Economist:

ABBAS AMANAT is an authority on Iranian culture and political history. In his new book he presents the past five centuries of Iran’s history in its Persian, Shia context. At 1,000 pages, it is not for the fainthearted. But Mr Amanat is a skilful narrator whose use of sources and anecdotes is illuminating. His book should be read by anyone who is curious about the history of political philosophy and ideas.

It is especially strong on cultural, literary and intellectual history and the role this has played in Iran’s interpretations of political and clerical authority. Mr Amanat dips into the lives and works of key figures, from those who articulated the country’s responses to European imperialism, such as Mirza Malkom Khan, a prominent modernist who died in 1908, to the ideologues of the Islamic revolution of 1979. These include Jalal Al-e Ahmad and the left-leaning zealots and poets who used a mix of Marxism, Islamism, the Shia tropes of martyrdom and Frantz Fanon’s third-worldism to give Iran’s Islamic revolution its distinctive characteristics.

It is Mr Amanat’s ability to draw out the bigger themes in Iran’s history as a Shia powerhouse state that sets the book apart. He begins with the creation of the Safavid state in the early 16th century. He explains the competing tensions within Persian Shiism of temporal and spiritual legitimacy, intertwined with messianic revivalism, mysticism and dissent. Put simply, in a battle between God and the crown, who wins what, and why?

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