Aspects of the Reign of Muzaffar Al-Din Shah of Persia 1896-1907
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ASPECTS OF THE REIGN OF MUZAFFAR AL-DIN SHAH OF PERSIA 1896-1907 Thesis submitbed for the Degree of PhD by ROBERT MICHAEL BURRELL School of Oriental and African Studies University of London 1979 ProQuest Number: 10673119 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10673119 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT This thesis is concerned with certain aspects of the reign of Muzaffar al-Din Shah of Persia from 1896 to 1907; during the last year of which Persia ceased to be an absolute monarchy and adopted ; a constitution,. The thesis first of all discusses the value of various British archives for the study of this period. It goes on to consider the character of Muzaffar al-Din and the nature of government during his © reign. Two particular organs of government are'Studied in detail: the army and the Customs administration, which was then undergoing reform at the hands of Belgian experts. The diffusion of cholera throughout Persia in 1904 is described, and the effects of that epidemic are discussed. The thesis then turns to a study of the political and economic circumstances which prevailed in the two important provinces of Pars and Isfahan. The thesis shows that there was much discontent in Persia, and it notes that few of the sources of that discontent were new„ It is seen that members of the religious classes played an important part in events throughout the period,, It is shown that the government of Muzaffar al- Din Shah was weak, that it failed to exercise effective central control, and that it was incapable of meeting the demands made upon it. It is argued that Anglo-Russian rivalry had a considerable impact on domestic events, and that that rivalry increased the problems facing the country, while at the same time it revealed to many Persians the extent of the governments weakness. It is concluded that although many demands were being made of the Shah and his government, they were not essentially incompatible with the continuation of absolute rule. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 PREFACE 3 CHAPTER I: Introduction and Discussion of Sources 6 CHAPTER II: The Position of the Shah and Affairs 23. at Court CHAPTER III: The Condition of the Army 52 CHAPTER IV: The Reform of the Customs 97 Administration CHAPTER V: The Cholera Epidemic 1904 138 CHAPTER VI: Affairs in Fars . 170 CHAPTER VII: Affairs in the Province of Isfahan 211 CHAPTER VIII: Conclusion 257 APPENDIX Brief Notes on European Officials 269 whose Names recur frequently in the Text of the Thesis BIBLIOGRAPHY 273 PREFACE The thesis would not have been possible without the assistance and support of many individuals and academic institutions. I would first like to thank my parents for their unfailing encouragement in my studies. The School of Oriental and African Studies awarded me a Governing Body Postgraduate Exhibition which enabled me to begin my study of Persian, and the School later appointed me to a lectureship in History, The years I have spent under its roof have been happy and rewarding ones. I would also like to acknowledge the administrative help which I have received from the Registrar of the School and his staff. My thanks are due to the Department of Education and Science for the award of a Hayter Studentship which enabled me to pursue research in London and to spend time travelling in Persia, The British Institute of Persian Studies in Tehran provided a warm welcome for me. The staffs of the Library of the School, of the Senate House Library in the University of London,and of the British Library (British Museum) have given me much willing help, and the resources of those libraries have been invaluable in my work* The staff of the Public Record Office met my every request with great courtesy and equal efficiency. I am deeply in their debt. Quotations from Crown Copyright Records in the Public Record Office appear by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office* I have received much help from colleagues at the School. In particular I would like to thank Professor P.M* Holt, Professor B. Lewis (now of Princeton University), Dr. K.S. McLachlan, Dr. D.O. Morgan and Dr. M.Eo Yapp for their informed interest in, and help with my research. 4 Dr. T .0* Gandjei and Mr. A. A. Haidari shared, with my supervisor, the trying task of teaching me Persian. I also owe much to Mr„ J.R. Bracken for his encouragement, and for his attempts to improve my prose style. His lack of success will be obvious to all readers of this thesis. Miss Janet Marks of the Department of Economic and Political Studies at the School showed great skill in reading my handwriting and in typing the final copy of the thesis. I have learned much from discussions with Dr. R.W. Ferrier, the Archivist of the British Petroleum Company, and with Mr. A oH0 Morton, formerly the Assistant Director of the British Institute of Persian Studies in Tehran. Miss Elizabeth Monroe and Mr. A„H. Hourani of Oxford gave valuable help and guidance in the early stages of my research, and I am very grateful to them. I would also like to record my thanks to Dr. B. Anderson of the University of London Health Service, who worked in Calcutta during the cholera epidemic of 1971, for the time which she gave to discussing that disease with me, and for reading and commenting upon a draft version of Chapter V. Dr. M. Woods of Birkbeck College raised questions which I had ignored, and encouraged me to find some of the answers. Mr. C. Birch read much of the final version of thesis, and helped to prevent some of its errors from reaching the reader0 I would also like to acknowledge^because I cannot repay, the debt to my wife for her very great help and support - without her this thesis would never have been finished. The person to whom I owe most is my supervisor, Professor A.KoS. Lambton. She awakened my interest in Persia and has sustained it constantly,, Her profound knowledge of that country and its history has been matched by her patience and 5 devotion as a teacher. Any merits which this thesis may possess must be attributed to her guidance; the faults which remain are entirely due to my inability to learn from her. The transliteration system used is basically that of the Cambridge History of Islam, with the additional and variant forms for Persian which are permitted under that system. Exceptions have been made in the case of some place names where strict transliteration would have given rise to peculiar spellings, as in the case of Tihran and Khwansar - here rendered as Tehran and Khunsar. Other examples of departure from the system are Abadeh, Bushire, Enzeli, Lingeh and Saveh0 Where there are accepted English spellings - bazaar and Caliph - these have been used. In footnotes where British archives have been cited, the standard form used in those documents has been followed, thus Shiraz Diary, not Shiraz Diary. In the case of diplomatic and consular despatches, the place of origin has been indicated only where it differs from that of the post occupied by the writer of the despatch, or where confusion may otherwise have arisen. In the bibliography* I have referred only to the series of documents which have been used, quoting the numbers of the volumes where I began and ended my research: but full references are provided in the case of each foot-note. 6 CHAPTER X INTRODUCTION AND DISCUSSION OF SOURCES "Yet let him know that undertakes to pick out the best ear amongst an acre of wheat, that he shall leave as good if not a better behind him, than that which he chooseth." Attributed to Thomas Fuller, in Autobiography of Joseph Scaliger translated and edited by G.W. Robinson. Cambridge (USA) 1927, p 08. The events examined in this thesis happened some 100 years after the establishment of the Qajar dynasty. That century had seen the renewal of European interest in Persia, an interest which had lain largely dormant since Safavid times. But the concerns of the European powers - chiefly England and Russia - were now wider and more important than they had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries„ Then the . interest of the external powers in Persia had been mainly, if not exclusively, commercial. Under the Qajar Shahs political and strategic considerations were to predominate and although trade was still a significant element it was subsidiary to, even if entangled with, those two paramount concerns. This intensification of external interest in Persia was one of the features which attracted me to the study of Qajar history. The geographical location of Persia is such that her history has long been open to the influence of external events; but from the early nineteenth century contacts with other countries became much wider in scale, as well as changed in their nature. The factors which shaped the history of Persia under the Qajars were, however, more complex than those which derived solely from an intensification of external interests in the country: for at the same time a reverse process was taking place and 7 some, albeit few, Persians were now starting to take note of European events and ideas.