---

The abundance of Iranian jokes, especially about the elite governors of the Qajar era, is important to examine their position in the political life of the mass. Conciseness and irony, as well as the inherent attraction of humor, have fostered the spread of these jokes in society and made them an effective tool in the political struggle of the mass. The question is whether these jokes seek to disrupt one of the official narrative sections of the government and which areas of domination have been denied? Our hypothesis is that among these jokes, the ones that challenged the authority of the state and the inherent nature of its components for the general public have a special place. In the case of jokes denying the authority of the state, there is a clear disobedience of the mass representative to the representative of the government, which leads to the success of representative of the mass, and in the jokes that confront the claims of superior elites, significant personal weaknesses were observed. Simultaneously by this jokes, people challenged the domination of power and dignity, and their efforts were aimed more at neutralizing domination. The theoretical framework of research is based on the theory of "hidden narratives" by James C. Scott, who tried to explain the resistance of the mass to openly criticize power without protest. So far, no research has been done to analyze the political jokes of the pre-constitution period.
 

---

The ritual of "The King of the Sacrificed Camel" is one of the rituals about which various reports have been mentioned in the historical sources of Qajar era. In this ritual, a man who looks like the king, gets on a camel in Eid al-Adha. But the camel is sacrificed, the man falls down, and loses his superficial kingdom in severe humiliation. However, the study attempts to seek why the government allowed a man similar to the kind to be humiliated? And why this ritual is held in Eid al-Adha? The assumption is that the rite follows the rites of "Temporary Kingdoms" that were held from the ancient ages to recent eras in different territories. The people of these territories believed that the weakness or illness of the king caused drought, epidemic, and famine. So, they had to kill the king before the indications of weakness unfold and his ghost could be transferred to his successor in full health. However, after a while, killing the king converted to the killing of a man similar to the king, and then killing of this man was converted to his punishment and humiliation, though in some cultures an animal was sacrificed instead of him. The ritual of "The King of the Sacrificed Camel" contains both the humiliation of the temporary king and the sacrifice of an animal. The similarity of animal sacrifice in this ritual and Eid al-Adha helped the organizers to use the legitimacy of Eid al-Adha to continue this ritual. The study employs the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl.
 
 

---

Research in different fields of political culture of subordinates in the history of Iran is very important. The ruling groups, in their narrative of the current situation, always claimed the prosperity of the country and the satisfaction of the subjects. The public should have challenged this narrative and shared their narrative with their equals. But this action required a media, a media that is immune from the supervision of the lord of power. What the masses of the people had at their disposal were various forms of popular culture. How the masses use these formats and choose some of them as a tool for informing is a point worthy of attention that should be investigated. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the pre-constitutional period in the Qajar era, analyzing how folk ballads found media capability, and how the ballad media found political function in the face of the common people with the ruling elites. Our assumption is that the melodiousness of the folk songs and ballads, their short meters, the humor and the simplicity of the interpretations and descriptions, facilitated their memorization and encouraged the audience to transmit them, and the speed of their publication was also increased. On the other hand, the oral nature of this media allowed the speaker to see feedback and reactions. Audiences could also make their own changes in expressions or themes, which would, thus, become an interactive medium. In subordinate's political activism, folk songs and ballads escaped censorship due to their oral nature, and spread the information that subordinates disseminated through their media and strengthened horizontal links between the masses. This gave media the possibility of changing and manipulating the themes and expressions of the democratic facet ballad. The medium of folk songs and ballads had the function of granting social status and consolidating social norms like any other media that subordinates used against dominant groups.
 

---