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Amīr Niẓām Garrūsī, Ḥasan ʿAlī Khān (1,627 words)

Ḥasan ʿAlī Khān Amīr Niẓām Garrūsī 1236–7/1820–1 – 1317/1900) was born in the Kurdish town of Bījār and was educated there and in Tabriz. He was named commanding officer of the Garrūs battalion by Muḥammad Shāh (r. 1250–63/1834–48) in early 1253/1837. He and his troops joined other commanders in accompanying the shah on his Herat campaign in July of that year. His military activities continued in Tabriz, Kīrmānshāhān, Mashhad, Zanjān, and Baghdad. In the interim he also married (Dhū l-Qaʿda 1253/January 1838), fathered a son (1259/1843–4), and was rumored to have committed patricide (1260/1844–5). Amīr Niẓām was relieved of his duties by the vizier Ḥājjī Mīrzā Āghāsī (d. 1265/1849) only to be brought back by Mīrzā Taqī Khān Amīr Kabīr (d. 1852) when he took over the vizierate (1264/1848) and be promoted twice (1265/1849 and 1266/1850) in military rank.

In late 1275/1859 Amīr Niẓām was sent to Paris as Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh's (r. 1264–1313/1848–96) special envoy to France and Britain, a post he held for seven years, during which he oversaw a group of Iranian students receive mostly military or vocational education and training: the group included his own son Yaḥyā and some graduates from Dār al-Funūn, a polytechnic established in 1851 by Amīr Kabīr to train upper-class Persian youth in engineering, military science, medicine, and genealogy. The appointment also provided an opportunity to see first-hand Europe's modern institutions as well as the latest products and achievements in science and (military) technology, some of which he managed to acquire (with funds Tehran was authorising but not always appropriating) and send to Iran. In the latter case, evidently, Amīr Niẓām would personally borrow money from other sources to cover the costs. As Iranian minister, he also witnessed the inner workings of the French, British, and Russian governments and their policies towards Iran, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Bahrain.

In 1282/1865 Amīr Niẓām was summoned to return to Tehran and present a report on his mission. He spent a year in Tehran compiling “detailed reports” that included his own recommendations for reforms in military and national affairs. During this period he also wrote what is now considered his most touching essay, an edifying letter to his son Yaḥyā, who was studying at the time at the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr in Paris.

Amīr Niẓām returned to Paris and continued his work for about a year, but poor health, and perhaps also frustration with Tehran's lack of full financial support of the Iranian embassy and, more broadly, with the government's lack of a serious and viable vision for Iran's economic future, all contributed to his decision to leave his post in France. Back in Tehran (1283/1867), he could hardly have asked for a less productive position than what Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh offered him: a seat in the Consultative Council of the government. At first such a position seemed accommodating enough in view of his health (if that was in fact an issue) but it was still, for all practical purposes, just a means to endorse only the shah's decisions. But Amīr Niẓām accepted the position and stayed on for five years until he was appointed ambassador to Ottoman Turkey in Muḥarram 1288/April 1871 to resolve the two countries' three-decades-old border disputes. However, seven months earlier (Jumādā II 1287/September 1870), he had suffered a lasting blow with the death of his twenty-seven-year-old son, Yaḥyā, in Kirmān, from cholera. Within only fourteen months of his arrival in Turkey Amīr Niẓām requested to return to Iran.

By the time he left the Ottoman capital he had initiated talks with a French financier to invest in creating railways and a national bank in Iran, encouraging the new progressive premier, Mīrzā Ḥusayn Khān Mushīr al-Dawla Sipahsālār (1243–98/1827–81) to seriously consider the deal, despite British and Russian attempts at impeding it. However, the French deal never materialised. Had the concession granted to Julius de Reuter in 1289/1872 not been cancelled later, it would have had to have been coordinated by Amīr Niẓām, who had become head of a new Favāʾid-i ʿĀmma (public works) ministry, which was established in 1289/1872. Most of these well-intentioned but flawed efforts at introducing reforms (including arranging—principally by Sipahsālār—an eye-opening tour of Europe for the shah in 1290/1873) did little in the short run to abate the economic crisis Iran was experiencing. The dynamic phase of Amīr Niẓām's ministerial term virtually ended with Sipahsālār's dismissal as premier (Rajab 1290/September 1873). By 1297/1879 Amīr Nīẓām and his ministry were hardly relevant especially since he had taken a leave due to illness and moved to Bījār a year earlier. However, his reputation as a loyal and strong officer recommended him as a good candidate to assist Ḥamza Mīrzā Ḥishmat al-Dawla (d. 1297/1879–80) in dealing with the emerging Kurdish unrest led by religious and tribal leaders Shaykh ʿUbaydāllāh and Ḥamza Āghā-yi Mangūr. Early in the campaign Ḥishmat al-Dawla died, but Amīr Niẓām marched forward and at the beginning of 1298/1880–1 drove ʿUbaydāllāh out of Iran. Then, despite his promise to guarantee Ḥamza Āghā's safety, he trapped and killed the outlaw and his entourage. As a reward for this work Amīr Nīẓām was given the governorship of some nearby territories.

In 1299/1881–2 the public works ministry was effectively scrapped and Amīr Niẓām was given the command of the Azerbaijan army with the title Sālār ʿAskar (military commander). Within three years he was promoted, effectively, to the governorship of Āzarbāyjān and became pīshkār (chief steward) of the crown prince Muẓaffar al-Dīn Mīrzā (r. 1313–24/1896–1907) in Tabriz. He also received the title by which he is now most widely known: Amīr Niẓām. When, on Rabīʾ II 1307/November 1889, Mīrzā Malkum Khān (d. 1908) was removed as Iran's ambassador to England for the improprieties that he had committed in the lottery concession episode, he appealed, through the reformist Mīrzā Yūsuf Khān Mustashār al-Dawla (d. 1313/1895–6) to Amīr Niẓām for damage control. The latter tried to put in a good word for Malkum (to whom he referred as “the Voltaire of Iran”) with the prime minister Mirza ʿAli Aṣghar Khān Amīn al-Sulṭān (Atabak-i Aʿẓam), 1274–1325/1858–1907), but to no avail. Within a year and a half, Amīr Niẓām was acting as Amīn al-Sulṭān's police interrogator, arresting and interrogating the same Mustashār al-Dawla for having contacts with Malkum, whom he would now call “wicked” and “damnable”. Amīr Niẓām's nine-year-long administration of Azerbaijan ended when he refused to resort to violence in order to suppress the unrest that had been brewing and gaining momentum in Tabriz since the tobacco protest movement that began in mid-1308/1891. (He may have had ulterior motives but violent reaction against the protesters would have exacerbated the situation.) After spending five years as governor of the east-central territories of Sāvujbulāgh, Ṣāʾīn Qala, Garrūs, Urmiyah, and Khūy, Amīr Nīẓām was sent back to Azerbaijan again in 1314/1896, in the same capacity of pīshkār, this time for the new crown prince Muḥammad ʿAlī Mīrzā (r. 1324–9/1907–9), whom he soon found too difficult to work with or to control. Now old and probably too exhausted to contend with the prince's behavior any more than he already had to (he couldn't have been pleased with himself when he followed Muḥammad ʿAlī Mīrzā's orders and closed down the progressive Tabriz newspaper, Iḥtiyāj (lit. “need”) in 1316/1898. In the same year Amīr Niẓām resigned and left Tabriz. However, he soon secured another post, the governorship of Kirmān and Balūchistān, which he handled for just about five months, until his death on 5 Ramaḍān 1317/7 January 1900.

Noted for his charming and unpretentious prose and for his handsome yet easy-to-read shikasta (lit.: broken”, a kind of cursive script) penmanship and calligraphy, Amīr Niẓām's actions and values display a curious spectrum of, at times, opposing traits overshadowed by a single notion: a sense of almost total loyalty to his superiors. He was an avuncular man of letters whom the affluent would seek to employ for the education of their children, a staunch advocate of western-style reforms, and a firm believer in a modern approach to commerce and education. Yet he also functioned as a harsh military commander, an obsequious police interrogator, and a passive agent of censorship in an era when the timing or the outcome of Iran's struggle for a better future could have changed, with more loyalty to ideas and principles.

Kambiz Eslami

Cite this page Eslami, Kambiz, “Amīr Niẓām Garrūsī, Ḥasan ʿAlī Khān”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Edited by: Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson. Consulted online on 12 January 2019  First published online: 2008 First print edition: 9789004171374, 2008, 2008-2

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