Reflections of Iranian Social Problems in the Documents of the Supreme Court, Beginning of the 14/20 Century

Social studies in Iran have focused on today’s situation and, for various reasons, have been ignorant of historical approaches. Since the nineteenth century, due to Iran’s extensive contacts with the West, many social macroeconomic problems have emerged, and some of them have played a crucial role in the production of social structures and social relations, hence the full understanding of today’s major social problems needs the understanding of the complexities and evolution of historical problems up to this day. Such an understanding, however, is difficult to arrive at since identifying and describing the historical issues of each period is heavily influenced by the thinking system of the socio-political power of its time. In this research, a categorization of issues is presented based on a source containing unique data from the challenges and issues of the early twentieth century Iran. The archived documents of the Divan-e Adliyeh Aazam, based on their legal and judicial nature, provide a set of data that will answer the question as to what were the macrosocial issues of Iran in the period under consideration.