Abstract:

This study investigates the orientalist, nationalist, and Islamist historiography of Iran during the late Qajar and Pahlavi eras. More specifically, using the Critical Discourse Analysis method the study examines texts produced by some of the main figures of these three groups to explore the ways they reconstructed the image of ‘Iran’ and ‘Iranians’ during the first four centuries of the Islamic era. The results show that the race-based approaches to history developed by the forefathers of the Aryan race theory - like Ernest Renan and Arthur de Gobineau - alongside orientalist Iranists – such as Edward G. Browne - shaped the worldview of many of the Iranian activist historians who later became ideologues of the Pahlavi monarchy. Accordingly, nationalist historians like Abdul-Hossein Zarrinkoob, who were under influence of the race-based approaches, pursued to present both the historical continuity and racial-civilizational superiority of Iran, Iranians, and the Iranian nation during the four centuries that have followed the collapse of the Sassanid empire. To this end, nationalist historians, as well as orientalist Aryanists, have argued that it was Iranians who inspired and/or achieved the main accomplishments in the first four centuries of the Islam era. Their anti-Arab racist approaches when translated into anti-Islam tendencies attracted critiques from Islamists elites such as Morteza Motahhari and Ali Shari’ati. On the eve of the 1979 Islamic revolution, these Islamic elites sought to deconstruct the orientalist and nationalist racial approach to history, by offering a new way of historiography partly in accordance with Internationalist Islamic doctrines.  

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