To understand this transformation, we need to
look at the representational domain to which the
sun belonged, the Qàjàr visual culture. There, the
(fe)male face did not represent “real (wo)men,” but
(wo)men of male artistic, and more particularly
male sexual fantasy. S/he fulfilled adult male desire
for music, wine, dance, homo/heterosex, or just
plain voyeuristic pleasure. S/he illustrated popular
romances and classical stories.
For a figure of male fantasy to be the main fea-
ture of the national emblem posed a problem. First,
the artist’s fantasy was denigrated by the repro-
ducibility of an emblem in many media (newspa-
pers, official state signs and stationery, stamps,
coins, flags, and so forth). The language of repre-
sentation increasingly relied on mimicking the cam-
era and attributing authenticity to the photograph.
More importantly, the place of artistic representa-
tion, the shift from private chambers and books
read in private to publicly displayed state signs cre-
ated an element of conflict between the private
nature of fantasies of pleasure and the public
nature of its new location. Third, while the purpose
of (fe)male representations in the private chambers
or even the printed books of the nineteenth century
was to provide pleasure to men, public display of
the national emblem was a serious matter of
national politics and state power. Whether as a
medallion to be granted for services to the state, or
as a logo printed on the masthead of the official
state gazette, on letterheads, stamps, coins and
flags, this (fe)male sun was not there for the
voyeuristic pleasure of male viewers, but to inspire
awe and respect, allegiance and identification.
Fourth, the nineteenth century marked a shift in
Iranian male sensibilities. The young beautiful male
adolescent to whom the adult man was attached
had turned from a figure of celebration into one of
abjection.
Finally, the incongruity became progressively
more pronounced as the project of building a mod-
ern Iranian nation increasingly included real
women in the public sphere. This latter process
brought the modernist embarrassment to a head,
becoming a problem by the first decades of the
twentieth century as women became readers of
gazettes, users of stamps, and viewers of the flag.
Public display of (wo)men of male sexual fantasy
became a source of modernist anxiety and discom-
fiture and forced a gradual yet unmistakable eclipse
of the sun. The more public the medium, the more
the facial features of the sun would fade. We can
almost trace the gradual setting of the sun as the
century progressed and as the emblem was repro-
duced on widely circulating artifacts, until its even-
sub-saharan africa 525tual formal effacement.
While the Lion and Sun was eliminated as Iran’s
official emblem in 1979, it has acquired a deep nos-
talgic burden among Iranian émigrés.Bibliography
A. Kasravì, Tàrìkhchah-i shìr va khawrshìd, in Armaghàn
11, 7 (1930), 542–54; 8 (1930), 588–98.
M. Mìnuvì¢ihrànì, Mansha±-i naqsh-i shìr va khawrshìd,
in Dinshah Irani memorial volume. Papers on Zoro-
astrian and Iranian subjects, Bombay 1948, 85–109.
H. Nayyir Nuri, Tàrìkhchah-i bayraq-i îràn, va shìr va
khawrshìd, Tehran 1965.
S. Nafìsì, Darafsh-i îràn va shìr va khawrshìd, Tehran
1949.
A. Piemontese, The statutes of the Qajar orders of knight-
hood, in East and West 19:3/4 (1969), 431–73.
Y. Zukà±, Tàrìkhchah-i taghyìràt va tahavvulàt-i darafsh
va ≠alàmàt-i dawlat-i îràn, in Hunar va Mardum 31
(1965), 13-24; 32/3 (1965), 21–38; 34 (1965), 24–40;
35 (1965), 32–7; 36 (1965), 30–7; 38 (1965), 21–9.Afsaneh NajmabadiSub-Saharan AfricaThis entry explores what national symbols might
mean to women living in Islamic cultures in Sub-
Saharan Africa. Little research has been under-
taken on this subject so the focus has to be on
setting the scene and asking appropriate questions.
To do this, it is first necessary to briefly address
the question of African nation-building and the
processes of gendering of these nations.
Research into nation-building in African coun-
tries has been minimal, although specific national
discourses have been identified in a few countries
(Fosse 1997, Steiner 1997, I. Cusack 1999). The
new leaders of independent Africa set about build-
ing nations from their multiethnic peoples and used
whatever material was at hand to construct a
national identity, just as an artist might construct a
collage. Thus, religion may or may not contribute
to the national culture, although for Islamic states
such as Sudan and Mauritania Islam will inevitably
be central to the nation-building project. There is a
danger of generalizing when writing about Africa
because of its ethnic, religious, and historical diver-
sity and the same caveat should be applied to
Islamic politics (Eickelman and Piscatori 1996).
However, Gwendolyn Mikell argues that “a pat-
tern of gross female exclusion and gender bias
emerged as Islam made incursions into sub-
Saharan Africa” (1997, 14). Present-day female lit-
eracy rates across Africa, comparing countries
where Islam is dominant with those where it is not,
suggest that this may still be the case.
In addition to nation-specific discourses, nations