An Eyewitness Account of Society and Politics in Qajar-Era Iran

The book 'Mer'at al-Vaqayeh-ye Mozaffari' offers an exceptional account of the rift within the Qajar court. Alongside effusive praise for Mozaffar al-Din Shah, the author accuses Amin al-Sultan of 'hooliganism' and praises the reforms of Amin al-Dowleh. In a piece, document researcher Reza Mokhtari Esfahani examines the work's explicit portrayal of politics, the crisis of domestic industries, and the society of that time.

According to the report of the Ambassador of Arjan, Reza Mokhtari Esfahani, a history scholar and scholar, in a note analyzed the two-volume book "Marat al-Waqa'i Mozaffari" by Abdul Hossein Khan Malek al-Morkhin, edited by Abdul Hossein Navaei and published as written heritage, and wrote:

With the arrival of modernity in Iran, many things were affected. One of these fields was official historiography, which was different from before. The official historiography affected by this development was different from the official historiography before it and the constitutional historiography. The book "Marat al-Waqa'i Mozaffari" written by Abdul Hossein Khan Malek al-Morkhin can be considered as an example of this type of historiography. Abdul Hussain Khan was the eldest child of Mirza Dayatullah Lasanul Malik Sepehr Kashani and the grandson of Mirza Mohammad Taqi Khan Sepehr, the owner of the annals. His family was one of the prominent secretaries whose lineage was traced back to Mirza Mahdi Khan, the minister of Nader Shah. From his mother's side, he is related to Fath Ali Khan Saba, Malik al-Sharai of Kashani. Malik al-Morkhin was a child of his time and besides being familiar with Persian literature and knowing Arabic, he was familiar with several foreign languages. He was also a prominent journalist and during the constitutional period, he published the newspapers Watan, Shahshahi, Ayane Efnema, Azadi and Pang Roozer. Malik al-Morkhin, with the next title of Lasan al-Sultaneh, wrote the book of Muzafari's Chronicles, except for the book of daily history of Iran and the completion of Naskh al-Tawarikh. He dedicated this book to the history of Muzaffaruddin Shah's reign, which includes various events of this period. Al-Waqa'i, although in his descriptions and narrations, he has an opinion on government events and incidents, Homayun rulings and government organizations, but he has not neglected social issues, including cultural, civil, local, and economic.

However, in its laudatory descriptions of the king and the institution of the monarchy, it is a perfect example of official historiography. Among them, where the author described Muzaffar al-Din Shah, it has a complete similarity with his previous examples. As he describes the appearance of this Qajar king, he writes: "His Highness Shahriari is characterized by a well-balanced stature, a rosy face, a lively gaze, sweet speech, receptive eyes, and black and elongated eyebrows. Melahat is mixed with morning glory and sugar is aroused with Angbeen. Today, it is Asbah and Amlah from all people; "Blessed be Allah, the Most High."

Malik al-Morkhin's narration of Shah's knowledge and grace is more to his predecessors than to the historians of the constitutional period: "He has a perfect hand in Persian, Turkish and French, and is rich in Arabic sciences and literature. He writes calligraphy better than the calligraphers of his predecessors, and he is the leader of his age in arithmetic, geography, art, history, and the art of painting. Sometimes juicy poems emanate from his reverent nature. He remembers ancient poems a lot, memorizes hadiths in a timely manner, and is a first-person shooter in the art of shooting with rifles and slingshots.

But this statement changes about Mirza Ali Asghar Khan Amin Sultan; Malek al-Morkhin, despite the fact that he entered the Naseri court as the secretary of Amin al-Sultan, and the means for his advancement in the government were provided by this chancellor, does not hesitate to criticize his morals and behavior: "The Prime Minister has been acting in a whimsical way and makes jokes in the court meetings and makes his face look like a clown, especially when Wazir Humayun [Mirzamehdi Khan Kashi] is in his assembly. is present Because he is the mockery of the king, the chancellor also follows the king's movements and his post-natural behavior. Most of his movements are limited to mobs. took the dignity of the ministry and chancellery; It is not without reason that patriotic people say that the ruin of Iran is due to his chancellery and ministry.

On the other hand, there is a different description and narrative of Mirza Ali Khan Amin al-Doulah, the reformist chancellor: "... Amin al-Doulah had great power in external and internal perfections, and he was the first person in the country in the art of composition and transmission. He invented his own way of writing that all the writers learn in his way and from his handwriting. In order of life, he behaved like the dust of Farang. He was dressed without make-up, only wearing a fringe-mabi shirt. He often came from his house on foot or on horseback to the door of the house, so that if he was in need, he would meet him on the way. In the assembly, he had complete dignity and peace. He did not joke and was considered very ugly. He didn't say anything except when needed. Whenever he did not want to answer something, he answered with the word yes. He was very reasonable and polite. He respected old families and scholars. No one left his assembly offended. He ignored the rebels. He established good laws for the development of the Iranian government. If he had continued in his work, the country of Iran would have developed in the style of Farang. He shortened some of the invasions of the Persians to Iran. He also put a limit on the scholars of Tehran who were interfering in government affairs..."

The image he presents of Amin al-Doulah is a model image of a chancellor in the Iranshahri tradition; The place that was the middle link between the institution of the monarchy and the elites of the society. According to this tradition, the chancellor represented the bureaucracy; The same bureaucracy that guaranteed the efficiency of the government. Malek al-Morkhin, with such a view, writes in the definition and explanation of this position:

"The decree of the chancellor is valid throughout Iran like the decree of the king, but sometimes the chancellor does not enforce the king's decrees that he does not consider appropriate, but the king has to enforce his decree. The chancellor is actually the power of the king, and the king is the soul of the chancellor. Nothing is done in the country without the signature of the chancellor, and whenever a job or rank or duty is given to someone, it must be approved and signed by the chancellor. Every ruler who is appointed to a province must give a sum of money to the king and one-fifth or one-tenth of that sum must be given to the chancellor so that his work will continue."

It was with such position and influence that it was different whether the chancellor was Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir and Mirza Hossein Khan Sepehsalar or Mirza Agha Khan Nouri and Mirza Ali Asghar Khan Amin Sultan. There were people who gave dignity to this position and as the Arabs say: "Sharaf Al Makan Bal Makin".

What is reflected in Malek al-Morkhin's historiography is the narrative mixed with his analysis of Iran's society and politics; An analysis that shows his national view. In describing the clothes of his contemporary Iranians, he writes: "It should not be hidden that all the people of Iran, from the time they are born to the time they die, are dressed in clothes from outside their country, which is actually impure. Because when a child is born, it is covered with foreign cloths, and after it dies, its shroud is also out of use. Apart from these two, his other clothes and furniture and furniture are from abroad. Even though he may get most of his necessities from his homeland and will not need foreign goods in any way. Of course, a country that has become like this and all its cash went abroad in exchange for goods, will become poor and destitute.

In this regard, he also gives statistics on the textile industry in his ancestral city. According to these statistics, the local industry had lost ground against the import of similar goods and was on the way to destruction.

Malek al-Morkhin's account of this situation seems to be a familiar and repeated story even in our times: "Before this, there were only seven hundred silk weaving factories in Kashan that wove all kinds of silk and other fabrics, and it was preferred to Farang cloth in every way, because in Iran, cloth is woven by hand and abroad by machine." Of course, handmade fabric is a thousand degrees stronger than wheeled fabric. Today, the number of those factories has reached seven. Are the people of Iran less intelligent and less intelligent than the people of Europe, or are their water and soil inferior to need them in this way? Even though today in most parts of Iran they weave all kinds of cloth, because no one wears it, it is worthless and priceless.

Not only the traditional industries of Iran, but the new industries such as sugar making and crystallization were also not enough, and sometimes competition and narrow-mindedness were effective in this regard: "Because the Iranian merchants who brought sugar to Iran from abroad, they became famous among the people that they use the bones of dead animals in this sugar, and in addition, the factory workers are non-religious, as long as their business is not harmed."

It happened that the Kahrizak sugar factory was closed, and later the import of sugar and its high price created a crisis due to the war between Russia and Japan.

As it can be seen from the description of the author of Mozafari's chronicles about the clothing of Iranians, he did not stay in the court and capital and spoke about the events of different countries. His reports about various incidents, including the lightning strike in a village that took the lives of humans and animals, the miracle of healing an invalid from Herat at the holy shrine of Razavi, the conflict between religious scholars and sheikhs in Hamedan, the high cost of public necessities, epidemic diseases and the death of people in different cities, etc., are many of his narrations from his time. Traditions that are used in writing local chronicles.

Even in this regard, he did not ignore the strange news that were related to rumors and superstitions: "In the city of Khoy, a woman gave birth to a girl [who] had one eye in her forehead and a hump on the back of her neck and four legs that were separated between them, but they were connected from the bottom of the leg, and she died two days later."

Or in another place, it is said about the birth of Kore Kheri in Minab that he had "two necks and two heads, and in each head two ears, two eyes, a nose and a mouth of Tam-ul-Khalkha".

The book ends with an article in the same context: "During Muzaffaruddin Shah's illness, Shatarbashi's daughter, who is very religious, dreamed that she was told that the Shah would not recover from this illness. How many years does his son reign? Some say that he is not a king. After them, Hazrat Imam Asr (AS) will appear.

Mozafari's events can be considered a treasure of valuable information that is found in few books. Among them, the news of conferring titles to government officials, which is useful for researchers in knowing the officials of that time and the history of special titles and the owners of those titles in different periods. Another difference of this book is the opinion on important events and news of some neighboring countries and countries of the West and East. As the reader finds out, at the time when Iranians wanted a constitution, the people of China also wanted a constitution.

As its name suggests, Muzafari Chronicles is dedicated to the years of Muzaffaruddin Shah's reign, and part of it is related to the constitutional movement, which, unlike other constitutional chronicles, also narrates the events of other parts of Iran and the world during those days; Narratives that sometimes have nothing to do with the constitution and the political events of the capital.

Dr. Abdul Hossein Navaei edited the book Merat al-Oqai Mozaffari in the last years of his life (1381) and even though this scientific effort was during the difficult time of illness, it still speaks of his precision and depth of knowledge in correcting manuscripts and Qajar history. A subject that is absent in the eyes of many present-day correctors. It was with this feature that Dr. Navaei's books in correcting and publishing historical texts and documents resembled research, unlike many published works in this field.