The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism

This lecture by Dr. Reza Zia-Ebrahimi is based on his book, "The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the politics of dislocation," published in 2016 by Columbia University Press. An abstract of the book from Dr. Reza's page on King's College website is given below:

Reza Zia-Ebrahimi revisits the work of Fath'ali Akhundzadeh and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, two Qajar-era intellectuals who founded modern Iranian nationalism. In their efforts to make sense of a difficult historical situation, these thinkers advanced an appealing ideology Zia-Ebrahimi calls "dislocative nationalism," in which pre-Islamic Iran is cast as a golden age, Islam is reinterpreted as an alien religion, and Arabs become implacable others. Dislodging Iran from its empirical reality and tying it to Europe and the Aryan race, this ideology remains the most politically potent form of identity in Iran.

Akhundzadeh and Kermani's nationalist reading of Iranian history has been drilled into the minds of Iranians since its adoption by the Pahlavi state in the early twentieth century. Spread through mass schooling, historical narratives, and official statements of support, their ideological perspective has come to define Iranian culture and domestic and foreign policy. Zia-Ebrahimi follows the development of dislocative nationalism through a range of cultural and historical materials, and he captures its incorporation of European ideas about Iranian history, the Aryan race, and a primordial nation. His work emphasizes the agency of Iranian intellectuals in translating European ideas for Iranian audiences, impressing Western conceptions of race onto Iranian identity.

Dr. Reza introduces his talk at Stanford University by clarifying what he means by Iranian nationalism.  The (dislocative) Iranian nationalism, according to Dr. Zia, was constructed in the late 19th century and was based on the ideas of European orientalists, many of whom were Islamophobes. This nationalism was not accepted or even discussed in Iran before the late 19th century. He defines Iranian nationalism as a cluster of following three myths or ideas.

• Iran is the land of Aryans. The Aryans are defined as a race that is generally in conflict with the Semitic race. Here, there is an attempt to link Iran with Europe and present Iranians as a European race. Many influential historians, who subscribed to this myth under Pahlavis, wrote Iranian history to affirm this myth;
• Everything in pre-Islamic Iran was great. It was the golden age of Iranian/Aryan history. If one wants to study true Iranian culture, before its adulteration, then he or she has to study this age. The decline of Iran started with the invasion of Arabs;
• Arabs are barbaric, uncouth, illiterate savages. Everything related to Arabs is brutish or boorish, including their culture (if it exists), their language, Arabic, and their religion, Islam.

As one can see Dr. Reza is talking about a particular type or a specific strand of Iranian nationalism. This strand rejects Islam, Arab and Semitic influences, including sometimes Shia Islam. So, Dr. Reza is telling the story of nationalism that is not accepted by millions of Iranians and the current Iranian government today. Dr. Reza explains how the myths above are ahistorical and European imports.

Some pictures that Dr. Reza used to illustrate Iranian dislocative nationalism:

Popularity of Farvahar: Symbol of pre-Islamic Iran, Zoroastrianism, etc.

Crown Prince Abbas asking a European to explain (after Iran's defeat by Russians):

Golden age archaism:

Arab invasion: Arabs are not only brutal savages that are killing Iranians and raping Iranian women, they are also brown while Iranians are white:

Aryan race theory borrowed from the Europeans, part of the state discourse under Pahlavis:

To understand the tussle between religious and ethnolinguistic nationalism in Iran, here are some previous blog posts on Iranian nationalism: Iranian identity and nationalism: Shahnameh's Jamsheed or Biblical Cyrus, Iranian 'Persian-National' Identity, Shiite and Persian Nationalism are both myths, Afraid of Ahmadinejad,  Is Persian Identity rising again in Iran?, and More on the tussle between and merging of Islamic and Persian identity in Iran.

Iranian identity and nationalism: Shahnameh's Jamsheed or Biblical Cyrus

Professor Ali Ansari gave a very enlightening talk on Iranian identity at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. He is a professor at St. Andrews and has written extensively on Iran, Iranian identity, Iranian nationalism, and Iran-US relations. He has written seven books on Iran: 

• Iran: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2014),
• The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran, (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 
• Crisis of Authority: Iran's 2009 Presidential Election, (Chatham House, 2010), 
• Iran Under Ahmadinejad (Routledge, 2008), 
• Iran, Islam & Democracy - The Politics of Managing Change ( RIIA, London, 2000), 
• The History of Modern Iran Since 1921: the Pahlavis & After (Longman, Pearson Education, London, 2003), and 
• Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Roots of Mistrust, (C Hurst and co, 2006).

Professor Ansari starts his talk by criticizing the ahistorical approach of studying Iranian history through the lens of the 1979 Revolution. He laments that scholars start from the 1979 Revolution and then look back for reasons why it happened as if it was the most important event in modern Iranian history. He contends that it is actually the 1906 Constitutional Revolution that is the most significant event and if one wants to understand Iran, one has to prioritize the 1906 Revolution. 

Professor Ansari explains that his talk is not about the politics of nationalism but about the ideas and myths that formed the basis or have fashioned Iranian identity and nationalism. He argues that it is the national mythology that defines nations, informs people who they are. 

In his talk, Professor Ansari dismisses the usual five periods division of modern Iranian history that he has also used in some of his works: the Constitutional Revolution, Reza Shah and modernization, Second World War and Mussaddeq, Second autocracy under Muhammad Reza Shah, and the post-Islamic Revolution period. He divides modern Iranian history into three periods on the basis of ideas prevalent about Iranian identity:

1. The age of enlightenment (1890-1963?)
2. The age of extremes (1963-1989): the unhappy consciousness?
3. The age of contestation (1989-present)

The age of enlightenment was the key period, according to Professor Ansari. During this formative age, ideas about nation and nationalism were absorbed from the West and then applied to Iran. Surprisingly, the level of engagement between the two sides was pretty sophisticated and a small but influential group of Iranians was debating ideas and was not ready to accept everything Western. The key problem faced by these Iranians was how to disseminate the ideas of civic nationalism to the wider public. They understood that for a nation, both history and myth are necessary. The myth they choose was Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (The Book of Kings). 

Professor Ansari does not explain Shahnameh as most of the people interested in Iran already know what it is but many readers here may be ignorant of its importance, so here is a short introduction. Shahnameh is a long epic Persian poem, consisting of some 50,000 couplets (two-line verses). It was written by Ferdowsi at the turn of the first millennium (977-1010 CE). It is the national epic of Greater Iran. The British Library website has the following Ferdowsi quote and a very, very short synopsis of the epic (more details about Shahnameh on the website can be read here):

"The houses that are the dwelling of today will sink beneath shower and sunshine to decay but storm and rain shall never mar the palace that I have built with my poetry." Ferdowsi.

The Shahnameh, literally meaning 'Book of Kings,' is structured according to the mythical and historical reign of 50 Persian Kings. The epic can be roughly divided into three parts: the first part tells of the mythical creation of Persia and its earliest mythical past; the second part tells of the legendary Kings and the heroes Rostam and Sohrab; the third part blends historical fact with legend, telling of the semi-mythical adventures of actual historical Kings.

Shahnameh was chosen because it was known to the Iranians. For centuries, millions of Iranians had listened to the epic and debated about the qualities of Jamsheed, Rostam, and Sohrab even when there was no historical evidence of their existence.  Even the British recognized the importance of Shahnameh and were using it to seek ordinary Iranians support for allies cause in WWII. In the propaganda pamphlet (published in 1942) below, Kaveh (the mythical blacksmith in Shahnameh who led the popular uprising against the cruel foreign ruler, Zahak) leads, while Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin follow him and Hitler (shown as Zahak) is bound on a horseback.

Source: Alamy.com

It's better to listen to Professor Ansari's lecture for understanding his argument, however, following is a summary of the rest of the talk. 

During the second period, according to Professor Ansari, the focus shifts from Shahnameh to Biblical Cyrus. The change is the result of the affinity that Mohammad Reza Shah felt for Cyrus, the Great. He perhaps thought Cyrus, the Great more useful for his own projection as an enlightened, liberal monarch who would emancipate his people and others from darkness, cruelty, and subjugation. The change also prioritizes 'real' history over myth. During the third period, Cyrus was initially rejected and Shahnameh was again promoted by the state as the basis of Iranian identity but more recently, Cyrus has also seen a revival. Can we see a synthesis in the near future?

To understand the tussle between religious and ethnolinguistic nationalism in Iran, here are some previous blog posts on Iranian nationalism: Iranian 'Persian-National' Identity, Shiite and Persian Nationalism are both myths, Afraid of Ahmadinejad,  Is Persian Identity rising again in Iran?, and More on the tussle between and merging of Islamic and Persian identity in Iran.