Mirza Naini and the Birth of Modern Concepts in the Legal-Political Literature of Iran: A Reading of Tanbīh al-Milla wa Tanzīh al-Umma

RaeesiDehkordi, Behrooz

doi:10.22034/jrpl.2026.736105

Mirza Naini and the Birth of Modern Concepts in the Legal-Political Literature of Iran: A Reading of Tanbīh al-Milla wa Tanzīh al-Umma

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Behrooz RaeesiDehkordi

10.22034/jrpl.2026.736105

Abstract

Mirza Mohammad Hossein Naini is among the most significant juridical-political thinkers of the Constitutional era, and his thought played a decisive role in the conceptual transition of law and politics in Iran. The central question of this article is how and to what extent Naini—without claiming direct engagement with modern Western political philosophy—reformulated modern legal and political concepts within the logic of Shia jurisprudence, and what place this reformulation occupies in the transition from traditional readings to the requirements of a modern political order. The research employs a conceptual analysis approach and an interpretive-critical reading of the text »Tanbīh al-Milla wa Tanzīh al-Umma«, examining textual evidence in relation to the core concepts of modern political thought and the historical context of the Constitutional Revolution.The preliminary findings demonstrate that Naini, through a series of concepts, provides clear signs of this conceptual transition: a non-deterministic view of history; the separation of the “religious domain” (*al-amr al-dīnī*) and the »national domain« (*al-amr al-waṭanī*) as the foundation of the public sphere; the formulation of “type-based common rights” (*ḥuqūq-i mushtaraka-yi nawʿiyya*) grounded in the distinction between right (*ḥaqq*) and ruling (*ḥukm*); the principle of equality in the political sphere; the negation of the inherent authority of power; the concept of *mustaṣghirīn* as a constructed political immaturity; the implicit acceptance of the separation of powers; and an emphasis on collective organization through »legitimate scholarly associations« (*anjuman-hā-yi ṣaḥīḥa-yi ʿilmiyya*).
Based on this reading, the article’s main hypothesis is that Naini can be regarded as a trend-setting and transitional thinker who, through the endogenous recreation of modern concepts, forged a link between traditional jurisprudential readings and the imperatives of modern political order. From this perspective, *Tanbīh al-Milla wa Tanzīh al-Umma* is not merely a defensive treatise in support of constitutionalism, but a theoretical text in the formation of a new political jurisprudence in Iran.

Keywords

Mirza Naini

*Tanbīh al-Milla*

constitutional jurisprudence

modern concepts

type-based common rights

national domain

separation of powers

despotism