Iranian Nationalism and Azerbaijan from the Constitutional Revolution to the Pahlavi Era

Abstract This paper traces the intellectual trajectory of Iranian nationalism to delineate when and how language and ethnicity in Azerbaijan came to be construed and framed as obstacles to Iran’s national unity. It spotlights historical moments that have sculpted the discourse of Iranian nationalism vis-à-vis Azerbaijanis. Contrary to established narratives that link the emergence of the assimilationist agenda to the polemical debates between Iranian and Turkish intellectuals after the First World War or to the early Pahlavi period, this paper focuses on the neglected debates and disputes about Azerbaijan’s language and identity in Persian periodicals at the turn of the twentieth century. It argues that these early debates anticipated the advent of homogenization policies in Iranian Azerbaijan. Drawing on archival documents, it illustrates how these debates ultimately crystallized into the formal policies enacted in Pahlavi Iran.