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Pdf?Id=Perbayan Writings of the Bab and Other Babis Are at the Official Babi Website Notes Chapter 1 1. The term “ethno-tribal monarchism” indicates the ethno-linguistic and tribal origin of the state’s rule in Iran. The Safavids (1501–1722) ruled Iran as the first independent state after the Arabo-Islamic invasion of the seventh century. Turkish-speaking tribes ruled Iran from the end of the Safavid period to the end of the Qajar period, except for the short period of the Zand dynasty (1750–1789). The Zands headed a federation of tribes led by Luri-speaking tribes. The Persian-speaking Pahlavi dynasty was the first nontribal state in Iran. 2. The akhbaris, the dominant religious school until the middle of the nineteenth century, advocated the use of inductive techniques to arrive at new legal or religious precepts. They are considered textualists (or literalists) because of their emphasis on potential sources for formulating new laws. The usuli (later sometimes called ejtehadi)advo- cated the use of deductive techniques to formulate new legal or religious precepts (ahkam). They are called usuli because they produced usul al-feq, or the Principle of Jurisprudence. Chapter 2 1. Agha Mohammad Khan, the dynasty’s founder, achieved to a large extent the restora- tion of the Safavid Empire’s territory. The Qajar frontier was later reduced when Iran lost territory to the Russians in the Treaties of Golestan (1813) and Turkmenchai (1828), as well as control of Harat in Afghanistan to Britain (the Treaty of Paris, 1857). The actual Iranian frontier today is the same as that of the later Qajar period. For a dis- cussion of changes to the Iranian frontiers during the Qajar rule, see Sykes ([1915]1958, 1: 339–353, and 2: 334–366). 2. The population of Iran at the beginning of the Qajar period (1800) is estimated to have been five to six million. It increased to ten million by 1914 (Issawi 1971: 20). Issawi estimates that throughout the same period (1800–1914), the portion of nomads fell from “perhaps a half to quarter of the total population.” Curzon estimates the pop- ulation to have been around nine million in 1891, when almost 67.5 percent were living in settled communities (22.5 percent in towns and 55 percent in villages) and one-fourth of the population was nomadic tribes (Curzon 1892, 2: 493). Abrahamian estimates the tribal population to be around 30 percent. However, since a number of tribal people settled in agricultural units and in cities (they were semi-nomadic), the actual percentage of the total population with tribal background, identity, and loyalty was higher than 25 percent or 30 percent. There were no censuses in the period under review. 164 NOTES 3. The social structure of the period was also fragmented. Each segment of society had its own regulation, operating mechanism, and hierarchy. This fragmentation could be seen even in cities where interactions of different groups were intense. This led groups to resist integration. The local authorities and the centralized state often regulated and facilitated the interactions of these different social units. Fragmentation of social and political structure has had a lasting impact on Iranian political culture and history. 4. Lambton addresses this particular aspect of the development of the Qajar bureaucracy through changes in “the traditional dichotomy of ‘the men of the sword’ and ‘the men of the pen,’ ” and concludes: “As the century progressed, the relative importance of the ‘men of the sword’ and the ‘men of the pen’ is changed. ...But whereas the ‘men ofthesword’hadapowerbase,‘themenofthepen’wereservantsofwhateverruler was in power” ([1966]1988: 215). This conclusion at best could be applied only to the evolution of the Qajars’ tribal bureaucracy and not to the city notables and divani powerholders, who had their own power base, resources, and network, and whose knowhow had been an essential part of the ruling coalition for centuries. 5. Mehdi Bamdad (1968, 1: 27) reports differently. According to him, Haji Ibrahim was arrested, blinded, and exiled to Ghazvin, where his tongue was cut, before being exiled again to Tallaghan, where he was executed. A third version, from Mahmoud Mahmoud (1949, 1: 88), is that “the merciless hands of foreign policy” killed Haji Ibrahim because he opposed the proposal of the emissary of the British governor of India to attack Afghanistan and kill the Afghan Sunnis to avenge the Shi’i massacre on the grounds that “politics should be separated from religion” (quoted by Haqiqat [Rafie]1989, 2: 1066). 6. The family’s descendants played an important role in Iranian history and culture. An abridged English version of the family tree, Qaemmaqam’s published writings, and a digital reproduction of his biography written in Persian by one of his direct descendants can be found at http://ghaemmagham.net/Homepage.html 7. Most students of Iranian history have identified Amir Kabir as the state-builder and reformer par excellence of the Qajar dynasty. However, it was through his violent sup- pression of the Babi messianic movement that Qajar rule was saved and a certain school of the ulama (usulis) became the official religious partner of the Qajars. This cooper- ation led to the evolution of religious orthodoxy alongside the centralized state (see Chapter 4 for more details). 8. The role of foreign missions in the events leading to the death of Amir Kabir has been discussed in detail from several perspectives. See Amanat (1997: 150–168) and Adamiyat (1969: 202–711). 9. There is a recent trend in studying the non-elite politics of Iran’s Qajar period. One of the latest is Martin (2005). 10. Abrahamian reviewed biographies of 1,283 elites of the Qajar period compiled by Mehdi Bamdad (1968) and concluded that “771 (60 percent) were state functionaries— courtiers, mostowfis and monshis (scribes); 286 (23 percent) were literary and scholarly figures—almost all linked to the court; 98 (8 percent) were princes; another 98 were ulama; and 19 (1 percent) were merchants” (Abrahamian 2008: 15). 11. Lambton’s descriptive account of the Qajar period is full of observations supporting the notion of fragmented authority. Yet when in a short passage she addresses the ques- tion of the Qajars’ central authority and the reasons why it did not develop a national state, she formulates it in the language of the persistence of absolutist political the- ory: “The power of the ruler in medieval Persia was reinforced, if not legitimized, by the curious fiction that he was the Shadow of God upon earth, a fiction which had a long tradition behind it going back to early Islamic times” (1988: xiii). Or, more NOTES 165 precisely, “[t]he tribal heritage of the Qajars was not their only legacy from the past. They also revived much of the administrative machinery of the Safavids; and they took over the theory of the ruler as the Shadow of the God upon earth, and the pomp and circumstance of the royal court” ([1961]1988: 92). Lambton’s argument should be read along with the arguments of Curzon (1892, 1: 436–437) and Sykes ([1915]1958: 381–393). 12. The king was considered defender of the faith as well. The 1907 constitution clearly expressed that “the Shah of Persia must profess and promote” the faith. However, the duties of the shah and the ulama toward religion were not quite clear. I will discuss this in detail in Chapter 5. Chapter 3 1. The term “buffer state” in its nineteenth-century usage implied a sort of stable political, military, and financial relation between the important but weak states of the periphery and a strong colonial metropolis. For a rich monograph examining the British policy in Persia from 1918 to 1925, see Sabahi (1990: 157–200). Sabahi sees Reza Khan’s ascen- dancy to the throne as a natural consequence of the British policy and concludes that “Persia remained a buffer state under Reza Shah until 1941” (p. 200). 2. The first majles had already voted on the foundation of Bank Melli Iran, or the National Bank of Iran (Nazzem al-Islam Kermani [1967]1983, 2: 17–21), though the project was realized only in 1928 during Reza Shah’s reign. 3. Raein (1966) and Lambton ([1957]1988: 301–318) have provided a general history of the political organizations present in the Constitutional Revolution (particularly dur- ing its earlier phase). Abrahamian studies the social and ethnic origin of the involved parties and groups along class lines, and follows their development through two rev- olutions (1982: 281–415), and Etehadieh examines their political behavior in the first and second majles (1982a) as well as their program in the second majles (1982b). Bahar (1944) surveys the parties’ political acts during the constitutional period by focusing on their impact in the last period of Qajar rule (1911–1926). 4. In this inventory of national military organizations I have excluded the Central Brigade formed by Ahmad Shah through the traditional bunichah system of recruitment. Its maximum number, including officers, was 2,250. Their mission was to safeguard the court and Tehran after the episode of the government in exile and the breakdown of the gendarmerie in 1915. The Central Brigade did not have any military importance and was annexed to the Cossack Division only five days after the 1921 coup (Aqeli 1998: 96–97). I have also excluded the military forces formed around Mirza Kuchak Khan’s rebellion in the north and his short-lived Soviet Socialist Republic of Gilan (June 1920– October 1921). Finally, I have excluded the Russian, Ottoman, German, and British forces occupying Iran from 1911 to 1922. After the dismantlement of the British-led forces in 1922, most of its Iranian members joined the unified army and the remaining British and Indian members left the country.
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