Fath-Ali Shah Qajar

Agha Mohammad Khan (born about 1742) was castrated as a child on the orders of Adel Shah Afshar and was long a hostage of Karim Khan Zand at Shiraz. After Karim Khan died in March 1779 he escaped from Shiraz, made Tehran his capital and won the war against the Zand successors.

In 1794 he took Kerman, and in September 1795 he sacked Tiflis. He was crowned on the Moghan plain in March 1796 and was murdered at Shusha in June 1797.

Perry writes that his conduct at Kerman “has come down as an exemplar of brutality”. The famous popular story that the eyes were counted or weighed is not in this source; we do not repeat its numbers and give only Iranica’s report.

The same source calls him hard-working, austere and concerned with order, and quotes Forster’s testimony. He had Karim Khan’s bones moved from Shiraz to Tehran and buried under the threshold of his palace so that he could tread on them every day.

Tehran, which he made the capital, is still Iran’s capital. His memory in Iran today is double: the man who reunited the country and a ruthless ruler; both are in the sources.

Fath-Ali Shah took the throne in 1797 and put down revolts by kinsmen and chiefs until 1801. He made his sons governors of provinces: Abbas Mirza in Tabriz, Hosayn-Ali Mirza in Fars, Mohammad-Ali Mirza in Kermanshah.

Amanat writes that, unlike Agha Mohammad Khan’s austerity, his court was lavish. The shah discussed liberty in England with the British envoy John Malcolm.

Amanat writes that his achievement was to turn a tribal khanship into a centralised and stable monarchy. His answer to Malcolm shows he chose absolute rule knowingly and saw its cost, instability.

His official portraits with long beard and crown, now in museums around the world, shaped the common image of “the Qajar shah”.

After the defeats of 1812, and under pressure from Britain, which no longer wanted to fight its Russian ally, Persia accepted the peace of Golestan. Rtishchev dictated the terms, with Gore Ouseley mediating. It was ratified at Tiflis in September 1814.

Persia gave up Georgia, Karabakh and the khanates north of the Aras except Erivan and Nakhchivan. Article 4 made Russia the backer of whichever heir the shah named.

Article 4 looked like a favour to Persia, but it gave Russia a say in the Qajar succession. Iranica writes that the borders were not clearly defined, which prepared the ground for the second war.

Sources disagree on the signing date (12, 21 or 24 October 1813); we show the disagreement and do not choose.

The loss of the Caucasus at Golestan and Turkmanchay remains a lasting wound in Iranians’ historical memory. The line the two treaties drew is today part of Iran’s border with Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The second war (1826–1828) began with the ulama’s call for holy war and pressure from the war party at court. After the defeat near Ganja and the fall of Tabriz, Persia made peace at Turkmanchay, a village south-east of Tabriz.

The treaty ceded Erivan and Nakhchivan, imposed a heavy indemnity and made warships on the Caspian a right of Russia alone. The commercial treaty signed with it fixed customs at five per cent and allowed Russian subjects to be tried only in the presence of a Russian delegate.

Article VIII of the commercial treaty became the model of “capitulations” (legal privileges for foreigners) in Persia, and other powers sought the same rights.

The indemnity appears in three forms in the sources (20 million silver roubles, £4 million, 10 million gold tomans); we show all three.

Iranica writes that the border Turkmanchay drew stayed unchanged until 1991, and Iran’s frontier still follows the Aras. The name “Turkmanchay” is still a byword for an imposed treaty in Persian political language; that is our reading of current usage, not a report from the sources.

Amanat writes that after Turkmanchay the state treasury was bankrupt, and only under British persuasion did the parsimonious shah reluctantly part with a large portion of his own royal treasures to pay the indemnity.

In the same years Russia backed Abbas Mirza, whom the shah had named heir, under Article 4 of Golestan.

This is our reading: in this episode the line between the shah’s property and the country’s wealth was not clear. The state treasury was empty while the shah’s treasure was full, and paying the indemnity for a war the country had lost depended on the shah’s personal will.

The limits of this reading: our source does not say how much treasure was handed over, and we know the shah’s motives only through Amanat.

The question of separating the state budget from the court’s property came back in the constitutional era; linking the two episodes is our reading.