This excellent volume, revisiting late 19th century, early 20th century constitutional thought and constitutional advocacy in Iran, and to a lesser extent the Ottoman Empire, Egypt and Tunisia, deserves to be read and cited widely. It covers a range of topics that have only begun to receive academic attention, including the role of minorities in influencing majoritarian constitutional and political thought, the place of empire and suzerainty in molding the imagination of key political concepts, and the travel and dissemination of ideas across the Middle East. Chapters are based on a plethora of primary sources, while also being well embedded in relevant disciplinary debates. Every chapter is implicitly, some explicitly, comparative. Most chapters cite widely in several languages and draw on previously little-known empirical data to formulate novel arguments about the rich constitutional imagination of the region.
Professor Mirjam Künkler, IALS, London, and President of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies (ASPS)

Denis Hermann, Ph.D. (2007), is a historian and researcher at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research). Specializing in the history of Modern Iran and Shi’ism, his publications include Le shaykhisme à la période qajare: Histoire doctrinale et sociale d’une École chiite (Brepols, 2017).

Erdal Kaynar, Ph.D. (2012), is associate professor in modern history at the University of Strasbourg. He works on the intellectual and political history of the late Ottoman Empire. His publications include L’héroïsme de la vie moderne. Ahmed Rıza en son temps (Peeters, 2021).