The Story of the Daughters of Quchan Gender and National Memory in Iranian History

In 1905, the year preceding the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, Iranian women and girls were sold by peasants to pay their taxes, and taken as booty in a raid by Turkoman tribesmen against a village settlement in Northeast Iran. This event became the focus of outrage and contributed to popular mobilizations against autocracy. This study investigates what made the incident so powerful, and explores what later "amnesia" of the event tells us about the political culture of modern Iran and about modernist historiography in general. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR