Afterwards, in 1790, he collected his forces and marched against
the Kajars, in the direction of Isfahan. But Hajji Ibrahim had
been intriguing against his sovereign, to whose family he owed
everything, not only with his officers and soldiers but also with
Aga Mahommed, the chief of the Kajars, and arch-enemy of the
Zends. Lutf ʽAli Khan was suddenly deserted by the whole of his
army, except seventy faithful followers; and when he retreated to
Shiraz he found the gates closed against him by Hajji Ibrahim,
who held the city for the Kajar chief. Thence falling back upon
Bushire, he found that the sheikh of that town had also betrayed
him. Surrounded by treason on every side, he boldly attacked
and routed the chief of Bushire and blockaded Shiraz. His unconquerable
valour gained him many followers, and he defeated an
army sent against him by the Kajars in 1792.
Aga Mahommed then advanced in person against his rival. He encamped with an army of 30,000 men on the plain of Mardasht, near Shiraz. Lutf ʽAli Khan, in the dead of night, suddenly attacked the camp of his enemy with only a few hundred followers. The Kajars were completely routed and thrown into confusion; but Aga Mahommed, with extraordinary presence of mind, remained in his tent, and at the first appearance of dawn his “muezzin,” or public crier, was ordered to call the faithful to morning prayer as usual. Astonished at this, the few Zend cavaliers, thinking that the whole army of Kajars had returned, fled with precipitation leaving the field in possession of Aga Mahommed. The successful Kajar then entered Shiraz, and promoted the traitor Hajji Ibrahim to be his vizier. Lutf ʽAli Khan took refuge with the hospitable chief of Tabbas in the heart of Khorasan, where he succeeded in collecting a few followers; but advancing into Fars, he was again defeated, and forced to take refuge at Kandahar.
In 1794, however, the undaunted prince once more crossed the Persian frontier, determined to make a last effort, and either regain his throne or die in the attempt. He occupied the city of Kermān, then a flourishing commercial town, half-way between the Persian Gulf and the province of Khorasan. Aga Mahommed besieged it with a large army Capture of Kermān. in 1795, and, after a stout resistance, the gates were opened through treachery. For three hours the gallant young warrior fought in the streets with determined valour, but in vain. When he saw that all hope was gone he, with only three followers, fought his way through the Kajar host and escaped to Bam-Narmashir, the most eastern district of the province of Kermān on the borders of Seistan.
Furious at the escape of his rival, the savage conqueror ordered a general massacre; 20,000 women and children were sold into slavery, and 70,000 eyes of the inhabitants of Kermān were brought to Aga Mahommed on a platter.
Lutf ʽAli Khan took refuge in the town of Bam; but the governor of Narmashir, anxious to propitiate the conqueror, basely surrounded him as he was mounting his faithful horse Kuran to seek a more secure asylum. The young prince fought bravely; but, being badly wounded and overpowered by numbers, he was secured an sent to the camp of the Kajar chief. The spot where he was seized at Bam, when mounting his horse, was marked by a pyramid, formed, by order of his revengeful enemy, of the skulls of the most faithful of his adherents. The most hideous indignities and atrocities were committed upon his person by the cruel Kajar, and finally he was sent to Teherān and murdered, when only in his twenty-sixth year. Every member of his family and every friend was ordered to be massacred by Aga Mahommed; and the successful miscreant thus founded the dynasty of the Kajars at the price of all the best and noblest blood of Iran.
The Zend is said to be a branch of the Lak tribe, dating from the time of the Kaianian kings, and claims to have been charged with the care of the Zend-Avesta by Zoroaster himself.[1] The tree attached to Markham’s chapter on the dynasty contains the names of eight members of the family only, i.e. four brothers, one of whom had a son, grandson and great-grandson, and one a son. Four of the eight were murdered, one was blinded, and one cruelly mutilated. In one case a brother murdered a brother, in another an uncle blinded his nephew.
Kajar Dynasty.—Aga Mahommed was undoubtedly one of the most cruel and vindictive despots that ever disgraced a throne. But he was not without care for the honour of his empire in the eyes of Europe and the outer world, and his early career in Mazandaran gave him a deeply-rooted mistrust of Russia, with the officers of which power he was in constant contact. The following story, told by Forster,[2] and varied by a later writer, is characteristic. A party of Russians having obtained permission to build a “counting-house” at Ashraf, in the bay of that name, erected instead a fort with eighteen guns. Aga Mahommed, learning the particulars, visited the Aga Mahommed. spot, expressed great pleasure at the work done, invited the officers to dine with him, imprisoned them, and only spared their lives when they had removed the whole of the cannon and razed the fort to the ground. This occurrence must have taken place about 1782.
Forster was travelling homeward by the southern shores of the Caspian in January 1784, and from him we gather many interesting details of the locality and period. He calls Aga Mahommed chief of Mazandaran, as also of Astarabad and “some districts situate in Khorasan,” and describes his tribe the Kajar, to be, like the Indian Rajput, usually devoted to the profession of arms. Whatever hold his father may have had on Gilan, it is certain that this province was not then in the son’s possession, for his brother, Jiʽafir Kuli, governor of Balfrush (Balfroosh), had made a recent incursion into it and driven Hidaiyat Khan, its ruler, from Resht to Enzeli, and Aga Mahommed was himself meditating another attack on the same quarter. The latter’s palace was at Sari, then a small and partly fortified town, thickly inhabited, and with a plentifully-supplied market. As “the most powerful chief in Persia” since the death of Karim Khan, the Russians were seeking to put their yoke upon him.
As Aga Mahommed’s power increased, his dislike and jealousy of the Muscovite assumed a more practical shape. His victory over Lutf ʽAli was immediately followed by an expedition into Georgia. After the death of Nadir the wali of that country had looked around him for the safest means of shaking off the yoke of Persia; and Campaign against Georgia. in course of time an opportunity had offered of a promising kind. In 1783, when the strength of the Persian monarchy was concentrated upon Isfahan and Shiraz, the Georgian tsar Heraclius entered into an agreement with the empress Catherine by which all connexion with the shah was disavowed, and a quasi-vassalage to Russia substituted—the said empire extending her aegis of protection over her new ally. Aga Mahommed now demanded that Heraclius should return to his position of tributary and vassal to Persia, and, as his demand was rejected, prepared for war. Dividing an army of 60,000 men into three corps, he sent one of these into Daghestan, another was to attack Erivan, and with the third he himself laid siege to Shusha in the province of Karabakh. The stubborn resistance offered at the last-named place caused him to leave there a small investing force only, and to move on with the remainder of his soldiers to join the corps d’armée at Erivan. Here, again, the difficulties presented caused him to repeat the same process and to effect a junction with his first corps at Ganja, the modern Elisavetpol. At this place he encountered the Georgian army under Heraclius, defeated it, and marched upon Tiflis, which he pillaged, massacring and enslaving[3] the inhabitants. Then he returned triumphant to Teherān, where (or at Ardebil on the way) he was publicly crowned shah of Persia. Erivan surrendered, but Shusha continued to hold out. These proceedings caused Russia to enter the field. Derbent was taken possession of by Imhov, Baku and Shumakhy were occupied and Gilan was threatened. The death of the empress, however, caused the issue of an order to retire, and Derbent and Baku remained the only trophies of the campaign.
In the meantime Aga Mahommed’s attention had been called away to the east. Khorasan could hardly be called an integral part of the shah’s kingdom so long as it was under even the nominal rule of the blind grandson of Nadir. But the eastern division of the province and its outlying parts were actually in the hands of Operations in Khorasan. the Afghans, and Meshed was not Persian in 1796 in the sense that Delhi was British at the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny. Shah Rukh held his position, such as it was, rather under Aḥmad
- ↑ Markham. Morier says of Karim Khan’s family, “it was a low branch of an obscure tribe in Kurdistan.”
- ↑ Journey from Bengal to England (1798), ii. 201; see also Markham, pp. 341, 342.
- ↑ Lady Sheil says (1849); “I saw a few of these unhappy captives who all had to embrace Mahommedanism, and many of whom had risen to the highest stations, just as the Circassian slaves in Constantinople.”
