Naser al Din Shah, as his journals attest, did not really like Europe and was fearful of what he saw, particularly Western forms of government. After his second trip he attempted to dissuade Iranians from going abroad, and frowned upon and distrusted those who ventured to do so. He visited Europe three times in his life, saw most of the major capitals, but little resulted except another round of concessions to British entrepreneurs. In 1892 there had been an uprising over the granting of a tobacco concession to a British national and Naser al Din Shah had been forced to cancel it. In 1896, at the time of Naser al Din Shah's death, Iran was hardly different to how it had been in 1848. Nothing had been done to improve the condition of its people and the administrative structure remained antiquated.
On 1 May 1896 Naser al Din Shah, who had ruled Iran as an absolute monarch for over forty-eight years, was assassinated while on a visit to a religious shrine about four miles from Tehran. The length of his rule had made him a father-figure both feared and respected. On this and earlier visits there had been no need for special protection. A presumed petitioner approached him in the shrine and shot the king at point-blank range.
The First Minister, All Asghar Khan Atabak, t carried the half-live body of the Shah to the waiting carriage and told the attendants that the bullet had ju st grazed his shoulder and that the Shah would be fine once he was back in the capital. In the short ride to Tehran, Atabak propped up the body in a sitting position and would occasionally lift the arm of the Shah as if waving to the crowd. The Shah died that night, but not before the Crown Prince had been notified in Tabriz to proceed at once to Tehran and messages had been sent to the British and Russian legations. Naser al Din Shah was succeeded by his son Mozaffar al Din Shah. The transition was smooth in the circumstances.
The assassin, Mirza Reza Kermani, was initially believed to have been either mentally deranged or a religious fanatic and soon after a cursory interrogation was hanged. He was bom in 1847 in Kerman to a minor land-owning family. He attended religious seminaries and became a disciple of the pan-Islamic leader Jam al al Din Afghani. As p u nishm ent for writing a threatening letter to Naser al Din Shah he had been imprisoned and tortured. In assassinating the Shah he carried out his m aster’s famous edict. ’Reciprocate tyranny with tyranny*. The records of his interrogation reveal something extraordinary. His motive for assassinating the ‘Shadow of God’ and the ‘Pivot of the World’, as Qajar kings had come to be called, was neither revenge nor personal grievance. Kermani’s answers reveal his deep revulsion to the corruption of Iranian society.
He had concluded that the only way things could be changed was for despots to be overthrown and eliminated. He blamed the state of affairs on British speculators, corrupt Iranians and especially the king. The Iranian assassin was beginning to think like a European nationalist and revolutionary. Kermani seemed to be questioning the validity of despotic monarchies. He ridiculed the attribution of God-like qualities to the king and wanted an end to the presence and influence of foreign powers in Iran. Naser al Din Shah’s death constituted an end of an era.
Naser al Din Shah’s children were vastly inferior to him. His eldest surviving son, Mas’oud Mirza Zell al Soltan, could not inherit the throne because his mother was a commoner and did not come from the Qajar tribe. The throne passed to the next surviving son, Mozaffar al Din, 1853-1907, who was an aging and ailing man when his father died. He had waited many years to become king and had virtually been ignored by his father for a quarter of a century. He had surrounded himself with some of the most inept people of the day and when he ascended the throne these same people accompanied him from Tabriz to Tehran and became his advisers, ministers and confidants. He was pathologically superstitious. Thunder and storms, which he believed were signs of anger from the heavens against those who had transgressed, terrified him, and he would ask his favourite soothsayer to confirm that they were not directed at him. He was timid and lazy, and greatly resented his father for having lingered on for so long.
From the moment he was proclaimed king his sole and fervent wish was to travel to Europe, ostensibly for health reasons, but first he had to raise money. The Russian bank in Iran, a branch of the Russian Ministry of Finance whose operations were not always conducted on a strictly business-like basis, was happy to extend loans to the king. A first loan of the rouble equivalent of £2,400,000 at 5% interest was raised and the customs receipts of the major ports were pledged as security. Other loans followed to finance a second trip. By 1906 the total financial resources of the government were pledged to the Russians. Before 1900 Iran’s only external debt was £500.000 borrowed from the British Imperial Bank in 1892 to pay off the compensation claimed by the British-owned Tobacco Regie after the cancellation of its concession by Naser al Din Shah. By 1914 the foreign debt had shot up to the equivalent of £6.8 million, of which £2.6 million was owed to Britain. It had risen to the equivalent of £10.6 million by 1919.
Tumultuous Cultural Situation in Qajar Persia
