nor that Fath ʽAli Shah’s claim to Meshed, as belonging to the
Persian crown, was actively resisted. But the large Province of
Khorasan, of which Meshed was the capital, had never been other
than a nominal dependency of the crown since the death of Nadir;
and in the autumn of 1830 the shah, under Russian advice, assembled
a large force to bring into subjection all turbulent and
refractory chiefs on the east of his kingdom. Yezd and Kerman
were the first points of attack; Khorasan was afterwards entered
by Samnan, or the main road from Teherān. The expedition, led
by ʽAbbas Mirza, involved some hard fighting and much loss of
life; several forts and places were captured, among them Kuchan
and Serrakhs; and it may be concluded that the objects contemplated
were more or less attained. An English officer, Colonel
Shee, commanded what was called the “British detachment”
which accompanied the prince. Thus far as regards Yezd, Kerman
and Khorasan. It was otherwise with Herat.
Hajji Firuzu’d-Din, son of Timur Shah, reigned undisturbed in that city from 1800 to 1816. Since Fath ʽAli Shah’s accession he and his brother Mahmud had been, as it were, under Persian protection. Persia claimed the principality of Herat as part of the empire of Nadir, but her pretensions had been satisfied by payments of tribute or evasive replies. Now, however, that she marched her army against the place, Firuzu ’d-Din called in the aid of his brother Mahmud Shah of Kabul, who sent to him the famous vizier, Fath Khan Barakzai. The latter, intriguing on his own account, got possession of the town and citadel; he then sallied forth, engaged the Persian forces, and forced them to retire into their own country. In 1824, on a solicitation from Mustafa Khan, who had got temporary hold of Herat, more troops were despatched thither, but, by the use of money or bribes, their departure was purchased. Some eight or nine years afterwards ʽAbbas Mirza, when at the head of his army in Meshed, invited Yar Mahommed Khan of Herat to discuss a settlement of differences between the two governments. The meeting was unproductive of good. Again the Persian troops advanced to Herat itself under the command of Mahommed Mirza, son of Abbas; but the news of his father’s death caused the commander to break up his camp and return to Meshed.
Sir Gore Ouseley returned to England in 1814, in which year Mr Ellis, assisted by Mr Morier—whose “Hajji Baba” is the unfailing proof of his ability and deep knowledge of Persian character—negotiated on the part of Great Britain the Treaty of Teherān. England was to provide troops or a subsidy in the event of unprovoked invasion, while Persia was to attack the Afghans should they invade India. Captain Willock succeeded Morier as chargé d’affaires in 1815, and since that period Great Britain has always been represented at the Persian court. It was in Fath ʽAli Shah’s reign that Henry Martyn was in Persia, and completed his able translation of the New Testament into the language of that country. Little more remains to be here narrated of the days of Fath ʽAli Shah. Among the remarkable occurrences may be noted the murder at Teherān in 1828 of M. Grebayadov, the Russian envoy, whose conduct in forcibly retaining two women of Erivan provoked the interference of the mullas and people. To repair the evil consequences of this act a conciliatory embassy, consisting of a young son of the crown prince and some high officers of the state, was despatched to St Petersburg. Shortly afterwards the alliance with Russia was strengthened, and that with England slackened in proportion.
Fath ʽAli Shah had a numerous family. Agreeably to the Persian custom, asserted by his predecessors, of nominating the heir-apparent from the sons of the sovereign without restriction to seniority, he had passed over the eldest, Mahommed ʽAli, in favour of a junior, ʽAbbas; but, as the nominee died in the lifetime of his father, the old king had proclaimed Mahommed Mirza, the son of ʽAbbas, and his own grandson, to be his successor. Why a younger son had been originally selected, to the prejudice of his elder brother, is differently stated by different writers. The true reason was probably the superior rank of his mother.
Mahommed Shah was twenty-eight years old when he came to the throne in 1834. He died at the age of forty-two, after a reign of about thirteen and a half years. His accession was not publicly notified for some months after his grandfather’s death, for it was necessary to clear the way of all competitors, and there were two on this occasion—one ʽAli Mahommed Shah. Mirza, governor of Teherān, who actually assumed a royal title, and one Hasan ʽAli Mirza, governor of Shiraz. Owing to the steps taken by the British envoy, Sir John Campbell, assisted by Colonel Bethune, at the head of a considerable force, supplied with artillery, the opposition of the first was neutralized, and Mahommed Shah, entering Teherān on the 2nd of January, was proclaimed king on the 31st of the same month. It cost more time and trouble to bring the second to book. Hasan ʽAli, “farman-farma,” or commander-in-chief, and his brother and abettor, had an army at their disposal in Fars. Sir Henry Lindsay Bethune marched his soldiers to Isfahan to be ready to meet them. An engagement which took place near Kumishah, on the road between Isfahan and Shiraz, having been successful, the English commander pushed on to the latter town, where the two rebel princes were seized and imprisoned. Forwarded under escort to Teherān, they were, according to Watson, ordered to be sent on thence as state prisoners to Ardebil, but the farman-farma died on the way, and his brother was blinded before incarceration. Markham, however, states that both ʽAli Mirza and Hasan ʽAli were allowed to retire with a small pension, and that no atrocities stained the beginning of the reign of Mahommed Shah. It is presumed that the fate of the prime minister or “kaim-makam,” who was strangled in prison, was no more than an ordinary execution of the law. This event, and the prevalence of plague and cholera at Teherān, marked somewhat gloomily the new monarch’s first year.
The selection of a premier was one of the first weighty questions for solution. A member of the royal family, the “asafu ’d-daula,” governor of Khorasan, left his government to urge his candidature for the post. The king’s choice, however, fell on Hajji Mirza Aghasi, a native of Erivan, who in former years, as tutor to the sons of ʽAbbas Mirza, had gained a certain reputation for learning and a smattering of the occult sciences, but whose qualifications for statesmanship were craftiness and suspicion. As might have been anticipated, the hajji fell into the hands of Russia, represented by Count Simonich, who urged him to a fresh expedition into Expedition against Herat. Khorasan and the siege of Herat. There was no doubt a plausible pretext for both proposals. The chiefs, reduced to temporary submission by ʽAbbas Mirza, had again revolted; and Shah Kamran, supported by his vizier, Yar Mahommed, had broken those engagements and pledges on the strength of which Fath ʽAli Shah had withdrawn his troops. In addition to these causes of offence he had appropriated the province of Seistan, over which Persia had long professed to hold the rights of suzerainty. But the king’s ambition was to go farther than retaliation or chastisement. He refused to acknowledge any right to separate government whatever on the part of the Afghans, and Kandahar and Ghazni were to be recovered, as belonging to the empire of the Safawid dynasty. The advice of the British envoy was dissuasive in this respect, and therefore distasteful.
Sir John Campbell, in less than a year after the sovereign’s installation, went home, and was succeeded as British envoy by Henry Ellis. The change in personnel signified also a transfer of superintendence of the Persian legation, which passed from the government in India to the authorities in England. The expedition was to commence with a campaign against the Turcomans—Herat being its later destination. Such counter-proposals as Ellis had suggested for consideration had been politely put aside, and the case was now more than ever complicated by the action of the Barakzai chiefs of Kandahar, who had sent a mission to Teherān to offer assistance against their Saduzai rival at Herat. Fresh provocation had, moreover, been given to the shah’s government by the rash and incapable Kamran.
About the close of the summer the force moved from Teherān. The royal camp was near Astarabad in November 1836. Food was scarce: barley sold for ten times the usual price, and wheat was not procurable for any money. The troops were dissatisfied, and, being kept without pay and on short rations, took to plundering. There had been operations on the banks of the Gurgan, and the Turcomans had been driven from one of their strongholds; but little or no progress had been made in the subjection of these marauders, and the Heratis had sent word that all they could do was to pay tribute, and, if that were insufficient, the shah had better march to Herat. A military council was held at Shahrud, when it was decided to return to the capital and set out again in the spring. Accordingly the troops dispersed, and the sovereign’s presence at Teherān was taken advantage of by the British minister to renew his attempts in the cause of peace. Although on the present occasion Simonich ostensibly aided the British chargé d’affaires M‘Neill, who had succeeded Ellis in 1836, no argument was of any avail to divert the monarch from his purpose. He again set out in the summer, and, invading the Herat territory in November 1837, began the siege on the 23rd of that month.
Not until September in the following year did the Persian army withdraw from before the walls of the city; and then the movement only took place on the action of the British government. M‘Neill, who had joined the Persian camp on the 6th of April, left it again on the 7th of June. He had done all in his power to effect a reasonable agreement between Siege of Herat. the contending parties; but both in this respect and in the matter of a commercial treaty with England, then under negotiation, his efforts had been met with evasion and latent hostility. The Russian envoy, who had appeared among the tents of the besieging army almost simultaneously with his English colleague, no sooner found himself alone in his diplomacy than he resumed his aggressive counsels, and little more than a fortnight had elapsed since M‘Neill’s departure when a vigorous assault, planned, it is asserted, by Simonich himself, was made upon Herat. The Persians attacked at five points, at one of which they would in all likelihood have been successful had not the Afghans been aided by Eldred Pottinger, a young Englishman, who with the science of an artillery officer combined a courage and determination which inevitably influenced his subordinates. Still the garrison was disheartened; but Colonel Stoddart’s arrival on the 11th of August to threaten the shah with British intervention put a stop to further action. Colonel Stoddart’s refusal to allow any but British mediators to decide the pending dispute won the day; and that officer was able to report that on
