FARZIN VEJDANI PUBLISHES BOOK ON CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN 19TH- CENTURY IRAN

FARZIN VEJDANI PUBLISHES BOOK ON CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN 19TH-CENTURY IRAN

Yale University Press has published History professor Dr. Farzin Vejdani’s new book, Private Sins, Public Crimes: Policing, Punishment, and Authority in Iran (external link) . Over the course of a decade, he combed through archival and print collections in Persian, Arabic, and Ottoman Turkish to find legal records, newspapers, and correspondences that told a fresh story about the intersection between law, religion, and authority in 19th-century Iran.

Dr. Vejdani examines how in Iran, as in many pre-modern Muslim societies, illicit acts were understood differently depending on whether they remained hidden or became public. While private transgressions were considered sins, public transgressions constituted crimes. The ambiguity in defining private and public acts had implications for the rules of evidence and jurisdiction in policing and punishing crimes, with government officials and religious scholars often simultaneously claiming such jurisdiction. On the one hand, Islamic privacy norms made it difficult to spy on and police “private” spaces where illicit acts, such as parties involving alcohol, music, and prostitution, occurred; on the other hand, religious authorities and their followers were invested in forbidding wrongdoing, even if this sometimes paradoxically entailed violating the same privacy norms they sought to protect. When legal authorities sought to detain and punish suspects, suspected criminals often sought shelter in inviolable sanctuaries, such as shrines, mosques, or royal stables. Given Islamic prohibitions on violence on sacred grounds and Iranian imperial traditions of redress, criminals in sanctuaries were able to negotiate lesser penalties, safe passage, or even forgiveness.

Professor Christian Lange of Utrecht University writes that “Vejdani’s exquisite history of crime and punishment in Iran’s long 19th century weaves together an amazing range of textual sources. The result is a wonderfully fine-grained legal and social history of (in-) justice and (dis-)order in the Qajar period. This accessible yet nuanced book is a true feast for Middle East historians, with important repercussions for the modern and contemporary periods. This is exemplary, path-breaking work.”

Of his new book, Dr. Vejdani says, “I’m happy to be bringing an episode of Iranian social history to life that researchers have often reduced to a chaotic and arbitrary era devoid of law. Iran in the 19th-century was a living, complex society with plenty of surprising stories about not only shahs, imams, and mayors but also prostitutes, murderers, and thieves.”