On 2 February 2023, the ACRPS Iranian Studies Unit hosted Abdulnabi Ghayem, Writer and Researcher, for a lecture titled “Persian Nationalism: Origins, Characteristics, Consequences.” The event was moderated by Haider Saeed, Researcher and Head of the Gulf Studies Unit at the ACRPS, and Editor-in-Chief of the Siyasat Arabiya journal.

Ghayem began by providing an overview of the impact of colonialism and the role of the Orientalist movement in the development of Persian nationalism through the historiography of Iran. Colonial policies led to the rise of Persian nationalism, which sought to separate Iran’s multiethnic population into Persian and non-Persian communities. During the reign of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar (1771–1834), British military commander and East India Company administrator John Malcolm (1769–1833) traveled to Iran and, with the help of his Farsi-speaking secretary, authored two volumes of History of Persia. According to Ghayem, Malcolm was perhaps the first to divide the history of Iran into two periods: its pre-Islamic history, and its history from the decline of the Sasanian dynasty until the Qajari period. He praised Iran’s pre-Islamic past while disparaging the post-Islamic era.

In the mid-19th century, the views of French statesman Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (1818-1882), the spiritual father of Nazism, about the supremacy of the Aryan race and Islam as an Arab religion came to prominence. Gobineau was appointed as the French minister to Tehran in 1855, where he remained for many years and came into contact with various segments of the population. He promoted his racist ideas and his perspective of the history of Iran, centered on the Aryan identity of the Persians. In 1869, he published his Histoire des Perses, in which he focused on the pre-Islamic history of Iran.

Ghayem also discussed the role of Iranian intellectuals such as Mirza Fatali Akhundov (1812-1878), Jalaluddin Mirza (1827-1872), and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani (1854-1896) in translating and spreading Gobineau’s thought and laying the foundations of Persian nationalism. Aryan superiority, Islam as an Arab religion, glorification of Iran’s pre-Islamic past and Zoroastrianism, and stress on the Persian language and its purification from other languages, notably Arabic, are some of the key aspects of Persian nationalism, according to Ghayem.

Nevertheless, Persian nationalism was not powerful or widespread, neither during the Constitutional Revolution (1905-1907) or thereafter. Yet it intensified after Reza Khan came to power in 1925, adopting Persian nationalism as his regime ideology. Persian nationalists wrote the history of Iran with a vision close to that of the Orientalists, rooted in Aryan supremacy, the exaltation of Iran’s distant past, and anti-Arabism. Despite the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime, this ideology and its repercussions continue to dominate the mindset of some Persian elites.