This study aimed to explain the conceptual and institutional evolution of family counseling in Iran, from its Islamic roots to its establishment as an academic and professional field in the contemporary period. The central problem was the lack of a historical-analytical account of the relationship between counseling-related functions in the Islamic tradition and the emergence of family counseling within Iran's modern academic system. Employing a qualitative historical-analytical approach and conceptual historiography, the study analyzed documentary data from classical Islamic sources, historical works on judicial institutions, fatwa, and hisbah, as well as sources on the history of psychology and counseling in Iran across three interconnected levels: conceptual, institutional, and discursive. The findings indicated that family counseling did not exist as an independent discipline in the Islamic tradition; however, functions related to guidance, conflict resolution, and family direction can be identified through concepts such as advice, guidance, and consultation, and within institutions like adjudication, fatwa, and hisbah. In the contemporary period, the introduction of modern psychology and the development of academic and professional institutions gradually transferred these functions from traditional structures to specialized ones. Following the Islamic Revolution, efforts to redefine counseling within an Islamic-Iranian framework emerged alongside its academic and professional expansion. The history of family counseling in Iran cannot be understood merely as the transfer of Western knowledge; rather, it represents a multi-layered process of continuity, rupture, conceptual redefinition, and institutional transformation, underscoring the need for a historical-critical reconsideration of the field's foundations while simultaneously incorporating the Islamic-Iranian intellectual heritage and the achievements of modern psychology in developing culturally grounded approaches.