A single photograph taken during the Constitutional Revolution portrays the nature of that historical event better than most of the accounts purporting to explain the Revolution in terms of the ideological impact of the West. It is a picture of some fourteen-thousand artisans and shopkeepers (pīshivarān), dressed in their traditional attire, taking sanctuary (bast) in the garden of the British Legation in Tehran and demanding mashrūīyat (constitutional rule). At first sight the picture is perplexing; it stands at odds with the present studies of the Revolution: How could a “modern,” or a “national bourgeois” revolution have been brought about by a social class who appeared—and indeed were—traditional in every sense of the word?

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Iran was shaken by a series of serious upheavals caused by the Bābī movement. Although of short duration, these upheavals engulfed the entire country and had far-reaching effects in that they formed the first of a chain of events that led on the one hand, to the constitional movement in Iran, and on the other, to the establishment of the now world-wide Bahā'ī Faith.

With the growth of the volume of foreign trade in nineteenth-century Iran, as well as the direct participation of European merchants, the use of bills of exchange, promissary notes, and drafts increased. In fact, toward the end of the nineteenth century, trade in Iran would have been greatly hampered without trade bills, due to the fact that all the flow of capital was to Tehran.

In this paper we discussed socioeconomic inequality among ethnic communities in Iran. There were significant clues to the widening gap between Persian and non-Persian communities. That is, contrary to the existing theories, modernization and industrialization have not been accompanied with improvement in the distribution of the resources among ethnic communities; rather they have increased inequality. Thus, we looked into the particular nature of Iranian modernization for causes of interethnic inequality. Political centralization, domination of Persian language and culture, and centralization of early industrialization contributed much to the development of the interethnic inequality at early stage of the Iranian modernization. In the new area, the 1960s–1970s, the existing gap was further widened by centralized and urban-biased economic growth. This was possible only because of the government's unique access to the increasing oil revenues which were generated with very little help from the domestic means of production.

At a time when the history of relations between the United States and the former Iranian regime (as well as other autocratic states) is being reconsidered, it is important to recognize that U.S. support for one-man rule in Iran did not commence in 1953 subsequent to the fall of the government of Dr. Mossadegh. A study of the diplomatic records of the U.S. State Department and the British Foreign Office indicates an earlier beginning.

Under the titular leadership of Ayatollah Khomaini, Iran is struggling to establish an Islamic republic. Such a system of government, based on an Islamic constitution and underpinned by Islamic laws which are “all-encompassing and complete,” is strongly believed by him and his followers to be the panacea for all the socioeconomic and political ills of Iran and, for that matter, the whole Islamic world.

The recent Iranian revolution has brought into light the question of the nature and significance of both the logic and the sociology of long-term social and economic development in that country. This subject is of considerable interest in its own right, but it is of even greater significance for a realistic understanding of the country's recent developments, its present situation, and its future prospects. For it was mainly the Jack of such an understanding and insight which led the vast majority of modern Iranian intellectuals and educated masses of all political and ideological persuasions to misconstrue the logic of the events since 1963, and fail to predict the form, content, and consequences of the recent revolution.

Defining the role of women in Islamic society has been an issue for debate in post-revolutionary Iran, particularly in light of recent rulings affecting women. This is not merely a theoretical debate but a crisis situation where some women who participated in the revolution alongside men now find themselves in a peculiarly difficult position in relation to society and the current government. Ali shariati (d. 1977), through his publihsed works and transcribed lectures during the 1960s and 1970s, has had a tremendous impact on the direction of this debate. Completely rejecting the role of women in both western and traditional societies, Shariati offers a third alternative: the figure of Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Mohammad and wife of Ali, the first Imam of the Shi'is as the personification of women's role.