“Rest in peace, for we are awake”: The Iranian Celebrations of 1971.

In 1971, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – the last Shah of Iran – organised a series of celebrations to commemorate the 2500th year of the Iranian monarch, beginning with Cyrus II. These included a huge military parade – in period costume – conducted by the ruins of the city of Persepolis and much besides. Grigor’s summary of the festivities is particularly lively: ‘international invitees included the rich and famous of the time: a dozen kings and queens, ten princes and princesses, some twenty presidents and first ladies, ten shaykhs, and two sultans, together with emperors, vice-presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and other state representatives who came to witness a ritualistic speech by the king at Cyrus’ tomb, an unparalleled sound-and-light spectacle over Persepolis, exquisite banquets in a tent city and a fantastic parade of national history’, as well as the construction of a museum and national monument in Tehran (T. Grigor, ‘Kingship Hybridized, Kingship Homogenized: Revivalism under the Qajar and Pahlavi Dynasties’ in S. Babaie and T. Grigor edd. Persian Kingship and Architecture (London, 2015), 243-245).
 
Grigor’s chapter on the festivities (T. Grigor, ‘Kingship Hybridized, Kingship Homogenized: Revivalism under the Qajar and Pahlavi Dynasties’ in S. Babaie and T. Grigor edd. Persian Kingship and Architecture (London, 2015), 219-254) is well worth reading in its entirety, putting the celebrations in their historical context and focussing particularly on the use of architecture under the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties in 19th and 20th century Iran, a time when the country underwent incredible changes in most senses of the word (social, cultural, political etc.). Very useful on the politics of this period in Iranian history is Hambly's chapter in the Cambridge History of Iran (G. R. G. Hambly, 'The Pahlavi Autocracy: Muhammad Riza Shah, 1941-1979' in CHI Vol. 7, 244-294). Further in-depth discussion of the Pahlavi era can be found in Abbas Amanat's Iran: A Modern History, see especially Chapter 11, 617-662)