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Persian Empire
امپراتوری فارسی
Timeline: Emancipation (Map Game)

OTL equivalent: Iran
Flag Coat of Arms
Flag Coat of Arms
Location of Persia
Location of Persia
Motto
یک مرد بهترین زنان شایسته، بهترین سلاح و بهترین از عرصه
("A man deserves the best of women, best of weapons and best of realms.")
Capital Tehran
Largest city Tabriz
Other cities Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad, Reyy
Language Persian
Religion
  main
 
Shia Islam
  others Sunni Islam, Bâbism
Ethnic Groups
  main
 
Persian
  others Kurdish, Turkish, Baluchi, Azerbaijani
Demonym Persian
Government Absolute Monarchy
Shahanshah Naser al-Din Qajar
Area 1,700,000 km²
Population ~ 7,250,000 
Currency Qiran

 The Qajar Dynasty is an Iranian royal dynasty which is ruling Persia (Iran) since 1789. 

History[]

The Qajar family took full control of Iran in 1794, deposing Lotf 'Ali Khan, the last of the Zand dynasty, and re-asserted Iranian sovereignty over large parts of the Caucasus and Central Asia. In 1796, Mohammad Khan Qajar seized Mashhad with ease, putting an end to the Afsharid dynasty, and Mohammad Khan was formally crowned as shah after hispunitive campaign against Iran's Georgian subjects. In the Caucasus, the Qajar dynasty permanently lost many of Iran's integral areas to the Russians over the course of the 19th century, comprising modern day  Georgia, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.

Origins[]

The Qajar rulers were members of the Karagöz or "Black-Eye" sect of the Qajars, who themselves were members of theKarapapak or "Black Hats" lineage of the Oghuz Turks. Qajars first settled during the Mongol period in the vicinity of Armenia and were among the seven Qizilbash tribes that supported the Safavids.

Qajars filled a number of diplomatic missions and governorships in the 16–17th centuries for the Safavids. The Qajars were resettled by Shah Abbas I throughout Iran. The great number of them also settled in Astarabad (present-day Gorgan, Iran) near the south-eastern corner of the Caspian Sea, and it would be this branch of Qajars that would rise to power.Within 126 years between the demise of the Safavid state and the rise of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, the Qajars had evolved from a shepherd-warrior tribe with strongholds in northern Persia into a Persian dynasty with all the trappings of a Perso-Islamic monarchy.

Rise To Power[]

See also: Mohammad Khan Qajar

Muzaffereddin Şah

Mohammad Khan Qajar with his attendants, seated in a garden.

In 1779, following the death of Karim Khan of the Zand dynasty, Mohammad Khan Qajar, the leader of the Qajars, set out to reunify Iran. Mohammad Khan was known as one of the cruelest kings, even by t

he 18th century Iranian standards. In his quest for power, he razed cities, massacred entire populations, and blinded some 20,000 men in the city of Kerman because the local populace had chosen to defend the city against his siege.

The Qajar armies at that time were mostly composed of Turkomans and Georgian slaves. By 1794, Mohammad Khan had eliminated all his rivals, including Lotf Ali Khan, the last of the Zand dynasty. He re-established Persian control over the territories in the entireCaucasus. Agha Mohammad established his capital at Tehran, a village near the ruins of the ancient city of Rayy. In 1796, he was formally crowned as shah. In 1797, Mohammad Khan Qajar was assassinated in Shusha, the capital of Karabakh Khanate, and was succeeded by his nephew, Fath-Ali Shah Qajar.

Reconquest Of Georgia[]

Russia, viewed Georgia as a pivot for her Caucasian policy, as Russia's new aspirations were to use it as a base of operations against both Iran and the Ottoman Empire, both immediate bordering geopolitical rivals of Russia. On top of that, having another port on the Georgian coast of the Black Sea would be ideal. A limited Russian contingent of two infantry battalions with four artillery pieces arrived in Tbilisi in 1784, but was withdrawn, despite the frantic protests of the Georgians, in 1787 as a new war against Ottoman Turkey had started on a different front.

Tiflis Minyatürü

A miniature depicting the siege of Tbilisi

The consequences of these events came a few years later, when a new Iranian dynasty under the Qajars, emerged victorious in the protracted power struggle in Persia. Their head, Agha Mohammad Khan, as his first objective, resolved to bring the Caucasus again fully under the Persian orbit. For Agha Mohammah Khan, the resubjugation and reintegration of Georgia into the Iranian Empire was part of the same process that had brought Shiraz, Isfahan, and Tabriz under his rule. He viewed, like the Safavids and Nader Shah before him, the territories no different than the territories in mainland Iran. Georgia was a province of Iran the same way Khorasan was. It was therefore natural for Agha Mohammad Khan to perform whatever necessary means in the Caucasus in order to subdue and reincorporate the recently lost regions following Nader Shah's death and the demise of the Zands, including putting down what in Iranian eyes was seen as treason on the part of the governor of Georgia.

Agha Mohammad Khan subsequently crossed the Aras River, and after a turn of events by which he gathered more support from his subordinate khans of Erivan and Ganja, and having re-secured the territories up to including parts of Dagestan in the north and up to the western-most border of modern day Armenia in the west.

With half of the troops Agha Mohammad Khan crossed the Aras river with, he now marched directly upon Tbilisi, where it commenced into a huge battle between the Iranian and Georgian armies. Erekle had managed to mobilize some 5,000 troops, including some 2,000 from neighboring Imereti under its King Solomon II. The Georgians, hopelessly outnumbered, were eventually defeated despite stiff resistance. In a few hours, the Iranian king Agha Mohammad Khan was in full control of the Georgian capital. The Persian army marched back laden with spoil and carrying off many thousands of captives.

By this, after the conquest of Tbilisi and being in effective control of eastern Georgia,  Agha Mohammad was formally crowned Shah in 1796 in the Mughan plain.

Gulistan zaa

Red indicates Persian land on Causacus before the two Russo-Persian wars in early 19th century, black indicates Persian land after treaties of Gulistan and Turkmenchay

Wars With Russia and Loss of Territories[]

See Also: Fath-Ali Shah Qajar

First Russo-Persian War (1804-1813)[]

Battle of Ganja

Battle of Ganja, 1804

In 1803, under Fath Ali Shah, the Qajars set out to fight against the Russian Empire, in what was known as the Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813, due to concerns about the Russian expansion into the Caucasus, most notably Georgia, which was an Iranian domain, although some of the Khanates of the Caucasus outside of Georgia were considered quasi-independent or semi-independent by the time of Russian expansion in the latest 19th century, and their entrance in Tbilisi. After the Russians annexed the Iranian territories comprising eastern Georgia on 12 September 1801 during the rule of Tsar Alexander I, they, under General Pavel Tsitsianov, stormed the Iranian town of Ganja in 1804, officially commencing the 1804-1814 war. This period marked the first major economic and military encroachments on Iranian interests during the colonial era. The Qajar army suffered a major military defeat in the war and under the terms of the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813, Iran was forced to cede most of its Caucasian territories comprising modern day Georgia, Dagestan, and most of Azerbaijan.

Second Russo-Persian War (1826-1828)[]

Battle of Elisabethpol

Battle of Elisabethpol, 1828

The second Russo-Persian War of the late 1820s ended even more disastrously for Qajar Iran with temporary occupation of Tabriz and the signing of Treaty of Turkmenchay in 1828, acknowledging Russian sovereignty over the entire South Caucasus and Dagestan, as well as therefore the ceding of what is nowadays Armenia and the remaining part of Republic of Azerbaijan; the new border between neighboring Russia and Iran were set at the Aras River. Iran had by these two treaties, in the course of the 19th century, irrevocably lost the territories which had formed part of the concept of Iran for centuries. The area to the North of the river Aras, among which the territory of the contemporary republic of Azerbaijan, eastern Georgia, Dagestan, and Armenia were Iranian territory until they were occupied by Russia in the course of the 19th century.

Battle of Lankaran

Storming of Lankaran, 1813

As a further direct result and consequence of the Gulistan and Turkmenchay treaties of 1813 and 1828 respectively, the formerly Iranian territories became now part of Russia.

Also, as a result of Russia's imposing of the two treaties, It also decisively parted the Azerbaijanis and Talysh  ever since between two nations.

Caucasian Muslims Migrating To Persia[]

Following the official losing of the aforementioned vast territories in the Caucasus, major demographic shifts were bound to take place. Solidly Persian-speaking territories of Iran were lost, with all its inhabitants in it. Following the 1804-1814 War, but also per the 1826-1828 war which ceded the last territories, large migrations, so-called Caucasian Muhajirs, set off to migrate to mainland Iran. Some of these groups included the Ayrums, Qarapapaqs, Circassians, Shia Lezgins, and other Transcaucasian Muslims.[45]

Through the Battle of Ganja of 1804 during the First Russo-Persian War (1804-1813), many thousands of Ayrums and Qarapapaqs were settled in Tabriz. During the remaining part of the 1804-1813 war, as well as through the 1826-1828 war, the absolute bulk of the Ayrums and Qarapapaqs that were still remaining in newly conquered Russian territories were settled in and migrated to Solduz (in modern-day Iran's West Azerbaijan province).

Some Georgian Christians also were exiled to Persia.

Footnotes[]

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