Abstract
From the period of 1906 to 1979, Iran witnessed monumental social and political change, constructing competing discourses of the nation. These competing discourses reflected the pervasive influence of Iran’s constitutional revolution and the subsequent Pahlavi nationalists, and their appropriation of nineteenth and twentieth century European scholarship. This article will examine the influence of the nationalist corpus of the late Qajar to the Pahlavi era, particularly the founder of Iranian nationalism, Mirza Fath Ali Akhundzadeh, and his heir, Mirza Agha Khan Kermani, as well as the next generation of Iranian nationalists such as Hasan Pirnia and Hasan Taqizadeh, on state nationalism. This paper argues that Iranian nationalism largely developed in response to European historiography. These nationalists appropriated and transformed European historiography for domestic use, rebranding it to facilitate a new reimagination of the nation-state. At the core of these national constructions were concepts of Iran’s ancient past with which one could imagine, critique and reconstruct the nation. This paper examines the influence of the nationalist legacy and the role of the 1979 Revolution in dismantling such a legacy. Whilst a time of rupture, this paper illustrates that the narratives about Iranian identity in modern Iran, continues to operate within the parameters inherited by Europe.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 2 |
| Pages (from-to) | 33-51 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | Oxford Middle East Review |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2023 |