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Zanhā-yi millat: Women Or Wives of the Nation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Afsaneh Najmabadi
Afsaneh Najmabadi*
Affiliation:
Department of Women's Studies, Barnard College (Columbia University)
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Extract

Several works in Persian and English have detailed Iranian women's participation in social, political, and literary activities of the Constitutional Revolution. The present essay attempts to look critically at the discourses that informed, and were in turn rearticulated and transformed by, these activities. It will be argued that in the early years of the 20th century the very concept represented by the word zan was a contested one; that its homonymic ambiguity (meaning both woman and wife) signified the ambiguity of womanhood itself. Further, it will be argued that this ambiguity resided in the integration into the Constitutionalist language of two conflicting discursive elements regarding women—a contestatory rearticulation that charted the possibilities, as well as the limitations, of defining a new womanhood.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 1-2 , Spring Winter 1993 , pp. 51 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1993

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi for helping me develop the arguments in this paper and for making available his private 19th- and early 20th-century archives of Persian periodicals. Thanks are due also to the colleagues and friends who offered critical and helpful suggestions on earlier drafts and during seminar presentations: Beth Baron, Lama Abu Odeh, Cyrus Amir Mokri, Palmira Brummett, Kouross Esmaeli, and Farzaneh Milani. The assistance of Laurie Abbott and Sholeh Quinn (University of Chicago Library, Middle East Documentation Section) and Assadollah Kheirandish is gratefully acknowledged, as is that of Nilufar Shambayati. In its final rewriting for Iranian Studies, the paper benefited from the critical suggestions of the journal's editor, Abbas Amanat.

References

1. See Afary, J., “On the Origins of Feminism in Early 20th-century Iran,” Journal of Women's History 1, no. 2 (Fall 1989): 65–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bamdad, B., Zan-i Irānī az inqilāb-i mashrūṭīyat tā inqilāb-i sifīd (Tehran: Ibn Sina, 1970)Google Scholar; Bayat-Philipp, M., “Women and Revolution in Iran, 1905–11,” in Beck, L. and Keddie, N., eds., Women in the Muslim World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 295–308Google Scholar; Mansur, R., “Chihrah-yi zan dar jarayid-i mashrutiyat,” Nimeye Digar 1, no. 1 (spring 1984): 11–30Google Scholar; Nahid, A., Zanān-i Irān dar junbish-i mashrūṭah (Saarbrucken: Nuvid, 1989)Google Scholar; Natiq, H., “Mas'alah-yi zan dar barkhi az mudavvanat-i chap az nihzat-i mashrutah ta ‘asri Riza Khan,” Zamān-i now 1 (Aban 1362 Sh./November 1983): 8–17Google Scholar, 27; Sanasarian, E., The Women's Rights Movement in Iran (New York: Praeger, 1982Google Scholar).

2. The theoretical arguments in this paper, in particular the notion of the integration of contradictory elements within the same discursive context, are largely informed by Terdiman, R., Discourse and Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

3. For a discussion of discursive contestations in many central political concepts in this period—the changed meanings of such words as nation/millat, politics/siyasat, and knowledge/'ilm—see Tavakoli-Targhi, M., “Refashioning Iran: Language and Culture during the Constitutional Revolution,” Iranian Studies 23, nos. 1–4 (1990): 77–101Google Scholar; idem, “The Formation of Two Revolutionary Discourses in Modern Iran: The Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1906 and the Islamic Revolution of 1978–1979” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1988)Google Scholar. For changes in the Arabic language in the same period, see Ayalon, A., Language and Change in the Arab Middle East: The Evolution of Modern Political Discourse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

4. Sadr, M. Hashimi (ed.), Muẕākirāt-i majlis, 2 vols. (Tehran, 1325 Sh./1946), 1:31Google Scholar (hereafter Muẕākirāt).

5. Ibid.

6. For the debate in the First Majlis see Muẕākirāt 1:484. For the debate in the Second Majlis see Muẕākirāt 11:1528–35.

7. For a discussion of women's activities in this period, see Afary, “Origins.“

8. Muẕākirāt 1:484. Referring to this discussion in the First Majlis, Afary states: “Mirza Murtaza Quli presented a petition on behalf of Anjuman-i Nisvan (Women's Anjuman) calling for recognition of women's societies. He posed the issue as a question: whether the women's demands were ‘in accordance with the laws of the Sharia'” (“Origins,” 72–3). Afary does not indicate her source, and the published proceedings of the First Majlis bear no reference to a petition by any women's society. The full text of Mirza Murtiza Quli Khan's question that opened this debate is: “It is quite evident that ours is an Islamic country and that, according to the Constitution, every law that is instituted must conform to Islamic law. Moreover, the morality of the nation must be improved. I have obtained a ticket. I shall read it. See if it is acceptable according to the sharīah.“

9. Muẕākirāt 1:484.

10. Ibid, (emphasis added). An influential figure of the Constitutional Revolution, Sayyid Hasan Taqizadah (1878–1970) articulated some of the most consistently secularist and modernist arguments within the debates of this time. Perhaps because he later became supportive of the Pahlavi dynasty, and because much of the later historiography of the Constitutional Revolution took an oppositional posture towards that dynasty, he has remained under-appreciated in this historiography. A full elaboration of his contribution to Iranian modernism and constitutionalism remains to be undertaken. For some recent publications related to his life and thinking, see Afshar, I. (ed.), Awrāq-i tāzah-yāb-i mashrūṭīyat va naqsh-i Taqīzādah (Tehran: Javidan, 1359 Sh./1980)Google Scholar; idem (ed.), Zindagī-yi tùfānī (khāṭīrāt-i Sayyid Ḥasan Taqīzādah) (Tehran: ‘Ilmi, 1368 Sh./1989)Google Scholar; Taqizadah, H., Maqālāt, ed. Afshar, I. (Tehran: Shukufan, 1349–1357 Sh./197O-1978)Google Scholar; Afshar, I. and Zaryab, A (eds.), Nāmahā-yi Edvārd Brawn bih Sayyid Ḥasan Taqīzādah (Tehran: Jibi, 1359 Sh./1980)Google Scholar.

11. Muẕākirāt 11:1531. The full debate appears in ibid., 1528–31. For accounts of this debate through the reports of the London Times, see Bayat-Philipp, “Women and Revolution,” 300–301, and Afary “Origins,” 76–7.

12. Muẕākirāt 11:1531 (emphasis added). The quotation is from the Qur'an 4:34. The statement about women belonging in the same category with the insane and idiots probably means that, to Mudarris, women's explicit exclusion from voting was redundant and unnecessary. In some Islamic legal texts women are categorized with minors and legal incompetents (aṣghār and mahjūrīn)—all those under guardianship.

13. Irān-i naw, 13 Sha'ban 1329/8 August 1911.

14. For a discussion of the “thereness” of women in texts, see L. H. Lofland, “The ‘Thereness’ of Women: A Selective Review of Urban Sociology,” in Millman, M. and Kanter, R. M., eds., Another Voice: Feminist Perspectives on Social Life and Social Science (New York: Anchor Books, 1974)Google Scholar. See also Atkinson, P., The Ethnographic Imagination: Textual Construction of Reality (London: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar, especially chapters 5 and 6.

15. For a radical feminist reading of the absence of women in generic nouns, see Daly, M., Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), 324–9Google Scholar.

16. Quoted by Kashani, Muhammad Mihdi Sharif, Vāqi'āt-i ittifāqīyah dar rūzgar, ed. Ittihadiyah, Mansurah (Nizam Mafi) and Sa'dvandiyan, Sirus (Tehran: Nashr-i Tarikh-i Iran, 1362 Sh./1983), 1:304Google Scholar.

17. From a leaflet dated 10 Jamadi II 1328/19 June 1910. See Sharif Kashani, Vāqi'āt 2:531. The “burning of infants” refers to an attack by the Cossack soldiers in Tabriz on a women's public bath in which the bath was set on fire, and it was reported that a number of infants who were there with their mothers burned to death. The incident was recounted often in condemnation of the autocratic shah in many texts of this period. See, for instance, ibid. 1:258, 266, and Kirmani, Nazim al-Islam, Tārīkh-i bīdārī-yi Irānīān, ed. Sirjani, A. A. Sa'idi (Tehran: Agah-Nuvin, 1362 Sh./1983)Google Scholar, part II, 321.

18. ‘Adālat, 23 Dhu al-qa'dah 1324/5 January 1907 (emphasis added).

19. Sharif Kashani, Vāqi'āl 1:289.

20. Ḥabl al-matīn 18, no. 4 (10 Rajab 1328/18 July 1910): 10.

21. Namimi, Husayn (ed.), Jāvdānah Sayyid Ashraf al-Dīn Ḥusaynī Gīlānī —Nasīm-i shumāl (Tehran: Farzan, 1363 Sh./1984), 778Google Scholar.

22. Related to the scripting of women and children as weak members of society and subjects of male protection was the emphatic vulnerability of the two most helpless categories of population, widowed women and orphaned children, both having lost their protectors.

23. The sermon is reported under an entry dated 7 Safar 1323/8 April 1905 in Kirmani, Tārīkh-i bīdārī, Part I, 295–6.

24. A full analysis of this story and a collection of the pertinent historical documents are the subject of A. Najmabadi, Daughters of Quchan: Re-membering the For-gotten Gender of Iranian Constitutionalism (forthcoming).

25. Kirmani, Tārīkh-i bīdārī. Part I, 446–7. Rai, an old unit of weight measurement, equals four man-i Tabrīz, approximately twelve kilograms.

26. Kirmani, Tārīkh-i bīdārī, Part I, 453. The story of Zahra is an allusion to the conflict, after Muhammad's death, reported between Abu Bakr and Fatimah over the estate of Fadak, a property belonging to the Prophet out of the booty of the Khaybar expedition (see Momen, M., An Introduction to Shi'i Islam [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985], 20Google Scholar; The Encyclopaedia of Islam [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965]Google Scholar, s.v. “FADAK” [L. Veccia Vaglieri]). For an example of the Shi'i narrative of the Fadak incident, see Z. Shirvani, Ḥadā'iq al-sīyahah (Tehran: Tehran University Press, 1348 Sh./1969), 351–2. Sayyid al-shuhadā (literally, “lord of all martyrs“) refers to the third Shi'i Imam, Husayn b. ‘Ali, killed on the plain of Karbala in 61/680.

27. Kirmani, Tārīkh-i bīdārī. Part I, 453.

28. Sharif Kashani, Vāqi'āt 1:52. “Kavah, the Blacksmith” was the figure in the wellknown liberation myth who led a popular uprising to save the people from the tyrant king Zahhak. The two snakes growing out of the king's shoulders fed daily on the fresh brains of slaughtered youth. For the significance of recovering/reconstituting pre-Islamic myths as history in the modernist discourse, see Tavakoli-Targhi, “Refashioning Iran.”

29. Ibid., 224. See also statements on pp. 242, 317, 337, and 351.

30. Kirmani, Tārīkh-i bīdārī, Part I, 610–11.

31. This language was common to both men and women. In a letter in Irān-i now, a woman exhorted men in this language: “O brothers! Today is the day of honor and magnanimity. Today is the day of manliness and endeavor… . It is evident that at such a precarious time the Islamic zeal and the manliness of our brothers has been evoked… . Along with us distraught women, they are ready to sacrifice life and property in a manly fashion, and following this laudable path, according to ‘men are in charge of women,’ to the extent that manliness and Iranianness requires of them, they will not refuse any of their life and property in order to protect the honor of Islam” (Irān-i now, 25 Safar 1328/7 March 1910).

32. Kirmani, Tārīkh-i bīdārī, Part II, 222–4. Note how the insistence on proper gender hierarchy (placing women below men) is linked to and reinforced by another: placing the Jew beneath the Muslim. Women and Jews appear in many texts as morally inferior. Both, for instance, are proverbially projected as cowards. Such commonalities between the Other external to the community (Jew) and the internal Other (Muslim woman) place the woman at once inside and outside the community, that is, at the margins.

33. Khwansari M. R., Khulāṣāt al-tawārīkh (Tehran: n. p., 1324/1906), 13Google Scholar. Here is another instance of the woman/wife ambiguity. Zanhā-yi ahl-i shahr could mean “women residents of the city” or “wives of the city residents.“

34. The symbolic presentation of woman as the veiled one is very common in the texts of this period; that single piece of a woman's outfit standing for her, signifying femaleness, acted as the most significant marker of the female from the male. For an insightful discussion of this point see Hancock, F., “The Veil As a Presentational Symbol” (unpublished paper, Harvard Divinity School, 1989)Google Scholar. A common insult to a man was to call him “wearer of a scarf (lachchak bih sar).

35. Khwansari, Khulāṣāt, 13–14.

36. The donor was the wife of Qazi Muhammad Qazvini, later executed during the “Lesser Autocracy,” June 1908-July 1909.

37. Muẕākirāt 1:84.

38. Nidā-yi vatan, 28 Rajab 1327/18 August 1909.

39. Tamaddun, 7 Rabi' I 1325/17 April 1907, 3–4.

40. Kasravi, A., Tārīkh-i mashrūṭah-yi Irān (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1347 Sh./1968), 698Google Scholar.

41. Irān-i naw 1, no. 13 (22 Sha'ban 1327/8 September 1909): 3.

42. All these examples are from a list of women contributors reported in Irān-i now 1, no. 149 (23 Safar 1328/5 March 1910): 2.

43. Ironically, the women's being named has made it more difficult for us today to identify who they were, since no family name or affiliation was in use at the time.

44. The speech was reported in full in Ḥabl al-matīn, 10 Rajab 1328/18 July 1910. Agha Baygum Khanum (1882–1949) was the daughter of Sakinah Kandashlu and Shaykh Hadi Najmabadi. Like many women who were engaged in constitutionalist activities during this period, she was also involved in establishing a school for girls (called Madrasah-yi dukhtarān) in the Darvazah Qazvin area of Tehran. Along with a number of other principals of girls' schools, she participated in the series of meetings that resulted in the formation of the Association of Women of the Homeland (anjuman-i mukhaddarāt-i vaṭan). On these meetings, see Irān-i now 156 (3 Rabi' I 1328/16 March 1910): 2; 157 “(4 Rabi' I 1328/18 March 1910): 2; and 166 (18 Rabi' I 1328/30 March 1910): 1. At the first meeting of the board of directors of the Association, she was elected chair. Agha Shahzadah Amin and Sadiqah Dawlatabadi were respectively elected as treasurer and secretary of the Association. See Bamdad, B., Zan-i Irānī 2:13–14Google Scholar. On Shaykh Hadi Najmabadi see Hairi, A., Shi'ism and Constitutionalism in Iran (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977), 73–7Google Scholar.

45. Nidā-yi vaṭan, 23 Sha'ban 1325/2 October 1907.

46. Ibid., 6 Ramazan 1325/14 October 1907.

47. Ibid., 1 Dhiqa'dah 1325/7 December 1908.

48. Shukūfah 4 (18 Rabi' I 1334/20 January 1916): 2–3. This precarious claim to equality was immediately modified in these terms: “It should be evident that by equality I mean equality in education and learning of sciences, not in any other matter.“

49. Shukūfah 4 (2 Jamadi H 1334/2 April 1916): 8–9.