Challenges to Stability in Early 19th Century Iran
Whether or not Nader Shah’s religious reforms were ever meant to seriously bridge the divide between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims in his empire has largely been dismissed as an irrelevancy. By the reign of his sons Reza and Nasrollah, Shi’ism had once again become publically practiced in its heartland of the Iranian Plateau, although the Ulema never became the power that they had been under the latter Safavid Shahs. Religious tension remained in Iran, violently erupting after the conversion of Shahrukh to the Shi’a rite, an action which ultimately unleashed revolt and almost caused the collapse of the Afsharid State. His successors were thus wise to maintain a policy which, for lack of a better word, can best be described as “secular”, in practice if not ideologically. Although the state maintained ties to the religious establishment, and indeed still identified itself to its Muslim neighbours as a Sunni state, actual state participation in terms of religious policy was minimalistic. The
Mullahbashi was more often than not an irrelevancy. Whereas religion had been a major source of legitimacy for the Safavids, for the Afsharids it was an irrelevancy at best and a major irritant at worst.
Instead, the Afsharids had placed a renewed emphasis on a shared Persian high culture and language. By the early 19th century, Iran had very much become a “Territorial State”. The Afsharid state increasingly had to rely on local notables in order to exert its writ as the sheer distances of the empire and changing internal conditions forced a reversal of sorts on the previous policy of centralisation, but outside areas such as the Caucasus Mountains, there were few who imagined themselves as separate entirely from the rulers in Mashhad. Although less than half of Iranians were Persian speakers by 1840, almost all of Iran’s cities outside the Turkic cities of the West, Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf were Persian speaking, and over the course of the previous century had become more, rather than less integrated to the Persian cultural sphere. As Isfahan had been for the Safavids, the court culture of Mashhad became the model to be emulated throughout Iran. Even in the distant Fergana Valley, the local Khan proudly boasted to passing merchants that his own palace was a miniature Kalat-i-Naderi.
Although still a land riven by particularism, perhaps an unavoidable consequence of Iran’s geography, Iran’s cities served as outposts for Persian language and culture. A Russian intelligence report on Fararud noted
“In the towns and cities of the region, even those which are a thousand miles or more from old Iran, almost all the inhabitants of these centres no matter what their origin will be Persian speakers. An old Uzbek man was heard to lament that his own language is forgotten by his grandchildren, who in all but physical appearance resemble the Persian peoples” [1]. The countryside was a different story however, where regional languages and dialects such as Lur and Kurdish survived even on the Iranian Plateau. There were millions of Oghuz Turkish speakers in the northwest of the Empire, representing the second largest linguistic group as well as Pashto speakers in the East. Particularly among nomadic peoples, there was little assimilation of Persian language and culture with exception of the odd loan-word here and there.
Nevertheless, until the second third of the 19th century, it can safely be said that Iran was slowly moving towards a linguistic and cultural integration of both elites and urbanites, as Persian dialects converged and non-Persian speakers gradually adopted the language. This rosy picture belies the fast-emerging religious divide that characterised Iran during the 1830s and 1840s. As previously discussed, Iran’s government for the most part tended to take little notice of religious affairs after the death of Nader Shah. While this had meant that religion could not be the powerful centripetal force that it had been under the Safavids, it also avoided for the most part the religious conflict that had partially resulted in their downfall. The lack of state support for the ulema, especially the Shi’a ulema had been powerful in the Safavid era had created something of a gap in the religious fabric of the empire, one that Sufi orders were increasingly filling by the 19th century.
During the 1830s, the economic impact of industrialisation in the West began to make itself felt in Iran as much as the rest of the world. Cheap textiles from Lancashire began to worsen the economic situation of Iranian weavers, particularly in areas with better transport links to the west such as Mesopotamia and the South of Iran. Wages for most manufacturers declined for much of the 1830s and 40s, making the impact of famine ever more acute among the artisanal manufacturers of Iranian cities. As much as the guilds, these people now became more closely associated with Sufi orders as they turned to religion in search of meaning in their increasingly difficult lives. This tendency linked itself with a growing millennialism that increasingly took a hold of many in Iran, as worsening economic conditions for much of the urban population and an inability of the traditional guild organizations to protect their members from hardship led to dissatisfaction with the existing order. Competing religious trends, such as the revived Usuli tradition which supposedly adhered to the official “Jafari’ Sunni” rite, were simply outmatched by the appeal of Sufism.
It was into this situation that Sayyed Ali Mohammad, or the
Bab, emerged in 1844 [2]. A critic of both the traditional Shi’a Ulema as well as the government, he preached that the return of the Mahdi to the world was imminent, and that he would overthrow “illegitimate” and “false” rulers to install a just government. His movement quickly spread among the urban centres of Iran, a trend which began to worry the government, who were very much aware of his revolutionary teachings. Although subject to harassment by authorities, the ulema was too weak to seriously challenge the movement, and the authorities increasingly distrusted by an increasingly impoverished populace. The Famine of 1846 led to perhaps half a million deaths within Iran, as well as huge numbers of emaciated people crowding into Iran’s cities [3]. The reports of Europeans in Iran tell of riots, as well as targeted acts of violence against state officials, religious minorities and Europeans, and the Shah issued a proclamation that the
Babis were to blame for the unrest. The army was sent to suppress the riots and the
Bab himself was arrested and subsequently executed.
This did not stop the popularity of his millenarian movement however. The fact that violence had been used to combat the movement only excited the belief of the
Babis that Iran’s rulers were false Muslims who would soon be overthrown by the Mahdi whose arrival was said to be imminent. Iran was seemingly on a knife’s edge as foreigners in Iran began to retreat to the coastal cities of the country, ready to flee if the violence that everyone expected erupted.
[1] – Fararud is the Iranian name for Transoxania/Central Asia, which it seems more appropriate to use when discussing Iranian Central Asia.
[2] – The Bab was a historical figure who gave rise to Babism in Iran, a forerunner to the Bahaism of OTL. Needless to say, the course that matters took in OTL will not happen in a vastly different Iran.
[3] - The cause of this famine is the potato blight, which has had a larger effect on an Iran that has taken to potato cultivation more so than OTL.
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London, 1847
Exile from one’s homeland is never an easy thing. For Ja’afar Korouni, the distance to which his exile took him had made things far worse. Shunned by Sunni Muslims for his unrepentant Shi’ism, and by his fellow Shi’a for the rejection of the
Bab, he had fled far from home, first to the city of Vienna, then to Paris. Even after five years of exile, he had not grown used to either the strange customs or the strange thoughts of the French. And yet this was still a time when Muslim Iranians were few and far between in Europe, and for the most part the French and other Europeans was the only company he had.
Strange then that on one summer’s morning, he was to receive word from an Iranian living not so far from his own residence, in the British capital of London. He had never been to this city, though he had heard that it was fast becoming the capital of the world, as Paris was becoming the capital of Europe, a great hub for trade and finance. The person who had sent the message was one Abbas Mirza Abdari, formerly of Tabriz but who had scandalised his home town first by expanding on the possibly heretical philosophies of his father, but in settling in Britain to understand what he could of Western knowledge [4]. Apparently, Abbas had heard about a newsletter that Ja’far had started in Paris, and was curious to meet with a fellow “Eastern Intellectual”.
Was this a wise invitation to accept? Even for one who was an exile, meeting with a man like Abbas carried ruinous risks for one’s reputation. Rumour had it amongst Iranians in Europe that the man was a heretic at best, and possibly an atheist of all things!
But as seems to be the case with characters such as these, there is also a certain allure. Certainly, Ja’afar was curious to hear from Abbas’ own mouth clarification on some of the more extravagant rumours that had circulated amongst Iranian expatriates, not to mention just what he had actually learned from his time studying in England. Thus it was that Ja’afar found himself travelling to London, first by train to Calais, by ship across the English Channel and train again into London. The journey had taken him under two days, something which he found rather astonishing.
London itself was an astounding sight, even to one who was accustomed to European cities. The familiar features of modern industry were already apparent in Paris, whose eastern side was quickly becoming an industrial powerhouse, and yet London seemed even more focused on the accumulation of wealth than Paris. Certainly, there seemed to be more human misery and poverty, perhaps the inevitable side of a city in which the rulers did not have an equivalent of the Paris mob to fear. Abbas himself lived far away from London’s poor however, in an unassuming terrace not too far from the British Museum [5].
“
Khosh amadid” Abbas greeted Ja’afar in his reception room, in Farsi that seemed out-of-practice. Abbas appeared every inch an English gentleman, or would have done were it not for his hooked nose and dark complexion. Complete with a waistcoat, he’d have seemed more suited for attending a formal dinner with his English peers as opposed to meeting a fellow exiled Iranian.
“Perhaps Abbas really has gone native and abandoned Islam”, Ja’afar pondered.
Abbas began speaking in French, which seemed to come to him more naturally now than Farsi did. “I trust that your journey was a good one?”
“Indeed it was, it had been quite some time since I had travelled far from Paris. One forgets how the railway has changed travelling from one place to another in recent years”
Abbas nodded. “It is certainly the case here. Give the country a few more decades, and you will be able to travel to the smallest village at the very edge of civilization by train”
The two exchanged a few more notes on travel in the west as well as other pleasantries.
“You know, I rather enjoyed reading your newsletter. It becomes rather depressing at times, continually reading the words of those who wish only to preserve things in our homeland as they are, albeit with themselves at the top. As if a change of dynasty or those in the nobility would stop poverty and oppression. It has certainly worked in the past…”
Ja’afar looked at Abbas quizzically. Abbas explained “English humour, I have spent too much time here. But you know as well as I that the world is changing. You have seen it in France as I see it in England. Iran has to change too, in organization, in thought…”
“Which is a hard task. I scarcely think that we are a people ready to abandon our religion for atheism”
“Yes, yes, I know very well what people think of me. Point out where our dear clerics have gone wrong, and they will spread all a manner of lies about you. I may have forgotten much about our culture, that is true, but I have not forgotten about our religion”
“That is comforting”
“And it is beside the point. There was a reason for me inviting you here. You see, across the Islamic world and even outside of it, there are some who are aware of the changes taking place in the world. In Europe, if we are being specific. These new technologies are unrivalled in the history of the world you know, and they come from somewhere”
“But what does this have to do with me?” Ja’afar asked.
“If Iran is to maintain pace with these countries, we need better rule. Shah Muhammad Ali will not live for long, and his son is a fool. Replace the dynasty, and we will only postpone the problem. You said it yourself when you quoted Ibn Khaldun before. We need rule by a number of people”
“Don’t we have that already?”
“Not rule by court favourites or cronies. We have a bureaucracy at the bottom, why not at the top too? Experienced men who rule for the country, not their own dynasties. Men accountable to the people”
Ja’afar approved this nod to his own writings. “If the path to progress is the same as the path to justice, I could support it”
[4] – See post
#466
[5] – Only a natural part of London for someone as curious as Abbas to settle. Interestingly enough, the British Museum was founded in 1753, and thus has not been butterflied.
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Author's Notes - Religion had been a great centripetal force in Safavid Iran, and it has been one that Afsharid Iran has lacked. This has been one of the causes for the multiple revolts that have afflicted Iran, and still means a lack of legitimacy for the Afshar rulers over a hundred years after the dynasty's foundation. Other methods to bind the country together have seen limited success, but in a pre-modern world they aren't quite as effective as the religious aura that the Safavids had enjoyed.
The narrative parts of the timeline are going to figure a bit more heavily from this point on, as we will follow various characters through the 19th century and perhaps beyond. The focus will largely be on Iran, but we will see characters from other parts of the world involve themselves as well, and some of the action will take place far from Iran.