Constitutionalism Unbound

Denis Hermann, Ph.D. (2007), is a historian and researcher at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research). Specializing in the history of Modern Iran and Shi’ism, his publications include Le shaykhisme à la période qajare: Histoire doctrinale et sociale d’une École chiite (Brepols, 2017).Erdal Kaynar, Ph.D. (2012), is associate professor in modern history at the University of Strasbourg. He works on the intellectual and political history of the late Ottoman Empire. His publications include L’héroïsme de la vie moderne. Ahmed Rıza en son temps (Peeters, 2021).

This excellent volume, revisiting late 19th century, early 20th century constitutional thought and constitutional advocacy in Iran, and to a lesser extent the Ottoman Empire, Egypt and Tunisia, deserves to be read and cited widely. It covers a range of topics that have only begun to receive academic attention, including the role of minorities in influencing majoritarian constitutional and political thought, the place of empire and suzerainty in molding the imagination of key political concepts, and the travel and dissemination of ideas across the Middle East. Chapters are based on a plethora of primary sources, while also being well embedded in relevant disciplinary debates. Every chapter is implicitly, some explicitly, comparative. Most chapters cite widely in several languages and draw on previously little-known empirical data to formulate novel arguments about the rich constitutional imagination of the region. Professor Mirjam Künkler, IALS, London, and President of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies (ASPS)

• ContentsAcknowledgementsList of FiguresIntroduction: Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran: Histories and PerspectivesDenis Hermann and Erdal KaynarPart 1: Conceptualizing Constitutionalism: (Re-)Imagining Politics1 Who Can Participate in the Shūrā? Non-Muslims in the First Parliaments of Tunisia, the Ottoman Empire and Iran, 1861–1911Anne-Laure Dupont2 Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi and Arabic ConstitutionalismPeter Hill3 The Nation Against the Sultan: Constitutionalist Thought in the Writings of the Young Turk Leader Ahmed RızaErdal Kaynar4 Democracy by Petition: the Popular Committees and What Made the Iranian Constitutionalism UniqueNader SohrabiPart 2: Constructing Constitutionalism: Ideas, Actors, and Networks5 Armenian Constitutionalism in the Late Ottoman Empire: the View from a ProvinceVarak Ketsemanian6 The Iranian Constitution in the Mirror of the Russian Azerbaijani PressZaur Gasimov7 Progressive Conservatives? The Young Turk Lectures on Constitutional LawNobuyoshi Fujinami8 Constitutionalism and the Political Ethos of the Last QajarsAlisa Shablovskaia9 Constitutional Authority and Shiʿi Political Culture: the Mobilisation of Messianic Logic by the Ulama during the Iranian Constitutional RevolutionDenis HermannPart 3: Enacting Constitutionalism: the Challenge of Constitutional Rule10 From Trusting to Cunning: Shifting Relations between Armenian Political Figures and Ḥasan Taqīzādeh during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911)Houri Berberian11 Crafting the Image of Constitutionalism: the Phenomenon of Bast in Turn-of-the-Century Iran and the Visualization of ProtestMira Xenia Schwerda12 Coal Heavers’ Strike of 1910 in the Ottoman Capital: Labor Activism and Socialist Politics in the Second Constitutional EraYaşar Tolga Cora13 A Shift in Law-Making: Ottoman Constitutionalism Facing the Local in RumeliaBarış ZerenIndex