Overview

Ayatollah Mohammad Hossein Nai'ni was perhaps the most important theoretician of Iran's Constitutional Revolution (1905-11). Among his myriad influential works was Tanbih al-Umma wa Tanzih al-Milla (Enlightenment of the Community and Purification of Religion), published in 1909 at the height of the revolution and often cited as one of the most religiously authoritative expositions of democratic Islam. Shortly after the end of the civil war it was supressed and was not unearthed until more than 40 years later by Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleqhani, who published a new edition complete with introduction and extensive annotations in 1955. This later interpretation of Nai'ni's work is arguably almost as important as the original itself and Taleqhani's analysis was highly influential in debates leading to the 1979 Revolution and the foundation of the Islamic Republic. Nai'ni's original text and Taleqhani's later edition and annotations are both here reproduced in English for the first time, alongside an authoritative socio-historical introduction and commentary to contextualise these important and divisive agents of reform and revolution. The volume reassesses their complex legacy today and sheds vital light onto the two modern revolutions which bookended Iran's twentieth century and the subsequent, and unfolding, post-modern reformation. This unique book is essential reading for understanding Iran, past and present, and political Islam.

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9781788311236

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Ayatollah Mohammad Hossein Nai'ni (1860-1936) was an Iranian intellectual, jurist and politician, and a leading force in Iran's Constitutional Revolution (1905-11). Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleqhani (1911-79) was an Iranian theologian and a senior cleric. He played an important role in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and, hugely popular and universally respected, became Tehran's first Friday Prayer leader before his sudden death. Mohammad Nafissi is a senior researcher in Islamic Studies at King's College London. He is also a senior visiting fellow at Soedertoern University, Stockholm, and adjunct lecturer in politics and conflict resolution at Boston University. He is a member of the international advisory board of Sociology of Islam and has published books, articles and edited collections.

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