96 TEHERAN AND A NEWER PERSIA
things seem to be reducible. 'Thus bad begins, but worse remains behind ' — said Hamlet once ; and so it proved in the decade that followed (1896-1907), occupied by the reign of Shah Muzaffar ad-Din. The depleted state of the treasury, the general downward trend of affairs, and the ever growing discontent of the people caused their leaders to rise — ecclesias- tical heads among them — and demand reforms and the rights of a Constitution, so that the people should have a real share in acts of the government. This concession was finally granted on August 5, 1906, by the monarch, already sick unto death ; the Parliament was formally inaugurated a fortnight later; and the Western world beheld the surprising innovation of a National Assembly entering upon its deliberations at Teheran on October 7 of the same year. What would Cyrus, Darius, or Xerxes have said; what might Chosroes and Shah Abbas have exclaimed, if they had witnessed this mighty revolution, effected almost without bloodshed by the people's hands !
The rest of the story is too recent to need to be related in detail. 1 Three months later, on January 7, 1907, Muzaffar ad- Din, ' King of Kings, rested with his fathers ' — as the official proclamation stated in announcing his death. The hopes and the fears of the nation were now centered upon his son, Muhammad Ali Mirza, who was crowned Shah two weeks afterwards, at the age of thirty-five. Never favorable to the idea of a Parliament, though he had signed the Constitution before his father's death, he came into conflict with the National Assembly almost immediately. The constant clashes that ensued between the Crown and the Deputies ultimately resulted in the Shah's regiment of Cossacks bombarding the Parliament building, in riot and bloodshed on both sides, and in the spirited revolution that first forced Muhammad Ali to abdicate and then formally deposed him, July 16, 1909, after a troublous reign of two years and seven months. His son,
1 Especially as I may now refex to the work by Professor Browne, already cited.
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