From Istanbul to Tabriz: Modernity and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran

Placing the history of social and intellectual movements in the Middle East in a comparative context, this article examines intellectual interactions between the Young Ottomans and Young Iranians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More specifically, it sheds light on the impact of Ottoman reformist and constitutional movements in similar developments in Iran and the role of modernizing bureaucrats, merchants, ulema, and intellectuals in the diffusion of an alternative and indigenous modernist and constitutionalist ideology from Istanbul to Tabriz and the Ottoman Empire to Iran. This article is based on Persian and Turkish newspapers printed in Istanbul, and Ottoman archival as well as Persian and Turkish narrative sources.