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Ahmad Shah Qajar
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Ahmad Shah Qajar (???? ??? ????? in Persian) ?(January 21, 1898 - 21 February, 1930) was Shah of Persia from July 16, 1909, to October 31, 1925 and the last of the Qajar dynasty.
d acceded to the Peacock Throne on July 16, 1909, following the overthrow of his father and predecessor, Mohammad Ali Shah, who had attempted to reverse earlier constitutional restrictions on royal power, and thus enraged the majority of Iranians.
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Ahmad Shah Qajar (???? ??? ????? in Persian) ?(January 21, 1898 - 21 February, 1930) was Shah of Persia from July 16, 1909, to October 31, 1925 and the last of the Qajar dynasty.
Reign
Ahmad acceded to the Peacock Throne on July 16, 1909, following the overthrow of his father and predecessor, Mohammad Ali Shah, who had attempted to reverse earlier constitutional restrictions on royal power, and thus enraged the majority of Iranians. Ahmad Shah inherited a kingdom in turmoil, frustrated with British and Russian imperialism and the absolute rule of his father. He attempted to fix the damage done by his father by appointing the best ministers he could find. He was, however, an ineffective ruler who was faced with internal unrest and foreign intrusions, particularly by the British and Russian Empires. In 1917, Britain used Persia as the springboard for an attack into Russia in an unsuccessful attempt to reverse the Russian Revolution of 1917. The newly born Soviet Union responded by annexing portions of northern Persia as buffer states much like its Tsarist predecessor. Marching on Tehran, the Soviets extracted ever more humiliating concessions from the Qajar government - whose ministers Ahmad Shah was often unable to control. The weakness of the central bureaucracy in the face of such aggression by an atheist foreign power sparked seething anger among many traditional Iranians - including the young Ruhollah Khomeini, who would later condemn both communism and monarchy as treason against Iran's sovereignty and the divine laws of Islam.
Eventually, the British crown and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company decided that the old, decaying feudalistic Qajar system was no longer useful to them, and shifted their support to Seyyed Zia'eddin Tabatabaee and Colonel Reza Khan Mirpanj of the Cossack Brigade, who believed in a heavily centralized authoritarian government that would bring the entire nation under his direct control. By 1923, with Reza's power rapidly on the rise, the young Shah's days in power were numbered.
Exile
Ahmad Shah was pushed aside in a military coup in 1921 by his Minister of War, Colonel Reza Khan, who subsequently seized the post of Prime Minister. Stripped of all his remaining power, Ahmad went into exile with his family in 1923. He was formally deposed on October 31, 1925, when Reza Khan was proclaimed Shah by the Founders Assembly, taking the name Reza Shah Pahlavi.
He died in 1930 at Neuilly-sur-Seine, outside Paris, France. His brother, former crown prince Mohammad Hassan Mirza, assured the physical continuation of the dynasty through his descendants.
Honours
See also
External links
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- Shahab Mirzai, Mohammad-Hasan Mirza: The last Crown Prince of Qajar, in Persian, Jadid Onlin, 2008, .
A slide show of some photographs from a collection belonging to Mohammad-Hasan Mirza, by Shahab Mirzai, Jadid Online, 2008, (2 min).
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