Iran: Empire of the Mind

by Michael Axworthy

  Mozaffar od-Din Shah’s successor was his son Mohammad Ali Shah, whose instincts were more autocratic than those of his father. He was resolved from the start, although he took an oath of loyalty to the constitution, to overturn it and restore the previous form of untrammelled monarchy. Through 1907 and the first half of 1908 the Majles passed measures for the reform of taxation and finance, and education and judicial matters. The latter were particularly disturbing to the ulema, because they saw their traditional role encroached upon.

  The figure of Shaykh Fazlollah Nuri symbolised the change of mind among many of the ulema and their followers at this time. Nuri was a prominent Tehrani mojtahed in 1905, and had supported the protests of 1905-1906. But by 1907 he was arguing that the Majles and its plans were leading away from the initial aims of the protesters, that it was unacceptable that sacred law should be tampered with, also unacceptable that other religious groups be treated equally with Muslims before the law, and that the constitutionalists were importing ‘the customs and practices of the abode of unbelief ’ (i.e. the West). At one point Nuri led a group of supporters into bast at the shrine at Shah Abd ol-Azim. From there his attacks on the constitutionalists grew stronger, and he expressed open support for the monarchy against the Majles, which he denounced as illegitimate. He also railed against Jews, Bahais and Zoroastrians, exaggerating their part in the constitutionalist movement. A group of clerics sent telegrams supporting him from the theological centre in Najaf.21 Other mojtaheds, like Tabataba’i, were more willing to accept Western ideas into the framework of political structures that were to govern human affairs in the absence of the Hidden Emam. But it is probably also fair to say that Nuri understood better than many of the ulema the direction that constitutionalism was leading, and (from his perspective) the dangers of it. The general ferment of ideas precipitated by the revolution and the years of dissent before it had affected the ulema too, and the ulema had never been a united bloc of opinion (no more than any group of intellectuals ever is). Eventually, another leading cleric (Khorasani) attacked Nuri from Najaf, declaring him to be a non-Muslim.

  In a way that is reminiscent of the way that the fighting around Troy in the Iliad is paralleled by the disputes of the gods on Mount Olympus, the struggle between radicals and conservatives in Tehran (and elsewhere) was paralleled by a struggle between the mojtaheds in Najaf. Before 1906, the most eminent of these, the marja for many Shi‘a Muslims, was Mohammad Kazem Khorasani, who supported the constitution and the line taken by Tabataba’i when the revolution came. But the ferment caused among the ulema by the revolution was such that as Nuri came to prominence in Tehran, Khorasani lost ground to a more conservative rival, Seyyed Mohammad Kazem Yazdi. This shift took concrete form at prayer: followers sat behind their chosen marja, and one account says that when the struggle was at its height only thirty or so still prayed behind Khorasani, while several thousand took their place behind Yazdi. Later on there was rioting in Najaf between the supporters of the different factions.22

  In June 1908 the Shah decided that feeling had moved in his direction enough for him to act, and (after his chosen first minister had been assassinated) launched the Cossack brigade in an attack against the Majles. The troops fired shells at the building until the delegates gave in, and the assembly was closed. Many leading members were arrested and executed, while others, like Taqizadeh, escaped overseas. The Shah’s coup was successful in Tehran, but not in all the provinces. In Tabriz, delegates from the constitutionalist regional assembly and their supporters (notably the charismatic ex-brigand Sattar Khan) successfully held the city against the royal governor and his forces.

  In 1907, newly allied to each other and France, and concerned at Germany’s burgeoning overseas presence, Britain and Russia had finally compounded their mutual suspicions and reached a treaty over their interests in Persia. The treaty showed no respect for the new conditions of popular sovereignty in the country (and proved inter alia that the apparent British protection of the revolutionaries in their Legation in 1906 had little real significance). It divided Persia into three zones: a zone of Russian influence in the north (including Tabriz, Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan —most of the major cities), a British zone in the south-east, adjacent to the border with British India, and a neutral zone in the middle.

  One consequence of the treaty was that the Russians, intolerant as ever of any form of popular movement, felt obliged to send in troops to restore Qajar rule in Tabriz after the Shah’s coup of June 1908. But some of the revolutionaries were able to escape to Gilan and continue their resistance with other locals there. In July 1909 they made a move on Tehran, coordinated with a move from the south, where revolutionaries in Isfahan had allied themselves with the Bakhtiari tribe and successfully taken over the city. Mohammad Ali Shah fled to the Russian legation, was deposed and went into exile in Russia. He was replaced by his young son, Ahmad (though Ahmad was not crowned until July 1914).

  The constitutionalists were back in control once more, but the revolution had entered a new, more dangerous phase. A new Majles came in (on a new electoral law, which yielded a more conservative assembly), but the divisions between the radicals and the conservatives had deepened, and the violence that had reinstated the revolution also had its effect; many of the armed groups that had retaken the capital stayed on there. Several prominent Bakhtiaris took office in the government. The ulema were divided and many sided with the royalists, effectively rejecting the whole project of constitutionalism. But within a few days the leader of the conservative ulema, Nuri, was arrested, tried and hanged for his alleged connections with the coup of June 1908. There were a series of assassinations carried out by both wings of political opinion—Behbehani was killed, and later Sattar Khan. The radicals (the Democratic party in the Majles) found themselves denounced by bazaar crowds as heretics and traitors and some of them (including Taqizadeh) were forced into exile. Rumours ran around that there was a Babi conspiracy behind the Democrats, and there were attacks on the Jews (in Kermanshah in 1909, and Shiraz in 1910, instigated as usual by preachers and marginal mullahs—a later, serious riot against the Jews in Tehran in 1922 was put down by Reza Khan23). There was disorder in many provinces, it became impossible to collect taxation, tribal leaders took over in some areas and brigandage became commonplace. To try to address this, and to redress the presence of the Russian-officered Cossack brigade, the Majles set up a gendarmerie trained by Swedish officers.

  Prince Charming

  Pushing forward despite these storms, the government appointed a young American, Morgan Schuster, as financial adviser. Schuster presented clearsighted, wide-ranging proposals that addressed law and order and the government’s control of the provinces as well as more narrowly financial matters; and began to put them into effect. Fulfilling Iranian aspirations, or at least the aspirations of some Iranians, in ways that British realpolitik had disappointed them, the United States in this phase and later looked like the partner Iran had long hoped to find in the West; anti-feudal, anti-colonial; modern, but not imperialist; a truly benevolent foreign power that would, for once, treat Iran with respect, as an agent in her own right, not as an instrument. People have suggested that there are only a limited number of stories in literature and folklore; that all the great variety ever told can be reduced to just a handful of archetypal plots. If that is so, and if we think of the British and the Russians in the nineteenth century as the Ugly Sisters, then at this time Morgan Schuster and by extension the United States, looked like Prince Charming. But the story was not to have a happy ending.

  The Russians objected to Schuster’s appointment of a British officer to head up a new gendarmerie (for tax collection), on the basis that it should not have been made within their sphere of influence without their consent, and the British acquiesced with their uglier sister. Schuster assessed, probably correctly, that the deeper Russian motive was to keep the Persian government’s affairs in a state of financial bankruptcy, and thus in a position of relative weakness
(in the position of supplicant for Russian loans), the better to manipulate them. Any determined effort to put the government of Persia on a sound financial footing, as Schuster’s reforms threatened to do, was a threat to Russian interests. The Russians presented an ultimatum: Schuster had to go. A body of women surged into the Majles to demand that the ultimatum be rejected, and the Majles agreed with them, insisting that the American should stay. But the Russians sent troops to Tehran and as they drew near, the Bakhtiaris and conservatives in the cabinet enacted what has been called a coup, and dismissed both Schuster and the Majles in December 1911.24

  Schuster later wrote a book about his time in Iran called The Strangling of Persia, in which (despite what today reads sometimes with a rather prosy, evangelical style) he expressed his admiration for the moral courage and determination of the people he worked with in the period of the Constitutional Revolution. The book explains much about the revolution, and about Persia at the time, but also about Schuster’s attitudes to the country, and also perhaps something of the reasons why he and by extension the US were so highly regarded by Iranians. He wrote of the Majles that it:

  … more truly represented the best aspirations of the Persians than any other body that had ever existed in that country. It was as representative as it could be under the difficult circumstances which surround the institution of the Constitutional Government. It was loyally supported by the great mass of the Persians, and that alone was sufficient justification for its existence. The Russian and British Governments, however, were constantly instructing their Ministers at Teheran to obtain this concession or to block that one, failing utterly to recognise that the days had passed in which the affairs, lives and interests of twelve millions of people were entirely in the hands of an easily intimidated and willingly bribed despot.25

  It would be incorrect to put all the blame for the outcome of the Constitutional revolution onto the foreigners. The revolution had brought forward violence and rancour between the groups represented in the Majles, and the divisions contributed to the events of December 1911. One could speculate (not least on the basis of the use of terror by other revolutionaries in other revolutions) that if the revolution had not been cut off at that point the violence might well have got a great deal worse, possibly with very damaging long-term effects. But that is to speculate too far. We do not know how it would have turned out. Revolutions may have family resemblances, but they have no timetable and no blueprint, and the constitutional revolution arose out of distinctive and unique political and social circumstances. There were many positive elements in the situation as it was before December 1911, as well as the negative; above all that at last (as Schuster pointed out) the country had a truly popular government, and that it was addressing as a priority the fundamental problem of the fiscal structures. Revolutionaries and people showed a strong solidarity against external meddling, a powerful enthusiasm for constitutional government, and for their elected Majles. This enthusiasm had been strong enough to overturn one coup already, and was strong enough to sustain the principles of constitutionalism later too, notably in 1919-1920. It gives the lie to those who condescendingly suggest that Iran, or Middle Eastern countries in general, are somehow culturally unsuited to constitutional, representative or (later) democratic government. When those forms of government were offered, Iranians grabbed them with both hands, as other peoples invariably have in other times and places.

  Persia, Oil, Battleships and the First World War

  Through this period, even before the British legation had been used for sanctuary by the protesters in 1906, new developments had been at work to reshape Britain’s attitude to Iran. Since at least the turn of the century, Britain’s traditional rivalries with France and Russia had been replaced by an awareness of the danger of the growing power and belligerence of Germany. France and Russia allied with each other (by implication, against Germany) in 1894; Britain and France in 1904, and Britain France and Russia all together in 1907 (the Triple Entente). Particularly sharp for Britain was the German programme of naval shipbuilding over this period. Since the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 Britain had maintained an unrivalled dominance of the world’s oceans; an essential support to her world empire. But under Emperor Wilhelm II the Germans began building modern warships at a rapid rate, threatening the Royal Navy’s dominance. British shipyards began to turn out ships to match the German programme. In 1906 the British launched HMS Dreadnought, which was said to have rendered all previous warships obsolete at a stroke by its combination of speed and the coordinated firepower of its simplified armament. In 1912 the British navy switched from coal to oil as fuel: oil burned more efficiently and was less bulky. But whereas Britain had huge domestic reserves of coal, oil had to be sought elsewhere. Oil had been discovered (the first oil to be found in the Middle East) in large quantities under the terms of the D’Arcy concession, near Ahwaz in Khuzestan, in south-west Iran, in 1908.

  Persia had for decades been of importance to Britain for the sake of the north-west frontier of India (perhaps of declining importance, especially after the Triple Entente), but now the oil reserves of Khuzestan became vital for the security of the whole British empire. Britain’s sphere of influence according to the agreement with Russia was quickly extended westwards to include the rest of the Persian Gulf coast and the oil fields. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed to exploit the oil, and in 1914 the British government bought up a majority share in it.

  Partly because of the oil, but also because Britain’s rivals fell away one by one over the following years, Britain gradually became the dominant external power in Iran in the decade that followed 1911. It was a period of deepening chaos, poverty and suffering. The Russians fired on revolutionaries in several of the cities in their northern zone in the aftermath of the coup of December 1911, notably in Mashhad, where protesters took sanctuary in the shrine of the Emam Reza, only for the Russian artillery to shell the shrine itself, an act of sacrilege and humiliation that was deeply felt throughout the country. The British Embassy reported in 1914 that the central government had little influence on events outside Tehran.26 The British and the Russians exercised a degree of control in their respective zones, but their grip was far from absolute, as was shown by the success of the Jangali movement in Gilan, under the charismatic leader Kuchek Khan, which continued to sustain some of the spirit of independence that had inspired the revolution (Jangal means forest, an allusion to the dense forests of the Caspian coast).

  Fig. 14. Kuchek Khan was the leader of the Jangalis of Gilan, who attempted to uphold the principles of the Constitutional Revolution, but later took a leftist direction under Bolshevik influence and were eventually defeated by Reza Khan’s Cossacks.

  The revolution is usually said to have ended in 1911, but this date is rather artificial. The constitution established by the revolution was not overturned, and a new Majles convened in December 1914. The spirit of the revolution and the ideals and expectations of the constitutionalists were not crushed. They resurfaced again and again in the events that followed. The revolution was a watershed in the history of Iran, as the episode in which previously more or less inchoate strands of thinking and opinion came together in concrete political form, shifted, changed and acquired permanent significance. It also, with the focus of popular debate in Tehran and the role of regional assemblies in sending delegates to the Majles, had a centralising and unifying effect, strengthening the nationalist sympathies of many of those delegates. The revolts in Gilan (and later Azerbaijan) had national, not separatist aims. There could be no going back to the pre-1906 state of things.

  During the First World War, despite the government’s declaration that Persia was neutral, the country was divided up by the different players that maintained troops in different sectors. There were the Russians in the north, but also the Jangalis and in Tehran the troops controlled (at least nominally) by the government—the Cossack brigade and the Swedish gendarmerie. Set against the Russians were the Ottomans, who made
an incursion into the country in the west and north, and their allies the Germans. For the most part none of these armed elements was strong enough to control large areas of territory or establish overall supremacy, and most of the fighting was low-intensity and indecisive most of the time. But in the north-west the Ottomans and the Russians fought each other more aggressively, doing much damage to the villages and the local population. For a time a revived rump of the constitutionalist movement was set up under Ottoman and German protection in Kermanshah, and for a period in 1915, when the Ottomans were doing well in the north and the Germans, allied with the Qashqai and others in the south, also made considerable progress, prospects for them looked good. The British pulled out of their consulates in Hamadan, Isfahan, Yazd and Kerman.

  But in the south the British set up a force called the South Persia Rifles in the spring of 1916, primarily to protect the oilfields; they also had a close relationship with the Bakhtiari, some of the Arab tribes of Khuzestan and those of the Khamseh confederation. Despite the skilful guerrilla war masterminded by the brilliant German adventurer Wilhelm Wassmuss (who has been compared to Lawrence of Arabia) the British slowly regained the upper hand, and the situation in Iran turned against the Germans and the Ottomans, as in the wider war, despite the Russians and their troops being removed from the equation after the October revolution of 1917. By the time of the armistice in November 1918 Wassmuss was captured near Isfahan and the British were resurgent in Persia.