Feth Ali Shah

Fath Ali Shah took part in the campaigns of Aga Muhammad and was considered a good general. At the time of the shah's murder, the heir to the throne was the ruler of Fars and was in Shiraz . With a small army, he hastened to Tehran . The candidates for the Shah’s throne were also made by the brother of Feth Ali Shah - Hussein-Kuli Kajar, also Sadek Khan Shekkaki, the brother of Aga-Mohammed Shah - Ali-Kuli Khan Kajar (he was soon blinded) and the son of Zaki Khan Zenda - Muhammad Khan ^[1] .

Hussein Kuli Khan twice rebelled against his brother. Appointed ruler in Kashan , he cunningly captured Isfahan and began to mint a coin on his behalf. Suleiman Khan Kajar helped the young Shah subdue him. Hussein recognized the power of Feth Ali and, at the request of his mother, was appointed ruler of Shiraz . Subsequently, he opposed the Shah, demanding that not only Shiraz and Kerman , but also Isfahan be transferred to his administration, for which he was even deprived of Fars , whose ruler was appointed Suleiman Khan Kajar.

Sadek Khan Shekkaki with the support of the Kurdish khans managed to capture Iranian Azerbaijan , reach Kazvin and gain a foothold in it. Fearing a collision with the approaching troops of the Feth-Ali Shah, Sadek Khan fled to Serab , and, having expressed humility, got this city under control. Soon, Sadek Khan, together with the governors of Khoy and Tabriz, Jafar Kuli Khan Dumboli and Muhammad Kuli Khan Afshar, opposed the Kajars , but the rest were defeated by the army of Suleiman Khan Kajar Nezam od Odoule, and their possessions and all property were confiscated.

Muhammad Khan Zend ruled Behbekhan and Kazerun : with the support of relatives and lurs, he took possession of Isfahan for a short time and confiscated horses and goods from the merchants in the population. The Qajars had to mobilize significant forces to break the Zend resistance. Mohammad Khan escaped, but was killed by Hussein Khan in Dizfühl , blinded, and sent to Fatah Ali Shah. Anti-Cajar rebellions flared up everywhere and testified to the separatist sentiments of large feudal lords. Only in 1798, Fatah Ali Shah, with the support of Haji Ibrahim and Suleiman Khan Kajar, managed to prevail over his opponents ^[1] .

Feth-Ali-Shah was proud of his Kajar origin and was an adherent of the Turkic language, in which he also wrote poetry ^[2] . Within the state, the consolidation of the power of the Qajar dynasty was achieved by the fact that the positions of governors were entrusted to numerous members of the Shah’s house (Feth Ali Shah had 150 sons and 20 daughters).

The reign of Fatali Shah ultimately brought in sufficient order and good governance, which made it possible for some economic recovery. Modern Europeans criticized the early Qajars for corruption, cruelty and ineptitude, but despite the fact that by the standards of European ideas about how the state should be governed, there were vices in the bureaucracy, Iran Fatali Shah was more calm and prosperous than he was in any the period after the power of the Safavids ceased to exist ^[3] .

The heir to the throne, the talented Abbas-Mirza , was brought up under the influence of the British Embassy, ​​which under Feth-Ali-Shah began to permanently reside in Iran, and when, according to the custom that was now established, he received Iranian administration, he was also subjected to Russian influence. It was hoped that he would decisively move Iran forward and introduce him to European culture, but he died a year before the death of Feth Ali Shah, and the throne went to Mohammed Shah . In addition, the shah left several dozen children, among whom were a number of statesmen, including Hassan Ali Mirza and Minister of Science Alicola Mirza Kajar .

In the area of ​​foreign policy under Feth Ali Shah, the influence of Russia and Great Britain on Iran began. After Georgia’s annexation, Russia also annexed the Baku , Cuban and Derbent khanates, and after a nine-year war ( 1804–1813 ), both the three named khanates and the rest of Georgia, Imereti , Mingrelia , formally ceded to Russia under the Gulistan Peace Treaty ( 1813 ). as well as Dagestan , Shirvan , Sheki , Ganja , Karabakh and Talysh .

Meanwhile, Britain, worried about the actions of Napoleon in Egypt and his embassy ( 1807 ) in Tehran , began to assure Iran, which was forced to ask for help from France , sending its ambassador to Napoleon and concluding a Franco-Persian alliance, signing the Finkenstein Treaty on May 4, 1807 in his friendship. However, during the Russo-Persian war (1826-1828), England did not help Iran in any way under the pretext that Iran was the first to launch offensive operations.

In the Turkmanchay peace ( 1828 ), the Erivan and Nakhichevan khanates with the capital of the Armenian patriarchate Etchmiadzin were transferred to Russia, while Great Britain at the same time considered it necessary to completely pay off all allied duties at the cost of a small amount. Feth Ali Shah was very happy when the following year Russia was satisfied with a humble apology for the massacre at the Russian embassy in Tehran and the murder of A. S. Griboedov .

Towards the end of Fatali Shah’s reign, the rhetoric of rebuilding the Safavid Empire (1501-1722), common in the annals of the early Kadjar era, was drowned out by a series of conflicts with the expanding Russian empire on the northern borders. In the West, formal discussions about the border took place in the 1840s, and involved not only the British and Russians, but also the Ottoman state and a number of pastoral nomadic and / or tribal groups along the border. Therefore, Kajar’s imperial ambitions focused directly on the uncertain status of territories in Greater Khorasan , where a number of Turkic khanates were increasingly clamped by expanding empires on their borders. Attempts to expand the Qajar imperial project, it seems, were known to the Bukhara emir at least by 1830. Indeed, Mohan Lal believed that the emir of Nasrullah Khan was the main obsessed with Kajar expansion into his lands. He explicitly describes the emir’s fear of the military power of the expansionist neighbors, but identifies the Kajar empire as a particularly significant threat so that “at the moment, it seems that not one of the enemies bothers him in the least or excites him (emir Nasrullah khan ) , with the exception of Persia. " Its informants contrast the Bukhara army with the “courage of the Russian and Persian armies, which the emir is extremely afraid of” , and the “power” of Kadzharov with the “weakness” of the rulers of Khorasan and Turkestan . This forgotten imperial project in Greater Khorasan and the accompanying Kajar imperial discourse remained buried under the irresistible power of the Russian and British empires ^[4] .

•  

  Hood. Mihr Ali , approx. 1806, Louvre Museum , Paris

•  

  Mihr Ali, 1809-1810, State Hermitage Museum , St. Petersburg

•  

  Mihr Ali, 1813-1814, Hermitage, St. Petersburg

•  

  Mihr Ali, approx. 1815, Brooklyn Museum

•  

  Mihr Ali, 1816, Doha Islamic Museum of Art

• American actress and model Sarah Shahi is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Fatah Ali Shah ^[5] .

• Russian-Persian war (1804-1813)
• Russian-Persian war (1826-1828)

• Feth-Ali-Shah // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 t. (82 t. And 4 ext.). - SPb. , 1890-1907.