History of Iran

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Iran before Iranians

The Elamite civilization in Iran, first developed in the Susian plain, under the influence of nearby Sumeria and Mesopotamia in the Tigris-Euphrates valley.

Around 3500 B.C., animal drawn wheeled carts were in use in Sumeria. They also used ploughs to till their land, and oars to propel their ships on the Euphrates river. The Sumerians were the most advanced and complex civilization in the world at that time, and by 3100 B.C. they had invented a system of writing which was the first of its kind in the world.

In 3000 B.C. a group of people called the Akkadians drifted into the northern Sumerian territory. The Akkadians adopted some aspects of Sumerian culture and for that reason, the region is sometimes referred to as Sumer - Akkad. Around 2340 B.C. Sargon, ruler of the Akkad defeated Sumer and went on to conquer Elam and the mountainous lands to the east. His empire spread from the Mediterranean Sea to the Caspian Sea in the north, and the Persian Gulf in the South.

The Guti, among other tribes living in the mountainous areas controlled many of the routes that crossed western Iran. They took advantage of periods of weakness in Babylonian power and, around 2200 B.C., even succeeded in invading Babylon, causing the fall of the empire of Akkad.

This fall allowed Elam to capture Susa, a city that was to become one of its capitals. Elam developed into a civilization that could be compared with that of Sumer, and during the 13th and 12th centuries B.C., at the height of its glory, it succeeded in defeating Assyria and Babylon.

Throughout the centuries that followed, the Assyrian Empire continued to fight for control of the region, at times succeeding with great force. They waged war with deliberate frightfulness, sacking cities, and killing their inhabitants indiscriminately. By 900 B.C. Assyria was busy restoring its control over Babylonia, and by 700 B.C. the Assyrian Empire included the entire Tigris-Euphrates region, and all the Eastern Shore of the Mediterranean. It was the most powerful empire the world had yet seen.

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Map of the Cradle of Civilization 6000 to 4000 B.C.

Arts

The Indo-European Aryans or Iranians arrived on the plateau during the second millennium BC, and it is at Tappeh Sialk that the remains of their most ancient dwellings have been found. The rich had jewels made of silver, and the poor of bronze or iron. Vast finds of pottery at Tappeh Sialk give us an insight into their art.

The most representative type, a long spouted pitcher used in funeral rituals, was decorated with the head of an animal. The artist accentuated the resemblance of the animal by drawing around the spout. For example, if he wanted to increase the resemblance of a bird, the artist drew a series of triangles suggesting a collar of feathers or a pair of wings.

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Ceramic spouted jar
(dating from the 10th century BC and found in Tappeh Sialk)

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Aryan or Indo-European is the general name given to the people thought to be originated from the steppe of central and southern Asia. Around 4000-3000 BC., these people started to emigrate to the warmer places in the south or west. Most scholars think of this as the beginning of the distinction between Indo-European tribes. Tribes who emigrated to the west became the ancestors of Germans, Slavs, Greeks, Latins, and probably Celts. People who chose the south as their destination came to be known as Indo-Iranians. There are also a rather small group of people who most likely chose not to participate in this great migration. These later entered the pages of history as Scythians and Samarians, although they are also believed to be nomadic Indo-Iranians since their language and customs are closely tide to the Ancient Persians.

There are scholarly arguments going on for a long time about the truth of the theory of Indo-Europeans, whether this migration really happened or not, and whether these people are in fact related. Reasons presented to support this theory are based on language and cultural evidence. Linguistic studies suggest close similarities between the ancient forms of modern Indo-European languages, in their grammar and in their vocabulary structure. Many words still in use are alike, and many others are the changed forms of similar ancient forms. Cultural background also provide basis for this theory, horse breeding, similar agricultural methods, strong fighting abilities, similar religious beliefs and mythological superstitions seem to suggest that all this started from a common background, probably from a time when all these people were the same. Today, the most wide spread theory specifies the people of Europe (with the exceptions of Estonians, Finns, and Magyars), Iran, and Indian subcontinent to belong to a common, Indo-European background. Until a strong argument proves otherwise, we shall undertake this theory as the closest thing to the truth.

4000-3000 BC is the approximate date for the migration of Indo-Iranian tribes from their Central Asian settlement, however, recent Archaeological, and Anthropological discoveries in Central Asia seem to provide information leading us to believe that this date could have been later, closer to 2500 or 2000 BC.

The Indo-Iranian settlement known as Iran-Vij to the Iranologists, based on the term Aerianem-Vaejou in Avesta, is a half mythical place whose location is an object of controversies. Opinions vary from Northern Caucasus to the western shore of Lake Aral (Kharazm) and the Oxus river. In Avesta and Veda, this place is described as "Heart of Cold" and supposedly the capital of the last common Indo-Iranian king. This king-hero, Yima (Yama in Sanskrit, Jamm in Modern Persian) was the source of all technology, and expander of the land. In one of the stories in Avesta, Yima realized that Iran-Vij is no longer big enough to hold all his people, so he decided to expand his land. He shoved his sword into the earth three times, and made it expand, respectively 1/3, 2/3, and 3/3, during a period of three 600 winters (Each winter being a year, since Iran Vij had only two seasons, Winter and Summer). This can be seen as a metaphor for the further Indo-Iranian migrations which led them into the Iranian Plateau and later on into India.

Indo-Iranians themselves were later divided into two major sections, Indians and Iranians. Indians continued their way further into the Dakan (Northern India), were stopped by local Dravidians, and settled there. They mixed up with the people, kept their own religion, and became present day Indians. Iranians, on the other hand, were themselves divided into three major tribes with each having its own sub-tribes. These tribes and range of their initial domination in the Iranian Plateau were

Maad (Medians): central and north-western parts.

Paars (Persians): In south and south-western parts.

Parthav (Parthians): north-eastern and eastern parts.

These tribes started their career in Iran as the hired warriors for the local chiefs, many archaeological discoveries such as Syalk suggest this. Since they knew the secret to horse riding and had Iron weapons, these warriors were able to put a stop on the constant invasion of villages by foreign powers, namely Sumerians and Babylonians. As the time went by, these mercenaries occupied the position of their superiors, and since they would reproduce faster than the local inhabitants, they soon took over the whole land. They also fought with some of the locals to submit them, these wars are reflected on the ancient mythologies talking about Iranians fighting the evil Deevs, huge stature creatures who hated Iranians. There is a theory going on that these Deevs could have been the ancient inhabitants, mainly the kadusis who lived behind the Alborz Mountains, who were defending their homes from the invading, horse riding foreigners.

When they finally took over most of the plateau, Iranian tribes started organizing their domains as they have been doing in their original homeland. Small villages, headed by local mayors, and each independent of each other with almost no unity. This method soon proved useless, especially under the constant attack of new masters of Mesopotamia, Assyrians. Slowly, the Iranian tribes re-organized themselves into kingdoms, and then empires. The first of these kingdoms was Mede

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During the second millennium B.C., successive Indo-European (Aryan) invaders broke through into the Iranian plateau, either from the Caucasus, or through Central Asia. Those who settled in Iran were divided into tribes that were distinguished from each other by their different dialects. The most famous of these tribes were the Persians (Pars), and the Medes (Maad).

The Persians eventually settled in the province of Fars and in the Bakhtiari Mountains, while the Medes occupied the Hamedan plain. The Medes, were fierce warriors and skilled horse breeders, and at first were organized as independent tribes; however, this changed under the tribal chief, Deioces. The Median capital was established at Ekbatan or "Place of Assembly", modern Hamedan. Under the rule of Cyaxares (633-584 B.C.), the Medes put an end to centuries of war against the Assyrians. Their capture of Ninava in 612 B.C. finally brought down the Assyrian Empire. For more than half a century after the fall of Ninava, the Medes ruled over a vast empire with borders stretching from Afghanistan to Turkey.
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Map of the Median Empire

Arts

The Medes first appeared on the historical scene around the 9th century BC, when they were mentioned in contemporary Assyrian texts. They were an Indo-European tribe who, like the Persians had entered western Iran at some earlier and as yet undetermined date. Very little of their artistry has survived, apart from a few rock tombs, some funerary relieves and some pottery.

The frustrating absence of remains attributable to the Medes is in marked contrast to the succeeding Achaemenians.

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The Persians achieved unity under the leadership of Achaemenes, whose descendant Cyrus brought the Achaemenian Empire onto the center stage of world history. Cyrus was the descendant of a long line of Persian kings and should be referred to as Cyrus II, having been named after his grandfather.

According to the writings of Herodotus, the last ruler of the Medes, Astyages (585 - 550 B.C.) was defeated and captured by Cyrus in 549 B.C.. In all probability Cyrus had the support of the Babylonian sovereign Nabonidus. The Persian king overthrew the Median empire and seized Ecbatana (Place of Assembly), which became his capital. He spared the defeated ruler, preferring not to indulge in the mass killings, which until then had been a feature of Assyrian victories. On the contrary he brought nobles and civilian officials, both Median and Persian, into the government of his kingdom.

From 546 B.C., Cyrus II applied himself to the task of attacking the powerful kingdom of Lydia, where the famous Croesus ruled. There were two battles, then Cyrus besieged and captured Sardis before going on to subdue the rich Greek cities. From this point onwards Cyrus was master of all Asia Minor. He now turned his attention towards his eastern frontiers and conquered a string of provinces one after the other, even crossing the Oxus in order to reach another river, the Jaxartes, which flows into the Aral Sea. A number of fortresses were then built for the purpose of keeping out the nomads of Central Asia.

In 539 B.C., the Persian sovereign assembled the bulk of his army and left his capital, Ecbatana, to follow the course of the Tigris down to Babylon, where he attacked Nabonidus. The city which had been capital of Mesopotamia for a thousand years offered little resistance, and welcomed Cyrus as a liberator.

As usual, Cyrus showed magnanimity in victory. The respect he showed for the religions of others earned him the homage of all Babylonians; Syria and Phoenicia thus came under Achaemenian law. Cyrus the Great now held sway over all the kingdoms of the Near and Middle East. In the space of less than twenty years he had assembled the greatest empire the world had ever seen. All he needed now was Egypt! However, soon after his son Cambyses had been entrusted with making the preparations for such a campaign, Cyrus himself was killed in battle on the eastern frontier of his empire.

When Cyrus died in 530 B. C., the Achaemenian Empire was well established. The sovereign had founded a new capital city at Pasargad in Fars. Similarly, he had worked out the administration of the empire, appointing a governor, or satrap, to represent him in each province. He imposed an annual tax in the form of a tribute on all the races he conquered, to which the Achaemenian power owed much of its wealth and magnificence.

Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses II (530-522 B.C.), After a victorious campaign against Egypt, he annexed the country to his father's empire, but during his absence the throne was seized by the Magus Gaumata, and the King died mysteriously. However, Darius I (522-486 B.C.) ended this reign, when he proclaimed himself the legitimate king. He then continued the work of Cyrus, creating 23 provinces, or satrapies, and building the administrative and religious cities of Susa and Persepolis.

The magnificent palace complex of Persepolis was founded around 518 B.C., although more than a century passed before it was completed.

Through his military campaigns, Darius extended the frontiers of the empire; in the east, around 512 B.C., he conquered Gandhara and the Indus Valley, while in the west, he attacked the Scythians, whom he never managed to subdue, and then turned against Greece.

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A view over Persepolis from the mountain Kuh-i-Rahmat

While attempting to put down a rebellion in Egypt in 490 B.C., Darius suffered a humiliating defeat at Marathon, near Athens. He died in 486 B.C. without renewing his attack on Greece.

After the death of Darius, the immense empire established under the first Achaemenian rulers was threatened, as Persian authority could no longer contain the rebellions of the satrapies.

Xerxes (486-465 B.C.), the son of Darius, put down revolts in Egypt and Babylonia with great severity and renewed the struggle against Greece. He quickly subdued Thessaly and Macedonia, then captured Attica and Athens, which he burned down; however, in 480 B.C. the Persian fleet was destroyed at Salamis.

Discouraged, Xerxes returned to Persia, and never left again. Gradually, the immense empire disintegrated; the Greek cities in Ionia, Egypt, then Pheonicia and Syria broke away, followed by the regions to the west of the Euphrates. Artaxerxes III (358-338) made one last attempt to reunite the empire, brutally taking back Egypt and quelling the revolt of the satraps, but a new power was already emerging in West-Macedonia.

The last Achaemenian ruler, Darius III (336 - 330 B.C.) was weak, and his cowardice at two major campaigns, the first at Issus (333 B.C.) and the other at Gaugamela two years later surrendered the empire to Alexander.

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Persepolis, the Throne of Jamshid, was a massive and magnificent palace complex built from about 512 BC and completed over the next 150 years. Persepolis was burnt to the ground during Alexander the Great's time, in 331 BC, although historians are divided about whether it was accidental or in retaliation for the destruction of Athens by Xerxes.

The ruins you see today are a mere shadow of Persepolis' former glory, but you can still get a great idea of its majesty if you carry a map and use a bit of imagination. Incredibly the whole site was covered with dust, earth and the sands of time before being rediscovered in the early 1930s.

One of the first things you'll see is Xerxes' Gateway, covered with inscriptions and carvings in Elamite and other ancient languages. The gateway leads to the immense Apadana Palace complex where the kings received visitors and celebrations were held. Plenty of gold and silver was discovered in the palace, but it was predictably looted by Alexander the not-so-Great, and what he left behind is in the National Museum in Tehran. The largest hall in Persepolis was the Palace of 100 Columns,
probably one of the biggest buildings constructed during the great Achaemenian period, once used as a reception hall for Darius I. Persepolis is 57km (35mi) from Shiraz, just off the Esfahan road, accessible from Shiraz by bus and shared taxi.


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The Greate Darius



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The Tomb of Cirus The Great

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Legend of the birth and rise of Cyrus the great

Historical Account

Video of Pasargad


Cyrus (Kourosh in Persian; Kouros in Greek) is regarded as one of the most outstanding figures in history. His success in creating and maintaining the Achaemenian Empire was the result of an intelligent blending of diplomatic and military skills and his rule was tempered with wisdom and tact. The Persians called him 'father'; the Greeks, whom he conquered, saw him as 'a worthy ruler and lawgiver' and the Jews regarded him as 'the Lord's anointed'.

His ideals were high, as he laid down that no man was fit to rule unless, he was more capable than all of his subjects. As an administrator Cyrus' insight was great, and he showed himself both intelligent and reasonable, and thereby made his rule easier than that of his previous conquerors.

His humanity was equaled by his freedom from pride, which induced him to meet people on the same level, instead of affecting the remoteness and aloofness, which characterized the great monarchs who preceded and followed him.

History has further labeled him as a genius, diplomat, manager, and leader of men, the first great propagandist and able strategist. Cyrus was indeed worthy of the title "Great".

Cyrus the Great, came to power after deposing the Median king Astyages in 550 BC. After a series of victories over the Lydian king, Croesus, in 546 BC, and after his successful campaign against the Babylonians in 539 BC, Cyrus established a large empire stretching from the Mediterranean in the west to eastern Iran, and from the Black Sea in the north to Arabia.

Whereas security was his main concern in the east, the immense wealth of the Greek maritime cities of the Ionian coast complemented their value as strategic bases in the west.



He was killed in 530 BC during a campaign in the north-eastern part of his empire.

Xenophon in the Cyropaedia wrote:

"He is able to extend the fear of himself over so great a part of the world that he astonished all, and no one attempted anything against him. He was able to inspire all with so great a desire of pleasing him that they wished to be governed by his opinions".

Legend of the birth and rise of Cyrus the great

Herodotus, the Greek historian of the mid-fourth century BC, best describes the legend of Cyrus and the myths surrounding his birth. According to him, Astyages was Cyrus' maternal grandfather, who dreamt that his daughter Mandane produced so much water that it overran his city and the whole of Asia. When the holy men (magi) heard of the king's dream, they warned him of its consequences.

As a result, her father gave Mandane in marriage to a Persian called Cambyses who, although of noble descent, was considered by Astyages to be "much lower than a Mede of middle estate". Mandane and Cambyses were not married more than a year when Astyages once again had a dream; this time he saw a vine growing from inside Mandane's womb, which overshadowed the whole of Asia. The magi immediately saw a bad omen and told the king that Mandane's son would usurp his throne. The king sent for his pregnant daughter and kept her under tight guard until the child was born. Royal instructions were given to Harpagus, a Median nobleman and confidant of the king, that he should kill and dispose of the newly born child. But Harpagus decided not to kill the baby himself.

Instead, he called for a royal herdsman and ordered him to carry out the king's command, adding that he would be severely punished if the child was allowed to live. However, the herdsman's own wife had given birth to a still-born child during her husband's absence, and she convinced him to keep the royal baby and bring it up as their own. They then presented Harpagus with the corpse of their still-born child, claiming that it was the prince.

Cyrus soon developed into an outstanding young boy, overshadowing his friends and showing royal qualities of leadership. One day, during a game with other children, Cyrus was chosen to play king. Promptly assuming this role, he punished the son of a distinguished Mede who refused to take orders from him. The father of the badly beaten boy complained to King Astyages, who in turn called for Cyrus in order to punish him. When asked why he behaved in such a savage manner, Cyrus defended his action by explaining that, because he was playing the role of king, he had every reason to punish someone who did not obey his command. Astyages knew immediately that these were not the words of a herdsman's son and realized that the boy was his own grandson, the son of Mandane. Later the story was confirmed by the herdsman, albeit with great reluctance. Astyages then punished Harpagus for his disobedience by serving him the cooked remains of his own son's body at a royal dinner. On the advice of the magi, the king allowed Cyrus to return to Persia to his real parents.

Harpagus vowed to avenge his son's death and encouraged Cyrus to seize his grandfather's throne. Herodotus described how Harpagus wrote his plan on a piece of paper and inserted it into the belly of a slain hare, which had not yet been skinned. The skin was sewn up and the hare given to a trusted servant who, acting as a hunter, traveled to Persia and presented it to Cyrus, telling him to cut it open. After reading Harpagus' letter, Cyrus began to play with the idea of seizing power from Astyages. As part of a careful plan, he persuaded a number of the Persian tribes to side with him to throw off the yoke of Astyages and the Medes. Cyrus succeeded in overthrowing his grandfather and became the ruler of the united Medes and Persians....

This fascinating account by Herodotus is still regarded by some as a reliable source on Cyrus' birth and coming to power, although it has a strong mythological flavour.

Among later sources, one story is of particular interest. It describes how the baby Cyrus, abandoned in the woods by a shepherd, is fed by a dog until the shepherd returns with his wife and takes the infant into their care. This tale is similar to mythological stories surrounding the infancy of other heroes and rulers (for example, Romulus and Remus, the twins who founded Rome, were saved and raised by a wolf).

Historical Account

The founder of the Persian monarchy was Hakhamanish or Achaemenes, Prince of the tribe of Pasargadae; his capital was the city bearing the same name, ruins of which still exist, dating from the era of Cyrus the Great. No definite acts can be traced to Achaemenes, after whom the dynasty was named; but the fact that his memory was highly revered tends to prove that he did in truth mold the Persian tribes into a nation before they stepped onto the stage of history. His son Chishpish or Teispes took advantage of the defenseless condition of Elam, after its overthrow by Assurbanipal, and occupied the district of Anshan, assuming the title of "Great King, King of Anshan.". Upon his death one of his sons succeeded to Anshan and the other to Fars.

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As shown in the above table, this division started the double line, a reference made by Darius in the Behistun inscription:

"There are eight of my race who have been kings before me; I am the ninth. In a double line we have been kings".

Cyrus the descendant of a long line of kings should actually be called Cyrus II, because he was named after his grandfather. He looked upon himself as the 'king of Anshan' and belonged to the ruling house of Persia, but Cyrus also had Median connections through his mother, whose father was supposedly Astyages, king of the Medes.

According to Herodotus, the last ruler of Media, Astyages (reigned 585-550 B.C), was defeated by Cyrus in 549 BC. Ecbatana, the royal city, was captured in 550 BC.

The famous tablet of the Annals of Nabonidus tells the story:
"[His troops] he collected, and against Cyrus, king of Anshan,... he marched. As for Astyages, his troops revolted against him and he was seized (and) delivered to Cyrus. Cyrus (marched) to Ecbatana, the royal city. The silver, gold, goods and substance of Ecbatana he took to the land of Anshan..."

Cyrus thus established himself king of the Medes and the Persians.

We are still not sure when Cyrus succeeded to the Persian throne. He may have been asked to accept the throne upon his capture of Ecbatana, which after all was in his family. In any case we know that Hystaspes, father of Darius, never reigned; though he was the son of Arsames.

A few years later Croesus, the king of Lydia (notorious for his vast wealth), saw an opportunity with the change of regime in Iran to expand his kingdom. He crossed the river Halys, previously regarded as the boundary between the Lydians to the west and the Medes and Persians to the east. Cyrus hastened westwards, and after an encounter at Pteria forced Croesus to retire to his capital city of Sardis. In his retreat, Croesus lay waste the countryside to impede the march of the Persian army. He foolishly assumed that Cyrus would not follow as winter was nearing and he was already far from home. But Cyrus followed him, and in an historic battle in 546 BC on the open plains of Hermus defeated the Lydians using the now famous ruse of covering the front of his army with camels, the smell of which terrified Crosus' cavalry and made them unusable.

Croesus then retreated to his 'impregnable' capital Sardis, to wait it out until his allies assembled. Herodotus tells the story of its capture.
"When the city was blockaded for fourteen days, Cyrus offered a rich reward to the first man who entered it. A Mardian soldier saw a member of the garrison descend what looked like from a distance an inaccessible cliff, pick up his lost helmet and return. He noted the track and with a few comrades surprised the careless garrison, and opened the gates to the Persian army..."

Croesus was first taken to Persia as a prisoner but subsequently lived as a great noble at the royal court. That he was not put to death seems probable, for Cyrus also spared the life of Astyages. Croesus and other Ionians were the first of many foreigners, particularly Greeks, to enter the service of the royal household; for the Persians this was of immense practical and cultural benefit. The conquest of Asia Minor had brought them into contact with a civilization totally different from their own, in government, religion and concepts of life.

Cyrus left his general Harpagus behind to consolidate the Persian position, and shortly afterwards Lycia, Caria and even the Greek cities of Asia Minor were added to his newly founded Persian empire. The fact that the Persians encountered little initial resistance was partly due to the Greek merchants wishing to expand their commerce as part of a large empire. Already, much of the trade lay within the empire or in areas about to be conquered.

About this time Cyrus built himself a capital in keeping with a king of his status, at Pasargadae (the name may mean - the Persian settlement) in Farsi.

In 540 BC Cyrus turned his attention to Babylon. Nabonidus, who through conspiracy had taken the Babylonian throne, failed to maintain internal union and national security and military affairs had been handed to his son, Belshazzar. Further discontent in Babylonia was provoked by Nabonidus's religious policies, and Cyrus was able to take advantage of this internal division. The fact that Prince Belshazzar was more interested in amusement than in safeguarding his people aided Cryus' entry, which according to Herodotus and Xenophon, was effected by a daring piece of strategy.
"...While Belshazzar had a great feast, the Euphrates, which flowed through Babylon, was diverted by the Persians into a great trench constructed outside the walls. Thus the Persian army, on a night when the Babylonians were engaged in a religious festival, were able to advance along the dry, or at least passable, riverbed..." Owing to the size of the place, states Xenophon, "...the inhabitants of the central parts, long after the outer portions of the town were taken, knew nothing of what had changed, but... continued dancing and reveling until they learnt of the capture."

Though there is no justification for rejecting this story the real reason for the weakness in Babylon's defense was probably due to the revolt of Urbaru.

Babylon reportedly surrendered to Cyrus with scarcely a struggle, and if there was no resistance it was because the city was taken completely by surprise. Cyrus, however, legitimized his succession as king by 'taking the hand of the god Bel' and his persuasive propaganda convinced the Babylonians that Marmuk, their supreme deity, had directed his steps towards the city.

Cyrus was now master of an area stretching from the Mediterranean to eastern Iran and from the black sea to the borders of Arabia. It was with some justification, then, that in the so-called 'Cyrus Cylinder' (housed at the British Museum) - a barrel shaped clay cylinder inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform recording the capture of Babylon - Cyrus describes himself as the 'ruler of the world.' Cyrus also relates how he repatriated various peoples and restored the 'images' (of the gods) to their shrines. The Jews are not mentioned by name, but it is clear from the Book of Ezra (I, I-3) that the captives deported by Nebuchadnezzar were at this time allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. This document was part of the doctrine which Cyrus sought to put into practice with a view to bringing peace to mankind, and later it was hailed as the first Charter of Human Rights. Although sections of the cylinder have been destroyed through time, the principal message of Cyrus' Declaration is readily apparent:

Throughout his reign, Cyrus was continually preoccupied with his eastern frontiers. Nine years after the conquest of Babylon he was killed in battle, though the circumstances of his death are not clear. Cyrus' body was brought back to Pasargade; his tomb, which still exists, consists of a single chamber built on a foundation course of six steps. According to Arrian (AD c. 96-180), the body was placed in a golden sarcophagus, and the tomb, as Plutarch (AD 46-120) reports bore the inscription.


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The famous clay cylinder of Cyrus the Great,
written in Babylonian cuneiform, recording his capture of Babylon in 539 BC.

"I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, mighty king, king of Babylon, king of the land of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters, son of Cambyses, ...king of Anshan, grandson of Cyrus, ...descendant of Teispes, ...progeny of an unending royal line, whose rule Bel and Nabu cherish, whose kingship they desire for their hearts' pleasures.
When I, well-disposed, entered Babylon, I established the seat of government in the royal palace amidst jubilation and rejoicing. Marduk, the great God, caused the big-hearted inhabitants of Babylon to come to me. I sought daily to worship him. My numerous troops moved about undisturbed in the midst of Babylon. I did not allow any to terrorize the land of Sumer and Akkad. I kept in view the needs of Babylon and all its sanctuaries to promote their well being. The citizens of Babylon ...their dilapidated dwellings I restored. I put an end to their misfortunes...
...the cities of Ashur and Susa, Agade, Eshnuna, the cities of Zamban, Meurnu, Der, as far as the region of the land of Gutium, the holy cities beyond the Tigris whose sanctuaries had been in ruins over a long period, the gods whose abode is in the midst of them, I returned to the places and housed them in lasting abodes. I gathered together all their inhabitants and restored to them their dwellings

[Asalbanoo]

he Achaemenian period may be said to begin in 549 BC when Cyrus the Great deposed the Median king Astyages. Cyrus (559-530 BC), the first great Persian king, created an empire extending from Anatolia to the Persian Gulf incorporating the former realms of both Assyria and Babylonia; and Darius the Great (522-486 BC), who succeeded him after various disturbances, extended the boundaries of the empire further still.
Fragmentary remains of Cyrus' Palace at Pasargad in Fars indicate that Cyrus favored a monumental style of building. He incorporated decoration based partly on Urartian, partly on the older Assyrian and Babylonian art, as he wished his empire to seem to be the rightful heir of Urartu, Assur, and Babylon.

Pasargad covered an area almost 1.5 miles in length and included palaces, a temple and the tomb of the king of kings. Enormous winged bulls, which no longer survive flanked the entrance to the gate-house, but a stone relief on one of the door jams is still preserved. It is adorned with a bas-relief representing a four-winged guardian spirit in a long garment of Elamite type, whose head is surmounted by a complicated headdress of Egyptian origin. In the early 19th century an inscription over the figure could still be seen and deciphered: "I, Cyrus, king, the Achaemenian [have done this].
The central hall in one of the palaces had bas-reliefs showing the king followed by a pastoral bearer. Here for the first time on an Iranian sculpture appear garments with folds, in contrast to the straight-falling robe of the four winged guardian spirit, executed according to the traditions of ancient oriental art, which did not allow the slightest movement or life. Achaemenian art here marks the first step in the exploration of a means of expression that was to be developed by the artists of Persepolis.
The rock cut tombs in Pasargad, Naqsh-e Rustam, and elsewhere are a valuable source of information about the architectural forms used in the Achaemenian period. The presence of Ionic capitols in one of the earliest of these tombs suggests the serious possibility that this important architectural form was introduced into Ionian Greece from Persia, contrary to what is commonly supposed.
Under Darius, the Achaemenian Empire embraced Egypt and Libya in the west and extended to the river Indus in the east. During his rule, Pasargad was relegated to a secondary role and the new ruler quickly began to build other palaces, first at Susa and then at Persepolis
Although Darius constructed a number of buildings at Susa, he is better known for his work at Persepolis (the palace at Persepolis built by Darius and completed by Xerxes), 30-km south-west of Pasargad.
The decoration includes the use of carved wall slabs representing the endless processions of courtiers, guards, and tributary nations from all parts of the Persian Empire. Sculptors working in teams carved these relieves, and each team signed its work with a distinctive mason's mark.
These relieves are executed in a dry and almost coldly formal, though neat and elegant, style which was henceforth characteristic of Achaemenian art and contrasts with the movement and zest of Assyrian and neo-Babylonian art. This art was supposed to capture the spectator by its symbolism, and convey a sense of grandeur; artistic values were therefore relegated to second place.

The king is the dominant figure in the sculpture at Persepolis, and it seems that the whole purpose of the decorative scheme was to glorify the king, his majesty and his power
Here, also we can see that the Persepolis sculptures differ from the Assyrian reliefs, which are essentially narrative and aim to illustrate the achievements of the king. The similarities are such, though, that it is obvious much of the inspiration for this sort of relief must have come from Assyria. Greek, Egyptian, Urartian, Babylonian, Elamite and Scythian influences can also been seen in Achaemenian art. This is perhaps not surprising, in view of the wide range of people employed in the construction of Persepolis.

Achaemenian art, however, was also capable of influencing that of others and its impress is most noticeable in the early art of India, with which it probably came into contact through Bactria.
The realism of Achaemenian art manifests its power in the representation of animals, as can be seen in the many relieves at Persepolis. Carved in stone or cast in bronze, the animals served as guardians to the entrances or, more often as supports for vases, in which they were grouped by threes, their union a revival of the old traditions of tripods with legs ending in a hoof or a lion's paw. The Achaemenian artists were worthy descendants of the animal sculptors of Luristan.
Silver-work, glazing, goldsmiths' work, bronze casting, and inlay work are all well represented in Achaemenian art. The Oxus treasure, a collection of 170 items of gold and silver found by the Oxus river date from the 5th to the 4th century BC. Among the best-known piece is a pair of gold armlets with terminals in the shape of horned griffins, originally inlaid with glass and coloured stones.
Achaemenian art is a logical continuation of what preceded it, culminating in the superb technical skill and unprecedented splendour so evident at Persepolis. The art of the Achaemenians is deeply rooted in the era when the first Iranians arrived on the plateau, and its wealth has accumulated throughout the centuries to constitute at last, the splendid realisation of Iranian art today.

[Asalbanoo]

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
Stone relief of gate at Pasargad
(showing a four-winged guardian figure
Watercolour painted by Sir Robert Ker Porter, 1818.)

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A Pair of winged human-headed lions beneath a winged disk,
(from the Palace of Darius at Susa. Now held at The Louvre, Paris.)



[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
Massive gold armlet from the Oxus Treasure
(with terminals in the form of winged griffins.
Originally inlaid with glass and coloured stones.)

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Sumptuous golden drinking cup
(from the Achaemenian period, found in Hamadan.
Ornamented with a stylized winged lion.)

[Asalbanoo]

The Helenistic period and the Seleucids

Arts

The conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great's armies left the Persian army in complete disarray. Alexander captured Babylon, Susa and then Persepolis. The splendor of Persepolis was short lived, as the palaces were looted and burned by Alexander in just one night.

The Greeks were then in possession of the ancient world from Egypt to Indus, and from Oxus to the Danube. Alexander followed a policy of integration between the Greeks and the Persian communities, encouraging marriages and applying the formula of magnanimity and generosity, which had formerly brought success to Cyrus.

In 324 B.C., having traveled down the Indus as far as its delta, he returned to Babylon where he fell ill and died in 323 B.C., at the age of 32, without having nominated an heir to his empire.

Those who succeeded him, were the so-called Diadochi, who fought among themselves and after the battle of Ipsus (301 B.C.), Alexander's Empire was finally divided into three main segments. The Ptolemaic Dynasty ruling Egypt, the Macedonian monarchy ruling Europe and Seleucus I ruling the east including; Mesopotamia, Iran, Syria and Bactria


The Seleucid capital was founded at "Antiochus" by Seleucus I. His son Antiochus, by an Iranian noblewoman, was put in charge of the eastern provinces.

The main difficulty that the Seleucid rulers faced was how to maintain the unity of an empire composed of a mosaic of different cultures and ethnic groups, and governed by independent-minded satraps. A new menace was added to this, that of the Parthians, a nomad people of Iranian origin who had settled in the region between the Caspian and Aral seas. In 250 B.C., Bactria proclaimed its independence, followed shortly afterwards by Parthia.

Antiochos III (223-187 B.C.) attempted to keep the empire together but in 189 B.C., the Roman army won a decisive victory against the Seleucids at the battle of Magnesia. Antiochos IV (175-164 B.C.) restored his position in western Iran, but failed to recoup Seleucid losses in the east.

The Seleucids tried on several occasions to force out the Parthians who had moved into northern Iran. However, the attempts of Demetrius I in 156 B.C., of Demetrius II in 141 to 140 B.C., and of Seleucus VII in 130 B.C. all failed.

Arts

After Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire (331 BC), Iranian art underwent a revolution. Greeks and Iranians lived together in the same city, where mixed marriages became commonplace. Two profoundly different concepts of life and beauty thus came into confrontation with each other. On the one hand all interest focused on modeling the plasticity of the body and its gestures; while on the other, there was nothing but dryness and severity, a linear vision, rigidness, and frontality. Greco-Iranian art was the logical product of this encounter.

The victors, represented by the Seleucid dynasty of Macedonian origin, replaced the old Oriental art by Hellenistic forms in which space and perspective, gesture, drapery and other devices were used to suggest movement or various emotions, however, some Oriental features still remained

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

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Relief from Alexander's Sarcophagus
Greeks and Persians hunting lions with Alexander the Grea

[Asalbanoo]

In 250 BC a new Iranian people, the Parthians, proclaimed their independence from the Seleucids, and went on to re-establish an Oriental Empire which extended to the Euphrates.
Under Mithridates I (171-138 B.C.), the Parthians continued their conquests and annexed Media, Fars, Babylonia and Assyria, creating an empire that extended from the Euphrates to Herat in Afghanistan. This in effect was a restoration of the ancient Achaemenian Empire of Cyrus the Great.
In addition to the nomads that were a constant menace on its eastern frontier the Parthians also had to face another powerful adversary, Rome. For almost three centuries, Rome and Parthia were to battle over Syria, Mesopotamia and Armenia, without ever achieving any lasting results.
The Parthian kings referred to themselves on their coins as "Hellenophiles", but this was only true in the sense that they were anti-Roman. In reality the Parthians sought to establish themselves as the direct heirs of the Achaemenian Empire, and Mithridates II (123-87 B.C.) was the first Parthian ruler to use the old Achaemenian title "King of Kings" on his coins.

Arts

The re-conquest of the country by the Parthians brought a slow return to Iranian traditionalism. Its technique marked the disappearance of the plastic form. Stiff figures, often heavily bejeweled, wearing Iranian dress with its drapery emphasized mechanically and monotonously, were now shown systematically facing to the front, staring straight at the spectator. This was a device used in ancient Mesopotamian art only for figures of exceptional importance. The Parthians however, made it the rule for most figures, and from them it passed into Byzantine art. A fine bronze portrait statue (from Shami) and some relieves (at Tang-i-Sarwak and Bisutun) highlight these features.
During the Parthian period the iwan became a widespread architectural form. This was a great hall, open on one side with a high barrel-vaulted roof. Particularly fine examples have been found at Ashur and Hatra. In the construction of these grandiose halls, fast setting gypsum mortar was used.

Perhaps allied to the increasing use of gypsum mortar was the development of gypsum stucco decoration. Iran was unfamiliar with stucco decoration before the Parthians, among whom it was in vogue for interior decoration together with mural painting. The mural at Dura-Europos, on the Euphrates, represents Mithras hunting a variety of animals.
In the Zagros area of western Iran many examples of Parthian 'clinky' ware, a hard red pottery which makes a clinky noise when tapped, can be found. Glazed pottery with a pleasing bluish or greenish lead glaze, painted on shapes of Hellenistic inspiration, are also frequently found.

Ornate jewelry with large inlaid stones or glass gems made its appearance during this period.
Unfortunately, practically nothing that the Parthians may have written has survived, apart from some inscriptions on coins and accounts from Greek and Latin authors; however these accounts were far from objective.
Parthian coins are helpful in establishing the succession of kings, they referred to themselves on these coins as "Hellenophiles", but this was only true in that they were anti Roman.
The Parthian period was the start of a renewal in the Iranian national spirit. Their art forms an important transitional stepping-stone; which led on the one hand to the art of Byzantium, and on the other to that of the Sassanians, and India.

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
Necklace consisting of three oval plaques, fixed to a chain.
(Two plaques show eagles with turquoise and garnet inserts.
Eagles holding rings in their beaks as symbols of kingship are
common features on both Parthian coins and rock relieves.)

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
Silver coins of the Parthian period.
(Top) Tetradrachm of Mithradates (c. 171-138BC)
(Bottom) Tetradrachm of Vologases VI (c. AD208-28)

[Asalbanoo]

In A.D. 224 Ardeshir, a descendant of Sassan and ruler of Fars and Kerman, rebelled against the Parthian king, Artabanus V, and established the Sassanian dynasty.
Within twenty years, Ardeshir I (224-241) created a vast empire that stretched as far as the Indus.
His son Shapur I (241-272) continued this expansion, conquering Bactria, and Kushan, while leading several campaigns against Rome. In 259, the Persian army defeated the Roman emperor Valerian at the battle of Edessa and more than 70,000 Roman soldiers were captured.
For nearly four centuries, foreign wars and internal struggles gradually exhausted the Sassanian Empire and a new enemy, the Hephtalite Huns, defeated them. It was not until the reign of Khosroe I (531-579), one of the greatest Sassanian rulers, that the Huns were beaten

Khosroe took Antioch in 540 A.D., while Khosroe II, who had rebuilt the empire until it rivaled that of the Archaemenians, laid siege to Byzantium in 626 A.D.. However, the dynamic emperor Heraclius turned the tables, with the Byzantines invading Iran in 628. Khosroe II was deposed and murdered by his followers. After his death, over a period of 14 years and twelve successive kings, the Sassanian Empire weakened considerably, and the power of the central authority passed into the hands of the generals. This paved the way for the first Arab attacks in 633 A.D..

Arts
In many ways the Sassanian period (AD 224-633) witnessed the highest achievement of Persian civilization, and constituted the last great Iranian Empire before the Moslem conquest.
The Sassanian Dynasty, like the Achaemenian, originated in the province of Fars. They saw themselves as successors to the Achaemenians, after the Hellenistic and Parthian interlude, and perceived it as their role to restore the greatness of Iran.
At its peak, the Sassanian Empire stretched from Syria to north-west India; but its influence was felt far beyond these political boundaries. Sassanian motifs found their way into the art of central Asia and China, the Byzantine Empire, and even Merovingian France.
In reviving, the glories of the Achaemenian past, the Sassanians were no mere imitators. The art of this period reveals an astonishing virility. In certain respects it anticipates features later developed during the Islamic period. The conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great had inaugurated the spread of Hellenistic art into Western Asia; but if the East accepted the outward form of this art, it never really assimilated its spirit. Already in the Parthian period Hellenistic art was being interpreted freely by the peoples of the Near East and throughout the Sassanian period there was a continuing process of reaction against it. Sassanian art revived forms and traditions native to Persia; and in the Islamic period these reached the shores of the Mediterranean.

The splendor in which the Sassanian monarchs lived is well illustrated by their surviving palaces, such as those at Firuzabad and Bishapur in Fars, and the capital city of Ctesiphon in Mesopotamia. In addition to local traditions, Parthian architecture must have been responsible for a great many of the Sassanian architectural characteristics. All are characterised by the barrel-vaulted iwans introduced in the Parthian period, but now they reached massive proportions, particularly at Ctesiphon. The arch of the great vaulted hall at Ctesiphon attributed to the reign of Shapur I (AD 241-272) has a span of more than 80 ft, and reaches a height of 118 ft. from the ground. This magnificent structure facinated architects in the centuries that followed and has always been considered as one of the most important pieces of Persian architecture. Many of the palaces contain an inner audience hall which consists, as at Firuzabad, of a chamber surmounted by a dome. The Persians solved the problem of constructing a circular dome on a square building by the squinch. This is an arch built across each corner of the square, thereby converting it into an octagon on which it is simple to place the dome. The dome chamber in the palace of Firuzabad is the earliest surviving example of the use of the squinch and so there is good reason for regarding Persia as its place of invention.
The unique characteristic of Sassanian architecture, was its distinctive use of space. The Sassanian architect conceived his building in terms of masses and surfaces; hence the use of massive walls of brick decorated with molded or carved stucco. Stucco wall decorations appear at Bishapur, but better examples are preserved from Chal Tarkhan near Rayy (late Sassanian or early Islamic in date), and from Ctesiphon and Kish in Mesopotamia. The panels show animal figures set in roundels, human busts, and geometric and floral motifs.

The splendor in which the Sassanian monarchs lived is well illustrated by their surviving palaces, such as those at Firuzabad and Bishapur in Fars, and the capital city of Ctesiphon in Mesopotamia. In addition to local traditions, Parthian architecture must have been responsible for a great many of the Sassanian architectural characteristics. All are characterised by the barrel-vaulted iwans introduced in the Parthian period, but now they reached massive proportions, particularly at Ctesiphon. The arch of the great vaulted hall at Ctesiphon attributed to the reign of Shapur I (AD 241-272) has a span of more than 80 ft, and reaches a height of 118 ft. from the ground. This magnificent structure facinated architects in the centuries that followed and has always been considered as one of the most important pieces of Persian architecture. Many of the palaces contain an inner audience hall which consists, as at Firuzabad, of a chamber surmounted by a dome. The Persians solved the problem of constructing a circular dome on a square building by the squinch. This is an arch built across each corner of the square, thereby converting it into an octagon on which it is simple to place the dome. The dome chamber in the palace of Firuzabad is the earliest surviving example of the use of the squinch and so there is good reason for regarding Persia as its place of invention.
The unique characteristic of Sassanian architecture, was its distinctive use of space. The Sassanian architect conceived his building in terms of masses and surfaces; hence the use of massive walls of brick decorated with molded or carved stucco. Stucco wall decorations appear at Bishapur, but better examples are preserved from Chal Tarkhan near Rayy (late Sassanian or early Islamic in date), and from Ctesiphon and Kish in Mesopotamia. The panels show animal figures set in roundels, human busts, and geometric and floral motifs.

Many depict the investiture of the king by the god "Ahuramazda" with the emblems of sovereignty; others the triumph of the king over his enemies. They may have been inspired by Roman triumphal works, but the manner of treatment and presentation is very different. Roman relieves are pictorial records always with an attempt at realism. The Sassanian sculptures commemorate an event by depicting symbolically the culminating incident: for instance in the sculpture at Naksh-i-Rustam (3rd c.) the Roman emperor Valerian hands over his arms to the victor Shapur I. Divine and royal personages are portrayed on a scale larger than that of inferior persons. Compositions are as a rule symmetrical. Human figures tend to be stiff and heavy and there is an awkwardness in the rendering of certain anatomical details such as the shoulders and torso.
Relief sculpture reached its zenith under Bahram I (273-76), the son of Shapur I, who was responsible for a fine ceremonial scene at Bishapur, in which the forms have lost all stiffness and the workmanship is both elaborate and vigorous.
Considering the entire collection of Sassanian rock sculptures, a certain stylistic rise and decline becomes apparent; from the flat forms of the early relieves founded on Parathian tradition, the art turned to the more sophisticated and - owing to Western influence - more rounded forms then appeared during the period of Sapphire I, culminating in the dramatic ceremonial scene of Bahrain I at Bishapur, then retrogressing to uninspired and trite forms under Narsah, and finally returning to the non-classical style evident in the relieves of Khosroe II.
There is no attempt at portraiture in Sassanian art, either in these sculptures or in the royal figures depicted on metal vessels or on their coins. Each emperor is distinguished merely by his own particular form of crown.
In the minor arts, unfortunately no paintings have survived, and the Sassanian period is best represented by its metal-work. A large number of metal vessels have been attributed to this period; many of these have been found in southern Russia. They have a variety of forms and reveal a high standard of technical skill with decoration executed either by hammering, beating, engraving or casting. The subjects most often portrayed on silver dishes included royal hunts, ceremonial scenes, the king enthroned or banqueting, dancers, and scenes of a religious character.

Vessels were decorated with designs executed in several techniques; parcel gilding, chasing or engraving, and cloisonné enameling. Motifs include religious figures, hunting scenes in which the king has the central place, and mythical animals like the winged griffin. These same designs occur in Sassanian textiles. Silk weaving was introduced into Persia by the Sassanian kings and Persian silk weaves even found a market in Europe.
Few Sassanian textiles are known today, apart from small fragments that have come from various European Abbeys and Cathedrals. Of the magnificent, heavily embroidered royal fabrics, studded with pearls and precious stones, nothing has survived; they are known only through various literary references and the ceremonial scene at the Taq-i-Bustan, in which Khosroe II is dressed in an imperial cloak that resembles the one described in legend, woven in gold thread and studded with pearls and rubies.
The same is true for the famous garden carpet, the "Spring time of Khosroe". Made during the reign of Khosroe I (531 - 579) the carpet was 90 ft. square. The Arab historians' description is as follows: "The border was a magnificent flower bed of blue, red, white, yellow and green stones; in the background the colour of the earth was imitated with gold; clear stones like crystals gave the illusion of water; the plants were in silk and the fruits were formed by colour stones" However, the Arabs cut this magnificent carpet into many pieces, which were then sold separately.
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Sassanian art is its ornament, which was destined to have a profound influence on Islamic art. Designs tended to be symmetrical and much use was made of enclosing medallions. Animals and 'birds and even floral motifs were frequently presented 'heraldically', that is in pairs, either confronted or back to back. Some motifs, such as the Tree of Life, have an ancient history in the Near East; others, like the dragon and winged horse, reveal the constant love affair of Asiatic art with the mythical.
Sassanian art was carried over an immense territory stretching from the Far East to the shores of the Atlantic and played a foremost role in the formation of both European and Asiatic medieval art. Islamic art however, was the true heir to Sassanian art, whose concepts it was to assimilate while, at the same time instilling fresh life and renewed vigor into it.

[Asalbanoo]

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
A rock relief beneath the tomb of Darius at Naqsh-e Rostam,
depicting the triumph of Shapur over the Roman emperor
"Valerian", and Philip the Arabian

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Ctesiphon, Iraq, Taq-i-Kisra

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Ornamental architectural pannels with pamette motifs
(from houses at Ctesiphon, Iraq)

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
Rock relief at Taq-i-Bustan
(showing the investiture of the Sassanian king Ardashir II.
The king (centre), is given a royal crown by Ahuramazda,
while Mithra stands behind the king in a supportive role)

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Detail of hunters mounted on elephants
(from the decoration of the left-hand wall in the main cave
at Taq-i-Bustan. The use of elephants is evidence of the
close relationship between India and the Sassanians)

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
Silver dish, partially gilded
(showing a Sassanian king, probably Shapur II hunting stags.)

[peyman1987]

Thanks asalbanoo
It's essential that we remember our ancient civilization
We were the greatest empire in the world but today I myself don't see any signs of those Persians

Thank you

[Asalbanoo]

The Abbassid Caliphates

Abu Bekr, the first successor of the Prophet Mohammed, was head of the Moslem community from 632 to 634. He set about patching up the internal unrest between tribes. Then Omar, caliph (head of the Moslem community) from 634 to 644, initiated an explosive expansion of Islam. He seized Syria, then Jerusalem and finally Damascus in 638 after having defeated Heraclius. In 635, other Arab troops launched an assault on the Sassanian Empire, and crossed the Euphrates. The downfall of the empire was well underway when the Arab horsemen dealt the deathblow to the Sassanid dynasty and overran Persia first entering Ctesiphon in 637. Successive victories were to follow. They emerged victorious from the engagement at Nahavand in 642, which left the way open for them to enter the Iranian plateau. The conquest of Persia continued with the fall of Afghanistan (651) and then Transoxiana (674).
[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]


Arts

The Arab conquest in the 7th century AD brought Persia into the Islamic community; however, it was in Persia that the new movement in Islamic art met its severest test. Contact with a people of high artistic achievement and ancient culture made a deep impression on the conquering Moslems.

When the Abbasids made Baghdad their capital (near the former capital of the Sassanian rulers), a vast stream of Persian influences came pouring in. The caliphs accepted the Old Persian culture; a policy also followed at the courts of the relatively independent local principalities (The Samanids, The Buwayhids etc.), which led to a conscious revival of Persian traditions in art and literature.

Wherever possible, the cultural inheritance of Persian art was infused with new life, and customs thoroughly foreign to Islam were retained or newly introduced. Islamic art (paintings, metalwork etc.) was heavily influenced by Sassanian methods and Persian vaulting techniques were adopted in Islamic architecture. Few secular buildings of the early period have survived, but judging from the remains it is probable that they retained many features of the Sassanian palaces, such as the "domed audience chamber" and "the ground plan arranged around a central court".

The main change that this period brought to the development of art was to restrict the depiction of lifelike portraits, or true-life representations of historical events

"On Resurrection Day, God will consider image-makers as the men most deserving of punishment"

Collection of sayings form the Prophet

As Islam did not tolerate the three dimensional representation of living creatures, Persian craftsmen developed and extended their existing repertory of ornamental forms, which they then rendered in stone or stucco. These provided a common stock on which, artists in other media drew. Many of the motifs can be traced back to the ancient civilizations of the Near East: they include fabulous beasts such as the human-headed sphinx with wings, griffins, phoenixes, wild beasts or birds at grips with their prey, and purely ornamental devices like medallions, grapevines, floral patterns and the rosette.

More tolerant Moslem believers were less stringent to the portrayal of figurative art and in bathing houses, paintings of hunting or love scenes for the entertainment of the patrons seldom aroused objection. However, in religious establishments, only indistinct hints of human or animal forms were tolerated.

The Persians were quick to appreciate the decorative value of the Arabic script and developed every variety of floral and abstract ornament. Persian ornament is usually distinguishable from that of other Islamic countries. The treatment of the arabesque tended to be freer in Persia than elsewhere and usually, though by no means always, retained natural and recognizable plant forms. Palmettes, Frets, Guilloches, Interlacings, and elaborate geometric figures such as the polygonal star also occur.

Calligraphy is the highest art form of the Islamic civilization, and like all forms of art that came into contact with Iran, the Persians enhanced and developed it. Ta'liq, "hanging script" (and its derivative Nasta'liq) was formalized in the 13th century; although it had been in existence for centuries prior to this, and it is claimed to be derived from the old pre-Islamic Sassanian script. The written page was also enriched by the art of the "Illuminator" and in some manuscripts by that of the painter, who added small-scale illustrations

The tenacity of Persia's cultural tradition is such that, in spite of centuries of invasions and foreign rule by Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Afghans, etc., her art reveals a continuous development, while retaining its own identity. During Arab rule, the adherence of the local population to the Shi'ite sect of Islam, (which was opposed to rigid orthodox observance), played an important role in their resistance to Arab ideas. By the time orthodoxy gained a foothold, through conquest by the Seljuks in the 11th century, the Persian element had become so deeply entrenched that it could no longer be uprooted.

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
"In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate".
Almost every sura (chapter) in the Koran begins with this phrase, known
as the bismillah ('in the name of God') from its opening three words.
Here it is executed in some major Koranic hands:
early Kufic, square Kufic, eastern Kufic, Thuluth;(left from top)
Naskhi, Muhaqqaq, Rihani, Nasta'liq.(right from top)

[Asalbanoo]

The Abbasid Dynasty (750-945) established its capital at Baghad, near the old Sassanian capital. For a century, the empire experienced a time of unprecedented cultural, artistic and economic development, particularly during the reigns of Harun al-Rashid (786-809) and al-Mamun (813-833). Persian scholars and artists played an important role in this intellectual activity; from the very beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate, they had been placed in charge of the highest court functions, and a large number of Iranian customs and traditions were rapidly adopted in Baghdad.

From the second half of the 9th Century a period of decline began, and by the middle of the 10th Century, the Abbassid caliphs at Baghdad had no real political control over Iran. The governors whom the caliphs had appointed to administer the frontier provinces displayed a tendency to establish virtually independent local dynasties. Some of these included the Tahirids of Khurasan (820 - 873), the Samanids of Khurasan and Transoxiana (819 - 1005) and their offshoot, the Ghaznavids of Khurasan, Afghanistan and northern India (977 - 1186).

In 945 the Buwayids, a local dynasty from Gilan occupied Baghdad. During their 110 years of rule, the Buwayids seized all political power from the Abbassid caliphs.

Arts
Once the initial shock of the Arab invasion was over, the Iranians got down to the job of assimilating their vanquishers. Artists and craftsmen put themselves at the disposal of the new rulers and the needs of the new religion, and Moslem buildings adopted the methods and materials of the Sassanian period.

The size of the buildings and the techniques of construction in the Abbassid period show a revival of the Mesopotamian architecture. Bricks were used for walls and pillars. These pillars then acted as isolated supports for the vaults that were used repeatedly throughout the Moslem world, due to the scarcity of roofing timber. The wide assortment of arches in Abbassid architecture leads one to believe that their varied shapes were for ornamental purposes rather than structural requirements.

Of all the decorative arts, pottery made the most remarkable advances during the Abbassid period. In the 9th century new techniques were developed in which bold designs were painted with a strong cobalt blue pigment on a white background. Sometimes several tones of luster were combined on a white background, including red, green, gold or brown. Towards the end of the 9th century, animal and human silhouette designs became quite common, on a plain or densely covered background.

The pottery of the late Abbassid period (12th to early 13th century) includes:
Carved or molded lamps, incense burners, small floor tables and tiles with a turquoise-green glaze.
Jars and bowls painted with floral patterns, chevrons, animals or human figures etc. under a green or clear glaze.
Jars, bowls and tiles painted with a deep brown luster on a clear greenish glaze; the luster sometimes combined with blue and green lines.
Paintings from the early Abbasid era are known to us from the fragments excavated at Samarra, outside western Iran (approximately 62 miles north of Baghdad, Iraq). These wall paintings were found in the reception rooms of bourgeois houses and in the non-public parts of palaces, especially the harem quarters, where no religious function took place. A favorite location of such decorations was the domes over square halls. A good deal of the images have Hellenistic elements, as shown by the drinkers, dancers and musicians, but the style is basically Sassanian in spirit and content. Many have been reconstructed using Sassanian monuments such as rock reliefs, seals etc.

In the east of Iran, a painting of a woman's head, (late 8th or early 9th century) found in Nishapur has a strong resemblance to the art of Samarra; however, it is hardly touched by Hellenistic influences.

The pictorial art (miniatures) in the final period before the destruction of the caliphate is found mainly in manuscripts illustrating either scientific or literary works and was mainly restricted to Iraq.

[Viren]

Thanks Buddy

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The Great Mosque of Samarra, Iraq, 848-852 AD.
Built on an open plan principle, this is the largest mosque of Islam (748 x 512 ft).
The most striking feature of the mosque is the winding minaret (Al-Malwiyya)
which is ascended by an external stairway.

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The hypostyle hall of the very ancient mosque
at Nayin, east of Isfahan, which dates from AD 960.
The columns are of brick with decorative stucco, which bears a resemblance
to the sculptured motifs on the 9th century monuments of Samarra.
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Ceramics are among the earliest examples of Islamic art
in Iran, and hold a place of special importance. This 9th
century plate is from Nishapur, and is decorated with two
birds on a white background.

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Slip painted glazed dish from Nishapur, Iran 10th century.
The Kufic script on the border transcribes the following
saying "The beginning of knowledge is bitter to taste, but
the end is sweeter than honey. Peace be (to the owner)".

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With the lessening of the caliphs' power in the 9th and 10th centuries, the feudal lords gradually returned to power, setting up independent principalities in eastern Iran; one of the most important was ruled by the Samanids.
Arts

The Samanid rulers were great art patrons and they turned Bukhara and Samarkand in Transoxiana into famous cultural centres.

The most complete documentation of Samanid art is to be found in its ceramics, and during the 9th century, the wares of Transoxiana were very popular throughout the eastern provinces of Persia. The best-known and most refined pottery of this Samarkand type is that bearing large inscriptions in Kufic (the earliest version of Arabic script used in the Koran, named after the city Kufa in Iraq) painted in black on a white background.

Figure decoration never appeared on these Transoxiana wares and motifs were often copied from textiles such as rosettes, roundels, and peacock-tail "eyes". On the other hand, Khorasan pottery of the Samanid period, known primarily from material excavated at Nishapur, did not eliminate the human form, and there are examples of human figures against backgrounds abounding in animals, flowers and inscriptions.

Unfortunately, practically nothing remains of Samanid paintings or miniatures, apart from a few fragments of wall paintings found at Nishapur. One such fragment depicts a life-size image of a falconer on horseback, riding at a 'flying gallop' in keeping with modes derived from Sassanian tradition. The falconer is dressed in Iranian style with influences from the steppe, such as the high boots.

As far as textiles are concerned, what have survived are several examples of tiraz (cloth strip used to decorate the sleeve) from Merv and Nishapur. Nothing remains of the vast production from the textile workshops of Transoxiana and Khorasan except the celebrated silk and cotton fragment known as the "Sudarium of St. Josse".

This piece is decorated with facing elephants set off by borders of Kufic characters and rows of Bactrian camels. It is inscribed to Abu Mansur Bukhtegin, a high official of the Samanid court who was put to death by Abd-al-Malik ibn-Nuh in 960. The fabric is almost certainly from the Khorasan workshop. Although the figures are rather stiff, Sassanian models have been closely adhered to, both in general composition and in the individual motifs.

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Mausoleum of Ismail the Samanid, Bukhara
This domed square displays one of the earliest and most
spectacular uses of brick in Iranian architectural decoration.
Brick patterns appear inside and outside the building.


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Ceramic bowl,
Samarkand or Nishapur, 9th - 10thcentury
This bowl is one of a group produced in Samanid times.
The decoration of these bowls and plates is considered
the finest adaptation of Arabic script to pottery.

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Slip-painted bowl from Nishapur, Iran, 10th century.
A hunting scene with a distant echo of Sassanian majesty.

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Part of the St. Josse silk, Khorasan 10th century.
The inscription wishes 'glory and prosperity to Abu Mansur Bukhtegin

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The Turkish Dynasties
The Ghaznavids and The Seljuks

While early on the Turks had an important role to play as soldiers conscripted to the personal guard of the Abbassid caliphs, soon they were no longer satisfied with this subordinate position. Often they took matters into their own hands and elevated themselves to positions of influence.
In 976, one of these military leaders founded the Ghaznavid dynasty (977 - 1186). But the Ghaznavids were unable to prevent the arrival of yet another powerful force, the Seljuks. They derived their name from an ancestor called Seljuk, whose nomadic tribe was converted to Islam, and were themselves originally central-Asian Turks. Togrul Begh, sultan from 1038, first defeated the Ghaznavids, then sacked Isfahan in 1051 and went on to seize Baghdad from the Buwayids in 1055. Named protector of the caliph, Togrul Begh showed himself to be a vigorous defender of Sunni doctrine.
In spite of the presence of the Turkish invaders, this era of Iranian revival, beginning with the publication of Ferdausi's Shah-namah, constitutes for Persia a period of intensely creative intellectual activity. Biruni, the most knowledgeable scientist of the Moslem middle ages, was interested in history, mathematics, astronomy and the physical and natural sciences. The poet, mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam, author of the famous Roubayyat, and the philosopher and theologian Ghazahli illustrate the wealth contributed by Persia to the sum of universal culture in the 11th and 12th Centuries.
By the second half of the 12th Century, the power of the Seljuks gave way to local dynasties set up by provincial governors. One of these provinces, Khorassan was governed by the princes of Khwarezm (1153), who set up a kingdom extending from the frontiers of China to those of Afghanistan. In 1217, the Khwarezmi armies reached as far as the Zagros Mountains but were never able to consolidate their conquests before the arrival of the Mongols
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The Advance of the Seljuks

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Ghaznavid art takes its name from the dynasty founded by the Turkish sultan Sabuktagin, whose rulers governed from Ghazni (in what is now Afghanistan). Craftsmen and artists were attracted from the conquered lands, primarily from the lands of the Islamic east, to beautify the capital.
Unlike the Samanids, their predecessors the Ghaznavids did not go so far as to proclaim themselves the descendants of the Sassanians (the memory of their Turkish origin was too fresh), but they spoke Persian, celebrated pre-Islamic festivals, and promoted neo-Persian letters.
The fact that elements foreign to Islam and Persia were also present at Ghazni poses the question of the extent of their influence on Ghaznavid art. Ghazni was the meeting ground between Moslem and Indian worlds. Indian monuments certainly left an impression on the conquerors, and there were numerous groups of Indian craftsmen at Ghazni; however, there is insufficient documentation to indicate an Indian contribution to Ghaznavid art.

Ghaznavid architecture provided one of the best examples of how decoration was considered to be as important as the structure itself. As well as providing the structure, brickwork was used to provide geometric patterns. Marble was used extensively in Ghazni and virtually surpassed stucco. Sources say that it was used for the facings of the mosque "Bride of the Sky", whose splendour rivaled that of the mosque at Damascus.

However, the Ghaznavid's use of sun-dried bricks combined with the severe climatic frosts resulted in the ruin of most of these buildings.

In the palace of Mas'ud III, the design was greatly enriched by the insertion of molded terra-cotta tiles, as well as what appears to be ceramic plaques decorated in relieves with figures of wild beasts, birds, and flowers, all glazed over in green, brown and yellow enamel. Today only fragments have been found in the ruins, and they are preserved in the Kabul museum.

An innovation of great importance, because it was to become a classic formula in Persian architecture, is the so- called 'cruciform' mosque plan, a court with four iwans. This formula was widely adopted not only in mosques, but also in the construction of madrasas, the schools in which the Koran was taught.

Like the Abbasids, sources suggest that the use of the human figure in wall paintings was widespread in Ghaznavid buildings.
The only remaining frescoes, found in the palace at Lashkari Bazaar show a row of 44 personages (the ruins of two pillars suggest that the original total may have been 70) wearing tunics, of which only the neck is visible and a long cloak fastened at the left. The bodies are depicted frontally and the feet in profile. Similarities can be drawn to that of Persepolis or Susa where it was customary to provide pictures of the men who guarded the palace.

Turkish elements had an influence on Ghaznavid painting; however, this influence is not limited to Ghaznavid art, but extends to all Persian Islamic painting. For example there are similarities between paintings (dated 1037) in Duvazdah Imam at Yazd in Iran and those paintings at Bezeklik and Toyuk.

The bas relieves found at Ghazni show scenes of court life (courtiers, dancers...), hunting scenes (horsemen battling a lion...) etc. The hunting scenes are similar to that of a Sassanian theme; however they are distinguished by their refinement of drawing and fluidity of movement.

Ghaznavid art produced some of the most notable examples of calligraphy in Islamic art. The Kufic script was very popular, and achieved its most elegant form during the reign of Ibrahim (1059-99). This script with ornamental border remained the fashion for centuries in various Persian provinces

Little is known of Ghaznavid art to fully appraise this heritage, and its historical importance consists principally in the legacy that it transmitted to the Seljuks.

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"Minaret of Mas'ud III"
Two details of the brick decoration, Ghazni, 11th century

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Lashkari Bazaar, the palace, 11th century

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Ghazni, Rauza Antiquary
large decorative marble slab sculptured on both sides,
11th century

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Arts of the Saljuks
The Seljuk period in the history of art and architecture extends for approximately two centuries from the Seljuk conquest in the second quarter of 11th century to the establishment of the Ilkhan dynasty in the second quarter of the 13th century. During this period, the centre of power within the Islamic world shifted from the Arab territories to Anatolia and Iran, with the traditional centres now residing in the Seljuk capitals - Merv, Nishapur, Rayy and Isfahan.
In spite of the Turkish invaders, this era of Persian revival, beginning with the publication of Firdawsi's "Shah-namah", constitutes for Persia a period of intensively creative artistic development. The sheer productivity of these centuries in the visual arts, in comparison with the art from earlier centuries represents a quantum leap forward.
The importance of Seljuk art is that it established a dominant position in Iran and determined the future development of art in the Iranian world for centuries. The stylistic innovations introduced by the Iranian architects of this period were, in fact to have vast repercussions, from India to Asia Minor. However, there is a strong overlap between Seljuk art and the stylistic groupings of the Buwayhids, Ghaznavids, etc.
In many cases the artists of the Seljuk period consolidated, and indeed at times perfected, forms and ideas that had long been known. It must be remembered that the picture is not as clear as it should be, with the massive scale of illegal excavations in Iran over the past hundred years.
The characteristic feature of the buildings of this period, is the decorative use of un-plastered bricks. The earlier use of stucco facings on the outer walls, as well as on the inside (to conceal the inferiority of the building material) was discontinued, although it reappeared later.

With the establishment of the Seljuk Turks (1055-1256) a distinctive form of mosque was introduced. Its most striking feature is the vaulted niche or iwan which, had figured prominently in the Sassanian palaces and had been known even in the Parthian period. In this so-called 'cruciform' mosque plan, an iwan is introduced into each of the four enclosing walls of the court (See Ghaznavid Art). Such a plan was adopted for the rebuilding of the Great Mosque of Isfahan in 1121 and was widely used in Persia until recent times. A notable example is the Masjid-i-shah or Royal Mosque founded by Shah Abbas at Isfahan in 1612 and completed in 1630.
Figure decoration appeared on Seljuk pottery from the mid 12th century onwards. At first the decoration was carved or moulded while the glaze was monochrome, though on the lakabi (painting) carved wares several colours were used. Sometimes decoration was applied onto the pot, painted in black slip under a clear or coloured glaze to create a silhouette effect. Large birds, animals and fabulous creatures form the bulk of the imagery, though on the silhouette ware human figures appear. The silhouette figures often stand-alone though it is usual for human and animal forms, whenever they occur, to be superimposed on a foliage background.

The last quarter of the 12th century saw the creation of the splendid and elaborate minai(enamel) ceramics, produced by means of a double-firing technique to set the varnish over the enamel. This type of ware, which originated in Rayy, Kashan and perhaps Saveh displays ornamental detail similar to luster-painted ware of Kashan. Some compositions depict battle scenes or episodes drawn from the Shah-namah.

Seljuk miniatures, of which few traces remain, because of the widespread destruction by the Mongol invasions, must also have been extremely ornate, like other art forms of the period, and certainly must have displayed features similar to pottery painting. The principle centre for book painting in the 12th and 13th centuries was Iraq, but this painting had a marked Iranian influence. Several fine examples of Seljuk Korans have survived, and they are notable for their magnificent painting on the cover often of pronounced geometric character, with the Kufic script taking the prime role.

During the Seljuk period metalwork was particularly widespread with extremely high levels of workmanship. Bronze was by far the most widely used metal during the 11th and 12th centuries (brass being a later addition). Artifacts were cast, engraved, sometimes inlaid with silver or copper or executed in openwork, and in some cases even graced with enamel decorations. In the 12th century the techniques of repousse and engraving was added to that of inlaying bronze or brass with gold, silver, copper, and niello.
A remarkable example is the bronze bucket inlaid with silver and copper now preserved in the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. According to its inscription it was made at Herat in 1163

A wide range of objects were produced at the time such as; perfume burners usually in the shape of animals, mirrors, candlesticks, etc and it seems likely that some of the best craftsmen traveled widely to execute commissions with fine pieces shipped over long distances.
The Seljuk period was undoubtedly one of the most intensively creative periods in the history of the Islamic world. It displayed splendid achievements in every artistic field, with subtle differences from one region to the next

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Seljuk minaret of the mosque at Damghan, Iran. The decorative effect achieved by the use of recessed bricks, forming highly original rhythms and geometric patterns, is characteristic of this 11th century Persian art.

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Pomp and circumstance, Turkish style.
Stucco relief from Rayy; late 12th century. It depicts the
enthroned Seljuk sultan Tughril II (1194) surrounded by
his officers. Beneath his feet is written: "the victotious,
just king" and in the panel above are his titles.

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Ceramic bowl of the minai type from Kashan, Iran, dated 1187.
Polychrome pottery such as this became very popular in Iran during the 12th and early 13th
centuries. As on much pottery of this type, the drawing is rapidly executed but extremely
accomplished. The subject is not clear, though winged genii are usually shown in the
company of royal personages.

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Koran, Iran 11th -12th century.
This type of script is usually associated with the Seljuks of Iran and is almost invariably written over a composite foliate background. The diacritical points appear as block dots and the vowels are indicated in red. In some manuscripts, green dots indicate primary variant readings while yellow and blue ones represent specific orthographic elements or sounds or secondary or tertiary variants of the text.
This example illustrated one of the most important advantages of the Arabic script: letters can be extended vertically or horizontally without the overall balance being impaired.

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Bronze bucket or kettle, Herat, Iran, dated 1163.
Height 17.5 in. The bronze surface is richly inlaid with figurative imagery
in gold, silver and copper. The importance of representational art in this
period is indicated by its intrusion into the calligraphy in the upper and
lower registers. Although the theme of the figure decorations are entirely
courtly, the bucket was made for a merchant.

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Luxury tableware.
Silver rose-water sprinkler with cap; repousse and chased, with niello decoration and guilding. The very few pieces of Seljuk metalwork in silver point to a serious shortage of that metal.

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The Mongol Invasions
The Ilkhans and The Timurids

The Mongol conquest of the Persian world brought with it terrible destruction and large-scale massacres. In 1219, Genghis Khan's army attacked the state of Khwarezm, capturing Transoxiana, Samarkand (1220) and Khorassan (1221), while a detachment penetrated as far as Azerbaijan. In 1256, a second expedition led by Hulagu (1217-1265), Genghis Khan's grandson, subdued the whole of Persia. In 1258, Baghdad was captured and the caliph put to death, bringing the Abbasid Caliphate rule to an end. Hulagu's successors, who took the title of il-Khan, established their capital at Tabriz.

The death of Sultan Abu Said in 1335 lead to the division of the Mongol Empire in Persia. Once again, local chiefs took advantage of this to declare themselves independent: a Persian Shi'ite dynasty, the Sardebarians (1337-1381), settled in the northwestern part of Khorassan while the Mozzafferids (1340-1392) took control of the south from Fars to Kerman. But these dynasties were short-lived as a third invasion, this time by the Turko-Mongol nomads lead by Tamerlane, swept across the region. The east of Iran fell in 1380, and Azerbaijan, Iraq and Fars a few years later.

Tamerlane (Timurid dynasty) dominated all of Persia from 1387. His invasion of Isfahan alone, led to more than 70,000 deaths where the heads of his victims were heaped up into pyramids. Nevertheless, after having established his capital at Samarkand, he drew artists, calligraphers, writers, philosophers, astronomers and mathematicians, from all parts of his empire, the majority of whom came from Shiraz and Isfahan.
Thus, ironically, this ruthless warrior and appalling killer initiated a true civilization in the cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, Herat, Balkh and Mashad. In the time of Shah Rukh (1405-1447) and Oleg Begh the whole of Persia became covered with admirable monuments and the art of miniature reached its peak at Shiraz and Herat.

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The doorway into the hall of Uldjaitu in the Friday Mosque, Isfahan; decorated with Timurid mosaics

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The Mongol invasions in the 13th century changed life in Iran radically and permanently. Genghis Khan's invasion in the 1220s, destroyed lives and property in north-eastern Iran on a grand scale. In 1258 Hulagu Khan, Genghis Khan's grandson completed the conquest of Iran, and consolidated his control over Iraq, Iran and much of Anatolia. With his capital in Maragha in north-western Iran, he founded the Ilkhanid kingdom, nominally subject to the great Khan, Qubilai, ruler of China and Mongolia.

The Ilkhan dynasty, lasting from 1251 to 1335, represents in Persian art (paintings, ceramics and metalwork) the period of greatest Far Eastern influence. The later Ilkhanids tried to repair some of the destruction caused by their devastating invasion in the early 13th century, by building new cities and employing native officials to administer the country.

Ilkhanid architecture did not constitute a new style in its time, but continued the Seljuk plans and techniques. Seljuk double dome architecture was very popular under the Ilkhans and decorative brick displays while not completely abandoned, gave way to an ever-growing use of glazed ceramics. In Iran, large interior and exterior surfaces were first covered with great faience mosaics ('tile mosaic') of geometric, floral and calligraphic motifs in the 13th century.

The technique was probably re-imported at the time from Asia Minor, where the Persian artists had fled before the Mongol invasion. One of the first Iranian monuments with large areas of faience mosaics is the Mausoleum of Oljeitu at Sultaniya.

As far as ceramics are concerned, all activity at Rayy ceased following the Mongol destruction in 1220, but Kashan pottery recovered immediately from the hardships suffered in 1224. Tiles were widely used both in architectural decoration and in mihrab1, as in the Imamzada Yahya of Varamin, which has a mihrab dating back to c. 1265, bearing the signature of the famous Kashan potter Ali ibn-Muhammad ibn Ali Tahir. These were called kashi after their production centre in Kashan.

There are two types of pottery most associated with the Ilkhans, one is "Sultanabad" ware (whose name was taken from where the first pieces were discovered in the Sultanabad region) and the other "Lajvardina" (a simple successor to the minai technique). Gold over-painting set against a deep royal blue glaze makes Lajvardina ware one of the most spectacular ever produced in Persia.

In contrast to this, Sultanabad ware is heavily potted and makes frequent use of grey slip with thick outlines, while another type displays black painting under a turquoise glaze. The drawing is of indifferent quality, but the ware as a whole has a special interest as a classic example of the way Chinese motifs invaded the Persian ceramic tradition.
Persian miniature painting began in the Mongol period at the beginning of the 13th century, when Persian painters were exposed to Chinese art, and Chinese painters worked at the Ilkhan courts in Iran. It is not known whether Persian artists went to China before the 15th century; but it is certain that Chinese artists, imported by the Mongol rulers, went to Iran, like those whom Arghun used to paint the walls of Buddhist temples. Unfortunately, the works of these artists as well as the whole collection of secular mural paintings are lost.
Miniature painting, of a high artistic level, was the only form of painting to survive from this period. In Ilkhanid miniatures, the human figure, which had previously been depicted in stocky and stereotyped fashion, was now shown more gracefully with truer proportions; drapery folds gave the impression of depth. Animals were observed more carefully than before and lost their decorative rigidity, mountains lost their smooth appearance and skies were enlivened by typically curly white clouds with twisted garland shapes. These influences progressively fused with Iranian paintings and were finally assimilated into new forms. The major centre of Ilkhan painting was Tabriz.

Some of the effects of Chinese influence can be seen in the painting of Bahram Gur's Battle with the Dragon from the famous Demotte "Shah-namah" (The Book of Kings), illustrated in Tabriz in the second quarter of the 14th century. The mountains and landscape details are of Far Eastern origin as of course is the dragon with which the hero is locked in combat. By using the frame as a window and placing the hero with his back to the reader, the artist creates the impression that the event is actually taking place before our eyes.
Less obvious, but more important, is the vague undefined relationship of immediate foreground to distant background, and the abrupt cutting off of the composition on all sides. Most of the miniatures of the Demotte Shah-namah are to be considered among the masterpieces of all times, and this manuscript is one of the oldest copies of Ferdowsi's immortal epic poem.

The Shah-namah was frequently illustrated in the Ilkhanid period, probably because the Mongols developed a pronounced taste for the epic during the 13th and 14th centuries.
Ilkhanid scribes and illuminators brought the art of the book to the foreground.

The schools of Mosul and Baghdad rivalled the best Mamluke1 work and may indeed have laid the foundations for it. Characteristic of this school is the use of very large sheets (up to 75 x 50cm, 28" x 20") of Baghdad paper and correspondingly large-scale script, especially muhaqqaq2.

Metalworking, which had flourished in north-east Persia, Khurassan, and Transoxiana, also suffered terribly from the Mongol invasion; however, it did not die out completely. After a gap in production of almost a century, which can be paralleled closely in architecture and painting, the industry revived. The key centres were in Central Asia, Azerbaijan (the principle centre of Mongol culture) and Southern Iran.

The combination of Persian style with Mesopotamian and Mamluke is characteristic of all the Ilkhanid metalwork. Mesopotamian metal inlay seems to have been inspired by Persian techniques, which it developed and perfected. Brass was substituted more and more for bronze, and gold inlay replaced red copper.

There was also a tendency in Mesopotamian work to cover the complete surface by minute ornamental patterning and human and animal figures were always well defined. However, Persian works showed a preference for a technique of inlay and engraving which avoided rigid and precise contours. There was also a reluctance to cover the whole surface with ornaments.
Towards the end of the 13th century, the Far Eastern influence is evident in both the Persian and Mesopotamian styles in the more naturalistic treatment of the plant ornaments (among which appear the lotus flower...) and the typically elongated human form.

[Asalbanoo]

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Tile mosaic on south-west of the entrance portal
to the shrine of Bayazid Bistami, Bistam, 1313.

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Detail of the mosaic, entrance to
Dervishes monastery, Natanz, 1304

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Mausoleum of Oljeitu, Sultaniya, 1304-15

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Two cross tiles and two star tiles, Kashan, c. 1260-1270

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Bahram Gur's Battle with the Dragon.
From the Shah-nama Ferdowsi, Tabriz. Second quarter of the 14th century.

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Page from a Koran in muhaqqaq with
Persian interlinear translation and prophetic
traditions in Kufic characters around the
pages. Late 13th to early 14th century.

[Asalbanoo]

The Safavids
Arts
During the same period as the Mongols and the Timurids, north-western Iran went through a different historical development. It was here that Turkoman groups fought with each other for power. The Turkoman Dynasty of the Kara-Koyunlu, or "Black Sheep" (1275-1468) was set up at Tabriz, and it was later replaced by the Ak-Koyunlu, or "White Sheep" (1434-1514). However, there was a third dynasty, called the Safavids (1502-1737), that emerged in Azerbaijan, and had as its leader Shah Ismail (1487-1524). He successfully conquered a vast territory which extended from Herat (Afghanistan) to Baghdad (Iraq).
The Safavid dynasty takes its name from Sheikh Safi-od-Din of Ardabil, who was the ancestor of the Safavid kings and spiritual leader of the Safavid Sufi order, founded in 1301.
The Safavid order was initially indistinguishable from the many other Sufi orders in existence in the Muslim world at that time. But Junayd, who became the head of the order in 1447, transformed it into a revolutionary Shi'ite movement that aimed at seizing power in Iran. Though the Safavid family itself was of Iranian origin, the bulk of its supporters were Shi'ite Turkoman tribesmen from Anatolia, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia, and Armenian highlands.
The Safavids were successful in bringing the whole of the Iranian plateau under unified control, and they made Iran a "national state" in the modern sense of the word. The height of Safavid glory was at the time of the reign of Shah Abbas I (1571-1629), who encouraged contact and trade with Europe and transformed his new capital, Isfahan, into one of the most magnificent cities of Persia. The presence at the Safavid court of foreign envoys and the growing number of merchants and travellers in Iran was later to have a great influence on the arts and literature in Europe.

The cultural growth was accompanied by considerable development in all forms of art. The Persian carpet, for example was at its finest during the Safavid era. Miniature paintings, Chinese and Arabic designs had an important influence in carpet motifs, and carpets became a major Persian export to Europe, India, and even the Ottoman Empire.
The Safavids adopted Shi'ism as their state religion, which had an important role in unifying the Persians against the strict Sunni Ottoman Empire. Two centuries of intermittent wars followed which produced only minor territorial changes.
By 1722 the Safavid rulers had lost much of their power leading to rebellions within the empire. A small force of Afghans, led by the Ghilzai chief Mahmud, took advantage of this, invading Khorassan, and capturing Isfahan.

Arts
The Safavid dynasty, of Turkish origin, is generally considered to have lasted from 1502 to 1737, and under Shah Ismail's rule the Shi'ite doctrine was imposed as a state religion. The Safavids continued the attempts of the Ilkhanids to foster closer diplomatic ties with the European powers, in order to cement alliances against the Ottomans.
As a result of this closer relationship, the Safavids opened the door to European influence.
From the description of Western travellers it is known that there once existed wall paintings; with battle scenes in Shiraz showing the capture of Hormuz from the Portuguese, as well as erotic scenes in Julfa, and pastoral scenes at the Hazar Jarib palace in Isfahan.
Inside the Safavid palaces pictorial decoration was used alongside traditional decorations in Kashi or ceramics.
Early Safavid painting combined the traditions of Timurid Herat and Turkoman Tabriz to reach a peak in technical excellence and emotional expressiveness, which for many is the finest hour in Persian painting

The masterpiece of the age is the Shahnama-yi Shahi (The King's Book of Kings, formally known as the Houghton Shah-nama) with its 258 paintings, which was the most lavishly illustrated Shah-nama recorded in all of Persian history.
Herat was the great Iranian miniature painting centre of the Timurid period, but in 1507, after its capture by the Safavids, the leading artists emigrated, some to India and some to the Safavid capital, Tabriz, or the Shaybanid capital, Bukhara.
One of the main innovations of the Bukhara miniaturists was the introduction of plant and animal motifs in the margins of their miniatures. It was in Tabriz, the other chief miniature centre of the period, that in 1522 Shah Ismail appointed the famous Behzad director of his library.

he Characteristic features of the Tabriz school can be seen in the illustrations for a manuscript of the Khamsa by Nezami; executed 1539 - 43 by Aqa Mirak of Isfahan, his pupil Sultan Muhammad, the Tabriz artists Mir Sayyid 'Ali, Mirza 'Ali, and Muzaffar 'Ali. Tabriz miniatures exploit the complete colour scale, and their compositions are complex and full of figures, which fill the space.
Shah Ismail's successor Shah Tahmasp, himself a painter, expanded the royal atelier. However, during the latter part of the 16th century, Shah Tahmasp became a religious extremist, lost interest in painting and stopped his patronage. This was the beginning of the end for the luxury book.
Many of the best artists left the court some going to Bukhara, others to India where they were instrumental in the formation of a new style of painting, the Mughal School. Those artists who remained turned from the production of lavishly illustrated manuscripts to separate drawings and miniatures for less wealthy patrons.

Some time around the end of the 16th century, with the transfer of the capital to Shiraz (1597), an official deregulation of the traditional code of book painting took place. Some painters turned to other media, experimenting with book covers in lacquer work or with full-length oil paintings.
If earlier paintings had been about man in his natural environment, the late 16th and early 17th century is about man himself. The work of this period is dominated by large scale representation of seedy dervishes, Sufi shaikhs, beggers, merchants.... with satire as the driving force behind most of these pictures. Some of the same artists leant their talents to an altogether different genre of painting - the sensuous and erotic - with scenes of lovers, voluptuous women, etc. These were extremely popular and were produced mechanically with the minimum of effort.

Two main factors influenced artists between 1630 and 1722; the works of Riza, and European Art. In the drawings by Riza, the outline of basic shapes is accompanied by an obsession with pleats and folds, which normally serve to emphasise the sensuous curvature of bodily form, but on many occasions, reach the point of complete abstraction. In a country with a powerful calligraphic tradition, writing and drawing are always interconnected, but at this time the link seems to have been particularly strong so that drawing takes on the physical appearance of Shikastah or Nasta'liq1 calligraphy.

By the second half of the 17th century, when Shah Abbas II sent the painter Muhammad Zaman to study in Rome, there was awakened a need in artists to find new ways of expression. Muhammad Zaman himself returned to Persia completely under the influence of Italian painting techniques. However, this did not lead to a great move forward in his style of painting; indeed his miniatures for the Shah-nama are in general banal and lack a sense of balance.
As far as architecture is concerned, pride of place goes to the expansion of Isfahan, masterminded by Shah Abbas I from 1598 onwards, which is one of the most ambitious and novel schemes of town planning in Islamic history.
In architectural decoration great importance was given to calligraphy, which was transformed into an art of monumental inscriptions, a development of particular artistic merit in the art of kashi.

Its chief exponent was Muhammad Riza-i-Imami who worked in Qum, Qazvin and above all, between 1673 and 1677 in Mashad. The death of Shah Abbas I in 1629 marked the beginning of the end for the golden age of Persian architecture.
The last decade of the 16th century saw a vigorous revival of the pottery industry in Iran. Safavid potters developed new types of Chinese inspired Kubachi blue and white polychrome ware, due perhaps to the influence of the three hundred Chinese potters and their families who were settled in Iran (in Kerman) by Shah Abbas I. Ceramic tiles were produced especially in Tabriz and in Samarkand. Other types of ceramics include bottles and flasks from Isfahan.

Textiles were greatly developed during the Safavid period. Isfahan, Kashan and Yezd produced silks, and Isfahan and Yezd satin; Kashan was famous for its brocades.
Persian clothes in the 17th century often had a floral decoration on a light background and the old geometric motifs gave way to the depiction of pseudo-realistic scenes full of human figures.

Carpets occupy the major position in the textile field, with key weaving centres in Kerman, Kashan, Shiraz, Yezd, and Isfahan.
There were a great variety of types such as the hunting carpet, the animal carpet, the garden carpet and the flower-vase carpet. The strong pictorial character of so many Safavid carpets owes much to Safavid book painting.
In metalwork, the engraving technique developed in Khurassan in the 15th century retained its popularity well into Safavid times. Safavid metalwork produced significant innovations in form, design and technique. They include a type of tall octagonal torch-holder on a circular plinth, a new type of ewer of Chinese inspiration, and the almost total disappearance of Arabic inscriptions in favour of those containing Persian poetry, often by Hafez and Sa'di.
In gold and silver work, Safavid Iran specialised in the production of swords and daggers, and of gold vessels such as bowls and jugs, often set with precious stones.

Safavid metalwork, like so many of the other visual arts, remained the standard for subsequent artists in the Zand and Qajar periods.

[Asalbanoo]

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Detail of a silk carpet from the Safavid period.


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Safavid fresco (oil paint on plaster)
"Attendants at an Outdoor feast".
By Muhammad Zaman or his atelier, Isfahan, c. second half of 17th century

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Shah-nama of Shah Tahmasp
Tabriz, c. 1525. The scene depicts the death of King Mirdas

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A view of the eastern pier of the north iwan of the Imam Mosque, built in Isfahan during the Safavid period.

[micropixel]

But as I know medes(mads) were not persian and the iran history is not only about persians .
Please be carefull .

[Asalbanoo]

Nader Gholi Afshar Gharakhlou, son of a cloak tailor from the Khorasan province in the north east of Iran, was born on 1688 in Daregaz. His father died when Nader was very young and the young boy had to support his mom. He was once kidnapped by Uzbek bandits along with his Brother Ebrahim and his mother. Nader spent four years in the Uzbeks jail, but he escaped with his brother when their mother died on captivity.
Nader began his career by joining the army of Baba Ali Beyg Koose Ahmadlou Afshar. In his army, Nader started showing his military abilities and was soon promoted as a general and married Goharshad, Baba Ali's daughter. He took over the power and wealth of Ali Beyg Koose after he passed away. At this time, Shah Tahmasp II Safavi, who declared himself king after the defeat of Afghans, heard of Nader's growing power and decided to take advantage of this new power. He sent Hossein-Ali Beyg Bastamy to invite Nader to join his army. Nader saw the opportunity and joined Tahmasp II's growing number of commanders.
Very soon Nader became the second most powerful person in Tahmasp II's court, and he soon decided that he has to get rid of the most powerful person, Fath-Ali Khan Qajar Qovanlou. Fath-Ali Khan, who was older and more experienced than Nader, felt the danger and started his struggle to escape Nader's trap, but he lost the game to him and was killed soon after.
Shah Tahmasp II, weak and careless like his father and grandfather, was happy with the peace in his court and did not care about who really controls his divided and anarchic country. When Nader became the ultimate strong man, Tahmasp awarded him with the title of “Tahmaspgholi Khan”, meaning “The Servant of Tahmasp”. A title with which Nader was known until his election as king.
At this time, the country was under chaos. Afghans, headed by Ashraf, controlled the eastern and central parts of the country, Tahmasp II was just claiming the country, without any actual territories. Ottomans, taking advantage of this situation, attacked and invaded the western sections of the country and captured Hamedan. Nader, both for his own ambitions and also patriotism, decided to throw the enemies out of the country.
For the beginning, he faced Ashraf and his Afghans twice, once in Mehmandoost near Semnan, and then in Moorche-Khort on north of Esphahan. Both times Ashraf was defeated and pushed back to Shiraz, there, in a final battle, Nader destroyed Ashraf’s army. Ashraf, escaping to Laarestan, was killed by a servant of his cousin, Mir Hossein, and his head was sent to Nader.
After finishing the Afghan business, Nader looked to the west (1733). In several battles with Ottoman’s, Nader defeated Ottomans and pushed them back to the older boundaries. Then he continued his attacks on Mesopotamia. He conquered Soleymania, Samera, and Karkouk, but was defeated behind the walls of Baghdad when Toupal Osman Pasha sent more forces to support Ahmad Pasha, the Ottoman governor of the city. Nader did not give up and came back with greater forces and this time put Ottomans under such pressure that they agreed to give the cities on the west of Aras river to Iran, in addition to Karbala and Basra on southern Mesopotamia. At this time, Russians, also getting afraid of this new strong man, gave back the cities of Yervan and Tephlis that they had taken away during the time of chaos.
When Nader went back to the now safe capital of Esphahan in 1736, he saw the weak Safavi king living in wealth and comfort and enjoying the goods of life. Nader, being aware of kings behavior, planned a trap for the king so that courtiers can see kings behavior with their own eyes, then he started a plot to depose Tahmasp and elect his 9 years old son, Abbas as Shah Abbas III. Nader became the sole ruler of the country, but finally he invited all of the governors of different provinces to a council in Moghan, north east of Azerbaijan. In the council of Moghan, pressured by Nader’s army, but also deciding partly on their own observations, the nobles unanimously chose Nader as the new king. Abandoning his “Tahmasp-Gholi Khan” title, Nader crowned as Nadershah I.
***
When Nader became king, his first action was to pursue his ultimate goal of gaining more money and more territories. He turned to the sure place, India! For the start, he had to secure his back, thus still operating from Esphahan, Nader headed for Ghandehar and Haraat, the eastern most parts of the country. He invaded Ghandehar and Haraat just opened the gates to the ruthless warrior. Nader’s eldest son, Reza Gholi, captured Balkh, then with the support of Balkh’s governor, Nader conquered Bokhara, Samarghand, and then the rest of the Transoxania.
Now, being sure that his northern neighbors would not have the power to rise against him, Nader turned his attention to Kabul, then part of Mongol Empire of India. Nader invaded Kabul and did not waste anytime to continue to the south, he invaded Lahour and Karachi, and reached the gates of Delhi (then Shah Jahan Abad) in 1738. Mohammad Shah, taken by storm, was incapable of defending his falling empire, so he just opened the doors of the city. Indians, upset by their kings weak reaction, started killing Nader’s soldiers, despite the orders to stop the fight. Nader, always fast tempered, ordered massacre of residents and only stopped after Mohammad Shah’s request and offers of money.
After emptying Mohammad Shah’s treasury from all of the precious stones and money, Nader spoke in public and expressed his support for the reign of Mohammad Shah and ordered the coins with his name to be changed back to Mohammad Shah’s name. Then he made a deal with the emperor to provide him with a hefty amount of money each year and promise of support and help. Next, Nader turned back home, this time looking for a good place to store the treasures. He found the perfect place in Kalat mountains, just north of his birthplace in Dareggaz. Then he changed the capital from Esphahan to Mashhad, the biggest city in Khorasan.
From then he started again to conquer Transoxania, he killed the king of Kharazam and appointed Khan of Bokhara as the ruler of all of Transoxania. Then he decided to go to Mesopotamia and conquer that section, but he got the news of his brothers death in Caucasia in the hand of Lezgi (present day Daghestani) tribes. Nader reached Caucasia in 1741, and fought with Lezgis, with no real results, this war ended in peace and a treaty of cease-fire. This was the place that Nader first meat Dr. Bazin, a French friar who became his personal physician.
Next, Nader headed to Mesopotamia and fought with Ottomans and in a treaty agreed to occupy Najaf and leave the rest of the Mesopotamia alone. He then went to Shiraz and then back to Mashahad. For some times, he lived in peace, but once again he had to head out to war with some tribes that rebelled. One night, in 1747, near Damghan in north east of the country, two of Naders commanders decided to kill Nader, so they entered his tent and cut his head with a sword, this was the end of life one of Iran’s greatest and cruelest kings.
Although a great conqueror, Nader can not be considered as a good or wise king. He did nothing to organize the war stricken country. He did not consider will of the people in his reign. All of the money that he gained from his conquest, he put on a treasure in Kalat. At the end of his life, he grew so suspicious of others that he even blinded his own son Reza Gholi Mirza in charge of treason. Nobody was safe from his anger. His death was both bitter and sweet. It marked the end of a period of golden conquests and national pride, but it also was full of murder and suspicion. All in all, Nader is considered as a great and influential king, but never reaching the level of Kourosh with his unusual open minuends or Shah Abbas for his creation of a united and powerful country.
***
Almost immediately after Nader’s murder in Damghan, the country fell into anarchy. All of Nader’s commanders started collecting forces and declaring themselves kings. The first one was Ahmad Khan Ebdali, one of Nader’s Afghan commanders. Ahmad Khan invaded Kabul, Ghandehar and Mazarsharif and declared himself king of Afghanistan, he later captured Harat for a short period of time.
At the same time, Nader’s nephew, Ali Khan declared himself king as Adel Shah (the Just King). The first action of this “Just” ruler was t kill all of his cousins! He killed Reza Gholi Mirza, Emam Gholi Mirza and all of other descendants of Nader who could be a problem for him. As you can expect, he did not enjoy his “just!” actions for a long time and was soon killed by his own brother who became Ebrahim Shah. Ebrahim Shah also gave his place to other adventurers.
Next, the nobles elected Shahrokh, the teenage son of Reza Gholi Mirza, Nader’s blind son, as the new king, but it was not long until a new person came along, Shah Soleyman III. This man, originally called Mirza Mohammad, was the son of Shah Soleyman I Safavis daughter and a clergy man in Mashhad. Encouraged by some nobles, he called himself the true heir to the throne and captured and blinded Shahrokh. In his own term, he did not last a long time (1749-1750). He was captured and blinded, and Shahrokh returned to the throne, with blind eyes! His “reign” continued 1796, when he was imprisoned by Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar (see next chapter).
At the other side of the country, three local chiefs tried to gain the power. They were Ali Morad Khan Bakhtiari, Karim Khan Zand, and Abolfath Khan Haft Lang. They found a grandson of Shah Soltan Hossein and called him Ismail III. Under the name of protecting the “rightful” king, these three gained power. Abolfath Khan became the Prime Minister, Karim Khan got the job of the army chief commander and Ali Morad Khan became the regent. The three friends, as they came to be known, conquered all of the country with the exemptions of Azerbaijan (ruled by Azad Khan Afghan), Mazandaran (controlled by Mohammad Hassan Khan Qajar) and Khorasan (still under the power of Shahrokh). Then, as long as some people are smarter than others, Karim Khan and Ali Morad Khan got rid of Abolfath Khan, and then Karim Khan just illuminated Ali Morad Khan! In the process, “Shah” Ismail III just was not important any more!!! So, Karim Khan, becoming the only “regent”, decided to do the better thing and called himself, well, not king, rather “The Servant of the People” (Vakil Al-Melleh).

[Asalbanoo]

Zand Dynasty
Arts
Kareem Khan, chief of Zands, a tribe of Lors in western Iran, was only known as Khaloo Kareem before becoming an important figure in the country’s politics. When Kareem Khan was young, Nadershah moved the Zand tribe form their home in Lorestan to the eastern steppes of Khorasan. After Nader’s death, the Zand tribe, under the guidance of Kareem, went back to their original land.
Kareem Khan, who was a very sharp and wise person with nationalist ideas, decided to organize the country after the civil wars that was caused by Nader’s assassination. As we said before, He and two other local tribes chose a grandson of Shah Soltan Hossein as Shah Esmail III and began to rule under his name, after a while, Kareem Khan managed to become the only ruler. He was not very much interested in the royal costumes and unanecessary court etiquette’s, so he did not accept the title of king and only called himself “Vakil Ol Melle”(Agent/Deputy of the People).
When Kareem Khan managed to conquer and organize the central parts of the country, he appointed Shiraz as his capital. At this time, Kareem Khan’s biggest opponents were Azad Khan-e Afghan in Azerbaijan, Shahrokh Shah in Khorasan, and Mohammad Hassan Khan Qajar in Mazandaran. Kareem Khan did not try to depose Sharokh Shah out of respect for Nader. Azad Khan was a strong and wise opponent, he had a strong military and also some popular support. Kareem Khan sent his greatest commanders, Ali Mardan Khan and Allah Gholi Khan Zand to invade Azerbaijan, those two, after several battles and some occasional defeats, finally managed to capture Azad Khan and bring him to Shiraz. Kareem Khan made him promise to be loyal and then set him free and gave a him a government job. Azad Khan, a man of his word, stayed loyal and lived in Shiraz until he died.
The strongest and biggest enemy of Kareem Khan was Mohammad Hassan Khan. Mohammad Hassan Khan Qajar Ghovanlou was son of Fath-Ali Khan, commander and regent of Shah Tahmasp II who was executed after Nader’s rise to power. In the period of anarchy, Mohammad Hassan Khan decided to restore the power that Nader took away from his father, so he gathered a relatively large army and invaded Mazandaran, Eastern Khorasan, Gilan and even Tehran (then only a small town). By growth of his power, Kareem Khan became rightly worried, because soon Mohammad Hassan Khan declared his desire to conquer Esphahan and possibly Shiraz. Kareem Khan once again sent his commanders, but the Qajar Khan was far more experienced than Azad Khan. So the Zand army was defeated , and Mohammad Hassan Khan came closer to Kareem Khan’s territory. Finally, after several years of battles, in one battle near Gonbad, one of Mohammad Hassan Khan’s commanders betrayed him. Mohammad Hassan Khan was killed and his family were captured. His head was sent to Kareem Khan along with two of his eldest children, Agha Mohammad Khan and Hossein Gholi Khan as hostages. The rest of the Kareem Khan’s reign was spent in relatively peaceful state. The only war after the defeat of Qajar Khan was a battle with Ottomans in which Kareem Khan invaded Basra, a city in south eastern Mesopotamia. Kareem Khan started construction works in his capital of Shiraz and founded Vakil Bazar, Vakil Public Bath, and several Vakil palaces in different cities, all named after the title “Vakil Ol- Melle”.
***
Kareem Khan lacked the futuristic view of educating a good heir. When he died in 1779, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Abol Fath Khan. This son was not a sharp and courageous ruler like his father, but rather lazy and weak. His whole reign was over shadowed by his powerful uncle, Zakki Khan. Zakki Khan, half brother of Kareem Khan, was a symbol of corruption and political mischief. His administration as the chancellor of the And territories led to the anarchy of next 20 years.
Abol Fath Khan died of a heart attack. He was succeeded by three of his cousins and also his brother. These four rulers governed the country on and off for twenty years. It seemed almost like the Zand dynasty has ran out of brave and wise rulers, until Lotf Ali Khan came along.
Lotf Ali Khan, grandson of Kareem Khan’s youngest brother, Sadegh Khan, was a very brave, patriotic and handsome warrior. There are countless number of accounts about his looks. He was also very brave and master of fighting arts. One thing that he lacked was political knowledge. Unlike his granduncle, he did not became the ruler as a result of his own hard work, he just inherited it! He was brave, but he did not know how to get close to his subjects and be friendly to them, a gift that Kareem Khan was master of.
Lotf Ali Khan faced a great problem when he became Vakil Ol Melle. This problem was called Agha Mohammad Khan. It was not a form of rare disease like cancer, or any kind of epidemic, but it was equally life threatening. Agha Mohammad Khan was the eldest son of Mohammad Hassan Khan Qajar, murdered chief of Qajars and Kareem Khan’s sweared enemy. When his father died, he and his younger brother Hossein Gholi Khan were sent to Kareem Khan’s court as hostages to ensure peace. Agha Mohammad Khan was castrated when he was very young, possibly by Aadel Shah Afshar, who was of course mad. In that time, seemed like he has no chance of re-gaining his fathers lands, but Agha Mohammad Khan never stopped planning. He counted seconds for the time of Kareem Khan’s death, and when he died, he fled Shiraz and did not stop until he reached Estar-Aabad, his birth place and traditional seat of Qajars. His brother, Hossein Gholi Khan was murdered earlier when he was sent to Ghoochan as the governor.
When Agha Mohammad Khan got to his hometown, the first thing he did was to gather all of his brothers (there were quite a few of them) and the remainder of his father’s army. Qajars were so excited that they did not notice Agha Mohammad Khan’s lack of, manhood! He invaded Mazandaran in the first month of his arrival, then continued to the south and captured Qazvin and Tehran. His brother, Abbas Gholi Khan conquered Gilan, and this was when he noticed the obvious, why not he himself as the chief? Why should it be Agha Mohammad Khan? He began a rebellion against his older brother, and god knows that Agha Mohammad Khan never wasted anytime in calming rebellions. The result of this “calming” was around 50 corpses, one of them Abbas Gholi khan’s. With the help of his now faithful remaining brothers, notably Jafar Gholi Khan, a tall, fierce, and dumb commander who was famous for cutting horses in half! Agha Mohammad Khan conquered most of northern Iran and came as far south as Isphahan.
This was where he faced Lotf Ali Khan. They fought, as you can say, not once, but close to ten battles. The last of them just outside the gates of Shiraz. Here, Lotf Ali Khan got the dagger in the back. He did not make sure of whom he is living in charge inside the city, and the person he left was not a big icon of faithfulness. This person, called Ebrahim Khan Kalantar, drew the conclusion that his master would loose the battle to the Qajar Khan, so he just did not open the gates when Lotf Ali Khan tried to come back to the city to get re-enforcement. Lotf Ali Khan did not have time to fight two enemies, so he and twenty of his followers went to Kerman, around 300 Km east of Shiraz. Agha Mohammad Khan of course followed him, and when he captured Kerman, he did some of the cruelest things in the history of humankind. He arrested the Zand Khan, after several street fights in which all of Lotf Ali Khan’s followers got killed. He ordered some unspeakable things to be done to him, and then he killed him. After this, he ordered each of his soldiers to bring him the eyeballs of twenty Kermani citizens. With this, he put his name up in the list with some of other famous evil guys such as Ghenghis Khan, Teymour, and Alexander. Kerman was known for years as the city of blinds.

[Asalbanoo]

The Qajar dynasty, which ruled Persia from 1794 to 1925, was not a direct continuation of the Safavid period. The invasion of the Ghilzai Afghan tribes with the occupation in 1722 of the Safavid capital Isfahan, and the eventual collapse of the Safavid Empire in the following decade plunged Iran into a period of political chaos. With the exception of the Zand interval (1750-79), the history of 18th century Iran was marred by tribal violence. This ended with the coronation of Agha Muhammad Khan Qajar in 1796, which ushered in a period of political stability that was characterised by a revival of cultural and artistic life.
The Zand and Qajar periods saw a continuation of oil painting introduced in the 17th century, and the decoration of lacquer boxes and book-bindings. Illustrated historical manuscripts and single page portraits were also produced for a range of patrons, in a style consistent with that of Muhammad Ali (son of Muhammad Zaman) and his contemporaries. While the excessive use of shading sometimes endows these works with a dusky quality, they do display an improved understanding of the play of light (coming from a single source) on three-dimensional forms.
The evolution of Persian art in the 18th and 19th centuries can be divided into distinct phases, beginning with the reign of Karim Khan Zand (1750-79), Fath Ali Shah (1797-1834) and Nasir ad-Din Shah(1848-96).
During the Zand period, Shiraz became not only the capital but also the centre of artistic excellence in Iran, and Karim Khan's building program in the city attempted to emulate Shah Abbas' Isfahan. Shiraz was endowed with fortifications, palaces, mosques and other civil amenities.

Karim Khan was also a noted patron to painting, and the Safavid-European tradition of monumental figure painting was revived under the Zand dynasty, as part of an overall revival of the arts.
Zand artists were as versatile as their predecessors. As well as developing life-sized paintings (murals and oils on canvas), manuscripts, illustrations, watercolours, lacquer work, and enamels from the Saffavid dynasty, they added a new medium that of wash drawing. However, in their paintings, the results often appeared to be rigid, since the Zand artists in order to correct what they considered an excessive emphasis on three-dimensionality, attempted to lighten the composition by the introduction of decorative elements. Sometimes pearls and various jewels were painted on the headgear and clothing of the subjects.

Karim Khan, who preferred the title Regent (Vakil) to that of Shah, did not demand that his painters prettify his appearance; he was happy to be shown at an informal and unpretentious gathering in a modest architectural setting.
The tone of these Zand paintings contrast sharply with the later images of Fath Ali Shah (the second of the seven rulers of the Qajar dynasty) and his court.
There is an unquestionable Zand inheritance in early Qajar art. It is known that the founder of the Qajar dynasty, Agha Muhammad Khan, decorated his Tehran audience hall with paintings looted from the Zand palace and Mirza Baba (one of Karim Khan's court artists) went on to become Fath 'Ali Shah's first painter-laureate.
Fath Ali Shah was particularly receptive to ancient Iranian influences, and numerous rock relieves were carved in neo-Sassanian style, depicting the Qajar sovereign in the guise of Khosroe.
The best known reliefs are at Chashma-i-Ali, at Taq-i-Bustan, and in the vicinity of the Koran Gate in Shiraz.
Under Fath Ali Shah there was a clear return to tradition; however, at the same time late 18th century European court style appeared in the palaces in Tehran. European influences also mingle with Sassanian and neo-Achaemenid themes in the carved figural stucco of this period (as can be seen in many houses in Kashan).

Fath Ali Shah also used large-scale frescoes and canvasses to create an imperial personal image. Portraits of princes and historical scenes were used to adorn his new palaces and they were often shaped like an arch in order to fit into a space in the same shape on a wall. Fath Ali Shah also distributed several paintings to foreign powers such as Russia, Britain, France and the Austro-Hungarian Empire

he interaction of popular style and European influence is even more evident in painting, with Flemish and Florentine elements appearing in the painting of the dancer "Mazda" by Madhi Shirazi (1819-20).
With the introduction of printing and large scale painting some of the finest Qajar miniature artists turned their hand to lacquer work such as book bindings, caskets, and pen boxes (qalamdan). The style is in particular cosmopolitan and characteristic of a court that attempted to combine the styles of Persepolis, Isfahan and Versailles.

In the second half of the 19th century Nasir al Din Shah, as well as collecting European artworks supported a local school of portraiture which abandoned the style of Fath Ali Shah in favour of a European-influenced academic style. The works of these local artists ranged from state oil portraits to watercolours of unprecedented naturalism.
Photography now began to have a profound impact on the development of Persian paintings. Soon after it was introduced into Iran in the 1840s, Iranians promptly adopted the technology. Nasir-al Din Shah's Minister of Publication, I'timad al-Saltaneh, claimed that photography had greatly served the art of portraiture and landscape by reinforcing the use of light and shade, accurate proportions and perspective.

In 1896 Nasir al-Din Shah was assassinated and within ten years Iran had its first constitutional parliament. This period of political and social change saw artists exploring new concepts, both within and beyond the confines of imperial portraiture.

In the double portraiture of Muzaffar al-Din Shah the prematurely aged ruler is shown resting one arm on a cane, the other on the supporting arm of his Premier. The artist here conveys both the frail health of the Monarch and the Monarchy.
The most important artist of the late Qajar period was Muhammad Ghaffari, known as Kamal al-Mulk (1852-1940) who championed a new naturalistic style.
Qajar tile-work is usually unmistakable. The repertory of the so-called cuerda seca tiles shows a completely new departure from that of the Safavid period. For the first time representations of people and animals form the main subject matter; there are hunting scenes, illustrations from the battles of Rostam (the hero of the national epic, Shah-nama) soldiers, officials, scenes of contemporary life and even copies of European illustrations and photographs.
The Qajar technique par excellence - again triggered by European influence, in this case Venetian glass- was mirror-work. Mugarnes cells faced with mirrors yielded an original and spectacular effect, as can be seen in the Golestan palace in Tehran or the Hall of Mirrors in Mashad's Holy Shrine.

In the field of applied arts, only weaving continued to have an importance that extended beyond the borders of Iran, and during the Qajar period, the carpet industry gradually revived on a larger scale.

Although many traditional designs were retained, they were expressed in different ways, often smaller in scale than their Safavid prototypes, with the use of a brighter range of colours.

[Asalbanoo]

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The Pavilion at Pars museum

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Shah Abbas II receiving a Mughal ambassador.
Historical painting by 18th century Zand artist Abu'l Hasan Ghaffari
Mustawfi Kashani. Notice the use of decorative elements in this painting

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< Portrait of Fath
'Ali Shah seated,
by Mihr 'Ali c.
1813-14 from The
State Hermitage
Museum Saint
Petersburg.

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Qajar prince and
his attendant.
Qatar, Tehran c.
1820. Designed to
fit into arches in
the divan or public
room of a house or
palace. >

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Portrait of Nasir-al Din Shah.
The watercolour on the right, clearly shows the artist's effort to copy the
photograph in every detail. The colours and decorative details used, must
have been according to his patron's wishes.

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Portrait of Muzaffar al-Din Shah and Premier 'Abd al-Majid Mirza, 'Ayn al-Dawleh', By 'Abd al-Husayn (Sani' Humayun). Tehran, early 20th century

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The ceiling of Zinatolmolk Residence, Shiraz

[Asalbanoo]

When Agha Mohammad Khan killed Lotf Ali Khan in 1796, he became the most powerful in Iranian politics. He was the master of two third of the country, the only other person ruling at this time was Shahrokh, old Afsharid king who was really a king in name and had no real power.
Agha Mohammad Khan moved his capital to Tehran, a small town half way between his birth place of Estar Aabad and Shiraz, still a very important city. Without wasting anytime, he set of for more wars. He captured Azerbaijan, then headed south and added Kurdistan and Lorestan to his kingdom, made sure that Fars and Kerman are obedient, and then went back to Tehran. Now, he thought of his most important passion, money! He new one person who had a whole lot of it, and he was in Khorasan, yes, our old friend Shahrokh Shah Afshar. Agha Mohammad Khan appointed Baba Khan, his nephew and most trusting commander as the regent and heir, and headed west to Mashad.
Shahrokh was blind, old, and stingy! He did not realize the dangers of playing games with a guy like Agha Mohammad Khan. When the Qajar Khan arrived in Mashad, Shahrokh treated him like a dear guest and accepted his superiority, but denied money. He said that he has no money and he is a poor man, but Agha Mohammad Khan new that most of Nader’s treasure should be some where in that palace. He warned Shahrokh about bad consequences of not giving him what he wants, but Shahrokh was cheaper than realizing the threat. Agha Mohammad Khan chose the fast solution, torture! He put boiling kettles on the old man’s head, and ordered his beard to be root out! Shahrokh finally gave up and turned the money in. Agha Mohammad Khan re-appointed him as the ruler of the Khorasan with the promise of paying 20,000 gold coins a year.
When Agha Mohammad Khan got back to Tehran, he faced a new problem in the opposite side of Mashad, Georgia! Georgia, then a part of Iran, was a Christian princedom. During the anarchy, many of its ruling class started looking to Russia for protection instead of Iran, and at this time, the princes and local Khans were rebelling against Agha Mohammad Khan. The Qajar King did not waste time and headed to Shushi, the capital of Shirvan, north of Azerbaijan and south of Georgia. Khan of Shirvan, Ebrahim Khalil Khan Javanshir, did not let the Qajar king to pass, so Agha Mohammad Khan surrounded the city. One night while camping outside the Shushi fortress, Agha Mohammad Khan asked for a Melon for dessert and he ate half of it. When he finished, he ordered the other half to be put aside for his tomorrow night. Three of servants ate the other half, and when Agha Mohammad Khan asked for it, they had to tell him that it has been eaten! He vowed to have the rude servants beheaded the following morning and went to sleep. Because everybody knew that Agha Mohammad Khan never fails to carry on his promises, especially in killing part, they decided to kill him before he can kill them! They entered his tent and put a dagger in his chest. This was the end of the life of a man who was cruel, stingy, and murderous, but at the same time a man who was responsible for rescuing Iran from anarchy and unifying the whole country. A fruit, such pity!
***
Agha Mohammad Khan was killed in 1797. When the news of his murder reached the capital, the riot broke out. First his brother Mehdi-Gholi Khan claimed the throne and then Nader Mirza, son of Shahrokh Shah Afshar, the blind old king of Khorasan re-claimed his ancestors throne. Before his death however Agha Mohammad Khan has named Baba Khan, his nephew and son of Hossein-Gholi Khan, as his heir. Baba Khan was one of his best commanders and the only one who knew how to keep the rest of Qajar tribe happy and calm. Baba Khan first persuaded his uncle Mehdi-Gholi Khan to reconsider his claim as the king, and the Khan happily agreed. Then Baba Khan coronated himself as Fath-Ali Shah (his original name was Fath-Ali, Baba Khan just a title). Next he moved toward Harat, where Nader Mirza concentrated his armies. In long battle, commanded by Baba Khan himself, Nader Mirza was captured and killed. This was when Fath-Ali Shah said his famous line: “Nader killed Fath-Ali, and Fath-Ali killed Nader”
(First Nader is Nader Shah, first Fath-Ali is Baba Khan’s great-grandfather who was killed by Nader Shah. Second Fath-Ali is Baba Khan himself, and second Nader is of course Nader Mirza).
After clearing the way to the throne, Fath-Ali Shah returned to the capital and started his long reign. His reign is THE WORST in the history of Iran. Baba Khan, first a brave and smart commander, changed his life style when he became king. He married over 500 wives, and spent most of his days in the Harem. He became fearful of his possible opponents. He was very stingy, and never tried to defend the country in front of the foreign enemies.
Fath-Ali Shah re-elected his uncles prime minister, Ebrahim Khan Kalantar Shirazi (the same person who betrayed Lotf-Ali Khan). During his reign, Czarist Russian started pursuing Peter the Great’s will of reaching the warm waters of the south. Paskovich. Russian general, attacked Azerbaijan. Iran’s forces, commanded by Fath-Ali Shah’s brave and wise son, Abbas Mirza, faced them north of Nakhjavan. Iran’s forces were weak and they lacked the technological advancement of Russians. The other problem was Fath-Ali Shah’s stinginess. He denied the requests of money for better equipment that Abbas Mirza sent him. Finally, Abbas Mirza had to back up from Azerbaijan down to Tabriz. In there, Russians forced Iranians to sign an agreement that gave them the ownership of Armenia and Georgia, called Torkaman-Chaay. After this, there was no war for almost five years when again the Russians attacked and this time they captured Tabriz. Once again Abbas Mirza faced them and pushed them as far back as Darband. Instead of sending him more support, Fath-Ali Shah sent a message telling him to give up! Abbas Mirza did not give up, but when Russians got a new reinforcement, Abbas Mirza could not stand in front of them. Paskovich came south and invaded the whole Azerbijan down to Ardebil. Abbas Mirza had no other chance than to make another humiliating treaty. This time it was called Golestan and it gave the right to 17 of Azerbaijan cities beyond the river Aras to the Russians (present day Republic of Azerbaijan). This was the most humiliating treaty in Iran’s history. It was also Iranians responsible to pay 20,000 gold pieces to the Russia and Fath-Ali Shah agreed to give the 17 cities, but no money. Abbas Mirza had to sell the jewelry of his own and his soldiers wives to pay the Russians. All of these wars really wore him out and he died from TB six months after the end of the war (1833).
Fath-Ali Shah, now the least popular and most hated king of Iran, lived one more year to sea Abbas Mirza’s son. Mohammad, becoming the new heir (although Fath-Ali Shah had 59 more sons alive, out of 250). Mohammad Mirza was chosen as the king despite all of the oppositions from his uncles, most notably, Ali Khan and Mohmmad Ali Mirza.
Fath-Ali Shah died in 1834. His legacy was the tales of his unbelievable mating, loss of a large part of countries territory, start of an anarchy, and most importantly, opening the foot of foreign imperialist powers to the country. He will always be remembered as the worst, the most hated, and the weakest king of Iran.
***
When Fath-Ali Shah died, Mohammad Mirza, his grandson and son of late Abbas Mirza was chosen as the new king. This election caused numerous problems within the country, the most important one of them being the claim of throne by Ali Shah.
Ali Shah Zell ol Soltan, tenth son of Fath-Ali Shah was an ambitious man. When his older brother Abbas Mirza died, leaving Mohammad Mirza as the heir, Ali Shah started planning for a riot against the new king to be. When Mohammad Mirza became king, Ali Shah, with the help of his brothers Emam Gholi Mirza and Hossein Ali Mirza, declaired himself as king and sat on the throne in Tehran. At that time, Mohammad Mirza was in Azerbaijan, where he succeeded his father as the governor; he did not have the time to come to Tehran fast enough and depose Ali Shah. Mohammad Shah was furious, but he was also lucky.
Mirza Abolghassem Ghaem Magham, chancelor of Mohammad Mirza's court, was a wise and strong minister. He and his father Mirza Issa had served Abbas Mirza for over 20 years, and he was left as the counselor of the new heir (and now king) after the death of his grand-father and father. Mirza Abolghassem planned a way to depose Ali Shah and restore Mohammad Shah to his throne. He contacted Fath-Ali Shah's other sons who were also in Tehran, but did not cooperate with their brother, he also started gathering forces to attack the capital. All of these actions made Ali Shah scared, so he sent his trusted brothers Imam Verdi Mirza and Ebrahim Mirza to face the forces of Mohammad Shah. When Mirza Abolghassem made sure that he has scared the 'king' enough, he entered diplomacy. He bribed Ali Shah's brothers to stop supporting him and promised them land and positions. Then he sent a force headed by Mohammad Shah's brothers Fereydoon Mirza and Khosrow Mirza to attack the weak armies of Ali Shah. It was soon all over and Ali Shah was deposed, emptying the throne for Mohammad Shah.
Mohammad Shah entered his capital victorious. He rewarded Mirza Abolghassem by appointing him as his Prime Minister. Then he started punishing his rebellious uncles, against Mirza Abolghassem's advise. He blinded Hassan Ali Mirza and Ali Shah, the eldest of the rebellious princes. He also exiled a whole bunch of them to a small castle in Azerbaijan. Some of the princes escaped to Russia or Mesopotamia, and some of them even to England. Finally Mohammad Shah did the one of the cruelest acts of his reign by blinding Khsorow Mirza, his brother, just because he was Abbas Mirza's favourite son!
After establishing his throne, Mohammad Shah withdrew to his palace, but not for long. The new story was the occupation of Harat, a city in Eastern Iran by Amir of Afghanistan. Amir, feeling rather secure by British protection he received, had decided to expand his country! Mirza Bolghassem appointed Soltan Morad Mirza, Mohammad Shah's brother and his greatest commander, as the governor of Khorasan, the province Harat is in. Morad Mirza moved his army to Harat and captured the city with no major opposition. He sent the news of the conquest to Tehran and also declared that he is going to conquer Afghanistan so that the Amir can not repeat his act. Morad Mirza was right in making that decision, and he had enough forces to occupy all Afghanistan and even parts of the Tajikestan, one of the provinces lost to Russian by Fath-Ali Shah. What Morad Mirza was not aware of was politics. The British, feeling the danger and realizing that if Morad Mirza conquers Afghanistan, he might continue to India, thought a solution. Their desire was to keep the attention of Iran away from Afghanistan and ultimately India, because they knew history enough to realize that Iranian kings like Mahmoud and Nader have conquered India before, and it is possible that another king might think of the same thing. The British plan was smart and at the same time cruel. They sent their navy to occupy the southern islands of Iran in the Persian Golf. When Iranian government complained, the British presented a solution: un-occupy Harat and we will give the islands back!!! Mohammad Shah had no other way, thus he sent a message to his brother telling him to come back to Tehran. Morad Mirza, confused and angry, declined the orders. The British added the diplomatic pressure by moving furthure north and actually entering the mainland. Mohammad Shah, this time angry, sent his other brother, Heidar Mirza to bring the Morad Mirza back. Heidar Mirza was successful in pursuading Morad Mirza and brought him back to Tehran. The English dislodged the islands. The British, willing to remove any possibility of similar actions in the future, forced the Iranian court to accept Harat as part of the Afghanistan Kingdom. This was another loss for Iran, following the ones to Russia.
Many historians now think that if Mohammad Shah and Mirza Bolghassem didn't listen to the British, the turn out could be a lot different. They say that with Morad Mirza's army strength and the equal military knowledge of his other brothers Heidar Mirza and Anooshirvan Mirza, Iran could turn out to be the winner party. If Morad Mirza just stayed in Harat and did not go any further, another army in the south could stop the British. Many say that the weakness of some Iranian officials made them scared of the British without reason, and there also were some officials who were cooperating with the Ambassador of Britain to scare the king. In any case, this war caused the creation of Afghanistan as a separate country under British protectorate and also ended the desire of Iranian kings to expand their territory.
Another great incident of Mohammad Shah's reign includes Mirza Abolghassem. Mohammad Shah, feeling suspicious about his prime minister because of his successful ways to organize the country and even winning a war (well, Harat was lost to diplomacy not to military power), he was thinking of a way to get rid of him. Mohammad Shah did not have a very stable personality, many people had lots of influence on him, including his old teacher, Haji Mirza Aghassi.
Haji Abbas Iravani, known as Mirza Aghassi, was a Molla (monk) from Iravan (Yervan, present capital of Armania, then an Iranian city). He was chosen as the teacher for the young Mohammad Mirza when his father Abbas Mirza was fighting the Russians. Being not very intelligent, he taught his pupil a lot of superstition. When Mohammad Shah became king, Haji Mirza Aghassi kept his influence on him. Haji was a very greedy person and he loved money. He used every opportunity to add to his treasures, and when it was a matter of him not getting money any more, he was ready to act.
Mirza Abolghassem was not a very easy person to deal with. He did not like the some habit of courtiers like expecting money without actually doing anything! He limited the expenditure and cut many of useless and wasteful payments, one of them Haji Mirza Aghassi's. Encouraged by many courtiers in similar situation and with support of Mohammad Shah's wife, Mahdol Olia, Haji decided to push the judicious counselor out of the scene. It could easily be done because Haji had a great amount of influence and also knew his pupil's weak spots. He started accusing Mirza Abolghassem of gaining too much power. He told the king that Mirza Abolghassem is thinking of deposing Mohammad Shah and installing Morad Morza, his powerful brother instead of him. These words, among with Mohammad Shah's painful Arthritis helped the king to make a decision that made him unpopular in the eyes of the history forever.
Mohammad Shah ordered the imprisonment of Mirza Abolghassem. Mirza Lived in prison for a short while. He was forbidden to write, because Mohammad Shah was afraid of his pen. Mohammad Shah is famous to say that if Mirza Abolghassem writes something, I can not refuse and I may change my mind. Finally, the courtiers made the king sign the execution order of the great counselor. Mirza Abolghassem died by suffocation, because Mohammad Shah had promised him that he would never shed his blood!
Mirza Abolghassem Ghaem Magham Farahani was the pride of Iran in the first half of Qajar rule. He organized the government, created new trade routs, wrote laws, provided food and job, and established relations with other countries. He also institutionalized the taxation system, provided health services, and cut the expenditure and systematized the government payments. In addition to being a great statesman, Mirza Abolghassem is one of the major literary figures of the Qajar era and perhaps the creator of moderns prose writing. His writings are simple and beautiful, free from the superficial and decorated method that dominated Persian literature for over a thousand years.
Mohammad Shah did not survive his great Prime Minister for long. Last few years of his life was expended in his ugly palace in Bagh Ferdows, just north of Tehran. He died from a heart attack. Unlike his grandfather and father, Mohammad Shah did not marry a lot of women. He had two wives and 5 children, nothing in compare with Fath-Ali Shah's 250 and Abbas Mirza's 57 children!!! Although he was not the greatest ruler of his time, he can be considered as the most innocent of Qajar kings.
***
Nasser Al-Din Mirza, heir to the throne of Mohammad Shah, was in Tabriz, seat of Azerbaijan province when he heard the news of his father's death. He was never a favourite of the old king, unlike his younger brother Abbas Mirza. Nasser Al-Din Mirza was a naive and inexperienced 19 year old with nothing in mind but girls and hunting, but this was no time for either of them.
Mirza Taghi Khan Amir Nezam, son of Mirza Abolghassem Ghaa-em Maghaam's cook, was the young prince's advisor and constable. He was a very briliant and sharp man, so clever that it is told that Mirza Abolghassem warned his sons from his future rise to power. Amir Nezam was a very patriotic person whose aim was to return Iran to its previous status as a major power, with prosperity and respect.
When Nasser Al-Din Mirza decided to go to the capital to claim his throne, Amir Nezam accumpanied him with his guards. Near Tehran, the supporters of Abbas Mirza, previous king's younger son, stopped the new king from entering the capital. Faced with a major problem at the very beginning of his reign, Nasser Al-Din was furious. Amir Nezam, being always a good commander, ordered the armies of Azerbaijan to join him in north of Tehran. He planned an attack on the city, but he only had minor fights around the city and sometimes near Qazvin or Qom. He was prepering for a major attack when he recived a message from the rebels offering peace. Apparently recognizing their opponents superior power and realizing the weaknesses of Abbas Mirza, they decided not to take the danger. Nasser Al-Din Mirza entered the city in a victorious way, being proud that his reign did not start with a blood shed. Amir Nezam, organizer of such a great stage that feared the rebels even before a real battle, was awarded the position of prime minister and the title of Amir Kabir, the Great Ruler.
***
First two years of Nasser Al-Din Shah's reign is filled with improvements in the country, thanks to Amir Kabir. He organized the financial system, cut the salaries of those curtains who did not deserve a salary, prepared a new tax system, wrote new guidelines for army divisions, and supported domestic economy. Amir encouraged local manufacturers, using the domestic products and banning the officials from using imported material. Amir appointed governors and commanders for the border areas that he knew would protect the country by their lives. He also established strong ties with Ottomans and other neighbors, but rejected any foreign influence from Britain. France, or Russia.
One of the greatest achievements of Amir Kabir was vaccination. He brought the vaccine for small pox and for polarization to the country and ordered all of the people to be vaccinated. This action reduced the death rate in dramatic amounts and was an start for the new health system in the country. He also sent students to the European countries to study medicine, engineering, law, politics, and military sciences. These new educated class provided the back bone for the countries fundamental change in the next half decade.
Perhaps Amir's greatest work was the building of Dar ol Fonoon, the first modern university in Iran. Amir ordered the school to be built on the edge of the city so it can be expanded as needed. He hired French and Russian instructors as well as Iranians to teach subjects as different as Language, Medicine, Law, Georgraphy, History, Economics, and Engeneering. Unfortunatelly, Mir did not live long enough to see his greatest monument completed, but it still stands in Tehran as a sign of a great man's ideas for the future of his country.
Seeing all of Amir Kabir's achievements, as well as his programs to cut the unnecessary expenses, curtains decided to depose Amir Kabir. Headed by Mahd ol Olia, Shah's mother and Amir's mother-in-law, the curtains were mad at Amir for cutting their allowances. Mahd ol Olia hated Amir because he thought of her as a bad influence in her son's reign and did not allow her to take part in ruling the country. Mahd ol Olia found herself several strong allies, notably Mirza Agha Khan Noori, a former official and a famous anglophil. Conspirators, mostly Mahd ol Olia and her brother, started talking to the king about Amir's negative points and persuaded him that Amir is planning to depose him. Being busy with all of his works, Amir did not know a thing about what was cooking for him.
At last, Shah was persuaded of Amir's treachery and ordered his deposition and exile to Kashan. Completely shocked and without any defense, Amir took of for Kashan with his wife, Shah's sister Ezzat ol Saltane. Still not satisfied, the conspirators asked for his execution. Shah, still feeling guilty of his action, refused, but he was persuaded of that Amir is a threat to hsi throne. Finally, while Shah was half drunk, Mahd ol Olia got his signature for the dirties act of Iran's recent history. Amirza Ali Khan, the executioner, was sent to Kashan. He found Amir taking a bath, so he went in and presented the order, Amir bowed his head to Shah's order and asked the opportunity to chose his own death method. Mirza Ali Khan accepted and then cut his wrist vain at his request. This was the end of Iran's greatest politician and reformer in the over two centuries.
***
Mirza Agha Khan Noori, one of the head conspirators in death of Amir Kabir was elected as the new prime minister. His rule was the start of decline of whatever Amir did. The manufacturers lost the support to produce more quality products, Vaccination was forgotten, and in short, all of Amir's legacies was lost. Probably the only thing remaining was Dar ol Fonoon, which continued to produce the educated. Headed by Ali Naghi Mirza, a very worthy person, Dar ol Fonoon became Iran's greatest educational centre.
Nasser Al-Din Shah reigned for fifty years. During his reign, he changed numerous prime ministers, even dissolved the position of prime minister and created a royal council. He never found another Amir Kabir, although some worthy people like Mirza Hossein Sepahsalar or Mirza Ali Amin ol Dowle came along. His last prime minister was Mirza Ali Asghar Amin ol Soltan, who holds the record for prime ministership, 22 years all in all, and during the reign of three kings. Nasser Al-Din Shah's reign was also the start of a lot of things, some of them mentioned below.
In the technological terms, Telegraph and telephone were brought to Iran by Mokhber Al-Slataneh Hedayat, and the first ministry of communication was also created by him. A small and limited train system was also brought from Belgium, and it proved to be an entertainment system rather than a rail road. Electric light was also first brought to Iran during the long reign of Nasser Al-Din Shah, although for a long time, it only worked in the royal palace.
Reign of Nasser Al-Din Shah also brought a new thing to Iran, official visits! Shah visited European countries three times, went to the Après exposition, met with Queen Victoria and Kaiser Wilhelm I. He also went to Russia, Netherlands, and Austria. His greatest souvenir from these trips was bringing a new wave of European liberal thought to Iran, and also facilitating the way for Iranian students to go to European universities. He also made a lot of treaties with foreign powers that gave way to imperialism of the late 19th century. With these treaties, Iran's police went under the French and Italian way, Austrians and Germans controlled the military trainings, and English and Russians captured the countries economy. Not wanting to stay out of business, Belgians took the countries import and export ministry under their power.
From all of these treaties, one stands out, the Reuter Treaty. Made with Baron Reuter, a Jewish-English lord, this treaty gave the rights to all of countries tobacco use to the Reuter Company. Iranians felt that this treaty puts them and on of their essential consumer products under the control of a foreign power. Islamic clergy, headed by Mirza-ye Shirazi, banned the tobacco use in Iran. Even the wives of the king refused to use tobacco. This caused a general unrest, and of course a bad profit for Lord Reuter. The treaty was canceled with Iran paying a fine. This accident, although not over a very important matter, showed the people that they can achieve what they want with unity, something that came handy a little while later.
In general, reign of Nasser Al-Din Shah was an era of transition from the old times to the modern world. Political, economical, and cultural changes prepared the country for a major social and political overturn. During his reign, several opposition groups were created, some of them supported by foreign powers, like Baha'is, and some of them domestically initiated, like the followers of Seyed Jamal Al Din.
Finally, in 1891, year of Nasser Al-Din Shah's half a century reign, came the end. The whole country was preparing for the celebrations. Shah left the palace for Shah Abdol Azim, tomb of a religious leader and a famous pilgrimage site. When he finished his prayers, he went toward the door of his late wife's tomb, close to the Shah Abdol Azim. Suddenly, he was shot three times by one of the followers of Seeyed Jamal Al Din, a famous opposition leader, acting from Turkey. The assassin turned himself in, He was called Mirza Reza. Not wanting the public to know that the king is dead, Prime Minister Ali Asghar Khan planned a play to fool the people. He moved the body to the palace secretly, and did not announce the death of the king. He then sent a messenger to Tabriz to let the heir to the throne know about his father's death. The king is dead, long live the king!!!
***
Nasser Al-Din Shah's son, Mozzafar Al-Din was an old child, as one of his companions once said. Waiting in his position og heir to the throne for 37 years, he never tried to learn how to really govern a country. He inherited Ali Asghar Khan, prime minister of his father, and the true ruler of the country. Although not nearly as strong as his father, "Abji Mozzafar" (sister Mozzafar, as he was called by the critics) made two trips to the "Farang", and spend a lot of money and bought a lot of useless things.
Coming with Mozzafar from Tabriz, where he held the position of governor of Azerbaijan, where a group of people known to the others as "Turks", although not many of them where actually Turk. These people who have been waiting for over 30 years for Mozzafar to become Shah, and now they could not control themselves, so they started emptying the treasury. This was not very pleasing to the people, especially the "Fars" group of curtains. So this started something that would burn the whole monarchy, at least it was suppose to!
***
God knows if it was a national thing or as some suggest, another conspiracy of "the English", but whatever it was, it was large. After the death of Nasser Al-Din Shah, intellectuals and oppositions both inside and outside the country found a situation in which they could voice their complains. Newspapers started to publish, books started to be written, parties came to existence, and for the first time, people started questioning the "divine" right of the king.
Who knows how, but some how, the curtains and nobles, mostly from the "Fars" group started to enter the scene. They began arranging meetings and leading people. It might be that they wanted to kick the "Turks" out, but lets be optimistic, maybe they were really thinking of the people! (sic.) Anyhow, some of these "nobles" became famous as the great "liberalists" and they started pressuring the old king to sign the guideline for limiting his own power, constitution. Finally, he did, and maybe because of it, he died almost immediately after, leaving the throne for his son, Mohammad Ali.
Meanwhile, the revolutionaries did not waste anytime taking advantage of the moment. They found a big building, and created the house of commons. Then they started the election for the first parliament. It went pretty good, and it was actually working, bringing almost democracy to the country, but Mohammad Ali was far too big (and fat...) of a trouble to get rid of.
***
The new Shah had a lot of things said behind his back. First that he is not the son of his father, which is a pretty big accusation, but considering his mothers behaviour, who knows!!! The other thing was that he was too much of and "absolutist" to be trusted with the throne of "constitutional monarchy". But the leaders of the revolution were pretty optimistic, so they brought the new king and put his hand on the Koran and made him promise not to betray the "constitution". He did, but apparently his hand was from the wood, because after a while, he got the itch of getting rid of all these commoners.
Mohammad Ali Shah could not trust any of his Iranian curtains to do the job form him, so he look for the help from his northern allies, Russians. A small group of Kaczak soldiers, created by the Russians, were available in Iran. They were the result of Nasser Al-Din Shah's desire to have a "Russian" military, and also an advantage given to Ruissia to make them happy after all of the advantages given to the English. Leader of the Kazaks, Colonel Liyakhov, was an absolutist, so that made the problem easy.
After escaping a murder conspiracy, Mohammad Ali Shah ordered Liyakhov to bombard the Parliament. Liyakhov killed many of the MPs, and Mohammad Ali Shah's guards captured the rest. Their leaders, people like Malek ol-Motekalemmin or Soor-e Esrafil, who were the major forces, were hanged, and the rest were sent to exile.
Mohammad Ali Shah started the short lived "absolutist" period this way. The leaders of the opposition who escaped the death, began planning for re-establishing the old way. Helped by the demonstrations inside the country and by the support given from the religious leaders, revolution started again.
Few incidents lead to the dethronement of Mohammad Ali Shah. One was the strike of the "Bazaar" merchants against the taxes and punishments, and the other one was the great sit-in in the British Embassy in Tehran, where more than a 100 thousand people demonstrated against the government. Also military like oppositions from all sides of the country started moving toward the capital. Sattar Khan and Bagher Khan from Azerbaijan, Sepahsallar From the North, and Sardar-Asad from the south. These forces met each other behind the gates of Tehran, and "conquered" the capital together.
Mohammad Ali Shah had to resign. He was sent to exile first to Odessa and then to Itally, where he died around 15 years later. He tried several more times to recapture his lost thrown, but he never succeeded.
***
Mohammad Ali Shah's 10 year old son, Ahmad Shah, was chosen to become the new king. Because he was a minor, the parliament found him a regent, Ali Reza Khan Qajar, an old man who was neither absolutist nor constitutionalist, he was just old!
This second constitutional period proved to be less pure than the first one. A lot of foreign influence entered the thoughts of the people, mainly through the new leaders of the revolution who were mainly western educated and not always very patriotic. Many popular poets and intellectuals started talking about the British hand in the whole second revolution and how they are getting closer to swallow the whole country. This thought was empowered by the election of openly "Anglophile" Vosoogh Al-Doleh to the prime ministership. Vosoogh made a treaty with the British, a treaty which was considered by many to be the official document of selling the country to the British. A series of oppositions started, and the ended by the rise of a new, obvious British trick.
Being disappointed in attracting now adult Ahmad Shah's attention toward working with them, and seeing no opposition from the Russians after the revolution of 1917, the British decided to act fast. Using the skills of their ambassador in Iran, general Ironside, they designed a Coup d'Etat. For acting the parts of the leaders of the Coup, they chose the Journalist Seyyed Zia and the former Kaczak troops liutenant, Reza Khan Maxim.
The Coup was successful, Seyyed Zia became the new Prime Minister and Reza Khan occupied the position of Ministery of War. Seyyed Zia ordered the arrest of a large group of countries rich and famous. He kept them in jail for ransom, asked in the form of unpaid taxes. But there was one problem, Seyyed Zia did not follow the guidelines correctly, so after 100 days in power, he and his "Black Cabinet" were fired from the job! This time, the British chose the better person, Reza Khan.
Reza Khan was an illiterate soldier from Savad Kuh area of Mazandaran province in the north of Iran. He joined the Kaczak troops when he was young in search of money and respect. Before participating in the Coup, he served many of the rich and famous that Seyyed Zia sent to jail. Reza Khan was perfect for the role, he was obediant and without any plans of his own.
Reza Khan occupied the position of Prime Minister after over powering 5 cabinets that came after Seyyed Zia from his position of Minister of War. Sradar Sepah, as he was now called, was a pretty brutal and not-very-pleasant man. He did not really understand the etiquettes of the court, and used insult as a very strong weapon against the people he did not agree with, thus during his reign, words like "Pedar sookhte" (Bastard) were very common! He was also unable to read, which lead to a lot of Jokes, still being told, after 70 years!
Anyway, Reza Khan's Prime Ministership was the death blow to the old and corrupt Qajar Dynasty. In a Parliament whose members were chosen for the purpose, Reza Khan Maxim was declared king as Reza Shah Pahlavi, and that was the end of Qajars, whose last king, Ahmad Shah, was living in Monte Carlo for the past two years, leaving the power to Sardar Sepah. Many say that Ahmad Shah was not a weak or indifferent king as evidence suggest, but that he was rather powerless in front of the Reza Khan and the English support. Whatever he was, he was for sure the last king of Qajars. Soon after overthrow, his heir to the throne and brother, Prince Mohammad Hassan and all his family were also sent exile. They moved to England, when Prince Mohammad Hassan's son grew up and joined the Royal British Navy!
Reza Khan was now the absolute ruler of a constitutional monarchy. With his rule, the great Constitutional Era did not end in a violent act as the first one did, it was just slowly put to rest, so slow that nobody felt its absence for a long time!

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As long as men fought with swords and at the most with simple guns and cannons, Iranians were known as fearless and fierce warriors. But the then modern weapons and war techniques, developed by Europeans, changed the methods of warfare so rapidly that within a short period of time Iranians found themselves helpless before Western armies. When Agha Mohammad Khan of Qajar dynasty defeated the Russian army with lightning speed, it was considered only natural by the Iranians that they should win the war with such ease. Just over a decade later, the modernized Russian army helped by British diplomacy, inflicted one defeat after another on the Iranian army leading to the annexation of a number of northern Iranian provinces by the Russian empire, notably Georgia and what became later known as Soviet Azerbaijan (the Republic of Azerbaijan, as it is known today.)
On the domestic side, lacking experience in international politics and diplomacy Iran soon became the scene of colonial rivalry between the Russians and the British who demanded more and more concessions from Iran and imposed merciless conditions. The Iranian central government was weakened and lost its autocratic control over the nation and, incidentally, the nation took the opportunity to demand and secure a constitutional system of government (1906).
However, for the same reason (weakness of the central government) internal conditions became chaotic inducing the Russians and the British to take full advantage of the situation such that in 1907 an agreement was signed by the two powers according to which Iran was divided into two "spheres of influence", the North being under the "influence" or control of the Russians and the South being practically governed by the British; though officially Iran retained its independence.
With the Russian Revolution and the overthrow of the Czarist regime, the Russian influence diminished, and even for some time vanished altogether, although it soon returned with the coming to power of Stalin: first as a great rival which the British had to contend with, and soon after as their ally.
Meanwhile, an Iranian soldier, Reza Khan, had been showing great gift for military leadership and organization, and had risen from the status of a private to that of an officer while the Iranian army was under the super vision and instruction of imperial Russian officers as military advisers. When the Russian officers left the Iranian army following the October Revolution, Reza Khan's value as a soldier became even more evident and appreciated. By then, the British were untroubled by Russian rivalries and favored a strong central government in Iran to protect their interests specially in the oil industry. Ahmad Shah, the last Qajar king, was not willing to cooperate with the British; and the Majlis (the parliament) which at one time the British had favored was now an obstacle in their way.
Thus, Reza Khan whom the British discovered as a man capable of controlling the country and protecting their interests, was supported by them. In 1921 he engineered a cope d'etat with the cooperation of Seid Zia- od-Din Tabatabai, a young journalist, as a result of which the latter became the prime minister and Reza Khan the minister of war. Gradually Reza Khan gained complete control of the government and the Majlis which finally deposed Ahmad Shah (1925) and a constituent assembly elected Reza Khan as the Shah. The Pahlavi dynasty was thus established. In the Second World War Reza Shah, sympathizing with the Germans, refused to allow the allies to pass Iran to supply the Soviet Union with war materials, and so help the Russians fight against the Germans. So, the Allied forces occupied Iran in 1941 and remained there until the war was over.
As soon as Iran was occupied, Reza Shah was "advised" by the British to abdicate in favor of his son Mohammad Reza who had to adopt policies more appropriate to the circumstances. Bitter over the fact that Reza Shah had betrayed them, the British refused Reza Shah's request to go to Canada. Instead the British government sent him first to the island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar, and later to Johannesburg, South Africa, where he died in 1944. From 1941 Mohammad Reza Shah, a young man of 22 years began his reign over the Iranian nation. Naturally he had to maintain a pro-Western foreign policy and an internal policy of economic and social development with Western aid and compatible with Western tastes and trends. Mohammad Reza Shah ruled Iran for over 38 years, until the victory of the Islamic Revolution.

Reza Shah
The new era in Iran's history opened in the 1920s with the coming to power of Reza Khan, a towering figure whose unique personality and unique career left a deep imprint upon the life of his nation. Reza Khan's rapid ascent from common soldier to King could be compared with the rise of Napoleon in France or Bernadotte in Sweden; however, it was more striking in terms of the social distance covered. Napoleon had the advantage of going to a military academy before embarking on a regular army career. Bernadotte was indeed a soldier who carried "the marshal's baton" in his knapsack and ended as king, but a king in a foreign country, to some extent imposed by external influence. Not so Reza Shah, who grew up in a purely Iranian environment, assumed the imperial rank among his own people, and thus created a real saga of a self-made man against the background of Iran's monarchical tradition.

In his national policies two main features stood out: nationalism and modernization. In this respect he could be compared to Peter the Great, who launched Russia from her medieval slumber upon a path of modernity. Among his contemporaries Reza Shah was frequently compared to his neighbor, Kemal Ataturk seen left greeting Reza Shah, of whose attitudes and reforms he was fully aware. The two leaders had certainly a good deal in common: their burning nationalism, their determination to modernize their countries, and their critical attitude towards the intrusion of religion into the public life of their respective nations. But the two also differed considerably from each other. While Ataturk was willing to burn the bridges with the past, Reza Shah not only maintained the institution of monarchy but also promoted a revived consciousness of ancient Achaemenian glory, particularly through architectural symbolism. In this sense, of course, he was more fortunate because his nation had had a long record of civilized life when the Turks were still leading a nomadic existence in the steppes of central Asia

In the subsequent chapters a group of specialists will review in greater detail the achievements of both Reza Shah and his son and successor, Mohammad Reza. In these introductory remarks we will limit ourselves to the main points in the work and struggles of these two rulers. Reza Shah's achievements could be summed up under three headings: building up the infrastructure of a modern state, asserting independence from foreign domination, and launching sociocultural reforms. With regard to the first, Reza Shah did indeed lay down the foundations without which a modern state could not function. These included assertion of government authority and national unification in the face of various centrifugal and anarchistic forces; the creation of a reliable army under national command; establishment of a modern fiscal system based on rational organization; and development of the minimum of communications and transportation facilities compatible with the requirements of a modern state.
Assertion of independence from foreign occupation and control was the second major achievement of Reza Shah. At the very outset of his rule he had to face the threat of militant Communism imported into Iran with the advancing Red Army which, despite the repudiation by the Bolsheviks of czarist Russia's imperialistic practices, fell into the old pattern of occupying the northern provinces of Iran and threatening the integrity of the entire state. This struggle for emancipation from foreign control was marked by two crises. The first was the Soviet attempt to set up a separatist Communist government in the province of Gilan. This required both military and diplomatic countermeasures, the outcome being the conclusion of the Soviet-Iranian Treaty of February 1921 and the subsequent withdrawal of Soviet troops from Iranian territory. The treaty, however, was negotiated by Iranian representatives in Moscow while Reza Khan, not yet fully in power, was personally commanding military operations against the northern rebels and their Soviet allies. This perhaps explains why the treaty was burdened with an onerous clause in the form of article 6 authorizing entry of Soviet troops into Iranian territory, should the latter become a base for anti-Soviet aggression. Although the attached memoranda made it clear that the provision in question comprised only the toleration by the Iranian government of the anti- Soviet activities of White Russian elements against the Soviet territory, in subsequent years Moscow tended to give a more comprehensive interpretation to this clause by including in it Iran's formal ties with Western powers during the period following World War II, which clearly was not encompassed by the terms of the original clause. Regardless, however, of the text of the treaty in question, Reza Shah succeeded in removing the Soviet presence in Iran and in effectively curbing the activities of Soviet agents and their Communist allies inside the country.
The second crisis that the Shah faced was the one with Great Britain. It revolved around oil, the concession for which was held by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the latter in turn controlled by the British Admiralty. Relations between Great Britain and Iran profoundly differed from those between Iran and Russia. While Britain exercised imperial control in India, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East, she was essentially a status quo power not bent on territorial aggrandizement and not guided by a militant or aggressive ideology. Iler interest in Iran focused largely on the preservation of such economic advantages as she or her citizens had achieved in that country. Therefore, from the point of view of Iran's independence, Britain was not only a country in a different category from the Soviet Union, but even could be counted upon as providing a counterbalance to the Soviets' actual or potential aggressive designs. This, however, did not diminish Britain's economic self-interest, which was based on somewhat outmoded notions regarding the relationship between the metropolis and the colonies or semi colonies. Although the showdown between Reza Shah and the British over oil in the early 1930s abounded in moments of tension and recrimination, it ended by a compromise in which rationality and restraint were displayed by both parties.
In his pursuit of policies aiming at the safeguarding of national independence and security, Reza Shah was ready to cooperate with the neighboring states which, like Iran, were anxious to safeguard their integrity against possible Soviet expansion and subversion. To this end he entered, in 1937, into a regional alliance known as the Saadabad Pact, the other signatories being Turkey, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Furthermore, not unlike his Constitutionalist predecessors of the period preceding World War I, Reza Shah was inclined to look for a friendly third force that would help Iran free herself from Soviet menace and British influence. Thus he repeated the experiment of 1911 when an American expert, Morgan Shuster, had been brought to Iran to reorganize Persian finances by inviting in the early 1920s another American, Dr. Arthur Chester Millspaugh, to assist in the reorganization of the Iranian treasury. After some years a German, Dr. Kurt Lindenblatt, was appointed governor of the national bank, while numerous German technicians were invited to advise Iran in developing her industry and communications. Although these contacts with the United States and Germany respectively did not represent a movement toward political or military alliance, nevertheless they were conceived by the Shah and his ministers as a material factor in reducing Iran's dependence upon her two powerful imperial neighbors.
The task of rebuilding, unifying, and strengthening the state consumed so much time and energy that to an outside observer it is little short of amazing that Reza Shah found enough strength to enact a number of social and cultural reforms, some of which had to be imposed against fierce opposition from various entrenched interests. The main thrust of these reforms was to transform the hitherto lethargic masses into a new and enlightened citizenry that would actively participate in the development of the country. Reza Shah was thus a pioneer in introducing what we may call a meritocracy in Iran's national life. Under his reign it was not inherited wealth or connections that counted but actual competence and performance. He was impatient with slothful and lazy officials and prone to dismiss or punish those who failed in their tasks or betrayed his trust. Having a dim view of the role played in the society by reactionary and often semiliterate clerics he took away from the religious establishment its judicial and educational responsibilities while developing under the state auspices a modern school system with the University of Tehran, opened in the 1930s, at its apex. He was also the first ruler in Iran to call for the emancipation and education of women. Aware of the shortage of the skilled manpower in his country, Reza Shah was willing to employ foreign experts. However, to avoid encouraging the foreign political influence that such experts might represent, he made it a point to hire them on an individual basis and to place them under Iranian control. Such experts, for instance, were employed in constructing the Shah's cherished project, the Trans-Iranian Railway. However, he took care not to rely on technicians of any single nationality and, furthermore, deliberately avoided dependence on foreign governments by providing exclusively Iranian financing of the project. Above all, he instilled in his people a sense of pride and self-reliance.

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Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi ascended the throne on September 16, 1941, when he was a few weeks short of his twenty-second birthday (October 26). At the time of the golden jubilee of the Pahlavi dynasty he had ruled for thirty-five years, thus more than doubling the period during which his father directed Iran's policies as head of state. Basically, Mohammad Reza Shah's reign displayed the same two trends as were characteristic of his father's period, nationalism and modernization. There were other similarities as well: the new King faced at the beginning foreign occupation and interference, he was challenged by tribal rebellion and unrest, and was beset by an upsurge of provincial separatism and communism. He also had to wage a struggle for economic independence from British dominance of the oil sector.

There were important differences between the two rulers and the periods during which they reigned. Reza Shah had begun his personal rule from a position of strength. Although his country was in a state of weakness and chaos and foreign troops were present on her soil, Britain was gradually relinquishing her responsibilities in Iran while the Soviet Union, despite a show of aggressive tendencies, was not the colossus she became after World War II, having in the 1920s barely emerged from the struggle for life and death against the counterrevolution of the Whites and foreign intervention. Faced with this situation, Reza Shah commanded the only reliable military force in Iran and the opposition to him, whether in the center or in the tribal areas, could never muster enough strength to overcome his skill, organization, and mobility. By contrast, Mohammad Reza Shah began his reign from a position of weakness dictated by the circumstances. Powerful armies of occupation had just entered his country and intended to stay there at least for the duration of the war. Following the conclusion of World War II, the hasty departure of the British and American troops was a mixed blessing inasmuch as it left Iran exposed to face alone a powerful Soviet military presence.

This leads us to another contrast: in the struggle for independence that both rulers had waged, at the time of Mohammad Reza Shah the stakes were higher and the tension greater because the Soviets were both more aggressive and stronger and also because, with the gradual abandonment by Britain of her imperial position east of Suez, the resulting power vacuum threatened the entire area of the Middle Fast. Most significant in this respect was Britain's conceding of independence to India in the late 1940s and two decades later her decision to relinquish imperial responsibilities in the Persian Gulf. True enough. the search for a friendly third force this time brought not only positive results but actually secured for Iran an ally in the form of the strongest yet most benevolent power in the world the United States. But before this alliance was concluded, there was an early tense period during which the availability of this third force was by no means certain. For one thing, the United States was geographically remote; for another, American policy makers needed to be educated in the realities of the power play in the Middle East in general and in Iran in particular. This "educational" process was not an easy matter inasmuch as throughout World War II the United States had conducted a consistent policy of close alliance with the Soviet Union and the entire American government propaganda apparatus was geared to present the Soviets to the American public as respectable allies, unjustly attacked by the Nazi war monster, peace- loving , and displaying encouraging democratic tendencies. In this respect, it is worth noting, Soviet intrigue in Azerbaijan coupled with the Soviet bid to extend control over Iran's central government constituted a vital factor in the radical reorientation of American attitudes that eventually found expression in the policy of containment formalized by the Truman Doctrine of 1947. Iran, however, although thus playing a key role in the process of policy change, was a potential victim if the process faltered, and she could have ended in a position similar to that of the Eastern European satellite states. To emerge victorious from these trials required strong nerves, cool courage, and singleness of purpose.
There was still another difference between the father and the son. While Reza Shah had to nurture only one nationalist movement during his reign, Mohammad Reza Shah had to deal with competing forces that interpreted nationalist objectives and priorities in a different way from his own. This in particular referred to the definition and designation of friends and enemies of Iran. There were elements during his rule that viewed Western, particularly British, imperialism as the only true danger to Iran. With such an approach, a possibility existed of effecting an alliance between this type of nationalist and the Communists who, by virtue of their ideologies and loyalties, regarded the West as an enemy. This possibility became an actual reality in the early 1950s and the alliance thus formed attempted to overthrow not only the government but the institution of monarchy as well. The Shah's own nationalism, which he described as "positive" in contrast with the negative, anti-Western brand of the competing forces, had as its objective not only a strong and independent Iran but also close links between Iran, the United States, and her Western friends, both of the latter being viewed as allies in the struggle to preserve Iranian independence and integrity.
Moreover, the Shah did not want to limit Iran's role to that of a 'junior partner" in a broader alliance to contain Soviet expansionism. He felt that the political situation in the Middle Fast called for a strong Iran that would play a stabilizing role in the region. For this reason he insisted on and secured the development of a well-equipped and trained military establishment that, under his rule, not only enlarged and modernized its land forces but also branched out into military aviation and the navy. By the mid-1970s Iran could be described as enjoying military hegemony in the Persian Gulf region while protecting the vita] sea-lanes through which eighteen million barrels of oil per day were being carried to overseas destinations.
Mohammad Reza Shah's reign differed also from that of his father's in the scope and content of modernization measures. The reforms carried out during Mohammad Reza's time were more comprehensive and more concerned with social justice and the welfare of the masses. Launched in 1963 and known under the general name of the White Revolution, these reforms contained an original six-point program with land reform as its central objective, later enlarged into seventeen points that embraced a variety of social, economic, and cultural measures. The program represented a broad attack in every conceivable sector against the old ills of the Iranian society. The reforms were accompanied by economic planning and development that in the 1960s and 1970s achieved one of the highest growth rates anywhere in the world. These impressive attainments were further bolstered by the substantial increase in national revenue through a truly revolutionary raising of the prices of exported oil. The latter represented the Shah's own achievement inasmuch as since the middle 1950s he had assumed personal leadership in all matters pertaining to the development of petroleum resources in the country. In this respect, he not only secured Iran's full control over his oil industry but also led the victorious regional campaign of oil-producing states to ensure that their major natural resource would obtain on world markets a price commensurate with the rising prices of manufactured commodities produced in advanced industrialized states.
Major Events of 1978
Mass demonstrations were put up by the Iranian people in the major cities, notably Tehran, Qom, Tabriz and Esfahan. There were occasional strikes which gradually became more widespread and frequent.
On 5th August, Imam Khomeini, who was on exile in Iraq, was forced to leave that country. He moved to Paris from where he guided and led the Islamic Revolution.
There were changes of government, one prime minister being replaced by another. The last, Shapur Bakhtiar, came to power on 6th January I 979

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The contemporary Iran
(1979-Today)

The Bakhtiar Government
Bazargan and the Provisional Government
The New Constitution
The Bani Sadr Presidency
Terror and Repression
Consolidation of the Revolution


In this chapter of history, we start with the Pahlavi government after Shah left the country and continue to the present Iran. We encourage you to look at the stamps for each year while reading the history because stamps published in each year give you a picture of the events in that year.
The Bakhtiar Government (End of Pahlavi)
Once installed as prime minister, Bakhtiar took several measures designed to appeal to elements in the opposition movement. He lifted restrictions on the press; the newspapers, on strike since November, resumed publication. He set free remaining political prisoners and promised the dissolution of SAVAK, the lifting of martial law, and free elections. He announced Iran's withdrawal from CENTO, canceled US$7 billion worth of arms orders from the United States, and announced Iran would no longer sell oil to South Africa or Israel. Although Bakhtiar won the qualified support of moderate clerics like Shariatmadari, his measures did not win him the support of Khomeini and the main opposition elements, who were now committed to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a new political order. The National Front, with which Bakhtiar had been associated for nearly thirty years, expelled him from the movement. Khomeini declared Bakhtiar's government illegal. Bazargan, in Khomeini's name, persuaded the oil workers to pump enough oil to ease domestic hardship, however, and some normalcy returned to the bazaar in the wake of Bakhtiar's appointment. But strikes in both the public and the private sector and large-scale demonstrations against the government continued. When, on January 29, 1979, Khomeini called for a street "referendum" on the monarchy and the Bakhtiar government, there was a massive turnout.
Bakhtiar sought unsuccessfully to persuade Khomeini to postpone his return to Iran until conditions in the country were normalized. Khomeini refused to receive a member of the regency council Bakhtiar sent as an emissary to Paris and after some hesitation rejected Bakhtiar's offer to come to Paris personally for consultations. Bakhtiar's attempt to prevent Khomeini's imminent return by closing the Mehrabad Airport at Tehran on January 26, 1979, proved to be only a stopgap measure.
Khomeini arrived in Tehran from Paris on February 1, 1979, received a rapturous welcome from millions of Iranians, and announced he would "smash in the mouth of the Bakhtiar government." He labeled the government illegal and called for the strikes and demonstrations to continue. A girls' secondary school at which Khomeini established his headquarters in Tehran became the center of opposition activity. A multitude of decisions, and the coordination of the opposition movement, were handled here by what came to be known as the komiteh-ye Imam, or the Imam's committee. On February 5, Khomeini named Mehdi Bazargan as prime minister of a provisional government. Although Bazargan did not immediately announce a cabinet, the move reinforced the conditions of dual authority that increasingly came to characterize the closing days of the Pahlavi monarchy. In many large urban centers local komitehs (revolutionary committees) had assumed responsibility for municipal functions, including neighborhood security and the distribution of such basic necessities as fuel oil. Government ministries and such services as the customs and the posts remained largely paralyzed. Bakhtiar's cabinet ministers proved unable to assert their authority or, in many instances, even to enter their offices. The loyalty of the armed forces was being seriously eroded by months of confrontation with the people on the streets. There were instances of troops who refused to fire on the crowds, and desertions were rising. In late January, air force technicians at the Khatami Air Base in Esfahan became involved in a confrontation with their officers. In his statements, Khomeini had attempted to win the army rank and file over to the side of the opposition. Following Khomeini's arrival in Tehran, clandestine contacts took place between Khomeini's representatives and a number of military commanders. These contacts were encouraged by United States ambassador William Sullivan, who had no confidence in the Bakhtiar government, thought the triumph of the Khomeini forces inevitable, and believed future stability in Iran could be assured only if an accommodation could be reached between the armed forces and the Khomeini camp. Contacts between the military chiefs and the Khomeini camp were also being encouraged by United States general Robert E. Huyser, who had arrived in Tehran on January 4, 1979, as President Carter's special emissary. Huyser's assignment was to keep the Iranian army intact, to encourage the military to maintain support for the Bakhtiar government, and to prepare the army for a takeover, should that become necessary. Huyser began a round of almost daily meetings with the service chiefs of the army, navy, and air force, plus heads of the National Police and the Gendarmerie who were sometimes joined by the chief of SAVAK. He dissuaded those so inclined from attempting a coup immediately upon Khomeini's return to Iran, but he failed to get the commanders to take any other concerted action. He left Iran on February 3, before the final confrontation between the army and the revolutionary forces.
On February 8, uniformed airmen appeared at Khomeini's home and publicly pledged their allegiance to him. On February 9, air force technicians at the Doshan Tappeh Air Base outside Tehran mutinied. Units of the Imperial Guard failed to put down the insurrection. The next day, the arsenal was opened, and weapons were distributed to crowds outside the air base. The government announced a curfew beginning in the afternoon, but the curfew was universally ignored. Over the next twenty-four hours, revolutionaries seized police barracks, prisons, and buildings. On February 11, twenty-two senior military commanders met and announced that the armed forces would observe neutrality in the confrontation between the government and the people. The army's withdrawal from the streets was tantamount to a withdrawal of support for the Bakhtiar government and acted as a trigger for a general uprising. By late afternoon on February 12, Bakhtiar was in hiding, and key points throughout the capital were in rebel hands. The Pahlavi monarchy had collapsed.

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Bazargan and the Provisional Government
Mehdi Bazargan became the first prime minister of the revolutionary regime in February 1979. Bazargan, however, headed a government that controlled neither the country nor even its own bureaucratic apparatus. Central authority had broken down. Hundreds of semi-independent revolutionary committees, not answerable to central authority, were performing a variety of functions in major cities and towns across the country. Factory workers, civil servants, white-collar employees, and students were often in control, demanding a say in running their organizations and choosing their chiefs. Governors, military commanders, and other officials appointed by the prime minister were frequently rejected by the lower ranks or local inhabitants. A range of political groups, from the far left to the far right, from secular to ultra-Islamic, were vying for political power, pushing rival agendas, and demanding immediate action from the prime minister. Clerics led by Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti established the Islamic Republican Party (IRP). The party emerged as the organ of the clerics around Khomeini and the major political organization in the country. Not to be outdone, followers of more moderate senior cleric Shariatmadari established the Islamic People's Republican Party (IPRP) in 1979, which had a base in Azarbaijan, Shariatmadari's home province.
Moreover, multiple centers of authority emerged within the government. As the supreme leader, Khomeini did not consider himself bound by the government. He made policy pronouncements, named personal representatives to key government organizations, established new institutions, and announced decisions without consulting his prime minister. The prime minister found he had to share power with the Revolutionary Council, which Khomeini had established in January 1979 and which initially was composed of clerics close to Khomeini, secular political leaders identified with Bazargan, and two representatives of the armed forces. With the establishment of the provisional government, Bazargan and his colleagues left the council to form the cabinet. They were replaced by Khomeini aides from the Paris period, such as Abolhassan Bani Sadr and Sadeq Qotbzadeh, and by protégés of Khomeini's clerical associates. The cabinet was to serve as the executive authority. But the Revolutionary Council was to wield supreme decision- making and legislative authority.
Differences quickly emerged between the cabinet and the council over appointments, the role of the revolutionary courts and other revolutionary organizations, foreign policy, and the general direction of the Revolution. Bazargan and his cabinet colleagues were eager for a return to normalcy and rapid reassertion of central authority. Clerics of the Revolutionary Council, more responsive to the Islamic and popular temper of the mass of their followers, generally favored more radical economic and social measures. They also proved more willing and able to mobilize and to use the street crowd and the revolutionary organizations to achieve their ends.
In July 1979, Bazargan obtained Khomeini's approval for an arrangement he hoped would permit closer cooperation between the Revolutionary Council and the cabinet. Four clerical members of the council joined the government, one as minister of interior and three others as undersecretaries of interior, education, and defense, while Bazargan and three cabinet colleagues joined the council. (All eight continued in their original positions as well.) Nevertheless, tensions persisted.
Even while attempting to put in place the institutions of the new order, the revolutionaries turned their attention to bringing to trial and punishing members of the former regime whom they considered responsible for carrying out political repression, plundering the country's wealth, implementing damaging economic policies, and allowing foreign exploitation of Iran. A revolutionary court set to work almost immediately in the school building in Tehran where Khomeini had set up his headquarters. Revolutionary courts were established in provincial centers shortly thereafter. The Tehran court passed death sentences on four of the shah's generals on February 16, 1979; all four were executed by firing squad on the roof of the building housing Khomeini's headquarters. More executions, of military and police officers, SAVAK agents, cabinet ministers, Majlis deputies, and officials of the shah's regime, followed on an almost daily basis.
The activities of the revolutionary courts became a focus of intense controversy. On the one hand, left-wing political groups and populist clerics pressed hard for "revolutionary justice" for miscreants of the former regime. On the other hand, lawyers' and human rights' groups protested the arbitrary nature of the revolutionary courts, the vagueness of charges, and the absence of defense lawyers. Bazargan, too, was critical of the courts' activities. At the prime minister's insistence, the revolutionary courts suspended their activities on March 14, 1979. On April 5, new regulations governing the courts were promulgated. The courts were to be established at the discretion of the Revolutionary Council and with Khomeini's permission. They were authorized to try a variety of broadly defined crimes, such as "sowing corruption on earth," "crimes against the people," and "crimes against the Revolution." The courts resumed their work on April 6. On the following day, despite international pleas for clemency, Hoveyda, the shah's prime minister for twelve years, was put to death. Attempts by Bazargan to have the revolutionary courts placed under the judiciary and to secure protection for potential victims through amnesties issued by Khomeini also failed. Beginning in August 1979, the courts tried and passed death sentences on members of ethnic minorities involved in antigovernment movements. Some 550 persons had been executed by the time Bazargan resigned in November 1979. Bazargan had also attempted, but failed, to bring the revolutionary committees under his control. The committees, whose members were armed, performed a variety of duties. They policed neighborhoods in urban areas, guarded prisons and government buildings, made arrests, and served as the execution squads of the revolutionary tribunals. The committees often served the interests of powerful individual clerics, revolutionary personalities, and political groups, however. They made unauthorized arrests, intervened in labor-management disputes, and seized property. Despite these abuses, members of the Revolutionary Council wanted to bring the committees under their own control, rather than eliminate them. With this in mind, in February 1979 they appointed Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi-Kani head of the Tehran revolutionary committee and charged him with supervising the committees countrywide. Mahdavi-Kani dissolved many committees, consolidated others, and sent thousands of committeemen home. But the committees, like the revolutionary courts, endured, serving as one of the coercive arms of the revolutionary government.
In May 1979 Khomeini authorized the establishment of the Pasdaran (Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Islami, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or Revolutionary Guards). The Pasdaran was conceived by the men around Khomeini as a military force loyal to the Revolution and the clerical leaders, as a counterbalance for the regular army, and as a force to use against the guerrilla organizations of the left, which were also arming. Disturbances among the ethnic minorities accelerated the expansion of the Pasdaran.
Two other important organizations were established in this formative period. In March Khomeini established the Foundation for the Disinherited (Bonyad-e Mostazafin). The organization was to take charge of the assets of the Pahlavi Foundation and to use the proceeds to assist low-income groups. The new foundation in time came to be one of the largest conglomerates in the country, controlling hundreds of expropriated and nationalized factories, trading firms, farms, and apartment and office buildings, as well as two large newspaper chains. The Crusade for Reconstruction (Jihad-e Sazandegi or Jihad), established in June, recruited young people for construction of clinics, local roads, schools, and similar facilities in villages and rural areas. The organization also grew rapidly, assuming functions in rural areas that had previously been handled by the Planning and Budget Organization (which replaced the Plan Organization in 1973) and the Ministry of Agriculture.
Trouble broke out among the Turkomans, the Kurds, and the Arabic-speaking population of Khuzestan in March 1979. The disputes in the Turkoman region of Gorgan were over land rather than claims for Turkoman cultural identity or autonomy. Representatives of left-wing movements, active in the region, were encouraging agricultural workers to seize land from the large landlords. These disturbances were put down, but not without violence. Meanwhile, in Khuzestan, the center of Iran's oil industry, members of the Arabic-speaking population organized and demanded a larger share of oil revenues for the region, more jobs for local inhabitants, the use of Arabic as a semi-official language, and a larger degree of local autonomy. Because Arab states, including Iraq, had in the past laid claim to Khuzestan as part of the "Arab homeland," the government was bound to regard an indigenous movement among the Arabic-speaking population with suspicion. The government also suspected that scattered instances of sabotage in the oil fields were occurring with Iraqi connivance. In May 1979, government forces responded to these disturbances by firing on Arab demonstrators in Khorramshahr. Several demonstrators were killed; others were shot on orders of the local revolutionary court. The government subsequently quietly transferred the religious leader of the Khuzestan Arabs, Ayatollah Mohammad Taher Shubayr al Khaqani, to Qom, where he was kept under house arrest. These measures ended further protests.
The Kurdish uprising proved more deep-rooted, serious, and durable. The Kurdish leaders were disappointed that the Revolution had not brought them the local autonomy they had long desired. Scattered fighting began in March 1979 between government and Kurdish forces and continued after a brief cease-fire; attempts at negotiation proved abortive. One faction, led by Ahmad Muftizadeh, the Friday prayer leader in Sanandaj, was ready to accept the limited concessions offered by the government, but the Kurdish Democratic Party, led by Abdol-Rahman Qasemlu, and a more radical group led by Shaykh Ezz ad Din Husaini issued demands that the authorities in Tehran did not feel they could accept. These included the enlargement of the Kordestan region to include all Kurdish-speaking areas in Iran, a specified share of the national revenue for expenditure in the province, and complete autonomy in provincial administration. Kurdish was to be recognized as an official language for local use and for correspondence with the central government. Kurds were to fill all local government posts and to be in charge of local security forces. The central government would remain responsible for national defense, foreign affairs, and central banking functions. Similar autonomy would be granted other ethnic minorities in the country. With the rejection of these demands, serious fighting broke out in August 1979. Khomeini, invoking his powers as commander in chief, used the army against other Iranians for the first time since the Revolution. No settlement was reached with the Kurds during Bazargan's prime ministership.
Because the Bazargan government lacked the necessary security forces to control the streets, such control passed gradually into the hands of clerics in the Revolutionary Council and the IRP, who ran the revolutionary courts and had influence with the Pasdaran, the revolutionary committees, and the club-wielding hezbollahis (see Glossary), or "partisans of the party of God." The clerics deployed these forces to curb rival political organizations. In June the Revolutionary Council promulgated a new press law and began a crackdown against the proliferating political press. On August 8, 1979, the revolutionary prosecutor banned the leading left-wing newspaper, Ayandegan. Five days later hezbollahis broke up a Tehran rally called by the National Democratic Front, a newly organized left-of-center political movement, to protest the Ayandegan closing. The Revolutionary Council then proscribed the front itself and issued a warrant for the arrest of its leader. Hezbollahis also attacked the headquarters of the Fadayan organization and forced the Mojahedin to evacuate their headquarters. On August 20, forty-one opposition papers were proscribed. On September 8, the two largest newspaper chains in the country, Kayhan and Ettelaat, were expropriated and transferred to the Foundation for the Disinherited.
In June and July 1979, the Revolutionary Council also passed a number of major economic measures, whose effect was to transfer considerable private sector assets to the state. It nationalized banks, insurance companies, major industries, and certain categories of urban land; expropriated the wealth of leading business and industrial families; and appointed state managers to many private industries and companies.

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Khomeini had charged the provisional government with the task of drawing up a draft constitution. A step in this direction was taken on March 30 and 31, 1979, when a national referendum was held to determine the kind of political system to be established. Khomeini rejected demands by various political groups and by Shariatmadari that voters be given a wide choice. The only form of government to appear on the ballot was an Islamic republic, and voting was not by secret ballot. The government reported an overwhelming majority of over 98 percent in favor of an Islamic republic. Khomeini proclaimed the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran on April 1, 1979.
The Khomeini regime unveiled a draft constitution on June 18. Aside from substituting a strong president, on the Gaullist model, for the monarchy, the constitution did not differ markedly from the 1906 constitution and did not give the clerics an important role in the new state structure. Khomeini was prepared to submit this draft, virtually unmodified, to a national referendum or, barring that, to an appointed council of forty representatives who could advise on, but not revise, the document. Ironically, as it turned out, it was the parties of the left who most vehemently rejected this procedure and demanded that the constitution be submitted for full-scale review by a constituent assembly. Shariatmadari supported these demands.
A newly created seventy-three-member Assembly of Experts convened on August 18, 1979, to consider the draft constitution. Clerics, and members and supporters of the IRP dominated the assembly, which revamped the constitution to establish the basis for a state dominated by the Shia clergy. The Assembly of Experts completed its work on November 15, and the Constitution was approved in a national referendum on December 2 and 3, 1979, once again, according to government figures, by over 98 percent of the vote.
In October 1979, when it had become clear that the draft constitution would institutionalize clerical domination of the state, Bazargan and a number of his cabinet colleagues had attempted to persuade Khomeini to dissolve the Assembly of Experts, but Khomeini refused. Now opposition parties attempted to articulate their objections to the Constitution through protests led by the IPRP. Following the approval of the Constitution, Shariatmadari's followers in Tabriz organized demonstrations and seized control of the radio station. A potentially serious challenge to the dominant clerical hierarchy fizzled out, however, when Shariatmadari wavered in his support for the protesters, and the pro-Khomeini forces organized massive counterdemonstrations in the city in 1979. In fear of condemnation by Khomeini and of IRP reprisals, the IPRP in December 1979 announced the dissolution of the party.
Few foreign initiatives were possible in the early months of the Revolution. The Bazargan government attempted to maintain correct relations with the Persian Gulf states, despite harsh denunciations of the Gulf rulers by senior clerics and revolutionary leaders. Anti-American feeling was widespread and was fanned by Khomeini himself, populist preachers, and the left-wing parties. Bazargan, however, continued to seek military spare parts from Washington and asked for intelligence information on Soviet and Iraqi activities in Iran. On November 1, 1979, Bazargan met with President Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, in Algiers, where the two men were attending Independence Day celebrations. Meanwhile, the shah, who was seriously ill, was admitted to the United States for medical treatment. Iranians feared that the shah would use this visit to the United States to secure United States support for an attempt to overthrow the Islamic Republic. On November 1, 1979, hundreds of thousands marched in Tehran to demand the shah's extradition, while the press denounced Bazargan for meeting with a key United States official. On November 4, young men who later designated themselves "students of the Imam's line," occupied the United States embassy compound and took United States diplomats hostage. Bazargan resigned two days later; no prime minister was named to replace him.
The Revolutionary Council took over the prime minister's functions, pending presidential and Majlis elections. The elections for the new president were held in January 1980; Bazargan, fearing further personal attacks, did not run. The three leading candidates were Jalal od Din Farsi, representing the IRP, the dominant clerical party; Abolhasan Bani Sadr, an independent associated with Khomeini who had written widely on the relationship of Islam to politics and economics; and Admiral Ahmad Madani, a naval officer who had served as governor of Khuzestan Province and commander of the navy after the Revolution. Farsi, however, was disqualified because of his Afghan origin, leaving Bani Sadr and Madani as the primary challengers. Bani Sadr was elected by 75 percent of the vote.

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Bani Sadr's program as president was to reestablish central authority, gradually to phase out the Pasdaran and the revolutionary courts and committees and to absorb them into other government organizations, to reduce the influence of the clerical hierarchy, and to launch a program for economic reform and development. Against the wishes of the IRP, Khomeini allowed Bani Sadr to be sworn in as president in January 1980, before the convening of the Majlis. Khomeini further bolstered Bani Sadr's position by appointing him chairman of the Revolutionary Council and delegating to the president his own powers as commander in chief of the armed forces. On the eve of the Iranian New Year, on March 20, Khomeini issued a message to the nation designating the coming year as "the year of order and security" and outlining a program reflecting Bani Sadr's own priorities.
Nevertheless, the problem of multiple centers of power and of revolutionary organizations not subject to central control persisted to plague Bani Sadr. Like Bazargan, Bani Sadr found he was competing for primacy with the clerics and activists of the IRP. The struggle between the president and the IRP dominated the political life of the country during Bani Sadr's presidency. Bani Sadr failed to secure the dissolution of the Pasdaran and the revolutionary courts and committees. He also failed to establish control over the judiciary or the radio and television networks. Khomeini himself appointed IRP members Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti as chief justice and member Ayatollah Abdol-Karim Musavi-Ardabili as prosecutor general (also seen as attorney general). Bani Sadr's appointees to head the state broadcasting services and the Pasdaran were forced to resign within weeks of their appointments.
Parliamentary elections were held in two stages in March and May 1980, amid charges of fraud. The official results gave the IRP and its supporters 130 of 241 seats decided (elections were not completed in all 270 constituencies). Candidates associated with Bani Sadr and with Bazargan's IFM each won a handful of seats; other left-of-center secular parties fared no better. Candidates of the radical left-wing parties, including the Mojahedin, the Fadayan, and the Tudeh, won no seats at all. IRP dominance of the Majlis was reinforced when the credentials of a number of deputies representing the National Front and the Kurdish-speaking areas, or standing as independents, were rejected. The consequences of this distribution of voting power soon became evident. The Majlis began its deliberations in June 1980. Hojjatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, a cleric and founding member of the IRP, was elected Majlis speaker. After a two-month deadlock between the president and the Majlis over the selection of the prime minister, Bani Sadr was forced to accept the IRP candidate, Mohammad Ali Rajai. Rajai, a former street peddler and schoolteacher, was a Beheshti protégé. The designation of cabinet ministers was delayed because Bani Sadr refused to confirm cabinet lists submitted by Rajai. In September 1980, Bani Sadr finally confirmed fourteen of a list of twenty-one ministers proposed by the prime minister. Some key cabinet posts, including the ministries of foreign affairs, labor, commerce, and finance, were filled only gradually over the next six months. The differences between president and prime minister over cabinet appointments remained unresolved until May 1981, when the Majlis passed a law allowing the prime minister to appoint caretakers to ministries still lacking a minister.
The president's inability to control the revolutionary courts and the persistence of revolutionary temper were demonstrated in May 1980, when executions, which had become rare in the previous few months, began again on a large scale. Some 900 executions were carried out, most of them between May and September 1980, before Bani Sadr left office in June 1981. In September the chief justice finally restricted the authority of the courts to impose death sentences. Meanwhile a remark by Khomeini in June 1980 that "royalists" were still to be found in government offices led to a resumption of widespread purges. Within days of Khomeini's remarks some 130 unofficial purge committees were operating in government offices. Before the wave of purges could be stopped, some 4,000 civil servants and between 2,000 and 4,000 military officers lost their jobs. Around 8,000 military officers had been dismissed or retired in previous purges.
The Kurdish problem also proved intractable. The rebellion continued, and the Kurdish leadership refused to compromise on its demands for local autonomy. Fighting broke out again in April 1980, followed by another cease-fire on April 29. Kurdish leaders and the government negotiated both in Mahabad and in Tehran, but, although Bani Sadr announced he was prepared to accept the Kurdish demands with "modifications," the discussions broke down and fighting resumed. The United States hostage crisis was another problem that weighed heavily on Bani Sadr. The "students of the Imam's line" and their IRP supporters holding the hostages were using the hostage issue and documents found in the embassy to radicalize the public temper, to challenge the authority of the president, and to undermine the reputations of moderate politicians and public figures. The crisis was exacerbating relations with the United States and West European countries. President Carter had ordered several billion dollars of Iranian assets held by American banks in the United States and abroad to be frozen. Bani Sadr's various attempts to resolve the crisis proved abortive. He arranged for the UN secretary general to appoint a commission to investigate Iranian grievances against the United States, with the understanding that the hostages would be turned over to the Revolutionary Council as a preliminary step to their final release. The plan broke down when, on February 23, 1980, the eve of the commission's arrival in Tehran, Khomeini declared that only the Majlis, whose election was still several months away, could decide the fate of the hostages.
The shah had meantime made his home in Panama. Bani Sadr and Foreign Minister Qotbzadeh attempted to arrange for the shah to be arrested by the Panamanian authorities and extradited to Iran. But the shah abruptly left Panama for Egypt on March 23, 1980, before any summons could be served.
In April the United States attempted to rescue the hostages by secretly landing aircraft and troops near Tabas, along the Dasht-e Kavir desert in eastern Iran. However the two helicopters on the mission failed and when the mission commander decided to abort the mission a helicopter and a C-130 transport aircraft collided, killing eight United States servicemen.
The failed rescue attempt had negative consequences for the Iranian military. Radical factions in the IRP and left-wing groups charged that Iranian officers opposed to the Revolution had secretly assisted the United States aircraft to escape radar detection. They renewed their demand for a purge of the military command. Bani Sadr was able to prevent such a purge, but he was forced to reshuffle the top military command. In June 1980, the chief judge of the Army Military Revolutionary Tribunal announced the discovery of an antigovernment plot centered on the military base in Piranshahr in Kordestan. Twenty-seven junior and warrant officers were arrested. In July the authorities announced they had uncovered a plot centered on the Shahrokhi Air Base in Hamadan. Six hundred officers and men were implicated. Ten of the alleged plotters were killed when members of the Pasdaran broke into their headquarters. Approximately 300 officers, including two generals, were arrested, and warrants were issued for 300 others. The government charged the accused with plotting to overthrow the state and seize power in the name of exiled leader Bakhtiar. Khomeini ignored Bani Sadr's plea for clemency and said those involved must be executed. As many as 140 officers were shot on orders of the military tribunal; wider purges of the armed forces followed.
In September 1980, perhaps believing the hostage crisis could serve no further diplomatic or political end, the Rajai government indicated to Washington through a diplomat of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) that it was ready to negotiate in earnest for the release of the hostages. Talks opened on September 14 in West Germany and continued for the next four months, with the Algerians acting as intermediaries. The hostages were released on January 20, 1981, concurrently with President Ronald Reagan's taking the oath of office. The United States in return released US$11 to US$12 billion in Iranian funds that had been frozen by presidential order. Iran, however, agreed to repay US$5.1 billion in syndicated and non-syndicated loans owed to United States and foreign banks and to place another US$1 billion in an escrow account, pending the settlement of claims filed against Iran by United States firms and citizens. These claims, and Iranian claims against United States firms, were adjudicated by a special tribunal of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, established under the terms of the Algiers Agreement. As of 1987, the court was still reviewing outstanding cases, of which there were several thousand.
The hostage settlement served as a further bone of contention between the Rajai government, which negotiated the terms, and Bani Sadr. The president and the governor of the Central Bank (Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran--established originally in 1960 as Bank Markazi Iran), a presidential appointee, charged the Iranian negotiators with accepting terms highly disadvantageous to Iran.
One incentive to the settling of the hostage crisis had been that in September 1980 Iran became engaged in full-scale hostilities with Iraq. The conflict stemmed from Iraqi anxieties over possible spillover effects of the Iranian Revolution. Iranian propagandists were spreading the message of the Islamic Revolution throughout the Gulf, and the Iraqis feared this propaganda would infect the Shia Muslims who constituted a majority of Iraq's population.
The friction between Iran and Iraq led to border incidents, beginning in April 1980. The Iraqi government feared the disturbed situation in Iran would undo the 1975 Algiers Agreement concluded with the shah (not to be confused with the 1980 United States-Iran negotiations). There is also evidence the Iraqis hoped to bring about the overthrow of the Khomeini regime and to establish a more moderate government in Iran. On September 17, President Saddam Husayn of Iraq abrogated the Algiers Agreement. Five days later Iraqi troops and aircraft began a massive invasion of Iran.
The war did nothing to moderate the friction between Bani Sadr and the Rajai government with its clerical and IRP backers. Bani Sadr championed the cause of the army; his IRP rivals championed the cause of the Pasdaran, for which they demanded heavy equipment and favorable treatment. Bani Sadr accused the Rajai government of hampering the war effort; the prime minister and his backers accused the president of planning to use the army to seize power. The prime minister also fought the president over the control of foreign and domestic economic policy. In late October 1980, in a private letter to Khomeini, Bani Sadr asked Khomeini to dismiss the Rajai government and to give him, as president, wide powers to run the country during the war emergency. He subsequently also urged Khomeini to dissolve the Majlis, the Supreme Judicial Council, and the Council of Guardians so that a new beginning could be made in structuring the government. In November Bani Sadr charged that torture was taking place in Iranian prisons and that individuals were executed "as easily as one takes a drink of water." A commission Khomeini appointed to investigate the torture charges, however, claimed it found no evidence of mistreatment of prisoners.
There were others critical of the activities of the IRP, the revolutionary courts and committees, and the club-wielding hezbollahis who broke up meetings of opposition groups. In November and December, a series of rallies critical of the government was organized by Bani Sadr supporters in Mashhad, Esfahan, Tehran, and Gilan. In December, merchants of the Tehran bazaar who were associated with the National Front called for the resignation of the Rajai government. In February 1981, Bazargan denounced the government at a mass rally. A group of 133 writers, journalists, and academics issued a letter protesting the suppression of basic freedoms. Senior clerics questioned the legitimacy of the revolutionary courts, widespread property confiscations, and the power exercised by Khomeini as faqih. Even Khomeini's son, Ahmad Khomeini, initially spoke on the president's behalf. The IRP retaliated by using its hezbollahi gangs to break up Bani Sadr rallies in various cities and to harass opposition organizations. In November it arrested Qotbzadeh, the former foreign minister, for an attack on the IRP. Two weeks later, the offices of Bazargan's paper, Mizan, were smashed.
Khomeini initially sought to mediate the differences between Bani Sadr and the IRP to prevent action that would irreparably weaken the president, the army, or the other institutions of the state. He ordered the cancellation of a demonstration called for December 19, 1980, to demand the dismissal of Bani Sadr as commander in chief. In January 1981, he urged nonexperts to leave the conduct of the war to the military. The next month he warned clerics in the revolutionary organizations not to interfere in areas outside their competence. On March 16, after meeting with and failing to persuade Bani Sadr, Rajai, and clerical leaders to resolve their differences, he issued a ten-point declaration confirming the president in his post as commander in chief and banning further speeches, newspaper articles, and remarks contributing to factionalism. He established a three-man committee to resolve differences between Bani Sadr and his critics and to ensure that both parties adhered to Khomeini's guidelines. This arrangement soon broke down. Bani Sadr, lacking other means, once again took his case to the public in speeches and newspaper articles. The adherents of the IRP used the revolutionary organizations, the courts, and the hezbollahi gangs to undermine the president.
The three-man committee appointed by Khomeini returned a finding against the president. In May, the Majlis passed measures to permit the prime minister to appoint caretakers to ministries still lacking a minister, to deprive the president of his veto power, and to allow the prime minister rather than the president to appoint the governor of the Central Bank. Within days the Central Bank governor was replaced by a Rajai appointee.
By the end of May, Bani Sadr appeared also to be losing Khomeini's support. On May 27, Khomeini denounced Bani Sadr, without mentioning him by name, for placing himself above the law and ignoring the dictates of the Majlis. On June 7, Mizan and Bani Sadr's newspaper, Enqelab-e Eslami, were banned. Three days later, Khomeini removed Bani Sadr from his post as the acting commander in chief of the military. Meanwhile, gangs roamed the streets calling for Bani Sadr's ouster and death and clashed with Bani Sadr supporters. On June 10, participants in a Mojahedin rally at Revolution Square in Tehran clashed with hezbollahis. On June 12, a motion for the impeachment of the president was presented by 120 deputies. On June 13 or 14, Bani Sadr, fearing for his life, went into hiding. The speaker of the Majlis, after initially blocking the motion, allowed it to go forward on June 17. The next day, the Mojahedin issued a call for "revolutionary resistance in all its forms." The government treated this as a call for rebellion and moved to confront the opposition on the streets. Twenty-three protesters were executed on June 20 and 21, as the Majlis debated the motion for impeachment. In the debate, several speakers denounced Bani Sadr; only five spoke in his favor. On June 21, with 30 deputies absenting themselves from the house or abstaining, the Majlis decided for impeachment on a vote of 177 to 1. The revolutionary movement had brought together a coalition of clerics, middle-class liberals, and secular radicals against the shah. The impeachment of Bani Sadr represented the triumph of the clerical party over the other members of this coalition

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Following the fall of Bani Sadr, opposition elements attempted to reorganize and to overthrow the government by force. The government responded with a policy of repression and terror. The government also took steps to impose its version of an Islamic legal system and an Islamic code of social and moral behavior.
Bani Sadr remained in hiding for several weeks. Believing he was illegally impeached, he maintained his claim to the presidency, formed an alliance with Mojahedin leader Masoud Rajavi, and in July 1981 escaped with Rajavi from Iran to France. In Paris, Bani Sadr and Rajavi announced the establishment of the National Council of Resistance (NCR) and committed themselves to work for the overthrow of the Khomeini regime. They announced a program that emphasized a form of democracy based on elected popular councils; protection for the rights of the ethnic minorities; special attention to the interests of shopkeepers, small landowners, and civil servants; limited land reform; and protection for private property in keeping with the national interest. The Kurdish Democratic Party, the National Democratic Front, and a number of other small groups and individuals subsequently announced their adherence to the NCR.
Meanwhile, violent opposition to the regime in Iran continued. On June 28, 1981, a powerful bomb exploded at the headquarters of the IRP while a meeting of party leaders was in progress. Seventy-three persons were killed, including the chief justice and party secretary general Mohammad Beheshti, four cabinet ministers, twenty-seven Majlis deputies, and several other government officials. Elections for a new president were held on July 24, and Rajai, the prime minister, was elected to the post. On August 5, 1981, the Majlis approved Rajai's choice of Ayatollah Mohammad Javad-Bahonar as prime minister.
Rajai and Bahonar, along with the chief of the Tehran police, lost their lives when a bomb went off during a meeting at the office of the prime minister on August 30. The Majlis named another cleric, Mahdavi-Kani, as interim prime minister. In a new round of elections on October 2, Hojjatoleslam Ali Khamenehi was elected president. Division within the leadership became apparent, however, when the Majlis rejected Khamenehi's nominee, Ali Akbar Velayati, as prime minister. On October 28, the Majlis elected Mir-Hosain Musavi, a protégé of the late Mohammad Beheshti, as prime minister. Although no group claimed responsibility for the bombings that had killed Iran's political leadership, the government blamed the Mojahedin for both. The Mojahedin did, however, claim responsibility for a spate of other assassinations that followed the overthrow of Bani Sadr. Among those killed in the space of a few months were the Friday prayer leaders in Tabriz, Kerman, Shiraz, Yazd, and Bakhtaran; a provincial governor; the warden of Evin Prison, the chief ideologue of the IRP; and several revolutionary court judges, Majlis deputies, minor government officials, and members of revolutionary organizations.
In September 1981, expecting to spark a general uprising, the Mojahedin sent their young followers into the streets to demonstrate against the government and to confront the authorities with their own armed contingents. On September 27, the Mojahedin used machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers against units of the Pasdaran. Smaller left-wing opposition groups, including the Fadayan, attempted similar guerrilla activities. In July 1981, members of the Union of Communists tried to seize control of the Caspian town of Amol. At least seventy guerrillas and Pasdaran members were killed before the uprising was put down. The government responded to the armed challenge of the guerrilla groups by expanded use of the Pasdaran in counterintelligence activities and by widespread arrests, jailings, and executions. The executions were facilitated by a September 1981, Supreme Judicial Council circular to the revolutionary courts permitting death sentences for "active members" of guerrilla groups. Fifty executions a day became routine; there were days when more than 100 persons were executed. Amnesty International documented 2,946 executions in the 12 months following Bani Sadr's impeachment, a conservative figure because the authorities did not report all executions. The pace of executions slackened considerably at the end of 1982, partly as a result of a deliberate government decision but primarily because, by then, the back of the armed resistance movement had largely been broken. The radical opposition had, however, eliminated several key clerical leaders, exposed vulnerabilities in the state's security apparatus, and posed the threat, never realized, of sparking a wider opposition movement.
By moving quickly to hold new elections and to fill vacant posts, the government managed to maintain continuity in authority, however, and by repression and terror it was able to crush the guerrilla movements. By the end of 1983, key leaders of the Fadayan, Paykar (a Marxist-oriented splinter group of the Mojahedin), the Union of Communists, and the Mojahedin in Iran had been killed, thousands of the rank and file had been executed or were in prison, and the organizational structure of these movements was gravely weakened. Only the Mojahedin managed to survive, and even it had to transfer its main base of operations to Kordestan, and later to Kurdistan in Iraq, and its headquarters to Paris.
During this period, the government was also able to consolidate its position in Kordestan. Fighting had resumed between government forces and Kurdish rebels after the failure of talks under Bani Sadr in late 1980. The Kurds held parts of the countryside and were able to enter the major cities at will after dark. With its takeover of Bukan in November 1981, however, the government reasserted control over the major urban centers. Further campaigns in 1983 reduced rebel control over the countryside, and the Kurdish Democratic Party had to move its headquarters to Iraq, from which it made forays into Iran. The Kurdish movement was further weakened when differences between the Kurdish Democratic Party and the more radical Komala (Komala-ye Shureshgari-ye Zahmat Keshan-e Kordestan-e Iran, or Committee of the Revolutionary Toilers of Iranian Kordestan), a Kurdish Marxist guerrilla organization, resulted in open fighting in 1985. The government also moved against other active and potential opponents. In April 1982, the authorities arrested former Khomeini aid and foreign minister Qotbzadeh and charged him with plotting with military officers and clerics to kill Khomeini and to overthrow the state. Approximately 170 others, including 70 military men, were also arrested. The government implicated the respected religious leader Shariatmadari, whose son-in-law had allegedly served as the intermediary between Qotbzadeh and Shariatmadari. At his trial, Qotbzadeh denied any design on Khomeini's life and claimed he had wanted only to change the government, not to overthrow the Islamic Republic. Shariatmadari, in a television interview, said he had been told of the plot but did not actively support it. Qotbzadeh and the military men were executed, and Shariatmadari's son-in-law was jailed. In an unprecedented move, members of the Association of the Seminary Teachers of Qom voted to strip Shariatmadari of his title of marja-e taqlid (a jurist who is also an object of emulation). Shariatmadari's Center for Islamic Study and Publications was closed, and Shariatmadari was placed under virtual house arrest.
In June 1982, the authorities captured Qashqai leader Khosrow Qashqai, who had returned to Iran after the Revolution and had led his tribesmen in a local uprising. He was tried and publicly hanged in October.
All these moves to crush opposition to the Republic gave freer rein to the Pasdaran and revolutionary committees. Members of these organizations entered homes, made arrests, conducted searches, and confiscated goods at will. The government organized "Mobile Units of God's Vengeance" to patrol the streets and to impose Islamic dress and Islamic codes of behavior. Instructions issued by Khomeini in December 1981 and in August 1982 admonishing the revolutionary organizations to exercise proper care in entering homes and making arrests were ignored. "Manpower renewal" and "placement" committees in government ministries and offices resumed wide scale purges in 1982, examining officeholders and job applicants on their beliefs and political inclinations. Applicants to universities and military academies were subjected to similar examinations.
By the end of 1982, the country experienced a reaction against the numerous executions and a widespread feeling of insecurity because of the arbitrary actions of the revolutionary organizations and the purge committees. The government saw that insecurity was also undermining economic confidence and exacerbating economic difficulties. Accordingly, in December 1982 Khomeini issued an eight-point decree prohibiting the revolutionary organizations from entering homes, making arrests, conducting searches, and confiscating property without legal authorization. He also banned unauthorized tapping of telephones, interference with citizens in the privacy of their homes, and unauthorized dismissals from the civil service. He urged the courts to conduct themselves so that the people felt their life, property, and honor were secure. The government appointed a follow-up committee to ensure adherence to Khomeini's decree, to look into the activities of the revolutionary organizations, and to hear public complaints against government officials. Some 300,000 complaints were filed within a few weeks. The follow-up committee was soon dissolved, but the decree nevertheless led to a marked decrease in executions, tempered the worst abuses of the Pasdaran and revolutionary committees, and brought a measure of security to individuals not engaged in opposition activity.
The December decree, however, implied no increased tolerance for the political opposition. The Tudeh had secured itself a measure of freedom during the first three years of the Revolution by declaring loyalty to Khomeini and supporting the clerics against liberal and left-wing opposition groups. But the government showed less tolerance for the party after the impeachment of Bani Sadr and the repression of left-wing guerrilla organizations. The party's position further deteriorated in 1982, as relations between Iran and the Soviet Union grew more strained over such issues as the war with Iraq and the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. The government began closing down Tudeh publications as early as June 1981, and in 1982 officials and senior clerics publicly branded the members of the Tudeh as agents of a foreign power.
In February 1983, the government arrested Tudeh leader Nureddin Kianuri, other members of the party Central Committee, and more than 1,000 party members. The party was proscribed, and Kianuri confessed on television to spying for the Soviet Union and to "espionage, deceit, and treason." Possibly because of Soviet intervention, none of the leading members of the party was brought to trial or executed, although the leaders remained in prison. Many rank and file members, however, were put to death. By 1983 Bazargan's IFM was the only political group outside the factions of the ruling hierarchy that was permitted any freedom of activity. Even this group was barely tolerated. For example, the party headquarters was attacked in 1983, and two party members were assaulted on the floor of the Majlis.
In 1984 Khomeini denounced the Hojjatiyyeh, a fundamentalist religious group that rejected the role assigned to the faqih under the Constitution. The organization, taking this attack as a warning, dissolved itself.

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As the government eliminated the political opposition and successfully prosecuted the war with Iraq, it also took further steps to consolidate and to institutionalize the achievements of the Revolution. The government took several measures to regularize the status of revolutionary organizations. It reorganized the Pasdaran and the Crusade for Reconstruction as ministries (the former in November 1982 and the latter in November 1983), a move designed to bring these bodies under the aegis of the cabinet, and placed the revolutionary committees under the supervision of the minister of interior. The government also incorporated the revolutionary courts into the regular court system and in 1984 reorganized the security organization led by Mohammadi Rayshahri, concurrently the head of the Army Military Revolutionary Tribunal, as the Ministry of Information and Security. These measures met with only limited success in reducing the considerable autonomy, including budgetary independence, enjoyed by the revolutionary organizations.
An Assembly of Experts (not to be confused with the constituent assembly that went by the same name) was elected in December 1982 and convened in the following year to determine the successor to Khomeini. Khomeini's own choice was known to be Montazeri. The assembly, an eighty-three-member body that is required to convene once a year, apparently could reach no agreement on a successor during either its 1983 or its 1984 session, however. In 1985 the Assembly of Experts agreed, reportedly on a split vote, to name Montazeri as Khomeini's "deputy" (qaem maqam), rather than "successor" (ja-neshin), thus placing Montazeri in line for the succession without actually naming him as the heir apparent .
Elections to the second Majlis were held in the spring of 1984. The IFM, doubting the elections would be free, did not participate, so the seats were contested only by candidates of the IRP and other groups and individuals in the ruling hierarchy. The campaign revealed numerous divisions within the ruling group, however, and the second Majlis, which included several deputies who had served in the revolutionary organizations, was more radical than the first. The second Majlis convened in May 1984 and, with some prodding from Khomeini, gave Mir-Hosain Musavi a renewed vote of confidence as prime minister. In 1985 it elected Khamenehi, who was virtually unchallenged, to another four-year term as president.
Bazargan, as leader of the IFM, continued to protest the suppression of basic freedoms. He addressed a letter on these issues to Khomeini in August 1984 and issued a public declaration in February 1985. He also spoke out against the war with Iraq and urged a negotiated settlement. In April 1985 Bazargan and forty members of the IFM and the National Front urged the UN secretary general to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict. In retaliation, in February 1985, the hezbollahis smashed the offices of the party, and the party newspaper was once again shut down. Bazargan was denounced from pulpits and was not allowed to run for president in the 1985 elections.
There were, however, increasing signs of factionalism within the ruling group itself over questions of social justice in relation to economic policy, the succession, and, in more muted fashion, foreign policy and the war with Iraq. The debate on economic policy arose partly from disagreement over the more equitable distribution of wealth and partly from differences between those who advocated state control of the economy and those who supported private sector control. Divisions also arose between the Majlis and the Council of Guardians, a group composed of senior Islamic jurists and other experts in Islamic law and empowered by the Constitution to veto, or demand the revision of, any legislation it considers in violation of Islam or the Constitution. In this dispute, the Council of Guardians emerged as the collective champion of private property rights. In May 1982, the Council of Guardians had vetoed a law that would have nationalized foreign trade. In the fall of 1982, the council forced the Majlis to pass a revised law regarding the state takeover of urban land and to give landowners more protection. In January of the following year, the council vetoed the Law for the Expropriation of the Property of Fugitives, a measure that would have allowed the state to seize the property of any Iranian living abroad who did not return to the country within two months.
In December 1982, the Council of Guardians also vetoed the Majlis' new and more conservative land reform law. This law had been intended to help resolve the issue of land distribution, left unresolved when the land reform law was suspended in November 1980. The suspension had also left unsettled the status of 750,000 to 850,000 hectares of privately owned land that, as a result of the 1979-80 land seizures and redistributions, was being cultivated by persons other than the owners, but without transfer of title.
The debate between proponents of state and of private sector control over the economy was renewed in the winter of 1983-84, when the government came under attack and leaflets critical of the Council of Guardians were distributed. Undeterred, the council blocked attempts in 1984 and 1985 to revive measures for nationalization of foreign trade and for land distribution, and it vetoed a measure for state control over the domestic distribution of goods. As economic conditions deteriorated in 1985, there was an attempt in the Majlis to unseat the prime minister. Khomeini, however, intervened to maintain the incumbent government in office.
These differences over major policy issues persisted even as the Revolution was institutionalized and the regime consolidated its hold over the country. The differences remained muted, primarily because of Khomeini's intervention, but the debate threatened to grow more intense and more divisive in the post-Khomeini period. Moreover, while in 1985 Montazeri appeared slated to succeed Khomeini as Iran's leader, there was general agreement that he would be a far less dominant figure as head of the Islamic Republic than Khomeini has been.

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On 6th January, Bakhtiar became the Shah's last prime minister.
stikes spread and there were confrontations between the Shah's forces and the revolutionary militia.
on 16th January the Shah left Iran. He died in Egypt several months after, having suffered very bad treatment by the Americans, his old friends and aIlies. On 1st February Imam Khomeini arrived in Tehran. On 10th February Bakhtiar declared martial law but the people disregarded the law according to Imam Khomeini's guidelines. There were bloody street fights and gradually the armed forces joined or surrendered to the people.
On 31st March there was a general referendum and aImost unanimously people chose an Islamic Republic for their country.

On 2nd December, the Islamic Republic Constitution was approved by the people through another referendum.

On 21st September Iraq began his attacks on Iran at a time when Iran was least prepared for a war. It made rapid advances into Iran soon capturing Khorramshahr and Susangerd and approaching Ahwaz. Abadan was sieged and was about to collapse when it was suddenly freed through courageous and daring operations by Iranians: the army, the Revolutionary forces and the people.

In a series of military operations, Iran inflicted one defeat after another on the Iraqis. Korramshahr was freed after two years, on 24th May 1982.

The war continued for eight years. Meanwhile, many countries and the United Nations intervened and tried bring about peace between the two countries.

On 18th July 1988 Iran finally accepted the UN resolution 598 and made peace with Iraq having regained its territories.

On 4th July 1989 Imam Khomeini passed away. Immediately the Council of the Experts appointed Ayatollah Khamenei as the new leader. Hojjatoleslam Rafsanjani became the President replacing Ayatollah Khamenei.

On 28th July 1989 the Iranian Constitution was changed and all executive powers and duties were given over to the President rather than the prime minister.