Description: This volume explores the development of constitutionalism in the long nineteenth century across the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran as a multifaceted and transformative force that durably reshaped conceptions of state and governance, society and community, and politics and sovereignty.
Review Quotes: This excellent volume, revisiting late 19th century, early 20th century constitutional thought and constitutional advocacy in Iran, and to a lesser extent the Ottoman Empire, Egypt and Tunisia, deserves to be read and cited widely. It covers a range of topics that have only begun to receive academic attention, including the role of minorities in influencing majoritarian constitutional and political thought, the place of empire and suzerainty in molding the imagination of key political concepts, and the travel and dissemination of ideas across the Middle East. Chapters are based on a plethora of primary sources, while also being well embedded in relevant disciplinary debates. Every chapter is implicitly, some explicitly, comparative. Most chapters cite widely in several languages and draw on previously little-known empirical data to formulate novel arguments about the rich constitutional imagination of the region.
Professor Mirjam Künkler, IALS, London, and President of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies (ASPS)