A History of Iran

by Michael Axworthy

  PRAISE FOR

  A History of Iran

  “More gripping than a novel . . . Empire of the Mind’s account of Iran today and the challenges it faces is worth a thousand documentaries and newspaper briefing articles.”

  —Robert Irwin, Prospect

  “Inviting us to look beyond the menacing bluster of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Axworthy celebrates Iran’s rich history of tolerance and creative expression.”

  —Chronicle of Higher Education

  “An engrossing, powerfully argued, and elegantly written history of a country which finds itself once again at the center of international affairs.”

  —Justin Marozzi, author of Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World

  “Readers are likely to share this reviewer’s sense that a fragmentary knowledge of Persian history suddenly, with the author’s engaging help, approaches a rounded picture—one well worth enlarging. It is hard to imagine a better treatment of Persia within a single volume than this.”

  —Foreword Magazine

  “Axworthy has attempted nothing less than to portray three millennia of Iranian cultural history in three hundred pages. In doing so, he does not only succeed in eliminating enormous gaps in our knowledge, he also sets his curious readers on new paths that are well worth following.”

  —Tageszeitung (Germany)

  “At this time above all, we need a deeply informed, engagingly written history of the nation from Cyrus to Khomeini and beyond. Axworthy does the job with balance and aplomb.”

  —Independent (UK)

  “Fascinating introduction to the history of a uniquely developed civilization. Axworthy treats history evenhandedly: he doesn’t hide the sins of the western countries, especially Britain and the United States; nor does he present Iran as the wretched victim of great power politics.”

  —Nipvet (Finland)

  “Michael Axworthy is a lover of things Persian: their history as one of the oldest continuing civilizations in the world, their poetry, their modern cinema, and so on. Axworthy, in his book, A History of Iran understands Iran as both an empire of the mind (a deeper, humane, reflective Iran) and a revolutionary Islamic empire with a heightened sense of its own uniqueness.”

  —Jewish Herald Voice

  “A fine discussion of Iranian progress and a top pick for any library strong in Middle Eastern studies.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “[Axworthy’s] work provides considerable insight into how the country got where it is today and useful context for understanding the sometimes alarming comments of its current leaders. On that basis alone, Empire of the Mind is well worth reading for anyone who’s interested in Middle Eastern affairs and their impact on the rest of the world.”

  —Charleston Post & Courier

  “Axworthy presents a history by turns thrilling, cautionary, inspiring, and surprising.”

  —Scotland on Sunday (UK)

  “[Axworthy] has written a compact but still inclusive narrative account that conveys both the diversity and richness of the various empires and cultural forces that have shaped the Iranian people. . . . This is an excellent examination of the forging of a people who are poised to, once again, play a prominent role in world affairs.”

  —Booklist

  “[An] excellent short history.”

  —Daily Telegraph (UK)

  “The book describes 2,500 years of Iranian history and history of thought in a light and readable style that is both appropriate to the subject and typical of many English authors. Iran, concludes the author, has far more to offer than repression, suffering, and unreliability. It offers a whole intellectual cosmos.”

  —Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany)

  “Sweeping, sensitive, and evenhanded overview of the ancient nation, from the days of the prophet Zoroaster to those of the Islamic Republic. Former British foreign-service officer and Iranian historian Axworthy covers an enormous amount of material in elegant, upbeat fashion. . . . Axworthy’s reasoned survey will be especially helpful to lay readers and students.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The book is comprehensively useful, interesting, and still light to read. It has been written with a personal touch without reducing objectivity.”

  —Agricola (Finland)

  Copyright © 2008 by Michael Axworthy

  Epilogue copyright © 2016 by Michael Axworthy

  Hardcover edition first published in 2008 by Basic Books,

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  Paperback edition first published in 2010 by Basic Books

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10107.

  Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ex. 5000, or email special.markets@perseusbooks.com.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Axworthy, Michael.

  A history of Iran: empire of the mind / Michael Axworthy.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  1. Iran—History. I. Title.

  DS272.A94 2008

  955—dc22

  2007049157

  ISBN: 978-0-465-09877-4 (2016 e-book)

  10987654321

  TO MY WIFE SALLY

  Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan

  Contents

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  1Origins: Zoroaster, the Achaemenids, and the Greeks

  2The Iranian Revival: Parthians and Sassanids

  3Islam and Invasions: The Arabs, Turks, and Mongols—The Iranian Reconquest of Islam, the Sufis, and the Poets

  4Shi‘ism and the Safavids

  5The Fall of the Safavids, Nader Shah, the Eighteenth-Century Interregnum, and the Early Years of the Qajar Dynasty

  6The Crisis of the Qajar Monarchy, the Revolution of 1905–1911, and the Accession of the Pahlavi Dynasty

  7The Pahlavis and the Revolution of 1979

  8Iran Since the Revolution: Islamic Revival, War, and Confrontation

  9From Khatami to Ahmadinejad, and the Iranian Predicament

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Select Bibliography

  Index

  . . . However, when I began to consider the reasons for these opinions, all these reasons given for the magnificence of human nature failed to convince me: that man is the intermediary between creatures, close to the gods, master of all the lower creatures, with the sharpness of his senses, the acuity of his reason, and the brilliance of his intelligence, the interpreter of nature, the nodal point between eternity and time, and, as the Persians say, the intimate bond or marriage song of the world, just a little lower than angels, as David tells us. I concede these are magnificent reasons, but they do not seem to go to the heart of the matter. . . .

  . . . Euanthes the Persian . . . writes that man has no inborn, proper form, but that many things that humans resemble are outside and foreign to them: “Man is multitudinous, varied, and ever changing.” Why do I emphasize this? Considering that we are born with this condition, that is, that we can become whatever we choose to become, we need to understand that we mus
t take earnest care about this, so that it will never be said to our disadvantage that we were born to a privileged position but failed to realize it and became animals and senseless beasts. . . . Above all, we should not make that freedom of choice God gave us into something harmful, for it was intended to be to our advantage. Let a holy ambition enter into our souls; let us not be content with mediocrity, but rather strive after the highest and expend all our strength in achieving it.

  —Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (translated by Richard Hooker)

  Preface

  The Remarkable Resilience of the Idea of Iran

  Har kas ke bedanad va bedanad ke bedanad

  Asb-e kherad az gombad-e gardun bejahanad

  Har kas ke nadanad va bedanad ke nadanad

  Langan kharak-e khish be manzel beresanad

  Har kas ke nadanad va nadanad ke nadanad

  Dar jahl-e morakkab ’abad od-dahr bemanad

  Anyone who knows, and knows that he knows,

  Makes the steed of intelligence leap over the vault of heaven.

  Anyone who does not know, but knows that he does not know,

  Can bring his lame little donkey to the destination nonetheless.

  Anyone who does not know, and does not know that he does not know

  Is stuck for ever in double ignorance

  (Anonymous, attributed to Naser od-Din Tusi (1201–1274); anticipating Donald Rumsfeld by perhaps seven centuries)

  Iranian history is full of violence and drama—invasions, conquerors, battles, and revolutions. Because Iran has a longer history than most countries, and is bigger than many, there is more of this drama. But there is more to Iranian history than that. There are religions, influences, intellectual movements, and ideas that have changed things within Iran, but also outside Iran and around the world. Today Iran demands attention again, and the new situation poses questions: Is Iran an aggressive power, or a victim? Is Iran traditionally expansionist, or traditionally passive and defensive? Is the Shi‘ism of Iran quietist, or violent and revolutionary? Only history can suggest answers to those questions. Iran is one of the world’s oldest civilizations, and has been among the world’s most thoughtful and complex civilizations from the very beginning. There are aspects of Iranian civilization that, in one way or another, have touched almost every human being on the planet. But the story of how that happened, and the full significance of those influences, is often unknown and forgotten.

  Iran is replete with paradoxes, contradictions, and exceptions. Most non-Iranians think of it as a country of hot deserts, but it is ringed with high, cold mountains. It has rich agricultural provinces, and others full of lush subtropical forests. Reflecting its wide climatic variations, Iran has a diverse and colorful range of flora and fauna. Between Iraq and Afghanistan, Russia and the Persian Gulf, Iranians speak an Indo-European language in the midst of the Arabic-speaking Middle East. Iran is commonly thought of as a homogeneous nation, with a strong national culture, but minorities like the Azeris, Kurds, Gilakis, Baluchis, and Turkmen make up nearly half the population. Since the 1979 revolution, Iranian women have been subject to one of the most restrictive dress codes in the Islamic world, yet partly in consequence, Iranian families have released their daughters to study and work in unprecedented numbers. More than sixty percent of students entering university now are female, and many women—even married women—have professional jobs.

  Iran has preserved some of the most stunning Islamic architecture in the world, as well as traditions of artisan metalworking, rug making, and bazaar trading: a complex and sophisticated urban culture. And yet its capital, Tehran, has slowly smothered itself in concrete, traffic congestion, and pollution. Iranians glory in their literary heritage and above all in their poetry, to a degree one finds in few other countries, with the possible exception of Russia. Many Iranians can recite lengthy passages from their favorite poems, and phrases from the country’s great poets are common in everyday speech. It is poetry that insistently dwells on the joys of life—themes of wine, beauty, flowers, and sexual love. And yet Iran also has an intense popular tradition of Shi‘ism, which in the mourning month of Moharram (when Shi‘a Muslims mourn the death of the Emam Hosein) emerges in religious processions dominated by a mood of gloom, and a powerful sense of betrayal and injustice. Iran’s religious culture also encompasses the world’s most forbidding, censorious, and dogmatic Shi‘a Muslim clerics. It is an Islamic republic, but one in which only 1.4 percent of the population attends Friday prayers.

  One thing is best explained at the start—another apparent paradox. Iran and Persia are the same country. The image conjured up by the name Persia is one of romance—roses and nightingales in elegant gardens, fast horses, flirtatious women, sharp sabers, jewel-colored carpets, melodious music. But in the cliché of Western media presentation, the name Iran conjures a rather different image—frowning mullahs, black oil, women’s blanched faces peering from under dark chadors, grim crowds burning flags, chanting “death to. . . .”

  In the south of Iran there is a province called Fars. Its capital is Shiraz and the province contains Iran’s most ancient and impressive archaeological sites, Persepolis and Pasargadae (along with Susa, in neighboring Khuzestan). In ancient times the province was called Pars, after the people who had settled there—the Persians. When those people created an empire that dominated the whole region, the Greeks called it the Persian Empire. Later, the term Persia was applied by the Greeks, Romans, and other Europeans to all the dynastic states that followed in that region—the territory that is Iran today: Sassanid Persia in the centuries before the Islamic conquest, Safavid Persia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Qajar Persia in the nineteenth century. But all through that time the people of those empires called themselves Iranians, and their land Iran. The word derives from the very earliest times, apparently meaning “noble.” It is cognate both with a similar word in Sanskrit, and with the term “Aryan”—the word used and abused in the racial ideologies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1

  In 1935 Reza Shah, wanting to distance his state from the decadent, ineffectual Qajar government he had displaced, instructed his embassies overseas to require foreign governments henceforth to call the country Iran in official communications. But many people, including some Iranians outside Iran, still prefer the term Persia because it retains the ancient, often happier, connotations. My practice is to use both terms, but with a preference for Iran when dealing with the period after 1935, and for Persia for the preceding centuries, when it was the word used for the country by English-speakers. Iranians themselves call their language Farsi because it originated in the Iranian dialect spoken in Fars province. The language is now spoken not just in Iran but also extensively in Tajikistan; in Afghanistan (as the Dari dialect); and it has had a strong influence on the Urdu language spoken in Pakistan and northern India. In the earlier chapters of this book, the term Iranian is used also to cover the non-Persian peoples and languages of the wider region, like the Parthians, Sogdians, and Medes.

  There are many books available on contemporary Iran, and on earlier periods of Iranian history. Several cover the whole history of Iran from the earliest times—notably the monumental seven-volume Cambridge History of Iran, and the huge project of the Encyclopedia Iranica (the latter is as yet incomplete but nonetheless incomparable for the range and depth of knowledge of Iranian history it pulls together—and much more than history). This book does not attempt to compete with those, but tries rather to present an introduction to the history of Iran for a general readership, assuming little or no prior knowledge. In addition it aims to explain some of the paradoxes and contradictions through the history—probably the only way that they can be properly understood. And beyond that—especially in Chapter 3, which explores some of the treasury of classical Persian poetry—it attempts to give the beginnings of an insight into the way the intellectual and literary culture of Iran developed, and has had a wider influence, not just in
the Middle East, Central Asia, and India, but throughout the world.

  Acknowledgments

  The title of this book, if not the idea of it altogether, is unusual in that it originated at a public event—a panel discussion in front of an invited audience, arranged to inaugurate the Forgotten Empire exhibition at the British Museum in the autumn of 2005. The panel was chaired by the journalist Jon Snow and included the Iranian ambassador, Seyyed Mohammad Hossein Adeli (recalled to Tehran shortly afterward), Haleh Afshar of York University, Ali Ansari from the University of St. Andrews, and Christopher de Bellaigue, author of In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs. Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, made an introductory presentation.

  The discussion ranged widely but centered on the question of continuity in Iranian history, and on the enduring power of the idea of Iran, the influence of its literary and court culture on the other powers and linguistic cultures of the region, and its resilience over millennia despite war, invasion, religious change, and revolution. Then Jon Snow asked the audience to put questions to the panel. I asked a question toward the end—to the effect that if, as members of the panel had suggested, the center of Iranian culture had moved at different times from Fars in southern Iran to Mesopotamia, to Khorasan in the northeast and Central Asia, and to what is now called Azerbaijan in the northwest; and given its strong influence far beyond the land of Iran itself, into Abbasid Baghdad and Ottoman Turkey, for example, on the one side and into Central Asia and Moghul India on the other; then perhaps we should set aside our usual categories of nationhood and imperial culture and think instead of Iran as an Empire of the Mind? The panel seemed to like this suggestion, and someone in the audience called out that it would make a good book. So, here it is.

  I have benefited greatly from the generous help and advice of a number of people, especially Baqer Moin, Ali Ansari, Willem Floor, Sajjad Rizvi, Lenny Lewisohn, Hashem Ahmadzadeh, Chris Rundle, Touraj Daryaee, Michael Grenfell, Peter Melville, Duncan Head, Haideh Sahim, and Mahdi Dasht-Bozorgi, Gary Sick, Luciano Zaccara, Rudi Matthee, Anna Paaso, and one anonymous reviewer, who read all or part of it in advance of publication; but also my father I for Axworthy and my sister Janet Axworthy, Peter Avery, Frances Cloud, Gordon Nechvatal, Shaghayegh Azimi, Paul Luft, and Paul Auchterlonie, as well as the other staff at the University Library in Exeter, and at the London Library. I should also thank my other friends and colleagues in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies in Exeter for their help and support, especially Tim Niblock, Rasheed El-Enany, Gareth Stansfield, James Onley, and Rob Gleave, as well as Michael Dwyer (simply the best editor it has been my good fortune to encounter), Maria Petalidou, and their colleagues at Hurst; Lara Heimert at Basic Books; Jim Morgan; my agent Georgina Capel; and (not just last but not least this time) my wife Sally for her unfailing cheerfulness and encouragement.