Iran in World History

Part of the problem was the Ghajar government’s inability to exer-
cise full authority over the country’s various nomadic tribes, on whom 
they relied to provide troops. The majority of Iran’s population in the 
early nineteenth century was still nomadic or semi-nomadic and there-
fore difficult to control; they were usually happy to join a campaign if 
it looked to be successful but quick to abandon the cause when things 
went wrong.
The results of the war with Russia were catastrophic for the Ghajars. 
The Russians managed to advance as far as Tabriz, and in order to rees-
tablish peace the Ghajars were forced by the Treaty of Golestan in 1813 
to cede most of their Caucasian provinces to Russia. They attempted 
to regain these territories in 1826 but were not successful. The Treaty 
of Turkomanchay in 1828 transferred even more of the Caucasus to 
Russia, a loss to Iran that would prove permanent. The psychological 
effect on Iranians was devastating, and likely explains why Iran has not 
engaged in any military aggression against its neighbors in the nearly 
two centuries since.
An early nineteenth-century portrait of Ghajar ruler Fath Ali Shah and some of 
his sons, all dressed in heavily bejeweled royal ceremonial attire. Fath Ali Shah’s 
patronage of the arts fostered the emergence of the Ghajar style of Persian 
painting, which shows increased European influence especially through a more 
photographic sense of realism and perspective. 
British Library Add. Or. 1239

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What Fath Ali Shah lacked in geopolitical skills, however, he made 
up for in virility. He is said to have had no less than one thousand wives 
and concubines, producing countless numbers of children. To this day 
it is taken as something of a joke when an Iranian claims “royal Ghajar 
lineage.”
Fath Ali Shah’s successor, his grandson Mohammad Shah, was 
faced with a growing domestic threat in the form of a new millenar-
ian religious movement led by a Shiraz merchant named Seyyed Ali 
Mohammad. Iran’s Shi‘ite society was ripe with expectancy a thousand 
years after the disappearance of the Twelfth Imam, and Seyyed Ali 
Mohammad acquired a large following who saw him as the returning 
savior.
Known to his disciples as “the Gate [of Truth]” (
bab
), Seyyed Ali 
Mohammad claimed to be receiving a new cycle of divine revelation 
that superseded the Qur’an. His teaching spread throughout Iran, 
bringing about a backlash from the country’s conservative Shi‘ite clergy 
who began to call for his arrest. In 1847, Mohammad Shah ceded to 
the clergy’s demands, ordering Seyyed Ali Mohammad’s confinement 
and eventual imprisonment in Azerbaijan. Undaunted, the Bab’s close 
disciples continued to spread his teachings.
One of the Bab’s principal acolytes was an exceptionally bold 
woman named Fatemeh Baraghani. Born in 1817, she was a poet also 
known by her pen name Tahereh and by the epithet Ghorrat ol-‘ayn 
(Solace of the eyes). These lines from one of her poems express the 
atmosphere of expectation in which the Bab’s followers spent their days:
The day of truth is here! Lies have turned to dust!
Order, justice and law are now possible.
Smashed, the despot’s fist! God’s hand opens:
Grace pours down—not sorrow, pain and trouble . . .
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Having called for the abrogation of Islamic law and supported by 
some one hundred thousand devotees throughout Iran, the Bab posed 
an unprecedented threat to both Ghajar and clerical authority. Tahereh 
signaled the end of Islamic law by removing her veil during a confer-
ence of Babis at Badasht in northern Iran in 1848. Among those present 
at the conference was one Mirza Hossein Ali from the town of Nur 
on the Caspian coast. He later came to be known as Baha’u’llah, the 
founder of the Baha’i faith.
Mohammad Shah died in September of that year, triggering Babi 
uprisings throughout the country. Conservative Shi‘ites, egged on by 
the clergy, responded by massacring Babis by the hundreds or even 

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thousands. The Bab, Tahereh, and other Babi leaders were arrested, 
and most were executed in 1852. Baha’u’ullah survived by going under-
ground, reemerging during the following decade as the voice of the 
newly pacifist Baha’is.
Mohammad Shah was succeeded upon his death in 1848 by his 
seventeen-year-old son Naser od-din, who was guided throughout 
the early years of his career by his prime minister and former tutor, 
Amir Kabir. Heralded by many as Iran’s first modernist reformer, Amir 
Kabir’s main concern was to centralize government power—an elusive 
prospect when most of the country remained in the hands of tribal 
warlords and feudal landowners.
Amir Kabir was largely responsible for crushing the Babi threat 
and ordering the execution of its leaders. Having previously gained 
experience as a representative of Iranian interests in Ottoman Turkey, 
he was impressed by the modernist reforms taking place there known 
as the