Qajar Dynasty
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According to Perspolis website, Agha Mohammad Khan established the Qajar dynasty by defeating numerous rivals and controlling all of Iran.
By 1794, he had eliminated all his rivals, including Lotf ’Ali Khan, the last of the Zand dynasty, and had reasserted Iranian sovereignty over the former Iranian territories in Georgia and the Caucasus. In 1796 he was formally crowned as shah and established his capital at Tehran, a village near the ancient city of Rey (now Shahr-e Rey).
Agha Mohammad was assassinated in 1797 and succeeded by his nephew, Fath Ali Shah.
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Fath Ali Shah ruled from 1797 to 1834. Under Fath Ali Shah, Iran went to war against Russia, which was expanding from the north into the Caucasian mountains, an area of historical Iranian interest and influence.
Under the terms of the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813, Iran recognized Russia ’s annexation of Georgia and ceded to Russia most of the north Caucasian region. A second war with Russia in the 1820s ended even more disastrously for Iran, which in 1828 was forced to sign the Treaty of Turkmanchai acknowledging Russian sovereignty over the entire area north of the Aras River (territory comprising present-day Armenia and Azerbaijan ).
Fath Ali was succeeded in 1834 by his grandson Mohammad Shah, who fell under the influence of Russia and made two unsuccessful attempts to capture Herat. When Mohammad Shah died in 1848, the succession passed to his son Nassereddin.
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| Nassereddin Shah (1848-1896) |
During Nassereddin Shah’s reign, western science, technology, and educational methods were introduced into Iran at the behest of his advisor Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir.
Nassereddin Shah tried to exploit the mutual distrust between Great Britain and Russia to preserve Iran ’s independence, but foreign interference and territorial encroachment increased under his rule. He was not able to prevent Britain and Russia from encroaching into regions of traditional Iranian influence. He took huge foreign loans to finance expensive personal trips to Europe.
In 1856, Britain prevented Iran from reasserting control over Herat, which had been part of Iran in Safavid times but had been under non-Iranian rule since the mid-18th century. Britain supported the city’s incorporation into Afghanistan, a country Britain helped create in order to extend eastward the buffer between its Indian territories and Russia ’s expanding empire. Britain also extended its control to other areas of the Persian Gulf during the 19th century.
Constitutional Revolution
When Nassereddin Shah was assassinated in 1896, the crown passed to his son Mozaffareddin Shah who was a weak and ineffectual ruler.
Royal extravagance and the absence of revenues exacerbated financial problems. The shah spent two large loans from Russia, partly on trips to Europe. Public anger fed on the shah’s propensity for granting concessions to Europeans in return for generous payments to him and his officials. People began to demand curbs on royal authority and the establishment of the rule of law, as their concern over foreign, and especially Russian, influence grew.
The shah’s failure to respond to protests by the religious establishment, the merchants, and other classes led the merchants and clerical leaders in January 1906 to take refuge in mosques in Tehran and outside the capital to avoid any arrest. When the shah reneged on a promise to permit the establishment of a “house of justice“ or consultative assembly, 10,000 people, led by the merchants, took sanctuary in June in the compound of the British legation in Tehran.
In August, the shah was forced to issue a decree for establishing a constitution. In October, an elected assembly convened and drew up a constitution that provided for strict limitations on royal power, an elected parliament or Majlis with wide powers to represent the people, and a government with a Cabinet subject to confirmation by the Majlis.
The shah signed the constitution on December 30, 1906. He died five days later. The Supplementary Fundamental Laws approved in 1907 provided, within limits, for freedom of press, speech, and association, and for security of life and property. The Constitutional Revolution marked the end of the medieval period in Iran.
Mozaffareddin’s son Mohammad Ali Shah (1907-09), with the aid of Russia, attempted to rescind the constitution and abolish the parliamentary government. After several disputes with members of the Majlis, in June 1908 he used his Russian-officered Persian Cossacks Brigade to bomb the Majlis building, arrest many of the deputies, and close down the assembly. Resistance to the shah, however, coalesced in Tabriz, Isfahan, Rasht, and elsewhere. In July 1909, constitutional forces marched from Rasht and Isfahan to Tehran, deposed the shah, and reestablished the constitution. The ex-shah went into exile in Russia.
Ahmad Shah, who succeeded to the throne at age 11, proved to be incompetent and was unable to preserve the integrity of Iran or the fate of his dynasty. The occupation of Iran during World War I (1914-18) by Russian, British, and Ottoman troops was a blow from which Ahmad Shah never effectively recovered.
With a coup d’Žtat in February 1921, Reza Khan (ruled as Reza Shah Pahlavi, 1925-41) grabbed political power. Ahmad Shah was formally deposed by the Majlis (national consultative assembly) in October 1925 while he was in Europe, and that assembly declared the termination of the Qajar rule.
