The Geography of Authorities: How Iran Constructed Its Political Sphere from Qasr-e Shirin to the Hawza

Iran’s contemporary influence is neither a late byproduct of the 1979 Islamic Revolution nor analytically sound to reduce, in a simplistic and reductive manner, to a distant Safavid origin-as if Iranian history had not been marked by ruptures, inflections, and profound transformations.

Rather, as multiple junctures in its history suggest, Iran has, over centuries, accumulated layered configurations of political and referential space. This process began with the geography of imperial demarcation in confrontation with the Ottomans, then gradually-through tension, gradualism, and historical acuity-shifted toward what may be termed here the “geography of religious authority,” before the Islamic Republic ultimately attempted, at the culmination of this long trajectory, to synthesize both geographies into a single formation: a state with fixed territorial boundaries, and a referential authority animated by a transnational project.

From this perspective, the modern Iranian narrative does not begin in Tehran, but rather along an extended line stretching from Qasr-e Shirin to Najaf, and then to Qom.

In this context, it is necessary to revisit the Treaty of Qasr-e Shirin (or Zuhab) of 1639, concluded between the Ottoman and Safavid Empires. This agreement brought to an end nearly one hundred and fifty years of intermittent warfare between the two imperial formations and established a political boundary that, in its broad contours, continued to shape relations between the Iranian and Ottoman spheres well into the modern era.

By contrast, the nineteenth-century agreements-most notably the Second Treaty of Erzurum in 1847-belong to a different historical and political context, that of Qajar Iran. These agreements reflect a transition from the language of empires to that of borders, sovereignty, and territorial delimitation, characteristic of the emerging modern state system.

This is not merely a pedantic chronological observation; rather, it constitutes, in my view, a primary key to understanding the Iranian idea itself. At Qasr-e Shirin, Iran learned how to secure for itself a fixed place on the map; only later did it learn how to seek a comparable place within the map of legitimacy.

Nevertheless, a degree of methodological caution is required when engaging with certain overextended interpretations that attribute to the Treaty of Qasr-e Shirin meanings not substantiated by its documentary record. Available primary sources do not support the claim that the treaty explicitly designated the Ottoman sultan as the sovereign authority over the Sunni Muslims of the world, nor the Safavid shah as the counterpart authority over the Shiʿa.

While such a reading may hold political appeal, it is, from an objective standpoint, better understood as a retrospective political interpretation rather than a codified legal provision within the treaty itself. More precisely, Qasr-e Shirin institutionalized a long-term equilibrium between two imperial powers, each anchored in a distinct confessional identity. In practice, this produced something akin to an implicit recognition of parallel spheres of influence within the broader domain of Islam, across its Sunni and Shiʿi dimensions.

Accordingly, Qasr-e Shirin was not an explicit document for the division of custodianship over Sunnis and Shiʿa. It was, however, the threshold at which the geography of Sunni–Shiʿi imperial contestation, in its Ottoman–Safavid articulation, reached a durable equilibrium.

At this point, a deeper analytical insight emerges. If Zuhab endowed Iran with a geography of borders, the subsequent centuries gradually propelled it toward what may justifiably be termed a “geography of religious authority.” From the Safavid era onward, Iran consolidated itself as the principal Shiʿi state in the Islamic world. Yet this did not entail that the highest centers of Shiʿi religious authority were located within Iran. On the contrary, throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the primary loci of ijtihad, taqlid, and juridical authority remained in Najaf, Karbala, and Samarra-namely, the major Shiʿi urban centers of Iraq.

Thus emerged a structural paradox that would long accompany Iran: it possessed the state, but not the supreme religious authority; it constituted the largest political body of Shiʿism, yet its principal referential heart lay beyond its borders.

It is precisely this tension that would later generate the Iranian imperative to reclaim the center of religious legitimacy within its own national domain.

No moment reveals this tension more clearly than the Tobacco Protest of 1891–1892. In that episode, it became unmistakably evident that the decisive juristic word within the Iranian sphere did not originate from within Iran itself.

Mirza Hasan al-Shirazi, the author of the famous fatwa against the tobacco concession, was based in Samarra-not in Qom nor in Tehran. Yet his ruling proved capable of unsettling the Qajar state and disrupting the equilibrium of both economy and politics.

What the Tobacco Protest reveals extends far beyond the question of an economic concession. It demonstrates that the geography of religious authority could, at critical junctures, exert a greater impact than the geography of the state. Iran, prior to seeking to internalize religious authority, found itself operating under the influence of a supreme authority located beyond its borders-one that nevertheless intervened directly in its internal affairs and imposed its rhythm upon both society and governance.

The Constitutional Revolution then conferred upon this trajectory a profoundly constitutional dimension. In the Supplementary Fundamental Laws of 1907, the well-known provision was introduced mandating the formation of a council of no fewer than five mujtahids to review the conformity of legislation with Islamic law. This effectively established a form of juridical “veto,” enabling clerical authorities to reject laws deemed incompatible with the shariʿa.

This moment should not be treated as a mere temporary compromise or a technical concession to the clergy. Rather, it represents a structural transformation in the very concept of the modern Iranian state. From that point onward, the jurist was no longer confined to a moral or social authority external to the state; instead, he became implicitly embedded within its constitutional architecture.

Admittedly, this arrangement did not yet constitute wilayat al-faqih in the sense later articulated by the Khomeinist republic. Nonetheless, it marked, without doubt, the first clear institutional incorporation of the jurist into the core of legislative legitimacy.

At this juncture, one can discern the distant germ of an idea that would later mature: that the state, within the Iranian Shiʿi imaginary, remains incomplete without a mechanism linking law to jurisprudence, politics to the shariʿa, and sovereignty to clerical oversight.

It is precisely at this historical intersection that Qom emerges as more than a city-as a geographical and spiritual destiny gradually taking shape, eventually becoming one of the key lenses through which modern Iran can be understood.

Qom did not originate as a capital of religious authority, nor was it initially the foremost center in the Shiʿi world. It is an ancient city with pre-Islamic layers, yet it acquired its distinctive significance when Fatima al-Maʿsuma, sister of Imam ʿAli al-Rida, entered it while en route to Khurasan to visit her brother in the early ninth century. She fell ill along the way, on the outskirts of what was then a marginal settlement along caravan routes, and passed away there, to be buried in a location that lay at the margins of the broader geographical imagination.

From that moment, a transformation began-one that resists reduction to the language of politics alone: an interrupted journey, illness on the road, death far from the intended destination, and a grave at the periphery. Yet that grave soon became a shrine; the shrine became a site of visitation; and the site of visitation evolved into a reservoir of Shiʿi longing, devotion, and sanctity.

Thus, Qom began as a space shaped by spiritual and emotional resonance before it became a locus of authority.

What renders Qom’s trajectory particularly compelling is that it was not constructed in a single moment, but rather formed gradually, as cities shaped by faith tend to do. Over centuries, the tomb of al-Maʿsuma accumulated sanctity, which progressively transformed into a reservoir of symbolic capital-particularly during the Safavid and Qajar periods.

In this way, Qom evolved from being merely a shrine-centered locality or a station of pilgrimage into a space where Shiʿi grief, the familial memory of the Ahl al-Bayt, and the Iranian sense of the need for an internal sacred center converged-one that could balance Najaf without displacing it.

In this regard, it is important to note that Najaf long represented the apex of religious authority and its transnational, extra-state extension. Qom, by contrast, was gradually taking shape-through the patience of centuries-as the Iranian response to that apex, or at least as the most viable contender to rival it within Iran’s own geographical domain.

It is nevertheless essential, at this juncture, to distinguish between the sanctity of Qom and the authority of Qom. The city is ancient in its spiritual significance, yet its modern hawza-which would ultimately transform it into a genuine rival to Najaf-did not fully crystallize until the arrival of ʿAbd al-Karim al-Haʾiri al-Yazdi in 1922. It is important to note that this particular year constituted a foundational moment of considerable magnitude. Available accounts indicate that al-Haʾiri initially came to Qom as a visitor to the shrine of Fatima al-Maʿsuma; however, his arrival was received as a major event by the city’s scholars and inhabitants alike. From that point onward began the tangible transformation from a “city of shrine” into a city of scholarly institution.

With al-Haʾiri, Qom began to take shape as an organized seminary, capable of producing a broad class of scholars from within Iran itself. It is precisely here that the historical possibility emerged-one that would later profoundly reshape the Iranian configuration: namely, that the principal center of Shiʿi religious authority could be located within the territorial boundaries of the Iranian state, rather than beyond them.

The Pahlavi era then imparted a decisive and confrontational dimension to this trajectory. Reza Khan, the ambitious Persian officer who would later become Reza Shah Pahlavi, emerged from the military establishment and was frequently compared to the Kemalist model in Turkey in terms of his inclination toward building a strong centralized state, modernizing society from above, and curtailing the role of traditional intermediaries.

A military officer in the Iranian army, he rose to prominence following the 1921 coup, became prime minister, and was subsequently crowned shah by parliament in 1925. This trajectory itself reveals that the first Pahlavi state did not arise from an organic social evolution, but rather from a determined project to reshape society through the coercive capacities of the state. His republican project in the 1920s, though ultimately unrealized, reflects both his engagement with emerging modernist models in the region and the enduring reality that state-building in Iran-even in its most militarized and top-down forms-could not proceed without reckoning with the influence of the religious scholars and the place of religious authority within the structure of social and political legitimacy.

Yet once his rule was consolidated, Reza Shah entered one of the most forceful phases of authoritarian modernization in confrontation with both the religious establishment and traditional society. He pursued strict centralization, restructured education, judiciary, and administration, and reached the apex of symbolic confrontation with the religious sphere through policies restricting the wearing of the veil, which culminated in the 1930s.

The significance here extends beyond the veil as a mere religious or cultural garment; it became a site of contestation over the very idea of the state itself. Was the state to inherit tradition or to rupture with it? Was it to act as guardian over society or as its partner?

Within this context, the episode of Shaykh Muhammad Taqi Bafqi in Qom acquires profound symbolic resonance. Known for his outspoken opposition to Reza Shah, Bafqi became associated with one of the most emblematic moments of confrontation between the royal court and the hawza in Qom. The message at its core was unequivocal: the modern state did not merely seek to regulate religion, but to subordinate it and redefine its boundaries.

Yet Iranian history does not unfold in linear trajectories; it often advances through paradox. Qom, which was constrained under the father, flourished under the son. A critical transformation occurred after Reza Shah’s abdication in 1941 and the accession of his son, Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The political climate shifted, albeit relatively, allowing the religious establishment to regain certain margins of maneuver and enabling Qom to grow within a less repressive environment than that of the previous era.

At this stage, the figure of Ayatollah Husayn al-Burujirdi emerges as the central personality who elevated Qom from a respected center into one of exceptional referential weight. During this period, the city’s scholarly, financial, and institutional networks expanded significantly, enhancing its capacity to attract students and symbolic authority from both within Iran and beyond.

It is therefore historically sound to assert that the modern flourishing of Qom’s religious authority occurred under the reign of Muhammad Reza Shah-provided this is understood as the outcome of an interaction between the state’s implicit interest in consolidating religious authority within Iran and the seminary’s need for a less repressive environment conducive to growth.

At this point, a more nuanced proposition imposes itself upon the analysis: the notion that Pahlavi Iran sought to weaken Najaf by strengthening Qom. While the sources consulted do not offer a formal document explicitly stating that the shah adopted such a policy, a careful political reading of the trajectory allows for a compelling inference: the rise of a major center of authority in Qom objectively served the Iranian state, insofar as it reduced the dependence of Iran’s religious sphere on a supreme referential center located beyond its borders, in Iraq.

In other words, the internalization of religious authority within Iran was not merely a religious development; it also constituted a sovereign gain for the state-even if it was never articulated in the form of an official decree. The stronger Qom became, the closer Iran moved toward resolving the longstanding paradox that had defined it for so long: a major Shiʿi state whose highest religious authority lay outside its territorial domain.

Yet this power that grew in Qom did not, paradoxically, remain in the service of the monarchy for long. When Muhammad Reza Shah launched the White Revolution in 1963-a broad package of social, economic, and political reforms that included land redistribution, expanded political participation, and the extension of voting rights to women-a sharp religious opposition erupted from within Qom itself.

The White Revolution constituted, in effect, a high-velocity modernization program that disrupted established social, rural, and political equilibria.

This moment coincided with the rise of a new mujtahid, Ruhollah Khomeini, who emerged as one of the most prominent critics of these reforms from within the Qom seminary. His opposition to the shah’s policies in 1963 marked a decisive turning point in his political ascent.

Here, the historical paradox becomes evident: the seminary that had, in part, flourished under the conditions of Muhammad Reza Shah’s reign began to generate, from within its own institutional core, the very force that would ultimately overturn his rule.

From this point onward, the entire equation was transformed. Najaf, in its dominant historical posture, had tended toward caution and restraint regarding the direct seizure of state power, even as it exercised profound influence over society and politics from outside the executive sphere. By contrast, Khomeinist Qom pushed the idea to its furthest limit: the jurist was no longer merely a moral guide, a constitutional overseer, or even a transnational religious authority, but rather the very founder of the state’s legitimacy.

It is at this juncture that the geography of Iranian religious authority reaches its full conceptual articulation: from Qasr-e Shirin, which established a political boundary; to Najaf, which long retained the apex of religious authority; to Qom, which reterritorialized that authority within Iran; and finally to the Islamic Republic, which sought-perhaps for the first time with such clarity-to unify and monopolize both boundary and authority within a single framework.

Viewed through this lens, modern Iran does not appear as an abrupt transition from the Safavids to Khomeini, but rather as a gradual, multilayered, and deeply meaningful historical process. In its first layer, Qasr-e Shirin fixed Iran’s imperial space in relation to the Ottomans. In the second, Iran lived through the structural contradiction of being the principal Shiʿi state while the highest religious authority remained outside its borders, in Najaf and Samarra. In the third, Qom-beginning with the burial of al-Maʿsuma, then through the institutionalization of al-Haʾiri’s seminary, and later its expansion under Muhammad Reza Shah-began to formulate an Iranian alternative to this paradox. The Khomeinist revolution then transformed this alternative into a governing principle rather than a mere historical possibility.

Thus, Qom became more than a shrine-city, more than a seminary, and more than a symbolic center of devotion. It emerged as the nodal point at which sanctity, jurisprudence, sovereignty, and geopolitics converged within a single structural formation.

Accordingly, the most precise characterization of the Iranian idea is neither that of a continuous “Safavid project,” nor merely the product of a modern revolutionary rupture. Rather, it is a long historical journey from the geography of demarcation to the geography of religious authority.

At Qasr-e Shirin, Iran secured its place on the map. In Najaf, it confronted a stark reality: the highest spiritual core of Shiʿism lay outside the body of the Iranian state. In Qom, the attempt began to reclaim that core within the Iranian domain as a structure of authority. The Islamic Republic then advanced this logic further-through practice rather than slogan-asserting that Iran does not seek to be merely a state with borders, but a state endowed with authority, and an authority embodied in a state.