In an effort to counteract the negative reputation Iran has earned in parts of the West during the past few decades, many Iranians and Westerners alike point to the country’s “glorious past”—the Achaemenid Empire, for example, where the so-called first charter of human rights was fabricated. Iranians point with pride to poets and other literary greats their country has produced. The verses of the national epic—Shahnameh (Book of Kings), written by Ferdowsi in the eleventh century—are frequently recited, and Hafez-reading (fal-e Hafez) is part of many Iranians’ everyday life. Sa’di’s medieval prose and poetry—recognized for their quality and profound commentaries—are still taught to schoolchildren. With regard to science, Iranians refer to the astonishing eleventh-century Omar Khayyam, who was not only an important mathematician but also authored the Rubaiyat—a collection of poems that captured the imagination of Edward Fitzgerald, who translated it into English in 1859. Avicenna, whose books were standard reading at many medieval European universities, is highly respected for his lasting global impact on medicine.

Until the twentieth century, these and other national heroes were but faint memories. Had it not been for the hard work of a number of diligent scholars, intellectuals, and cultural producers who granted a strong new identity to these heroes, their memories could have fallen into the cracks of Iran’s Westernization and modernization processes. Thus, it is not far-fetched to claim that the essence of Iranians’ pride partially owes to the construction of a series of modern memorials that rose above the erstwhile, dilapidated—at times even “lost”—graves of Iran’s past heroes. Indeed, these modern buildings, according to Talinn Grigor’s Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs, “salvage[d] Iran’s national and international reputation as an ancient, yet modern, world power” (18).

With erudite scholarship, Grigor reveals how Iran created a novel view of itself through the country’s past heroes.Covering more than one hundred years of mostly unexamined primary literature in Persian, English, Armenian, German, and French, Grigor traces the careers of a generation of architects, archeologists, architectural critics, art historians, ethnologists, and Iranian intelligentsia who spent a lifetime “building Iran.” Building Iran is not a mere account of the process of monument building, however; “architecture was not,” Grigor informs the reader, “only a symbol of progress and modernity, but also a means to those ends” (13).

The Pahlavi era, 1925–79, is the principal period discussed in Building Iran. But Grigor goes beyond this phase of Iran’s modern history to explore essential information from times prior and subsequent to the reigns of Reza Shah (1925–41) and Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1941–79). The book begins at the end of the reign of the Qajar dynasty (1794–1925), when an emerging hybrid architectural style “synthesized European, pre-Islamic, and Islamic visual traditions” (11). Largely due to the influence of European and European-educated specialists, this was not a mere “translation of Western schemes to a passive space but, rather, a negotiation with unique set of conditions, limitations, and possibilities” (11). These negotiations took place in the Society of National Heritage (SNH), which had existed since the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, had its roots in the secret societies (anjomans) of the late-Qajar era, and was an organized institution integral to the massive project of Iran’s modernization (17–21). Officially established in 1922 (and terminated in 1934, to be re-launched in 1944), the SNH became a venue through which more than sixty monuments, preservation projects, and Iran’s first archeological museum and modern national library were constructed.

Building Iran’s first chapter deals with the goals of the founding members of the SNH, including the German archeologist Ernst Herzfeld (indirectly affiliated with the society) and the French architect and archeologist Andre Godard (director of archeological undertakings) as well as Iranian intelligentsia (including the court minister, Abd al-HusaynTeymurtash; the foremost historian of modern Iranian education, Isa Sadiq; the author of The History of Ancient Iran (1933) Hasan Pirnia; and the Zoroastrian representative to parliament, Arbab Keikhosrow Shahrokh). Inspired partially by figures like Shahrokh, who was a force behind the revival of the Achaemenid and Sasanian architecture in the administrative buildings of the 1930s, and in part by a Western inclination toward elevating the Aryan race, these men believed in the Aryan supremacy of Iran and did their best to give an image to this idea. “Cultivating a good taste,” by following ideals of the West while clinging to Iran’s “glorious past,” was indeed the achievement of this group. The book’s first chapter is also a testimony to the process of the bureaucratization of the discipline of architecture. While other studies have addressed certain aspects of these institutions in the context of archeology (see, for example, Kamyar Abdi, “Nationalism, Politics, and the Development of Archeology in Iran,” American Journal of Archeology 105, no. 1 (2001): 51–76; and Mohammad Gholi Majd, The Great American Plunder of Persia’s Antiquities, 1925–1941, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003), no other study of modern Iran has so meticulously dealt with these institutions in connection to the field of architecture.

The story of memorials to Iranian heroes begins in chapter 2. Entitled “Inventing Heritage,” this chapter is the tale of how the gap between “living traditions” and “invented heritage” was filled (75). Ferdowsi, whose original tomb and its exact location were at first unclear to the SNH members, gave Iranians an opportunity to both nurture and validate a “place” for this excellent poet of the Shahnameh. Ferdowsi’s monument in Tus (near Mashhad) invoked a national spirit (zogh-e melli) for modern Iran; it “was a mirror to the early Pahlavi politics, aspirations, and vision, for it was not just a new architectural vocabulary but a novel definition and function ascribed to public symbols, spaces, and practices in modern Iran” (75).

Chapter 3, “Refashioning the Fatherland,” describes the “metamorphosis” of Hafez’s old grave (the so-called “metal cage” built originally by the Qajar ruler Naser al-Din Shah) from what was seen as a tasteless structure devoid of value into a new memorial (83). By making the baldachin over the tomb resemble a Sufi hat, its French architect, Maxime Siroux, sought to capture what he perceived to be the essence of Hafez’s character as a Sufi. Dealing with Sufi and Muslim national heroes from Islamicate Iran, this chapter delves into intricate analyses by foreigners regarding the pre- and post-Pahlavi periods as well as pre-and post-Islamic histories of Iran. The construction of Hafez’s tomb coincided with the time when the nation’s “father” (Reza Shah) was forced into exile, becoming what Grigor refers to as a “fallen modernist” (104). Subsequently, Grigor describes the character of Reza Shah as the “architect” of Modern Iran—one who, “like most reformists of the 1920s and 1930s worldwide, made good use of architecture” (105). While focused mostly on the “metamorphosis” of Hafez’s tomb, chapter 3 addresses two other memorials in Shiraz: the mausoleum of Sa’di and a relatively small memorial for Shah Shoja, executed by a group of Iranian architects led by Mohsen Forughi and Houshang Seyhoun (1952 and 1965, respectively). By the 1930s, the SNH put an end to the French monopoly over archeological excavations in Iran; Iranian specialists were thus commissioned formational projects. In addition to describing the monuments, this chapter reveals interesting details about the atmosphere of the city of Shiraz, which was not only very hospitable to foreign and regional tourists but also had a reputation for embracing a culture of bourgeois entertainment in public spaces, including graveyards.

Chapter 4, “Aryanism and the Museum,” deals with the work of a group of Beaux-Arts-educated architects such as Seyhoun, who were assigned the tombs of Omar Khayyam, Avicenna, and the militant hero Nader Shah. These sites allowed both appropriation and resistance (122). Like Hafez’s memorial, these latter graves were not built from scratch. Nader Shah’s original tomb was from the late eighteenth century, and Ibn-Sina’s tomb chamber in Hamadan was built by a Qajar princess in the late nineteenth century. The SNH carefully documented the “before” and “after” versions of these structures. Subsequently, the society’s various publications showcased the traditional, generic, Qajar styles juxtaposed with “modern,” simple, and soaring structures swollen with pride (121). As these structures were demolished and rebuilt, Grigor asserts, questions were raised about Iran’s national identity; these debates, along with the monuments that inspired them, eventually came to exemplify the clash of two architectural movements in post-World War II Iran: “co-opted Modernism and return to roots” (122).

This concept is further explored in chapter 5, “Traditionalism and the White Revolution,” in which Grigor describes building the tomb of two other medieval Iranian poets, Omar Khayyam and Baba Taher, as well as that of the first modernist Iranian painter, Kamal al-Molk (all completed in the 1960s). The decorative features of these mausoleums resembled those of Timurid and Safavid buildings; each was embellished by inlays of calligraphy and floral forms on blue tiles. The emergence of this architectural trend was due to the “secularized Islamic aesthetics” that was integral to the making of a new national identity—one that combined aspects of Iran’s ancient and Islamicate histories (146–47). To be sure, these constructions coincided with the Mohammad Reza Shah’s land reform laws of the White Revolution, which reduced religious endowment revenues. Meanwhile, the Shah was declared both secular and religious leader of Iran, and the Muslim calendar was replaced with the royal calendar (162). This period allows Grigor to investigate how Islam in Iran was secularized and historicized (105). She addresses, for example, the 1973 publication of The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture by Nader Ardalan and Laleh Bakhtiar, describing how—unlike Reza Shah’s period when Islam was suppressed—Iran’s Islamicate history during the 1960s and 1970s was “co-opted” (162). Indeed, the most significant contribution of Building Iran can be found in the last three chapters, where Grigor describes the ways in which the traditional ritual of ziyarat (Shiite pilgrimage to sacred sites) was gradually replaced by the modern secular task of siyahat (touristic explorations). In the former decades of the Pahlavi era, the monuments intentionally were built for only non-religious heroes. Until 1937, Western travelers were not welcomed in religious mausoleums, such as Imam Reza’s in Mashhad (33). In the 1960s and 1970s, however, many religious sites were, for the first time, defined as historical and tourist spots.

Like the preceding chapters, chapter 6, “Masculinist Myths of Modernism,” is concerned with the process of memorial making. This time around, however, the tomb—whose design was inspired by a tenth-century Samanid mausoleum in Bukhara—is not raised to celebrate one of Iran’s heroes. Rather, it commemorates the founders of the American Institute for Persian Art and Archaeology (now known as the Asia Institute) who were two of the most powerful Western voices behind the revival of the spirit of Iran’s “glorious past” through their monumental A Survey of Persian Art (1964): America’s Arthur Upham Pope and his colleague and wife (another accomplished scholar of Persian art), Phyllis Ackerman. The chapter is a broad sweep of fresh material, including the role of Queen Farah Pahlavi as a supporter of women designers and scholars (including Ackerman) and a commissioner of the arts and preservation projects. It also provides theoretically engaging arguments within the discourse of feminism, patronage, and preservation, which nonetheless leave the reader with some questions that might have been addressed had the scope of the book permitted. The Shiraz Arts Festivals sponsored by the Queen, for example, were frequently criticized for their overwhelmingly Western avant-garde content and were even interpreted as nihilistic by some contemporary commentators (see, for example, Robert Gluck, “The Shiraz Arts Festival: Western Avant-Garde Arts in 1970s Iran,” Leonardo 40, no. 1 [February 2007]: 20–28.).Therefore, Farah Pahlavi’s embrace of a “return” to Iranian traditions deserves a more nuanced analysis (182–85).

In the epilogue, Grigor discusses the process of reinterpretation of the Pahlavi monuments as they morphed into symbols of the Islamic Republic regime in the opening years of the 1980s. While some were harshly damaged (for example, epigraphs praising the Pahlavi monarchs were removed), others stayed intact and were assigned new meanings (for example, Shahyad [Memorial to the Shah] became Azadi [freedom]). This last section conveys yet another episode in how the “glorious past” has been dealt with in Iran; this time, however, this past lingered as a challenge as politicians went through the complicated process of redefining it according to the principles of an all-Islamic state.

Building Iran is not the first to study the modernist monuments of West Asia. Tapati Guha-Thakurta’s Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004) is an apt match. Grigor’s work is exceptional, however, in that she delivers the history of modern architecture in a nation that was never officially colonized, but under certain circumstances could be conceived of as a colonial (and postcolonial) territory. Moreover, Building Iran is not just about how Western stylistic influences changed Iranian architecture. Instead, Grigor invites her readers to mull over the combats of cultural politics that were waged due to the active participation of a privileged group of Iranians. Consequently, one could place her work in the “gray” zone of studies of (post)colonialism and architecture. In this sense, the book is also akin to Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830–1914 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008) in which Zeynep Celik reconsiders the conventional black-and-white East-West influences on the architectural practices of Arab regions to provide a more nuanced understanding of the cross-cultural influences of non-Western (Ottoman) and Western (French) empires.

Building Iran is a rich text with so many details that are carefully traced from myriad regional and international archives and then woven together into a coherent and beautifully written narrative. Yet just as Grigor has done in other publications (e.g., Talinn Grigor, “Of Metamorphosis: Meaning on Iranian Terms,” Third Text 17, no. 3 (2003): 207–225), here, too, she could have offered further theoretical arguments concerning issues of memory, history, and nostalgia as they overlap with architecture. Overall, however, Building Iran significantly enhances an understanding of architectural practices in modern Iran. Complete with a comprehensive index and bibliography, the book is superbly designed as a whole and contains a corpus of (mostly) colored photographs that will better inform those unfamiliar with Iran’s architecture. Mind‐expanding, not only for scholars of modern Iran or the Middle East, this study will also appeal to students of non-Western modern architecture. Above all, the book historicizes the motives behind an infatuation in Iran with things past. As a result, it is a must-read for all lovers of Iranian culture.