ABSTRACT
In 1927, following the stabilization of his new dynasty, Riza Shah launched a programme of radical secularizing, centralizing measures and, in the years that followed, enforced the new policies aggressively, often through the use of the army.1 His regime’s programme was essentially that formulated by the intelligentsia of the constitutional period, and was popular with the nationalist elite. However, when imposed upon the population at large it provoked widespread hostility and, occasionally, active defiance.
