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Rouhani visits Constitution House of Tabriz
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TEHRAN – President Hassan Rouhani paid a visit on Wednesday to the Constitution House of Tabriz during his tour of East Azarbaijan.
The Constitution House of Tabriz is a historical edifice located next to the Great Bazaar of Tabriz.
The house is the gathering place of the leaders, activists and sympathizers of the movement during the years which led to Constitutional Revolution, between 1905 and 1907.
The revolution led to the establishment of a parliament in Iran during the Qajar Dynasty.
Director of the Cultural Heritage Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) Masud Soltanifar accompanied Rouhani during the visit.
Rouhani called the Persian Constitutional Revolution one of the most important political and social reforms in the history of Iran and the Middle East at large.
Iran was the “first country” in the region which launched a revolution to achieve “justice” and create a “law-abiding” society in order to save the country from “dictatorship”, he explained.
“The Persian Constitutional Revolution is the most important political movement after the Tobacco Protest in Iran,” he added.
The Tobacco Protest was a Shia revolt in Iran against an 1890 tobacco concession granted by the Shah to Great Britain.
The protest was held by Tehran merchants in solidarity with the clerics. It climaxed in a widely-obeyed December 1891 fatwa against tobacco use supposedly issued by Grand Ayatollah Mirza Hassan Shirazi.
People as well as great scholars, clerics and intellectuals joined the constitutional revolution, Rouhani stated.
He said that the young generation in Iran should get acquainted with the constitutional movement as one of the most important bases of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
The house is a part of Iranian history through which, the present can understand the origins of democracy, he explained.
As part of his regular provincial tours Rouhani, with a high-ranking delegation, travelled East Azarbaijan Province on Wednesday and Thursday.
The Constitution House of Tabriz was constructed by order of Haj Mehdi Kuzekonani in 1868. It includes a two-floor building with internal and external part, with the Qajar period architecture.
Kuzekonani was a merchant in the Bazaar of Tabriz. With the initiation of the Constitutional revolution and the uprising of people in Tabriz, Haj Mehdi joined the revolution and became one of the major financiers of the movement.
In the same time he used the house as a place for the meeting of the revolutionary leaders and a place for publication of underground paper of the movement. The house became important in the history once again just after World War II when it is used as a place for Azerbaijan's Democrat Party meeting center (1946-1947). In 1975 the house was registered by the Cultural Heritage of Iran.
PHOTO: President Hassan Rouhani paid visit to the Constitution House of Tabriz in East Azarbaijan Provicne on May 20 (Photo: President.ir)
Source: Tehran Times
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