Democracy by Petition: the Popular Committees and What Made the Iranian Constitutionalism Unique

Nader Sohrabi

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Chapter 4 Democracy by Petition: the Popular Committees and What Made the Iranian Constitutionalism Unique

In: Constitutionalism Unbound

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Nader Sohrabi

Nader Sohrabi
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 112–145

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004734661_006

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Abstract

This chapter examines the constitutionalist committees known as anjumans whose specificity was that they sprang up throughout Iran as thoroughly popular grassroots initiatives. The collective petitioning in the public forums of anjumans, together with networks of contact between anjumans throughout Iran, and anjumans’ newspapers that reflected public wants, heralded the rise of the public sphere at a popular level beyond the forums structured by lay or clerical leaders. Added to this were the collective sanctuaries at the shared “secular” spaces of telegraph offices where the public came into direct contact with the source of justice, far more often the Assembly than the shah. The changes let open the door to a secular sphere, where the public voiced its wants independently in terms and means of its own beyond the clerical channels, and even beyond the Assembly.

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Constitutionalism Unbound

Constitutional Dynamics and Political Transformation in the Ottoman and Qajar Lands in the Long Nineteenth Century

Series: Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia, Volume: 135

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004734661

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 21 Jul 2025

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Part 1 Conceptualizing Constitutionalism: (Re-)Imagining Politics

Part 2 Constructing Constitutionalism: Ideas, Actors, and Networks

Part 3 Enacting Constitutionalism: the Challenge of Constitutional Rule

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Chapter 4 Democracy by Petition: the Popular Committees and What Made the Iranian Constitutionalism Unique

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Constitutionalism Unbound

Constitutional Dynamics and Political Transformation in the Ottoman and Qajar Lands in the Long Nineteenth Century

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