Conclusion

Abstract

It is now possible to attempt to answer the questions set out in the introduction. First, what were the social, political, and economic factors that shaped legal reform in early twentieth-century Iran? The effort to create a state judiciary and the quest for the rule of law after the 1906 Constitutional Revolution faced extraordinary difficulties: the fragmentation of state power during the period between 1910 and 1923; severe financial constraints; and deep-seated resistance among some of the Shi‘i clerical estate, perhaps unique in the Islamicate societies of the day, both to a state judiciary based on secular law codes and to even minimal state control over the shari‘a courts. The process of reform was—moreover—complex, protracted, and theoretically untidy. Iranian statesmen were engaged in a difficult, pragmatic—indeed, frequently trial-and-error—process of institution-building in difficult circumstances. Thus imposing too rigid a set of analytical categories on this history should be avoided. Nevertheless, legal reform was driven by constitutionalist ideology—a significant measure of conscious planning—as well as by political struggles and the three variables identified in the introduction: imperialism, liberal legality, and etatiste legality, all played a part in shaping the reform.