Jews in the Pre-Constitutional Years: The Shiraz Incident of 1905

During the Constitutional years (1906–11) the legal status of the Jews and some other religious minorities improved, even if only to a limited extent. Can one assume that this change in the legal status of the Jews reflected changes in the public's actual treatment toward the Jews in reality during the days leading up to the Constitutional Revolution in 1906? To an extent, the answer is in the affirmative. The present article argues, however, that the real life situation of the Jews in the years leading up to the Constitutional Revolution was still often one of abuse and occasional persecution. To prove this contention, section I of the article presents some such cases. Section II establishes some of the reasons for the attacks on the Jews—not only religious, but also economic and socio-political ones, as well as briefly suggesting certain recurring paradigms surrounding it. Section III looks at one case study from November 1905 in the city of Shiraz. Finally, this preliminary research ends with some concluding remarks.

Be-karestan-e Sane‘ kas cheh danad,

kherad dar kar-e U hayran bemanad.1 ¹Shahin, Shahin-i Turah, ed. M. Khooban (Los Angeles: Ketab, 1999), 280. View all notes