Women and the Politics of Resistance in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution 3031280962, 9783031280962

Table of contents :
Foreword
Acknowledgment
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
References
Chapter 2: Why Women Are Absent from Political and Economic Histories?
Methodological Traps: West/East, Man/Woman, Public/Private
References
Chapter 3: The Pre-Revolution Struggles and the Emergence of New Classes
The Court, Government, and Roaya in the Late Nineteenth Century
Foreign Trade and the Pervasive Economic Crisis
The Pre-Revolution Struggles and the Emergence of Modern Classes
References
Sources
Chapter 4: Women, Daily Life, and Street: Women’s Participation in the Nineteenth-Century Demonstrations
Women and Daily Life: Discussing the Body of Evidence
Women and Street Protests
Writing as Resistance: The Formation of a New Class of Women Intellectuals
Summing Up: Women’s Situation on the Eve of Constitutional Revolution
References
Chapter 5: Economic Crisis, the Coloniality of Consumption, and Women’s Resistance
The Constitutional Revolution (1906–1911)
Women’s Agency in the Constitutional Revolution
West Economic Encroachment and Farangi Ma’abi: 1909–1925
The Coloniality of Consumption and Everyday Forms of Resistance
References
Chapter 6: From Resistance to Repression: Modernization and Transformations of Women’s Movement
Systematic Suppression of the Press and Women’s Independent Organizations in Post-Constitutional Era II (1921–1941)
The Emergence of State-Sponsored Women’s Organizations and Depoliticized Domesticity
Class Interest and Transformations of Women’s Resistance
References
Chapter 7: Epilogue
References
Index

Citation preview

Women and the Politics of Resistance in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution

Maryam Dezhamkhooy

Women and the Politics of Resistance in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution

Maryam Dezhamkhooy

Women and the Politics of Resistance in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution

Maryam Dezhamkhooy Heidelberg University Heidelberg, Germany

ISBN 978-3-031-28096-2    ISBN 978-3-031-28097-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28097-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To the people of my land who have risen in the seek of life.

Foreword

Rarely has a feminist book been published with so much relevance to the present. Following the death of Mahsa Amini in Teheran on 16 September 2022, at the age of 22, political protests broke out that quickly spread over the whole of Iran. The young woman had been arrested for allegedly wearing an inappropriate hijab—a piece of cloth, which carries so much meaning. A symbol of piety and religiosity for some, others see it as a means of systematic oppression and disenfranchising of women. The starting point of protests against the regime in Iran is a piece of material culture, which demonstrates how important ‘things’ remain as symbols within contemporary society. Through the production and use of material culture, gender and power relations have been and are negotiated, confirmed, and challenged. Here we have a comprehensive assessment of this process in the recent history of Iran—a vital contribution to global understanding. Contemporary archaeologists, who study societies through material remains, are well placed to analyze, interpret, and comment on social change. In this book, Maryam Dezhamkhooy has taken up the challenge of highlighting the role of women in the socio-political developments of early twentieth-century Iran. Then and now, women are at the frontline of resistance. Women, as those responsible for childcare, care work, and maintenance activities, are the primary reproducers of family structures, societies, and entire nations. In her work, Maryam Dezhamkhooy tackles how the everyday, lived experience of women is intertwined with political movements across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and describes how their active vii

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engagement plays a significant role in making change. Writing women back into our political and economic histories becomes an urgent task for historians and archaeologists, if we wish to understand the full extent of society and social change. Vienna, Austria Liverpool, UK Lisbon, Portugal November 29, 2022

Katharina Rebay-Salisbury Rachel Pope Ana Cristina Martins

Acknowledgment

This book is based on research conducted on the Iranian women’s movements by the author between 2020 and 2022. During this time, I enjoyed the generous support of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. I am grateful to a number of friends and colleagues for encouraging me to start the work. I thank Thomas Meier and Leila Papoli-Yazdi for their academic support. I would like to thank the AGE (Archaeology and Gender in Europe) board, Katharina Rebay-­Salisbury, Rachel Pope, and Ana Cristina Martins, who wrote a wonderful foreword to the book. I am also grateful to Andria Sinclair who developed the language of the text and Hasan Mousavi-Sharghi who worked on the format. Eventually, many thanks to all those Iranian scholars and activists who worked, researched, and resisted despite all difficulties. Their efforts paved the way for the younger generation of Iranian scholars like me and encourage us to step further.

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 W  hy Women Are Absent from Political and Economic Histories? 11 3 T  he Pre-Revolution Struggles and the Emergence of New Classes 23 4 W  omen, Daily Life, and Street: Women’s Participation in the Nineteenth-Century Demonstrations 49 5 E  conomic Crisis, the Coloniality of Consumption, and Women’s Resistance 77 6 F  rom Resistance to Repression: Modernization and Transformations of Women’s Movement109 7 Epilogue123 Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  The introduction puts forward a short history and chronology of Qajar Iran and a brief entry into the Western encroachment and the economic crisis. The author explores the overflow of consumer goods and how it has been utilized as a policy by Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Second, the absence of research on women’s contribution and their critical engagement with the economic crisis has been in-sum explored. Eventually, the sources and research method and content of each chapter have been in short introduced. Keywords  Qajar Iran • The Constitutional Revolution • Women’s movement • Pahlavi dynasty • Feminism Concerning Iranian women’s efforts in the Constitutional Revolution, do veiled Iranian women not deserve to be admired publicly? (Shuster The Strangeling of Persia, 1912: 242)

The Qajar era (1794–1925) was an epoch of change, encounter, and close contact with the West. From a socio-political perspective, at this time, Iran should be considered a country that was searching for modernity. As a result, Iranian society underwent considerable social transformations and was marked as a transitional society. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Dezhamkhooy, Women and the Politics of Resistance in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28097-9_1

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The Constitutional Revolution in Iran refers to the period between 1906 and 1911. This era is when the Iranian government changed from the Qajar absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy and a Parliamentary system, Majles (Odabaei 2016: 98; Abrahamian 1998; Amanat 1993: 163). The introduction of a charter of Fundamental Law, Qanun-e Asasi, limited the power of the monarchy and precipitated the rise of modern political organization. Indeed, the Revolution marks the birth of Iranian modernity (Matin 2012: 37). Several studies have been conducted on the Constitutional Revolution (see Ajoudani 2003; Katouzian 2012; Abrahamian 2015). Most of this research have focused on the role of two specific groups: intellectuals and the clergy. Whereas, the study of women has remained marginal to Constitutional Revolution research. The role of women has continued to be ignored despite their widespread participation in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, as evidenced by concurrent sources. Only a small handful of research, such as that of Afary (2006, 2009), have addressed the role of women in the Revolution. However, these researchers have chiefly focused on women’s achievements within the realm of women’s rights. This simply means that other aspects of women’s activities have widely remained uninvestigated. Feminist political theory has demonstrated the significance of the study of the socio-political aspects of women’s life in all disciplines (see Lugones 2007; Murphy 2010). Historical and archaeological scholarships have been inevitably influenced by this advancement. Indeed, “scholarship on women is required if we want to write comprehensive histories” (Gilchrist 1991: 499). The aim of this research has been twofold: first, this study presents one of the very first historical and archaeological contributions to women’s political actions and their resistance to modern consumerism in Iran. Second, and in relation to the first objective, this research attempts to demonstrate the biased nature of knowledge production in the studies of women in past societies. To grasp how women could initiate organized activities, I will investigate women’s lifestyle and social life in the nineteenth century. It is worthy of note that some sources consider the participation of women in the Revolution as unexpected and without any background (see, e.g., Shuster 1912). To methodologically challenge this, we should notably examine women’s life before the Revolution. In this study I examine the possibilities and potentials inside the traditional lifestyle of urban Iranian women. Seemingly, these possibilities and experiences, and their coping strategies

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and skills helped women to organize themselves in the Constitutional Revolution. Modern consumption is fundamentally a dynamic concept with a historical perspective that can vary socially and chronologically in different societies (see Matthee 2016: 1; Hansen and Schrader 1997; Fairchilds 1993: 850). Generally, “early modern Iran shares the underdeveloped state of research on consumption with many parts of the non-Western world” (Matthee 2016: 2). Remarkably, we can track the rise of modern consumption in Iran in the nineteenth century. The Industrial Revolution in Europe introduced significant changes in political and economic relations worldwide and expanded European countries’ encroachments and the rise of capitalism in the nineteenth century. During these years, the imposition of colonial conventions and the “sustained attention of European imperialism” on Iran guaranteed the economic interest of Europe in Iran (Cronin 2008: 197). European mass products gradually destroyed Iranian workshops and traditional industry products, particularly in textiles (Floor 2009; Abtahi and Emami-Meibodi 2015: 4; Lambton 1996: 181; Ivanov 1977: 14). This led in turn to a subsistence crisis and poverty, on the one hand, and transformations of social and daily life, on the other hand. Women were among the groups who reacted to this situation. Drawing on feminist scholarship (see Lugones 2007, 2008), I apply the term colonialism in the broader context of the Iranian economic crisis and discuss the coloniality of early modern consumerism. It is worthy of note that Iran was never officially colonized, but the economic penetration of Western powers implies an element of coloniality. In fact, one of the fundamental axes of Western dominance was through the prevalence of consumption among the (world’s) population. The coloniality of consumption emphasizes durability and its long-term effects. In Quijano’s words, an issue with “a colonial origin and character” “has proven to be more durable and stable than the colonialism in whose matrix it was established” (Quijano 2000: 533). Women approached the economic crisis through the concept of household management, tadbir-e manzel/tartib-e zendegi. They claimed the importance of home management and the promotion of women to the household managers (Najmabadi 1998: 91). Frugality and economy as science and less consumption turned into critical words in women’s literature and writings. It was proposed that a proper daily routine and less consumption could support mam-e vatan, “the homeland”, and the economy. Drawing on home management they insisted on women’s education

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and its critical role in sustainable household consumption. Remarkably women’s activities were not only limited to home management. They established organizations and initiated public activities to support domestic products and resist hyper consumption. Hence, by this time, daily life was assumed as politics. Women initiated a novel approach to enter the emerging public sphere, as they constituted household management as a socio-politically charged concept. Since women considered daily life the same as politics, I will consider women’s activities in the context of daily life accordingly. It is worth emphasizing here that I have tried to avoid the production of Qajar woman “as a singular monolithic subject” (Mohanty 1988: 61). Appreciating diversity in women’s worlds and experiences, feminist standpoint scholars encourage us to pay attention to the unique perspective of each group of women to their social reality (Haraway 1991; Longino 1999). To avoid problematic generalization, I shall try to show that women also had different understandings and attitudes toward progress, the independence of homeland, and their own freedom. While for groups of women, avoiding consumerism and reducing the import of Western goods was one of the essential missions of each citizen, particularly women, some women were very welcoming to Western goods. It is noteworthy that the modern Iranian woman has several and sometimes contradictory faces which should also be methodologically considered (see Chaps. 4 and 5). With the rise of the Pahlavi government in 1925 in Iran, the tension finds more complex dimensions. The government’s economic policies had failed to support domestic products. Moreover, the authoritative regime suppressed independent organizations, including those of women. This study shows how activists and governments had different interpretations of citizenships and women’s role in public. For example, the Pahlavi patriarchal government imposed a modern gender system and (again) tied women to domestic space. Women turned daily life into an arena for constitutionalism and resistance to foreign powers, while the Pahlavi government defined women’s role mainly inside the family. Eventually, the tensions between the government and reformists, including female activists, resulted in imprisonment, assassinations, exile, and a ban on the press, on the one hand, and transformations of women’s activities, on the other hand. Chronologically, I have focused on a period of 35 years (1906–1941), from the early days of the Constitutional Revolution to the end of Reza

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Shah’s reign. However, I have included the eras of Mohammad Shah (r.1834–1848) and Naser al-Din Shah (r.1848–1896) as a necessary background for discussions about the history of importation and consumption. In order to understand the women’s movement, especially the first generation of women’s newspapers and writings, I also needed to go back a little bit and examine the political, social, and economic condition of Iran, at least since the Naser al-Din Shah’s era. This era is socially an era of dramatic changes and politically the time of the collapse of a dynasty and rise of a new dynasty. So, in every sense, we are viewing a transitional society. Here an attempt has been made to provide a timeline tailored to these developments and the historical course of women’s participation: Late Naseri Era1 (late nineteenth century) Constitutional Revolution (1906–1911). First Post-constitutional era (1911–1921). This period chiefly coincides with Ahmad Shah’s reign and lasted until the Black Coup d’etat of 1921. Second Post-constitutional era (1921–1945). This period begins with the Black coup d’etat and the appointment of Reza Khan as the secretary of war in 1921. Although Reza Khan was crowned in 1925, I have set the year 1921 as the dividing point, given the fact that almost all women’s press was banned from publishing after the Coup d’etat. From a methodological perspective, this research is chiefly text-based. I have relied more on written documents and sources to examine the women’s movement and activities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Investigating first-hand documents, such as memoirs and newspapers, I have tried to consider the transformation of agents, press, and policies. Also taking into consideration that, after the establishment of Pahlavi dynasty, some activists changed their point of view and started cooperating with the government. Hence, I have attempted to trace changes in strategies and attitudes of the agents and consider transformations of their social and political life. In fact, the potential of historical documents as multi-layered texts should be contextually examined. To decode and understand the role of women’s newspapers, we also need to investigate those published by male journalists, especially women’s writings in these newspapers. Accordingly, I have also considered women’s writings in a number of prominent newspapers of the time, such 1

 Naseri era refers to the long reign of Naser al-Din Shah.

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as Iran-e Now. Interestingly, some dialogues and discussions took place in articles and notes between male and female journalists. It should be considered that as an archaeologist, the way that I consider text is a bit different. Thanks to archaeological methods, it is sometimes possible to read layers of texts related to materialities. Indeed, I have chosen to track material culture and visual evidence in texts; in this regard small things such as newspaper advertisements, clothes designs, fashion, and make up pages have been considered as materiality of consumption. I have also investigated material culture, such as imported European cosmetic products, accessories, textiles, and clothing preserved in museums or by families. Regarding the latter, Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran, the digital archive supported by Harvard University facilitated access to data and materials preserved by individuals and families and by research centers as well. It is worth mentioning that in this study I have tried to overcome barriers and misunderstandings due to translation. The Persian language is a gender-neutral language. Gender identification articles do not exist in Persian. Therefore, I have tried to choose the words and grammatical structures which more appropriately convey Persian words and meaning. For example, I have applied the words “man” and “woman” instead of “male” and “female” whenever possible, as “man” and “woman” in their singular form are used in Persian. Also, I have used the plural forms, “women” and “men”, as the plural forms have been applied more in original Persian texts which refer to social structure and the recognition of a plural identity especially among women. The book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 2 puts forward methodological concerns on the relative absence of women from political and economic histories. Archaeological and historical methodologies that rely on the binary category of man and woman mask the complexity of social life and of women’s role in public life. I will argue that an analytical focus on women’s everyday lives, as the context of interaction, where the borders between public and private fade, provides a manifold methodology that embraces the entanglement of public and household. Chapter 3 reviews the social and political aspects of Iranian society in the nineteenth century. As a component of this, it looks at the long-term circumstances that contributed to the Revolution. It also considers the social order, traditional powerful classes, and the emerging social forces in Qajar society, including women. This background helps us to contextualize women’s contributions to the revolution, their programs and demands.

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Chapter 4 examines the background of women’s presence in public before the emergence of the modern public sphere. The chapter emphasizes the participation/organization of demonstrations by women. Here I have chiefly tried to investigate the role of ordinary women in bread riots. This role has been discussed as a background for women’s contribution in public life. The chapter also considers the traditional lifestyle of women and its role in articulating new forms of women’s contribution in public at the turn of the twentieth century. The misogynistic discourse of didactic literature, women’s reaction to this, and emerging forms of resistance and participation in society have also been briefly investigated. Chapter 5 investigates the Constitutional Revolution and new forms of women’s social contribution. It puts forward women’s different strategies of resistance to Western economic encroachment and their call for active participation in public and responsibility for the country. Chapter 6 analyses the modernization project as a multifaceted project that stimulated the institutionalization of the modern gender system. It discusses how this process implied new notions of housework as apolitical and pushed women into domestic space. The concluding chapter draws together the main arguments and results of the research, highlighting the dynamic nature of women’s lives and resistance against Western encroachment. The book is a preliminary contribution to the study of the role of women in the contemporary history of Iran. This research attempts to recall the forgotten voices of women to challenge official versions of the past and replace them with alternative narratives and truths (Buchli and Lucas 2001). Fortunately, archaeological and historical methods allow us to bring forgotten things and people partly back to collective memory. There is no need to say that our research reflects the issues, tensions, and challenges of the contemporary world and doing research would be the first step to turn criticism into transformative action. I hope this research will generate fruitful debates and stimulate elaborated research on women, which appreciates the complexity and intersectionality of gender research.

References Abrahamian, Ervand. 1998. Iran Between Two Revolutions. Translated by A. Golmohammadi and M.E. Fattahi. Tehran: Nashr-e Ney (in Persian). ———. 2015. The Crowd in Iranian Politics (1905–1953): Five Case Studies, Behrang Rajabi. Tehran: Markaz (in Persian).

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Abtahi and Emami-Meibodi. 2015. The Evolution of Textile Industry in Qajar Iran, Case of Study: The City of Yazd Traditional Motifs. Journal of Iran and Islam Historical Studies 16: 1–20. Afary, Janet. 2006. The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911. Translated by R. Rezaei. Tehran: Bisotoun (in Persian). ———. 2009. Sexual Politics in Modern Iran. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ajoudani, Mashallah. 2003. The Iranian Constitutional Revolution. Tehran: Nashr-e Akhtaran (in Persian). Amanat, Abbas. 1993. Russian Intrusion into the Guarded Domain: Reflections of a Qajar Statesman on European Expansion. Journal of the American Oriental Society 113 (1): 35–36. Buchli, Victor, and Gavin Lucas. 2001. The Absent Present: Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. In Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, ed. Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas, 3–18. London: Routledge. Cronin, Stephanie. 2008. Importing Modernity: European Military Missions to Qajar Iran. Comparative Studies in Society and History 50 (1): 197–226. Fairchilds, Cissie. 1993. Consumption in Early Modern Europe. Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 35 (4): 850–858. Floor, Willem. 2009. Textile Imports into Qajar Iran: Russia Versus Great Britain: The Battle for Market Domination. Santa Ana, CA: Mazda Publishers. Gilchrist, Roberta. 1991. Women’s Archaeology? Political Feminism, Gender Theory and Historical Revision. Antiquity 65: 495–501. Hansen, Ursula, and Ulf Schrader. 1997. A Modern Model of Consumption for a Sustainable Society. Journal of Consumer Policy 20: 443–468. Haraway, Donna J. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. New York: Routledge. Ivanov, Mikhail Sergeevich. 1977. The Modern History of Iran. Translated by H. Tizabi and H. Ghaem Magham. Tehran: Entesharat-e Hezb-e Tudeh Iran (in Persian). Katouzian, Mohammad Ali. 2012. Iran: The Short Society. Translated by A. Kowsari. Tehran: Nei Publishing. Lambton, Ann. 1996. Qajar Persia: Eleven Studies. Translated by Simin Fasihi: Tehran: Javdan Kherad (in Persian). Longino, Helen E. 1999. Feminist Epistemology. In The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, ed. John Grecco and Ernest Sosa, 327–353. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Lugones, M. 2007. Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System. Hypatia 22 (1): 186–209. ———. 2008. The Coloniality of Gender. Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise 2 (2): 1–17. Matin, Kamran. 2012. Democracy Without Capitalism: Retheorizing Iran’s Constitutional Revolution. Middle East Critique 21 (1): 37–56.

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Matthee, Rudolph. 2016. Patterns of Food Consumption in Early Modern Iran. Oxford University Press: Oxford Handbooks Online. Mohanty, Chandra. 1988. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Feminist Review 30: 61–88. Murphy, Kate. 2010. Feminism and Political History. Australian Journal of Politics and History 56 (1): 21–37. Najmabadi, Afsaneh. 1998. Crafting an Educated Housewife in Iran. In Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Lila Abu-Lughod, 91–124. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Odabaei, Milad. 2016. Shrinking Borders and Expanding Vocabularies: Translation and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906. In Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and Narratives of the Enlightenment, ed. Ali Ansari, 98–115. Gingko Library. Quijano, Anibal. 2000. Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from South 1 (3): 533–580. Shuster, Morgan. 1912. The Strangling of Persia. New York: The Century.

CHAPTER 2

Why Women Are Absent from Political and Economic Histories?

Abstract  This chapter considers methodological concerns on the relative absence of women in political and economic histories. Archaeological and historical methodologies that rely on the gender binary of man/woman mask the complexity of social life and women’s role in public life. Moreover, the chapter discusses the dominance of harem discourse in the studies of women in Muslim-majority countries, highly influenced by orientalism and colonialism. These have led to a set of binaries such as public and private. The chapter emphasizes the necessity of moving beyond the dichotomies and considering daily life as a dynamic context of interaction between public and private. Moreover, the chapter provides an overview of groundbreaking concepts such as the everyday forms of resistance, the dailiness of women’s life and maintenance activities, which argue for the significance of daily life. The chapter argues that the reinvestigation of methodological challenges indicates that we do not necessarily need new data but new methodological concerns in favor of gender equality and a more dynamic picture of past societies in research. Keywords  Feminism • Gender binary • Muslim women • Methodology • Orientalism • Qajar Iran • Everyday forms of resistance

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During the last decades, the increasing attention within women’s history on how women have configured and expressed their political actions has enriched the picture of women’s lives. This interest has respectively led to methodological concerns. Women’s archaeology and history are deservedly growing subfields, “with concerns that run from the power (im)balance between the sexes in the present practice of these disciplines to the technical and methodological questions of how gender issues are or are not recoverable from archaeological and historical contexts” (Gilchrist 1991: 495). When I came across the evidence of women’s activities against the import and consumption of European mass productions in Iran I asked myself why they have still remained uninvestigated. As Murphy (2010: 21) has subtly demonstrated, traditional political history has told stories about men and masculine actions performed within narrowly defined political institutions. Political historians equated politics with parliaments and (mainly male) parliamentarians and thus have overlooked political activities that fell outside these parameters (Murphy 2010: 21). In this chapter, I would like to put forward some methodological concerns which are deeply connected with the relative absence of women, particularly Muslim women, from economic and political histories. “From a gender perspective, researchers have noted that traditional methodologies, epistemologies, and methods are not scientifically objective but the opposite: they generally ignore women’s knowledge by showing bias towards the male perspective” (Beetham and Demetriades 2007: 199). It is worth noting, any (un)intentional effort to reverse this power imbalance would be methodologically polemical. Feminist scholarship has been largely concerned with critique. Methodologies used for research on women in development were developed from critiques of particular sex, class, and race biases found in traditional research methodologies (Beetham and Demetriades 2007: 199). What we need in historical studies of women is the promotion of self-­criticism and the constant re-evaluation of our methodologies. This means that we should be aware of dominant perspectives in knowledge production and of our standpoints and subjectivities which highly influence our work and interpretations.

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Methodological Traps: West/East, Man/Woman, Public/Private Historical studies of women in Iran are embedded in a set of binaries which can be recognized as methodological traps. These traps are deeply connected to the West and East encounter, and to the establishment of Western knowledge, chiefly expressed as Orientalism, in the region. The developing West/backward East binary has framed the studies of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Iranian art, culture, and history. Histories, travel literature, and the visual imagery of eighteenth- and nineteenth-­ century European Orientalists have reinforced this image (Booth 2010: 3; Grigor 2008: 24). At the beginning of the twentieth century, orientalists, chiefly men, were invited by the Pahlavi government to assist in the revival of Persia (see Grigor 2016: 54; Grigor 2008: 27). For Pahlavi scholars and Western orientalists, the Qajar kings were blamed and belittled in Pahlavi historiography for backwardness, despotism, and lack of taste (Grigor 2016: 54). For example, German archaeologist and orientalist Ernst Herzfeld “not only methodologically was categorizing Iranian cultural history into neat periodic compartments but also constructing the classic Orientalist east-­ west binaries” (Grigor 2008: 27–28). This colonial framework has unfortunately persisted to the present and has adversely affected research and studies of Qajar Iran, including gender and women’s studies. This model extremely reduces Qajar Iran and its social, political, economic, and cultural characteristics to a simplistic version: of a male-dominant, backward, and decadent culture. Accordingly, the oppositions of man and woman, public and private, are recognized as the cornerstones of Iranian culture and social life in the Qajar era. Highly influenced by the conservative framework of Qajar studies, studies of women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries use these oppositions to analyze historical and archaeological evidence about women (e.g., see Bahrami-Borumand 2018; Varmaghani et al. 2016). This framework oversimplifies the lived experience and social agency of individuals. Women are simply considered as the ones who are not men. “Women are defined in relation to men, the norm. Women are those who do not have a penis; those who do not have power; those who cannot participate in the public arena” (Oyěwùmí 1997: 34). “Women’s behaviour has been recognized as deviant to a standard which is male” (Gilchrist 1991: 498). These approaches contribute to subsume female agents as passive agents who

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suffer “the absence” of men’s abilities, power, and privilege. This has led to generalizations that attribute homogenous subjectivities to women and fails to see women as an independent and internally heterogeneous category. To clarify the case, I shall briefly discuss an example from Qajar Iran. The duality of man/woman has affected the analysis of textual evidence and of material culture, particularly architecture. The binary of biruni as the male, public, and visible sector of domestic architecture versus andaruni as the female, less visible, and socially unimportant sector has extended beyond Qajar studies and becomes the basis of Iranian architectural studies in all eras. Indeed, the gender duality of man/woman implies a hierarchical perspective and the descent of women. “The distinction between high and low social visibility has been gendered as a division between public and domestic life. The most ‘high social visibility’ activities, such as political action and resistance, are attributed to men, and most ‘low social visibility’ activities, such as domestic activities, are attributed to women” (Voss 2008: 868). It comes as no surprise then that the role of women in politics, economics, and trade which are traditionally considered men’s domains is ignored. This artificial division between public and private has led to the removal of women from Iranian intelligentsia and reformists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The histories of Iranian intellectualism in Qajar Iran are currently dominated by a masculine model, while commonly women have been investigated by female scholars who may be considered at best women activists and publishing in “women only” contributions (see Afary 1998; Sanasarian 1985, 2005). This view is itself rooted in orientalism. According to Saied (1994: 7) Orientalism “is a collective notion of identifying us Europeans as against all those non-Europeans”. Saied believes that Western knowledge is also produced within this discourse. The biased nature of Western knowledge toward Muslim-majority societies has resulted in the dominance of harem stories. “The harem [is] as an almost ubiquitous element in Western representations of the Oriental Other” (Booth 2010: 6). “The Euro/American imagery unambiguously placed ‘Eastern’ women in an envisioned harem of Western making” (Booth 2010: 3). A harem symbolized the duality of aggressive men and oppressed women. It is a metaphor for the passivity and inferiority of Muslim women (see Ahmed 1982: 522). Elie (2004: 139) calls this harem syndrome a complex ensemble of ideas and of nearly indelible images that have constituted a kind of doxology informing the discourse on gender in the Middle East.

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Yet, in the West, images and attitudes that the discourses and images of orientalism shaped continue to saturate assumptions about Middle Eastern and Eastern women (Booth 2010: 3). It is worth noting that this dichotomy has also been produced and reproduced by non-Western and native scholars (see Booth 2010). In fact, the dominant discourse in Iran’s historical scholarship on Qajar women is still harem stories. Qajar women have been simply pictured as plump hairy women who were obsessed with two things: love affairs and conspiracy (see, e.g., Motazed 2000). This oversimplified image has then been widely generalized. As Mohanty states (1988) each scholar, regardless of race and color, who joins in this discourse, reproduces this dichotomy. Postcolonial and poststructuralist feminist theories raise questions about whether binary categories of analysis are adequate to interpret the material culture (Voss 2008: 861). A number of feminist commentators have already called for identifying “the androcentric and indeed Eurocentric assumptions underlying the ways in which women and men are portrayed” (Smith 2008: 164). Women of color and Third World feminisms have consistently shown the way toward a critique of this and understood the gender binary introduced by the West as a tool of dominance (Lugones 2007: 197; Oyěwùmí 1997: 35). They have already called for “the urgent need to redirect the debate on gender in the Middle East” (Elie 2004: 139; Ahmed 1982; Bullock 2010). Scholars have been dissecting Orient-­ scapes and explicating them as politically loaded and romantically infused products of European and American minds, pens, and ambitions over time (Booth 2010: 3). Therefore, understanding the gender system in pre- and non-modern societies is pivotal to understanding the place of women in these societies. The reason to historicize gender formation is that without this history, we keep on centering our analysis on a binary, hierarchical, oppressive gender formation that rests on male supremacy (Lugones 2007: 187). Instead we need more dynamic gender studies that deconstruct the dichotomy that has resulted in presenting a monolithic and ahistorical image of women in general and non-European women in particular. Indeed, any attempt to deal with women and the production of historical scholarship on the women of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-­ century Iran necessitates a deconstruction of these firmly established oppositions. Overall, researchers should move toward a syncretic model of society in which multiple active gendered agents contribute to public and social life. In historical and archaeological studies of women, it is vital to

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reinvestigate the link between women and domestic work and the prohibition of women’s presence in public. These together assist us in including women and other genders as active agents involved in cultural transformations in favor of a more inclusive picture of past societies. One of the main goals of this research is to show the diversity and multiplicity of women’s subjectivities in Qajar Iran. Instead of emphasizing the differences between men and women in the binary, particularly in Iran as a country with a non-binary gender system (see Najmabadi 2001, 2005), we should seek differences between women. Methodologically, it is also polemical to put all women in a unitary model. Class and other distinguishing factors, such as literacy and cultural differences, have communicated their economic and political viewpoints and influenced goals and strategies (see Chaps. 4 and 5). This should be recognized and translated into methodologies. Instead of treating women as a homogeneous and passive group, we should acknowledge that women, like men and other genders, were politically and socially charged human beings. This is the point that intersectional feminism has brought into the foreground. I will attempt to challenge the image of Qajar women as incapable, disempowered, and secluded through the investigation of their resistance against European economic encroachment. I begin with a brief investigation of women’s everyday life in pursuit of women’s agency and strategies of coping. Then, I will investigate women’s participation in the economic uprisings of the nineteenth century, known as the bread riots, and the formation of organized resistance to the overflow of Western industrial mass products. Daily life as an analytical component has been less favored in gender research, especially in archaeology and history (see, e.g., Mohaghegh Neyshabouri, unpublished PhD thesis 2020: 2; Papoli-Yazdi and Dezhamkhooy 2021). Inspired by novel approaches in social science, the need for proper theoretical archaeologies and histories which address the daily lives of men and women has been already adequately discussed by feminist scholars (Gilchrist 1991: 499; Aptheker 1989). Like many other societies, daily activities had a significant role in the life of Qajar women. I will consider women’s resistance in the context of daily life and explore how political, social, and economic factors have transformed the meanings of women’s daily routines. Indeed, making women’s concrete experiences the “point of entry” for research and scholarship exposes the rich array of new knowledge contained within women’s experiences (Brooks 2007: 58). It is noteworthy that traditional research using

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the binary model has “failed to notice the coping abilities these women exercised on a daily basis” (Swigonski 1994: 391). Anthropologist James Scott (2008: 33) criticizes the ignorance of everyday forms of resistance in favor of the emphasis on “open political action”. Instead, Scott discusses the less visible, everyday forms of resistance, particularly among lower classes and subordinate groups, such as women. He calls them “the ordinary means of class struggle. When they are widely practised by members of an entire class against elites or the state, they may have aggregate consequences all out of proportion to their banality when considered singly” (ibid.: 34). Scott’s research reveals the significance of resistance strategies in daily life as a “prosaic but constant struggle” between the subordinate and the powerful (Scott 2008: 33; Bayat 2013; Chaudhary et  al. 2017). According to Scott (2008: 42) a prominent aspect of everyday forms of resistance is their cumulative impact, which participates in the massive socio-political transformation. Equally noteworthy is that feminist scholarship has also argued for the significance of daily activities and their role in women’s life and raising resistance from a gendered perspective (see Aptheker 1989; Brooks 2007: 54; Collins 1998, 2000). In seeking to make visible women’s political activities outside of conventional masculine institutions, feminist scholarship has revised scholarly understandings of what constitutes politics (Murphy 2010: 2021) and has argued for the alternative understanding of power. Hartsock (1997: 607) has subtly discussed that “to be without the power of dominance is perceived as being very nearly without the power to act at all, or at least as being without the power to act effectively”. Starting our investigation of power relations from the standpoint of women exposes us to experiences that changes the way we see and define power/power relations (Mohaghegh Neyshabouri 2020: 43). Defining power as “capacity”, or as Hanna Pitkin suggests, replacing “power over” with “power to” brings our attention to other aspects of power, especially the “powers of the allegedly powerless” (Pitkin 1985: 276; Mohaghegh Neyshabouri 2020: 43). Feminist standpoint theory has put forward striking methodological discussions in terms of women’s different lived experiences. According to feminist standpoint theory, knowledge is socially situated and research should begin with the lives of the subordinate. It seeks to uncover the hidden knowledge that women have acquired “from living life on the margins” (Brooks 2007: 77; Bowel 2021: 16).

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Connecting the links between standpoint feminism and the theory of everyday forms of resistance, I have attempted to consider the emerging intellectual and modern middle-class women in Iran as a dynamic group who applied different strategies in daily life to resist Europe’s economic penetration and the growing consumerism. Generally, their strategies to resist Western encroachment and their attitudes toward Iran’s political and economic crisis were notably different from men. Drawing on “the dailiness of women’s life” (Aptheker 1989), I try to consider daily life’s implications and significance as the building block of social life, which was strongly linked to the issue of women’s presence in the public sphere in the Constitutional era. In doing this, I have adopted the term “maintenance activities” (Montón-Subías 2018; Montón-Subías and Sánchez-Romero 2008; Montón-Subías 2010) introduced by Spanish archaeologists to avoid the duality of public and private and to transcend the limiting and biased nature of conservative terms, such as domestic activities. It is through the material practices enacted in daily life that societies change. Hence, a multiscalar focus on women’s daily life can draw attention to the overlooked aspects of resistance during the Constitutional Revolution. Women’s resistance and revolutionary activities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were highly structured by their different lived experiences. The renewed investigations of women’s role promise new perspectives on the less investigated aspects of Qajar Iran as a diverse and multicultural society. A set of theoretical, methodological, and, of course, political issues are involved in the absence and the downplay of women. It is the responsibility of historical scholarship, among other disciplines, to unmask the biased nature of knowledge. Critical engagement in “studies of women in the past and in our own historiography promise a greater balance for the future understanding” (Gilchrist 1991: 500). It is of hope that this modest effort challenges the existing attitudes toward the role of women in Qajar Iran.

References Afary. 1998. Women’s Secret Associations in the Constitutional Era. Translated by J. Zousefian. Tehran: Banu (in Persian). Ahmed, Leila. 1982. Western Ethnocentrism and Perceptions of the Harem. Feminist Studies 8 (3): 521–534.

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Aptheker, Bettina. 1989. Tapestries of Life: Women’s Work, Women’s Consciousness, and the Meaning of Daily Experience. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Bahrami-Borumand, Marziyeh. 2018. The Other in Andarun: An Analysis of Gender Space. Tehran: Tisa (in Persian). Bayat, Asef. 2013. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. California: Stanford University Press. Beetham, Gwendoly, and Justina Demetriades. 2007. Feminist Research Methodologies and Development: Overview and Practical Application. Gender and Development 15 (2): 199–216. Booth, Marilyn. 2010. Introduction. In Harem Histories: Envisioning Places and Living Spaces, ed. Marilyn Booth, 1–19. Durham and London: Duck University Press. Bowel, Tracy. 2021. Feminist Standpoint Theory. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/fem-­stan/. Accessed 3 November 2022. Brooks, Abigail. 2007. Feminist Standpoint Epistemology: Building Knowledge and Empowerment Through Women’s Lived Experience. In Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, ed. Sharlene Hesse Biber and Patricia Lena Leavy, 53–82. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc. Bullock, Katherine. 2010. Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil: Challenging Historical and Modern Stereotypes. London: The International Institute of Islamic Thought. Chaudhary, Nandita, Pernille Hviid, Giuseppina Marsico, and Jakob Villadsen. 2017. Resistance in Everyday Life: Constructing Cultural Experiences. Singapore: Springer. Collins, Patricia Hill. 1998. It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation. Hypatia 13 (3): 62–82. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. New York and London: Routledge. Elie, Serge. 2004. The Harem Syndrome: Moving Beyond Anthropology’s Discursive Colonization of Gender in the Middle East. Alternatives 29 (2): 139–168. Gilchrist, Roberta. 1991. Women’s Archaeology? Political Feminism, Gender Theory and Historical Revision. Antiquity 65: 495–501. Grigor, Talinn. 2008. Recultivating “Good Taste”: The Early Pahlavi Modernists and Their Society for National Heritage. Iranian Studies 37 (1): 17–46. ———. 2016. Gendered Politics of Persian Art: Pope and His Partner. In Arthur Upham Pope and A New Survey of Persian Art, ed. Yuka Kadoi, 47–73. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Hartsock, Nancy C.M. 1997. The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism. In Feminist Social Thought: A Reader, ed. Diana Tietjens Meyers, 461–483. London: Routledge.

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Lugones, M. 2007. Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System. Hypatia 22 (1): 186–209. Mohaghegh Neyshabouri, Safaneh. 2020. Resistance and Encroachment in Everyday Life: A Feminist Epistemological Study of Qajar era Iranian Women’s Travel Journals. A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Alberta. Mohanty, Chandra. 1988. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Feminist Review 30: 61–88. Montón-Subías, Sandra. 2010. Maintenance Activities and the Ethics of Care. In Situating Gender in European Archaeologies, ed. Liv Helga Dommasnes, Tove Hjørungdal, Sandra Montón-Subías, Margarita Sánchez Romero, and Nancy L. Wicker, 23–33. Budapest: Archaeolingua. ———. 2018. Gender, Missions, and Maintenance Activities in the Early Modern Globalization: Guam 1668–98. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 23 (1): 1–26. Montón-Subías, Sandra, and Margarita Sánchez-Romero. 2008. Engendering Social Dynamics: The Archaeology of Maintenance Activities. Oxford: Archaeopress. Motazed, Khosrwo. 2000. Politics and the Harem in Qajar Iran. Tehran: Elmi Publishing (in Persian). Murphy, Kate. 2010. Feminism and Political History. Australian Journal of Politics and History 56 (1): 21–37. Najmabadi, Afsaneh. 2001. Gendered Transformations: Beauty, Love, and Sexuality in Qajar Iran. Iranian Studies 34 (1/4): 89–102. ———. 2005. Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́. 1997. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Papoli-Yazdi, Leila, and Maryam Dezhamkhooy. 2021. Homogenization, Gender and Everyday Life in Pre and Transmodern Iran: An Archaeological Reading. Münster and New York: Waxmann. Pitkin, Hanna. 1985. Wittgenstein and Justice: On the Significance of Ludwig Wittgenstein for Social and Political Thought. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Saied, Edward. 1994. Orientalism. New York and Toronto: Vintage Books Edition. Sanasarian, Eliz. 1985. Characteristics of Women’s Movement in Iran in Women and the Family in Iran. In Women and the Family in Iran, ed. Asghar Fathi, 86–106. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

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Scott, James. 2008. Everyday Forms of Resistance. Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies 4 (1): 33–62. Sanasarian, Eliz. 2005. The Women’s Rights Movement in Iran: Mutiny, Appeasement and Repression from 1900 to Khomeini. Trans. N. Ahmadi Khorasani. Tehran: Nashr-e Akhtaran (in Persian). Smith, Laurajane. 2008. Heritage, Gender and Identity. In The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, ed. Brian Graham and Peter Howard, 159–178. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company. Swigonski, Mary. 1994. The Logic of Feminist Standpoint Theory for Social Work Research. Social Work 39 (4): 387–393. Varmaghani, Hosna, Hossein Soltanzadeh, Dehbashi Sharif, and Mozayan. 2016. The Relationship Between Gender and Space in the Public and Private Realmsin the Qajar Era. Bagh-e Nazar 12 (37): 31–40. Voss, Barbara. 2008. Gender, Race, and Labor in the Archaeology of the Spanish Colonial Americas. Current Anthropology 49 (5): 861–891.

CHAPTER 3

The Pre-Revolution Struggles and the Emergence of New Classes

Abstract  This chapter reviews the social, economic, and political aspects of Iranian society in the nineteenth century. Indeed, it looks at the long-­ term circumstances that contributed to the Constitutional Revolution. It also considers the social order, traditional powerful classes, and the emerging social forces in Qajar society, including women and the Babi movement, and their role in the revolution. This background helps us to contextualize women’s contributions to the revolution, their programs, and their demands. Keywords  Iranian intelligentsia • Babism • Reforms • Female intellectuals • The Tobacco Concession • Foreign trade • Economic crisis

The Court, Government, and Roaya in the Late Nineteenth Century Iran in the nineteenth century was a country with an absolute monarchy under the rule of the Qajar dynasty (1794–1925) (Abrahamian 1979: 386). The year 1794 marks the rise to power of Agha Mohammad Khan, the founder of the dynasty (Abrahamian 1998). However, some researchers

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Dezhamkhooy, Women and the Politics of Resistance in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28097-9_3

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consider 1796 as the year that marks the coronation of Agha Mohammad Khan (Fashahi 1981: 16). The Qajar dynasty came to power by conquering the Zand dynasty (1750–1794) and defeating Lotf-Ali Khan-e Zand after a series of battles, and the betrayal of Mirza Ebrahim Khan-e Kalantar, who surrendered Shiraz, the capital of the Zand Dynasty, to Agha Mohammad Khan. Agha Mohammad Khan ruled over a vast territory including present Iran, parts of present-day Afghanistan, and the Caucasus. However, a large part of this territory was lost during Fath-Ali Shah’s reign (r.1797–1834) in the Iran-Russian Wars, known as the Russo-­Persian Wars (Shafiyev 2018; Baumer 2018) and the Herat War (between Iran and England) during the reign of Mohammad Shah (r.1834–1848) and Naser al-Din Shah (r.1848–1896) (see Nategh 1990; Fashahi 1981: 94). Although some researchers, particularly in the last century, have applied concepts, such as Oriental despotism (Momeni 1966; Abrahamian 1974: 9; Abrahamian 2015: 17; Fashahi 1981: 21) and autocracy, to analyze the political structure of the Qajar dynasty, considerable evidence suggests that in fact Qajar authority did not exceed the capital and its surroundings, as they relied on local governors and influencers to control their territory (Abrahamian 2008: 72; Keddie 1971: 3–4). Hence, despite references in Qajar times and afterward to the absolutism of the Qajar shahs, careful study shows how limited their power really was (Keddie 1969: 34). In fact, Qajar bureaucracy and their military and financial resources were unable to meet the requirements of an authoritarian government. The Qajars lacked a centralized political-administrative structure (Keddie 1971: 3; Deutschmann 2015: 23) as one of the main requirements of despotism. Interestingly, Abrahamian (1974: 9) has described the Qajars as “despots without the instruments of despotism”. Power granted the Shah personal authority, but the mutual interests and dependency of the government and citizens caused the society was able to restrict the Shah. The citizens not only had the power to negotiate with him, but they did not always heed his commandments (Martin 2008: 32). Due to this form of indirect relation, it can be stated that the government based in the capital, especially the Shah himself, was unable to correctly assess the situation in the country. Instead, the Qajars expanded their influence through intermediaries, such as local rulers, landlords, sheiks, and tribal chiefs. Although, powerful established groups, such as clerics and tribes, “were potentially in opposition to a weak government. The tribespeople generally followed their leader on whichever side they chose” (Keddie 1978: 311).

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Indeed, nineteenth-century Iran was a delicate balance between tribal groups, urban merchant communities, religious elites, ulama, and an autocratic monarchy (Deutschmann 2015: 22). Essentially, in emergencies, such as chaos and unrest, which frequently occurred in the nineteenth century, the government invoked clergies and influential local elites. “Merchants played the role of bankers and moneylenders in the absence of a modern banking system, and often supplied money to the government and its representatives” (Keddie 1972: 71). It is also worth mentioning that at times of financial crisis, such as during Naser al-Din Shah’s and Mozaffar al-Din Shah’s rule, the government negotiated with prominent merchants to provide loans and financial support (see Martin 2008; Abrahamian 2008), as merchants were one of the powerful and wealthy classes of Qajar society (Keddie 1978: 307). Generally, economic decline and fiscal difficulties were some of the main problems of the Qajars, which were partly due to the institutional arrangements (Masroori 2000: 658; Ivanov 1977: 15). The Qajar government budget balance was always precarious, and the government faced a budget deficit (Keddie 1983: 592). “Fiscal crises occurred with some regularity in Qajar Iran especially in two waves from the 1820s to 1850 and from the 1880s onwards” (Foran 1992: 140). The Qajars’ finance relied specifically on an old and inefficient tax system. While the rich classes, such as high-ranked ulama, were exempted from taxation, “nearly all taxation fell directly or ultimately on the peasantry, and a smaller amount paid by tribes and artisans. Despite the oppression of the taxation system the revenues that actually reached the central government were not large” (Keddie 1972: 64–65). The loss of the fertile north which had supplied a significant part of the Qajars’ tax revenue also severely affected the government’s budget (Matin 2012: 49). The explosive growth of the court from a simple tribal base that had consisted of the Shah and a handful of courtiers now turned into an extensive apparatus composed of the Shah, his numerous wives, children and grandchildren, wives of ex-Shahs and their children. Moreover, the administration became more stratified and sophisticated, and the government explored all possible options to resolve these issues (Malek 1991: 69–70). Therefore, a fundamental and long-lasting challenge of the Qajars was simply the appropriation of funds. As a matter of fact, the Qajars appropriated the lion’s share of money for short-term or longterm needs and requirements of the aforementioned groups, in terms of employee salaries, harem costs, pensions to princes and non-specialists

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who did not provide specific services (see Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000; Kia 2001: 103). Seemingly, in the Naseri era, the government suffered a relative lack of expertise and specialization in government offices (Keddie 1978: 309; Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000: 816; Mahdavi and Nategh 2004: 254). Some professions and titles, such as high-ranked tax officials, the mostowfian, who were responsible for tax accounting, were hereditary. Hence, it was very common that people who lacked proper expertise and competence achieved high rank, key positions, and gained professions requiring highly specialized skills. Qolam-Ali Khan, who later received the noble title Aziz al-Soltan, the nephew of Amin Aqdas, Naser al-Din Shah’s powerful wife, was granted the position of Amir Toumani, “general”, as a child and allocated many properties by the Shah. Almost the whole family, including his uncle and father and aunt, could enjoy the benefits of this relationship. His father, Mirza Mohammad, repeatedly received royal consideration and the Qazvin cavalry was entrusted to him (see Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000; Shirazi 2018; Yarshater 2001: 191). One of the other main problems of the Qajar era was the systematic corruption that caused significant financial difficulties (Fashahi 1981: 35; Bakhash 1971: 147; Ivanov 1977: 14). The official documents and personal writings of the Naseri era largely evidence this crisis. The memoirs of Etemad al-Saltaneh (2000), the head of the Royal Publication Department and a close attendant of Naser al-Din Shah, from 1875 to 1876 and 1881 to 1895, demonstrate that corruption systematically occurred in the Qajar bureaucracy. It was possible to buy titles, govern provinces, and obtain the medals and baldrics of nobility by paying an offering to the Shah or influential courtiers and to eunuchs who acted as middlemen. Etemad al-­ Saltaneh’s (2000: 816) diary on June 7, 1892, describes the Shah’s trip to Mahallat, a town in central Iran. Meanwhile, he complains that official positions and titles have turned into hereditary titles ten years before that date. Then, using ironic language, he complains that it is no surprise that knowledge, grace, and art are also considered inheritable properties in the royal court these days. Consequently, Etemad al-Saltaneh, who denounced the situation (at least in his writings), especially the management system of the young prime minister Amin al-Soltan in the early years of his work, tried to get closer to Amin al-Soltan in the following years, especially in 1891 and 1892, to benefit from this friendship. Mirza Ebrahim Badaye Negar, a bureaucrat who was famous for grace and knowledge, and who worked in various official positions in the court

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of Naser al-Din Shah, describes the situation of the court, government, and nation in the thirtieth year of Naser al-Din Shah’s reign: Naser al-Din Shah’s work is exclusive to talking and having fun, enjoying new mansions and construction projects and inappropriate arbitrary dismissals, appointments and promotions. The government, if there is any at all, exclusively operates to collecting tax in trivial amounts of money or as goods and agricultural products from poor people and widows, and giving it to improper irresponsible people. Consequently, the nation lives in misery and in the danger of decline. (Badaye Negar n.d., no 469, The Library of the Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Tehran)

Iranian society was a rural society, and therefore agriculture continued to play a key role in the country’s economy. Due to the absence of an official demographic census, information about Iran’s population in the nineteenth century is scattered and contradictory. Katouzian (1981: 32) estimates the population of the country in the early nineteenth to be between 6 and 7 million. Abrahamian (2008: 2) has noted that at the end of the nineteenth century, the total population was fewer than 12 million. Of this, 60 percent of Iran’s population lived in villages, 25–30 percent were nomads, and approximately 10–20 percent lived in cities (Martin 2008: 35; Abrahamian 2008: 2). According to Abrahamian (2015: 17), the urban population resided in 80 towns. Tehran, Tabriz, Hamadan, Shiraz, Isfahan, Yazd, Kerman, Urmiah, Kermanshah, and Qazvin were the most populated cities of these. Noteworthy, influential groups and classes, such as merchants, clergy, landlords, some tribal chiefs, sheiks, and the emerging intelligentsia lived in cities. Illiteracy was a popular phenomenon and its rate was high among the population, both men and women. Apart from 5 percent, the remaining people were illiterate (Martin 2008: 128; Masroori 2000: 667). Epidemic diseases, corruption, and the cruelty of local rulers and tax agents (see Adamiyat and Nategh 1977: 488) have led to the poverty, disorder, and immigration of citizens, particularly peasantry. Many reformists, especially bureaucrats, such as Mirza Ebrahim Badaye Negar, considered agriculture and trading as the basis of the economy (see Nategh 1979: 145). However, peasants and landowners constantly struggled with local rulers and with environmental problems, such as low rainfall, drought, and soil fertility. In his memoirs, Etemad al-Saltaneh (2000: 927) repeatedly reports that many Khorasani peasants sought refuge in Russian territory accepting

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Russian citizenship due to poverty and to the violence and cruelty of rulers. Therefore, “it was not only the central government that ignored the people, but there were several authoritarian power centers always involving in conflict, and each of which tried to eliminate the others, and people were plagued by lawlessness, murder, and looting” (Katouzian 2012: 118). The central government lacked the proper mechanisms to support its citizens while imposing pressure on them for tax (Bakhash 1971: 147; Lambton 1953: 145). “Granting concession to foreign companies worsened the situation, especially at a time when the value of land taxes, as the major source of income (Foran 1992: 140; Bakhash 1971: 146; Momeni 1966: 8), and taxes were constantly declining due to inflation. It was prevalent that peasants and even landowners could not afford to pay taxes. Generally, obtaining tax turned into a very difficult task for the officials” (Martin 2008: 47). From these years, we have access to numerous reports of epidemics, poverty, and inflation (Nategh 1979; Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000; Ettehadieh et al. 2013; Afkhami 2019). To make matters worse, the spread of cholera and plague was usually accompanied by famine. Cholera outbreaks had become so frequent that the disease persisted in the country and became endemic in some areas, such as Gilan, north Iran (Nategh 1979). The disease took thousands of victims in each period of the outbreak. Badaye Negar mentions the population of Iran as nine crores,1 according to the Russian annals, and warned of a slowing population growth rate (Badaye Negar n.d., quoted by Nategh 1979: 143). One of the most widespread cholera outbreaks of the Qajar era was the cholera that plagued the country in 1856. Count de Gobineau (1976: 94–95), the French aristocrat staying in Tehran in the same year, wrote that everyone who could escape fled the capital to save his life. So many people died it was like leaves were falling from trees. Although there are no statistics on the number of the dead in Tehran, he speculates that more than a third of Tehran’s inhabitants died of cholera. Issawi (1971: 21) discusses nine cholera outbreaks for the years 1851–1861. Generally, the government of the time was directly responsible for the spread of cholera and its consequences, as when the epidemics occurred, they left the capital and hid the truth. To avoid blocking the roads, officials did not announce the news to other countries. The government also opposed quarantine

1

 An ancient Iranian numbering system. One Crore is equal to 500,000.

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that was needed to manage food supply and expenses (Nategh 1979: 25; Seyf 2002: 171). In cities poverty forced people to commit minor crimes, while some women prostituted themselves. Petty crimes, such as fraud and petty theft (furniture theft, bathing accessories, or clothing), were occasionally reported (see Shaykh Rezaei and Azari 1999; Floor 2009). Generally, small robberies of cheap utensils tragically illustrate the growth of poverty. For example, a young woman was arrested on Tuesday, April 10, 1887, in the Sangelaj neighborhood on charges of robbery: The wife of Hassan, the hookah seller, has stolen three minor bathing accessories from the public bathroom. The police have arrested her and taken her to the head of the neighborhood. Because she had a breastfeeding baby who cannot stay without her mom, the head of the neighborhood handed her over to her husband to satisfy the owner of the items. (Shaykh Rezaei and Azari 1999: 432)

From the last years of Naser al-Din Shah’s reign, there have been reports of food shortages and rising food prices, especially for bread and meat. It is worth noting that the price increase was largely artificial and caused by the interference of local influentials and politicians, such as Kamran Mirza Nayeb al-Saltaneh, the son of Naser al-Din Shah, who was in charge of Tehran’s administration (Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000: 1036; Fashahi 1981: 60). Starvation and food shortages, especially bread shortages, due to poor harvest or wheat hoarding, could lead to riots and public disturbance. From time to time it was known that government agents, local nobles, or imams have hoarded wheat (Martin 2008: 134). Investigating bread riots and food shortage, Ranin Kazemi (2016: 342) emphasizes the socio-­ economic factors involving in the hoarding or exporting of the surplus grain. According to Kazemi the majority of food shortages didn’t entail a significant drop in the food supply of the local community. By this time, several bread riots with considerable participation of women had occurred in the capital and other cities, especially Shiraz, Isfahan, Mashhad, Tabriz, and Ardabil (Martin 2008: 45; Cronin 2018: 845). Sometimes, like the 1893 riot in Shiraz, they appeared as the leader and organizer of the protests (Martin 2008: 45; see also Chap. 4). We shall return to the presence of women in the protests in Chap. 4. In 1861, during a bread riot in Tehran many men and women stopped the Shah’s

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carriage and protested against the lack of bread and its high price. As the riot continued, the Shah, who was in great fear, ordered the execution of the sheriff of Tehran. The famine of 1894 in Tabriz also led to a public riot. In this revolt, the demand for bread became a political slogan against the Qajar monarchy (Nategh 1978: 53). Etemad al-Saltaneh writes about food scarcity and rising prices in his memoirs on Saturday, March 19, 1894: Meat is scarce in Tehran, and bread is very expensive. No one is thinking about people. God protects our king from the curse of the people. (Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000: 939)

There is a subtle point in the quote mentioned above from Etemad al-­ Saltaneh. He calls Naser al-Din Shah “our king” and places this against the phrase “the people”. This distinction marks a continuing chasm between the population and the government of the day. This short description is one of the most accurate descriptions of the Qajar king’s relationship with the citizens. The king was, in fact, king of the courtiers, servants, and his affiliates. He did not even know the situation in Tehran, which was his capital. Also, Tehran was governed by its own governor and minister. As a matter of fact, a logical solution to all these problems was the introduction of some structural reforms (Malek 1991: 70). Abrahamian (2015: 81) applies the term defensive modernization to explain Qajar strategies. He states that Qajar efforts at statewide defensive modernization were not so remarkable and were limited to a few showy actions in Tehran. In a nutshell, attempts at reform were never far-reaching nor were they long-lasting (Bakhash 1971: 141). It is worthy of note that Amir Kabir and Mirza Hossein Khan Sepahsalar, the reformist Chief Chancellors, attempted to introduce reforms to the Qajar government and bureaucracy. Amir Kabir started a series of reforms including attempts to set up Western style factories (Malek 1991: 77) and reduced salaries, but he was confronted by the hostility of the court. Eventually, he was expelled and killed as a result of a courtier’s conspiracy. Mirza Hossein Khan Sepahsalar (2017: 10) prepared Tanzimat, a booklet of regulations, to reintegrate and revive the unfunctional and obsolete bureaucracy and taxation and to protect peasantry and citizens against the brutal and improper tax system. However, the Shah eventually dismissed him and the reforms remained unfinished. Moreover, the government’s efforts failed because of the inability to increase tax revenues—a problem caused by a staggering price increase of

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up to sixfold over a century (Abrahamian 1998: 80). Generally, the reformist bureaucrats failed to introduce long-term and stable reforms to the government (Masroori 2000: 658). “It could hardly be expected that the bureaucrats themselves could become the instrument through which the system that financed and supported them might be reformed” (Bakhash 1971: 147). The Qajars reacted to their declining power through a series of measures. Lacking determination and a solid base, the authorities opted for easier options, such as the sale of noble titles and receiving offerings in exchange for governmental positions, particularly the governing position in cities and states (Malek 1991: 70; Martin 2008: 48). Public offices were auctioned regularly on an annual basis and allocated to the highest bidders (Malek 1991: 70). Another temporary and inefficient solution, which in turn gave rise to other dilemmas, was the converting of the status of Crown lands. Lambton (1953: 152) believes that the process started in 1878–1879. Consequently, a substantial proportion of Crown lands was sold to the nascent bourgeoisie (Malek 1991: 70). From the mid-nineteenth century onward the Qajars adopted a second strategy for survival. They started to sell commercial and economic concessions to foreign capitalists, primarily Britain and Russia (Matin 2012: 49), and to acquire foreign debts as well. This process was initiated by Naser al-Din Shah in 1872 (Abrahamian 1998: 80; Bakhash 1971: 159; Keddie 1983: 584) and this improper system facilitated the political and economic encroachments of foreign governments, particularly Russia and British India (Deutschmann 2015: 14). In order to obtain concessions and commercial contracts, the Russian and British governments and foreign companies bribed the Shah (referred to in the texts as an “offering”, ta’rof ), or influential individuals, such as Amin al-Soltan and even Etemad al-Saltaneh (see Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000; Yarshater 2001: 192). However, sometimes concessions, such as the Tobacco Concession, placed the government at risk of a public revolt and, on the other hand, of substantial financial loss. In this case, Naser al-Din Shah granted a British subject a total monopoly over sale and export of tobacco. The Tobacco Concession was undoubtedly against the economic interests of businessmen who were more active in this revolt than any other group. Tehrani merchants started a protest in solidarity with the clerics (Keddie 1983: 584; Keddie 1969: 47; Kazemzadeh 1968; Lambton 1987: 248). Soon the majority of the nation, even ladies of the royal harem, joined the protest (Foran 2007: 254; Kazemi 2014: 282). It led to a vast crisis, not only

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for the government, but also for the person of Shah and for Amin al-­ Soltan, whom the nation saw as a British agent. Under the pressures and threats from various groups, the Shah declared on January 5, 1892, the official annulment of the Tobacco Concession (Keddie 1966: 3; Mottahedeh 2000: 218) and had to pay compensation of £500,000 to the British company to annul the contract which in turn led to the rise of a lot of debt (Martin 2008: 46; Keddie 1966: 125). However, the people did not stop protesting, indicating that the crisis and dissatisfaction went well beyond the Tobacco Concession (Lambton 1987: 223; Etemad al-­ Saltaneh 2000: 789). Anonymous letters were sent to Amin al-Soltan, threatening him with death, while apparently, Mirza Hassan Shirazi issued a fatwa for his ex-communication, which remained secret for a while (Keddie 1966: 65; Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000: 788). Part of the memoirs of Etemad al-Saltaneh describing the days after the cancelation of the concession demonstrates that the country was in turmoil: Friday, January 15, 1892 His Majesty left Tehran for a seven-night stay at Doushan Tappeh. His Majesty thinks that the rebellion is finished and everything is working properly. However, the whole of Iran is in a riot, nobody tells the truth to the Shah, and the Shah himself does not want to hear the truth. (Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000: 789)

In the final years of Naser al-Din Shah’s reign, especially after the Tobacco Protest, which lasted for months, the Shah’s popularity among the people and foreigners declined sharply. During the crisis, both the Russians and the British (the Imperial Bank of Persia) refused to give a loan to the Shah to solve the problem. Etemad al-Saltaneh (2000: 845) narrates that many ambassadors attributed insanity and foolishness to the Shah. In another case, on September 15, 1892, the Shah, who had left the capital to travel to Iraq (present Arak in central Iran), intended to enter the capital city after six months. Unfortunately, the Shah’s arrival in the city coincided with the cholera outbreak in the country. Tehran’s minister Mirza Isa urged people to light up the city. Instead, the people refused to decorate the city and swore at the Shah (ibid.: 830). According to the aforementioned, on the eve of the twentieth century, Iran was a developing country with a sluggish economy and an inefficient governing policy. Describing the Qajar governance system, especially in the years before the Constitutional Revolution, Abrahamian (2008: 33) rightly used the allegory that “their state—if it can be called

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that—hovered above, rather than controlled and penetrated into society”. This government had minimal obligations to citizens and provided them with very few services. Naser al-Din Shah ignored the riots and protests that frequently occurred during his rule, and the government refused to carry out its duties while putting the nation under pressure of taxation. The cost of foreign loans, corruption, the Shah’s foreign travels, and the intervention of foreigners in domestic and foreign policy were practically imposed on the citizens who were getting poorer day by day. At the end of the nineteenth century, posts, telegraphs, railroads, customs, revenues, forests, river fisheries, and all conceivable natural and mineral resources were sold, rented out, or given as security for debts to Russia and Great Britain. Literally, there was nothing left in the country worth selling which had not been sold already (Malek 1991: 70).

Foreign Trade and the Pervasive Economic Crisis Iran’s pervasive commercial relations with the West hark back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the country reached the relatively highest level of centralization and prosperity under the Safavid Dynasty (1501–1736) (Keddie 1972: 62). Indeed, “the Safavid polity rested on geopolitical accumulation and long distance trade” (Matin 2012: 48). By that time, European merchants imported silk and luxury items to the country (Keddie 1972: 62). In a nutshell, Iran’s foreign trade flourished during the Safavid era. Iranian government dispatched delegates and merchants traveled across the world to supply raw material, such as copper, to the flourishing domestic industry (Jamalzadeh 1935: 5; Minowa and Witkowski 2009: 296; Taghavi 2009: 57). According to John Cartwright, a foreign observer, in the early seventeenth century the amount of raw silk which was imported to Kashan was more than the cotton that was imported to London (quoted by Jamalzadeh 1935: 5). Moreover, the Safavids established a prosperous transit economy. This included the export of silk to the West, overland and maritime trade of various consumer goods from India and Southeast Asia westward, and the flow of precious metals back into the Indian subcontinent (Matthee 2012: 31–32). It is noteworthy that the decline of the Safavids and the political instabilities afterward resulted in the gradual erosion of economic and trade infrastructures. Several factors, such as pandemics, war, famine, the loss of

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purchasing power, the rise of trade costs, and the bellicose policies of the Shahs, contributed to the decline of the economy. However, the relative recovery of the economy was established particularly after the rise of the Zands to power, yet the prosperous economy and trade of the Safavid era was never revived (Keddie 1972: 62; Floor 1992: 68). Considering the geopolitical context and the global economy some scholars discuss that the long-distance trade which was established by the Safavids was extremely decreased as the modern Western powers dominated the geopolitics of the region and Euro-Asian trade (Matin 2012: 48). “In the course of nineteenth century, Iran was drawn into the network of the international economy mainly through foreign trade” (Issawi 1983: 229). Several factors were involved in the expansion of Iran’s foreign trade and incorporation into the international economy: political treaties, which also guaranteed the commercial interests of the West, particularly Russia and Britain, granting concessions to European countries, the relative development of channels of trade, and the introduction of new communication technology, such as the telegraph and post. Evidence demonstrates a relative economic stagnation for the period between 1800 and 1914 (Keddie 1972: 59; Issawi 1971: 50; Issawi 1983: 229). Again noteworthy is that Anglo-Russian rivalry in the geopolitical context of West Asia played a crucial role in the decline of Iranian trade (Keddie 1972: 61; Matin 2012: 48). The treaties with Russia severely affected the composition of trade and the agents of trade (Issawi 1983: 232). The Treaty of Turkmenchay, imposed on the Iranian government in 1828, limited tariffs on Russian goods to 5 percent ad valorem. In 1801 the Iranian government signed an economic treaty with Britain which privileged British subjects in trade, construction, and establishing firms around the country. Consequently, in a period of 50 years British firms took over 50 percent of the total import-export trade of Iran (Issawi 1983: 232; Malek 1991: 73). Historically speaking, the crisis that began after Iran’s defeat in the Russo-Persian wars (1804–1813 and 1826–1828) also severely affected the era of Mohammad Shah and Naser al-Din Shah, as its economic and social consequences became more and more apparent, and gained new dimensions (Shafiyev 2018: 16–42; Amanat 1993: 35). Vanessa Martin (2008: 103) believes that the serious trade depression, long-term unemployment, and the post-war recession after the Herat War (1837–1838) also severely affected ordinary people. “As Qajar Iran began to integrate

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evermore into the global economy, an appreciable increase followed in the outbreaks of food shortage across the country” (Kazemi 2016: 337). Interestingly, the financial crisis in the country did not effectively decrease even when trade infrastructure was expanded (Keddie 1983: 592) as there was no salient change in the living conditions of the masses. The opening of the Suez Canal and shipping on the Karun River, in southwest Iran, in 1888 and the arrival of steamships helped expand foreign trade in Iran (Martin 2008: 47; Keddie 1972: 59; Issawi 1983: 236). British steamboats were transporting merchandise through Karun alongside local marine transport, but over time Iranian businessmen who saw local business at risk of decline became unhappy with the situation, as they were financially harmed by Western competition (Keddie 1971: 6). However, the arrival of English ships made an excellent profit for some local elites (Momeni 1966: 15). Sheikh Khazal bin Jaber, the ruler of Mohammareh (present Khoramshahr), who dominated both Karun and south Iranian customs, against the will of the central government, established a strong relationship with the British and had high revenues from taxation and from the expansion of trade in the south (see Strunk 2010; Fashahi 1981: 34). In northern Iran, the Russian Tsar paid, at his own expense, for dredging Bandar-e Anzali’s lagoon, one of the most crucial northern ports of Iran, and deepening it, as well as creating a suitable path between Anzali and Tehran. Indeed, the Tsar intended to expand Russian control to Anzali and facilitate Russian ships traveling into Pir Bazar as much as possible (Keddie 1972: 59; Fashahi 1981: 97; Momeni 1966: 35; Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000: 960). According to Etemad al-Saltaneh (2000: 960), Naser al-Din Shah had given this concession to the Russians in his third trip to Europe during his stay in Russia in exchange for free residency and reception of the Tsar. In Etemad al-Saltaneh’s words, sponging off the Tsar, the Shah granted the concession to the Russians without thinking about its future troubling outcomes. “Indeed, Iran’s foreign trade grew steadily throughout the nineteenth century and up to the First World War” (Malek 1991: 71). However, “the balance of trade became increasingly unfavorable to the Iranians as the price of Iranian raw materials fell relative to those of the imported manufactured goods” (Keddie 1972: 72–73). Although, while Iran’s export rate had increased over the years, notably due to the rise in carpet, raw material, and agricultural exports, particularly cash crops, such as opium,

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cotton, fruit, and nuts (Martin 2008: 46; Keddie 1983: 581; Momeni 1966: 7), the import rate continued to surpass that (Abtahi and EmamiMeibodi 2015: 14). Charles Issawi (1983: 231) believes that until about 1860, Iran’s exports and imports seem to have about balanced. After that time, imports were considerably higher than exports—often twice as high. By the 1880s trade increased from £7,000,000 to £7,500,000, composed of two-thirds imports and one-third exports (Curzon 1892: 562–563). As the structure of trade drastically changed, Iran increasingly exported raw material, particularly silk and cotton and later oil, which were in high demand by Russia and Britain (Issawi 1983: 233; Malek 1991: 70). Furthermore, the direction of trade changed and trade with neighboring countries, such as Turkey, Afghanistan, and Bukhara in central Asia, was severely curtailed (Issawi 1983: 232–233). By the 1870s Russia and Britain had control of over 90 percent of foreign trade (Malek 1991: 73). All these transformations led to a crucial change in the agents of foreign trade. While at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Persian merchants, including Muslim and non-Muslim, dominated Iranian foreign trade, by the middle of the century a considerable part had transferred to Europeans (Issawi 1983: 237). Moreover, foreign merchants were not the subject of the internal custom fees that Iranian merchants were required to pay (Keddie 1972: 64). The latter also had to pay road tax every time their merchandise passed through Iranian internal roads and cities (Issawi 1983: 237). One of the most obvious consequences of these policies was the bankruptcy of merchants and the drastic decline in domestic industries, especially textiles (see also Chap. 5). Mirza Ebrahim Badaye Negar in his autobiography describes the situation for businessmen at the end of Naser al-Din Shah’s reign: Merchants and businessmen had to pay usury at 1 or 5 percent interest rate and pay for telegraphs, and tried to visit influential and noblesse, in the purpose of making their business. Consequently, they have all become beggars and poor. […] There is not a trader for whom 1,000 tomans2 have been credited. (Badaye Negar n.d., quoted by Nategh 1979: 145)

The foreign economic penetration, especially the active presence of Russians and the British merchants in Iranian trade, provoked outrage 2

 The Iranian toman was one of the official currencies of Qajar Iran.

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among Iranian businessmen (Moaddel 1992: 455; Torabi-Farsani 2009: 29). Therefore, merchants should be considered as one of the first dissatisfied groups that could organize the protests.

The Pre-Revolution Struggles and the Emergence of Modern Classes The period of 1800–1914 saw increased economic conflict between Iranians and Europeans, which eventually went from the economic into the political sphere (Keddie 1972: 73). “The chief productive classes in the cities were the merchants and artisans” (Keddie 1972: 70). Traditionally, bazaars and craftsmen had a distinct self-regulating guild division, and each guild usually had its guild council (Moaddel 1992: 454; Abrahamian 2008: 121) which played a protective role. “By the mid-nineteenth century, the import of Western manufactured goods has accelerated the bankruptcy of the craftsmen in most branches of traditional industries” (Malek 1991: 75). Merchants and artisans organized collective actions through their guilds and sent several petitions from different parts of the country to the Shah urging him to prohibit the import of European manufactured goods, but many of these efforts failed (Malek 1991: 76; Keddie 1972: 71). According to Issawi (1983: 232) the government was more concerned with the interests of the military and bureaucracy than with those of craftsmen and other producers. Hence, artisans and craftsmen didn’t receive proper support from the government. Generally, during these years, associations, trade councils, cooperatives, and companies were gradually established (see Martin 2008). These efforts can be formulated as different strategies designed to protect the interests and benefits of different social and economic groups who attempted to cope with the growing crisis. Newspapers, such as Akhtar, which was published in Istanbul, encouraged businessmen to establish trade unions and companies to counter the economic influence of foreigners, particularly England (Afshari 1983: 150; Eskandari-Qajar 2007: 518). “Beginning in the 1880s there was a development of Persian merchant companies combining several merchants or representing a single wealthy merchant with manifold activities” (Keddie 1971: 72) to cope with the growing penetration of foreign merchants. A few years later, in the days of revolution, observers reported the well-organized participation of even very impoverished bazaar guilds, such as carpenters, sawyers, and walnut vendors in a “sit-in strike”, bast neshini, held at the British Embassy (Abrahamian 1998).

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Another powerful group who settled in the urban centers was the religious class. With established institutions and the ability to organize, the clergy have long played a significant role in Iran’s urban life (Keddie 1978: 310). The high-ranked clerics, ulama, retained considerable independence and long-term established power based on their steady income from the Muslim community, particularly the bazaaris, from the control of religious educational centers and waqf, the endowment and land ownership (Keddie 1972: 60). Thus, clergies’ lives were primarily based on receiving funds from the bazaar (Keddie 1983: 584; Abrahamian 2008: 116). Abrahamian (2008: 35) states that for the first time merchants and ulama became conscious of their common grievances against the government and the foreign powers. As a result, merchants and bazaar classes who were hostile to Western economic penetration aligned with powerful ulama (Keddie 1978: 310). The high-ranked Mujtahids and clerics could mobilize people by issuing fatwas, while lower-ranked clerics and preachers, akhund, could stimulate the masses through lectures and sermons inspired by Shi’a history (Keddie 1971: 5). In several cases, such as the Tobacco Concession, they supported the bazaar and forced the Shah and the government to withdraw by issuing fatwas (Homayoun Katouzian 2012: 83; Kazemi 2014: 265). It is worthy of note that the clergy consisted of different groups in terms of religious education and their access to power. Most scholars believe that the main body of the clergy, including the high-ranked clerics affiliated with the court, such as the Imam of Friday Prayer, in the Naseri era remained conservative, close to the monarchy (Momen 2012: 329; Masroori 2000: 658) and the most potent opponent to modernity and freedom (Ajoudani 2003: 250; Masroori 2000: 658; Bakhash 1971: 152). Essentially, the final years of Naser al-Din Shah’s reign should be considered as years of dissatisfaction and the gradual formation of opposition groups. In these years of chaos and political instability, new social forces, classes, and groups were emerging that played a crucial role in restructuring Iran’s politics and society in the following decades. This issue has also been considered by foreign travelers and observers who reported the emergence of new social forces that challenged the authority of conservatives and monarchists. According to a foreign observer, “rationalism is spreading in this land. The mullahs are not able to stop this stream. Today, skepticism is the tendency of all the upper classes and the educated groups of Iranian society. Soon, it gives rise to a pervasive public movement” (Sepsis 1844: 111).

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Aside from traditional well-established influential classes of ulama and merchants, there were two main emerging independent groups that were in opposition to the weak Qajar government (Keddie 1978: 311): intellectuals and the Babi movement. These groups were going to initiate a new chapter in the government’s relations with its citizens. The incompetence of the Qajar government and the despair of reforms led to the growth of opposition groups. Although the new groups and arising classes had origins in traditional classes such as the aristocracy, nobility, or clergy, they were clearly distinct from traditional classes based on their lived experience, education, and especially socio-political attitudes and activities (see Keddie 1978: 311). These new groups can be considered the primary cores of revolutionists and reformers. Generally, they criticized the government, joined or established an opposition, and sometimes even converted their religion (see Afary 2009: 117). Under Naser al-Din Shah, the government and the Shah sought to prevent the promotion of new ideas and criticism of the Qajars. The newspapers Qanun and Akhtar, both published outside of Iran, were banned by Naser-ed-Din Shah in the years after the Tobacco Protest of 1891–1892 (Eskandari-Qajar 2007: 518). However, access to mass communication and modern technology, such as the printing industry, telegraph, newspaper, and postal service largely undermined the government’s efforts to retain its authority (Matin 2012: 37). Revolutionary ideas and thoughts were generally delivered to the public through newspapers published outside of Iran and entered the country by mail. Intellectuals: The rise of the Iranian middle class is usually said to have begun with the Constitutional Revolution (Chehabi 2019: 43). Homa Nategh (1990: 171) considers intellectuals as one of the two main critics of the principles of Qajar governance. The contact with the West, especially through modern education, introduced new ideas, new occupations, and eventually a new middle class (Abrahamian 2008: 35). Intellectuals helped rouse larger groups to combat Iran’s backwardness, misgovernment, and subservience to foreign interests (Keddie 1978: 311). The intellectuals of the Naseri and Constitutional Era were generally nonreligious and in favor of a secular government in its original Western sense (Ajoudani 2003: 124; Adamiyat 1970: 68). Generally, intellectuals supported religious reforms, and some of these joined the emerging Babi movement. Mirza Aqa Khan (1854–1896) was one of the best-educated and brightest members of the Iranian intelligentsia (Masroori 2000: 662), the

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founder of enlightenment in Iran, and a critic of religious culture (Nategh 1990: 71). Apparently, Mirza Aqa Khan and his friend and colleague Seyyed Ahmad Rouhi were particularly influenced by Bab’s teachings and converted to Azali Babism after Bab’s death in 1850 (Afary 2009: 117). Different experiences distinguished intellectuals from groups, such as traditional clerics, who had considerable influence among people in the Qajar era. In terms of gender, the core of the emerging intellectual and middle class consisted mainly of men. Men played a more active role in public and politics due to the possibility of traveling and of achieving political positions, such as the reformist bureaucrats Mirza Malkom Khan and Mirza Jusef Khan Mostashar al-Dowleh, who were politicians. Literacy had probably a slightly higher rate among men, for reasons such as studying religious sciences, receiving education in traditional and modern schools, or attaining scholarships to study abroad (Martin 2008: 128). Aside from the men, women from the aristocracy and noble families, upper classes and even some women of the royal harem, such as Zahra Khanom Taj al-Saltaneh, the daughter of Naser al-Din Shah, should be mentioned among the first groups that reacted to Iran’s critical condition in their writings. Bibi Khanom Astarabadi, the author of Ma’ayeb al-Rejal, “Men’s Imperfections”, and the founder of one of the first girls’ schools together with Tahereh Qurrah al-Ain, a poet, literate woman and theologian, and one of the influential Babi leaders, can be mentioned as two of the intellectuals and pioneers of women movement in the Naseri era (Momen and Lawson 2004: 835; Smith 2000: 323, see also Chap. 4). Moreover, these women initially developed a new perception of women in public. Masroori (2000: 658) divides Iranian intellectuals into three different groups. According to him, enlightenment liberals were one of these groups who argued that the first step toward reform in Iran would be to awaken and educate the Iranian people and free them from ignorance and superstition. Noteworthy is that Masroori’s interpretation, along with too many others, of Iranian intelligentsia is chiefly male-centered. Yet, as a matter of fact, many female intellectuals organized their activities within this framework (see National Library and Archive of Iran 1999). Indeed, scholarship on Iran’s intellectual history implies a “paradigmatic separation” of women from the intellectual class and places blinders on the intellectual contributions of women (Smith 2007: 353). In this study, I have incorporated women into intellectuals and reformists who believed in progress. However, researchers rarely incorporate women in general

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categories of intellectuals and freethinkers; instead, they are usually mentioned as women’s rights activists (see, e.g., Afary 2009; Sanasarian 2005). Babism: Ali Mohammad Bab was a young Shirazi businessman who, in 1844, claimed a new religion (Nategh 1990: 62; Momeni 1966: 90). Under Naser al-Din Shah, the central government oppressed the Babis as “heretics and disrupters of social stability” (Momen 2012: 329). Bab was quickly arrested and executed violently in 1850, but Babism remained in Iran (MacEoin 1983). A review of the documents shows that Babism was referred to by the Shah, conservative clergy and the royalists as reformers, enlighteners, and constitutionalists in the turbulent years of the Naseri era and the Constitutional Revolution (Momen 2012: 328; Abrahamian 2008: 19). “It became part of the rhetoric of the royalist forces and clerics who were allied to the court to label all of the constitutionalists Babis” (Momen 2012: 330). Mirza Hassan Roshdiyeh, one of the pioneers of modern schools in Iran (Ajoudani 2003: 143), and Mirza Jahangir Khan Suresrafil, a journalist and constitutionalist, were among those charged with Babism (Ein al-Saltaneh 1998: 128; Keddie 1980: 22). Generally, Babism can be seen as a form of political opposition rather than a religion, as a result of its transformations. Homa Nategh (1990) and Mohammad Reza Fashahi (2016) have argued for this. Also, Nikki Keddie (1980: 21) states that “the significance of Babi movement for later Iran was not that it brought a religious and moral revival of the country. Its continuing significance was probably more political than religious”. Etemad al-Saltaneh’s (2000: 1035) report also points out the socio-­ political nature of Babism and describes them as anarchists: Nowadays, Europe is in turmoil as a result of the anarchists, who are quite strong throughout Europe. They are the enemy of the despotic kings of each nation. Inside the country, especially in Tehran, Iranian anarchists, namely Babis are more than 50,000 people.

The Babi uprisings of the mid-nineteenth century also involved large numbers of women and female Babis fought alongside men on the battlefield (McElrone 2005: 312). There were also influential women among Bab’s followers. Tahereh Qurrah al-Ain was a pioneer who joined the Bab (Momen and Lawson 2004: 835; Smith 2000: 323). Tahereh went to Karbala in 1843 to meet with Seyyed Kazem Rashti, the leader of Sheykhiyeh who granted the title of Qurrah al-Ain to Tahereh (Nategh

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1990: 63). The Mufti of Baghdad assesses her as: “I saw in this woman a grace and perfection that I did not see in many men. She had a lot of intellect, modesty and chastity” (Arianpour 1971: 131). Lesan al-Molk Sepehr, the official historian and courtier, has also been unable to hide the grace and perfection of Tahereh. He wrote that Tahereh “knew the Arabic sciences and hadiths and the interpretation of the verses of Quran perfectly” (Lesan al-Molk Sepehr 1967: 60). In the gathering of the Badasht Plain, one of the first gatherings of the Babis led by Tahereh and Mohammad Ali Qodus, Tahereh gave a speech (Jestice 2004: 300; Maneck 1994: 38). Tahereh also organized circles of women who gathered around her (both in Karbala and later in Qazvín, Hamadan, Baghdad, and Tehran) (Maneck 1989: 3). “Tahereh is probably more responsible than any other individual for the emphasis this religion places on equality of women and men in the sight of God” (Jestice 2004: 300). Tahereh was eventually arrested and executed during Naser al-Din Shah’s reign in 1852 (Nategh 1990: 65).

References Abrahamian, Ervand. 1974. Oriental Despotism: The Case of Qajar Iran. International Journal of Middle East Studies 5 (1): 3–31. ———. 1979. The Causes of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran. International Journal of Middle East Studies 10 (3): 381–414. ———. 1998. Iran Between Two Revolutions. Translated by A.  Golmohammadi and M.E. Fattahi. Tehran: Nashr-e Ney (in Persian). ———. 2008. A History of Modern Iran. Translated by M.E.  Fattahi. Tehran: Nashr-e Ney. ———. 2015. The Crowd in Iranian Politics (1905–1953): Five Case Studies, Behrang Rajabi. Tehran: Markaz (in Persian). Abtahi and Emami-Meibodi. 2015. The Evolution of Textile Industry in Qajar Iran, Case of Study: The City of Yazd Traditional Motifs. Journal of Iran and Islam Historical Studies 16: 1–20. Adamiyat, Fereydun. 1970. Andishehhay-e Mirza Fath-Ali [Mirza Fath-Ali’s Thoughts]. Tehran: Kharazmi (in Persian). Adamiyat, Fereydun, and Homa Nategh. 1977. Treatise on Administrative Law of Iran. Tehran: Agah (in Persian). Afary, Janet. 2009. Sexual Politics in Modern Iran. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Afkhami, Amir. 2019. A Modern Contagion: Imperialism and Public Health in Iran’s Age of Cholera. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Afshari, Mohammad Reza. 1983. The Pishivaran and Merchants in Precapitalist Iranian Society: An Essay on the Background and Causes of the Constitutional Revolution. International Journal of Middle East Studies 15 (2): 133–155. Ajoudani, Mashallah. 2003. The Iranian Constitutional Revolution. Tehran: Nashr-e Akhtaran (in Persian). Amanat, Abbas. 1993. Russian Intrusion into the Guarded Domain: Reflections of a Qajar Statesman on European Expansion. Journal of the American Oriental Society 113 (1): 35–36. Arianpour, Yahya. 1971. From Saba to Nima: 150 Years of Persian Literature. Vol. 1. Tehran: Nashr-e Zavar (in Persian). Bakhash, Shaul. 1971. The Evolution of Qajar Bureaucracy: 1779–1879. Middle Eastern Studies 7 (2): 139–168. Baumer, Christoph. 2018. The History of Central Asia: The Age of Decline and Revival. London and New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. Chehabi, Houchang. 2019. The Rise of the Middle Class in Iran Before the Second World War. In The Global Bourgeoisie: The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire, ed. Christof Dejung, David Motadel, and Jürgen Osterhammel, 43–63. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cronin, Stephanie. 2018. Bread and Justice in Qajar Iran: The Moral Economy, the Free Market and the Hungry Poor. Middle Eastern Studies 54 (6): 843–877. Curzon, George. 1892. Persia and the Persian Question. London: Green & co. De Gobineau, Arthur. 1976. Three Years in Iran. Translated by Z.  Mansouri. Tehran: Farrokhi Publications (in Persian). Deutschmann, Moritz. 2015. Iran and Russian Imperialism: The Ideal Anarchists, 1800–1914. London: Routledge. Ein al-Saltaneh, Ghahraman Mirza. 1997 [1998]. The Diaries. Edited by Masoud Salour and Iraj Afshar. Tehran: Asatir (in Persian). Eskandari-Qajar, Manoutchehr. 2007. Novellas as Morality Tales and Entertainment in the Newspapers of the Late Qajar Period: Yahya Mirza Eskandari’s “Eshgh-e Doroughi” and “Arousi-e Mehrangiz”. Iranian Studies 40 (4): 511–528. Etemad al-Saltaneh, Mohammad Hassan Khan. 2000. Etemad al-Saltaneh’s Memoirs. Edited by Iraj Afshar. Tehran: Amir Kabir (in Persian). Ettehadieh, Mansoureh, Ismaeil Shams, and Azam Ghafouri, eds. 2013. Cholera Pandemic: Documents and Correspondences of Abdolhossein Mirza Farmanfarma 1903–1905. Tehran: Nashr-e Tarikh-e Iran (in Persian). Fashahi, Mohammad Reza. 1981. The Barriors of the Development of Capitalism in Iran. Tehran: Gothenburg (in Persian). ———. 2016. Socio-Political Movement in the Era of Feudalism. Edited by Azizollah Alizadeh. Tehran: Ferdows (in Persian).

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Floor, Willem. 1992. Commerce vi. In the Safavid and Qajar Periods. Encyclopedia Iraniac VI (1): 67–75. https://iranicaonline.org/articles/commerce-­vi. Accessed 15 December 1992. ———. 2009. Textile Imports into Qajar Iran: Russia Versus Great Britain: The Battle for Market Domination. Santa Ana, CA: Mazda Publishers. Foran, John. 1992. Fragile Resistance: Social Transformation in Iran from 1500 to the Revolution. Boulder, San Francisco, and Oxford: Westview Press. ———. 2007. Social Transformation in Iran from 1500 to the Revolution. Translated by A. Tadayon. Tehran: Rasa. Homayoun Katouzian, Mohammad Ali. 2012. Iran: A Short-Term Society. Translated by A. Kowsari. Tehran: Ney (in Persian). Issawi, Charles. 1971. The Economic History of Iran: 1800–1914. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1983. Iranian Trade, 1800–1914. Iranian Studies 16 (3/4): 229–241. Ivanov, Mikhail Sergeevich. 1977. The Modern History of Iran. Translated by H. Tizabi and H. Ghaem Magham. Tehran: Entesharat-e Hezb-e Tudeh Iran (in Persian). Jamalzadeh, Mohammad Ali. 1935. Ganj-e Shayegan: An Overview of Iran’s Economy. Berlin: Kaveh (in Persian). Jestice, Phyllis. 2004. Gender and Holy People. In Holy People of the World: A Cross-Cultural Encyclopaedia, ed. Phyllis Jestice, vol. 3, 297–301. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Katouzian, Mohammad Ali. 1981. The Political Economy of Modern Iran. New York: NY University Press. ———. 2012. Iran: The Short Society. Translated by A.  Kowsari. Tehran: Nei Publishing. Kazemi, Ranin. 2014. The Tobacco Protest in Nineteenth-Century Iran: The View from a Provincial Town. Journal of Persianate Studies 7: 251–295. ———. 2016. Of Diet and Profit: On the Question of Subsistence Crises in Nineteenth-Century Iran. Middle Eastern Studies 52 (2): 335–358. Kazemzadeh, Firuz. 1968. Russia and Britain in Persia, 1864–1914: A Study in Imperialism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Keddie, Nikki. 1966. Religion and Rebellion in Iran: The Tobacco Protest of 1891–92. London: Frank Cass. ———. 1969. The Roots of the Ulama’s Power in Modern Iran. Studia Islamica 29: 31–53. ———. 1971. The Iranian Power Structure and Social Change 1800–1969: An Overview. International Journal of Middle East Studies 2 (1): 3–20. ———. 1972. The Economic History of Iran, 1800–1914, and Its Political Impact an Overview. Iranian Studies 5 (2/3): 58–78. ———. 1978. Class Structure and Political Power in Iran since 1796. Iranian Studies 11 (1/4): 305–330.

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———. 1980. Iran: Religion, Politics, and Society: Collected Essays. New  York: Frank Cass. Keddie, Nikki R. 1983. Iranian Revolutions in Comparative Perspective. The American Historical Review 88 (3): 579–598. Kia, Mehrdad. 2001. Inside the Court of Naser od-Din Shah Qajar, 1881–1896: The Life and Diary of Mohammad Hassan Khan E’temad os-Saltaneh. Middle Eastern Studies 37 (1): 101–141. Lambton, Ann. 1953. Landlord and Peasant in Persia. London: Oxford University Press. ———. 1987. Qajar Persia. Austin: University of Texas Press. Lesan al-Molk Sepehr, Mohammad Taghi. 1967. Nasekh al-Tavarikh. Edited by Mohammad Bagher Behboudi. Tehran: Eslamiyeh (in Persian). MacEoin, Denis. 1983. From Babism to Baha’ism: Problems of Militancy, Quietism, and Conflation in the Construction of a Religion. Religion 13 (3): 219–255. Mahdavi, Asghar, and Homa Nategh. 2004. The Destiny of a Bureaucrat in Qajar Court. Yaad 18 (71–72): 251–255 (in Persian). Malek, M.H. 1991. Capitalism in Nineteenth Century Iran. Middle Eastern Studies 27 (1): 67–78. Maneck, Susan. 1989. Táhirih: A Religious Paradigm of Womanhood. The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 2 (2): 1–10. ———. 1994. Religion and Women. Albany: SUNY Press. Martin, Vanessa. 2008. The Qajar Pact: Bargaining, Protest and the State in Nineteenth-Century Persia. Translated by H.  Zangeneh. Tehran: Mahi (in Persian). Masroori, Cyrus. 2000. European Thought in Nineteenth-Century Iran: David Hume and Others. Journal of the History of Ideas 61 (4): 657–674. Matin, Kamran. 2012. Democracy Without Capitalism: Retheorizing Iran’s Constitutional Revolution. Middle East Critique 21 (1): 37–56. Matthee, Rudolph. 2012. The Safavid Economy as Part of the World Economy. In Iran and the World in the Safavid Age, ed. Willem Floor and Edmund Herzig, 31–47. London: I.B.Tauris. McElrone, Susynne. 2005. Nineteenth-Century Qajar Women in the Public Sphere: An Alternative Historical and Historiographical Reading of the Roots of Iranian Women’s Activism. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25 (2): 297–317. Minowa, Yuko, and Terrence Witkowski. 2009. State Promotion of Consumerism in Safavid Iran: Shah Abbas I and Royal Silk Textiles. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 1 (2): 295–317. Moaddel, Mansoor. 1992. Shi’i Political Discourse and Class Mobilization in the Tobacco Movement of 1890–1892. Sociological Forum 7 (3): 447–468.

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Momen, Moojan. 2012. The Constitutional Movement and the Baha’is of Iran: The Creation of an ‘Enemy Within’. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39 (3): 328–346. Momen, Moojan, and Todd Lawson. 2004. Tahirih, Holy People of the World: A Cross-Cultural Encyclopedia, vol. 3. Edited by Phyllis Jestice. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Momeni, Baqer. 1966. Iran on the Eve of the Constitutional Revolution. Tehran: Amir Kabir (in Persian). Mottahedeh, Roy. 2000. The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran. London: Oneworld. Nategh, Homa. 1978. A Look at Writings and Resistance of Women During the Constitutional Revolution. Ketab-e Jomeh 30: 45–50 (in Persian). ———. 1979. The Cholera and the Incapable Government. Tehran: Nashr-e Gostareh (in Persian). ———. 1990. Iran in Cultural Path. Paris: Khavaran & Pegah (in Persian). National Library and Archive of Iran. 1999. Shokufeh with Danesh. Tehran: National Library and Archive of Iran (in Persian). Sanasarian, Eliz. 2005. The Women’s Rights Movement in Iran: Mutiny, Appeasement, and Repression from 1900 to Khomeini. Translated by N. Ahmadi Khorasani. Tehran: Nashr-e Akhtaran (in Persian). Sepahsalar, Mirza Hossein Khan. 2017. Ketabcheh-ye Tanzimat. Edited by Ali Asqar Haghdar. Ankara: Bashgah-e Adabiyat (in Persian). Sepsis, A. 1844. Quelques mots sur l’état religieux actuel de la Perse in Revue de l’Orient. de l’Algërie et des colonies 3: 97–105. Seyf, Ahmad. 2002. Iran and Cholera in the Nineteenth Century. Middle Eastern Studies 38 (1): 169–178. Shafiyev, Farid. 2018. Russian Conquest of the South Caucasus, Resettling the Borderlands: State Relocations and Ethnic Conflict in the South Caucasus. Montreal, Kingston, London, and Chicago: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Shaykh Rezaei, E., and Sh. Azari. 1999. Police Reports of Tehran Districts. Tehran: Iran National. Shirazi, Aliyeh Khanom. 2018. The Travelogue. Edited by Zohreh Torabi. Tehran: Nashr-e Atraf (in Persian). Smith, Peter. 2000. Táhirih, A Concise Encyclopedia of the Baháʼí Faith, 332–333. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Smith, Hilda. 2007. Women Intellectuals and Intellectual History: Their Paradigmatic Separation. Women’s History Review 16 (3): 353–368. Strunk, William. 2010. The Reign of Shaykh Khaz’al ibn Jab̄ ir and the Suppression of the Principality of ‘Arabista ̄n: A Study of British Imperialism in Southwestern Iran 1897–1925. Translated by Safa al-Din Tabarraeian. Tehran: Moassese Motaleat-e Tarikhe Moaser-e Iran (in Persian).

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Taghavi, Abed. 2009. Review of Trade Changes of Carpet Industry in the Safavid Era. Quarterly Scientific-Research Goljaam Iran Carpet Scientific Association 5 (12): 55–68. Torabi-Farsani, Soheila. 2009. The Early Participation of Prominent Merchants in the Constitutional Era in the Establishment of Law. Pazhuhesh-Namey-e Tarikh (Journal of Historical Research) 4 (14): 27–44. Yarshater, Ehsa. 2001. The Qajar Era in the Mirror of Time. Iranian Studies 34 (1–4): 187–194.

Sources Badaye Negar, Mirza Ebrahim. n.d. No 369 J., The Library of the Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Tehran.

CHAPTER 4

Women, Daily Life, and Street: Women’s Participation in the Nineteenth-Century Demonstrations

Abstract  This chapter examines the background of women’s presence in public and the participation/organization of demonstrations by women. It chiefly investigates the key role of ordinary women in bread riots. The chapter also considers the traditional lifestyle of women and its role in articulating new forms of women’s contribution to the public at the turn of the twentieth century. The investigation of historical text and official documents such as police reports challenges the stereotype of Qajar women as isolated and oppressed. The anti-woman discourse of didactic literature and women’s writings as an emerging form of resistance have been briefly investigated. Keywords  Everyday life • Homosociality • Maintenance activities • Bread riot • Women’s demonstrations • Writing as resistance • The Tobacco Protest

Women and Daily Life: Discussing the Body of Evidence In this chapter, I shall briefly consider what was going on in the women’s world over these critical years. How women’s daily lives were affected by the misery and instabilities of the Naseri era. Did they initiate or join the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Dezhamkhooy, Women and the Politics of Resistance in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28097-9_4

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protests? Did they organize activities and resistance? This chapter briefly investigates women’s lifestyles and afterward examines the history of women’s contributions to protests, civil resistance, and riots in the nineteenth century. According to Mohanty (1988: 65), the “third-world woman” is reproduced in Western feminist texts as “sexually constrained” and “ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition bound, religious, domesticated, family-­ oriented, victimized”. Regarding south-west Asian and North African societies, the countries with a Muslim majority, the conservative approach, influenced by orientalism and colonial views, sees women as oppressed, veiled, and constrained to domestic space (see, e.g., Van Sommer and Zwemer 2014; although see critical appraisals by Bullock 2010; Abu-­ Lughod 2002; Ahmed 1982). Here, I draw on daily life and demonstrations as two fields designed to challenge Eurocentric assumptions and emphasize the role of women in public. I try to shed light on quotidian life as a benchmark and its significance in the survival of a society and the critical role of women in daily management, which has been widely ignored. Then, I will attempt to demonstrate how negotiation and protest were connected to everyday life, particularly in periods of economic crisis and instability. It is to be hoped that this analysis assists us to achieve new interpretations that challenge gendered stereotypes about “women of the Orient”. I begin with a brief investigation of women’s daily lives with an emphasis on social aspects, women’s strategies, and joint activities. Then, I present historical cases of women’s participation in the protests in the era of Mohammad Shah and Naser al-Din Shah. Finally, I will address new strategies of resistance and organized activities of women in the late Naseri era. As a matter of fact, the main focus of this chapter is not a historical report of women’s contribution to the protests. Rather, it raises some pertinent questions about women’s life. The main question would be, how did women’s lifestyle and their crucial role in the daily life of families support their participation in public events, including in protests? As Joyce McCarl Nielsen (1990: 10) puts it, women’s culture, history, and lives have remained “underground and invisible”, relegated to the “underside” of men’s culture, history, and lives. Like many societies, we have access to fewer sources, documents, and evidence about women rather than men. In her classic book Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, which is mainly devoted to the study of Egypt, Turkey, and Syria, Leila Ahmed (1992: 104) points out that no document

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written by women is available from the Medieval Islamic period of these societies. Fortunately, in this case researchers have access to women’s documents and writings, albeit on a limited scale in Iran. Actually, “one of the best sources available for the study of women’s activities in Iran in the nineteenth and early twentieth century has been the written works of the women of that period” (Sanasarian 1985: 89). Remarkably, we have access to several memoirs and biographies, poems, letters and correspondence, and even to a few travelogues. Since the constitutional era, women have also published newspapers, playing a vital role in this research. Additionally, official and legal documents, such as endowments, marriage and divorce certificates, dowry inventories and solh, “agreements”, are available, either published or preserved in archives or by the families, which deserve research consideration. We also have a range of sources written by men, plus official and administrative documents as well. Interestingly, men’s memoirs and police reports make us familiar with different faces of urban women from the Naseri era. Moreover, thanks to the early introduction of photography to Iran by the royal court, we have access to the rich archive of Golestan Palace, which includes thousands of photographs of harem women and their relatives, servants, bondwomen, and eunuchs (see Scheiwiller 2012: 19). Most of these photographs were taken by Naser al-Din Shah, who founded a photography studio in the Palace (Tahmasbpour and Pérez González 2018: 47). Some researchers also believe that some of the photographs were taken by harem women familiar with photography (Scheiwiller 2017; Zoka 1997; Mohammadi Nameghi and Pérez González 2013). Fortunately, there are also photos of ordinary women and men, of different ethnic and religious groups, villagers, nomads, and urban women, which should be considered valuable research data. Through investigating and examining the evidence, we try to trace the presence of women in public in the age of revolutions and transformations. It should be noted that various sources represent different aspects of Iranian women in the Qajar era. I will chiefly focus on urban women, as I consider the Revolution and early modern consumerism an urban phenomenon. Moreover, at present we have more access to sources and evidence about them. Remarkably, like many other social groups, we should consider plurality and diversity in the women’s world (see Mohanty 1988). Therefore, from the very beginning, we should avoid a homogenous image of women, keeping in mind that different groups of women joined

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the protests and the Revolution with different motives. Throughout the text, I try to scrutinize the image of these groups as far as the evidence allows me. I will attempt to apply analytical tools, such as class, education, political attitudes, and social activities, to make a distinction between different groups of women and their activities. One of the unique sources on ordinary urban women is Tehran Police’s annual reports from the late Naseri era. The reports, dating back between 1886 and 1888, have been set up daily and created separately by each neighborhood. These reports have recorded interesting examples of conflicts, offenses, agreements, cooperation, shared activities, and ownership and of struggles between women, couples, neighbors, and business partners in the domestic space, the neighborhood, the public, and bazaar. The reports help to construct a more realistic and dynamic image of Iranian women in the late Qajar. They illustrate a different image of women, far from the stereotype of submissive individuals who spent most of their lives at home (see, e.g., Kotnik 2005: 472; Sadoughianzadeh 2013: 6). Women participated in community life; they created heterosocial and homosocial networks1 and held family and community together. They performed their everyday tasks, worked and tried to support their families, fought for their rights, or even committed minor crimes. It is not surprising that such women came to the streets to demand their rights and the rights of their families. Regarding the economic infrastructure of the country, which was mostly based on agriculture, livestock, and traditional industry, the participation of women in the household economy was essential. On the one hand, economic activities, daily household chores, shopping, and providing family needs (Alam and Razavi-Sousan 2013: 72; Azad 1979: 300), and poverty, on the other hand, drove women to participate in public life. Impoverished urban women generally took jobs such as laundering, ironing, carpet weaving, and handicraft production or they worked as servants, brokers, musicians, and dancers. However, in villages and among nomads, women were intensely involved in agriculture, livestock breeding, and handicraft production (Moghadam 2000: 380; Shafiei 2014: 211). Handicrafts were one of the main exports of Iran and thus women’s products were sold in national and international markets (Moghadam 1  The Iranian gender system was non-binary, and non-homosocail networks were not necessarily heterosocail. The author does not consider these mutually exclusive or monolithic concepts.

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2000: 381). It is worthy of note that women made up a large part of agricultural labor in Qajar Iran. Iran’s rice was in large part produced by women in Gilan, while Gilaki women also cultivated silk-worms and spun silk (Delrish 1996: 49; Moghadam 2000: 387; Poya 1999: 31). Reports by the Tehran Police present compelling cases of women’s daily lives. Interestingly, the police reports recorded cases of dispute and disagreement between women and neighboring men, shopkeepers, landlords, or other women in the neighborhood. For example, a disagreement on minor issues, the right to use of shared means and properties, a small sum of money, or even cheap kitchen essentials could lead to a quarrel. There are also reports on women’s and men’s partnerships: Haji Seyyed Abolqasem, the fodder seller, has a house that is shared with a woman. Yesterday, they have disputed over a waterway, and reported the case to the head of the neighborhood. The head of the neighborhood sent an architect to investigate the waterway. After the investigation, the head of neighborhood devised a compromise acceptable to both. (Shaykh Rezaei and Azari 1999: 425)

An impressive booklet from the Naseri era, published by Homa Nategh (1976) under the title of The Managing of Possession and Wives in the Nineteenth Century, provides valuable information about the daily life of women. The author, Mostafa Khan, the eldest son of the foreign minister Mirza Sa’id Khan and custodian of the Imam Reza Holy Shrine from 1873 to 1879 (Nategh 1976: 9; Adamiyat and Nategh 1977), is always concerned about neighboring women who may steal fruit from his gardens during his absence. Therefore, he writes to his cousin and warns him of neighboring women: Haji Mohammad’s house is behind the Bagh-e Sallar [garden wall]. At night, his wife comes up on the roof, and hangs rope and basket. Haji Mohammad cuts alfalfa, grass and twigs and picks the fruits and binds them while women drag them up to the roof and carry to their own homes. (Mostafa Khan 1977: 559–560)

Regarding family life, women did not always behave as their husbands wished. There are reports of family disputes and attempted suicide of women due to marital disputes and complaints to the police. Women have

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even reported sexual harassment (see Shaykh Rezaei and Azari 1999). We present an example: Qasem, who works at a bakery, has got into a fight with his wife. His wife complained to the government agents. An officer was sent to them. Because they had made a minor dispute the officer resolved the conflict and made peace. (Shaykh Rezaei and Azari 1999: 374)

In order to methodologically challenge the model of women as secluded, I first analyze misinterpretations of Iranian architecture and then critically investigate the notion of domestic activities. It has been widely discussed that the social life of the Qajar era was largely homosocial (see Najmabadi 2005). This homosociality has introduced misunderstandings and inappropriate generalizations of women’s life as secluded in Qajar Iran (see, e.g., Sadoughianzadeh 2013). Here it is necessary to scrutinize the concept of homosocial, as this cannot be negligently applied to analyze the lifestyle of different social groups and classes. Some have understood this concept ahistorically and very rigidly, as though men and women lived utterly separate in Qajar society. It has been discussed that men and women often belonged to two separate spaces of outside, birun, and inside, andarun (see, e.g., Tavakoli-Targhi 2016: 189; Arjmand 2016: 24). This has led to biased interpretations based on the so-called interior-exterior dichotomy of Persian domestic architecture. Among the concepts related to the Iranian lifestyle, the word andarun/andaruni, the private sector of the house, has produced some considerable misinterpretations. Many researchers and visitors have erroneously considered it “a women-only space which implies complete segregation” (see Bird 2002: 52; Arjmand 2016: 24; Mahdavi 2007: 484; Mahdavi 2012: 357). The word andarun/andaruni, in general, was a metaphor for private space, a place of comfort and not for accepting strangers and clients (see Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000), while biruni, the public space, was designed to receive strangers, conduct business talks, and had mainly organizational goals. Messengers, who are usually young boys or eunuchs, were employed in the interaction between the two quarters (Arjmand 2016: 24). Andaruni was the private quarter of the house and was not only for women, but also male members of the family, eunuchs, servants, relatives, and family guests had access to it. Considerably, even the houses of eunuchs, who essentially did not marry, had andaruni. Etemad al-Saltaneh (2000: 988) reports that Aziz

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al-Soltan’s engagement party with Akhtar al-Dowleh, the daughter of Naser al-Din Shah, was held in Arg, the royal neighborhood. Etemad al-­ Saltaneh and other courtiers had been invited to the andarun of Etemad al-Haram, the head of the eunuchs, who accepted male guests. It is also worth mentioning that biruni was not specific to male aristocrats, as royal and noblewomen also had a biruni building for their administrative needs and for receiving male guests. Etemad al-Saltaneh (2000: 1006) reports a meeting to investigate the abuse of his property at Isma’il Abad village in the biruni of Queen Anis al-Dowleh. It is worth noting that biruni and andaruni architecture was mainly the style of architecture of the upper class houses (Djamalzadeh 2012: 11). Tehran Police reports elucidate that in the houses of ordinary people (also including nomads and villagers), an andaruni-biruni separation usually did not exist (Shaykh Rezaei and Azari 1999). Essentially, ordinary people’s homes did not have biruni. Generally, people who had large houses rented out a number of rooms. In these houses, different people, such as single men, immigrants, lonely women, widows, and impoverished families, lived in proximity to each other (see Shaykh Rezaei and Azari 1999). In these shared houses, and in the neighborhoods, the social relationship between men and women was broadly normal. All the examples mentioned above show that a level of relationship between men and women, especially within the boundaries of a neighborhood, with shopkeepers and bazaari merchants, as well as in mosques and religious places, was practiced. Noteworthy, bazaar had a significant role in the daily life of all women from different social strata and classes (see Shirazi 2018; Taj al-Saltaneh 1983; Shaykh Rezaei and Azari 1999). Women from the lower and middle classes, rural and nomad women, who participated in agriculture and pastoral farming, and who were also responsible for the household needs, went out regularly. In order to deconstruct the duality of public and private, I have adopted the term “maintenance activities” introduced by some gender archaeologists instead of “domestic activities” (Montón-Subías 2018; Montón-­ Subías and Sánchez-Romero 2008; Montón-Subías 2010). Indeed, the term “domestic activities” diminishes women’s activities and considers them entirely separate from public life. “The “maintenance activities” category constitutes an attempt to disassociate the characterization of these activity patterns from the often used “domestic activities” category because of the limiting nature of this concept, in that it is associated with a particular space” (González-Marcén et  al. 2008: 4). Maintenance activities are

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the basic activities that constitute the essential part of everyday life. Generally, in many societies, women have been mainly responsible for performing them. These comprise the basic tasks of daily life that regulate and stabilize social life (González-Marcén et al. 2008: 3). In fact, “household maintenance activities are intrinsically social, involving various divisions of labor and supporting relationships among the members of domestic groups and the larger communities of which they are part” (Gifford-­ Gonzalez 2008: 15). Noticeably, maintenance activities properly match the leading role of Qajar women in daily life and the reproduction of social order. One of the considerable aspects of women’s life in Qajar Iran was cooperation and participating in shared activities. Two main typical activities which were conducted in groups were household chores (maintenance activities) and economic activities. In addition, women’s gatherings were a unique aspect of women’s life in Qajar Iran. Indeed, everyday life was a field that comprised a large part of the lives of women. Women were chiefly responsible for the daily needs of the families. In the upper classes, women also supervised the preparation of food and housework. Essentially, doing household chores, such as food preparation, shopping, tailoring, and making handicrafts together, were common. Economic activities and the production of handicrafts, particularly Persian carpets, were usually performed collectively by women. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, carpet weaving became an important manufacturing industry, but the most common form of organization remained small-scale domestic production, where women were the main labor force (Moghadam 2000: 381). Issawi states that “the bulk of the carpet industry is carried on in the weaver’s home, the women and children doing the weaving” (Issawi 1971: 302). Generally, close relationships and intimacy between individuals from the same sex, specifically between women, were at least in urban societies the standard form of socialization. Historical evidence, particularly personal texts and photos, demonstrates that women recognized themselves as a group (see Astarabadi 1992; Shirazi 2018). Indeed, womanhood in nineteenth-century Iran was partly constituted through single-sex gatherings, cooperation, and sharing daily activities. This lifestyle produced effective networks and should be read as evidence of sisterhood and its significance in women’s life. Sisterhood empowered women and created a space through which their lives were tied together.

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Daily life acted as the context and ground field for women’s social life and the constitution of a collective sense of being. Shared activities were organized both in public and private spaces. Consequently, alongside spaces used by both men and women, single-sex spaces, spaces with two separated but connected segments, and spaces used in two different time parts, such as public baths, were designed in private architecture and urban public space. Public baths, mosques, gardens, and architectural elements of domestic architecture, such as yards, chambers, talar, halls, kitchens, and rooftops, are the spaces used to do daily activities together and for holding events and gatherings. Moreover, we can argue for semi-private/ semi-public spaces, such as alleys, the benches designed on both sides of doors, and architectural elements on the border of the neighborhoods. This space played a dual role in the life of the inhabitants; it connected neighbors and provided space for short chats, and it made access to the public and private spaces possible. Organizing various events and collective activities, such as going to the public bath and bazaar, either attending or arranging religious recitals, rawda, and congregational prayer, religious festivals, eids, were also prevalent features in the women’s community. In her travelogues, Aliyeh Khanom Shirazi (2018) describes in detail collective activities of the Naseri royal harem, which included skill-training, learning, praying, going to gardens, and attending parties. There were women’s gatherings specifically arranged as all female occasions (Shahri 1992: 21; Mahdavi 2007: 453). Sometimes, female musicians and dancers were invited to these gatherings and parties to create a joyful atmosphere: Last night there was a woman’s party in the house of Aqa Assadollah, the tobacconist, accompanied by a female band. (Shaykh Rezaei and Azari 1999: 8)

Shahri (1992: 23) also mentions women’s religious gatherings under the name of praising Holy Fatima, the daughter of the prophet. Nevertheless, these meetings contained performances with emphasis on femininity, womanhood, and the collective aspects of women’s lives. This ritual consisted of making dolls and putting makeup on these (and incinerating them at the end), stamping, and dancing (see Bast et al. 2006). Women could spend long hours together. This lifestyle allowed women to consult with each other and provide each other with solutions to problems, to collaborate, organize, and build networks through which they

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conducted their affairs and acquire information about society. The book, Ma’ayeb al-Rejal, “Men’s Imperfections”, authored by Bibi Khanom Astarabadi, interestingly presents details of such women’s gatherings: “One day there was a party at the home of a friend. A group of women had gathered there, and the atmosphere was joyful and friendly. I was also invited to the party. I started to narrate interesting stories and tales and give my friends advice based on every story” (Astarabadi 1992: 52). Evidently, at the gatherings or when they conducted shared activities, women sought solutions to remove social constraints and to the difficulties of marital life. The feminist historian Bettina Aptheker (1989: 44–45) has subtly discussed the intimacy among women friends and the crucial role of women’s use of narrative in their daily lives, despite the dominant culture’s trivialization of women’s talk. Indeed, storytelling is a “coping strategy” and a response to challenges. In their efforts to resist the incursions and assaults on the quality of their daily lives, women have bonded together in love and friendship (Aptheker 1989: 179). Men were pessimistic about this feminine socialization because they thought these gatherings were out of control. This attitude has then been reflected in language. For example, the author of Ta’dib al-Nesvan, “Disciplining Women”, complains that women talk to their friends about everything including their marital life and personal issues (Ta’dib al-­ Nesvan 1992: 93) and never care about his advice (ibid.: 57). Words such as khaleh and khahar, aunt and sister, which women used to indicate intimacy and close friendship between them, received negative implications in patriarchal masculine language. They were ironically used as khaleh khanbaji and khale zanak to belittle intimacy between women (see Khansari 1976: 23; Ta’dib al-Nesvan 1992: 33). Remarkably, public space in Qajar Iran refers more to places, such as mosques, holy shrines, bazaars, and even public baths, rather than the streets. For women, public baths (apart from their original purpose as a location for being cleansed) were a form of amusement and distraction from daily life. They were social meeting place where the women would go with their extended family and arrange to meet their friends (Mahdavi 2007: 493). Many women also gathered in mosques, Tekyeh and Husseiniyah, unique places to hold Muharram mourning, or for religious ceremonies, such as ta’zieh, condolence religious Shia theater. A part of the Tekyeh Dowlat, the royal theater in Tehran, was also dedicated to female audiences. Women visited these places daily or on special occasions.

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Indeed, we cannot imagine places like bazaars or tekyehs without the presence of women. According to Count de Gobineau (2019: 45), the women’s hijab was not taken seriously in Tehran under Naser al-Din Shah’s reign, and men and women were able to see each other in public parks, gardens, and public rituals, like religion recitals and ta’zieh (Azad 1979: 321). Binning (1857: 393) states that urban and rural women of the lower classes felt free to talk to male strangers; also, many middle-class women were not shy and talked to strange men, an issue that he did not expect. In rural communities and among the nomads, gender segregation and hijab, in the form of veil and burqa, almost did not exist (Azad 1979: 321). This absence has been recorded in the photographs and texts, such as Taj al-­ Saltaneh’s memoirs (Taj al-Saltaneh 1983: 101). Leila Ahmed (1992: 103–104) believes that women’s positions in the class system determined how they were affected by other factors, such as customs, wealth, property, and seclusion. Generally, the evidence does not support the complete exclusion of women from public and social life, particularly in rural areas, and among nomads who formed the majority of the population in Qajar Iran. The prohibitions on women of the upper classes, due to their dignity and social status, were less enforced on women from the lower and middle classes. Generalizations based on the lifestyle of the upper classes would erroneously lead to a homogenous image of women’s world. We should investigate diverse lifestyles in Qajar Iran as a society with high cultural diversity. Iranian society was a society with religious and ethnic plurality. Different ethnic groups and followers of other religions did not necessarily follow the same norms. The active face of ordinary women has also been reflected in the writings of the first generation of modern writers. For example, Sadegh Hedayat, the modern writer of the late Qajar and Pahlavi era, in his stories, such as Alaviyah Khanom, Abjee Khanom, and Toop Morvari, provides a remarkable picture of the lives of these women, their economic activities, ambitions, efforts, and even their offenses (see Hedayat 1959; Sharifi 2008). Therefore, women in Qajar society were responsible for carrying out the daily maintenance activities. More significantly, women also created and maintained the networks and social relationships through these activities that are essential to the survival of human society (Montón-Subías 2018; Montón-Subías and Sánchez-Romero 2008; Meyers 2003). Through communicating within the neighborhood, mosque, bazaar, gatherings and through close relationships with other women and family

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members, women were able to become informed and participate in society. In critical situations, especially economic crises, women, like men, joined the protests to show their dissatisfaction (Cronin 2018: 855). Here I have tried to weave the strands of Qajar women’s daily experience at home, work, and in women’s community to provide a brief background on the presence of women in public. It is worth mentioning that we should try to proceed with discussions on women’s life beyond the duality of public and private. I have attempted to choose different examples from the lives of women to demonstrate how their interaction with society in the context of daily life was dynamic and beyond the stereotypes about gender relations in the Orient. Conventional male-dominant interpretations in knowledge production have ignored women’s different ways of life, thinking and acting, and consider a marginal role for women in history. Understanding women’s different experiences allows us to create a new understanding of women’s social reality and the role of women in history.

Women and Street Protests First, it should be noted that different forms of protest, individually and collectively, such as written forms and petitioning, sit-ins in holy shrines or in the houses of elite men, women, and leading clerics were common forms of protest in Qajar Iran (see Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000; Khosh Eftekhar 2006). Moreover, protests that were organized in support of fatwas were also common in the Qajar era, which can be considered as reflective of social dynamics (see Martin 2008; Lambton 1987: 223; Kazemi 2014: 251). It was less visible that protesters, particularly women, were harassed, beaten, or arrested by government forces, especially when they came onto the streets due to poverty and hunger or in support of a fatwa (Cronin 2018: 854). However, with the advent of modernism and the formation of a police force, this order gradually changed (see Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000: 350; Motamedi 2002: 120). The huge subsistence crises in nineteenth-century Iran dramatically affected the life of the population (see Kazemi 2016; Cronin 2018). Interestingly, although the reformists of this era criticized the economy and notably wrote about the downturn in industrial workshops, trade, and market, the disturbance of quotidian life and large-scale poverty showed itself more than anywhere in the protests of women, who usually undertook provisioning their families and feeding their children. Essentially,

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these protests showed that hunger and misery had become part of the daily life of society. Some people could not even buy bread anymore. Regarding the dynamic nature of human actions and the unintended consequences of actions that constitute historical processes (Merton 1936: 894), it is usually impossible to pinpoint an exact beginning date for the socio-political activities of women in the recent past of Iran. In short, the history of women’s protests dates back to the early nineteenth century and possibly before that (Martin 2008: 132). In various locales and for different reasons, women, mostly from the lower and middle classes, were roused to and engaged in public action throughout the century (McElrone 2005: 312). However, the first recorded example of women’s protests in the Qajar era was in 1850 when a number of women who had come from Isfahan to Tehran rioted during the time of prayer at the Jame Mosque, a Congregational Mosque of the city, and asked the Friday Imam to prevent the looting of chaotic Isfahan. This demonstration was part of the larger protests against government policy as an organized and planned movement (Martin 2008: 132). It is worth pointing out that women are sometimes mentioned as taking part in public protests over other issues, but their perennial presence at bread demonstrations is notable. They were always central to bread riots (Cronin 2018: 853). “Bread was an important daily requirement as it was consumed with all meals particularly among urban lower classes” (Mahdavi 2012: 364; Polak 1989: 84). Morgan Shuster, present in Iran in the years after the Constitutional Revolution, wrote of the importance of bread: “In Iran, bread acts as a test for the survival or change of cabinet and government” (Shuster 1912: 216). Economic instability, food shortages, famine, and inflation were significant causes for women to organize or participate in protests (Martin 2008; Alam and Razavi-Sousan 2013: 73; Azad 1979: 358; Nategh 1978: 53). At times of crisis, provoked by sudden price rises, their anger was inflamed by well-founded rumors of hoarding, speculation, and official collusion (Cronin 2018: 845). The issues that prompted most protests had direct bearing on women’s and their families’ lives (McElrone 2005: 312). Women always established a link between the starvation of their children and politics. This link was actually between what was going on in private life and the government’s policies. During Naser al-Din Shah’s reign, inflation had pushed women onto the streets several times. “The price of staple foods, especially bread, became an issue of the greatest sensitivity, even the smallest price rises

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representing a potentially mortal threat to the very poorest” (Cronin 2018: 845). One of the most important demonstrations was the women’s revolt due to the famine of 1860. “They had already been infuriated by the general belief that the high officials of the city were hoarding and speculating with the small amounts of grain intended for distribution to the needy” (Cronin 2018: 851). Naser al-Din Shah ordered the hanging of the sheriff of Tehran to put down the rebellion and reduce the price of bread (Nategh 1978: 53). During the late nineteenth century, demonstrations raged across the country and continued during the reign of Mozaffar al-Din Shah (Salehi et al. 2020: 129). During the 1890s and 1900s, the food price fluctuated, and scarcity of some basic groceries, such as bread and meat, constantly occurred. Etemad al-Saltaneh wrote in his memoirs on March 26, 1891: “Today, there was a council to establish food prices. The reason is that on the day the Shah was going to the Friday Imam’s house, a group of women had complained to the Shah and cursed Nayeb al-Saltaneh, the minister of war. The Shah ordered Nayeb al-Saltaneh to establish a council of tradesmen to fix the prices” (Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000: 738). However, the problem of grocery shortages and inflation did not resolve, instead increasing and becoming more complex (see Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000: 937). There were also protests in Isfahan in 1894 over the increase in the price of bread. People, mainly women, crowded at the Masjed-e Shah and did not allow the imam, Aqa Najafi, to lead the prayer to the congregation, as they considered him one of the causes of the price increase. In April 1894, the price of bread rose again, and women protested the price of sugar, bread, lamb, and oil used in oil lamps (Martin 2008: 134). One of the most well-known organized women’s revolts is a series of protests for food led by Zeinab Pasha in Tabriz (Alam and Razavi-Sousan 2013: 74; Nahid 1981: 30). These could be considered as a symbol of the urban impoverished women’ objections. Zeinab Pasha was born to a lowincome family in Amou Zeinoddin, an ancient neighborhood of Tabriz (Nahid 1981: 41). Like many other families, her family had a hard time subsisting during that era, and she witnessed famine, hunger, and pressure on the lower classes. Zeinab led a group of women protesters and reacted to the hoarding of grains, particularly wheat, by nobles and landowners. It was rumored that the main mujtahid of Tabriz had about 70,000 kharvar, donkey load as a measure, grains in his warehouse. One of Zeinab’s most famous operations was the opening of the grain warehouse of Ghaem Magham, the governor of Azerbaijan (Nahid 1981: 43–45). Zeinab’s

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intuitive capability for organizing protests and attacks made her a hero of ordinary people, and she has been admired in Turkish poetry of this time. Fuel shortages, like the bread crisis, could also lead to women’s organized demonstrations. In 1894, 40 women held a sit-in at the stables of the Shiraz ruler due to fuel shortages (Document No. 808, 16.11.1894, FO 248/602 quoted by Martin 2008). The cholera epidemic in 1894 caused many problems and difficulties in Astarabad, while the local people blamed Russian citizens. Women also held a sit-in at the British Consulate as a sign of protest (Martin 2008: 135). The contribution of women in the Tobacco Protest in the late nineteenth century is one of the most significant public participations of women (Shojaei et al. 2010: 258; Kazemi 2014: 270; Afary 1993: 9–10). The protest was mainly organized by Iranian merchants against a tobacco concession granted by Naser al-Din Shah to the British Major G. F. Talbot in 1890. The protest was supported by clerics who incited the nation against Talbot’s monopoly over tobacco (Keddie 1969: 34). In different cities, particularly in Tehran and Tabriz, two main protest centers, women joined the riot and organized activities (Nahid 1981: 32–36; Kazemi 2014: 170). The women of Tabriz, who were led by Zeinab Pasha, actively contributed to the protest and made Tabriz Bazaar close, against the will of the governor (Sardarinia 1998: 6; Taherzadeh-Behzad 1984: 84). It seems that economic problems and the increase of women’s awareness of the political and social situation were effective in participation in that protest (Alam and Razavi-Sousan 2013: 71). Cronin (2018: 851) criticizes conservative views that consider urban lower classes and women as “politically passive and unthinking” and emphasizes the female protesters’ possession of motivation and objectives in their own right. She states that “by the late nineteenth century, they were reacting against the chaotic transformation of their lives and living standards wrought by a collapsing Qajar political order and the simultaneous arrival of newly aggressive economic imperatives. They accordingly mounted a last-ditch resistance to the rapid ascendancy of the free market and the disappearance of older forms of elite and royal paternalism, market regulation and consumer protect” (Cronin 2018: 846). Indeed, women’s demonstrations had implicit political implications, especially when the government’s economic policy reached an unstable and critical stage. Women’s protests were so crucial that Shuster (1912: 240) wrote, it was renowned in Tehran that whenever women rebelled

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against the cabinet and government, the situation of the cabinet and the government would become arduous. Martin (2008: 125–126) rightly believes that ordinary women participated in public political activities, possibly with mixed motives, and not necessarily influenced by secular beliefs. Nategh (1983: 39) draws our attention to the point that women’s participation in political action cannot always be considered progressive, as sometimes they were influenced by conservative clerics. However, Nahid Yeganeh (1983: 14) subtly considers the complex nature of women’s participation and states that women’s participation in political and social activities is stimulated by different sociopolitical views and attitudes, including conservative or critical attitudes. Nonetheless, these have interacted with each other and fueled social transformations and the development of women’s movements. Generally speaking, women’s pervasive participation in public political actions with economic motives has been mostly ignored by male-­dominant conventional history. To revisit economic history, we do need more flexible and gender-informed analytical frameworks. Therefore, Qajar era women should not be ignored as background noise. As a matter of fact, women of the late nineteenth century should be noticed as one of the leading social forces who contributed to socio-political transformations.

Writing as Resistance: The Formation of a New Class of Women Intellectuals As previously mentioned, women played a key role in protests and demonstrations that were primarily economically motivated. During these years, women gradually questioned their inferior position in their writing. Fortunately, written evidence allows us to show that in the middle of the Qajar era, a group of women also revolted against patriarchy and the antiwoman discourse of didactic essays, as this mode of literature considered the subjugation of women as one of the pillars of men’s superiority and of social order (see Baghdar Delgosha 2019: 63; Tavakoli-Targhi 2016: 149). However, documents such as the Tehran Police reports show a severe contrast between women’s daily life and this literature with its prescriptions. There are little data on the education of women (Sanasarian 1985: 88). However, we can assume that the rate of literacy in general and among women was low. “There was a general belief consistently reiterated by the

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religious leaders, that literacy among women would pose a dangerous threat to society and women were not allowed to learn how to write” (Sanasarian 1985: 88–89). Such a conservative approach prohibited women from access to knowledge. However, this cannot be generalized, and social factors, such as class, should also be taken into account. Martin (2008: 142) discusses that women have seemingly become more educated, acted more organized, and had better access to financial resources in the final two decades of the Qajar era. There is evidence of upper class women using written form for their personal purposes, such as greeting or handling the matters of their properties or economic assets (see Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000; Shirazi 2018; Farahani 2019; see also http://www.qajarwomen.org/en/). It should be noted that the conservative approach considers noblewomen confined to their homes or harem as a merely erotic place dominated by male desires. This approach has been reinvestigated and criticized by a handful of researchers (see Ahmed 1982, 1992; Papoli-Yazdi and Dezhamkhooy 2021; Booth 2010), although more is still needed to enrich our understanding of women’s lives in all classes. Women from aristocratic families were generally educated, literate, and interested in learning different skills. Some women of the Qajar court were poets, calligraphers, painters, writers, and scholars (see Shirazi 2018; Taj al-Saltaneh 1983; Najmabadi 1995: 9). According to Etemad al-Saltaneh (2000: 1040), the royal harem had an extensive library, and he was occasionally asked to organize it: His Majesty had decided to send me to organize the library of the andarun. The Shah ordered me to separate translated books. The whole day we were all busy. We took out one hundred and seventy volumes. (Etemad al-­ Saltaneh 2000: 1040)

The first group of women, who started to write, was generally from noble and aristocratic families (Baghdar Delgosha 2019: 75). Considering the extreme cultural taboo attached to the written works of women, women’s publications themselves were a revolutionary act. Writing, which was a more formal communication method and generally used by men, was gradually chosen by women to publicly discuss their views, opinions, and demands. Women’s early writings include autobiographies (see, e.g., Taj al-­ Saltaneh 1983) and a handful of travelogues (see, e.g., Shirazi 2018;

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Esmat al-Saltaneh 1882; Vaghar al-Dowleh 2019). These texts usually consider women’s daily life. The Qajar women of the nineteenth century seem to be writing at a time where it was only recently starting to be recognized that the dailiness of women’s lives had any value worth writing about in prose (Mohaghegh Neyshabouri 2020: 39). One of the first books written by women in the Qajar era was Ma’ayeb al-Rejal. The author, Bibi Khanom Astarabadi, a reformist and women activist, is one of the women who revolted against patriarchal culture and didactic literature (Nategh 1978: 48). According to the introduction, Bibi Khanom wrote her book at the beginning of 1312 AH, mid-1894, in the forty-eighth year of Naser al-Din Shah’s reign in Dar al-khilafa, capital city, Tehran (Astarabadi 1992: 47). Indeed, Bibi Khanom was one of the female aristocrats of the Naseri era and known for her two pioneering works, authoring the book Ma’ayeb al-Rejal and setting up a girls’ school. During her life, Bibi Khanom actively attempted to improve women’s conditions. Like many women activists of the first generations, she came from a noble family resulting from a marriage between a clergical family and an aristocratic family. According to her autobiography her father was Mohammad Baqer Khan, the commander of the Astarabad cavalry, and her mother, the daughter of Mullah Kazem Mojtahid Mazandarani. Following a romantic relationship at the age of 22, she married Musa Khan Vaziri, a migrant from Baku who was four years younger than her (Astarabadi 1992: 48). Ma’ayeb al-Rejal was, in fact, written in response to Ta’dib al-Nesvan, “Disciplining Women”, by a member of the Qajar nobility or a prince. The author of the text is anonymous; however, by examining the documents and sources, Rouhangiz Karachi (2010: 206) considers this person to have been Prince Khanlar Mirza Ehtesham al-Dowleh, the descendant of Fath-­ Ali Shah Qajar. Karachi believes that he wrote the book in the era of Naser al-Din Shah some time before 1870. A few years later, in early 1880, the manuscript was published in Tehran (Javadi 1992: 4). In this text, the author defines the criteria for the ideal woman and explains men’s expectations, which are primarily focused on taciturnity and silence, obedience, and beauty features. If we consider the way the author has regulated the content, we find that he starts from subjugation and control of women’s language and minds and then addresses the body. Interestingly, the author of Ta’dib al-Nesvan has recommended that this treatise should be taught at girls’ schools.

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Ma’ayeb al-Rejal, on the other hand, demonstrates aspects of women’s daily life, their challenges and difficulties, their gatherings, and the topics discussed at such gatherings. The introduction shows women’s awareness of current issues. As discussed before, women’s gatherings and parties were places to exchange news and organize women’s activities. According to her book, it was at a women’s party that Bibi Khanom, through her friends, found out about Ta’dib al-Nesvan: So one of the sisters said, “listen to a news story from this unfair world, a tragic and fearful story. And that is about a book that I have seen, which unfairly considers the women’s world. This book titled, Ta’dib al-Nesvan, is one of the worst books that I have ever read. I have brought it with me; you can have a look at it. The author considered himself as an educated and trained man who wants to discipline women. His book was, indeed, some nonsense words without any proper references. Throughout the book, the author blames women and tries to impose subordination on them. I found the book very improper and unpleasant, and threw it away. (Astarabadi 1992: 53–54)

The idea of writing Ma’ayeb al-Rejal was also formed during one of these women’s gatherings. According to the writer, at one of the gatherings sisters appreciated her words and asked her to write this valuable book. Eventually, as her friends, who also suffered from common marriage problems, requested, Bibi Khanom inserted her life story as an epilogue to the book (Astarabadi 1992: 53–55). Considering Bibi Khanom’s story, it can be concluded that women were aware of their situation in public and private life and that they discussed it. In fact, at their gatherings, women complained and denounced men’s superiority. As Bibi Khanom openly criticizes men in the introduction of her book and condemns them for mistreatment: In short, I don’t consider myself as the right one to discipline men, but I have responded to Ta’dib al-Nesvan to reveal the imperfections and weaknesses of men. Therefore, that they might stop disciplining women and improve themselves. It is worthy of note that, not every man is excelling a woman, as all things and affairs are relative in this world. (Astarabadi 1992: 48–54)

Ma’ayeb al-Rejal is important in two ways. First, the text exposed the significance of friendship and community building within the women’s

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world. And second, women challenged patriarchal discourse in their writings. According to some evidence in the text, men were supposed to be aware of or had even read this book: Now, I have decided to put forward some remarks in high quality, melodic and pleasant language, to respond to the improper words of this evil author. So, I make men know that there are still a few among women, who are high-­ ranked, reputable, respectful and honorable. There are still women who know language structure and write very well and put forward admirably rational discussions. (Astarabadi 1992: 54)

Ma’ayeb al-Rejal consists of an introduction, four chapters, and an epilogue, which consists of the author’s biography. Bibi Khanom clarifies the message of the book in the introduction and advises women: But my religious sisters, consider my advice and treat your husbands nicely only if the husband is faithful and righteous, and treats his wife kindly. If he is violent and brutal, of course, emancipate yourself as soon as possible. Try to get rid of this marriage while you are young and have no children. (Astarabadi 1992: 49)

These chapters, majles, are the wine drinker’s characteristics, the gamblers, the narcotics (hashish and opium), and the fourth majles describes villains and vagrants (Astarabadi 1992: 48). Regarding the writing style, Bibi Khanom was influenced by classic Persian literature, especially Golestan Sa’di in the introduction, and she has employed a melodic prose style. Moreover, she demonstrates knowledge of poetry and literature, and the text has been properly adorned with ancient poems and narratives. Therefore, as she has rightly claimed in the introduction, she has an excellent knowledge of Persian. Essentially, Bibi Khanom tries to review Ta’dib al-Nesvan fairly and courageously endorses some of the author’s critiques of women’s behavior. However, she believes that women’s improper behavior resulted from neglect and the lack of education (Astarabadi 1992: 64). Ma’ayeb al-Rejal is probably marked as one of the first examples that record oral complaints and protests in a written form. The impact of women’s gatherings, conversations, and narratives on the writing style of Ma’ayeb al-Rejal, especially in the main chapters, is apparent. The main chapters which consider men’s imperfections have been formulated as

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narratives. Seemingly, the author was remarkably familiar with men’s language. The language in these sections is simple, colloquial, and enriched with folklore poetry and masculine slang. In a nutshell, the language demonstrates that Bibi Khanom, a woman from a noble family, was quite familiar with society and men’s culture and regularly visited public places and attended women’s gatherings. The language of the text leads us beyond the text, showing that protests, critiques, complaints, and even ridicule of men and their gatherings shared between women have not been unprecedented. According to historical evidence, oral history, and ethnographic data, we know that criticizing men was common between women, specifically at women’s gatherings (Papoli-Yazdi and Dezhamkhooy 2021; Ahmed 1982; Astarabadi 1992: 52). Should Bibi Khanom be considered an exception in her criticism of the situation for women? The answer is definitively negative. Bibi Khanom states that other women appreciated her decision to write the book. Some friends also had suggestions to improve it. A friend asked her to add a chapter on her lineage, family, and ancestors, with career and life story (Astarabadi 1992: 47). Interestingly, Bibi Khanom, unlike the author of Ta’dib al-Nesvan, published her booklet in her name and bravely incorporated her marriage story into the book. By this time, the generational and intergenerational experiences of women, their criticism of patriarchal society, and their political attitudes were going to be written and as a result their voices reached beyond women’s gatherings. During these years, Zahra Khanom Taj al-Saltaneh (1983) began writing her memoirs in which she discusses marital problems, criticizes the extreme form of hijab of urban women, and expresses her political attitudes and her interest in socialism and constitutionalism. Noteworthy is that from this very early literature, women’s concerns with daily life are revealed. They wrote about women, especially lower class women, families, responsibilities, and challenges in working and managing daily life (see Taj al-Saltaneh 1983: 101; Astarabadi 1992: 54). While it should be noted that women’s socio-political activities under Naser al-Din Shah were slowly advancing, these participations, as well as their rich experiences of being active in street protests, became a prelude to their significant participation in the Constitutional Revolution. Writing and women’s skill in creating community furnished women with confidence to engage in the ongoing revolution. Writing provided women with new possibilities and opportunities to participate in public, as well as

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dialogue with men. Soon after, women established their own newspapers. Iran’s revolutionary atmosphere and the introduction of notions such as nation, citizen, and compatriot played a significant role in forming women’s literature, especially women’s newspapers, and new forms of women’s resistance.

Summing Up: Women’s Situation on the Eve of Constitutional Revolution Generally speaking, changes in lifestyle and transformation of social order had gradually emerged in the Naseri era (Vaghefi and Kamel 2020: 52). In these years, several factors influenced women’s life, informed their socio-­ political views, and accelerated their participation in public: The growing political and economic crisis and the rise of public dissatisfaction. Ordinary women played a key role in street protests, particularly in organizing protests known as the bread riots (McFarland 1985; Dezhamkhooy 2020; Cronin 2018: 853). They were not “rebellions of the belly”, but rather primarily interventions in urban politics, and like most subaltern political actions, defensive in their objectives (Cronin 2018: 845). The growth of the print industry and particularly newspapers helped the expansion of modern social and political thought. Women were inspired by the status of women, especially in Europe and other Muslim-­ majority countries, such as Egypt. This growth was accompanied by the opportunity to communicate with European women who traveled to Iran (Alam and Razavi-Sousan 2013: 73). Modern education was gradually provided, although on a limited scale. Iranian activists established modern schools and educational systems. Christian missionaries also opened modern schools in different parts of Iran, including Orumieh and Tehran (Fashahi 1981: 99). Orumieh girls’ school had up to 500 students (Rich 1836), and Isfahan girls’ school had 160 students. These activities influenced Iranian society (Nategh 1978: 108). The emergence of women’s activists and reformists who organized activities, such as opening schools, initiating associations, holding workshops, and later publishing women’s newspapers in the late nineteenth century. Depending partly on the class, women’s long-term organized activities can be separated from occasional actions, such as joining protests and

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demonstrations. Leila Ahmed (1992: 103–104) has subtly discussed “the importance of class in framing and circumscribing the possibilities of women lives”. Recognizing the social characteristics of that time, it is very plausible that most women’s leaders were from prominent elite families and even members of the royal court (National Library of the Islamic Republic of Iran 1998: 1; Afary 2006: 234). Women reformists were able to organize long-term movements, such as establishing newspapers and schools, as they were educated and usually had access to financial sources, while ordinary women usually participated in street protests. Ordinary poor and middle-class women had different lifestyles and strategies, which were based on relatively broad social relationships and fewer restrictions, compared to high-ranked women. In times of crisis, they could quickly gather together women and even men to organize demonstrations (see Martin 2008; Cronin 2018: 853). Zeinab Pasha’s action can be analyzed in this context. However, they were generally unable to organize long-­ term activities requiring capital, a level of literacy and familiarity with administrative and management methods.

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CHAPTER 5

Economic Crisis, the Coloniality of Consumption, and Women’s Resistance

Abstract  This chapter investigates the Constitutional Revolution and new forms of women’s contribution. First, a brief history of the revolution days, the economic stagnation, and the continuation of imports from Europe after the revolution have been explored. Westernization and the rise of interest in the Western lifestyle and European consumer products among elites and upper classes have been discussed as significant internal factors in this process. Then, the chapter investigates women’s agency and puts forward women’s different strategies of resistance to Western economic encroachment and their call for active participation in public and responsibility for the country. Relying on feminist standpoint theory and James Scott’s everyday forms of resistance, the chapter interrogates resistance from women’s perspective and challenges conventional (masculine) understanding of political action. Eventually, the chapter exemplifies this through the investigation of women’s organizations, actions, and the press. Keywords  Westernization • Consumption • Everyday forms of resistance • Feminist standpoint approach • Home management • Women’s organizations and newspapers

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Dezhamkhooy, Women and the Politics of Resistance in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28097-9_5

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The Constitutional Revolution (1906–1911) The general dissatisfaction with the Qajars strongly manifested itself in the assassination of Naser al-Din Shah in 1896 and precipitated the Revolution. The Constitutional Revolution was the outcome of a convergence of the different social groups and classes most dissatisfied with Qajar foreign policy, especially its economic and political consequences. In the years leading up to the Constitutional Revolution, people saw foreign intervention and corrupt politicians as the leading causes of the disorder. The Russian government tried to expand its economic influence in north Iran, while in the southern part of the country, the British had gained the shipping concession on the Karun River, and as a result their products were destroying domestic trade (Issawi 1983: 236; Keddie 1972: 73). The rise of anti-British and anti-Russian sentiments and the developing feeling among Iranians that the Qajar government was selling the resources of the country to foreign powers for petty profits were highly involved in the growing protest movements (Keddie 1972: 74; Stein 1983: 275). Abrahamian (2008: 41, 2015: 84) considers economic components influential factors involved in the Constitutional Revolution. The years before the Constitutional Revolution were difficult years of famine and cholera. Drought, poor harvests, and subsequent hunger combined with a cholera epidemic had placed the country in crisis. The short-term motives for the Revolution emerged in 1904 and 1905 due to the economic crisis caused by government default and increasing inflation. As a result, the price of bread increased by 90 percent and sugar by 33 percent. The cause of this severe inflation was a crop failure, the cholera outbreak (Afkhami 2019: 4; Nategh 1979: 20; Abrahamian 1979: 404), and the 1905 Japan-­ Russia War. Excess mortality associated with cholera, in turn, caused a major crisis in agriculture and for harvesting. Due to a lack of human resources, agricultural products in many regions, such as tobacco in Shiraz and silk in Rasht, were destroyed, leading to a shortage of supplies and a drop in trade and economic stagnation (Abtahi and Emami-Meibodi 2015: 12). Economic stagnation and the gradual encroachment of the West in the country caused common concerns for many bazaar businessmen and religious elites; until then, these dispersed groups allied together as an inclusive middle class, which was later to be known as the traditional middle class (Abrahamian 2008: 138). Therefore, it is not surprising that

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prominent businessmen (such as Moein al-Tojjar Boushehri) became sponsors of the constitution. Later, even some elites and rulers, such as prince Zell al-Soltan, the son of Naser al-Din Shah and ruler of Isfahan, and Sheikh Khazal, who was particularly dissatisfied with the central government’s supervision of south Iranian customs, financially joined the Revolution (Kasravi 1978: 796). The emerging modern class of Iranian intelligentsia also played a crucial role in the formation of national resistance against the Qajar government that culminated in the Consititutional Revolution. The crisis widely triggered a response among ordinary people, especially women, and dissatisfaction became general and pervasive. In June 1905 women demonstrated in Tehran and, according to an eyewitness, strongly expressed their anger at the city’s ruler (Abrahamian 2015: 87). Ordinary people mainly joined the protests due to the economic crisis, but this quickly became politically motivated (Cronin 2018: 843). Eventually, almost the whole country, unsatisfied and frustrated with the system, became virtually unified against the Qajars at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, it would be entirely wrong to consider all Iranians as constitutionalists at the time. The monarchists also appeared very powerful. Conservative clerics, especially the imams of Friday prayer, some mujtahids, large groups of nobles, princes, courtiers, and groups of businessmen close to the court still supported the absolute autocratic monarchy, for these men the establishment of a council to discuss the issue was meaningless (Abrahamian 2015: 45; Alam 2009: 95). According to this group, the monarch must issue the rule of law and not have his decisions restricted (Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000: 936). Despite all difficulties, the Constitution Decree was finally signed on August 4, 1906, by Mozaffar al-Din Shah, who was severely ill (Afary 2006: 85). It was assumed by the revolutionists that the decree ended the absolute monarchy, which was supported by the idea of divine providence (Nahavandi 2009: 35). The ailing Shah died three days after the decree was signed, and the crown prince Mohammad Ali Mirza ascended the throne as successor of his father. The accession of Mohammad Ali Shah (r.1907–1909) to power confronted the constitutionalists with serious difficulties. The new Shah was allied with conservative groups, especially clerics. Gaining the support of the Shah, the conservatives advocated mashrueh, a constitution that is based on sharia (Ajoudani 2003: 373). On July 23, 1908, Mohammad Ali

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Shah organized a coup d’état with Russian support against the constitutionalists (Ajoudani 2003: 382). Initially, the Cossack Forces bombarded the Parliament and then a group of monarchists ravaged its building. A curfew was subsequently established, and any public gathering, even Ta’zieh, was banned (Abrahamian 2015: 45). However, this coup was confronted by resistance from Najaf clerics and the uprising of Tabriz constitutionalists (Homayoun Katouzian 2012: 97). Although the Tsar’s government actively antagonized the Iranian revolution, Caucasus intellectuals appreciated the revolution and dispatched volunteers to Iran to fight government forces alongside Iranian Revolutionists (Qeshmi 1997: 80). In July 1909, just 13 months after the Shah’s successful coup, he was stripped of his position, and his 12-year-old son, Ahmad Shah (r.1909–1925), was promoted to power (Abrahamian 2015: 48–47). As a result, the end of Mohammad Ali Shah’s rule should be considered the end of the era of revolution.

Women’s Agency in the Constitutional Revolution William Morgan Shuster, who lived in Iran during the constitutional years at the invitation of the Iranian government in order to enforce reforms in the financial sector, in his book The Strangling of Persia admires the contribution of Iranian women to the revolution: The Persian women since 1907 had become almost at a bound the most progressive, not to say radical, in the world. That this statement upsets the ideas of centuries makes no difference. We of Europe and America are long accustomed to the increasingly large role played by Western women in business, in the professions, in literature, in science, and in politics, but what shall we say of the veiled women of the Near East who overnight become teachers, newspaper writers, founders of women’s clubs and speakers on political subjects? (Shuster 1912: 195)

To what extent is Shuster’s interpretation of Iranian women as women who abruptly and unexpectedly left andaruni and became pioneers of development correct? Methodologically, it cannot be accepted that women’s contribution occurred “overnight” and without any background. In Chaps. 2 and 4, the stereotype of passive women in the Qajar era was partially investigated. I have discussed that before the Constitutional Revolution, women joined

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protests and, on the other hand, women of aristocracy and the royal harem could interfere in political affairs. Etemad al-Saltaneh (2000) mentions several cases of women’s political interventions in favor of their interests. They could also influence significant issues, such as the selection of local rulers, taxation, and the awarding of titles and royal medals. Therefore, these less investigated aspects of women’s social life should be contemplated as the background for their considerable participation in the Constitutional Revolution. The organizational and coordinating skills that women have developed from their work and nurturing tasks in their daily lives were applied by them in a new direction. From the very early stages of the Constitutional Movement, groups of women, from varying social backgrounds, participated in demonstrations in various forms. Women held strikes, supported the revolution financially and spiritually, and protected constitutionalists from the Shah’s forces. For example, in the summer of 1906, when constitutionalists were gathered in the garden of the British Embassy, several thousand women gathered to join the strikers, but British authorities prevented them from participating (Afary 2006: 235; Afary 1993: 11; Shojaei et  al. 2010: 258; Abrahamian 2008: 44). There are also interesting examples of women’s groups who supported the Constitution and protected the Constitutionalists, such as using veiling to conceal what they were carrying and safeguarding the male revolutionists, which have been discussed by some researchers (Abrahamian 1998: 109; Papoli-Yazdi and Dezhamkhooy 2021: 152; Nahid 1981: 55). Women’s intimate relationships, their skills in community building, and collective activities came to play a crucial role in their resistance. As a component of this they used their established allied networks to initiate their programs. These networks have played a crucial role in facilitating women’s resistance (Aptheker 1989: 175). Political scientist and feminist scholar Berenice Carroll (1972: 608–609) has discussed “collective power” and “cooperative power”, as the powers of the allegedly powerless. Community was served as a “gathering site” (Brooks 2007: 75) on which multiple activities were organized. Women used public and private spaces as premises to organize their political and social activities. The most important activities were held/founded in women’s homes or gardens and private properties include lectures, the office of associations, office of newspapers, girl’s schools, and skill-training courses. Eventually, in Tehran, Majles, the parliament, began to fully function in 1906. Most seats in parliament had been awarded to powerful conservatives and influential groups, such as landowners, aristocrats, lords, and mullahs. Remarkably,

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neither the peasants nor women had representatives within the governing body (Homayoun Katouzian 2012: 96). Parliament adopted a conservative policy on women and did not concern itself with women’s literacy. It is worthy of note that women corresponded to Majles for facilitating their participation in public and particularly in education. However, Majles only accepted women’s education where it related to home management and parenting, and sciences related to the family and its economy; it refused the participation of women in politics and political science education for women (Afary 1993: 13). In an interesting article published in Iran-e Now in July 28, 1911, a female teacher criticizes the politicians and elites who prevented women’s participation: “Men keep telling us that after all, you are just women and are not good for any work except for housekeeping”. She opposes this attitude and declares that women want “to find out who is the enemy of their homeland and to know what foreigners are doing in their country”. This new notion reconfigurated women as people who can perform a political function (Kerber 1980: 283; Kashani-Sabet 2005: 32). However, female constitutionalists continued their independent movement and established their own organizations and press. “Women considered themselves politically in harmony with men, and sometimes like men made constitutional pretenses of their wealth and died in men’s clothing on the way to the revolution” (Najmabadi 1995: 92). Female revolutionists published their articles and notes in constitutional newspapers, especially Iran-e Now, to support the revolution and encouraged all men and women to join the movement. Interestingly, women used new patriotic concepts in their writings to introduce themselves as members of the nation. In one case, Tayereh signed her essay in Iran-e Now as khademeh va faniyeh vatan-e aziz, “the servant and devotee of the beloved homeland” (Letter from an Iranian woman, Iran-e Now, September 13, 1909). Compounds such as “Iranian women” and “compatriot sisters” pointed out that instead of class, social status, or gender (as factors that implied superiority or inferiority), being Iranian within the framework of the nation and citizenship should now be considered. The word “sister”, applied mostly by women within their communities and relationships, was now used by female revolutionists and in a broader context by male revolutionists to refer to Iranian women as their compatriots. Applying this word demonstrated the growth of empathetic understanding between men and women as groups who could hold different standpoints.

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Women’s educational, organizational, and publication activities effectively contributed to the emergence of the public sphere and a new understanding of social life. Considerably, girls’ schools were not only a place for literacy, education, and joining civilization through science. These schools quickly became the most important space for learning, teaching, and practicing citizenship, a space for the construction of female citizens (Najmabadi 1995: 92). Although Iranian women participated in public before the revolution, they claimed a higher level of participation in society after the revolution. Theoretically, the Constitution granted the nation the right to participate in politics; while during the Qajar absolute monarchy, people were generally considered roaya, the people/children of the shah, the crowned father, and were not allowed to enter politics. Essentially, the Constitutional Revolution was the beginning of a new perception of the relationship between women and society through new concepts, such as citizenship, nation, and democracy. Women, like men, aspired to be citizens, which essentially meant the right to participate in the public sphere and decision-making for the future of their homeland. However, women considered social and political issues of the country from a perspective that was somehow different from male reformers. “They created a new hybrid space of political activity for their inclusion. Their supplemental work was surely transformative. The maleness of the text, as well as the maleness of the social context, became an arena of struggles that challenged male exclusivity” (Najmabadi 2005: 215). It is worth noting that women considered themselves as relatively independent agents who have stood outside political institutional power (see below). This situation granted them the opportunity to criticize government policies and establish organized activities against Western encroachment and internal challenges involved in the crisis. Remarkably, during these years, women became involved in two crucial political issues: the national demand to establish Bank-e Melli, the National Bank, and the boycott of European textiles (Afary 2006: 235).

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West Economic Encroachment and Farangi Ma’abi: 1909–1925 Q (the Westernized character): Can’t you see how fine and high-quality are the Western pocket watches? Don’t you recognize good European shirts, boots, gloves, umbrellas, cigarettes and even the word politics, special drinks, parks, shoe wax, Madame [a trade brand?] pocket, carriages and articles? Y (the conservative character): Which mine did you find? What device did you build? We still must import satin, broadcloth, calico, and Debit [a trademark of cloth]. We still use Western gharry, carriage, table, chairs and utensils. (Sheikh va Shukh, Manuscript No. 778, Faculty of Theology, University of Tehran 1995)

The history of women’s resistance cannot be investigated without considering the politico-economics of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-­ century Iran. Before investigating women’s activities against Western economic dominance, we need to examine the context of Western economic encroachment in the Qajar era. First, we shall examine the brief history of imports in the Qajar era. It is worth noting that the history of modern consumption and the import of Western industrial products have thus far chiefly remained uninvestigated. The Iranian economy at the beginning of twentieth century was a non-­ productive economy based on the export of raw material, at this time its import rate was higher than its export rate (Issawi 1983: 233). The Russian and British government’s policies aimed at making Iran both a supplier of raw materials and a market for their manufactured goods. In her pioneer study of Qajar economic decline, Homa Nategh (1990) shows that the systematic and pervasive import of luxury goods and consumer products into Iran began from the regulation of the colonial treaty of Turkmenchay in 1828, and especially in the era of Mohammad Shah. Since then, Iran gradually became one of the leading markets for Western fabrics, luxury, and consumer goods. One of the first reported examples harks back to the rule of Abbas Mirza, the crown prince, in Tabriz. In 1826, Abbas Mirza sent Mirza Sa’id Khan, the head of Iran’s mines, to Europe to buy supplies and ammunition. On arrival Mirza Sa’id Khan first bought a ship, but instead of providing this with the goods ordered by the government, he stocked the ship with clothes, socks, and luxury goods (Nategh 1990: 209).

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In 1835, Marius Outrey (1835), who had witnessed this prosperous trade and the presence of Iranian merchants in the Ottoman Empire in Trabzon in Turkey, expressed his surprise at the vast amount of commercial goods flowing into Iran. Indeed, it was from 1835 that European companies had been established in Tabriz. Persia was a virgin market for the factory-produced goods of European powers enjoying the fruits of their Industrial and Scientific Revolutions (Stein 1983: 257; Fashahi 1981: 18–19; Al Zubaidi 2019: 369). In his commercial report to the French foreign minister, the French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire noticed European efforts to take over the monopoly of cotton fabric (Nategh 1990: 209–211). Ernest Mandel (1980: 405), when analyzing the expansion of capitalism, places the expansion of British textile exports to Asia in the third period, between 1836 and 1847, which coincides with the reign of Mohammad Shah in Iran. Scholars have discussed that the Iranian government in the era of Mohammad Shah strived to mechanize Iranian industry (Nategh 1990: 236; Talebpour 2012: 70). The government even sanctioned European products to support Iranian products. However, internal political obstacles, on the one hand, and the tension with the two strong governments, Britain and Russia, on the other hand, led to the failure of Iran’s shaky government (Nategh 1990: 212). Ultimately, Naser al-Din Shah, the son and successor of Mohammad Shah, withdrew from Amir Kabir’s, the reformist chancellor, reform programs (Nategh 1990: 236). Naser al-Din Shah increasingly resorted to conferring economic privileges and concessions on foreign governments (Abrahamian 1979: 393). Accordingly, the import of luxury and consumer goods had become an established policy. The increasing rate of textile imports and other European products seriously damaged Iran’s traditional handicraft industries (Martin 2008: 46; Abtahi and Emami-Meibodi 2015: 3). The indiscriminate import of textiles, especially British cheap cotton products, eventually led to the bankruptcy and dismantling of textile workshops (Nategh 1990: 212; Talebpour 2012: 68; Abtahi and Emami-Meibodi 2015: 4). Eugène Flandin (1947: 176), the French orientalist and painter, who witnessed the beginning of this process, wrote in his travelogues that Iranian patriotism could not resist British goods. Interested in the flashy Western goods, Iranians actively participated in the decline of traditional Iranian industries (Nategh 1990: 216). Consequently, in the middle of the Naseri era, Iran’s weaving workshops had dramatically declined (Nategh

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1990: 213; Ansari Renani and Kermani 2001: 5; Talebpour 2012: 83). Mirza Hossein Tahvildar (1963: 101) reported that European yellow and low-quality fabrics had been prevalent in the Iranian market for several years. Unfortunately, Iranians abandoned their bodies and souls [a metaphor for domestic products] and appreciated the flashy products of the others [Europeans]. The British officially registered Iran as one of their buyer countries and adorned the fabrics they sent to Iran with the Iranians’ favorite motifs. Calico was the most pleasing fabric among Iranians (Nategh 1990: 214). The import and consumption of foreign goods under Naser al-Din Shah proceeded so rapidly that Mirza Hossein Khan Sartip, the vice-­ president of the Iranian Embassy in Istanbul, in his book Iranian Politics, discusses that Iran starts to progress only when we establish broadcloth and calico factories and weapon and ordnance factories (Sartip, manuscript 1892). Hence, the most striking feature of Iran’s import trade was the sharp rise in imported textiles, which by the 1850s accounted for two-­ thirds or so of the total and were still about one-half in the early 1900s (Issawi 1983: 233). A handful of studies on the economy of this period demonstrate how wealthy classes and individuals, such as landowners, prominent merchants, and nobility, benefited from the economic transformations and market fluctuations of the century (Kazemi 2016: 352; Mozayan al-Saltaneh 1917: 1–2); while they benefitted from foreign trade, particularly from being involved in the import of British goods (Issawi 1970: 19), artisans suffered the most from imports (Issawi 1983: 233; Malek 1991: 75). “For the artisanal groups the result was disastrous. For the small shopkeepers, inflation had probably been eating up whatever benefit accrued to them by the increased trade, at a time when the prevailing sense of business insecurity augmented their fears” (Afshari 1983: 148). A foreign observer, Isabella Bird, who visited Iran in the nineteenth century, describes the overflow of European manufactured goods in Iran bazaars: A stroll through the Tihranbazaars shows the observer something of the extent and rapidity with which Europe is running the artistic taste of Asia. Masses of rubbish, goods of nominal utility which will not stand a week’s wear. The refuse of European markets is training the tastes and changing the habits of the people. (Bird 1891: 391)

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Transformations of Iran’s economy and capitalist pressure, conveyed geopolitically, on Iran (see Matin 2012: 47) also introduced social and cultural changes to Iranian society and promoted the emergence of Westernized classes, farangi ma’aban. “As a concept, Westernization has a long pedigree, and it is closely linked with colonialism, modernization and lately globalization” (Bozkurt 2012: 1). Remarkably, people’s lifestyles, customs, and traditions have been discussed among the areas that would undergo considerable transformations during the Westernization process (Thong 2012: 893). Westernization had a growing influence across society in Qajar Iran (Fashahi 1981: 95) and manifested itself in conspicuous consumption, a growing interest in European luxury goods, and, respectively, the prevalence of Western lifestyle and manufactured goods among commoners. In his influential work The Civilizing Process, Norbert Elias (1994) has discussed “the civilizing process of imitation in post-medieval Europe”. He elaborates how the bourgeoisie and popular groups adopted the habits, behavior, and taste of the aristocratic classes in very specific areas in Europe (Kazemi 2020: 555; Aya 1978: 219). Elias (1994) believes that the growth of demand generated as a result of this cultural imitation led to the “birth” of consumer society in eighteenth-century Britain. Since the publication of Elias’ work, the historians have produced critical accounts to demonstrate that the prevalence of goods and consumer culture was not restricted to the eighteenth-century England (see Roche 2000; Kazemi 2020; De Vries 2008). In the course of the nineteenth century, Iran was gradually transforming into a society with great interest in Western consumer products. In the Naseri era, Western goods had specific loyal customers. A review of the memoirs, writings, and newspapers of this era shows that Western products had many enthusiastic customers in the court, harem, and among the aristocracy. As a matter of fact, the royal court itself had gradually become Westernized. The Shah, for example, was more interested in Western technological phenomena, inventions, perfumes, and shoes than in fundamental reforms. In his memoirs, Etemad al-Saltaneh (2000) has repeatedly mentioned his visits to Monsieur and Madam Eugenie Pillot’s shop. In their shop in Tehran, the French couple offered luxury consumer goods for sale, such as porcelain, crystal, perfumes, decorative objects, shoes, clothes, cosmetics, and soaps. Madam Pillot occasionally went to the royal harem and presented their goods especially to the harem ladies and the court (Azad

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1979: 395). However, Madame Pillot’s shop was not the only Western shop in Tehran; according to newspaper advertisements, it can be concluded that the number of these shops was growing and the desire for consumption gradually spread to other classes, including commoners (Azad 1979: 395; Taj al-Saltaneh 1983: 106; Talebpour 2012: 85). Thus, individuals and social groups who fancied Western appearance, makeup, and behavior, gradually appeared at the court, on the streets of Tehran, and in the royal andarun. However, this topic has been primarily only discussed in regard to men (see Vaghefi and Kamel 2020; Najmabadi 2005; Afary 2009), yet women were also interested in a Western appearance. The first visual and written evidence of women interested in the Western lifestyle dates to the Naseri era. Western appearance is one of the main features of this group, which has been frequently mentioned in the texts. Aliyeh Khanom Shirazi (2018: 33) was a woman from a noble family who lived for a while in the royal harem. She says that some ladies were interested in European gauze dresses and asked her to sew European outfits for them. Westernization can also be tracked in photographs and paintings from this time. The photographs and memories of Taj al-Saltaneh, the daughter of Naser al-Din Shah, indicate royal women’s interest in European customs: I was grown up and had turned into a beautiful girl. My father had decreed to dress me in European style, and often in pink and white. (Taj al-­ Saltaneh 1983: 31)

Interest in a European appearance remained in Taj al-Saltaneh and many others like her. In her memoirs, she criticizes some of her previous views and behaviors. Narrating the story of her interest in learning French, she also points to her excessive interest in European appearance because of an association with her French teacher. Eventually, she explains that she had misunderstood the concept of progress and thought that a Western appearance meant progress (Taj al-Saltaneh 1983: 109–110). According to the aforementioned, nineteenth-century Iran was a period of cultural transformations. We can trace social and cultural changes in memoirs, personal texts, and imported material culture, such as costumes, cosmetic kits, and accessories in this period. A Westernized class gradually emerged in Iran, mainly consisting of individuals from aristocratic and noble families, who tended to present a Europeanized figure of themselves and live in Western style, rather than joining the structural reforms.

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Gradually, from the Naseri era, reactions against the lifestyle of these groups emerged in society. Interestingly, some of the first reactions and critiques came from within the government and from reformist bureaucrats. The critiques that arose from intellectuals and writers of this period about farang, “Europe”, and the people who tried to imitate a European lifestyle, farangi ma’ab, “the Westernized”, have been reflected in this period’s writings and are significant from a socio-cultural point of view (Nategh 1979: 113). For example, Majd al-Molk Sinaki (2012: 58), a reformist Qajar bureaucrat, criticizes the blind imitation of Europe in his book Kashf al-Gharaeb, also known as Resaleye Majdiyeh. Generally, political unrest and the economic crisis continued after the revolution. In the years of the Revolution and after the establishment of the Constitution, Iran struggled between two colonial agreements from 1907, the Anglo-Russian Convention, and 1919, the Anglo-Persian Agreement. By signing the 1919 Agreement, the British effectively undermined Iran’s independence. The two powers agreed to seek concessions only within their own zones (Abrahamian 2008: 49). Aimed at the expansion of economic interests, the conventions accelerated the overflow of Western manufactured goods. Issawi (1983: 232–233) has discussed that such agreements influenced trade composition and its agents in favor of European mercantile interests. The Majles could not take adequate measures against powerful and influential groups, and many politicians cooperated with Britain (Makki 1978: 70; Zirinsky 1992: 650). Some Iranians, notably northern merchants whose trade with Russia and Britain had been embargoed, sought to restore equilibrium to Iran’s policy by restoring good relations with Russia (Zirinsky 1992: 641). With the formation of independent newspapers, the advertising of European products and services in the press also began. Newspaper advertisement pages had become a place to promote foreign goods, especially toiletries, textiles, lace, and ribbon. In addition, various precious fabrics, especially satin and broadcloth, shoes and boots, cosmetics and European-­ style tailor shops which were in great demand among aristocracy and nobles, were regularly advertised. According to newspapers and material culture, the population showed a positive response and tendency to buy expensive and low-quality foreign goods (see Nour al-Doja 1915a: 3–4). “Many of the Persian aristocrats also could afford to travel to Europe or to study abroad and had wives who enamored of the sophistication of Western life and the luxuries they

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had seen on their travels” (Lewinsohn 2015: 6). Traveling to Europe, they brought back their wives toiletries, perfumes, European textiles, outfits, and accessories. The ideals of beauty and standards for beauty features were restructured and became gradually Westernized (Dezhamkhooy 2022: 263). European fashion, which was introduced in Iran with the French word mode, became a popular issue. European women and men were considered the benchmark for mode, whereas before this, local and ethnic beauty features and the royal harem had played a leading role in setting fashion and beauty changes (Moier al-Mamalek 1982: 21; Ein al-Saltaneh 1997: 1070; Papoli-Yazdi and Dezhamkhooy 2021: 82–83). The Western style, farangi ma’ab, appeared more visible on the streets, becoming part of Iranian social life and the emerging modern culture, particularly in the capital city. “By the time of Ahmad Shah these foreign influences became very pronounced in the Lālehzār district and street in Tehran, since by then nearly all the foreign embassies and their staff were in the neighbourhood. Because of this Lālehzār became first street in all of Iran, even before Reza Shah’s decree in 1932 ordering the unveiling of women in public places, where European and Europeanized ladies could be seen promenading down the street unveiled in their hats and parasols” (Lewinsohn 2015: 7; Motamedi 2002: 490–491). Hence, the import of fashionable, European-­ style clothing, which shops and tailors constantly advertised, fueled the desire for consumption in the population specifically women, as “beauty became in an important sense feminized” (Najmabadi 2001: 92). In 1912, Alam-e Nesvan magazine wrote of the Iranian women’s penchant for the use of luxury objects: Nowadays, ladies consider wearing décolletage, using luxury objects and going to cinema and theater as essentials of civilization and trying to follow their European sisters, but unfortunately they are unaware of European etiquette. (Zandi 1933: 3–4)

It is noteworthy that women’s magazines and periodicals created much room for fashion, style, and appearance as compared to daily newspapers. Women’s magazines allocated pages to fashion-related subjects, such as the history of women’s makeup and new trends in costumes. In addition, they introduced seasonal fashion trends, especially for summer and winter. Danesh, the first women’s newspaper, accepted the first example of these

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advertisements. The last page of Danesh had been chiefly devoted to advertising tailoring houses and shops which offered European products. The following quote is an example of an advertisement in Danesh: Penedis Shop has recently offered women accessories such as gloves, pocket and handbags, handkerchiefs, perfume soaps and all kinds of perfumes, artificial flowers and European hair extensions. (Danesh, No. 25, 27 April 1911: 2)

Interestingly, the first written objection to the advertising of European goods was published on September 29, 1910, in the second issue of Danesh. A woman named Khanom-e Haji Mirza Yahya in a letter considered the advertising of European products against the national interest: I would like to ask the honorable director in chief of the newspaper to initiate an appropriate program to promote proper Iranian costumes instead of advertising madame’s [a metaphor for European shops] satin and lace. Thus, women can prepare their clothes from domestic textile. This strategy partly financially supports our economy. Thus, money that is so valuable and difficult to earn does not flow out of the country in return for these low-­quality fabrics. Noteworthy, Iranian silk fabrics are available for women’s clothing. Definitively, we should buy and wear domestic fabrics instead of visiting Madame’s satin and lace shop. (Khanom-e Haji Mirza Yahya 1910: 7)

Dr. Kahal, the director and editor in chief of Danesh, published this critique along with a courageous response in the newspaper. In response, she noted that she did not intend to encourage Iranian women to consume useless and nonfunctional European goods. Rather she accepted advertisements in order to cover the newspaper’s expenses. Khanom-e Haji Mirza Yahya’s strong reaction shows that along with women who welcomed the Western way of life, a new group of women was also emerging who denounced consumerism. At first, both groups, Westernized and activists, generally emerged from the heart of the aristocracy, but over time, especially in the years after the revolution, women from the traditional urban middle class, such as clerical families, merchant families, or the girls and wives of physicians, played a key role in the formation of intellectual and modern middle-class women. It seems that Khanom-e Haji Mirza Yahya, a woman without an aristocratic title, was also a woman of the emerging modern middle class, a woman who claimed the right to participate in the public sphere and strived for structural

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reforms. Below the pervasiveness of women’s backlash against consumption and their strategies to counter Western economic influence will be investigated.

The Coloniality of Consumption and Everyday Forms of Resistance Feminist standpoint theory approaches the world from women’s perspective and brings into consideration the experiences and knowledge of women, specifically oppressed women. According to the feminist standpoint of scholar Patricia Hill Collins (2000: 285) “concrete experience” provides the basis for women’s knowledge. “Women’s concrete experiences consist of what women do. They are the wide and diverse range of activities that women engage in as part of their everyday lives. From each of these concrete experiences, women have cultivated particular knowledge and unique sets of skills” (Brooks 2007: 57). “Activity is epistemology: women own realities through their different activities and experiences” (Hekman 1997: 343). The acquired knowledge and skills from daily life, respectively, provide the basis for women’s action and engagement in public. Based on their personal histories, individuals experience and resist domination differently (Collins 2000: 285). The feminist historian Bettina Aptheker (1989: 173) argues that a different kind of resistance has been “shaped by the dailiness of women’s lives”. She argues that the resistance strategies employed by women in their everyday lives and their families inform women’s participation in those struggles that are traditionally recognized as resistance movements. “It is a resistance that exists outside the parameters of those politics and outside the purview of any of the traditional definitions of progress and social change” (Aptheker 1989: 173). The interest in resistance corresponds with feminists’ concern with the power that women have to act in spite of or as a response to male domination (Allen 1998: 33). According to feminist scholarship, empowerment and resistance cannot be understood best as instances of power over; rather, these terms describe the capacity of an agent to act in spite of or in response to the power wielded over her by others (ibid.: 34). Hanna Pitkin (1985: 276) suggests, replacing “power over” with “power to” brings our attention to other aspects of power, especially the “powers of the allegedly powerless” (Mohaghegh Neyshabouri 2020: 43). The feminist standpoint

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approach to resistance highlights not only the existence of resistance in women’s lives, but also the different nature and forms of resistance when viewed from the perspective of women, as opposed to the androcentric ways in which the concept of resistance has been traditionally defined in society (Mohaghegh Neyshabouri 2020: 44). It is noteworthy that because of its different form, women’s resistance has often been omitted from the history recorded and told by those in power (Aptheker 1989: 169). Anthropologist James C. Scott (1985, 2008) also considers resistance in the context of the everyday lives of subordinate groups. According to Scott (2008: 33), much of the politics of subordinate groups falls into the category of everyday forms of resistance. They are highly “political” and constitute a form of “collective action”. Indeed, Scott shed light on everyday practices as strategies to cope with the power of superior groups. We can consider Scott’s notion through a gender lens as women’s lives profoundly tie to everyday life activities. “In line with feminist standpoint theory, the theory of everyday resistance stresses the significance of everyday life as the place where resistance takes place” (Mohaghegh Neyshabouri 2020: 49). In accordance with everyday forms of resistance, it is also useful to consider Asef Bayat’s (2013) notion of quiet encroachment, which is the extension of Scott’s resistance theory. Quiet encroachment might be more pertinent to examining the activism of marginalized groups (Bayat 2013: 47). Drawing on Scott, Bayat’s research on Iran, Egypt, and Tunisia (Bayat 2013, 2021) demonstrates the quiet encroachment of ordinary people in quotidian life and its transformations to resist social and political challenges that affect their life and the impact of these strategies on governments. “Although quiet encroachment also stems from the practices of everyday life, its key characteristic for Bayat is that it involves claim making: infringing actions rather than just defensive ones” (Mohaghegh Neyshabouri 2020: 151). Therefore, it can provide an appropriate framework to elaborate the establishment of associations and organized activities by Qajar women. As a matter of fact, Qajar women’s resistance against European manufactured goods has received less attention by historians. Women’s strategies have not been recognized as resistance due to the androcentric notions of political actions. On the other hand, the biased nature of historical knowledge has led to the removal of women from political and economic histories. Economics is still largely considered a male-dominant area and

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women’s role in economic activities and economic demonstrations has been chiefly neglected. Feminist standpoint scholars encourage us to use women’s experience as a lens through which to examine society as a whole (Brooks 2007: 59). The forms of Qajar women’s resistance are not the same as men’s (Mohaghegh Neyshabouri 2020: 46). It is noteworthy that Qajar women were greatly skilled in myriad tasks that they usually accomplished collectively on a daily basis. Consequently, women’s knowledge of the social world was different from elite men, politicians, and male revolutionists. Appreciating these differences help us understand and contextualize their strategies, choices, and ways of resistance. I began my analysis from the experiences of women as a group outside institutionalized political power, this resulted in a different understanding of the notions of progress and patriotism and in different forms of political expression and resistance. Influenced by their different lived experiences, women had different attitudes toward the economic crisis and the ways of coping with it. The notion of “coping” as a form of resistance goes against the usual connotation of the word which implies “more passive and accommodating qualities” (Aptheker 1989: 180). Contrary to popular interpretations of the domestic and passive role of women, it is evident that women played an active role in organizing activities against Western economic encroachment, both in public and private families, where they usually made the decisions. Women’s resistance was organized around two main issues: promoting domestic production and the boycott of Western manufactured goods. To achieve these goals, women adopted two main and interwoven lines of strategies based on their concrete experiences in everyday life; the promotion of home management skills, tadbir-e manzel (the defensive strategy), and, second, launching a series of organized activities, including the establishment of associations, cooperatives, and educational institutions (claim making). Women considered consumption and the appreciation of Western products a crisis, as it was practiced by families at a national level and had introduced long-term financial distress to the national economy. Anibal Quijano (2000: 533), the Peruvian sociologist, has applied the term coloniality to discuss the durability and stability of challenges which have a colonial origin and character. The economic penetration of Western powers implied an element of coloniality. Inspired by Quijano’s discussion, we can say that consumerism has proven to be more “durable and

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stable” than the colonial economic penetration in whose matrix it was established. Remarkably, issues such as Western domination and inappropriate foreign policy were the subjects of women’s activities, but with a different approach. Daily life became an arena for resistance against advancing imperialism (see Nategh 1990: 214–217; Stebbins 2016; Afkhami 2019: 7). Ranging from individual actions of women within their homes and families to the more organized group behavior of women’s associations and cooperatives, women reformers used a variety of strategies to warn against the consumption of European products and to undermine Western economic penetration. As Aptheker (1989: 174) points out, the everyday resistance of women “is informed by values of nurturance, connection, community, family and endurance”. Their centrality within the family led them to perform political action through existing family structures and transform it to a unit of resistance. Women used family structure as an “effective female sphere of influence” (Dill 1980) to raise awareness among citizens and resist the Western dominance. From the perspective of women, family life was a political issue. “For them, the family was a basic part of the system of political communication” (Kashani-Sabet 2005: 32). In short, women perceived society and private life as intersectional fields. Topics related to daily life were constantly addressed in women’s newspapers, from newspapers with less political content, such as Danesh, to moderately politically oriented ones, such as Shokoufeh, to more Avant-­ garde left-wing papers, such as Zaban-e Zanan. From women’s perspective, the country’s major problems and crises were relevant to problems and mismanagement in families and in individual decision-making. Therefore, poverty, hunger, and unemployment were discussed alongside the drop in domestic trade, the devastating impact of imports, and critiques of the statesmen and foreign policy. Maryam Amid, also known as Mozayan al-Saltaneh, the editor in chief, published in Shokoufeh: “What is the duty of women? We can serve the country in two ways: one is education, acquiring science and art, and the other is through economy” (Nour al-Doja 1915a: 3). Women argued for a fundamental change in citizens’ lifestyles that could resolve some major crises. In this process, women as “home managers” played a leading role. The main themes that were emphasized in women’s writings included family economics, lower and proper consumption, and learning manual skills, especially sewing and

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handicrafts. Female revolutionists believed that Iranian women should not only avoid buying foreign goods, but should acquire a proper knowledge of housekeeping and raising children to support the country (Azad 1916: 3–4). In one of the articles published by Tayereh in Iran-e Now on December 18, 1909 (the first year number 91), she addresses Iranian women: If we want to free our dear homeland from the suffering of poverty and dependency and not to bother ourselves seeking for reliable servants, we must learn the science of housekeeping, marriage etiquette and morals, reduce our costs, and leave spending money on the useless things; instead we should fund girls’ education.

Hence, the practice of everyday life was fundamentally changed during the revolutionary days. In fact, the emergence of new understandings of daily maintenance activities with the purpose of supporting domestic industries linked public and private in women’s writings. “It enabled Iranian women to regard themselves not just as participants in the domestic realm, but also as contributors to the civic community” (Kashani-Sabet 2005: 33). Consider this following example about imported goods; the author links the daily life of families to the country’s financial crisis and economic dependence: With a loud voice that resonates across our beloved homeland, I ask honorable Iranian ladies to consider your beloved country and your unemployed husbands and innocent children. Stop keeping up with the Joneses and don’t waste your income and your husbands’ on low quality and unoriginal European goods. Definitively, you will be cursed by next generations and your posterity. (Mozayan al-Saltaneh 1914c: 4)

Therefore, the life of women that in the words of Mehrtaj Rakhshan, a reformist and women’s activist, was always considered as an invaluable and irrelevant subject with women as passive dead people (Rakhshan 1910) now mattered and had become a subject which deserves discussion. Indeed, the knowledge gleaned from women’s everyday experience served as a helpful tool for revisiting daily routine and, in particular, managing household finance and stressing the role of women in public. “From their shared knowledge of what life was really like for them” (Brooks 2007: 61), women developed a critical perspective on the economic and political reality.

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Soon Shokoufeh, the most prominent women’s journal of the time, became a safe space for leading women, such as Sediqeh Dowlatabadi and Shahnaz Azad, who later published the Zaban-e Zanan and Nameh-ye Banovan newspapers. Shahnaz Azad wrote column essays about the mission of Iranian women entitled “Iranian Women” in Shokoufeh, in which she particularly emphasized skill training, and denounced consumerism and the purchase of Western goods. In an article entitled “The Role of Women in Public Services”, Nadimbashi, a male audience or journalist, discusses that Iranian women should increase their awareness and knowledge of consumption and family economics, so that they can at least manage their homes (Zia al-Din Nadimbashi 1914: 2). Those who penned articles in revolutionary newspapers also discussed the significance of women’s education for the purpose of proper daily routine and its role in the development of the country. Noteworthy, women called schools “human-making factories” in their writings (see Mozayan al-Saltaneh 1913: 1). Women started to teach housekeeping, parenting skills, and handicrafts at schools along with lessons also taught in boys’ schools. Maryam Amid, the director in chief of Shokoufeh, established a girls’ school called Dar al-Elm va Sanaye’ Mozayaniyeh. The courses there included Persian, French, Arabic, history, geography, geometry, handicrafts, and home management (National Library of the Islamic Republic of Iran 1999: 2). Women’s newspapers published essays and notes in relatively simple language and gave simple examples to clarify the case precisely. These examples, which focused on the lifestyles of different classes, attempted to elucidate how every ordinary person contributes to the country’s economic crisis, how a woman who buys an eight-toman European boot places financial pressure on the family economy and causes the country to rely on the West economically and politically due to the growing demand for imports. Essentially, growing consumption and the Westernized lifestyle were considered as prominent factors involved in the economic crisis, for example: Iranian women are mostly unaware of their duties and national responsibilities, and the history of their land and ancestors. They destroy Iran by buying and using foreign goods. They even can’t sew their dresses and undershirts and ask Armenian and European tailors to sew them. A woman whose husband’s monthly income is less than 20 tomans, should not wear boots which cost eight tomans. Definitively, this is wrong. (Azad 1916: 3)

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Therefore, a critical approach was developed among women which placed more emphasis on lifestyle modification and the personal responsibility of citizens in the country’s economic reconstruction. A competent woman should be educated to manage the house; however, the meaning of home management during these years was not merely to provide comfort to a husband as didactic literature prescribed. In women’s writings, women’s inferiority in the patriarchal system has been denounced, but at the same time, women have been presented as individuals who have agency and should change the lifestyle of the families to save/serve the country. They brought the issue of home management and maintenance activities into the public sphere and considered the social and political aspects of daily routines. It is also noteworthy that women’s efforts were not restricted to press activities. Expanding the scope of their activities, women established associations, cooperatives, and economic campaigns. The main goal of these activities was the revival of Iranian traditional industries and the promotion of Iranian products. They bought shares of homegrown companies and started negotiations with prominent merchants and businessmen to support Iran’s economy (Nahid 1981: 111). Two main groups of women had a leading role in these activities: teachers and journalists. Both of these groups should be considered revolutionists who usually organized themselves in women’s associations. Women’s support of Iranian goods and the establishment of Hemmat-e Khavatin Association is one of the best examples of women’s collective and organized activities. Prominent female reformers, such as Maryam Amid were among the leading operators of the Association (National Library of the Islamic Republic of Iran 1999: 8). In the five weeks after its establishment, this organization registered 5000 women members (Sedghi 2007: 55). In its manifesto, which was published in Shokoufeh in 1915, the Association strongly criticized the indiscriminate importation of Western goods: “From clothing to shroud, other utensils and furniture, these come from abroad” (Mozayan al-Saltaneh 1915a: 1). The Association published a “bill” in Shokoufeh that acted as the public organ of the Association. The bill, written by Nur al-Doja, the inspector of girls’ schools in Tehran, stated that “the primary goal of establishing the Association was firstly to promote domestic products and secondly the development and promotion of traditional arts and handicrafts between students and women”

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(Nour al-Doja 1915b: 1–2). The bill briefly presents solutions for the “development of homegrown textiles”, the most important of which being “its use among women in general and students in particular” (ibid.: 1). The bill further stated that Iranian women’s communication with Europeans had recently increased, and European customs and habits have influenced them. This influence also included clothing style, particularly including a growing interest in dresses with decorated margins and lacework (ibid.: 2). The Association asked women to avoid buying Western machine-made lace and instead to use handmade ones produced by Iranian women and female students. In this way, the promotion of homegrown products between women, school staff, and pupils was supported by school managers, who were the principal members of the Association. Shokoufeh encouraged the use of Iranian textiles and shoes; Maryam Amid cooperated with the Association to promote and sell Iranian products in Dar al-Elm Mozayaniyeh School and the newspaper’s office. The manager of Om al-Madares high school published a note in Iran-e Now calling for solidarity and fundraising to reconstruct the country. In her writing, she emphasizes the significance of a proper lifestyle and ties it to national interests and independence: To apply Western cosmetics, accessories and luxury goods brings dishonor and disgrace upon us. Instead, we should promote and improve the quality of internal textiles and goods. Signed: Khademehy-e Vatan, the servant of the country, the manager of Om al-Madares High School, the daughter of Emam al-Hokama. (Rakhshan 1910)

Women’s efforts were not limited to Tehran. Sherkat-e Khavatin-e Isfahan, a women-based cooperative, was established in 1918 by Sediqeh Dowlatabadi. With the financial support of women, three small textile workshops, in which their weavers were all women, were established in three different cities of Iran. They produced handmade silk fabrics in Yazd, wool in Kerman, and linen and cotton in Isfahan (Sanati 1998: 16; Nahid 1981: 111). Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, in a speech delivered at a gathering at Dorrat al-Ma’ali’s home, the manager of Mokhaddarat-e Eslami School, again supported homegrown textiles and denounced the indiscriminate importation of foreign goods:

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A wealthy country is a country that exports more than imports. It simply means selling more and buying less. Unfortunately, our country imports more. (Dowlatabadi 1998: 175–178)

Politicians and local elites played a serious role in the country’s economic downturn and the decline of the domestic goods market. Research (Abrahamian 1979; Homayoun Katouzian 2012: 92; Nategh 1990: 212; Momeni 1966: 10) shows how local elites and high-profile merchants’ commercial interests interacted with the economic encroachment of the West. Some Persian merchants were nonetheless able to take advantage of the new relations with Europe (Keddie 1972: 71). The Hemmat-e Khavatin Association negotiated with businessmen and called on Iranian merchants to cooperate with the Association and expand the distribution of Iranian textiles throughout the country (Mozayan al-Saltaneh 1915a: 2). The Association managed successful negotiations with some cooperatives and companies, established by Iranian merchants, to promote and distribute Iranian textiles across the country. In one case, the Association facilitated the distribution of Isfahan textiles in the Tehran bazaar (Mozayan al-Saltaneh 1915b: 1). Moreover, the Association and Shokoufeh displayed Iranian textiles for sale in their own offices. Shokoufeh also encouraged “boys’ school managers to strive to promote homegrown fabrics among their students” (Mozayan al-Saltaneh 1915a: 1–3). Women linked the promotion of domestic industry with traditional lifestyles and gradually began referring to the past and recalling the ways of life that relied on proper consumption, thrift, and self-sufficiency. The past needed to be remembered. Drawing on collective memory, women tried to stimulate the nation to revive recent past lifestyles. A past that was not like the elitist Aryan myth and the glory of ancient Persia, which was discussed as an emerging form of nationalism by male journalists, intellectuals, and politicians. It was the past that people could remember in its details. This past was a recent past of ordinary people; men and women who used to use durable goods and adequately reuse and recycle things. These were the people whose lifestyles were chiefly based on thriftiness, saving, and providence. Iranian traditional industry used durable and natural materials, such as silver, animal bones, wool, and different kinds of metal, specifically copper and iron and alloys such as brass (see Floor 1992). Remarkably, durability was a highly appreciated ethos in Qajar Iran, and preservation, reuse, and frugality were highly cherished. Handmade and traditional industry

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products and textiles were passed down from generation to generation in families as capital. They were also used as offerings and gifts, instead of money, by the royal court and elite families in ceremonies, royal visits, and on special occasions (see Etemad al-Saltaneh 2000; Shirazi 2018; National Library of the Islamic Republic of Iran 1999). Western industrial products and manufactured goods transformed this ethos, as those products nurtured mass consumption, driven by fashion, planned obsolescence, cheap materials, and product availability. By this time, increased consumption and the use of fast-moving goods prevailed, such as crystal, glass, and porcelain, also including, but not limited to, nondurable clothes, such as cheap textiles, socks, and boots. Iranian goods and textiles produced from durable materials, such as copper, brass, gold, silver, zari, a unique recyclable Persian handmade textile, and Iranian handmade silk and termeh, a precious fine textile, were replaced by poor-­ quality and fragile manufactured goods. Indeed, Iranians had gone from saving capital, in the form of precious metals, durable goods, and handmade objects, to capital consumption. As a response woman consciously sought alternative lifestyles. They particularly emphasized saving in the form of precious metal, particularly gold, which was a long-established female tradition, and the application of durable/recyclable household goods and utensils by women (National Library of the Islamic Republic of Iran 1999: 210). Women strived to promote the sustainable lifestyles of the recent past which had been marginalized in favor of modern encroaching mass production: What was wrong with the fair fabrics of Yazd, Kashan and Kerman? Why did we stop using them in favor of European low-quality satin and rotten velvet? What are the advantages of using European textile? Since, we have appreciated flashy but low-quality European goods we have destroyed our country. (Mozayan al-Saltaneh 1914: 4)

Women even saw the root of some social problems in the decline of domestic trade and traditional industry. In the lower classes and among individuals who entered bankruptcy, several problems were prevalent: We believe that the extraordinary prevalence of opium is a result of the development of Iran’s relations with foreign countries and the import of cheap foreign goods. Since then, thousands of Iranian artisans, merchants, businessmen and shopkeepers have been made insolvent and homeless. (Payk-e Saadat Nesvan 1928: 70)

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Women’s approach to the reforms and progress was distinctive in challenging the fundamental assumptions about women’s passivity and ignorance. It also strongly questioned conservative distinctions between public, private, and political. Female revolutionists emphasized individual responsibility and duty and challenged family life as apolitical and private. They gradually found that reforms were not possible without changes in Iranian lifestyles. With the rise of the authoritarian Pahlavi government, most of the efforts made by the women’s movement remained fruitless. Although the nationalist Pahlavi government claimed to promote development and progress, the economic policies and formal modernization of the regime were against the democratic reforms in practice. The imposition of a European dress code and unveiling intensified textile imports and fueled emerging consumerism. Equally, the elimination of women’s independent organizations paved the way for the oppression of women and the construction of a Westernized face for women, which was linked to consumption while emphasizing women’s role in domestic space.

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CHAPTER 6

From Resistance to Repression: Modernization and Transformations of Women’s Movement

Abstract  This chapter analyses the new state’s modernization project as a multifaceted project that stimulated the institutionalization of the modern gender system. It discusses the systematic suppression of the press and women’s independent organizations in the Pahlavi era (1921–1941) and the establishment of state-sponsored women’s organizations. The chapter investigates how this process implied new notions of housework as apolitical and pushed women into domestic space. The argument has been situated in socio-political transformations after the establishment of the Pahlavi regime such as the class interest and the cooperation of the old aristocracy with the new state. Eventually, the changing and dynamic nature of women’s resistance at the beginning of the twentieth century has been briefly interrogated. Keywords  Reza Shah • Oppression • Leftism • Class interest • Women’s Centre • Depoliticized domesticity • Transformations of women’s resistance

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Dezhamkhooy, Women and the Politics of Resistance in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28097-9_6

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Systematic Suppression of the Press and Women’s Independent Organizations in Post-Constitutional Era II (1921–1941) Hey Mola Amou, now you realize that I was right, it is not possible to tell the truth in Iran. Do you know what has happened to me because of saying the truth? Now, I am so frightened that I refuse to say the truth, and I also refuse to be unjust. Before the Constitution, I sympathized with Iranian people, and I told the truth a few times. But they grabbed me, tied my feet to the tree and beat me so strongly that I was hospitalized for three or four months each time. Moreover, they just got a heavy fine. Yes, finally, the Constitution established in Iran. (Molla Nasraddin 1921)

The main characteristics of this period of political instability are the dethronement of Ahmad Shah, the decline of the Qajar dynasty, and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925. In the second decade of the twentieth century, the process of transformation from an unstable political structure to the establishment of centralization and the rise of Reza Khan to power led to pressure on the public sphere. This period begins with the Black coup d’état of February 22, 1921, under the support of Britain, which led to the appointment of Reza Khan, an unknown Cossack officer, to the Ministry of War and Seyyed Zia al-Din Tabataba’i, an anglophile journalist, as prime minister (Abrahamian 2015: 49; Zirinsky 1992: 639). In 1925 Reza Khan officially succeeded the Qajar dynasty and was crowned as the first king of the Pahlavi dynasty. The Shah ruled from 1925 until 1941 when Britain and Russia deposed him during World War II (Cronin 1994: 724; Zirinsky 1992: 639; Keddie 2003: 88). Establishing his authoritarian power based on a modern army and a centralized administrative system—and the country’s rising oil revenues—he was able to control ministers, parliamentarians, the press, and the nation (Abrahamian 2015: 50; Ghods 1991: 223). Under this rulership eastern tyranny was gradually reconfigured as modernity and Westernization (Abrahamian 2015: 50; Sedghi 2007: 65). The government established a repressive modernization project that dismantled the public sphere and eliminated citizens’ participation in decision-­making as one of the Constitutional Revolution ideals (Sedghi 2007: 65). Reza Shah considered democracy and independent political action to hinder rapid modernization. The Shah and a small group of the politicians close to him decided for the country, engineered the elections,

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“and a twenty-year tradition of independent political campaigning was brought to an end” (Paidar 1997: 102). As a result of these changes, the public no longer played an influential role in politics, and there were no more demonstrations (Abrahamian 2015: 50; McFarland 1985: 52). Regarding socio-political transformations, especially the women’s resistance, the second post-Constitutional era can be divided into three main sub-phases: Phase 1: 1921–1925 (power transition) Phase 2: 1925–1931 (suppression) Phase 3: 1931–1941 (the establishment of women’s governmental organizations) Generally, the pressure on women’s activists had begun during the reign of Ahmad Shah. Unveiled women had at this time received warnings and their newspapers were censored (Sedghi 2007: 56). Women’s newspapers and associations were also threatened by extremists and conservatives. For example, Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, the director of Zaban-e Zanan, was repeatedly threatened and harassed by extremists at her newspaper office and home. When she wrote an editorial about the death of freedom, she received death threats from fundamental clerics (Sanati 1998: 15). In a telegram to the Minister of Education, the Friday Imam of Isfahan described the publication of Zaban-e Zanan as against Islam and sharia and asked for its seizure (Bayat and Kuhestaninejad 1993: 583). Moreover, the government had searched its publishing house and censored Dowlatabadi’s writings (Sedghi 2007: 56). Finally, in 1921 Zaban-e Zanan was banned by the ruler of Isfahan under the orders of Sepahdar Azam, the prime minister, due to criticizing the government, particularly the disgraceful 1919 Agreement. Women’s activities during Reza Shah’s reign underwent two distinct phases. The women’s movement in the early 1920s, the power transition phase, was small, but almost independent. Continuing to stress earlier themes, women spoke out against the government, the intervention of foreign powers and their own unequal status (Sedghi 2007: 76). From 1925 to 1931, the regime severely suppressed free thinkers and monitored the public sphere. With the emergence of communism in Russia, Iranian reformists were also influenced by left-wing tendencies (Mohammad Gholizadeh 1997: 37; Taj al-Saltaneh 1983: 59; Nahid 1981: 115). During these years, many journalists and freethinkers were

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imprisoned, exiled, or assassinated in the regime’s dungeons in appalling ways (Makki 1978: 72). “The fate of women’s organizations was no better” (Paidar 1997: 102; Nahid 1981: 123). Independent women’s organizations were repressed by the authoritarian regime, particularly in Phases 2 and 3, while women’s governmental sponsored institutions and organizations were established. The first striking and vivid examples of systematic women’s arrest and imprisonment due to social and political activities occurred under Reza Shah. “In Qazvin the Women’s Society was crushed and twenty-four of its members were imprisoned for holding pro-communist views. Namehy-e Banovan was forced to stop publication and its founder Shahnaz Azad was imprisoned for criticizing Reza Shah” (Soltanzadeh 1974: 105–106). Women such as Jamileh Sedighi and Showkat Rousta, the editorial board members of Peyk-e Sa’adat-e Nesvan, were sentenced by Reza Shah’s regime to four years’ imprisonment in Tehran Women’s Prison (Ebrahimi 1975: 319; Nahid 1981: 113). These individuals were charged with having communist/socialist sympathies. According to Maryam Firouz (1948), unfortunately, in 1931 the dictatorial authorities dissolved the Society Peyk-e Sa’adat-e Nesvan. In the following section, the intention is to briefly examine the birth of state-sponsored feminism and mechanisms of repression that were also applied through daily life, the gender system, and the economy; the latter being partly associated with the government’s gender politics. On the other hand, relatively rapid class transformations can be discussed as part of the socio-political dynamics of this period. This factor plays a role in the transformations of women’s movements, the social status of women, and the rise of a new class of women, who were in close contact with the government and participated in the establishment of state-dependent depoliticized organizations and activities.

The Emergence of State-Sponsored Women’s Organizations and Depoliticized Domesticity In the years of the Revolution, women had insisted on a mutual relationship between lifestyle and household consumption, and macroeconomics and politics. Therefore, proper home management and the role of women in managing the family economy were discussed as a means to support the country’s independence, especially from an economic perspective. Indeed,

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women challenged the duality of public and private and regarded daily life as a highly political phenomenon. Drawing on this approach to daily life, women infringed upon encroachments exhibited in the campaigns and resistance against foreign goods. Women signed their writings with signatures, such as “the servant of the nation” and “the devotee of the homeland”, which implied responsible citizenship and the right to participate in the public sphere. The heritage of the years of resistance for women provided considerable insight into the significance of the contribution of all citizens regardless of gender, age, ethnic and religious borders. Nevertheless, women still wrote of responsible citizenship and the need for public participation in the development of the country and the role of women in this direction: We should determinedly act to develop the homeland. It is important to encourage the sluggish people to contribute. We should strive for the increase of schools. The industry should be promoted. Women’s upbringing, which is the basis of the country’s progress, should be considered. Noteworthy, we, the women, should not be provoked by irrational words like women cannot work. (Zaban-e Zanan 1920a: 1–2)

With the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty, women’s daily maintenance activities were gradually considered as housework related to private and family life and separate from public life. The new regime mainly expected women to be good wives and mothers responsible for nurturing patriotic soldiers. Indeed, Reza Shah upheld the soldier as the model for citizenship (Najmabadi 1991: 53). Modern gender norms fueled this redefining of women’s domestic roles. Maria Lugones (2007: 186), the leading feminist philosopher, considers the modern gender system to be a colonial and violent phenomenon. “Essential to this project was the need to form a modernist culture that lauded matrimony, domesticity, and motherhood. Popular newspapers as well as school curricula reinforced women’s familial responsibilities, even as they invited women to complement their household duties with work outside the home” (Kashani-Sabet 2006: 2). Women were advised to consider marriage as a traditional duty with the purpose of procreation (Kashani-Sabet 2006: 20). Accordingly, housework was considered part of the woman’s essential duties and was depoliticized. If women were previously advised to learn to sew in order to avoid buying foreign clothes, they

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should now learn to tailor, because it was an essentially feminine duty that was necessary for housewifery. Thus, despite their immense propaganda on the emancipation of women, the new regime did not appreciate women’s economic and political contributions. Najmabadi (1991: 54) has discussed that the new regime didn’t consider women as a labor force. The new state, instead, was to be a modern one, eliminating whatever was seen as vestiges of backwardness, such as the veil. The following account by Mehrangiz Dolatshahi, the activist and politician, is considerable: In 1947–1948, we initiated activities, meetings and debates to discuss women’s development. I remember that Ms. Bamdad, who belonged to one of the first generations of activists, published a newspaper called Zan-e Emrouz. They [the Pahlavi regime] had banned this newspaper; I went to the office of General Razmara because the curfew had confiscated it. He called Ms. Bamdad and talked to her. General Razmara said, ‘you should do your duties, such as housewifery and housekeeping’. She said: ‘We do housekeeping, but our house has grown up. We consider the whole country our home. (Dolatshahi 1984: cassette 3:6)

It is worth noting that a new class of male elite had also emerged, who monopolized political power and allocated maintenance activities to women as their natural duty. The new male-dominant political atmosphere participated in the construction of a new model for being a woman, the modern woman (Amin 1999: 355). Modern Iranian women should be educated, unveiled, and secure in monogamous matrimony in order to create a more harmonious family structure (ibid.: 351). State policies have tended to “ensure that women’s lives inside and outside the home remained under the control of male guardians” (Paidar 1995: 117). “The modern Iranian woman of Pahlavi propaganda was never imagined as independent of male guardianship” (Amin 1999: 352; Paidar 1995: 358). Remarkably, the king, Reza Shah, was considered “the Great Father” (Amin 1999: 362) who manifested the idea of guardianship. “It should therefore come as no surprise that maintenance activities should have lost social recognition in a context of growing social inequality, as they were cornered into a domestic sphere progressively differentiated from the public realm of power, a dualism which the much more integrated past social reality was split into” (Montón-Subías 2018: 19).

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It is also noteworthy that the introduction of the modern gender system and the marginalization of women through domestic work paralleled the prohibition of women’s organizations. Following the Pahlavi regime’s centralized policy, all these organizations were finally shut down in the late 1920s, the last of which was closed in 1932 for unknown reasons (Sanasarian 2005: 57–83; Nahid 1981: 123). “The state co-opted women’s undertakings, presenting itself as the champion of their emancipation; it drew on female supporters of the monarchy, and banned the initiatives of oppositional women. The rise of the strong state, thus, made women’s autonomous activities obsolete as it exploited women’s earlier efforts for its Westernization and centralization policies” (Sedghi 2007: 76). The repression of women’s organizations gradually paved the way for the emergence of state-sanctioned women’s organizations. One of these, the Iranian Women’s Centre, Kanun-e Banovan, was founded in 1935 on the order of Reza Khan and headed by his daughter Shams Pahlavi (Sedghi 2007: 62; Hafezian 2009: 37). Chronologically, the Centre was established after suppressing and eradicating of independent women’s organizations (Sanasarian 2005: 90; Paidar 1995: 102). All of this led to one of the most important and historically controversial social programs of the day: The Women’s Awakening of 1936. The program aimed to liberate Iranian women from a vilified traditional and forced women to achieve a standardized vision of modern Iranian woman (Amin 1999: 359). With the formation of government-controlled women’s organizations, particular forms of apolitical social activities were introduced that defined women’s roles within the family and emphasized training and skills related to domestic activities and housewifery. The Women’s Centre avoided any political activities and taught women housewifery in order to foster the development of proper wives for husbands and of mothers for children (Afary 2009: 154; Elwell-Sutton 1949: 53). The activities of the Centre were initially restricted to unveiling, vocational training, home economics, education, charity, and the shaping of patriotic female citizens (Afary 2009: 151; Hafezian 2009: 37). There was no longer any encouragement to change lifestyle and learn home management with a view to fighting Western economic imperialism. In fact, the state-controlled women’s organization demonstrates a shift from resistance and women’s contribution to public needs to a depoliticized feminine agenda. The message was clear: Women either had to stay at home under the supervision of their husbands and fathers or operate under the supervision of the government.

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The Women’s Centre also had a charitable function, and noblewomen honorarily cooperated with this. The women’s movement, which initiated autonomous activities to support the country, had now been demoted to depoliticized charity. Indeed, the Centre and its function symbolized the metamorphosis of the women’s movement under Reza Shah’s dictatorship and his modernization project. Naturally, many activists refused to cooperate with the Centre. For example, Roshanak Nowdust, the director of the banned magazine Peyk-e Sa’adat-e Nesvan and an active member of the banned Association of Sa’adat-e Nesvan in Rasht northern Iran, did not cooperate with the Women’s Centre in Gilan province. Until Reza Shah’s downfall, Roshanak’s activities were devoted to the education of Gilani girls and women (Massoudi and Mohajer 2011: 24–25). Remarkably, Roshanak was no exception; during 1931–1941 many activists were drastically forced to reduce the scope of their activities. Whereas those who decided to join the governmental associations were forced to change their manner, perspective, and activities. For example, Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, who published the avant-garde Zaban-e Zanan newspaper, changed her perspective after joining the Centre and accepting its management. Holding the anniversary of unveiling day (January 7, 1936) was among the activities of Dowlatabadi (Sanati 1998: 17), which was itself a sign of working under Reza Shah’s program. Zaban-e Zanan, which was banned in Isfahan, was published again in Tehran in 1922 and 1942 (Torabi-Farsani 2016: 79; Mohit-Tabatabaei 1987: 174; Sanati 1998: 15). The contents of Zaban-e Zanan during this period, discussing the programs and achievements of Women’s Centre, are accompanied by a kind of conservatism (Sanati 1998: 15). During this period, Dowlatabadi declared that educating women in mothering and nurturing was the motto and the goal of Zaban-e Zanan. For example, in the first issue published in December 1942, we read: “What women need is knowledge of housekeeping, proper ways of treating a husband, childbearing, family hygiene, sewing, cooking and tailoring; these are the topics that always have a special place in Zaban-e Zanan” (Zaban-e Zanan 1942: 2). It seems that, despite all the feminist thoughts of the editor, what women need to know remained only within the framework of home, husband, and children (Sanati 1998: 15). Dowlatabadi, who had denounced Britain’s and Russia’s interference and opposed the 1919 Agreement, was interested in socialism (see Zaban-e Zanan 1920b, 1–2; Nahid 1981: 111), and in launching campaigns and cooperatives to support Iranian textiles and products now emphasized housekeeping as woman’s duty.

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Class Interest and Transformations of Women’s Resistance It is noteworthy that changes in the goals, scopes, and approaches of the women’s movement were to some extent the result of class interest which itself led to different attitudes toward resistance, different directions, and the cooperation of aristocratic women with the government’s program. Indeed, the different social positions of stakeholders generated inherently opposing interests. The history of the modernization of the country and women’s participation is “an actualization and structuralization of various and ever new forms of class interests and class conflicts, with which the consciousness of members of the social group involved is inevitably connected” (Hochfeld 1967: 6). Reza Khan’s relationship with Qajar titled aristocracy, who had a different social background from his, was complex, particularly during his rise to power. Nevertheless, some influential elites and members of the aristocracy were incorporated into the new regime. From the Shah’s point of view, to build a strong state you needed first and foremost intelligent, educated, and forward-looking men (Afkhami 2009: 20). These were likely aristocratic, well educated, ideologically sophisticated, but not comparably strong or committed individuals. Almost all of them were old enough to have experienced the Constitutional Revolution, although by the time Reza Khan came to power many had lost their fervor for constitutionalism. Reza Khan served with them in the cabinet and called on them for political advice (Afkhami 2009: 19–20). Aristocratic women enjoyed their families strong relationship with the court and the official positions of their husbands. According to Mehrangiz Dolatshahi (1984: cassette 3:6), aristocratic women, even when educated, did not work, as they considered working against their dignity and social status. It is naturally worth noting that work, especially physical labor, was a symbol for the lower classes (see Papoli-Yazdi and Dezhamkhooy 2021: 111; see also Bayat 1997, 2013). Hence, women’s work in offices was exclusive to machine writing, usually done by women from poor or middle-­ class families who had inadequate educational backgrounds (Dolatshahi 1984: cassette3:14). On the other hand, within Reza Shah’s modernization project women were urged to participate in the building of the newly forming state bureaucracy, rather than become part of the labor force in factories. This limited the project from the start to only certain sections of upper- and

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middle-class urban women (Najmabadi 1991: 54). Aristocratic women honorarily participated in charitable or even political government-­affiliated activities, such as the unveiling-day ceremony. Therefore, noblewomen established or participated in women’s activities which often operated under the supervision of the government, such as the Women’s Centre, or acted as a government office, such as the Women’s Deputy of Tehran Municipality. It seems that participation in state-sponsored activities symbolized the loyalty of the aristocracy to the regime and guaranteed the position of titled high-ranking families. Mehrangiz Dolatshahi (1984, cassette 3:5) points to women’s participation in charity in the final years of Reza Shah’s rule, during World War II and after the end of the war. According to Dolatshahi, at the time of her arrival back in Iran in spring 1946, after studying sociology in Germany and five years after the dethronement of Reza Shah, there were numerous charity organizations in Tehran, but there was only a women’s party that worked for political rights. According to the aforementioned, it should be noted that class interest and socio-political attitudes of the agents are prominent factors in the transformations of women’s movements. Since its beginning the women’s movement did not necessarily consist of aligned groups with similar approaches and perspectives. As we travel further away from the days of the Constitutional Revolution, competitions and different approaches of women activists become more apparent. This is neither a coincidence nor merely the result of the time. Instead, the historicity of differences should be considered within the socio-political context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Issues such as the change of government and the rise of a loyal aristocracy and their access to finance and governmental support played a significant role in transformations of the women’s movement. The establishment of political parties in Iran, especially the emergence of leftist parties, such as the Tudeh Party, played a crucial role in the reflourishing of women’s independent movements (Elwell-Sutton 1949: 53). During these years and despite violent suppression, leftist movements were growing in Iran. Advocating socialism and communism, groups of women established independent associations with socialist tendencies, such as Jam’iyat-e Nesvan-e Vatankhah, the Patriotic Women League, and Sazeman-e Bidariy-e Zanan, the Awakening of Women Organization (Nahid 1981: 114–118; Paidar 1997: 102; Kambakhsh 1972: 31). Remarkably, these groups pursued goals and plans for the future of Iran and Iranian women that differed from those of women from

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the aristocracy who preferred to work with the government. The new generation of intellectual women and activists opposed the Pahlavi government and denounced the aristocracy (Nahid 1981: 112–118; Ebrahimi 1975: 319). Mehrangiz Dolatshahi’s narrative of independent activists who resisted cooperation with governmental parties is of consideration: A group of women came to negotiate with Mr. Mozaffar Firouz, [a politician and Qajar aristocrat], but they didn’t reach an agreement. Firouz and his colleagues wanted the women’s organization to be completely inside the Democratic party, and they wanted to stay on the side and maintain their independence. (Dolatshahi 1984: cassette 3:5)

Although many women activists had aristocratic origins and became influential figures in the early years of the women’s movement, independent middle-class women helped sustain the women’s independent movement, especially in the Pahlavi era. The main characteristic of the members of this group was education and expertise instead of aristocratic descent. Their close contact with society had given them a deep understanding of the issues of different groups of urban, rural, and nomadic populations. Indeed, most of Iran’s population, which remained rural and experienced poverty and deprivation, was ignored by the government and women’s activists working according to the government’s policies. The writings of women’s activists specifically the leftists, such as Roshanak Nowdust (see Peyk-e Sa’adat-e Nesvan 1928: 99–100; Massoudi and Mohajer 2011), criticize a group of women who were merely advocating state-sponsored modernization and were interested in the flashy Western lifestyle. According to Nowdust they didn’t recognize the importance of structural reforms, ignored women’s major issues, and the rural and nomad population (Massoudi and Mohajer 2011: 9–10). Nancy Dowd (2010) in the Question of Men: Men’s Subjugation and Privilege emphasizes that anti-essentialist feminists have rightly drawn our attention to the differences between women of different classes and the intersectionality of privilege and inequality. The governmentalization of women’s activities continued under Mohammad Reza Shah (r.1941–1979) with the emergence of more prominent government-affiliated women’s organizations and parties, such as the Women’s Organization of Iran, established in 1966 (Sanasarian 2005: 129).

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CHAPTER 7

Epilogue

Abstract  The concluding chapter draws together the main arguments and results of the research, highlighting the dynamic nature of women’s lives and their systematic resistance against Western encroachment. The chapter also calls for rethinking methodological issues and discusses how Pahlavi propaganda has affected Qajar studies in general and the role of women in particular. Lastly, it suggests the application of novel conceptual and methodological means to improve the study of women in past societies. Keywords  Qajar studies • Pahlavi propaganda • Women’s resistance • Political action This book has discussed whether and how the women’s movement has contributed to the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906. In it I have tried to discuss two key issues of women’s contribution, namely, women’s daily life and their systematic resistance against Western economic penetration. I began with a methodological question about the marginal role of women. In fact, methodological challenges have led to the gender imbalance in academic research in favor of elite men. My first finding of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Dezhamkhooy, Women and the Politics of Resistance in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28097-9_7

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this journey was the origins of the relative absence of women in political and economic histories of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iran. Qajar studies of early twentieth century have been strongly affected by later Pahlavi propaganda against the Qajars. One of the key dimensions of this propaganda was the image of Qajar women as passive and oppressed. The new regime wanted to legitimize itself based on its interpretation of history and culture. This went along with Western views, particularly Orientalism, which saw the women of Orient as inferior in colonialist hierarchies and relations. Therefore, it was appropriate to consider how this model has been implemented in the studies of gender and women. Nonetheless, to study women’s resistance we do not necessarily need new data, but rather new methodological concerns in favor of gender equality and a more dynamic picture of past societies in research. The organized resistance against import and consumption is one of the critical aspects of the Constitutional Revolution but it has been rarely investigated. This ignorance has two main aspects: First, the Iranian Constitutional Revolution has been mainly recognized for male-centered political actions, armed resistance, and nationalist (masculine) implications, such as the praise of ancient empires and male heroes. The long-­ term omission of women from the intellectual history has been discussed by some scholars (see Smith 2007). Remarkably, female reformists are not considered part of the Iranian intelligentsia and are usually discussed as a separate category, as women activists, in most of the research. Only a handful of research has investigated the role of women in the Revolution (see Afary 1998, 2006, 2009; Sanasarian 2005). These studies have mainly examined the women’s movement for women’s development and women’s rights, whereas women’s participation in general issues of the country, such as the establishment of the parliament, economic crisis, import, and consumption, has been widely ignored. Second, the study of women has been mainly assigned to gender and women’s studies, but in countries without a well-established gender studies tradition, such as Iran, researchers are reluctant to investigate women. The domination of the Western perspective, on the other hand, has resulted in research which is mainly conducted within the framework of Western gender studies and fails to consider women’s lives in non-Western cultures (see Oyěwùmí 1997, 2002). Apart from the benefits of studying women through a gender lens, women, as members of each community and society, should be considered in sociological and historical studies of societies.

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Taking these into account compels us to approach women’s activities differently. “A feminist standpoint approach to resistance highlights not only the existence of resistance in women’s lives, but also the different nature and forms of resistance when viewed from the perspective of women” (Mohaghegh Neyshabouri 2020: 44). When I began writing this book, I thought that women’s rights would center on the research. However, the sources, especially women’s newspapers, have led the research in a different direction. I realized that the country’s major challenges were reflected by women, although they approached these issues in a different way. In a hermeneutic process, women’s writings guided me to a novel interpretation of women’s participation. I realized that I should focus on daily life in order to understand the first steps of women’s resistance in Iran. The investigation of evidence, particularly historical documents and women’s writings, demonstrates that the women’s movement has not focused only on the women issues but on the social, political, and economic challenges of early twentieth-century Iranian society. Indeed, different motivations have inspired women to act. “The issues, as during the constitutional revolutionary period, were not women oriented. Public protest against cost increases, overtaxation, corruption, and unpopular governors were common in nineteenth century Iran” (McElrone 2005: 312). Like any other social phenomenon, women’s participation and organizations have been in a constant state of variation as they entered and exited socio-economic assemblages, while several trends co-existed together. All in all, it is vital to consider plural temporalities of women’s movements as a social phenomenon. The women’s movement should not be investigated as an isolated movement whose only concerns were women’s issues. It should be situated in the social, political, and economic context of Iranian modernity. The contribution to the destiny of the country and to the Constitution was one of the main concerns of women in the Constitution years. The revival of the country expressed with the words Iran-e Now, “the new Iran”, evolved into a national demand, and women, who considered themselves a part of the nation, eagerly participated in the reform programs. Furthermore, women considered the economy as one of the fundamental pillars of the progress and independence of Iran. This attitude led them to initiate organizations, campaigns, and programs to support the establishment of a stable economy. Therefore, women reformists should be considered as part of the emerging Iranian intelligentsia, who

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argued that the first step toward reform in Iran would be to awaken and educate its citizens. During the Revolution and particularly after the establishment of the Constitution women developed the idea of the responsible citizen. Women played a significant role in the formulation of the concept of citizens, not only as holders of rights, but also as obliged to the country. Female reformists considered the significance of women’s participation and their direct and indirect role, as citizens, in the fulfillment of revolutionary goals. They believed that the country’s economic regeneration could be achieved with the participation of all citizens. In their writings about consumption, they mainly addressed Iranian citizens, especially women, rather than the government. Now the crowned father was no longer supposed to possess absolute authority and be the only eligible person to make decisions, and every citizen, every man and woman was obliged to fulfill her/his duty to the homeland. Women’s effort not only changed their lives; they also advanced a more inclusive society. Indeed, they participated in the establishment of the modern public sphere and a more comprehensive interpretation of citizenship. The anti-consumption campaigns of the nineteenth century were initiated by women and chiefly considered the leading role of women in the family economy, managing daily life and family needs. In the words of Asef Bayat (2013), women questioned choices in daily life and considered life as politics. Women demonstrated that even small things, such as buying a pair of boots or cosmetics, are political and have economic and social consequences. They showed that the lifestyle of every citizen could influence the destiny of the country. Therefore, female reformers participated in raising social awareness among Iranian people, especially ordinary women and in the gradual formation of modern middle-class women, who played an active role in the socio-political transformations of Iranian society in the twentieth century. However, research should consider the different perspectives and goals of different groups of women and the transformations of women’s movements in the Pahlavi era. Reza Shah banned all opposition groups, political parties, independent newspapers, women’s organizations, and trade unions (Sedghi 2007: 65). These years were when more women joined reformative and political movements and parties, and the modern middle class became slightly mature while governments themselves followed authoritarianism, dictatorship, and oppression (Chehabi 2019: 43).

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The imposition of modernization, the oppressive policies of the modern state, and the dismantling of the public sphere resulted in the severe decline of independent movements. In 1941 there were no political parties or any possibility of continuity with those of the previous period of constitutional government from I906 to I92I (Elwell-Sutton 1949: 46). Notably, one of the reasons for the failure of the women’s movement and the oppression of modern middle-class women in Iran was the establishment of governmental women’s organizations. Reactionary and conservative groups also welcomed women’s oppression. For many years, women’s independent participation in public remained controversial in Iran (see Amin 1999). Najmabadi (2005: 155) discusses that the public sphere implied codes of “manly” looks and behavior and has been exclusively male territory. However, the years between the dethronement of Reza Shah in 1941 until the coup of 1953 opened a new chapter in the history of political parties and women’s activities. The flood of Iranian opinion was suddenly released after 20 years of suppression (Elwell-Sutton 1949: 45). In the following decades, particularly after the coup of 1953, massive repressions destroyed women’s resistance, political parties and working class’ organizations, although women’s widespread contribution to the 1970 uprisings, which ended in the 1979 Revolution, is a new chapter in the women’s resistance. Women reformists strived both for women’s rights and for institutional transformations. Their struggles challenged gender stereotypes about women and their role in society. It can be said that part of the 120 years of post-Constitutional history is the history of fighting to uphold democratic gender rights/values. Women had traversed a long path from bread riots and politically motivated demonstrations, such as the Tobacco Protest, to contribution in the public sphere and claiming the right to citizenship. Historically, women’s resistance against excessive consumption and their active role in the establishment of the public sphere have been widely neglected. Women’s voices were barely heard even by their contemporaries, men and women, and the next generations. However, modern authoritarian regimes encouraged women’s domestic roles and nonpolitical state-controlled activities. “The social status of women has remarkably deteriorated in the last century. Both the Pahlavi and Islamic regimes have endeavoured to put women in predefined frameworks and to determine women’s duties, roles and responsibilities, mostly in relation to domestic space” (Papoli-Yazdi and Dezhamkhooy 2021: 19).

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Unfortunately, the erasure and marginalization of women and their connections to society is still widespread within historical scholarship. Ultimately, the main proposal of this book would be to approach the study of women in a different way. Proper methodologies cannot be restricted to women’s issues and perspectives alone, but “should be open to the wider world and to epistemic diversity” (Labadi 2022: 216). This would lead to a rethinking of gender issues and can bring a level of gender equality to studies of past societies.

References Afary. 1998. Women’s Secret Asscociations in the Constitutional Era. Translated by J. Zousefian. Tehran: Banu (in Persian). Afary, Janet. 2006. The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911. Translated by R. Rezaei. Tehran: Bisotoun (in Persian). ———. 2009. Sexual Politics in Modern Iran. New  York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Amin, Camron Michael. 1999. Propaganda and Remembrance: Gender, Education, and “The Women’s Awakening” of 1936. Iranian Studies 32 (3): 351–386. Bayat, Asef. 2013. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Chehabi, Houchang. 2019. The Rise of the Middle Class in Iran before the Second World War. In The Global Bourgeoisie: The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire, ed. Christof Dejung, David Motadel, and Jürgen Osterhammel, 43–63. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Elwell-Sutton, L.P. 1949. Political Parties in Iran 1941–1948. Middle East Journal 3 (1): 45–62. Labadi, Sophia. 2022. Rethinking Heritage for Sustainable Development. London: UCL Press. McElrone, Susynne. 2005. Nineteenth-Century Qajar Women in the Public Sphere: An Alternative Historical and Historiographical Reading of the Roots of Iranian Women’s Activism. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25 (2): 297–317. Mohaghegh Neyshabouri, Safaneh. 2020. Resistance and Encroachment in Everyday Life: A Feminist Epistemological Study of Qajar Era Iranian Women’s Travel Journals. A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Alberta.

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Najmabadi, Afsaneh. 2005. Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Oyěwùmí. 2002. Conceptualizing Gender: The Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of African Epistemologies. Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies 2 (1): 1–9. Oyewumi, Oyeronke. 1997. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourse. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Papoli-Yazdi, Leila, and Maryam Dezhamkhooy. 2021. Homogenization, Gender and Everyday Life in Pre and Transmodern Iran: An Archaeological Reading. Münster and New York: Waxmann. Sanasarian, Eliz. 2005. The Women’s Rights Movement in Iran: Mutiny, Appeasement, and Repression from 1900 to Khomeini. Translated by N. Ahmadi Khorasani. Tehran: Nashr-e Akhtaran (in Persian). Sedghi, Hamideh. 2007. Women and Politics in Iran, Veiling, Unveiling, and Reveiling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Hilda. 2007. Women Intellectuals and Intellectual History: Their Paradigmatic Separation. Women’s History Review 16 (3): 353–368.

Index

A Abbas Mirza, 84 Abjee Khanom, 59 Abolqasem, Haji Seyyed, 53 Abrahamian, Ervand, 23, 27, 30, 32, 37, 38 Afghanistan, 24, 36 Agha Mohammad Khan, 23, 24 Ahmad Shah, 5, 80, 90, 110, 111 Ahmed, Leila, 59, 65, 69, 71 Akhtar, 37, 39 Akhtar al-Dowleh, 55 Akhund, 38 Alam-e Nesvan magazine, 90 Alaviyah Khanom, 59 America, 80 American, 14, 15 Amin al-Soltan, 26, 31, 32 Amin Aqdas, 26 Amir Kabir, 30, 85 Amir Toumani, 26 Amou Zeinoddin, 62 Andarun, 54, 55, 65

Andaruni, 14, 54, 55, 80 private quarter of the house, 54 See also Andarun; Biruni Anglo-Russian, 34, 89 Anis al-Dowleh, 55 Anzali, 35 Aptheker, Bettina, 58, 92, 93, 95 Aqa Assadollah, 57 Arak, 32 Ardabil, 29 Arg, 55 the royal neighborhood, 55 Association of Sa’adat-e Nesvan, 116 Astarabad, 63, 66 Azad, Shahnaz, 97, 112 Azali, 40 Azerbaijan, 62 Aziz al-Soltan, 26, 54 B Bab, Ali Mohammad, 41 Babis, 41, 42 Babism, 41

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Dezhamkhooy, Women and the Politics of Resistance in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28097-9

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132 

INDEX

Badasht Plain, 42 Baghdad, 42 Baku, 66 Bandar-e Anzali, 35 Bank-e Melli, 83 Bayat, Asef, 93, 126 Bazaar, 37, 38, 52, 57, 59, 78, 100 Bibi Khanom Astarabadi, 40, 58, 66–69 Bird, Isabella, 86 Biruni, 14, 54, 55 Black Coup d’etat, 5 Britain, 31, 33, 34, 36, 85, 87, 89, 110, 116 British, 31, 32, 34–37, 63, 78, 81, 85, 86, 89 British Embassy, 37, 81 British government, 31, 84 Bukhara, 36 C Cartwright, John, 33 Central Asia, 36 Collins, Patricia Hill, 92 Colonialism, 3, 87 Constitutional Revolution, 1–5, 7, 18, 32, 39, 41, 61, 69, 78, 80, 81, 83, 110, 117, 118, 123–125 Cossack officer, 110 D The dailiness of women’s life, 18 Danesh (newspaper), 90, 91, 95 Nameh-ye Banovan, 97 Peyk-e Sa’adat-e Nesvan, 116, 119 Shokoufeh, 95, 97–100 Zaban-e Zanan, 97, 111, 113, 116 Dar al-Elm Mozayaniyeh School, 99 Dar al-Elm va Sanaye’ Mozayaniyeh, 97

Dar al-khilafa, 66 De Gobineau, Arthur (Count), 28, 59 Dolatshahi, Mehrangiz, 114, 117–119 Dorrat al-Ma’ali, 99 Doushan Tappeh, 32 Dowd, Nancy, 119 Dowlatabadi, Sediqeh, 97, 99, 100, 111, 116 Dr. Kahal, 91 E Egypt, 50, 70, 93 Elias, Norbert, 87 The Civilizing Process, 87 Emam al-Hokama, 99 England, 24, 37, 87 Etemad al-Haram, 55 Etemad al-Saltaneh, 26, 27, 29–32, 35, 41, 54, 55, 60, 62, 65, 79, 81, 87 Euro-Asian trade, 34 European, 3, 6, 12–15, 33, 34, 37, 70, 83–91, 93, 95, 97, 99, 101, 102 European countries, 34 European customs, 88, 99 European goods, 91, 96, 101 Everyday forms of resistance, 17, 18, 92, 93 James Scott’s Theory, 93 F Farangi ma’ab, 89, 90 farangi ma’abi, 84 See also Westernization Fath-Ali Shah, 24, 66 Feminist, 2–4, 12, 15–17, 50, 58, 81, 92–94, 113, 116, 119 Feminist political theory, 2 Feminist standpoint theory, 17, 92, 94

 INDEX 

Firouz, Maryam, 112 Flandin, Eugène, 85 Friday Imam, 62, 111 Fundamental Law, 2 G Gilan, 28, 53 Gilan province, 116 Gilani girls, 116 See also Gilan Golestan Palace, 51 Golestan Sa’di, 68 Great Britain, 33 H Haji Mohammad, 53 Hamadan, 27, 42 Harem, 14, 15, 25, 31, 40, 51, 57, 65, 81, 87, 88, 90 Harvard University, 6 Hedayat, Sadegh, 59 Hemmat-e Khavatin Association, 98, 100 Herat War, 24, 34 Herzfeld, Ernst, 13 Hijab, vii, 59, 69 Holy Fatima, 57 Husseiniyah, 58 I Imam of Friday Prayer, 38 See also Friday Imam Imam Reza Holy Shrine, 53 India, 31, 33 Industrial Revolution, 3 Iran-e Now, 6, 82, 96, 99, 125 Iranian culture, 13 Iranian government, 2, 33, 34, 80, 85

133

Iranian society, 1, 6, 27, 38, 59, 70, 87, 126 Iranian women, 1, 51, 52, 80, 82, 83, 90, 91, 96, 97, 99, 114, 115, 118 Iran-Russian Wars, 24 Isfahan, 27, 29, 61, 62, 70, 79, 99, 100, 111, 116 Islamic regimes, 127 Isma’il Abad village, 55 Issawi, Charles, 36 Istanbul, 37, 86 J Jame Mosque, 61 James Scott, see Scott, James C. Jam’iyat-e Nesvan-e Vatankhah, 118 Japan-Russia War, 78 K Kamran Mirza Nayeb al-Saltaneh, 29 Kanun-e Banovan, 115 Karachi, Rouhangiz, 66 Karbala, 41, 42 Karun River, 35, 78 Kashan, 33, 101 Kashf al-Gharaeb, 89 See also Resaleye Majdiyeh Keddie, Nikki, 41 Kerman, 27, 99, 101 Kermanshah, 27 Khademehy-e Vatan, 99 Khahar, 58 sister, 58 Khaleh, 58 aunt, 58 despise intimacy between women, 58 khaleh khanbaji, 58 khale zanak, 58

134 

INDEX

Khanlar Mirza Ehtesham al-Dowleh, 66 Khanom-e Haji Mirza Yahya, 91 Khoramshahr, 35 See also Mohammareh Khorasani, 27 L Lālehzār, 90 Lesan al-Molk Sepehr, 42 Lugones, Maria, 113 M Ma’ayeb al-Rejal, 40, 58, 66–68 Madame Pillot’s shop, 87 Madam Pillot, 87, 88 Magham, Ghaem, 62 Maintenance activities, vii, 18, 55, 56, 59, 96, 98, 113, 114 Majles, 2, 68, 81, 82, 89 parliament, 81 Mam-e vatan, 3 the homeland, 3 Mandel, Ernest, 85 Martin, Vanessa, 34 Maryam Amid, 95, 97–99 Mashhad, 29 Masjed-e Shah, 62 Masroori, Cyrus, 40 Middle East, 14, 15 Mirza Aqa Khan, 39, 40 Mirza Ebrahim Badaye Negar, 26, 27, 36 Mirza Ebrahim Khan-e Kalantar, 24 Mirza Hassan Roshdiyeh, 41 Mirza Hassan Shirazi, 32 Mirza Hossein Khan Sartip, 86 Mirza Hossein Khan Sepahsalar, 30 Mirza Isa, 32 Mirza Jahangir Khan Suresrafil, 41

Mirza Jusef Khan Mostashar al-Dowleh, 40 Mirza Malkom Khan, 40 Mirza Mohammad, 26 Mirza Sa’id Khan, 53, 84 Mohammad Ali Mirza, 79 Mohammad Ali QoduS, 42 Mohammad Baqer Khan, 66 Mohammad Reza Fashahi, 41 Mohammad Reza Shah, 119 Mohammad Shah, 5, 24, 34, 50, 84, 85 Mohammareh, 35 Mohanty, Chandra, 15, 50, 51 Mokhaddarat-e Eslami School, 99 Mola Amou, 110 Mostafa Khan, 53 Mozaffar al-Din Shah, 25, 62, 79 Mufti of Baghdad, 42 Muharram, 58 Mujtahid, 38, 79 Mullah Kazem Mojtahid Mazandarani, 66 Mullahs, 38, 81 Murphy, 12 Musa Khan Vaziri, 66 Muslim, 12, 14, 36, 38, 50, 70 N Najafi, Aqa, 62 Najmabadi, Afsaneh, 113, 114, 118, 127 Naser al-Din Shah, 5, 24–27, 29–36, 38–42, 50, 51, 55, 59, 61–63, 66, 69, 78, 79, 85, 86, 88 Naseri era, 5, 26, 38, 40, 41, 49–53, 66, 70, 85, 87–89 Nategh, Homa, 40, 41, 53, 78, 84–86, 89, 95, 100 Nayeb al-Saltaneh, 29, 62 Near East, 80

 INDEX 

135

Nielsen, Joyce McCarl, 50 North African, 50 Nowdust, Roshanak, 116, 119 Nour al-Doja, 98

Quiet Encroachment of the Ordinary, 93 notion created by Asef Bayat, 93 Quijano, Anibal, 94 Qurrah al-Ain, 41

O Om al-Madares high school, 99 Orientalism, 13–15, 50 Ottoman Empire, 85 Outrey, Marius, 85

R Rakhshan, Mehrtaj, 96, 99 Rasht, 78, 116 Resaleye Majdiyeh, 89 Reza Khan, 5, 110, 115, 117 See also Cossack officer Reza Shah, 4–5, 90, 110–114, 116–118, 127 Russia, 31, 33, 34, 36, 85, 89, 110, 111, 116 Russian, 27, 28, 31, 34, 35, 63, 78, 80, 84 Russo-Persian Wars, 24, 34

P Pahlavi dynasty, 5, 110, 113 Pahlavi government, 4, 13, 102, 119 Pahlavi, Shams, 115 Persian, 6, 24, 34, 36, 37, 56, 68, 80, 89, 97, 100, 101 Persian domestic architecture, 54 Persian language, 6 Persian merchants, 100 Persian texts, 6 Pir Bazar, 35 Postcolonial, 15 Post-constitutional era, 5, 111 Q Qajar dynasty, 23, 24, 110 Qajar era, 1, 13, 51, 54, 60, 61, 64–66, 80, 84 Qajar Iran, 6, 13, 14, 16, 18, 25, 34, 53, 54, 56, 58–60, 87, 100 Qajar shahs, 24 Qajar society, 6, 25, 54, 59 Qajar women, 15, 16, 56, 60, 66, 93, 94, 124 Qanun-e Asasi, 2 See also Fundamental Law Qazvin, 26, 27, 112 Qolam-Ali Khan, 26

S Safavid Dynasty, 33 Safavid era, 33, 34 Saied, Edward, 14 See also Orientalism Sangelaj neighborhood, 29 Sazeman-e Bidariy-e Zanan, 118 Scott, James C., 17, 93 Sedighi, Jamileh, 112 Sepahdar Azam, 111 Seyyed Ahmad Rouhi, 40 Seyyed Kazem Rashti, 41 Seyyed Zia al-Din Tabataba’I, 110 Shah, 24–26, 30–32, 35, 37–39, 62, 65, 79, 110, 117 Shahri, Jafar, 57 Sheikh Khazal bin Jaber, 35 Sherkat-e Khavatin-e Isfahan, 99 Sheykhiyeh, 41 Shiraz, 24, 27, 29, 63, 78 Shirazi, Aliyeh Khanom, 57, 88

136 

INDEX

Showkat Rousta, 112 Shuster, William Morgan, 61, 63, 80 Sinaki, Majd al-Molk, 89 Southeast Asia, 33 Suez Canal, 35 Syria, 50 T Tabriz, 27, 29, 30, 62, 63, 80, 84, 85 Tabriz Bazaar, 63 Ta’dib al-Nesvan, 58, 66–69 Tahereh Qurrah al-Ain, 40–42 See also Qurrah al-Ain Tahvildar, Mirza Hossein, 86 Taj al-Saltaneh, 40, 59, 65, 69, 88 Talar, 57 chamber, 57 Talbot, G. F., 63 Tayereh, 82, 96 Ta’zieh, 58 Tehran, 28, 58, 59, 61–63, 66, 70, 79, 118 Tehran bazar, 100 Tehran Municipality, 118 Tehran Police, 52, 53, 55, 64 Tehran’s administration, 29 Tehran Women’s Prison, 112 See also Tihran; Tihran bazars Tehrani, 31 Tekyeh Dowlat, 58 See also Ta’zieh

Tobacco Concession, 31, 32, 38, 63 Toop Morvari, 59 Trabzon, 85 Tsar, 35, 80 Tudeh Party, 118 Tunisia, 93 Turkey, 36, 50, 85 Turkmenchay, 34 U Ulama, 25, 38, 39 Urmiah, 27 W West Asia, 34 Westernization, 87, 88, 110, 115 World War II, 110, 118 Y Yazd, 27, 99, 101 Yeganeh, Nahid, 64 Z Zahra Khanom Taj al-Saltaneh, 40, 69 Zand dynasty, 24 Zeinab Pasha, 62, 63, 71 Zell al-Soltan, 79