| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Middle East and Northern Africa

Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi. Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography. (St. Antony's Series.) New York: Palgrave. 2001. Pp. xvi, 216. $60.00.
This work by Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi takes up several issues bearing on the origins of modernity in Iran. It emphasizes aspects of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries not often discussed: in particular, Iranian knowledge of Europe coming through Persian travel literature of the period and the impact of this writing on the formation of modern Iranian culture. The book approaches the subject in terms of discourse and text analysis.	1
Among Tavakoli-Targhi's several interesting contentions is that students of the subject of Orientalism, such as Edward W. Said, ought to place far greater weight on theorizing its origins than they do. If they did, they would have to come to terms with the contribution of scholars in Iran and of the late Mughal period in South Asia. It was these men who educated the first European scholars, such as Sir William Jones (1746–1794) and A. H. Anquetil-Duperron (1731–1805). While the later participation of Middle Eastern scholars in the Orientalist project is well attested and, to a certain extent, written about, it is correct to say that no one before has put much evidence on the origins or on the South Asian origins of Orientalism. Here, there may be some ambiguities. The French Orientalist Maxime Rodinson wrote a well-known book, Europe and the Mystique of Islam (1987), tracing back European interest in the subject to medieval times. Tavakoli-Targhi's contention that the South Asian moment in the history of Orientalism has not been assessed as a part of the overall history still stands, however, and it seems reasonable to think it might have played some subsequent role in the development of modern culture in Iran.	. . .

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