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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
This essay provides a historical analysis of Iranian experiences with disability. I will begin by reviewing the literary application of the term in various contexts. Next, I will examine the social milieux in which local observers, medical professionals, and policy makers talked about and treated disability. As state-run institutions emerged to address disability needs, health professionals often drew a distinction between physical disability and intellectual or psychological disability, raising ethical and legal questions about the status of the disabled in modern Iranian society. Finally, an attempt will be made to situate disability politics in contemporary Iran, where the disabled population has increased significantly as a consequence of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88). Although this paper concentrates on Iranian experiences with disability, comparisons can be drawn with other Islamic societies.
The title for this paper comes from a symposium that I organized at the University of Pennsylvania in November 2006. My essay has benefited from the discussions and comments that ensued at Penn, and I thank the symposium participants—Sumi Colligan, Liat Ben-Moshe, Hila Ramon-Greenspan, Sandra Sufian (in absentia), and Bob Vitalis—for their input. I am also grateful to the School of Nursing and my colleagues there, especially Dean Afaf Meleis and Dr. Julie Fairman, for their support of the symposium. Finally, I thank Professor Afsaneh Najmabadi for her comments on an earlier draft of this paper and for inviting me to submit a panel on disability history in the Middle East for the annual conference of the American Historical Association. Thanks to her support, the panel was included in the 2008 AHA conference program.
1 Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri, “Liberty Against all Odds: Requiem for Laleh and Ladan,” 11 July 2003, Iranian.com: http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2003/July/Bijani.
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3 By “public,” I mean people's personal interpretation and accounting of disability at work and in communal spaces.
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20 From the Internet Medieval Sourcebook: Abû Ûthmân al-Jâhiz, The Essays, c. 860 CE, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/860jahiz.html.
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47 Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, “The Politics of Reproduction,” International Journal of Middle East Studies (February 2006): 1–29.
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57 Majallah-i Mahiyanah, Shir va khurshid, 43–44.
58 Ittila‘at, 10 Mehr 1317/September 1938, 1; The Iranian Red Lion & Sun Bulletin (March 1947), 22–23.
59 F. Kashani-Sabet, “Conceiving Citizens: Women, Sexuality and Religion in Modern Iran” forthcoming manuscript, on the health culture of Iran in the early Pahlavi era.
60 F. Kashani-Sabet, “Politics of Reproduction; For Related Discussions”, Amin, Camron, “Importing ‘Beauty Culture’ into Iran in the 1920s and 1930s: Mass Marketing Individualism in an Age of Anti-Imperialist Sacrifice,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 24, no. 1 (2004): 79–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also Cyrus Schayegh, “Science”; PHS, RG91, Box #20, Folder #2, “Meshed: Persia's Great Shrine City,” Fifteenth Annual Report of the American Christian Hospital, from July 1929 to June 1930 “Science, Medicine, and Class in the Formation of Semi-Colonial Iran, 1900s–1940s” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2004).
61 Pernick, Martin S., “Defining the Defective: Eugenics, Aesthetics, and Mass Culture in Early-Twentieth-Century America,” in The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability, ed. by Mitchell, David T. and Snyder, Sharon L. (Ann Arbor, MI, 1997), 94.Google Scholar
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65 Iran, National Archives, File 291, Vizarat-i Dakhilah, Sihhiyah-i kull-i mamlikati, “Nizamnamah-i Asasi-yi Abilih kubi-yi majjani,” September 1932. Also, Avvalin rapurt-i shish mahah-i sihhiyah-i kull (Tehran, 1926), 64.Google Scholar
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67 Qanun-i Muzaffari (National Library, Iran, manuscript #314), 46–47.
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76 PHS, RG91, Box #20, Folder #2, “Eighteenth Annual Report of the American Christian Hospital, Meshed,” from July 1932 to June 1933, 2.
77 PHS, RG91, Box #20, Folder #2, “Meshed: Persia's Great Shrine City,” Fifteenth Annual Report of the American Christian Hospital, from July 1929 to June 1930, 39, 18.
78 PHS, RG91, Box #20, Folder #2, “Meshed Medical Report, 1935–1936,” 5.
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81 Report of the Autopsy of the Siamese Twins: Together with Other Interesting Information Concerning Their Life (Philadelphia, 1874).Google Scholar Barnum, P. T., The Life of P. T. Barnum: Written by Himself (Chicago, 2000Google Scholar; reprint of 1865 edition); Bogdan, Robert, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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95 Baghchihban, Zindiginamah-i Jabbar Baghchihban, 102.
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