Guarded Domains of Iran

The Guarded Domains of Iran (Persian: ممالک محروسهٔ ایران, Mamâlek-e Mahruse-ye Irân), or simply the Domains of Iran (ممالک ایران, Mamâlek-e Irân) and the Guarded Domains (ممالک محروسه, Mamâlek-e Mahruse), was the common and official name of Iran from the Safavid era, until the early 20th century.[1][2] The idea of the Guarded Domains illustrated a feeling of territorial and political uniformity in a society where the Persian language, culture, monarchy, and Shia Islam became integral elements of the developing national identity.[3] According to the modern historian Ali Mir Ansari, this name demonstrates that the concept of Iran existed before the rise of nationalism.[4]

Stamp of Ahmad Shah Qajar. The term "the Guarded Domains of Iran" is visible on the top of the stamp.

The concept presumably started to form under the Mongol Ilkhanate in the late 13th-century, a period in which regional actions, trade, written culture, and partly Shi'ism, contributed to the establishment of the early modern Persianate world.[5] The definition of the Guarded Domains' borders was almost identical to that of Eranshahr in the Sasanian-era text Letter of Tansar, as well as the description by the 14th-century geographer Hamdallah Mustawfi in his Nuzhat al-Qulub.[1]

Mirza Fazlollah Khavari Shirazi, the vaqaye-negar (court chronicler) of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar (r. 1797–1834),[6] wrote in his Tarikh-e Zu'l-Qarneyn that ruling all of the Guarded Domains of Iran was one of the requirements to be considered the legitimate ruler of the country.[7]

References
  1. Amanat 1997, p. 13.
  2. Amanat 2017, p. 443.
  3. Amanat 1997, p. 15.
  4. Ansari 2012, p. 19 (see also note 56).
  5. Amanat 2019, p. 33.
  6. Ashraf 2021, p. 84.
  7. Ashraf 2021, p. 93.

Sources
  • Amanat, Abbas (1997). Pivot of the Universe: Nasir Al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831-1896. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1845118280.
  • Amanat, Abbas (2017). Iran: A Modern History. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300112542.
  • Amanat, Abbas (2019). "Remembering the Persianate". In Amanat, Abbas; Ashraf, Assef (eds.). The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere. Brill. pp. 15–62. ISBN 978-90-04-38728-7.
  • Ansari, Ali Mir (2012). The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521687171.
  • Ashraf, Assef (2021). "Safavid Nostalgia in Early Qajar Chronicles". In Melville, Charles Melville (ed.). The Contest for Rule in Eighteenth-Century Iran: Idea of Iran Vol. 11. I.B.Tauris. pp. 81–102. ISBN 978-0755645992.

Further reading
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