ABSTRACT

It was during the constitutionalist movement of the late nineteenth century that the modern intellectual elite emerged; that is, the growing body of people who were then known as monavvarolfekran and, since the 1940s, as rowshanfekran. There were two principal outside models for this new elite, even though there were important differences between them. One was the contemporary Russian intelligentsia, whose ideas and attitudes had a large impact on the thinking and aspirations of monavvarolfekran. The other – less obvious but in certain respects more important and more enduring – model was the French intellectual tradition.