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Iran's Great Reformer of the Nineteenth Century: An Analysis of Amīr Kabīr's Reforms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

John H. Lorentz*
Affiliation:
Portland State University

Extract

One of the more pervasive implicit assumptions about Amīr Kabīr in both Persian and Western sources is that he was an innovator who wished to transform Iranian society. Not unrepresentative of such an assumption are comments like the following: “If Amīr Kabīr had not been killed at the hands of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh's executioners, how much he would have entangled the fate of Iran in a significant transformation.” In the same vein there is a tendency to view Amīr Kabīr as a visionary of political freedom. This tendency is perhaps most evident in two rather popularized Persian accounts of his life and career, that of Hāshimī Rafsanjānī and that of Ḥusayn Makkī. But with the advantage of hindsight, many less exaggerated accounts, also, attribute more to the intentions of Amīr Kabīr than can perhaps stand up under scrutiny. It is not uncommon, as Algar points out, for Amīr Kabīr to be reckoned among the precursors of the Constitutional Revolution.

Type
Administrative Developments in Qajar Iran
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1971

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Footnotes

An earlier version of this article was presented at a panel on “Administrative Developments in Qajar Iran,” cosponsored by The Society for Iranian Studies and the Middle East Studies Association, held in Denver, Colorado, November, 1971.

References

Notes

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14. Ibid., pp. 385-86.

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18. Ibid.

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34. Ibid., pp. 134-35.

35. Ibid., pp. 133-135.

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