FOURTEEN FROM SHAHYAD TO AZADI: THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC AND THE ANCIENT LEGACY

The last shah left Iran in January 1979 on what was officially an extended holiday but one from which he was never to return. He died of cancer in Egypt just six months later. The Ayatollah Khomeini, exiled by the shah for his subversive activities, returned by plane on 1 February from Paris, where he had spent the final years of his exile.

His return was almost messianic and there were cries of ‘Imam amad’, ‘the Imam has come’. He was accepted immediately and without question as the de facto ruler of the country. The army defected from the shah to the new regime and revolutionary committees were established throughout the country. The Shia religious establishment now assumed power, and a Revolutionary Council dominated by clerics was formed. In effect the Holy City of Qom, long the main centre of opposition to the regime of the shah, took over from the secular city of Tehran. The anti-clericalism of the shah’s regime died a rapid death and there was little opposition to the return of Islam and Islamic ideas. In March there was a referendum on the form of government that should replace that of the shah, and a vote of 97 per cent was recorded for the establishment of an Islamic Republic.

In October a new constitution was drafted, the main theme of which was ‘dual control’ by the civilian and clerical institutions. The Majlis was to be elected by popular vote while the Guardian Council was made up of clerics and was an appointed body. The president was to be elected by popular vote and there was also a dominating figure to be known as the ‘supreme leader’, the first of whom was Khomeini himself. He had the ultimate power over everything in the country and could overrule both the president and the Majlis. Together with this he also assumed the role of Vilayat-e Faqih, Guardian of the Law, which also made him in effect the moral supervisor of the nation. Later on in his period of office the Ayatollah established his own ‘Expediency Council’, also called the ‘Council for the Discernment of State Interests’, which he appointed and chaired and in which the most important decisions were taken and ratified.

In January 1980 Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, a socialist, was elected to be the first president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The new government then moved fast to bring about fundamental changes in virtually every sphere of the country’s life. Islamic dress and other codes were re-imposed and the civil courts were put under the control of the clergy. They proceeded to bring back sharia – Islamic law – and to enforce this throughout the country. The economy was put firmly under state control and the foreigners who had been so influential were ousted. The oil industry was re-nationalized and the newly established Iranian National Oil Company took charge of all oil production in the country. All other foreign interests in the country, which had become considerable under the shah, were expropriated. The new republic was becoming a theocracy with firm state control and the supreme power was ultimately in the hands of one man. The weakness of the shah had within a year been replaced by the strength of the Imam Khomeini.

There were nevertheless at first deep divisions in the leadership and much opposition to Khomeini himself. The fiercest opposition came from the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, the People’s Mojahedin (MEK), which had been a guerrilla movement at the time of the shah. It was Islamic but also Marxist and had the support of large numbers of young people and many students. Its aim was to establish a state that was more ideologically based than one which was run by clerics. The Mojahedin was detested by Khomeini and his supporters, and the conflict between the two produced considerable violence in the early years of the revolution. The left-wing president, Bani-Sadr, who had been a member of the Tudeh Party, had become closely associated with the Mojahedin and with their defeat by Khomeini, Bani-Sadr was forced to flee the country. He was replaced in late 1981 as president by Ali Khamenei, and the prime minister was Mir Hossein Mousavi. The influential speaker of the Majlis was Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who was later to succeed Khamenei in the presidency.

This, together with the pre-eminence of Khomeini himself, set the scene for the balance of power in Iran in the 1980s and on into the 1990s. Khomeini saw Islam as being a religious ideology to replace Marxism, which was in its final stages. In this context, Khamene’i was increasingly regarded as being conservative, Mousavi as radical and Rafsanjani as being the moderate of the trio. However, to Patrick Clawson and Michael Rubin, in their book Eternal Iran (2005) this categorization was too simplistic and they described both Khamene’i and Mousavi as being hardliners while Rafsanjani was more inclined to cut deals and was described by them as being ‘pragmatic’.1

While all these major leaders were in general agreement on the core programme of the revolution, their attitudes to both the Islamic and the pre-Islamic history of Iran were somewhat different. It is possible to talk in general terms of the ‘hardline’ and the more – at least relatively – ‘liberal’ wings of the Islamic state, and these attitudes determined the extent to which particularly pre-Islamic studies were allowed to continue and even to be encouraged. The particular character of Iran, and its historical and religious differences from the rest of the Islamic world, was from the outset fully recognized. However, considering the prime importance of Islam and matters relating to social and economic questions, archaeological and historical research was not in the first instance given any priority.

When revolutions take place and new regimes that promulgate new ideas and ideologies take charge, the past is usually then considered to be at best no longer worthy of much attention and at worst as having been thoroughly evil. In either case all signs of the existence of the past need to be expunged. When regimes such as the Bourbons in France and the Romanovs in Russia were toppled by violent revolutions, the process was regarded as the sweeping away of the waste of history.

However, there was a big difference between the aftermath of the removal of those European regimes and that of the removal of the Pahlavis. What replaced it was not a new ideology raring to be tried out but an ancient religion with a history going back well into the previous millennium. Rather than the past being swept away, what was happening was one past was being replaced by another. While the Achaemenid past had been used by the Pahlavis as justification for their actions, the Islamic past was now being used as justification for the new regime. Just as the shah had looked back for his inspiration to Cyrus, so Khomeini looked back for his to the Prophet Muhammad. While this produced something very different, it was something that was nevertheless fundamentally Iranian.

The Shia Islamic tradition had since the time of the last of the orthodox caliphs been embedded in the life of Iran. It was firmly based on the belief that the legitimacy of the caliphate was derived from the continuation of the bloodline of the Prophet in what was in effect a dynastic succession. This has been variously translated as being the ‘household’ of the Prophet or the Prophet’s ‘tribe’. The contention of the Shia was therefore that only members of the dynasty had the right to be the rulers of Islam and so should become the successors or caliphs. From the outset they considered that the caliphates of the Umayyads and Abbasids were illegitimate. The main Shia ritual centred on the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson Husayn, the last of the orthodox caliphs, in the Holy Month of Muharram. An especial significance attached to the tenth of the month, Ashura, the day on which Husayn was murdered by agents of the Umayyads.

While this Shia belief had existed in Iran throughout its years of subjection to the caliphate, and later in the time of the invasions by the Turks and the Mongols, it was the Persian Safavids, the dynasty that restored the country’s independence, who had in 1501 first made Shia the official national religion. As a consequence, the Safavids were regarded by the Islamic Republic as being the model for what was now happening. The leader of the movement to reinvigorate the Shia was Mujtaba Mirlawhi, who established the Fida’iyan-i Islam – the Devotees of Islam – after 1945. It was he who stressed the role of the Safavid dynasty, taking the title of Navvah-i Safavi – the servant of the Safavis.

Revolutionary Guards visiting Persepolis, 2000.

Looked at this way, Shia Islam can be regarded more than anything as a national or nationalist phenomenon, and this is clearly seen in its opposition to capitalism and to Western imperialism. Shia taught of the ‘Hidden Imam’ who would return and inaugurate an era of true Islamic government (see Chapter Ten). Khomeini developed this concept and was even considered by many of his followers to be himself the imam. The Islamic government he envisaged was firmly based on the teachings of the Koran and the correct interpretation of the Koran was thus seen as vital. This explains the importance of Vilayat-e Faqih to Khomeini. In his role of interpreter of the Islamic law he was able to adapt Islamic teaching to the modern world and to give it a social message. It was in this way that Shia Islam was converted into an ideology. In this, Khomeini’s mentor had been Ali Shariati, who maintained that Islam – not communism – was the answer to the evils of capitalism. Shariati went further and claimed that Islam had been twisted by the clergy into a dogma, while it was really an ideology. This linked it into the idea of the ‘Third World’ and to opposition to the West, in particular to America, which became ‘The Great Satan’. Shia Islam continued to develop in this way during the 1970s at a time when the ideology of communism was on the wane. When Khomeini began to adapt the religion to the conditions of Iran in the 1980s the country’s proletariat found it more attractive than either socialism or communism, and Islam was able to take on the role of ideology with little difficulty.

Far from rejecting the past in the traditional revolutionary manner, the Islamic Republic built its new Iran on its own Islamic past. This looked back to the Safavids not as the creators of Shia Iran but as the bridge between the early years of Islam and the modern era. As a result of this Islamic emphasis in the early 1980s, it would have seemed that the pre-Islamic, and particularly Achaemenid, past was to have received the same treatment as the Bourbons and the Romanovs: to be condemned and then forgotten as an ancient irrelevance. However, this was far from being the case and in the new Iran the ancient empire was from the outset accorded a place of honour.

At first this may not have seemed to be the case, as archaeological and other work in Persepolis and its surroundings was brought to a halt. Since it was the Safavid dynasty to which the new Shia establishment looked as their Islamic forebears, the ancient civilization was certainly not their first priority. Already by 1979 the physical evidence of the great ceremonies that had taken place in Persepolis at the beginning of the decade was fast falling to pieces. What had been referred to as being a second ‘Field of the Cloth of Gold’ was already fast disappearing into the sands. This situation then continued on into the 1980s. However, while there was at first little attention paid to the centre of the ancient empire, there was certainly no Alexandrian bout of destruction either. The graven images of Zoroastrian times were just ignored. The few visitors to Persepolis and Pasargadae during the early years of the Islamic Republic speak of the way in which the ancient sites lay deserted rather than desecrated, and appeared to be returning to the sands from which they had been rescued by archaeologists in the nineteenth century. However, what was happening was largely about prioritizing the Islamic credentials of the new regime, rather than a deliberate attempt to ignore or destroy the country’s pre-Islamic past. The retention of that all-important national identity was always seen as essential to the proper understanding of the nation and its past.

The particular significance of Pars as being where Iran had first come into existence had always been recognized and the region had consequently been accorded a special place in historical studies. The importance of the Achaemenid dynasty, which had begun its rise to power in Pars, had also made the province the accepted core region of the Persian state. The fact that this was also recognized by the new regime can be seen from the establishment in the 1980s of a Foundation for the Study of Pars based in Shiraz. This foundation was closely associated with the University of Shiraz and was concerned mainly with historical and archaeological research. This indicated in many ways a continuation of the recognition of the special position accorded the province by the Pahlavis. The principal work of the foundation has been archaeological and it has produced a number of articles and research papers. Since this work by the foundation would have had to receive official approval from Tehran, this gives some indication of how the history of ancient Persia was viewed by the new regime once it had established itself.

A book on Pars written by Koorosh-e Sarvestani and published by the foundation identifies ‘a people who called themselves Aryans’ emigrating from Central Asia southwards into Pars.2 They spoke dialects of what was essentially the same language. They called their land ‘Arya Waich’ – the country of the Aryans – and called their language E’ran shatra, which evolved into ‘Iran Shahr’. Cyrus II, the founder of the Achaemenid dynasty, is referred to as being ‘Cyrus the Great’ and it is stated that he ‘established the greatest empire of the time by his remarkable deeds’. He was ‘considered by historians to be a sagacious and competent king and was deemed Zolqarnein (possessor of two centuries) by great scholars’. The use of the term ‘possessor of two centuries’ here is intended to indicate the influence that the deeds of Cyrus, who reigned for some thirty years, continued to exert throughout virtually the entire Achaemenid era.

Sarvestani’s book goes on to examine the pre-Islamic religion of Zoroastrianism in some detail. It is described as having been a monotheistic religion, worshipping ‘a matchless and great god called Oromazes’. It is also contended that after the fall of the Achaemenids, Pars was the only territory where what are referred to as ‘true Zoroastrianism and its holy scriptures’ were preserved. It was Ardashir I, founder of the Sasanid dynasty, who then restored the religion in Pars and throughout the country. This all suggests quite a positive and even benign attitude towards the religion that had preceded Islam. The worship of Zoroastrianism was permitted and it received protection from the Islamic Republic.

Sarvestani continues with an account of the Islamic period with particular reference to Pars, contending that ‘Farsees have always been in deep sympathy with the Prophet’s household.’ He relates how the first Iranian to go in search of the Prophet was Salman-e Farsi, a man whom the Prophet is said to have referred to as ‘one of our household’. In his Fars-nama, Ibn Balkhi wrote that the people of Pars have been named the Ahrar-ol-Fars, the Free Men of Fars. According to Balkhi, the Prophet said, ‘God chose two groups from among the people, Qoreish from the Arabs and Parsees from Ajams.’3 This all elevated Pars to a very special position in Islam. It was seen as being, in effect, the Hejaz of Iran, the place where Islam had first taken root in the country.

By the time the Islamic Republic was firmly established, Pars was thus being accorded a unique historical role. It was there that both the Achaemenid Empire and Iranian Islam had originated, and its holy shrines ‘have always won Fars the reverence of lovers of the Prophet’s household and the Shi’ites of the world’. It has remained, according to Sarvestani, ‘in the vanguard of the preservation and development of the holy values of the Revolution’.⁴ In this way, by the 1990s under the Islamic Republic, the ancient and the contemporary worlds were brought together geographically in Pars, which was recognized as being the heart of what had been essentially Iranian since ancient times.

Scholars outside Iran have also emphasized the particular Iranian contribution to the nature of Islam. The Islamic scholar Patricia Crone made a study of the importance of the native Persian prophets of early Islam and how they shaped the way in which the new religion developed in the country. Her book on the subject published in 2012 was very well received in Iran itself.

While the special position of Pars was recognized unequivocally by the Islamic Republic, attitudes to the Achaemenids themselves were often more ambivalent. This may at least partly have had something to do with the central role accorded to them by the discredited Pahlavis. At first the new rulers were wary of being too closely associated with these early rulers and saw the Shi’ite Safavids as being their real forebears.

During his time as president of the Republic, Ayatollah Khamene’i paid a visit to Persepolis and wrote the following judgement on his experience:

In my visit . . . I witnessed two distinct attributes lying side by side. First, the art, elegance, and the superb ability that has created . . . monuments which, after the lapse of tens of centuries, still remain a marvel to mankind. On the other hand, next to it lies exploitation and brute force . . . an individually cruel greatness . . . one has become the ruler of many. This is the dark and bitter history of the exploited . . . We must recognise these monuments as a valuable treasury in which we can see history and humanity, Iran and the Iranians, together with their legacy. We must preserve them.5

The Ayatollah’s visit and his reaction to what he saw demonstrated the importance not only of Persepolis but of Pars as a whole. This was the province in which the state had been founded and where its distinctiveness was most in evidence. There the country’s Achaemenid beginnings were brought together with its Shia Islamic present. Lindsey Allen contended that the Khamene’i visit to Persepolis illustrated the ‘qualified national pride surrounding a monument so clearly evoking the country’s monarchic tradition’.⁶ The continuity that had been sought by successive rulers over the ages was certainly ‘monarchic’ in this sense. Islamic Persia had been transformed into Persian Islam, and the Iran/Persia heritage was central to that individuality which over the centuries had made the country so different from other Islamic countries. Lawrence Paul Elwell-Sutton, an Islamic Studies scholar, observed that, ‘Iran had never been conquered spiritually, and had always in the end absorbed her conquerors while retaining her own integrity.’⁷ Cyrus, Shah Abbas, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the Ayatollah Khomeini, together with many other rulers, were very different in their beliefs and aspirations but they all held in common a firm belief in the role of their country. To Michael Axworthy, Iran was an ‘empire of the mind’. It is perhaps the continuity of this ‘mind’ that in a fundamental way made Iran the longest-lasting imperial state in world history.

The revolution came to Iran in 1979. The Shahyad Tower in the background was renamed the Azadi (Freedom) Tower.

Located in a prominent position in Tehran at the junction of major roads is the triumphal arch in white stone, built in 1971 by the last shah to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of the Achaemenid dynasty. It also acts as a grandiose gateway to the capital. On its official opening it was named the Shahyad, which means ‘souvenir of the shah’, and it contained galleries filled with exhibits connected to the monarchy and its history. Within a decade of the events of 1971, the monarchy had been overthrown and replaced by the Islamic Republic. However, far from being considered an undesirable relic of the former regime, the arch was retained. Its role in the new regime became a different one and it was renamed the Azadi – Freedom – Tower. It remains an impressive gateway to Tehran, but what had once been a symbol of the ancient empire was transformed into a symbol of the new Islamic Republic.

While neither Shahyad nor Azadi may have been particularly appropriate names for the arch, the unity of the vast monument symbolizes in stone that continuity over the millennia that has transcended the many different regimes that have ruled the country through the ages.