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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iran
Index
The tomb of Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna by the West), a famous mathematician who
died in A.D. 1037
Courtesy LaVerle Berry
At Karim Khan's death, another struggle for power among the
Zands, Qajars, and other tribal groups once again plunged the
country into disorder and disrupted economic life. This time Agha
Mohammad Qajar defeated the last Zand ruler outside Kerman in 1794
and made himself master of the country, beginning the Qajar dynasty
that was to last until 1925. Under Fath Ali (1797-1834), Mohammad
Shah (1834-48), and Naser ad Din Shah (1848-96) a degree of order,
stability, and unity returned to the country. The Qajars revived
the concept of the shah as the shadow of God on earth and exercised
absolute powers over the servants of the state. They appointed
royal princes to provincial governorships and, in the course of the
nineteenth century, increased their power in relation to that of
the tribal chiefs, who provided contingents for the shah's army.
Under the Qajars, the merchants and the ulama, or religious
leaders, remained important members of the community. A large
bureaucracy assisted the chief officers of the state, and, in the
second half of the nineteenth century, new ministries and offices
were created. The Qajars were unsuccessful, however, in their
attempt to replace the army based on tribal levies with a
European-style standing army having regular training, organization,
and uniforms.
Early in the nineteenth century, the Qajars began to face
pressure from two great world powers, Russia and Britain. Britain's
interest in Iran arose out of the need to protect trade routes to
India, while Russia's came from a desire to expand into Iranian
territory from the north. In two disastrous wars with Russia, which
ended with the Treaty of Gulistan (1812) and the Treaty of
Turkmanchay (1828), Iran lost all its territories in the Caucasus
north of the Aras River. Then, in the second half of the century,
Russia forced the Qajars to give up all claims to territories in
Central Asia. Meanwhile, Britain twice landed troops in Iran to
prevent the Qajars from reasserting a claim to Herat, lost after
the fall of the Safavids. Under the Treaty of Paris in 1857, Iran
surrendered to Britain all claims to Herat and territories in
present-day Afghanistan.
The two great powers also came to dominate Iran's trade and
interfered in Iran's internal affairs. They enjoyed overwhelming
military and technological superiority and could take advantage of
Iran's internal problems. Iranian central authority was weak;
revenues were generally inadequate to maintain the court,
bureaucracy, and army; the ruling class was divided and corrupt;
and the people suffered exploitation by their rulers and governors.
When Naser ad Din acceded to the throne in 1848, his prime
minister, Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir, attempted to strengthen the
administration by reforming the tax system, asserting central
control over the bureaucracy and the provincial governors,
encouraging trade and industry, and reducing the influence of the
Islamic clergy (see Glossary)
and foreign powers. He established a
new school, the Dar ol Fonun, to educate members of the elite in
the new sciences and in foreign languages. The power he
concentrated in his hands, however, aroused jealousy within the
bureaucracy and fear in the king. He was dismissed and put to death
in 1851, a fate shared by earlier powerful prime ministers.
In 1858 officials like Malkam Khan began to suggest in essays
that the weakness of the government and its inability to prevent
foreign interference lay in failure to learn the arts of
government, industry, science, and administration from the advanced
states of Europe. In 1871, with the encouragement of his new prime
minister, Mirza Hosain Khan Moshir od Dowleh, the shah established
a European-style cabinet with administrative responsibilities and
a consultative council of senior princes and officials. He granted
a concession for railroad construction and other economic projects
to a Briton, Baron Julius de Reuter, and visited Russia and Britain
himself. Opposition from bureaucratic factions hostile to the prime
minister and from clerical leaders who feared foreign influence,
however, forced the shah to dismiss his prime minister and to
cancel the concession. Nevertheless, internal demand for reform was
slowly growing. Moreover, Britain, to which the shah turned for
protection against Russian encroachment, continued to urge the shah
to undertake reforms and open the country to foreign trade and
enterprise as a means of strengthening the country. In 1888 the
shah, heeding this advice, opened the Karun River in Khuzestan to
foreign shipping and gave Reuter permission to open the country's
first bank. In 1890 he gave another British company a monopoly over
the country's tobacco trade. The tobacco concession was obtained
through bribes to leading officials and aroused considerable
opposition among the clerical classes, the merchants, and the
people. When a leading cleric, Mirza Hasan Shirazi, issued a
fatva (religious ruling) forbidding the use of tobacco, the
ban was universally observed, and the shah was once again forced to
cancel the concession at considerable cost to an already depleted
treasury.
The last years of Naser ad Din Shah's reign were characterized
by growing royal and bureaucratic corruption, oppression of the
rural population, and indifference on the shah's part. The tax
machinery broke down, and disorder became endemic in the provinces.
New ideas and a demand for reform were also becoming more
widespread. In 1896, reputedly encouraged by Jamal ad Din al
Afghani (called Asadabadi because he came from Asadabad), the
well-known Islamic preacher and political activist, a young Iranian
assassinated the shah.
Data as of December 1987
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