Un d e r Eu r o p e’s S h a d o w
83
dialect of Persian continuing to dominate urban life and government
administration.
The Bukharan state, along with the newly created Afghanistan to
the south, found itself increasingly caught between the colonial aspi-
rations of the Russians to the northwest and the British in India. The
nineteenth century would be characterized by the intrigues of these
two
European empires, a geopolitical power struggle that came to be
known as the “Great Game.”
While Ahmad Shah was consolidating his new polity in the east,
in the Caucasus the Christian state of Georgia declared independence
from Iran as well. In the southwestern Fars region, yet another of
Nader Shah’s former generals, Karim Khan Zand (who was of Lor or
possibly Kurdish origin), established local control and set up his capital
at Shiraz. Like his late ex-employer, Karim Khan initially installed a
Safavid puppet ruler, whom he soon dispensed with in 1760. He did not
take the title of shah, however, preferring instead to call himself “the
People’s Advocate” (
vakil or-ra‘ya
).
Karim Khan’s reputation as one of the
most enlightened rulers in
Iranian history is summed up in the following observation by British
Ambassador Sir John Malcolm in 1815: “The mode which Kareem
Khan took to attain and preserve his power, was different from that
pursued by any former monarch of Persia. He made no effort to gain
strength by the aid of any superstitious or religious feelings. He neither
tried to attach his army by gratifying their lust of plunder; nor courted
the applause of a vain-glorious nation by the pursuit of ambitious pro-
jects or the gorgeous display of royal splendor. He was modest, even to
his attire; and though
his rule was always firm, his general manner to
the meanest of his subjects was familiar and kind.”
3
Karim Khan’s rule saw the flourishing of Shiraz, which had been
home to the medieval poets Sa‘di and Hafez. Many of the city’s most
important surviving monuments, including the Vakil bazaar, the Vakil
mosque, the Vakil bathhouse, and the Karim Khan citadel, date to
this period, as does the main part of Sa‘di’s mausoleum. A distinctive
school of art emerged under Zand patronage, in which the influence
of European techniques such as foreshortening is increasingly evident.
With the establishment of a British trading post at Bushehr on the
coast
of the Persian Gulf, Iran’s connection to the global sea trade was
revived, to the benefit of the local economy.
Unfortunately, upon Karim Khan’s death in 1779, his successors
were unable to maintain the stability of the Zand state against con-
stant attacks from its neighbors and internal struggles from within.
I r a n i n Wo r l d H i s t o r y
84
The Turkic Ghajar tribe, based in the city of Sari in northeastern Iran,
were the most troublesome. Their chief, a mean-tempered eunuch by
the name of Agha Mohammad Khan who had spent sixteen years in
Shiraz as a Zand hostage, escaped in 1779 and fled north to take over
leadership of the clan.
Agha Mohammad Khan moved the Ghajar capital from Sari in
Mazandaran to Tehran, which at the time was merely a village between
the Alborz foothills and the ancient city of Rayy. Over the following
decade the Ghajars managed to steadily expand their rule over adjacent
territories, and in 1794 they defeated and captured the last Zand ruler.
With much of Iran’s historical expanse
now firmly under his control,
Agha Mohammad Khan declared himself King of Kings (
Shahanshah
)
in 1796. A cruel and ruthless leader, Agha Mohammad Khan had many
enemies. In 1797 he was assassinated in his sleep by three of his ser-
vants, whom he had condemned to death but somehow neglected to
imprison. He was succeeded by his nephew Baba Khan, crowned as
Fath Ali Shah, who had been governor of the province of Fars.
Fath Ali Shah ruled Iran for the next thirty-seven years. His
reign saw increasing exposure to Europe and European culture. Fath
Ali Shah himself is said to have read the entire third edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
, which so impressed him that he had him-
self formally referred to as “Most Formidable Lord and Master of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
.” Persian painting under his rule became dis-
tinctly
Europeanized in style, marked particularly by large-scale royal
portraits done in oils. No less than twenty-five portraits of Fath Ali
Shah have survived.
In the decades to come, Europeans would become similarly enam-
ored of Persian high culture. Translations of the classical Persian poets
became quite popular in the West. The German poet Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe modeled his
West-Eastern Divan
on the odes of Hafez, and
in England, Edward Fitzgerald’s loose translation of Omar Khayyam’s
quatrains led to the appearance of Omar Khayyam Societies all over the
country. Sa‘di’s highly quotable
Rose Garden
was cited by such Western
writers as
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Alexander Pushkin, and
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The Iranian military still lagged behind European standards, how-
ever. The Russians took the formerly Iranian province of Georgia with-
out difficulty, and the Ghajar counterattack led to a war that lasted
from 1804 to 1813. Recognizing the superiority of Russia’s compara-
tively modern army, the Ghajars sought support first from England and
then from France, but their entreaties fell on deaf ears.