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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks for advice and support go first and foremost to Professor Malcolm Yapp, my former supervisor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, for his invaluable guidance in the original planning, research and writing of this work. Much would not have emerged without the questions he raised, and a great deal of improvement was due to the criticisms and suggestions he made. I am also grateful for the advice of Dr Norman Calder, who has given much time and assistance particularly on the subject of the relations between religion and state. Dr John Gurney of Wadham College, Oxford, has been particularly helpful in suggesting source material and allowing time for me to use the excellent collection of Persian works at Wadham College. I am also grateful to Mrs Anne Enayat for advice and references on the mercantile background, as well as for her most helpful comments and suggestions as an editor.
I would like to thank many friends and acquaintances for lending books, sending photocopies of references and drawing my attention to particular points. I am most especially grateful to the British Institute of Persian Studies, without whose financial assistance and interest my research could not have been started nor the book completed. My thanks are due also to the School of Oriental and African Studies whose award of an Exhibition enabled me to carry on with my research, originally undertaken for a thesis. I owe a great deal to the support and encouragement of my parents, and of my husband, who has given considerable time to reading and checking the work.
Introduction
The nineteenth century saw the beginnings of a process of change in Iran which would transform the country from a traditional feudal society into a modernized and centralized state. This movement, the product of the impact of the West, accelerated in the early part of the twentieth century. A significant point in the process of change was reached during the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-9, which was the turning point where the old order was finally broken and the beginnings of the new one established. In the old order Shi'ite Islam was secure as the ideology of the state and as the law according to which the shah ruled, and the 'ulama (who were its interpreters and proponents) enjoyed a position of privilege and respect. The new order would bring uncertainties as to the place of Islam and the 'ulama in a modern state, most particularly by establishing the law of parliament alongside the law of Islam, the shari'a. It was during the Constitutional Revolution that the problems facing Islam in the conflict between the old order and the new first became apparent.
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