Iran: Empire of the Mind (34 page)

Mashruteh

On 5 August, nearly a month after the first protestors took refuge in Golhak, and menaced by a potential mutiny among the Cossack brigade, whom he had been unable to pay, Mozaffar od-Din Shah gave in and signed an order for the convening of a national assembly. The Majles convened for the first time in October 1906, and rapidly set about drafting a constitution, the central structure of which, in the form of what were called the Fundamental Laws, were ratified by Mozaffar od-Din Shah on 30 December. The Shah died only five days later. The Constitution was a major event, not just in Iranian history, but in regional and world history. A movement often called the Young Ottomans had established a kind of national assembly in an attempt to recast the Ottoman Empire as a constitutional monarchy in the 1870s, but the experiment had only lasted for a couple of years. The Constitutional movement in Iran had a more enduring effect and even though its revolution is often described as a failure, the Majles itself survived and the movement’s achievements influenced events throughout the rest of the twentieth century. And the initial success of the revolution was achieved by peaceful, dignified protest; almost wholly without bloodshed.

The Majles was not elected on the basis of full, but partial suffrage, on a two-stage system, and represented primarily the middle and upper classes who had headed the protests in the first place. The electors were landowners (only above a middling size), ulema and theological students, merchants and bazaar guild-members with businesses of average size or above. In each region these electors elected delegates to regional assemblies, and those delegates nominated the 156 Majles members (except in Tehran where they were elected directly). Numerically the Majles was dominated by the bazaar
merchants and guild elders, and it divided roughly into liberal, moderate and royalist groupings, of which the moderates were the most numerous by a large margin. Behbehani and Tabataba’i supported the moderates but were not themselves Majles members. Outside the Majles, both in the capital and in the regional centres, the elections stimulated the creation of further political societies (
anjoman
), some of which grew powerful and influenced the deliberations of the Majles itself. Some represented occupations, others regions like Azerbaijan, others ethnic or religious groups like the Jews and Armenians. There were anjoman for women for the first time. There was a great upsurge in political activity and debate across the country, which was shown also by the expansion in the number of newspapers; from just six before the revolution began to over one hundred.
¹⁹
This upsurge was disturbing in itself to the more traditional-minded; especially to the more conservative members of the ulema.

The Majles expected to govern, and to govern on new principles. The constitution (which remained formally in force until 1979, and was based on the Belgian constitution) stated explicitly that the Shah’s sovereignty derived from the people, as a power given to him in trust; not as a right bestowed directly by God. The power of the ulema, and their frame of thought, was also manifest in the constitution. Shi‘ism was declared to be the state religion, shari‘a law was recognised, clerical courts were given a significant role and there was to be a five-man committee of senior ulema to scrutinise legislation passed by the Majles, to confirm its spiritual legitimacy; until the Hidden Emam—whose proper responsibility this was—should reappear. But the civil rights of non-Shi‘a minorities were also protected, reflecting the involvement of many Jews, Babis, Armenians and others in the constitutional project. Jews and Armenians had their own, protected seats for their representatives in the Majles (though the first Jewish representative withdrew after encountering anti-Semitism from other members of the Majles, and the Jews thereafter chose Behbehani to represent them—another important example of a mojtahed sympathetic to the Jewish minority
²⁰
).

All revolutions are about movement and change—that is obvious. They are also about leadership. The Constitutional Revolution marked the
effective end of the Qajar era of government, and promised to usher in a period of government under more regular, legitimate, modern principles. Instead, for a variety of reasons, many of which had nothing to do with the revolution itself, it inaugurated a period of conflict and uncertainty. It was still a major change, a watershed. But in addition to that kind of change, most revolutions also bring their own dynamic of change, change
within
the human groupings and systems of values involved in the revolution. The players in the revolution find their expectations, assumptions and illusions challenged, and in some cases subverted or overturned, by the progress of the revolution itself. As with other revolutions (notably the French) the constitutional revolution provided a playground for the law of unintended consequences.

The prime revolutionary classes were the ulema and the bazaari merchants, and their motivations, if not their mode of expressing them, were at root conservative. They wanted the removal of foreign interference and a restoration of traditional patterns of commerce and religious authority. In the earliest phase of the revolution the ulema were in charge. It was their authority that gave the protests authority, and it was their hierarchy and their system of relationships that organised and coordinated the protest. But once installed in the British legation, it was a question of ‘where next’, and the ulema had no clear answer. It was plain that the simple removal of ministers and objectionable Qajar initiatives was not enough; the Shah’s good faith could not be relied upon, and previous protests had failed to secure future good behaviour. The call for a constitution was not just for a vague construct, the pet project of Westernisers: it was manifest that the country needed to commit itself to a permanent change of direction more definitive than anything tried before. The constitution really was an idea whose time had arrived—even the leaders of the ulema initially embraced it, despite it being plainly a western-inspired idea. But their acceptance (whether or not they realised it straight away) effectively handed over the initiative, and therefore the leadership, to the owners of the constitutional idea—the liberals and nationalists, whose models were secular, western models. Many of these men were members of the state bureaucracy, spiritual heirs of Amir Kabir, eager for reform of the state (especially state finance, but also
education and justice) along Western lines. One could think of them as a new intelligentsia, suddenly grown into importance to rival the traditional intelligentsia, the ulema. They were to be found disproportionally among the Majles delegates from Azerbaijan and Tabriz, and one of their most prominent leaders, Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh, was from that region. Their agenda extended further than just a constitution. It soon became increasingly clear to many ulema that the revolution was taking a direction they had neither anticipated nor wanted.

Mozaffar od-Din Shah’s successor was his son Mohammad Ali Shah, whose instincts were more autocratic than those of his father. He was resolved from the start, although he took an oath of loyalty to the constitution, to overturn it and restore the previous form of untrammelled monarchy. Through 1907 and the first half of 1908 the Majles passed measures for the reform of taxation and finance, and education and judicial matters. The latter were particularly disturbing to the ulema, because they saw their traditional role encroached upon.

The figure of Shaykh Fazlollah Nuri symbolised the change of mind among many of the ulema and their followers at this time. Nuri was a prominent Tehrani mojtahed in 1905, and had supported the protests of 1905-1906. But by 1907 he was arguing that the Majles and its plans were leading away from the initial aims of the protesters, that it was unacceptable that sacred law should be tampered with, also unacceptable that other religious groups be treated equally with Muslims before the law, and that the constitutionalists were importing ‘the customs and practices of the abode of unbelief ’ (i.e. the West). At one point Nuri led a group of supporters into bast at the shrine at Shah Abd ol-Azim. From there his attacks on the constitutionalists grew stronger, and he expressed open support for the monarchy against the Majles, which he denounced as illegitimate. He also railed against Jews, Bahais and Zoroastrians, exaggerating their part in the constitutionalist movement. A group of clerics sent telegrams supporting him from the theological centre in Najaf.
²¹
Other mojtaheds, like Tabataba’i, were more willing to accept Western ideas into the framework of political structures that were to govern human affairs in the absence of the Hidden Emam. But it is probably also fair to say that Nuri understood
better than many of the ulema the direction that constitutionalism was leading, and (from his perspective) the dangers of it. The general ferment of ideas precipitated by the revolution and the years of dissent before it had affected the ulema too, and the ulema had never been a united bloc of opinion (no more than any group of intellectuals ever is). Eventually, another leading cleric (Khorasani) attacked Nuri from Najaf, declaring him to be a non-Muslim.

In a way that is reminiscent of the way that the fighting around Troy in the
Iliad
is paralleled by the disputes of the gods on Mount Olympus, the struggle between radicals and conservatives in Tehran (and elsewhere) was paralleled by a struggle between the mojtaheds in Najaf. Before 1906, the most eminent of these, the marja for many Shi‘a Muslims, was Mohammad Kazem Khorasani, who supported the constitution and the line taken by Tabataba’i when the revolution came. But the ferment caused among the ulema by the revolution was such that as Nuri came to prominence in Tehran, Khorasani lost ground to a more conservative rival, Seyyed Mohammad Kazem Yazdi. This shift took concrete form at prayer: followers sat behind their chosen marja, and one account says that when the struggle was at its height only thirty or so still prayed behind Khorasani, while several thousand took their place behind Yazdi. Later on there was rioting in Najaf between the supporters of the different factions.
²²

In June 1908 the Shah decided that feeling had moved in his direction enough for him to act, and (after his chosen first minister had been assassinated) launched the Cossack brigade in an attack against the Majles. The troops fired shells at the building until the delegates gave in, and the assembly was closed. Many leading members were arrested and executed, while others, like Taqizadeh, escaped overseas. The Shah’s coup was successful in Tehran, but not in all the provinces. In Tabriz, delegates from the constitutionalist regional assembly and their supporters (notably the charismatic ex-brigand Sattar Khan) successfully held the city against the royal governor and his forces.

In 1907, newly allied to each other and France, and concerned at Germany’s burgeoning overseas presence, Britain and Russia had finally compounded their mutual suspicions and reached a treaty over their interests
in Persia. The treaty showed no respect for the new conditions of popular sovereignty in the country (and proved
inter alia
that the apparent British protection of the revolutionaries in their Legation in 1906 had little real significance). It divided Persia into three zones: a zone of Russian influence in the north (including Tabriz, Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan —most of the major cities), a British zone in the south-east, adjacent to the border with British India, and a neutral zone in the middle.

One consequence of the treaty was that the Russians, intolerant as ever of any form of popular movement, felt obliged to send in troops to restore Qajar rule in Tabriz after the Shah’s coup of June 1908. But some of the revolutionaries were able to escape to Gilan and continue their resistance with other locals there. In July 1909 they made a move on Tehran, coordinated with a move from the south, where revolutionaries in Isfahan had allied themselves with the Bakhtiari tribe and successfully taken over the city. Mohammad Ali Shah fled to the Russian legation, was deposed and went into exile in Russia. He was replaced by his young son, Ahmad (though Ahmad was not crowned until July 1914).

The constitutionalists were back in control once more, but the revolution had entered a new, more dangerous phase. A new Majles came in (on a new electoral law, which yielded a more conservative assembly), but the divisions between the radicals and the conservatives had deepened, and the violence that had reinstated the revolution also had its effect; many of the armed groups that had retaken the capital stayed on there. Several prominent Bakhtiaris took office in the government. The ulema were divided and many sided with the royalists, effectively rejecting the whole project of constitutionalism. But within a few days the leader of the conservative ulema, Nuri, was arrested, tried and hanged for his alleged connections with the coup of June 1908. There were a series of assassinations carried out by both wings of political opinion—Behbehani was killed, and later Sattar Khan. The radicals (the Democratic party in the Majles) found themselves denounced by bazaar crowds as heretics and traitors and some of them (including Taqizadeh) were forced into exile. Rumours ran around that there was a Babi conspiracy behind the Democrats, and there were attacks on the Jews (in Kermanshah in
1909, and Shiraz in 1910, instigated as usual by preachers and marginal mullahs—a later, serious riot against the Jews in Tehran in 1922 was put down by Reza Khan
²³
). There was disorder in many provinces, it became impossible to collect taxation, tribal leaders took over in some areas and brigandage became commonplace. To try to address this, and to redress the presence of the Russian-officered Cossack brigade, the Majles set up a gendarmerie trained by Swedish officers.

Prince Charming