Is democracy a foreign concept to the political culture of the Near East? This perennially debated question often overlooks a crucial historical factor: the rise of Ottoman and Qajar constitutionalism during the long nineteenth century. This volume is the first study to emphasize constitutionalism as a transformative force across Ottoman and Iranian lands. It investigates how new political ideas and social dynamics across the century shaped constitutionalism into a multifaceted and potent movement, culminating in the revolutions of 1906 and 1908. It traces how constitutionalism durably altered conceptions of state and society, leaving a significant legacy in both Iranian and (post-)Ottoman contexts. Contributors are Houri Berberian, Yaşar Tolga Cora, Anne-Laure Dupont, Fujinami Nobuyoshi, Zaur Gasimov, Peter Hill, Denis Hermann, Erdal Kaynar, Varak Ketsemanian, Mira Xenia Schwerda, Alisa Schablovskaia, Nader Sohrabi and Barış Zeren.

Table of Contents:
Contents Acknowledgements List of Figures Introduction: Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran: Histories and Perspectives  Denis Hermann and Erdal Kaynar Part 1: Conceptualizing Constitutionalism: (Re-)Imagining Politics 1 Who Can Participate in the Shūrā? Non-Muslims in the First Parliaments of Tunisia, the Ottoman Empire and Iran, 1861–1911  Anne-Laure Dupont 2 Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi and Arabic Constitutionalism  Peter Hill 3 The Nation Against the Sultan: Constitutionalist Thought in the Writings of the Young Turk Leader Ahmed Rıza  Erdal Kaynar 4 Democracy by Petition: the Popular Committees and What Made the Iranian Constitutionalism Unique  Nader Sohrabi Part 2: Constructing Constitutionalism: Ideas, Actors, and Networks 5 Armenian Constitutionalism in the Late Ottoman Empire: the View from a Province  Varak Ketsemanian 6 The Iranian Constitution in the Mirror of the Russian Azerbaijani Press  Zaur Gasimov 7 Progressive Conservatives? The Young Turk Lectures on Constitutional Law  Nobuyoshi Fujinami 8 Constitutionalism and the Political Ethos of the Last Qajars  Alisa Shablovskaia 9 Constitutional Authority and Shiʿi Political Culture: the Mobilisation of Messianic Logic by the Ulama during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution  Denis Hermann Part 3: Enacting Constitutionalism: the Challenge of Constitutional Rule 10 From Trusting to Cunning: Shifting Relations between Armenian Political Figures and Ḥasan Taqīzādeh during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911)  Houri Berberian 11 Crafting the Image of Constitutionalism: the Phenomenon of Bast in Turn-of-the-Century Iran and the Visualization of Protest  Mira Xenia Schwerda 12 Coal Heavers’ Strike of 1910 in the Ottoman Capital: Labor Activism and Socialist Politics in the Second Constitutional Era  Yaşar Tolga Cora 13 A Shift in Law-Making: Ottoman Constitutionalism Facing the Local in Rumelia  Barış Zeren Index