This chapter attempts to trace a genealogy of the post-revolutionary rowshanfekran-e dini as a social and political reality and their historical entwinement with elements of the Islamic left that would in later years emerge as 'reformists'. In other words, it proffers a political genealogy and account of the historical articulation of the reformist dispositif. It thus details how a politically engaged assortment of intellectuals, journalists, political activists, and the disparate institutions within and between which they operated came to be identified and identify one another under the banner of 'religious intellectualism' and 'reformists', amongst others. It describes the various stages of the Islamic left’s political marginalisation and how it came to pass and discusses the historical coalescence of the reformist apparatus and its routinised network of reading groups, periodicals, newspapers, research circles, and think tanks incorporating the activities of public intellectuals ascribing to the rowshanfekr-e dini moniker, each possessing varying degrees of social and political capital vis-à-vis the post-revolutionary order.