Abbas Amanat’s Iran: A Modern History is one of the most ambitious works of Iranian historiography in decades. An eminent historian of Qajar Iran, Amanat here steps outside his forte to weave together half a millennium of history into a singular narrative. The book consists of four parts: the first three chapters deal with the Safavid period; chapters four through six cover the Qajar era; chapters seven to twelve focus on Pahlavi Iran; and the last four chapters trace the Islamic Republic. Published reviews by leading experts in different periods of Iranian history concur in praising Amanat’s accomplishment. Taking for granted this well-deserved praise, my comments here will focus on the book’s overall narrative structure, while I will also make a few specific observations on its chapters on the twentieth century, my own area of specialization. These two levels of commentary are related since the bulk of the book, i.e. about 600 of its 908 pages of text, is devoted to the twentieth century. As the author points out, this apparent “imbalance” is due to the fact that the academic historiography of Iran deals overwhelmingly with the last century. Amanat’s synthesis therefore builds on a vast array of secondary sources by other historians, chosen carefully and judiciously assembled. In this manner, he has produced what is perhaps the most comprehensive, balanced and readable history of modern Iran. Keeping direct citations to a minimum, Amanat provides an extensive list of his sources at the end of the book. The text thus has an encyclopedic appearance, a design that makes invisible its masterful scholarly architecture.
The most salient feature of Amanat’s overall narrative is the fusing together of modern and “early modern” history, or a view of Iran in the French Annales School’s longue durée patterns of historiography, a choice running counter to mainstream scholarship’s sharp division of history into distinct periods. Engaging in a sweeping narrative, Amanat confidently accepts the hazards that come with seeking significant threads of continuity across five centuries of Iran’s history. This narrative design involves certain historiographic assumptions that Amanat’s introduction could have explored further. Most important is the assumption of unbroken continuity between pre-modern and modern notions of Iran, or, as this reviewer has argued, the categorical distinction between Iran’s national and imperial histories. The fact that the twentieth century, or Iran’s national history, takes up two-thirds of the book means also that the modernist idea of Iran, as a nation-state, strategically influences Amanat’s reading of earlier periods of history. A prime example of continuity, between national and imperial history, is Amanat’s notion of “Persian kingship,” referring to an almost perennial pattern going back to pre-Islamic times and exhibiting features such as recurrent tensions between the court and the bureaucracy (dargāh va divān). Another longue durée pattern of continuity is the idea of Shiʿism as Iran’s “national religion,” implying a broad division of powers, along with conflict/cooperation, between the shahs and the clerical establishment. There is also the suggestion of a similarly fixed tension, within this Iranian “meta-religion,” between messianic-revolutionary and ossifying conservative tendencies, traceable to pre-Islamic times, but more clearly manifest in Shiʿism.
The assumption of continuous national or proto-national Iranian history, at least since Safavid times, hints at a certain “methodological nationalism” at work in the treatment of both Iranian and Shiʿi history. To Amanat’s credit, allusions to political and cultural continuity do not impose a rigid frame on the book’s narration, which for the most part remains refreshingly fluid and often attentive to the indeterminacies that result from his synthesizing diverse source material. Amanat’s careful handling of narrative tensions is most apparent in his coverage of the twentieth century, which, as noted above, comprises two-thirds of the book. An excellent example is the chapter on the Constitutional Revolution, which mostly captures the inherent contradictions of this birth event of Iran’s national history. The chapter, however, does not emphasize the revolutionary rupture this makes with Iran’s pre-modern political and religious history. Nor does it pay sufficient attention to the event’s global framing, including the decisive precedence of Ottoman Islamic constitutionalism or the Russo-Caucasian social democracy’s launch of modern Iran’s reformist and revolutionary agenda. At this chapter’s conclusion, Amanat notes how the “liberal experience” of constitutionalism was suppressed by the authoritarianism of Pahlavi-era nation building. This, and similar passing references, show that a certain ecumenical liberalism is the benchmark against which both Pahlavi-era modernity and the Islamic Republic are normatively gauged. His normative preference notwithstanding, Amanat consistently brings nuance and fairness to his survey of Pahlavi-era authoritarian modernity and its Islamist, nationalist and leftist contenders. As a historian of twentieth-century century Iran’s opposition movements, I submit that Amanat tries to give them voice and presence, even when his perspective does not do justice to the depth of the opposition’s, and particularly the left’s, contribution to the making of Iranian modernity. After all, the signature political project of Pahlavi modernity, i.e. the White Revolution, copied the agenda of the left, whose positive and creative contributions Amanat notes only in passing. A similar distancing is evident in Amanat’s treatment of left-leaning intellectuals, for example Jalal Al-Ahmad, whom he tries to present fairly, yet incorrectly considers an advocate of Islamism and political alignment with the clergy. Thus, and despite his largely successful striving for balance, Amanat’s narration still shows traces of Persian nationalist and cold war historiography, such as calling Azerbaijan’s autonomous government “secessionist,” or Iran’s non-Persian languages “dialects.”
Amanat’s preference for a democratic and pluralist Iran, however, does not distort his clear-sighted survey of the undemocratic trajectory of the “Islamic Revolution.” The chapters on the Revolution and the Islamic Republic take up about a quarter of the book, tracing the ideas and political project of Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors with meticulous attention to detail and a largely unbiased vision. While Amanat’s measured tone and dispassionate narration is most evident here, careful readers will discern a salient note of lamentation, both here and throughout the text. Amanat’s overall narration thus fits the “tragic” mold, as described in Hayden White’s famous typology of historiographic genres. In his own perceptive allusion, narrating modern Iranian history is like a “sorrowful stroll in the garden of memories.” In the end, this reader’s final word on Amanat’s accomplishment is one of deep appreciation. He has given us the most informative, meticulously researched and comprehensive synthesis of modern Iranian history to date.
