Book Review

Middle East and Northern Africa

Using the word "f(r)iction," a playful synthesis of the terms "frontier" and "fiction," Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet argues that modern discourses of nationalism in Iran have often originated from loss of land. In response to border wars waged by Russia, Britain, and the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, Iranian intellectuals developed a stronger sense of national identity and constructed new discourses that galvanized other segments of society for the ostensible goal of restoring Iran's glory. Building on (and sometimes questioning) the well-known arguments of Benedict Anderson and other theorists of nationalism, Kashani-Sabet shows that while Iran's history as a geographic entity can be traced to antiquity, its emergence as a modern nation-state has relied on many familiar tropes. These have included an emphasis on the primacy and authenticity of the Persian language (as against other Iranian languages), a reliance on grand narratives and myths that glorify the past, the use of print media such as newspapers, textbooks, and political cartoons, the development of a national army, schools, and other modern institutions in which a sentiment of nationalism was inculcated, and even the resettlement of Persian and non-Persian ethnic communities in response to occasional separatist threats. Intellectuals relied on the modern sciences of geography and economics to construct a new nationalist rhetoric. They called for the protection of a nation that could be visualized through the use of maps and similar geographic tools. A new genre of reform literature, one that was addressed to the court (resaleh), lamented the failure of the government to create greater wealth despite Iran's rich soil. By the time of the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, "the land of Iran no longer was the king's private property but the citizen's homeland" (p. 143). A constitutional monarchy was established with the promise of political rights for many.

. . .