The 1905 Constitutional Revolution: Shi’i Jurisprudence and Constitutionalism

Abstract

It is an established fact that the 1905 Constitutional Revolution, like every other constitutionalist revolution, was an anti-despotic revolution aimed at restricting the ruler’s power. By all historical accounts,¹ Iranians’ first major experience in constitutionalism in the modern sense was intended to restrict the unbridled tyranny of the Qājār dynasty’s monarchs who had become even more corrupt by being praised as “the shadow of God” and “the possessor of the subjects.”² Such anti-despotism, theoretically and practically, represented a renewed interpretation of the relationship between the state and society—which was advocated by some of the elites and many of the then famous Uṣūlī jurists—and resulted in the victory of the national movement, at least in its early stage, against the monarchy.