Karim Khan Zand (Makers of the Muslim World)

MAKERS of the MUSLIM WO R L D

Karim Khan Zand

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Series editor: Patricia Crone, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton SELECTION OF TITLES IN THE MAKERS OF THE MUSLIM WORLD SERIES

‘Abd al-Malik, Chase F. Robinson Abd al-Rahman III, Maribel Fierro Abu Nuwas, Philip Kennedy Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Christopher Melchert Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi, Usha Sanyal Al-Ma’mun, Michael Cooperson Amir Khusraw, Sunil Sharma Beshir Agha, Jane Hathaway Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis, Shahzad Bashir Ibn ‘Arabi, William C. Chittick Ikhwan al-Safa’, Godefroid de Callataÿ Nasser, Joel Gordon Shaykh Mufid, Tamima Bayhom-Daou For current information and details of other books in the series, please visit www.oneworld-publications.com/ subjects/makers-of-muslim-world.htm

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MAKERS of the MUSLIM WO R L D

Karim Khan Zand JOHN R. PERRY

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KARIM KHAN ZAND

Oneworld Publications 185 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7AR England www.oneworld-publications.com © 2006 John R. Perry All rights reserved Copyright under Berne Convention A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN 1–85168–435–2 978–1–85168–435–9 Typeset by Sparks, Oxford, UK Cover and text design by Design Deluxe Printed and bound in India by Thomson Press Ltd on acid-free paper NL08

Portrait of Karim Khan: reproduced by permission of the British Library, from No. 1 of B.L. MS Or. 4938, A collection of drawings, principally of royal personages and statesmen of the Persian court. Figure 1 (Qasr-e Qajar): reproduced from Pascal Coste, Monuments modernes de la Perse, Paris, 1867. Figures 2 and 6 (photographs in Shiraz): taken by the author. The Map of Iran, the Genealogical table (Figure 3), and the Plan of Shiraz (Figure 5): drafted by the author. Figure 4 (Lotf-Ali Khan): reproduced from E. S. Waring, A Tour to Sheeraz, London, 1807. Figure 7 (Vakil’s Bazaar): reproduced from Jane Dieulafoy, La Perse, la Chaldée et la Susiane, Paris, 1887.

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vii Preface viii 1

IRAN AND THE WORLD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 1 Iran and its People 4 The Safavid Dynasty 9 Nader Shah Afshar 11 First-Person Testimony: Sheikh Hazin 14

2

THE RETURN OF THE ZANDS 17 The Lurs Go Home 19 Safavid Pretenders 21 Enter the Qajars 26 Pretenders Lost and Found 28

3

THE CONQUEST OF THE NORTH, 1759–1763 31 Exploits of Mohammad Khan and Sheykh-Ali Khan Zand 32 First-Person Testimony: Le Sieur Simon 39 Neutralization of the Qajars 41 Azerbaijan: The Defeat of Azad and Fath-Ali Khan 43

4

CONSOLIDATION OF THE CENTER, 1763–1766 47 Retribution and purges 48 Reconquest of the south: the revolt of Zaki Khan Zand 51 Lar,Yazd, and Kerman: the two Taqis 54 Curbing the Qajars, 1759–1777 59

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5

THE PERSIAN GULF AND KHUZISTAN 63 Kharg Island: The Dutch and Mir Mahanna 65 Perspicacious Semi-Fiction: The “Rostam of Histories” 68 The Banu Ka’b 73 War with the Pashalik of Baghdad, 1774–1779 75

6

KARIM KHAN’S DEATH AND SUCCESSION, 1779–1795 81 Reigns of Zaki, Sadeq, Ali-Morad, and Ja’far Khan Zand (1779–1789) 82 Lotf-Ali Khan Zand (1789–1994) 86 First-Person Testimony: Mr Jones and Lotf-Ali Khan’s diamonds 89 The Qajar Conquest 94

7

PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT AND FOREIGN RELATIONS 99 Western approaches 101 The Caspian Rim and Azerbaijan 104 Georgia and Transaraxia: into the Russian Orbit 106 Ottoman Turkey and India 110 The Dutch and French East India Companies 111 The British East India Company 112

8

KARIM KHAN’S CHARACTER AND ACHIEVEMENTS 117 The people’s deputy 117 Religious policies 122 Rebuilding the economy 124 Rebuilding Shiraz 127 Leisure and the arts 132 The legend and the legacy 133

Bibliography 137 Index 143

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Map of Iran under Zand rule x Contemporary portrait of Karim Khan Zand xii Figure 1. “Qasr-e Qajar,” Karim Khan’s palace at Tehran 45 Figure 2. The Vakil with his kinsmen and courtiers 50 Figure 3. Genealogical table of the Zand Dynasty 84 Figure 4. Lotf-Ali Khan Zand 87 Figure 5. Plan of Shiraz at the time of Karim Khan Zand 128 Figure 6. A corner of the arg (citadel) of Shiraz 129 Figure 7. Karim Khan’s covered market, the Vakil’s Bazaar 130

vii

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PREFACE

K

arim Khan Zand was a minor chieftain of a hitherto obscure pastoral tribe who came to rule most of Iran with his capital at Shiraz, and founded a short-lived dynasty during the latter part of the eighteenth century (1751–94). His claims to fame are not the spectacular battles and ruthless executions that distinguish his predecessors and successors in power; rather they are a practical common sense, unselfish humility, and unbiased humanity in the service of his subjects. His reputation in Iran is that of a good man who became and remained a good monarch, restoring a much-needed measure of peace, prosperity, and justice after half a century of tyranny and chaos. He is remembered fondly as “The Vakil,” conventionally translated as “Regent.” Certainly he rejected the title of king (thus preserving his memory even in the Islamic Republic, where the very word shah is anathema) – but the true meaning of vakil as used by Karim Khan is far from conventional, as we shall see (chapter 8). The Zand period was one of transition, when Iran was poised to enter the modern era – to be redefined, geographically and economically, by direct and regular contact with the European powers as they cast their imperial and commercial nets around the globe, and to seek a new balance at home between the competing cults of the Shah and the Shi’a. It is usually the Qajars, Iran’s penultimate dynasty, who are credited with ushering the country into the modern era (see Keddie, Qajar Iran and the Rise of Reza Khan 1796–1925). In fact, many of the conditions indispensable to Iran’s very survival after the disintegration of Nader Shah’s empire, let alone its recovery and reintegration, had already been restored under the Vakil – sufficiently, at least, to survive the brief but bloody interregnum of his immediate Zand successors and their war with Agha Mohammad Khan viii

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PREFACE ix

Qajar.These conditions included administrative continuity, religious unity, and diplomatic and commercial ties with powerful neighbors (Ottoman Turkey and British India). The historical events described here are mostly condensed from contemporary sources: Persian chronicles, reports of British, French, Dutch, Russian, and other visitors to the Zand realms, and memoirs of Iranian and Armenian residents and emigrants. Under the headings “First-Person Testimony” will be found summaries and quotations from the narratives of individuals who experienced some of the events or situations mentioned in that chapter. The sources cited and the main secondary literature are listed in the Bibliography. The transcription of Persian (and Turkish and Arabic) names has been kept as simple and consistent as possible (though some Arabic references in the Bibliography may exhibit different conventions from names in the text). Familiar personal titles (shah, khan, sheikh, sultan) and place names (Shiraz, Isfahan) are spelled as is usual in English – unless they form part of a name, such as Sheykh-Ali Khan (who is a khan, but is not a sheikh), or Mohammad Mehdi Esfahani, a poet who hails from Isfahan. For less familiar names and terms, it may be noted that in the names of two of Karim Khan’s most tenacious opponents, Azad Khan and Agha Mohammad Khan, both the “a’s (as well as that in Khan) are “long,” i.e. pronounced like the vowel in pause. For the consonants, g is always “hard” as in give and get; q represents a k pronounced farther back on the palate; kh is the throaty scrape heard in German orWelsh Bach, and gh approximates a voiced gargle (Parisian r). The sequence th, however, is simply t followed by h: Fath-Ali is pronounced as if it were Fat-hali. It remains to acknowledge the encouragement I have received over the years, from descendants of the Zand tribe themselves (and a descendant of Azad Khan Afghan), to give wider currency to the history of Karim Khan and the Zands. Scattered throughout Iran and abroad after the victory of the Qajars, theirs is an illustrious legacy that should not be forgotten. If the present volume helps to preserve it for them and their children, and to interest a broader audience, it will have fulfilled its purpose.

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x KARIM KHAN ZAND

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PREFACE xi

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xii KARIM KHAN ZAND

Contemporary Portrait of Karim Khan Zand.

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1 IRAN AND THE WORLD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

T

he eighteenth century was a momentous period in Europe and America, an era of imperial ambitions and territorial expansion, of cultural efflorescence and scientific achievement. It introduced worldwide wars, dissent without martyrdom, political and economic revolutions, the beginning of the end of slavery. The principal engine of change in most of these fields was the law. Newly divorced from all but the most abstract symbolism of an origin in heaven, it secured the total interdependence of society, and in its universal application (celebrated or excoriated in the novel, another novelty of the age) regulated the march of a new concept of progress. So conscious are we today of the seminal nature of our eighteenth-century civilization that we (in Britain and much of the Commonwealth, Europe, and even in anti-traditionalist America) still celebrate some special occasions and respected professions by dressing them up in the knee-breeches, powdered wigs, and three-cornered hats of the 1700s. Whether at Oktoberfest in Bavaria, or in the everyday courtroom attire of judges and advocates in Britain, we pay continuing homage to the graceful zenith of a long transition from feudal autocracy to industrial capitalism, accompanied by the music of Bach and Mozart. The world to the east of this comfortable image, as seen through the telescopes of the imperial or mercantile servants of such as the Hanoverians, Habsburgs, and Romanoffs, appeared 1

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static, mired in a fatalistic traditional structure where splendor and squalor coexisted in age-old equilibrium. Nevertheless, the spirit of scientific inquiry that had animated European intellectuals from the outset of the Enlightenment brought them increasingly into contact – sometimes in collaboration with an imperialistic agenda, but often out of simple curiosity – with eastern countries: two scientific expeditions (from Denmark and Russia) and a lone French botanist explored parts of Iran during the Zand period, and British employees of the East India Company in the Persian Gulf had at least a smattering of Persian language and classical culture from their training in India as, in effect, successors to the Mughals. Such observers often realized that these descendants of more ancient civilizations had their own dynamics, and were responding to developments of their own very active eighteenth century as well as to the reverberations from their Western neighbors. Nowhere was this more evident than in the Persianate world, with its territory extending from the Caucasus across the Iranian plateau up into Central Asia, through Afghanistan, down into northern and central India. In this subregion of the Islamic area, Persian was, as well as the mother tongue of tens of millions of the settled and nomadic populations, the common language of literature, commerce, politics, and diplomacy. So far, none of the states in this region had faced actual war with a Western power, unlike their neighbors the Ottoman Turks. Before the middle of the century, however, Britain’s East India Company was embroiled with other Indian regional rulers in an undeclared contest of bribery, intimidation, and full-scale military campaigns for political control of the land where it was ostensibly just a business venture; and Russia had briefly invaded Persia’s south Caucasus and Caspian coastal provinces, and was poised for the permanent conquest of Central Asia. Iran was still known to the West as Persia; not until the 1930s did Reza Shah’s nationalistic government require foreign diplomats to refer to the county officially by its ancient and

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proper name. Europeans naturally made the connection with the Persian empire of Cyrus and Darius, the province of Pars (Greek Persis, now Fars) where the ruins of Persepolis stood close to the city of Shiraz, and the Persian poetry of masters such as Hafez of Shiraz that was cultivated in Istanbul as well as Isfahan, Bukhara, and Calcutta. Iranian conquerors of the ancient world (the Persian Xerxes, the Parthian Mithridates) were plucked from the pages of Plutarch as vehicles for drama and opera. Similarly, their later counterparts the Turco-Persian warlords whose exploits were reported within the year by East India merchants or Jesuit missionaries found their way into English literature, or French and Italian music. Thus Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (1587) is the Emir Timur, nicknamed lang “the lame” (r. 1370–1405) – who also figures in one of Vivaldi’s operas; and a mock-furious little harpsichord piece by Rameau, called “la Coulicam” (in Pièces de clavecin en concert of 1741), refers to Tahmasb-qoli Khan, the pre-regnal name of Timur’s conscious emulator in empire, Nader Shah Afshar (r. 1736–47). There is an organic connection between the Safavid, Afsharid, Zand, and early Qajar periods (collectively, c.1500–1800) that defines in broad outline the salient political and socio-cultural characteristics of Iran up until at least the early twentieth century. This is all the more surprising when we see that few of the rulers seem to have given a thought to the advantages of an orderly succession. Shah Abbas Safavi (r. 1587–1629) was a shrewd strategist and economist whose political and commercial innovations promised stability and prosperity under an enlightened despotism; however, his distrust of his sons as potential rivals ensured that they were either eliminated or ill-trained for rulership, which contributed to the downfall of his dynasty. In the crucial two generations of our story (c.1725–80), Nader Shah rose parasitically to power on the back of the fatally wounded Safavid dynasty; he blinded his eldest son and unwittingly trained his dynastic replacement, Karim Khan Zand, who in turn kept as a hostage-guest at court

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the nemesis of his own line, Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar. Yet the basic institutions and attitudes of Safavid politics and religion at the dynasty’s zenith echo as a leitmotif throughout succeeding administrations. Let us first therefore try to characterize the salient features of early eighteenth-century Iran as a place, a concept, and a society.

IRAN AND ITS PEOPLE Historians of Europe may date the “imagining” of the nation state to the nineteenth century, after the establishment of print capitalism and the progressive retro-construction of a national legend – an inductive process. This does not mean that Asian nations must necessarily evolve even later, though the prerequisites (for Europe), such as an exclusive national language or efficient communications, may not be in place. It might be argued that the early evolution in Europe of sophisticated civic government (the city-state in Greece and early Rome, later in Renaissance Italy and Germany) actually tended to retard the attainment of a broader national unity – especially in Italy and Germany – despite the existence of a common written (and printed) language and a broadly integrated culture. Iran, by contrast, never developed a theory and practice of the polis, and had no printing press before the early nineteenth century. It defined itself deductively, and on a large scale. That is, its Zoroastrian mythology and national legend long preceded widespread literacy (its definitive form is the epic Persian poem of Ferdowsi, the Shah-nama or Book of Kings, completed c.1010); and its “imagined” identity, as a construct of a common literary language, the national legend, and a territorialized religion, was embodied in all three of its great empires (the Achaemenian, the Sasanian, and the Safavid) from ancient times onward. This sense of national identity was preserved despite the massive replacement of Zoroastrianism by Islam after 650,

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and through the six-centuries-long hegemony of the Arab caliphate. It began to reassert itself after the Mongol invaders killed the last caliph in 1258. Around 1300, the troops sent from Mongol-ruled (Il-Khanid) Tabriz to fight the Mamluks in Syria were referred to by their Persian chronicler as “the Iranians.” The ethnolinguistically Turkish tribal leaders (or turkicized religious figures, in the case of the Safavid family) who from the eleventh to the early twentieth century ruled parts of greater Iran (Iran-shahr) appealed by their very names to the Iranian national legend (Key Kobad, Tahmasb) and, after the Safavids, additionally to the national cult of Shi’ism (Abbas, Fath-Ali) – as did their Georgian and Armenian officers (Rostam, Sohrab; Lotf-Ali, Ali-qoli). A large proportion – perhaps as much as half – of the population comprised nomadic sheep herders, tribally organized, who contributed significantly to the economy, the military, and the political establishment of Iran. Many of the most powerful of these (such as the Afshars and Qajars, mainly in the north) were Turks. They were politically dominant under the Safavids, Nader Shah, and the Qajars, but under Karim Khan the Iranian tribes of the center and south (Lurs, including the Bakhtyari and the Lak tribes such as the Zand, and Kurds) gained the ascendancy. This ethnic difference, whether noted in language, geographical origin, or subculture, was freely acknowledged, but was never a divisive issue; both were mainly Shi’i in religion and Safavi by tradition, and their rivalries, turning on pastures and territory and military-political dominance, were expressed intra-ethnically as much as inter-ethnically. However, a more narrowly defined Turco-Persian rivalry, or rather professional jealousy, was expressed directly in ethnolinguistic terms throughout the post-Mongol period in Iran. This was the idealized division of prestigious labor between military command-cum-executive power, seen as a prerogative of the Turks, and administrative, diplomatic, and literary-cultural affairs, conceived as proper to the Persians. The conceit was summed up in the phrase Tork-o Tazik, “Turk and Tajik.” (Tazik

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or Tajik was a Middle-Persian term meaning “Arab,” and came to refer to Persian Muslims in contradistinction to Turks; in Safavid writings it was applied indiscriminately to all Persians, but later came to refer specifically to the Persian-speakers of Central Asia as distinct from the Uzbeks.) This distinction was exemplified in the Turkish prince of the blood, who might compete with his brothers and any other rivals for kingship, and who bore the title mirza “son of an emir” after his name, in accordance with Turkish syntax – such as Nader Shah’s grandson Shahrokh Mirza; and in the Persian bureaucrat-secretary and historian-poet, who often bore the same title before his name, in line with Persian syntax – as for instance Mirza Mohammad Hoseyn, vizier to several Zand rulers (see Perry, “Mirza, Mashdi, and Jujeh Kabab”). Some form of duality is encountered in a number of Iranian social structures, whether idealized or practical. Tribes were often subdivided in two branches, the names alluding to an ancestor or a geographic origin: below we will meet with the Zand-e Bagala and Zand-e Hazara, the Bakhtyari of the Chahar Lang (“four limbs”) and Haft Lang (“seven limbs”), and the Ashaqa-bash (“lower”) and Yukhari-bash (“upper”) branches of the Qajars of Astarabad. Karim Khan Zand was able to use the animosity between the two Qajar branches – more specifically, their dominant clans, respectively the Qoyunlu (“sheep-folk”) and the Develu (“camel-folk”) – to divide and subdue them for a time. Outside the walled cities and larger towns, the vast tracts of mountains and steppe that covered eastern and north-eastern Iran were sparsely populated by semi-nomadic herders, and did not lend themselves to accurate demarcation as political frontiers. Mashhad, the Shi’i shrine city that had grown up around the tomb of the eighth imam, Ali-Reza, was fostered by Shah Abbas as a national cultic center to bolster the established rite of Imami Shi’ism (a tacit admission that the Safavids had relinquished the major shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq to

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Ottoman control). Marv, to the north-east of Mashhad, became the Safavid outpost on the Central Asian frontier. This indistinct desert frontier with Uzbek Bukhara gradually hardened into a cultural border, as Turkish-speaking settlers came to outnumber the Persian-speaking Tajiks of the Oxus basin and their language either ousted Persian altogether or influenced it so strongly that the dialects of Bukhara and Samarkand became virtually incomprehensible to Persians of the plateau, and vice versa. Shi’i proselytizing stopped well short of the Oxus, and the Sunni Turkmen tribes of the steppe north-west of Marv raided caravans of merchants and pilgrims on the Mashhad road for live captives, whom they took by the hundreds to sell as slaves in Bukhara, until well into the nineteenth century. Herat, also a Persian city, remained an outpost of the Safavid empire on the borders of Afghanistan, while the distant Pashtun city of Qandahar, center of the Ghelzay Afghans, was disputed with the Mughal rulers of India. Relations between Isfahan and Delhi, and Delhi and Bukhara, were nowhere near as ideologically rancorous as they were between Isfahan and Bukhara. The Safavids and Mughals acknowledged a cultural, if not genealogical, kinship; Shah Esma‘il twice sent an army to aid the Timurid ruler Babur in Central Asia against the advancing Uzbeks. When Babur was finally driven from Samarkand in 1526 and founded a new state in Delhi, his descendants (known as the Mughals, as being related to the Mongol conqueror Chinghiz Khan) owned a genealogical as well as a cultural kinship with Central Asia. Like the Safavids, they spoke a Turkic language among themselves and their officers, but patronized Persian among their administrators and courtiers. Sufis and poets from both Iran and Central Asia flocked to their generous and tolerant court, where the difference between Sunni and Shi’i, and even between Muslim and Hindu, was rarely an excuse for conflict. This contrast with Safavid Iran, where the ruler or the clergy (olama) intermittently lowered the threshold of Shi’i fanaticism, is illustrated by the visit to Iran of Babur’s son, the Mughal

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emperor Humayun. In 1544 this prince, twice defeated by rebellious Afghans, took refuge with Shah Tahmasb. The latter refused to assist him unless he converted to Shi’i Islam – by some accounts, on pain of death for himself and his 700-strong retinue. Humayun reluctantly assented, but resumed his Sunni status on his return to India, and never interfered with the faith of the many Shi’is from Iran who entered his service. Persian was a prized commodity in Muslim India, and Iranian poets were much in demand. A writer or Sufi who fell upon hard times in Isfahan would take leave to make the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca; if he sailed from Bandar Abbas – perhaps in an East India Company merchant ship – they might call first at Surat on the Gujarat coast, where he would look for a more congenial court. Or if he continued to Mecca, he might seek out – or already have made a rendezvous with – talent scouts for an Indian patron. The religious classes were almost as cosmopolitan as the merchants, and comprised a high-profile component of society in all the Persianate countries. They were of two kinds: the olama (singular, alem), and the dervishes. The former were trained scholars and jurists of the Shari’a, or Islamic law. Shi’i scholars had a hierarchy and a range of specialized functions, from the mojtaheds, who were authorized to enunciate their own judgments on questions of religious law, down to the humble village molla, who would officiate at betrothals and funerals, teach scripture classes, and preach the Friday sermon at the mosque. Whereas in the neighboring Sunni states of the Ottomans and the Uzbeks the olama had been largely co-opted into the government and were dependent on the ruler for salary and authority, in Iran the clerical establishment – though courted and strengthened by the Safavids – became obstinately independent of the state. Their emoluments came from private donors, in particular through close connections with the bazaar, and the degree of learning of a colleague, and hence his place in the hierarchy, was determined by his peers.

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Dervishes were wandering ascetics affiliated with a Sufi brotherhood. Sufis, the devotees of a mystical interpretation of Islam (who were not necessarily dervishes), ranged from fervent gnostics to recreational mystics. A scholar or a shah, a merchant or a carpenter could be a Sufi; each was affiliated with an order, but this religious identity conferred no special status. Olama and true dervishes, however, generally despised each other; in times of political chaos they tended to emigrate to different refuges, the olama to the Shi’i shrine cities of Iraq, and the dervishes to India.

THE SAFAVID DYNASTY In 1501, the charismatic Esma’il of the Safavi family of Ardabil in north-western Iran gathered a band of fanatical Turkmen followers who revered him almost as a god, conquered the country, and was installed as shah, “king.” He thereby revived both the original Persian title (khshayathiya in its Old Persian form) for the monarch of Iran and the kingdom itself, which since the Islamic conquest in 650 C.E. had been carved into a number of provinces ruled successively by the Arab caliphs of Baghdad, the Seljuk Turks, and the Mongols. Esma’il and his successors forcibly converted the majority of their subjects from Sunni to Shi’i Islam, which became the official state religion – no longer an extremist cult, but the routinized theory of Islamic succession of the twelve imams, underpinned by a large body of legal scholars (the Shi’i olama) and popularized by the annual mourning rituals for Imam Hoseyn in which countless thousands of citizens took part, as they still do. A century later, under Shah Abbas the Great, a state had been formed which enjoyed fairly secure borders, a healthy economy, and an indigenous culture with characteristic elite and vernacular features distinct from those of the surrounding Islamic regions. This engendered a self-conscious national identity, cutting across ethnicity and social class, every bit

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as confident as its contemporaries in France, Muscovy, or Elizabethan England. Technically the state was a multi-ethnic empire, comprising Persians (i.e. Persian-speakers), who prided themselves on their administrative and mercantile skills; Turks – including the military elite and even the Safavid family, who were in origin Turkicized Iranians (perhaps Kurds) whose mother tongue was Turkish; Armenians and Georgians, many of whom (having converted from Christianity to Islam) rose to prominence in the government or army; and a variety of other Arab, Turkish and Iranian peoples, notably the Afghans (Pashto-speakers, and still mainly Sunni Muslims) on the eastern marches. But in the Safavids’ core territory (corresponding roughly to the borders of today’s Islamic Republic) the cult of the Shi’a common to both Persians and Turks of Iran, their common enmity toward the Ottoman Turks and the Uzbek Turks of Bukhara – both champions of Sunni Islam – and the cult of the shah, enshrined in the national epic and now revived in their own time, fostered a heightened sense of transregional identity. As I have suggested in the preceding section, it is not anachronistic to describe this as a form of nationalism. On the world stage, Shah Abbas was a worthy contemporary of the Mughal emperor Akbar, Tsar Boris Godunov of Muscovy, Henri IV of France, and Queen Elizabeth I of England. His martial prowess and military reorganization, competent administration and ruthless realpolitik, shrewd business sense, patronage of the arts, and flair for public spectacle secured his reputation as a great and just monarch both within Iran and abroad. His reconstruction of the capital, Isfahan, centered on the huge central Royal Square (meydan-e shah) with the covered bazaar and magnificent royal mosque at either end, made it one of the architectural wonders of the age. He maneuvered the East India Company into helping him to evict the Portuguese from Hormuz island in the Gulf, setting a precedent for his Afsharid and Zand successors. European merchants and adventurers such as Pietro della Valle and Sir Robert Sherley extolled his affability and fine balance of piety and religious

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toleration. His name became a byword for Iranian kingship, and his reign the touchstone by which subsequent regimes were measured. His successors were not so competent or so fortunate. The shah’s numerous male progeny, a potential source of rebellion and treachery, were increasingly kept away from public affairs and virtually confined to the harem – a poor training for kingship. Less than a century after Abbas’s death, in the reign of the pious and compliant Shah Soltan-Hoseyn, the illtrained and poorly led Safavid army succumbed to a revolt by the Ghelzay Afghans of Qandahar, whom the Safavid court had kept in line at a distance through a Georgian governor-general. Having defeated the Persian garrison with surprising ease, they rode their momentum to the siege and capture of Isfahan itself in 1722. Their leader, Mahmud, massacred most of the royal males and hundreds of other nobles, then succumbed to a debilitating physical and mental illness; in 1725 he was beheaded and succeeded by his cousin Ashraf. Meanwhile the Ottomans and Russians invaded from the west and north to secure their zones of interest, which they demarcated in a pact of 1724 by a line running straight through the south Caucasus principalities to Hamadan, then turning south-west to Kermanshah. It seemed as if the fabled Safavid kingdom of Iran had evaporated overnight.

NADER SHAH AFSHAR A single Safavid prince, Tahmasb Mirza, had escaped from the ransacked capital. His cause was espoused by Nader-qoli Beg, an ambitious mercenary from among the Afshar Turkmen who had captured Mashhad. Under the name of Tahmasb-qoli Khan, “the slave of Tahmasb,” he led an Iranian army to victory over the Afghans in 1729. Within three years Nader had his ostensible liege lord Tahmasb deposed for incompetence and replaced by his infant son Abbas, with himself as regent for this symbolic

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Safavid. Having recovered the border territories occupied by Ottoman Turkey and Russia, in 1736 Nader was hailed as the national savior. He promptly summoned a grand national assembly and engineered his own election as their “reluctant” king, under the name of Nader Shah. This was his first mistake, soon to be followed by a second. In his negotiations with the Ottomans he proposed that the Iranians would renounce Shi’ism (a major cause of enmity with the Sunni Turks) if the Turks agreed to recognize a diluted version – the Ja‘fari school of Shi’i law, as codified by the Imam Ja’far – as a fifth “orthodox” rite of the Shari’a. This compromise was perhaps seen by the pragmatist Nader as a stepping-stone to a larger Asiatic empire. The Ottomans were unconvinced, and the religious clauses were never enacted. But the seeds of suspicion had been sown among his core supporters, the Shi’i Turkmen, and appeared to be confirmed when, in the course of his escalating series of conquests – of Afghanistan, Bukhara, Delhi – Nader inducted into his army contingents of Sunni Uzbeks and Afghans, and treated their officers as trusted staff. This third error sealed his fate. Nader Shah had “raised his country from the lowest depths of degradation to the proud position of the foremost military power in Asia” (Lockhart, Nadir Shah, 269). At this point, exorbitant requisitions for his campaigns provoked widespread revolts among a populace who saw themselves being pillaged by their hereditary enemies in the guise of the king’s army – a king who had usurped his throne from the beloved Safavi family and threatened to sell their very religion for a treaty. Nader became increasingly paranoid and replied with execution and massacre, erecting towers of severed heads in his wake. He was also suffering from physical and mental disorders, which exacerbated his sudden rages and cruelty even to his own men. Finally Nader’s nephew, Ali-qoli Khan, who had been sent to quell a rising in Sistan province, realized that he had become an object of suspicion to his uncle, and made common cause with the rebels. The discontent of many years had found a focus.

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As Ali-qoli led a march on Mashhad, Nader had just returned from crushing opposition in western Iran – only to be faced with a rebellion of the Kurds, deportees living at Khabushan (present-day Quchan, north of Mashhad). Nader apparently lost confidence in his Turco-Iranian officers (i.e. the Qizilbash Afshar and Qajar chieftains), and on the evening of 19 June 1747 secretly ordered Ahmad Khan Abdali and others of his Afghan confidants to arrest them, and kill any who resisted. This was overheard by a spy. Duly warned, three Qizilbash officers strangled the sentry outside Nader’s tent, crept in as he slept and, though he awoke and fought back, stabbed him to death. The courage required for this deed should not be underestimated; Nader Shah had the terrifying presence and the reputation for irrational rage and capricious brutality that in modern times was reported of Stalin. They sent Nader’s severed head to Ali-qoli with promises of loyalty, and prepared to deal with the Afghans. This was easier said than done. Alerted by the looting of Nader’s tents, the young Ahmad Khan Abdali rallied his 4,000 men at dawn. They captured the artillery and several prisoners, and retired in good order – skirting Mashhad and Herat, already in Ali-qoli’s hands – to Qandahar. Here Ahmad Khan seized a treasure caravan from India bound for Nader’s camp. In October of 1747 an assembly of Afghan leaders (loya jirga) elected Ahmad Khan, under the dynastic name of Durrani, as the first king of Afghanistan. Nader Shah, the Napoleon of Asia, brilliant military mind that he was, had miscalculated the extent of loyalty to the Safavid ethos – shah and Shi’a – that remained in the hearts of the Turkmen military and the Iranian masses even after the dynasty’s catastrophic fall. The eastern half of his empire was now definitively detached, and it remained to be seen whether his kinsmen could salvage sufficient control over Iran itself for history to preserve the memory of an Afsharid dynasty.

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Nader had blinded his eldest son, Reza-qoli Mirza, five years before on suspicion of instigating an attempt on his father’s life. Ali-qoli now determined to secure his own line by extirpating all of Nader’s progeny. From Mashhad, he dispatched a force of Bakhtyaris under a Georgian officer to Kalat, Nader’s fortress on the road to Abivard where the Shah had sent his family for safety before setting out toward Khabushan. Here they slaughtered Nader’s sons and grandsons without regard to age, and even killed those of his widows and concubines who were pregnant. Only Reza-qoli’s teenage son Shahrokh Mirza was spared, since his mother was of the Safavid line; Ali-qoli thought to keep him as a hedge against the popular veneration of the Safavids. This recurring cycle of murder and mutilation has its rationale, albeit more that of a pride of lions than the elite extended family of a civilized state. Since a king is the supreme defender of his subjects and the procreator of his dynastic line, he must above all be physically sound. To disqualify a man from rulership, it sufficed to blind him, and in order to ensure that his genes never compete for sovereignty, to castrate him. These methods were usual throughout most of Eurasia in earlier times, though they became associated in particular with the Byzantine and Ottoman and other Asiatic empires. In stable periods, younger siblings or other competitors might simply be confined to the harem (a frequent device in the Ottoman and Safavid states); but whenever the succession was disputed, or a new dynasty took over (as here, and again at the end of Zand rule and the beginning of Qajar power), drastic measures were expected and implemented.

FIRST-PERSON TESTIMONY: SHEIKH HAZIN The traumatic period of the fall of Isfahan, the virtual partition of Iran among the Afghans, Russians, and Ottomans, and the brutal reconquest by Nader Shah is described in terms of one

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man’s experience in the autobiography of Sheikh Mohammad Ali Hazin of Lahijan (1692–1766). Hazin came of a family of scholars and landowners of Gilan and traced his descent to Sheikh Zahed Gilani, a revered thirteenth-century Sufi who was the spiritual mentor of Sheikh Safi, founder of the Safavi Sufi order. His father came to Isfahan as a student, and the boy grew up at the Safavid court as a precocious polymath and poet. In 1721, as the Afghan army secured its supplies from the outlying villages, burned what it left, and prepared for a blockade of the famine-stricken capital, Hazin tried in vain to persuade Shah Soltan-Hoseyn and his own remaining family and friends to flee the city before it was too late: At that time, it was still possible to remove with one’s family and furniture, the roads being not yet blocked up; and for two or three months afterwards, there was no difficulty in going out of the town. But my friends and relatives would not suffer me, and assailed me with speeches, that were foreign to the purpose. This was the juncture, when the removal of the king from the capital would have been productive of the best effects; for he had no means left there of standing up against the enemy; and might have retired with his family and courtiers, and as much of his treasure as he pleased, to any part of his dominions, the whole of the provinces of Iran, except Candahar, being still in his possession. Had he escaped from that scene of famine, all the various chiefs and armies of his kingdom would have joined him . . . I made my opinion understood by two or three of the Soltan’s confidential friends, inciting them with all my might to abandon the opposite design . . . But this was unsuitable to the fixed decree of fate; and certain persons of inconsiderate minds interfered to prevent it; so happened that which happened. [Hazin, 117–119; for an Armenian account of this period’s military history, see Abraham of Erevan]

Finally, having sold all but his books – he gave away two thousand volumes and left the rest to be plundered – Hazin disguised himself as a peasant and escaped only days before the Afghans entered in triumph. For two years he taught in

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Khorramabad among the Lurs, organizing a militia to defend the town against the advancing Ottoman troops. He resided at the Shi’i shrine of Najaf in Iraq for three years, then followed his wanderlust through Russian-occupied Gilan (his ancestral home) to Mashhad. Returning via Tehran to Isfahan and Shiraz, he found the last city devastated. After further adventures in Lar and voyages in the Gulf, during which he completed the Hajj by way of Bandar Abbas and Surat, he was so horrified by the continuing oppression under the regency of the future Nader Shah that in 1734 he left Iran for good and emigrated to India. Of his subsequent life and travels his memoirs (completed in 1742) tell us comparatively little; though treated as a celebrity, he disliked India and the Indians, wrote satires on them, and criticized their Persian verse.While he was at the Mughal court of Delhi, Nader Shah invaded and occupied the capital in 1739; Hazin went into hiding, and thus escaped the massacre which Nader ordered after a rumor of his death caused riots and the killing of some of his troops. Hazin moved to Agra and then Benares (Varanasi), where he died and is buried. Hazin (this, his pen-name, means “sorrowful”) is emblematic of the urbane, cultivated, cosmopolitan Shi’i mirza (secretary, tutor) of Safavid and post-Safavid Iran who fled a politically dangerous and economically depressed homeland for the courts of Muslim India, there to contribute to the Persianization of the ruling elite. Such were the extended clan of Shushtari sayyids, members of which emigrated from south-western Iran during the Zand period to become influential at the court of Hyderabad and with the elite of the East India Company; both Mir Abd al-Latif and Sayyid Abdollah left memoirs (see Dalrymple, White Mughals, index). Open-minded and tolerant, even if critical, Hazin sought out fellow scholars among all faiths, and in return was “equally admired and esteemed by the Muselman, Hindoo, and English inhabitants of India” (Sir Gore Ouseley, cited in Hazin, p. v).

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esides the Abdali Afghans, other tribal and ethnic bands that had been pressed into imperial service from the four corners of Iran likewise sought to avoid the clutches of Nader’s would-be successors in Mashhad and to set off home. Among them were Bakhtyari and Zand tribesmen from the Zagros foothills, who had been rounded up some fifteen years before, during Nader’s consolidation of his power in central Persia. Forcible deportation (more accurately, forced migration from one square of the imperial chessboard to another) was practiced as a regular politico-economic strategy by rulers of the greater Iranian region as long ago as the Assyrian emperors in the 700s B.C.E. and as recently as Reza Shah Pahlavi in the 1940s. That is why there are still Kurds in Khorasan and Baluchistan, six hundred miles from Kurdistan, and Armenians in Isfahan and Shiraz. Shah Abbas had transported tribes from his north-west frontier (as part of a scorched-earth defense against Ottoman invaders, who were there at the limit of their long supply lines) to his north-eastern marches (to absorb frontier raids by Turkmen and Uzbeks, a close and constant threat). His most ambitious move, in winter of 1605, was to deport (among many others) the entire population of an Armenian frontier town, Julfa on the River Aras, to Isfahan; here the survivors (thousands had died en route) were resettled in their own town of New Julfa, across the river Zayanda Rud, to contribute as

17

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artisans, merchants, and financiers to the prosperity of the Safavid state. Nader Shah, too, resettled some of his human capital in and around Mashhad, the nearest thing to a capital city that this compulsive nomad possessed. But his main use for the unreliable tribesmen whom he dragged from their mountain pastures was as auxiliaries and cannon-fodder in his army as it marched on almost permanent campaign from Isfahan to Baghdad to Mashhad, Bukhara, Delhi, and back. When the Ottoman army took advantage of the collapse of the Safavids to occupy Kermanshah, the western gateway to Iran, they met fierce resistance from the local tribes. A band of seven hundred Zand horsemen under Mehdi Khan harried them repeatedly from the foothills east of the city and made sure that they advanced no farther. In 1732, after Nader had expelled the Ottoman Turks, he set about pacifying the Zagros tribes, whose erstwhile patriotic guerrilla war was now viewed as banditry by the aspiring ruler. Having subdued the Bakhtyari and the Feyli Lurs by the time-honored expedients of selective massacre and deportation, he sent a detachment to deal with the Zands. They were lured from their fortress at Pari, Mehdi Khan and four hundred men were slaughtered, their tents were burned, and the remaining men and as many families and flocks as could be rounded up were marched five hundred miles to the north-east, beyond Mashhad, to the steppes of Abivard and Darra Gaz. There the old men, women, and children remained for fifteen years while the young men served in Nader’s army. Among these draftees was Karim Beg, the eldest son of a former chief, Inaq Khan. Karim must already have been in his thirties, but seems not to have risen far up the ranks. He used later to tell how, as a poor cavalryman in Nader’s employ, he once stole a gold-embossed saddle belonging to an Afghan officer from outside a saddler’s shop, where it had been left for repair. Next day he heard that the saddler had been held responsible for the loss, and was to be executed. Conscience-smitten,

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Karim surreptitiously replaced the saddle at the shop door, and watched from concealment. The saddler’s wife was the first to discover it; she fell on her knees, calling down blessings on the unknown thief who had had a change of heart, praying that he might live to own a hundred such saddles. “I am quite certain,” the Vakil (as by then he was) would say, with a smile, “that the honest prayer of that old woman was what gained me the good fortune I enjoy today” (Malcolm, 148–149).

THE LURS GO HOME The morning after Nader’s assassination (20 June 1747), his heterogeneous army encamped at Khabushan rapidly disintegrated. The bulk of the Iranian contingents, notably the Bakhtyari under Ali Mardan Khan of the Chahar Lang branch, straggled back to Mashhad, and initially gave their support to Ali-qoli Khan, who, with many promises and much largesse, was enthroned a few weeks later as Adel Shah, “the Just King.” The Afghans in the Mashhad garrison were prudently allowed to retire by the governor, Mir Sayyid Mohammad, who was also Superintendent (motavalli) of the shrine. He was about to play a brief but dramatic role in the troubled politics of the former capital. The new ruler soon disappointed many of his early adherents. He lacked his uncle’s imperious magnetism to pull together the surviving elements of a sprawling and exhausted empire. Instead of marching to secure the old Safavid capital of Isfahan, he delegated this task to his brother, Ebrahim, and remained at Mashhad to celebrate. His large unemployed army meanwhile reduced city and surroundings to near-famine, and murmurs of rebellion rose once again. Late in 1747, Ali Mardan Khan asked permission to lead the Bakhtyari home, and was refused. Nevertheless the whole contingent set off, routed a pursuit force, and defiantly returned to the Zagros ranges, where Ebrahim Mirza Afshar was already recruiting

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support from his Isfahan base to challenge his brother’s title. The Bakhtyari were already a formidable force inside Isfahan. Chief among them was the governor Abol-Fath Khan of the Haft Lang branch, originally appointed by Nader, whom Ebrahim left as his viceroy in the capital on setting out against Adel Shah in the spring of 1748. A refugee from Mashhad staying quietly at the Jesuits’ house was Father Louis Bazin, who had been Nader Shah’s personal physician for a few months before his patient’s assassination. The Zand exiles apparently made their way home independently at about the same time, as winter was setting in. Their winter pastures lay well to the north of Bakhtyari territory, on the Hamadan plains, centered on the villages of Pari and Kamazan in the vicinity of Malayer. The Zands were the northernmost branch of the Lurs, and have sometimes been classified with their immediate northern neighbors, the Kurds: both Luri- and Kurdish-speaking groups bearing the name of Zand have been noted in recent times. But the bulk of the evidence points to their being one of the northern Lur tribes, collectively called Lak, who may originally have been of Kurdish origin. They are, in any case, distinct from both the Bakhtyari (the “Great Lur”) and the Feyli Lurs (the “Little Lur”) of Khorramabad, who were also to play a part in the resurgence of the Zagros tribes. The Zands in Darra Gaz comprised some thirty to forty families. Leadership in this exodus devolved upon Karim Beg, whose father Inaq and uncle Budaq had jointly led the Zand before their exile. No record survives of the march home; Karim Beg, now with the title Karim Khan, is next seen in active competition with the other tribal heads of western central Iran who were carving out their own principalities with the calculated assistance of the more ambitious Ebrahim. Everyone assumed that Isfahan, even in its semi-ruined state, was the once and future capital of a united Iran, whoever held the reins of power.

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The Safavids had partially solved the problem of security along their thousand-mile frontier with the Ottoman empire by co-opting the leading chieftains of four of the ethnic blocs straddling the frontier – the Arabs, Lurs, Kurds, and Georgians – as hereditary march-wardens, with the formal title of vali, governor of a velayat or province (chapter 7). The Vali of Ardalan, centered on the town of Sanandaj, representing the Kurds, was to be the first to begin sparring with the newcomers from Khorasan. Karim Khan rejected an alliance proposed by Mehr Ali Khan Tekkelu of Hamadan. Twice defeated by the Zands, Mehr Ali called in the help of Hasan Ali Khan, the Vali of Ardalan. For six weeks, the hit-and-run tactics of the Zand cavalry harassed the Kurds until a revolt at home forced the Vali to retire. Karim was now joined by an erstwhile rival, Zakariya Khan, who held Borujerd and Kazzaz, and by 2,000 cavalry of the Qaraguzlu tribe from the Hamadan district. Together they marched south on Golpayegan, a strategic point on the road to Isfahan, which also marked the limit of of Ali Mardan Khan Bakhtyari’s expansion towards the former capital. Karim defeated a Bakhtyari force and seized Golpayegan. However, he was immediately forced to wheel north to meet another attack by Mehr Ali Khan. He decisively defeated the Tekkelu and took Hamadan; but had lost the strategic initiative to Ali Mardan, who seized Golpayegan and prepared to besiege Isfahan.

SAFAVID PRETENDERS By early 1750, the fate of what had been Nader’s empire was largely settled. Ebrahim Mirza had defeated and deposed his brother Adel Shah near Zanjan, in the summer of 1748, and a year later had himself been crushed near Semnan by forces loyal to Nader’s only surviving grandchild, Shahrokh Mirza. This prince was named in homage to Tamerlane’s son of the same name, whose birth was announced when his father was

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performing the chess move known as “castling” (shah-rokh, “king-to-rook”). He had been spared by Adel Shah in case his Safavid blood came in useful; however, it was not thick enough for some officers, who in 1750 deposed (and later blinded) Shahrokh in favor of another Safavid, Mir Sayyid Mohammad, a grandson of Shah Soleyman, who was now the Superintendent of the shrine of the Imam Ali-Reza. Enthroned as Shah Soleyman II, the pious Sayyid soon alienated his supporters by disbursing the last of Nader’s treasure and refusing to sanction their extortion.Within two months he in turn was deposed and blinded, and Shahrokh was hauled out of the harem by a new coterie of patrons. Despite their surprise at finding him blinded, they reinstated him. He was maintained on the throne of ruined Khorasan for almost half a century by various coalitions of self-seeking warlords (including his two sons, Nasrollah and Nader Mirza), but mostly as a vassal of Ahmad Shah Dorrani, until his death at the hands of Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar when he reconquered Mashhad in 1796. Neither Shahrokh nor his patrons launched any attempt to restore Afsharid or Ghelzay authority in western Iran. Soleyman II, oddly enough, was the most active and successful of the four claimants to the Safavid throne after the Afghan conquest who were actually enthroned. Of those who were unsuccessful – at least a score, spanning the period 1722 to 1776 – a few were genuine princes of the line, absent from Isfahan or spirited out of the harem before the Afghan massacre of 1725, and the rest were clearly spurious. Several had their causes espoused by rebels against Nader or by hopeful warlords and politicians during the subsequent interregnum. Collectively, this phenomenon underlines the extent to which the Safavid ethos had infiltrated the Persian psyche and the desire for a return to the stability of the old familiar order (see Perry, “The Last Safavids”). The last two of these pretenders to play a role in the power struggle in western Iran will be introduced below and in the next section.

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With the return of its tribal manpower from Nader’s army and the resurgence of Isfahan as the political center, this region was now ready to reassert its position as the heartland of a neoSafavid empire. Isfahan, “half the world” to the last Safavid Shah, had never reconciled itself to being subordinate to Mashhad. As the political center of gravity shifted, Khorasan, Nader’s strategic base, found itself automatically relegated to the status of an impoverished province peripheral to the divergent halves of his erstwhile empire. In the east, the former Mughal heartland, lay the expanding realms of the Afghan monarch Ahmad Shah, who from January 1751 asserted his military supremacy in Khorasan itself and preserved the rump Afsharid state as a buffer against the west. The west, which comprised Azerbaijan and the Caspian littoral, the Zagros, Khuzistan and the Persian Gulf coast with its hinterland as far as the Kavir and Lut deserts, was recovered by a coalition of Zagros tribes dominated briefly by the Bakhtyari, then for the next forty years by the Zand – who also found themselves constrained to begin by parading a Safavid scion. Gaining the political prize, Isfahan, was the initial problem. Ali Mardan’s first attempt to reduce it, in the spring of 1750, met with a severe check at the town of Murcheh-khurt. From Golpayegan, he sent appeals to his local rivals, including Zakariya Khan and Karim, who accepted the proposed alliance and, with their arrival, increased his numbers to 20,000 men. Toward the end of May this force faced the army of Isfahan on the plain to the west of the city, and routed it. After a few days’ siege Isfahan was stormed; Abol-Fath Khan and the other leading citizens prepared to defend the citadel, but an offer of generous terms if they surrendered and cooperated soon brought them out to confer with their new masters. Abol-Fath of the Haft Lang branch of the Bakhtyari, a noble with an illustrious genealogy reaching back to the spiritual mentor of the early Safavid family, enjoyed the support both of his tribesmen in the city and of the Afsharid loyalists, if indeed any were left. Ali Mardan, of the rival Chahar Lang branch, was

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by comparison an upstart who owed his career to Nader Shah’s appreciation of his valor. Karim Khan, though not mentioned by any of the Europeans present at the capture of Isfahan, had evidently risen to pre-eminence among the ranks of Ali Mardan’s Lur lieutenants. These three therefore constituted from the outset a triumvirate, in which mutual trust came second to expediency. Their first action was to set up a Safavid puppet monarch to gain popular confidence. Two or three of the minor princes of this house were still left in Isfahan, the sons of a former court official, Mirza Mortaza, by a daughter of the last Safavid shah, Soltan-Hoseyn. The youngest of these, a youth of about 17 by the name of Abu Torab, was selected as the most suitable for the throne, and despite his and his mother’s tearful protests, was proclaimed shah, under the name of Esma’il, on 29 June 1750. The East India Company’s agent in Isfahan (who had entertained him to dinner a few months before) dismisses him in his report as “no more than a conspicuous Name, under which Ally Merdan Caun carries on his Tyranny, with the greater Shew of Justice” (Gombroon Diary, VI, 10 September 1750). Ali Mardan assumed the title of vakil od-dowla (“deputy of the state”) as the sovereign’s supreme executive. Abol-Fath retained his post as civil governor of the capital, and Karim Khan was entrusted with the subjugation of the rest of the country as supreme commander of the army (sardar), though Ali Mardan retained his own Bakhtyari forces. But for the moment Karim was in a position to subdue the northern districts adjacent to the Zand homeland. For the third and final time he defeated Mehr Ali Khan Tekkelu and occupied Hamadan. The main military prize in this region was the fortress of Kermanshah, which twenty years before had been Nader’s base and arsenal in his campaigns against the Ottoman Turks. Dominating not only the routes through the Zagros to Baghdad, but also that between the centers of Kurdistan and Luristan, it was well stocked with arms and munitions. It was held nominally for Shahrokh Shah by Mohammad Taqi Golestana and Abd al-Ali

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Khan Mishmast. With the help of the Vali of Ardalan, they had already repulsed an attack in 1749 by the Zangana tribe, and were determined not to relinquish their charge until it became clear who would prevail in the complex struggle for power. Negotiations with Karim Khan, though conducted courteously on both sides, failed to secure the fortress, and the Zands set off for a campaign in Kurdistan before the winter. The Vali, Hasan Ali, was ill-prepared, and welcomed his new suzerains with diplomatic compliance, but the Zand army sacked and burned Sanandaj and laid waste much of the environs before retiring to winter in their home territory. Once Karim left Isfahan, Ali Mardan had redoubled his extortion, bearing most heavily on the Armenian suburb of Julfa, which Karim had taken under his wing and accorded fair treatment on the fall of the city. More significantly, the Bakhtyari chief deposed and killed Abol-Fath Khan and replaced him in office with his own uncle. Finally, in contravention of an oath the triumvirate had sworn, that they would not act without consultation, he had marched independently on Shiraz and was systematically looting the province of Fars. Replacing the governor and his lieutenants, the Bakhtyari chief began to extort the equivalent of three years’ taxes and innumerable “presents,” and to requisition all the raw and manufactured materials his army needed. Of the officials and headmen who had not already fled, a dozen were blinded in one eye during this period by “that dog . . . that bastard,” to quote the Kalantar’s oft-repeated epithets for the Bakhtyari chief (Kalantar, 41–43). In January 1751, on his way back to Shiraz after pillaging Kazarun, Ali Mardan was ambushed at the steep and narrow pass known as the Kotal-e Dokhtar, the “Maiden’s Passage,” by local musketeers under Mozare’ Ali Kheshti, headman of the nearby village of Khesht. He lost all his booty from Kazarun and three hundred men, and had to retreat through the wreckage of Kazarun and take the mountain route over the

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Zardeh-Kuh range toward Isfahan, his ranks further thinned by desertion and the mid-winter weather. Meanwhile, Karim Khan harangued his lieutenants concerning Ali Mardan’s perfidy, and early in 1751 entered Isfahan at the head of his augmented army to put an end to extortion and near-anarchy. The following month he met his rival in his own Bakhtyari mountains and attacked the depleted and dispirited band. The young shah, whom Ali Mardan had taken with him for safe keeping, fled to the Zand ranks together with his vizier Zakariya Khan and other notables, and the Bakhtyari were routed. Ali Mardan and his allies, including the Vali of Luristan, Esma’il Khan Feyli, fled to the plains of Khuzistan. A few of the captured rebel chiefs were blinded or executed, but the Bakhtyari soldiery as a whole were treated with a generosity which was becoming typical of the Zand Khan’s policy. The early months of 1751 thus mark the beginning of Karim Khan’s rule as viceroy of the nominal neo-Safavid king Esma’il III. It was a makeshift position, to be hotly disputed for twelve more years – the “king” was even kidnapped by Karim’s next rival for power – and it was generally expected that the eventual victor would follow Nader’s precedent and soon drop the device, proclaiming himself as shah. From Isfahan Karim appointed regional governors to the conquered towns and nominated his kinsmen as commanders of the armies in the Zand homeland, the Zagros provinces, and the approaches to the still unsubdued Kermanshah fortress. Local dignitaries came from all over western central Iran to pay their respects to the new shah and his Vakil. The myth of a rival government in Mashhad, whether Afsharid or neo-Safavid, had died a natural death.

ENTER THE QAJARS Ali Mardan was still a threat. He had gained support and fresh levies from Sheikh Sa’d of the Arab tribe of the Al-Kasir, the Vali

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of Arabestan (modern Khuzistan).This region, geographically a part of the low-lying, marshy Tigris–Euphrates estuary in Iraq, adjacent to the Ottoman-ruled port of Basra, was “traditionally” claimed for Iran, provided the sovereign controlled it; for even when it was nominally in Iranian hands, the unruly Arab tribes there had scant respect for foreign governors and tax-collectors (an equal problem for the Ottoman rulers of southern Iraq). In the late spring of 1752 Ali Mardan’s new force set off with the Lurs of Esma’il Khan toward Kermanshah, and made friendly contact with the fortress. An attack on their base camp by Mohammad Khan Zand failed miserably, and after replenishing his stocks the Bakhtyari chief left his wary hosts at the fortress and continued into the Zand homeland. Near Nehavand he was met by the main Zand force under Karim Khan, and was completely routed. Once again Ali Mardan was forced to flee into the hills, and thence to Baghdad. At this juncture, a new and potentially more redoubtable enemy confronted the Zands. Mohammad Hasan Khan Qajar was the elder and only surviving son of Fath-Ali Khan, who had preceded Nader Khan Afshar as vakil od-dowla to their Safavid protégé Tahmasb II during the aftermath of the fall of Isfahan. Nader had engineered the dismissal and execution of this rival and himself replaced him as Tahmasb’s protector, until he felt confident enough to appropriate the crown – yet another cause of Qajar resentment. Having blocked the Afsharids’ advance west, the young Qajar chief had by now extended his sway from Astarabad to include Mazandaran and Gilan as far as the cities of Rasht and Qazvin – in effect, three-quarters of Iran’s Caspian shoreline and both sides of the Alborz range. Drawn by appeals for help from Kermanshah, he arrived at the head of a small force within a day’s march of the Zand army just as it had resumed its siege of the fortress. Leaving Mohammad Khan Zand and his Lak clients the Kalhor and Zangana tribes to prosecute the siege, Karim marched with his main force to meet this threat. The Qajars

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refused battle and retired straight to Astarabad. Although the campaigning season was already well advanced, the Zand leader determined to press home his advantage and besieged the fortress of Astarabad for two months. A stalemate was reached: supplies were running low in the fortress, and the Zands for their part were constantly harassed by Turkmen irregulars, but neither side would yield anything in negotiations. Finally, Mohammad Hasan took the field and, by a feigned flight which drew the Zands into a Turkmen ambush, utterly routed his attackers. The Vakil and less than half his battered forces straggled back to Tehran – leaving in Qajar hands his puppet king, Esma’il III, who had defected on the advice of his ever-opportunistic vizier, Zakariya Khan.The Qajar leader took full advantage of his new credentials, minting coins at Rasht in the name of the shah – an overt claim of suzerainty (Gombroon Diary, VII, 17 August 1754; Rabino, Coins, Medals and Seals, 48). The Qajars did not follow up their victory, and after wintering in Tehran Karim received word that Ali Mardan Khan was raising an army in Luristan to challenge him again. Early in 1753, he returned to Isfahan to keep a watch on this threat and on the progress of the siege of the Kermanshah fortress.

PRETENDERS LOST AND FOUND To complicate these moves around the chessboard of Iran, political intrigues were afoot across the frontier, in Baghdad. Under the enlightened and shrewd Soleyman Pasha, the Sultan’s quasi-autonomous governor, the erstwhile city of the Caliphs had become a refuge for victims of Nader Shah in his later years and, since his death, for many who judged it unwise to risk public life in the Iran of his successors until the present chaos cleared. Among these was the Qizilbash noble Mostafa Khan Begdeli Shamlu, who had been en route from Mashhad as ambassador to Istanbul to ratify the peace treaty of 1746 when he learned of Nader’s assassination. A few years later

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appeared another refugee, who gave himself out to be a son of Shah Tahmasb II. He claimed to have been spirited away from Isfahan by a loyal retainer at the time of the Afghans’ massacre of the Safavid princes, and to have lived in Russia until after Nader’s death. Whether they believed his claim or not, he was a heavensent opportunity for the Pasha to fish in Iran’s troubled waters, for Mostafa Khan to return home as a man of consequence, and for Ali Mardan, when he arrived in flight from the field of Nehavand, to raise yet another army and settle accounts once and for all with his Zand rival. All three espoused this latest pretender’s cause, proclaimed him Shah Soltan-Hoseyn II, and began to recruit an army with which to set him on the throne of Iran. They sent couriers to the beleaguered garrison of the Kermanshah fortress, with the encouraging promise that the royal army would soon march to their relief, and to yet another contestant for power, who was also an old friend of Mostafa Khan: Azad Khan Afghan at Urmiya.The Zands redoubled their efforts to take the obstinate fortress, but to no effect. In the spring of 1753 Ali Mardan and Mostafa Khan, reinforced by the Feyli Lurs of Esma’il Khan, and with the promise of help from Azad Khan Afghan, set off through the Zagros with their royal protégé. Suddenly, Soltan-Hoseyn II revealed himself as quite “unsuitable” – whether crazy, boorish, nervous or otherwise uncooperative is not clear from the chroniclers’ terse accounts – to be passed off as a Safavid monarch. The march slowed as new bands of supporters, denied access to the prince, deserted in droves. Karim Khan, doubtless aware of these developments, advanced in person from Isfahan, sending ahead an ultimatum to the defenders of the Kermanshah fortress.Two years of siege had taken their toll, and with no hope of relief by Ali Mardan’s depleted rabble, Mohammad Taqi and Abd ol-Ali capitulated to the Vakil, whose generous terms were scrupulously observed. Swiftly continuing westward, Karim confronted the pretender’s

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forces when their last hope – Azad Khan and his Afghans – was still two days distant, and scattered them without difficulty. Mostafa Khan was captured, but Ali Mardan yet again made his escape, taking with him the would-be Shah Soltan-Hoseyn II. Finding him a useless burden, the Bakhtyari chief later blinded this unfortunate and left him to make his way to the Shi’i shrines of Iraq, where he lived out his days as a religious recluse. This episode was to be the last time a Safavid pretender was used as a pawn in the power struggle for post-Nader Iran. A number of sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of the last two Safavid shahs survived the interregnum in quiet exile in Baghdad or India; three of them wrote memoirs which are useful sources for the history of the period. Mirza Da’ud and the other sons of the unfortunate Shah Soleyman II, for example, slipped away from Mashhad to the shrine cities of Iraq before his fall, and in September of 1751, with the help of the East India Company’s agent, secretly sailed from Bushehr to India (Gombroon Diary, VI, 29 September, 3 October 1751; Lockhart, Fall of the Safavi Dynasty, 510–512). They first took refuge with the emperor Alamgir in Delhi, but in the face of an invasion by Ahmad Shah Dorrani, moved to Murshidabad in Bengal. There they were later joined by Mirza Da’ud’s son, Mirza Mohammad Khalil, who had at first stayed in Isfahan, then moved to Shiraz, where he was hospitably received by Karim Khan. Of those Safavid princes who were elevated to the throne, the Vakil’s own mascot, Esma’il III, temporarily in Qajar hands, was the only one to die a natural death or with his sight intact.

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A

zad Khan was a Ghelzay Afghan of Kabul, who had commanded a contingent of his countrymen in Nader Shah’s army of Azerbaijan in 1747. During the subsequent chaos he rose to somewhat precarious power on both sides of the Aras river, partly in the service of King Taymoraz of Georgia and his warrior son Erekle, whose sister he married. After capturing Yerevan and expanding northward on his own initiative, Azad was forced south of the Aras by Erekle, who had succeeded his father as King of Georgia. Now, in summer 1753, Azad had mistimed his junction with Ali Mardan’s royal army, and found himself outnumbered by a triumphant Zand force. Like the Qajar chief one year before, he chose discretion and retreated, pleading that he wished only to dissociate himself from Ali Mardan now that he knew his pretender to have been an imposter. But Karim demanded nothing less than Azad’s surrender and tribute, which was rejected. Karim’s lieutenants reminded him of the reverse sustained in his rash pursuit of the Qajars, but he was adamant, and attacked. His kinsmen’s reluctance led to complete tactical confusion and precipitated the very disaster they had feared: the Zands were routed and fled back to their fortress at Pari, where Sheykh-Ali Khan was left to organize the defense. Karim, his brother Sadeq, and Eskandar Khan hurried to Isfahan, 31

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but found the citizens hostile and, judging it indefensible, headed south for Shiraz.

EXPLOITS OF MOHAMMAD KHAN AND SHEYKH-ALI KHAN ZAND Azad was not slow to exploit this sudden collapse of the Zand power. At Pari he tricked Sheykh-Ali and Mohammad Khan into the open and seized them, together with fifty other men and women of Karim’s family who were in the fortress. The prisoners and booty were dispatched under a strong escort toward Urmiya, Azad’s northern base, while in early October he secured undefended Isfahan and reduced the dependent towns to subjection, levying heavy contributions on all. He wintered there, stabling his horse in the Augustinian church and holding court in Shah Abbas’s audience hall, the Chehel Sotun or “Forty Columns.” Of the 60,000 tomans he levied on the city; 8,000 was to be extorted on the spot from the Armenian suburb of Julfa. His Uzbek contingent was quartered on Julfa, which for the second time in three years was reduced to abject poverty: in the words of the Armenian chronicler: “The tax-collectors fell upon the . . . unprotected Christians as a fire blows through the reeds; they . . . tied up men and women in the streets, in the squares, demanding money” (Carmelites, I, 685; Hovhanyants, 282). Sayyid Abdollah al-Shushtari notes in his memoir [Tazkera-ye Shushtar, pp. ix–xi] that he ransomed one of these prisoners, a priest, and took him home, where he read the New Testament with him. Karim had meanwhile been refused entry to Shiraz by the governor, Hashem Khan Bayat, who had come to power via a coup d’état, and had not been confirmed in office by the Vakil. This scenario will be seen frequently in this and other histories of Iran: however fierce and mobile the nomadic armies, if the city gates were barred to them, they were helpless. Even the artillery of the time was generally of little help. Only negotiated

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self-interest could obtain the winning combination of a fortified urban base and a well-supplied army. Karim was forced to turn about. With a few local reinforcements, he retired as far as the town of Qomesha, which had recently been ravaged by Azad’s deputy, Fath-Ali Khan Afshar. From the fortress here he mounted a series of guerrilla raids against Azad’s foragers and communications. Fath-Ali Khan, sent with 8,000 men to exterminate this wasps’ nest, made no headway and had to send for reinforcements under Azad Khan in person. Seeing the hopelessness of their position, Karim’s younger half-brother Eskandar Khan proposed a daring attempt to kill Azad, to which Karim reluctantly assented. Eskandar galloped head-down into the ranks of the Afghans, and impaled a distinguished-looking Afghan officer on his lance. As he whirled round, he was an easy target for the enemy musketeers as they snapped out of their astonishment; he died at Karim’s feet, believing he had succeeded. But he had killed the wrong man. Greatly moved by Eskandar’s wasted sacrifice, the Vakil nevertheless led an orderly retreat south-westward into the Kuhgiluya mountains. They wintered in the Zagros valleys, supported at Khorramabad by the Feyli Lurs. Then the Zands’ flagging morale was raised by news of a spectacular escape by Azad’s captives from Qal’a Pari. Mohammad and Sheykh-Ali managed to slip their bonds during an afternoon halt on the fourth day’s march, and slew the escort leader.They raised the cry that Karim and his army had arrived, and in the ensuing confusion, during which Zand men and women fought the guards with captured spears and tent poles, they seized seventy mules from the baggage guards and rode to freedom. Avoiding Pari, they fell in with large numbers of Kurds and Feyli Lurs on their way to join the Zands against what they perceived to be a new Afghan invasion. They made their way to Borujerd, where they were met by Karim Khan. This small success boosted Zand morale, and encouraged more contingents from the Iranian Zagros tribes to join their army.

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This optimistic spirit was short-lived. In the spring of 1754, Azad sent his re-equipped army under Fath-Ali Khan to confront the new Zand force. The Zands fell back on the Silakhur region, south-east of Borujerd, lost most of their flocks, and saw the last of their Lur allies slip away. The triumph of Kermanshah was thus followed by a disastrous series of defeats that split the Zand army into fugitive fragments. Mohammad Khan and Sheykh-Ali Khan Zand were isolated with a few men in the Chamchamal region of Kermanshah, where a large force under Ali Mardan surprised them and look them to the enforced hospitality of his camp in a nearby gorge. Talks of an alliance with Karim against the common enemy, Azad, came to nothing, and the Zand khans realized that their only hope was to kill the Bakhtyari leader before he disposed of them. At a prearranged signal, they overpowered Ali Mardan and his companions at their next interview, and Mohammad Khan killed the Bakhtyari chief with his own dagger.The captives successfully ran the gauntlet of musket fire and eventually rejoined Karim Khan with the welcome news that his earliest and most persistent rival was no more. Mohammad Khan then set about recruiting tribal levies on the borders of the Zohab pashalik and prepared to recover Kermanshah. Incidents during this period illustrate particularly clearly just what all this marching and counter-marching, fight, flight, and negotiation, were really about. Finding this horde of some ten thousand Lurs grazing their flocks on what he claimed as his territory, the Baghdad-appointed pasha, Abdollah Khan, demanded tribute, which Mohammad Khan indignantly refused.The capture of taxpaying populations is, of course, one function of the state. However, Abdollah then switched from an imperial frontier official to his real role, that of a Kurdish nomadic pastoralist whose livelihood was threatened by the encroachment of others of his kind. He quickly summoned reinforcements from his tribe, the Bajlan, and their neighbors, the Jaf, to run these foragers off his range.

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Coincidentally, the Zand, Vand, Kalhor and Zangana Laks and Lurs were just then reinforced by 6,000 families of Shaqaqi Kurds, recently returned from Khorasan (where they had doubtless been deported by Nader Shah). They had first contemplated joining Azad at Isfahan, but “on meeting him, thought better of it” and had left the captial, on the pretext of making a pilgrimage, in order to seek out Mohammad Khan Zand’s motley army (Golestana, 301). The chronicler’s cryptic phrase might mean that Azad already had enough manpower, but was happy to confiscate, or force-purchase, some of their sheep to feed his army; or, if they had too few flocks, he would look on them as a liability – mouths to feed rather than troops to field. In any case, like Adel Shah in Mashhad, he had viewed these nomads as his to dispose of; they had to resort to subterfuge (as others had to flight, or arms) to escape him. Mobility is the key component in the politics, as well as the economics, of nomadic herders. Appropriately, the Perso-Arabic term for the taxpaying population in its relation to the ruler is ra’iyat, literally “flock” (plural, ra’aya). The metaphor is that of a flock of sheep, to be herded, penned, and protected from predators so that they can be fleeced by their owners in due course. It goes back to ancient times, and can be seen in the wording of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd,” here adapted as a religious allegory. The surprising turn given to this metaphor by Karim Khan the Vakil will be described later (chapter 8). The confrontation at Zohab appears to have ended without a battle, and for some weeks Mohammad Khan Zand remained an active threat to Azad’s communications with Urmiya, intercepting at least one treasure-convoy, before turning his attention again to Kermanshah and its fortress.The year before, while he had been pressing the siege in anticipation of the approach of Ali Mardan with his neo-Safavid army from Baghdad, Mohammad Khan had nearly taken this stronghold owing to an extraordinary turn of events. A disaffected arsenal worker conceived the idea of blowing up the fortress to gain a reward

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from the Zands. He laid a slow fuse to a cache of gunpowder skins buried under a pile of cannonballs, retired to what he considered a safe distance (a tower next to the river Qara-su), and awaited results. The terrific blast blew up three towers and the walls between, with all who were stationed there, and hurled cannonballs into the air to rain down on the defenders all over the fortress. The attackers were no less alarmed; supposing their positions had been mined, the Zand soldiery leapt from their trenches and dashed back to escape the expected assault. Mohammad Khan was equally nonplussed, and found out what had happened only after the culprit, who had been blown out of his tower into the river, crawled out to claim his reward. The Zand commander, incensed at the enormity of his treachery (so the chronicler claims; probably, too, at the loss of the munitions), had him beaten and clapped in irons. The defenders were the first to recover their wits; they began to repair the breaches and manned the walls all that night in case the besiegers took belated advantage of the disaster. But it was only at dawn that the Zands rolled up two guns preparatory to storming the breaches. Accurate (or lucky) shots from the fortress knocked them from their mountings, and the defenders won a week’s grace to repair the breaches and clear out the moat. It was not long, however, before the commandant Mirza Mohammad Taqi bowed to the inevitable and surrendered to the Zands.The remains of the fortress were demolished. Meanwhile, Heydar Khan of the Zangana Lurs raised a large force of Lak tribesmen to wrest Kermanshah city from its enforced allegiance to Azad. While leading a general evacuation to join Mohammad Khan near the frontier, he shot Mohammad Taqi dead, apparently to satisfy a personal vendetta. In the winter of 1754–55, Mohammad Khan stormed and destroyed the Tekkelu tribe’s fortress of Valashgerd. Having cleared western central Iran of Azad’s collaborators, he marched via Khuzistan to amass further plunder and join Karim’s army in Fars.

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Azad had meanwhile marched into Shiraz in August 1754, and the next month Fath-Ali Khan Afshar drove Karim’s small force out of Kazarun. He fell back on the strategic village of Khesht, near the pass of Kamarej, his last tenuous foothold on the Iranian plateau. Nasir Khan, his nominal vassal at Lar to the south-west, had ignored his appeals for help, and the Zand nucleus was left with a few local allies such as Rostam Soltan, the headman of Khesht. A plan was devised to lead Fath-Ali into ambush in the narrow Kamarej pass: the Zands and their mostly Arab musketeers from the Dashtestan (the Gulf coastal plain) lined up on the plain below, while Rostam Soltan and the musketeers of Khesht positioned themselves atop the hills flanking the defile. Like Ali Mardan three years before, the Afshars were ambushed and routed. The survivors were pursued through Kazarun to Shiraz, which Azad had to evacuate ten days later. Sympathizers opened the city to the besieging Zands, and on 29 November 1754, Karim first entered his future capital of Shiraz (see Malcolm, 123–125). Next spring, Mohammad Khan Zand, who had now rejoined Karim, defeated Fath-Ali Khan, and Azad took steps to relinquish his precarious hold on Isfahan and retire northward. While Karim was consolidating his hold on Fars, and preparing to subjugate Nasir Khan of Lar, his Qajar rival Mohammad Hasan was similarly reasserting his authority over Mazandaran and Gilan, so that the Qajar domains were now adjacent to Azad’s territory; and when in November one of Azad’s generals was defeated by a Qajar force, the Afghan pulled out of Isfahan and retired to Kashan. Karim Khan heard of this on his way to raid Kerman and, changing direction, recaptured Isfahan unopposed on 17 December 1755. Two days later he set off in pursuit. Azad, squeezed between the Zand and Qajar forces, made all speed back to Urmiya early in 1756. But all was not well in the Zand camp. The bulk of Karim’s army left at Isfahan now comprised infantry, mostly Arabs recruited from the middle Gulf coast. Disgruntled at the length of their service, the hardships of a severe winter, and arrears of

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pay, they demanded their release. Karim, fearing a confrontation with the Qajars, refused. And in fact an ultimatum arrived from Mohammad Hasan Khan demanding that the Zands recognize Shah Esma’il, still in Qajar hands, and cooperate or be eliminated. Karim became more adamant in his refusal, which set off a mutiny. Though this was quelled after a few days’ fighting, the damage had been done; Isfahan, with a long-oppressed population held by an unreliable garrison, was indefensible when the Qajar chief advanced. Sheykh-Ali and Mohammad Khan Zand were sent to intercept him and, on 27 March, at Kazzaz, between Qom and Kashan, were heavily defeated. Mohammad Khan was captured and sent to Mazandaran. After two years captivity he attempted to escape; this time, however, his luck ran out, and he was caught and killed. Karim Khan moved out with a few Zand veterans to Golunabad, the site of the victory of the Ghelzay Afghans over the Safavids in 1722. About the beginning of April 1756 he was routed and fled to Shiraz. The Qajars then entered Isfahan unopposed. Late in June, Mohammad Hasan marched on Shiraz, but found it too well defended and, on news of an advance by Azad, withdrew via the desert route to Sari. Azad reoccupied Isfahan about mid-August of 1756. From here he moved swiftly in pursuit of Mohammad Hasan, but the Qajars were fast enough to block the Alburz passes. Azad’s force therefore swung westward to Rasht in order to outflank them along the Caspian coastal route. Mohammad Hasan in turn moved west to Amol, and completely destroyed Azad’s advance lines at Rudsar with a surprise cavalry raid at night. Azad, who had been preparing to winter at Rasht, saw his elaborate exploratory front being rolled up in confusion by this bold stroke, and in February had to abandon Rasht in a precipitous retreat to Qazvin and back to Isfahan. Mohammad Hasan continued through Gilan and Talesh as far as Astara on the edge of the Moghan Steppe, then cut across

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Azerbaijan and laid siege to Azad’s home base of Urmiya. Azad’s governor Yusof Khan Hotaki Afghan sent urgent calls for help, and shut himself in the citadel to wait.

FIRST-PERSON TESTIMONY: LE SIEUR SIMON In making sense of this bewildering few years of the three-cornered power struggle in western Iran, the partisan information from Zand and Qajar chroniclers and the Armenian history of New Julfa, plus the fragmentary reports of British and Russian commercial agents, can be supplemented from the letters of a French secret agent who rode with Azad Khan as his personal physician between 1755 and 1757. Le Sieur Simon (his forename is not recorded) was sent overland in June 1751 from the consulate in Istanbul to Isfahan, with instructions “to find out the civil and military situation of [Persia], the factions dividing it, the princes who claim the crown . . . its political relations with the neighboring powers, in particular Turkey and Russia” (his adventures may be pieced together from the records of the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères: Perse VII, Nos. 70–102, supplemented by mentions in the Gombroon Diary). Simon was an enthusiastic amateur rather than a professional spy, and soon irritated his superiors with his unorthodox approach: a petulant letter was sent from Aleppo begging him not to use again a cumbersome syllabic code he had invented, since the key he had sent had not yet arrived. At Baghdad he served Abdollah Pasha so well as a doctor that the governor wished to retain him indefinitely; however, Simon slipped away into Iran, leaving behind him large debts which the disgruntled French consul had to pay. By October 1754 he had reached Hamadan and under duress had become a (Shi’i) Muslim, in which persuasion he continued with some enthusiasm, dating his letters by the Hijri calendar and signing himself “Mirza Mohammad Reza” – while insisting to his superiors that this was but a “ruse de guerre.”

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By September 1755 he was in Isfahan, shortly before Azad, threatened by both Qajar and Zand forces, left the city to the Zands and retired northward. Simon impressed the Ghelzay chieftain with his medical skill and was engaged as his doctor, to accompany him on campaign. “If I should perish,” Simon wrote to his superiors, “pray be assured that it is in His Majesty’s service.” In September he reported a rumor that Karim Khan had been assassinated at Shiraz; and managed to send off a manuscript of Rashid od-Din’s celebrated Universal History for the Royal Library. Both on this occasion and when Azad returned in force to Isfahan in August of the next year, Simon used his influence to alleviate the sufferings of the foreign Christians of Isfahan. He could not help the Armenians of Julfa, who had to pay the exorbitant sum of 6,000 tomans, and were leaving daily for Shiraz (Gombroon Diary, VIII, 22 December 1755, recording a letter from Simon). The wretched plight of the Armenians of New Julfa, whose jeweled and brocaded church vessels and vestments had already been melted down, was always worse than that of their Muslim neighbors. Their historian explains: In the space of five years five “kings” succeeded one another. They knew that their invasions were banditry, so each in turn demanded huge sums in taxes to satisfy the needs of their armies; and for fear that another one stronger than he would come and drive him away, each one demanded the tax instantly, granting no time to pay.Yet Julfa was already emptied of wealthy princes, for many had fled abroad, and others, having been mulcted of large sums, were now poor. It was therefore impossible to render the unjust [collective] requisitions; so they sold off at half price all their property and furniture, and when they had no more property or furniture they were beaten, burned, wounded, and tortured on dreadful racks. [Hovhanyants, 285]

Simon was by training a botanist, and evidently took every opportunity on his overland journey to study, collect, and make

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drawings of specimens of local plants, gathering information for a pharmacopeia of Persia – more to his liking, one suspects, than spying for Louis XV. There is in the archives of the Quai d’Orsay, France’s Foreign Ministry – filed separately from the consular intelligence reports – an anonymous portfolio of botanical drawings and descriptions which, from the dates and places recorded, can only be that of Simon (I am indebted to Dionyssios Vassiliades for this serendipitous discovery). Yet he relished the adventure too, and seems to have identified himself with Azad’s fortunes. When the Afghans left Isfahan on 15 April 1757, to raise the Qajar siege of Urmiya, Simon wrote excitedly, “We are on the march . . . we are going to fight Mohammad Hasan Khan.” Together with his concubine and young son he accompanied Azad’s army northward, never to be heard from again.

NEUTRALIZATION OF THE QAJARS In June 1757, two months after marching from Isfahan, Azad was met by the main Qajar force a short distance from Urmiya. Despite his superiority in numbers, he was deserted at the height of the battle by Shahbaz Khan Donbali and other disaffected local khans; the rest fled before the victorious Qajars, who looted his baggage and returned to lay siege to Urmiya. The fortress capitulated within days, and with it went the loyalty of most of Azad’s former territory. Fath-Ali Khan Afshar was induced to join up with the Qajars, while Azad fled to Baghdad. Karim Khan had meanwhile engaged in a series of operations designed to secure the hinterland of Shiraz, from the Kuhgiluya mountains to Khuzistan. His neglect of Isfahan enabled Mohammad Hasan’s Qajars to return to the metropolis on 15 December 1757, after another lightning winter offensive. The famine-stricken city could barely support its own populace, let alone the large and restless army yet again forced upon it

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and, in March of the following year, Mohammad Hasan set off to besiege Shiraz once more. As before, Nasir Khan Lari was invited to join the Qajar chief, and a month later the complete force was encamped outside the Zands’ city. But Shiraz had been well stocked with supplies and the remaining local resources destroyed; daily sorties and raids cut off men and mounts, forcing the Qajars to seek further afield for food and fodder, and in a few weeks the siege became an ironic copy of Karim Khan’s abortive assault on Astarabad six years previously, this time with the roles reversed. One night in July 1758 the Afghan and Uzbek contingents, acquired earlier from Azad, looted the Qajar camp and deserted in a body. The next day the depleted and dispirited Qajar army struck camp and fled north. The over-extended Qajar commitment was now rolled rapidly back to its point of origin. Hoseyn Khan Develu of the rival Yukhari-bash branch of the Qajars, who had held Isfahan for Mohammad Hasan, relinquished the city and raced back towards Astarabad to secure it with his own men. Mohammad Hasan’s loyal governor of Mazandaran massacred most of the unreliable Afghans who had been allowed to settle around Sari after Azad’s defeat; but even on reaching Tehran the Qajar chief was deserted by Fath-Ali Khan Afshar, Shahbaz Khan Donbali and other recently acquired lieutenants. Qajar control had everywhere been eroded: Sari was plundered by Yomut Turkmen and fell to Sheykh-Ali Khan’s pursuing Zands. Mohammad Hasan, taking with him the puppet king and a few loyal retainers, fled to Astarabad, which, despite Hoseyn Khan Develu’s attempts to assert his authority, had remained loyal. In September 1758, the Vakil and his army moved from Shiraz in the wake of Sheykh-Ali Khan. He combined his slow advance with a review and reorganization of his realms in central Persia, arriving at Tehran in December. Sheykh-Ali Khan, unable to breach the Qajar lines at Ashraf (present-day Behshahr), boldly turned their right flank and made for their capital along the coast, which obliged Mohammad Hasan to

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pull back hurriedly and withdraw into Astarabad. Fearing betrayal by the Yukhari-bash Qajars in his midst, Mohammad Hasan had them massacred, then emerged again to bring Sheykh-Ali to battle before he could be extensively reinforced from Tehran. The resulting clash, on 14 February 1759, ended in a total Qajar defeat. Mohammad Hasan was struck down in flight by a Kurdish renegade in the service of his Develu rival Hoseyn Khan, and Astarabad fell with enormous booty into Zand hands.

AZERBAIJAN: THE DEFEAT OF AZAD AND FATH-ALI KHAN Having recovered Esma’il III, Karim could once more legitimately style himself vakil and reassert his authority with a grand traditional Nowruz celebration in Tehran. Nowruz, the Persian New Year, is a joyous occasion celebrating the natural beginning of spring at the vernal equinox (21 March). It is marked by age-old and universal symbols of new life and fresh growth, some of which (eggs, flowers, new clothes) also appear in the celebration of Easter. Unlike Easter, Nowruz has never been wholly co-opted by religion: in Zoroastrian times it was partially assimilated into the cultic calendar, but in Muslim Iran it has remained a secular holiday (being, for one thing, on the solar and not the lunar calendar). Politically, it has long been an occasion in Persia, right through the Pahlavi monarchy, for a grand court levee at which the shah and his representatives formally receive loyal greetings, and review and reward their entourage. At Nowruz of 1759, Azad Khan was still at large in Iraq, and Fath-Ali Khan Afshar and his allies controlled Urmiya; but the most immediate danger seemed to stem from the disaffected Afghan troops in Mazandaran. The Qajar governor at Sari had anticipated this with his massacre the previous year, and the Zand ruler now resolved to rid himself of this superfluous and

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fickle minority at one blow. In a coordinated “St Bartholomew’s day,” thousands of Afghans were massacred all over northern Iran – reputedly 9,000 in Tehran alone – and those who escaped were hunted down and killed as far away as Yazd. The Vakil spent the summer heat in the yeylaq (summer retreat) of Shemiran, in the hills above Tehran, and a second winter in Tehran.This city – not yet as important, and nowhere near as big, as it became in Qajar times – was to be his base of operations for as long as it took to subdue the north. Accordingly he had a fortified residence built, which became the nucleus of the later royal palace, the Golestan (it was known after the fall of the Zands as Qasr-e Qajar, “Qajar Castle” – see figure 1). It is tempting to speculate how the modern history of Iran might have turned out had he chosen Tehran as his capital, almost thirty years before the first Qajar ruler; however, it appears he had already decided on Shiraz, which was where he sent booty and hostages from these campaigns in the north. One purpose of this relatively prolonged stay in and near Tehran, at the edge of the Qajars’ winter pastures, was to ensure the subservience of this tribe under the apparently compliant leadership of the Develu clan. Most of the nine sons of Mohammad Hasan Khan Qoyunlu had fled to the traditional Qajar refuge, the Turkmen steppes, and Karim Khan appointed Hoseyn Khan as governor of Astarabad. The Vakil had good reason not to trust such a powerful force in his rear. Qajar ambitions go back long before the coronation of the first monarch of that line in 1796. To read a history of this period compiled by a one of the Qajar chroniclers is to see it as a virtually unbroken record of the Qajar dynasty from 1725, when Fath-Ali Khan Qajar (Mohammad Hasan’s father) took up the cause of Tahmasb II Safavi. That Fath-Ali was ousted by Nader, who was not immediately succeeded by a Qajar, makes little difference to this “we were robbed” view of history, which was to steel Agha Mohammad’s resolve during his captivity in Shiraz.

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In spring 1760 the Vakil moved out on an aggressive reconnaissance of Azerbaijan. Maragha was temporarily secured, but the lightly equipped Zand army found Tabriz too well defended by Fath-Ali Khan Afshar and returned to Tehran before the summer. That autumn, the Vakil and his full court took a longneeded rest on the pastures of the Khamsa, near Soltaniya (present-day Arak), and returned to Tehran in December to prepare a full-scale spring offensive. In the event, he was anticipated by his old enemy Azad who, since early 1758, had been planning to retake Tabriz with the help of the Pasha of Baghdad. The Georgian king Erekle, under pressure from the expanding power of both the Afshars of Urmiya and the Zands, encouraged Azad to return to Azerbaijan, but on his approach demurred at providing active aid; and Azad’s former lieutenants Fath-Ali and Shahbaz Khan, far from flocking to his standard, drove off his vanguard and prepared to defend their independent stake in the province. Probably in the summer of 1760, Azad advanced on Tabriz with a large and composite army and faced the coalition of Afshar and other Azerbaijan warlords at Maragha. He was completely routed and fled to Kurdistan. Failing to recruit further support either among the Kurds or from Soleyman Pasha, he and his household retinue made their way to a comfortable but

Figure 1. “Qasr-e Qajar,” Karim Khan’s palace at Tehran (from a nineteenth-century drawing).

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humiliating asylum at the Georgian court in Tbilisi. Two years later, his last hope of glory gone with the Zands’ conquest of Azerbaijan, he surrendered to Karim Khan (chapter 4). It is not clear why Karim Khan was unable to take immediate advantage of these struggles for Azerbaijan. Probably his hold on Mazandaran and Gilan – which were to remain Qajardominated during the rest of his reign – was not secure enough to allow him to extend the Zand front. It was not until the summer of 1762, after prolonged confrontation at a distance, that the Vakil advanced on Tabriz. He obtained submission, and supplies of sheep, horses and troops, from the Shaqaqi Kurds and the Shahseven tribe. Near Qara Chaman (now called Siah Chaman), some sixty miles south-east of Tabriz, he was attacked by Fath-Ali Khan’s larger army. Both sides used field artillery, commanded on the Zand side by a Georgian master gunner, Lotf-Ali Khan. The Afshar coalition at first seemed sure of victory, especially when the Zands’ right wing broke and was pursued back to the baggage camp – which the officers in charge, led by Nadr Khan Zand, abandoned to be plundered. But the Zand center and left, rallied by Karim and Sheykh-Ali, swept the field; Shahbaz Khan was captured and hastily transferred his allegiance to the Vakil, while Fath-Ali fled to Urmiya. Tabriz opened its gates, and a few weeks later the Vakil was besieging Urmiya. Spirited sorties by the garrison, hit-and-run raids by the local Kurds, and a severe winter failed to dislodge the blockaders. After seven months Fath-Ali came under increasing pressure to capitulate, and negotiated a surrender on terms. Urmiya fell on 20 February 1763, the last fortress in western Iran to resist the Zands.

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W

ith the collapse of Fath-Ali Khan’s confederation early in 1763, following so soon on that of the Qajars, the Vakil was for the first time master of all Iran, with the exception of the Afsharid state of Khorasan. The large retinue that accompanied the Zand army, first on a tour of western Azerbaijan, then the following summer to Shiraz, included a large number of new allies and hostages, among them Azad Khan Afghan and Fath-Ali Khan Afshar. The former had accepted Karim Khan’s invitation, delivered to him in Tbilisi, to live the quiet life of a pensioner in Shiraz. This he did, and eventually died two years after the Vakil, in 1781, and was buried as he wished in his native city of Kabul. The reconciliation was advantageous for both parties: the Vakil was spared the threat, however remote, of a renewed bid for power by the Afghan or his men, and Azad need not fear assassination or settle for exile in a Christian land. For all his plundering and extortion in Isfahan, Azad was reputedly a fair and honest warrior, and had treated the women among his Zand captives from Pari with chivalry. His surrender to Karim Khan, when he was already beyond pursuit, is a rare example in this period of good sense and trust between adversaries who acknowledged that their competition was over. The two other arrangements by which a conqueror traditionally sought to hold distant subordinates in check were marriage 47

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alliances and the taking of hostages. A typical hostage was a close male relative (i.e. a possible successor) of the person delegated to command a tribe or territory; he would live as a guest and courtier of the suzerain, with the unspoken understanding that his life or liberty could be forfeit if his distant relative in power were to misbehave. Nevertheless, he was generally in a more congenial situation than that of a bride added to the harem, who could easily disappear with her co-wives into the guarded recesses of the women’s quarters for the rest of her days. None of the Vakil’s marriages of convenience appear to have been much more than that; Mohammad Hoseyn-qoli’s sister Khadija, who was (or rose to be) the mistress of the Vakil’s harem, remained a loyal Qajar and aided her nephew Agha Mohammad in escaping when the Vakil died (chapter 6). However, the Zand leader did not condone forced marriages. Ali Mohammad Khan Zand captured and married a sister of Hoseyn-qoli during his punitive campaign of 1773, but she refused to acquiesce; the Vakil was reportedly outraged with his kinsman, and restored the girl to her family. Nor did Karim ever retaliate upon a hostage for the disobedience or rebellion of a distant relative. At the height of Hoseyn-qoli Khan’s insurgency, Agha Mohammad took sanctuary (bast) in the Shah Cheragh shrine at Shiraz; but the Vakil assured him that, no matter what, he would not be subject to a reprisal (Rostam al-Hokama, 353–354). During this period, too – perhaps as late as his definitive entry into Shiraz in 1765 – Karim Khan “the Vakil” changed the polarity of his title, vakil od-dowla, “deputy of the state,” to vakil or-ra’aya, “deputy of the subjects.” (The significance of this development will be examined in chapter 8.)

RETRIBUTION AND PURGES Fath-Ali Khan Afshar, who by all accounts lacked the generous qualities that made Azad respected even by his enemies, was

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executed in July 1764 near Isfahan, probably on the instigation of ex-minions who now found themselves free to voice their detestation. Given Fath-Ali’s record of oppression and treachery, this action may be seen as an act of policy. So, too, may Karim Khan’s recent massacre of the Afghans, in view of the still precarious victory enjoyed by the Zands and the fact that the Afghans were generally detested as a reminder of the worst days of Nader Shah’s tyranny. But during this same period there were other executions and acts of cruelty which plainly embarrass the most devoted chroniclers and can only be regarded as a stain on the Vakil’s record of magnanimity and forbearance. It would seem that tensions had arisen in the Zand ranks which led to something approaching a purge. During Karim’s summer recreation in the Khamsa region in 1760, a Zand officer was executed after a harem squabble involving Khadija, Karim Khan’s new Qajar bride. During the siege of Urmiya, a plot was discovered to assassinate the Vakil; some half-dozen conspirators, including the camp physician, were executed, and their heads flung at the foot of the city wall. Soon after the siege there occurred the most palpable mark on the Vakil’s character. Sheykh-Ali Khan Zand, the hero (together with the late Mohammad Khan) of so many daring escapes from and raids on the three main foes of the Zands, had apparently shown himself so arrogant and independent as to constitute a threat to his cousin’s authority. He is charged by the chroniclers with misappropriation of booty and provincial revenue, and with cruelty and extortion in dealing with conquered populations, to the extent of countermanding the Vakil’s orders of leniency. Three of the clique he had cultivated in camp at Urmiya were executed on Karim’s orders. Sheykh-Ali, refusing to heed the signs, remonstrated so hotly with his cousin that the two came to blows and Karim had him blinded. It can only be concluded that the Vakil saw such arrogance and obstinacy from one who had hitherto been his close friend

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and most able lieutenant as a genuine threat to his rule, and as a dangerous crack in the united Zand front at a still critical period. Both men seem to have been completely reconciled: Sheykh-Ali spent the rest of his life (until 1772) as a respected member of the court, and never became a focus of sedition (see figure 2). Several lesser Zand officers were dismissed or arrested at this time, including Sabz-Ali, a nephew of Sheykh-Ali. Nadr Khan Zand, whose flight from the baggage-camp at Qara Chaman had nearly cost the Zands that battle, died after a drunken debauch, possibly from poison. Three Zand officers were blinded at Khoy some three months after the fall of Urmiya, and others were blinded and executed later at Isfahan. Then the purge, if such it was, stopped. There is another possible explanation for this spate of executions besides that of policy. At Silakhur, during the last weeks of 1763, Karim was taken gravely ill. There were fears for his life, though he recovered within the month. No indication of the nature of his illness is given by the Persian chroniclers, but reports reaching the Carmelite community at Basra about this

Figure 2. The Vakil with his kinsmen and courtiers. The blind figure in the center is Sheykh-Ali Khan. (Detail of a painting in the Kolah-e farangi, Shiraz.)

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time assert that he had recently recovered from an abscess of the throat caused, it was said, by excessive addiction to opium. He had also taken to excessive drinking and meted out summary punishments to suspected miscreants while drunk (Carmelites, 663, 666). Certainly both vices were common enough among rulers of the time, and Karim Khan is known to have enjoyed his wine; but this is the only period of his life when the Vakil was noted to be dangerous when drunk. Fortunately this was a temporary aberration, and never reached the fatal precipice of Nader’s madness.

RECONQUEST OF THE SOUTH: THE REVOLT OF ZAKI KHAN ZAND Paradoxically, the only irrefutable case of real and sustained rebellion at this time was treated by Karim with consistent moderation and clemency. His cousin and half-brother Zaki, as his conduct on the Vakil’s death was to show, was a cruel and selfish opportunist. Piqued by a fancied lack of recognition of his role in the battle of Qara Chaman, he and his adherents had retired to Tehran, where he plundered Sheykh-Ali’s baggage, and continued to Isfahan. Here his Bakhtyari supporters tricked Ali Mohammad Khan Zand, then governor of Borujerd, into renouncing his allegiance to the Vakil and joining Zaki to exploit the long-suffering populace of Isfahan. They then launched an abortive attack on Kashan. Karim forbore at first to interfere, but by October 1763 he realized that the whole center of his hard-won realm was likely to crumble under the shocks of this irresponsible adventure. He advanced from Ardebil to the relief of Kashan and Isfahan, and Zaki Khan, together with his family, Bakhtyari adherents, and a string of hostages from the families of loyal Zands in Isfahan, fled through the Bakhtyari mountains to Khuzistan. He lost his baggage and hostages to the pursuing Nazar-Ali Khan Zand on the western edge of the Zarda Kuh foothills

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and sought the help of Mowla Mottaleb, the chief of the Shi’i Mosha’sha’ Arabs, who was then Vali of Arabestan. The Vali found it convenient to use Zaki’s forces as an arm of his advance on rebel-held Dezful. Zaki, however, recruited reinforcements from the Al-Kasir tribe, then waging a bloodfeud against the Vali and, under their influence, secured the adherence of the Governor of Dezful in a threefold alliance against the Vali. Zaki then sent a force under Ali Mohammad Khan which killed Mowla Mottaleb’s family and captured him alive. Anxious to avoid the clutches of his blood-enemies the Al-Kasir, the Vali paid Zaki a ransom of 60,000 tomans; but no sooner was this accepted than Zaki found it expedient to hand over his prisoner to the now dominant Al-Kasir, who promptly killed him (Ghaffari, 128–137). The Al-Kasir had no further use for their Zand ally, and the remaining Mosha’sha’ became bitterly hostile, so Zaki Khan was obliged to lead his few remaining Bakhtyari and Lur adherents back into the mountains. There, early in 1764, he was intercepted by Nazar-Ali Khan and threw himself on the Vakil’s clemency. Both he and Ali Mohammad were granted a full pardon. Thus ended an episode which might have split the Zand empire irreparably had Zaki Khan been more diplomatic in dealing with his allies. The revolt had acted as a litmus test, indicating the latent disaffection of various tribal elements in the Zand confederation and on its fringes, which Karim took steps to remedy. The Bakhtyari, still jealous of their status under the Safavids and Nader Shah, and having come within an ace of supreme power under Ali Mardan, now tasted the Vakil’s displeasure. This came as a more merciful variation of the punishment meted out to the Bakhtyari – and the Zand – by Nader. Having recaptured Isfahan and restored his authority there by early 1764, Karim sent forces into the Zarda Kuh to round up and disarm as many Bakhtyari tribesmen as possible. Three thousand of their fighting men were incorporated into the Zand army and the rest were forcibly resettled, the Haft Lang around Qom and Varamin, some two hundred miles to

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the north, and the Chahar Lang near Fasa in Fars, three hundred miles south-east of their ancestral lands. Next their northern neighbors, the Feyli Lurs, whose nominal submission to the Vakil had likewise been sloughed off during Zaki’s revolt, were chastised. In the winter of 1764–65 the Zands struck at Khorramabad, plundering Esma’il Khan and forcing him to flee to the Iraqi plains and the hospitality of the Banu Lam Arabs. Karim dealt out no further punishment to the Lur tribesmen, merely replacing Esma’il as paramount chief by his more compliant brother. Whereas the Bakhtyari seem to have been cowed for the rest of the Vakil’s reign, his attempts to subjugate the Feyli Lurs were less successful: soon afterwards Esma’il Khan returned to power and retained his influence for the rest of the Zand period. Finally, to complete this pacification of the south-west quadrant, the Zand army moved into northern Khuzistan, preceded by a detachment under Nazar-Ali Khan which pursued the Banu Lam and plundered a group of Al-Kasir tribesmen. During the few days the Vakil spent at Dezful and Shushtar – where he celebrated Nowruz of 1765 – he made several new government appointments and extracted 20,000 tomans in reparations and presents from the recalcitrant province. In May he set off back toward Shiraz, through the Kuhgilu mountains, where other rebel strongholds remained to be breached. Ever since Karim had been driven back on Kazarun by Azad in 1754, this mountainous area to the north-west of Shiraz had come to form the strategic left flank of the new Zand heartland of Fars, guarding the routes to Khuzistan and Luristan. His first campaign here was undertaken in 1757, while Azad and Mohammad Hasan Khan were struggling for supremacy in the north. Behbahan, the central stronghold of the independent mountaineers, was blockaded, stormed, and sacked, and Jayezan fell after a grueling eight-month siege. In 1760, while the Vakil was in Azerbaijan, rebellion simmered here until the spring of 1765, when all paid homage to the Vakil on his return

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from Khuzistan – with the exception of the Lur tribe of the Liravi, centered on two fortresses near Behbahan. The Zand advance met with desperate resistance all around these strongholds, which fell after appalling casualties on both sides. No quarter was asked or given; prisoners were beheaded and a tower of skulls built as a warning to others. The excessive savagery of this treatment would have gone unnoticed in Nader’s day, but as the action of the normally moderate Vakil it calls forth a somewhat anxious justification from the “official” chronicler Mirza Sadeq Nami: the unrepentant brigands had put up a fierce fight and an example was necessary in this strategic area. On 21 July 1765, after an absence of almost seven years, the Vakil re-entered his capital and was not to leave again for the remaining fourteen years of his reign. Only now could he give thought to securing his strategic right wing, the large and mountainous province of Lar. This project, like that of containing the ambitions of the Qajars, was not one that could be definitively completed in a few years. Both these endeavors, as intermittent but essential police work, began before and continued after the period of active conquest with which this chapter is concerned.

LAR, YAZD, AND KERMAN: THE TWO TAQIS The crescent of mountainous terrain sweeping from the south-west of Shiraz, comprising the provinces of Lar and Kerman and the city and desert environs of Yazd, were no less important, strategically and economically, than the northwestern mountain tracts of the Lurs, Kurds, and Turks. Lar and Kerman dominated the lower Gulf littoral and the Safavid port of Bandar Abbas; Kerman produced goat wool for export (both the British and the Dutch East India Companies had kept a resident there in Nader Shah’s reign) and, with its local supplies of iron, sulfur, and saltpeter, manufactured firearms and

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munitions for the lively domestic market.Yazd was a center of silk weaving, and had been an important stage in the overland trade between Safavid Iran and India, now much reduced by reason of insecurity of the roads and the switch to maritime traffic. Nasir Khan Lari had risen by a process of organized brigandage in the period of the Afghan invasion and Nader Shah’s reign to gain undisputed control of Lar and its dependency, the Sab’a region bordering on Kerman and the Gulf coast. Nader Shah had been content to confirm his de facto dominion. Nasir Khan had failed to take Shiraz during the interregnum, but from 1751, with a strong standing army, asserted his authority over the port of Bandar Abbas and the trade routes inland. He had been wooed with further diplomas and titles by Azad, Mohammad Hasan, and Karim Khan, and had indeed aided the Qajar chief in his abortive siege of Shiraz in 1758. Karim’s first campaign in Lar, in 1755, was a two-pronged advance on the city of Lar itself, which however held out; Nasir Khan agreed to pay tribute and a truce was reached. Over the next three years, the Zands kept up intermittent pressure on Nasir Khan, who was also involved in border hostilities with Shahrokh Khan, the governor of Kerman. When Karim Khan set off in pursuit of the Qajars in 1758, he detailed a force to chastize Nasir Khan which had some success, but made no attempt to take the stronghold of Lar itself. While Sadeq Khan governed Shiraz, the Khan of Lar continued his depredations unchecked, and in 1760 even forced a truce by the terms of which his autonomy was recognized for a small tribute and hostages were exchanged. Early in 1766, however, Karim dispatched Sadeq to reduce the fortress. The town of Lar fell quickly, and a deserter showed the Zands a secret track up the rocky promontory on top of which was Nasir Khan’s fortress. Nasir Khan nevertheless fought on until, with supplies running low, his men mutinied and he was forced to sue for terms. His stronghold was demolished and he and his family were taken back to Shiraz, where they were generously treated

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as hostage-guests. The inhabitants of Lar were not subjected to reprisals, and Masih Khan, a cousin of Nasir Khan, was appointed to govern in his stead, which he did loyally for the rest of Karim’s reign. The provincial centers which lay even further away from Shiraz showed a proportionally greater determination to live a life of their own at the outset of the Zand regency. At the end of Nader’s reign, Kerman was seized by an Afshar, Shahrokh Khan, whose family had held the province more or less continuously since the time of Shah Abbas. He added Yazd and Abarquh to his domains and paid nominal homage, but no taxes, to the Afsharid rulers in Mashhad. In 1754 he appealed to Nasir Khan Lari for help against repeated raids by a former governor of Kerman, Mo’men Khan Bafqi. Nasir Khan marched with 8,000 men ostensibly to join him, but on meeting Shahrokh Khan near Mashiz he bound him hand and foot and sent a demand to Kerman for a ransom. This was refused, and he advanced to besiege the city. But he was hotly resisted, and when Shahrokh Khan managed to bribe his guards and escape, the Khan of Lar beat a disgruntled retreat. Meanwhile Yazd, closer to and traditionally dependent on Isfahan, broke free under Taqi Khan Bafqi, a local chieftain who had profited from the rivalries of Azad, Mohammad Hasan, and Karim Khan to become self-styled governor. On his way north in 1758, the Vakil sent a flying column under Zaki Zand to bring Taqi Khan to book. The “governor” was dragged straight from his bed to the rack, and before Karim arrived with the main body of the army he had already disgorged 12,000 tomans. At a further court hearing, all his creditors were brought forward to testify to his oppression and were duly reimbursed. Taqi Khan was fined and dismissed, and the Zand army moved on. In 1760, while the Vakil was in Tehran, Shahrokh Khan once more took possession of Yazd. Karim therefore dispatched Khoda-Morad Khan Zand to impose his authority on the whole of Kerman province. Shortly before the arrival of the Zand

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army, Shahrokh Khan was killed in a popular insurrection, but his successors at first refused to admit Khoda-Morad to Kerman. He negotiated an entry on terms, which once inside he ignored, and subjected the city to even greater oppression than had Shahrokh Khan. Barely six months later, in March 1761, the Zand governor was deposed and killed by a victim of his injustice, one Taqi Khan Dorrani (i.e. from a local village called Dorran, not the Afghan ruling family). The story of this rebel, a social bandit in the style of Robin Hood, is one of the more remarkable in the annals of Zand history. Taqi was a charcoal seller who used to drive donkey-loads of his ware from his village to Kerman, a day or two distant. A crack shot with a musket, he would amuse himself by hunting on the way. One day he bagged a large mountain sheep, and on arrival gave it to Khoda-Morad’s servants as a present to the governor, in hopes of the usual reward. The sheep was duly cooked and served, but no reward materialized. Exasperated, Taqi gave up waiting and made to leave; but he was set upon by the governor’s servants, who now demanded the customary gratuity from a supposed beneficiary of their master. Refusing to believe he had received nothing, they beat him and confiscated his gun as security. Next day Taqi clung to the governor’s stirrup as he rode out and appealed for justice, but far from redressing his grievances Khoda-Morad ordered his servants to beat him again and throw him out of the city. Taqi limped home with a raging sense of injustice, and collected a band of three hundred followers, including hill bandits who, like him, were expert marksmen. With these he took to harassing the governor’s men in a private guerrilla war. He apparently had influence with the workers and artisans of Kerman city, and his private war soon escalated into a social revolt against an alien and exploitive government. An alliance with Rashid Khan Afshar, a kinsman of the late Shahrokh Khan, provided Taqi with the resources to mount a diversion near Mashiz, while he and fifty men silently scaled the walls

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of Kerman on the night of 25 March 1761, and by sunrise had captured the battlements and citadel. Khoda-Morad Zand was shot from his horse, after a term of only four months. Taqi Khan began his reign on a wave of relative popularity, fining the rich to give to the poor; but Kerman soon relapsed into the civil turmoil and economic stagnation with which successive predators had familiarized it. Late in 1762 Taqi Khan Bafqi, who was with the Vakil’s army in Azerbaijan, begged the chance to redeem himself by an attack on his namesake in Kerman. His advance guard was roughly handled by the Dorrani musketeers, and he turned tail without further engagement. He celebrated his narrow escape with sacrifice and thanksgiving, and issued a victory proclamation (fath-nama) in which he declared that true victory consists in a general’s bringing his troops back to base without casualties. When Karim Khan heard of this, he is reported to have laughed heartily and remarked, “Just like a townsman!” (Rostam al-Hokama, 375–378; Perry, Karim Khan Zand, 128–133).This was the only recorded time that Karim entrusted a courtier with a military operation, instead of a Zand or other tribal leader. Another expedition in about 1764 almost foundered on the jealousy of its joint commanders, a Kurd, Mohammad Khan Garrusi, and an Afshar, Amir Guna Khan Taromi. Garrusi was fortunate to reach Kerman at a time when Taqi Khan was absent, and took advantage of mutinous elements within to seize the city. But he was unable to extend his authority outside, and two months later had to flee when Taqi Khan mounted a successful night raid and recaptured the city. In a second advance on Kerman soon after this, the Kurdish Khan was routed in the field and again retired to Shiraz. For his fifth attempt to hold this stubborn province, the Vakil commissioned the veteran Ali Khan Shahseven, who methodically drove Taqi Khan back on his capital and besieged it. But during a skirmish outside the walls, he was shot dead by a sniper (Taqi Khan himself, as rumor had it, at a range of 1,500 yards), and his army trudged back to Shiraz. Outside

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Kerman, the invincible Taqi Khan was becoming a legend and making a mockery of Karim Khan’s pretensions to be regent of Iran. The myth grew to include the Two Qolis, craftsmen of Kerman called Qoli tofang-saz, “the gunsmith,” and Qoli barutkub, “the powder-maker,” whom Taqi Khan employed to make for him what were regarded with almost superstitious awe as the finest muskets and black powder in Iran. Ali Khan’s army was sent back to the attack under Nazar-Ali Khan Zand. By judicious propaganda and generous treatment of defectors he encouraged desertions by many who were disillusioned with their champion, since he had adopted the familiar extortionate ways of earlier governors. By spring of 1766, supplies had dwindled in the blockaded city and popular disaffection increased to such a degree that Taqi Khan was seized and the gates thrown open to the Zands. He was taken to Shiraz and put to death. From then on Kerman and its dependencies remained securely in the Vakil’s hands, though the rivalries of the various local governors did little to restore its prosperity. Eventually, Karim Khan appointed as begler-begi an Isma’ili sayyid, AbolHasan Ali-shah Mahallati (whose grandson in 1818 was to be granted the hereditary title Agha Khan, as the imam of the Nizari Isma’ilis, by Fath-Ali Shah). The sayyid was respected locally for his piety and generosity; his moral authority overrode the petty squabbles of the regional governors, and his ample private income from the khoms (the 20 percent alms remitted by the faithful from as far away as India) removed any temptation to skim revenue. Kerman was thus governed wisely and well for the rest of the Vakil’s reign.

CURBING THE QAJARS, 1759–1777 The provinces of Astarabad (present-day Gurgan), Mazandaran, and Gilan never wholly submitted to Afsharid or Zand rule. Astarabad is adjacent to Khorasan and the sparsely populated

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Turkmen steppes east of the Caspian Sea; Mazandaran and Gilan, a subtropical forestland below sea level, rich in rice, tea, and silk, fenced off from the plateau by the Alburz range, have traditionally provided refuges for independent dynasts and nonconformists throughout Persian history. This corridor remained a locus of Qajar power and intermittent revolt from Nader Shah’s time up to Agha Mohammad’s final overthrow of the Zands in 1795. Karim Khan was aware of the magnitude of this problem and attempted to reduce it by every method available to an overlord whose capital was distant by over five hundred miles, or two to three weeks’ march: by appeasement, by dividing the Qajars among themselves, by marrying into their family, and by taking hostages – but without great success. Mohammad Hasan Khan on his death in 1759 left nine sons, most of whom fled from Astarabad to the traditional Qajar refuge, the Turkmen of the northern steppe. From here they launched periodic raids against the Zand-appointed governor, Hoseyn Khan Develu, of the rival Yukhari-bash branch of the tribe. Early in 1748, when Adel Shah Afshar had advanced to Ashraf (Behshahr) and was attempting to subdue the Qajars, he had captured 4-year-old Mohammad, the eldest son of Mohammad Hasan Khan, and castrated him. During the Zand campaign of 1759 this boy, now aged about 16 and known as Agha Mohammad Khan (agha means “eunuch”), was again captured, and sent to Tehran. Here Karim Khan treated him with exceptional kindness and urged him to persuade the remaining fugitives to give themselves up. This they did, and were settled on the family estates; the older princes, including Agha Mohammad and Hoseyn-qoli Khan, were taken as hostages to Shiraz, where they were treated with the Vakil’s customary kindness. Mohammad Hasan’s sister, Khadija Bigom, was likewise taken to Shiraz as the Vakil’s wife. This wise policy was unfortunately prejudiced by the immediate military pacification of the Qajar realms, undertaken by Zaki Khan with unnecessary brutality. But the greatest risk the

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Vakil took in attempting to tame these provinces was in later appointing Mohammad Hasan’s second son, the 20-year-old Hoseyn-qoli, to govern Damghan. With Agha Mohammad disqualified, Hoseyn-qoli Khan was the heir apparent and guarantor of the posterity of the Qoyunlu clan of the Qajars. Perhaps, as the Qajar historians claim, the Vakil was persuaded by Agha Mohammad – for whose political acumen he had a genuine respect – that this was the best way to retain full control of Mazandaran. At any rate, the youth’s first action on taking up his appointment in February 1769 was to marry the daughter of a Qajar noble, from which union was born in the following year the future Fath-Ali Shah. Over the course of the next eight years Hoseyn-qoli recruited and organized a powerful following of Ashaqa-bash and their clients and, by intimidation backed by open warfare where necessary, neutralized the power of the Yukhari-bash, who were subsidized by the Zand. He was careful to keep within the bounds of the traditional Qajar feud, and could never be proved to have rebelled openly against the Vakil; with the result that Karim refrained from exerting pressure on his hostages and was content to send three small expeditionary forces to replace or restore the Yukhari-bash khans and exact apologies and contrite promises from the young Qajar. Hoseyn-qoli’s savage destruction of the Develu stronghold of Qal’a Namaka earned for him the sobriquet of Jahansuz Shah (“world-burner”), and brought a punitive force of Lur and Kurd cavalry under Zaki Khan Zand. He prudently withdrew to the Turkmen steppes, but when Zaki’s force retired he came out of hiding and killed Hasan Khan, the ex-governor of Astarabad who had recently relinquished his post in fear of attack. Fearing for his own position, Mohammad Khan Savadkuhi, governor of Mazandaran, called for Zand reinforcements and marched on Astarabad. Hoseyn-qoli bypassed him, seized his capital of Sari, defeated him in the field, and tortured and killed him. His son Mehdi Khan escaped to Shiraz, and returned with a Zand army to exact vengeance. Again the Qajar took refuge on the

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steppes, only to return and defeat Mehdi Khan at Barforush after the Zands had withdrawn. Finally, in 1776, Zaki Khan returned to Mazandaran and restored order with a brutality long remembered. All Hoseynqoli’s supporters were so relentlessly persecuted that by the time Zaki left for Shiraz even the Qajar’s Turkmen allies had begun to desert him. He massacred a band of Turkmen raiders who had attacked one of his few remaining allies; then, soon after a last abortive assault on Astarabad, about 1777, he was murdered by a band of Turkmen as he lay asleep in the open. Though the Vakil condoled most sympathetically with Agha Mohammad, he can hardly have been other than greatly relieved.

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E

ven before his definitive return to Shiraz in 1765, the Zand ruler recognized the strategic and economic necessity of securing the routes to both the upper and the lower Gulf. After he settled in his capital, he was more actively occupied with affairs in the Persian Gulf than in any other region. The Iranian coast of the Gulf, from the Shatt al-Arab (the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates) to the Strait of Hormuz, was dominated by a series of petty Arab sheikhs and their often intractable subjects. For the most part Sunni Muslims, they paid tribute to inland rulers only when these could afford to send armed expeditions to enforce it; even then, the coastal Arabs would often escape temporarily to the offshore islands. Their usual occupations of fishing, pearling, and trading were supplemented by raiding and plundering rivals by land and sea. Their counterparts on the Arabian shore included the Qawasem (locally pronounced Jawasem) of Ra’s al-Khayma, who from 1760 began to cross the Gulf and infiltrate Qeshm Island and the hinterland of Bandar Abbas. This port, also known as Bandar Abbasi and formerly called Gamrun (anglicized by the East India Company as “Gombroon”), was developed by Shah Abbas to serve Kerman and Isfahan. It lost much of its importance through Nader Shah’s transfer of the capital to Mashhad, and during the anarchy of the interregnum it was a center only of continuous strife as 63

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the governor Mowla-Alishah, Nasir Khan Lari, the local Banu Ma’in Arabs, and the invading Qawasem contested the rights to plunder the dwindling merchant traffic, blackmail the British and Dutch trading posts, and salvage the sorry remains of Nader’s navy. The latter comprised two 20-gun ships of 400 tons bought from the East India Company, renamed the Rahmani and the Fayz-e Rabbani, at this point lying derelict in the harbor. Nader had intended also to build his own ships, and had even brought timber and carpenters all the way from Mazandaran; the beams were carried on men’s shoulders, and took two months to reach Rishahr, near Bushehr, where a shipyard was established. But his death had interrupted this grandiose scheme to outdo Shah Abbas (see Lockhart, Nadir Shah, 213–215). For some time this abortive navy still captured the imagination of Nader’s would-be successors: Ebrahim Mirza, Shahrokh Shah, and Karim Khan in turn sent diplomas to Mowla-Alishah, the shah-bandar (harbor-master) of Bandar Abbas, charging him as admiral (darya-begi) to take good care of the “fleet.” The Rahmani was later sold by the Banu Ma’in to the Imam of Oman and sailed to Muscat. Even after Karim Khan had established himself at Shiraz, his access to this region was blocked by the hostile Nasir Khan Lari; and by the time this menace was neutralized, Shiraz’s natural port of Bushehr (Bushire) had risen to replace Bandar Abbas as Iran’s premier trading center. This process was confirmed when first the Dutch in 1759, then the British East India Company in 1763, moved their bases from Bandar Abbas in the lower Gulf and resettled respectively on Kharg Island and at Bushehr, in the upper Gulf (chapter 7). Karim Khan’s contemporary at Bushehr was Sheikh Naser of the Banu Ma’in, who combined his small army and fleet in 1753 to capture the Bahrain archipelago. He was imprisoned by the Vakil two years later, but on release remained a loyal vassal of the Zands until his death in 1783. Some forty miles north-west lived his rival and occasional ally Mir Nasir Vagha’i

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of Bandar Rig, whose territory included the offshore island of Kharg.

KHARG ISLAND: THE DUTCH AND MIR MAHANNA In 1753, Baron Kniphausen, a former director of the Dutch agency at Basra who had been imprisoned, fined, and expelled by the Ottoman governor, returned from Batavia (Jakarta, in the Dutch East Indies) with three ships and occupied the island of Kharg. From here, he so successfully blockaded the Shatt alArab that the governor in vain begged him to return to Basra and resume trading. Kniphausen proceeded to turn Kharg into a flourishing Dutch mini-colony with a stout fort and a village, attracting Armenian merchants from the mainland and the staff of the declining settlement at Bandar Abbas. In addition they shipped in German troops as a garrison and Chinese peasants to grow vegetables. The terms by which the Dutch held Kharg were questionable. There had been no thought of applying for permission from a central authority; Karim Khan was known to have established a Safavid regency at Isfahan, but his writ had not yet reached Shiraz, let alone the coast. According to the Baron and his successors, Mir Nasir of Bandar Rig on the adjacent shore had freely ceded the island to them – indeed, records confirm that the Dutch had received a written invitation from Mir Nasir to set up a trading post on his land, though exactly where was not specified (for a detailed account and documentation of this episode see Perry, “Mir Muhanna and the Dutch”). Mir Nasir’s energetic adolescent son Mir Mahanna maintained that they owed rent. On the pretext of his father’s inability to press this claim, Mahanna killed both his parents and, by 1755, had taken control of Bandar Rig. His elder brother Hoseyn returned from Bahrain, bent on revenge, but at this point Karim Khan’s forces suddenly descended on Bandar Rig and detained both

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brothers at Shiraz for a year. They returned apparently reconciled, but soon afterwards Mir Mahanna killed his brother and fifteen other relatives and recovered complete control of Bandar Rig. Over the next few years Mir Mahanna’s notoriety spread throughout the Gulf. The Vakil arrested him again in 1758, but reinstated him on the intercession of an influential relative of the pirate; and when, in 1765, Karim sent an army with a demand for tribute, Mir Mahanna embarked his men and livestock on boats and pushed off to Khargu, a small island next to Kharg. The Vakil is said also to have demanded tribute from the Dutch on Kharg, who likewise refused (Niebuhr, 183–184). The Zand army was left helpless on the shore. Finally the East India Company’s vessel and Sheikh Naser’s flotilla sailed diffidently into the attack. For the next five weeks Mir Mahanna’s fleet ran rings round them, and continued to prey on merchant shipping from its Khargu base. A Dutch expedition from Kharg was routed, and the pirate quickly followed up this advantage by landing in force on Kharg itself. On New Year’s Day 1766 the director, Van Houting, was tricked into leaving his fort to negotiate, whereupon he and his staff were seized and bundled into boats for Bushehr, there to await passage back to Batavia. By this coup, Mir Mahanna secured the strongest fort and richest warehouse in the Gulf; he had likewise regained control of Bahrain, and when the frustrated Zand army withdrew from Bandar Rig the Vagha’i chief reoccupied his paternal base as well. The story entered Gulf folklore: years later, an Indian envoy on his way to the Vakil was told how the Franks on Kharg had allowed their pigs to stray onto a shrine sacred to Khizr – a legendary saint reputed to have discovered the Water of Life – who was accordingly enraged, and commanded Mir Mahanna to storm and sack their fort (Perry, “Blackmailing Amazons,” esp. 160–162; for the Indian embassy, see below, chapter 7). A further Zand expedition under Zaki Khan failed even to take Bandar Rig, and the promised East India Company flotilla

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was ordered back to Bombay by Agent Moore two days before the Iranian troops reached the coast. The agent then attacked Kharg independently and was beaten off with loss, after which Mir Mahanna in reprisal captured a British merchant vessel, the Speedwell, as she sailed up the Gulf. No coordination was achieved between the Company and the Zands, despite protracted talks; but, by 1768, pressure was being exerted on Khargu through a joint blockade by Zaki’s army at Bandar Rig and the Bushehr fleet. Hardship robbed Mir Mahanna of support, and early in 1769 he was surprised by a revolt of some of his kinsmen and barely escaped with his bodyguard in a small open boat. The island submitted to the Zands, and the Vakil showed his usual statesmanship in forgoing all reprisals, distributing Mir Mahanna’s property among the rebels, and appointing their leader, Hasan Soltan, to govern Bandar Rig. Mir Mahanna had meanwhile landed near Basra, where he was captured by the Ottoman governor’s men and executed. Kharg slipped back into the poverty and obscurity of the days before the Dutch, who never returned to the Gulf; and Bandar Rig, its defenses demolished, was henceforth completely overshadowed by Bushehr. Karim Khan’s attempts to control the lower Gulf were rather less successful. In 1769, he demanded tribute from the Imam of Oman and the return of Nader’s ship the Rahmani, which the Imam had bought from the Banu Ma’in without the Vakil’s consent.These demands were contemptuously rejected, and an intermittent state of war, manifested in isolated acts of piracy, subsisted between Iran and Oman for most of the Zand period. Having won some measure of control over the Bandar Abbas region, Karim in 1773 sent a force there under Zaki Khan to mount a seaborne invasion of Oman. Sheikh Abdollah – the real power in the region, whose son was then a hostage in Shiraz – promised every support. On Zaki’s arrival, he lured him to Hormuz island with the promise of his beautiful daughter’s hand in marriage, and there imprisoned him. The Zand army

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kicked their heels on the mainland for a few days, and finally dispersed; the Vakil was obliged to comply with the Sheikh’s suggestion of an exchange of hostages, and Abdollah’s son was sent from Shiraz while a chastened Zaki returned in disgrace (Nami, 176–178; Factory Records, XVII, 1071: 8 May 1774).

PERSPICACIOUS SEMI-FICTION: THE “ROSTAM OF HISTORIES” What did Iranians of Karim Khan’s time, and shortly after, think of the Vakil and his court, his attempts to restore political credibility and economic prosperity to his ravaged country, and his dealings with the Farang, the “Franks,” those Argonauts from India with their machine-knitted woolens and enigmatic agendas? The stylized court chronicles do not tell us, but the Rostam of Histories, an unusual history of Iran from 1694 to 1835 by Mohammad Asaf, nicknamed “The Rostam of Philosophers,” does. It is based on the reminiscences of the author’s grandfather, who served the last Safavid ruler, Shah Soltan-Hosayn (1694–1722), and father, who served Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar during his captivity at the Zand court of Shiraz (1765– 79). Further family and personal memories take the story through the bloody and disastrous reigns of Karim Khan’s successors into that of the second Qajar king, Fath-Ali Shah (1797–1834). The Rostam of Histories (alluding to Rostam, or Rustam, the superhero of the Iranian national legend) generally affects a bombastic, mock-heroic tone, but frequently slips into a lively vernacular Persian to pass on scurrilous and dubious anecdotes. The following episode blithely mixes elements of Mir Mahanna’s conquest of the Dutch base on Kharg with his piracy against British ships, and of George Skipp’s embassy to Karim Khan in 1767 (chapter 7) with elements of allegory and perceptive prophesy concerning the future history of

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British India’s entanglements with Iran. More to our point, its fictionalized farrago encapsulates a range of eighteenth-century Persian traditions, attitudes, and truths far better than a reliably documented history. These include an idealization of the Vakil and his shrewd economic and political policies; the traditional antipathy between tribal khans and bureaucrats; flattery of Agha Mohammad (a necessity for one writing in the reign of his successor); a critical look at the foreigners’ main imports (woolen clothing, and sugar from Indonesia); an inflated view of their greed for empire and fear of Iranian arms, and a shrewdly accurate assessment of the British agenda in India. (This abridged translation is made from the Persian edition of Rostam al-tavarikh, 383–390, corresponding to the German translation, II, 636–647. A summary of what “really” happened may be seen below in chapter 7, “The British East India Company.”) [While Karim Khan was unsuccessfully trying to subdue the Persian Gulf pirate Mir Mahanna] an emissary from the august state of England came to that axis of equity, the court of His Highness the Vakil Karim Khan Zand. The latter kept him waiting without audience for some time; the viziers asked why he would not see this envoy from the King of England, and the Vakil replied: “If he has business with the Shah of Iran, I am not the Shah, merely his viceroy; the shah is Esma’il, who resides in the fortress of Abada – take the envoy there and let him conduct his business; I have no business with him.” Karim Khan then asked his ministers what they perceived to be the purpose of the emissary’s mission. They replied that he was evidently keen to have friendly relations with the ruler of Iran, and had brought gifts of costly Indian and Frankish goods; he wished to establish a consulate and import cloth, clothing, and sundry manufactured articles from Farangestan [Europe] and India into Iran. On hearing this, Karim Khan burst out laughing and said, “I understand their objective – they want to play us for fools and take possession of Iran by trickery, just as they have seized India by deceit and fraud!” And he knelt like Rostam, gripping the hilt of his sword, and growled, “We will

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not brook this Frankish mockery! Iran has no need whatsoever of Frankish stuffs and hardware, for there is ample cotton, wool, linen, silk and fur in Iran. Let the people of Iran weave and tailor what they need for themselves, and if they can’t get sugar from Lahore, there is enough Mazandaran sugar, honey, and grape and date syrup.” Then he summoned Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar and Azad the Afghan and . . . the leading Zand khans, and addressed Agha Mohammad Khan. “O scion of celebrated sultans and descendant of powerful khaqans! Tell me, what is the purpose of the Franks in coming to Iran with presents for its ruler?” [Agha Mohammad Khan agreed with Karim Khan’s assessment of the embassy.] His Highness the Vakil turned to his officers and tribal khans and asked their opinion. To a man, they approved the judgment of Agha Mohammad Khan. Then he turned to the viziers and asked their view. They unanimously disagreed with Agha Mohammad Khan’s view and called it foolish. His Highness the Vakil turned on them angrily, saying, “What Agha Mohammad Khan has pointed out is truly a maxim straight from Aristotle, and has roused us from the sleep of heedlessness and sobered us from the drunken stupor of ignorance. If you think I am a stupid Lur, you are gravely mistaken . . . Why, even bazaar porters or bathhouse furnace-stokers would grasp at once that the Franks are bent on subjugating Iran just as they did India. And if you are thinking to yourselves, ‘The Frank is a courteous fellow, and we’ll fall on our feet whatever the case; if they take Iran, we’ll keep our offices’ – think again! If the Franks do conquer Iran, they’ll call all of you traitors and leave not one of you alive . . . The Franks are treating the Indians circumspectly, out of fear of the Iranians; if ever they should completely subjugate Iran, they will abolish Islam and humble the nobles and officers of Iran. Know that the Franks captured India through guile and cunning, not by strength and boldness. Thank God,” he proclaimed, “that today I have reason to hope that there will come after me someone [presumably, Agha Mohammad] who can preserve the women and children of Iran from harm at the hands of the enemy.”

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Karim Khan summoned the Frankish envoy and with great hauteur and indifference conversed with him through an intermediary. He gave away the envoy’s gifts to the muleteers, stable-hands, and ushers, and presented him in return with gifts of double their value; and for the next two days he held a tournament of equestrian spectacles . . . such as polo matches, javelin-throwing contests, target archery and musketry on horseback, spearing rings at full gallop, swordplay, and hammering nails into walls with stones flung from slings. Ali Reza Khan Qajar, the brother of Agha Mohammad Khan, shot an arrow clean through two iron skillets; Mostafa-qoli Khan, another brother of his, sliced a fully loaded camel in two with one stroke of his damascened sword; Ja’far Khan Zand, cousin of Karim Khan, placed a zanburak [a 6-pounder swivel cannon] across his knee and broke it in two; Taher Khan Zand, a husky, fresh-faced youth, ducking underneath the horse on which his brother Vali Khan sat, put his shoulder against the horse’s belly and his arms around one foreleg and one hind leg, heaved it up from the ground and broke into a brisk trot . . . Finally, Karim Khan dismissed the emissary, and dispatched to Mir Mahanna, the most bloodthirsty pirate of the Gulf coast, a rich robe of honor and a written commission (farman) concerning the Franks. The emissary reached the coast, boarded his ship, and set sail; Mir Mahanna meanwhile received the royal robe and the farman, kissed it deferentially and pressed it to his eyes and head, and was apprised of its contents. Proudly he slung the robe around his shoulders and, in accordance with the Zand ruler’s command, ordered several of his bloodthirsty cutthroats, more ravenous than wolves, under the command of one Godless Kazem and his ogre-like slave, to go and capture the envoy’s vessel. Within ten days they had boarded the Frankish ship, killed all the Franks and tossed them overboard, with the exception of the emissary and five of his intimates, whom they deprived of their noses and ears and set free, together with their possessions, to return to their own country. Soon enough, an enormous army with countless artillery in full hue and cry set

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out from Farangestan and India to conquer Iran, and gathered off the port of Bandar Abbas. When this news reached that model of a Persian monarch, the Vakil, he was furious. Turning to his viziers, he asked their advice. The viziers replied sulkily, “We have already given you good advice, and you did the opposite, and now this is the result. We will no longer interfere in affairs of the kingdom.” Then His Highness turned to Agha Mohammad Khan . . . who, after some thought, advised him to send Mir Mahanna a farman and a robe of honor, delegating the task of dealing with the Franks to him. All the amirs and khans applauded, while the viziers ridiculed the idea . . . Mir Mahanna at once dressed three hundred of his cutthroats in women’s head-to-foot veils (chadors), fully armed underneath, each with a brace of pistols at his belt and a musket in his hand, and embarked them on a boat headed for Bandar Abbas. Mir Mahanna himself with two hundred picked pirates followed at a distance in another boat. When they came within sight of the port, the Franks spied them from afar with their telescopes. Seeing a boatload of women, they were overcome with lust, and rejoiced at the thought of satisfying their appetites, dancing and singing, “Girls galore are coming ashore!” – and they opened the harbor boom. When the first boat hove to, bringing those crafty cutthroats into the port, they suddenly opened fire on the Franks; a great many Franks and Indians were killed. Then Mir Mahanna’s boat arrived. The infamous pirate and his bloodthirsty henchmen drew their swords and fell upon the Franks like wolves upon a flock of sheep. They killed them and tossed their bodies into the sea, sparing only the commander and a few officers, whose noses and ears they cut off before sending them back to Farangestan and India. When this news reached India, a great alarm and commotion ensued, and the Franks set about mustering a mighty army to send against Iran. They craftily sent out spies, and from their reports they sensed that the Indians had consulted together and resolved that when their ranks were drawn up against the Iranians they would sheath their swords

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and go over en masse to the Iranian side, then draw their swords against the wicked, deceitful Franks. Thus forewarned, the Franks wisely elected to draw a bucket of water from the well of forbearance with the hand of tact and pour it over the fire of wrath and revenge . . . and went home.

We may note (with reference to material below, above, and in chapter 7) that the only British forces sent from India to the Gulf during this period were in support of an attack by Karim Khan in 1765 on another unruly vassal, Sheikh Salman of the Banu Ka’b Arabs. Mir Mahanna in 1766 lured the Dutch out of their fortress (not, so far as is recorded in the Dutch archives, by dressing his pirates as women), captured them, and sent them home (with their noses and ears intact). The pirate’s successor did capture a British ship and two of the Company’s employees in 1772 (though without any killing or mutilation), and sent them to Karim Khan’s capital, Shiraz, as hostages to pressure the Company into reopening negotiations (it worked). The East India Company was not master of India until some time after Karim Khan’s death. British gunboat diplomacy was eventually deployed in the Gulf – against Bushehr, not Bandar Abbas – in 1856 (twenty-one years after the “Rostam of Histories” was completed), as a means to pressure the Qajars to retreat from Herat, in Afghanistan. The “Indian Mutiny,” after which the government of India was transferred from the Company to the British crown, occurred in the following year.

THE BANU KA’B The biggest and best organized of the “pirate” states which the Vakil set himself to subdue was that of the Banu Ka’b of southern Khuzistan (for a detailed account of these operations, see Perry, “Banu Ka’b”; for the modern descendants of the Ka’b, see Thesiger). In the late sixteenth century, this Shi’i Arab tribe had moved from lower Iraq to settle in Qobban on the Khowr Musa inlet, in the marsh flats of the left bank of the Shatt al-

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Arab, and later at Dowraq on the Jarahi river. After Nader’s death their great Sheikh Salman rebuilt this center as his capital and renamed it Falahiya, “Prosperity” (present-day Shadegan in Iran). He rapidly expanded his realms along the Shatt to comprise a triangular empire of about one hundred square miles, spanning both Persian and Ottoman territory. In 1758 he laid down the nucleus of a navy which soon outstripped that of the qaputan pasha, the Ottoman coastguard commander of Basra. His amphibious forces could raid date-groves and caravan routes or demand tolls from shipping on the Shatt and, when pursued by the forces of either the Pasha or the Vakil, had only to disappear into their marshland fastness and evade or buy off their frustrated pursuers. Karim Khan mounted punitive campaigns of limited success in 1757 and 1765. For the second of these he had been promised assistance by Omar Pasha of Baghdad and the British. A truly international project was evolved for combined operations against this brigand state, whereby Ottoman troops and the East India Company’s gunboats were to drive the Ka’b inland from the Shatt while the Zand army intercepted them from the north-east. But though Karim reached Falahiya, the boats and supplies promised by the Pasha never materialized. By dint of destroying Ka’b property, and breaching their great dam to flood their crops, the Vakil elicited tribute from Sheikh Salman and marched home, first delivering a strong protest to the Pasha. The Ka’b, after playing cat-and-mouse with the clumsy and ill-coordinated Basran navy, likewise bought a truce with the Turks. The British at Basra, who omitted to have themselves included in this treaty, lost three ships to the Ka’b and unwisely launched their own amphibious offensive with reinforcements from Bombay. They suffered heavy casualties and withdrew to patrol the Shatt. All remaining Turkish and British pressure on the Ka’b was then removed when Sheikh Salman induced the Vakil, by means of expensive presents, to serve both the Pasha

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and the Company’s agent with an ultimatum to withdraw from Iranian territory and cease molesting his “subjects” the Ka’b. Ka’b fortunes declined rapidly with the death of Sheikh Salman in 1768, after thirty-one years of independent tussling with the three strongest powers in the Gulf. His successors readily cooperated with the Vakil seven years later in his conquest of Basra. Only with the taming of the sheikhs of the Gulf ports and the Banu Ka’b was the Zand leader ready for this last and most ambitious target, which had eluded both Shah Abbas and Nader Shah (though under the last Safavid, Shah Soltan-Hosayn, the Iranians had taken and held Basra in 1697–1701).

WAR WITH THE PASHALIK OF BAGHDAD, 1774–1779 Karim Khan’s war with the Ottoman Turks (strictly speaking, with the quasi-autonomous Baghdad pashalik and its dependency of Basra) was fought simultaneously on two fronts – the Shatt al-Arab, and the Kurdish provinces of Baban and Zohab, from where Baghdad itself could be threatened (for a perspective on the Kurdish front, see chapter 7). The major political cause of the war was Omar Pasha’s intervention in the rivalries for the frontier province of Baban (approximately presentday Sulaimaniya in Iraq), which, since the death of Soleyman Pasha of Baghdad in 1762, had fallen increasingly under the influence of the Zand-sponsored viceroy (vali) of neighboring Ardalan (equivalent to Iran’s present-day ostan of Kordestan). Direct intervention by either of the powers in the affairs of their proxy frontier wardens invariably triggered a reaction by the other. Omar’s replacement of the Baban ruler in 1774 provoked two campaigns by the Zands to restore Iranian influence in the area. This sudden hardening of the Pasha’s hitherto laissez-faire attitude was further manifested in his imposition of a frontier

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toll on Iranian pilgrims to the shrines of Najaf and Karbala, and in his confiscation of the property of Persian pilgrims and residents who died during the epidemic (probably of cholera) that devastated Iraq during 1772–73. Demands for redress and for fair treatment of pilgrims, in accordance with the treaty of 1746, brought no response.The Vakil had also vainly demanded the return of Jewish and Armenian refugees from Iran, to further his policy of repopulating and boosting the economy of Shiraz and Isfahan (chapter 8). With the loss of the shrine city of Mashhad, free access to the shrines of Iraq for Iran’s Shi’is was more important to the Zand leader than it had been to the Safavids or the Afsharids, and the Pasha’s obstructionist policies were enough to justify a jihad. Other motives were the need to employ a restless standing army, and to recoup prestige after Zaki’s embarrassing misadventures on Hormuz; to chastize the Pasha and his motasallem (governor) of Basra for their connivance at Ka’b depredations and for alleged assistance of the Omani enemy; and above all the commercial prize of Basra itself. In recent years, the Iraqi port had perceptibly overtaken its rival Bushehr; to rub it in, the East India Company had withdrawn its agent from Bushehr in 1769 and was trading exclusively at Basra. Factors favoring the Zands were the weakness and disorganization of both Baghdad and Basra after the recent epidemic, and the inability of the Ottoman government, chastened after its defeat by Russia in 1774, to render direct assistance to its near-autonomous eastern province. Even the Pasha of Baghdad managed to send only 200 janissaries, who sneaked in by river two weeks after the siege had started. The East India Company’s president, Henry Moore, was expected by the Motasallem to add his two armed cruisers to the defenses, and by his superiors in Bombay to preserve strict neutrality; in the event he compromised by firing on the besiegers’ support fleet of the Ka’b and Bushehr Arabs, then fleeing down the Shatt to the open Gulf (see also chapter 7).

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While Ali-Morad and Nazar-Ali Khan Zand kept the Pasha’s forces occupied in Kurdistan with a few thousand men, Karim’s brother Sadeq Khan Zand marched into Khuzistan with an army of 30,000 men and arrived at the Shatt al-Arab upstream of the city in mid-March 1775. Seeking to exploit any disunity, Sadeq sent an envoy to request that the Motasallem, Sheikh Darwish of the Montafeq tribe, the heads of the Armenian and Jewish communities, and the East India Company send representatives to discuss terms; all, however, declined. The Motasallem’s Arab allies of the Montafeq withdrew without contesting passage of the Shatt, and a few days later (in the words of Abraham Parsons, an English traveler then in Basra) “the Persian army was leisurely wafting itself over the river, on blown goat skins, having no enemy to obstruct them” (164–165; cf. Nami, 187; the 1925 documentary film Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, directed by Merian Cooper, shows the Bakhtyari on their annual spring migration crossing the Karun river on inflated goatskins). This corresponds with the Persian chronicler’s description (allowing for inflation) that a bridgehead on the far bank was secured by two thousand intrepid Bakhtyaris, who swam across in the teeth of fierce opposition. Boats provided and crewed by the Ka’b and the Arabs of Bushehr ferried across the Iranian army’s transport and supplies until a pontoon bridge was built.These thirty Arab galleys and thirty boats were to maintain Zand superiority in the Shatt for most of the siege, which commenced in earnest early in April. The Basra garrison under the energetic Motasallem, Soleyman Aqa, defended the town with spirit. On 26 April, after a night-long bombardment by Sheikh Naser’s fleet, the Iranians launched an assault with scaling ladders at five different points; this was beaten off, and Sadeq was forced to entrench for a blockade lasting over a year. The East India Company’s agent had provided a chain boom to block the Shatt below Basra before slipping away to Bombay. In October, a fleet from Oman broke through the boom to land supplies and reinforce-

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ments, which greatly raised Basran morale; but their united sortie the following day was indecisive. The Omani fleet was thus confined to its anchorage under constant fire, and that winter the Imam decided to cut his losses and ordered it back to Muscat. A relief force sent from Baghdad was defeated by Sadeq’s Shi’i Arab allies, the Khaza’el. By the spring of 1776, the tightened blockade around the eight-mile perimeter had brought the defenders to the verge of starvation. Mass defections and the threat of mutiny drove Soleyman Aqa to capitulate on 16 April 1776. Ottoman reactions to these fireworks on the eastern frontiers were surprisingly slow, even granted the death of the capable Sultan Mostafa III and his succession by the weak AbdolHamid late in 1773, and the subsequent defeat by Russia. An Ottoman envoy,Vehbi Efendi, was dispatched to the Zand court in February of 1775, when the Kurdish front was momentarily quiet and before news of the impending siege of Basra had reached Istanbul. Vehbi arrived in Shiraz, ironically, about the same time that Sadeq reached Basra, but was not empowered to negotiate over this new crisis. By the time he returned to Topkapi, bearing the conventional compliments and detailed complaints against Omar Pasha, Basra had fallen. The complaints about Omar Pasha did prompt the Sultan’s advisers a few months later to replace him – or at least provided a pretext to end the quasi-autonomous Mamluk dynasty of Baghdad. The move made little difference, since a few weeks after Omar’s head reached Istanbul his former lieutenant (kahya) Abdollah Pasha, with popular support, displaced Istanbul’s appointee and restored the Mamluk dynasty (for Omar Pasha and his line, see Perry, “Mamluk Pashalik”). It was not until about May 1776 that a fatva was issued from Istanbul declaring war on the Vakil and forces were levied for a campaign on the Kurdish front. At Marivan in May 1777 Khosrow Khan, the Vali of Ardalan, was heavily defeated by the reinforced Pasha of Baban; but some months later a three-pronged

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Zand invasion of Kurdistan restored the status quo with a rout of the Turkish–Baban forces on the plain of Shahrezur, and Abdollah Pasha sued for peace. In Basra, meanwhile, a heavy indemnity was extorted and hostages, including Soleyman Aqa, were sent to Shiraz. But there were no executions, and Sadeq seems in general to have respected the terms of capitulation. Only when he returned to Shiraz later in the year, leaving Ali Mohammad Khan Zand to administer the city and region, did the occupation degenerate into a chaos of unrestrained greed and senseless slaughter. Extortion increased to the verge of outright looting and women were abducted for the pleasure of the commandant and his officers. Having squeezed the town dry, Ali Mohammad turned his attention to the countryside: he plundered and burned down the town of Zubayr and repeatedly robbed the Montafeq Arabs, despite having given a pledge of safe conduct. In June 1778, the Montafeq retaliated by routing one of his raiding parties and, in September, Ali Mohammad set out with a large force to teach them a lesson. The Arabs led him into a trap between the Euphrates and a swamp, and massacred him and his army almost to a man. Vengeance satisfied, the Montafeq made no attempt to follow up this resounding success by liberating Basra, and the Iranian garrison was able to sit tight until Sadeq Khan hastened back with reinforcements in December. Bled of all wealth, depopulated by plague, siege, and occupation, Basra was already more of a liability than an asset to the Zands. From this point forward, it lost its commercial importance as a terminus of the caravan route to Aleppo and as a port; both British and local traffic shifted their port of call a hundred miles south to Qoreyn (Kuwait), which can date its rise to prominence from these years. Basra was no longer of use even as a bargaining point in negotiations with Baghdad, since these had collapsed with the recent death of Abdollah Pasha and a renewal of internecine anarchy in the pashalik.

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R

umors that the Vakil was ill had been in the air since 1776, but were routinely denied. The impending death of a ruler, of whatever reputation or character, was always a cause for trepidation: even if his succession had been arranged, it was often subject to dispute. A male of the blood line was expected to succeed, but there was no absolute rule of primogeniture. If a ruler had no single, competent, indisputable successor designate, then the contest was free for all. The Zand state was still technically a regency, but the Safavid mascot, Shah Esma’il III, had died in 1773, all but unnoticed and without progeny. Of Karim Khan’s surviving three sons, the elder two, Abol-Fath and Mohammad Ali, in their twenties, were frivolous and incompetent, and the youngest, (Mohammad) Ebrahim, was a child of 11. Probably the Vakil expected his younger brother and lifelong lieutenant, Sadeq Khan, to succeed in the short term (Sadeq had at least thirty-five sons, including Ja’far Khan, who did rule from 1785 to 1789); but Sadeq was in occupied Basra when his brother died. About September 1779 Karim Khan fell seriously ill, apparently of tuberculosis. Though in his seventies, he remained active until the end, which came six months later, on 1 March 1779. Three days later, after the events to be described below, the Vakil was buried with scant ceremony in a garden adjacent to the palace – probably the Bagh-e Nazar, where Edward Scott 81

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Waring (p. 97) saw his discarded tombstone in 1802, and traces of a grave were discovered in 1938. Thirteen years later, when Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar conquered Shiraz, he exhumed his former host’s remains and carried them back to Tehran; here he reputedly had them reburied beneath the steps of a building in the Golestan palace, so that he might have the satisfaction of treading his enemy’s bones underfoot. The bones were later said to have been removed on the orders of Fath-Ali Shah, and reinterred at Najaf. However, more than a century later, about 1927, Reza Shah ceremoniously disinterred some remains from beneath the same steps in the presence of several members of the Zand family, with the intention of sending them under a guard of honor to Shiraz. Then the Crown Prince suddenly fell ill, the transfer was postponed, and the remains were apparently stored in the Golestan palace among the crown jewels. When these were brought out on the eve of Prince Mohammad Reza’s wedding to Fawziyeh, in 1938, a canvas bag came to light which purportedly contained the Vakil’s bones; they were sent for burial to the Emamzada-ye Zeyd in Tehran, where the last Zand ruler, Lotf-Ali Khan, had been buried in 1794 (see below). But were these really the Vakil’s remains, or had some Zand descendant secretly carried his bones to Shiraz, or to his birthplace of Pari? Nobody knows for sure (see Golsha’ian). What is certain is that Karim’s leading kinsmen launched into a murderous power struggle even before his body was buried, with his three sons as pawns.

REIGNS OF ZAKI, SADEQ, ALI-MORAD, AND JA’FAR KHAN ZAND (1779–1789) Zaki Khan is already familiar as an impetuous and ruthless warrior whose brutality in pacifying the Qajar territories in 1760 and again in 1776, and whose selfish attempts to carve out a personal fief in central and southern Iran during 1763–64 almost demolished the nascent Zand empire (chapter

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4). Repeatedly forgiven, and in 1773 sent to Bandar Abbas to organize a naval assault on Oman, he was tricked into captivity on Hormuz and ignominiously exchanged for the Sheikh’s son in Shiraz (chapter 5).When the Vakil had breathed his last, Zaki Khan, allied with Ali-Morad Khan and ostensibly proclaiming the Vakil’s second son (who was also his own son-in-law; see figure 3) as ruler, lured from the citadel and slaughtered Nazar-Ali and Sheykh-Ali Khan and their supporters, who had battened onto Abol-Fath. Sadeq Khan arrived from Basra to press his own claims to the succession, but was deserted by his army when Zaki threatened reprisals on their families in Shiraz. Sadeq fled to Bam in Kerman province. On the morning of the Vakil’s death, his Qajar hostage Agha Mohammad was indulging his permission to go hunting outside the walls; he received the expected news from a runner sent by his aunt, the Vakil’s wife Khadijeh Bigom, and spurred his horse northward. Zaki Khan sent in pursuit Ali-Morad Khan Zand, an ally from the Hazareh branch of the Zand, with his best troops. Ali-Morad, however, seized Isfahan and rebelled in the name of Abol-Fath, whom Zaki had imprisoned. On his march against him, Zaki Khan demanded of the villagers of Izadkhast a sum they could not raise, and in a fury had eighteen of them flung from the rocky promontory on which the village stood. Even Zaki’s own men were shocked, and killed their leader on the spot. Sadeq Khan was thus enabled to return and occupy Shiraz, but was still opposed by Ali-Morad. After an eight-month blockade by Akbar Khan, a son of Zaki Khan who had thrown in his lot with Ali-Morad, Shiraz fell by treachery in February 1781. The citizens were spared any reprisal, but Sadeq was murdered together with all his sons except Ja’far, who had come to terms privately with Ali-Morad. Ali-Morad, who had only one eye and a drinking problem, had achieved notoriety, like Zaki, for his ignominious capture by a local enemy (in Kurdistan; see chapter 7, “Western Approaches”) and for his brutal suppression of a Qajar insurrection only five

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Abo’lFath six sons

Mohammad = a daughter Ali

6. Lotf-Ali (1789-94)

5. Ja’far (1785-89)

c.30 sons

4. Ali-Morad (1782-85)

3. (Mohammad) Sadeq [2] = a daughter = [1] Allah-Morad (1780-82)

Akbar

Seyd-Morad

Khoda-Morad

Zand-e Hazara

Figure 3. Genealogical table of the Zand dynasty. Rulers are indicated by serial numbers and regnal dates. Budaq’s daughter first married Allah-Morad, then Sadeq.

Mohammad Rahim (d. 1777)

2. Zaki (1779)

Budaq

Mohammad

two sons

1. (Mohammad) Karim (1751-79)

Inaq

Zand-e Bagala

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years before. His harsh treatment of even loyal Yukhari-bash tribesmen brought complaints to the Vakil, who had recalled him. Faced now with a resurgence of Qajar power, Ali-Morad first killed Akbar Khan at Ja’far’s request, then established his capital strategically at Isfahan. He campaigned energetically in Mazandaran, sending his son Sheykh-Oveys Khan with a force which took Sari and drove Agha Mohammad back to Astarabad. However, his pursuit force was trapped in the Elburz defiles and annihilated; Sheykh-Oveys and the rest of the army fell back on Tehran. He was joined there by his furious father, who executed several officers and, though already ill, prepared for another assault on the Qajars. But Ja’far Khan took advantage of his absence to march on Isfahan. Hastening to defend his capital in midwinter, against his doctors’ advice, Ali-Morad died at Murcha-khurt in February 1785. Ali-Morad’s reign, which saw the Zands relinquish all claims to northern and even central Iran, can be seen as the watershed between Zand and Qajar history. Ja’far Khan occupied Isfahan, and sent a conciliatory invitation to Sheykh-Oveys Khan, which he foolishly accepted. On arrival at Isfahan he was blinded and imprisoned. Agha Mohammad, no longer on the defensive against the only successor of the Vakil whom he respected, marched south in force. Ja’far Khan quitted his capital in confusion, leaving his baggage and treasury to be looted by the citizens before the Qajars occupied the city. Ja’far was welcomed in Shiraz, which had remained loyal under its ward aldermen, headed by Haji Ebrahim; he was now appointed kalantar, or mayor. Ja’far was able briefly to reoccupy Isfahan when Agha Mohammad unwisely tackled the Bakhtyaris and was driven back on Tehran. But he soon returned, and Ja’far shuttled back to Shiraz. Revolts in Hamadan and Yazd further threatened the Zands’ tenuous hold on the center. The only successes were achieved by Ja’far’s teenage son Lotf-Ali Khan, who subdued Lar and Kerman and even recaptured Isfahan before having to relinquish it yet again to the Qajars. In 1789, Ja’far Khan’s

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treachery in dealings with his own supporters provoked a mutiny in which he was killed. A loyal follower, Haji Ali-qoli of Kazarun, quelled a rebellion in Kashan by granting honorable terms to the insurgents. Ja’far refused to ratify the agreement and had the rebels imprisoned, whereupon Ali-qoli retired to Kazarun in high dudgeon. Ja’far lured him to Shiraz by swearing on the Koran not to harm him, but promptly flung him into prison. A plot was hatched by courtiers fearing for their own lives, led by Seyd-Morad Khan of the Zand-e Hazara. They bribed a slave girl to poison the ruler, released the prisoners, and slew Ja’far Khan as he lay on the floor already half dead. His head was flung from a window into the square below.

LOTF-ALI KHAN ZAND (1789–1794) Ja’far was succeeded by his son, 20-year-old Lotf-Ali Khan, the only one of Karim Khan’s successors to have won general admiration for his courage and integrity (his career is sympathetically chronicled by Malcolm, 175–201). Hearing of the coup while at Kerman, he had to flee the doubtful loyalty of his own troops for Bushehr, where he was sheltered and aided by Sheikh Naser.Then a force sent against him by Seyd-Morad was won over to his cause by its second-in-command. Thus encouraged, Lotf-Ali marched straight for Shiraz. Here the Kalantar, Haji Ebrahim, had been canvassing support for Ja’far’s son. A bold, handsome, and popular youth, Lotf-Ali was genuinely welcomed by the citizens (see figure 4). The mutineers held out in the citadel (arg) for a time, but surrendered; Seyd-Morad was executed. No sooner was Lotf-Ali installed than he had to meet a determined Qajar assault.Though defeated in the field, he held the capital for a month until the besiegers retired to Tehran. Early the following year, 1790, while Agha Mohammad was

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occupied in Azerbaijan, Lotf-Ali attempted to secure Kerman, but a severe winter forced him to retire with heavy losses of men and animals. His downfall was precipitated by a mutual distrust between him and Haji Ebrahim, the mayor of Shiraz who had initially

Figure 4. Lotf-Ali Khan Zand (from an engraving after a contemporary portrait).

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helped him to power. On his way to attack Isfahan in 1791, Lotf-Ali took with him the Kalantar’s eldest son as a hostage. Haji Ebrahim, who it seems had already contemplated freeing Fars and its dependencies from the unstable Zand yoke, if not negotiating terms with the Qajars, decided to act now in selfpreservation. By a ruse he arrested the Zand officers and gained control of the garrison, at the same time sending word to his brother, who commanded the infantry in Lotf-Ali’s army. This officer fomented a mutiny, from which the young Zand fled with three hundred loyal men back to Shiraz – only to find the gates barred against him. Denied help also from Bushehr, where Sheikh Naser’s son and successor had thrown in his lot with the Kalantar, Lotf-Ali nevertheless continued with the few troops still loyal to him and a few Arab levies to fight off the Qajar advance on Shiraz. After several victories over Qajar detachments, including the vanguard of the main force near Persepolis, he even penetrated the Qajar camp in a daring night raid, killing the pickets and routing the disorganized resistance. Assuming that Agha Mohammad had fled, he waited for dawn while his undisciplined Arab auxiliaries scattered to plunder. At first light, to his dismay, he heard the muezzin call to prayer, and realized that the Qajar chief and his bodyguard were still in the camp; Lotf-Ali and his close adherents had to flee eastward. Haji Ebrahim opened the gates of Shiraz to the Qajars in July 1792. Agha Mohammad demolished the walls of the city and took back to Tehran not only movable booty but even the doors and marble pillars of the palace. He deported the remaining Zands, together with 12,000 families of their supporters from various Lak and Lur tribes, far to the north in Astarabad and Mazandaran. The young Zand ruler’s last few years were a ceaseless round of desperate searches for allies in south-eastern Iran, of lightning victories and frustrating defeats. Driven beyond Kerman to the oasis of Tabas (within the Afsharid realms of Shahrokh Shah) he found support from the governor, Mir Hasan Khan, and the next year, 1793,

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marched on Shiraz. After an unsuccessful siege of Darabgerd he fell back to Tabas and from here set off toward Qandahar to seek help from Ahmad Shah Dorrani’s successor, Timur Shah of Afghanistan. A few days later he received news of Timur Shah’s death, and turned back. With support from two chiefs of Narmashir, Lotf-Ali surprised Kerman in 1794 and held it for four months before the Qajars were admitted by treachery. The Qajar eunuch behaved with studied barbarity in the fallen town: all adult males were killed or blinded, and some 20,000 women and children given as slaves to the troops; 20,000 pairs of eyes were said to have been piled up and counted, two by two, before the conqueror. Lotf Ali himself fled to Bam, formerly a safe refuge for fleeing Zands. This time the governor, fearing for his brother in Kerman, secretly ordered Lotf-Ali to be seized and handed over to the Qajars. His guest refused to believe warnings of treachery, and delayed his flight till the last moment; his famous horse Qeran was hamstrung as he spurred it toward the gate, and Lotf-Ali was seized, bound, and delivered. Agha Mohammad had his last Zand enemy blinded and cruelly tortured before taking him back to Tehran for execution. Lotf Ali’s courage and resilience had imparted a certain nobility to the death throes of the Zand dynasty. But it came too late to make up for the wanton waste of the Vakil’s moral capital by his first four successors. The urban governors and headmen, the tribal chiefs and regional warlords of central and southern Iran, justifiably disillusioned with the Zands and not yet familiar with the Qajars, had elected to turn a new page in the history of Iran.

FIRST-PERSON TESTIMONY: MR JONES AND LOTF-ALI KHAN’S DIAMONDS Abdor-Razzaq Beg Donbali, another of the Vakil’s hostages, whose appreciative memoirs of his life in Shiraz are quoted

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below (chapter 7), later wrote an official history of the Qajar dynasty up to 1811. A copy of this was presented to, and translated by, Sir Harford Jones Brydges, after his embassy to the court of Fath-Ali Shah in the same year.Twenty years before his knighthood and augmented surname, as an East India Company employee based at Basra, Mr. Harford Jones had briefly been Lotf-Ali Khan Zand’s confidant during the doomed prince’s final days in Shiraz, when Lotf-Ali had considered selling his jewels to raise an army, and later when the Zand prince was a fugitive in the mountains between Shiraz and Bushehr. In the following excerpts from his account of these meetings, published in the preface to his translation (between pp. cxxv and clxxxv), Jones is openly partial in his admiration and sympathy for the young Zand (whom he calls “the king”) and his vizier, who were outmaneuvered by Haji Ebrahim. The two large diamonds he refers to, the “Sea of Light” (Darya-ye nur, at about 180 carats the sixth-largest known in the world) and the “Crown of the Moon” (Taj-e mah, 115 carats), were mined in Golconda, India, and came first into the possession of the Mughal emperors a century before. The last independent Mughal, Mohammad Shah, was obliged to present them to Nader Shah Afshar when the latter conquered Delhi in 1739. After his assassination they passed to his grandson Shahrokh Mirza (chapter 1), and were perhaps brought to Shiraz and presented to Karim Khan during one of the visits by Shahrokh’s eldest son, Nasrollah Mirza, in 1767 and 1775 (chapter 7; on the second occasion Nasrollah, ousted from power by his father and younger brother, stayed at Shiraz for seven years until the reign of Ali-Morad Khan). According to Qajar historians, the jewels passed from Shahrokh’s patrons to Mohammad Hoseyn Khan Qajar, then to his conqueror Karim Khan in 1760 (Fasa’i/ Busse, 63; for more on the diamonds, see Khalidi, 40, 49–53). Jones’s help as an honest broker was sought by Mirza Mohammad Hoseyn Farahani, a poet (under the pen-name of Vafa, “faithful”) and bibliophile who was vizier to Sadeq, Ja’far, and Lotf-Ali Khan in succession and had been

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on good terms with the Company’s representatives in the Gulf. Jones begins his journal: Very early, therefore, in the spring of the year 1791, I left Bussorah [Basra] for Bushire . . . I was really desirous to visit Mirza Husain again: the society and pleasures of Shiraz, which I enjoyed in 1787, were also much to my fancy and taste; and moreover, I had great curiosity to see the king, who, on my first visit to the capital, was quite a youth . . . I reached the capital at a period the most delightful and luxurious of the whole year, that of the first opening of the spring. I was most commodiously lodged by my kind friend, Mirza Husain . . . and I received from him every attention and kindness that can be imagined . . . The king was sitting, with a crimson cloth cloak thrown over his shoulders, at the corner of one of the windows: and as I approached him, he beckoned me to enter the room. I did so, standing at a distance to receive the usual order to sit down. The king said: “Aka,” i.e. Gentleman, “sit yourself down near me; we are now met as merchants – I to sell, and you to buy. But tell me first, what sort of a host does Muhammed Husain make to you?” And then, laughing, said: “if he lets you want for any thing, he must have the felek [bastinado]; first, because the late king, of blessed memory, my father, was much pleased with you; and secondly, because I understand you did not allow Husain, when he was at Bussorah on his pilgrimage, to want for any thing.” And then, laughing more freely, added, “By the king’s soul! tell me if he gives you wine?” I answered: “. . . he has done me the high honour to admit me a daily guest to his table; and as your majesty knows it would be a disgrace to his high character and birth that such liquour should be produced there, so I hope your majesty will believe me when I say, I prefer the honour of being admitted to his society before any gratification I could receive from drinking the finest wines which Persia affords.” “Well spoken again!” said the king. “I have heard you were a prudent and discreet man; and, in consequence, I have ordered you here, to treat with you on a business of importance.” The king then threw aside his cloak . . . on each arm he wore bazubunds or

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armlets, containing, among many other superb ones, the jewels already noted.

Jones spent several weeks more at Shiraz in inconclusive negotiations about the jewels (which he later valued at almost one million pounds sterling, equivalent in today’s terms to sixty times as much). Lotf-Ali Khan was meanwhile preparing a campaign against the Qajars, and Jones, to his surprise, was advised by his host to leave Shiraz as soon as the Zand ruler had marched out of the city. His account continues: The evening before the king marched, I happened to go into the garden of Koulah Fringee [the Bagh-e nazar; see Plan of Shiraz, figure 5] . . . and there I saw the king’s son, a boy about seven years old, with his tutor or Lala . . . On [my] coning up to him and saluting him, he said: “You are the fringee [farangi, European] my father so often talks of.You brought him a pretty musical clock: did you bring nothing for me? I shall be king tomorrow, whilst my father is away; and you must come to see me, as you were used to visit him.” I was delighted with the child, and replied, “What does your highness wish for?” “Lala,” he replied, “tells me the best penknives are made in your country: do give me one. And my Dy (i.e. my nurse) says the scissors you make are better than ours: pray give me also a pair of scissors for Dy.” I happened to have a very fine penknife in my pocket, which I immediately presented him . . . The child, in the gaiety of his little heart, exclaimed, “O! you are a good man!” He kept me walking and talking with him near an hour; and I never saw a prettier-behaved, handsomer, or more intelligent child. Strange to tell, the next time we met was in Azarba’ijan; himself, a shrivelled eunuch, and a slave; myself the accredited minister of my country, to the successor of the destroyer of his father’s house and throne! The king had left Shiraz about six days; when early one morning I heard a noise of a multitude of people rushing along the street; and very soon after, my Mehmandar [official chaperon] arrived, and informed me Hajy Ibrahim had seized Berkordar Khan, the governor of the fortress, by orders, as he told the people, which he had received from the king . . .

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The Mehmandar had gone out to learn what he could of what was passing; and when he returned, he told me, “The people are tolerably quiet, because, as yet, they consider what has been done to have been done by the king’s order;” but, he added, “I do not believe it, because the gates are shut, and all communication with the camp, which was free yesterday, is forbidden to-day. Besides, a messenger sent by the Khanum [the wife of the vizier, who had accompanied Lotf-Ali] to her husband has been stopped, and strictly examined, at the gate of the city . . . a message has been sent to that lady, to tell her, as she values the safety of herself and Mirza Buzurg’s children, to forbear interfering in any thing that is going on: – this convinces me,” said he, “Hajy Ibrahim is a scoundrel.” . . . When the morning came, it was known that some partial instances of the plunder of private individuals had taken place during the night; but that the greater part of the tumult we had heard had arisen from disarming and turning out of the city the few Lacks and Zands who had remained in it after the king’s departure [cf. Fasa’i/ Busse, 47–48] . . . It was one fine evening, that the town became certified of the king’s presence in its neighbourhood, by the sound of the camel-guns [6-pounder swivel guns called zanburaks, mounted on special camel-saddles; here fired in salute] . . . I shall not easily forget the expression of joy which ran through the city on hearing these guns; and yet there was no person left in it of sufficient consequence and courage to lead forth a band to seize the traitor . . . Unfortunately for the king, the families of all the principal nobles with him were in Shiraz, and consequently in the power of Hajy Ibrahim. To those persons, Hajy Ibrahim, therefore addressed . . . letters, threatening to exercise on the innocent and helpless the severest tortures, if their husbands and fathers did not desert the king. The effect . . . was all that Hajy Ibrahim could have wished or expected.

After several strained interviews with Haji Ebrahim, Jones was given permission to leave Shiraz. Mirza Hoseyn and he reluctantly decided against his taking the vizier’s large and valuable library (755 volumes) for sale in India, since Agha

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Mohammad Khan was bound to know of and covet it, and might react violently if thwarted. An eventful journey to the coast – during which Jones’s party came under musket fire on a moonlit descent of the gorge leading to Kamarej – brought him once again to Lotf-Ali Khan: I found the king sitting on a horse-cloth, under the commonest small thin tent, having his saddle, and a sort of portmanteau, placed against the pole of the tent, to support his back; his bridle, his sword, pistols, spear, and a carbine I had given him, lying by his side; and in front of the little tent his favorite and renowned horse, Keraun [Qeran], was picketted . . . When I came fairly under the tent, though he still kept his seat, he put out his hand; which I was going to kiss, when, to my great surprise, he caught hold of my hand, and shook it; saying, “They tell me this is the way, in your country, in which friends greet each other.”

Jones gave the fugitive what information he could from Shiraz, including the news that “ballads in praise of his majesty’s valour, courage, and constancy, were sung in the streets, before Hajy Ibrahim’s face” (Jones Brydges provides a translation of one such ballad, pp. clxvi–clxviii; another is given by Waring, 93–94). He urged him, rather than besieging Shiraz, to fortify Bushehr, sell his jewels to raise troops, and ask for help from the British government in India. After sharing a meal, they parted for the last time. As it turned out, Lotf-Ali preferred to stake all on a swift assault on the advancing Qajar army rather than take Jones’s advice (he had ruefully admitted during this last conversation that – like his father, Ja’far Khan – he had a bad habit of ignoring good advice). The diamonds, after Lotf-Ali’s capture at Bam, were transferred into the Qajar treasury.

THE QAJAR CONQUEST It might seem strange to think of citizens, or at any rate civic officials, “electing” a new government in a country and at a

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time when everyone without exception of rank, kinship, and even age or sex, might be subject to summary execution, or mutilation and imprisonment, at the hands of the ruler. Yet the mechanisms of the bloodless coup, to judge by Haji Ebrahim’s seizure of Shiraz, were one field in which the secretarial classes could hope to match the military.Voting, of course, was unheard of; but there were checks and balances in the vacillating symbiosis of tribe and town, ruler and bureaucrat, every bit as effective as those in a democracy where the assassinations and massacres, though metaphorical, can be politically as deadly as the real thing. An incident during Karim Khan’s pacification of Azerbaijan in 1761 is instructive. The citizens of Old Shamakhi (Shemakha), north of the Aras river – traditionally subject to Safavid Iran and later a strategic base of Nader Shah, but in practice not to be held by the Zands – petitioned the Vakil to confirm their candidate, one Mohammad Sa’id, as governor of the district. This he did, which emboldened the citizens of neighboring New Shamakhi to eject their unpopular governor, an appointee of Nader, and invite Mohammad Sa’id to govern them as well. The tradition of royal authority, even if vicarious and limited, backed by a written farman or royal diploma, could still empower local challenges to despotism. This aspect of the shah, as the redresser of his subjects’ wrongs – especially those committed in his name by his own subordinates – is one that Karim Khan was to invoke through his title of Vakil, during the settled period of his rule (chapter 8). Ultimately, trust is everything. The Shirazis had enjoyed a privileged life under Karim Khan’s rule; for at least fourteen years the city had flourished as Isfahan had flourished at the height of the Safavid era, and had been envied by much-ravaged Isfahan. But the fickle successors of the Vakil evidently could not be trusted to protect the city. Undoubtedly, the terrible lesson of Kerman had its desired effect on such as Haji Ebrahim. As has been demonstrated often in this history, an army without proper artillery and adequate provisions was

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helpless before a walled city with a united populace; but a city that refused to negotiate terms was doomed if it fell to assault. Once Lotf-Ali was locked out, and rejected the prudent course of fortifying Bushehr and purchasing reinforcements, he was lost – just as Shah Soltan-Hoseyn Safavi, by insisting on remaining in Isfahan when he could still have slipped past the Afghan blockade, lost his throne and his life (chapter 1). Haji Ebrahim’s bargain with Agha Mohammad was honored in the short term. After the death of Lotf-Ali he accompanied the future Qajar monarch to Tehran and served as his vizier. He continued in office into the reign of Fath-Ali Shah – until 1801, when rivals at court encompassed his downfall and execution. Following Zaki Khan’s “pacification” of the Qajar territories in 1776, Hoseyn-qoli Khan was persuaded by a cautionary letter from Agha Mohammad Khan, the senior of six Qajar hostages in Shiraz, to send his 5-year-old son Baba Khan (the future Fath-Ali Shah) to the Vakil’s court as a pledge of good faith. After a two-month stay in Shiraz, the child was returned to his father, as a token of the Vakil’s trust (which Hoseyn-qoli was yet again to betray). The following anecdote, one of many told (here by Ehtesham ol-molk, a son of Fath-Ali Shah) about the Qajar hostages and their host, is especially indicative of the Vakil’s fairness and aversion to sham and hypocrisy, and Agha Mohammad’s time-serving expediency in the service of a tenacious ambition for his tribe and lineage. During Baba Khan’s visit, Karim Khan treated him like his own son, and set him to play with the other boys of the Zand court. One day Baba Khan was matched in a wrestling bout with the Vakil’s 6-year-old great-nephew, Lotf-Ali Khan. Since the Qajar boy seemed to be getting the upper hand, Agha Mohammad furtively signaled him to throw the fight. Karim Khan noticed this, and mildly reproached the Qajar for teaching the boy to be deceitful. He himself cheered Baba Khan on to win, then seated him on his knee with a congratulatory kiss.

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Eighteen years later, Agha Mohammad was to exact a cruel revenge on Lotf-Ali (and on Khosrow, his young son, to ensure the end of the lineage) for what he saw as his long humiliation in Shiraz. Before this, he had gone to extraordinary lengths to reconcile the two branches of the Qajar tribe and their leading clans, the Qoyunlu and Develu, despite active opposition from his two brothers and intrigues from other factions. His nephew Fath-Ali later played his part, collecting a full complement of wives and concubines and fathering five sons in one year (1789) alone (Fasa’i/ Busse, 35). Agha Mohammad’s subsequent career is beyond the scope of this history, but his assassination – which happened fifty years almost to the day after that of Nader Shah, and in a strangely similar manner – is a fitting point at which to close this narrative. Encamped at Shusha in 1797, while preparing his second invasion of Georgia, Agha Mohammad Shah (he was crowned the year before, after his first Transaraxian campaign) was disturbed by the loud quarreling of two of his servants, and ordered their immediate execution. One of his commanders, Sadeq Khan Shaqaqi, interceded in vain; the Shah refused to rescind the sentence, consenting only to postpone it until after the imminent Friday holiday. With incredible self-confidence, he permitted the two to go about their duties in the mean time. Having nothing to lose, they enlisted the help of a third servant, and stabbed the Shah to death that same night, 17 June 1797.

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T

he geographical extent of the Zand empire at its zenith, from 1765 to 1779, was in practice about two-thirds that of the Safavids, and one-third that of Nader Shah’s territory at its height. All three of these versions of Iran, it should be remembered, vacillated in extent at the frontiers, Nader’s most of all. Sistan and Baluchistan, never strongly held, and regarded by Nader mainly as a source of manpower, had remained aloof from the wrangling in western Iran on Nader’s assassination. Under Nasir Khan Baluch this largely desert region was partly absorbed into the Dorrani empire; thus Lar and Kerman, exercising a tenuous jurisdiction over the coastal sheikhdoms of Makran, constituted the eastern marches of Karim Khan’s Iran. The natural frontiers of the Lut and Kavir deserts, and the turbulent Qajar province of Astarabad, separated the Zand state from the Afsharid kingdom of Khorasan, which from 1755 was effectively a tributary of Ahmad Shah Dorrani. The only contact between Zands and Afsharids seems to have been two visits to Shiraz by Shahrokh’s son Nasrollah Mirza, in 1767 and 1775, which were requests for aid to further personal and factional interests rather than embassies. The prince was politely received but went home empty-handed (Ghaffari, 160–161; Factory Records, XVII, 1085, 1 February 1775). There is no record of contact between the Vakil and Ahmad Shah; 99

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it would seem that these two great contemporaries, having divided Nader’s empire so neatly between them, agreed tacitly to keep Khorasan as a buffer between their separate interests and hostile peoples. Within the imperial frontiers – the mamalek-e mahrusa or “[divinely] protected realms” as the country was termed in official Safavid and Qajar usage – major provinces were governed by a begler-begi, a governor-general appointed by the state, who might or might not be a local chieftain. In Karim Khan’s time the maximum number of regions governed by a beglerbegi were nine: Fars, Lar, Kerman (see chapter 4), Astarabad, Mazandaran, Gilan, Azerbaijan, Urmiya, and Khoy Salmas (see chapter 3). Other major cities in the central or Gulf regions were governed by a hakem, generally a local magnate appointed or confirmed by the ruler: such were Bandar Abbas, Bushehr, Hamadan, Isfahan, Kashan, Kermanshah, Qazvin, Tehran, and Yazd. The raw materials of Karim’s original coalition – the Lur, Lak and Hamadan plains tribes of the Zand, Vand, Zangana, Kalhor and Qaraguzlu – remained closely connected with the Zand chief after his rise to power, providing more than half of his standing army of Fars. The Zangana in particular, who governed Kermanshah throughout this period, were well represented at court, and Heydar Khan was twice sent as an ambassador to Baghdad; while Abdollah Khan Kalhor went as ambassador to Istanbul in 1775. Control of more distant tribes was often largely nominal, the Vakil merely confirming a de facto chief who was kept in line by means of hostages and shows of force. Deportation of an insubordinate tribe was applied only once, against the Bakhtyari in 1764 (chapter 4). Tribal groups which, like the Zand themselves, had returned from exile, were welcomed and encouraged to settle in western Iran. The four western frontier provinces with a dominant ethnicity (Arab, Lur, Kurd, Georgian) were traditionally governed by a vali or march-warden from the leading tribe or family,

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normally a hereditary post subject to royal ratification. This was an echo of the satraps of the old Persian empire, and one of the many Safavid institutions which partially survived the dynasty’s demise. Ranged south to north, as described below, the valis were: of Arabestan, i.e. Khuzistan, the alluvial plain of the left bank of the Tigris; of Lorestan (Luristan), the Zagros ranges from Dezful to Kermanshah; of Ardalan, the Kurdish territory between Kermanshah and present-day Mahabad; and of Gorjestan or Georgia, the joint Christian kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti centered on the city of Tbilisi (Tiflis). This last tributary state, together with Armenia (Yerevan), Qarabagh (Shusha), and Shirvan (Darband), was not to be included in the Zand realms (see below).

WESTERN APPROACHES In the Zand period, Fars as the metropolitan province was a special case. Sadeq Khan, Karim’s brother, held the predominantly military post of begler-begi from 1757. The mayor of Shiraz (kalantar), whose office had been amalgamated with that of the civil governor of Fars (saheb-ekhtiar) under Nader Shah, also became responsible for a range of municipal and provincial functions and appointments. Mirza Mohammad, known as the Kalantar of Fars, was appointed to this office by Karim Khan on his first entry into Shiraz in 1754, after the ravages of Ali Mardan Khan (chapter 2), and retained it through the reigns of Ali-Morad and Ja’far Khan until his death in 1786. His successor, Haji Ebrahim – who had risen through the civil ranks as a ward alderman (kadkhoda) of Shiraz – wielded such influence that he was able in 1791–92 to engineer the transfer of government of the city, and effectively of the country, to the Qajars. Control of the adjacent plains and marshes of Khuzistan, in the person of the Vali of Arabestan, had been vested for two centuries or more in the Mosha’sha’ family of Shi’i sayyids of

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Hawiza, when Nader Shah replaced the incumbent with his own appointee, the province to be administered from Dezful and Shushtar, in the Zagros foothills to the north-west. This only enabled rival tribes – the Al-Kasir and the Banu Ka’b – to expand their influence. Mowla Mottaleb Mosha’sha’i, grandson of the deposed vali, rebelled even before Nader’s death and was confirmed as vali by the distant Adel Shah Afshar. Within the year Sheikh Sa’d of the Al-Kasir led a popular coup which gained him control of Dezful and Shushtar from his nearby camp in the desert. The next few years of virtual civil war in Khuzistan also saw the northward expansion of the Banu Ka’b. In 1751 Ali Mardan Khan Bakhtyari had Esma’il III send Sheikh Sa’d a diploma as Vali of Arabestan, but the following year he was ousted from tribal leadership by his uncle, and Mowla Mottaleb seized the chance to repossess the title of Vali. In 1763 he was still feuding with the Al-Kasir when the two became involved in Zaki Khan Zand’s rebellious foray into Khuzistan (chapter 4). By the time of Sadeq Khan’s siege of Basra the Al-Kasir appear to have regained the upper hand. Pacification of the Zagros range and its eastern foothills, adjacent to the Zand homeland, took up the major part of Karim Khan’s time and energy at the outset of his reign, and again took on importance with his challenge of the Baghdad pashalik in the 1770s. The Vali of Luristan, Esma’il Khan Feyli, on Ali Mardan’s demise had prudently submitted to the Vakil, but later supported Zaki Khan Zand in his irresponsible forays in central Iran. Early in 1765, in midwinter, the Vakil sent a successful punitive force against Esma’il’s capital of Khorramabad, and appointed Esma’il’s more compliant brother, Naser Ali Khan, to be Vali of Luristan. But Esma’il, a fiery and popular schemer, soon returned from his refuge of Baghdad and resumed leadership. After Karim Khan’s death he sent presents to Agha Mohammad Khan at Tehran, to ensure his continuity under what he saw would soon be the new regime. The Vali of Ardalan in 1750 was Hasan Ali Khan, who attacked Karim Khan’s band even before the joint Bakht-

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yari–Zand capture of Isfahan, in defense of the fortress of Kermanshah (chapter 2). He had to withdraw to Sanandaj to protect his interests against an assault by Salim Pasha, ruler of the neighboring Kurdish principality of Baban under Turkish suzerainty. This episode illustrates the special position of the Kurdish principalities during the Safavid period and the following century. Baban and Ardalan (corresponding roughly to present-day Sulaimaniya in Iraq and Kordestan in Iran) have traditional east–west ties of culture and kinship, which were bisected by the north–south frontier between Ottoman Turkey and Iran. Their affinities and dynastic rivalries thus furnished pretexts for interference by their respective overlords, leading to periodic proxy wars. Salim Pasha later assisted Azad against the Zands, in reward for which he was appointed Vali. But in 1753 a rebellion at home and invasion by the Pasha of Baghdad drove Salim for refuge to Mohammad Hasan Khan Qajar. Unfortunately Khosrow Khan Ardalani, grandson of Sobhan Verdi Khan, the Vali in Nader’s time, already had the ear of the Qajar contender, who appointed him as Vali in 1754 (Rabino, Kurdistan, 83–84). On Mohammad Hasan’s defeat by Karim Khan, Khosrow transferred his allegiance to the victor. He retained his post for most of the next thirty years, until 1802. The proxy war of 1774–75 began when Khosrow helped establish a rival claimant to the pashalik of Baban, and Omar Pasha of Baghdad intervened to reverse this. A joint Zand and Kurdish force under Ali-Morad Khan was sent to reimpose the Vakil’s influence, but the overconfident Zand general was captured and sent as a prisoner to Baghdad. Omar Pasha returned him unharmed, presents and assurances of peace were exchanged; but the Vakil nevertheless opened up a new offensive early next year, led by Nazar-Ali Khan Zand, to coincide with the assault on Basra. These same frontier animosities – territorial, dynastic, cultural – persisted into Qajar and Pahlavi times. Though often dormant during periods of uncontested central rule and relative

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prosperity, they tended to erupt anew whenever foreign interests challenged the vigilance of the government.Thus, from the 1920s into the 1940s, the army of Reza Shah and his son was kept busy quelling rebellions in Khuzistan (Sheikh Khaz’al), Luristan, and north-eastern Kurdistan (the Mahabad republic) – as well as Gilan (the Jangalis) and Azerbaijan – that were fomented or exploited by British and Russian interference.

THE CASPIAN RIM AND AZERBAIJAN Gilan was traditionally administered from Rasht by its own governors, even when incorporated by Mohammad Hasan Khan into the Qajar realms after the demise of Nader Shah. Karim Khan initially deposed the Qajar appointee, Hedayatollah Khan of Fuman, in 1759, but he escaped from Tehran and reinstalled himself as governor while the Vakil was occupied with the siege of Urmiya. Karim arrested and fined him, and had Nazar-Ali Khan Zand administer Rasht for the duration of his stay in Azerbaijan; but on leaving the north in 1763 Karim reappointed Hedayat-ollah as begler-begi of Gilan. Hedayat-ollah inherited a fertile subtropical province rich in natural resources, especially its silk industry, which had been promoted by Shah Abbas as a royal monopoly for export. He maintained a brilliant court, amply supplied with strong liquor and Georgian slaves, and a powerful salaried army, but prudently kept up his twice-yearly tribute to Shiraz, supplemented by gifts and special orders of silks. His sister was married to Karim Khan’s eldest son, Abol-Fath. His revenue was augmented by a poll tax on the large Armenian community, and by trade with the Russians, who maintained a fortified post at the port of Anzali (Enzeli ) as well as a consul at Rasht. As early as 1773, apparently threatened by the Qajar resurgence, Hedayat-ollah applied to be taken under Russian protection.When this was refused, he began in 1779 to drive out Russian merchants and solicit help from Fath-Ali Khan of Qobba

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against the advancing Qajars. He was forced from power by Agha Mohammad Khan in 1781, and killed three years later as the result of an old blood feud. Mazandaran, sandwiched between the Qajar winter pastures of Astarabad (Gurgan) and the Zand realms of western Iran, suffered accordingly. After Karim Khan’s conquest of the region in 1759–60, he appointed a local leader, Mohammad Khan Savadkuhi, as begler-begi. Hoseyn-qoli Khan Qajar repeatedly threatened Mazandaran, and in 1772 seized the capital, Sari, defeated Mohammad Savadkuhi, and killed him. His son Mehdi Khan escaped to Shiraz and returned the next year as governor-general with a Zand army, driving the Qajar into hiding; but once the Zands had withdrawn Hoseyn-qoli returned and defeated Mehdi Khan Savadkuhi (chapter 4), though he contemptuously released him to continue as governor under Qajar supervision. The diversion of most of the Zand army to besiege Basra in 1774 enabled Hoseyn-qoli to consolidate his hold on the province, until his murder by Turkmen in 1777. Azerbaijan south of the Aras was ethnically and politically more homogeneous than the provinces north of the river; the leading Turk and Kurd tribes were all Shi’i and had been ardent supporters of the Safavids from the outset. In 1763 Karim Khan confirmed the Donbali family of turkicized Kurds in their dominance of eastern Azerbaijan, appointing Najaf-qoli Khan as begler-begi at Tabriz, and his uncle, Ahmad Khan Donbali, to govern Khoy and Salmas, the northernmost sector of the Ottoman frontier. Najaf-qoli’s nephew Shahbaz Khan was taken as a hostage to Shiraz; later he was joined by Nafaf-qoli’s 10-yearold son Abdor-Razzaq Beg, who (according to his memoirs, written in the early Qajar period) grew up there to enjoy a life of wine, women, and poetry (chapter 8). Urmiya, on the western shore of the lake of that name, remained in the hands of the Qasemlu clan of the Afshars. Under Fath-Ali Khan Afshar it switched loyalties several times during the three-way power struggle of the 1750s before

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surrendering to the Vakil in 1763. He appointed as begler-begi Rostam Khan Qasemlu, the son of an old rival of Fath-Ali Khan, and subsequently other Qasemlus, including Rostam’s son Emam-qoli Khan. The latter expanded his authority to Khoy and south into Kurdistan, and after Karim Khan’s death may have had designs on central Iran; he was killed in a battle with allies of Ali-Morad Khan Zand in 1783.

GEORGIA AND TRANSARAXIA: INTO THE RUSSIAN ORBIT The provinces north of the River Aras (Araxes) as far as the Caucasus range, including the tributary Christian kingdom of Georgia, were conceptually an integral part of Iran for the Safavids – and for the Zands and the Qajars, until well into the nineteenth century. From a Russian geostrategic perspective this region has been called Transcaucasia; it never acquired a name from the Persian imperial viewpoint (unlike Mavarannahr, Transoxiana, the land across the Oxus river). Since the following discussion requires such a term, we will call it Transaraxia, “the land across the Aras river.” Safavid pretensions to rule Georgia, and even her southern Muslim neighbors of Shirvan, Qarabagh and Nakhchevan, had been shaken by Peter the Great’s incursion of 1722. Over the next two decades Nader Shah temporarily reimposed Iran’s suzerainty by force of arms and a show of strength against the Russians, but the Afsharids and Zands, from their distant capitals, could not exert consistent pressure on this volatile region. Although the chroniclers ignore it, Iran’s hold on the regions north of the Aras was completely eroded over the next forty years; so that when Agha Mohammad Khan in 1796 and 1797 tried to restore it by Nader Shah’s methods, this backfired for his Qajar successors and resulted in the definitive loss of the region to Russia.

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The chronic threat for the Safavids in Transaraxia was Ottoman Turkey. Whenever the Sultan launched a campaign from the west, he could count on automatic support from the fiercely independent Sunni Muslim chieftains of the eastern mountain tribes of Daghestan collectively called Lezgi, and their Chechen neighbors, whom neither Nader Shah nor the colonizing Russians of the following centuries were able to pacify. The mainly Shi’i citizens and governors of the towns and, in times of peace, the Georgian and Armenian Christians, acknowledged Persian suzerainty. When invaded by the Ottomans, Georgian rulers and their Armenian subjects were obliged to submit and temporarily swear allegiance to the Sultan. With the sudden interest taken in the region by Peter the Great, and pursued by his successor the Empress Catherine II, a new threat materialized – a power that had proved itself militarily stronger than the Turks, and to which the Christian populations might be drawn voluntarily by ties of religion. Nader Shah had deterred the Russians temporarily, but his immediate successors did not have his resources. The most powerful of the Shi’i khans of Transaraxia was Fath-Ali Khan Qobbe’i (or Darbandi), who ruled over much of the region corresponding to northern Azerbaijan (the presentday ex-Soviet republic) from the 1760s until 1789. Regarded by the Persian chroniclers as a vassal of the neo-Safavid Zand state, he was in fact autonomous. He maintained friendly relations with his Georgian neighbor and, like him, sought Russian financial and military aid against threats from the Ottomans and the Sunni khans of Daghestan. Erekle (Heraclius XII; in Persian, Irakli Khan) of the Bagratid dynasty, King of Kakheti while his father, Teymoraz, ruled the other Georgian kingdom of Kartli, had been obliged to join Nader Shah on his Indian campaign, since Nader had kindly reestablished the Georgian monarchy as a vassal of Iran. After the Afshar monarch’s assassination he embarked on an aggressive expansion southward, “more to defend his country than for conquest” (Correspondence consulaire, La Perse, VII, no.

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81, 1 February 1753) – a sound defensive strategy in view of the anarchy prevailing south of the Aras, which threatened the Transaraxian Christian states with massacre and pillage. After his occupation of Yerevan in 1749 and defeat of his former ally Azad in 1751–52, Erekle could afford largely to ignore the changing situation south of the Aras. His father died in 1760 on his way back from a journey to St Petersburg to appeal – in vain – for subsidies and troops against attacks by the Lezgis, leaving his son as King of Kartli and Kakheti. It was now obvious that Mashhad was no longer the seat of government. Probably during the Zand army’s progress through Azerbaijan (1762–63), when he also handed over the refugee Azad, Erekle tendered his pro forma submission to the Vakil and received his diploma as Vali of Gorjestan – the traditional Safavid office, by this time an empty honorific. Conceivably, they might yet need each other in the event of a resurgence of Ottoman power. However, Erekle’s involvement in Russia’s victorious war with the Ottoman Turks in 1768–74 brought Georgia more closely into the Russian orbit, even before Karim Khan’s war with the Baghdad pashalik of 1775–76. With the Vakil’s death and the belligerent Qajar expansion in the north it seemed no longer either necessary or indeed desirable for Georgia to curry favor with Iran; following through a proposal he had made as early as 1771, Erekle in 1783, by the Treaty of Giorgievsk, formally placed his kingdom and its Transaraxian dependencies under Russian protection.The immediate consequence of this was a savage assault on Tbilisi by Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar (chapter 6); in the longer term, it led to the incorporation of the Georgian monarchy into Russia in 1804 and the subsequent Russian conquest of all other Transaraxian territories still claimed by Qajar Iran. The curiously ambivalent position of Georgia during the Zand period – tied to Iran by traditional imperial, economic, and cultural bonds which in practice were badly frayed, and some of which had already snapped; and drawn to Russia (also Orthodox Christian, but otherwise culturally alien) by a desire

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for security – is illustrated by the coinage issued in Erekle’s realms. Silver coins were struck in the name of Esma’il III, or with the Zand-style inscription ya karim, “O Gracious One” (invoking an epithet of God, but alluding to Karim Khan) at Shamakhi, Nakhchevan, and Ganja between 1764 and 1776, and at Tbilisi up until 1799, twenty years after the Vakil’s death! In the same period (1765–95), the copper series minted at Tbilisi bore Christian, Georgian, and even Russian imperial iconography such as the double-headed eagle. There is little doubt that the complimentary reference to Karim Khan, even in retrospect, was calculated to make the silver coins acceptable for trade throughout Iran, whereas the copper coins – struck for local use only – reflect Erekle’s political orientation toward Russia (Poole, 105 ff.; Rabino, “Coins of the Shahs,” 179, 190–192). The Russian government maintained an official consul at Rasht, primarily to facilitate trade by Russian citizens (which included many Armenians and Muslims) in the north of Iran and along the Caspian coast and, in furtherance of this, to stay on friendly terms with, and obtain political intelligence from, the local ruler, Hedayat-ollah Khan Fumani. The consul was not authorized to make diplomatic overtures to Hedayat-ollah’s ostensible overlord and the ruler of most of Iran, Esma’il III, and/or Karim Khan. The only Russian contact with the Vakil (mentioned by a later local history as an embassy to Shiraz in 1779) was probably a circular reportedly sent by Consul Bogolyubov in 1774, on instructions from the College of Foreign Affairs in St Petersburg, to assure Karim Khan, Fath-Ali Khan of Darband, and other Iranian rulers that Russian support for Erekle and King Solomon of Imeretia was a temporary measure to counter Ottoman aggression, and that the Empress had no designs on Iranian territory. In the spring of 1784 Catherine II sent an embassy to Isfahan in response to Ali-Morad Khan Zand’s magnanimous offer to cede the Transaraxian khanates (already a fait accompli by the Treaty of Giorgievsk) in exchange for recognition and aid against the Qajars; but Ali-

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Morad died before any agreement could be signed (Ferrières de Sauveboeuf, II, 202–203).

OTTOMAN TURKEY AND INDIA The sole diplomatic contact between the Ottoman state and the Zands was the embassy of Vehbi Efendi, who arrived at Shiraz too late to stop the siege of Basra (chapter 6). It might seem odd that it took more than twenty years for Istanbul to recognize the Vakil’s neo-Safavid regime. Strictly speaking, however, the government of Iran with which the Sultan had unfinished business (an unratified treaty of 1746 with Nader Shah) was the rump Afsharid state of Shahrokh Shah in Mashhad. This entity was remote and, in effect, a vassal state of the Indo-Afghan Dorrani empire; the pseudo-Safavid revival of the Zands was now more powerful, and directly threatened the frontiers of two Ottoman provinces. Protocol or not, it had belatedly to be dealt with. Vehbi’s embassy, whose progress from Istanbul coincided exactly with Sadeq Khan’s march on Basra (January to early April 1775), did little more than re-establish courteous diplomatic relations between Iran and Turkey. A politely worded reply, containing a repetition of the Vakil’s complaints against Omar Pasha, was drafted by Abdollah Khan Kalhor (a Lak), who himself reciprocated the embassy in advance of Vehbi’s return. The Mughal empire, much reduced in size and splendor by the 1730s, had been humiliated by Nader Shah’s sack of Delhi in 1740 and the further conquests of Ahmad Shah Dorrani in the 1750s. It was left to powerful local rulers, notably the Mahrattas and Haidar Ali of Mysore, whose principal trading partners lay in the Persian Gulf, to establish diplomatic relations with the Zands. The first embassy from Mysore arrived at Shiraz in 1770, under a sayyid of Iranian extraction, bearing gifts that included two elephants, a tiger, a leopard, and a chee-

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tah. It remained two months, and was apparently reciprocated. A second embassy was observed early in 1774 (by the Vakil’s British hostages, Beaumont and Green – see below), which offered the Vakil naval assistance and proposed a marriage alliance in exchange for the grant of a trading base in the Gulf (Abdul Qadir, 1–2, 31–34; Factory Records, XVII, no. 1069). Apparently Bandar Abbas was promised, but whatever agreements might have been made were nullified by the imminent collapse of the Zand state. Haidar Ali’s son and successor, Tipu Sultan, sent a further embassy to the Zands in 1786 (during Ja’far Khan’s reign), about which nothing more is known.

THE DUTCH AND FRENCH EAST INDIA COMPANIES Of the western European powers that had engaged Safavid Iran in diplomatic and commercial exchange, the Dutch, like the British, confined their dealings in Afsharid and Zand times to negotiations involving commercial bases for their East India Company (Oost-indische Compagnie) – except for Baron Kniphausen’s quasi-colonial venture on Kharg Island (chapter 5). The glory days of Dutch trade with Iran and competition with the British lay in the previous century, and their battles with Mir Mahanna mark their last hurrah in the Persian Gulf (for the Kharg episode from an economic perspective, see Floor, “The Dutch on Khark Island”). The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs kept an eye on developments in Iran from distant Istanbul, and only insofar as such events might impinge on Turkey’s contribution to the balance of power in Europe; though it did manage to infiltrate a consular spy, le Sieur Simon, into the three-way power struggle in western Iran (chapter 2). The affairs of their Compagnie des Indes, however, were run from Baghdad by the Carmelite Bishop of Babylon from 1748 until 1758, when an energetic new consul, Dr Pirault, arrived and somewhat revived French

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trade at Basra (Carmelites, 662). But due to complete indifference to Persian Gulf trade in Paris, no contact was made with Iran until 1768, when Pirault, observing with satisfaction the contretemps between British commercial agent Moore and Karim Khan (see below), sent an agent to Shiraz to negotiate the exchange of French woolens against Gilan silk and to put out feelers for the cession of Kharg Island, which Mir Mahanna had recently recovered from the Dutch (but not exactly handed over to the Vakil). Pirault’s negotiator extravagantly agreed to provide annually two million articles of woolen clothing for the Persian army, half to be paid for in Gilan silk and Kerman wool and half in cash.The Vakil nonchalantly agreed to cede them Kharg as well, and the pact was signed in 1770 – only to be ignored in Paris, and forgotten in Shiraz. Pirault, the Bishop, and his consular staff all died in the plague at Basra in 1773. Jean-FrançoisXavier Rousseau, Pirault’s assistant and successor, attempted to renew contact with the Zands after the siege of Basra, and was even invited to Shiraz to negotiate; but continuing indifference in Paris and sudden anarchy in Shiraz put an end to this last initiative.

THE BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY Unlike Russia, Britain had no formal diplomatic representation in Iran (either from London or Bombay), and until early in the next century left diplomatic initiatives to what was ostensibly a commercial outfit, the Honorable East India Company, managed from Bombay. Like their French counterparts, the Directors of the Company (in London) were uninterested in fostering trade in the Persian Gulf, regarding it as an unprofitable backwater. Their reason for keeping a foothold in the Gulf was the strategic one of communications with India: a courier using the “direct route” took only two weeks to travel overland between Aleppo and Basra, which meant a saving of

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over six months on the voyage from Britain around the Cape of Good Hope. In 1759 the Company’s decision to abandon Bandar Abbas, where their profits were nullified by Baluchi raiders, marauding armies, and the exactions of their “protector” Nasir Khan of Lar, was accelerated by the only repercussion of the Seven Years’ War in the Gulf: two French privateers attacked and looted the factory (as their office and warehouse was called). For the time being, the British concentrated their efforts at Basra, where the Pasha of Baghdad renewed their privileges. In 1763 they concluded an agreement with Sheikh Sa’dun of Bushehr, confirmed by a generous grant from Sadeq Khan, the Vakil’s deputy in Shiraz, for a duty-free, fortified establishment at the port, a monopoly of local trade, and restoration of their house in Shiraz (the text of this agreement is in Factory Records, XVI, 782; cf. also Sykes, 280). Trade flourished at Bushehr: in the next four years, the Company’s sale of woolens showed a large annual increase over the last decade at Bandar Abbas, and Iran’s export of raw silk from Gilan responded well to the Vakil’s presence in the northern provinces. The unwritten quid pro quo that the Zands expected of the Company was naval assistance in their subjugation of the Gulf littoral (a continuation of Shah Abbas’s and Nader Shah’s policies). Though this would appear to have been in the Company’s interest, the directors vetoed it; and though the Company’s agents on the spot found ways to accommodate the Vakil’s demands, poor organization on both sides too often scuttled the projected operations – as witness the Company’s unimpressive showing against Mir Mahanna and the Banu Ka’b (chapter 5). They had also neglected to bring a gift for the Vakil on his arrival at Shiraz in 1765, and quibbled (in the Iranians’ view) about other details of the agreement. The Vakil is said once to have demanded angrily what use these English were to the country, and to have ordered their agents out of Shiraz. George Skipp, the Company’s envoy to Shiraz in April 1767, was very coolly received. But he persevered; an agreement

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was signed in May 1768, and a flotilla was dispatched from Bombay to help the Zands capture Kharg from Mir Mahanna. The new agent at Basra, Henry Moore, jealously sabotaged the agreement by ordering a premature, unilateral assault on Kharg, which was soundly defeated; and on the flotilla’s arrival he sent it back to Bombay before the rendezvous with Zaki Khan’s army. After Mir Mahanna fell to a coup d’état on Kharg next year, Moore continued to demand that the Vakil cede the island; the factors at Bushehr then quit their post for Basra (to Moore’s satisfaction) in fear of Iranian reprisals. Despite comparable setbacks in Basra, culminating in Moore’s arbitrary somersaults of policy during the Zand siege six years later, the agent’s high-handedness met with the moral support of the directors in London, who regarded Karim Khan’s legitimate moratorium on the export of silver specie as unduly restrictive (Factory Records, XVI, Private, no. 12). The Bombay Presidency disagreed, and when in 1769 feelers were extended from Shiraz for a renewal of the Bushehr factory, they instructed the still recalcitrant Moore to send another envoy to Shiraz. He stalled until, in 1770, Mir Ali Vagha’i of Bandar Rig captured a British merchant vessel, the Britannia. Demands for restitution sent to the Vakil, as Mir Ali’s overlord, went unanswered. In 1773 Moore and his staff fled plague-ridden Basra on two ships bound for Bombay. As they passed Bandar Rig, three of Mir Ali’s fleet swooped out and captured the smaller of these vessels, the Tyger. The prize was beached at Bandar Rig and the two Company employees on board, Beaumont and Green, were sent to Shiraz as hostages for the resumption of the Company’s trade at Bushehr. They were treated well, having a wine ration and the freedom of the city; while the Zands later used the Tyger in the Basra campaign. Moore returned to Basra when the plague subsided, and on instructions from Bombay politely reopened negotiations with Shiraz. These dragged on for a year, sticking on the Vakil’s demand for naval aid against Sheikh Abdollah of Hormuz.

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London was keen to drop all commitments in the troublesome Gulf, but Bombay insisted on continuing talks. Moore put in at Bushehr on his second flight from Basra (under siege by the Zands) in April 1775, to find the deal all but concluded, and himself blamed by both parties for his “unaccountable antipathy . . . against Carem Caun” (Factory Records, XVII, 1089). The hostages and the Tyger were returned, and the Union Jack was hoisted over the Company’s second factory at Bushehr. It was a Pyrrhic victory. Sadeq Khan guaranteed their house and property in conquered Basra; Moore, understandably, did not come back. But the combined effects of the plague, the siege and occupation, and increased Arab raids severely curtailed Basran trade. The Regulating Act of 1773 began the process of transferring the Company’s administration of its profitable Indian interests to the British government, which had no interest in the Gulf trade; the Company’s agent at Basra was retained mainly to supervise overland communications, since war with France was again in the wind. The Bushehr factory was likewise run at a loss, and was downgraded to a one-man residency even before the Vakil’s death. By the early Qajar period, trade in the upper Gulf had shifted from Basra to Qoreyn (Kuwait), and in the lower Gulf from Bandar Abbas to Muscat. While he was at Shiraz with Lotf-Ali Khan in spring of 1791, Harford Jones (later known as Jones Brydges) evidently wrote to his namesake in Calcutta, the Orientalist Sir William Jones (1746–94), who with his famous lecture on the affinity of Sanskrit and Greek in 1786 is credited with founding the discipline of comparative Indo-European philology. In Sir William’s reply of 1 November (sent to Basra; I am indebted for the copy of this letter to M. J. Franklin, of the University of Swansea), he acknowledges receipt of a letter from LotfAli Khan to be forwarded to Timur Shah Dorrani (evidently a plea for military assistance; see chapter 6). He thanks Harford Jones for securing him a copy of “the work of Mirza Sadik” (presumably Nami’s history of Karim Khan, the Tarikh-e Giti-

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gosha) and speaks warmly of Lotf-Ali and his erudite vizier Mirza Mohammad Hoseyn Farahani, whom he looks forward to visiting at Shiraz in 1793 or 1794. This, alas, was not to be; both Lotf-Ali and Sir William died two years later. The letter does at least show that not all of the Company’s dealings with the Zands were self-interested “business as usual,” and provides a bitter-sweet coda to the record of Indo-British relations with Iran in this period.

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W

e have seen several instances where the neo-Safavid state restored by Karim Khan, though ostensibly a close copy, departed somewhat from the original Safavid tradition as patented by Shah Abbas. Such were the reduced territorial extent of the empire and the status and accountability of the four march-wardens, the valis – especially the increasingly secessionist Vali of Gorjestan, King Erekle. But the most significant area in which the Safavid conceptual heritage clashed with the exigencies of historical fact is that of the nature of the Zand ruler’s authority. This could not be ignored for long by one with a living Safavid talisman in tow, nor by his officers and subjects. The way in which Karim Khan outmaneuvered this incubus was unique, a complete contrast to Nader’s methods and, in hindsight, a stunning improvement on the Safavid monarchy itself.

THE PEOPLE’S DEPUTY Such was the abstract prestige of the Safavid Shah, especially since Nadir’s premature and unpopular usurpation of the throne, that early contenders for power in the interregnum found it necessary to create and carry around with them a figurehead princeling, to canvass support and legitimize their 117

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power. Their respect for their protégé was non-existent: Shah Soleyman II at Mashhad was deposed and blinded a few weeks after his coronation, because he took his job too seriously and would not connive at his patrons’ looting of the treasury (chapter 1); Shah Soltan-Hoseyn II was blinded and turned loose by Ali Mardan Khan because the conspirators despaired for some reason of passing him off as a king (chapter 2). Shah Esma’il III was passively regal enough for Ali Mardan Khan Bakhtyari, Karim Khan Zand, and (temporarily) Mohammd Hoseyn Khan Qajar to invest in. The winner, Karim Khan, was content once he settled at Shiraz in 1765 to house the Shah in the fortress of Abada, midway between Isfahan and Shiraz, with an adequate pension and provisions and an annual Nowruz present from his supposed viceroy, “the humblest of his slaves.” The title originally assumed by Karim (though not documented in this form) was presumably vakil od-dowla, “deputy of the state.” A variant of this, vakil os-saltana or vakil-e shah, “royal vicegerent” or “viceroy,” had been assumed by Morshedqoli Khan Ostajlu, the Qizilbash chief responsible for placing Abbas I on the Safavid throne (though not for long, since Abbas turned out to be no mere figurehead; see Savory, 82). Such an epithet implied supreme command of the Shah’s army and politico-military dictatorship on his behalf. The title vakil oddowla was conferred on Fath-Ali Khan Qajar in 1726 by his protégé Tahmasb II, and was assumed by Nader (in addition to na’eb os-saltana, “viceroy”) in 1732 when he deposed Tahmasb and installed the infant Abbas III (Lockhart, Nadir Shah, 16, 63). Ali Mardan Khan likewise assumed the title on his investiture of Esma’il III, and it was presumably inherited by Karim Khan after he defeated Ali Mardan. By the time he settled in Shiraz, the Zand leader is reported to have changed the form of his title to vakil or-ra’aya, “deputy of the subjects,” or vakil ol-khala’eq, “deputy of the people.”This formulation, which reverses the polarity of the conventional Safavid-style epithet to imply, anachronistically, a democratic

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basis for the Vakil’s authority, did not spark any commentary by contemporary observers; it seems to have been accepted as an elegant variation on the original, perhaps with the purpose of further upstaging the token shah. The Carmelite chronicler noted in 1764: “Up to now, he has not been able to assume the title of “king’” (p. 664) and in the same year the Russian consul at Rasht reported that Karim Khan, having conquered “the fairest provinces and cities of all Persia, nevertheless has not dared claim the crown . . . thereby winning the people’s love” (Arunova and Ashrafyan, 111). Karim Khan continued to defy expectations and insist on the designation vakil for the rest of his reign. “If anyone addressed him as shah,” writes his hostage-guest Abdor-Razzaq Beg, “He would immediately reprove him, saying in all humility that the Shah was in Abada and he was merely his steward”( Donbali, II, 31). This fiction continued even after Esma’il III died, almost unnoticed, in 1773. The Vakil’s title and position were thus analogous to that of the Nawab (Indo-Perso-Arabic novvab, plural of na’eb, “deputy,” a synonym of vakil) of Indian Muslim states such as Awadh or Bengal: originally the viceregent of the Mughal emperor, he became an autonomous ruler and continued under that title even after his nominal overlord was no more. Karim Khan owed his undiminished popularity largely to the fact that he thus respected the surviving pro-Safavid prejudice and the people’s distrust of any new despot who might emulate Nader by elbowing the Safavid mystique aside. At the same time he realized that the Safavid ghost was now ready to be quietly buried by a government that could justify itself through humane and efficient policies rather than by appeal to a threadbare charisma, and allowed the outworn device of a regency to lapse without ceremony. His sword (displayed in the Pars Museum at Shiraz; see Perry, Karim Khan Zand, 217) bears a couplet alluding to him as “the Vakil, that conquering king” – a conventional metaphor, but one which by its very use attests that the monarchy was not a live issue.

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“The Vakil” was no longer his title, but a unique personal honorific: none of his Zand successors laid claim to the title vakil, or foisted it on the son of Karim Khan which he ostensibly represented. The Zand khans are often loosely described, both by Persian historians and foreign observers, as monarchs or kings (cf. Jones Brydges, in chapter 6). Even so, it was left to the founder of the next dynasty, Agha Mohammad, formally to assume the crown and the title of Shah. The full title Vakil or-ra’aya, which is not generally known (even in Iran) apart from Karim Khan’s adoption of it, merits further discussion. It was not an invention of the Zand leader’s, but his adaptation of a current and continuing office, that of a local magistrate appointed by the crown to investigate cases of stolen property or embezzlement, and in particular oppression or corruption by government officials. In Safavid Isfahan it was listed as one of the ex-officio functions of the kalantar, who was described by visiting Europeans as representing citizens before the Shah in his traditional assizes for the redress of wrongs (mazalem), and merchants against the governor’s exactions. Karim Khan is recorded as appointing a vakil or-ra’aya at Isfahan in 1752 (before his own assumption of the title), and Ali-Morad Khan at Qom in 1780. Sometimes the office was still subsumed within another civic post: when Karim Khan’s governor (hakem) of Kashan resigned that office by reason of illness, he continued to function as vakil or-ra’aya. The Zand ruler’s use of the title perhaps led to its more frequent occurrence as an independent post, for we find mention of a vakil or-ra’aya in cities throughout the Qajar era: Kashan in 1834, Tabriz in 1863 and again in 1896. As early as 1815 an Iranian visitor to London explained the House of Commons as “the house of the Vakil or-ra’aya.” Ultimately, the term came into its own in a manner fully consonant with Karim Khan’s use of it: the first elected deputy to take his seat in the new Iranian parliament (majles) after the Constitutional Revolution in 1906 was the vakil or-ra’aya of Hamadan. Other members of this and subsequent parliaments were likewise the sons of provincial

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vakils. This evolution is both natural and appropriate, seeing that the Persian term for parliamentary deputy at that time was vakil-e majles.The Majles, repeatedly threatened by autocracy in different guises during its first century, remains for the Iranian people their own hard-won hope for a just society. The function of an attorney for the underprivileged can be traced back to pre-Islamic (Sasanian) times, and the term vakil or-ra’aya appears in embryo as early as 821 with the Taherids, Iran’s first independent dynasty of the Islamic period. Thus the vakil or-ra’aya, culminating in the elected parliamentary deputy, continues a millennium-old tradition of a provincial ombudsman in Iran (see Perry, “Justice,” esp. 208–212). Karim Khan’s choice of this title speaks more subtly, and in retrospect more accurately, of his agenda than conventional bombast such as the regnal name Adel Shah, “the Just King.” The Vakil’s theory and practice of just rule did not, of course, imply that he anticipated a modern-style bureaucratized democracy. He kept central political control firmly in his own hands. Despite a considerable survival of Safavid court offices and protocol, none of the resident amirs, whether Zand or other tribesmen, or civil officials, rose to special prominence. His viziers functioned as clerks and companions of his leisure hours rather than colleagues in government; in this he followed Nader’s precedent and anticipated Agha Mohammad. Throughout this period, from the fate of Abol-Fath Khan Bakhtyari in the Isfahan triumvirate to Haji Ebrahim’s relationship with, first, Lotf-Ali Khan Zand, and then the first two Qajar monarchs, it is clear that the necessary alliance between a tribal ruler and his urban secretariat was rarely one of mutual trust.The Vakil’s first vazir-e divan or prime minister, Mirza Aqil of Isfahan, was executed in 1763 together with the mostowfi olmamalek or finance minister, during a spate of alleged plots and possible purges that did not spare even some top Zand officers (chapter 4). Their successors in office, however, served for the remainder of the Vakil’s reign.

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RELIGIOUS POLICIES The Vakil did not seek the sanction of the olama for his novel position. In Safavid times the Shi’i clergy were the bulwarks of the Shah’s authority as viceroy of God and the Imams, but their power was subsequently weakened by Nader’s Sunni-leaning religious policy and appropriation of much vaqf property to pay for his army. The revenues from vaqf, or religious endowments which included lands and buildings attached to shrines, mosques, and colleges (madrasa), were managed by religious dignitaries (often sayyids, reputed descendants of the Prophet) who might thereby wield political influence. Mir Sayyid Mohammad, the superintendent of the Mashhad shrine who briefly reigned as Shah Soleyman II before his vakil od-dowla tired of his rectitude (chapter 1), is a good exemplar of the perks and perils of the job. During the interregnum, many of the Shi’i clergy emigrated to the shrines of Iraq, so that those who remained or returned in Karim’s reign found their sanction unneeded by a tribal leader whose piety was perfunctory at best. One of the more pious of the chroniclers avers (at second hand) that the Vakil never once performed his prayers during his life. He upheld the Shi’a in a conventional way, having coins struck in the name of the hidden Imam, assigning stipends to religious functionaries such as the Sheykh ol-Eslam, and building a splendid mosque in Shiraz. The shrines he repaired, however, were those of secular heroes (the poets Sa’di and Hafez, and the latter’s patron Shah Shoja’) or anonymous popular saints; and he is said to have refused pensions to religious students, sayyids, and dervishes, regarding them as parasites. He declared that his regulation of prices enabled them, like everyone else, to get by on what they had (Rostam al-Hokama, 309). There is some ambiguity in his reported attitude to popular aspects of Islam and to dervishes. On the one hand, he despised superstition (and flattery): he threw out one charlatan who claimed that his sight had been restored by a visit to the tomb

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of Karim’s father, Inaq Khan, angrily declaring: “My father was a warrior, not a saint to work miracles!” However, there is a tale that when a courtier advised against a dervish’s petition to have a hostel (tekye) built for him and his visitors, charging that the man was fond of wine and hashish, Karim retorted that if he had such extra expenses he would need a stipend as well – and duly assigned him one. The dramatic enactment of the martyrdom of Imam Hoseyn at Karbala, known as ta’zia or shabih-khani, most likely evolved during the Vakil’s reign. It is not reported during the later Safavid period, when other aspects of the Moharram rituals became popular; but a visitor to Shiraz in 1786, during Ja’far Khan’s reign, watched performances of the well-known episodes of Qasem’s wedding and the European ambassador’s protest to Yazid (Francklin, 248–250). It is at any rate certain that Shi’ism as a component of Iranian identity, which came under threat during Nader Shah’s attempts to make peace with the Ottoman Turks, reasserted itself fully under the Zands. Sufi dervishes also began to return to Iran in the Vakil’s reign (from India, as the clerics returned from Iraq). They included devotees of the Ne’mat-ollahi order, who had been driven into exile during the Safavid era, and were to flourish again in Iran under the Qajars. Persecution of these competitors by the olama was a recurrent phenomenon throughout the greater Safavid period, and reappeared during the last years of the Vakil’s reign with the expulsion from Shiraz of two Ne’matollahi dervishes, Ma’sum-Ali Shah Dakani and Nur-Ali Shah. It reached a peak in the later Zand and early Qajar period, when the threat of anarchy provoked a sometimes violent assertion of civic responsibility by provincial olama and their urban allies. Thus, of the Ne’mat-ollahis, Nur-Ali Shah had his long locks, and his ear, cut off in Ali-Morad’s time; Moshtaq-Ali Shah was stoned to death by a mob led by clerics in Kerman during LotfAli Khan’s stormy reign; and several more were condemned to death in Kermanshah by the mojtahed Aqa Mohammad Ali (who earned the sobriquet Sufi-kosh, “Sufi-killer”) up until the

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early years of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar (cf. Browne, 368; Algar, 32–33, 38). The Zand government’s treatment of Christian, Jewish, and Hindu minorities is linked with questions of foreign relations, and in particular with commerce (see below). In the case of the various Christian resident aliens, who were missionaries of the Discalced Carmelite, Benedictine, Jesuit, Capuchin, Augustinian, Dominican and other orders, both Karim Khan in 1764 and Ali-Morad in 1781 issued decrees in response to petitions from these “French padrés,” guaranteeing their freedom of worship, residence, and commerce, as under the Safavid shahs, and protection from molestation by the Armenian Christians, on condition that their behavior did not offend against the Shi’a or its adherents. From this it may be conjectured that, as usual, relations between Christians and Muslims were probably no worse than between native and foreign (or Armenian and Latin) Christians. The missionaries were not permitted to proselytize among Muslims, but did try to poach Armenian or Chaldean (Assyrian) converts – whereupon the native community might react violently. In Iran, the millet system of registered religious confessions was not so bureaucratized as in the Ottoman realms, but the principle was the same: provided it paid the poll tax, each community was self-governing and immune from interference by the Muslim authorities – except that open conflict between Christian communities, as a breach of public order, might subject them to a crackdown.

REBUILDING THE ECONOMY The years from 1722 to 1764 appeared to the townsmen and villagers of Iran a constant vicious cycle of military occupation and extortion by a series of freebooters who used funds squeezed from one area to ravage another. Karim Khan had to remedy some forty years of artificial famine and depopulation, to which he himself had of necessity contributed during his

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struggle for power. A visitor to Bandar Abbas in 1750 found “not one house in ten but was deserted of inhabitants” (Plaisted, 10). The diarist of the East India Company, whose ships were taking on fewer trade goods and more refugees, notes in 1751 how “from all quarters of the Kingdom, Numbers of the most Substantial People are leaving the Country, on Pretext of going to Mecca” (Gombroon Diary, VI, 31 October 1751). Internal displacement among poorer citizens was even greater. The Vakil’s approach to this was typically pragmatic and comprehensive: he established security of the roads, curtailed illegal taxation and extortion, supervised the reallocation and working of abandoned lands, and had community leaders encourage exiles to return, by letter and in person (Hovhanyants, 311). He did not make the extravagant and hypocritical gesture characteristic of Nader and his Afsharid successors in declaring a tax amnesty, except once in the case of Kerman on evidence of genuine hardship. Security of the roads paid an immediate commercial dividend. By late 1764, at the conclusion of Karim Khan’s pacification of the northern and central regions, foreign observers noted that the roads between Shiraz and Isfahan and up to the Russian frontier were daily filled with merchant caravans (Brieven, 3048 [1766], 36–37).The Danish scholar Niebuhr was assured on his way to Bushehr by a party of Arab pilgrims that “nowhere in the world could one travel with such safety as in Persia” (p. 178; cf. also Francklin, 130; Waring, 302). Shi’i Muslims needed little encouragement to return from the insecurity of exile in Iraq. Bishop Emmanel of Baghdad notes in 1763 that Shi’i refugees from Nader Shah’s reign were returning in large numbers to Iran, as well as Armenian families and foreign missionaries. The Vakil encouraged the growing influx by active invitations to Christian Armenians and Jews, the merchant wholesalers and bankers of the state, to return and settle in thriving Shiraz. One such caravan from Baghdad in 1763 was said to have numbered about 10,000 returning refugees (Carmelites, 662–663, 672). One of the

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Vakil’s complaints against Omar Pasha of Baghdad concerned his refusal to repatriate Armenian and Jewish refugees (chapter 5). Admittedly some were still reluctant to return, and on taking Basra in 1775 Sadeq Khan fined those who still refused. Under Karim Khan, however, Shiraz became the largest Jewish center in Iran, and Armenians were encouraged to resettle round Shiraz and Isfahan by the gift of complete villages. The Indian merchants at Shiraz had their own quarter and caravansary in 1765; like the Armenians and Jews, they enjoyed an international network of kin and colleagues, and worked not only as merchants but as bankers, brokers, agents, and sailors, for both Iranian and European traders. Government executives, the begler-begi of a province or hakem of a city and their subordinates in administration, were paid a fixed government salary which was reviewed periodically together with their appointments (see Farmans, nos. XX, XXI; Rostam al-Hokama, 307).They were, of course, expected to make some private profit from public office; but the Vakil’s reputation for justice kept this to a minimum, and officials were dismissed and fined where rapacity or peculation could be proved. The trial of Taqi Khan Bafqi, the dismissed governor of Yazd, is a case in point (chapter 4). Once, a tradesman from whom the governor of Mazandaran had extorted the negligible sum of two abbasis took his complaint to Shiraz. The Vakil at once sent bailiffs to Sari to summon the offender to court, where he was tried and dismissed from his post. The plaintiff meanwhile was lodged free of charge in the palace for six weeks, and on returning home was given subsistence money and compensation for loss of income during his absence. Agricultural subsidies were another means of economic recovery (Rostam at-Hokama, 421–422). In the autumn of 1775, a severe famine in Isfahan and Fars obliged Karim Khan to throw open the state granaries for the relief of the poor. In Isfahan, the grain was sold to the populace at a fixed rate of 100 dinars per man-e Tabriz (equivalent to 6 lb); at Shiraz, the shortage was so acute that grain had to be brought from as far

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afield as Tehran, Qazvin, and even Azerbaijan, so that on arrival the cost had soared to 1,400 dinars per man. Despite the urgings of his ministers to cover these expenses, the Vakil insisted on distributing this grain at the same nominal rate as at Isfahan, and the famine was eventually beaten. Public works and disaster relief outside the metropolis were normally the responsibility of the local authorities, but there are reports of assistance being sent from Shiraz. In 1778 an earthquake shook Isfahan and its environs, and in Kashan thousands of people are said to have been buried alive. Karim Khan sent masons, carpenters, and laborers under the supervision of two Zand khans to help repair the damage. Tribal leaders were not always warriors and nomads. Together with their extended families, servants, and adherents, they might be residents of towns, or landlords and cultivators of agricultural estates, and sought continuity for their communal and economic interests whatever dynasty might be in power. Karim Khan issued a diploma in June 1751, soon after he repulsed Ali Mardan Khan from the Chahar Mahall district (chapter 2), authorizing Abdal Khan, the son of Nader Shah’s appointee, as head of the Haft Lang branch of the Bakhtyari and tax-farmer of the district, with an annual salary of 700 tomans. This appointment was confirmed in 1754 by Azad Khan (briefly in control of Isfahan), with the admonition to be kind and just to the peasants, then again by Karim Khan in 1759, and by Ali-Morad Khan Zand in 1780 (documents preserved by the Bakhtyari khans, kindly made available by Gene Garthwaite).

REBUILDING SHIRAZ Most of Karim Khan’s contributions to the architecture of his capital city are still standing, despite four subsequent earthquakes and the destructive malice of Agha Mohammad Khan when he sacked the town in 1792 (see figure 5). The project was one of planned urban renewal – the first since Shah Abbas’s

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reconstruction of Isfahan – inspired primarily by military and political considerations. Like a smaller version of Isfahan, the central square (meydan) is surrounded by ceremonial edifices: the ruler’s mosque, the audience hall and government offices (divan-khana), the citadel and palace (arg), the bazaar, and the fanfare gallery (naqqara-khana; no longer standing), from which trumpets and drums saluted the ruler’s entrance. The wall and towers of the arg were faced with baked bricks in geometrical patterns recalling those of local tribal rugs (see figure 6). Having undergone two sieges by the Qajars, the Vakil’s first concern was for the defenses of the sprawling and poorly walled city. Over the year 1766–67, the city’s perimeter was

Figure 5. Plan of Shiraz at the time of Karim Khan.

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tightened by one-third of its circumference to one farsakh (about 6 km), by the demolition of older, outlying buildings and earthworks, and the amalgamation of several quarters. The number of gates was reduced from twelve to six, piercing a stout new wall with eighty round towers and a broad ditch. The huge labor force involved was paid from the royal treasury, as in the case of the other buildings. Besides the official constructions the Vakil added functional buildings such as baths and caravansaries and perpetuated his city’s just renown for beautiful gardens, laying out new complexes inside and outside the walls (see the plan of Shiraz, figure 5; and Nami, 154–155; Ghaffari, 155–156; Francklin, 51–55). The Vakil’s covered bazaar (still functioning, although bisected by the main modern thoroughfare) was the most significant of his buildings, as a financial institution as well as an architectural monument. Merchants and retailers paid a

Figure 6. A corner of the arg (citadel) of Shiraz.

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low monthly rent for use of the shops, stores, and warehouses (Francklin, 58–59; see figure 7). That the Vakil had other commercial interests in the bazaar is suggested by the fact that one of his wives had a brother who owned a clothier’s

Figure 7. Karim Khan’s covered market, the Vakil’s Bazaar (from a nineteenth-century engraving).

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store (Rostam al-Hokama, 345). Prices of staples were fixed and posted, and standards enforced: Niebuhr witnessed two butchers nailed by the ears to a post for the afternoon, as a punishment for selling bad meat (p. 116). The southward shift in Persia’s political center of gravity emphasized the Gulf and Indian Ocean commerce, involving both locals (Arabs, Indians, Armenians) and Europeans (Dutch, French, and British), which enriched the capital (chapters 5 and 7). Karim Khan and his financial advisers were well aware of the chronic problem then besetting Iran’s international commerce – one they shared with Ottoman Turkey, and which continued into the nineteenth century. This was the drain of silver from the country, caused by the unfavorable balance of trade with India, Afghanistan, and other Gulf countries: i.e, Iran suffered from a shortage of exportable goods sufficient to cover imports, so that the balance was made up from cash.This problem was specifically addressed in the first trade agreement concluded at Shiraz, in July 1763, for the East India Company to operate from Bushehr. They were to take a fair proportion of goods in kind, “and not export from Persia the whole Amount of their sales in ready Money, as this will impoverish the Kingdoms [sic] and in the end prejudice Trade in general” (Jones Brydges, p. cix; Factory Records, XVI, 781). This policy was regarded as unduly restrictive by the Company’s directors in London, who were naturally more concerned with maximizing their immediate profits. The Vakil’s policy of attracting merchants and artisans, and encouraging the officers and men of his tribal army to set up residence in and around Shiraz, considerably increased its population. Estimates by contemporary visitors put the figure at between 40,000 and 50,000 inhabitants, which compares very favorably with estimates for ruined Isfahan over the same period (between 20,000 and 50,000). The large standing army of Fars, when not on campaign, was kept amused by a wellrun brothel quarter, the staff of which were in turn heavily taxed, and thus played their part in the economic as well as

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the social scheme of the Zand metropolis (Rostam al-Hokama, 340–343).

LEISURE AND THE ARTS The higher class courtesans, euphemistically called lulian, “gypsies,” by their devotees, were not merely (and not always) sexual partners, but musicians, dancers, and singers, educated in poetry and conversation in a tradition going back to preIslamic times and akin to that of the Greek hetaira and the Japanese geisha. The Vakil’s most literate hostage, Abdor-Razzaq Beg Donbali, repeatedly praises the wine, women, and song of the Zand metropolis – and Karim Khan’s role in promoting this – in his biographical memoir of clerics and poets of the period. One of these courtesans, a witty singer named Shakhnabat (“sugar candy”), became the Vakil’s mistress during his later years.When she fell ill, and traditional medicine was ineffective, Karim had her bed surrounded by women in the hope that by sympathetic magic her malady might be transferred to one of them. Despite these ministrations she died, a ghazal on her lips; the disconsolate Karim had her portrait painted and a verse epithet composed by the court poet (and later historian) Mirza Sadeq Nami (Rostam al-Hokama, 341; Waring, 61). The political and economic privations of the period 1721– 61, in the words of Azar Bigdeli, a major poet and critic of the time, “reached a point where no one has the heart to read poetry, let alone write it” (quoted in Browne, 282). Some writers, such as Hazin (chapter 1), emigrated to India; some, like Vafa of Qom, left but returned to Iran under Karim Khan; Azar and others, such as Moshtaq and Hatef, stayed in the city or province of Isfahan. Shiraz had barely a single generation (c.1760–90) to establish itself as a center of culture, in succession to Isfahan, before it was sacked by the Qajars and the focus of power and patronage shifted to Tehran. When the political center under

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the Vakil first gravitated to Shiraz, literature and the arts were naturally attracted to the ruler’s court as the traditional fount of patronage and the immediate market for textiles, paintings, panegyrics, chronicles, and other artifacts. Of twenty-three artists resident in Zand Shiraz, at least seventeen, to judge by their surname Esfahani, came from the former capital (Ghaffari, 227–252). So also did poets such as Mohammad Mehdi Esfahani, who later joined the Qajar court at Tehran, where he wrote a memoir including anecdotes of the Qajar hostages in Shiraz. To Abdor-Razzaq we owe a glimpse of one specific factor in the shift of literary activity from Isfahan to Shiraz during the Vakil’s time. Isfahan’s governor (hakem) Mirza Abdol-Vahhab Musavi, who with his regular soirées had been an active patron of the city’s poets, died about 1760, and was replaced by Haji Aqa Mohammad Renani. He turned out to be an oppressive philistine, who nevertheless was on good terms with the Vakil. The disappointed poets and other civic figures in 1763 or 1764 went in a deputation to Shiraz, but failed to secure his replacement; so some of them moved permanently to the Zand capital (Donbali, I, 241–242, 269, 271).

THE LEGEND AND THE LEGACY The figure of the king, the shah, is inherently of mythic proportions in Iranian culture. The very first shahs, according to Ferdowsi’s Book of Kings (shah-nama), were the equivalents of the Indo-Aryan gods, superhuman culture-heroes who taught humankind how to clothe and house themselves, use fire, organize society, and worship them. Their human successors are still the stuff of legend. It is perhaps surprising to find as many, if not more, stories about the justice, kindness, simplicity, and goodness of one who explicitly rejected the rank of shah than about any other Iranian ruler. As the exemplar of the archetypical just king with a genuine concern for his people, the Vakil overshadows the Sasanian king, Khosrow Anushiravan

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the Just, and the Safavid Shah Abbas the Great; where these may surpass him in military glory and world renown, the Zand Khan stands out in folk memory as a self-effacing public benefactor. He was not ashamed of his humble origin, and was never tempted to invent a more illustrious pedigree than that of the chief of a hitherto obscure Zagros tribe who had once lived by banditry. As Vakil, he retained his simple tastes in clothes and furniture, wearing the tall Zand turban of yellow cashmere and squatting on a cheap flatweave rug (zilu). Gifts of jewelry he had broken down and sold. He bowed to the dictates of his station to the extent of having a bath and a change of clothes once a month, an extravagance that is said to have shocked his fellow tribesmen. His physical courage is frequently emphasized, and the history of his campaigns illustrates that what he may cede to Nader Shah in military genius he more than recoups in tenacity of purpose and resilience in apparent defeat. He had a sense of humor, and could take a joke against himself (a trait palpably lacking in both Nader Shah and the early Qajar rulers). Once he told his court jester (moqalled) to go and see what a dog, which was barking outside, wanted of him. The jester went; and, after appearing to listen for some time with profound attention, he returned, and said, with a grave air, “Your Majesty must send one of the chief officers of your own family to report what that gentleman says: he speaks no language except ‘the barbarous dialect’ [kaj-zaban, a disparaging term for Karim’s own Lak dialect], with which they are familiar, but of which I do not understand one word.”

The Vakil laughed heartily and rewarded the jester (Malcolm, 551–552). What above all made his reign a success was his closeness to his subjects, his identification of his own needs with theirs (as being, in title and practice, their ombudsman), and his consequent tolerance and magnanimity shown to all classes.

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The manifest genuineness of this attitude, its remoteness from any bulwark of assumed piety or disguised self-interest, ensure him a favorable mention by contemporary writers of every loyalty. He remained easy of access for all, setting apart a regular time each day for receiving complaints and petitions in the traditional manner. Traditional, too, was his indulgence in wine, opium and all-night debauches, though these seem seldom to have prejudiced his efficient and humane conduct of government. Apart from a few arguably ill-considered ventures such as the wars against Oman and Ottoman Iraq, the Vakil’s military enterprises were of a defensive and conservative nature. His treasury remained empty by design, as incoming revenue was ploughed back into the country in the form of buildings and amenities, wages and pensions, and internal security. Fixed tax assessments and price controls guaranteed the peasantry subsistence survival with a chance to improve their lot in good years, and must have mollified their well-founded distrust of tribal rulers. Karim made it a rule not to appropriate windfalls: just as in his years of struggle he distributed booty among his troops and new allies, so during his reign he refused to confiscate the residue of those deceased without immediate heir, and when during the rebuilding of Shiraz a pot of gold coins was unearthed he shared it out among the workmen on the site (see Rostam al-Hokama, 310, 420, 421). During the twenty years of his rule from Shiraz, Karim Khan succeeded in restoring a surprising degree of material prosperity and peace to a land ravaged and disoriented by his predecessors. Obviously his virtues are greatly enhanced by their juxtaposition with the cruelty and tyranny of Nader Shah and Agha Mohammad Khan, and undeniably the state he created was destroyed by his unworthy Zand successors. But his rare combination of strength and purpose with common sense and humanity produced, for at least a quarter of a particularly bloody and chaotic century, a stable and honest government.

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In some respects his legacy to Iran extends beyond the eighteenth century. The function and symbolism of the Vakil or-ra’aya, the People’s Deputy, in pre-modern Iran, and his democratic descendants today, have been mentioned above. Like Nader Shah, Karim Khan was a pragmatist where religion was concerned; but whereas the Afshar tried to manipulate the clerics to compromise on points of religious law for his political advantage, the Vakil’s laissez-faire attitude to religious matters allowed the moderate Imami Shi’ism of late Safavid times to resume its popular sway. Perhaps, too, his easygoing repudiation of royalty subtly undermined the cult of the shah – on which his successors the Qajars and the Pahlavis insisted with such fervor, only to meet with increasing censure and opposition. Be that as it may, the personal reputation of the Vakil has outlived all challenges: he is honored by his fellow Iranians of every ideology, and remembered with affection as their representative in the parliament of world history.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

SELECTED PRIMARY SOURCES Listed here are original sources, and later compilations containing substantial published documents (including coins), that are cited in the text. Some have never been published, others are not available in translation, and even some in translation are not easy to find. Readers in search of more detailed discussion of particular points should look under the secondary sources listed in the second section. Abdul Qadir, Khwaja. Waqa’i-i manazil-i Rum; Diary of a Journey to Constantinople, ed. and trans. Mohibbul Hasan. London, 1968 Abraham of Erevan. History of theWars 1721–1738. Annotated translation from the original eighteenth-century texts with introductory notes by George A. Bournoutian. Costa Mesa, CA, Mazda Publishers, 1999 Arunova, M. R. and Ashrafyan, K. Z. Novy materialy po istorii Irana vtoroy poloviny XVIII v. ANSSR, Institut Narodov Azii: Blizhniy i Sredniy Vostok. Moscow, 1962 Brieven, see East India Company, Dutch Carmelites. A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia, vol. I. London, 1939 Correspondence consulaire. Affaires Étrangères, Perse, B1. 175, B1, 176, B1. 197 (Baghdad/Bassorah, 1742–57): preserved at the Archives Nationales, Paris. Tome VII (La Perse, 1726– 1757) and Tome VIII (La Perse, 1758–1805): preserved in the archives of the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris. Donbali, Abd al-Razzaq Beg Maftun. Tajrebat al-ahrar wa tasleyat al-abrar, ed. Hasan Qadi Tabataba’i, 2 vols. Tehran, 1349–50/1970–71 137

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East India Company, British. Persia and the Persian Gulf Records, India Office Library. Vols. VI–XIII: Gombroon Diary, 1746– 63; XV–XVII: Factory Records, 1763–79 East India Company, Dutch (Oost-indische Compagnie). Records at the Rijksarchief, the Hague. Bataviase inkomende brieven overgekomen (“Brieven”) from 1749 to 1775. (For Dutch records earlier than 1749, see Floor in this section.) Factory Records, see East India Company, British Farmans of Ibrahim Shah (XVIII) and Karim Khan (XX, XXI) in British Library MS Or. 4935 (Rieu, Suppt. no. 402) Fasa’i, Hajji Mirza Hasan Hosayni. Farsnama-ye Naseri, trans. Heribert Busse, History of Persia under Qajar Rule. New York, Columbia University Press, 1972 Ferrières de Sauveboeuf, Comte L. F. Mémoires Historiques, Politiques et Géographique desVoyages . . . depuis 1782 jusqu’en 1789, vol. II. Maastricht, 1790 Floor, Willem. The Afghan Occupation of Safavid Persia 1721– 1729. Studia Iranica, Cahier 19, Paris, 1998 Francklin, William. Observations made on a tour from Bengal to Persia in the years 1786–87 . . . London, 1790 Ghaffari Kashani, Mirza Abo’l-Hasan. Golshan-e Morad, ed. Gh.-R. Tabataba’i-Majd. Tehran, 1369/1990 Gombroon Diary, see East India Company, British Golestana, Abo’l-Hasan b. Mohammad Amin. Mojmel al-tavarikh, ed. M. Razavi. Tehran, 1344/1965 Hazin, Sheikh Mohammad Ali: F. C. Belfour (trans.) The Life of Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hazin,Written by Himself, London, 1930; (ed.) Târikh-e ahvâl-e shaykh Hazin ke khod neveshtaast, London, 1931 Hovhanyants, Haroutioun. Patmut’iwn Nor Jughaya or y Aspahan (History of New Julfa), vol. I. New Julfa, 1880 Jones Brydges, Sir Harford. The Dynasty of the Kajars. London, 1833 Kalantar, Mirza Mohammad. Ruznama-ye Mirza Mohammad Kalantar-e Fars, ed. Abbas Eqbal. Tehran, 1325/1946

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Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, écrites des missions étrangères: Mémoires du Levant, vol. IV. Paris, 1780 Nami Esfahani, Mirza Mohammad Sadeq Musavi. Tarikh-e giti-gosha, ed. Sa’id Nafisi. Tehran, 1317/1938 Niebuhr, Carsten. Reisebeschreibungen nach Arabien und Anderen Umliegenden Länden, vol. II. Copenhagen, 1778 Parsons, Abraham. Travels in Asia and Africa. London, 1808 Plaisted, B. A Journey from Calcutta, in Bengal, by Sea, to Busserah . . . in theYear 1750. London, 1758 Poole, R. S. The Coins of the Shahs of Persia, Safavís–Kájárs. London, 1847 Rabino di Borgomale, H. L. “Coins of the Shahs of Persia (continued: 1737–1848),” Numismatic Chronicle, 4th series, 11 (1911), 176–197 —— Coins, Medals and Seals of the Shahs of Iran (1500–1941). London, 1944 Rostam al-Hokama, Mohammad Hashem Asaf. Rostam altavarikh, ed. M. Moshiri. Tehran, 1348/1969; trans. Birgitt Hoffmann, Persische Geschichte 1694–1835 erlebt, erinnert und erfunden: Das Rustam at-tawarih in deutscher Bearbeitung. Bamberg, aku, 1986 Shushtari, Abd al-Latif ebn Abi Taleb ebn Nur al-din. Tohfat al-alam. Bombay, 1263/1847 Shushtari, Sayyid Abdollah ebn Sayyid Nur al-din. Tazkera-ye Shushtar. Calcutta, 1924 Waring, Edward Scott. A Tour to Sheeraz. London, 1807

SECONDARY SOURCES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Some of the more academic studies listed below (notably the books by Perry and Lockhart, in which the fullest bibliographies are given) are out of print, and may only be available in university libraries. An additional source of further information on particular persons, places, and institutions is Encyclopaedia

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Iranica (ed. E. Yarshater, Columbia University); 12 vols. to date, A–I; also accessible on line (plus numerous entries J–Z) at www.iranica.com Algar, Hamid. Religion and State in Iran 1785–1906. Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1969 Amin, A. A. British Interests in the Persian Gulf 1747–1780. Leiden, Brill, 1967 Browne, E. G. A Literary History of Persia, vol. IV. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1924 Dalrymple, William. White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India. London, HarperCollins, 2002 Floor, Willem. “The Dutch on Khark Island: A Commercial Mishap,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24 (1992), 441–460 Golsha’ian, Abbas-qoli. “Arg-e Karimkhani,” in Pars [Shiraz newspaper], 23 Bahman 1354/12 February 1976, pp. 7–8. Keddie, N. Qajar Iran and the Rise of Reza Khan 1796–1925. Costa Mesa, CA, Mage Publishers, 1999 Khalidi, Omar. Romance of the Golconda Diamonds. Ahmedabad, 1999 Khatak, Sarfaraz Khan. Shaikh Muhammad ‘Ali Hazin, His Life, Times andWorks. Lahore, 1944 Lockhart, Laurence. Nadir Shah: A Critical Study Based Mainly upon Contemporary Sources. London, 1938 —— The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia. Cambridge, 1958 Malcolm, Sir John. The History of Persia from the Most Early Period to the Present Time, vol. II. London, 1815, revised edn. 1829 Perry, John R. Karim Khan Zand: A History of Iran, 1747–1779. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1979; trans. ‘A. M. Saki, Karim Khan-e Zand:Tarikh-e Iran beyn-e salha-ye 1747–1779. Tehran, Faraz, 1365/1986

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BIBLIOGRAPHY 141

—— “The Banu Ka’b: An Amphibious Brigand State in Khuzistan,” Le monde iranien et l’Islam 1 (1971), 131–152 —— “The Last Safavids, 1722–1773,” Iran (JBPIS) 9 (1971), 59–69 —— “Mir Muhanna and the Dutch: Patterns of Piracy in the Persian Gulf,” Studia Iranica 2/1 (Paris, 1972), 79–95 —— “Justice for the Underprivileged: The Ombudsman Tradition of Iran,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 37/3 (1978), 203–215 —— “Blackmailing Amazons and Dutch Pigs: A Consideration of Epic and Folktale Motifs in Persian Historiography,” Iranian Studies 19/2 (1986), 155–165 —— “The Mamluk Pashalik of Baghdad and Ottoman–Iranian Relations in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in S. Kuneralp (ed.), Studies on Ottoman Diplomatic History, pp. 59–70. Istanbul, Isis Press, 1986 —— “Mirza, Mashti and Juja Kabab: Some Cases of Anomalous Noun Phrase Word Order in Persian,” in Charles Melville (ed.), Pembroke Persian Papers, 1: Persian and Islamic Studies in honour of P.W. Avery, pp. 213–228. Cambridge: Cambridge University, Centre of Middle Eastern Studies, 1990 Rabino di Borgomale, H. L. Report on Kurdistan. Persia, Diplomatic and Consular Reports. Simla, 1911 Savory, Roger. Iran under the Safavids. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986 Sykes, Sir Percy H. A History of Persia, vol. II. London, 1958 Thesiger, Wilfred. The Marsh Arabs. London, Longmans, 1964; A. Lane, 1977

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INDEX

Abbas I (the Great) 3, 6, 10–11, 118, 134; transportation of tribes 17–18 Abbas III 118 Abd al-Ali Khan Mishmast 25, 29 Abdal Khan Bakhtyari 127 Abdol-Hamid, Sultan of Turkey 78 Abdol-Vahhab Musani 133 Abdollah, Sheikh of Oman 67–8 Abdollah Khan Kalhor 100, 110 Abdollah Pasha 34, 39, 78–9 Abdor-Razzaq Beg Donbali 105, 132, 133: history of Qajar dynasty 89–90 Abol-Fath (son of Karim Khan) 81, 83 Abol-Fath Khan Bakhtyari 20, 23, 24: death of 25 Abol-Hasan Ali-shah Mahallati 59 Abu Torab (see also Esma’il III) 24 Adel Shah Afshar (Ali-qoli Khan) 19, 21, 22, 60, 102 Afhans/Afghanistan 10, 11, 13, 15, 17: Ghelzay 11, 31; massacre of 42, 44, 49 Afshars 5, 23, 99: Qizilbash 13; rout of 37; Qasemlu 105 Agha Mohammad Khan 4, 22, 61, 83, 96: hostage in Shiraz 48, 60; in Rostam of Histories 69, 70, 72; exhumed remains of Karim Khan 82; part in power struggle 83, 85, 88, 89; occupies Shiraz (1792) 88; and execution of Lotf-Ali 89, 97; assassination of 97; Transaraxia 106, 108; agricultural subsidies 126 Ahmad Khan Abdali (later Ahmad Shah Durrani) 13 Ahmad Khan Donbali 105 Ahmad Shah Durrani 13, 22, 23, 30, 99, 110 Akbar Khan (son of Zaki Khan) 83, 85 Ali Khan Shahseven 58–9 Ali Mardan Khan 23–4, 28, 29, 102: after death of Nader Shah 19; “deputy of the state” 24; Esma’il III 24, 118; ambush of (1751) 25–6; routed by Karim Khan 27; Azad Khan 29, 30, 31; Soltan-Hoseyn II

29, 30; death of 34 Ali Mohammad Khan Zand 48, 51, 52, 79 Ali Morad Khan Zand 77, 83, 103, 109–10, 127: death of 85 Ali-qoli (of Kazarun) 86 Ali-qoli Khan (later Adel Shah) 12–13, 14, 19 Al-Kasir tribe 26, 52, 53, 102 Aqa Mohammad Ali 123 Arabestan 27: vali of 101–2 Arabs 21; Banu Ma’im 64; Mosha’sha’ 52; on Persian Gulf 63–4; Qawesem 63, 64 Arak 45 Ardabil 9 Ardalan 75; Vali of 21, 25, 102–3 Armenians 10, 17, 107: in Isfahan 32, 40; return to Iran 125–6 armies (see also Zand army) 35 arts 132–3 Ashaqa-bash 51 Astarabad 27, 28, 42, 44, 59–60, 99: siege of 28, 43, 61, 62 authority of ruler 117–18 Azad Khan 29, 30, 31, 40, 43, 127: Zands 31–2, 33, 34, 35; siege of Pari 32; attempt to kill 33; in Shiraz 37; occupation of Isfahan 38, 40; battle at Rudsar 38; siege of Urmiya 41; defeat of 45–6; surrender to Karim Khan 47 Azar Bigdeli 132 Azerbaijan 23, 45, 46, 104, 105–6 Baba Khan (later Fath-Ali Shah) 96 Baban 75, 103 Babur 7 Baghdad 28, 30, 39: refuge for victims of Nader Shah 28; Karim Khan’s war with 75–9; return of refugees from 125–6 Bakhtyari tribe 5, 17: branches of 6, 23, 52–3; after death of Nader Shah 19–20, 23; in Isfahan 20; Karim Khan’s treatment of 26, 52–3; crossing Karun river 77

143

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144 INDEX Baluchistan 99 Bam 89 Bandar Abbas 54, 55, 63–4, 67, 111, 125: East India Company leaves 113 Bandar Rig 65–6, 66–7, 114 Banu Ka’b 73–5, 102 Banu Lam Arabs 53 Basra 74, 75, 79: East India Company at 76–8, 113, 114–15; siege of 77–8 Bazin, Father Louis 20 Behbahan, siege of 53–4 Borujerd 33 botanists 2, 40–41 Britannia 114 British, in Gulf (see also East India Company) 69, 73, 74 Brydges, Sir Harford Jones 90 Bukhara 7, 12 Bushehr, East India Company at 64, 76, 113, 114, 115, 131 Catherine II, of Russia 107, 109 Christians 106, 107, 108, 107, 125: in Isfahan 40; treatment of 124; cities gaining entrance to 32–3, 94–5; citizenship 94–5; government of 100 coinage 109, 122 commerce 131 courtesans 132 Daghestan 107 Darabgerd 89 Darwish, Sheikh 77 Dashtestan 37 Delhi 7, 12, 16 Della Valle, Pietro 10 deportation 17–18 “deputy of the people” 118–19, 136 dervishes 9, 123 Dezful 52, 53 diamonds, of Lotf-Ali Khan 90, 92 displacement of citizens 125 Dowraq 74 Dutch East India Company 54, 64, 111: at Kharg Island 65, 66 earthquake 127 East India Company 24, 64, 73, 76, 112– 16: employees speaking Persian 2; Abbas I and 10; at Bandar Abbas 54, 113, 125;

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at Bushehr 64, 76, 113, 114, 116, 131; Mir Mahanna and 67, 73; at Basra 76–8, 113, 114–15 Ebrahim Mirza Afshar 19–20, 21, 64 Emam-qoli Khan Qasemlu 106 Enlightenment 2 Erekle, King of Georgia 31, 45, 107, 108, 109, 117 Eskander Khan Zand 31, 33 Esma’il III, Shah 7, 9, 30, 38, 43, 118: Zands and 26; in Qajar hands 28; death of 81 Esma’il Khan Feyli 26, 27, 29, 53, 102 ethnic differences 5 Europeans, views of Iran 3 executions 49–50, 121: by Nader Shah 12 extortion 12, 79, 124, 126 Falahiya 74 famine 126 Fars 3, 25, 36, 37, 53, 100: government of 101 Fath-Ali Khan Afshar 27, 43, 105: raids against Zands 33, 34; ambush of 37; fall of Urmiya 41, 46: deserts Mohammad Hasan 42; at Tabriz 45; execution of 48–9 Fath-Ali Khan Qajar 44, 118 Fath-Ali Khan Qobbeli 104–5, 107 Fath-Ali Shah 61, 82, 97 Feyli Lurs 20, 33, 53 forced migration 17–18 France; trade with Iran 111–12 Georgia/Georgians 10, 21, 106, 107, 108 Gilan 27, 37, 46, 59, 60: administration of 104–5 Golpayegan 21, 23 Golunabad 38 government, of Zand empire 100–106: payment of officials 126 governor-generals 100 Great Britain (see also East India Company) trade with Iran 112, 113: Karim Khan seeks naval help from 113, 114–15 Guna Khan Taromi 58 Hafez of Shiraz 3 Haidar Ali 110 Haji Aqa Mohammad Renani 133

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INDEX 145 Haji Ebrahim, Kalantar of Shiraz 85, 86, 87–8, 92, 93, 101; bargains with Agha Mohammad 88, 96 Hamadan 21, 24, 85 Hasan Ali Khan (Vali of Ardalan) 21, 102–3 Hasan Khan 61, 88 Hasan Soltan 67 Hashem Khan Bayat 323 Hedoyat-ollah Khan Fumani 104, 109 Herat 7, 13 Heydar Khan Zangana 36, 100 Hormuz Island 10 Hoseyn Khan Develu 42, 44, 60 Hoseyn-qoli Khan Qajari 48, 61–2, 96, 105 hostage in Shiraz 60: destruction of Qal’a Namaka 61 hostage-taking 48 Imam Hoseyn, mourning rituals for 9, 123 Inaq Khan (father of Karim Khan) 18, 20, 123 India 7–8, 16, 110–11 Iran: x-xi; in 18th century 2–16: national identity 4–5, 9–10; borders of 6–7, 99; people of 5, 10 Isfahan 10, 23, 126: capture of (1722) 11, 15; New Julfa 17–18, 25, 32, 40; Bakhtyari in 20, 23: Karim Khan and 26, 31–2, 37; taken by Azad Khan 32; taken by Qajars 38, 41–2; Christians in 40; Zaki Khan and 51; Ali-Morad’s capital at 85; center of culture moved from 133 Islam (see also Shi’ism; Sunni Muslims) 4 Ja’far Khan 81, 85–6 Ja’fari school of law 12 Jayezan, siege of 53 Jews 125–6 Jones, Harford 90, 115: journal of 91–4 Jones, Sir William 115 justice 126 Kabushan 13 Kalat 14 Kalhor tribe 100 Karim Khan Zand 24, 30: drafted into Nader Shah’s army 18–19; leadership of Zands 20; seizes Golpayegan 21; alliance with Ali Mardan 23, 24; viceroy of Esma’il III 26; appointment of regional

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governors 26; and Qajar threat 27–8, 44, 60–62; siege of Astarabad 28; siege of Kermanshah 29–30; routed by Azad Khan 31–2; tries to take Shiraz 33; at Qomesha 33; enters Shiraz 37, 88; discontent of army 38; neglect of Isfahan 41–2; in Tehran 42, 44, 45; in Shiraz 44, 54, 95, 118; siege of Tabriz 46; surrender of Azad 47; treatment of hostages 48; arranged marriages 48; title of 48, 118–21; plot to assassinate 49; blinding of Sheykh-Ali Khan 49–50; illness of 50–51; excessive drinking 51; rebellion of Zaki Khan 51–2; disarming of Bakhtyari tribes 52–3; consolidates in south 51–4; government appointments 53, 59, 100, 101, 104, 105–6; campaigns in Lar and Kerman 55–9; in Rostam of Histories 69–73; and Ka’b 74–5; war with Baghdad pashalik 75–9; and Shi’ism 76, 122–3; sons of 81; death and burial of 81–2; treatment of Qajar hostages 96; and Persian Gulf 63, 64, 65–6, 67–8, 74, 75; control of tribes 100–101; and Russians 109; and India 110–11; and East India Company 113, 114–15; as vakil 118–21; religious policies 122–4; economic policies 124–7; rebuilding of Shiraz 127–32; and the arts 132–3; character of 134, 135–6; closeness to subjects 134–5; fiscal policies 135 Kamazan 20 Kashan 51 Kazarun 25, 37, 86 Kazzaz, battle of 38 Kerman 59, 100; siege of (1754) 56, 57–8: Taqi Khan and 58–9; taken by Qajars 89 Kerman province 54–5, 85, 87, 99: Karim Khan and 56–7, 58–9 Kermanshah 24–5, 34, 100: occupied by Ottoman Turks 18; siege of 27, 29, 35–6 Khadija (wife of Karim Khan) 49, 60, 83 Khamsa 45 Kharg Island 64, 112, 114; Dutch at 65–6, 112, 113 Khesht 37 Khoda-Morad Khan Zand 56–7, 58 Khorasan 23, 35, 99, 100 Khorramabad 53, 102

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146 INDEX Khosrow Anushivaran the Just 133–4 Khosrow Khan Ardalani 78, 103 Khuzistan 23, 51, 102, 104: Zand army in 53, 77; control of 101–2 Kniphausen, Baron 65 Kuhqili mountains 33, 53 Kurdistan 25, 77, 78, 104 Kurds 5, 17, 21, 33, 103: Donbali 105; at Kabushan 13; Shaqaqi 35, 46 Lak tribes 5, 36 Lar 54, 55, 85, 99 legends, national 4 Lotf-Ali Khan 46, 82, 85, 86–9: diamonds of 90, 92, 94; Harford Jones on 91–3, 94, 115 Luristan 102, 104 Lurs tribes 5, 18, 20, 21, 52 Majles 121 Maragha 45 Marivan 78 Marlowe, Christopher 3 marriage alliances 48 Marv 7 Mashhad 6, 11, 13, 18, 19, 108 Masih Khan Lari 56 Ma’sum-Ali Shah Dakani 123 Mazandaran 27, 38, 59, 60, 85: Qajars and 27, 37, 105; Afghan troops in 43–4; Karim; Khan and 46, 61; Zaki Khan and 62; Ali-Morad and 85 Mehdi Khan 18 Mehdi Khan Savadkuhi 61–2, 105 Mehr Ali Khan Tekkelu 21, 24 merchants 10, 125–6, 131 Mir Ali Vagha’i 114 Mir Mahanna 65–7, 73, 112, 113, 114 Mir Nasir Vagha’i 64–5 Mirza Aqil Isfahani 121 Mirza Da’ud (son of Soleyman II) 30 Mirza Hoseyn Farahani 90–91, 92, 93, 116, 132 Mirza Mohammad (Kalantar of Fars) 101 Mirza Mohammad Khalil 30 Mirza Sadeq Nami 54 Mohammad Ali Khan Zand (son of Karim Khan) 81 Mohammad Asaf, Rostam of Histories 68–73

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Mohammad Hasan Khan 27, 28, 37, 38–9, 43, 60, 90, 103: enters Isfahan 41–2; siege of Shiraz 42, 55; and Gilan 104 Mohammad Khan Garrusi 58 Mohammad Khan Savadkuhi 61, 105 Mohammad Khan Zand 27, 32, 34: and Azad Khan 33, 35; siege of Kermanshah 35–6; destruction of Valashgerd 36; defeat of Fath-Ali Khan 37; captured by Qajars 38 Mohammad Mehdi Esfahani 133 Mohammad Sa’id 95 Mohammad Shah (Mughal emperor) 90 Mohammad Taqi 24, 29, 36 Moore, Henry 76, 114–15 Morshed-qoli Khan Ostajlu 118 Moshtaq-Ali Shah 123 Mostafa Khan Begdeli Shamlu 28, 29, 30 Mowla-Alishah, governor of Bandar Abbas 64 Mowla Mottaleb Mosha’sha’i 52, 102 Mozare’ Ali Kheshti 25 Mughal Empire 7–8, 110–11 murder, cycle of 14 Murshidabad 30 Nadar Khan Afshar 27 Nader-qoli Beg 11 Nader Shah 3, 8, 11–14, 16, 55, 118: murder of family 14; and forced migration 18; and Bandar Abbas 63–4; navy of 64; diamonds given to 90; territory of 99, 106; and Georgia 06, 107; in India 110 Nadr Khan Zand 46, 50 Najaf-qoli Khan 105 Naser Ali Khan 102 Naser, Sheikh (of Banu Ma’in) 64 Nasir Khan Baluch 99 Nasir Khan Lari 37, 42, 55–6, 64 Nasrollah Mirza 22, 90, 99 national identity 4–5, 9–10 navy: of Nader Shah 64; of Sheikh Salman 74 Nazar-Ali Khan Zand 51, 52, 53, 59, 83, 103, 104; and Omar Pasha 77 Ne’mat-ollahi Sufis 123 Niebuhr, C. 125 Nowruz celebrations 43 Nur-Ali Shah 123

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INDEX 147

olama 7, 8, 9, 123 Oman, relations with Iran 67–8 Omar Pasha 74, 75–6, 78, 103, 110, 126 Ottoman Turkey see Turkey Pari 20, 31, 32 Parsons, Abraham 77 peace 135 Persia see Iran Persian Gulf 23, 63–8 Persian language 2, 8 Persian world 5, 10: territory of 2; influence of 3 Peter the Great 106, 107 pilgrims, toll on 75–6 Pirault, Dr 111–12 poetry 132 poor relief 126–7 power struggle: after death of Nader Shah 21–6: after death of Karim Khan 82–6 public works 127 purges 121; in Zand army 49–50 Qajars x, 60; branches of 6, 97: and Mazandaran 27, 37, 105; threat to Zands from 27–8, 37–9, 60–62; neutralization of 41–2; desertions from army 42; power struggle following death of Karim Khan 85, 86, 88, 89 Qandahar 7, 13 Qara Chaman, battle of 46, 50, 51 Qaraguzlu tribe 21 Qasemlu tribe 105–6 Qizibashi Afshars 13 Qobban 73 Qomesha 33 Qoreyn (Kuwait) 79 Rahmani 64, 67 ra’iyat (flock) 35 Rameau, Jean 3 Rashid Khan Afshar 57 Rasht 27, 28, 38, 104 Regulating Act 1773 115 religious classes 8–9 religious policies 122–4, 136 Reza-qoli Mirza 14 Reza Shah 52, 104

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roads. security of 125 Rostam Khan Qasemlu 106 Rostam Soltan 37 Rousseau, Jean-François-Xavier 112 Rudsar 38 Russia/Russians 2, 11; in Gilan 104–5: trade with Iran 104, 109; and Transaraxia 106, 108; and Georgia 108–9; Karim Khan and 109 Sa’d, Sheikh of al-Kasir 26, 102 Sabz-Ali (nephew of Sheykh-Ali Khan) 50 Sadeq Khan (brother of Karim Khan) 31, 77, 79, 81, 101, 126: takes Lar 55; and succession 83; and East India Company in Basra 113, 115 Sa’dun, Sheikh of Bushehr 113 Safavids 3, 4, 5, 6–7, 9–11, 15, 21: claimants to throne 21–6, 28–30; and security 21; and Georgia 106, 108; and Transaraxia 107 Salim Pasha 103 Salman, Sheikh 74–5 Samarkand 7 Sari 85, 105 Sayyid Abdollah al-Shushtari 32 Sayyid Mohammad 19, 22,122: enthroned as Soleyman II 22, 122 scientific enquiry 2 security 21: of roads 125 Seven Years War 113 Seyd-Morad Khan 86 Shahbaz Khan Donbali 41, 42, 45, 46, 105 Shahrokh Khan Afshari 55, 56–7, 64, 88, 110 Shahrokh Mirza 6, 14, 21–2, 90 shahs, 9, 133: redresser of subjects’ wrongs 95, 120 Shakhnabat (mistress of Karim Khan) 132 Shatt al-Arab 63, 65, 74, 76, 77 Sherley, Sir Robert 10 Sheykh-Ali Khan Zand 34, 38, 42, 46, 83: defense of Pari 31, 32; escape from Azad Khan 33; siege of Urmiya 49 Sheykh-Oveys Khan 85 Shi’ism 5, 7–8, 12, 107, 123, 136: Imami 6; official state religion 9; clergy 122; return from exile 125 Shiraz 3, 16, 30, 32, 54, 79: Ali Mardan and

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148 INDEX 25; Karim Khan refused entry to 32–3; besieged by Zands 37; Karim Khan in 37, 38, 44, 54, 95, 118; besieged by Qajars 42, 55, 86, 88, 95–6; after death of Karim Khan 83, 85; Lotf-Ali in 86; Harford Jones in 91–2; mayors of 101; East India Company in 113, 114; Jewish center 126; rebuilding 127–32; defenses 128–9; bazaar 129–31; center of culture 132–3 shrines, access to 76 Shustar 53, 102 Silakhur 34, 50 silver 131 Simon, Le Sieur 39–41, 111 Sistan 99 Skipp, George 113–14 Soleyman II 22, 118, 122 Soleyman Aqa 77, 78, 79 Soleyman Pasha 28, 29, 45, 75 Soltan-Hoseyn II 11, 15, 29, 30, 118 succession 3, 14, 81: to Abbas I 11; to Karim Khan 82–6 Sufis 9, 15, 123 Sunni Muslims 7, 10, 12, 63, 107 Tabas 88, 89 Tabriz 45, 46, 105 Tahmasb I 8 Tahmasb II 11, 27, 118 Tahmasb-qoli Khan see Nader Shah Afshar Taqi Khan Bafqi 56, 58, 126 Taqi Khan Dorrani 57–9 taxation 34, 35 Tbilisi 46, 108, 109 Tehran 51, 88, 132; Karim Khan arrives at (1758) 42: base of Karim Khan 44, 45; Golestan 44; Ali-Morad at 85 Teymoraz, King of Georgia 31, 107, 108 Timur, Emir 3 Timur Shah Durrani 89, 115 Tipu Sultan 111 Transaraxia 106–10 tribes 6: subdivisions 6; deportations 17– 18; control of 100–101; leaders 127 triumvirate 24–6 trust 95 “Turk and Tajuk” 5–6 Turco-Persian rivalry 5–6

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Turkey/Turks 5–6, 7, 8, 10: language 7, 10; invasion of 11; negotiations with Nader Shah 12: army of 18, 78; threat of in Transaraxia 107, 108; Zand empire and 110–11 Tyger 114, 115 Urmiya 32, 35, 43, 105: besieged by Qajars 39, 41; besieged by Zands 46, 49; administration of 106 Uzbeks 7, 12, 32 Vafa of Qom 132 vakil or-ra’aya 118, 120–21, 136 Valashgerd 36 valis 21, 100–101 Van Houting (director of East India Company) 66 vaqf, use of revenues from 122 Vehbi Effendi 78, 110 Waring, E.S. 82 Yazd 54, 55, 56: revolt in 85 Yerevan 31, 108 Yukhari-bash 61 Yusaf Khan Hotaki Afghan 39 Zagros mountains 17, 19–20, 23, 102 Zagros tribes 18, 20, 23: join Zand army 33; pacification of 102 Zahed Gilani, Sheikh 15 Zakariya Khan 21, 26, 28 Zaki Khan Zand 60, 61, 62, 82–3, 102: rebellion of 51–2; and Mazandaran 62; invasion of Oman 67–8, 83; succession to Karim Khan 83 Zand army 100, 131–2: rout of (1753) 31–2; morale 33–4; defeats 34; recruits to 35; discontent of 37–8; battle of Qara Chaman 46; purges in 49–50 Zand empire 52, 100: extent of 99; Afshars and 99–100; Ottoman frontier 105 Zand tribe 17, 20, 25: Nader Shah and 18 Zangana tribe 25, 27, 35, 36, 100 Zohab 34–5, 75 Zoroastrian mythology 4 Zubayr 79

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