â10 Tehran: A Revolution in Makingâ in âPolitical Landscapes of Capital Citiesâ on University Press of Colorado Open Books
Political Landscapes of Capital Cities investigates the processes of transformation of the natural landscape into the culturally constructed and ideologically defined political environments of capital cities. In this spatially inclusive, socially dynamic interpretation, an interdisciplinary group of authors including archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians uses the methodology put forth in Adam T. Smithâs The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities to expose the intimate associations between human-made environments and the natural landscape that accommodate the sociopolitical needs of governmental authority.

Political Landscapes of Capital Cities blends the historical, political, and cultural narratives of capital cities such as Bangkok, Cusco, Rome, and Tehran with a careful visual analysis, hinging on the methodological tools of not only architectural and urban design but also cultural, historiographical, and anthropological studies. The collection provides further ways to conceive of how processes of urbanization, monumentalization, ritualization, naturalization, and unification affected capitals differently without losing grasp of local distinctive architectural and spatial features. The essays also articulate the many complex political and ideological agendas of a diverse set of sovereign entities that planned, constructed, displayed, and performed their societal ideals in the spaces of their capitals, ultimately confirming that political authority is profoundly spatial.
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University Press of Colorado Open Books
10

Tehran

A Revolution in Making

TALINN GRIGOR

In his study The Political Landscape, Adam T. Smith highlights the political clashes of the 1990s in Moscow, Belfast, and Jerusalem to reinforce often underestimated importance of spatiality not only as backdrop for political activities but also as the very stake of political struggle.1 The Iranian Revolution of 1978â1979 is considered by many as one of the most important events in the twentieth century. It not only ended the institution of monarchy and established a republic in Iran but also managed to shift the rules of the global power game. Embracing Smithâs discussions of capital cities as primary spaces for political contestation,2 this study maintains that the processes and the meanings of the Iranian uprising are intimately tied to the history of Tehran, Iranâs capital city. A manifestation of social and economic stratifications, Tehranâs urban space is, and has always been, the condition for political contestation. Since its foundation, topographical and morphological development of Tehran embodied its social segregation and economic promotion. Already in the Safavid era (1501â1722), it had become an active religious center of Shiâism, with its distinct culture of protest. In the sixteenth century Tehran was encircled by walls and it acquired the status of a city. This coincidence of urbanism and power politics was further intensified by the fact that Tehran acquired a reputation for having âclever though rebellious and quarrelsomeâ inhabitants.3 In 1785, under the Qajar dynasty (1785â1925) Tehran became the capital city of Iran. At the end of the twentieth century, it enabled one of the most important modern revolutions in history. In effect, from the very beginning, Tehran was a revolution in making.4

Like many ancient capital cities in the Middle East, Tehran emerged as disembedded capitalâthe center of political authority outside historically dominant urban centers5âyet Tehran was only five miles northwest of the city of Ray, which marked the legendary site of Ragha, the city of universal and sacred nature mentioned in the Zoroastrian holy book, the Avesta. The creation story of this ancient city began with the Wise Lord, Ahura Mazda, who summoned Ragha into being as the twelfth city of his vast universe: âAt the beginning there was fire. All creation seemed to be aflame. We had drunk the sacred haoma and the world looked to be as ethereal and as luminous and as holy as the fire itself that blazed upon the altar.â6 A site on the Khorasan highway and the Silk Road, Ray connected the east and the west in Persia and was an important site for economic and cultural exchanges. A revolt against the invading Arab armies in 643 left the city in ruins, after which a Muslim garrison town was established nearby. Ray became a religious center of great importance as a result of the Shah Abdol Azim shrine (ninth century). The shrine contains the tomb of Abdol Azim al-Hasani, a fifth-generation descendant of Imam Hasan. Subsequently, Ray became a favorite summer residence for Muslim dynastic rulers such as the Abbasids, Seljuks, and Buyids, until its complete destruction in 1220 by the Mongols. Ray maintained its holy aspect, but never flourished either politically or physically.7 This proved to be a blessing for Tehran, to where the survivors of Mongol invasions migrated, five miles northwards, and settled permanently.8

The recorded history of Tehran began around the late fourteenth century. The Timurids, who were fond of Tehranâs gardens and pomegranates, built a palace on the northern edge, on the present site of Golestan palace, thus initiating an urban growth-pattern that defined major aspects of its subsequent social geography. With an altitude of 3,900 feet above sea level, the province of Tehran sits between the Alborz mountain range in the north and the Salt Desert in the south. It is positioned on the northern edge of the great central plateau, which rises steadily toward the north, with a difference in level of several thousand feet between its southern and northern borders. As a result of its geographic and topographic setting, the constant tendency to move north characterizes the urban expansion of Tehran. This north-south growth has endured to the present day, compelled in part by a need to move away from the desert toward the mountains as the source of fresh air and clean water.

By the 1960s, this spatial north-south urban axis of expansion took on a sociological dimension that impacted the politics of Iranâs class struggle. Southern Tehran included the industrial area and cemetery of Ray that merged with the former fortified Qajar Tehran. The north consisted of rich and lush Shemiran and areas up to the slopes of the Alborz mountain range. The poor south, with the dense bazaar and Qajar residential quarters, was seen as a contrast to the well-to-do north with modernist villas, modern mini-markets, and fresh air and water. Although this vertical axis of social promotion initially evolved out of historic and geographic needs, spatial segregation and social struggle came to be embodied in the northward urban expansion of Tehran in two decades preceding the Iranian Revolution of 1979.9 The ruling monarch who in 1959 moved his court to the northernmost point of the city socially and symbolically strengthened this historical urban development. By so doing, he exacerbated the effect of the vertical axis of social promotion.