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| 1 |
ID:
149270
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper assesses the extent to which the modern historiography of Iran is indebted to a nationalist construction of Iran’s past, rather than proceeding from impartial and critical historical research. The paper pursues this aim by applying the distinction between history (as a scholarly discipline) and memory (as a nationalist construct) to one of the central tropes of the country’s historiography. According to that trope, Iranian history can be summarized as a succession of violent invasions by foreign “races,” which never stamped out Iran’s separate ethnic identity. This resilience is attributed to Iranian civilization’s inherent superiority, which Iranianized the invaders and thus ensured Iran’s survival as a primordial nation. The analysis shows that—counter-intuitively—twentieth-century Iranian historians, instead of subjecting this narrative to critical assessment, have in fact played a central role in developing it into a self-serving historiography. Special attention is given to Zarrinkub’s seminal Two Centuries of Silence.
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| 2 |
ID:
104193
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| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Early nationalist thought in nineteenth-century Iran emphasised the lost glories of the Zoroastrian pre-Islamic past, which it held for a utopian society of refinement, progress, and power destroyed by the advent of Islam. This article aims to show the prominence of this archaistic movement in the early phase of Iranian nationalism by highlighting the impact of an Indian Parsi traveller named Manekji Limji Hataria on nationalist intellectuals. Because of his religious background as a Zoroastrian, Manekji came to be perceived as an emissary of Iran's Golden Age. Fully aware of the potential influence this perception granted him, Manekji endeavoured to disseminate neo-Zoroastrian, pre-Islamic-centred, and frankly anti-Arab/anti-Islamic readings of history among intellectuals, and thus succeeded in having a disproportionate influence on the nationalist definition of Iranian history and identity.
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| 3 |
ID:
106069
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