Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
118: The Constitutional Revolution in Persia - 4
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
The defeat of the Czar’s armies and the creation of the Imperial Duma encouraged the Persians. The ulema of Tabriz, Karbala and Najaf wrote to the Shah advising him to rescind the concessions. The reply was vague, so the ulema declared that they were asking Sultan Abdul Hamid of the Ottomans, as Caliph of Islam, to take Persia under his protection.
In Tehran, the protests culminated in the mass migration of the ulema to the sanctuary of Shah Abdul Azeem in December 1905. The townsfolk, workers, merchants and bureaucrats followed suit. The throngs swelled to more than 20,000 people. This was the Persian equivalent of a peaceful “sit-in” to show the Shah that the people had had enough and would not tolerate oppression any more. Threats from the Shah and his prime minister proved fruitless and the Shah had to cave in. Under his own signature he wrote to the ulema promising reforms, the removal of the corrupt officials and the constitution of a Majlis e Adalat (Court of Justice).
The Shah did not keep his promises. Restlessness grew with each passing month and protests broke out again in June 1906. The shops were shuttered and a large number of people took refuge in the Juma’ Masjid where the ulema denounced the Shah and his henchman. More migrations from the capital to other shrines followed until the capital city looked like a ghost town. The governor tried coercion by locking up the shops of merchants participating in the hitherto peaceful protests but this method did not work. In desperation, he surrounded the Juma’ Masjid and ordered its occupants out. The order was refused; a fight took place, in which one of the clerics died. The burial procession for the dead cleric attracted thousands of mourners. The Shah’s troops dispersed the mourners killing scores of people.
The ulema, witnessing the violent methods of the authorities, agreed to vacate the Juma’ Masjid and to move south, to the city of Qum. Multitudes deserted Tehran and marched out with the ulema. The governor, seeing that the shops were still closed, ordered them opened and threatened that if his orders were not obeyed, he would command his soldiers to loot them. Determined to continue their non-violent protests, some of the ulema sought refuge in the British Embassy. The Embassy granted permission and soon the number of refugees there swelled to 15,000.
The Shah was checkmated. He could not force an evacuation from the British embassy. The protests had engulfed the entire nation. He dismissed the unpopular governor of Tehran and wrote a letter under his signature promising to punish those responsible for the repression. By now the people had lost faith in the promises of the Shah. They demanded constitutional reform and the formation of a Majlis with legislative authority. The demands included that the Majlis be composed of 200 members elected by eligible males between the ages of thirty and seventy. The Shah was in failing health and his resolve flickered. In September 1906 he accepted all of these demands.
A committee was immediately constituted to draft the electoral laws. The committee worked overtime and within thirty days submitted a draft to the Shah for his signature. The draft envisaged a total of 156 members for the Majlis, 60 to be elected from Tehran and the remainder from the provinces. Members were to be elected for a term of two years. Direct elections were prescribed for Tehran and indirect elections were proposed for the provinces. The Shah approved the draft and the Majlis was born.
Within a month, the Majlis members from Tehran were elected and went to work. The electoral law had made a provision, on an interim basis, for the Tehran delegates to commence work even before the arrival of delegates from the provinces. This was done to prevent the Shah from sabotaging the Majlis even before it started its work.
Two of the important issues facing the nation were the drafting of the Fundamental Laws and the financial crisis. By November 1906 the Majlis prepared a draft for the Fundamental Laws. The religion of the state was to be Islam and the Ithna Ashari Fiqh, the governing school of jurisprudence. The lives and properties of all citizens and all foreign subjects were guaranteed. The people of Persia were guaranteed equal rights and due process before the law.
The Qajar dynasty was accorded sovereignty as a trust conferred by the Divine. The Majlis was given “the right in all questions to propose any measure, which it regards as conducive to the wellbeing of the government and the people, after due discussion and deliberation thereof in all sincerity and truth”. Five members of the Majlis were to be from the ulema, who had the privilege of screening legislation to ensure its compliance with Islam. Local government was slated to be in the hands of elected anjumans (provincial assemblies and municipal councils).
To solve the financial crisis facing the country and to extricate it from foreign control, the Majlis proposed the creation of a national bank with a capital of 6 million tumans, so that the authority to create credit and to manage the inflow and outflow of capital from the country, rested with Persians. The foreign banks, controlled by Britain and Russia, had on more than one occasion demonstrated their stranglehold on the financial affairs of the country.
In 1906, in response to an increase in the international price of silver, large amounts of Persian tumans were smuggled into British India, where they were melted down into Indian rupee coins, which had smaller silver content. When silver coins became scarce, the Imperial Bank, controlled by Britain, flooded the Persian market with paper currency. Inflation rose, compounding the financial problems of Persia. The Majlis was aware of the critical role that finance played in foreign control and its members were conscious of the fate of Egypt, which had fallen prey to foreign financial interests. The Majlis members and the ulema made a fervent appeal to the people for subscriptions to the new bank. The response was overwhelming. Rich and poor alike came forward with subscriptions. But this project was not successful due to the determined opposition of both Britain and Russia. The foreign banks withheld credit and made paper money scarce, choking off commerce and contributions alike. As a result, the financial strings of Persia remained in foreign hands.
Under prodding of the ulema, Sultan Muzaffaruddin Shah signed the constitution from his deathbed in 1906. He died a week later and was succeeded by his son Muhammed Ali Mirza who was even more averse to the controls imposed on him by the constitution than was his father. He snubbed the leaders of the Majlis and did not even invite them to his coronation. The provincial governors continued to hamper the progress of the elections. A frustrated populace protested and riots broke out in Shiraz, Tabriz, Kirmanshah, Maku and Fars.
The principal concern of the new Shah, like that of his father, was to raise loans to finance his lavish lifestyle. A new loan of 400,000 British pounds, to be underwritten jointly by Britain and Russia, was in the negotiation phase. The Majlis acted swiftly and decisively to block it and to forbid any fresh loans without its consent. It passed a resolution that the annual expenditures of the Shah were subject to approval by the Majlis and that he should be held to the allotted budget. It also demanded that the detested Belgians who had been imported to oversee the finances of the country be dismissed forthwith.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
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