The impact of modernity on the foundations of political thought during the Qajar period

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the evolution of the foundations of Iranian political thought in the face of modernity and to measure its consequences in the political life of Iranians during the Qajar period. The main question is what are the basic epistemological propositions based on the prevailing epistemological principles in Iran before confrontation with modernity, and how did these propositions change after the confrontation? In this study, the impact of modernity on the field of ontology, epistemology and anthropology of Iranian political thought during the Qajar period was investigated and the extent of developments in each of these three sectors and their results were examined. Also, the evolution of the principles of the evolutionary and legislative rule of God and the knowledge of man on the one hand, and the study of the effects of these changes on political thought on the other were explored. The data of this research have been analyzed with a historical approach and within the framework of qualitative analysis method; the desired information was also collected by library-documentary method. The results show that in the beginning, this confrontation was active and the change in political thought and its structures took place while maintaining the general principles of political thought; therefore, we rarely encounter letters that indicate a violation of the established principles of this confrontation.