No title

Iranian Studies Journal of The Society for Iranian Studies

Volume 1 (1968)

Ali Banuazizi, Editor Roy Mottahedeh, Associate Editor

Published by The Society for Iranian Studies, P. 0. Box 89, Village Station, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

The Society for Iranian Studies COUNCIL Ervand Abrahamian Ali Banuazizi, Executive Secretary Hormoz Hekmat Abbas Heydari-Darafshian Farhad Kazemi, Treasurer Manoucher Parvin, President Majid Tehranian

IRANIAN STUJDIES Journal of 7he Society for Iranian Studies Contents: Volume 1 (1968) ARTICLES Al-i

Ahmad, Jalal. Someone Else's Child (translated by Theodore S. Gochenour). . . . . . .155-162

Bausani, Bulliet,

Alessandro.

Theism and Pantheism

Richard W. City Histories Iran . . . . . . .

in Rumi.

8-24

in Medieval .104-109

Chubak, Sadeq. Two Short Stories (translated by John Limbert). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113-121 Cottam,

Richard in Iran.

W. Political Party Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Farrokhzad, Forough. Anita Spertus)

Three Poems (translated by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

82-95

54-75

Fatemi,

Ali M. S. Economic Development of Petroleum Exporting Countries . . . . . . . . . .110-112

Limbert,

John. The Origin Kurds in Pre-Islamic

Mintz,

Sidney W. Social Science Research by North Americans Abroad: Some Reflections.

Mottahedeh, Parvin,

and Appearance of the Iran. . . . . . . . . .

Roy.

Manoucher. A Forgotten

Sources

for

the Study of Iran

Military Expenditure in Iran: Question . . . . . . . . . ..

iii

.

41-51

.

34-40

.

4-7

.149-154

.

.

96-103

in Iran

.

132-148

A ColThe Lifted Veil: Farmanfarmaian, Tanya. of Poems, 1966-67 (reviewed by lection Majid Tehranian) . . . . . . . . . . . . .

166-167

Savory, Zonis,

Notes

Roger.

on the Safavid

Educational

Marvin.

State.

Ambivalence

.

BOOKREVIEWS

Russia Kazemzadeh, Firuz. 1864-1914 (reviewed

in Persia and Britain by Nikki R. Keddie).

.

163-165

in Iran: and Rebellion Keddie Nikke R. Religion of 1891-1982 (reviewed The Tobacco Protest by Farhad Kazemi). . . . . . . . . . . . .

31-32

OPEC Oil (reviewed by Majid Teh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

168-175

Lutfi,

Ashraf. ranian).

The Foreign Policy of Iran: Ramazani, Rouhollah. 1500A Developing Nation in World Affairs: 1914 (reviewed by Shaul Bakhash) .122-125 on Oil

(reviewed

76-79

by Majid Tehranian).

Recent

Studies

Wulff,

Crafts of Persia: Hans E. The Traditional Technology and Influence Their Development, (reon Eastern and Western Civilizations viewed by Nikki R. Keddie) . . . . . . . .

165

MISCELLANEOUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acknowledgment. of Current Research on Iran. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . By Way of Introduction. The Bitter Loss, M.T.. Forough Farrokhzad: Recent Books on Iran. . . . . . . . . . . . . Second Annual Business Report of the Society's Meeting, Majid Tehranian . . . . . . .

iv

. . .27-30, . . . . . .

121 80 2-3 52-53 25-26

128-131

Bulletin

rheSocCleu

oF anutn

Uolunwe Ir, lUtnWr I

nlt

Socdl Stube

Wlonter 1965

I RA

N IAN

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S

BULLETINOF THE SOCIETYFOR IRANIANCULTURAL AND SOCIAL STUDIES

COUNCIL Ervand Abrahamian All Banuaziz'i, Secretary Hormoz Hekmat Abbas Heydari-Darafshian Farhad Kazemi, Treasurer Manoucher Parvin, Pres'ident Maj id Tehraniian

IRANIANSTUDIES Ali Banuazizi, Editor Roy Mottahedeh, Associate

Editor

IRANIANSTUDIES is published quarterly by The Society for Iranian Cultural and Social Studies. to members of the It is distributed copies Society as a part of their membership. The price of single for non-members is $1.00 per issue. by the The opinions expressed contributors are those of the individual authors and not necessarily those of the Society or the editors of IRANIANSTUDIES. Articles may be submitted in English or Persian to the Editor for publication, All communications concerning IRANIANSTUDIES or the Society's affairs should be addressed to: The Society for Iranian Cultural and Social Studies New Haven, (SICSS), P.O. Box 3384, Yale Station, Connecticut 06520, U.S.A. cover

design

by Tina Kazemi

ST

I R A NIAN

UD

IE

S

BULLETINOF THE SOCIETY AND SOCIALSTUDIES FOR IRANIANCULTURAL Volume I

Winter 1968

Number 1

CONTENTS 2

BY WAYOF INTRODUCTION

l

SOURCESFOR THE STUDYOF IRAN Roy Mottahedeh

8

THEISMAND PANTHEISMIN RUMI Alessandro Bausani

25

RECENTBOOKSON IRAN

27

ON IRAN (I) BIBLIGRAPHYOF CURRENTRESEARCH

31

BOOKREVIEW in Iran: Reli_gion and Rebellion The Tobacco Protest of 1891-1892, Reviewed by Farhad Kazemi

by Nikki

Keddie

BY

WAY

OF

INTRODUCTION

The main objective of The Society for Iranian Cultural and Social Studies, as set forth by its Constitution, Is "to encourage the study of Iranian culture and society, social, economic Including history, language, literature, problems of Iran." The need for a forum and political that could bring all students of Iranian society and of social science culture, dispersed in various disciplines and humanities, together had been felt for sometime. In a meeting held at Yale University on September 2nd, 1967, prelimInary plans for the formal establishment of the Soclet? finally came to fruition. The purposes of the Society, as its main objective, are manifold; to provide academic forums for current research in Iranian studies, to encourage further research In the field, to focus the attention of the researchers on the gaps; to po+nt out some of the fundamental problems that contemporary Iran faces, to enhance a better conmunication and understandIng between Iranian and non-Iranian scholars and students, and finally to generate greater Interest in Iranian studies In the academi'c conununiti'es. The present members of the Society are mostly young Iranian students and scholars who have been educated at home in social sciences and humanities. and foreign universities and social life to relate The need In their own intellectual to the study of Iranian the findings of their disciplines society and culture has been an important motivating factor We believe, however, that Persian In brInging them together. culture, particularly in its mystical philosophic and poetic has also something to contribute to the view of literature, It is the hope agent. man as a free and self-transending of this Society, therefore, to help to bring the analytic Insights of western social science and the integrating powers of the Persian cultural tradition to a conmon meeting ground. But to provide such a forum for cross-cultural tion, the Society needs the participation of all 2

comnunicathose non-

Iranians who are also engaged in the study of Iranian culture and society. We would welcome their membership and contributions. The Society hopes to provide in its meetiungs and publications a forum, free of all restraints of commitment to any particular political group, publitc policy or ideological position, for the discussion and analysis of the cultural and social problems facing Iran. The safeguard of freedom of inquiry and expression for its members will be, therefore, the Society's sole commitment. And the maintenance of high standards of scholarship and intellectual integrity will be its sole criterion In selection of materials to be presented to its public. To achieve its purpose, the Society hopes to sponsor seminars on Iranian studies to be held at least once a year, to encourage, and whenever possible, publish research conducted on all facets of Iranian life and history. In these activities, we would welcome the participation and contributions of institutions and individuals who share our objectives. The present journal, Iranian Studies, will be published on a quarterly basis as the bulletin of Tne Society for It is designed to serve Iranian Cultural and Social Stvlies. as a medium for the publication of scholarly articles on Iranian culture and society, literature, language, and history, as well as the social, economic and political problems of Iran. It will also report on current research on Iran and the Society's activities, and would enable Its members to communicate their views to each other on matters of conmnoninterest.

STUDIES IRANIAN

3

Sources

for

the

Study

of

Iran ROY MOTTAHEDEH Oliver Wendell Holmes when he taught anatomy at the Harvard Medical School in the 19th century used to begin his lecture on the skull by picking up each bone and des"The frontal bone borders on the cribing its position: parietal bone, the parietal bone borders on the occipital bone," and so on, until he came to the sphenoid bone, a bone composed of many pieces that seem to border on everything and assume all shapes. He is supposed to have picked up the sphenoid and said in annoyance, "Gentlemen, curse the sphenoid bone!" No such uncharitable words would come from the student of Iran, but how often the primitive state of his science, like the anatomy of an earlier century, makes Iran seem the most complex and indefinable of all the bones in the greater body politic of the world. Ethnically composed of every variety of mankind, a corridor open to the movement of many peoples, the home of seemingly endless numbers of languages (Pahlavi, Kurdish, Soghdian, Avestan, etc., etc.), a great cultural influence on its neighbors yet always ready to receive outside influences, It is hard to say one can describe the borders of Iran or where historically needed to be how one can master all the separate disciplines able to describe Iran with any accuracy. Fortunately, the student now has several guides through Walter B. Henning's list, the labyrinth of Iranian Studies. Bibl'iography of important studies on old Ijranian Subjects in Its (Tehran: 950), is extremely broad yet selective choice of books, and names many classics which students now A Guide to Iranian Area Study by L.P. Elwell-Sutton overlook. lists and describes several hundred useful books and articles.

Roy Mottahedeh is a Junior Fellow in History at Harvard University. 4

The old Grundrics der Iranischen Philologie is still the nearest thing we have to an encyclopaedia on Iran, and its useful articles and bibliographies can now be supplemented by the new two-volume encyclopedia in Persian, Iranshahr. Articles on Iran in Western languages are listed in Index Islamicus 1906-1955 (and supplements) by J.D. Pearson who is also the author of a very valuable general guide, Oriental and Asian Bibliography (1966). Persian articles are similarly (Teheran: 1961) by Iraj brought together in Index Iranicus Iranian biblioAfshar, an extremely industrious and intelligent especially those prepared for grapher whose other publications, the Iranian Bibliographical Society are essential to all students. Persian books, whether in manuscript or In print, are listed in C.A. Storey's masterful (but incomplete) Persian Literature: A Bio-Blbliographical Surevey. For Arabic manuscript sources on Iran the fundamental survey is Carl Brockelmann's Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur (five volumes). The exciting archeological discoveries in Iran in the last few years make it all the more tragic that one of the archeologically richest countries in the world cannot enforce Its Louis antiquity laws and thereby prevent amateur excavation. vanden Berghe's Archeo.logie de 'Iran (1939) does make it excavations easy to find the reporttfor most oF7'he scientific of Iran, and summarizes what we know about each period. Articles by Russian archeologists who work in neighbouring areas are listed in the footnotes and bibliography of R.N. Frye's indispensible survey of pre-Islamic and early Islamic Iran, The Heritage of Persia (1963), as well as in the occasional survey articles on Iranian studies in the Soviet Union found in Kratkije Soobshchenja Instituta Vostokovedenja. The surveys of stratigraphy by T. Cuyler Young, Jr. and of pre-Islamic are by Edith Paroda are examples of the very high quality of scholarship on Iranian archaeology in this country. Three new journals give a central place to Iranian archaeology: Iranica Antigua (1961 on), Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies7T963 on), and Teheraner Forschunen 71961 on). The geography of Iran, fundamental to archaeologists, etc. is te subject df the historians, anthropologists, recently released volume Persia (1945) by the Navy IntelliThe numerous Persian books gence Division of Great Britain. on geography are listed in D. Wilber's useful article in Archaeolo Orientalia (1952) edited by G.C. Miles. The masterful survey of the medieval geographers of Iran by Paul Schwarz, Iran im Mittelalter, still has not been used Both geographical and anthropolog"isufficiently by scholars. cal books on Iran can be followed in some detail through the reviews in The Geographical Journal. IRANIANSTUDIES

5

The study of Iranian languages, one of the most complex studies, is perhaps the strongest field of all philological Amongthe many able scholars in this of Iranian studies. field are P.J. de Menasce and J. Duchesne-Guillemi n in France, H.K. Nyberg and G. Widergren in Scnadinavia, W. Brandenstein and 0. Hansen in Germany, M. Boyce and I. Gerschevitch in England, V.A. Livshyts and l.A. Rubinchik in Russia, and R.N. Frye and M. Dresden in America. G. Lazard's books have given a new basis to the study of modern Persian. G. Doerfer's many-volumed Tuerkische und Mongolische Elemente would be able Im Neepersischen is a feat which few specialists to undertake. The important study of the many dialects of Iran, long the specialty of G. Morgenstierne, has now attracted like D.N. MacKenzie. Incidentally, we are still phililogists far from having a Persian dictionary on historical principles; like the dictionaries but in addition to the many classical five-volume Farhan2-e Nafisi, we now have a solidly based dictionary by M. Mo'in. A good survey of the whole field of Iranian language with ample bibliography is provided by volume Iranistik (1958) in the series Handbuchder Oriental istik. J. Rypka's literary history of Persia will probably Its continue to be the most widely read book in this field. Persian and Russian counterparts by Dr. Safa and E.E. Bertels A in this subject. are also widely admired by specialists different approach, in which literature is discussed as literature rather than cultural history, makes Alessandro Bausani's Storia della Letteratura Persiana outstanding, espand perceptive discussion of ecially in its very intelligent the structure and techniques of Persian peotry. F. Meier, H. Ritter, and Parviz Khanlari's studies are other examples of what could be done in the study of Persian literature if a more careful and painstaking approach were adapted. Texts continue to be published at an even faster rate, in series l ike the series of the Bonuah-e.Nashr especially va Tar h the Soviet "Pamiatniki Literatur Norodov Vostoka," and so on. Catalogues of manusqripts translations, the UNESCO including the Iranian catalogues by Afshar and Daneshpajuh provide the student of Persian literature and history with Contemporary Iran seems an unexpected wealth of materials. to have an ever_.growing number of magazines with useful bookreview sections, and one in particular, Rahnama-ye Ketab, makes Hopefully, a special effort to review newly publishes texts. the study of classical Arabic will not decline in modern Iran, for it is no accident that the best editors of Persian texts, men like Qazvini and Eqbal, were excellent Arabists. 6

The study of Iranian history is still in its primitive stages. The Greek and Romansources, though studied for generations and conveniently summarized in many works are still far from being used fully; and even those which have been used are not well known to Iranians. Few general works on the pre-Islam4c period have been produced in recent years, and most of these, like the works of F. Altheim, and controve,rsial. Western students should not overlook the interesting Russian books on the Sassanian period by V.G. Lukonin and N.V. Pigulevskaja. A very helpful guide to sources for the Islamic period is Jean Sauvaget and Claude Cahen's Introduction to the History of the Muslim East (1965). The section "Abstracta Islamica" in Revue des Etudes Islamigues provides abstracts of relevant articles and books as they appear. A good introduction to the important work done on this period in Iran itself are the excellent books of Zarrinkub. Safavid history has attracted many talented scholars like I.P. Petrushevsky in the Soviet Union and Martin P. Dickson in America; but it is a great hardship for the rest of us that none of them have ever written a general history of the Safavid period. Safavid documents are being published in many countries, and H. Busse's Utersuchungen zum Islamischen Kanzleiwesen is a model of what good use can be made of such materials. The amazingly full studies of A.K.S. Lambtonset a high standard for work on more recent Persian history. In this field we are fortunate to have several scholars in American universities: R.K. Ramazani, Nikki Keddie, Firuz Kazemzadeh, Richard Cottam, Amin Banani and others. Two interesting and different approaches to recent Iranian history are found in the works of M.S. Ivanov in Russian and of Peter Avery in English. The student of contemporary Iranian studies has at his disposal ever-growing bodies of statistics issued by the General Department of Statistics, the Plan Organization, the many branches of the Ministry of Finances, the Iranian Petroleum Institute, the many banks and so on. No subject are t.1. Paljukaitis's Ekonomicheskoe Razvitije Irana (Moscow, 1963), Hans Bobek's Probleme eines unterentwickelten Landes, alter kultur (Frankfurt, 1962) and J.P. Gittinger, Planning for Agricultural Development: The Iranian Experience (Washington, 1965). The most important publication on Iranian studies will hopefully appear in the near future: The many-volumed Cambridge History of Iran. This will include volumes on geography and history of all kinds, and will contain articles by scholars of all nationalities. STUDIES IRANIAN 7

Theism and Pantheism in Rumi ALESSANDROBAUSANI defined as "all, is God and God Pantheism is generally is al l (I) but it can therotical ly assume two different forms. First, it is said that the finite and temporal world is nothing in front of God, and it is swallowed up by the sole absolute Reality of God, or in the second instance, God is considered as dissolved in the world, poetically sung or scientifically demonstrated as a Whole, in which an immanent Life-Energy acts. In both cases, however, what most sharply distinguishes pantheism from non-pantheism (or theism) is the fact that God-is always considered by pantheists as something impersonal; pantheof their view on theaffirm the superiority ists generally istic "inferior" forms of religion pointing out that (a) calling God a "person" restricts and diminishes His greatness, as it necessarily implies a body and a limitation, (b) of devotion of an Ego to pantheistic piety is not a feeling a Thou, but rather the sensation of being a part belonging to a Whole, a wave in the immense sea of Being. It is also well-known that the original and fundamental of the three great monotheistic religious experience religions of the world, i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Islam is between man and God radically antipantheistic. The relation is always felt in both the Bible and the Qur'an just as one between an Ego and a Thou, or, to put it better, between an Ego and a He, only that one of them (the He-God) has a much more powerful and free life than the more limited Ego of Man. It would be quite useless to quote examples of this way of feeling the contact between God and Man from the Holy Books; I only bring to the mind of my readers three passages of the three Holy Books, which I consider particularly significant for this subject. One is the fight of Jacob with God (Gen. A primitive XXXII, 25 ff.) yet splendid symbol of the idea of Persian and Alessandro Bausani is Professor of Rome and the University Islamic Studies at the University of Naples. He is the author of a history of Persian litea history of the rature, Storia della Letteratura Persiana, as well as a history of Iran, Persia Religiosa, religion of the literatures of Pakistan, a chrestomathy of Malay, and many other publications. 8

of God-Person; the second is the famous passage in St. John's Gospel: (111, 16) "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting Life". The third is the passage so often quoted by Iqbal (and also by Rumi himself) "Every day He is engaged in some new affair" (Qur. LV, 29) though the entire Qur'an bears perhaps even stronger witness idea of God than other of a personal'istic and activistic It can be added that one of the oldest names for Scriptures. "God" among the Semites, el, has been etymologically connected by some scholars with the Hebrew demonstrative root el, "that", "'He'', '"You"; (2) one of the most ancient ideas of God has been, according to this theory, that of a vague yet most powerful presence of Sombebody in some sacred place. Then, among the pantheon of various local Person-Gods one, more powerful, destroyed the others and reigned above all in undisputed and so we arrived at monotheism. Or might and sovereignty: else the Person-Gods were, in the course of Time, and this only in mature minds, felt as participating by philosophically some impersonal divine force, of which they were themselves no more than ephemeral (though longer aged than man) manifestations, and so we reached pantheism. Thus pantheism is see for instance Hinduism) theoretically (and also practically, or connected with polytheism and with a manifestantionist emotionist point of view concerning the problem of emergence of being (s). The Perfect Manof pantheism is the Saint, often the Ascetic, in which the God-head shines more clearly and who points to the way to redemption from this world, and Theism is on the other hand re-absorption into the Absolute. connected with a militant and sometimes even violent and revolutionary struggle against "other gods" in the name of God of the other (which however retains some characteristics weaker companion gods oF before, specially personality and and also with a creationist point of view living activity) God is for theism-an concerning the emergence of beings. Artist-God, and things are created, "made", "wrought" by Him according to His independent and arbitrary will, not emanated The Perfect Man from HIimthrough a sort of blind necessity. of theism is the Prophet, soinething like a Commander-in-Chief of God's armies on earth, struggling hard in order that the only true God (3) may reign on earth as He reigns in Heaven. A Prophet is not necessarily a Saint, but only a person God only by an act of free election has chosen, and made infallible on His part, not by inherent divine qualities.

IRANIANSTUDIES

9

RUMI'SCONCEPTION OF GODHEAD Facing. the problem in this way, let us now study which of these two conceptions of the Deity is more strongly emphasized in Runti's master-work, the Masnavi-i-Ma'navi'. (4) In 1923 Prof. R.A. Nicholson of Cambridge, the best European authority on Rumi, wrote: "Neigher the theologian nor the poet is a pantheist... I am aware that as regards Jalalud-Din this judgment may appear questionable to those who have read certain passages in the Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz where he describes his oneness with God in terms which look pantheistic at first sight and which I myself understood in a pantheistic sense at a time when I knew less about the history of Sufism than I do now. (5) i hope to show to my readers that Rumi too, as many great mystic personalities of both Islam and Christianity, felt and sang God as a creative personality, giving to the word haqiqat a meaning that is for instar,ce found in the well-known rubal of Jami: < - J,>,

Jf~~~..ij6/

j8>g>^J

That same sense of "active personality" let Mr. Whinfield to the happy though not too exact translation. OF REASON PHILOSOPHERS DEVOID FINDTHIS WORLD A MERE FAIL TO IDEAOF THEMIND: 'TIS AN IDEA- BUTTHEY. BEHIND(6) SEE THEGREATIDEALISTWHOLOOMS The active creativeness of God is by Rumi clearly kept distinct from the created thing. This is best expressed in a rather seldom quoted passage of the Masnavi (11, 1360 ff.) which I consider fundamental for my thesis: "I am in love with Thy making (sun') both in the hour of Thanksgiving and in the hour of patience; how should I be in love like an infidel with that thou hast made (masnu)? He that loves God's making is glorious, he that loves what God hath made is an unbeliever!

. . .

therefore

distinguish,s$re,

the

ordainment from the thing ordained, so that thy difficulty may be removed at once. . . Infidelity is Ignorance and the ordainment of infidel'ity is knowledge ... the ugliness of the script is not the ugliness of the artist; nay 'tis an exhibition of the ugly by-him, the skill of the artist is that he can make both the ugly and the beautiful."

10

What has already been made by God is something crystallized, stony, senseless. No feeling then in Rumi, of a divineness of Nature: things are residual tracks of God's ever rapidly evolving and artistically original act of creation. To love that would mean to adore and love created things would mean idolatry, shirk. This idea of God as a is something radically differnaggash, a painter, an artist, ent from any conceptior, of God as an Impersonal principle -from which everything necessarily emanates. In order to point out this utter independence of God from this world Rumi often pleases himself to call the regions where this inaccessible and yet ever originally working Ego abides "Nothing", "non-existence" (adam). Non-existence Is called by Rumi the kargah-l-Khuda, the workshop of God. Nonexistence is the house and workshop of God, not, it must be remarked, God himself. Since God's workshop is non-existence, workshop there

Is only worthlessness

outside of the

. . . Inasmuch as the

Work has woven a veil on the Worker, you cannot see Hlm outside of that work. Since the workshop is the dwelling-place of the Worker, he that is outside is unaware of Him. Come then Into the workshop, that is to say into non-existence, that you may see the Work and the Worker together." (Masnavi 11, 689-90 and 760-62; on the metaphysical Importance of nonexistence also cf. Masnavi IV 2341 - 83). And even when the pure soul, the ego of man is, after death, or in ecstasy, extremely near God, this nearness is never felt by Rumi as a real absorption in God without any residual. The metaphors He uses to express fana In an interesting passage of the Masnavi (IIi, 3669 ff.T are for instance the following: the flame of the candle In the presence of the sun (but yet the candle exists and "if you put cotton upon it, the cotton will be consumed by the sparks") or a deer in the presence of lion, or elsewhere, as redhot iron In the fire, when Iron takes the properties of fire without entirely losing its own individual essence. In that state it can claim to be fire as wall as iron. The soul near God becomes then one "according to whose desire the torrents and rivers flow and the stars move in such wise as he wills, and life and death are his officers going to an fro according to his desire" In another passage, which I quote rather In (III, 1885 ff.). full as it Is a good specimen of Rumi's ideas about fana and baga, Rumi tells of a lov,r who, as he reached the presence of his Beloved, died, and "the bird, his spirit flow out of IRANIAN STUDIES

11

his body" for "God is such that when He comes, there is not a single hair of thee remaining" (111, 4616, 4621). But Rumi, not What an encouraging idea for a pantheist! unlike a modern novel-writer is always ready to surprise us with some coup de scene. So the real end of the story is told some lines further, under the heading: "Howthe Beloved caressed the senseless lover that he might return to his senses" (l , 4677 ff.) and He (the Sadr-i Jahan, the Beloved) "took the lover's hand saying: This man whose breath has departed will only then come to life when I give him spiritual breath. . . . He said: "O spirit that We have opened the door to hast fled from tribulation, and union with Us. Welcome! 0 thou whose selflessness intoxication is caused by Our Self, 0 thou whose being incessantly derived from Our Being, now, without lip, I tell

thee

the old mysteries

anew:

. . . At this

hearken!

momentopen the ear of earlessness for the sake of hearing Whenhe began the mystery of "God doeth what He willeth"! to hear the call of Union little by little the dead man began to stir. The lover of God is not lass than an earth which at the zaphyr's blandishments puts on a garment of green and lifts up its head from death; he is not less than the seminal water from which at the devine bidding there are born Josephs with faces like the sun; he is not less than a wind from which, at the conmand "Be!" peacocks and sweet-voiced birds come to being in the bird's womb; he is not less than the mountain of rock which by parturition brought forth the she-camel (7). So after

the annihilation

of everything which is not

God, as the Qur'an says

,

J

(quoted by Rumi just some lines before the anecdote of Sadr-i-Jahan) the mystery of the perpetually active personality of God,i.e. the mystery of "God doeth what he willeth" is revealed, inasmuch as God gives life to a new creation, a new world of deified, but not evanescent and This will be Paradise: but Rumi goes annihilated beings. so far along this way as to admit, In a certain sense, the presence of an element of Time in the otherworldly plane. This is the deepest meaning or his idea that the highest degree in the life of the spirit "is not attainment but infinite aspiration after having attained" (8). The verse of his Diwan ,-

r

^

-

4

st_

v

12

"

;

w

i

s

is well-known. (III, 1957 ff.):

In the Masnavi he repeats it in other words

"The greed of true men is by the forward way but greed

in the effeminate

goes backward .

.

.

. Ah,

there is a very occult mystery here in the fact that Moses sets out to run towards a Khizr. nyGod, do not tarry in anything that thou hast gained, but crave more like one suffering from dropsy who is never sated with water. This Divine Court is the Infinite Plane, Leave the seat of honour behind: the way is thy seat of honour' (9). Infinity is; then, conceived not as spatial, not as extensive, but rather intensive infinity, not as a billowing sea in which the Soul-Drop is submerged, but rather as a Way towards the far away limi't of God: ;o (Qur. LIII, 42). A sort of intensive Time (" appreciative time " lqbal would say) is present in this eternal striving. But a Way involves also two hedges limiting it, otherwise it is no longer a Way but a dipersive Desert: limitation and form are then spirtually productive. This is something quite different from what pa'ntheism has always asserted. So for Rumi, external acts of worship such as namaz and saum etc. have a real formative value. If the Spirit should not express itself through matter, if the batin were not to be expressed through zahir why would God have created the material world? Rumi asks himself in this passage of the Masnav7 (I, 2625 ff.): "If the spiritual explanation were sufficient, the creation of the world would have been vain and idle (whereas the QtJr'an repeatedly asserts that God did not create the world joking, He did it seriously. The material world is therefore a serious thing.) If love were only spiritual thought and reality, the form of your fasting and prayer would be non-existent. The gifts of lovers to one another are, in respect of Love, naught but forms; but the purpose is that the giftsr may have borne testimony to feelings of love which are concealed 'in secrecy." It is rather surprising to find so clear an assertion of the spiritual productiveness of ritual worship in an alleged pantheist like Rumi. For him acts of worship are one of the forms in which love, the communionbetween God and Manexpresses itself: and we have just seen that this dialogue will eternally continue in the world, or worlds, IRANIAN STUDIES

13

disclosed to our purified phys Ical body.

sight after

the death of the

Also the relationship between God and the world is, according to Rumi, rather a relationship of creation than of emanation. God, the "divine artist who depicts thoughts" (VT, 2 1 8 1) creates thing, In a way which reminds the ash'arite, and sharply anti-pantheistic and anti-necessitarian Idea of successive creations of the Universe In atoms of Time: "Every instant

...thou

art dying and returning:

Mustafa

declared that this world is but a moment...... Every moment the world is renewed and we are unaware of its being renewed whilst it remains the same in appearance. Life Is ever arriving anew like the stream, though in the body it has the semblance of continuity. From its swiftness It appears continuous, li-ke the spark which thou whir1est rapidly with thy hand. If thou whirl a firebrand with dexterity it appears to the sight as a very long line of fire. The swiftmotion produced by the action of God presents this length of duration (10) as a phenomenonarising from the rapidity of divine action" (Masnavi 1, 1142 ff.).

The ever active God recites spells arld incantations over the spirits and (Masnavi 1, 1448 ff.) " ...... they begin to stir; because of His spells the non-existences at that very momentare dancing joyously Into existence. Whenagain He recited a spell over the existent, at this word the existent marched back post-haste into non-existence. He spake Into the ear of the rose and made It laughing: He spake to the stone and made it a cornellan of mine. He spake to the body a message, so that It became spirit, he spake to the sun so that it became radiant. Again He puts into Its ear a fearful saying, and upon the face of the sun fall a hundred eclipses. Consider what the Speaker chanted Into the ear of the cloud so that it poured tears from Its eyes, like a waterskin; consider what God has chanted Into the ear of the earth, so that it became regardful and has ever since remained silent." Owing to that contact witm the creating God, things, tokens of H's power, are beautiful. Rumi likes Nature, he does not fly away from the world like the Buddhist who consider things ugly and despicable (11). Rumi's fl-ight from the world is the flight of one, who, though considering this world beautiful (Laysa fi'l-imkan ahsan mim-makan)yet thinks 14

that God, the ever active Worker working In the workshop of has prepared or Is preparing there worlds non-existence, even richer and more Intense than this world of ours. He Is preparing "speaking worlds" to use Rumi's original expression: "The prophets abandoned this delight because they were steeped In the divine light; since their spirit had experienced tha delight these delights seemed to them mere play.... since every atom of that world Is living and able to understand discourse, and eloquent, they have no rest in this dead world" (Masnavi V, 3588). Speaking Worlds: Another aspect, together with that of the eternal striving after God, of that dialoguing duality, which Rumi sees, after fana of that element of intensity-time even in the Plane of Eternal Life. But Rumi Is also deeply aware that, If no practical and visible wall be raised against the too easy mergingconception, words and thoughts in-God and identifying-with-God So the idea of the indispensable would remain insufficient. life of man role of the Prophet-Saint in the spiritual In the spiritual emerges in Rumi's religious philosophy. path, if the direct dialogue of man with God is too premature, a danger is felt: the danger of losing sight of the proporimperfect tions, the danger of assimilating one's own still self into the Ego of God, the danger of Pride. Even angelical natures suffer this temptation, the supreme temptation of the perfect soul (12). "Harut and Marut were intoxicated with the spectacle of God and with the marvels of the King's gradual temptation of them. Such intoxication arises even from God's gradual temptation, so that you may judge what intoxicatlons are wrought by the ascension to God. . . The Divine trial was turning them rapidly down, but how should one that is drunken have consciousness of these things? (13) ...Be cut off...fron the intoxication

of lust

. . . but know again

that

this

world is to be deemedIntoxication of lust in the terrestrial of small account beside the Intoxication of the angels ... a single drop of the wine of Heaven causes the soul to be rapt away from the wine and cupbearers of this world - so that you may imagine what intoxications befall the angels and the spirits

purified

by the Divine

Glory

. . . Therefore,

Harut

and Marut because of their feelings of Intoxication said: Alas, we would rain upon the earth like clouds; we would IRANIAN STUDIES

15

spread in this place of injustice a carpet of justice and equity and devotions and faithfulness". (mii, 801, ff). They were superb; they wanted to take themselves the tntltiattve of changing the world, of teaching justice and doing good. But the supreme and most freely acting Personality, God, punished them for their fault and they fell into the pit of Babylon where they teach no more than a poor substitute of Divine Lore, a counterfeited form of the Science of Heaven, magics, the theology of pantheism. Rumi sees a powerful means against falling Into magics and pantheism in the faith In a Prophet: the personality of the Prophet becomes in this way like a symbol of the personality of God, and a remedy against any subtle temptation of pride and envy. Man Is always ready to say, like Ibils: "Yes, I love and adore God, and none but Hin"'. And this he does often in the lbilsian sense, I.e. with the satanic arriere-pensee. To love and adore the Invisible and impersonal God Is easy, Is an easy pretext for me not to curb my neck to true and perfectly humble adoration". This Iblisian tauhid (T4Tmust be broken so that the purified soul may understnad the divine tauhid. Prophets and veneration for them are the weapon to destroy this extremely subtle temptation, which mounts, in ultimate aialysis, to a temptation towards pantheism. So Rumi says (Masnavi, 11, 811 ff.): "God made the Prophets the mediumbetween Him and His creatures In order that feelings of envy should be displayed In the agitation of the mind, inasmuch as no one was disgraced by inferiority to God, no one was ever envious of God; but the person whomhe deemed like himself (15) he would bear envy against him for that reason". This gradual temptation could seem rather cruel on the part of God but (1) the Islamic God is not a petty-god. of some pantheistic pseudo-religion and (2) evil is always ready to conceal itself i.n the innermost chambers of human heart and a cruel physician is necessary to eradicate It. But God's surgical lancet goes even deeper than this: ". . . Now, as the grandeur of the Prophet (in this case MuhammadT1Nas none feels envy of become established, him, since he is accepted by all the faithful; theref6re, In every epoch after Muhammada Saint arises: the probation of the people lasts until the Resurrection. Whosoever has a good disposition is saved; whosoever has a glass-heart Is broken. 16

Two points have to be remarked In this connection: (1) the psychological acuteness of Rumi's religious analysis (2) the activistic trend in his spiritual attitude. Mancan never repose at his ease in a given religion, In taqlId, God is always near him to urge him, to stimulate him through new "temptations". So the Path becomes also extremely dangerous (16); man is always In danger of losing himself and not many are there who reach that degree of hardness enabling them to see God face to face, that hardness so beautifully expressed in the Persian verse Iqbal liked so much (17)

Man, once he has overcome all the temptations of God in a fascinating struggle that reminds one of Jacob transposed into a spiritual plane, can stare Into God's eyes: this indescribable and ever new dialogue with God Is the supreme goal of the lover, killed by the Beloved and then caressed by Him again to Life. Through fixing his eyes In God's eyes man acquires an Immensepower. He acquires a power which is no more the fruit of pantheistic magics, but of theistic taslIm, islam (in the etymological sense) accepting the amanat of God: "Do you bear His burden? He will cause you to be borne aloft. Do you recieve His commands? He will cause If you accept His comyou to be received into His favour. mand you will become the spokesman therof; If you seek union Free will is with Him, thereafter you will become united. the endeavour to thank God for His beneficence: your Thanksnecessitarianism Is the denial of that beneficence. giving for the power of acting freely increases your power; Thanksnecessitarianism Is the denial of that beneficence. giving for the power of acting freely increases your power; necessitarianism takes the Divine gift of free will out of -your hand". (18) (Masnavi I, 936 ff.) and: "He (the man who broke his foot on the path of exertion) . . . was an accepter of the Divine Command,and he became accepted. Until now, he was receiving commandsfrom the King: henceforth he delivers the King's commandsto the oeople. Until now the stars were influencing him: henceforth he Is the ruler of the stars!" (1,1074-77). Here, as everybody clearly sees, we are very far from Nirvana''(19). IRANIANSTUDIES

17

Sunrning up the results of these short remarks on Rumi's pantheism, which are far from exhaustive but only intended as a stimulus for ITt and others to deeper"study, we see that Rumi's ideas are in the following several points quite distinct from those of a pantheist: (1) God in not All: He is working outside "all" in his workshop situated in the plane of non-existence (adam). (2) The sensible world, though ephemeral, is not, so to say, ephemeral by nature because of any inner Principle, but it is made such by God. It is not a joke, but it has (see for instance also Masnavi, IV to be taken seriously, So material acts of worship too have to be taken 3659-60). The material world too has its positive Importanct seriously. (3) If free activity and a sort of intensive Time are of Personality, then the God of Rumi the characteristics could also be called a person, though Rumi never states this in explicit words. But he makes Him always act ac totally free and even sometimes strangely and cruelly, original Ego-Power, fighting with Man so that he may become Man. (20). (4) The sensible world and even the thoughts of man emerge as a result not of necessary emanation or manifestation, but of free creation. (5) Devotion is here on earth submission to the will of God, and in the hereafter it will be an eternal and indescribable running after God or a dialogue with God. (6) Every temptation of mixing up the humanand the divine planes must be overcome by the faith in the Prophet and, after him, in the Saint of the epoch, which form an insuperable barrier against too simple a form of monism. Perhaps the only point in which Rumi remains rather near the ideal of pantheistic ethics is the accentuated character of liberation and redemption of the individual from the cage of the world in his religious preaching, and his Saint-ethics of moksha (though expressed in quite different forms than the Brahmanic ideal of iioksha) which is not the prophetic ethics a militant and socially organized faith, that ethics of the spiritual conquest of the world of God. It is also a duty of elementary honesty to state that in Rumi's Masnavi many lines and passages also can be read, which at first sight point to something like a pantheistic I shall quote two examples, one pointing to an initial view. unity of Being, the second to a final stage indifferentiate of unity with God. 18

(1) "Simple we were and all one substance; we were all without head and without foot yonder. We were one substance like the Sun: we were knottess and pure like water. Whenthat Godly light took form, it became many in number like the shadows of a battlement. Raise ye the battlement with the mangonell(manjanig), that difference may vanish from amidst this company of shadows" (Masnavi 1, 686-89). (2) The story, too well known to be reproduced here at length "of the person who knocked at a friend's door": his friend from within asked who he was: he said: 'tis 1: and the friend answered "Since thou art thou, I will not open the door: I know not any friend that is "I", and he opened the door only when the hover answered again, after long purifying suffering and pains, "tis Thou! (I, 3056 ff.) But I think that it would be immature to interpret right away such passages as pointing to a pantheistic view of immersion and complete annihilation of the self in the Deity. People (20) who quote such anecdotes and stories of the Masnavi generally - indulging in that adulterated pantheism in which too many Europeans try to find relief from too mechanized a life - forget to read deeper and to read further. For instance this same anecdote of the Lover who finally said "tis Thou", is accompanied by some considerations, among the clearest ones in Rumi's Masnavi, about the free and personal working of God (vv. 3068 ff.): "For that, 0 reader, the hand of God is necessary, for it is the "Be! and it was" the bringer into existence of every impossible thing. By His hand every Impossible thing is made possible: by fear of Him every unruly one is made quiet

.

.

Even the dead are made living

by the spell

of the Almighty, and that non-existence which is more dead than the dead - non-existence Is compelled to obey when He calls It into being. Recite the text: "Every day He Is engaged in some affair. Do not deem Him idle and inactive. Ilis least act, every day is that He despatches three armies: One army from the loins of the fathers towards the mothers in order that the plant may grow in the womb. One army from the wombs to the earth, that the world may be filled with male and female. One army from the earth to what Is beyond death that every one may behold the beauty of good works". IRANIAN STUDIES

19

Therefore, even to be annihilated in and with such an ever active God can in no wise mean a real and complete and As Rumi says in this same anecdote, nirvanic annihilation. God kills and gives Life: even the dead are made living by the spell of the Almighty (as we just saw in the story of Sadr-i-Jahan quoted above). So the mystery of what the lover and the beloved will say to each other in the chamber finally unlocked, remains a mystery, but is not final annihilation. Death and effacement of the Ego is for Rumi only a pieparatory degree to a more splendid rebirth and revival of which he Generally he uses in such can give only dim and vague hints. cases expressions like "this discourse hath no end . ." As for initial somebody who wants to avoid useless talking. unity it was - it seems clear to me - unity of all things in non-existence, from which they emerged by a free creative act of God, it does not mean unity in some etheral matter to which they will return. The first 'adam is quite different from the 'adan of fana. No doubt then that the mistake of many of Rumil's interpreters is due chiefly to four reasons: (1) They failed to understand that Persian lyrics are expressed in terms a.id metaphors of a panthetraditionally istic or seemingly pantheistic character, and that the pantheism of many Persian poets is a question allegorical So rather of form and emotion than matter and intellect.. we clearly see, for instance, that those poems of Rumi which follow the lyrical pattern of the hazal (22) more strictly (the odes of his Diwan) are generally more pantheist- ooking than the verses of hTs Masnavi. (2) They failed to perceive that for Rumi "annihilation" and unity are rather a preparatory stage to a metaphysical personal life, impossible to express in words and therefore only continuously hinted at. (3) They failed to grasp the great religious importance Rumi attributes to the obedience and faith In a Prophet, as a pomrful barrier against confusion of values and vahdat1-vujud.

(4) Psychologically they were themselves inclined to consider a monotheistic and personal istic religion like Islam and orthodox Christianity something "old" and superated by were led modern monistic views,so that they instinctively to attribute their ideas to Rumi too. 20

IN THETEXT NOTESTO REFERENCES Encyclopaedia of ReuI12ionand Ethics,

1.

Hasting's

2.

R. Otto. Das Heilige, and 213

3.

I.e. the only God really worth serving adoring, workinq loving, for he is the most artistically J Cf. the Quranic and the often reiterated challenges of the Holy to other "Gods" to do what God has been capable

IX,.609.

Munchen, 1947, XXVIII ed. p. 142 and of all. Quran of doing.

I follow Prof. R.A. Nichol-

4.

In the following quotations son's translation.

5.

The Ideal of personality In Sufism, 1923, Quoted in Syed Abdul Vahid's lqbal: His Art and Thought. Lahore 11 ed. 1948 p. 95-96.

6.

Lawa'ih. A treatise on Sufism by Nur-ud-Din Abd-urJami=...wth a translation by E.H. Whinfield and Rahman Mirza MuhamnadKazvini ... London, 1906 p. 44. The entire treatise of Jami is imbued with pantheistic ideas, and also in the quoted quatrain it would be to give haqiqat the meaning of a personal difficult God. AnyhowMr. Whinfield's perhaps involuntary confronted with the original, translatlon of idealist, it very apt to convey to the mind of the reader the difference between pantheistic and theistic conception of haqiqat.

7.

8.

About this idea of second birth of Personality, see also the words Iqbal attributes to RumIat the beginning of Javednama. See Nicholson's

note III daftar,

p. 109.

So his famous

misra

could easily 9.

be reversed in

It is unnecessary to explain to Muslim readers who Khizr was. I would only like to point out the deeply and obscure passage modern way in which that difficult of the Holy Quran is explained by Rumi. About the infinite progress of man even in the other World sometimes this Quranic verse has also been quoted (LXVI, 8).

IRANIANSTUDIES

21

The conception that not only In this world but even In the Paradisiacal plane there always remains a Mystery, and then, an element of striving to solve It, is also to be seen in Dante's Divine Comedy (Paradise XXI, 91-96) question from when S. Pier Damiani answering a difficult Dante about predestination and free will says to Him: Ma quell'alma nel ciel che plu si schiara Quel serafin che In Dio plu l'occhlo ha fisso alla domanda tua non satisfara nell'abisso Pero che si s'inoltra dell'eterno statuto quel che chiedi che da ognt creata vista e scisso It "serial

time".

10.

In his Six Lectures Iqbal calls

11.

In some Buddhist texts for Instance the human body Is described, in powerful Imagery but more powerful pessimism as a mass of blood, excrements and bones, trying to eradicate from the feelings of man any slightest trace of admiration for beauty in Nature.

12.

The famous Russian philosopher and mystic V.S. Soloviov has some deep considerations on the supreme temptations In his SD ritual Fundamentals of Life (DuQovnvia Osnovy Zhizni, 1884). Italian ed. Bologna 1922. p. 46 ff.

13.

Note here again the original way In which God Is Introduced as a personal living power who almost Jokes with men and angels like the cat with the mouse.

14.

The character of Iblis Is described In a very original way In the Masnavi, which in this too Is the chief Particularly Intersource of Iqbal's Ideas on lblis. esting is the story of Iblis and Mu'awlya and the wonderful yet deceitful words put Into the mouth of Iblis about his longing for his former state, his nostalgia for Heaven (Masnavi 11, 2617 ff.)

15.

Cf.

16.

God is even so "cruel" as to act with man In the manner Rumi describes In the words (Masn. 111, 4462 ff.) "In the course of events your resolutions and purposes In order now and then come right and are fulfilled, that through hope of that fulfilment your heart may form an Intention and that he may once more destroy For if He were to keep you wholly your Intention. unsuccessful, your heart would despair: how would tt

the Quranic assertion

22

sow the seed of expectatior.? And unless It seed of expectation how from 4 ts barrenness subjection to the Divine become apparent to their failures the lovers are made aware of I-n success Is the guide to Paradise"'

sowed the woul its it? By their Lord.

17.

See Lectures,

18.

A study of Rumi's attitude towards the problem of free-willl would be extremely Interesting but It Is rather out of pisce here. The verses quoted are Intended only to show how a personalistic view of Religion could brilliantly solve the problem.

Lahore ed.,

1930 P. 163.

19.

About the exterior similitude and real differences between the conceptions of fana and nirvana, see the penetratIng- and Interesting article of the Itallan orientalist, M.M. Moreno. Mistica Musulmana-eMistica Indiana. (MuslIm and Hindu Mystics) In Annali LateromensI, X., 1946. Rome.

20.

In order to understand what I mean by Intensive Time In God a re-reading of Iqbal'4 wonderful discussion on Time In His Lectures would be necessary. Iqbal, with Bergson, considers apprecIative Time, or duree, as a fundamental element of consciousness, and personality. Thus, an element of Time Is Introduced even ILto the deepest and innermost receptacles of Personality; more, over, personality means life In real Time, unadulterated by spatial Imaginations. But to exist In real time qens to create. Free creation Is the living symbol of appreciative Time. So if God creates,there must be present In Him an element of Tlme. But Iqbal, criticizing Bergson's keeping too sharp a distinction between elan vital and spatialising thought, finds, In the Idea of a teleological plan created by a GodPerson a brillian solution to the dilemma between purely Intellectualistic teleokog(denying reality tt, Time) and chaotic elan vital.

21.

for Instance, It is a pity that such an insufficient study,asthat of Carra de Vaux In the Encyclopaedia of be dedicated to so great and Important a perIsl s-oa ity In Islamic thought as Rumi.

IRANIANSTUDIES

23

22.

A very clear Jefinitlon of ghazal Is to be found in the extremely interesting qFtTc7e by H.H. Schaeder In Zei tschrift der Dentschen Moroen1and'ischen Gesel1schaft, on Insanu-i-KamiI (1925, pp. 192 ff .) (Die islamische Lehre vom vol IkonmmenenMenschen, ihre Herkunft und ihre dichterische Uestaltung i,e. the Islamic doctrine on Perfect Man, its origin and its poetical elaboration. pp. 255-61 are dedicated to Rumi).

24

Recent

Books

on

Iran

BOOKS PUBLISHED ON IRANIN ENGLISH(1962-1967) Arasteh, R., Education and Social Awakening in Iran 18501961 (Brill, 1962) Arasteh, R. Manand Society

in Iran (Brill,

1964)

General Arfa, Under Five Shahs (Murray, 1964) Avery, P., Modern Iran (Ernst Benn, 1965) Bayne E., Four Ways of Politics: State and Nation In Italy, Somala,israel,and Iran (Daynamics of Political Particpation, 1965) Benedick, R.,industrial

Finance in Iran (Harvard, 1964)

Binder, L., Iran (Univ. of California,

1962)

Cottam, R., Nationalism in Iran (Pittsbur4Univ.

Press, 1964)

CuiIcan, W., The Medes and the Persians (Pra.ger,

1965)

Davar, F., Iran and India through the Ages (Asia Publication, 1963) Eagtton, W., The Kurdis h Republic of 19946 (Oxford Univ. Press, 1963) English,

P., City and Village in Iran: Settlement and Economy inthe KermanBasin (Univ. of Wisconsin, 1966) ~

Eskdund, K., Behind the Peacock Throne: Travels in Persia (Redman. 1I965) Esfandiary,

F, Identity Card (Grove Press, 1966)

Eskdund, K., Behind the Peacock Throne: Travels in Persia (Redinn,1965)Forbes, D., The Heart of Iran (Hale, 1966) Frye, R. The Heritage of Persia (World Publishers, IRANIAN STUDIES

25

1963)

Gittinger,

J., Planninq for Agrcultural Plan. Assoc., 1967)

Harnock, C., Persian Lions,

Developent

PErsian Lambs (Holt,

Nazen, W.,. Iran: A Selected List of References 1967) Jacobs, N., Sociology of Development (Praeger, Keddle, N., Religion and Rebel,lion In Iran: Protest (Class, 1966) Marlowe J., Marlowe J.,

Iran: A Short Political

(National

1965) (Library of Congr.., 1967)

The tabacco

Gufde (New York, 1962)

The. Perslan Gulf in the Twentieth Century (Praeger, 1962)

Mehdevi, A., Persia Revisited Nahat, L.., and Kibell

(Knopf, 1965)

C., The Petroleum Industry In Iran (U.S., Dept. State, 1967)

Notlau, G., and Wiehe, H., Russia's 1963)

South Flank (Praeger,

Ramazani, J., The Foreign Policy of iran_ 1500-1941 (Univ. Press of Virginia, 1967) Skrine,

C., The World War In Iran (Constable,

1965)

Soraya, An Autoblograph (Doubleday, 1964) W1ilber, D., Contemporary Iran (Praeger, Wilber, D., Iran- Past and Present Zabih, S.,

1963)

(Princeton,

1963)

The Lommunist Movement in Iran (Univ. of California,

1967)

26

Current Research on Iran (I) A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THESESCONCERNING IRANCOMPLETED IN THE LASTFIVE YEARS,ORIN PREPARATION, IN BRITISHANDAMERICAN UNIVERS'ITIES. ECONOMI CS NowaT7B. Oil experts and economic development with special referencd to Iran and Venezuela. Oxford. Parvin, M. The role of per capita Income growth-a socioeconomic study-. Columbia. Rajaee, A. OPECand Its objectives American. Sadri,

In the Middle East.

M. Economic Planning In Iran; study of entrepreneurtal probIems during economic growth. Pennsyl vania.

Tabriztchi,

S. Location of Industry In Iran. Columbta.

Tehranien, M. The political economy of Persian oil nationalization. Harvard.

since

Zekavat, S. An analysis of the feasibility of the use of fiscal policy to stimulate economic growth In Iran. S. California isphahani,

A. Optimization of economic resources for economic for economic growth in Iran. S. California

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Arcilesi,

S. Development of U.S. pol icy in Iran (1949-1960). Florida.

Berk, H.

Persia and the European state system: From unilateralism to reciprocity in Persian diplomacy in the 19th century. Columbia.

Davand, D. Iran in the perspective American. IRA$I/WSTUDIES

27

of Soviet

political

strategy.

Ferdows, Amir Garthwaite,

G.

The Idea of constitutlonal Indiana Persia.

government In

The role of the Bakhtlarl Trlbe In the Persian revolution and their nineteenth (LA). -century background. California,

Irons, W.

A nomadic or seminomadic tribe ofiran. Michigan.

Kudsi-Zadeh, A.

Political Indlana.

McDaniel, R.

The Perslan revolution and the Shuster Mission, 1911. Illinois.

Martinez, A.

A history

Mottahedeh, R.

Iran and Iraq In the Buyld Period, Harvard.

Nezami, A.

Legislative

Noorl, H.

of the oil A study of the nationalization Industry In Iran. Colorado State College. J.

Russell,

legacy of Jamal al-Din Afghani.

Columbia.

of the I1-Xanid state.

elites

In Persia.

Chicago.

Effects of reference group identificatlon importance ascribed by on the relative Iranian and Latin American students at the University of OklahQma. Oklahoma.

Sedehi,

A.

Constitution and constitutionalism Iran. N.Y. University

Staley,

W.

The Intellectual Princeton.

in

development of Kasravi.

Spooner, B.

in Persian daluchesReligion and politics tan: a study In the confusion of temporal Oxford. authority. and spiritual

Umer, Z.

Shibli

Young, Cuyler T. Jr. Zonls,

M.

and the Islamic tradition.

Proto-Historic vania.

The style political

Western Iran.

Oxford Pennsyl-

and structure of the Iranian M.I.T. elite.

28

Entner, M.

Russia and Persia (1890-1912)

Fishburne, C. U.S. policy toward Iran (1959-63). in Iran.

Ghoreichl, A. Soviet politics

Florida.

Colorado.

with the U.S. (1856-1906)

Haddad, J.

Perslan relations

Heravi, M.

Relations between Iran and the U.S., from the beginning until the end of World War 11. American.

Hekmat, H.

Iran and the Cold War, a study of snall behaviour. Columbia.

Howell, W.

Soviet policy and the,Kurds. Virginia.

power

via-

Mirheydar, D. Geographical Factors In the political bility in Iran. Indiana. Rafat, A.

Nationalization of the private property of Indonesia, aliens in International law-Iran, Cuba, Egypt. Minnesota.

Tabari, K.

U.S. - Iranian Relations

(1941-45),

Columbia.

ANDSOCIOLOGY POLITICS.HISTORY Abrahamian, E.

The social bases of the Tudeh Party (194153). Columbia.

Alberts,

Social structure and cultural change in an Iranian Village (Davarabad). Wisconsin.

R.

Algar, G. Bill,

J.

Cuff, H.

Political and social role of the ulama In Cambridge. Qajar Persia. Iranian politics ton.

and modernization.

Prince-

Cross-cultural problems of Iranian students in the United States. Columbia.

Ferdows, Adele. The Fedayan Islam.

IRANIANSTUDIES

29

Indiana.

LI TERATURE Atai,

P.

Contrastive study question signals.

Javadi-Tabrizi,

Netzer, Nouri, Shaked, Spencer,

of English Michigan.

H. The idea of Persia and Persian literary influence in English literature, with special reference to the Nineteenth ceatury. Cambridge.

A.

Judo-Persian

literary

M.

The scholars Edinburgh.

of Nishapure,

S.

The Pahlavi

H.

and Persian

andarz

influences.

literature.

Columbia

700-1225. London.

A study of the dependence upon alGhazali's Ihya' of the introduction and the first two 'Pillars' of the Persian Kimiya-i-Sa'adat. Edinburgh.

30

book

review FARHADKAZEMI

Nikki R. Keddie, Religion and Rebellion in Iran: Protest of 1891-182. London: Frank Cass & Co.

The Tobacco Ltd., 1966.

The 1891-1892 protest movement against the granting of tobacco concession to an English company, points to an extremely Important and interesting chapter In the Iranian history. It was the first successful mass protest against the unscrupulous foreign concessionaires and the greedy and unpopular Qajar monarch and his hated entourage. But more important, it marks the successful formation of a peculiar phenomenon in Iranian history--the alliance of the ulama with the modernizing reformers. This phenomenonof religious-radical alliance was to recur later during the years 1905-1906 leading to the birth of the Iranian Constitution. The fascinating story of the protest against the Tabacco Monopoly is told in clear and concise language by Professor Nikki Keddie of U.C.L.A. In her well.-balanced treatnent of the subject, Professor Keddie discusses the background to the protest movement itself and then draws interesting conclusions on its eventual success. In an attempt to place the movement protesting the Tobacco Monopoly in its proper historical perspective, Professor Keddle points to the rising popular discontent with Naser-ed Din Shah's free-wheeling grants of concessions to foreign agents in the perlod prior to the tobacco incident. These concessions not only Increased the already wide influence of foreign agents in Iran, but they also made possible further exploitation of the people by the Shah and his government. The most famous of these concessions, was the one granted in 1872 to Baron Julius de Reuter giving him monopoly over much of the country's resources. The Russian opposition to Reuter, the British refusal to support him, and some internal opposition forced the Shah to cancel the concession. As Professor Keddie points out, the cancellation of the Reuter concession was significant in that it "called forth an internal protest which shook the Iranian government and forced the Shah to act In ways distastefull to himself." (p. 6). This early victory against Reuter in many ways paved the way for the later tobacco protest. Farhad Kazemi is a graduate student at Harvard University IRANIAN STUDIES

31

Professor Keddie then discusses Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani's role during the tobacco episode, giving him much credit for having begun the tactic of allying the ulama with the reformers against the government. (p.15). In less detail she discusses MalkamKhan's ag'itation through his England-based publication, Qanun. Although Professor Keddie agrees that the exact influence of neither Afghani nor MalkamKhan can be measured, she nevertheless gives a great deal of credit to their efforts (especially Afghani's) against the Shah and the Tobacco Monopoly. The organized and coordinated campaign against smoking, finally forced the frightened Shah to give in. The Russian opposition to the concession,. it should be noted, was crucial during the whole affair since it also put a great deal of pressure on the Shah. Professor Keddie concludes by saying that the tobacco protest, in spite of its victory, did not solve any of the original The concession was cancelled, but the causes of discontent. On the contrary, during the foreign influence did not subside. coming years, the country appeared to be succumbing even more Nevertheless, the tobacco movementwas a to foreign control. significant episode in the modern history of Iran in that, to put It In Professor Keddie's words, "it pointed the way to win victories from the government, it also left the ambiguous legacy reformers, and religious of peculiar coalitions of nationalists, leaders whose opposition to the government masked very different aims--a legacy which still shows strong signs of life as late as the present." (P. 133). As it has already been pointed out, this small book is a sound scholarly volume on an important period of the Iranian Professor Keddie's knowledge of many languages has history. enabled her to use source material not easily accessible to The result has been a fine analytical treatment of a others. subject which had not been treated adequately up to now. Professor Keddie deserves credit for helping to fill this lacuna.

32

The

eP

rTmnIan Cbart

UokumeI,ftumnWrt

n

S

SprInq1966

StudiFs

rranian

BULLETINOF THE SOCIETYFOR IRANIANCULTURAL AND SOCIALSTUDIES

COUNCIL Ervand Abrahamian AlI Banuazizi, Secretary Hormoz Hekmat Abbas Heydari-Darafshian Farhad Kazemi, Treasurer Manoucher Parvin, President Majid Tehranian

IRANIANSTUDIES Ali Banuazizi, Editor Roy Mottahedeh, Associate

Editor

IRANIANSTUDIES is published quarterly by The Society for Irdnian Cultural and Social Studies. It is distributed to members of the The price of single copies Society as a part of their membership. for non-members is $1.00 per issue. The opinions expressed by the contributors are those of the individual authors and lot necessarily those of the Society or the editors of IRANIANSTUDIES. Articles may be submitted in English or Persiai to the Editor for publication. All communications concerning IRANIANSTUDIES or the Society's affairs should be addressed to: The Society for Iranian Cultural and Social Studies (SICSS), P.O. Box 3384, Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, U.S.A.

rranian

Studifs BULLETINOF

THE SOCIETYFOR IRANIANCULTURAL ANDSOCIALSTUDIES Volume I

Spring 1968

Number 2

CONTENTS 34

SOCIAL-SCIENCERESEARCH BY NORTHAMERICANS ABROAD: SOMEREFLECTIONS Sidney W. Mintz

41

THE ORIGINS ANDAPPEARANICE OF THE KURDSIN PREISLAMICIRAN John Limbert

52

FOROUGH FARROKHZAD: THE BITTER LOSS POEMS(Translated

by Anita Spertus):

54

THOSEDAYS

64

THEWINDWILL CARRYUS AA4AY

68

REBIRTH

76

BOOKREVIEW RECENTSTUDIES ON OIL Majid Tehranian

80

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CURRENT RESEARCH ON IRAN (II)

SOCIAL-SCIENCE RESEARCH BY NORTH AMERICANS ABROAD: SOME REFLECTIONS*

Sidney

W. Mintz

The break-up of colonial empires in Asia and Africa since World War II; the rise of sternly nationalistic regimes in many non-western countries; the great unpopularity of America's undertakings in Viet Nam; and persisting international tensions have all contributed to the difficulties faced by American social scientists These difficulties engaged in research abroad. have mounted so in recent years that the central problem for could soon become not what to North American social scientists study, but where to study; and one may expect the situation to grow worse, not better. In the Middle East, recent hostilities have made North American social scientists less than welcome in while "Dperation Camelot" in Latin America --when many countries; Department of Defense funds were secretly employed to support allegedly the cause of honest social science "pure" research--did much harm. toward North American research workers in foreign Hostility lands seems to spring from many sources, but I think that we North Americans should be prepared to admit that much of the responsibility is our own. Too often the North American anthroor sociologist pologist, political scientist, has treated the country in which he worked as no more than a convenient stoppingplace on his way to a doctoral degree, exploiting his hosts without any serious thoughts of intellectual Latin reciprocity. * The author wishes to express his thanks to Ali Banuazizi, Jacqueline W. Mintz and Majid Tehranian for their useful criticisms of earlier versions of this paper. The responsibility for the arguments advanced here and for any errors they may contain, however, rests solely with the author. The author He and his wife, research fellows in villages west

is Professor of Anthropology at Yale University. a linguist, spent a year in Iran as Fulbright during 1966-67. Their investigations were made of Shiraz, in' the Province of Fars.

IRANIAN STUDIES

34

America, for instance--and it strikes this writer as stunningly disingenuous to deny that the relationship of this vast area to the United States is quasi-colonial in character--used to be called "our back yard"; and many of us have treated its countries and peoples in just this way. We may think nothing of "doing research" in a Latin American country without paying respects to our foreign colleagues, without lecturing (if invited) at their institutions, without learning the national Even language. fundamental courtesies--letters of thanks, farewel l visits. sending back reprints, When these slights etc.--may be forgotten. can be interpreted as reveal ing an "imperial istic" attitude toward the host country on the part of the foreign researcher, they are doubly damaging. Some aspects of the hostility of the host, however, are probably not attributable to North American sins. The social scientist abroad must realize that he is moving into a pre-existing structure of intellectual and academic life, one in which the host scholars, validating their statuses and playing their roles appropriately at home, have vested interests of their own in dealing with visitors. The social scientist abroad, to put it another way, is but a special kind of tourist; his host-colleagues must look ahead to their own security long after he is gone. The writer has discovered the implications of this during nearly two decades of research experience in Latin America. The local anthrothe local museum director, pologist, the local professor of social has much to defend in his dealings with his visiting science, North American colleagues. He must assure himself that the North American is not trying to take his job away from him; such things, after all, have probably happened. If he has not completed his doctoral training, he may feel somewhat insecure in the company of the visitor, and anxious to establish his own credentials of competence, even if these do not include a higher degree. If his library is poor, or if his administrative obligations are heavy, he may feel out of touch with developments in his own speciality, and concerned not to expose his anxiety in this regard. No doubt it sometimes happens that the visitor wishes to study precisely what his host has been wanting to do for years but could not, for lack of funds and time. And above all, perhaps, the host must be careful to guard against the criticisms of his fellow-nationals-the harshest of which may be that he is excessively deferential to foreigners. For these and other reasons, American social scientists abroad may be subject to a certain amount of tension or inhospitality that is not precisely their fault--even though I would continue to argue that we sometimes deserve what we get. Since

I spent

less

than a year in Iran,

35

I am not equipped

SPRING 1968

to

deal profoundly or at length with so sensitive and subtle a topic in discussing that country. And prefatory to any other remarks I may make, I would like to stress that my reception in Iran by colleagues in the social sciences was for the most part warm and reassuring. But perhaps a few points may be made in connection with this general theme. The first is that North American social scientists in Iran do well to take note of the historical relationto western lands, and of the ship of that ancient civilizaiion effects of that relationship on the intellectual ambiance. I think it would be fair to say --in spite of the absence of any reliable sociological evidence-that Iranian intellectual attitudes toward the West have been shaped in good part by the educational experiences of that nation's middle and upper classes. An older generation of Iranian intellectuals, trained in the great universities of France, or in Iranian schools which followed an essenFrench system of education, tially is far more favorably disposed to French culture and to the French language, for example, than toward any comparable western intellectual tradition. French culture was surely that segment of western learning most admired by the Iranian intellectual community of half a century ago, and France still the stands very high--if not at the pinnacle--in of Iranian view of western cultural achievements. The stereotype "the French people," I suspect, The work is similarly favorable. of English scholars is also highly regarded--as, indeed, it deserves to be--even though I believe that the popular stereotype of "the English" is far less favorable than that of "the French." in attitudes Differences toward Frenchmen and Englishmen--assuming that this argument has any merit--may hinge in part on the differing historical roles of their respective nations in Iranian affairs. At the present time, the French international posture probably the favor with which French cultural reinforces achievements are regarded: French recognition of the national aspirations of other peoples, for instance, symbolized by the disengagement in Algeria and the momentous earlier withdrawal from Viet Nam, and French for national pride and independence from the United struggles to require States, symbolized by events too recent and too telling here. repetition When one turns from what may be inferred about attitudes toward Frenchmen and Englishmen to what may be inferred about attitudes toward the North Americans, a different image emerges. Of course, as more Iranians receive their educations in the it is United States and become familiar with American culture, that this society, conceivable too, will receive some credit for of the United States in conits achievements. But the position to some extent against temporary world affairs may militate fuller recognition of its intellectual accomplishments at this claim no more for it than that--that time. One has the feeling--l

IRANIAN STUDIES

36

the current Iranian stereotype of "the Americans" takes into account America's great economic and military might; the gaucherie and apparent "openness" of the North American abroad; (often North American wealth; and that curious informality as deliberate that typifies impoliteness) misread, unfortunately, by-no means many of us. It is often assumed by many foreigners, limited to Iranians, that our accomplishments are all of a charge technical order, and that we are lacking in "culture"--a not usefully countered by losing our tempers. into the unprovable is called for This momentary digression need rationales in and anti-that because people who are pro-this advancing their arguments. It is hardly enough to be anti-English one has to be able to say why. In or anti-French or anti-Russian; to the case of us North Americans, it may be useful superficially the roles vis-a-vis reflect upon America's role in Iranian life, of other foreign powers there. Though Iran shares a long border its recovery of celebrates with the Soviet Union (and still Azerbaijan after World War II), Iranian foreign policy is sensibly relations. China committed to an improvement in Irano-Soviet in any public foreign policy statements. hardly figures Englandi at times as the arch-imperialthough conjured up retrospectively force in Iranian and world ist power, is now seen as a declining The attitude toward the at least by many Iranians. affairs, is as much one of Arab states, though rarely stated publicly, and positions of amusement as anything else, though the policies the U.A.R. are cause for some nervousness. toward the United States is something else But the attitude in Middle Eastern oil and politics; again. American interests both governmental and private; American developmental undertakings, the Peace Corps; military advisers and military equipment--while new, nor by any means altothese undertakings are not altogether validate the American pregethernecessarily bad, they certainly sence and the show of American authority in Iran. And the corres(quite ponding attitude toward the United States often carries appropriately, it seemed to me) a sense of being subjected to an over-arching power, heavily engaged in defining and consolidating its interests everywhere. Hence contexts are provided in Iran in and the obviousness of which it is popular to be anti-American; American power gives play to great imaginativreness in intellectual circles. I am reminded of a Saul Bellow character on a fellowship in Europe, who is lectured accusingly by everyone about "You and impelled to empty his pockets to your atom bomb," and who feels that he is not carrying one. Well, none of us is; establish but it is nonetheless for us as individuals to difficult convince others of our bona fides in today's world.

37

SPRING 1968

I suppose I am suggesting that the creative anti-American is automatically provided with good field position when confronted by the visiting North American social scientist. Some examples may illuminate this suggestion. Since my personal view of the American adventure in Viet Nam is extremely negative, and since I make no to conceal my opinions, special effort i was amused while in Iran to have been invited to give a public lecture on "The role of the in American life"--hardly a topic on which I can claim military any professional competence. Since the invitation came from an Iranian social scientist who knew I was an anthropologist rather than a sociologist or political scientist, I was led to speculate whether I was seeing imaginative anti-Americanism in action. Again, on two separate occasions, I respectfully declined invitations to take to the field with me young Iranian social science students as assistants. I explained in each case that I cannot carry out my field research through an interpreter, and that, given the brevity of my stay, I could not take the necessary time to accommodate, introduce, and properly train a fledgling assistant in the field. In one such case, my refusal was matter-of-factly accepted, but in another, it was apparently interpreted as disdainful and chauvinistic on my part, and I was indirectly taken to task accordingly. In this same connection, it may be worth remarking that both invitations came from scholars who had received their graduate social-science educations abroad, and hence might be expected to understand that one of the most difficult and demanding teaching assignments in social science is in-the-field training. One scholar did understand this; the other either did not--or would I was also urged in one instance to give a full semester not. of lectures in anthropology, even after having made clear well in advance, and by mail, that the terms of my grant and of my sabbatical leave forbade this. When, after refusing, I was accused of "academic imperialism," I was made to wonder whether possibly my refusal was nearly as useful as my acceptance would have been. can be a double-edged sword. But programmed anti-Americanism Planners have been discovering in recent years that social science research really does have relevance to planning design; that census statistics do not provide all of the answers; that basic information from sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists., etc., really can have practical Such data, of course, utility. who are social scientists, may be gathered by local nationals and the like. Additional working through universities, institutes, data may be gathered through the research of scientists employed by International bodies, as in the case of Fredrik Barth's brilliant work on the Basseri of Iran for UNESCO. But whether or by foreigners, data will be gathered by local nationals collected primarily by scholars who choose to work in Iran because in Iran, and enjoy doing their research there. they are interested

IRANI"

STUDIES

38

take on their This is not the least bit mysterious. Scientists due to a variety of causes, some of them research directions research without a genuine fortuitous. But no one does first-rate in his subject, interest however obscure (or ludicrous) this may And the only way to expedite the research of seem to others. the completion of their scientific scholars and to accelerate is to make the prerequisites undertakings when they are foreigners here visas, work permits, for research opportunities--including etc.--more rather than less so. To impose too many available, the initiation conditions to delay tipon research opportunities, of research, to attach a quid pro quo to every permission granted, could lead eventually to a widely-held understanding that unfetsocial science research by foreigners tered, impartial, is no in Iran--with possibly unfortunate consequences. longer feasible scientific One keeps in mind that the international community is really a very small one; the word, that is, "gets around." One reason for the brain drain, other than higher salaries, is that value so highly their freedom to carry on research. scientists Social science research at its best is a creative undertaking. It cannot be forced. The production of monographs and books is but the production of significant easy enough for the facile; research cannot be computerized. Nor can scholars be told what to investigate, As Hogben once suggested, an entire desert may have to be surveyed in order best to determine where to run a railroad line across it. When the survey is completed, only a trivial percentage of the data will be employed in the actual but those data'can be made to "emerge" only by a engineering; patient, thorough--and initially, seemingly wasteful--investigation beforehand. Moreover, many of the most significant findings in social science have emerged as by-products of research freely undertaken, with no particular practical goal in mind. this case, North American--social So far as the foreign--in scientist the host country and to is concerned, his obligationsto his colleagues are clear. there, whether in Iran or elsewhere, To assist--consonant with the requirements of his research plan and the terms of his grant--with the planning of courses, the preparation of bibliographies, and the integration of his intellectual hosts with the wider scientific community; to give lectures on his research and on his discipline; to play the host in turn, when his foreign colleagues the United States; to maintain visit communication, once he has returned to his own institution. It seems to me that, just as social scientists would like to feel as welcome and unfettered as possible in their research abroad, so must they also be prepared to welcome such research by outsiders in their homelands. One of the more promising aspects

39

SPRING 1968

of the North American picture in this regard is the constantly and carrying on increasing number of foreign scholars visiting Two decades ago, the Latin American research in our universities. engaged in teaching and research in our academic social scientists few; now, institutions community, for example, were pitifully such as Yale, Harvard, Chicago and Berkeley proudly count many The "brain Latin American academicians among their faculties. drain" danger is real; but many of these scholars come to give us the benefit of their knowledge for a semester or a year, and then The hope is, of course, that return to their parent institutions. too--that will be reciprocated, cordiality such international abroad will be judged more and North American social scientists rather than in terms of their more on their individual merits, pursued by their government. or the policies national origins, For when one comes back to the fundamentals, good will matters community scientific The international perhaps more than all else. and of national politics at its best rises above considerations It should matter not at all to fellow-biodifferences. cultural that their cultural backgrounds or fellow-anthropologists logists from of their homelands--make them different --or the policies each other, as long as they can communicate honestly and cooperin the pursuit of the truth. atively Since this is commonly accepted to be the case among scientists, we were very moved to discover that "ordinary" Iranians understood so well what we were doing among them, and were so happy to help. Though we have been back in the United States for half a year now, a receive (and answer) perhaps as many as six letters we still with whom we lived and worked. We were month from the villagers in getting to know many kind and warm Iranian very fortunate people in all walks of life; but we remember best the folk we saw or sitting of "our" villages, each day, along the muddy streets As we remember rme saebzi. together over a tasty abgoosht or them, we think that they remember us. Of them we asked more than they take us in, and teach us how they of any other Iranians--that They had plenty of time, it is they gave most freely. lived--and and we hope they true, to make up their minds about us personally, If we have only to too much of what they saw. did not dislike count upon them to permit us to work in Iran again, we will have no worries.

IRANIAN STUDIES

40

THE ORIGINS AND APPEARANCE PRE-ISLAMIC IRAN

OF THE KURDS IN

John Limbert At present the Kurds occupy parts of Turkey, I ran, I raq, Syria and the USSR. As the map shows, the area in which the Kurds predominate is a long arc extending roughly northwest to southeast in a band of varyi ng width from cent ra I Turkey to In these western Iran in the Kermanshahand Shahabad regions. last areas, the historic road from Baghdad to Hamadanand beyond divides the Kurds from their Iranian cousins, the Lurs. Within this extensive, mountainous area the Kurds speak an Iranian language divided into two groups of dialects--northern Kurdish, or Kurmandji, and southern Kurdish, called Kurdi. The dividing line between these two groups of dialects run roughly from the southwest corner of Lake Rezaiyeh to the town of Rowanduz in northern Iraq. Linguists consider Kurdish to be a northwestern Iranian language and therefore quite distinct from Persian, a southwestern language. Within the Kurdish areas there are linguistic minorities such as the Gurani of Iran and the Zaza of Turkey who consider themselves Kurdish, but whomlinguists insist speak a non-Kurdish Iranian language. The basic question concerning the origin of the Kurds is this: are they the descendants of the original inhabitants of all or a part of this extensive area or did they come to this area at an undetermined date from an undetermined place? Furthermore, what, if anything, can be found about the situation of the Kurds in pre-Islamic Iran? We must be careful to distinguish between the history of the Kurds and the history of Kurdestan. We are concerned with the history of the Kurdish people, wherever they appear. The name "Kurdestan" did not appear until the time of the Seljuqs. Our evidence about the history of the Kurds is very scarce, and what does exist is often of little value. One English traveller asked John Limbert is a Ph.D. candidate in History and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. 41

SPRING 1968

The peasant answered, a peasant the name of a nearby village. dutifully The traveller Nazanom (Kurdish for 'I don't knov'). recorded that he had passed the village of Nazanom. Some in spite of the Kurds' obvious links with the Iranian scholars, peoples, have even claimed that they have found a Kurdish nose that looks like the nose in the relief of the Assyrian king Others have felt Thus the Kurds are the Assyrians. Ashurbanipal. like that, since the Kurdish women are tall and attractive UnforGeorgian women, the Kurds are a branch of the Georgians. evidence because of the complete lack of anthropological tunately, What evidence we concerning the Kurds, such things can be written. common language in no and geographical--but do have is linguistic The Kurds speak a mutually intelligible way implies a common race. language (although sometimes just barely so) over a wide area but within a single tribe there may be a wide variety of racial types. from their Furthermore, the Kurds have absorbed characteristics Arab, Persian, Turkish, and Armenian neighbors. The Origin of the Kurds The Shahnameh of Ferdowsi relates the popular Iranian version The tyrant Zahh5k had two snakes growing of the Kurds' origin. Thus to which had to be fed fresh brains. out of his shoulders, protect the tyrant two young people were killed every day. To for human save some of the youths, sheeps' brains were substituted brains and about four hundred young people thus saved fled to the Kurds. mountains and became the original Some Kurdish tribes have given themselves Arab origins--Arab and tribes would go to the mountains, mingle with foreigners, may have a These Arab geneologies forget their mother tongue. factual basis when we consider that the Kurds are apparently not Minorsky homeogeneous, but an amalgam of various ethnic elements. writes, of the Kurds among The classification the Iranian nations is based mainly on data and does and historical linguistic not prejudice the fact there is a complexity of ethnical elements incorporated in them.1 At present there are Iranians other than Kurds living in Kurdish areas, and there may wel1 have been non-Iranians who also became Mahabad, and At Soleimaniyeh, part of the Kurdish population. based on Qotur, there has been observed a social stratification in a feudal relationship. newcomers dominating older inhabitants IRANIAN STUDIES

42

~

:

43

The "Kurdishness" of this entire area may actually diverse peoples. imposed on ancient,

be a unity

The word of the word Kurd is not certain. The derivation is Iranian and appears in the Sassanian epic Karnamak-eitself It also appears among the Arabs at the time Ardashir-e-Papakan. of the conquests of the seventh century A.D. with its Arabic Some scholars have suggested that the word comes plural akr5d. from the name of the Guti, a people mentioned in Sumerian tablets century B.C., or in Kar-da-ka (or as early as the twenty-fourth of about 2000 B.C. Xenophon Qar-da-ka) in Sumerian inscriptions uses the name Kardukhoi. for the people l iving in present-day Iraqi Kurdestan whom his army fought on its retreat in 401 B.C. According to Xeonophon, these Kardukhoi lived as far north as The kh ending of their name is (Bohtan) River. the Centrites apparently an Armenian plural ending of Kardu, for Xenophon writes In later that he learned the name of the tribe from an Armenian. and Livy mention them sources the name Kyrtiae appears--Polybius first for an enemy of Rome around 190 B.C., fighting as mercenaries, the Seleucid Antiochus I I I, and later for an al ly of Rome around 170 B.C., Eumenes of Pergamum. Strabo mentions Kyrtiae in Media He also uses the Atropatane (Azarbaijan) and in Persis (Fars). name Corduene or Gordiaea for the area that is now Turkish Kurdestan. between the words Kurd In spite of the apparent similarity feel that the and Kardu, Kyrtiae, and Corduene, philologists from Kurd by reason of the final short older terms are distinct Kardu vowel which is part of the root of these words, i.e., The initial K or Kardu may actually (kardu-karduw) and Kyrti. represent I, in which case there is a connection with the Semitic Furthermore, Kardu may be root QRD*, meaning brave or strong. The the indigenous name for the Georgians. related to Kart'veli, name Kurd probably comes from the Persian Gord, meaning "hero", of the local name, Kardu which would be an Iranian interpretation or Qardu.2 believed that the modern Kurds were direct Older scholarship This view was based on the similardescendants of the Kard5khoi. and the relationship, ity of the names, the obvious geographical of the Kardukhoi as wild mountain fact that Xenophon's description tribesmen not recognizing outside authority matches in many feature! the habits of the Kurds as recorded in later histories. However, this view has been widely disputed since the beginnFor it has been recognized that any ing of the twentieth century. that affiliations, people, regardless of its racial and linguistic lives in the mountains bordering Mesopotamia will have about the

IRANIAN STUDIES

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same manner of life. Furthermnore, the older view confuses the Kurdish people with Kurdestan, assuming that the area presently inhabited by Kurds has always been so occupied and ignores the migrations and other shifts of populations that occurred in We know, for example, that displacement of pre-Islamic times. peoples was an important part of Achemenian policy. The Kurds themselves ciaim to be descendants of the Medes (Persian Mad), who, as Herodotus describes, overthrew eventually the Assyrians in 612 B.C. and who later were absorbed by Cyrus the Achemenian into his empire of the "Medes and the Persians." We have very little information about the Medes. The first mention of them in the sources is in 844 B.C. in an inscription of the Assyrian king Salemnasr, who made war on a tribe called the Amada, which lived east of the Assyrians both in the mountains of present-day Iranian Kurdestan and on the plateau further to the east. Although some scholars have dismissed the Kurds' claim of Median descent, and geographical linguistic evidence supports these claims. All Kurdish dialects have maintained the-basic characteristics of Kurdish despite the wide -dispersion of the tribes. This fact suggests that there was an ancient and powerful language from which the dialects evolved. Kurdish could well be descended from the Median language or languages which spread into Asia Minor after the fall of the Assyrian empire in 612 B.C. Geographically, this is very interesting, since according to Herodotus the western frontier of the Median empire was the Halys River (Kizil Irmak), which is just about as far west as Kurds are found today. An Armenian manuscript of the fifteenth century, probably copied from a much older work, contains a monophysite liturgical prayer in seven languages, one of which is called "the language of the Medians." This language is a North Iranian dialect which affinities to North Kurdish (Kurmandii).3 The Median language, cf which we have very few traces, apparently stood in the same relation to old Persian as Kurdish does to modern Persian, that is, northwest to southwest Iranian. The Kurds could have been formed by amalgamations among Iranian and non-Iranian indigenous tribes as the former moved west from the Persian plateau into the Zagros mountains and the anti-Taurus ranges of Turkey. In this shadowy period the Iranian Medes may have absorbed the settled Manneans of Iranian Kurdestan. The 'ranian scholar Rashid Yasami (himself a Kurd) says that Deio-es, who, according to Herodotus, organized the Median kingdom, was the same as "Dia'aku" who is reported to be a chief of the Manneans in Assyrian courses at the time of Sargon I (c. 715 B.C.).4

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SPRING 1968

In central Kurdestan there of different nationalities Minorsky says,

could have been an Iranization of tribes but bearing a similar name (Kardu).

It is very possible that the Kurdish nation is formed from the union of two tribes, the Mardi Zescendants of the Manneansff and the Kyrtiae ?f the Bohtan areg7 who spoke Median dialects very close to each other. It is certain that in their expansion to the west the Kurds incorporated many indigenous elements.5 that Kurmandj, the present word for Minorsky also speculates North Kurdish, represents the union of Kurd with Mede and Mannean. The theory of Kurdish east-to-west migration is an attractive one, especially as the Median capital of Ekbatan (Hamadan) was located east of present Kurdish areas. But there is no way we can establjsh how or when the Kurds spread west of the Median portion of tie Iranian plateau. We can only guess that at the time of Xenophon, what is now Iraqi Kurdestan was not yet Kurdish. It is very interesting that Livy separates the Kyrtiae from the Medes when both are fighting against Rome in the army of Antiochus At that time (190 B.C.) the Kyrtiae are mercenaries, III. used as infantry, and auxiliaries, but the Medes are picked men in the cavalry. The "Kurds" of Fars The Arab and Persian historians who wrote during the early centuries of Islam frequently mentioned Kurds living outside of in Fars. Kurdestan, especially According to these histories, the Kurds had lived in many places outside of Kurdestan in Sassanian times. The historians Mas'udi and Istakhri, writing in the middle of the tenth century A. D., tell of Kurds living in Kerman, Sistan, Khorasan, and Fars as well as in Kurdestan proper. Rashid Yasami believes that the Kurds' original home was Fars. He cites as evidence the Persian historian Beihaqi (c. 1000 A.D.). Each reason and area associated with it: Greece, the painters the Kurds (akrad) of

has something the wise men of of Ch,na...and Fars.

According to Yasami, not only were the Kurds of Fars a major support of Sassanian power, but Ardashir I, the founder of

IRANIAN STUDIES

46

the empire, was himself a Kurd. He says that Sasan, Ardashir's grandfather, married Ram Behesht of the Bazanjan Kurds, who, were one of the five Kurdish tribes of Fars. according to istakhri, and Their son Pgpak took advantage of his Kurdish connections sent his son Ardashir as governor to Darabgerd (Darab), which was the center of the Chupanan, or Shab5nk5reh, the large federation of tribes to which the Banzanjan belonged and who had been Sasan's These same Kurds of Fars now became Ardashir's original protectors. supporters in his revolt against Ardavan V, the Arsacid ruler. After Ardashir had proclaimed himself king of kings, Ardavan wrote an insulting letter to him which called attention to Ardashir's Kurdish ancestry. You've bitten off more than you can chew and you have brought death to yourself. 0 son of a Kurd, raised in the tents of the Kurds, who gave you permission to put a crown on your head?7 However, not all Kurds supported Ardashir. Both the Shahnameh and the Karnamak-e-Ardashir tell of Ardashir's defeat by and eventual conquest of the Kurds. In the Shahnameh account Ardashir wars with the Kurds before subduing the neighboring areas of the reference is probably to the Kerman and S.istan--therefore Kurds of Fars. But in the Karnamak account Ardashir makes war on the Kurds of the land of Masi, which the translator and editor, as Madi, an area in Kurdestan. Sadeq Hedayat, interprets Although it is possible that the Kurds of Fars are related to the tribes of Kurdestan, it is more likely that the groups are and that the tribes of Fars are not true Kurds, but distinct Iranian tribes speaking southwest Iranian dialects, perhaps related to mDdern Luri. Such southwest dialects as Luri and Bakhtiari are much more closely related to Persian than to Kurdish. If we reconstruct the ancient linguistic division, then the Kurds of the north spoke a language related to Median--that is, northwest Iranian, and the "Kurds" of the south spoke a language related to Persian, or southwest Iranian. Of course it is impossible to prove that the tribes of Fars were not true Kurds; they might have been. But before the beginning of the twentieth century, no basic distinction was recognized between Kurdish and Luri.8 Only recently h&ve these two languages been found to follow the N.W.-S.W. or Mede-Persian division. Furthermore, there is simply no trace of Kurdish One of speakers at presetn either in Fars or on its borders. five Kurdish tribes of Fars is the Jiloya; at present istakhri's there is a Lur tribe in the same area with the name Kuh-Giluyeh, 47

SPRING 1968

whose origin

and whose time of coming to Fars are unknown.

of all is the fact that Kurd in the older Most conclusive Persian or Arab sense meant simply nomad with no particular In this case, Ardavan V's letter becomes ethnic connotations. he is calling Ardashir an ignorant since in effect more insulting, to Iranian nomads--accordnomad. The term was not even restricted ing to a tenth century work, the Persians called the Mesopotamian Thus it is reasonable (but hardly Arabs the "Kurds of Suristan." Kurds of Fars of Sassanian times were certain) that the so-called not true Kurds at all , but were Iranian nomads speaking dialects related to Persian. From what has been said, it should be clear that the early with any certainty. history of the Kurds cannot be reconstructed of evidence and the romanticizing of the scarcity Unfortunately, the Kurds by Americans and Europeans (they are seen as straighin opposition to the connivforward, outgoing, jolly-good-fellows cowardly Persians) has resulted in an outing, double-dealing, nonsense, propounding wild theories pouring of pseudo-scholarly But we can draw two that can never be conclusively disproved. conclusions: 1)

2)

The Kurds were formed by an amalgamation of Northwest Iranians, migrating from the east, who absorbed various elements from the indigenous population of the Zagros unity upon them. mountains and imposed a linguistic there is no basis for and geographically Linguistically between Kurds and Medes. making a distinction The Kurds that the Islamic historians mention as living in South and Southwest Persia were probably not true Kurds, but were nomadic tribes speaking Southwest Iranian dialect related to-modern Luri and Persian.

IRANIAN STUDIES

48

FOOTNOTES V. Minorsky, "Kurds", Encyclopedia

of Islam,

p. 1132.

2-To follow the derivation of the name in more detail, Minorsky, Nikitine, and Driver. 3 MacKenzie, D.N., 4 Yasami, Rashid,

"The Language of the Medians",

7 Ibid., 8

354-5.

Kurds, 70.

5 Cited by B. Nikitine, 6 Y5sami, op. cit.,

see

Les Kurdes,

12.

172-3.

171.

The Sharafnameh, a sixteenth century history cal ls the Lurs a branch of the Kurds.

49

of the Kurds,

SPRING 196&

BIBLIOGRAPHY I.

Literary A.

Sources

Sources Classical Library)

by the Loeb Classical

(published

Herodotus, The Persian Wars Livy, History of Rome Polybius, Histories Strabo, Geography Xenophon, Anabas i s B.

Pahlavi

Sources

Karnamak-eHedayat, Sadeq, editor and translator, (Book of the deeds of Ardashir, Ardashir-e-Papakin. from Pahlavi into modern son of P3pak), translated 3rd edition, Teheran, 1963. Persian. I1.

Other Sources Arfa,

Hassan, The Kurds.

London:

Oxford Press,

1966.

Vol. 7.. Fars Army of Iran, Farhang-e-Geographia-ye-Iran, (Dictionary of Iranian Geography) Teheran: Army In Persian. 1951. Geographical Division, Tarikh-e-MofassalAmir Sharaf Khan, Sharafnameh. Bidlisi, ( Complete History of Kurdestan). Teheran: e-Kurdestan. Elmi, n.d. Driver, G.R., "Dispersion of the Kurds in Ancient Times." Journal of the Oct., 1921, yal Asiatic Society. pp. 563-572. , "The Name Kurd and

Its

Associations."

Philological

JRAS, 1923, pp. 393-403. in Kurdish

J "Studies

School of Oriental pp. 491-513. Edmonds, C.J.,

History."

and African

Studies,

Kurds, Turks, and Arabs.

IRANIAN STUDIES

50

Bulletin

Xi,

of

the

3 (T92275

London: OUP, 1957.

Scene." 195)

of the Kurds in the Middle Eastern Royal Central Asian Society Journal XLV (Apri , 53. PP. 1p41

Lane, D. Tribes lation April,

on the Nomad Austin "Hajji Mirza Hasan-e-Shirazi (A transof Fars in the Fars-Nameh-e-Nasiri ." JRAS of the Farsnameh, lith. Teheran, 1895-6). 1923, pp. 209-231.

, "The Place

LeStrange, G. Lands of the Eastern Caliphate. (First published, Press, 1930. University

Cambridge: 1905.)

of the Province of "Description , G., translator. Fars in Persia at the Beginning of the 12th Century A.D." JRAS. Translated from a manuscript of Ibn-al-Balkhi. 1912. pp. 1-30; 311-340; 865-90. MacKenzie, D.N. "The Language of the Medians." XXII (1959), pp. 354-5. Minorsky, V., "The Guran." pp. 75-103.

BSOAS, I I, pt.

_, "Kurds" in The Encyclopedia account. but excellent

BSOAS,

1 (1943),

of Islam.

A concise,

_

Journal of the Royal "Tribes of Western Iran." pp. 73-80. LXXV(1945). Institute, Anthropological

Nikitine,

Basil.

Les Kurdes.

Paris,

1956.

Kurds and Kurdistan. London, 1948. Saf rastian, Arshak. The author holds the theory that the Kurds were the inhabitants of modern Kurdestan and as such original and others. the direct descents of the Guti, the Kassites, UNESCO, Iranshahr (The Land of Iran). In Persian. 1963. Vi lchevski, Sciences,

2 volumes.

0. Kurdi (Kurds). Leningrad: In Russian. 1961. U.S.S.R.,

Teheran,

Academy of

va Tarikhi-ye-u. Yasami, Rashid, Kord. Peivastegi-ye-Nezhadi and Racial Connections) Teheran, (Kurds. Their Historical This book, written by an Iranian Kurd, In Persian. n.d. account of Kurdish origins well-reasoned is a fascinating, and history.

51

SPRING 1968

FOROUGH FARROKHZAD: THE BITTER LOSS

Among leading contemporary Iranian poets, Forough Farrokhzad, 1934-1967, stood out in at least two regards: her womanhood, and her daring modernism. Attractive, exuberant, and, above all, an she was as sensitive, iconoclast, uninhibited, and warm in her as in her poetry, according to those who knew her well. friendships Her untimely death in an automobile accident a year ago shocked attended by thousands of people the whole of Tehran. Her funeral, from all walks of life, was one of the city's greatest public displays of genuine grief in recent years. Farrokhzad's place in modern Persian poetry is still a matter of critical examination. She was one of a group of young modernist lead in breaking away from the poets who followed Nima Youshij's mold of Iran's powerful classical tradition in poetry by writing in 1 blank verse and dealing with the live problems of their age. Farrokhzad's contribution was, however, the more significant be-. cause she also spoke as a woman. With raw and powerful imagery, her poetry gives an unabashed expression to desires and perceptions that have been long hidden in Iranian women because of their oppressive social conditions. But Forough Farrokhzad avoids the of parochialism; pitfalls she goes far beyond the quaintness of an outspoken poetess breaking traditional taboos by lustily celebrating her sensuality; sexual fetters were broken by her only to set her forth on further adventures of the mind and the spirit. She also has social and philosophical concerns. She exposes the social injustices, mocks the bureauunmasks the social hypocrisies, cratic imbecilities. She deals with the problems of alienation, both her own.and those of her generation, the despair and anguish of human separation, expressing her own yearnings for a world to come

1 The leading figures among these modernist poets include: Mehdi Akhavan-Sales (Omid), Ahmad Shamlu (imdid), Siavash Kasrai, Fereydoun Taval lol i, Mgder N5derpour, Mehdi Tehrani ( Azad), Yadol l ah Royai (Roy-i), Houshang Ebtehaj (Sayeh), Atashi, Tamimi, and Sepehri.

IRANIAN STUDIES

52

shall reign. And ail this she where freedom, love, and simplicity does with utter honesty and a great sense of personal immediacy. Despite the universality of her themes, she is, perhaps, the least and the most Persian of the Persian modernist poets. affected, Her imageries arise from the pulse of ordinary life in Iran. Although she did write some poetry of despair, in the end, life asserts itself. of life is exuberant, visceral, Her affirmation and earthly; here again, her unique perception of life as a woman asof the alienaserts itself. She is, perhaps, the least alienated in her ten years as a ted modern Persian poets. And above all, poet, she grows by leaps and bounds in craftsmanship, in the elevation of her themes, and in the depth of her understanding. She even made a successful excursion into another artistic medium of expression, directing a documentary film on a leprosarium which won her considerable 2 critical acclaim. The following poems are drawn from Farrokhzad's last collection of poatry published under the title of one of her better-known digar (Rebirth). poems, tavallodi These poems, along with a numnber of others, have been sensitively translated into English-by Miss Anita Spertus, a gradiate of Radcliffe College, and a student of Persian art and literature. While the present poems cannot show the whole of Farrokhzad's poetic range, they are representative of some of her major thematic concerns in her maturest stage of development. M.T,

2 For an anthology of Farrokhzad's own self-evaluation as well as her friends' elegies on the occasion of her death, see Arash, Vol. 2, No. 13, Esfand 1345.

53

SPRING 1968

THOSE DAYS

Those days have passed those

fine

those

full,

days peaceful

those skies

full

of glitter

those

groves

full

those

houses

leaning

Those roofs

days

of cherries on one another over green ivy fences

of playful

those streets

kites

giddy with the perfume of locust trees

Those days have passed those

days when, from the slit

my songs,

like

bubbles

My eye drank up all like

fresh

filled

that

of my eyelids, wrth air,

it fell

rushed out

upon

milk---

it was as if,

between the pupils

there was a restless

rabbit

of my eyes,

of joy:

each daybreak it would go out with the aged sun seeking and at night

new fields,

it would go down into the dark forests

IRANIAN STUIES

54

jT ubiv

0o 51,

;

L'

s; o4

L~jtJac~ ~Lbu.,)"

};

5

s

A56 e sLa t 5

T

o5

&T W9,j

55

Ass(1O

Those days have passed those

days

snowy silent

when, from behind the window pane in a warm room, I would gaze out endlessly: My pure snow, like

soft

fluff,

would come down softly on the old wooden ladder rope

on the thin clothes-line on the tresses

of the aged pines

And I would think of tomorrow, ah, tomorrow a white

form

slippery

It would begin with the rustle with the appearance

veil;

in the door frame of an indistinct shadow

which suddenly would set

her free

and with the wandering pattern on the colored

of my grandmother's

in the coldness of light; doves

of flying

panes of glass---

tomorrow The warmth of the korsi

brought drowsiness

Quickly and fearlessly, far from my mother's I would erase

sight,

the lines

IRANIAN STUDIES

that cancelled

56

my old exercises

&44o; -; Uy

)).

4q?

4.

sAA .z ,.,

zr-,X

?)s*))r

.

L?+

'U1

)y)T* 1y9 45j4L*jS

57~~~~_

5

When the snow slept I would walk saddened in the little

garden

At the base of the pots of withered

jasmine

I would bury my dead sparrows Those days have passed those days of enchantment and wonder those

days of sleep

and wakefulness

those days when every shadow held a secret and every closed

box concealed

Every corner of a closet

a treasure

in the silence

of noon

was a world unto itself Anyone not afraid

of the dark

was a hero in my eyes Those days have passed those

festive

days

that waiting

for sun and flowers

that trembling in the silent

at a scent, modest company of the wild narcissus

that would visit on the last The calls

the city

morning of winter

of pedlars

IRANIAN STUDIES

in the long streets

58

were splashes of green

W3Jt9j5LIA,-

.sg1_J1

)

Q,

t

59

tbj~) O

s) A&

)a1,(5Jl

C,

0T

a63l37

in wafting smells,

The bazaar was afloat

in the pervading odor of coffee and fish The bazaar would unroll under one's feet, would stretch out and fuse with all the momentsalong the way, and it would turn round in the eyes of the dolls The bazaar---Mother would go swiftly toward the colored fluid forms and would return with gift packages, with baskets full The bazaar was rain that would fall and fall and fall Those days have passed those days of wonder at the secrets of the body those days of cautious acquaintance---the

beauty of a

blue-veined hand that, with a flower, would call another hand from behind a wall; and little

spots of ink on this trembling quivering fearful hand,

and love repeated in a greeting full of shyness On warmsmoke-filled

afternoons

we would sing our love in the dust of the street Wewere acquainted with the simple language of floral messengers Wewould bring our hearts to a garden of innocent friendliness IRANIAN STUDIES

60

cL-G .

s

~

9jI2j *,

. :SseAS.

~

45DA

,,j

L

Fj

.4

s

sJxolG61vj

and would be grateful and a ball It was love,

to the trees,

with messages of kisses that quivering

would pass among us

feeling which, in the darkness of a corridor,

suddenly would surround us and we would be enraptured with the burning quickness of our breaths and our beating hearts and stolen smi les Those days have passed those days like

plants

which decay in the sun

decayed with the rays of the sun And lost

are those streets

giddy with the perfume of locust trees

in the noisy

crowds of the one-way streets

And the girl

who used to color

with geranium petals, Now is a lonely

alas,

woman,

Now is a lonely

IRANIAN STUDIES

woman.

62

her cheeks

oLrL

L;)

Lo

;

MJ

t

>;;i)

5

L

bj)o

Lr,

63

THE WIND WILL CARRY US AWAY

In my small night, alas the wind has a rendezvous with the leaves of trees In my small night rests the fear of ruin Listen... Do you hear the blowing of the darkness? I look at this good luck like a stranger I am accustomed to my hopelessness Listen... Do you hear the blowing of the darkness? In the night now something is happening: the moon is red and disturbed and above this roof, which at any momentmight fall, the clouds like the crowds of mourners seem to await the momentof rain A moment and after that---nothIng. Behind this window the night is trembling,

IRANIAN STUDIES

64

ir

l

> _A

5 vl

) 5 *A

,

S

3o

K ;lt) ) r? ? hr

4SbAr ~~~~s)- - ,?,

?5 )o

65

01a-Y'

l j

and the earth stands still

in its course

Vague things lie behind this window, you and 1, uneasy

Oyou are green all over, put your hands like a burning memoryin my loving hands and entrust your lips like a warmsense of life to the caresses of loving lips The wind will carry.us away with it The wind will carry us away.

IRANIAN STUDIES

66

13L

67

3 1,t.3

REBIRTH

My whole being repeating that

in itself carry you to the dawn of eternal

it will

Ah, I sighed in this

is a dark verse

to you in this

blossoming and growth

verse;

verse

I grafted

you to tree

and water and fire

Perhaps life is a long road on which a woman with a basket passes every day Perhaps life is a rope with which a man hangs himself Perhaps life

is a child,

Perhaps life

is a cigarette,

returning

Perhaps it is the absent who tips

lit

from a branch

from school in an interval of rest while making love

look of a passer-by

his hat

and, with a meaningless

Or perhaps

life

smile,

is that clozed

says "good morning to another passe r-by moment

when my glance

meets ruin in the pupils

a feeling

I shall

that

with my visions

of your eyes:

mingle

of the moon and the darkness.

IRANIAN STUDIES

68

o'41A

5

,1@i

4t li4)@.I)

Z?.T j4J.I

LoT\~~.T fjX Jj

&?

)L

ab

wjI 6ii.

L~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~U

=LA.L AlpLiy

69

Z

In a room as big as loneliness my heart as big as love looks at its excuses

drooping

the beautiful

in the flower pot

flowers

that you plaited

the sapling the voice

for simple happiness:

in the garden of our house

of the canaries,

songs as bi-g as the window

their

Ah... this

is my lot,

this

is my lot:

My lot is the sky that a hanging curtain My lot

takes from me

is to step down from a deserted

stair

and find something worn out and nostalgic My lot

is to walk sorrowfully

to relinquish

my soul

in a garden of memories,

in the sadness

of a voice

"I love your hands"

I plant I will

my hands in the garden: become green---l

And the sparrows will in the holes

know, I know, I know lay eggs

between my inky fingers

IRANIAN STUDIES

70

that says

~?J3 t 3a

3j

O\= L; I

5 Lli

. j;X

al jt J13j -L

1~ LA.&-

j?, .

Lo-a4)L4)l;

I

)t~~~~~~ ijT

,e

>yA

P Xf .71 y )

b

1

4?

;L o jl>AJ s @SL

') ,

71

4

e

&h

I hang earrings

on my ears,

a pair of twin red cherries, and to my nails

I facten

There is a street

dahlia

petals

where

the boys who once loved me still,

with the same toussled

think of the innocent

the wind carried

of the poor girl whom, one night

away.

There Is a street has stolen

smiles

hair and lean legs and slender necks,

that my heart

from the quarters

of my childhood

The journey of a mass along the line of time and the mass making pregnant

the dry line of time,

a mass aware of an image which a mirror brings In this

back.from

a party

way

someone dies and someone remains No fisher

would hunt pearls

in a shallow disappears

IRANIAN STUDIES

72

stream that underground.

0f)'Y

4"

&.j(l

,R4a.2tr X. s

\,,\yT

@)19

.9r

S ' *- Jh S,c .>

sJ@hj B4A X o4j

73

&Bd4)

~

know a sad little

fairy

who lives

In an ocean

and plays

to her heart on a wood-tipped

softly,

softly

A sad little

fairy

who dies

at night

and will

from a kiss

flute:

from a kiss,

IRANIAN STUDIES

be reborn in the world at dawn

74

75

book

review RECENT STUDIES IN OIL Jaid Tehranian

Financing Economic Development in Iraq: The Role of Oil in a Middle Eastern Economy, by Abbas Alnasrawi. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967. The Evolution of Oil Concessions in the Middle East and North Africa, by Henry Cattan. New York: Oceana Publications, 1967. Ydrk:

Crude Oil Prices in the Middle East, Frederick A. Praeger, 1966.

Mattei: Oil and Power Politics, Frederick A. Praeger, 1966.

by Hulmut J. Frank.

by Paul H. Frankel.

Oil and Public Opinion in the Middle East, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966.

New

New York:

by David Hirst.

The Economics of Transporting Oil to and Within Europe, by Michael Hubbard. London: MacLaren & Sons Ltd., 1967. Economic Aspects of Oil Conservation F. Lovejoy and Paul T. Homan. Saltimore: 1967. Our Gift,

Our Oil,

Regulation, by Wallace The Johns Hopkins Press,

by Anibal R. Martinez.

Vienna,

1966.

A Financial Analysis of Middle Eastern Oil Concessions: 1901-65, by Zuhayr Mikdashi. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966. Permanent Sovereignty Over Oil Resources: A Study of Middle East Oil Concessions and Legal Change, by Muhamad-A. Mughraby. Beirut: The Middle East Research and Publishing Center, 1966.

Majid Tehranian Lesley Col lege.

is Assistant

IRANIAN STUDIES

Professor

76

of Political

Economy at

The past two years' vintage of studies on oil has been lush and promising. We have listed here only ten of the most important of those recently published in English on different aspects of this most complex of world industries. Since it is difficult to deal critically with all of them in a single review, the aim of this note is simply to provide brief summaries while pointing out some of their common and divergent features. One striking aspect of these studies is the fact that four of This is not them are by writers who come from the producing countries. of the increasingly purely accidental; it is suggestive serious interest that the producing countries have taken in the affairs of an industry vital to their future development. For a long time the industry was the exclusive domain of eight major international oil companies which exhibited an altogether natural jealousy over their knowledge of its operations. With little access to the vital sources of information in the industry, few scholars could conduct serious research on oil. But as the dominant position of the seven AngloAmerican-Dutch sisters (British Petroleum, Standard of New Jersey, Gulf, Mobil, Shell, Standard of California, and Texaco) with their French half-sister (Compagnie Francaise des Pe"troles) has been somewhat weakened in the recent decade, so has their exclusive control of the sources of information. There are now many independent private and national oil companies competing in the international markets. Furthermore, governments of the producing countries and also of some of the consuming countries, have more or less come to the conclusion that oil is too important a matter to be left entirely to the oilmen. The trade journals, which still remain an excellent source in the thinking of the representatives of private interests, are now supplemented by publications such as those of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Middle East Research and Publishing Center, which reflect the point of view of the producing countries. A whole generation of independent observers and scholars of the oil scene, including some of the present writers, have also emerged to fill some of the gaps. We have now, notably in the works of Professor M.A. Adelman of M.I.T., even the beginnings of some theoretical into insights the economics of the industry.*

*See especially, "The World Oil Outlook", in Marion Clawson (ed.) Natural Resources and International Development (Baltimore, 1964); "Oil Prices in the Long-Run (1963-65)," University of Chicago Journal of Business (April, 1964); The Supply and Price of Natural Gas (London 1962); "Crude Oil Production Costs in Four Areas",(A.I.M.E. Feb.-Mar., 1966); "Oil Prices 1957-67: An Interim Report (Unpublished Mss, Dec., 1967); "Security of Eastern Hemisphere Fuel Supply (MIT Dept. of Economics Working Paper, December, 1967.

77

SPEING 1968

Another common feature to note among these studies is that, with the exception of one, Economic Aspects of Oil Conservation all are primarily concerned with petroleum in the Regulations, This, again, is symptomatic of international Eastern Hemisphere. only Although Eastern Hemisphere oil constitutes market conditions. its share of inabout 56 percent of the world's total production, This is a posttrade in petroleum exceeds 85 percent. ternational in the last two decades of war phenomenon; and the availability cheap Middi.e East and North African oil on a massive scale to the consuming countries of Western Europe, has motivated the latter to domestic coal to lowshift their demand for fuel from high-cost more Oil exports constitute cost imported petroleum products. trade, and of this, an inthan 50 percent of all international The movement creasing share comes from the Eastern Hemisphere. of millions of barrels of crude oil and crude oil products across involves a highly complex network of inter-relationships continents among an increasing number of producing and consuming countries as intermediaries, the oil companies. well as among their everpresent with The chief concern of these studies is, quite appropriately, and legal framework of these rethe changing ecomonics, politics, lationships. The studies under review are on the whole impressive contriMikdashi's study ventures into a butions to our understanding. brief, and presents a good, though necessarily virgin territory It is a comparative analysis of the Middle East oil concessions. welcome beginning of a study that will have to be later carried out in order to provide a basis for the comparison in greater detail Frank's study of crude oil prices presents of the new concessions. development of a very cona very lucid account of the historical Alnasrawi's work is a case study of fusing system of pricing. economic development, or lack thereof, with abundant resources in It shows what money capital and foreigh exchange earnings from oil. can and cannot do in the underdeveloped oil producing countries. Oil and Public Opinion in the Middle East is a study of an important The author argues western bias. infused with a distinct subject, ignoring the fact that the subject of oil should be depoliticized, that a country which depends on a single commodity for more than cannot be policical80-90 percent of its foreigh exchange earnings, the oil Henry Cattan's study reflects to its fate. ly indifferent system in companies' views on the evolution of the concessionary Mughraby's study rethe Middle East; it is somewhat apologetic. piece of research into the legal notions that presents an extensive system and its serve as the under pinnings of the concessionary Martinez's book is an anthology of the author's reevolution. accounts of the changing scene in the industry. levent and irrelevant Frankel's book on Mattei is a study, by a-close advisor and an astute observer of the oil scene, of a remarkable oilman, who chaloil companies on their own grounds. lenged the major international

IRANIAN STUDIES

78

Hubbard's is a study of the changing transport scene, which is now of more of super-tankers being revolutionized by the introduction And, finally, Lovejoy and Homan's exthan 100,000 dwt capacity. system in the United States pretensive study of the prorationing sents an excellent case study in microcosm, of the problems and Despite conprospects of production programming on a worldscale. in the United States siderable governmental and private cooperation to maintain prices high by keeping supply commensurate with demand, the industry continues to be plagued with excess producing capacity. towards prorationing among the exporting countries OPEC's efforts can profit greatly from the lessons of the American experience as analyzed in this work. All in all, these are good years for the students of the New sources of information are international petroleum industry. Just as with the market bursting forth with each passing day. as the problem is no longer as much one of scarcity conditions, abundance. absorption of the available

79

SPRING 1968

CURRENT RESEARCH ON IRAN (E)

IRANCOMPLETED OF THESESCONCERNING THESECONDPARTOF A BIBLIGRAPHY IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS, OR IN PREPARATION,IN BRITISH ANDAMERICAN UNIVERS ITIES.

of Nishapur in the Eleventh

history

Bulliet,

R.

The social Harvard.

Daftary,

F.

Economic development

Kazemian, Gh.

Zonis,

M. Studies

in the texts

M. The life

(Berkeley)

U. Calif.

on the

Princeton.

of Hafiz.

criticism

E. Contemporary Persian

Loraine,

in Iran.

The impact of the U.S. technical and financial rural development of I'ran. American.

Rehder, R. Modern Persian Schwartz,

planning

century.

of Sogdian Christians.

art and music.

Berkeley.

Chicago.

and works Maleku-sh-Shuara

Bahar.

Cambridge.

Radwan, S. A comparative study of Persian and Arabic poetical developA.D. Cambridge. ments in Eighth and Ninth centuries, Ovanessian,

0.

JaIalu-Din

Rumi and Sufism.

and economic life

Emerson, J. The trade relations Cambridge. A.S.

Husaini,

Husain, M. Perry,

J.

Underground religious Cambridge. The Safavids.

The Zands.

IRANIAN STUDIES

Cambridge.

80

Iran.

movements in Timurid Iran.

Cambridge.

Cambridge.

of Safavid

Iraia Sllt

tuUiEs

Eulketin of The Sodet!j PorIrantin Ctu4al an) ;s.d1 Sbt 4a

rmtn:er3 Uolumr, S,etwtor

1968

COUNCIL Ervand Abrahamian Secretary Ali Banuazizi, Hormoz Hekmat Abbas Heydari-Darafshian Farhad Kazemi, Treasurer President Manoucher Parvin, Maj id Tehranian

IRANIAN STUDIES Ali Banuazizi, Roy Mottahedeh,

Editor Associate

Editor

for Iranian quarterly by The Soceity IRANIAN STUDIES is published to members of the It is distributed and Social Cultrual Studi-es. of single copies The price membership. as a part of their Society by the expressed The opinions is $1.00 per issue. for non-members authors and not necessarily are those of the individual contributors may Articles of IRANIAN STUDIES. or the editors those of the Society for publication. to the Editor be submitted or Persian in English IRANIAN STUDIES or the Soceity's All communications concerning Cultural and for Iranian The Soceity should be addressed to: affairs New Haven, Studies (SICSS), P. 0. Box 3384, Yale Station, Social U.S.A. 06520, Connecticut

Cover

design

by Tina

Kazemi

TIt

'et

to

"S .4 Apr xBunlIetin of

Tht Socety IerIrantn Volume I

Culuwa nb$ocda &ubt

Summer 1968

Number 3

CONTENTS

82

POLITICAL PARTY DEVELOPMENTIN IRAN Richard W. Cottam

96

NOTES ON THE SAFAVID STATE Roger Savory

]04

CITY HISTORIES IN MEDIEVAL IRAN Richard W. Bulliet

110

ECONOMICDEVELOPMENT OF PETROLEUMEXPORTING COUNTRIES Ali M. S. Fatemi

113

TWO SHORT STORIES BY SADEQ CHUBAK by John Limbert Translated JUSTI CE THE FLOWERSOF FLESH

121

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

122

BOOK REVIEW "RATIONALITY" ANTD"IRRATIONALITY" IN IRANIAN FOREIGN POLICY Shaul Bakhash

POLITICAL PARTY DEVELOPMENT IN IRAN'

Richard

W. Cottam

political party free and vigorous of reasonably The period in Iran was remarkably brief when viewed in the peractivity Beginning land. of that ancient of the very long history spective of Reza Shah in 1941, party activity the abdication slowly after August 1953 when it was suduntil more intense became steadily But as brief as this period was, these twelve denly suppressed. which party development of political patterns years witnessed states. of other developing comparison with the experience deserve the posthas been in vogue throughout The term "developing" But for all that the term remains a vague one. World War II era. of over twenty five hundred history Why Iran with its recorded the United States while as "developing" years should be classified than two hundred years should be classified with a history of less Indeed the very use of obvious. as "developed" is not immediately subconand more journalists so vague a term leads some analysts connotawith its perjorative "primitive" to substitute sciously tions for "developing".2 differThere are qualitative Yet the term is a fair one. which are of those societies processes ences in the political and as "modern". as "developing", as "traditional", classified of analysis in the political school the predominant But, oddly, the structural-functional approach, following states, developing than the differences rather the similarities tends to stress to Fred Riggs has made a major effort among the three systems. to the to focus on the unique by pointing failure remedy this as a major indicator of differentiation factor of functional out, his the stage of development.3 But, as Riggs points or develsystem is not a synonym for the transitional prismatic as traditional which are classified Some societies oping system. The factor of differentiation. have a great deal of functional as a can be useful differentiation the degree of functional but of development of the stage valid indicator frequently

Richard W. Cottam is Professor of Pittsburgh. University

IRANIAN STUDIES

of

82

Political

Science

at

the

it cannot serve as the primary analytbecause of the exceptions ical device for pointing to the unique aspects of the political process in the three systems. The contention here is that the most obvious and at the same time analytically distinction useful political among the three is the degree of political awareness and political participation. By political awareness is meant ail at least vague awareness of An individual the state as a unit and of the society of states. as politically classified unaware is not necessarily apolitical. in village, He may understand and participate clan, and tribal politics and yet not be conscious of the state. Therefore the awareness as the tea is used simplest indicator of political which has or here is a comprehension of membership in a cosunity seeks a state organization and of the existence of a society of states. Between the individual who barely understands he is a member of such a community and the individual who comprehends the subtleties and nuances of the political process of the state there is a vast range in degree. Seen in these terms, the developing process is the growth in the percentage of the population that is politically aware and of the percentage of the population which has a sophisticated understanding of the political process of the state. The purpose of this study is to test the analytical utility of this focus by correlating types of political parties in Iran with three different levels of political awareness and political participation. Unfortunately levels of political awareness in Iran can only be estimated. Voting in elections, which would seem to be a logical indicator of basic political participation, is in fact of little utility. Uncomprehending peasants were herded to the polls in parliamentary elections while politically sophisticated urbanites remained at home rather than participate in a meaningless ritual. The urban vote for the 17th Majlis in 1952 was something of an exception, however, since the politically aware populace considered it relatively free and meaningful. in Around 40% of the adult male population of Tehran participated that vote. Nor is a survey such as Almond and Verba's Five nation in study likely to yield valid results in Iran. In a dictatorship which much of the most active population is engaged in underground politics, honest answers to questions designed to test political awareness are hardly to be expected. The three periods to be looked at are: 1906-1921, the generic period for Iranian political parties in which certainly as less than three percent of the population could be classified politically aware; 1941-1950 during which the level of awareness is assumed to be five to ten percent; and 1950-1953 during which

83

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the level of awareness is assumed to be over ten percent and during increased rapidly. participants which the percentage of political The typology to be used for the parties will be based on the 1) dependence on or independence of a following five criteria: would the party collapse were the i.e., individual, particular 2) base of recruitment for activity; to cease political individual is the party leadership drawn largely from the old i.e., leaders, oligarchy or from some other source; 3) base of recruitment for to which popular elements is the party i.e., party rank and file, likely to turn for support; 4) breadth of the ideology appeal is it i.e., toward party competition, made; and 5) attitude or non-authoritarian. authoritarian parties does not begin with The history of Iranian political to their political Iranians have been referring the year 1941. revolution of 1906. parties since shortly after the constitutional groups, the Democrats and Moderates, can lay And two political of party A definition "party". some claim to the appellation which is abstracted from the great, broadly-based parties of the United States or Western Europe would, of course, exclude both the These groups were composed of only a few Democrats and Moderates. in communicating with the who found difficulty dozen individuals more than parliaIndeed they amounted to little Iranian mass. But their failure to organize extensively mentary groupings. of their lacking any purpose outside parliament is not indicative of individual members. There beyond advancing the self-interest homogeneity in each of the groups although the was ideological and ideological, and consciously Democrats were the more intensely the ideology was a compound of the French Enlightenment and nationalism. Their failure to organize outside is merely awareness. symptomatic of the narrow base of political Whether the Moderates and Democrats are described as politiWhat is important is to consequence. cal parties is of little groups emerged naturally from the recognize that these political of the dowreh or circle and that they institution traditional parties more of political constituted a major step in the direction Furthermore, they were very natural in accord with the Western model. awareness. groupings for this stage of political political The institution of the dowreh consisted of a group of who met regularly or men of similar interests relatives friends, As awareness of Western or for socializing. for discussions some ideas and institutions penetrated the oligarchy, political sons of the oligarchy became enamored of these ideas and deterparallel A salon constitutionalism mined to put them into effect. expanded to that of 19th Century Russia followed and some circles The Democrat party in particular when into societies (anlumans).

IRANIANSTUDIES

84

it was formed, had close ties to and drew its leadership from a number of these societies. A dominant section of the leadership in this stage was recruited from sons of the oligarchy. This was not the group within leader was which a charismatic likely to appear. Dominant personalities were expected features of the dowreh, the anjuman and the new party. But they were too well known, too much part of the group to elicit the type of unquestioning support characteristic of that of the charismatic leader. The statement often heard that parties in this period were little more than personal is misleading. instruments Strong personalities were to be found in both parties, but neither could be classified as personality dependent. Such a type would appear in a later stage of political awareness when an effort would be fruitful for reaching barely aware voters through a highly personal appeal. These early parties, if they can be called classified as personality independent; leadership the oligarchy; rank and file recruited from the base; rather broad ideology; and non-authoritarian.

such, can be recruited from narrow literate

came to a standstill Party activity during the 1920's and under the authoritarisn 1930's rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi; but in terms of a growth in political development awareness proceeded when Reza Shah abdicated in 1941 and free rapidly. Therefore, was again possible a much larger party activity existed public which had at least potential for the appeal of receptivity political For would-be party leaders. party leaders this development offered new opportunities and new types of political parties to appear. were certain The type of party that appeared almost immediately was the glorified dowreh-type described above. This should come as no surprise. Habits, values, and norms of behavior that were characteristic of the traditional will society persist throughout the transitional or developing stage. Only as Iran has moved into an increasingly in the 1960's has the totalitarian control Nor are these glorified dowreh-type party begun to disappear. behavioral confined to the most conservative traditional patterns The behavior members of society. of even those leaders who their will continue to include basically alter style nevertheless some traditional which often add not at all to political patterns the glorified dowreh party was modal only effectiveness. However, in the early stage of growth in political In the 1941awareness. 1950 period a new modal type appeared.

85

SUMMER1968

By 1941 approximately five per cent of the population was and probably somewhere between five and ten percent had literate, process. Awareness and parsome awareness of the modern political are not the same thing, however, and a major effort ticipation figures to communicate from rival political could be anticipated with and then to mobilize the support of this group. Included also aware during the Reza in the public which had become politically and had achieved a Shah period was a group which was well-educated In absolute sophistication. high degree of political relatively numbers this group, to be referred to henceforth as the "new inteBut when it is remembered that the vast was not large. llectuals," unaware, the group was majority of Iranians remained politically Emerging from families of moderate very influential. potentially the members of means, often small merchants or minor bureaucrats, this group were frequently restive and anxious to see fundamental change. In the period from 1941 to 1946 two new party types appeared. The first, represented by the Tudeh Party, focused its appeal on Along with an the more radical members of the new intellectuals. compelling ideology came a promise of fundamental intellectually The fact that this party openly proclaimed its adherence change. with the Soviet Union was less of to communism and its association Though most an obstacle to recruitment than might be imagined. including many members of the Tudeh, of the new intellectuals, in Iran had foreign intervention nationalistic, were intensely foreign with any particular been so common that an association as long as the power could be thought of as not unpatriotic welfare of the Iranian people was foremost in mind; and many saw far less reason to look with favor on Iranian nationalists the British than on the Soviets. as personality The Tudeh Party type can be classified independent; leadership recruited mainly from the new intellectuals; rank and file recruited also largely from the new although a major but at this time, generally unsucintellectuals cessful effort was made to attract members from other elements of and authoritarian. society; narrowly and rigidly ideological; The other party type was represented by the National Will These people resembled each Party and the Democrat Iran Party. One major of the typology. other closely in each of the criteria sophistiIn politically existed however. perceptual difference the National Will Party was perceived to be at cated circles least as close to the British as the Tudeh Party was to the The party's leader, Sayyid Zia al-Din Tabatabai, had Soviets. become premier in 1921 after a coup d'etat perceived to have been When he fell from power he went into exile in the British-backed.

IRANIANSTUDIES

86

British mandate of Palestine and was believed to have been brought back to Iran during the British and Soviet wartime occupation as part of a British effort to counter the Soviet challenge implicit in the Tudeh Party. That a man with such a reputation could seriously hope to gain popular support is testimony to the Iranian acceptance of foreign interference astonishing as a fact of life that must be lived with. AhmadQavam, the leader of the Democrat Iran Party, was believed to be "close" to the British as were most aristocratic politicians; but there was a substantial in degree of perceived attachment. difference Each of these parties sought to attract support from the the new intellectuals, and the by-now substantial old oligarchy, inert. The mode of appeal to each group of aware but politically of the three groups had to be different and Sayyid Zia and Ahmad understood this. Qavam intuitively Support from the old oligarchy was gained essentially by an appeal to the power and spoils interest of prominent personalities, and here both parties were The new intellectuals successful. were appealed to through an advocacy of economic and social reform and real national independence. Here the Democrat Iran Party had some success, but the National Will Party with its British reputation attracted very few The appeal to the third group was primarily intellectuals. personal and here neither party was successful. For a brief period in 1946 the Democrat Iran Party was able to enlist the support of a surprisingly leaders and large number of political the party was extraordinarily successful in the elections for the 15th Majlis. But following this electoral victory the party collapsed with a suddenness that amply demonstrated the tenuousness of party attachments. This party type can be described as personality dependent; leadership recruited from the oligarchy; rank and file recruited from the oligarchy with a generally Unsuccessful appeal to the new intellectuals and to the aware mass; an ideological appeal narrower than that of the dowreh-type party but broad when compared with the Tudeh; and non-authoritarian. The failure of the National Will and Democrat Iran parties and the limited success of the Tudeh demonstrate two major points. First, even though a by-now significant section of the Iranian public was to some extent politically aware, mobilizing was extremely difficult. them politically Second, a narrowly ideological appeal was necessary to attract recruits from among the new intellectuals. The elements of the successful ideological appeal were also becoming clear. They included as an essential feature an intense devotion to the goal of a truly independent Iran with a dignity consonant with Iran's great past. They included also an acceptance of modernizing, achievement values which called for rapid social and economic change. But within these areas of general agreement there was a wide range of 87

1968 SUMMER

One group of new intellectuals viewpoints. felt Iran's national independence and dignity were in no sense compromised by a close association with the Soviet Union. However, Soviet support for a puppet communist government of Iranian Azerbaijan in the latter part of this period did lead to disillusionment and many defections. Polar to this, another group made of nationalism its primary focus and proclaimed that Iran's dignity could only be restored by a restitution of lost territories now included in the Soviet Union, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The majority of the new intellectuals rejected any close association with a foreign power but accepted Iran's boundaries as essentially unalterable. On the point of economic and social change, one group accepted the comunist formula. Another combined what it believed was doctrinaire Marxist socialism with an insistence that a peculiarly Iranian road to socialism must be followed. A third group was less doctrinaire, resembling rather closely the British Fabians. A fourth called for a statism which in many ways resembled the corporate focus of fascist Italy. A major area of disagreement concerned the applicability of the liberal democratic frame. There were among the new intellectuals, and even more so among the old intellectuals who had in the early constitutional participated for whom revolution,many the goal of liberal democracy haa a clear priority. For others liberal democracy was at most a very distant goal. A mere recounting of the range in intellectual attitude spells out the dilemma for the Iranian political leader in this To attract the new intellectual period. he must make a narrowly ideological appeal. But such an appeal would attract only one section of the intellectual community and would have virtually no appeal beyond that small group. Therefore the possibility of building a broadly based party was remote and the established pattern for the 1946-1950 period was the development of a number of narrowly ideological parties with a restricted popular appeal. Of the successful parties in this and the Mardom Iran Party, made little the new intellectuals as the recruting Both parties had rather narrowly file. the

substance

of

their

appeals

was very

period two, the Iran Party real effort to go beyond base for their rank and ideological appeals and similar.

They were

highly

nationalistic, with a foreign opposed to any close association power, non-doctrinaire and liberal democratic. Mardom socialist, Iran in addition stressed spiritual values. Both were independent of particular leaders, although the Iran Party came to be closely identified with Allahyar Saleh. Their resemblance was close

IRANIAN STUDIES

88

enough that the two parties sometimes merged. But there was one The which persistently drove them apart. difference typological who had Iran Party leaders were by and large old intellectuals emerged from the oligarchy whereas the Mardom Iran leaders were new intellectuals of middle class origin. The Iran Party can be seen therefore as a party which evolved naturally from the glorified dowreh type. Leadership was recruited from the same oligarchic base; but the ideological appeal had been narrowed which permitted recruiting from the new intellectuals. All of the other significant parties made serious efforts to attract support outside the narrow community of the new intellectuals. Two of these, however, found their greatest recruitment successes within the new intellectual community. The Tudeh Party though outlawed, stepped up its appeal to virtually every recognizable group within the newly awakened publtic. But its successes outside the intellectual community were few and largely confined to the labor area although there were beginnings of progress in near Tehran and in the Caspian province of Gilan. villages The second of these parties, the Toilers Party, was a most interesting transitional type. It targeted two specific groups and hoped to be able, through the personal appeal of its leader Dr. Mozaffar Baqai, to reach deeply into the non-participant politically aware. By far the greatest success for the Toilers Party resulted from the alliance of Dr. Baqai and some doctrinaire the brilliant, Marxist but anti-Stalinist intellectuals, especially one-time communist theoretician, Khalil Maleki. With the newspaper Shahed as its mouthpiece this wing of the Toilers Party was able to attract the support of a large number of new intellectuals. Dr. Baqai also included in his entourage men who were able to exercise some control over a number of labor unions and who had excellent circles. A contacts within the guilds and religious third group of close associates of Dr. Baqai were men with easy the British access to the Court, the army and, cynics believed, with Embassy. This latter group had had a dowreh-type association itself with the Dr. Baqai prior to 1946 and then had associated Democrat Iran Party. The Toilers Party in fact deserves close study. Rarely will a political such a broad combingroup be found which incorporates ation of traditional Furthermore and modern behavioral patterns. the Toilers Party just might have become Iran's dominant party. which might Dr. Baqai seems to have had a charismatic potential eventually have enabled him to reach many of the non-participant politically aware. But in this regard he could not compete with Dr. Mohamad Mossadeq and,by making an effort to do so,Dr. Baqai

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his party and his own reputation was to destroy as a leading nationalist politician. The Toilers Party was clearly personit recruited its leaders ality dependent; from the new intellectuals, from labor and guilds; it attracted its rank and file also from these three groups; it was narrowly and rigidly ideological; and it was non-authoritarian. Two other parties of some significance had relatively far success greater outside the community of the new intellectuals. Both can be classified as personality dependent although in each case had the leaders died in the period either a successor would have been found or a new party with a substantially similar appeal would have appeared. In fact minor parties competing for the same rank and file were already in existence. The more noteworthy of those two parties, the Warriors of Islam, was ostensibly headed by the turbaned but spectacularly on the opportunistic Shams Qanatabadi. But it was dependent leadership of the most successful of the politician-priests, AbolQassem Kashani. This party recruited its leaders from three groups, Shiah religious leaders, guild leaders, and street leaders. Rank and file support was attracted from the deeply religious lowermiddle class. Since the great bulk of the aware but as yet nonparticipating public could be classified as lower-middle class, and since the Warriors of Islam was the most successful of the parties in reaching this group, especially in the provincial centers, Kashani could reasonably believe that his political potential was next only to that of Mossadeq. However he was dependent for success on a loose alliance with some independent-minded politicalin Tehran and in the provincial religious and leaders centers, the tenuousness of this alliance in 1953. was to be demonstrated Kashani's No real ideological appeal was broad and loose. in an effort was made to reconcile the inherent contradictions His appeal which had a dual center in Islam and Nationalism. economic and social attitudes were conservative to reactionary, but there is little were very reason to believe his rank and file much aware of them. of Iran They were attracted to grand slogans and Islam. This was not the kind of appeal to attract, and Kashani did not reach, The party of the religious intellectual. course claimed to oppose authoritarianism but liberal democracy was clearly of little interest to Kashani personally. The other of these two parties, Pan Iran, was more narrowly targeted. It directed its appeal to lower middle class youth, particularly high school students. At this stage of Iran's political development this was a highly significant target group,

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and a number of parties or would-be parties competed for preeminence in the high schools. Since the young students were volatile and easily mobilized, force of some they were a political in a chaotic situation. potential particularly All of the groups targeting them used essentially the same ideological appeal, an intense nationalism which called not only for the ouster of the imperial West but also for the return of lost Iranian territories now located within the boundaries of each of Iran's neighbors including the Soviet Union. The appeal was statist but anti-capitalist, anti-communist, and often anti-Semitic. The leader of the most successful of these groups was Dariush Foruhar, and leaders were recruited from young men of the lower middle class and the fringes of the new intellectuals. The party called for free party competition but the sincerity of its call for tolerance could be questioned Finally there was the Fedayan Islam about which little is known. This party recruited fundamentalist-activists from the urban lower middle and lower classes. In ideology it called for a return to the fundamental principles of Islam and viewed secular and nationalist parties as blasphemous. Premier Ali Razmara was assassinated by a member of this group in 1951, an act which led to the premiership of Dr. Mossadeq. Partly for this reason the party is sometimes mistakenly placed in the Mossadeqist National Front.5 In fact Mossadeq soon became a prime target of Fedayan assassins, and a leading Mossadeq lieutenant, Hossein Fatemi, was gravely wounded by a Fedayan gunman. The party had virtually no appeal among the new intellectuals and Nevab Safavi and other Fedayan leaders were generally regarded as insincere and for sale to the highest bidder. The Shah had Safavi and the entire Fedayan leadership executed in a later period,but the assassins of Premier Mansur in 1965 were possibly Fedayan members. Unlike the previous period, the parties of this period must be classified as successful. Virtually every element of the population which was mobilizable was reached by one or another of them. But only the Tudeh and Toilers parties had any real success in attracting significant support from both within and without the new intellectual groups. And none of the parties could be classified as a mass party. In order to achieve this end what was called for was a means to surmount the ideological parochialism that characterized these parties and at the same time to attract the attention and support of the politically aware but non-participant section of the population.

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In the final period of relative freedom, 1950-1953, there did finally emerge a political party or political movement which met both of these requirements. This was the National Front which formed around the leadership of Dr. MohammadMossadeq. Prior to 1951 the National Front was indeed a front or coalition. Of the parties described above only the Tudeh and the Fedayan Islam were not included. In addition the National Front incorporated a number of glorified dowrehs which were formed around some of Iran's leading political personalities, and also incorporated entire guilds. Whether the National Front after 1951 is defined as a party, a movement or a front is of little The individual significance. parties maintained their identities within the National Front but lost much of their freedom of action. This loss of freedom was best demonstrated when in 1953 both Dr. Baqai and Ayatollah Kashani sought to take their parties out of the National Front. Both were confronted immediately with massive defections. The intellectual wing of Toilers split off to form the Third Force Party. Almost all of the loosely aligned religious leaders who had cooperated with Kashani broke away from any association with the Warriors of Islam as did guild leaders. In both cases only those individuals personally beholden to Baqai or Kashani remained. In the eyes of most of the National Front Baqai and Kashani had committed treason. The National Front continued to be regarded as a coalition by its leaders but it had demonstrated an ability to discipline even its most outstanding lieutenants. The National Front succeeded in surmounting the ideological parochialism of the previous period by focusing the attention of all participants on the one task regarding which there was general consensus, i.e., the destruction of the British-Iranian oligarchy alliance which was perceived to be denying Iran independence and progress. But even more than this, the National Front had in Dr. Mossadeq a charismatic leader who quickly came to personify and symbolize the Iranian search for national dignity. Very quickly a general consensus developed around the conclusion that Dr. Mossadeq was a leader who could be trusted. Those who broke with him soon found their very patriotism questioned. Dr. Mossadeq also proved to be the answer to the problem of transforming the politically aware but inert mass into active participants. Other political leaders had understood that in the early stages of political awareness a people is particularly prone to indentify with and to seek satisfaction for its frustrations in the leadership of a great personality. Qavam, Baqai, and Kashani each offered himself for this role. But only

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The 1950-1953 period magic appeal. Dr. Mossadeq had the requisite was one in which there was a rapid extension downward into the awareness and an even more rapid expansion population of political Dr. Mossadeq and the of the percentage of political participants. National Front thus can be seen as primary agents of political and the norms that those moving into the political socialization, democratic norms. It is no stream accepted included liberal accident that the man who gave leadership to the National Front and who became Iran's first really popular leader should have In 1951 a potentially popular national democracy. espoused liberal leader needed the support first of all of the new intellectuals,and leader could at that time have it is doubtful that an authoritarian attracted broad support from that group. Obviously a great many an acceptance more than three years would be required to inculcate governmental process in a people which of the liberal-democratic But in this three-year had long acquiesced in authoritarianism. period a great many uncomprehending people accepted the liberaldemocratic process simply because it was part of the political elite they believed normative system of a leader and a political from in. It is one of the ironies of this age that intervention West cut short this experiment. the liberal-democratic depenas personality The National Front can be classified the new intellecdent; leadership recruited from the oligarchy, from the rank and file recruited tuals and the middle-class; broad; and aware; ideologically entire spectrum of politically (until the summer of 1953,when confronted with non-authoritarian a serious challenge from the right, it turned sharply in the authoritarian direction). party development can be viewed in Thus Iranian political three stages, each related to the percentage of politically which the percentage of politically aware. In the first stage,in aware was very low, parties were mere outgrowths of traditional more structured and with an slightly oligarchical patterns, and liberal ideology focusing broadly on nationalism explicit in a power position, although briefly These parties, democracy. process than political of the traditional were more disruptive They did, process. a modern political capable of substituting serve in the 1906-1908 and again in 1919-1921 periods, especially But they did not as agents of rapid political mobilization. produce the kind of leadership capable of performing a tutelary role. When a tutelary leader did appear in Reza Shah, he operated outside the party structure. revived. With Reza Shah's abdication in 1941 party activity aware was At this stage, in which the percentage of politically

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probably approachiag the ten percent mark, the outstanding of the duccessful parties was the narrow ideochaLacteristic to attract the support of the mobilizable logical appeal utilized element. new intellectual The third stage, lasting only from 1950-1953, was one in the participation of was able to enlist which party activity Evidence such aware population. the entire politically virtually inert as the continued memory of Dr. Mossadeq among politically peasants suggests that this period was indeed one of rapid mobilization.6 political for There is no thought here of suggesting an inevitability Iran's developmental process has these stages of development. alone been a unique one. The variable of foreign intervention was in part responsible Foreign intervention makes this obvious. revolution of 1906 and of for the success of the constitutional its failure in 1912, for the coup d'etat of 1921 which was the first step in Reza Shah's rise to power, for the abdication of Reza Shah, and for the overthrow of Dr. Mossadeq. Furthermore the success of the National Front was dependent on the single national the entire around which virtually issue of anti-imperialism But at the same time each aware populace could rally. politically of these stages mirrored the extent and profile of political awareness in the country. has been conducted Since 1953 Iranian political party activity There was an effort on two levels, and semi-clandestine. official loyal to the regime, in the late 1950's to superimpose two parties, Now an official, frankly on the polity; but the attempt failed. party But the really significant exists. authoritarian,party is underground. Should the present regime be replaced by activity there is little one permitting once again free party activity, of much resemblance to the party activity reason to anticipate Since that time a great many more Iranians have become 1953. The modal participants. aware and are potential politically party type of the future would surely be one capable of recruiting rank and file support from this very large newly awakened population.

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Footnotes and more condensed version of this 1An earlier presented at a Seminar on "Problems of Contemporary sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Iranian Students Association in University, States, April 16-17, 1965.

paper was Iran," Harvard the United

for Iran than in the This point has no better illustration that the sophisticated and complex suggestion of Thomas Schelling Thomas Dr. MohammadMossadeq might respond to child psychology. C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (New York, 1963) p. 13. in Developing 3Fred W. Riggs, Administration The Theory of Prismatic Society (Boston, 1964).

Countries:

4It is one of the ironies of American social science studies of developing states that this very common phenomenon is so Since the perceptual frame of the frequently understressed. color to some extent the view of another analyst will inevitably of liberal political culture, an exaggeration of the attraction Instead, the democratic values might reasonably be expected. But this underestimation of liberalopposite appears to be true. democratic attachments may well best be explained as a consequence from a determining perception of perceptual distortion resulting the Even with optimal success, of American national interest. liberal-democratic elite in the early stages of development can And the avoidance of instability achieve only tenuous stability. in developing states which have the misfortune of being on the Sino-Soviet littoral is generally assumed to be in the American interest. American policy makers seem to prefer an authoritarian regime which can maintain at least a comforting surface stability in such areas to the democratic regime whose surface appearance The downgrading of liberal democratic will frequently be chaotic. of a attachments may therefore be in large part a rationalizing In Iran it amounted to a self-fulfilling national policy stance. prophecy. 5See N. Marbery Efimenco, "An Experiment with Civilian Dictatorship in Iran: The Case of MohammadMossadeq, "Journal of Politics, August 1955, p. 396. 6This point was made at the Harvard Conference on Iran, of his paper April 1965 by Hossein Mahdavy during the discussion He reported that in the course of "Iran's Agrarian Problems". the Iranian survey team had making a survey of thirty villages found universal withl the name of Dr. Mossadeq. familiarity SUMMER1968

NOTES ON THE SAFAVID STATE

Roger

Savory

if a language does not have a word It is axiomatic that, does not exist for a given concept, that particular concept for the people who speak that language. We must therefore begin consideration of the evolution of the Safavid state by making the of the state the concept negative statement that, for the 5afavids in any Western sense did not exist. As Minorsky has said: "it is a moot question how the idea of the State, if ever distinctly was expressed in Safavid realized, The term dawlat, terminology." used in an abstract was sometimes meaning "bliss, felicity", way to denote the aura of beneficence which surrounded ruler the just and sheltered his subjects. of the Thus the principal officers Safavid state were termed arkan-i that is, the pillars dawlat, which supported this So too, especially from the regal canopy. time of shSh cAbbas I onwards, the vazIlr was entitled ictimad that is, its trusty or prop. al-dawla, support During the

Roger Savory is Associate Studies at the University *This is article State."

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