Iran: Empire of the Mind (31 page)

The other side of the story is that most Iranians at the time probably preferred it this way. In the smaller towns and villages of the country (where most still lived) the wars in Armenia and Shirvan were a long way off, and there would have been only sporadic (and inaccurate) news of them. The civil wars between the Qajars and the Zands, let alone the earlier revolts in the time of Nader Shah and the Afghans, affected many more Iranians either directly, or indirectly through economic dislocation. Those terrible events were still within living memory, and most Iranians would have been grateful to have been spared them. Under Fath Ali Shah some moderate prosperity returned to these traditional communities.

But the popular agitation for war and the murder of Griboyedov showed the influence of the mullahs, and the closeness of some of them to at least one important strand of popular feeling in the towns (as always, one should be wary of assuming all the mullahs thought the same way—they did not). In later decades, as other European powers demanded, secured and exploited the same privileges as those accorded the Russians at Turkmanchai, popular feeling became more and more bitter at the apparent inability of the Qajar monarchy to uphold Persian sovereignty and dignity.

6

THE CRISIS OF THE QAJAR MONARCHY, THE
REVOLUTION OF 1905-1911 AND THE ACCESSION
OF THE PAHLAVI DYNASTY

Whatever happens will be for the worse, and therefore it is in our interest that as
little should happen as possible

Lord Salisbury, writing about Persian affairs in December 1879

[Aya] ma ra az mum sakhta-and?
Are we made of wax?
Naser od-Din Shah, March 1855
¹

Fath Ali Shah died in 1834, shortly after his son, Abbas Mirza, who had been his designated heir for many years. This meant that another son, Mohammad, took the throne. Mohammad Shah’s accession was supported by both the Russians and the British (they judged, correctly, that he would uphold the treaties that gave them their privileges within Persia), and was achieved peacefully. But his reign brought few benefits for the Persian people. He made little real effort to develop the country or defend its essential interests, despite the increasingly manifest developmental gap between Persia and Europe. His first prime minister was in fact a reformer, but the Shah had him strangled in 1835. Persian merchants began to protest about the way that cheap European products, especially textiles, coming onto Persian markets with low or no tariffs, undercut domestic
craftsmen and destroyed their livelihoods (though other merchants, who made a profit from handling the imports, kept quiet).

Perhaps partly in reaction to the defeat in war, the humiliating treaty of Turkmanchai, and the increasing and unwelcome presence of foreigners and foreign influences, there were attacks on minorities in the 1830s, especially the Jews. These tended to be led, as at other times, by preachers or mullahs of marginal status who (like some religious enthusiasts and ideologues of most faiths through the ages) disregarded the established, humane and dignified precepts of their faith for the temporary popularity that could accrue from extremism and hatred. There was a serious attack by a mob in Tabriz in 1830, which seems to have resulted in the death or flight of most of the previous Jewish population there. It may have begun (like similar attacks in medieval Europe) with a false allegation that a Muslim child had been murdered by a Jew.
²
It was followed by similar attacks elsewhere in Azerbaijan, which led Jews to avoid the whole province thereafter; and there were forced conversions of Jews in Shiraz. A riot broke out in Mashhad in 1839, and many Jews were killed before moderate Shi‘a clergy intervened. The Jews were then forced to convert, or flee.
³
For many years the converts still kept in their own communities, being called
jadidi
; in other places many such converts still observed Jewish rites in private and some later reverted to Judaism (though they risked being accused of apostasy if they did). Later in the century there were similar outbreaks at Babol on the Caspian in 1866, in Hamadan in 1892,
⁴
and elsewhere. Jewish and other travellers recorded that the Jews they saw were generally living in poor ghettoes and subject to daily, low-level intimidation and humiliation (though the position may have improved toward the end of the century in some places at least). There was persecution elsewhere in the Islamic world at the same time, and some have suggested that the impact of European anti-Semitic writings was a factor.
⁵
No doubt only a small minority of Muslims were actively involved in attacks, and there is evidence that some ulema and others did what they could to prevent or limit them; but as in other times and places, it could not have happened at all without the majority preferring
to look away. The Armenians seem generally to have avoided this degree of persecution in this period.

Despite their agreement on the succession, in the time of Mohammad Shah the British and Russians were still rivals in Persia, Afghanistan and Central Asia in what came to be called the Great Game. The British had supported the Persians against the Russians before the war of 1826-1828, and now the Russians encouraged Mohammad Shah to take compensation for the loss of territory in that war by grabbing territory in the east—in Herat and Kandahar (which had been Persian lands as recently as the reign of Nader Shah, and long before). The British disliked the prospect of any encroachment in Afghanistan that might threaten India or make Russian access to India any easier. Mohammad Shah sent troops to Herat in 1837, and besieged the place for a few months,
⁶
but withdrew in 1838 after the British occupied Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf and demanded that he quit Afghanistan. Mohammad Shah made further trading concessions to Britain in a new treaty in 1841.

Hajji Mirza Aqasi, Mohammad Shah’s second prime minister (who had been instrumental in the removal and killing of the first) was pro-Sufiand encouraged the Shah to follow his example. Fath Ali Shah had always been careful to conciliate the ulema, but Mohammad Shah’s Sufi inclinations made him deeply unpopular with them, bringing forward again the ever-latent Shi‘a antigonism toward secular authority.

The Babi Movement, Naser od-Din Shah, and Amir Kabir

Another development during the reign of Mohammad Shah was the appearance in Iran of the Babi movement, which eventually gave rise to the Baha’i religion. This originated around the year 1844 (1260 in the Muslim calendar)—a year that had been awaited with millenarian enthusiasm as the 1,000
^th
anniversary of the disappearance of the twelfth Emam. Followers of a branch of Shi‘ism called Shaykhism had speculated since the eighteenth century that there must be a gate (‘Bab’) through which the Hidden Emam could communicate with the faithful. As the year 1260 approached, some Shaykhis grew increasingly excited that the Bab might be revealed in that year, and when the time came some people identified a
particular, pious young man from Shiraz, Seyyed Ali Mohammad, as the Bab. In May 1844 he declared he was indeed the Bab, and began preaching against the shortcomings of the ulema. His preaching and that of his followers grew more radical, and he was taken into custody. He advocated better treatment of women (and attracted many female followers), that the Islamic ban on interest be lifted, that judicial punishments should be made less harsh and that children should be better treated. From one perspective his teaching looks progressive; from another it appears as little more than the conventional, gentle teaching of the milder strand of orthodox Shi‘ism. But in 1848 he and his followers began preaching that the Bab was the Hidden Emam himself, and that their faith was a new belief, superseding the previous revelation of Islam. This changed the position, putting the Babis and the ulema in direct conflict.

One of the most remarkable and radical of the Bab’s followers was a woman from Qazvin, Qorrat al-Ain, who discarded the veil as a sign that Shari‘a law had been set aside. She was a poetess, debated theology with the ulema and preached the emancipation of women. She was sent into exile in Iraq at one point, but returned. Like the Bab she was arrested, but was able still to speak to her followers while under house arrest.

When Mohammad Shah died in 1848 his 17-year-old son Naser od-Din took the throne, again with the support of the Russians and the British. The boy was thoughtful and intelligent in appearance, with large dark eyes and a dreamy tendency; he could lose himself for hours in books of Persian folk tales.
⁷

But after the accession of the new Shah there were revolts involving Babis in Fars, Mazanderan and in Zanjan, which were crushed by the government with great severity. Following these disturbances, which have been linked to linked to social upheavals elsewhere in the world at this time, the Bab was executed in Tabriz in 1850 (the story is that the firing squad had to shoot twice, because the first time the bullets only cut the ropes binding him, setting him free), and animosity between the Babis and the monarchy escalated rapidly. Three Babis tried to assassinate the new Shah in August 1852—they failed, but there was a harsh backlash thereafter, Qorrat al-Ain was killed by her captors in the same year along
with most of the other leaders of the movement, and the Bab’s followers were viciously persecuted as heretics and apostates. The new faith appeared to be a challenge to both the secular and the religious authorities, and as such stood little chance, despite converting quite large numbers. Many thousands of them died, and others left the country.

The movement continued to grow in exile, and split in the 1860s, with a new leader, Baha’ullah, announcing himself as a new prophet (‘He Whom God Shall Make Manifest’), as predicted by the Bab. Most Babis followed him, and since that time his movement has been known as the Baha’i faith. Within Iran Baha’is have been persecuted and killed in almost every decade since that time.

The story of Qorrat al-Ain and her advocacy of women’s emancipation is an important point in the history of women in Persia; and therefore for the story of Iranian society as a whole. And there are some surprises here. From the viewpoint of the early twenty-first century, with the Islamic regime in power in Iran, and with what is often thought of (not entirely accurately) as a traditional role for women reimposed since the revolution of 1979, one might assume that before the twentieth century all Iranian women, in accordance with that tradition, were closeted at home and never went out except heavily veiled. But this is not at all the case. Before the social changes brought by industrialisation and urbanisation, the structure of society was very different. Before 1900 up to half the population were nomadic or semi-nomadic, and in such societies, tightly integrated and often living at the economic and geographical margin, women’s roles were of necessity more equal and less restricted. Broadly, women ran the domestic arrangements while the men ranged widely looking after the flocks, but with the men away the women had to take important decisions (often as a group) and carry responsibility; and when time came to move, everyone had to take an active part
⁸
. Traditional tribal costumes vary enormously across Iran even today, and are often colourful and eye-catching, with no veil in sight.

Of the remainder of the population, the majority were peasant farmers and labourers. But among these people too, women had an essential economic role and some independence (insofar as anyone in the poorer
classes could properly be thought of as independent). Women had to work hard in the fields and probably did the majority of the routine work, of all but the heaviest sort. Again, a veil of the enveloping
chador
kind was normally quite incompatible with that sort of activity.

Even in the towns and cities, the majority of people were relatively poor and in those households most women would have had to work outside the home. And there were significant numbers of prostitutes, to whom the rules of respectability certainly did not apply. So the set-up we might think of as typical, of heavily veiled women seldom leaving the home and even in the home kept apart from males that were not relatives, was in fact untypical before 1900, and limited to middle-or high-class families in towns (precisely the class that looms large historically, being the literate, book-writing, book reading class — perhaps only 4 per cent of families overall, or less). But that set-up was, or became, an aspiration for many men who could not afford to make it a reality. One could think of the heavy veil as a kind of elite fetish, like some of the fashions of nineteenth-century Europe, which similarly immobilised women; being wholly impractical and incompatible with work of any kind. For a man’s wife to be out of the house and out of his control, especially in the towns (perhaps partly because of the presence of prostitutes in the towns), exposed him potentially to derision and ridicule. But for her, or them, to be kept at home and to emerge only veiled, was expensive and a sign of the man’s status. It would be easy to overlook or underestimate the significance and implications of this trope among men in Iranian society, and elsewhere; rather than being an outgrowth of traditional religion and society (there is little justification for it in the Qor’an or the earliest hadith, which originated in different social circumstances), it may largely underpin them. Possession of material goods had its patterns and its social consequences, but so also did the possession of women.