Islamic Law and Society in Iran

A Social History of Qajar Tehran

Nobuaki Kondo

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351783187
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Thema: Politica

The relationship between Islamic law and society is an important issue in Iran under the Islamic Republic. Although Islamic law was a pivotal element in the traditional Iranian society, no comprehensive research has been made until today. This is because modern reformers emphasized the lack of rule of law in nineteenth-century Iran. However, a legal system did exist, and Islamic law was a substantial part of it.

This is the first book on the relationship between Islamic law and the Iranian society during the nineteenth century. The author explores the legal aspects of urban society in Iran and provides the social context in which political process occurred and examines how authorities applied law in society, how people utilized the law, and how the law regulated society. Based on rich archival sources including court records and private deeds from Qajar Tehran, this book explores how Islamic law functioned in Iranian society. The judicial system, sharia court, and religious endowments ( vaqf ) are fully discussed, and the role of 'ulama as legal experts is highlighted throughout the book. It challenges nationalist and modernist views on nineteenth-century Iran and provides a unique model in terms of the relationship between Islamic law and society, which is rather different from the Ottoman case.

Providing an understanding of this legal system in Iran and its role in society, this book offers a basis for assessing the motives and results of modern reforms as well as the modernist discourse. This book will be of interest to students of Middle Eastern and Iranian Studies.

1
The historical development of Tehran

Tehran before the Qajars

Tehran lies on the southern slopes of the Alborz Mountains at an altitude of 1,158 meters above sea level. The old capital city of this region, Rey, is located south of Tehran and includes several historical sites such as the shrine of Shah ‘Abd al-‘Aziz and Chashme-e ‘Ali. Tehran’s northern suburb, Shemran, connects the city to the Alborz Mountains and was used as a summer residence for the inhabitants of Tehran. Tehran has a dry climate, just like other cities on the Iranian plateau, because the Alborz blocks wet winds from the Caspian Sea. Snow on the mountains turns into water and irrigates the city via traditional irrigation canals known as qanat. According to Olivier, a French traveler, Tehran was hot and insanitary during the summer. It was not uncommon for people to leave the city or send their family to the villages in the vicinity in order to escape the dangerous epidemics that prevailed there during the summer season.¹

Originally, Tehran was a village on the outskirts north of Rey. However, by the first half of the fourteenth century, Hamd-allah Mostowfi refers to it as a qasabe, a small city.² In the sixteenth century, Tehran began to be called a shahr (a city). According to a Safavid source, Haft Eqlim (dated 1593–1594),

Tehran was adorned with a city wall and markets, and received the rank of a city (samt-e shahr) during the reign of Shah Tahmasp Safavi, the ruler of Iran.³

Another Safavid writer, Majd al-Din Mohammad Hoseyni stated,

It (Tehran) was a small city (qasabe) before, but the late victorious king (Shah Tahmasp) made efforts to develop it and built a city wall, which was 6 farsang (=about 36 km) long. Now it prospers.⁴

One of the most well-known descriptions of Safavid Tehran is by E‘temad al-Saltane. Writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, he notes:

In 961 AH, Shah Tahmasp ordered a city wall to be constructed around Tehran, which was 6000 steps around the city. A hundred and fourteen towers (borj) were constructed on the wall equal to the auspicious number of chapters of the Qur’an. A chapter of the Holy Qur’an was concealed in each tower.⁵

However, there are two points that need to be examined in this description. First, the date, 961AH (=1553–1554) is problematic. It is not mentioned in any of the contemporary sources, though in most of the secondary literature it is accepted as a fact.⁶ According to a late Safavid source, it was in the Year of the Dragon/963–964AH/1556–1557 that the construction of the city wall first began.⁷ When one compares events before and after the construction with a contemporary source, one will find the exact date was the Year of the Snake/964–965AH/1557–1558.⁸ We know for example that Shah Tahmasp visited Karaj, a small city located near Tehran the year before.⁹ According to a nineteenth-century source, Shah Tahmasp spent a long time visiting the Emamzade Hamze, located next to Shah ‘Abd al-‘Azim, and hunting in the region, and then ordered the construction of the city wall.¹⁰ The date 964–965/1557–1558 is also more probable because in 961/1553–1554 Tahmasp was engaged in war with the Ottoman ruler Suleyman I.

The second point is the story of the Qur’anic towers. What is curious is that a similar description can be found in Golshan-e Morad, an eighteenth-century Zand chronicle. In around 1760, the entire city wall built by Shah Tahmasp was in ruins. Karim Khan Zand is said to have ordered the city wall to be rebuilt with 114 towers, a number equal to the total number of chapters of the Qur’an, which was a good omen.¹¹

The Zand chronicle, however, does not mention the Qur’anic chapters being concealed in the towers. It is likely that Karim Khan wanted to connect the city with the Holy Qur’an as he had done when he rebuilt the gate of the Qur’an in Shiraz. As none of the Safavid sources mention 114 towers, it is almost certain that E‘temad al-Saltane altered the description found in Golshan-e Morad and connected the 114-tower story with the Safavids in his own geographical work.

E‘temad al-Saltane also wrote that no palace was built in Tehran during the Safavid period and gardens occupied two-thirds of the city area.¹² This might be the reason why Chahryar Adle describes Tehran before the eighteenth century as “le jardin habité.” Though the concept of “the inhabited garden” is very attractive, one cannot ignore the fact that Tehran was considered a city (shahr) in contemporary sources. For example, Mirza Mofid Mostowfi stated in the seventeenth century that Tehran was one of the famous cities in Central Iran (shahrha-ye mashhure-e ‘eraq).¹³ Though a European traveler named Della Valle emphasized the small size of the population of Tehran at that time,¹⁴ another traveler named Thomas Herbert counted 3,000 houses. Since, according to him, more than twelve people resided in each house,¹⁵ one can estimate the population of the city to have been around 30,000, not an insignificant number for Iranian cities at that time. The Safavids appointed Qezelbash Amirs as the provincial governors of Tehran during the reign of Shah ‘Abbas.¹⁶ They sent a jurist as sheykh al-eslam as in other major cities in the empire during the seventeenth century.¹⁷ Five madrases were built in Tehran during the Safavid Period. Moreover, at that time, it was normal that a city contained vast gardens. Isfahan for example had many such gardens like the chahar bagh.

The Zand chronicle, Golshan-e Morad, states that Karim Khan renovated Tehran because it was located between Central Iran and Azerbaijan and was a famous city in Central Iran.¹⁸ He built an audience hall and a residence which still exists today. Although it is not clear if Karim Khan intended to make Tehran his capital city as Perry claims, he probably expected to stay there for a while in order to confront the Qajars in the north.

In brief, Tehran was not merely an inhabited garden after the seventeenth century as not only did it have a large population but was of considerable political, cultural, and strategic significance. It is no accident that Aqa Mohammad Khan Qajar chose Tehran as his capital.

The early Qajars and Tehran

How and why the Qajars chose Tehran as their capital city is not clear from previous studies. There is also confusion about when Tehran became the Qajar capital.¹⁹ Naturally, as Adle and Hourcade have pointed out, the concept of the capital must also be defined clearly.²⁰ We can reach more concrete conclusions only after examining the early Qajar chronicles such as Saravi’s Tarikh-e Mohammadi and Chulavi’s Tarikh-e Molk-ara, which have not been considered hitherto in studies on Tehran.

After the death of Karim Khan Zand, Aqa Mohammad Khan escaped from Shiraz to Astarabad, and began his military operations to subdue various regions in Iran. In autumn of 1785, he entered Tehran with his army.²¹ According to the chronicles, he had decided to make Tehran his capital (maqarr-e asas-e soltani, maqarr-e eyalat va markaz-e khelafat) when he left Isfahan and for this reason he took many builders, artisans, and engineers with him. Saravi considered that he chose Tehran because it was the center of his conquered regions, while Chulavi gave the following two reasons: Tehran was located between Mazandaran and Central Iran; and no strong general ruled there.²² In other words, Aqa Mohammad Khan chose Tehran as his capital for geographical and strategic reasons. At that time, he confronted the Zands whose stronghold was Shiraz. Tehran became his capital once he entered the city.

Immediately, Aqa Mohammad Khan brought his mother and all the people of his haram from Mazandaran to Tehran.²³ The title of the capital city dar al-saltane (“the house of the King”) is found in a sale deed dated as early as September–October 1787.²⁴ The title can also be seen in a sale deed dated October–November 1818,²⁵ but is not found in later documents. After that Tehran held the more majestic title, dar al-khelafe (“the ...