Encyclopedia of Islam

Qajar dynasty

The Qajar dynasty, which ruled i

ran

 from 1796 

to 1925, was originally composed of a loose tribal 

federation in the northwest territories of Iran 

until 1796, when a 

shaykh

 named Agha Muham-

mad Khan defeated his rival shaykhs and declared 

himself the first Qajar shah of Iran. Although 

Khan was assassinated a year after taking power, 

his descendants managed to unify the country 

under a strong, centralized government, putting 

an end to the tribal warfare and civil strife that 

had gripped Iran for centuries.

Under the Qajar shahs, Iran went through an 

intense process of modernization and Westerniza-

tion in nearly every sector of society. At the same 

time, the Qajars encouraged the blossoming of a 

distinctly Persian literary and artistic tradition, 

and they promoted a high level of philosophical 

and theological creativity unmatched in the rest 

of the Middle East at the time.

Despite these successes, however, the Qajar 

shahs were unable to escape the Anglo-Russian 

rivalry that dominated most of the 19th century. 

Consequently, they were powerless to keep Iran 

from being partitioned into British and Russian 

zones of influence. The loss of national sover-

eignty and the plundering of the country’s natural 

resources by foreign powers led a coalition of mer-

chants, clerics, and intellectuals in 1906 to force 

the Qajar shah, Mozaffar al-Din (r. 1896–1907), 

to accept a 

constitUtion

 that created an elected 

parliament, or Majlis, transforming Iran into a 

constitutional monarchy. Yet, the constitution-

alists were promptly repressed by Russia, who 

feared that the rising sense of nationalism in Iran 

would compromise their political and economic 

interests in the region. Using the might of their 

Cossack forces, the Russians, with the support 

of the British, propped up a succession of weak-

willed shahs on the Qajar throne. However, with 

the outbreak of World War I, the Russians and 

British recognized the need for strong leadership 

in Iran. As a result, they encouraged a coup d’état 

by the commander of the Cossack Brigade, r

eza

s

hah

 p

ahlavi

 (r. 1925–41), who, in 1925, put an 

end to the Qajar dynasty by declaring himself the 

first Pahlavi shah of Iran.

See also 

colonialism

; 

democracy

.

Reza Aslan