Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911) in Qajar Iran

The Persian Constitutional Revolution was a series of protests, political struggles and armed conflicts in Qajar Iran between 1905 and 1911 that forced the monarchy to accept a written constitution and an elected parliament, the Majlis. It was one of the earliest constitutional revolutions in the Middle East. Although Russian and British intervention cut it short, the constitution it created remained Iran’s legal framework until 1979.

Background: a weak monarchy under foreign pressure

At the start of the 20th century Iran was ruled by the Qajar dynasty, which had governed since the 1790s. The shahs had little effective control over the provinces, no modern army and a chronically empty treasury. To raise money they sold concessions to foreigners, such as the tobacco monopoly of 1890, cancelled after a nationwide boycott, and the oil concession granted to William Knox D’Arcy in 1901.

Mozaffar ad-Din Shah, who came to the throne in 1896, borrowed heavily from Russia and spent much of it on travels to Europe. The customs service was run by Belgian officials, whose tariffs angered Iranian merchants. Russia dominated the north and Britain the south, and many Iranians feared the country was becoming a colony in all but name.

New ideas also played a part. Reformist intellectuals, newspapers printed abroad, secret societies and contacts with the Caucasus and the Ottoman Empire spread ideas of law, representation and national sovereignty. Japan’s victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War and the Russian Revolution of 1905 seemed to show that constitutional states were stronger than autocracies.

Protest and sanctuary, 1905-1906

The immediate crisis began in December 1905, when the governor of Tehran had several merchants beaten for allegedly raising sugar prices. In protest, a group of leading clerics and merchants took bast, or sanctuary, at the Shah Abdol-Azim shrine south of the capital. The shah promised to set up a “house of justice” but did not act.

In the summer of 1906 tension rose again after troops killed a protester. Senior clerics, led by Sayyed Abdollah Behbahani and Sayyed Mohammad Tabatabai, withdrew to the holy city of Qom. In Tehran, several thousand people, mostly merchants, guild members and students, took sanctuary in the garden of the British legation, where their numbers grew to an estimated 12,000 to 14,000. There, demands shifted from a house of justice to an elected national assembly.

On 5 August 1906 the ailing Mozaffar ad-Din Shah signed a decree agreeing to a national consultative assembly.

The constitution and the first Majlis

The first Majlis opened on 7 October 1906, elected on a restricted franchise by groups including princes, clerics, landowners, merchants and guilds. It drafted the Fundamental Law, which the shah signed on 30 December 1906, just over a week before his death.

His son Mohammad Ali Shah was openly hostile to the new order. The Majlis pushed through a Supplementary Fundamental Law, signed in October 1907, which set out civil rights such as equality before the law, freedom of the press and of association, the separation of powers and the role of Shia Islam as the state religion. It provided for a committee of senior clerics to check that laws conformed to Islam.

The constitutionalists soon divided. Some clerics, notably Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri, turned against the constitution, arguing that a parliament making laws contradicted religious law. Outside parliament, local elected councils called anjomans sprang up in Tabriz, Tehran and other cities, and a lively new press appeared, some of it fiercely critical of the court and the clergy. Meanwhile, on 31 August 1907, Britain and Russia signed the Anglo-Russian Convention, dividing Iran into spheres of influence without consulting its government.

Coup and civil war, 1908-1909

On 23 June 1908 Mohammad Ali Shah struck. The Persian Cossack Brigade, commanded by the Russian officer Colonel Vladimir Liakhov, bombarded the Majlis building in Tehran. Parliament was closed, several leading constitutionalists were executed, and others fled or went into hiding.

Resistance centred on Tabriz, the capital of Azerbaijan province. Led by Sattar Khan and Baqer Khan, the city’s armed volunteers held out against royalist forces for about ten months. Among those who died defending it was Howard Baskerville, an American teacher killed in April 1909. Later that month Russian troops entered Tabriz, officially to protect foreigners and open supply routes.

Other forces then moved on the capital: revolutionaries from Gilan in the north under Mohammad Vali Khan Sepahdar, and Bakhtiari tribesmen from the south under Sardar As’ad. They entered Tehran on 13 July 1909. Mohammad Ali Shah took refuge in the Russian legation and was deposed in favour of his 11-year-old son, Ahmad Shah. Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri was tried and hanged at the end of July.

The second Majlis and Russian intervention

A second Majlis met in November 1909. To reform the chaotic finances it hired an American, William Morgan Shuster, as treasurer-general in 1911. Shuster’s energetic efforts to collect taxes, including in the Russian sphere, alarmed both Russia and Britain.

In November 1911 Russia issued an ultimatum demanding Shuster’s dismissal and a promise not to hire foreign advisers without Russian and British consent. When the Majlis refused, Russian troops advanced in the north. In December 1911 the cabinet accepted the ultimatum and the Majlis was dissolved; Russian forces carried out executions in Tabriz around the same time.

Key people

Mozaffar ad-Din Shah (reigned 1896-1907) was a weak and sickly ruler who conceded the assembly and signed the Fundamental Law shortly before he died. His son Mohammad Ali Shah (reigned 1907-1909) tried to destroy the constitutional order and ended his life in exile; a failed attempt to regain the throne in 1911 was defeated.

The two senior clerics of Tehran, Sayyed Abdollah Behbahani and Sayyed Mohammad Tabatabai, gave the movement religious authority and mass support in its early stages. Behbahani was assassinated in 1910 amid bitter conflicts between rival constitutionalist factions. Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri, once an ally, became the leading clerical opponent of the constitution and was executed in 1909.

Sattar Khan and Baqer Khan, popular leaders from Tabriz neighbourhoods, became symbols of armed resistance. William Morgan Shuster later described his short time in Iran in his book The Strangling of Persia, published in 1912, which blamed Russia and Britain for the collapse of reform.

Timeline

• 1905, December: Merchants are beaten in Tehran; clerics take sanctuary at Shah Abdol-Azim.
• 1906, July: Thousands take sanctuary in the British legation garden.
• 1906, 5 August: Mozaffar ad-Din Shah agrees to a national assembly.
• 1906, 7 October: The first Majlis opens.
• 1906, 30 December: The shah signs the Fundamental Law.
• 1907, 31 August: The Anglo-Russian Convention divides Iran into spheres of influence.
• 1908, 23 June: The Cossack Brigade bombards the Majlis.
• 1909, 13 July: Constitutionalist forces take Tehran; the shah is deposed days later.
• 1911, December: After a Russian ultimatum, the second Majlis is dissolved.

Legacy

The revolution did not create a stable parliamentary state. Iran was occupied during the First World War, and in the 1920s Reza Khan seized power and founded the Pahlavi dynasty. Yet the constitution of 1906-1907 stayed formally in force, and later movements, including the oil nationalisation campaign of the early 1950s, appealed to it.

The revolution also introduced a lasting debate about the relationship between religion, law and popular sovereignty, which resurfaced in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Figures such as Sattar Khan remain national heroes in Iran today.

Why it matters

The Persian Constitutional Revolution was one of the Middle East’s earliest attempts to bind a monarch to a written constitution and an elected parliament. Its success and its defeat by foreign powers shaped Iranian nationalism and suspicion of outside interference for the rest of the century.