Fath-Ali Shah Qajar

• 1. Introduction

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  Fath-Ali Shah Qajar was born on the 5th of August 1772 in the city of Damghan, and he died on the 24th of October 1834 as the ruler of an empire that had shrunk in ways that still mark the map today. He spent thirty-seven years on the throne of Iran, and in that time he gave two things to history that contradict each other completely. On one side: a centralized state, a flowering of Persian painting and poetry, and a court so ornate that European diplomats struggled to describe it. On the other: the loss of Iran's Caucasian territories to Russia, signed away in two treaties that Iranians have never forgotten.

  His name before the throne was Baba Khan. He was five years old when he was sent as a political hostage to the court of Karim Khan Zand in Shiraz. He watched his father murdered by Kuklan Turkmens in 1777. He survived capture, political scheming, and the violence of a dynasty still fighting for its life. By the time he was crowned in Tehran on the 19th of March 1798, he had already lived several lifetimes.

  What kind of ruler does a childhood like that produce? Diplomats who met him early described someone vigorous, intelligent, and imposing. Diplomats who met him later spoke of indolence and greed. The truth of Fath-Ali Shah sits somewhere between those two portraits, in the distance between the rock reliefs he had carved next to Sasanian monuments in Ray, Fars, and Kermanshah, and the treaties of Gulistan and Turkmenchay, which stripped Iran of Georgia, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.

• 2. Hostage, Heir, and Kingmaker

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  At age five, Baba Khan arrived at the Zand court in Shiraz, where he found his uncle Agha Mohammad Khan already living as a hostage. That encounter shaped everything. Agha Mohammad Khan had been castrated at a young age, a political mutilation meant to keep him from threatening the throne. He would go on to found the Qajar dynasty anyway.

  After Karim Khan Zand died in 1779, Baba Khan aligned himself with Agha Mohammad Khan, who had returned to Mazandaran and outmaneuvered rivals including Baba Khan's own relative Morteza Qoli Khan. Agha Mohammad Khan then married Baba Khan's mother in Sari, making himself practically a stepfather and guardian to the boy.

  Baba Khan proved his usefulness early. In 1781, he seized Damghan from Qader Khan Arab Bestami, recovering the domain his murdered father had governed. He also married Qader Khan's daughter Badr Jahan. In 1783, a second marriage, this time to Asiya Khanom Devellu in Sari, was arranged by Agha Mohammad Khan as a political settlement with the Yokhari-bash branch of the Qajar tribe. These were not romantic choices; they were treaties written in people.

  Following Agha Mohammad Khan's accession to the throne at Tehran on the 21st of March 1786, Baba Khan was formally named heir and vice-regent. He then served in campaigns against the Zands in southern Iran, winning a narrow victory over the governor of Yazd, Mohammad-Taqi Bafqi, in 1787. By the time his uncle was assassinated in 1797, Baba Khan was already governing Fars province. He moved quickly and took the throne.

• 3. A Court Built for Eternity

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  The coronation on the 28th of July 1797 in Shiraz was the beginning of a reign-long project in self-presentation. Fath-Ali Shah ordered coins minted first in Shiraz and Tehran under the name Soltan Baba Khan, and later as Fath-Ali Shah. Placing his own name on coinage, rather than a Shia Imam's name as tradition dictated, was a deliberate claim to full sovereignty.

  He commissioned extraordinary objects of regalia. Among them were the Takht-e Khurshid, or Sun Throne; the Takht-e Naderi, or Naderi Throne, which later kings also used; and the Taj-e Kiyani, the Kiani Crown, a reworking of the crown his uncle had created. Most of these pieces were studded with pearls and gems.

  Portraiture became a state project under his direction. He is instantly recognizable in all 25 known portraits, mainly because of his immense, deeply black beard, which reached well beneath his narrow waist. One of these portraits is held in the University of Oxford collection. Another, by the artist Mihr Ali, is at the Brooklyn Museum. During his reign, large-scale oil painting and portraiture reached a height previously unmatched under any Islamic dynasty, driven largely by his personal patronage.

  He also ordered rock reliefs carved next to monuments left by the Sasanian Empire in Ray, Fars, and Kermanshah. The Sasanians had ruled Iran from 224 to 651 CE. By placing his own image alongside theirs, he was making a claim not just to Qajar legitimacy but to the entire sweep of Persian imperial history. An inscription from this effort survives at Cheshmeh-Ali in Rey, near Tehran.

  In 1797, he received a complete set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica's third edition, which he read in full. He then extended his royal title to include the phrase "Most Formidable Lord and Master of the Encyclopaedia Britannica." His court culture was known for extremely rigid etiquette, and the Scottish statesman John Malcolm, who met Fath-Ali Shah in 1800, described him as above middle height, fair-complexioned, with regular features and an expression that conveyed quickness and intelligence.

• 4. Two Wars, Two Treaties

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  Iran had controlled Georgia intermittently since the Peace of Amasya in 1555. Russia's annexation of Georgian territories in 1801, following a series of Georgian embassies and a treaty, was read in Tehran as a direct violation of that long-standing order. When Russian General Pavel Tsitsianov attacked and stormed Ganja, massacring many of its inhabitants, Fath-Ali Shah declared war.

  The first Russo-Persian War ran from 1804 to 1813. Early Iranian victories were reversed once Russia shipped in advanced artillery that the Qajar forces could not match. Fath-Ali Shah sought outside help. Britain had signed a military agreement with Iran following the rise of Napoleon, but Britain declined to assist, arguing the agreement applied only to a French attack. France offered an alliance through the Treaty of Finkenstein, and Paris was preparing to help when Napoleon made peace with Russia and the offer evaporated.

  In January 1813, Russian forces under General Pyotr Kotlyarevsky stormed Lankaran. Russian troops also invaded Tabriz. On the 24th of October 1813, in the village of Gulistan, Mirza Abolhassan Khan Ilchi signed the Treaty of Gulistan on Iran's behalf; Nikolay Rtishchev signed for Russia. The treaty text had been drafted by the British diplomat Sir Gore Ouseley. Iran surrendered Georgia, Dagestan, most of present-day Azerbaijan, and additional Caucasian khanates. Russia in return pledged to support Abbas Mirza as crown prince.

  Thirteen years later, in 1826, Fath-Ali Shah decided to try again. Crown prince Abbas Mirza led an army of 35,000 across the border on the 16th of July, recapturing Lenkoran, Quba, and Baku in the first year of fighting. Then the tide turned. In May 1827, Ivan Paskevich, Governor of Caucasus, invaded Echmiadzin, Nakhichevan, and Abbasabad. On the 1st of October, he captured Erivan. Fourteen days later, General Georgiy Eristov entered Tabriz. By January 1828, Russian forces had reached the shores of Lake Urmia.

  Abbas Mirza signed the Treaty of Turkmenchay on the 2nd of February 1828. The formal signing took place on the 21st of February, with Hajji Mirza Abol Hasan Khan on the Iranian side and Ivan Paskevich on the Russian. Iran lost the Erivan khanate, the Nakhchivan khanate, the Talysh Khanate, and the districts of Ordubad and Mughan. Iran also pledged to pay Russia 10 million in gold. The treaty required the resettlement of Armenians from Iran to the Caucasus, and the liberation of Armenian captives who had been brought to Iran as far back as 1795.

• 5. Diplomacy, Death, and the Shah Diamond

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  The aftermath of the wars brought problems that could not be solved on a battlefield. In 1829, Alexander Griboyedov, the Russian diplomat and playwright, was killed in the Massacre at the Russian Embassy in Tehran. The killing threatened to destabilize Iran's already weakened position with St. Petersburg.

  Fath-Ali Shah sent his grandson Prince Khosrow Mirza to Tsar Nicholas I to deliver a formal apology. The prince also carried one of the largest diamonds from the royal crown jewels: the Shah Diamond. The gesture worked. The crisis passed without another war.

  On the 25th of October 1833, Fath-Ali Shah's favorite son and crown prince, Abbas Mirza, died. He had been the military and diplomatic face of the later reign. Without him, Fath-Ali Shah named his grandson Mohammed Mirza as crown prince. Fath Ali died exactly one year after Abbas Mirza, on the 24th of October 1834. He was buried in a tomb at the Fatima Masumeh Shrine in Qom.

  The struggle for the throne that followed his death was one of the complications his advisors had long feared. He had, after all, reportedly fathered more than a hundred sons. A book published in England in 1874 claimed that Fath-Ali had the largest number of children ever born to a man; the source acknowledges that claim is not accurate, noting that Moulay Ismail ibn Sharif of Morocco, who lived a century earlier, is generally considered to hold that record.

• 6. Legacy in Stone and Ink

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  The 19th-century Persian writer Fath-Ali Khan Saba was hired to produce the Shahanshahnama, a chronicle of Fath-Ali Shah's reign and his wars with Russia, commissioned between 1806 and 1810. Inspired by the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, it is widely regarded as the most important Persian book written during the Qajar period. The painter Mohammad Hasan Afshar was among those who contributed to the visual record of the period.

  Fath-Ali Shah was the last Qajar ruler to dress in the traditional manner, wearing the decorated Persian long robe called the qaba, a crown, high heels, and the beard that appears in every surviving portrait. In a portrait from The David Collection dated 1811, he holds a jeweled sceptre in his left hand while his right hand rests on the hilt of a sword or Persian jambiya dagger at his belt.

  He used both the ancient Persian title shahanshah, meaning King of Kings, and the Turco-Mongol title khaqan, meaning khan of khans. The dual titling was deliberate, positioning him as ruler of both the settled Persian imperial tradition and the tribal world from which the Qajar dynasty had risen.

  British, French, and Russian diplomats are the main outside sources for judging his character. Early in his reign they found him vigorous and sharp. Later dispatches described extreme indolence and avarice. The most vivid piece of court gossip passed down by these observers involves a marble harem slide reportedly constructed at his order, which the diplomatic record describes in terms that could hardly appear in a state document.

  The tax register from 1800 to 1801 listed only Sabzevar and Neyshabur as actually paying taxes to the government in Khorasan; the rest of the local leaders paid nothing to the state. That gap between the grandeur of his court and the actual reach of his authority is perhaps the most honest summary of his reign. The two treaties he signed remain the standard by which Iranians measure him, and the rock reliefs he placed beside the Sasanian carvings at Rey and Kermanshah are still visible today.