Shah and his successors in Afghanistan than under any other sovereign power. Aga Mahommed determined to restore the whole province to Persia, and, after a brief residence in Teherān on his return from the Georgian expedition, he set out for Meshed. It is important to note that on the occasion of his coronation he had girded on the sabre consecrated at the tomb of the founder of the Safawid—thus openly pledging himself to support the Shiʽite faith.
But there had been continual dissatisfaction in the capital of Khorasan, and constant inroads upon it from without, which the royal puppet was unable to prevent. His popularity was real, but never seemed to have effect outside the limited sphere of personal sympathy and regard. Owing to the frequent revolutions in the holy city the generals of Timur Shah, king of the Afghans, had made three expeditions on Shah Rukh’s behalf. Meshed had been taken and retaken as though he were not a resident in it, much less its de jure king. Moreover, his two sons Nadir Mirza and Wali Niʽamat had long been fighting, and the former was in 1796 the actual ruler of the place. Three years before Timur had died, and his third son, Zaman Shah, by the intrigues of an influential sirdar, Paiyanda Khan, and been proclaimed his successor at Kabul.
Aga Mahommed’s entry into Meshed was effected without a struggle on the part of those in possession. The Kajar shah walked on foot to the tomb of Imam Riza, before which he knelt and kissed the ground in token of devotion, and was recognized as a Shiʽite of Shiʽites. Shah Rukh submissively followed in his train. Then began the last act of the local tragedy. The blind king’s gradual revelation, under horrible torture, of the place of concealment of his several jewels and treasures, and his deportation and death (of the injuries thus received, at Damghan, en route to Mazandaran), must be classed among the darkest records of Oriental history.
From Meshed Aga Mahommed sent an envoy to Zaman Shah, asking for the cession of Balkh, and explaining his invasion of Khorasan; but the Afghan monarch was too perplexed with the troubles in his own country and his own insecure position to do more than send an unmeaning reply. It is not shown what was the understood boundary between the two countries at this particular period; but Watson states that on the shah’s departure he had received the submission of the whole of Khorasan, and left in Meshed a garrison of 12,000 men.
Aga Mahommed had now fairly established his capital at Teherān. On his return thither in September 1796 he dismissed his troops for the winter, directing their reassembly in the following spring. The re-invasion by Russia of the provinces and districts he had recently wrested from her west of the Caspian had made Death and Character of Aga Mahommed. great progress, but the circumstance does not seem to have changed his plans for the army. Although, when the spring arrived and the shah led his forces to the Aras, the Russians had, it is true, retreated, yet territory had been regained by them as far south as the Talysh. Aga Mahommed had now arrived at the close of his career. He was enabled, with some difficulty, to get his troops across the river, and take possession of Shusha, which had given them so much trouble a year or two before. There, in camp, he was murdered (1797) by his own personal attendants—men who were under sentence of death, but allowed to be at large. He was then fifty-seven years of age, and had ruled over part of Persia for more than eighteen years—over the kingdom generally for about three years, and from his coronation for about one year only.
The brutal treatment he had experienced in boyhood under the orders of ʽAdil Shah, and the opprobrious name of “eunuch” with which he was taunted by his enemies, no doubt contributed to embitter his nature. His contempt of luxury, his avoidance of hyperbole and dislike of excessive ceremony, his protection to commerce and consideration for his soldiers, the reluctance with which he assumed the crown almost at the close of his reign—all these would have been praiseworthy in another man; but on his death the memory of his atrocious tyranny alone survived. Those who have seen his portrait once will recognize the face wherever presented. “Beardless and shrivelled,” writes Sir John Malcolm, “it resembled that of an aged and wrinkled woman, and the expression of his countenance, at no time pleasant, was horrible when clouded, as it very often was, with indignation. He was sensible of this, and could not bear that any one should look at him.”
Aga Mahommed had made up his mind that he should be succeeded by his nephew Fath ʽAli Shah, son of his full brother, Hosain Kuli Khan, governor of Fars. There was a short interval of confusion after the murder. The remains of the sovereign were exposed to insult, the army was disturbed, the recently captured fort on the left bank Fath Ali Shah. of the Aras was abandoned; but the wisdom and resolution of the minister, Hajji Ibrahim, and of Mirza Mahommed Khan Kajar secured order and acceptance of the duly appointed heir. The first, proclaiming his own allegiance, put himself at the head of a large body of troops and marched towards the capital. The second closed the gates of Teherān to all comers until Fath ʽAli Shah came himself from Shiraz. Though instantly proclaimed on arrival, the new monarch was not crowned until the spring of the following year (1798).
The so-called rebellions which followed were many, but not of any magnitude. Such as belong to local history are three in number, i.e. that of Sadik Khan Shakaki, the general whose possession of the crown jewels enabled him, after the defeat of his army at Kazvin, to secure his personal safety and obtain a government; of Hosain Kuli Rebellions. Khan, the shah’s brother, which was compromised by the mother’s intervention; and of Mahommed, son of Zaki Khan, Zend, who was defeated on more than one occasion in battle, and fled into Turkish territory. Later, Sadik Khan, having again incurred the royal displeasure, was seized, confined and mercilessly bricked up in his dungeon to die of starvation.
Another adversary presented himself in the person of Nadir Mirza, son of Shah Rukh, who, when Aga Mahommed appeared before Meshed, had taken refuge with the Afghans. Fath ʽAli sent to warn him of the consequences, but without the desired effect. Finally, he advanced into Khorasan with an army which appears to have met with no opposition save at Nishapur and Turbet, both of which places were taken, and when it reached Meshed, Nadir Mirza tendered his submission, which was accepted. Peace having been further cemented by an alliance between a Kajar general and the prince’s daughter, the shah returned to Teherān.
Now that the narrative of Persian kings has been brought up to the period of the consolidation of the Kajar dynasty and commencement of the 19th century, there remains but to summarize the principal events in the reigns of Fath ʽAli Shah and his immediate successors, Mahommed Shah and Naṣru ’d-Din Shah.
Fath ʽAli Shah came to the throne at about thirty-two years of age, and died at sixty-eight, after a reign of thirty-six years. Persia’s great aim was to recover in the north-west, as in the north-east of her empire, the geographical limits obtained for her by the Safawid kings; and this was no easy matter when she had to contend with a strong European power whose territorial limits touched War with Russia. her own. Fath ʽAli Shah undertook, at the outset of his reign, a contest with Russia on the western side of the Caspian, which became constant and harassing warfare. Georgia was, clearly, not to revert to a Mahommedan suzerain. In 1800 its tsar, George, son and successor of Heraclius, notwithstanding his former professions of allegiance to the shah, renounced his crown in favour of the Russian emperor. His brother Alexander indignantly repudiated the act and resisted its fulfilment, but he was defeated by General Lazerov on the banks of the Lora. Persia then re-entered the field. Among the more notable occurrences which followed were a three days' battle, fought near Echmiadzin, between the crown prince, ʽAbbas Mirza, and General Zizianov, in which the Persians suffered much from the enemy’s artillery, but would not admit they were defeated; unsuccessful attempts on the part of the Russian commander to get possession of Erivan; and a surprise, in camp, of the shah’s forces, which caused them to disperse, and necessitated the king’s own presence with reinforcements. On the latter occasion the shah is credited with gallantly swimming his horse across the Aras, and setting an example of energy and valour. In the following year ʽAbbas Mirza advanced upon Shishah, the chief of which place and of the Karabagh had declared for Russia; much fighting ensued, and Erivan was formally taken possession of in the name of
