Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:59:03.635Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Haves and the Have Nots: A Historical Study of Disability in Modern Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay provides a historical analysis of Iranian experiences with disability. I will begin by reviewing the literary application of the term in various contexts. Next, I will examine the social milieux in which local observers, medical professionals, and policy makers talked about and treated disability. As state-run institutions emerged to address disability needs, health professionals often drew a distinction between physical disability and intellectual or psychological disability, raising ethical and legal questions about the status of the disabled in modern Iranian society. Finally, an attempt will be made to situate disability politics in contemporary Iran, where the disabled population has increased significantly as a consequence of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88). Although this paper concentrates on Iranian experiences with disability, comparisons can be drawn with other Islamic societies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , April 2010 , pp. 167 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The title for this paper comes from a symposium that I organized at the University of Pennsylvania in November 2006. My essay has benefited from the discussions and comments that ensued at Penn, and I thank the symposium participants—Sumi Colligan, Liat Ben-Moshe, Hila Ramon-Greenspan, Sandra Sufian (in absentia), and Bob Vitalis—for their input. I am also grateful to the School of Nursing and my colleagues there, especially Dean Afaf Meleis and Dr. Julie Fairman, for their support of the symposium. Finally, I thank Professor Afsaneh Najmabadi for her comments on an earlier draft of this paper and for inviting me to submit a panel on disability history in the Middle East for the annual conference of the American Historical Association. Thanks to her support, the panel was included in the 2008 AHA conference program.

References

1 Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri, “Liberty Against all Odds: Requiem for Laleh and Ladan,” 11 July 2003, Iranian.com: http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2003/July/Bijani.

2 Spencer, Rowena, Conjoined Twins: Developmental Malformations and Clinical Implications (Baltimore and London, 2003), 7–8.Google Scholar Also, Encyclopaedia medica, vol. 12 (1902), 141.Google Scholar

3 By “public,” I mean people's personal interpretation and accounting of disability at work and in communal spaces.

4 Kudlick, Catherine J., “Disability History: Why We Need Another ‘Other’,” American Historical Review, 108, no. 3 (June 2003): 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar pars. 22 August 2006, http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/108.3/kudlick.html.

5 Linton, Simi, Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity (New York, 1998), 8–9.Google Scholar

6 Miles, M., “Signing in the Seraglio: Mutes, Dwarfs, and Jestures at the Ottoman Court, 1500–1700,” Disability and Society, 15, no. 1 (2000): 115–134CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sufian, Sandra, Healing the Land: Malaria and the Zionist Project in Palestine, 1920–1947 (Chicago, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scalenghe, Sara, “The Deaf in Ottoman Syria, 16th–18th Centuries,” Arab Studies Journal, 13 (2005): 10–25Google Scholar; Ghaly, Mohammad M.I., “Writings on Disability in Islam: The 16th-Century Polemic on Ibn Fahd's al-Nukat al-Ziraf,” Arab Studies Journal, 14 (2006): 9–38Google Scholar; Sumi Colligan and Liat Ben Moshe's research on disability rights in Israel. I have also benefited from the online bibliographies assembled by M. Miles on disability history in the Middle East: http://www.socsci.kun.nl/ped/whp/histeduc/mmiles/mesabib2.html. While none of these works addresses Iran or Shi‘ism or deals with some of the forms of disability detailed in this essay, I include them as examples of emerging scholarship on the subjects of health and/or disability history in the Middle East.

7 Malti-Douglas, Fedwa, Power, Marginality, and the Body in Medieval Islam (Aldershot, 2001), x.Google Scholar

8 For example, see the contemporary account of the Russo-Persian War of Mirza, Jahangir, Tarikh-i Naw, ed. by Iqbal, Abbas (Tehran, 1948).Google Scholar

9 Dwight Marsh, Reverend, Tennessean in Persia and Koordistan (Philadelphia, 1869), 196.Google Scholar

10 Linton, , Claiming Disability, 3Google Scholar.

11 For further discussion of Qur'anic verses on disability, see Miles, M., “Some Historical Texts on Disability in the Classical Muslim World,” Journal of Religion, Disability, & Health, 6 (2/3): 77–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also Bazna, Maysaa S. and Hatab's, Tarek A. “Disability in the Qur'an: The Islamic Alternative to Defining, Viewing, and Relating to Disability,” Journal of Religion, Disability & Health, 9, no. 1 (2005): 5–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For my references to the Qur'an in translation, refer to the edited volume by N. J. Dawood, which includes the parallel Arabic text (London, 2000).

12 For studies of benevolence in the Middle East, see Ener, Mine, Managing Egypt's Poor and the Politics of Benevolence, 1800–1952 (Princeton, NJ, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bonner, Michael, Ener, Mine, and Singer, Amy, Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts (Albany, NY, 2003).Google Scholar

13 Miles, “Some Historical Texts on Disability in the Classical Muslim World.”

14 Nahj al-Balagha: Sermons, Letters and Sayings (English & Arabic), ed. by Ali Reza, Syed (Karachi, 1971), II: 456.Google Scholar

15 Baqir Majlis, Muhammad, Hilyat al-Mottaqin [Ornament for the Pious] (Tehran, 1959), 218–223.Google Scholar

16 Stiker, Henri-Jacques, A History of Disability, trans. by Sayers, William (Ann Arbor, MI, 1999), 65.Google Scholar

17 Miles, “Some Historical Texts on Disability in the Classical Muslim World,” 79.

18 Najmabadi, Afsaneh, “Zanha-yi Millat: Women or Wives of the Nation?” Iranian Studies, 26 (1993): 55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mansoureh Ettehadieh, “Zan dar jami’ah-i qajar,” Kilk, 55–56 (Fall 1373/1994): 27–50.

19 Michael W. Dols, “The Leper in Medieval Islamic Society,” Speculum, 58, no. 4 (October 1983): 901.

20 From the Internet Medieval Sourcebook: Abû Ûthmân al-Jâhiz, The Essays, c. 860 CE, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/860jahiz.html.

21 Jan Zürcher, Erik, Turkey: A Modern History (London, 2004).Google Scholar

22 Keddie, Nikki, Qajar Iran and the Rise of Riza Khan, 1796–1925 (Costa Mesa, 1999).Google Scholar

23 Malcolm, John, Sketches of Persia (London, 1861), 47.Google Scholar

24 Malcolm, Sketches of Persia, 48–49.

25 Baillie Fraser, James, A Winter's Journey from Constantinople to Tehran with Travels Through Various Parts of Persia (London, 1838), 2: 189.Google Scholar It is unclear to me whether this Quli Khan is the same individual described by Malcolm as Reza Quli Khan.

26 Fraser, , A Winter's Journey, 2: 191.Google Scholar

27 Wilson, S. G., Persian Life and Customs (New York, 1900), 185.Google Scholar For more on the history of torture in Iran, see Rejali, Darius, Torture and Modernity: Self, Society, and State in Modern Iran (Boulder, CO, 1994).Google Scholar

28 Wilson, , Persian Life and Customs, 265.Google Scholar

29 Fraser, , A Winter's Journey, 2: 63.Google Scholar

30 Sykes, Ella C., Persia and its People (London, 1910), 134.Google Scholar

31 For historical background on Islamic charities, see the entry for “Waqf” by Astrid Meier in Encyclopaedia of Islam, online version, http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:3678/subscriber/uid=1721/entry?result_number=1&entry=islam_COM-1466&search_text=waqf&refine_editions=islam_islam#hit. For discussions of hospitals in the Iranian context, refer to Ebrahimnejad, Hormoz, Medicine, Public Health and the Qajar State (Leiden, 2004), 80–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Encyclopaedia of Islam, “Tibb” and “Bimaristan,” online version, http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:3678/subscriber/uid=1721/entry?result_number=1&entry=islam_COM-1216&search_text=tibb&refine_editions=islam_islam#hit and http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:3678/subscriber/uid=1721/entry?result_number=1&entry=islam_COM-0123&search_text=bimaristan&refine_editions=islam_islam#hit, respectively. Also, Dols, Michael, Majnun: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society (Oxford, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Ebrahimnejad, Medicine, Public Health and the Qajar State, 13–50.

34 al-Mulk, Majd, Risalah-i Majdiyyah (Tehran, 1321/1942), 11.Google Scholar

35 Qanun-i Muzaffari (National Library, Iran, manuscript #314), 46–47.

36 Sheil, Mary, Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia (London, 1856), 252.Google Scholar

37 Wills, C. J., “Medicine in Persia,” British Medical Journal, 1 (1879): 623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also cited in Floor, W., Public Health in Qajar Iran (Washington, DC, 2004), 53.Google Scholar

38 Cochran, James P., “Treatment of the Sick and Insane in Persia,” American Journal of Insanity, 56 (1899): 105.Google Scholar

39 Cochran, “Treatment of the Sick and Insane in Persia,” 107. Also cited in Floor, Public Health, 55.

40 Wishard, John G., Twenty Years in Persia (London and Edinburgh, 1908), 251.Google Scholar

41 For more on Iran's philosophy of humanism and the notion of “insan-i kamil,” see F. Kashani-Sabet, “Hallmarks of Humanism,” American Historical Review (October 2000): 1171–1203.

42 Mostofi, Abdollah, Administrative and Social History of the Qajar Period: from Agha Mohammad Khan to Naser ed-Din Shah (1794–1896) (Costa Mesa, 1997), I: 155–156.Google Scholar

43 Dols, Michael, “Insanity and its Treatment in Islamic Society,” Medical History, 31 (1987): 2–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 PHS, RG 91, Box 1, Folder 21, “Tehran Station, 1910–1911,” 2.

45 PHS, RG 91, Box 1, Folder 21, “Tehran Station, 1910–1911,” 2.

46 PHS, RG 91, “Report of the American Hospital in Tabriz, 1919–1920,” 2.

47 Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, “The Politics of Reproduction,” International Journal of Middle East Studies (February 2006): 1–29.

48 For an overview of the Sanitary Council, see Great Britain, Public Record Office, FO 924, 30 August 1903. For an excellent survey of health matters during the Qajar era, see Amir Arsalan Afkhami, “Health” Encyclopaedia Iranica, online version.

49 Nida-yi Vatan, no. 46, 23 July 1907, 1.

50 Gilmour, John, League of Nations Health Organisation. Report on an Investigation into the Sanitary Conditions in Persia (Geneva, 1925), 52.Google Scholar

51 Gilmour, , Sanitary Conditions in Persia, 54.Google Scholar

52 Avvalin rapurt-i shish mahah-i sihhiyah-i kull (Tehran, 1926), 61–62.Google Scholar

53 Salnamah-i Pars [Pars Yearbook] (Tehran, 1308/1929), 80.Google Scholar

54 Gilmour, , Sanitary Conditions of Persia, 54.Google Scholar

55 Majallah-i Mahiyanah, Shir va khurshid, 41.

56 PHS, RG91, Box #20, Folder #2, “Meshed: Persia's Great Shrine City,” Fifteenth Annual Report of the American Christian Hospital, from July 1929 to June 1930, 9.

57 Majallah-i Mahiyanah, Shir va khurshid, 43–44.

58 Ittila‘at, 10 Mehr 1317/September 1938, 1; The Iranian Red Lion & Sun Bulletin (March 1947), 22–23.

59 F. Kashani-Sabet, “Conceiving Citizens: Women, Sexuality and Religion in Modern Iran” forthcoming manuscript, on the health culture of Iran in the early Pahlavi era.

60 F. Kashani-Sabet, “Politics of Reproduction; For Related Discussions”, Amin, Camron, “Importing ‘Beauty Culture’ into Iran in the 1920s and 1930s: Mass Marketing Individualism in an Age of Anti-Imperialist Sacrifice,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 24, no. 1 (2004): 79–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also Cyrus Schayegh, “Science”; PHS, RG91, Box #20, Folder #2, “Meshed: Persia's Great Shrine City,” Fifteenth Annual Report of the American Christian Hospital, from July 1929 to June 1930 “Science, Medicine, and Class in the Formation of Semi-Colonial Iran, 1900s–1940s” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2004).

61 Pernick, Martin S., “Defining the Defective: Eugenics, Aesthetics, and Mass Culture in Early-Twentieth-Century America,” in The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability, ed. by Mitchell, David T. and Snyder, Sharon L. (Ann Arbor, MI, 1997), 94.Google Scholar

62 Tarbiyat, 2nd year, no. 74, 10 April 1898, 296.

63 Nasiri, 21 May 1894, 30.

64 Hifz-i Sihhat, nos. 7–8, 1 Sha‘ban 1324/1906, 57.

65 Iran, National Archives, File 291, Vizarat-i Dakhilah, Sihhiyah-i kull-i mamlikati, “Nizamnamah-i Asasi-yi Abilih kubi-yi majjani,” September 1932. Also, Avvalin rapurt-i shish mahah-i sihhiyah-i kull (Tehran, 1926), 64.Google Scholar

66 Charles Oberling, “Certain Aspects of Public Health in Persia,” Proceedings of the New York State Association of Public Health Laboratories (1942), 38. This observation contrasts with the report of the League of Nations, which found that since “the introduction of the vaccination service by the Sanitary Council in 1909, it is much less common.” Gilmour, Sanitary Conditions of Persia, 42.

67 Qanun-i Muzaffari (National Library, Iran, manuscript #314), 46–47.

68 Cochran, “Treatment of the Sick and Insane in Persia,” 105.

69 Mary E. Bradford, “Something of Persian Lepers,” The Assembly Herald (1906): 502.

70 Wilson, , Persian Life and Customs, 140.Google Scholar

71 Wilson, , Persian Life and Customs, 140.Google Scholar

72 Wilson, , Persian Life and Customs, 141.Google Scholar

73 Dols, “The Leper in Islamic Society,” 912.

74 Avvalin rapurt-i shish mahah-i sihhiyah-i kull (1926), 63.

75 PHS, RG91, Box #1, Folder #20, “Report of Medical Work Meshed East Persia, Year Ending June 30, 1927,” 2.

76 PHS, RG91, Box #20, Folder #2, “Eighteenth Annual Report of the American Christian Hospital, Meshed,” from July 1932 to June 1933, 2.

77 PHS, RG91, Box #20, Folder #2, “Meshed: Persia's Great Shrine City,” Fifteenth Annual Report of the American Christian Hospital, from July 1929 to June 1930, 39, 18.

78 PHS, RG91, Box #20, Folder #2, “Meshed Medical Report, 1935–1936,” 5.

79 PHS, RG 91, Box #20, Folder #2, “The 17th Annual Report of the American Christian Hospital,” 1932, 7.

80 Sihhatnima-yi Iran, first year, no. 1 (March–April 1933): 12–13.

81 Report of the Autopsy of the Siamese Twins: Together with Other Interesting Information Concerning Their Life (Philadelphia, 1874).Google Scholar Barnum, P. T., The Life of P. T. Barnum: Written by Himself (Chicago, 2000Google Scholar; reprint of 1865 edition); Bogdan, Robert, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

82 Sihhatnima-yi Iran, first year, no. 1 (March–April 1933): 12–13.

83 “Letter from Brazil,” Medical Record, 21 July 1900, 108–109.

84 Sihhatnima-yi Iran, first year, no. 3 (May–June 1933): 59–63.

85 Yang Costello, Carrie, “Teratology: ‘Monsters’ and the Professionalization of Obstetrics,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 19, no. 1 (March 2006): 1–2, 10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

86 Sihhatnima-yi Iran, first year, no. 3 (May–June 1933): 59–63.

87 Sihhatnima-yi Iran, first year, no. 3 (May–June 1933): 59.

88 For example, see al-Muluk Bamdad, Badr, Tadbir-i Manzil (Tehran, 1310/1931).Google Scholar Also Kashani-Sabet, “The Politics of Reproduction.”

89 Sihhatnima-yi Iran, first year, no. 2 (April–May 1933): 2–6.

90 Susan Beth Azhakh, “A Look at the Past and Present: General and Special Education in Iran” (Masters Thesis, Mankato State University, Minnesota, 1980), 28.

91 Baghchihban, Jabbar, Zindiginamah-i Jabbar Baghchihban bunyan guzar-i amuzish-i na shinavayan dar Iran, bih qalam-i khudash (Tehran, 1977), 16–18Google Scholar, 52–53.

92 Baghchihban, Zindiginamah-i Jabbar Baghchihban, 88–89.

93 Baghchihban, Zindiginamah-i Jabbar Baghchihban, 95.

94 Baghchihban, Zindiginamah-i Jabbar Baghchihban, 96–101.

95 Baghchihban, Zindiginamah-i Jabbar Baghchihban, 102.

96 Baghchihban, Zindiginamah-i Jabbar Baghchihban, 135–136.

97 Baghchihban, Zindiginamah-i Jabbar Baghchihban, 138–139.

98 Baghchihban, Zindiginamah-i Jabbar Baghchihban, 140.

99 Baghchihban, Zindiginamah-i Jabbar Baghchihban, 142–143.

100 Dawlat-i Illiyah-i Iran, Vizarat-i Ma`arif, va Awqaf va Sana'i-i Mustazrafah, Salnamah-i Ihsa'iyah, 1307–1308 (1928–29); also the years 1309–10 (1930–31), 1312–13 (1934–35), and 1313–14 (1934–35). For subsequent years, see Vizarat-i Farhang, Salnamah va amar, 1315–16 (1936–37) and 1316–17 (1937–38).

101 Wishard, John, Twenty Years in Persia (London and Edinburgh, 1908), 251.Google Scholar

102 PHS, RG 91, Box 1, Folder 18, “Report of Medical Work Outside of Meshed Year Ending June 30, 1922,” 1.

103 Overseas Consultants Incorporated, Report on Seven Year Development Plan for the Plan Organization of the Imperial Government of Iran (New York, 1949), 5: 85–87.Google Scholar For an overview of public health during the Pahlavi era, see Good, Byron, “The Transformation of Health Care in Modern Iranian History,” in Modern Iran: The Dialectics of Continuity and Change, ed. by Bonine, Michael and Keddie, Nikki (Albany, NY, 1981).Google Scholar

104 Salnamah-i Amar-i Kishvar, Sal-i 1349/1970.

105 Christoffel, E. J., Aus der Werkstatt eines Missionars (Baden, 1973), 134.Google Scholar

106 Christoffel, Aus der Werkstatt eines Missionars, 14–21.

107 Christoffel, Aus der Werkstatt eines Missionars, 18–19.

108 Gaster, Gwen, Our Blind Family (London, 1959), 42, 46.Google Scholar

109 Gaster, Our Blind Family, viii.

110 Gaster, Our Blind Family, 3.

111 Gaster, Our Blind Family, 24.

112 Gaster, Our Blind Family, 46–49.

113 Azhakh, “A Look at the Past and Present,” 30.

114 For instance, consider “The Declaration of the Rights of the Child,” accepted by the UN General Assembly on 6 November 1959. Also, a UNESCO consultant assisted the Iranian Department of Special Education in evaluating its programs. See Ahy, Homa, Special Education in Iran (Tehran: Ministry of Education Press, 1972), 15–33.Google Scholar Dr. Homa Ahy served as Director General of special education in Iran at that time.

115 Mahmoud Fatheddin, “A Special Education Program for Mildly Mentally Retarded Children in Tehran, Iran” (PhD diss., Florida State University, 1978), 30–34.

116 The quotation attributed to the shah is cited in Ahy, Special Education in Iran, 7.

117 Cited in Fathedddin, “A Special Education Program,” 37.

118 Browne, E. G., The Persian Revolution of 1905–1909 (Cambridge, 1910).Google Scholar

119 Center for International Rehabilitation website, http://www.cirnetwork.org/idrm/reports/compendium/iran.cfm.

120 “Iran Human Rights Practices, 1995,” US Dept. of State Department of State Dispatch, March 1996, accessed via Lexis/Nexis academic search.

121 “Iran: Country Profile,” p. 1, 2 October 2002, Janet Matthews Information Services, Quest Economics Database, Middle East Review World of Information. Accessed via Nexis/Lexis academic search.

122 “Iran: Country Profile,” 1.

123 http://www.electionaccess.org/LR/Countries%20A-L/Iran.htm.

124 “Twins Want Separation; Singapore Surgeons Plan Three-Day Operation,” Calgary Sun, 12 June 2003, Thursday, Final Edition, 30, accessed via Nexis/Lexis Academic Search.