Inside Out: Locating the Golestan Harem in the City Center During Nasser al-Din Shah’s Reign

This paper will look at the ways in which Nasser al-Din Shah’s harem, or the andaroon of his Golestan Palace, was a central location for negotiations between tradition and modernity during his reign (1848 to 1896). Located in what was at the time the historical core of Tehran and steps away from the Grand Bazaar, the andaroon of Golestan was the site of a unique familial formation that at once reflected certain Islamic traditions, and yet was in many ways informed by and even expanded at the height of Persian engagement with the processes of urban modernization.

Under Nasser al-Din’s reign the Golestan harem, grew both physically and in terms of the number of its residents as compared to the harem of his predecessor Mohamad Shah Qajar who reigned from 1834-1848. This expansion presents an interesting contradiction since this is a period that is generally understood as the emergence of modernity in Iran and since in both European accounts, and Persian nationalist accounts, the harem as an institution is thought to be an outdated and traditional form of kinship that represents Islamic backwardness. As such, its simultaneous expansion in the face of greater contact with Europe and Western modernity presents us with an interesting paradox that I hope to explore.

This paper will focus on the spatial dimensions of Nasser al-Din Shah’s harem, its proximity to the core of an expanding urban locale, and the ways in which different bodies, ideologies and commodities were distributed within and outside of it. I hope to offer new insight about the physical and material organization of this social institution and the ways in which it was controlled, lived in, and subverted.