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James M. Gustafson , Kirman and the Qajar Empire: Local Dimensions of Modernity in Iran, 1794-1914 (New York : Routledge , 2015). Pp. 198. $145.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781138914568
History
The history of Iran's southern cities during the Qajar period continues to occupy a blind spot in Iran's modern "regional" historiography, a missive that James Gustafson attempts to remedy in his examination of Kirman's sociopolitical development from the emergence of the Qajar dynasty to the start of World War I. The era, as narrated in this work, witnesses the revival of Kirman after the devastating campaigns of Aqa Muhammad Khan, who famously blinded the city's adult male population and enslaved the bulk of its remaining inhabitants as punishment for siding with his Zand rivals in 1794. Kirman's proximity to the Persian Gulf, its fertile plains, and its distance from Tehran, allowed a unique brand of center-periphery relationship to develop in the 19th and 20th centuries. Kirman's great families, essential to the city's revival, harnessed its geography and agrarian endowment to their advantage. This is the story of a city that rises from the ashes, thanks to its notables, to earn its position as a prosperous center for trade, allowing it to play a pivotal role in Iran's foreign and domestic politics and in shaping its economic, religious, and cultural trajectory into the 20th century. Gustafson speaks to an audience of Iranian historians and largely validates prevailing theoretical conceptions of the importance of peripheries in Iran's development during the Qajar era.
The...