نجم آبادى، افسانه. حکایت دختران قوچان: از یاد رفته های انقلاب مشروطه. تهران: انتشارات روشنگران و مطالعات زنان، ١٩٩۵، ٢٩٣ص
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. Hikayat-i Dukhtaran-i Quchan: Az Yadraftah-ha-yi Inqilab-i Mashrutah. Tehran: Intisharat-i Rawshangaran va Mutala‘at-i Zanan, 1995, 293pp.
ABSTRACT
The Story of the Daughters of Quchan: the Forgotten of the Constitutional Revolution
حکایت دختران قوچان: از یاد رفته های انقلاب مشروطه
This book is an account of the sale of Quchani girls to Turkment and the enslavement of women of Bashghanlu. This occurred during the time of the time of Ghulamriza Khan Assif Al-Dauleh in Khurasan, the rule of his son Amir Hussain Khan in Quchan and the governance of Salar Mufakham in Bujnur in the spring and fall of 1905.
Najmabadi devotes the first part of the book to describing the incident. The second part examines how this national tragedy was reflected in the mirrors of official correspondences and reports, presentations, announcements, newspapers, and other media of the time. She has even arranged the book chapters in accordance to the verses of a poem about the topic from the “Charand wa Parand” column of Ali Akbar Dehkhoda.
In addition to emphasising the centrality of the incident to the Constitutional Revolution, the book critiques male-centric historiography and its role in marginalising the “Story of the Daughters of Quchan.” In recounting the incident, the book considers its goal as putting forth a feminist understanding of history in opposition to the “history of great men.” In doing this, the book also presents a clear picture of the communication mechanisms among the Iranian state administrators, the peasantry, and the central government in the early years of the twentieth century.
In the next two chapters, Najmabadi again emphasises the symbolic relationship between the feminine and patriotism. Yet her way of drawing on images and humorous writings in this book is different from the specific methodology she employs in her later works such as Women with Moustaches and Men without Beards.
In the last chapter, she attempts to critique the misogynist methods of historians such as Faraidun Adamiyat and Malikzadah and to show the main role of “the history of great men” in obscuring the central place of women in history as evidenced in their neglect of the “story of the daughters of Quchan.”
Iradj Esmailpour Ghouchani
Translated by Niki Akhavan