The life of Taj al-Saltana, daughter of the ruler of Iran, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, epitomized the predicaments of her changing era. Overcoming her limited education within the harem walls, Taj chronicled a thirty-year span in the life of a generation that witnessed a shift from traditional order to revolutionary flux. It is as though she had chosen this moment to recall her personal history--a tale filled with "wonder and anguish"--in order to record a cultural and political leap, symbolic of her time, from the indulgent, sheltered, and often petty world of her father's harem to the puzzling and exposed, yet emotionally and intellectually challenging world of a new Iran.

Now almost one hundred years later Taj's memoirs are relevant and qualify her not only as a feminist by her society's standards but also in comparison with feminists of her generation in Europe and America. Beyond her fascination for the material glamors of the West at the turn of the twentieth century--fashion, architecture, furniture, the motorcar--she was also influenced by Western culture's painting, music, history, literature and language. And yet throughout this time she kept her bond with her own literary and cultural heritage and what she calls her "Persianness."

Despite her troubled life of agony--an unloving and harsh mother; a benevolent but self-indulgent father; an adolescent, bisexual husband; separation from her children; financial difficulties; the stigma of leading a libertine lifestyle and the infamy of removing her veil--Taj's is a genuine voice for women's social grievances in late 20th-century Iran, and one that reveals a remarkable woman in her own right.

Center for Iranian Research and Analysis

This book consists of two parts. The first hundred pages are an introduction by Abbas Amanat. The second part is the translation of Taj Al-Saltana's memoirs by Vanzan and Neshati.

Taj Al Saltana was one of daughter's of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar. She lived in the Shah's harem until the age of thirteen when she was married and sent off to her fatherinlaw s residence. This book is the collection of Taj's childhood and adolescent memories. She provides a vivid picture of her childhood, her relationships with her father, the shah who loved her, her mother who did not show any affection towards her, her nanny, and the rest of her cohabitants in the harem. Living in the harem, she provides a valuable account of its socioeconomic life. Women's relationships with each other, with the Shah and with their male trustees are described very well. Taj presents a refreshing view of how the Qajar dynasty operated the country's affairs. The corruption of the bureaucracy, foreign intervention, and the royal courts' inability to deal with socioeconomic changes are all aspects of Qajar rule that Taj explains in her memoirs.

Taj's memories of her own personal life and the life of her cohabitants in the harem disclose how the traditional royalty of Iran managed their life. She was a melancholic and distressed princess who had the economic opportunity by virtue of being one of the Shah's daughters to become educated in literature and philosophy. This became a source of both her happiness and anguish. While she is critical of socioeconomic and political aspects of Iranian society as well as patriarchal arrangements, she remains docile and subjects herself to exploitative relationships. This contradiction haunts her until her premature death. Her childhood memories of harem life demystify Western accounts of mysterious Persian women. Unintentionally she discloses an important socioeconomic relationship between the royal court and the commoners. She explains that many of the Shah's wives were from low income classes. For those young women to marry the Shah was to liberate themselves from harsh economic reality. Taj is more critical of the women of the harem and how vicious they were towards each other rather than being critical of her father and his unlimited lust for young women. It seems as if she accepted her fathers' mischiefs as inherent rights of the monarch. Her criticisms of socioeconomic and political problems are directed at the Shah's associates and vazirs and not at the Shah himself. The oppression of women is explained as a cultural problem. Her admiration of European life styles and the women's suffragist movement is quite similar to those modernists of her time as well as the contemporary secular intelligentsia. She sees veiling as the most problematic aspect of women's oppression. For her unveiling is the dynamic force for women's liberation. She says "The sources of the ruination of the country, the cause of its moral laxity, the obstacle to its advancement in all areas, is the veiling of women.... The veiling of women in this country has spawned and spread thousands upon thousands of corrupt and immoral tendencies." She admires the relationships between women and men in the villages who work side by side on the farm. She appreciates unveiled farm women and their productive role yet while she unveiled herself she chose not to be economically productive all her life. Throughout the book the contradiction between her knowledge and criticism of sociocultural aspects and her actions and life style is clearly manifested. While she is rightfully critical of Iranian socioeconomic and cultural factors, she continued to play her traditional role. Tai does not mention her public role as an agitator for women's liberation or an organizer for any type of women's organization. It seems as if she saw women's liberation as a move from unveiling to wearing western clothing and corsets which is as problematic as wearing a veil. Taj 's memories are a sad story of a woman who reached a certain degree of political and sexual consciousness yet lived and died inside the walls of prisons built by patriarchal values and practices. Her love affairs were not signs of liberation but anger and rebellion against those walls which finally crushed her without being slightly scratched.

In the introduction Amanat introduces Taj as a representative of the emerging secular intelligentsia and a feminist in the aftermath of the Constitutional Revolution. Amanat describes the historical account and the political characters of the time very interestingly. However, Amanat's understanding and interpretation of Taj's memories is painted with his own wish thinking on the question of secularism as a solution sociopolitical problems and Shi'i Islam as the obstacle to sociopolitical reforms. He believes that the restrictions which have been imposed on women attest to the persistence or revival of old religious values a institutions. He says "The plight of today's Muslim women remains strikingly and sadly comparable to that of Taj a century ago." The most problematic of Amanat interpretations of Taj is his failure to briefly explain the patriarchal system which existed all along and was then encouraged by Muslim male elite. He does not mention the status of and limitations placed on nonMuslim women who lived under the same patriarchal system. His views on secularism and Islam related to women liberation do not allow him to explore either the patriarchal exploitation of women or the socioeconomic problems in their own light. Amanat clearly views women as passive objects rather than as agents of social and political change who may maintain or change patriarchal relationships. In contrast, the class base of an individual has a profound impact on how she perceive herself in relation to her immediate environment. This is manifested in Taj's account of the royal household. A decadent, backward, yet self indulgent Qajar dynasty must be seen in its own light. The most simple paradigm for explaining socioeconomic and political ills of Iranian society is the analysis provided by intelligentsia which diagnoses Islam as the infective agent. To cure the problem, secularism is the remedy.

A short note on the translation is necessary order to clarify some misunderstandings. Fix throughout the book, when Taj speaks of God translation refers to it as He which is specific Christianity. In Farsi God does not connote a gender specific entity. Second, several words-en'san, a'dl and ba'sSlar-all of which refer to humankind in Farsi are translated as man and mankind which again is gender specific. These criticisms aside, we should be grateful the translators and Amanat for bringing this work before the public.

Habibi: A Journal for Lovers of Middle-Eastern Dance and Arts

Several books written by children of Qajar (19th century Iranian) royalty have been published in recent years. Crowning Anguish is, to my mind, the book most likely to be of interest to Habibi readers. It is an extraordinary memoir written by Taj al-Saltana, daughter of Naser al-Din Shah (ruled 1848-1896), the fourth king of the Qajar dynasty (1785-1925). Born in 1884, Taj's life spans the dying decades of Qajar rule and its ultimate end, first in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, and in the takeover of Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1925.

The memoir is in the form of a tale told to her teacher in explanation of some of her behavior and life choices; it chronicles, from the perspective of a child and young woman in her father's, and later her husband's, anderun (private family quarters), a period of turmoil and change in late nineteenth, early twentieth century Iranian history. In it, Taj gives fascinating glimpses of Qajar court life, the intrigues, dangers, liaisons, and struggles for control.

Among the most interesting aspects of the memoir are Taj's education and feminism. She received some private tutoring in the anderun, but was largely self-educated, and read voraciously from classical and contemporary European literature in translation. As a result, she developed a notion that the best path for Iranian families would be for Iranian women to discard the veil, and receive education sufficient to allow them to work outside the home. Her view was that by doing so couples could choose to marry for love, thus reducing the many social ills that result from arranged marriages, such as marital infidelity and divorce. Women could contribute to the family and national economies, rather than staying at home bored and getting into trouble.

While the memoir focuses on Taj's life, it depicts vividly some of the most interesting political events of late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century Iran, which are oddly reminiscent of events of more recent times. In particular, the call during anti-crown protests of 1891-92 for the overthrow of the Shah and the raising of the highest Shi'ite leader to the position of "Supreme Exemplar" seem to mirror the events leading to the (counter-) revolution of 1979.

Dancers and musicians do not appear to advantage in these memoirs. Taj's own attitudes accurately reflect the general attitude towards professional Performers, though perhaps colored by the fact that her own husband had affairs with one of the dancing girls from the visiting Russian circus, and also with a male dancer. During the reign of Taj's brother, Mozaffar al-Din Shah, the family was shocked by the "constant coming and going of female musicians, and prostitutes who disguised themselves as musicians." Taj compares this with the situation during her father's life: "I could not remember female musicians in my father's harem, with the exception of wedding feasts, and then it was only male musicians. It was impossible to find a single whore among them." Taj describes a boy dancer: "Renowned throughout the town, the boy had a thousand adoring lovers. Being a dancer, however, he was unworthy of being anyone's beloved."

Taj herself was (in her own estimation) an accomplished musician; but, since she restricted her musical performances to her own amusement, she escaped the censure heaped upon professionals. She studied tar (Persian long-necked lute) with Mirza Abdollah, one of the great performers of the Qajar era; she claims that her tar-playing skills soon surpassed those of her teacher! She was, apparently, much admired (but not for her music!) by one of the greatest of contemporary Iranian composers, 'Aref-e Qazvini, whose rakish photograph also appears in the book.

The book begins with a 100-page introduction by Abbas Amanat that provides a fine description of the historical context of the memoirs; most of the terminology, personalities, and cultural tidbits needed to follow the memoirs are included. The book involves a long list of dramatis personae; an alphabetized set of biographical sketches of each of the major characters is provided at the end, and is a big help. The reader new to things Iranian might do well to read it immediately after the introduction, before going on to the memoir itself.

The illustrations of Crowning Anguish alone would make the book of great interest to aficionados of Middle Eastern history, culture, and arts. It includes many photographs and paintings of Iranian court ladies in their shalite (short skirt) attire, as well as depictions of court life, palaces, and ministers. Among my favorites are the etching of a Persian woman in shalite on page 26, the etching of Ziba Khanum in shalite on page 31, the famous posed photograph of 'Aref on page 57, and the mid-life photo of Taj herself in European dress on page 311.