Abstract
The Iranian Revolution has been one of the epic events of postwar history, involving remarkable levels of political mobilisation, international crisis, and political brutality. Contrary to the expectations of many, the apparently stable regime of the Shah was overthrown in 1978–9 and a new post-revolutionary system successfully established and maintained. Yet beyond its importance for the history of modern Iran and of the world as a whole, the revolution has posed analytic questions of considerable complexity, both for those who seek to relate it to the overall course of modern Iranian history, and for those who want to compare it to other modern revolutions. If the Iranian upheaval deserves the name ‘revolution’, defined in terms of levels of mass mobilisation, destruction of an existing political and social order, and the establishment of a distinctly new order, then it would seem to be an unusual variant of this type of social event, a development as atypical as it was unexpected.
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Notes and references
Karl Griewank, Der neuzeitliche Revolutionsbegrif. (Weimar, 1955), ch. 1.
Thus Radio Ahvaz, broadcasting in Arabic on 1 September 1980: ‘This awaiting universal Islamic state will demolish all tyrannical thrones built on the corpses of the oppressed. The sword of justice will claim all charlatans, agents, and traitors.’ See my ‘Iranian Foreign Policy Since 1979: Internationalism and Nationalism in the Islamic Revolution’, in Juan Cole and Nikki Keddie (eds), Shi’ ism and Social Protes. (London, 1986).
One exception is the nineteenth-century Shi’ite writer Mullah Ahmad Naraqi, an exponent of the Usul. school which did emphasise the powers of juridical authorities in Islam. But Naraqi did not extend this to include full political power, as Khomeini was later to do (Said Amir Arjomand, ‘The State and Khomeini’s Islamic Order’, Iranian Studie., vol. XIII, nos. 1–4 (1980), p. 154). What is striking is that Khomeini does not invoke the precedent of those conservative writers who opposed the secular constitution of 1906. Indeed, while he exhibited an initial tolerance of the 1906 Constitution, he seems later to have regarded the whole period of the Constitutional Revolution as an embarrassment.
This point has been well made by Mohammad Ja’far and Azar Tabari, ‘Iran: and the Struggle for Socialism’, Khamsi., 8, 1981.
Sami Zubeida, ‘The ideological conditions for Khomeini’s doctrine of government’, Economy and Societ., vol. II, no. 2 (May 1982).
Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolution., (Princeton, 1982), pp. 530–537.
For a guide to the earlier role of the clergy in Iran see Nikki Keddie, Iran: Religion, Politics and Societ., (London, 1980)
her Religion and Rebellion in Iran: The Iranian Tobacco Protest of 1891–9. (London, 1966). Strictly speaking Islam does not have a clergy in the sense of an ordained body of men. But in this text I have used the term ‘clergy’ interchangeably with the word ulem., literally ‘those who know’, the standard Arabic Muslim term, and the word mulla., the word normally applied to Shi’ite clergy in Iran. Iranians themselves tend not to use the word mulla., but to talk of the akhun., a slightly derogatory term for an ordinary clergyman, or of the ruhaniya., the body of religious personnel. Higher-ranking clerics are called mujtahid., meaning that they have the authority of ijtiha., independent judgement on holy matters, whilst the highest ranking are called ayatolla., literally ‘sign of God’. For a general discussion of Iranian terms for the clergy see Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophe. (London, 1986), pp. 231–2. Given the absence of any established hierarchy, the designation ayatolla. is a result of promotion and reputation within the Islamic institutions. Prior to the revolution it was a term confined to a small number of clergyman, of whom Khomeini was neither the senior nor the most learned. The term Ima., applied to Khomeini, represents a verbal inflation, but is an honorary title and, at least officially, does not indicate any claim to his being one of the line of Twelve Imams of the Shi’ites believe are the true followers of Mohammad.
We do not yet have the detailed information necessary to establish who were ‘the faces in the crowd’ that made the Iranian Revolution, that is, a precise evaluation of the social forces behind the revolution. While it appears, from the very size and superficial appearance of the demonstrators, that members of all social groups participated, it is much less clear what the proportions were. Some initial indications are given in Farhad Kazemi, Poverty and Revolution in Ira. (London, 1980).
He suggests that it was second-generation migrant industrial workers, not the poorest inhabitants of shanty towns, who participated most in the revolutionary protests. The poorest sections were still outside the social networks that would have drawn them into the demonstrations of late 1978. For an important, earlier study of this issue see Ervand Abrahamian, ‘The Crowd in Iranian Politics, 1905–53, in Haleh Afshar (ed.), Iran: A Revolution in Turmoi. (London 1985).
No full account of the revolution has yet been written, but surveys are included in Abrahamian, and in Nikki Keddie, Roots of Revolutio. (New Haven, 1981)
Also of interest are Robert Graham, Iran: The Illusion of Powe., Second Edition (London, 1979)
Mohammed Heikal, The Return of the Ayatolla., (New York, 1981)
L. P. Elwell-Sutton, “The Iranian Revolution: Triumph or Tragedy”, in Hossein Amirsadeghi, ed., The Security of the Persian Gul. (New York, 1981).
The best eyewitness account is Paul Balta and Claudine Rulleau, L’ Iran Insurgé. (Paris, 1979).
On post-revolutionary developments the outstanding study is Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollah., London 1984. Bakhtiar’s own account is given in his Ma Fidelit., Paris, 1982. See also my interview with him in MERIP Report., no. 104, March-April 1982.
Graham provides invaluable analysis of many aspects of the economic change; see also my Iran: Dictatorship and Developmen. (London, 1979), and the references contained therein. On rural conditions, see Eric Hooglund, Land and Revolution in Iran, 1960–198. (Austin, 1982). A general economic overview is given by M. H. Pesaran, ‘Economic Development and Revolutionary Upheavals in Iran’, in Haleh Afshar (ed.), Iran: A Revolution in Turmoil.
American Ambassador William Sullivan complained bitterly of the Shah’s indecisiveness, a characteristic foreign observers had noted during the crisis of the early 1950s. One British journalist who met the Shah in September reported that the monarch flatly refused to believe there were any slums in Tehran, a fact evident to the most casual observer. Some pertinent observations are given in Fereidun Hoveida, The Fall of the Sha., (London, 1980).
Theda Skocpol, State and Social Revolutio. (London, 1979), pp. 14–18.
Skocpol’s own reflections on the Iranian revolution are in ‘Rentier State and Shi’a Islam in the Iranian Revolution’ in Theory and Societ., May 1982. She points to the sociological weakness of rentier states and the mobilising potential of Shi’a Islam as special factors enabling the Iranian revolution.
An important comparative perspective on the 1979 revolution is given by the Mosaddeq period when secular nationalism and a mass Cornmunist movement predominated: see Richard Cottam, Nationalism in Ira. (Pittsburgh, 1964). The clergy at that time gave some support to Mosaddeq, but turned against him in 1952 and did not oppose the 1953 coup. Khomeini never mentions Mosaddeq’s name in a positive light and argues that his fall was a result of his abandonment of Islam.
For discussion of this issue see Said Amir Arjomand, ‘Shi’ite Islam and Revolution in Iran’, Government and Oppositio., vol. 16, no. 3 (Summer 1981)
Edward Mortimer, Faith and Powe. (London, 1982), ch. 9
Hamid Algar, ‘The Oppositional Role of the Ulama in Twentieth Century Iran’, in Nikki Keddie (ed.), Scholars, Saints and Sufi., (Berkeley, 1972). Also indispensable is the work of Akhavi, cited in n. 22 below.
An extremely shrewd and careful discussion of these points is contained in Shahrough Akhavi Religion and Politics in Contemporary Ira. (Albany, New York, 1980).
Akhavi demonstrates the contingency of Islamic thought and hence the availability of a wide range of equally valid ‘interpretations’. On Islam as a state religion under the Safavis, see I. B. Petrushevsky, Islam in Ira. (London, 1985), ch. XIII.
A careful study of the organisation and curricula of the Qom madrase. in the mid-1970s is given by Michael Fischer in Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolutio. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980).
On Shariati see Fischer, Ira., Keddie, Roots of Revolutio., and Mangol Bayat-Phillip ‘Shiism in Contemporary Iranian Politics: The Case of Ali Shariati’, in Elie Kedourie and Sylvia Haim, (eds), Towards a Modern Ira. (London, 1980). Shariati too was quite anti-clerical, and is regarded by most religious authorities as an unlettered upstart. His writings fall into the mainstream of Third World cultural and nationalist writings of the 1970s. He died in London, in 1977. See his On the Sociology of Isla. (Berkeley, 1979).
For the earlier decades of the century see the classic E. Brown, The Persian Revolutio. (London, 1909)
for the early 1950s see Kermit Roosevelt, Countercou. (New York, 1980), a vivid account of the American and British roles in preparing the 1953 cou. that reinstalled the Shah.
Hossein Mahdavy, ‘Patterns and Problems of Economic Development in Rentier States: the Case of Iran’, in M. A. Cook (ed.), Studies in the Economic History of the Middle Eas. (London, 1970)
Homa Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran, 1926–197. (London, 1981).
William Sullivan argues that some accommodation with Khomeini might have been possible in early 1979, but that this was excluded by an unrealistic ‘hard line’ being pursued by Brezezinski, the President’s National Security Adviser: in ‘Dateline Iran: the Road Not Taken’, Foreign Polic., Washington, no. 40 (Fall 1980) and his Mission to Ira. (New York, 1981). The best accounts of US Iranian relations are in Barry Rubin, Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience in Ira. (New York: 1980) and
Gary Sick, All Fall Down, America’ s Tragic Encounter with Ira., London 1985. See also my discussion of variant US accounts in MERIP Reports no. 140, May-June 1986.
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© 1988 The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York and Fred Halliday
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Halliday, F. (1988). The Iranian Revolution: Uneven Development and Religious Populism. In: Halliday, F., Alavi, H. (eds) State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19029-4_3
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