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The Confessions of Dolgoruki

The Crisis of Identity and the Creation of a Master Narrative

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Iran Facing Others
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Abstract

In his discussion of the “tenuous” relationship between historiography and literature, Hayden White mentions that, while historiography arises against a background of “literary” discourse, it shares with it the “systems of meaning-production (the modes of emplotment).” It is by virtue of its subject matter (“real” rather than “imaginary” events) that historiography differentiates itself from literature.1 White would perhaps be intrigued to learn that a work of fiction, masquerading as historiography, in time created a long-lasting master narrative. The Confessions of Dolgoruki was a narrative that appeared in 1930s Iran, purporting to be the memoirs or political confessions of Dimitriy Ivanovich Dolgorukov (d. 1867), the Russian minister in Iran from 1845 to 1854.2 According to these Confessions, in the 1830s, Dolgoruki, who had been commissioned as translator to the Russian embassy, came to Iran with a secret mission. He subsequently converted to Islam, studied under a certain Hakim Ahmad Gilani and donned the clerics’ garments. He employed a number of people as spies, among them Mirza Hosayn ’Ali, the future founder of the Baha’i religion. After returning to Russia, he set off for the ’Atabat (the Shi’i shrine cities of Iraq) under the alias Shaykh ‘Isa Lankarani. Upon arriving in the ’Atabat, he persuaded a young seminary student from Shiraz to return to Iran and launch the Babi movement. He subsequently returned to Iran himself as the Russian ambassador and began to bring about the appearance of the Baha’i religion by giving instructions to Mirza Hosayn ’Ali.

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Notes

  1. Hayden White, “The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory,” History and Theory 23, no. 1 (February 1984): 1–33. Quotation is from page 21. This chapter supports White’s arguments on the ideological function of narrative history.

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  2. See Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).

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  3. See the first historiographical study of The Confessions of Dolgoruki in Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, “Baha’isetizi va Islamgara’i dar Iran,” [Anti-Baha’ism and Islamism in Iran] Iran Nameh 19, nos. 1–2 (Winter/Spring 2001): 79–124; idem, “Anti-Baha’ism and Islamism in Iran,” trans. Omid Ghaemmaghami, in The Baha’is of Iran: Socio-historical Studies, ed. Dominic Parviz Brookshaw and Seena B. Fazel (London: Routledge, 2008): 200–31.

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  4. For a discussion of The Confessions of Dolgoruki within the context of conspiracy theories, see Ahmad Ashraf, “The Appeal of Conspiracy Theories to Persians,” Princeton Papers (Winter 1997): 55–88; idem, “Tavahhom-e tawte’eh,” Goftego (Summer 1374/1995): 7–45;

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  5. and Houchang E. Chehabi, “The Paranoid Style in Iranian Historiography,” in Iran in the 20th Century: Historigraphy and Political Culture, ed. Touraj Atabaki (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), 155–76. For a study of The Confessions in relation to the persecution of the Baha’is of Iran, see Moojan Momen, “Conspiracy Theories and Forgeries: The Baha’i Community of Iran and the Construction of an Internal Enemy,” forthcoming. See also, “Dolgorukov Memoirs,” Encyclopedia Iranica.

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  6. See Hasan E’zam Qodsi, Khaterat-e man ya tarikh-i sad saleh-ye Iran, 2nd ed. (Tehran: Karang, 1379/2000), 2:910.

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  7. On the errors and internal tensions of The Confessions, see Mojtaba Minouyi, “Enteqad-e ketab: sharh-e zendegani-ye man,” Rahnama-ye ketab 6:1 and 2. (Farvardin va Ordibehesht 1342), 25–26; Lajneh-ye Melli-e Nashr-e Athar-e Amri, Bahthi dar e’terafat-e maj’ul montasab be Kinyaz Dolgoruki (Tehran: Mo’asseseh-ye Melli-e Matbu’at-e Amri, 1352/1973), 23–109;

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  8. [Moojan Momen,] “Conspiracies and Forgeries: The Attack upon the Baha’i Community in Iran: A Response to Dr. David Yazdan’s Article, Muslim Brotherhood—Part VIII,” Persian Heritage 9, no. 35 (2004): 27–29.

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  9. Lajneh-ye Melli-e Nashr-e Athar-e Amri, Bahthi dar e’terafat-e maj’ul montasab be Kinyaz Dolgoruki (Tehran: Mo’asseseh-ye Melli-e Matbu’at-e Amri, 1324/1945). This book was republished in 1352/1973 with an introduction incorporating the words of Eqbal Ashtiyani, Kasravi and Minuvi refuting the authenticity of The Confessions.

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  10. During the Qajar period, three different Russian ambassadors by the name Dolgorukov came to Iran. The first was Nikolai Andreevich (d. 1847) who was in Iran during the reign of Fath-’Ali Shah; the second was Dimitry Ivanovich (d. 1867) (the one to whom The Confessions is ascribed), a contemporary of Mohammad Shah and Naser Al-Din Shah; and finally, Nikolai Sergeevich (d. 1913) who came to Iran during the last years of the reign of Naser Al-Din Shah. See Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Polovtsov, Russikii Biografischeski Slovar (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia tovarishchestra Obscchestre, 1905), 6:553–54; and P.Kh. Dvor’i ‘anskie rody Rossiiskoi imperii [Noble Families of Imperial Russia] (IPK “Vesti,” 1993), 1:196.

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  11. “Excerpts from Dispatches Written During 1848–1852 by Prince Dolgorukov, Russian Minister to Persia,” World Order (Fall 1966): 17–24. According to World Order, a person “employed as an Oriental secretary by the Russian Legation” was a Babi. Moojan Momentells us, however, that this person, Mirza Majid-i Ahi was not himself a Babi, and he may have been regarded as such because he was the brother-in-law of Baha’ullah, a prominent Babi who would later found the Baha’i religion. See Moojan Momen, The Babi and Baha’i Religions 1844–1944: Some Contemporary Western Accounts (Oxford: George Ronald, 1981), 6.

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  12. In 1952, when the latter was imprisoned along with many other Babis in Tehran, Mirza Majid urged Dolgorouki to press the government to release him. See H. M. Balyuzi, Baha’ullah: The King of Glory (Oxford: George Ronald, 1980), 99.

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  13. For more on Dolgoruki’s dispatches, see Momen, The Babi and Baha’i Religions 1844–1944, 4, 5, 9–10, 75, 77–78, 92–95, and passim. The dispatches were first published in Mikhail Sergeevich Ivanov, The Babi Uprisings in Iran [Babidskie vosstaniia v Irane (1848–1852)] (Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1939). An expanded version of this book was published with some revisions under the title, Antifeodal’nye vosstaniia v Irane v seredine XIX [Anti-feudal Upraising in Iran in Mid-19th Century] (Moscow: Izd-vo “Nauka,” Glav. red. vostochnoi lit-ry, 1982). We do not have data on whether the existence of the real dispatches had been an inspiration for the author of The Confessions. Ivanov’s short biography does not reveal whether he traveled to Iran before 1939 when his book was published or whether he was in touch with Iranians while preparing the dissertation on which the book was based. See http://www.mgimo.ru/content1.asp.

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  14. For example: [Moojan Momen], “Conspiracies and Forgeries,” which has been submitted by Katherine Bigelow, Director, Office of External Affairs, The National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States, and Bahman Nikandish, “Mobarezeh’i najavanmardaneh: Kinyaz Dolgoruki ya asrar-e peydayesh-e mazhab-i Bab va Baha’ dar Iran,” Payam Baha’i nos. 309–310 (2005): 43–49; and Adib Masumian, Debunking the Myths: Conspiracy Theories on the Genesis and Mission of the Baha’i Faith (Lulu: 2009).

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  15. Mahmud Mahmud, Tarikh-e ravabet-e siyasi-e Iran va Englis dar qarn-e nuzdahom-e miladi (Tehran: 1954), 8:143; For Taqizadeh’s words see: ’Abbas Zaryab Kho’i, “Taqizadeh anchenan ke man mishenakhtam,” in Yadnameh-ye Taqizadeh, ed. Habib Yaghma’i (Tehran: Anjoman-e Athar-e Melli, 1349), 166.

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  16. Following Banani’s talk, representatives from the Islamic Republic of Iran distributed handouts to the participants refuting Banani’s remarks. See Yamamoto Tatsuro, ed., Proceedings of the Thirty-First International Congress of Human Sciences in Asia and North Africa, Tokyo-Kyoto, 31st August–7th September 1983 (Tokyo: Toho Gakkai, 1984), 280.

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  17. Denise MacEoin, The Sources for Early Bábí Doctrine and History: A Survey (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 171.

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  18. Hashem Mohitmafi, Tarikh-e enqelab-e Iran, 1: Moqaddamat-e mashrutiyat, ed. Majid Tafreshi and Javad Janfada (Tehran: Entesharat-e ’elmi, 1363/1984), 22.

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  19. Mortada Ahmad A. Prince Dolgoruki, 3rd ed. (Tehran: Dar al-Kotob-e Eslamiyye, 1346/1967), 36.

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  20. See Christopher Partridge and Ron Geaves, “Antisemitism, Conspiracy Culture, Christianity, and Islam: the History and Contemporary Religious Significance of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” in The Invention of Sacred Tradition, ed. James R. Lewis & Olav Hammer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 75–95, quote from page 84. Partridge and Geaves explain the reason for this phenomenon as such: “One of the problems with conspiracies is that they are difficult to disprove to those committed to them. Cognitive dissonance is quickly and almost instinctively assuaged by incorporating contrary evidence in the theory itself.” This mechanism, they believe, is why in case of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion the conspiracy element contributed most significantly to its longevity. Ibid.

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  21. See Sayyed Mohammad Baqer Najafi, Baha’iyan (Tehran:Tahuri, AH 1357/1978), 619–22.

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  22. Bahram Afrasiyabi, Tarikh-e jame’-e Baha’iyat: nowmasuni, 3rd ed. (Tehran: Sokhan, 1368/1989), 342–58; idem, Tarikh-e jame’-e Baha’iyat (kalbod shekafi-e Bayahiyyat), 10th ed. (Tehran: Fam, 1382), 271–83.

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  23. See ’Ali Abu Al-Hasani (Mondher), “Ezharat va Khaterat-e Ayatollah Hajj Shaykh Hosayn Lankarani darbareh-ye Babigari va Baha’igari,” Faslnameh-ye motale’at-e tarikhi, vijeh nameh Baha’iyat 4, no. 17 (Tabestan 1386/Summer 2007), 91–97.

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  24. Kinyaz Dolgoruki ya asrar-e peydayesh, 19. The history of the notion that Shi’ism constitutes the fifth legal school of Islam sheds light on understanding the context of the author’s Weltanschauung. This idea was already proposed for the first time during the reign of Nader Shah who suppressed Shi’ism, but he did allow the Shi’is to practice their tradition by granting them status as the fifth legal school. See Said Amir Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shi’ite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 216. However, the issue was soon forgotten with the downfall of Nader Shah. Following late nineteenth and early twentieth century attempts at rapprochement, in 1911, six of the Shi’i ulama residing in Iraq signed a fatwa urging unity among Muslims. In the text of this decree, Shi’ism was referred to as “one of the five Islamic legal schools” whose conflicts had led to “the decline [enhetat] of Islamic states” and “the dominance of foreigners [ajaneb].” See al-’Erfan 3, no. 4 (Feb. 1911): 160–61.

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  25. See also Rainer Brunner, Islamic Ecumenism in the 20th Century: The Azhar and Shiism between Rapprochement and Restraint (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 43.

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  26. Shahrokh Meskub, “Melli gara’i, tamarkoz, va Farhang dar ghorub-e Qajariyeh va tolu’ ’asr-e Pahlavi,” in Dastan-e adabiyat va sar gozasht-e ejtema’ (Tehran: Farzan Rooz, 1373/1994), 5–38, quotes from page 8. Meskub avers that in many places in the world, nationalism looks for a scapegoat among ethnic, racial, cultural, or religious minorities to blame for all national disappointments, to invoke or direct the anger and hatred of the masses to in order to convince them of its own ideals. He then goes on to state that in Iran, the Arabs and the Imperialist powers have been the “scapegoat”(s). Meskub, “Melli gara’i,” 9.

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  27. See Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, “Narrative Identity in the Works of Hedayat and his Contemporaries,” in Sadeq Hedayat, His Works and His Wondrous World, ed. Homa Katouzian (London: Routledge, 2008), 107–28, quote from pages 107–8. This nationalist memory project, Tavakoli-Targhi tells us, was configured in the nineteenth century based on “a late sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century neo-Zoroastrian identity narrative that sought to dissociate Iran from Islam.” This Iran-centered historical memory, “constituted the pre-Islamic age as an archaetopia— an idealized and memorialized historical period.” Tavakoli-Targhi, “Narrative Identity,” 108–9.

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  28. See also Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and Nationalist Historiography (Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave in association with St. Antony’s College, 2001).

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  29. See Rasul Ja’fariyan, Jaryanha va sazmanha-ye mazhabi-siyasi-ye Iran: az ruy-e kar amadan-e Mohammad Rez̤a Shah ta piruzy-e enqelab-e Islami, 1320–57, 6th repr. (Qum: 1385/2006), 703–21. A discussion of the legitimacy of such categorization and labelling is beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice it to say that there were several reform oriented theologians whose major lines of thought had much in common with proponents of the Salafiyyeh. For all practical purposes, in this paper, we will use the epithet “Salafi” to refer to them.

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  30. The most prominent of these theologians were Sayyed Asa Allah Kharqani and Shari’at Sanglaji. On Salafiyya see, Rainer Brunner, Islamic Ecumenism in the 20th Century: The Azhar and Shiism between Rapprochement and Restraint, trans. Joseph Greenman (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 18, 39, 72, and passim; Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., under “Salafiyya.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., under “Wahhabiyya.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., under “Islah.”

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  31. Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, Defining Islam for the Modern Egyptian State: Moftis and Fatwas of the Dar al-Ifta (Leiden: Brill, 1997). For a concise but useful discussion of the similarities and divergences of Salafi and Wahhabi thoughts, see Tayfun Atay, “The Significance of the Other in Islam: Reflections on the discourse of a Naqshbandi Circle of Turkish Origin in London,” The Muslim World , no. 89 (Jul–Oct 1999): 455–77, particularly 467–77.

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  32. The Protocols have been described as “one of the most important forgeries of modern times.” Richard S. Levy, “Introduction: The Political Career of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” in Benjamin W. Segal, A Lie and a Libel: A History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, trans. and ed. R. S. Levy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 3–47.

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  33. See also Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Michigan: Scholars Press, 1969);

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  34. Christopher Partridge and Ron Geaves, “Antisemitism, Conspiracy Culture, Christianity, and Islam: The History and Contemporary Religious Significance of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” in The Invention of Sacred Tradition, ed. James R. Lewis and Olav Hammer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 75–95. For a comparison between The Protocols and The Confessions, see Moshe Sharon, “The ‘Memoires of Dolgorukov’ and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” Honestly Concerned website, http://honestlyconcerned.info/bin/articles.cgi?ID=IR12607&Category=ir&Subcategory=19 (accessed February 10, 2009).

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  35. The Arabic translation of The Protocols was available as early as 1920; therefore, the creator of The Confessions could have been well aware of it. See Sharon, “The ‘Memoires of Dolgorukov’ and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” For the Persian translation of The Protocols, see Gholamreza Sa’idi, Khatar-e Jahud Baraye Jahane Eslam (Tehran: Entesharat-e Ketab Forushi-ye Mohammadi, 1335/1956), 116–20.

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  36. See Ahmad Ashraf, “The Appeal of Conspiracy Theories to Persians,” Princeton Papers (Winter 1997), 57–88, quote from page 18. In a book published around the same time as The Confessions, Hosayn Kuhi Kermani the editor of the newspaper Saba, despite indicating in a footnote that The Testament of Peter the Great was “created in the name of Peter after him,” in the main text refers to The Testament as drawing the main guidelines of Russian politics and foreign policy and then quotes an item from that document: “Do your best to get close to Istanbul as much as you can … Facilitate the demise of Iran, and penetrate up to the Persian Gulf.” He then adds, “Almost all the successors of Peter, the Imperialists of Russia, have followed the guidelines set in this document.” Hosayn Kuhi Kermani, Az Shahrivar 1320 ta faje’eh-ye Azarbaiyjan va Zanjan: tarikh-i ravabet-e Rus va Iran (Tehran: Entesharat-i Ruznameh Nasim-e Saba, 1942), 20–21.

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  37. Abd al-Rahim Talebov, Siyasat-i Talebi (Tehran: Shams, AH 1329/1290S/1911). Talebov penned Siyasat-i Talebi in AH 1320/1902. The book was published posthumously in AH 1329/1911.

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  38. See Feraydoun Adamiyat, Andisheha-ye Talebov Tabrizi (Tehran: Entesharat-i Damawand, 1363/1984), 4.

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  39. Karl R. Popper, “Critiques of the Classical Theories of History,” in Theories of History, ed. Patrick Gardiner (Clencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1959), 281.

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  40. Leonidas Donkins, “The Conspiracy Theory, Demonization of the Other,” Innovations 11, no. 3 (1998): 349–60, quotation from page 350.

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  41. For the postmodern notion of identity being contingent, only existing in relation to something else (the other) and the Other conditioning the existence of any given identity, see Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005);

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  42. Kevin Hetherington, Expressions of Identity: Space, Performance, Politics (London: Sage Publications, 1998);

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  43. and Alberto Melucci, The Playing Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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  44. For a case study on the development of the concept of “self” through “other” in a Muslim community, see Atay, “The significance of the Other in Islam,” 455–77. For a discussion of the internal Other and the external Other, and their demonization see Ziva Amishai-Maisels, “The Demonization of the ‘Other’ in the Visual Arts,” in Demonizing the Other: Antisemitism, Racism, and Xenophobia, ed. Robert S. Wistrich (Amsteldijk, The Netherlands: Harwood, 1999), 44–72.

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  45. Abbas Amanat, “The Historical Roots of the Persecution of Babis and Bahais in Iran,” in The Baha’is of Iran: Socio-Historical Studies, ed. Dominic Brookshaw and Seena Fazel (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2007), 180–81. Amanat shares with Tavakoli-Targhi and Mottahedeh the idea of Baha’is constituting the Other against which modern Iranian Shi’i identity has constructed itself.

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  46. Mottahedeh has discussed the ways in which “the Babi” constituted the “negative stereotype and fetishized image against which and through which the modern nation identified itself.” Negar Mottahedeh, “The Mutilated Body of the Modern Nation: Qurrat al-’Ayn Tahirih’s Unveiling and the Iranian Massacre of the Babis,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 18, no. 2 (1998): 38–47. See also idem, Representing the Unpresentable: Historical Images of National Reform from Qajars to the Islamic Republic of Iran (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2008). Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi has proposed the ways in which Iranian Islamism of twentieth century defined itself as against Baha’is as the internal Other. Tavakoli-Targhi, “Baha’isetizi.”

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  47. The same type of melded national identity has been in order, at least for some Islamists, in postrevolutionary Iran, who have given a central position to “Iran and the Iranian nation but identified both with Islam.” For this “Iranian nationalist form of Islamism,” then, “deviant religion and treason to the nation” have collapsed into one another in Baha’is as the nation’s internal Other. It has been alleged “not only that they were spies for foreign powers, but also that they were national apostates, defectors from the Iranian Muslim nation.” See Juan R. I. Cole, “The Baha’i Minority and Nationalism in Contemporary Iran,” in Nationalism and Minority Identities in Islamic Societies, ed. Maya Shatzmiller (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), 127–63. Quotes from pages 150, 157.

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  49. This connection that The Confessions makes between Baha’is and the foreign power has been interpreted as a way to appeal to the changes of mentality of younger members of the upper class for whom the earlier purely theological anti-Baha’i polemics were no more attractive. See Firuz Kazemzadeh, “The Baha’is of Iran: Twenty Years of Repression,” Social Research 67, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 537–58. While this specific alleged link with the imperialists was a phenomenon of the modern world, the practice of associating the ostracized with enemies outside the community is one “familiar in other times and places.” See Bernard Lewis, “Some Observations on the Significance of Heresy in the History of Islam,” Studia Islamica, no. 1 (1953): 43–63.

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  50. Asadollah Kharqani, Mahw al-mawhum wa sahw al-ma’lum (Tehran: 1960), 2. This work was published posthumously, with an introduction by Ayatollah Sayyed Mahmud Taleqani.

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  53. On Shaykh Ebrahim Zanjani, see Mahdi Bamdad, Tarikh-e Rejal-e Iran (Tehran: Zavvar, 1347), 1:15; Abu Al-Hasan ’Alavi, “Rejal-e sadr-e mashrutiyyat,” Yaghma, 5:3 (khordad 1331), 133; and his autobiography, Shaykh Ebrahim Zanjani, Khaterat-e Shaykh Ebrahim Zanjani (sargozasht-e zendegani-e man), ed. Gholam Hosein-e Mirza Saleh (Tehran: Kavir, 1379). Regarding the latter, see Mahdi Khalaji, “Naqd-e daruni-e rawhaniyyat, gozareshi dar sekularizm,” Iran Nameh 4 (Winter 1383): 489–511. According to Homa Nateq, the original copy of Khanjani’s autobiography kept in the library of the parliament in Iran differs markedly with the published version of the book. See Homa Nateq, “Rawhaniyyat az parakandegi ta qodrat 1828–1909” Rahavard 83 (Summer 2008): 95.

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  54. On Zanjani as the prosecutor of the revolutionary court that condemned Shaykh Fazl Allah Nuri to death, see Edward G. Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905–1909 (London: Frank Cass & Co, 1966), 444;

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  55. Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, & the Origins of Feminism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 258, 265.

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  56. Zanjani was closely associated with Zoka’ al-Mulk Forughi, and Sadr al-Ulama; see Iraj Afshar, ed., Awraq-e tazehyab-e mashrutiyyat, marbut be salha-ye 1325–1330 (Tehran: Entesharat-e Javidan, 1359), 335–45. He was also a close friend of and Hajj Sayyah Mahallati who was closely connected with Azalis and may have himself been one. See Zanjani, Khaterat, On Sayyah being an Azali see Mangol Bayat, Iran’s First Revolution: Shi’ism and the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1909 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 67–68.

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Yazdani, M. (2012). The Confessions of Dolgoruki. In: Amanat, A., Vejdani, F. (eds) Iran Facing Others. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137013408_12

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