Analyzing the Representation of Qajar History in Reza Shah’s Textbooks: Emphasizing the Role of Agency and Structure in Shaping Official Educational Content (1925–1941)

Bakhtiari, Mohammad; Talakoubi, Nima

doi:10.22034/chs.2026.559167.1143

Analyzing the Representation of Qajar History in Reza Shah’s Textbooks: Emphasizing the Role of Agency and Structure in Shaping Official Educational Content (1925–1941)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Mohammad Bakhtiari ¹

Nima Talakoubi ²

¹ Associate Professor, Department of History, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran

² M.A. Student in Islamic Iranian History, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran

10.22034/chs.2026.559167.1143

Abstract

The way any political regime treats the legacy and history of its predecessor can always be challenging. In the modern era, given the significant role of public opinion, this issue has gained even greater importance. The Pahlavi state, which came to power after the Qajar dynasty, paid particular attention to the standardization and shaping of public opinion through institutions such as the education system. Since one of the most important means of directing the educational system is the compilation of textbooks, the present study adopted a descriptive-analytical approach to examine history textbooks from the Reza Shah period in an attempt to reveal the volume, characteristics, and principal themes related to Qajar history in these books and to answer the question of what image of the Qajar era was presented by the educational system of Reza Shah’s government at different educational levels. The findings indicate that in primary school textbooks, relatively little attention was devoted to the Qajar era. However, at the secondary level, although a considerable portion of the material was allocated to Qajar history, biases were mainly evident at the level of vocabulary and linguistic terminology. In fact, the plurality of textbook authors and the consideration of the reciprocal relationship between events and narratives limited the possibility of overt distortion of historical facts except in discussions concerning the period after the Constitutional Revolution. Finally, the biases that reached their peak in the narrative of the Coup of 21 February 1921 (3 Esfand 1299) were, until 1938, mainly the result of the authors’ positional anxieties and their adherence to the dominant discourse of the period than the product of an official supervisory structure. Nevertheless, after this date, the Ministry of Culture initiated a more systematic effort to present a unified narrative by combining selected pre-existing texts with the rewriting of certain accounts.

Keywords

Qajar period

textbooks

history education

Reza Shah era

representation of Qajar history

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