which established the constitutional monarchy on 5 August 1906 The Constitutional Revolution began in 1905 with protest against a foreign director of customs (a Belgian) enforcing "with bureaucratic rigidity" the tariff collections to pay for a loan to another foreign source (Russians) that financed
Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar's extravagant tour of Europe. The revolutionaries –
bazaari,
ulama,
radicals – argued that Iran's oil industry was being sold to the British, while tax breaks on imports, exports and manufactured textiles were destroying Iran's economy (which had been supported by the bazaar merchants), and that the shah was selling assets to pay interest on the fortune in foreign debt he had accumulated. It ended in December 1911 when deputies of the Second Majlis, suffering from "internal dissension, apathy of the masses, antagonisms from the upper class, and open enmity from Britain and Russia", were "roughly" expelled from the Majlis and threatened with death if they returned by "the shah's cabinet, backed by 12,000 Russian troops". In between there were two different
majles (parliaments), a deposed shah and a 1907 division of the country by Britain and Russia capitalizing on Iran's weak government. A new
fundamental law created a parliament, giving it final approval of all loans and the budget. The majles was endorsed by the leading clerics of
Najaf –
Akhund Khurasani,
Mirza Husayn Tehrani and
Shaykh Abdullah Mazandarani.
Background In the late 19th century, like most of the Muslim world, Iran suffered from foreign intrusion and exploitation, military weakness, lack of cohesion, and corruption. In the 1813
Treaty of Gulistan and the 1828
Treaty of Turkmenchay, Iran lost "Georgia, Armenia, and their Caspian navy" to Russia, "gave up its claims to Afghanistan, and paid an indemnity of three million pounds to the tsar". In the
Treaty of Paris (1857), it agreed to withdraw from
Herat (formerly part of Iran) and signed a commercial treaty with Britain. The lack of a standing Iranian army was part of the problem because the forces that were raised to fight the Russians (for example) were "faction-ridden tribal contingents" and lacked modern artillery. To compensate for his lack of an army, the Qajar Shah would use
loyal tribes, putting down a rebellion by declaring a rebellious city or region
open booty for the tribe, who would then appear to
rape and pillage – a far more destructive means of discipline than arresting and punishing rebels. Major roads between cities that might have appeared to be investments in improving transportation, provided opportunities not for greater trade and prosperity, but for tax collectors to fleece towns along the road, and thus "encouraged the local peasants to settle in more distant regions". A survey for the British Foreign Office reported: Perhaps worst of all the indignities Iran suffered from the superior militaries of European powers were "a series of commercial capitulations." While the sales by the shah of titles, patents, privileges, concessions, monopolies, lands, ... high offices" paid for some improvements, such as a telegraph network and in Tehran a regular police force, a municipal civil service, etc., they were also spent on consumption by the shah's court. Under the
Qajar dynasty (1789–1925), foreign (Western) mass-manufactured products, "especially textiles, undermined the traditional handicrafts, and consequently presented for many bazaars a mutual enemy – the foreigner." In
Isfahan at least, 10% of "the guilds in this city were weavers; not even 1/5 of those survived" competition with imported textiles. Widows and orphans were hurt, and farmers suffered: by 1894 the price they were paid for wheat harvest dropped to 1/6 what it had been in 1871; irrigation systems had fallen into ruin, "turning fields and villages into desert". In 1872,
Naser al-Din Shah negotiated a concession granting a British citizen control over Iranian roads, telegraphs, mills, factories, extraction of resources, and other public works in exchange for a fixed sum and 60% of net revenue. This concession was rolled back after bitter local opposition. Other concessions to the British included giving the new
Imperial Bank of Persia exclusive rights to issue banknotes, and opening up the
Karun River to navigation. and described as a "dress rehearsal for the...Constitutional Revolution", formed from an anti-imperialist and antimonarchist coalition of "clerics, mercantile interests, and dissident intellectuals". and the arrangement threatened the job security of a significant portion of the Iranian populationhundreds of thousands of workers in agriculture and the bazaars. This led to unprecedented nationwide protest erupting first among the bazaari, and then the ulama. In December 1891, the most important religious authority in Iran,
marja'-e taqlid
Mirza Hasan Shirazi, issued a fatwa declaring the use of tobacco to be tantamount to war against the
Hidden Imam, using the strongest possible language to oppose the
Régie (tobacco monopoly). Bazaars shut down, and Iranians stopped smoking tobacco, despite the popularity of tobaccowhich Iranians were said to be less likely to forego than breadthe religious ban was so successful that it was said that women in the
shah's harem quit smoking. In 1905, protests erupted about the imposition of Iranian tariffs to repay the
Russian loan for Mozaffar ad-Din Shah's royal tour. In December of that year, two merchants in Tehran were
bastinadoed for price-gouging. The city's merchants rebelled, closing its bazaar. The clergy followed suit as a result of the alliance formed during the
Tobacco Protest. The two protesting groups sought sanctuary in a Tehran mosque, but the government entered the mosque and dispersed them. The dispersal triggered a larger movement that sought refuge at a shrine outside Tehran. The shah yielded to the demonstrators on January 12, 1906, agreeing to dismiss his prime minister and transfer power to a "house of justice" (forerunner of the Iranian parliament). The
basti protesters returned from the shrine in triumph, riding royal carriages and hailed by a jubilant crowd. During a fight in early 1906, government forces killed a
sayyid (a descendant of
Muhammad). In a skirmish shortly afterwards,
Cossacks killed 22 protesters and injured 100. The bazaar again closed and the
ulama went on strike, a large number taking sanctuary in the holy city of
Qom. Many merchants went to the
British embassy in Tehran, which agreed to shelter the
basti on the grounds of the embassy.
Creation of the constitution During the summer of 1906, about 12,000 men camped in the gardens of the
British embassy in what has been called a "vast open-air school of political science". Demand for a
parliament (
majlis) began, with the goal of limiting the power of the shah. Mozaffar ad-Din Shah agreed on a parliament in August 1906, and the first elections were held that fall. One hundred fifty-six members were elected, the overwhelming majority from Tehran and the merchant class. The
National Consultative Assembly first met in October 1906. The shah was old and frail, and attending the inauguration of parliament was one of his last official acts. Mozaffar ad-Din Shah's son,
Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar, was unsympathetic to constitutionalism; the shah signed the constitution (modeled on the
Belgian constitution) by 31 December 1906, making his power contingent on the will of the people, and died three days later.
The constitution treats an injured man after the
Triumph of Tehran The constitution itself was created by the royal proclamation on 5 August 1906 by Mozaffar ad-Din Shah on "for the peace and tranquility of all the people of Persia." The Quran was the foundation of this constitution while the Belgian constitution served as a partial model for the document. The electoral law of 9 September 1906 defined the regulations for the Elections to the Majlis. (No women, foreigners, men under 25, "persons notorious for mischievous opinions," those with a criminal record, active military personnel, etc. were allowed to vote. Members of the parliament were required to be fully literate in Persian, "Iranian subjects of Iranian extraction," "locally known," "not be in government employment," between the ages of 30 and 70, and "have some insight into affairs of State." The fundamental laws of 30 December 1906 defined the role of the Majlis as a bicameral legislature: the National Consultative Assembly was to be based "on justice." and there was to be "another Assembly, entitled the Senate." The Constitutional Amendment of 1907 declared
Twelver Shi'ism to be the state religion, and called for a council of five high ranking Twelver Shia clerics to ensure that the laws passed by the parliament were not against the laws of Islam.
Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar, the sixth Qajar shah, came to power in January 1907. He opposed the constitution. The British switched their support to the shah, abandoning the constitutionalists. In August of that year, taking advantage of Iran's weakness, the
Anglo-Russian Convention was signed, dividing Iran into a Russian zone in the north and a British zone in the south; the center of the country was neutral.
The Minor Tyranny and the civil war of 1908–1909 In 1908, the shah moved to "exploit the divisions within the ranks of the reformers" and
eliminate the majlis, staging a coup d'état and creating a period in Iranian history called the
Minor Tyranny. It was at this point that
Fazlollah Nori defected from the constitutionalists, helping the shah kill some revolutionaries and bomb the parliament. Iran tried to remain free of Russian influence through resistance (via the
majlis) to the shah's policies. Parliament appointed American lawyer
William Morgan Shuster as Iran's treasurer-general. In response, Russia issued an ultimatum to expel Shuster and suspend the parliament,
occupying Tabriz. After shelling the Majles (parliament) of Iran in the capital Tehran, 40,000 of Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar's soldiers were ordered to attack Tabriz, where Constitutional rebels were holding out.
Sattar Khan was appointed the commander in chief of High Council, i.e. commander of the constitutionalist forces. By April 1909, the Tabriz rebels had lost large numbers of fighters, but succeeded in driving out royalist forces from the city, and Sattar Khan and his lieutenant Bagher Khan had distinguished themselves as heroes. Inspired by this victory, constitutionalists across Iran set up special committees in Tehran, Rasht, Qazvin, Isfahan and other cities, and the powerful Bakhtiyari tribal leaders threw their support to the Tabriz rebels. Constitutionalist forces marched to Tehran, forced Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar's abdication in favor of his young son
Ahmad Shah Qajar, and re-established the constitution in 1909. A further split in the revolutionary movement occurred in 1910 when "a group of guerrilla fighters headed by Sattar Khan, refused to obey a government order to disarm." After a "brief but violent confrontation" in which Sattar Khan was wounded, Yeprem Khan, the recently appointed police chief of Tehran "succeeded in disarming them".
The end The revolution ended in December 1911 when deputies of the Second Majlis, suffering from "internal dissension, apathy of the masses, antagonisms from the upper class, and open enmity from Britain and Russia", were "roughly" expelled from the Majlis and threatened with death if they returned by "the shah's cabinet, backed by 12,000 Russian troops". == Religious debate ==