72 Islam and Modernity
Union. The ulama were notable for the minor role they played in these events,
apart from one prominent cleric, Ayatullah Kashani, who initially supported
Mossadegh then turned against him. While, no doubt, the mullahs continued
to have the allegiance of some popular sectors, these were not politically signifi -
cant at this stage. New sectors of the urban populace were affi liated to the new
politics, and were set loose from the earlier hegemony and affi liations of bazaar
and ulama.^15
In July 1952, Mossadegh, faced with hostile manœuvres by the Shah and
his supporters, resigned tactically, succeeding in eliciting a revolt in Tehran. As
soon as news of his resignation reached the bazaar, traders and craftsmen fought
the security forces to make their way to parliament. The National Front depu-
ties called for a general strike, and the Tudeh joined in. The bazaar closed down
entirely, and there were strikes in all the sectors controlled by the Tudeh and the
unions. After attempts at violent suppression, the government capitulated. The
heaviest fi ghting took place in the bazaar, in the working-class industrial districts
and the railway repair shops, on the route between the university and parlia-
ment and in Parliament Square. Students, of course, were prominent in these
events. The worst slum districts of southern Tehran were quiet. The centres of
popular activism had shifted (Abrahamian 1982: 270–2).
There were marked differences between Cairo and the Iranian cities in the
fi rst half of the twentieth century. Cairo underwent a basic dislocation of its old
urban structure of quarter organisation, guild and tariqa (Sufi order), caused
both by the impact of colonial penetration and by the incorporation into world
markets, including wide-ranging rural development, which led, eventually, to
mass migration to the city. Egypt also underwent a signifi cant level of indus-
trialisation. Through bazaar associations and their coordination, Iranian cities
maintained important sectors of autonomous urban organisation. Modern poli-
tics and ideologies of nationalism, liberalism and communism developed and
thrived for the most part in the new social spaces of university, school, workshop
and coffee house. At the same time they were effective in urban mass mobilisa-
tion only through catering to the structures and interests of the bazaar. These,
in turn, were transformed by the forces and processes of modernity, but were
never displaced as centres of urban autonomy. The bazaar was to be the hub
of organisation, fi nance and coordination in all the political upheavals of the
century, and, crucially, for the Islamic Revolution of 1978–9.
Given the secularisation of the political fi eld in the middle decades of the
twentieth century, the question arises as to why the 1979 Revolution was led by
a cleric and established the Islamic Republic. The years between the Mossadegh
government and the Revolution were a time of severe repression of all non-
regime politics. The next episode of challenge to the regime and its subsequent
confrontation came in 1961–3, this time from religious sources in Qum. This
was the fi rst appearance of Ruhullah Khomeini as a clerical challenger. The