The Constitutional Moment: The Ulama and the Political Sphere, 1892–1921

Abstract

This chapter investigates ulama participation in the movement against the Régie of Tobacco (1891–1892) and in the Constitutional Revolution (1906–1911), as well as the revolution’s impact on relations between the ulama and the state leading up to the 1921 coup. The historiography of the period, with minor differences here and there, casts the ulama as principal participants or leading instigators of both these seminal events. I claim instead that their own priority during the period was to manage the transition from acting as spiritual and political leaders of a scattered community to acting as a distinct social and political entity in a nation in the making. It is the political turmoil of the period and the ulama’s participation in the revolution and repression that made them an important part of Iranian history.