| The history of modern Iran began with the ruling Safavid dynasty (1501–1722) which established Twelver Shiism as the state religion. The dynasty’s founder Shaikh Safi al-Din (1252–1334) was a Sufi teacher and mujaddid (renovator) of Sunni allegiance who started a movement of reform among the tribes of eastern Anatolia and northwestern Iran. His descendant Shah Ismail (1487–1524) activated popular e s chatological expectations in the period of disorder following the collapse of the Timurid Empire by proclaiming himself the Hidden Imam, or expected Shiite messiah. Led by a fearsome band of warriors known as Qizilbashis (red heads) from their distinctive red turbans, the movement enabled Shah Ismail, who proclaimed himself king in Tabriz in 1501, to conquer most of Iran in the course of the next decade. |
Shah Suleiman and his courtiers with Western visitors, shown against a lyrical European-style landscape. The Safavid rulers exported carpets and silk to Europe as well as ceramics designed by Chinese craftsmen for the Western markets. They broke with the traditional religious hostility toward figurative painting by claiming that the Imam Ali, revered by the Shiites, had been a painter as well as a calligrapher.
|
Though the power of the Safavid state, based on the brilliant new capital built by Shah Abbas (1588–1629) in Isfahan, was limited, relying for its authority on a network of uymaqs or smaller chieftains and the traditional iqta system of taxfarming, the Safavid strategy of religious consolidation gave Iran the distinctive Shiite character it retains to this day. Once the Qizilbashis had done their work Ismail’s messianic claims were deemphasized, and Shiite scholars were imported from Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, and al-Hasa to promote the “official” version of Twelver Shiism, according to which the return of the Imam/Messiah is indefinitely deferred. Sunnism was suppressed, the tombs of Sufi saints desecrated, and khanaqas (hostelries) given over to Shiite youth. Jews and Zoroastrians were subjected to forcible conversion.The pilgrimage to Mecca was discouraged in favor of ziyaras (visits) to the lavishly-endowed shrines of the Shiite imans. In the eighteenth century, following the disintegration of the Safavid Empire, Iran endured a period of anarchy with Ottomans and Russians controlling the north, and Afghans, Afshars, Zand, and Qajar tribal chiefs vying for power in the south. Though Nadir Shah, an Afshar chieftain who proclaimed himself Shah in 1736, curbed the power of the Shiite ulama, the turbulence of the eighteenth century permitted the ulama to obtain a higher degree of institutional autonomy than their Sunni counterparts.
|
Under the Qajar dynasty (1779–1925) the powers of the Shiite ulama were enhanced by zakat and khums (religious taxes), which were paid to them directly, while their custodianship over shrines and waqfs (charitable trusts) gave them access to rents from land and housing. The location of two of the most important shrines at Karbala and Najaf in Iraq, in Ottoman-controlled territory, gave them a power base outside the domain of the state. The mourning ceremonies commemorating the martyrdom of the Imam Hussein at Karbala and the associated taziya (passion plays) became characteristic features of popular religiosity, making Shiism a component element in Iranian national identity. |
As pressures from Russia and Britain began to impinge on Iran in the nineteenth century, the ulama came to the forefront of nationalist resistance. In 1873 they forced the Shah to cancel farreaching economic and financial concessions made to a British citizen, Baron de Reuter, and in the 1890s they led a national boycott against a tobacco monopoly granted to another Briton, Major Talbot. The political momentum engendered by the tobacco agitation culminated in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, when a coalition of liberal ulama, merchants, and members of the Westernized intelligentsia forced the Shah to convene a national assembly and to submit to a form of parliamentary government. A brief period of constitutional rule, during which tensions between conservative ulama and the liberals came to the surface, was brought to an end by the Russians in 1911, when they intervened to restore the Shah’s autocracy. |
| In 1925 Reza Khan Pahlavi, an officer in the Cossack Brigade, came to power after a period of instability following the Russian Revolution. Reza Shah instituted a radical modernizing regime that sought to break the power of tribal leaders and to curb the autonomy of the ulama by introducing secular education and government supervision of religious schools. Secular courts were established depriving the ulama of their legal monopoly, which included the lucrative business of registering land transactions. During the Second World War Britain and Russia, who needed a compliant Iranian government to facilitate the passage of war material to the eastern front, forced Reza Shah to resign and replaced him with his son, the young Muhammad Reza. |
| After the Second World War oil, first discovered in 1908 and leased to the British under generous concessions, became a bone of contention when the nationalist Prime Minister, Muhammad Mosaddeq, attempted to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. In the crisis engendered by a boycott of Iranian oil by Western oil companies, the CIA intervened to help the army restore the autocratic Pahlavi regime. |
| The collapse of the regime in 1979 and the ensuing Islamic revolution were the result of a complex combination of economic, cultural, and political factors. Far from benefiting small tenants and landless peasants, the Shah’s ambitious land reforms in the 1960s favored large-scale enterprises and agribusiness (in which the ruling family had interests), while alienating the ulama, many of whom were themselves wealthy landowners or controlled extensive waqfs in land. The sudden increase in oil prices after 1973 increased wealth in the small modernized sector of the economy, while adversely affecting small businesses in the bazaari community, which had close links to the ulama. The corruption of the Pahlavi family and ruthless repression by SAVAK, the secret police, alienated the educated middle classes, and especially the younger generation of students, who had come under the influence of Marxism and the leftist versions of Islamic ideology promoted by Dr Ali Shariati and Jalal Al-e-Ahmed, author of a highly influential tract entitled Westoxification. Poor rural migrants to the cities provided the tinder for revolution. |
Under a deal reached between the Shah and Saddam Hussein, Iraq expelled the dissident cleric Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini from the Shiite center of Najaf, where his lectures calling for a restored Islamic government under ulama supervision found a receptive audience among ulama and students. From his place of exile in a Paris suburb Khomeini had access to the international media, while taped copies of his fatwas and sermons denouncing the Shah were smuggled into Iran. Early in 1979 a series of massive demonstrations, timed to coincide with the ritual of Ashura (the Day of Mourning for the Imam Hussein), forced the Shah into exile, bringing Khomeini home to a tumultuous reception. For ten years, until his death in 1989, he ruled the Islamic republic as the supreme religious leader. Although the Ayatollah Khamenei, Khomeini’s successor as the supreme religious authority, lacks Khomeini’s charisma, the right of the Guardianship Council which he controls to vet candidates for the parliament has effectively curbed its power to introduce changes that the religious establishment regards as being contrary to its interests
|
| Back to Table of Contents |
|
