“The women of Iran are the most progressive women in the world.”

This statement is attributed here to the American Morgan Shuster, who worked alongside the heroes of Iran’s Constitutional Movement. He wrote it in praise of Iranian women in his 1912 book The Strangling of Persia.

The title of his book referred to the struggle of Iran’s freedom movement amid pressure from the Russian and British governments, the historical despotism of the Qajar shahs, and clerical reaction, which together completed the circle of suffocation around freedom in Iran.

In the same book, one of the valuable sources on the history of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution, he is also rendered here as writing:

“It is highly unlikely that anyone could spend even a short time among Iranians and live with them, witnessing in that association the difficulties they endure with exemplary dignity, without coming to feel affection for Iranians and to support their aspirations for justice.”

During the period when the constitutional revolutionaries employed Shuster as Treasurer-General of Iran, he was able, according to this account, to reform Iran’s tax system at a time when the treasury had been emptied. He imposed taxes upon northern and southern customs revenues claimed by the Russian and British governments, and seized the property of Shoa‘ al-Saltaneh for the benefit of the Constitutional Revolution—an action said to have angered the Russians to the point that they dispatched Cossacks to oppose it.

The splendour of freedom that he saw in Iranian women 114 years ago shines today more brightly than at any previous point in history.

The anima of the Iranian woman is the anima of the Iranian lands. If you want to understand the spirit of Iran, know the Iranian woman. Her incomparable splendour is the enduring splendour of this land.

May International Women’s Day be auspicious for the heroic women of the Iranian lands. As long as they remain, Iran will remain eternal.

Aydin Areta
8 March 2026