My dissertation offers a history of the modern Iranian prison from the late Qajar era of the late 19th century to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Starting from the truism that all modern Iranian intellectuals and movements have cut their political teeth within the four walls of Iran's penal institutions, my dissertation argues that the prison is a preeminent site from which Iranian political and public discourses have been articulated. Through an examination of state archives as well as political and literary texts, I argue that questions of citizenship, rights, criminality, embodiment, and martyrdom were all constituted in the shadow of the peculiar intimacy between the state and its prisoners.