The Expansion of the State in Iran

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

In the late 1920s, Reza Shashay points a really interesting figure by the name of Ali Akbar. And so he appoints Dawav to centralize the judiciary. He wants to wrestle power away from the remaining Sharia courts and really centralize Iran's legal apparatus. But in fact, it actually takes several years to bring on the personnel who are sort of educated along essentially modern European legal lines. That again, this process in some ways reverses in 1979 when the courts are put into the hands of clerics as, you know, and the sort of modern bureaucrats are booted and modern legalists are booted from the judiciary.

Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran, from 1906 through the present. This episode is the first in a four-part series, covering the period from 1906 until 1941, from the Constitutional Revolution that imposed constitutional limits on the Qajar dynasty through the 1921 coup that brought to power Reza Khan—who then in 1925 deposed the Qajars and became Reza Shah, the first shah of the Pahlavi dynasty. We end just before the 1941 occupation of Iran by longtime imperial powers, Britain and the Soviet Union, which forced Reza Shah out and replaced him with his son, Muhammad Reza Shah—which is where we will pick up in episode two. RIP Mike Davis. Listen to his Dig interviews here: thedigradio.com/tag/mike-davis Please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Read our newsletters and explore our vast archives at thedigradio.com