The question of the continuity of rulership and governmental structures between the Sāsānid and early Islamic periods merits detailed study, but has not yet received it; yet it is evident to the most superficial observer that this continuity was in many spheres a close one. Obviously, there was a violent change in the field of established religion and cult; the state church of Zoroastrianism was overthrown and the new faith of Islam introduced. Yet even here, it is not impossible to discern some elements of continuity. Islam could conceivably be viewed as a new, purified form of Zoroastrianism brought by a new prophet. Allāh and Iblīs could be equated with Ahūra Mazda and Ahriman; there was a common belief in a creation story, in a resurrection, heaven and hell, and in angels and other spirits; both religions had the practices of worship and prayer and sacred texts; and the fatalistic aspects of Zurvanism, the form that Zoroastrianism took in the later Sāsānid period, was not unlike the determinist views that became influential, if not universally acknowledged, in early Islam.

The political history of the Ghaznavid and Seljuk dynasties, which ruled much of Iran throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries, is now fairly well known and recently has been drawn together in the excellent narrative of Professor Bosworth in the Cambridge History of Iran. It is still quite imperfectly understood, however, and will probably remain so for a good while yet to come. The old and serviceable schematization of the period based on the notion of a Sunni revival, keyed to the development of madrasa education and to the personality of Nizam al-Mulk, is still current despite increasing awkwardness in fitting the facts to it. It would be premature to attempt at this time an alternative schematization, and, indeed, such a schematization, when it eventually appears, may well be not so much an alternative to the old one as an expansion in which the main features of the old one have a prominent place.

The last millenium of Iranian history has been what might best be called the “Turanian period,” a time of Turkish and Mongol rule and nomad domination. It is a period viewed by Iranians and most students of Iranian history with mixed, largely negative, feelings that reflect the experience and writings of the conquered peoples. The experience of the Turanians tends to be disregarded, only in part because they wrote very little about it. This essay considers the nature and some of the experience of the conquering Turanian nomad society.

In discussing nomadism it is important to dispose of some perhaps tacit assumptions of cultural bias. The nomad should not be viewed as a mere vagabond or vagrant. He noves purposefully and he is far from lacking means of support, although they may be hidden over the hill or around the bend in the road.

It is generally agreed that the rise of the Safavids in the sixteenth century marks a new period in the history of Persia. Hegemony of one dynasty over nearly all the Persian-speaking world, accompanied by the swift forced conversion of the overwhelming majority of the Persians into Twelver Shi'ism, resulted in the emergence of the first Persian state in the modern era. Such a signal event could not but invest the Persian state and society with major, fundamental institutions. The same institutions have continued to characterize and to influence Persia down to the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1905-1911. It is these institutions that constitute the “traditional” features of the society against which the forces of “modernization” have been operating since the adoption of the Constitution and the Supplementary Fundamental Law of 1907.

The Qajar uymāq provided Iran with a central dynasty from 1795 until 1924. A great deal of attention has been paid to the dynastic aspect of the Qajar uymāq, with emphasis being placed on the founders of the dynasty (Āghā Muḥammad Khān and Fatḥ cAlī Shāh and their successors. The almost total preoccupation with the family that established the dynasty has underestimated the amazing complexity of the organism out of which it developed and the origins of that organism in the even more complex Safavid uymāq system. In order to understand the specific characteristics of the social system(s) of Qajar Iran, it is necessary to study first the development of the uymāq system in Iran and the origins of the Qajar within that newly developing social context.

Among the tribal peoples of the Middle East, from the Atlas to the Hindukush mountains, the most common type of political organization appears to be some form of segmentary structure in which powerful sociocultural mechanisms function to contain every tendency toward the emergence of permanent centralized power figures. Some tribes of Iran characteristically deviate from this general pattern. The Boir Ahmadi is one of them. Their political organization, as it existed during the nineteenth century and up to 1963, consisted in an intrinsically centralized system, that is, a system in which its political power figures showed a vested interest in maintaining, rather than preventing, centralized leadership. In this paper I describe--as much as is possible within a limited space--the bases and the functioning of this system, trace its emergence and inner evolution, and outline its present transformation. In conclusion, to further highlight some of its features, I compare it with European feudalism.

The nomadic tribes of Iran have long attracted interest, yet despite many descriptive accounts there have been few critical studies of them. Major obstacles to analysis have been a romanticization of nomadism, a dichotomization that emphasizes the differences between nomadism and agriculture, and a disregard for the historical setting and change. Discussions have tended to obscure important economic and social relationships between nomadic and sedentary society, and within the tribal structure itself; moreover, it has often been assumed that an organic or deterministic, link between pastoralism and tribal political structures exists.

The Bakhtiyārī are commonly associated with the central Zagros mountains. It is assumed that this rugged area in turn necessitates transhumant movement of the Bakhtiyārī with their flocks of sheep and goats and a tribal organization to accomplish this end. Furthermore, this environment isolates and gives the tribe autonomy vis-a-vis the state.

A major characteristic of traditional politics is that their policy-implementing and policy-formulating roles are less differentiated than those in more politically developed societies. Consequently, the bureaucracy in a traditional setting plays a crucial role in system-maintenance, not only through its recruitment function and socialization of the new recruits, but by reinforcing the system's goals and mores. Without the development of an effective bureaucracy as an agent of political integration, the traditional system either remains traditional or breaks apart. The possibility that the bureaucracy would be able to perform its herculean task is further reduced by the fact that as a subsystem within the larger traditional political system it mostly symbolizes the general systemic patterns. For example, if the ascriptive norms are prevalent in the society, one may expect to see inheritance of offices and nepotism on the institutional level. Political development, therefore, is a painfully slow process which more often than not may never come about.

The social scientist studying the modern world is inevitably struck by the importance of peasant rebellions. In some countries--such as Russia, Yugoslavia, Albania, China, Cuba, and Vietnam--peasant rebellions have helped bring about communist revolutions. In others--such as Mexico, Algeria, Kenya, and recently Angola--they have contributed toward the success of nationalist revolutions. In yet other countries--including Spain, Greece, Peru, India, Phillippines, Malaya, and Indonesia--they have helped shake, even though they have not destroyed, the foundations of the old order. The social scientist studying Iran, however, is struck not by the importance but by the conspicuous absence of any large-scale peasant rebellions in the modern era.

The transformation in the structure of classes and of power in the past two centuries in Iran, as in many Third World countries, can be seen as: (1) a change from a relatively decentralized structure of power in which several different groups and localities shared power to one in which power is concentrated in the center and is backed by a modernized army and bureaucracy, (2) a change from primarily vertical divisions in society, in which the most homogeneous groups--tribes, ulama, towns, and religious communities--comprise both rich and poor, to a division based on more horizontal class lines. These two changes go together and form part of the transformation often referred to under such rubrics as “modernization,” “westernization,” or “the impact of the West,” although none of these terms is fully satisfactory. This paper attempts to outline the basic lines of these two sociopolitical changes in modern Iran and also to assess recent sociopolitical developments there.