A Qajari Social Contract

Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani (1854-1896) was an Iranian philosopher and intellectual. Born to a prosperous family in Kerman, Iran, Kermani spent the majority of his career in Istanbul where he became a prominent opponent of the Qajar monarchy. Influenced by Western science and thought and Islamic reform, he wrote numerous articles, political pamphlets, poems and philosophical and theological treatises before his execution by the Persian state.Behzad Zerehdaran is a research fellow at Philipps University of Marburg, Germany. He is the author of Politics and Poetica of Rights in Modern Iran (2024). He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Dr Zerehdaran is an able scholar of Qajar history and culture, and his translation and edition of this book by Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani together with his own biographical introduction to it is a valuable contribution to Qajar studies and the rise of Persian nationalism in the late nineteenth century.

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionA Tale of Three Cities: The Intellectual Life of Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani1. Introduction: Infinite Pages of a Revolution2. Kerman: The Making of an Intellectual Dissident2.1. Birth and Lineage2.2. Formative Environment of Kerman2.3. Education and Teachers2.4. Conflict and Flight3. Isfahan: Between Patronage and Peril3.1. Reformist Circles and Court Intrigues3.2. Tehran Interlude and the Road to Exile4. Istanbul: Between Flourishing and Perishing4.1. Sympathy With the Azali Cause: Cyprus, Marriage, and Melancholy4.2. The Birth of an Author: Rezvan and Early Literary Experiments4.3. Three Mirrors of Azali Thought: Hekmat-e Nazari (Theoretical Philosophy), Haftad-o-do Mellat (Seventy-Two Sects), and Hasht Behesht (Eight Paradises)4.4. Journalism and Reform: Akhtar and the Tobacco Crisis4.5. Recognition and Stability4.6. In the Circle of Dissidents: Mirza Habib Esfahani4.7. Azali Exposure and Exclusion in Exile4.8. Reading the Enlightenment4.9. In the Circle of Dissidents: Mirza Malkom Khan and Seyyed Jamal al-Din Afghani4.10. Extradition and AftermathThe Fading Shadow of God: On Atheology and the Death of the Sacred in Takvin va Tashri1. The Genealogy of Disbelief: From Ilhad to Atheology2. The Poetics of Heterodoxy: Literature as Humanist Resistance3. The Clerical Hegemony of Safavid Shi'ism4. The Fracturing of the Divine Order: Literature and the Poetics of Denial5. The Birth of the Intellectual Amid the Twilight of Qajar Absolutism6. Theoretical Framework: The Unthought and the Logosphere7. Reading Takvin va Tashri: The Genesis of Fear and the Contract of Religion8. Prophecy, Power, and the Social Contract9. The Tongue of Nature: Prophecy Without Revelation10. The Fusion of Horizons: Kermani in Dialogue with Durkheim, Montesquieu, and Ibn Khaldun11. Concluding Remarks: Toward a Natural AtheologyTakvin va TashriThe First Ray: On the Weakness and Infirmity of Man, and the Intensity of His Helplessness and DependenceThe Second Ray: On the Formation of Human Societies After the State of FearThe Third Ray: On the Trajectory of Man in His Original CourseThe Fourth Ray: On the Organisation of Man’s Livelihood Within SocietyThe Fifth Ray: On the Emergence of Sciences, Arts, and Crafts in Accordance With the Needs and Exigencies of Human LifeThe Sixth Ray: On the Origin of Language and SpeechThe Seventh Ray: On the Origin of Script and Writing, and the Invention of Numerals and LettersThe Eighth Ray: On the Nature of Poetry, Music, Painting, and Related ArtsThe Ninth Ray: On the Art of Medicine, Veterinary Practice, and SurgeryThe Tenth Ray: On War, Its Instruments, and the Enhancement of Martial PowerThe Eleventh Ray: On the Relations and Exchanges of Estates, Commerce, Cultivation, and IndustryThe Twelfth Ray: On the Origin of the Science of Astronomy, Judicial Astrology, the Horoscope, and the Celestial TablesThe Thirteenth Ray: On the Origins of Geometry, Arithmetic, Jarr al-Asqal (the Science of Moving and Balancing Heavy Bodies), and Avfaq (Magic Squares or Numerical Talismanic Tables)The Fourteenth Ray: On the Origins of Seafaring and Other Western DiscoveriesThe Sixteenth Ray: On Prophetic Power, Kingship, Wisdom, and the Formation of the Civilised WorldThe Seventeenth Ray: On Man in Pursuit of First Causes, and the Inquiry into and Division of PhilosophyThe Eighteenth Ray: On the Manner of the Emergence of Prophets, Priests, and the Talmud Among the IsraelitesThe Nineteenth Ray: On the Manner of Worship and the Origins of IdolatryGlossaryBibliography