https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzSaow5H1F0

A compelling lecture by Dr. Farzin Vejdani titled “Policing, Punishment, and Authority in Iran”, presented by Farhang Foundation in partnership with the Iranian Studies Initiative at UC Santa Barbara.

Lecture was conducted on October 11, 2025.

In this lecture, Dr. Vejdani draws on a rich array of multilingual primary sources to examine how in Qajar-era Iran the boundaries between public and private spaces often corresponded with jurisdictional friction between governmental authorities and religious scholars. He explores how “private” gatherings in domestic residences—featuring music, alcohol, and prostitution—were at times tolerated by local police, yet vehemently opposed by religious authorities who held different conceptions of privacy and public order. Furthermore, Vejdani shows how certain sacred spaces—shrines, mosques, royal stables, telegraph offices—functioned as refuges for convicted criminals, grounded in both Islamic prohibitions of violence on holy grounds and Iranian imperial traditions of sanctuary and redress.

About Dr. Vejdani: He is an Associate Professor of Middle Eastern History at Toronto Metropolitan University (PhD, Yale University 2009). His recent book, Private Sins, Public Crimes: Policing, Punishment, and Authority in Iran (Yale University Press, 2024), builds the foundation for this lecture. His earlier work includes Making History in Iran: Education, Nationalism, and Print Culture (Stanford University Press, 2014)