Then started the sordid story of the Anglo-Russian intrigues...

Then started the sordid story of the Anglo-Russian intrigues and encroachments and a race by these powers for extorting economic and political concessions that at times deprived the country of nearly all its resources.[^1] The tale of internal administration is no less sombre. The Shah of Iran was absolute and his decisions were unquestionable.

“The taxes were collected, concessions were granted, and presents were offered, all for the benefit of the Shah and his courtiers, whose extravagance kept Persia poor.”[^2] Power was abused in strange ways as Court decisions were sold and robbers were licensed.[^3] Public offices were monopolized by a host of princes – Fateh Ali Shah (1212/1797-1250/1834) alone had one hundred and fifty-nine children[^4], who in the absence of a strong and efficient central government plundered the helpless peasants with impunity.

Out of the ashes of an almost ruined society, however, emerged a national movement the goal of which was to resurrect a new and independent Iran. The Russian campaigns had proved the vulnerability of the Iranian army to the new scientific methods of warfare and awakened the Iranians to their woeful backwardness and to the compelling need of Western education.

Amongst the outstanding patriots who quickly grasped the implications of the new situation were Prince Abbas Mirza, the eldest son of Fateh Ali Shah, and Mirza Taqi Khan Amir-i Kabir or Amir-i Nizam, the Prime Minister of Nadir al-Din Shah (1265/1848-1314/1896).

Prince Abbas Mirza, whom Watson describes as “the noblest of the Qajar race,” ^5 not only played the chief role in the organization of the Iranian army on Western lines, but was also amongst the first to realize the need for sending Iranian students to European countries for higher education. He sent many students to England to study science at his own expense. He was the first to introduce typography in Iran, which was a forerunner of the printing press.

Again, it was at his instance that a number of Russian and French books on military science were translated into Persian. Mirza Taqi Khan Amir-i Kabir was an extra­ordinary statesman produced by Iran in the thirteenth/nineteenth century.

During the short period of three years that he was the Prime Minister, he set himself to put his country on the road to progress and stability and arrest the political and social decline by the introduction of administrative, legal, and educational reforms of far-reaching importance.