Modern Iran
When last we left Elam, the Sassanian Persians had ascended, and are making war against Rome.
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Wars with Rome continued, and by about 560 A.D, a new people, that of the "Gokturks" (of central Asia), had emerged in the east. "Khosrow I" was now king of Persia, and he concluded an alliance with a Turkish leader called Sinjibu, after which a common frontier between the Turkish and Sassanian empires was established (area of Afghanistan). The agreement was not a good one however, as sometimes the Turks acted as allies of Rome against Persia.
In 623 A.D. the Byzantine emperor Heraclius reversed previous Persian successes over the Roman army by capturing Jerusalem in 614 A.D. and winning at Chalcedon in 617 A.D. The Persian king Khosrow Parviz, died in 628 A.D. and left Persia prey to a succession of puppet rulers who were frequently deposed by a combination of nobles and Zoroastrian clergy. Thus, when Yazdegerd III, Persia's last Sassanid and Zoroastrian sovereign came to the throne in 632 A.D, the year of Muhammad's death, he inherited an empire weakened by the Byzantine wars and internal dissension.
For centuries before: The Arab Lakhmid had been Sassanian Persian vassals and the Arab Ghassanids were vassals of the Byzantine Empire. They acted as frontier guardians of the two empires against fellow Arabs: While the Meccan and Medinese Arabs of Arabia had established commercial connections with both the Byzantines and Sassanids Empires.
The LakhmidsThe Lakhmids were a group of Arab Christians who lived in Southern Iraq, and made al-Hirah their capital in (266). The al-Hirah ruins are located 3 kilometers south of Kufa, on the west bank of the Euphrates. The Lakhmid Kingdom was founded by the Lakhum tribe that immigrated out of Yemen in the second century and ruled by the Banu Lakhm, hence the name given it. The founder of the dynasty was 'Amr, whose son Imru' al-Qais converted to Christianity. Gradually the whole city converted to that faith. Imru' al-Qais dreamt of a unified and independent Arab kingdom and, following that dream, he seized many cities in Arabia . He then formed a large army and developed the Kingdom as a naval power, which consisted of a fleet of ships operating along the Bahraini coast. From this position he attacked the coastal cities of Persia (Iran) (which at that time was in civil war, due to a dispute as to the succession), even raiding the birthplace of the Sassanid kings, the province of Pars (Fars). In 325, the Persians, led by Shapur II, began a campaign against the Arab kingdoms. When Imru' al-Qais realized that a mighty Persian army composed of 60,000 warriors was approaching his kingdom, he asked for the assistance of the Roman Empire. Constantius II promised to assist him but was unable to provide that help when it was needed. The Persians advanced toward al-Hirah and a series of vicious battles took place over al-Hirah and the surrounding cities. Shapur II crushed the Lakhmid army and captured al-Hirah. He ordered the extermination of its population in retaliation of their raids on Pars. In this, the young Shapur acted much more violently than was normal at the time in order to demonstrate to both the Arab Kingdoms and the Persian nobility his power and authority. The GhassanidsThe Ghassanids were a group of South Arabian Christian tribes that emigrated in the early 3rd century from Yemen to Hauran in southern Syria, Jordan and the Holy Land where they intermarried with Hellenized Roman settlers and Greek-speaking Early Christian communities. Modern Syrians are a mix of these three peoples. |
Seeing the problems of Yazdegerd III's Persia Empire; These former Arab vassals on the empire's southwestern and western borders realized that their moment had arrived. They, together with Turks, Greeks and Romans - who were now disenfranchised because of Greece and Rome's fall in the Middle East: launched raids into Sassanian territory and were quickly joined by Muhammad's caliphs in Arabia, Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab. Thus, though called an Arab victory, it was really a Black and White, Muslim and Christian attack on Persia.
An Arab victory at Al-Qadisiyyah in 637 A.D. was followed by the sack of the Sassanian winter capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris. The Battle of Nahavand in 642 A.D. completed the Sassanids' defeat. Yazdegerd fled to the empire's northeastern outpost of Merv, whose Marzban, or March-lord named Mahuyeh, soon became soured by the imperious and expensive demands of Yazdegerd III. Mahuyeh turned against his Emperor and defeated him with the help of Hephthalites from Badghis. {The Hephthalites were a powerful nomadic confederation of White Huns from Central Asian. The Hephthalites had troubled the Sassanids since at least 590 A.D, when they had sided with Bahram Chubin, Khosrow Parviz's rebel general}. A Miller near Merv murdered the fugitive Emperor Yazdegerd III for his purse.
Pictured below: Sassanian kings as depicted on ornamental plates.
With the fall of the empire, the fate of its religion was also sealed. The Muslims officially tolerated the Zoroastrian faith, though persecutions were not unknown. But little by little, it vanished from Persia. It is said that some Zoroastrians immigrated to western India, where they are now chiefly concentrated in Mumbai (Bombay). There they are known as Parsi, {descriptions of these people in the 1831 book "The Modern Traveler", by Josiah Condor, suggests that they may not be purely Persian}, they have preserved only a relatively small portion of their sacred writings, but they still number their years by the era of Yazdegerd III, the last king of their faith and the last Sassanian sovereign of Persia. It can be assumed that eventually, descendents of the Arian tribe gained hegemony in Persia. Hence the name change to, "Iran" - meaning; land of the Arians.
Soon After their victory; factionalism was growing among Arabs, partly the result of the jealousies and rivalries that accompanied the acquisition of new territories and partly the result of the competition between first arrivals in Persia and those who followed.
In Persia the first Arab conquerors had concluded treaties with local Persian magnates who had assumed authority when the Sassanian imperial government disintegrated. These notables—the marzbans and landlords (dehqans)—undertook to continue tax collection on behalf of the new Muslim power. The advent of Arab colonizers, who preferred to cultivate the land rather than campaign farther into Asia, produced a further complication. Once the Arabs had settled in Persian lands, they, like the Persian cultivators, were required to pay the kharaj, or land tax, which was collected by Persian notables for the Muslims in a system similar to that, which had predated the conquest. The system was ripe for abuse, and the Persian collectors extorted large sums, arousing the hostility of both Arabs and Persians.
Another source of discontent was the jizyah, or head tax, which was applied to non-Muslims of the tolerated religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. After they had converted to Islam, Persians expected to be exempt from this tax. But the Umayyad government, burdened with imperial expenses, often refused to exempt the Persian converts.
The beginning of European JudaismThe Arabs continued their wars with Rome, these wars also had a religious overtone. One group caught in the middle were the "Khazars". These were members of a confederation of Turkic-speaking tribes that had, in the late 6th century A.D, established a major commercial Empire covering the Caucasus region of Russia. The Khazars and Arabs fought each other in Armenia and other places. There was apparently pressure on the Khazars from their allies the Romans, to convert to Christianity, while at the same time, there was also pressure put on them by the Arabs to accept Islam. The Khazars did neither, instead they chose the Hebrew religion, which they knew to be a choice that both sides would have to respect, since both of their religions were based on the Hebrew religion. The prominence and influence of the Khazar state was reflected in its close relations with the Byzantine Emperors: Justinian II (704) and Constantine V (732) each had a Khazar wife. Itil the Khazar capital in the Volga delta was a great commercial center. The Khazar Empire fell when Sviatoslav, duke of Kiev Russia (945–72), and son of Igor and of St. Olga; defeated its army in 965 A.D. The Khazars are the progenitors of European Jewry, the entomology of the term Jew or Jewish probably relates to these people. |
The tax demands of the Damascus government were as distasteful to those urbanized Arabs and Persians in commerce as they were to those in agriculture, and hopes of easier conditions under the new rulers than under the Sassanids were not fully realized.
The Umayyads ignored Persian agricultural conditions, which required constant reinvestment to maintain irrigation works and to halt the encroachment of the desert. This no doubt made the tax burden, from which no returns were visible, all the more odious. Furthermore, the regime failed to maintain the peace so necessary to trade. Damascus feared the breaking away of remote provinces where the Arab colonists were becoming assimilated with the local populations. The government, therefore, deliberately encouraged tribal factionalism in order to prevent a united opposition against it.
In 750 A.D. Umayyad power was destroyed, and the revolution gave the caliphate to the 'Abbasids. Hejazi commercial interests had in a sense overcome the military party among leading Muslim Arabs. Greater concern for the east was manifested by the new caliphate's choice of Baghdad as its capital—situated on the Tigris a short distance north of Ctesiphon and designed as a new city, to be free of the factions of the old Umayyad garrison cities of Al-Kufah, Wasit, and Al-Basrah.
Despite the development of a distinctive Islamic culture, the military problems of the empire were left unsolved. The 'Abbasids were under pressure from the infidel on several fronts—Turks in Central Asia, pagans in India and in the Hindu Kush, and Christians in Byzantium. War for the faith, or jihad, against these infidels was a Muslim duty. But, whereas the Umayyads had been expansionists and had seen themselves as heads of a military empire, the 'Abbasids were more pacific and saw themselves as the supporters of more than an Arab, conquering militia. Yet rebellions within the imperial frontiers had to be contained and the frontiers protected.
Rebellion within the Arab empire took the form of peasant revolts in Azerbaijan and Khorasan, coalesced by popular religious appeals centered on men who assumed or were accorded mysterious powers. Abu Muslim — executed in 755 by the second 'Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur, who feared his influence — became one such messianic figure. Another was al-Muqanna' (Arabic: “the Veiled One”), who used Abu Muslim's mystique and whose movement lasted from 777 to 780. The Khorram-dinan (Persian: “Glad Religionists”), under the Azerbaijanian Babak (816–838), also necessitated vigorous military suppression. Babak eluded capture for two decades, defying the caliph in Azerbaijan and western Persia, before being caught and brought to Baghdad to be tortured and executed. These heresiarchs revived such creeds as that of the anti-Sassanid religious leader Mazdak (died 528 or 529), expressive of social and millenarian aspirations that were later canalized into Sufism on the one hand and into Shi'ism on the other.
Over-exploitation of agriculture by Arab governors had debilitated rural life, and Kharijites (puritanical Arabs), who found refuge in Sistan (Persia's southeastern border area) from the Umayyads, organized or attracted bands of local peasants and vagabonds who had strayed south from Khorasan. Kharijite bands isolated the cities and threatened their supplies. Sistan needed an urban champion who could come to terms with the Kharijites and divert them to what could legitimately be termed jihad across the border, forming the gangsters into a well-disciplined loyal army. Such a man was Ya'qub ibn Layth, who founded the Saffarid dynasty, the first purely Persian dynasty of the Islamic era, and threatened the Muslim empire with the first resurgence of Persian independence.
Ya'qub ibn Layth seized Baghdad's breadbaskets—Fars and Khuzestan—and drove the Tahirid emir from Neyshabur. His march on Baghdad itself was halted only by the stratagem devised by the caliph's commander in chief: who inundated Ya'qub's army by bursting dikes. Ya'qub died soon after, in 879. He had made an empire, minted his own coinage, fashioned a new style of army loyal to its leader rather than to any religious or doctrinal concept, and required that verses in his praise be put into his own language—Persian—from Arabic, which he did not understand. He began the Persian resurgence.
The collapse of the Tahirid viceroyalty left Baghdad faced with a power vacuum in Khorasan and southern Persia. The caliph reluctantly confirmed Ya'qub's brother 'Amr as governor of Fars and Khorasan but withdrew his recognition on three occasions, and 'Amr's authority was disclaimed to the Khorasanian pilgrims to Mecca when they passed through Baghdad. But 'Amr remained useful to Baghdad so long as Khorasan was victimized by the rebels Ahmad al-Khujistani and, for longer, Rafi' ibn Harthama. After Rafi' had been finally defeated in 896, 'Amr's broader ambitions gave the caliph al-Mu'tadid his chance. 'Amr conceived designs on Transoxania, but there the Samanids held the caliph's license to rule, after having nominally been Tahirid deputies. When 'Amr demanded and obtained the former Tahirid tutelage over the Samanids in 898, Baghdad could leave the Saffarid and Samanid to fight each other, and the Samanid Isma'il (reigned 892–907) won. 'Amr was sent to Baghdad, where he was put to death in 902. His family survived as Samanid vassals in Sistan and were heard of until the 16th century. Ya'qub remains a popular hero in Persian history.
It may be with the Sassanian Persians; that Europeans begin their habit of depicting the rulers and people of the ancient Black Empires as Caucasian People. Note the plaque above from a 12th century French cross. It mythically depicts a now "White" Sassanian King Khosrau II; submitting to Byzantine Emperor Heraclius. |
There was nothing of the popular hero in the Samanids' origin. Their eponym was Saman-Khoda, a landlord in the district of Balkh and, according to the dynasty's claims, a descendant of Bahram Chubin, the Sassanian general. Saman became Muslim. His four grandsons were rewarded for services to the caliph al-Ma'mun (reigned 813–833) and received the caliph's investiture for areas that included Samarkand and Herat. They thus gained wealthy Transoxanian and east Khorasanian entry-port cities, where they could profit from trade that reached across Asia, even as far as Scandinavia, and from providing Turkish slaves—much in demand in Baghdad as royal troops—while they protected the frontiers and provided security for merchants in Bukhara, Samarkand, Khujand, and Herat. With one transitory exception, they upheld Sunnism and at each new accession to power paid a tribute to Baghdad for the tokens of investiture from the caliph whereby their rule represented lawful authority.
Thus, legal transactions in Samanid realms would be valid, and Baghdad received tribute in return for the insignia prayed over and signed by the caliph. This tribute took the place of regular revenue, so that it represented a solution of the taxation problems and consequent resentments that had bedeviled the Umayyad regime. In modern assessments of imperial power, Baghdad may seem to have been politically the weaker for this type of arrangement, but ensuring the reign of Islam in peripheral provinces was important to the caliphs. To insure Islam's portals to East Asia were adequately guarded, the supply of Turkish slaves essential for the caliph's bodyguard was maintained, and Turkish pagan tribes were converted to Islam under the Samanids.
The End of Black rule in Persia |
Rudaki, in a poem about the Samanid emir's court, describes how “row upon row” of Turkish slave guards were part of its adornment. From these guards' ranks two military families arose—the Simjurids and Ghaznavids—who ultimately proved disastrous to the Samanids. The Simjurids received an appendage in the Kuhestan region of southern Khorasan. Alp Tigin founded the Ghaznavid fortunes when he established himself at Ghazna (modern Ghazni, Afghanistan) in 962. He and Abu al-Hasan Simjuri, as Samanid generals, competed with each other for the governorship of Khorasan and control of the Samanid Empire by placing on the throne emirs they could dominate. Abu al-Hasan died in 961, but a court party instigated by men of the scribal class—civilian ministers as contrasted with Turkish generals—rejected Alp Tigin's candidate for the Samanid throne. Mansur I was installed, and Alp Tigin prudently retired to his fief of Ghazna. The Simjurids enjoyed control of Khorasan south of the Oxus but were hard-pressed by a third great Persian dynasty, the Buyids, and were unable to survive the collapse of the Samanids and the rise of the Ghaznavids.
The struggles of the Turkish slave generals for mastery of the throne with the help of shifting allegiance from the court's ministerial leaders both demonstrated and accelerated the Samanid decline. Samanid weakness attracted into Transoxania the Qarluq Turks, who had recently converted to Islam. They occupied Bukhara in 992 to establish in Transoxania the Qarakhanid, or Ilek Khanid, dynasty. Alp Tigin had been succeeded at Ghazna by Sebüktigin (died 997). Sebüktigin's son Mahmud made an agreement with the Qarakhanids whereby the Oxus was recognized as their mutual boundary. Thus the Samanids' dominion was divided and Mahmud was freed to advance westward into Khorasan to meet the Buyids.
The homeland of the Buyids was Daylam, in the Gilan uplands in northern Persia. There, at the end of the 9th century, hardy valley dwellers had been stirred into martial activity by a number of factors, among them the rebel Rafi' ibn Harthama's attempt to penetrate the region, ostensibly with Samanid support. 'Amr ibn Layth had pursued the rebel into the region. Other factors had been the formation of Shi'ite principalities in the area and continued Samanid attempts to subjugate them. After the Tahirid collapse, the lack of stability in northern Persia south of the Elburz Mountains attracted many Daylamite mercenaries into the area on military adventures. Among them Makan ibn Kaki served the Samanids with his compatriots, the sons of Buyeh, and their allies the Ziyarids under Mardavij. Mardavij introduced the three Buyid brothers to the Persian plateau, where he established an empire reaching as far south as Esfahan and Hamadan. He was murdered in 935, but his Ziyarid descendants sought Samanid protection. They adhered to Sunnism and maintained themselves in the region southeast of the Caspian Sea.
Mardavij's expansionism south of the Elburz was taken up by his Buyid lieutenants: the eldest brother, 'Ali, consolidated power for himself in Esfahan and Fars and obtained the caliph's recognition; another brother, Hasan, occupied Rayy and Hamadan; and the youngest brother, Ahmad, took Kerman in the southeast and Khuzestan in the southwest. The caliphs al-Muttaqi and al-Mustakfi of the 940s were at the mercy of the Turkish slaves in their palace guard. The generals of the guard competed with each other for the office of amir al-umara' (commander in chief), who virtually ruled Iraq on behalf of the caliphs. When Ahmad gained Khuzestan, he was close to the scene of the amir al-umara' contests, which he chose to settle by himself.
Although the Buyids were careful to avoid sectarian strife, family quarrels weakened them sufficiently for Mahmud of Ghazna to gain Rayy in 1029. But Mahmud (reigned 998–1030) went no farther: his dynasty paid great deference to the caliphate's legitimating power, and he made no bid to contest the Buyids' role as its protectors. Mahmud's agreement with the Samanids' Ilek Khanid successors, that the Oxus should be their mutual boundary, held, but south of the river the Ghaznavids had to contend with their own distant relatives, the Oguz Turks. Contrary to the sage counsel of Persian ministers, Mahmud and his successor Mas'ud (reigned 1031–41) permitted these tribesmen to use Khorasanian grazing grounds, which they entered from north of the Oxus. United under descendants of an Oguz leader named Seljuq, between 1038 and 1040 these nomads drove the Ghaznavids out of northeastern Persia. The final encounter was at Dandanqan in 1040.
After their defeat by the Seljuqs, the Ghaznavids, patrons of Islamic culture and letters, were deflected eastward into India, where Mahmud had already conducted successful raids. The raids took the form of jihad (or holy war), and the Ghaznavids carried Islam and Persian Muslim art to the Indian subcontinent. In Persia it was the Seljuqs' turn to create a new imperial synthesis with the 'Abbasid caliphs. Toghril Beg, the Seljuq sultan, entered Baghdad in 1055, and Buyid power was terminated, thus ending what Vladimir Minorsky, the great Persiaologist, called the “Persian intermezzo.”
Toghril I had proclaimed himself sultan at Neyshabur in 1038 and had espoused strict Sunnism, by which he gained the caliph's confidence and undermined the Buyid position in Baghdad. The Oguz Turks had accepted Islam late in the 10th century, and their leaders displayed a convert's zeal in their efforts to restore a Muslim polity along orthodox lines. Their efforts were made all the more urgent by the spread of Fatimid Isma'ili propaganda (Arabic da'wah) in the eastern Caliphate by means of an underground network of propagandists, or da'is, intent on undermining the Buyid regime, and by the threat posed by the Christian Crusaders.
The Buyids' usurpation of the caliph's secular power had given rise to a new theory of state formulated by al-Mawardi (died 1058). Al-Mawardi's treatise partly prepared the theoretical ground for Toghril's attempt to establish an orthodox Muslim state in which conflict between the caliph-imam's spiritual-juridical authority on the one side and the secular power of the sultan on the other could be resolved, or at least regulated, by convention. Al-Mawardi reminded the Muslim world of the necessity of the imamate; but the treatise realistically admitted the existence of, and thus accommodated, the fact of military usurpation of power. The Seljuqs' own political theorist al-Ghazali (died 1111) carried this admission further by explaining that the position of a powerless caliph, overshadowed by a strong Seljuq master, was one in which the latter's presence guaranteed the former's capacity to defend and extend Islam.
Muhammad Karim Khan Zand entered into an alliance with the Bakhtyari chief 'Ali Mardan Khan in an effort to seize Esfahan—then the political centre of Persia—from Shah Rokh's vassal, Abu al-Fath Bakhtyari. Once this goal was achieved, Karim Khan and 'Ali Mardan agreed that Shah Sultan Husayn Safavi's grandson, a boy named Abu Turab, should be proclaimed Shah Isma'il III in order to cement popular support for their joint rule. The two also agreed that the popular Abu al-Fath would retain his position as governor of Esfahan, 'Ali Mardan Khan would act as regent over the young puppet, and Karim Khan would take to the field in order to regain lost Safavid territory. 'Ali Mardan Khan, however, broke the compact and was killed by Karim Khan, who gained supremacy over central and southern Persia and reigned as regent or deputy (vakil) on behalf of the powerless Safavid prince, never arrogating to himself the title of shah. Karim Khan made Shiraz his capital and did not contend with Shah Rokh (reigned 1748–95) for the hegemony of Khorasan. He concentrated on Fars and the centre but managed to contain the Qajar in Mazanderan, north of the Elburz Mountains. He kept Agha Muhammad Khan Qajar a hostage at his court in Shiraz, after repulsing Muhammad Hasan Qajar's bids for extended dominion.
Karim Khan's geniality and common sense inaugurated a period of peace and popular contentment, and he strove for commercial prosperity in Shiraz, a centre accessible to the Persian Gulf ports and trade with India. After Karim Khan's death in 1779, Agha Muhammad Khan escaped to the Qajar tribal country in the north, gathered a large force, and embarked on a war of conquest.
Between 1779 and 1789 the Zands fought among themselves over their legacy. In the end it fell to the gallant Lotf 'Ali, the Zands' last hope. Agha Muhammad Khan relentlessly hunted him down until he overcame and killed him at the southeastern city of Kerman in 1794. In 1796 Agha Muhammad Khan assumed the imperial diadem, and later in the same year he took Mashhad. Shah Rokh died of the tortures inflicted on him to make him reveal the complete tally of the Afsharids' treasure. Agha Muhammad was cruel and he was avaricious.
Karim Khan's commercial efforts were nullified by his successors' quarrels. With cruel irony, attempts to revive the Persian Gulf trade were followed by a British mission from India in 1800, which ultimately opened the way for a drain of Persian bullion to India. This drain was made inevitable by the damage done to Persia's productive capacity during Agha Muhammad Khan's campaigns to conquer the country.
Fath 'Ali Shah (reigned 1797–1834), in need of revenue after decades of devastating warfare, relied on British subsidies to cover his government's expenditures. Following a series of wars, he lost the Caucasus to Russia by the treaties of Golestan in 1813 and Turkmanchay (Torkman Chay) in 1828, the latter of which granted Russian commercial and consular agents access to Persia. This began a diplomatic rivalry between Russia and Britain—with Persia the ultimate victim—that resulted in the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention giving each side exclusive spheres of influence in Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet.
The growth of European influence in Persia and the establishment of new transportation systems between Europe and the Middle East were followed by an unprecedented increase in trade that ultimately changed the way of life in both urban and rural areas of Persia. As with other semicolonized countries of this era, Persia became a source of cheap raw materials and a market for industrial goods from Western countries. A sharp drop in the export of manufactured commodities was accompanied by a significant rise in the export of raw materials such as opium, rice, tobacco, and nuts. This rapid change made the country more vulnerable to global market fluctuations and, because of an increase in acreage devoted to nonfood export crops, periodic famine. Simultaneously, in an effort to increase revenue, Qajar leaders sold large tracts of state-owned lands to private owners—most of whom were large merchants—subsequently disrupting traditional forms of land tenure and production and adversely affecting the economy.
Hajji Mirza Aghasi, a minister of Mohammad Shah (reigned 1834–48), tried to activate the government to revive sources of production and to cement ties with lesser European powers, such as Spain and Belgium, as an alternative to Anglo-Russian dominance, but little was achieved. Naser al-Din Shah (reigned 1848–96) made Persia's last effort to regain Herat, but British intervention in 1856–57 thwarted his efforts. Popular and religious antagonism to the Qajar regime increased as Naser al-Din strove to raise funds by granting foreign companies and individuals exclusive concessions over Persian import and export commodities and natural resources in exchange for lump cash payments. The money paid for concessions was ostensibly for developing Persia's resources but instead was squandered by the court and on the shah's lavish trips to Europe.
Popular protest and the Constitutional Revolution
In 1890 Naser al-Din Shah granted a nationwide concession over the sale and importation of tobacco products to a British citizen. However, popular protest compelled Naser al-Din to cancel the concession, demonstrating several factors of crucial significance for the years to come: first, that there existed in Persia a mercantile class of sufficient influence to make use of such broad, popular sentiment and, second, that such public outpourings of discontent could limit the scope of the shah's power. More important, the protest demonstrated the growing power of the Shi'ite clergy, members of which had played a crucial role in rallying Persians against the monopoly and which was to have great influence over political changes to come.
The “Tobacco Riots”—as this episode came to be known—were a prelude to the Constitutional Revolution that was to occur in the reign of Mozaffar al-Din Shah (1896–1907), during a time when the country suffered deep economic problems associated with its integration into a world economy. Persia had remained on the silver standard after most countries had left bimetallism for a gold standard in the late 1860s. Silver values in Persia slipped from the 1870s onward, and silver bullion drained out of the country, which lead to high rates of inflation and to bread riots. Further, in 1898 the government retained a foreign adviser to restructure the Customs Bureau. That action increased government revenue but alarmed Persian merchants who feared further tax increases, including a substantial land tax. Merchants and landowners appealed for help to the 'ulama', with whom they had traditionally maintained close ties. Many of the clergy had themselves become increasingly hostile to the Qajar regime because the clerics had become indignant over government interference in spheres that traditionally were administered by the clergy (such as the courts and education) and over fears that the government might tax vaqf land (mortmain, administered by the clergy). In a trend begun in the Safavid period, a number of influential mujtahids began to concern themselves with matters of government, to the point of questioning the regime's legitimacy. Even the shahs' earlier suppression of the Babi and Baha'i movements, viewed as heresy by the majority of the Shi'ite establishment, failed to ingratiate the regime with the 'ulama'. Together these groups—'ulama', merchants, and landowners—began to criticize the privileges and protections accorded to European merchants and called for political and legal reforms.
At the same time, Persia was increasingly interacting with the West. This contact sparked an interest in democratic institutions among the members of a nascent intellectual class, which itself was a product of new, Western-style schools promoted by the shah. Encouraged by the Russian Revolution of 1905 and influenced by immigrant workers and merchants from Russian-controlled areas of Transcaucasia, the new Persian intellectuals were, paradoxically, to find common cause with Persia's merchants and Shi'ite clergy.
All aggrieved parties found an opportunity for social reform in 1905–06 when a series of demonstrations, held in protest over the government beating of several merchants, escalated into strikes that soon adjourned to a shrine near Tehran, which the demonstrators claimed as a bast (Persian: “sanctuary”). While under this traditional Persian form of sanctuary, the government was unable to arrest or otherwise molest the demonstrators, and a series of such sanctuary protests over subsequent months, combined with wide-scale general strikes of craftsmen and merchants, forced the ailing shah to grant a constitution in 1906. The first National Consultative Assembly (the Majles) was opened in October of that year. The new constitution provided a framework for secular legislation, a new judicial code, and a free press. All these reduced the power of the royal court and religious authorities and placed more authority in the hands of the Majles, which, in turn, took a strong stand against European intervention.
Although the Majles was suppressed in 1908 under Mohammad 'Ali Shah (ruled 1907–09) by the officers of the Persian Cossack Brigade—the shah's bodyguard and the most effective military force in the country at the time—democracy was revived the following year under the second Majles, and Mohammad 'Ali fled to Russia. Constitutionalists also executed the country's highest-ranking cleric, Sheikh Fazlullah Nuri, who had been found guilty by a reformist tribunal of plotting to overthrow the new order—an indication that not all of Persia's religious elite were proponents of reform. In addition, as part of the secular reforms introduced by the Majles, a variety of secular schools were established during that time, including some for girls, causing significant tension between sections of the clergy that had previously advocated reform and their erstwhile intellectual allies.
The end of the Majles, however, did not come as a result of internal strife. In an attempt to come to grips with Persia's ongoing financial problems, the Majles in 1911 hired another foreign financial adviser, this time an American, William Morgan Shuster, who advocated bold moves to collect revenue throughout the country. This action angered both the Russians and British, who claimed limited sovereignty in the respective spheres of influence the two powers had carved out of Persia in 1907 (the Russians in northern Persia and the Caucasus and the British along the Persian Gulf). The Russians issued an ultimatum demanding Shuster's dismissal. When the Majles refused, Russian troops advanced toward Tehran, and the regent of the young Ahmad Shah (reigned 1909–25) hastily dismissed Shuster and dissolved the Majles in December 1911.
Until the beginning of World War I, Russia effectively ruled Persia, but, with the outbreak of hostilities, Russian troops withdrew from the north of the country, and Persians convened the third Majles. Jubilation was short-lived, however, as the country quickly turned into a battlefield between British, German, Russian, and Turkish forces. The landed elite hoped to find in Germany a foil for the British and Russians, but change eventually was to come from the north.
Following the Russian Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the new Soviet government unilaterally canceled the tsarist concessions in Persia, an action that created tremendous goodwill toward the new Soviet Union and, after the Central Powers were defeated, left Britain the sole Great Power in Persia. In 1919 the Majles, after much internal wrangling, refused a British offer of military and financial aid that effectively would have made Persia into a protectorate of Britain. The British were initially loath to withdraw from Persia but caved to international pressure and removed their advisers by 1921. In that same year British diplomats lent their support to an Persian officer of the Persian Cossack Brigade, Reza Khan, who in the previous year had been instrumental in putting down a rebellion led by Mirza Kuchak Khan, who had sought to form an independent Soviet-style republic in Persia's northern province of Gilan. In collaboration with a political writer, Sayyid Ziya al-Din Tabataba'i, Reza Khan staged a coup in 1921 and took control of all military forces in Persia. Between 1921 and 1925 Reza Khan—first as war minister and later as prime minister under Ahmad Shah—built an army that was loyal solely to him. He also managed to forge political order in a country that for years had known nothing but turmoil. Initially Reza Khan wished to declare himself president in the style of Turkey's secular nationalist president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk—a move fiercely opposed by the Shi'ite 'ulama'—but instead he deposed the weak Ahmad Shah in 1925 and had himself crowned Reza Shah Pahlavi.
Reza Shah's need to expand trade, his fear of Soviet control over Persia's overland routes to Europe, and his apprehension at renewed Soviet and continued British presence in Persia drove him to expand trade with Nazi Germany in the 1930s. His refusal to abandon what he considered to be obligations to numerous Germans in Persia served as a pretext for an Anglo-Soviet invasion of his country in 1941. Intent on ensuring the safe passage of U.S. war matériel to the Soviet Union through Persia, the Allies forced Reza Shah to abdicate, placing his young son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi on the throne.
In 1935 the Iranian government requested those countries with which it had diplomatic relations, to call Persia "Iran". The suggestion for the change is said to have come from the Iranian ambassador to Germany, who came under the influence of the Nazis. At the time Germany was in the grip of racial fever and cultivated good relations with nations of "Arian" blood. It is said that some German friends of the ambassador persuaded him that, as with the advent of Reza Shah, Persia had turned a new leaf in its history. It was only fitting that the country be called "Iran." This would not only signal a new beginning, and bring home to the world, the new era in history, but would also signify the NOW Arian race of its population, as "Iran" is a cognate of "Arian" and derived from it.
The words Arian and Aryan are a source of confusion. Obviously, the word Aryan as used by Darius, and the nomadic tribe of White people who supposedly came into Persia are not the same thing. In Darius' usage, Aryan seems to mean a "Noble" class on the one hand, but in the Behishtan inscription, it seems to refer to a language. But since the "People" that we refer to as Aryans did not have a written language, it still could not refer to them. But interestingly, though Darius acknowledges being "King of countries containing all kinds of men" no tribe of Aryans is ever mentioned in Persian inscriptions; making it a mystery where that name for a people or tribe came from in the first place. So to avoid confusion; the spelling "Aryan" is reserved for Persians, and the spelling "Arian" is used for the tribe of White people.
Persian inscriptions containing the word Aryan or naming the people who make up the Persian Empire.
The Behishtan inscriptions of Darius
The Behishtan inscriptions of Darius: 3. (15-30.) Darius the King says: By the favor of Ahuramazda these are the countries which I seized outside of Persia; I ruled over them; they bore tribute to me; what was said to them by me, that they did; my law -- that held them firm; Media, Elam, Parthia, Aria, Bactria, Sogdiana, Chorasmia, Drangiana, Arachosia, Sattagydia, Gandara, Sind, Amyrgian Scythians, Scythians with pointed caps, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Sardis, Ionia, Scythians who are across the sea, Skudra, petasos-wearing Ionians, Libyans, Ethiopians, men of Maka, Carians. COLUMN 4:
The inscriptions of Naqsh-I-RustamInscriptions on south face of steep ridge north of Persepolis2. (8-15.) I am Darius the Great King, King of Kings, King of countries containing all kinds of men, King in this great earth far and wide, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage. Darius inscription only on south retaining wall of palace2. (5-18.) Darius the King says: By the favor of Ahuramazda these are the countries which I got into my possession along with this Persian folk, which felt fear of me (and) bore me tribute: Elam, Media, Babylonia, Arabia, Assyria, Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Sardis, Ionians who are of the mainland and (those) who are by the sea, and countries which are across the sea; Sagartia, Parthia, Drangiana, Aria, Bactria, Sogdiana, Chorasmia, Sattagydia, Arachosia, Sind, Gandara, Seythians, Maka. Aria was an Old Persian satrapy, which enclosed chiefly the valley of the Hari River, and which in antiquity was considered as particularly fertile and, above all, rich in wine. The region of Aria was separated by mountain ranges from the Paropamisadae in the east, Parthia in the west and Margiana and Hyrcania in the north, while a desert separated it from Carmania and Drangiana in the south. It is described in a very detailed manner by Ptolemy and Strabo, and corresponds to the Herat Province of today's Afghanistan. |
See: Additional Material Menu - for Persepolis, Apadana, and pictures of the people of the Persian Empire.
The Muslim conquest; of which Turks and Greeks were the major component: will lead to the creation of the last great Middle-Eastern Empire, that of the Ottoman Turks. The power and influence of the Turkic Ottoman Empire was pervasive in all areas until it's breakup just after World War I. As with all great Empires; the Ottoman Empire had it's own religion, the Muslim religion of the Prophet Mohammad - Islam. Which during the duration of the Ottoman Empire, was termed the Turkish religion, rather than the Arab religion. Islam was spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. Today, the world-wide acceptance and practice of Islam is due to the power and influence of the great Ottoman Empire. This was in conformity with other Empires established by migrants from the Eurasian plains. Earlier the Romans had accepted and adapted one branch of the Hebrew religion (Christianity), and made it their own. Thus making it a de facto European religion, Christianity was spread as the Roman Empire expanded. Today, the world-wide acceptance and practice of Christianity is due to the Romans and other Europeans they influenced, not to the Hebrews, who considered Christianity, a Hebrew "only" religion. Another Turkic group "the Khazars" accepted and adapted the Main Hebrew religion; thus also making it a de facto European religion. It is often times called Judaism or the Jewish religion, the origin of the term "Jewish" is however unknown, Hebrews did not call themselves Jews. Today, because of the long duration of the Turkic Ottoman Empire (1299 - 1922), and the great influx of Turkic peoples throughout the centuries: The ruling elite of Egypt, North Africa and the Entire Middle-East is predominantly of Turkic stock, rather than the common perception of Arab stock. Though the term "Arab" is used as the common unifier of the various ethnicity's of the Middle-East. Please see the Anatolia-3 page, for a history of the Turkic peoples.
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The fall of the last Persian Empire, also marks the end of rule by the Ancients in the West. However there are still a few ancients left in the East, so let's see what they are doing.
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