This volume presents the Persian edition and the first-ever English translations of Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani's Takvin va Tashri (Genesis and Canonical Lawgiving).

Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani (1854-1896) was an Iranian intellectual, philosopher and secular nationalist whose iconoclastic ideas about modernisation and opposition to the Qajar monarchy would be taken up during the Constitutional Revolution and by later thinkers such as Ahmad Kasravi. In this book, Kermani argues for an evolutionary understanding of the origins and roles of societal institutions and divine ideas, presenting the concept of God as a psychological projection. With a critical commentary that places Kermani's ideas in the context of Qajar-era Iran, this important primary source will be of value to scholars and students of Iranian intellectual history.

Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani (1854-1896) was an Iranian philosopher and intellectual. Born to a prosperous family in Kerman, Iran, Kermani spent the majority of his career in Istanbul where he became a prominent opponent of the Qajar monarchy. Influenced by Western science and thought and Islamic reform, he wrote numerous articles, political pamphlets, poems and philosophical and theological treatises before his execution by the Persian state.


Behzad Zerehdaran is a research fellow at Philipps University of Marburg, Germany. He is the author of Politics and Poetica of Rights in Modern Iran (2024). He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia.