Despite its enduring popularity and status as an important work of modern Iranian drama, Bīžan Mofīd's play Šahr-e Qeṣṣe (City of Tales, 1968) has received relatively little scholarly attention*. The present paper addresses this dearth of discussion by presenting a set of preliminary reflections on the work’s critique of society in late Pahlavi Iran. Specifically, it explores how the playwright uses folklore and humor to shape a highly original, linguistically playful discourse influenced by anti-establishment sentiments prevalent among Iranian intellectuals at the time. As a part of this investigation, the play is compared with two other popular works, each of which share different, but equally significant, traits with Šahr-e Qeṣṣe: Ṣamad Behrangī's Māhī-ye Sīyāh-e Kūčūlū (1968) and Aḥmad Shāmlū’s Parīyā (1953/54). The analysis shows that Mofīd shared the critical attitude of Behrangī and Shāmlū, but that he, unlike these writers, did not celebrate the use of force as a means of achieving emancipation. Mofīd thus emerges as a sober and distinctly humanist voice inviting his audience to critical reflection on the nature of social responsibilty rather than rash, ideological action.
*) The work is treated in some detail by Abbas Amanat in Iran: A Modern History (Yale, 2017) and Andrea Ritzel-Moosavi Male in Komödiantische Volkstheatertraditionen in Iran und die Entstehung des iranischen Berufstheaters nach europäschem Vorbild von der Jahrhundertwende bis 1978 (Verlag Peter Lang, 1993). Briefer mentions include William O. Beeman's Iranian Performance Traditions (Mazda, 2011) and Willem Floor's The History of Theater in Iran (Mage, 2005).
