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Re-Interpreting Modern Iran: Tribe and State in the Twentieth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Stephanie Cronin
Stephanie Cronin*
Affiliation:
University of London
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Abstract

For the nationalist elite of early Pahlavi Iran, the regime's military successes over tribal opposition, whether real or imagined, were welcomed and celebrated. These successes were interpreted as confirmation of their views of tribal power as hostile to modernity, archaic and outmoded, and of Riza Shah as the deliverer of Iran's national salvation. This conceptualization of the “tribal problem” had appeared in tandem with and as a product of modernist ideology in the late nineteenth century, acquired the backing of state power with the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty, and endured until the revolution of 1979. It communicated itself, in diluted form, to Western scholarship, which has been largely content to depict Riza Shah's tribal policies as regrettably brutal, but an unavoidable stage in Iran's progress and “modernization.”

Yet this version of tribe–state relations is clearly an ideological construct rather than an historical analysis. The account which follows begins a re-evaluation of tribal politics in modern Iran, focusing especially on the Riza Shah decades when these politics were a site of intense conflict and where the nationalist template was most starkly delineated, and concludes by tracing and re-examining the evolution of the tribe–state dynamic in the decades of land reform and revolution.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , June 2009 , pp. 357 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2009

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Footnotes

This is a revised version of the paper presented to the conference on “Iran and Iranian Studies in the Twentieth Century” held at the University of Toronto, 19–20 October, 2007.

References

1 For the consolidation of landlordism under Riza Shah and the reaction of the rural poor, see Cronin, Stephanie, “Resisting the New State: Peasants and Pastoralists in Iran, 1921-1941,” Journal of Peasant Studies, 32, no.1 (January 2005): 1–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For a discussion of Iranian modernism or perhaps “pseudo-modernism,” see Katouzian, Homa, The Political Economy of Modern Iran: Despotism and Pseudo-Modernism, 1926-1979 (London 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and The Emergence of the Pahlavis (London and New York, 2000)Google Scholar.

3 Bayat, Kaveh, “Riza Shah and the Tribes: An Overview” in The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921-1941 ed. Cronin, Stephanie (London and New York, 2003): 213Google Scholar.

4 Ibid. See also Mafi, Mansurah Nizam, Maramnamahha va Nizamnamahha-yi Ahzab-i Siyasi dar Iran (Tehran, 1361)Google Scholar.

5 Even the British had their yaylaq in their summer residence in the village of Qulhak then to the north of Tehran.

6 Cronin, Stephanie, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran, 1910-1926 (London and New York, 1997): 5–6Google Scholar; 121–125.

7 For the role of the Qajar state in confederacy formation in the nineteenth century see Beck, Lois, The Qashqa'i of Iran (New Haven and London, 1986)Google Scholar. For a similar analysis in a different context see Yapp, Malcolm, “Tribes and States in the Khyber, 1838–1842” in The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan, ed. Tapper, Richard (London, 1983)Google Scholar.

8 See, inter alia, Afary, Janet, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy and the Origins of Feminism (Columbia, 1996)Google Scholar; Said Arjomand, Amir, The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; Katouzian, State and Society in Iran.

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15 Of course many military operations against different tribal groups were undertaken by the army, particularly in the 1920s. A full list of the tribal campaigns undertaken by the army between 1921 and 1941 is given in Cronin, Stephanie, Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and the New State, 1921–1941 (London, 2006)Google Scholar.

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17 Chick, Shiraz, to Loraine, 31 January 1922, FO371/7805/E4730/6/34.

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19 This policy appears to have been first considered concretely in relation to the tribes of Luristan. See Annual Report 1927, Clive to Chamberlain, 21 May 1928, FO371/13069/E2897/2897/34. By 1928 the government was already building walled villages for the settlement of the nomadic Lurs. Annual Report 1928, Clive to Henderson, 14 July 1929, FO371/13799/E3676/3676/34. For the shah's intention, by 1928, to apply this policy to the Bakhtiyari see Report on the Situation in Bakhtiari, 22 September 1928, R. G. Monypenny, Consul, Ahwaz, FO416/83: 141-6.

20 For a discussion of the urban and rural opposition of 1927–1929 see Cronin, Stephanie, “Modernity, Change and Dictatorship in Iran: The New Order and Its Opponents,” Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 2, (April 2003): 1–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 The electoral law of 9 September 1906 did not provide for any tribal representation, other than that of the tribe from which the dynasty was drawn, the Qajar. The electoral law of 1 July 1909, however, made provision for the Bakhtiyari, the Shahsavan, the Qashqai, the Khamsah and the Turkmans each to send one deputy to the Majlis. Lambton, “Ilat,” Encyclopaedia of Islam: 1109–1110. Nonetheless by the late 1920s the Bakhtiyari had apparently acquired the right to send two deputies.

22 Summary of Events and Conditions in Fars during the year 1934, Knatchbull-Hugessen to Simon, 11 February 1935, FO371/18994/E1482/1482/34.

23 Digard, Jean-Pierre, “Baktiari Tribe, i. Ethnography,” Encyclopaedia Iranica 3: 557.

24 Their losses in livestock in these years have been estimated at sixty per cent. Digard, “Baktiari Tribe, i. Ethnography”: 558.

25 Digard, “Baktiari Tribe, i. Ethnography”: 557.

26 Stephanie Cronin, “Riza Shah and the Paradoxes of Military Modernization in Iran, 1921–1941” in The Making of Modern Iran, ed. Stephanie Cronin.

27 The Bakhtiari Tribe, C. A. Gault, Consul, Isfahan, 1944, IOL/L/P&S/12/3546.

28 Beck, The Qashqa'i of Iran: 145–147. For an account by the German agent responsible for liaising with Nasir Khan Qashqai see Schulze-Holthus, Berthold, Daybreak in Iran: A Story of the German Intelligence Service (London, 1954)Google Scholar.

29 G. F. Magee, Tribes of Fars, Shiraz, November 1945, FO371/FO371/52737/E1260/633/34: 11.

30 G. F. Magee, Tribes of Fars, Shiraz, November 1945, FO371/52737/E1260/633/34:20–21.

31 Gault, Isfahan, to Bullard, 7 August 1943, FO248/1424.

32 Gault, Isfahan, to Bullard, 7 August 1943, FO248/1424.

33 G. F. Magee, Tribes of Fars, Shiraz, November 1945, FO371/52737/E1260/633/34: 11.

34 G. F. Magee, Tribes of Fars, Shiraz, November 1945, FO371/52737/E1260/633/34: 11–12. For the Southern League, see Cronin, Tribal Politics in Iran: 29; 52.

35 G. F. Magee, Tribes of Fars, Shiraz, November 1945, FO371/52737/E1260/633/34: 12.

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40 Koohi-Kamali, The Political Development of the Kurds in Iran: 88. For the development of Kurdish nationalism in general see also McDowall, David, A Modern History of the Kurds (London, 1997)Google Scholar; Edmonds, C. J., “Kurdish Nationalism,” Journal of Contemporary History, 6, no. 1 (1971): 87–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Komala-i Jiyanawi Kurdistan (the Committee for the Revival of Kurdistan).

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45 Koohi-Kamali, The Political Development of the Kurds in Iran: 110.

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47 For the view that the Qashqai do constitute a national minority, see Beck, The Qashqa'i of Iran: 285–290.

48 For the Bakhtiyari Star, see Cronin, Tribal Politics in Iran: 74–78.

49 Anderson, Imagined Communities.

50 See, for example, Garthwaite, Gene R., “Reimagined Internal Frontiers: Tribes and Nationalism—Bakhtiyari and Kurds” in Russia's Muslim Frontiers: New Directions in Cross-Cultural Analysis, ed. Eickelman, Dale F., (Bloomington, 1993)Google Scholar.

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53 See Beck, The Qashqa'i of Iran for the impact on the Qashqai of the tribal education program. See also Paul Barker, “Tent Schools of the Qashqai: A Paradox of Local Initiative and State Control” in Continuity and Change in Modern Iran, ed. Bonine and Keddie,

54 Digard, “Baktiari Tribe, i. Ethnography”: 558.

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