A History of Islamic Societies

From the Safavid period (1501–1722), Iran inherited the pattern of state, religious, and tribal (uymaq) institutions that shape its history to the present day. The Qajar dynasty, which ruled Iran from 1779 to 1925, resembled its Safavid predecessors in that it was a weakly centralized regime faced with strong provincial tribal forces and an increasingly independent religious establishment. In the nineteenth century, European conquests, cultural influence, and above all economic penetration polarized state and society and led to the constitutional revolution of 1905, in which a coalition of intellectuals, ʿulamaʾ (in the Iranian case, often called mullahs), merchants, and artisans attempted to create a parliamentary regime. After an anarchic period, a military officer, Reza Shah Pahlavi, seized control of the state. The Pahlavi period, from 1925 to 1979, virtually repeated the earlier history. The Pahlavis sought to centralize state power and modernize the Iranian economy and society, and again provoked scholar-led nationwide resistance in the name of Islam. For 200 years, the struggle between the state and the ʿulamaʾ was a principal feature of Iranian history.

Qajar Iran: the Long Nineteenth Century

The modern cycle began with the Qajars, who came to power after a period of anarchy and tribal struggles. Their regime was never consolidated. Their armies were composed of a small Turkoman bodyguard and Georgian slaves; the central administration was a court government too underdeveloped to tax the country effectively. The provinces they ruled were fragmented into innumerable tribal, ethnic, and local factions headed by their own chieftains. A combination of formal governmental appointments, control of land, rights to collect taxes, and the power to administer justice and mediate disputes made tribal chiefs virtually independent of the state. Khans and ilkhans governed their own tribes. Even the authority of khans was by no means absolute since it depended upon the ability to rally support from lesser chiefs who had to be coerced, cajoled, bought off, or otherwise made allies of the paramount khans. Town quarters and guilds also had a degree of political autonomy. The Qajars, moreover, never captured the aura of legitimacy that had surrounded the Safavids. They maintained their suzerainty by exploiting the rivalries of lesser chiefs.