Two Faces of Urbanization in the Muslim East: Tehran in the Second Half of the 19th Сentury — 1930s.

Abstract

In this study the authors examine the main stages of evolution and social characteristics of the capital cities in the Muslim East on the example of Tehran, which over the course of a century has made its way from the medieval Shah's residence to the capital of a modern country. This period in the history of Iran was marked by a gradual modernization of state and society, associated with the personalities of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar and the new ruler Reza Shah Pahlavi, who managed to offer a radical way to transform the country basing on a new ideological doctrine, the symbolic expression of which was his renovated capital. The image of Tehran is reconstructed on the basis of urban planning outlines of the 1920s — 1930s, a wide range of narrative sources, mainly diaries of the Iranian rulers themselves and European diplomats and travelers, and information from Persian literary works.