The Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911)

The Persian Constitutional Revolution (Enqelab-e Mashruteh) was a movement between 1905 and 1911 that forced the Qajar shahs to accept an elected parliament, the Majlis, and a written constitution, one of the first in Asia. It began with protests by merchants and clerics in Tehran in December 1905, won a royal decree in August 1906, survived a royalist coup and civil war in 1908–1909, and was ended by Russian intervention in December 1911.

Why Iranians demanded a constitution

By 1905 several groups had their own reasons to want limits on royal power.

• Merchants and guilds of the bazaar resented foreign competition, the customs tariff of 1903 that favoured Russian goods, and the Belgian customs chief Joseph Naus. A photograph of Naus dressed as a mullah at a costume party circulated in 1905 and caused fury.
• Clerics feared foreign influence and the spread of European ways, and some resented the government’s interference in their affairs. Many also had close family and business links with the bazaar.
• A new educated class of officials, teachers and writers, many shaped by the reform ideas of figures such as Mirza Malkam Khan and by newspapers printed abroad, wanted law (qanun) and representative government.

Behind all this lay the state’s debts and foreign loans, the expensive royal journeys described on the page about Mozaffar ad-Din Shah, and the memory of the Tobacco Protest, which had shown that bazaar and clergy together could defeat the crown. Events abroad mattered too: Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905 and the Russian revolution of that year seemed to show that constitutional states were stronger than autocracies.

From the sugar merchants to the British legation

In December 1905 the governor of Tehran had several sugar merchants beaten on the soles of their feet for refusing to lower their prices. One was a respected elderly merchant. The bazaar closed, and a group of clerics led by the two senior mujtahids of Tehran, Sayyed Abdollah Behbahani and Sayyed Mohammad Tabatabai, took sanctuary (bast) at the shrine of Shah Abdol-Azim. Their main demand was a “house of justice” (edalatkhaneh), a court to protect subjects from arbitrary officials. The shah agreed in January 1906 but did nothing.

Tension returned in the summer. In July 1906 troops fired on a crowd protesting the arrest of a preacher, and a young seminarian was killed. The leading clerics left Tehran for Qom in protest, a move remembered as the “great migration”. At the same time merchants, guild members and students began a sit-in in the gardens of the British legation, with the legation’s permission. Their numbers grew to an estimated 12,000–14,000. Inside the garden, tents were organised by guild, speeches were given, and the demand hardened from a house of justice to an elected national assembly.

The shah, ill and unwilling to use force, gave way. He dismissed his chief minister Ein al-Dowleh and on 5 August 1906 (14 Jumada II 1324) signed the decree for a National Consultative Assembly. The anniversary, 14 Mordad in the Iranian calendar, is still commemorated in Iran.

The constitutional order, 1906–1908

An electoral law followed in September, and the assembly opened on 7 October 1906. Within three months it had drafted the Fundamental Law, which the dying shah signed on 30 December 1906; a much longer Supplementary Fundamental Law, adding a bill of rights and the separation of powers, was signed by his son in October 1907. These texts, the elections and the work of the assembly are told in the First Majlis and the constitution of 1906.

Across the country, local councils (anjomans) were formed, especially in Tabriz, and newspapers multiplied, among them Sur-e Esrafil, famous for the satirical columns of Ali Akbar Dehkhoda. Women set up societies and schools, as described in women in the Constitutional Revolution.

Coup, civil war and restoration

The new shah, Mohammad Ali Shah, disliked the constitution. The coalition that had won it also began to split: some clerics, led by Shaykh Fazlollah Nuri, turned against the Majlis, arguing that its laws must conform to the shari’a (a mashruteh-ye mashrueh), while radicals pressed for more secular reforms. In August 1907 Britain and Russia divided Iran into spheres of influence in the Anglo-Russian Convention, a shock to the constitutionalists who had looked to Britain for sympathy.

1. 23 June 1908 The Cossack Brigade under its Russian commander, Colonel Liakhov, shells the Majlis; several constitutionalist leaders are executed. See Mohammad Ali Shah and the bombardment of the Majlis.
2. 1908–1909 Tabriz holds out under Sattar Khan and Baqer Khan through a long siege, told in the siege of Tabriz.
3. July 1909 Bakhtiari tribal forces from Isfahan and revolutionaries from Gilan take Tehran; the shah takes refuge in the Russian legation and is deposed in favour of his young son Ahmad. See the constitutionalists take Tehran.
4. November 1909 The second Majlis opens.

The end in 1911

The restored constitutional government faced empty coffers, rebellions and divisions between moderates and democrats. In 1911 the Majlis hired an American financial adviser, Morgan Shuster, to reform the treasury. Russia, seeing its influence threatened, sent troops into northern Iran and issued an ultimatum demanding his dismissal. When the Majlis refused, the regent’s government accepted the ultimatum and closed the assembly in December 1911. Russian forces carried out executions in Tabriz. The story is told in Morgan Shuster and the Russian ultimatum.

How historians interpret the revolution

Historians agree on the outline but differ on emphasis. Edward Browne, who wrote while it was happening, saw a national awakening against despotism and foreign control. Ervand Abrahamian stresses the alliance of bazaar, clergy and intelligentsia and the class interests behind it. Janet Afary highlights the grassroots councils, women’s societies and social-democratic groups, especially in Tabriz and the Caucasus networks. Others, such as Abbas Amanat, emphasise the role of the clergy and the tension between constitutional law and religious law that the revolution left unresolved.

Whatever its failures, the revolution left Iran with a constitution that remained the legal basis of the state until 1979, the idea that the nation had rights against the ruler, and a parliament that, even when weak, never entirely disappeared. Many Iranians have looked back to it in later struggles over oil, parliament and law.