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The Kayanid Crown and Qajar Reclaiming of Royal Authority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Abbas Amanat
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Extract

In the first surviving portrait of Fath ᶜAli Shah (r. 1797-1834) as the Qajar sovereign, painted in 1213/1797-98, just after his accession, the young shah appears with a turban-like cap decorated with a plumed jiqqa (aigrette, fig. 1). The so-called Kayanid crown, a creation of his uncle and predecessor, Aqa Muhammad Shah Qajar (1785-97), is missing. In contrast to most other royal portraits of the later years, here in this majestic work by the master painter, Mirza Baba Shirazi, the shah poses on what appears to be a platform throne covered with a carpet, though at the time there was no Qajar royal throne in existence. The absence of the crown and the throne, the most conspicuous symbols of kingly authority, made the young Fath ᶜAli Shah a crown-and-throne-less king (bī tāj va takht), a synonym for utter powerlessness in the Persian political culture.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 1-4: Qajar Art and Society , 2001 , pp. 17 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2001

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References

1. For the power of images in the early Qajar era, see Diba, L., “Images of Power and the Power of Images: Intention and Response in Early Qajar Painting (1785-1834),” Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch, 1785-1925, ed. Diba, L. and Ekhtiar, M. (London and New York, 1999), 30–49Google Scholar; Lerner, J., “A Rock Relief of Fath ᶜAli Shah in Shiraz,” Ars Orientalis 21 (1992): 31–43.Google Scholar For a general survey of the Qajar paintings see Robinson, B. W., “Persian Royal Portraiture and the Qajars,” Qajar Iran: Political, Social and Cultural Changes, Bosworth, C. E. and Hillenbrand, C., eds. (Edinburgh, 1983), 291–311.Google Scholar For individual artists see M. ᶜA. Karimzadeh Tabrizi, Aḥvāl va āār-i naqqāshān-i qadīm-i Īrān, 3 vols. (London, 1985-91).Google Scholar

2. For a survey of the political history of the period, see G. Hambly, “Agha Muhammad Khan and the Establishment of the Qajar Dynasty” and “Iran during the Reign of Fath ᶜAli Shah and Muhammad Shah,” Cambridge History of Iran (CHIr), Avery, P., et al., eds. (Cambridge, 1991), 7: 104–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Amanat, A., “Fatḥ-ᶜAlī Shah Qājār,” Encyclopaedia Iranica (EIr), 9, esp. 407a–410b.Google Scholar Among primary sources in English translation see Brydges, H. Jones, The Dynasty of the Kajars (London, 1833), cxv-cxci, 9–155.Google Scholar

3. ᶜAbd (Maftun) al-Razzaq Bayg Dunbuli, Maᵓāir-i Sulṭānīya (Tabriz, 1241/1825-26), 25.Google Scholar

4. This chronicle presumably is an earlier draft of the above-mentioned Maᵓāir-i Sulṭānīya. It was given to Jones by the senior statesman, Mirza Buzurg Qaᵓim Maqam Farahani, upon his departure from Iran in 1811. It contains a number of important details about the history of Fath ᶜAli Shah period missing in Maᵓāir.

5. Dynasty of the Kajars, 26-27.

6. Maᵓāir, 25-26; cf. Dynasty of the Kajars, 27-28. See also Amanat, A., “Ebrāhīm Kalāntar Šīrāzī,” EIr 8:69.Google Scholar

7. Maᵓāir, 27-28.

8. Maᵓāir, 28-30; cf. 35-37; also cf. Hidayat, Riza Quli, Rawżat al-Ṣafā-yi Nāṣirī, vol. 9 (Tehran, 1339/1960), 314.Google Scholar Hidayat's account, which was compiled some fifty years later, does not specify the source for this report

9. Zoka, Y., “Tāj-hā va takht-hā-yi salṭanatī Īrān,” Hunar va Mardum 60 (1346/1967): 48–51.Google Scholar

10. Dynasty of the Kajars, cxxiv.

11. The 176-carat Darya-yi Nur table diamond on one armband was matched on the other side with Taj-i Mah, another piece of Nadir's Indian spoils, which weighed 154 carats and both were surrounded by other magnificent pieces. Ibid., cxxvii-cxxxiii.

12. Ibid., cxxi.

13. Malcolm, J., The History of Persia, 2 vols. (London, 1825), 2: 287Google Scholar; cf. another portrait in an illustrated manuscript of Saba's Shāhānshāh-nāmah (circa 1818) in the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. See Royal Persian Painting, 172 (pl. 33).

14. Saravi, Muhammad Fathullah (Saruᵓi), Tārīkh-i Muḥammadī (Aḥsan al-tawārīkh), ed. Gh. Tabatabaᵓi-Majd (Tehran, 1371/1992), 284.Google Scholar

15. Malcolm, History, 2: 287. This crown, now in the Museum of the Gulistan Palace in Tehran, was later enameled in Isfahan by order of Fath ᶜAli Shah (Zoka, “Tāj-hā,” 47). For an illustration of Nadir's crown see Malcolm, History, 2: frontispiece and Royal Persian Paintings, pls. 19 and 22.

16. For a catalogue and description of the Persian crown jewels see Meen, V. B. and Tushingham, A. D., Crown Jewels of Iran (Toronto, 1968).Google Scholar See also Y. Ḏoka (Zoka), “Crown V: Qajar and Pahlavi Periods” and Jellicoe, Patricia, “Crown Jewels” EIr 6: 426–30.Google Scholar

17. For Aqa Muhammad's reading of the Shāhnāmah see Ahmad Mirza ᶜAzud al-Dawla, Tārīkh-i-ᶜAżudī(Tehran, 1357), 140.Google Scholar

18. For a sample of literary references to the Kayanid crown see Dihkhuda, et al. “kulāh,” Lughatnāmah, 2nd ed. (Tehran, 1377), 18,468.Google Scholar

19. Malcolm, History, 2:287–88.

20. The verses around the shah's portrait read: bast tā bar ṣaffḥā-yi ījad timālī chunin/āfarīn bar qudrat-i khūd kard ṣūrat āfarīn; Darāy-i dahr Fatḥ-i ᶜAli kin sudihand/ bar dargähash - - (two words illegible) jabīn; chūn shahash bast kilk-i munīr u shabīh-i ū/ bas āfarīn kih kard bar-ū ṣūrat-āfarīn. Since he sketched on the tablet of existence such an image/ the image-maker praised his own skill; the Darius-like Fath ᶜAli (Shah)/ on whose threshold - - touch their forehead; Since the royal (painter?) made this portrait with his luminous brush/ he was praised by the Creator.

21. Hidayat, Rawżat al-Ṣafā, 9: 326.Google Scholar

22. Dunbuli, Maᵓāir, 31-32

23. Dynasty of the Kajars, 41-42.

24. Given Jones’ admirable adherence to the text throughout his translation, it is unlikely that he misread it here.

25. Dynasty of the Kajars, 43.

26. Hidayat, Rawżat al-Ṣafā, 9: 320.Google Scholar

27. For the connotation of using jahānbānī vis-à-vis jahānsūz (world-burner), the title of Fath ᶜAli Shah's father, see Amanat, A., “Fatḥ-ᶜAlī Shah Qājār,” EIr 9:408.Google Scholar

28. See Layla Diba's excellent description of this portrait in Royal Persian Paintings, plate 37 (180-81) where she draws comparisons with other contemporary portraits. For the information about the reworking of this painting, I am indebted to Layla Diba and Maryam Ekhtiar who drew my attention to the X-ray analysis. This portrait is from a private collection and was X-radiographed as part of the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Conservation Study (1996-99) at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

29. Dunbuli, Maᵓāir. 36.

30. Later, on his return to the capital from the Khurasan campaign of early 1214/1799, the shah ordered Sadiq Khan Shaqaqi, who was in Qajar custody, to be bricked up in his jail and allowed to perish. (See Hidayat, Rawżat al-Ṣafā 9:352–54Google Scholar).

31. Malcolm, John, Sketches of Persia (London, 1845), 216.Google Scholar

32. For the early campaigns and the real and imagined conspiracies against the shah see A. Amanat, “Fatḥ-ᶜAlī Shah Qājār” and the cited sources.

33. For construction and other details see Zoka, “Tāj-hā,” 52-66. The political symbolism of these thrones requires a separate study.

34. For the structure of the Kayanid crown see Meen, and Tushingham, Crown Jewels, 73.Google Scholar

35. Meen, and Tushingham, Crown Jewels, 73.Google Scholar