The Tale of the Quchan Maidens as an "Originator" Event of the Constitutional Revolution

One of the defining characteristics of recent Iranian scholarship is the belief that European historical chronology, as blindly applied to nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Iran, has produced an inaccurate and highly misleading narrative of the history of the constitutional revolution. Selective omission of events and projection of a European-, especially French-, inspired intellectual frame of reference have thus created a broad outline that, far from reflecting the local political culture, echoes European narratives of the French Revolution. This belief is often coupled with a conviction that a rereading of primary Persian texts would alter the narrative and, more important, bring to light events that had been deliberately overlooked, or barely mentioned, because they had been deemed as contradicting the "standard" outline.¹ Such critiques, indeed, are essential for the reconstruction of past events, paying due attention to the specifically Iranian political circumstances and sociocultural environment of the time. Texts can and must be reread to facilitate groundbreaking analysis and further enhance our knowledge of this most crucial episode in twentieth-century Iranian history.

However, any attempt to create a more "authentic" version of events and restore some of the actors' proper role so far conveniently obscured in existing scholarship must follow the rigorous disciplines of historiography. That entails a careful scrutiny of hard-core facts, sifted from the myths found in abundance in Persian texts. To state that memoirs, eyewitness accounts, and press reports can be subjective and biased is to state the obvious. However, the complexity of all events that led to the revolution, the ambiguity of its publicly proclaimed objectives, the multifaceted nature of its ideological composition, and the constant shifting of alliances and alignments of its diverse leadership, not to mention the nuanced rhetoric at times adopted by some of the players for sheer political survival, can never be overstated. All the texts used as primary sources, practically without exception, display these characteristics. Historians, therefore, should study legendary figures and events, and the myths attached to some, through a meticulous corroboration of all available texts, and not just conduct textual explication of some. They should scrupulously assess the relevance of an event in arousing public emotion and in actually shaping the political agenda of the movement. Of even greater importance to historians is the need to situate an event within its broader political context to evaluate the power it had to highlight, or dim, the defining issues of the time.

Late Qajar history is replete with instances of instrumentalized, at times even fabricated, events in the course of sociopolitical turmoil. Its instigators would create a crisis situation with the intention of achieving short-term goals. The famous fatwa of December 1891 banning the consumption of tobacco is a case in point. Attributed to the highly respected mojtahed Mirza Hasan Shirazi, the fatwa was in fact forged by his aides, upon the instigation of a group of court officials and wealthy merchants, themselves secretly backed by the Russian government.² Shirazi did not disavow it, once it was promulgated in his name, and it legitimized the nationwide movement of revolt against the tobacco concession the shah had granted a British firm. It unleashed an unprecedented religious fervor in the country under the leadership of Mirza Hasan Ashtiani, the Tehran mojtahed most prominent in liberal circles, and forced the shah to repeal the concession. The repeal fulfilled Russia's mercantile interests in Iran more than anyone else's. The tobacco affair constituted a prelude to the constitutional revolution. The most significant legacy of that protest movement, though, was the tactics used to rally the bazaar, liberal politicians, and intellectuals round selected ulama, giving a religious or moral aura to worldly motives and goals.

On the eve of the revolution, underground societies staged events in various parts of the country that were instrumental...