Naser al-Din Shah Qajar

Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (1831 – 1 May 1896) was the fourth shah of the Qajar dynasty, reigning from 5 September 1848 until his assassination nearly forty-eight years later — the third-longest reign in Iranian history. His reign opened with the reforming ministry of Amir Kabir, saw Iran drawn into the orbit of Britain and Russia through concessions and royal tours of Europe, and produced in the Tobacco Protest a first rehearsal of the Constitutional Revolution that followed under his son. ¹

The day of his birth is split across the sources: Wikidata's value, resting on authority files, and older readings of the English article give 16 July 1831, while the current article gives 17 July 1831 at Kahnamu, a village near Tabriz. This record follows the referenced reading, with the variant stated. ^{2 1}

He was the eldest son of Mohammad Shah Qajar and Malek Jahan Khanom, Mahd-e Olia, and succeeded his father in 1848. His first chief minister was Mirza Taghi Khan, Amir Kabir, who had also been his tutor: in three years the minister reordered the finances, founded the Dar al-Funun college and the newspaper Vaqaye'-ye Ettefaqiyeh, and curbed the power of court and clergy alike. In 1852 the Shah dismissed him and had him executed; with him, in the article's judgement, died the prospect of an independent Iran led by meritocracy rather than nepotism. ¹

The reign brought Iran's first armed ventures and losses of the century, among them the occupation of Herat in 1856 and its evacuation under British pressure, and a long practice of funding the state by tax farming and by selling concessions to Europeans — a railway-and-irrigation concession to Paul Julius Reuter in 1872, withdrawn under popular pressure, and customs revenues thereafter. The Shah built military factories, introduced telegraphy and postal services, built roads, enlarged the army and raised the Russian-trained Persian Cossack Brigade. He was the first Iranian to be photographed, an eager patron of photography who kept a studio at the Golestan Palace, a painter in pen and ink, and a poet whose couplets were recorded by his contemporaries. ¹

Naser al-Din was the first modern Persian monarch to visit Europe formally, travelling in 1873, 1878 and 1889; in London in 1873 Queen Victoria made him a Knight of the Garter, and his diary of that tour was published in several languages. In 1890 he granted Major Gerald Talbot a fifty-year concession over the purchase, sale and processing of all tobacco in the country. The grant provoked a nationwide boycott, sealed by a fatwa of Ayatollah Mirza al-Shirazi declaring tobacco use forbidden, which reached into the Shah's own household; the concession was cancelled. The episode is considered by many authorities the origin of modern Iranian nationalism. ¹

On 1 May 1896, as he visited and prayed at the Shah Abdol-Azim Shrine in Ray, the Shah was shot by Mirza Reza Kermani, a follower of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. He was buried in the same shrine, where his one-piece marble tombstone bearing his effigy originally stood; the funeral took place six months after his death. His final prime minister, Ali Asghar Khan, helped secure the succession of his son Mozaffar ad-Din. ^{1 2}

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