romantic tragedies and operettas, we notice also “serious” dramas, such
as a performance of Hedayat’s Parvin, Dokhtar-i Sasan in 1937 and the
famous plays written by Sa‘id Nafisi, Akharin yadgar-e Nader Shah and
‘Abbas Mirza Nayeb al-Saltaneh.56 A major difficulty in analysing the pro-
gram of the Red Lion and Sun in Tabriz, as well as that of other venues, lies
in the fact that announcements often provide us with only the title of a play,
accompanied by a rather vague description in general terms (“funny” – por
khandeh or “ethical” – akhlaqi). For many plays the name of its author is not
mentioned; the same is true for translators or actual contents.
Most of the plays can be classified along the three major categories proposed
by Osku’i and others: 1 historical or narrative plays (tarikhi va dastani); 2 moral
plays of daily life (ma‘ishati va akhlaqi); 3 musicals and operettas (muzikal va
operet).57 In the same way as historical novels found a wide audience in early
twentieth-century Iran, history and historical topics dominated the theatre as
well. Historical personalities entering the stage can be telling about popular
perceptions of history, they inform us as well on which heroes were adequate
for raising national awareness.58 Plays and operettas on Shah ‘Abbas, Nader
Shah,59 ‘Abbas Mirza and Amir Kabir were particularly frequent, but we also
encounter Cyrus the Great and Soltan Mahmud of Ghazna.60 The last play,
Soltan Mahmud Ghaznavi and the Conquest of the Heathen Temple at Sumana
is announced with the comment that the play demonstrates the sacrificial
patriotism, the bravery and courage of the Iranians.
Especially in the second category, moral and educational entertainment,
translations from western languages, especially French, but also from Armenian
and Turkish, played a major role, and we should not forget that modern
drama started with translations of Shakespeare and Molière in Iran (as well
as in the other countries of the Middle East). Many plays were also adapta-
tions or stage scripts that were improvements of already existing translations
that had to be modified for technical or other reasons. Molière continued to
be attractive well into the twentieth century, despite the fact that many of his
plays had already been in circulation since the late Qajar period. The troupe
Aryan performed the Damad-e farari – The Runaway Groom in the transla-
tion by M. Pur-Rasul, in addition to Tabib-e ejbari (Le docteur malgré lui).61
Sometimes plays were also attributed to Molière because he was a recognized
brand name.62 Typical for a translation from Armenian is the very famous
play Namus that circulated in various translations and versions. Originally
written by Alexander Shirvanzadeh, an internationally acclaimed Armenian
writer and dramatist, and based on his novel of the same name, which
appeared already in 1885, the drama Patui hamar (For the sake of honor) was
staged for the first time in 1904.63 It is basically a family drama, set in the
nouveau riche atmosphere of Baku at the turn of the century, and addresses
the tensions between modern capitalism and traditional codes of honour.
Performed in Baku, Tiflis and Istanbul, a first translation for the Red Lion
and Sun was prepared by Reza Khan Qolizadeh in 1929 and performed by
the troupe Azariyan under the already mentioned title Baraye sharaf.64 It is
probably the same play, which was translated by Yahya Aryanpur under the
title Namus ya dar rah-e ‘eshq and which was performed by later troupes
under the title Namus.65 In addition to translations, plays exclusively written
for the stage of Tabriz appear in the program. Very popular and performed by
various troupes was the play Raqs-e sheytan, whose playwright Hoseyn Omid
was a member of Aryan (1902–72) and at that time editor of the newspaper
Tabriz.66 The announcement promises that it is the best example for the edification
of public morale in society (tahzib-e akhlaq-e jame‘eh). Another less known
play is introduced with a small summary: the play Tazeh damad – mobarak
bada (Congratulations to the newly wedded groom) written by Owrang Khadivi
is about an old, already married man with several children who wants to take
an 18-year-old girl as a second wife. Plays dealing with forced marriage,
polygamy and other vices were very common and this is one of them.67
The third category of plays consists of musicals and operettas, almost
exclusively works by the famous Azerbaijani composer and playwright Uzeyir
Hajibeyov (in Persian transliteration ‘Ozeyr Hajji Beygof, 1885–1948). His
works were beloved all over the Caucasus, Turkey and Iran and make up for
at least one-third of all performances on the stage of the Red Lion and Sun in
the 1930s and 1940s: whether Olmasun bu olsun (If not that one, this one) or
Mashhadi ‘Ebad, Er va ervad (Husband and wife), also with the title Ezdevaj-e
‘ebrat-angiz, or under the name of the main protagonist as Karbala’i Qobad,
Leyli-o Majnun, Asli-o Keram, Shah ‘Abbas va Khorshid Banu or Arshin
Mal Alan, they all guaranteed full halls. Here, we encounter quite often the
rather paradoxical situation that Azeri operettas were translated into Persian
in order to be performed in the Azeri environment of Tabriz in the 1930s –
which also explains the proliferation of different titles for one and the same
oepretta. The combination of western orchestral music in oriental “modes”
(maqam), the amusing plots and romantic storylines fascinated the audience
and created almost a monopoly for this type of musical drama.68 No attempts
were ever made to import European operettas by Strauss or Offenbach, where
both music and content would not have been attractive to Middle Eastern
audiences.
If we want to understand the program and the attractions theatre in Tabriz
had to offer, we have to leave the narrow confines of a mere literary discourse
on plays and to understand a theatre visit from the perspective of the audience
and their expectations. Then we can see that going to the theatre, similar to
going to the cinema in later years, fulfilled other social functions as well. More-
over, the one major drama or pièce announced was rarely the only part of the
program: a whole evening consisted of additional attractions and included
dance and musical interludes. On 22 August 1930, the Aktural-e Azariyan
troupe performed the historical play Khosrow Parviz, in three acts and put in
verse by Mr. Oveysi, as the evening’s main act. This was followed by a dance
performance (dans-e ‘ali) and a small comedy written by the director Reza
Qolizadeh. This comedy (komedi) was called ‘The Iranian Traveller’ and was
set up with five actors: a coffee shop–owner, an apprentice, a soothsayer, an
opium addict and a traveller. They were assisted by a prompter (suflivar).
Qolizadeh himself played the role of King Khosrow in the first play and then
the apprentice in the comedy. Mohammad ‘Ali Roshdi, from the 1940s on the
best-known actor of Tabriz, played the vizier and later the traveller. These
were small troupes, without question. The combination of a serious historical
drama, a dance or music interlude, and a farce or comedy sketch at the end is
a standard that we can find on many nights at the Shir-o Khorshid. At that
time, up to the 1940s, there was no distinction between actors in serious
dramas, in sketches and in operettas; the borders of the genres were fluent and
the members of a troupe performed in several settings.
Expectations of a certain play were quite different and the announcements
attempted to appeal to the various tastes and motivations of their audience
as best as they could. The Turkish play Kif icinde (In the bag, 1315/1936)
is presented as follows: “This play is funny from beginning to end, at
the same time it extols the virtues of women’s reforms, natural marriage
practices, the fight against corrupt morals and the abuse of alcohol.”69
Another example for early drug-abuse prevention programs that aimed at
being entertaining and instructive at the same time was a play with the title
Puz-e ‘ali, jib-e khali (Empty talk, empty pockets, or Empty vessels make the
most noise):
If you want to see with your own eyes the result of debauchery and the
unsavoury habit of opium consumption that destroys the foundation of
humanity and ruins the pillars of mankind, if you like to watch the heinous
termination of vagrancy, unemployment and treachery that is the result
of superstitious beliefs and ideas, if you are desirous to witness the ulti-
mate causes for obscurantism (tasavvof), dervishdom, fraudulence and
vagabondry that are a burden for human society – and finally, if your
natural talents allow you to spend an evening with watching a witty play
that anytime you think back about it, you will be laughing for hours, then
visit and confirm our claims for yourself!70
A very important aspect of going to the theatre must have been also the buffet
and the orchestral music during the breaks. A “full buffet” (bufet-e mokammal)
was regularly on offer, in the 1940s the catering came straight from the Grand
Hotel in Tabriz.71 In the winters heating was important, and in the summers,
open-air performances were frequent and often combined with the newly
discovered pleasure of a gardan parti.72 The Red Lion and Sun moved to
its summer stage in the Bagh-e Melli and the actors of Aryan offered
sketches (mozheke) and in addition, free “curtains” (pardeh) of cinema.73 All
this proves that theatre in Tabriz was not considered elite culture, but was
part of bourgeois entertainment. It occupied the place that cinema would
dominate some years later on and shares many common features with it:
entrance fees, topics and themes, posters and advertisements, training of
actors, and the role of music. This becomes most obvious in the adaptation of
plays to the screen and vice versa.74 The closeness of cinema and theatre can
also be seen in scripts for film and dramas for the stage written by the same
person: a prime example is Shah-e Iran va banu-ye Arman by Zabih Behruz.
A printed edition from 1306/1937 mentions that the first version had been
written for the cinematograph in Cambridge, but without funding he had
turned it into a Persian screenplay and later on also into a theatre version in
five acts.75 We already saw that the Pahlavi administration treated all kinds of
public entertainment on a similar level. This also extended both to the prac-
tical and to the statistical level: in 1938 the Yearbook of the Ministry of
Culture counts only four pure cinemas and three pure theatres, 131 establish-
ments or buildings fall into both categories and thus come much closer to
modern-day multi-purpose halls.76
The audience: Who could afford to go to the theatre?

The overall impression one gets from theatre announcements, police regulations,
plays staged and selected memories from people who went to the theatre as
children in the 1930s is that theatre had become an attraction for large segments
of the urban society of Tabriz.77 With a maximum of 800 seats on offer at the
Red Lion and Sun, the venue had to be competitive and catch the attention of
a very heterogeneous audience. The price range for most performances was
consequently quite wide. For prominent events, such as the special perfor-
mance on the occasion of the millennium of Ferdowsi (Hazareh-ye Ferdowsi)
that took place on the night of 11 October 1934 (19 Mihr 1313), ticket prices
started at 4–20 rials on the ground floor (radif) and went up to 60–100
rials for private boxes (lozh).78 The price difference between the cheapest
tickets and the most expensive places was thus 25-fold, comparable to the
price calculations of modern, unsubsidized opera houses.79
So who could afford to go to the theatre? Of course, not everybody. But on
the whole, theatre does not seem to have been an exorbitant luxury. The wide
range of available tickets made it an entertainment that could be attended by
people with very different social backgrounds. Almost all members of the new
rising urban “middle classes”, vague and imprecise as this term appears,
should have been able to watch performances from time to time. The intimate
integration of theatre into urban society becomes obvious in the great number
of charity events, whence performances or concerts supported flood victims,
newspaper vendors or orphaned children.80
It is always difficult to place prices in a cultural and economic context.
While a conversion of rial prices to contemporary rates in British pounds or
German Reichsmark is not particularly meaningful (unless one is a specialist
of European economic history), a random selection of prices for common
goods and services from the 1930s might give us at least a certain idea. A bus
ticket from Tehran to Qazvin was about 13 rial in 1936, as much as a
medium-range floor seat in the theatre.81 If, on the other hand, Walther Hinz
is correct in calculating the net income of an Iranian peasant at 24 tuman
(1 tuman equals 10 rials) a year, half of it spent for sugar and tea, a theatre
ticket would have been beyond imagination.82 According to Robert Byron,
travelling in Iran in 1934, the monthly subscription rate for a zurkhaneh, a
traditional centre of sport and chivalry, in Tehran was three tumans a month.
This makes going to the theatre a reasonable alternative.83 In 1926, cinemas
on Lalehzar Street in Tehran would charge between 3 qeran (equivalent to
3 rials) and 1 tuman for tickets, and cinema prices remained a reference
point also for stage performances.84 Salary levels of state employees in 1938
started with 320–40 rials a month for simple registrars (sabet), teachers
(amuzegar) and physicians (pezeshkyar), going up more than ten times for
senior positions in the administration, medical profession, universities or the
judiciary.85
Going to the theatre was also a family event, and children would be taken
along. Women could not only come and watch the performances with their
families, they also attended alone. Many posters from the 1930s state expli-
citly that the gallery and the loges on one side were reserved for women.86
Even whole shows or performances were “women only”, as can be seen in a
small report from Tabriz carried in the newspaper Ettela‘at from 1928 about a
special cinema performance, given exclusively for women on the stage of the
Red Lion and Sun.87 The aim of reaching out to the younger generation is
also documented: special student discounts (for the mohasselin-e madares)
were announced for a performance of the comedy Showhar-e divani-ye dahati
(A crazy village husband).88
Cultural politics and theatre: Language on stage

The most interesting questions concerning theatre in Tabriz are related to
language. The large majority of the urban population of Tabriz were native
speakers of Azeri Turkish and appreciated plays in their mother tongue. The
same is true for the Armenian community who – as we have seen – was at
the forefront of introducing western-style theatre in the town. On the other
hand, the language of modernist intellectuals was Persian and the Pahlavi
state did everything in its power to strengthen the role of Persian as the
national language of Iran. This discrepancy and the authoritarian approach
towards language politics created a number of problems for the actual prac-
tice on stage. If we want to define cultural politics with regard to theatre and
drama in Tabriz, it is not censorship, but the language question, that is of
utmost importance.
Language and nationalism, both Persian and Turkish, have been intertwined
to such a degree that it is almost impossible to find a neutral position.
A source that we can assume not to have been overtly biased in favour of
Persian nationalism at that time was the staff of the Turkish military. In a
secret report from 1927 we read: “The Turks of Azerbaijan do not see a need
to read or study their language. Among the people of Azerbaijan, learning
the Persian language instead of Turkish is quite common. The intellectuals of
Azerbaijan, who have learnt Persian, regard Turkish as the language of the
villages and do consider it insufficient to answer to academic or literary
demands.”89
Indeed, the theatre announcements and posters for the Red Lion and Sun
are – apart from the titles of some plays – exclusively in Persian, with the
exception of early plays for the Armenian community and the period of the
independent government of Azerbaijan in 1945–46, when Azeri-Turkish
announcements in Cyrillic script became the norm. But this is not the whole
truth. Despite Persian announcements, we can well assume that a majority of
the actual dramas and operettas were not performed in Persian, but in Azeri
Turkish. Even more, there were few actors who were able to perform in Per-
sian on stage – and audiences were not necessarily able to follow a play given
entirely in Persian. Mutual understanding was thus a problem that is at least
partly comparable to the situation in the Arab world where the diglossia
between written standard Arabic (fusha) and spoken dialects (‘ammiya) was a
major impediment for the implementation of western theatre.90 This complex
situation also necessitated even more translations, in different directions,
between the languages in use in Azerbaijan: Turkish, Armenian and Persian.
An early critique of language policies and the quality of translations comes
from an unexpected side. The first secretary of the embassy of the (then)
Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan wrote a letter to the Ministry of Culture that
was published in December 1920 in the newspaper Rahnama. He states that
while he appreciates the popularity of the famous plays by “our” Caucasian
compatriot Hajibeyov, such as O olmasun, bu olsun, Mal Alan and Asli-o
Keram, originally written in Turkish and by now translated into many foreign
languages, he has to complain heavily about the poor quality of the Persian
translations of these plays as they were shown in Tehran. Even an illiterate
audience, he declares, would be able to discern the lack of grammar and the
deficiencies of the translations. He also criticizes the theatre announcements,
which contrary to regulations almost never carry the name of a play’s author,
although the vast majority of performances in Tehran featured plays by
Hajibeyov. His criticism becomes more transparent once we realize that in
spring 1920 the Bolsheviks had taken over (Russian) Azerbaijan and that the new
leader of the new Socialist Republic was none other than Nariman Narimanov,
not only an ardent Bolshevik and a clear Azerbaijani nationalist, but a highly
successful playwright, whose plays were played regularly in Iranian theatres,
most notably adaptations of his play on Nader Shah Afshar.91
The choice of Persian, whether in Tehran or in Tabriz, and the concomitant
lenience towards mediocre translations was not an entirely free choice. Pahlavi
authorities made every attempt to ban performances in languages other than
Persian and regularly refused to grant the necessary permits. This caused a lot
of pain, disappointment and economic hardship to the performing actors. The
language problem could indeed create existential problems. In a petition from
1932 three Armenian actors ask the Ministry of Culture directly for help. Since
the staging of plays in the Armenian language in Tabriz has been officially
banned (qadaghan) they are forced to look for other places to exercise their
profession. However, they all have family in Tabriz and can not afford to
move. So they request permission to stage at least five plays in the Armenian
language, so that they can make at least enough money to move their families
and households.92
In a quite sensational petition, dated 18 Khordad 1308 (8 June 1929) the
troupe Jam‘iyat-e A’ineh-ye ‘Ebrat states their case directly to Reza Shah.
Setting out with excessive praise of the Pahlavi monarch, who “with his
splendid rule leads Iran’s way through material and spiritual reforms”, they
explain that lately the Director of Culture of Azerbaijan (ra’is-e ma‘aref) has
denied the troupe – composed of young and eager youths from Tabriz – any
permission to perform on stage, quoting the order that all plays would have to
be in Persian, despite the fact that this troupe has for some time now brought
literary, moral and historical plays to the stage in order to strengthen culture
and public morale, and they have even founded an adult evening school to
teach Persian. Now the situation has become extremely difficult, the troupe
maintains, because despite their eager intentions of playing in Persian, the
majority of the population has not yet even an elementary education and is
illiterate in Persian. So nobody shows up for their performances. But the
absence of plays has a bad effect on the public spirit and the decision of
the Director of Culture of Azerbaijan to cancel all plays is disastrous for the
general situation of the theatre in Tabriz. The Jam‘iyat-e A’ineh-ye ‘Ebrat
therefore petitions the Shah to ask the Director of Culture to allow them at
least to play in Persian again with the hope that people can thus be trained to
learn Persian gradually or at least that Persian can slowly be spread amongst
the populace.93
The actors were right in their appeal that theatre was supposed to be an
integral part of the program of national language education in Persian. The
millennium of Ferdowsi is a prominent example.94 The state-sponsored series
of Hazareh-events was organized throughout the year 1934. It featured the
large international Ferdowsi conference of that year, as well as the inaugura-
tion of the Ferdowsi Memorial in Tus, the publication of new Shah-nameh
editions and the famous movie released by ‘Abd al-Hoseyn Sepanta with
Imperial Film.95 In Tabriz, a great performance was announced for the
Friday night of 19 Mehr 1313 in the Red Lion and Sun, commemorating
the “Thousand Year Anniversary of Ferdowsi”, great poet and reviver of the
national language under the banner of “Zaban-e melli – Parsi”. The proceeds
of this gala event were donated to flood victims and people who had lost their
homes, thus adding a charitable dimension to the nationalist propaganda
efforts. All together three plays were staged, one pièce on the life of Ferdowsi
in four acts, and another drama in three acts on the fights between Rostam,
Sohrab and Esfandiyar, written by a certain J. Akhgari. To ease the educa-
tional burden, an additional one-act comedy was scheduled for the end, per-
formed by the troupe Aryan and directed by Buyuk Khan Nakhjavani. The
prospective audience was admonished not to abstain from buying tickets,
since this magnificent event and celebration was an honour for all Iranians,
had been staged already in all other civilized domains, i.e. other provinces
(implying it would be a shame if it would turn out to be a failure in Tabriz),
supported the victims of the flood and provided the pleasure of seeing a historical
play of literary value. The order of priorities is obvious.96
Another dimension in the active and enforced Persianization of Azerbaijan
was reached with the establishment of the Organization for Public Enlightenment
in 1939. Too late in Reza Shah’s reign to achieve any significant impact it
nevertheless shows what might have been on the agenda – and it was also a
blueprint for the language politics pursued later by the Ferqeh-ye Demokrat
1945–46. In a letter to the prime minister from February 1941 the provincial
government of Azerbaijan (Ostandari no. 3) has presented a report on the
public lectures sponsored and initiated by the Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar in
Tabriz. The scheduled weekly lecture meetings had taken place once, and
in order to attract the populace, pieces of music and shows (namayesh) had
been included in the program. However, since the population of the Ostans 3
and 4, except for a very limited number of people, do not actually know any Per-
sian, these lectures, whose primary aim was to raise national awareness (i.e. par-
varesh-e afkar), did not produce any tangible results. It is strongly
recommended to introduce further evening classes in Persian for adults and to
establish full-time kindergarten places (shabanehruzi) taught by Persian
speakers. All education and schooling should be exclusively in Persian, and
the speaking of Turkish should be absolutely forbidden in schools.97
The language problem had its ups and downs but remained a difficult issue
even after the abdication of Reza Shah. In 1944, in a letter to the director of
the Shir-o Khorshid the Actors Association states that the municipality of
Tabriz has not given permission to perform a play in Turkish, but that it was
impossible to find Persian-speaking actresses and actors on such short notice.
Since a group of musicians from the Soviet Union was on tour during this
period, the stage should rather be given to them.98 Only shortly after, during
the brief rule of the Ferqeh-ye Demokrat in Azerbaijan in 1945–46, all
Persian-language plays were forbidden.
In the case of Azerbaijan, language issues and multilingualism were not
seen as a potential chance for positive development by the Pahlavi regime and
were definitely not opened up to entrepreneurial decisions. Even moderate
liberties and limited support through a more open-minded cultural politics’
approach might have produced different results – an interesting point of
comparison is the situation in India where Parsi theatre troupes were useful in
configurating linguistic identities.99
Conclusion: Theatre as part of twentieth-century Iranian

entertainment culture
If there is one key term that helps us to understand the importance of theatre in
the urban fabric of Tabriz in the 1930s it is tafrih – “amusement”, “pastime”,
“leisure”, or simply ‘fun’. It can be found on many advertisements, right on
top of the poster design: “An evening full of entertainment – An evening full
of laughter” (shab-e sarasar tafrih – shab-e sarasar khandeh). Iranians, despite
all educational drive towards modernity, progress and national awareness
were allowed to simply enjoy themselves. The complaint by Nilla Cram
Cook, an American who worked for the Iranian Ministry of Culture in the
1940s and trained an Iranian ballet, that theatre in Iran was basically decadent
and mistakenly had taken the comédie française as its model, should be taken
in a much more positive vein.100
Drama and theatre have hitherto been considered almost exclusively under
the aspect of high culture and serious literature. If what took place on stage
did not conform to such expectations, it tended to be ignored or underrated.
It is consequently not surprising that the most common introductions to Persian
drama, as we have seen, move straight from Akhundzadeh and Mirza Aqa
Tabrizi to the modern playwrights of the 1960s and 1970s. Privilege is also
another perspective that tends to dominate any discussion on drama and
theatre in Iran – national Iranian theatre as equivalent with ta‘ziyeh: religious
pageants, puppeteering or storytelling as the better, native forms of theatre in
Iran. This stance that favours the indigenous, the authentic and the folkloric
over supposedly imported and westernized culture is very strong, but is not at
all congruent with the reality of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. The emerging
middle classes in the urban centres were looking for new forms of entertainment.
They spent time and money on new pastimes and enjoyed the performances
on stages such as the Red Lion and Sun in Tabriz.
A final evaluation of theatre under Reza Shah is difficult, not only because
different perspectives do not always allow for a neutral judgment, but also
because the early Pahlavi period itself is not free of contradictions. Conflicting
and changing policies towards theatre abound, and this is particularly true
with regard to the language question. Theatre and drama were caught
between two extremes: appreciated as a propaganda tool for Pahlavi ideology
and at the same time closely watched and controlled by police and censors.
It is, however, overly simplistic to regard the theatre scene of the 1920s and
1930s exclusively through the lens of censorship. Overemphasizing censorship
as the main characteristic of this period appears to be a way of discarding a
very early approach towards a “relaxed” modernity. Iranians enthusiastically
appropriated new forms of entertainment – free from self-tormenting fears of
westernization and crucifying identity searches.
Another point is the absence of sound philological research. While local
historians have made a lot of new material available, research on texts, play-
wrights, performance practices, stage props, audiences and reception, as well
as on the emerging criticism of both plays and performances, has been minimal,
if not completely absent. For an unbiased assessment of the development of
Persian drama and playwriting, we would need re-editions of major texts
from the period. I would argue that the opposition to Pahlavi theatre and the
negative evaluation of its cultural impact has its origin precisely in the fact
that it was so extremely popular. It presented a fusion of traditional comedy
and western theatrical forms and as such is not acceptable for either one of
the reciprocally exclusive modern discourses on theatre (nativist v. intellectual).
It is unfortunate that even those protagonists who actively participated on stage
in such hybrid experiments, such as Yahya Aryanpur, later on disassociated
themselves from their own experience. Drama and operetta at the Red Lion
and Sun in Tabriz was innovative, entertaining and educational, and above all
it had a faithful audience and highly motivated actors and directors.
Appendix
Regulations on theatre and other public events: The Nezam-nameh of

1306 (1928)
Paragraph 1: Whoever wants to organize public gatherings, whether for
theatre, cinema or assemblages (majales-e tafrih), cafes, concerts, evening
banquets or any type of performance, celebration or conference, sport
events or artistic shows and the like, charging entry fees or meant to raise
funds or donations, has to turn to the police (nazmiyeh) in advance, state the
topic and intention of such gathering together with a program (prugram) in
written form, so that permission can be granted in accordance with
existing laws and regulations. In the case this procedure is not observed,
necessary measures will be taken by the police officers.
Paragraph 2: Individuals or organizations who want to set up a location for
public theatre, as detailed in §1, have to turn to the police in order to
apply for a special permit. Without observance of this regulation, the
publication of announcements and the sale of tickets will be prohibited.
Paragraph 3: The application to be submitted by the theatre organizer for a
permit at the office of the police has to include the following points: place
of the performance, content of the performance, name and address of the
applicant for the performance, the original play of the performance, date
and time of the start of the performance.
Paragraph 4: All plays (pièce) have to be presented in advance to the office of
the police and after examination by the police have to be handed over to
the Ministry of Culture (Vezarat-e Jalileh-ye Ma‘aref) in the capital or to
the regional Office of Culture in the provinces so that in case of approval,
stamp and seal could be affixed, and afterwards in the same way, with
information to the police office, this attestation has to be displayed.
Paragraph 5: Every ensemble that in the course of the performance deviates from
the play that has been approved of, will be held responsible and accountable.
Paragraph 6: Theatre organizers are bound according to the Law 26 from
Sonboleh 1303 to pay the stamp fees and have to provide certification
from the relevant office.
Paragraph 7: Theatre operators have to attach the number of each row on
both sides inside the theatre hall and equally the number of each seat has
to be affixed in a visible spot on the seat.
Paragraph 8: On the tickets, the number of the row and the seat has to be marked.
Paragraph 9: It is not allowed to sell more tickets than there are seats and the
sale of tickets has to take place at designated places.
Paragraph 10: At the time of admission, at least one person at each row has
to be present to guide the visitors and to control the tickets.
Paragraph 11: During the performance the ushers do not have the right to
stand in the corridors and the spaces in between seats; in every row one
seat has to be reserved for them.
Paragraph 12: Some minutes before the start of the performance, the people
waiting outside the hall have to be notified through ringing a bell. After
the performance has begun, the entrance doors to the theatre hall have to
be closed and before the break they should not be opened for anyone.
Paragraph 13: Nobody is allowed to enter the theatre hall with a walking
stick, a cane or arms. The theatre operator is obliged to provide a storage
place for objects and garments of the visitors. In the cloakroom, garments
or objects have to be taken with a number and to be returned in the same
way, once the performance has ended.
Paragraph 14: The ensemble has to state clearly in advance, both on the
tickets and the announcements, at what time the play will begin. They are
obliged to start the performance at the mentioned time.
Paragraph 15: The performance has to end in winter at 12 o’clock at night
and in summer should not go beyond 1:30 after midnight, unless with a
special permit from the police.
Paragraph 16: The theatre organizers will, with the help of police officers,
prevent persons from entering who wear masks, are dressed in costumes
or carry arms, unless the performance is of the type of a “Masked Ball”
where everybody is dressed up in costumes.
Paragraph 17: The lighting inside the theatre hall has to be sufficient and be
of a kind that is not dangerous.
Paragraph 18: The air inside the theatre hall has to be always in motion and
also in winter, if necessary, the windows have to be opened so that the air
can circulate.
Paragraph 19: Doormen have to be careful and immediately report any violation
of the rules by people entering they might witness to the officers inside the
theatre hall; they are not allowed themselves to quarrel with people inside.
Paragraph 20: The theatre permit does not include permission to sell alco-
holic beverages.
Paragraph 21: The entrance to the theatre hall has to open at the determined
time as announced in advance in order to welcome the audience; the
visitors and spectators shall only enter and leave through the public
entrance to the theatre hall.
Paragraph 22: The organizers of the theatre are not allowed to let persons
enter individually prior to the opening of the public entrance.
Regulations inside the hall

Paragraph 23: Inside the theatre hall all doors, curtains and ropes drawn up
for partitions have to be arranged in such a way that they can be opened
and closed with ease so that the spectators can save themselves easily in
case of fire.
Paragraph 24: The use of smoking utensils inside the theatre is forbidden.
Paragraph 25: Any kind of pointless noise such as whistling, trampling, or
clapping and all movements that might disturb other visitors or prevent
them from watching the performance is absolutely forbidden.
Paragraph 26: For reasons of fire prevention the counsel of the municipality
and the office of the police should take into account the construction of
certain parts inside the theatre.
Paragraph 27: The theatre building consists of the theatre itself and its sur-
roundings, stairs and hallway, the stage and place of performance as well
as those parts that belong to the actors (artist) and internal offices of the
theatre.
Paragraph 28: The opening of the stage will be opened and closed by means
of a curtain that should be fire-resistant as far as possible.
Paragraph 29: On occasions when the play necessitates the use of weapons,
permission has to be received in advance from the office of the police.
Once permission has been granted, weapons should not be employed facing
the audience and also the story line has to be detailed in the program.
Paragraph 30: All incendiary objects and matters that need to be brought to
the theatre hall must be delivered before to the officials of the police from
where they are to be recalled on occasion as needed.
Paragraph 31: Objects which have been forgotten by visitors in the theatre
have to be collected and immediately handed over to the officials of the
police.
Paragraph 32: It is absolutely forbidden to place chairs or any other object in
the hallway that might obstruct passage.
Paragraph 33: Lights inside the theatre hall are not to be extinguished before
not all visitors have left.
Paragraph 34: Slowing down vehicles in front of the theatre and regulating
the traffic is the task of the police officers.
Paragraph 35: Officials inside the theatre have to maintain and regulate public
order: they have, in the first instance, to admonish people that have taken
somebody else’s place, have no ticket or are guilty of indecent movements,
and in case of repetition, remove them from the theatre hall and if
necessary, retain them at the police station (komisariya).
Paragraph 36: Every house, room, garden or any other place that is used for
banquets or other forms of healthy public entertainments (tafrihat) will be
subject to the paragraphs of this regulation (nezam-nameh).
Paragraph 37: Each place that has been set up for one particular play or
performance will not have the right to give another play without a separate
permit.
Paragraph 38: Police officers can, if necessary, enter and inspect all places of
public performances, of whatever type they are.
Paragraph 39: Paragraphs related to the internal order of each theatre have to
be attached, in a visible place with legible script, inside the hall.
Hoseyn Sami’i – minister of the interior
Tabriz, Matba‘eh-ye Omid, 29 Bahman 1306 [19 February 1928]
Published in Gozideh-ye asnad-e namayesh, vol. 2, pp. 124–29 [quoting:
Fasl-nameh-ye Te’atr, no. 2–3, 1367 (1988), pp. 196–200.]
Notes
1 There is some confusion concerning the exact date of the inauguration of the
Sahneh-ye Shir-o Khorshid. The 18 Shahrivar 1306 (10 September 1927) appears
to be the most precise and reliable date: Newspaper Iran, no. 2495, 7 Mehr 1306,
p. 1; Ettela‘at, no. 307, 23 Shahrivar 1306 (albeit with an alternative date), as
quoted in Gozideh-ye asnad-e namayesh dar Iran, ed. Mas‘ud Kuhestani-nezhad,
‘Ali Mir Ansari and Seyyed Mehrdad Ziya’i (Tehran: Sazman-e Asnad-e Melli-ye
Iran, 1381/2002), vol. 2, pp. 15–17. Mohammad Javad Mashkur, Tarikh-e Tabriz
ta payan-e qarn-e nohom-e hejri (Tehran: Anjoman-e asar-e melli, 1352/1973),
p. 375 confirms the month Shahrivar, the year 1300 is obviously a mistake. For
the program of the evening Mahmud Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz: az
enqelab-e mashruteh ta nahzat-e melli-ye naft (Tehran: Sazman-e Asnad va
Ketabkhaneh-ye Melli-ye Iran, 1383/2004), pp. 109–11. An opera under the title
Madar-e vatan is listed by Jannati ‘Ata’i as the work of Qodrat Mansur. Alter-
natively, under the same title, we find a drama in three acts written by Shahrokh
Arbab Aflatun (23p.; Tehran, published Jam‘iyat-e Nakisa, printed Parvin, n.d.),
see Abu al-Qasem Jannati ‘Ata’i, Bonyad-e namayesh dar Iran (Tehran: Ebn-e
Sina, 1333/1955), pp. 72, 116.
2 Peter Chelkowski, “Popular Entertainment, Media and Social Change in Twentieth-
Century Iran,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 7: From Nadir Shah to the
Islamic Republic, ed. Peter Avery, Gavin Hambly and Charles Melville (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 765–813: 785–86. M. R. Ghanoonparvar
and John Green, ed., Iranian Drama: An Anthology (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda,
1989), pp. xviii–xix. M.R. Ghanoonparvar, “Persian Plays and the Iranian
Theater,” in Colors of Enchantment, ed. Sherifa Zuhur (Cairo: AUC Press, 2001),
pp. 87–106: 93. Andrea Ritzel-Moosavi Male, Komödiantische Volkstheater-
traditionen in Iran und die Entstehung des iranischen Berufstheaters nach europäischem
Vorbild von der Jahrhundertwende bis 1978 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1993), pp. 89–90:
“Doch in der Regierungszeit von Reza Shah geht das Theater einem Tiefpunkt
entgegen, denn die fast 20-jährige Herrschaft Reza Shahs war im kulturellen
Bereich von einer starken und willkürlichen Zensur gekennzeichnet.” With reference
to Jannati ‘Ata’i, Bonyad-e namayesh dar Iran, p. 76. Jamshid Malekpur, Ada-
biyat-e namayeshi dar Iran (Tehran: Tus, 1363/1984) does not cover the Pahlavi
period and ends with the Mashrutiyat. Willem Floor, The History of Theater in
Iran (Washington D.C.: Mage, 2005), pp. 254–77, is the first to give a coherent
summary of theatre in the Reza Shah period.
3 Mahmud Delfani, ed., Farhang-setizi dar dowreh-ye Reza Shah (asnad-e mon-
tasher nashodeh-ye Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar), 1317–1320 hejri shamsi
(Tehran: Sazman-e Asnad-e Melli, 1375/1997), p. xxxvii.
4 Most impressive is the two-volume edition Gozideh-ye asnad-e namayesh dar Iran,
mentioned above. A detailed study on theatre in Gilan is Fereydun Nowzad,
Tarikh-e namayesh dar Gilan: az aghaz ta 1332 (Rasht: Nashr-e Gilakan, 1368/
1989). Until now, only Willem Floor has made ample use of these recent editions,
in his History of Theater in Iran. The local perspective is particularly strong in the
case of Azerbaijan, see also Hoseyn Yusofi and Javid Sabur, Namayeshgaran:
barrasi-ye seyr-e namayesh va mo‘arrefi-ye chehreh-ha-ye bartar-e te’atr-e Ardabil
(Ardabil: Alefba 1382/2003).
5 These discourses, nativist v. modernist, are in no way an exclusively Iranian phe-
nomenon. They exist in a surprisingly similar way in the Arab world as well as in
the Ottoman Empire and in modern Turkey. The history of theatre and modern
drama in the Middle East follows comparable stages, although the time frames
are not always identical and the sources of inspiration differ. Examples are the
strong preference for localized adaptations of the plays of Molière in the early
stages of European-style theatre in the Middle East, discussions on the use of
colloquial language and the appearance of female actors on stage. To my knowledge
there is no large-scale comparative study of Middle Eastern theatre. See the clas-
sics by Jacob M. Landau, Studies in the Arab Theater and Cinema, with a preface
by H. A. R. Gibb (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958) and
Christa-Ursula Spuler, Das türkische Drama der Gegenwart: Eine literarhistor-
ische Studie (Leiden: Brill, 1968). More recent are the survey by Don Rubin, ed.,
The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre, Volume 4: The Arab World
(London and New York: Routledge, 1999) and Friederike Pannewick, Das
Wagnis Tradition: Arabische Wege der Theatralität (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2000)
on the debate over an “authentic” Arab theatre, pp. 84–88.
6 Medjid Rezvani, Le théâtre et la danse en Iran (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1962).
7 Bahram Beyza’i, Yek motale‘eh: namayesh dar Iran ba shast tasvir va tarh va yek
vazheh-nameh (repr. Tehran: Rowshangaran, 1387/2008). M. R. Ghanoonparvar,
“Drama,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, online edition, 1996, at http://www.irani-
caonline.org/articles/drama.
8 Floor, History of Theater, p. 258. For an early usage see Rezvani, Le théâtre et la
danse, p. 76, who calls ‘le spectacle populaire’ « Noumaich » and ‘le théâtre
moderne’ « Theatre ». On the other hand, we find the terms used interchangeably
in modern works such as Behruz Gharibpur, Te’atr dar Iran (Tehran: Daftar-e
pazhuhesh-ha-ye farhangi, 1384/2005), which offers a survey from pre-Islamic
times up to the Islamic Revolution.
9 Beyza’i, Namayesh dar Iran, pp. 207–9.
10 Gharibpur, Te’atr dar Iran, p. 11.
11 Aleksander B. Chodzko, Théatre persan: choix de téaziés ou drames, traduits pour
la première fois du persan (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1878). Also Farrokh Gaffary,
“Evolution of Rituals and Theater in Iran,” Iranian Studies 17 (2004), pp. 361–89.
12 For the return to “indigenous” theatre traditions under the Islamic Republic see
Saeed Talajooy, “Indigenous Performing Traditions in Post-Revolutionary Iranian
Theater,” Iranian Studies 44 (2011), pp. 497–519.
13 See also the introduction in ‘Abbas Javanmard, Te’atr, hovviyat va namayesh-e
melli (Tehran: Nashr-e Qatreh, 1383/2004), which deals with the question of a
“national theatre” as part of the wider quest for an Iranian identity.
14 Gaffary, “Evolution of Rituals,” p. 362. Gharibpur, Te’atr dar Iran, pp. 11–13.
Also extensively discussed in Jalal Sattari, Zamineh-ye ejtema‘i-ye ta‘ziyeh va
te’atr dar Iran (Tehran: Markaz, 1386/2008).
15 Bozorg ‘Alavi, Geschichte und Entwicklung der modernen persischen Literatur
(Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1964), pp. 91, 191.
16 Mostafa Osku’i, Seyri dar tarikh-e te’atr-e Iran (Tehran: Anahita Oskuyi, 1378/
1999), p. 339.
17 Eden Naby, “Theater, Language and Inter-Ethnic Exchange: Assyrian Performance
before World War I,” Iranian Studies 40 (2007), pp. 501–10. The important role of
Assyrian Christians in the development of modern theatre in Iranian Azerbaijan,
especially their translations into Assyrian, has been overshadowed by the longer-
lasting Armenian tradition. For Armenian theatre in Tabriz see Floor, History of
Theater, pp. 241–42. On the Sahneh-ye Arameneh and the Talar-e Aramiyan (built
1915 by M. Aramiyan), Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz, pp. 22, 54 n. 3.
18 Yahya Aryanpur, Az Saba ta Nima: tarikh-e 150 sal-e adab-e farsi, 2 vols (Tehran:
Sherkat-e sehami-ye ketabha-ye jibi, 1350/1971), vol. 2., p. 295 on the Qafqazi tra-
dition; Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz, pp. 13–22; Floor, History of Theater,
pp. 239–43.
19 Elham Mahootchi, “Theatre Announcements in Tabriz,” Neshan Magazine 9
(2006), online edition: http://www.neshanmagazine.com/articles.asp?id=195
(verified 27.05.2009). Based on these collections she stresses the importance of
theatre announcements for the development of Iranian graphic design.
20 Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz.
21 Floor, History of Theater, p. 269.
22 Gozideh-ye asnad-e namayesh, vol. 1, part 2, p. 291.
23 Ibid., p. 311.
24 There actually is a pub in Highgate under this name: http://theredlionandsun.com.
25 G. Stratil-Sauer, Meschhed: Eine Stadt baut am Vaterland Iran (Leipzig: Ernst
Staneck Verlag, 1937), pp. 12, 84. The theatre, located on the (then called)
Khiyaban-e Pahlavi was first planned as an all-purpose hall (talar), before it was
also officially recognized as theatre. It was built by the German-trained architect
Karim Taherzadeh Behzad, who also designed the Ferdowsi Memorial at Tus.
See the contribution by Talinn Grigor in the present volume, Chapter 5.
26 Osku’i, Seyri dar tarikh-e te’atr, pp. 275–76, gives the year 1295 (1916) for a first
theatre in Tehran and the year 1308 (1929) for the completion of major renovations.
Rezvani, Le théâtre, pp. 139–40.
27 On the role of Amir Lashkar and his predecessor, Mashkur, Tarikh-e Tabriz, p.
374. The only available description of the architecture, layout and decoration with
historical photos is Parviz Khanlu, “Tarikh unutmaz – Tabrizin Shir Khurshid
ti’atri,” Azerbaijan International, issue 6.4, Winter 1998, online edition at http://
www.azeri.org/Azeri/az_arabic/arabic_ai_articles.html, pp. 4–5. On the Bagh-e
Melli and the role of the “Red Lion and Sun” organization, Gozideh-ye asnad-e
namayesh, vol. 2, pp. 16–17. An eyewitness account from 1938 by Walther Hinz
mentions the pleasant “Parkrestaurant mit Orchestermusik” managed by the
Iranian Red Cross, Iranische Reise: Eine Forschungsfahrt durch das heutige
Persien (Berlin-Lichterfelde: Bermühler, 1938), p. 47.
28 Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz, pp. 111–16. The text of the Nezam-nameh
is included in Gozideh-ye asnad-e namayesh, vol. 2, pp. 124–29 (quoting the
Fasl-nameh-ye Te’atr, no. 2–3, 1367 (1988), pp. 196–200). For a full translation of
this Nezam-nameh, see the appendix to the present article.
29 Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz, p. 70, document from 1308/1929.
30 Ibid., 259, in the announcement of a play by the Goruh-e Azarbayjan.
31 Ibid., p. 149, for the play Damad-e farari, performed in 1931.
32 Ibid., p. 139, facsimile p. 207.
33 These regulations were already in place before Reza Shah came to power: for an
early announcement from the Edareh-ye enteba‘at, the press or censorship office
in the Ministry of Culture, from 19 Rabi‘ al-sani 1339 (31 December 1920) see
Gozideh-ye asnad-e namayesh, vol. 1, part 2, p. 224. Also Floor, History of Theater,
p. 258. For an overview of the complicated procedure a play had to undergo prior to
being performed on stage, Gozideh-ye asnad-e namayesh, vol. 2, p. xv.
34 Ibid., pp. 198–99, for evaluations of plays from 1316/1937. Floor, History of
Theater, p. 258.
35 Ibid., p. 179, on the play Woman’s Misfortune (Badbakhti-ye zan).
36 Gozideh-ye asnad-e namayesh, vol. 2, pp. 322–27.
37 Vezarat-e Farhang/Dowlat-e Shahanshahi-ye Iran, Sal-nameh va amar 1315–1316
va 1316–1317 (Tehran, 1938), p. 286.
38 Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz, p. 440; facsimile, p. 464.
39 Ibid., pp. 53–62.
40 Ibid., pp. 65–67.
41 Ibid., pp. 85–89.
42 Ibid., pp. 99–101.
43 Ibid., p. 122, document 31.
44 Ibid., pp. 102–3.
45 Ibid., pp. 103, 125.
46 Ibid., pp. 105–8.
47 Ibid., p. 305.
48 Ibid., p. 251.
49 Ibid., pp. 252–53. He was arrested after the fall of the Republic of Azerbaijan, had to
earn his living as a factory worker and was never able to work on stage again.
50 Ibid., p. 353, based on the available advertisements and memoirs from the period.
For the composition of the troupes after 1941, pp. 301–7 (Honarpishegan-e
Deram-o Operet-e Tabriz); 353–59 (Deram-o Operet-e Ferdowsi); 413–20 (Goruh-e
namayesh-e Iran).
51 Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz, pp. 489, 523.
52 Lists of authors and titles – albeit without any biographical details or synopses – are
provided by Jannati ‘Ata’i, Bonyad-e namayesh, pp. 69–72, 79–81, and 84–86. He
also has a valuable bibliography of published theatre plays, sorted by title, pp. 89–123.
A comprehensive list can also be found in Osku’i, Seyri dar tarikh-e te’atr,
pp. 281–83. A collection of plays from the Pahlavi period in a modern edition can be
found in the second part of the second volume of Gozideh-ye asnad-e namayesh, with
the following plays either as full texts or in summary: Zabih Behruz, Jijak ‘Alishah;
Fazlollah Baygan, Va‘deh-ye pa’iz (synopsis); ‘Abbas Aryanpur Kashani, Dust-e
khod-ra beshenas; Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, Hess-e madari ya zendegi-ye tarik;
‘Ata’ollah Deyhimi, Adam-o Hava; Shams al-Din Behbahani, Amuzeshgah-e
akaber; Anon., Hasan-e Sabbah va Khayyam va Nezam al-Molk; Sediqeh Dow-
latabadi, Shifteh-ye Hafez; Hur-’ur-Rezazadeh Shafaq, Bonyan; Hoseyn
Kheyrkhvah, Seh ‘asheq-e por-ru; Mohammad Nowruzi, Sar-e bazangah; Yahya
Aryanpur, Dar rah-e ‘eshq-e namus; Hayk Karakash, Lebas-e qazi; Leon Shanet
(?), Eugene Payel (?) (translated from the Armenian); Malek al-Sho‘ara Bahar,
Tarbiyat-e na-ahl; Nima Yushij, Kafsh-e Hazrat-e Ghelman; ‘Abd al-Hoseyn
Nushin, Ta’sir-e zan-e vazifeh-shenas. The collection is not representative; it is
based on texts found in the relevant files of the National Archives (Sazman-e
Asnad), also vol. 2, pp. xx-xxiii.
53 ‘Alavi, Geschichte und Entwicklung, p. 191. He emphasizes in particular the pure
language that eliminated almost all Arabic words, p. 183.
54 Aryanpur, Az Saba ta Nima, vol. 2, p. 311.
55 Chelkowski, “Popular Entertainment, Media and Social Change,” pp. 785–86.
56 Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz, pp. 155, 189, 215, 222.
57 Osku’i, Seyri dar tarikh-e te’atr, pp. 281–83. Also Floor, History of Theater, p. 261.
58 Cf. Ali Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals in the 20th Century (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1998), p. 54 on the historical play by Khalkhali using the Barmakids
as a typical example. There were similar developments and tendencies also in the
Turkish theatre of the time to disseminate pan-Turkish ideologies and constructions
of national history, Spuler, Das türkische Drama, p. 17.
59 Sa‘id Nafisi, Akharin yadgar-e Nader Shah (Tehran: Majalleh-ye Sharq, 1305/
1926).
60 Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz; Anon., Fotuhat-e Kurosh-e Kabir, p. 179;
Anon., Amir Kabir, p. 177–78; Mohammad Safa’i, Soltan Mahmud Ghaznavi:
Fath-e bottkhaneh-ye Sumanat, p. 190. All these plays were performed by the
troupe Aryan in the 1930s.
61 “Monsieur de Pourceaugnac”: I am not certain about the original title, ibid.,
pp. 149–50.
62 More on translations of Molière in Gharibpur, Te’atr dar Iran, pp. 69–70; Malekpur,
Adabiyat-e namayeshi, vol. 1, pp. 303–80 (under the heading Nahzat-e tarjomeh
va eqtebas-e namayesh-nameh). Maryam B. Sanjabi, “Mardum-Gurı-z: An Early
Persian Translation of Moliere’s Le Misanthrope,” International Journal of
Middle East Studies 30 (1998), pp. 251–70.
63 Nishan Parlakian and S. Peter Cowe, ed., Modern Armenian Drama: An Anthology
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), pp. xvii, 129; and the full translation
in English of the Armenian text, pp. 132–84.
64 Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz, p. 70: “‘For the Sake of Honour’ is
among the masterpieces of the famous Armenian writer Shirvanzadeh and Mr
Qolizadeh has prepared a translation of it with the utmost efforts” states the
announcement from 17 Aban 1308.
65 Thus a performance by the troupe Deram-o Operet-e Ferdowsi from 1942, ibid.,
p. 391. A comparison of different translations and their variants would be among
the most urgent tasks for anyone dealing with the literary history of drama at that
time.
66 For a full biography, see ibid., pp. 107–8. For the announcement from Bahman
1310 (January 1932), p. 158.
67 Ibid., p. 159.
68 A detailed discussion of these works and their contents is beyond the scope of the
present study. Again, a more detailed examination of the variant scripts and trans-
lations of Hajibeyov’s operettas in Iran could be rewarding. More on Hajibeyov
from an Iranian perspective in Malekpur, Adabiyat-e namayeshi, vol. 2, pp. 83–119.
The musical aspects of Hajibeyov’s compositions and the Azeri maqam have been
discussed by Inna Naroditskaya, Song from the Land of Fire: Continuity and Change
in Azerbaijanian Mugham (London: Routledge, 2002). A very good collection of
librettos, images and music clips can be found on http://www.hajibeyov.com.
69 Ibid., p. 186, performed by the troupe Aryan on 29 Aban 1315 (20 November
1936): “In namayesh sar ta sar khandeh ast, dar ‘eyn-e hal dar qesmat tajaddod-e
nesvan va vaz‘-e zanashu’i-ye tabi‘i va eslah-e mafased-e akhlaqi va mazarrat-e
alkol ebrat-avar ast.”
70 Ibid., p. 180. The author of this particular play is not given; it was performed by
Aryan on 4 Dey 1314 (26 December 1935).
71 Ibid., i.e. p. 254.
72 Ibid., p. 232, shows a ticket for the Gardan parti, in the “National Park of the
Red Lion and Sun” from 1931.
73 Ibid., p. 198. The evening program in the “National Park” would begin at 7:30.
Strangely, foreign visitors would complain about the inappropriate cinema screen
erected in that place. See the contribution by Bianca Devos in the present volume,
Chapter 12.
74 The “first” Iranian film, Sepanta’s Dokhtar-e Lor (1933), also appeared on stage
in Tabriz in 1944, ibid., p. 474.
75 Zabih Behruz, Shah-e Iran va banu-ye Arman: bozorgtarin sinamaha-ye tarikhi va
akhlaqi va adabi-ye Irani (Tehran: Farus, ca. 1306/1937).
76 Vezarat-e Farhang, Sal-nameh va amar, p. 286; listed are the categories sinamatografi,
tamashakhaneh and sinama va tamashakhaneh.
77 One very emotional response to the article by Parviz Khanlou in the “Readers’
corner” is instructive, cf. Parviz Khanlu, “Tarikh unutmaz – Tabrizin Shir Khurshid
ti’atri,” in Azerbaijan International, issue 6.4, Winter 1998, online edition at
http://www.azeri.org/Azeri/az_arabic/arabic_ai_articles.html, pp. 4–5.
78 Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz, p. 168, poster on p. 224.
79 Compare for example the price range in 2010 at the Royal Opera House in
London, 7 pounds (no seat, no view) to 500 pounds (box/loge), http://www.roh.
org.uk.
80 Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz, p. 168, 189, 399. The Jashn-e Hazareh-ye
Ferdowsi of 1934 was dedicated to the flood victims; proceeds of a performance
of Hedayat’s Parvin, dokhtar-e Sasan in 1937 were destined for the newspaper
vendors of Tabriz (“instrumental in serving the world of the press”); a “Children’s
Day” charity event by the Honarpishegan-e Deram-o Operet-e Ferdowsi in 1948
was organized for orphans.
81 Hinz, Iranische Reise, p. 22.
82 Ibid., p. 143.
83 Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, with an intro. by Bruce Chatwin (London:
Picador, 1981), p. 187f.
84 Advertisement of the Grand Cinema for the film Rasputin, in the newspaper
Ettela‘at, no. 59 (30 Mehr 1305), p. 2.
85 Vezarat-e Farhang, Sal-nameh va amar, p. 288; salaries listed according to ranks
and echelons.
86 Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz, p. 254, in the announcement for an opera
by Hajibeyov.
87 Ettela‘at, no. 661, 1 Dey 1307 (22 December 1928), p. 2; as quoted in Gozideh-ye
asnad-e namayesh, vol. 2, p. 29.
88 Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz, p. 257.
89 Azarbayjan dar avayel-e dowreh-ye Pahlavi: bar asas-e gozaresh-e mahramaneh-ye
sal-e 1927 beh artesh-e Turkiyeh, ed. and transl. by Towhid Malekzadeh Delmaqani
(Tabriz: Akhtar, 1387/2008), p. 92.
90 Rubin, The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre, p. 19 (and throughout).
91 Gozideh-ye asnad-e namayesh, vol. 1, part 2, pp. 222–23, quoting the journal
Rahnama no. 219, 10 Rabi’ II 1339 (22 December 1920), p. 4.
93 Ibid., p. 91.
94 Osku’i, Seyri dar tarikh-e te’atr, p. 314–17. Osku’i presents in detail the memories
of ‘Ali Asghar Garmsiri, ‘Abd al-Hoseyn Nushin and Gholam‘ali Fekri on this
event and the roles played by Mohammad ‘Ali Forughi and Mojtaba Minovi. The
first play, performed for foreign and Iranian dignitaries on the occasion of the
official celebration, is not identical with the performance in Tabriz.
95 Talinn Grigor, “Recultivating ‘Good Taste’: The Early Pahlavi Modernists and
Their Society for National Heritage,” Iranian Studies 37 (2004), pp. 17–45. Afshin
Marashi, “The Nation’s Poet: Ferdowsi and the Iranian National Imagination,” in
Iran in the 20th Century, ed. Touraj Atabaki (London: Tauris, 2009), pp. 93–111.
96 Ranjbar-Fakhri, Namayesh dar Tabriz, p. 168, poster p. 224.
97 Delfani, Farhang-setizi, p. 166.
99 Highly informative and inspiring the article by Kathryn Hansen, “Languages on
Stage: Linguistic Pluralism and Community Formation in the Nineteenth-Century
Parsi Theatre,” Modern Asian Studies 37 (2003), pp. 381–405.
100 Nilla Cram Cook, “The Theater and Ballet Arts of Iran,” Middle East Journal
3 (1949), pp. 406–20. Her evaluation – that unfortunately is still frequently
quoted – echoes the disappointment of many westerners who wanted to maintain
Iran as the romantic, oriental country of their dreams. Originally from Iowa, Cook
spent some time in India as a self-appointed devotee of Gandhi, until she was
deported. Overall, she must have been a rather bizarre figure, “India: Runaway
Disciple,” Time Magazine, 11 December 1933.
10 “Newly hatched chickens”
Bozorg ‘Alavi on the young literary scene of
the 1930s
Roja Dehdarian
In 1973 the literary scholar Don Shojai (Donné Raffat, pseud.) travelled from
the United States to the German Democratic Republic to meet the Iranian writer
and, in the meantime, scholar of Iranian studies, Bozorg ‘Alavi. Aiming to write a
“portrait of the writer in his twentieth year in exile” he held a series of inter-
views with ‘Alavi.1 In reply to Shojai’s question about which period he regarded as
the most important, the most memorable of his life, ‘Alavi answered:
I think it must have been those years with Hedayat, Farzad, and Minovi.
Those years were very rich – for all of us. That stretch of time before
Hedayat went to India, Minovi went to London … and I went to
prison. … Yes, that was the best period, I think. Every day we would get
together for several hours, from about four-thirty or five in the afternoon
till about nine or ten in the evening.2
But it is not only with regard to his personal life that ‘Alavi highlights the
years between 1930 and 1936 as one of the richest periods; he also emphasizes
these years as highly fruitful, even revolutionary, for the development of modern
Persian literature.3 The writer Sadeq Hedayat, for example, later considered as
“the best and most celebrated Iranian writer of the twentieth century,”4 wrote
and published some of his best-known works during this time.5
This chapter will attempt to paint a picture of the cultural life of this period
from the young literati’s point of view, that is the circle6 around Sadeq
Hedayat and Bozorg ‘Alavi, later known as Rab‘eh or “group of four.”
Analyzing the memoirs, interviews and scholarly writings of Bozorg ‘Alavi, I
shall ask how this group of modern-minded young intellectuals conceived
themselves within the Iranian cultural sphere of the 1930s. Their relationship
to Iranian society, the governmental and state-controlled cultural policy and
their positions in the predominant cultural discourse of Iranian nationalism
and modernity of the time will be taken into consideration. I will argue that
the young writers – like the majority of the Iranian intelligentsia of the time –
contributed actively to this cultural discourse. Despite their highly critical
attitude towards the policy of the Reza Shah government they were amongst
the main actors promoting a new Iranian national identity.
234 Roja Dehdarian
Formation of the literary circle
In 1931 some young Iranian intellectuals, recently returned from their stay in
Europe, began to meet in Tehran’s coffeehouses, from early on united by their
common interest: literature. Later they came to be known as the literary circle
Rab‘eh. The nucleus of these meetings was Sadeq Hedayat, who had lived and
studied in Belgium and France from 1926 to 1930. Back in Iran, he had
published his first play, the historical drama Parvin, dokhtar-e Sasan (Parvin,
the Sassanian Girl) (Tehran 1930) and with it had drawn the attention of the
young Bozorg ‘Alavi.7 ‘Alavi himself had returned from Germany in 1928,
where he had completed his school education. Highly interested in literature
and affected by writers important in Europe, like Stefan Zweig, Arthur
Schnitzler, Anatol France, Maxim Gorki and Edgar Alan Poe, he met
Hedayat in 1930. In his memoirs he recounts their first meeting in the vicinity
of a bookshop in Nasiriyeh Street:
He was young and tall, well-dressed, vigorous and unpretentious. …

Naturally I brought the conversation round to “Parvin, dokhtar-e Sasan”
in order to ingratiate myself with him and show off how mature I was.
I wanted him to understand that I was a literate person experienced in
this field as well. Hedayat was fond of this prelude and in the end he
cracked a joke. I guess he said: Then you are also a gifted man. … At
that time he was unknown and nobody noticed him.8
This event marks the beginning of a close friendship. Hedayat told the young
‘Alavi that he could find him every afternoon either in Café Vaka or in Café
Lalehzar.9 As ‘Alavi acknowledged himself, from early on they shared an
enthusiasm for modern European writing, as well as an interest in Iranian
history. They started to meet nearly every afternoon to read and discuss the
latest published European literary works of the French periodical Nouvelles
littéraires, to exchange books and ideas, encouraging one another to read and
write.10 Two other young writers also participated regularly in these meetings:
Mojtaba Minovi, who had lived in Paris in the 1920s, and Mas‘ud Farzad,
who had lived in London. There were also other young men linked with
them, like the writer Shirazpur (“Sheen”) Partow, the actor ‘Abd al-Hoseyn
Nushin, the director of the Conservatory of National Music (Honarestan-e
Musiqi) Gholam Hoseyn Minbashiyan and the young Parviz Natel Khanlari,
who later became publisher of the literary journal Sokhan and professor at
Tehran University.
‘Alavi describes the activities of the group in his interview with Shojai as
follows:
[O]ur major concern, when someone wrote something, was to share it

with the others. Hedayat was writing his pieces and then reading them to
us. The stories I wrote which were published in Suitcase I read to
Hedayat. My first joint work with Hedayat was Non-Iran. Minovi
Bozorg ‘Alavi on the young literary scene 235
collaborated with Hedayat in writing Maziyar (a historical play). In the
evenings from five or six, when we would be getting off work – me from
school, Hedayat from an office, and Minovi from elsewhere – we would sit
in a café and talk. Discuss things. Things we had written we would read
to each other. For example, I read my translation of Zweig’s Briefe eine
[sic] Unbekannten, which I called “White Flowers”. We were involved
with these kinds of things.11
Cultural life in Tehran at this time can be considered as marginal in comparison

with that which these young men had experienced in 1920s Europe. After their
return and in their sometimes boring jobs – ‘Alavi worked as a German teacher
at the Technical School in Tehran (Madreseh-ye San‘ati-ye Iran-o Alman)12
and Hedayat in the National Bank (Bank-e Melli), in his own words, the
“God-forsaken bank” – they lacked intellectual companionship, which they
sought elsewhere. Hedayat expressed his dissatisfaction with his job in a letter
to his friend Taqi Razavi in Paris in August 1931: “I’m thinking of opening a
bookshop. I’ve even found two partners [who may have been two from among
‘Alavi, Partow, Minovi and Farzad]. I’m sure it’ll get going soon … .”13
Although the young writers didn’t open a bookshop they enjoyed sharing
their common experiences and interests:
For my part … , what was … important to me was that I had found

some people who were different. They stood head and shoulders above
other people. They were bigger. One could trust them. One could speak
one’s mind freely with them.14
Elsewhere ‘Alavi says:
Then there was something else, too! Back in those days in Tehran, there
were not that many people who were interested in Western music. And I
genuinely disliked Iranian music! Hedayat disliked it as well. Whereas
now I do like it … , I truly appreciate it. But back then, Hedayat had
records! Minovi had a magnificent record collection! On Fridays, for
example, we would go to Minovi’s house and listen to music from morning
till night.15
In some respects the members of this group were trying to continue the life-
style of their formative years in Europe. Vis-à-vis the cultural establishment of
their time they considered themselves “social and intellectual rebels,”16 in the
words of ‘Alavi they “were different” in comparison with other people.
Vis-à-vis the literary establishment

Among the leading figures in the field of literature and literary research
during the reign of Reza Shah were men like the literary scholar Sa‘id Nafisi,
236 Roja Dehdarian
who established himself in the area of literary history and Persian classical
poetry; Iran’s “father of literary research” Mohammad Qazvini;17 the historian
and philologist ‘Abbas Eqbal Ashtiyani; the famous poet and literary scholar
Mohammad Taqi Bahar; and the poet and professor of history Rashid
Yasami, amongst others,18 most of whom held important academic positions.
Some of them, like Sa‘id Nafisi and ‘Abbas Eqbal, had even occupied the
chairs of Persian literature since the foundation of Tehran University. They
were commonly called the Odaba’-e Sab‘eh, the “seven men of letters,” and
were active first and foremost in the field of literary research. In his literary
history, ‘Alavi distinguishes between those who were primarily academics and
those who had been poets, “revolutionary and effusive,” in their youth, like
Mohammad Taqi Bahar, ‘Ali Akbar Dehkhoda and Ebrahim Purdavud. As a
result of the dictatorial regime of Reza Shah, these latter figures had chosen
to keep away from politics, devoting themselves almost entirely to literary
scholarship.19
‘Alavi describes his own group in relation to the literary establishment as
follows: “We were the newly hatched chickens (ma tazeh jujeh-ha’i budim ke
az tokhm dar amadeh budim).”20 Even though they were not yet known they
sometimes participated in the literary meetings of the established literati in
the house of Sa‘id Nafisi, who was married to Mas‘ud Farzad’s sister:
Every week these scholars and men of letters would gather there. Farzad
took us with him. We were the newly hatched chickens of literature.
We wanted to work our way up. We were four persons and they were
seven. – They were called the seven men of letters.21
The literary establishment of the time hardly noticed them in the beginning.
They considered them, in ‘Alavi’s words, as “ignorant insolent small fry” and
dismissed their literary works, such as Maziyar and Hedayat’s short stories, for
lacking any literary value.22 In response to this attitude the younger generation
developed their own strategies, one of which was mockery: they modelled
their name Rab‘eh on the term Sabeh, the Arabic word for “seven.” ‘Alavi
recounts that it was Mas‘ud Farzad who introduced the name to the group:
One day Mas‘ud Farzad said for fun: If they are the seven men of letters
(Odaba’-e Sab’eh), we are the four men of letters (Odaba’-e Rab‘eh).
I said: But Rab‘eh, that doesn’t mean anything. He said: Yes, but it
rhymes; meaning is no longer as important.23
What began as a joke later became the well-known name of the group. The
young writers were aware that they did not share the “experience and
knowledge of the older generation, hadn’t read as many books and couldn’t
measure up to their academic achievements in the field of Iranian literature.”24
Hedayat in particular suffered from the pretension of the leading intelligentsia
of his country, as his works of the time reflect. In the satirical verses Vagh
vagh Sahab (Mr. Bow-Wow) (Tehran 1933), for example, the writers Hedayat
and Farzad criticize the academic class for their opportunist attitude towards
the ruling elite and their plagiarism. To become a successful and famous
scholar, according to them
You first of all have to look carefully around to see if one of the famous
scholars lives in your town, and then whether he is well-respected by the
people there, or, like me, has been cheated by fate. If the former is the
case and life is on his side, then work for him for a while. This means that
you should sit quietly in on his sessions, ingratiate yourself with him and
pay court to him. Join the ranks of his entourage in order that your work
brings in money and your name starts to take root. Then commit the
titles of some thick Arabic books to memory and write an article imitat-
ing them. You have to make especially sure that there is not a single page
on which the name of the book is not mentioned. Whenever you come to
the phrases which you didn’t understand, by no means show this but
instead place them without shame in your own writings, and with this
make strangers tremble with fear and your acquaintances go green with
envy and jealousy. … Never forget that if in your writings and talks you
trumpet to the importance of honesty for society and mankind’s moral
issues and such major topics which appear fundamental but are actually
trivial, whether it is convenient or inconvenient, whether you are asleep
or awake, then it won’t be long before you receive the title of philosophic
scholar and social reformer. Your name will be on the lips of every man
and woman and you will have made it.25
By comparison they illustrate the circumstances for the younger generation as

follows:
We must wait years and save up our meager pennies, or borrow at exorbitant
interest rates, so that we can cover the expenses of printing one tiny book.
Then, we expend our time, money, and mental and physical strength in
determining the book’s format and font, and in selecting the type of
paper and the cover’s color. We undergo the torture of proofreading, and
ultimately, with a hundred heartaches behind us, we deposit our printed
books with the bookseller, where, if we are fortunate and he is one of the
class of honest booksellers, as time passes we will slowly receive our
money from him in credit. And if God forbid he is from that other class,
then Angel of Death Azrael save us.26
But there were also famous scholars like ‘Ali Akbar Dehkhoda who supported
the literary activities of the young and motivated writers. According to ‘Alavi,
Dehkhoda occasionally participated in their literary get-togethers in a café in
Lalehzar Street or invited them to his home. Dehkhoda’s advice for the young
generation in dealing with the literary establishment was: “Don’t look at
238 Roja Dehdarian
them. They are in power and your battle against them is of no use. You are
the princes of literature (shahzadeh-ye adab) and we are only your parasites
(rizehkhor).”27
Mojtaba Minovi retrospectively emphasizes the prolific collaboration of the
young writers in contrast to the rivalry between those of the older generation.
In 1952, in his speech in memory of Sadeq Hedayat, one year after his death,
he stated:
They were more than seven and we also were more than four, but they
had a thousand faces and a thousand hearts, while we were one. Each of
us had his own personality and we answered to nobody, but in our love
for the arts we were like-minded and we shared our thoughts and were
equal to one another.28
Literature, social criticism and the Pahlavi state

The members of the group not only struggled with the literary establishment,
they also felt a deep antipathy towards the government of Reza Shah, as well
as towards the traditional power of religion. Whereas Reza Shah celebrated
the great Iranian kingdom in the 1930s, the young writers exposed nationwide
social and political ills, and their critical attitude is reflected in their works.
We find for example harsh social criticism in the aforementioned satirical
verses Vagh vagh Sahab, published by Hedayat and Farzad. ‘Alavi in his first
independently published volume Chamadan (The suitcase) (Tehran 1935)
offers a critical view of Iranian society. Like Hedayat, he selected his subjects
from the milieu of social outcasts and focused his attention on those who had
been left behind by modernization. Furthermore, he is also interested in the
emotional lives of his protagonists, who completely unsettle the illusion of
successful modernization.
In his first story of the volume, entitled “Chamadan” (The suitcase)29 ‘Alavi
deals with the generational conflict, the gap in Iranian society between old and
new, traditional and avant-garde, experienced by most of the European-educated
young intellectuals of the time. The story is set in Germany, initially in the
hot and dusty summer city of Berlin, and then continuing in a tranquil holiday
resort near Zittau on the Czech border. The events are narrated in the first
person by the protagonist, F., the archetypal student, who lives in a one-room
apartment in Berlin and takes each day as it comes. One morning when F., in
spite of the repeated knocking of his landlord, oversleeps, his father appears
unexpectedly in his room. Having just arrived, the father whips open his
golden cigarette box, and while smoking regards the chaotic lifestyle of his
son and his scattered books with disapproval. ‘Alavi vividly depicts the con-
trast between the clean-shaven father, always busy, who lives an orderly life in
his orderly house in Berlin, and his disorganized son, sleeping the day away.
The father’s efforts to point his son in the right direction come to nothing and
his position at the centre of his family is completely undermined. However,
the son is dismissive of his father, strongly aware of the gap between them, and
regards his father as a hangover of the world of yesterday. There is nothing
else for the father to do but to give a check to his son, who as usual is completely
broke, and invite him to join him on his holiday. The story heats up when the
son follows his father to his holiday resort near the Czech border. The real
reason for F. to go there is not so much his father but a Russian woman,
Katuschka, whom F. met some time before and with whom he has fallen in
love. Coincidentally, she is residing in the same village as his father. F. takes a
room in the same guesthouse in which Katuschka is staying with her mother
and another woman and sends her a note. They manage to meet that same
evening. Immediately it becomes clear that the gap between the two lovers is
too deep to bridge: Katuschka, an emigrant, descended from old Russian
aristocracy, is unable, despite her love for F., to continue their relationship.
She has just met another man whom she wants to marry in the near future.
This man has everything that a woman of her origin needs: money, status and
security, everything that F. lacks. Neither Katuschka nor F. is able and willing
to transgress the gap between the old world and the modern. In his story,
‘Alavi contrasts the remains of old, traditional society with the requirements
of the modern world and the reality in which the youth of the present live
through this somewhat curious triangular love story. F. comes to condemn a
society in which a woman is forced to sell herself to earn her living:
Maybe, if the conditions didn’t force her to, Katuschka could live with me
without becoming my wife, today, when neither her father nor her mother
can force her. But an ominous and terrible devil – money, society and her
milieu – forces her to sell herself. To sell herself for an entire lifetime just in
order to live. Every woman sells herself, some of them for some change for a
few hours or days, others for a whole lifetime to ensure their subsistence.30
The story ends, when F. discovers that his beloved’s fiancé is his own father.
In another story of the same volume entitled “Shik-push” (Chic-dressed),31
which to date has been almost completely overlooked, ‘Alavi satirizes the type
of the typical pseudo-educated Europeanized Iranian “intellectual.” The essay
focuses on the Iranian dandy Mr. Navapur who, in the circles of Tehran’s
intelligentsia, is said to be a young and modern intellectual.32 In fact, he is
not interested in anything but his appearance, and in the course of the story
the narrator exposes him to be a gold-digging poser. In the story ‘Alavi makes
particular reference to the literary establishment, which he depicts as superficial
and self-important, only interested in liberating the Iranian homeland from
noxious Arabic influences, and debating hour after hour over nonsense.33
In ‘Alavi’s elaborate story “Sarbaz-e sorbi” (The tin soldier)34 in particular,
Iranian society is highlighted as morally and socially damaged. It is the story
of the young man F., government official and son of a clergyman, and the
naïve and chubby-faced girl Koukab, who one morning when F. wakes up
240 Roja Dehdarian
after his first drinking bout is in his room. “With that my story with Koukab
began … .”35 ‘Alavi depicts the fateful relationship between the two protago-
nists: Koukab comes to stay with F., who was living in Bushehr at that time,
but he, as a result of his noxious obsession with his mother (who died shortly
before), sees her as a mother-substitute and remains incapable of bonding
with Koukab as a woman. Koukab on the other hand is obsessed with reco-
vering a tin soldier which seems to have been the substitute for her former
husband. F. begins to cast one tin soldier after another for Koukab, but never
the right one, and loses his job as a result of this obsession. Shortly after F.
has completed the – in his view – “right tin soldier,” Koukab disappears and
F. returns to Tehran, where he sinks deeper and deeper into opium addiction
and madness. Koukab is not able to free herself from the destructive rela-
tionship either. Not able to return home to her husband – who in the mean-
time has married another woman – she comes to Tehran, where F. picks her
up. Fleeing from F.’s rage, she ends up in the milieu of prostitution with a
wrinkled, pockmarked face and straggly hair. The narrative structure of the
story is of particular interest: narrated by three sources (the narrator, F. and
Koukab) in the first person, the reader himself has to combine the different
and, in parts, disconnected narrative sections, to understand the development
of the story. But in the end, the “real” course of events remains open or, as is
much more the case, a “subordinate reality” does not exist at all. Social cri-
ticism – as shown in the story – concerned society as well as human relations,
such as relationships between men and women and intra-familial relations.
‘Alavi creates an image of a society in which civil servants, instead of fighting
against the opium trade, are personally involved in selling opium and are them-
selves addicted to it. He depicts in the most minute details the milieu of misery
and poverty to which his protagonists have fallen. The reader is confronted
with a subtle criticism of the role of women, the Iranian divorce law and
the inhumanity of a society that reduces the individual – as picked up in the
beginning as well as in the end of the story – to its cash value, to ten shahis.
Despite the fact that the young writers’ works were not censored by the
censorship authority until around 1935,36 they did not go unnoticed by the
political department of the police. The meetings of these young men and their
unconventional behaviour were viewed suspiciously. Minovi recounts:
Our meetings usually took place in the coffeehouses or restaurants. …

Sometimes we also openly drank harder drinks than water and we could
be heard discussing loudly and sometimes expressing strong views. So we
often attracted negative attention from the others around us. But their
actions against us had no greater consequence than the government emis-
saries disturbing our chess games or someone following us everywhere to
keep us under observation.37
‘Alavi refers to an event that took place in one of the cafés of their regular
meetings: “One day one of the Armenian servants warned us that some
people had come and asked what are you playing up here.”38 ‘Alavi in parti-
cular seems to have been under observation. He remembers that one day in
the printing office of the Majles, where from time to time he corrected statutes
commissioned by the military headquarters, one of the employees advised
him not to go home too late:
Every evening when you go home that late, someone has to follow you.
After all, the poor guy is only human. He never makes it to bed before
midnight.39
But ‘Alavi didn’t take it seriously and did not want to unsettle his friends. And
although the group was sometimes observed by state officials, the young men
did not encounter serious difficulties until 1936. The reason for this is on the
one hand the fact that the writers did not participate openly in political
activities. On the other hand their works were often published in very small
print runs – in some 300 or 1000 copies – at their own expense. At this time
they were practically unknown and their writings, although often critical,
were for the most part overlooked by state officials.40
The niche for innovation

Thus the young literati created for themselves a niche in which they were able
to produce a remarkable amount of innovative literary as well as some scho-
larly work. Some of them experienced this as the most prolific period of their
artistic careers: alongside his short story collections and his novel (already
mentioned above) Hedayat published two volumes of folk tales and popular
beliefs, Awsaneh (Folk tales) (Tehran 1931) and Neyrangestan (Collection
of popular beliefs, rites and superstitious practices) (Tehran 1933), and the
travelogue Esfahan nesf-e jahan (Isfahan, half the world) (Tehran 1932).
He shared an interest in Iranian history and Persian classics with Minovi
and collaborated with him on the publication of the historical play Maziyar
(Tehran 1933). Mas’ud Farzad was occupied with poetry and satire, translated
Shakespeare and worked with Hedayat on the publication of the satirical
verses Vagh vagh Sahab. In addition to the translation of The Maid of
Orleans (Doshizeh-ye Orle’an) (Tehran 1930), Bozorg ‘Alavi translated Das
iranische Nationalepos (Hamaseh-ye melli-ye Iran) (Tehran 1948) by Theodor
Nöldeke,41 encouraged by Hedayat and in cooperation with Minovi. In his
interview with Hamid Ahmadi, ‘Alavi describes his fruitful work with Minovi.
Each morning during the holidays they met at Minovi’s house to compare
‘Alavi’s translation with the German original and an English translation of
the text. “This man [Minovi] had an incredible memory. … He taught me
how to work accurately and I’m always indebted to him.”42 Further ‘Alavi
published in conjunction with Hedayat and Shin Partow the volume Aniran
(Non-Iran) (Tehran 1931) to which I will return later. And finally in spring
1935 ‘Alavi debuted with Chamadan, his first collection of short stories.
242 Roja Dehdarian
The well-known Czech literary scholar Jan Rypka gives an account of it in
May 1935:
About two weeks before the Nouruz of 1314 in Teherán (Kitabcháne

va matba’ai Dániš) a collection of short stories of 108 pp. kl. 8 was pub-
lished. Its author is Áqá Bozorg ‘Alaví, a young writer (1283 = 1904) and
teacher at a Technical school in the capital of Iran. Following the example
of Guy de Maupassant, who was then emulated by Sádiq Hidájat, a
Persian novelist of the same generation and the same circle of friends,
‘Alaví also entitled his book after the first story čamadán. The publication is
highly worthy of our attention, not only because of its novelty but also,
and primarily, because of its substance.43
Following Mohammad ‘Ali Jamalzadeh, Sadeq Hedayat and Mohammad

Hejazi, Rypka states that Bozorg ‘Alavi is now the fourth author to publish an
“independent short-story collection,” a rarity in Iran at that time.44 Jan Rypka
was the first European scholar to notice the young writers’ generation and their
significance. He had participated in an international conference of Ferdowsi
scholars in Tehran in the autumn of 1934 on the occasion of a series of celebra-
tions marking the millennium of Ferdowsi’s birth, and over the course of this
had got to know the literary circle.45 ‘Alavi depicts how one day Rypka came to
the café in which the friends were meeting: “He now became one of the permanent
café-visitors as well and later wrote about what he had seen and heard there.”46
Engagement in the “national project”

Alongside their interest in European literature, an engagement with Iran’s
ancient past takes center stage in the young writers’ work and thought. For a
better understanding of their attitude I would like to refer to an event Bozorg
‘Alavi recounts in his memoirs. When he came to Germany in the 1920s he
was deeply impressed by the culture, art and literature, as well as the material
advances of the Weimar Republic. His enthusiasm was accompanied by a
strong feeling of how backward his own homeland was. One day during a
class excursion to the seaside he visited a German dike. His teacher asked
him: “Are there dikes like this in Iran?” Before ‘Alavi was able to answer, his
teacher declared: “No, Iran is not advanced enough.” This experience hit him
hard. Like many other Iranians living in Europe for some years, he was forced
to develop a new perspective on his native society. Following this experience
‘Alavi began to search for literature about Iranian history to compensate for
the feeling of backwardness. His reading of the German translations of
famous Iranian poets like Ferdowsi and ‘Omar Khayyam, as well as scholarly
works about the pre-Islamic history of Iran like the opus Grundriss der iranischen
Philologie by Wilhelm Geiger and Ernst Kuhn, Theodor Nöldeke’s Das ira-
nische Nationalepos and A. Christensen’s L’empire des Sassanides, helped him
to regain some of his lost national pride.47
Like a large number of their contemporaries, the young Iranian writers
were struggling with the technological and scientific backwardness of their
home country vis-à-vis the West. ‘Alavi describes his impressions on his return:
The sight of Tehran was terrifying for me. The lanes appeared to be
narrower. The street lamps which in Europe towered straight up to the
sky, appeared to be crooked and in a bad state of repair. The water in
the basin smelled bad, my mother had grown old and even my sister
wanted to hide her face from me.48
To link the claims of modernity with their sense of patriotism they jumped on
the bandwagon of nationalism. Following the lead of their predecessors like
Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh or Hoseyn Kazemzadeh Tabrizi they encouraged
each other to read European orientalist works published on Iran’s history. Even
the young and highly critical intellectuals absorbed the “imaginary perception”
of old, that is, authentic Persian culture, constructed in them and developed
romantic nationalist sentiments with regard to Persia’s pre-Islamic past.49
This attitude is reflected in many of their writings, for example in their
folkloric publications, such as the Neyrangestan by Hedayat or the Nowruz-nameh
by Minovi. The volume Aniran, published by the three writers Shin Partow,
Bozorg ‘Alavi and Sadeq Hedayat in 1931, must also be seen in this context.
The authors touch upon three historical events, Alexander’s conquest of Iran,
the Arab conquest and the Mongol invasion, and present them as the three
disasters of Iranian history. Therewith they follow the prevalent “nationalist
‘emplotment’ of Iran’s ancient history as a tragedy [which] was based on the
comprehension of the Muslim conquest as a force engendering ‘the reverse
progress of Iran’ (taraqqi-ye ma‘kus-e Iran).”50 In his story “Div! … div! … ”
(Demon! … demon! … ) ‘Alavi focuses on the period of the Arab conquest of
Iran of about 1200–1300 years earlier. Modelled on the style of Hedayat’s
novel Parvin, dokhtar-e Sasan, ‘Alavi’s story has strong overtones of anti-Arab
racism. He depicts the Arab conquerors as utterly underdeveloped, ugly and
cruel – in sum, as the title indicates, the personification of div (demon). Like
wild animals they came at the civilized, sophisticated and virtuous Iranian
people and “raised the centenary-long Sasanian civilization to the ground.”51
Again and again ‘Alavi describes the predatory practices of the “black faced
Arabs” with their “uncombed hair” and “dirty necks,” murdering Iranian
men, robbing and hawking Iranian women. The story develops from this
contrast between the Arab invaders, compared to Ahriman, and the Iranian
nation, as Ahura, embodied by an Iranian woman named Arnavaz and some
Iranian patriots. After the takeover of Iran, Arnavaz, the daughter of
the border official of Hamadan, is kidnapped by the invaders and sold at the
bazaar in Kufa to an Arab camel driver. Twelve years later she returns mor-
ibund to her father’s house, wanting him to care for her adolescent son and
raise him as an Iranian. Arriving deep in winter at a tumbled-down cottage
she does not meet her father, who had committed suicide years earlier in
244 Roja Dehdarian
order not to fall into the invaders’ hands. She does however find her former
fiancé Zaravand, who was sitting together with some friends, all of them dis-
illusioned patriots. According to Arnavaz’s testament, Zaravand raised her
son Gazravan as an Iranian, but despite this, some years later, he came to
betray his Iranian family; in the end he couldn’t stand his predisposition as an
Arab and “turned into div.” One of the basic statements of the text is the
declaration of an old Iranian patriot: “Iran won’t bow to Aniran [Non-Iran] …
Iran belongs to the Iranians.”52
As Tavakoli-Targhi states, by “linking the end of the ‘enlightened’ pre-
Islamic times to origins identified with Iran through Mahabad or Kayumars,
a new memory, identity, and political reality were fashioned.”53 By discover-
ing contemporary signs of modernity, like nationalism and scientific progress,
in Iran’s glorious past, the country could be conceived as a modern nation
and the Iranian civilization at least on a level with European civilizations, if
not superior. This is what Marashi calls the “authentication of modernity.”54
In this, European orientalist scholarship played an important part.
According to Marashi “orientalism thus enabled nationalism by helping to
excavate the deep reservoirs of pre-modern Persianate culture in order to find
the nation-subject of a new national narrative.”55 Writers like Bozorg ‘Alavi
and Mojtaba Minovi through their translations of philological and historical
orientalist works like Theodor Nöldeke’s Das iranische Nationalepos or A.
Christensen’s L’empire des Sassanides were the main actors fashioning this
“new national narrative.” One of the most important events promoting this
new national Iranian identity was the Pahlavi state’s celebrations marking the
millennium of Ferdowsi’s birth. Some of the young intellectuals even took an
active part in these. Within the context of the Ferdowsi congress in October
1934, the actor ‘Abd al-Hoseyn Nushin and Gholam Hoseyn Minbashiyan, both
belonging to the circle around Hedayat, brought three plays of the Shah-nameh
to the stage.56
The strong nationalist character of Reza Shah’s regime had encouraged
from the beginning scholarly interest in national history. Men like Sa‘id
Nafisi, Mohammad Taqi Bahar, ‘Abbas Eqbal and Mohammad Qazvini,
according to ‘Alavi, spent most of their energy on “academically consolidating
the national pride in Iran’s historical heritage.”57
However, not only the established literati took part in the so-called
“nationalist memory project” of Reza Shah’s regime. The young writers, too,
highly influenced by their encounter with the West, had thoroughly absorbed
the spirit of romantic nationalism.
In ‘Alavi’s Geschichte und Entwicklung der modernen persischen Literatur
(History and development of modern Persian literature), we read:
[Reza Shah] advocated … modernism and nationalism. These two ideas

were aspired to by both the new rulers and the Iranian people. But they
were by no means new: they already had been central for the Iranian
intelligentsia for a long time. … During the reign of Reza Shah …
nationalism was a form of refuge, in which the intellectuals sought
shelter. … [They] took comfort in their research in the field of Iran’s dis-
tant past, in their interest in the classical heritage, in folk-tales, customs
and conventions. They took pleasure in it, pleasure that the present
denied them.58
‘Alavi highlights the commitment of nearly the entire intelligentsia to the

project of nationalism as a form of refuge from unbearable conditions in the
present.59 What he underestimates somewhat is the fact that official nation-
alism was actively supported by a majority of the Iranian intellectuals. The
“nationalist memory project” was conceived long before the inauguration of
Reza Shah. Developed in the nineteenth century, emphasized in the years of
the Constitutional Revolution, it was men like Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh,
Hoseyn Kazemzadeh Tabrizi and Ebrahim Purdavud, who can be seen as the
theorists of Iranian nationalism in the twentieth century. Reza Shah was
merely the man who picked up this ideology and implemented it directly in
his cultural policies. During his reign the discourse of secular nationalism,
once used as a discourse directed against foreign intrusion and as a “coun-
terdiscourse”60 to religious discourse, became “institutionalized as the official
culture and ideology of the state.”61
Although the attitude of the young writers towards the Pahlavi regime was
highly critical and they opposed the autocratic style of the state’s moderniza-
tion measures, they shared the ideology of nationalism and contributed
actively to this cultural discourse. But they are less a product of the cultural
politics of Reza Shah’s government than the outcome of a spirit developing in
Iran since the nineteenth century and their contact with European thought.
When the young writers returned from their stay in Europe they had to locate
themselves between many conflicting fronts. As ‘Alavi declares “the political-
economic and social development of Iran was the demand of the time; the
wish to be taught by Europe and America had become an inner need for the
people.”62 Between 1930 and 1935 the young writers reached the peak of their
literary activity and were amongst those who profited from the secularization
of public life. Keen on experimenting with new literary forms, “assimilating
Western ideas and literary genres with [their own] indigenous forms of
thought and expression,”63 they formed the nucleus of the trend-setting lit-
erary movement in Iran.64 It was not until the mid 1930s, as a consequence of
political developments, that the variety of cultural production began to be
restricted in the name of “cultural uniformity.”65 And it was exactly at this
time that – due to the aggravation of the political climate – the members of
the circle went their separate ways. Mojtaba Minovi left Iran for London in
1935 and Sadeq Hedayat went to Bombay in 1936. When Hedayat returned
to Tehran in September 1937, Bozorg ‘Alavi had already been imprisoned as
one of the members of the “group of fifty three.” It was also at this time that
men like Sadeq Hedayat as well as Bozorg ‘Alavi were not only abandoning
the nationalist agenda but becoming one of its harshest critics. ‘Alavi in
246 Roja Dehdarian
particular later dissociated himself explicitly from the nationalist effusions of
his story “Div! … div! … .”
Conclusion
During the preceding period, despite the arbitrary rule of Reza Shah, the
country experienced – as ‘Alavi states in his literary history – a “revolutionary
intellectual upheaval.”66 We are dealing here with a lively and diverse cultural
scene in Tehran and – with regard to literature – a great deal of experimental
creativity. ‘Alavi himself illustrates the atmosphere of this period as follows:
On the whole, I think, conditions were less discouraging then than

nowadays. From a personal standpoint, it was good to be returning to
one’s country. There was a great deal of intellectual excitement. The
people who had studied abroad didn’t leave their education behind them.
They felt conscience-bound to do something for the country. They
inspired one another. They had a sense of purpose – not necessarily a
common one, but one larger than themselves. … For example, at the time
I returned – which was in the late twenties, by the way – there was no
university or centre of learning where people could congregate. So people
got together at each other’s house. They held discussions, exchanged
books and ideas, encouraged one another to read.67
The relatively small group of young intellectuals around Sadeq Hedayat,

despite cleaving themselves to the predominant cultural discourses of their
time, acted mainly independently of the official cultural institutions as well as
public expectations. That is to say they were not yet bound to any political or
social institution and were still free from political guidelines, such as the later
established aims of a writer’s task, adopted in 1946 at the First Congress of
Iranian Writers. In this way, the “newly hatched chickens of Persian literature”
were able to write history; with their innovative prose and their “modern
modes of thought”68 they set the course for later literary developments.
Notes
1 Donné Raffat, The Prison Papers of Bozorg Alavi: A Literary Odyssey (Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985), p. x. See also “Letter of Don Shojai/Donné
Raffat to Bozorg ‘Alavi from October 28, 1972” in Nachlass Bozorg ‘Alavi (Literary
estates of Bozorg ‘Alavi) 29–1, Archive of Humboldt-University Berlin.
2 Raffat, The Prison Papers of Bozorg Alavi, p. 90.
3 Bozorg Alavi, Geschichte und Entwicklung der modernen persischen Literatur
(Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1964), p. 160. See also Bozorg ‘Alavi, Gozasht-e
zamaneh (Tehran: Mo’assaseh-ye Entesharat-e Negah, 1385/2006), p. 65.
4 Homa Katouzian, “Preface,” in Sadeq Hedayat: His Work and His Wondrous
World, ed. Homa Katouzian (New York: Routledge, 2008).
5 Including the three volumes of short stories Zendeh be gur (Buried alive) (Tehran
1930), Seh qatreh khun (Three drops of blood) (Tehran 1932), Sayeh rowshan
(Chiaroscuro) (Tehran 1933) and his novel Buf-e kur (The blind owl) (Bombay
1936).
6 A circle is defined as “a group of people connected in an informal way by
common interests,” Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture
(Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1993), p. 218. Hereafter I will use the term with
regard to the “group of four,” an informal but nonetheless influential association
of young intellectuals united by their common interest in literature.
7 See ‘Alavi, Gozasht-e zamaneh, pp. 58–59.
8 Ibid., p. 59.
9 Bozorg ‘Alavi, Khaterat-e Bozorg Alavi/Memoirs of Bozorg ‘Alavi, ed. Hamid
Ahmadi (Tehran: Donya-ye Ketab, 1377/1998), p. 165.
10 See ‘Alavi, Gozasht-e zamaneh, p. 61.
12 See ‘Alavi, Gozasht-e zamaneh, p. 40. ‘Alavi recalls that as a teacher he only had
to work until midday and he didn’t need much time to prepare his lessons. So he
had a good deal of spare time which he could use to read and write.
13 “Letter of 29 August 1931,” in Ketab-e Sadeq Hedayat, ed. Mahmud Katira’i
(Tehran: Sazman-e Entesharat-e Ashrafi, 1349/1970), p. 212, as quoted in Homa
Katouzian, Sadeq Hedayat: The Life and Literature of an Iranian Writer
(London and New York: Tauris, 1991), pp. 49–50.
15 Ibid., p. 92.
16 Katouzian, Sadeq Hedayat, p. 54.
17 Alavi, Geschichte und Entwicklung, p. 173.
18 For example, the famous prose author and lexicographer ‘Ali Akbar Dehkhoda,
the literary scholar Vahid Dastgerdi and the Rumi researcher Badi‘ al-Zaman
Foruzanfar.
19 See Alavi, Geschichte und Entwicklung, p. 173.
20 ‘Alavi, Khaterat-e Bozorg ‘Alavi, p. 168.
21 ‘Alavi, Gozasht-e zamaneh, p. 66.
22 Ibid., p. 74.
23 Ibid., p. 66.
25 Sadeq Hedayat and Mas‘ud Farzad, Vagh vagh Sahab (1933; Tehran: Entesharat-
e Javedan, 2536 [Pahlavi]/1976), pp. 106–7.
26 Hedayat and Farzad, Vagh vagh Sahab, pp. 111–12, as quoted in Iraj Parsinejad,
A History of Literary Criticism in Iran (1866–1951): Literary Criticism in the
Works of Enlightened Thinkers of Iran: Akhundzade, Kermani, Malkolm, Talebof,
Maraghe’i, Kasravi and Hedayat (Bethesda, MD: IBEX Publishers, 2003), p. 216.
28 “Sokhanrani-ye Aqa-ye Mojtaba Minovi dar jalaseh-ye yadbud-e Hedayat (25
Farvardin 1331/14 April 1952)” in ‘Aqayed va afkar darbareh-ye Sadeq Hedayat
pas az marg (Tehran: Entesharat-e Anjoman-e Giti, 1335/1956), p. 106.
29 Bozorg ‘Alavi, “Chamadan,” in Chamadan (Tehran: n.p., 1313/1935), pp. 5–20.
30 Ibid., p. 15.
31 Bozorg ‘Alavi, “Shik-push,” in Chamadan (Tehran: n.p., 1313/1935), pp. 93–113.
Jan Rypka refers to this story as being of interest for the insight into a little-known
field of Persian literature that it provides, but which stands apart from the rest of the
book. Jan Rypka, “Aus der modernsten Belletristik Íráns,” Archiv Orientální:
Journal of the Czechoslovak Oriental Institute, Prague VII (1935), p. 313. Wickens
touches briefly upon the story in his article, G.M. Wickens, “Bozorg ‘Alavi’s
Portmanteau,” University of Toronto Qarterly XXVIII: 2 (1959), pp. 116–33.
32 ‘Alavi, “Shik-push,” p. 93.
33 Ibid., p. 109.
248 Roja Dehdarian
34 Bozorg ‘Alavi, “Sarbaz-e sorbi,” in Chamadan (Tehran: n.p., 1313/1935), pp. 71–91.
35 Ibid., p. 76.
36 In 1935, Sadeq Hedayat “had to give a written pledge to the censors to stop publish-
ing altogether.” See Homa Katouzian, “Riza Shah’s Political Legitimacy and Social
Base, 1921–41,” in The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah
1921–1941, ed. Stephanie Cronin (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 31.
37 “Sokhanrani-ye Aqa-ye Mojtaba Minovi,” p. 106.
39 Ibid., p. 73.
40 See ‘Alavi, Khaterat-e Bozorg ‘Alavi, p. 186.
41 Theodor Nöldeke, Das iranische Nationalepos (Berlin and Leipzig: Vereinigung
wissenschaftlicher Verleger Walter De Gruyter & Co., 1920).
43 Rypka, Aus der modernsten Belletristik Íráns, p. 302.
44 Ibid.
45 For an account of the celebrations and their positioning in the national project of
the Pahlavi state see Afshin Marashi, “The Nation’s Poet: Ferdowsi and the Iranian
National Imagination,” in Iran in the 20th Century: Historiography and Political
Culture, ed. Touraj Atabaki (London and New York: Tauris, 2009), pp. 93–111.
47 Ibid., pp. 32–33.
49 See also Houra Yavari, “The Blind Owl: Present in the Past or the Story of a
Dream,” in Sadeq Hedayat, ed. Katouzian, pp. 44–45.
50 Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, “Historiography and Crafting Iranian National
Identity,” in Iran in the 20th Century, ed. Atabaki, p. 5.
51 Bozorg ‘Alavi, “Div! … div! … ,” in Aniran, by Shin Partow, Bozorg ‘Alavi and
Sadeq Hedayat (n.p.: Samimeh-ye majalleh-ye Arman, n.d. [2nd edn]), p. 22.
52 Ibid., p. 24.
53 Tavakoli-Targhi, Historiography and Crafting Iranian National Identity, p. 5.
54 Afshin Marashi, Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power, and the State, 1870–1940
(Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2008), p. 55. See also Cyrus
Schayegh, Who Is Knowledgeable Is Strong: Science, Class, and the Formation of
Modern Iranian Society 1900–1950 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 2009), pp. 47–49.
55 Marashi, The Nation’s Poet, p. 99.
56 “Sokhanrani-ye Aqa-ye Mojtaba Minovi,” p. 107.
58 Ibid., pp. 132–33.
59 Ibid., pp. 133, 155.
60 Marashi, Nationalizing Iran, p. 113.
61 Ibid., p. 109.
64 See also ibid., p. 35.
65 See Afshin Matin-asgari, “Marxism, Historiography and Historical Consciousness
in Modern Iran: A Preliminary Study,” in Iran in the 20th Century, ed. Atabaki,
p. 208.
67 Raffat, The Prison Papers of Bozorg Alavi.
68 Claus V. Pedersen, “Sadeq Hedayat, A Writer Ahead of Time,” in The Necklace
of the Pleiades: Studies in Persian Literature Presented to Heshmat Moayyad on
his 80th Birthday, ed. Franklin Lewis and Sunil Sharma (Amsterdam: Rozenberg
Publishers, 2007), p. 334.
11 Giving birth to a new generation
Midwifery in the public health system of
the Reza Shah era
Elham Malekzadeh
Introduction
Reza Shah’s reign is one of the historical epochs during which the state took
various measures to change the status of women in society. There were var-
ious social, economic, and even political spheres in which women were able to
engage, provided they were cognizant of the limitations imposed on them by
the state at that time. Health and medicine was one of the domains in which
women could get involved during the early Pahlavi period. Obviously, the
effectiveness of their role depended on the level of awareness of health
authorities.
One of the most important fields of women’s activity was the occupational
system of midwifery in the health organizations, which this paper analyzes. It
considers the role of the Pahlavi administration in modernizing the country in
order to examine the evolution of a modern national health system. This
article focuses mainly on the sector of women’s service provision, as well as
efforts of the state to establish a systematic network to take care of pregnant
women and their children. In the path to a modern society, the Pahlavi state
paid close attention to the birth and development of a new generation, which
was supposed to be in charge of the country’s future. Therefore, during the
entire period of Reza Shah’s reign, the government exercised strong control
over this field, including prenatal care.
Before addressing the main issue, we provide the historical background of
health and medical treatment in Iran. Then, we discuss how different gov-
ernments fulfilled their obligations toward citizens in this field. Finally, we
conclude with discussing the increasing attention paid to gynaecology and
women’s and children’s diseases. This study is based on a wide range of dif-
ferent primary sources from the Reza Shah period such as books, journals,
and newspapers. But first and foremost, unpublished documents from the
National Archives in Tehran (Sazman-e Asnad va Ketabkhaneh-ye Melli)
are analyzed to outline the changes in the occupation of midwifery in the
administrative framework of the national health organization during the
1920s and 1930s.
250 Elham Malekzadeh
Iranian socio-political conditions and their impacts on the
evolution of medicine
The Qajar era was one the most important epochs in the evolution of
medicine in Iran. During this period, medicine and public health changed
significantly, due to the impact of the Dar al-Fonun School, which incorpo-
rated traditional medicine with European medicine into the Iranian medical
education system.1
These changes were the result of reforms by Naser al-Din Shah, the first
ruler to establish health service centres. In 1265q (1849), he decided to build a
hospital near the city of Astarabad, but the project was not realized.2 The
next year, 1266q (1850), he ordered the establishment of a hospital in Tehran,
which was inaugurated in 1268q (1852).3 After the establishment of Dar
al-Fonun by Amir Kabir, European medicine found its way into the medical
education system, but it did not replace traditional medicine, which survived
alongside modern medicine. Application of modern methods of medicine,
especially new methods of surgery taught by European physicians, was the
most important contribution of the Dar al-Fonun to Iranian society. These
measures played a significant role in public health advances. The establishment
of health societies (anjoman-ha-ye hefz al-sehheh) in the capital and major
provinces of Iran, which coordinated government health measures and gran-
ted medical certificates to qualified candidates, was one of the most important
steps taken in the Qajar Era.4
Naser al-Din Shah’s trips to Europe encouraged him to adopt the industrial
and medical services of European countries. He also decided to establish a
hospital in Tehran in the European model. As a result, in addition to the
hospital built in 1268q (1852), another hospital was built in 1284q (1868). In
1290q (1873) the Public Hospital in Tehran was officially inaugurated.5 New
physicians titled hafez al-sehheh were put in charge of public health in Tehran
and other big cities.6
However, the hafez al-sehheh were not able to perform their tasks due to the
lack of necessary medical instruments, and in most cities, the only physicians
were the traditional health practitioners called hakem bashi. The hefz al-sehheh
societies established in the larger provinces of Iran were particularly sig-
nificant in introducing modern medicine and improving the health of the people.
These societies monitored the status of public health and physicians’ practice
and issued medical certificates. Beginning in 1323q (1905), two French physi-
cians, Dr. George and Dr. Calais, were employed by the government of Iran, a
move that accelerated the progress of modern medicine in Iran. Soon, however,
political events in Iran hindered further development.7 The Constitutional
Revolution and changes in the socio-political situation together with widespread
poverty also had an impact on the health sector. Meanwhile, charity hospitals
were established due to the efforts of individuals such as Hajj Sheikh Hadi
Najmabadi, who used the legacy of the late Mirza ‘Isa Khan Vazir, governor
of Tehran, to establish an endowed hospital named the Vaziri Hospital.8
Giving birth to a new generation 251
During the Iranian Constitutional period, the name of the Department for
Health Care (Edareh-ye Hefz al-Sehheh) changed to Health Department
(Edareh-ye Sehhiyeh). As few and ineffective measures were taken to improve
public health, the status of public health in Tehran and other cities did not
change much, and rural districts and villages suffered from a lack of hygiene.
Often, drought, famine, or other natural disasters caused epidemics such as
cholera, malaria, and plague, which got out of control and killed many people.
The outbreak of such epidemics also led to the introduction of quarantine reg-
ulations, to be enforced along the borders of Iran with neighbouring states to
prevent the spread of such disasters.9
As foreign physicians saw that Iran was unable to prevent such epidemics
from spreading to neighbouring countries, they decided to take certain steps to
prevent chaos; among them, the measures taken by Dr. Tholozan, the king’s
attending physician, were of great importance. In 1324q (1906), Dr. Tholozan
who was appointed as the first ambassador of the physicians’ society, established
the Central Board of Health (Hey’at-e Sehhiyeh), the institute responsible for
maintaining public health in Iran. This department passed quarantine reg-
ulations for ports and border regions and implemented a vaccination program
carried out previously by Dr. Cloquet, another European physician.10
Later, the Central Board of Health changed its name to the Sanitary
Council (Majles-e Sehhat or Hefz al-Sehheh). In 1329q (1911), the Sanitary
Council of Tehran, which was an affiliate office of Majles-e Sehhat, passed a
budget for public health for the first time.11 As these decisions were made to
promote the health and welfare of the people, any public services were to be
covered. At the same time, because of changes arising out of the Constitutional
Revolution and the establishment of the National Consultative Assembly
(Majles), special laws and regulations to administer the medical and phar-
maceutical affairs of Iran were prepared by the Sanitary Council and passed
by the parliament.12 In 1277 (1861), the first medical physicians’ meeting was
held by the order of Naser al-Din Shah, and from that time on, this meeting
was held weekly to discuss heath and medical issues.
As a result of these measures and new conditions, the improvement of
health services attracted attention, and the government decided to establish a
medical school as an affiliate of the Dar al-Fonun. However, because of the
difficulties faced by the main health authorities, no significant improvement
was achieved, and the only step taken was the ratification of the education
law (qanun-e asasi-ye ma‘aref) and the medicine law (qanun-e tababat) in
1329q (1911).13
The medicine law was formulated and passed by a group of physicians who
had graduated from European academic centres, including Dr. ‘Ali Khan Hakim
A‘zam, Dr. Yahya Mirza Lesan al-Hokama, and Dr. Amir Khan Amir A‘lam,
who were all members of parliament. This law began to be enforced two years
after its ratification. When World War I began, the disordered situation
caused by the breach of Iran’s neutrality increased the instability of the med-
ical school. The abovementioned law was comprised of 13 articles, whose
first, second, and eleventh articles stipulated that every physician’s practice
required an official certificate issued by the Ministry of Education.
Thus, after the ratification of this law, any physician who wanted to prac-
tice was obliged to attend medical school.14 The enforcement of this law
developed the medical school and increased the number of its students. In
general, it can be claimed that government reforms before the Pahlavi era
paved the way for later changes in the field of health and medical treatment.
Women’s affairs and the cultural policies of Pahlavi I

At the beginning of the rule of Reza Shah, changes in the wider arena of health
care were inspired by the industrial and socio-economic development of foreign
countries such as Italy and Germany, and especially Turkey.15 Reza Shah fol-
lowed the reforms of Ataturk in the lifestyle and role of women.16 Comparing
the status of women in Turkey with those of Iran, Reza Shah expressed his
understanding of Turkish progress: “I could not assume that the Turks had made
such great progress in the adoption of European civilization. However, I see that
we are very underdeveloped especially in the education of women and girls;
therefore, it is required to forcefully advance our people, especially our women.”17
Newspapers of this era published essays on women’s scientific achievements
in other countries and paved the way for the education and participation of
Iranian women in scientific arenas. Among these newspapers, ‘Alam-e Nesvan
and Shafaq-e Sorkh were published to enlighten women and girls. Some of
these essays were about the capabilities of Iranian women for medical education
and teaching in female schools. The strong emphasis these newspapers placed
on the shortage of female physicians and encouraging Iranian women to study
medicine indicate that the society and the government welcomed the devel-
opment of medicine among women as a remedy for the problems of society.18
An essay entitled “What Can the Iranian Woman Do?” expressed that
The Health Department of Iran, like that of other countries, tries to employ
competent and educated nurses to supervise and take care of poor families,
teach them principles of health and wellbeing, examine the health condi-
tions of children in schools, and prevent any epidemics. Moreover, the Red
Lion and Sun Society (Jam‘iyat-e Shir-o Khorshid-e Sorkh) [equivalent to
the Red Crescent] of Iran is responsible for employing proficient nurses to
work as a standby workforce and in case these nurses get married, they
can take care of their children better than any other.19
Women’s health conditions and the establishment of the First

Women’s Hospital during the rule of Pahlavi I
The policies of the government encouraged Iranian women to engage in
health activities. Increased awareness of health and hygiene caused women to
make more demands on their husbands, and to pay more attention to their
husbands and children. To achieve this level of social development, it was
required that laws and regulations be in favour of women. During the rule of
Reza Shah, new issues arose regarding safeguarding the lives of mothers and
children, the maintenance of public health, and women’s affairs.
Female nurses and physicians and especially American- and European-
educated missionary women, who interacted with Iranian women, also played
a key role in this period. Among them was the Russian female physician
Dr. Ezgenarzadeh, who married a man from Mashhad. She established a
charity clinic and examined women and their children three days a week free of
charge. She worked until 1314 (1935) and offered mothers advice on methods
of taking care of their infants and children. For this purpose, she prepared
small pamphlets to address the minor complications of motherhood.20
These activities motivated Iranian women and political leaders towards
progress and development. Dr. Speer, an American physician stated,
[W]hen the Shah made his notable visit to the Central Mission Hospital
in Teheran, he asked particularly that the lady doctor should be pointed
out to him, exclaiming, “Is it possible for a woman to have enough knowl-
edge to become a doctor?” Upon being told that the slender, blue-eyed
person, Dr Mary J. Smith, was she, he held out his hand, saying, “Feel
my pulse and tell me the state of my health.
It happened that in 1906 the Iranian wife of the prime minister urged him
to stipulate, when he was signing the permit of the American Missionary
Hospital in Teheran, that no women should be allowed. After she herself
was ill and taken for care there, she gave a sum of money for the estab-
lishment of a woman’s ward. This gift was duplicated by Mrs McCormick
of Chicago, so the woman’s ward in Teheran came into being. It was
maintained as a distinct unit of the medical work in Teheran until ill
health compelled Dr Smith to resign, when the women’s work became
part of the general work of the hospital.21
The newspapers of the Reza Shah era mentioned that there were more than
three thousand female physicians in Britain, in order to introduce Iranian
women to the efforts of women in other countries and encourage them to
promote their social and educational status.22 Coursebooks were the most
essential and effective means of applying the policies of the government
regarding women’s affairs. They were compiled to create a new culture among
young girls to improve women’s long-term health conditions. For this purpose,
the models of other countries regarding women were used:
In civilized countries, there are several societies and associations with the
participation of mothers and mature girls, helping other deprived mothers
and taking care of poor children … women’s charities are divided in most
countries into four important classes, and each class has clearly defined
tasks and duties. One of these classes is in charge of preparing clothing
and garments for the infants of poor mothers given to them free of
charge. Another class is responsible to prepare milk technically for those
mothers who are not able to or are forbidden from breastfeeding. They
take care of the infant by observing hygienic principles. The third class
is in charge of hospitals and pharmaceuticals for infants. Deprived
mothers refer to these hospitals if they feel their child is sick. The fourth
class takes care of orphans and homeless children.23
After the Constitutional Revolution, Dr. Mary Smith served for several years
in the public hospital of Tehran. However, during the rule of Reza Shah,
health programs and the methods of administering hospitals were changed to
nationalize the field of health and medical treatment, therefore no foreign
physician or medical staff was authorized to work in Iran. From that time,
Iranian staff were for the first time in charge of the supervision and management
of the health affairs of their own country. For the purpose of this policy,
Iranian-educated physicians increased in number.
In 1335q (1917), Dr. Amir Khan Amir A‘lam felt the need to establish a
specialized hospital for women. Until that time, there was no hospital to
admit women and children independently. Dr. Amir A‘lam did his best to
build a hospital on land presented to him by the government. One part of this
building was used as the central section, and the other parts were assigned
to become a clinic and pharmacy.24 Moreover, as no male physician was
authorized to examine a woman, a French midwife was responsible for
examining women, and for several years she was in charge of the management
of the hospital. The first midwifery school in Iran, the Amuzeshgah-e Mama’i,
was established at this hospital, which was composed of two separate wards
assigned to the treatment of children and women, and training of service
providers for deprived women.25
In early 1337q (1919), the women’s hospital was inaugurated officially,
presided over by Dr. Mohazzab al-Dowleh, and began operation with a
budget of 200 tumans provided by endowment income (owqaf).26 Fifty-nine
female patients were hospitalized in this hospital by the end of the same year.
Additionally, ten students of the Teacher Training School (Dar al-Mo‘allemat)
were trained by Madame Frascina for midwifery. In late 1337q (1919) when
Mirza Ahmad Khan Naser al-Dowleh Badr was minister of education, the
École Franco-Persane for girls changed to the Dar al-Mo‘allemat and it was
decided that ten students of this school would be trained for midwifery in the
women’s hospital three days per week. The educational program of the Dar
al-Mo‘allemat consisted of a four-year education after obtaining the certificate
of the sixth grade of elementary school.
Dr. Amir Khan Amir A‘lam was aware of the necessity of establishing
maternity hospitals; therefore he took steps to educate and train proficient
midwives, who were able to help mothers give birth to their children based on
scientific and medical principles of gynaecology. He believed that maternity
hospitals could be centres of progress in the profession of medicine, since in
such hospitals the students of natural sciences could realize through practice the
more abstract aspects of delivery.27 In a lecture on this subject, Dr. Amir A‘lam
introduced maternity hospitals as centres for the education of knowledgeable
and competent midwives. He also wrote,
The lack of such institutions, which were supposed to be established at least

in the capital, explains why thousands of pregnant women and sometimes
their babies lost their lives in the hands of ignorant and uneducated mid-
wives. Unfortunately, in addition to the lack of maternity hospitals, the
lack of health establishments was another cause of the chaos in the health
sector of Iran.28
In 1337q (1919), when the Medical Department of the Dar al-Fonun was
presided over by Dr. Mohammad Hoseyn Khan Loqman Adham, the medicine
class changed its name to “medical school.” The school became administered
separately and was assigned to an independent location. It was reformed and
attention was paid to the field of midwifery, which had not been previously
taught:
[F]ourthly, establishment of Iranian medicine and midwifery, since Iranian

medicine, therapeutics, and … psychology, which was for an Iranian
physician an important means of practice, have not been taught for several
years, as some years ago the shortage of foreign pharmaceuticals caused
severe problems. A course of midwifery and microbiology, which previously
had no instructor, will be taught by Dr. Yunes Khan three days per week
in the Medical School (Madreseh-ye Tebbi). Whereas most physicians
studying in Iran have not passed the course of midwifery, it is required
that physicians have full knowledge of this discipline, therefore, this
course has been incorporated into the program.29
Before the rule of Reza Shah, it was not common for midwives to study and
most of them were illiterate. Indeed, many held superstitious views about
birthing rituals. Because of this ignorance, midwives who were unaware of the
scientific principles of delivery failed to save many mothers and infants during
labour. If a baby was born feet first and unable to breathe, the midwife who
was unaware of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and instead used superstitious
methods caused the infant to suffocate and die. Severe psychological traumas
arose out of the deaths of children. The application of unsterile instruments and
contamination of parturition space and midwives’ hands were other factors
that led to infection, haemorrhage, and death of mother and child.
When during the Reza Shah period reforms were carried out to modernize
Iran, the municipality was the executive organization assisting the government
to establish centres and institutions to realize the objectives of such plans. One
of the responsibilities of municipalities was to construct urban wastewater
systems through proper piping, public toilets, and clean streaming water in
the gutters of streets and alleys, since people thought that running water was
not polluting.
To provide safe and clean water, the decision was made to construct sanitary
pipelines, which was vital to the improvement of health conditions, since such
pipelines could supply potable water for all uses, including washing vegetables
and other foodstuffs.30 All these issues were the responsibility of municipalities.
For the purpose of improving the social and health situation of all people,
and saving the lives of pregnant mothers from the ignorance of uninformed
midwives, the municipality charted important plans and established a midwifery
school, whose first program was completed in the academic year 1311–12 (1932–
33). The first 18 female graduates of this school fulfilled the requirements of
this field of study and began to provide the women of Tehran with health and
welfare services.31
The most important objective of Reza Shah’s government was to establish
special institutions and organizations to protect the lives of infants, like the
numerous institutions of various foreign countries, which were established
under different titles but with a unified intent to decrease the annual mortality
rate of neonates, fight ignorance, and assist the deprived classes of society.
Through lectures delivered to the public and essays published in newspapers,
this goal was approached by supervising and promoting public health. For
example, after the establishment of the Organization for Public Enlightenment
(Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar), several lectures were delivered on the subject
of under-population in developing countries. One of the lectures published in
the newspaper stated,
In social sciences and health sciences, there is no scale better than

the number of newborns to assess a nation’s development. Any increase in
the number of neonates improves the progress of the nation and helps
people to protect themselves against the endless conflicts of everyday life.
You are perhaps aware how the other countries try to increase their popu-
lation and how much money they spend for this purpose. The increase in
the population of the capital is an index of the increasing progress of our
country. Our capital will be soon one of the most populous capitals of
Asia. However, this increase in population is due to immigration from
other cities to the capital; but when we claim that the population has
increased by 25% during the past six years, we mean something else. The
large number of births in Iran is subject to economic progress, whose
effects have been observed in the capital sooner than in other regions in
Iran. Certainly, following this economic movement, the number of new-
borns will increase and after provision of security and prosperity, the
population will increase.32
According to the objectives of the government, these institutions should

mainly aim to fight against ignorance and assist the poor and deprived classes
of society. The most effective means of saving the lives of newborn babies
were the establishment of centres to protect pregnant women free of charge,
centres to examine babies and toddlers, orphanages for young infants
throughout the country, distribution of milk among poor infants, presentation
of lectures and conferences on health issues to introduce rich and poor people
to the importance of hygiene, proper feeding methods, and infant care, and
finally the ratification of the law on mandatory vaccination against smallpox
and free public examinations of infants.
Gradually, along with the policies of the government to render social
reforms and provide social services, intellectual and wealthy families began
to go to hospitals to treat their diseases and give birth to their children.
Moreover, the institute of the Dar al-Mo‘allemat, which was established
thanks to the efforts of people like Dr. Amir A‘lam to teach specifically
female students, used the knowledge of all scholars and was reasonably
effective in the reduction of the mortality rates of newborns and women in
labour. At first, Madame Frascina was the instructor of the midwifery school.
At the beginning, people were hesitant to use the facilities, and the number of
pregnant women and patients initially referred to the hospital was less than
ten. Every 15 to 20 days only one or even no childbirth happened. After
Madame Frascina, Dr. Dremsen, Dr. Pen, and Dr. Sarkisian were appointed
respectively to administer the hospital and instruct the students of the Dar
al-Mo‘allemat.33
The school of midwifery had no codified bylaws. The educational program
was for three years, and the applicants had to hold a certificate of sixth grade
(elementary school) and know the French language. Therefore, most students
of the school of midwifery were graduates of the Dar al-Mo‘allemat. After
the codification of bylaws for medicine, pharmacology, and midwifery in 1307
(1928), it was ordered that only the students who had completed the third
grade of high school could enrol in the school of midwifery. Two years later,
in 1309 (1930), the parliament passed the articles of association and bylaws of
the midwifery school, and this school, which until then had been a branch of
the school of medicine, was affiliated with the General Health Department
(Edareh-ye Sehhiyeh-ye Koll-e Mamlekati). It was then ordered that only
those students who had completed the fifth grade of high school could enrol
in the school of midwifery. Moreover, a specified program was prepared for
the field of study of midwifery. Dr. ‘Alim al-Molk Farahmandi, who was the
head of the school, was appointed officially by the General Health
Department as the principal of the school of midwifery. Dr. Bakhtiyar,
Dr. Jahanshah Saleh, and Dr. Gholam Hoseyn Mosaddeq were appointed in
1313 (1934), 1315 (1936), and 1317 (1938) respectively.
The establishment of any scientific and educational centre requires
planning, the selection of educational and testing materials, a method of
recruiting instructors and admitting students, etc. Considering the attitude
of the government towards social issues, this need in the field of the study of
midwifery was reflected in the books and journals of that time:
The civilized nations of the world respect mothers and provide them with
benefits and many advantages. The title of mother is one of the most
precious titles. The highest rank in any formal or informal meeting is
assigned to mothers. This respect conferred upon mothers is because they
are in charge of educating the future generation of each nation. It can be
claimed that the good fortune or misfortune of any nation is the result of
the behaviors and education that are provided by mothers to the mem-
bers of this nation. Mothers have more effects on their children than
fathers and teachers. Therefore, wise mothers endowed with artistry give
birth to great men.34
One of the most important measures set forth in the above publications spe-
cified “first aid stations and hospitals in many cities of Iran, especially in
Tehran, establishment of health centres by municipalities and State General
Department of Health, establishment of maternity hospitals, orphanages,
establishment of women and children hospitals, erection of midwifery schools
and nursing schools, whose annual graduates can serve people.”35
Ratification and enforcement of medical law was another step taken to
regulate the health affairs of Iranian society. In principle, this decision not
only covered the profession of medicine, but also other fields of study relating
to the field of health. The government paid particularly close attention to the
practice of midwives. The documents addressing these issues prove this claim.
All students of midwifery abroad had to legalize their education documents
through the Ministry of Education to be permitted to work in Iran, and in
some cases their diploma had to be certified by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
to receive their professional permit; otherwise, they were not allowed to
practice as midwives, and in case of practicing without such formalities,
they could be legally prosecuted and their diploma deemed null and void.
Considering the importance of these documents in explaining the activities
of the midwifery school and the education of modern midwives, we studied
the documents of the National Archives of Iran regarding the laws and reg-
ulations on midwifery, the articles of association and bylaws of the govern-
ment, and individuals applying for the study of midwifery. The results of this
survey follow:
1. On 14 Mizan 1303 (6 October 1924), a letter was sent by the Department

of Medicine to the Ministry of Education, stating “as some foreign and
Iranian midwives practice without any medical diploma, therefore it is
requested that all midwives be notified through newspapers to refer to the
school of medicine and submit their supporting documents in order
to register their names. Those individuals with medical diplomas will be
distinguished and the others shall be prevented from practicing using
the title of doctor.”36
2. On 3 Qows 1303 (26 October 1924), a letter was sent by the Department
of Medicine to the Ministry of Education requesting that the following
decisions regarding the admission of students to the school of midwifery
should be enforced:
[A]ccording to the letter no. 7338,37 and based on the decision made by
the High Council of Education (Shura-ye ‘Ali-ye Ma‘aref), the applicants
to midwifery school shall have the certificate of the third grade of high
school, and any student who knows the French language is required to
pass the examinations of the first grade of high school. Mr Amir A‘lam has
the same opinion and states that these applicants shall have the certificate
of the third grade of high school, or pass the required examinations.38
3. Courses of midwifery were divided into two levels: preliminary and practical.
The courses of the preliminary level were anatomy, physiology, health,
medical principles of the Soviet Union, pharmacology, midwifery, women’s
diseases, children’s diseases, maintenance of maternity hospital and infants,
bacteriology, anatomy of pathology, surgery and therapy, principles of
treatment and general supervision of patients, dermatological and genital
diseases, and social information. The practical level covered all practical
courses such as vaccination, chemistry and pharmacy, writing prescrip-
tions, dressing wounds, orthopaedics, and first aid. Since most educated
midwives were graduates from abroad and above all from Russia, the
teaching materials were selected based on the medical principles of the
Soviet Union.39
4. Teaching regulations of the discipline of medicine and other disciplines rela-
ted to medicine such as midwifery had to be enforced in the framework of the
internal policies of modern institutions such as the Women’s Association
(Kanun-e Banovan). According to the recommendation of the Ministry of
Education, the Kanun-e Banovan was asked to pay attention to the fol-
lowing in amending the program of women’s schools: “programs of the
different branches such as the technical-vocational branch, dressmaking,
painting, midwifery, and nursing should be arranged by the women of the
association themselves.” According to this order, the Women’s Associa-
tion would prepare related programs and submit them to the Ministry of
Education for the approval of the High Council of Education. Moreover,
it was ordered that the students of medicine had to pass the theoretical
and practical examinations in order to be eligible to receive the medical
diploma. This order was applicable for those women and students who
studied midwifery.40
5. Several regulations and bylaws were passed pertaining to education in the
school of midwifery and conferring diplomas; for example, it was ordered that
the midwifery license had to be issued only under the following conditions:
Obtaining a certificate.
The applicants shall enroll in the school of midwifery; after education
and receiving diploma, they are allowed to apply for the license of
midwifery.
Not only midwives who practice by experience rather than education
are entitled to study midwifery to receive the midwifery license, but
also volunteers are allowed to take the examinations held by the
Department of Examinations (Edareh-ye Emtehanat) in accordance
with the program of the school. If they pass the courses, they can
receive the midwifery license.41
6. After the abovementioned programs, the entrance exam of the midwifery
school was held on 29 Hut 1302 (20 March 1924) for the female students
of the women’s hospital.42 The following information is of particular
importance:
Applicants consisted of four women named A‘lam al-Moluk, Zinat

Khanom, ‘Aziz al-Moluk, and Iran Khanom A‘lam.43
Other students, who were prepared to take the exam, were asked to
wait until after the return of Madame Dremsen from a trip.
A‘lam al-Moluk and Zinat Khanom were permitted to receive the
provisional certificate, until the final diploma was issued, but Ms. ‘Aziz
al-Moluk Khanom was required to assist two women in labour to
deliver their children, and Iran Khanom had to assist three women in
order to be permitted to receive their diplomas.44
7. The application for the establishment of a midwifery school in Tabriz in

1309 (1930) is worth mentioning here. According to the existing docu-
ments, Dr. Mohseni Azar, who was the physician of the Pahlavi hospital
of the Red Lion and Sun Society in Tabriz and his wife Ms. Tanasob
Mohseni Azar, midwife of this hospital, applied to establish a midwifery
school in the province of Azerbaijan with the following reasons:45
Providing the people of Azerbaijan with midwifery services and meeting

their needs through the establishment of this centre.
Making the head of the Department of Education (Edareh-ye
Ma‘aref) of Azerbaijan Province familiar with such institutions, since
they are of great service to the public.
The physician (i.e. Dr. Mohseni Azar) is obliged to establish a private
maternity hospital for the practical education of students.
The Ministry of Education replied to the Department of Education of

Azerbaijan Province, which sent the application of Dr. Mohseni Azar
and attached documents to the capital, as follows: “For the time being,
the establishment of a midwifery school in Tabriz is not permitted.”46
8. On 8 Mehr 1312 (30 September 1933), a letter was sent from the
Ministry of the Interior and State General Department of Health to the
Ministry of Education, which belonged to the Personnel Department
(Edareh-ye Personel). This letter requested that, considering the fact that
there were not sufficient midwives with a diploma in the provinces, skilled
midwives who had practical experience for many years but not the
required diploma should be permitted to continue practicing, under the
condition that they would not engage in any medical teaching or surgery and,
in case of unnatural parturition, refer the woman in labour to a proficient
physician.”47
The minister of education replied,
The opinion of this ministry is that individuals engaged in medical

professions such as physicians, midwives, dentists, and pharmacists
shall continue to practice, provided that they are equipped with regular
education to prevent any problem for the public. If that department
bears the responsibility of public health, … it can take necessary
measures through its health officials working in different cities and
provinces.48
9. On 8 Mehr 1312 (30 September 1933), it was emphasized based on

Article 1 of the medical law that unauthorized midwives were not per-
mitted to practice midwifery.49
10. If the practicing midwives would not improve their educational status,
they would be prevented by the officials of the State General Health
Department from practicing and their license deemed null and void. For
example, according to document no. 12, a midwife named Khanom
Qajari was prevented from obtaining a midwifery permit due to defects
in her diploma, and her documents were returned to her until the remedy
of such defects: “Regarding the diploma of midwifery, it is required that
a comprehensive decision will be made to prevent any problem in the
future. Local physicians (atebba-ye shahr) are not authorized to issue
certificates of midwifery. The examinations shall be officially valid.
Therefore, the diploma of Khanom Qajari is returned in order that you,
after consideration and in conformance with the proposed new regulations,
send it again.”50
11. Another fact discovered during this study of midwifery documents was
the scope of activities by midwives. As mentioned above, midwives were
not permitted to engage in medical practices or prescribe medicines like
physicians.51 Moreover, in case any problem occurred in relation to par-
turition and women in labour, midwives were not allowed to engage in
any type of surgical operations. Based on this decision, the higher edu-
cation section of the Health Department of Tehran stipulated, “accord-
ing to the received report, some midwives perform surgery, while they are
only allowed to practice simple midwifery and are not authorized to do
such operations. It is ordered that the first aid stations of every neigh-
bourhood receive a commitment from the midwives, that in case of the
necessity for any surgical operation, the midwives would hold officially
confirmed certificates. If this order is breached, the individual engaged in
surgery is deemed responsible.”52
12. A survey of the historical documents regarding the applications for mid-
wifery school examinations and for the extension of the midwifery
diploma indicates that the number of applications increased from 1311
(1932) to the second half of the year 1314 (1935). The government paid
close attention to this process and midwifery licenses were conferred
based upon the following procedures:
The applications were processed based only on legal principles and in

accordance with the government’s legal decrees.
The priority of the government was to centralize examinations in
terms of time, manner of holding the examinations, educational level,
and instructions.
The personal conditions of the applicants attending examinations,
such as pregnant applicants, the degree to which they did or did not
attend classes, and even excused or unexcused absences were observed.
13. The study of these documents from the Reza Shah period reveals the
objectives of the government on the one hand and the effects of the ideas
of intellectuals and female social activists on the other hand. For example,
Ms. Tarbiyat, the head of the Women’s Association stated,
to prevent the consequences of unemployment, which is the main

cause of any maliciousness among our daughters, it is required that we
train them in manual arts and crafts such as painting, dressmaking,
typing, bookkeeping, etc. and assist them to be admitted in the faculty
of medicine and its branches such as dentistry, pharmacology, mid-
wifery, nursing, etc. … The minister of education has acknowledged in
one of the meetings of the Women’s Association that women are
required to pass senior school in order to engage in any occupation or
industry. Therefore, it is necessary that the second cycle of our female
high school is assigned to the professions and in these senior schools,
female students can study different types of craft such as dressmaking,
painting, nursing, midwifery and other crafts suitable for women.53
14. Another important point is that there were foreign or Armenian–Iranian

women engaged in midwifery in Iran for many years. These midwives,
who had either become Iranian citizens through marriage or had simply
developed an interest in Iran, were eager to stay and work inside the
country, even after the government had started to implement new laws
that barred foreign physicians from practicing in Iran in the 1930s. On
the other hand it is interesting to note that most of these women and even
Iranian girls, who prior to Reza Shah’s reign had enjoyed an academic
education in this profession, were graduates of the universities and
schools of Yerevan, Baku, Tbilisi, or elsewhere in the Caucasus, or
Istanbul. A few of these women had graduated from the Beirut midwifery
school. In addition, one of them had studied in Warsaw. There were also
British women who had studied in London. These midwives, 21 Iranians
and 6 foreigners, applied to receive the midwifery license by submitting
their diplomas after the nationalization of health fields and the ban on
the practice by foreign subjects. They encountered difficulties during the
processing of their applications, which proves the exactness and serious-
ness of the government and reflects the diligence of these women seeking
to exercise their social and working rights. Certainly, there were also
breaches of rules and regulations. However, the changes in this arena
shall be regarded as one of the most important achievements aiming
to prevent the mortality of mothers and children arising from the
ignorance of traditional midwives who failed to observe modern health
principles.
Conclusion
It was during the reign of Naser al-Din Shah that Iran witnessed the first
steps to improving the general health status. Especially in the years after the
Constitutional Revolution, and even more after the War, the eagerness to
provide medical services to women resulted in the foundation of the first private
hospitals reserved for female patients and the employment of French mid-
wives. The pioneering role in this process played by Dr. Amir Khan Amir
A‘lam also encompassed instruction in women’s diseases.
With the beginning of Reza Shah’s rule the conditions for midwifery changed
tremendously, with the result that under the supervision of the state, a modern
midwifery education came into existence. According to documents from the
early Pahlavi period in Iranian archives, the most important measures taken in
the field of health care and gynaecology were the following: ratification of
laws on health and women’s medicine; legal regulation and supervision of the
practice of physicians; establishing a system of health and medical education,
including the instruction of midwives at special schools; the regulation of
admission to these midwifery schools; the preparation of educational material
and syllabi with theoretical and practical courses. This regulation by the state
aimed at supervising and organizing the issuing of medical certificates and
diplomas for midwives by official institutions, preventing the practice of
unauthorized midwives who had no certificate of license, and determining the
scope of service and terms of reference of midwives.
In the course of this policy other institutions like nurseries or orphanages
were also founded. The process of implementing all these measures was not
without problems, but the main burden had been placed on the women
practicing in this field. Their continuous efforts and pursuit, however, con-
tributed to the acceptance of modern forms of midwifery by more and more
Iranians and also fuelled the call for women’s rights in general. By establishing
midwifery as a modern profession a further step towards the creation of a
new Iranian society was taken.
Notes
1 The Dar al-Fonun, the first higher school in Iran, was founded in 1851 to integrate
modern European practices into science, technology, and military training. Nikki
R. Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale
2 Cyril Elgood, A Medical History of Persia and the Eastern Caliphate: the Develop-
ment of Persian and Arabic Medical Sciences from the Earliest Times until the
Year A.D. 1932 (1951; Amsterdam: APA-Philo Press, 1979), p. 512.
3 Fereydun Adamiyat, Amir Kabir va Iran (Tehran: Khvarazmi, 1362/1983),
pp. 30–31. For more information regarding the establishment of hospitals in the
Qajar era see: Elham Malekzadeh, Negahi be omur-e kheyriyeh-ye Iran dar
dowreh-ye Qajar (Tehran: Daneshgah-e Azad-e Eslami Vahed-e Shahr-e Rey,
1385/2006).
4 Mohammad Hasan E‘temad as-Saltaneh, Al-ma’aser va al-asar, lithograph
(Tehran: Sana‘i, no date), p. 156.
5 E‘temad as-Saltaneh, Al-ma’aser va al-asar, p. 105. Naser Najmi, Tehran-e ‘ahd-e
Naseri (Tehran: ‘Attar, 1364/1985), p. 421. Naser Najmi, Dar al-khalafeh-ye
Tehran (Tehran: Hamgam 1362/1983), p. 146.
6 E‘temad as-Saltaneh, Al-ma’aser va al-asar, p. 115.
7 Majalleh-ye Mahyaneh-ye Shir-o-Khorshid-e Sorkh-e Iran 1:2 and 3 (1305/1926),
p. 174.
8 Malekzadeh, Negahi be omur-e kheyriyeh, pp. 117–18. For more information
regarding other endowed and charity hospitals see: Elgood, A Medical History of
Persia.
9 The quarantine regulations were enforced along the borders by the government of
Iran with the assistance of other countries such as the Ottoman Empire, Britain,
and Russia. For more information see Elgood, A Medical History of Persia.
10 Elgood, A Medical History of Persia, pp. 517–18. Gholam Hoseyn Sadri Afshar,
Sargozasht-e sazman-ha va nehad-ha-ye ‘elmi va amuzeshi dar Iran (Tehran:
Vezarat-e ‘Olum va Amuzesh-e ‘Ali, 1354/1975), p. 131.
11 Elgood, A Medical History of Persia, pp. 531–32.
12 Elgood, A Medical History of Persia, pp. 535–36.
13 Mohsen Rusta’i, Tarikh-e tebb va tababat dar Iran: az ‘ahd-e Qajar ta payan-e
‘asr-e Reza Shah, be revayat-e asnad, vol. 1 (Tehran: Sazman-e Asnad va Ketab-
khaneh-ye Melli, 1385/2006), p. 17.
14 Ruz-nameh-ye rasmi-ye dowlat-e shahanshahi-yi Iran 1:42 (26 Saratan 1329q / 17
July 1911), pp. 26–27.
15 Peter Avery, Tarikh-e mo‘aser-e Iran, trans. Mohammad Rafi‘i Mehrabadi, vol. 2
(Tehran: ‘Ata’i, 1367–68/1988–89), p. 59. The original edition is Peter Avery,
Modern Iran (London: Benn, 1965).
16 Samuel Huntington, Saman-e siyasi dar javame‘-e dastkhosh-e degarguni (Political
order in changing societies), trans. Mohsen Salasi (Tehran: ‘Elm, 1370/1991), p. 150.
17 ‘Isa Sadiq, Tarikh-e farhang-e Iran az aghaz ta zaman-e hazer, vol. 2 (Tehran:
Sazman-e Tarbiyat-e Mo‘allem va Tahqiqat-e Tarbiyati, 1342/1963), pp. 301–5.
18 ‘Alam-e Nesvan 11:4 (Tir 1310/June–July 1931), pp. 89, 155–56.
19 “Mashaghel-e Nesvan,” ‘Alam-e Nesvan 11:5 (Shahrivar 1310/August–September
1931), pp. 214–16.
20 Rosalie Slaughter Morton, A Doctor’s Holiday in Iran (New York and London:
Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1940), p. 234.
21 Morton, A Doctor’s Holiday, p. 236.
22 Shafaq-e Sorkh 8:1258 (27 Tir 1308/18 July 1929), p. 1.
23 Vezarat-e Farhang, Ketab-e sheshom-e ebteda’i-ye dokhtaran (Tehran: Sherkat-e
Tab‘-e Ketab, 1319/1940), p. 15.
24 Malekzadeh, Negahi be omur-e kheyriyeh, pp. 131–32.
25 Document no. 14/702–29701506, Tehran, Archive of the Centre for Documents
and the National Library and Archives of Iran, referred to hereafter as ACD/NLI.
26 Rusta’i, Tarikh-e tebb va tababa, vol. II, p. 558.
27 Majalleh-ye Mahyaneh-ye Shir-o-Khorshid-e Sorkh-e Iran 1:4 (1305/1926).
28 Majalleh-ye Mahyaneh-ye Shir-o-Khorshid-e Sorkh-e Iran 1:5 (1305/1926).
29 Ahmad Hashemiyan, Tahavvolat-e farhangi-ye Iran dar dowreh-ye Qajariyeh va
madreseh-ye Dar al-Fonun (Tehran: Entesharat-e Mo’asseseh-ye Joghrafya’i va
Kartugrafi-ye Sahab, 1379/2000), pp. 134–37. Rahnama-ye daneshkaddeh-ye
pezeshki, qesmat-e avval, pp. 66–68.
30 Morton, A Doctor’s Holiday, p. 240.
31 Majalleh-ye Baladiyeh 6 (1310), p. 300.
32 Ettela‘at 4:3919 (18 Mordad 1318/10 August 1939), p. 1.
33 Mozakerat-e majles, dowreh-ye sheshom-e taqniniyeh, jalaseh-ye no. 252 (15 Khordad
1307/5 June 1928), p. 4584.
34 Vezarat-e Farhang, Ketab-e sheshom-e ebteda’i-ye dokhtaran, p. 14.
35 Sa‘id Nafisi, Tarikh-e shahriyari-yi Shahanshah-e Reza Shah-e Pahlavi: az 3
Esfand 99 ta 24 Shahrivar 1320 (Tehran: n.p., n.d.), pp. 182–85.
36 Doc. No. 33/702–297015061, ACD/NLI.
37 Dated 19 Mizan Sichqan Il, the Turkish year, which was used instead of Iranian
years until 1925.
38 Doc. No. 297015061–270/44, ACD/NLI.
39 Docs. No. 11 and 12/701–297015030, ACD/NLI.
40 Majalleh-ye Mahyaneh-ye Shir-o-Khorshid-e Sorkh-e Iran 1:2 and 3 (1305/1926),
pp. 6–7.
41 Doc. No. 14/702–29701506, ACD/NLI.
42 Doc. No. 702/90–29701506, ACD/NLI.
43 Doc. No. 3/702–297015061, ACD/NLI.
44 Doc. No. 297015037–702/3, ACD/NLI.
45 Doc. No. 297015030–701/6, ACD/NLI.
46 Doc. No. 297015030–701/3, ACD/NLI.
47 Doc. No. 297021597–702/7, ACD/NLI.
48 Doc. No. 29702159–702/4, ACD/NLI.
49 Doc. No. 7/702–297021597, ACD/NLI.
50 Doc. No. 1/701–297015020, ACD/NLI.
51 Doc. No. 4/701–297015020, ACD/NLI.
52 Docs. no. 1, 2, 3, and 4/702–297015020, ACD/NLI.
53 Majalleh-ye Tarbiyat 5:5 and 6 (Farvardin 1316/April 1937).
12 Engineering a modern society?
Adoptions of new technologies in early
Pahlavi Iran
Bianca Devos
The day after 4 Shahrivar 1317 (26 August 1938), when Reza Shah had
driven the final spike to complete the Trans-Iranian railway, Tehran’s largest
newspaper reported enthusiastically on the ceremonial opening. The Ettela‘at
came up with a 16-page special issue featuring reports of the festivities,
background articles about the building project, and, above all, a selection of
the latest photographs showing newly constructed bridges and tunnels – with the
emperor on his inspection tour.1 There can be no doubt that the Trans-Iranian
railway was of utmost propagandistic relevance for the Pahlavi regime,
but apparently it was not only the official state propaganda that prompted
Ettela‘at’s editor to cover the event so extensively. In fact, he expected to sell a
huge number of copies due to the general appeal that technology as a fascinating
manifestation of the modern age had for the general public in Iran.
The popular excitement surrounding such a marvelous feat of engineering
was not special to Iran. Public enthusiasm for technological innovation found
its expression on the pages of newspapers and magazines all over the world.
Hence, the technical challenges involved in the construction of the Trans-Iranian
railway, which passed through difficult terrain and symbolized the conquest
of nature, attracted international compliments as well. The German orientalist
Walter Hinz visited the northern section of the railway with its elaborate
constructions – such as the outstanding “Three Golden Lines” spiral climbing
the Alborz mountains at Gaduk2 – shortly after its completion and pro-
claimed that its spectacular panorama could even rival the Gotthardbahn.3
Such statements demonstrate clearly why the railway became the jewel in the
crown of Reza Shah’s personal modernization agenda. The propagandistic
importance of the project was further increased by the fact that it was completely
financed through extra consumption taxes on sugar and tea, deliberately
avoiding foreign loans. However, it was exactly the way this gigantic project
was funded that led critical observers like Robert Byron to assess the railway’s
economic aspects. He came to the conclusion that the railway would never
pay and identified other reasons behind the ambitious undertaking:
The taxation imposed by the first two hundred miles of it is already depriv-
ing the peasants of their only luxuries, tea and sugar. But its purpose is a
Engineering a modern society? 267
question of psychology rather than economics. For the modern Persian it
is the symbol of national self-respect … .4
Technology had become the distinctive feature of modernity and thus the
level of mechanization was regarded as a clear indicator of the degree of a
nation’s progress. Consequently, the possession of modern technology was not
only a matter of rationalization and raising efficiency, it was also a question
of prestige, so that the decision for costly technology did not follow exclusively
economic considerations.5 Even if the Pahlavi state promoted technology first
and foremost as a means to achieve economic advancement, it also intended
to gain international prestige as a progressive nation. Moreover, technology
served as a domestic tool to enforce the authority of the central government,
which thereby tried to exert its influence even on an everyday level, penetrat-
ing the life of most Iranians to a degree hitherto unknown in the country’s
history. In addition to this new extent of state interference, Iranian society
was affected by the concomitant social and cultural impact of technological
advances, epitomized by the beginning of mass market advertisement and
consumerism.
Considering the immense socio-cultural dynamics of modern technology,
this chapter examines the adoption of technological innovations in Iran in
order to illustrate different facets of the change in relations between state and
society during the early Pahlavi period. How modernity was practically
embraced by Iranians during this crucial stage has hitherto not been addressed
sufficiently. The introduction of new technologies is therefore not analyzed in
an abstract manner, but at the micro level of society.6 First, I focus on how
the Pahlavi state under Reza Shah used technology to govern the country in an
authoritarian and perhaps already proto-totalitarian way. The discussions
among members of the modern middle class on correct and beneficial ways of
modernization and the role of technology that took place in the capital’s
newspapers especially during the 1930s will also be taken into account. The
modernization debate provides insights into the middle class’s conception of
modernity, the position of their members vis-à-vis the increasingly dictatorial
state as well as towards ordinary Iranians, and their self-image as role models
of a modern Iranian society. The chapter then explores how the majority of
Iranians actually adopted technology in their daily lives by examining three
specific fields of modern technology in detail: transportation, cinema, and the
telephone.7
Technology and the state

The first modern technical devices found their way into Iran during the Qajar
period and at that time it was mostly the ruler himself who initiated their
introduction. Two daguerreotype cameras were sent to Mohammad Shah as
presents from the British queen and the Russian tsar respectively in the 1840s.8
Mozaffar al-Din Shah placed the order to buy a motion-picture camera during
268 Bianca Devos
his journey to Europe in 1900.9 Since their use was restricted to members of
the court, modern technical devices became status symbols of the aristocracy.
Qajar elites used technology mainly for their own personal benefit and primarily
in a private context. When, at the turn of the century, the first foreign
companies attained permission to sell technical devices like gramophones,10
cameras, watches, and automobiles, such objects gradually became more widely
traded commodities and were particularly widespread among the Iranian upper
class.
Large-scale promotion of technology started only during the early Pahlavi
period, when the state embraced a modernization programme to stimulate the
country’s economic development. Initial steps included the construction of
factories to produce consumer goods such as textiles, sugar, and matches in
order to reduce Iran’s immense dependency on imports.11 Other measures,
like the expansion of a nationwide road and railway network, aimed at
facilitating trade, but served also, from an early date on, the non-economic,
political purpose of creating national unity and internal security. For instance,
already in 1926 the government concluded a contract with the German
Junkers Company to establish regular air traffic, connecting the major cities
of Iran.12 Airplanes were also used to bring the government’s directives to
even the most remote parts of the country: for instance, leaflets were dropped
over tribal areas, informing local chiefs in Lorestan and Borujerd about Reza
Shah’s plan to pacify the whole country and to initiate development and
prosperity.13 Such campaigns indicate the state’s intention to penetrate the
lives of its subjects more efficiently by using modern technology. This ambi-
tion becomes much more visible in the foundation of the Organization for
Public Enlightenment (Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar) in 1939.14 Afshin
Marashi has characterized it as “the Iranian state’s first attempt to present
itself to its public through the use of new technologies,” which comprised
print media, radio, and cinema.15 Even though the radio seems to have been
the most important tool among these propagandistically used media, it has
not yet been the subject of a more elaborate analysis or study.16
Radio Tehran was inaugurated on 4 Ordibehesht 1319 (24 April 1940) by
the crown prince Mohammad Reza.17 At 7p.m. he pressed the button and the
programme started with the national anthem. It was followed by the opening
speech of Prime Minister Ahmad Matin-Daftari and continued with music
and announcements of Radio Tehran’s first broadcast in five languages.18
Later on, Radio Tehran was on air for eight and a half hours every day.19 Special
time slots were reserved for Iranian music, but Western music was also played
regularly, either by the radio orchestra or from gramophone records. Radio
broadcasts were instrumental in popularizing new forms of music.20 Due to its
close connection to the Organization for Public Enlightenment, Radio Tehran’s
programme included to a great extent public tutorials:
Generally, the radio programme consists of three parts: news, music, and
the educational part. … The instruction programme of the radio comprises
features (goftar-ha) about farming, hygiene and sports, history and
geography of Iran, as well as housekeeping.21
Music and public instruction made up the major part of the programme, so
that the radio was an important tool for exerting cultural influence and thus
became a key medium of official propaganda. Consequently, the entire pro-
gramme was subject to strict censorship: all news, feature programmes, and
commentaries had to be approved by the police or other state institutions
before being broadcast.22 The radio as a state-owned institution with an
exclusive broadcast monopoly was much easier to control by the authorities
than the several existing journals and newspapers, which – except for Iran-e
Emruz – were in private hands and employed their own editorial staff.23
Several other aspects made the radio more attractive for state propaganda
than newspapers and journals. First of all, it had a much wider range than the
print media, since the rate of illiteracy in Iran at the beginning of the 1940s
was still very high.24 Even if it was quite common by then among urban
middle- and upper-class Iranians to read a newspaper regularly, it was not yet a
mass phenomenon. Even the paper with the highest circulation, the Ettela‘at,
cannot be regarded as a mass medium at that time.25 Radio broadcast could
hence reach a greater audience than print media, particularly since the trans-
mission at public squares was free of charge and accessible for people from
the lower classes.26 Beyond that, the radio as a sound-transmitting novelty
enjoyed great popularity and was more appealing than the press, especially
since its music programmes were highly entertaining.
This audio dimension made the radio also instrumental in the enforcement
of another prominent project of Reza Shah’s cultural reform agenda: the
purification of the Persian language. Before Radio Tehran began to broadcast,
the new words approved by the Iranian Academy (Farhangestan-e Iran) had
been published in the newspapers. This was an effective way of introducing
the spelling of neologisms, but not their pronunciation.27 With the start of
Radio Tehran’s language programme, the Farhangestan had an acoustic tool
at hand that enabled it to introduce the correct articulation of new words – an
aspect which was regarded as one of the fundamental duties of the radio.
Therefore, two or three times a week, the Farhangestan sent an instructor,
usually Sa‘id Nafisi, to the radio station to teach the announcers how to
pronounce the new words correctly and how to apply them.28
Apart from this domestic function, Radio Tehran now provided the govern-
ment with a valuable platform for positive publicity outside the country. The
Persian programme on foreign radio stations like the BBC or Radio Berlin
was well received in Iran and certainly raised the Pahlavi state’s awareness
that it had to counter external propaganda with its own media.29 Domestic
news was soon announced in five, later even six, foreign languages.30
Even in comparison to motion pictures, the radio occupied the predominant
position as a propaganda medium. The first films had been commissioned by the
government already in the 1920s, and from 1932 onwards, sound newsreels
270 Bianca Devos
were screened regularly in Persian.31 The propagandistic use of motion pictures
apparently climaxed in 1934, when a film about Reza Shah’s journey to Turkey
was dispatched to all parts of Iran32 and a state-sponsored film about the life of
Ferdowsi was screened commercially as part of the poet’s millennium celebra-
tion.33 The relevance of films in the realm of state propaganda declined,
however, in the second half of the 1930s, at the same time as the development
of a national cinema came to a halt: no single feature film was produced in
Iran during the decade from 1937 to 1947.34 And so, the radio must indeed be
regarded as the most important medium for official public instruction, possi-
bly benefitting from its rather late establishment.35 Reza Shah’s rule was
actually almost over when Radio Tehran started its programme in 1940. Only
at this late stage of his reign can a planned and organized state propaganda
be discerned, first and foremost in the creation of the Sazman-e Parvaresh-e
Afkar.36 However, to what extent this institution actually enabled the state to
use mass propaganda, as Hamid Mowlana has suggested,37 is not entirely
clear and cannot be answered as long as an in-depth evaluation of the activities
of the Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar remains a desideratum.38
The modernist approach to technology

An important pre-condition for the extensive propagandistic use of broadcast
by the Pahlavi authorities was the spread of radio sets during the 1930s.
Gradually, they found their way into modern Iranian households and, as a
former luxury product, epitomized the advancement of the new urban middle
class – the social group that, by and large, benefitted the most from modern-
ization during the 1920s and 1930s. Members of it held positions in the new
administration apparatus or worked in other white-collar professions. These
middle-class Iranians were not just passively modernized through state-enforced
reforms, they themselves acted as pioneers promoting a progressive way of
life, primarily by adopting a modern Western lifestyle. By integrating techni-
cal devices into their daily routine and enjoying the comforts of a mechanized
living, they facilitated a wider spread of technology in Iranian society. Years
before the first radio station in Tehran started its programme, the pages of the
Ettela‘at were filled with advertisements for multi-band radios from famous
companies like Blaupunkt, Lorenz, or Philips.39 Radio stations in Berlin,
Rome, and London brought the sound of the “big, wide world” into the living
rooms of the proud owners of such receivers,40 who thereby prepared the
ground for a national radio broadcast.41
Newspaper advertisements can be a valuable source of information about
the advent and integration of new technologies into the lives of their readers.
In the case of Ettela‘at, the modern middle class can be considered as the
paper’s main target group.42 When we look at the commercial advertisements
of the 1920s and 1930s, we should keep in mind that they do not necessarily
reflect actual supply and demand – this is particularly true for frequently found
advertisements covering high-end products such as automobiles. Assuming
that collective ideas, ideals, and desires are incorporated into the advertising
message, one can rather perceive such commercials as a projection surface for
images of a better life and thus gain insight into the new middle class’s general
concept of a modern Iranian life.43
This notion adheres in great part to the global perception of technology at
the time, which can, to some extent, be ascribed to the fact that advertisements
for imported goods were apparently not devised exclusively for the Iranian
market, but followed international designs. This can be easily recognized in the
artwork, which in Iranian advertisements was usually identical to that used by
foreign companies for its sales promotions abroad.44 As in other countries,
luxury commodities like automobiles, watches, and cameras were promoted
as status symbols and suited, in the Iranian case, the modern middle-class
members’ desire to distinguish themselves from the mass of ordinary Iranians
through objects which until then only the Qajar aristocracy had been able to
afford.45 Together with less expensive products like home appliances or com-
munication devices, they moreover promised consumers a more comfortable,
“mechanized” life as well as the promise of saving time.46
That members of the modern Iranian middle class also adopted technology
to secure their social status becomes apparent in advertisements for “scientific
toys.” They were obviously targeting progressive parents who wanted to
familiarize their children with new technology at an early age and thus raise
their future opportunities.47 The readers’ general desire for qualifications and
education is consistently reflected in another set of advertisements, e.g. for
gramophone records by Linguaphone which promised to be “the easiest way
to learn foreign languages.”48 The strong demand for learning foreign languages
is furthermore evident in small advertisements for languages classes or
textbooks.49 In contrast to commercial advertisements, these classified ads
were placed by individuals or institutions, usually to offer a commodity or a
service to one person or a small group of customers and thus give a more
accurate picture of the real demand-and-supply situation.50 The urban middle
class’s lack of profound foreign language skills was caused by its quite recent
social advancement. In the past, only elite families had been able to send their
children to study abroad. Even between 1928 and 1933, at the height of the
official programme by the Pahlavi state to dispatch students to the West, only
a total number of 640 young Iranians studied in Europe, the majority with an
upper-class background.51 Most members of the modern middle class had
graduated from Iranian schools modelled on European institutions and thus
only had a basic knowledge of foreign languages, which was not on a par with
the language skills of foreign-educated members of the upper class.
To conclude, one can say that for members of the modern middle class,
technology served first and foremost to satisfy their own interests. Nevertheless,
several among them felt responsible enough to contribute actively to the
modernization of Iranian society as a whole. This “mission” becomes partic-
ularly apparent in the editorial content of the Ettela‘at, especially in articles
by authors from a middle-class background who deal with the question of
272 Bianca Devos
“How to be modern in Iran.” These articles started a true modernization
debate in the paper and must be seen apart from the state-commissioned
propaganda contributions that solely declared the general need for reform
and praised the already achieved progress. Those who participated in this
actual debate on modernization were, on the one hand, members of Ettela‘at’s
editorial staff or freelance authors and, on the other hand, readers of the
paper, who regularly wrote letters to the editor. They all can be defined as
belonging to the urban middle class52 and represent a group of “concerned
individuals”53 that I prefer to designate as “middle class modernists” or in
short as “modernists.” It becomes apparent in their articles that they con-
sidered themselves as the avant-garde of a new society in the Pahlavi state
and, therefore, intended to be role models for the mass of ordinary Iranians
still living a traditional life. The articles by modernist authors also reflect
much more personal concerns about the practical dimension of modernization,
i.e. the actual implementation of reforms as well as possible negative effects of
incorrectly adopted Western modernity, if compared to articles written by the
official “middle-class intelligentsia” that convey a more general and ideological
notion.54
Most of the middle-class modernists widely supported the state’s ambitious
reform agenda. They believed a strong centralized state to be of utmost
importance for it to succeed, and this belief in a patriarchal state was
widespread among them. Hence, many modernists advocated a rigorous
enforcement of the reforms by the official authorities and – as can be seen
from further examples discussed below – again and again requested the gov-
ernment to attend to this duty. With regard to the introduction of new tech-
nologies, an editorial article from 1931 points out the state’s shortcomings in
the execution of modernization measures:
Transportation in this country has shifted to the automobile for some

years now, lorries have arrived in Iran, and different routes of motor
transportation have been established. Also, the state has provided the
[necessary] facilities. It has leveled and asphalted the national roadways,
built the basic communication lines … , and means of transportation
have started operating nationwide.
Thus, special attention has been paid to the basics, but since no attention
has been paid to the details, the principles and provisions (osul va
moqarrarat) for transportation in Iran have not been codified [and] this
useful means has emerged as unusable.55
Observing the process of modernization in their country very carefully, the

middle-class modernists not only focused on the government’s performance,
but also tried to contribute actively to the spread of a “correct” modernity by
instructing and guiding the common people, who were largely unfamiliar with
the comforts of modern life. Particularly in articles criticizing the general
misuse of modern technical devices, the modernists’ concern to educate their
compatriots becomes evident. The reference point for a proper application of
technology was always the Western societies from which technical devices
were imported; and they were supposed to be adopted in a manner as similar
as possible. The middle-class modernists derived their authority to instruct the
common people from their knowledge of European countries, based on their
education or travels. In their articles they often refer to visits to Western
countries, depicting the modern life there and contrasting it with the Iranian
situation. Their fear of inferiority caused by the ignorance of their own people
is omnipresent in the debate. And, indeed, reports from Western travellers to
Iran about quite peculiar ideas and uses of technology had stoked these fears,
a prime example being Lord Curzon’s observation on how the telegraph was
perceived by many Iranians: At the end of the nineteenth century, telegraph
stations were considered as asylum (bast) resulting from the popular belief
that the telegraph wires ended directly at the foot of the Shah’s throne in
Tehran.56
The “common” Iranians and technology – three case studies

The articles by middle-class modernists discussed below illustrate the modern-
ization debate and provide valuable and detailed information on how tech-
nology was actually adopted by ordinary Iranians in the 1920s and especially
1930s. They cover three aspects of modern life, invariably connected with
modern technology: transportation, cinema, and the telephone.
Transportation
The concern about Iran’s image in the West is particularly obvious in the
opening phrase of an article entitled “bus stops” (istgah-ha), from April 1931:
“Everything new that has gained a foothold in our country has immediately
taken up our peculiar appearance,”57 states the author and disapproves of the
local colouring Iranians give to innovations. Offering the example of public
transport in Tehran, he complains about the common misuse of buses, which
he considers to be unique in the world. As the article illustrates, it was cus-
tomary in Tehran for only the starting point and the destination of bus routes
to be fixed. The stops in between were not defined and depended on the
wishes of the passengers.
[I]t is now more than three years that regular bus services have been
established in the city of Tehran, [but] it has not yet assumed an orderly
shape. … Nowhere in the world is it acceptable that passengers get on
and off every few metres; and that after three years of bus service, no
fixed bus stops exist.58
The practice of using this means of transportation so uneconomically had

negative consequences, which the author criticizes strongly. He complains
274 Bianca Devos
about the waste of time and fuel caused by the frequent interruptions, as well
as about the physical laziness of his compatriots who were obviously not
willing to walk to a fixed bus stop. Furthermore, he calls on the passengers to
keep order when getting on and off the bus. In his opinion, the police and
other state institutions should be in charge of organizing the bus service in
the “right” way: “We think that the responsible authorities and especially the
traffic police (sho‘beh-ye ta’min-e ‘obur va morur) absolutely have to interfere in
this matter and place it under their supervision.”59 A few days prior to the pub-
lication of this article, General Mohammad Hoseyn Ayrom, head of the national
police force (nazmiyeh), had asked the citizens of Tehran in a newspaper
announcement to obey the instructions given by police officers when walking
in the streets. According to him, most accidents were caused by the ignorance
of the people, and the policemen constantly had to prevent pedestrians from
leaving the pavement and crossing the street wherever they wanted to.60 Almost
three years later, in February 1934, a comprehensive bylaw (nezam-nameh) was
issued, which in 83 paragraphs regulated all aspects of traffic.61 Compared to
earlier traffic regulations it was the most detailed and restrictive yet, as its
instructions were not limited to pedestrians and drivers of motor transport, but
also covered animal-drawn vehicles and the handling of animals in the street.62
Eight months after the passage of this bylaw, a debate arose in the press on
the high number of accidents. They were ascribed first and foremost to the
recklessness of drivers and, to a lesser extent, to a lack of familiarity with
traffic rules by pedestrians. The general benefits of technology were not open
to debate; instead, the way of using technology was subject to discussion:
We have no right to say that automobiles are evil because of these

harmful incidents; since all these devices, which civilization has created
and which assure the fortune of mankind, are generally good; since the
quintessence of their creation was to comfort, ease, and protect the existence
of mankind and to defend human life in different ways. The whole discus-
sion centres on how automobiles are used; when they are used properly,
their inherent benefits will unfold.63
The first in a series of three editorials from September 1934 asserted that
many drivers regarded the transport of passengers as a usual business without
bearing their great responsibility in mind, pointing out this attitude as the
most common reason for accidents. Thus, most drivers did not check the
brakes or the engine before departure and, once behind the wheel, considered
smoking, drinking alcohol, or even sleeping as admissible.64
Another malpractice was to overload the car with cargo or passengers, so that
the danger that the vehicle might overturn and catch fire rose dramatically. If
such an accident had destroyed transported goods, it was the immediate eco-
nomic loss that was deplored; if there were casualties, the author complained
about the loss of valuable manpower:65 “Every healthy person has an ethical
and economic value for us. Every single one of these healthy persons …
represents in his occupation an active unit of energy and power for this
country.”66 Faced with the negative effects of such an imprudent handling of
technology, the middle-class modernists raised the question of what could be
done in practice to prevent accidents, especially since traffic on the streets was
continuously increasing. As there were not enough policemen, at least not
enough to position one at every street corner in order to observe compliance
with the regulations of the bylaw, authors called for the personal responsi-
bility of Iranian citizens. As a first step, drivers should be alerted and made
aware of their liability for their passengers, who in turn were supposed to
watch over the drivers’ performance and, if necessary, admonish them to
observe the rules.67 The authors advocated further steps to improve the
security of other traffic participants. Correct traffic behaviour had to become
a matter of common knowledge, and specific measures had to be taken to
enable pedestrians to cross the streets safely, such as the creation of sufficient
crosswalks and the erection of traffic signs.68 Since nobody could trust the
general adherence to traffic rules, timid pedestrians showed rather unpredict-
able behaviour when crossing the street: as soon as a car appeared, they
started to run back and forth, thereby making the situation even more dan-
gerous.69 In order to make people more confident, the authors regarded harsh
penalties for traffic violations as essential; in particular, the legal punishment
for accidental deaths was not sufficient:
Drivers, who cause an accident, must be punished, and article 177 of the
general penal law (qanun-e mojazat-e ‘omumi), which defines the case of
unintentional killing (qatl-e gheyr-e ‘amd) and which is applied for punishing
indicted drivers, is not sufficient in the light of the multitude of accidents
and the recklessness of the drivers. A more severe punishment is needed … .70
The demands of these modernist authors were met with various measures to
extend state control over traffic and transportation. In the following years,
one can regularly find further provisions concerning the national transport
system, such as the regulations for the transport industry in 1936.71 For the
young Pahlavi state, traffic accidents and casualties were not the only problem
modern transportation entailed. It also raised the level of mobility for Iran’s
inhabitants, which the state in turn sought to control by means of travel per-
mits (javaz).72 Another harmful consequence of modern means of transport,
which the Pahlavi state had to address, was damage to historical monuments.
One of the first measures to protect the national heritage of Iran was carried
out in Isfahan in 1935, when it was prohibited to pass over the Si-o-seh pol
bridge by any means of transport.73
Cinema
The growing awareness that modern technology might be dangerous for both
historical buildings and the physical health of people was accompanied by an
276 Bianca Devos
increasing cognizance of possible harm to the mind.74 Consequently, modern-
ist authors called for further regulations also to prevent psychological com-
plications. The cinema illustrates this concern quite clearly and highlights
the modernists’ dilemma, caught between striving for fast progress and at the
same time pleading for a regulated use of technology. They regarded the
cinema as a progressive form of entertainment and a useful tool for educating
people, especially since it was very popular among large parts of the Iranian
populace.75 However, not all movies were considered adequate for a general
audience. One of Ettela‘at’s columnists, for example, reported that a film
showing “one of these vulgar and meaningless fights which ten or fifteen year
olds like” created such an aggressive atmosphere among some petty criminals
sitting with their wives and children in the audience that the screening ended
up in a punch fest.76
Especially children who were taken to the movies by “ignorant” parents
attracted the attention of several modernist authors. They agreed that, above all,
horror films could bring mental harm to young spectators. But also romantic
movies were regarded as a threat to the moral constitution of children. The
author of one article was appalled by small children in movie theatres
watching kissing scenes: “When the lips of the lover touch the lips of the
beloved, the sound of kissing [imitated] by attending children reaches the ear
even before the [sound of the] cinema loudspeakers.”77 The common practice
to bring even small children along to the cinema was also mentioned by the
German Walter Hinz, who frowned on the noise children made and the fact
that everybody read aloud the Persian subtitles of the mostly Russian films.
He commented on the emotional involvement of the Iranian audience,
astonished at the cheering or disapproval during the screening of a movie.78
Such observations probably fuelled the concerns of the modernists, who accord-
ingly welcomed the revision of the cinema statutes, issued by the Ministry of
Justice and the Ministry of the Interior in 1939, in several newspaper articles.
The revised statutes imposed the legal obligation on cinemas to refuse
entrance to children under the age of seven. Children between seven and six-
teen were only admitted to special screenings of educational films, which
should take place once a week. Even the fact that these regulations contained
a kind of pre-censorship of films did not diminish the authors’ applause for
this state intervention.79
The Ettela‘at articles dealing with cinema generally reveal the predicament
in which the Iranian modernists were caught: despite their wish to introduce
Western media as fast as possible, they could not accept it in its entirety and
refused some of its productions, especially commercial films like action and
horror films. The authors argued that such films had been produced for the
European and American lower classes and did therefore not answer Iran’s
needs, but would rather pose a threat to the progress and reform of Iranian
society.80 Western-oriented, but also vested with a strong nationalist fervour,
the modernists were often trapped in such conflicts. On the one hand, they
considered a strict imitation of Western ways of employing and using
technology as the only way of reducing dangers, assumed to occur only due to
misapplication. Most of all, they were convinced that the correct usage of
modern technology would definitely help to reduce Iran’s image as a backward
country. On the other hand, this would always imply the adoption of the
corresponding cultural aspects as well, at least to a certain degree. This in
turn stood in stark contrast to the ambition of Iranian modernists to limit the
increasing Western cultural influence. Of course, this dilemma was not a
uniquely Iranian, but rather a global phenomenon at that time.81
This attitude arose out of an increasing awareness among modernists of the
risks and dangers that accompanied modern life. It must also be seen against
the general background of growing nationalistic sentiments, sometimes even
xenophobia, in Reza Shah’s state of the 1930s, so frequently reported by foreign
travellers at that time. For instance, the German journalist Margret Boveri
had to face anti-European attitudes during her stay in Tehran. She as well
attested to the Iranians’ inconsistency between their blind adoption of
modern technology and the newly awakened national quest for liberation
from foreign influence. In her opinion, everything European was taken over
jauntily as long as it was mere technology; as soon as Weltanschauung was
touched, the state strongly intended to remain purely Iranian.82
The telephone
A mere adoption of technology, however, was naturally impossible, since new
technical devices always brought new forms of cultural techniques with them.
This aspect is also illustrated by our third example, the telephone. Whenever
Iranians developed supposedly peculiar ways of using Western technology, the
state as well as the concerned middle-class modernists felt the need to redirect
its use into the “right” direction, not only in order to prevent mental or physical
harm, but also to ascertain an authentic imitation of the foreign example.
The first telephone lines had been installed in Iran already before World
War I. In 1923, the basis for a national telephone system was established with
the support of the German company Siemens. Fourteen years later, the auto-
matic telephone service was launched, which required the allocation of new,
four-digit numbers to every subscriber and brought along the first telephone
directory.83 Since the telephone was extremely popular, the demand out-
numbered the supply for a long time. When, in 1937, automatic dialling
became possible and 3,000 new telephones were put in operation, the enthusiasm
of the people in Tehran was great. They were now able to make calls without
contacting an operator and going through a switchboard. Immediately, the
Ettela‘at published instructions on how to use the automatic telephones and
urged readers to keep their phone calls short so that others could use the
phone without difficulty.84 But subscribers were so excited that they ignored
the instructions and, as a result, frequently dialled wrong numbers or used the
telephone so extensively that the whole system was close to collapse. The
situation remained completely chaotic for one and a half days.85
278 Bianca Devos
One reason behind the strong demand was that Iranians had by then discovered
the telephone as a new pastime. Talking to someone on the phone had become a
leisure activity not only enjoyed by regular subscribers, but also by people who
used public or semi-public phones. In the column “social problems” (masa’el-e
ejtema‘i), from 1935, one author gives an account of a conversation he had
with his friend, who as a shopkeeper also owned a telephone. This friend
complained about daily visitors who came to his shop only to call a friend as
they were bored of walking alone in the street. By referring to the original
purpose of the telephone as a technical device created first and foremost for
urgent matters or business affairs, the author of the article makes it clear that
such calls were an obvious misappropriation of this helpful technology:
So many people get on our nerves. If they only would make urgent phone
calls! [Instead,] they want to play every joke which the telephone has to
offer on their friends and fellows. … We ourselves have to know the
[proper] way of using every single device and invention and make use of
it in due time.86
The author continues by stating that the main benefit of the telephone was to
save time; but since Iranians did generally not yet know the value of time,
they inevitably used modern time-saving innovations in an improper way.87
His criticism is apparently much affected by the idea of an efficient and
rationalized way of life, exemplified by the use of modern technology in
Western societies. For Iranians this would be impossible to attain as long as
they were not even aware of the original purpose behind specific inventions.
Consequently, the first step to overcome this obstacle to Iran’s progress was to
educate people how to think modern – before actually being modern.
In fact, the call for a rational and sober employment of technological
innovations was widespread and not restricted to Iran. But the Iranian mod-
ernists were apparently not aware of the global phenomenon that such devices
were often used in another way than originally intended by their inventors.
The way Iranians used the telephone actually corresponds with international
developments of that time, when the telephone started to transcend its original
function as a medium for business and turned into a medium of private
communication. First emerging in the USA, this trend gradually spread to
Europe, where, until the 1920s, the telephone had continued to be regarded as
a prolongation of the telegraph or one-way means of communication.88
The modernist’s concern was only partly caused by their fear that techno-
logical benefits would not materialize, due to possible misappropriation or ill
use. As seen already above, their worry owed much to observations made by
foreigners which could possibly cement a negative perception of Iran in the
world. This fear resurfaces also in connection with the telephone, even though
this time it occurs in a reversed way, with a positive account made by a foreigner.
When the newspaper announced the launch of the automatic telephone
system, it reported how the German engineer who was in charge of supervising
the installations in Tehran praised the almost natural talent of the Iranians to
put the new telephones to use. By pointing out his international experience,
his assessment is presented as particularly reliable:
He was amazed that people became so familiar with the new apparatus in
the course of only two or three days and he deemed the grasp and
instinct (farasat) of the Iranians praiseworthy and applaudable, seeing
that [the people] in foreign countries, while instructions … were posted
in every public place several days before and after the telephones
started their service, did not learn the new way of talking as fast as the
Iranians did.89
How important the foreign perception of Iran was becomes constantly evident
in the modernization debate of the 1930s in the Ettela‘at, and it is also
reflected in a short anecdote reported by Ella Maillart in her travelogue.
When Crown Prince Mohammad Reza married the Egyptian princess Fowziyeh
in 1939, the Iranian government did not possess enough cars to organize
adequate wedding celebrations and, therefore, temporarily confiscated all
private cars in Tehran.90 Such unusual measures were deemed necessary by
the authorities in order to stimulate the country’s image as a progressive
nation, since even towards the end of the 1930s Iran’s actual mechanization
was not as far advanced as intended. Ironically, technology itself posed a
threat to the state’s ambition of presenting a fully modernized country: the
cameras of foreign travellers could catch the still existing signs of “back-
wardness,” like mules and camels transporting goods, which continued to be
quite common in the 1920s.91 As a consequence, police officers were instructed
to prevent foreigners from photographing manifestations of “backwardness”
like ruined buildings or camels,92 and, as part of the state’s virtual obsession
with regulations, special photographing licenses (javaz) were issued as well.
Walter Hinz obtained such a javaz and translated the regulations, printed on
the back of the license in Persian, for future travellers to Iran. According to
these regulations, it was prohibited to photograph military facilities and to
take pictures that offended taste and decency or damaged national prestige.
Photographs of streets, boulevards, newly constructed as well as renovated
historical buildings, however, were explicitly permitted.93
With such regulations the Iranian state could of course exert only rather
limited influence on Iran’s image abroad, which presents itself as quite diverse
in the travelogues from the 1920s and 1930. The way in which foreign visitors
actually perceived the country depended to a large extent on the author’s
personal attitude towards modernization and imitation of the West. For those
who came to Iran in search of traditional forms of living or historical archi-
tecture, it was quite sobering to witness the spread of cars and electricity. One
of them was Ella Maillart, who passed through Iran in 1939 on her way to
Afghanistan, where she intended, together with Annemarie Schwarzenbach,
to explore an almost unknown nomadic tribe. Her principal reservations
280 Bianca Devos
against the benefits of Western progress as well as her general scepticism
about a blind adoption of technical innovations are displayed in her account
of Tabriz:
Arg, or citadel, is a wrong name for the great wall we had ascended:
built under Ghazan Khan at the beginning of the fourteenth century, it is
the ruin of the Mosque Ali Shah which must have had one of the biggest
vaults that have ever been built. … Below, at the far end of the open
courtyard, spotless in daylight stood a huge cinema screen. Below us
where the arched mihrab stood once to indicate the direction of the
sacred Mecca, was throned the fire-proof cabin of a cinema-projector,
new god, and bestower of oblivion to our mass civilisation.94
Other travellers, however, were more favourably disposed towards the under-
taken reforms and shared the state’s technocratic view on transforming the
country and its society. They gave enthusiastic reports on the advancement of
road building and the rationalization of the public sphere.95 But even these
authors, who were sympathetic to Iran’s rapid modernization, found it espe-
cially worthwhile to mention such uses of technology that differed from the
“standard” Western ways. Consequently, travelogues constitute a valuable
source of information on how technical devices were actually used by
common Iranians, and they highlight the fact that technology was never
adopted in a cultural vacuum. Instead, technology was adopted in ways that
best served the specific demands of the local society. The Austrian geographer
Gustav Stratil-Sauer, for example, describes an image that must have been
quite common at that time in and around Mashhad: an automobile with a
coffin strapped onto the hood or running-board, bringing a deceased to his or
her last resting place next to Imam Reza. These automobiles had gradually
replaced the former camel caravans, the so-called “caravans of death” feared
for the scent of decay after their at times week-long journeys.96 When Stratil-
Sauer gives an account of trucks whose cargo deck was used for passenger
transportation, he noted especially the preservation of the traditional sex
segregation that was guaranteed by spanning a rope in the middle of the
loading space, thus separating the women’s from the men’s space.97 A pal-
pable example of foreign amazement at the influence of local climate and
environmental conditions on the perception of technology is finally given
again by Ella Maillart:
I found the explanation of something that had been puzzling me since

1937. Many lorries dragged a thick chain between their front wheels as if
escaping from prison. The chain was meant to prevent an accumulation
of electricity on cars whose shiny bodies have for hours rubbed against
the fast, compact wind of these flinty and calcinated highlands: a shock
might hurt the first man to step down from a vehicle overcharged with
electricity.98
Conclusion
When modern technology became more widespread in Iran during the early
Pahlavi period, the motives for its adoption were the same as in other countries
and societies: of course, it was the ultimate symbol of modernity, but, above all,
it was their practical usefulness that made modern technical devices so
attractive. In addition, social aspects like prestige and distinction as well as
entertainment promoted a wider acceptance. Which function technology ful-
filled depended on the interests of the respective group of users, so that a
study of the adoption of modern technology delivers – on a very factual
level – insight into the socially distinctive perception of modernity and the
changing state–society relations during Reza Shah’s reign.
One can roughly distinguish three groups of users: the state, the modern
middle class, and the mass of Iranians, who embraced technological progress
with different intentions and in quite different ways. The young Pahlavi state
promoted technology with the aim to advance national economic progress as
well as to establish the country’s image as a fast-progressing nation. But the
drive for technological progress was also strongly connected with the increasingly
dictatorial character of Reza Shah’s rule in the 1930s. By then, technical
devices had become useful tools in the hands of the state authorities, which
enabled them to penetrate people’s lives and influence public opinion. Pursuing
the creation of a modern Iranian society and a uniform national identity –
with a standardized language as just one aspect – the state relied, for example,
on the radio as the main technical innovation for its propaganda. By installing
loudspeakers on public squares, the state went beyond merely offering a pro-
paganda programme, it rather tried to enforce collective listening. Thereby,
Reza Shah took a first step towards following the example of totalitarian
regimes in Europe. However, in the short remaining time of his rule, he never
achieved comparable outcomes. On the other hand, one of the effects of the
state’s vital interest in extending his control over vast areas of public life was
actually to prevent the fast spread of technology, or as Robert Byron expressed it:
The Persians have a talent for cutting off their nose to spite their face.
They stopped the Junkers air service because it exhibited foreign supe-
riority. They make roads, but their customs duties prohibit the import of
motors. They want a tourist traffic, but forbid photographing because
somebody once published a picture of an Iranian beggar, while con-
formity with their police regulations is a profession of itself, as I have
discovered in the last day or two.99
Technology might have brought more state control into the daily life of Iran’s
population, but first of all it offered them a more comfortable way of living.
Therefore, it was eagerly used by large parts of society, who also quickly dis-
covered the entertaining and exciting features of modern technology. When
ordinary Iranians who were largely unfamiliar with the European lifestyle
282 Bianca Devos
integrated technical devices into their normal course of life, they inevitably
adapted them to their personal needs. Such pragmatic ways of using technol-
ogy often differed from the ideal, but it obviously was this pragmatism that
enabled ordinary Iranians to overcome possible frictions between tradition
and modernity and even, deliberately or unintentionally, to thwart the state’s
supervision over their everyday life.
These developments prompted middle-class modernists, who advocated
a strong central state and a controlled social modernization, to subject
technology to discussion. They themselves already made use of technical
innovations in their daily routine for practical reasons, but as an emerging
social class were also well aware of these innovations’ prestige and distinction.
Their discussions about correct and beneficial modernization focused very
much on practical issues of modernity like the misuse of specific technical
devices. By adjusting the discussion to the facts that the enforcement of
reforms by the authoritarian regime had created, the whole modernization
debate in the Pahlavi state shifted to a more practical level. This new
dimension in Iran’s modernization discourse can be interpreted as a beginning
transformation of the public sphere, initiated by the participation of the new
middle class, which increasingly embraced a more and more bourgeois cul-
ture. Its members found a platform in the emerging high-circulation press,
particularly Tehran’s greatest daily Ettela‘at, which owed its leading position
in the country’s newspaper market mainly to a technical innovation: Iran’s
first rotary press.100
Notes
1 Ettela‘at 3583, 5 Shahrivar 1318 (28 August 1939). This issue had twice the
number of pages of a regular issue.
2 “Seh khatt-e tala,” Cheshmeh towse‘eh online 20 (Farvardin 1390/March–April
2011), at http://www.cheshmeonline.ir/MAGAZINE/page_view.asp?artid=259&
vol=20, accessed 20 February 2012.
3 Walther Hinz, Iranische Reise: Eine Forschungsfahrt durch das heutige Persien
(Berlin-Lichterfelde: Hugo Bermühler, 1938), p. 85.
4 Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana (London: Penguin Books, 2007), p. 224. The
railway was indeed not efficient enough to be competitive in land transportation,
see Patrick Clawson, “Knitting Iran Together: The Land Transport Revolution,
1920–40,” Iranian Studies 26 (1993), pp. 235–50: 241.
5 Most evident was this development in the construction of luxurious ocean liners,
Bernhard Rieger, Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and
Germany, 1890–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 1–5.
6 Cyrus Schayegh has shown in his inspiring article “Seeing Like a State” that the
historiography of Pahlavi Iran is characterized by a strong state-centred view,
which separates the state and its bureaucratic or technocratic elite as the motor
for modernization from a passive society and, thus, disregards people’s everyday
lives. As a suggestion for future research, Schayegh advocates taking hitherto
neglected sources into consideration and resorting to microhistorical approaches.
Cyrus Schayegh, “‘Seeing Like a State’: An Essay on the Historiography of
Modern Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42 (2010), pp. 37–61.
7 The main sources for this study are newspaper articles from the Ettela‘at,
published material from Iranian archives, and selected reports from European
travellers to Iran during the Reza Shah period.
8 Chahryar Adle, “Daguerreotype,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 6, 1993,
pp. 577–78.
9 F. Gaffary, “‘Akka-s-Ba-šı-, Ebra-hı-m,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 1, 1984, p. 719.
10 A farman by Mozaffar al-Din Shah permitted an American company to sell
gramophones in 1323q (1905/1906). Digital Persian Archives, http://www.asnad.
org/en/document/753/, accessed 19 August 2010.
11 Another advantage in the development of light industry was that it was the least
capital-intensive industrial branch. Hassan Hakimian, “Industrialization i. The
Reza Shah Period and its Aftermath, 1925–53,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 13,
2004, pp. 105–10. With the acceleration of industrial development in the second
half of the 1930s, the government even undertook tentative attempts to establish a
national heavy industry. The construction of a factory site in Karaj had been
started in 1939, but with the German consortium Demag-Krupp in charge, the
project was given up after the allied invasion in 1941. Willem Floor, “Steel
Industry in Iran,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, online edition, 2005, at http://www.
iranicaoonline/articles/steel-industry-in-iran.
12 For a more detailed account of the effects of mechanized transportation in Iran
see Cyrus Schayegh, Who Is Knowledgeable Is Strong: Science, Class, and the
Formation of Modern Iranian Society, 1900–1950 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2009), pp. 95–97.
13 [Habiballah] Nowbakht, Shahanshah-e Pahlavi: Dar tarikh-e farmandahi va
vezarat-e jang va zamamdari-ye Shahanshah-e Pahlavi, vol. 1 ([Tehran]:
Matba‘eh-ye Majles, 1342q/1924), p. 226.
14 Mahmud Delfani, ed., Farhang-setizi dar dowreh-ye Reza Shah: Asnad-e
montasher nashodeh-ye Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar, 1317–1320 h.sh. (Tehran:
Entesharat-e Sazman-e Asnad-e Melli, 1375/1996), p. 36.
15 Afshin Marashi, Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power, and the State, 1870–1940
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008), p. 108.
16 A collection of documents, published by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic
Guidance in 2000, provides a good deal of source material (without further
analysis), Asnadi az tarikhcheh-ye radiyu dar Iran: 1318–1345 h.sh., ed. Mo‘ave-
nat-e khadamat-e modiriyat va ettela‘-rasani, Daftar-e ra’is-e jomhur (Tehran:
Sazman-e Chap va Entesharat-e Vezarat-e Farhang va Ershad-e Eslami, 1379/
2000).
17 Asnadi az tarikhcheh-ye radiyu, p. 7. “A’in-e goshayesh-e dastgah-e pakhsh-e
seda-ye Tehran,” Ettela‘at 4166, 5 Ordibehesht 1319 (25 April 1940), p. 1.
18 The programme also ended with the national anthem. “Bar-nameh-ye goshayesh-e
dastgah-e pakhsh-e seda,” Ettela‘at 4162, 1 Ordibehesht 1319 (21 April 1940),
p. 1. “Ruz-e goshayesh-e Radiyu Tehran,” Ettela‘at 4169, 9 Ordibehest 1319 (29
April 1940), p. 1.
19 Asnadi az tarikhcheh-ye radiyu, p. 8 (doc. 4).
20 Asnadi az tarikhcheh-ye radiyu, p. 23 (doc. 12). See also the contribution by
Keivan Aghamohseni in the present volume, Chapter 4.
21 “Gozaresh-e komisiyun-e radiyu,” Ettela‘at 4169, 9 Ordibehest 1319 (29 April
1940), p. 1. Since the public instruction programme was considered to be most
useful for an audience outside the capital, it was broadcast in the early evening,
which was the only time when the majority of provincial towns had electricity
supply. Asnadi az tarikhcheh-ye radiyu, p. 6 (doc. 3).
22 Asnadi az tarikhcheh-ye radiyu, pp. 12–16 (doc. 6 and 7), p. 28 (doc. 15).
23 Even though the censorship under Reza Shah must be regarded as strict, its
categorization as all-embracing should be reconsidered. Entrepreneurial interests
284 Bianca Devos
of newspaper editors, for example, could challenge the suggested omnipotence of
Reza Shah’s censors. Bianca Devos, Presse und Unternehmertum: Die Tageszei-
tung It.t.ila-‘a-t in der frühen Pahlavı--Zeit (Würzburg: Ergon, 2012). See also the
contribution by Karim Soleimani in the present volume, Chapter 8.
24 There are no reliable data for the 1920s and 1930s on literacy rates in Iran.
Young estimates that in 1934 ten per cent of Iran’s total population of twelve
million were illiterate. Herrick Black Young, “The Modern Press in Persia,” The
Moslem World 24 (1934), p. 20. See also Julian Bharier, Economic Development in
Iran 1900–1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 37.
25 Devos, Presse und Unternehmertum, pp. 297–303.
26 On the installation of loudspeakers at public squares in provincial capitals see
Delfani, Farhang-setizi dar dowreh-ye Reza Shah, p. 2 (doc. 1). The nationwide
range of the radio broadcast was actually limited by insufficient electricity supply
in the provinces. Asnadi az tarikhcheh-ye radiyu, p. 9 (doc. 4).
27 “Farhangestan: Eslahat-e pezeshki,” Ettela‘at 4192, 1 Khordad 1319 (22 May
1940), p. 3. Asnadi az tarikhcheh-ye radiyu, p. 35 (doc. 16). On the history of the
Farhangestan from 1926 till 1941 see Mohsen Rusta’i, Tarikh-e nakhostin Far-
hangestan-e Iran be revayat-e asnad: hamrah ba vazheh-ha-ye mosavvab va gom-
shodeh-ye Farhangestan, 1314–1320sh (Tehran: Nashr-e Ney, 1385/2006).
28 Asnadi az tarikhcheh-ye radiyu, p. 34 (doc. 15/3), p. 35 (doc. 16).
29 When Radio Tehran started broadcasting, Radio Berlin’s Persian service had
been already established. Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 36–56. M., “Ghamkhvari be vasi-
leh-ye radiyu,” Ettela‘at 4236, 14 Tir 1319 (5 July 1940), p. 1. The BBC started
its Persian broadcast in late December 1940. F. Safiri and H. Shahidi, “Great
Britain xiii. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC),” in Encyclopaedia
Iranica, vol. 11, 2002, pp. 276–86.
30 The strong concern about a positive representation abroad led the Iranian
authorities to allow their ambassadors in Moscow, Ankara, and Kabul to report
immediately about the reception quality of the programme in the respective cities.
Asnadi az tarikhcheh-ye radiyu, p. 25–26 (doc. 14–14/2).
31 Hamid Reza Sadr, Iranian Cinema: A Political History (London: Tauris, 2006),
pp. 9, 23.
32 “Film-e mosafarat-e ‘alahazrat-e homayun-e shahanshahi dar Mashhad,” Ette-
la‘at 2615, 6 Mehr 1314 (29 September 1935), p. 4.
33 Sadr, Iranian Cinema, 34. Hinz, Iranische Reise, pp. 49–50. See also the con-
tribution by Christoph Werner in the present volume, Chapter 9.
34 Peter Chelkowski “Popular Entertainment, Media and Social Change in Twen-
tieth-Century Iran,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol 7. From Nadir Shah to
the Islamic Republic, ed. Peter Avery, Gavin Hambly and Charles Melville
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 795.
35 According to the then prime minister Matin-Daftari, Reza Shah at first even
disapproved of the radio. Ahmad Matin-Daftari, Khaterat-e yek nakhost vazir, ed.
Baqer ‘Aqeli (Tehran: Entesharat-e ‘elmi, 1371/1992), p. 164.
36 As an institution founded in 1939 under the auspices of the pro-German prime
minister Ahmad Matin-Daftari it is suggestive to compare the Sazman-e Parvar-
esh-e Afkar with fascist propaganda institutions like the German Reichs-
ministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels. See also
Marashi, Nationalizing Iran, p. 104.
37 Hamid Mowlana, Journalism in Iran: A History and Interpretation, Ph.D. thesis,
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, 1963), p. 484.
38 Mahmud Delfani made with the publication of Farhang-setizi dar dowreh-ye
Reza Shah a first important contribution, an analytical study on this institution is
still missing.
39 Examples of such advertisements can be found in Ettela‘at 1966, 18 Mordad 1312
(9 August 1933), p. 4; and Ettela‘at 3586, 8 Shahrivar 1317 (30 August 1938), p. 9.
40 An indication that such programmes were popular, even though they were in
foreign languages, is the publication of the schedule of the above-listed radio
stations in the newspaper. “Farda shab – bar-nameh-ye radiyu,” Ettela‘at 3785, 4
Farvardin 1318 (25 March 1939), p. 8.
41 Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi and ‘Alı- Mohammadi: “Communications in
Persia,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 6, 1992, pp. 89–95.
42 Devos, Presse und Unternehmertum, pp. 263–66.
43 Christian Pfister, “Einleitung (1): Bilderwelt der Konsumgesellschaft: Werbung in
ihrem ökonomischen und kulturellen Umfeld,” in Bilder vom besseren Leben: Wie
Werbung Geschichte erzählt, ed. Daniel Di Falco, Peter Bär and Christian Pfister
(Bern: Verlag Paul Haupt, 2002), p. 10. For an account of modern consumption
habits in Iran examined through advertisements for mass consumer products
from the 1950s onwards see Schayegh, “Seeing Like a State,” pp. 50–53.
44 One striking example is an advertisement showing a woman at the wheel of a
Chevrolet picking up one of her friends; both women are dressed in the latest
European fashion. “Chevrolet,” Ettela‘at 938, 10 Dey 1308 (31 December 1929),
p. 3. The image of a car driven by a free, self-confident, and adventurous woman
emerged in Western advertisements at the end of the 1920s; it corresponded with
a change in the social position of women. Monika Baumann, “Ein kurzer Traum
von der Freiheit am Steuer: Autofahrerinnen in der Werbung der späten 1920er
Jahre,” in Bilder vom besseren Leben, p. 98. In Iran, the advertisement was pub-
lished one year after the official permission for veiled women to ride in open
carriages (however only when accompanied by their husband). Houchang Che-
habi, “The Banning of the Veil and Its Consequences,” in The Making of Modern
Iran. State and Society under Reza Shah, 1921–1941, ed. Stephanie Cronin
(London: Routledge, 2003), p. 197.
45 The desire for distinction is addressed, for instance, by the advertising message
that “noble men prefer the excellent automobiles from Vauxhall to all others.”
“Otomobil-e Vakshal,” Ettela‘at 797, 7 Tir 1308 (28 June 1929), p. 6.
46 There were regular advertisements for telephones, fridges, bathroom appliances,
and other technical devices promising to bring more comfort into everyday life,
like electric suns from Bosch: “Zemestan raft,” Ettela‘at 2151, 8 Farvardin 1313
(28 March 1934), p. 6.
47 “Mekanu asbab-bazi-ye ‘elmi,” Ettela‘at 2740, 5 Farvardin 1315 (25 March
1936), p. 6.
48 Ettela‘at 2762, 11 Ordibehesht 1315 (1 May 1936), p. 8.
49 For example “Ranj-e ostad bara-ye amukhtan-e zaban-e khareji,” Ettela‘at 3552,
5 Mordad 1317 (27 July 1938), p. 3; and “Dars-e almani – engelisi – faranseh,”
Ettela‘at 4292, 9 Shahrivar 1319 (31 August 1940), p. 6.
50 Emil Dovifat and Jürgen Wilke, Zeitungslehre 2: Redaktion, die Sparten, Verlag
und Vertrieb, Wirtschaft und Technik, Sicherung der öffentlichen Aufgabe (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1976), 183.
51 David Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1992), pp. 79–83, 125–26, 129–30.
52 Devos, Presse und Unternehmertum, pp. 171–91, 263–66, 276–83.
53 In her study on the Persian exile newspaper Akhtar-e Estanbul in the late
nineteenth century, Anja Pistor-Hatam used this expression for individuals who
contributed to discussions in the paper on modernization. Anja Pistor-Hatam,
Nachrichtenblatt, Informationsbörse und Diskussionsforum: Aḫtar-e Esta-nbu-l
(1876–1896) – Anstöße zur frühen persischen Moderne (Münster: Lit, 1999).
54 Touraj Atabaki applied this term to intellectuals, who were involved in cultural
reform politics and shaped the official nationalistic discourse, in contrast to the
286 Bianca Devos
urban middle class. Touraj Atabaki, “Agency and Subjectivity in Iranian
National Historiography,” in Iran in the 20th Century: Historiography and Political
Culture, ed. Touraj Atabaki (London: Tauris, 2009), pp. 69–92, p. 82.
55 “Haml va naql,” Ettela‘at 1299, 28 Farvardin 1310 (18 April 1931), p. 1.
56 George Nathaniel Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, vol. 1 (n.p.: Elibron
Classics, 2001), p. 175.
57 “Istgah-ha,” Ettela‘at 1295, 23 Farvardin 1310 (13 April 1931), p. 1.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 “E‘lan-e nazmiyeh,” Ettela‘at 1291, 18 Farvardin 1310 (8 April 1931), p. 3.
61 The text was so voluminous that it was published in four Ettela‘at issues.
“Nezam-nameh-ye ‘obur va morur-e ashkhas va vasa’el-e naqliyeh,” Ettela‘at
2116, 18 Bahman 1312 (7 February 1934), p. 1; Ettela‘at 2118, 21 Bahman 1312
(10 February 1934), p. 3; Ettela‘at 2120, 23 Bahman 1312 (11 February 1934),
p. 1; Ettela‘at 2122, 25 Bahman 1312 (14 February 1934), p. 3.
62 For the first police instructions for traffic safety see Willem Floor, “Les premières
règles de police urbaine a Téhéran,” in Téhéran: Capitale bicentenaire, ed.
Chahryar Adle and Bernard Hourcade (Paris: Institut français de recherche en
Iran, 1992), pp. 173–98.
63 “‘Obur va morur,” Ettela‘at 2279, 13 Shahrivar 1313 (4 September 1934), p. 1.
64 “Havades-e otumobil,” Ettela‘at 2277, 11 Shahrivar 1313 (2 September 1934), p. 1.
66 “Havades-e otumobil,” Ettela‘at 2277, 11 Shahrivar 1313 (2 September 1934), p. 1.
67 “Vazifeh-shenasi-ye shufer-ha!,” Ettela‘at 2154, 12 Farvardin 1313 (1 April 1934),
p. 2.
There is no indication that at that time a pedestrian safety campaign was conducted.
70 “Mojazat-e shufer-ha,” Ettela‘at 2278, 12 Shahrivar 1313 (3 September 1934), p. 1.
71 “Nezam-nameh-ye mo’assesat-e haml va naql,” Ettela‘at 2742, 8 Farvardin 1315
(28 March 1936), p. 4.
72 For the strict control of all travellers on Iran’s roads and highways, see for
example Hinz, Iranische Reise, pp. 23–25.
73 “Bara-ye hefz-e asar-e tarikhi,” Ettela‘at 2595, 2 Mehr 1314 (25 September
1935), p. 4.
74 How this insight was gained in the 1930s and 1940s has been discussed extensively
by Schayegh, Who Is Knowledgeable Is Strong, pp. 75–109.
75 “Sinema va atfal,” Ettela‘at 3871, 31 Khordad 1318 (22 June 1939), p. 1.
76 Hoseyn Hejazi, “Kudakan va sinema,” Ettela‘at 3875, 4 Tir 1318 (26 June 1939),
p. 5.
77 “Sinema va atfal,” Ettela‘at 3871, 31 Khordad 1318 (22 June 1939), p. 1.
78 Hinz, Iranische Reise, p. 48.
79 “Eslah-e a’in-nameh-ye sinema,” Ettela‘at 3864, 24 Khordad 1318 (15 June
1939), p. 1. It revised the cinema statute from 11 Dey 1314 (2 January 1936).
80 Hoseyn Hejazi, “Kudakan va sinema,” Ettela‘at 3875, 4 Tir 1318 (26 June 1939),
p. 5. Schayegh, Who Is Knowledgeable Is Strong, pp. 78–79.
81 Keith Watenpaugh describes the same phenomenon in his study on the middle
class in Aleppo at the same time: “[The] acceptance of the underlying logos of
Western civilization while asserting the ability of non-Westerners to resist the
political and cultural hegemony of the West is the quintessential ambivalence at
the center of the historical experience of modernity in the colonial and post-
colonial non-West.” Keith David Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East:
Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 5.
82 Margret Boveri, Vom Minarett zum Bohrturm: Eine politische Biographie
Vorderasiens (Zürich: Atlantis, 1938), p. 345.
83 Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ali Mohammadi, “Communications in Persia,” “Telefon-
ha-ye khodkar be kar oftad,” Ettela‘at 3256, 26 Shahrivar 1316 (17 September
1937), p. 1.
84 “Tarz-e goftogu ba telefon-ha-ye khodkar-e Tehran,” Ettela‘at (morning edition)
131, 22 Shahrivar 1316 (13 September 1937), p. 1.
85 Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ali Mohammadi, “Communications in Persia”.
Phone numbers from 4000 till 6999 had been assigned. “Telefon-ha-ye khodkar
be kar oftad,” Ettela‘at 3256, 26 Shahrivar 1316 (17 September 1937), p. 1.
86 “Telefon,” Ettela‘at 2640, 27 Aban 1314 (19 November 1935), p. 2.
87 Ibid. For the modern middle class’s changing perception of time see Schayegh,
Who Is Knowledgeable Is Strong, pp. 97–98.
88 This was still the case in the 1920s, especially in France and in Germany, where
the telephone was used for broadcasting concerts and theatre performances.
Werner Faulstich, Medienwandel im Industrie-und Massenzeitalter: 1830–1900
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2004), p. 188.
89 “Telefon-ha-ye khodkar be kar oftad,” Ettela‘at 3256, 26 Shahrivar 1316
(17 September 1937), p. 8.
90 Ella Maillart reports that the cars “were punctually returned but their tyres had
been replaced by worthless ones” due to the general lack of tyres and other spare
parts. Ella K. Maillart, The Cruel Way (London: William Heinemann, 1947), p. 66.
91 Clawson, “Knitting Iran Together,” p. 237.
92 Wipert v Blücher, Zeitenwende in Iran: Erlebnisse und Beobachtungen (Biberach
an der Riss: Koehler & Voigtländer, 1949), p. 284. Hinz, Iranische Reise, p. 32.
93 Hinz, Iranische Reise, pp. 28–29.
94 Maillart, The Cruel Way, p. 62. For a more positive view, see Hinz, Iranische
Reise, p. 47. Adjacent to the Arg and the public garden was also the newly built
theatre of Tabriz, see the contribution by Christoph Werner in the present
volume, Chapter 9.
95 Hinz, Iranische Reise. Gustav Stratil-Sauer, Meschhed: Eine Stadt baut am
Vaterland (Leipzig: Ernst Staneck Verlag, 1937).
96 Stratil-Sauer, Meschhed, p. 79.
97 Stratil-Sauer, Meschhed, p. 11.
98 Maillart, The Cruel Way, pp. 66–67.
99 Byron, The Road to Oxiana, p. 130.
100 Devos, Presse und Unternehmertum, pp. 199–201, 298.
13 Religious aspects in communication
processes in early Pahlavi Iran
Katja Föllmer
Since the early twentieth century, both traditional and modern forms of
communication have been used in the Iranian public sphere to shape the reli-
gious, social and political discourse of reform and change. While during the
successful protest against the tobacco monopoly (1891–92), Shi‘ite clerics
made use of traditional modes of mass communication, a few years later the
Constitutional Movement (1905–11) employed the newly emerging print
media. Traditionally, religious, didactic and popular modes of communication
were based on direct face-to-face contacts. Only those who had good social
networks could communicate with larger groups across the regions. The
Shi‘ite clergy, which maintained relationships with all social classes, was
therefore the most influential group and a certain kind of medium for the
distribution of information among the masses. The rise of the new media
gradually changed both the traditional social relationship and sphere of
influence. As a result of the emergence of new media such as the press, of the new
political and social self-awareness and the increasing literacy of the Iranian
common people, especially in the 1930s, written mass communication gained
importance in Iranian society. Those who had traditionally been passive reci-
pients became increasingly active in the Iranian public sphere. The new urban
intellectual middle class, which had access to foreign sources of information,
dominated the discourses in the print media and published new ideas in their
own critical newspapers. These publications were read by a growing public.
The social and technical developments, along with a strong censorship,
intensified in the Pahlavi period. Social change, migration and increasing lit-
eracy led to the emergence of new modes of communication, particularly in
urban centres, while the traditional ones still flourished in rural areas. The
new mass media were the preferred means of public communication for both
state and opposition, while clerics still tended to ignore them.
On the basis of some examples, this paper will examine different aspects of
public communication that are related to religion. It will focus on the repre-
sentation of religion in specific settings in Iran until the late 1930s. Particular
attention will be given to the role and function of various ‘media’ and com-
munication practices of the Shi‘ite clergy, the Iranian people during public
religious and popular performances, the print media and literary texts.
Religious aspects in communication processes 289
Theoretical basis
Religion is interwoven with all practices of Iranian social life. Therefore,
conventionally religious aspects and influences are to be found in every kind
of social communication in Iranian culture, as for instance in education,
feasts and rituals, in literature and the press.
Many scholars of media theory usually focus on secondary media, e.g.
books, newspapers and films, and give it a neutral and professional role in the
transmission of messages.1 The primary media – humans as communicators
who use e.g. language in a direct face-to-face communication – and their role
in social communication, especially their contribution to the social meaning
of the mass media, are generally not considered separately in the theories of
mass communication.
Recent communication studies usually have focused on mass communica-
tion which is indirect, unilateral/one-sided, mainly public and which always
needs a technical medium of transmission.2 McQuail notes that the many
connotations of the term ‘mass communication’ do not allow for a simple
agreed definition that is a common-sense perception to provide a general
characterization of the term. It can comprise institutions, techniques and
technologies to disseminate messages to large, heterogeneous and widely dis-
persed audiences.3 According to Habermas all of life is communicative.
Informal relationships exist between public and private space, which are
generally based on face-to-face communication. A change in social and
economic structures and conditions implements varying forms of com-
munication and media organization. Relevant factors for media reception are
for instance the degree of common people’s literacy and their access to and
experience of the media in daily life.4 Habermas’s theory cannot be applied in
contexts with a strong underlying religion, like Iranian society. His theory is
not marked by differences especially of gender, ethnic origin or religious
background.5
When religious aspects in Iranian society are discussed, the primary media
are essential to understanding how the mass media could gain ground in a society
that underwent obvious changes. Traditionally, religious authorities, scholars
and intellectuals dominated the production of meaning in the communication
process because of their great social impact through knowledge and power.
They functioned as social mediators who brought information with religious
concerns to the people of all social strata. They successfully addressed large
and heterogeneous audiences, as the Tobacco Revolt demonstrated. Traditional
religious rituals and feasts are a strong component in this respect.
The beginning of the twentieth century and especially the early Pahlavi era
stands for rapid technical development, social change and a change of com-
munication processes. The traditional institutions were no more social media.
They were now less socially important and only had a medial function.6 The
new media, the telegraph, the post and especially the press were crucial for
mass communication during the Constitutional Movement, but not in the
290 Katja Föllmer
sense that all people had the same access to the media. The mass of illiterate
and rural people rather got the new messages still in the traditional way,
through traditional media, public feasts, narrators etc.
The publications that consider the historical development of the mass
media in Islamic countries like Iran rather focus on technical progress without
concerning the traditional media and communication forms as its social
origin.7 Some authors describe and analyze the later use of mass media in
religious and ethnic contexts and their contribution to the emergence of a new
religious public sphere.8 Eickelman notes that communication via mass media
also has to deal with direct personal communication as an important part of
the development of a public sphere with a vital religious function.9 Thus, the
study of mass communication in the Iranian context should consider the
mutual relationship with direct interpersonal communication, which depends on
the opinion leader of a social group as a central element in the communication
process.10
This paper will focus on those institutions and media through which religious
concerns were communicated and which were addressed to heterogeneous and
widely dispersed audiences. Birgit Meyer notes:
The rearticulation of religion necessarily implies some kind of transforma-

tion, which entails shifts of its position in relation to the state and the
market, as well as the shape of the religious message, structures of
authority, and modes and moods of binding and belonging.11
Therefore, the traditional and new role of the clerics and religious intellectuals
as opinion leaders is discussed. Then, the traditional religious passion plays
and public performances as popular rituals are taken into consideration for
their contribution to the discourse about religious values and principles. And
last but not least, the contribution of the press and literature on the religious
discourse will be analyzed. All of these aspects underlay evident changes in
their social and public relevance until the end of Reza Shah’s reign.
The involvement of Shi‘i clerics and Sufi orders in policy and their
modes of communication
Traditionally, many places and centres existed in and around an Iranian city
or village reflecting religious concerns of some kind: the mosque, the traditional
gymnasium (zurkhaneh), the cemetery and shrines of saints (emamzadeh,
qadamgah), sacred trees and wells, the Sufi convents (khaneqah), the educational
institutions (maktab, madraseh), as well as the bazaar nearby the mosque. The
Islamic representatives, the Shi‘i ‘olama’, were involved in many public rituals
and feasts like mourning rites, commemorative rituals (rowzeh-khvani),
weekly gatherings for religious discussion or recitation, annual passion plays
and pilgrimages. They participated in weddings for the supervision of the
public contract, took part in funerals and were responsible for religious
instruction and education, as well as for the observance of Islamic morality in
commercial bazaar activities. In sum, religion was part of the everyday social
life of the Iranian people,12 and the clergy’s role was to intermediate between
believers and revelation.13 The strong connection between clerics and bazaaris,
religious education, social welfare, kinds of entertainment and religious public
feasts led to the adept transmission of information in a local area among all
social levels. The clerics were the only group to have links with all economic,
social and administrative strata in Iranian society. The deep involvement of
religion in daily affairs, their description in religious terms, symbols or ele-
ments – preferably in a simple, emotional language and in easy memorable
forms – and their social determination by their local and religious origin, all
this demonstrates the strong religious feeling of the people and their need for
a moral religious authority.
In nineteenth-century Iran we find a range of factors that were to affect public
communication, which was traditionally based on face-to-face interaction and
often determined by the involvement of the clerics. The first political agitation
leading to the mobilization of the masses against the Iranian government was
during the Tobacco Protest of 1891–92. This happened in cooperation with
religious intellectuals like Jamal al-Din Afghani. Afghani wrote a letter to
Ayatollah Mirza Hasan Shirazi (1814–96) choosing a religious tone when
addressing the highest of the ‘olama’, which caused him to agitate and to unite
the ‘olama’, the merchants and the people in the protest movement.14 Shirazi
and the Tehran ‘olama’ communicated via a telegraph connection carried out
via the chief of Tehran merchants, Malek al-Tojjar, who was a close follower
of Afghani. Shirazi received telegrams and letters from all parts of Iran
asking him to help cancel the concession. The nationwide protest reached its
culmination with Shirazi’s Fatwa: ‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the
Forgiving, today the use of tonbaku and tobacco in any form is reckoned as
war against the Imam of the Age (may God hasten his Glad Advent!)’.15
Only through the involvement of high mojtaheds16 in political and economic
issues, and the use of well-known forms of religious discourse by religious
authorities, did the Tobacco Protest of 1891–92 become a successful nation-
wide movement, the first ‘profound mass movement’17 and first politicization
of the Iranian people. Traditional face-to-face-communication (e.g. sermons,
religious ceremonies and gatherings) in combination with a good social and
clerical network and the use of new communication techniques like the tele-
graph still dominated. The Iranian newspapers Akhtar and Qanun, published
outside Iran, were of some influence on the intellectuals, as well as the use of
anonymous letters and placards in an orthodox Islamic language style. The
importance of such new media and the use of an appropriate simple language
increased a few years later during the Constitutional Movement.
In summary, the Tobacco Movement was a significant political event and
provides a good illustration of the nationwide flow of information by means
of both old and new modes of communication through new alliances between
intellectuals, reformists and traditional religious authorities. In this way, the
292 Katja Föllmer
news about extraordinary events such as the ban of a leading molla, the call
for jehad and the exclusion of the ‘unclean’ employees of the tobacco régie
was able to spread throughout the country in a very short time.18 Finally,
Ayatollah Mirza Hasan Shirazi’s (1814–96) pronouncement gave the protest
nationwide proportions. His fatwa, which banned the use of tobacco, was
couched in simple terms.19 The regional movement was able to expand and to
become an oppositional mass movement.20 In all important urban centres the
bazaars were closed and people abstained from the consumption of tobacco.
The Movement had demonstrated how the leading ulama … could

mobilize both the resentments and the religious feelings of the masses in
a way that the reformers [could not]. … Profound discontent with eco-
nomic and administrative oppression … with the encroachment of for-
eigners, meant that popular reaction was bound to take a largely
traditionalist and anti-foreign form.21
“After the tobacco movement, the reformer made continual attempts to keep
the leading ‘ulama involved in oppositional activity.”22 Until the Constitu-
tional Revolution (1906–11) a declaration by a local religious authority was
more successful than efforts by intellectuals. High clerics thus led political
agitation through their personal contacts with each other and through public
sermons and instructions. At this time, the press was still of limited impor-
tance for transregional mass communication. Letters and telegrams were the
most commonly used media between the elites. Apart from religious author-
ity, simple language and religious symbolism helped to transform the protest
from an intellectual endeavour into a mass movement. The independent
political position of the ‘olama’ and the success of the Tobacco Movement
increased the ‘olama’s political power in the following years, even though the
Qajars tried to divide them, especially the emam-e jom‘ehs and mojtaheds.23
As many of the leading religious officials (mojtaheds, prayer leaders and
others) were far from being moral paragons, people often expressed their
feelings through the language of Islamic modernism and Sufism.24 Most of
the intellectuals joined Islamic modernism or even advocated secular ideas,
whereas Sufism formed a popular counterpart of the religious doctrines of the
conservative ‘olama’. Reformists, like Sayyed Jamal al-Din Afghani (1839–97)
and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani (1853–96), saw the need for a cultural revival,
political reform and a move away from the man-made decline, but they were not
successful in the wide-ranging spread of their ideas. Sometimes their language
was too difficult, sometimes their ideas were too abstract, theoretical or con-
tradictory to be understood by the masses.25 The writings of Mirza Malkom
Khan (1833–1908) in his paper Qanun, for instance, might have been influ-
ential among the Tehran intellectuals even before the Tobacco Movement.
The importance of his ideas and postulations was only rediscovered some years
later when new copies of Malkom Khan’s texts were published.26 Malkom’s
confused and contradictory statements of religious affiliation were not of
decisive evidence.27 Thus, intellectual reformers did not enjoy direct popular
support during the Tobacco Movement. They could not realize their ideas
without the help of the ‘olama’.
Prior to the Constitutional Movement new intellectual organizations and
secret societies formed the first non-religious opposition network against the
government. These institutions played an important role for the forthcoming
revolution. Their members were interested in the freedom of public opinion
and press to write and publish newspapers. Besides the use of these modern
media, public communication forms like improvisational performances, read-
ings of newspapers and the recitation of poems were used to politicize the
Iranian people.
The first protest against the Qajar government was a peaceful procession
during the religious mourning of Moharram in 1905 to protect and give
sanctuary to Iranian businessmen and a congregation of merchants and
theology students in the main mosque of Tehran, led by the high clerics
Sayyed Mohammad Tabataba’i and Sayyed Abdollah Behbahani, at the
Shrine of ‘Abd al-‘Azim near Tehran.
During the Constitutional period, particularly after the convening of the
Constituent Assembly, when political organizations had developed and regio-
nal, ethnic and religious associations came into being, Iran’s new intellectuals
intensified the use of print media and published many new periodicals. “The
number of papers and journals published within Iran jumped from six on
the eve of the revolution to over one hundred during the ten months after the
Constituent Assembly.”28 The Iranian press thus gave public discourse a new
meaning, which reflected the views of the masses excluding rival opinions,
such as orthodox-religious and anti-constitutional positions. In the Iranian
newspaper Sur-e Esrafil anti-clerical radicals satirized the mollas as ‘money
grabbers’ and suggested that the ‘olama’ should keep their hands out of poli-
tics.’ Habl al-Matin ridiculed the authors of the constitution for having insti-
tuted a supreme committee to judge the religious legitimacy of all bills: ‘This
makes as little sense as having a supreme committee of five merchants to
scrutinize the commercial validity of all laws deliberated by the peoples
representatives.’ The paper also placed the whole blame for the decline of the
Middle East on clerical ignorance, superstitions, obscurantism, dogmatism
and insistent meddling in politics.29
The parliamentary dispute between liberal secular and conservative deputies
led to a conflict with and the detachment of traditionalist clerics, who went
their own way to follow their interests. The ratification of the Fundamental
Law in 1906 caused some ‘olama’ to be dissatisfied with the Constitution.
Traditional conservative clerics like Sheykh Fazlollah Nuri did not use the
full potential of the new media. He rather helped to form a conservative
organization and political society with a functional network of royalists and
lower social classes. To express his protest Nuri went to the Shrine of ‘Abd
al-‘Azim, the place where the Constitutional Movement had its starting point.
He was in close contact with the religious centre in Najaf and the politically
294 Katja Föllmer
neutral marja‘ (source of emulation), Sayyed Kazem Tabataba’i Yazdi, who
supported Nuri’s demands. Furthermore, the constitutionalist ‘olama’ of
Najaf and apolitical clerics also joined Nuri’s alliance. This alliance and its
ideology of Islamic traditionalism found its expression in a published tele-
gram and a so-called ruz-nameh that had an immediate impact on religious
craftsmen and traditionalist deputies of the Majles.30 Nuri’s well-organized
social network connecting conservative, neutral and constitutionalist clerics,
upper-class monarchists and the lower classes against the new middle-class
intelligentsia and secular forces was very successful. The use of print media
and the telegraph was only of secondary importance as far as it could help to
establish transregional connections. This traditionalist alliance was focused on
political agitation rather than intellectual discourse. Chehabi notes on the parti-
cipation accompanied by mass mobilization: “the nondemocratic opposition is
almost by its very nature more adept at bringing out the people to the streets
than its democratic counterpart.”31
Two years after Nuri’s hanging in 1909 by constitutionalists, the nation-wide
traditionalist movement came to an end. The traditionalist Yazdi advised the
‘olama’ to withdraw from the political arena and preserve the Islamic tradi-
tion in their mosques and seminaries. In the 1920s the political figures Ahmad
Shah and Reza Khan still needed the ‘olama’ as allies. They were aware of the
‘olama’s power. Reza Khan consulted with them and cultivated their support
in his efforts to become Iran’s monarch.32 He promised to carry out the cler-
gy’s convictions and intentions, including the distribution of sacred religious
texts. Instead of keeping his promise he imposed many restrictions on their
most important spheres of social influence: religious education as well as
religious endowments (owqaf). The ‘olama’ could not articulate their dis-
content appropriately in public. Protests against Reza Shah soon ceased.
From 1926 until 1932, the ‘olama’ constituted around 30–40 per cent of the
deputies in the sixth and seventh Majles. In 1937, the parliament did not
include even a single important figure from the ‘olama’.33
Even though several westernized intellectuals and Reza Shah himself had
sympathies for and relations with Sufis, Sufism also suffered under the anti-
religious policy of the Shah, who criticized certain dervishes, their practices
and the anti-modernism they represented, and saw a concurring social power
in its popularity.34 Despite its anti-religious policy the Iranian state under Pah-
lavi rule never followed a full-fledged ideology of secularism,35 but western
secular ideas on the separation of nation-state and religion gained ground,
especially in the Reza Shah period, and formed a challenge to Islamic clerics.
In the early Pahlavi period, Sufi orders transformed in different ways as the
Soltan‘alishahi and Safi‘alishahi branch of the Ne‘matollahi order demon-
strate. In 1939, on the Shah’s request, a booklet (pand-e Saleh/Saleh’s advice)
was published, written by a leading Soltan‘alishahi, which instructed adult
illiterates on legitimate Sufi behaviour. Curiously, the mystical content of it
was insignificant. Its description did not distinguish a certain Sufi order from
other Iranian Shi‘ites, and, most important, it was not directed against the
prevalent social and state order.36 Thus, van den Bos argues, the Soltan‘a-
lishahi branch of the Ne‘matollahi Sufi order evolved from a powerful but
localized sect into a nationally integrated socio-religious organization.37 The
Safi‘alishahi branch of the Ne‘matollahis instead had founded the Society
of Brotherhood (Anjoman-e Okhovvat) already in 1899 and also combined
politics with mysticism up to 1922. It grew most and became more public and
nation-oriented under Reza Shah. It was an exclusive organization with few
material traces, like the Freemasons. One of its publications was the Magazine
of Brotherhood (Majalleh-ye Okhovvat), published in Kermanshah; another
magazine published in Tehran was the Magazine of Morals (Majmu‘eh-ye
Akhlaq). The Kermanshah magazine was progressive, nationalistic and
patriotic. It discussed the role of poetry, the female role for patriotism and the
need of education. The leader even worked as diplomat.38 The powerful elite
of the order did not question the Shah’s autocracy, and its modernism evolved
from an authentic democratic reform-mindedness to political silence.39
Van den Bos concludes that under Reza Shah Sufism lost its exterior
power and changed radically. Sufi ideology increasingly argued its relevance
for the Iranian nation and transformed mystic religiosity in the context of
the nation-state. The magazines offered a platform for pluralistic discussions
within the Sufi order. Internally this orientation changed the traditional
spiritual authority into a (this-wordly) authority through rational reasoning.
A national religiosity was publicly propagated by the Safi‘alishahis, whereas
the Soltan‘alishahis addressed a generalized Shi‘ite religiosity40 and were thus
excluded from state power.
In summary, clerical institutions in the Reza Shah period were not capable
of challenging the state and its secular opponents. The clergy did not have any
public communication platform, neither political literature nor organizations;
some of them, mainly the orthodox conservatives, persisted instead in maintain-
ing their conventions;41 others, like Sufi orders, gathered and organized in secret
circles and became part of the state administration, or they transformed their
religiosity into the idea of the nation-state. The reliance of the clerics upon
popular support under Reza Shah made many of them subservient to the
wishes of the common people, or they sided with the government and, as a
consequence, they lost their intellectual freedom.42 Socially they lost their
importance as a moral and educated authority. The number of religious
students in the intellectual religious centre Qom declined.43
The Shi‘i establishment in general was a hindrance to the realization of the
Shah’s modernization efforts.44 At the same time, the government’s enforcement
of European dress codes, the headgear for men and the prohibition of veiling
for women, as well as the Shah’s wife’s visit to a mosque while being unveiled,
were great provocations not only for the clerics but also for the religious
feelings of the Shi‘i masses. Since the clergy was divided and influenced by its
own particular interests and individual relations with the laity, rather than by
strong bonds among themselves, their social influence underwent a fundamental
transformation not only through nationalization and centralization measures.45
296 Katja Föllmer
Finally, the clergy was under stringent state supervision from 1934 on, which
curtailed its political and social power during the Pahlavi era.
The time of Reza Shah’s rule could be called a period of contemplation and
self-criticism for the clerics, which formed the basis for later religious reforms.
They were forced to rationalize their financial revenues and economic affairs,
to develop an advanced systematic theology and to standardize the academic
curriculum of religious centres, before, in the 1940s, they successfully cultivated
extensive communication networks throughout the country and established
religiously inclined publishing houses and journals.46
Khomeini reflected the Reza Shah period and the status of the ‘olama’ in
his Kashf-e Asrar (1943). His intention was to defend Islam, the Qoran and
the homeland against unbelief, ignorance and religious factionalism, which
occurred within Iranian society under Reza Shah.47 His polemic writing
against prostitution, the abolition of the veil, mixed schools for girls and boys,
the sale and consumption of alcohol, and music is also directed against the
new media and the media and information policy of the Shah regime.
According to him the media propagate a negative image of the clergy and
circulate lies and untruths:
[W]ith their shameful pens, they have blackened a number of sheets and
distributed them among the masses, not realizing that, today, to weaken
the resolve of the people in religion, in religious observance and towards
the clergy is among the greatest crimes, as nothing is more conducive to
the annihilation of the Islamic countries.48
Khomeini argues that the media produces the degeneration and demoralization
of young people, who spend their time on the streets, in cinemas and theatres
instead of learning the religious commandments and moral issues and
duties.49 The people should read the books and treatises of the mojtaheds and
their advice on the right way of living, based on their rational and decent
judgement. The mojtaheds who have saved the knowledge of centuries can safe-
guard the certainty and security of the country better than the administration
and security forces of the state.50
Khomeini is aware that the clergy are not able to match up to the new
popular media and state-controlled press. One reason for this he sees in the
loss of their authority and the importance of their words even though the
people indeed know the clerics well and look up to them. The clergy needs power
and the support of the people for the realization of their proclamations.51 When
he defends the books of his co-religionists and religious newspapers as a
thousand times better than the other stupid media he calls for the fight
against it:
My pious co-religionists, my innocent brothers, my friends of the Persian

language, my zealous youth, my honourable compatriots, read these
infamous papers, these manifestations of offence, these foundations of
discord, these roots of immorality, these invitations to Zoroastrianism,
the return to the Magi, these maledictions of religious sacred things, and
then, come out with a plan of remedy; with national enthusiasm, with a reli-
gious movement … , with patriotic anger, with a powerful will and an iron
fist you have to take away this unclean, disgraceful seed from the earth.52
To communicate the proper religious values and morals Khomeini suggests to the
people to buy and read the treatises of the living mojtaheds, which form a large
collection of substantial knowledge. This would be cheaper than an evening in
the cinema or theatre.53 The radio should have a decent speaker to talk – for
at least a few minutes – about the life of an outstanding man of Islam who
fought for the country’s independence, as a role model for the young people.54
In Khomeini’s understanding the clergy acts in regard to the new media in
a strong, limited frame. He gives preference to written media like books and
treatises, rather than newspapers or direct contact with the people. He does
not take the high illiteracy of the common people into consideration. He still
does not recognize the usefulness of the visual media for his purposes; he
rather reduces its function to the distribution of false images that are hostile
to Islam, whereas the radio could be the only alternative as a means of right
instruction by a ‘decent speaker’.
The traditional rowzeh-khvani has a special meaning. Khomeini, who
himself worked as a rowzeh-khvan, acknowledges its importance only under
clerical direction. As part of a non-governmental organization, this popular
tradition would hence help the land and the people to convey God’s com-
mandments, moral and gnosis. The social and cultural importance of such
traditional performances as cultural representations and as ‘the most basic ways
to study modes of human interaction’ is outlined by William O. Beeman.55 The
next section will shed light on it.
The role of public religious and popular performances

Many studies of Iran at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the
twentieth centuries have focused on social and political issues and the role of
the press in literary development and political change, but further questions
considering the public communication culture in Iran and the role of enter-
tainment in special popular events still remain unanswered. Considering the
fact that the large majority of the city’s inhabitants were illiterate there was a
clear effort to extend social influence to mobilize the masses via readers who
were asked to inform those who were unable to read.56 Traditional mass
communication at public events and performances played a crucial role in this
respect. These events and performances are ritual or ritual-like activities in
religious or non-religious contexts with a high symbolical character. Public
feasts, ceremonies, political rites and even theatre performances are multiple
and redundant rituals with more than one message or purpose. They are a
means for defining and reaffirming the full extent of human community and a
298 Katja Föllmer
medium for expressing values and appropriate responses for instance to the
demands of tradition and history, and status and destiny.57 Ritualized events
are symbolic representations of the social and spiritual unity of the participants
and make direct information flow between the different social levels. Besides the
crucial role for communication beyond social borders ritualized events can
combine popular culture with religious representation. Performance theory
models suggest active roles for ritual participants who reinterpret value-laden
symbols as they communicate them. Non-intellectual dimensions with emotive,
physical and even sensual aspects dominate the performative medium. Religious
performances in particular serve as a revitalization of religious experiences.58 As
a sensual form religious performances are part ‘of a particular religious aes-
thetics, which governs a sensory engagement of humans with the divine and
each other’.59
When we see the relatively high number of traditional public spaces
that existed in the 1920s it becomes clear that communication at these places
was the common method of people’s interaction. In the capital Tehran for
instance, in the year 1922, traditional public spaces were still prevalent, with
514 coffeehouses, 155 public baths, 180 mosques, 30 madrasehs and 295
karavansarays, in comparison with modern public spaces, in which there are a
relatively high number of modern schools (99), only 35 coffeeshops, 15 res-
taurants and 8 cinemas.60 Apart from military and administrative professions,
traditional jobs still dominated. There were 180 employees in mosques and
emamzadehs, 140 professional ta‘ziyeh performers, 80 traditional singers and
instrumentalists (motreb), 391 narrators of the tragedies of Karbala (rowzeh-
khvan) and 211 religious teachers and prayer leaders (pishnamaz), in relation
to modern professions such as 47 teachers of music, 15 official teachers, 18
journalists and 4 newspaper vendors,61 from a total number of 196,255 registered
inhabitants.62
However, public performance and entertainment was a very important
factor in Iran not only since Safavid times. These ritual events brought people
from all social levels together in one public place at a certain time. The public
event served the cohesion of the community and reaffirmed social, religious
and moral values, and was therefore also used for political propaganda.
Already under the Qajar reign (1796–1925) many of the old traditions were
revived, in particular the rowzeh-khvani and ta‘ziyeh passion plays, but also
the naqqali tradition and the performance of comedy plays (shabih-khvani,
mazhakeh, taqlid).63 The Qajar rulers who had no religious legitimization
supported the popularization of religious customs like rowzeh-khvani and
ta‘ziyeh performances, and built particular theatre buildings for them, the
tekiyehs. They tried to proclaim themselves as legitimate descendents of ancient
Iranian monarchies. Thus they also supported the print of the Shah-nameh
and the oral naqqali tradition in coffeehouses. Also in Qajar times the naqqali
tradition developed from an aristocratic entertainment in exclusive coffee-
houses into a popular performance tradition in public places.64 All of these
forms have two things in common: they were mainly oral, transmitted from
one generation to another, and they were to a great extend improvisations.65
The pieces were performed everywhere all over the country and had an
enormous audience.66 The humorous passages of ta‘ziyeh, the so-called
gusheh and the religious parody and farce ‘Omar koshan were of special
interest to all social strata in urban and rural spaces, both the intellectuals
and the common people, and directly criticized the real social and political
situation.67
At the end of the Qajar reign, new media like the press, telephone and tele-
graph were still not available to the masses. In the predominantly agricultural
and nomadic Iranian society with a high amount of illiterates and very limited
access to the new media, easily memorable forms of transmission like poetry,
short stories and theatre performances played a crucial role in the prevalent
oral mass communication. These forms have had a great appeal to the con-
ventionalized, codified and culturally shared emotions of the people.68 This
was the best way for the transmission, reception and reflection of knowledge
and political messages that could motivate an individual’s actions. As naqqali
performances were accused of instigating riots they were forbidden in the late
1920s. Some years later, only a few naqqals were allowed to recite the Shah-nameh
to promote the Pahlavi regime.69
The rowzeh-khvani, the stationary Shi‘i commemorative ritual and important
parts of the ta‘ziyeh plays in particular were specialized in the manipulation
and emotionalization of the assembled crowd of all social strata. The prose
narration in combination with illustrating lines of poetry gave the rowzeh-
khvani a timeless quality. Thus, its religious chants, symbols and poetry were
often exploited for political purposes.70 The rowzeh served to articulate the
scholastic learning of the ‘olama’ with popular belief. It was a lesson for
moral and righteous living, and the interpretation of belief occurred ‘in a
social dialectic, informed in part by the dramaturgic ordering of the Karbala
story’.71 Under Reza Shah, rowzehs, still a key medium of popular religion,
were monitored and around 1935 laws against rowzeh-khvani preachments
should limit its influence.72
The ta‘ziyeh drama performance was a living tradition for which new plays
and local variations on the traditional themes were composed; but in the
1930s, it was considered a backward religious and social ritual, and restrictions
were imposed on its performance in urban centres. In 1932, the performances of
passion plays were forbidden, whereas on the rural periphery these plays were
still performed for a while, until their official prohibition in 1935. In 1936,
Reza Shah outlawed the carrying of the naql in the city.73
Comic improvisational theatre with music, songs and performance still
must have been present under Reza Shah. Especially popular improvisation
theatre was still performed in small towns and in rural areas at wedding
feasts. Beeman reports a decrease in popular entertainment only since the
1960s when the number of theatre groups began to diminish. Maybe this type
of entertainment was no longer considered to be modern, the mode of financing
weddings changed, and in particular the policy of the Ministry of Culture and
300 Katja Föllmer
Arts under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had a significant impact on its gradual
disappearance. The groups had to get licenses, but did not know how, and they
were required to submit their scripts to the relevant officials for censorship. The
main point Beeman does not explicitly consider is the increasing role of
Iranian TV and cinema, with domestic film production as a means of enter-
tainment spreading a change in public taste and an acquaintance with the
urban lifestyle to the provinces.74 Since the 1940s, people’s interest in tradi-
tional entertainment has decreased with growing access to the new mass
media like radio, television and cinema.
The mainly secular performances of naqqali, taqlid or ru-howzi aside, European
theatre was gradually introduced and performed in Persian towns. However,
this was not as widely popular as the traditional performances were. The
impact of Azeri-speaking writers on the development of Persian drama is
undeniable. The writer Jalil Mohammad Qolizadeh published his critical
plays in the influential Azeri paper Molla Nasr al-Din. Despite the lack of
success of these plays on Iranian stages, the first step toward a modern form
of Persian drama was made. Later, the drama further developed as a means of
criticising the ruling class.75 A successful representative of Iranian playwrights
in the 1920s was the nationalist Sayyed Mohammad Reza Mirzadeh ‘Eshqi
(1893–1924). His plays were known for their powerful criticism of the new
Pahlavi regime, which made him the first victim of that regime.76
Religious rhetoric, the satirical communication mode and the press

The introduction of new communication media such as the telegraph and
newspapers, the establishment of a postal system and the improvement of
travel and transport connections facilitated and advanced communication
between the Iranian people over great distances.77
Already during the Tobacco Movement Persian newspapers from abroad
like Qanun and Akhtar reported on the concession debate and the great foreign
influence in Iran. The exact influence of the Persian journal Qanun, published
by Mirza Malkom Khan (1833–1908) in London, on the Iranian people
cannot be measured, but both he and Afghani had prominent friends in Iran,
and the Islamic tone of their writings may well have influenced the religious
classes.78 Furthermore, the distribution of information was well organized.
Thus, hundreds of copies of anonymous leaflets that attacked the government’s
policy on Islamic religious principles were distributed at night in the mosques
and madrasehs. Later, large numbers of pamphlets were also sent by Malkom
Khan, to be distributed in the provinces.79
The new intellectuals concentrated on the use of print media, which some of
them thought to be the only means by which to spread new ideas.80 Kermani
for instance, like many others, seemed to have generally avoided oral forms of
transmission and ignored the fact that not the medium, but (religious)
authority and the mode of expression were crucial for widespread success.
Not so Afghani. His influence was greater, but without religious authorities
his message also remained limited to intellectuals and the ruling elite. When
he wished to convene Tehran’s intellectuals in 1889 to support him and his
reforms and to overthrow the Iranian government, strengthening the opposi-
tion to the tobacco concession from London, he was able to gain the audience’s
interest through his rhetorical capabilities. Despite this and the use of ortho-
dox appeals to the religious,81 this was not sufficient to mobilize people.82
Keddie notices that ‘many’ Iranians only heard of Afghani when he published
the Arabic newspaper al-‘Urva al-Vusqa in Paris,83 but this should be confined
only to the elite circles of Iranian politicians who were interested in foreign news
for political reasons. Furthermore, in most cases the new intellectuals and
reformers were of lay backgrounds and had no religious authority to support
them. This limited their impact on the masses. Even Afghani’s tactic of present-
ing himself as a religious figure with the support of admirers and disciples
remained unsuccessful until he arranged an alliance with leading ‘olama’.
Their authority and use of religious language and arguments were necessary
to move the masses.84
The use of religious symbols underlined the social and political importance
of religion at that time. The proclamation of an Azerbaijani mojtahed, which
sets political issues in a religious context, is remarkable:
The unfortunate Azerbaijani, despite the lies of the slanderers with ulterior
motives, is not a wicked insurgent, nor a rebel, nor does he lay claims to
sovereignty: he is not seeking after independence or separation, nor does
he wish to cause a bloody uprising or to take revenge. On every occasion,
he has declared to his opponents and to all the world that his sacred goal
and lost beloved is Iran’s Constitution of eternal dominion, and his
cherished Ka‘ba is the National Assembly of Tihran. As for his equitable
judge and arbitrator of all differences, it is none other than that ‘Holy
Book’, the Constitutional Code.85
This example demonstrates the useful connection between conventional and

new concerns postulating political reforms. Even though the Iranian masses
were still illiterate and had no access to print media, periodicals were the
most important medium and had crucial public influence. The technical
standards of print allowed many editors to publish, and the weak government
did not control the rising number of periodicals. The new public medium
evolved not only into a communication platform for intellectuals, rather it
gave them the possibility of addressing the masses, combining performative ele-
ments with literary forms. Most of the new newspapers aimed to demonstrate
and explain the deficiencies of Iranian society to the people in order to gain
their support for new ideas.
The dominant tone in public communications was critical. Periodicals
which contained satirical texts and caricatures were the most successful
media. Kubíčkova summarizes the situation as follows: ‘Satire occupies the
foreground. … This modern Satire documents best certain important changes
302 Katja Föllmer
in poetic diction: expressions and turns of speech taken from the colloquial
language, … plays on words proper to folk-poetry, dialect words and slang.
Metrical principles are less strictly observed and, … , strophic song forms are
popular.’ Overall, poetry was still the preferred literary form, and had a
didactic and political character.86 Even the first translations of French drama
in 1866 were made in poetry.87
Satirical periodicals bridged the linguistic, social and regional gaps. They
witness the influence and popularity of the Turkish satirical magazine Molla
Nasr al-Din, published 1906–17 in Tiflis, 1921 in Tabriz and until 1929 in
Baku.88 Its success was due to its well-known writers as well as to its car-
icatures. Like many other periodicals, Molla Nasr al-Din profited from a cer-
tain degree of free expression in Czarist Russia. Writers like Jalil Mohammad
Qolizadeh, a satirist, playwright and short-story writer, and especially ‘Ali
Akbar Saber (Taherzadeh, 1862–1911) have had a great deal of influence on
Iranian poets and writers and brought about the beginning of the develop-
ment of modern Persian satire. Saber had no objections to Islam, but opposed
superstition, hypocrisy and sanctimony. Saber’s satirical poems draw a vivid
and humorous picture of his contemporaries. He had a special interest in Iran
and its political events in the course of the Constitutional Revolution.
The clergy in Tabriz and the Iranian government regarded the journal and the
writings of Saber as so dangerous and heretical that they confiscated the
journal at Iran’s border.89 A very popular method of entertaining in Molla
Nasr al-Din was the frequent use of a fictional molla named ‘Molla Da‘i’ or
‘Molla ‘Amu’. This was a humorous and cynical figure. He was present in
every issue: he answered letters, advised the reader, parodied the viewpoints of
the establishment and was figured in cartoons.90 However, this paper became
a model for Persian satirical newspapers such as Nasim-e Shomal, Sur-e Esrafil
and Azerbaijan91 and contributed to the social awareness of the Iranian people
and their political agitation. Yet Molla Nasr al-Din’s sharp and principled
criticism of Islam and the ‘olama’ and its radical views concerning the role of
women were not reflected in the Iranian media.92 These media focused rather
on a range of journalistic, literary and creative forms than on the expression
of a radical politics.
A very popular Persian satirical paper of the time was Nasim-e Shomal,
edited by Mirza Ashraf al-Din Hoseyni Gilani (1871–1934) and published in
Rasht and Tehran.93 This was the only paper that was published for a longer
period, namely until the reign of Reza Shah, but it became an ordinary
newspaper after the death of Gilani. The Iranian poet translated or adapted
many of Saber’s poems and published them in the journal. He was a witty and
gifted narrator.94 Furthermore, its form – in poetry with recurring verses – made
it easy for illiterate people to memorize. This guarantied its popularity among
Iranians. Gilani’s popularity and his strong identification with the edited
paper were reflected in his nickname ‘Mr. Nasim-e Shomal’. As to the paper’s
distribution, it is said that ten- to twelve-year-old boys sold it on the streets. Sa’id
Nafisi reports that children gathered in front of the printing house, proud to
be the paper’s distributors and to bring a new sensation to the Tehran
people.95 Those who could read did this in public spaces: in the bazaar, at
crossroads, in coffeehouses and other places. Groups of people gathered there
to hear the latest news and the poems of Gilani,96 which commented on
everyday problems of the common people.
The Persian paper that has had a strong impact on both modern Persian
literature and the development of satire until recent times was Sur-e Esrafil with
its satirical column ‘Charand parand’, by ‘Ali Akbar Dehkhoda (1879–1959).97
Its success appears to have been unprecedented.98 However, Browne notes
that, generally speaking, we have little knowledge about its reception among
Iranians,99 and Catanzaro argues that Sur-e Esrafil might have been only part
of the intellectual discourse, mainly in Kerman and Shiraz.100 Sur-e Esrafil
was only published for one year in Tehran. It may have been the first paper
that was officially distributed and sold by children in the street and the
bazaar.101 The satirical column by ‘Dakhu’ may have had the largest audi-
ence.102 However, the paper’s impact on the development of modern Persian
satirical prose literature is undeniable.
Both Nasim-e Shomal and the column ‘Charand parand’ used simple
language, proverbs and common expressions. They showed their sympathy for
the hardships of the common people, and criticized those responsible. While
Dehkhoda marked a new direction in Persian prose literature, Gilani used the
more popular literary form of poetry, which had a long tradition in Iranian
popular culture. Both are the first Persian writers of modern Persian satire.103
Whereas Dehkhoda’s success stagnated after his paper was published abroad,
Gilani remained successful and became much better known after moving
from Rasht to Tehran, where he had a larger audience in all strata of Iranian
society. It is worth mentioning that although Nasim-e Shomal was only distributed
in Tehran, Gilani’s poems were known throughout Iran. People copied it and
sent it by post in all directions of their country.104
Another well-know Iranian periodical was the regional Tabrizi newspaper
Azerbaijan, whose special characteristics have been discussed by Raoul Motika.105
This constitutionalist newspaper was the first print medium intended for the
Azerbaijani–Turkish people. Papers of the religious conservative anti-con-
stitutionalists existed, but were of lesser importance, such as the paper Ey Molla
‘Amu.106Whereas Azerbaijan was written in Persian, Ey Molla ‘Amu was
published in Turkish. The anti-constitutional paper was not a professional
paper, but also included Molla Nasr al-Din’s method of dialogues between a
molla and an ordinary man of the masses.107 It was propagandistic and often
published simple copies of telegrams or text without any journalistic form.
The language and syntax were simple and near to the spoken language and
dialect.
A discussion in Ey Molla ‘Amu acknowledges the importance of the telegram
as a valuable mode of communication for the Constitutional Movement to
contact the ‘olama’ in Tehran and urban centres of the provinces, but it also
recognizes its vulnerability for manipulation.108 The anti-constitutional paper
304 Katja Föllmer
tried to protect the influence of the Shari‘a and the orthodox clergy, and
denounced the constitutionalists as tricksters,109 whereas Azerbaijan’s rhetoric
remained Islamic because this still shaped the people’s worldview and sense of
identity more than the developing Iranian national consciousness. This was
the main strategic factor for mass mobilization in regard to constitutional
aims. They emotionalized the people, relating the recent situation of the
Constitutional period to the martyrdom at Karbala, or demonstrating solidarity
with Muslims of all confessions using a pan-Islamic vocabulary. However,
nation and belief are strongly interconnected with each other, but Azerbaijan
subordinated belief to the concept of the Iranian nation and laid claim to a
civil law, which was refused by traditionalists as un-Islamic.110
We have no information about the reception of the newspaper Azerbaijan,
and Motika notices that the number of copies of a newspaper does not
necessarily reflect its circulation. Even illiteracy was not a hindrance to the
circulation of a newspaper’s contents. People gathered around and listened to
those who read articles aloud for instance in coffeehouses, where the recitation
of the Shah-nameh was replaced by the reading from a newspaper. Furthermore,
public contests promoted the spread of certain poems. For instance, those who
could recite the poem ‘Feryad-e vatan’, a Persian translation of a poem in
Molla Nasr al-Din that was published in the Cairo paper Hekmat, received a
free subscription to Azerbaijan.111
In summary, Motika observes a transition between older forms of public
communication, which were intended for the ruling elite, and novel forms,
such as newspapers, which were addressed to the masses as potential political
activists. He comes to the conclusion that even though there were religious
and ethnic conflicts they were seldom the subject of constitutionalist debates
in Azerbaijan. Motika argues that the constitutionalists intentionally avoided
references to those conflicts. They rather intended to create a new national
consciousness and not to endanger the Constitutional Movement.112 Further,
he does not find the mention of a separate religious group. By the simple
division between oppressors and the oppressed, who were in alliance with the
‘olama’, the newspaper offered a definition of the Iranian nation beyond religious
and social differences.113 The choice of Persian as the main language of the
newspaper also indicates the emphasis of the national aspect.
The instances of the Persian newspapers show the different aspects and com-
plexity of mass communication and political participation. During the Tobacco
Movement religious authority and argumentation were still important and
traditional oral communication dominated. Islamic reformists did not gain
much success despite an organized distribution of their written ideas. The
situation changed in the Constitutional Period when an increasing number of
intellectuals published periodicals to motivate people for political participa-
tion. The most successful papers emotionalized people through a satirical
communication mode, the use of colloquial language and popular literary
forms. They also gained the people’s interest through religious rhetoric, alle-
gories and metaphors without obtaining the support of a religious authority.
There was no equal access to the print media and a limited distribution of the
newspapers because of a small number of copies, an often irregular and brief
publication and an illiterate audience. Since the Constitutional Movement,
the daily press was not only a public political medium, it also became the first
arena of contemporary literary activities.114 Addressed to relatively large and
heterogeneous audiences the relevant written concerns were still transmitted
through oral communication at traditional public places. Eskandari-Qajar
summarizes:
Newspapers and their contents had crossed over into popular culture, not
only as conveyors of news but also as purveyors of entertainment and a
kind of entertainment that meshed well with existing traditional modes of
entertainment such as naghali (recitation) and the coffee house culture
that sustained it.115
Religious discourse in Persian literature

The development of Iranian journalism brought about a change in Persian
literary communication. Journalists expressed themselves in novel forms.
Literary themes of the past were insufficient for contemporary concerns.
Modernists sought to ‘replace flowery language, irrelevant fantasy, and crude
humour with noble and useful themes’.116
Since Reza Khan was aware of the importance of religion and the immense
social importance of the Shi‘i clerics, during his premiership he undertook
many efforts to demonstrate his affinity to Shi‘i Islam and the Iranian people.
He organized official religious congregations and personally led various pro-
cessions in the annual mourning for the martyrs of Karbala. The religious
establishment sent him gifts, which were publicly and ceremoniously delivered
to him. The clerics did not oppose his bid to become Shah and establish his
own dynasty.117
Soon after rising to power he broke with many members of the political
elite and modern intelligentsia. The national policy of Reza Shah to unify
Iran began with the suppression of separatist movements and revolts in the
provinces. His moves against the Bakhtiyari and the other tribes did not consist
of a frontal attack but a series of military, economic and administrative man-
oeuvres extended over a period of time. The clerics who were involved in the
protests were arrested or exiled.
The assassination of the American diplomat and photographer Major
Robert W. Imbrie during a religious ceremony in 1924 led to the beginning of
a strong censorship of the press. This forced political opposition to confine
their communication, as prohibitions and restrictions increasingly limited
traditional practices and the popular religious entertainments in particular.
The press had a tendency to report only results or final outcomes without ever
detailing or commenting on the background of an incident, its accompanying
306 Katja Föllmer
circumstances and its significance. The short report about the Mashhad riot
in the Gowharshad Mosque in 1935 by the newspaper Ettela‘at, for instance,
which was described as an expression of resistance by a group of clerics who
avoided the new European headgear,118 demonstrated the rigorous state control
of the flow of information and the absence of an intact traditional commu-
nication network between the clerics of Mashhad and the Iranian people.119
The riot at the anniversary of the destruction of the Shrine by Russian troops
ended with violence. It seems that contemporaries who did not take part in
this event had no further information than that of the newspaper.120
Social relations changed in particular during the Reza Shah period: women
appeared in public, a growing number of state-educated urban people had
access to different kinds of public communication forms, whereas traditional
communication modes preferred by Shi‘i clerics still existed, but were of
decreasing importance. Most of them confined themselves to their quietist
and apolitical traditional role. Many intellectual writers left the political
arena and addressed new fields of interest. Traditional performances like
ta‘ziyeh were forbidden as they were thought to cause trouble. Arguing with
Bell, ritual performances constitute a set of activities that construct particular
types of meaning and values in specific ways that imply dynamics beyond
official state control because they construct relationships of (religious) author-
ity and submission and are therefore a central arena for cultural mediation
between e.g. meaning and needs of the masses.121 The cultural policy of Reza
Shah, in contrast, was not only defined by western values, it also addressed only
the elite. Modern theatre performances, for instance, which were promoted by
the Shah, included primarily foreign pieces and were presented in foreign
languages. This and the cost of tickets made it available and comprehensible
to a minority of the literate urban elite only and not to the common people.
Despite the traditional communication that still existed under Reza Shah’s
rule the press played an increasing role in the expression of new ideas refer-
ring to the nation-state and modernism as well as to religious aspects. It was
not only a medium of entertainment and propaganda for the growing number
of literate citizens. It also became a medium for the discourse of scholars, new
intellectuals, writers and poets of the time with different social, religious and
educational background.
Literature should here be considered as a medium for the formation and
transmission of social discourses. Text and discourse interact with each other,
which makes historical reality and literature dependent on each other. This
also applies to directives of the government. When Kubíčkova argues that the
strict censorship of Reza Shah led to the decline of creative workers, who
turned their attention to formal problems connected with their art, it is only
one reaction to censorship from a literary studies perspective. Together with a
growing literacy and the complete lack of criticism, these developments might
have induced intellectuals to focus more strongly on the study of Iranian cul-
ture, religion and language, as Ebrahim Pur-e Davud (1885–1969) and Sadeq
Hedayat (1903–51) did, or on collecting regional customs, proverbs and
languages like Dehkhoda and Hedayat (a collection of proverbs, published in
1931, and an edition of a dictionary, the famous Farhang-e Dehkhoda), or in
literary criticism.
The technical superiority and the economic and political interference of the
West caused intellectuals and writers to search for a new self-awareness based
on a common cultural heritage that united the various religious and ethnic
groups and tribes, in contrast to the West and to other Islamic countries, so as
to define a common national culture and territorial integrity.122
A significant example of these new developments is the perception and use
of pre-Islamic Iranian heritage, which was one of the numerous forms of
nationalist sentiments and expression of unsatisfied expectations and violated
dreams of many nationalist politicians and writers, such as Mohammad Taqi
Bahar (1886–1951), Mohammad Reza Mirzadeh ‘Eshqi, Mirza Ashraf al-Din
Gilani, Ahmad Kasravi (1890–1946) and Mirza Abu al-Qasem ‘Aref Qazvini
(1882–1934).123
Interest in the Iranian pre-Islamic past had already begun in the nineteenth
century with the rediscovery of the Persian epic Shah-nameh. It was used as
political legitimization of the ruling Qajar elite on the one hand and as a
romantic escape from political reality by Persian poets and writers on the
other hand. Already during the Constitutional Movement, nationalist reformers
like Mirza Fath-‘ali Akhundzadeh (1812–78), Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani and
Mirza ‘Abd al-Rahim Tabrizi (Talebof) rejected Islam, westernism and
imperialism. At the same time they glorified Iran’s pre-Islamic past and the
Zoroastrian religion, which they thought to be related to national power.124
The period between 1909 and 1921 was a time of political chaos, dis-
illusionment and despair, especially for the new intellectuals who stressed the
glorious past of Iran and the positive aspects of Islam, in contrast to the
present. The works between 1909 and 1921 were apolitical and artificial, and
used legendary subjects. They criticized the public and private morals of their
day through popular ideas known from the Shah-nameh.125 A romantic view
and a didactic purpose dominated their writings at the expense of historical
truth.126 A prominent author in this respect was ‘Abd al-Hoseyn San‘atizadeh
(1895–1973), who glorified the Zoroastrian religion as the national religion of
Iran and as a symbol for socio-religious action against tyranny and corruption,
but his writings were of less literary quality.127
Bahar’s notion of an ideal national constellation for Iran is based on the
revival of ancient Iranian splendour, based on the Shah-nameh and the
potential of early Islam.128 For Bahar, the Islamic tradition is as important as
Iranian nationalism. They do not contradict each other. Like Amiri Farahani’s
(1860–1918) interest in ancient Iranian culture he also did not have an anti-
Islamic flavour.129 Ancestral heroism is important for Bahar, but he does not
refer to pre-Islamic religion. Ashraf Gilani’s poems also defended the cause of
Islam and glorified the grandeur of ancient Iran. He remained an ardent
Muslim, hoping that the emergence of the Hidden Imam would solve all
national and social problems. Not only in his faith, but also in his language
308 Katja Föllmer
and literary style, as well as in the selection of daily issues he remained close
to Iranian people.130
Persian writers generally portrayed pre-Islamic culture not only in an
idealistic manner, but also as a means for criticising the situation after the
Constitutional Movement: for instance, when the nationalist and strong
supporter of the Constitutional Movement, Mirzadeh ‘Eshqi, who edited the
journal Qarn-e bistom, saw that the movement did not meet with success, and
that the way for another autocratic monarchy was open, he wrote against it
with firm conviction. Finally, he paid with his life for his criticism. In his
stage play Rastakhiz-e Shahryaran-e (salatin-e) Iran (The resurrection of
the kings of Iran) ‘Eshqi, as a Muslim, did not hesitate to write about
non-Islamic religious aspects. He makes Zoroaster a moral instance and
messenger to the Iranian people, to enlighten them as to the rich Iranian
culture that stands in opposition to the culture of recent days. With the help
of the ancient culture ‘Eshqi clarifies the Iranian political situation for the
Iranian people and instructs them. The pre-Islamic God and his prophet
Zoroaster stand in contrast with the more recent Islam. The references in
‘Eshqi’s writing are still confined to the historical personages and myths of
the Shah-nameh.
The very popular tasnifs of ‘Aref Qazvini were also concerned with pre-
Islamic subjects, especially in the last years of his life131 when his poems
glorified the Zoroastrian faith as national religion.132 As already mentioned,
his communicative methods were very popular. He was an outstanding
entertainer, educated as a professional rowzeh-khvan. Browne describes him as
“a man of dervish-like disposition” who often sang ‘his poems to the accom-
paniment of music at public and patriotic meetings.’133 His pan-Islamic per-
suasion changed to anti-Arab sentiments and extreme nationalism that
favoured the ‘pure Zoroastrian Iranians’ and their ancient faith.134 Whereas
‘Eshqi became a great critic of Reza Shah, Qazvini refused to collaborate
with him when he wanted the use his tasnifs for propaganda issues.
Other writers, like Ebrahim Pur-e Davud and later Sadeq Hedayat, also
used references to ancient Iranian culture in their literary work. Pur-e Davud
surrendered to a romantic patriotism like ‘Eshqi, but he was the first who
widened and deepened the knowledge of ancient Iranian culture and pre-
Islamic religion through scholarly research in Germany and translations of
religious middle Persian texts. In his introduction to the translation of the
Gathas (published in 1924), the oldest written source of Zoroastrianism, Pur-e
Davud calls it ‘the oldest national tradition’ (qadimtarin asar-e melli) written
in the ‘greatest Iranian language’ (zaban-e bozorgtarin-e Irani). His emphasis
on the need for the exact words of Zoroaster’s messages reminds us of the
Islamic hadith tradition, with which he, as a former student of Islamic studies,
was familiar.135 His aim was to serve the Iranian Zoroastrians and to
enlighten Iranian Muslims about their cultural heritage for the salvation of
Iran. He therefore referred to Zoroastrian messianic figures and embraced the
ancestral faith, and posed it against Islam.136
Before Sadeq Hedayat turned to ancient Iranian culture, he analyzed the
poems of ‘Omar Khayyam, where he saw his own opinion and that of his
contemporaries reflected:
The reader will never doubt that the composer of the quatrains is mock-
ing all religious dependencies, belittling the clergy who carry on about
subjects of which they are completely ignorant. The quatrains demon-
strate the revolt of the Aryan spirit against the Semitic beliefs, and
Khayyam’s retaliation against the debasing and fanatical principles of his
people. It is obvious that a meticulous and liberated thinker such as
Khayyam could not have blindly adhered to dogmatic, arbitrary, fabri-
cated and irrational injunctions of the clerical institution, and to have
had respect for their silly, deceptive stories.137
Further he writes:
Perhaps Khayyam could be put next to other anti-Arab Iranians … . He

certainly employs a mournful tone when recounting the old glories of the
ancient courts and magnificent kings. And perhaps Ferdousi’s Shahna-meh
invokes in him such patriotic passions, for in his poems he endlessly
laments the Iranian glory trampled to the ground, and the palaces in
which bats and foxes now reside.138
In the 1930s, Hedayat’s most creative years, he not only specialized in folklore
and regional and social dialects, he also published collections of popular songs
and short stories like Zendeh be gur. In one of these stories, “Atashparast”
(The fire-worshipper), Hedayat demonstrates to the Iranian reader how fas-
cinating the experience of the ancient Iranian religion can be for an individual
and even for a foreign ‘unbeliever’.
As Gheissari notes:
To reconcile the discrepancy between his constitutionally sanctioned title

of monarch and his actual autocratic leadership, Riza Shah distanced
himself from the traditional sources of legitimacy, i.e., religion and tribe,
and turned instead to a carefully crafted version of nationalism that
celebrated Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage. This source of legitimacy could be
promoted as being older than Islam and broader than any single tribe. By
stressing the institution of kingship and the panorama of Iranian history
and culture, Riza Shah generated a deluge of nationalistic rhetoric and
sentiment. He named the new dynasty Pahlavi, a reference to the ancient
language of the pre-Islamic Sassanids. Heroes of the past were honoured;
ancient names and symbols were given to many public places and people
began to give their children old Persian names. The Iranian academy,
Farhangestan, was founded to purify the languages of foreign loanwords.
Emphasizing patriotic sentiments was a measure by which the Pahlavi
310 Katja Föllmer
state expected to curb foreign influence and reduce ethnic prejudices and
religious obscurantism in the country.139
The efforts of the intellectuals to make the discourse of nation and patriotism
part of the thoughts of the common people changed under the dictatorship of
Reza Shah. Under his reign the cultivation of the pre-Islamic heritage con-
tinued for state propaganda and political legitimization through the new
media, mainly the press, or by great public events such as the Ferdowsi festival.
The traditional communication modes and the influence of the clerics were
confined as far as possible. The literary activities in the early Pahlavi period
were limited to western-educated nationalist intellectuals who had a particular
interest in ancient Iranian history as a national heritage that distinguishes
Iranian culture from the rest of the Muslim world. Religious aspects were
discussed in relation to an idealization of the Iranian past. The acquisition of
knowledge and the reform of the Persian language superseded questions with
Islamic concerns. The religious rhetoric was replaced in favour of nationalistic
terms. Even though religious networking and reform evolved since the 1940s,
references to Islamic themes in Iranian public communication were still rare until
the 1960s and the publication of Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s (1923–69) Gharbzadegi. If
we find religious subjects in public discourse during the reign of Reza Shah,
these were often related to pre-Islamic issues, whereas traditional orthodox
Islam was generally avoided as being backward, and Sufi orders adapted to
the government policy.
Conclusion
The religious aspects of public communication underwent a significant change
from the beginning of the Tobacco Movement until the end of Reza Shah’s
reign. Public communication changed rapidly, particularly during the Con-
stitutional period. As Eickelman and Anderson summarize, the development
of nationalism and the proliferation of media and means of communication
have greatly increased the possibilities for creating new communities and net-
works among them, dissolving the earlier barriers of space and distance, and
opening new grounds for interaction.140 The increasingly open and accessible
forms of communication played a significant role in fragmenting and
contesting political authority that was not necessarily religious.
The popular support expressed through religious rituals and feasts was
limited by governmental supervision and restrictions. Leading traditional cle-
rics no longer had a significant influence on public communication in urban
centres insofar as they did not regard the new media as an appropriate means
to communicate religious knowledge, values and morals. For the same reason,
they were less than effective in their opposition to the anti-clerical, Islam-critical,
and secular ideas of the new intellectual middle class, or against popularization.
Under Reza Shah, the new media, Western education, and social and cultural
differences between modern urban centres and rural areas had a significant
impact on the decline of the clergy’s status and functions. Khomeini
acknowledged that the clergy needed the people’s support to regain its social
power and authority, but he did not offer a solution of the problem to realize
this in practice. Not until over a decade later, did the clergy have a new
opportunity to expand its authority, due to the growing influence of such
religious intellectuals as ‘Ali Shari‘ati and Jalal Al-e Ahmad, and also because
of socio-political factors which cannot be discussed here.
Sufi orders, on the other hand, outwardly adapted to the nationalistic ideas
of the government, while internally they experienced a religious reorientation
with regard to the modernization process. Their participation in public mass
communication was not relevant even though they had a few publications
through which they defined their social alignment. Religious authorities gen-
erally still followed the traditional way of oral communication without the use
of Iranian print media.
The process of transformation of political concerns into popular forms
made Persian print media a crucial means of communication between the
literate elites and illiterate people. A simple rhetoric, colloquial language, and
the use of religious terms and metaphors formed a common base for it.
Literacy and oral tradition could not be isolated from each other.141 The oral
transmission of relevant concerns or contributions of the press demonstrates
an interactive relationship between written and oral communication until the
middle of the Pahlavi period.
The great social and political impact of the press and its status as political
pluralist medium during the Constitutional period were lost in the Pahlavi
era. An intellectual discourse about education, Iranian history and the pur-
ification of the Persian language according to the government’s nationalistic
course dominated the activities in the press. This also included reflections on
religious issues that were shaped by nationalistic ideas.
The repression of Shi‘i clerics and traditions through an enforced moder-
nization process limited Islamic faith to the individual and the private sphere,
and largely confined it to the rural area. Since the clash between the Shah and
clerics, the Islamic faith and its institutions still did not provide an appropriate
alternative for opposition to the government. Thus, some of the intellectuals
such as ‘Eshqi, Hedayat and Pur-e Davud left the popular mainstream, which
criticized the present moral decline through references to the romantic ideal
of the Islamic past and ancient heroism. They rather explored Zoroastrian
faith as a religious and moral alternative even if this implied a rejection of
Islam, whereas ‘Aref Qazvini discovered its potential for the creation of a
national religion. All of them successfully combined the popular knowledge
of ancestral heroism and references to Zoroastrian faith. In his treatise Kashf-e
Asrar, Khomeini vigorously attacked the growing popularity of the Zoroastrian
faith under Reza Shah. He considered this development dangerous for mono-
theism in Islam (towhid) and called for the elimination of Zoroastrianism,
Zurvanism and Mazdakism as polytheistic (sherk) and idol worshipping (bot-
parasti) religions.142 However, the efforts of the Iranian literati to replace
312 Katja Föllmer
Islam with the idealized ancestral faith failed mainly because there were no
acknowledged Zoroastrian authorities who were able to undo the effects of
the centuries-old social tensions between Muslims and Zoroastrians, or elim-
inate their persistent suspicions of one another. The masses, whose knowledge
was only based on the popular Shah-nameh tales, failed to support such
developments, and social and cultural differences between the Islamic and
Zoroastrian communities persisted.143
In summary, the cultural activities in the Reza Shah period were predicated
on familiarization with the new European techniques and modes of commu-
nication, and with the new art forms which began to develop under Qajar
reign. Even though critical forms of expression such as satire stagnated, and free
expression of opinions in public was impossible, both the thirst for knowledge
about the Iranian cultural heritage and the burgeoning means of popular
entertainment under governmental supervision weakened the authority of Isla-
mic traditions. This formed the basis for Khomeini’s polemic treatise Kashf-e
Asrar. He claimed authority and power for the Shi‘i clergy for the sake of the
well-being of Iranian society, but he failed to recognize the potential value of
the new visual media and communication modes. Rather, he condemned
these, preferring communications based either on written texts addressing a
small literate elite or on oral transmission.
Iranian cultural production was generally no longer limited to the social
elite, but a disparity still existed since it was limited to the urban centres;
traditional communication still existed on a local rural level, but it was of less
importance for a transregional flow of information. A reflection of political
and social pluralism and criticism in the print media as in the Constitutional
period did not yet exist, but it offered the opportunity to develop novel fields
beyond journalistic activities and political opposition under the totalitarian
regime of Reza Shah.
The general exclusion of Islamic authorities from the public sphere and
their refusal of the new (particularly visual) media did not prevent them from
continuing with their traditional role and function while opposing Reza
Shah’s secular reforms. Leading clerics, who had lost much of their influence
on society, became less important for public mass communication, which had
been hitherto an established social medium; the clergy now needed to find
another way to communicate with the masses. Khomeini showed a certain
helplessness in this respect.
For the study of this ‘period of silence’ under Reza Shah, the focus on the
new media and modes of mass communication for the propagation of new
ideas and the knowledge of the official power structures alone do not offer a
profound understanding of a society that oscillated between traditional con-
ventions and modernization. Concerning the status of religion and its repre-
sentatives in the Iranian society of that time, we need to take into account not
just the social and ideological disparities, but also the cultural knowledge and
traditions that had accumulated over the centuries and were still very much
alive among the people.
Notes
1 Denis McQuail, Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction (London: Sage,
1994), p. 101. See for instance Dale F. Eickelman and Jon W. Anderson, ed., New
Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003).
2 Roland Burkart, Kommunikationswissenschaft (Wien: Böhlau, 2002), pp. 170–71;
and Heinz Pürer, Publizistik-und Kommunikationswissenschaft (Konstanz: UVK,
2003), pp. 58–75.
3 McQuail, Mass Communication Theory, p. 10.
4 Hans J. Kleinsteuber, “Nationale und internationale Mediensysteme” in Die
Wirklichkeit der Medien: Eine Einführung in die Kommunikationswissenschaft, ed.
Klaus Merten et al. (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994), pp. 544–45.
5 Peter van der Veer, “The Moral State: Religion, Nation, and Empire in Victorian
Britain and British India” in Nation and Religion. Perspectives on Europe and
Asia, ed. Peter van der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1999), p. 20; and Talal Asad, “Religion, Nation-State, Secularism”
in Nation and Religion, ed. van der Veer and Lehmann, p. 180.
6 Werner Faulstich, Medien und Öffentlichkeiten im Mittelalter 800–1400 (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1996), passim. Faulstich, who analyzed traditional
forms of direct communication, differentiates between communication media and
medial means of communication in relation to their social relevance. According
to him communication media are socially institutionalized in the communication
process, in contrast to media that only have a neutral function for the transmission
of information.
7 See Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ali Mohammadi, Small Media, Big
Revolution: Communication, Culture, and the Iranian Revolution (Minneapolis
and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
8 Eickelman and Anderson, New Media in the Muslim World.
9 Ibid., p. 15f.
10 Summarized by Gerhard Maletzke, Kommunikationswissenschaft im Überblick:
Grundlagen, Probleme, Perspektiven (Opladen and Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher
Verlag, 1998), pp. 111–16.
11 Birgit Meyer, “From Imagined Communities to Aesthetic Formations: Religious
Mediations, Sensational Forms, and Styles of Binding” in Aesthetic Formations.
Media, Religion and the Senses, ed. B. Meyer (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009),
p. 2.
12 Michael M. J. Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge,
MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 136–39.
13 H. E. Chehabi, Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism. The Liberation
Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini (London: I.B. Tauris, 1990),
p. 14.
14 Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al-Afghani”. A Political Biography (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 343–44.
15 Ibid., pp. 353–54.
16 A mojtahed exercises the ejtehad, an individual judgement in interpreting religious
law: for details, see Juan R. Cole, “Imami Jurisprudence and the Role of the
Ulama: Mortaza Ansari on Emulating the Supreme Exemplar,” in Religion and
Politics in Iran: Shi‘ism from Quietism to Revolution ed. Nikki R. Keddie (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 33–46.
17 Nikki R. Keddie, Religion and Rebellion in Iran: The Tobacco Protest of 1891–1892
(London: Cass, 1966), p. 7.
18 The protest sprang up in Tabriz, where a leading mojtahed preached against the
tobacco concession and declared the movement to be a jehad, a battle against the
314 Katja Föllmer
western ‘unbelievers’. The leading religious authorities in Esfahan declared
tobacco to be unclean. The local governor could not prohibit sermons and
meetings or the posting of placards in the bazaar declaring the employees of the
tobacco régie unclean and denying them entry into public places. In Shiraz a
crucial and unusual event which accelerated the protest movement was the official
expulsion of the leading molla, Sayyed ‘Ali Akbar, to Karbala after his public
sermon, which is said to have been inspired by an article against the tobacco
concession in the newspaper Akhtar. A telegram of protest was sent to the gov-
ernment and the telegraph office was threatened by the Iranian people and
‘olama’. This crowd was dispersed by armed troops and at least two people died.
The exiled Sayyed went to see Afghani, who wrote a letter to the leader of the
Shi‘i ‘olama’, Ayatollah Mirza Hasan Shirazi. Later, in London, Afghani printed
this letter and sent it to his Iranian friends for further distribution, see ibid.,
pp. 65–69, 73, 75ff, 94.
19 Clerics were rhetorically practised in communicating with ordinary people,
see Sreberny-Mohammadi and Mohammadi, Small Media, p. 105.
20 Ervand Abrahamian, “The Causes of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies 10 (1979), pp. 399–400. Asghar
Fathi, “Role of the Traditional Leader in Modernization of Iran, 1890–1910,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies 11 (1980), pp. 88–89.
21 Keddie, Jamal ad-Din “al-Afghani”, p. 355.
22 Ibid.
23 Keddie, Religion and Rebellion, pp. 114–19. Keddie divides between ‘shrine
‘ulama’ and ‘corruptible wordly ‘ulama’.
24 Fischer, From Religious Dispute to Revolution, pp. 136–39.
25 Keddie, Religion and Rebellion, p. 16; Fathi, “Role of the Traditional Leader,”
pp. 88–89.
26 Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
27 Hamid Algar, Mirza Malkum Khan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1973), p. 9.
28 Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions, p. 87.
29 Ibid., p. 93.
30 Said Amir Arjomand, “Traditionalism in Twentieth-Century Iran” in From
Nationalism to Revolutionary Islam, ed. Said Amir Arjomand (Oxford: MacMillan,
1984), p. 202.
31 Chehabi, Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism, p. 37.
32 Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran. Clergy-State
Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1980), p. 31.
33 Ibid., p. 59.
34 Matthijs van den Bos, Mystic Regimes: Sufism and the State in Iran, from the
Late Qajar Era to the Islamic Republic (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 74, 88.
35 Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph
of Nativism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996), p. 86.
36 Van den Bos, Mystic Regimes, p. 90.
37 Ibid., p. 91.
38 Ibid., pp. 99–105. Similar divisions of internal and external orientations already
existed in the thirteenth century, when Sufi Sheikhs could also have this-wordly
professions, like the druggist Sheikh ‘Attar-e Neishapuri.
39 Ibid., p. 108.
40 Ibid., p. 109.
41 The conservatives often spoke for non-practicable ideals and were thus subject of
many jokes, see Fischer, From Religious Dispute to Revolution, p. 138.
42 Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals, p. 82. Fischer, From Religious Dispute to Revo-
lution, p. 109: ‘Qum’s madrasas had fallen into disuse and ruin and the town had
suffered … “an intellectual famine”.’
43 Ibid., p. 114.
44 The Shah’s particular measures against the social influence of the clerics are
summarized by Azar Tabari, “The Role of the Clergy in Modern Iranian
Politics,” in Religion and Politics in Iran, ed. Keddie, p. 60.
45 Reza Shah continued to support the open conflict between the mojtaheds and the
emam-e jom‘ehs of the Qajar era, see Bill, The Politics of Iran, p. 24.
46 Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals, p. 80.
47 Emam Khomeini, Kashf-e Asrar (s. l., s. a.), p. 17.
48 Cited by Arjomand, “Traditionalism in Twentieth-Century Iran,” p. 205.
49 Khomeini, Kashf-e Asrar, p. 194.
50 Ibid., pp. 202–3.
51 Ibid., pp. 211–12.
52 Ibid., p. 74.
53 Ibid., p. 193.
54 Ibid., p. 215.
55 William O. Beeman, Iranian Performance Traditions (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda
56 Ali M. Ansari, Modern Iran, 2nd ed. (Harlow, England: Pearson Education
Limited, 2007), p. 99–100.
57 Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 120–37.
58 Ibid., p. 73.
59 B. Meyer, “From Imagined Communities,” p. 13.
60 Jafar Shahri, Tarikh-e ejtema‘i-ye Tehran dar qarn-e sizdahom, zendegi, kasb-o-
kar … , vol. 1 (Tehran: Esma‘iliyan, 1367/1988), pp. 69–71.
61 Shahri, Tarikh-e ejtema‘i-ye Tehran, pp. 85–87.
62 Ibid., p. 61.
63 Said Amir Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 77–78.
64 Kumiko Yamamoto, “Naqqa-li: Professional Iranian Storytelling,” in Oral
Literature of Iranian Languages, ed. Philip Kreynebroek and Ulrich Marzolph
(London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010), p. 246.
65 Even though in Qajar times professional writers, the maqtal-nevisan, were
employed to write ta‘ziyeh plays down, see Jamshid Malekpur, Adabiyat-e
namayeshi dar Iran: Nakhostin kushesh-ha ta dowreh-ye Qajar, vol. 1 (Tehran:
Tus, 1363/1984), p. 229.
66 Mostafa Osku’i, Seyri dar tarikh-e te’atr-e Iran (Tehran: Anahita Osku’i, 1378/
1999), p. 53.
67 Malekpur, Adabiyat-e namayeshi, pp. 242–72.
68 Siegfried J. Schmidt, “Die Wirklichkeit des Beobachters” in Die Wirklichkeit der
Medien: Eine Einführung in die Kommunikationswissenschaft, ed. Klaus Merten et
al. (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994), p. 11.
69 Yamamoto, “Naqqa-li,” p. 246.
70 Peter Chelkowski, “Kashefi’s Rowzat al-Shohada’: The Karbala Narrative as
Underpinning of Popular Religious Culture and Literature,” in Oral Literature of
Iranian Languages, ed. Philip G. Kreyenbroek and Ulrich Marzolph (London
and New York: I.B.Tauris, 2010), pp. 266–67.
71 Fischer, From Religious Dispute to Revolution, p. 178.
72 Ibid., pp. 109, 114.
73 Naql is ‘a huge, tear-shaped, wooden structure, requiring a hundred men to lift it,
representing the coffin of Hoseyn’, see ibid., pp. 170–72.
316 Katja Föllmer
74 William O. Beemann, “A Full Arena: The Development and Meaning of Popular
Performance Traditions in Iran,” in Modern Iran: The Dialectics of Continuity
and Change, ed. Michael E. Bonine and Nikki Keddie (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1981), p. 374.
75 Osku’i argues that this development may be the main reason for later closing
down the theatre of the Tehran university Dar al-Fonun, see Osku’i, Seyri dar
tarikh-e te’atr-e Iran, p. 103.
76 Osku’i, Seyri dar tarikh-e te’atr-e Iran, p. 133f.
77 Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions, p. 58.
78 Keddie, Religion and Rebellion, pp. 27–28.
79 Ibid., pp. 46–47, 60.
80 Hamid Khosravi Sharoudi, Zur Problematik des Demokratisierungsprozesses in
Iran: Eine soziokulturelle Analyze anhand von Entstehung und Scheitern der Kon-
stitutionellen Bewegung von 1906 (Berlin: Schwarz, 1998), pp. 157, 163–64.
81 Keddie, Religion and Rebellion, p. 27.
82 Sharoudi, Zur Problematik des Demokratisierungsprozesses, p. 149. Keddie, Reli-
gion and Rebellion, p. 19.
83 Ibid., p. 16.
84 Ibid., pp. 15–16.
-
85 Cited in Touraj Atabakai, Azerba-ija-n: Ethnicity and the Struggle for Power in
Iran (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000), p. 33.
86 Vêra Kubíčkova, “Persian Literature of the 20th Century” in Jan Rypka, History
of Iranian Literature, ed. Karl Jahn (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publ. Co., 1968), p. 363.
87 Osku’i, Seyri dar tarikh-e te’atr-e Iran, p. 133.
88 Hasan Javadi, Satire in Persian Literature (London and Toronto: Associated
89 Ibid., p. 145.
90 Ibid., p. 147.
91 Raoul Motika, Die politische Öffentlichkeit Iranisch-Aserbaidschans während der
-
Konstitutionellen Revolution im Spiegel der Täbriser Zeitung Aarba-yǧa-n (Frankfurt
am Main: Peter Lang, 2001), p. 185.
92 Ibid., p. 186.
93 This newspaper published weekly seven to eight pages and focused on satire and
social and literary subjects: see Mas‘ud Partavi and A‘zam Yazdanmehr, “Matbu‘at-e
tanz dar Iran az aghaz ta kunun,” Sal-nameh-ye Gol Aqa (1371/1992), p. 105.
94 Javadi, Satire, p. 152.
95 Cited by Yahya Aryanpur, Az Saba ta Nima: Tarikh-e 150 sal-e adab-i farsi, vol.
2 (Tehran: Zavva-r, 1372/1993), pp. 63–64.
96 Hojjatollah Asil, Nasim-e Shomal: Bargozideh va sharh-e ash’ar-e Ashraf al-Din
Hoseyn Gilani (Tehran: Farzan, 1382/2003), p. 10.
97 For example, it influenced the contemporary satirist Kiyumars Saberi Fumani
(1941–2004) and his column “Do kalameh harf-e hesab,” see Abu al-Fazl Zarru’i-
Nasrabad, “Moqaddameh’i bar sabk-shenasi-ye do kalameh harf-e hesab,”
Sal-nameh-ye Gol Aqa (1374/1995), pp. 100–130; and Katja Föllmer, Satire in
Iran von 1990 bis 2000 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2008), pp. 80–90.
98 Gholamhoseyn Yusofi, Didari ba ahl-e qalam, vol. 2 (Tehran: ‘Elmi, 1376/1997),
p. 154.
99 Edward G. Browne, The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia (Los Angeles: Kali-
mat, 1983), xii.
100 Christl Catanzaro, “Leserbriefe in Sûr-e Esrâfîl und Rûh. ul-Qods als Formen des
Informationsaustausches für die Intelligenzija der Mašrût.îyat-Zeit,” in Presse und
Öffentlichkeit im Nahen Osten, ed. Christoph Herzog et al. (Heidelberg: Orientverlag,
1995), p. 21.
101 Cited in Yusofi, Didari ba ahl-e qalam, p. 153.
102 Ibid., p. 153.
103 Morad Mohebbi, “Nasim-e shomal,” Sal-nameh-ye Gol Aqa (1374/1995), p. 54.
104 Ibid., p. 57.
105 Motika, Die politische Öffentlichkeit.
106 Charles Kurzman, “Introduction: The Modernist Islamic Movement,” in Mod-
ernist Islam 1840–1940, ed. Charles Kurzman (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002), p. 16.
107 Motika, Die politische Öffentlichkeit, p. 195.
108 Ibid., p. 195.
109 Ibid., p. 196.
110 Ibid., p. 171.
111 Javadi, Satire, pp. 147ff. Motika, Die politische Öffentlichkeit, p. 182.
112 Ibid., p. 164.
113 Non-Muslims seemed not to be part of the Iranian national ideal because they
maintained a degree of social isolation, see ibid., pp. 165–67. In 1909–10 the left-
democratic newspaper Iran-e Now was more progressive in its nationalistic atti-
tude, because it claimed for a full and equal treatment of Muslims, Jews, Chris-
tians, Zoroastrians, and Persian and Turkic speakers, see Abrahamian, Iran
between Two Revolutions, p. 105.
114 Kubíčkova, “Persian Literature of the 20th Century,” p. 363.
115 Manoutchehr M. Eskandari-Qajar, “Novellas as Morality Tales and Entertainment
in the Newspapers of the Late Qajar Period: Yahya Mirza Eskandari’s ‘Eshgh-e
Doroughi’ and ‘Arousi-e Mehrangiz’,” Iranian Studies 40:4 (2007), p. 521.
116 Kurzman, “Introduction,” p. 14.
117 Homa Katouzian, “Riza Shah’s Political Legitimacy and Social Base” in The
Making of Modern Iran. State and Society under Riza Shah 1921–1941, ed. Ste-
phanie Cronin (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 21.
118 J.E. Knörzer, ‘Ali Dashti’s Prison Days: Life under Reza Shah (Toronto: Mazda
119 The magazine Mehr published the official report of the Ministry of Internal
Affairs, which made a ‘Sheykh Bohlul who was known for his crime in the past
and who has been prosecuted for it’ responsible for the riot in which he protested
under the pretext of the new headgear and dress and proclaimed lies. Mehr
4:1314 (1935), p. 429. Some months later the conviction and execution of
Mohammad ‘Ali Asadi is reported without further comments. Mehr 9:1314
(1935–36), p. 926.
120 Khosrow Mo’tazed, Si sal ba Reza Shah dar qazzaqkhaneh (Tehran: Alborz,
1385/2006), pp. 281–82.
121 Bell, Ritual, pp. 82–83.
122 In detail see Ali Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals in the 20th century (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1998).
123 Boroujerdi, “Triumphs and Travail,” p. 148.
124 Tabari, “The Role of the Clergy,” p. 55.
125 H. Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1966), pp. 41–43.
127 Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature, pp. 50–51.
128 The poem Iran mal-e shomast, published in the Iranian journal Nowbahar in
1329q/1911, reflects this. Printed in Aryanpur, Az Saba ta Nima, vol. 2, p. 132.
129 Sorour Soroudi, “Poet and Revolution: The Impact of Iran’s Constitutional
Revolution on the Social and Literary Outlook of the Poets of the Time,” part 1,
Iranian Studies 12:1/2 (1979), pp. 15, 26, 28.
130 Ibid., pp. 33–35.
318 Katja Föllmer
132 See for instance Kolliyat-e divan-e Mirza Abu al-Qasem ‘Aref-e Qazvini, ed. ‘Abd
al-Rahman Sayf Azad (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1342/1963), pp. 425–30.
133 Browne, Press and Poetry, pp. xvi-xvii.
134 Soroudi, “Poet and Revolution: The Impact of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution
on the Social and Literary Outlook of the Poets of the Time,” part 2, Iranian
Studies 12:3/4 (1979), p. 252.
135 Ibid., p. 263.
136 Ibid., pp. 264, 266.
137 According to Iraj Parsinejad, A History of Literary Criticism in Iran (1866 – 1951):
Literary Criticism in the Works of Enlightened Thinkers of Iran: Akhundzade,
Kermani, Malkom, Talebof, Maraghe’i, Kasravi and Hedayat (Bethesda, MD:
Ibex, 2003), p. 207.
138 Ibid., p. 208.
139 Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals, p. 46.
140 Eickelman and Anderson, “Introduction” to New Media in the Muslim World, p. 3.
141 This conclusion is based on the study of oral literary communication in Kurdish
culture. Christine Allison, “Kurdish Oral Literature,” in Oral Literature of Ira-
nian Languages, ed. Philip Kreyenbroek and Ulrich Marzolph (London and New
York, 2010), p. 35.
142 Khomeini, Kashf-e Asrar, pp. 11–18.
143 Michael Stausberg, Die Religion Zarathustras: Geschichte, Gegenwart, Rituale,
vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2002), pp. 153–87.
Index
‘Abbas Mirza 153 Amir A‘lam 251, 254–55, 257, 259, 263
‘Abdollah, Mirza 75, 77, 79, 85 Amir Kabir 150, 162, 250
Abkar, Paul 106 Anderson, Jon W. 310
Abrahamian, Ervand 158 Anet, Claude 128
Achaemenids: archaeology 136, 138; Aniran 241, 243–44
architecture 101, 104–5, 113; stamps Anjoman-e asar-e melli see Society for
152, 154, 156–57, 160, 169 National Heritage
Ackerman, Phyllis 102 anniversaries 7, 153, 157, 221
actors 202–3, 210, 222 see also theatre antiquities 121, 124–27, 129, 131–35,
advertisements 270–71 138–43
aerodromes see aviation Arabic influence 28–33, 105, 219, 243
Afarin, Hoseyn Heng 75 archaeology 121–22, 135, 137–43, 152;
Afghani, Jamal al-Din 291–92, 300–301 before Reza Shah 122–29; under Reza
Afshar, Mahmud 64 Shah 129–37 see also museums
Aftab-e Sharq 185 architecture 4, 9, 95–100, 114–15;
Agha Mohammad Shah 153 avant-garde 105–9; historicism 101–5;
agency debate 3 Shah’s mausoleum 109–14; stamp
Aghamohseni, Keivan 9 depictions 156–57, 160, 169–70
Ahmad Shah Qajar 152–53, 155, 182, archival sources 181, 193–95
294 ‘Aref Qazvini, Mirza Abu al-Qasem 82,
Ahmadi, Amir 207 307, 311
Ahmadi, Wali 20 aristocrats 97, 268, 271; music 76–77
air traffic see aviation Ariyan, Arshalus 212
Ajam 32 armed forces see military
Akhundzadeh, Fath‘ali 203, 206, 222, 307 Armenians 205, 209–11, 213, 215, 219–20
Al-e Ahmad, Jalal 310–11 art 4, 80–81, 130, 134–35
‘Ala’, Hoseyn 130 arts 101, 106, 211
‘Alamir, ‘Abbas 166 Aryan 210–15, 217, 221
‘Alavi, Bozorg 4, 6, 11, 22, 214, 233–38, Aryanpur, Yahya 22, 211–12, 214–15,
241–42; nationalism 242–46; social 223
critique 238–41 As‘asi, Arshalus 212
Alborz 184 Ashtiyani, ‘Abbas Eqbal 236, 244
‘Alikhan, Moharram 190 Assyrians 205
Alliance Française 62–63 Ataturk, Kemal 252
American Institute for Persian Art and authoritarian modernization 1–2, 9–10
Archaeology 134–35 automobiles see cars
American School 59, 63 avant-garde 4–5, 95–96, 105–11, 114–15
Amin al-Soltan 128 aviation 161–62, 164–65, 268
Amini, Hoseyn Khan 127 Avicenna 102
320 Index
Ayandeh (Future) 64 cafés 77, 234–35, 240
Ayrom, Mohammad Hoseyn 187, 274 callisthenics 57, 59, 61, 66–67
Azar, Mohseni Azar 260 cameras 267–68, 279, 281
Azariyan 209–10, 212, 215 cars 274, 279–80
Azerbaijan 260, 301; censorship cartoons 152, 155, 301–2
185; physical education 55, 60, 67; Caspian Sea 164
theatre 205–6, 210–11, 213, 215–16, Catanzaro, Christl 8
219–22 Caucasus 206, 210, 262
Azerbaijan (newspaper) 303–4 cement factory 158, 161
Azeri 67, 212–13, 216, 219, 300 censorship 1, 10, 181–83, 193, 283n23;
literature 240; music 82; Office of
backwardness 5, 204, 242–43, 273, 279 Guidance in Writing 190–92;
Bader, Ahmad (Naser al-Dowleh) 63, post-Teymurtash era 188–90; Radio
101 Tehran 269; religious communications
Baghcheh-ban, Jabbar 211 300, 305–6; Teymurtash era 184–88;
Bahar, Mohammad Taqi (Malek theatre 202, 209, 223
al-Sho‘ara) 4, 19–27, 31–33, 214, Central Police Office see police
236, 244, 307; on language 27–31 Chamadan (The suitcase) 238–39, 241
Bahman, ‘Ali Akbar 165 Chehabi, Houchang E. 8
Bakhtiyari uprising 165–66, 305 Chelkowski, Peter 214
Baku 206, 210, 215 children 252–58, 263, 271, 276; physical
Balck, Viktor 61 education 63–65
ball games 59, 64–66 Christensen, Arthur 242, 244
Ballereau, Paul 131 CIA 170
Banani, Amin 99 cinema 108–9, 210, 217, 269–70,
Bank-e Melli see National bank 275–77, 300
Baqi‘i, Gholam Hoseyn 66–67 Cinema Suli (Tabriz) 206
Bayat, Mostafa Qoli 165–66 class structure 96–97 see also middle
bazaar 97, 290–92, 303 class
Bazargan, Mehdi 65 classical music: European 78–79, 82,
Bazgasht movement 25 84–85, 88; Iranian 74–78, 90
BBC 269 clerics 111, 288, 290–97, 305–6, 310–12
Beeman, William O. 297, 299–300 see also ‘olama
Behruz, Zabih 205, 214, 217 coins 150
Behzad, Karim Taherzadeh 106 Columbia University 37, 39, 66
Belgium 61–62, 67, 162, 234 comedy 216, 298–99
Benjamin, Samuel Green Wheeler 127 communication 11, 150, 162; popular
Berlin 79–80, 160, 197, 238 events 297–300; religious aspects
Beyza’i, Bahram 203–4 288–90, 305–6, 310–12; satire
Bizhan, Asadollah 48 300–305; Shi‘i clerics 290–97; Sufis
Bolsheviks 136, 220 294–95; telephone 277–80
Boroujerdi, Mehrzad 165 competition 61, 65–67
Bos, Matthijs van den 295 concerts 76–77, 208–9
bourgeoisie see middle class Constituent Assembly 293
Boveri, Margret 276 Constitutional Movement 21–22, 245;
brainwashing 191 archaeology 123, 128, 138;
bridges 161, 163, 266, 275 communications 288–89, 303–4,
Britain 59–60, 98, 121–22, 163–64, 253 307–8; medicine 250–51; music 73,
Browne, Edward G. 47, 303, 308 75–77; stamps 152, 154, 159–62, 167,
Brussels 55, 62 171–72; theatre 203, 205
Büchner, Ludwig 24 Cook, Nilla Cram 222
buses 273–74 Cossack brigade 58
bylaws see nezam-namehs Coste, Pascal-Xavier 122
Byron, Robert 57–58, 218, 266, 281 Cottam, Richard W. 99
Index 321
coups d’état: CIA 170; Reza Khan theatre and 211–12; university 37–38,
154–55, 166, 181 43–49 see also medicine
Court Ministry 183–88 Eickelman, Dale F. 290, 310
Cronin, Stephanie 6, 12n2 elite 3, 8–10, 43, 88, 301; self-image 149
Curzon, George Nathaniel 128, 273 engineering 266 see also technology
customs administration 162–63 England 48–49
ensembles 210–12
dance 57, 216 entertainment 5, 10–11; cinema 276;
Daneshsara-ye tarbiyat-e badani 66 religion/communication 297–300, 305;
Dar al-Fonun 44, 49, 50n2, 57–58, theatre 201–3, 208, 217–18, 222–23
62–63, 75, 250, 255 epidemics 57, 251
Dargahi, Mohammad 183, 188 Esfahan see Isfahan
Darvish Khan 75, 77, 79 Esfandiyari, Hasan 101
Darwin, Charles 4, 24–25 ‘Eshqi, Mirzadeh 183, 193, 205, 300,
Dashti, ‘Ali 63, 182–83, 189 307–8, 311
Davar, ‘Ali Akbar 3, 79, 101; stamps Eskandari-Qajar, Manoutchehr M. 305
159, 165–68, 172; University of Esrafil, Qasem Sur-e Esrafil 154
Tehran 39–41, 44 E‘temad al-Dowleh see Qaragozlu,
Dehdarian, Roja 11 Yahya Khan
Dehkhoda, ‘Ali Akbar 31, 42, 236–37, E‘tesamzadeh, Abolqasem 186
303, 307 E‘tezad al-Saltaneh, ‘Aliqoli Mirza 57
Democratic Party 22 Ettela‘at 266, 270–72, 276–77, 279, 282,
demolitions 97–100 306
Department of Medicine 258 etymologies 24; false 29
Department of Publication and eugenics 4, 63–64
Propaganda 87 Europe 4–5, 77, 122, 149, 277;
Devos, Bianca 11 architecture 98, 101, 105–6, 111–12,
Dewey, John 38, 53–54n57,n59 115; higher education 38, 43;
Diba, Kamran 106 literature 234–35, 242–43, 245;
Dieulafoy, Marcel 122–23, 137 medicine 250–51; museums 127;
Dowlatshahi, Mohammad ‘Ali 157, music 73, 79–80, 82, 84–85, 88;
165–66 physical education 60–61, 64, 67
drama see theatre evolution 4; linguistic 23–24, 29–30
Dramatic Arts School 211–12 exercise see physical education
drugs 216–17, 240 Ey Molla ‘Amu 303
East 204 Farahani, Amiri 307

École de Joinville 61, 63 Falsafi, Hoseyn 182
École des Beaux-Arts 111, 134–35 family 106, 215, 218
École normale de gymnastique et Faramarzi, ‘Abd al-Rahman 190
d’escrime 55, 62, 67 Farhangestan 7, 15n39, 28, 166–67, 269,
economy 76, 163, 166–67, 218 309
Edareh-ye Koll-e Entesharat va Farzad, Mas‘ud 234, 236–38, 241
Tablighat see Department of fashion 115
Publication and Propaganda Fath ‘Ali Shah 150, 153
Edareh-ye Koll-e Tashkilat-e Nazmiyeh fatherland 28
see police fatwas 291–92
Edareh-ye Rahnama-ye Nameh-negari feminism 2–3
see Office of Guidance in Writing Ferdowsi 7, 30, 101, 139, 166, 221, 270,
Edareh-ye Sehhiyeh-ye see Health 309–10; Rab‘eh 242, 244
Department film see cinema
education 7–9, 19, 271; censorship/ finance 162–63, 167, 266
brainwashing 191–92; music 84–85; Finance and Customs Department 162
stamp depictions 158–59, 165–68; Firuz Mirza Nosrat al-Dowleh 44, 101
322 Index
Flandin, Eugène 74, 122 Haqiqat 182
Floor, Willem 203, 206 harmony 82
Föllmer, Katja 11 Hart, Charles Calmer 2, 99
football 59, 64–66 health 169, 249–52; public health 61;
Forbes, Rosita 99 women’s 252–63 see also physical
foreign perceptions: media 187, 190; education
travellers 122, 277, 279–80 Health Department (Edareh-ye
Forughi, Mohammad ‘Ali (Zoka’ Sehhiyeh) 251–52, 257–58, 261
al-Molk) 3, 39–41, 79, 89, 101, 111, Hedayat, Morteza-Qoli Khan 40, 46,
129–30, 138, 159, 165–67, 172 84–85, 88–90, 189
Forughi, Mohsen 102, 106, 111–12 Hedayat, Sadeq 4, 6, 11, 214, 233–38,
Fragner, Bert 29 241–45, 306–9, 311
France 47–49, 61, 75, 234; archaeology Hejazi, Mohammad 155, 190, 192, 242
121–24, 126–39 Hekmat, ‘Ali Ashgar 19, 37, 40–45, 66,
Front Populaire 136 89, 101, 166, 169, 189
heritage: archaeology 124, 130, 132,
games 59, 64–66 see also physical 138–39; architecture 97–98, 101–5,
education 110, 114; religion 307, 310
gender 2–3, 13n17, 280 see also veil; Herzfeld, Ernst 4, 99, 103, 105, 130–32,
women 134–35
German Technical School Hesabi, Mahmud 42, 51n22
(Madreseh-ye San‘ati) 63 High Council of Culture 85, 191
Germany 121, 234, 242; music 79–80, High Council of Education 182
84, 90; physical education 47–49, higher education 3, 37–39, 43–49
54n59, 60–61 Hilton hotel 170–71
Gharibpur, Behruz 204 Hinz, Walther 218, 266, 276, 279
Gheissari, Ali 309 His Master’s Voice 82, 90
Ghirshman, Roman 135 historicism 31–32; architecture 95–96,
Gibson, Thomas R. 66 101–5, 107, 110, 115; theatre 214–17
Gilan 184 Hoseynqoli, Aqa 77, 79
Gilani, Mirza Ashraf al-Din Hoseyni hospitals 250, 253–55, 257–58, 260, 263
302–3, 307 Hovanessian, Vartan 106–8
Godard, André 4, 102–6, 111, 121, Hushmand, Mohammad Javad 187
132–37
Golestan Palace 97–98, 127, 154, 160 iconography see stamps
Gorgani, Mohammad ‘Ali 42 ideology 20–21, 31–32
Gowharshad Mosque 6, 154, 306 Imbrie, Robert W. 305
gramophone 76–78, 82–83, 87, 90, income 218
268, 271 India 29, 187, 222
Greeks 64, 205 industrialization 98, 161–63, 167–68
Grigor, Talinn 9 inferiority see backwardness
Guevrekian, Gabriel 4, 98, 106–7, 109, intellectuals 4, 8–10, 47, 60, 183;
177n98 archaeology 125, 138–39;
Gustav VI 134 communications 292–93, 300–301,
gymnastics 58–59, 61–64, 68 305–11; literary 233–34, 239, 244–46;
stamps 152, 160
Haag-Higuchi, Roxane 8 International Style 107–8, 113
Habermas, Jürgen 289 Iraj Mirza 124, 126–27
Hablolmatin 187 Iran-e Bastan 65, 178n129
Hafez 7, 30, 102 Iranian Academy see Farhangestan
Hajibeyov, Uzeyir 215, 220 Iranian National Museum see museums
Hajjizadeh, Baqer 213 Iranian Social-Democratic Party
Hakimi, Ebrahim (Hakim al-Molk) 62, (Hezb-e Ejtema‘iyun-e‘Ammiyun) 79
101, 127, 129, 145n22 Iranshahr 79, 160
Index 323
Isfahan 169–70, 275 257–59, 261–63; physical education
Islam 28–29, 38, 138; architecture 102, 65; university 40, 42–46 see also
105, 113; communications 294, nezam-namehs
296–97, 300, 302, 304, 307–12; Lefébure, Clément 62–63
theatre 204 see also religion leisure 108–9, 222
Islamic Republic 114, 172, 202, 204 Lemaire, Alfred Jean Baptiste 75
Istanbul 55 Ling, Per Henrik 61
literacy 283n24, 288–89, 297, 306, 311
Jam, Fereydun 114 literary history 19–21, 23–26, 32–33
Jam, Mahmud 165–66, 168–69, 172, literature 4, 11, 19–27, 211, 233–38, 246;
185, 189 innovation 241–42; national project
Jamalzadeh, Mohammad ‘Ali 160 242–46; religious discourse in 305–10;
Jordan, Samuel 59 social critique and 238–41; in theatre
jubilee stamp set 157–66, 168–69, 214–17
171–72 Lockhart, Laurence 99
judicial reform 158–60, 165, 167 Loftus, William Kennett 122
Lotman, Jurij 26
Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad 27 Louvre Museum 121, 123, 127, 135–38
Kashf-e Asrar 296, 311–12 luxuries 271
kashf-e hejab see veil
Kasma’i, Ahmad 184 Madreseh-ye Sepahsalar 46
Kasravi, Ahmad 307 magazines 79, 86, 182, 193, 295, 302 see
Kaveh 60 also periodicals
Kazemi, Baqer Khan 166–67 Mahjubi, Reza and Morteza 77
Kazemi, Morteza Moshfeq 80–81 mail service 150, 162, 300 see also
Kazemzadeh Tabrizi, Hoseyn 79, 243, stamps
245 Maillart, Ella 277, 279–80
Keddie, Nikki R. 301 Majles 43–44, 98, 124–25, 127, 130–32,
Kermani, Mirza Aqa Khan 292, 300, 181–84, 189, 241, 251, 294
307 Malekzadeh, Elham 11
Khadivi, Owrang 215 Malkom Khan, Mirza 292, 300
Khalili, ‘Abbas 186 Mansur, ‘Ali 87, 192
Khanlari, Parviz Natel 234 Mazandaran 185
Khayyam, ‘Omar 102, 242, 309 Marashi, Afshin 268
Khaz’al, Sheykh 164, 207 Mer’at, Esma‘il 192
Khomeini, Ruhollah 109, 296–97, Markov, Nikolai 105
311–12 marriage 215–16, 239
Khorasan 185 Mashhad 22, 192, 207, 306
Khosrow I Anushiravan 160 Mashrutiyat period 159–60
Khoy 213 Matin-Daftari, Ahmad 268
Khuzestan 164, 207 Maugras, Gaston 131, 133
Kiya, Mohammad Sadeq 137 Mecquenem, Roland de 123, 131–32
knowledge transfer 47, 49 media 86, 102; on modern technology
Kowsar, Mehdi 106 268–69, 276, 282; stamps 149–50, 152
Kubíčková, Věra 301, 306 see also censorship; communication
Kuleli Askeri Lisesi 55 medicine 249–55
Kupal, Sadeq Khan 183 merchants 97, 100, 125
middle class 2, 4–5, 10–11, 288;
language 7, 15n39, 27–31, 269, 303; architecture 95–101, 104–5, 110,
French 48; learning 271; theatre 203, 112–15; avant-garde 106–8;
210, 213, 219–22 historicism 101–2; modern technology
law 158–60, 165, 167, 293; antiquities 267, 270–75, 277, 282; music 76, 78,
125–27, 131–32, 138–43; censorship 82; theatre 201, 208, 212, 217–18, 223
181–82, 185; medicine 251–53, midwifery 11, 249, 254–63
324 Index
Mihan 184 Monroe, Paul 39
milieu 26–27, 31 monuments: archaeology 122, 124, 132,
militarism 61, 65 135; architecture 101–4, 109–14;
military 107, 164–66, 207; censorship by stamp depictions 160
181–84; music (marches) 75, 84 morality 61–64, 214–17, 220, 291–92,
Minbashiyan, Gholamhoseyn 6, 84–91, 295–99, 310–11
234, 244 Morgan, Jacques de 123, 126, 128,
Ministry of Culture 193, 209, 220 135, 137
Ministry of Education 111; archaeology Moshir al-Dowleh see Pirniya, Mirza
124, 126, 132; censorship 184–85, 188, Hasan Khan
191; higher education 38–43, 48, Moshiri, Iraj 106–7
49n2; medicine 252, 258–60; physical Mossadeq, Mohammad 169
education 62–63, 65–66 Mostafavi, Mohammad-Taqi 137,
Ministry of Finance 98, 111–12 144n10
Ministry of Foreign Affairs 190 Mostowfi al-Mamalek, Mirza Hasan
Ministry of the Interior 184–85, 209, 212 101, 184
Ministry of Justice 98, 160 motherhood 252–55, 258
Ministry of Post and Telegraph 154–55 Motika, Raoul 303–4
Ministry of Sciences 124 motion pictures see cinema
Ministry of Trade 98 motrebs 74–75, 77–78, 91
minorities 205–6 Mowlana, Hamid 270
Minovi, Mojtaba 233–35, 238, 240–41, Mozaffar al-Din Qajar 76, 121, 123,
243–45 128, 267
Mirfendereski, Mohammad Amin 106 Mozhdehi, Amir Jalil 186
Mirza Aqa Tabrizi 203, 206, 222 Mughals 25
Mirza Taqi Khan see Amir Kabir museums 9, 104, 124, 127–30,
Mo‘azzam, Moshir 155 135–38, 169
Modarres, Seyyed Hasan 99 music 4–5, 9, 73, 89–91, 235;
modernists 20–21, 26, 60–61, 65–66; governmental modernization 84–89;
literary 243–44; middle-class/ non-governmental modernization
technology 270–78 78–83; Qajar period 73–78; Radio
modernization 1–8, 33, 47–48, 155–56, Tehran 268–69; Reza Shah period
166–67; foreign visitors’ perceptions 78–83; in theatre 216–17
277–80; historicism and 101–2, 105;
linguistic 27; literary critique 238; Nader Shah 102, 153, 214
middle class movement 271–73; stamp Nafisi, Sa‘id 101, 214, 235–36, 244,
depictions 160–65, 171–72 see also 269, 302
architecture; music; technology nahzat-e banovan 3, 13–14n17
Mohammad ‘Ali Shah Qajar 124, 152 Najaf 293–94
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi 55, 65, 87, Najmabadi, Hajj Sheikh Hadi 250
300; architecture 111–12, 114; stamps Nakhjavani, Buyuk Khan 201, 209,
169–70; technology 268, 279 211, 221
Mohammad Shah Qajar 267 Namus 215
Mohammad Taqi Khan 182 naqqali 203, 298–99
mohit (milieu) 26–27, 31 Narimanov, Nariman 220
Mojahedin 114 Naser al-Din Shah Qajar 57, 75, 77, 98,
mojtaheds 291–92, 296–97, 301 121–22, 124, 127, 149–51, 250–51, 263
Mokhber al-Saltaneh see Hedayat, Naser al-Dowleh see Bader, Ahmad
Morteza-Qoli Khan Nasim-e Shomal 302–3
Molière 201–2, 215 Nasiri-Moghaddam, Nader 9
Molla Nasr al-Din 302–4 National Bank 104, 111–12, 136,
Momtaz al-Molk, Morteza Khan 129, 160, 235
136, 146n38 National Consultative Assembly see
monarchy 114, 151–54, 156 Majles
Index 325
National Museum see museums Palestine 188
National Physical Education Paris 48, 63, 122–23, 136
Association 55, 66 Parliament see Majles
nationalism 7, 11, 87, 107, 171, 276; Partow, Shirazpur 234, 241, 243
archaeology 102, 132, 138; Parvin, doktar-e Sasan 214, 234, 243
communications 295, 307–11; passion plays see ta‘ziyeh
educational system 43–45, 52n32, Payandeh, Abolqasem 190
53n41; language politics 219–22; performances 297–300, 306
literary history 20–21, 26, 28, 31–33; periodicals 2, 154–55, 160, 301–4
literature 233, 242–46; physical periodization 6, 14n37; Bahar’s 25, 33
education 60–62, 64–65; stamps permits 209, 258; to travel 275
152–54, 159, 163–64; theatre 201, Persepolis 3, 131–32, 134; stamp
204, 212 depictions 153, 159–60, 170, 172
nativist discourse 203–5, 222–23 Persian 219–22; language 27–31; radio
Navidi, Liza 212 269–70
navy 164 Persian literature 19–20, 23–25,
nazmiyeh see police 27–28, 32, 236; religious discourse
Ne‘matollahis 294–95 305–10
Nettl, Bruno 77 Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich 38
newspapers: modern technology 266, Petit Bleu 136
268–72, 282; propaganda 150, 155, Peykar 187–88
159–61; public health 252–53; religion photography 267–68, 279, 281
291, 293, 300, 302–5 see also physical education 8–9, 55–59, 62–68;
censorship morality 61–62; WW1/aftermath
nezam-namehs 7, 208–10, 223–26, 274 59–60
Nöldeke, Theodor 241–42, 244 physicians 250–54
Now‘i, Khalil 189 pilgrimage 102–3, 110
Nuri, Sheykh Fazlollah 293 Pirnazar, Hasan 187
Nushin, ‘Abd al-Hoseyn 234, 244 Pirniya, Hasan (Moshir al-Dowleh) 101,
129–30, 138, 182, 184
Odeon Company 82, 90 poetry 22–23, 236, 302–4
Office of Guidance in Writing 183, 188, police 6, 208, 240, 279; censorship
190–92 183–90, 193; traffic 274
‘olama 38, 45, 125; architecture 97, 100, politicians 3, 40–41, 89, 101, 166,
111; communications 290–94, 296, 171–72, 192
299, 301–4 Polyphon Company 82–83, 90
Omid, Hoseyn 209, 212, 215 Pope, Arthur Upham 4, 102–3, 105, 130,
operettas 214, 216 see also theatre 132, 134–36
opium 80, 216–17, 240 population 256
oral tradition 298–99, 311 postal service 150, 162, 300 see also
Organization for Public Enlightenment stamps
(Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar) 7, pragmatism 46–49; political 5–6; uptake
86–87, 221, 256; censorship 183, of technology 282
191–92; modern technology 268, 270; press see censorship; media;
theatre 202 newspapers
Oriental Institute 132–33 prices 217–18
Orientalism 122, 243–44; architecture printing 27 see also media; stamps
96, 110, 114 propaganda: modern society 266,
Osku’i, Mostafa 205, 214 268–70, 281; stamps 149–52, 154–57,
Ostovar-e Qom 189 171–72; theatre 202, 207
Ottoman Empire 55, 59–60 public events 297–300 see also theatre
Purdavud, Ebrahim 137, 236, 245, 306,
pahlavans 56–58, 64 308, 311
palaces 97–98, 127, 154 ‘purification’ 28–30, 32–33, 269
326 Index
Qajar era 60; archaeology 124, 137–39; Russia 25, 47, 153, 163–64, 213
architecture 97–98, 101; Rypka, Jan 242
communication 298–99; literary
history 21–22, 26; medicine 250; Saba, Hoseyn 182
music 73–78; post/stamps 149–54, Saber, ‘Ali Akbar (Taherzadeh) 302
162, 164, 171; protests against 293; Sabk-shenasi (Stylistics) 4, 19–21, 25–33;
technology 267–68; theatre 203 background 21–23; concept 23–25
Qanun 291–92, 300 Saburi, Mirza Mohammad Kazem 22
Qaragozlu, Yahya Khan 39–40, 85, 131 Sadeq, ‘Ali 106, 111–12
Qavam, Ahmad 111 Sadiq, ‘Isa 4, 37–42, 44–45, 48, 50, 54,
Qazvini, Mohammad 236, 244 57, 101
Qolizadeh, Jalil Mohammad 302 Sadr, Mohsen 165–66, 168, 172
Qolizadeh, Reza 4, 210–12, 215–16, 300 Sadri, Abolfazl 63
Qom 189 Safavids 25, 104–5
Safi‘alishahis 294–95
Rab‘eh group 6, 233–34, 236 Sami‘i, Hoseyn 208
racism 61–63, 102, 115, 243 San‘atizadeh, ‘Abd al-Hoseyn 307
radio 86–87, 268–70, 297 sanatorium 168–69
Rahnama, Gholamhoseyn 42 Sanitary Council (Majles-e Sehhat) 251
railways 107, 111, 161–65, 167–68, 266 sanitation 255–56
Ranjbar-Fakhri, Mohammad 206 Sar Faraz 187
recording 76–77, 87, 90 Sarbaz-e sorbi (The tin soldier) 239–40
Red Cross 207 Sassanids 101, 104–5, 113, 136, 138–39,
Red Lion and Sun: Society 207, 252, 152, 309
260; theatre 201, 205, 207–11, 214–23 satire 301–3
reformers 2–5, 10, 41; communications Sayyah, Fatemeh 47
292–93, 307; physical education 55, 57 Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar see
regulations see nezam-namehs Organization for Public
religion 102, 113; education 38; music Enlightenment
74–75; Persian literature 305–10; Schayegh, Cyrus 61, 282n6
theatre 203–5 see also Schmidt, Erich Friedrich 132–34
communications School of Beaux-Arts see École des
Reuilly, Yedda 134 Beaux-Arts
revivalism 103–5 secularization 245, 294; architecture 95,
Revue de France 136 97, 101–3; education 44–45
Reza Pahlavi 9–10, 49, 58, 79; Selim Sırrı 55, 62
archaeology 124, 130, 132, 136, Sepanta, ‘Abd al-Hoseyn 221
138–39; architecture 107, 109; as Sepehr school 62
censor 189, 193; clerics and 305–6; Setareh-ye Iran 182
communications 294, 309–10; death Seyhun, Hushang 102, 106, 111
95, 114–15; music 84–89; propaganda Shafaq, Rezazadeh 42
154–65, 270; theatre 201–2, 205, 208; Shafaq-e sorkh 189
University of Tehran 39, 44–46; urban Shafi‘zadeh, Javad 212
renewal 100; women/medicine 253 Shah-Goldiyan, Liza 212
Rezvani, Medjid 203 Shah-nameh 221, 298–99, 304, 307–8, 312
ritual 297–98, 306 shahrbani see police
roads 163, 167–68, 272 Shahrokh, Arbab Keykhosrow 101
Roshdi, Jamil 206 Shari‘a 304
Roshdi, Mohammad ‘Ali 206, 210, 216 Shari‘ati, ‘Ali 311
Rousseau, Jean Jacques 38 Sheybani, ‘Abdolhoseyn 47, 154
rowzeh-khvani 7, 290, 297–99, 308 Shi‘i 111, 113, 153–54; clerics 75, 288,
Royal Museum 127–28 290–97, 305–6, 311–12; pilgrimage
Rubanovich, Julia 26 102–3; plays 98, 204
ruhowzi 78 Shirazi, Ayatollah Mirza Hasan 291–92
Index 327
Shirvanzadeh, Alexander 211, 215 Tahmasebi, Abolfazl 189
Shojai, Don 233–34 Tajaddod (Modernity) party 79
Sho‘ubiyeh movement 31–32 Taqavi, Hajj Seyyed Nasrollah 101
Shura-ye ‘Ali-ye Farhang see High Taqizadeh, Seyyed Hasan 39, 63, 88,
Council of Culture 101, 154, 160, 243, 245
Shura-ye ‘Ali-ye Ma‘aref see High Tavallali, Fereydun 137
Council of Education taxation 158, 163–64, 266; antiquities
Siebertz, Roman 10 125–26
Siemens 277 Takiyeh Dowlat 98
singing 74–75, 91 ta‘ziyeh 98, 203–5, 222, 298–99, 306
Siroux, Maxim 102, 104–5, 111, 135 Teachers College 37–42, 46–48
Siyasi, ‘Ali Akbar 42 technology 5, 11, 266–70, 281–82;
Smith, Mary J. 253–54 modernist approach 270–73;
social conditions 89–91 ordinary Iranians 273–80;
Social Darwinism 4, 61, 64 propaganda 160–63, 165
Society of Brotherhood 295 Tehran 160, 169, 235, 297; architecture
Society for National Heritage (SNH) 4, 107; theatre 206, 208–9; urban planning
6, 101–5, 111–12, 130, 138–39 97–100 see also University of Tehran
Sodwa Company 82–83 telegraph 273, 291, 303
Soleimani, Karim 10 telephone 277–80
Solhi, Mehdi 85 television 300
Soltan‘alishahis 294–95 Teymurtash, ‘Abdolhoseyn 3, 6, 101,
sources 2, 181, 193–95 131, 212; as censor 183–88, 193;
sovereignty 161–63 music 79, 88; University of Tehran
Soviet Union 25, 136, 210, 213, 259; 39–40, 44
architects 106 theatre 4–5, 10–11, 80, 108; audience
sport 57–68, 211 see also physical 217–19; cultural politics 208–10;
education language 219–22; nativist discourse
stamps 7, 10, 149–50, 171–72; jubilee set 202–5; regulations 223–26; religion
157–65; men responsible for 165–69; 296–99, 306; in Tabriz 201–2, 205–8,
post-1935 169–71; Qajar 150–54; 222–23; topics 214–17; troupes/
under Reza Shah 154–57 ensembles 210–13 see also
state 1–3, 95, 165; modernist middle performances; ta‘ziyeh
class support 272; Pahlavi policy 5–7, Tiflis 206, 210–13, 215
9–11; technology and 267–70, 281–82 Tobacco Movement 21, 288–89, 291–93,
see also nationalism 300, 304, 310
State Department for Music 85–87, 89 tourism 102, 108, 110
Stockholm 61–62, 134 traditionalists 82, 292–94, 304
Stratil-Sauer, Gustav 280 traffic 273–75
Street Widening Act 98 Trans-Iranian Railway 107, 111,
Stylistics see Sabk-shenasi 162–65, 266
Sufism 292, 294–95, 310–11 translations 241, 308; of Pahlavi terms
Supreme Cultural Council see High 15n40; of plays 215, 219–20
Council of Culture transportation 4–5, 162–65, 167–68,
Sur-e Esrafil 303 268, 272–75, 300
Susa 122–23, 126, 129, 131, 133, 136, 139 travellers 122, 277, 279–80
Sweden 57–58, 61–62, 64, 67–68, 134 troupes 210–13
syphilis 61 Tudeh Party 67, 113
Turkey 67, 210, 252
Tabarestan 185 Turkish 67, 219–20, 222, 303
Tabriz 260, 280, 302 see also theatre Tynianov, Jurij 25
tabula rasa 96–100, 107
Tadayyon, Seyyed Mohammad 64, 131 ‘ulama see ‘olama
tafrih 5, 222 see also entertainment Uniformity of Dress Code 115 see also veil
328 Index
United States 39, 48–49, 59, 99–100, 132 Westdahl, Carl Gustav 183
University of Tehran 3, 7–8, 19, 32, whiteness 114–15
37–38, 46–49; architecture 111–12; Wigley, Mark 115
Department of Archaeology 137; women 239–40, 249, 252–63; music 74,
Hekmat’s role 40–43; Sadiq’s role 78, 83, 91; sport 59; theatre 202, 212,
38–40; Shah’s role 43–46 218 see also veil
urban planning 97–99, 160 Women’s Association 259, 262
World War One 59–60, 154, 251
Vagh vagh Sahab 236–38, 241 wrestling 56–57
Varzandeh, Mir Mehdi 4, 6, 55–60,
62–68; Swedish influence 61–62 xenophobia 6, 277
Vaziri, ‘Alinaqi 4, 6, 78–82, 84–85,
87–91 Yasami, Rashid 236
Vaziri, Qamar al-Moluk 83 Yazdi, Mohammad Farrokhi 182
veil 3, 59, 83, 88, 110, 115, 295–96 Yazdi, Sayyed Kazem Tabataba’i 294
Vezarat-e ‘Olum see Ministry of Sciences Young, Herrick B. 58
Vosuq al-Dowleh, Mirza Hasan Khan Yushij, Nima 214
166, 168
Zafar, Keyqobad 106, 111–12
water 255–57 Za‘faranlu 182
Weill, David 135 Zahiri, Mehdi 211–12
Werner, Christoph 10 Zoka’ al-Molk see Forughi, Mohammad
West 67, 273, 307; architecture 100; ‘Ali
culture 4–5, 276–77; education 37–38, Zoroastrians 30, 307–8, 311–12;
45–49; music 73, 75–77, 79–80, 86–89, architecture 95, 101, 111, 113
91; stamps 152, 165, 170; theatre 203–5 zurkhanehs 56–58, 60, 63, 67, 218, 290

Culture and Cultural Politics Under Reza Shah The Pahlavi State, New Bourgeoisie and The Creation of A Modern Society in Iran

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Culture and Cultural Politics Under Reza Shah The Pahlavi State, New Bourgeoisie and The Creation of A Modern Society in Iran

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Culture and Cultural Politics Under

Culture and Cultural Politics Under Reza Shah presents a collection of

Dr Bianca Devos is Assistant Professor/Lecturer at the Center for Near and

1 Journalism in Iran 10 City of Knowledge in Twentieth

4 Media, Culture and Society in 13 Social Movements in Iran

ISBN: 978-0-415-82419-4 (hbk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

List of ﬁgures vii

1 Modernization in literary history: Malek al-Sho‘ara

2 Policy or puzzle? The foundation of the University of

3 Mir Mehdi Varzandeh and the introduction of modern

4 Modernization of Iranian music during the reign of

5 The king’s white walls: Modernism and bourgeois

6 Archaeology and the Iranian National Museum: Qajar and early

7 Depicting power: Reza Shah’s rule, cabinet politics and the

8 Press censorship in the Reza Shah era, 1925–41 181

9 Drama and operetta at the Red Lion and Sun:

10 “Newly hatched chickens”: Bozorg ‘Alavi on the young

11 Giving birth to a new generation: Midwifery in the public

12 Engineering a modern society? Adoptions of new technologies

13 Religious aspects in communication processes in early

3.1 Mir Mehdi Varzandeh, around 1970. Source: Private collection,

Keivan Aghamohseni is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology and an active

This volume arose out of an international symposium on “Culture and Cultural

Features of Reza Shah’s cultural politics

Intellectuals and technocrats: key ﬁgures in Iran’s

The shah: state politics and authoritarian modernization

Ahmadi considers Sabk-shenasi to be conditioned and informed by its ideological

intended to force unity and homogeneity upon a land of inﬁnite cultural

This observation is certainly true. The overall conception of Sabk-shenasi was

The biographical background

A novel concept: stylistics and evolution combined

Through his broad conception of the notion of style, Bahar attempts

Literary history in long-term perspective

The progress and decline of anything human beings pursue – in particular

While Bahar considers literary phenomena to arise from a changing socio-

Clear but not pure: the ideal use of language

Language and fatherland (zaban va mihan) are closely connected through

To catch up with the “civilized world”, the architects of Iranian nationalism

A lot of Arabic words which tended to be shorter, more simple in respect

In Sabk-shenasi, the complex of “puriﬁcation” is discussed within the

Bahar was deﬁnitely not an advocate of the unthinking replacement of Arabic

History: the Sho‘ubiyeh movement

It was because of [ … ] the self-importance and arrogance that some

During the Abbasid period, a confrontation arose between the Sho‘ubiyeh,

As an intellectual who supported the restructuring of Iran as a modern nation-

Giving birth to the University of Tehran: espousing ideas, one baby

Ideas and concepts

The Teachers College as the nucleus of the University of Tehran:

The law: the politician ‘Ali Asghar Hekmat makes an appearance

Hekmat becomes minister of education

Hekmat and Sadiq

The “Golden Label”: on Reza Shah’s motivation and role

Secularization of the educational system

Western ways of thinking meet eastern ways of acting: transfer of

Following the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, physical education appeared

Figure 3.1 Mir Mehdi Varzandeh, around 1970.

Varzandeh and the legacy of traditional physical education

Given the powerful build of traditional Iranian pahlavans, Varzandeh was at

Modern physical education in Iran before Varzandeh

Lack of cooperation is the lament of Persian statesmen today. The graduates

World War I and its aftermath in Iran

In the opinion of those who have immersed themselves in the secrets of

taxation of antiquities excavated on private lands

The ‘olama’ considered all archaeological discoveries found on private

Three expeditions sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania: at Turang