Cross-Referencing Historiographies: Iran Through the Prism of Ottoman Past

Two historical research agendas have been separately formulated in response to \nthe intellectual and political problems of Turkey in the post-1968 period and \nIran in the aftermath of the 1979 Revolution. This paper focuses on the uses of \n'Asiaticness' as an explanation in the studies of nineteenth-century Iran. It \nattempts to demonstrate that the lessons of Ottoman historiography may help to \ntranscend the impasse of Iranian historiography in this regard, in order to arrive \nat a better characterization of the Oajar period by recourse to the world historical \ncontext. If this is so, then one implication would be that the Iranian past could \nhave equally useful lessons for the improved understanding of the Ottoman \nnineteenth century. As such, this is an argument in favor of comparative research \nprograms.