A Day-by-Day Chronology of the Iranian Press

The fourteenth of Mordad marks the 120'st year since the signing of the Constitutional Decree and the beginning of modern journalism in Iran. Roozshomar-e Tarikh-e Matbuat-e Iran is an encyclopedia of how journalism in Iran evolved.
Press activity in Iran began in 1837, with the publication of the first newspaper, known as Kaghaz-e Akhbar. The venture was not especially successful, but it introduced Iranians to the medium and prepared the ground for journalism to take shape in the country. Journalism in the modern sense entered a new phase with the Constitutional Decree. Before August 1906, Iranian publications either served the court or arrived from abroad, often clandestinely. Within less than a year of the decree, dozens of new titles appeared in Tehran, Tabriz, Rasht and Isfahan, and for the first time in Iran, reading a newspaper meant taking part in political and public life. Sur-e Esrafil began publication in May 1907; a little over a year later its editor, Mirza Jahangir Khan Shirazi, was killed.

Roozshomar-e Tarikh-e Matbuat-e Iran, by Elaheh Ardalani, is a day-by-day account of that transformation, one that reshaped a great many social classes and institutions. Under each day of the calendar, the book gathers everything that befell the Iranian press on that date, from the earliest years of printing to the end of March 2022.

The result of this simple choice is at times startling. In linear history, events drift apart along the timeline; in a calendar they are drawn back together. Turn to the first of Ordibehesht and you find the launch of Daneshkadeh under Mohammad-Taghi Bahar in 1918, and a few lines below it, Bahar's own death in 1951. Thirty-three years apart, one shared day. Few historical narratives place these two events side by side, but a calendar has no choice. It is this ordering that sets the birth of a publication, its suppression, and sometimes the murder of its editor within a few pages of one another, giving the reader a compressed and tangible picture of what became of the Constitutional generation.

Behind the structure lie fourteen years of research. The author spent thirty years in the press and in public relations and is a specialist at the Office of Media Studies and Planning. Her primary sources are the works of Seyyed Farid Ghasemi, and the standard she insists upon is the use of accurate and reliable sources, a standard meant to keep false accounts out of the history of the press. In a book of this kind, that insistence is not merely good advice. Unlike open historical narrative, a chronology leaves little room for ambiguity; every line must have a date and a definite place.

The book also has a visual dimension. An image accompanies each day, serving as documentary evidence as much as illustration. What finally reaches the reader is a work of reference, one the author herself calls an encyclopedia, and the description is not far off the mark. Roozshomar-e Tarikh-e Matbuat-e Iran was not written to be read once. It is a book to consult, to search, and to return to.

Roozshomar-e Tarikh-e Matbuat-e Iran will soon be added to the Owrang Library collection.