In a sense, the history of science deals with the creation and development of scientific ideas and theories concerning scientific discoveries or even failures. Its focus is on scientific discovery and its forerunners, and it generally ignores areas where two methodologically divergent and geographically separate scientific traditions clash, especially when no new discoveries have resulted therefrom.

One such area is the clash between modern European and traditional Islamic sciences. For this reason, the introduction of modern science into the Islamic world and its challenge to traditional scholars has not attracted the attention of historians of science either from within or without. Books on the history of science dealing with the Islamic world, and more particularly with Iran, rarely cover the field beyond medieval times, thus showing a tangible research deficit.

During World War I a movement developed in the forests of Gilan to free Iran from foreign control and internal despotism. Tsarist Russian, Soviet, Ottoman, German, and British forces all attempted to influence the course of events in Gilan, often through the use of force. From their strongholds in the forests, or jangal—whence their name—the Jangalis gained the strength several times, first with the weakening of Russian forces in the region after the 1917 Russian Revolution and then with the assistance of the Iranian Communist Party after the arrival of Soviet troops in Gilan in May 1920, to take control of Rasht, Anzali, and other towns in Gilan province. They even harbored hopes of marching on Tehran to take control of the Iranian central government. This nationalist movement initially had a formal organizational structure under the name ittihād-i Islām, but basically was under the control of the charismatic Mirza Kuchik Khan, along with several other powerful leaders.

Why have large scale and durable political parties, representing broad socio-economic interests and seriously concerned with assuming political power through democratic constitutional means, not emerged in Iran? And why have even State-sponsored parties failed? These important questions have received virtually no serious scholarly attention. What follows is a preliminary attempt to address them by considering the configuration of those groups or collectivities normally identified as political parties, exploring their inadequacies, and highlighting the main factors which have accounted for the failure of party politics in twentieth-century Iran.

The Early Years

With the introduction of constitutional arrangements in Iran in 1906, the newly established National Consultative Assembly (Majlis) became the major arena for public debate among constitutionalists on how best to identify, consolidate, build upon and institutionalize the new political achievements. The difficulties of reconciling political order and constitutional accountability provoked pronounced differences of opinion and discord.

The earliest historical references to the Persian Gulf appear to stem from the time of the Sumerian rulers of Mesopotamia in the third millennium B.C., when, for instance, the trade with Dilmun (on the western shores of the upper part of the Gulf) of Ur Nanše, King of Lagash (2494–2465 B.C.), is mentioned. The Gulf itself is specifically named in a historical text of Lugal Zagesi, King of Uruk (2340–2316 B.C.), where it is said that “then from the Lower Sea, by the Tigris and Euphrates, as far as the Upper Sea, [the god Enlil] provided him with clear routes”; and, in an inscription of Sargon of Akkad, it is said that Enlil gave him the Upper Sea and the Lower Sea.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is seriously challenged by a secularizing intellectual force from within. It may seem ironic for such a movement to appear in a clerical-dominated regime, initially thought by many to embody the victory of religion and tradition over secularism and modernization. But the Iranian revolution came in the wake of at least a century of exposure to secular ideas and institutions, an experience whose impact continued to be discerned during and after the revolution by observers who could see beyond the rhetoric of Islamism.

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.