Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the 

Pahlavi Monarchs, Talinn Grigor. New York: Periscope Publishing Ltd, 2009, 
233pp. 
 
To
plunge
the
depths
of
modernization
by
turning
to
architecture
may
come
as
no

surprise,
but
to
do
so
by
circumambulating
the
tombs
of
the
great
Persian
poets
is
a

twist
of
genius.



In
Building Iran,
Talinn
Grigor,
carefully
parses
the
architectural
records
of
the

Society
for
National
Heritage
(anjoman­e asar­e melli
or
SNH)
and
here
reveals
a

telling
tale
of
modern
Iran.
The
story
begins
with
Ferdowsi
and
the
poet’s
tomb,
the

exact
location
of
which
the
SNH
saw
as
its
responsibility
to
manufacture,
build
and

cultivate.



In
fact,
in
Grigor’s
telling
of
the
tale, the production
of
modern
Iran’s
cultural

heritage,
was
the
sole
project
of
SNH
under
the
rule
of
Reza
Shah
(1925‐1941).

Using
the
Shi'ih
practice
of
ziyarat

(religious
pilgrimage)
the
SNH
superseded
the

religious
map
of
Iran
with
a
secular‐national
map
(recall:
Benedict
Anderson),
and

realized
a
ritual
of
middle
class
tourism
that
coincided
with
a
systematic
series
of

secular
bourgeois
tropes.
In
this
context,
the
manufacturing
of
modern
Iran,
meant,

the
elimination
of
the
present
for
a
future
that
was
designed
by
SNH’s
“men
of
great

taste”
(41).
“The
first
architectural
effort
of
the
SNH
was
to
discover,
document,

destroy,
invent
and
ritualize
the
figure
that
finally
became
the
most
prominent

historical
figure
in
modern
Iran:
Ferdowsi”
(41).
Discover,
document,
destroy,

invent,
ritualize…in
that
order.
And
it
was
order,
precisely,
that
was
at
stake
in
the

manufacture
of
the
state.

Order
would
come
to
construct
Iran
as
modern.




While
historians
have
tended
to
write
about
the
state
celebration
of
Ferdowsi’s

millenary
anniversary
in
1934
as
an
outcome
of
Iran’s
forced
modernization,
Grigor

maintains
that
the
“construction
of
the
mausoleum”
in
Tus
“was
instrumental
to
the

very
negotiation
of
Iran’s
modernity”.
In
SNH’s
staging
of
the
modern,
its
very

production,
modernity
is
represented
as
literary,
secular,
and
monumental,
turning

“folklore
into
history”
and
reorienting
the
popular
storytelling
rituals
surrounding

Ferdowsi’s
Shahnameh
into
newspaper
stories
and
textbook
data
ready‐made
for

circulation
and
consumption
in
the
modern
world.
This,
the
alleviation
of
lore,
the

fixing
of
ambivalence,
the
documentation
of
facts
(about
the
resting
place
of
the

great
poet),
was
productive
of
a
state
whose
ambition
was
to
play
on
the
even
field

of
an
imagined
Western
“exactitude.”



The
truth?

‐‐And
here,
I
must
give
away
some
of
Grigor’s
brilliant
detective
work,
á

la
Timothy
Mitchell’s
Colonizing Egypt
and
Gwendolyn
Wright's
The Politics of 
Design in French Colonial Urbanism.
The
SNH
never
could
pinpoint
the
year
of

Ferdowsi’s
birth
or
the
exact
location
of
the
poet’s
resting
place.
Photographs

documenting
the
site

(the
very
tools
of
fact
and
document)
show
two
different

graves,
not
one.

And
when
the
mausoleum
was
finally
erected
for
Reza
Shah’s

inauguration,
it
was
bereft
of
a
stable
foundation.
After
nearly
forty
years
of
effort

on
the
part
of
the
SNH,
“Ferdowsiyeh”
(i.e.
the
Ferdowsi
mausoleum,
a
secular
site,

nominally
framed
in
terms
connoting
religious
pilgrimage)
was
built
as
“eight

ceremonial
steps
and
a
pyramid
crown”.

By
contrast,
forty
years
later,
in
1972,
the

SNH
built
the
“Popeiyeh”
in
Isfahan
to
entomb
the
bodies
and
commemorate
the
art

scholarship
and
passion
of
Arthur
Pope
and
Phyllis
Ackerman.
It
did
so
in
less
than

three
years. 


Thus,
Grigor’s
Building Iran,
is
not
only
a
history
of
monumental
constructions,
but
a

monumental
reconstruction
of
the
history
of
bureaucratization
in
Iran.
In
this

capacity,
Grigor’s
book
on
modern
Iranian
monuments,
is
a
perceptive
archeology
of

bureaucratic
structures,
and
the
forces,
interpersonal,
identitarian,
racial,
political,

secular,
and
gendered
that
were
brought
to
bear
on
the
manufacture
of
modern

Iran.





Under
the
keen
eye
of
Reza
Shah,
architectural
structures
were
fabricated
to
project

the
modernity
of
the
state.
Architecture
in
the
post‐war
era,
by
contrast
(and

represented
by
the
work
of
mostly‐French
educated
architects,
such
as
Houshang

Seyhoun,
who
was
assigned
the
tombs
of
Sina,
Omar
Khayyam
and
Nader
Shah,
and

Andre
Godard),
was
a
site
for
critical
debates
to
do
with
“imitation”,
“appropriation”,

and
“resistance”
(122).
Thus
architecture’s
quest
to
“return
to
roots”
–
in
all
the

ways
that
these
terms,
“return”
and
“roots”,
can
be
put
under
erasure
and
also
be

productive
of
meaning‐‐
under
the
reign
of
the
Pahlavis
also
discursively
implied
a

return
to
racial
purity,
indeed,
a
sinister
Aryanism
(131‐135).
This
too,
is
thoroughly

considered
by
Grigor
in
Building Iran.




After
the
establishment
of
the
Islamic
Republic
of
Iran,
Khomeini’s
“Hanging

Ayatollah”,
Hojjat
al‐Islam
Khalkhali,
put
the
tombs
of
Ferdowsi,
Hafez,
Sa’di
and

Nader
Shah
on
the
list
of
un‐Islamic
symbols
that
were
erected
under
the
direction

of
Pahlavi
kings
and
were
therefore
undermining
of
the
purity
of
Iranian
culture.

But
as
Grigor
describes
the
revolution
that
led
to
the
establishment
of
the
Islamic

Republic,
acts
of
violence
to
these
remains
of
national
heritage
were
rejected
both

by
the
leaders
of
the
revolution
and
by
those
who
took
to
the
streets
in
protest.


Vandalizing
mobs
were
“dissuaded
from
proceeding
with
their
plans”
at
the
tombs

of
Ferdowsi,
Hafez,
Sa’di
and
Nader
Shah.
And
while
it
may
be
true
that
these

mausoleums
were
largely
neglected
in
the
first
decade
after
the
Revolution,
they

were
eventually
brought
under
the
hegemony
of
the
Islamic
Republic…albeit
with
a

difference:
Many
of
the
inscriptions
at
these
sites
were
rewritten
and
reinterpreted.

Yet,
that
which
lurks
in
the
configuration
of
the
displays
and
inscriptions,
and
which

speaks
in
the
discourses
of
evolution
and
progress,
is
the
Arayanist
Anti‐Arabism

that
cannot
but
confront
the
pan‐Islamist
agenda
of
the
revolutionary
state.



Grigor’s
Building Iran
is
a
brilliant
document
of
the
discourses
that
took
residence
in

the
brick
and
mortar
of
the
modern
nation
and
then…stayed.



Negar
Mottahedeh,
Program
in
Literature,
Duke
University