ABSTRACT
Iran belongs to the Islamic sphere, but Islam in Iran is different just as the people of Iran are different. Iran means the land of the Aryans. Thirteen hundred years of Islam, the fearful Mongol invasions under Genghis Khan, and later Tamerlane and his Tartars, have devastated the fair land of Iran and stamped out the lofty ideals of that ancient time. Like Kamal Ata Turk in Turkey, Riza Shah endeavoured to make the Iranians Iran-conscious, and no effort was spared to link them again to their glorious pre-Islamic past, and to make them forget if possible, the long predominance of Arab influence. Foreign missions were represented in Iran by the Lazarites who came to Iran in 1625. Their work and that of other Catholic orders is mostly confined to the ancient Christian communities and to the foreigner residing in Iran.
