"Russian intrusion into the guarded domain": reflections of a Qajar statesman on European expansion.

• Author: Amanat, Abbas

IN EARLY 1828, DURING RUSSO-PERSIAN NEGOTIATIONS for the conclusion of the Turkamanchay peace treaty, Mirza Abul-qasim Qaim-maqam Farahani, minister to the crown prince Abbas Mirza, was despatched to Tehran to persuade Fath Ali Shah to pay from the royal treasury the ruinously large war reparations required by the victorious Russians as a precondition to signing the treaty. With the greatest reluctance Fath Ali Shah parted with a portion of the indemnity, but not before dictating a candid letter to his son in the hand of Qaim-maqam, whose eloquence was appreciated even at the height of the shah's anguish. Alarmed by the dwindling state revenue caused by "the upheavals of the past two years," the shah was blunt enough to admit a devastating deficit in the government budget. "If all is taken into account [with the exception of Azarbaijan] the deficit between the revenue and the expenses of the central government ... exceeds twenty million kurur [ten million tumans]." Nostalgically recalling the time when the gold reserves in the state treasury were estimated to be eighty kurur [forty million tumans], the shah confessed further that only his "status and dignity" prevented him from declaring bankruptcy. He no doubt deeply felt the pain of the financial losses. "How all of a sudden was all that was accumulated dispersed and all that was collected ruined?" he pondered with a melancholy that conveyed the guilt he must have felt at the memory of Aqa Muhammad Khan Qajar, his plundering uncle and the founder of his dynasty.(1)

There have been few events in the history of nineteenth-century Iran which could match the two rounds of Russo-Persian wars of 1805-1813 and 1826-1828 in their immediate impact and long-term socio-political consequences. Iran's first serious encounter with a powerful Christian neighbor not only resulted in the loss of all prosperous Caucasian provinces but also in economic bankruptcy, precipitated by military spending and war reparations. But still greater losses were in the political realm. Defeat in war cast an unhealthy shadow over the legitimacy of the Qajar monarchy and its claim to be the true defender of the Guarded Domain of Iran, a shadow from under which the ruling house never fully escaped--as it never fully recovered from the payment of five million tumans (equivalent to three million pounds) war reparations imposed upon it by the Russian conquerors.

As has often been noted, the conclusion of the Turkamanchay treaty in 1828 also entailed serious international consequences for Iran since it served as the basis for unequal diplomatic and commercial relations best symbolized by the capitulatory rights secured by the European powers. But beyond the terms of the treaty, the behavior of the powers toward Iran changed dramatically in the aftermath of the war. Superiority in the battlefield was followed by diplomatic pressure at the negotiating table and an enduring air of condescension on all fronts, intensified by the Griboedov affair and the massacre of the Russian mission in Tehran.(2)

Moreover, both the treaties of Gulistan (1813) and Turkamanchay included potentially troublesome articles, as they linked the question of dynastic succession to the support and endorsement of a foreign power. While the Gulistan treaty promised Russian support for any heir apparent that the shah might choose to nominate, the Turkamanchay treaty exclusively recognized Abbas Mirza as the legitimate heir to the throne, an endorsement that guaranteed the succession of the house of Abbas Mirza for the rest of the Qajar period. The intense rivalry of the competing sons of Fath Ali Shah was an underlying theme throughout Fath Ali Shah's reign (1797-1834) and one of the most important causes for renewed hostilities during the second round of the wars with Russia.(3)

Despite all the immediate and long term effects of the Persian defeat, and regardless of the enduring impact on Iran's historical awareness, there were few contemporary observers who cared to record their personal reflections of these tumultuous events. The Persian accounts of the period scarcely went beyond the formal record of official chroniclers. Abd al-Razzaq Dunbuli, Abul-fazl Khavari, Jahangir Mirza Qajar, and shortly after, Riza-quli Khan Hidayat and Muhammad Taqi Sipihr, despite occasionally candid tones, were careful not to offend the reputations of their patrons and relatives. Likewise, court poets and literary figures were anxious to glorify the heroic deeds of their royal patrons, even if it was at the expense of posterity. Fath Ali Khan Saba's Shahanshah-namih, a tale of Fath Ali Shah's splendors composed in conscious competition with Firdawsi's Shah-namih, is no more representative of the consequences of defeat than it is factually accurate. Defeat in the war with Russia was either conveniently turned into victory or treated as a temporary setback in frontier skirmishes with infidels. Most other literary figures of the period barely deviated from Saba's norms, though further research may reveal interesting surprises.(4)

One important exception to this literary divorce from historical reality appears in the works of Mirza Abul-qasim Qaim-maqam (1779-1835), the renowned statesman, essayist, and poet of the early Qajar period. His involvement in Russo-Persian affairs as minister to the powerful crown prince and viceroy of Azarbaijan, Abbas Mirza, his political position in the events leading up to the war, and his crucial role during the course of peace negotiations make his reflections, whether in prose or in poetry, particularly valuable. His literary corpus, which consists of friendly letters (ikhwaniyat), panegyrics (qasidas), essays, prefaces to the works of others, and later his innovative use of popular poetry in his Jalayir-namih, as well as his large collection of official correspondence, all provide insights into the outlook and personality of a distinguished statesman unique among his peers. His literary works often stand in contrast to the aridity of historical accounts and the formulaic cajolery of self-censoring poets. In spite of its significance, however, this particular dimension of Qaim-maqam's work has been frequently overlooked by later readers who were overly charmed by his stylistic marvels.(5)

The fact that Qaim-maqam was an heir to the ancient tradition of the "men of the pen" made his personal reflections on political change all the more interesting. He came from a bureaucratic family with a long history of divan service going back to the Zand and before that to the late Safavid period. As ministers to Abbas Mirza, both his father Mirza Isa (Buzurg) Qaim-maqam and from the mid-1810s Abul-qasim himself, were among the most influential figures in introducing the old Persian bureaucratic and literary ethos to the Qajar state and court, particularly in Azarbaijan. Though they never fully disengaged themselves from nostalgic loyalties to their earlier patrons, the Zands, within the Qajar polity the Qaim-maqams represented a strong voice for state-building and centralization, ministerial authority, and diplomacy--positions which helped transform the military-nomadic spirit of the early Qajars. At least up to 1858 and the abolition of the office of grand vizierate (sidarat) by Nasir al-Din Shah, the Qaim-maqams' influence in the conception and conduct of the Qajar state was paramount, even after Abul-qasim's execution in 1835. Not only Qaim-maqam's own rival and successor, Hajji Mirza Aqasi, but the later Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir and Mirza Aqa Khan Nuri essentially adopted Qaim-maqam's outlook on politics and diplomacy.(6)

Perhaps nowhere is Qaim-maqam's compliance with the old Persian ministerial ethos more evident than in his politics of expediency during the inter-war period between 1813 and 1826. Following a precarious course, Qaim-maqam tried with some success to use the dormant Russian threat to the Azarbaijan frontiers to secure domestically Abbas Mirza's position as heir apparent to the throne as well as viceroy of the most prosperous province in Iran. After the defeat in the first round of the Russo-Persian wars and the subsequent loss of territory, Abbas Mirza could only maintain his political credit, and thus his claim to the still undetermined succession (particularly against his powerful brother Muhammad Ali Mirza Dawlatshah, the governor of Kirmanshah province), by presenting himself as the champion of Persian defense against Russian aggression. Qaim-maqam was the architect of a "no war no peace" policy which drew on religious and national sentiments to rally support behind the crown prince and his military modernization program, with the hope of creating a credible defense against Russia. The same political gesture facilitated funding for military reforms and guaranteed British support as well as royal favor toward the crown prince.

CRUSADE BY THE PEN

As part of Qaim-maqam's policy in 1818, five years after the conclusion of the Gulistan treaty, he published a collection of two fatwas (legal opinions) on the subject of the "holy war" (jihad) delivered by prominent Shiite mujtahids of Iraq, Shaykh Jafar Najafi and Sayyid Ali Tabataba i. The fatwas were originally issued in 1813 in response to an earlier inquiry by Qaim-maqam the father. One of the earliest Persian books printed in Iran, the "lesser" book of the Holy War (Jihadiya [-yi Saghir]) as it came to be known, carried an introductory essay in the name of its compiler, Qaim-maqam the father, but was presumably written by the son, Abul-qasim. Likewise the introduction to a more complete version of an unpublished work on the same subject known as the "greater" book of the Holy War (Jihadiya [-yi Kabir]) was also written by Abul-qasim. Though the content analysis of both Jihadiyas requires a separate study, some attention should be paid to these introductions, for they reflect the younger Qaim-maqam's earliest views on the subject of the...