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Peasant Rebellions of the Caspian Region during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1909

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Janet Afary
Janet Afary
Affiliation:
Departments of History and Near East StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Abstract

Despite a growing literature on peasant movements in the early 20th century, the story of the peasant rebellions of the Caspian region at the time of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–11 has been little studied.1 A close look at three sets of materials—the newspapers of the Constitutional Revolution, among them Majlis (1906–1908), Anjuman (1906–1909), Habl al-Matīn (1907–1909), and Sūr-i Isrāfīl (1907–8); British diplomatic reports; and several regional studies and memoirs of the period—reveal that, during the First Constitutional Period of 1906–1908, a number of strikes and sit-ins were carried out by the peasants, often with the support of craftsmen and workers, who had initiated trade union activity. Such revolts were considerably more sustained and prominent in the northern areas of Gilan and Azerbayjan, which were directly influenced by the flow of radical ideas from the Russian Caucasus; they also benefited from a long history of social struggle among the craftsmen and small shopkeepers (pīshahvarāns), who maintained their guilds, and a tradition of alliances among the craftsmen, the urban poor, and the poor peasants.2

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , May 1991 , pp. 137 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I wish to thank colleagues at the Near East Collection of the University of Chicago, especially Bruce Craig, Paul Sprackman, and Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, and David Beasley at the New York Public Library, who facilitated the research for this article. I am grateful to Kamran Afary, Michael Flug, John Foran, Harry Harootunian, Nikki Keddie, Thomas Ricks, and especially Kevin Anderson, who made helpful comments on earlier drafts. I have also benefited greatly from the comments of the anonymous reviewers of IJMES. Any shortcomings are the sole responsibility of the author.

1 Most studies of the Constitutional Revolution, including E.G. Browne's classic The Persian Revolution of 1905–1909, and Ahmad Kasravī's monumental study Tārīkh-i Mashrūtah-⊃i īrān (History of Constitutionalism in Iran), have addressed the urban dimensions of the revolutionary movement. Kasravī alluded to the support that the Tabriz provincial council of 1906 received from the rural communities in Azerbayjan in its political activities. In particular, he described how the grievances of the villagers of Qarachaman in Azerbayjan led to the greater radicalization of the Tabriz council in the spring of 1907; in that process, the leading Mujtahid of Tabriz was expelled from the city by angry crowds, much to the chagrin of the Tehran Constitutionalists. See Kasravī, , Tārīkh-i Mashrūtah-⊃i īran (Tehran, Amirkabir Publications, 1984, originally published in 1951), pp. 283–46.Google Scholar See also Asghar, Fathi, “The Role of the ‘Rebels’ in the Constitutional Movement in Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 10 (1979), 55–66;Google Scholar and Mohammad, Reza Afshari, “The Pishivaran and Merchants in Precapitalist Iranian Society: An Essay on the Background and Causes of the Constitutional Revolution,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 15 (1983), 133–55.Google Scholar

2 See Afshari, , “The Pishivaran and Merchants in Precapitalist Iranian Society,” pp. 144–45.Google Scholar

3 The word anjuman, meaning“gathering, association, society,” is an old Persian name that was revived in order to refer to the secret or semi-secret councils formed both before and after the 1906 revolution. For a history of the term, see Bayat, M., “Anjoman,” in Ehsan, Yarshater, ed., Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 2 (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), pp. 77–88.Google Scholar

4 Seyyed, Hasan Taqizadeh, “Tārīkh-i Inqilāb-i īrān,” Yaghmā (1961), p. 27. I am grateful to Ahmad Ashraf for providing me with this document.Google Scholar

5 “La situation agraire en Perse í le veille de la revolution,” Revue du Monde Musulman, 12 (12, 1910), 622.Google Scholar The many writings of Pavlovitch on the Iranian revolution need to be examined elsewhere. It is interesting, however, to note that E. G. Browne found Pavlovitch's commentary on the 1907 Anglo-Russian Alliance of suflicient merit to include it as an appendix to his Persian Revolution, pp. 429–31.Google Scholar

6 See Sultanzada's, “Le mouvement revolutionnaire en Iran,” in Cosroe, Chaqueri, ed., La socialdemocratie en Iran (Florence: Mazdak Publications, 1979), p. 70;Google Scholar published originally in Zizn Nacional Nosti, no. 29 (1920).Google Scholar

7 The diary is reproduced in the original form by Muhammad, Rawshan in Mashrūtah-⊃i Gīlān az Yād'dasht'hā-yi Rābīnū (Rasht: Ta⊃ati Press, 1352/1973),Google Scholar henceforth referred to as Mashrūtah-⊃i Gīlān. Rabino was no ordinary European diplomat of this period, however. Muhammad Rawshan, editor of Rabino's diary, cites over forty manuscripts by Rabino on various aspects of Iran's history, economy, agriculture, literature, language, and grammar (see Introduction, pp. xiv-xvii). Indeed, Rabino seems to have been among the first to have used oral history in the region and to have solicited the contribution of the community in his studies. He recounts how, with his Iranian secretary Mirza Hasan Khan Samsam al-Kitab, they would“visit the different classes of people, the ulama and the nobility, the tradesmen, the poor and the destitute peasants, the rich and the landlords, and take down their comments.” The results of these studies were once again checked with these informants. This process meant at times engaging the peasants in a heated quarrel over the many different “types of rice” which were cultivated on the land, or it meant appealing to the shepherds and peasants of the Gilan region to present their folk songs and stories, whereupon they came and “told many stories and sang songs,” which Rabino and his secretary recorded (see Mashrūtah-⊃i Gīlān, Introduction, pp. xxiii–xxiv).Google Scholar

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9 Ann Lambton points out that the equality of shares was based on quality as well as quantity of land (Ann, Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia [London: Oxford University Press, 1969], p. 6).Google Scholar There were also variations to this general practice, such as in areas where the division of land depended on water rights. In Yazd, for example, land and water were separately owned, and the size of land was not equalized by plough land or water share but depended on the“ability and enterprise of the individual peasant” (see Ann, Lambton, The Persian Land Reform: 1962–1966 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969], p. 8).Google Scholar

10 Nikki, Keddie, “Historical Obstacles to Agrarian Change in Iran,” in Charles, Issawi, ed., The Economic History of Iran: 1800–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 54–57.Google Scholar See also Charles, Issawi, “Geographical and Historical Background,” in the same collection, pp. 1–19.Google Scholar This volume includes a number of valuable essays which have been used throughout this study. See also M. Pavlovitch, “ La situation agraire, ” and Avetis Sultanzada, “The Lines of Development of Modern Persia,” originally written and reprinted in 1928 in Cosroe, Chaqueri, ed., Avetis Sultanzade: The Forgotten Revolutionary Theoretician (Life and Works) (Tehran: Padzahr Publications, 1986), pp. 35–34.Google Scholar In a chapter on the“Breakdown of Central Authority,” in Iran: Monarchy, Bureaucracy, and Reform under the Qajars, 1858–1896 (London: Ithaca Press, 1978),Google Scholar Shaul Bakhash includes some interesting material on the riots and protests against landowners and government officials in this period (see pp. 287–89). See also Khusraw, Khusravī, Jāmi⊃ah Shināsī-i Rustā-yi īrān (Sociology Iranian Village) (Tehran: Intisharat-i Payam, 1358/1979).Google Scholar

11 James, B. Fraser, Historical and Descriptive Accounts of Persia (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1834), p. 258.Google Scholar

12 lbid.

13 George, N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, vol. 2 (London: Frank Cass and Company, 1966, originally published in 1892), pp. 470–71.Google Scholar

14 Issawi, , Economic History of Iran, pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

15 Ibid.; see also Pavlovitch, , “La situation agraire,” p. 620.Google Scholar

16 Keddie, , “Historical Obstacles,” p. 56.Google Scholar

17 Issawi, , Economic History of Iran, p. 17.Google Scholar

18 Lambton, , Landlord and Peasant in Persia, p. 152.Google Scholar

19 Keddie, , “Historical Obstacles,” pp. 54–55.Google Scholar

20 Pavlovitch, , “La situation agraire,” p. 620.Google Scholar

21 Keddie, , “Historical Obstacles,” p. 55.Google Scholar

22 Pavlovitch, , “La situation agraire,” p. 621.Google Scholar

23 Lambton, , Landlord and Peasant, p. 169.Google Scholar

24 Hasan, Hakimian, “Wage Labor and Migration: Persian Workers in Southern Russia, 1880–1914,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 17 (1985), 443–62.Google Scholar

25 lbid., p. 447.

26 Abdullaev, Z. Z., “Bourgeoisie and Working Class, 1990s,” in Issawi, Economic History of Iran, p. 51.Google Scholar

27 lbid.,

28 Hakimian, , “Wage Labor and Migration,” p. 450.Google Scholar

29 Eric, R. Wolf, “Peasant Rebellion and Revolution,” in Jack, Goldstone, ed., Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative, and Historical Studies (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), p. 175.Google Scholar

30 Nāzim, al-Islām Kirmānī, Tārīkh-i Bīdārī-i īrānīyān, vol. I (History of the Awakening of Iranians) (Tehran: Agah Press, 1983); see also Bayat,“Anjoman.”Google Scholar

31 Kasravī, , Tārīkh-i Mashrūtah-⊃i īrān, pp. 174–75.Google Scholar

32 For a discussion of these anjumans, see Janet, Afary, “On the Origins of Feminism in Twentieth Century Iran,” Journal of Women's History, 1, no. 2 (1989), 65–87.Google Scholar

33 The power of Kasravī's momentous study is due to the fact that he presents the history Constitutional Revolution ostensibly from the point of view of the Tabriz anjuman and the revolutionary anjumans of the Mujahidin fighters. See also the more recent study by Mansūrah, Rafī⊃ī, Anjuman (Tehran, 1983), which discusses some of the social reforms carried out by the anjuman.Google Scholar

34 For a discussion of the ljtimā⊂iyyūn-i ⊂āmmiyyūn and its relation to RSDWP and Himmat, Tadeusz, Swietochowski,“Himmat Party: Socialism and the Nationality Question in Russian Azerbaijan, 1904–1920,” Cahiers du monde russe et sovietique, 19 (1978), 119–42.Google Scholar

35 In 1908 the British officials estimated the number of members of the Mujahidin to be 86,150 in the regions of Azerbayjan and the Caucasus (reported in Habl al-Matīn, no. 205, 12 01 1908).Google Scholar

36 “Programme de l'organisation revolutionnaire Iranienne Mojahid,” in La social-democratie Iran (Florence: Edition Mazdak, 1979), pp. 157–60.Google Scholar

37 Anjuman no. 62, 14 04 1907; see also Anjuman no. 74, 5 05 1907.Google Scholar

38 Majlis no. 57, 30 03 1907.Google Scholar

39 Majlis no. 60, 5 04 1907.Google Scholar

40 lbid. The term ra⊂iyyat, meaning“peasant,” can mean“citizen” in Persian. I have translated the term as“peasant” only when the circumstances in the text clearly indicated that such was the case.Google Scholar

41 Majlis no. 59, 3 04 1907.Google Scholar

42 Majlis no. 77, 24 04 1907.Google Scholar

43 Majlis no. 61, 8 04 1907.Google Scholar

44 See Adamiyat, , Fikr-i Dimūkrāsī-i Ijtimā⊂ī, p. 84.Google Scholar

45 Majlis no. 147, 1 08 1907.Google Scholar

46 lbid. The Fidā⊃ī were revolutionary fighters in the organizations of the Mujahidin who responsibility for acts of political terror; however, the terms Fidā⊃ī and Mujahid were often used interchangeably by the public when referring to any volunteer fighter.

47 Majlis no. 147, 1 08 1907.Google Scholar

48 Majlis no. 61, 8 04 1907.Google Scholar

49 Ibid.

50 See Majlis no. 61, 8 04 1907.Google Scholar There were 83 votes to abolish tas⊂īr, 74 votes to return tuyūl revenues to the central government, and 68 votes to allocate tafāvut-i ⊂amal excess taxes to the central government as well. A summary of the reforms appears in Kasravī, , Tārīkh-i Mashrūtah-⊃i īrān, pp. 228–9;Google Scholar and Lambton, , Persian Land Reform, pp. 32–33. Lambton has also pointed out that the reforms would not alter the basic structure of the landowning classes in the country, though they prevented, “in theory at least, the alienation of large areas of land from the control of the central government,” and paved the way for the creation of a modern tax administration (p. 33).Google Scholar

51 Adamiyat, , Fikr-i Dimūkrāī;-i Ijtimā⊂ī, p. 87.Google Scholar

52 Majlis no. 135, 13 06 1907.Google Scholar

53 Majlis no. 157, 14 08 1907.Google Scholar

54 Majlis no. 157, 14 08 1907.Google Scholar

55 Majlis no. 103, 22 04 1908.Google Scholar

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57 The party program appears in īrān-i Naw, no. 20 (20 03, 1911), 1–2. The delegates to the Majlis, with all their professed admiration for the French Revolution, had ignored the fact that even in that revolution, which had occurred more than a century earlier, the night of August 4, 1789, when the assembly had attacked feudal property rights, and the day of July 17, 1793, when all feudal and seigneurial dues and rights had been abolished and land was expropriated without compensation, were indispensable components of the newly formed bourgeois republic, without which the republic would not have long endured.Google Scholar

58 Adamiyat, , Fikr-i Dimūkrāsī-i Ijtimā⊂ī, p. 83.Google Scholar

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60 George, N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, vol. I (London: Frank Cass and Co. Ltd. 1892/1966), p. 354.Google Scholar

61 lbid., p. 388.

62 Ibid

63 British Consular Report, “Land Tenure in Gilan,” in Economic History of Iran, p. 225.Google Scholar

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65 See Issawi, , “Agriculture,” in Issawi, , Economic History of Iran, pp. 210–11.Google Scholar

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67 Eugene, Aubin, La Perse d'aujourd'hui—Iran (Mesopotamia, Paris: Armand Colin, 1908).Google Scholar References are to the Persian translation of this book, which appears as Safar Nāmah va Barrasī'hā-yi Safīr-i Farānsah dar īran: īran-i Imrūz, 1906–1907, trans. 'Ali Asghar Sā⊂īdī (n.p.: Zavvar Press, 1362/1983), pp. 149–50.Google Scholar

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70 See Rawshan, , Mashrūtah-⊃i Gīlān, p. 50.Google Scholar

71 Majlis, no. 20, 30 12 1906.Google Scholar

72 See Rawshan, , Mashrutah-⊃i Gīlān, pp. 100–101.Google Scholar Another important aspect that is apparent through the British reports of the period is the degree of international solidarity which was seen among workers on both sides of the border. Thus, by spring 1907, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, the British ambassador in Iran, reported on the support of the Anzali boatmen for the Baku sailors, writing that: “A strike occurred at Baku among the sailors of the Baku-Enzeli line, which paralyzed the service for a time. The mails were brought to Persia in steamers manned by Russian bluejackets but travelers were not taken. The boatmen in Enzeli subsequently struck in sympathy” (Great Britain: Correspondence Respecting the Affairs of Persia, December 1906 to November 1908, Extract from Monthly Summary of Events, Spring-Rice, to Grey, , no. 25, 24 04 1907 [London: Harrison and Sons, 1909]).Google Scholar

73 Adamiyat, , Fikr-i Dimūkrāsī-i Ijtimā⊂ī p. 21.Google Scholar

74 Rawshan, , Mashrūtah-⊃i Gīlān, p. 24.Google Scholar

75 Ousley to Court of Directors, “Silk Production and Trade, 1812,” in Issawi, , Economic History of Iran, p. 231.Google Scholar

76 Ibid., pp. 231–32.

77 Lafont, F. and Rabino, Hyacinth, “Silk Production, 1900s,” originally in L'industrie sericole en Perse (Montpellier, 1910),Google Scholar in Issawi, , Economic History of Iran, p. 236.Google Scholar

78 See Great Britain: Correspondence Respecting the Affairs of Persia, Spring-Rice, to Grey, , no. 25, 24 04 1907.Google Scholar

79 Rawshan, , Mashrūtah-⊃i Gīlān, p. 31.Google Scholar

80 Ibid.

81 The Sattar Committee would play an important part in the reestablishment of the Constitutional government in Gilan and the takeover of Tehran in July 1909. ⊂Atā⊃, Allāh Tadayyun, Tārīkh-i Gīlān va Naqsh-i Gīlān dar Nahzat-i Mashrūtiyyat-i īrān (Tehran: Furughi Publications, 1353/1974), pp. 228–29.Google Scholar

82 Rawshan, , Mashrūtah-⊃i Gīlān, p. 32.Google Scholar

83 Ibid., pp. 32–35.

84 See Ibid., p. 54, and Adamiyat, , Fikr-i Dimūkrāī-i Ijtimā⊂ī, p. 73. The ⊂Abbasi anjumans were also known as the Abu al-Fazl anjumans. Both names refer to the brother of Imam Husayn, ⊂Abbas who perished along with other followers of Husayn in Karbala in A.D. 680. Abbas tried to bring water to the besieged group, and his name is often invoked as one who brings relief and exhibits selfless dedication to others.Google Scholar

85 Rawshan, , Mashrūtah-⊃-i Gīlān, p. 54.Google Scholar

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89 Ibid., p. 56.

90 Ibid., p. 43.

91 Anjuman-i Millī-i Vilāyatī-i Gīlān, no. 4, 09 30, 1907, p. 3.Google Scholar

92 Ibid.

93 See Habl, al-Matīn, no. 111, 8 09 1907;Google Scholar and Habl, al-Matīn, no. 113, 10 09 1907.Google Scholar

94 Anjuman-i Mullī-i Vilāyatī-i Gīlān, no. 1, 31 08 1907.Google Scholar

95 Ibid.

96 See Amīrkhīzī, , Qiyām-i āzarbāyijān (Tehran: Tehran Books, 1960), pp. 170–71.Google Scholar

97 Reported later in Habl al-Matīn, no. 25, 27 05 1907.Google Scholar

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102 Ibid.

103 Ibid., p. 53.

104 Rawshan, , Mashrūtah-⊃i Gīlān, p. 72.Google Scholar

105 Ibid., pp. 72–73.