Abbas Amanat

Amanat received his B.A. from Tehran University in 1971 and his D.Phil. from the University of OxfordUniversity of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university in Oxford, England, where teaching existed in some form by 1096; it describes itself as the oldest university in the English-speaking world and is organised as a federal system of the university and dozens of self-governing colleges.Open the full entry in 1981.⁠[1]

His doctoral thesis, “The early years of the Babi movement: background and development,” at Oxford’s Faculty of Oriental Studies and St Catherine’s College, examined the formative 1844–1847 phase of the Babi movement and its early impact on the ulama, merchants and other urban groups.⁠[2]

He first taught in the Program of Religious Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and joined Yale in 1983 as an assistant professor of history.⁠[3]

That year Ithaca Press in London published Cities and Trade: Consul Abbott on the Economy and Society of Iran, which he edited.⁠[4]

In 1989 Cornell UniversityCornell UniversityCornell University is a private research university in Ithaca, New York, and a member of the Ivy League. It is New York State's federal land-grant university, a distinction unique within the Ivy League. Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White founded the university in 1865, and it opened in 1868. In addition to its Ithaca campus, Cornell operates Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell Tech in New York City and a medical college in Qatar. It enrolled 26,793 students in fall 2024. Its president is Michael I. Kotlikoff.Open the full entry Press published his Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844–1850.⁠[5]

From 1991 to 1998 he was editor-in-chief of Iranian Studies, the journal of the Association for Iranian Studies, and from 1993 to 2004 he chaired Yale’s Council on Middle East Studies.⁠[4]

A consulting editor and longtime contributor to Encyclopaedia Iranica, he wrote major entries including “Constitutional Revolution” (1994) and “Islam in Iran: Messianism” (2007).⁠[6]

In 1995 Crowning Anguish: Memoirs of a Persian Princess from the Harem to Modernity, which he edited, was published; he also edits Mage Publishers’ Persia Observed series, which includes Edward Browne’s The Persian Revolution of 1905–1909.⁠[1]

In 1997 the University of California Press published Pivot of the Universe, his study of the Qajar monarch Nasir al-Din Shah and the Iranian monarchy from 1831 to 1896.⁠[7]

A Persian translation, Qebleh-e ‘Alam, was published by Nashr-e Karnameh in Tehran in 2004, and I B Tauris issued a paperback in 2008.⁠[8]

He received a Mellon-Sawyer Grant for the comparative study of millennialism from 1998 to 2001 and was a Carnegie Scholar of Islamic Studies from 2005 to 2007.⁠[4]

From 2005 to 2021 he directed the Yale Program in Iranian Studies.⁠[6]

In 2009 I B Tauris published his Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi’ism in London and New York.⁠[8]

In October 2017 Yale University Press published his Iran: A Modern History, which combines chronological and thematic approaches with political history as the driving narrative and covers dynastic changes, revolutions, civil wars, foreign occupation and the rise of the Islamic Republic, layered with literature, music, religion and economy.⁠[9]

Reviewer C P W Gammell called it “a truly great book” and said that by placing today’s Iran in the context of five hundred years of history the author offers a “sensible, even-handed and accurate analysis.”⁠[10]

In April 2018 he was named William Graham Sumner Professor of History, having previously been professor of history and international studies; that year he also held the Bahari Fellowship at Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and served on the board of directors of Encyclopaedia Iranica.⁠[3]

He said he wrote the book to ask whether characteristics within Shi’i Islam facilitated the clergy’s rise to control of the state; he argued that the religious establishment coexisted with the state for nearly five centuries and that, after Pahlavi-era secularization, the sidelined clerical community became more prone to radicalization.⁠[11]

The Yale Program in Iranian Studies described the history as not a survey in the conventional sense but an exploration of the story of a nation, showing how events, people and institutions are shaped by currents that sometimes reach back hundreds of years.⁠[12]

History Today editor Paul Lay named the book among the best history books of 2018, describing it as more than 1,000 pages long and the product of at least 20 years’ work, and called Amanat “one of the leading scholars of Iran.”⁠[13]

He taught at Yale from 1983 to 2021. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences retirement tribute said that for years he was the university’s sole historian of Iran, the Muslim world, the Middle East and the Persianate world, teaching courses such as “The Making of Modern Iran,” and noted that Iran: A Modern History was being translated into Chinese, Persian, Turkish and Arabic and that Pivot of the Universe was in its seventh edition.⁠[14]

He appeared on episode 334 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls him a historian at Yale specializing in the modern history of Iran; topics included the Mahsa Amini protests, propaganda, Iranian culture, the Islamic Revolution, the CIA in Iran, Khomeini and Khamenei, nuclear weapons, Israel and the future of Iran.⁠[15]

On February 6, 2023, Christ’s College, Cambridge, held an event on the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests to place the 2022 Iran protests in context; Amanat spoke virtually alongside Ali AnsariAli AnsariAli Ansari is the founder and CEO of micro1, working on AI recruiting and human-expert data for model training.Open the full entry of the University of St Andrews and took part in a panel discussion with the Master, Simon McDonald.⁠[16]

In 2025 Cornell University Press published The Caspian World: Connections and Contentions at a Modern Eurasian Crossroads, which he co-edited with Kevin Gledhill and Kayhan A. Nejad.⁠[6]

The book’s description presents the Caspian Sea as a site where the Russian, Persian, Ottoman and British empires competed and collaborated, and examines it as a space of multi-sided exchange.⁠[17]

On May 30–31, 2025, Yale held the conference “The Royal Domain: Empire in Qajar Iran and the Nineteenth-Century Persianate World,” at which his former students presented new research on empire in Qajar and Persianate history to celebrate his four decades of teaching; the conference description credits him with establishing Yale’s Council on Middle East Studies and Program in Iranian Studies.⁠[18]

Yale Center Beijing and the Yale Club of Beijing announced an online talk by him on June 9, 2026, “Iran: from Domestic Protest to Global Crisis,” analyzing Iran’s current domestic and diplomatic crises; the event biography says he has served as director of the Ghasem Ghani Project at Yale University Library.⁠[19]

Personal website: Public link: https://www.abbasamanat.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[6]

Yale University: Official website: https://www.yale.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[14]