The book under review is an anthology of contributions most of whose authors took part in a conference held at Yale University in April 2008. As one of the editors states in the Preface, this volume presents recent scholarship regarding questions of “Iranian identity”, or, more precisely, identities from the Shahname until the present. It is divided into four parts, presenting a thematic arrangement of the articles. In his introduction on “Iranian identity boundaries”, Amanat discusses Iranian national identity as a construct that has endured since Safavid times. Nevertheless, he acts on the assumption that an Iranian “cultural awareness” or a “Persian identity” has always existed. Although the article contributes many interesting insights to the question of Iranian identities, it lacks a thorough discussion of the main key words: what does “Iranian” mean at different times under various historical conditions, and what does “Iranian culture” consist of in these diverse conditions? If the ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous peoples of Iran did and do possess a shared “cultural awareness” as well as a “deeper sense of themselves”, what exactly does this mean?

Part I “The legacy of cultural exclusion and contested memories”, includes three articles, dealing with “Iran and Aniran” (Dick Davis), “Redrawing the boundaries of ʿAjam in early modern Persian literary histories” (Sunil Sharma) and “Iranian history in transition” (Touraj Atabaki). Accrediting the Shahname with “an almost iconic significance in discussions of Iranian identity”, Davis focuses on its “Iranian-ness”. Concluding that the Shahname presents “a unity of diversity” or, rather, of “disunity”, he sees the reason for its presumed “uniquely Iranian identity” in the way Ferdousi, in the second half of the tale, imagines the Sasanian version of an ideal, monolithic Iran. As Sharma points out, New Persian did not belong exclusively to one nation. He refers in particular to the discourse on Persian literature that took place between Iranian, Indian, and European scholars during the second half of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Atabaki, for his part, analyses the construction of collective identities, specifically the way Babak Khorramdin's revolt of the early ninth century was used for this purpose throughout the twentieth century. Using Babak as a case study, Atabaki convincingly demonstrates how historical narratives are used to construct the desired national identities, irrespective of any known facts.

Part II, “Empires and encounters”, assembles four articles dealing with “Rebels and renegades on Ottoman–Iranian borderlands” (Fariba Zarinebaf), “Iranian perceptions of Russia and the Russians from the Safavids to the Qajars” (Rudi Matthee), “Anglophilia and Anglophobia in modern Iranian history” (Abbas Amanat), and “British Imperialism, regionalism, and nationalism in Iran, 1890–1919” (H. Lyman Stebbins). Zarinebaf's contribution does not in fact discuss the question of identities but concentrates on border conflicts and diplomatic dodges instead. Matthee focuses on Russia's image as Iran's “rude and barbarous neighbour”, which, for various reasons, was later dwarfed by Great Britain as the “perfidious influence” pulling the strings of every negative event in Iran. Amanat, then, looks at exactly this influence, that is, the “hidden hand” of the British or the “modern Other” against which Iranians, at least partially, formed their nationalist identity during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In his contribution, Stebbins concentrates on British imperialism in Iran's southern regions, depicting Great Britain as the ultimate “other” on the one hand, but convincingly arguing at the same time that Britain's presence in the south was based on local arrangements, bilateral relations with local elites, and direct military and fiscal intervention. Unfortunately, there is no contribution on the “Othering” of the United States as the “big Satan” to be found in the volume.

Part III “Nationalism and the appropriation of the past”, consists of two articles, “The academic debate on Iranian identity” (Afshin Matin-asgari) and “Iran and Iraq” (Houchang E. Chehabi). As the “Persian-National paradigm” has been severely criticized since the early 1990s, Matin-asgari suggests a compromise: premodern Iran should be regarded as an empire instead of a nation, while at the same time the continuity of imperial paradigms could be acknowledged even by proponents of critical historiography. The author concludes, correctly, that modernist inventions constructing a uniform Iranian identity from premodern times until the present can no longer be considered workable. Regarding the differences or, better put, similarities between Iran and Iraq, Chehabi compellingly shows that anti-Arab as well as anti-Iraqi Iranian nationalism is not the result of age-old resentments, be they “racial”, “ethnic” or otherwise. On the contrary, Iran and Iraq have much in common regarding their communities, their cultural affinities, and even their nationalisms.

Part IV “Self-fashioning and internal othering” includes three articles that deal with “Identity among the Jews of Iran” (Daniel Tsadik), “The Confessions of Dolgoruki” (Mina Yazdani), and “Iranian nationalism and Zoroastrian identity” (Monica M. Ringer). Tsadik gives a definition of “identity” that is helpful in the context of his own subject, even if it does not reflect a broader scholarly debate. Since Safavid times, Jews have had varying and multiple identities which depend not least on the way in which they were regarded by changing governments and the encircling Muslim populations. In her very instructive contribution on the Confessions of Dolgoruki, Yazdani concludes that this work of fiction not only “created a master narrative of Babi-Baha'i connections with foreign imperialist powers”, but also combined the contradictory Aryan and Islamic modes of Iranian national identity through “casting Baha'is as the internal Other”. Ringer affirms that, concerning Zoroastrianism in modern Iran, an “inherent conflict between community identity, religious identity, and nationalism” can be detected. During the Pahlavi era in particular, when Iranian nationalism was primarily nourished by the ancient past, tensions about what exactly determined Zoroastrian identity were aroused between the state and the Zoroastrian community as well as within the community itself.

Overall, the volume under review adds valuable arguments and findings to the vast and controversial discussion on “Iranian identity”. It might be regarded as a prolongation of the conference volume edited by Carlo Cereti (Iranian Identity in the Course of History. Rome, 2010) and a number of its contributions should definitely be read in conjunction with the articles on “Iranian Identity” published in the Encyclopædia Iranica. However, the volume would have benefited from a theoretical discussion of “identity”, which would have served as a basic concept for the articles included. Finally, one can only determine that the discussion on “Iranian identity” has not yet reached its conclusion. If more scholars acted on Matin-asgari's proposal quoted above, perhaps it would be possible to agree at least on some historically established basics regarding “Iranian identity”.