Reza Shah and the Disintegration of Bakhtiari Power in Iran, 1921-1934

International Society for Iranian Studies

Riza Shah and the Disintegration of Bakhtiyari Power in Iran, 1921-1934Author(s): Stephanie CroninReviewed work(s):Source: Iranian Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3/4 (Summer - Autumn, 2000), pp. 349-376Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of International Society for Iranian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4311378 .

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Iranian Studies, volume 33, numbers 3-4, Summer/Fall 2000

Stephanie Cronin

Riza Shah and the Disintegration of Bakhtiyari Power in Iran, 1921-1934

Introduction

DURING THE YEARS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION AND THE GREAT War, Iran experienced a widespread and general reassertion of tribal power and by 1921 much of the country was under tribal control. Riza Khan's seizure of power, however, inaugurated a transformation in the relationship between the center and periphery in Iran. For the new regime and for the nationalist elite which supported it, the suppression of the tribes was an indispensable element of their larger project: the construction of a modern, centralized state, with a cultur- ally homogeneous population. Their agenda was clear: the destruction of the autonomy and feudal authority of the tribal leaderships was to be closely followed by the subjection of the tribal populations to the unmediated power of the modernized state and their integration into settled society. From the very moment of seizing power in Tehran, the new regime embarked on a sustained effort to establish its military and administrative hegemony over the tribes.

The extirpation of tribal power was of absolute centrality to the state-building effort of the early Pahlavi period. Like their contemporaries elsewhere in the Middle East, the newly empowered Iranian nationalists insisted that sovereignty and independence were only possible on the basis of the complete disarming of the civilian population and the concentration of physical power in the hands of the state. For this trend the establishment of a single national authority in Iran, which commanded the universal and direct allegiance of the population and which alone conducted relations with foreign powers, was essential to the country's political survival. For the nationalists, furthermore, the tribes were the antithesis of modernity, the regime and its supporters, and indeed the settled population at large, viewing the tribes as both primitive in themselves and as symbolizing Iran's backwardness. Riza Shah himself, like his counterpart, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was especially sensitive to the image his country presented to the West and the archaic, exotic, and picturesque appeal of the tribes for European visitors was especially galling. Iranian nationalists in this period had little interest in conditions in the countryside generally, and the rural areas, whether agricultural or pastoral, experienced great hardship under Riza Shah. Although the urban elite

Stephanie Cronin is Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow in Iranian History, University College, Northampton, and Senior Research Associate, School of Oriental and African Studies.



350 Cronin

conceptualized tribal sedentarization as desirable in social and political terms, the policy was implemented with little preparation and with little or no regard for its consequences for pastoral productivity or for its cost in human suffering, bequeathing to the late 1930s and early 1940s a legacy of economic dislocation and political bitterness.

The prevalence of these broad ideological prescriptions within hunian nationalism is well-known. However, of the first Pahlavi regime's practical orientation towards the tribes, either nationally or towards particular groups and sub-groups, there has been little concrete and precise discussion.' Two particular, and related, aspects of the regime's tribal policy which have received little attention, and which this paper seeks to address, are, firstly, the question of the methods which were utilized in tribal management in this period, and secondly, the part played by various levels and sectors of tribal society itself in either resisting or collaborating with the regime in the execution of both its immediate and its long-term goals.

In 1921 much of south-central Iran was controlled by the khava1nin-i buzurg, the great khans, of the Bakhtiyari tribal confederation.2 The great Bakh- tiyari khans had become some of the wealthiest and most powerful of the tribal leaderships. As well as their domination of the confederation and its territories the great khans had, as a result of their contribution to the restoration of constitutional rule in 1909, established themselves as a factor in national politics and had also since then come to dominate the governments of several provinces ring- ing Bakhtiyari proper. They had, furthermore, become extremely wealthy, particularly in terms of landed property, as a result of their monopoly of tribal leadership, the spoils of office, and their British connections.

Nonetheless, despite their political influence and their wealth, they succumbed easily to the new power in Tehran. With the reversal of British policy brought about by Percy Loraine in the early 1 920s, they forfeited the support of their imperial patron. They were demoralized by a series of financial blows, particularly the indemnity imposed after the "Shalil incident" and the arrears of taxes demanded by Dr. Millspaugh. Then, in the mid-twenties, the endemic and enerva- ting factionalism and rivalry which had beset relations between the senior khans was finally and fatally transcended by a new and permanent political schism which saw Ja'afar Quli Khan Sardar Ascad3 taken into the cabinet and made min-

1. There is some discussion of the first Pahlavi regime's tribal policies in Richard Tapper, Frontier Nomads of Iran: a Political and Social History of the Shahsevan (Cambridge, 1997); Lois Beck, The Qashqa'i of Iran (New Haven and London, 1986); and Pierre Oberling, The Qashqa3i Nomads of Fars (The Hague, 1974).

2. For the Bakhtiyari prior to the rise of Riza Khan, Gene Garthwaite, Khans and Shahs: A Documentary Analysis of the Bakhtiyari in Iran (Cambridge, 1983) is invaluable. Some historical information and attempts at constructing theoretical frameworks for the study of the Bakhtiyari, although from an anthropological perspective, may be found in David Brooks, "The Enemy Within: Limitations on Leadership in the Bakhtiari" and Jean-Pierre Digard, "On the Bakhtiari: Comments on 'Tribes, Confederation and the State"' in Richard Tapper (ed), The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan (London, 1983).

3. The memoirs of Jacafar Quli Khan Sardar Ascad have been edited and published



Riza Shah and the Bakhtiyari 351

ister of war and the rest of the khans reduced to political marginality and impotence.

Yet the downfall of the khans was not solely due to the irresistible ascendancy of the new state power. Processes were advancing within the Bakhtiyari confederation itself which augured the end of traditional tribal organization and relationships and which were rendering the rule of the great khans obsolete. The authority of the great khans began to encounter challenges from various internal sources. The confederation itself collapsed when the resentment of the minor khans of the Chahar Lang subdivision at Haft Lang domination, encouraged by Riza Khan, broke into the open and resulted in the secession of the Chahar Lang. An intergenerational conflict erupted within the leading Haft Lang families themselves resulting in the formulation, by the younger khans, of a novel and radical solution to the problem of weakening Bakhtiyari cohesion and the ossifi- cation of tribal leadership-the establishment of a reformist political party based explicitly on concepts of Bakhtiyari ethnic identity. The alienation of the elder khans from the tribal milieu, a process in train since 1909, had produced a general attenuation of tribal loyalties, and encouraged both the emergence of a middle-ranking layer of kalantars as the focus for tribal leadership and an increasingly vocal resentment on the part of the tribal rank and file at what they perceived as the political and economic oppression of the khans. The emerging, albeit still unsophisticated, class consciousness of the tribespeople was reinforced by their proletarianization in relatively large numbers as workers in the oilfields and by the emergence of yet another direct threat to the khans' position-the rapid spread in the late 1920s of a radical anti-landlord movement among the non- Bakhtiyari peasantry in khan-owned villages. The demystification of chiefly authority in the eyes of the tribespeople was further accelerated by the khans' rapid loss of function to the new modern state institutions.

The Bakhtiyari khans' inability to defend themselves against the Pahlavi regime therefore clearly stemmed partly from their perception that their position, as hereditary rulers and as landlords, was more acutely and immediately threatened from below and within than from outside, i.e. from the external power of the state itself. After a brief and muddled attempt at resistance, the tribal leadership, between 1923 and 1933, largely co-operated with the regime, to which it was openly subservient, in an attempt to preserve for itself a definite, even if much reduced, role. The great khans were instrumental in securing the state's increasing control over the tribes, making direct military intervention unnecessary. The Bakhtiyari tribes were, for example, disarmed by the khans themselves, who were confident enough to decline Riza Khan's offer of military assistance, and the uprising of 1929 was also quelled by the pacific intervention of the Tehran- based senior khans.

Nonetheless the nationalist characterization of the khans as feudal and as puppets of the British persisted and in 1933 the regime finally tumed against

but although they are mostly concerned with the 1920s and early 1930s when Sardar Ascad occupied a succession of high government positions, they provide little insight into the inner workings of the regime. Jacafar Quli Khan Amir Bahadur (ed), Khatirit-i Sardar As cad Bakhtiyari (Tehran, 1372).



352 Cronin

them, their political destruction, already largely accomplished, being now followed inexorably by their physical destruction. As part of the reign of terror which swept through the Iranian elite in these years, several khans were executed and many more sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Yet by now so completely had the khans severed themselves from the tribal pyramid that this repression in the capital evoked no response from the Bakhtiyari in the south. With the removal of the tribal leadership and with military officers controlling the apex of the tribe, the regime was able to embark on a major experiment in social engineering: the settlement of the tribes and the suppression of nomadic pastoral- ism. Although the countryside in these years experienced a dramatic upsurge in banditry, the tribes, fragmented, partially disarmed and leaderless, were no longer capable of mounting the large-scale revolts of the past.

The Army and the Tribes

Although Riza Shah's skill in manipulating political conflict of every kind, including intra-tribal conflict, has been widely recognized, yet the pacification of the countryside in the 1920s and 1930s is still imagined, by both apologists for and critics of the regime, to have been largely, if not wholly, a military under- taking, enforced in the teeth of armed tribal resistance. Yet in fact direct carn- paigning, or even its threat, was only one, and in practice the least effective, method of tribal management utilized by the regime. Where the state resorted to military operations most readily, notably in the case of the Lurs, results were most uncertain and the imposition of control most protracted and difficult. As the example of the Bakhtiyari clearly shows, the regime achieved its objectives most completely and most easily where it was able to eschew military tactics and rely instead on exploiting the political and financial vulnerabilities of the tribal leaderships.

Of course, many military operations against different tribal groups were undertaken by the army, particularly in the 1920s.4 Such campaigning was indeed the army's sole military function in these years. Yet the army suffered from certain endemic and chronic defects and weaknesses which made the results of these engagements at best unpredictable.5

A particular difficulty with which the army was confronted was that the tribes were, in the 1920s, much better armed than they had been in the past, the majority having acquired modern magazine rifles during and since the Great War. The tribes were indeed at least as well armed as the army itself, and only slowly, and as part of a major reorganization, was Riza Khan able to overcome the

4. For some Iranian army views of tribal campaigning see, inter alia, Kavih Bayat, cAsha3ir az didg5h-i manabic-i nizami-yi mucasir 1300-1350," Tanrkh-i Mu?isir-i iran, 1 (1372/1993): 121-39; Ahmad Amirahmadi, Khdtirdt-i nakhustYn sipahbud-i Irain (Tehran, 1373/1994); Kavih Bayat (ed), cAmaliyyat-i Luristiin: Asniad-i Sarttp Muhammad Shahbakhti, 1303 va 1306 shamsr (Tehran, n.d.).

5. For a discussion of the army's operational difficulties in this period see Stephanie Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran (London and New York, 1997).




problems resulting from the army's deficiencies in armament and to ensure its definitive superiority over the tribes.6 A conventional army of the type then being constructed by Riza Khan faced other disadvantages in tribal campaigning. Tribal territory was for the most part mountainous and devoid of good communications and this made military operations by regular troops difficult and prolonged in the face of determined opposition. There were also, in the circumstances prevailing in the country at the time, general organizational and political constraints upon the concentration of large numbers of troops for specific campaigns. The total strength of the army reached around 40,000 men by the mid-twenties, yet owing to the difficulties of mobilization, the distances involved and the lack of transport, to the necessity for maintaining garrisons in the north and east and retaining enough of the Tehran garrison to guarantee stability in the capital and the protection of the main lines of communications, the maximum that the War Minister had available for dealing with any tribe or group of tribes in this period was about 10,000 men. This was actually the number that he was able to concentrate against the Kurdish tribal leader Simko in Azarbayjan in 1922. Any combination of tribal forces, or simultaneous out- breaks of tribal insurrections in different parts of the country, presented the regime and the military authorities with grave dangers, as was demonstrated by the near collapse of government control in southern Iran in 1929.

The military capacity of the tribes was also limited and contingent. They possessed no artillery or machine-guns, decisive weapons in tribal campaigning, and although they had acquired modem rifles, ammunition was faulty and in short supply, and they lacked the sophistication to maintain reserve stocks. They had no military organization other than that of being grouped into followings led by their own khans, and they would rarely fight outside their own territory or far from their own homes.

For both the military authorities and the tribal leaderships therefore the resort to force was an unattractive option and one, furthermore, that was almost always indecisive, leading only to a stalemate. The tribal campaigning which was undertaken by the army, largely a feature of the 1920s and early 1930s, was rarely a deliberate initiative of the regime but rather tended to be dictated by the need to respond to tribal rebellion. The army in fact had a much more significant role to play in tribal management in terms of maintaining control once the submission of the tribes had been secured by non-military means. Wherever the regime established its political dominance over tribal leaderships, the army was instrumental in confirming and rendering permanent state control through the establishment of military government and the appointment of army officers in place of deposed chiefs and khans.

The Emergence of the Khavanin-i Buzurg

Riza Shah's overarching strategic objectives towards the Bakhtiyari, and the methods he employed to achieve them-the threat, if not the actual deployment of military force, the weapon of the tax demand, the encouragement of

6. Stephanie Cronin, The Army, 131-133.



354 Cronin

fissiparous tribal sub-groups and the patronage of dissident factions within the leadership-were entirely in keeping with the regime's treatment of other tribes. The internally generated centrifugal pressures, although undoubtedly more advanced within the Bakhtiyari, were also shared by other tribal groups in this period of rapid historical change. The interaction between the Bakhtiyari and the new Pahlavi regime was, however, in certain respects unique. One of the key factors explaining the relative ease with which Riza Khan was able to establish control over the Bakhtiyari is to be found in the character of confederational leadership as it had emerged since the late nineteenth century. The Bakhtiyari confederation was unusual in its possession of a relatively large, centralized and collective leadership, consisting of the sons and nephews of Husayn Quli Khan Ilkhani, who had first unified the Bakhtiyari tribes in the mid-nineteenth century.7 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century these ruling Haft Lang khans of the Ilkhani and Haji Ilkhani families, the khavanTn-i buzurg, consolidated their control of the Bakhtiyari confederation and then ensured their permanent and unchallengeable political and financial ascendancy by cultivating links with the British official presence and the oil company. Their access to wealth and power again increased dramatically as a result of their role in the restoration of constitutional rule in 1909.8

Like the Bakhtiyari, other tribal groupings in southern Iran appear to have acquired greater stability, particularly in terms of their leaderships, in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. It was in this period that Shaykh Khazcal of Muhammarah and the Qavamis of the Khamsah, as well the great khans of the Bakhtiyari, established themselves as permanent features of the political land- scape. This was undoubtedly largely due to the imperial context. These leaderships were successful in replacing their fluctuating and unstable links to Iranian power sources with durable and profitable ties to the immensely powerful British imperial presence. British support artificially promoted and maintained these leaderships, and guaranteed their permanent political and economic ascendancy, causing them to ossify and become impervious and unresponsive to internal pressures, thus destroying the traditional equilibrium and balance both within the tribal groupings themselves, between the leaderships and subordinate layers, between the tribal leaderships and Tehran, and between the various elements across southern Iran. By the early twentieth century the position of the grat khans of the Bakhtiyari, for example, no longer depended on their capacities as tribal leaders, or the success of their political relations with local, regional or central Iranian authorities, but entirely on their links with the British. This was to have serious consequences for their ability to sustain themselves in the very different political context of the 1920s.9

Yet the specific formation of the Bakhtiyari leadership presented a striking contrast to the political expressions of other confederations and tribes in southern

7. For the Bakhtiyari in the nineteenth century see Garthwaite, Khans and Shahs, 62-95.

8. Garthwaite, Khans and Shahs, 112-20.

9. The Qashqa'i seem, paradoxically, to have stabilized in opposition to the British. For the Qashqa'i confederation, see Beck, The Qashqa'i of Iran.




Iran. On the one hand, the historical development of the large confederations of the Khamsah and the Qashqa'i had produced leadership residing, in a more or less stable and permanent way, in a single individual, Qavam al-Mulk and Ismacil Khan Sawlat al-Dawlah respectively, while Shaykh Khazcal had achieved a particularly secure personal ascendancy in Arabistan.'? On the other hand, fragmented tribal groups with considerable internal autonomy, such as the Lurs and the Kuhgilu, had avoided the political danger of any centralized leadership at all. The great khans of the Bakhtiyari, however, constituted a leadership which was both numerically large and theoretically collective, and which was accordingly uniquely and fatally vulnerable to internal factionalism and therefore to external manipulation.

Although the great khans had, by 1909, succeeded in acquiring positions of unprecedented wealth and power within the Bakhtiyari confederation, across southern Iran and at Tehran, their new eminence contained within it two dangers.

Firstly, it led to a rapid abandonment by the khans of the confederation as the central focus of their interests and responsibilities. Following the constitu- tionalist victory in 1909 the senior great khans left the tribal territories for Tehran or one of the provincial capitals. They gave up their nomadic way of life and adopted urban manners and mores, acquiring considerable property in Isfahan and Tehran. They thus forfeited the independence of state control which their physical inaccessibility had hitherto guaranteed them and, in a development heavy with significance for the future, placed themselves within the reach of any power which might establish itself in the capital. They became absentee landlords first and foremost, indistinguishable from the urban elite in general. The permanent removal of the senior khans from the tribal environment and the general transformation in their position also had negative implications for the continued legitimacy of their authority. The gulf between the great khans and the rest of the confederational pyramid, in terms of wealth, political power, and cultural level and orientation, had widened dramatically and was continuing to grow both quantitatively and qualitatively, weakening the links of the tribal hierarchy.

The second danger lay in the fact that although the great khans had managed to arrogate exclusively to the Ilkhani and Haji Ilkhani families supremacy within the confederation, they had devised no method of regulating relations between themselves and of mitigating the factional rivalries and intrigues to which they had always been prone and which worsened proportionally as the opportunities for wealth and power increased.11

The Khavanin-i Buzurg and the New Regime in Tehran

During the summer of 1921, although Riza Khan had established himself in control of Tehran, the authority of the central government barely extended beyond the capital. As well as the political challenge presented by provincially-

10. W. T. Strunk, The Reign of Shaykh Khaz'al ibn Jabir and the Suppression of the Principality of 'Arabistan: a study in British imperialism in south-western Iran, 1897-1925, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Indiana, 1977.

11. See Garthwaite, Khans and Shahs.



356 Cronin

based radical movements, Colonel Pasyan in Mashad and the Jangalis in Gilan, there had, as a result of the collapse of central authority during the years of revolution and war, been a widespread reassertion of tribal activity and approximately tiree-quarters of the country was under tribal control. The situation in the north was most urgent and compelling and commanded the first attention of the new power in Tehran. By latel921/early 1922 the army was consolidating its position throughout north, north-west and north-east Iran and the authority of the central government was being imposed in the wake of military control.

At the time of Riza Khan's coup in 1921 southern Iran, unlike the north, was relatively quiescent. Although the central government had little or no enforceable authority and the tribes and tribal confederations lived in conditions of practical autonomy, yet there were no active challenges in the form of open tribal rebellions or radical separatist movements. Another factor suggested cau- tion. In northern Iran the Russian presence had been first disorganized and then largely eclipsed by the 1917 revolution. In the south, however, British power and influence remained intact, and the clients and allies of the British retained, for the moment, all the protection of their imperial patron. Indeed certain British interests in southern Iran, particularly its control of the oil industry and its role as a Persian Gulf power, were assuming increasing importance in the post-war world. Accordingly, Riza Khan's advance southwards, although relentless, was a slower and more delicate operation than had been his military occupation of the northern provinces.

Riza Khan had himself little or no personal knowledge of southern Iran. Indeed he first set foot there only at the end of 1922. For him the south was a region which had been lost to Iran, where Iranian sovereignty did not prevail, where British power was supreme, and where oil, a vital national resource, was in foreign hands. He accordingly harbored a particular enmity towards those local leaderships, particularly the Bakhtiyari khans and Shaykh KhazCal of Muham- marah, whom he considered responsible for having invited in and benefited from the British presence. Not only were these and other traditional elements outside central control, as represented by their armed strength and their refusal to pay taxes, and impediments to the achievement of modernity and national unity, but they constituted a permanent fifth column, and were a perennial danger to the integrity and political independence of the Iranian state. The ultimate destruction of these leaderships and the reorientation of their followers towards the new Ira- nian authorities, the elimination of direct British involvement in local politics, the establishment of Iranian sovereignty over the oil-fields and the assertion of an Iranian presence in the Gulf, were essential steps in the realization of Riza Khan's wider agenda.

Having turned his attention towards southern Iran only at the beginning of 1922, Riza Khan had, by the end of the following year, largely succeeded in destroying the political independence and freedom of action of the Bakhtiyari khans, and had substantially diminished both their prestige and their wealth. Long before launching any frontal assault on tribal power, which he was later to do through the policies of disarmament, conscription, and settlement, Riza Khan had reduced the Bakhtiyari khans to a condition of impotence and most of them




to docility also. By fanning the flames of an endemic internecine discord, Riza Khan produced with the ruling families a chronic and debilitating, almost fratri- cidal, strife. Relying on the support of a small minority of khans to control the tribes, he confined the majority of the tribal leadership to grumbling passivity, leaving them perpetually hostile yet incapable of coherent resistance.

Riza Khan's first step was to attempt to extend peacefully the reach of his army, initially to the towns of the south and then throughout the tribal territories. As Riza Khan had succeeded in consolidating his position in Tehran and extending his military control across northern Iran, it had quickly become clear that a fundamental change had occurred both in the nature of political power in Tehran and in the character of the relationship between the centre and the provinces. As 1921 turned to 1922, this new reality permeated the consciousness of the Bakhtiyari khans who began openly to express their fears that the central government was launching a systematic attack on Bakhtiyari influence.'2

The Shalil Incident

In August 1922, determined to halt Riza Khan's efforts to establish military control all the way down to the Gulf, the khans secretly organized an attack on the army at Shalil on the Bakhtiyari road. The Shalil incident, as it becarne known, proved to be the downfall of the khans. In mid-July a detachment of Irn- ian troops numbering 274 of all ranks, including 12 officers, had left Isfahan for Shushtar in northern Arabistan. On 2 August it was suddenly attacked by tribesmen in the Murvarid Pass on the Bakhtiyari road near Shalil in Luristan, losing about 115 killed and a similar number wounded or missing, and all its weapons, animals, and baggage.'3 When the shattered remnant of this detachment straggled back to Isfahan they immediately identified their assailants as Bakhti- yaris,'4 although the khans publicly and steadfastly denied any involvement.'5 This incident, with its humiliation of the army, enraged nationalist opinion and unleashed a storm of anger and bitterness against the Bakhtiyari and their patrons, the British. The Bakhtiyari were denounced as traitors and murderers in the press and in the Majlis and by the population at large and the press clam- oured for the summary execution of the khans and the mobilization of a large military force to punish the tribes. The specific allegation that the British had instigated the attack in order to prevent troops being sent to Arabistan and were aiming at the partition of the country was repeated everywhere.'6

The Bakhtiyari khans appear to have been taken aback by the ferocity of the reaction from Tehran. They had grasped neither the new appeal of Riza Khan for

12. Loraine to FO, 30 December 1921, F0371/78021E6/6/34. 13. Loraine to FO, 13 August 1922, F037 1/7807/E8043/6/34. 14. Loraine to FO, 22 August 1922, F0371/7808/E8385/6/34. 15. Fitzpatrick, Isfahan, to Minister, Tehran, 3 August 1922, F0371/7809/

E9337/6/34; Loraine to FO, 13 August 1922, F0371 /78071E8043/6/34. 16. Intelligence Summary no. 33, 19 August 1922, F0371/7828/E10849/285/34;

Loraine to FO, 22 August 1922, F0371/7808/E8403/6/34; IS no. 35, 2 September 1922, F0371/7828/E10188/285/34.



358 Cronin

nationalist circles, nor the extent of their own unpopularity, their role in the restoration of the constitution having long been obliterated by their subservience to the British. They now suddenly became conscious enough of the depth of the regime's hostility and were keen to deflect the anger and vengefulness of Tehran and avoid an open conflict with the government.'7

Riza Khan also wanted to postpone a showdown with the khans as the political situation in the capital was becoming increasingly unstable. Finding himself embroiled in a burgeoning conflict with the Majlis, on 23 September Riza resorted to a tactical resignation, producing a genealized crisis."8 At this moment the military was also fully occupied in its operations against Simko in Azarbayjan. For this campaign the army had been mobilized to its full strength, with 8,000-10,000 troops concentrated in the north-west.

Riza Khan and the Bakhtiyari khans therefore both indicated their readiness to embark on negotiations. Nonetheless Riza Khan continued to use the opportunity presented by the widespread anger at the khans to whittle away at their position. By the end of the year the khans had lost all their governorships outside Bakhtiyari itself, including the prized governor-generalship of Isfahan; their personal retainers had been forbidden to carry arms, Bakhtiyari officers had been dismissed from the army and, in a move especially resented by the khans, the military authorities had begun recruiting in Bakhtiyari-owned villages and among the Chahar Lang Bakhtiyari tribes.'9

Sardar Jang, one of the senior khans resident in Tehran, had undertaken to negotiate with both the government and with Riza Khan personally on behalf of all the Bakhtiyari. In late September he left for the south on a mission of enquiry and, although his apprehensions and the fears and resentments of the other khans remained far from allayed, by December he believed that he had arranged terms which would allow the affair to be settled. Under these terms the khans still denied any involvement in Shalil but would pay 10,000 tumans to the victims and their families in view of the fact that the attack had taken place in their territory.20

Riza Khan, however, had no intention of allowing the khans to regain their political equilibrium. He was well aware of the conflicts among the khans and began to exploit systematically their family quarrels with the objective of destroying them from within and his task was made easier by elements among the khans themselves. So deep was the enmity within the Bakhtiyari ruling elite that a faction of khans, led by Jacafar Quli Khan Sardar Ascad, was actively will- ing to side with the War Minister against the Haft Lang majority in order to

17. Loraine to FO, 9 August 1922, F0371/7807/E7956/6/34.

18. For the general political background see Houshang Sabahi, British Policy in Persia,1918-1925 (London, 1990); Cyrus Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah: From Qajar Collapse to Pahlavi Power (London and New York, 1998).

19. Annual Report 1923, Loraine to MacDonald, 4 March 1924, F0371/10153/E3362/2635/34; Crow, Isfahan, to Minister, Tehran, 19 November 1922, F0371/90431E6343/1416/34.

20. An account of Sardar Jang's mission of enquiry may be found in Loraine to Curzon, 10 May 1923, F0371/9043/E6343/1416/34.




secure an advantage over its rivals. Riza Khan apparently had an old military campaigning friendship with Sardar Ascad2I and, in late 1922-early 1923 he devised and began to implement a scheme to use him, together with his younger brother Amir Jang, and their uncle, Sardar Muhtasham, to undermine and weaken the khans' efforts to defend themselves. These three khans were already on very bad terms with the rest of both ruling families and they eagerly embraced the War Minister's patronage.

At the very moment that Sardar Jang returned to Tehran to arange the details of the final settlement of Shalil with the Chief of the General Staff, a serious quarrel among the khans, enflamed by the War Minister, erupted in the south. The pro-Riza Khan faction first denounced, then openly campaigned against, the incumbent ilkhan and his deputy, the ilbayg, finally succeeding in forcing the resignation of both.22 They then frustrated the khans' efforts to agree on successors and the confederation was left without any formal leadership for the next three and a half months, throughout the heightening political crisis. Meanwhile the War Minister's attitude towards the Bakhtiyari hardened, the request for a cash indemnity of 10,000 tumans, which Sardar Jang had accepted in December, rapidly becoming a demand for 480,000 tumans, practically as a fine. The War Minister had, however, publicly exempted Sardar Ascad's faction from responsibility for the original attack and therefore from any share in the payment of the fine.

The Haft Lang majority, although aware of the worsening situation, were unable to formulate a coherent response. They announced that they neither could nor would pay the sum demanded, practically defied the War Minister to do his worst, talked freely of armed resistance, and at the same time importuned Loraine, the British minister, to protect their interests.23 At the same time Riza Khan's own position had been considerably strengthened by his success in per- suading Sardar Ascad and his clique to side openly with him. Towards the end of March, Riza Khan made it clear that he was determined upon a definitive resolu- tion of the matter and he began military preparations for an attack on Bakhtiyari. Brigadier Amanallah Jahanbani, the Chief of the General Staff, went to Isfahan where he made a stirring speech to the officers of the garrison enjoining them to spare no efforts in putting matters right in the south and promising rewards and decorations to all who distinguished themselves in the service of their country.24

The khans believed themselves still able to rely on British help and protection. Loraine, however, from the moment of his arrival in Tehran in late 1921, had begun a fundamental reassessment of British policy. His reevaluation of Britain's interests in the rapidly changing post-war world, together with his per-

21. Annual Report 1923. According to Muhammad Taqi Bahar, for example, Riza Khan served under the command of Sardar Ascad in an operation against the tribal forces of Rahim Khan Chalabianlu in the Ardabil region during the constitutional wars. Muhammad Taqi Bahar, Malik al-Shucara, Tarikh-i mukhtasar-i ahzab-i siydsT-yi Iran (Tehran, 1323), 1: 71.

22. Loraine to Curzon, 10 May 1923, F0371/9043/E6343/1416/34. 23. Annual Report 1923. 24. IS no. 16, 21 April 1923, F0371/9019/E5824/69/34.



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sonal admiration for Riza Khan, was to culminate, in 1923-24, in the abandonment of Britain's traditional friends in southern Iran in favour of good relations with a strong central government. Although, during the first half of 1923, a certain amount of ambiguity was still present in Loraine's attitude, nonetheless it was clear that he would take no decisive action to support the khans in any defi- ance of Tehran. The khans themselves, however, throughout the Shalil crisis and beyond, showed no grasp of the fundamental change in direction which was taking place in British policy, and were in particular oblivious to their own growing irrelevance, to the fact that the British in Iran no longer needed the Bakhtiyari as they had done in the days when the south lacked effective central government or security. The khans continued to try to cling to the vestiges of British protection even as the British themselves were in the process of changing sides.

On 1 April the crisis came to a head. Riza Khan revealed to Loraine that he had had in his possession, since the previous autumn, actual proof of the khans' complicity in Shalil, in the form of a telegram from Sardar Jang and Samsam al- Saltanah, the senior khans in Tehran, instructing the ilkhan and ilbayg to stop the troops by any means.25 The Bakhtiyari majority immediately collapsed and admitted their involvement in the Shalil attack. A furious Loraine, while com- plaining of "the extreme difficulty of navigating in this sea of duplicity, tch- ery, mendacity, and concealed purposes"26 advised them to accept Riza Khan's demand for a cash payment large enough to be equal to the restoration of the honor of the army and to pay up.27 The khans were by now completely demoralized and had collectively disintegrated as a result of their internal conflicts which had reached unprecedented levels of bitterness due to the defection to the War Minister's camp of Sardar Ascad's faction. At the end of April, as if in evidence of their helplessness, the khans, in what Loraine described as the "extremity of their folly"28 finally declared that they had failed to agree among themselves regarding whom should be the new ilkhan and ilbayg. They then, paralyzed by their own dissensions, requested the govermnent itself to make the appoint- ments.29 This effectively turned the choice over to Riza Khan himself who had apparently already promised Sardar Ascad's faction that the tribal govemors would be chosen from among them. On the same day, in a dramatic development in the south, the army entered and occupied Chahar Mahal, taking over several of the khans' homes.

It was now becoming clear that the crisis had peaked and the capitulation of the khans, though not yet actually accomplished, was nonetheless inevitable. There was no longer any serious risk of arned resistance from the tribes owing

25. Loraine to FO, 2 April 1923, F0371/9042/E3431/1416/34; Loraine to FO, 6 May 1923, F0371/90431E4580/1416/34; Consul, Ahwaz, to Loraine, 15 July 1923, F0371/9043/E8161/1416/34.

26. Loraine to Curzon, May 10 1923, F0371/9043/E6343/1416/34

27. Riza Khan set out his demand for compensation "commensurate with the honour of the Army" in two letters to Loraine, dated 1 and 3 May. F0371/9043/ E6343/1416/34.

28. Loraine to FO, 30 April 1923, F0371/9043/E4392/1416/34.

29. Loraine to FO, 30 April 1923, F0371/9043/E4392/1416/34.




to the dissensions within the Bakhtiyari leadership. The tribes in the south were without their principal khans, who were all in Tehran, and were certain either to collapse or be divided by intrigue if they tried to engage in military operations under these circumstances. There was furthermore nothing to prevent Riza Khan from arresting all the khans in Tehran should they attempt to mobilize the tribes in the south. He could even resort to a forced sale of their properties in Chahar Mahal and Tehran should they prove recalcitrant. The khans, relying on the mediation of the British minister Loraine, and a loan from the Oil Company, capitulated and agreed to pay an indemnity of 150,000 tumans. The same day, 23 May, the appointment of the pro-government Sardar Muhtasham and Amir Jang as respectively ilkhan and ilbayg was confirmed and Sardar Ascad was made governor-general of Khurasan.This faction was also formally exonerated from all complicity in the Shalil incident30 and absolved of any share in the fine. The ascendancy of the pro-Riza Khan faction within Bakhtiyari was now complete. Sardar Ascad in particular benefited from his alliance with Riza Khan. In 1924 he was taken into the cabinet, as minister of posts and telegraphs, becoming minister of war in 1927, a post he retained until his fall from favor in late 1933.

Riza Khan had now succeeded where the British and the khans themselves had failed and had stabilized the apex of the tribal pyramid, having brought about a decisive breach among the senior khans by permanently co-opting Sardar Ascad to the side of the government and imposing a crushing financial penalty on the majority tribal leadership. This apparently permanent triumph of Sardar Ascad meant an end to the conventional uncertainty and instability inherent in the for- mer, collective, Bakhtiyari leadership. From 1923 to 1933 Sardar Ascad constituted the sole, but enduring, Bakhtiyari presence at the centre of power, the majority of the khans abandoning any pretence at a national role.

The Khavanin-i Buzurg and Dr. Millspaugh

No sooner had the khans capitulated to the War Minister's demands over the Shalil settlement, however, than the government brought fresh pressure to bear on them in the form of a bill from Dr. Millspaugh, the American Financial Adviser, for arrears of revenue amounting to the enormous sum of 2,300,000 tumans.31 The American Financial Mission, headed by Arthur C. Millspaugh, had arrived in Iran in the autumn of 1922. Millspaugh had immediately embaiked on a thorough and fundamental overhaul of the financial administration. A large number of new taxes were introduced, all tax exemptions granted by the Qajar shahs, including those conferred as a reward for services to the state, were can- celled, and Millspaugh also publicly identified particular individuals whom he identified as guilty of gross delinquency in the payment of taxes.32 Among the most important of the latter were the Bakhtiyari khans who, accordingly, sud-

30. Loraine to Curzon, 6 September 1923, F0371/9043/E10191/1416/34. 31. For an appreciation of the size of this sum, it may be noted, for example, that

the budget for the year 1924-5 only provided for revenue of nearly 23 million tumans. IS no. 42, 18 October 1924, F0371/10132/E10388/255/34.

32. A. C. Millspaugh, The American Task in Persia (New York, 1925), 185-8.



362 Cronin

denly found themselves tumed into a test-case for the new Financial Mission. For Millspaugh the enforcement of the payment of taxes, including arrears, was vital to the restructuring of Iranian finances. For Riza Khan, however, the demand for the payment of revenue, including large accumulations of anears, constituted, as well as a symbolic assertion of authority, a powerful weapon in his immediate struggle with refractory elements among the old elite and he used it with devastating effect throughout the south.

The ministry of finance had originally demanded 2,300,000 tumans from the khans but, under British pressure, re-examined the case and reduced this figure to 1,500,000 tumans, offering the khans the option of paying in instalments sread over a number of years. Nonetheless the khans rected with appalled incredulity. Sardar Jang as usual appealed to Loraine for advice, insisting that the money claimed was far in excess of what the khans could possibly owe, and that in any case there were very substantial sums which ought to be offset against this total. According to Sardar Jang, these counter-claims consisted of the remission of revenue in respect of services rendered to the government by the khans at their own expense, particularly for their armed assistance in the constitutional wars, and as compensation for Bakhtiyaris killed in these wars, and were supported in some cases by royal frmans and other documents.33

Loraine made the British position clear. Although he promised he would work towards a fair and reasonable assessment of the khans' arrears, he wamed the khans that there was no question but that they must now accept their financial obligations towards the government and must come to a proper agreement with the ministry of finance regarding both the settlement of arrears and the future payment of revenue. This was exactly the same advice that he was then giving to Britain's other protege in the south, Shaykh Khazcal of Muhammarah. Loraine specifically advised Sardar Jang to prepare a statement of the revenue which the khans admitted to be owed by them to the government and to produce the various firmans and other documents to which he had referre in order that the whole question might be discussed and resolved at a conference between the khans and the Financial Adviser.34 At the same time Loraine did his best to moderate the attitude of the ministry of finance, urging Dr. Millspaugh to be conciliatory towards the khans and not to reject their counter-claims without careful consideration.

The khans, however, were unused to the formal, legalistic approach recom- mended by Loraine. They attempted rather to resist the Financial Adviser's demand with their habitual tactic of procrastination. They tried to argue that the government owed them money rather than vice versa, and generally resisted the spirit of Loraine's advice, showing a marked tendency to evade rather than accept what the government insisted were their obligations.35 It was only when Peel, the British consul at Ahwaz, arrived in Tehran for his annual visit to the capital that the khans, at his insistent prompting, took any definite steps to prepare a financial statement. Peel also, at Loraine's request, had a number of meetings

33. Loraine to Curzon, 6 September 1923, F0371/9043/E10191/1416/34.

34. Loraine to Curzon, 6 September 1923, F0371/9043/E10191/1416/34.

35. Annual Report 1923.




with the American official who was handling the case, and presented the khans' argument that the ministry's claim was inaccurate and that their ability to pay was strictly limited.36

The khans themselves still took few practical steps in their own defence and, in particular, failed to make any official reply to the Financial Adviser's letter which had contained the original demand. They were clearly unprepared for the speed and decisivenesss with which the ministry of finance would act when officials of the revenue department, supported by the army, promptly seized a number of private estates owned by the khans. This sudden and drastic action had its intended effect. Although the khans first engaged in a bout of protracted haggling amongst themselves, punctuated by threats that they would throw themselves on the mercy of the shah, they nonetheless eventually wrote to Dr. Millspaugh nominating Sardar Jang and the ilbayg, Amir Jang, to represent them in discus- sions with the ministry of finance. A number of conferences duly followed, in which Peel played a crucial role in assisting the khans in the presentation of their case, and the American Adviser flnally agreed to accept in full settlement the sum of half a million tumans, 50,000 tumans in cash at once, and the balance in yearly installments.37

Internal Conflicts within the Bakhtiyari Confederation

i) The Junior Haft Lang Khans

The great khans of the Bakhtiyari had been placed on the defensive by Riza Khan's seizure of power and, from 1921 onwards, were clearly retreating politi- cally. By the end of 1923 their defeat and the ascendancy of the new regime had been clearly demonstrated by the character of the final settlement of the Shalil incident and their capitulation following the shock of their confrontation with the ministry of finance. In this period, however, the nascent state power in Tehran was not the only danger to the khans' position. The rule of the khavantn-i buzurg was also threatened from within the tribe itself. Indeed by the early 1920s the Bakhtiyari confederation was already disintegrating under the pressure of a number of internal dynamics. In these few years, dangerous and overt schisms threatening confederational cohesion developed with greater or lesser rapidity on several levels. These internal fractures and challenges forced the khans, in order to survive as an elite, to try, however reluctantly, to accommo- date themselves to, and to seek support from, the new regime in Tehran.

One early challenge came from within the Haft Lang elite itself, from the younger generation of khans. In fact, for some years before and throughout the 1920s the leadership of the khavanrn-i buzurg was riven by a generational conflict of a new type, with ideological and political, as well as personal, dimensions. This conflict, although it had first arisen in the post-1909 situation, and thus in origin pre-dated the contextual transformation wrought by Riza

36. Loraine to Curzon, 6 September 1923, F0371/9043/E10191/1416/34. 37. Loraine to Curzon, 6 September 1923, F0371/9043/E10191/1416/34.



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Khan's coup, was brought to a head by the tensions and crises erupting in Bakh- tiyari as a result of the assertiveness of the new regime.

The hostility displayed by the younger generation of Haft Lang khans towards their elders had two principal causes. It resulted, firstly, from the consis- tent exclusion by the senior khans of the numerous younger generation from any position of power either within or outside Bakhtiyari. The resulting resentment of the younger generation was dangerously aggravated by the rapid shrinkage of opportunity available to the Bakhtiyari elite after the 1921 coup.38 After this date the immediate and visible decline in Bakhtiyari power and influence caused the younger khans' general insecurity and uncertainty about the future to increase exponentially. The second cause of the conflict, undoubtedly related to the first, was the widespread dissatisfaction of the younger generation at what they perceived as the general incompetence and failure of their elders and their awareness of the threat this represented to the survival of a Bakhtiyari entity.

In the chaotic conditions prevailing in southern Iran during and immediately after the Great War, the younger generation of Haft Lang khans appear to have developed a certain consciousness of themselves as a group, and they shared a perception of the deterioration in the circumstances of the Bakhtiyari and the need for reform and regeneration. The cohesion of the junior khans, and their determi- nation to act to effect change was increasingly evident throughout the summer of 1921 and in September assumed a visible and organized form. They openly formed an association or party among themselves called the Bakhtiyari Star, Sitarah-i BakhtiydrT, and published in Isfahan a pamphlet which outlined the program of this association.39 The program of the Bakhtiyari Star contained a large number of organizational proposals and political demands. The organizational proposals were sophisticated and the political demands of a fairly advanced and radical character.

The main body of the program began by making various recommendations for the political organization of Bakhtiyari. It advocated the establishment of a central assembly, (anjuman), to deal with all questions of importance and also the establishment of assemblies in the districts and amongst the tribes. The assemblies were to be elected by universal suffrage although representatives had to be educated. Elections were to be secret, equal, direct and universal.

The program went on to make a number of demands regarding the political, social and cultural advancement of Bakhtiyari and for the establishment of general democratic freedoms. These included: the abolition of distinctions, ranks and titles; security for people in their homes; freedom of speech, of writing, of

38. Annual Report 1922, Loraine to Curzon, 16 July 1923, F0371/9051/E8057/

8057/34. 39. The program may be found in Bridgeman to Curzon, 5 October 1921,

F0371/6407/E13435/2/34. A very slightly amended version of this program, produced in response to the severe criticism which had greeted its first appearance, may be found in Consul-General, Isfahan, to Loraine, 17 February 1922, F037 1/7805/E4742/6/34. The programme is also reproduced in Rawshanak Bakhtiyar, "Zindigi va marg-i Khan Baba Khan Ascad,'' Kitaib-i Anzan, vizhah-i farhang, hunar, tarikh va tamaddun-i Bakhtiydrf, 1: 76-98.




thought, of forming associations, of the press; separation of religion from the state; compulsory primary education for both boys and girls; free compulsory primary education for the children of the poor, both boys and girls; technical, scientific and industrial schools for both boys and girls; compulsory military education for compulsory military service when the state required it; compensation to be paid to anyone illegally arrested or sentenced; public sanitation, medi- cines and doctors to be free to the poor.

A second chapter was devoted to proposals regarding land and agriculture. It began by demanding the abolition of any financial revenues which were modifi- cations of slavery and the abolition of forced labour. It then, rather startlingly, put forward the demand that the sub-assemblies assume control of all forests, grazing-grounds, vaqf lands and mines. The next article stipulated that proprietors should only own land in reasonable proportions, so that Iranian democracy may be safeguarded.

There then followed several articles proposing measures aimed at improving the lot of the peasantry. These included fixing fair rents for the lease of land; compensation for natural disasters such as floods or droughts; and the establishment of agricultural schools. The next section of the program dealt with workmen and labour and made similar sorts of recommendations. These included the eight-hour day; a day's holiday on Friday; no work at "unusual hours"; no child labour; no hard and strenuous tasks to be given to women; two months paid maternity leave for women; wages to be fixed by a council consisting of representatives of the workmen and of the employers and of the central assembly; and the supervision of industrial relations by the provincial assemblies. Subsequent articles also advocated respect for the rights of women, and specifically insisted that inheritance should be according to the laws of Islam, noting that at present nothing was given in Bakhtiyari to female children.

The program thus set out exhibited certain remarkable features. The articles calling for the limitation of land ownership and linking such limitation to the preservation of Iranian democracy, and proposing the collective ownership of natural resources, and the demands for the establishment of formal institutions of democratic self-government, struck at the heart of both the political power of the khans within the tribe, and the basis of their wealth. Furthermore there was, in the program, a clear and strong awareness of identity and the Bakhtiyari Star was both explicitly and implicitly an ethnically based party. The first article of the section entitled "General Principles" stated unambiguously that only Bakhtiyaris might enjoy membership of the party. The introduction emphasized the differ- ences between the various peoples of Iran and their different stages of cultural and political development, and insisted on the need for separate and autonomous development while another article insisted that each tribe separately should be allowed to enjoy internal liberty and autonomy.

Two issues immediately arise concerning this document. The first concerns the general significance and wider meaning of the Bakhtiyari Star project. The second concerns the origins of the political ideas which the program expressed and the route by which these ideas had been transmitted to the junior khans.

The younger generation of khans was more clearly and more acutely aware than their elders of the weakening of traditional tribal ties. They themselves had



366 Cronin

been profoundly affected by the different environment which the Bakhtiyari elite had come to inhabit, having grown to maturity in the cities of Isfahan and Tehran, divorced from the tribal way of life and without intimate knowledge of their followers, and they keenly felt their own irrelevance to tribal life. They observed the emergence of a new tribal leadership in the form of a layer of middle ranking kalantars, who lived alongside the ordinary nomads and canried out the everyday duties formerly reserved for the khans. They also perceived the alienation of the tribesmen from the khans and the consequent danger to their own leadership. They realized the essential need to carve out a new and plausible role for themselves, distinct from the discreited rule of their elders. If the existing situation continued they would never be able to oust their seniors, but would be obliged to wait for their own succession by seniority of age. But they feared that, when eventually their time arrived, they could claim little legitimacy in customary tribal terms and the tribes would no longer want or need them.

In the Sitarah may be seen the junior khans' attempt to reorganize Bakhti- yari on a new and modem basis. Instead of asserting their authority as tribal khans, they would now do so as political leaders, preserving for themselves both their own leadership and the loyalty and allegiance of their constituency, mobi- lizing the rank and file on a democratic and radical basis. The junior khans believed the degeneration of conditions in Bakhtiyari to be a result of the stranglehold of a corrupt and ossified leadership and the general thrust of the program is strongly democratic. This radicalism was a weapon against their elders, with democracy used to engage the rank and file against the authority of the khans, and with legitimacy conferred by modem ideals which acted as a counter- weight to the pull of traditional loyalties. The Sitarah would also undertake a redefinition of Bakhtiyari ethnicity. This would be made overt and would be no longer a tribal sense of belonging based on kin and genealogy, but a modem, quasi-national identity.

Interesting as they are, the individual provisions of the program may be less important than its overall intentions: to guarantee a leadership role for the detri- balized Haft Lang families, to preserve Bakhtiyari distinctiveness and to con- struct a new identity for the Bakhtiyari, to interpret the needs of the population, to articulate the necessary social change, and to introduce a mode of political activity which was capable of carrying the tribal population and its leadership through the transition to modernity.

The junior khans had largely grown up in the cities of Isfahan and Tehran where many had received a modem education. They had extensive experience of Europe, through travel or, in some cases, through an English education in mis- sionary school in Isfahan. It was natural that they would, in these environments, imbibe the nationalism and social reformism prevailing among the educated urban elites during the constitutional and post-constitutional years.' The Sita- rah program was in many respects typical of this outlook and there is some evidence of concrete links between the junior khans and local urban reformers such as Kay Ustuvan Khan-i Muctamid, the president of the Isfahan branch of the Kumitah-i Ahan, the Iron Committee, who seems to have suggested to them

40. Rawshanak Bakhtiyar, "Zindigi va marg-i Khan Baba Kha.n Ascad," 86.




some of the program' s main features.4' The influence of European social- democratic thought on the program is clearly evident, perhaps as mediated through the newly-established Soviet presence in Isfahan.42

The program's concern for the lot of the peasantry and the conditions of workmen is particularly surprising, in that it emanates from a class of landowners, and has little direct relevance to nomadic life. It indicates the extent to which the junior khans had moved away from the tribal and nomadic milieu, there was indeed nothing in the program which related directly to the needs of pastoral nomadism. The program was entirely and recognizably the product of modem urban traditions of political reform. It is also possible that demands relating to the conditions of industrial employment, such as the eight-hour day etc., may have been raised as a direct consequence of the experience of many Bakhtiyari tribesmen of working in the oil-fields.

The Bakhtiyari Star, with its objective of constructing a modem identity for the Bakhtiyari and articulating the need for and direction of political and social change, contained a clear challenge to the traditional rule of the senior khans. The reaction of the latter was predictable. They began their counter-attack by severely criticizing individual points contained in the program and ended by denouncing the younger khans as Bolsheviks.43 The Sitarah continued to exist throughout the summer of 1922, under the leadership of Sardar Fatih, and the junior khans, while attaching great theoretical importance to generalized reform, concentrated their efforts on minor improvements and obliged the reluctant senior khans to undertake some improvements to local roads and communications.44 However the senior khans' uncooperativeness and cynicism successfully frustrated any broader social changes which the junior khans attempted to initiate.

The eruption of the Shalil crisis in mid-1922 and the ensuing assault by the regime on the khans temporarily submerged the discontent of the junior khans and the Sitarah then sank without trace. Nonetheless the junior khans remained unreconciled to the rule of their elders and to the confederation's increasing subordination to the central government, and certain of them continued to play an oppositional role in internal tribal politics, a generational faultline continuing to fissure the confederation throughout the decade.

41. Bridgeman to Curzon, 5 October 1921, F0371/6407/E13435/2/34; Consul- General, Isfahan, to Loraine, 17 February 1922, F0371/7805/E4742/6/34. The Kumitah-i Ahan was an association of moderate reformers once headed by Sayyid Ziya, see Husayn Makki, Tirrkh-i bTst-siilah-i Iran, 8 vols. (Tehran , 1323), 1: 188-89.

42. The Soviet consulate in Isfahan opened in June 1922. 43. Consul-General, Isfahan, to Loraine, 17 February 1922, F0371/7805/

E4742/6/34; Annual Report 1922. 44. Fitzpatrick, Consul, Ahwaz, to Minister, Tehran, 20 July 1922,

F0371 /7809/E9958/6/34.



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ii) The Tribal Rank and File

One of the most important factors prompting the junior khans to try to develop new political strategies and initiatives had been the increasing, and increasingly obvious, alienation of the mass of ordinary tribes-people from chiefly rule. By the early 1920s the khans' ties with, and their influence over, the tribes were rapidly weakening. The senior khans were losing, indeed were abandoning, their tribal base, from which they had historically derived their strength and which had always been the source of their power.

The discontent of the tribes with their khans was, in 1921, not new. Indeed a certain resentment was perhaps endemic.45 However as a dangerous phenome- non it had, like the frustrations of the junior khans, its origins in the situation which had arisen from 1908-11 when the khans had begun to play a national role and to acquire both great wealth and the trappings of office. Since that time the tribes' dissatisfaction had incmased steadily. By 1921 these feelings showed no sign of abating but had reached such a pitch that the tribal hierarchy threatened to disintegrate under the pressure.'

After 1909 a gulf had opened up between the ruling khans and their nomadic followers, and the distance separating them, in cultural, political, economic and even purely geographical, terms had continued to widen. The fathers of the senior khans had been in every respect tribal chiefs. They had lived with their families in black goat-hair tents, migrating each spring and autumn with their followers. They lived intimately with their tribesmen and derived legitimacy from the qual- ity of their leadership. By the 1920s, however, the khans had long since ceased to accompany the tribes. They had settled down in what their followers regaided as palaces, which they had built in Chahar Mahal, a province adjacent to but quite distinct from Bakhtiyari. Many of them had taken up a more or less permanent residence in Tehran, and only visited Bakhtiyari at long intervals. Their wives had adopted veiling in imitation of town-dwellers. They no longer shared their peoples' lives as their fathers had done and their position as leaders, arbitrators, and rulers no longer depended on their abilities and experience but was artificially maintained by their wealth and their ties with the British.47

The Bakhtiyari people keenly resented these developments. They argued that it was by exploiting tribal ties that the khans had persuaded them to take up arms and leave their country to win for them their national eminence. Having won for the khans their high positions the tribesmen believed themselves entitled to a share of the new power and wealth in the same way as they were entitled to shares of resources in Bakhtiyari itself. They felt cheated by the growing gulf between themselves and their khans, who now lived in grand houses, sent their children to Europe, and governed provinces, and they considered the reciprocal basis of tribal life to have been violated. They accused the khans of appealing to

45. Major Noel's report, Isfahan, 12 May 1921, F0371/6405/E9256/2/34.

46. Major Noel's report, Isfahan, 12 May 1921.

47. Major Noel's report, Isfahan, 12 May 1921.




their sentiments of Bakhtiyari solidarity when convenient, but of going back on this principle when it came to dividing the spoils.48

The disillusionment felt by the tribespeople towards their khans was fully reciprocated.49 The khans' wealth was now mainly drawn from their landholdings and their oil interests, their salaries as ilkhan and ilbayg being of minor importance and their own flocks a negligible factor. The khans, their transformation into absentee landlords and their absorption into the traditional urban elite now largely complete, were by the 1920s eager to divest themselves of responsibility for their followers. This was especially so because of the system of bastah- kashi. With their rapid ascent the khans had dispensed with the customary tribal division of resources but, aware of the necessity of maintaining a hold over their followers, had converted them into armed retainers, bastagan, dependent on regular cash payments, the system known as bastah- kashi. By the early 1920s their bastagain no longer served any useful purpose for the khans, who found them only a drain on their resources and they were highly receptive to suggestions that the bastagian be disarmed and dissolved.50

The khans' opportunity to rid themselves of their bastagain came in 1925. In the summer of 1925, after the submission of the Shaykh of Muhammarah, the regime in Tehran made a major attempt to disarm the civilian population throughout the south.5 But rural disarmament was a complex and difficult task and the military authorities met with only mixed success, imposing the policy mainly on the settled communities while leaving much of the nomadic population with its weapons. Yet although other southern tribal confederations such as the Qashqa&i and the Khamsah largely escaped or avoided the military authorities' efforts in this period, the army was largely successful in disarming the Bakhti- yan. But even among the Bakhtiyari tribes themselves the policy was imposed unevenly, the Haft Lang being almost completely, but the Chahar Lang only partially, disarmed.52 The Haft Lang Bakhtiyari succumbed to disarmament relatively easily and quickly because of the active co-operation of their khans. Immediately Riza Khan had declared his intention to begin disarmament in the south, he had begun negotiations with the ilkhan regarding the implementation of the policy, Riza asking the ilkhan whether he needed troops to help him, the ilkhan declining. In fact the senior Bakhtiyari khans, unlike other tribal leaderships, welcomed the measure and co-operated readily with the government.53 The policy was implemented in Bakhtiyari only and entirely by the khans themselves, without any outside intervention, either civil or military. In this way the khans threw off the financial burden of maintaining their bastagan but in so doing lost one of their remaining pillars of influence among the tribes.

48. Major Noel's report, Isfahan, 12 May 1921. 49. Major Noel's report, Isfahan, 12 May 1921. 50. Loraine to Curzon, 13 November 1923, F037 1/9043/E 1 1754/1416/34. 51. IS no. 21, 8 August 1925, F0371/10842/E5218/82/34. 52. The Bakhtiari Tribe, C. A. Gault, Consul, Isfahan, 1944, IOL/P&S/12/3546. 53. The Bakhtiyari governor of Chahar Mahal, Sardar Mucazzam, was especially

instrumental in the implementation of the policy. Bahram Amiri, "Zindiginamah: hamasa-i cAli Mardan Khan Bakhtiy5r-i," Kitaab-i Anzan. 2: 73-90.



370 Cronin

iii) The Chahar Lang

During 1923 another faultline within the Bakhtiyari tribal confederation had begun to fissure. The confederation consisted of the two major lineages of the Haft Lang and the Chahar Lang and, during the late nineteenth century, the Cha- har Lang had drifted into subordination to the Haft Lang and its khans had found no place within the Ilkhani/Haji Ilkhani ascendancy."4 In the early 1920s Riza Khan's primary targets among the Bakhtiyari were the ruling great khans of the Haft Lang whose autonomy and power he wished to weaken and undermine. He accordingly adopted a policy of conciliation towards the subordinate Chahar Lang Bakhtiyari tribes, attempting to drive a wedge between the two branches of the confederation. As in the case of his overtures to Sardar Ascad, he again met with an enthusiastic response. Elements among the Chahar Lang, led by the formidable Bibi Maryam, were eager to seize the opportunity to break away from the control of the Haft Lang khans and pressed Riza Khan to adopt a policy of complete separation." In the early summer of 1923, while the crisis over the Shalil incident was still unresolved, Riza launched a campaign which had as its objective the removal of the Chahar Lang from the authority of the Haft Lang ilkhan and ilbayg. The Tehran government duly ordered the separation of the Chahar Lang tribes, numbering some 2,000 families, from the Bakhtiyari hukumat, and placed them under their own ilkhan and ilbayg, who were made completely independent of any central tribal authority, and the Bakhtiyari confederation, unified since the mid-nineteenth century, collapsed. The Haft Lang ilkhan and ilbayg repeatedly threatened to resign unless Riza Khan restored their authority over the whole of Bakhtiyari yet, in response to these threats and to ardent appeals from both the Haft Lang khans and the British about the danger of chaos and anarchy among the tribes and especially in the vicinity of the oil- fields, Riza Khan merely insisted that the only the Chahar Lang themselves could decide whether to submit to the Haft Lang khans."6 When the Haft Lang attempted to reassert their authority and fighting broke out between them and the Chahar Lang, Riza Khan sent the arny to support the Chahar Lang chiefs in their autonomy. The centrifugal tendencies within the confederation having been thus stimulated, another sub-division, the Janaki, also began to demand their autonomy from the Haft Lang hukumat, which they achieved in 1924.57

54. The Bakhtiari Tribe, C. A. Gault, Consul, Isfahan, 1944, IOL/P&S/12/3546.

55. Loraine to Curzon, 20 September 1923, F0371/9043/E10202/1416/34. For Bibi Maryam see Julie Oehler, "Bibi Maryam: A Bakhtiyari Tribal Woman," in Edmund Burke I1I (ed.), Struggle and Survival in the Modem Middle East (London and New York, 1993), 129-42.

56. Consul-General, Isfahan, to Consul, Ahwaz, 10 October 1923; Consul- General, Isfahan, to Consul, Ahwaz, 11 October 1923; Peel, Ahwaz, to Tehran, 13 October, 1923; Consul-General, Isfahan, to Consul, Ahwaz, 14 October 1923; Consul-General, Isfahan, to Consul, Ahwaz, 15 October 1923; Monson, Tehran, to Peel, Ahwaz, 16 October 1923; Peel, Ahwaz, to Loraine, 21 October 1923, F0371/9043/EI 1815/1416/34.

57. Loraine to Curzon, 13 November 1923, F0371/9043/El 1754/1416/34;




iv) The Peasantry

As the 1920s wore on, the khans began to experience another type of challenge to their position, this time in their capacity as landowners. The khans, in common with the landowning elite in general, frequently imposed extremely harsh conditions on their peasantry. In 1928 the peasants in the khans' villages in Chahar Mahal revolted against their authority, claimed that the land and the water belonged to God, and that the produce of the land belonged to those who worked the land, namely, themselves."8 They refused to pay anything to the khans or to give them the share of the produce customarily due to them. Discon- tent and action of this kind had in fact begun in one or two villages several years before, in 1924, but it was only in the summer of 1928, when it received some definite official encouragement, that it spread to a large number of villages and a committee of peasants was formed. This committee adopted a program and began to direct the movement and from this point on the peasants began to demonstrate an openly threatening attitude towards their landlords, the khans.59

In this peasant movement the government saw an opportunity further to strike at the position of the khans. The khans themselves were refused any official help against the peasants, and any action which the khans tried to take resulted in appeals by the peasants, assisted by the village committee, to the new cAdliyya courts-60 The prestige of the khans was dealt a further blow when they were, in the middle of this dispute, deprived of their last remaining non-tribal official position, the governorship of Chahar Mahal itself.6' The khans, aware of the suspicion with which they were still regarded by the shah, and convinced that he was determined to damage their interests still more, found themselves power- less against their peasants, who received a consistently sympathetic hearing from the authorities. During the summer some of the committee went to Tehran and were actually received by the prime minister.

Annual Report 1924, Loraine to Chamberlain, 22 May 1925, F037 1/10848/ E340 1/3401/34

58. Report on the Situation in Bakhtiari, 22 September 1928, R. G. Monypenny, Consul, Ahwaz, F0416/83/141-6.

59. There is a brief description of the general character of relations betwen landowners as a class and the peasantry in Ann K. S. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London, 1953), 263. For a discussion of peasant movements in modern Iran, see Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism ( New York, 1996), 145-76.

60. The modern secular courts established through the reorganization of the judicial system by cAli Akbar Davar, minister of justice, in 1927.

61. Their last in the sense of a post as a Bakhtiyari right or possession. Although Sardar Ascad remained minister of war this was because of his own personal standing with the shah, not because the Bakhtiyari had any special customary rights in relation to the post.



372 Cronin

At this point, however, the government began to retreat and sent a commission to Chahar Mahal to investigate. This commission examined the peasants' gnevances and the khans' title to the land in dispute, and in July submitted their report which, in almost all villages, was in fact in favour of the khans. The vil- lagers nevertheless refused to accept the decisions of the commission, with the result that Tehran replaced the new civil governor of Chahar Mahal with a military officer, who was authorized to use force if necessary to oblige the peasants to abide by the decisions of the commission and to pay the landlords their dues. The military governor was determined to carry out his instructions, and with his help the khans again began to receive from their peasants the payments in kind and cash to which they believed themselves entitled as landowners.62

Although the government had initially supported the peasants as a tactic to weaken the Bakhtiyari khans, an awareness appears quickly to have spread through the landowning elite at large and to Riza Shah himself of the danger of any permanent peasant success against the khans, especially in stimulating peasants elsewhere to try to emulate their actions. It was probably only this danger that induced the shah finally to uphold the khans' rights as landowners. The khans themselves, however, had been thoroughly cowed by their experience and now confined themselves to seeking to obtain only what they considered the minimum of their just dues. The khans were further worried by the fact that the Bakhtiyari tribesmen, although they had not been involved in the peasant rebellion, had nonetheless followed it with close attention. The khans feared the pos- sibility that the revolutionary ideas animating the peasantry might lead to trouble among the tribes. Such a development was by no means unlikely given the political radicalism periodically expressed by some of the younger khans, the resentment of the rank and file, and the latter's inchoately but insistently expressed demand for a more equitable division of resources. There was no doubt that the tribesmen were being influenced to some degree by their contact with the new ideas current among the peasantry of Chahar Mahal. The British took the khans' fears one stage further, expressing concern that, should the tribesmen adopt the ideas of the peasants, the resulting turmoil might reach the oil-fields at Masjid-i Sulayman where a large number of Bakhtiyaris were employed.63

The Bakhtiyari and the Modernizing State: the 1929 Rebellion

By the late 1920s the great khans had lost all of their power, most of their influence and a considerable proportion of their wealth. Their authority was limited solely to their chieftainship of the Haft Lang tribes and even this was now disputed by the raft of reforms introduced by the regime in the mid to late 1920s. For example, the new ministry of justice, the cAdliyya, began to undermine the patriarchal dispensation of justice by the khans within the tribe while Millspaugh's financial reforms had tumed the khans from tax-farmers into little more than officials of the ministry of finance.

62. Report on the Situation in Bakhtiari, 22 September 1928, R. G. Monypenny, Consul, Ahwaz, F0416/83/141-6.

63. Report on the Situation in Bakhtiari, 22 September 1928, R. G. Monypenny.




Furthermore the regime's radical agenda was no longer threatening only the position of the great khans. In these years several major pieces of legislation were enacted which promised to have, cumulatively and in the long-term, a profound effect on general conditions in Bakhtiyari and on the tribal way of life. In 1924 the Majlis passed laws providing for a national census and for the establishment of a bureau for the registration of births and deaths. These measures were the necessary preliminaries to the introduction of conscription, the compulsory military service law being passed in 1925. Although no systematic attempts to take recruits from the tribes were made until the 1930s, yet appre- hension at the measure was widespread and profound.i' The Uniform Dress Law, passed by the Majlis in December 1928, threatened the symbolic expression and reproduction of tribal identity. In 1928 and 1929 extensive legislation was passed concerning the registration of landed property and title deeds, potentially under- mining the tribespeople's customary rights to pastures. During 1927 a policy with which Riza Shah was to become particularly identified, and for which he attracted especial opprobrium from the tribes, also began to be discussed in ear- nest: the prohibition of pastoral nomadism and the forced settlement of the nomadic tribes on the land and their conversion into agriculturalists.65

In 1929 the fears of the tribes at the imposition of the accumulating new legislation allied with the resentments of some of the younger generation of khans to produce the most serious disturbance in Bakhtiyari of the Riza Shah period.

At the beginning of 1929 the apparent calm prevailing throughout most of rural Iran was abruptly shattered. One by one, the tribal areas of western, southern, central, and southeastern Iran erupted into rebellion, the south almost slip- ping out of government control altogether. These upheavals were all precipitated by broadly similar grievances arising from Tehran's centralizing drive. The tribes were angry at the attempts made by the government to disarm them, they were embittered over the ever increasing taxes they were forced to pay, they hated the new dress law, feared the growing reach of the conscription commissions, and the imposition of the census registration which was their preliminary, resented the frequent replacement of their own leaders by military officers, suffered from the establishment of new government monopolies on commodities such as opium and tobacco and were apprehensive of the activities of the Department for the Registration of Title Deeds and at rumors of forced sedentarization. The tribal revolts began in January with a serious outbreak in Kurdistan, in the early summer the province of Fars descended into turmoil as first the QashqaDi and then the

64. See Stephanie Cronin, "Conscription and Popular Resistance in Iran, 1925- 1941," International Review of Social History, 43 (1998): 451-71.

65. This policy appears to have been first considered concretely in relation to the Lurs. See Annual Report 1927, Clive to Chamberlain, 21 May 1928, F0371/13069/E2897/2897/34. By 1928 the government was already building walled villages for the settlement of the nomadic Lurs. Annual Report 1928, Clive to Henderson, 14 July 1929, F0371/13799/E3676/3676134. For the shah's intention, by 1928, to apply this policy to the Bakhtiyari see Report on the Situation in Bakhtiari, 22 September 1928, R. G. Monypenny, Consul, Ahwaz, F0416/83/141-6.



374 Cronin

Khamsah rose, and by early July there were signs of impending trouble in Bakh- tiyari.i

Although generally motivated by similar grievances, each tribal outbreak also had its own specific concerns. An important element of the Bakhtiyari revolt was the continuing discontent of the junior khans at the rule of their elders, now living the lives of absentee landlords in Tehran and completely divorced from tribal affairs. A number of junior Haft Lang khans, notably Sardar Fatih and Sardar Iqbal, together with the Chahar Lang khan, cAli Mardan Khan Chahar Lang, and Sardar Fatih's brother in law, Sartip Khan of the Kuhgilu, thus put themselves at the head of a groundswell of discontent to lead a movement which was as much directed against the senior khans as at Tehran.67 The Bakhtiyari were, however, not in open revolt as a confederation. The rebels were composed almost entirely of the Zarasvand tribe of the Haft Lang, the tribe from which the great khans were drawn, and the Chahar Lang under cAli Mardan Khan and it seems that the overall leader of the revolt was cAli Mardan Khan.68

Apparently inspired by the example of the Qashqa&i, the rebel Bakhtiyari put forward demands that the Uniform Dress Law and conscription not be applied to them, and that the Census Department, the Department for the Registration of Title Deeds, and the government monopolies be abolished.69 There is some evidence, however, that certain of the younger khans had more ambitious objectives and hoped to use the rebellion to realize fundamental change not just within Bakhtiyari but in the regime at Tehran itself. Sardar Fatih, for example, apparently drew up detailed plans for the capture of Isfahan and Tehran and for the deposition of Riza Shah.70

Sardar Ascad Bakhtiyari, the minister of war, had himself concluded that subversive propaganda by the younger khans against their elders was responsible for the rebellion and that it was a movement of the younger khans against both the old leadership and the government. Expressing the view of many of the senior khans in Tehran, he favored a strong response to the rebellion and informed the shah that, in his opinion, the only thing to be done was to send the army to give these recalcitrant khans and tribesmen a lesson.7'

Hostilities between the Bakhtiyari and the army actually began in early July when a series of military engagements left the tribesmen with the upper hand. The army had been forced to fall back to a defensive position outside Isfahan

66. Annual Report 1929, Clive to Henderson, 30 April 1930, F0371/14543/ E2445/522/34. An account of the Qashqa'i rising may be found in Kavih Bayat, Sharish-i cAsha3ir-i Fiars (Tehran, 1372/1993).

67. Clive to Henderson, 27 July 1929, F0371/13782/E3918/95/34.

68. IS no. 15, 27 July 1929, F0371/13785/E3919/104/34; Jacafar Quli Khan Amir Bahadur (ed.), Khatirat, 232-33; Bahram Amiri, "Zindiginamah," 78-79.

69. Clive to Henderson, 27 July 1929, F0371/13782/E3918/95/34.

70. Knatchbull-Hugessen to Simon, 1 December 1934, F037 1/17889/E7530/ 40/34.

71. Consul-General Bristow, Isfahan, to Clive, Tehran, 11 July 1929, F0371/13781/E3668/95/34; Ja'afar Quli Khan Amir Bahadur (ed), Khatirat-i Sardar As'ad Bakhtiyari (Tehran, 1372), 232-233.




itself when Riza Shah, in a state of intense anxiety and aware of the army's weakness, decided it was necessary to have recourse to conciliatory methods.72 He summoned the senior khans in Tehran to several meetings and finally sent two of the most venerable, Samsam al-Saltanah and Amir Mufakhkham, to the south to use their influence to restrain the tribes. Samsam succeeded where the army had failed and persuaded the tribesmen to disperse. In return the unpopular ilkhan, the brother of Sardar Ascad, the minister of war, and the ilbayg were removed and the tribes allowed to choose their successors, the hated military governor of Chahar Mahal was removed, and the leaders of the revolt were given pardons by the shah, who also promised that conscription would not be applied to the Bakhtiyari for five years.

The tribal insurgencies of 1929, particularly of the Bakhtiyari and the Qashqaai, threatened the government with the loss of its control throughout south-central and southern Iran. The popular perception of the weakening of central control encouraged the peasantry to defy the new government opium monopoly and gave renewed impetus to those elements in the towns who were determined to resist the clothing law and conscription. During July, for example, when the Bakhtiyari revolt was at its fiercest, Pahlavi hats were discarded by the poorer classes in Isfahan with impunity.73 By the autumn, however, the tribes had largely been conciliated and had dispersed on their migrations. They had achieved no real redress of their grievances but only paper concessions and the civil and military authorities were able to regroup and rebuild their position.

The 1929 uprising was the last attempt by the Bakhtiyari to resist the central government. In 1932 Tehran began to make serious efforts to implement the policy of sedentarization, which had first been discussed in the mid-twenties. At the beginning of the year the ilkhan gave a guarantee in writing that after that winter the tribes would give up the migration and would settle permanently in either the summer or winter quarters. At the same time Riza Shah aggressively pursued his objective of severing the southern tribes from their hereditary leaders. The Bakhtiyari khans, as well as other tribal leaders, Sawlat al-Dawlah of the Qashqa'i, Qavam al-Mulk of the Khamsah, and Shaykh Khazcal of Muham- marah, had all been for some time compelled to remain permanently in Tehran. Now matters came to a head. In August 1932 Sawlat al-Dawlah and his eldest son were imprisoned and in August 1933 Sawlat was murdered in prison. In November Sardar Ascad, still minister of war, a large number of Bakhtiyari khans, and Qavam al-Mulk of the Khamsah were arrested and accused of plotting against the shah's life.74 In April 1934 Sardar Ascad was murdered in prison and, in November, eight people implicated in the so-called Bakhtiyari plot were executed, four were Bakhtiyaris, two Boyr-Ahmadis, one Qashqa'i and one Mama- sani. Among those executed were Sardar Fatih, cAli Mardan Khan Chahar Lang, and Sartip Khan Kuhgilu, leaders of the 1929 revolt who had all previously been

72. Clive to Henderson, 10 August 1929, F0371/13782/E4084/95/34. 73. Clive to Henderson, 10 August 1929, F0371/13782/E4084/95/34. Isfahan

had been the center of the anti-conscription movement two years before, see Stephanie Cronin, "Conscription and Popular Resistance."

74. Hoare to Simon, 16 December 1933, F0371/178891E41/40/34.



376 Cronin

pardoned by the shah. Twenty others, all Bakhtiyaris, were sentenced to long prison terms. Four khans were jailed for life."

These imprisonments and executions produced little reaction among the tribes in the south. Even as the arrests were being carried out, Riza Shah had been able to rely on elements within Bakhtiyari loyal to him to carry out his orders. The shah told the ilkhan and the ilbayg that they were to remain at their posts and they telegraphed this information to the tribal kalantars and kadkhudas with the instruction that things were to carry on as normal.

In any case the tribes were in no position to show any resistance. Their economy, like that of rural Iran generally, had been deteriorating for some time, while the introduction of conscription in the more accessible areas of Bakhtiyari had added to the tribes' hardship by creating a shortage of labour.76 Disarmed, heavily taxed, under pressure to settle, despite the fact that a government building commission had itself enumerated the massive difficulties involved in prepar- ing suitable permanent dwellings, and now effectively leaderless, the tribal population was profoundly demoralized.77

During the 1920s each sector of tribal society had perceived the consequences of and opportunities presented by rapid social change differently. Each group had responded according to its own immediate interests, eagerness to secure advantage in internal tribal conflict easily overcoming fear of the Tehran regime, and each had allowed itself to be co-opted by the regime in the pursuit of its own limited objectives. By the early 1930s Riza Shah was able to dispense with all the Bakhtiyari factions. The power of the khans was destroyed and, from then on, the only response available to the tribes to the political repression, economic hardship and forced settlement of the 1930s was a retreat into banditry.78

75. Knatchbull-Hugessen to Simon, 1 December 1934, F0371/17889/E7530/ 40/34. See also Rawshanak Bakhtiyar, "Zindigi va Marg-i Khan Baba Khan As'ad."

76. Annual Report 1933, Hoare to Simon, 24 February 1934, F0371/17090/ E 1620/1620/34.

77. Memorandum respecting the Bakhtiari Tribes, A. E. Watkinson, Consul, Ahwaz, October 1933, Mallet to Simon, 20 October 1933, F0371/16970/E6755/ 5362/34.

78. Despite the hardships of the 1930s and the elimination of the confederational leadership, Garthwaite stresses the general durability and adaptability of the lower levels of the tribal structures and the survival and persistence of Bakhtiyari roles and identity under both the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic republic. Gene Garthwaite, "Reimagined Internal Frontiers: Tribes and Nationalism- Bakhtiyari and Kurds," in Dale F. Eickelman (ed.), Russia's Muslim Frontiers: New Directions in Cross-Cultural Analysis (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1993), 130-45.



Documents

Reza Shah and the Disintegration of Bakhtiari Power in Iran, 1921-1934