ABSTRACT
In Egypt, rising national awareness from the mid-nineteenth century onward and the search for a glorious past were coupled with romanticization of the rural population as the true heirs of the nation's ancestors. Reza Shah's accession to the throne in 1925, and the cultural mission of members of the Pahlavi elite who surrounded him, with their vision for a modernized, westernized and urban Iran, precipitated the rise of romantic attitudes toward the countryside and the peasantry. Hygiene and its relation to nationalism have been studied by various scholars in the context of modernity and the relationship between the individual and society. The fascination with the Iranian peasantry should be seen in the context of identity dilemmas expressed by Iranian intellectuals in the last two decades of the Pahlavi regime. Glorification of 'authentic' rural life was a manifestation of the romantic element in the Pahlavi perception of Iranian national revival, as the awakening of a sleeping beauty.
