Flag of Iran

How to read it

Article 18 of Iran’s constitution says the official flag is green, white and red, with the special emblem of the Islamic Republic and the motto “Allahu akbar”. The present flag was officially adopted on 29 July 1980, Store norske leksikon records, and keeps the colours of the flag used under the shah until 1979. The emblem sits in red in the middle of the white stripe, and where the white meets the green and the red the motto runs in white Kufic script, 11 times on the green and 11 times on the red. The emblem is a stylised form of the word Allah. Its designer, the architect Hamid Nadimi, won a national competition for a new emblem announced in the spring of 1979, Maleki writes; she gives 9 June 1980 as the day it was approved, where Store norske leksikon gives 9 May 1980.

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What the emblem in the centre shows

The Norwegian encyclopedia Store norske leksikon describes the emblem as the word Allah, written in a strongly stylised form: an upright tulip between four crescents. The tulip is meant to recall everyone who has died for Iran’s cause. Maleki, who interviewed Nadimi in 2009, writes that he drew the word to look like a tulip and a lotus flower, both symbols in ancient Persia. In her account the crescents are shaped to recall the phrase “There is no god but God”, the upright stroke in the middle stands for balance and for iron, after the Quran’s Surah al-Hadid, and the doubling mark (tashdid) above it doubles that stroke’s strength. When the emblem is used on its own it is usually printed in green.

Why “Allahu akbar” is on the flag 22 times

The number is a date: the revolution’s victory came on the 22nd day of the 11th month of the Iranian calendar, Maleki writes. The inscription runs 11 times along the lower edge of the green and 11 times along the upper edge of the red. Its lettering resembles the maʿqeli or bannaʾi Kufic that Persians used on brickwork under the Seljuks and Timurids. Nadimi told her that his first sketch of the inscription ended up looking like “USA” written in lower case, so it was drawn again differently.

Telling it from Tajikistan’s flag

Tajikistan’s flag has the same three colours the other way up: red at the top, white and green at the bottom, with the white stripe twice as deep as the others and a yellow crown under an arc of seven yellow stars, in the proportions 1:2. These are the colours Store norske leksikon calls pan-Iranian, also found in Iran’s and Kurdistan’s flags. Iran’s stripes are equal, the green is on top, and it has the red emblem and the two bands of white script.

The lion and sun flag before 1980

Iran first adopted a green, white and red tricolour in 1848, with narrow green and red stripes and a gold lion holding a sword before a rising sun on the white, Store norske leksikon records. A law of 7 October 1907, after the revolution of 1905 and the constitution of 1906, made the three stripes equal, with the lion in the middle of the white. Until 1979 there were three versions: the state flag with the lion, a civil flag without it, and a naval flag with the lion in a wreath of olive and oak; from 1964 the proportions were 4:7. Iranians in exile still use this flag.