Five Best: Understanding Iran

Selected by Bartle Bull, the author of “Land Between the Rivers: A 5,000-Year History of Iraq.”

The Heritage of Persia

By Richard N. Frye (1963)

Five top books on Iran.

1. Today Iranians protesting in the streets express national identity through the iconography of ancient Persia. There have been remarkable consistencies across the 2,500-year history of Iran since a Persian ruler, Cyrus the Great, established the Acheamenid empire around 550 B.C. One is a pattern of divinely sanctioned monarchies, founded by men of humble origins, that ultimately fell to external forces. In 330 B.C. Alexander the Great conquered the domain Cyrus had built; Persia reasserted itself half a century later in the 400-year Sasanian Empire, which rivaled Rome. Cliffside reliefs at Naqsh-e Rostam in Iran show the Roman emperor Valerian (253-260) as a captive of the Sasanian king Shapur I. Richard Frye’s elegant history brings ancient Persia to life, explaining currents—Zoroaster, Cyrus and the Jews, the classical Greek affinity—that still matter greatly. He ends with the hard-fought Muslim conquest of the seventh century. The Arab invaders were eventually followed by Turks and Mongols, but Persian identity was reasserted by the Safavids (1501-1763), who imposed Shiism as a national faith. Frye’s study is the classic history of pre-Islamic Iran; for complete coverage, the seven-volume “Cambridge History of Iran” (1968-91) is irreplaceable.

The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution

By Amir Taheri (1985)

2. In 1983, four years after seizing power in Tehran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini told his followers, “I have the fear that, like Hitler, we may enter history as people who achieved quick victories followed by defeat.” Nearly half a century later, his regime remains in place. Amir Taheri, the editor of Iran’s leading daily newspaper in the years leading up to the shah’s fall in 1979, produced a study of the cleric and his revolution that is a masterpiece of political detective work. From a bleak mud-built home in Khomein, in west central Iran, to the cottage outside of Paris that was Khomeini’s headquarters while in exile, Taheri documents the shifting milieus behind the man who hijacked a broad-based revolution to launch a blood-soaked theocracy. Mr. Taheri portrays an austerely charismatic ayatollah who concealed a totalitarian agenda behind the rhetoric of justice, resistance and moral purity. The author does not ignore the way Western powers misread the situation: One CIA memo, welcomed by the Carter White House at the time, praised Khomeini as a “philosopher king.”

Shah of Shahs

By Ryszard Kapuściński (1985)

3. Iran has inspired more than its share of superior literary travel writing from outsiders—from Robert Byron in the 1930s to Christopher de Bellaigue in the 2000s. Ryszard Kapuściński, a Polish journalist, stands with Byron at the pinnacle of this tradition. Written and reported in Tehran soon after the 1979 revolution, “Shah of Shahs” captures what no dry history can: the texture of a society in the act of destroying itself. Today the crimes of the last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, can seem quaint by comparison to the repression that followed. The shah’s secret police, Savak, “banned the plays of Shakespeare and Molière because they criticized monarchical and aristocratic vices.” The Black Friday massacre of Sept. 8, 1978, in which dozens of protesters where gunned down, seemed to shred what remained of the shah’s contract with his people. Like many visitors to Iran, Kapuściński was at least partly in search of something deeper than the politics of the day. As the book closes, a Tehran rug merchant explains to the author how carpets define the Persian character: Spread one on a parched desert, lie down and “you see before you flowers, you see a garden.”

Democracy in Iran

By Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr (2006)

4. Despite Iran’s history of repressive politics, meaningful elections have real roots in the country. “Democracy in Iran” traces the earliest back to the early 20th century, when the exhausted Qajar dynasty, which had been in power since 1789, granted a parliament and constitution to “all the people of Persia.” By 1909 male suffrage extended to shopkeepers and peasants. The parliament, or majlis, had sole legislative and fiscal authority and approval over military and foreign policy. Iran’s parliament remained an important seat of power until 1953, when Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, facing popular pressure amid economic troubles, arranged to win 99.94% of the vote in a referendum to abolish the majlis and take personal control. Under the Islamic state there was an attenuated resurgence of the tradition from 1997 to 2013, when turnouts reached 70% and the electorate had real, if regime-approved, choices between reformers, pragmatists and hard-liners. The election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani as president in 2013 marked the last time the regime allowed consequential elections.

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

By Marjane Satrapi (2003)

5. The triumph of Khomeini’s clerical state meant particular suffering for Iran’s women and girls, against whom it has waged a ruthless war. The liberalizations that had been made under Pahlavi only made the crackdown that followed more painful. The graphic-novel format of Marjane Satrapi’s family memoir “Persepolis” offers visual immediacy and simplicity that are perfect for conveying two great themes: childlike innocence and revolutionary horror. Her jewel-box epic covers four turbulent years in the life of a Tehran girl with big dreams. Marji wants to be a doctor or, perhaps, the next Marie Curie. Her cosmopolitan parents initially hope that the fall of the shah will mean more freedoms, but the Islamic regime brings forced veiling to her Tehran school when she is 10 years old. It also kills her handsome communist uncle. When Iran goes to war with Iraq, Saddam’s Hussein’s jets bury her Jewish neighbors in rubble. “Persepolis” has almost all the history you need to know in its tiny introduction and 150 pages. It is one of the better works of art of the century.