| Preface
This work was conceived at the onset of the revolutionary upheaval in Iran in 1978 to 1979, In addition to the cited historical sources, documents and publications, which include a number of important recent memoirs, it draws on a number of interviews I have conducted since that time with the key personalities of the old and the new regime. The first of these was with Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Neauphle-le-Chateau, France, on January 2, 1979. I have subsequently interviewed the former prime minister, Shahpour Bakhtiar, the former president, Abo'l-Hasan Bani-Sadr; two of the surviving highest ranking generals who took over the army after the Shah's departure on January 16, 1979; the former British ambassador to Iran, Sir Anthony Parsons; the former American ambassador to Iran, William Sullivan; the former director of the Iranian National Oil Company, Hasan Nazih who was the first important nationalist figure to break with Khomeini, and many other Iranians most of whom prefer to remain anonymous. I was also present during an exclusive interview with the former Empress, Farah Pahlavi, conducted by my wife, Kathryn Arjomand.
Furthermore, at the time of the outbreak of the revolution I was working on a project on religion and the state in Shi'ism (The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1984).
In 1977 and 1978, the research on the project brought me to encounters with "The Signs of God" (literal translation of ayatollah), including the late Grand Ayatollahs Kazim Shari'at-madari and 'Abdollah Shirazi and the Grand Ayatollah Shehab al-Din Najafi Mar'ashi, who were then quite accessible and could talk fairly objectively and openly about the issues that were suddenly to become capital with the establishment of Islamic government. I am grateful to all the above for their assistance with this project.
The crucial period for the writing of the manuscript was the year I spent at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1984-85). I am most grateful to the Institute's faculty of the School of Social Science, to the fellow members with whom I discussed my work, and to the staff, especially Lucille Allsen whose editorial suggestions while typing the manuscript I came to value.
I also wish to express my gratitude to the State University of New York at Stony Brook for providing me with a grant-in-aid to start the project at an early stage, and to Professors Lewis Coser, John Gagnon, Dick Howard, and James Rule for their comments on an earlier draft of this book at a symposium organized by the Department of Sociology.
Professor A. K. S. Lambton read and commented on an earlier draft of the manuscript. I am very grateful to her.
Finally, I wish to thank the editors of Government and Opposition and Middle Eastern Studies for their kind permission to use materials previously published in their journals. My article, "Iran's Islamic Revolution in Comparative Perspective," World Politics 38, no. 3 (April 1986) Copyright © 1986 by Princeton University Press, is also reprinted here in a modified form with permission of Princeton University Press.
Needless to say, none of the persons named above bear any responsibility for the ideas and opinions expressed in this book or for its shortcomings. For these, I alone am responsible.
Stony Brook, Long Island
June 1987 S. A. A. | 
