In an article entitled “The Study of History in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” Professor A. Amanat analyzes the state of historical research and wonders whether the new interest in history will endure or whether it is a passing fad, a lingering after-effect of the 1979 revolution. He points out that “the frontiers of serious scholarship do not seem to have reached the domain of analysis. Neither the methodology, nor the scholarly attitude seem to be ready for the task.” In the eighteenth year of the Islamic revolution, it is perhaps worth taking another look at the state of historical research in Iran with an eye to detecting any changes in the observed trends pointed out by Amanat.

In the late-Pahlavi era, the study of history as an academic discipline was the least popular among the topics at the national universities. It was consistently the last choice for the entering class.