Private Sins, Public Crimes: Policing, Punishment, and Authority in Iran

A groundbreaking scholarly study of crime and punishment in Qajar Iran
 
Drawing on a rich array of primary sources in multiple languages, Farzin Vejdani argues that the ambiguity in defining the boundaries between private and public in Qajar Iran often corresponded with the jurisdictional friction between government authorities and religious scholars regarding who had the authority to police and punish public crimes. This ambiguity had implications for the spaces in which illicit acts were carried out: private parties in domestic residences where music, alcohol, and prostitution were present were often tolerated by local police officials but raised the ire of religious authorities and their followers, who raided these residences, ironically in violation of strong Islamic norms of privacy.
 
Crimes that were manifest but remained unpunished triggered a crisis of legitimacy that often coincided with upstart Islamic religious scholars challenging the states authority. Even when the government had every intention of punishing a crime, convicted criminals sought shelter in sanctuariesincluding shrines, mosques, royal stables, and telegraph officeswhich were even more inviolable than private residences. This inviolability, grounded in both Islamic prohibitions of violence on sacred grounds and Iranian imperial traditions of redress, allowed criminals to negotiate a lesser sentence, safe passage for voluntary exile, or forgiveness. See more