The purpose of this paper is to critically reframe the origins of revolutionary historiography in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In this instance, the role of the clergy is paramount because they have been provided a pivotal position in the movement of history. Efforts at mythologizing the role of the clergy in modern Iranian history predate the 1979 Revolution. The pre-revolution traditional clergy began historicizing the Khomeini-led movement of 1961-1964 as a revolutionary (as opposed to a reactionary) force as early as the autumn of 1962. This is a historical conjuncture highlighted by the first instantiations of oppositional armed struggle against the monarchy and state-led passive reforms. Using the revolutionary clerical historiography and Islamic Republic of Iran’s complex web of revolutionary history institutes as objects of case study, the present paper adopts a multidisciplinary analytical framework in the politics of memory. Through the integration of classic notions such as collective memory (Halbwachs), myth-building and ideology (Sorel), and sacred time (Eliade) into an analytical framework informed by notions of state historical engineering (Wilson), this undertaking proposes a ‘clergy-centred’ approach insofar as the main historical actors are considered ‘guardians of faith and freedom’ rather than simply Islamist. This angle necessarily draws analysis into a domain of inquiry untapped by prevailing studies. A richer understanding of politics and religion in Iran today would be inconceivable without such theoretical manoeuvrings. The paper, thus, argues for a paradigmatic shift of revolutionary clerical historiography from a nativist and organic intellectual force into a memory toolkit for the purposes of state propaganda in the aftermath of the Islamic Republic’s inception. In this variation of history, a Khomeinist myth is positioned as a doctrinal Tersanctus for both the ruling elite and their loyal opposition in contemporary Iran. Clerical historiography identified the Khomeini-led movement as the historical continuation of a long-standing anti-despotic and anti-colonial movement of the great clergy that predated the Constitutional Revolution (1905-11). In so doing, it introduced a clergy-framed periodization of modern Iranian history and contested the dominant secular narratives of the time. In the post-revolutionary period, the Khomeinist clergy readily deployed this ‘narrative structure’ to build the main contours of the Islamic Republic’s official historiography. Thirty-one years later, this “clergy-centred narrative of the Islamic Revolution” functions as the official narrative in Islamic Republic of Iran and its sanctity is safeguarded by a host of state-sponsored revolutionary history institutes.