Iranians' Defensive Idea When Confronting Modern Warfare (1218-1243 AH)

 
Iran faced a defensive position when confronting the devastating Russian tsarist battles. The present study aims to analyze the reasons of the formation of defensive idea and its dimensions in the narrations of intellectual agents (historians, poets, theologians) living in Fath-Ali Shah's era. The results of this study, that used a historical analysis method, show that reminding readers of vivid memories or archetypes belonging to Iranian territorial models happened in order to expand this honorable historical past and in order to fight decadence and to go past crises, which would both raise the readers' awareness toward external threats and reproduce country-religious symbols, with the intention of emphasizing the necessity of defending the boundaries and borders. This type of multi-faceted actions foregrounded historical awareness-raising as a social praxis in critical situations and as a central signified element in the defensive idea. As a result, numerous cases of religious symbols were integrated in the war against archetypes and everyday realities. Representing a mythical view, historical models, hero-centeredness, using and referring to sacred religious texts, depicting sublime human goals of the Islamic troops each reflect part of dimensions of the defensive idea dealt with and reflected by knowledge sources.