Approximately halfway through the life of the dynasty, by the mid-1800s, the Qajars’ traditional, largely tribal, sources of legitimacy no longer sufficed to keep emerging social forces politically compliant. This resulted in the increasing political significance of a number of groups, each of which had their own constituents. When groups with corporate identities, such as clerics and merchants, mobilized within and amongst themselves, they could command considerable respect and following among the population at large. Some of the more notable of these groups included the clergy, merchants, landlords, tribal leaders, the small but growing number of reformist intellectuals, and princes, who entered into coalitions together and, with overt and subtle support from the British, sought to change the dynasty from within. The collective power of these groups to place demands on the court was considerable, ultimately resulting in a movement that resulted in the convening of a parliament and the drafting of a constitution. The movement came to be known as the Constitutional Revolution.

This chapter introduces the volume, stating the central objective of the book – namely, tracing the rise, consolidation, and fall of Iran’s last two dynasties – and the political, social, and economic changes that each of the two dynasties, the Qajars and the Pahlavis, effected in Iran.

This chapter analyzes the rise and consolidation of Qajar rule from a tribal monarchy to a national dynasty. It examines the pervasiveness of centrifugal forces dominating the country’s landscape following the collapse of the Safavid dynasty, and slow rise in the 1780s of the Qajars from a tribal chieftaincy to a dynasty. The Qajars consolidated power, eliminated various tribal rivals, incorporated the clerical classes into the power structure, and implemented what was at best halting and scant social and economic reforms. Personal autocracy, and the avarice of successive monarchs and courtiers, undermined prospects for any kind of political development, paving the way for the dynasty’s steady decline and eventual collapse.

From the arrival of the Ottomans and the Safavids to Kurdistan until the removal of the Kurdish emirates in the mid-nineteenth century, the Kurdish nobility was actively involved in regional and trans-border politics. The struggle between the Ottomans and the Safavids, especially during the first half of the sixteenth century, when the division between ‘Iranian Kurdistan’ and ‘Ottoman Kurdistan’ was consolidated, was pivotal in shaping the political landscape in Kurdistan. However, for the successive centuries some of the Kurdish lands would keep changing hands after each war between two states. At other times Kurdish lords would switch their loyalty for another ruler or simultaneously pay tribute and tax to both states. Tools of politics used by both states and the Kurdish emirs varied from time to time but remained mainly the same in essence. While the Ottoman Empire and Iranian dynasties planned their imperial project on Kurdistan the Kurdish nobility played an active role in regional and trans-border politics. The policies of both states had lasting effects in the region while Kurdish lands remained a ‘buffer zone’ between two states until the mid-nineteenth century, when finally the Ottomans and Qajar Iran removed the Kurdish notables from their position and incorporated their lands into the central administration.