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The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran
The Iranian revolution still baffles most Western observers. Few considered the rise of theocracy in a modernized state possible, and fewer thought it might result from a popular revolution. Said Amir Arjomand's The Turban for the Crown provides a thoughtful, painstakingly researched, and intelligible account of the turmoil in Iran which reveals the importance of this singular event for our understanding of revolutions.
Providing crucial historical background, Arjomand examines both the structure of authority in Shi'ism (one of the two main branches of Islam) and the impact of the modern state on Iranian society, two factors essential to the comprehension of the revolution of 1979. He then describes the emergence of Khomeini; the infusion of petrodollars into the economy; the blatant political corruption; and Khomeini's disposal of Bakhtiar, Bani-Sadr, and Bazargan, consolidation of religious rule, and establishment of a constitution based on a new interpretation of Islamic principles.
Providing crucial historical background, Arjomand examines both the structure of authority in Shi'ism (one of the two main branches of Islam) and the impact of the modern state on Iranian society, two factors essential to the comprehension of the revolution of 1979. He then describes the emergence of Khomeini; the infusion of petrodollars into the economy; the blatant political corruption; and Khomeini's disposal of Bakhtiar, Bani-Sadr, and Bazargan, consolidation of religious rule, and establishment of a constitution based on a new interpretation of Islamic principles.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
About the author
Said Amir Arjomand
41 books17 followersSaid Amir Arjomand is Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He earned his Ph.D at the University of Chicago in 1980. He was the founder and first President of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies (1996-2002) and Editor of International Sociology (1998-2003). He edited a special double issue of that journal on "Constitutionalism and Political Reconstruction" (March 2003). He has held appointments at St. Antony's College, Oxford, 1982-83; the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, 1984-85; Sociology and Development Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1989; the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Social Sciences, 1998; and the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, 1993-94. His article, "Constitutions and the Struggle for Political Order: A Study in the Modernization of Political Traditions," European Journal of Sociology (1992), won the Section's Award for the Best Essay in Comparative and Historical Sociology in 1993. His books include The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam (l984), The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (1988), and Rethinking Civilizational Analysis (Edited with Edward Tiryakian, in press). At Princeton, he was the inaugural Martin and Kathleen Crane Fellow in Law and Public Affairs.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 16, 2011
Read Chapter 10, and you're good to go. The rest of the book is muddled and isn't worth the slog. Meanwhile, the comparative revolution section (10) should have been his primary focus beyond just the last chapter, rather than the afterthought that he makes it out to be. It is your book if you have an eye for history that reads more like an inventory and constantly refers back to classical, 19th century texts like Weber, Durkheim, and Tocqueville. This is not your book if you're just looking for an easily graspable, introductory or better analysis of the Iranian revolution.
September 23, 2026
I finished reading The Turban for the Crown tonight, and enjoyed it despite it's clear partisanship towards liberalism and the civilisational preference for middle class polity, the weaknesses and historical contingency of which we've discussed at length before. I particularly enjoyed the concluding chapter, Chapter 10, which was a theoretical discussion of the causes and consequences of the Islamic Revolution, comparing it to other modern and early modern revolutions - some of which I'm not too familiar with and am looking forward to checking out the notes pages for references - as these causes and consequences pertain to our modern theoretical conceptualisation of revolution as a phenomenon. I was impressed by the author's discussion of the relevance and limitations of the J-Curve thesis in relation to the Islamic Revolution as well as his exploration of the relationship between traditionalism, institutional autonomy, teleology and the disjointed and varied processes of social integration.
I did think his discussion of the relative insignificance of class interest in the Islamic Revolution was a bit narrow, though. This is not necessarily because I dispute his contention that economic interests of social groups were at best a secondary factor - he provides compelling evidence, the two chief examples being that the peasantry, which had an economic interest in and benefitted substantially from the Islamic Revolution, did not participate in it in any major way, and the traditional 'mercantile' bourgeoisie of the bazaar, the sole urban group which participated in the revolution directly and principally for economic reasons, was underrepresented in the Majles, signifying a comparatively low integration into the new polity, and was "fighting a losing war" against the centralising, statistics economic policies of the Islamic Republic despite having been among the most politically coherent social groups to support the Revolution itself.
No, my objection was that the author clearly identifies the concept of 'class interest' with economic interest, with the immediate economic condition and interest of a social group. This was evidently done in an attempt to refute Marxist accounts of the revolution, and I will not deny that Marxists themselves often make the same identification, albeit to argue in favour of it. But I think, from a Marxist point of view, this is reductive. I think it is precisely the kind of thinking that Lenin openly criticised as 'economism' and 'trade union consciousness' - the tendency to see economic position, condition and interest as synonymous with class position, condition and interest, rather than as the underlying material substrate of this, in the same way that neuronal activity is the underlying material substrate of sentient consciousness but can hardly be considered synonymous with it. Marxist theory properly conceived, at least in my view, considers economic position, condition and interest a constitutive element of social position, condition and interest, but at the same time considers that the latter - i.e. the social - must be considered as an operative totality which overdetermined the former, i.e. the economic.
What I mean by that is simply that it is an erroneous oversimplification yo conceive class interest as synonymous with economic interest. The latter is constitutive of the former, but does not constitute it exclusively. This can be seen in the core Marxist emphasis that the root logic driving a social formation is class struggle - not mere economic laws or immediate economic position, but a political and social logic operative at the root of economic phenomena without being confined exclusively to them. In other words, the relationship is dialectical - economic base is constitutive of social totality, but social totality also acts upon and determines economic base. Thus, class interest cannot be considered synonymous with immediate economic interests, but rather a way of conceptualising a group's material relationship with the social totality as a whole. Since economics is most immediately material it is constitutive, it plays a structuring role through the concept of overdetermination, but this does not mean that economic immediacy is universally socially determinative. I realised I've used quite a lot of jargon there, but it seemed unavoidable and I hope I've gotten my point across.
This point is why I also take issue with another thing the author clearly did to counter his interpretation to Marxist views, namely pointing out the relative insignificance of the industrial working class - not only in the Islamic Revolution but in most modern and early modern revolutions. He points out that revolutions are usually made not by materially ascending classes - specifically mentioning that neither the French Revolution, nor the English Revolution, nor the sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish rebellions, were made by the ascendant bourgeoisie, just as the driving forces of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions were not chiefly the industrial working class - but by declining classes which are being dislocated by the processes of national integration, state formation and economic development, in hopes of protecting local or particular privileges or restoring an idealised old order being swept away by centralising modernity. He doesn't say it explicitly, but the author clearly had Marxism in his sights.
To me, that is odd. It is true that for a lot of the history of Marxism, the political and theoretical movement erroneously focused on the industrial working class, considering it synonymous with 'the proletariat', the almost mythological collective subject of Revolution in the age of capitalism. But this misses the mark. Marx, and Marxist theory properly considered, were never fixated on the industrial working class for its own sake. Rather, what they focused on was proletarianisation - which can be broadly conceived as the process by which heterogenous social groups previously stably integrated into the socio-economic order are dislodged, de-integrated and dispossessed by the very ongoing, innate logic of that order's own reproduction/development. In the 19th century, when Marx was writing, that process usually took the form of peasants, artisans, and guild producers being dispossessed of their land and protected privilege by the emerging predominance of commodity production and competitive markets, leading to their being declassed and forced into the factories, new centres of mass market-oriented production, to find means of subsistence. That is why Marx wrote about the industrial working class, but it never really meant that the industrial working class in itself was central to the thesis - indeed, far from proving the obsolescence of Marxism, the decline of the industrial working class and the integration of what remains of it into modern societies as a core socio-political constituency has made 'the working class' as such less and less relevant to Marxism itself. The problem is that it used to occupy such a central place in both the socio-political theorising and the political imaginary of the Marxist movement that we have yet to properly account for this fact or devise a sufficiently powerful explanatory-strategic schema to replace the erstwhile centrality of the industrial working class, or at least to properly propagate and politicise such a new theory in terms of praxis.
I did think his discussion of the relative insignificance of class interest in the Islamic Revolution was a bit narrow, though. This is not necessarily because I dispute his contention that economic interests of social groups were at best a secondary factor - he provides compelling evidence, the two chief examples being that the peasantry, which had an economic interest in and benefitted substantially from the Islamic Revolution, did not participate in it in any major way, and the traditional 'mercantile' bourgeoisie of the bazaar, the sole urban group which participated in the revolution directly and principally for economic reasons, was underrepresented in the Majles, signifying a comparatively low integration into the new polity, and was "fighting a losing war" against the centralising, statistics economic policies of the Islamic Republic despite having been among the most politically coherent social groups to support the Revolution itself.
No, my objection was that the author clearly identifies the concept of 'class interest' with economic interest, with the immediate economic condition and interest of a social group. This was evidently done in an attempt to refute Marxist accounts of the revolution, and I will not deny that Marxists themselves often make the same identification, albeit to argue in favour of it. But I think, from a Marxist point of view, this is reductive. I think it is precisely the kind of thinking that Lenin openly criticised as 'economism' and 'trade union consciousness' - the tendency to see economic position, condition and interest as synonymous with class position, condition and interest, rather than as the underlying material substrate of this, in the same way that neuronal activity is the underlying material substrate of sentient consciousness but can hardly be considered synonymous with it. Marxist theory properly conceived, at least in my view, considers economic position, condition and interest a constitutive element of social position, condition and interest, but at the same time considers that the latter - i.e. the social - must be considered as an operative totality which overdetermined the former, i.e. the economic.
What I mean by that is simply that it is an erroneous oversimplification yo conceive class interest as synonymous with economic interest. The latter is constitutive of the former, but does not constitute it exclusively. This can be seen in the core Marxist emphasis that the root logic driving a social formation is class struggle - not mere economic laws or immediate economic position, but a political and social logic operative at the root of economic phenomena without being confined exclusively to them. In other words, the relationship is dialectical - economic base is constitutive of social totality, but social totality also acts upon and determines economic base. Thus, class interest cannot be considered synonymous with immediate economic interests, but rather a way of conceptualising a group's material relationship with the social totality as a whole. Since economics is most immediately material it is constitutive, it plays a structuring role through the concept of overdetermination, but this does not mean that economic immediacy is universally socially determinative. I realised I've used quite a lot of jargon there, but it seemed unavoidable and I hope I've gotten my point across.
This point is why I also take issue with another thing the author clearly did to counter his interpretation to Marxist views, namely pointing out the relative insignificance of the industrial working class - not only in the Islamic Revolution but in most modern and early modern revolutions. He points out that revolutions are usually made not by materially ascending classes - specifically mentioning that neither the French Revolution, nor the English Revolution, nor the sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish rebellions, were made by the ascendant bourgeoisie, just as the driving forces of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions were not chiefly the industrial working class - but by declining classes which are being dislocated by the processes of national integration, state formation and economic development, in hopes of protecting local or particular privileges or restoring an idealised old order being swept away by centralising modernity. He doesn't say it explicitly, but the author clearly had Marxism in his sights.
To me, that is odd. It is true that for a lot of the history of Marxism, the political and theoretical movement erroneously focused on the industrial working class, considering it synonymous with 'the proletariat', the almost mythological collective subject of Revolution in the age of capitalism. But this misses the mark. Marx, and Marxist theory properly considered, were never fixated on the industrial working class for its own sake. Rather, what they focused on was proletarianisation - which can be broadly conceived as the process by which heterogenous social groups previously stably integrated into the socio-economic order are dislodged, de-integrated and dispossessed by the very ongoing, innate logic of that order's own reproduction/development. In the 19th century, when Marx was writing, that process usually took the form of peasants, artisans, and guild producers being dispossessed of their land and protected privilege by the emerging predominance of commodity production and competitive markets, leading to their being declassed and forced into the factories, new centres of mass market-oriented production, to find means of subsistence. That is why Marx wrote about the industrial working class, but it never really meant that the industrial working class in itself was central to the thesis - indeed, far from proving the obsolescence of Marxism, the decline of the industrial working class and the integration of what remains of it into modern societies as a core socio-political constituency has made 'the working class' as such less and less relevant to Marxism itself. The problem is that it used to occupy such a central place in both the socio-political theorising and the political imaginary of the Marxist movement that we have yet to properly account for this fact or devise a sufficiently powerful explanatory-strategic schema to replace the erstwhile centrality of the industrial working class, or at least to properly propagate and politicise such a new theory in terms of praxis.
August 14, 2013
This, sad to say, is the first book I've ever read about modern Iran. During the revolution of 1979 such reading as I did was in the popular press or from a leftwing perspective. Now, having heard war drums beating out of Washington against Iran for years and having seen the Argo movie, I decided to look at the events leading up to the Iran of today a bit more closely.
Arjomand writes of the Iranian revolution from a sociological perspective, his eye very much on contemporary theories of revolution, many of which he cares to refute employing Iran as a counterexample. In the course of this he gives a quick overview of historical trends beginning in the 16th century which crested in the state versus clergy (and other sectors of society ultimately dominated by the clergy) struggle of the seventies and early eighties. In addition, he presents a portrait of traditional Shi'ism against which he contrasts the version promulgated by Khomeini and his successors.
The picture isn't pretty. This book came out in the late eighties, its analyses ending in 1986. At that point at least Iran is portrayed as being on a par with Saudi Arabia with thought police on the streets, a bloody court system, oppressed women and minorities--the whole ugly business reminiscent of the Nazis and led by men just as out of touch with reality.==Yet, this is not to say that their revolution wasn't popular or that their current government isn't...--but that, too, is reminiscent of the German state before their invasion of the USSR.
Arjomand writes of the Iranian revolution from a sociological perspective, his eye very much on contemporary theories of revolution, many of which he cares to refute employing Iran as a counterexample. In the course of this he gives a quick overview of historical trends beginning in the 16th century which crested in the state versus clergy (and other sectors of society ultimately dominated by the clergy) struggle of the seventies and early eighties. In addition, he presents a portrait of traditional Shi'ism against which he contrasts the version promulgated by Khomeini and his successors.
The picture isn't pretty. This book came out in the late eighties, its analyses ending in 1986. At that point at least Iran is portrayed as being on a par with Saudi Arabia with thought police on the streets, a bloody court system, oppressed women and minorities--the whole ugly business reminiscent of the Nazis and led by men just as out of touch with reality.==Yet, this is not to say that their revolution wasn't popular or that their current government isn't...--but that, too, is reminiscent of the German state before their invasion of the USSR.
September 21, 2021
خب برسیم به مشغله چندماهه اخیر اینجانب، عمامه به جای تاج
نویسنده کتاب خودش رو جامعه شناس تطبیقی معرفی میکنه و در این کتاب مثال های به شدت گویایی میزنه تا نشون بده انقلاب اسلامی هم زمان که یک پدیده نوآورانه و خلاقانه است، در عین حال در تاریخ مشابه به همچین چیزی وجود داشته و غفلت حکام پهلوی از این نمونه های مشابه رو یکی از دلایل اصلی وقوع انقلاب معرفی می کنه، نگاه آقای ارجمند به روحانیون مبارز با کمی بی انصافی همراهه، وقتی با لحنی ازونها یاد میکنه که انگار صرفا برای بدست آوردن جایگاه مادی مردم رو به دین دعوت میکردن اما وقتی تعداد شهدای روحانی جنگ رو یادآور میشه، خودش تا حدودی لحن فصل های قبلی رو اصلاح میکنه. در کل نویسنده نگاه مثبتی به مقوله ولایت فقیه و حکومت اسلامی نداره اما این باعث نشده در روایت کردن دچار طرفداری بشه، یک روایت تاریخی روان و البته از نظر ادبیاتی سخت، و همچنین تطبیق های آموزنده که بعد خوندن کتاب بیش از پیش به چرت بودن این جمله که دین افیون توده هاست، پی میبرید...
نویسنده کتاب خودش رو جامعه شناس تطبیقی معرفی میکنه و در این کتاب مثال های به شدت گویایی میزنه تا نشون بده انقلاب اسلامی هم زمان که یک پدیده نوآورانه و خلاقانه است، در عین حال در تاریخ مشابه به همچین چیزی وجود داشته و غفلت حکام پهلوی از این نمونه های مشابه رو یکی از دلایل اصلی وقوع انقلاب معرفی می کنه، نگاه آقای ارجمند به روحانیون مبارز با کمی بی انصافی همراهه، وقتی با لحنی ازونها یاد میکنه که انگار صرفا برای بدست آوردن جایگاه مادی مردم رو به دین دعوت میکردن اما وقتی تعداد شهدای روحانی جنگ رو یادآور میشه، خودش تا حدودی لحن فصل های قبلی رو اصلاح میکنه. در کل نویسنده نگاه مثبتی به مقوله ولایت فقیه و حکومت اسلامی نداره اما این باعث نشده در روایت کردن دچار طرفداری بشه، یک روایت تاریخی روان و البته از نظر ادبیاتی سخت، و همچنین تطبیق های آموزنده که بعد خوندن کتاب بیش از پیش به چرت بودن این جمله که دین افیون توده هاست، پی میبرید...
January 8, 2021
This is written by an Iranian Muslim about the fall of the Shah of Iran. Khomeini was a religious cleric that had a run in with the Shah in 1963. He spent a good deal of time in Paris after he was arrested. This author was there. In fact he has interviewed Khomeini. As a Shiite, he states his bias up front. He believes that Shiites generally believe in a separation of church and state and that Khomeini has subverted this belief. However, he does not let his bias get his way to a thorough look at the Iranian Revolution. In his comparative chapter, he compares Khomeini to Cromwell in British history. The author is well footnoted and knowledgeable. It also clearly shows why the Carter Administration bungled its dealings with Iran.
March 21, 2021
I found this book very interesting and enjoyed reading it.
Basically, it starts with some historical background on clerics' role in society and government in the 15th century. The author proceeds with clerics and kings' interaction in the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties in more detail.
The author tries to look more closely at what factors led to the Islamic revolution and the major similarities and differences with other revolutions.
Basically, it starts with some historical background on clerics' role in society and government in the 15th century. The author proceeds with clerics and kings' interaction in the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties in more detail.
The author tries to look more closely at what factors led to the Islamic revolution and the major similarities and differences with other revolutions.
May 18, 2021
I really like the perspective of the author over the Islamic revolution in Iran. Amir Arjomand perfectly draw a line from the Shi'ism from Safavid emperor and connect it to Islamic revolution in 1979. The social analysis of these two and a half centuries could help the reader to have better understanding the replacement of Turban with the Crown!
June 26, 2024
Author does a fantastic job of laying the groundwork for the Islamic revolution in Iran. It is an older book and I believe a lot more information regarding foreign influence has come out. With that said, it’s not to take away the agency Iranians had in the revolution and this book does an amazingly detailed job of explaining the culture of Iran during the time period. VERY DENSE book though.
November 10, 2025
Interesting structuralist explanation of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that also devotes a good deal of time to the ways in which Western-influenced modernization and centralization transformed Shi'ite Islam.
July 26, 2023
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate energy.
June 12, 2013
Extremely dense treatment of the years leading up to and then immediately proceeding the Iranian Revolution of 1979. I read only certain chapters of the book, as I was focusing mainly on the months leading up to the Revolution and the underlying drivers within Iran that brought revolution about. However, this is a book I would return to when I want to do an even deeper dive on post-WWII Iran.
Arjomand gives a very granular account of what transpired in under the Iranian republic after WWII, the coup that brought the Shah back to power in the 60s, and then the conditions throughout that period that made the theocratic revolution and Khomeini's heirocracy the winning force. What I found really interesting was how the liberal intelligentsia (mostly middle class professionals) and the military came to accept the revolution. The former mistook Khomeini for a leader who would rescue Iran from the corruption of the Shah and usher in an inclusive government built upon a liberal interpretation of the Sacred Law. The latter viewed the clerics as the political winner of the revolution and the top brass then shifted allegiances once the middle ranking officers revealed that they had been allied with Khomeini in their hearts all along. In both cases, the moderates failed to realize what they were facing until it was too late and the clerics had consolidated power, ousted or humiliated what moderate politicians remained after the Shah, dissolved the secular Majles (parliament), and tightened their grip on Iranian society.
And throughout the whole Revolution, the U.S. was viewed as largely dithering about whether the Shah was worse than a military junta that never materialized. By the time the U.S. made up its mind what to support, it was too late and the hostages in the embassy were already being taken.
My only gripe would be that the detail of the book can also work against it if you (the reader) aren't interested in getting quite so granular. However, the book is broken up into digestable and well-titled chapters and sub-chapters, so with a little skipping around and title interpretation, it's not a huge deal. I give it 4 stars, but would likely give 3.5 if Goodreads allowed that.
So, in all, a very well done account and a must-read if you want to peel back the myths about the Iranian Revolution and try to understand the who, what, and why of the matter.
Arjomand gives a very granular account of what transpired in under the Iranian republic after WWII, the coup that brought the Shah back to power in the 60s, and then the conditions throughout that period that made the theocratic revolution and Khomeini's heirocracy the winning force. What I found really interesting was how the liberal intelligentsia (mostly middle class professionals) and the military came to accept the revolution. The former mistook Khomeini for a leader who would rescue Iran from the corruption of the Shah and usher in an inclusive government built upon a liberal interpretation of the Sacred Law. The latter viewed the clerics as the political winner of the revolution and the top brass then shifted allegiances once the middle ranking officers revealed that they had been allied with Khomeini in their hearts all along. In both cases, the moderates failed to realize what they were facing until it was too late and the clerics had consolidated power, ousted or humiliated what moderate politicians remained after the Shah, dissolved the secular Majles (parliament), and tightened their grip on Iranian society.
And throughout the whole Revolution, the U.S. was viewed as largely dithering about whether the Shah was worse than a military junta that never materialized. By the time the U.S. made up its mind what to support, it was too late and the hostages in the embassy were already being taken.
My only gripe would be that the detail of the book can also work against it if you (the reader) aren't interested in getting quite so granular. However, the book is broken up into digestable and well-titled chapters and sub-chapters, so with a little skipping around and title interpretation, it's not a huge deal. I give it 4 stars, but would likely give 3.5 if Goodreads allowed that.
So, in all, a very well done account and a must-read if you want to peel back the myths about the Iranian Revolution and try to understand the who, what, and why of the matter.
July 9, 2012
I recommend this book if you are interested in certain aspects of Iranian history: specifically, how Iran's economy operated prior to the Constitutional Revolution, and the initial modernization of the Iranian state. I learned that Iran called upon a French banker, then upon an American one, when it wished to set up its economic procedures in the late 1920's. It made me stop to think about how much the relationship between the U.S. and Iran has changed.
The author is meticulous in defining the Persian/Farsi/Arabic words which appear throughout the book. Some may be distracted by it in the beginning of reading, but I found that it is helpful when reading other books or articles on Iran. A few words have commonly entered into English usage, but a great many have not.
Bear in mind that this book was written/published in 1988, a decade after the Iranian Revolution. Its strength lies in "what happened," not necessarily the "whys" or thought process behind what happened. As such, a reader will want to consult other works for current events. Nevertheless, this book is a fine introduction to the facts of Iranian history.
The author is meticulous in defining the Persian/Farsi/Arabic words which appear throughout the book. Some may be distracted by it in the beginning of reading, but I found that it is helpful when reading other books or articles on Iran. A few words have commonly entered into English usage, but a great many have not.
Bear in mind that this book was written/published in 1988, a decade after the Iranian Revolution. Its strength lies in "what happened," not necessarily the "whys" or thought process behind what happened. As such, a reader will want to consult other works for current events. Nevertheless, this book is a fine introduction to the facts of Iranian history.
October 9, 2008
This is a reread... So worth it.
February 23, 2009
Possibly my favorite non-fiction book ever right now. It's pretty dense and hard to read but brilliantly woven.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews