Days of Revolution: Political Unrest in an Iranian Village - Rilegato

Hegland, Mary Elaine

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0804775672 ISBN 13: 9780804775670

Casa editrice: Stanford Univ Pr, 2013

Riassunto

Outside of Shiraz in the Fars Province of southwestern Iran lies "Aliabad." Mary Hegland arrived in this then-small agricultural village of several thousand people in the summer of 1978, unaware of the momentous changes that would sweep this town and this country in the months ahead. She became the only American researcher to witness the Islamic Revolution firsthand over her eighteen-month stay. Days of Revolution offers an insider's view of how regular people were drawn into, experienced, and influenced the 1979 Revolution and its aftermath.

Conventional wisdom assumes Shi'a religious ideology fueled the revolutionary movement. But Hegland counters that the Revolution spread through much more pragmatic concerns: growing inequality, lack of development and employment opportunities, government corruption. Local expectations of leaders and the political process—expectations developed from their experience with traditional kinship-based factions—guided local villagers' attitudes and decision-making, and they often adopted the religious justifications for Revolution only after joining the uprising. Sharing stories of conflict and revolution alongside in-depth interviews, the book sheds new light on this critical historical moment.

Returning to Aliabad decades later, Days of Revolution closes with a view of the village and revolution thirty years on. Over the course of several visits between 2003 and 2008, Mary Hegland investigates the lasting effects of the Revolution on the local political factions and in individual lives. As Iran remains front-page news, this intimate look at the country's recent history and its people has never been more timely or critical for understanding the critical interplay of local and global politics in Iran.

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Informazioni sugli autori

Mary Elaine Hegland is Professor of Anthropology at Santa Clara University. She was the only American scholar in Iran conducting field research during the Islamic Revolution, and one of very few to have access to the country in the 30 years since.

Mary Elaine Hegland is Professor of Anthropology at Santa Clara University. She was the only American scholar in Iran conducting field research during the Islamic Revolution, and one of very few to have access to the country in the 30 years since.

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Days of Revolution

Political Unrest in an Iranian Village

By Mary Elaine Hegland

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2014 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-7567-0

Contents

Illustrations..............................................................
ix
Preface....................................................................
xi
Acknowledgments............................................................
xxv
Cast of Characters.........................................................
xxvii
Chronology of Significant Events...........................................
xxxi
Introduction...............................................................
1
1 Historical Aliabad.......................................................
19
2 Political Repression: The Mosaddeq Era...................................
51
3 Economic Transformation and Political Space..............................
87
4 Recruitment to Revolution................................................
115
5 The Final Months.........................................................
155
6 After the Revolution: The Local Uprising.................................
193
7 Aliabad: Thirty-Four Years Later.........................................
227
Glossary...................................................................
261
Notes......................................................................
265
Bibliography...............................................................
289
Index......................................................................
301

CHAPTER 1

Historical Aliabad

BY NOW, Shiraz and Aliabad have both expanded so that they allbut meet. In 1978, though, Aliabad was half an hour by bus, some 35 kilometers,from the outskirts of Shiraz. The city of Shiraz had been built upa ways out on the road leading to Aliabad, with lovely residential areasand then walled-in gardens and orchards as one traveled toward Qasr el-Dashton the outskirts of the city. Buses loading up to go to Aliabadand other settlements in the same direction waited near the Qasr el-Dashtsquare until they were filled with passengers. People could do some last-minuteshopping for fresh fruit and vegetables at the outdoor shops nearthe square, as well as for other items in nearby stores. When the bus wasfinally out of the city, the scenery turned plain, with dry stony groundbetween ranges of hills lining either side of the highway. The skyscrapersof the Hossainabad housing project just outside Shiraz, where severalAliabadis had found construction work, caught one's attention. Even in1978, traffic was heavy, in part because of the presence of several factoriesbetween Shiraz and Aliabad. Large trucks sped along, bringing gravel tothe city from the two gravel pits on Aliabad land. Moving further up thevalley, one saw high rocky crags in the distance. The bus stopped at severalfactories to let off workers, who walked the rest of the distance off themain road to their work sites. The village of Qodratabad lay on the left,with its gendarmerie station not far off the paved highway, and then onlytwo kilometers further on was Aliabad.

Aliabad

Aliabad is located in a valley that not many decades ago was populatedby villages of riyat (sharecroppers). The province of Fars produced wheat,barley, rice, cotton, sugar beets, fruit, dates, legumes and vegetables. By1870, opium had become an important crop, although its cultivation wasbanned in 1955. Grape varieties from the region were famous and includedthose used to produce Shiraz, Syrah and Sirah wines. As is much of Iran,Fars is arid and hot in the summer. Although dryland agriculture was alsopracticed in Aliabad and other villages in the area, irrigated land of courseproduced much more. Water sources were valuable and often the subjectof contention. Before land reform in the 1960s, most of the area was underthe control of the absentee Qavam family landlords. Cultivation was carriedout by means of animal and human power, with produce divided betweenlandlord and peasants. The riyat and their families in Aliabad and the othervillages in the region lived in what would be seen by middle-class Westerneyes as severe poverty. Modern roads and transportation, education andhealth facilities, plumbing, electricity, and natural gas for heating and cookingcame to Aliabad only in the 1950s and 1960s, although this was soonerthan in many other Iranian villages. Animal products were also significantin the regional economy, both for villagers and even more so for nomadictribal groups, who shepherded their flocks up and down mountain slopesdepending on the season. People of Aliabad and other villages in the areainteracted with the various tribal groups making their home in Fars province,such as Qashqai and Lurs, as trading partners, political allies or victimsof bandits preying on itinerant traders walking between villages, or even oflarge tribal groups taking over control of the village before political centralizationin the 1950s and 1960s.

When I approached Aliabad, a village of about 3,000 people, for thefirst time in 1978, I could see several rows of new houses and their courtyards,with construction still proceeding on new additions, to the right ofthe highway. On the left stood the high-walled, square-shaped old villagewith a tower rising up at each of its four corners. The bus stopped nearthe entrance to the old village, where quite a few men and boys generallysat enjoying the sun and the opportunity to catch up on village affairs andnews from Shiraz. A few vehicles in various stages of repair and severalshops, such as a "coffee house," welding shop, motor repair shop andbread bakery, as well as an old, rundown shrine, were just outside the villagegate. Further on, just past the village wall, another small residentialarea had been built some seven or eight years earlier. The village cemeteryand the little building for washing bodies before burial lay to its left. Onthe right side of the highway, just past the large residential area with itsrows of recently built homes, were several government buildings: healthcenter, post office and school. Beyond these and further away from thehighway lay the main shrine of the village, Seyyid Seraj, with a little roadproviding access and surrounded by another, smaller cemetery.

Anyone entering the village gate would first go through a passagewaylined on either side by four or five rooms, each with a corrugated metaldoor pulled down and padlocked. Prior to land reform, these rooms wereused to store the grain produced in the village before it was transported tothe landlord in Shiraz, and to keep seed for the following year. The roomswere also used as a prison for recalcitrant peasants. Just inside the passageway,large Pepsi and Coca-Cola signs marked two or three minimal groceryshops edging the large, open area. Here men often gathered to sit in the sunand talk. The mosque courtyard lay just to the right of this square. Leadingoff this open area were several little alleyways. The main one formed acircle around the village. Subsidiary alleys branched off from the main alleyto give access to all homes. A small ditch for disposing of waste water ranthrough the center of each alley. Walking through the alleyways, one couldcatch glimpses through courtyard doors of activity within, such as womenwashing dishes or clothes at the courtyard water spigot.

Although the "new village" homes across the highway were built offine-looking fired brick, homes in the old village were constructed of sun-driedmudbrick plastered with mud. The color of the mud-covered buildingstogether with the dusty, plain appearance of the alleyways gave a drablook to the interior of the village. I remember watching dirt and scraps ofpaper tossed up by wind gusts and feeling rather dismayed at the thoughtof living there for a year and a half.

Several Aliabad residents told me the history of the settlement. It hadbeen decimated by the Mongol invasion in the 13th century. Over time, people—manyfrom the surrounding areas—immigrated in and out. Accordingto local historians, at some points it contained some 8,000 households. Forthe last 200 years, people told me, Aliabad had been a large village and animportant political, market, cultural and religious center. Persons trainedin religion and religious law who had long ago emigrated from Bahrain toAliabad had directed the mosque and Qoranic school. Aliabad, along withmost other villages in the Shiraz area, became the tax farm of the Qavamfamily of Shiraz, though not without some resistance, villagers told me.

Later, many tax farmers—the government tax-collectors of agriculturalareas—took over as their own private property the villages fromwhich they were supposed to collect tax revenue for the government. InAliabad too, the head of the Qavam family was able to take ownership byforce. Stories have been passed down of men tied up and beaten or takento Shiraz and put in chains in the Qavam effort to gain possession of thevillage. In Aliabad, this process apparently took place 100 years or morebefore my 1978–1979 fieldwork.

Informants talked about the great power of the Qavams and how forsome hundred and fifty years the current head of the Qavam family hadcontrolled the regions of Darab and Fasa and acted as the "shah" of theregion from Shiraz to Bandar Abbas. They owned at least 50 villages similarto Aliabad, people reported. According to one informant, there had beenthree "shahs" in the region: Qavam, Qashqai and Shaikh.

Reza Shah—the father of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi—who ruledIran from 1925 to 1941, wanted to cut back the power of such regional politicalfigures and bring the country under centralized political control. In the1930s, Reza Shah abolished the office of mayor of Shiraz, held by IbrahimKhan Qavam, who had controlled Aliabad. Ibrahim and his family wereexiled to Tehran for a time, as was the head of the Qashqai tribespeople,Solat ed-Doleh Qashqai. One complaint against Ibrahim Qavam was thathe acted like an independent power and cooperated too closely with theEnglish. Later, though, he regained the favor of the central government,which was concerned about Qashqai power in Fars. Ibrahim Qavam wasappointed governor-general of Fars in 1943 and provided with rifles to distributeamong the Khamseh tribesmen. At some point, Aliabad was givenover to Khanum Khorshid Kolah Qavam, sister of Ibrahim Qavam anddaughter of Habibollah Qavam ol-Molk.

The villagers of the next village, Darab, could relate even more vividtales about the period several decades after the Qavams took over ownershipof Aliabad, when Nazem ol-Molk, Khanum Khorshid Kolah's husbandat the time, came with a retinue and tented outside Darab. Nazemol-Molk wanted to forcefully take over ownership of his tax farm. Thestruggle continued for some time in Darab, with members of the Qavamfamily, Nazem ol-Molk and his wife, Khanum Khorshid Kolah, attemptingto use internal factionalism and gaining the support of a poorer groupwho owned no land or orchards to obtain control of Darab. The membersof this minority faction were willing to cooperate with the Qavam outsidersin the struggle against the dominant faction. They hoped therebyto serve their own interests through taking over as the socioeconomic andpolitical village elite. Sometime between 1935 and 1938, a number of Darabvillagers were killed, and Khanum Khorshid Kolah was able to appoint akadkhoda and a bailiff and enforce the giving of one-sixth of dryland cropsand one quarter of irrigated crops to her as landlord. But the matter wasnot settled conclusively, and for another 30 years or so the conflict continued,with eruptions of violence every few years.

After Nazem ol-Molk died, Khanum Khorshid Kolah married AsadollahKhan Arab Shaibani—"Arab"—who had been the Qavams' bailiff forAliabad. The Qavams owned the large building in Aliabad that housed thegovernment kindergarten in 1978–1979. When Khanum Khorshid Kolahcame to Aliabad for a visit accompanied by a retinue of some thirty horsemen,she stayed in that building. Seyyid Ibn Ali Askari, who became thelargest landowner in Aliabad after land reform, later bought this buildingfrom the Qavams. Seyyid Ibn Ali lived there with his family until the hostilityof other villagers during the 1962 land reform conflict forced him tomove to Shiraz. Khanum Khorshid Kolah also owned the house and courtyardthat in 1978–1979 was home to Seyyid Ibn Ali's brother, Seyyid YaqubAskari. Together the two brothers controlled village affairs, with Seyyid IbnAli residing in Shiraz, before the Iranian Revolution of February 1979.

Before the 1950s and 1960s, half or more of the working force ofAliabad, at least 200 men, engaged primarily in agriculture. Another 200villagers worked primarily in trade. Others filled the specialties requiredby the local population, such as carpenter, shepherd, bath attendant, barber,blacksmith, guard of the vineyards, guard of the fields and religiousspecialist. Ten or more men were shoemakers, sewing the tough, handmadeshoes with crocheted cotton uppers and leather—later rubber tire—solesworn by villagers and especially valued by migrating tribespeoplebecause of their durability. Only some ten men practiced migrant labor,journeying to Abadan to work for extended periods in the oil industry.Women were not expected to work outside the domestic environment butkept busy in their own courtyards. Agricultural families kept animals, andwomen took responsibility for them in the courtyard, feeding chickensand milking goats, sheep and cows, as well as preparing milk productsand preserving other foods. Widows were often forced to work to supportthemselves and their children and might go out to camps of migratingtribespeople to trade.

Khanum Khorshid Kolah continued to be the owner of Aliabad untilland reform in 1962. Ibrahim Qavam died in 1969.10 His two sons, Ali andMohammad Reza, and his daughters lived in Tehran in 1978. KhanumKhorshid Kolah died in the early 1970s. Her husband Arab Shaibani, whohad also served as her agent, died at about the same time. Although theformer landlords of Aliabad were no longer in the picture when I came inlate summer 1978, their ownership of Aliabad and the taifeh-keshi politicalsystem in operation during their time were recent enough that oral historyinterviews could shed light on them.

Political anthropology had become one of my main interests before Iwent to Aliabad for field research. To study political anthropology, whichtypically deals with local politics and the connections between nationaland local politics, I should talk with men, I assumed. I owe it to the revolutionaryturmoil and to periods when, with few exceptions, men wouldnot talk with me—a suspect American in their midst—that I was forced tostart asking women about their activities and observing their interactionswith others, and began to realize the unique roles women played in politics.I questioned them about engagements, weddings, cooking and distributingfood in the name of holy figures, mourning ceremonies, women'svisits and gifts when a daughter became pregnant and then gave birth, andwomen's many other formal and informal visits and exchanges. Throughobservation and asking questions, I became aware of women's lively socializingand networking, which helped keep political alliances active, andof the close relationships between women and their families of origin—whichcould provide men with more political clout to protect people andresources, as well as alternative alliances in case men deemed it best to shiftallegiance to another coalition of taifeh. Then, when taifeh-keshi emergedagain during the revolutionary upheaval, I was better prepared to understandthe parts of both men and women. Men's and boys' public actions ofviolence were more visible and dramatic—and resulted in outrage and extensivediscussion. Women's part in politics was less apparent but went onas part of everyday social life before, during and after eruptions. Withoutbeing sensitized to the political aspects of women's lives, I might well haveoverlooked a crucial part of taifeh-keshi politics in village history—politicalrelations through women and women's political work—and then in theRevolution and the post-Revolution local uprising.

Bilateral Kinship and Political Alternativesin Aliabad Taifeh-Keshi

Much of the flexibility of taifeh and the ability of men to shift fromone taifeh to another to best serve their own and their families' interestswas based on the bilateral kinship system: in Aliabad as elsewhere in Iran,children are considered equally related to their mother's and father's families.The nuclear family is primary, and a woman is considered to be amember of her husband's household rather than her father's. Beyond thenuclear family, almost equal importance is placed on ties through both menand women, rather than only on patrilateral (through the father) kinship.

In Aliabad, matrilateral (through the mother) and affinal (in-law)ties held weight: in-laws were called relatives. Wedding celebrations wereheld at the home of the bride as well as at the home of the groom, indicatingthe significance of the bride's family in social and political alliances.

In form (or rather lack of fixed form), the Aliabad taifeh system resembledthe kinship system commonly found in other Iranian communities,urban as well as rural, which is characterized by indefinite boundaries,alternative ties, leadership yet interaction among members, flexibility andfluctuation. Ties with new allies could be cemented and turned into moralties through intermarriage. Indeed, the taifeh system was largely based onthe kinship system.

In form, the Iranian kinship system resembles kindreds, or networksof people tied together by a variety of kin, marriage and associational tiesrather than bounded, corporate lineages. The system is fluid, enabling peopleto activate, mobilize and modify relationships as they see fit, thereforeallowing individuals choice and alternatives in political alliance.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Days of Revolution by Mary Elaine Hegland. Copyright © 2014 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press.
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Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Stanford Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0804775672
• ISBN 13: 9780804775670
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 316
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile