Text Screening (Censorship) in Iran: A Historical Perspective

Censorship has a long history in Iran that has interfered with text production, i.e., original writing as well as translation. This phenomenon seems to have marked the borderline between the government and the ‘enlightened’ intellectuals throughout history in Iran. Different governments have delineated ‘redlines’ for authors and translators and dealt with these constructors of culture based on the definitions they set for those ‘redlines’. This historical research aims at exploring and finding out the features of these ‘redlines’ as well as the mechanisms and rules of text screening (censorship) throughout Iran’s modern era since the importing of the printing press.

Keywords:

Censorship , Self-censorship , Bowdlerization , Text Screening , Mobtazal , Mohāreb , Zālleh , Sanctities , Sensitive Texts , Taboos