Iran Facing Others

Home , Babak Khorramdin, Dick Davis (translator), Iranian nationalism

Iran Facing Others

Identity Boundaries in a Historical Perspective

Edited by Abbas Amanat and Farzin Vejdani iran facing others Copyright © Abbas Amanat and Farzin Vejdani, 2012. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-10253-8 All rights reserved.

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ISBN 978-1-349-28689-8 ISBN 978-1-137-01340-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137013408 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

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First edition: January 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents

Preface ix Farzin Vejdani Introduction: Iranian Identity Boundaries: A Historical Overview 1 Abbas Amanat I The Legacy of Cultural Exclusion and Contested Memories 1 Iran and Aniran: The Shaping of a Legend 39 Dick Davis 2 Redrawing the Boundaries of 'Ajam in Early Modern Persian Literary Histories 51 Sunil Sharma 3 Iranian History in Transition: Recasting the Symbolic Identity of Babak Khorramdin 65 Touraj Atabaki II Empires and Encounters 4 Rebels and Renegades on Ottoman- Iranian Borderlands: Porous Frontiers and Hybrid Identities 81 Fariba Zarinebaf 5 Facing a Rude and Barbarous Neighbor: Iranian Perceptions of Russia and the Russians from the Safavids to the Qajars 101 Rudi Matthee 6 Through the Persian Eye: Anglophilia and Anglophobia in Modern Iranian History 127 Abbas Amanat 7 British Imperialism, Regionalism, and Nationalism in Iran, 1890– 1919 153 H. Lyman Stebbins vi Contents

III Nationalism and the Appropriation of the Past 8 The Academic Debate on Iranian Identity: Nation and Empire Entangled 173 Afshin Matin- asgari 9 Iran and Iraq: Intersocietal Linkages and Secular Nationalisms 193 H. E. Chehabi IV Self-Fashioning and Internal Othering 10 Identity among the Jews of Iran 221 Daniel Tsadik 11 The Confessions of Dolgoruki: The Crisis of Identity and the Creation of a Master Narrative 245 Mina Yazdani 12 Iranian Nationalism and Zoroastrian Identity: Between Cyrus and Zoroaster 267 Monica M. Ringer Contributors 279 Index 283 To John D. Gurney

Preface

The study of Iranian identity poses considerable challenges ranging from the complex legacy of the premodern past to the diversity of ethnic and religious populations, from the history of encounters with multiple imperial powers to the long shadow cast by nationalist ideologies. This present volume attempts to reap- praise the question of Iranian identity by engaging with more recent scholar- ship, including theories of nationalism, border studies, and research on identity formation. Abbas Amanat’s introduction, “Iranian Identity Boundaries: An Interpretive Overview,” lays out the major issues connected with the study of Iranian identity and sets the stage for subsequent papers in the volume. Avoiding a static conception of Iran, he historicizes the multiple loci of Iranian identity, rooted in language, literature, territory, imperial traditions, myth, history, and religion. Part I, “The Legacy of Cultural Exclusion and Contested Memories,” examines notions of Iran as a bound geographical and cultural space in literature and literary histories that often excluded regions and peoples from its self- definition. The notion of Iran and 'Ajam as geographical and imperial markers was by no means solely the product of modernity and nationalism. Nor were they, as some Iranian nationalists have argued, an eternal, continuous, and static category. A nuanced examination of Persian mytho- histories such as the Shahnameh, literary biogra- phies, and early literary histories demonstrate the unstable, shifting, and dynamic meanings attributed to Iran, particularly over the period of the tenth to the twentieth centuries. No discussion of Iranian identity can ignore the centrality and importance of Abu al- Qasem Ferdowsi’s epic poem Shahnameh (The Book of Kings). Arguably more than any other Persian text, it was the Shahnameh, according to Dick Davis in “Iran and Aniran: The Shaping of a Legend,” that “contributed much toward Iran’s perception of the nature of its own continuing reality in the past thousand years.” Although it would be tempting to see the text as conveying a singular and unified notion of Iran, Davis persuasively argues for a more nuanced reading of the poem, one that pays greater attention to the fundamentally shifting conception of Iran as a geographical boundary, the complex attitude toward presumed Others such as Turanians, Indians, Chinese, and Arabs, and the mixed genealogies of the tale’s quintessentially “Iranian” figures. While the Shahnameh as a poeticized mytho-historical narrative of Iranians embodied an important register of narratives and memories, tazkerehs, or biographical dictionaries, and later literary histories of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century were significant sites for the articulation of early modern and x Preface modern notions of Iran. In “Redrawing the Boundaries of 'Ajam in Early Modern Persian Literary Histories,” Sunil Sharma examines the processes by which 'Ajam, a term implying a broader Persianate literary world, came to have a more contracted meaning in the early modern period. The tendency in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century Persian biographical dictionaries to valorize “classical” Persian poets while denigrating those of the “middle” period, particularly those writing in Central Asia and South Asia, formed the immediate background for later twentieth- century nation- centered canonizations of Persian literature. Meanwhile, in Chapter 3, titled “Iranian History in Transition: Recasting the Symbolic Identity of Babak Khorramdin,” Touraj Atabaki explores the con- struction of Iranian collective identity through the vector of a single event: the ninth-century revolt of the neo-Mazdakite leader, Babak Khorramdin, against the Abbasid Caliphate. He examines how modern historiographical readings of this event, including nationalist, Stalinist, regionalist, traditional Islamist, and Shi'i narratives, reflect changes in Iranian political culture. All these conflicting narratives share a highly selective approach to the revolt, one that highlights the employment of amnesia as a critical aspect of identity formation. Part II, “Empires and Encounters,” examines how imperial encounters from the early modern period onward facilitated the articulation of an external Other through which to define a Safavid and later Qajar sense of Self. From the sixteenth century until the early twentieth century, Iranian dynasties encountered a number of foreign empires, especially the Ottomans and later the Russians and the British. All three encounters shared certain features: the loss of territory, the infiltration of foreign agents, ideological and religious competition, and anxieties over the fragil- ity of boundaries and frontiers. According to Fariba Zarinebaf in “Rebels and Renegades on Ottoman- Iranian Borderlands: Porous Frontiers and Hybrid Identities,” warfare, Sunni-Shi'i tensions and contested borderland regions contributed to the shaping of Ottoman-Safavid identities in the early modern period. Both Ottomans and Safavids supported dis- sident movements in each other’s borders: the Safavids aided Qizilbash and Celali (Jalali) rebels in the Ottoman Empire while the Ottomans in turn supported tribal groups and Christian minorities disgruntled with the Safavids’ extreme Shi'i policies. Safavid Iran consolidated its self-identity as a Shi'i state through its engage- ment with its main Sunni Other, the Ottoman Empire. Zarinebaf explores shifting political alliances, particularly among the Iranian- Ottoman border, where diverse populations on both sides were engaged in a constant process of refashioning them- selves according to social, political, and economic circumstances. Shifting attention to Iran’s northern border in Chapter 5, “Facing a Rude and Barbarous Neighbor: Iranian Perceptions of Russia and the Russians from the Safa- vids to the Qajars,” Rudi Matthee sets out to answer why Iranians’ perception of Russia failed to inspire the same intensity of sentiment as England. Focusing on Iranian perceptions of Russia, he traces the transformation of Iranian views of “Ominous Russia” (Rus- e manhus) from the Safavid condescension toward perceived Russian barbarity to Qajar ambivalence, wavering between awareness of Russia’s successful modernization program and fear of its military superiority and expansionist goals. Given Russia’s opaque, though somewhat brutal, imperial- ist agenda toward Iran, Matthee concludes that Iranian attitudes toward Russia, Preface xi although often negative, did not include a sense of dashed hopes that marked contemporary Anglo- Iranian relations. Even more consequential in the shaping of modern Iranian national Self against an external Other was Great Britain. Abbas Amanat’s “Through the Persian Eye: Anglophilia and Anglophobia in Modern Iranian History” investigates Iranian ambivalence toward England during the Qajar period. Fear and fascination perme- ated “diplomatic, commercial, and cultural encounters” between Iran and England. In the eyes of many Iranians, England had inexplicable powers of political intrigue and manipulation. Viewed from a longer historical perspective of cultural Other- ing, England came to occupy the position of an important imperial Other through which Iranian identity was partially articulated. Continuing on the theme of Anglo- Iranian encounters in Chapter 7, H. Lyman Stebbins examines the interplay between regional, national, and imperial forces in the shaping of identities in Iran in “British Imperialism, Regionalism, and Nationalism in Iran, 1890–1919.” British imperialism in the south of Iran reinforced regional identities and traditional elites but simultaneously provided a rallying point for the mobilization of local actors— including tribes, the ulama, and nationalists— against an external Other starting with the 1906 Iranian Constitu- tional Revolution. Despite the temporary and fragile alliance of local forces against the British and the later attempts by the Pahlavi state to integrate the south into the centralizing state, the issue of regionalism was an enduring source of anxiety. Part III, “Nationalism and the Appropriation of the Past,” explores the ways in which certain forms of nationalism have silenced alternative understandings of the past. Nationalism, as a foundational principle for many works of nineteenth- and twentieth- century history, often assumes an ethnically, linguistically, and religiously homogenous nation from time immemorial to the present. In “The Academic Debate on Iranian Identity: Nation and Empire Entangled,” Afshin Matin- asgari focuses the ongoing contemporary academic debate about Iran. Focusing on the latest phase of this debate from the 1990s to the present, he argues the hegemonic “Persian-National paradigm” has been increasingly chal- lenged intellectually and politically, resulting in a crisis in orientation. He calls for less emphasis on continuities in studies of Iranian history and more critical con- sciousness of the ways in which Orientalists and Iranian nationalists recast imperial notions of premodern Iran within a national framework. In Chapter 9, “Iran and Iraq: Intersocietal Linkages and Secular National- isms,” H. E. Chehabi questions predominant narratives of an essential antagonism between Iran and Iraq, not only perpetuated by nationalists on both sides, but also replicated by less-informed pundits. In light of the Iran-Iraq war, the longest war of the twentieth century, many have overlooked or glossed over the shared communities, histories, and cultures, preferring instead to believe that the conflict between Iran and Iraq had “ancient roots.” In light of these shared histories, Che- habi argues that the mutual Othering Iranians and Iraqis engage in is a relatively recent phenomenon. Part IV, “Self-Fashioning and Internal Othering,” shifts focus from the external Other to its internal analogues. While it is nearly impossible to draw strict boundaries between these two forms of Othering, the issue is one of emphasis. In Iran, the internal Other often took the form of religious minorities—Jews, Zoroastrians, and xii Preface

Baha'is—who at times benefited from the integrative potential of secular nationalism but also suffered from more exclusionary ideological tendencies. Daniel Tsadik’s “Identity among the Jews of Iran” attempts to gauge the degree of Jewish integration into the broader Iranian- Muslim community from the early modern period onward. Focusing on language, conversion, persecution, iconography, and pilgrimage sites, Tsadik paints a picture of the Iranian Jewry as one occupying a liminal space, simultaneously manifesting evidence of acculturation into Iranian society while maintaining a wider identification with the international Jewish community. The advent of the 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution extended the hope of equality for all Iranian citizenry under the rubric of nationalism— including Jews— although this aspiration remained elusive. Throughout the rest of the twentieth century, segments of the Iranian Jewish population embraced a range of political programs (i.e., Zionism, communism, and nationalism), sought out alternative religious identities through conversion to Islam or the Baha'i faith, and attempted to negotiate their identity in light of the plethora of possibilities available to them. Conspiracy theories and a sense of anxiety about heterodox minorities coalesced in the representation of the Baha'i community. In “The Confessions of Dolgoruki: The Crisis of Identity and the Creation of a Master Narrative,” Mina Yazdani examines the creation of an internal Other, the Baha'is, through The Confessions of Dolgoruki, a forged memoir attributed to a nineteenth- century Russian diplomat, Dimitry Ivanovich Dolgorukov. The text reveals a tendency in Iranian nationalism to equate internal threats with external ones, in this case by claiming that the Babi and Baha'i movements were creations of Russian imperialism. In the course of making conspiratorial claims about supposed Baha'i links to foreign imperial powers, the text displays contradictory aims, ranging from the promotion of racist nationalism and Sunni-Shi'i rapprochement to anticlericalism. According to Yazdani, these contradictions reflect the postconstitutional identity crisis in which nationalists fused Islamist and Aryanist conceptions of the nation. In contrast to Jews and Baha'is who were often cast as internal enemies and threats to national unity, Iranian secular nationalists often viewed Zoroastrians as repositories of Iran’s “authentic” ancient past. In “Iranian Nationalism and Zoro- astrian Identity: Between Cyrus and Zoroaster,” Monica M. Ringer examines how Iranian Zoroastrians actively participated in promoting a unique place for them- selves in Iranian nationalism. This process, however, was not without considerable ambivalence and tension. By universalizing the pre- Islamic past for the purpose of partaking in nationalism, some Iranian Zoroastrians paradoxically denuded this past of its religious significance. Iranian Zoroastrians therefore had to grapple with the question of whether they constituted a religious or an ethnic community. Despite the considerable range of topics addressed in this edited volume, there are still important subjects that have remained unaddressed, at least independently. Foremost among them is the role of gender in the formation of Iranian identities. Another is the place of mysticism and mystical trends in Iranian Islam. Persian mystic poets and Sufi orders and convents have played a crucial role in all facets of Iranian culture, ranging from visual arts, architecture, statecraft, and popular forms of piety and culture. Preface xiii

The theme of this volume and many of its contributions emerged from the “Fac- ing Others: Iranian Identity Boundaries and Modern Political Cultures” conference held April 25–27, 2008, at Yale University. Sponsored by the Iranian Studies Initia- tive at Yale, the conference received generous funding from the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. Professor Bert Fragner delivered the keynote address. Professor Ehsan Yarshater kindly agreed to participate in the conference and offered insightful concluding remarks. Presenters whose contributions are not in the present volume included Sabri Ates, Lois Beck, Stephen Dale, Manochehr Dorraj, Arash Khazeni, Orly Rahimiyan, Mahmoud Sadri, and Mohamad Tavakoli- Targhi. Fakhreddin Azimi, Gene Garthwaite, Arang Keshavarzian, Kishwar Rizvi, and Farzin Vahdat graciously agreed to act as panel discussants and chairs. The edi- tors would like to thank those who helped with various dimensions of the planning and implementation of the conference including Mehrun Etebari, Kira Gallick, John Hartley, and Ranin Kazemi. Mehrdad Amanat provided valuable feedback and comments on selected chapters. Farzin Vejdani, 2011