Soldiers, Shahs and Subalterns in Iran: Opposition, Protest and Revolt, 1921-1941

Soldiers, Shahs and Subalterns in Iran Also by Stephanie Cronin TRIBAL POLITICS IN IRAN: Rural Conflict and the New S...

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Soldiers, Shahs and Subalterns in Iran

Also by Stephanie Cronin TRIBAL POLITICS IN IRAN: Rural Conflict and the New State, 1921–1941

THE ARMY AND THE CREATION OF THE PAHLAVI STATE IN IRAN, 1910–1926

SUBALTERNS AND SOCIAL PROTEST: History from Below in the Middle East

and North Africa (editor)

REFORMERS AND REVOLUTIONARIES IN MODERN IRAN: New Perspectives

on the Iranian Left (editor)

THE MAKING OF MODERN IRAN: State and Society under Riza Shah,

1921–1941 (editor)

Soldiers, Shahs and

Subalterns in Iran

Opposition, Protest and Revolt, 1921–1941 Stephanie Cronin Departmental Lecturer, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, UK

© Stephanie Cronin 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-0-230-53794-1

hardback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 19

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

List of Illustrations

vi

Acknowledgements

vii

Note on Transliteration

Part I

viii

From Constitutionalism to Dictatorship

Chapter 1 Introduction: Contesting Power in the New Iran Chapter 2 The Provincial Cities in Revolt (i): Colonel Pasyan and the Mashhad Rebellion, April–October 1921

1 3 44

Chapter 3 The Provincial Cities in Revolt (ii): Major Abulqasim Lahuti and the Tabriz Insurrection of 1922

101

Chapter 4 Popular Protest, Disorder and Riot in Iran: The Tehran Crowd and the Rise of Riza Khan, 1921–1925

128

Part II

159

The New Order and its Opponents

Chapter 5

Reform from Above and Resistance from Below, 1927–1929

161

Chapter 6

Popular Politics, the New State and the Birth of the Iranian Working Class: The 1929 Abadan Oil Refinery Strike

201

Chapter 7

The Politics of Radicalism within the Iranian Army: The Jahansuz Group of 1939

238

Conclusion

261

Notes

269

Bibliography

308

Glossary of Persian Words and Phrases

320

Index

322

v

List of Illustrations

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Constitutionalist bastis standing by the rice pots in the British legation A constitutionalist bast at the British Legation in Tehran Constitutionalists by the wall of the British legation during a bast The constitutionalist cleric, Ayatullah Muhamad Kazim Khurasani, delivering a sermon Knocking off time at Abadan refinery, 1909 Colonel Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan, commander of the Khurasan gendarmerie, 1921 Portrait of Abulqasim Lahuti Iranian and Russian commanders of the Cossack Brigade Riza Khan while a guard of the Dutch Legation and the Dutch Minister Riza Khan Ahmad Shah Qajar, Riza Khan and Jan Muhammad Amiralai, aide-de-camp to Ahmad Shah Members of the armed forces demonstrate their solidarity with the revolution of 1979

vi

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following for their help and advice: Janet Afary, Touraj Atabaki, Kaveh Bayat, Oliver Bast, Houchang Chehabi, Amir Hassanpour, Edmund Herzig, Homa Katouzian, Vanessa Martin, Reza Sheikholeslami, Saeed Talajooy, Richard Tapper, Heidi Walcher, Malcolm Yapp and Sohrab Yazdani. I would like to express my gratitude to Dilshod Rakhimov, to Joanne Burman at the BP archive, and especially to Mohammad Awadzadeh and his colleagues at the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies, for their help in finding the images reproduced below. Particular thanks are due to the Iran Heritage Foundation for their generous support and their provision of a fellowship which allowed me the time to work on this book and I would also like to acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council. Earlier versions of Chapters 1 and 6 appeared in Middle Eastern Studies, of Chapter 4 in the International Review of Social History and of Chapter 7 in Iranian Studies. I am grateful to the journal editors, Sylvia Kedourie, Aad Blok and Homa Katouzian respectively, for permission to include this material. Special thanks are also due to Lubica Pollakova for her help with the index.

vii

Note on Transliteration

The system of transliteration employed in this book is a simplified version of that recommended by the International Journal of Middle East Studies.

viii

Part I

From Constitutionalism to Dictatorship

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1 Introduction: Contesting Power in the New Iran

Scholarship on the history of early Pahlavi Iran has been dominated by a discourse of state-building and “the man of order”.1 Manifestations of opposition, protest and revolt have been incorporated into this discourse only as discrete episodes punctuating, and even validating, a dominant narrative of reform and modernization. Indeed, historians have sometimes seemed mesmerized by the image of a country rescued from extinction by a new, successful and hegemonic monarchy committed to a European model of state-building.2 To preserve this image of Iran under Riza Shah, it has been correspondingly necessary to present those individuals and groups who contested the new regime’s agenda as either politically and socially reactionary and obscurantist or entirely marginal. The new state was understood as the only dynamic and modern element in an otherwise ossified and moribund “traditional” environment, while its critics and opponents were assumed to be, by definition, historically redundant and doomed to social extinction.3 The chapters which follow argue, on the contrary, that this defining period in modern Iranian history was one where the power of the new state was constantly contested by a wide range of social groups with diverse forms of political representation, modes of action, and ideological vision. The new state as it emerged and consolidated in the 1920s and then degenerated in the 1930s faced successive challenges to its power and its legitimacy. Its growing authoritarianism encountered political opposition, its economic policies, including the fostering of landlordism in the countryside and étatiste industrial development, met with protest from ruined provincial merchants and from the devastated rural and urban poor, while its cultural policies were rejected, sometimes violently, by many of those outside the Tehran elite. 3

4 Soldiers, Shahs and Subalterns in Iran

In short, the book aims to re-examine the era of state-building, reform and modernization in Iran from the perspectives of those outside the newly-forming Pahlavi elite and its lieutenants among the modern intelligentsia. Deliberately shifting the spotlight downwards, the chapters discuss the various subaltern social categories which engaged in contesting the new state’s agenda: the political “crowd” in Tehran and the provincial towns and cities mobilized by a guild and clerical leadership; the urban and rural poor; the new working class in the oil fields; junior tribal khans; the lower ranks of the army and politically dissident elements within the officer corps, and looks at the methods, mechanisms and institutions these groups used to articulate an agenda of their own.4 Just as a new focus on those outside the old and new elites on which the Pahlavi state based itself furnishes a more comprehensible picture of the changes affecting Iranian society in those decades, so too does it facilitate a better understanding of the regime itself. The book particularly seeks to explain certain features of Riza Khan/Shah’s mentality and rule by referencing his own subaltern origins.5 For example, the shah’s mania for acquiring landed property, although galvanized by the opportunities opened up by legislation for the registration of title deeds of 1928, appears to have been, at least in part, the evolution of a typical peasant land hunger, albeit onto a scale made possible by his own meteoric political rise. Again, his own subaltern origins may partly explain his instinctive comprehension of the power of populist tactics, and his successful deployment of subaltern mobilizations against refractory elements of the old Qajar elite, including the dynasty itself, against tribal khans and against the British-owned oil company.6 His readiness to resort to such mobilizations, and the accompanying elaboration of a discourse of paternalism stressing his role as a champion of the downtrodden, is a typical feature of the political struggles in which he engaged throughout the 1920s.

The constitutional revolution and its legacy The discourse of state-building and reform elaborated for early Pahlavi Iran has been embedded in a broader view of Iranian historical development. Among the most important features of this view was a “catastrophist” perspective which has dominated the historiography of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Iran and which emphasizes the failure and chaos of the pre-1921 decades, places a corresponding emphasis on the novelty and uniqueness of the post-1921 regime, and

Introduction: Contesting Power in the New Iran 5

which tends to imply the unavoidable necessity of the authoritarianism of the early Pahlavi period. According to the “catastrophist” perspective on late Qajar Iran, the revolutionary period inaugurated with the mass protests and the shah’s granting of a constitution and a National Assembly in 1906 ended five years later with the closure of the Majlis (Parliament) under Russian threats, the turmoil of these years having failed to provide Iran with the means to escape from the coils of an exhausted Qajar political order and having opened the way for increased imperialist intervention, both political and military.7 This view concludes that the comprehensive constitutionalist defeat ushered in a decade of political anarchy and national collapse which was only ended by the coup of 1921. Even the periodization which has conventionally dominated the historiography of late Qajar Iran has reinforced the impression of constitutionalist failure and futility. Discussions of the constitutional era almost always end with the defeat of 1911, while the era of authoritarian modernization begins in 1921 with Riza Khan’s unheralded, and apparently inexplicable eruption onto the national political stage, the intervening decade little more then a hiatus of primordial chaos without historical significance.8 This catastrophist perspective developed under the influence of at least two, separate but related, outlooks, and achieved an almost unchallenged dominance over scholarship on the period, whatever the orientation of individual authors, whether sympathetic or hostile to the revolution or to its successor regimes. It resulted, firstly, from the observations of the British diplomatic and commercial establishment in Iran, observations which were lent an especial significance by a general belief that Britain was sympathetic to constitutionalism, at least at first. Whatever the actual degree of British sympathy for what they imagined the objectives of the constitutional movement to be, it did not outlast the accommodation with the Russian Empire reached in the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907, and their own growing alarm at the radical direction taken by certain constitutionalist trends. Indeed it was the British dislike of the some of the more chaotic manifestations of the constitutional movement, coupled with their exasperation at the old Qajar aristocracy, which later led them seamlessly into offering their public backing to the new “man of order”, Riza Khan. British fears and anxiety at the exuberance and vitality of the popular politics of the constitutional years led to a growing hostility which seeped into their descriptions of the revolution, and these descriptions formed an important basis for much Western scholarship on the period.9


The catastrophist perspective was also fostered by another interest. During the 1920s and 1930s the ideologues of the Pahlavi regime itself were eager to present the pre-coup decades as a period of chaos and relentless disaster, as part of the attempt to emphasize Riza Shah’s own unique individual claim to the role of national saviour. Both the existence and vitality of a broad constitutional milieu and the achievements of the revolution were systematically downplayed and finally written out of history altogether.10 These two trends of historical analysis naturally converged, reinforcing each other as a result of the political support given by Britain to the emerging Pahlavi order. The chapters which follow question this catastrophist perspective and the distortions which it has produced in the broad historical narrative of modern Iran, in particular its obscuring of the process by which the country moved from the embryonic multi-party pluralism nurtured in the space provided by the collapsing Qajar monarchy to the consolidation of a dictatorship which obliterated the developing civil society in the interests of an imagined “national unity” and “modernity”. Rather than seeing the constitutional years as barren and without issue, and the early Pahlavi period as discrete, self-contained and entirely novel, these chapters stress the links between the two periods. The book suggests a new periodization of these decades, one which locates the real rupture not in 1921 but in 1925, which emphasizes the constitutionalist origins of the political struggles of the first half of the 1920s, and which sees the consolidation of the new dynasty between 1925 and 1927 as a key moment ushering in an era of the strong state. The constitutional revolution had in fact wrought profound changes in the Iranian political landscape, changes that are largely unrecognized or erased by the catastrophist perspective. The revolutionary years were seminal to Iran’s subsequent history in terms of ideology and political culture. The period produced the broad agenda for reform adopted by the nationalist elite over many subsequent decades while the inability of the constitutional authorities to overcome Iran’s internal and external problems proved to be a crucible of Pahlavi authoritarianism, predisposing the political class towards succumbing to the allure of a charismatic personality. The revolution also had significant and specific state-building successes. Perhaps the most important of these were the Majlis, convened in 1906, and the Government Gendarmerie, established in 1910. Both not only survived the Russian ultimatum of 1911, but entered on a period of expansion and vitality, making important contributions to the nationalist struggle during the First World War, stabilizing radical political activity and providing it with a focus and


with political and military instruments. Both institutions continued to play important roles in shaping political and military developments in the 1920s. They represented elements of continuity between the statebuilding efforts of the constitutional and early Pahlavi periods and also acted as conduits, transmitting the political struggles of the constitutional revolution into the Pahlavi era. Gendarme officers presented repeated political and even military challenges in the early 1920s, while the Majlis acted as a focus for efforts to anchor the emerging new order in a constitutional and legal framework. Most importantly, the constitutional period represented a high water mark in the development of popular politics in Iran, a form of politics which was to be crucial in shaping the domestic landscape, firstly by restricting the space available to the imperial powers before the coup of 1921, and secondly by influencing and contesting the strategies of the new regime in the first decade of its existence, forcing Riza Khan to engage in a protracted struggle with his political opponents over the character of the new state. A central theme of this book is the legacy the constitutional revolution bequeathed to early Pahlavi Iran. The constitutional revolution embodied two quite distinct traditions. The first was a tradition of popular politics with a strong subaltern dimension which had begun to acquire a modern agenda and a national dimension in the late nineteenth century and which found its fullest expression in the mass strikes, demonstrations and basts which led to the granting of the constitution. The second was an elite tradition of state-building, which was represented most clearly by a concern with military reform. These two traditions did not represent a straightforward left-right split. The vision of a strong, modern and independent Iran was, in many respects, shared by both left and right. During 1909–1911 the leftleaning Democrat Party, for example, included in its programme the demand for universal conscription as a means of safeguarding the country and engendering patriotism, a demand eventually implemented by Riza Shah in the 1920s in precisely these ideological terms. Indeed it was Riza Shah’s ability to pose as the inheritor of the statebuilding tradition which, in the 1920s, encouraged many of the constitutionalist intelligentsia, including its leftist components, to offer their support, however conditional, to the new Pahlavi authoritarianism. Nor was this a simple religious-secular split. It rather represented, in different forms and combinations, elite-subaltern, official-popular and central-local contradictions. Such conflicts may clearly be discerned in, for example, the hostility of the Majlis to the provincial anjumans.11


These two traditions may be seen as broadly embodying two differing conceptions of political organization, represented on the one hand by a “top-down” secular and centralizing nationalism, and on the other by local, autonomous, voluntarist and decentralized movements driven by demands for natural justice, sometimes conceptualized in religious terms.12 During the early constitutional years these two traditions were not usually perceived as being in any fundamental opposition but, on the contrary, were assumed to be mutually reinforcing. Nonetheless an underlying contradiction existed between them, between, on the one hand, the evolution of popular politics in the direction of democratic government and a vibrant civil society, and on the other, the growing weight of an authoritarian nationalism which found its purest expression in uniform and on the parade ground. This tension continued throughout the constitutional period, was submerged in the struggle for survival characterizing the years during and immediately after the First World War, but came fully to the surface between 1921 and 1925. It was resolved, but then only temporarily, when Riza Shah succeeded in openly sundering the religious-radical alliance, winning the enthusiastic support of the secular reformers for his version of the statebuilding project by promising the implementation of reform in return for political submission. The decades of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were pre-eminently an era of constitutionalism, especially in the Middle East, and the Iranian revolution took place amidst a flurry of such upheavals across the world.13 Everywhere intellectuals in countries falling under imperial domination seized on constitutional government as the secret of Europe’s political and military strength.14 Successive revolutionary outbreaks in Tsarist Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Qing dynasty China sought to limit or abolish autocratic monarchies and to bring about constitutional reform and national regeneration. Although each movement had its own character and historical context, they shared broad objectives. In 1905 an alliance of middle class constitutionalists and working class revolutionaries succeeded in wresting wide-ranging concessions from the Tsar, including a guarantee of civil liberties and a promise of universal male suffrage. In early 1906 the first Russian constitution was promulgated and a consultative assembly, the Duma, convened. This victory, although it quickly succumbed to brutal repression, was of immense symbolic and exemplary significance. In 1908 an uprising sparked off by Ottoman army officers, fearful of imperial disintegration, economic domination by Europe and the loss of territories to Russia and to new states in the Balkans, forced


the sultan to restore the constitution first granted in 1876 and suspended indefinitely two years later. Parliamentary elections followed immediately. In China, ineffective imperial absolutism seemed to be the harbinger of administrative decay and the cause of Chinese helplessness against Western economic and political control, expressed through unequal treaties and spheres of influence. A combination of secret societies, westernizing intellectuals such as Sun Yat Sen, the reformed and modernized military and provincial merchants and gentry brought about the 1911 revolution, followed by a republic and a constitution in 1912 and elections to a National Assembly the following year. During the nineteenth century in Iran, as in the Ottoman Empire and China, the arbitrary and theoretically absolute power of the monarch was increasingly starkly contrasted with a reality in which the state was growing weaker and weaker in the face of internal and external threats. These threats included the economic, military and political power of Europe and internal centrifugal forces, especially regional or tribal bids for autonomy. In both the Ottoman Empire and China, officers and soldiers from the new modernized army units, who had absorbed ideas of political change along with concepts of military reform, were key in launching the revolutions. In Iran, owing to the generalized failure of modernization projects, this element was absent. Also absent, owing to Iran’s economic underdevelopment, were the working class and leftist forces prominent in the 1905 upheavals across the Russian empire, although from 1905 onwards left-leaning groups began to appear and play an important role, especially in Tabriz, as the revolution moved through its successive phases. In Iran the task of launching a revolution fell to a coalition of social forces and intellectual trends, “a religious-radical alliance”,15 an anti-imperialist and antiQajar conglomeration of clerics, merchants and dissident intellectuals, sometimes active in secret societies. This coalition had first emerged during the Tobacco Protest of 1891–2, when it had an early and striking success in forcing the shah to cancel the tobacco concession granted to a British subject, Major G. F. Talbot.16 It derived its power from the ability of the leadership to mobilize an urban “crowd”, consisting of low-ranking mullahs, theology students, guild artisans, bazar shopkeepers and the mass of the urban poor. The shah was forced to agree to the demand for a constitution by this crowd, active in everincreasing numbers in three waves of strikes and public protests between the spring of 1905 and the summer of 1906, in Tehran, the shrine of Shah Abdul Azim, and in Qum. By the time of the great bast of 1906 in


the British legation, which provided the environment for the formulation of a coherent demand for a National Assembly, the revolutionaries had been able to assemble a crowd numbering 14,000, representing nearly one-third of the labour force of Tehran. The establishment of the constitution and a formal representative and democratic institution, the National Assembly or Majlis, was the crowning achievement of the Tehran crowd. In Iran, various social groups, historically lacking formal channels of political representation, had become accustomed to asserting themselves through mass popular actions, as a political crowd, and such crowds were a familiar feature of urban life. Like their counterparts elsewhere, Iranian crowds possessed their own traditions, repertoires of actions, ideological contexts and concrete objectives. The actions constituting the repertoire of the urban crowd included the guild strike and the closure of the bazars, the taking of bast, the use of mosques for political meetings, the addressing of appeals in the form of petitions and telegrams to the authorities, the distribution of anonymous and often menacing and intimidatory shabnamahs and, when these methods were exhausted, collective bargaining through riot.17 The interventions of urban crowds were usually accompanied by a discourse emphasizing an appeal for justice, with the implication that the people’s rights had in some sense been violated, while the use of clerics or other figures of authority as intermediaries heightened the sense of legitimacy surrounding these protests. So widespread and well understood were these tactics that their use may be seen in surprising and unfavourable environments, such as the army. Soldiers routinely addressed petitions to the authorities, military and civil, went on strike and made demonstrations, these being followed, if no redress were found, by an escalation culminating in desertion and finally mutiny. By the constitutional period, certain of these tactics had even spread to the countryside, with petitions to the Majlis, for example, an increasingly common feature of rural conflict between peasants and landlords and between khans and nomads.18 The first victory of national significance came with the “Tobacco Protest” of 1891–1892, when the closure of the bazars in cities throughout Iran, the mass consumer boycott of tobacco and demonstrations in the streets of Tehran, forced the shah to cancel his sale of the tobacco concession to a foreigner. In 1905–1906 these techniques produced their greatest success when mass basts, bazar strikes and street demonstrations provided a context within which revolutionary intellectuals were able to formulate a novel political agenda, the demand for a constitution and a National Assembly.


The success of this first phase of the revolution was achieved purely by the methods of mass public protest, without resort to arms or violence. Paradoxically, this success was possible partly because of the very weakness of nineteenth century efforts at reform and state-building. The failure to carry out measures which might have strengthened the institutions of Qajar government, or to create new institutions, particularly a modern army, meant that when the crisis came the shah and the social forces on which the monarchy rested had no repressive apparatus at their disposal. On the other hand, of course, in the Ottoman Empire and Xing dynasty China, sultan and emperor were to be deposed by the very modernized army units they had worked so hard to build up. In Iran, no such units existed. Although the shah had no modernized army on which he might depend to defend him against the constitutionalists, neither did he need to fear that such an army might turn against him. The Iranian state’s weakness at this time may be attributed to the failure of nineteenth century reform. Yet the Qajar dynasty’s survival for another twenty years after 1905–1906 may equally have been the consequence of this very failure, and the resulting absence of a modern officer corps with sufficient dynamism to seize the political initiative. The very real danger to the shah potentially represented by army officers was illustrated by the response to the revolution of Iran’s partially modernized cavalry unit, the Russian-officered Cossack Brigade, which had been deeply compromised by the spread of constitutionalist ideas, and the trajectory later adopted by the much more consistently reformoriented Government Gendarmerie. The last Qajar shah was indeed eventually deposed by one of his own officers, an ex-cossack whose main support lay within the new army, but this did not take place as an integral part of the revolutionary process as it had in the Ottoman Empire and China, but only after a struggle for supremacy within the country lasting two decades. It did not, furthermore, result in the abolition of the institution of the monarchy, as had been the case elsewhere, but rather only in a change of dynasty, with profound consequences for Iran’s future. Between the winter of 1905 and the summer of 1906 the shah could resist the revolutionaries only by the methods of bribery and the sowing of division among his opponents. When these failed, he found himself with no choice but to accede to the demands for a constitution and a National Assembly. The shah lacked coercive instruments, troops and police, with which to defend his autocracy, but the revolutionaries too lacked the means, armed force, to seize and retain real power. Each side launched bids to grasp power, including the shah’s coup of


1908 and the constitutionalist recapture of Tehran in 1909. Yet their mutual weakness produced an underlying deadlock which neither side was able decisively to resolve. Thus, when in 1906 the first National Assembly convened, the revolutionaries were not truly in power. The constitution had been designed to limit the absolutism of the shah but the institutions of constitutional government lacked the means in reality to enforce their will within the national territory and to guarantee the survival of the state against its external enemies. The weakness of the new constitutional government made a profound impression on reforming circles and explains, to a large extent, their later ready embrace of the militarism and authoritarianism of the new Pahlavi regime. The constitutional revolution may best be understood when it is placed within its historical and global context. It was an Iranian manifestation of an international trend, part of a wave of such movements and upheavals which swept across much of the world, including southern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, in the late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries. At the same time, its precise character, the social forces which it mobilized, its leadership and its agenda were conditioned by the specific circumstances of Iranian history. The methods employed by the revolutionaries drew on a deep indigenous tradition of urban protest. Their objectives, however, were no longer localized grievances but, in an illustration of the growth of a modern political consciousness, national demands focused on the state. Furthermore, the constitutional revolution itself produced a rapid acceleration of political consciousness, the formulation of new demands for a National Assembly, for example, taking place during the very course of the basts. The mass participation in the revolution, the establishment of the Majlis, the holding of elections, the spread of a free press, generated a democratic potential, while the efforts to secure constitutional rule led to the reactivation of an Iranian state-building project which dated back to the beginning of the nineteenth century.19 Yet the constitutional revolution failed to establish its authority over a key institution of the Iranian state, the Cossack Brigade, and this failure had profound consequences for the future. The Russian officers were left in situ. In 1908 they bombarded and suppressed the Majlis and, in the years of reaction and foreign occupation after 1911, were able further to strengthen their position. Although the overthrow of Tsarism freed Iran from the grip of the Russian Military Mission, this only created a space immediately occupied by the remaining imperial power, Britain, and opened the way for another cossack coup, this time


British-sponsored.20 Thus it was the Cossack Brigade, identified historically with anti-constitutionalism, led by an officer, Riza Khan, who had played no visible part in the political and military struggles of the previous decade, which carried out this decisive political intervention. The resulting regime embarked on a state-building project which owed its central features to the programmes of the revolutionary period. Yet the cossacks had grown to political maturity in an atmosphere dominated by loyalty to autocracy, Russian and Iranian, and hostility to constitutionalism and reform and the circumstances of the coup and the character of the new national leadership which it produced led to the marginalization of elements more centrally committed not just to the state-building but to the constitutionalist dimension of the revolution’s goals. As a result, the way in which the new Pahlavi regime appropriated the legacy of the constitutional revolution was problematic. The new regime’s authoritarianism, martial temper and inclination to resort to force distorted and rendered deeply unpopular many of the reforms long advocated by the constitutionalist intelligentsia. For example, constitutionalist proposals for encouraging and providing protection for women who gradually chose to discard chadur and pichih became unveiling by administrative diktat backed up by force, while the “tribal problem” was reconceptualized from a problem of historical backwardness into an existential threat to national survival, this threat then becoming the justification for an increasing military hegemony over civil society.21 The chapters which follow contest the view, advanced at the time and throughout subsequent decades, which argues that, whatever the defects of the monarchist regime as it emerged in the 1920s, no serious alternative national leadership was available and that, in the context of the period, the regime’s authoritarianism was unavoidable and even essential to any programme of reconstruction and reform, given the nature of the society, of the opposition, and of the character of the period. On the contrary, the book argues that both Riz˙a Khan’s seizure of power and the dictatorship which was constructed over the ensuing decade were constantly contested, and only imposed after the crushing of myriad other political trends and social forces. The early chapters of the book emphasize the diversity of political actors and options present in post-World War One Iran. They specifically dispute the assertion, put forward most assiduously by General Ironside, the progenitor of the 1921 coup, and later by ideologues of the Pahlavi regime, that Riza Khan was the sole candidate able to address the needs of the moment and to undertake the task of national salvation. In


contrast to this view, the chapters argue that in 1920–1921 Riza Khan was a figure of marginal significance, rescued from obscurity only by immediate British strategic needs, and only able to achieve a fragile supremacy by appealing to those very constitutionalist currents which he was later to suppress with such brutality. Despite much recent research into the nature of Riza Khan/Shah’s rule, the man himself remains an enigma.22 Certainly, the type of regime which emerged during the 1920s owed much to Riza Khan’s own particular methods, habits and inclinations, and bore his unmistakable personal imprimatur yet, concerning the development of Riza Khan’s views, either before the coup or when in power, very little material exists, other then a collection of speeches and a couple of ghostwritten safarnamahs, all reiterating broad generalities.23 Himself inarticulate and a poor reader, he left no defence or apologia. His own outlook remains opaque and the weltanschauung of the inner circles of the regime elusive. This contrasts with Mustafa Kemal, for example, whose thirty-six hour speech before the congress of the Republican People’s Party (RPP) in 1927 shaped understanding of the emergence of the new republic, both inside and outside Turkey, for generations. As a figure of historical significance Riza Khan only emerges as late as 1918, and then as an intriguer, assisting the White Russian Colonel Starroselsky to take command of the Cossack Division from the liberal Colonel Clergi. His role in the Starroselsky coup, and his later offer to betray the Russians, appear to have brought Riza Khan to British attention. In 1920 he is suddenly placed by the British General Ironside in effective command of the Iranian Cossack Division at Qazvin. Although already in his early forties, he has been, before 1918, invisible in Iranian political and even military life. Regarding his early life and career, all the extant biographical fragments make only some brief references to his participation in various tribal campaigns. Of his political views at this time we know nothing and there is no indication that he expressed any interest in or even possessed any knowledge of the constitutionalist and nationalist struggles which were taking place while he was a young man. By early middle age, Riza Khan had made no mark on national life. The blankness of Riza’s early life contrasts strikingly with the biographies of other nationalist officers of the period, particularly that of Colonel Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan. The charismatic Colonel Pasyan, though more than a decade younger, had by 1921 already acquired a reputation of considerable substance by his participation in the political and military conflicts of the preceding years. Riza Khan’s apparent detachment from the formative political and


ideological experiences of his generation and the singular environment, the Russian-officered Cossack Division, in which he grew to maturity, perhaps may go some way to explaining the paradoxes which later beset his regime. If the circumstances of 1920–1921 were ideal for the emergence of a “man on horseback”, yet there were in Iran other, much more obvious, potential candidates, both individual and collective, ready to assume this role. One of the many myths about the pre-history of the coup asserts that the cossacks were the only effective military force in the country. This view owes its origin to General Ironside, whose role in facilitating the coup and in selecting its leadership was absolutely central. Ironside totally disregarded, for reasons of pragmatic politics, the Government Gendarmerie, which was, in purely military terms at least as effective, if not considerably more effective, than the Cossack Division. The Gendarmerie, however, was unpalatable to Ironside because of its nationalist inclinations, the British, one-time patrons of the Gendarmerie, had their fingers badly burnt by the force’s defection to the nationalists during the war, and also because it was practically as well as politically much less amenable to British control, being stationed in relatively well-organized units throughout the country under the leadership of a much more professionally and politically mature officer corps. Riza Khan was allocated the role of coup-maker by Ironside and the main reason for his suitability in Ironside’s eyes seems to have been precisely that he seemed to be a soldier and not a politician. The British minister in Tehran, Herman Norman, reiterated this view even after the coup, with the extraordinary description of him as an “honest and capable officer without political ambitions”.24 Ironside could have found no protégé within the Gendarmerie so apparently yet deceptively reliable as the cossack Riza Khan. Riza Khan’s relative obscurity and his unlikely candidature for the task of national salvation may also be illustrated by a comparison with the early career of his Turkish contemporary, Mustafa Kemal. Riza Khan and Kemal were both from modest social origins and both sought advancement through a military career. The military milieux that they entered were, however, very different. Kemal graduated from the Ottoman military academy, joined the Committee of Union and Progress, becoming a member of the inner circle of Unionist officers, served in the Tripolitanian and Balkan wars and became a military hero during the Great War. By virtue of his personal charisma and the quality of his leadership, he assumed the political and the military leadership of the Turkish national resistance and his victories in the war of


independence bestowed on the new state and its leader an aura of great legitimacy. Riza Khan, however, did not arrive in power as a military and nationalist hero. His record of active service was confined to a few campaigns against recalcitrant tribes and brigands and to acting as guard to one or other foreign legation. Although the Cossack Brigade had a cadet school he did not attend it, apparently receiving little or no formal education of any kind. By 1920–1921 he was largely unknown in nationalist circles, while his unit, the Cossack Division, was widely detested as a foreign puppet. British support was vital to the success of the coup and he was generally believed, both at the time and subsequently, to have been brought to power by the British.

Constitutionalist struggles, popular traditions and the new regime Although the coup left the Qajar shah in place as constitutional head of state, it brought about fundamental shifts in the distribution of power, between the old elite and the rising generation of nationalist politicians, between the army and civilian institutions such as the Majlis and the Qajar monarchy, between Tehran and the provinces, and between Iran and the Great Powers. Most crucially, the coup allowed Riza Khan to position himself to such strategic advantage that he was able to establish his personal ascendancy, through the posts of war minister, prime minister and finally shah, without recourse to any further violent political rupture. Nonetheless, at the moment of its foundation in 1921, Riza Khan’s regime encountered a range of opposition from groups and individuals whose political and ideological formation had taken place within the conflicts and turmoil of the constitutional revolution and the Great War and whose proposals for Iran’s future drew on the their experiences in these conflicts both within Iran itself and within the wider Middle East. Furthermore, his rise to supreme power in the years down to 1925 was neither seamless nor inexorable but was a complex, uneven and fragile process, contested at every step. The first part of the book includes three case-studies of such contests for power in the first half of the 1920s. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss revolts led by gendarme officers. In both cases these movements occupied a power base in provincial cities, far from the locus of national political life, but nonetheless they saw themselves as spearheading not local but national movements. These chapters, in their biographical dimension, trace what were, in many respects, typical personal, political and intel-


lectual formations, and provide an antidote to the scholarly fixation on the personality of Riza Shah which has obscured the contribution of other figures within the various political and military constitutionalist milieux. The discussion of Pasyan’s regime in Mashhad illustrates the fragility of Riza Khan’s grip on power in the immediate post-coup period while the Lahuti episode highlights the diffuse nature of the radical environment in the Iran of these years, the immense appeal of the Soviet example to layers who were not themselves communists, and the ready ability of Iranian radicals to pick and choose elements of Marxist ideology to suit the needs of the moment. The account of the Lahuti rebellion also makes some effort to look beyond the officer corps, and to discuss the political orientation of the rank and file and non-commissioned officers of the Gendarmerie, and to understand the methods typically employed in popular assertions of power: the mass boycott, the demonstration and the strategically targeted threat of violence. The Lahuti episode began as a “traditional” protest over non-receipt of pay, familiar from soldiers’ lives in the nineteenth century, but it was transformed into a revolutionary challenge by the wider political context and the presence of a leadership prepared to make a bid for power. Lahuti’s revolt was in fact the last in a series of provinciallybased radical movements which broke out in the decade between the suppression of the Majlis and the coup of 1921, of which the most famous was the Jangali revolt. It may also be seen, in particular, as a final stage in the revolutionary constitutionalist history of Tabriz, a city emblematic of Iranian social-democracy, and an immediate sequel to the Khiyabani revolt to which it was inextricably linked.25 Tabriz had still to play a role in the republican agitation of 1924 and the antiQajar movement of 1925. Yet the suppression of the 1922 insurrection was a fundamental watershed marking the beginning of the centralized authoritarianism of the early Pahlavi period which was to endure until another World War provided a new opportunity for a reawakened radicalism in the form of Jafar Pishavari’s Democrat Party and the Autonomous Government of Azarbayjan. Arriving at the site of national political power via the coup of 1921, Riza Khan quickly made himself war minister and forced his coconspirator, Sayyid Ziya, into exile. In 1923 he became prime minister and two years later crowned himself shah. Explanations of the success of his rise to supreme power have focused on his control of the coercive instruments of the new state, especially the army, and, crucially, on his acquisition of the backing of the British minister in Tehran,


Percy Loraine. However there was another side to this seemingly triumphant ascent. Chapter 3 looks at Riza Khan’s rise from a different angle, focusing on the opposition to his accumulation of power posed by the Tehran crowd, led by the clergy and the bazar, and at the methods, drawn directly from the arsenal of his enemies, which he deployed to defeat this opposition. The political influence of urban crowds throughout the country had reached their zenith in the constitutional revolution, and their vitality continued undimmed into the 1920s. The victory of the revolutionaries in 1905–1906 had showed the continuing and indeed deepening salience of a repertoire of methods typical of past urban protests. The persistence of such methods, traditional in form but modern in political content, and the readiness of wide layers of the population to adopt them, continued into the 1920s. Urban crowds in early Pahlavi Iran, in both Tehran and the provincial cities, continued to demonstrate their political vitality and to play a key role in the crises which periodically rocked the new regime. In the political and constitutional battles of 1924–1925, for example, the Tehran crowd was a factor of central and sometimes decisive importance. The struggle over republicanism, for example, was decided not in the Majlis nor in the madrasahs of Qum but on the streets of the capital, the actual political victory belonging to the anti-republican Tehran crowd led by Mudarris and acting in defence of the constitution. The republican movement was defeated by a coalition of conservative constitutionalists, both secular, represented by Majlis deputies such as Mutamin al-Mulk (Husayn Pirniya), and religious, led by Sayyid Hasan Mudarris. In the relative political freedom of 1924, such a grouping might still assemble itself in Tehran and its ability to mobilize mass support showed the power it continued to possess. However this was the last occasion in early Pahlavi Iran that such an alliance was able to form and intervene in national political life. From 1925 onwards a combination of political repression, especially in Tehran, the initial support given to the new regime by much of the secular intelligentsia and the nationalist elite, and the inability of Riza Khan’s variegated enemies to make common cause, meant an end to any possibility of broad, constitutionalist, secular-religious alliances. The furore aroused by the ghawgha-yi jumhuri, the republican uproar, contrasts with the apparent absence of opposition to the change of dynasty. An explanation for this is sometimes sought in the ulama’s specific dislike of republicanism, especially its evident consequences in the new Turkish republic, their preference for constitutional monarchy


and therefore their greater readiness to accept a change of dynasty. However the apparent clerical preference for constitutional monarchy did not reconcile them to what many considered to be the profoundly unconstitutional rule of the new shah. More significant in silencing opposition was the transformation in the political environment brought about between 1924 and 1925. Mudarris, for example, continued vocally to oppose the change of dynasty but by 1925–1926 he had been deprived of his political power, and was no longer able to marshal and mobilize mass support in the streets. The power and legitimacy of crowd action, especially in the capital, not only forced the new post-coup regime onto the defensive, but exercised a profound impression on Riza Khan as a political strategist. During the mortal struggle inaugurated by the republican movement and culminating in the change of dynasty, Riza Khan translated the lessons drawn from his early observations of Iran’s urban politics into a new strategy, with a marked populist dimension. His agenda for radical constitutional change, first a republic then a change of dynasty, required some form of political backing and legitimacy. Lacking any political party, he resorted directly to the urban crowd, finally triumphing after orchestrating a strong anti-Qajar protest campaign in the provincial cities led by radical Tabriz. The account of the republican movement in Chapter 3 shows how in these years Riza Khan, far from relying purely on force or even on his core nationalist support, was keenly concerned with demonstrating his wider political and ideological legitimacy by manipulating the idioms of popular protest. In 1924 Riza Khan could not ensure the victory of the republican movement simply by the use of force. In his accumulation of power, Riza Khan certainly frequently resorted to repression or the threat of repression. However, in the early 1920s his repressive apparatus was not sufficiently developed for this approach to be adequate alone. He needed to complement his deployment of army and police with real political support. In these years he typically combined or alternated repression with other methods, principally the cooption of actual or potential oppositional leaders, and the organization of support from subaltern social groups, encouraging such subaltern mobilizations by a discourse of paternalism emphasizing his own role as a champion of the downtrodden and a guarantor of their rights against feudal, reactionary and pro-British elements. Of the methods which relied essentially on force, martial law supplemented by occasional assassination were key in establishing control over the capital. Equally, however, in the years of Riza Khan’s rise the


silencing of opposition was complemented by a comparable encouragement of those social forces prepared to offer support to the regime. Riza Khan’s success in supplanting the Qajar dynasty, for example, was only possible because repression in the capital was accompanied by the encouragement of genuine anti-Qajar sentiments in the provincial cities, especially in the constitutionalist stronghold of Tabriz. As the republican movement clearly demonstrated, in these years Riza Khan was able to draw on real support, especially among modernizing and even leftist circles. The constitutional revolution had provided Riza Khan with the vocabulary of reform and the rhetoric of nationalism and populism and, during the 1920s, the years of his rise to supreme power and of his major reform efforts, his regime derived much of its impetus from the backing of the socialist, modernist and nationalist intelligentsia. Yet he was not a natural leader of these circles either by birth or education. He rather acquired its acceptance by his readiness to implement its agenda. A consensus around this agenda had gradually emerged during the years since the constitutional revolution and its key elements, national sovereignty, state-led economic development, military strength, educational and legal reform, women’s emancipation, tribal disarmament and settlement, were precisely those implemented by the early Pahlavi state. It was, furthermore, not only his readiness to implement the statebuilding agenda of the constitutional revolution, but his methods which increasingly attracted approval. By the 1920s a significant section of the political class had grown exasperated at the obstruction to progress represented by the seemingly immovable old grandees and their paralysing domination of the political system, and impatient with the limitations and compromises inherent in democratic politics. Riza Khan’s increasingly dictatorial rule was openly welcomed and eagerly embraced by these currents, for whom it offered speed, certainty and firmness of purpose, just as Kemal’s dictatorial rule was welcomed in Turkey. Ali Akbar Davar, for example, one of Riza Khan’s most talented supporters, keenly advocated the need for dictatorship in his newspaper in the early 1920s.26 Of especial significance to the construction of this authoritarian nationalist discourse in the 1920s, and its increasingly successful hegemony, was its formulation of “the tribal problem”. Although the political reality of tribe-state relations in interwar Iran was typically one of pragmatism and cooption, yet Riza Khan and his nationalist supporters articulated these relations differently in ideological terms. They emphasized the imperative of confrontation, defined the tribes as presenting


an existential threat to national survival, and insisted on the necessity of building up military strength and authoritarian state structures capable of containing and eventually eradicating this threat. The tribal problem was used to justify the primacy of the army in the national budget and the installation of military rule in the provinces, while the submission of tribal groups, however achieved in practice, was deployed to burnish Riza Khan’s nationalist credentials and gather support for his wider agenda. The victory over Shaykh Khazal in 1924, for example, produced an unprecedented outpouring of vitriol against the tribes and glorification of the army and its commander, and provided a springboard for Riza’s bid for the throne the following year. The political elite’s enthusiastic embrace of this discourse contributed more than any other single factor to the growth of militarist and authoritarian trends, paving the way for a decade of dictatorship. The defeat of the republican movement, and Riza Khan’s decision to resort to dynastic change and his own accession to the monarchy, was a key turning point in the construction of the new order in Iran. As Chapter 3 makes clear, Riza Khan’s most serious political miscalculation in the early 1920s was his sponsorship of the republican movement, and its defeat the gravest threat to his rise to power. The crisis over republicanism was of such magnitude that, uniquely in these years, it even shook his ascendancy within the new army. Although Riza Khan’s rise has often been attributed to his skills in political manipulation, yet the republican movement was a fiasco. This was a time when republicanism was in vogue among modernist elements and it was the first preference of Riza Khan himself, harmonizing most closely with his inclinations which, although not democratic, were strongly anti-elitist. Unlike his Turkish contemporary, Mustafa Kemal, however, he was unable to prevail against the opposition. His abandonment of republicanism and his eventual accession to the throne fundamentally altered the trajectory of Iran’s political development. It illustrated his victory over both his brother officers and over all other civilian political forces, setting the stage for his increasingly individual and autocratic rule. It produced in him an obsessional fear for the continuity of the new dynasty and a perpetual suspicion of assassination plots which poisoned the atmosphere surrounding the court. Finally Iran’s elite, in its readiness to embrace a politically regressive form, that of the monarchy, indicated its capitulation to the forces of dictatorship. The early Pahlavi monarchy has been described as a Kemalist monarchy.27 A comparison with the emerging Kemalist state in Turkey certainly illustrates many similarities, but also key differences. In the early


1920s both Iran and Turkey were depopulated, impoverished and facing political chaos and collapse. Both Mustafa Kemal and Riza Khan faced similar state-building tasks and the trajectories of their regimes during their first decade, both in broad outline and in terms of the nature and timing of specific measures, bore a superficial similarity. Both were determined secularizers, by temperament and by policy, both based their regimes on the theory and the practice of ethnic nationalism and both brutally suppressed dissent and opposition. Both presided over the unprecedented intrusion by the modernizing state into the lives of ordinary people, using measures such as conscription and dress reform to achieve their wider political agenda. In both Turkey and Iran the early years of the new order were years in which Kemal and Riza Khan increasingly gathered power in their own hands, bringing political activity under their control. In both countries too, once complete domination of the political scene had been achieved, the regimes embarked on a phase of radical change. Both had experienced a pluralist phase of relative freedom, and both then established authoritarian regimes which launched extensive programmes of reforms. The reforms themselves were similar, secularizing, centralizing and modernizing, although both regimes refrained from any assault on the economic order, rather sponsoring étatiste capitalist development. From 1925 Turkey, like Iran, became a dictatorship. The Turkish National Assembly became a rubber stamp, with elections having only a purely ceremonial function. The press was brought under government control, or closed down. Between 1925 and 1927 Turkey, like Iran after 1929, went through a period of terror, provoked by tribal rebellion and a plot against the leader’s life. By the early 1930s Kemal and his followers had brought under their control all the country’s cultural and intellectual life, suppressing those independent social and cultural organizations that had survived from the earlier constitutional era. There were, however, certain crucial differences between the Turkish and the Iranian experiences and a divergence between the regimes which became more significant as time passed. In particular, the Kemalist leadership, although it possessed its tensions, retained a more collective character, Ismet Inönü’s long service as prime minister during Kemal’s semi-retirement and the machinery of the RPP paving the way for continuity and a smooth transition after Kemal’s death. The regime retained widespread support, channeled through the RPP, from the intelligentsia, the bureaucracy and army while its vision of a modern, secular, independent Turkey continued to inspire these layers of society. In this way, the new political and social order in Turkey acquired a stability


which it conspicuously lacked under Riza Shah and the regime avoided the extreme deterioration experienced by Iran in the 1930s. The attitudes of the Kemalist and Pahlavi states towards political parties perhaps best exemplifies differing approaches towards both political support and dissent. For the new Turkish republic, effectively a one-party state, the RPP functioned as a mechanism for organizing both the regime’s core support and, with its rank and file national organization, a base among the wider population. In this respect it operated in rather similar ways to other parties in one-party states, notably the Communist Party in the USSR. In Iran, the new regime signally failed to provide itself with this vital organizing mechanism. Although Taymurtash appears to have grasped the significance of this method of securing a political base, and experimented in the 1920s with the formation of an authoritarian party linked to the regime, first with the Iran-i Naw Party and then with the Tarraqi Party, these were little more than ephemeral groupings of Majlis members, held together by the personality of Taymurtash himself, and not surviving his downfall.28 Unaware of the utility of an effective national party, or perhaps simply insufficiently interested in civilian politics, Riza Shah failed to make Iran a one-party state, leaving it effectively a no-party state. In the absence of any effective political tool for securing and sustaining active political support, Riza Shah increasingly fell back on repression alone to silence dissent. By the 1930s, with the reform drive stalled, Riza Shah had not only alienated the clergy and the bazar, but was also quickly losing ground among those groups who formed the backbone of Kemalism, the bureaucracy, the intelligentsia, and even the army.

The birth and death of electoral politics The discussion in Chapter 4 of the republican agitation also highlights the central role played by the Majlis in the political and constitutional struggles of the early 1920s. The reduction of the Majlis to docility and obedience was a key element in the consolidation of Riza Shah’s militarymonarchical dictatorship, and was symbolic of a broader silencing of independent or critical voices. Yet the transformation of the Majlis into a stage-prop for the regime was a protracted task, not fully accomplished until mid-decade. The Majlis had been established following the huge bast in the British legation of July–August 1906 which had culminated in the shah’s granting of the Constitutional Edict. In the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, formal ideas of representative government had been confined


to a tiny intellectual elite. Yet these notions spread rapidly during the revolutionary months of 1905–1906. Over the following years the actual establishment of a representative institution, and the impact of repeated elections on popular consciousness and modes of political activity, had left the relationship between authority and people fundamentally transformed. The holding of elections for deputies to the first and second Majlis began to school at least the urban population in the methods of democratic and electoral politics, parties began to emerge and the press reflected and formed a nascent public opinion. Throughout this period, the Majlis became a focus of national political activity, both elite and popular. It was the site for elite opinion-forming debate as well as for decision-making and the actual passage of legislation. But it was also an institution which the mass of the people claimed as their own. Appeals, petitions, pleas for justice and complaints of oppression poured in, and the Majlis grounds were the site for repeated political demonstrations, on local matters as well as on issues of national significance. This popular conception of the Majlis as a place where grievances might be aired and wrongs redressed was encouraged by the ideological origins of the institution in demands for a “House of Justice” (Adalat Khanah), an autonomous representative body which might administer justice and secure the rights of the individual against the state.29 The Majlis was first assembled in 1906 and the constitutional era is deemed to have ended with its closure in 1911. Yet, although it was closed under Russian threats in 1911, it did not cease to exist. Elections were again held and a new Majlis convened in 1914.30 These elections to a new Majlis provided Iran with a legitimate representative institution which proved capable of providing political leadership to nationalist forces battling against foreign intervention and a docile and collaborating shah. The Majlis deputies played an important role in the muhajirat of 1915, leaving Tehran and establishing a nucleus of authority beyond the reach of the Russian armies. In 1919–1920, the appeal to constitutional government and democratic legitimacy was successful in frustrating British efforts to force through the Anglo-Iranian Agreement, this Agreement requiring a Majlis ratification impossible for Britain to obtain.31 In all the popular protests of the two decades between 1906 and 1926, those concerned with local matters as well as those that had a national political significance, the Majlis played a central role. The establishment of the Majlis in 1906 had constituted an extraordinarily important development for popular politics in Iran, its immediate acquisition of the status of a place of bast indicating the reverence in which it was held. For


the Tehran crowd, the Majlis constituted the centre of national political life, its buildings themselves the focus of popular political activities and the constitution an ideological lodestar. Protests of every kind were held in the Majlis grounds, complaints, demands and petitions were directed ceaselessly to the deputies, and press and public displayed a profound belief in the legitimacy of this embodiment of constitutional and representative government. Although the independence of the Majlis was gradually undermined, it continued to play a role until the consolidation of Riza Shah’s military monarchical dictatorship foreclosed independent political activity altogether. In the showdown over the republic, for example, the Majlis was crucial in a number of ways. It functioned as the site both for initiating the constitutional change and for the first organized opposition. Furthermore, it was, most crucially, the Majlis deputies who actually took the decision to reject Riza Khan’s republican legislation in 1924, although in this they were accepting the view of the Tehran crowd that they were debarred from tampering with the constitution, and were reacting to the pressure from below which had become, momentarily, stronger than the pressure from above. As the 1920s wore on, the increasingly confident new regime was able to rob the Majlis of its popular political legitimacy. However Riza Shah never succumbed to the temptation to abolish the Majlis altogether, although he clearly possessed the power to do so. Rather, having established total control, he then sustained the Majlis’s existence, attempting to appropriate some of its charisma.32 After his abdication in 1941, the institution itself, and all the accompanying panoply of representative and democratic politics sprang back into life, to occupy again a central role in the intense political struggles of the years of the Second World War and the oil nationalization crisis. As the regime gradually tightened its grip over the behaviour of the deputies assembled in the Majlis in Tehran, so too it extended its reach deep into the electoral process which selected them. The elections to the fifth Majlis, held in 1923, were still relatively free of direct central control, but the elections to the sixth Majlis in 1926 were heavily manipulated. Seven more general elections were held in the years down to 1941 but these were devoid of any democratic content. Political parties were banned or dissolved, interrupting the transition then under way from fluctuating factions organized around personalities to modern ideological parties. Deputies were carefully chosen and their election arranged by the army and the ministry of the interior to ensure no disruption of the general political conformity, to coopt local notables and


to enhance networks of patronage throughout the provinces. Yet this stranglehold was not achieved without provoking ongoing challenges. The conduct of the elections to the sixth Majlis, the first to assemble after the change of dynasty, provoked widespread outrage and vocal condemnation in the provinces. As election succeeded election, however, and Tehran’s control tightened, criticism first became circumspect, then clandestine, and finally vanished. In the early 1920s, elections in Iran, although unruly and corrupt, and sometimes violent, nonetheless reflected and gave representation to real political divergences and conflicts. One account which has survived describes the prolonged struggle which took place in Shiraz during the summer of 1923 over the elections to the fifth Majlis which culminated in a serious riot and the burning of the ballot box in an attempt to frustrate a process which was popularly seen as corrupt and fraudulent.33 This account shows the importance of elections in the politics of the provincial cities in the early 1920s, how the old control of local grandees was being eroded by the emergence of new social groups and modern ideological conflicts, and how elections in these years provided the occasion for the appearance of a degree of real class conflict. At this stage, regime control over the electoral process was still limited. Riza Khan’s faction was only one strand in a kaleidoscopic and shifting pattern of local struggles, and was obliged to manoeuvre within the constraints of local politics rather than exercising control from above.34 The campaign for the fifth Majlis elections in Shiraz in 1923 produced a bitter struggle for votes which represented a deeper struggle for power in the city between distinct social groups. On one side stood the urban middle and lower classes who had formed the backbone of the constitutional movement since its inception, and who were expressing their politics in increasingly ideological terms. Prominent among this group were the local intelligentsia, schoolmasters, newspaper journalists, minor government employees, and also lower-ranking clerics. On the other side stood the local elite, the big landowners, the tribal khans and, at its apex, the governor-general, the Qajar prince, Sarim al-Dawlah. The struggle for power between these two groups took place against a background of a serious economic depression in Fars and it was the discontented and impoverished urban population which provided the constituency for the agitation and unrest which were marked features of Shiraz politics in this period. Dissatisfaction with the way in which elections were conducted was widespread throughout Iran but in the early 1920s, as the case of


Shiraz shows, was mainly directed at the disproportionate influence of the landowning elite who controlled the process at a local level and could shepherd their rural dependents to the polls. But as the regime’s power grew, this dissatisfaction shifted to become increasingly focused on the manipulations of the ministry of the interior and the military authorities. Popular resentment at the degradation of the elections was expressed in a variety of ways. Telegraphic complaints to the Majlis, for example, were common. By 1926, when open criticism was becoming more difficult, shabnamahs became the main instrument for denunciations of the conduct of elections and their results. One such shabnamah produced in Mashhad in March 1926 was typical.35 The broadsheet was anonymous. It was crudely printed and pasted on the walls of the city, and it was also circulated, the text ending with a plea that it should be read and then passed on to others. The broadsheet expressed a wide range of grievances against the local military commander, General Jan Muhammad Khan Davallu, particularly denouncing the general’s role in the conduct of the elections to the sixth Majlis, then in progress in Mashhad. It complained that, although the shah had declared that the elections would be free, the general had suppressed this freedom. It went on to say that all the candidates in this election were nominees of the general, and that no one had the power to offer opposition or “to utter a word”. Though the elections had not yet commenced, the shabnamah declared that it was known who would be elected and their names were freely repeated, and it then listed by name the candidates who would be successful. It complained about the censorship exercised over the press’s reporting of the elections, and about the arrangements for the elections themselves, the voting booths having been moved from the main mosque in Mashhad, a place of bast where people were free to criticize the procedure, to a government-controlled venue which only the general’s “own” people might enter. It concluded its tirade against the general and the elections with a broadside against the committee which oversaw the elections, declaring that its members were spies of the British. During 1926 the efforts of the ministries of war and the interior to control the elections to the sixth Majlis became so blatant, and popular discontent so deep, that the government decided a safety-valve was needed. In April the press was given full freedom to publish telegrams from the provinces complaining of the interference of officials in the elections, and in some cases the offending official was temporarily removed. Such essentially cosmetic measures, however, did little to reconcile people to the subversion of the democratic process. Nonetheless, despite the


greater control exercised by the state, violent outbreaks in the provinces still occurred. In May the elections in Rasht, for example, had to be suspended. Disturbances culminating in a fracas between the townspeople and the troops over the elections had led to the votes recorded so far being cancelled and arrangements made for a new election. A broad feeling persisted across the country that the sixth Majlis had not been elected constitutionally and this was an important undercurrent in the protests which erupted in the southern provincial towns in 1927.

The emerging new order and the subaltern response In early 1926 Riza Khan had successfully, and without any violent political rupture, crowned himself shah. Yet in its first year the new dynasty encountered a number of serious difficulties, the fabric of the emerging new order threatening to unravel. After his accession the new shah vacated the post of war minister, which he had held since 1921, and prime minister, held since 1923, and there was considerable uncertainty about the personnel of the government and its ability to function. The new shah’s treasured army experienced particular difficulties. The high command was rocked by intrigues, the most serious of which focused on the new minister of war, General Tahmasbi, two serious mutinies broke out in provincial garrisons, and an alleged plot against the shah’s life was discovered involving several high-ranking army officers. Discontent was also visible in civilian circles, mostly in the provinces where control of the new state was less complete. There was in particular widespread popular resentment at the domination of the military authorities, and especially at the conduct of elections to the sixth Majlis. By 1927 the regime had stabilized, marking the beginning of a truly new period. The constitutional and political contest over the nature of the emerging order was essentially now over and the state was able to embark on the implementation of its broad agenda: a comprehensive reordering of social, cultural, ideological and economic institutions, relationships and mores. The second part of the book looks at the imposition of this new Pahlavi order and at the different types of opposition which it provoked: from the urban populations in the provincial cities, from the tribal nomads and peasants, from the new workers in the southern oil industry, and from junior army officers. Between 1927 and 1929, the new regime, under the leadership of the shah’s principal lieutenants, the triumvirate of Ali Akbar Davar,


Prince Firuz Farmanfarma, and particularly Abd al-Husayn Taymurtash, and at its most dynamic and confident, initiated a period of extraordinary legislative radicalism. Unlike the constitutional changes of the first half of the decade, the legislation of these years affected directly and profoundly the lives and daily experience of wide layers of the population. Although the control of the new state in Tehran was, by now, largely complete, the provincial towns were still capable of mounting organized opposition and Chapter 5 looks at the wave of major confrontations, rippling from urban to rural areas, which greeted the regime’s reform drive. Both the urban protests and the rural rebellions described in Chapter 5 had a distinctly subaltern character. During the early 1920s Riza Khan had been relatively successful in either coopting or neutralizing the most senior figures among both the tribes and the clergy. Although the new state is usually considered to have been relentlessly hostile towards both these groups, in reality its policies were more nuanced, their impact much harsher on nomads and peasants and on mullahs, preachers and religious students, than on khans and mujtahids. Into the vacuum created by the regime’s cooption of khans and senior mujtahids stepped a range of lower-ranking tribal and clerical individuals and groups, desperate to defend themselves and making bids for the leadership of popular discontent. Consequently, both the urban and the rural upheavals were often as much an internal struggle for power within tribal or clerical hierarchies, with a distinctly class dimension, as they were a conflict between a corporate group and the state. At the same time as he had waged a series of power struggles with his political opponents in Tehran, Riza Khan had also undertaken the subjugation of the political leaderships of the great tribal confederations. By 1925 he had coopted, neutralized or removed all the great tribal leaders and regional magnates. The regime’s offers of pragmatic accommodations were usually accepted and indeed fully reciprocated. Many tribal khans and aghas enthusiastically embraced Riza Shah’s patronage, partly to ensure their own survival, partly in order to benefit from the largesse which was the reward for political support, and partly because they in fact approved of many of the regime’s policies, for example, its consolidation of landlordism. Only those tribal leaders who failed to make the necessary shift with sufficient speed and decisiveness, most notably Shaykh Khazal, risked being eliminated altogether as figures of national or even of local significance. It was this process, of integration into the elite and of identification with the regime, which explains the paradox presented by Sardar Asad’s continued occupancy of the post of minister of war throughout the years of brutal tribal pacification.


As a result, the rural risings of 1929 had a clear anti-khan and antilandlord dynamic. The risings were nowhere led by the most senior tribal khans, now linked to and dependent upon Riza Khan and the new state, but by junior, subordinate and minor khans and kalantars, and were often directed at least as much against their own khan/ landlord aristocracies, seen as beneficiaries of the new order, as against the state. A similar pattern may be observed in the new state’s relations with the clerical hierarchy. The ulama, like the tribes, were internally divided in their reaction to the new order, along elite/subaltern lines. Just as it was the tribal rank and file’s horror at Pahlavi hats, conscription and forced settlement which provided the dynamic for the 1929 risings, while the leadership remained ambivalent, aloof or even hostile, so the clerical agitation in the provincial towns was largely driven by the fears of lower-ranking mullahs, preachers and religious students. It was they who were primarily vulnerable to the new dress and conscription laws, routinely denied exemption from these laws by the state boards, and who lost their livelihoods by the secularization of the judicial system. The unequal impact of reforming legislation on different categories of clergy was clearly signalled, for example, by the 1928 Uniformity of Dress law.36 This law provided for the establishment of secular boards which had the power to grant or deny exemption to different categories of cleric. Mujtahids, provided they possessed an ijazah from a marja‘-yi taqlid, were free of any necessity to prove their exempt status before the boards. Heavier obligations, more difficult to meet, were, on the other hand, imposed on lower-ranking clerics with constituencies among the rural and urban poor. Rural mullahs and itinerant sermonizers, both very large categories, were especially hard hit.37 Riza Khan’s promise to restore order and security after the turmoil of the constitutional and post-constitutional years possessed a deep appeal for all sections of Iranian society. This was as true for the tribal populations, devastated by the khankhanliq of the past decades, as for the towns and cities, and as true for the religious as for the secular. Riza Khan was able to capitalize on this sentiment and reach concordats with senior clerics, including Shaykh Abd al-Karim Hairi Yazdi in Qum, and with the maraji‘-yi taqlid in Najaf, Shaykh Muhammad Husayn al-Naini and Sayyid Abu al-Hasan al-Musavi al-Isfahani. It appears that Hairi Yazdi offered either his political support or at least his acquiescence to Riza Khan in return for official toleration of his project of building up Qum into a leading centre of Shi‘i learning.38 With the Najaf maraji‘, al-Naini and al-Isfahani, Riza Khan had established good


relations while they were in Iran following their exile from Iraq. Well disposed towards Tehran as a result of Riza Khan’s help in facilitating their return to Najaf from exile, they openly endorsed his government in 1924.39 They were followed in their general attitude by most of the Iranian ulama in Najaf, who continued to look to the Tehran government for help in their resistance to British mandatory rule in Iraq. Although the Tehran ulama, under the leadership of Sayyid Hasan Mudarris, were openly hostile to Riza Khan, they were largely silenced by the imposition of martial law, intimidated by the 1926 assassination attempt on Mudarris, and rendered leaderless by the latter’s forced retirement, arrest and exile. As a result of the concordats with Hairi Yazdi in Qum and the maraji‘-yi taqlid in Najaf, clerical opposition to the new order was never able to attract the support of the most senior and prestigious ulama. This was an important factor in undermining the movement of protest which broke out across the southern cities in 1927 and in Tabriz the following year. The 1927 movement was, of all the clerical protests of the period, the only one to possess a relatively high-ranking leadership in the person of Haj Agha Nurullah Isfahani, the head of the leading clerical family in Isfahan, although he was never able to attract significant support from Qum or Najaf. More typical, in their quietism and desire to avoid political engagement, were the mujtahids of Tabriz who, like the rich merchants of the city, were deeply reluctant to become involved in popular protest, only finally allowing themselves to be drawn in by intense popular pressure. Across the provincial towns in these years, moments of crisis frequently allowed very minor clerical figures to emerge and put themselves at the head of popular discontent. Chapter 5 describes the case of Sayyid Nur al-Din in Shiraz in April 1927. Low-ranking but apparently learned and ambitious and, in contrast to the senior mujtahids, actively encouraging the townspeople to defy the authorities over the policy of the pre-conscription civil registration, Sayyid Nur al-Din was deported from the city by the army. The army’s action sparked off a week of demonstrations demanding his return, becoming a dress rehearsal for the much deeper and more prolonged protests of the autumn. Similar episodes took place across the country. In Tabriz, a mullah who had been preaching against conscription and indeed against the shah, was banished to a small village. Within days he was being escorted back through the streets of Tabriz in triumph, the authorities having been frightened into a retreat by the popular clamour aroused by his banishment while in 1929, a local religious leader, Mullah Khalil, put himself at the head of a


rising against dress reform, conscription and disarmament among the Kurds in Azarbayjan.40 The best-known instance of religiously-inspired opposition to the new order occurred in Mashhad in July 1935. This episode offers a striking example of the seizure of a leading role by a very minor clerical figure, a rawzah khvan, a reciter of narratives of the lives of the imams, and the dry tinder for the conflict provided by the hardships of the lower classes. The sequence of events which led to the army’s massacre of a crowd gathered in the shrine of Imam Riza in Mashhad was sparked off by the determination of the authorities to force men to adopt the new “international” hat, and to insist that women appeared in public unveiled. Although the dress policies were the ostensible cause of the outbreak, the depth and character of the protest was the result of the underlying anger of lower classes at heavy taxation, poverty and low wages.41 By the summer of 1935 the determination of the authorities to enforce the dress reforms was producing a considerable amount of subterranean resentment across the country. Any open discontent was, however, immediately suppressed. A few shops in the Tehran bazar, for example, closed in protest, but were immediately reopened by the police. Nonetheless, the depth of hostility was so great that a senior mujtahid, a marja‘-yi taqlid resident in Mashhad, Agha Husayn Qumi, was finally moved to raise his voice, and went to Tehran in the hope of remonstrating with the shah in person. He was rebuffed, and possibly even briefly arrested. This treatment was sufficient to make Qumi resolve to withdraw from any further controversy and political involvement and he immediately left for Najaf.42 Meanwhile in Mashhad, meetings had begun to be held in the Gawharshad mosque adjoining the shrine of Imam Riza, by tradition a place of bast and considered to be beyond the reach of the authorities. Criticism of the international hat and unveiling was openly voiced in the safety of the bast and the popular mood worsened when news arrived of the shah’s treatment of Qumi. Since it was summer, the courtyard of the shrine was full of pilgrims camping out. On 10 July the numbers in the shrine were larger than usual, and sensitivities sharper, owing to the fact that the night of 10–11 July was the anniversary of the Russian bombardment of the shrine two decades earlier. Despite the size of the assembled crowds, and their mood, the na’ib al-tawliyyah43 of the shrine, Muhammad Vali Asadi, chose this moment to order the arrest of a rawzah khvan named Bahlul for expressing disapproval of the European hat and unveiling. The incensed crowd


immediately forced his release and demanded he deliver a sermon. Bahlul went into the pulpit and delivered a ferocious attack on the shah and local army officers and put forward a number of demands relating both to the hat and unveiling and to the heavy burden of taxation. Bahlul was followed by a shrine servant who also spoke in the same terms, ending by snatching from his own head the official headwear of the shrine servants and tearing it to pieces. Other shrine officials, apparently to save themselves from onslaught by the angry crowds, followed suit. Police arrived at the shrine but could do nothing and the commander of the local garrison, General Iraj Khan Matbui, then placed hundreds of troops near the shrine to prevent anyone else entering and to maintain order in the surrounding area. During the night many left the shrine peacefully and in the morning the troops entered to disperse the remainder. At this point a fracas broke out, General Matbui seems to have panicked and ordered his men to fire on the crowd using their machine-guns. According to an official statement issued later, eighteen people were killed and some 50–60 wounded, of whom fourteen subsequently died, although the actual number killed and wounded was almost certainly much greater than this. General Matbui, apparently overcome by the turn of events and at his own desecration of the shrine, withdrew his men without either arresting Bahlul, who taken refuge inside the actual tomb-chamber of Imam Riza, or even leaving guards at the shrine gates to prevent the gathering of more crowds.44 These events produced what amounted to a popular uprising in Mashhad. Over the next three days, the local government was completely paralysed. Vast numbers of people collected in the shrine while crowds of people paraded through the town beating their breasts as in Muharram processions and calling on Husayn to protect them from the shah. These crowds went to the homes of the senior clerics in the city and dragged them from their houses, forcing them to come to the shrine.45 While the authorities, civil and military, were under siege, increasing numbers of people continued to gather in and around the shrine, many flocking in from the surrounding villages armed with sticks, sickles, shovels, daggers and other makeshift weapons. The bazars were closed and, day and night, speakers harangued the crowds in the shrine, a particularly large demonstration taking place on the evening of the 13th. It was also clear that most of the conscripts in the garrison were in sympathy with the protesters. Army officers disarmed the troops and confined them to barracks, even keeping machine-guns in readiness for use against them. Only the troops of a politically reliable Tehran


regiment, the Marg regiment, then stationed in Mashhad, were left with their weapons.46 On 13 July the conscripts were provided with a feast, apparently to distract their attention from the action the men from the Marg regiment had been ordered to take during the night.47 At 2 am on 14 July, the Tehran troops arrived at the shrine, forced their way in and, in their determination to clear both mosque and shrine, opened fire with machine-guns. The official tally of casualties was given as twenty-eight killed and sixty wounded, but the actual number buried by the military, who had prepared trenches for the purpose before the event, was much greater, estimated by one report at 128, and not less than 200 to 300 wounded.48 Some 800 people were arrested and the prisoners were flogged, in batches of thirty at a time, throughout the following week. The army and the police also suffered a small number of casualties, both dead and wounded. The massacre in the shrine is often seen as evidence of the violent intensity of the conflict between the new state and the religious institution. However, as the above account shows, the senior mujtahid, Agha Husayn Qumi, was easily silenced, and the shrine authorities, represented by the na’ib al-tawliyyah, actually tried to prevent protest by arresting Bahlul, other senior clerics only becoming involved at all when left with no choice by angry crowds.49 The protests were led by a rawzah khvan and the shrine servants, and provided an opportunity for the lower classes to vent their frustration and anger not only at hats and unveiling, but at the wider impact on their lives of the regime’s reforms, particularly its fiscal and economic policies.50

The new state and the suppression of popular protest Although the first killings in the Mashhad shrine may have been the result of panic by the military, the second massacre was carried out deliberately. In fact, in the state’s response to the serial urban protests of these years, it is possible to trace a steady and relentless escalation in the use of force. In Isfahan and Shiraz in 1927, the regime was eager to resolve the conflict by negotiation, Taymurtash himself visiting Qum in an unsuccessful attempt to mediate a solution. Tabriz in 1928, however, saw a greater resort to repression by the army. Demonstrators were threatened with execution, some suffered flogging, and many small shopkeepers found themselves the first to be conscripted into the army. Finally, in Mashhad in 1935, the army engaged in an unprecedented and bloody onslaught on civilians congregated in one of the holiest places in Shi‘i Islam. This increasing resort to force paralleled, and was indeed made


possible by, the increasingly subaltern character of the protests. Whereas the presence of a figure such as Haj Agha Nurullah at the head of the 1927 movement, and its support among the merchants and guilds, made prudent a degree of respect from the regime, no restraint was necessary in suppressing the Mashhad opposition, with its low-ranking leadership and its base among the impoverished poor of the city and the surrounding rural areas. Although, as details seeped out, news of the massacre in the Mashhad shrine caused revulsion throughout the country, there was no mistaking the dislike of the local elite for both the protesters and their leader.51 In early Pahlavi Iran, much of society continued to view its submission to authority as it had done in the Qajar period, as conditional and negotiable. If they deemed it necessary, the bazar merchants, the guilds and the ulama, supported by the urban poor, held demonstrations, organized strikes, took bast and delivered petitions, women rioted over the price of bread and soldiers mutinied over pay and conditions. The Qajars had met such protest with an erratic combination of bargaining and threat, rather than a quick resort to naked repression for which, in any case, they lacked the means. The new Pahlavi state, on the contrary, considered its authority absolute. After 1921, the rough and ready consensus on which had depended the pattern of negotiations between ruler and ruled typical of Qajar politics had begun to break down. The balance of coercive force between state and people gradually changed, greatly enhancing the ability of the former to impose its wishes regardless of popular consent. The new Pahlavi state increasingly demonstrated its reluctance to abide by the habits of its Qajar predecessor, and showed a greater willingness, born of a greater ability, to resolve political conflict by force. In its early years, the new regime, its repressive apparatus still primitive and its political base relatively secure, evinced a willingness to engage in essentially political strategies of negotiation and compromise. Yet, as the shah built up a repressive apparatus of police and army but became more isolated politically, the response offered to dissent changed, repression deployed as a first rather than a last resort. Suppression by force became indeed Riza Shah’s general approach to any sign of criticism. He was as uninterested in bargaining with merchants and ulama in bast in shrines and mosques as he was disinclined to tolerate the debate, argument and compromise inherent in democratic institutions such as the Majlis and political parties. This authoritarian mentality also corresponded to another fundamental difference between the Qajar and early Pahlavi states. Whereas


the Qajar shahs had been principally concerned with maintaining a harmonious status quo, the new monarchy was at the apex of a political system which was becoming not only increasingly authoritarian but also activist, determined to force through a transformation of society which it knew would encounter bitter resistance. In the 1930s the state’s growing imperviousness to appeals from below led to the gradual disappearance of collective protests and, on the rare occasions when they erupted, to their taking on more and more of an insurrectionary tenor, culminating in the infamous massacre in the Mashad shrine. Opposition increasingly retreated into evasion, often facilitated by bribery, many tribal populations, for example, avoiding the enforced settlement policy by this tactic, while conservative women resisted forced unveiling by the simple expedient of retreating from public space altogether. Alternatively, resistance was forced into clandestinity and rapidly radicalized, ruined peasants and nomads resorting to banditry and smuggling, sacked oil workers to sabotage. In the 1920s the tension between state-building and popular politics inherited from the constitutional period was resolved in favour of a strong state with an authoritarian and commandist approach. The victory of this trend, and its consequences for popular politics, were exemplified by the fate of the custom of bast, a key element of the repertoire of urban protest. Just as the attitude of the new state towards urban protest differed fundamentally from that of its predecessor, so too the character of that protest had itself been undergoing a constant evolution and adaptation to meet the requirements of the changing political context.52 The use of long-established “traditional” strategies to advance modern agendas may clearly be seen in the case of bast.53 In the past, the custom of taking bast had been a strategy to which individuals, including common criminals, might resort to find temporary sanctuary from arbitrary authority. By the late nineteenth century the taking of bast had increased dramatically and it had changed from an individual strategy of flight to a collective action with an overtly, and occasionally revolutionary, political objective. The favoured sites for bast, and the methods employed by the bastis had also changed. Whereas mosques, shrines and royal buildings had traditionally offered a customary right of bast, during the nineteenth century European legations and consulates, and eventually any foreign-owned property, became the most popular locations. The methods of the bastis, and the scope and impact of their activities were also transformed by the development of communications. The use of the offices of the Indo-European


Telegraph Department became common, as from here the bastis could communicate directly with the government, the Majlis, the shah, and even the world beyond Iran. The objectives of those taking bast also underwent an extraordinary expansion. From being essentially attempts to control departures from established norms by arbitrary authorities or to rectify a violated status quo, thus perhaps confirming rather than challenging or defying a common culture, mass urban protest increasingly focused on issues of national politics.54 Although, signifying the original function of the tradition, the bastis still tended to couch their action in justificatory appeals for justice and against oppression, in reality the demands put forward, most notably, in 1906, were increasingly for transformative political change. As a result of the bastis’ reliance on European extra-territoriality, the taking of bast came to signify the weakening of Iran and the further direct entanglement of European powers in conflicts between rulers and ruled within the country. The taking of bast was crucial to the success of the constitutional revolution. It had, however, inevitably become identified with weak government and the absence of national sovereignty. In the 1920s nationalist opinion could no longer tolerate the notion that foreign legations might involve themselves in domestic politics by extending protection to opponents and critics of the regime, nor the assumption that religious buildings were beyond the reach of the state. Accordingly, the post-1921 regime systematically suppressed the practice of bast in the name of national independence and state sovereignty. During the 1920s, the new regime consistently challenged the inviolability of mosques and shrines, and refused categorically to admit any right of extraterritorial bast.55 In this assertion of its own sovereignty, the state simultaneously deprived its critics of one of their most important weapons. Certainly Riza Shah was not the first Iranian ruler to refuse to respect the right of bast. During the nineteenth century, state-builders such as Amir Kabir had made sporadic, but unsuccessful attempts to restrict the right of bast, their failure part of their wider inability to strengthen the structures of Qajar government. From time to time, the Qajar shahs simply violated the right of bast, expelling their enemies from sanctuary by force. Such violations, however, were still conceptualized as deviations, and the custom continued to embody a right in popular perception. During the 1920s the new state refused to acknowledge this customary right, either in theory or in practice. At first, the right of sanctuary was denied to army personnel, soldiers entering mosques to drag out deserters. Then, in 1924, Riza Khan used his troops to disperse the anti-republican


crowds in bast in the Majlis grounds, while in 1928 Taymurtash dragged Ayatullah Muhammad Taqi Bafqi from the shrine of Hazrat Masumah in Qum following an alleged insult to ladies of the court. Finally, in Mashhad in July 1935 the regime signalled in blood its determination to suppress any lingering notion that any part of Iranian territory might be beyond its reach.

Traditions old and new Chapters 4 and 5 showed the continuing salience, in interwar Iran, of a repertoire of urban protest drawn from the constitutional period and the Tobacco Protest and deriving from even earlier practices and customs. These chapters also demonstrated the ways in which, and the speed at which, the actions which constituted this repertoire were being transformed. Chapter 6 provides an account of a protest by a new type of urban crowd, the embryonic industrial working class, assembled in the oil fields and concentrated in their thousands in the oil refinery at Abadan where they laboured together, sharing a collective experience of modern factory conditions, and discusses the hybrid political idioms of this new working class. Just as Iran’s supposedly “traditional” political culture, based on the urban quarter, the guild, the bazar and the mosque, was both sensitive to its wider environment and constantly evolving, and there was much that was modern about the urban protests typically engaged in by merchants, artisans, the ulama and the urban poor, so similarly, the 1929 strike shows that there was much in apparently modern forms of protest, in both their methods and their mentalité, which had its origins in older cultural and political traditions. The May 1929 strike displayed features typical of much older and fully indigenous traditions of popular politics, creatively re-invented and deployed by new proletarians who found themselves suddenly facing the combined power of the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company and the new state. The strikers drew on an established repertoire of popular protest: the cessation of work, the closure of the bazars, the public mobilization of women, the riot. Just as this repertoire of action combined the traditional and the new, so did the rhetoric which was deployed to legitimize it, utilizing, in particular, heavily gendered concepts of honour and shame. Central to the account of the 1929 strike in Chapter 6 is an analysis of the role played by women within the community of refinery workers. The open participation of women was established in the nineteenth


century, and perhaps earlier, as one of the most important features of the repertoire of urban protest.56 Just as the broader custom of popular protest continued in the 1920s, so too did the tradition of women’s demonstrations. Chapter 4 has already indicated the central and radicalizing role played by women in the Tehran bread riots of 1925. In these years women also took an organized part in more directly political activities, in anti-conscription riots, in demonstrations against the exiling of the Shi‘i ulama from the holy cities of Iraq, both for and against the republican movement, and in carrying out an extremely sophisticated and politically-motivated “run” on the Imperial Bank of Persia. The role played by women in the Abadan strike conforms closely to the template of female participation in urban protest. Their involvement occupied a particular place in the choreography of the strike, was carefully planned together with the male union organizers, and was led by a charismatic female figure. The character of their participation was heavily gendered and accompanied by a discourse which emphasized their weakness and helplessness, yet they were in fact a radicalizing force, the male strike leaders barely able to contain the women’s violence. The description of their role contained in Chapter 6 indicates the existence of a tradition of female leadership and oratory, alive and enduring among the poorer social classes but largely invisible in the available historical sources. Beyond the role played by women in the 1929 strike, Chapter 6 also illustrates the deep collective traditions of the Iranian lower classes, and the creativity of their response to their changing circumstances. It outlines their constant adaptation of existing collective and communal institutions and practices to meet the challenges of an emerging capitalism, and shows how the methods, including strikes and occupations, the discourse and the organizational forms adopted by groups of workers in the upheavals of the constitutional revolution and afterwards were primarily derived from local traditions. The first workers’ associations, for example, were not unions but collective associations based on an evolving indigenous model, that of the anjuman, while unions developed out of both trade anjumans and existing guild organizations. Just as the workers spontaneously built on actually existing local traditions of collective organization, so too labour leaders tried to establish new traditions which would assist in the task of welding the emerging working class into a conscious entity. Among these new traditions, perhaps the best-known is that of celebrating May Day, if possible with a strike. The first May Day event was organized in 1921


and May Day 1929 provided an important symbolic context for the Abadan strike.57 Traditions were important to popular protest in Iran. Indeed across the world, traditions, new and old, real and imagined, may be identified as central to subaltern political activity. In Iran, well-established local methods of collective action provided a wide range of social groups with ready-made tools which they could use to organize action and mobilize support, and which were easily understood by the entire society. Not only did traditions of protest provide guides to effective tactics, but the location of protest within such traditions offered an aura of legitimacy and an ideological defence of considerable power. Of course, these traditions of protest were subject to a process of continuous adaptation and evolution and were constantly invented and re-invented. It follows, therefore, that to say that traditions were important to popular protest is not to say that such protest was “traditional” in the sense of backward-looking or unchanging, nor essentially conservative. Rather, as the examples of the changing roles of bast and of the Majlis, or the strategies of the Abadan strikers show, these traditions were plastic and malleable, remarkably adept at responding to new conditions, and able to act as vehicles for demands and programmes which might be either defensive or revolutionary. A similar utilization of the familiar in the pursuit of new objectives in changing contexts may be seen in the discourses generated by protest in this period, one example of which is analysed in the discussion of the 1929 strike. As the 1929 shabnamah shows, subaltern discourse usually avoided any challenge to the existing order, but rather couched its demands in criticism of an alleged departure from socially sanctioned norms and values, a perception which might be buttressed by reference to a mythologized past. Indeed popular protest often demanded a return to what was imagined as the status quo ante. However, while the “cultural unity” implied by such a discourse might occasionally serve to reinforce social cohesion, it might equally subvert the social order. This perennial feature of the discourse of popular protest should not therefore be interpreted to mean that the accompanying political activity was always or usually conservative, merely a struggle “to keep things as they were”, but rather as an effort by the relatively powerless actively to renegotiate the terms of change by using the ideological tools available to them. Another source for subaltern discourse may be found in the petitions asking for justice submitted directly to a range of authorities, including the shah and the Majlis. Like the 1929 shabnamah, the language of petitions typically suggests a strong sense on the part of the urban and rural poor of natural justice, of the recognition of conditions for the exercise of


legitimate authority and of their own, sometimes ancient, rights.58 Of course, such “rights” were often conceptualized in vague language and were neither politically recognized nor legally enshrined, yet popular belief in their existence was deep and apparently instinctive. The notion of such “rights” appears to have derived from a range of different influences, religious and secular, but again shows a striking subaltern awareness of broad ideological developments and a readiness to absorb and adapt.59

Disaffection in the army The final chapter of the book returns to themes raised in Chapters 2 and 3 and looks at a form of opposition new in both organizational and ideological terms, a conspiratorial grouping of disaffected junior officers. Indeed, the phenomenon of the coup, especially the coup carried out by reforming or nationalist officers, belongs quintessentially to the modern army. The weakness of Qajar military reform meant that the material from which coup-makers might be fashioned was absent in nineteenth century Iran. Only with the Government Gendarmerie, established in 1910, did a politicized officer corps appear. Riza Shah built his new army around his old comrades from the Cossack Division, who remained loyal to him throughout the life of his regime. Yet, from the moment of its foundation, Pahlavi rule was subject to challenges from elsewhere within the new army. In the first half of the 1920s, before the consolidation of his dictatorship, Riza Khan experienced a number of challenges from constitutionalist and nationalist officers. By mid-decade conditions within the new army were provoking a different kind of opposition, whereby political disaffection fused with material hardship to produce armed mutinies among junior officers and the rank and file.60 By the 1930s, with the transformation of political and military circumstances, and the emergence of a new type of officer, the product of the Cadet College in Tehran and foreign military institutions, the old divisions within the army faded. But this decade saw the appearance of new kinds of discontent. Increasing restiveness and frustration developed among army officers at Riza Shah’s domination and the stranglehold over the army exercised by his favourites while the growth of sympathy for fascism and general pro-Axis sentiment within the army, although it remained diffuse, began to augur instability and helped bring about the Allied invasion in 1941. Riza Shah’s army has been described as the “main pillar” of the new state.61 Yet the army’s relationship with the regime was more complex


than this suggests, its military effectiveness and even, at least in the shah’s own eyes, its political reliability, doubtful. Yet in fact, throughout the 1930s, the army high command, mostly ex-cossacks, was consistently loyal to the regime. Senior officers tolerated the insecurity of their position, and their occasional humiliation, in return for prestige and wealth, and even welcomed the shah’s capriciousness when it resulted in the downfall of rivals. Nonetheless, no displays of loyalty were sufficient to assuage Riza Shah’s suspicions. The shah simultaneously relied upon, yet mortally feared, his own army, the ambitions, real or imagined, of its senior officers, and the disillusionment of their subordinates. The shah’s fear of his own officers led to an increasing reliance on the police, whom he used to keep watch on army officers.62 By the early 1930s the power of the police was pervasive and was corroding the morale of the regime and the nationalist circles who supported it. Indeed, the shah relied far more on the police than on the army for political protection.63 Although the army had been and still was useful in the rural areas for tribal management, and might still be used in cities, especially provincial cities, as an instrument of coercion in times of crisis, the shah’s lack of trust made it less useful as a guarantor of political security. The account in Chapter 7 of the Jahansuz group illustrates the existence, but also the ephemeral and fragile character, of opposition among junior army officers. It paints a vivid picture of the atmosphere prevailing within the army and especially within the court, and looks at the key role played by senior police officers in accelerating the deterioration in the shah’s state of mind. Of especial significance were Riza Shah’s perennial fears of assassination. In fact, these fears had become very visible from at least the mid-1920s, and had only heightened with time. Chapter 4 identified 1925, and the creation of the new dynasty, as a turning point in the life of the new regime, adding to the new shah’s fear of assassination an obsessional concern for the succession of the crown prince. Chapter 5 locates a second key moment in 1929. Shaken by the eruption of myriad opposition movements between 1927 and 1929, in the southern cities, in Tabriz, among the oil workers in Abadan, and finally, and most dangerously, among the great tribal confederations, Riza Shah’s confidence faltered. None of these movements offered a coherent challenge to the regime or the dynasty, and were suppressed relatively easily. Yet the regime never recovered its earlier élan. A propensity towards extra-legal political violence had been evident from early on and, by the mid-1920s, the regime had already developed a habit of secretly murdering its opponents, this habit itself a mirror image of the shah’s own fear


for his life. The emergence of this method of reacting to opposition was, in the 1930s, to become a real terror, decimating the elite, demoralizing the regime, and leaving the shah isolated. When, in response to the multiple crises of 1929, the shah began to purge his administration, his attention focused not on rivals for power, of whom there were none, but on his closest associates, on supporters of the regime and loyal officials and servants of the state. During the 1930s, with its key nationalist supporters dead or disgraced, the regime had no hope of retaining its reforming zeal. As the decade wore on, in an atmosphere conditioned by the power of the police and the political police, Riza Shah found himself increasingly isolated, his regime demoralized and based on arbitrary rule enforced by terror and cushioned by corruption. By 1929, the shah was still cocooned within the support of nationalist circles of considerable talent and energy. By the 1930s, however, active support was draining away, to be replaced by passivity or resentful submission to an increasingly demoralized and arbitrary state apparatus. The shah’s health was suffering, his use of opium taking its toll, his morale further damaged by the attitudes and behaviour of those surrounding him, and he became morbidly preoccupied with the real or imagined ambitions of those closest to the court. On his public appearances, Riza Shah evinced a deep fear of popular hatred. His visits to provincial cities were marked by obsessional police and military security, the local population barred from the streets and the doors, gateways and balconies of buildings along the route of his car.64 Perhaps the following anecdote, with its echoes of the “Potemkin villages” constructed in the Crimea and the Ukraine to deceive the Russian autocrat, Empress Catherine II, in the eighteenth century, symbolizes most perfectly the shah’s own isolation, and the fear and complicity of senior officials and officers. In 1930, while on a visit to Sistan, the shah was driven through the streets of what the local authorities described as the new town. This “town” had been constructed from nothing over the previous few months by the local military in anticipation of the shah’s visit. It had eight wide, straight avenues, lit by electricity, and along the avenues were high whitewashed walls with grand porches at regular intervals. However, the area was popularly known as the “town of walls”. It had in fact no inhabitants and behind the walls and porches were no buildings but only plots of waste land. Nonetheless the shah, in ignorance of the true reality, declared himself well pleased with this example of progress and modern development.65

2 The Provincial Cities in Revolt (i): Colonel Pasyan and the Mashhad Rebellion, April–October 1921

The foundation of Pahlavi rule in Iran is conventionally dated from the coup d’état of February 1921 yet, during the spring and summer of 1921, Riza Khan’s newly-established power in Tehran was under grave political, ideological and military threat from the gendarme regime headed by Colonel Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan in Mashhad. The Mashhad adventure is worthy of attention on several general counts. Firstly, it illustrates certain features of the struggle between Riza Khan and other political tendencies which was inaugurated with the coup d’état of February 1921 and which was resolved only by the consolidation of the military-monarchist dictatorship in 1926. It particularly highlights the fragility of Riza Khan’s grip on power in the immediate post-coup period. Secondly, it reveals an aspect of the inner dynamics of the Iranian army at the moment of its foundation, and provides a vivid portrait of an army officer of that period, tracing what was in many ways a typical personal, political, and intellectual formation. Hitherto the only officer individually visible in the history of these years, despite the central role played by the army, has been Riza Khan himself. A fuller picture of another senior officer, as well as a delineation of some of the central features of the officer corps in general, is invaluable in facilitating a more balanced assessment both of the extent to which Riza Khan may be seen as representative of this milieu and of the wider political potential of the military in the early 1920s. Thirdly, the Mashhad episode indicates, especially by the nature of the opposition which it engendered, some of the general problems associated with state-building throughout the Middle East. Finally Pasyan’s rebellion possesses considerable intrinsic interest. Unlike other regionally-based radical movements of the period, the Jangalis in Gilan, Shaykh Khiyabani and Major Abulqasim Khan Lahuti in Tabriz,1 it is 44

Colonel Pasyan and the Mashhad Rebellion, April–October 1921 45

possible to construct an almost day to day account of the internal life of the Mashhad regime and to chart the course of its relations with the central government. Thus we are provided with an unparalleled picture of Iranian revolutionary nationalism in action.2 The name of Colonel Pasyan is well-known among historians of Iran and references to his rebellion may be found in most works dealing with the establishment of Pahlavi rule. Yet little is understood about the significance of his political role and the character of the movement which he headed. This might seem surprising in light of the interest which has been taken in other radicals of the first quarter of this century. The growing discontent with the Pahlavis in the 1960s and 70s produced a spate of attempts to rescue from obscurity figures who could be claimed as precursors of the opposition movement. After the revolution of 1979 martyred Islamic and anti-Pahlavi activists from the early decades of the century, such as Kuchik Khan, leader of the Jangalis, and Sayyid Hasan Mudarris, achieved an unprecedented public prominence, appearing on postage stamps and having streets named after them.3 Yet Colonel Pasyan remains an enigma. There has as yet been no attempt to integrate the Mashad revolt into the overall history of the period. During the Pahlavi period the opposition’s perception of the army as a bastion of monarchism resulted in a general lack of interest and sympathy towards military officers among these elements, while the attitude of the Islamic Republic towards Pasyan has remained distinctly ambivalent. Although the regime has sanctioned the publication of documents relating to the episode, yet it has kept its distance, reluctant to embrace Pasyan as a martyr of the struggle against the shahs, despite his impeccable revolutionary credentials, presumably owing to the absence of any discernible Islamic component in his movement and to the marked secularism which characterized his brief tenure of power.

The 1921 coup In 1921 Riza Khan, after arriving at the site of political power via a military coup, was faced with a dual task. It was necessary for him to consolidate his own preeminence within what remained of the Iranian state, particularly the government and the armed forces, and simultaneously to enforce central authority throughout the entire country. As a result of the slow collapse of Qajar rule and the centrifugal tendencies unleashed by the constitutional revolution and the Great War, by 1921 Iran as a political entity was on the point of disintegration.


Tribal and regional elements had reasserted themselves while at the centre stood only a weak shah and a helpless government. The war years had witnessed the rapid advance of nationalist activity and there was widespread disgust with the incompetence and corruption of the traditional ruling elite. Particularly significant was the appearance of a tendency for opposition to political developments at Tehran to express itself in provincially-based radical movements such as that of Shaykh Khiyabani in Tabriz or Kuchik Khan in Gilan. Although the challenge presented by the Democrat Khiyabani had been crushed in 1920, the Jangalis and the communists remained active in Gilan throughout the summer of 1921. Riza Khan established himself in Tehran via a military coup and his principal base of support then lay, as it was to remain, within the military or, more precisely, among his comrades from the Cossack Division. However his supremacy even in the military sphere was not unquestioned, the most important source of opposition originating from within the officer corps of the Government Gendarmerie. The latter force, imbued with the spirit of constitutionalism and with a strong nationalist record, offered a sharp contrast to the Cossack Division, long identified with the most reactionary tendencies in Iranian society.4 In order to assert his hegemony in both the new army and the regime being constructed around it, Riza Khan was obliged to reduce the independence, appeal and prestige of the Gendarmerie and this he accomplished by degrees during 1921.5 The destruction of the gendarme regime in Mashhad and the potential alternative leadership offered by the charismatic nationalist officer at its helm, was a key stage in this process. Although the hostility between the Gendarmerie and the Cossack Division during the constitutional period and the Great War had been endemic and profound, nonetheless a sufficient measure of cooperation was achieved to make possible the coup d’état of 1921. After the traditional mistrust between the two forces had been modified and even partially overcome by their common opposition to British control embodied in the 1919 Anglo-Iranian Agreement, the gendarmes were drawn into the coup preparations being made by Sayyid Ziya al-Din Tabatabai and Riza Khan. Gendarme participation in the preparations for the coup was vital to its success and in return for their support they were rewarded with important posts in the new government and with considerable power in the provinces. Indeed elements within the Gendarmerie, with a selfconscious mission of national salvation, appear to have been planning a coup of their own which was only just preempted by Riza Khan’s action.6


In the months immediately following the coup of February 1921, while Sayyid Ziya remained in power, the Gendarmerie attained the height of its political power and its organizational development. In the capital gendarme officers occupied the strategically crucial posts of military governor and minister of war while in many provincial towns martial law was declared, allowing gendarme officers to assume authority, and in certain provincial capitals gendarme officers carried out mini-coups parallel to that in Tehran. In Kirmanshah for example Major Mahmud Khan Puladin arrested the governor-general, Sarim al-Dawlah and sent him to Tehran in custody while in Mashhad, Colonel Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan similarly arrested and sent to Tehran the governor-general of Khurasan, Qavam al-Saltanah.7

Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan: constitutionalist struggles Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan had been born in Tabriz in 1892 into a prominent muhajir family. His forebears had emigrated from the Caucasus after Iran’s defeat at the hands of the Russians in the war which ended with the disastrous treaty of Turkomanchai in 1828, being unable to tolerate life under foreign rule.8 His father and grandfathers were closely connected to powerful officials, including the famous reformer Mirza Taqi Khan, Amir Kabir,9 who was the vazir of the Azarbayjan army during Abbas Mirza’s attempts at military modernization. Like many muhajirin the Pasyan family possessed strong military traditions. Muhammad Taqi’s uncle was the senior cossack officer General Hamzah Khan, and several members of his generation of the family entered the Government Gendarmerie upon its foundation. These included his cousin Haydar Quli Khan Pasyan, later a high-ranking officer in Riza Khan’s new army, and two other cousins, Ali Quli and Ghulam Riza, both of whom were martyred in the nationalist uprising against the British at Shiraz in 1916. In Tabriz, then a centre of constitutionalist thought and activity, Muhammad Taqi received a modern education, studying science and foreign languages as well as Arabic and Persian.10 In 1907 at the age of fifteen he went to Tehran to continue his education and entered the Military College. He studied there for five years and, with one year remaining for the completion of his course, was obliged by the ministry of war to take up a commission in the Government Gendarmerie with the rank of second lieutenant. After two years’ service he was promoted to captain but encountered constant difficulties in his work owing to what he described as the corruption of the authorities and


their failure to provide funds, including his own pay and that of his men. While at Qazvin as second in command of the battalion he complained that in six months he had received only two months’ salary, half of which he had distributed among his men who were starving.11 His subsequent appointments included that of instructor and interpreter at the Gendarmerie school in Yusufabad in Tehran, and company commander and interpreter at Hamadan. He saw active service against brigands in Hamadan and Yazd, where he was wounded and decorated for bravery. He then returned to study in the Gendarmerie officers’ school at Tehran. Promoted to major, he had just received the appointment of command of a battalion at Hamadan when the Great War broke out. The Great War in Iran saw a bitter political and military confrontation between nationalist groups, supported by the Germans and the Ottomans, and the Allied powers, Britain and Russia.12 In this period the Gendarmerie constituted the military backbone of the nationalist struggle and the officer corps of the force in particular underwent a rapid and profound political radicalization.13 Gendarme officers played an important role in organizing the muhajirat or emigration of nationalists and Majlis deputies from Tehran, defended the provisional government set up in western Iran against attacks from the Russian armies, and organized a series of coups in western and southern Iran, capturing the larger towns for the nationalists and expelling Allied officials. Major Pasyan played a leading role in one such coup in Hamadan in November 1915, as did his cousins, also gendarme officers, in a similar episode in Shiraz. In Hamadan a force of Iranian cossacks was stationed on a hill called Musalla, a strategic point commanding the town, and directly overlooking the house of the German vice-consul. Hamadan was important for the nationalists, being situated some halfway between Tehran and the Ottoman border and well within reach of the Russian army, and Pasyan, commanding the Gendamerie in the town, considered it essential to secure control. On 22 November he decided to disarm the cossacks and personally led a gendarme advance on Musalla. After a very mild exchange of shots the cossacks surrendered and were duly disarmed. Major Pasyan then made a patriotic speech to the cossacks, exhorting them to join the gendarmes in fighting to defend the independence of Iran. It seems that a portion of the cossacks did indeed go over to the gendarmes, putting on gendarme uniforms and entering the battalion, while the remainder were allowed to disperse.14 The gendarmes under Major Pasyan established themselves firmly in control of Hamadan, appropriated the contents of the


Imperial Bank of Persia to fund their continued resistance, and expelled the Russian and British consuls. Cowan, the British consul, was at great pains to emphasize Pasyan’s leading role in this episode, despite the presence in Hamadan of two Swedish officers, nominally his superiors. Cowan, like many of his opponents in a later period, paid tribute to Pasyan’s personal qualities. He observed that the “very excellence of his character” made him a most dangerous man as he had a “capacity for inspiring confidence in others, great personal courage, undoubted intellectual ability and tact, which…render him a man capable of becoming a national hero”.15 So serious did Cowan believe the threat to British interests represented by Pasyan to be that he requested that any measures taken in western Iran for the suppression of the nationalist movement be directed specifically against him.16 The Hamadan Gendarmerie was reinforced by gendarmes from elsewhere in western Iran and the nationalist provisional government retreated there from its base in Qum. Major Pasyan, with another gendarme officer, Major Azizullah Khan Zarghami, organized the defence of Hamadan against the advancing Russian armies, but the Russians were greatly superior in numbers and weapons and after several encounters, the gendarmes were obliged to retire. The nationalists again retreated, this time to Kirmanshah. Their military supporters, under Pasyan, who was in charge of the defence of the region, made several stands against the advancing Russians, but again were forced to fall back.17 The nationalists finally fled across the border and sought asylum in Ottoman territory. During their retreat from Kirmanshah the demoralization and disunity of the nationalist forces, both political and military, had become increasingly evident. Pasyan himself ascribed their failure to their own disunity, hesitation and doubt, the absence of sincerity among the leadership and the existence of different parties as well as a lack of weapons.18 Because of the behaviour of some of his “faithless and deceitful” comrades,19 Pasyan resigned and went to Germany for medical treatment for his wounds. In August 1916 an offensive by the Central Powers enabled the nationalists to install themselves once again in Kirmanshah but their stay was again brief and chaotic, ending in a collapse which was to prove permanent. Pasyan had by now returned and witnessed the débâcle after which he again left for Berlin.20 He reiterated that the responsibility for defeat lay, not with the foreigners, but with his own countrymen, locating the ultimate source of weakness within Iran itself. Earlier in 1916 the nationalists had lost control of Shiraz in an episode which must have made a profound impression on Pasyan. At


the time of the muhajirat from Tehran the Gendarmerie, under the command of Major Ali Quli Khan Pasyan, together with their local supporters in the Democrat Party, had seized power in Shiraz. Ali Quli was a cousin of Muhammad Taqi Pasyan and another cousin, Captain Ghulam Riza, was also among the leaders of the Shiraz coup. The gendarmes and Democrats held Shiraz, the most important town in southern Iran, for the nationalist cause until April 1916, when they were overthrown by a tribal army headed by Qavam al-Mulk, chief of the Khamsah tribal confederation. Qavam al-Mulk instituted a severe repression in Shiraz, treating the nationalist gendarmes with great cruelty. Major Ali Quli Khan Pasyan and Captain Ghulam Riza Khan Pasyan decided to try to reach their still pro-German tribal allies in Tangistan on the Persian Gulf littoral but were unable to carry out this plan. Rather than fall into the hands of their enemies they committed suicide by shooting each other. Ali Quli died instantly but Ghulam Riza was wounded only to die shortly after, apparently poisoned in hospital on the orders of the pro-Allied gendarme officer Fath al-Mulk, whom Qavam had placed in command of the force after his capture of Shiraz.21 Henceforward Ali Quli Khan Pasyan was to be extolled as a martyr and icon of the struggle against the British. Many of the gendarme officers now went into exile, the majority to Istanbul but a few, including Pasyan, to Berlin. There he continued his military training, first in the German air force and then in the infantry. He also engaged in a variety of intellectual, cultural and political activities. He wrote an account of his own life, Sarguzasht-i Yak Javan-i Vatandust (Memoirs of a Young Patriot) and of his experiences in western Iran during the war, Jang-i Muqaddas Az Baghdad Ta Iran (Holy War from Baghdad to Tehran).22 He translated widely between Persian and various European languages, including German, French and English. His love of poetry,23 especially that which was politically committed, was particularly evident and his choice of works for translation, for example of Alphonse de Lamartine and Rabindranath Tagore, illustrated his own romantic nationalism. He studied European music, learning to play the piano, and transposed Persian national songs into German. On a more overtly political level he was in contact with the Iranian radicals led by Hasan Taqizadah and grouped around the periodical Kavih, for which he occasionally wrote articles. With the changed circumstances in Iran resulting from the Russian revolution of 1917 and particularly the German armistice of late 1918, political émigrés had been returning home and in 1920 Pasyan also returned to Iran. Still only twenty-eight, yet with experience of coup-


making, in Hamadan, of active service and high command in western Iran, and of the martyrdom of his cousins in Shiraz, he resumed his position in the Gendarmerie. Promoted to colonel in June he received orders to take over the force in Mashhad and to reorganize it.24

The reassertion of government authority 1918–1921 The reorganization and expansion of the Gendarmerie between 1918 and 1920 was part of a renewed effort by the government of Vusuq al-Dawlah, after the chaos of the war years, to restore its control throughout the country. The establishment of a regiment in Khurasan, a province in which gendarmes had never previously been stationed, and the appointment of Colonel Pasyan to command, was a novel and bold assertion of central authority. The difficulties incumbent upon establishing central control over Khurasan were many and grave. The province of Khurasan was remote, separated from Tehran by about 545 miles of primitive and dangerous highway crossing the desert. It comprised a huge geographical area, 500 miles in length and over 300 miles in average breadth, and was strategically highly vulnerable, adjacent to the newly established Bolshevik power in the north, possessing a long and notional eastern border with Afghanistan, and with Baluchistan facing British India in the south. The only urban centre of any significance was Mashhad itself, while the countryside was dominated by numerous powerful and well-armed nomadic tribes, Turkomans and Kurds in the north-east, Hazarahs, Taymuris, Barbaris and Baluchis in the south and south-east, over whom no effective central or provincial authority had ever been established. The most important feature of Mashhad itself was of course the presence there of the shrine of the eighth Shi‘i Imam, Imam Riza, a complex of religious institutions, possessing huge vaqf endowments, and supporting a large, unpoliticized but generally conservative religious establishment. In Mashhad the ulama, whose income was tied to the government and the shrine, had remained largely impervious to constitutionalist sympathies. Indeed during that most famous example of clerical opposition to government, the ‘Tobacco Protest’ of 1891–1892, Mashhad had held aloof, while the behaviour of the ulama during the constitutional revolution in 1907 led the British consul-general to describe them as “reactionary to the core,” the leading mujtahid of the shrine declaring that he would not submit to the Majlis and pledging his assistance to the shah.25 The central government was represented in Khurasan by the governorgeneral who in turn appointed governors to the smaller towns of the


province, these appointments frequently merely giving official recognition to traditional tribal and local leaderships. The structure of provincial administration was primitive yet complex, involving a network of interlocking, overlapping and conflicting authorities, both official and customary, the power of the governor-general depending on his skill in managing these diverse and well-armed local interests. Of particular importance for the southern and northern peripheries of the province were Shawkat al-Mulk of Birjand and the Sardar of Bujnurd.26 Both occupied hereditary and largely autonomous positions, Shawkat al-Mulk as governor of Sistan and Qayinat, covering an enormous expanse of territory in the south of the province, the Sardar of Bujnurd in the north-east, claiming suzerainty over Kurds and Turkmans. In general the tribes paid little attention to any authority other than their own, although efforts were haphazardly made to purchase their cooperation, and the towns and traffic along the roads endured their frequent depredations. Mashhad had possessed a considerable European presence for some time, although this was generally not of a character to encourage aspirations towards reform. By the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 most of Khurasan, including Mashhad, had been allotted to the Russian sphere. A great deal was done to establish the Russian presence, including its military presence, ever more firmly and in 1912 the Imperial Russian army occupied Mashhad, immediately and brutally suppressing all manifestations of constitutionalism, in the process and to universal horror bombarding and occupying the shrine. The Russian army had remained in occupation of Mashhad until its disintegration in 1917–18 whereupon its place had been taken by the British-Indian Malleson Mission which had raised local levies for the defence of the province. These forces, the Kurd Mounted Levies and the Khurasan and Sistan Levies, were highly significant in providing modern military training to considerable numbers of tribesmen. Another European presence was provided by the various Belgian officials employed by the Iranian Treasury and another by the Swedish chief of police, Major Sjöberg and his successor Major Bronikovsky. Mashhad also possessed a British consul-general and a military attaché, the latter responsible for intelligence gathering across the whole of Central Asia. Mashhad thus appears an unlikely site for an outburst of political radicalism. The city had not been a leading centre of the constitutional movement, although a branch of the Democrat Party had been organized there in 1910 by Muhammad Taqi Bahar and Haydar Khan Amu Ughli. Although Khurasan, like Azarbayjan, shared a long border with


the Russian Empire, and the movement of Iranian migrant workers into Turkestan had been substantial, yet the political and ideological impact of Russian social democracy had been much weaker. However there was a substantial Azari and Caucasian community in Mashhad which proved exceptionally receptive to radical politics and this element was indeed to provide a bedrock of support for Pasyan’s revolt. Nonetheless, although relatively weak, constitutionalism and reform were present in Mashhad, perhaps best represented by the newspaper Bahar, edited by one of the outstanding figures of the constitutionalist movement, Shaykh Ahmad Bahar. This newspaper called typically for national reform, for an end to corruption, for better provincial governors and for an end to Iran’s subjection to foreigners. Khurasan, unlike Azarbayjan, possessed no embryonic national question, and no tendency towards autonomism. On the contrary Bahar, although extolling the virtues of the province, always emphasized its great role in the history of Iran. In a sense, therefore, Pasyan and his movement were not a product of the Mashhad environment. Although the nationalist gendarmes interacted with local forces they were, to some extent, an extraneous factor. The force had been born out of national, rather than local, developments and its presence in Mashhad was the result of a decision made in and imposed by Tehran. Between 1918 and 1921 a heightened sense of political insecurity prevailed within Khurasan. Civil war raged in the Central Asian provinces of the former Russian Empire while the Jangali rebellion to the west was in full swing, culminating in the declaration of the Soviet Republic of Gilan in 1920. The same year Tabriz fell under the control of the Democrats led by Shaykh Muhammad Khiyabani. The disintegration of the Tsarist army in Khurasan after the Russian revolution and the departure of the local units of Iranian Cossack Brigade removed elements of stability, however politically unpalatable, while the activities of radical Russian soldiers provided much encouragement to the Democrats in Mashhad. The ‘Adalat (Justice) Party, active among migrant Iranian workers in Turkestan, particularly targeted Khurasan.27 During 1920 rumours of a military invasion of Khurasan by armed members of the ‘Adalat Party were rife.28 In 1919–1920 the Bolsheviks had adopted a militantly hostile attitude towards the Iranian government which they saw as an instrument of British imperialism, hoping that it would be overthrown and replaced by one more sympathetic to them. The new Soviet government was specifically alarmed by the Anglo-Iranian Agreement and, until negotiation showed itself to be a more effective way of reducing British influence, generated a great deal of propaganda of a


nationalist, particularly anti-British, complexion. The Gendarmerie, established precisely in order to provide security for the province, including on its Soviet border, was one of the segments of Iranian society specifically chosen as a potentially receptive target by the ‘Adalat Party, which directed constant propaganda at the force. Most significant were articles such as the one published by the ‘Adalat Party’s newspaper, Bayraq-i ‘Adalat, in June 1920 and entitled ‘Appeal to Persian Gendarmerie’. This article, couched in purely nationalist terms, contained extravagant praise of the patriotism of the Gendarmerie and included a document purporting to be the political testament or “will” of Major Ali Quli Khan Pasyan, a martyr of the Shiraz insurrection of 1915–1916 and a cousin of Colonel Pasyan, calling on the force to save Iran from the British.29 Another article published in the same newspaper on 2 July reiterated these themes, mentioning by name the patriotic officer Colonel Pasyan.30 This propaganda appears to have had some impact, and there were certainly enough desertions from the Gendarmerie to Soviet territory in this period to cause concern to Qavam al-Saltanah.31 Another contribution to the atmosphere of instability was made by the communist-backed Kurdish tribal rebel and bandit Khuda Vardi, who was only suppressed in 1921 after several difficult operations.32 Khurasan faced not only political uncertainty and military insecurity but also aggravated economic difficulties. Since the end of the previous century the policies of the Russian government had succeeded in reorienting the economy of Khurasan away from India and towards Russia via Central Asia. However the cessation of trade with Central Asia since the Russian revolution had severely disrupted the economy of the province. The province was undergoing an economic depression and there was widespread unemployment and hardship. In 1918 the prime minister, Vusuq al-Dawlah, had appointed his brother, Qavam al-Saltanah as governor-general of Khurasan. Qavam was acutely aware of the necessity of organizing the internal security of the province and its external defence. At first Qavam looked favourably on the Gendarmerie and cooperated wholeheartedly in building up the regiment. The first officer appointed ra’is of the force upon its foundation in the province, Major Prince Muhammad Husayn Jahanbani, was a close relative by marriage. At this stage he had great confidence in the gendarmes, most of whom he knew personally and whose officers had been specially selected by himself and his brother, the prime minister Vusuq al-Dawlah, for duty in Khurasan.33 Recruiting for the force was carried on apace, on the basis of a rough and ready application of the bunichah system, a primitive form of conscription introduced in


the previous century. Villages of average size were each asked for two men and also for about 120 tumans per man, and certain minor local khans and tribal chiefs along with contingents of their followers were also recruited, although no khan was ever promoted above the rank of captain.34 In this way a rudimentary attempt was made to enmesh the countryside in Mashhad’s authority. The Gendarmerie was to be assisted by the nizam troops, remnants of the nineteenth century efforts to reform the Qajar army, apparently somewhat better preserved in Mashhad than elsewhere, and the police under the Swede, Major Sjöberg. During 1919 and 1920 the Gendarmerie and nizam forces, sometimes assisted by tribal levies, conducted several campaigns against bandits, including Khuda Vardi, and against refractory tribal khans.35 However throughout Qavam’s governor-generalship, the financing of the military forces was in continuous difficulties. This was due partly to the overall shortage of funds, provincially and nationally, but mainly to the fact that the available money was often dissipated through widespread and endemic embezzlement. Both the gendarmes and the nizam troops complained repeatedly in this period that they were not receiving their pay and demonstrated their discontent in ways which had become traditional during the late Qajar period. For example in September 1920 Qavam visited the small town of Quchan, north-east of Mashhad, but had difficulty in leaving as, at the last moment, the gendarmes and the nizam troops surrounded him, clamouring for their arrears of pay. Qavam borrowed 4,000 tumans from a merchant for distribution to the men and was only then able to leave. The gendarmes in Quchan also accused Major Jahanbani of embezzlement, of appropriating about 6,000 tumans from his men’s pay. So desperate had the situation become that the authorities in Mashhad resorted to the expedient of arranging for the payment of the troops in garrison by delivering to the officers havalahs or cheques upon persons and villages from whom revenue was owing.36 By the autumn of 1920 the financial chaos was producing serious friction between Qavam and the Belgian Director of Revenues for Khurasan, Monsieur Leon Dubois. Qavam had been taking practically all the revenues of the province for the military forces, although little was reaching the men themselves. This situation was exacerbated by renewed attempts by the central government to extract its share of provincial resources. In October Dubois received orders from Tehran that half the revenue must be remitted there and consequently fell out with Qavam. A week later Dubois was instructed by Tehran to audit the accounts of the Gendarmerie and the police but was not allowed to do


so by Qavam. Relations between Dubois and Qavam were by now very strained. Dubois expressed the belief that half the money he had disbursed for payment to the military forces had been embezzled by Qavam and others and declared himself unable to restrain the rapacity of the governor-general.37 In the midst of this quarrel, in early September 1920, Colonel Pasyan arrived in Mashhad to take over from Major Jahanbani as provincial ra’is of the Gendarmerie. Pasyan brought with him a considerable reputation as a military commander, acquired during the struggle of the nationalist forces in 1915–1916, and as a brave and capable officer and also of being personally austere and hard-working, indeed something of a zealot and ascetic.38 On his arrival he immediately began to effect reforms in the regiment, having brought with him a group of fifteen like-minded officers to assist him in developing the force. He made every effort to ensure the regular payment of his men, discharged inefficient gendarmes and replaced them by new enlistments. However his efforts were hampered and his work jeopardized by the impossibility of obtaining even the sanctioned minimum of funds. By January 1921 he had become very disheartened at what he considered the practical failure of his four months hard work in Mashhad.39 He blamed Qavam for the shortage of cash and threatened to resign if money were not forthcoming.40 By February 1921, the gendarmes’ pay was still in arrears, there was considerable demoralization within the force and Pasyan was being forced to contemplate a reduction of the Gendarmerie establishment. Like Dubois, he too was publicly on bad terms with Qavam, and was refusing to observe conventional courtesies, such as taking tea in the latter’s house, as long as his men remained without their pay. In these months other sources of conflict in Mashhad were becoming evident. The friction between Qavam and Dubois was widening into a general conflict between the latter and the provincial elite. In December an agitation developed among the local landowners against Dubois over two taxes, poll and cattle, which he was attempting to collect and which they were accustomed not to pay.41 At the end of December Dubois announced that revenue totalling 216,000 tumans was outstanding against the landowners. There was widespread discontent among the nizam troops of the Mashhad garrison. Their pay was considerably in arrears and the men asserted that the money had been disbursed by the Treasury but retained by the military commander, Salar-i Muzaffar. The rank and file were also dismayed at a recent decision that the remission of revenue, which had been a privilege of military


service in the past, had been withdrawn and they would have to pay their taxes in the ordinary way in the future, while the officers were informed that the promotions and commensurate pay increases granted to them three years previously as a reward for the suppression of local disorders had been refused ratification by the minister of war and the extra pay drawn was to be retrenched.42 In February dissension even broke out within the shrine of the eighth Imam, Imam Riza, a centre of pilgrimage for Shi‘is from all over the Muslim world. Although the revenue of the shrine was immense, it was a major land-owner in Khurasan and possessed vaqf land as far away as India, it was currently in debt and, accordingly, minor servants of the shrine, such as Quran readers, khadims, farrashes and so on, had had their pay cut by one-third. Certain officials, led by one of the sarkishiks of the shrine,43 the Democrat I‘tizad al-Tawliyah, demanded the production of accounts to justify this action and urged that, if economies had to be made, they should be general and range from the highest to the lowest.44 Towards the end of 1920 and the beginning of 1921 a variety of other factors were contributing to the heightening of tension in Khurasan. The collapse of the Anglo-Iranian Agreement had left British policy towards Iran in disarray and there were grave apprehensions regarding the withdrawal of the British-Indian Malleson Mission, scheduled for early March, and the disbanding of the Kurd Mounted Levies and the Khurasan and Sistan Levy Corps, war-time military formations set up under its auspices. Little heed was taken of the new reality of Soviet-Iranian relations, as expressed in the treaty of February 1921 and whereby experiments in using Iranian communists and regional radicals were to be abandoned in favour of consolidating relations with the central government, and there were widespread fears of a Soviet invasion of Khurasan in the spring. What was known of Bolshevik doctrines, and the circulation of ‘Adalat Party propaganda in Khurasan, unsettled the provincial elite. The panicky atmosphere was aggravated by articles in the local radical press such as that in Mihr-i Munir which warned the rich to take heed of the fate of the millionaires of Russia, and was reflected in the fears expressed by the wellto-do of the poorer elements who were alleged to be marking down the houses of the wealthy for future action.45

The anti-Qavam coup This then was the tense and turbulent situation in Mashhad when Sayyid Ziya and Riza Khan carried out their coup in Tehran. Although Sayyid Ziya was tainted by his past associations with the British,


nonetheless the avowed nationalist, state-building objectives of the coup-makers and their determined measures against a discredited aristocracy and higher bureaucracy, aroused enthusiasm and even euphoria among the younger generation of revolutionary nationalists.46 The coup-makers immediately made sweeping arrests among the elite, announcing the intention of extracting arrears of taxes from them with which to finance a programme of reconstruction, its principal objectives to be financial solvency, administrative reorganization, land reform, development of trade and industry and the formation of a modern army. On 2 April, a few weeks after the establishment of the new regime in Tehran and immediately after the withdrawal of the British Malleson Mission from Khurasan, Colonel Pasyan took control of Mashhad. 2 April was the thirteenth and last day of nawruz and, in accordance with custom, Qavam had spent the day in a garden beyond the city. On his return at sunset his motor-car was stopped at the Arg gate of Mashhad by armed gendarmes and he was informed by the colonel that he was under arrest. Shortly afterwards he was sent to Tehran where he was imprisoned by Sayyid Ziya. At the same time many other officials of the Khurasan provincial government, military and police officers, landowners and merchants, were arrested and confined in the Gendarmerie headquarters, in close imitation of the pattern of arrests carried out by Sayyid Ziya in Tehran. Colonel Pasyan had apparently chosen his own moment for his coup, although acting in conformity to general instructions received from the cabinet. He had planned the action secretly and it came as a great surprise to the provincial government and the local community. The day following the coup, 3 April, Sayyid Ziya, whom Pasyan sincerely admired and to whom he remained consistently loyal, appointed him military governorgeneral of Khurasan.47 In the proclamation with which he accepted this appointment, Pasyan stressed his disinterestedness, his patriotism, his desire for liberty and an end to injustice and tyranny, and the need for reform and a strong central government.48 However, although Pasyan was a strong supporter of the new government and wholly confident in the new prime minister, it seems that the latter did not entirely reciprocate his confidence. Norman, the British minister in Tehran, telegraphed to Prideaux, the consul-general, that Sayyid Ziya “would be grateful if you would keep and eye on O.C.G. [Officer Commanding Gendarmerie] as although he considers him honest he is afraid of what he may do next being an ambitious man”.49 Evidently Pasyan’s potential to offer an alternative national leadership was already a concern in Tehran.


On 4 April martial law was proclaimed in Mashhad50 and the Gendarmerie, nizam (military) and nazmiyyah (police) departments were given joint responsibility for its enforcement. In fact these three forces were already cooperating in a whole-hearted manner. Although the nizam troops and the police easily outnumbered the gendarmes, of whom there were only about 200 in Mashhad, they had not opposed Pasyan’s coup. Neither officers nor men had any particular affection for the former regime and in any case any potential resistance to Pasyan was neutralized by the immediate arrest of several of the most senior military and police commanders. The provincial ra’is-i qushun, Salar-i Muzaffar, had been one of the first persons arrested along with the most senior Iranian police officer in Mashhad, Major Abdullah Khan Tabrizi. Immediately after his coup Colonel Pasyan began to expand the Gendarmerie and to reform the military organization of the province. In line with the policy of the central government he incorporated all the local nizam forces into the Gendarmerie. Three months’ pay was disbursed to them, they were formed into five companies, each of 100 men, and issued with Gendarmerie uniforms. Pasyan had been particularly eager to carry out this measure as he did not trust the nizam officers. He had been confirmed in this attitude by revelations on 8 April that elements among them, led by Salar-i Amjad, the infantry commander, were plotting to rescue Qavam and overthrow the new government. Salar-i Amjad and his fellow conspirators had accordingly been arrested and a gendarme officer, Captain Ismail Khan Bahadur, appointed commander of both the Gendarmerie proper in Mashhad and the reorganized military units. In order to reassure the nizam troops, Pasyan ordered a parade at which he explained his reasons for arresting their commanding officers and promised a commission to enquire into the charges leading thereto.51 Recruiting for the Gendarmerie was carried on energetically, if a little indiscriminately, throughout April and May and service in the force was apparently very popular.52 In the small town of Quchan alone 250 men were enlisted and sent to Mashhad. By the beginning of May the force numbered 1,025 and Pasyan expressed the hope that it would eventually be raised to 3,600. As well as direct enlistment, Pasyan also looked to the tribes, Barbari, Taymuri and Hazarah, who had traditionally rendered military service to the government as a source of contingents of recruits. He was particularly hopeful regarding the Barbaris, whose chiefs he asked to provide 1,000 men, while the Taymuris and Hazarahs were each asked for 300 horsemen.53 Tribal contingents were to be allowed, as in the past, to have tribal officers.


In mid-May the officer corps of the Mashhad Gendarmerie was reinforced by the arrival from Tehran of a number of officers to augment the training staff and towards the end of the month a Gendarmerie school was set up which held classes for officers and NCOs as well as for new enlistments. The growing numbers of the force found accommodation in the hutted encampment outside the town recently vacated by the British Malleson Mission. Their armament consisted mostly of the Lee-Metford long rifle and short bayonet, donated by or purchased from the British government at various times. The Malleson Mission itself had given the Gendarmerie 1,000 rifles and 1,000 boxes of small arms ammunition. Four Lewis guns had also been acquired from Britain. The ordnance consisted of two Schneider field guns, two Austrian mountain guns and two mountain guns obtained from the (British) Kashmir Mountain Battery. In order to carry out a thorough army reform, Colonel Pasyan set up several military commissions in Mashhad, with various functions: the revision of army accounts, the dispensation of justice in cases cognizable by martial law, the checking of arms and ordnance stores including those purchased from the British, etc. However it seems that the work of these commissions was hampered to some extent by the lack of experience of the officer members. The general discipline of the military and semi-military formations in the city was excellent54 and, despite the intense activity in Mashhad, the Gendarmerie continued with its normal duties of guarding the roads and quelling tribal disturbances. The Tehran-Mashhad road was picketed throughout its length and towards the end of May 200 gendarmes left Mashhad for Turbat-i Haydari to deal with disturbances created in that area by Salar Khan Baluch. At the end of April the morale of the Gendarmerie officer corps received an especial fillip in the form of promotions in recognition of their services during the coup. Two of Colonel Pasyan’s closest supporters, Captains Ismail Khan Bahadur and Mahmud Khan Nawzari, were raised to the rank of major while six lesser officers also received promotions.55 Immediately after the coup Pasyan had taken measures to consolidate his control over the outlying districts of the province. The governors of the more important towns, Quchan, Turbat-i Haydari and Nishapur, were brought into Mashhad as prisoners while gendarme officers replaced them temporarily, introducing martial law. Elsewhere new nominal governors were installed or existing officials were told to carry on, but in either case a gendarme officer was the de facto administrator.


Arrests of landowners whose taxes were in arrears had begun on the day of the coup and continued for some time afterwards, although at the same time some detainees were released under guarantee or on parole. The colonel made it quite clear that the payment of arrears of revenue was now to be vigorously enforced and that bribery would not effect the release of persons in custody. Dubois was jubilant over the arrest of Qavam and the other landowners and immediately began issuing demands for various sums of money. He assessed Qavam’s arrears as amounting to 150,000 tumans and warned that this did not take into account any claims against his properties in Rasht and Tehran, and threatened to confiscate his estate at Salami. Indeed within a few weeks the whole of the stock and produce of Qavam’s estate had been seized by the Mashhad authorities. Within a few days of the coup Dubois had, together with Colonel Pasyan, set up a finance commission to investigate and assess revenue claims. Four of the five members of this body were military personnel,56 the civilian member being Alam al-Dawlah, then Revenue Accountant in Mashhad and one of Pasyan’s closest and most radical supporters.57 The finance commission sat throughout April and May and Dubois appointed five additional inspectors of revenue for his department. While Dubois began calculating outstanding revenues for roughly the past ten years with much enthusiasm,58 the colonel set about collecting proof regarding bribery and illegal exactions by the ex-governorgeneral and his satellites. Several other landowners and merchants were found to equal Qavam in the extent of their debts, and the commission also brought to light a large number of cases of corrupt practices indulged in by the former provincial authorities, Qavam and his secretary being chief among the offenders. Furthermore when the commission examined the accounts of Salar-i Muzaffar, the ex-ra’is-i qushun, it discovered the misappropriation of large sums of money, 10,000 tumans over the past three months alone. This caused the commission to order an audit of the nizam department’s accounts for the past year, while Salar-i Muzaffar was declared to be personally in debt for a considerable amount which he immediately paid up. Another of the colonel’s priorities was the reform of the shrine administration, the indebted condition of which had become a public scandal.59 In early April he began to consider, in consultation with the mutavallibashi, Zahir al-Islam,60 a close ally, the steps to be taken against those who had, by virtue of the terms of vaqf endowments, consumed vast amounts of the shrine’s revenues. Although certain prominent shrine officials had been arrested immediately after the coup they had


soon been released and with the departure in mid-April, on pilgrimage to Mecca, of Muhammad Najafi Khurasani, known as Aqazadah, the most important mujtahid in Mashhad, a possible focus of clerical opposition was removed. Some resentment existed among certain clerical elements, who complained that the new regime was committing acts of sacrilege by enforcing revenue claims against the shrine fraternity, but with Aqazadah absent and the mutavallibashi allied to Pasyan, there was, at this point, no serious religious opposition to the colonel. Indeed the mujtahids of Mashhad were reported to have declared, in typically conservative vein, their aloofness from and neutrality towards the recent changes, saying that what had been resorted to was for the good of the country and the maintenance of religious law, and that it behooved religious leaders to support the present government, both provincial and central.61 However Colonel Pasyan was now contemplating nothing less than a complete overhaul of the shrine administration so that its income could be devoted wholly to its proper purposes, education and charitable work, the upkeep of buildings etc., and not to individual privilege. On the morning of 7 May, on the orders of the prime minister, Sayyid Ziya, Pasyan arrested all the high officials of the shrine, with the exception of the mutavallibashi. The arrests were carried out at homes, by a force of 100 gendarmes and thirty police, all volunteers. Twenty-one persons were taken into custody, including four out of five of the sarkishiks, and all were charged with systematically embezzling shrine revenues. Small gendarme guards were placed at each of the gates of the shrine, the shrine was cleared of khadims and kishiks, and the shrine’s valuables were put under seal by Pasyan himself. The colonel then announced that the affairs of the shrine were to be thoroughly investigated, economies effected wherever possible and the number of people drawing salaries and pensions from the shrine reduced to reasonable proportions. Sayyid Ziya had sent instructions rendering the previous shrine administration null and void and ordering new arrangements to be made. Pasyan therefore appointed four committees for the investigation of shrine affairs. These committees were to examine the shrine’s accounts, its personnel, its lands and buildings and its moveable property. Pasyan himself presided over the second and third of these committees and in mid-May declared his resolve to reduce the number of people drawing money from the shrine from 1,200 to ninety-five. Although the shrine pensioners were extremely bitter in their denunciations of the authorities and demanded material redress,62 yet these measures produced no serious public demonstrations. However they did set in


motion undercurrents of unrest in clerical circles63 and from now on many of the religious and administrative personnel of the shrine were to be implacably hostile to Pasyan and his regime. Pasyan’s action in fact constituted the first attempt in Iran to establish some state control over the vaqf. Over the preceding fifty years, and particularly since the constitutional revolution, the administration of vaqf property in Iran had increasingly degenerated and a movement in favour of reform had developed. For the secular radicals of the constitutional period, however, it was not enough merely to ensure that the revenues from vaqf endowments were devoted to their proper, educational and charitable, purposes. It was also necessary to limit the economic and political independence and power of particularly the reactionary elements among the ulama. The Jangalis, for example, included in their programme64 a provision for the actual confiscation of all religious endowments and for their income to serve the public welfare.65 The establishment of state control over the vaqf had been an important part of Ottoman reform and a potent instrument for the reduction of the position of the ulama in the Ottoman Empire, and the modernizing regimes of the twentieth century Middle East, including that of Riza Shah, were to continue along this path. Pasyan’s measures, although unsuccessful, may thus be seen as paradigmatic. During April and May, Pasyan also introduced a variety of minor reforms into the provincial administration and took steps to consolidate the new regime. He ordered the dismissal from government departments of all opium addicts and prohibited the practice of medicine except by those possessing a recognized diploma. He also issued an order that all arms in the possession of private individuals were to be handed in at Gendarmerie headquarters and instituted house searches to discover weapons. He began subsidizing two local newspapers, Sharq-i Iran and Mihr-i Munir to support the government of Sayyid Ziya. He also took measures specifically aimed at easing the lot of the poorer classes, such as ordering the reduction of the price of bread and meat. Meanwhile the revenue department had examined and reported on the accounts of the baladiyyah department (the municipality) and had begun the enumeration and registration of dwellings for efficient taxation. In mid-May Dubois published a long list of taxes, fixed by Tehran, on houses, vehicles, transport animals, country products, trades, etc. Most of these taxes had formerly been collected by the municipality on a lower scale but now they were to be the responsibility of the provincial revenue department. The daily collections of the latter department, newly reorganized and possessing an unaccustomed determination,


immediately averaged 400 tumans, ten times the sum which the municipality had used to receive. The imposition of new municipality taxes by Tehran, and their more effective collection, also caused a good deal of general discontent, particularly among the better-off, and a tendency for the villages to boycott Mashhad became apparent.66

The fall of Sayyid Ziya: an uneasy truce Colonel Pasyan’s relationship with the central government remained harmonious so long as Sayyid Ziya held the premiership, however the latter’s fall and exile brought about a crisis for the gendarme regime in Mashhad. For radical nationalists Sayyid Ziya’s departure appeared to represent not an internal coup by Riza Khan, but a counter-coup by the old elite,67 especially as it was followed by the release of the political prisoners originally arrested by the Sayyid, including of course Qavam al-Saltanah. This superficial normalization seemed to be, both to supporters and opponents of the coup, not another step in the consolidation of the new era inaugurated by the February coup, but rather a return to the status quo ante.68 It was this apparent counter-coup which Pasyan refused to accept and which led him to attempt to defend, from his base in Mashhad, the wider programme of reform of which the Sayyid had been a briefly prominent exponent. The fall of Sayyid Ziya had been engineered by an alliance between Riza Khan and various elements of the old elite. The shah had feared for his throne and had been angered by economies in the civil list, the aristocracy threatened by imprisonment and demands for taxes, officials dismissed or their salaries reduced, and the ulama deprived of a variety of sources of income. The population of Tehran in general, especially the merchants, were discontented by the new municipal taxation. The Sayyid’s overthrow was sudden and accomplished before any resistance could be offered. The Gendarmerie in particular, towards whom Sayyid Ziya had tended to look as a counterpoise to Riza Khan and his cossacks,69 was taken by surprise, although it appears that Sayyid Ziya did make some effort to use the Gendarmerie in the vicinity of Tehran to defend his position.70 By the time reports of the action against him reached Mashhhad Sayyid Ziya was already in exile. The news of Sayyid Ziya’s fall was greeted with considerable satisfaction by the same social strata in Khurasan as had opposed him in the capital. The landlords and tribal chiefs owing money to the revenue department were naturally delighted, although in fact Dubois had not, thus far, attempted to tackle recalcitrant tribal debtors. The


beneficiaries of the shrine were pleased, as were the merchants, who anticipated the modification of the recently imposed municipality taxes. The Gendarmerie, however, were apprehensive about the consequences of the change of regime at Tehran. Indeed the hostility of the wealthy towards the Gendarmerie, in whom they saw a “concrete expression of the money they have been mulcted of”,71 was now very marked. On 25 May Pasyan received a telegram from the shah informing him that Sayyid Ziya had been relieved of his appointment but that he should continue to work as before and keep order in Khurasan. Two days later the colonel sent a telegram to Riza Khan, whom he understood to be the dominant factor in Tehran, offering him his congratulations and expressing the hope that the good work begun by him and the cossacks would be brought to a successful conclusion.72 Rumours had begun to circulate in Mashhad to the effect that the new government would include Qavam al-Saltanah and on 29 May telegrams arrived containing ominous enquiries about the whereabouts of the latter’s moveable properties. Then, on 30 May, Colonel Pasyan received a circular telegram from the shah, addressed to provincial and district governors, announcing the appointment of Qavam as prime minister. The next morning orders arrived from Tehran appointing a local notable, Najd al-Saltanah, as the new governor-general of Khurasan and directing the release of all persons in custody, with the exception of outlaws and robbers. However the elderly and timorous Najd al-Saltanah was most reluctant to assume his post and asked Tehran to excuse him from duty on account of his age, suggesting that Colonel Pasyan continue temporarily in office. At this point the colonel began to contemplate defying Tehran. He imposed a censorship in the telegraph office, carried out a series of arrests of persons he believed likely to collaborate with the new central government, particularly those individuals he thought likely to be nominated as governor-general, including Najd al-Saltananah, and telegraphed to Gendarmerie commanders at outstations such as Quchan, Turbat-i Haydari and Nishapur, asking if they would support him, soon receiving affirmative replies from them. Pasyan was clearly overwhelmed at the news of Qavam al-Saltanah’s appointment. He was convinced that the new prime minister was actuated solely by the motive of revenge while he himself was consumed with personal hatred for, and fear of treachery by, Qavam.73 He apparently felt that the only two courses open to him were either to defy Tehran or to leave for Europe. He further declared that he had


overturned Qavam’s rule in Mashhad with only 200 gendarmes, with his present force of 4,000 men he believed he could capture Tehran within three months. The colonel asserted that the state of Iran could not be worse than it would soon be under the regime of Qavam. He was apparently confident that Sayyid Ziya would soon return to power. The same day, 31 May, Colonel Pasyan occupied the telegraph office for several hours, engaging in communication with the Swedish commandant of the Gendarmerie, Colonel Gleerup, and with a variety of Iranian officials in Tehran, including the minister of court. Gleerup and the minister of court both expressed the view that Pasyan should give up the governor-generalship, but retain the military command. However the colonel distrusted Qavam too much to be satisfied with mere assurances and pressed for a message from the shah himself, meanwhile concentrating all the Gendarmerie in their encampment on the outskirts of Mashhad. The next day the colonel began to canvass support among both military and civilian elements in Mashhad for his stand. In the morning he addressed two parades of officers, first about fifty gendarmes in the encampment, then about thirty police, including the Swedish chief, Major Bronikovsky, in the city. He informed both assemblies that he had submitted certain stipulations to Tehran. If these were acceded to by the shah he would depart quietly for Europe after rendering a full account of his administration. If not, he would expect them to support him in resistance. It seems that he received a very cordial and sympathetic response. Bronikovsky, for example, described his officers as much affected and ready to support the colonel. In the evening Pasyan invited many of the leading citizens of Mashhad to an assembly. To this gathering he first described his and his family’s service to Iran and his military sacrifices during the war. He then read out all the correspondence that had passed between himself and Tehran and stated that he still awaited the shah’s reply to his conditions. He declared that he had to protect his subordinates and repeated that if his terms were not met he would resist to the last. Again the listeners were appreciative, some out of genuine admiration, some presumably from a fear of defying the existing powers in the city. They deputized six of their number to telegraph to the shah asking that for the benefit of Khurasan Colonel Pasyan be retained in office until a new governor-general arrived and that his representations be favourably heard.74 These six included important merchants, clerics and the tribal chief, Sardar Nusrat Taymuri.


The terms which Pasyan was determined Tehran must accept in fact contained no general political demands but were mainly concerned with safeguarding his followers from reprisals, guaranteeing the future of the Gendarmerie force in general, and securing for himself a safe conduct to the frontier.75 They were as follows: 1) The promotions given to gendarme officers by the former prime minister [Sayyid Ziya] should be recognized by the new government; 2) The gendarmes of Khurasan should not be victimized on account of their share in the recent coup d’état; 3) The examination of the revenue accounts should be continued by the new governor-general; 4) The new budget for the Gendarmerie of Khurasan, already submitted, should be approved; 5) The governor-general and other departments of the provincial government should treat the Gendarmerie according to the latter’s regulations; 6) The colonel should be permitted to proceed to Europe with one year’s pay and journey’s expenses; 7) He should be granted a safe conduct to the frontier. The colonel enquired of the British in Mashhad whether they would be prepared to arrange a guarantee of safe-conduct for him to India and the consul-general, Prideaux, believing he might take bast in the consulate, expressed the opinion to Norman in Tehran that he should be granted asylum in India in recognition of his friendliness towards Britain and his honest work over the last two months. When Pasyan had first arrived in Mashhad the British, although wary because of his war-time activities, had admired his attempts to reform the military forces and increase security. Again their close relationship with Sayyid Ziya in Tehran ensured their support for his partisans in the provinces, and their offer of asylum upon his downfall. However they were adamant that they could not countenance rebellion against the central government and in fact were appalled at the prospect of armed conflict and the possible involvement of Soviet Russia. From now on the sympathy of the British in Mashhad quickly evaporated. As a result of the radicalization of the Mashhad regime and their growing resolution to back the central government they became increasingly suspicious of, and ultimately hostile towards, the colonel. Nonetheless notwithstanding the actual nuances and decisions of British policy, both supporters of


the Mashhad regime and of the central government accused each other, with ever greater frequency and bitterness, of relying on British support. The crisis was temporarily resolved when, on the following day, 2 June, the minister of court informed the colonel that the shah accepted his first five proposals but that the acceptance of the final two would be contrary to the interests of the country in general and of the Gendarmerie service in particular. He was accordingly requested to persuade Najd al-Saltanah to take over the post of governor-general and himself to remain in command of the military forces in Khurasan. The colonel then announced that, as his stipulations regarding his subordinates had been met, he would do as the shah ordered. He immediately amnestied all the prisoners, including the shrine officials, and martial law was abolished in Mashhad. The reform of the shrine administration was allowed to lapse indefinitely, and the many hundreds of its erstwhile establishment returned to place and office, with the exception of the colonel’s supporter, Zahir al-Islam, the mutavallibashi. The venom of the shrine administration towards the latter was such that he was obliged to leave for Tehran early in June with a protective escort of gendarmes, Pasyan thus losing an influential and strategically located ally. Pasyan made no further attempts to reform the shrine administration and generally modified his stance towards clerical power in Mashhad. Indeed he was even later to be accused in more radical quarters of pandering to the orthodox. The Tehran authorities were very conscious both of the personal prestige and ambition of Colonel Pasyan and of the capacity of the Gendarmerie to intervene in national political life.76 It was this awareness which had dictated their conciliatory attitude during the crisis of late May and which had persuaded them of the need to placate the colonel. Riza Khan undoubtedly calculated that he did not yet possess the military strength to risk a confrontation, especially while still engaged against Kuchik Khan in Gilan and while a large part of western Azarbayjan and northern Kurdistan was in the hands of the Kurdish rebel, Ismail Aqa Simitqu (Simko). In early June Pasyan received telegrams expressing the Tehran authorities’ confidence in him and confirming his promotion to the rank of full colonel with the grant of a pension for life in recognition of his services. The stability and durability of Qavam’s new cabinet was indeed most uncertain. It quickly annoyed the British by its apparent friendliness with the Soviet legation and American oil interests, and by its peremptory dismissal of the British officers serving with the Cossack Brigade.77 As a result of its “sullen disposition”78 towards Britain, London decided


to cut off all loans from British sources, thus particularly jeopardizing the position of Riza Khan, who desperately needed money to secure his ascendancy within the army. Riza Khan, whose position did not depend on his cabinet post, had been determined, since the February coup, to bring about his own ascendancy both within the army and within the wider political arena. He had been specifically concerned to aggrandize power to his own principal basis of support, his ex-cossack comrades, and to neutralize the political and military challenge offered by the gendarmes. He had already succeeded in removing the ex-gendarmes Major Masud Khan Kayhan and Colonel Kazim Khan Sayyar from their respective posts of war minister and military governor of Tehran. The autonomy of the Gendarmerie had been destroyed by its transfer from the ministry of the interior to the war ministry, now headed by Riza Khan himself, and the numerical and organizational superiority which it had possessed at the time of the coup was being destroyed by rapid recruitment to the Cossack Brigade and the preferment of cossack officers.79 In Mashhad an uneasy situation now prevailed, with Najd al-Saltanah as governor-general and Colonel Pasyan as military commander. It had become clear immediately that the two figures were not wholly in accord. Najd al-Saltanah was aged, averse to the assumption of authority and a Qajar official of the most old-fashioned stamp, “prompted by little else save the wish to accumulate money to pay off certain liabilities, an aid to which he finds in the sale of civil offices”.80 He was of course quite unable to impose his will on the colonel, who remained the most powerful individual in the province. Furthermore none of Najd al-Saltanah’s following were capable of dominating the situation or even of gaining sufficient political weight to counterpoise the gendarme party. A striking example of the colonel’s preponderance over the governor-general was provided when the latter, in accordance with instructions from Tehran, ordered the abolition of martial law in Quchan and Darrah Gaz. Pasyan opposed this move and threatened to withdraw his command form those places if these orders were put into effect. Najd al-Saltanah was forced to acquiesce. The retention of martial law, involving as it did the presence of a gendarme officer as military governor, was of key importance to Pasyan’s position. Immediately after the resolution of the May crisis, recruiting for the Gendarmerie, drill and training were resumed, both in Mashhad and in the outlying areas, especially the Quchan district. The force now numbered 2,500 and could parade over 800 strong in Mashhad alone, while the Quchan garrison numbered 100 foot and fifty mounted gendarmes.


Contingents of tribal horsemen had been successfully enlisted and as well as recruits from the Barbaris of whom there were now 130, the Gendarmerie also accepted 100 Bakharzi tribesmen, enlisted and commanded by the son of the Hazarah chief, Shuja al-Mulk.81 There was no graduated course of instruction for the recruits who, after being grounded in the preliminaries of drill, were drafted into the ranks where they were expected to learn their skills through contact with more experienced troops. However the gendarmes were put through a course of musketry, of a rather perfunctory nature, the allotment of ammunition being six rounds per man for the course, and a German was engaged as machine-gun instructor. But training deficiencies had serious consequences, for example, the men were unable to hit the target at elementary ranges and the condition of their rifles was deteriorating owing to ignorance of the care of arms. However the conflict between Tehran and Mashhad had merely been temporarily submerged and by no means resolved. Although by midJuly the promotions of gendarme officers, sanctioned by the former prime minister, Sayyid Ziya, in connection with the coup in Khurasan, had been confirmed by the central government and were promulgated on a “strong as possible” parade, yet the Gendarmerie budget, sanction for which had been promised by the shah, had not yet been formally passed by the cabinet, nor would the latter allow Colonel Pasyan to appropriate anything from the revenues of the province without its permission. This presented the colonel with a grave problem as his expanded force now required about 50,000 tumans per month for its maintenance. Furthermore the former prime minister’s order to absorb all military cadre into the Gendarmerie, which had never in any case been ratified by the war ministry, was rescinded, probably a move on the part of the central government to detract from the colonel’s supremacy in Khurasan and from the significance of the Gendarmerie nationally. By now the military forces themselves were experiencing some turbulence. Pro-Bolshevik propaganda, disseminated by the ‘Adalat Party and directed specifically at the Gendarmerie, was much in evidence, particularly significant being quantities of leaflets containing the “will” of the martyred gendarme officer Ali Quli Khan Pasyan, while from the opposite end of the political spectrum, the shrine establishment were at work to undermine the loyalty of the gendarmes to the colonel. The colonel and some of his colleagues were also concerned about the behaviour and efficiency of certain of the regular officers who had been taken into the Gendarmerie, while some of the tribal contingents were beginning to manifest discontent and there were desertions and discharges


from among these groups. The Barbari element was especially turbulent. After three Barbaris deserted in mid-July and fled to Afghanistan, fifty-five more were permitted to take their discharge. By July, most ominously for the future, it had also become clear that the central government was intriguing among local tribal khans with the intention of creating counterpoises to the dominance of Colonel Pasyan in Khurasan. Rumours began to circulate in Mashhad that the Barbari chief, Haydar Shah, had been commissioned by the prime minister to raise and hold ready 800 armed horsemen from among his tribesmen.82 It was further and specifically believed that Haydar Shah, in response to Qavam’s prodding, was undermining the loyalty of those of his tribesmen who had enlisted in the Gendarmerie, a belief which was borne out by the July desertions and discharges. There were other signs of discontent with the gendarme regime in the outlying districts of the province. Some fifty elders of Turbat-i Shaykh Jam, for example, came to Mashhad to appeal against the oppressiveness of their taxation and the harshness of the gendarmes collecting it. In Astarabad deputations of residents met in the local telegraph office to protest to Tehran that they did not want gendarmes in that place, while the Turkman tribes in the vicinity met with a view to concerting measures to check the advance of the gendarmes into their territory and to avoid giving up their arms. As July drew to a close the situation in Mashhad was becoming more tense. As all the government employees, including the military, knew, the local treasury hardly contained enough money for their immediate needs while the central government was pressing hard for remittances to Tehran. Dubois, always one of the colonel’s staunchest supporters, resigned his charge of the revenue department, though retaining that of customs, after being libelled in the press. Dubois believed that he was being harassed at the inspiration of Qavam, who was determined to drive him out of even his remaining appointment. A particular controversy existed over more than 100 horses which had been confiscated by Pasyan, while military governor-general, their owners owing revenue to the state. These horses had been distributed among gendarme officers. About forty of these horses had belonged to Qavam, who had now sent representatives from Tehran to reclaim them. The other ex-owners most concerned were the Taymuri and Hazarah chiefs, Shawkat al-Dawlah and Shuja al-Mulk. The colonel had been ordered by Tehran to return the animals but was refusing to do so pending sanction of his budget which would enable him to purchase suitable remounts.


Mashhad and Tehran were now deadlocked. The colonel’s attitude to the central government was as yet one of passive resistance,83 but it was clear that he would have to act soon to resolve the situation. Najd al-Saltanah, initially reluctant to take over as governor-general, was eager to retire and on 17 July had telegraphed to the capital that he was unable, for reasons of ill-health, to continue much longer in office. The colonel now distributed small parties of gendarmes along the Tehran-Mashhad road, apparently to arrest anyone who might be sent to replace him as governor-general. Najd al-Saltanah was finally unnerved completely when, on the night of 22 July, two bombs exploded in Mashhad. This incident was closely followed by his receipt of a letter containing assassination threats. On 26 July he asked the colonel for an escort of gendarmes to his country home, and wired to Tehran that he could not carry on as governor-general. He received a reply ordering him to remain in office. He telegraphed back that he would continue nominally to act for a few days more though he intended to remain in bed. Two days later he went to the Arg palace where he met Colonel Pasyan to whom he summarily handed over the provincial government, of his own volition and without further reference to Tehran.

Colonel Pasyan resumes control: a developing crisis Thus Colonel Pasyan again resumed the governor-generalship of Khurasan. Pasyan, although not yet technically in revolt, having notionally accepted office as the nominee of a sick man, in fact now presented Tehran with the alternative of acquiescing in his retention of power or attempting to unseat him by force. He was being encouraged in these moves by his principal supporters, including Dubois and his own second-in-command, Major Ismail Khan Bahadur. Dubois, who had accepted Pasyan’s invitation to return to work in the revenue office, was not in a conciliatory mood and immediately inaugurated a propaganda counter-campaign against Qavam, promising to publish proof that he had appropriated large sums of money, precisely 35,000 tumans, intended for the gendarmes’ pay. Major Bahadur, apparently something of a firebrand, professed his desire to march on Tehran even were the colonel to go into exile, while the colonel himself was by now adopting a bellicose stance, declaring that it would take 6,000 cossacks and £2 million to remove him and that he anticipated the resignation of the cabinet.84 Colonel Pasyan again took up residence in the governor-general’s palace from which he immediately discharged various menial hangerson. He imposed a censorship in the telegraph office and began to


decypher all the telegrams of Najd al-Saltanah’s administration, only Dubois now being allowed to telegraph in cypher. Although his position was still legally and constitutionally sound, he was disobeying the central government on several minor counts. He was refusing to restore the horses confiscated from Qavam and certain Taymuri and Hazarah chiefs, he refused to send to Tehran as requested the 1,000 rifles bequeathed by the Malleson Mission on its withdrawal from Mashhad, and he was not remitting any money from the provincial treasury. The colonel’s next step was, in a repetition of the tactic employed successfully in May, to attempt to consolidate his position by canvassing the good opinion of local notables for transmission to Tehran by telegraph. He convened a meeting of some 250 leading citizens, including merchants and members of the ulama, and told them that he had assumed the governorgeneralship in order to suppress the disorders which had recently occurred. He then left them to deliberate, apparently expecting them to send enthusiastic telegrams to Tehran recommending his retention in office. However on this occasion he was disappointed. The assembled notables were reluctant to associate themselves definitely with a figure so disliked and feared by the central government and accordingly they merely requested Tehran that the colonel be permitted to remain in charge pending the appointment of a suitable governor-general.85 However the attitude of the local notability was transformed when, on 1 August, Colonel Pasyan received an announcement from Tehran that Samsam al-Saltanah Bakhtiyari had been appointed as new governor-general of Khurasan. There was much consternation in Mashhad at this news, even among elements who were lukewarm towards Pasyan and the gendarme party. Indeed some of those who had been imprisoned by the colonel during the May crisis now wrote to Pasyan offering to unite with him in opposing the appointment.86 The prospect of the arrival of a tribal chief as governor-general, bringing with him a substantial contingent of armed retainers, was alarming in itself while the specific record of the Bakhtiyari when at Tehran after their victory over the shah in 1909 boded ill for both the political stability of the province and the security of property of the elite. Pasyan telegraphed various political figures in Tehran who possessed a reputation for nationalist sympathies or at least a degree of personal integrity, such as Mustawfi al-Mamalik, Mushir al-Dawlah, Mutamin al-Mulk and Sulayman Mirza, asking them to discuss the situation over the wire, but none responded. Some of the Mashhad notables who resented the appointment of a Bakhtiyari chief to the highest office in the province and who feared the descent of his retainers on the town, also wired to Tehran in protest. This


group was very diverse and included both partisans of Pasyan and his erstwhile victims. Qavam’s reply was received on 6 August. It was a repressive snub which briefly stated that the shah had great confidence in Samsam, that the wishes of the people of Khurasan had been duly considered in the making of the appointment and that Samsam would soon be leaving for Mashhad. Undoubtedly for Qavam, a strong element of Samsam’s appeal lay in his ability to furnish his own reliable armed support, thus ensuring his independence of the colonel when in Mashhad and his capacity to prevail against the Gendarmerie. The citizens of Mashhad, including deputations of ulama and merchants, again sent telegrams of protest both to the central government and to the ulama of Tehran and some took bast in the telegraph office awaiting replies. Colonel Pasyan himself entered into negotiations directly with Samsam. The colonel wired to Samsam promising to obey him provided he brought no Bakhtiyari force with him, as this the people would not tolerate, and asking him to retain Dubois in office and to give a general guarantee that the cabinet, particularly Qavam, would keep its promises. On 13 August Samsam, apparently extremely anxious to take up his post, replied promising to maintain the colonel in military command and announcing that he was starting for Mashhad alone in a carriage. He reassured the colonel regarding the central government and promised to try to keep Dubois even though the government objected to his retention.87 However these negotiations were interrupted by the unexpected appearance on the Mashhad road on 15 August of Colonel Gleerup, the Swedish commandant of the Gendarmerie, and a party of three Iranian colonels, Sadiq Khan Kupal (Salar-i Nizam), Azizullah Khan Zarghami and Fath Ali Khan Saqafi Tupchi.88 This party continued towards Mashhad but was stopped at Sharifabad by a gendarme column commanded by Major Bahadur which had originally set out to intercept Samsam. Colonel Pasyan himself motored out to Sharifabad to interview Gleerup who produced a document from the government authorizing him to reorganize the Khurasan Gendarmerie as he saw fit and giving him a free hand. The government had told him only that Pasyan was to be permitted to go on six months’ leave but that if he continued to defy Tehran an expedition would be sent to suppress him. Unsurprisingly Pasyan and Gleerup were unable to reach any agreement and the latter and his party, after the Iranian officers had been disarmed, returned to Tehran. Although Gleerup’s sudden arrival had disturbed Pasyan and increased his suspicions regarding the government’s intentions, nonetheless negotiations with Tehran were resumed via the good offices of the British


consul-general in Mashhad. Pasyan submitted his conditions to the government through intermediaries, the imam-i jum‘ah of Tehran and General Hamzah Khan, his uncle and a respected cossack officer.89 These conditions were essentially the same as those put forward at the time of the May crisis and included the granting to Pasyan of permission to depart to Europe, unmolested, with an escort to the frontier of his own choosing and accompanied by Dubois and Major Bahadur, certain reservations with regard to his own pension and guarantees for the immunity from reprisals of those who had supported him. Alternatively he offered to serve under Samsam provided his recent acts were condoned, his budget for Khurasan ratified, and Dubois retained as Director of Revenue for the province. The central government declared itself ready to accept the first set of conditions. However the prospect of losing their leader alarmed both the civilian and military partisans of the colonel, who feared their enemies’ vengeance. Officers in charge of detachments on the frontier telegraphed to Mashhad their intentions to leave their commands if Colonel Pasyan persisted in his proposal to go into exile. Major Mahmud Khan Nawzari was particularly active in organizing telegrams from gendarmes on the northern frontier forbidding Pasyan from leaving Khurasan. Representations such as these profoundly affected the colonel who was, in any case, reluctant to abandon his post and did not really wish to leave his country.90 A tribal eruption in the east of the province provided evidence of the government’s bad faith and further persuaded the colonel that he should not leave but should rather reassert his authority and quell the disturbances. Since taking over the governor-generalship from Najd al-Saltanah, and even while conducting negotiations with the government, Pasyan had not neglected to take measures aimed at securing his position and consolidating his support. This time he left alone the shrine, where his previous attempts at reform had engendered powerful opposition, and rather tried to cultivate support among the mullahs, who had been unsettled by the prospect of the arrival of the Bakhtiyari. In order to encourage the allegiance of the poorer elements to his regime, he ordered a reduction in the price of bread. He tried to smooth relations between the Gendarmerie and the civilian population, setting up an Intelligence Bureau with headquarters in his own office to furnish him with reports on this and other subjects. A propaganda department was established which made considerable headway. The colonel appointed agents to persuade the people of Mashhad of the virtues of his regime and sent similar advocates among the Barbari tribesmen whose chief was simultaneously being courted by the central government. Dubois in particular continued his campaign


against Qavam in the local press. He wrote two long letters to the newspapers Sharq-i Iran and Bahar publishing details of the Gendarmerie accounts and estimates of the defalcations of the period of Qavam’s Governor-Generalship, and criticizing the way in which government officials had had to pay for their appointments. Furthermore, pamphlets and shabnamahs, some anonymous but attributed to gendarme elements, and some signed by political groups, such as the Kumitah-i Milli-yi Khurasan (The National Committee of Khurasan), inveighing against Qavam and Samsam, were now appearing in Mashhad. One such pamphlet gave an interpretation of the history of Khurasan, and outlined the excesses of past governors-general and the present miserable condition of the people resulting from the rapacity of these provincial rulers. The pamphlet concluded with a prayer for justice and declared that Colonel Pasyan was the best man to administer it.91 Undoubtedly Pasyan enjoyed considerable prestige both in Mashhad and in the province generally.92 There was widespread appreciation of his genuine asceticism and incorruptibility and since his assumption of office the city had been quieter and more orderly. The colonel also tried to encourage an esprit de corps within the Gendarmerie. He held meetings for his officers and exhorted them to cultivate patriotism, they in turn pledging him their support, while in Mashhad and Quchan imams administered to the gendarme rank and file an oath of fidelity to the colonel. Pasyan now required 70,000 tumans per month for the maintenance of his force and Dubois was earnestly addressing himself to the problem of raising sufficient funds. However in a further effort to undermine the gendarme regime and to deprive it of legitimacy Tehran now formally appointed a replacement for Dubois but the colonel was determined to retain his staunch ally and prevented the Tehran official from coming to Mashhad. Colonel Pasyan had consistently expressed scepticism regarding the sincerity of Tehran’s assurances and indeed, notwithstanding the negotiations in which the central government was engaged, Qavam continued to intrigue amongst the tribal chiefs. By early August his attempts to incite the latter against the gendarme regime were beginning to bear fruit. For example Nusrat-i Lashkar, the commander of the roadguards on the Mashhad-Tehran road, who was already at odds with the pro-Pasyan governor of Sabzavar, received a communication from Qavam telling him that he was independent of the latter. Colonel Pasyan accordingly resolved to station 400 troops at Sabzavar under Major Bahadur, partly to prop up the governor against Nusrat-i Lashkar but also to confront any forces approaching from Tehran. After some financial difficulty an advance


party left Mashhad early in August followed by the main contingent on the 13th. The grievances of the tribes against the gendarmes and the revenue collectors were easy to exploit and their hostility soon broke out into armed conflict. On 11 August the first tribal attack on the Mashhad regime took place. A small detachment of gendarmes under a captain returned to Mashhad from Kariz, a village near the Afghan border, whence they had been driven out by Shuja al-Mulk Hazarah. The colonel vowed revenge against Shuja and warned the central government that he would attack him if he did not apologize for his behaviour. Meanwhile he continued a policy of conciliation towards tribal groups whose allegiance was undecided, trying to tempt certain elements, particularly the Taymuris, to back him, offering incentives such as provincial sub-governorships to their khans. In early August he appointed the Taymuri chief, Shawkat al-Dawlah, as governor of Turbat-i Shaykh Jam, a small town in the south-east of the province. This policy of conciliation was prompted by Pasyan’s desire to neutralize opposition and to secure the military support of the Taymuri horsemen and was partially successful, a squadron of gendarmes at Quchan being redeployed and replaced by 100 Taymuri savars. However when Shawkat tried to reach Turbat-i Shaykh Jam an affray took place between his gendarme escort and the followers of Shuja alMulk. One man was killed and the entire party arrested by Shuja’s men. This second encounter between gendarmes and the followers of Shuja al-Mulk, which took place shortly after the Kariz attack, meant that active hostility between a tribal chief and Colonel Pasyan was now definitely established.93 Shuja al-Mulk had apparently formed a confederacy with other chiefs, including Sayyid Haydar Khan and Mir Ali Ahmad, Barbari chiefs in adjacent territory, and with Salar Khan Baluch, Ibrahim Khan Baluch and Jafar Khan Karai. Indeed Pasyan suspected even Shawkat al-Dawlah himself of being in secret collusion with Shuja, despite the bribe of a governorship. Shuja was collecting as many savars as possible from these tribal groups, Barbaris, Hazarahs, Karais, and even the much-courted Taymuris, in order to launch an attack on Mashhad itself, the central government having dangled before the tribesmen’s eyes the opportunity to capture all the arms and ammunition belonging to the Gendarmerie and to loot the city.94 This tribal unrest in the east of the province confirmed Pasyan’s distrust of the government and he immediately moved to crush the disturbances.95 An advance party of gendarmes left Mashhad for Turbat-i Shaykh Jam on 20 August, followed next day by a punitive column. Certain gendarme posts on the main roads radiating north of Mashhad


were also withdrawn and the men held ready to march south. However Colonel Pasyan also faced tribal opposition in the north of Khurasan. The Sardar of Bujnurd was mobilizing all his savars, both Kurd and Turkman, numbering about 700, practically all of whom were armed with magazine rifles. The Sardar was determined to resist the imposition of martial law, and the extension of the authority of the provincial government and the control of the Gendarmerie which embodied it, in his territory. Indeed the attitude of the Kurds throughout the northern portion of the province was determined by that of the Sardar and it was reported that the hostility of the whole Kurd population of Quchan and elsewhere was evoked by the very sight of a gendarme.96 The Kurds of Quchan had been further aggravated by the recent dismissal and arrest of the Kurd chief, Taj Muhammad Khan, who had been appointed deputy governor of Quchan in April. Taj Muhammad was soon freed, Pasyan saying that he had been arrested by mistake, and he joined the Gendarmerie with 100 savars, probably in payment for his release, but the Kurds were not appeased. The central government was now unceasing in its exhortations to Khurasani governors and sardars to rally to its support. On 27 August Qavam sent a telegram to Shawkat al-Mulk of Birjand, governor of Sistan and Qayinat, authorizing him in the name of the government and the shah to take action against the rebellious Colonel Pasyan. Shawkat al-Mulk was instructed to gather an army, to be paid from the tax revenues, not one coin of which was to be sent to Mashhad, and to grant sanctuary to deserters from the Gendarmerie. A copy of this telegram was also sent to Shuja al-Mulk.97 Shawkat replied to Tehran that he had commenced warlike preparations, although at the same time he began parleying with Mashhad for a reconciliation. Hoping to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the colonel he discussed the situation at length over the telegraph wire with the Mashhad karguzar, Mutasim al-Saltanah Farrukh,98 and even sent one of his officials to Mashhad to confer personally with Pasyan.99 Shawkat’s determination to avoid taking sides in the conflict between Pasyan and the central government illustrates the dilemma faced by many of the notables of the province. A natural inclination to defer to the de facto authority, coupled with an appreciation of the potential for order and security represented by the Gendarmerie, vied with a dislike of the radical modernizing thrust of the Mashhad regime, this ambivalence compounded by an overweening horror of the predatory tendencies of the tribes which was being unleashed by the conflict.


Meanwhile in Tehran the government had begun to plan an expedition to Khurasan. Riza Khan had been reluctant to undertake operations against Colonel Pasyan before the Jangalis had been crushed, but the recent cossack successes in Mazandaran had eased the situation somewhat and on 30 August a cossack detachment left Tehran for the east, followed by a second echelon on 9 September. However the government forces commanded by General Husayn Aqa Khuzai halted at Shahrud and did not attempt to march on Mashhad itself. Undoubtedly Riza Khan did not wish to risk an open conflict between his “disorganized and ill-equipped” cossacks and Pasyan’s “devoted and well-armed” gendarmes.100 The road to Mashhad was protected by posts of four mounted gendarmes every sixteen miles and a large contingent, under Major Bahadur, had been stationed at Sabzavar for some time, in order to guard the approaches to the city. A portion of Bahadur’s force now moved westwards to Mazinan, whereupon Nusrat-i Lashkar’s roadguards fell back from Abbasabad to join the cossacks at Shahrud. Thus the opposing forces confronted each other but in fact, for the rest of the life of Pasyan’s regime, the Sabzavar front remained static. Riza Khan clearly feared Pasyan, seeing him both as a rival for national political leadership and as an alternative focus for loyalty among the military. Although Riza Khan had succeeded in forcing Sayyid Ziya into exile, thus removing Pasyan’s central point of orientation, and had begun a process of downgrading and neutralizing the Gendarmerie, nonetheless his position in Tehran was by no means assured. Indeed the Cossack Division on which he depended was already engaged to the limit of its capacity against the Jangalis, while that section which remained in the capital was both primitively organized and poor fighting material. The Tehran authorities were uncertain regarding Pasyan’s next move, fearing simultaneously that he contemplated consolidating his power in Khurasan, carving out for himself a separate republic there, or that he was planning to try to capture Tehran itself. The central government was constantly aware of the possibility that Pasyan might link up with other radical movements, such as that of Kuchik Khan, or with Gendarmerie commanders in other parts of the country. Indeed his own cousin, Colonel Haydar Quli Khan Pasyan, was then commanding the Gendarmerie regiment in Isfahan and the government realized that, with the bulk of the cossacks away in the north and the east, the capital was vulnerable to an attack from Haydar Quli Khan Pasyan in the south.101 By early September there were 3,800 gendarmes in Khurasan102 and their superiority over Riza Khan’s cossacks, in terms of numbers,


weapons and morale, was clear. Farajullah Bahrami103 observed that Tehran was unable to defend itself, there being then present not even 1,000 properly armed troops, and he concluded that had the colonel assembled his gendarmes, instead of scattering them in the sub-provinces of Khurasan, and attacked Khuzai in Shahrud and then advanced on Tehran, Riza Khan would have fled and the capital would gladly have submitted to him.104 Even the shah, who observed that although Riza Khan had certainly collected plenty of men, these could not be made into soldiers simply by being dressed in uniform and given rifles to hold, was doubtful of the ability of the cossacks to withstand any force which might be sent against them.105 Bahrami’s assessment of the mood in Tehran is confirmed by J. M. Balfour, a British official, who remarked in his contemporary account of this episode that the government of Qavam had succeeded in bringing about such a revulsion of feeling among the humbler classes that any gendarme success would have met with support in the capital.106 Pasyan was reported to have stated that the restoration of the regime of Sayyid Ziya, with all that it stood for, would follow his success. His first defiance of the central government, in late May, had been predicated on the belief that the Sayyid would return to power. Pasyan had certainly been a steadfast, indeed fervent, supporter of Sayyid Ziya. During the Sayyid’s incumbency Pasyan had lost no opportunity of extolling both the prime minister and his policies, and even after his fall and exile Pasyan continued to adhere to him, declaring himself to be at one with the members of the former cabinet. Notwithstanding the deep hatred which existed between the shah and Sayyid Ziya, Pasyan himself was always careful to couch his statements in terms of loyalty and obedience to the shah and this appears to have been a genuinely felt sentiment. No hint of criticism of the shah can be detected in his attitude and in fact he broke with his supporter, the poet Arif Qazvini, partly owing to the latter’s compositions abusing the shah and his dynasty.107 In the April proclamation with which he first took over the provincial governor-generalship, he declared that he derived his authority from the shah, “who has made a firm resolve to save the Country from the hands of the persons who for years have been robbing it and making it their own property and who have brought it down to its present state”.108 He emphasizes this point: “Those persons who are interested in this Country must be grateful for the steps now taken by His Majesty the shah”.109 Pasyan consistently rejected accusations that he was a rebel, describing himself always as a devoted servant of the shah and of the state, insisting rather that it was the tribal insurgents who were guilty of disloyalty to the shah.110


However many of those who came to support Pasyan were evolving a more or less overt republicanism and it may be that for Pasyan himself this was a transitional moment. Couching political activities, however radical, in terms of traditional loyalties was a common practice. The nationalists of the war-time muhajirat insisted that they had not rebelled against the shah and the government but were rather determined to release them from the Allied yoke. Mustafa Kemal had also initially employed similar justifications for his actions. Just as the logic of events in Turkey was forcing the Kemalists to break with such formulations, so the gendarme regime in Mashhad was propelled towards republicanism and modern theories of national resistance and popular sovereignty. Pasyan himself, however, whether for reasons of belief or political expediency, never publicly attacked the shah. Pasyan consistently maintained that his own position was legitimate. In his April proclamation he stated “during my fifteen years service I have always considered obedience to the Government as my duty” and to prove to the local population that he was, in taking over the military governor-generalship, acting in accordance with orders from a higher authority, he published the telegram from Sayyid Ziya investing him with full powers. In a speech made during the May crisis he pointed out that he had only arrested Qavam on the orders of the central government. He stated, furthermore, that the government had ordered him to kill Qavam but he had declined this order because Qavam had not been condemned by any formal court. He repeated that he had always intended to be loyal and would be loyal still but he knew of Qavam’s vengefulness and, although he did not wish the blood of even one Iranian to be spilt, nevertheless, if the government intended vengeance and had decided to finish him off, then he would be compelled to resist with the forces he had under his command.111 A couple of months later, in a telegram to Samsam al-Saltanah, he repeated his allegation that Qavam was motivated solely by revenge while he himself was defending his reputation and honour, and that of his subordinates, as well as the security of an important province.112 Pasyan’s conviction that the prime minister sought his life and that any assurances the latter might give were worthless was a powerful factor contributing to his intransigence at this point. It is striking that, although very much dominant at Tehran, Riza Khan was not particularly prominent or even visible in the struggle between Pasyan and the government. This struggle found its focus rather in the personal hatred between Qavam and the colonel, although undoubtedly the responses of the government were in fact being determined by Riza Khan, for whom the destruction of Pasyan and everything


he represented was an essential prerequisite to his own aggrandizement of power. Indeed one of the reasons for Qavam’s appointment to the premiership may have been Riza Khan’s belief that he, more than anyone else, could be relied upon to oppose Pasyan to the end. The authenticity of Pasyan’s patriotism and his desire for reform was unquestioned as was his own honesty and disinterestedness. In the proclamation with which he accepted the governor-generalship from Sayyid Ziya he declared: …God is the best witness as to my efforts in saving the honour and respect of the Nation and the independence of our MotherCountry.113 Like other Iranian reformers Pasyan was a strong supporter of the establishment of an effective central government and wished to see an end to local despotisms of every kind. He criticized the change of cabinet “every ten days”114 while in the aforementioned proclamation he declared that “To ensure peace and safety the Centre must be strong” and announced that it was his object that the province of Khurasan should be “filled with the breeze of liberty” and that “the bad, dirty and thick air of injustice and tyranny” would end. Pasyan was always at pains to stress his own simple mode of living and his lack of interest in pomp and grandeur, emphasizing that he had not accepted the post of governor-general out of a desire for money. Keen to justify himself publicly he published in Mashhad a pamphlet outlining his own achievements and defending the course of action he had taken, his Risalah-i Difa‘iyyah (Letter of Vindication). He directly contrasted his own behaviour as governor-general with the practices prevailing in the past. Accusing previous governors-general of arrogance and of plundering and despoiling the people, he asked rhetorically whether their property and luxuries had been acquired legitimately.115 He reiterated that his own incumbency had been free of these vices and that he had ruled justly. Intensely meritocratic in approach, Pasyan was also especially scathing in his criticism of the norms prevailing inside the Gendarmerie itself. He complained of promotion procedures, which were often based on nepotism and intrigue, of corruption and embezzlement, particularly the practice of superiors retaining a portion of their subordinates’ pay, and of the general failure of the authorities to provide adequate funds for the force. Although himself of Azari origin and proud of his muhajir status,116 Pasyan articulated an ideology of secular, purely Iranian, nationalism.


He concluded his defence with a dramatic restatement of this belief: “I am an Iranian and I not only love Iran but I worship her…If they kill me drops of my blood will trace the word Iran and if they burn me my ashes will form the name Motherland”.117 Although lacking a clearly defined programme, Pasyan and his supporters clearly aimed at reorganizing the government and administration along constitutional, legal and modern lines, eradicating corruption and patronage, and introducing procedures based on fairness and equality. However Pasyan’s identification of Qavam in particular, and “reactionary aristocrats” in general as his chief opponents, and his tendency to ascribe the oppressive and rapacious policies of the elite to personal faults and defects of character, inhibited the elaboration of a comprehensive and convincing critique of Iranian society. Documents such as his Risalah-i Difa‘iyyah are steeped in moral indignation, drawing on personal experience, rather than political analysis. Although inaugurating a radical break with the past in practice, Pasyan did not draw the ideological consequences coherently, retaining for example a traditional allegiance, at least for propaganda purposes, to the shah and suppressing the incipient republicanism of the Kumitah-i Milli. At the same time it should be noted that references to religion, of any but the briefest and most conventional kind, such as Pasyan’s invoking the aid of the eighth Imam upon taking up the governor-generalship in April,118 are largely absent from his writing. The Iran he evokes is that of Darius and Jamshid rather than that of Islam, and the general thrust of the Mashhad regime was aggressively secular, aiming specifically at reducing the power and wealth of the shrine establishment. Pasyan’s supporters, however, were not averse to using religion for propaganda purposes, accusing Qavam, for example, of causing the blood of Muslims to be spilt on ‘Ashura, in Muharram, by their coreligionists and compatriots, so that he might obtain his corrupt desires.119 Pasyan himself, although concerned to alleviate the hardships of the poorer classes in Mashhad, consistently repudiated any sympathy for Bolshevism. Certain of his supporters, however, evolved views very close to the radical nationalism with an Islamic colouring which had been the stuff of Bolshevik propaganda towards the Middle East in the immediate past. Colonel Nawzari, for example, in a speech in the Quchan madrasah before a public audience on 18 September, explained what he understood the principles of Bolshevism to be, and declared that these were of great utility inasmuch as they embraced the ownership of the land by the people and the abolition of a titular ruler. He concluded his speech with a denunciation of British influence in


Iran.120 On another occasion Nawzari stated that the objects of his party were to obtain freedom for Khurasan and “to further the unity of Islam and to break the chains of slavery which capitalists and rich landowners have placed upon the necks of the workers and the poor”.121 ‘Adalat Party propaganda had already had a certain impact on the Gendarmerie, both in Khurasan and elsewhere, and the appeal of communism for elements within the force was soon to be dramatically revealed by the rebellion of Major Abulqasim Khan Lahuti in Tabriz. Although Pasyan had asserted, when threatened during the May crisis, that he could capture Tehran with his gendarmes, he in fact made no serious attempt to organize such an expedition. He rather distributed his force according to the needs of the internal security of the province. He made no appeal to his cousin, Colonel Haydar Quli Khan Pasyan, in Isfahan nor to any other gendarme officer to provide assistance to his regime. Although he sincerely desired reform, even radical reform, he was apparently not prepared to make a personal bid for state power, placing great value on legality and constitutionalism. Indeed he seems to have been forced to adopt increasingly uncompromising positions by, on the one hand, his own supporters, who were themselves undergoing a process of radicalization, and the intransigence of the Tehran authorities, embodied by Qavam, on the other. Officers such as Majors Bahadur and Nawzari and civilian supporters such as the karguzar, the Democrat Mutasim al-Saltanah, were persistent in their efforts to widen the scope of the gendarme regime, repeatedly raising the possibility of capturing Tehran. On 22 August the group which had coalesced in Mashhad in opposition to Samsam al-Saltanah’s governor-generalship telegraphed to Tehran that the province had decided to break off its relations with the capital. Adherents of this group interviewed all the heads of government departments, including Major Bronikovsky, the Swedish chief of police, and requested them to conform to this announcement. A couple of days later Bronikovsky was relieved of his command and ordered to return to Tehran as soon as possible and Alam al-Dawlah, the Gendarmerie accountant, was placed in charge of the city police. From the evening of 24 August Mashhad was placed under martial law and a censorship imposed on letters and telegrams. Next day the local leaders were summoned to the telegraph office to discuss the situation with Mushir al-Dawlah, a prominent Tehran politician with some standing in constitutionalist circles, and the Khurasan Majlis deputies in Tehran, but without result.


The rise of the Kumitah-i Milli-yi Khurasan During September political life in Mashhad was dominated by the rise of the Kumitah-i Milli-yi Khurasan. The Kumitah, of which Colonel Pasyan was president, had made its first appearance during the May crisis, had grown stronger as the political situation polarized, and was now the organizational focus for radical nationalism. The Democrat Party in Mashhad identified itself with the Kumitah, as did a socialist group, and these elements, together with the local supporters of the Moderate Party and of the Ittihad-i Islam122 were very active in discussing internal reform. The Kumitah issued a manifesto on 15 September123 and then prepared a proclamation declaring Khurasan a republic, although publication of this was postponed by Pasyan. The Kumitah was particularly active in pushing Pasyan to take an anti-British stand and urged the establishment of close ties with the Soviet Union. Indeed the Kumitah sent a mission to Ashkhabad and Tashkent in an attempt to buy machine-guns but without success. The colonel himself also, as his relations with the British deteriorated, made overtures to the Bolshevik authorities in Tashkent, particularly hoping for rifles and machine-guns. Although his nationalism had always made him resolutely anti-Russian he now declared that he would violate his conscience and stretch out his hand for help to whomsoever would give it to him.124 But he received the response that the Soviet government would only sell weapons if Tehran authorized the transaction, an attitude in line with the recently concluded Iran-Soviet Treaty. The degree to which Pasyan and his supporters had misjudged the situation is evident from the offer made by Rothstein, the Soviet minister in Tehran, to Riza Khan to assist his operations in Khurasan in any way he could, if necessary sending a detachment of troops into Khurasan from Transcaspia.125 Naturally this last suggestion was most unwelcome in Tehran both to Riza Khan and to the British. The colonel’s personal position in Mashhad remained strong throughout September.126 The pro-Qavam faction was subdued and leaderless and the colonel appeared able to carry the province along with him. He used various methods to attract the support of different sections of the community. Vis-à-vis the elite he was alternately repressive, to demonstrate his power, and magnanimous, to demonstrate the advantages of supporting his regime. He promoted all the officers of the Gendarmerie a step, including two, Majors Bahadur and Nawzari, to lieutenant-colonel, and replaced the civil governors of towns such as Sabzavar and Turbat-i Haydari with gendarme officers. He assiduously


collected intelligence and sent emissaries to try to gather support. He sent representatives to Tehran to maintain contact with his sympathizers there and with certain Khurasan Majlis deputies, to Haydar Khan Amu Ughli in Gilan, and to Shawkat al-Mulk in Birjand. He also sent a representative to Birjand to meet Aqazadah on his return from pilgrimage and to escort him back to Mashhad, where his arrival would considerably enhance the prestige of the leadership. The Mashhad regime took other minor measures of consolidation. Steps for the inception of a department of education were taken, Colonel Pasyan himself subscribing money in the interests of female schooling. The possibilities of exploiting the mineral resources of the province were examined, there was some discussion concerning the issue of a paper currency to tide over the financial difficulties and an issue of postage stamps was arranged. The atmosphere in Mashhad was by now fiercely anti-foreign, and the local newspapers, such as Bahar and Sharq-i Iran, were becoming more and more vituperative in their denunciations of the British. Evening entertainments and public meetings were held to raise money, and these provided opportunities for propagandizing on behalf of the regime. The chief star of the entertainments was the poet Arif Qazvini, whose verses exhorted the people to march on Tehran, while other speakers eulogized Pasyan, likening him to a second Nadir Shah, who had also set out from Khurasan to conquer the world, and also describing him as the Napoleon of Iran.127 Pasyan also produced constant propaganda against his tribal enemies. On 5 September he published a long manifesto against the Sardar of Bujnurd “who never stirred when the Russians bombarded the shrine”128 and on the 7th he directed another manifesto against Shuja al-Mulk. Meanwhile recruiting for the Gendarmerie was being pushed on vigorously, although the financial situation was causing increasing difficulties. In Quchan, for example, the response was poor as the allowance in lieu of rations had been reduced. In order to make enlistment more attractive the term of service was reduced from three years to one year. By early September the total gendarme force in Khurasan numbered 3,800 of all ranks. Throughout September recruiting parties were arriving constantly in Mashhad with batches of men who were equipped and drafted into the ranks at once and men discharged from the Gendarmerie were being recalled. The quality of the force naturally deteriorated as a result of this indiscriminate numerical growth.129 It now seemed that the Gendarmerie was only held together at all by its strong leadership, an assessment that was to be borne out by its rapid collapse after the death of Colonel Pasyan.


The maintenance of the Gendarmerie, approximately 5,000 strong by the end of September, was putting a severe strain on the province’s resources. An important factor in assuring the Gendarmerie’s loyalty to the colonel had always been the latter’s regular payment of wages and ration allowances, a procedure unprecedented in Iranian military tradition. Although Pasyan appropriated all the revenue collected yet the local Treasury was quite depleted and he again began to squeeze the wealthy. The entertainments organized under Gendarmerie auspices realized collections averaging 3,000 tumans, mainly owing to large donations by wealthy citizens. He began to raise funds by any further expedient which suggested itself. He sold a large amount of grain to a Bolshevik Food Purchasing Commission which paid for its purchase in gold, the five and ten rouble gold pieces being promptly disbursed to the gendarmes as arrears of pay. He extracted forced loans from the wealthy and auctioned the domestic effects of defeated tribal chiefs, declaring their lands forfeit to the Khurasan government,130 notwithstanding the preaching of the mullahs that the purchase of confiscated goods from the areas of tribal fighting was contrary to the laws of Islam. He raided sources of cash like the Posts and Telegraphs, and imposed new taxes, including a poll tax on all travellers leaving Mashhad, and encouraging the export of goods to Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, he placed an ad valorem tax of ten per cent on exports and a tax of three tumans per pound on opium. Towards the end of September he encouraged an attempt to launch a bank, and the former manager of the Quchan branch of the now defunct Russian Bank, a Caucasian, was engaged to run the new venture. One of the initial functions of the new bank was to be the collection of the outstanding debts of the Russian Bank for the purposes of the war chest. The Bolshevik Commission promised to assist with the new concern and the premises of the old Russian Bank were turned over to it. The possibility of the Mashhad regime striking its own coinage was also considered. Throughout this period of radicalization the Mashhad regime was constantly engaged in operations against tribal forces in the east of the province.131 During the first half of September gendarme columns132 were in action against Shuja al-Mulk, Sayyid Haydar Barbari, Salar Khan Baluch, and other tribal leaders, whose followers were estimated to number between 1,000 and 3,000 savars. The small columns operating in the Turbat-i Haydari, Turbat-i Shaykh Jam and Kariz area met with considerable success, Shuja al-Mulk fled across the Afghan border, and the eastern front was temporarily liquidated.


At this point the Tehran government, witnessing the consolidation of Pasyan’s authority in Mashhad and his victories over the tribes, and realizing that their strategies of incitement were uncertain of success, decided to reopen negotiations with Mashhad. This they did through the good offices of the British legation and the British consul-general, Prideaux. While Pasyan was away at the eastern front Prideaux, after consultation with Dubois, negotiated settlement terms with the central government. These terms were communicated to the karguzar Mutasim al-Saltanah for transmission to Pasyan who was then at Turbat. However at the same time two of the colonel’s principal supporters, Alam al-Dawlah, now chief of police, and Asad Aqa Zawarzadah, a landowner with socialist sympathies, who disapproved of the settlement, reported to him that his authority was being seriously undermined. Pasyan consequently wired to Prideaux on 9 September that he would not negotiate while his troops were fighting and, on his return to Mashhad next day, inaugurated the arrest of all those in favour of his yielding to the central government. This included all those with connections to Prideaux, and also several members of the azadikhahan Party,133 including the high-ranking gendarme officer, Jafar Khan. Jafar Khan had, until 9 September occupied the key position of acting commandant of Mashhad. Now however he was accused of conspiracy and replaced by a nephew of the colonel, Captain Ali Asghar Khan. Heightened political tension in Mashhad was now being reflected more widely within the Gendarmerie itself. Two gendarme officers in Turbat were accused of agitating in favour of the Tehran authorities and were arrested and brought to Mashhad. There was also discontent within the police over some of their number being sent to the front. Certain officers met together and decided to refuse to obey if ordered to perform any services other than their police duties. This episode marked a final breach in relations between Colonel Pasyan and the British. The colonel had by now become convinced that the British were in treacherous collusion with the central government, a belief which even the British Minister in Tehran, Norman, admitted he had good reason to hold.134 Norman himself had complained to the shah of Qavam’s double-dealing, negotiating with the colonel through the good offices of the legation while simultaneously inciting the tribes to attack the gendarme regime, thus laying the British open to allegations of bad faith.135 Norman in Tehran, although still uncertain as to the reliability of Riza Khan, was eager to bring about a peaceful resolution of the conflict with the colonel. In Mashhad, however, the British officials had become increasingly alarmed about the direction of


the regime. Their relations with the gendarmes had steadily deteriorated since the May crisis and they were now denouncing the regime in hysterical terms and, although evidence is scanty, they were certainly taking such measures of disruption as they could. Newman, of the Indo-European Telegraph department, for instance, apparently interfered with military signalling between Sabzavar and Mashhad. In one of his last communiqués Pasyan fiercely denounced the British “who had broken the back of the whole world”.136 Pasyan’s military successes over the tribes had considerably augmented his personal prestige and had given a certain impetus to his regime and to the morale of his supporters. His attitude towards the central government stiffened further after the arrival of cossack reinforcements at Shahrud and he reiterated his conviction regarding Tehran’s bad faith, insisting upon recognition of the legality of his position as governor-general as a prerequisite to negotiation.137 Nonetheless contacts continued between Mashhad and Tehran. In mid-September a commission was sent to Mashhad from the capital which included two mujtahids and two of the Khurasan Majlis deputies, but the colonel’s regime had now gathered so much momentum that he was unwilling to consider more negotiations except on his own terms. Although the gendarme columns operating in south-eastern Khurasan had won substantial military victories, the tribal forces had been dispersed rather than destroyed and by the latter part of the month some regrouping was taking place and the fighting continued. Shuja al-Mulk returned from Afghanistan and with other tribal chiefs began collecting followers. Together they planned to move on Turbat-i Haydari where much of the population was hostile to Pasyan and believed to be willing to join his opponents at the first opportunity. Indeed a little earlier the Gendarmerie commander at Turbat had reported that the leading notables were in collusion with Shuja al-Mulk. He was ordered to arrest them and nine were taken to Mashhad as prisoners. The Kurd chiefs in the north of the province were also known to have been collecting men for some time. There was now considerable discontent throughout the Khurasani countryside. Villages in the civil war area were being forced by the Mashhad authorities to find cash indemnities and to pay one year’s land revenue in advance and resentment was intense. The Mashhad regime was now overstretched and was beginning to experience difficulties in meeting the tribal challenge. As well as the


Mashhad garrison and the force at Shahrud blocking the cossack advance, there were gendarme concentrations in the north of Khurasan, in the Quchan-Darrah Gaz-Bajgiran triangle, and on the southern front at Turbat-i Jam. Small gendarme detachments were being sent south every day, or at least as fast as they could be equipped and clothed. Recruits were put through elementary drill and then immediately sent to the front to fight without any further training. A number of the Mashhad police, with their officers, were even ordered to the front. No possible source of recruits was left unexplored, for example prisoners were released from gaol and enlisted. However despite these difficulties the gendarmes continued to achieve success in many small skirmishes, for instance defeating an attack by Shuja al-Mulk on Bakharz. Pasyan had been encouraged in his resistance by the fluidity of political alignments in Tehran. The political situation generally had remained uncertain throughout the summer. There had been considerable doubt, both in Tehran and in Mashhad, as to whether the cabinet would survive the opening of the fourth Majlis on 22 June. Although in fact Qavam did not resign as prime minister, nonetheless throughout July, as Pasyan resumed the governor-generalship of Khurasan, Qavam’s government was paralysed by doubts surrounding the ability of the Majlis to function. His government continued to have a very chequered career and by the end of the summer had become manifestly moribund. Instability at the centre was further demonstrated when, on 25 September, Riza Khan organized the expulsion from the country of the only politician among his opponents seriously capable of assuming the premiership, Mushar al-Mulk, on a “trumped-up” charge of fomenting a plot against the lives of himself and Qavam.138 During early October there was in fact no functioning government until, on 10 October, no one else being willing to accept the premiership, Qavam reformed his cabinet, but it displayed the same inertia as the old one. Thus the Mashhad revolutionaries had good reason to be sceptical of Qavam’s political survival and Tehran’s ability to impose its will coherently and effectively. Yet, although the weakness of the central government was clear, it was in a sense misleading, even irrelevant. Real power in Tehran already lay with Riza Khan, whose position was independent of the existence of any particular cabinet or political constellation. At the end of September a formidable revolt of the Kurds to the north of Mashhad, in the areas of Bujnurd, Shirvan and Quchan, was successfully inaugurated. The revolt was led by the Sardar of Bujnurd and other frontier Kurd khans, such as Farajullah Khan, acting under the direct orders of Qavam. The opening up of a new front placed the


gendarme regime in mortal danger. The Kurd forces advanced rapidly, capturing Quchan with relative ease. The gendarme garrison surrendered and, probably as a condition of surrender, evacuated the town. After looting the town the Kurds also withdrew. Among the Kurd forces was Taj Muhammad Khan, still holding his rank of captain in the Gendarmerie. Meanwhile in Mashhad reports of the Kurd rising had produced a rapid and thoroughgoing mobilization, although Pasyan himself was absent on the south-eastern front. All vehicles were commandeered for troop transport, rifles were issued to civilian supporters of the Kumitah, and recruiting into the Gendarmerie practically amounted to conscription. However there were severe problems in providing equipment and accoutrements for this expanding force, the local police being deprived of their greatcoats for the benefit of the gendarmes, and the command structure was also inadequate, many new officers had to be created from the ranks, while other officers received rapid promotions. Nevertheless morale in Mashhad was still high. The belief was widespread that help would soon arrive from the Jangalis in Gilan and the Bolsheviks in Ashkhabad. The karguzar, Mutasim al-Saltanah, threatened to appropriate the income and the gold and silver of the shrine to finance the fighting and had already sent a message to the Khurasan Majlis deputies in Tehran threatening to destroy their homes, confiscate their lands and kill their relatives if they consented to troops from Tehran being sent against Mashhad. Colonel Pasyan returned to Mashhad immediately from the southeastern front. He held a consultation with Colonel Nawzari, the karguzar, and other officials and then, aware of the urgency of the situation confronting him, hurried northwards with the few officers and men who could be mustered. He encountered straggling bodies of his force strung out along the Quchan road whose officers tried to dissuade him from going forward. He was brought up just north of Quchan, on the Bujnurd road, where on 3 October fighting broke out between his small force of gendarmes and the Kurds.139 The latter, more than 1,000 men, were overwhelmingly superior in numbers, were well armed, with weapons captured from the Gendarmerie during earlier engagements, and were apparently reasonably good fighting material, containing many men who had served in the British levies. In this engagement Colonel Pasyan was killed.140 By the time Pasyan met his death only a tiny force remained with him, including a few raw recruits. Apparently twelve men were killed during the battle and twelve surrendered afterwards, although others had probably fled at an earlier stage. The Kurd forces


followed up their advantage and advanced towards Mashhad, camping at Chanaran, a village near the city.

The collapse of the gendarme regime The death of Colonel Pasyan inevitably resulted in the disintegration of the gendarme regime in Mashhad and inaugurated a period of considerable confusion in both the city and the province as a whole. Gendarme detachments at all the northern frontier posts were disarmed and dispersed and, in one case at least, driven into Soviet territory, by tribal forces and occasionally by local bandits. The Mashhad authorities kept the news of the colonel’s death secret for twenty-four hours until the stream of refugees, including straggling gendarmes, made this impossible. During these twenty-four hours there was a good deal of discussion over the telegraph between the Gendarmerie commanders in Mashhad and Sabzavar, Colonels Nawzari and Bahadur. Even before Pasyan’s death had become known in Mashhad Nawzari had declared that the gendarmes were divided into two factions, one of which wished to make peace, but the other, his own faction, would fight to the death. But now however the two commanders decided that without Pasyan’s charismatic leadership they could not continue to resist and they both telegraphed to Tehran that they submitted to the central government and would return to their duty. News of the Kurd advance produced a panic in Mashhad and some of the town’s notables met in the house of Aqazadah, who had returned the previous day, to discuss what steps could be taken to keep the Kurds out of the town. Aqazadah, whose mediatory role was facilitated by his religious standing and prestige and the fact that owing to his absence he had not been associated definitively with either side in the conflict, sent a telegram to Qavam begging him to stem the Kurds’ advance and requesting the recognition of Colonel Nawzari as Gendarmerie commander and acting governor-general as a matter of temporary expediency.141 The fear in Mashhad was only partially allayed by a telegram from Qavam making Nawzari, now reverted to the rank of major,142 temporarily responsible for the maintenance of order, granting a pardon to all the officers of the Gendarmerie and instructing the Kurds to disband to their homes.143 The latter obeyed while their leaders began to reap the rewards of their actions. A title was bestowed on each of the khans who had assisted in the downfall of Colonel Pasyan, and one of their number, Muhammad Ibrahim Khan Qaramanlu was appointed governor of Quchan.


Meanwhile Major Nawzari, now acting governor-general, opened negotiations with Tehran regarding the terms on which Mashhad would submit to the central government.144 They were again essentially defensive, concerned with the protection from reprisals of the supporters of the revolutionary regime and the general maintenance of security. They were: 1. A general amnesty. 2. The body of Colonel Pasyan to be given up to a messenger sent by Aqazadah. 3. A good governor-general to be quickly appointed from Tehran. 4. The colonel’s body to be buried with military honours. 5. The promotions made by the colonel to be respected and the Gendarmerie organization not to be changed. 6. Officials not to be deprived of their appointments and those friendly with foreigners not to be reemployed. 7. Officers’ property looted at Quchan to be restored. 8. Suspect gendarmes to be disarmed and deported. 9. Arms taken by the tribes to be surrendered, to obviate the necessity of expeditions. 10. Mahmud Khan Nawzari to be confirmed as commandant or allowed to proceed to Tehran on leave. 11. The gendarme detachment which fled from Bajgiran to Soviet territory to be allowed to return to duty. The central government immediately accepted the first four conditions and agreed to negotiations over the remainder. Accordingly Pasyan’s body was brought to Mashhad and given a public funeral with full military honours. The body was interred in the new mausoleum which had been raised as a monument to Nadir Shah. A squadron of seventy-five mounted gendarmes and about 500 infantry formed the escort and speeches were made at the graveside extolling Pasyan as a martyred hero and patriot.145 Mashhad was still very far from subdued and conditions throughout the province remained fluid and uncertain during the first half of October. The Kumitah-i Milli-yi Khurasan remained active146 and the press was bitterly critical of the authorities while Colonel Pasyan’s tomb became a focus of nationalist activity , religio-political ceremonies being held there almost daily. Temporary civil and military authority was in the hands of Major Nawzari. However although he had been one of Pasyan’s most radical supporters, his was a vacillating and indecisive personality


and he now appeared confused and inclined towards compromise and submission to Tehran. Nonetheless a faction of the Gendarmerie, led by Major Bahadur, wished to continue armed resistance. Bahadur’s position was being strengthened by the daily arrival in Mashhad of gendarmes from the eastern and northern fronts. The bulk of the guns and machine-guns belonging to the Gendarmerie had been on the south-eastern front and was now being brought back to Mashhad by the returning troops. By mid-October the whole Gendarmerie force was in the city or camped close thereto, with the exception of small detachments which remained at important points like Kariz, Turbat-i Shaykh Jam, Nishapur, and so on. Thus a combustible situation was again developing. However uncertainty about the future was producing attrition within the force, several minor chiefs with their followings returned to their homes and men who had been in the regular army prior to its incorporation into the Gendarmerie were again to be seen in their original uniforms. The Gendarmerie’s morning drill gradually ceased. On 11 October Tehran announced the appointment of Colonel Ali Khan Riyazi to the command of the Gendarmerie in Khurasan. The officer corps as a whole was uncertain and divided in its allegiance. Although innately loyal to the shah they had been inspired with an intense nationalism by their late leader and were hostile to the central government. As their position became increasingly precarious so these officers tended to incline towards the shah. They were confirmed in this attitude by their receipt of a telegram from Qavam assuring all officers and officials who had participated in the rebellion, with the exception of Major Bahadur and Monsieur Dubois, of the shah’s pardon. Many officers were accordingly in favour of immediate submission, but some insisted that the promotions made by Pasyan be confirmed. They held many meetings and discussions but their irresolution persisted. At this point Major Bahadur arrived in Mashhad in defiance of Riza Khan’s order to him to go on leave within forty-eight hours. He made inflammatory speeches at Pasyan’s tomb, calling for vengeance for the latter’s death and denouncing in bitter terms the prime minister, for which he was cheered by the crowd, and he began to tip the scales again in favour of rebellion. Major Bahadur was in constant contact with the Kumitah, and together they formulated a plan to concentrate all the gendarmes in Mashhad and again defy Tehran, in the belief that the cabinet would not dare to order a bombardment of the city. Misunderstanding the actual location of power at Tehran they placed their hopes in their belief that Qavam’s cabinet was on the point of falling,


reckoning without the determination of the War Minister, Riza Khan, now a permanent factor independent of particular governments, to crush all opposition. The notables of Mashhad again made a futile attempt to intervene in the situation by asking Tehran to appoint Shawkat al-Mulk temporarily as governor-general, an offer declined by Shawkat himself. On 16 October Major Bahadur launched a coup in Mashhad.147 Bahadur had been greatly distressed by the death of his chief and it was widely believed in Mashhad that he would, sooner or later, attempt to carry out Pasyan’s programme but, lacking his charisma, might utilize more ruthless methods. There was considerable apprehension in the city regarding both Bahadur and the consequences of his rebellion. An additional factor in the situation was undoubtedly the rivalry between Pasyan’s two principal supporters within the Gendarmerie which had emerged following the colonel’s death and rumours had begun to circulate in Mashhad of the arrest of each by the other. On the 16th Major Nawzari148 informed Bahadur that he and Dubois had been excluded from the general amnesty and that the War Minister had telegraphed that he must leave Khurasan within forty-eight hours or be arrested, but Aqazadah promised to telegraph to Tehran interceding for both men. However when later the same day Bahadur learned that Nawzari had requested that the cossack force at Sabzavar be brought closer to Mashhad, Bahadur marched a squadron of gendarmes to the governor-general’s palace and arrested him, sending him to a gendarme encampment outside the city. He then began to make preparations for renewing the rebellion, his plans apparently including driving the British out of Mashhad, crushing the adherents of Qavam and the central government and financing his actions by levying forced contributions from merchants and confiscations from the Imperial Bank of Persia. But his attempt to capture power now met with little popular support in Mashhad.149 Furthermore the majority of the gendarmes at the encampment to which Nawzari had been sent were Barbaris and the officer in charge, Lieutenant Abdullah Khan Barbari, was an ex-Indian army officer. Lieutenant Abdullah Khan had sought the advice of the British consulgeneral who had warned him against following Bahadur in any fresh adventure. Accordingly Lieutenant Abdullah released Nawzari and when he encountered Bahadur, who had set out to re-arrest Nawzari, advised him to flee as his cause was lost. Bahadur returned to Mashhad and took bast in the house of Aqazadah, escaping south to Birjand the same night. In early November he was sent from Birjand to Tehran under arrest. The defeat of Bahadur’s coup extinguished the resistance of the gendarmes and the Kumitah. The cossacks under General Khuzai, who had


begun their advance from Shahrud only after receiving news of the Kurd victories, arrived in Mashhad in early November and administrative control of the province was transferred to them. A campaign against the radical elements in Mashhad was immediately inaugurated and a number of civilian supporters of the nationalist movement were arrested and put on trial. However the authorities had apparently decided to adopt a more cautious approach in dealing with the gendarme officers and the amnesty which had been granted to them was not violated at this stage.150 Major Nawzari and his faction, although they had opposed the radicalism and continued armed resistance of Bahadur, were nonetheless not prepared to relinquish their position entirely and submit to cossack domination. Their attempts to obstruct the new administration led to their being threatened with arrest and after they took bast they were finally permitted to resign the service and leave Mashhad.151 Meanwhile the northern part of Khurasan was still in the hands of wellarmed Kurd khans who had, after their victories over the Gendarmerie, immediately begun to quarrel among themselves and who had done nothing to organize the frontier posts from which the gendarmes had been expelled. Paradoxically these groups, as a result of their operations carried out at Qavam’s request, now represented a much more formidable obstacle to government authority than previously. It was estimated, for example, that the Kurds of Quchan had captured approximately 1,200 rifles from the Gendarmerie. The south and south-east of the province were also in tribal hands. Since the withdrawal of the gendarme detachments the scattered fighting elements of their tribal opponents had been returning and were harrying the country in attempts to compensate themselves for their confiscated flocks, herds and horses. Intra-tribal conflict, between these elements and the erstwhile supporters of Pasyan such as Sayyid Murtaza Barbari and his followers, was also intense. It was now necessary for the cossack administration to try to assert its control over the whole of Khurasan and small detachments of cossacks gradually ventured out from Mashhad. However full government authority was not to be established throughout the province for some years. The intention of the cossack regime to subdue the gendarmes, militarily as well as politically, was clear from the beginning. During November General Khuzai began to call in the arms and ammunition belonging to the force and to reduce the numbers serving in it, the tribal element having in any case largely melted away. Little consideration was given to those so retrenched. Their uniforms were simply taken away and they were turned adrift. An order was issued annulling all promotions made by


Colonel Pasyan without the prior sanction of the central government. Recruiting for the cossacks began in Mashhad and in December, following Riza Khan’s order amalgamating the two forces nationally, the remaining gendarmes were taken over by cossack officers and issued with inferior rifles. Tension between the cossacks and gendarmes was, if anything, heightened by their organizational unification and an estrangement quickly developed between General Khuzai and Colonel Ali Khan Riyazi, the high-ranking gendarme officer who had been appointed by Tehran as Inspector to the Khurasan Gendarmerie, over the treatment and future of their respective forces. The profound antagonism between cossacks and gendarmes in Khurasan was not overcome but was exacerbated by the manner of their incorporation into the new army then being established by Riza Khan and was to have lasting consequences for both the military and political development of Iran in the 1920s.152

Conclusion During his lifetime the charismatic Colonel Pasyan had achieved the status of a nationalist hero. Upon his death he acquired and has retained the aura of martyrdom.153 This was due partly, no doubt, to his personal qualities, acknowledged even by his opponents, and also partly to the frustrations among the Iranian intelligentsia resulting from the strangulation of constitutionalism and the ambiguous nationalism of the Pahlavi era. Unlike Sayyid Ziya, Pasyan was not tainted by British patronage, on the contrary his nationalist credentials were beyond question or reproach. Clearly the movement which he headed awakened real hopes for the realization of the constitutionalist ideal, for the regeneration of Iranian society and political life and the inauguration of a new epoch of progress and development based on legality and justice. During its brief existence the gendarme regime in Mashhad, although presenting no fundamental challenge to the existing socio-economic order, made a genuine attempt to implement reform and to eradicate corruption and abuse of power and privilege, exhibiting a democratic regard for hitherto disregarded groups. As well as launching an unprecedented assault on the political and financial position of the elite, the regime also made efforts to encourage social welfare, addressing such matters as opium addiction, the practice of medicine and the education of women. Even present were rudimentary notions of development, Pasyan stressing the need for schools, hospitals and factories. Efforts were made to explain the measures adopted to the people affected and the hardships suffered by the poorer classes were alleviated by a crude system of price controls.


The gendarme officers and nationalists grouped in the Kumitah were clearly Pasyan’s most organized source of support, and a radicalizing force of some significance. However the nature of the wider backing given to him in Mashhad is harder to assess. Members of a variety of social strata, including merchants and ulama, were to be found among his partisans, but these appear to have been attracted on an ideological and individual basis, and it would be hazardous to assert, on present evidence, that they represented economic or class interests. The only element which may tentatively be identified as supporting Pasyan as a result of its sociopolitical position was a group of state-oriented senior officials, most notably the Tehran-appointed karguzar, Mutasim al-Saltanah Farrukh, who was the chief civilian partisan of the gendarme regime, the mutavallibashi of the shrine, Zahir al-Islam, also appointed by Tehran, and Alam al-Dawlah, the Revenue Accountant. Other important members of the Kumitah-i Milli were the chief of the telegraph office, the chief of the excise department, the post-master, the director of education and other officials of the customs and justice departments. These officials, along with the senior gendarme officers and intellectuals such as Mir Murtaza, the owner of the Tus press, and Shaykh Ahmad Bahar, editor of the Bahar, constituted the real leadership of the Mashhad regime. In Dubois, the Director of Revenues, in particular, although a foreigner, Pasyan found a natural ally in his struggle against the old order. Although Pasyan himself and many of both his military and civilian supporters were of Azari or Caucasian origin, ethnicity in itself does not seem to have been a significant factor in determining political allegiance. These groups supported Pasyan owing to their radical inclinations and not because of their common ethnic background. On the contrary, the focus of national loyalty for the Mashhad revolutionaries remained the Iranian nation and Tehran the centre of political orientation, local or regional demands being completely absent.154 Yet, however much he was admired personally, Pasyan failed to engage the active support of nationalists elsewhere in the country, most importantly in Tehran itself, his appeals to nationalist and constitutionalist figures in the capital meeting with little response. These elements were already gravitating towards Riza Khan, who himself appeared to promise the realization of the programme of secular nationalism. They harboured a profound fear of the consequences of central political weakness and conflict, inviting as it did foreign intervention and internal disintegration and, although they would have flocked to Pasyan had he successfully installed himself in the capital, yet they would do nothing to encourage a renewal of the turmoil of the constitutional and war years.


The enemies of the gendarme regime are easier to identify and consisted of, first, Qavam al-Saltanah himself and the personnel of his provincial government. By extension, the metropolitan elite were extremely alarmed at the example they saw being set in Mashhad. Large landowners and merchants in Khurasan resented Pasyan’s taxation policies, the shrine establishment also disliked being taxed and were angered by the secular character of his programme. Finally and most crucially the tribal khans of the province, Barbaris, Hazarahs and Baluchis in the south and Kurds in the north, were resentful of Mashhad’s efforts to tax them and, although inclined to vacillate, were easily turned decisively against Mashhad by a determined central government. Indeed the constellation of enemies engendered by Pasyan’s regime prefigured in many respects the shape of resistance to later efforts at state-building, not just in Iran but throughout the Middle East. In its increasingly radical and uncompromising defiance of the central government the Mashhad regime was also undoubtedly caught up in an apparently irreversible dynamic which unfolded after Pasyan’s fateful arrest of Qavam. The elevation of the latter to the prime ministership encrusted political divergence with bitter personal hatred, while Qavam’s appointment of Samsam al-Saltanah as governor-general of Khurasan was a key factor unifying much of the provincial elite behind Pasyan. Overarching these conjunctural episodes was of course the determination of Riza Khan to destroy personal rivals, eliminate regional autonomy and establish his own personal ascendancy over the military forces. Often appearing to be the victim rather than the arbiter of events, the demands put forward by Pasyan during the crises of May and August were defensive in character, centring on safeguarding the Gendarmerie and protecting his subordinates from reprisals, although his more radical supporters seem to have understood more accurately the ultimate inevitability of confronting Tehran. In fact had Colonel Pasyan marshalled his forces, appealed to his brother officers in the Gendarmerie and his admirers in the capital, and made a determined bid for state power in the summer of 1921, there would have been little to stand in his way. Pasyan and Riza Khan, although mortal enemies, nonetheless had much in common. Ideologically they were in many respects similar. Both were nationalist, secular, even anti-clerical, and shared a profound detestation of the old elite. Both were charismatic leaders, with a soldier’s dislike of political squabbling and factionalism, and located themselves within a state-building, nationalist tradition. Indeed Pasyan’s experiment in Mashhad mirrored the modernizing, centralizing policies of the Pahlavi era. The gendarme regime’s efforts to penetrate the countryside and to


extend its control over hitherto autonomous elements, the tribes, hereditary feudal provincial rulers, and, most controversially the ulama and the shrine establishment, and to use taxation to finance a programme of reconstruction, are clear paradigms for the future. However, certain crucial differences may also be observed. Pasyan and Riza Khan possessed personal and political histories that were greatly at variance. Pasyan’s intellectualism and his sophisticated acquaintance with European thought and culture differ starkly from Riza Khan’s limited intellectual level, while the former’s life-long and active identification with constitutionalist ideals contrasts with Riza’s opportunism and adventurism. In the months immediately following the coup d’état of February 1921, while Sayyid Ziya remained in power, the Gendarmerie attained the height of its political power and its organizational development. However by the end of 1921 it found itself submerged, politically and militarily, by Riza Khan’s Cossack Division. By a combination of cooption and repression Riza Khan ensured, both in the new army and in the regime constructed around it, his own supremacy and the ascendancy of his comrades from the Cossack Division, triumphing over the leadership offered by the officer corps of the Gendarmerie and the political traditions represented by the force. The destruction of the gendarme regime in Mashhad was a key episode in this process. The harmony of the coup period had been brief and deceptive and the obstacle to Riza Khan’s control of the army and to his political preeminence represented by the Gendarmerie was highlighted by the gendarme regime then firmly entrenched in Mashhad. During the spring and summer of 1921 the existence of twin epicentres of power, at Tehran and Mashhad, threw into stark relief the contrast between the political tendencies represented on the one hand by Riza Khan and the cossacks and on the other by Colonel Pasyan and the gendarmes. Pasyan, remaining obdurate in Mashhad after Sayyid Ziya’s fall and exile, presided over a prolonged period of tension, between the central government and provincial radicalism, between the opposing military and political agendas of the Gendarmerie and the Cossack Division, and between his own personal ambitions and those of Riza Khan, which was only resolved by the physical liquidation of the gendarme regime in Mashhad. Pasyan’s destruction freed Riza Khan to adopt unchallenged the mantle of nationalism among the military and to fashion both army and state in his own image.

3 The Provincial Cities in Revolt (ii): Major Abulqasim Lahuti and the Tabriz Insurrection of 1922

For eleven days in early 1922 the red flag flew over Tabriz and power lay in the hands of a revolutionary committee and a soldiers’ council, the latter headed by the poet and gendarme officer, Major Abulqasim Lahuti. Yet this episode, as dramatic as it was brief, has never been integrated into the history of the Iranian left. Largely forgotten by later generations of Iranian activists, it has been neglected, or even ignored altogether, by their historians. Lahuti himself is now remembered for his contribution to poetry and, in particular, the literary awakening of another country, Tajikistan, but he has attracted little interest as a figure of political significance in the development of Iranian socialdemocracy. Yet, although the rebellion to which Abulqasim Lahuti gave his name, in Tabriz in January 1922, was short-lived and easily suppressed, nonetheless both the adventure itself and Lahuti’s early personal history is of considerable general interest and significance. Lahuti became the first and certainly the most outstanding communist poet Iran has produced. Although his major literary success came after he had established himself in the Soviet Union, the intellectual and political formation which cradled his poetry took place within the context of Iranian social-democracy as it was developing during the first two decades of the twentieth century. His progression from militant populist nationalism to committed communism under the impact of his experiences during the constitutional revolution and the World War was shared by many Iranians, and he may be seen as typical of the leftward evolution of the Democrat wing of the constitutional movement. Lahuti’s formative political experiences were, in certain respects, different to those of other Iranian social-democrats and proto-communists of whom we have knowledge. One unusual feature of his early life is the 101


military context within which he chose to work. His military career and his continued life inside Iran, rather than in exile, after the suppression of the Majlis in 1911, give his development a trajectory different to that of many radicals of the period. Lahuti is also unusual in that, unlike many Iranian social-democrats and later members of the Firqah-i ‘Adalat (Justice Party), he was never part of the émigré milieu in Baku and he had no direct experience of social-democracy in Tsarist Russia and TransCaucasia. His own exile, during and after the Great War, was rather in Ottoman territory, and he had, apparently, very little contact with those who were to become the leadership of early Iranian communism. Although the Tabriz communists spontaneously joined his revolt in 1922, his and their action was unauthorized by and, indeed, completely contrary to the general line of the nascent Communist Party of Iran. Lahuti is one of the most interesting figures produced by Iran’s armed forces in the early twentieth century. He was perhaps the earliest exponent in Iran of the strategy of bringing about revolution through the agency of the army, and in this respect clearly anticipated developments such as the Tudah Military Network of the late 1940s. It was his soldier’s background, and specifically his contacts with revolutionaries working among the Russian occupying troops in Iran, which first drew him towards an ideologically clearly-defined Marxism. The circumstances driving his transition from militant nationalism to Bolshevik sympathies draw attention to a factor often overlooked in accounts of the spread of leftist ideas in Iran: the role played by the revolutionary soldiers and the soldiers’ committees which sprang up under Bolshevik inspiration among the Russian armies in Iran. The presence of a figure such as Lahuti within the Government Gendarmerie also sheds interesting light on the role and character of that force. The Gendarmerie was deeply identified with Iranian constitutionalism and nationalism and, specifically, with the Democrat Party. The example of Lahuti, and of other officers prominent in the force in the years 1917–1921, such as those who comprised the radical wing of the supporters of the revolt of Colonel Pasyan in Mashhad in 1921, clearly indicate the increasing leftward shift of elements within the force under the impact of the Russian revolution of 1917. Lahuti’s seizure of power is also of interest in that it was the last in a series of provincially-based radical movements which broke out in the decade between the suppression of the Majlis and the coup of 1921, of which the most famous was the Jangali revolt. It may also be seen, in particular, as a final stage in the revolutionary constitutionalist history of Tabriz, a city emblematic of Iranian social-democracy, and an

Major Abulqasim Lahuti and the Tabriz Insurrection of 1922 103

immediate sequel to the Khiyabani revolt to which it was inextricably linked. The suppression of the 1922 insurrection was a watershed marking the beginning of the centralized authoritarianism of the early Pahlavi period which was to endure until another World War provided a new opportunity for a reawakened militancy in the form of Jafar Pishavari’s Democrat Party and the Autonomous Government of Azarbayjan.

Abulqasim Lahuti: early life Abulqasim Lahuti was born in Kirmanshah on 4 December 1887 into humble circumstances. His father was a cobbler by trade, his mother from one of the Kurdish tribes of the region, and he grew up knowing Kurdish as well as Persian. In a natural and simple account he has described some of the experiences of his early years.1 Recalling his feelings of revulsion from the violence and injustice which he frequently witnessed in the Iran of his childhood, he explained the development of his sensitivity to the sufferings of the poor and weak, stressing his reaction, as a child himself, on witnessing brutality towards other children, and recounting his burgeoning class consciousness and the mischievousness of “little urchins” such as himself in the face of the arrogance of the rich.2 It was in the environment of his family, and particularly under the influence of his father, that Lahuti first acquired his love of poetry. At an early age he became aware of the power of words, and especially of poetry, over the poor and the illiterate and he has described the effect on himself of seeing crowds work themselves into ecstasies by the recitations of the Shi‘i narratives of the martyrdom of the Husayn and Hasan, and how he “watched people’s spirits rise” as they listened to Firdawsi’s Shahnamah.3 These observations naturally led to his becoming conscious of the power of poetry to engage and mobilize people, including the illiterate, in political and social struggles. Lahuti may have received some elementary education at a maktab, a traditional school, in Kirmanshah, at any rate he learned to read and write, but owing to his family’s financial hardship he was apprenticed and obliged to work from a young age. His father, although almost illiterate, was a lover of Sufi poetry and composed many religious poems and was considered one of the best poets in Kirmanshah. The young Lahuti often attended poetry gatherings with him and by adolescence had, under his father’s influence, himself begun to acquire a reputation locally as a poet and to attract considerable attention.4


Towards the end of the nineteenth century Kirmanshah began to share in the general intellectual ferment, and Lahuti has described how “the aspirations of the petty bourgeoisie and artisans found expression in peculiar forms. Various religious sects, lodges of freemasonry and similar organizations sprang up like mushrooms”.5 All of these groups were keen to win the allegiance of promising young men and apparently tried to cultivate the young Lahuti. Under his father’s influence, Lahuti’s earliest poetry was infused with mysticism and this particularly attracted the interest of some local adherents of the Babi sect. His father appears to have had Babi connections and one day was persuaded to take his son to a meeting where an effort was made to identify the young man as blessed with divine revelation and to turn him into a Babi preacher. This encounter was significant in that the Babis’ assurances to the young Lahuti that he would have the power to work miracles led to the “bitterness of disillusionment” and the loss, once and for all, of his religious belief.6 This was clearly an episode of great emotional impact. Lahuti later commented that he grew up “almost without noticing it”, but his adolescence was marked by one event, the loss of his childhood faith in God.7 Lahuti’s promise was then recognized by the local Masonic society who, in 1904, sent him to study in Tehran, his only experience of formal schooling. Here, at a school on the Lalezar, Tehran’s main street, Lahuti apparently again encountered difficulties arising from his poor background. His stay was short, he described the school as “no place for a cobbler’s son” and himself as not sorry to leave.8 Arriving in Tehran from such a background at such a moment, Lahuti naturally became involved in the revolution of 1905–1906. Influenced, like many others, by the events of the Russian revolution of 1905, Lahuti joined a revolutionary circle. He later wrote: “I shall never forget the room draped in red calico, the red banner, and the revolver on the table, before which I swore to be a loyal and staunch soldier of the revolution”.9 As a member of this circle, Lahuti wrote and distributed shabnamahs, leaflets directed against the shah and the aristocracy, spoke at meetings and carried messages for the revolutionaries while disguised as a muleteer. Of his political evolution he later commented that by “that time there was not a scrap of mysticism left in my head”.10 Lahuti celebrated the granting of the constitution with verses which were turned into revolutionary songs. After the shah’s counterrevolution and the suppression of the Majlis in 1908 he, together with others among his comrades who had managed to go into hiding, left Tehran for the constitutionalist stronghold of Rasht. On the way,


however, he and his band were captured by a detachment of the shah’s supporters. One who resisted was killed on the spot while the others were imprisoned in Karaj, in a filthy stable. He was eventually able to make his escape thanks to his Kurdish background. Hearing a sentry singing a Kurdish folk song, he spoke to him in that language, learnt from his mother, and the Kurdish soldier helped him to escape. He then made his way to join the revolutionary forces in Rasht, across snow-covered mountains, by remote paths, living on what plants he could scratch from under the snow.11 It appears from one of Lahuti’s poems that he took part in the fighting against royalist troops in Rasht and was subsequently decorated by Sattar Khan.12 The revolutionary movement in Rasht was very mixed and, in Lahuti’s published recollections, it seems that the aspect of his time in Rasht which made the greatest impression on him was the danger to the revolutionary movement presented by the possibility of the development of national strife between the Azerbaijanis, Persians and Armenians and he later took immense pride in the contribution he had made to the prevention of this development and in helping to establish unity among the disparate ethnic groups. In this he echoed the concerns of the early social-democrats in Baku, Russian and Caucasian as well as Iranian, who had been made only too aware of the disastrous impact of communal and ethnic conflict.13 After the constitutionalist victory in 1909 the leader of the revolutionary movement in Rasht, the Armenian Yifrim Khan, became chief of police in Tehran and Lahuti, together with other revolutionaries, entered his police force.14 In 1909 Lahuti began his literary career with the publication of his first poem, entitled Ay Ranjbar (Oh Toiler), which criticized social inequality.15 His first published poems appeared in Iran-i Naw, the organ of the newly-founded Democrat Party and in publishing his poetry he had the help of Haydar Khan Amu Ughli, then a leading member of the Democrat Party and later one of the leaders of the ‘Adalat and Communist Parties.16 These early poems displayed a militant nationalism, with a marked inclination towards leftist ideas. Even before he had begun to publish poetry he had become interested in journalism and had begun to write for the progressive newspaper Habl al-Matin. In combining poetry with journalism, Lahuti equipped himself with a powerful weapon. The development of a free press during the constitutional years, with the mushrooming of newspapers and periodicals, had placed an immensely important weapon in the hands of reformers, and journalists played an important political role. The medium of poetry, in particular, was


regarded as an effective means of reaching the wider population, and the leading newspapers published almost daily poems on domestic politics and foreign affairs.17 In turning to journalism, Lahuti was following the example of the most prominent poets of the time, including Mirzadah Ishqi, Iraj Mirza, Arif Qazvini and Malik al-Shuara Bahar. After the crushing of the constitutionalists in 1911 Lahuti has described how he advocated the launching of a new revolution and, with this objective in mind, joined the Government Gendarmerie in 1911–1912, he and his comrades wanting all revolutionaries to join the Gendarmerie where they could have access to weapons. At a meeting he and his comrades “swore under the red banner that we should remain loyal to the revolution, while preserving its armed nucleus under the uniforms of the gendarmerie”.18 Lahuti passed the course at the Gendarmerie officers’ school in Tehran in 1912 and acquired a reputation as a capable officer. By 1913 he had risen to the rank of major and was sent to organize the force at Qum, where he became Officer Commanding the Gendarmerie Battalion. When a conflict broke out between the gendarmes and the armed Bakhtiyari tribal forces whom the government wished to remove from Tehran, Lahuti earned the special praise of General Hjalmarson, the Swedish Commandant, for disarming 150 Bakhtiyaris in Qum, and was decorated with an Order of Valour. As commandant at Qum, Lahuti participated in the gendarme campaigns against the Lur tribes, but also, like gendarme commanders elsewhere, seems to have provoked considerable antagonism among the notables of the city by interfering in their affairs and meddling in the elections to the third Majlis.19 Lahuti also apparently continued his political activities and tried to make his gendarme unit a refuge for revolutionaries “on the run”.20 After the outbreak of the World War he deserted and was forced to flee from Qum in obscure circumstances. Although accused of taking a bribe from a tribal chieftain, it seems more likely that his flight was connected with his having conducted subversive activities within the force. The changed circumstances of the War certainly made the Allies more wary of the political dangers presented by the militantly nationalist Gendarmerie, and Lahuti himself later wrote that the “commanders of the British and Russian occupation forces in Iran found it inconvenient to have detachments like mine, full of hatred for the occupying forces, on their hands”.21 Lahuti’s detachment in Qum was disbanded and he was sentenced to death, in absentia. He escaped across the Ottoman-Iranian border, staying in the


small Ottoman border town of Sulaymaniyyah apparently in order to keep in touch with his comrades in Iran, until the Ottoman Empire also became embroiled in the war. At that point the frontier was closed and all communication with Iran ceased. Finding it intolerable to stay abroad, isolated from his own country, Lahuti went on foot to Baghdad, and from there was able to return to Iran. In the early years of the World War Lahuti participated in the nationalist struggle, “the partisan war against the occupying troops”, in western Iran.22 In 1915 he was with the proOttoman Kurdish tribes skirmishing with Russian forces in western Iran and he then entered the service of Schunemann, the German consul in Kirmanshah, and was employed in training levies. Harbouring an extreme mistrust of the Swedish officers of the Gendarmerie,23 and apparently fearful of the treatment he might receive from the Gendarmerie since he was still under sentence of death, he left Kirmanshah and tried to open a line of communication to the British but was rebuffed.24 Apparently reassured regarding his safety he returned to his home town, Kirmanshah, briefly the political and military base of Nizam al-Saltanah’s National Government, and became one of the editors of an anti-Allied periodical, Bisutun.25 According to Lahuti’s own account, it was at this point that he experienced a sharp change in the course of his life.26 He has described how, at the time of the February revolution of 1917 in Russia, discontent was brewing among the Russian troops who had occupied Kirmanshah. He worked with the revolutionaries clandestinely agitating among the Russian soldiers, and made speeches at their meetings, and together with them organized a joint committee of Russian and Iranian revolutionaries which attempted to disrupt British efforts to establish control over western Iran.27 One of the leading Russian Bolsheviks in the Russian army in Kirmanshah, with whom Lahuti may have been in contact, was Second Lieutenant Ivan Osipovich Kolomiitsev, who was later shot by Iranian cossacks while in Iran as the official Soviet representative.28 It seems to have been through these connections that Lahuti heard, for the first time, about scientific socialism, Marx, Lenin, the Bolshevik Party and its programme.29 In 1917 in Kirmanshah Lahuti took part in the creation of what he later described as “the first workers’ organization in Iran”, the Firqah-i Kargar (The Workers’ Party), which supported the Soviet revolution and opposed the intervention against the new Soviet state, writing and printing its first proclamation himself and also continuing to write revolutionary poems and articles for Bisutun.30 The Brest-Litovsk treaty, signed between Germany and the new Soviet government, provided for the withdrawal of all Russian forces from Iran


and on 4 January 1918 Trotsky, the Soviet foreign minister, announced their immediate evacuation. General Baratov, however, commander of the Russian forces in Iran then stationed at Kirmanshah, who was joined in Kirmanshah at the beginning of January by the fanatically antiBolshevik Russian General, Lazar Bicherakov, defied this order and attempted to organize his men into White partisan units. According to Lahuti, these newly-formed White Guards then launched a bloody terror against the Iranian revolutionaries, and he again had to escape to Ottoman territory, this time to Istanbul.31 In Istanbul Lahuti experienced conditions of extreme hardship, surviving among the homeless and street children to whom he later paid tribute in a poem entitled “Orphans of War”. He eventually found work in a variety of menial occupations, as a stevedore, a waiter, then a printer and a teacher. He returned to journalism which again became his main activity and he founded and edited, together with Ali Nawruz (Hasan Khan Muqaddam), a magazine called Pars, published in both Persian and French. Although only six or seven numbers of the bimonthly Pars appeared, it seems to have been of a high literary standard.32 During his three-year exile in Istanbul Lahuti also published a few small collections of his own poems, some overtly criticizing social and political conditions in Iran. The following lines are typical: From the poverty of the peasant and the cruelty of the landowner it becomes clear that Iran is being laid waste by despotism and I lament When I see the treacheries of the Shah and the ignorance of the nation I fear that this country will perish and I lament The landowner sells the peasant with the land and I see that the nation is powerless to prevent this oppression and I lament.33 As was the case with much of the nationalist literature of the time, an important theme in Lahuti’s work was the need for the freedom and education of women and this became especially prominent in his Istanbul poetry. Many of Lahuti’s Istanbul poems were written in allegorical form, to avoid the Turkish and Allied military censorship. In these poems Lahuti referred to himself as a nightingale and his country as a ruined garden while Britain was the hated winter killing the roses in the garden, or a merciless hunter trapping the wounded nightingale. Nonetheless eventually Lahuti ran into trouble with the Turkish censorship and, when publication of his magazine was suspended, he


decided to return to Iran. However, the Turkish authorities refused to give him an exit visa so again he was obliged to travel clandestinely through remote regions, re-entering Iranian Azarbayjan via Maku. He travelled in the company of Amir Hishmat, a nationalist fidayi who had fought in western Iran during the war. Lahuti’s attention had been attracted by the revolutionary movement in Gilan but this had already been suppressed by Riza Khan before he reached Iran towards the end of 1921. He made his way to Tabriz where, with the help of the Swedish officer, Colonel Lundberg, whom he had known before his exile, he rejoined the Gendarmerie with his former rank of major.34

The Democrat Party, the Government Gendarmerie and the Iranian cossacks It is clear, from Lahuti’s own version of his life, that his original decision to join the Government Gendarmerie in 1911–1912 was taken with the deliberate intention of providing his trend of radical politics with some military capability. As he himself has described, this path was adopted by a number of revolutionaries, for whom the Gendarmerie provided a receptive milieu.35 The Government Gendarmerie was deeply imbued with ideas of constitutionalism and nationalism. It had been established by the Democrat-supported government which had come to power in July 1910, after the restoration of constitutional rule the previous year. The Democrats, acutely aware both of the weakness of the state in the face of foreign intervention and of the helplessness of the Majlis against reactionary domestic elements, were eager for the construction of a modern army. With the increased prominence of state-building as a constitutionalist objective in the second phase of the revolution, 1910–1911, they were able to take steps towards this goal with the creation of a military force, the Government Gendarmerie, under the leadership of European officers from neutral Sweden.36 The child of the constitutional revolution, even of the Democrat Party itself, the Gendarmerie quickly came to symbolize Iranian aspirations towards reform, national unity and independence. Most of its officer corps came from Shuster’s Treasury Gendarmerie, to which they had been recruited on the personal recommendations of members of the Democrat Party with whom Shuster was closely associated, such as Sulayman Mirza Iskandari and Riza Musavat. In 1911 Shuster described these officers as “the pick of the Young Persia patriots” who, on news of the Russian ultimatum, “came and begged to be allowed to fight for


their country”.37 The close links between the Democrats and the Government Gendarmerie continued after the suppression of the Majlis. The officers’ schools of the Gendarmerie, through which Lahuti himself passed, were particularly targeted by the Democrats as fertile ground for propaganda and they deliberately introduced teachers into these schools in the hope of spreading their ideas and broadening their support among the young officers.38 With the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, and the concomitant political polarization, the Gendarmerie identified itself openly with Iranian nationalism and threw its armed strength into the struggle against Allied occupation, the Swedish high command largely eclipsed by nationalist and Democrat Iranian officers. Between late 1915 and 1917 the Gendarmerie engaged in a protracted military conflict with the Allies in western and southern Iran. In November 1915 Gendarmerie officers played an important role in organizing the muhajirat, when Majlis deputies, government officials and nationalist politicians left Tehran to establish a government, first known as the Committee of National Defence (Kumitah-i Difa‘-yi Milli) and subsequently as the National Government (Hukumat-i Milli), free from Allied control and no longer under the Russian guns. Gendarme officers also organized a series of coups in each of the provincial towns in southern and western Iran where they were stationed, including Shiraz, Hamadan, Kirmanshah, Sultanabad (Arak), Isfahan, Yazd and Kirman, seizing control in the name of the Committee of National Defence and forcing Allied nationals to leave. Throughout 1916 and into 1917, the gendarmes fought a series of battles with the Russian armies, in defence of the National Government established under the leadership of Nizam-al-Saltanah in Kirmanshah.39 Although the National Government was eventually driven into exile, the Russian revolution of February 1917 and the subsequent disintegration of the Tsarist armies gave heart to the nationalists who, with the gendarmes, began spontaneously reorganizing themselves. Among the officers and men of the Gendarmerie there naturally developed sympathies with various of the radical movements which were appearing in the area, especially the Jangali revolt. There was both support within the Gendarmerie for the Jangalis, and also some defections from the force to Kuchik Khan. By early 1918 ex-Gendarmerie officers were providing the Jangalis in Gilan with military training40 and there were substantial contacts between the Tehran gendarmes and the Jangali capital at Rasht. As 1918 progressed, sympathy for the Jangalis developed among provincial Gendarmerie regiments.41 During the joint Bolshevik-Jangali takeover of Rasht in May 1920, the gendarmes refused to fight with the cossacks


against Kuchik Khan and, after the cossack surrender, went over to him, remaining more or less loyal.42 Indeed some ex-gendarmes remained with Kuchik Khan until the end. In May 1921 there were still many gendarme deserters acting as officers with the rebel forces. After the Jangali rebellion was crushed and Kuchik Khan was in hiding with only six followers, one of these was an ex-gendarme officer.43 In Kirmanshah and other towns of western Iran, as Lahuti has described, the gendarmes had been directly and dramatically exposed to revolutionary ideas and activity through contact with the soldiers’ committees set up during 1917 by the Russian soldiers still in Iran. These committees, in Kirmanshah, Hamadan and elsewhere, were especially active in encouraging the gendarmes and the Democrats in their nationalist resistance to the extension of British control in Iran. In September 1917 in Hamadan, for example, the Democrats set up a militia which was instructed by ex-gendarmes and which received some encouragement from the local Russian soldiers’ committees.44 The October Revolution and the overthrow of Tsarism, and the subsequent renunciation of secret treaties and capitulations by the new Soviet government, had been greeted with great enthusiasm by all shades of nationalist opinion in Iran. Declarations such as the Appeal addressed to the Muslim workers of Russia and the East, issued by the Soviet government on 3 December 1917, had a deep resonance.45 The Soviet struggle against British interventionist forces, which began using northern Iran as a base, aroused widespread sympathy and the Soviet objective of removing British influence from Iran harmonized with the aims of the nationalists and the gendarmes. In these circumstances, the ideology of Bolshevism naturally began to exert a considerable attraction and it seems that, in the following years, the Gendarmerie was one of the segments of society specifically chosen as a potentially receptive target by the ‘Adalat Party, later the Iranian Communist Party. The ‘Adalat Party had been formed during the early years of the War by the more radical survivors of the old Social-Democratic Party of Iran, (firqah-i ljtima‘iyyun ‘Amiyyun) and it carried on a clandestine agitation against the “imperialist” war. In 1917 it was able to begin public activities, joining forces with Bolshevik organizations in the Caucasus, publishing several newspapers and recruiting Iranian immigrant workers for an Iranian “Red Army” to join in the Russian civil war against the Whites.46 In these years the ‘Adalat Party directed constant propaganda, although mostly of a nationalist character, at the Gendarmerie. This propaganda became especially intensive in the summer of 1920, after the Bolshevik landing at Anzeli in Gilan. In June the ‘Adalat Party’s newspaper, Bayraq-i


‘Adalat (The Banner of Justice), published an article entitled “Appeal to Persian Gendarmerie”. This article, couched in purely nationalist terms, contained extravagant praise of the patriotism of the Gendarmerie and included the political testament, or “will” of Major Ali Quli Khan Pasyan, one of the martyred leaders of the 1915–1916 anti-British insurrection in Shiraz, calling on the force to save Iran from the British.47 Bayraq-i ‘Adalat published other such articles during 1920, exhorting the gendarmes to remember the revolutionary traditions of their force and even referring to the heroism of named Iranian officers, both living and martyred. On 2 July, for example, Bayraq-i ‘Adalat wrote that: the honour and glory of being a member of the force can only be maintained until and as long as their country remains independent. The Gendarmerie force of Persia is in reality the only military creation of the Persian revolution … The gendarmes are the ‘children’ of the Persian democratic Revolution and it can only be expected that they will prove their worth in the Persian Communist Revolution.48 In these months there appears to have been a consistent effort by the ‘Adalat Party to encourage gendarmes at frontier posts to defect to Soviet territory, perhaps with the intention of recruiting them into the military units which they were trying to form. Party members crossed the border from Turkistan to Mashhad to join the force with the specific object of converting their fellow gendarmes to Bolshevism. Bayraq-i ‘Adalat wrote: Those of the force guarding the frontiers, having witnessed the favourable treatment extended to the Persians by the Soviet government … leave their posts in large numbers and join the party, which is determined to liberate mankind from the tyranny of the British.49 When Haydar Khan Amu Ughli, then a leading ‘Adalati, arrived in Lutfabad, he suggested to the commanding officer of the Gendarmerie post that he and his men should leave the post in a body and join the Iranian communists at Ashkhabad.50 These efforts appeared to have an effect and, in the spring and summer of 1920, a number of gendarmes deserted from north-eastern frontier posts to Soviet territory, including three of four who had originally come over the border from Turkistan to proselytize among the force. This caused the Iranian authorities to express a good deal of concern about the


impact of Bolshevik propaganda on the Gendarmerie. Qavam al-Saltanah, governor-general of Khurasan, for example, was seriously worried about the loyalty of the local regiment which had, as Bayraq-i ‘Adalat had happily pointed out, experienced a number of defections from frontier posts, and he ordered the Gendarmerie commander to organize the relief of those gendarme posts on the frontier whose fidelity was in some doubt in Mashhad.51 The Bolshevik newspaper Tocsin commented that, although duty on the frontier was considered onerous, the authorities’ main consideration was: the fear that men remaining for long on frontier duty may fall sick of that dangerous illness – Bolshevism. This illness is considered incurable.52 Some of the gendarmes who deserted gave explanations of their action which chimed with ‘Adalat Party objectives. In April, for example, three men, including a non-commissioned officer, deserted from Darrah Gaz. They gave as the reason for their action the bitterness they felt at seeing their country under the English heel, and stated that others of their comrades were of the same way of thinking, although a contributory cause of their action was probably the fact that their pay was six months in arrears.53 In June ten gendarmes, again including a non-commissioned officer, deserted their border post at Shams-i Khan. Once on Soviet soil, in Ashkhabad, they joined the ‘Adalat Party and the Soviet authorities refused to surrender them. The attitude and behaviour of the Ashkhabad authorities was by now beginning to arouse the extreme indignation of the Mashhad provincial government, and the governor-general addressed a strong protest to them regarding their attempts to seduce the gendarmes from their allegiance.54 Throughout its life, the Gendarmerie’s nationalist inclinations had been highlighted by the contrast it presented to Iran’s other military force, the Russian-officered Cossack Brigade/Division. This was never more so than in the immediate afterglow of the Russian revolution, when the prestige of Gendarmerie, with its record of active service against foreign occupation, was at its height, while popular clamour against the cossacks was at its most intense. The Cossack Brigade, set up by Russian officers in 1878 as a bodyguard for the shah, had always been closely identified with Tsarist interests in Iran and with the most reactionary tendencies in Iranian society itself. Its notoriety had increased after it was used by Muhammad Ali Shah as the instrument of his coup against the Majlis in 1908. During the World War


it remained loyal to its Russian masters and it was increased to a Division under the terms of the never-ratified Sipahsalar Agreement of 1916. During the nationalist struggle in western Iran there had been open armed clashes between the Russian-officered Iranian cossacks and the pro-Democrat gendarmes. The Cossack Brigade/Division had always been detested in nationalist circles because of the foreign domination and domestic reaction which it represented, and it was also deeply unpopular among the wider population due to its indiscipline and general lawlessness. There had been deeply-felt, if ineffective, opposition to the growth of the Brigade before and during the War, and the establishment of new formations during 1917, as the collapse of Tsarism was giving birth to a nationalist revival, produced a volatile reaction. In early 1918, the new Soviet government officially recalled the Russian officers serving with the Iranian cossacks and severed its links with the force, refusing to recognize it in any way.55 Although Allied support made a new, White Russian, cossack leadership in Tehran secure, among Democrats in the provinces from 1917 onwards there was both an old desire and a new resolve that they should rid themselves of the cossacks, and everywhere it was stationed the Division became a target of both popular and Democrat hostility. Iranian Democrats, having witnessed the disintegration of the Tsarist armies and apparently in touch with revolutionary Russian soldiers, began to try to win over the rank and file of the Iranian cossacks56 while agitating at a political and official level for the removal of the Russian officers. The conflict which developed in Mashhad during 1917 was typical. It was not until early 1917 that Russian officers first arrived in Mashhad to raise a new Iranian cossack formation. As soon as the new formation began to take shape, nationalists and Democrats inaugurated a concerted campaign against it.57 Furthermore, revolutionaries in the Russian army added fuel to the flames by agitating among Iranians against the Cossack Division, saying that it would side with the oppressors against the revolutionary movement.58 The Russians found recruiting for the force difficult. A boycott against the men of the regiment was organized, and they found themselves unable to buy bread or provisions or forage for their horses. After the senior Russian officer, Colonel Mamonov, threatened to allow his men to take what they needed by force, the cossacks found themselves able to buy food, but were supplied with forage by the local authorities, secretly and with great obstruction by opponents of the Division. Large demonstrations, involving hundreds of townspeople, took place, with requests that the governorgeneral ascertain from Tehran the status of the Mashhad cossacks, the


local Democrats knowing that the Sipahsalar Agreement, under the terms of which the new units were being raised, had never been ratified by the government. The Division’s enemies also used more direct methods. The most senior Iranian cossack officer in Mashhad received a letter threatening his life if he continued to identify himself with Russian interests and to wear cossack uniform. Another Iranian officer also received a letter containing threats against the lives of the Russian commander and his officers. This letter called upon the officer to abandon the cause of the oppressors of Iran, and spoke of the determination of patriots to annul the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907. The situation of the Iranian cossacks in Mashhad became completely untenable, even the governor-general withholding official recognition from the force and refusing to use it for local peace-keeping duties and, in early 1918, Colonel Staroselsky, the Russian commander, removed the cossacks from Mashhad. In Tabriz, as in Mashhad, there was bitter hatred and resentment between the Iranian cossacks and the Democrats. The Iranian government had agreed to the establishment of the Tabriz regiment only under intense Russian pressure, in 1912. The Tabriz cossacks were, from the start, entirely outside Iranian control, practically forming part of the Russian army of occupation,59 and they were hated accordingly. They took their orders from the Russian military or consular authorities, and were mainly used on the lines of communication between the different Russian garrisons. So purely Russian was the character of the Tabriz cossacks that, in a review of the Russian troops held there towards the end of 1913, the Iranian cossacks marched past with their Russian comrades.60 The Russian officers of the Brigade made no effort to conceal their indifference to Iranian sovereignty, openly proclaiming their allegiance to the Tsar of Russia and repudiating any obligation to the Iranian government. In Tabriz the cossacks were so completely identified with Russian domination that resentment reached the highest levels. In early 1918, the vali‘ahd himself, by tradition resident in Tabriz, made an unsuccessful attempt to force the replacement of the Russian commander with an Iranian officer. Reviewing the cossacks, the vali‘ahd told them that the old despotism of Russia having disappeared, there was no longer any reason for their Iranian officers to be considered as inferior and of lower rank to the Russian officers, who were actually only instructors. He then obliged the senior Russian officer to hand over the keys to the cossack stores of arms and ammunition to an Iranian officer.61 Within a short time, however, the new Russian commander at Tehran, Colonel Staroselsky, had re-established full White Russian control over the Tabriz cossacks.


Nonetheless hatred of the force, among both the politically active and the population at large, remained intense, the more radical elements particularly aware of its reactionary potential.

Tabriz, Iranian social-democracy and the Khiyabani revolt Democrat and social-democrat influence in Tabriz was profound and pervasive. Although the first Iranian social-democratic organization had originally been established outside the country, among Iranian émigrés in Baku, its first home in Iran was in Tabriz. The proximity of Tabriz to the Russian Empire, and the large emigration from Azarbayjan to the Baku oilfields made the city naturally susceptible to the influence of Russian and Trans-Caucasian social-democracy.62 By 1906 a branch of the Firqah-i Ijtima‘iyyun ‘Amiyyun (the Organization of Social-Democrats), founded in Baku the previous year, had been established in Tabriz under the name of the Secret Centre (Markaz-i Ghaibi). The Baku organization was itself an offshoot of the Muslim social-democratic Himmat Party and its members had close links to the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party. An Armenian social-democrat grouping had also been established in Tabriz, even earlier, in 1905. The Secret Centre played an active role in providing political and practical support to the Tabriz anjuman and in creating a volunteer army of mujahidin to defend the new order, its programme radical but eclectic, a “mélange of socialism and indigenous ideas”.63 After the shah’s coup of 1908 Tabriz led the struggle to defeat the royalist forces and to restore the constitution and so heroic was its resistance that the city’s reputation as a constitutionalist stronghold was assured, and after the constitutionalist victory in 1909, elements among the Tabriz Social-Democrats were closely involved in the formation of the Democrat Party.64 After the closure of the Majlis in 1911, the Russian army, which had occupied Tabriz in 1909, put a brutal end to all constitutionalist activity. In a “reign of terror” all mujahidin were disarmed, many leading constitutionalists were arrested and summarily executed, and civilians massacred.65 After 1914, and the entry of the Ottomans into the War, Azarbayjan became a major battlefield, with widespread suffering from the ravages of military occupation and famine. It was only with the February revolution of 1917 that political activity again became possible in Tabriz. The nationalist movement, in Tabriz as elsewhere, received a massive impetus from the February revolution. The Democrats rapidly revived and began to fill the vacuum created by the political collapse and military disintegration of Russia after its seven year occupation of Tabriz.


The leadership of the Azarbayjani Democrats was assumed by Shaykh Muhammad Khiyabani, one of the outstanding figures of Tabrizi radicalism. Khiyabani had originally acquired his reputation when, as a young preacher in Tabriz, he had joined the consitutionalist struggle.66 Active in the Tabriz anjuman, he had entered the ranks of the mujahidin fighters during the civil war and was later elected as a deputy to the second Majlis. Khiyabani had adopted radical ideas while studying in the Caucasus and was both a respected cleric and a powerful speaker. Reputedly a member of the Organization of Social-Democrats in Tabriz, he had voted with the Democrats in the Majlis. From early 1917 onwards the Democrats played an active role in running Tabriz, even though there were governors-general appointed from Tehran.67 They were well armed, having appropriated most of the weapons and ammunition left behind by the departing Russians and, in March 1918, Khiyabani publicly announced the re-establishment of the Democrat Party and began to publish a newspaper, Tajjadud (Renewal). Around him developed a coterie of close supporters, including figures such as Ismail Amirkhizi and Muhammad Ali Badamchi. Elements to the left of the Democrats were also reviving in Tabriz, as the ‘Adalat Party in the Caucasus sent militants to various towns in northern Iran to reactivate the old social-democratic organization.68 The Democrat ascendancy within Tabriz was interrupted by a renewed Ottoman occupation, and Khiyabani and some of his closest supporters were exiled. Embittered by what they perceived as the central government’s collaboration with the Turks, the Tabriz Democrats became convinced of the immediate necessity of radical change at Tehran and of the necessity also of a degree of autonomy for Azarbayjan.69 Khiyabani’s revolt was inaugurated with the election campaign for the fourth Majlis in August–September 1919. After the Democrats’ success in these elections, relations between Tabriz and the prime minister, Vusuq al-Dawlah, whose government had been largely discredited by its negotiation of the Anglo-Iranian Agreement, deteriorated steadily and in April 1920 Khiyabani took complete control. He set up his own government, the National Government (Hukumat-i Milli) and renamed the province Land of Freedom (Azadistan). His movement’s objectives were, broadly, the establishment of Iranian national sovereignty and independence through the agency of a constitutional regime. Although sympathetic to some degree of autonomy for Azarbayjan, he always rejected accusations of separatism.70 With the fall, in late June, of the deeply unpopular Vusuq al-Dawlah, and the subsequent formation of a government by the respected


constitutionalist, Mushir al-Dawlah, a serious split developed within the ranks of the Democrats. Some of the latter, fearing the centrifugal and disintegrative momentum which they perceived in Khiyabani’s movement, openly aligned themselves against him and with the central government. Khiyabani, increasingly isolated, displayed an intransigence which contrasted unfavourably with Mushir’s willingness to negotiate and his desire to resolve the conflict by consent.71 Meanwhile, hatred between the Democrats and the cossacks had continued unabated. In early 1920 the Democrats apparently even attempted to assassinate the cossack Officer Commanding.72 Nonetheless the cossacks and their Russian officers offered no resistance as the Democrats took control of Tabriz but withdrew to their barracks at Bagh-i Shumal on the northern outskirts of the city where they were allowed to remain unmolested. Although, during Khiyabani’s tenure of power, the Democrats established their authority throughout the city, the cossack barracks remained outside their control. This was to prove fatal. The cossacks were the instrument by which the Iranian government overthrew the Democrat regime and reasserted its authority in Tabriz, the force acting entirely in keeping with its traditions. In August 1920 the Iranian government appointed Mukhbir al-Saltanah governor-general of Azarbayjan but Khiyabani refused to recognize his authority. Khiyabani’s own authority extended no further than the city gates, beyond which his tribal opponents had established themselves, and when Mukhbir al-Saltanah arrived as new governor-general he took up residence in the cossack barracks where he found a force ready to support him.73 The Russian cossack commander and his senior Iranian officers, Zafar al-Dawlah (later General Hasan) Muqaddam and Ismail Khan (later General) Amir-Fazli, assured Mukhbir that they were ready to act against the Democrats and were confident of victory.74 Early on the morning of 13 September Mukhbir sent the cossacks into Tabriz where they seized the vali‘ahd’s palace, the citadel and the Democrat strongholds. After four hours fighting the cossacks succeeded in dispersing their opponents, killing fifty and wounding over 100, and recovering all the guns and machine-guns, and most of the rifles and ammunition, which were in the possession of the Democrats, finally discovering and shooting Khiyabani himself.75 With the cossack seizure of Tabriz, Mukhbir al-Saltanah was able to establish himself as governor-general although Tehran’s control over both the city and the province was still tenuous. The coup against Khiyabani did not inaugurate or imply any fundamental change in the relationship between Tehran and the provinces nor any substantial


increment in central power. It did, however, leave a legacy of deep bitterness amongst the Tabriz Democrats. The re-established authorities were unable, and perhaps uninterested in, carrying out any systematic repression, and Khiyabani’s Democrat supporters remained at liberty and politically active. Another element was also added to the cocktail of discontent in Tabriz in the form of a new Gendarmerie regiment. During the months of his regime, Khiyabani had been greatly concerned with the need to establish order and security, through constitutional and legal mechanisms. In pursuance of this objective, he had taken steps towards organizing a Gendarmerie, just as had the Democrats of the second Majlis. Having been impressed, when in Tehran, by the Government Gendarmerie, Khiyabani had decided to set up a similar force in Tabriz, under his orders, to be called the Azarbayjan Gendarmerie. He gathered together some individuals who had previous experience in the army and formed a battalion of gendarmes whose uniform and general structure resembled that of the Government Gendarmerie and placed the force under the command of a Major Mir Husayn Khan Hashimi. However, Khiyabani’s Gendarmerie, which came to number about 400, both officers and men mostly locally recruited, apparently remained neutral when Khiyabani was overthrown and surrendered without taking any action. This force, however, was subsequently absorbed in its entirety by the Government Gendarmerie, becoming the nucleus of a new regiment. Major Hasan Khan Malikzadah, who had been sent from Tehran with a few officers to Tabriz to begin the construction of a Gendarmerie regiment as part of the central government’s efforts to extend its authority, took over Khiyabani’s gendarmerie in toto, this becoming the Fourteenth Regiment of the Government Gendarmerie. Major Mir Husayn Khan Hashimi became Malikzadah’s second-in-command and his rank, as also the ranks of other officers, which had originally been given to them by Khiyabani, were officially confirmed.76 This strongly pro-Democrat Gendarmerie regiment continued to grow and, by 1920–1921, it had become an important element in the Tabriz government, replacing the cossacks as the main instrument with which the local authorities were attempting to deal with the threat represented by the Kurdish tribal leader, Simko.

The Lahuti revolt Although the central government had succeeded in suppressing Khiyabani’s revolt, it had been unable to ease or resolve the worsening national crisis. In 1921 the cossack officer Riza Khan cut the Gordian knot of


Tehrani politics, marched on the capital and carried out a coup, inaugurating an entirely novel era in Iranian state-building, in centre-periphery relations and the centralization of power, and in political discourse. The changed circumstances of post-coup Iran had an immediate significance for the Iranian Communist Party, the name adopted by the ‘Adalat Party the previous year. From the spring of 1921 onwards, Soviet policy towards Iran was reversed, experiments in using Iranian communists and separatist movements abandoned in favour of consolidating relations with the Iranian central government, as expressed in the SovietIran treaty of February 26th, 1921. In the new diplomatic climate, and after the liquidation of the Jangali movement by Riza Khan’s cossacks, the controversy which had raged within ‘Adalat and the Iranian Communist Party between those who advocated an immediate communist revolution in Iran and those who believed in co-operating with the Iranian bourgeoisie in the struggle against the British, was resolved in favour of the latter.77 This found expression at a meeting on 25 January 1922, actually immediately before the outbreak of Lahuti’s revolt, when the Iranian Communist Party adopted a new approach consisting of the acceptance of, and operation within, the existing Iranian political framework, that is the new government dominated by Riza Khan, whom the Soviets recognized as “representative of the Iranian national bourgeoisie”.78 Bolshevik agitation amongst groups such as the Gendarmerie declined dramatically from the spring of 1921. However, it was clear that neither the Iranian Communist Party, nor the Comintern, nor the Soviet state had very much influence, let alone control, over independent left-leaning nationalism in Iran. The mélange of revolutionary ideas which had made up ‘Adalat ideology, and especially radical nationalism with a communist colouring, continued to find an echo among elements within the Gendarmerie, who took little notice of the changed diplomatic context. The continuing power of these inclinations, especially when allied to specific localized grievances against the direction of the new regime, was soon to be dramatically demonstrated by the evolution of certain trends among the supporters of the rebellion of Colonel Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan and most clearly exemplified by the revolt of Major Lahuti in Tabriz.79 The coup in Tehran also transformed the position and the prospects of the Gendarmerie. Its senior officers, elements among whom had apparently been preparing a coup of their own, were well represented in the post-coup regime, initially occupying the posts of minister of war and military governor of Tehran, as well as providing military governors for several provincial capitals. During the following months, however, in


tandem with the growing ascendancy of Riza Khan, the gendarmes were gradually supplanted by cossacks, a process which accelerated rapidly after the downfall of Sayyid Ziya. The endemic political, ideological and professional hostility between these two forces, although overcome temporarily for the period of the coup d’état, soon resurfaced. Discontent and resentment among the gendarmes was widespread and, in one case, immediately provoked active resistance. Between April and October the gendarme colonel, Muhammad Taqi Khan, held power in Mashhad, in increasingly open defiance of Tehran. Pasyan’s overthrow by a tribal rising instigated by Tehran removed a major political and military threat to Riza Khan and paved the way for the absorption of the Gendarmerie into the new, cossack-dominated, army. Yet the process of constructing a new army out of the opposing gendarme and cossack elements was not straightforward. Although the two forces were amalgamated formally on equal terms, by Army Order Number One issued on 6 December, in fact the gendarmes were alienated by Riza Khan’s personal ascendancy and were outraged by the way in which the new army was being constructed. Riza Khan trusted and relied upon his cossack comrades, whom he placed in the positions of greatest power. Conversely he distrusted the ex-gendarmes whom he deprived of the pay and promotion which they felt commensurate with their training and experience. The ex-cossacks received consistently preferential treatment in terms of pay and rank at all levels. In this way friction between the two groups was perpetuated within the new army in every division and among junior as well as senior officers, and even within the rank and file. Cossack officers were put in command over gendarme officers of equal rank and, while Riza Khan made every effort to provide funds for the ex-cossack troops, the pay of the ex-gendarmes fell further and further into arrears.80 By the end of 1921, the gendarmes appear to have been getting very little pay at all and resentment was widespread, the force in the capital was especially discontented and threatened disturbances. On 24 December a deputation of ex-gendarme officers headed by Colonels Azizullah Khan Zarghami and Fath Ali Khan Saqafi Tupchi visited Riza Khan and stated that they would not answer for the actions of their men if they were not paid up to date.81 This was the context in which the rebellion led by Major Abulqasim Khan Lahuti broke out in Azarbayjan in January 1922. Although Lahuti and many of his supporters, both military and civilian, had wider political aims, the spark for the rising was undoubtedly the anger felt by many gendarmes at the circumstances of their incorporation into the new army. Ever since the announcement of Army Order Number One,


amalgamating the Gendarmerie and the Cossack Division, friction between the two forces in Azarbayjan had been growing, owing specifically to the fact that junior cossack officers had, in several cases, been promoted over the heads of more senior gendarmes, and that the military authorities at Tabriz and elsewhere had issued pay to the ex-cossacks in preference to the ex-gendarmes.82 The gendarmes at Tabriz were, by January 1922, seven months in arrears and greatly resented the fact that their commander was no longer a gendarme officer, but they were now subordinate to the cossack general, Ismail Khan Amir-Fazli, one of the commanders of the force which had overthrown Khiyabani. The rebellion to which Lahuti gave his name broke out apparently spontaneously at Sufiyan on 31 January 1922, when the Gendarmerie detachment mutinied, cut the telephone wires and destroyed the railway. The gendarmes at Sharafkhanah joined the movement and arrested their Commanding Officer, Colonel Mahmud Khan Puladin, when he refused to join them.83 The gendarmes from both places then marched on Tabriz. On the outskirts of the town they encountered a cossack force which had been sent out to stop them but they forced the cossacks to retreat and to take refuge in their barracks, where they were surrounded. Major Lahuti, who was then in Tabriz, put himself at the head of this movement and, on 1 February, took charge of all government departments, including the police. In Tabriz the gendarmes were joined by local Democrats and together they formed a revolutionary committee called Tajaddud (Renewal), and this was where real power lay during the insurrectionary period.84 The only part of Tabriz which remained outside the revolutionaries’ control was, just as in Khiyabani’s time, the cossack barracks, at Bagh-i Shumal.85 The rebellion led by Major Lahuti was both more radical and more plebeian in character than the earlier gendarme movement led by Colonel Pasyan, having its origins among, and being based upon, the noncommissioned officers and the rank and file rather than the upper echelons of the officer corps. That these strata provided the inspiration for the movement is confirmed by the recollection of Hasan Arfa that he was asked to join the rebellion by the non-commissioned officers and men of his squadron.86 Lahuti himself, in the course of an interview with Hasan Arfa, in which he attempted to enlist the latter’s support, harshly criticized the senior officers of the Azarbayjan Gendarmerie regiment. Indeed the rebel gendarmes had not hesitated to arrest those senior officers who had declined to join them, Colonel Lundberg in Sufiyan, Colonel Puladin in Sharafkhanah, and Colonel Shihab in Tabriz. Within a few days of the start of the rebellion, Lahuti had arrested half a dozen colonels and imprisoned them in the Tabriz citadel.


In fact Lahuti faced strong opposition from the most senior gendarme officers, many of whom, in Azarbayjan and elsewhere, had already thrown in their lot with Riza Khan. These officers, of whom Arfa was typical, were already beginning to find congenial positions in the new army and, fearing chaos and disintegration, had no hesitation in opposing Lahuti’s movement, Arfa warning Lahuti that he was risking a bloody civil war which would end in catastrophe.87 Colonel Shihab, another senior gendarme officer in Tabriz, refused, like Arfa, to support the rebel gendarmes and advised them either to obey the commanders appointed by the government or to resign and go home. He further warned them not to plunge the country into “wild and dangerous adventures”.88 Arfa and Shihab actually attempted, although unsuccessfully, to collaborate with the governor-general, Mukhbir al-Saltanah, and the Tabriz cossack commander, Brigadier Amir-Fazli, in a plot against the rebel gendarmes, and the rebellion was in fact ultimately crushed by a force commanded by an ex-gendarme, Brigadier Habibullah Shaybani.89 When the rebel gendarmes had reached Tabriz, they had found considerable support waiting for them. The local Democrats, who had again armed themselves, rallied to their side, apparently seeing the revolt as an opportunity to avenge the death of Shaykh Khiyabani. The name of the revolutionary committee, Tajaddud, clearly recalled Khiyabani’s newspaper and some of Khiyabani’s closest supporters, including Ismail Amirkhizi, Sayyid al-Muhaqqaqin Diba, Muhammad Ali Tarbiyat and Muhammad Ali Badamchi, assumed prominent roles in the movement.90 The Democrats harboured particular enmity towards Mukhbir al-Saltanah, who still remained as governor-general, and whom they regarded as responsible for the crushing of their movement in 1920. When the revolutionaries took control of Tabriz, Mukhbir al-Saltanah was guarded by cossacks. Arfa has described how his house “was surrounded by two encircling forces, the rebellious gendarmes forming the outer and the Cossack guards the inner ring, watching each other with fingers on the triggers of their rifles”.91 The gendarmes quickly gained the upper hand and arrested Mukhbir al-Saltanah while General Amir-Fazli ordered the cossacks to retreat to their barracks at Bagh-i Shumal. Immediately on the gendarme seizure of power, the Democrats had gone to the telegraph office and begun discussions with various elements in Tehran, including the prime minister, Mushir al-Dawlah.92 As at the time of Khiyabani’s revolt, Mushir was again anxious to avoid a conflict. He accordingly officially recalled Mukhbir al-Saltanah, and appointed an acting governor-general, Ijlal al-Mulk.93 The latter was persona grata with the Democrats and he set about trying to arrange an


accommodation between Tehran and the Tabrizis. Lahuti had also put himself in telegraphic communication with the central government and the Majlis and had explained the grievances of the gendarmes, putting forward the immediate demand that the government pay the gendarmes their much-delayed salaries.94 The rebellion had been sparked off specifically by the gendarmes’ resentment at what they considered unfair treatment. In a proclamation Lahuti declared that the gendarmes took over Tabriz because they had been ordered to remove their “sovereign uniforms” which were their “historical honour” and put on the uniforms of the “wretched cossack executioners” that were a sign of the era of Tsarism.95 However Lahuti himself, and many of his comrades in the force, immediately seized the opportunity to introduce their own political agenda. Calling the gendarmes partisans of freedom, enemies of despotism and devotees of the nation, Lahuti, in proclamations to the people of Tabriz, emphasized the Gendarmerie’s desire to safeguard the independence of the country and the happiness of their compatriots. In his public statements Lahuti acknowledged the authority of Tehran and placed great stress on his efforts to petition the Majlis and the central government about the rights of the gendarmes and the people of Tabriz.96 Yet the gendarmes also developed the plan of marching on the capital. In an attempt to win over Hasan Arfa, Lahuti declared that the country needed real reforms, that the people who then held power were incompetent, corrupt and devoted to foreign interests, and that he had decided to mobilize all the patriotic forces of Azarbayjan and march on Tehran.97 He repeatedly and publicly called for the establishment of a revolutionary republic with himself as commander of a national army.98 Lahuti made repeated efforts to reassure the people of Tabriz that their safety and security was in good hands and no harm would come to them from the rebels.99 Lahuti and his followers made no appeal to Azarbayjani separatism, Lahuti rather made vigorous efforts to convince the Azarbayjanis that the Gendarmerie was the true defender of the Iranian nation. But, with both senior gendarmes and many nationalists now supporting Riza Khan as offering the best hope for Iranian nationalism, Democrat opinion was again, as in the time of Khiyabani, divided, some of the Tabrizis ultimately joining the cossacks to fight against the gendarmes.100 Lahuti also found support among more radical elements in Tabriz. Although the initial mutinies had appeared to be spontaneous, there had been some contacts between rebel gendarmes and communists in Tabriz,101 Lahuti himself claiming to have linked up with his old comrades-in-arms before the uprising and to have launched a propaganda


campaign among the gendarmes.102 In “free Tabriz”103 red flags appeared, the shah’s portraits were destroyed and the gendarmes were joined by some 270 local members of the infant Iranian Communist Party, many apparently of Caucasian origin,104 under the leadership of Ali Asghar Sartipzadih, Husayn Bichiz and Haj Muhammad Ibrahim Shabistari.105 In a clear echo of his earlier experiences, and indicating the movement’s rapid radicalization, Lahuti’s last two telegrams to Tehran were signed “President of the Committee of Free Soldiers and Gendarmes” (Ra’is-i Kumitah-i Sarbazan va Zhandarmha-yi Azadi) and his proclamations to the people of Tabriz, exhorting them to assist the revolutionaries, were similarly signed.106 The Tehran government had wished to come to a negotiated settlement with Tabriz, Mushir al-Dawlah concluding that, after his recall of Mukhbir al-Saltanah, the crisis was passing its peak. It seems that the military suppression of the insurrection was the result of Riza Khan’s personal initiative.107 Riza Khan had, from the beginning of the rebellion, apparently decided to grasp the opportunity to crush opposition within both the politically turbulent and radical city of Tabriz and within the Gendarmerie. Realizing that the 200 cossacks in Tabriz, facing as they did about 350 gendarmes and the armed Democrats, were helpless until reinforcements arrived, Riza Khan temporized, giving the impression that he was prepared to accept a negotiated solution based on an amnesty for the rebel gendarmes. But in fact he had, immediately upon receiving reports of the situation in Tabriz, ordered large contingents of cossacks from Saujbulagh, Gilan and Tehran to move on the city. Although he had sent orders to Brigadier Amir-Fazli to obey Ijlal al-Mulk, he had also informed him that help was on its way, whatever money he required could be supplied him and that he should not lose heart. While negotiations were still proceeding the cossack force from Saujbulagh, numbering more than 1,000 men and commanded by Brigadier Shaybani, was approaching Tabriz. The city was becoming tense and on 7 February Lahuti posted notices announcing that the cossacks were coming to fight against the peoples’ rights and calling on all the inhabitants of the city to join him in resistance. In the last message between Tehran and Tabriz before telegraphic communication was cut, Riza Khan warned the rebels that if they did not submit they would be attacked. Next day, the cossack force under Shaybani reached Tabriz. They linked up with the cossacks in the city at their barracks in Bagh-i Shumal and, after severe fighting, defeated the rebels. The gendarme Captain Turaj Amin, who was the real military commander of the insurrection, tried to organize a defence but was wounded and the gendarmes, although


holding all the tactical points in the city, could not long withstand the overwhelming odds. Gendarme casualties were large and many who were captured with their rifles were summarily shot. However Lahuti himself, for whose head a reward had been offered, accompanied by about 350 of his comrades, both gendarmes and civilian nationalists, managed to escape and fled across the Soviet frontier. “‘Punitive’ troops were ravaging the streets of Tabriz. Some of the insurgents scattered to the hills, the rest of us fought our way towards the frontier”.108 Lahuti and his band finally crossed the Araxes river into the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan on horseback. The bulk of the gendarmes remaining in Tabriz surrendered over the next few days. Riza Khan appointed the ex-cossack, General Amir-Fazli, military governor of Tabriz, placed the other most senior cossack officer in Tabriz, General Zafar al Dawlah Muqaddam, in charge of the police, and the city was placed under martial law. There followed widespread arrests.109 The establishment of military government exercised through the agency of the ex-cossack high command of the new army heralded a period of profound change. For the next twenty years Tabriz was to find itself under ever tightening central control, sometimes civilian but often military, its population disarmed and conscripted, and publication in Azari Turkish banned. Lahuti never returned to Iran. After his arrival in the Soviet Union, his radical but independent nationalism and his sympathies for what he understood of the Soviet Union rapidly crystallized into orthodox communism. He himself later described how, on his arrival in the Soviet Union, he “found a new path”.110 He arrived in Moscow in 1923, worked as a compositor in the Central Publishing House of the Peoples of the USSR, and soon began to publish. He became a literary worker at the publishing house and there, on “an unforgettable day” in 1924, he was admitted to the ranks of the Communist Party.111 He eventually settled in Stalinabad (Dushanbe), the capital of the (Persian-speaking) Soviet Republic of Tajikistan where he became one of the founders of Soviet Tajik poetry. He was the author of the Tajik national anthem and of the Tajik translation of the Soviet national anthem.112 Lahuti’s poetry clearly mirrored his ideological development, exhibiting a transition from progressive nationalist to communist themes. Only once in the Soviet Union did he acquaint himself systematically with the ideas of socialism and from then on much of his inspiration came from the radical economic and social transformation of Tajik and Soviet society, and he acquired the soubriquet, adib-i surkh, the red writer.113 One of his most important works from this period was the qasidah Kreml, published in 1923, the first poem in Tajik and Persian literature praising the October


revolution. With the invasion of the Soviet Union by Hitler, the antifascist struggle became the main theme of Lahuti’s work and he wrote in an heroic strain which appealed to patriotic sentiments.114 Dastan-i ghalabah-i Tanya (Story of Tanya’s Victory) was one of the great works of wartime Soviet poetry, celebrating the heroism of a woman partisan executed by the Nazis. As well as composing many poems, Lahuti contributed greatly to the development of Tajik drama and was the author of the first original Tajik libretto. He also did important work as a translator, introducing to Tajik and Persian literature the work of Pushkin, Gorky, Mayakovsky, Shakespeare and other famous western authors. Lahuti died on March 16th, 1957.115 The Tabriz insurrection to which Lahuti has given his name erupted only fifteen months after the overthrow of Khiyabani’s Democrat regime. It seems to have been initially largely a spontaneous affair, sparked off by the specific grievances of the gendarmes at the circumstances of their incorporation into the new army, and by the anger of both the gendarmes and the civilian Democrats at the imposition of the reactionary rule of the cossack army officers, and in particular it provided the Democrats with an opportunity to avenge themselves against Mukhbir al-Saltanah, still governor-general, whom they held responsible for the murder of Khiyabani. A radical trend was imparted to the rebellion by Lahuti himself, certain tendencies among the gendarme officers which had been encouraged by Bolshevik propaganda, and the active participation of a significant number of members of the Iranian Communist Party. As is clear from his public declarations, Lahuti, in January 1922, still expressed himself in typical constitutionalist and left-wing Democrat terms. However, although there was little Bolshevik content in the declared objectives of the rebellion, yet the forms which the movement took, most notably Lahuti’s own description of himself as leader of the soldiers’ committee, clearly derived their inspiration from, and imitated, the Russian revolutionary example. For their part, the Tabriz communists themselves displayed an astonishing indifference to the newly-adopted line of the Iranian Communist Party, which sought to accommodate itself to the “bourgeois” regime of Riza Khan. There is no evidence of Lahuti, while in Iran, having been in direct contact with the ‘Adalat and Iranian Communist Party leadership, but, once settled in the Soviet Union, he became an orthodox communist of the period. He found in Soviet communism the ideal focus for his artistic and emotional energies and for the next three decades gave consistent expression, through his poetry, to the concerns and struggles both of the Soviet state and of the international communist movement.

4 Popular Protest, Disorder and Riot in Iran: The Tehran Crowd and the Rise of Riza Khan, 1921–1925

Early Pahlavi Iran has conventionally been seen through the prism of its state-building effort, the interwar decades characterized as a classic example of Middle Eastern “top-down modernization”. In these years, according to this view, a new state, based on a secular, nationalist elite and acting as the sole initiator and agent of change, undertook a comprehensive and systematic reshaping of Iranian political, economic, social and cultural life. The new state was understood as the only dynamic and modern element in an otherwise ossified and moribund “traditional” environment, while its critics and opponents were assumed to be, by definition, reactionary and obscurantist.1 Scholarly attention remained focused on the high politics of the Tehran elite with balancesheets drawn up based on assessments of the new state’s success in transforming Iran into a modern nation state according to a template drawn from European experience. Not only were broader, non-elite social groups and layers deemed to be merely passive objects of state policy but, insofar as they contested the state’s agenda, were also considered as historically redundant and doomed to social extinction. Such was the typical view, at least until the revolution of 1979, of, for example, all varieties of popular urban leadership deriving from the mosque and the bazar. This version of the Pahlavi period has established such dominance that little attempt has been made to incorporate into the study of modern Iranian history some of the new approaches and analyses developed by social historians of other countries and regions. With the exception of gender studies, where a rich seam of experience has been mined, historians of Iran have so far made little effort to elucidate either the historical narrative or the perception of their own experience of nonelite groups such as the urban poor, non-metropolitan groups including the guilds and the bazars of the provincial cities, or of any social 128

The Tehran Crowd and the Rise of Riza Khan, 1921–1925 129

category in the countryside. In attempting to rescue the Tehran crowd from obscurity or from condemnation as a fanatical and blindly reactionary mob, the narrative which follows hopes to rectify the imbalance in much older scholarship and to introduce into the study of Iranian history some of the perspectives of “history from below”.2 Although scholarship’s tendency to focus on the state and its elite supporters has derived to a large extent from the political and academic perspectives and interests of historians working in the field, it has certainly been strongly reinforced by the difficulties of the sources.3 The problems of studying even the European crowd are well known.4 Since those taking part in crowd actions have rarely left archival material of their own, and since extant descriptions have usually reflected elite (and hostile) attitudes, historians of European crowds have developed the use of sources such as police, prison and especially legal records, detailing instances at which the official world came directly into contact with the subaltern, to glean data about mass political action. Such research is barely even in its infancy in relation to Iranian history. Such sources as are available regarding the interventions of the Tehran crowd permit some discussion of the political role of the Tehran crowd, but allow little more than occasional glimpses of its social composition.5 The questions which have been asked in the course of the study of, for example, the French and English crowds, about both the general nature of the crowd and its behaviour and about its components, “the faces in the crowd”, their social origins, ages, occupations, and gender, may be raised in relation to the Tehran crowd of the early 1920s, but can as yet only be answered occasionally and in the most general terms.6 In February 1921 Riza Khan, an officer in the Iranian Cossack Division, captured political power in Tehran via a military coup and, by the end of 1925, he had overthrown the Qajar dynasty and made himself shah. Explanations of the success of his rise to supreme power have focused on his control of the coercive instruments of the new state, the army and the police, on his political astuteness, capacity to out-manouvre his opponents and personal strength of will and ruthlessness and, crucially, on his acquisition of the backing of the British minister in Tehran, Percy Loraine.7 These explanations have usually been accompanied by a tendency to define Iranian politics as the exclusive preserve of a nationalist elite and to imagine this elite, and the state which it constructed, as constituting the sole significant arena of political activity. This tendency has led to an inclination to remain indifferent to, and has even rendered invisible, the strategies adopted in these years by a variety of subaltern elements external to this elite and often excluded from, or marginal to,


the dominant secular nationalist discourse. Such elements comprised both plebeian social layers, the rural and urban poor; “traditional” groups such as the lower ranks of the ulama and the bazar merchants and guilds; and new social categories called into existence by modernity itself, including an industrial working class, located especially in the oil fields of the south, and an intelligentsia which found employment as minor government officials, teachers, journalists and so on. These layers and groups, historically lacking formal channels of political representation, had become accustomed to asserting themselves through mass popular actions, as a political “crowd”.8 The account which follows looks at the continuing political vitality of the urban crowd in early Pahlavi Iran and the role it played in the crises which wracked Tehran in the first half of the 1920s, examining, as far as possible, the ways in which crowds were mobilized, their composition, leaderships and objectives. In particular it analyzes Riza Khan’s own adoption of populist tactics in his struggle with the Qajar dynasty in 1924–1925 and his regime’s attempts to manipulate the Tehran crowd in an effort to overcome opposition, both elite and popular, and to intimidate formal democratic institutions such as the Majlis (Parliament) and the independent press. For the people of Iran’s towns and cities, as they entered the Pahlavi era, there was nothing unusual or exceptional about popular protests.9 Such protests were, rather, a familiar feature of urban life throughout the country. They ranged from peaceful, even routine, actions designed merely to engage with the authorities and perhaps to change or modify a particular policy, to more determined and prolonged confrontations, to outright mass defiance emphasized by the use of different forms of violence. Urban crowds habitually employed a wide variety of methods in their efforts to influence, manipulate, resist and sometimes confront local and national authorities. Indeed there existed a repertoire of actions with which both the people and the authorities were intimately acquainted and through which conflict between rulers and ruled could be choreographed. This repertoire was deeply ingrained in the historical experience of broad layers of especially the urban, but also to some extent the rural, populations, who resorted to it spontaneously and almost instinctively. Among the actions constituting this repertoire, perhaps the most well-known are the addressing of appeals in the form of petitions and telegrams to the central authorities, either the government or the Majlis,10 the use of mosques for political meetings, the taking of bast, the guild strike and the closure of the bazars, the distribution of anonymous and often menacing and intimidatory shabnamahs and,


when these methods were exhausted, collective bargaining through riot. These actions were, furthermore, ranked in a generally recognized hierarchy, ready to be adopted successively until the authorities responded, and there was a broad expectation on the part of those resorting to protest that the authorities were under an obligation to listen to their grievances and to offer remedies. The authorities themselves, largely lacking any effective coercive power and conscious of the necessity for consensus and consent, were often prepared to heed such demonstrations, especially once they reached a certain pitch.11 Popular protests had traditionally been provoked by localized issues such as resentment at avaricious and oppressive governors. Since the late nineteenth century, however, mass urban protests in Tehran and the provincial cities had increasingly focused on issues of national politics, meeting with a large measure of success. The “Tobacco Protest” of 1891–1892, which included the closure of the bazars in cities throughout Iran, the mass consumer boycott of tobacco and demonstrations in the streets of Tehran, forced the shah to cancel his sale of the tobacco concession to a foreigner.12 Most famous of all were the huge demonstrations and mass basts of 1905–1906 which led directly to the granting of a constitution and the convening of a National Assembly or Majlis.13 Towns and cities throughout Iran were, therefore, the scenes of frequent popular protests. The Tehran crowd, however, occupied a unique position. Not only was it much larger than any crowd which could be mustered in a provincial city but, located in the capital with ready access to the Majlis, the government, the shah and the foreign legations, it was a political factor of the greatest significance, able to exert an influence, and sometimes a determining impact, on national politics. The Tehran crowd was therefore a potent political force, but it was rarely a spontaneous phenomenon, and it was not uniform in its social composition nor predictable in its political objectives. Rather, a variety of crowds might be called into action by different leaderships, with different objectives, sometimes “radical”, sometimes “conservative”, often defying such ready categorizations.14 The most common type of crowd was that which could be mobilized by the ulama and their allies in the bazar, the merchants and the guilds. This type of crowd, composed of a mercantile and clerical leadership, with a mass following made up of guild artisans and the poor, was typically mobilized by issues with a religious element or which directly touched the interests of the ulama and the bazar. Another crowd consisted of more modern social groups, for example lower middle class government employees, teachers,


journalists, and was more likely to espouse overtly political and ideological positions. Occasionally different crowds might find themselves pitted, ideologically and even physically, against each other. More commonly, however, major protests would involve diverse urban crowds made up of both constituencies. In fact, most popular protests in the early 1920s were complex in both their social composition and their political agenda. Urban crowds, both in the capital and in the provincial cities, were assembled in a number of ways, through the print media, the respectable press and the more disreputable shabnamah, through word of mouth, and through deliberate mobilization by preachers in mosques aided by their networks of supporters in the bazars and the guilds. For the Iranian crowd, the national and provincial press was of particular significance, at least until the mid-1920s when harsher censorship began to take effect. Since the late nineteenth century, the growth in literacy, the broader dissemination of nationalist ideas, the spread of print media and the wider availability of crude printing methods, had led to the rapid emergence of a public opinion, articulated through an independent press. By the early 1920s, the press was playing a role of central importance in shaping public opinion, in giving expression to popular political attitudes and in encouraging and organizing mass protests. This role it had inherited particularly from the constitutional period when an explosion in newspaper and periodical publication of an engaged and critical character had first taken place.15 In the first years of Riza Khan’s new regime, the Iranian press, continuing the traditions of the constitutional period, was both flourishing and extremely free in its language and its targets and in this it reflected and gave shape to popular sentiments which received little expression elsewhere. Newspapers were crucial in organizing the huge demonstrations which took place in Tehran and in the provincial cities against the 1923 expulsion to Iran from Iraq by the British mandatory authorities of ulama who had criticized the British-organized elections. The press gave full and colourful expression to popular anti-British feeling, published news of protests, thus contributing to their rapid spread, and carried notices from the organizers of demonstrations giving precise details of the arrangements and calling for support. The Sitarah-i Iran of 25 October 1923, for example, carried a notice from the organizers outlining plans for a national demonstration to be held in three days time against Britain and on behalf of the Iraq ulama. According to the notice, the demonstration was called in the name of “Iran and Islam” and required the support of all the inhabitants of Tehran without distinction of political party or faction. The notice further gave assembly


points and times, routes and told participants to carry black flags and march in an orderly silent manner. The influence of the press, in forming public opinion and providing an organizing medium for political protest, was far wider than the relative smallness of a fully literate readership might suggest. The early 1920s saw the proliferation of newspapers. In the year 1921–1922 licenses were issued for upwards of 200 newspapers in Tehran alone, and this in a town of some 300,000 inhabitants, barely a tenth of whom could read or write.16 Their circulation was not limited to those able to read and with the means to purchase a newspaper. Free reading rooms had been established in Tehran and in many provincial cities and newspapers were often distributed free. Articles might be read aloud in bazars and marketplaces for the benefit of the illiterate, providing a focus for popular discussions. The urban and even to some extent the rural poor would thus be readily exposed to the contents of the newspapers and able to transmit by word of mouth their contents, or versions thereof, further afield, the tradition of oral communication through extended family, kin and neighbourhood networks still remaining strong. An even more significant medium for the poorer classes were the anonymous broadsheets (shabnamahs, literally night-letters) which frequently appeared posted on city walls or circulated in bazars. Those among the poor with the rudiments of literacy might participate not just in the consumption of these broadsheets but also in their production. These publications, freed by their anonymity from legal constraints or the fear of retribution, articulated directly and sometimes menacingly the grievances and demands of the oppressed. The expression of both specific and general threats was a noteworthy feature of a typical shabnamah.17 Both the “respectable” press and the shabnamahs shaped and expressed, in different ways and to different degrees, the attitudes of the poor, and sometimes gave direction to their energies. As well as the print media, speech was also a vital mobilizing tool. Anti-republicanism became a mass movement in 1924 largely because of the popular oratory of clerical figures such as Khalisizadah, the prayer-leader of the Tehran bazar, and the Majlis deputy, Sayyid Hasan Mudarris, and their ability to use the mosques as an arena for political mobilization. A further potent ingredient contributing to the emerging subaltern discourse and to mass action was the prevalence of rumour. Although often distorted and even fantastical, rumours often expressed in a distilled and essential way the concerns of the powerless, and had, furthermore, the capacity to spread like wildfire, often being instrumental in sparking off local protests, both in the towns and in the countryside.18 The bread riots in Tehran in 1925, for


example, seem to have been both provoked and given direction by the spread, sometimes spontaneous and sometimes deliberate, of rumours combustible in the febrile atmosphere arising from genuine grain shortages.19

The Tehran crowd and popular protest For the first year and a half after his coup Riza Khan had concentrated on building up the army, on suppressing regional challenges to his power and on consolidating his political position in the capital and within the government.20 His methods, however, increasingly provoked both popular resentment and concern among the political elite and he was widely attacked in the press and the Majlis for his dictatorial behaviour. Against this background of political tension, the Tehran streets were increasingly the scenes of unrest. Sometimes the protests were provoked solely by mundane matters, were orderly and carried out by “respectable” groups, such as the bast in the Majlis in September 1922 by fifty schoolteachers who had not received their pay, or the closure, around the same date, of 1,000 shops in the city as a protest against high rents.21 Sometimes, mass popular disorder manifested itself as “mob” violence, in the eruption of popular hostility towards minorities, Bahais, Zoroastrians or Jews. Such outbreaks were indeed a typical feature of generalized political tension and were often the result of the deliberate channelling of popular grievances into directions more palatable to the authorities.22 Sometimes, too, mass protests took place on more overtly political issues. The government’s attempts to curb the press in the autumn of 1922 for example, resulted in an uproar in the Majlis, attacks on newspaper offices, rioting for and against the government in the streets, and the taking of bast by the ulama. Popular protest was most effective when it involved an alliance between the ulama, supported by the bazar, and the secular nationalists. The ulama’s ideological appeal to the urban poor and the bazar’s organizational power, coupled with the nationalists’ influence as shapers of public opinion via the press and the Majlis, represented a coalition of formidable political power. This was the alliance which produced, over the summer and autumn of 1923, the most sustained popular protest of the early 1920s, a protest which provided an object lesson in both the power and the moral authority of the Tehran crowd. Occasioned by the expulsion of Shi‘i ulama from the Iraqi holy cities by the British mandatory authorities, this protest was led by clerical and bazar elements, and was not intended to oppose or confront the government


but rather to increase pressure on it to take strong action in defence of what the protesters defined as Iran’s national and religious interests. Maintained over a protracted period, this popular movement, led by the ulama and the bazar but in alliance with wider nationalist opinion, especially as represented in the Majlis and the secular press, was able to mount a concerted campaign using a variety of both modern and traditional tactics. This prolonged campaign dramatically demonstrated the power of the Tehran crowd to assert itself and, under a clerical leadership with connections throughout the country, to provide a focus for national politics. It also showed the continuing salience of a repertoire of methods typical of past urban protests, including mass demonstrations, the closure of the bazars, the taking of bast, the organization of boycotts, the collection of petitions and the circulation of telegrams appealing for support between cities and to various authorities. The persistence of such methods, often traditional in form but modern in political content, and the readiness of wide layers of the population to adopt them, signalled the effectiveness of mass protest as a means of building up a dynamic for political action and providing for such action a degree of legitimacy. The campaign further illustrated the increasingly important role of the secular press in shaping public opinion. Although provoked by a specific and limited episode, the 1923 protests were deliberately presented as national protests, carried out by “the people” in the name of Iran and Islam while the strength of popular feeling and the breadth of the mobilization gave the leadership the opportunity to pose broader issues and make wider and more general political demands.

The Tehran crowd and the republican movement In October 1923 Riza Khan made himself head of the government after successfully implicating a former prime minister and powerful rival, Qavam al-Saltanah (Ahmad Qavam), in a plot against his life and having him exiled, and in November the shah left for Europe.23 Thus far, in his rise to power, Riza Khan had largely relied on his control of the army and the police in the capital. He had suppressed the early provincial challenges to his new regime with his new army and had extended his authority throughout the provinces via the newly-established military authorities. He had overcome an early political crisis in the autumn of 1922 by a resignation manoeuvre, and he had engineered the downfall of Qavam in 1923 by intrigue.24 Although he had been able to witness, on many occasions, popular protests in the capital, he had not yet himself


sought directly to mobilize or manipulate the Tehran crowd. However, the fundamental changes which he now sought, after becoming prime minister and seeing the shah leave for Europe, possibly permanently, required some popular imprimatur. In the absence of any institutional or organized political support, a direct resort to the “people”, both in Tehran and in the provincial towns and cities, seemed a safer alternative to formal democratic engagement. Riza Khan’s first major effort to generate mass support in Tehran for political change came with the republican movement in early 1924.25 This movement provides a clear example of Riza Khan’s desire that the momentum for political and constitutional change should appear to emanate from the people, and this new populism led to his regime’s ready use of the Tehran crowd and its repeated attempts to manipulate popular politics. The republican agitation in the capital also illustrated the existence of politically and socially varying types of urban crowd; the crucial role played by the press in forming public opinion; and the intimate interaction between popular and elite politics, an interaction which found a sharp focus in the Majlis, both in its debates, in the leadership provided by different groups of deputies, and in the institution itself as the primary and legitimate locus for political decision-making. It was the Tehran press which inaugurated the republican movement in Iran when, on 20 January 1924, a Tehran newspaper reproduced an article favouring the establishment of an Iranian republic from the Istanbul paper Vaqt.26 Sympathy for the concept of republicanism had been growing in Iran since the constitutional period and the actual behaviour of the present shah, Ahmad Shah, had given added strength to growing ideological predilections.27 Accordingly, when the Vaqt article was reproduced in Tehran it received a genuinely warm welcome both in the rest of the press and among much of the population. Public opinion then undoubtedly favoured the idea of a republic in Iran and hardly any voice was raised in defence of the now widely despised Ahmad Shah.28 After the publication of the Vaqt article the press, both in Tehran and in the provinces, immediately took up the republican cause.29 Riza Khan himself, however, when questioned by a journalist, had refused to give an opinion on the issue. Although he was certainly discreetly encouraging the campaign, those newspapers which he subsidized were among the most outspoken, “he preferred that it should wear the cloak of popular feeling”,30 wishing by his general attitude to create the impression that he was acquiescing in a movement which emanated from the people.31 The prince regent32 appealed to Riza Khan to exercise a restraining influence on the press but Riza Khan, again appealing


to the authority of the people, replied that he was unable to do so as the press was the expression of popular opinion.33 The press campaign had been an important prelude in preparing public opinion and in February an actual movement began to organize itself and a republican committee was formed in Tehran. Again republican activists were determined that the movement should have a popular character. The leader of the republican committee stated that their policy was to obtain telegrams from all the towns of Iran urging a change in the constitutional law in favour of a republic. When they were thus able to show that the whole of Iran demanded a republic, they would work through sympathizers in the Majlis to bring about a change in the constitution.34 Supporters of the republican movement, and especially the military authorities, also made strenuous efforts to organize popular protests in the provincial towns and especially the provincial capitals. A movement rapidly developed in the provinces which complemented that in the capital and which appeared to have real and considerable popular support.35 In an ever-intensifying atmosphere, republican committees were formed in the provincial capitals, delegations arrived in Tehran from the nearer provinces and telegrams began to pour in to Tehran from across the country demanding the abolition of the Qajar dynasty and the establishment of a republic. During February and early March meetings and demonstrations in favour of a republic continued to be held in mosques and other places of assembly in both Tehran and the provinces. In some places crowds gathered to take bast in the telegraph offices, stating that they would not leave until the Majlis granted their request for a republic, elsewhere the bazars were closed in demonstration.36 During the first weeks of March, however, the first signs of opposition became visible on the streets and pro-republican public meetings in Tehran began to encounter hostility. The shah himself was now making some attempts to organize opposition to the republican movement through the Tehran clergy, and had established close contact with Khalisizadah, the prayer-leader of the Tehran bazar and the son of the most prominent cleric exiled from Iraq, Ayatullah Mahdi al-Khalisi. Nonetheless, up to mid-March, the opposition was not serious and people were still rallying to the republican idea, which had a genuine degree of popularity. The ulama themselves remained divided on the matter and incapable of decisive action. The republican movement was now in the ascendant, its core made up of modernizing and leftist elements. It had its conservative and religious opponents but these were in a minority. However, as the movement gathered speed, a third tendency defined itself. This tendency, epitomized


by the liberal independents in the Majlis such as the president of the House, Mutamin al-Mulk (Husayn Pirniya), included those who sympathized with Riza Khan’s nationalist and reforming agenda, and with the idea of a republic, but feared the implicit threat to constitutional rule.37 As this tendency grew in strength it too found more of a voice in the press.38 The ultras among the republican activists were eager to have the Majlis vote in favour of a republic before nawruz, the Iranian New Year, on 21 March. By tradition on this holiday the shah appeared before the people in a salam. Although the shah was absent in Europe the salam would still be held by the vali‘ahd (the crown prince), and the republicans wished to avoid the dangerous symbolism of the people paying homage to a Qajar prince. But republican opinion was divided on this strategy. Fattan al-Saltanah, head of the Tehran republican committee, warned Riza Khan that opinion in the capital was not yet educated to the idea of a republic, and recommended an intensive campaign of preparation.39 At first Riza Khan apparently did not wish to bring the matter to a head for another two months, which period was to be spent in peaceful propaganda, but was persuaded by other members of Fattan al-Saltanah’s committee, and he decided to force through the change by nawruz.40 This decision to resort to forcing the pace of change produced a radicalization in the movement and crystallized the doubts of those who feared the constitutional implications of the change. The consequences of this attempt to accelerate the political process first became apparent in the Majlis. The fifth Majlis had been opened by the prince regent on 11 February, with a clear majority of pro-republicans, many of whom had been helped to election by Riza Khan and the military authorities.41 Riza Khan had also apparently tried to arrange for some extra-parliamentary pressure to be brought to bear on the deputies by secretly providing a sum of 3,000 tumans to pay some Tehran mullahs to arrange demonstrations against the shah at the Majlis when it began its proceedings.42 The largest pro-republican faction was the Tajaddud (Revival), headed by the excleric Sayyid Muhammad Tadayyun, and supported by the socialists and the independents. Leading the opposition was the Hizb-i Islah Taliban (the Reformist party), led by Sayyid Hasan Mudarris, a conservative cleric whose political base lay in the bazar networks of merchants, guilds and lesser ulama.43 Before the Majlis had even had time properly to examine the credentials of individual deputies, the republican agitation was in full swing and Mudarris had adopted a strategy of systematically obstructing parliamentary procedure.


On 14 March, with opposition to the republic still muted and inchoate but visible in the streets, a Majlis session began in which each member’s mandate had to be openly voted upon. Mudarris insisted on challenging the mandate of deputy after deputy, on the grounds that they had not been elected freely by the people, partly to try to reduce the number of Riza Khan’s supporters and also to delay discussion of the republican issue until after nawruz. The increasingly heated debates finally, on 17 March, led to Tadayyun leading his supporters out of the House, where one of his party slapped Mudarris in the face. Mudarris immediately called on the crowd outside, who invaded the Majlis compound, and turmoil ensued until the police and military restored order. Tadayyun’s party’s chief object had been to bring about the proclamation of the republic as quickly as possible, and before nawruz, but the physical assault on Mudarris upset many of his supporters and half of them subsequently left him.44 For two days there was no Majlis sitting, although the House finally reconvened. A tug-of-war then started, Tadayyun trying to rush through the remaining members’ mandates in order to get to the business about the republic, and Mudarris still steadily opposing mandate after mandate in order to postpone any discussion of the republic till after 21 March. But after the assault on Mudarris, the conflict over the republic moved from the Majlis to the street. The “mobs in the lower quarters of the town”45 took up the quarrel of Tadayyun and Mudarris and invaded the Majlis grounds in turn as each happened to be the stronger, and many scuffles took place there. Both pro- and anti-republicans were now straining every nerve to demonstrate their public support and the popular mood in Tehran was volatile and shifting. On 15 and 16 March attempts were made to hold republican meetings in the Masjid-i Shah, but the meetings were a failure through interruptions by representatives of the merchants. Anti-republican meetings in the mosques were more successful By 19 March the mobilization of the oppositional crowd, under the leadership of the ulama, was assuming much larger proportions, and included both those who were against the republic per se, but also many who simply disliked the methods employed by Tadayyun to rush the matter through the Majlis with the object of presenting the people with a fait accompli by the New Year.46 Although the anti-republican demonstrations had a religious foundation and the speeches made were based on Islam, arguments were also increasingly being made to the effect that the existing Majlis did not possess the constitutional power to introduce a republic, and that a special assembly would have to be convened for that purpose, following a referendum on the matter.


The weakening of the pro-republicans’ hold over the Tehran population was starkly illustrated on 19 March when an open-air prorepublican meeting in Tehran, for which elaborate stands had been built outside the city by military working parties, was poorly attended and ended in a fiasco. On the same day in the bazar a serious clash took place between pro and anti-republican crowds. Partisans of the republic attempted to close the bazaars by force but the merchants resisted. Immense crowds came to the help of the bazaris and mauled the republicans severely, forcing them to take flight. The bazar was intensely indignant at this incident. Crowds immediately gathered in the mosque, although the thoroughfares leading there were barred by the police, and those who could not reach the mosque held prayer meetings in the open bazar instead. Khalisizadah, the prayer-leader of the bazar and a leader of the opposition to the republic, was sent to protest to the president of the Majlis.47 Meanwhile, in the midst of the turmoil in the city, a sitting of the Majlis had opened at 4 pm, Riza Khan having apparently sent a demand to the president of the Majlis for the deputies’ decision on the republican question by noon the following day, before nawruz. The disintegration of the Tajaddud faction, under the weight of Tadayyun’s tactical mistakes and the intensity of popular opposition, meant that the pro-republicans were now unable to assemble a majority to defeat Mudarris. Many people entered the Majlis building to protest and the proceedings degenerated into complete disorder, many of the deputies abandoning the session. Towards midnight the city commandant, with a detachment of troops from the Nadiri regiment, went to the Majlis to prevent unauthorized persons from entering and, according to one report, with orders from Riza Khan to prevent deputies leaving till the republican question was settled. The officers and men of the Nadiri regiment, however, had already participated in a meeting at which they had passed a resolution declaring that they would refuse to fight on behalf of the formation of a republic.48 In a display of solidarity with the opposition, these soldiers refused to obey the orders of their commander, and allowed anti-republicans to enter the Majlis buildings. Large numbers of people were in the Majlis all night and no business could be done.49 Early the next morning, the Nadiri regiment having proved unreliable, Riza Khan sent cavalry from the Pahlavi regiment, one of the best regiments in the new army, and police to clear the Majlis and prevent people entering. Nevertheless, at 11 a.m. the crowd outside, numbering about 1,500 and led by mullahs, attacked the guards, broke into the grounds, and surrounded the Majlis, shouting against the republic. Rival mobs


then had a pitched battle in the Majlis grounds, the anti-republicans winning the day and remaining in possession until evicted late in the afternoon by an armed force. Despite the rioting, an attempt was made to hold a sitting of the Majlis in the morning. It seems that a resolution was passed to the effect that the Majlis had not the power to alter the constitution without a referendum to the people, by fifty-two votes to twenty-four, but owing to the disorder the validity of the sitting was questioned.50 The Majlis was then adjourned till 22 March, the day after nawruz. The square outside the Majlis was finally cleared by police about 5 pm, but the crowd within the grounds did not leave till 7.30 pm when about 3,000 people, led by mullahs, came out and moved through the streets, tearing down republican flags and symbols. At a huge public meeting, clerical speakers demanded political freedom and personal safety, the release of those arrested, and the election of a constituent assembly to decide on the question of a republic.51 The Tehran streets remained alive with the conflict over the nawruz holiday of 21 March. The next day, 22 March, the Majlis resumed its place at the centre of the conflict. The deputies were scheduled to meet in open session to discuss the proposal for a change in the fundamental laws of the constitution and the establishment of a republic. However, the sitting never began. Tehran was extremely tense and the deputies had received news that large anti-republican crowds were gathering in the bazaars to make a demonstration at the Majlis. In due course, shortly before 4 pm, a crowd numbering well over 5,000 people marched towards the Majlis, broke through the police cordon around the Majlis square, hammered at the doors of the Majlis, which had been closed, and demanded admittance to the grounds. The doors were opened after some hesitation, and the crowd rushed in, filling the grounds and bearing banners inscribed with anti-republican slogans. Anti-republican speeches were made in the grounds, including by some of the deputies themselves, and the Majlis was called upon to allow no change in the fundamental laws of the constitution, at least until the previous consent of the people had been obtained. The crowd was perfectly orderly, the greater part of them squatting down on the floor, in peaceable possession of the grounds.52 Meanwhile another large crowd had gathered in the Masjid-i Shah and neighbourhood to await events in the Majlis. From numbering about 3,000 at 3 pm, it grew to about 10,000 and signatures were collected for a petition against the republic.53 At 5 pm two companies of the Pahlavi regiment arrived in the Majlis square and fifteen minutes later Riza Khan drove up in a carriage and tried to drive into the Majlis. He was unable to do so, as the crowd was


too dense. Very angry, he left his carriage and gave the order for the two companies of soldiers to march into the Majlis grounds. They forced their way in and lined up in the centre. As Riza Khan entered there was some shouting, and he made his way through to the entrance of the building with great difficulty. After waving his arms in the air several times as a sign to the crowd to make way, he ordered the soldiers to clear the grounds. The crowd now began to become angry and missiles were thrown, one of which seems to have struck Riza Khan. The military, armed with bayonets, proceeded to evict the demonstrators with the use of considerable violence and several people were wounded, some falling underneath a wall which collapsed under the pressure of the crowd. Many people were arrested, including Khalisizadah, and the arrested men were taken to the nearest police station and detained there.54 Although the troops succeeded in clearing the Majlis grounds, this episode in fact signalled the political collapse of the republican movement. The deputies and the population in general were furious at the action of the army, especially since the Majlis had become customarily accepted as a place of bast. Immediately upon Riza Khan entering the Majlis, he was berated by the president, Mutamin al-Mulk, who even threatened to call the deputies into session to denounce his action. Had he done so, there would certainly have been a vote of no confidence in Riza Khan.55 The deputies then demanded the release of those arrested. Riza Khan acquiesced, the detainees were freed, and Mutamin al-Mulk apologized to them on behalf of the Majlis. Riza Khan, under intense pressure, agreed to abandon his republican project and, a little later, a sitting of the Majlis was held at which it was decided that the constitution must be upheld, and there could be no question of a republic.56 On 1 April Riza Khan issued a proclamation in which he called for republicanism to be dropped, in deference to public opinion, and for all patriots to unite and work for the preservation of the greatness of Islam and the independence of Iran.57 From the beginning the republican movement, although encouraged and organized by Riza Khan’s military and civilian supporters, had nonetheless struck a chord among much of the population. It had found especial favour with the intelligentsia but a general desire to rid the country of Ahmad Shah was widespread throughout the country. It was this genuinely popular dimension of the republican movement which allowed Riza Khan to present the proposed constitutional change as the authentic expression of the wishes of the people. Up till 17 March popular dislike of Ahmad Shah was the preponderant mood and public opinion, especially as represented in the press, was


broadly favourable towards the idea of a republic. The ulama were divided and largely silent, opposition muted and confined to a few individual clerics, and their supporters in the bazar indifferent. Mudarris alone had been vocal in opposition in the Majlis. Around that date, however, a complete revulsion of public feeling took place. The republican camp’s decision to force the change through by nawruz created unease while the assault on Mudarris caused outrage among both deputies and the public. The Tajaddud faction split up after the Mudarris incident and this was in itself a great blow to the republican movement. The press had also started to confuse the republic with religion, awakening fears that a republic would damage Islam, while news of the abolition of the caliphate by the new Turkish republic had reached Tehran in early March and formed a background for growing religious anxiety. The pro-republicans made a serious tactical mistake when they tried to close the bazars on 20 March, the day before nawruz, just at a time when merchants most expected to do good business, and the successful resistance to this attempt gave the anti-republican crowd a taste of its own strength. Even the prince regent managed to play a role helpful to his partisans. Although he was visited by deputations of notables and deputies who advised him to leave, and even hinted that his life might be in danger, he remained in his palace, thus providing the anti-republicans with an important rallying-point, of which they took good advantage. As opposition increased, the conflict took on a religious aspect and the Tehran clergy came out into the open as the leaders of the antirepublican movement. The slogans used by the anti-republicans brought the silent and half-hearted to their side, and the result was the development of a solid feeling amongst the masses of Tehran against a republican form of government.58 Riza Khan’s use of the army against the peaceful demonstrators in the Majlis on 22 March was another turning-point, his inability to retrieve the situation by any method other then armed force causing him to lose what remained of his support and his prestige. The fifth Majlis had opened with a solid republican majority. Had the deputies not been overawed by the vehemence of the anti-republican demonstrations in the capital, it is likely that they would have fulfilled Riza Khan’s expectations and brought about the proposed constitutional change.59 In the face of an overwhelmingly and actively hostile population, however, the majority changed their minds and retreated, taking refuge behind the fundamental law.60 Under intense popular pressure, the deputies accepted the view of the Tehran crowd that they were in fact debarred from tampering with the constitution, as they had not


been elected especially for that purpose, and only a specially convened constituent assembly had the power to introduce a republic. The ignominious collapse of the republican movement gravely damaged Riza Khan’s prestige and weakened his overall position in the Majlis, among the general population, and even in the army.61 Over the following months he was obliged to engage in a protracted and complex struggle, with both popular and elite opposition, before he succeeded, through the introduction of martial law in Tehran, in restoring his pre-eminence.

The Tehran crowd and martial law Although Riza Khan had formally abandoned republicanism, he remained in a political deadlock with his opponents. As he could now count on only about thirty votes in the Majlis and his ability to appeal directly to popular support in the capital had severely diminished, he decided to revert to the tactic of direct military intimidation. On 7 April he resigned and left Tehran for the country. The next day, 8 April, the Majlis received telegrams from all the provincial army commanders, some expressing regret at Riza Khan’s withdrawal and requesting the Majlis to bring him back, others more menacing.62 This resignation tactic was successful. The shocked deputies, under pressure from the Tajaddud and Socialist members, immediately passed a vote of confidence in Riza Khan and sent a deputation which successfully persuaded him to return and resume all his posts. Although his army had cowed the Majlis, Riza Khan’s position was still precarious and his enemies were determined to use the opportunity presented by the failure of republicanism to bring him down completely. His own closest supporters were, furthermore, disconcerted by the speed at which the republican movement had been abandoned and confused about the direction events were taking.63 Over the next few months the political situation in Tehran definitely seemed to be crystallizing in favour of the shah, even though he was still in Europe. In the capital, the decisive political arena, Riza Khan faced both parliamentary and popular hostility. Although the deputies had been intimidated by the threats of the army commanders, many remained resentful and angry, and were vocal in their criticisms in the Majlis of both the senior officers’ actions and of Riza Khan’s new cabinet, introduced after his reinstatement. The streets of the capital were also still firmly under the control of Riza Khan’s enemies. By June a considerable popular agitation had developed in Tehran for the


return of the shah.64 Although Ahmad Shah inspired little or no personal affection or respect, the opposition was anxious for his return as they hoped his constitutional position would act both as a rallying-point for their own forces and as a barrier to Riza Khan. A group of forty ulama telegraphed the shah, inviting him to return, and they seemed to have the backing of public opinion. The press reflected the changed mood, largely refraining from its former vituperation of the shah. Public criticism of Riza Khan, on the other hand, was becoming bolder and more outspoken, and it had actually become more dangerous to speak publicly in his favour than in favour of the shah.65 By early July the demand for Riza Khan’s resignation from the premiership showed no signs of weakening, press criticism continued unabated and he seemed in danger of an eclipse. Riza Khan had been trying, since April, to conciliate his opponents, using a range of political and financial inducements to regain both elite and popular support. He particularly needed to establish control of both the press and the street. For those not amenable to his conciliatory tactics, however, other methods were available. On 3 July, as the political crisis showed no signs of diminishing, Tehran was plunged into uproar by the murder by two police agents of Muhammad Riza (Mirzadah) Ishqi, the famous nationalist poet and editor of the newspaper, Qarn-i Bistun. Ishqi had supported Mudarris over the republic and his newspaper had since become highly critical of the regime.66 The murder gave rise to a widespread fear of the inauguration of a campaign of terror against critics of the regime, and the editors of hostile newspapers took sanctuary in the Majlis.67 Ishqi’s funeral was itself the occasion of another mass protest against the regime. At a time when Tehran had only about 150,000 inhabitants, it attracted 30,000 mourners, and speeches were made at which Riza Khan was denounced as a murderer and assassin and the oppressor of the people.68 The tension and ferment which had been caused by Ishqi’s murder continued unabated for several days until it was drowned, or perhaps channelled into, an outbreak of hostility towards the Bahai community.69 The stimulation of anti-Bahai feeling had been greatly helped by rumours of two supposed miracles. In one case a Bahai, who allegedly refused alms with some derogatory remarks about Islam, was blinded; in the other a pious Muslim was said to have recovered his sight by the aid of the water of a wayside fountain. News of both miracles spread like wildfire and the fountain acquired great fame and was visited every day by hundreds of people who had various ailments and hoped for a cure. Hostility towards the Bahais grew apace and for some days those suspected of being Bahais


were insulted and stoned in the streets, some Bahai shopkeepers had their shops looted, and demonstrations were made outside the houses of prominent Bahais.70 The anti-Bahai agitation was accompanied by a marked growth of popular hostility towards foreigners. It was generally believed in Tehran that the anti-Bahai agitation had a political origin, specifically that it had been instigated by Riza Khan himself to distract public attention from the murder of Ishqi.71 This was indeed the view of the US vice-consul in Tehran, Major Robert Imbrie, who personally observed the rioting. Major Imbrie’s interest in the conflict was intense. On 18 July, accompanied by another American, Melvin Seymour, he drove in a cab to the miraculous fountain in order to photograph the scene. The taking of photographs immediately angered the crowd, a section of which, at the instigation of a young mullah, took up the cry that the Americans were Bahais who had poisoned the water in the fountain. The crowd first severely beat Imbrie and his companion, then followed them into the hospital where they were taken by the police, murdering Imbrie while he was lying on the operating table.72 Whether this mob attack on Imbrie was actually organized by the regime, and if so whether Imbrie’s murder was fully intended or a consequence of events spinning out of control, or whether Riza Khan merely took advantage of the opportunity the murder provided, cannot be resolved definitively. Certainly it later transpired that the police had been under orders not to interfere in anti-Bahai disturbances and neither the police nor the military present at the assaults did anything to prevent them, indeed, some of the military participated in the attack.73 But what is clear is that the episode gave Riza Khan the perfect pretext to regain the political initiative. He immediately declared martial law, imposed a military censorship on the press and carried out mass arrests of his political opponents, particularly any, such as Khalisizadah and leaders of the city quarters, who had prestige and influence with the Tehran crowd.74 In all about 300 of his most outspoken critics were jailed and some were deported from Tehran. One of the main provisions of the martial law regulations was aimed at preventing free public assembly and the imposition of martial law in the capital allowed Riza Khan to suppress those popular urban elements which had been inclined to oppose the regime’s agenda. Their leaders, those to whom they looked to give authentic voice to their grievances, clerics such as Khalisizadah and newspaper editors such as Ishqi were silenced, either through arrest or murder. His control over the Tehran street established, Riza Khan was able from now on freely to mobilize a


friendly crowd, without fear that, as had happened during the republican agitation, this crowd would be overwhelmed by its opposite number. Although martial law had silenced the press and the Tehran streets, opposition continued in the Majlis. The imposition of martial law itself had been strongly opposed by the deputies, who had not been consulted prior to its declaration.75 Parliamentary critics of the government were still led by Mudarris, who particularly attacked martial law as contrary to the constitution. With his supporters, Mudarris decided to make another attempt to dislodge Riza Khan and announced he would present an interpellation76 in the Majlis on 19 August. However Mudarris quickly realized that he had no real chance of mustering a majority against Riza Khan and he tried to withdraw the scheduled interpellation.77 But Riza Khan, grasping the opportunity to deal his enemies in the Majlis as crushing a blow as he had dealt those on the streets, decided to insist on a vote on the interpellation on the date set. He wished to demonstrate clearly his parliamentary ascendancy, but he was also determined to stage a dramatic intimidation of any remaining parliamentary opposition by a populist coup de théâtre. Early on the morning of the 19th, at about 7 am, a large crowd of about 4,000 people assembled round the Majlis, although only a limited number were permitted by the soldiers on guard to enter the Majlis grounds. At 8 am Riza Khan arrived in his car. The crowds shouted to him that they were not allowed to enter, but, as if bowing to popular demand, he gave orders that they should be permitted to do so. It was immediately obvious that the crowd, which began to shout slogans in favour of Riza Khan and against Mudarris, consisted of supporters of Riza Khan and that this demonstration had been orchestrated beforehand.78 Inside the Majlis there were also well-organized displays of support for the government. These displays, however, rapidly degenerated into disorder and threatened to get out of hand. One disturbance after another erupted and at one point Riza Khan made a show of personally intervening in order to save Mudarris from a violent attack. These scenes continued unabated and at 12.30 the House decided to adjourn till later in the afternoon. Riza Khan left the Majlis amid the applause of the crowd outside, some of whom threw flowers at him. Mudarris left on foot but he and a few of his supporters were immediately set upon by gangs of roughs among the crowd. He was eventually rescued by the police only after receiving sufficient injuries to confine him to bed.79 When the Majlis reassembled at 5.30 in the afternoon the whole of the opposition was absent, whether as a deliberate protest or as the direct result of intimidation is unclear. Riza Khan was determined to press his advantage. He refused the


Speaker’s suggestion that the interpellation lapse as there was no one present to move it and demanded a vote of confidence. In the absence of those opposition members who had demanded a secret ballot, the vote was taken openly and the ninety-one members present unanimously recorded their confidence in Riza Khan.80 The murder of Major Imbrie and the subsequent imposition of martial law and a military censorship was a key-turning point in Riza Khan’s post-republican fortunes. From this time on, the press ceased to play any significant oppositional role and no longer gave voice or shape to popular grievances. These grievances were increasingly driven underground, emerging only through the secret circulation of anonymous shabnamahs. The Majlis too, especially after the interpellation fiasco, succumbed to intimidation and became more disciplined and docile, a tool of the regime rather than a sounding-board and mould of public opinion. Martial law remained in force in Tehran for the duration of the final contest between Riza Khan and the Qajars. However, even after its lifting in early 1926, neither the press nor the Majlis were capable of asserting their former independence.

The Tehran crowd and the overthrow of the Qajars Although Riza Khan had publicly abandoned the republican movement, his determination to get rid of Ahmad Shah was undiminished and the year 1925 was dominated by his struggle with the Qajars. His peaceful victory over the Shaykh of Muhammarah and his restoration to full Iranian sovereignty of the oil-rich province of Khuzistan at the end of 1924 delighted nationalist opinion and provided another opportunity for his supporters to stage-manage shows of public support. It seems that a plan was even devised to have Riza Khan taken to the palace and declared shah by popular acclaim, although Riza Khan himself believed this plan ill-advised and premature and scotched it.81 Having rejected the idea of using the groundswell of support for his Khuzistan success to propel himself onto the throne, nonetheless Riza Khan did indeed soon play the populist card against the Majlis. Some three weeks after his return he openly renewed his campaign against Ahmad Shah by demanding that the Majlis recognize him as commander-in-chief of the army, a position which constitutionally belonged to the shah. If the deputies failed to reach a decision, he would, he threatened, appeal over their heads directly to the people. The deputies, fearful and weakened by years of relentless intimidation, agreed to recognize his special claims to command of the armed forces, and made


him constitutionally answerable only to the Majlis, no longer to the shah.82 Riza Khan was now determined to force the issue with the shah. The dynasty’s remaining supporters were desperate for the shah to return while public opinion, already disillusioned with the Qajars, became increasingly exasperated. The crisis began to come to a head when the shah, on 16 September, telegraphed his intention to return to Iran and to sail from Marseilles on 2 October. This completely unexpected announcement created a sensation in Tehran. Its meaning was feverishly discussed but public opinion was baffled as to the shah’s real intentions. In the midst of the furore caused by the news of the shah’s decision to return, Tehran was convulsed by large-scale bread riots. In times both of actual shortage of staple foods, especially bread, and of fear of shortage, food riots were common and the authorities were everywhere extremely sensitive to popular feeling on this issue. However, it was in the capital that the consequences of bread shortages were potentially most dangerous for the authorities and, by September, anxiety and fear about winter supplies were affecting deeply the Tehran population, especially the poorer classes.83 In 1925 the harvest had failed catastrophically, especially in the neighbourhood of Tehran, owing to drought and locusts. Although warnings had been given much earlier in the year that there would be shortages, it was only in September that the scale of the disaster became generally known. The capital had immediately become tense. The cereal supply of the city totalled, when reduction had been made for seed, only 1,000 kharvars to meet a normal consumption of 80,000 kharvars.84 The surrounding areas could be of no help to the capital as the nearby towns were in a grave situation themselves. The memory of the terrible famine of 1918 was still very much alive and Tehran was now faced with a potentially even greater disaster. By the latter part of September the wheat situation was really critical. From Sunday 20 September the government grain department, on official instructions, issued to the bakers less wheat then usual, and on that day and on the three following days the bread put on sale was of bad quality and shortages occurred. These shortages heightened feelings of alarm in the city. The bread question had been the subject of several recent debates in the Majlis, and it was well known among the people that the government grain stock was low. On the morning of 23 September, after three days of shortages, a crowd collected in the bazar and decided to congregate in the Sipahsalar Mosque. Here they were addressed by the military governor of Tehran, General Murtaza Khan Yazdanpanah, who tried to persuade them to disperse by assuring them


that their complaints would be remedied at once. The crowd, estimated at several thousands and clamouring for bread, was unconvinced and decided to go to the Majlis to ask that some effective steps be taken to put the matter right before the arrival of winter worsened the situation further.85 Up to this point, the movement was a simple demonstration on the part of people who were acutely anxious about their winter supplies of food, and who believed that the shortage of supplies was simply and solely occasioned by a lack of grain. Now, however, the original crowd in the mosque was joined by far greater numbers, and speakers began to raise wider political objectives. The intention of the recent arrivals was made clear when a Majlis deputy, who had been prominent in the republican movement, made a speech telling the crowd that the government would make bread abundant if only they would proclaim that they did not wish for the present shah to be their ruler any more. This apparently angered the crowd, and the deputy was forced to flee to avoid being violently attacked.86 From then on, the situation deteriorated into chaos. Thugs began to force the merchants in the bazar to close up their shops under threats of various kinds, and there were demonstrations for and against the shah, and for and against the government. One crowd broke into the Majlis buildings, assaulted some of the deputies and did considerable damage, cheering the name of the shah and showing hostility to the government. Troops were called out, but the crowd dispersed without coming into conflict with them, having been mollified when the deputies in the Majlis promised them they would take effective steps to provide food for the people. In a gesture to public opinion, Riza Khan himself ordered a considerable amount of army transport to be sent out to fetch in grain which was already on its way to the capital. A remarkable feature of the riots was the role played by women. More than half the crowd was composed of women. It was they who invaded the Majlis session room where they put on a theatrical parody of a parliamentary sitting, and broke many chairs and glass chandeliers. Although the main body of the crowd dispersed, a number of these women remained in bast in the Majlis enclosure, although during the night they were forcibly removed to the police station.87 On the next day, Thursday, 24 September, there was plenty of bread in all the shops. The bazars, however, remained closed, and from early in the morning large crowds, drawn especially from the poorest quarters of the town, gathered in different parts of the bazars. As on the previous day, women again played a prominent role. They were in the forefront of


the crowd with their veils tied round their waists and brandishing sticks and other implements.88 The crowds were agitated by a number of rumours. These were principally to the effect that the government and its alleged sponsors, the British, were responsible for the shortages, and specifically that the government had taken no adequate steps to provide the people with bread; that the Russians had offered wheat but that the Iranian government had refused; that the British would not allow the Iranian government to accept the Russian offers; that there was bread to be had in the Soviet legation and that the people should go there to take bast; that some protest must be made against the outrageous action of the police in arresting Muslim women. These rumours contributed towards raising the temperature of the crowd which became very angry. One group began to march up towards the Majlis, whilst another large crowd made its way towards the Soviet legation. The crowd that marched towards the Majlis quickly drove back the police with stones and sticks, and only the arrival of soldiers saved the building from being sacked. The police had received orders not to treat the crowd too roughly, but when the crowd had inflicted injuries on many of the police and seemed in real earnest, the military were ordered to fire over the heads of the people, and even then hardly succeeded in stemming the rush. Little by little, however, the crowd was driven off and dispersed, and with the arrival of reinforcements, the army regained control of the situation.89 Meanwhile, the crowd going towards the Soviet legation, about 5,000 strong, had also had an encounter with the police and military, and though the main body had been driven back, individuals had succeeded in penetrating the legation garden, and by the evening there were around 120 people in bast there, loudly demanding the return of the shah. The Iranian government immediately asked the Soviet minister to evict the bastis but the minister replied that he was unable to act against the ancient custom of according refuge to those seeking it. The government accordingly placed military posts closely around the legation in order to arrest the bastis when they themselves decided to leave. The next day, Friday, the city was quiet and on Saturday the bazars opened as usual and except for some patrols of military in various quarters of the town, the disturbances appeared to be over. On Sunday the bastis began to leave the Soviet legation but were immediately arrested. By the next day the legation too was quiet. Although the bread shortage had been acute, and the population of the city genuinely deeply concerned at the real prospect of famine, it seems clear that the riots themselves had been deliberately provoked


by Riza Khan to work up an anti-shah demonstration and to frighten the shah into abandoning his recently announced plan to return to Iran.90 Riza Khan seems to have calculated that he could manipulate the popular anxiety over bread to start a general anti-shah movement in the capital. The government apparently deliberately ordered that the bread supply should be curtailed in order to heighten popular anxiety, and its own agents then encouraged people to gather in crowds, and to close the bazars, for the purpose of a demonstration. These agents then tried to direct the demonstrations into channels suitable to Riza Khan’s purpose and turn a protest against the shortage of bread into an antishah demonstration. But the crowd refused to be led into any expression of anti-shah sentiment, on the contrary, the shah had rarely received as much approbation as he did during these riots, while it was Riza Khan who came in for abuse. Riza Khan’s agents then completely lost control of the crowd, which appears to have reacted to the instigation of other political tendencies, leftist but especially royalist, which had also been active among them.91 Riza Khan had made money freely available beforehand to buy support for an anti-shah demonstration but apparently the funds were embezzled, and in consequence the ground was not well prepared. The plans then miscarried badly, and the demonstration turned against the organizers and assumed a violent anti-government and pro-shah complexion. The attitude of the crowd annoyed and alarmed Riza Khan and the government was then forced to take drastic steps to quell the disturbances. Riza Khan appears to have taken fright after the first day’s events and ensured that there was plenty of bread available by the second day but events had already moved beyond his control. Indeed, for the rest of that winter, although the grain situation in Tehran remained critical, the government took every precaution to alleviate popular anxiety and prevent further disturbances. The military authorities, for example, scoured the villages of Azarbayjan for grain to transport to the capital while the government spent large amounts of money to hold the price stable.92 The bread riots had intervened before the shah’s date of sailing and 2 October passed without the shah using the passage he had booked. On 4 October the bazars in Tabriz were closed as a protest against the shah’s return. Tents were pitched in the compound of the telegraph office in a bast and a stream of messages and petitions was sent to the capital. This agitation against the shah and the whole Qajar dynasty, which had begun in Tabriz, then spread rapidly to many other provincial cities. It seems that Riza Khan, when letting loose the disorders in Tehran on 23 September, had contemplated an anti-shah movement starting in the


capital and spreading to the provinces but, his provocation backfiring, decided to reverse the process and make the movement start in the provinces and converge on the capital.93 The republican movement had been particularly strong in Tabriz and now a very active anti-shah campaign was quickly re-ignited. A Committee of National Awakening was formed which, although it received definite encouragement from the military authorities, contained representatives from all sections of the population of the city and reflected an authentic current of opinion. The Tabrizis, consciously recalling their struggle against the royalist forces of Muhammad Ali Shah during the constitutional wars, now actively assumed the leadership of the antiQajar movement.94 In response to appeals from Tabriz, committees similar to its own sprang up in many provincial cities and towns, and each swore to follow the lead that Tabriz should give. The Majlis was bombarded with telegrams from all over the country demanding the dethronement of the shah. These tactics were successful. The anti-Qajar movement spread rapidly and the impression soon appeared of an irresistible demand throughout the country for the removal of the Qajars and their replacement by a Pahlavi dynasty. Although the Tabriz committee represented an authentic popular movement, elsewhere a great deal of skilful engineering by Riza Khan’s civilian and especially his military supporters had gone into creating this impression. Nonetheless contempt for Ahmad Shah was such that the desire on the part of public opinion for the removal of the Qajars was largely genuine, although artificial regarding the installation of a Pahlavi dynasty, except in so far as the maintenance of some form of monarchy corresponded with the general desire to remain within the constitutional framework.95 Tehran, however, remained aloof. There were some efforts to mobilize the capital’s population against the shah but these met with little success. With local leaders arrested, the press silenced and martial law still in force, there was also little overt protest. Meanwhile the provinces, with Tabriz in the lead, were bitterly complaining of the inaction of the Majlis in dealing with the situation and of its inattention to the demand for the removal of the Qajars. Messages from the Tabriz Committee of National Awakening to Tehran were gradually becoming more threatening and finally, on 28 October, professing exasperation at the inaction of the Majlis and its failure to comply with the wishes of the nation, the Committee sent an ultimatum to Tehran announcing that it intended to sever connections with the capital and raise an army of volunteers to march on to Tehran and punish the cowardly deputies who refused to listen to the people.


Although the Tehran population itself was quiet, the Tabrizi movement was reinforced in Tehran in several ways. On 28 October and subsequent days, Azarbayjanis resident in Tehran took bast with Riza Khan as a protest against the inaction of the Majlis in what they called the “national crisis”. By the evening of the 30th this movement, which was headed by some influential merchants, had reached considerable proportions.96 On the evening of the 29th, while the Majlis was discussing the political situation, shots rang out in an assassination attempt, organized by the chief of police, on the opposition deputy, Muhammad Taqi Bahar.97 This incident was intended to terrorize any remaining critics and indeed all the deputies, who feared the regime’s resort to open and systematic violence, immediately fled the Majlis.98 On 31 October the Majlis, in fear of the regime and under intense pressure from the provincial agitation, voted for the abolition of the Qajar dynasty and the establishment of a provisional government, with Riza Khan at its head, pending the decisions of a constituent assembly. Riza Khan appears to have learnt well the lesson of the republican fiasco and there was, on this occasion, no attempt to railroad constitutional change through the Majlis. Rather the constitutional niceties were fully observed with the call for the convening of a constituent assembly to make the necessary decisions. The docility of the deputies had further been ensured by Riza Khan’s preparations in cultivating individual politicians and he had also, earlier in the year, neutralized certain of the most prominent right-wing defenders of the Qajar dynasty in the Majlis by taking them into the cabinet.99 The deputies, facing no popular anger nor mass protests in Tehran of the kind that had persuaded them to abandon the republic, but only intense and even threatening anti-Qajar demands from the provinces, especially Azarbayjan, now voted obediently, and almost unanimously, as the regime required.100 The role played by the Tabrizis had indeed been pivotal and they were overjoyed at their success, believing themselves to have recovered their former position as the leaders of progressive public opinion in Iran.101 Elsewhere, despite the popular clamour which had apparently preceded the decision, the news of the Majlis decision was received calmly and with acquiescence though mostly also without enthusiasm. In Tehran, however, the population, although denied the streets, made its feelings clear in the elections to the Majlis the following year when they refused to return a single deputy who had voted for the change of dynasty.102


Conclusion In the first years after the coup of 1921, the Tehran crowd was an active political force in the life of the capital, popular protests taking place over myriad minor and local grievances as well as over issues of wider nationalist and religious significance. But it was in the political and constitutional battles of 1924–1925 that the Tehran crowd became a factor of central and sometimes decisive importance. The struggle over republicanism, for example, was decided not in the Majlis nor in the madrasahs of Qum but on the streets of the capital. Although it was the Majlis deputies who actually took the decision not to introduce the change, they did so only because the pressure from below was stronger than the pressure from above. The actual political victory belonged to the anti-republican Tehran crowd led by Mudarris and acting in defence of the constitution. It was again crowd action, but this time probably stimulated by the regime, which led to the murder of Imbrie and created the political conditions which enabled Riza Khan to declare martial law and thus finally to crush his critics’ ability themselves to use the weapon of popular protest. The bread riots of 1925 proved to Riza Khan the necessity of going beyond Tehran to use provincial crowds, especially that in Tabriz, to force the capital, both the population and the national political institutions, to accept the change of dynasty. In the first half of the 1920s both the regime and its opponents repeatedly invoked the Tehran “street” and attempted to force through, or resist, political and constitutional changes on the back of popular disturbances. Riza Khan, relying on the army and a certain amount of elite support, with the occasional resort to intimidation, at first largely eschewed direct populist appeals. In 1924–1925, however, he and his supporters in the capital, imitated by the military authorities in the provinces, repeatedly attempted to produce and utilize public disturbances to provide an appearance of legitimacy for their actions, to intimidate opponents, and to force through legislation of doubtful popularity. Although, in the first years of his power, Riza Khan had neither sought to mobilize the urban crowd nor experienced its power when pitted against him, yet he had frequently had occasion to observe its political power and especially its value in conferring a degree of popular legitimacy.103 In 1924–1925, during the mortal struggle inaugurated by the republican movement and culminating in the change of dynasty, Riza Khan translated the lessons drawn from this


early experience into a new strategy. In these years a populist dimension to Riza Khan’s methods may clearly be discerned. While strangling democratic institutions, intimidating the Majlis, frustrating parliamentary opposition and curbing the press, Riza Khan nonetheless used every opportunity, both by stimulating mass action and by stressing in statements the primacy of the wishes of the people, to provide his accumulation of power with a veneer of legitimacy and popular consent. His agenda for radical constitutional change, first a republic then a change of dynasty, required some form of political backing and legitimacy. Lacking any political party, he resorted directly to the Tehran crowd, a tactic he adopted, and threatened to adopt, repeatedly in his struggle with Ahmad Shah. Furthermore, although usually portrayed as inherently cautious, a political realist and pragmatist, here Riza Khan, with his determination to choreograph the Tehran crowd, appears rather as a reckless gambler with a penchant for the coup de théâtre, nowhere betraying the typical bourgeois fear of the mob.104 For Riza Khan, however, the Tehran crowd repeatedly proved itself to be a double-edged sword. As a political force it was unreliable and uncontrollable, as were the consequences of its actions. For the authorities, the decision to mobilize a crowd always involved major risks. A particular danger was represented by the fact that Riza Khan’s opponents, particularly the ulama, with their stronger and more intimate links to the urban population, and their networks of support within the bazar and among the guilds, were much more adept than the regime at mobilizing crowds. The appearance of any pro-regime crowd was always likely to risk provoking the arrival of a larger and more powerful opposing crowd, often with the aura, in popular eyes, of greater legitimacy. The republican fiasco provided an object lesson in such dangers. Again, there was always a risk that a crowd summoned by the regime might simply turn against its sponsors, as happened so dramatically during the 1925 bread riots. The 1925 bread riots were the last appearance of the Tehran crowd on the political stage during Riza Shah’s rule. These riots, plus its refusal to be mobilized in support of the change of dynasty, seem to have convinced him of its incorrigible hostility. But, more importantly, Riza Khan ceased to have any use for such a political weapon. With the stabilization of the new dynasty, his struggle with his political enemies in the capital was largely over and his position secure. With the Majlis reduced to docility and the critical press to silence, Riza Khan needed no longer to mobilize crowds in support of his objectives, but rather only to prevent manifestations of popular protest. After 1926 the army,


and especially the new police force, were to be exclusively the instruments for the imposition and defence of the new order in Tehran. Even when the provincial cities were wracked by mass protests, in Isfahan and Shiraz in 1927 over conscription, in Tabriz in 1928 over both conscription and clothing reform, and in Mashhad in 1935 over the “European” hat, the capital remained quiescent. It was not till after the abdication of Riza Shah in 1941 that the Tehran crowd regained life and voice.


Part II

The New Order and its Opponents


5 Reform from Above and Resistance from Below, 1927–1929

1927–1929 was a period of extraordinary legislative radicalism in Iran. These three years saw the introduction and determined enforcement of the key measures which came to symbolize the era. These measures included census registration and conscription, the reorganization of the judicial system along secular lines, the launch of the policy of nomadic settlement, the beginning of the trans-Iranian railway, the abolition of capitulations, the passing of the Uniform Dress law and effective legislation for the registration of title deeds to landed property and real estate, and the introduction of étatiste economic measures, including the opium and tobacco monopolies. This major reform drive coincided with the ascendancy of the shah’s principal lieutenants, Ali Akbar Davar, Prince Firuz, and particularly Abd al-Husayn Taymurtash.1 Riza Shah’s programme was essentially that formulated by the intelligentsia of the constitutional period, and was popular with the nationalist elite. However, when imposed upon the population at large it was neither received passively, nor opposed blindly, the arrival of the new order rather evoking complex and multi-faceted responses from different layers and sectors of Iranian society. Whereas the restoration of relative order and stability in the first half of the decade had been widely welcomed, as the regime embarked on a more radical phase of modernization, especially during the years 1927–1929, substantial social groups, especially subaltern groups, resorted to strategies of avoidance, opposition and sometimes resistance. The measures which made up the accelerated reform drive of 1927–1929 were central elements of the nationalist drive to create a strong state capable of governing a modern and homogeneous society. Yet wherever they were imposed they were experienced by the general population as highly oppressive. The fiscal and military reforms 161


weighed especially heavily, the draining of money and manpower from the provinces resulting in few reciprocal social, infrastructural or educational benefits. Opposition to the new state’s agenda accordingly erupted at intervals over the years 1927–1929 throughout the provinces, in various towns and cities, and among different rural groups. It was led, in general, by middle-ranking clerics and the guilds in the urban centres and by junior tribal khans and aghas in the countryside. The first half of the 1920s had been essentially a period of power struggle within the elite, the political changes of these years possessing little social content. However, once the outstanding constitutional and political issues had been resolved in favour of the establishment of a military-monarchical dictatorship, the regime was able to embark on a programme of far-reaching and profound modernization. The driving force behind this programme was the triumvirate of Teymurtash, Davar and Firuz and between 1927 and 1929 the new state was at its most dynamic and confident. In many of its individual reform measures, as well as in its overall direction, the new regime was giving effect to long-standing demands of Iranian constitutionalism, and it accumulated much nationalist support on that account, the activism of the new state contrasting sharply with the passivity and helplessness of its Qajar predecessor. However, the increasingly dictatorial character of the regime had a profound effect on the manner in which it implemented its reform agenda. Preferring rapid and radical change imposed by force and from above over a slower pace of change encumbered by any democratic process, the regime’s key personnel developed a commandist approach. Heavily influenced by the martial temper of Riza Shah himself, they sought to impose their will across vast geographical areas and intricate social contexts by diktat, backed up by the threat of military intervention. These methods produced in civilian officials, and especially in army officers, a tendency to underestimate, and sometimes even deliberately to minimize, the complexities and difficulties of their task, and often provoked and aggravated opposition as much or more than the reforms themselves. The legislation of the second half of the 1920s affected directly and profoundly the lives and daily experience of wide layers of the population. Informed by the nationalist elite’s overall objective of incubating a society Europeanized in appearance and modern in social and cultural mores, the innovations of these years were often devastating in their impact on non-metropolitan, non-elite groups, and tended actually to worsen the lot of the poor and to increase the gulf between the elite and the rest of the population. Conscription, for example, a long-

Reform from Above and Resistance from Below, 1927–1929 163

standing demand of the constitutionalist intelligentsia, was enforced initially and primarily on the poor, the better-off easily able to purchase exemption. The dress laws were welcomed by the educated, modern elites in the cities, who were in any case in the process of adopting western fashions, but were anathema to provincial clerical and tribal elements, who felt their role and identity undermined, and to the poor everywhere, who found the new sartorial requirements beyond their means and who lacked any cultural understanding of the new styles of clothing. The new secular law courts, which European states found so appealing, were in reality more expensive, less accessible and less familiar to the mass of the population than the old judicial system administered by the ulama or the governor in the cities and by the khans for the tribal populations.2 The legislation providing for the registration of land and property benefited landlords and khans, who were able to register in their names land to which their title was dubious;3 the introduction of state monopolies on crops such as opium hit hard the peasant cultivators and also the large numbers of small shopkeepers and peddlers who depended on trading in opium sap;4 and tribal disarmament and settlement, although unopposed by the great khans who were already being absorbed into the urban elite, threatened the foundation of the nomadic and semi-nomadic way of life. Popular opposition, and then resistance, to the imposition of these dramatic changes first erupted in an urban context although Tehran, where the state’s new mechanisms of control, the police and the army, were most effective, saw only brief episodes of protest. The cities and towns of the provinces, however, were the sites of major confrontations between local populations and the representatives of the modernizing state. The succession of challenges offered to the new regime’s radical reform agenda began in the provincial urban centres of the south. In the latter part of 1927 the towns of southern Iran, especially Isfahan and Shiraz, were gripped by a mass movement of opposition to conscription. The following year Tabriz manifested profound and violent hostility to both conscription and the clothing reforms. Finally, in 1929, with government authority barely intact in the provincial towns, a succession of tribal and peasant revolts broke out. One by one, the rural areas of western, southern, south-central and south-eastern Iran erupted into rebellion. The most prolonged and serious of these rebellions were those in Fars and Isfahan, among the Qashqai, the Khamsah and the Bakhtiyari, the south almost slipping out of government control altogether. But, although for the duration of the uprisings only a shadow of Tehran’s authority remained, even in the cities of Isfahan and Shiraz, and although the tribes were able


to wrest temporary concessions from the government, they, like the urban opposition which had preceded them, failed to arrest the longterm centralizing drive of the regime.

The new order: notables, ulama and the provincial towns In the early 1920s the notables of the southern towns, especially the merchants, had welcomed the establishment of order and security, the army’s control of the roads allowing trade and commercial activity to flourish. By 1927, however, these provincial middle classes had begun to harbour doubts about the new regime in Tehran. They were concerned at the increasingly étatiste direction of state economic policy, and at wider processes of centralization which augured the marginalization of the provincial towns and their own loss of local power and influence. They resented the ever-higher levels of taxation which were demanded from them, and the draining of resources from their own towns to satisfy the apparently insatiable demands of the military budget and the trans-Iranian railway. They had been unenthusiastic about the change of dynasty and found the omnipresent provincial military authorities oppressive and brutal. They particularly disliked the interference of the interior ministry and the army in the Majlis elections and were also deeply affected by the burgeoning apprehension of their traditional allies, the ulama.5 The guilds had been specifically antagonized by the abolition in 1926 of the guild tax whereby the state removed from the guild elders the power of determining how much each member paid in taxes. This measure had apparently been purposely designed to sap the control of the craft and trade masters over their apprentices, artisans, journeymen and labourers, and struck a severe blow at guild organization.6 Many members of the ulama had, like the merchants, welcomed Riza Khan’s coming to power, seeing in him a source of salvation for Iran and for Islam. Between Riza Khan’s becoming prime minister in 1923 and his accession to the throne in 1925, they had, in general, been willing to cooperate with the new regime, a willingness especially evinced by leading clerics such as Shaykh Abd al-Karim Hairi Yazdi in Qum and the maraji‘-yi taqlid resident in Najaf. The Tehran ulama, however, had been permanently alienated by the 1924 republican movement and the subsequent treatment of their principal spokesman, Sayyid Hasan Mudarris and, by 1927, many of especially the lower-ranking ulama throughout the country were aware that the balance of power between themselves and the regime was about to alter decisively to their detriment. Although


on the defensive, they were angry at the reorganization and secularization of Iran’s judicial system which was pushed through during 1927 and which threatened their role, status and income, and which deprived altogether large numbers of minor clerics of their livelihoods. They disliked the cabinet’s decision in early August to make the “Pahlavi hat”, similar to the French képi, the official headgear for Iranian men, perceiving it to symbolize rapid and profound cultural secularization.7 They had been made anxious and fearful by the rise of Abd al-Husayn Taymurtash, the shah’s new minister of court and a strong advocate of modernization, whom they believed had particularly influenced the shah against them. They had been especially provoked in August 1927 by the formation, by Taymurtash and other leading secularizers, of the Iran-i Naw (New Iran) Party, from membership of which anyone not wearing the Pahlavi hat was expressly debarred, a provision aimed at themselves. They also shared the cynicism and anger widely felt by the general population at the authorities’ manipulation of the elections to the sixth Majlis. At the beginning of the 1920s, the relationship between the Tehran government and the provincial cities had been relatively easy and harmonious. Provincial elites had no hesitation in voicing their complaints to Tehran and expected, and received, redress. Examples are extremely numerous but often have much the same character. The two cases of Rasht and Qazvin described below may be taken as typical. In December 1921 some leading personalities of Rasht made a strong protest, in writing, to the governor of Gilan, criticizing his behaviour, particular his propensity for taking bribes. The protest specifically accused the governor of acting contrary to his instructions from Riza Khan, and threatened to report him to Tehran, with a public demand for a change in the governorship, if he did not cease his demands for money. As the governor apparently continued with his extortion and acceptance of bribes, merchants and others in the province duly addressed further complaints to the government in Tehran. By the end of February these complaints had led to the governor’s removal. In 1921–1922 the town of Qazvin was the scene of more or less continuous discontent with the new provincial regime established after the February coup. At the beginning of July 1921, on the day the fourth Majlis opened, shabnamahs were posted up in the town criticizing the Majlis for being under British control and complaining about the conduct of the elections. The military governor of Qazvin, General Khudayar Khan Khudayari, was a particular target of popular hostility. When, the following January, demonstrations took place against landlords in the town who were demanding exorbitant


rents, Khudayari ordered the arrest of one of the leaders of the protest. Although this man had taken bast in the telegraph office, he was arrested there by the troops, Khudayari issuing a warning that he would deal severely with any further disturbances of the peace. Nonetheless, shortly after, the local population, refusing to be intimidated, protested about Khudayari to the Tehran government and the following week Riza Khan, bowing to popular pressure, recalled the general. The people of Qazvin, however, were not reconciled to the provincial government. On 5 May notices were placarded in the town, harshly critical of the new governor and other officials, and on 20 May, a telegram was signed by 200 inhabitants of the town protesting about the Swedish chief of police. As well as functioning as a mechanism for articulating genuine popular grievances, collective protests in provincial towns and cities were often also a weapon in local factional struggles or a tool in the strategies of powerful individuals. Even a figure such as the Kurdish tribal leader Ismail Agha Simko was attuned to the utility of appearing to have public backing for his demands. In August 1921 Simko, apparently alarmed at the preparations being made by the army to attack him, prevailed on the inhabitants of Urumiyyah to send a messenger to the governor-general at Tabriz asking that the troops might be dispersed and the dispute settled by peaceful negotiations. A similar example comes from the same period in Astarabad where the governor secretly instigated an attack on a caravan. He then summoned all the local officials, merchants and mullahs and made them telegraph a protest to the prime minister asking for the reinstatement of the governor’s own, recently dismissed, road-guards. In towns and cities throughout Iran at the beginning of the Pahlavi era, collective public protests by local elites, merchants, notables and clerics, the most respectable and conservative elements of provincial society, were endemic, mechanisms typically not for challenging, but for maintaining the political status quo and for contributing to the integration of Tehran with the rest of the country. In the early 1920s, such protests were indicative of no essential hostility to the higher authorities, but were simply recognized and long-standing methods of making local voices heard and representing sectional interests. As the new state strengthened its grip, however, and asserted its authoritarian and centralizing agenda, local protests tended to become more indicative of an emerging underlying struggle between the new order and its opponents. Furthermore, as the new state successfully established itself, the richer and more conservative elements within the local elites tended to bend to its will. Popular protests accordingly often took on a more plebeian character,


with leadership passing to distinctly subaltern figures, provoking from the authorities a greater propensity towards violence.

The new order: local elites, local subalterns Each outbreak of conflict between the new order and its opponents, therefore, also contained, either implicitly or overtly, a struggle for leadership within oppositional coalitions, between old elites and more subaltern elements. Indeed, in 1920s Iran, the cities and towns also saw many mass protests and riots which, rather than indicating hostility towards the new state, were in fact wholly driven by conflicts between the old provincial elites themselves and their local plebeian counterparts. Food riots, for example, erupted in towns and villages in times of scarcity and in any case were an ever-present threat of which the authorities were keenly aware. Struggles within the guilds, between masters and journeymen, produced demonstrations and protests from both sides, particularly in the conditions of super-exploitation prevailing in the carpet industry in Kirman. The Majlis elections were also a focus for popular discontent. In keeping with the growing political awareness among wider layers of the population, and the deepening demand for political representation, Majlis election campaigns became the occasions for protracted, multi-sided struggles, between the Tehran authorities, local elites, and the broader urban populations. The fifth and sixth Majlis elections, in 1923 and 1926, produced a number of sometimes violent conflicts, before the growing power of the new state robbed the electoral process of any real democratic content. The elections to the fifth Majlis which took place in Shiraz during the summer of 1923, for example, were the site of a prolonged struggle which culminated in a serious riot and the burning of the ballot box in an attempt to frustrate a process which was popularly seen as corrupt and fraudulent.8 This election produced a bitter struggle for votes which represented a deeper tussle for power in the city between distinct social groups. On one side stood the urban middle and lower classes who had formed the backbone of the constitutional movement since its inception, and who were expressing their politics in increasingly ideological terms. Prominent among this group were the local intelligentsia, schoolmasters, newspaper journalists, minor government employees, and also lower-ranking clerics. On the other side stood the local elite, the big landowners, the tribal khans and, at its apex, the governor-general, the Qajar prince, Sarim al-Dawlah. The struggle for power between these two groups took place against the background of a


serious economic depression in Fars and it was the discontented and impoverished urban population which provided the constituency for the agitation and unrest which were marked features of Shiraz politics in this period. At the beginning of the campaigning in Shiraz, Sarim al-Dawlah and his local ally, the landowner and tribal chief, Qavam al-Mulk, made their attitude clear. Openly alarmed at the prospect of Democrat candidates being elected by politically-organized voting, Sarim al-Dawlah declared his determination to ensure the return of the sitting deputies, whom he considered reliable, and the prevention of the election of any of the more radical candidates, even were people to vote for them. Local landowners, notables and tribal khans had exercised a very close control over previous elections and clearly resented, and were unwilling to accept, any erosion of their traditional prerogatives. In the most recent elections in the province, in 1919, the then governorgeneral, Abd al-Husayn Mirza Farmanfarma, had simply nominated the deputies, dispensing with the pretence of having an election throughout the provincial districts. Now, however, the townspeople of Shiraz, in the changed political environment of the early 1920s and with a rapidly developing political awareness, were less ready to tolerate the electoral manipulations of the old elite. Wider public opinion in Shiraz, organized by the many Democrat clubs and associations and articulated by an aggressive local press, took a view diametrically opposed to that of Sarim al-Dawlah and Qavam al-Mulk. As soon as the campaign began, the Shiraz press denounced the sitting Majlis as a packed assembly, not representative of the nation and elected in circumstances when British influence was dominant. Public opinion in the city was intensely critical of the manipulations by local notables of previous elections and greeted the new election with enthusiasm, seeing it as an opportunity to rid themselves of the nominees of the notables and for the leading local Democrats (an appellation surviving from the constitutional period) to sweep the board. A large number of local men of modest means, typically minor government officials or schoolteachers, immediately announced their intention to stand and, by the beginning of July the names of more than 400 candidates had appeared on the ballot papers for the five seats allotted to Shiraz. Thus the stage was set in Shiraz for a contest between the landowning elite and the reforming urban intelligentsia. However, the latter were dealt their first blow when the Committee of Returning Officers, itself appointed by Sarim al-Dawlah, received the allocation of votes to the


various districts of Fars and it became clear that the townspeople of Shiraz would be heavily out-voted by the villagers and tribesmen of the districts. In the absence of a census, the interior ministry had only a vague idea of the actual population distribution and of the eligible voters and ballot papers were issued for towns and districts on estimates provided by the provincial authorities, in the case of Fars by Sarim al-Dawlah himself. As a result, the allotment of votes was clearly unbalanced and unrepresentative of the actual distribution of the electorate. At this point, the conflict became more complex. Firstly, the control which the governor-general and Qavam were attempting to exert over the election was challenged from within the local elite in early May, by Sawlat al-Dawlah Qashqai, an old rival of Qavam. Fearing that he was being excluded from the apportionment of patronage, and aiming at his own election with nationalist support, Sawlat protested strongly at the way in which Sarim and Qavam were manipulating the election. An even more serious complication arose when, early in June, the governor-general refused to accept onto the ballot paper a candidate favoured by the ministry of war but of whom he himself did not approve. This was a fatal decision, and turned the army command decisively against the elections. The publication of the first results of the voting produced an outburst of intense indignation in Shiraz, expressed especially strongly by the newspapers, against the conduct of the elections. The attack was directed primarily against the “influentials”, the owners of large estates and districts, who were accused of making an illiterate peasantry vote as they dictated, and thus swamping and deliberately frustrating the Democrats and nationalists of Shiraz itself in their bid for political power. The governor-general and Qavam were particular targets of popular outrage. Rumours had begun to circulate in the town about how, in similar circumstances, the ballot box had been burnt at Mashhad, and several Democrat leaders now openly advocated any means to frustrate the election and get it annulled. The candidates, who had counted the voters they had brought to the polls and then found the number of votes taken out of the ballot box by the Committee of Returning Officers far fewer, openly alleged that the authorities and the Committee were tampering with and substituting voting papers in order to secure the return of their favoured candidates. The clergy added their voices to the protests, a Shirazi mujtahid openly denouncing the conduct of the elections to Sarim al-Dawlah’s face. Finally, at the beginning of July, a crowd of Shirazis poured petrol on the ballot box and burnt the voting papers. The soldiers and police


on guard in the municipality did nothing to stop them or prevent their escape, and even assisted one of the arsonists whose clothes had been set on fire by the petrol. The governor-general was incensed at the frustration of his many months of work aimed at securing the election of his own candidates and was especially furious at the military commandant, whom he publicly accused of inspiring and abetting the burning of the ballot papers in revenge for the rejection of his candidate. He demanded the support of Tehran against the military commandant, in favour of the validity of the election (less the votes burnt), and the punishment of those guilty of burning the papers. No such support was forthcoming, new elections were arranged, and Sarim al-Dawah resigned and quit the province.

Opposition to the new order in the southern cities In 1923 the germinating discontent in the provincial cities found its first open expression when Isfahan became the site of a significant urban protest directed specifically at the new regime and its policies, in this case new regulations for the manufacture and sale of opium. Since the late nineteenth century opium production in Iran had increased exponentially and had assumed both great domestic and international economic and political significance.9 By 1880 the opium poppy had already become a major cash crop in southern Iran, especially in Isfahan, Kirman and Fars, and members of the local elite, merchants and landowners, including clerical landowners, were making fortunes from the profits of opium exports. Since the constitutional period the Iranian government had put forward sporadic proposals to control opium production, partly for revenue purposes and partly in response to growing international pressure. The proposals of the League of Nations to control and eventually eradicate the export of opium were well-known across southern Iran and had become a general grievance, being widely viewed as an attempt by the West to deprive the region of its one valuable commodity. Popular anxiety about government legislation was especially real in Isfahan where it was feared that the limitation of cultivation might mean the disappearance of the district from the commercial map. Although such fears were growing, nonetheless, at the same time the trade was booming, vast areas of land newly turned over to poppy cultivation, owing to the huge profits that might be made. In 1923 the new American Financial Adviser, Dr Arthur Millspaugh, made the first determined effort to centralize and establish government


control over the opium business, beginning with the collection of the opium tax, and immediately produced a crisis in the town of Isfahan. Hundreds of merchants and landowners engaged in poppy cultivation, led by Ayatullah Haj Aqa Nurullah Isfahani, took bast in the telegraph office and wired protests to the government, and peasants either came into the town, or were brought, to protest. Riots took place in the streets, troops had to be called out to disperse the crowds and a number of demonstrators were shot by the military, including five peasants killed.10 The uproar was only quelled after the city had been placed under martial law and the leading landowners and merchants forced to leave. Over the next few years the southern cities continued to see minor and sporadic outbreaks of opposition to one or other of the government’s policies. But it was the imposition of conscription which finally fused the disparate elements of discontent at the intensifying impact of the new order into a concerted movement of resistance. This movement was centred on Isfahan and Shiraz, began at the beginning of October 1927 and continued until the end of December, and was led by the ulama, fully supported by the bazars and especially the guilds of both towns. During the passage of the conscription bill through the Majlis, between 1923 and 1925, clerical deputies had put up little opposition, religious disquiet having been neutralized by a concession granting exemption to all religious students.11 Nonetheless underlying clerical dislike of the secularizing impact of military service was increasingly apparent, and there was particular concern over the fact that the new law gave to the state the power to decide who, among the broad ranks of those engaged in religious study and activity, was entitled to exemption. By 1927, conscription for the ulama had become an issue of central importance and one enmeshed in a web of hostility to the central government and the shah. Conscription was also, however, an issue of central importance to the regime. Universal military service had been an integral element of Iranian programmes of defensive modernization since the early nineteenth century and, for the nationalist ideologues of the early twentieth century, the construction of a strong national army, based on conscription, was an essential element of state-building and nationformation. For Riza Shah, the new army was at the heart of Iran’s regeneration and he was determined to expand radically the human resources on which the military might draw. Not only would conscription enable the shah to realize his objective of an army numbering 100,000 men under arms, but it would, according to its supporters,


bring with it a number of other benefits. The act specifically stated that conscription would give the Iranian army a national character and would give all families in the country an interest in defending their nation and its independence, would result in an increase of patriotic sentiments among the Iranian people, mutual good feeling between various classes and the creation of feelings of equality and would embody the virtues of the avoidance of discrimination and the equality of all before the law.12 For Riza Khan’s supporters among the nationalist intellectuals of the Revival and Socialist parties, most clearly represented by the veteran constitutionalist, Hasan Taqizadah, the construction of an army based on conscription was an essential step in both the achievement and defence of national sovereignty and in the creation and inculcation of national identity. Yet it immediately became clear that the enthusiasm of sophisticated, politically conscious urban leaders was not altogether shared by their peasant constituencies.13 In keeping with the views of nationalist ideologues and the general tenor of the Conscription act, the government had refused to make any concession to the ulama’s dislike, expressed by Mudarris, of the extension of military service to Iran’s nonMuslim minorities. The Zoroastrian Majlis deputy, Arbab Kaykhusraw, made a spirited defence of his community’s right and desire to share equally in the burdens as well as the privileges of citizenship, but in January 1925 the Christians of Urumiyyah were reported to be much disturbed by the government’s intention to impose conscription on them and to have decided to emigrate if this were indeed the case.14 Military service in general had demonstrated itself to be widely and deeply unpopular. In the early 1920s the army had made the first serious attempt to enforce the old agriculturally-based bunichah system of recruiting, inherited from the previous century, in southern Iran, an area traditionally exempt.15 This attempt led to turmoil in the countryside, causing panic in the villages and constituting a rich source of bribes for recruiting officers.16 Some villages in Kirman province were entirely deserted and the army was obliged to abandon temporarily its efforts due to the general uproar. Matters did not improve. During 1924 landowners were harried by the military authorities to provide recruits from among their peasants and, so intense did this pressure become that, in August, a group of these landowners threatened to take bast (sanctuary) in the British consulate in protest.17 After the passage of the Conscription act through the Majlis in 1925, the ministry of war had begun to apply the law in Tehran and its environs, where government control was more complete and the army more


reliable, as it had immediately become apparent that considerable popular opposition to the measure existed throughout the country. Yet even in Tehran, the initial work of the recruiting commission had produced hostile demonstrations and rumours were gaining currency within the army itself that the ulama of the Shi‘i shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala had pronounced against conscription. During 1926 the enforcement of conscription progressed extremely slowly. By the end of the year the imposition of conscription was still limited almost entirely to the capital and its environs, the provinces of Tehran, Qazvin and Hamadan, and even there had yielded disappointing results. Exemptions were numerous and the number of men conscripted did not exceed 2,000–3,000. In early 1927, the political, military and constitutional difficulties of the first year of the new dynasty having been overcome, the government felt sufficiently strong to begin to apply the law more energetically throughout the country. Recruiting offices were established and call-up notices posted in all the provincial capitals. However the benefits of conscription enumerated by its nationalist supporters were largely lost on the populations visited by the recruiting commissions and strong opposition immediately appeared. Disturbances broke out in provincial towns following the arrival of recruiting officers, the bazars were closed and the recruiting commissions attacked.18 Nonetheless the government pressed on, although it quickly became impossible for it to ignore the fact that recruitment was being accompanied by gross corruption. In May a joint commission, consisting of representatives of the ministries of war and the interior, left Tehran to tour the provinces to enquire into the complaints made regarding the methods used in the enforcement of conscription. At first, although resentment at conscription was intense, it resulted only in sporadic and spontaneous defiance. In April, in Shiraz, however, a more sustained protest took place. This lasted from 16–25 April and was, in many respects, a dress rehearsal for the much bigger protests of the autumn. It especially demonstrated the readiness of subaltern figures, were an opportunity to be provided by the hesitation or reluctance of their seniors, to seize the leadership of popular discontent. In early 1927 a low-ranking mullah, aged about thirty-five, named Sayyid Nur al-Din had begun to agitate openly against the government, preaching specifically against the census registration of the people of the town, a necessary pre-condition for conscription. The registration was being vigorously pursued by the army and all the principal mujtahids, with only one exception, had already registered themselves and their families. Sayyid Nur al-Din therefore, in his vocal opposition, immediately


attracted the attention of the authorities, both civil and military. Sayyid Nur al-Din was also already unpopular with the more eminent mujtahids of Shiraz. Although he had not advanced through the clerical hierarchy, he had studied at the shrine cities in Iraq and was popularly held to be learned, indeed superior in learning in shari‘a law to most of the mujtahids themselves. The latter intensely disliked him, considering him an arrogant upstart. Their resentment of the popular respect in which he was held was compounded by their contempt for the humble origins of both himself and his followers, who were mostly drawn from the Jadidi community, Jewish converts to Islam and their descendants, petty shopkeepers and drapers.19 Already a marked man, at the end of Ramadan Sayyid Nur al-Din took a step too far when he encountered in the street a drunken man and had him taken to his house and flogged by his servant for his violation of Islamic precepts. The governor-general immediately, on Tehran’s orders, took this opportunity to remove him, and had him arrested by the army and deported to Bushire. The followers of Sayyid Nur al-Din were incensed at this action and gathered a large crowd to protest, sending telegrams to leading mujtahids around the country and to the Majlis. Witnessing the strength of popular sentiment, the leading clergy also found themselves obliged to complain at this action. Although they were apparently privately pleased to see Nur al-Din humiliated, they had no wish to see him turned into a martyr and a popular hero and they ordered the bazars to close until the government relented and allowed him to return. On seeing the reaction of the crowd and the bending of the leading clergy to its demands, the army determined to assert its authority, and filled all the approaches to the bazars and mosques with armed men. Undisciplined soldiers and police finally fired on a crowd of demonstrators, one boy was killed, and three other persons wounded. This further outraged public opinion, and by now the bazars were totally closed, the guilds were on strike, the census registration office was deserted, and young mullahs led demonstrations of many hundreds of people until the army, with difficulty, prevented them from doing so. Eventually, after nine days, the authorities were forced to yield and permit Nur al-Din’s return.20 This retreat represented a clear victory for the Shirazi protesters yet the broader political balance of the city had not fundamentally changed. Neither the leading clerics, who had talked of leaving the city but had made no effort actually to do so, nor the big merchants had been enthusiastic about the strikes. The merchants in particular were relieved at their end. They had been obliged to comply through fear of popular wrath, most having been torn between pressure to reopen from the army


and threats from minor clerical figures that they would be looted if they did so. As 1927 wore on, the increasing friction between the regime and elements among the provincial ulama gave rise to a number of further incidents. In late August the ulama of Isfahan led demonstrations of protest at the arrest of a preacher who had criticized the shah and the introduction of the Pahlavi cap. For eight days the Isfahan bazars were closed, and crowds assembled at the telegraph office to send telegrams to Tehran. The preacher was accordingly released and the ulama went on to demand successfully the dismissal of the chief of police.21 In October the ulama in Tehran, Isfahan and Mashhad launched a campaign against the New Iran Party. Leading clerics in Tehran threatened to leave the city and those in Isfahan threatened to go into bast in Qum, whereupon the shah, in any case exasperated by the squabbling to which the party had been prone, advised it to cease its activities. Despite growing evidence of a determination to resist, in the autumn of 1927 the army pressed ahead with the call-up, producing a dramatic, concerted and well organized example of popular resistance across the towns of the south. Even the rural areas of southern Iran were unaccustomed to providing soldiers, the bunichah system normally not having been enforced. The sudden and unprecedented imposition of conscription on the towns was intolerable to the urban populations and opposition immediately appeared led by the ulama, with strong support from the bazar, especially the craft guilds. The day designated for the first call-up in Shiraz was 8 October. On that day the bazars in Shiraz closed down and remained closed in protest and trade came to a standstill.22 Similar action was taken in Isfahan and to a lesser extent in Kirmanshah, Qazvin and Tehran. The bazars in Isfahan and Shiraz, where opposition was most determined, were to remain closed for three months. The occupational guilds in Shiraz and elsewhere organized general strikes, and carpenters, masons, brickmakers and others stopped work. Even in Tehran the bazars closed and there were attempts by crowds to demonstrate in front of the Majlis although these were prevented by the police. In Isfahan, the anti-conscription movement had been successful in securing the support of the head of the city’s leading clerical family, Ayatullah Haj Agha Nurullah Isfahani.23 Isfahani was head of the Baqir family, who possessed the guardianship of the most important mosque in Isfahan, the Masjid-i Shah. The family were also large landowners in the area and Isfahani was personally very wealthy, his control of the mosque and his wealth making him an extremely influential figure in


the city. Isfahani had supported the constitutional movement, and belonged to that trend among the ulama who were in the process of formulating an early template of Islamic modernism, seeing the constitution and its institutions, including an elected Majlis, as inherently Islamic, in conformity with the shari‘a, and beneficial to the political independence and economic prosperity of the Muslims. Isfahani had led the opium protests of 1923 and, given his personal record, it was inevitable that he should feel betrayed by the increasing emptiness of the electoral process and by the new shah’s apparent contempt for the constitution. He therefore grasped this opportunity to force the regime to retreat over unpopular legislation, specifically the conscription law, to bring about a greater regard for the constitution, and to protect the position of the ulama. In response to a request from the people of the city, Isfahani agreed to go to the shrine city of Qum to take bast and from there lead a campaign against conscription.24 Isfahani and several of his colleagues, including another senior Isfahan cleric, Ayatullah Mirza Husayn Fishariki, accordingly took up residence in Qum where they were joined by clerical representatives from Tehran and many provincial towns, including Shiraz, Hamadan, Mashhad and Tabriz, and from Najaf in Iraq. However the ulama who joined Isfahani in Qum were, with one or two exceptions, very minor figures, and this weakened his position. But the major setback to the movement was its failure to enlist the support of the clerical establishment in Qum. The Isfahanis and Shirazis had hoped that the most important cleric resident in Qum, Ayatullah Shaykh Abd al-Karim Hairi, might be persuaded to take an active part in the campaign.25 However Hairi, who had a personal history of political non-involvement, openly declared his neutrality. The anti-conscription movement in the south was becoming a complex phenomenon, in fact a coalition involving a multiplicity of grievances and demands. The local ulama, firmly established as the leadership of the movement, were motivated not just by dislike of conscription itself but by opposition to the general direction of the regime’s reforms and by the steady diminishing of their own power. The opposition of the population in general to conscription was spontaneous, genuine and profound, and aggravated by the corruption of the recruiting commissions, while the more politically aware had wider grievances against the government, the most important being their resentment at the interference of the shah and the military in the elections. Indeed the view was almost universally held that the Majlis then in session had been elected unconstitutionally.


In their defence the shah and his officials, both in the capital and the provinces, relied heavily on the argument that conscription had been introduced by the Majlis and only the Majlis could enact changes, the shah, as a constitutional monarch, having no choice but to give effect to the law.26 This line of argument, however, only exasperated the protesters. In Shiraz, when the governor-general arranged for a delegation from the opposition to meet the Shiraz Majlis deputies, specifically on the grounds that it was the Majlis deputies who were responsible for the conscription law, the delegation bluntly denounced both the legitimacy of the Majlis and the regime’s perversion of constitutional procedure. The Shirazis told their deputies to their face that their election had been imposed by force and that since other laws passed by the Majlis were flouted and ignored by the government, as far as the protesters were concerned the conscription law could suffer the same fate.27 The ulama in bast in Qum seized on the issue of constitutionalism and legality, making it central to their opposition to conscription. They demanded that the constitution be respected and that the shah be a constitutional monarch, leaving government to a fully responsible cabinet; that the elections be free and the deputies not be appointed by the shah or the army; and, most crucial of all, they wanted implemented the constitutional provision for a supreme committee of five mujtahids able to scrutinize all bills introduced into the Majlis to ensure that nothing was done which contravened the shari‘a. In pursuance of this last point they argued that all laws passed by the Majlis in the absence of this committee were in fact unconstitutional and illegal. These opinions were a potent weapon. The ulama were apparently aiming especially at the legislation of the fifth and sixth Majlis, and specifically at the act which deposed the Qajars, thus threatening the legitimacy of the shah’s newly established dynasty.28 Meanwhile the military authorities continued to make a show of implementing conscription. On 16 October the general officer commanding the south, General Mahmud Khan Ayrum, and the colonel in charge of conscription telegraphed from Isfahan to the press in Shiraz that 517 conscripts and ninety-two volunteers had been recruited. Yet the British consul-general in Isfahan noted in his diary that “some conscripts had presented themselves, but only those who had a valid excuse for not serving”29 while the appearance of volunteers had been secured by a judicious expenditure of money and the employment of old soldiers in civilian clothes.30 Finally, after several postponements, all liable for conscription in Isfahan were ordered to present themselves on 27 November.


Of those called up, about 550 were exempted, about 300 presented themselves, and about 500 failed to answer the summons. At first the shah, on the advice of his entourage, had treated the southern movement with contempt. This attitude, however, became increasingly untenable as the imposition of martial law and the arrival of troop reinforcements in Isfahan and Shiraz made no impact on the strikes. Although the shah had been greatly angered by the protests, nonetheless his acute understanding of political reality and his ready appreciation of political danger indicated the necessity of a tactical retreat, coupled with the appearance of compromise. In this way the government hoped to avoid aggravating the crisis while it decided upon a strategy. On 24 October the shah summoned groups of ulama, merchants and deputies and made to them a lengthy speech, the theme of which was his personal devotion to Islam. The government issued orders to the police and the military to deal leniently with anti-conscription demonstrators in Tehran and the shah also gave orders for leniency in the carrying out of conscription. On 12 November conscription ceased entirely in Tehran. Early in November the shah sent his minister of court, Taymurtash, to Qum to meet the ulama who had taken refuge there from Isfahan, although they declined to see him.31 Hints were dropped about leniency and exemption, and the intention to rely on the peasantry, the government clearly attempting to defuse the opposition of specifically the better-off urban elements, particularly the guilds, without abandoning the central tenets of the conscription policy. After the failure of Taymurtash’s mission to Qum the shah realized that the situation was becoming dangerous. Despite the press censorship, news of the strike was being carried throughout the country and its duration began to convey an impression of powerlessness on the part of the central government, and of the decline of the control, civil and military, of the Pahlavi regime. At first the shah continued to insist that amendment of the conscription law rested with the Majlis, while the president of the Majlis, replying to the ulama of Shiraz, and the prime minister, replying to leaders of the merchants, repeated platitudes about leniency in taking conscripts. By early December the shah’s impatience for a settlement was becoming overwhelming. On 10 December he again sent Taymurtash to Qum, accompanied by the prime minister and two compliant Tehran clericals. This time the mission met a different response. The ulama in Qum themselves were by now also keen to reach a facesaving compromise as support for the protests in Shiraz and Isfahan had


begun to crumble. For some time the big merchants had surreptitiously been doing a certain amount of business, but those of smaller substance were experiencing genuine distress while the severe hardship of the apprentices, petty shopkeepers and guildsmen was only alleviated by an arrangement giving them half-pay.32 The ulama themselves were spending a considerable amount of money on sustaining the strike, Ayatullah Isfahani himself personally financing the movement in Isfahan. By December the people of Isfahan and Shiraz had become extremely battleweary and the onset of winter had further undermined both their resolve and that of the bastis in Qum. By early December the bazars in Isfahan had already begun to reopen. Taymurtash’s second visit to Qum produced the basis for a settlement. The shah and Ayatullahs Isfahani and Fisharaki exchanged complimentary telegrams, which were published in the press.33 A few days later two of the ulama from Qum came to Tehran, returning with the government’s signature to the acceptance of five conditions.34 The conditions were: 1) A revision of the conscription law to be made by the next Majlis. 2) Five high-ranking mujtahids to form a committee to supervise the Majlis, as provided by the constitutional law. 3) Ecclesiastical supervisors for the provincial press to see that nothing anti-Islamic is printed. 4) A strict veto on practices which are forbidden by Islam, such as drinking of wine, gambling, etc. 5) Reintroduction of the numerous small religious courts for dealing with personal status, the administration of oaths, etc., which had recently been centralized by the ministry of justice. The government apparently also gave some verbal promises concerning other matters, including an undertaking that there would be no government interference in the next elections. Although this agreement had been negotiated between Taymurtash and Isfahani, it produced a great deal of consternation and confusion among the bastis in Qum who found it unsatisfactory and unlikely to be implemented. But on 26 December Isfahani, already past his mid-sixties and who had been unwell for some time, died.35 This deprived the anticonscription movement of its leader and also weakened the influence of the remaining ulama over the population in general. There was widespread demoralization at the death of Isfahani and next day the strikes in


Shiraz ended. The crisis was over and the general perception was of a government victory, little prestige having accrued to the ulama, the general population believing that the agreement with the government to be hardly worth the paper on which it was written.

Tabriz: no conscription, no Pahlavi hats Resistance to conscription had so far been most organized and prolonged in the towns of the south, Isfahan and Shiraz, where leadership was provided by the ulama and the guilds. Elsewhere protests erupted in a more spontaneous way. On 11 December in Rasht, for example, serious anti-conscription riots broke out, led by the women of the town, and the bazars were closed. These riots resulted in twenty deaths, and martial law was proclaimed, a strict censorship imposed and an armoured car sent from the capital to overawe the population.36 The government had already decided to exercise great leniency in the actual recruiting of conscripts and towards the end of 1927 continued at all only for appearance sake. During December in the Tehran districts recruiting was carried out almost secretly and practically on a volunteer basis while, when the commission declared its work complete in Kirmanshah town, only fifty recruits had been taken. At the end of the year conscription, which had in any case been implemented very slackly in all the towns throughout the country, and only in the latter months extended to the districts, was temporarily cancelled altogether, and a few volunteers from villages were enlisted at practically the old volunteer rate of pay. From the very beginning the methods employed had allowed great leakage in man-power and the total number of recruits called up during 1927 probably did not exceed 3,000. For the first six months of 1928 a certain leniency continued in the application of the law. Yet still wherever attempts were made to enforce the law, or even to carry out the registration, a degree of resistance was encountered. For instance early in January 1928 disturbances occurred in Maraghah, in Azarbayjan, in connection with compulsory registration of citizens for recruiting purposes while in Isfahan province a pro-conscription mullah was murdered by Bakhtiyari tribesmen.37 The work of the recruiting commissions proceeded haltingly and with difficulty, and they concentrated their efforts on the settled peasantry in the villages who were incapable of the organized, collective and sustained opposition shown by the better-off elements led by the guilds in the towns. During January and February a commission was active in Isfahan province, but no recruits were taken from Isfahan town, only


from the villages. During April another attempt was made to apply the law in Isfahan itself but as a result of the outcry and the closing of the bazars it was again discontinued. Nonetheless the commission continued its activities in the surrounding villages, apparently collecting few men but a lot of money.38 By the end of April considerable hardship was being experienced in the villages around Hamadan although in the town the effect of conscription was practically nil. Again although by September there were about 800 conscripts undergoing their training in Rasht town, all were from the surrounding villages. Rampant inefficiency and corruption prevailed everywhere. In Isfahan, the census officials took bribes for entering false ages, in Shiraz about 10 per cent of those actually called up were Jews, a proportion far greater than their presence in the general population, and the Kirman conscription committee was reported to be taking every Zoroastrian they could lay their hands on.39 In Isfahan there were upwards of 60 per cent absentees and elsewhere there were huge numbers of exemptions. In Gilan, of 550 names examined by the recruiting commission, only sixty-six were found liable for service. In Hamadan, of 300 conscripts called up, only 130 presented themselves, of whom nearly a hundred were exempted. Everywhere all those who were actually recruited were drawn from the very poorest sections of the population. Around the middle of 1928 the shah apparently decided the time had come to enforce conscription with renewed determination and the army and the ministry of the interior were ordered to renew their efforts while an energetic campaign was launched in both the national and local press in support of conscription as a patriotic duty. By midSeptember it was clear that there was increased activity throughout the country in conscripting recruits. Nonetheless both the methods employed by the commissions and the results they obtained fell far short of the grandiose expectations of nationalist ideologues and they also continued to encounter constant opposition. In Kirmanshah, for example, recruiting was very busily carried on but it apparently took the form of seizing domestic servants who could later be “ransomed”.40 In early October the bazars in Shiraz were again closed as a protest against the renewed call-up and there were some casualties as a result of a clash between the troops and demonstrators. In November in Kirman the methods used by the military authorities to obtain recruits caused widespread resentment and there was unrest in the city over both conscription and the enforcement of the new clothing reforms.41 The renewed recruiting drive coincided with an intensifying effort on the part of the civil and military authorities to oblige the male


population to abandon their traditional headgear and adopt the Pahlavi hat.42 This effort had begun with the cabinet’s decision in early August 1927 to make the Pahlavi hat the official headgear for Iranian men and during 1928 the shah himself had become the chief and most vocal protagonist of the move to banish turbans and ‘abas. At each weekly reception in his palace he urged his subjects to modernize their dress and as the year wore on he began having those wearing turbans actually turned away from his receptions. On 25 December 1928 a bill, drafted by Taymurtash, calling for the compulsory adoption of the Pahlavi hat and the short coat by all male Iranians, was introduced into the Majlis. The bill outlined a few strictly limited exceptions, and fixed a scale of punishments, including fines and imprisonments, for those failing to comply. The bill was discussed in the Majlis sittings of 25 and 27 December and after some minor amendments was inevitably passed by a very large majority. The law was to come into effect at nawruz (21 March) 1929. However, the police had not waited for the Majlis decision but, during the latter part of 1928, had begun exerting strenuous pressure on the male populations of many Iranian cities to begin wearing the Pahlavi hat immediately. Except among the small numbers of the westernized elite, the Pahlavi hat was extremely unpopular and the actions of the police produced further resentment and indignation. Those wearing turbans, for many of whom the new clothes were not just unbecoming but actually tainted with heresy, were publicly insulted and their headgear forcibly removed by the police. The general unease was compounded by the prevalence of apparently credible rumours that nawruz 1929 was also intended to witness the compulsory abolition of the veil.43 In 1928 it was Tabriz, the provincial capital of Azarbayjan, which was to be the site of the biggest protest against the two major reforms, and the second and last significant episode of urban resistance to the new order in this period. Here too, as with the previous year’s protests in southern Iran, dislike of conscription and the clothing law enmeshed with wider resentment at the impact of the imposition of reform to produce an explosive and general challenge to the tightening control of the Tehran regime. By early 1928 nothing had yet been done to enforce conscription or even registration in Tabriz, a city with a reputation for political radicalism and general toughness. At the end of March the decision was made to enforce registration with drastic measures. For example body washers and coffin-makers were to be obliged to demand proof of registration from families of deceased persons before providing their services.44 Yet the authorities still met with little success and at the end of April, apprehen-


sive at the depth of opposition, suspended the application of conscription to Azarbayjan. When, in the latter part of the year, the renewed determination of the authorities to impose conscription and, simultaneously, the wearing of the Pahlavi hat reached the city, considerable unrest immediately manifested itself. The bazars were closed and protest meetings were held in mosques, these actions culminating in a demonstration on 17 October by a crowd of about 10,000 who apparently intended to take bast in the Soviet consulate.45 This demonstration, however, was broken up by the police and the army with some violence.46 During the past year the regime had stabilized and grown in confidence and assertiveness. It was now able to dispense with the negotiation and concession to which it had been obliged to resort in Shiraz and Isfahan, and immediately responded to opposition in Tabriz with military force in a brutal but largely successful bid to suppress the movement. Although popular opposition in Tabriz was intense, both the ulama and the bazar had been much more cautious in their attitude to the government than had been their counterparts in the south the previous year. One of the four mujtahids of Tabriz, Ayatullah Haj Mirza Abul Hasan Agha Angaji, for example, had resorted to quietism regarding disobeying the government. When deputations of the people of the city urged him to make some pronouncement regarding conscription, he was circumspect, replying that when faced with the dilemma of having to choose between submitting to the registration or abandoning their pilgrimages to Mecca, Karbala or Mashhad, people should give up their pilgrimages. The Pahlavi hat, however, was a more serious issue for him and his response had more activist consequences.47 The cabmen of the city, who had discarded the new hat which they had been wearing for a few days, were called to the police stations and asked to sign a document promising to wear only Pahlavi hats. Having signed they then went to Angaji, who told them that a promise extorted was not binding, with the result that they reverted to their old headgear.48 The large demonstration of 17 October was actually led by low-ranking mullahs, while the mujtahids, “old and cautious men”,49 and the rich merchants had initially been reluctant to take part in the movement, only popular pressure finally forcing them to take a stand. Nonetheless arrests, which had begun even before the demonstration took place and continued for some time afterwards, included a number of ulama and rich merchants who were later deported. Those banished included Ayatullah Angaji and another mujtahid, Ayatullah Mirza Sadiq Agha. The merchants, besides having refused to attend a ceremony in honour of


conscription to which they had been invited at the governor-general’s palace, were accused of having given money to the shopkeepers who had closed their shops, and of having provided tea and carpets for the various meetings. In fact some of these merchants had only acted under intense popular pressure. One of the arrested, Haj Muhammad Agha Hariri, the leading merchant in the bazar, had actually been forced by the people of the Shuturban (Davachi) quarter of the town where he lived, a quarter inhabited by merchants and guild members and known for its religious sensitivities, to attend the protest meetings in the mosques.50 The mainstay of the protest in Tabriz had been the lesser ranking mullahs and the small shopkeepers, who had put up the strongest resistance in the bazar. These elements now faced serious consequences. They were accused of inciting the people to resist the authorities and treason, and some were threatened with hanging, others immediately flogged. Throughout the end of 1928 and into 1929, as the military authorities pressed on ruthlessly with the reforms, many small shopkeepers were the first to be recruited into the army.51 These men were often the only breadwinner of their families who were left on the verge of starvation. The hat policy was pursued with equal determination. Police and soldiers were seen every day in the streets, tearing off and trampling on the turbans of clerics, who went away with their bared heads covered by their ‘abas. This policy was followed systematically, different quarters of the town being chosen on different days. The military authorities even embarked on the actual destruction of the physical core of the mercantile and clerical classes, under the guise of “town planning”. They began to pull down large numbers of houses and many of the bazars, and to construct new avenues, one of which was to cut right through the Shuturban (Davachi) quarter, where recent opposition had been fiercest. Those so made homeless were then evicted from the mosques, where they had initially found shelter, and directed by the military authorities to the ‘ajizkhanah, an institution where destitute vagrants might find shelter and bread.52

Rural opposition In the rural areas the tribal populations, alarmed by Tehran’s radical version of modernity, had been watching closely developments in the towns. With the military authorities still engaged on the brutal enforcement of their control in Tabriz, and the opposition to conscription and the imposition of the Pahlavi hat still fresh, the first tribal rising against the new order broke out in Azarbayjan. Towards the end of 1928, the


Tabriz military authorities had apparently begun an attempt among the Kurds in the area south-west of Lake Urumiyyah to enforce the abandonment of tribal dress in favour of the new hat, backing up this attempt with the employment of threats and menaces. The Kurdish tribes already generally resented the closer control which the local Persian authorities were attempting to establish, and feared the disarmament and conscription as well as the uniform dress, especially the despised Pahlavi hat, which they perceived would inevitably follow. In January, when Mullah Khalil, a local religious leader, issued a proclamation calling on the tribes, to resist these innovations by force of arms, his appeal met with an immediate response among the Kurdish tribes in the areas Sauj Bulak-Urumiyyah and Tabriz, and the revolt even began to take on a pan-Kurdish and nationalist complexion.53 The Mangur, the Mamish and certain other tribes under their own khans, collected a force which by the end of January was estimated at 15,000 men. This force, under the overall leadership of Mullah Khalil, drove the army out of the town of Sardasht and besieged the garrison in Sauj Bulagh, attacking the finance ministry in that town. The Kurds defeated the army in a series of engagements but lacked the cohesiveness to take advantage of their military superiority. In Tabriz itself, the military authorities faced a delicate situation. Their forces were depleted by the needs of the Kurdish front and their control of the city was tenuous. It appeared. furthermore, that the rebellion might easily and quickly spread throughout the Kurdish areas. The army commander in Tabriz, General Husayn Khuzai, was anxious to negotiate a settlement and accordingly, on 15 February, he offered the Kurds an amnesty. This, however, held little appeal for the Kurds. Khuzai also ordered the release of two important Mangur chiefs who were imprisoned in Tabriz. These two leaders, however, promptly joined the rebels and took an active part in the ensuing fighting. Intermittent fighting and negotiation continued until June when the Kurdish forces, finding themselves unable to obtain assistance from broader tribal groups, weakened by a shortage of ammunition, and fearing for the safety of their families and homes, retreated into the mountains, their leaders taking refuge in Iraq. But it was in the south that the rural uprisings assumed their most dangerous dimensions. The epicentre of the southern tribal uprisings was located in the province of Fars.54 In the spring of 1929 first the Qashqai and then the Khamsah rose against the central government. Some of the smaller tribal groups, especially the Kuhgiluyyah, as well as independent brigand chiefs and their bands joined in the movement, and the whole of


Fars quickly became engulfed in conflict. At the beginning of June the movement spread northwards, to the province of Isfahan, where some sections of the Bakhtiyaris, principally from the subordinate Chahar Lang lineage, although with a sprinkling of the dominant Haft Langs, also broke out into rebellion.55 Although each of the tribal groups had its own specific concerns, they shared certain major underlying grievances. They were angry at the attempts made by the government to disarm them, they were embittered over the ever increasing taxes they were forced to pay by the officials of the finance department, they hated the new dress law, feared the growing reach of the conscription commissions and the imposition of the census registration which was their preliminary, resented the interference and corruption of the local military authorities and suffered from the establishment of new government monopolies on commodities such as opium and tobacco. They were particularly apprehensive at rumours of forced sedentarization and at the activities of the department for the registration of title deeds, which they feared would lead to their being dispossessed of lands over which they believed themselves to have customary and collective rights. As with the urban protests of 1927 and 1928, so too was conscription a major factor in provoking the rural risings. There had never been any reluctance among the tribal populations to undertake military service. Irregular tribal levies, raised for specific campaigns and officered by tribal khans and chiefs, had indeed constituted the only significant military resource available to the Iranian state in the nineteenth century and still, in the late 1920s, continued to be of great importance to the fighting capacity of the army. Conscription however was viewed with horror. The absorption of large numbers of young men into a regular army, on the same terms as, and indistinguishably from, peasants and townsmen, their removal from the tribal environment and protection, and their subordination to non-tribal authority and the submergence of their tribal identity, was a process which struck at the foundations of tribal existence. Angry at the new state’s far-reaching fiscal and military impositions, alienated by its cultural policies and resenting the land legislation, many among the rural poor were also ready to grasp an opportunity to rid themselves, once and for all, of their own tribal/landlord aristocracies. Far from being hostile to the extension of the new state, during most of the 1920s the great southern tribal confederations had offered little resistance to, but had rather tended to welcome, the gradual establishment of greater stability. This was as true for the tribal populations, weary of the


anarchy and khankhanliq of the previous two decades, as for the khans, most of whom actively offered their support to the new regime and sought its patronage. By mid-decade, Sawlat al-Dawlah, ilkhani of the Qashqai, for example, had reinvented himself as a nationalist politician, while Qavam al-Mulk, chief of the Khamsah, had become a loyal courtier and pillar of the new order in the south. The attitude of the tribal rank and file changed, however, after 1927–1928, when the regime launched a radical programme of modernization and centralization. The first half of the 1920s had been characterized by a prolonged period of power struggle within the elite. During these years Riza Khan had engaged simultaneously in coopting, curbing, and occasionally eliminating the tribal leaderships, and in waging a series of mortal battles with his political enemies in Tehran. In 1924 he was thwarted in his presidential ambitions by an anti-republican coalition of his political opponents in Tehran. Nonetheless, by the end of the following year, he had succeeded in engineering his accession to the throne. In his presentation of himself as the instrument of national deliverance, his taming of the tribal leaderships had been an important element. Following its stabilization, the new regime turned its attention away from the tribal leaders to the tribal populations themselves. Not only were the elites no longer the main target of the regime’s tribal policy but they were now, rather, enlisted as the principal instruments of its execution. In 1926 the first substantial steps had been taken towards implementing conscription. As the military authorities had encountered broad opposition in the towns and cities to the recruiting of conscripts, they redirected their efforts to the countryside, where the settled population was incapable of resistance against the combined onslaught of the military authorities and their own landlords. Although the army, fearing resistance, made no general effort to take conscripts from the nomads until well into the 1930s, tribal apprehension at the measure, and at its preliminaries, the census and the registration of births and deaths, was widespread and profound. Other measures followed the conscription law. In December 1928 the Majlis passed the Uniform Dress law, which threatened the symbolic expression and reproduction of tribal identity; in 1928 and 1929 extensive legislation was passed concerning the registration of landed property and title deeds, undermining the tribespeople’s customary rights to pastures; and during 1927 a policy with which Riza Shah was to become particularly identified, and for which he attracted implacable hostility from the tribes, also began to be discussed in earnest: the prohibition of pastoral nomadism and the forced settlement of the nomads on the land and their conversion into


agriculturalists.56 Taken together these measures, unlike the intra-elite struggles of earlier years, represented a direct social and economic assault on the rural poor, both settled and nomadic. The rural risings of 1929 were provoked by the novelty both of the regime’s radical agenda and of its energetic and authoritarian approach and were directed at resisting the measures themselves and at removing those deemed responsible for them. The anti-khan character of the risings is most evident in the case of the Bakhtiyari. Bitter disagreements had, for many years, poisoned relations between the senior Bakhtiyari khans and the younger generation of junior khans and, in 1929, a number of junior khans of the dominant Haft Lang lineage, together with the Chahar Lang khan, Ali Mardan Khan Chahar Lang, took the opportunity to put themselves at the head of the growing feeling of tribal resentment to lead a movement which was as much directed against the senior khans as at Tehran.57 Indeed, the tribesmen were reported to have declared openly that they no longer recognized the authority of the senior khans.58 The overall leader of the revolt was Ali Mardan Khan Chahar Lang, and the insurgents allied themselves with other dissident tribal groupings, notably the semi-bandit Sartip Khan of the Buyir Ahmadi, and the movement was also joined by numerous bands of brigands, particularly that led by the outlaw Khaybar. There was some degree of coordination between the Bakhtiyari and the Qashqai tribes, and both groups put forward similar demands: that the conscription and the dress laws not be applied to them, and for the abolition of the census department, the department for the registration of title deeds, and the government monopolies.59 These demands were defensive, aimed at protecting the tribes from the novel impositions of the government which were popularly perceived as unjust. The tribes explained their resistance in terms of their desire for fair treatment and for a cessation of the violations of their rights. They strongly rejected the notion of themselves as rebels against duly constituted authority, seeing themselves, on the contrary, as the victims of illegitimate oppression Their outlook found typical expression in a petition which a group of Qashqai kalantars arranged to be handed in to the British consulate in Shiraz on 7 June. In their petition the kalantars stressed their loyalty to the government and their past readiness to assist the army in its campaigns and specifically singled out the oppressiveness and greed of the military governors as the cause of their discontent. They complained that they had been asking for justice for three months but had been ignored and they concluded with the


unusual request that the British consul communicate their petition to the League of Nations.60 Even General Shaybani, charged by the shah with the restoration of order in the south, seemed, in the wording of his offer of amnesty and pardon, to accept that the kalantars and the tribesmen had certain legitimate grievances and acknowledged their appeal for justice.61 An anti-landlord dynamic is also particularly evident in the uprisings in eastern Fars. For the populations of this region, especially the Khamsah tribes, settled and nomadic, the multiple rural crises of 1929 appear to have offered an opportunity for them to try to rid themselves altogether of the principal landlord in the region, the Khamsah ilkhani Qavam al-Mulk. This region saw the most concerted efforts at coordinated action between settled cultivators and nomadic pastoralists, facilitated in this case by the fact that they were often kin, of common Khamsah tribal origin. Like the Bakhtiyari and the Qashqai, the Khamsah made demands for the cancellation of conscription and of disarmament, but here the central issue was opposition to the recently established state monopoly on opium. The opium monopoly aroused intense resentment among the Khamsah in eastern Fars, as well as in other areas of southern Iran heavily involved in poppy cultivation. A particular grievance concerned the apparently arbitrary valuation of the opium crop at a figure far below that previously obtained in the open market.62 Then, in the spring of 1929, in the midst of the simmering disaffection, the government, as part of its general policy of severing tribal and provincial magnates from their local bases, removed Qavam al-Mulk from his ilkhaniship of the Khamsah confederation and his governorship of eastern Fars, appointing a military governor to replace him.63 With this step, the whole delicate pyramid of authority in eastern Fars collapsed. The Khamsah tribes immediately grasped the opportunity to rid themselves both of their ilkhani and the biggest landowner in the region, and of the hated opium monopoly. They refused to accept the military governor and minor chiefs of sections of the Khamsah began to assert their own authority, quickly evicting every civil and military representative of the Tehran government from eastern Fars and even western Kirman. The widespread hatred of the opium monopoly was a factor of paramount importance in the overthrow of the government’s authority in eastern Fars, and succeeded in uniting the heterogeneous populations of the region, settled and nomadic, in the countryside and the small towns against the Tehran regime. Although the bulk of the fighting


was carried out by nomadic elements among the Khamsah, they had the active and passive support of both non-Khamsah nomadic groups and of the settled peasantry. Many of the settled cultivators of eastern Fars were themselves of Khamsah origin, their districts were the biggest opium producers in Fars, and they lent their full support to the Khamsah insurgency which clearly articulated their grievances.64 By the autumn of 1929 the rural uprisings in the south had largely exhausted themselves and the government, through a combination of military force and broad but temporary concession and compromise, was beginning to reestablish its authority.65 A political deadlock remained, however. The army had been signally unable to defeat the tribal insurgents in the field but the tribal populations were also in need of an accommodation. They lacked unity and cohesion, and had exhausted their ammunition, while their families and flocks were clearly suffering, with high mortality among their young children.66 The tribal populations themselves, however, seemed satisfied that they had achieved the purposes for which they rebelled. They had not been defeated by the army, threats of conscription and Pahlavi hats had evaporated, and they retained their arms.67

Continuing urban discontent Certainly the provincial cities shared in full measure the grievances animating rural resistance, especially conscription, the Pahlavi hat and, in the south, the opium monopoly. In 1929, as the army’s power in the rural areas began to disintegrate, several major cities located within areas of intense tribal disaffection, especially Tabriz, Isfahan and Shiraz, remained tinderboxes of discontent. In Tabriz, the control of the military authorities was, since the violent clashes of the previous August, still tenuous, and it was reported that the people were ready to “welcome a blow to the Government from whatever direction it might come”68 while the populations of the southern cities, although not actively defiant, were sullen and resentful. In the major cities of the south the ulama, the bazar merchants and the guilds, as well as the urban population in general, were still smarting from their failure to achieve anything from the long and bruising protest of 1927. Since then, the regime’s economic policies had produced considerable financial hardship, by 1928 a general state of depression prevailing throughout the south. In the cities, as much or more than in the countryside, the introduction of the opium monopoly in September 1928 had caused wide-


spread discontent among the many sections of the population who feared their means of livelihood threatened by it. Millspaugh, the Financial Administrator-General, estimated that at least a quarter of the entire population of the city of Isfahan was largely dependent on the opium trade. These included “opium-peddlars, brokers, bazaar traders, commission and export merchants, packers, porters, coppersmiths, and the manipulators of stick and cake opium”.69 Although it was the big landowners and merchants who had made fortunes out of opium, the trade was very widely diffused among the broader population. For large numbers of people in the producing areas, opium functioned as a currency. During the harvest, peddlers and small shopkeepers, who had advanced goods on credit to the peasants, went to the villages to secure their payment in opium sap. Gifts of sap would be made to village mullahs, and village barbers and carpenters would also be paid in sap. Millspaugh himself has described how as soon as the gathering of sap began, “thousands of vendors of small articles and sweetmeats go out from the large towns and barter their goods for sap. Dervishes, storytellers, beggars, musicians and owners of performing animals go from one field to another, and are rewarded or given alms by having the flat side of the opium knife scraped on their palms, or on the small bowls carried by the dervishes. These itinerants sell their accumulations to travelling opium-buyers, who also purchase from the peasants”.70 Most of these thousands of people depended on their gains, during the opium harvest, for a large portion of their annual income, and all were instantly deprived of their work by the introduction of the state monopoly. There were other economic grievances, especially the high levels of taxation imposed by Tehran. Hostility to conscription had continued unabated leading, for example, to bazar closures in Shiraz in 1928 and a riot outside a mosque, with the troops firing on the crowd. Resentment was again general throughout the provinces at the conduct of the 1928 Majlis elections, which the ministries of war and the interior had controlled more tightly than ever. The alienation of the southern cities from the new regime had been further aggravated, and the atmosphere at court revealed, by a visit from the shah in late 1928. All welcome preparations in the cities had been banned while the police took stringent and overwhelming security measures, the shah’s fear of assassination being much in evidence. In Shiraz, for example, three hours before the shah’s arrival, the streets were cleared and the chief of police threatened that anyone standing behind doors or gateways would be shot. All high buildings which afforded a view of the shah’s route were cleared and the police would


not allow any peasant within 200 yards of the road. The shah entered the city in a fast-moving, closed car, sitting far back in the shadow so as hardly to be seen. All the police precautions reinforced the main impression created by the manner of the shah’s arrival, which was of a man afraid.71 Further damage to local opinion was caused when the shah received representatives of the merchants, the notables, the elected members of the municipality and newspaper editors. His speech to them was scathing and abusive, to the extent that the merchants lost any courage they might have had to enumerate their grievances as they had intended, these grievances including the opium monopoly, the activities of the tax officials of the finance department, and the need for a larger budget for education in Fars. Far from boosting the morale of the local authorities and the partisans of the new order in the south, the shah’s visit produced a further drop in the esteem in which he was held. The Shirazis in general had been disconcerted by the shah’s obvious antipathy towards them, and relief at his departure was universal, even among army officers.72 Although provincial urban hostility to the regime remained latent during 1929, and no open or organized dissent materialized in the cities, nonetheless the authorities were extremely conscious of the precariousness of their position. In Tehran, as well as in the provinces, there was especial nervousness at the approach of ‘Ashura, the tenth day of Muharram, with its commemoration of religious martyrdom and mourning ceremonies. In 1929 ‘Ashura fell in June, at the height of the Qashqai rising, and the regime, in a time of crisis, made a deliberate decision to make concessions to popular and clerical sentiments. The government, which had for several years vigorously discouraged all the traditional observances of ‘Ashura, now relaxed its prohibitions, and allowed, and even encouraged, the public performance of these rituals. All the low-ranking clerical personnel who had been refused exemption from wearing the Pahlavi hat were allowed to revert to wearing their turbans for the two mourning months of Muharram and Safar. Only very minor restrictions on the public processions were enforced by the police while the rawzah khvanis, recitations of the narrative of the martyrdom of the Imam Husayn at Karbala, were very well attended. The shah himself had been present at one such event in the government audience hall, and on two occasions had given the sum of 500 tumans to the narrator.73 In Tabriz, still threatened by the Kurdish uprising, the changed attitude of the military authorities was particularly marked. During the suppression of the opposition in the previous autumn, the army had


collected and confiscated all the paraphernalia, swords, banners, trumpets, etc, used during the commemorations. But, in the weeks leading up to ‘Ashura, anonymous posters appeared on the walls of buildings in the city stating that the people intended to carry out the usual ceremonies in spite of the authorities’ prohibition, and that they would resist interference, shedding if necessary their own blood and that of others.74 The military authorities not only decided to back down but even themselves to try to give an impression of piety. On ‘Ashura, the police themselves distributed swords for the commemorations and rawzah khvanis were held in the afternoon and evening, the army commander, General Husayn Khuzai, the chief of police, the governorgeneral and other leading officials being prominent and apparently sympathetic participants at one of the largest gatherings in the bazar. Khuzai was particularly zealous, beating his breast in public, ordering that tea be served to everyone, and publicly stating that he approved of these customs.75 Throughout the 1920s, army officers had been amongst the most aggressive secularizers, their activities in this respect often far exceeding the limits which Tehran found politic.76 Their new-found piety, however, did not outlive the crisis of authority and prestige which had produced it and, by 1930, restrictions on the public performance of religious rituals were again being enforced.

The defeat of the 1929 uprisings and its consequences The successive tribal uprisings of 1929, although defeated, had a serious impact on Riza Shah and his regime. The traumatic near collapse of the new state across much of southern Iran aggravated the shah’s perennial inclination towards paranoia. Profoundly shaken by the extent and the depth of the crisis, he began to be overtaken by fear for his own life and for the survival of his new dynasty, both of which he believed threatened by a constellation of opponents including the tribes themselves and their putative allies among the British and individuals and groups within the very elite which staffed the political, military and bureaucratic institutions of the new state. In the summer of 1929, at the height of the tribal rebellions, the shah visibly began to lose confidence in the loyalty of even, and perhaps especially, his closest supporters, and the first signs appeared of what was to become a reign of terror, sweeping through the elite in the early 1930s and cutting down friends and enemies alike. Although the shah was able to respond pragmatically on a practical level, yet throughout the summer he remained in a highly nervous


state. The example of Afghanistan was not encouraging. There King Amanullah, whose radical modernizing reforms mirrored his own, had alienated both the ulama and conservative tribal groups, and he had been overthrown earlier in the year by a tribal rebellion. In Iran the shah now believed himself to be facing the gravest crisis since he had come to the throne and the very survival of his dynasty to be threatened.77 He not only feared that southern Iran would slip out of government control altogether, but he was also convinced that the uprisings were the work of the British, who wished to reassert their power in Iran. The British had certainly, in the past, had close links with both Qavam al-Mulk and the Bakhtiyari khans, although never with Sawlat and the Qashqai, but these relationships had, by mutual consent, evaporated in the early 1920s.78 Nonetheless the shah held firmly to the belief that the British had instigated the tribes, and official circles and especially the army shared this view.79 The shah’s belief in British malevolence was aggravated by the outbreak of a strike by labourers in the southern oilfields in May 1929.80 Although Taymurtash dismissed the alleged communist threat, of which the Anglo-Persian Oil Company made much, the shah was outraged by the arrival of British naval vessels just outside Iranian territorial waters in the aftermath of the strike. As well as reawakening Riza Shah’s old fears about British imperial ambitions, the upheavals of 1929 also aggravated the shah’s fears for the security of his dynasty and caused him to begin to doubt those who had been his most ardent supporters. His perennial fear of assassination was also much in evidence. In June Prince Firuz Farmanfarma, the minister of finance and, with Taymurtash and Davar, one of the triumvirate who had controlled the whole machinery of government for the shah since his accession to the throne, was arrested and imprisoned. On the same day the former governor-general of Fars, the Qajar prince, Akbar Mirza Sarim al-Dawlah, and General Fazlullah Khan Zahidi, the commander of the amniyyah, who had been in Shiraz during the tribal disturbances, were arrested and jailed in Tehran. A little later General Mahmud Khan Ayrum, the former commander of the southern army, was arrested and imprisoned and the former divisional chief of staff in the south, General Prince Muhammad Husayn Farmanfarma, a brother of Firuz, also fell under suspicion and was arrested. No reasons were given for the arrests, but hints were dropped in the newspapers Ittila‘at and Shafaq-i Surkh that they were in connection with a plot to support the Qashqai revolt.81 In fact, Firuz, Sarim al-Dawlah and General Muhammad Husayn Farmanfarma were all Qajar princes, and the shah appeared to suspect that the tribal rebellions were the precursor of an


attempt to overthrow his dynasty and restore the Qajars, perhaps with British help.82 Prince Firuz was the first of Riza Shah’s high officials to suffer the fate of disgrace, arrest and imprisonment. With his fall began a process which was to end in the death, imprisonment or exile of most of the shah’s loyal officials, including Taymurtash, the minister of court, and Sardar Asad, the minister of war. As well as casting a shadow over his loyal officials, the tribal rebellions of 1929 also sealed the fate of the tribal leaderships themselves. In 1930 Sardar Asad and Sawlat al-Dawlah did their best to demonstrate to Riza Shah their own loyalty and the continued reliability and usefulness of their tribal followers, furnishing substantial irregular contingents for the army’s operations against the Buyir Ahmadi. But in the same year Tehran renewed its efforts at tribal disarmament and pacification and in 1932 began to make serious efforts to implement the policy of sedentarization. At the same time Riza Shah aggressively pursued his objective of severing the southern tribes from their hereditary leaders and matters quickly came to a head. In August 1932 Sawlat al-Dawlah and his eldest son, Nasir Khan, were imprisoned, and in August 1933 Sawlat was murdered in prison. In November Sardar Asad, still minister of war, a large number of Bakhtiyari khans, and Qavam al-Mulk were arrested and accused of plotting against the shah’s life.83 In April 1934 Sardar Asad was murdered in prison and, in November, eight people implicated in the so-called Bakhtiyari plot were executed.84 Among those executed were Ali Mardan Khan Chahar Lang, the Haft Lang Bakhtiyari khans, Sardar Iqbal and Sardar Fatih, and Sardar Fatih’s brother-in-law, Sartip Khan Buyir Ahmadi, leaders of the 1929 revolt who had all previously been pardoned by the shah. Twenty other Bakhtiyaris were sentenced to long prison terms, including four khans to life.85 With this, the southern tribal leaderships were permanently removed as a factor in national political life. For the tribal populations in general, 1929 was also a turning point. The summer of that year saw the last significant collective rural opposition of the Riza Shah period, its failure to delay, divert or moderate the regime’s determination to impose its agenda ushering in a decade of extreme hardship throughout the countryside. Disarmed, heavily taxed, the pressure to settle only ameliorated only by the corruption of the local authorities, with their khans executed or imprisoned, the tribal populations were profoundly demoralized. With the regime’s assault on the nomadic way of life, and its attempted destruction of the pastoral economy, and with military control of their pastures and


migration routes ever tighter, the tribes were no longer capable of asserting the political and military autonomy of the past. The peasantry too experienced worsening conditions during these years. Harshly taxed in order to provide revenue for the regime’s prestige projects, the Railway and the army, undermined by the spread of the cash economy, and largely unable, through lack of money or education, to make use of the new institutions such as the law courts or the department of land registration, the peasants’ main point of contact with the modern state was through the conscription commissions. Nonetheless throughout the 1930s rural resistance continued to manifest itself, but now only through the widespread persistence of banditry, whereby pauperized rural, especially nomadic, elements, sometimes allied to other marginal figures such as army deserters, continued to evade and defy the new state. Such banditry was neither a survival from the pre-modern era nor an anachronism, but was rather itself created by, and constituted a response to, conditions of rapid and authoritarian modernization and rural social disintegration. The rural resistance to the new order which erupted across southern Iran during the spring and summer of 1929 ultimately failed to defend the nomadic and peasant populations from the modernist vision of the urban nationalist elite. The nomads and peasants were unable to sustain their military defiance of the new order and the leaderships of the risings were politically outmanoeuvred by the regime acting in concert with its allies among the tribal elites. The various manifestations of rural discontent of those months at no stage coalesced into a unified or sustained movement. The confederations were themselves internally divided, in no case did a tribal confederation as a whole rise against the government, and there was intense hatred between the confederations, particularly between the Qashqai and the Khamsah. Furthermore, the demands of the rebels were invariably defensive, calling for the removal or rescinding of new laws and institutions, and developed no wider political perspective or coherent strategy through which a challenge to the central government might be mounted. The tribal risings also petered out for more mundane, although compelling, reasons, including a severe shortage of ammunition and the needs of the pastoral economy, particularly migration, although not before they had starkly revealed the limits of the regime’s coercive power. The tribal uprisings did not persuade the senior khans to abandon their alliance with the new state. On the contrary Sardar Asad Bakhtiyari threw his full weight behind a military response and other senior khans were instrumental in re-establishing Tehran’s authority. Even Sawlat


al-Dawlah’s ambivalence ended once he was restored to his former position in Shiraz, whereupon he was happy to act once more as a conduit for the transmission of Tehran’s will to his resentful tribesmen. The consequent rise of the kalantars as more authentic spokesmen for the nomadic populations led to increased fragmentation and further reduced the tribes’ capacity for unified action. Only twenty years previously the Bakhtiyari khans had intervened decisively in national politics by their role in deposing the shah and restoring the constitution. Although the myth of 1909 was still vividly alive among the khans, yet a comparison of the situation in 1929 with the earlier rising reveals a very different context. In 1929 the junior Bakhtiyari khans could furnish no figure of the stature of Ali Quli Khan Sardar Asad, the father of the present Sardar Asad, capable of providing intellectual leadership and of uniting the confederation for the march on Tehran. Not only did the tribal risings lack leaders of sufficient calibre and vision, but they lacked urban and intellectual allies in general. In 1909 the Bakhtiyari had acted in concert with the radicals and constitutionalists in Isfahan, Tehran and elsewhere. By 1929 Riza Shah, having begun to implement many of the demands of the nationalist intelligentsia, still largely retained the support of this group which was, in any case, temperamentally disinclined to ally itself with tribal elements, unless in the most exceptional circumstances. By this time too, there was little or no chance of the tribal rebels mounting a successful assault on the capital. In Tehran, again in contrast to the earlier period, the control of the new state, embodied in the army and police, was complete. Perhaps the most important reason for the ultimate political failure of the rural resistance was its inability to connect with disaffected elements in the provincial cities who shared many of its grievances. A tribal capture of a major provincial city would have had the capacity to transform the national political balance of forces. Yet there was no significant community of action between the uprisings in the countryside and broader urban forces, even those, the lower-ranking clerical and bazari elements, who had recently been most active in resisting Tehran’s agenda. The Khamsah had proved themselves able to take control of the small towns of south-eastern Fars for a period of time and many provincial towns elsewhere saw sporadic outbreaks of violence against the physical and human representations of the new order, for example the recruiting commissions and the local civil authorities, with rioting and attacks on the police and the amniyyah. But, in general, the people of cities such as Shiraz, Isfahan and Tabriz experienced only fear


at the prospect of tribal descents on their cities, and panic was the usual reaction to the approach of tribal forces. Nonetheless, although there was fear at the prospect of the actual arrival of armed tribal fighters in the cities, there was, at the same time, considerable sympathy for their plight and their suffering at the hands of the army and the finance department. The urban populations, especially the poorer classes, were also happy to take advantage of the authorities’ manifest weakness in the summer of 1929 to make bonfires of the hated Pahlavi hat, which they discarded with impunity and en masse. Neither the tribal resistance of 1929 nor the ulama-led urban opposition which had preceded it proved able to arrest or divert Tehran’s centralizing drive. The “religious-radical alliance”,86 the cooperation between secular reformers and clerical dissidents, which had achieved such success in the past, and was to be so effective in the future, was, in the Iran of the late 1920s, inoperative. In his implementation of many of the demands of the nationalist intelligentsia, Riza Shah had sundered this alliance. Its two components were now at loggerheads, one lending enthusiastic support, the other firmly opposed, to the ascendancy of the shah and the character of his state-building project. Just as the tribal insurgents had failed to acquire urban allies, and especially support in the capital, so the ulama lacked any strategy of linking their resentments to the growing unease among secular elements at the increasingly autocratic rule of the shah. Not only did the ulama lack secular support but they were themselves internally divided along elite/subaltern lines. Just as it was the tribal rank and file’s horror at Pahlavi hats, conscription and forced settlement which provided the dynamic for the risings, while the leadership remained ambivalent, aloof or even hostile, so the clerical agitation in the provincial towns was largely driven by the fears of lower-ranking mullahs, preachers and religious students. It was they who were primarily vulnerable to the new dress and conscription laws, routinely denied exemption by the state boards, and who lost their livelihoods by the secularization of the judicial system. Although leading provincial mujtahids such as Ayatullah Isfahani assumed, for a variety of local reasons, a leading role in the opposition movement, the most important senior religious figures, especially Ayatullah Shaykh Abd al-Karim Hairi, remained unwilling or unable to put themselves at the head of a challenge to the new state. The resistance manifested between 1927 and 1929 to the new order by different social groups, urban and rural, elite and subaltern, was episodic and serial rather than sustained, expressing sectional, regional and local interests as and when these were challenged, and neither possessing nor


generating any leadership capable of transcending these interests. It had, furthermore, largely exhausted itself by 1930. Yet, although this resistance had been overcome, it nonetheless had a serious impact on the regime. The traumatic events of 1929 aggravated Riza Shah’s perennial inclination towards paranoia. Profoundly shaken by apparent assaults on his rule from many directions, he began to lose confidence in his supporters. The arrest of Firuz Mirza in mid-1929 began the inauguration of what was to become a reign of terror, decimating the Iranian elite and leaving the shah isolated and his regime directionless and demoralized. The successive waves of resistance which greeted the regime’s radical reform agenda of the late 1920s were motivated by complex and interlocking grievances. For both the urban and the rural opposition, one of the most hated of the reforms was the introduction of universal military service. The history of conscription provides, in many respects, a template for the broader fate of the reforms of the Riza Shah era. In the regime’s ideological determination, its authoritarian and commandist approach, the shock with which it reacted to the political consequences on the ground, and the eventual pragmatic accommodation to reality, epitomized by the toleration of evasion through bribery, the implementation of conscription bears a striking resemblance to another key policy, the enforcement of nomadic settlement. Riza Shah was irrevocably committed to conscription, which was a central pillar of his programme of modernization and secularization, and although forced to temporize, was ultimately determined to crush collective resistance. By 1930 he had largely succeeded in so doing. The subsequent implementation of the policy was apparently aided by a deliberate decision to defuse popular anger by tolerating, even encouraging, individual strategies of avoidance, in particular by allowing the manipulation of the exemptions system through bribery. Indeed the regime appears to have decided, in the face of the 1927 episode, to use an almost institutionalized system of bribery to defuse the opposition of the better-off. As a result, the vast majority of conscripts were drawn from the very poorest groups in society.87 As far as the tribes were concerned, throughout the 1930s the regime exercised extreme caution when imposing conscription, adopting a gradual, piecemeal approach. It was not until the mid-1930s that the first serious and systematic efforts were made to take recruits from the tribes, although from then on the reach of the recruiting commissions was slowly extended, year by year. By the late 1930s however conscription had still not been universally applied to the tribes and was still provoking sporadic armed resistance.88


Just as the policy of forced settlement failed to turn pastoral nomads into settled agricuturalists but rather inculcated an enduring hatred of the Pahlavi regime into the tribal populations, so conscription, although it produced a large army, did not produce a strong or efficient army. In 1941, when it met its first real test with the Anglo-Soviet invasion, the army simply disintegrated, the conscripts sold their rifles to the tribes and went home, leaving the whole painful process of rebuilding the army to begin again.

6 Popular Politics, the New State and the Birth of the Iranian Working Class: The 1929 Abadan Oil Refinery Strike

In May 1929 the operations of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in Abadan in south-western Iran were shaken by a series of demonstrations and strikes. This sudden eruption of industrial militancy, and the rudimentary workers’ organization which tried to give it shape and leadership, was rapidly suppressed by the combined and coordinated action of the oil company and the local Iranian authorities. Yet this episode, the first major industrial unrest which Iran had ever experienced, has come to be regarded as a landmark both in Iran’s domestic political history and in the history of its relationship with the Britishowned oil concession, the Abadan protests dramatically announcing the arrival of a new factor in Iranian politics, an organized working class, and the potency of a new type of protest, the industrial strike.1 On 1 May a demonstration by refinery workers took place in Abadan marking May Day and raising demands for higher wages and shorter hours. This signalled the open emergence of a conflict between the oil company and its labour force which had been simmering for months. The oil company responded to the demonstration with an all out effort to smash the incipient union organization which it now discovered to be in the process of formation among the refinery workers, thus provoking a general strike, the accompanying riots at the refinery and in Abadan town, and an outburst of popular hostility towards the foreign company. The sudden outbreak of industrial conflict of this magnitude, in an environment where the authoritarianism of the regime was steadily increasing and had largely succeeded in destroying both trade union organizations and the political parties, socialist and communist, which supported them, and where the working class was new, weak and inexperienced, seems at first sight to be an anomaly. Not only the scale 201


of the Abadan upheaval, but also its character seem puzzling, the methods adopted by the strikers and the discourse generated by the strike being anchored in cultural traditions which long pre-dated modern labour unionism.2 A better understanding of the meaning and significance of the Abadan episode may be teased out by placing it within both a wider context and a specific historical conjuncture. It was the result of the intersection of several different historical trends: a perennial popular hostility to foreign concessions which was as old as the concession era itself; a tradition of urban protest which possessed its own discourses and repertoires of action; the growing reach of a modern nationalism which had crystallized during the constitutional period and been empowered by the new regime established after the coup of 1921; and a maturing leftist current, also possessing a marked nationalist outlook, oriented towards the emerging working class and led by an organic intelligentsia.3 Of the most crucial conjunctural importance, in the late 1920s, were the immediate strategic needs and populist tactics of the regime itself which opened up a space within which, albeit temporarily, a popular anti-oil company movement could take shape. The leadership of the Abadan strike was composed of trade union organizers motivated by a broader political commitment, the best-known of whom was Yusuf Iftikhari.4 This leadership was heavily influenced by European, and especially Russian, examples of trade union organization, and the strike which they eventually organized appears, at first glance, to be an entirely modern form of protest, engaged in by a newly-forming social category. Yet, although the Russian example was undoubtedly a powerful one in the Iran of the 1920s, and provided a template for the cell-structure of the clandestine union, the Abadan events themselves displayed features typical of much older and fully indigenous traditions of popular politics. The demonstrations and strikes of May 1929 represented a fusion of old and new forms of protest, an example of a process of selective borrowing from a foreign model and its adaptation to an indigenous tradition, resulting in the creation of a novel symbiosis. Although the leftist union leaders provided a basic organizational framework, a new symbolic context centred on May Day, and the links with nationalist circles in local politics, the strikers themselves drew on a long-established repertoire of popular protest: the cessation of work, the closure of the bazars, the public mobilization of women, the riot. Just as the strikers’ action combined old and new, anchoring itself in tradition, so too did the rhetoric which was deployed to legitimize it. The strike was accompanied by the elaboration of a subaltern discourse which placed the hardships of the oil workers within a framework conditioned by concepts of natural

The 1929 Abadan Oil Refinery Strike 203

justice, of the duties of a benevolent ruler, and a sense of national community, and, in particular, utilized heavily gendered concepts of honour and shame. This gendered discourse, and the central role played by women, was crucial in symbolizing the legitimacy of the strike, the approbation of the wider community and in mobilizing mass support, enabling the refinery workers to represent their action as a struggle undertaken on behalf of the entire community.

Foreign concessions and popular protest By 1929, the oil concession was the last remaining of the foreign concessions which had been granted in the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries by the Qajar shahs, and had also revealed itself to be of the greatest long-term significance. The concession era had begun spectacularly in 1872 with the Reuter concession. Although this agreement was cancelled, others soon followed. Iranian dislike of these types of arrangements had appeared immediately and, as the concessions proliferated, religious and political resentment at the speed with which the country’s economic resources were passing into the hands of foreigners accumulated and spread. When, in 1890, Major Gerald Talbot acquired a fifty-year concession for the production, sale and export of tobacco, popular opposition erupted across the country. The bazar merchants and guilds stopped work and demonstrations were held in the capital and a number of provincial cities, culminating in an almost universally observed boycott of tobacco. Led by the ulama, these protests displayed an extraordinary degree of discipline and cohesion and the shah was forced to cancel the loathed concession. The Tobacco Protest was a spectacular demonstration of the power of a tradition of urban protest deployed in the service of new political objectives and framed within an emerging national discourse. Within a few years, in 1905–1906, the methods of popular protest were again deployed, with spectacular success, during the constitutional revolution, when months of bazar strikes, demonstrations and mass basts succeeded in forcing the shah to agree to representative government. During the 1920s, despite the growing authoritarianism of the new state, this tradition of popular politics remained alive. One of the most salient features of this tradition of popular protest was the open participation of women. Although attention has largely focused on the emergence in these years of elite female emancipatory movements, it is clear that women from poorer classes were present and active in the political lives of their communities in late nineteenth


and early twentieth century Iran and probably much earlier.5 Indeed, the presence of women in public protests was an especially sensitive barometer of the social composition of urban crowds. Where the protests were organized by a more conservative, especially religious, leadership, of some social standing and with a concern to maintain prestige and respectability, women might be discouraged from participating. Where the protests were more spontaneous and plebeian in character, for example, bread riots or anti-conscription riots, women were not only involved but sometimes played a central role.6 Women’s demonstrations often occupied a particular role in the choreography of a wider protest, the appearance in public of a crowd of women frequently being the prelude to the mobilization of an entire community. The participation of women in such episodes was heavily gendered and also typically displayed a strong ritual and symbolic aspect. Women protesters might throw dust on their heads, rend their garments and, in an echo of Shi‘i mourning ceremonies, engage in theatrical displays of weeping.7 These actions would be accompanied by a discourse which emphasized their weakness and helplessness, appealed for justice, and shamed their oppressors, who were enjoined by both religion and culture to protect females and children. Paradoxically, despite this exploitation of traditional cultural perceptions, women demonstrators, drawn from the poorest classes and with little to lose in terms of status and social prestige, often acted as a radicalizing force in protests, readier than their male counterparts to resort to mockery and insult and even to violence, relying on the reluctance of the authorities to violate social codes by physically dispersing or arresting females. Although women’s demonstrations were rarely spontaneous but, on the contrary showed signs of careful planning, yet little is understood about the mechanisms by which they were organized and led. Evidence suggests, however, that there existed in communities in slum quarters female figures with a recognized role and status who could be called on to produce crowds of women demonstrators in the service of a cause or the interests of an individual.8 Although evidence is scanty, it seems there was even a tradition of female oratory. The correspondent of the Times newspaper observed, for example, during the protests at the closure of the Majlis in 1911, that at a large meeting of women held in the Sipah Salar mosque, speeches were delivered by female orators.9 A close re-reading of the available source material furnishes other examples of women orators. As discussed below, during the 1929 Abadan disturbances the female leader of the strikers’ wives, Banu Zahra Khanum Muhammad Sadiq, made a


speech excoriating the oil company and denouncing the local police as traitors. In 1946 striking oil workers in Abadan were again addressed by a woman who, in front of a crowd of 80,000, accused the British of spending more on dog food than on workers’ wages and demanded the nationalization of the oil company.10 Just as the broader custom of popular protest continued in the 1920s, so too did the tradition of women’s demonstrations. The Tehran bread riots of 1925 illustrated familiar features of such female action. In these riots women constituted the majority of the crowd, were at the front of the demonstrations and were the most threatening, brandishing sticks and other makeshift weapons. Their subsequent arrest by the police provoked a further sense of solidarity and outrage on the part of the wider community. Women also took part in more directly political activities. A notice in the newspaper Sitarah-i Iran in 1923, calling for support for demonstrations against the British mandatory authorities exiling of Shi‘i ulama from the holy cities of Iraq, inadvertently confirmed the habitual presence of women at such events. The notice, placed in the newspaper by the clerical leadership of the protest, insisted that “women should abstain from attending the demonstration, their part in it will be to urge their husbands and sons to be punctual in attending, in this way they can give the demonstration their moral support”.11 Clearly, not only did the socially conservative religious leadership feel that women’s participation in such an event was inappropriate and might compromise its respectability, but this admonition that they should stay at home is a powerful indication that women normally considered themselves free to participate. Secular reforming trends also organized womenonly demonstrations. In March 1924, for example, at the height of the republican movement, a group of women demonstrated in a street protest against the Qajar dynasty.12 In May 1926 what was an extremely sophisticated example of organized action took place in Tehran when women carried out a “run” on the Imperial Bank of Persia. Part of the wider nationalist campaign against foreign concessions, a large number of women, all possessing notes in small denominations, arrived together at the Bank and demanded the notes be changed for silver coin.13 In December 1927 anti-conscription riots broke out in Rasht, led by the women of the town, and the bazars were closed. These riots resulted in twenty deaths, and so serious were they that the government proclaimed martial law, imposed a strict censorship and sent an armoured car from the capital to overawe the population.14


Popular politics, constitutionalism and Iran’s first trade unions The repertoire of urban protest deployed to such effect during the Tobacco Protest and the constitutional revolution depended on institutions such as the urban quarter, the guild, the bazar and the mosque, all functioning as networks of organization and mobilization. As long as these institutions continued to exist, they would remain capable of generating urban protest.15 From the constitutional period onwards, however, new structures, including political parties and trade unions, began to emerge which were potentially capable of articulating a new kind of discontent on a new basis.16 Yet the notion of a simple dichotomy between new trade unions based on class conscious workers in the modern sector of the economy, and artisans in workshops bound within the confines of the guild and a pre-capitalist mentality, is an oversimplification. In fact, the new trade unions born during the constitutional revolution represented neither an entirely novel development nor a clear break with the past but developed out of, or were super-imposed on, existing traditions and institutions of collective communal self-organization. The arrival of trade unionism in Iran, as also the social-democratic politics which succoured it, have been attributed in large part to radical influences emanating from Russia, particularly from the labour and revolutionary movements in the Caucasus, transmitted by the migrant workers who moved between northern Iran and the expanding industries, especially the oil industry, of the Russian Empire. Certainly the first unions were established, and remained strongest, in Tehran, the Caspian provinces and Azarbayjan, areas long exposed to social-democratic ideas, the newly formed cadres of Iranian social-democracy providing leadership and coherence to labour discontent. However the new unions were not the first workers’ organizations to come into being, nor did they introduce the tactic of the collective withdrawal of labour. When the constitutional revolution of 1905–1906 heralded an explosion of strikes among workers in both the developing capitalist and the pre-capitalist sectors of the economy, both the organizational forms and the methods spontaneously employed by the strikers derived primarily from the domestic political environment. By the time of the constitutional revolution, the tactic of the strike, the withdrawal of labour, already had a long history in Iran. The guild strike, whereby artisans, both masters and those they employed, especially apprentices, would cease work as a form of protest, was an estab-


lished practice of popular urban politics. As the context changed it was natural that urban craft workers, especially those moving out of small workshops into modern industrial environments, would take this tactic with them.17 The wave of strikes that erupted in the early days of the constitutional revolution owed nothing to formal trade union organization, which still lay in the future.18 The first union was formed in 1907 or possibly as late as 1910 but the first major strike of the constitutional revolution took place in November–December 1906, when fishermen in the port of Enzeli went on strike in protest at the low price paid to them for their catch by the Russian concessionaire Lianozov.19 Strike fever spread spontaneously to a wide range of workers in Tehran. In Tabriz leather workers struck, as did boatmen, customs workers, dockers and sailors at Enzeli.20 Strikes also broke out among workers far from the reach of social-democratic ideas. In Kirman in the south-east, largely isolated from constitutionalism and far from social-democratic influence, the carpet industry was plagued by apparently endemic industrial strife, the weavers taking sanctuary in the British consulate in protest at a lockout by their employers.21 As well as ceasing work, strikers often adopted other elements of the traditions of popular protest. The tactic of the occupation of a strategic building, sometimes with the claiming of a right of sanctuary (bast), was particularly salient. The Enzeli fishermen, for example, occupied en masse the telegraph office and sent telegrams to the new Majlis demanding the termination of the Lianozov concession and complaining that they were paid a bare pittance in return for their labour, while the Kirman carpet weavers took bast in the British consulate. A typical feature of these kinds of conflicts was an effort by the strikers to acquire legitimacy by demonstrating that they possessed the support of the wider society. The Enzeli fishermen, for example, won the support of the population in general, who deeply resented the Russian presence, the people of the nearby towns of Rasht and Enzeli beginning a boycott of Russian goods.22 The discourse of striking workers in the constitutional period frequently emphasized that their action was not in pursuit of a narrow sectional, or even class, interest, but was rather undertaken on behalf of the entire community, with economic demands situated within the context of a broader nationalist campaign. Not only the methods and discourse but also the organizational forms adopted by groups of workers in the upheavals of the revolution owed much to local influences. The first workers’ associations were not unions but collective associations based on an evolving indigenous


model, that of the anjuman. The first telegraphists’ strike in 1907 was organized under the leadership of their anjuman, their union not taking shape until the next year. Tramway workers also formed an anjuman, as did the servants of foreign residents and shoe workers.23 The precise relationship between the existing guilds, the revolutionary workplacebased anjumans and the new trade unions is uncertain. Some early unions, such as the telegraphists, may have evolved out of trade anjumans. Some may have developed from existing guild organizations. The guild remained a living example of the power of collective organization although guild masters, usually owning their own small-scale means of production and possessing the mentality of a classical petty bourgeoisie, were able to use the strike only for political and not for economic ends. Some guilds, however, such as the porters’ guild, where members owned only their own labour, were more obviously suitable for mutation into a union. Certainly guild habits and mentalities continued to exert a strong influence on the developing trade union movement.24 These first experiments in trade unionism were born and flourished in the new atmosphere of political freedom promised by the constitution, and were given impetus by the activism of the revolutionary years. Although all the embryonic unions disappeared as a result of the political repression which followed the closure of the Majlis in 1911 and the occupation of the radical north by the Russian army, yet the experience of the constitutional years was sufficient to establish a tradition of labour organization which was crucial to the rebirth of the unions after 1917.25

The Anglo-Persian Oil Company and Iran’s new proletarians Not all the concessions aroused the same degree of either popular or elite hostility as had Reuter and the Tobacco Régie. Those whose longterm significance was unclear, or which avoided any immediate or direct threat to existing interests, provoked less controversy. In 1901 the D’Arcy oil concession agreement was signed but at first attracted little attention in Iran.26 Exploration was concentrated in the tribal territories of the south-west, far from Tehran and other urban centres where political awareness was most acute. The likely success of the search was uncertain, the long-term significance of oil little appreciated and, in any case, the embryonic constitutional movement was fully occupied with its political struggle against royal despotism. Despite this lack of interest in its birth, the concession was to prove of central and defining importance to Iran. With the concession, oper-


ated by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company after its incorporation on the London stock exchange in 1909, the shah had in effect handed over to the concessionaires comprehensive rights to search for, develop and exploit petrol and natural gas throughout most of Iran, for sixty years.27 The struggle to regain control of Iran’s oil was to occupy the government, wider circles of nationalist opinion, and the population in general for half a century. Almost immediately upon beginning its commercial operation, the oil company began to be made aware of the discontent of its workforce. Labour disputes, both minor and more serious, erupted regularly, although trade union organization was completely lacking. The first reported labour disturbance took place in 1914 when two workers were killed in an industrial accident. Their workmates asked the company to provide support to the families who had lost their breadwinners and to improve safety. The company refused and the workers responded by throwing stones at the living quarters of the British staff and all work in Abadan ceased.28 This protest was suppressed by the tribal forces of Shaykh Khazal. As the rapid expansion of company operations at the end of the First World War brought together larger concentrations of workers, dissatisfaction at conditions and the cost of living provoked protests from all sections of the workforce. On December 9 1920 the Indian workforce at the Abadan refinery, some 3,000 strong, went on strike asking for higher wages, shorter hours and better conditions. The company granted their demands and the next day the Iranian labour force apparently followed their lead and also went on strike. They too were given a pay rise. Eighteen months later, in May 1922 Indian and Iranian workers again went on strike, demanding higher pay. This time the company was less accommodating. Relying on Shaykh Khazal to suppress the Iranian workers, company officials organized the deportation of half the Indian workforce, about 2,000 men.29 Meanwhile the company was enjoying a period of tremendous expansion. The first oil field had been located in Masjid-i Sulayman and the company established an administrative centre in the nearest port, Muhammarah (Khurramshahr), and constructed pipelines to carry the oil from the fields to the jetties and a refinery at Abadan. During the 1920s major exploratory efforts were undertaken which resulted in the discovery of several new oil fields while the refinery was completely reequipped and modernized. Between discovery in 1908 and the end of the First World War the production of oil in Iran had already increased tenfold to nearly a million tons. By 1929 it had grown another six-fold.30 Company profits were exploding and were becoming the basis for a


global operation, with Abadan the greatest oil complex in the world.31 In 1913–1914 the company’s profits were £27,000 and Iran’s royalties £10,000. By 1929 Iran was the world’s fifth largest producer of oil.32 As a result of the rapid expansion of its operations, the company was beginning to have a major impact on local Iranian society. The numbers of workers employed in the industry grew exponentially. In 1911 the company employed a total of 1,884 Iranian workers. By 1929 this had grown to 15,245, by the next year it had almost doubled, to 27,180.33 The significance of this workforce may be seen when compared to other sectors of the economy. In 1925 Iran had fewer than twenty modern industrial plants, of these only five had more than fifty workers.34 Not only were the numbers of oil workers unprecedented for a single enterprise but their conditions of work were also new. In contrast to the artisanal economy which still predominated across Iran, the oil workers were not dispersed in small workshops but were concentrated in the oil fields and especially in their thousands in the refinery where they laboured together, sharing a collective experience of modern factory conditions. By 1927 more than 10,000 Iranians were employed in the refinery alone which had become a hotbed of discontent. These new proletarians were overwhelmingly drawn from the rural poor of southern Iran, both settled and nomadic, perhaps with a small admixture of impoverished artisans from the collapsing handicrafts industries and the urban poor.35 Owing to the company’s relationships with local tribal leaders, Shaykh Khazal and the Bakhtiyari khans, the numbers drawn from these tribal backgrounds were particularly large.36 There was a high turnover of labour. Many of the rural poor, driven to seek work in the oil fields by a season of poor crops, would last no longer than a few months, finding it impossible to adjust to industrial conditions. Former nomads, for example, used to spending hot weather in cool mountain uplands, found themselves working in Abadan in temperatures of fifty degrees or more. The transitional status of these new workers was vividly mirrored in their clothing. The Arabs wore blue boiler suits with a keffiyah around their heads, while the Bakhtiyari tribesmen chose wide black trousers of the kind worn at home, with a European jacket.37 The Iranians, unskilled labourers and sometimes skilled workers, comprised the lowest levels of the company’s workforce. Most were employed directly by the company but a proportion were hired by local sub-contractors. Above them was a substantial layer composed of imported Indian labour, employed as salaried clerical and technical staff and as skilled artisans, and receiving preferential treatment in terms of pay and conditions. The superior position of the Indian labour was a constant


source of grievance both to the Iranian government, nationalist opinion, and the Iranian labourers themselves. Although the numbers declined slightly as the 1920s wore on, by 1929 the company was still employing 2,518 Indians. The management of the company was entirely British. The conditions the new workers found when they arrived in Abadan were extremely harsh. The town itself owed its extraordinary growth, reaching a population of 60,000 by the 1920s, entirely to the oil company and its refinery.38 The struggle for housing in Abadan was perhaps the worst aspect of the situation. Existing housing was inadequate, squalid and insanitary, and company building in no way kept pace with the expanding population. Most of the Iranian workers, especially the unskilled on the lowest pay and the contract labour, had no hope of company housing and had to fend for themselves in shanty-town hovels.39 Wages were not generous, while extra hardship arose from job insecurity. The company requirement for labour fluctuated wildly and unpredictably. For example, the number of Iranians employed fell by a third within twelve months between 1930 and 1931.40 Those laid off would simply be so informed when they turned up for work at the refinery gates. Sometimes workers would simply be suspended, until employment was found for them elsewhere in the company’s operations. Suspensions would also be used as a disciplinary measure. Such layoffs were disastrous as they meant not only the loss of wages but loss of priority in the fierce struggle for housing and the fear of unemployment was always present.41 The position of the sub-contracted labour, often paid less than the company’s stipulated minimum wage and without even the theoretical right to company housing, and employed for the dirtiest and most menial tasks, was particularly desperate.42 In general, the provision of services such as medical treatment, schools and other amenities was completely inadequate. Although it was the male breadwinners who endured the difficult working conditions, it was often their families, and particularly their wives, who bore the brunt of the harsh life in Abadan and the oil fields.43 The oil industry in the south gave Iran its first indigenous working class and its sharpest experience of modern capitalism. The rural poor drawn to Abadan were not, however, the first Iranians to work in modern industry. Iran’s first proletarians were formed outside the country altogether from the many thousands of the rural poor who migrated from northern Iran to the Baku oil fields in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century.44 Here these migrant workers came into contact with both political radicalism, including Russian social-democracy, and militant labour organizations and, on their return, brought their new-found class and political consciousness into the Iranian domestic environment, founding unions


and a social-democratic organization. The rural poor entering the southern oil industry encountered no such radical political parties, nor any preexisting labour organizations. This did not, however, produce passivity or resignation. It meant rather that these new workers interpreted their situation and articulated their discontent using the cultural and political referents which were within their reach. Although the southern oil industry did not harbour political or industrial militancy of the type witnessed by Iranians in Baku, yet the Indian workforce, notwithstanding the resentment engendered by their relatively privileged position, provided a vivid education in the methods of collective bargaining. The imported Indian labour appears to have possessed a degree of political experience and class consciousness as well as some subterranean organization which enabled them to lead strikes in 1920 and 1922. This practical example, quickly emulated by the Iranian workers, was reinforced from 1922 onwards by the presence of a small number of members of the newly-founded Communist Party of Iran. The very nature of the company as a foreign concession meant, furthermore, that the consciousness of its Iranian workers would be heavily influenced from the beginning by a modern nationalist discourse which rejected the very legitimacy of the oil concession as well as contesting the British imperial presence more generally. The impact of this discourse intensified after the coup of 1921. However, notwithstanding these novel influences, the political culture possessed by the Iranian workers derived largely from indigenous traditions of popular protest. So deep was this culture that, in 1929, the union-organized strike quickly reverted to a default position deploying a repertoire of action possessing a profound local resonance.

The oil company and the new state The D’Arcy concession had been signed by the shah before the arrival of constitutional government in Iran and without provoking the kind of widespread opposition that had put an end to the Reuter and the Tobacco concessions. By 1909, however, almost immediately upon oil being discovered in commercial quantities, the new constitutional authorities became embroiled in a sharp dispute with the company over its interpretation of its concessionary rights and specifically over the revenues due to Iran. Disagreement over royalties and the company’s accounting methods were henceforth both perennial and bitter, Iranian officials consistently arguing that Iran was not receiving its due under the terms of the concession. The government also disliked the company’s indifference to Iranian sovereignty represented by its negotiation of separate agree-


ments with local tribal leaders in the oil areas in south-west Iran, Shaykh Khazal, chief of the Muhaysin Arabs and governor of Muhammarah, and the senior khans of the Bakhtiyari confederation.45 Yet, largely powerless, the Iranian authorities in these years could do little more than periodically reiterate their doubts regarding the royalties they were receiving and their non-recognition of the company’s separate agreements with the tribal chiefs. They did not, however, propose any fundamental challenge to the concession itself. Both the government’s helplessness and the character of its attitude towards the concession were to change rapidly after the coup of 1921. Although discontent with the way the company operated the concession had been endemic, after 1921 its focus gradually shifted. Until the early 1920s, the Iranian government had concentrated its efforts on persuading the company to be fair in its interpretation of the terms of the concession, particularly regarding the calculation of royalties. From the mid-1920s onwards the increasingly confident post-coup regime began to envisage a renegotiation of the concession itself. Although notions of expropriation, largely formulated by the new Iranian Communist Party, had begun to gain wider currency, the regime did not at this stage advocate the removal of the company from Iran, but wished to gain for the country a more realistic share of the enormous profits which the company had begun to make from Iranian oil and to end the threat it represented to Iranian sovereignty. For the new regime which emerged from the coup of 1921, and for the wider nationalist circles which supported it, the south was a region that had been lost to Iran, where Iranian sovereignty did not prevail, where the power of Britain and its local tribal clients was supreme, and where oil, a vital national resource, was in foreign hands. From the early 1920s this newly-empowered nationalism was determined upon enforcing a general acknowledgement of Iranian sovereignty, the irreversible integration of semi-autonomous provinces into the emerging political order, and the assertion of national control over the economy and economic resources. As far as southern Iran was concerned, it was deemed imperative to destroy the autonomy of the tribal leaderships and to subdue the oil company. Indeed, these objectives were seen as inextricably linked. The Bakhtiyari khans and particularly Shaykh Khazal, protégés of the oil company, were constantly depicted in the press as reactionaries in their own right and, even worse, as pawns of the British, a fifth column permanently at the ready to subvert national unity and independence in the interests of their foreign masters. Within a few years the regime had, by a combination of inducement, cooption, blackmail and military threat,


brought the southern tribal leaderships to heel.46 By 1925 the Bakhtiyari khans had made their peace with the new order, but the more defiant Shaykh Khazal had been removed altogether from the south and made a virtual prisoner in Tehran. The nationalist fear that Britain might engineer the secession of the province of Khuzistan and reinvent Khazal as the ruler of another independent oil-rich Gulf shaykhdom under British protection was over. Riz˙a Khan’s sustained and successful campaign against Shaykh Khazal was greeted by nationalist opinion as a triumph and as an indirect blow against British imperialism. Khazal’s removal was also of more practical significance to the company. Since the beginning, the Bakhtiyari khans and Shaykh Khazal had been crucial in providing security for the company’s operations. Shaykh Khazal, in particular, had played a key role, using his tribal followers and dependants to maintain a rough and ready order in Abadan and in particular to break strikes. After 1925, the company no longer possessed the option of calling in Khazal’s men should any kind of disruption occur. Rather, the company was henceforth obliged to rely on the apparatus of the new state for its security. This introduced a new vulnerability to the company, making its continued smooth operation conditional on the goodwill of local officials and military and police officers.47 From now on, the company could meet disturbances only by requesting help from the state itself or by resorting to the drastic alternative of calling in British naval assistance. As relations between the company and the government deteriorated after 1927, company management became ever more conscious of this vulnerability. In the years immediately following the coup of 1921, the Iranian government’s dissatisfaction with the oil company had faded into the background as a series of power struggles took place between Riz˙a Khan and a range of opponents within the political elite. Following the stabilization of the new Pahlavi dynasty, the regime embarked on an extraordinary period of legislative radicalism aimed at the rapid and profound transformation of the country. One of the iconic measures of this period was the abrogation of capitulations, which was carried out in 1927–1928. For the regime, and for all shades of Iranian opinion, this move signalled the end of the old unequal treaty relations with the imperial powers and the arrival of Iran on the stage of international relations as a truly independent and formally sovereign state. After the successful abolition of capitulations, the most perfect symbol of Iran’s continuing subordination to imperial domination was the oil company and, in 1927, the concession reappeared on the government’s agenda.48


The government had already signalled its intentions to close the other remaining foreign concession, the Imperial Bank of Persia.49 The British-owned bank accepted the inevitable with a degree of resignation.50 The Anglo-Persian Oil Company, however, was a different matter. The company made it clear that, while prepared to enter into negotiations with the government, it did not intend to allow its concessionary rights to be eroded in any fundamental sense. Iranian state-building efforts had, throughout the nineteenth century, been hampered by a lack of revenue. Despite the fiscal reorganization undertaken by the Financial Adviser, Dr Millspaugh, by the latter part of the 1920s oil royalties were still one of the few secure sources of income available to the government. Although these revenues were small in absolute terms, they were vital to the financing of Riza Shah’s ambitious and expensive development programme. The regime, refusing to compromise its independence by raising foreign loans, was already driving domestic taxation up to astronomical levels to raise cash. As the decade neared its end, Riza Shah found himself in urgent need of funds, especially for his pet project, the trans-Iranian railway, and, most importantly, to meet the ever-expanding demands of the military, an institution on which the regime depended.51 In fact, from 1929 onwards, oil royalties were channelled by the shah into a special fund reserved for the purchase of strategic armaments. For the shah and for wider nationalist circles, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was no longer merely a symbol of imperial domination. It now appeared, by depriving the country of its fair share of the profits from Iranian oil, to be robbing Iran of the means to become a modern state and presenting a threat to the entire nationalist project. In July 1928 Riza Shah sent Taymurtash to London to open discussions about the concession. In a series of meetings, Taymurtash tried to convince the company chairman, Sir John Cadman, of the need for a new relationship which would provide Iran with more realistic royalties.52 At the same time the regime, aware of its weakness vis à vis the oil company, launched a broad campaign to mobilize public opinion in Iran. The government signalled its attitude in a number of ways. On November 20 1928, the prime minister made a speech at the first meeting of the newly-elected Majlis, referring to the old concessions and at the need for revising them to bring them more into line with modern conditions.53 When Riza Shah toured Khuzistan in the same month he refused to visit the company’s installations, the newspaper Shafaq-i Surkh explaining the shah’s decision to be a consequence of popular dislike of the company and its outdated imperial demeanour.54


The Iranian press was a central pillar of the nationalist campaign. Since the mid-1920s, the press had been largely reduced to docility by the legal and extra-legal repression of the regime, but now, safe in the knowledge of government approval, it needed little encouragement to publish vituperative attacks on the company and all its works. During the 1920s a germinating nationalist discourse had elaborated a general critique of the company. This critique possessed a number of dimensions. It resented the denial of Iranian sovereignty implicit in the company’s dealings with tribal leaders and the overbearing attitude of company officials towards the Iranian government, was exasperated by the constant disputes over royalties, and was concerned at the large proportion of foreigners employed in the oil industry and the lack of opportunities for Iranians, and at the absence of any sign of wider development in the oil region. Especially in the context of Iran’s urgent need for secure sources of revenue for its development programme, nationalist circles balked at the company’s readiness to reduce production in the interests of keeping global prices high. As soon as the government indicated its willingness to tolerate public criticism of the company, these grievances found ready press outlets and a receptive audience. The Sitarah-i Iran, for example, commented in November 1928 that the D’Arcy concession had been granted by a corrupt, ignorant government bribed by unscrupulous financiers who wished to swindle Iran.55 The press, echoing the paternalistic approach of the regime, seized in particular on the question of the appalling conditions of the workers employed by the company. This issue was taken up not only by left-leaning newspapers such as Tufan but also by a number of mainstream and semiofficial newspapers such as Tehran’s Ittila‘at, Sitarah-i Iran and Shafaq-i Surkh.56 A typical article from the Shafaq-i Surkh of September 1928 described the low wages and indebtedness of the workers, their hardship exacerbated by financial deductions for holidays and as fines, their “dark hovels made of packing materials” and their “utmost poverty and destitution”.57 These denunciations were spontaneously and independently reinforced by Persian-language newspapers published abroad, Habl ul-Matin in Calcutta and Chihranamah in Cairo.58 In February 1929, Cadman came to Tehran to continue the discussions begun in London. By March, however, the negotiations had stalled completely. It was in this context, of Iran’s desperate financial need and political frustration, that the regime extended some toleration, and even encouragement, to a popular campaign against the oil company.


Populism and paternalism By the late 1920s, the new shah, whose regime was increasingly authoritarian but whose power was not yet absolute, still possessed sufficient political flexibility and astuteness to permit a degree of independent activity, if this were in the regime’s interests. Indeed, the regime had by now an established record of utilizing subaltern discontent in the furtherance of its own agenda. Especially in his struggles against refractory elements of the old Qajar elite, Riza Khan himself, and his supporters within the military and among the nationalist intelligentsia, often stimulated, encouraged and organized support “from below”. Such subaltern mobilization would typically be accompanied by an ideological populism and paternalism which stressed Riza Khan’s role as that of a champion of the downtrodden and a guarantor of their rights against feudal, reactionary and pro-British elements. Riza Khan’s readiness to adopt such tactics was most clearly visible in his campaign against the Qajar dynasty in 1924–1925. The republican campaign of 1924 based itself on a groundswell of genuine support, deployed reforming and populist slogans, castigating Ahmad Shah as a corrupt and tyrannical puppet, and used methods drawn from a familiar repertoire of popular urban protest.59 The regime’s use of populist tactics was also evident in its struggles with the tribal aristocracies. In an attempt to weaken and undermine their position, the government frequently encouraged subordinate tribal groups to mount challenges to their own khans. These political attacks on the tribal leaderships were accompanied by an ideological offensive which emphasized the oppression and exploitation of the old rule of the khans, and the primacy of the rights of the tribal populations of which the benevolent new state would be the guardian. In its pursuit of the destruction of the Bakhtiyari khans, the regime even supported a peasant antilandlord movement in the mid-1920s.60 Into the spaces created by the new state’s struggle with its elite opponents emerged a range of lower class movements, ideas and practices. However, the relationship between the regime and these periodic subaltern political interventions was always complex and replete with tension. The regime did not manufacture the discontent which propelled the subaltern mobilizations, this was invariably authentic. It did, however, seek to shape and channel it. The degree and manner of the regime’s involvement varied from case to case, while the extent of regime control was also uncertain. Any subaltern political activism contained an inherent danger that it might rapidly go beyond the


objectives of the regime and begin to assert an agenda of its own.61 Wherever subaltern mobilizations threatened to escalate or to radicalize uncontrollably or where they simply outlived their usefulness, the regime was inclined to take fright, to retreat and to resort to using its repressive apparatus against them. This ambivalence was to be most strikingly illustrated in the case of the May protests by the oil workers who, having believed themselves to be acting with official support, were then ruthlessly suppressed by the local authorities. In its conflict with elements it could cast as feudal or reactionary, such as the Qajar dynasty and the tribal khans, the regime framed its encouragement of subaltern discontent within a discourse of nationalism, paternalistic reform and modernity. In its suppression of such elements, it was relatively simple for the regime to portray itself as progressive. However, the growing authoritarianism of the regime meant that it also possessed a strategic project of suppressing independent political activity originating from the left. While destroying trade unions and parties of the left it was even more crucial for the regime to advertise a paternal concern for the poor, if it were to retain any legitimacy and ideological credibility. Accordingly, during the struggle with the oil company, the regime, having in previous years ruthlessly suppressed trade unions, now eagerly posed as a defender of the rights of the downtrodden workers.62 From late 1928 the government began to pursue a populist tactic in its struggle with the oil company and signalled its readiness to tolerate open hostility to the company in Khuzistan and a number of local merchants and officials put themselves at the head of a nationalist campaign against the company. The most important members of this group were Mirza Husayn Muvaqqar, the Majlis deputy for Khurramshahr, and his son and sons-in-law. Muvaqqar’s influence derived not only from his official position as Majlis deputy but also from his social prominence and wealth. Other members of this group included the Iranian consul in Basra and the chief inspector of customs in Khuzistan. This campaign was able to tap into the strong local hostility to the company in Khuzistan, and also to capitalize on the fact that it could imply, more or less openly, that it had government support.63 The campaign also had a strong subaltern dimension. The regime had made criticism of the appalling conditions endured by the workers an important element of its case against the oil company and it was natural for these nationalist circles now to make common cause with trade unionists active in the oil industry. The trade unionists could deliver mass support for the nationalist campaign, while prominent


local officials could provide some political protection for the trade unionists whose activities would otherwise have attracted the hostile attention not only of the company but also of the Iranian police.

Iranian trade unions and the new state Towards the end of the First World War, the political context in Iran again became more favourable to labour organization. In 1917 the Russian revolutions both boosted a more clearly delineated Iranian nationalism and led to the emergence of cadres drawn from the newlyfounded socialist and communist parties who were able, over the next few years, to offer leadership to a newly revitalized trade union movement.64 In 1921 the union organizers in Tehran came together to form the Central Council of Federated Trade Unions which immediately affiliated to the Profintern.65 This new leadership possessed a clear political perspective and, in addition to establishing organizations and recruiting members, embarked on a range of educational and cultural activities with the object of raising the political consciousness of the workers. The unions opened reading rooms, translated Marxist texts into Persian, published newspapers, and organized lectures, cultural events, schools and social clubs. Among the new traditions which the labour movement in Iran tried to establish was that of celebrating May Day, if possible with a strike, and the first May Day event was organized in 1921.66 The trade union activity of the early 1920s was carried on under the leadership of politically committed cadres with a new ideological orientation. In their favour was a domestic environment where, as had been illustrated during the constitutional period, the formation of collective organizations was almost instinctive. In the changing ideological environment, however, these organizations indicated a new preference for the nomenclature of trade unionism over that of the anjumans. So deep was the collective instinct that the banding together of those suffering common difficulties appeared in the most unlikely places, and sometimes where there was no evidence of formal trade union leadership. As well as more conventional associations, there were unions of unemployed workers and even, following the purges of ministry staff by the American Financial Adviser, Dr Millspaugh, a union of dismissed finance officials.67 Furthermore, the relative freedom of the early 1920s also saw a renewed wave of strikes. Sometimes these strikes occurred among groups of workers, such as printers and teachers, who had managed to form unions.


Sometimes, however, as in the case of the many strikes by police, collective action took place in the apparent absence of any trade union organization.68 The strikes of these years, frequently including those led by unions, continued to display features familiar from the past. As in the nineteenth century, they were often a protest against the nonpayment of wages, and they were often accompanied by other, older, tactics such as the occupation of a relevant building and the taking of bast. For example, in 1921–1922 teachers struck owing to their pay being in arrears and also took bast in the Majlis.69 Despite this strong cultural predisposition towards collective organization, and the prevalence of the strike tactic, the establishment of unions on a permanent basis was fraught with difficulties. Many of the unions founded in these years remained weak and ephemeral. They possessed only a low level of organization, their members only a low level of class consciousness, and they suffered from financial hardship, from a perennial surplus of labour and from the short-term and seasonal nature of much employment. The majority of the new workers who joined the unions were peasants who had not severed their attachment to their villages and who would abandon their jobs and return home as soon as they had collected a small sum of money.70 The working class proper was itself new, numerically tiny and inexperienced, and its conditions of life were precarious. The distinction between guild and union was still blurred with some of the unions, like the guilds, containing both employers and workers.71 The arrest of its leaders often led to the total collapse and disappearance of a union.72 The new unions also displayed an eclectic ideological mix. Despite the allegiance of their leading cadres to the Communist Party, they were ready to adapt to popular movements organized by leaderships with very different politics, the nationalist context being the crucial determinant. They enthusiastically joined, for example, the clerical-led demonstrations in support of Shi‘i mujtahids expelled from Iraq by the British, union members carrying banners extolling the virtues of Islam.73 In the early 1920s a degree of mutual toleration existed between the unions and the regime, leading to the unions accepting and echoing the regime’s own paternalistic approach, the printers’ union welcoming Riza Khan with a banner hailing him as “the defender of the Workmen’s Unions in Iran”.74 In addition to their own organizational and ideological weaknesses, the unions were extremely vulnerable to changes in the political context. They had flourished during the relative freedom of the constitutional years but disappeared during the subsequent years of political reaction,


only re-emerging in the fluid political situation which followed the Russian revolution. As long as the post-1921 regime wished to retain the support of left-leaning circles, they were able to make real advances. However, as the new regime became stronger, it began to crack down on both the unions and the parties which supported them. Attempts to call strikes were met with the arrest of the strike leaders, and many union members were imprisoned. From the mid-1920s open activities such as the celebration of May Day became increasingly difficult. After Riza Shah’s accession to the throne, a period of repression began in earnest. Most of the cadres of the unions and the Communist Party were arrested and the organizations driven underground. Despite the difficulties it was experiencing as a result of the growing authoritarianism of the new state, and more openly hostile to Riza Shah as a result of the radical line adopted by the sixth congress of the Comintern, the Communist Party, at its second congress in December 1927, made a decision to launch a new campaign to organize the Iranian working class. Following the advice of the Profintern, the Party specifically resolved to pay special attention to organizing the most numerous category of workers, “and the one most cruelly exploited by foreign capital”, the oil workers.75 In 1928 the Communist Party established a special trade union committee charged to carry out these tasks. Trade union activities, especially outside Tehran where the control of the state was looser and less consistent, were given new life by the Communist Party’s campaign.76 New unions were formed among tinsmiths, oil-bunker workers and hat makers in Rasht, among porters, fishery workers and boatmen in Enzeli, among railway workers in Mazandaran, the railwaymen’s union organizing a strike in January 1929, among carpet weavers in Mashhad, and among workers at the match factory, soapmakers and weavers in Tabriz.77 This drive towards unionization also led to renewed efforts to establish a network among the oil workers in Khuzistan. In order to highlight the rebirth of the unions, the trade union committee of the Communist Party took a decision to pay special attention to making May Day 1929 a national event. That year saw a concerted effort to hold May Day celebrations in Tehran while the May Day demonstrations in Abadan provided the catalyst for the broader protests and the strike.

The 1929 strike The accumulation of a new and authentic proletariat, in its many thousands, in the oil industry in and around Abadan had presented an


irresistible opportunity to trade union organizers. Reports of communists arriving in the oilfields with a view to gaining work in the industry and carrying on propaganda began to appear in 1922. In 1924 an Indian mechanic had tried to organize a union among the workers in the oilfield at Masjid-i Sulayman.78 At the end of 1925 the cadres of the Communist Party succeeded in forming a first trade union among the Iranian oil workers. This union survived long enough to present a report on their working conditions to the Majlis in 1926, although this early organization then disappeared. As a result of the 1927 drive towards unionization, the Communist Party began work again in the oil industry. The party sent a few of its members to Abadan where they linked up with sympathizers already working there.79 The group was led by Yusuf Iftikhari, who had been sent to Abadan directly from the KUTIV in Moscow.80 They then embarked on an organizational agenda that had two aspects: recruitment to a secret trade union, and open and public activity to create workers’ clubs. By locating themselves firmly within the nationalist campaign against the oil company being waged by the regime and its nationalist supporters, the communists were able to make real headway on both levels. Iftikhari and his comrades began recruiting among the skilled workers of the APOC’s Training Shop, establishing a tight-knit and secret structure for the union, based on three-men cells.81 However their work progressed in the teeth of a range of serious difficulties, some of which were specific to the oil industry, while some were familiar from efforts at unionization elsewhere. The oil company had its own intelligence service, even more vigilant than usual because of the burgeoning conflict over the workingmen’s clubs, and any suspicions of a connection with a union would result in instant dismissal and possibly deportation from the province. The intimidation of the workforce in the interests of political and industrial discipline was notorious. As in other infant industries, most of the oil workers were recent arrivals from the countryside and turnover was high.82 The educational level of the labourers was very low, and the union recruited mostly among clerical staff, foremen and artisans, and also went beyond the confines of the company to recruit among sympathizers in the town, the 29 cell-leaders later identified by the company including eight foremen, a number of skilled workers, some clerical staff and even a sarraf in the Abadan bazar.83 Nonetheless, the union organizers were able to tap into a pre-existing and deep discontent with the company which was already resulting in sporadic wildcat strikes. Such strikes might erupt from nowhere and become quite menacing. In March 1928, for example, following the spread of a rumour that the company intended to fire 10,000 Iranians


and replace them with Indian and Iraqi labourers, more than 2,000 Iranian workers gathered in front of the company’s labour office in Abadan and threw stones at it. At the same time as they were establishing the clandestine cells, the union organizers, following a well-established practice, began a campaign to create workingmen’s clubs which would promote sports, cultural and social activities. Such clubs were intended to operate publicly and to provide an opportunity for educating and raising the political consciousness of the workers attracted to them, while avoiding the hostile attentions of the authorities. The campaign for the clubs in Abadan was conducted entirely openly and found support from nationalist circles who were conducting their own campaign against the company,84 the principal nationalist supporter of the clubs being the Majlis deputy Mirza Husayn Muvaqqar, and his son. The clubs were immensely popular, the opening of one was said to have been attended by over 700 men.85 The company, however, was utterly opposed to the clubs, which it believed were a front for labour organizing, and forced them all to close, although in fact most of those involved in the clubs knew nothing about the union.86 Over the next few months a running conflict developed with the company over the existence of the clubs, their suppression leading to anger among the workforce reaching boiling point. By the early summer of 1929 the continuing conflict over the clubs, suspicions of union activities, and the nationalist campaign against the oil concession were combining to cause increasing alarm among the company management. The union leaders in Abadan, emboldened by the broader nationalist campaign against foreign concessions and mindful of the Communist Party’s intentions to celebrate May Day where possible, decided to use the occasion to lead the refinery workers in an open demonstration against the oil company. The May Day protests, demanding shorter hours and higher wages, and threatening a strike, passed off peacefully but the oil company seems to have decided to take the opportunity presented by this public marking of May Day to crush, once and for all, any signs of insubordination among its workforce.87 The company management, although even more wary than usual of its labour as a result of the clubs movement, knew nothing precise about the embryonic union and was taken by surprise as its intelligence service began, with great difficulty, to uncover the scale of organization. By the day after the demonstration, the company had ascertained that the union numbered an estimated thirty cells in Abadan, each of which had about 15–20 members, with two more cells in Masjid-i Sulayman, seven in Khurramshahr and two in Ahvaz.88 Company


officials immediately contacted both the local Iranian authorities in Abadan and the military governor-general of Khuzistan, General Farajullah Aqavli, in the provincial capital, Ahvaz, and demanded their full cooperation in the suppression of the discontent.89 General Aqavli gave the governor of Abadan, Aqa Asayish, full authority to act and E. H. Elkington, the general manager of the Abadan refinery, passed on to Asayish copies of all the reports which he had received from the company intelligence service, these reports including names of cell leaders of the union. Asayish ordered the arrests of some twenty-five people and confiscated a number of documents in their possession. He then left for Ahvaz to discuss the situation in person with General Aqavli, returning to Abadan accompanied by the chief of police of Khuzistan, Colonel Rukn al-Din Mukhtar, these officials apparently unaware of the discreet encouragement Tehran was lending to the anti-company agitation. On his return on 3 May the governor went immediately to see Elkington and they agreed on a crackdown. Colonel Mukhtar began a series of police operations to arrest as many of the cell leaders as possible. The arrests proceeded slowly amidst a great deal of confusion, as some of the names given in the company’s intelligence reports were wrong. It was only after the chance arrest of a cell leader named Sayyid Khalil, a boilermaker in the marine workshop, that the police located an accurate list of the names of the other leaders. By the evening the police had made some thirty to forty arrests, and seized pamphlets, instructions, lists of names, materials relating to the production of a leaflet and details of a proposed strike. The next day, May 4, further arrests were made, bringing the total to forty-five. Of those arrested twenty were employed by the oil company while the remainder were dismissed workers. Elkington professed himself extremely pleased with the action of the local authorities. By now, however, news of the arrests was spreading throughout Abadan and the atmosphere was becoming tense. Elkington himself admitted that company workers “were seething with trouble”.90 The governor of Abadan and the local chief of police visited Elkington to reassure him that no further disturbances need be expected but the company knew better. The Director of the APOC in Tehran, T. L. Jacks, met the minister of court, Taymurtash, and painted a lurid picture of widespread Bolshevik and Soviet plots. Taymurtash, although openly sceptical of Jack’s claims, was nonetheless himself alarmed at the developing situation, and agreed to authorize the local authorities in Khuzistan to take such strong action as they saw fit. On the night of 5 May Elkington received intelligence that a strike in protest at the arrests was being


planned for the next morning by those of the trade union organizers still at liberty. In the early morning of 6 May the strike began. The union leaders had carefully planned the choreography of the action in advance with a leading role being assigned to women, wives of the refinery workers, with whom they had been in contact for some time.91 Early in the morning on 6 May, before the arrival of the day shift, a large group of women, mainly consisting of the wives of refinery workers, under the leadership of Banu Zahra Khanum Muhammad Sadiq, gathered at the refinery gates.92 They began to bemoan the fate of those who had been arrested, and attempted to prevent labourers on the incoming day shift from going to work in the refinery. The women began crying and berating the labourers arriving for work, alternately humiliating them and beseeching them. The women accused the workers of not being men, of having no honour and no respect, of being indifferent to the fates of their brothers who had been imprisoned for their sake, and finally implored them not to go into work.93 It seems that the presence of the women, and the nature of their appeals, had a profound effect on the labourers congregating outside the refinery gates and the mood of the protest changed. The women were joined by groups of men, refinery workers committed to the strike, who also called on the arriving day shift not to go into work as their brothers had been imprisoned after trying to defend their rights and to get them an increase in wages.94 These workers had prior instructions from the union to act as pickets and they armed themselves with sticks and began to block the main refinery gates and other entrances to the plant, turning back anyone who indicated any intention of trying to get into work. By now the entire day shift had gathered outside the refinery gates and the temper of the strikers was steadily worsening. Some of the strikers attacked a company office but were prevented from breaking into the refinery itself by the arrival of the chief of police with a small number of officers. The police, however, were soon forced to take refuge in the fire station office. The mood of the crowd was becoming uglier, both the governor and the chief of police were personally assaulted, bricks were thrown and some of the strikers succeeded in breaking into the refinery. There were by now at least 3,000–4,000 people in the crowd and several thousand workers, perhaps as many as 9,000 of the 10,000 employed in the refinery, were on strike.95 At this point some of the workers left the refinery and went to the Abadan bazar. On their arrival the bazar closed in their support.96 They then went to the police station where they tried to force the release of


those arrested over the last few days but the police managed to disperse the crowd, making several more arrests. At the refinery the pickets had remained in place, easily denying entry to a few labourers and some Indian clerks who were still hoping to begin work. Whenever British employees arrived by car, the pickets hauled off their Indian drivers, leaving the British to drive their cars themselves and force their way into the refinery. After about an hour, senior British management arrived and made the strongest possible efforts to get the Indian clerks into the refinery but failed. The pickets engaged the British management in altercations, more volleys of stones were thrown and glass panes of doors and windows were smashed.97 Finally the British officials were obliged to retreat and take refuge in their own quarters. It was only when police reinforcements and the army arrived from Ahvaz, in trucks provided by the oil company, that the authorities succeeded in dispersing the crowd. The soldiers were then posted to guard all the company installations and to try to regain control of the town which was in a state of great unrest. The strike had been total and no worker from the day shift had entered the refinery that day. Although the pickets’ main aim had been to ensure the observation of the strike, the union organizers had also planned the occupation of the refinery.98 Despite battling with the police and charging the police lines, they were unable to achieve this objective. Nonetheless, even after the police had dispersed the crowd, the company, fearful that strikers might still surreptitiously try to enter and take over the refinery, decided to keep the refinery gates closed. The night shift was kept on duty, and was only released at 3 pm on 7 May, having worked for a total of thirty-two hours. The women who had launched the strike at the refinery gates had continued to play an important role throughout the day, encouraging the strikers and even themselves battling with the police. Zahra Khanum made a speech against both the oil company and the local authorities and, in front of a group of police, denounced the chief of police, Colonel Mukhtar, and called the assembled police officers tools of the oil company and traitors to the Iranian people.99 The women appear to have been more militant and more inclined to violence than the men, inciting the strikers to storm the police station and release those who had been arrested and actually themselves attacking a number of policemen. Feelings were running so high among the women that the union leaders were obliged to try to contain their anger, struggling to restrain them from further acts of violence. In this they had great difficulty as the women were less inclined to accept the discipline of the organization and obey


instructions.100 Indeed it seems that the authorities were actually terrified of the women.101 Although the company had been engaged in a running conflict with its workforce and with wider nationalist opinion over the issue of the workingmen’s clubs, it was completely unprepared for the response to its attempted crackdown. In fact, the strike of 6 May produced a mood approaching panic among company officials. Elkington asked the British navy to move the warship HMS Cyclamen closer to Abadan and a few days later, in a still hysterical tone, admitted that the strike had led to “one of the most anxious moments of my life”. He continued that there was “no possible doubt that had the rioters broken into the Refinery chaos would have ensued and it is impossible to say how much of the Refinery, if any, would be standing today. Our bungalow area would have been sacked in which operation every Persian and Arab in the countryside would have joined, and the picture that we should have presented after the rioters had satiated themselves would have rivalled Hangkow and Shanghai”.102 In these panic-stricken and completely unrealistic fears, Elkington obliquely expressed some comprehension of the depths of popular hatred for the company. The local Iranian authorities, intimidated by the oil company and believing that they acted with the approval of Tehran, took a hard line with the arrested strikers. During the night of 6 May those already arrested were taken in secret to Ahvaz. Arrests continued in Abadan the next day. Armed police and soldiers surrounded the workers’ housing, making more arrests, while those who remained free were driven at the point of bayonets to the refinery and compelled to begin work. The arrests were not confined to the striking refinery workers. Over the following week, the police and army spread their net wider, arresting a number of people from a variety of backgrounds, especially those known for their nationalist sympathies and who had been involved in the establishment of the workers’ clubs. The police apparently acted under the impression, inspired by the company, that everyone who had been associated with the workers’ clubs was a member of the union, although in reality most of those involved with the clubs knew nothing about the clandestine cells.103 The number of those arrested in Abadan finally reached about 200, and included practically all the union cell leaders. All were eventually deported to Khurramabad in Luristan where they were imprisoned under the authority of the military commander, General Ahmad Agha Amirahmadi. Nor was the police action limited to Abadan. At the same time as the refinery strike, a “sharp but relatively slight” protest had taken place in the company operations at the main oil fields area at Masjid-i-Sulayman,


150 miles from Abadan.104 Following this episode, a number of workers in Masjid-i Sulayman were arrested and banished from Khuzistan. The local authorities had clearly been unnerved by the women’s role in the protest and, in the immediate aftermath of the strike, took the unusual step of arresting a number of the wives and children of the strikers. They were removed from Abadan to the provincial capital, Ahvaz. However their arrest produced such a public revulsion and the authorities were by now becoming so concerned at the impact of these events on public opinion that, when the women arrived in Ahvaz they were immediately released and returned to Abadan.105 After the suppression of the refinery strike, the situation “remained quiet, although not without menace” and the military reinforcements, which had arrived from Ahvaz and which were supported by an armoured car, remained in Abadan to guarantee the security of the company’s operations. Company officials were well aware that resentment had merely been driven underground and was continuing to simmer among both their own workers and the wider population.106 Jittery company officials expected further demonstrations and were relieved when the emotionally-charged month of Muharram passed without incident. However, new protests were indeed being planned, with women again at their centre. The families of the 200 deported strikers, who numbered quite a large group of women and children, had become the object of much sympathy on the part of the population of Abadan, and were considered martyrs for the community. A subscription list had been opened for them which was well supported. The remnants of the anticompany movement organized a demonstration of women to mobilize support for the deportees. This action, however, was of a quite different character to that of the strike. An overwhelming military and police presence ruled out any repetition of a general strike by male workers, and led to the women making a weapon out of cultural perceptions of their defencelessness and the obligations of the authorities. The demonstration by the women, mostly wives of the deportees, took place on 22 June. The women travelled from Abadan to Ahvaz where they went to the telegraph office and sent a telegram to RizaShah, then they went in a procession to the shah’s statue where they prayed and wept. Constructing a narrative of the principal events of the Abadan strike, through a critical reading of the oil company’s own accounts, is relatively straightforward. Attempting to gain access to the mentality of the strikers is, however, a more hazardous project. Even the memoirs of one of the strike leaders, Yusuf Iftikhari, presents the episode refracted through the prism of his own ideological categories. The company’s


own views of the motivation of its striking workers reduce them to mere tools of outside forces, whether mythical foreign agitators mysteriously disembarked from Soviet ships docked nearby, or of Machiavellian Iranian Bolsheviks, concealing their true identity the better to dupe the guileless peasants contentedly employed by the company. Yet the oil company archives have preserved one document, a shabnamah with the title “From the Eastern Performers of sacrifices for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company”, which allows us a glimpse into the ideological universe of these new workers, a universe different to the mentality projected onto them whether by the company management or by the union organizers.107 Shabnamahs, literally ‘night-letters’, anonymous broadsheets, leaflets or placards posted on city walls or other public places, or circulated by hand, were a perennial feature of popular protest in Iran. They were often written using colourful and highly-charged language. The Abadan shabnamah is a typical example of the language of subaltern petitioning. Its language is inflected by a range of influences. It is carefully framed to avoid any challenge to the existing order, rather it appeals to that order, and to its guardians, the shah, the state officials and the army, to carry out their obligations, and suggests a strong awareness of a discourse of justice, of legitimate authority and of popular rights. The protests are explained as a natural reaction to the violation of the rightful order by the illegitimacy and oppression of the oil company. Several times the shabmanah makes reference to “our crowned father” the shah, appeals to the army as “defenders and protectors of the proud sons of Darius” and “brave, faithful and dignified warriors” and asks that both army and shah “come to the rescue of us, a handful of unfortunate toilers and get our rights for us”. It specifically calls on General Aqavli, the military governor-general of the province and the man who was finally responsible for the suppression of the strike, whom it describes as “one of the most patriotic men of our country, and…the real protector and defender of the… nation’s rights”, to come to the aid of the workmen of Khuzistan and “thus take the high hand of the A.P.O.C.’s tyranny off a handful of poor, unfortunate, oppressed toilers”. The shabmanah expresses both a generalized sense of the company’s violation of the rights of the nation, and also a sense of a specifically Iranian identity. It repeatedly deploys concepts and a terminology drawn from the modern secular nationalism which had emerged in the late nineteenth century and was being vigorously promoted by the Pahlavi regime, and even verges on a Persian chauvinism. It declares


that “this nation which is 6,000 years old has been already awakened and is now demanding its own rights. It has broken, and is still engaged in breaking to pieces, the chains of tyranny that bound it”. Denouncing the privileged Indian clerical staff, “the half-burnt people from the Equator”, it laments “Yes, they rule over you, while you, glorious and noble sons of Darius…have no better work to do than to carry heavy pipes and material on your shoulders in the 125 degrees heat of Khuzistan”. Far from expressing any sense of class consciousness or class conflict, the shabmanah presents the workers as one element within an harmonious Iranian social order, disrupted only by the tyranny of the company. It makes no reference whatsoever to Islam, its justificatory context being provided entirely by a hybrid discourse drawing on motifs of modern secular nationalism and older subaltern notions of natural justice and rights. Its language is sometimes curious and unsophisticated, but its general intention is to place the workers’ protests within a cross-class, collectively-sanctioned moral universe.

The aftermath of the strike From the beginning the attitude of the Tehran government towards the Abadan strike had been ambivalent and had constantly shifted as events unfolded. Prior to the strike, the government had been deeply embroiled in waging its own propaganda war against the company, and had given tacit support to the local nationalist campaign and to the formation of the workers’ clubs, this in turn providing a legal and open arena for the trade unionists and some political protection. However, although the regime had tentatively encouraged a popular movement against the company, yet it had as great an inherent dislike and fear of labour militancy as the company. The revelation of the clandestine union and the level of anger displayed during the strike clearly indicated that the anti-company agitation had developed far beyond what was acceptable to the regime. Taymurtash accordingly authorized a crackdown and the local authorities, the provincial governor-general, the chief of police and the governor of Abadan cooperated fully with the company in the suppression of the strike. Wider nationalist opinion shared the regime’s dilemma. The Iranian consul in Basra, for example, a member of the local nationalist circle and a fierce critic of the company and its treatment of its Iranian workers, nonetheless supported the crackdown in the interests of law and order.108 In early May Taymurtash had offered every reassurance to the company that its operations would be protected. Very quickly, however, and as


soon as the workers’ movement had been decisively crushed, the government’s tone underwent a marked change and Taymurtash allowed his hostility to the company to resurface. Made extremely indignant by the looming presence of British warships, Taymurtash began to insist repeatedly that it was the government’s view that the main cause of the trouble were the legitimate grievances of the labourers, in particular the low wages paid. By the end of May Taymurtash’s attitude towards the company had hardened. Despite the fact that he himself had given full authority to the local authorities to suppress the strike, he became increasingly vocal in his criticism of their behaviour, determined on the release of those who had been arrested, and specifically dismissive of the accusations against the Majlis deputy, Mirza Husayn Muvaqqar. He informed the company that the government believed that most of those arrested during the strike had not been guilty of any crime and that their discontent was due to “low wages and the lack of specific regulations for their work”, grievances which the company should take steps to remedy.109 Already angered by the arrival of a British warship just outside Iran’s territorial waters, RizaShah’s perennial suspicions of incorrigible British malevolence had been reinforced by the outbreak, days after the Abadan strike, of a serious tribal insurgency in southern Iran. It was the shah’s fixed idea, and a view shared by the government and especially the army, that the serious southern tribal uprisings of 1929 were instigated by the British as part of the battle over the oil concession. Taymurtash’s renewed and increasingly open hostility was also dictated by the need to propitiate an outraged public opinion. Despite the press censorship, news had quickly leaked out of the strike and the manner of its suppression. The Majlis deputy, Muvaqqar, and some of the deportees began to arrive in Tehran and they, together with others who had been involved in the protests found opportunities to express their views. There was much open criticism of the government for its support of the oil company and particularly for deporting the strikers without trial.110 In mid-August Taymurtash admitted that he was being greatly embarrassed by the petitions of the deportees, some of whom had long service to the oil company.111 The government, in response to public opinion, began to exculpate itself by fixing blame ever more firmly on the local authorities, and declared that the officials responsible for the arrests in Abadan would be reprimanded. The various layers of the local authorities also began to blame each other. The governors of Abadan and Masjid-i Sulayman were removed from their posts. Following his recall to the capital, the governor of Abadan, Aqa Asayesh, was arrested, having been thoroughly scapegoated by the


governor-general of Khuzistan, General Aqavli, for the drastic action taken on 6 May and especially the deportations, Aqavli himself having come in for a great deal of press criticism.112 The government finally tried to draw the sting from the situation by recommending the deportees to the Railway Syndicate for employment.113 Nonetheless, the suppression of the strike and the mass arrests had completely destroyed the incipient trade union organization in the oil industry. Although the government ordered the release of most of those who had been arrested, some of the leaders, including Yusif Iftikhari, remained in prison until after the shah’s abdication in 1941. There were to be no more strikes in the oil industry until the 1940s. Nonetheless, in another sense, the strike was successful in obtaining a wage rise for the company’s workers. Throughout the summer and autumn of 1929, Taymurtash continued to exhibit a staunch determination to use the oil company’s treatment of its workers as a stick with which to beat the concession. The regime, however, continued to suffer the opprobrium of both nationalist circles and the wider public over its response to the strike. Towards the end of the year the shah planned a trip to the south, when he would visit the oil company works and Taymurtash took this as an opportunity to repair the shah’s reputation. Taymurtash informed the company that the shah was determined that the company announce a pay increase during his visit. According to Taymurtash, the shah was particularly anxious that, as far as the lowest grades of labour were concerned, the increase should reflect a substantial and easily appreciable advance on existing rates of pay.114 In fact, the shah was only really concerned to secure an increase in the pay of the lower grades of workers. The company eventually announced a general increase of five per cent for the entire Iranian workforce due to its fears of further unrest in the higher grades where the union activists were to be found, were the wage rise confined to the lowest grades.115 In due course, on the occasion of the shah’s visit to the refinery, the company announced that it desired “to mark this visit in a manner gratifying to His Imperial Majesty who has the welfare of his people so much at heart by an increase of five per cent in pay to all Persian employees including clerical staff, artisans, skilled and unskilled workmen. Further adjustments will be made to pay of lower grades to ensure that no workman receives less than 4 krans per day”.116

Conclusion The 1929 refinery strike signified the emergence of the organized working class in Iran, and furnished a template for industrial militancy


which was to reappear repeatedly in periods of political crisis, most notably in 1946, and between 1951–1953 and 1978–1979. The industrial militancy of these later periods bore many of the hallmarks first exhibited by the Abadan strike. In the years of the oil nationalization crisis, as in 1929, a layer of socialist union leaders, whose implantation in the working class was very shallow, were nonetheless able to put themselves at the head of waves of industrial unrest and the mass participation of workers in street protests. Their ability to play this role, despite the frailty of their organization and the thinness of their presence, derived from their ability, again echoing 1929, to tap into profound existing discontent and to frame this discontent within a nationalist-inflected subaltern discourse. Indeed, the demand for the nationalization of the oil industry of these years may be understood as the reappearance of the old popular hostility to foreign concessions in a modern form, a hostility that might trace its genealogy back to the anti-Reuter and anti-Tobacco Régie movements. In 1978–1979, despite the fact that trade unions had no legal existence of any kind and any potential leadership was in jail or exile, the working class was again able to make a dramatic assertion of its collective presence, through demonstrations, spontaneous strikes, and the organization of workplace councils (shawra-yi kargaran).117 Thus the waves of industrial militancy which periodically convulsed Iran were not dependent on trade unions. For most of the twentieth century, trade unions in Iran had no permanent existence, were either banned altogether or operated in conditions of extreme difficulty. In their brief moments of legal operation, they were further hampered by the prevailing economic and social underdevelopment. The political capacities and resourcefulness of Iranian workers must be sought, therefore, only very partially in the leadership of left-wing activists. A more complete explanation must take account of other factors: a pre-existing, even perennial, discontent of the workforce at both its own conditions and at the subjugation of the broader national community; a strong cultural tradition of self-organization, producing at different times, anjumans, trade unions, and workers’ councils; and a cultural familiarity with older methods of protest which included tactics of the strike, the occupation, the boycott, the closure of the bazars, ritualized re-enactment of mourning rituals, especially by women, and the riot.118 For most of the twentieth century the Iranian working class was subject to severe political repression and economic exploitation. However, during periods of political crisis, whenever the facade of authoritarianism weakened or cracked, or whenever the state or wider elite nationalist circles required mass support, space was created into which a subaltern praxis might suddenly re-emerge. This occurred during both the major


upheavals of 1951–1953 and 1978–1979, but was also apparent in 1929, when the strategic needs of the new Pahlavi state and its nationalist supporters led to a temporary relaxation of its customary hostility towards independent working class organizations and the offer of encouragement, albeit partial and ambiguous, to a popular anti-oil company movement. Despite the significance of the role it has played, the early social and political formation of the Iranian working class has received comparatively little attention.119 Although a small number of leading trade union and leftist intellectuals of the period later produced memoirs,120 sources available thus far tell us little about the workers themselves in the oil industry in the 1920s and 1930s: the social origins of these new proletarians; the contours of their ideological universe; the continuing impact of the experiences they brought with them from their former lives; the language and concepts they used to represent themselves and articulate their discontent; the broader cultural context which conditioned their behaviour and modes of action in their new industrial environment.121 Some investigation of the creation of a new social class, its cultural, political and ideological contours, is of clear significance to an understanding of the Riza Shah decades, a period when Iran underwent significant state-led industrialization. But it is also of broader interest to the history of modern Iran. In the 1920s, the oil industry created tens of thousands of new workers from the impoverished rural poor of southern Iran. But subsequent decades, as the Iranian economy developed further, and especially after the land reform caused waves of migration among newly proletarianized peasants and nomads, also saw a continuous process of the creation of new workers. The rapidly expanding working class in Iran throughout the decades down to the Islamic revolution and beyond continued to be “new”, and the political culture of its constituent members continued to be profoundly linked to their former lives. The history of working class organization in Iran is usually presented in terms of a dichotomy between the traditional and the modern. Artisans employed in small workshops and organized in guilds, subservient to their masters and to a wider traditional political culture, are contrasted with fully-fledged proletarians, possessing a seamlessly formed class consciousness, working in modern industries where capital confronted labour in classical terms.122 While presenting an unrealistic traditional-modern dichotomy, this conceptualization has the additional effect of stressing the primacy of ideas and methods from abroad and marginalizing indigenous political culture and traditions, making workers’ protests in Iran wait upon the arrival and absorption of a European model.


However, recent research has shown that in fact Iran’s supposedly traditional political culture was both sensitive to its wider environment and constantly evolving, and that there was much that was modern about the urban protests typically engaged in by bazar merchants, guilds, the ulama and the urban poor. Similarly, the account of the 1929 strike given above demonstrates that there was much in apparently modern forms of protest, in both their methods and their mentalité, which had its origins in older cultural and political traditions. In this sense, the narrative of the strike offers a challenge to conventional definitions of tradition and modernity. Rather than using “tradition” to denote an actual condition of backwardness and stasis doomed to extinction by a rising modernity, here the concept of “tradition” is reinterpreted to indicate a tool used by social groups, especially subaltern social groups, as part of a dynamic process through which they make sense of their situation, mobilize support and provide themselves with legitimacy.123 Traditions were important to popular protest in Iran. Indeed across the world, traditions, new and old, real and imagined, may be identified as central to subaltern political activity.124 In Iran, well-established local methods of collective action provided a wide range of social groups with ready-made instruments which they could use to organize action and mobilize support, and which were easily understood by the entire society. Not only did traditions of protest provide guides to effective tactics, but the location of protest within such traditions offered an aura of legitimacy and an ideological defence of considerable power. Of course, traditions in this sense were subject to continuous adaptation and evolution and were constantly invented and re-invented, might be new or even imaginary, but none of these caveats lessened their political power. It follows, therefore, that to say that traditions were important to popular protest is not to say that such protest was “traditional” in the sense of backward-looking or unchanging, nor essentially conservative. Rather, as the example of the Abadan strikers shows, these traditions were plastic and malleable, remarkably adept at responding to new conditions, and able to act as vehicles for demands and programmes which might be either defensive or revolutionary. The narrative above illustrates the deep collective traditions of the Iranian lower classes, and the creativity of their response to their changing circumstances. It outlines their constant adaptation of existing collective and communal institutions to meet the challenges of an emerging capitalism, and shows how the methods, discourse and organizational forms adopted by different groups of workers were primarily


derived from local traditions. Just as the workers spontaneously built on actually existing local traditions of collective organization, so too labour leaders tried to establish new traditions which would assist in the task of welding the emerging working class into a conscious entity. These new traditions included the celebration of May Day, if possible with a strike, and May Day 1929 provided an important symbolic context for the Abadan events. A similar utilization of the familiar in the pursuit of new objectives in changing contexts may be seen in the discourses generated by protest in this period, one example of which is analysed above. As the 1929 shabnamah shows, such subaltern discourse usually avoided any challenge to the existing order, but rather couched its demands in criticism of an alleged departure from socially sanctioned norms and values, a perception which might be buttressed by reference to a mythologized past. Indeed popular protest often demanded a return to what was imagined as the status quo ante. Although the “cultural unity” implied by such a discourse might occasionally serve to reinforce social cohesion, it might equally subvert the social order.125 This perennial feature of the discourse of popular protest should not therefore be interpreted to mean that the accompanying political activity was in any sense conservative, but rather represented an effort by the relatively powerless actively to renegotiate the terms of change by using the ideological concepts available and familiar to them. Perhaps the most startling feature of the narrative of the strike presented here is the challenge it offers to male-centred accounts of labour history in general and Iran’s tradition of popular protest in particular. Although literally no women were employed in the Abadan refinery, nor in other sectors of the oil company’s operations, yet women played a highly visible role in the strike. Their role, furthermore, was not auxiliary or supporting but a central element in the choreography of both the May protests and their aftermath. The demonstration by the wives of the refinery workers closely followed a pattern typical from urban protest since at least the nineteenth century. Their highly gendered and ritualized behaviour was recognizable to the community at large, and even to the elite, as an appeal for support and was indeed a prelude to the involvement of wider sections of local society. Despite, or perhaps because of, their exploitation of notions of female weakness, the Abadan women were able, in a way again typical of such protests, to resort to more radical and even violent methods. Having thus signalled the legitimacy of their actions, the refinery workers then readily deployed other tactics typical of urban protest such as the closure of


the bazars in solidarity and attempts to occupy and take bast in the refinery. The 1929 Abadan strike showed how a subaltern group, the refinery workers, combined modern forms of political organization, a rudimentary trade union, with methods of protest deriving from local traditions to mount a challenge to the oil company. As Iran moved through the twentieth century, such hybrid popular protest, sometimes traditional in form but increasingly modern in political content, continued to appear and re-appear.126 The continuing cultural resonance of such methods was most spectacularly illustrated in 1978–1980, with the massive demonstrations by veiled women, apparently organized by female figures of authority in the urban slums, and the occupation for a total of 444 days of the US embassy by student followers of Khomeini, vividly rehearsing a much older repertoire of popular politics.

Figure 1

Constitutionalist bastis standing by the rice pots in the British legation

(Courtesy of the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies)

Figure 2

A constitutionalist bast at the British Legation in Tehran


Figure 3

Constitutionalists by the wall of the British legation during a bast


Figure 4 The constitutionalist cleric, Ayatullah Muhamad Kazim Khurasani,

delivering a sermon


Figure 5

Knocking off time at Abadan refinery, 1909

(Reproduced from the BP archive © BP plc)

Figure 6 Colonel Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan, commander of the Khurasan gendarmerie, 1921 (Courtesy of the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies)

Figure 7

Portrait of Abulqasim Lahuti

(Courtesy of Dilshod Rakhimov)

Figure 8

Iranian and Russian commanders of the Cossack Brigade


Figure 9

Riza Khan while a guard of the Dutch Legation and the Dutch Minister


Figure 10

Riza Khan


Figure 11 Ahmad Shah Qajar, Riz˙a Khan and Jan Muhammad Amiralai, aidede-camp to Ahmad Shah (Courtesy of the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies)

Figure 12 Members of the armed forces demonstrate their solidarity with the revolution of 1979 (Courtesy of the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies)

7 The Politics of Radicalism within the Iranian Army: The Jahansuz Group of 1939

When the Iranian revolution of 1979 overthrew Pahlavi power in Iran, the attention of historians was suddenly attracted towards a study of the antecedents of the revolutionary movement and of opposition to the Pahlavi dictatorship in general. This redirection of attention produced, during the 1980s, quite novel historical and historiographical analyses of modern Iran. The army, however, largely escaped these revisionist approaches. Yet it is clear that the image of the army conventionally accepted, the military structures a bedrock of monarchical rule and the officer corps a key element on which the regime could depend, is a considerable oversimplification. Although ideological trends within the army tended to be dominated by secular nationalism and modernism, political attitudes towards the Pahlavi shahs were always capable of marked variegation. The relationship between the shah and the officer corps, both senior and junior, especially during periods of political crisis and uncertainty such as the early years of Pahlavi rule or the oil nationalization crisis, was susceptible to considerable tension. Indeed a tradition of political opposition to Pahlavi rule may be discerned within the Iranian officer corps, beginning with Colonel Pasyan in 1921 and Major Lahuti in early 1922, and continuing with Lieutenant Salar-i Jang and Colonel Puladin in 1926, Muhsin Jahansuz in 1939, the Tudah Military Organization led by Captain Ruzbih and Colonel Siamak in the 1940s and early 50s, to the pro-Musaddiq General Afshartus.1 Although located on both the political right and the left, these individuals and groups shared and were principally characterized by the twin features of an implacable hostility to the regime of the shahs and an intense and defining modern nationalism. This paper attempts to delineate and place in context the military conspiracy led by Lieutenant Muhsin Jahansuz. In the autumn of 1939 238

The Jahansuz Group of 1939 239

a group of junior officers and cadets and a number of their civilian associates were arrested. They were accused of having links with foreign powers and with plotting an armed revolt against the shah and his dynasty. After a brief and secret trial many received lengthy prison terms while their leader, Muhsin Jahansuz, was sentenced to death and shot. The actual activities in which the Jahansuz group engaged were trivial in terms of any threat offered to the regime’s security and the episode was hidden from contemporary public knowledge by heavy press censorship and the circumstances of the group’s court-martial. Nonetheless the existence of organized disaffection within the army was a matter of profound political anxiety for the shah. The Jahansuz group is far from the only example of radical anti-monarchism within the army of the late 1930s. Only two years previously, for example, in May 1937, four officers from a Tehran regiment had been implicated in a conspiracy against the shah’s life and executed.2 Yet it is the only case where any real information exists regarding the extent of the movement, its programme and the motives of its leaders. An examination of the Jahansuz affair provides a rare insight into the political atmosphere prevailing both within the army and among wider layers of society in late 1930s Iran, into the character of a secret opposition group and into the preoccupations, prejudices and inner workings of the regime. First, however, a note of caution. It has in general been extremely difficult to write about Iran in the 1930s.3 The character of the regime meant that few useful contemporary sources, such as material from the press, etc., were generated. Furthermore the secrecy surrounding the regime and the novel distance which it maintained vis-à-vis the British diplomatic establishment means that British archival sources for the period are also sparse. It follows therefore that it is especially difficult to reconstruct the history of an episode such as the Jahansuz affair. The discovery and trial of the Jahansuz group was shrouded in secrecy and in fact no contemporary sources have yet been located. It was indeed only after the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime in 1979 that a solid source became available in the form of a memoir by one of those arrested with Jahansuz, Najafquli Pasyan, then a also conscript lieutenant in the army.4 The overthrow of Pahlavi political power was accompanied by the destruction of historical orthodoxies of all kind. Opponents of the shah, from a variety of perspectives, began to challenge prevailing views of the past. This dynamic reinterpretation of the past, as part of the political struggle taking place in the present and for the future, led to the production of quantities of both primary and secondary source material, documentary collections, memoirs, diaries, autobiographies


etc, as competing forces sought to win victory in the realm of ideology, and as individuals sought to explain and justify their personal records.5 It is in this context that Najafquli Pasyan wrote his memoir of Jahansuz. The existence of a source of this kind for the Jahansuz episode is extremely valuable. But naturally the impossibility of any systematic corroboration introduces into its account an element of vulnerability. A working distinction may be made in this regard between the factual, and relatively uncontroversial element of Pasyan’s work, and the interpretation which he imposes on his narrative. In particular his presentation of Jahansuz clearly draws heavily on the tradition and symbolism of martyrology present in oppositional political discourse in Iran. In Pasyan’s depiction, Jahansuz displays many of the typical features of the martyr, with his youth, his purity of motive, the charismatic nature of his leadership, his selfless struggle against overwhelming odds and his inevitable death. Indeed this idiom was especially familiar to Pasyan through intimate personal experience. His own family history had become suffused with metaphors of martyrdom as a result of the deaths of Majors Ali Quli Khan and Ghulam Riza Khan Pasyan after the fall of nationalist Shiraz in 1916 and of Colonel Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan in 1921. It is within this framework that Pasyan’s account of the Jahansuz episode must be understood.

Iran in the 1930s: discontent in the intelligentsia and in the army The 1930s was a decade of intense political repression in Iran. Indeed independent political activity inside the country had ceased more or less completely. The Majlis and the press were tightly controlled and dragooned into the regime’s service while political parties and trade unions had been suppressed altogether. This repression, together with unpopular measures such as the new oil agreement and the regime’s blatant corruption, increasingly alienated nationalist opinion. As the 1920s turned into the 1930s Riza Shah lost the support of the older generation of the intelligentsia. These elements, who had originally welcomed so enthusiastically his strong government with its nationalist veneer, sank into passivity or disgrace during the early 1930s. The younger generation of intellectuals, however, felt no such ambivalence towards Riza Shah. They were more forthright in their condemnation of the regime and made the modern institutions of higher education in Iran the sites of some of the few outbursts of political turbulence of the decade. Repression not only forced political activity into


clandestinity but rapidly radicalized its content. The organized left was most active and clear in its positions. In 1930 Iranian students in Europe met in Cologne under the aegis of the Iranian and German Communist Parties and demanded the release of all political prisoners, the establishment of a republic and denounced Riza Shah as a tool of British imperialism.6 Dissident activities among Iranian students in Europe continued while in Iran itself protests also took place at the Medical College in 1934, at the Teachers’ College in 1936 and at the faculty of law of Tehran university in 1937. The protests inside Iran typically combined grievances specific to the students with resentment against the methods and policies of the regime in general. The government reacted unpredictably to these activities, occasionally retreating and making concessions, occasionally with harsh repression. Although in practice the government sometimes compromised, its repressive armoury had been greatly strengthened by a law ostensibly aimed at safeguarding national security passed by a docile Majlis in 1931. This law provided for prison terms of ten years for members of organizations directed against the monarchy or which advocated communism (ishtiraki).7 This vaguely worded and all-encompassing prohibition was primarily directed against all forms of socialism and communism. However it was sufficiently flexible to be capable of use also against radical critics of the shah from across the political spectrum including any who might fall too far under the spell of fascism.8 In May 1937 the most notorious action against the intelligentsia was taken with the arrest of the physics professor Taqi Arani and the group which became known as the “fifty-three”. This then, the development of opposition to Riza Shah among the young intelligentsia, is the context within which the Jahansuz group must be placed. Although Muhsin Jahansuz himself and many of those arrested with him were army officers, they were not career officers but were rather junior officer conscripts, completing their military service prior to resuming civilian life. Thus they may be taken to reflect political developments occurring in Iranian society generally as much as within the specific environment of the army. Nonetheless their presence within the army meant that, at least as far as the regime was concerned, the threat they represented was much more serious than any danger from civilian opponents. The 1930s and 1940s saw the continuing development of politically radical opposition, of both the left and the right, to Pahlavi rule in Iran. Although much has been written concerning the character of leftwing radicalism, less is known of radical critiques of the dictatorship of


the shah advanced by non or even anti-communist nationalist ultras in these years. The latter category includes the Jahansuz group, which has generally been considered a right-wing, pro-fascist or Nazi tendency. Before giving a fuller account of the history of the group it may perhaps be useful to attempt some general assessment of the meaning and significance of this identification in the context of late 1930s Iran. Jahansuz and his associates were modernists,9 in many respects resembling those who were attracted to Marxism, socially conscious, advocating rapid industrialization and technological advance and an end to poverty and the subordination of Iran to the imperial powers.10 Furthermore, in their secular nationalism the radicals of the right shared the official ideology of the regime. It was precisely what they saw as the regime’s departure from these values which inspired their opposition. It was Riza Shah’s failure to carry out effectively his own programme of nationalist modernism, and his perversion of its key tenets, which impelled them into active hostility. In his absorption and espousal, albeit rather diffuse, of certain ideas typical of European fascism, Jahansuz was giving expression to a response widespread in the Middle East of that period. During the 1930s and early years of the Second World War the appeal of fascism for the modern intelligentsia and the military throughout the Middle East was considerable. Following the turning of the military tide with the German defeat at the battle of Stalingrad in early 1943, this tendency reoriented itself and abandoned its advertised admiration for the regimes of Hitler and Mussolini. Nonetheless in Iran this trend continued to be active and to find organized expression in the Pan-Iran Party and the proMusaddiq National Party of Darius Foruhar,11 and furnished important ideological components for non-communist nationalist opinion among wider political layers. During the 1930s an inclination towards Italy and Germany, in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, was largely instrumental, those so inclined highlighting features of these regimes which appeared to reinforce their own domestic political agendas. Admiration was expressed for the national unity and cultural homogeneity supposedly achieved by Italy and Germany, for their independence, strength and strong leadership. The martial spirit and nationalist fervour of the fascist regimes was especially appealing to army officers.12 The apparent modernity of Mussolini’s Italy was particularly popular. As in the early part of the century, Iranian nationalists also were also favourably impressed by what they perceived as the successful modernization and international prestige of Japan, now under a semi-fascist military regime. The democracies of


Britain and France, on the contrary, were seen as internally decadent and the archaic imperial enemies of national independence in the Middle East. These ideological predilections dovetailed neatly with Iranian nationalism’s traditional tactical orientation towards enlisting support from a third power against its closest enemies, Russia and Britain. Links between Iranian nationalists and Germany dated back to the anti-Allied campaigns of the Great War and a pro-fascist orientation in the 1930s was to a large extent simply a fashionable expression of a very traditional international manoeuvre. In Iran the regime itself was not immune to the appeal of fascism or to the benefits of political and economic cooperation with Germany. The shah increasingly fostered an image of himself as a representative of the führerprinzip while the attraction of ideological themes generated by Germany was enhanced by the officially sanctioned dissemination of Nazi propaganda. As the decade progressed, the spotlight on Germany shone ever brighter. German economic penetration of Iran grew rapidly, German engineers were in charge of the trans-Iranian railway and economists of the National Bank, and was matched by closer cultural, diplomatic and political contact on every level.13 Nonetheless the shah was determined that admiration for fascism or Nazism should remain firmly under the control of the state. Independent rightist activity, like any other expression of political belief or activity, was deemed a threat to the regime and ruthlessly suppressed. In the summer of 1937 for example, when some students of the Technical School in Tehran initiated a Nazi movement of sorts, they were immediately arrested.14 This then was the atmosphere within which Jahansuz developed his theoretical prescriptions. The extreme youth of both Jahansuz himself and his associates is remarkable, indicating that they arrived at their political conclusions at university or even high school. They absorbed the intense nationalism and proto-fascism of both the regime and public opinion generally, yet the discrepancy between the officially-promoted vision of Iran’s future and the reality of Iran’s present impinged ever more forcefully on an impressionable younger generation. Jahansuz and his co-conspirators were conscript junior officers, and had formed their oppositional opinions in civilian life. Yet the presence of such a group within the army, the quintessential institution of Pahlavi Iran, showed that even this prized and pampered institution was neither immune nor invulnerable to dissent. Although far too junior to pose a threat as coup-makers, the discovery of the Jahansuz group came as a sudden shock to the shah, reviving his perennial fears of


assassination and renewing his doubts regarding the ultimate reliability of the army as guarantor of his dynasty. Of course opposition to Riza Shah within the Iranian army was not a new development in the 1930s. From the very moment of its foundation, Pahlavi rule in Iran had encountered strong challenges from within the army. Disaffection was especially intense in the years between 1921 and 1926, before the effective consolidation of the shah’s dictatorship and while the spirit of political and intellectual independence instilled in sections of the officer corps by their experiences during the constitutional period and the Great War remained alive. By the late 1920s, however, the same pall of silence that was covering civilian politics had settled also over the army. The shah had persistently tried to insulate the army from political activity and, by a combination of harsh repression, political cooption and the guarantee of material privilege and social prestige, had succeeded in acquiring the support, or at least acquiescence, of the majority of the upper echelons of the officer corps. Any political dissent took place in secrecy, fear and isolation. Indeed the entire army, from the most loyal commander downwards, functioned in an atmosphere of sporadic terror, an atmosphere deliberately cultivated by the shah as a means of control. Nonetheless the army, as an institution, was immensely privileged by the shah. Money was lavished on it and it was made into a showcase for the regime, expressing most perfectly the ideology of secular nationalism on which the Pahlavi monarchy based its legitimacy. During the 1930s the army and military expenditure underwent a relentless expansion. Conscription was enforced with increasing effectiveness as the decade progressed and as a result the army mushroomed from about 42,000 men in 1930 to an estimated 105,451 in 1937, reaching 127,000 men organized into eighteen divisions by 1941. Resources devoted to the army increased even faster than its numerical growth, the shah being especially keen to acquire the latest and most expensive military hardware. Although exact calculations are difficult, it is clear that throughout the Riza Shah period, the ministry of war’s budget allocation was far higher than that of any other government department and that spending on the army grew steadily, nearly quadrupling between 1930 and 1941.15 Furthermore, in addition to its official budget allocation the ministry of war also received the enormous sum of about £2 million annually during much of the 1930s for the purchase of up-to-date and sophisticated military equipment from abroad, including aeroplanes, artillery, machine-guns and mechanical transport.16 The ministry of war, even in times of financial crisis, always had ample funds at its disposal,


and regarding their disbursal was a law unto itself, army expenditure not being subject to audit by the ministry of finance. Thus the army was equipped with a dazzling array of weaponry and the officer corps occupied a position of material privilege and social prestige. Indeed the British Military Attaché allowed himself the sanguine opinion that the army was pampered to a degree which should make its loyalty a matter of no doubt.17 Nonetheless there were ample reasons for discontent within the army. There was widespread resentment at the military clique which monopolized power within the army, at the prevailing uncertainty and insecurity caused by the erratic and arbitrary exercise of power and disgust at the spectacular corruption. Junior conscript officers did not share in the opportunities and benefits available to career officers, and they and the rank and file appear to have been unfavourably impressed by the contrast between the lavish wealth of the senior commanders and the devastation and destitution which the regime’s economic policies had wrought on the rural areas from which most of them came. The acquisition of immense landed wealth by both the shah and his military favourites was a keenly felt grievance among these rural and provincial recruits. Furthermore conscripts, although they received their meagre pay and rations regularly, were generally treated extremely harshly. Despite the vast sums spent on buying the most up-to-date weaponry from abroad the army as a whole remained inefficient and poorly organized, unable even to use properly and maintain its equipment and little or nothing was done, for example, to improve supply or medical services, a neglect symptomatic of the hierarchy’s lack of concern for the welfare of the ranks. It was this army which Muhsin Jahansuz entered in 1939.

Muhsin Jahansuz and his circle Muhsin Jahansuz was born in 1914 in Kirmanshah into a Kurdish family of some local standing. He apparently had a difficult childhood, losing his mother at an early age, but was a success at school where he won a reputation for intense patriotism. His father made the unusual decision to send him to Beirut to continue his education. He remained there several years but as a result of financial hardship was obliged to leave before the completion of his studies.18 His time in the relatively open environment of Beirut seems to have been a crucial formative experience for Jahansuz. It brought him into contact with contemporary political trends and ideologies not just in the Middle East but in Europe as well and enabled him to perfect his linguistic ability, becoming fluent in


French and competent in English and Arabic, thus ensuring his independent access to information about political developments after his return to Iran. Although Jahansuz was never in Europe, yet the influence of Europe, mediated through a Middle Eastern filter, was profound. Jahansuz returned to Iran in 1933. Back in Kirmanshah he attended lectures organized by the poet Husayn Pashmi. These lectures exerted a strong appeal for the local intelligentsia and provided a forum for wideranging discussions of artistic and social matters.19 In 1934 Jahansuz entered the law faculty of Tehran university, graduating in 1938. At Tehran university he encountered another important influence, Saham al-Din Zuka al-Dawlah Ghaffari, a professor in the faculty. Professor Ghaffari was generally inclined to be critical of the Pahlavi regime. In his classes, which Jahansuz attended, he criticized the economic condition of the country, especially the trans-Iranian railway and the great expenditure which it entailed.20 He was later arrested and tried along with Jahansuz.21 An indication of the atmosphere prevailing within the law faculty while Jahansuz was a student there is provided by the following incident. The crown prince was due to pay a visit to the faculty. In his honour, eau de cologne to the value of 1,200 tumans, a considerable sum, was purchased and the bottles shattered in the hallways to provide a pleasant atmosphere for the royal visitor. Several students were incensed at this waste of money and circulated an open letter pointing out that the same expenditure would have provided the rudiments of education for a large number of illiterate peasants. As a result of this protest six students were sentenced to life imprisonment.22 On graduation Jahansuz was liable for military service and he entered the officers’ college in the autumn of 1939 with the rank of second lieutenant in the cavalry. He was posted to Kirmanshah, his home town, but after only forty-five days he was arrested and imprisoned in Tehran. On 13 March 1940, at the age of twenty-five, he was executed. Long before arriving at the officers’ college Jahansuz had become an adherent of that trend in nationalist opinion which had come to see Riza Shah as an agent of the British and had become committed to his overthrow.23 He had come up with a plan for the creation of a secret organization among young graduates and military cadets which would engage in political activities and struggle against the dictatorial regime of the shah. When Jahansuz began his military service in the officers’ college, he already knew several cadets from his hometown who shared these opinions and together they formed the kernel of the organization. Immediately after entering the college he held meetings with a number


of first and second year students where conversations took place on affairs of the day and the future of the country, and they agreed to form a society to be called islahat (reforms).24 This group had no formal membership, structure or organization. No programme was drawn up, nor were any basic principles established.25 It was rather a loose collection of individuals, sharing broad ideological and political positions but mainly connected by personal relationships of kin and friendship.26 The group collectively, as well as its individual members, was at a very illdefined and immature stage of development. Indeed both in terms of personnel and outlook the group was very mixed, containing people whose political formation was incomplete and who were evolving in varying and sometimes contradictory directions. Jahansuz, however, due to his strong personality and his possession of a certain charisma, appears to have been accepted as a leading spirit. The group’s main, indeed sole, activity seems to have been to meet and have discussions about current affairs, the favoured meeting-place the lawn of the officers’ college, revealing a striking amateurishness and naiveté. Members of the group brought a variety of topics and ideas drawn from different sources for debate but it was agreed that the group’s overall objective was to take action against the shah and awaken the people of Iran. Insofar as this group possessed any coherence, it was provided by Jahansuz himself who assumed intellectual leadership. The general ideological influences which had contributed to the formation of Jahansuz’s outlook were clearly highly eclectic, drawn from a miscellany of Iranian, Middle Eastern and European sources. His association with the ideology of Nazism has derived largely from his translation of extracts from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which were published in the newspaper Mihr-i Iran in 1938.27 However this was only one of many translations which he produced for the newspapers after his return to Iran from Beirut, his linguistic skills and financial difficulties leading naturally to this kind of occupation. Yet his general ideas bear obvious traces of fascist ideology and the left in particular, including members of the “fifty-three” then in prison, immediately denounced Jahansuz and his group as fascists.28 Nationalism was the key feature of Jahansuz’s thought, which returned time and again to the “honour and greatness” of Iran, and his principal accusation against Riza Shah was that he was subservient to the British.29 Jahansuz had been struck by the poverty and the economic, political and cultural degradation of the mass of the population and the corruption of the regime. His economic prescriptions were derivative, plainly influenced by the autarky and corporatism typical of European fascism. He


believed that Iran was large enough and possessed enough natural wealth to supply most of its own needs. He was in favour of a rudimentary land reform, arguing that the government should divide the land into portions and sell it to the peasant cultivators.30 He advocated rapid industrialization, making use of the precepts and experiences of socialism to the extent that it might be useful for the benefit of the workers. He believed that the government should create public works and combat poverty, disease and unemployment, and should encourage the creation of partnerships between capital and labour.31 He was fiercely anti-communist but ridiculed the anti-communism of the regime, pointing out that it was poverty and indigence that won the people to the side of communism and that the best way to keep people from the influence of communism was to eradicate poverty in the country. He was particularly in favour of mass education, and especially literacy in modern Persian, linking the development of education to a general improvement in the material condition of the population. He was particularly impressed by the progress of Turkey under Mustafa Kemal in this respect.32 The influence of European fascism, both directly and as mediated through the shah’s own ideology, on the evolution of these ideas is clear. Jahansuz however was consciously concerned to recast these formulae in an Iranian idiom and render them readily comprehensible and accessible to Iranians. He was fond of quoting the poetry of Sa‘di and Arif in support of his nationalist views, and placed particular emphasis on the importance of young people drawing the lessons of Iran’s history over the last century and especially of the previous thirty years, emphasizing the significance of the constitutional revolution and its martyrs. He had been particularly impressed by the life and martyrdom of Jahangir Khan Sur-i Israfil, and often returned to his example.33 Jahansuz also translated into Persian a wide range of texts from a variety of sources which he felt would contribute to the political education of Iranian youth. Among these translations was a book about the uprising of the Mahdi in the Sudan, Jahansuz emphasizing the heroism of the Mahdi’s opposition to British imperialism.34 There is no evidence of any interest in, or even awareness of, racial exclusivity in Jahansuz’s concerns. In fact he himself, and many of his associates, were Kurds. Yet Jahansuz put forward no Kurdish agenda. On the contrary, he always stressed the interests of Iran and the Iranian people and placed great emphasis on the achievement of national unity, in this echoing the shah’s campaign of the same name, vahdat-i milli. Nonetheless there was a certain ambiguity present within the group concerning this issue. The core of the group appears to have possessed a


sense, albeit diffuse, of ethnic solidarity, based on shared personal histories and youthful friendships, and manifested a keen sensitivity regarding the shah’s confiscation of land in Kurdistan.35 During the 1930s the Kurdish petty bourgeoisie, from which Jahansuz and many of his group were drawn, was particularly resentful. This layer had been hit hard economically by the establishment of a state monopoly in tobacco and also by the preferential treatment given to boost production on the shah’s own estates, as well as by the government’s general neglect of the province.36 Furthermore rural Kurdistan, unlike most other tribal areas, had remained in an extremely unsettled state for most of the decade. In the late 1930s conscription was still being only cautiously extended among the Kurdish tribes and in early 1939 there was a serious rising in the Sardasht area due to the imposition of conscription, disarmament and clothing reform.37 After the arrest of the Jahansuz group the police accused one member, Husayn Pashmi, specifically of inciting the tribes against the government and creating sedition in the western regions of the country.38 Just as Jahansuz’s own ideology was eclectic, so he seems to have gathered around him an eclectic mixture of individuals. The group encompassed embryonic Kurdish nationalism and incipient Persian chauvinism and also fascism and communism. Although Jahansuz himself and his group has always been considered right-wing, at their trial several members of the group were accused of having a connection with the Soviet Union, and two, Razavi Shiva and Amanullah Qurayshi, indeed later joined the Tudah Party.39 Individuals with both a left-wing past and a left-wing future were attracted to the group. Shiva was an old communist who had been a member of the ‘Adalat Party.40 Qurayshi, under the influence of members of the “fifty-three” with whom he found himself imprisoned, became a Marxist and joined the Tudah in early 1942, became a prominent activist and soon found himself again sentenced to a long term of imprisonment.41 The degree to which individuals within the Jahansuz group were actually separated by adherence to fundamentally opposing ideological and political trends was obscured by their common agreement on the overriding necessity of overthrowing the shah. Jahansuz’s general ideological positions, and the profile of his group, remained vague and eclectic. The issues which particularly animated their hostility in 1939 however were very precise and immediate and were related exclusively and directly to the domestic Iranian scene. In broad terms Jahansuz considered it his patriotic duty to overthrow the shah and thus free Iran from British control. Specifically, however, he and his group were incensed firstly by the trans-Iranian railway, and secondly by the shah’s confiscation and appropriation of land. In their


analysis of the former and revulsion at the latter they typified the response of radical nationalism of those years. The trans-Iranian railway was the largest single economic initiative of Riza Shah’s rule. It ran north-south, extending from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf, a distance of about 1,800 kilometres. It appears that the north-south route was chosen partly in order to facilitate the efficient exploitation of the shah’s estates in northern Iran and partly to assist military mobilization and the army’s access to the main centres of ethnic and tribal rebellion.42 Construction had begun in 1927 and was completed in 1938. The railway was financed mainly from a tax on sugar and tea and in this way the necessity of foreign loans was avoided but an immense and disproportionate burden was placed on the peasantry, for whom tea and sugar were staples. Although sections of the railway were open from 1937 it succeeded in attracting little traffic and the country saw little or no immediate benefit from the enormous expenditure. Despite the difficulties surrounding the operation of the existing railway the shah was determined upon the construction of a further railway, linking Tabriz through Tehran to Mashhad, and this was begun in 1938, thus condemning the Iranian population, particularly its poorer sections, to further enormous tax burdens. The most outspoken Iranian critic of the railway project was Dr Muhammad Musaddiq. He had laid out his case in the discussions which took place in the sixth Majlis in 1926 when the railway construction bill was submitted.43 He argued that the proposed route would bring no economic benefit, that an alternative route across the north-central regions would be more productive, and that the proposed route had been chosen for strategic and not economic reasons. Jahansuz drew inspiration from and relied explicitly on the arguments of Dr Musaddiq in the formulation of his criticisms of the railway. Nationalist opinion in general, insofar as it remained allied to the shah, had supported the railway, a prestige project assisting in the unification of the country and the centralization of power. As the regime lost the backing of these elements, so the showpiece railway was increasingly criticized and the view that it had been built to assist the strategic objectives of Britain gained wider currency. Jahansuz strongly believed that the route of the railway had been determined by strategic considerations, that it was economically irrational and that it imposed an intolerable burden on the population, and these views were reinforced by his attendance in the classes of Professor Saham al-Din Ghaffari at Tehran university, who argued a sophisticated intellectual case in the same political vein. Jahansuz’s opposition to the railway was passionate and he was prepared


to use arguments from diverse sources to back it up. The example of Musaddiq was important, at the officers’ college he circulated among his friends a copy of Musaddiq’s speech to the Majlis,44 but he also cut an extract from a French newspaper written by a communist commentator, the original article having appeared in Pravda, according to which the railway was “a pistol aimed at the heart of Russia”.45 The second issue which provoked the particular hostility of the Jahansuz group was that of the shah’s acquisition of landed property. Riza Shah had by the 1930s become the greatest landlord in Iran, owning 1.5 million hectares, largely by illegal and corrupt methods. Although the amlak (personal states) of the shah “were acquired nominally by purchase, and the title-deeds were handed over under a formal transaction,…this was merely a cloak for virtual confiscation”.46 These confiscations, and the methods by which they were carried out, caused havoc amongst large and small landowners alike. Jahansuz and his friends bitterly denounced the confiscation of land and its appropriation by the shah. This was a particularly sensitive issue for Jahansuz and his associates from Kurdistan, whose relatives and friends appeared to have suffered personally. Jahansuz’s own father had, in fact, lost land and property in this way.47 Furthermore unlike an earlier generation of elite nationalists, the Jahansuz group, largely middle class themselves, admired the shah’s rise from his humble origins, and regarded his behaviour in this respect as an especial betrayal.48 A third, though less pressing, objection of the Jahansuz group related to the general development programme of the government, especially in Tehran. By the late 1930s the capital had been modernized beyond recognition. Tehran was growing rapidly, new avenues paved with asphalt replaced the old lanes, old streets were widened and extended, but this development was accompanied by large scale corruption and basic measures for the welfare of the population were neglected. There was for example still no clean water supply in the capital. Jahansuz deplored the foolishness of the government in constructing beautiful buildings while the people remained pauperized and culturally backward,49 and argued that the most important thing was for the people to develop culturally and politically and for them to acquire a basic education, these sentiments clearly echoing the student protest at the law faculty in 1937.

Arrest and trial The life of the Jahansuz group was very short. Rumours of its activities began to circulate and the group was soon betrayed by one of its


members, as a result of a petty personal quarrel, to General Murtaza Yazdanpanah, the commandant of the officers’ college. A commission, headed by General Yazdanpanah, was formed to investigate the allegations and to present a report to Riza Shah.50 Arrests began immediately of junior officers in both the air force and army, at first in Tehran and Khuzistan, then spreading to Kirmanshah, soon embracing civilians as well as army officers, reaching as far as the Tehran university professor, Saham al-Din Zuka al-Dawlah Ghaffari. Jahansuz was identified as the leader and eventually 87 people were detained and accused of membership in the group. Those arrested included any persons with a connection to Jahansuz, of whatever kind. The arrests were all carried out in secret. The initial accusation against the group was that they had plotted against the security of the country and against the monarchy.51 The revelation of this alleged conspiracy caused the shah a sudden access of fear and anxiety.52 He appointed General Azizullah Zarghami, the chief of the general staff, and General (the police rank of sarpas) Rukn al-Din Mukhtar, the chief of police, to carry out an investigation, and personally gave instructions for the arrest and prosecution of suspected individuals. Apparently the shah placed particular reliance on General Mukhtar to the extent that the investigation was handed over to and conducted by Mukhtar and the political office of the police despite the fact that many of those arrested, including the principals, were army officers and subject to military jurisdiction. Conversely all the accused, including the civilians, were eventually tried under military law by court-martial. General Rukn al-Din Mukhtar was a key figure in the shah’s apparatus of political repression. The police and the secret police had been important to Riz˙a’s acquisition and consolidation of power since the early 1920s. Colonel Muhammad Dargahi, the first Iranian chief of police after the dismissal of the Swede, General Westdahl, had built up an extensive intelligence service which the shah trusted to the full.53 In 1931 the shah appointed Muhammad Husayn Khan Ayrum chief of police and he in turn placed Captain Abdullah Miqdadi at the head of the political police. Rukn al-Din Mukhtar served under Ayrum as deputy chief of the central police and replaced him as chief in 1935. Mukhtar further refined the police as an instrument of the dictatorship, using Miqdadi as his righthand man, and continued to employ the mixture of legal and criminal methods utilized by his predecessors.54 Mukhtar and his police were directly responsible for the murders of Shaykh Khazal, Prince Firuz, Sayyid Hasan Mudarris, Muhammad Farukhi, Sardar Asad Bakhtiyari


and others, and for the arrest, trial and imprisonment of the “fiftythree”.55 In the case of the Jahansuz group it is clear that Mukhtar’s role was crucial at every stage, in arresting and interrogating suspects, in formulating charges and marshalling evidence, and in reporting to and shaping the shah’s perception of the affair. The shah was, for his own part, very ready to believe in the existence of plots.56 Indeed the atmosphere within the army was such that scepticism about the gravity of alleged conspiracies was not tolerated. Colonel Shahquli, for example, was removed from his post for expressing doubts about the importance of the Jahansuz affair.57 The years of Riza Shah’s rule were littered with the revelation of conspiracies, particularly assassination attempts, usually largely imaginary or concocted by the police. Nonetheless the shah’s fear was real enough and was often to be observed in his everyday behaviour.58 The accusation of plotting assassination was often levelled by the police at political opponents of the regime or those who had fallen into disfavour and was readily believed by shah. This had been the case with Qavam al-Saltanah in 1923, with Colonel Puladin and Samuil Hayyim in 1926 and with Sardar Asad Bakhtiyari in 1933, as well as with many minor and anonymous figures.59 Consequently it was almost inevitable that any sign of discontent among junior officers would become, in the hands of the police, a plot against the shah’s life. The shah expressed openly his shock and fear especially to the chief of the general staff, General Zarghami, and the commandant of the officers’ college, General Yazdanpanah. Any sign of disaffection within the army was uniquely disturbing to him. He tolerated, indeed encouraged, corruption among his senior commanders and expected armed tribal rebellion but the existence of political opposition among cadets and young officers he construed as representing not just a threat to himself but also to the existence of his dynasty.60 Since his accession to the throne, political control of his senior generals had been essential to Riza Shah, not just in order to safeguard his own position but also to guarantee the smooth and unchallenged succession of the crown prince. In fact the shah had little fear of any rival to himself, but was extremely conscious of the vulnerability of the succession. The precedent which he himself had set by rising to power and to the monarchy itself through his control of the army haunted him. He believed that it would be some years before the young crown prince Muhammad Riza would, in the event of his own death, be able to establish himself on the throne without both a struggle and the support of a senior general. He openly spoke of the importance of his living long enough to ensure


the succession.61 The shah had always particularly feared assassination62 and his concern for his dynasty now added new urgency to that fear. Although he knew that none of his senior officers possessed either the courage or the wider political support necessary to offer a challenge to his own power, he was aware that the sudden propulsion of the young and inexperienced crown prince onto the throne would present an ambitious general with an almost irresistible opportunity. He feared that such a general might aspire to the throne himself, launch a military dictatorship or become regent on behalf of the crown prince. The shah’s apprehensions were proved to be remarkably prescient by the ambitions of General Haj Ali Razmara in the 1940s.63 Accordingly the presence of radical opposition within the army appeared to the shah to represent a real threat to his dynasty. He also seemed to fear especially, with the example of the “fifty-three” fresh in his mind, that communism might be spreading from the universities into the army.64 Furthermore the atmosphere of xenophobia and paranoia surrounding the regime inevitably led the shah to presume that the strings of the conspirators were being pulled by foreigners. But at first he was at a loss to decide exactly which foreign power was responsible and what their objective might be.65 The candidates were of course Britain and the Soviet Union but now Germany was also added to the list of international suspects. That Britain and the Soviet Union would meddle in domestic Iranian politics was seen as inevitable but now, in the new circumstances of the German-Soviet pact, Germany’s intentions too were rendered suddenly uncertain and unpredictable. This pact, signed on 23 August 1939, the alliance between Germany and Iran’s traditional northern enemy, appeared to jeopardize the disinterested and neutral role in which Iran had attempted to cast Germany. Furthermore the shah knew that Iran’s friendship with Germany was making him increasingly unpopular with the British and also, notwithstanding the 1939 Pact, with the Soviet Union. He now believed he had reason to fear also that the Germans themselves might be tempted to dispense with him altogether and install an overtly and unambiguously pro-German regime in Iran based on Nazi sympathizers within the army. From the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 to the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Allied occupation of Iran in 1941 the shah was walking a tightrope, attempting frantically to preserve Iran’s neutrality, declared on 4 September 1939, and his own precarious grip on power. After the outbreak of war in Europe the shah tried to distance Iran a little from Germany and relations between the two countries experienced a certain cooling.66 Covert activity of


various kinds by all three Powers, the Soviet Union, Britain and Germany, intensified in proportion to the rising stakes,67 and it was in this heightened and confused atmosphere that the arrest and trial of the Jahansuz group took place. Eventually the shah decided to hedge his bets by accusing the Jahansuz group of having connections with both Germany and the Soviet Union. Britain was omitted from the charges presumably because there existed within the army no significant pro-British sentiment and such an accusation would have been met with incredulity. The shah ordered that the accused be tried by a field courtmartial, under war-time conditions, and a colonel, Colonel Husaynpur, was appointed to preside. Thirty-seven people were consigned to trial, seventeen were officers and the rest civilians. They were all accused of violating certain articles of military law.68 These were capital crimes and carried the death sentence. Arraigning particularly the civilian accused in this way was extremely harsh, indeed it was illegal. There was in this case no attempt to use the 1931 law safeguarding national security which provided for a maximum sentence of ten years and which had been used against the “fifty-three” two years earlier. Other than the thirty-seven now indicted, another fifty or so people had been arrested along with Jahansuz. Although no evidence existed against them other than personal friendship or merely acquaintance with the accused, they were kept in prison several months. They were, however, never brought to trial but were freed after the police admitted to the military court that no evidence could be produced against them. At the court-martial, Jahansuz and his associates were charged on three counts. Firstly they were accused of working in the interests of Germany. The main evidence put forward for this was Jahansuz’s translation of Mein Kampf. Secondly they were accused also of having connections with the Soviet Union. This accusation focused particularly on four individuals, Razavi Shiva, a lawyer, Zayn al-Abidin Kashani, also a lawyer, and two friends of theirs, junior officers in the amniyyah, Second Lieutenants Vasiqi and Mujtahidi, and seemed to rest largely on the possession by Razavi Shiva of a photograph of Lenin. A fifth man, Nimatullah Zarabi, was also accused by the prosecution of being a communist. The third and final accusation, and for the shah and General Mukhtar the most serious, was that the group had plotted an armed rebellion against the shah and the crown prince. This charge carried the most severe punishment possible. The prosecution argued that some members of the group were fascists, some communists; that they had planned to launch a coup d’état and to take power into their own hands; and that they had acted specifically against the crown and incited the people to rise against the monarchy.69


Although the court-martial went through the motions of a trial, actual decisions about guilt and sentencing were being taken elsewhere. The shah was determined that Jahansuz was to be executed. In fact in response to the police report the shah finally gave instructions that five of the accused were to be executed.70 They were Second Lieutenant Muhsin Jahansuz, then a cavalry officer of the Kirmanshah brigade, two air force officers, Second Lieutenants Ghulam Ali Javid and Abdulhusayn Abbasiyan, and two civilians, Husayn Pashmi, a bookseller and poet from Kirmanshah and Nimatullah Zarabi, a government employee. In court the prosecution divided the accused into three categories according to the seriousness of their involvement and demanded the following penalties.71 For the first category, who were considered the principal conspirators, the punishment demanded was execution. This group consisted of five people, the same five whose execution the shah had ordered, Jahansuz, Javid, Abbasiyan, Pashmi and Zarabi. For the second category, the largest, consisting of twenty-four persons, the prosecution demanded various terms of imprisonment. Fifteen of this group were military personnel, all lieutenants or cadets, the remaining nine were civilians. Several of this group were relatives of the more centrally involved conspirators. The final category consisted of seven persons, all civilians, but it was decided not to continue with the prosecution of these individuals and they were freed by a subsequent sitting of the court. The shah held to his insistence that Jahansuz, Pashmi and Zarabi be executed, although apparently dropped this insistence in relation to Javid and Abbasiyan, and this was communicated to the chief of police, General Mukhtar, by the chief of staff, General Azizullah Zarghami.72 The court, after completing its deliberations, duly prescribed the following sentences. Second Lieutenant Jahansuz, the poet Pashmi and the lawyer Zarabi were to be executed; Air Force Second Lieutenants Javid and Abbasiyan received fourteen and twelve years imprisonment respectively; Second Lieutenants Yazdiyan and Kiani, and the lawyer Kashani, seven years each. The remaining accused were given lesser prison terms while Saham al-Din Ghaffari was exonerated completely. All those found guilty immediately demanded an appeal. In a letter to the chief of the office of military justice, General Nakhchavan, the acting war minister, said that the shah agreed to allow appeals from all the convicted except Jahansuz, who must be executed. Regarding Jahansuz the shah ordered the office to verify again whether foreign powers were involved or not and then to take Jahansuz to Qasr prison and carry out the sentence. Nakhchavan added that it was necessary to carry out the shah’s order quickly.73 The shah apparently held Jahansuz responsible for inciting the other officers and seducing them from their duty.


A court of appeal was convened on 13 March, 1940, operating under the same conditions of a field court-martial as the first, to hear the appeals, with General Geranmayyah, an old comrade of the shah, presiding. To the surprise of those in court Jahansuz was absent. In his case the sentence of execution had already been carried out. He had been shot at Qasr prison on the same day the appeal court convened. The appeal court commuted the death sentences on Pashmi and Zarabi, condemning them instead to twelve years in prison, and also reduced the terms of imprisonment awarded to the other defendants to various terms ranging from nine years to three and a half months. These decisions had, like the earlier judgements, actually been made outside the court, by the shah and his advisors.74 In any case even the exonerated Saham al-Din Ghaffari was in fact not released but was detained in prison until after the abdication of the shah.75

Conclusion Riza Shah himself had only a year and a half of power remaining to him. The harsh treatment meted out to his critics within the army made his own position no stronger, nor did it enable him effectively to control the pro-German inclinations of the officer corps or to channel these tendencies into support for his regime. When, after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Allies invaded Iran, they did so not only in order to open a new corridor to Russia and to secure the expulsion of German agents, not only to oust the procrastinating shah, but also to forestall a coup by pro-Axis officers of the kind that had occurred earlier in the year in Iraq and which had dealt such a serious blow to Allied morale and prestige.76 Riza Shah’s abdication inaugurated a transformation in domestic political circumstances. As well as a sudden liberation of long-suppressed political forces, specific initiatives were launched to redress some of the injustices of the previous decade. In October the Majlis passed a bill granting pardons for political prisoners, and more than 1,250 were released during the following months. Relatives of victims of the secret police initiated legal proceedings, and trials took place of police officers and other government officials, the new shah, Muhammad Riza, making no effort to protect his father’s henchmen. General Mukhtar was arrested, and after mounting a defence based largely on the ultimate culpability of the ex-shah, was sentenced to six years in prison. Captain Miqdadi however paid with his life and was executed in 1942. Regarding Riza Shah’s amlak, personal estates acquired by confiscation, a particular grievance of the Jahansuz group, in September 1941 these were transferred to the


state. In June 1942 a law was passed providing for the return of these estates to their former owners and special courts were set up to supervise this procedure.77 The army had been shattered by the circumstances of the Allied invasion and Riza Shah’s abdication. Demoralized and effectively leaderless, it had been incapable of offering coordinated resistance to the British and Soviet forces.78 Nonetheless, although in post-1941 Iran it was of little or no military significance, its officer corps still represented a political force of some weight. As late as 1943 the British were still tormented by its proGerman proclivities and arrested and deported General Fazlullah Zahidi whom they identified as a ringleader of this current. Although the Allied invasion solidified the pro-German sentiments of the officer corps, yet now, as before 1941, this did not imply any definite orientation towards the new shah. As the war progressed, however, pro-German sympathies quickly became irrelevant. Among the upper echelons of the officer corps, still suffering from the disgrace and shock of the collapse of August 1941, and fearful of either a British insistence on a substantial reduction in the size of the army, such as they had enforced on the Iraqi army, or the imposition of direct Allied control in the form of British or US military missions, there took place a certain rallying around the figure of Muhammad Riza Shah. Nonetheless, at the same time the youth and political weakness of the new shah unleashed the ambitions of his father’s senior officers. The inability of the young shah to assume undisputed leadership of, and establish firm control over, these officers inaugurated a period of struggle within the army, between individuals and their cabals, for both military ascendancy and political power. For the younger, ideologically motivated officers also, the 1940s necessitated new orientations and presented new opportunities. In the novel circumstances of relative political freedom, with Soviet influence at its zenith, radical nationalism tended to be attracted to the Tudah Party, finding organized expression within the army in the network of Captain Khusraw Ruzbih. In his memoirs of Jahansuz, Najafquli Pasyan describes how just before his execution Jahansuz cried “Long live Iran”. Although Pasyan reproduces a document to support this anecdote yet, with its typical mythical quality, the story may well be apocryphal.79 Nonetheless the image encapsulates accurately the meaning of the Jahansuz episode, as a disorganized, incoherent, but passionately nationalist defiance of the shah. Riza Shah, although he attempted to present himself as the embodiment of the Iranian nation, never successfully monopolized Iranian nationalism. On the contrary, during the 1930s the divergence


between his regime and nationalist opinion became increasingly apparent. Those who criticized the shah on nationalist grounds occupied a position which was highly vulnerable politically, but which was ideologically very powerful. Indeed the very changes introduced by Riza Shah himself had created an environment which empowered radical nationalism although the shah himself was unable to sustain his leadership of this tendency or even ultimately to retain its favour. Muhsin Jahansuz and his associates were propelled into radical opposition not by their ideology, of nationalism and modernism, nor by their flirtation with fascism, both of which they shared with the regime, but by their conclusion that the shah was not only incapable of realizing this agenda but had actually betrayed it. Jahansuz’s fascism may have been superficial, decorative and modish, his capacity to launch a movement extremely limited, and his power to organize a coup non-existent. Yet, with Riza Shah possessing virtually no bases of support and the crown prince young and inexperienced, Iran was then indeed a “one-bullet” regime,80 any potential assassin threatening not just the life of the shah himself but the survival of his dynasty and the state he had constructed. Riza Shah always harboured a fear of assassination and Jahansuz, furthermore, threatened to realize another major danger, that of military conspiracy. The politicization of the army was a burgeoning phenomenon in the Middle East in the late 1930s, its consequences particularly apparent in neighbouring Iraq, where the colonels of the “Golden Square” had become the determining factor in political life. Riza Shah accordingly reacted to any sign of political disaffection within the army with the harshest measures. Not only Jahansuz himself but also his civilian co-accused were prosecuted under military law, with its accompanying death penalty, this being indeed the only penalty the shah would accept for Jahansuz himself, just as in 1926 he had refused any other sentence for Colonel Puladin. Dr Taqi Arani, by contrast, whose activities were certainly more substantial, was tried in a civil court in 1938, receiving a sentence of ten years imprisonment, the maximum provided for by the 1931 law safeguarding national security. The Jahansuz group symbolized changes that were taking place both in Iranian society generally and in political activity in particular and in this they mirrored developments taking place throughout the Middle East. They were not born into the metropolitan elite. On the contrary, they were from provincial middle and lower middle class backgrounds, but they acquired modern educations and were future members of the professional and bureaucratic classes, and they expressed their political


positions in ideological terms. They signalled both the rising importance of these classes, and their increasingly insistent demands for political involvement. Of the same generation as Nasser and Abd al-Karim Qasim, the Jahansuz group were, although perhaps only in embryo, strikingly similar to the Free Officers and their civilian allies who were soon to overturn the existing order throughout much of the Arab world.

Conclusion

The Riza Shah decades have often been presented as a period dominated by the overwhelming power of a modernizing authoritarian state, where opposition, when it could be detected at all, was backward-looking, marginal and easily suppressed. Yet the narratives above depict a different reality, the persistence of deep social conflicts, the contested character of political power, and the only very partial reach of the monarchy’s ideological hegemony. None of the movements of opposition, protest and revolt described in this book were organized by political parties, which were, in any case, not tolerated for most of the period, nor by conventional political leaderships. They were, rather, social movements indicative of the contentious political engagement of broad layers of the Iranian people, social groups and categories often either entirely invisible in the literature or present only as passive recipients of the state’s agenda, fodder for its fiscal and military policies.1 The episodes of contentious politics recounted above took place in a range of settings: the new army, the rural poor, the embryonic working class, the urban crowd, and these environments continued to generate discontent throughout the Pahlavi period, open conflict often erupting to the surface suddenly during moments of crisis. The army, for example, usually conceptualized as a monolithic bastion of the monarchy, was in fact riven by political fissures and social tensions, between left and right, communist, nationalist and royalist, and between the most senior officers, their middle-ranking and junior subordinates, and the rank and file. From the beginning, modern Iranian military units, the Cossack Brigade established in the nineteenth century and the Government Gendarmerie of the constitutional period, had been immersed in politics and this tradition of politicization continued into the Riza Shah 261


decades and indeed throughout the life of Pahlavi Iran.2 Yet, in contrast to the officer corps in neighbouring Arab states, the Pahlavi army in the years down to 1979 never developed a corporate and independent political identity, and made no bid for power on its own account. Its one direct intervention, the anti-Musaddiq coup of 1953, was undertaken with the express objective of restoring the rule of Muhammad Riza Shah and its most politically ambitious generals, Ali Razmara, Fazlullah Zahidi, Taymur Bakhtiyar, sought to advance their careers by serving the shah, not opposing him. After 1941, the Iranian army experienced no further cataclysmic defeat which might have enabled a caucus of young, left-leaning or nationalist officers to coalesce and seize power, such as occurred in Egypt, Iraq and Syria in the years following the 1948 Palestine war. After Riza Shah’s abdication in 1941 and the catastrophic collapse of his army, on which had been lavished so much of the country’s wealth, the new shah, Muhammad Riza, made a concerted effort to rebuild the military as a bastion of the monarchy and restore morale, yet opposition quickly reappeared. The most significant centre of political disaffection within the army in the years between 1941 and 1954 was the Tudah Military Organization. In August 1944 two officers, members of the Organization, led a mutiny in Khurasan which, however, failed to ignite a wider uprising against the government.3 Despite a difficult relationship with the Tudah political leadership, the Military Organization survived and, in the years prior to the 1953 coup, grew to number at least 466 officers, and possibly as many as 700.4 Yet the Military Organization, whose members were mostly concentrated in non-combatant positions, was unable to prevent the coup of 1953 and, indeed, appears to have remained largely passive during the events which led to the overthrow of Musaddiq. In 1954 the Military Organization was uncovered and destroyed, leaving only a remnant under Khusraw Ruzbih, this not surviving Ruzbih’s own arrest and execution. In addition to communist cells within the army, the years of the oil nationalization crisis saw the crystallization of open nationalist and pro-Musaddiq tendencies within the army, symbolized by the emergence in 1952 of the Patriotic Officers group, led by Brigadier Mahmud Afshartus who was to be murdered in 1953 by opponents of Musaddiq while occupying the post of chief of police.5 The coup against Musaddiq provoked considerable resistance from within the military itself, sections of both the officer corps and the rank and file remaining loyal and attempting to defend Musaddiq until the end.6

Conclusion 263

Although an actual split between pro-Musaddiq and royalist trends was avoided in 1953, the years of the oil nationalization crisis had clearly exposed the political fragility of the Iranian army. The 1960s and 1970s saw a further dangerous widening of the gap between senior and junior officers, and between the officers and the rank and file. This gap was perhaps best illustrated by the case of the homafars, air force technicians largely from humble backgrounds, whose claim to officer status was consistently refused, and who later played a key role in the overthrow of the shah. During 1978 the shah made sporadic attempts to use the army to suppress the growing revolutionary fervour, however neither the shah nor his high command appeared confident that they could rely on the troops. As the crisis developed, the army began to disintegrate, morale collapsed, troops fraternized openly with demonstrators and desertions rocketed.7 Within the revolutionary context, the stark political, economic and social divisions within the army took on a fatal significance. Caught between the inaction of their high command and the growing revolutionary sympathies of their men who, as conscripts, brought into the army the attitudes of the wider population, many middle-ranking officers simply retreated into neutrality or requested leave or early retirement. The rapid disintegration of the officer corps and rank and file was finally consummated first by the military’s declaration of neutrality, and then an institutional switch of allegiance from shah to Islamic republic. The pervasiveness of political and social tensions within the Pahlavi army has escaped attention owing to a theoretical insistence on the loyalty of the officer corps to the monarchy, and on the supposed effectiveness of its indoctrination of rank and file conscripts. A range of other types of social conflict actually endemic in Pahlavi Iran have also remained largely invisible as a result of scholarly and political prejudices. The rural poor, in particular, have been deemed “non-revolutionary” at best, and more usually completely dismissed as socially conservative, deferential and apolitical, enduring their harsh lives with a passive resignation, sometimes with a certain nobility but more often with a degrading servility.8 Yet the narrative above offers the possibility of writing a different version of the history of the rural poor in Pahlavi Iran. Certainly, throughout this period, peasants and nomads continued to be caught between forms of economic exploitation and political subordination which were, on the one hand, “traditional”, represented by subsistence agriculture and pastoralism and the rule of the khans and rural magnates, and on the other hand “modern”, represented by private


property, the ever more aggressive penetration of capitalist relations into the countryside, and the authoritarian state. But it is now clear that in the 1920s both the peasantry and the nomadic populations made repeated efforts to modify and sometimes challenge their existing circumstances and the impact upon their societies of the novel and radical politics introduced by the new state. This tradition of peasant/nomad activism continued into the subsequent decades, with outbursts of antilandlord action and land seizures erupting especially in periods of more generalized political crisis. In the spring and summer of 1952, for example, a wave of peasant protests engulfed much of rural Kurdistan, a stimulus to this movement and an encouragement of class conflict in the rural areas being provided by the Musaddiq government’s introduction of measures to ease the lot of sharecroppers. For about eight months, elected peasant councils took control of villages, peasants refused to pay dues or provide corvée, and forced landlords to flee. The subsequent repression was ruthless.9 Similarly, the land reform of the early 1960s unleashed extraordinary levels of peasant activism. The first district where the land distribution decree was implemented was Maraghih, in eastern Azarbayjan, in early 1962. A bulletin put out by the Agricultural Union of Iran, a landowners organization, documented 21 cases of violence against landowners and their property in Maraghih in the month of March alone.10 Finally, as the power of the monarchy began to crumble in 1978 under the pressure of an urban-based mass protest movement, the villages, especially those in close proximity to towns and cities, became drawn into the revolutionary upheavals. In March 1979, only one month after the revolution itself, peasant and village labourer groups began a new round of land expropriations, and seizures occurred in virtually every major province and in villages and districts throughout the country. The impetus for these expropriations was sometimes provided by outside political activists, sometimes by young village activists politicized by their experiences in urban centres, but the overwhelming majority of participants in seizures and in demands for the distribution of land were landless and land-poor peasants themselves.11 The Kurdish nationalist organizations grasped the opportunity, as well as putting forward political demands for autonomy, to launch a social revolution in the countryside, confronting landlords and encouraging peasant uprisings and land redistribution.12 Across the country there were waves of land seizures and occupations by tribal and peasant communities.13 This process went so far in the Turkman Sahra in north-eastern Iran as to lead to the establishment of a network of peasants’ councils which for a period operated as the real authority in the region.14

Conclusion 265

While peasants and pastoral nomads were ready to challenge landlordism whenever a favourable political conjuncture opened up, as the twentieth century wore on, the rural poor played another political role of increasing importance, as newly proletarianized industrial workers or migrants in the mushrooming urban slums. This process had been evident in the interwar decades, with the rapid growth of an industrial working class in the southern oil fields. The push of the commercialization of land, the penetration of the cash economy and, after land reform, the spread of agri-business, coupled with the pull of the growing industrial and urban sectors, led to ever more pauperization and flight from the land among nomads and peasants alike. The addition to the existing urban poor of a tide of pauperized peasants and nomads in the 1960s and 1970s, surviving in the swollen shanty-towns of Tehran and other big cities, was a key factor in producing the demonstrations of an unprecedented size which brought down the monarchy in 1978–1979.15 The flight from the countryside to the towns and especially to the capital in the 1960s and 1970s transferred the rural conflict to the cities and was a key factor in deciding the revolutionary struggle. Without this swollen population of migrants, the revolutionary mobilizations would have been much smaller and the revolutionaries and the regime more evenly balanced. The resemblance to the contests of the early 1950s would have been greater and, perhaps, the resolve of the regime strengthened. Even the troops might have behaved differently had the conscripts, often rural in origin themselves, not been faced so obviously with their own kind on the streets. The mass protests which took place on the streets of Tehran and other cities during the revolutionary period of 1977–1979 were perhaps the largest in history.16 They owed their size both to the hegemony which the revolutionaries had come to exercise over Iranian society, and also to the massive increase in the numbers of the urban poor which had taken place during the previous 10–15 years. Yet, although their size made them a unique and novel phenomenon, these demonstrations and street protests owed their character to a deep indigenous tradition of urban protest. As the chapters above show, this tradition of urban protest had had its early national political successes in the Tobacco Protest and the constitutional revolution and had continued to play a key role in the early 1920s in Tehran, and for longer in the provincial cities. Indeed, whenever the grip of the state had weakened, urban crowds, with their familiar repertoires of actions, would vie for power on the streets. After Riza Shah’s abdication, in the


years of the oil nationalization crisis, during the White Revolution, and most spectacularly in 1977–1979, the city streets repeatedly became arenas of intense political struggle and the urban crowd a key player. Such crowds might, as in the past, be mobilized by a variety of leaderships, the clergy and the bazar, or leftist political groups and trade unions, and possess a range of different, and even conflicting, political agendas. Again, typical of a tradition of urban protest, women often continued to play a carefully choreographed and prominent role in street protests, especially those organized by a religious leadership or around Islamic slogans. In the mobilizations of the urban crowd in the street protests of 1977–1979, the clergy often played a role similar to that which they had adopted in previous moments of mass upheaval. The revolutionary process which unfolded during 1978 strikingly reprised a particular phenomenon visible in the narratives of the 1920s and 1930s unfolded in the foregoing chapters: the defining importance of elite-subaltern divisions within the clerical hierarchies in determining political orientations.17 The accounts above, of clerical-led resistance in the provincial cities to the authoritarian modernization of the early Pahlavi period, clearly delineated the inclination of senior ulama to cooperate with the authorities, whatever their character, and the much greater readiness, even eagerness, of lower-ranking mullahs to articulate the demands of the lower classes. In these years, outbreaks of provincial defiance often provided an opportunity for minor clerical figures, most notably the rawzah khvan, Bahlul, in Mashhad in 1935, to emerge from obscurity and put themselves at the head of popular discontent, sometimes dragging mujtahids and ayatullahs in their wake. In 1978, too, the reluctance of senior religious figures inside Iran to sanction open protest was marked while the majority of clerical revolutionaries were middle-ranking or lower. During the 1970s, although senior clerics were unhappy with the shah’s regime, they had expressed their grievances almost entirely in reformist terms and, in 1978, only gave their support to the revolutionaries after much persuasion and pressure up to and including outright intimidation.18 The revolutionary intransigence of Ayatullah Khumayni, in exile in Iraq and then in France, was entirely exceptional. Open discontent had erupted in 1977–early 1978 and had been based in the seminaries, the universities, and the bazar. However it was the entry of the working class into the revolutionary process, after June 1978, which was decisive in the conflict with the regime. The participation of labourers and factory workers swelled the street demonstrations from tens

Conclusion 267

of thousands to hundreds of thousands and even millions, while a crescendo of work stoppages culminated in a general strike which paralysed the economy.19 Of crucial importance was a strike in the oil fields which threatened the regime’s financial existence. The emergence of organized labour as a factor of national political importance in Iran had been signalled by the Abadan oil refinery strike of 1929. In subsequent periods of political relaxation or crisis, notably 1946 and 1951–1953, the working class had played a role of everincreasing significance. Its social weight was increasing throughout this period partly as a simple result of its rapid numerical growth, itself a consequence of the shah’s development policies. The class thus created was new, unaccustomed to the industrial and political discipline imposed by social-democratic traditions familiar in the West. Lacking representation, this class in formation was prone to wildcat stoppages and, devoid of the caution inherent in trade union movements elsewhere, was ready to engage in the political general strike. For most of the twentieth century the Iranian working class was subject to severe political repression and economic exploitation. Yet, paradoxically, it is precisely here that an explanation for the extraordinary militancy displayed by the working class during 1978–1979 may be found. The very absence of an established leadership with a wider political allegiance, which might have been tempted to subordinate the rapidly radicalizing industrial militancy to a wider political agenda, meant that, as the apparatus of control disintegrated, the working class could embrace unreservedly the revolutionary opportunity.20 An explanation for the creativity and militancy of Iranian workers in 1978–1979 may only be found by looking beyond the role of leftist groups, leaderships and intellectuals, to focus on the experience and traditions of the workers themselves. These included a perennial discontent at their own conditions allied to a strong cultural tradition of self-organization capable of producing, at different times, anjumans, trade unions, and workers’ councils, and a cultural familiarity with older methods of protest which included tactics of the strike, the occupation and the boycott. For most of the twentieth century, neither political parties nor trade unions in Iran had any permanent existence, but were either banned altogether or operated in conditions of extreme difficulty. The absence of recognized and legitimate channels through which representation might be secured and grievances transmitted created a space which was repeatedly filled by traditions of spontaneous popular protest. Such popular protest erupted whenever the state faltered, reaching a climax in the revolutionary years of 1977–1979 when a wide range of


subaltern groups: factory workers, labourers, the urban poor, mullahs and religious students, bazaris, the intelligentsia, even salaried white collar workers and soldiers, instinctively reached for a familiar repertoire of protest: the political strike, the taking of bast and factory occupations, desertion and mutiny, massive street demonstrations, often including phalanxes of veiled women, the politicization of mourning rituals and their use as mobilizing tools, and the circulation of imported cassettes replacing the oppositional shabnamahs of earlier decades, always accompanied by a discourse emphasizing natural justice. Although these traditions of protest had been inherited from the past, they had been transformed by the political context. Their strength lay in their powerful cultural resonance, but they had become the carriers of entirely novel political objectives. Despite both the authoritarianism of Pahlavi Iran and the “modernization” of the twentieth century, the beliefs and practices embedded in traditions of popular politics had refused to die, but had remained vividly alive in the collective memory of Iran’s lower classes. In 2009 these traditions of urban protest were again to burst onto the political scene, in the form of the massive demonstrations which accompanied the presidential election, both the incumbent, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, and his opponents mobilizing their supporters to vie for control of the streets. In this campaign, and in the political struggles which have followed, the template of popular politics handed down from the Tobacco Protest, through the constitutional revolution, the oil nationalization crisis and the 1979 revolution, has once again powerfully reasserted itself.

Notes

Chapter 1 1 Touraj Atabaki and Erik J. Zürcher, Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization under Atatürk and Reza Shah (London and New York, 2004). 2 An uncritical acceptance of this version of early Pahlavi Iran has proved surprisingly resilient. For a recent example see Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge, 2008). 3 Such discussion of opposition as has taken place has largely focused on ideological disaffection among the intelligentsia, the best-known example of which is the Erani group of the 1930s. The ubiquity of this focus is undoubtedly partly due to the fact that intellectuals are more likely to leave written sources. On the Erani group see, for example, Ervand Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran (Berkeley, 1999), pp. 48–72. 4 Although Iranian historical writing has recently begun to incorporate nonelite perspectives, for example in Janet Afary’s account of the constitutional period, and Vanessa Martin’s work on Qajar Iran, the Riza Shah decades have so far completely escaped these new approaches. See Vanessa Martin, The Qajar Pact: Bargaining, Protest and the State in Nineteenth-Century Persia (London and New York, 2005); Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (New York, 1996). 5 Riza Khan became shah in December 1925 when a constituent assembly voted in favour of a change of dynasty. The designation Riza Khan or Riza Shah has been employed in the text according to the chronological context. 6 For the use of populist tactics in the context of the campaigns against the power of the tribal khans, see Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and the New State, 1921–1941 (Routledge, 2006), pp. 103–4. 7 See, for example, Muhammad Reza Afshari, “The Historians of the Constitutional Movement and the Making of the Iranian Populist Tradition”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 25, part 3, 1993, pp. 477–94. 8 This view of the period has been challenged recently by a particular growth in interest in Iran during the years of the Great War. See Touraj Atabaki (ed.) Iran and the First World War: A Battleground of the Great Powers (London and New York, 2007); Oliver Bast (ed.) La Perse et La Grande Guerre (Tehran, 2002); Mohammad Gholi Majd, Persia in World War 1 and its Conquest by Great Britain (Maryland, 2003). The government of Vusuq al-Dawlah in 1918–1920 has been the object of particular historical revisionism. See, for example, Oliver Bast, “Putting the Record Straight: Vosuq al-Dowleh’s Foreign Policy in 1918–1919”, Touraj Atabaki and Erik J. Zürcher, Men of Order, pp. 260–81. 9 For a discussion of the forces shaping Western scholarship on modern Iran see Stephanie Cronin, ‘Writing the History of Modern Iran: A Comment on 269

270 Notes

10

11 12 13

14

15

16 17

18

19

20

21

22 23

Approaches and Sources”, Iran ( Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies), 1998, vol. xxxvi, pp. 175–84. Kaveh Bayat, “The Pahlavi School of Historiography”, Touraj Atabaki, Iran in the 20th Century: Historiography and Political Culture (London and New York, 2009), pp. 113–20. Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, pp. 167–72. See Vanessa Martin, The Qajar Pact, pp. 183–91. The framing of protest in this way may be traced into the 1920s and beyond. For the regional context, see Touraj Atabaki, “Constitutionalism in Iran and its Asian Interdependencies”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 28, no. 1, 2008, pp. 142–53. This era tended to produce, in Turkey and China, as well as across the Middle East including in Iran, not multi-party democracies, but prolonged periods of disintegration followed by authoritarian modernizing regimes, whether of left or right. This phenomenon certainly provides scope for more comparative study. See Charles Kurzman, Democracy Denied, 1905–1915: Intellectuals and the Fate of Democracy (Harvard, 2008). For a comparative perspective, see also Zhand Shakibi, Revolutions and the Collapse of Monarchy: Human Agency and the Making of Revolution in France, Russia and Iran (London, 2006); Tim McDaniel, Autocracy, Modernization, and Revolution in Russia and Iran (Princeton, 1991). The phrase was coined by Nikki R. Keddie. See Nikki R. Keddie, “The Origins of the Religious-Radical Alliance in Iran”, Iran: Religion, Politics and Society (London and Portland, Or, 1980), pp. 53–65. Nikki R. Keddie, Religion and Rebellion in Iran: The Tobacco Protest of 1891–2 (London, 1966). For the tradition of petitioning see Irene Schneider, The Petitioning System in Iran: State, Society and Power Relations in the Late 19th Century (Wiesbaden, 2006). See Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, pp. 151–4; Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics, pp. 109–10. Mansoureh Ettehadieh has shown that peasants petitioned the shah even before the constitutional period. Mansoureh Ettehadieh Nezam-Mafi, “The Council for the Investigation of Grievances: A Case Study of Nineteenth Century Iranian Social History”, Iranian Studies, vol. 22, 1989, pp. 51–61. Stephanie Cronin, “Importing Modernity: Foreign Military Missions to Qajar Iran”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 50, no. 1, January 2008, pp. 197–226. Stephanie Cronin, “Britain, the Iranian Military and the Rise of Reza Khan”, Vanessa Martin (ed.) Anglo-Iranian Relations since 1800 (Abingdon, 2005) pp. 99–127; Stephanie Cronin, “British Influence during the Reza Shah Period, 1921–1941”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. XI, 2002, pp. 231–4. For a fuller discussion of this point, see Stephanie Cronin, The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921–1941 (London, 2003), pp. 8–9, 157–210; Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics in Iran, pp. 16–17. Some of the most recent research on early Pahlavi Iran is collected in Stephanie Cronin (ed.) The Making of Modern Iran. Riza Shah-i Kabir, Safarnamah-yi Khuzistan, 1303 (Tehran, 1362); Safarnamah-yi Mazandaran, 1305 (Tehran, 1355).

Notes 271 24 Norman to Curzon, 3 March, 1921, FO416/68. 25 For Shaykh Khiyabani in Tabriz, see Chapter 3, pp. 116–19. See also Homa Katouzian, “The Revolt of Shaikh Mohammad Khiyabani”, Iranian History and Politics: The Dialectic of State and Society (London, 2003), pp. 203–35. 26 Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (London and New York, 2000), pp. 286–7. 27 Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr, Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty (Oxford, 2006), p. 39. 28 Matthew Elliot, “New Iran and the Dissolution of Party Politics under Reza Shah”, Touraj Atabaki and Erik J. Zürcher, Men of Order, pp. 65–97. 29 Mansoureh Ettehadieh Nezam-Mafi, “The Council for the Investigation of Grievances”; Abbas Amanat, “Constitutional Revolution: Intellectual Background”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 6 (1993), pp. 167–76. 30 See Mansurah Ittihadiah, Majlis va Intikhabat: az Mashrutah ta Payan-i Qajariyah (Tehran, 1375). 31 The campaigns for and against the 1919 Agreement are discussed in Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran, pp. 88–163. 32 During the 1930s, however, a perceptible lack of interest developed in preserving the figleaf of Majlis legislation, and Riza Shah increasingly governed by decree. This was the case with the prohibition of the hijab, for example. 33 Chick to Loraine, Shiraz, 26 July, 1923, FO371/9043/E9303/1417/34. 34 For a discussion of the role of local conflicts in elections in the early constitutional period see Mohammad Ali Kazembeyki, Society, Politics and Economics in Mazandaran, 1848–1914 (London, 2003), pp. 159–65. 35 Translation, British Military Attaché, Meshed, to CGS, Army HQ, Simla, 20 April, 1926, FO371/11488/E4142/195/34. 36 Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Manzur al-Ajdad, Siyasat va Libas: Bar Guzidah-i Asnad-i Muttahid al-Shikl Shudan-i Albasah, 1308–1317 (Tehran, 1380); Bianca Devos, Kleidungspolitik in Iran: Die Durchsetzung der Kleidungsvorschriften Für ∨– Männer unter Riz˙a– Sah (Würzburg, 2006); H. E. Chehabi, “Staging the Emperor’s New Clothes: Dress Codes and Nation-Building under Reza Shah”, Iranian Studies, vol. 26, nos 3–4, Summer–Fall 1993, pp. 209–30. 37 Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany, 1980), pp. 42–3. 38 Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics, p. 28. 39 Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics, pp. 30–1. 40 See Ibrahim Afkhami, Qiyam-i Mullah Khalil dar Mukhalafat-i ba Pushidan-i Libas-i Farhangi va Radd-i Farman-i Riza Khan dar Sal-i 1307 shamsi (Tehran, 1368). 41 Knatchbull-Hugessen to George Rendel, FO, 17 July, 1935, FO371/18997/ E4880/4338/34. 42 H. E. Chehabi “The Banning of the Veil and its Consequences”; Stephanie Cronin, The Making of Modern Iran, p. 199. 43 The na’ib al-tawliyyah was the chief official responsible for the shrine to the secular authorities. In the past this official had been known as the mutavallibashi.

272 Notes 44 Consul-General Daly to Knatchbull-Hugessen, Meshed, 15 July, 1935, FO371/ 18997/E4871/4338/34. See also Sina Vahid, Qiyam-i Gawharshad (Tehran, 1366). 45 Consul-General Daly to Knatchbull-Hugessen, Meshed, 15 July, 1935. 46 For the shah’s policy of preserving the superiority of the Central Division, see Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran (London and New York, 1997), pp. 113–14. 47 Consul-General Daly to Knatchbull-Hugessen, Meshed, 15 July, 1935. 48 Consul-General Daly to Knatchbull-Hugessen, Meshed, 15 July, 1935. 49 Curiously, both the na’ib al-tawliyyah, Muhammad Vali Asadi, and General Matbui were eventually executed, Asadi a few months after the Mashhad episode, Matbui in 1980 after the Islamic revolution. 50 The widespread but largely subterranean plebeian discontent searched for any avenue to find expression. For example, in April 1935, rioting followed an earthquake in Mazandaran in which hundreds of people lost their lives. The earthquake was popularly interpreted as a punishment for the government’s policies towards the ulama and especially the prohibition of Muharram processions, and crowds of people attacked the police. Knatchbull-Hugessen to Simon, 4 May, 1935, FO371/18996/E3122/2722/34. 51 See, for example the remarks of Muhammad Ibrahim Amirtaymur, quoted by Camron Amin, The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman: Gender, State Policy and Popular Culture, 1865–1946 (Florida, 2002), p. 88. 52 Other, more radical strategies of opposition and protest were also modernized. For the modernization of banditry and smuggling see Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics, pp. 106–9; Stephanie Cronin, “Resisting the New State: Peasants and Pastoralists in Iran, 1921–1941”, Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 32, no. 1, 2005, p. 33. 53 See J. Calmard, “Bast”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 3 (1989), pp. 856–8; Abbas Khalisi, Tarikhchih-yi Bast va Bastnishini (Tehran, 1366). 54 For a discussion of “crowds and a common culture” see James Grehan, “Street Violence and Social Imagination in late-Mamluk and Ottoman Damascus (c.1500–1800)”, Stephanie Cronin (ed.) Subalterns and Social Protest: History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa (Routledge, 2007), pp. 25–49. 55 In his suppression of the custom of bast, Riza Shah was enthusiastically supported by the British legation, which was only too happy to divest itself of any necessity of extending protection to potentially awkward and embarrassing critics of a regime which it now supported. See Knatchbull-Hugessen to acting Consul Gault, 10 August, 1935, FO371/18997/E5144/5144/34. 56 Vanessa Martin, The Qajar Pact, pp. 95–112. 57 Ervand Abrahamian, “May Day in the Islamic Republic”, Khomeinism (London and New York, 1993), pp. 60–87. 58 See Mansoureh Ettehadieh Nezam-Mafi, “The Council for the Investigation of Grievances”, p. 60; Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics in Iran, pp. 109–10. 59 A striking example comes from a petition from five Qashqai kalantars presented to the British consulate in Shiraz during the 1929 uprising, asking that their grievance be submitted to the League of Nations. See above, pp. 188–9. 60 Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, pp. 171–81. See also Kavih Bayat, Qiyam-i Nafar Jam: Shurish-i Lahak Khan Salar-i Jang, Khurasan, Tir Mah 1305 (Tehran, 1375). 61 Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran, p. 68.

Notes 273 62 For an interesting discussion of the police and crime in this period see Cyrus Schayegh, “Serial Murder in Tehran: Crime, Science and the Formation of Modern State and Society in Interwar Iran”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2005, pp. 836–62. 63 Mallet to Simon, 14 July 1933, FO371/16941/E4225/47/34. 64 Chick to Clive, Shiraz, 5 December 1929, FO371/13781/E95/95/34. 65 Consul, Sistan and Kain, to Tehran, 8 December 1930, FO371/15341/E606/ 146/34.

Chapter 2 1 The Jangalis were a leftist, constitutional/nationalist trend based in the forests of Gilan and led by Kuchik Khan. In May 1920, together with the newly-formed Iranian Communist Party and with Soviet assistance, they declared the short-lived Soviet Republic of Iran. For a full account see Cosroe Chaqueri, The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, 1920–1921: Birth of the Trauma (Pittsburgh, 1995). Chaqueri’s account of the Jangalis, based on extremely thorough research, bears witness to the fragmentary nature of the source material for the internal history of the movement. For Khiyabani see above, Chapter 3, pp. 116–19 and Homa Katouzian, “The Revolt of Shaikh Mohammad Khiyabani”. 2 A particularly rich source for the history of Pasyan’s revolt consists of the weekly Meshed Diaries and Khorasan Intelligence Summaries covering the period from September 1920 to December 1921. The Diaries were compiled by the Consul-General, Lt.-Col. F. B. Prideaux and the Intelligence Summaries by the Military Attaché, Lt.-Col. E. A. F. Redl, and his successor, Major H. J. K. Wallis. The Diaries may be found in FO371/4912; 6419; 6420, the Summaries in FO371/4917; 6419; 6420, FO248/1332. The major Persian source for Pasyan’s revolt is Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, Majmu‘ah-i Asnad va Madarik 1300 Shamsi (Tehran, 1370), a collection of documents published by the Institute for Research and Cultural Studies in Tehran. This largely supersedes the documentary material published by Mihrdad Bahar, Dar Barah-i Qiyam-i Zhandarmiri-yi Khurasan bih Rahbari-yi Kulunil Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan (Tehran, 1369), although the introduction remains of interest. Also available is Pasyan’s own explanation of his actions and the beliefs which inspired them, Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan, “Risalah-i Difa‘iyyah”, Mashhad, Laylah-i 13 Saratan 1300, in Chand Nafar az Dustan va Havakhahan-i Anmarhum, Sharh-i Hal-i Kulunil Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan (Berlin, 1927), pp. 26–45. An old but still useful account of the episode and some documents are provided by Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar-i Ahzab-i Siyasi-yi Iran (Tehran, 1371). Less reliable is ‘Ali Azari, Qiyam-i Kulunil Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan dar Khurasan (Tehran, 1329). Marxist analyses are put forward by Ja‘far Mujiri, “Qiyam-i Khurasan va Darsha-yi An”, Dunya, vol. 7, Winter 1966, pp. 101–18; ‘Abd al-Husayn Agahi, “Qiyam-i Milli-yi Khurasan”, Dunya, vol. 6, Spring, 1965, pp. 74–80. 3 For a discussion of the Islamic Republic’s attempts to appropriate Iranian history see Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism, pp. 88–110.

274 Notes 4 For an account of the histories of the Gendarmerie and the Cossack Brigade and their relations with each other, see Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State. 5 For a detailed account of this process see Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State. 6 Lt-Col Parviz Afsar, Tarikh-i Zhandarmiri-yi Iran (Qum, 1332), p. 272. 7 Lt-Col Parviz Afsar, Tarikh-i Zhandarmiri, p. 276; Husayn Makki, Tarikh-i Bist Salah-i Iran (Tehran, 1323), vol. 1, pp. 321–2.

8 Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan, “Risalah-i Difa‘iyyah”, pp. 26–7.

9 Ibid., p. 27.

10 Ibid., pp. 27–8. 11 Ibid., p. 28. 12 Wm. J. Olson, Anglo-Iranian Relations during World War 1 (London, 1984); Houshang Sabahi, British Policy in Persia, 1918–1925 (London, 1990); Touraj Atabaki (ed.) Iran and the First World War; Oliver Bast (ed.) La Perse et La Grande Guerre; Mohammad Gholi Majd, Persia in World War 1. 13 For a discussion of this process see Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State. 14 Lt-Col Parviz Afsar, Tarikh-i Zhandarmiri, pp. 130–1. 15 Cowan, Qazvin, to Marling, 30 November 1915, FO248/1106. 16 Ibid. 17 Lt-Col Parviz Afsar, Tarikh-i Zhandarmiri, passim. 18 Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan, “Risalah-i Difa‘iyyah”, p. 31. 19 Ibid., p. 32. 20 Ibid., p. 32 21 Lt-Col Parviz Afsar, Tarikh-i Zhandarmiri, pp. 101–05. 22 Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan, “Risalah-i Difa‘iyyah”, pp. 33–5. 23 Pasyan also possessed a love of classical Arabic poetry and employed it in his writing. See, for example, the quotation at the beginning of document no. 144, in Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, p. 254. 24 Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan, “Risalah-i Difa‘iyyah”, p. 36. 25 Quoted in Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, p. 77. 26 For the history of the Khuzaymi amirs in eastern Khurasan, see Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh, Small Players of the Great Game: The Settlement of Iran’s Eastern Borderlands and the Creation of Afghanistan (London, 2004). 27 Houshang Sabahi, British Policy in Persia, pp. 102–7. Oliver Bast, “The Council for International Propaganda and the establishment of the Iranian Communist Party”, Touraj Atabaki (ed.) Iran and the First World War, pp. 163–80. 28 For the background to these rumours see Oliver Bast, “The Council for International Propaganda”, pp. 176–8. 29 A translation may be found in Meshed Intelligence Summary no. 24, 12 June 1920, FO371/4917/C4654/510/34. 30 Meshed I. S. no. 34, 21 August 1920, FO371/4917/C9625/510/34. 31 For a general assessment of the impact of communism on the Gendarmerie see Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State. 32 Oliver Bast, “The Council for International Propaganda”, pp. 176–7. 33 Meshed Diary no. 19, 10 May 1919, FO248/1249/8.

Notes 275 34 Lt-Col Parviz Afsar, Tarikh-i Zhandarmiri, p. 222. 35 Lt-Col Parviz Afsar, Tarikh-i Zhandarmiri, pp. 214–19; Meshed Diaries nos 20–30, 22 May–31 July 1920, FO 371/4912. 36 Meshed Diary no. 26, 28 June 1919, FO248/1249. 37 Monthly Summary, October 1920, FO371/6434/E2004/2004/34. 38 Meshed Intelligence Summary no. 15, 9 April 1921, FO371/6420/E6979/ 88/34. 39 Meshed I. S. no. 2, 8 January 1921, FO371/6419/E3611/88/34. 40 Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan, “Risalah-i Difa‘iyyah”, p. 38. 41 Meshed Diary no. 48, 4 December 1920, FO371/6419/E1486/88/34. 42 Meshed Intelligence Summary no. 51, 18 December 1920, FO371/6419/ E2355/88/34. 43 The sarkishik was the senior responsible official present in the shrine, deputizing for the mutavallibashi. The shrine possessed five sarkishiks, who were on duty in shifts, throughout the day and night. 44 Meshed Diary no. 7, 12 February 1920, FO371/6419/E4501/88/34. 45 Meshed I. S. no. 3, 15 January 1921, FO 371/6419/E3611/88/34. 46 Homa Katouzian, “Nationalist Trends in Iran, 1921–26”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 10, 1979, pp. 533–51, p. 539. 47 Riyasat-i Vuzura’ bih Kulunil Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan, 14 Farvardin 1300; Riyasat-i Vuzura’ bih Kulunil Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan, 14 Farvardin 1300, in Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, documents no. 1 and 2, pp. 51–2. Meshed Diary no. 15, 9 April 1921, FO371/6420/E6384/ 88/34. 48 Translation in Meshed Diary no. 15, 9 April 1921, FO371/6420/E6384/88/34. 49 Norman to Consul-General, Meshed, 6 April 1921, FO371/6404/E5722/2/34. 50 A‘lamiyyah-i Kulunil Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan, 15 Farvardin 1300, in Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, doc. no. 3, pp. 52–3. 51 Meshed I. S. no. 16, 16 April 1921, FO371/6420/E6979/88/34. 52 Meshed I. S. no. 18, 30 April 1921, FO371/6420/E8262/88/34. 53 Meshed I. S. no. 17, 23 April 1921, FO371/6420/E6984/88/34. 54 Meshed I. S. no. 22, 28 May 1921, FO248/1332. 55 Meshed Diary no. 19, 7 May 1921, FO371/6420/E8262/88/34. 56 Meshed Diary no. 16, 16 April 1921, FO371/6402/E6863/88/34. 57 Alam al-Dawlah subsequently transferred to the Gendarmerie as Accountant and Quartermaster and became chief of police under Pasyan when the Swede, Major Bronikovsky, was dismissed from his post. 58 Consul-General, Meshed, to Government of India, 8 April 1921, FO371/ 6404/E5722/2/34. 59 Meshed Diary no. 16, 16 April 1921, FO371/6420/E6863/88/34. 60 Born in 1883, Zahir al-Islam’s father was imam-i jum‘ah of Tehran and his mother a daughter of Nasir al-Din Shah. Among his previous appointments was that of mutavallibashi of the Sipah Salar mosque in Tehran and he was one of the largest landowners in Khurasan. He was forced to leave Mashhad in June by the implacable hostility of the shrine hierarchy. In September 1921 he was accused of complicity in a plot against Qavam al-Saltanah and Riza Khan and was arrested, but after a short time released. 61 Meshed I. S. no. 17, 23 April 1921, FO371/6420/E6984/88/34.

276 Notes 62 Meshed I. S. no. 20, 14 May 1921, FO248/1332. According to the British Military Attaché, “Those now smarting under deprivation demand that their ancestral lands be restored to them and have vowed their lives and the lives of their sons in the fight with those who have deprived them of their rights and their means of livelihood.” Ibid. 63 Meshed I. S. no. 24, 11 June 1921, FO248/1332. 64 The Jangalis adopted this radical programme partly in response to the influence of their local communist allies. 65 Cosroe Chaqueri, The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, p. 215. 66 Meshed Diary no. 20, 14 May 1921, FO371/6420/E8544/88/34. 67 Homa Katouzian, “Nationalist Trends”, p. 539. 68 Ibid. 69 Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State. 70 According to Afsar, Sayyid Ziya apparently sent orders to the commanders of the Qum and Semnan gendarme battalions, Major Muhammad Khan Dargahi and Major Fath Ali Khan Saqafi Tupchi, that they should send troops towards Tehran. The commanders obeyed, although they were unaware of the purpose of their summons but while en route they received news of the fall of the cabinet and returned to their headquarters. Lt-Col Parviz Afsar, Tarikh-i Zhandarmiri, pp. 277–8. 71 Meshed I. S. no. 21, 21 May 1921, FO248/1332. 72 Meshed Diary no. 22, 28 May 1921, FO371/6420/E8544/88/34. 73 Consul-General, Meshed, to Norman, 31 May 1921, FO371/6405/E8263/ 2/34. 74 Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, vol. 1, p. 145. 75 Pasyan’s terms are listed in full in Meshed Diary no. 23, 4 June 1921, FO371/6420/E8807/88/34. 76 See, for example, Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar’s assessment of the relative popularity of gendarmes over cossacks and the high reputation of Pasyan himself. Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, p. 159. 77 Houshang Sabahi, British Policy in Persia, p. 160. 78 Annual Report, 1922, Loraine to Curzon, 16 July 1923, FO371/9051/E8057/ 8057/34. 79 Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State. 80 Meshed I. S. no. 30, 16 July 1921, FO371/6420/E12077/88/34. 81 Meshed I. S. no. 24, 11 June 1921, FO 248/1332. 82 Meshed I. S. no. 28, 9 July 1921, FO 248/1332. 83 Meshed I. S. no. 30, 16 July 1921, FO371/6420/E12077/88/34. 84 Consul-General, Meshed, to Norman, 29 July 1921, FO371/6406/E10145/ 2/34. 85 Meshed I. S. no. 31, 23 July 1921, FO371/6420/E12077/88/34. 86 Consul-General, Meshed, to Norman, 3 August 1921, FO371/6406/E10145/ 2/34. 87 Telegram from Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan to Samsam al-Saltanah Bakhtiyari, 16 Asad 1300; telegram from Samsam al-Saltanah to Pasyan, 18 Asad 1300, in Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, pp. 146–8. The extant correspondence between Pasyan and Samsam is reproduced in Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, docs nos 5–8, 10–14, pp. 54–64. 88 Lt-Col Parviz Afsar, Tarikh-i Zhandarmiri, p. 234.

Notes 277 89 Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, p. 149. Pasyan had earlier offered an explanation of his action in Khurasan to General Hamzah Khan, see Kulunil Muhammad Taqi Khan bih Zhanral Hamzah Khan Pasyan, 3 Tir 1300, in Kavih Bayat, Tarikh-i Inqilab, doc. no. 4, p. 53. 90 Colonel Gleerup, for example, had formed this opinion during his mission to Sharifabad. Meshed Diary no. 35, 27 August 1921, FO371/6420/E11627/ 88/34. 91 Meshed I. S. no. 34, 20 August 1921, FO371/6420/E12452/88/34; see also A‘lamiyyah-i Jam‘i Az Tarafdaran-i Kulunil Muhammad Taqi Khan, in Kavih Bayat, Tarikh-i Inqilab, doc. no. 38, pp. 94–6. Pasyan’s opponents also engaged in the propaganda war, see, for example, A‘lamiyyahay bar zid-i Kulunil Muhammad Taqi Khan, in Kavih Bayat, Tarikh-i Inqilab, doc. no. 98, pp. 161–2. 92 Meshed I. S. no. 32, 6 August 1921, FO371/6420/E12452/88/34. 93 For the telegrams from Qavam al-Saltanah to Shuja al-Mulk Hazarah see Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, docs no. 28–30, pp. 82–4. 94 Meshed Diary no. 34, 20 August 1921, FO371/6420/E11276/88/34. 95 Meshed I. S. no. 34, 20 August 1921, FO371/6420/E12452/88/34. 96 Meshed I. S. no. 35, 27 August 1921, FO371/6420/E12452/88/34. 97 This telegram is reproduced in Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, pp. 151–2. 98 These telegraphic exchanges are reproduced in Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, passim. 99 These negotiations were still proceeding at time of Kurd revolt. 100 Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, pp. 148–52. 101 J. M. Balfour, Recent Happenings in Persia (Edinburgh and London, 1922), pp. 275–6. 102 A return showing the total strength and distribution of the Khurasan Gendarmerie may be found in Meshed I. S. no. 36, 3 September 1921, FO371/6420/E12452/88/34. 103 Farajullah Bahrami was an important official of the Riza Shah period and was secretary to Riza before and immediately after his accession to the throne. 104 Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, pp. 159–60. 105 Norman to Curzon, 11 September 1921, FO371/6407/E12292/2/34. 106 J. M. Balfour, Recent Happenings, pp. 275–6. 107 Meshed I. S. no. 37, 10 September 1921, FO371/6420/E13787/88/34. Arif Qazvini was one of the most important poets of early twentieth century Iran and had, during the Great War, identified himself with the left-wing of the nationalist movement. For Qazvini see Jan Rypka, History of Iranian Literature (Prague, 1956; Dordrecht, 1968), p. 372; J. Matini, – – M. Caton, “‘Aref Qazvı–nı–, Abu’l-Qasem (ca. 1300–1352/1882–1934), poet, musician, and singer (d. 1934)”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 1987, vol. 2, pp. 391–2. 108 Meshed Diary no. 15, 9 April 1921, FO371/6420/E6384/88/34.

109 Ibid.

110 See, for example, his letter to Na’ib al-Hukumah of Herat to whom

Shuja al-Mulk had appealed for help. Meshed I. S. no. 41, 8 October 1921, FO371/6420/E13787/88/34.

278 Notes 111 112

Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, pp. 144–5.

Telegram from Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan to Samsam al-Saltanah,

10 Asad 1300, in Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, pp. 142–4. 113 Translation in Meshed Diary no. 15, 9 April 1921, FO371/6420/E6384/88/34. 114 Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan, “Risalah-i Difa‘iyyah”, p. 40. 115 Ibid., p. 40. 116 Ibid., p. 26. 117 Ibid., p. 45. 118 Meshed Diary no. 15, 9 April 1921, FO371/6420/E6384/88/34. 119 Bayaniyyah-i Intibahiyyah-i Jam‘iyyat-i Milliyun-i Khurasan, in Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, doc. no. 126, pp. 190–2. 120 Consul-General, Meshed, to Mr Bridgeman, 18 November 1921, FO371/ 7802/E530/6/34. 121 Meshed Diary no. 43, 22 October 1921, FO371/6420/E14153/88/34. 122 Ittihad-i Islam was a trend, rather than an organization proper, Islamic and nationalist in orientation. See Majid Tafrishi, “Shaykh al-Ra’is Qajar va Andishah-i Ittihad-i Islam”, in Tarikh-i Mu‘asir-i Iran (Tehran, 1372), vol. 1, pp. 65–78. The Moderate Party was, like the Democrat Party, a survival from the constitutional period. 123 Bayaniyyah-i Intibahiyyah-i Jam‘iyyat-i Milliyun-i Khurasan, in Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, doc. no. 126, pp. 190–2. 124 Meshed I. S. no. 36, 3 September 1921, FO 371/6420/E12452/88/34. 125 Tehran I. S. no. 20, 17 September 1921, FO371/6435/E11701/2004/34. 126 Meshed I. S. no. 39, 24 September 1921, FO371/6420/E14151/88/34. 127 Another figure who in his youth associated himself with Pasyan’s movement and who was later to achieve great literary eminence was Abdulhusayn Nushin. 128 A reference to the notorious Russian action in 1912, part of their wider suppression of constitutionalism after their occupation of northern Iran. 129 Meshed I. S. no. 36, 3 September 1921, FO371/6420/E12452/88/34. 130 Meshed I. S. no. 40, 1 October 1921, FO371/6420/E14151/88/34. 131 Official communiqués about the fighting on the eastern front in this period were frequently issued by the Mashhad military authorities, see Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, passim. 132 The fighting on the eastern front was mainly undertaken by the Kavih detachment commanded by Captain Taqi Khan Kavusi and the Shamshir detachment of Captain Ali Riza Khan Shamshir. Orders and reports passing between the Mashhad military authorities and these detachments are reproduced in Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, passim. 133 Meshed I. S. no. 37, 10 September 1921, FO371/6420/E13787/88/34. Literally “freedom-wishers”, the azadikhahan were generally constitutionalist/ nationalist. 134 Norman to Curzon, 11 September 1921, FO371/6407/E12292/2/34.

135 Ibid.

136 Meshed I. S. no. 41, 8 October 1921, FO371/6420/E13787/88/34. Both

Tehran and Mashhad persistently accused the other of receiving British support. The Tehran newspaper Ittihad was typical, on 4 September, for example, alleging that the British were giving money, arms and munitions to Pasyan and intended to send disbanded units of the South Persia rifles to Khurasan to fight for him. FO371/6407/E12041/2/34.

Notes 279 137 Meshed Diary no. 38, 17 September 1921, FO371/6420/E13651/88/34. 138 Annual Report, 1922, Loraine to Curzon, 16 July 1923, FO371/9051/E8057/ 8057/34. 139 For the composition of the Kurd forces see Meshed I. S. no. 42, 15 October 1921, FO371/6420/E14151/88/34. 140 For an account of this episode see Ramzan ‘Ali Shakari, Atraknamah: Tarikh-i Jam‘-i Quchan (Tehran, 1345), pp. 122–6; Meshed I. S. no. 41, 8 October 1921, FO371/6420/E13787/88/34. 141 The telegrams exchanged between Qavam and Aqazadah were published in the Bahar of 5 October and are reproduced in Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, pp. 224–5, doc. no. 165. 142 The central government refused to acknowledge promotions made by Pasyan without their sanction. 143 Meshed Diary no. 41, 8 October 1921, FO371/6420/E13651/88/34. 144 The conditions put forward by Nawzari were published in the newspaper Bahar of 6 October and may be found in full in Meshed Diary no. 41, 8 October 1921, FO371/6420/E13651/88/34. 145 In order to remove the focus for dissent provided by Pasyan’s tomb, Riza Khan later ordered a party of cossacks to transfer Pasyan’s remains to a common cemetery outside the town. 146 See for example, their response to Pasyan’s death: A‘lamiyyah-i Havadaran-i Kulunil, in Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, doc. 181, pp. 241–3. 147 Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, pp. 157–8. 148 An extract from Bahar describing this episode may be found in Kavih Bayat, Inqilab-i Khurasan, doc. no. 182, pp. 244–7. 149 Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, p. 157. 150 Only after the amalgamation of the Gendarmerie and the Cossack Division in December were some officers arrested by a military court convened to adjudicate on claims preferred against the Gendarmerie. 151 On the whole the Tehran authorities, once they had established their control in Mashhad, refrained from reprisals, treating even the closest colleagues of Pasyan with some leniency. Mahmud Khan Nawzari, for example, resumed his career by transferring to the police where he reached the rank of colonel and chief of police at Qazvin, while Mutasim al-Saltanah was pardoned by the cabinet of Mushir al-Dawlah in 1922. Amanullah Ardalan, Khatirat-i Haj ‘Izz al-Mamalik Ardalan, ed. Baqir Aqali (Tehran, 1372), p. 114. 152 The Eastern Division established in Khurasan and headquartered at Mashad continued to be plagued by dissension. See Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, pp. 158–9, 175–9; Kavih Bayat, Qiyam-i Nafar-i Jam. 153 For a discussion of this phenomenon see the introduction to Mihrdad Bahar, Dar Barah-i Qiyam. 154 Pasyan himself always wrote in Persian, never in Turkish.

Chapter 3 1 Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, Soviet Literature, no. 9, 1954, pp. 138–44. This account of his early life in Iran was written many years after the events it describes and in completely changed circumstances, yet it is Lahuti’s own

280 Notes

2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31

version of his life and gives rise to no major discrepancies with what we know of the period from other sources. It is also the version which is reflected in official Tajik publications from the Soviet era. See, for example, M. Zand, Abulkosim Lakhuti (Stalinabad, 1957). Evidence of leftist and radical nationalist activity from the years between the constitutional revolution and the coup of 1921 is, of course, generally very sparse and fragmented. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 138.

Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 138.

For Kirmanshah in this period see Muhammad ‘Ali Sultani, Ahzab-i Siyasi

va Anjumanha-yi Sirri dar Kirmanshah az Faramushkhanah ta Khanah-i Siyah, 2 vols (Tehran, 1378).








Munibur Rahman, Post-Revolution Persian Verse (Aligarh, 1955)

p. 42. See Cosroe Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left: SocialDemocracy in Modern Iran (Richmond, Surrey, 2001), pp. 191–2. Kavih Bayat, Kudita-yi Lahuti, Tabriz, Bahman 1300 (Tehran, 1376), p. 17. ∨ ∨ Jirí Becka, “Abulqosim Lohuti”, Jan Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, p. 564. For biographical details of Amu Ughli see Cosroe Chaqueri, The RussoCaucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, pp. 206–8. Hassan Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature (Cambridge, 1966), p. 36. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 140. Kavih Bayat, Kudita-yi Lahuti, pp. 19–30. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 140. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, pp. 140–1. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 141. Kavih Bayat, Kudita-yi Lahuti, pp. 27–30. Who’s Who in Persia, vol. 2, IOL/MIL/17/15/11/3. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 141. For Lahuti’s relations with the Sanjabi Kurds in western Iran see Karim Sanjabi (ed.) Il-i Sanjabi va Mujahidat-i Milli-yi Iran: Khatirat-i ‘Ali Akbar Khan Sanjabi Sardar-i Muqtadir (Tehran, 1380). Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 141. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 141. For Kolomiitsev, see Cosroe Chaqueri, The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, p. 531, note 46. Entsiklopediyai Soveti-Tojik (Dushanbe, 1983), pp. 159–68. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 141. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 141.

Notes 281 ∨

∨

32 Vera Kubícková, “Persian Literature in the 20th Century”, Jan Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, p. 383. 33 Abulqasim Lahuti, “Minalam”, Ahmad Bashiri (ed.) Divan-i Lahuti (Tehran, 1358), p. 66. 34 Muhammad Taqi Bahar, Malik al-Shu‘ara’, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, vol. 1, p. 170. Lahuti had personal connections to the highest levels of the Gendarmerie. His first wife was Nusrat Aqavli, the sister of Farajullah and Fazlullah Aqavli, both Gendarmerie colonels, the latter committing suicide in 1919, apparently in protest at the Anglo-Iranian Agreement and the military subjection of Iran. 35 Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 140. 36 Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, pp. 9, 19. 37 W. Morgan Shuster, The Strangling of Persia (New York, 1912), p. 190. 38 Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, p. 30. 39 Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, pp. 35–42. 40 Military Attaché, Tehran, to Director of Military Intelligence, 19 January 1918, WO/157/1250/84. 41 Meshed Intelligence Summary, no. 21, 25 May 1918, WO157/1259. 42 36th Indian Brigade, IS no. 63, 20 June–4 July 1920, AIR20/581. 43 IS no. 30, 26 November 1921, FO371/7826/E1056/285/34. 44 Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, p. 45. 45 J. C. Hurewitz (ed.) The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record (New Haven and London, 1975), vol. 2, pp. 108–10. 46 Cosroe Chaqueri, “Communism i In Persia to 1941”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 6 (1993), pp. 95–102. 47 A translation of this document may be found in Meshed IS no. 24, 12 June 1920, FO371/4917/C4654/510/34. It is reproduced in Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, appendix C. 48 Extract from Bayraq-i ‘Adalat, 2 July 1920 (trans.), Meshed IS no. 34, 21 August 1920, FO371/4917/C9625/510/34. 49 Extract from Bayraq-i ‘Adalat, 2 July 1920 (trans.), Meshed IS no. 34, 21 August 1920, FO371/4917/C9625/510/34. 50 Meshed Diary no. 26, 3 July 1920, FO371/4912/C5722/227/34. 51 See above, pp. 51–4, and Oliver Bast, “The Council for International Propaganda”. 52 Extract from Tocsin, 9 June 1920 (trans.), Meshed IS no. 25, 19 June 1920, FO371/4917/C4654/510/34. 53 Meshed IS no. 17, 24 April 1920; no. 18, 1 May 1920, FO371/4917/C510/ 510/34. 54 Meshed Diary, no. 25, 26 June 1920, FO371/4912/C4655/227/34. 55 Marling to FO, 23 January 1918, FO371/3264/14692. 56 Marling to FO, 21 December 1917, FO371/2988/242011. 57 Meshed IS, no. 28, 14 July 1917, WO157/1258. 58 Meshed IS, no. 28, 14 July 1917, WO157/1258.

282 Notes 59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

W. A. Smart, Tabriz, to Townley, 18 November 1913, FO248/1079.

Ibid.

Consul, Tabriz, to Marling, 20 February 1918, FO371/3264/33414.

For the early history of Iranian social-democracy see Janet Afary,

The Iranian Constitutional Revolution; Cosroe Chaqueri, The Armenians of Iran (Cambridge, Mass., 1998); The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left. Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, p. 84.

Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution; Cosroe Chaqueri, The

Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left. Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, p. 337. For Khiyabani, see Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution; Touraj Atabaki, Azerbaijan: Ethnicity and Autonomy in Twentieth-century Iran (London and New York, 1993); Homa Katouzian, “The Revolt of Shaykh Muhammad Khiyabani”. Homa Katouzian, “The Revolt of Shaikh Mohammad Khiyabani”, p. 212. Cosroe Chaqueri, “Communism”, p. 95. Touraj Atabaki, Azerbaijan, p. 48; see also Homa Katouzian, “The Revolt of Shaikh Mohammad Khiyabani”. Touraj Atabaki, Azerbaijan, p. 50. Touraj Atabaki, Azerbaijan, p. 50; Homa Katouzian, “The Revolt of Shaikh Mohammad Khiyabani”. IS no. 58, 1–15 April 1920, 36th Indian (mixed) Brigade, AIR20/581. Tehran Monthly Summary, Norman to Curzon, 11 September 1920, FO371/ 4930/C14858/34. Homa Katouzian, “The Revolt of Shaikh Mohammad Khiyabani”, p. 227. Norman to F. O., 19 September 1920, FO371/4927/C6811/6811/34. Lt-Col Parviz Afsar, Tarikh-i Zhandarmiri (Qum, 1332), pp. 247–8. Cosroe Chaqueri, “Communism”, pp. 96–8. Cosroe Chaqueri, “Communism”, p. 98. For the evolving views of Pasyan’s radical supporters, see above, pp. 83–4. Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, pp. 145–6. Intelligence Summary no. 35, 31 December, 1921, FO371/7826/E3904/285/ 34. IS no. 5, 4 February 1922, FO371/7826/E3815/285/34. Hassan Arfa, Under Five Shahs (London, 1964), p. 129. Entsiklopediyai Soveti-Tojik, pp. 159–68. Kavih Bayat, Kudita-yi Lahuti, p. 53. Hassan Arfa, Under Five Shahs, pp. 128–9. Ibid., p. 130. Ibid. For Habibullah Shaybani see Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, pp. 250–1.

Kavih Bayat, Kudita-yi Lahuti, p. 51.

Hassan Arfa, Under Five Shahs, p. 128.

Notes 283 92 93 94

95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

107 108 109 110 111 112

113 114 115



Lahuti continued to write poetry during the Tabriz insurrection. “The

unforgettable…days of free Tabriz …it was in those days, when we often had to forget completely our need for food and sleep, that there were born in me real poems, poems that would never have been born had it not been for those strenuous days”. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 142. For an example of the Tabriz poetry see “Bisat-i Adl”, Ahmad Bashiri (ed.) Divan-i Lahuti, pp. 78–9. Kavih Bayat, Kudita-yi Lahuti, pp. 125–6.

Kavih Bayat, Kudita-yi Lahuti, pp. 126–7.

Hassan Arfa, Under Five Shahs, pp. 129–30.

Manshur Garakani, Siyasat-i Dawlat-i Shuravi dar Iran (Tehran, 1326),

p. 163. Kavih Bayat, Kudita-yi Lahuti, pp. 126–7. Husayn Makki, Tarikh-i Bist Salah, vol. 2, pp. 14–22. Kavih Bayat, Kudita-yi Lahuti, p. 48. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, pp. 141–2. Ibid., p. 142. IS no. 6, 11 February 1922, FO371/7826/E3815/285/34. Kavih Bayat, Kudita-yi Lahuti, p. 48. See the proclamation reproduced in Kavih Bayat, Kudita-yi Lahuti, pp. 128–9; see also Loraine to FO, 7 February 1922, FO371/7802/E1486/6/34; IS no. 6, 11 February 1922, FO371/7826/E3815/285/34. Loraine to FO, 10 February 1922, FO371/7802/E1570/6/34. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 142. Kavih Bayat, Kudita-yi Lahuti, p. 85. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 142. Abdulkasim Lahuti, “About Myself”, p. 142. ∨ ∨ Jirí Becka, “Abulqosim Lohuti”, Jan Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, p. 564. See also Kamyar Abedi, “Lahuti, Abu’l Qasem”, Encyclopaedia Iranica (2009), available at www.iranica.com. Ibid.; Keith Hitchens, “Modern Tajik Literature”, Ehsan Yarshater (ed.) Persian Literature (Albany, N.Y., 1988), pp. 454–75. Munibur Rahman, Post-Revolution Persian Verse, p. 47. A curious coda to Lahuti’s career occurred in the new context of the Cold War. In 1953 Iranian newspapers, apparently inspired by the CIA officer, Donald Wilber, published reports that Lahuti had fled from the Soviet Union, and the following year a forged biography was published abroad. Wilber arranged this misinformation apparently because he feared that Lahuti was being groomed to act as a figurehead for a Soviet takeover of Iran. Donald M. Wilber, Adventures in the Middle East: Excursions and Incursions (Darwin, USA, 1986), p. 191. Lahuti replied with poems, newspaper and magazine articles and radio broadcasts and began writing his autobiography, Sarguzasht-i Man, although this remained unfinished at ∨ ∨ the time of his death. See Jirí Becka, “Abulqosim Lohuti”, Jan Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, p. 566. It was as part of Lahuti’s response to this campaign that he published his autobiographical fragment, “About Myself”.

284 Notes

Chapter 4 1 The “orientalist” underpinnings of this view are clear. 2 The modern study of the “crowd” was pioneered by social historians such as George Rudé and E. P. Thompson and has since generated much debate and a considerable literature particularly relating to the history of early modern and modern Europe. See, for example, George Rudé, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England (London, 1964); Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century: Studies in Popular Protest (London, 1970) and E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century”, Past and Present, vol. 50, 1971, pp. 76–136. For a recent discussion of the literature see the introduction in Tim Harris (ed.) The Politics of the Excluded, c.1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 2001). The concepts developed by Rudé et al were quickly taken up and applied to Iran by Ervand Abrahamian, see “The Crowd in Iranian Politics, 1905–1953”, Past and Present, vol. 41, December 1968, pp. 184–210; “The Crowd in the Persian Revolution”, Iranian Studies, vol. 2, no. 4, Autumn 1969, pp. 128–50. Since then, the application of this approach to Iranian history has received only sporadic attention, although it has continued to generate some scholarly research, for example, Stephen L. McFarland, “Anatomy of an Iranian Political Crowd: The Tehran Bread Riot of December 1942”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, February 1985, pp. 51–65. In the meantime, historians working on a number of non-European countries, in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, have developed an interest in the politics and history of the “crowd”. See, for example, James E. Kirby, Jr., “The Foochow Anti-Missionary Riot: August 30, 1878”, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 25, no. 4, 1966, pp. 665–79; Frank Furedi, “The African Crowd in Nairobi: Popular Movements and Elite Politics”, The Journal of African History, vol. 14, no. 2, 1973, pp. 275–90; Stanley Shaloff, “The Cape Coast Asafo Company Riot of 1932”, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 7, no. 4, 1974, pp. 591–607; Arthur L. Rosenbaum, “Gentry Power and the Changsha Rice Riot of 1910”, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 34, no. 3, 1975, pp. 689–715; Anand A. Yang, “Sacred Symbol and Sacred Space in Rural India: Community Mobilization in the ‘Anti-Cow Killing’ Riot of 1892”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 22, no. 4, 1980, pp. 576–96; Boaz Shoshan, “Grain Riots and the Moral Economy”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 10, no. 3, 1980, pp. 459–78; Lakshmi Subramanian, “Capital and Crowd in a Declining Asian Port City: The Anglo-Bania Order and the Surat Riots of 1795”, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 19, no. 2, 1985, pp. 205–37; Juan R. I. Cole and Moojan Momen, “Mafia, Mob and Shiism in Iraq: The Rebellion of Ottoman Karbala 1824–1843”, Past and Present, no. 112 (1986), pp. 112–43; Peter C. Perdue, “Insiders and Outsiders: The Xiangtan Riot of 1819 and Collective Action in Hunan”, Modern China, vol. 12, no. 2, 1986, pp. 166–201; John D. Rogers, “The 1866 Grain Riots in Sri Lanka”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 29, no. 3, 1987, pp. 495–513; James W. White, “State Growth and Popular Protest in Tokugawa Japan”, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, 1988, pp. 1–25; Andrew Gordon, “The Crowd and Politics in Imperial Japan”, Past and Present, no. 121 (1988),

Notes 285 pp. 141–70; Teresa Meade, “‘Living Worse and Costing More’: Resistance and Riot in Rio de Janeiro, 1890–1917”, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, 1989, pp. 2241–66; Dominic Fortescue, “The Accra Crowd, the Asafo, and the Opposition to the Municipal Corporations Ordinance, 1924–5”, Canadian Journal of African Studies, vol. 24, no. 3, 1990, pp. 348–75; Ibrahim Abdullah, “Rethinking the Freetown Crowd: The Moral Economy of the 1919 Strikes and Riot in Sierra Leone”, Canadian Journal of African Studies, vol. 28, no. 2, 1994, pp. 197–218. 3 For a discussion of this point see Stephanie Cronin, “Writing the History of Modern Iran”. 4 George Rudé, The Crowd in History, pp. 3–16. 5 British archival material, although usually a source for diplomatic history or for the high politics of the Tehran elite, may be read and used differently, and such material, although inevitably reflecting the agenda of the British diplomatic and commercial establishment in Iran, may be found to contain important evidence for crowd activities and for “subaltern” history in general. The British minister in Tehran, the military attaché, the oriental secretary and the provincial consuls were all preoccupied with the need for the creation of some form of political stability and order, a sine qua non for the advancement of British strategic interests. This led them to be intimately concerned with the progress of Riza Khan’s bid for political power, and the extent and nature of opposition to it. British archival material for the period under review is also diverse in that it records a struggle which was also underway among British diplomatic and consular personnel themselves regarding the correctness of Loraine’s decision to back Riza Khan against his myriad opponents, including those who had been and were still British clients. For this study, long reports, such as that by the oriental secretary to the British legation, Havard, on the failure of the republican movement, and by Loraine himself on the 1925 bread riots, have been particularly important, while the data accumulated by the military attaché and reported in the fortnightly Intelligence Summaries has been invaluable for charting the course of oppositional tendencies among broad layers of the Tehran population. 6 The study of the crowd in countries under direct colonial rule has been a little easier owing to the colonial authorities’ accumulation of data and the preservation of colonial police, prison, judicial and medical records. See, for example, David Arnold, “Looting, Grain Riots and Government Policy in South India, 1918”, Past and Present, no. 84, August 1979, pp. 111–45. 7 These perspectives have dominated the analyses of both critics and admirers. See, for example, Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State; Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran; Cyrus Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah: From Qajar Collapse to Pahlavi Power (London and New York, 1998); Mohammad Gholi Majd, Great Britain and Riza Shah: The Plunder of Iran, 1921–1941 (Florida, 2001); Houshang Sabahi, British Policy in Persia. Even Ervand Abrahamian’s recent effort to “provide a broad sweep of twentieth-century Iran” has focused on the state and state-building. Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran, pp. 1–7. For a critique of these perspectives see Cyrus Schayegh, “Seeing Like a State: An Essay on the Historiography of Pre-revolutionary Modern Iran”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, no. 42, issue 1, February 2010, pp. 37–61.

286 Notes 8 The concept of the political or historical crowd employed in this article is derived from the theoretical framework elaborated by George Rudé. See especially George Rudé, “The Subject and Its Problems”, The Crowd in History, pp. 3–16. While rejecting too rigid a definition, Rudé denotes the historical crowd as a specific group, distinct from other phenomena such as “audience” crowds and from collectivities too general and large to aggregate, such as a political party or “the general public”. Following Rudé, this article focuses on the crowd in terms of its mass actions, its “hostile outbursts”, in the form of political demonstrations, strikes and riots. Rudé’s formulations are especially relevant in another sense. His analysis of the period of the 1730s to the 1840s in French and English history as “years of transition” is strikingly applicable to the Tehran of the 1920s. Here too political and economic changes were “transforming old institutions, uprooting the old society, changing old habits and modes of thinking and imposing new techniques”. The Crowd in History, p. 5. Such breaks with the past left their mark on the Tehran crowd, just as Rudé argues they shaped the French and English crowds. 9 Donald Quataert has pointed out the “everyday” character of popular protest in similar conditions in the Ottoman Empire, see “Rural Unrest in the Ottoman Empire, 1830–1914”, Farhad Kazemi and John Waterbury (eds) Peasants and Politics in the Modern Middle East (Florida, 1991), p. 40. 10 For examples of petitions from merchants and guilds, see Asnadi az Anjumanha-yi Baladi, Tujjar va Asnaf (Sazman-i Chap va Intisharat-i Vizarat-i Farhang va Irshad-i Islami, Tehran, 1380), 2 vols. 11 For “contentious repertoires”, “how, when, where, and why ordinary people make collective claims on public authorities, other holders of power, competitors, enemies, and objects of popular disapproval” see Charles Tilly, Social Movements, 1768–2004 (Boulder, Colorado, 2004). See also Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (Cambridge, 1998); Charles Tilly, Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge, 2001). 12 Nikki R. Keddie, Religion and Rebellion in Iran. 13 See, inter alia, Ervand Abrahamian, “The Crowd in the Persian Revolution”; Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution. 14 For a discussion of the “conservative” crowd see George Rudé, “‘Church and King’ Riots”, The Crowd in History, pp. 135–48. 15 See Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, pp. 116–31. 16 Annual Report, 1922, Loraine to Curzon, 16 July 1923, FO371/9051/E8057/ 8057/34. 17 On the general significance of anonymous threats, and the seriousness with which they were viewed by the authorities, see E. P. Thompson, “The Crime of Anonymity”, D. Hay, P. Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E. P. Thompson, Cal Winslow (eds) Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England (London, 1975), pp. 255–344. 18 There is a considerable literature on the role of rumour in popular politics. For some recent discussions, see, for example, Ethan H. Shagan, “Rumours and Popular Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII”, Tim Harris (ed.) The Politics of the Excluded, pp. 30–66; A. Fox, “Rumour, News and

Notes 287

19

20 21 22

23 24 25

26

27

28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37

Popular Political Opinion in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England”, Historical Journal, vol. XL (1997), pp. 597–620. For some discussion of the non-European world see R. Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi, 1982); A. A. Yang, “A Conversation of Rumours: The Language of Popular “Mentalités” in Late Nineteenth Century Colonial India”, Journal of Social History, vol. 20, 1987, pp. 485–505. See also L. White, “Between Gluckman and Foucault: Historicizing Rumour and Gossip”, Social Dynamics, vol. 20 (1994), pp. 75–92. The impact and significance in the Iranian context of the twin phenomena of the circulation of shabnamahs and the persistence and tenacity of rumour still await research. See Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, chs 4–6. Intelligence Summary no. 37, 16 September 1922, FO371/7828/E12254/ 285/34. For an account of the outbreak of anti-Jewish rioting which accompanied the political crisis of September 1922 see IS no. 38, 23 September 1922, FO371/7828/E12259/285/34. Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, pp. 153–4. Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, ch. 6. Accounts of the republican movement may be found in, inter alia, Muhammad Taqi Bahar, Malik al-Shu‘ara’, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, vol. 2; Yahya Dawlatabadi, Tarikh-i ‘Asr-i Hazir va Hyat-i Yahya (Tehran, 1328–1336), vol. 4. Havard, Diary of Events concerning the Republican Movement in Persia, Ovey to MacDonald, 1 April 1924, FO371/10145/E3743/455/ 34. For the ideological background to republicanism see Touraj Atabaki, “The Caliphate, the Clerics and Republicanism in Turkey and Iran: Some Comparative Remarks”, Touraj Atabaki and Erik J. Zürcher (eds) Men of Order, pp. 44–64. IS no. 8, 23 February 1924, FO371/10132/E3511/255/34.

Havard, Diary of Events.


Annual Report, 1924, Loraine to Chamberlain, 22 May 1925, FO371/10848/

E3401/3401/34. While Ahmad Shah was absent in Europe, he was represented in Tehran by two of his brothers, both Qajar princes, the prince regent and the vali‘ahd or crown prince. Havard, Diary of Events.

IS no. 11, 15 March 1924, FO371/10132.

Annual Report, 1924.


See Vanessa Martin, “Mudarris, Republicanism and the Rise to Power of

Riza Khan, Sardar-i Sipah”, Stephanie Cronin (ed.) The Making of Modern Iran, pp. 65–77.

288 Notes 38

39 40 41

42 43

44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63

64 65 66

67

See, for example, the leading article in the Isfahan newspaper Akhkar of 25 February, which was reprinted in the Mihan of Tehran (trans.), IS no. 10, 8 March 1924, FO371/10132/E3944/255/ 34. IS no. 12, 22 March 1924, FO371/10132/E4131/255/34. IS no. 12, 22 March 1924, FO371/10132/E4131/255/34. On elections in the Riza Shah period see Asnadi az Intikhabat-i Majlis-i Shuravi-yi Milli dar Dawrah-i Pahlavi-yi Avval (Idarah-i Kull-i Arshiv, Asnad va Muzih-i Daftar-i Ra’is-i Jumhur, Tehran, 1378). IS no. 9, 1 March 1924, FO371/10132/E3512/255/34. For the role played by Mudarris see Vanessa Martin, “Mudarris, Republicanism, and the Rise to Power of Riza Khan”. There are several Persian sources for Mudarris. See, for example, Husayn Makki, Mudarris Qahriman-i Azadi (Tehran, 1358); A. Mudarrisi, Mudarris (Tehran, 1366); Ibrahim Khajah-Nuri, Mudarris (Tehran, 1357). Havard, Diary of Events. Havard, Diary of Events. Havard, Diary of Events. Havard, Diary of Events; IS no. 12, 22 March 1924, FO371/10132/E4131/ 255/34. Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, p. 160; IS no. 12, 22 March 1924, FO371/10132/E4131/255/34. IS no. 12, 22 March 1924, FO371/10132/E4131/255/34. IS no. 12, 22 March 1924, FO371/10132/E4131/255/34. Soviet Radio Bulletin, Rosta (trans.), IS no. March, FO371/10132/E. Havard, Diary of Events. IS no. 12, 22 March 1924, FO371/10132/E4131/255/34. Havard, Diary of Events. Havard, Diary of Events. IS no. 12, 22 March 1924, FO371/10132/E4131/255/34. Prime Minister’s Proclamation, from Sitarah-i Iran, 1 April 1924 (trans.) FO 416/74. Havard, Diary of Events. Annual Report, 1924. Annual Report, 1924. Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, pp. 162–3, 193–5. Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, pp. 161, 194; Ahmad Amirahmadi, Khatirat-i Nakhustin Sipahbud-i Iran (Tehran, 1373), vol. 1, pp. 231–3. For the reluctance of the republican camp to drop the campaign, see, for example, articles in the Tehran newspaper Shafaq-i Surkh from 6 April. IS no. 25, 21 June 1924, FO371/10132/E6279/255/34. IS no. 25, 21 June 1924, FO371/10132/E6279/255/34. Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran, p. 288. See also M. Qa’id, ‘Ishqi (Tehran, 1998); ‘Ali Akbar Mushir Salimi (ed.) Kulliyat-i Musavvar-i ‘Ishqi (Piedmont, CA, 1364). IS no. 27, 5 July 1924, FO371/10132/E6700/255/34.

Notes 289 68 Michael P. Zirinsky, “Blood, Power and Hypocrisy: The Murder of Robert Imbrie and American Relations with Pahlavi Iran, 1924”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 18, 1986, p. 282. 69 IS no. 28, 12 July 1924, FO371/10132/E6706/255/34.

70 IS no. 28, 12 July 1924, FO371/10132/E6706/255/34.

71 IS no. 28, 12 July 1924, FO371/10132/E6706/255/34.

72 Ovey to MacDonald, 2 August 1924, FO371/10156/E7108/6215/34;

Annual Report, 1924; Zirinsky, “Blood, Power and Hypocrisy”, pp. 275–6. 73 Ovey to MacDonald, 2 August 1924, FO371/10156/E7108/6215/34. 74 IS no. 30, 26 July 1924, FO371/10132/E7104/255/34. 75 IS no. 30, 26 July 1924, FO371/10132/E7104/255/34. 76 An interruption to proceedings to demand an explanation from a minister. In this case Mudarris hoped to provoke a vote of no confidence in Riza Khan. 77 IS no. 34, 23 August 1924, FO371/10132/E7941/255/34. 78 Ovey to MacDonald, 20 August 1924, FO371/10146/E7936/455/34. 79 Ovey to MacDonald, 20 August 1924, FO371/10146/E7936/455/34. 80 Ovey to MacDonald, 20 August 1924, FO371/10146/E7936/455/34. 81 Annual Report, 1925, Loraine to Chamberlain, 8 April 1926, FO371/11500/ E2635/2635/34. 82 Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, pp. 196–7. 83 For a discussion of the catastrophic impact of a late nineteenth century famine see Ahmad Seyf, “Iran and the Great Famine, 1870–72”, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 46, no. 2, March 2010, pp. 289–306. 84 Annual Report, 1925. 85 Loraine to Chamberlain, 29 September 1925, FO371/10849/E6722/5808/34. A brief account of the disturbances may also be found in Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, pp. 276–7. 86 Loraine to Chamberlain, 29 September 1925, FO371/10849/E6722/5808/34. 87 Loraine to Chamberlain, 29 September 1925, FO371/10849/E6722/5808/34. The role of women is confirmed by Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar who states that the majority of the crowd was made up of women and children. Malik al-Shu‘ara’ Bahar, Tarikh-i Mukhtasar, p. 276. 88 Loraine to Chamberlain, 29 September 1925, FO371/10849/E6722/5808/34. 89 Loraine to Chamberlain, 29 September 1925, FO371/10849/E6722/5808/34. 90 Loraine to Chamberlain, 29 September 1925, FO371/10849/E6722/5808/34. 91 Loraine to Chamberlain, 29 September 1925, FO371/10849/E6722/5808/34. 92 For an account of the magnitude of the disastrous crop failures see the section on the famine crisis, Annual Report, 1925. 93 Annual Report, 1925. 94 Annual Report, 1925. 95 Annual Report, 1925. 96 IS no. 27, 31 October 1925, FO371/10842/E7216/82/34. 97 Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran, p. 298. 98 IS no. 27, 31 October 1925, FO371/10842/E7216/82/34. 99 For a discussion of the alignments within the Majlis see Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran, pp. 294–9; for the significance of the reconstruction of the cabinet see Annual Report, 1925. 100 Eighty deputies voted in favour, eighty-five being present. 101 Annual Report, 1925.

290 Notes 102 Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran, p. 298. 103 The impact of the character of the prevailing regime on the repertoire of protest is discussed by Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires (Chicago, 2006). Less attention has been given, however, to the ways in which repertoires of protest might shape regimes, especially newly-emerging regimes. 1045 For prevailing attitudes to popular mass action see, for example, Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (London, 1909).

Chapter 5 1 See Miron Rezun, “Reza Shah’s Court Minister: Teymourtash”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 12, no. 2, 1980, pp. 119–97. 2 Majid Mohammadi, see Judicial Reform and Reorganization in 20th Century Iran (London, 2008). 3 Ann K. S. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London, 1953), p. 189. 4 A. C. Millspaugh, The American Task in Persia (New York and London, 1925), p. 190. 5 For elections in the early Pahlavi period, see Asnadi az Intikhabat-i Majlis-i Shuravi-yi Milli dar Dawrah-i Pahlavi-yi Avval. 6 Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, 1982), pp. 151–2. 7 H. E. Chehabi, “Staging the Emperor’s New Clothes: Dress Codes and Nation-building under Reza Shah”. The Uniform Dress law as passed by the Majlis actually came into effect from 21 March 1929. 8 Chick to Loraine, Shiraz, 26 July 1923, FO371/9043/E9303/1417/34. 9 Roger T. Olson, “Persian Gulf Trade and the Agricultural Economy of Southern Iran in the Nineteenth Century”, Michael E. Bonine and Nikki R. Keddie (eds) Continuity and Change in Modern Iran (Albany, NJ, 1981), pp. 155–6; Ahmad Seyf, “Commercialization of Agriculture: Production and Trade of Opium in Persia, 1850–1906”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 60, no. 2, 1984, pp. 233–50. See also bibliography in S. Shahnavaz, “Afyun”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 1, 1985, pp. 594–8. 10 A. C. Millspaugh, The American Task , pp. 191–2. See also D. W. MacCormack – and S. M. ‘Ameri, Memorandum on Persian Opium, Tehran, 13 October 1924, reprinted in Records of the Second Opium Conference, Geneva, 17 November–19 February 1925 (Geneva, 1925), vol. 2. 11 Stephanie Cronin, The Army, p. 126. 12 A translation of the Bill as originally presented to the Majlis in April 1923 may be found in Loraine to Curzon, 28 April 1923, FO371/9021/E5823/71/34. 13 (American) Chargé d’Affaires, W. Smith Murray, to Secretary of State, Washington, 24 March 1925, National Archives Microfilm Publications, Microcopy 715, Roll 12. 14 IS no. 9, 28 February 1925, FO371/10842/E2098/82/34. 15 The bunichah system imposed collective responsibility for the provision of soldiers onto villages, tying liability to revenue assessments. 16 Intelligence Summary no. 40, 6 October 1923, FO371/9020/E11740/69/34.

Notes 291 17 IS no. 40, 4 October 1924, FO371/10132E9746/255/34. 18 Intelligence Summary no. 1, 8 January 1927, FO371/12285/E512/ 34/34; Intelligence Summary no. 2, 22 January 1927, FO371/12285/E883/ 34/34. 19 The origins of this community are obscure. It may have been the remnant of waves of forced conversion which took place in Shiraz especially in the 1820s and 30s. For communities of converted Jews in Isfahan see Heidi A. Walcher, In the Shadow of the King: Zill al-Sultan and Isfahan under the Qajars (London and New York, 2008), note 104, p. 369. 20 IS no. 9, 30 April 1927, FO371/12285/E2318/34/34. 21 IS no. 18, 3 September 1927, FO371/12286/E4109/34/34. 22 Consul Chick, Shiraz, to Clive, 22 October 1927, FO371/12293/E4979/ 520/34. 23 For Isfahani see Vanessa Martin, “Aqa Najafi, Haj Aqa Nurullah, and the Emergence of Islamism in Isfahan, 1889–1908”, Iranian Studies, vol. 41, no. 2, April 2008, pp. 155–72; Heidi A. Walcher, In the Shadow of the King; Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics. 24 Husayn Makki, Tarikh-i Bist Salah, vol. 4, pp. 415–39. There is some confusion in certain of the Persian sources over this episode. Isfahani’s journey to Qum and his taking there of bast in 1927, over the issue of conscription and more generally the shah’s disregard for the constitution, is sometimes conflated with the 1923 protests in Isfahan over tighter government control of opium production. See S. A. Rasa, Qiyam-i Ayatullah Haj Aqa Nurullah Najafi Isfahani (Tehran, 1384). 25 Annual Report, 1927, Clive to Chamberlain, 21 May 1928, FO371/13069/ E2897/2897/34. 26 See, for example, document no. 2, “A‘laniyyah-i Hakim-i Isfahan (Nizam alDin Hikmat) Khitab bih Ahali-yi Isfahan dar Khusus-i Luzum-i Taba’iyyat az Qanun-i Nizam Vazifah va Tahdid-i Mukhalifin bih Sarkub va Mujazat”, Ali Riza Isma‘ili, “Asnadi dar barah-i Nazhat-i va Muhajirat-i ‘Ulama’-yi Isfahan bih Qum (1306 H.S.)”, Ganjinah-i Asnad (Sazman-i Asnad-i Milli-yi Iran), vols 3–4, nos 23–4, Fall and Winter 1996–7, pp. 15–16; Intelligence Summary no. 21, 15 October, 1927, FO371/12286/E4742/34/34. 27 Chick, Shiraz, to Clive, 22 October 1927, FO371/12293/E4979/520/34. 28 Clive to Chamberlain, 19 November 1927, FO371/12293/E5207/520/34. 29 Quoted in Consul Chick, Shiraz, to Clive, 1 December 1927, FO371/13056/ E40/40/34. 30 IS no. 22, 29 October 1927. 31 Clive to Chamberlain, 5 November 1927, FO371/12293/E4979/520/34. 32 Consul Chick, Shiraz, to Clive, 8 November 1927, FO371/12293/E5208/ 520/34. 33 Translations in Consul Chick, Shiraz, to Clive, 1 December 1927, FO371/ 13056/E40/40/34. 34 Clive to Chamberlain, 29 December 1927, FO371/13056/E375/40/34. 35 Isfahani’s death immediately gave rise to rumours that he had been poisoned on the orders of the Tehran authorities. Since he was unwell and ageing, he may have died of natural causes, although the shah’s regime was certainly developing a habit of secretly murdering its opponents. 36 IS no. 26, 24 December 1927, FO371/13055/E584/38/34.

292 Notes 37 IS no. 2, 21 January 1928, FO371/13055/E722/38/34; IS no. 4, 18 February 1928, FO371/13055/E1301/38/34. 38 IS no. 9, 28 April, 1928, FO371/13055/E2673/38/34. 39 IS no. 2, 19 January 1929, FO371/13784/E1004/34; IS no. 23, 16 November 1929, FO371/13785/E6248/104/34. 40 IS no. 18, 1 September 1928, FO371/13055/E4673/38/34. 41 IS no. 21, 13 October 1928, FO371/13055/E5275/38/34; IS no. 23, 17 November 1928, FO371/13055/E5970/38/34. On 28 December the Majlis passed the Uniform Dress law, which stated that the official clothing for Iranian men was the hat and suit and outlawed other forms of dress, see H. E. Chehabi, “Staging the Emperor’s New Clothes: Dress Codes and Nationbuilding under Reza Shah”. 42 The Pahlavi kulah had been adopted by the army in the early 1920s. It had first appeared as civilian clothing early in 1925 when worn by some young men in Tehran apparently in a deliberate challenge to the clergy. 43 Mandatory female unveiling was, however, postponed, probably due to concern at the fate of King Amanullah in Afghanistan, overthrown after advocating similar reforms. 44 IS no. 7, 31 March 1928, FO371/13055/E2135/38/34. 45 This was a very large demonstration for a city where the total population was probably less than 200,000. 46 Consul Gilliat-Smith, Tabriz, to Parr, 19 October 1928, FO371/13056/E5211/ 40/34. 47 Even the quietist Ayatullah Shaykh Abd al-Karim Hairi, in Qum, was moved to telegraph to Riza Shah expressing concern that the clothing reform was contrary to the laws of Islam. Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran, p. 44. 48 Consul Gilliat-Smith, Tabriz, to Parr, 19 October 1928, FO371/13056/E5211/ 40/34. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. Davichi was the pre-existing Azari name of the quarter. It had been changed to Shuturban as part of Riza Shah’s Persification policy. 51 Extract from Tabriz Consulate Diary, no. 11, November 1928, Clive to Chamberlain, 12 December 1928, FO371/13781/E95/95/34. 52 Ibid. 53 Annual Report, 1929, Clive to Henderson, 30 April 1930, FO371/14545/E2445/ 522/34; Gilliat-Smith, Tabriz, to Clive, 28 January 1929, FO371/13781/E1658/ 95/34; Clive to Chamberlain, 12 March 1929, FO371/E1658/95/34; Ibrahim Afkhami, Qiyam-i Mullah Khalil dar Mukhalafat-i ba Pushidan-i Libas-i Farhangi va Radd-i Farman-i Riza Khan dar Sal-i 1307 shamsi. 54 Kavih Bayat, Shurish-i ‘Asha’ir-i Fars (Tehran, 1365). 55 The Bakhtiyari confederation was divided into the lineages of the Haft Lang and the Chahar Lang. Since the late nineteenth century the great khans of the confederation had been drawn from the Haft Lang, while the Chahar Lang had drifted into a position of general subordination. See Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics, pp. 79–81. 56 This policy appears to have been first considered concretely in relation to the tribes of Luristan. See Annual Report 1927, Clive to Chamberlain,

Notes 293

57

58 59 60

61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80 81 82

21 May 1928, FO371/13069/E2897/2897/34. By 1928 the government was already building walled villages for the settlement of the nomadic Lurs. Annual Report 1928, Clive to Henderson, 14 July 1929, FO371/13799/ E3676/3676/34. For the shah’s intention, by 1928, to apply this policy to the Bakhtiyari see Report on the Situation in Bakhtiari, 22 September 1928, R. G. Monypenny, Consul, Ahwaz, FO416/83, pp. 141–6. For Ali Mardan Khan see Bahram Amiri, n.d., “Zindiginamah: Hamasah-i ‘Ali Mardan Khan Bakhtiyari”, Kitab-i Anzan, Vizhah-i Farhang, Hunar, Tarikh va Tamaddun-i Bakhtiyari, vol. 2, pp. 73–90. Elkington to Medlicott, 15 July 1929, BP 59010.

Clive to Henderson, 27 July 1929, FO371/13782/E3918/95/34.

Petition from Certain Kashgai Chiefs to His Majesty’s Consulate, Shiraz

(undated), Davis, Shiraz, to Clive, 10 June 1929, FO371/13781/E3350/95/34, petition in original Persian in FO248/1389/591/22. Copy in translation of General Shaibani’s Proclamation, Clive to Henderson, 12 July 1929, FO371/13781/E3668/95/34. Note on Statement by Mr Shaw, Geologist, Re Situation in Fars, no date, BP59010. Chick, Shiraz, to Clive, 15 March 1929, FO371/13781/E1872/95/34. Davis, Shiraz, to Clive, 31 July 1929, FO371/13782/E4083/95/34. For a discussion of peasant rebellion and its corollary, banditry, see Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics, pp. 106–9, 127–8. For a full account of the course of the uprisings and their suppression see Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics, pp. 113–32. Annual Report, 1930, Clive to Henderson, 22 May 1931, FO371/15356/ E3067/3067/34. Annual Report, 1929, Clive to Henderson, 30 April 1930, FO371/14545/ E2445/522/34. Gilliat-Smith, Tabriz, to Clive, 28 January 1929, FO371/13781/E1658/95/34. A. C. Millspaugh, The American Task in Persia, p. 190. Ibid., pp. 190–1. Chick to Clive, 5 December 1928, FO371/13781/E95/95/34. Ibid. Clive to Henderson, 29 June 1929, FO371/13781/E3556/95/34. Ta‘ziyyahs, however, remained forbidden. Gilliat-Smith, Tabriz, to Clive, 19 June 1929, FO371/13781/E3556/95/34. Ibid. See Stephanie Cronin, The Army, pp. 217–19. Clive to Henderson, 10 August 1929, FO371/13782/E4086/95/34. See Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics. See, for example, Clive to Henderson, 12 July 1929, FO371/13781/E3668/ 95/34; Extract from the Tehran newspaper Iran of 5 July 1929, FO371/ 13781/E3668/95/34; Taimourtache to Clive, le 13 juillet 1929, FO371/13781/ E3659/ 95/34; Clive to Henderson, 29 June 1929, FO371/13781/E3557/ 95/34. See Chapter 6.

Clive to Henderson, 29 June 1929, FO371/13782/E3554/96/34.

Summary of Events and Conditions in Fars during the year ended 31 March

1930, Davis, Shiraz, to Clive, 24 April 1930, FO371/14551/E3025/3025/34;

294 Notes

83 84 85

86 87 88

Annual Report, 1929, Clive to Henderson, 30 April 1930, FO371/14545/E2445/ 522/34. Hoare to Simon, 16 December 1933, FO371/17889/E41/40/34. See Hamid Riza Dalvand, Majarayi-yi Qatl-i Sardar As‘ad Bakhtiyari (Tehran, 1379). Knatchbull-Hugessen to Simon, 1 December 1934, FO371/17889/E7530/40/34. See also Rawshanak Bakhtiyar, “Zindigi va Marg-i Khan Baba Khan As‘ad”, in Kitab-i Anzan, Vizhah-i Farhang, Hunar, Tarikh va Tamaddun-i Bakhtiyari, vol. 1, pp. 76–98. Nikki R. Keddie, “The Origins of the Religious-Radical Alliance in Iran”, pp. 53–65. Annual Report, 1930, Clive to Henderson, 22 May 1931, FO371/15356/E3067/ 3067/34. The rising of the Kurdish tribes in the Sardasht area in the spring of 1939, for example, was partly a result of the call for conscripts. IS no. 7, 8 April 1939, FO371/23261/E3024/216/34.

Chapter 6 1 See, for example, Kaveh Bayat, “With or Without Workers in Reza Shah’s Iran”, Touraj Atabaki (ed.) The State and the Subaltern: Modernization, Society and State in Turkey and Iran (London and New York, 2007), pp. 95–122; Ervand Abrahamian, “The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Labor Movement in Iran, 1941–1952”, Michael E. Bonine and Nikki R. Keddie (eds) Continuity and Change in Modern Iran, pp. 181–202; Habib Ladjevardi, Labor Unions and Autocracy in Iran (Syracuse, 1985), pp. 20–1. ‘Abd al-Samad Kambaksh, Nazari bih Junbish-i Kargari va Kumunisti dar Iran (Stassfurt, 1972–5). 2 Within social movement theory a debate has taken place between those who emphasized the ways in which cultural practices might be conducive to particular forms of mobilization, constituting a “toolkit”, or might shape protest movements, and those who stressed the significance of cultural change, the imparting to existing traditions of new meanings. See Charles Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), pp. 56–8. For social movement framing see Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment”, Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 26, 2000, pp. 611–39. 3 For the Gramscian notion of organic intellectuals (“the thinking and organizing element of a particular…social class…distinguished less by their profession…than by their function in directing the ideas and aspirations of the class to which they organically belong”), see Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (London, 1971), introduction, p. 3. See also Michiel Baud and Rosanne Rutten, “Popular Intellectuals and Social Movements: Framing Protest in Asia, Africa and Latin America”, International Review of Social History, vol. 49, supplement 12, 2004. 4 Yusuf Iftikhari has left his own account of his union activities in the oil industry and his role in the 1929 strike. Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds)

Notes 295

5

6

7

8 9 10

Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah: Khatirat-i va Asnad-i Yusuf Iftikhari (Tehran, 1370). Iftikhari was in many respects a typical “organic intellectual” of the period, his father a small shopkeeper whose early death threw the family into financial hardship, forcing Iftikhari and his brothers to emigrate to Baku and eke out a living as teachers. Ervand Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, p. 36. In later years Iftikhari denied ever having been a member of the Iranian Communist Party and expressed considerable hostility towards the pro-Soviet Tudah Party. See Vanessa Martin, The Qajar Pact, pp. 95–112. An early article indicating the presence of women in political demonstrations was Mangol BayatPhillip, “Women and Revolution in Iran, 1905–1911”, Lois Beck and Nikki R. Keddie (eds) Women in the Muslim World (Harvard, 1978) pp. 295–308. The history of female emancipatory movements in Iran and of state policy towards women has attracted a great deal of attention. For a survey see Parvin Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran (Cambridge, 1995). For the Riza Shah period see Mansoureh Ettehadieh, “The Origins and Development of the Women’s Movement in Iran, 1906–1941”, Lois Beck and Guity Nashhat, Women in Iran from 1800 to the Islamic Republic (Illinois, 2004), pp. 85–106; Camron Amin, The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman; Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, “Patriotic Womanhood: The Culture of Feminism in Modern Iran, 1900–1941”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 2005, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 29–46; Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, “The Politics of Reproduction: Maternalism and Women’s Hygiene in Iran, 1896–1941”, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 2006, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 1–29. A recent account of changing gender relations may be found in Janet Afary, Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (Cambridge, 2009), while the gendering of Iranian history is argued in Afsaneh Najmabadi, The Story of the Daughters of Quchan: Gender and National Memory in Iranian History (Syracuse, 1998). This conclusion bears out recent research into European crowd activity which has suggested women were more likely to take part in crowd disputes where these were related to the economic interests of the domestic household, even if these apparently bread-and-butter disputes had obvious political implications. For a discussion of this point, and of possible optical illusions produced by the sources see Tim Harris (ed.) The Politics of the Excluded, pp. 17–20. Further to female involvement in rioting, see, inter alia, John Bohstedt, “Gender, Household and Community Politics: Women in English Riots, 1790–1810”, Past and Present, vol. 120, no. 1, 1988, pp. 88–122. For a discussion of the symbolic meaning of ritual weeping in Iranian Shi‘ism, see Stephen C. Poulson, Social Movements in Twentieth-Century Iran (Lanham, 2005), p. 54. See also Heidar G. Azodanloo, “Performative Elements of Shi‘ite Ritual and Mass Mobilization: The Case of Iran”, Critique, no. 3, 1993, pp. 35–54. Perhaps the female equivalent of a lutibashi, the leader of a luti gang. For the role of lutis in popular protest see Vanessa Martin, The Qajar Pact, pp. 120–8. Quoted in Bayat-Phillip, “Women and Revolution in Iran, 1905–1911”, p. 303. Ervand Abrahamian, “The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Labor Movement”, p. 195.

296 Notes 11 12 13 14 15

IS no. 43, 27 October 1923, FO371/9020/E11923/69/34.

Intelligence Summary no. 10, 8 March 1923, FO371/10132/E3944/255/34.

Intelligence Summary no. 10, 15 May 1926, FO371/11484/E3487/95/34.

IS no. 26, 24 December 1927, FO371/13055/E584/38/34.

Riza Shah’s town planning was partly intended to destroy the physical

basis of urban opposition, see above, p. 184. 16 For the birth of trade unionism in Iran see W. M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions in Iran, 1900–1941 (Durham, 1985); Cosroe Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, pp. 90–5; Habib Ladjevardi, Labor Unions and Autocracy, pp. 1–3. 17 The view that the artisanal economy, with its guild corporations, experienced little labour conflict has been convincingly challenged by Sherry Vatter in her exploration of the struggles waged by journeymen weavers of nineteenth century Damascus against their masters. Sherry Vatter, “Militant Journeymen in Nineteenth-Century Damascus: Implications for the Middle Eastern Labor History Agenda”, Zachary Lockman (ed.) Workers and Working Classes in the Middle East: Struggle, Histories, Historiographies (Albany, 1994), pp. 1–19. Whether Iranian guilds experienced internal class and economic conflicts of the type which have been noted among, for example, weavers in Damascus remains unexplored. 18 Similar waves of strikes swept across the Ottoman Empire in the immediate aftermath of the restoration of the constitution by the 1908 revolution. Eric J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London and New York, 1993), p. 98. For a discussion of the history of labour in the Ottoman Empire/Turkish Republic, see Donald Quataert and Erik J. Zürcher (eds) Workers and the Working Class in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic 1839–1950 (London, 1995); Donald Quataert (ed.) “Labor History in the Ottoman Middle East, 1700–1922”, International Labor and Working Class History, Fall 2001, pp. 93–179; Touraj Atabaki and Gavin D. Brockett (eds) “Ottoman and Republican Turkish Labour History”, International Review of Social History, vol. 54, 2009, supplement 17. 19 Cosroe Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, p. 90; Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, p. 156. 20 See Cosroe Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, pp. 90–5; W. M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions in Iran, 1900–1941 (Durham, 1985), pp. 5–11. 21 W. M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p. 11. 22 Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, p. 156. 23 Cosroe Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, pp. 90–1. The historical and political precedents of the anjumans have not yet been properly explored. Cosroe Chaqueri has commented on the strong “historical tendency towards communal, collective self-management” which found expression in the vast anjuman movement of 1905–1906 while Janet Afary has mapped the dimensions of the phenomenon, tracing the emergence of anjumans during the constitutional revolution across the country and among a variety of social groups. The anjumans bear an obvious resemblance to the soviets which emerged under similar conditions and played similar roles during the Russian revolution of 1905. Cosroe Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian

Notes 297

24

25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36

37 38

39

Origins of the Iranian Left, p. 44; Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution. See also M. Bayat, “Anjuman: Political”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 2, 1987, pp. 77–80. For Iranian guilds see W. M. Floor, “The Guilds in Iran – An Overview from the Earliest Beginnings Till 1972”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 1975, vol. 125, pp. 99–116. W. M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p. 7. For an account of the negotiations leading to the signing of the concession see R. W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum Company: vol. 1: The Developing Years, 1901–1932 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 15–47; L. P. ElwellSutton, Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics (London, 1955), pp. 10–35. Five northern provinces were excluded from the scope of the concession out of deference to Russian susceptibilities. W. M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p. 28. W. M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, pp. 27–32. Ronald Ferrier, “The Development of the Iranian Oil Industry”, Hossein Amirsadeghi, Twentieth-Century Iran (London, 1977), pp. 93–128. Ronald Ferrier, “The Development of the Iranian Oil Industry”, p. 97. By 1929 the company’s profits had rocketed to £4,274,000, Iran receiving £1,437,000. R. W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum Company, pp. 154, 401. Ervand Abrahamian, “The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Labor Movement”, p. 183. Z. Z. Abdullaev, “Promyshlennost i zarozhdenie rabochego klasse Irana v kontse xix–nachale xx vv” (Baku, 1963), extracts reproduced in Charles Issawi (ed.) The Economic History of Iran, 1800–1914 (Chicago, 1971) pp. 48–52. In the interwar period the diverse origins of the newly-recruited workers does not appear to have given rise to ethnic tensions in the workplace. Although in 1946 Arab labourers were successfully mobilized by their own shaykhs, doubling as labour contractors, against a general strike by the mainly Persian workforce, yet with the accelerating detribalization of southern Iran, such tensions quickly faded. See Ervand Abrahamian, “The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Labor Movement”; Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics, pp. 191–205. N. Kemp, Abadan: A First-Hand Account of the Persian Oil Crisis (London, 1953), p. 43. Elkington, Abadan, 17 June 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. The development of the “company towns” of Abadan and Masjid-i Sulayman and their role in moulding a raw and unskilled workforce into appropriate “human capital” has been vividly described by Kaveh Ehsani, “Social Engineering and the Contradiction of Modernization in Khuzestan’s Company Towns: A Look at Abadan and Masjed-i Soleyman”, International Review of Social History, vol. 48, part 3, 2003, pp. 361–90; see also Mark Crinson, “Abadan: Architecture and Planning under the Anglo-Persian Oil Company”, Planning Perspectives, vol. 12, no. 3, 1997, pp. 341–60. L. P. Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil, p. 95.

298 Notes 40 From 20,095 in 1930 to 14,797 in 1932, a result of falling demand for oil in an international recession. R. W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum Company, p. 401. 41 Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p. 117; L. P. Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil, p. 90. 42 As late as 1946 a shanty-town for contracted labourers was described in the following terms: “Beyond both the Company area and the municipality, a poverty-stricken community existed under canvas and sackcloth awnings, supported by walls of beaten petrol cans and mouldering wood…They were a scrawny, wild-eyed people, fighting desperately for survival on handfuls of beans and lentils”. N. Kemp, Abadan, pp. 46–7. 43 For a description of the hardships faced by the wives of the oil workers, see Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p. 119. 44 On this phenomenon see Hassan Hakimian, “Wage Labour and Migration: Persian Workers in Southern Russia, 1880–1914”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 17, no. 4, 1985, pp. 443–62; Cosroe Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, pp. 77–96; Touraj Atabaki, “Disgruntled Guests: Iranian Subaltern on the Margins of the Tsarist Empire”, International Review of Social History, vol. 48, no. 3, 2003, pp. 401–26. 45 The position of Shaykh Khazal was a particularly sensitive issue. Shaykh Khazal had become ruler of the Arab tribes of the ethnically mixed province of Khuzistan in the late nineteenth century and his de facto position had then been recognized by the Iranian government which appointed him governor of Muhammarah (Khurramshahr). He had gradually increased his influence in the region and had also acquired great wealth due to his connections to the oil company and the British government. By the First World War he had made himself the virtually autonomous ruler of oil-rich Khuzistan. During the war he made himself extremely useful to Britain which toyed with the idea of separating Khuzistan from Iran and reinventing Khazal as the ruler of another British-protected Gulf shaykhdom. His removal in 1924 by the new regime in Tehran was greeted with unadulterated joy by all shades of nationalist opinion. On Shaykh Khazal see W. T. Strunk, “The Reign of Shaykh Khaz‘al ibn Jabir and the Suppression of the Principality of ‘Arabistan: A study in British imperialism in south-western Iran, 1897–1925”, unpub. PhD thesis, University of Indiana, 1977. The Bakhtiyari are a large tribal confederation inhabiting a mountainous region of southern Iran, whose winter pastures are in north-east Khurasan. Their senior khans had, like Shaykh Khazal, accumulated great wealth and political power as a result of their British connections. For the oil company’s relations with the Bakhtiyari khans see Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics, pp. 133–59; Gene R. Garthwaite, Khans and Shahs (Cambridge, 1983); A. Abtahi, Naft va Bakhtiyariha (Tehran, 1384). For the earlier history of the Bakhtiyari see also Arash Khazeni, Tribes and Empire on the Margins of Nineteenth-Century Iran (Washington, 2010). 46 See Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics, pp. 40–71. 47 This sense of vulnerability was exacerbated by Britain’s decision at the end of 1925 to withdraw its infantry garrisons from Iran’s Gulf ports, where they had been stationed since the nineteenth century. 48 For an Iranian view of the historical development of the Iranian Oil industry see Mustafa Fatih, Panjah Sal Naft-i Iran (Tehran, 1334).

Notes 299 49 The other remaining thorny concession, that of the Caspian fisheries, was also superseded in 1927 by a mixed company consisting of Iran and the Soviet Union. 50 For the Imperial Bank of Persia see Geoffrey Jones, Banking and Empire in Iran: The History of the British Bank of the Middle East, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1986). 51 See Stephanie Cronin, “Riza Shah and the Paradoxes of Military Modernization in Iran, 1921–1942”, Stephanie Cronin (ed.) The Making of Modern Iran, pp. 37–64. 52 Mostafa Elm, Oil, Power and Principle: Iran’s Oil Nationalization and Its Aftermath (Syracuse, 1992), p. 28. 53 Annual Report, 1928, Clive to Henderson, 14 July 1929, FO371/13799/ E3676/3676/34. 54 Kaveh Bayat, “With or Without Workers”, p. 116. 55 Mostafa Elm, Oil, Power and Principle, p. 29. 56 Kaveh Bayat, “With or Without Workers”, p. 117. 57 Kaveh Bayat, “With or Without Workers”, p. 117. 58 Kaveh Bayat, “With or Without Workers”, p. 117. 59 See above, Chapter 4. 60 Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics, pp. 86–7. 61 See, for example, the discussion of the Tehran bread riots of 1925, above, pp. 149–52 and the growing radicalism and combativity of the peasant movement of 1924–1928, Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics, pp. 86–7, 95–8. 62 Kaveh Bayat, “With or Without Workers”, p. 111. 63 See, for example, Abadan to Cadman, 25 November 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011; Jacks to Elkington, 7 June 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 64 Habib Ladjevardi, Labor Unions and Autocracy, pp. 3–17; Ervand Abrahamian, “The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Labor Movement”, pp. 182–3. 65 The Red International of Labour Unions, organized under the auspices of the new Soviet state. 66 Ervand Abrahamian, “May Day in the Islamic Republic”, Khomeinism, pp. 60–87. 67 W. M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p. 69, note 76. 68 For the police strikes see, for example, Intelligence Summary no. 16, 22 April 1922, FO371/7827/E5897/285/34. 69 Intelligence Summary no. 34, 24 December 1921, FO371/7826/E3904/285/ 34; Intelligence Summary no. 37, 16 September 1922, FO371/7828/E12254/ 285/34. 70 Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p. 110. 71 Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p. 113. 72 Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p. 111. 73 Intelligence Summary no. 28, 14 July 1923, FO371/9020/E8866/69/34. 74 Intelligence Summary no. 46, 17 November 1923 FO371/10131/E257/255/34. 75 W. M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p. 37. 76 W. M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p. 39. 77 W. M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, pp. 39–42. 78 W. M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p. 32. 79 Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p. 122. 80 The Communist University of Toilers of the East, generally known by its Russian acronym.

300 Notes 81

Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p. 124; Kaveh Bayat, “With or Without Workers”, p. 115. 82 Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p. 123. 83 Cosroe Chaqueri (ed.) The Condition of the Working Class in Iran (Florence, 1978) p. 218. 84 Kaveh Bayat, “With or Without Workers”, p. 115. 85 W. M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p. 44. 86 Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipir Shudah, p. 141. 87 “Disturbances in Company’s Area May 1929”, 13 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 88 Cosroe Chaqueri, The Condition of the Working Class, p. 216. 89 Farajullah Aqavli had transferred to the new army formed after the 1921 coup from the nationalist-inclined Government Gendarmerie where he had already achieved regimental command. He occupied a series of senior appointments during the Riza Shah period and was imprisoned by the British after the 1941 invasion for alleged pro-Nazi sympathies. He later resumed his career and became chief of staff and was twice minister of the interior. See Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State, p. 247. 90 Elkington to Greenhouse, 4 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 91 Yusuf Iftikhari describes in his memoirs the importance the union organizers attached to the involvement of the wives of the workers, and the efforts they made to prepare the women to play a role when the time came. Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, pp. 139–40. Despite the section in Iftikhari’s memoirs devoted to the women’s involvement, all the scholarly accounts to date have remained silent on this dimension of the strike. 92 Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p. 140.

93 Correspondent, British Petroleum Archive 59010.


95 Habib Ladjevardi, Labor Unions and Autocracy, p. 21.



98 “Disturbances in Company’s Area May 1929”, British Petroleum Archive

59010. 99 Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p. 140. 100 Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p. 140. 101 Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p. 140. 102 Elkington to Cadman, 9 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 103 Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p. 141. 104 Letter, 23 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. Strikes also broke out simultaneously in another foreign-owned company. On 26 May labourers employed on railway construction in the vicinity of

Notes 301

105 106 107 108

109 110 111 112 113 114

115 116

117

118

Ahvaz by the American-owned Ulan Company held a demonstration. This was followed two days later by a construction gang of about 300 men refusing to proceed to work. The oil company provided Ulan with information which enabled the police to arrest the strike leaders. The suppression of this attempted strike was followed by a systematic campaign of sabotage. A train was deliberately derailed and the locomotive capsized, components were stolen from the compressors being used on the bridge, cars and lorries were either set on fire or otherwise vandalized. The oil company had no doubt that this was the work of “disgruntled labour”. Abadan to Chairman, 28 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010; Elkington to Dr Young, 15 September 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. Kavih Bayat and Majid Tafrishi (eds) Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, pp. 141–2. Letter, 8 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. “From the Eastern Performers of sacrifices for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company”, British Petroleum Archive 59010. Kaveh Bayat, “With or Without Workers”, pp. 120–1. Some indication of the confusion prevailing in nationalist circles over how to react to the strike was reflected in the pages of Habl ul-Matin. See extracts in British Petroleum Archive 59010. Teymourtache (sic) to Greenhouse, 27 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. Letter, 4 November 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. Tehran to Abadan, 17 August 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. Abadan to Cadman, 25 November 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. Letter, 4 November 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. Letter, 4 November 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011; Greenhouse to Cadman, 23 November 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011; Jacks, Abadan, to Cadman, 29 November 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. Jacks to Cadman, 29 November 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. London to Tehran and Abadan, Cadman to Greenhouse and Jacks, 1 December 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. In fact, the depreciation in the qiran exchange rate meant that the company could grant this rise without it actually affecting their budget. For a discussion of wages and purchasing power in interwar Iran see W. M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, pp. 102–11. The qiran (kran) was a pre-1932 unit of currency worth one-tenth of a tuman. In 1930 the exchange rate was pegged at 1 pound = 59.75 qiran. For the workers’ councils of the revolutionary period see Assef Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran: A Third World Experience of Workers’ Control (London, 1987). For the workers’ counsels see, inter alia, Assef Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran; Valentine M. Moghadam, “Making History, but Not of Their Own Choosing: Workers and the Labor Movement in Iran”, Ellis J. Goldberg, The Social History of Labor in the Middle East (Boulder, Colorado, 1996), pp. 65–97. For a different view see Saeed Rahnema, “Work Councils in Iran: The Illusion of Worker Control”, Economic and Industrial Democracy, 13, 1992 pp. 69–94.

302 Notes 119 The work of Ervand Abrahamian is the obvious exception. See also Cosroe Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, pp. 77–96. 120 See, for example, Ja‘far Pishavari, Yaddashtha-yi Zindan (Los Angeles, n.d.); Ardishir Uvanissian, Yaddashtha-yi Zindan, Salha-yi 1928–42 (Stockholm 1979). 121 We have not, as yet, located sources such as the mine inspectors’ accident reports which Donald Quataert has used to build up a vivid portrait of Ottoman miners. Donald Quataert, Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire: The Zonguldak Coalfield, 1822–1920 (New York, 2006). Again, although the trans-Iranian railway was the biggest infrastructural project in the world in the interwar decades, we know nothing of the tens of thousands of labourers who built it. For one example of a study of a specific group of Iranian workers in the later Pahlavi period, see Willem Floor, “The Brickworkers of Khatunabad: A Striking Record (1953–1979)”, International Review of Social History, vol. 48, no. 3, 2003, pp. 427–55. The 1979 revolution opened up new possibilities for research in this area, sometimes based on fieldwork. See, for example, Valentine M. Moghadam, “Industrial Development, Culture, and Working Class Politics: A Case Study of Tabriz Industrial Workers in the Iranian Revolution”, International Sociology, vol. 2, no. 2, 1987, pp. 151–75. 122 See, for example, Cosroe Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, p. 94. 123 For a discussion of this phenomenon, see Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983). 124 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983). 125 James Grehan, “Street Violence and Social Imagination in late-Mamluk and Ottoman Damascus”. 126 Women continued to play a leading role in oil workers’ protests and to suffer the consequences, which were often severe. For example, in an unsympathetic account of an anti-company riot in Abadan in 1946, a British observer has described how “a thousand rioters pushing women and children in front of the mob, and yelling, ‘We’re going to sweep the British out!’ had marched towards the tanker-loading jetties”. The crowd refused to stop on the order of troops guarding company installations who then opened fire, injuring fourteen of the crowd and killing two women. N. Kemp, Abadan, pp. 66–7.

Chapter 7 1 For Salar-i Jang, see Stephanie Cronin, The Army, pp. 114, 123, 170, 177–9, 216, 220, 239; Kavih Bayat, Qiyam-i Nafar Jam; for Colonel Puladin see Stephanie Cronin, The Army, pp. 154–7; for the Tudah Military Organization see Muhammad Husayn Khusrawpanah, Sazman-i Afsaran-i Hizb-i Tudah-i Iran az Darun (Tehran, 1380); Maziar Behrooz, Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran (London, 1999), pp. 12–14; for General Afshartus see Homa Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran (London, 1990, 1999), pp. 130–1, 172, 183–5, 191.

Notes 303 2 Seymour, Tehran to Eden, 18 June 1937, FO371/20835/E3685/904/34. 3 Since the 1979 revolution however considerable attention has been devoted to identifying, locating and publishing historical material. See, for example, Mansourah Ettehadieh and Kaveh Bayat, “The Reza Shah Period: Document Collections Recently Published in Iran”, Iranian Studies, vol. 26, nos. 3–4, Summer–Fall 1993, pp. 419–28, and the journal of the Iran National Archive Organization, Ganjinah, and of the Institute of Research and Cultural Studies, Tarikh-i Mu‘asir-i Iran, Majmu‘ah-i Maqalat, and the publications of these two bodies. 4 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah I‘dam-i Jahansuz (Tehran, 1370). Najafquli Pasyan was the brother of Brigadier Haydar Quli Pasyan, who had been imprisoned by Riza Shah in the early 1930s and was only released after shahrivar 1941, and a cousin of Colonel Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan. After his release from prison Najafquli Pasyan became a well-known author and journalist. He wrote for the daily Ittila‘at and became its editor-in-chief. He later became managing editor of the daily Nida-yi Iran Nuvin, an organ of the Iran Nuvin Party and was a deputy to the twenty-third Majlis on an Iran Nuvin ticket. He wrote a famous account of the Democratic Party of Azarbayjan, Marg Bud, Baz Gash Ham Bud (Tehran, 1328). After the revolution of 1979 he wrote his account of Jahansuz, which was published in 1991. He subsequently also wrote an autobiography, which provides more information about the circumstances of his own arrest in 1939, as well as a general description of his life and work, Najafquli Pasyan, Dar Asr-i Daw Pahlavi (Tehran, 1377). An additional source for Jahansuz, also published after the revolution, and dealing particularly with the role of Muhkhtar and his conduct of the case, is Jalal Abduh, Chihil Sal dar Sahnah-i Qazayi, Siyasi, Diplumasi-yi Iran va Jahan, 2 vols (Tehran, 1368). 5 Stephanie Cronin, “Writing the History of Modern Iran”. 6 Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, p. 154; Miron Rezun, The Soviet Union and Iran: Soviet Policy in Iran from the Beginnings of the Pahlevi Dynasty until the Soviet Invasion of 1941 (Geneva, 1981), p. 292. See also Khusraw Shakiri, Firqah-i Jumhuri-yi Inqilabi-yi Iran (Guruh-i Nahkustin-i Duktur Arani) va Firqah-i Inqilabi-i Iran, Asnad 1305–1307 (Tehran and Florence, 1996). 7 Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, p. 154; M. Reza Ghods, Iran in the Twentieth Century (Boulder, Colorado), 1989, p. 113. 8 This prohibition was clearly in the minds of the police when they formulated their conclusions about the Jahansuz group. According to a final police report the group were alleged to have been aiming at the formation of a jumhuri-yi ishtiraki. Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah I‘dam, p. 304. 9 Perhaps “pseudo-modernists”, see Homa Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran: Despotism and Pseudo-Modernism, 1926–1979 (London, 1981), p. 124. 10 Ibid. 11 The National Party specifically claimed Jahansuz as a precursor, Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, p. 258. 12 For an expression of this outlook see for example the famous speech given by Sami Shawkat in Baghdad in 1933, “The Profession of Death”, Sylvia G. Haim (ed.) Arab Nationalism: An Anthology (Berkeley, 1976), pp. 97–9. 13 Miron Rezun, The Soviet Union and Iran, pp. 318–35. 14 Seymour to Eden, 18 June 1937, FO371/20835/E3685/904/34.

304 Notes 15 For a discussion of the complications of the War Office budget in the 1930s see Homa Katouzian, The Political Economy, p. 131. Breakdowns of military expenditure may be found in the Annual Reports prepared by the British minister in Tehran, see footnote 16. 16 See for example Annual Report, 1933, Hoare to Simon, 24 February 1934, FO371/17909/E1620/1620/34; Annual Report, 1934, Knatchbull-Hugessen to Simon, 5 February 1935, FO371/18995/E1606/1606/34; Annual Report, 1935, Knatchbull-Hugessen to Eden, 28 January 1936, FO371/20052/E1147/1147/34; Annual Report, 1936, Seymour to Eden, 30 January 1937, FO371/20836/ E1435/1435/34; Annual Report, 1938, Seymour to Halifax, 3 March 1939, FO371/23264/E2586/2586/34; Intelligence Summary no. 5, 11 March 1939, FO371/23261/E2589/216/34. 17 Report on the Present Relations between the Shah and his Army and their bearing on the Stability of the Pahlavi Regime, Percy C. R. Dodd, MA, 3 December 1930, Parr to Henderson, 3 December 1930, FO371/14542/E6707/ 469/34. 18 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 44. 19 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 19–20; Ahmad Amirahmadi, Khatirat-i Nakhustin Sipahbud-i Iran, vol. 1, pp. 36–7. 20 Sarhang-i Ghulamriza Najati, Tarikh-i Siyasi-yi Bist va Panj Salah-i Iran, 2 vols (Tehran, 1373), vol. 1, p. 47; Jalal Abduh, Chihil Sal, p. 941. 21 For a discussion of the case against Ghaffari see Jalal Abduh, Chihil Sal. 22 Letter from Mr Herrick Young to A. C. Trott, 6 August 1937, FO371/20835/ E5370/904/34. 23 Sarhang-i Ghulamriza Najati, Tarikh-i Siyasi, p. 47. 24 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 43. 25 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqaah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 41. 26 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 42–3. 27 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 20; Sarhang-i Ghulamriza Najati, Tarikh-i Siyasi, p. 47. 28 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 176–8. 29 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 13, 172. 30 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 48. 31 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 49. 32 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 49. Turkey under Mustafa Kemal appeared to embody many of the virtues which admirers of the strong state perceived in Italy under Mussolini and Germany under Hitler. 33 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 46. Mirza Jahangir Khan Shirazi was the founder and editor of the radical left-wing and anti-clerical newspaper of the constitutional period, Sur-i Israfil. He was hanged after the monarchist counter-revolution in 1908. See Suhrab Yazdani, Sur-i Israfil: Namah-i Azadi (Tehran, 1386); Sohrab Yazdani, “Heterodox Intellectuals of the Iranian Constitutonal Revolution”, Robert Gleave (ed.) Religion and Society in Qajar Iran (London 2005), pp. 174–91. 34 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 172–6. 35 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 42–3. 36 M. Reza Ghods, Iran in the Twentieth Century, pp. 109–10. 37 Intelligence Summary no. 7, 8 April 1939, FO371/23261/E3024/216/34. 38 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 237.

Notes 305 39 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi’ah-i I’dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 53, 172. 40 The ‘Adalat (Justice) Party had been founded at Baku during the First World War. In 1920 it changed its name to the Communist Party of Iran. 41 In 1948 Qurayshi was elected to the Advisory Board of the Tudah Party. In 1949, in the crackdown following an attempt on Muhammad Riza Shah’s life, he was tried in absentia and given a long prison sentence, Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, pp. 313–14, 318. 42 Homa Katouzian, Political Economy, pp. 115–16; M. Reza Ghods, Iran in the Twentieth Century, p. 102. 43 The text of Musaddiq’s speech is reproduced in Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 293–301. 44 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 41–2. 45 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 42. 46 Ann K. S. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia, p. 256. A description of some of the shah’s methods may be found in ‘Ali Akbar Darakhshani, Khatirat-i Sartip-i ‘Ali Akbar Darakhshani (Bethesda, 1994), pp. 241–56; Hoare to Simon, 24 May 1932, FO371/16077/E2780/ 2780/34. 47 Najafquli Pasyan, Dar Asr-i Daw Pahlavi, p. 66. 48 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 42–3. 49 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 47–9. 50 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 52. 51 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 43. 52 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 53. 53 The role played by Mukhtar in the 1930s as an instrument of political repression and control had been exactly prefigured in the first half of the 1920s by Muhammad Dargahi. See Stephanie Cronin, The Army, pp. 139, 154–6, 248–9. 54 Ali Murtaza Samsam Bakhtiyari, Peaks and Troughs: A Tentative Interpretation of Iran’s Modern History (London, 1996), p. 250. 55 Ibid. 56 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 113. 57 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 115. 58 Descriptions of the shah’s apparent paranoia may easily be found in the British sources. See, for example, Nicolson to FO, 2 October 1926, FO371/ 11490/E5612/284/34; Report on Personalities in Persia, Clive to FO, 18 December 1928, FO371/13783/E98/98/34. 59 The Puladin case displays many parallels with that of Jahansuz. Both officers appear to have engaged in little more than careless talk, the evidence against both was concocted by the police and the shah, perceiving mortal danger from each, was determined upon their execution. For Sardar Asad see Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics, pp. 178–86. 60 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 111–12. 61 Report on the Present Relations between the Shah and his Army and their bearing on the Stability of the Pahlavi Regime, Percy C. R. Dodd, MA, 3 December 1930, Parr to Henderson, 3 December 1930, FO371/14542/ E6707/469/34. 62 Stephanie Cronin, The Army, p. 155.

306 Notes 63 For the activities of Razmara in the 1940s see M. Reza Ghods, “The Rise and Fall of General Razmara”, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 29, no. 1, January 1993, pp. 22–35. 64 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi’ah-i I’dam-i Jahansuz, p. 113. 65 Ibid. 66 Political Review of the Year 1939 in Iran, Bullard to Halifax, 17 January 1940, FO371/24581/E584/584/34. 67 Miron Rezun, The Soviet Union and Iran, pp. 335–53. 68 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 221. 69 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 203–4. 70 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 204–5. 71 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 221–3. 72 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 236. 73 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 239. 74 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, p. 245. 75 Jalal Abduh, Chihil Sal, p. 942. Political offenders often served sentences harsher than those actually imposed by the courts. 76 Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, p. 164. 77 Ann K. S. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, p. 257. The actual fate of this landed property was rather more complicated, see Lambton, pp. 257–8. 78 Some sporadic attempts at armed resistance did take place. For an account of one of these episodes see Kavih Bayat, Farman-i Muqavamat, Khatirat-i Ibrahim Shushtari az Shurish-i Padigan-i Hava’i-yi Qal‘ah-i Murghi, 8 Shahrivar 1320 (Tehran, 1376). 79 Najafquli Pasyan, Vaqi‘ah-i I‘dam-i Jahansuz, pp. 12–13, 248. 80 The phrase is from Ervand Abrahamian, describing Muhammad Riza Shah, Iran Between Two Revolutions, p. 499.

Conclusion 1 The literature on social movements is extensive. See, for example, references in Charles Tilly, Social Movements. 2 For the Iranian army see Steven R. Ward, Immortal: A Military History of Iran and its Armed Forces (Washington D.C., 2009). 3 Ahmad Shafa‘i, Qiyam-i Afsaran-i Khurasan va Si va Haft Sal Zindigi dar Shuravi (Tehran, 1365); Abu’l Hasan Tafrishiyan, Qiyam-i Afsaran-i Khurasan (Tehran, 1367). 4 Maziar Behrooz, Rebels with a Cause, p. 13. 5 For the pro-Musaddiq Patriotic Officers see Homa Katouzian, Musaddiq, pp. 130–2. 6 Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne (eds) Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran (Syracuse, 2004), pp. 255–6. 7 For the army during the revolution see Charles Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution, pp. 105–16; Steven R. Ward, Immortal, pp. 211–41; Sepehr Zabih, The Iranian Military in Revolution and War (London, 1988). 8 Farhad Kazemi and Ervand Abrahamian, “The Nonrevolutionary Peasantry of Modern Iran”, Iranian Studies, vol. xi, 1978, pp. 259–304. For an alternative view see Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics, pp. 86–112 and Amir

Notes 307

9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17

18 19 20

Hassanpour, “The Peasant Revolt in Mukri Kurdistan, 1952–3”, unpublished paper, 1989. Amir Hassanpour, “The Peasant Revolt in Mukri Kurdistan, 1952–3”. Mohammad Gholi Majd, Resistance to the Shah: Landowners and Ulama in Iran (Gainesville, 2000), p. 186. Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs (London, 1985), p. 197. Farideh Koohi-Kamali, The Political Development of the Kurds in Iran: Pastoral Nationalism (Basingstoke, 2003), p. 182. Ahmad Ashraf, “Dihqanan, Zamin va Inqilab”, Kitab-i Agah (special issue), Masa’il-i Arzi va Dihqani (Tehran, 1361). Maziar Behrooz, Rebels with a Cause, p. 108; Shahrzad Azad (V. M. Moghadam) “Workers’ and Peasants’ Councils in Iran”, Monthly Review, vol. 32, no. 5, October 1980. See Farhad Kazemi, Poverty and Revolution in Iran: The Migrant Poor, Urban Marginality, and Politics (New York, 1980). Charles Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution, pp. 121–2. Although some analysis has been made of the effect on political orientation among the ulama of factors such as their sources of income, their dependence or otherwise on the state in terms of appointments, etc., internal class divisions within clerical hierarchies has received less attention. For an attempt to explain the politics of the ulama by reference to broader class conflict, see Mansoor Moaddel, “The Shi‘i Ulama and the State in Iran”, Theory and Society, vol. 15, no. 4, 1986, pp. 519–56. Charles Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution, pp. 33–49.

Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions, p. 520.

Of course, the absence of a significant and coherent leftist leadership inside

the country also meant that, industrial militancy notwithstanding, the revolutionary initiative could be seized by Islamist forces.

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Glossary of Persian Words and Phrases ‘aba cloak ‘adalat (firqah-i ‘adalat, hizb-i ‘adalat) justice (justice party) ‘adalat khanah house of justice, precursor to the National Assembly adib-i surkh “the red writer” ‘ajizkhanah poorhouse, refuge for the old and sick amlak estates, properties amniyyah rural gendarmerie anjuman association, council, society arg citadel ‘ashura tenth day of muharram, climax of mourning for the martyrdom of Imam Husayn at Karbala ayatollah a distinguished mujtahid azadikhahan (lit.: ‘freedom-wishers’), liberal constitutionalist/nationalists baladiyyah municipality bast sanctuary basti one taking sanctuary bunichah pre-1925 system of military recruitment whereby liability for service was tied to revenue assessment chadur (lit.: tent) enveloping covering for women dastan story farrash servant fidayi fighter, self-sacrificer firqah-i ljtima‘iyyun ‘Amiyyun Social-Democratic Party ghawghar-i jumhuri republican uproar havalah money-order or draft homafars air force technicians ijazah diploma allowing the exercise of independent judgement in the interpretation of Islamic law ilkhani paramount chief of a tribe or a tribal confederation imam-i jum‘ah prayer-leader at the main mosque of each town, appointed by the shah islah (hizb-i islah taliban) reform (Reformers’ Party) jadidi Jewish convert to Islam kadkhuda headman of a village, urban quarter or tribal section, tribal level below kalantar kalantar middle-ranking tribal leader, head of a tribal sub-group, the leading khan of a constituent tribe of a tribal confederation, urban mayor karguzar agent of the Iranian foreign ministry khadim servant khan tribal leader, a military honorific khankhanliq time of independent khans, period of chaos and internecine tribal conflict kharvar unit of measurement equal to 100 man, one man equalling approximately 6.5 lb, although with considerable local variation kulah cap or hat kumitah committee 320

Glossary of Persian Words and Phrases 321 Kumitah-i Milli National Committee madrasah theological seminary majlis meeting, parliament marja‘-yi taqlid (pl. maraji‘) highest-rank of the Shi‘i ‘ulama’ markaz-i ghaybi secret or hidden centre maktab traditional school milli national muhajir (pl. muhajirin), (lit.: emigrants) Muslim refugees from territories in the Caucasus conquered by Russia muhajirat (lit.: emigration) the flight from Tehran of nationalists and Majlis deputies in late 1915 muharram Shi‘i month of mourning mujahidin ideologically-motivated (holy) warriors mullah a low-ranking cleric mujtahid a cleric able to give authoritative opinions in matters of Islamic law mutavallibashi (na’ib al-tawliyyah) shrine administrator nawruz Iranian new year, celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox, usually March 21 or the previous/following day depending on where it is observed nizam regular military regiments established as part of nineteenth century reform efforts pichih face veil qiran a pre-1932 unit of currency worth one-tenth of a tuman ramadan month of fasting ra’is-i qushun chief of the army rawzah khvan professional narrator at a rawzah khvani rawzah khvani recitation of narrative of the battle of Karbala and the martyrdom of Imam Husayn risalah-i difa‘iyyah letter of vindication safar second month of the Islamic calendar, following muharram safarnamah travelogue salam royal reception sardar local magnate or leading notable, a commander sarkishik the deputy for the mutavallibashi sarpas police rank of General sarraf money changer, traditional banker savar armed tribal horsemen shabnamah (lit.: nightletter) publicly circulated anonymous leaflet or pamphlet shari‘ah Islamic law shahrivar the sixth month of the Iranian solar year, often used to refer to August–September 1941, the Anglo-Russian invasion and abdication of Riza Shah shawra-yi kargaran workers’councils taraqqi progress ta‘ziyyah passion play re-enacting the martyrdom of Imam Husayn tuman a pre-1932 unit of currency worth ten qirans. In 1932, the riyal replaced the tuman at a rate of 1 tuman to 10 riyals ‘ulama’ Muslim clergy vahdat-i milli national unity vaqf religious endowment vali‘ahd crown prince

Index

1921 coup 5–7, 13, 15–16, 44, 45–47, 57, 69, 100, 120, 121, 129, 212, 213, 214 see also Firqah-i ‘Adalat Abadan strike 39–40, 201–202, 221–230, 231–237 see also women Abbasiyan, Second Lieutenant Abdulhusayn 256 Abdul Azim, shrine of 9 ‘Adalat Khanah (House of Justice) 24 ‘Adalat Party 53–54, 57, 70, 84, 102, 105, 111–113, 117, 120, 127, 249, 305n40 Afshartus, General 238, 262 Agricultural Union of Iran 264 Ahmad Shah Qajar 136, 142, 145, 148, 153, 156, 217, 287n33 Ahmad, Mir Ali 77 ‘ajizkhanah 184 al-Isfahani, Sayyid Abu al-Hasan al-Musavi 30 al-Khalisi, Ayatullah Mahdi 137 al-Naini, Shaykh Muhammad Husayn 30 Alam al-Dawlah 61, 84, 88, 98, 275n57 Ali Asghar Khan, Captain 88 Ali Quli Khan Sardar Asad 197 Amanullah (King of Afghanistan) 194 Amin, Captain Turaj 125 Amirahmadi, General Ahmad Agha 227 Amir Kabir 37 Amir-Fazli, Ismail Khan (General) 118, 122, 123, 126 Amirkhizi, Ismail 117, 123 Angaji, Ayatullah Haj Mirza Abul Hasan Agha 183 Anglo-Persian Agreement (1919) 24, 46, 53, 57, 117

Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) 38, 194, 201, 208, 210, 212–215, 222, 224, 229 Anglo-Russian Convention (1907) 5, 52 anjumans 7, 39, 116, 117, 208, 219, 233, 267, 296n24 Anzeli 111, 207 Aqavli, General Farajullah 224, 229, 232, 300n90 Arani, Taqi 241, 259 Arfa, Hasan 122, 124 Arg gate 58; palace 72 Army Order Number One 121 army, conscription 171–173, 175, 181, 184, 186–187, 193, 196, 200; discontent in 4, 10, 11, 23, 41–42, 127, 238–241, 243–244, 252–253, 257, 259, 261; fascism in 242, 254–255; junior officers 41, 239, 241, 243, 252–253, 255, 263; Pahlavi regime 9, 17, 19, 21, 22, 25, 28, 41, 42, 45, 46, 69, 97, 100, 121, 123, 126, 127, 129, 134, 135, 140, 144, 148, 150, 155, 171, 192, 244–245, 253–254, 258, 262–263; Pasyan’s regime 60, 94; role in elections 164, 166, 169, 177; suppression of protests 31, 32–34, 35, 37, 140, 142–143, 151, 156–157, 162, 163, 174–177, 183, 192–193, 226, 227, 229; tribes 185–187, 188, 190, 194–195, 197–198, 231, 250 Asadi, Muhammad Vali 32, 272n50 Asayish, Aqa 224, 231 Ashkhabad 85, 91, 112, 113 ‘Ashura 83, 192–193 Astarabad 71, 166 authoritarianism 3, 5–8, 12, 13, 17, 20–21, 22–23, 35–36, 103, 166, 322

Index 323 188, 196, 199, 201, 203, 217–218, 221, 233, 261, 264, 266, 268 Ay Ranjbar 105 Ayatullah Mirza Sadiq Agha 183 Ayrum, General Mahmud Khan 177, 194, 252 Azarbayjan 17, 32, 52–53, 68, 103, 109, 116–119, 121–124, 152, 154, 180, 182–183, 184, 206, 264 Badamchi, Muhammad Ali 117, 123 Bafqi, Ayatullah Muhammad Taqi 38 Bagh-i Shumal 118, 122, 123, 125 Bahadur, Major Ismail Khan 59, 60, 72, 74–75, 76, 79, 84, 85, 92, 94–96 Bahais 134, 145–146 Bahar (newspaper) 53, 76, 86, 98 Bahar, Muhammad Taqi Khan 52, 154 Bahar, Shaykh Ahmad 53, 98 Bahlul (rawzah khvan) 32–34, 266 Bahrami, Farajullah 80 Bakharz 90 Bakhtiyari (tribe) 73, 74, 75, 106, 163, 180, 186, 188, 189, 194, 195, 197, 210, 213–214, 218, 292n54 Bakhtiyari, Samsam al-Saltanah 73, 81, 84, 99 Bakhtiyari, Sardar Asad 29, 195 Baku 102, 105, 116, 211, 212, 305n40 Balfour, J. M. 80 Baluch, Ibrahim Khan 77 Baluch, Salar Khan 60, 77, 87 Baluchis 51, 60, 77, 87, 99 Barbari (tribe) 51, 59, 70, 71, 75, 77, 95, 96, 99 Barbari, Lieutenant Abdullah Khan 95 Barbari, Sayyid Murtaza 96 bast, constitutional movement 7, 9, 10, 12, 23, 131, 203; extra-territoriality 37, 272n56; government reaction to 35, 36, 38, 166, 183; Majlis status

of 24, 142; republicanism 137, 150, 151, 152, 154; urban crowd 35–38, 40, 130, 134, 135, 172, 175–177, 207, 220, 237, 268 Bayraq-i ‘Adalat (newspaper) 54, 111–113 Bicherakov, Lazar 108 Bichiz, Husayn 125 Bisutun (periodical) 107 Bolshevism 51, 53, 57, 70, 83, 85, 87, 91, 102, 107, 110, 111–113, 120, 127, 224, 229 Brest-Litovsk Treaty 107 Britain, Anglo-Persian Oil Company 4, 38, 201, 211; constitutional movement 10, 12, 23; First World War 24, 48; involvement in Abadan strike 227, 231; Riza Khan’s relations with 5–6, 13–16, 17, 57, 129, 241, 247, 254–255; Lahuti’s relations with 106–107; opposition to 46, 47, 50, 53–54, 69, 111–112, 120, 132, 134, 151, 168, 205, 212, 243, 250; Pasyan’s relations with 49, 67, 75, 83, 85–86, 88–89, 95, 97; relations with tribes 188–189, 193–194, 213–214 Bronikovsky, Major 52, 66, 84 bunichah 54, 172, 175 Buyir Ahmadi (tribe) 188, 195 Buyir Ahmadi, Sartip Khan 195 Cadet College (Tehran) 41 Cadman, Sir John 215, 216 capitulations 161, 214 Catherine II, Empress of Russia 43 censorship 27, 132, 146, 148, 178, 180, 205, 231, 239 see also press census 161, 169, 173, 174, 181, 186, 187, 188 see also conscription Central Asia 52–54 Central Council of Federated Trade Unions 219 centralization 8, 17, 22, 45, 51, 55, 58, 99, 103, 119, 120, 126, 164, 166, 170, 179, 187, 198, 250

324 Index Chahar Lang, Ali Mardar Khan 188, 195 Chihranamah (newspaper) 216 China 8, 9, 11 Clergi, Colonel 14 clergy, anti-republicanism 137–138, 141–143; constitutionalism 9, 19, 51; higher ranks 29–31, 32, 33, 34, 51, 62, 66, 89, 164, 169, 173, 174–176, 177, 179, 183, 198, 220, 255, 266; legitimacy of protests 10, 166; lower ranks 26, 29–32, 165, 167, 174, 175, 184, 192, 197, 198; mobilization of masses 4, 130, 131, 133–135, 198, 220, 266; opposition to Pahlavi reforms 162–163, 170–171, 176; relations with Pasyan 63, 66, 68 Comintern 120, 221 Committee of National Awakening 153 communism 84, 101, 102, 126, 127, 241, 248, 249, 254 conscription 7, 22, 30–32, 39, 54, 91, 157, 161, 162–163, 171–173, 175–191, 196, 198–200, 204, 205, 244, 249 constitution 5, 8–12, 18, 23, 25, 73, 104, 116, 119, 131, 137, 138, 141–143, 145, 147, 148–149, 153–154, 155–156, 162, 173, 176–177, 179, 197; Russian 8 Constitutional Edict 23 constitutionalism 4–14, 16–26, 28–29, 30, 36–39, 41, 45, 46, 47, 51–53, 63, 83, 84, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105–106, 109, 116, 117–118, 127, 131–132, 136, 161, 163, 167, 168, 170, 171, 172, 176, 177, 179, 197, 202–203, 206–208, 212, 219–220, 244, 248, 261, 265, 268 corruption 43, 46, 47, 53, 82–83, 97, 173, 176, 181, 186, 195, 240, 245, 247, 251, 253 Cossack Brigade/ Division 11, 12–13, 14–16, 41–42, 46, 47, 48,

53, 64–65, 68–69, 72, 75, 79–80, 89, 90, 95–97, 100, 107, 109–111, 113–115, 118–120, 121–127, 129, 261 crowd 4, 9, 10, 18–19, 25, 32–34, 38, 94, 103, 128–137, 139–143, 146–148, 149–152, 155–157, 174–175, 183, 191, 204–205, 225–226, 261, 265–266 Dargahi, Colonel Muhammad 252 Darrah Gaz 69, 90, 113 Dastan-i Ghalabah-i Tanya (Story of Tanya’s Victory) 127 Davar, Ali Akbar 20, 28, 161, 162, 194 Democrat Party 7, 46, 50, 52–53, 57, 84, 85, 101–102, 105, 109–111, 114–119, 122, 123–125, 127, 168–169 demonstrations 7, 10, 17, 24, 33–35, 39, 114, 131–132, 135–139, 141–143, 146–147, 150, 152, 165, 167, 171, 173–175, 183, 201–205, 220–221, 223, 228, 233, 236–237, 263, 265–266, 268 Diba, Sayyid al-Muhaqqaqin 123 dress reforms 22, 30, 32, 157, 161, 163, 181, 182, 185–188, 198 see also Pahlavi hat, unveiling Dubois, Leon 55–56, 61, 63, 64, 71, 72–76, 88, 94–95, 98 economic policies 3, 20, 22, 28, 34, 128, 161, 188, 190, 245, 245, 263 see also taxation elections 12, 24, 25–28, 106, 117, 132, 138, 141, 154, 164–165, 167–170, 176–177, 179, 191, 268 elite, elite/subaltern divisions 7, 24, 30, 128, 130, 136, 144–145, 162, 167, 173, 188, 198, 266; nationalist 3, 4, 6, 7, 16, 18, 21, 24, 129, 155, 161, 162, 182, 193, 196, 233, 251; Pahlavi 43, 129, 134, 187, 193, 199, 214; provincial 26–27, 35, 56–57,

Index 325 73, 97, 99, 165, 166, 167–170; Qajar 4, 16, 46, 58, 64, 83, 85, 99, 168; tribal 188, 196 Elkington, E. H. 224, 227 Farmanfarma, Abd al-Husayn Mirza 168 Farmanfarma, Firuz Mirza 29, 161–162, 194–195, 199, 252 Farmanfarma, General Prince Muhammad Husayn 194 farrashes 57 Farrukh, Mutasim al-Saltanah 78, 84, 88, 98 Fars 26, 163, 168–170, 185–186, 189–190, 192, 194, 197 Farukhi, Muhammad 252 fascism 41, 241, 242–243, 247, 248–249, 259 Fath al-Mulk 50 Fattan al-Saltanah 138 fifty-three (group) 241, 247, 249, 253–255 finance commission 61 Firqah-i ‘Adalat (Justice Party) 102 Firqah-i Ijtima‘iyyun ‘Amiyyun (Organization of Social Democrats) 116 Firqah-i Kargar 107 First World War 6, 8, 13, 15–17, 45–46, 48, 81, 98, 101–102, 106–107, 109, 110–111, 113–114, 116, 209, 219, 243–244 Fishariki, Ayatullah Mirza Husayn 176 Gawharshad mosque 32 Gendarmerie school 48, 60 Germany 107, 242–243, 254–255 Ghaffari, Saham al-Din Zuka al-Dawlah 246, 250, 252, 256–257 ghawgha-yi jumhuri (the republican uproar) 18 Gilan 44, 46, 53, 68, 86, 91, 109, 110, 125, 165, 181 Gleerup, Colonel 66, 74 Government Gendarmerie 6–7, 11, 15, 17, 41, 46–51, 54–60, 63–72, 74–81, 82, 84, 85, 86–90, 91–100,

102, 106–107, 109–114, 119, 120–127, 261 government grain department 149 Great War see First World War guilds 4, 9–10, 35, 38, 39, 128, 130, 131–132, 138, 156, 162, 164, 167, 171, 174–175, 178–179, 180, 184, 190, 203, 206, 208, 220, 234–235 see also strikes, trade unions, workers Habl al-Matin (newspaper) 105 Haft Lang 186, 188, 195, 292n54 Haft Lang, Sardar Fatih 195 Haft Lang, Sardar Iqbal 195 Hamadan 48–49, 51, 110–111, 173, 176, 181 Hamzah Khan, General 47, 75 Hashimi, Major Mir Husayn Khan 119 havalahs 55 Haydar Shah 71 Hazarah (tribe) 51, 59, 70, 71, 73, 77, 99 Hazrat Masumah, shrine of 38 Himmat Party 116 Hizb-i Islah Taliban (Reformist Party) 138 HMS Cyclamen 227 homafars 263 Iftikhari, Yusuf 202, 222, 228, 232, 294n4 Ijlal al-Mulk 123 Imam Riza, shrine of 32–33, 51, 57 Imbrie, Major Robert 146, 148, 155 Imperial Bank of Persia 39, 49, 95, 205, 215 imperialism 5, 7, 8–9, 12, 53, 111, 194, 212, 214–215, 241, 242, 243, 248 industrialization 3, 234, 242, 248 Inönü, Ismet 22 Iran-i Naw (New Iran) Party 23, 105, 165, 175 Iran-Soviet Treaty 85 Iranian Communist Party 111, 120, 125, 127, 213, 273n1, 279n140, 295n4

326 Index Ironside, General 13–15 Isfahan 31, 34, 79, 84, 110, 157, 163, 170–171, 175, 177–181, 183, 186, 190–191, 197–198 Isfahani, Ayatullah Haj Agha Nurullah 31, 171, 175–176, 179, 198, 291n34 Ishqi, Muhammad Riza (Mirzadah) 106, 145–146 Iskandari, Sulayman Mirza 109 Italy 242 Ittihad al-Islam 85, 278n123 Ittila‘at (newspaper) 194 Jacks, T. L. 224 Jadidis 174, 291n18 Jafar Khan 88 Jahanbani, Major Prince Muhammad Husayn 54–56 Jahansuz group 42, 238–245, 249, 251, 253, 255, 257, 258, 259, 260 Jahansuz, Muhsin 238–239, 241–242, 243, 245–251, 252, 255–259 Jangali revolt 17, 44–46, 53, 63, 79, 91, 102, 110–111, 120, 273n1, 276n65 Javid, Second Lieutenant Ghulam Ali 256 Jews 134, 181 justice, discourse on 8, 10, 24, 37, 40, 76, 97, 188–189, 202–203, 204, 229–230, 268 kalantars 30, 188–189, 197, 272n60 Karai, Jafar Khan 77 Kariz 77, 87, 94 Kashani, Zayn al-Abidin 255 Kashmir Mountain Battery 60 Kavih (periodical) 50 Kayhan, Major Masud Khan 69 Kaykhusraw, Arbab 172 Kemal, Mustafa 14, 15, 20–23, 81, 248 khadims 57, 62 Khalil, Sayyid 224 Khalisizadah 133, 137, 140, 142, 146

Khamsah (tribe) 50, 163, 185, 187, 189–190, 196, 197 Khiyabani, Shaykh Muhammad 17, 44, 46, 53, 103, 116–119, 122–124, 127 Khuda Vardi 54, 55 Khudayari, General Khudayar Khan 165–166 Khurasan 47, 51–55, 57–58, 62, 64–68, 70–76, 78–80, 82–87, 89–91, 93–97, 99, 113, 262 Khurasani, Muhammad Najafi (Aqazadah) 62 Khurramabad 227 Khuzai, General Husayn Aqa 79, 80, 95–97, 185, 193 Kiani, Second Lieutenant 256 Kirmanshah 47, 49, 103–104, 107–108, 110–111, 175, 180, 181, 245–246, 252, 256 kishiks 62 Kreml 126 Kuchik Khan 45, 46, 68, 79, 110–111 Kuhgiluyyah (tribe) 185 Kumitah-i Milli-yi Khurasan (The National Committee of Khurasan) 76, 83, 85, 91, 93–96, 98 Kupal, Sadiq Khan (Salar-i Nizam) 74 Kurd Mounted Levies 52, 57 Kurds 32, 51, 52, 54, 57, 68, 78, 89–92, 96, 99, 103, 105, 107, 119, 166, 185, 192, 248–249, 251, 264 Lahuti, Major Abulqasim Khan 17, 44, 84, 101–111, 120–127, 238, 280n1, 283n97, 283n118 landlords 3, 10, 29–30, 64, 163, 165, 186–187, 189, 217, 251, 264 League of Nations 170, 189, 272n60 legitimacy 3, 10, 16, 19, 24, 25, 40, 76, 135, 155, 156, 177, 203, 207, 212, 218, 229, 235, 236, 244 Lianozov 207 Loraine, Percy 18, 129 Lundberg, Colonel 109, 122

Index 327 Majd al-Saltanah 65, 68–69, 72–73, 75 Majlis, 1911 closure of 5, 12, 17, 24, 109–110, 116, 204, 208; conscription law 171, 172, 178, 179; creation of 6, 10–12, 23, 24, 131; Democrats in 116, 117, 119; dress reform 182, 187; elections for 9, 24–28, 106, 117, 164–165, 167–168, 176, 177, 191; Khurasan representatives in 84, 86, 89, 91; muhajirat (1915) 24, 48, 50, 81, 110; overthrow of the Qajars 148–154; republican movement 18, 133, 137–143; Riza Khan’s relations with 7, 16, 23, 25, 134, 144, 147–153, 155, 156, 240–241, 250–251, 257, 271n33 Malikzadah, Major Hasan Khan 119 Malleson Mission 52, 57–58, 60, 73 Mamish (tribe) 185 Mamonov, Colonel 114 Mangur (tribe) 185 Marg regiment 34 martial law, use of 19, 31, 47, 84, 126, 144, 146–148, 153, 155, 171, 178, 180, 205 Marxism 17, 102, 219, 242, 249 Mashhad 27, 32–35, 38, 112–113, 114–115, 121, 157, 169, 175, 176, 183, 221, 250; Pasyan’s regime in 17, 44–100, 102 Masjid-i Shah (Tehran) 139, 141; (Isfahan) 175 Matbui, General Iraj Khan 33, 272n50 May Day 39–40, 201, 202, 219, 221, 223, 236 Mazandaran 79, 221 Medical College (Tehran), protest at 241 Mihr-i Munir (newspaper) 57 merchants 3, 9, 31, 35, 38, 58, 61, 64–65, 66, 73–74, 95, 98, 99, 130, 131, 138–140, 143, 150, 154, 164–166, 170–171, 174, 178–179, 183–184, 190–191, 192, 203, 218, 235

Millspaugh, Dr Arthur 170, 191, 215, 219 Miqdadi, Captain Abdullah 252, 257 Moderate Party 85, 278n123 modernization 3–5, 9, 22, 47, 78, 99, 128, 137, 161–163, 165, 171, 187, 194, 196, 199, 242, 251, 261, 266, 268 Mudarris, Sayyid Hasan 18–19, 31, 45, 133, 138–140, 143, 145, 147, 155, 164, 172, 252 muhajirat (1915) 24, 48, 50, 81, 110 Muhammad Ali Shah Qajar 113, 153 Muhammarah (Khurramshahr) 209, 213 Muharram 33, 83, 192–193, 228 Mujtahidi, Second Lieutenant 255 mujtahids 29–32, 34, 51, 62, 89, 169, 173, 174, 177, 179, 183, 198, 220, 255, 266 see also clergy Mukhbir al-Saltanah 118, 123, 125, 127 Mukhtar, Colonel Rukn al-Din 224, 226, 252, 253, 255, 257 Mullah Khalil 31, 185 Muqaddam, Zafar al-Dawlah (General Hasan) 118, 126 Murtaza, Mir 98 Musaddiq, Dr Muhammad 238, 242, 250–251, 262–264 Musavat, Riza 109 Mushar al-Mulk 90 Mushir al-Dawlah 73, 84, 118, 123, 125 Mustawfi al-Mamalik 73 Mutamin al-Mulk (Husayn Pirniya) 18, 73, 138, 142 mutavallibashi (na’ib al-tawliyyah) 61, 62, 68, 98, 271n44 mutinies 10, 28, 35, 41, 122, 124, 262, 268 see also demonstrations, riots, strikes Muvaqqar, Mirza Husayn 218, 223, 231

328 Index Nadiri regiment 140 na’ib al-tawliyyah 32, 34, 271n44 Najaf 30–32, 164, 173, 176 Nakhchavan, General 256 National Government 107, 110, 117 nationalism, armed forces 94, 102, 105, 109, 110, 238, 242–243, 247, 250; Lahuti 102, 105, 126; Pahlavi 20, 22, 97, 98, 100–101, 124, 202, 213, 218, 229, 230, 244, 258–259; Pasyan 45, 49, 50, 82, 83, 85 Nawruz, Ali (Hasan Khan Muqaddam) 108 Nawzari, Mahmud Khan 60, 75, 83–84, 85, 91–93, 95–96 Newman 89 Nishapur 60, 65, 94 nizam troops 55, 56, 59, 61 Norman, Herman 15, 58, 67, 88 Nusrat-i Lashkar 76, 79 Nushin, Abdulhusayn 278n128 opium 63, 87, 97, 161, 163, 170–171, 176, 186, 189–192 Ottoman Empire 8–9, 11, 15, 48–49, 63, 102, 106–107, 108, 116 Pahlavi hat 30, 165, 180, 182–185, 190, 192, 198, 292n41 see also dress reform Pahlavi regime, army 41, 200, 238, 243–244, 261–263; authoritarianism of 18, 28, 35, 103, 130, 166, 178, 268; comparison with Kemalism 21–23; constitutionalism 6, 7, 12, 13, 20, 97, 229; historiography of 3–6, 13, 44, 45, 128, 238 see also Riza Khan Pan-Iran Party 242 Pars (magazine) 108 Pashmi, Husayn 246, 249, 256, 257 Pasyan, Colonel Haydar Quli Khan 47, 79, 84 Pasyan, Colonel Muhammad Taqi Khan, career of 14, 47–48, 50–51; death of 91–92, 93–97,

279n147; Hamadan 48–49; ideas of 82–84; Mashad coup 58–59, 66, 67; policies towards women 86, 108; reforms 59–63, 75, 86; relations with Riza 65, 68, 69, 79–80, 81–82, 85, 88, 90, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99–100, 121, 238; relations with tribes 51, 52, 54, 55, 59, 60, 64, 66, 70–71, 73, 75–78, 80, 86–89, 92–93, 96, 99–100, 121; supporters of 53, 54, 61–62, 66, 74–75, 77, 84, 85–86, 91, 96, 98–99, 120; threat to central government 17, 44, 45, 64–65, 68–70, 71–73, 75–81, 88–90 Pasyan, Major Ali Quli Khan 47, 50, 54, 70, 112, 240 Pasyan, Major Ghulam Riza Khan 47, 50, 240 Pasyan, Najafquli 239, 240, 258, 303n4 petitions 10, 24, 25, 35, 40, 124, 130, 135, 141, 152, 188–189, 229, 231 Pishavari, Jafar 17, 103 police 11, 19, 32–35, 42–43, 52, 55, 58–59, 62, 66, 84, 88, 90, 91, 105, 122, 126, 129, 135, 139–142, 145–146, 147, 150–151, 154, 157, 163, 166, 169–170, 174–175, 178, 182–184, 191–193, 197, 205, 214, 219, 220, 224–228, 230, 249, 252–253, 255–256, 257, 262 poor, the, Abadan 210–212, 234; Lahuti’s attitude 103; Pahlavi regime 3–4, 30, 128, 130, 162–163, 181, 186, 188, 198, 199, 250; Pasyan’s policies 63, 75, 83, 84, 97; protests of 9, 35, 38, 39, 40, 131, 133–134, 149–150, 203–204, 235, 261, 263, 265, 268 popular politics 5, 7, 8, 24, 36, 38, 136, 202, 203, 206, 236, 268 populism, Riza’s use of 4, 19, 20, 130, 136, 147–148, 155–156, 202, 217–218

Index 329 press 12, 24–25, 27; in popular politics 130, 132–134, 135–138, 168, 231–232; Khurasan 57, 76, 93; republicanism 142–143, 145; suppression of 153, 156, 181, 232, 239, 240 Prideaux, F. B. 58, 67, 88 Profintern 219, 221 protests, legitimacy of 10, 19, 40, 135, 155, 203, 207, 235–236 Puladin, Major Mahmud Khan 47, 122, 238, 253, 305n59 Qajars 4–6, 11, 16, 17, 20, 26, 35–36, 37, 41, 45, 55, 69, 129, 130, 137, 167, 194–195, 203, 205, 217–218; overthrow of 148–149, 152–154, 177 Qaramanlu, Muhammad Ibrahim Khan 92 Qarn-i Bistun (newspaper) 145 Qashqai (tribe) 163, 185, 187, 188–189, 192, 194, 196 Qashqai, Nasir Khan 195 Qashqai, Sawlat al-Dawlah 169, 187, 195 Qavam al-Mulk 50, 168, 187, 189, 194–195 Qavam al-Saltanah (Ahmad Qavam) 47, 54–59, 61, 64–66, 68, 71–74, 76, 78, 80–85, 88, 90, 92, 94–96, 99, 113, 135, 253 Qayinat 52, 78 Qazvin 14, 48, 165–166, 173, 175 Qazvini, Arif 80, 86, 106 Quchan 55, 59–60, 65, 69, 76–78, 83, 86–87, 90–93, 96 Qum 9, 18, 30–32, 34, 38, 49, 106, 155, 164, 175–180 Qumi, Agha Husayn (marja‘-yi taqlid) 32, 34 Qurayshi, Amanullah 249, 305n41 Rasht 28, 61, 104–105, 110, 165, 180–181, 205, 207, 221 Razavi, Shiva 249 reform 3, 4, 6, 8, 13, 20, 23, 30, 34, 43, 52, 53, 138, 161, 162, 163,

176, 182, 184, 194, 199, 218; dress 22, 32, 157, 181, 249; Lahuti 29, 124; land 234, 248, 264, 265; military 7, 9, 109; Pasyan 56, 58–59, 60–61, 63–64, 67–68, 75, 82, 84, 85, 97; Qajars 11, 41, 55 repression 18, 19–20, 23, 34–35, 50, 100, 119, 208, 216, 221, 233, 240, 241, 244, 252, 264, 267 republicanism 17–21, 23, 25, 37, 39, 81, 83, 124, 134–145, 147, 148, 150, 153, 154, 155–156, 164, 187, 205, 217, 241 Reuter Concession 203, 208, 212, 233 riots 10, 26, 35, 38–39, 131, 133–134, 141, 146, 149, 150, 151–152, 155, 156, 167, 171, 180, 191, 197, 201, 202, 204, 205, 227, 233, 272n51 Risalah-i Difa‘iyyah (Letter of Vindication) 82–83 Riyazi, Colonel Ali Khan 94, 97 Riza Khan/Shah, 1921 coup 5–6, 13–18, 44, 45–46, 57, 119–120, 129; armed forces 41–42, 121, 123, 124, 171, 199, 241, 244, 250–251, 252–253, 257–259; clergy 26, 29–31, 164–165; Lahuti 125–127; martial law 145, 148, 155; nationalist supporters of 7, 8, 161–162, 172, 194–195, 198, 240; origins of 4, 14; overthrow of the Qajars 20, 148–150, 152–154; Pasyan 65, 68, 69, 79–80, 81–82, 85, 88, 90, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99–100; populism of 19, 130, 151–154, 156, 217; relations with the British 14, 15, 16, 18, 31, 129, 194–195, 215, 231, 241, 246, 247; republican movement 136–144; tribes 19–21, 26, 29–30, 42, 187, 193–195, 214 Republican People’s Party (RPP) (in Turkey) 14, 22–23

330 Index Russia 5, 6, 8, 9, 11–13, 14, 15, 24, 32, 47, 48–50, 52–53, 54, 57, 85, 86, 87, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107–108, 109, 110–111, 113–117, 118, 127, 151, 202, 206, 207, 208, 211, 219, 221, 243, 251, 257 see also Soviet Union Russian Bank 87 Russian civil war 111 Russian Military Mission 12 Russian revolution (1905) 104, 296n24 Russian revolution (1917) 50, 53, 54, 102, 110, 113, 127, 219, 221 Ruzbih, Captain Khusraw 238, 258, 262 Sabzavar 76, 79, 85, 89, 92, 95 Sadiq, Banu Zahra Khanum Muhammad 204, 225 Salar-i Amjad 59 Salar-i Jang, Lieutenant 238 Salar-i Muzaffar 56, 59, 61 Sardar of Bujnurd 52, 78, 86, 90 Sardasht 185, 249, 294n89 Sarim al-Dawlah 26, 47, 167–169, 194 sarkishiks 57, 62, 275 n43 Sartipzadih, Ali Asghar 125 Sayyar, Colonel Kazim Khan 69 Sayyid Hardar Khan 77 Sayyid Nur al-Din 31, 173–174 Sayyid Ziya see Tabatabai, Sayyid Ziya al-Din Schunemann 107 Second World War 25, 242 Secret Centre 116 secularism 8, 18, 22, 30, 41, 45, 63, 82, 83, 98, 99, 128, 130, 134–135, 161, 163, 165, 171, 193, 198, 199, 205, 229–230, 238, 242, 244 Seymour, Melvin 146 Shabistari, Muhammad Ibrahim 125 shabnamah 10, 27, 40, 76, 104, 130–132, 133, 148, 169, 229, 236, 268, 286n11 Shafaq-i Surkh (newspaper) 194, 215, 216

Shahrud 79–80, 89–90, 96 Shams-i Khan 113 Sharq-i Iran (newspaper) 63, 76, 86 Shawkat al-Mulk (Birjand) 52, 78, 86, 95 Shaybani, Brigadier Habibullah 123, 125 Shaykh Khazal 21, 29, 148, 209–210, 213–214, 298n46 Shihab, Colonel 122, 123 Shiraz 26–27, 31, 34, 47–51, 54, 110, 112, 157, 163, 167–169, 171, 173–181, 183, 188, 190, 191–192, 194, 197, 240 Shuturban (Davachi) 184, 292n49 Shuja al-Mulk 70, 71, 77–78, 86–87, 89–90 Shuster, Morgan 109 Siamak, Colonel 238 Simitqu, Ismail Aqa (Simko) 68, 119, 166 Sipahsalar Agreement (1916) 114, 115 Sipahsalar Mosque 149 Sistan 43, 52, 57, 78 Sitarah-i Iran (newspaper) 132, 205, 216 Sjöberg, Major 52, 55 social democracy 101, 102, 105, 116–117, 206–207, 212, 267 Social Democratic Party of Iran 111, 116–117 Soviet Union 17, 53–54, 57, 67, 68, 85, 87, 92–93, 101, 107–108, 111, 113, 114, 120, 126–127, 151, 183, 200, 224, 229, 249, 254–255, 257–258 Stalingrad, battle of 242 Staroselsky, Colonel 14, 115 state-building 3–4, 6–7, 11–13, 22, 36, 44, 58, 99, 109, 120, 128, 171, 198, 215 strikes 7, 9–10, 35, 38–40, 130, 174, 175, 178–179, 194, 201–203, 204, 206–208, 209, 212, 214, 219–220, 221, 232, 233, 236, 267–268, 300n105 see also Abadan strike

Index 331 students 237, 241, 243, 246–247, 251; religious 9, 29, 30, 171, 198, 268 subaltern, elite/subaltern division 7, 24, 30, 128, 130, 136, 144–145, 162, 167, 173, 188, 198, 266; popular politics 40–41, 133, 202, 229–230, 233, 235–237; populism 217–218; protests 4, 7, 19, 28–29, 35, 129, 161, 268 succession 42, 253–254 Sulayman Mirza 73 Tabatabai, Sayyid Ziya al-Din 17, 46–47, 57–58, 62–67, 70, 79–82, 97, 100, 121, 276n71 Tabriz 9, 17, 19–20, 31, 34, 42, 44, 46, 47, 53, 59, 84, 102, 109, 115–120, 122–127, 152–155, 157, 163, 166, 176, 180, 182–185, 190, 192, 197, 207, 221, 250 Tabrizi, Major Abdullah Khan 59 Tadayyun, Sayyid Muhammad 138–140 Tahmasbi, General 28 Taj Muhammad Khan 78, 91 Tajikistan 101, 126 Tajjadud (newspaper) 117 Talbot, Major G. F. 9, 203 Tangistan 50 Taqizadah, Hasan 50, 172 Tarbiyat, Muhammad Ali 123 Tashkent 85 taxation 32–33, 63–64, 71, 99–100, 164, 171, 186, 191, 195–196, 215, 250 Taymuri (tribe) 51, 59, 66, 71, 73, 77 Taymuri, Sardar Nusrat 66 Taymurtash, Abd al-Husayn 23, 29, 34, 38, 161, 165, 178–179, 182, 194–195, 215, 224, 230–232 Teachers’ College (Tehran), protest at 241 telegraph 27, 37, 58, 65–66, 71, 72–74, 75, 78, 84, 87, 89, 92, 95, 98, 123–124, 125, 137, 145, 149, 152, 166, 171, 175, 177, 207, 208, 228

Times, the 204 title deeds 4, 161, 186, 187, 188, 251 Tobacco Protest (1891–1892) 9, 10, 38, 51, 131, 203, 206, 208, 212, 233, 265, 268 trade unions 201, 202, 206–209, 218–222, 225, 230, 232, 233–234, 237, 240, 266, 267 see also anjumans, guilds, workers trans-Iranian railway 161, 164, 196, 215, 232, 243, 246, 249–251 tribes, 1929 uprising 30, 42, 46, 185, 188–190, 193–198, 250, 253, 264; Azarbayjan 118, 119; conscription 163, 180, 184–187, 199–200; disarmament and settlement of 20, 29, 36, 42, 163, 186, 195–196; junior khans of 29, 30, 162, 169, 187–189, 197–198; Pasyan’s relations with 51, 52, 54, 55, 59, 60, 64, 66, 70–71, 73, 75–78, 80, 86–89, 92–93, 96, 99–100, 121; relations with the British 194, 208–210, 213–214, 216, 231; senior khans 29–30, 66, 76, 167–168, 195–196, 217–218; tribal problem 13, 16, 20–21 Tudah 102, 238, 249, 258, 262 Tufan (newspaper) 216 Tupchi, Fath Ali Khan Saqafi 74, 121 Turbat-i Haydari 60, 65, 85, 87, 89 Turbat-i Shaykh Jam 71, 77, 87, 94 Turkestan 53 Turkey 14, 21–22, 81, 143, 248 Turkmans 52, 71, 78, 164 Tus press 98 Ughli, Haydar Khan Amu 52, 86, 105, 112 ulama see clergy Uniformity of Dress law (1928) 30, 292n40 unveiling 13, 32–33, 34, 36, 182, 292n42 see also dress reform, Pahlavi hat

332 Index vaqf 51, 57, 61, 63 Vaqt 136 Vasiqi, Second Lieutenant 255 Vusuq al-Dawlah 51, 54, 117

working class, growth of 4, 9, 38, 39, 130, 201, 202, 210–211, 232–233, 234, 261, 265 World War One see First World War

Westdahl, General 252 women, Pahlavi regime 13, 20, 32, 36; Lahuti’s work 108; protests 35, 38–39, 150–151, 180, 202–205, 225–227, 228, 233, 236–237, 266, 268, 300n92, 302n127; Pasyan’s policies towards 86, 108 workers, ‘Adalat Party policies towards 104, 111; conditions 107, 211, 216, 218, 232, 298n43; discontent 36, 39, 42, 201, 202–203, 207, 209, 212, 218, 223–230, 231, 233, 235–237, 266–268; organization 39, 201, 206, 208, 219–223, 227, 233, 234–236, 237, 267; migration 53, 210, 222, 265

Xing (dynasty)

11

Yazdanpanah, General Murtaza Khan 149, 252, 253 Yazdi, Shaykh Abd al-Karim Hairi 30–31, 164 Yazdian, Second Lieutenant 256 Yusufabad 48 Zahidi, General Fazlullah Khan 194, 258, 262 Zahir al-Islam 61, 68, 275n60 Zarabi, Nimatullah 255–256 Zarghami, General Azizullah Khan 49, 74, 121, 252–253, 256 Zawarzadah, Asad Aqa 88 Zoroastrians 134, 172, 181

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