The Mantle of the Prophet

Where did the 1979 Islamic Revolution come from? Only six years after the revolution, the late Harvard professor of history Roy P. Mottahedeh set out to answer this question. Drawing on more than two millennia of Iranian history, fourteen centuries of Shi’i scholarship, and the intellectual challenges of modernity, he traced the deep currents that gave the revolution its force. From lectures on Aristotle in Qom’s seminaries to SAVAK’s prisons and the bustle of the bazaars, Mottahedeh illuminates how the revolution was shaped by Iranian society and how it reshaped the nation in turn. The Mantle of the Prophet offers a rare account of the revolution and its aftermath as they were lived and endured. As the future of the Islamic Republic once again hangs in the balance, Mottahedeh’s classic study has lost none of its relevance. It remains a powerful testament to a society marked by sacrifice, conviction and an unfinished struggle for freedom.

Roy Parviz Mottahedeh was the Gurney Professor of History, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He served as the Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard from 1987 to 1990 and as Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard from 2006 to 2011. His first book, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society, gained him a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he was among the first to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. His history of modern Iran, The Mantle of the Prophet, is an international bestseller which has been translated into numerous languages, and both this and his translation of Lessons in Islamic Jurisprudence by Muhammad Baqir As-Sadr are also available from Oneworld.