In a sense, the history of science deals with the creation and development of scientific ideas and theories concerning scientific discoveries or even failures. Its focus is on scientific discovery and its forerunners, and it generally ignores areas where two methodologically divergent and geographically separate scientific traditions clash, especially when no new discoveries have resulted therefrom.

One such area is the clash between modern European and traditional Islamic sciences. For this reason, the introduction of modern science into the Islamic world and its challenge to traditional scholars has not attracted the attention of historians of science either from within or without. Books on the history of science dealing with the Islamic world, and more particularly with Iran, rarely cover the field beyond medieval times, thus showing a tangible research deficit.

During World War I a movement developed in the forests of Gilan to free Iran from foreign control and internal despotism. Tsarist Russian, Soviet, Ottoman, German, and British forces all attempted to influence the course of events in Gilan, often through the use of force. From their strongholds in the forests, or jangal—whence their name—the Jangalis gained the strength several times, first with the weakening of Russian forces in the region after the 1917 Russian Revolution and then with the assistance of the Iranian Communist Party after the arrival of Soviet troops in Gilan in May 1920, to take control of Rasht, Anzali, and other towns in Gilan province. They even harbored hopes of marching on Tehran to take control of the Iranian central government. This nationalist movement initially had a formal organizational structure under the name ittihād-i Islām, but basically was under the control of the charismatic Mirza Kuchik Khan, along with several other powerful leaders.

The three poems that follow depict a moment of transition in the course of topical poetry in contemporary Iran. The advent of the revolution caught many modernist Iranian poets off guard, particularly because it did not seem to confirm their vision of revolution. Secular and predominantly leftist, Iranian poets and writers anticipated a socialist revolution and were surprised at the revolutionary potential of Shiᶜite Islam. These poems, written in 1978-1979, depict the speaker in the act of acknowledging the passage of one era and the advent of another while at the same time distancing himself from its increasingly religious cast. In the first poem, “Akher-e bazi” (End of the Game), the poet seems to welcome the demise of an unwanted political order through an utterance that can be read as an address to its chief personage, perhaps even the person of the last Iranian monarch.

Why have large scale and durable political parties, representing broad socio-economic interests and seriously concerned with assuming political power through democratic constitutional means, not emerged in Iran? And why have even State-sponsored parties failed? These important questions have received virtually no serious scholarly attention. What follows is a preliminary attempt to address them by considering the configuration of those groups or collectivities normally identified as political parties, exploring their inadequacies, and highlighting the main factors which have accounted for the failure of party politics in twentieth-century Iran.

The Early Years

With the introduction of constitutional arrangements in Iran in 1906, the newly established National Consultative Assembly (Majlis) became the major arena for public debate among constitutionalists on how best to identify, consolidate, build upon and institutionalize the new political achievements. The difficulties of reconciling political order and constitutional accountability provoked pronounced differences of opinion and discord.

Although the predominant language of Iran's literature is Persian, a trickle of literary works has always been written in other languages, most notably in Azeri Turkish, the language spoken in Iranian Azerbaijan as well as in the Republic of Azerbaijan to the north of the Araxes river. The following two poems, translated from the original Azeri Turkish, demonstrate the presence of that minority voice.

With regard to the translated poems, a reference to a historical event is necessary here. From 1946, when the autonomous movement in Iranian Azerbaijan was defeated, to the downfall of the Iranian monarchy in 1979, contact between the people of the two regions was discouraged on both sides, and Azeri Turkish was aggressively suppressed by the state, which defined Iranian nationalism through the increasing dominance of the Persian language. However, individual poets of the two regions were in sporadic contact.

The earliest historical references to the Persian Gulf appear to stem from the time of the Sumerian rulers of Mesopotamia in the third millennium B.C., when, for instance, the trade with Dilmun (on the western shores of the upper part of the Gulf) of Ur Nanše, King of Lagash (2494–2465 B.C.), is mentioned. The Gulf itself is specifically named in a historical text of Lugal Zagesi, King of Uruk (2340–2316 B.C.), where it is said that “then from the Lower Sea, by the Tigris and Euphrates, as far as the Upper Sea, [the god Enlil] provided him with clear routes”; and, in an inscription of Sargon of Akkad, it is said that Enlil gave him the Upper Sea and the Lower Sea.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is seriously challenged by a secularizing intellectual force from within. It may seem ironic for such a movement to appear in a clerical-dominated regime, initially thought by many to embody the victory of religion and tradition over secularism and modernization. But the Iranian revolution came in the wake of at least a century of exposure to secular ideas and institutions, an experience whose impact continued to be discerned during and after the revolution by observers who could see beyond the rhetoric of Islamism.

Hushang Golsmri's masterfully crafted short story “Fathnamehye moghan” (The Victory Chronicle of the Magi) captures a sobering moment in the transitional period of revolutionary Iran. Golshiri delves beneath the surface of the ongoing revolutionary confusion to reflect on the events and gains insight into an aspect of the culture deeply rooted in the Iranian psyche. Golshiri conveys the sentiments of the collective narrator “We,” which represents, if not all Iranians, at least the intellectuals who had been supportive of a revolution in order to acquire freedom but are suddenly faced with a situation in which the freedoms they had been taking for granted have been curtailed. In a manner, perhaps not very different from before, they are trying to learn, or, as Barat sees it, to conform to the new restrictions placed upon their lives. Wine and its prohibition are used as a symbol of restrictions on other liberties.

In an article entitled “The Study of History in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” Professor A. Amanat analyzes the state of historical research and wonders whether the new interest in history will endure or whether it is a passing fad, a lingering after-effect of the 1979 revolution. He points out that “the frontiers of serious scholarship do not seem to have reached the domain of analysis. Neither the methodology, nor the scholarly attitude seem to be ready for the task.” In the eighteenth year of the Islamic revolution, it is perhaps worth taking another look at the state of historical research in Iran with an eye to detecting any changes in the observed trends pointed out by Amanat.

In the late-Pahlavi era, the study of history as an academic discipline was the least popular among the topics at the national universities. It was consistently the last choice for the entering class.

The Qasida that follows provides an easy and obvious example of how topical literature can assume a specific political relevance within a specific social context. Written and first published in 1983, the poem was immediately seized upon as containing the poet's opposition to the ruling revolutionary state. This node between patriotism and political dissent was made possible only in the context of certain pronouncements by the leaders of Iran's revolution interpreted largely as their disregard for the country of Iran in an overzealous pursuit of the Islamic component in Iranian identity. Ever since his response to a question put to him on the plane that brought him back to Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini was widely believed to feel no great affection for the country he was about to rule. Asked what he was feeling as he was returning to his homeland after fourteen years of exile, the Ayatollah had dismissed the question by saying, “Nothing!”

Simin Behbahani (B. 1927) is by far the most prominent woman poet of the last two decades. Her recent works manifest a sensitivity to feminist themes and adhere to a new notion of literary endeavor and a new ideology of representation that promote women's causes and gender equality. Her short story “Fenjan-e Shekasteh” (The Broken Cup), for example, brings to the fore the theme of love and man-woman relationships, thereby manifesting the author's new ideological orientation. The story offers these themes in the context of the history of intellectual activities in Iran, by virtue of which it gains additional significance.

The story portrays a woman who, as was common among intellectuals in the decades prior to the 1979 revolution, devotes her life to the political movement for freedom and sacrifices everything, including her love, in its path.

Mitra Davar's short story “Homework” takes us into the world of a young woman still at school but already grappling with a deep sense of alienation. Manizheh, the protagonist, leads a life delimited by her movements between home and school. Both sites demand duties and responsibilities she finds herself unable to fulfill. At school, her teachers complain that she is absentminded. At home, her mother urges her to take the medication a doctor has prescribed to combat her melancholia and to devote herself to her homework.

We do not know the exact causes of Manizheh's depression, but something in her longing gaze tells us of a need to get beyond barriers that circumscribe her life. She is forever looking out of windows, staring at stray cats, and collecting feathers and autumn leaves. Yet she cannot find the vital link between all that she observes and is asked to do.

It was very early in the morning. She was looking at the yard from behind a window. The tree was in full bloom. She removed a lock of white hair from her forehead. It was the forty-first time that she was watching the tree blossom. She was standing in front of the window in her thick white nightgown with long sleeves and closed collar. She was a bit cold. The wind made the blossoms shiver. It seemed that the flowers never felt cold. The woman recalled the very first time she watched them.

She has awakened to the sound of her husband's voice, “Wake up! Come and see! The tree has blossomed!” They have stood watching together at the window. Her long white nightgown was sleeveless and thin, with lace around its open collar. She wasn't cold, or perhaps it was her sense of decency that made her forget the cold.