Twentieth-Century Iran
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Hossein Amirsadeghi, Twentieth-Century Iran, bahai-library.com.
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TWENTIETH-
CENTURY
IRAN
Edited by
Hossein Amirsadeghi
Assisted by
R. W. Ferrier

_,
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HEINEMANN: LONDON
William Heinemann Ltd                                          Introduction
15 Queen Street, Mayfair, London W1X 8BE
by Sir Denis Wright, GCMG
LONDON    MELBOURNE       TORONTO
JOHANNESBURG      AUCKLAND
The remarkable changes and developments that have occurred in Iran
since the present Shah proclaimed the first Six Points of his reform
programme in January 1963 need to be studied not only against the
background of the innovations introduced by his father, Riza Shah
Pahlavi, but also against the chaotic conditions which preceded the
First published 1977
coup d'etat of 21February1921. This dramatic episode marked the begin-
© Hossein Amirsadeghi 1977           ning of the end of the old Persia of the Qajar Shahs, though it was not
SBN 434 01924 4
until April 1926 that Riza Khan crowned himself Shahanshah, King of
Kings, in the Gulestan Palace and thus founded a new dynasty in his
country's long and chequered history.
If the Qajars had failed it was partly because during their reigns Iran
lay isolated from the outside world by reason of geography and poor
communications. Intermittent and limited contact with the West meant
that there was little urge to abandon age-old Islamic ways in favour of
the new ideas and inventions which had transformed the nations of
Western Europe and placed power in their hands. None of the Qajar
Shahs possessed the imagination or drive of a Peter the Great. Besides, the
Qajars suffered from Anglo-Russian rivalry which tended to stifle any
ideas which Iranian visionaries or European entrepreneurs might have
for the economic development of Iran. There would have been railways
in Iran long before 1927 but for this rivalry.
When Riza Khan seized power in 1921 he was determined to free his
country from foreign tutelage. He also aimed to establish a strong central
government backed by a national army and launch Iran on an industrial
path. By the time of his abdication and exile at the end of 1941 he had
largely succeeded in achieving his first two objectives but had only
taken a few halting steps on the road towards industrialization. The
Anglo-Russian occupation of Iran during the Second World War,
subsequent Russian intrigues in Azarbaijan and Kordestan, and the
chaotic aftermath of the war caused the most serious difficulties for the
immature Iranian economy and confronted a young and inexperienced
new Shah with daunting problems. For some years the country seemed
Printed and bound in Great Britain by    to lose direction. Additionally the oil crisis, precipitated by Dr Musaddiq's
Morrison & Gibb Ltd, London and Edinburgh   nationalization of the oil industry, deprived Iran of much-needed oil
v
2                    TWENTIETH-CENTURY IRAN                                          1900-1921: THE LAST YEARS OF THE QAJAR DYNASTY                         3
Iran was no more one society than it was one economy; like many other        ment. First, modern governments appropriate as national revenue between
traditional societies it was a mosaic of social units. The village, the tribe   twenty-five and fifty per cent of national income; in 1900 the Iranian
and the urban quarter or guild provided species of economic association         government took only two per cent. Second, the ultimate guarantee of
for their members but these groupings were endorsed or intersected by           state authority is its army; the Iranian army was almost a music-hall joke
other allegiances. Iran was a country of many languages: Persian (Farsi)        and the only effective force at the disposal of government in 1900 was the
was spoken by less than half the population; fifteen per cent spoke Persian     Persian Cossack Brigade, a force of l 500 men which had been founded in
dialects so distinct as to be unintelligible to the main group; twenty-five     1879 and which employed Russian officers and NCOs. In such a situation
per cent spoke Turkish languages; and the remainder spoke a variety of          the Iranian government could not coerce but was obliged to bargain with
languages including Kurdish, Arabic and Baluchi. Nor, despite a common          its subjects and its own local governors. The Iranian political system was
misapprehension, was Iran religiously united. It is true that the great         no more than a giant bazaar. But by 1900 the bargaining system was
majority of Iranians belonged to the so-called Twelver Shiite branch of         beginning to break down.
Islam, although there were substantial numbers of Sunnis as well as some           In 1900 Iran was ruled by the Qajar dynasty which had seized power at
non-Muslims (Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Babis). But Twelver             the end of the eighteenth century. It is fashionable to dismiss the later
Shiism is of its nature peculiarly prone to factionalism for the ultimate       Qajar rulers as essentially frivolous, absorbed in the enjoyment of the
source of authority, the Imam, is held to be in seclusion-the Hidden            present pleasures of this world and in the contemplation of the prospec-
Imam-and there is no agreement on who should supply his place. In the           tive pleasures of the next. This view is unjust. It is true that the Qajars
course of the eighteenth century most Twelver Shiites came to accept the        adhered to the ancient but currently unfashionable view that kings should
guidance offered by the consensus of opinion among the mujtahids, the           enjoy kingship but they did possess other merits in the eyes of their
most eminent Shiite theologians of Iraq and Iran. Nevertheless there was        subjects: they were pious; they strove to preserve some sort of order in
still ample room for argument about which opinions should be given most         Iran; and they resisted pressure from Russia and Britain. They also made
weight in establishing the consensus and many hostile factions were             intermittent efforts at reform-to strengthen their army and administraformed such as the Usulis, the Akhbaris, the Shaykhis and the Muta-             tion, to collect more taxes and to stimulate economic developmentsharis. 2 In addition the various Sufi orders, notably the Nimatullahi order,   although with no great conviction; and these would-be reforms were
provided important foci of loyalties. 3 Thus economic, linguistic, religious    greeted without enthusiasm by other groups within the Iranian political
and other associations (such as the numerous, popular wrestling clubs,          establishment to whom they appeared as curtailments of their own
zurkhanehs) formed the bases of the social life of Iranians and it was          privileges.
through such associations (and above all through his own family) that               The Iranian political establishment included three groups. First were
the Iranian sought both entertainment and all those services which are          those whose influence derived from their position in the governmental
now provided by the state: education, law and security against the              system: the Qajars, their numerous progeny and the bureaucrats reared in
consequences of sickness and old age. In the nature of things such              that long tradition of Persian administration and embodying more than
associations could not bear extensive burdens; insecurity was endemic           any other group something which was peculiarly Persian. Second were
and less than one in twenty Iranians could read or write.                       those who commanded a religious following: the ulema. Third were
The Iranian political system was characterized by that dominant trait of     those whose power derived from their local influence as great landlords or
traditional societies--rninimal government. Iranian governments were            tribal chiefs. The categories overlapped: ulema and local notables sought
not expected to do more than to provide the conditions in which Muslims         government jobs; Qajars and bureaucrats sought local influence; and all
could live as good Muslims. All those economic and social functions which        coveted landed wealth. But all these men possessed wealth, patronage or
are discharged by modem governments were left to non-governmental               position which could command followers and therebyinfluence thepolitical
agencies; only in the nineteenth century were such basic functions as            system. The successful working of that system depended on some coldefence and the conduct of foreign affairs assumed by the central govern-        laboration between them and it was the increasing want of such collaborament and then only imperfectly; in earlier periods they were confused            tion which imperilled the system at the end of the nineteenth century.'
with border problems and left to the appropriate provincial governors.              Two factors menaced the ancient political consensus. The first was the
Two simple tests may serve to illustrate the weakness of Iranian govern-         influence of the West. This influence manifested itself directly through the
TWENTIETH-CENTURY IRAN                                             1900-1921: THE LAST YEARS OF THE QAJAR DYNASTY                         5
political and economic pressures applied differently by Britain and                 oblige him. 6 'The real friend', commented the British Prime Minister
Russia and indirectly through the striking example of the success of                Lord Salisbury, sadly, 'is the friend from whom one can borrow.'7 I~
European economic, social and political ideas and techniques. Iranians              January 1900 Iran borrowed £2·4 million at five per cent, although diswere led to try to exploit the new economic opportunities and to agitate            counts reduced the sum to c.£2 million and increased the true interest rate
for changes in Iranian institutions in order to bring them closer to those          to nearly six per cent. Three-quarters of the loan went to pay off old
of the successful world of Europe. The second factor was the effort of the          debts and the remainder was spent on pensions for Qajar supporters and
Qajar state to tilt the traditional balance of political influence in the favour    on an expensive European tour by the Shah. 8 In April 1902 Iran came
of the state itself. Even at the beginning of the nineteenth century it             back for another £1 million loan from Russia although skilful Iranian
seemed apparent to many Iranians that the traditional institutions would            diplomacy frustrated Russia's attempt to attach a condition that would
not protect Iran against the pressure of Europe, particularly the advance           have given Russia the right to construct a pipe line to bring Baku oil to the
of Russia from the north. Iran required a new, European-style, disciplined          Persian Gulf. Nevertheless Iran did concede to Russia a veto on railway
army both to unite Iran and to preserve it from attacks from outside. Such          construction in Iran as a condition of the loans. Before the end of l 902 the
armies cost money however and Qajar resources were pitifully small:                 new loan was exhausted, helped by another visit by the Shah to Europe,
virtually all the land tax that was not misappropriated was spent in the            and in April 1903 it was Britain's turn to aid the Iranian government
provinces and the central government was obliged to rely upon customs               to the tune of £200,000, guaranteed, like the Russian loans, on certain
duties, the sale of concessions and whatever it could extract from its own          revenues.
officers as the price of their appointment to or continuance in office. The            The money raised by foreign loans had been frittered away. Admittedly
state needed to obtain more wealth either by appropriating a greater share         it was not much. By comparison with that of Egypt and the Ottoman
of existing wealth through increased taxation, or by stimulating economic           Empire, or judged in relation to the wealth of Iran, the Iranian debt was
activity and hoping that its own revenue would rise in proportion, or by            trifling; it was significant only in relation to the government's minuscule
borrowing. In practice the Qajars had little success with any of these.            revenues. But what had been borrowed had been wasted. The only
Partly this lack of success was due to foreign pressure: Russia opposed            department of government which had been reformed was the customs
concessions which would benefit Britons and Britain opposed concessions            administration which, as the only major source of central government
which would benefit Russians. Partly it was due to the inadequacies of the         revenue, was of particular importance to the state, the more so as future
Qajars themselves and their willingness to throw over reforming ministers         receipts were mortgaged to pay for the loans. The customs had been put
and their policies when the going became rough. Partly it was due to               in the care of Belgian experts, led by Joseph Naus, who sought to make
internal opposition to change, especially on the part of the ulema who             the collections more efficient and to increase their yield by raising duties
regarded innovations as un-Islamic as well as being a threat to their own          f~om the standard five per cent to which Iran had been held by treaty
interests and who commonly secured the support of court factions. Fierce           smce 1828. In 1903 new customs agreements permitted an increase in
clashes took place within the Iranian political elite such as those which         tarifs although British Indian merchants complained that imports from
occurred over the mighty economic concession given to Baron Julius                India were unfairly penalized and joined their criticisms to the vociferous
Reuter in 1872 and over the monopoly on tobacco given to a British                complaints of Iranian merchants. But the unpopular Belgians persisted in
company in 1890. In both cases the Qajar ruler, Nasir al-Din Shah                 their efforts to improve revenue yields and extended their reform pro-
(1848-<)6) was forced to give way. 5                                              posals to the general finances of the Iranian government, thereby menac-
Nasir al-Din Shah was assassinated in 1896 by a follower of the Persian        ing the interests of all those groups, notably the ulema, who evaded
Pan-Islamic propagandist, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and was succeeded by            payment of revenue due on their lands.
his son Muzaffar al-Din Shah (1896--1907) in whose reign the conflict                 Hostility to the foreign loans, to the concessions, to the customs
within the Iranian political system came to a head. Muzaffar, a weak,             reforms, to the extravagances of the court and to such un-Isiamic
gentle man, who was known in Paris as 'mauvaise affaire de Din', was              practices as wine drinking manifested itself ever more strongly in Iran and
devoted to religion and cats but ignorant of government and diplomacy.            frequently vented itself in attacks on non-Muslim minorities, especially
He sought a foreign loan and after long negotiations with Britain had             the Babis, who could not claim foreign protection. Popular manifestations
failed to produce a satisfactory result, found Russia more willing to             also took the form of bread riots, not infrequently caused by speculators
80                    TWENTIETH-CENTURY IRAN

an agreement was reached with the Iranian government, ratified in
October 1954, on the then generally established 50 :50 profit sharing basis.
Iranian oil again took its place in world markets.
Domestically, two immediate measures seemed to point to a serious
interest in economic and social reform. First, the Seven Year plan was
revived and Abdul Hasan Ebtehaj appointed as director. 46 If the
principles of the plan could be put into action it meant that some Iranians
believed, as expressed by E. A. Bayne in a university lecture, that man can
change his environment. Second, the Shah resumed the sale to the peasants
of lands inherited from his father which he had begun in 1951 but which
had been suspended by Musaddiq.
On another level, too, a new era began. The Shah determined to rule
as well as reign with a thoroughly restructured national army as his base.
In the course of rooting out pockets of opposition to the regime, the scale
of Tudeh infiltration was discovered. Over 500 members had penetrated
the army officer corps. It was alleged that this network had planned a coup
by which Musaddiq would have been succeeded by Riza Radmanesh, a
long time promoter of the revolutionary cause in Iran. Riza Shah had
imprisoned him for communism in 1938.
These revelations and the continued uncertain political atmosphere
made any predictions about Iran's future hazardous. In 1955 a member of
the Fidayan-i Islam shot at Prime Minister Ala. 47 His assailant and other
Tehran, c. 1895. (By courtesy of BP Archives)
members of the Fidayan-i Islam were executed in January, 1956 along
with Razmara's assassin. Throughout 1955 and 1956 sentences of death or
imprisonment were passed on numerous army officers and others with              Khorramshar (formerly Muhammarah) in the early 1920s. (By courtesy of BP Archives)
opposition views-Tudeh or religious. The anti-Bahai riots in May, 1955
gave a good indication of the power still exerted by the mullas. In spite of
all this, there were many signs which pointed, certainly from 1956, to the
Shah's taking a firmer grip on the conduct of affairs, foreign and domestic.
In foreign policy Iran seemed unreservedly pro-Western. But in the
1950s some evidence suggests vacillation on the part of the Shah. It
would take nearly ten years to transform him into the more confident ruler
he became. In 1955 the Baghdad Pact (CENTO after 1959) offered the
security of formal association with the West. Despite strong Turkish
pressure, the Shah hesitated, not because of lack of attraction on his part
to the Pact but because of high level ministerial opposition, the lack of
popular support in Iran, and the refusal of the British and American
governments to give the guarantees he sought. Still, in February, 1959,
Iran joined.
The terrible lessons of the Iraqi revolution of 1958 profoundly affected
· Iran. The fear of increased and hostile Egyptian influence there and the
continued Russian propaganda~ combined with other factors~ caused the
186                  TWENTIETH-CENTURY IRAN                                              PERSIAN SOCIETY: TRANSFORMATION AND STRAIN

heavily as in Mehriz and Shahrbabak (near Yazd) where the farmer                  Safavi made that form of Islam the state religion as a tool of national intesupplying oxen, labour, seed, manure, and storage might still only keep           gration and anti-Ottoman mobilization. Previously the four Sunni schools,
half to two-thirds of the harvest, and in the Bafq area only a third. 67 With     the several Shiite sects and the various popular Sufi movements competed
and reform, the boneh system fell apart: it required the abyar-kadkhoda-         for followers and achieved dominance in localized areas rather than
arbab (work team leader, village headman, landowner) authority structure.         nationally. n Claiming religious as well as political leadership, the Safavids
In the Veramin villages attempts to reconstitute it on a voluntary basis          endowed shrines and madressehs and used ulema in official positions to
have failed. In the villages of Yazd, however, which have long been owned         promote a standardized state religion. 72 There were, however, many ulema
by small holders, shares in a common irrigation system together with              who were not integrated into the state, Iran remaining in this and other
endogamous marriage patterns and late division of inheritance allowed a           respects less centralized than its Ottoman rival; and a strong tradition was
relatively harmonious quasi-joint land-holding system to emerge. This is          maintained by the ulema of independence and claim to moral supremacy
clearest among Zoroastrian villages where much land was made vaqj (a              over worldly politicians and the ulema in the latter's pay. After the
religious endowment) and supported periodic communal feasts intended              Safavids, Nadir Shah (1736-47) attempted to play down Shiism,73 but it
to ensure that even the poorest members of the village survived. Similar          had become too well established, and the Qajars (1785-1906), as outlined
communal feasts accompanied Muslim village preachments (rauzeh). 68               by Hamid Algar, were forced to appeal to Shiism and the ulema in their
Whatever has been lost, whatever temporary problems of new experi-             attempts to rebuild the state. In the nineteenth century the ulema became
ments, the issue that must worry planners is the decline in productivity in       spokesmen against the concessions being given the Russians and English.
many areas and particularly the $1,400 billion food import bill last year, 69     The fact that the latter preferred to work through their coreligionists or
and the related inability of the rural population to provide a sufficiently       nationals made charges of colonialism in terms of attacks on Islam credible,
increasing demand for domestic industrial production. 70 (See Chapter 6.)         and worked to set off a number of riots against these minorities. 74 The
most traumatic of the 'attacks on Islam' was the rapid growth of the Babi
-later Bahai-movement, which tried to combine modernization with
4. Islam, Religion and Civil Society                                            fundamentalist assumptions about prophecy, divine guidance and redemption; charged with heresy, apostasy (a capital crime), and treason
After the now fading tribal-urban dualism, and the central economic
(colonialist agents), blood flowed as late as 1956, and still today even
reorganization, perhaps the third issue in Iran's modern nation-building
relatively well-educated middle class Muslims will launch into a string of
effort is religion. Modernists do themselves a disservice when they make a
obscenities and curses against Bahais at the slightest excuse.
simple identification of religion with outmoded tradition: the different
The position of the ulema as defenders of the Persian Islamic identity
styles of religious behaviour provide an extremely useful guide to cleavages
was solidified by the various battles of the nineteenth century, their parin the social structure. Not only has Islam become a major idiom of proticipation in the Constitutional Movement to remove a monarchy which
test against the stresses and disruptions that modernization involves, but
had bondaged Iran financially to foreigners, and their continued fight
religion plays at least four other socially important roles: it is a means of
afterwards against imperialism and the introduction of a secular society.
organizing local communities (villages and urban neighbourhoods); it has
Part of the legacy of their success remains in the provisions of the Iranian
served in the past as the cultural environment of the intelligentsia and still
Constitution that five mujtaheds may veto legislation conflicting with the
provides symbols of self-identity as well as symbols for metaphysical consharia; that freedom of the press and education be limited where it contemplation; it has been used by the state to bolster claims to legitimacy.
flicts with Shiism; that King, judges and cabinet ministers be restricted to
The role of minority religions, of which Iran has a sparkling varietythose of the Jafari Shiite faith; and that only four religions be granted legal
Armenians, Assyrians, Bahais, Ismailis, Jews, Sunni Muslims, Zororecognition (Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism; but not the
astrians, and Sufi groups-must be viewed within the context of these four
largest minority: Bahaism).
dynamic roles played by the majority Jafari Shiite Islam.
De facto freedom of religion is guaranteed today by strict enforcement
of the civil order by the police and gendarmerie. The Shah and the
a. Religion and the Legitimacy of the State                 .                   bureaucracy are committed to a separation of religion from politics and
Most Iranians are Jafari or Twelver Shiites because in 1501 Shah Is           - relegation of the former to the private sphere. Riza Shah not only system-
-- Twentieth-Century Iran (Used by permission of the curator)