Armenian participation in the Constitutional Revolution of Iran remains a subject fraught with ambiguities and unanswered questions. There has not been, to this date, a comprehensive study of Armenian participation, nor on the Caucasian element in general. There have been several articles and also a few biographies of major Armenian figures such as Mirza Malkom Khan (1833–1908) who, though not an active participant, was one of the principal proponents of constitutional government, or Yeprem Khan Davitian (1868–1912), who was instrumental in the battles to restore the constitution. This emphasis, in fact, is a problem. By concentrating on two key individuals, we take away from the larger dynamics and exclude other factors, and their exploits or ideas become merely the exploits and ideas of two individuals who happen to be of Armenian background.

The intellectual model of european nationalism had a powerful impact in the second half the nineteenth century upon Qajar intellectuals and officials, many of whom lived abroad, were fluent in some European language, or were influenced by translations of European works. These thinkers, beginning in the 1850s, were the first to attempt to “imagine” an Iranian nation. That they made this attempt is a result not only of the influence upon them of the modular nationalist experience, but also of their own encounter with the same forces of modernity that were hammering Europe itself—new media of communication, new forms of transportation, and processes of economic differentiation deriving from the rise of core industrial economies and vastly increased world trade—all of which afforded states and other institutions the resources for disciplinary technologies that reshaped the Self.

Persian historical sources, especially those of the early Qajar period, devote more attention to the achievements of the Russian czar Peter I (r. 1682-1725) than to any other “modern” European monarch. The image of Peter the Great captured the attention of Iranian reformers, who articulated their own hopes by glorifying him as the regenerator of the Russian Empire. They drew an ambiguous image of the czar, portraying him, on the one hand, with admiration and esteem and, on the other, with fear and mistrust. Yet the Qajar ruling elite looked to Peter as a sort of mirror in which they could see their own reflection and as a symbol crucial to the construction of a discourse that in their minds would lead to change, a discourse that resonated naturally with the political requirements of their nation. By using Czar Peter as a point of reference, Iranian reformers expressed their dismay at the deteriorating international status of Iran and the urgency to arrive at solutions.

Towards the end of the 19th century, different parts of the Islamic world, occupied with various attempts to cope with the European power play, became aware of a country that seemed to have “made it”: Japan, remote and in self-imposed, almost complete isolation from the Western world for more than 200 years up to 1853, fascinated Muslim viewers. In different aspects, Japan's situation lent itself to comparison. It had been a military confrontation with economic incentives that had forced Japan to come into contact with the West. In the first military confrontation with the American warships sent to force the opening of Japanese ports in 1853, Japan could not withstand the Western threat and thus confirmed the stereotype of the inferior traditional Oriental country retreating in the face of the superior, advanced West.

Current histories of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1909) frequently begin the story of the revolutionary years with 11 December 1905. On that day the bastinado was inflicted on three Tehrani merchants, Sayyid Hashim Qandfurush, Hajj Ahmad Qaysariyah, and Sayyid Isma'il Charmfurush, on orders from ‘Ala’ al-Dawlah, governor of Tehran. This incident, we are told, led the two leading Tehran clerics, Sayyid Muhammad Tabataba'i and Sayyid ‘Abdallah Bihbihani, to stage a protest sit-in with their supporters in the Shah ‘Abd al-'Azim shrine and demand the dismissal of ‘Ala’ al-Dawlah and premier ‘Ayn al-Dawlah, as well as the institution of a house of justice. A month later, the sit-in ended successfully: though ‘Ayn al-Dawlah remained premier, ‘Ala’ al-Dawlah was dismissed and a royal decree to establish a house of justice was issued. Some months later another incident set off the next round of the contest.

“It is true that the Japanese have copied Europe. There is no Such Obstacle there as in our case, for their religion is not so strong.” So said the famous Persian statesman Mirza Malkom Khan in an article that was published in an English journal in 1891. The first statement seems obvious enough, but what about the second? Is it true that the Japanese encountered no obstacles in their emulation of Europe? Even more fundamentally, why did Japan play so prominent a role in the eyes of Persian and Ottoman observers to begin with? Reform-minded statesmen and intellectuals in both countries looked to this Far Eastern state because it seemed so easily to take over European technologies and to avail itself of the progress led by the West.

In their narratives of the rise of the Safavid dynasty, many Safavid chroniclers include accounts of either one or two dreams of Shaykh Safi al-Din (1253-1334), founder of the Safavid order. A historiographical reading of the various renditions of the dreams serves several important purposes: it gives insight into the historical methodology of the Safavid chroniclers, it indicates changing religious perspectives in Safavid Iran, and it demonstrates the patterns of political legitimacy that evolved from the reign of Shah Isma'il (1501-1524) to the reign of Shah ‘Abbas I (1587-1629). This paper will thus examine six versions of Shaykh Safi's dreams and show how interpretations of the dreams changed over time, based on evolving religious and political attitudes.

Scholars have long been aware of the importance of dreams in Islamic history, and have outlined the many religious and political functions of dream episodes in historical and philosophical texts.

The historical accounts of pre-Islamic Iran have diverse allegorical meanings. These meanings are embedded in narrative structures that terminate in the Muslim conquest of Iran and the death of Yazdigird III (d. 31/651 or 652), the last Sasanian king. In early “Islamicate” historiography, the accounts of ancient Iran served as an allegory of the Persian (differentially identified as Furs, 'Ajam, and Majūs) submission to Islam. The narrative termination of Persian sovereignty (sal ṭanai) coincided with the commencement of Islam and the closure of the cycle of prophecy inaugurated by Adam. The co-termination of Sasanian dynastic rule and the cycle of prophecy mark the transition to a new and “superior” moral and political order—divinely sanctioned to last until “the end of time” (ākhir-i zamāri).