Everything about Nasser Al-din Shah Qajar totally explained
Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar, (
July 16,
1831 -
May 1,
1896) was the
King and
Shah of Persia from
September 17,
1848 to
May 1,
1896 when he was assassinated. He was the son of
Mohammad Shah Qajar and the longest reigning monarch king in Persian history. He had sovereign power for close to 50 years and was also the first Persian monarch to ever write and publish his diaries.
Biography
He was in
Tabriz when he heard of his father's death in 1848, and he ascended to the
Peacock Throne with the help of
Amir Kabir. He tried to recover the part of eastern
Persia (especially
Herat) that had come into the British sphere of control but after the British attack on
Bushehr, he'd to retreat. Herat is today a part of
Afghanistan. Nasser-al-Din Shah was forced to sign the
Declaration of Paris granting Afghanistan supremacy over the former Persian territories.
Though Nasser al-Din had early
reformist tendencies, he was dictatorial in his style of government. He persecuted
Bábís and
Bahá'ís, and this increased when a deranged Bábí attempted to assassinate him in 1852. He was the first modern
Persian monarch to visit Europe in
1873 and then again in
1878 (when he saw a
Royal Navy Fleet Review), and finally in
1889 and was reportedly amazed with the technology he saw there. During his visit to the United Kingdom in 1873, Nasser al-Din Shah was appointed by Queen Victoria a Knight of the
Order of the Garter, the highest English order of chivalry. He was the first Persian monarch to be so honoured.
In 1890 he met British
Gerald Talbot and signed a contract with him giving him the ownership of Iranian Tobacco Industry, but he later was forced to cancel the contract after
Mirza Reza Shirazi issued a
Fatwa that made farming, trading and consuming tobacco as Haram (forbidden). It even affected the Shah's personal life as his wives didn't allow him to smoke.
This wasn't the end of his attempts to give advantages to Europe because he later gave the ownership of Iranian Customs Incomes to
Paul Julius Reuter.
.
Nasser al-Din introduced a number of western innovations to Persia, including a modern
postal system, train transport, a banking system and newspaper publishing. He was the first Iranian to be photographed and was a patron of Photography who had himself photographed hundreds of times.
Nasser al-Din was assassinated by
Mirza Reza Kermani, a follower of
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, when he was visiting and praying in the shrine of Shah-Abdol-Azim. It is said that the revolver used to assassinate him was old and rusty, and had he worn a thicker overcoat, or been shot from a longer range, he'd have survived the attempt on his life. Shortly before his death he's reported to have said "I will rule you differently if I survive!" Nasser al-Din Shah's assassin was prosecuted by the defense Minster Nazm ol Doleh.
He was buried in the
Shah-Abdol-Azim Cemetery, in
Rayy near
Tehran, where he was assassinated. His one-piece marble tombstone, bearing his full effigy, is now kept in the Golestan Palace Museum in Tehran and is renowned as a master piece of Qajar era sculpture.
Gallery
Image:Nasir ad-Din Nadar.jpg|Nasser al-Din,
photo by Nadar
Image:Nasser Ad-Din Shah Qajar.jpg|Nasser al-Din Shah
Image:Nasser Ad-Din Shah Qajar in a garden of the Golestan Palace.jpg|Posing in a garden of the Golestan Palace (from the private album of Nasser al-Din Shah)
Image:Nasser Ad-Din Shah Qajar in the Hall of Mirrors, the Golestan Palace.jpg|Standing next to the Jewelled Globe in the Hall of Mirrors of the Golestan Palace (from the private album of Nasser al-Din Shah)
Further Information
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