Iran: the crisis of democracy, 1941–1953 . By Fakhreddin Azimi. pp. xi, 433. London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 1989. £29.50.

was held within the 'ulama' as a whole, and by individual 'ulama' at different times and in varying circumstances. She is by no means inclined to overestimate the role played by the religious classes: indeed, her general message is that for the most part the mujtahids she discusses were leading from behind: they were obliged to support the constitution because that was where the sympathies of their followers generally lay. This was clearly an essential consideration in a religious system in which the influence and prestige of a mujtahid depended on his possession of disciples, not on a formally defined position in a hierarchy. Shaykh Fazlallah Nurl receives more sympathetic treatment from Dr Martin than he did from the constitutionalists, who had him hanged in 1909. She credits him with seeing the inevitably secularising and westernising consequences of the acceptance of constitutional government, and the erosion of the position of the 'ulama' that this would bring about, much more clear-sightedly than any of his peers. She contends that his opponents among the 'ulama' never really succeeded in answering (in Islamic terms and according to Shn theological-legal presuppositions) the arguments that he put forward and that the developments of the Pahlavi era eventually proved that he was right. Those who are expert in the period will be able to evaluate Dr Martin's case more adequately than I can: for myself I find her arguments and the evidence she produces generally convincing. If I were looking for holes to pick, I might query the absence from the bibliography of some items which readers would be likely to find worth consulting, such as Moojan Momen's Introduction to Shti Islam, A. K. S. Lambton's articles on the tobacco regie and her brief study of the revolution in the volume on Middle Eastern revolutions edited by P. J. Vatikiotis, and Shuster's celebrated book The Strangling of Persia. Nor am I happy about the appropriateness of the use in a Persian context of such terms as "fief" and "feudalism". But these are comparatively minor points. The story Vanessa Martin tells can hardly fail to set off all kinds of resonances in the reader's mind especially comparisons and contrasts with the events of 1979 and after in Iran. The author rightly resists any temptation to stray into such pastures. The real value of her book is that, in the words of Yann Richard of CNRS quoted on the jacket, it will "become the standard work on the Iranian constitutional revolution", and not just for want of anything better. It marks a rather impressive scholarly debut,