A handful of correspondents from English, Russian, and French dailies and freelance observers with diverse viewpoints brought to Western audiences the unfolding of a struggle that contradicted stereotypes of indolence and deceit meticulously crafted over centuries and even admitted by Iranians in their own narratives of decline. Now there was a new revolutionary resolve apparent even in the midst of the civil war. Awaiting the final assault on Tehran in his camp outside the capital, Sardar As‘ad, the French-educated Bakhtiyari khan, daringly replied to the English and Russian representatives who were warning him of the dire consequences of storming the capital in one sentence: “on se verra à Téhéran” (see you in Tehran).
Contrary to the cynicism of most European observers, and contrary to perceptions of failure in later historiography, the Emergency Committee, formed just after the conquest of the capital, mustered an impressive list of accomplishments. To restore calm and security to the terrorized capital, the committee put Yeprem Khan (1868–1912), an Armenian revolutionary commander originally from the Ganjeh province (today in the Republic of Azerbaijan) in charge of Tehran’s police department. With his aides among the Rasht fighters, he quickly ended the looting and terrorizing by government troops, by irregulars disbanded after the collapse of the old regime, and by the newly arrived revolutionary forces.
The committee, or Supreme Council, as it came to be known, consisted of the two nationalist leaders and a number of ministers from among the younger bureaucratic elite. Soon to be dominated by Taqizadeh, who had returned from his exile, the committee came to play a major part in the days after the restoration of the constitution. It allocated ministries to its members but avoided appointing a prime minister, and it successfully negotiated the terms for the exile of the deposed shah.
Through the mediation of the two powers, the committee granted the deposed shah a hefty salary and saw that he would be deported along with his entourage. Once a revolutionary cabinet was formed with Sepahdar as premier, the electoral law was swiftly revised, replacing the seven classes of deputies of the first Majles with direct representation. A nationwide election was held, and by November 1909 the second Majles was in session.
More symbolic, and more daring, were the trials held shortly after the nationalists’ victory. To the Supreme Council’s credit, a national amnesty was declared, and there were hardly any vengeful killings. Only a handful of reactionaries were arrested and tried. Of the five who were executed by order of a special tribunal on specific charges of murdering constitutionalist protesters in the sanctuary of ‘Abd al-‘Azim during the final days of the old regime, the most prominent was Shaykh Fazlollah Nuri, the relentless opponent of the constitutionalists. The tribunal held as proof of its verdict Nuri’s fatwa to the effect that killing the protesters in the sanctuary was lawful.
It hence underscored the new regime’s wishes not to punish anyone for ideological orientation. In the final months of the so-called Minor Tyranny, as the period of the civil war came to be known, Nuri had abandoned his earlier call for mashru‘eh in favor of the old absolutist order and avowed support for Mohammad ‘Ali Shah’s suppression of the constitutionalists. With peculiar zeal he orchestrated clerical petitions from the growing number of clergy in Tehran and elsewhere expressing loyalty to the Qajar regime and warning the shah of any compromise that might result in restoration of the constitution.
Hanged by the gallows in Tup Khaneh Square in front of a dazed public witnessing the unprecedented execution of a mojtahed, one of the most prominent Shi‘i jurists of his time, the execution was emblematic of changing times. It seemed as though the kingship and the clergy, the two pillars of the ancient Iranian order, were cracked, if not shattered, by contingencies of a modern revolutionary movement.
Colonial Intrusions and Cultural Downfall
