Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-wxhwt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T13:23:06.332Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Iran's Great Reformer of the Nineteenth Century: An Analysis of Amīr Kabīr's Reforms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

John H. Lorentz
John H. Lorentz*
Affiliation:
Portland State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

One of the more pervasive implicit assumptions about Amīr Kabīr in both Persian and Western sources is that he was an innovator who wished to transform Iranian society. Not unrepresentative of such an assumption are comments like the following: “If Amīr Kabīr had not been killed at the hands of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh's executioners, how much he would have entangled the fate of Iran in a significant transformation.” In the same vein there is a tendency to view Amīr Kabīr as a visionary of political freedom. This tendency is perhaps most evident in two rather popularized Persian accounts of his life and career, that of Hāshimī Rafsanjānī and that of Ḥusayn Makkī. But with the advantage of hindsight, many less exaggerated accounts, also, attribute more to the intentions of Amīr Kabīr than can perhaps stand up under scrutiny. It is not uncommon, as Algar points out, for Amīr Kabīr to be reckoned among the precursors of the Constitutional Revolution.

Type
Administrative Developments in Qajar Iran
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 2-3: Administrative Developments in Qajar Iran , Spring Summer 1971 , pp. 85 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1971

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

An earlier version of this article was presented at a panel on “Administrative Developments in Qajar Iran,” cosponsored by The Society for Iranian Studies and the Middle East Studies Association, held in Denver, Colorado, November, 1971.

References

Notes

1. Ismā˓īl Rā'īn, Ḥuqūq Begīrān-i Ingilīs dar Irān (Tehran, 1347/1968), p. 229.Google Scholar

2. Rafsanjānī, Hashimī Amīr Kabīr yā Qahrimān-i Mubārazah bā Isti˓mār (Tehran, 1346/1967), pp. 7-10Google Scholar; Makkī, Ḥusayn Zindigānī-yi Mīrzā Taqī Khān Amīr Kabīr (Tehran, 1337/ 1958), pp. 2-3.Google Scholar

3. Algar, Hamid Religion and State in Iran, 1783-1906 (Berkeley, 1969), p. 136.Google Scholar

4. Browne, E. G. The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia (Cambridge, 1914), p. 310.Google Scholar

5. Ādamīyat, Farīdūn Amīr Kabīr va Īrān, 3rd edition (Tehran, 1969), pp. 19-20.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., pp. 166-17.

7. ˓Abbās Iqbāl, Mīrzā Taqī Khān Amīr Kabīr, p. 29.

8. Avery, Peter Modern Iran (New York, 1965), p. 50.Google Scholar

9. Bamdad, Mahdi Tārīkh-i Rijāl-i Īrān, Vol. I (Tehran, 1347/1969), P. 211.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., p. 212.

11. Arasteh, Reza Education and Social Awakening in Iran (Leiden, 1962), p. 37.Google Scholar

12. Ādamīyat, op. cit., p. 382.

13. Ibid., p. 388.

14. Ibid., pp. 385-86.

15. ˓Alī Aṣghar Shamīm, Īrān dar Dawrah-i Salṭanat-i Qājār (Tehran, 1963), p. 119.Google Scholar

16. Ādamīyat, op. cit., p. 385.

17. Arasteh, op. cit., p. 35.

18. Ibid.

19. Sir Rawlinson, Henry England and Russia in the East (London, 1875), p. 83Google Scholar; Watson, Robert Grant A History of Persia (London, 1866), pp. 373—74Google Scholar; Avery, op. cit., p. 49.

20. al-Mulk, Lisān Nāsikh al-Tavārīkh, Vol. 3 (Tehran, 1385/1966), p. 191.Google Scholar

21. Arasteh, op. cit., p. 36.

22. Lambton, A. K. S. Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London, 1953), P. 164.Google Scholar

23. ˓Abdullāh Mustawfī, Sharḥ-i Zindigānī-yi Man: Tārīkh-i Ijtimā ˓ī va Idārī-yi Dawrah-i Qājārīyah, Vol. I (Tehran, 1321/1942), p. 69.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., p. 70.

25. Arasteh, op. cit., p. 20.

26. Mustawfī, op. cit., p. 70.

27. Ādamīyat, op. cit., p. 348.

28. Lambton, A. K. S. “The Impact of the West on Persia,” International Affairs, Vol. 33, No. 1 (January, 1957), p. 16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. Curzon, George N. Persia, Vol. II (London, 1892), p. 468.Google Scholar

30. Ramazani, Rouhollah K. The Foreign Policy of Iran, 1500-1941 (Charlottesville, Virginia), 1966, p. 65.Google Scholar

31. Watson, op. cit., pp. 382-83.

32. It seems to this writer that a number of interesting and important questions in regards to the Bābī movement have been left virtually untouched. The theological aspects have received a good deal of attention, but social and economic causes have been treated in depth only by M. S. Ivanov in his Russian language work entitled, The Bābī Risings in Iran, 1848-52, and his analysis is marred by a Marxist bias. But equally surprising is the curious lack of any anthropological-sociological approaches to the Bābī movement. I would suggest that a fruitful avenue of approach might be to view it as a nativistic or messianic movement. Nikki Keddie draws some suggestive comparisons with the radical messianic movement, the Tapings in China, in her article, “Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. IV (1962), pp. 265-295Google Scholar, but she does not penetrate the subject to any great degree.

33. Algar, op. cit., pp. 135-36.

34. Ibid., pp. 134-35.

35. Ibid., pp. 133-135.

36. Lorimer, J. G. Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia, Vol. I, Part 2, Ch. 11-12 (Calcutta, 1915), P. 1999.Google Scholar

37. de Gobineau, Comte Correspondance entre le Comte de Gobineau et le Comte de Prokesch-Osten (1854-1877) (Paris, 1933), p. 68.Google Scholar

38. Shiel, Lady Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia (London, 1856), p. 248.Google Scholar

39. Watson, op. cit., p. 401.

40. Arasteh, op. cit., pp. 35, 37.

41. Ibid., p. 37.

42. Iqbāl Yaghmā'ī, “Madrasah-i Dār al-Funūn,” Yaghma (Tir, 1348/1969), P. 223.Google Scholar

43. Binder, Leonard Iran: Political Development in a Changing Society (Berkeley, 1962), p. 105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar