Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-rdgjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-07T09:00:48.494Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A FAMILIAL STATE: ELITE FAMILIES, MINISTERIAL OFFICES, AND THE FORMATION OF QAJAR IRAN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Assef Ashraf
Assef Ashraf*
Affiliation:
Assef Ashraf is a University Lecturer in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; e-mail: aa2098@cam.ac.uk
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the social makeup of the early Qajar administration or chancery (dīvān). Using a wide range of Persian sources, the article focuses on those individuals who held offices in the dīvān and traces their family, social, and geographic backgrounds, highlights their marital ties, and reveals their sources of economic and social prestige. In doing so, the article draws attention to patterns of continuity and change between Safavid, Afsharid, Zand, and Qajar rule, and to the familial and informal nature of political power during the early Qajar period (1785–1834). Ultimately the article suggests that an analysis of the social makeup of the dīvān, and of what political office-holders actually do, offers a more fruitful pathway for understanding the formation of Qajar Iran than a focus on institutions and political structures.

Keywords

familial statesocially oriented political historyQajar Iranstate formation

Information

Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , February 2019 , pp. 43 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

The Qajar state was a familial state. Qajar princes held most of the provincial governorships, while many of the offices that comprised the Qajar administration (dīvān) were occupied by individuals who were descended from administrative families, were related to other administrative families, and were related to the ruling Qajar house.Footnote 1 The fact that Qajar Iran's politics and administration were largely a family affair is not news, nor does it make Qajar Iran exceptional. Historians of 19th-century Iran, especially those writing in Persian, have long drawn attention to the familial nature of Qajar-era politics.Footnote 2 And historians of other regions, from Western Europe to Japan, have written extensively on elite families and the politics of the aristocracy.Footnote 3 Nevertheless, numerous questions about the historical role of political families in Qajar Iran remain underexplored. Chief among them is how a focus on those families—and especially those families who served in the dīvān—might change our understanding of the early Qajar period and the formation of the Qajar state.

The production of Qajar power and the emergence of a Qajar state are among the least understood, though most deserving, topics in 18th- and 19th-century Middle Eastern history. The story of the formation of Qajar Iran can be summarized as follows: in 1722, the Safavid Empire collapsed. Political turmoil and instability marked much of the remainder of the 18th century. Nadir Shah Afshar (r. 1736–47) and Karim Khan Zand (r. 1750–79) ruled for some time, but neither managed to establish states that outlasted their own lives. Meanwhile, the Qajars were one among several tribal groups vying for power. Agha Muhammad Khan Qajar (r. 1785–97) defeated his Zand rivals and crowned himself shah in 1796. Only one year later, however, he was assassinated. His nephew, and designated successor, Fath-ʿAli Shah (r. 1797–1834), took the throne at a time when several competitors, including some of his own relatives, refused to recognize his rule. Given this situation, it is not surprising that the prevailing wisdom among historians is that 18th-century Iran witnessed “tribal resurgence” and a general political and economic downturn.Footnote 4 And yet, during the period stretching from 1785 to 1834—what can be called the early Qajar period—the Qajars successfully consolidated political power to rule over what they called the “guarded domains of Iran” (mamālik-i maḥrūsih-yi Īrān).Footnote 5 Fath-ʿAli Shah himself ruled for thirty-seven years, and the Qajars remained in power until 1925. For bringing to a close a politically turbulent period, the rise of the Qajars is a watershed moment in Iranian history.Footnote 6

Historians have written about the early Qajar period in one of three ways. Some scholars, influenced by Weberian theories of state formation, have focused on the creation of offices by Qajar rulers, especially Fath-ʿAli Shah, and the bureaucratic capacity of the Qajar state.Footnote 7 Those efforts have often been framed as a precursor to later 19th-century attempts to create a more centralized, bureaucratic, and by extension “modern” state.Footnote 8 Another group of historians has placed the rise of the Qajar state in the context of 18th- and 19th-century religious developments. According to this body of scholarship, during the 18th century the social and political influence of the Shiʿi ʿulamaʾ grew, and by the early 19th century Qajar rulers had to contend with the ʿulamaʾ’s ascendant power.Footnote 9 Finally, a third body of scholarship has depicted the rise of the Qajars as a “tribal” story. The Qajar state emerged, we are told, as a result of the Qajars defeating their rivals, conquering territory, and consolidating power through tribal modes of rule.Footnote 10

A socially oriented approach to Qajar politics, institutions, and the state offers an alternative pathway to understanding the history of the early Qajar period.Footnote 11 An obvious place to undertake such an approach would be with the administrative offices that comprised the Qajar dīvān. The ministers, secretaries, scribes, and historians who served in the dīvān were the cornerstone of the Qajar government. They were responsible for the government's central tasks: diplomacy, political counsel, tax collection, and the writing, copying, and transmission of decrees (firmān) and correspondence. Doing a socially oriented study of the dīvān would entail identifying the main office holders, tracing their family, social, and geographic backgrounds, highlighting the marital ties between office holders, and uncovering their sources of economic and social prestige. It would mean taking seriously the familial nature of the Qajar state—not just as a description of the Qajar polity, but as a clue to how power was produced and reproduced in the formative years of the Qajar period.

Socially oriented approaches to political history have made headway in much of the scholarship on imperial and state formation. Scholars have increasingly questioned the traditional binary between state and society, and have argued that mundane processes, informal practices, and relationships in society involving individuals, networks, and institutions all contribute to upholding political order.Footnote 12 Some have advanced the notion of familial states in other contexts.Footnote 13 Others have gone so far as to question the very category of the “state,” preferring to explore the practice of governance.Footnote 14 The case of Qajar Iran suggests, like much of this scholarship, that social and economic ties have historically been central to consolidating political power, and that schematic conceptions of state institutions and offices erase the many intricate and complex ways in which power is formed.

An analysis of the familial nature of early Qajar political history also elaborates on scholarship within Middle Eastern history. Two of the more recent and productive considerations of the relationship between families and political power have been in the scholarly literature on provincial households in the Ottoman Empire and in Qajar Iran, and in the debates over whether merchants and merchant families were “autonomous” from political power.Footnote 15 The scholarship on provincial households largely grew out of an interest in the “politics of notables” (a ʿyān)—those individuals in the Ottoman Empire who, in the words of Albert Hourani, acted “as intermediaries between government and people, and … as leaders of the urban population.”Footnote 16 At its best, the “politics of notables” scholarship has forced scholars to reevaluate assumed dichotomies between imperial and local, state and civil society, and in the case of the Ottoman Empire, Ottomans and Arabs.Footnote 17 But by concentrating on specific provinces or regions and, typically, on the later periods of Ottoman and Qajar history, these studies have also tended to emphasize processes of decentralization—the devolution of power from the imperial center to provincial and local levels.Footnote 18 The scholarship on merchants, meanwhile, has explained what merchants did historically, rather than what normative definitions of merchants would lead us to believe they did. By doing so, scholars have usefully drawn attention to the nexus between merchant families and institutional power, and to the social, economic, and political activities in which merchant families engaged.Footnote 19

Ultimately, a socially oriented approach to Qajar political history and to the three dīvān offices that are the subject of this article—the Grand Vizier (ṣadr-i a ʿẓam), the Imperial Accountant (mustawfī al-mamālik), and the Imperial Secretary (munshī al-mamālik)—revises the prevailing interpretations of the early Qajar period.Footnote 20 Several different but related points emerge through a reading of the relevant sources—including biographical poetry anthologies (taẕkirih),Footnote 21 family histories,Footnote 22 histories of political offices,Footnote 23 and chronicles.Footnote 24 At the most basic level, the socially oriented approach adopted here pushes back against reified understandings of the Qajar state. The early Qajar state had elements of both patrimonial and bureaucratic rule, with both genealogical modes of governance occurring alongside the differentiation of offices without any necessary contradiction.Footnote 25 A second point, and one that is closely tied to the first, is that there was both continuity and change in the social composition of the Qajar state. Qajar rulers recruited men into their dīvān who themselves had served earlier governments, or were descended from families with long administrative experience, but they also recruited men with little or no administrative background. Ministers who served in the dīvān then entrenched their interests by marrying into the Qajar house. And finally, a third point that emerges from the sources: ministers who served in the dīvān sought to bolster their power and prestige by carrying out duties that went beyond normative descriptions of their offices, through cultural and economic pursuits, and by competing with one another, sometimes violently. Taken together, the three points illustrate the contingent process by which the Qajar state emerged, formed, and was made—a helpful reminder that the early Qajar state was very much a “state in the making.”Footnote 26

Beyond a Weberian State

During the early Qajar period, the differentiation of offices and genealogical modes of governance occurred simultaneously. Among Agha Muhammad Khan's first acts, after escaping captivity in Shiraz following Karim Khan Zand's death in 1779, was to recruit a treasurer (mustawfī). From there the number of offices in the dīvān grew, and by the end of Fath-ʿAli Shah's reign the dīvān was the largest it had been since the Safavid period.Footnote 27 Sources from the early Qajar period attest to the fact that the prime minister, imperial treasurer, and imperial secretary were among the principal positions in the nascent Qajar state. At the same time, early Qajar sources often and repeatedly mention the family lineages of political men, reminding us that family backgrounds and relationships were a vital factor in who was recruited to fill dīvān positions.

Analyzing the order in which offices were filled is one way to detect the significance of each office relative to others. It is telling that Agha Muhammad Khan took as his first minister a treasurer, Mirza Ismaʿil, whom he recruited shortly after returning to Mazandaran in 1779. Soon thereafter, he took another treasurer, Mirza Asadullah Nuri, as his revenue secretary to the army (lashkarnivīs).Footnote 28 Meanwhile, the first imperial secretary under the Qajar ruler seems to have been Mirza Riza Quli Navaʾi, who was appointed in 1791 or 1792.Footnote 29 The position of prime minister was only filled a couple years later, in 1794, when Agha Muhammad Khan appointed Muhammad Ibrahim, the former city mayor (kalāntar) of Shiraz during the Zand period, to the post.Footnote 30 Together, these individuals comprised Agha Muhammad Khan's dīvān.

During the first few decades of the 19th century, Fath-ʿAli Shah expanded the administration, and the shah established greater division of labor between the offices. In 1806 or 1807, Fath-ʿAli Shah officially divided the central dīvān into four offices: the chief minister, the imperial treasurer, the imperial secretary, and minister of war. The shah's court chronicler, Mirza Fazlullah “Khavari” Shirazi, provided a description of the responsibilities of each office:

First is the ṣadr-i a‘ẓam, who is responsible for providing counsel [muhimmāt-i shūr-i mamlikat] and for appointing and dismissing governors [vilāt va bayglarbaygān], the heads, deputies, rulers, and chiefs of the court and every province, and is also responsible for military and government affairs. Second is the vazīr-i istīfā-yi mamlikat [i.e., the mustawfī al-mamālik] who oversees all financial matters, and who collects and disburses revenue, gifts [pīshkish], and taxes [māliyāt] of regions near and far. Third is the vazīr-i dār al-inshā who by custom is known as munshī al-mamālik and keeps the records of diplomatic correspondence and imperial decrees. Fourth is the vazīr-i ‘askar who heads military affairs, and is in charge of dispensing salaries and stipends to the royal troops, for presenting troops to the shah, and recruiting new soldiers.Footnote 31

Each minister's responsibilities were, in theory, well defined with a clear division among the advisory, financial, secretarial, and military officials. The nucleus of the central Qajar administration, which would continue to grow and expand during the 19th century, was thus created within the first ten years of Fath-ʿAli Shah's reign.

Fath-ʿAli Shah's development of the dīvān was an effort to recreate the structure of Safavid administration, but also part of a broader strategy to resurrect the Safavid imperial system.Footnote 32 Shirazi's descriptions of the early Qajar dīvān offices echo the descriptions that Safavid-era administrative manuals, like the Tazkirat al-Muluk (Memorial for Kings), provided for similar political offices.Footnote 33 In formal terms, the early Qajar dīvān continued in the tradition of the Safavid dīvān—in fact, as an institution, the dīvān probably had roots dating to the Sasanian Empire (224–551 CE).Footnote 34 At the same time, however, Agha Muhammad Khan and Fath-ʿAli Shah expanded their territorial reach to former Safavid domains. In 1785, Qajar control was limited to the Alburz region, along the southern littoral of the Caspian Sea, and beyond that, to some areas in northern and northwestern Iran.Footnote 35 By the middle of the first decade of the 19th century, the Qajars had effectively extended their authority from the Caucasus in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south, and from Kermanshah in the west to Khurasan in the east—the approximate frontiers of the Safavid Empire in the late 17th century.Footnote 36 In that sense, the growth in the number and organization of offices should also be seen as reflecting the rising demands of a growing empire.

Expanding Qajar territorial control also meant that there was a need for ministers and secretaries to be based in cities and towns across the empire. Provincial cities across Qajar Iran, including Tabriz, Shiraz, Mashhad, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Qazvin, Yazd, and Kerman, all had Qajar prince-governors with their respective ministers, secretaries, and scribes. Some of these provincial dīvān officials were promoted up the chain to Tehran, with Tabriz and Shiraz being especially noteworthy “feeder” cities.Footnote 37 But an underappreciated point is that the provincial administrative system was not limited to well-known provincial capital cities. The city of Nakhchivan, which until 1828 was part of the Qajar province of Azerbaijan and under the aegis of ʿAbbas Mirza, is a good example. Hundreds of early 19th-century decrees (firmān), petitions, and other forms of correspondence survive from the local Nakhchivan dīvān. Because the correspondence includes political orders and requests exchanged between Tehran, Tabriz, Nakhchivan, and other locales, two noteworthy points emerge: first, the provincial town of Nakhchivan was linked to other Qajar provincial cities, as well as to larger capital cities; second, there were secretaries and scribes active in the local Nakhchivan dīvān who wrote and recorded the political correspondence that now survives.Footnote 38 It is not unreasonable to imagine similar situations in smaller cities and towns across Qajar domains.

A growing administration at the capital, provincial, and local levels also contributed to the relative political stability under early Qajar rulers, especially when compared to the 18th century.Footnote 39 While other factors besides the dīvān—including legal institutions, provincial households, and mercantile activity—undoubtedly contributed to the political and economic recovery of the Qajar period, an expansion in the number of ministers, secretaries, and scribes meant that the business of governing could be done. The evidence for economic recuperation under the early Qajars is fragmentary, but a statement of revenue from 1811, for example, captures the Qajar state's ability to raise and collect taxes. The statement is a record of the 1.7 million tūmān in cash and kind raised from various provinces, districts, and tribes (īlāt) across Qajar territories.Footnote 40 Taxes collected at the local level were sent to the district level, then up to the provincial level, until finally reaching the capital, Tehran.Footnote 41 While much of Iran's financial situation during the 18th century remains obscure, and thus difficult to compare to the situation of the early 19th century, the evidence suggests that the government improved its ability to raise revenue under Qajar rule.Footnote 42 It would be no exaggeration to say that the ministers of the dīvān, who maintained financial records and ledgers across Qajar territories, made much of this economic recuperation possible.

On the other hand, too great an emphasis on the growing institutions of the Qajar state obscures the personal and patrimonial ties that ran through the Qajar government. There is perhaps no greater evidence for how important family genealogies were in the early Qajar period than in the abundance of details about those genealogies scattered across different sources.Footnote 43 The names and background of ministers and secretaries are often found, for instance, in early Qajar-era biographical anthologies (taẕkirih), among the names of poets, historians, and other lettered men (and sometimes women).Footnote 44 If the individuals were descendants of the prophet Muhammad's family, this would deserve special mention.Footnote 45 In other cases, entries declare the family's long background in politics, as in the case of the Qaʾim-Maqam Farahani family: “the majority of his [Mirza Abu al-Hasan ʿIsa] ancestors, ancestor after ancestor, grandee after grandee, served in the ministries of illustrious sultans.”Footnote 46 Chronicles and other histories often provide similar kinds of statements.Footnote 47

As the following section will illustrate, although family lineage was by no means the only consideration for choosing dīvān ministers it was undoubtedly among the main factors in who was selected. By the time Fath-ʿAli Shah died in 1834, at least sixteen different individuals had held the positions of prime minister, imperial secretary, and imperial treasurer (see Table 1), and four of them were descended from men who held a high-ranking post in earlier polities. Others may have been descended from local officials who held less noteworthy positions. It is true that under Fath-ʿAli Shah the Qajar administrative structure grew and differentiated into discrete political offices. But patrimonial and informal networks of power persisted well into the Qajar period.

TABLE 1.

Dīvān Ministers

Continuity and Change

The Qajar state was simultanesouly a continuation of older polities and a break with those polities. This is different than saying that Qajar political culture drew on a rich tradition of Persian, Islamic, and Turco-Mongolian rituals and concepts while adapting them to the circumstances of the 19th century, or that the administrative offices created by rulers like Fath-ʿAli Shah had roots in earlier polities—both of which earlier scholars have demonstrated.Footnote 48 Instead, the point here is that the social composition of the state was both old and new. Qajar rulers recruited men into their dīvān who themselves had served earlier governments, or were descended from families with long administrative experience, but they also recruited men with little or no administrative background. These men then married into the Qajar house, and their descendants became princes, princesses, and statesmen themselves. Well into the 20th century, descendants of Qajar-era marriages were among Iran's political and cultural elite.

Continuities between Afsharid, Zand, and Qajar rule ran deep and cut across all of the major positions in the Qajar administration. The first prime minister under the Qajars, Muhammad Ibrahim Iʿtimad al-Dawlih, is particularly noteworthy because of the circumstances under which he came into Qajar service. His family was originally from Qazvin, until Nadir Shah made Muhammad Ibrahim's father, Muhammad Hashim, the alderman (kadkhudā) of the Haydari quarter of Shiraz. Muhammad Ibrahim's own political career began later, under the Zands, when he worked under the mentorship of the mayor (kalāntar) of Shiraz, Mirza Muhammad, before being promoted to mayor of the city himself in 1785.Footnote 49 During the Qajar siege of Shiraz in 1790–91, Muhammad Ibrahim sensed the imminent downfall of the Zands, defected against his Zand overlords, and pledged allegiance to the Qajars.Footnote 50 A few years later, Agha Muhammad Khan made him prime minister, marking the beginning of his political career with the Qajars (Fig 1).Footnote 51

FIGURE 1.

Iʿtimad al-Dawlih (standing) with Agha Muhammad Khan. © The British Library Board. Inside back cover of Add. 24903, The British Library.

Several other individuals with similar backgrounds were recruited in the early years of Qajar rule. Mirza Shafiʿ, the second prime minister of the Qajar period, was the son of Haji Mirza Ahmad, who had served Nadir Shah.Footnote 52 The Amin al-Dawlih's father and grandfather served as “stewards” (mubāshir) of Isfahan during the Zand period.Footnote 53 And Mirza Muhammad Riza “Bandih,” who under the orders of Fath-ʿAli Shah helped compile the general chronicle Zīnat al-Tavārīkh (The Ornament of Histories), was the son of Mirza Muhammad Shafiʿ Tabrizi, a financial officer for both Nadir Shah and Agha Muhammad Khan.Footnote 54

The case of the Farahani family, meanwhile, is especially noteworthy because they served Safavid, Zand, and Qajar rulers and therefore represented a chain of continuity through the vagaries of 18th-century politics.Footnote 55 Ancestors of Mirza Abu al-Qasim Farahani had served numerous shahs through the centuries, and by the late Safavid period, Mir Abu al-Fath Farahani was the keeper of the seal (mīr-i muhrdār) in the Safavid court.Footnote 56 Mir Abu al-Fath's son, and the later Qaʾim-Maqam's paternal great-uncle, Mirza Muhammad Husayn Farahani “Vafa,” served the Zands as a chief minister (vazīr-i sarkār-i umarā ʾ) and imperial accountant.Footnote 57 Mirza Abu al-Qasim's father, the first Qaʾim-Maqam Mirza Abu al-Hasan ʿIsa, had entered Qajar service during the reign of Agha Muhammad Shah. After Fath-ʿAli Shah acceded to the throne in 1797, he first appointed Mirza Abu al-Hasan as minister to his son Hasan-ʿAli Mirza in Tehran, before moving him to the court of ʿAbbas Mirza, where he took the title Qaʾim-Maqam and served until he died of plague in 1821 or 1822.Footnote 58 He was replaced by his son, Mirza Abu al-Qasim who became the new Qaʾim-Maqam upon his father's death. In addition to these two ministers, ʿAbbas Mirza appointed Haji Haydar Ali Khan as his vizier (ṣadr) for a couple years. Further underlining the continuities between Zand and Qajar rule, Haydar Ali was related to Iʿtimad al-Dawlih, the first Qajar ṣadr who had also served the Zands.Footnote 59

The background of the Farahanis points to another feature of the early Qajar administration: the apprenticeship and education that ministers received was an additional conduit of continuity through different political rulers. Sources therefore also provide information about ministers’ training and the supervision under which ministers began their careers. To give a few examples: Iʿtimad al-Dawlih, aside from being the mayor of Shiraz under the Zands, also served as an apprentice under Mirza Muhammad Husayn Vafa, the head of the Farahani family, in effect linking him back to the late Safavid bureaucratic elite as well.Footnote 60 Meanwhile, Mirza Mirza Isa Qaʾim-Maqam was in turn trained by Iʿtimad al-Dawlih.Footnote 61

Continuities such as these were not limited to the central administration in Tehran, but were also evident at the provincial and local levels. Qajar rulers preferred to leave secretaries and fiscal officers in place, rather than appoint new officials, after conquering new territory. Mirza ʿAli Bayg, a secretary (munshī) in Nakhchivan's dīvān, provides an illustrative example. ʿAli Bayg was born before the Qajar conquest of Nakhchivan, in the late 18th century, to a family that had served as secretaries in the region for years.Footnote 62 He seems to have been responsible for collecting, copying, and compiling dozens of petitions, decrees (firmān), and other correspondence from the Nakhchivan archives that stretched from the early 18th to the early 19th century—material to which he would have had easy access given his family background. The access to documents his family origins gave him also made him well positioned to write a brief history of some of the notable political figures of Nakhchivan, including Kalb-ʿAli Khan.Footnote 63 ʿAli Bayg's short biography of Kalb-ʿAli Khan, combined with the archival documents he copied and compiled, provide a portrait of Kalb-ʿAli Khan that is missing from most Qajar chronicles and narrative sources, which only mention him and his tribe, the Kangarlu, in passing.Footnote 64 ʿAli Bayg, by contrast, provides a granular account of Kalb-ʿAli Khan's role in Nakhchivan and in the early 19th-century Russo-Persian wars. The account is unique, and goes some way towards explaining why the Qajars would allow local officials, who had deep familiarity with and knowledge of their region, to continue serving under their rule.

There were pragmatic reasons for why Qajar rulers favorably viewed continuities along family, educational, and experiential lines. To be a minister, a secretary, or a historian serving an administrative role required knowledge and expertise in penmanship and diplomatics, in record-keeping techniques like siyāq, and in other subjects, like Arabic grammar and the Islamic sciences, that were central to the ministerial ethos of the “men of the pen.”Footnote 65 Recruiting men who had been raised in administrative families, had been trained by ministers, or simply had experience were among the surest ways to ensure capable individuals were staffing the government.

Nevertheless, there were ministers who lacked such links in their background, a reality that stands out even more when juxtaposed with the continuities between Safavid, Afsharid, Zand, and Qajar rule. Take, for instance, Qajar tribal khans. Most Qajar khans became provincial governors or military leaders—that is to say, not dīvān officials—but among the earliest examples of a Qajar being selected for a ministerial position was Allah Yar Khan, son of Mirza Muhammad Khan, of the Devellu clan of Qajars.Footnote 66 Allah Yar Khan began his career as a steward (khwānsālār) to Fath-ʿAli Shah, before eventually being given the title Asaf al-Dawlih, and becoming, in effect, the prime minister.Footnote 67 As the 19th century progressed, and in part as a result of the numerous examples of marriages between the Qajar royal family and scions of ministerial families, an increasing number of individuals from the Qajar house were appointed to ministerial and secretarial positions.

But “outsiders” in the dīvān during the early years of Fath-ʿAli Shah's reign were not exclusive to Qajar tribal khans. Muhammad Husayn Khan, the governor (bayglarbayg) of Isfahan, provides an example of someone who rose from humble origins to become the prime minister and to the pinnacle of power. Although his father and grandfather had been local stewards (mubāshir), they lacked a true dīvān background. Originally a green grocer from Isfahan, Muhammad Husayn Khan's first promotion was to become the alderman (kadkhudā) of his neighborhood in the city. From there, he worked to build alliances with local shopkeepers, merchants, and farmers, gradually making his way up to becoming the mayor (kalāntar) of the city.Footnote 68 Muhammad Husayn Khan came to the attention of Fath-ʿAli Shah when the new shah passed through Isfahan on his way to Tehran to take the throne, following Agha Muhammad Khan's death. In 1806, Fath-ʿAli Shah brought him to Tehran, appointed him to serve as imperial treasurer, and gave him the title Amin al-Dawlih.Footnote 69

The fact that Muhammad Husayn Khan was promoted up to a prestigious position is an indication that Qajar rulers took other factors besides family lineage into consideration. Loyalty was one such consideration, and the giving of gifts helped express loyalty to Qajar rulers.Footnote 70 A timely and luxurious gift that Muhammad Husayn Khan gave to Fath-ʿAli Shah in 1801–2, while he was still the governor of Isfahan and on the occasion of the shah's marriage to Tavus Khanum, surely helped his career prospects: a gem-studded “Sun Throne,” later renamed the “Peacock Throne” (takht-i ṭāvūs) in honor of the shah's wife.Footnote 71 Part of the explanation for the gift may lie in the fact that Muhammad Husayn Khan was close to the family of Tavus Khanum, both of whom were from Isfahan, but the gift, coming as it did early in Fath-ʿAli Shah's reign, may also have been made with an eye toward solidifying Muhammad Husayn Khan's political prospects.Footnote 72 Gifts from ministers to the shah were not uncommon. A manuscript of the Shahanshahnama, an epic poem about Fath-ʿAli Shah's reign modeled on Ferdowsi's Shahnama, includes a painting of Mirza Riza Quli Navaʾi, the imperial secretary, presenting gifts, including cash and textiles, to the shah (Fig. 2).

FIGURE 2.

Mirza Riza Quli, the munshī al-mamālik, presenting gifts to Fath-ʿAli Shah Qajar © The British Library Board. IO Islamic 3442, f 64v, The British Library.

Almost as soon as the Qajar dīvān began to take shape, the families that held offices attempted to bolster their positions by marrying into the Qajar house. Marriages between the Qajars and ministerial families fit a broader pattern of marital ties between Qajar rulers and urban notables, provincial khans, and other social groups during the early 19th century. Ministerial families married other ministerial families, of course, but marriages with the Qajar household inextricably linked them to the royal family, and as the 19th century progressed, the descendants of these unions, who numbered well into the thousands, formed a significant portion of the political elite.

The numerous marriages between the children of the shah and ministers make it clear that the division between the royal court (dargāh) and the administration (dīvān), which may have existed at a theoretical level, was in reality blurred.Footnote 73 Fath-ʿAli Shah had at least 160 wives and over 260 children, including sixty sons and fifty-five daughters who survived him.Footnote 74 The majority of these children did not marry into ministerial families, but there were many who did. The daughters of Iʿtimad al-Dawlih, Mirza Shafiʿ, and Muhammad Husayn Amin al-Dawlih all married Qajar princes.Footnote 75 Mirza Ismaʿil Khan Halal-Khur, the son of the mustawfī and munshī Mirza Faridun Khanlar, was married to the shah's sixteenth daughter Dirakhshandih Gawhar Khanum.Footnote 76 The shah's twenty-eighth daughter, Khurshid Kulah Khanum, was married to Mirza ʿAli Muhammad Khan, the son of ʿAbd Allah Khan Amin al-Dawlih.Footnote 77 Similar examples can be found among the children of other ministers as well. In other cases, office holders themselves married into the Qajar house, as in the case of Mirza Abu al-Qasim Qaʾim-Maqam II, who married Gawhar Malak Khanum, the full sister of the early Qajar crown prince ʿAbbas Mirza and the shah's ninth daughter.Footnote 78

The marriages also point to the male-dominated political culture of Qajar Iran. The names of women are generally omitted from the sources, and fathers are given preference when tracing family lineages. We know relatively little about the mothers and sisters of dīvān ministers, with the notable excetption of those who were Qajars. Secretaries and historians eulogized the Qajar house by writing biographical sketches of Qajar shahs and princes, but also their wives and princesses.Footnote 79 In some cases, Qajar women also received education and training from ministers, a point that historians also took care to note. Muʿtamid al-Dawlih, for instance, taught the shah's favorite wife, Tavus Khanum, how to read and write.Footnote 80

Many of the children and grandchildren of the marriages between Qajar rulers and ministerial families continued to be politically influential well into the 19th century and beyond. The descendants of these unions may have numbered in the thousands by the late 19th century.Footnote 81 The example of Iʿtimad al-Dawlih illustrates the varied political activities of these individuals. One of Iʿtimad al-Dawlih's sons served as governor (bayglarbayg) of Shiraz, while another was governor of Kashan, during the early 19th century. Meanwhile, among his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, several of them became notable politicians during the latter half of the 19th century, including Mirza Fath-ʿAli Khan, who was the head of the dīvān (sāḥib-i dīvān) in the late-Fath-ʿAli Shah period and remained prominent into the reign of Nasir al-Din Shah (r. 1848–96), Mirza Muhammad Riza Qavam al-Mulk III, who was the governor of Shiraz, and Mirza Husayn Khan Muʿtaman al-Mulk, who served the Qajar state in Khurasan.Footnote 82 Iʿtimad al-Dawlih's brothers, and their children—Iʿtimad al-Dawlih's nephews—also held important political positions, both during the reigns of Agha Muhammad Khan and Fath-ʿAli Shah, and later in the 19th century.Footnote 83

In fact, as Fath-ʿAli Shah's reign progressed, and the years of Qajar rule went on, certain families became closely associated with specific ministerial positions. For instance, the Ashtiyani family came to dominate the position of imperial treasurer: Mirza Muhammad ʿAli served first as mustawfī, but then his brother Mirza Hasan continued the family line. Hasan's son Yusuf succeeded his father as mustawfī in the Muhammad Shah (r. 1834–48) period.Footnote 84 The Nuris were also a prominent administrative family: Mirza Asadullah Nuri was recruited by Agha Muhammad Khan in 1795–96 to serve as his minister of the army, before switching over to become the imperial treasurer under Fath-ʿAli Shah.Footnote 85 His son, Mirza Agha Khan Nuri, later also served as army minister for the shah.Footnote 86

Loyalty and marriage tied ministerial families to the Qajar house, and ensured some level of security for dīvān officials. But because during the early 19th century the size of the administration grew, and the number of ministers increased, there was also greater competition among the ministers. From the perspective of the ministers, the dīvān was a space where competition over power, prestige, and influence played out.

Qajar Courtly Encounters

Early Qajar dīvān office holders had origins in various cities and regions across Qajar domains. The dīvān can be viewed, in fact, as a point of contact between Qajar rulers based in capital cities like Tehran, and men with social and economic roots in the provinces. Seen this way, the dīvān was an arena where networks of provincial power encountered one another; politically ambitious men competed with each other; political, economic, and social benefits became entrenched; and rivalries, feuds, and even violence erupted between dīvān ministers. The dīvān, in other words, offered an opportunity for ministers to prove their worth and consolidate their personal power and prestige, but also presented the risk of losing that same power. Qajar Iran's early history again demonstrates that, as in the case of many other imperial courts, incidents of encounter, exchange, and violence were constitutive elements to court culture and state formation.Footnote 87

The dīvān’s function as a site of contact for Qajar Iran's regional and political elites becomes easier to appreciate when one is reminded that the sixteen individuals who held the positions of prime minister, imperial secretary, and imperial treasurer during the first three decades of Qajar rule came from six different regions and eight different cities. Some of the cities, like Shiraz and Isfahan, were home to numerous influential families because of their historic roles as political capitals. Other cities and towns, like Nur and Bandpay, in Mazandaran, were not urban centers of particular importance, but were closer to the Qajars’ ancestral homeland in Astarabad. Agha Muhammad Khan and Fath-ʿAli Shah's decision to draw some of their ministers from these localities was part of a broader shift in the center of political gravity away from the south and towards the north at the turn of the 19th century.Footnote 88 But the geographic diversity of the towns and cities represented, from Shiraz to Tabriz, and from Navaʾi to Astarabad, also reflected a willingness by the shahs to draw on expertise from across their domains (Fig. 3).

FIGURE 3.

Geographic origins of ministers. The size of the dots reflects the number of ministers from that town or city. Map by Assef Ashraf.

The ministers who were recruited into the dīvān from these various locales then began carrying out basic political and economic tasks of the government that sometimes went above and beyond the traditional definitions of their offices. Even a cursory survey of the variety and nature of the tasks Qajar rulers entrusted to dīvān officals makes this point abundantly clear: without them, there would be no Qajar government that one could speak of beyond the palace walls. The officials served as emissaries and representatives of Qajar rulers, kept political and financial records, and produced literary, historical, and cultural texts that presented a particular vision of the Qajar state. The sheer variety of these activities had the effect of adding to their prestige and their self-fashioning as men worthy of being dīvān ministers, in conjunction with—or regardless of, as the case may be—what their family lineage was.

The skills of ministers were especially put to the test when they were delegated to serve as representatives of Qajar rulers, and dispatched to carry out diplomatic and political missions. In 1803–4, for instance, Fath-ʿAli Shah sent Mirza Shafiʿ on a mission to Azerbaijan to ease local tensions in the face of Russian military activities in the region. In May-June 1804 he reached Yerevan, where he met with Muhammad Khan Qajar, the governor (bayglarbayg) of the city. Fath-ʿAli Shah had received information that Muhammad Khan was collaborating with the Russians. In the course of negotiations with the governor, Mirza Shafiʿ assured the governor that if he recommitted his loyalty to the Qajars, he would face no retribution. Soon after, the governor of Yerevan sent a gift (pīshkish) and a letter of loyalty (farmān-i barādarī) to ʿAbbas Mirza, the Qajar prince-governor of Azerbaijan.Footnote 89

Instances when nothing less than Qajar authority was at stake offered particularly good occasions for ministers to prove their abilities. In May 1796, Agha Muhammad Khan was preparing for his final assault on Shusha and Azerbaijan, the only regions among former Safavid territories that he had not yet conquered. According to Iʿtimad al-Saltanih, “apparently he [Agha Muhammad Khan] felt in his heart that this journey would be his last journey,” and therefore made appropriate preparations.Footnote 90 He took most of his commanders and advisors with him, including Iʿtimad al-Dawlih, his prime minister, but ordered Mirza Shafiʿ and Muhammad Khan Qajar Devellu, the governor of Tehran, to stay behind in Tehran. Agha Muhammad Khan instructed Mirza Shafiʿ that should anything befall him, under no circumstances was Mirza Shafiʿ to permit any of the “princes, ministers, or military commanders” (shāhzādigān va vuzarāʾ va umarāʾ) into the city, until the heir-apparent—i.e., Baba Khan, the future Fath-ʿAli Shah—arrived from his post as governor of Fars to take the throne. As it turned out, Agha Muhammad Khan conquered Shusha, but was then assassinated by three men in his retinue as Qajar forces marched on Georgia.Footnote 91 Agha Muhammad Khan's senior advisors, including his prime minister, Iʿtimad al-Dawlih, and his brother, Husayn Quli Khan, rushed back to Tehran to inform others of the shah's death. Mirza Shafiʿ, however, true to his orders, refused to allow even the prime minister and the late shah's brother back into the capital. He immediately sent a messenger to Shiraz to summon their heir, Baba Khan, to Tehran. Only when he had arrived, were others also allowed back into the capital.Footnote 92

Diplomatic and political missions, such as those above, were obvious tasks for dīvān ministers, but these ministers also attempted to bolster their prestige through social, cultural, and economic pursuits. To take the example of ʿAbd Allah Khan Amin al-Dawlih: he expended a great deal of effort and resources to revitalize Isfahan, by building schools, parks, and other structures. During his tenure in Fath-ʿAli Shah's dīvān, the population of Isfahan reportedly grew to 300,000—a sharp rebound following the decline of the 18th century, and close to the population during the Safavid era.Footnote 93 Meanwhile, men like Abu al-Qasim Farahani Qaʾim-Maqam wrote poetry and prose that were widely praised during his own time. His literary output included panegyrics (qaṣīda) and popular poetry in his Jalāyirnāma (The Book of Jalayir), as well as a collection of official correspondence, letters of friendship (ikhwāniyāt), essays, and introductions to other works.Footnote 94 Another prime minister, Muʿtamid al-Dawlih, wrote under the pen name Nashat, and was among Fath-ʿAli Shah's favorite poets.Footnote 95 Some of this work was intended to legitimize Qajar rule or promote the Qajars as defenders of the faith, while in other cases it was more aesthetic.Footnote 96 Finally, ministers accumulated wealth through real estate and land purchases. The Qaʾim-Maqam, Nuri, and Ashtiyani families, among others, became wealthy landowners during the early 19th century, a fact that became even more apparent when they lost parts of their wealth as a result of competition with other ministerial families.Footnote 97 Taken together, and when considered alongside the marriage alliances between Qajar rulers and ministerial families, these activities remind us of the many different ways in which political elites reinforce their elite position within society.

Nevertheless, ministers could fall precipitously and violently from power. In fact, rivalry, factionalism, and violence were critical elements in the early Qajar dīvān. A well-known example of a minister's demise is Muhammad Ibrahim Iʿtimad al-Dawlih, who, despite having a long and distinguished career serving both Zand and Qajar rulers, and being related to the Qajars through marriage, was ultimately executed in 1801 after being accused of conspiracy and betrayal.Footnote 98 The circumstances surrounding Amin al-Dawlih's demise provide another example. In early 1824, a certain Hashim Khan led a rebellion of the Lur population of Lunban, in Isfahan. The governor of Isfahan at the time was ʿAli Muhammad Khan, who was the son of Amin al-Dawlih, and also son-in-law of Fath-ʿAli Shah.Footnote 99 He was, at the same time, a nephew of the rebellion's leader, Hashim Khan, which led to the suspicion that he was not taking proper steps to stop the rebellion. Fath-ʿAli Shah marched on Isfahan after the Nowruz celebrations, and after quelling the uprising, blinded Hashim Khan, removed ʿAli Muhammad Khan as the governor, and replaced him with his son Sultan Muhammad Mirza as the governor. In what was possibly further retribution, Amin al-Dawlih—the erstwhile governor's father—was removed as prime minister and in his place the shah appointed Allah Yar Khan Asaf al-Dawlih, a Qajar from the Devellu clan.Footnote 100

Violent episodes such as these were not unusual in Qajar and Iranian history—or for that matter in the history of other empires and states. Examples of ministerial downfall in the Iranian context suggest a weakness in administrative power, but they also lay bare the ministerial competition among men vying for their own interests. In the case of Iʿtimad al-Dawlih, Mirza Shafiʿ, a secretary to Iʿtimad al-Dawlih, was also his fierce rival, and may have played a part in engineering his superior's downfall in order to secure his own place as prime minister.Footnote 101

Conclusion

In trying to understand how and why the Qajar state formed, close attention to the social makeup of the state—who served in the administration, what their social and economic background was, and how they were related to one another and to the Qajars—is as significant as which ideology shaped the government or which political offices comprised the administration. A socially oriented political history moves us beyond descriptions of the institutional and formal characteristics of the Qajar state. Ultimately, the methodology outlined here has the potential to bring Qajar political history into closer conversation with debates on state and imperial formation animating historians who work on different times and places. From a modern perspective, to say that a state was both bureaucratic and patrimonial, had both old and new social elements, and had a central administration that functioned as an arena for competition among its ministers sounds like a case for its many shortcomings. But in the context of the late 18th century, and in the wake of the political turmoil following the Safavid Empire's collapse, the attributes of early Qajar Iran's politics also serve as a reminder that the making of states is a process defined by both continuity and change (Table 1).

References

NOTES

Author's note: For their constructive critiques of earlier versions of this article, I thank Abbas Amanat, Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, Arash Khazeni, Tanya Lawrence, and the anonymous IJMES reviewers. I also wish to thank Akram Khater and Jeffrey Culang for their help in shepherding the article through the review process and preparing it for publication. Finally, this article benefited from the questions and discussion during the Middle East Studies Association's 2017 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

1 “Administration” is an admittedly inadequate translation of dīvān, which can be alternatively translated as “administrative office,” “chancery,” or even “government.” None of these terms, however, captures the full meaning of dīvān. The essential idea behind the word—which some scholars argue is derived from the Old Persian word meaning “inscription” or “document,” while others say is derived from the Arabic verb meaning “to collect” or “to register”—is that the dīvān is where government ministers, secretaries, and scribes conduct their record-keeping and administrative business. During the early Qajar period, the dīvān was also called the daftar-khānih (Chamber of Records). See Shirazi, Mirza Fazlullah Khavari, Tarikh-i Zu al-Qarnayn, ed. Afsharfar, Nasir (Tehran: Kitabkhanih, Muzih, va Markaz-i Asnad-i Majlis-i Shura-yi Islami, 2001), 1:243Google Scholar; and Malcolm, John, The History of Persia from the Most Early Period to the Present Time (London: John Murray, 1815), 2:437Google Scholar. For more on the history and usage of the word dīvān, see François de Blois and C. Edmund Bosworth, “Dīvān,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, VII/4, 432–38, accessed 10 January 2018, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/divan; and A. A. Duri et al., “Dīwān,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, eds. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs, accessed 10 January 2018, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0170.

2 There is a large body of writing on the “political men” of the Qajar period (rijāl-i dawrih-yi Qājār), which provides biographical information on—as the words suggest—the political men of the 19th century and their families. Most of this scholarship has focused on simply tracing the family backgrounds and networks of the men who held ministerial and secretarial posts. In that sense, the works are akin to the Dictionary of National Biography in the British context. For some examples, see Bamdad, Mahdi, Sharh-i Hal-i Rijal-i Iran dar Qarn-i 12, 13, 14 Hijri, 6 vols. (Tehran: Zuvvar, 2008)Google Scholar; al-Mamalik, Dust ʿAli Khan Muʿayyir, Rijal-i ʿ Asr-i Nasiri, 3rd ed. (Tehran: Tarikh-i Iran, 2010)Google Scholar; Nuri, Husayn Saʿadat, Rijal-i Dawrih-yi Qajar (Tehran: Intisharat-i Vahid, 1985)Google Scholar; and Sasani, Khan Malik, Siyasatgaran-i Dawrih-i Qajar, 2 vols. (Tehran: Intisharat-i Hidayat, 1974)Google Scholar. Even those scholarly works with a more analytic approach tend to be schematic and focus on the macro level. See, for instance, Shaʿbani, ʿAli, Hizar Famil (Tehran: Bu ʿAli, 1987)Google Scholar, whose book divides Iranian history from the 18th to the 20th centuries into five distinct periods: the tribal era (dawrih-yi khānkhānī), the epoch of princes (ʿ aṣr-i shāhzādigān), the emergence of ministers (ẓuhūr-i dīvānsālārān), the presence of statesmen (ḥużūr-i dawlatmardān), and parliamentary government (ḥukūmat-i pārlamānī).

3 The scholarly literature on this topic is vast. For a classic comparative study of aristocracies across different regions, see Anderson, Perry, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: New Left Books, 1974)Google Scholar.

4 Lambton, Ann K. S., “The Tribal Resurgence and the Decline of the Bureaucracy in the Eighteenth Century,” in Studies in Eighteenth Century Islamic History, ed. Naff, Thomas and Owen, Roger (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), 108–32Google Scholar. On Iran's economy during the 18th century, see Fars, Mirza Muhammad Kalantar-i, Ruznama-yi Mirza Muhammad Kalantar-i Fars, ed. Iqbal, Abbas (Tehran: Shirkat-i Sahami, 1946)Google Scholar; al-Hukama, Muhammad Hashim Asaf Rustam, Rustam al-Tavarikh, ed. Mushiri, Muhammad (Tehran: Taban, 1969)Google Scholar; and Issawi, Charles P., The Economic History of Iran, 1800–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 13Google Scholar.

5 The years 1785 to 1834 correspond to the reigns of Agha Muhammad Khan (r. 1785–97) and Fath-ʿAli Shah (r. 1797–1834).

6 On the rise of the Qajars as being a “watershed” in Iranian history, see Lambton, Ann K. S., “Persian Trade under the Early Qajars,” in Qajar Persia: Eleven Studies (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1987), 110Google Scholar.

7 Martin, Vanessa, “An Evaluation of Reform and Development of the State in the Early Qājār Period,” Die Welt Des Islams 36 (1996): 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meredith, Colin, “Early Qajar Administration: An Analysis of Its Development and Functions,” Iranian Studies 4 (1971): 59–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 For studies on Qajar efforts to create a centralized bureaucracy, see Bakhash, Shaul, Iran: Monarchy, Bureaucracy, and Reform Under the Qajars: 1858–1896 (London: Ithaca Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Bakhash, Shaul, “The Evolution of Qajar Bureaucracy: 1779–1879,” Middle Eastern Studies 7 (1971): 139–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sheikholeslami, A. Reza, The Structure of Central Authority in Qajar Iran, 1871–1896 (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Sheikholeslami, , “The Patrimonial Structure of Iranian Bureaucracy in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Iranian Studies 11 (1978): 199–258CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There are exceptions, of course. For an example of a study that places early Qajar kingship in the context of historical Persian, Turco-Mongolian, and Islamic institutions, see Amanat, Abbas, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831–1896, 2nd ed. (London: I.B.Tauris, 2008), 7–13Google Scholar.

9 The relationship between the ʿulamaʾ and the Qajar state has generated vigorous scholarly debate. For some studies, see Algar, Hamid, Religion and State in Iran, 1785–1906: The Role of the Ulama in the Qajar Period (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Arjomand, Said Amir, “The Shiʿite Hierocracy and the State in Pre-Modern Iran: 1785–1890,” European Journal of Sociology 22 (1981): 40–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arjomand, , “The Office of Mulla-Bashi in Shiʿite Iran,” Studia Islamica 57 (1983): 135–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arjomand, , The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shiʿite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 215–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lambton, Ann K. S., “A Reconsideration of the Position of the Marjaʿ Al-Taqlīd and the Religious Institution,” Studia Islamica 20 (1964): 115–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lambton, , “Some New Trends in Islamic Political Thought in Late 18th and Early 19th Century Persia,” Studia Islamica 39 (1974): 95–128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Amanat, Abbas, Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844–1850 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 33–69Google Scholar.

10 Hambly, Gavin, “Āghā Muḥammad Khān and the Establishment of the Qājār Dynasty,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic, ed. Avery, Peter, Hambly, Gavin, and Melville, Charles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 104–43Google Scholar; Gavin Hambly, “Iran During the Reigns of Fath ʿAlī Shāh and Muhammad Shāh,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic, 144–73; Leonard Helfgott, “The Rise of the Qajar Dynasty: The Political Economy of Tribalism in Eighteenth Century Persia” (PhD diss., University of Maryland, 1978); Ebrahimnejad, Hormoz, Pouvoir et Succession en Iran: Les Premiers Qâjâr, 1726–1834 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000)Google Scholar; Shaʿbani, Hizar Famil, 19–36.

11 I have borrowed the phrase “socially oriented political history” from Peirce, Leslie, “Writing Histories of Sexuality in the Middle East,” The American Historical Review 114 (2009): 1325CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

12 A seminal study of the informal ties that sustained political power during the early Islamic period is Mottahedeh, Roy P., Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980)Google Scholar. For helpful introductions to the literature on state formation after the social and cultural turns, see Steinmetz, George, ed., State/Culture: State-Formation After the Cultural Turn (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and Sharma, Aradhana and Gupta, Akhil, eds., The Anthropology of the State: A Reader (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2006)Google Scholar.

13 See Julia Adams’ work on The Netherlands during the early modern period: The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

14 On this point, see Philliou, Christine, Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2011), xxiii–xxvGoogle Scholar.

15 The two examples mentioned here, of course, do not cover the full spectrum of the scholarship on family history in the Middle East. For a helpful introduction to the small, but burgeoning, field of Middle Eastern family history, see Doumani, Beshara, “Introduction,” in Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender, ed. Doumani, Beshara (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1–19Google Scholar.

16 Hourani, Albert, “Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,” in The Modern Middle East: A Reader, ed. Hourani, Albert, Khoury, Philip S., and Wilson, Mary C., 2nd ed. (London: I.B.Tauris, 2004), 89Google Scholar.

17 Gelvin, James L., “The ‘Politics of Notables’ Forty Years After,” Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 40 (2006): 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an example of how local urban elites were not necessarily intermediaries between the state and local society, and sometimes acted as a self-determining political force of their own, see Thompson, Elizabeth, “Ottoman Political Reform in the Provinces: The Damascus Advisory Council in 1844–45,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 25 (1993): 457–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 This is less true in the Ottoman context, where scholars have tied the growth of provincial households to the expansion of the empire. For example, see Khoury, Dina Rizk, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul, 1540–1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar. For examples of studies on Qajar Iran, see Gustafson, James M., Kirman and the Qajar Empire: Local Dimensions of Modernity in Iran, 1794–1914 (London: Routledge, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walcher, Heidi, In the Shadow of the King: Zill Al-Sultan and Isfahan under the Qajars (London: I.B.Tauris, 2008)Google Scholar; and Werner, Christoph, An Iranian Town in Transition: A Social and Economic History of the Elites of Tabriz, 1747–1848 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000)Google Scholar.

19 See Herzig, Edmund, “The Family Firm in the Commercial Organization of the Julfa Armenians,” in Etudes safavides, ed. Calmard, Jean (Paris: Institut Français de recherches en Iran, 1993), 287–304Google Scholar; Matthee, Rudi, “Merchants in Safavid Iran: Participants and Perceptions,” Journal of Early Modern History 4 (2000): 233–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aslanian, Sebouh, “The Circulation of Men and Credit: The Role of the Commenda and the Family Firm in Julfan Society,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 50 (2007): 124–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aslanian, , From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2011)Google Scholar; and Floor, W. M., “The Merchants (Tujjār) in Qājār Iran,” Zeitschrift Der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 126 (1976): 101–35Google Scholar. For similar work done in the context of South Asia, see Subrahmanyam, Sanjay and Bayly, C. A., “Portfolio Capitalists and the Political Economy of Early Modern India,” Indian Economic & Social History Review 25 (1988): 401–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, “Iranians Abroad: Intra-Asian Elite Migration and Early Modern State Formation,” The Journal of Asian Studies 51 (1992): 340–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, “Of Imârat and Tijârat: Asian Merchants and State Power in the Western Indian Ocean, 1400 to 1750,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37 (1995): 750–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 The father and son Mirza ʿIsa “Buzurg” Qaʾim-Maqam and Mirza Abu al-Qasim Qaʾim-Maqam are also included, since they functioned as the ṣadr-i a ʿ ẓam for ʿAbbas Mirza, the heir-apparent and influential prince under Fath-ʿAli Shah. The other main dīvān positions of the early Qajar period included the revenue secretary to the army (lashkarnivīs), head of the dīvān (ṣāḥib-i dīvān), court chronicler (vaqāyi ʿ -nigār), mint master (mu ʿ ayyir al-mamālik), reader of the khutba at ceremonial occasions (khātib al-mamālik), and chief astrologer (munajjim-bāshī). See Lambton, “Persian Society under the Qajars,” in Qājār Persia: Eleven Studies, 99.

21 Maftun, ʿAbd al-Razzaq Bayg Dunbuli, Tazkirih-yi Nigaristan-i Dara, ed. Khayyampur, ʿAbd al-Rasul (Tabriz: Kitabfurushi-yi Tehran, 1963)Google Scholar; Qajar, Mahmud Mirza, Safinat al-Mahmud, ed. Khayyampur, ʿAbd al-Rasul, 2 vols. (Tabriz: Shafaq, 1968)Google Scholar; Garrusi, Fazil Khan, Tazkirih-yi Anjuman-i Khaqan (Tehran: Layla, 1997)Google Scholar; Shirazi, Ahmad Divan Baygi, Hadiqat al-Shuʿara, ed. Navaʾi, Abd al-Husayn, 3 vols. (Tehran: Zarrin, 1985)Google Scholar.

22 Mustawfi, ʿAbd Allah, Sharh-i Zindigani-yi Man: Tarikh-i Ijtimaʿi va Idari-i Dawrih-yi Qajariyyih (Tehran: Zuvvar, 1964)Google Scholar; al-Saltanih, ʿAli Quli Mirza Iʿtizad, Iksir al-Tavarikh, ed. Kiyanfar, Jamshid (Tehran: Visman, 1991)Google Scholar; al-Dawlih, Ahmad Mirza Qajar ʿAzud, Tarikh-i ʿAzudi, ed. Navaʾi, ʿAbd al-Husayn (Tehran: ʿIlm, 1997)Google Scholar; Khavari Shirazi, “Khatimih-yi Ruznamchih-yi Humayun,” in Tarikh-i Zu al-Qarnayn, 2:949–1165.

23 al-Saltanih, Muhammad Hasan Khan Iʿtimad, Sadr al-Tavarikh: Sharh Hal-i Sadr Aʿzam'ha-yi Padshahan-i Qajar, ed. Mushiri, Muhammad (Tehran: Ruzbihan, 1978)Google Scholar; Sulaymani, Karim, Alqab-i Rijal-i Dawrih-yi Qajariyyih (Tehran: Kitabkhanih-i Milli-i Iran, 2000)Google Scholar.

24 Isfahani, Mirza Muhammad Sadiq Musavi Nami, Tarikh-i Giti-Gusha, ed. Nafisi, Saʿid (Tehran: Iqbal, 1937)Google Scholar; MSaruʾi, uhammad, Tarikh-i Muhammadi: Ahsan al-Tavarikh, ed. Majd, Ghulam Reza Tabatabaʾi (Tehran: Muʾassasih-i Intisharat-i Amir Kabir, 1992)Google Scholar; Shirazi, Khavari, Tarikh-i Zu al-QarnaynGoogle Scholar; Qajar, Mahmud Mirza, Tarikh-i Sahib-Qirani: Havadis-i Tarikh-i Silsilih-yi Qajar (1190–1248 A.H.), ed. Jalali, Nadirih (Tehran: Majlis, 2010)Google Scholar.

25 Julia Adams’ work, in particular, has revised traditional Weberian understandings of the state. See The Familial State.

26 For more on “states in the making,” see Stoler, Ann Laura and McGranahan, Carole, “Introduction: Refiguring Imperial Terrains,” in Imperial Formations, ed. Stoler, Ann Laura, McGranahan, Carole, and Perdue, Peter C. (Santa Fe, N.M.: School for Advanced Research Press, 2007), 8Google Scholar; Adams, The Familial State, 13.

27 On the Zand dīvān, see Perry, John, Karīm Khān Zand: A History of Iran, 1747–1779 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 217–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Mustawfi, Sharh-i Zindigani-yi Man, 2, 7; Iʿtimad al-Saltanih, Sadr al-Tavarikh, 21–22.

29 Iʿtimad al-Saltanih, Sadr al-Tavarikh, 20; Sulaymani, Alqab-i Rijal, 176; Bamdad, Sharh-i Hal, 2:37–39.

30 Abbas Amanat, “Ebrāhīm Kalāntar Šīrāzī,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, VIII/1, 66–71, accessed 10 January 2018, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ebrahim-kalantar-sirazi.

31 Khavari Shirazi, Tarikh-i Zu al-Qarnayn, 1:243.

32 For differences between the early Qajar and Safavid administration, see Hambly, “Iran During the Reigns of Fath ʿAlī Shāh and Muhammad Shāh,” 157n21.

33 Minorsky, Vladimir, Taẕkirat al-Mulūk: A Manual of Ṣafavid Administration (London: Luzac, 1943), 115Google Scholar.

34 C. Edmund Bosworth, “Dīvān ii. Government office,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, VII/4, pp. 432–438, accessed on 10 January 2018, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/divan#pt2.

35 Hambly, “Āghā Muḥammad Khān,” 114.

36 See Roemer, H.R., “The Safavid Period,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, ed. Jackson, Peter and Lockhart, Lawrence, vol. 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986): 330–31Google Scholar.

37 Examples include Mirza Shafiʿ (Shiraz), Mirza Abu al-Qasim Qaʾim-Maqam (Tabriz), and Khavari Shirazi (Shiraz).

38 See “Savad-i Faramin-i Salatin va Umaraʾ-yi Hukkam,” n.d. MS. 331, Majlis Library, Tehran (hereafter Majlis MS. 331). For a discussion of this source, see Assef Ashraf, “From Khan to Shah: State, Society, and Forming the Ties that Made Qajar Iran” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2016), 181–88.

39 On this point, see Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 3.

40 “Statement of the Fixed Revenue of Persia, 1811,” 8 August 1811. IOR/L/PS/9/67 f. 6, The British Library. There is no mention of an author on the document, but the date suggests it may have been Gore Ouseley, the British envoy in Iran in 1811. It is unclear how the Qajar government's financial information came into the hands of the British. Thus the figures in the statement should be read with caution. Nevertheless, the statement does illustrate that revenue was collected from at least Azerbaijan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Khurasan, Arak, Fars, and tribes like the Bakhtiyari and Khudabandihlu.

41 One tūmān was worth roughly half a pound sterling at this point. For a discussion of the tūmān’s value in the 19th century, see Issawi, Economic History of Iran, 343.

42 Ibid., 13.

43 There is a long tradition in Islamic history of family lineage playing a role in determining who is appointed to administrative posts. For examples from early Islamic history, see Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership, 98–104.

44 For an early Qajar taẕkirih of women poets, see Qajar, Mahmud Mirza, Tazkirih-yi Nuql-i Majlis, ed. Nasiri, Muhammad and Jalali, Nadirih (Tehran: Miras-i Maktub, 2006)Google Scholar. See also Brookshaw, Dominic Parviz, “Women in Praise of Women: Female Poets and Female Patrons in Qajar Iran,” Iranian Studies 46 (2013): 17–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Brookshaw, Dominic, “Qajar Confection: The Production and Dissemination of Women's Poetry in Early Nineteenth-century Iran,” Middle Eastern Literatures 17 (2014): 115–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On early-Qajar taẕkirihs, see Vanzan, Anna, “Adabiyan va Ijtimaʿ dar Dawran-i Zand va Avaʾil-i Qajar bar Asas-i Tazkirih-yi Jahan-ara,” Iranshenasi 9 (1997): 37–52Google Scholar; and Abe, Naofumi, “The Politics of Poetics in Early Qajar Iran: Writing Royal-Commissioned Tazkeras at Fath-ʿAli Shāh's Court,” Journal of Persianate Studies 10 (2017): 129–57Google Scholar.

45 See, for example, Dunbuli Maftun, Tazkirih-yi Nigaristan-i Dara, 78.

46 Ibid., 145.

47 For instance, Iʿtimad al-Saltanih writes that Mirza Agha Khan Nuri's ancestors were descended from Imam ʿAli's family, and were “venerable and respected” (mukarram va muḥtaram) during the Safavid, Afsharid, and Zand periods. Iʿtimad al-Saltanih, Sadr al-Tavarikh, 233.

48 See Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 7–13.

49 Amanat, “Ebrāhīm Kalāntar Šīrāzī.”

50 For an account of Iʿtimad al-Dawlih's execution, see Iʿtimad al-Saltanih, Sadr al-Tavarikh, 18–20.

51 Ibid., 15–21.

52 Ibid., 45.

53 Ibid., 69.

54 Iʿtizad al-Saltanih, Iksir al-Tavarikh, 247; Dunbuli Maftun, Tazkirih-yi Nigaristan-i Dara, 63–64. On Zinat al-Tavarikh, see Storey, Persian Literature, 1:147.

55 Another early Qajar minister whose family held administrative roles back to the Safavid era was the muʿayyir al-mamalik (mint-master). Dust ʿAli Khan Muʿayyir al-Mamalik writes that his ancestors served as mint-masters since “the middle of the Safavid period” (avāsiṭ-i dawrān-i Ṣafaviyyih), when they were known as muʿayyir-bāshī. Muʿayyir al-Mamalik, Rijal-i ʿAsr-i Nasiri, 27.

56 Farinaz Mutasharʿi, “Nasabnama-yi Qaʾim-Maqam,” Payam-i Baharistan 8 (Payiz 1387 Sh. / Autumn 2008): 376.

57 Khavari Shirazi, Tarikh-i Zu al-Qarnayn, 1:105; Iʿtizad al-Saltanih, Iksir al-Tavarīkh, 396; Dunbuli Maftun, Tazkirih-yi Nigaristan-i Dara, 113–114; Perry, Karīm Khān Zand, 218. See also Meredith, “Early Qajar Administration,” 79n16; and ʿAzud al-Dawlih, Tarikh-i ʿAzudi, 289.

58 Iʿtizad al-Saltanih, Iksir al-Tavarikh, 397.

59 Iʿtizad al-Saltanih describes Haydar ʿAli as “among the relations” (az aqvām) of Haji Ibrahim. Ibid., 396.

60 On this point, see Amanat, “Ebrāhīm Kalāntar Šīrāzī.”

61 ʿAzud al-Dawlih, Tarīkh-i ʿAzudi, 113.

62 Majlis MS. 331, ff. 26v and 27r.

63 For an introduction to Kalb-ʿAli Khan's life see Majlis MS. 331, ff. 25v and 26.

64 For some examples, see Maftun, ʿAbd al-Razzaq Bayg Dunbuli, Maʾasir-i Sultaniyyih, ed. Mansuri, Firuz (Tehran: Muʾassasih-yi Ittilaʾat, 2005), 93, 100Google Scholar; Mirza, Nadir, Tarikh va Jughrafi-yi Dar al-Saltanih-yi Tabriz, ed. Majd, Ghulam Reza Tabatabaʾi (Tabriz: Intisharat-i Sutudih, 1994), 222–23Google Scholar; and Akty Sobrannye Kavkazskoi͡u Arkheograficheskoi͡u Kommissiiei͡u (AKAK), (Tiflis: Glavnago Upravlenii͡a Nami͡estnika Kavkazskago, 1866), 1:408–10, 623–30Google Scholar.

65 Siyāq was the shorthand numerical system used for accounting purposes by secretaries and financial accountants across much of the Islamic world. For an introduction to the system, see Isfahani, Muhammad ʿAli Furugh, Furughistan: Danishnama-yi Fann-i Istifa va Siyaq, ed. Afshar, Iraj (Tehran: Miras-i Maktub, 1999)Google Scholar; and Bagheri, Mohammad, “Siyāqat Accounting: Its Origins, History, and Principles,” Acta Orientalia: Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 51 (1998): 297–301Google Scholar. On the “professional toolkit” of the scribal class, see Kinra, Rajeev, “Master and Munshī: A Brahman Secretary's Guide to Mughal Governance,” Indian Economic & Social History Review 47 (2010): 530CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 For more on the Devellū and the Quyunlū branches of the Qajars, and their significance, see Hambly, “Āghā Muḥammad Khān,” 106–13.

67 Iʿtimad al-Saltanih, Sadr al-Tavarikh, 105.

68 Morier, James, A Second Journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia minor, to Constantinople, between the years 1810 and 1816 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1818). 131Google Scholar. See also Hambly, “Āghā Muḥammad Khān,” 139–40.

69 Khavari Shirazi, Tarikh-i Zu al-Qarnayn, 1:244; Iʿtizad al-Saltanih, Iksir al-Tavarikh, 242–43.

70 Ashraf, Assef, “The Politics of Gift Exchange in Early Qajar Iran, 1785–1834,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58 (2016): 560CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 The “Sun Throne” was renamed in honor of Tavus Khanum because the latter was the shah's favorite wife. For more on her, see ʿAzud al-Dawlih, Tarikh-i ʿAzudi, 19–27, 71–76.

72 On the giving of the gift, see Khavari Shirazi, Tarikh-i Zu al-Qarnayn, 1:163. For a discussion, see Ashraf, “Politics of Gifts,” 564.

73 On this point, see Amanat, Abbas, “The Downfall of Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir and the Problem of Ministerial Authority in Qajar Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23 (1991): 577CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 The precise number of Fath-ʿAli Shah's wives and children is disputed. For some figures, see Sipihr, Muhammad Taqi, Nasikh al-Tavarikh, ed. Bihbudi, Muhammad Baqir (Tehran: Kitabfurushi-yi Islamiyyih, 1998), 2:140–46Google Scholar; Khavari Shirazi, Tarikh-i Zu al-Qarnayn, 2:969–1035; and ʿAzud al-Dawlih, Tarikh-i ʿAzudi, 336–64. See also Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 19; and Abrahamian, Ervand, A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 ʿAzud al-Dawlih, Tarikh-i ʿAzudi, 63, 65, 112, 213. See also Brookshaw, “Qajar Confection,” 118–19.

76 ʿAzud al-Dawlih, Tarikh-i ʿAzudi, 355; Khavari Shirazi, Tarikh-i Zu al-Qarnayn, 2:1018–19. The numbering is based on Khavari Shirazi's numbering.

77 ʿAzud al-Dawlih, Tarikh-i ʿAzudi, 356–57.

78 Ibid., 353–54.

79 A notable example is Shirazi, Khavari, “Khatimih-yi Ruznamchih-yi Humayun,” also published separately as Mirza Fazlullah Khavari Shirazi, Tazkirih-yi Khavari, ed. Muhaddis, Mir Hashim (Zanjan: Zangan, 2000)Google Scholar.

80 ʿAzud al-Dawlih, Tarikh-i ʿAzudi, 23.

81 Sipihr, Muhammad Taqi, Nasikh al-Tavarikh, ed. Bihbudi, Muhammad Baqir, 2nd ed. (Tehran: Kitabfurushi-yi Islamiyyih, 1965), 2:140–146Google Scholar.

82 For more see Iʿtimad al-Saltanih, Sadr al-Tavarikh, 31–35, 40–43.

83 For examples, see Ibid., 40, 81.

84 Khavari Shirazi, Tarikh-i Zu al-Qarnayn, 1:574; Iʿtimad al-Saltanih, Sadr al-Tavarikh, 136; Mustawfi, Sharh-i Zindigani-yi Man, 26; Shirazi, Hadiqat al-Shuʿara, 1497; Sulaymani, Alqab-i Rijal, 145.

85 Iʿtimad al-Saltanih, Sadr al-Tavarikh, 21–22; Khavari Shirazi, Tarikh-i Zu al-Qarnayn, 1:131.

86 Iʿtizad al-Saltanih, Iksir al-Tavarikh, 420, 500. Mirza Agha Khan Nuri would later become ṣadr-i aʿzam, during the 1850s, under Nasir al-Din Shah. Iʿtimad al-Saltanih, Sadr al-Tavarikh, 233–48.

87 On the themes of encounter and violence in Mughal India, see Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, Courtly Encounters: Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Truschke, Audrey, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016)Google Scholar. On the role of violence in court culture, see Elias, Norbert, The Court Society, trans. Jephcott, Edmund, 1st American ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983)Google Scholar.

88 On this point, see Ricks, Thomas M., “Towards a Social and Economic History of Eighteenth-Century Iran,” Iranian Studies 6 (1973): 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Iʿtimad al-Saltanih, Sadr al-Tavarikh, 53–54.

90 Ibid., 46.

91 For an account of this campaign, see Saruʾi, Tarikh-i Muhammadi, 292–93; Khavari Shirazi, Tarikh-i Zu al-Qarnayn, 1:45–50.

92 Iʿtimad al-Saltanih, Sadr al-Tavarikh, 46–47.

93 Muhammad Mahdi ibn Isfahani, Muhammad Riza, Nisf-i Jahan fi Taʿrif al-Isfahan, ed. Sutudah, Manuchihr (Isfahan: Taʿyid, 1961), 71, 75, 110, 281Google Scholar.

94 Qaʾim-Maqam, Mirza Abu al-Qasim, Munshaʾat-i Qaʾim-Maqam, ed. Qaʾim-Maqami, Jahangir (Tehran: Kitabkhanih-yi Ibn Sina, 1958)Google Scholar; Farahani, Mirza Buzurg Qaʾim Maqam, Jihadiyyih, ed. Qaʾim-Maqami, Jahangir (Tehran: Shirkat-i Ufsit, 1974)Google Scholar; Qaʾim-Maqam, Mirza Abu al-Qasim, Nama'ha-yi Parakandih-yi Qaʾim-Maqam-i Farahani, ed. Qaʾim-Maqami, Jahangir, 2 vols. (Tehran: Bunyad-i Farhang-i Iran, 1978)Google Scholar; Qaʾim-Maqam, Mirza Abu al-Qasim, Nama'ha-yi Siyasi va Tarikhi-i Sayyid al-Vuzaraʾ Qaʾim-Maqam Farahani, ed. Qaʾim-Maqami, Jahangir (Tehran: Danishgah-i Milli-i Iran, 1979)Google Scholar.

95 On this point, see ʿAzud al-Dawlih, Tarikh-i ʿAzudi, 150. For an introduction to his poetry, see Dunbuli Maftun, Tazkirih-yi Nigaristan-i Dara, 134–138; and Mahmud Mirza Qajar, Safinat al-Mahmud, 49–74. See also Brookshaw, “Qajar Confection.”

96 For a discussion of these works, see Amanat, Abbas, “‘Russian Intrusion into the Guarded Domain’: Reflections of a Qajar Statesman on European Expansion,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 113 (1993): 35–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 On the Amin al-Dawlih's land policies, see Walcher, In the Shadow of the King, 11–12. The rise of Haji Mirza Aghasi, prime minister from 1835 to 1848, was especially ruinous for these families. See Abbas Amanat, “Āqāsī,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, II/2, 183–88, accessed 10 January 2018, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/aqasff-ujuli-mnsz-adras-ivxni-ca.

98 See Iʿtimad al-Saltanih, Sadr al-Tavarikh, 23–24. See also Amanat, “Ebrāhīm Kalāntar Šīrāzī.”

99 He was married to Khurshid Kulah Khanum Shams al-Dawlih, the daughter of the shah and Tavus Khanum.

100 Saʿadat-Nuri, Rijal-i Dawrih-yi Qajar, 51; Sipihr, Nasikh al-Tavarikh, 1:20.

101 For the rivalry between Iʿtimad al-Dawlih and Mirza Shafiʿ, see Sadr al-Tavarikh, 23–24, 46.

Figure 0

TABLE 1. Dīvān Ministers

Figure 1

FIGURE 1. Iʿtimad al-Dawlih (standing) with Agha Muhammad Khan. © The British Library Board. Inside back cover of Add. 24903, The British Library.

Figure 2

FIGURE 2. Mirza Riza Quli, the munshī al-mamālik, presenting gifts to Fath-ʿAli Shah Qajar © The British Library Board. IO Islamic 3442, f 64v, The British Library.

Figure 3

FIGURE 3. Geographic origins of ministers. The size of the dots reflects the number of ministers from that town or city. Map by Assef Ashraf.