Reading Iran historically: why one historian argues for the long perspective on the narrative
Dr Ali Ansari, professor of Iranian studies at St Andrews University, makes an important observation in a HistoryExtra membership essay about the political layer of today's debate about Iran: media narratives often focus on the period after the 1979 Islamic Revolution; yet Persian cultural continuity carries a living historical weight in contemporary Iran. Ansari's piece is among the rare attempts to bring academic conversation into news cycles through a long-perspective reading.
The central argument of the essay is this: Iran cannot be resolved either as a simple 'theocracy' or as a simple 'post-revolutionary regime'. Ansari traces an uninterrupted cultural structure from the governance forms of the ancient Persian empires (the Achaemenid empire, 550-330 BCE, and the Sasanian empire, 224-651 CE) to the Safavid (1501-1736) and Qajar (1789-1925) dynasties, and through Pahlavi rule (1925-1979) to the Islamic Republic (1979-present).
At one point Dr Ansari draws a striking comparison: 'reducing the modern Iranian state simply to a Shia Muslim identity prevents us from understanding how Persian poetry survived against the Arab conquest in the seventh century. Ferdowsi's Shahnameh is Iran's national epic, and its content is a direct transmitter of pre-Islamic mythology'.
Ansari is careful in the essay about the contemporary significance of links between Ehron and Tehran. 'It is dangerous for our historical reading to turn into political implications; as historians, we can only bring out the unseen layers of contemporary narrative.' This is an expression of a strong commitment to the ethics of academic history.
Iran underwent a deep modernisation process when the Pahlavi dynasty was founded in 1925; nevertheless, Ansari argues that the modernisation programmes of Shah Reza and his son Shah Mohammad Reza were also directly tied to the Achaemenid heritage. The 2,500th anniversary celebrations the Shah held at Pasargadae in 1971 meant that the rhetoric of modernisation summoned ancient Persia.
The founders of the Islamic Republic (1979-present) are themselves part of this cultural complex. Ansari notes that most of the poetic citations in Ayatollah Khomeini's writings come from Rumi and Hafez, and that these two poets are products of Sufi mysticism, not the Islamic jurisprudential tradition. 'This shows that even revolutionary rhetoric must rest on Persian cultural continuity.'
One of the cultural motifs that has crossed into contemporary communication is the Nowruz holiday. The spring equinox festival on 21 March moved from pre-Islamic Zoroastrian tradition into the Persian empires and then into the official calendar of the Islamic Republic, and is still Iran's most attended popular festival. Ansari interprets this as a 'democratic example of historical continuity', because Nowruz is transmitted through popular tradition more than by state direction.
Ansari also covers the diaspora dimension in the essay. Since 1979, approximately 5.5 million Iranians have clustered in diaspora communities, particularly in Los Angeles, Toronto, London and Hamburg. Within these communities, debates about 'the real Iran' continue; Ansari argues that the concept of 'the real Iran' is itself a current argument in Iran's internal political discourse, and that the diaspora cannot therefore be said to have 'bought into' the narrative.
In using academic references, Ansari emphasises that he is an observer historian rather than a disputant. Other Iranian historians cited in his work include Charles Melville at Cambridge, Abbas Amanat at Yale and Hossein Modarressi at Princeton. 'We do not want our history reduced to a single political narrative frame; but we also want to prevent our history from being politicised by news cycles,' he says.
HistoryExtra's rationale for publishing the article is also striking. In her foreword, editor Catherine Lee writes that 'contemporary conflict journalism needs historians; but historians should be advisers, not commentators'. Reading the article offers a strong example of how a historian's commentary, in addition to reading contemporary news on post-1979 Iran, can deliver clarity of view.