While the debates of the first term of Iranian Parliament- the National Consultative Assembly, or Majles (1906-1908) - have long been an important source for historians and other scholars, no serious effort has ever been undertaken to try and properly understand this historical source. As a result, a number of misconceptions exist about the debates of the early parliament and what survives as their minutes. The present paper aims to dispel some of these misconceptions by focusing on two issues: 1) whether - and to what extent - what survived to our day (by the virtue of being published in the Majles newspaper) should be considered the official minutes of the parliament; 2) what were some of the characteristics of the later edition of the minutes published as the supplement to the Official Gazette of Iran. This is achieved by the careful analysis of a number of sources, mainly the debates themselves, legal documents, periodicals and memoirs.