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Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Nikki R. Keddie
Affiliation:
Univesrsity of California

Extract

The period 1905–1912 saw a number of nearly simultaneous revolutions or mass movements in Asian countries, which may be considered as the first wave of a revolutionary movement which continues to rock Asia. The Chinese overthrow of the Manchu dynasty, the Young Turk victory, and the Indian mass movement of 1905–1909 are probably the best-known in a series of events which also embraced smaller Asian countries and groups. The main reasons for their simultaneity were probably: the electric effect of the Russo-Japanese War, a startling Asian victory over a Western Power; the Russian Revolution of 1905, an inspiring anti-autocratic struggle which temporarily took Russia away as a bulwark for conservative governments in Asia; the intensification of imperialist pressures on Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which brought Asian economic and political reactions; and, possibly, the beginnings of economic crisis, which were reflected in Asia. Among these the Russo-Japanese War perhaps deserves to be singled out as the immediate spark, igniting highly inflammatory material in Asia as it did in Russia itself. Not only was Asian pride, hitherto battered by a continuous stream of Western conquests, bolstered by this victory, but the fact that the only Asian constitutional power defeated the only major Western non-constitutional power strengthened the fight for constitutional government as the panacea for internal ills and the “secret” of Western strength.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1962

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References

1 In English, besides the Browne and Shuster books mentioned above, there are several pamphlets by Browne, , and his The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia (Cambridge, 1914)Google Scholar, which includes a chronology of the last years of the Revolution. Among the numerous articles in various languages, Lambton, Ann K. S., “Secret Societies and the Persian Revolution of 1905–1905?”, St. Antony's Papers: Number 4 (New York, 1959)Google Scholar, deserves note. In Persian the best books are probably those of three scholarly Tabrizi eyewitnesses: Amirkhizi, Esmā'il, Qeyām-e Azarbājān va Satār Khān (Tabriz, 1960)Google Scholar; Ahmad Kasravi, Tārikh-e mashruteh-ye Iran, 4th ed. (Tehran, n.d.); TagizAdeh, Sayyed Hasan, Tārikh-e avāyel-e engelāb-e mashrutiyyat-e Irān (Tehran, 1959)Google Scholar; and by the son of the (Azali) preacher, Malek ol Motakallemin: Mandi Malekzādeh, Tārikh-e engelāb-e mashrutiyyat-e Irān, 7 vols. (Tehran, n.d.). The Soviet work showing the most work on archives but also with the most distortions is Ivanov, M. S., Iranskaia revoliutsiia 1905–1911 godov (Moscow, 1957)Google Scholar. Non-Iranian eyewitness reports are found in published diplomatic documents; in several numbers of the Revue du monde musulman; indeLorey, E. and Sladen, D., The Moon of the Fourteenth Night (London, 1910)Google Scholar; and Tria, V., Kavkazskie sotsial'-demokraty v persidskoi revoliutsii (Paris, 1910).Google Scholar

2 On the Bibis, besides conversations with Bibis in Iran and a few articles, I have found useful these works of Browne, Edward G.: Materials for the Study of the Babi Religion (Cambridge, 1918)Google Scholar; ed. Nugtatu'1 Kaf (Cambridge, 1911); ed. and tr., The Tarikh-i ladid or New History of Mirza Ali Muhammad, the Bab (Cambridge, 1893)Google Scholar; ed. and tr., A Traveller's Narrative Written to Illustrate the Episode of the Bab (Cambridge, 1891)Google Scholar; A Year Amongst the Persians (London, 1893).Google Scholar Also Alessandro Bausani, “Bāb” and “Bābis”, Encyclopedia of Islam (New ed.), and Persia Religiosa (Milan, 1959)Google Scholar; Gobineau, de, Religions et philosophies dans l' Asie centrale, 3d ed. (Paris, 1957)Google Scholar; A'zam, Nabil i, The Dawn Breakers, tr. and ed. Shoghi Effendi (New York, 1932)Google Scholar; Nicolas, A. L. M., ed. and tr., Le Béyan arabe (Paris, 1905)Google Scholar; ed. and tr., Le Béyan persan (4 vols., Paris, 1911–1914)Google Scholar;Seyyed Ali Mohammed dit le Bab (Paris, 1905). The Azalis have recently printed the Bayān, Hasht Behesht and other texts in Iran, but these are unavailable through standard outlets.Google Scholar

3 Bausani, Persia Religiosa, p. 405.

4 On the Taipings I have used: Boardman, Eugene P., “Christian Influences on the Ideology of the Taiping Rebellion”, Far Eastern Quarterly, X (Feb., 1951), 115124CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brine, Lindesay, The Taeping Rebellion in China (London, 1862)Google Scholar; Hamberg, Theodore, The Visions of Hung-Siu-Tshuen and Origin of the Kwang-si Insurrection (Hong Kong, 1854)Google Scholar; Joseph R. Levenson, “Confucian and Taiping ‘Heaven’: The Political Implications of Clashing Religious Concepts”, paper delivered at the Congress of Orientalists (Moscow, 1960); Lin-le (Lindley, Augustus F.), Ti-ping Tien-kwoh; The History of the Ti-ping Revolution (London, 1866)Google Scholar; Thomas Taylor Meadows, The Chinese and Their Rebellions (Stanford, Cal., n.d.); Medhurst, W. H., ed., Pamphlets Issued by the Chinese Insurgents at Nanking (Shanghai, 1853)Google Scholar; Taylor, George, “The Taiping Rebellion, its Economic Background and Social Theory”, Chinese Social and Political Science Review, XVI (1933), 545614Google Scholar; and Teng, Ssu-yü, New Light on the History of the Taping Rebellion (Cambridge, 1950)Google Scholar. New translations of Taiping documents are in deBary, W. T., Chan, W. T., and Watson, B., Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York, 1960), and more will soon be published at the University of Washington.Google Scholar

5 Gobineau, op. cit., p. 285.

6 Ibid., pp. 278–279; Nicolas, Le Beyan person, iii-xv.

7 Cf. especially Browne's Introduction to Nuqtatu'l Kaf. Bausani, op. cit., in his chapter on the Babis discusses both traditional and original features.

8 Gobineau, op. cit., p. 285. On the economic program of the Bābis, Minorsky says: “It is an interesting fact … that the new preaching was addressed definitely to the middle classes, to the petty bourgeoisie, the lesser clergy, and the traders. The Bab himself belonged to a family of merchants, and it is curious to find among his demands such trifling details as the legalization of loans at interest, the fixing of the monetary standard, and the inviolability of (commercial) correspondence. — In a recent work the activity of the Bab has been studied with relation to the economic crisis which Persia went through at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Further, the author [M. S. Ivanov] points out the extremely radical character the preaching took after the arrest of the Bab. His followers, gathered in Mazandaran, went so far as to suggest the abolition of private property, which was regarded as a usurpation. The shah's government, relying on the great landed nobility, closely connected with the administration, drowned the revolt in blood [” “Iran: Opposition, Martyrdom, and Revolt,” Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization, ed. Gustave E. von Grunebaum (Chicago, 1955), p. 198. The combination of bourgeois and communist elements in one revolt is far from unique.

9 The idea that the real attraction of Babism in the late nineteenth century was for those interested in political and social reform is suggested, among other places, in a letter from S. Churchill, Tehran, 1889, in the Browne manuscripts in Cambridge and partially reprinted in Browne, Materials for the Study of the Babi Religion, p. 293. On the social causes of late medieval heretical revolts see Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millenium, 2nd ed. (New York, 1961). The ideologies discussed by Cohn have many similarities to both Babi and Taiping ideas.Google Scholar

10 Browne, Materials, p. 221.

11 “As one of the most prominent and cultivated Azalis admitted to me some six orseven years ago, the ideal of a democratic Persia developing on purely national lines seems to have inspired in the minds of no few leading Azalis the same fiery enthusiasm as did the idea of a reign of the saints on earth in the case of the early Babis.” Ibid.,

12 Browne's attribution, based probably on a letter (now in the Cambridge Browne collection) from the Babi scribe who sent him the manuscript, is in Materials, pp. 221–223. Browne notes the work apparently dates from 1863–1864, while elsewhere noting that Mirzā Aqā Khān Kermāni was born in 1853. The Baku Nezami Museum manuscript collection has several Akhundov autographs of the work and of letters about it, and has published a catalogue in Azerbaijani Turkish of its Akhundov manuscripts. Some of these, including the Kamāl od Dowleh volume, have been published in Russian in: Akhundov, M. F.: Izbrannye filosofskie proizvedeniia (Baku, 1953).Google Scholar

13 On influences from Russian Transcaucasia see my translation of Sayyed Hasan Taqizādeh, “The Background of the Constitutional Movement in Azerbaijan”, The Middle East Journal, XIV, 4 (Autumn, 1960), especially pp. 459462, and Kasravi, op. cit., pp. 127, 145–146, 193–195.Google Scholar

14 On Malkam Khān cf. especially Browne, Persian Revolution, pp. 35–42 and passim; and Press and Poetry, pp. 20–21; also Les comédies de Malkom Khan, tr. Bricteux, A. (Paris, 1933)Google Scholar. The Cambridge University Library has Malkam Khān's Qānun as well as the other Persian newspapers mentioned in Press and Poetry as being in Browne's possession. In Persian see especially Tabātabā'i, Mohammad Mohit, ed., Majmu'eh-ye āsār-e Mirzā Malkam Khān, Vol. I (Tehran, 1948–1949).Google Scholar

15 This is from one of Qazvini's very useful biographical notes in Browne, The Persian Revolution, p. 406.

16 On insincerity, symbolism, and esoterism in Islam and Iran, see Bausani, op. cit., Gobineau, op. cit., Minorsky, op. cit.; Abd-el-Ialil, M, J.., “Autour de la sincerite d'al-Gazzali”, Mélanges Louis Massignon, I (Damascus, 1956)Google Scholar; Browne, A Year Amongst the Persians; Gibb, H. A. R., Mohammedanism (London, 1949)Google Scholar; Goldziher, I., Études sur la tradition islamique, tr. Léon Bercher (Paris, 1952)Google Scholar; Grunebaum, Gustave E. von, Islam (Menasha, Wise, 1955)Google Scholar; Marshall G. S. Hodgson, “Batiniyya”, Encyclopedia of Islam (New ed.), and The Order of Assassins ('s-Gravenhage, 1955)Google Scholar; and Nicolas, Le Beyan person. On philosophy vis-d-vis orthodoxy see Hourani, George F., “Ibn Rushd's Defence of Philosophy”, The World of Islam (London, 1960)Google Scholar; Mahdi, Muhsin, “The Editio Princeps of FarabFs Compendium Legum Platonis”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, XX, 1 (1961), 124CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Ibn Khaldun's Philosophy of History (London, 1957)Google Scholar, especially the parts on Ibn Khaldun's unacknowledged Averroism; Strauss, Leo, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, Ill., 1952)Google Scholar and Simon van den Bergh, tr. and introd., Averroes' Tahafut al-Tahafut (London, 1954)Google Scholar. Massignon, Louis, Essai sur les origines du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane, New ed. (Paris, 1954), pp. 125126Google Scholar, discusses pressures toward fabrication in religions which believe all creative power resides in God, and the Islamic notion that the truth of a statement may lie in its efficacy for good ends. See also the brilliant new Cahen, C., et al. ,L' élaboration de L'lslam (Paris, 1961).Google Scholar

17 On Asian appeal to, and reading modern values into, traditional ideals as an alternative to the ideologies of Western oppressors see Keddie, Nikki R., “Western Rule versus Western Values: Suggestions for a Comparative Study of Asian Intellectual History”, Diogenes, 26 (1959), 7196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Sharīf al-Mujāhid, “Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī: His Role in the Nineteenth Century Muslim Awakening”, Unpublished M. A. thesis, McGill Institute of Islamic Studies, Montreal, 1954, Ch. iv, shows the near identity of their religious views. This thesis is very useful, particularly for its long passages translated from Afghāni's Arabic and Persian writings. Despite Afghāni's importance, no adequate biography or analysis of him exists, and the existing sketches all have important errors or omissions. The best brief biography is probably I. Goldziher, “Djamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī”, Encyclopedia of Islam (1st ed.). See also Ahmad, A., “Sayid Ahmad Khān, Jamāl al-dīn al-Afghānī and Muslim India”, Studia lslamica, XIII (1960), 5578.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Jamāl ad-Din al-Afghānī, “The Materialists in India”, Réfutation des materialistes, tr. Goichon, A. M. (Paris, 1942), pp. 2225.Google Scholar

20 “Réponse de Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani à Renan” (from the Journal des débats), ibid., pp. 178–179, 183–185. Al-Mujāhid says that Afghāni here speaks of the “Muslim religion”, meaning what then existed, but elsewhere of an ideal “Islam”. The terminological argument is not entirely convincing since Afghani is here writing French and using ordinary French terminology. In any case, it is important that Afghāni never made this distinction explicit.

21 The documents quoted are from Great Britain, Public Records Office, F.O. 60/594, “Persia: Jemal-ed-Din: Proceedings of an Expulsion from Persia 1883–1897”. In order: No. 174, Cairo, May 22, 1883; Enclosure in A. 28877, Hyderabad, June 25, 1883; Enclosure in No. 923, Constantinople, Dec. 12, 1895; “Memo by the General Superintendent of the Thagi and Dakaiti Department”, India Office, March 6, 1896 (printed, and marked “Confidential”).

22 Ibid., no. 299, St. Petersburg, August 27, 1887.

23 Both letters translated in Browne, Persian Revolution, p. 17; pp. 28–29.

24 Ibid., p. 414.

25 Browne and Phillott, who edited the Persian Hajji Baba, call Ruhi its translator, but one of the letters from Ruhi to Browne pasted into Browne, Or. Ms. F 532, “Hasht Behesht”, Vol. II, in the Cambridge Library calls Mirzā Habib the translator. Browne may have had grounds to consider Ruhi the translator, but Sayyed Mohammad Ali Jamālzadeh wrote me in 1960 that he had concluded from other evidence that Mirza Habib did the job. A comparison showing up the sharper nature of the translation is in H. Kamshad, “Creative Writing in Modern Persian Prose”, Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1959, pp. 38–43. Letters in the Browne Cambridge collection, including one reproduced in the printed Hasht Behesht (n.p., n.d.), facing p. 1, summarized p. alef, suggest Mirza Javad Karbalāt'i, an early Bābi leader, and Mirzā Āqā Khān Kermāni contributed to Hasht Behesht; but its concern to present Bābi doctrine is more typical of Ruhi than Kermani.

26 Kermāni, Nāzem of Eslām, Tārikh-e biclari-ye iranian, 2d ed. (Tehran, 1945–1946), p. 8. This work is particularly valuable for its primary material and, as he notes, Browne drew on it in his Persian Revolution. On Sultan Abdul Hamid's use of the Afghāni circle to attract the Shi'a ulamā and the Shah's fear of this, see the Appendix to this article.Google Scholar

27 Browne, Persian Revolution, p. 413.

28 Catalogue of Oriental Mss. Belonging to Browne, E. G. (Cambridge, 1932), p. 148.Google Scholar

29 This comparison is suggested in Zarrinkub, Abdol Hosein, Naqd-e adabi (Tehran, 1959–1960), p. 504.Google Scholar

30 Appendix to this article; and Great Britain Public Records Office, F. O. 371/102, Persia 1906, Files 13–460, No. 381: London, Dec. 23, 1905, Hardinge to Grey, Confidential (Report on relinquishing post as Minister to Tehran). After summarizing other elements in the political situation, Hardinge gives reasons for clerical opposition to the government, and then notes that relations between the British government and the Shi'a mojtaheds have been generally good. “A valuable lever in our possession is the socalled Oudh bequest, a fund left by the last king of Oudh for religious purposes at Kerbela and Nejef, and administered under the supervision of the British Residency at Baghdad. This enables our Resident, as well as his Vice Consul at Kerbela, who is always an Indian Shiah, to maintain close relations with the great doctors at Nejef, Kerbela … and Samara, whilst the clergy in Persia itself, who have always candidates for a share in these religious endowments find it to their advantage to be on friendly terms with the British Legation … in order that the Minister may say a good word for themselves or for their friends at Baghdad.” The fear that Great Britain might arouse the Iraq ulama against the Russophil policy of the government “has acted within recent years as a wholesome deterrent on Persian statesmen”. The Sultan has also cultivated relations with the mojtaheds as part of his pan-Islamic policy, and old hatreds have lessened "largely owing to the action of the Sultan, whose Ambassador at Tehran is in very close touch with the leaders of the clerical party, and who himself sends presents to the principal Persian Ulemā, and is believed to employ one of the ablest among them as his secret political agent. On several occasions the Mujtaheds have attempted to appeal to the Sultan from the Shah, and to invoke the assistance of Constantinople against measures, such as the Russian Loans or the employment of Belgians in the Persian Administration, which they deemed detrimental to Islam. Several of them have asked my advice as to a closer union between Persia and Turkey against the common enemy in the North, and I have been surprised to hear from Persian pulpits panegyrics, doubtless not very sincere, on the Sultan, who not so long ago would have been deemed, as the successor of Omar, only worthy of curses and execrations.”

31 Sayyed Jamal ed Din Esfahani wrote Lebās of taqvā against the use of foreign goods. Parts are quoted in Esfahāni, M., “Sharh-e hāl-e marhum Sayyed Jamāl ed Din Vā'ez”, Yaqmā;, VII, 12 (1333 [1954–1955]), 551Google Scholar, and Sayyed Mohammad Ali Jamālzādeh, Tarjomeh-ye hāl-e Sayyed Jamāl ed Din Vā'ez”, Part 2, Yaqmā, VII, 4 (1954–1955), 400,Google Scholar from which I translate the book's conclusion: “Honor would be not to have need of our enemies. Our honor is in this, that science and industries become common in our country. Our honor is in wearing the clothing of virtue. The clothing of virtue is the clothing of zeal and bravery. The clothing of virtue is the clothing of Islam and religion. The clothing of virtue is the clothing whose wearing is the cause of the flourishing of Moslem trade and the stagnation of the bazaars of unbelieving traders. The clothing of honor and manhood … must be worn so that in both worlds heads can be high and worthy.” Jamālzādeh has written me that the author, his father, was irreligious, which corroborates statements from reliable informants in Iran who knew him. His use of religious beliefs for nationalist purposes is also shown in a letter about him from Molk, Dr. Afzal ol, Yaqmä;, VII, 10 (1954–1955)Google Scholar which recalls his saying to booksellers, “still the Qur'ān, the Book of God, is printed on foreign paper. These gentlemen are not planning to prepare at least one paper factory so that the word of God should not be printed on foreign paper.” (p. 454.) On the movement against the tobacco concession see Browne, Persian Revolution; Nāzem ol Eslām Kermāni, op. cit., Ch. i; and especially the eyewitness diary, Feuvrier, Dr., Trois ans à la cour de Perse, New ed. (Paris, 1906)Google Scholar, Ch. v, which stresses the startling unanimity and determination of Iranians in this movement. The role of the clergy before the revolution is discussed in G. H. Razi, “Religion and Politics in Iran: A Study of Social Dynamics”, Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1956, Part III, and in Adolphe Back de Surany, Essai sur la constitution persane, Published doctoral thesis (Paris, 1914).Google Scholar

32 Bābi Alī: The ministerial department of the Prime Minister. It is often translated in the West “Sublime Porte” and used for the Sultan, whose palace it once denoted. From the 17th or 18th century Bābi Alī referred to the headquarters of the government, as opposed to the Sultan's court. See J. Deny, “Bāb-i 'Alī”, Encyclopedia of Islam(New ed.); and H. A. R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West, Vol. I, Pt. I, 44 n., 113.