Rereading the Iranian Constitutionalism Based on the Narrative of Ibrahim Beg's Travelogue

Document Type : Research Paper I Open Access I Released under (CC BY-NC 4.0) license

Authors

1 Faculty member, History Department, University of Tabriz

2 Associate Professor of History of Islamic Revolution, Faculty of International Studies, Imam Hossein(As) University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The present article seeks to explain the proximate factors in the emergence of the Iranian constitutionalism by citing historical sources and the Narration of the critical treatise "Ebrahim Beg's Travelogue" and utilizing Crane Brinton’s theory of revolution. The aforementioned treatise has the following advantages: first, it presents a relatively comprehensive picture of the situation in Iran and the new demands formed in the years leading up to the constitutionalism, and second, historical sources confirm the importance and impact of this treatise on the awakening of Iranians. Brinton’s theory of revolution also has high credibility in this research because it has been examined in the four major revolutions (France, Russia, England, and America) of the world. The method of the article is descriptive-explanatory, and Brinton’s theory has been used to explain the proximate factors and also as a criterion to determine the nature of the Iranian constitutionalist movement. The findings indicate that among the preliminary signs that Brinton lists in his theory of revolution, the components of "government inefficiency", "legitimacy crisis" and "elite gap/change of allegiance of enlightened thinkers" played a role in the emergence of the Iranian constitutionalism. The signs of "no economic crisis" did not apply to the Iranian constitutionalism, and on the contrary, economic poverty, criticized by the Sahatnameh, "class gap" and "surprising failure in the use of force" were also not observed. In other words, the constitutional movement had a peaceful process and the constitutional decree was issued without military and bloody conflict, and this is one of the cases that shows the fact that the Iranian constitutionalism was not a revolution but a movement.

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Main Subjects

Iranian History of Culture
Volume 3, Issue 1
March 2026
Pages 78-93

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History

  • Receive Date: 09 January 2025
  • Revise Date: 02 February 2025
  • Accept Date: 03 February 2025
  • Publish Date: 21 March 2026

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