The Death of Griboyedov (1829)

On 11 February 1829 a crowd in Tehran stormed the Russian legation and killed the Russian minister, the playwright Alexander Griboyedov, together with almost all of his mission. The riot grew out of anger at the Treaty of Turkmenchay and at the legation’s sheltering of Armenians from Muslim households who wanted to leave for Russian territory; it brought Iran close to a new war, which the shah avoided with an apology mission and the gift of a famous diamond.

The ambassador who wrote Woe from Wit

Griboyedov was one of the most gifted Russians of his generation. His verse comedy Woe from Wit, a satire on Moscow society, circulated in manuscript and became a classic of Russian literature, though it was not staged in full during his lifetime. He was also a professional diplomat who knew Persian and had served in Tabriz in the years after the Treaty of Golestan.

During the war of 1826–1828 he worked on the staff of his relative General Paskevich and helped draft the Treaty of Turkmenchay. He was rewarded with the post of minister plenipotentiary to Iran. On the way south he married the young Georgian princess Nino Chavchavadze in Tiflis, left her at Tabriz, and travelled on to Tehran, arriving at the beginning of 1829.

A treaty enforced to the letter

Griboyedov’s instructions were to insist on the terms of Turkmenchay, above all the payment of the indemnity and Article 15, which allowed people from the ceded lands to return to Russian territory. Many Armenian and Georgian captives, taken in earlier wars and raids, lived in Iranian households, some of them converted to Islam. Under the treaty, Russian officials claimed the right to repatriate them.

Two cases brought matters to a head. Two women, described as Armenians, were taken from the household of Allahyar Khan Asaf al-Dowleh, the former chief minister and commander of Tabriz, to the legation. Then Mirza Yaqub, an Armenian from Erivan who had been made a eunuch as a boy and had risen to a senior post in the royal household, came to the legation and asked to go home. He knew the finances of the shah’s harem, and the court regarded his flight as both a scandal and a danger.

The attack on the legation

The shah’s government asked for Mirza Yaqub to be returned and Griboyedov refused. In the bazaars, the story spread that Muslim women were being held by the Russians and forced back to Christianity. A leading cleric of Tehran, Mirza Masih Astarabadi, was asked whether it was lawful to free them, and his answer was taken as permission to act. On the morning of 11 February the bazaars closed and a large crowd marched on the legation.

The Cossack guard was small. Accounts say the attackers broke in over the walls and roofs, the Russians fired back, and the death of a young man in the crowd turned the protest into a massacre. Griboyedov was killed with almost all of his staff and guards, about 37 people in the most cited count, and dozens of attackers also died. The secretary, Ivan Maltsov, survived by hiding in another part of the compound. Griboyedov’s mutilated body was later identified by an old wound to his hand from a duel.

Who was responsible

The causes are still argued over. Persian sources and the Qajar court blamed the envoy’s own conduct: his staff’s behaviour in the city and his refusal to compromise over the women and Mirza Yaqub. Russian writers often blamed British agents who feared Russian influence in Tehran, or court factions opposed to the treaty. Historians such as Laurence Kelly and George Bournoutian conclude that no single plot is proven. The anger of the city at a humiliating peace, the role of the clergy, and Griboyedov’s rigid enforcement of the treaty all played a part. Whether the shah’s government could have stopped the crowd, and whether some at court let it happen, remains uncertain.

An apology and a diamond

Fath-Ali Shah and Abbas Mirza feared that Russia would use the killing as a reason to resume the war. They sent one of Abbas Mirza’s sons, Khosrow Mirza, at the head of an embassy to St Petersburg in 1829. He apologised to Nicholas I, stated that the government had no part in the killings, and presented gifts. The best known was the Shah diamond, a long yellowish stone of almost 90 carats engraved with the names of three rulers, including Fath-Ali Shah. It is kept today in the Diamond Fund in the Moscow Kremlin.

Nicholas I accepted the apology. Russia was then at war with the Ottoman Empire and had no wish to reopen a front in Iran. He also reduced the remaining indemnity owed under Turkmenchay. The affair was closed without a new war, and Russian influence at the Qajar court continued to grow.

A grave in Tbilisi

Griboyedov’s body was carried back to Tiflis and buried at the monastery of St David on Mtatsminda hill, above the city. Nino Chavchavadze, widowed at sixteen, never remarried. The inscription she placed on his tomb, saying that his mind and works would remain immortal in Russian memory but asking why her love had outlived him, is one of the most quoted epitaphs in the Caucasus.

The incident is still remembered differently in each country. In Russia it is the tragedy of a great writer killed abroad; in Iran it is usually told as a popular reaction to foreign arrogance after a lost war. For the wider background, see the page about the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828 and the reign of Fath-Ali Shah.