About Shokufeh

Shokufeh

Shokufeh, meaning Blossom, was a Persian-language women's magazine published in Tehran from 1913 to 1919. Issued on a biweekly basis, it was the second women's magazine in Iran, following Danesh, which had appeared briefly in 1910 and 1911. Shokufeh was founded and edited by Maryam Amid Mozayen ol-Saltaneh, a school founder and women's organiser of the late Qajar period, and it became an influential platform for women's issues. It began with education, equality, hygiene, child-rearing and ethics, and gradually addressed more political themes, including national independence and the role of women in Iranian society, before publication ended after its founder's death in 1919.

Foundation and editor

Shokufeh was founded and edited by Maryam Amid Mozayen ol-Saltaneh, also known as Maryam Amid-Semnani. She was the daughter of Aqa Mirza Sayyed Razi Ra'is al-Atebba, a prominent medical advisor, described in other accounts as a high-ranking medical advisor at the Qajar court. Some sources give slightly different starting years, 1912 or 1913, and end years ranging from 1916 to 1919, but the standard magazine account dates Shokufeh from 1913 to 1919 and identifies it as the second-ever Iranian women's magazine. The first, Danesh, had lasted only from 1910 to 1911, so Shokufeh's longer run made it the more sustained early voice of the women's press in Tehran.

Maryam Amid and girls' education

The editor's work for Shokufeh cannot be separated from her work in girls' schooling. In the patriarchal Iranian society of the time, religious conservatives strongly opposed girls' education and most women were illiterate, as families were often reluctant to have their daughters educated. In 1912 Amid-Semnani set up a school for girls with two branches. One branch, Dar al-Elm, offered reading and writing, mathematics, geography and foreign languages, and candidates for admission were required to pass a test set by the Ministry of Education. The other branch, Dar Al-Sanayeh, located in the Abmangel neighbourhood, provided tuition in artistic subjects and handicrafts such as carpet weaving, knitting and hosiery. To encourage families to send their girls to school and keep them there until completion of their studies, she allowed many students to enrol for free. The magazine and the schools were parallel instruments for the same cause.

The Iranian Women's Society

In addition to her editorial work, Mozayen ol-Saltaneh established an Iranian feminist society, the Anjoman Hemmat Khavatin, around the same time as Shokufeh; other accounts name the body she founded as the Iranian Women's Society, Anjoman Khavatin Irani. The objectives of the society, which included the promotion of Iranian industry, education, science and the arts among women, were regularly published in Shokufeh. The magazine therefore functioned partly as the printed organ of an organised women's association, reporting and promoting its aims. As the activities of the women's society expanded, the boundaries of the magazine expanded with it, carrying Shokufeh beyond household and educational topics into public questions.

Early content: equality, education and hygiene

Initially, Shokufeh focused on subjects related to women, including equality, education, hygiene, child-rearing and ethics. Reference accounts summarise its early programme in similar terms: equality of rights, education, upbringing, hygiene and ethics. The magazine was devoted to furthering education and equal rights for women and featured articles on women's rights issues such as early marriage and the lack of educational opportunities for girls. Academic summaries add that it emphasised education as a prerequisite for the nation's advancement, worked to combat superstition and ignorance, highlighted the living conditions of women in other countries, and sought to raise the status of Iranian women through education and health awareness. Comparisons with women abroad were used to motivate Iranian readers to recognise their own worth and pursue new ideals.

Format, script and satire

Shokufeh was released twice a month and originally consisted of four pages printed in traditional Naskh calligraphic script. From the fifth issue onward, the magazine was published in Nastaliq script. It was noted for its use of satire: its entire back cover was initially given over to social caricatures, although these were discontinued after the start of the First World War. The four-page biweekly format was modest, but the combination of argument, practical guidance and a full back page of caricature gave the journal a distinctive identity among Tehran periodicals of the 1910s. In addition to the journal, Amid-Semnani translated several French books into Persian, extending the same educational project into book publishing.

Toward political themes

As the activities of the Iranian Women's Society expanded, Shokufeh began addressing more political themes, such as national independence and the evolving role of women in Iranian society. Other accounts describe the same progression: in the course of the work of the women's society, the topics started to be more political, whereby national independence and the woman's role were addressed. Although the magazine claimed not to interfere in the political sphere dominated by men, its growing engagement with national issues occasionally brought it under censorship. The tension was structural: a journal that promoted Iranian products and industry, national education and women's public organisation was already making national arguments, even when it formally disclaimed interference in men's politics.

Censorship and the limits of the women's press

Shokufeh claimed not to interfere in the men's political sphere, but it was unable always to keep to that line, which brought the magazine under censorship. This record matters because it shows the practical boundary faced by the early women's press in late Qajar Iran. Education, hygiene and ethics were permissible; national independence and an expanded public role for women pressed against official and clerical sensitivities. Scholarship on women of the constitutional era stresses that they initiated publications, associations and comprehensive education campaigns despite opposition from government and from some men. Shokufeh's experience of censorship, within a run that lasted several years, documents both the space that had opened after Danesh and the limits still imposed on it.

Place among early women's magazines

Histories of Iranian women's journalism place Shokufeh second in sequence and central in importance. After the Constitution, magazines and the press frequently published articles and letters by women, and specialised magazines followed: Danesh in 1910, Shokufeh in Tehran under Maryam Amid, and, three years after Shokufeh closed in the usual narrative, Sediqeh Dolatabadi's Zaban-e Zanan in Isfahan. Studies of women's citizenship and of the Qajar women's movement list Shokufeh of 1913 alongside Danesh, Zaban-e Zanan, Alam-e Nesvan and Jamiyat-e Nesvan-e Vatankhah as the defining women's publications of the late Qajar years. Within that group Shokufeh is distinguished by its association link, its schools connection through its editor, and its shift from domestic instruction toward national questions.

End of publication

The publication of Shokufeh was discontinued following the death of Mozayen ol-Saltaneh in 1919. The magazine's dependence on its founder-editor was complete: she had founded it, edited it, written for it under the name Maryam Amid Mozayen al-Saltaneh, founded the associated women's society whose objectives it published, and run the girls' schools whose cause it promoted. When she died, the journal ended. Some scholarly accounts date the effective run to 1916, and transliterations of the title vary, including Shokoufeh, Shokofeh and Shekufeh, but the standard record is a Tehran biweekly women's magazine of 1913 to 1919 that ceased on its founder's death.

Legacy

Shokufeh's legacy is that of the second, and the first sustained, women's magazine in Iran. It carried forward the opening made by Danesh in 1910 and widened it: from education, hygiene and ethics to equal rights, early marriage, national independence and women's public role, published in an organ connected to a women's society and to working girls' schools. Its satirical back-cover caricatures, its change from Naskh to Nastaliq script, its experience of censorship and its end with Maryam Amid Mozayen ol-Saltaneh's death in 1919 together give a compact history of what the early Iranian women's press could achieve in the late Qajar period and of the personal, institutional foundations on which it rested.