The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran

Drawn from the first-hand accounts of eyewitnesses, Roy Mottahedeh's gripping account of Islam and Politics in revolutionary Iran is widely regarded as one of the best records of that turbulent time ever written.

The true story of a young mullah, his life in the sacred shrine city of Qom, and the dramatic events of the 1979 Revolution, this enthralling account paints a vivid picture of contemporary Iran, while providing a panoramic survey of Muslim, Shi'ite and Persian culture from the Middle Ages to the current day. From the ancient time of Zoroaster to the world of Khomeini, this sweeping saga interweaves biography with history, politics and religion to offer new levels of understanding into Iran’s past, present and future.

Written with feeling, sympathy and clarity, this revised edition includes a new chronology detailing events in Iran from the revolution right up to the present day and Ahmadinejad’s controversial regime.

'Even with news breaking daily in Iran, the first book I send myself and other readers back to has to be Roy Mottahedeh's "The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran," which was first published in 1985. A professor at Harvard, Mottahedeh has written an intellectual history as stirring and graceful as any novel. He sets the intimate biography of a young cleric against the vast epic of Iranian thought from Zoroaster to Avicenna, Kasravi to Khomeini. "The Mantle of the Prophet" is literary, learned, and deeply felt; the writing is splendid, and the story is an education for the Western reader unaware of the powerful tides of Shi'ite and Persian thought over a period of centuries.' – The New Yorker, June 26, 2009

"A masterpiece….[Mottahedeh exposes], with dazzling erudition, the subterranean Sufi and poetic heritage lying just below the surface of Khomeini's seemingly granitelike orthodoxy."–The New York Review of Books