The Idea of “Law” in the Iranian Tanzimat Period

To seek the intellectual roots of the Iranian constitutionalism, one has to be back to the preconstitutionalism epoch. Indeed, in that time, Iranian elites had recognized the "deterioration" as the main crisis of Iran, which was rooted in the problem of “despotism.” Their strategy to overcome this crisis was the “Law.”However, the key point was that the majority of intellectual elites had thoughtcodifying the law is the only job that has to be done. Nevertheless, they did not pay attention to the mechanism of how to move from traditional legal logic to the new one in Iran. In the Iranian Tanzimat period, considering the two concepts of law in the European lands (the political and the rational concepts), the idea of law seems to base on the rational concept. In that time, debates were on the explanation, justification, and interpretation of the law. All the utterances were about: which law is the right one? What is the proper criterion to pass a legal regulation? Must the law be written based on nature, the tradition, the practices, or the divine Sharia? This article is going to assess the represented hypothesis by investigating some works of intellectual elites and historical documents of Iranian pre-constitutionalism.