تشکرى بافقى، على اكبر. مشروطيت در
يزد: از ورود انديشۀ نوين تا كودتاى سيد ضياء الدين طباطبائى: ١٢٩٩- ١٢٨٥ش.
تهران: مرکز یزد شناسی،
١٣۷۷/١٩٩٩-١٩٩٨، ٢٩٠ص.
Tashakkuri Bafqi, ʻAli Akbar. Mashrutiyat
dar Yazd: az Vurud-i Andishah-yi Navin ta Kudita-yi Sayyid Ziyaʼ al-Din
Tabatabaʼi: 1285-1299 Sh. Tehran: Markaz-i Yazdshinasi, 1998-1999, 290pp.
ABSTRACT
Constitutionalism
in Yazd: From the Introduction of the New Contemplation until the Coup d’etat
of Seyyed Ziaeddin Tabatabaei (1906-1920)
مشروطيت در يزد: از ورود انديشۀ نوين
تا كودتاى سيد ضياء الدين طباطبائى: ١٢٩٩- ١٢٨٥ش
The first
chapter provides an overview of the city’s history and geography. It also
covers some of Yazd’s natural limitations which have isolated the town from
other centres of power. However, in the rest of the book which is divided into
four sections on politics, society, economics, and culture, the main aim is to
consider how new ideas about constitutionalism became popular in a place like
Yazd.
In each
section, the book shows how the wave of constitutionalism shifted course after
coming into contact with the edges of the “remote world” of Yazd and became
subject to interpretation to the extent that it ultimately ends in the
reproduction of the same despotism of the past, but in a smaller dimension and
with greater chaos.
Perhaps the
book’s most important characteristic is that it does not address the history of
constitutionalism based on occurrences in Tehran, as is usually the case, but
from the perspective of a small but heterogeneous city. Attitudes toward
constitutionalism from the viewpoint of the city’s clergy, merchants, and
religious minorities, especially the Zoroastrians, are clearly evident from
public correspondence, minutes of meetings, newspapers, and the confidential
correspondence with the British Embassy, all of which have been published in
the book.
This work
sketches a picture of constitutionalism in “one of the most remote parts of
Iran” for critics and scholars of modernity and modernisation in Iran. This
picture is one in which the ideas of constitutionalism which aimed to weaken
absolutism and to establish a parliamentary order failed. These ideas became
instruments in the hands of despots and local looters who further encroached on
the lives and property of the people behind the cloak of constitutionalism.
Iradj
Esmailpour Ghouchani
Translated
by Niki Akhavan
