Central Powers diplomats leave Tehran

On 15 November 1915 the representatives of the Central Powers left Tehran. The German legation was headed by Prince Heinrich XXXI Reuss, the Austro-Hungarian one by Count Hugo Logothetti. The Turkish representatives left with them. According to the Encyclopaedia Iranica and the British chronology of the war it happened on precisely 15 November, although some accounts give the previous day. The reason was the Russian troops, who since the beginning of the month had been gathering at Qazvin and had pushed forward to the Karaj river, about 40 kilometres from the capital. The diplomats were not fleeing in panic, however. They hoped that the young Shah, Ahmad, and his government would follow them, and that Persia, freed from Russian and British tutelage, would enter the war on the side of Germany and Turkey.

The emigration

The first to leave were the Persian opponents of the Entente. At the beginning of November, when a rumour spread that the Russians would enter the capital, seize the Shah and deal with his opponents, Democrats from the parliament, the Majlis, journalists and part of the gendarmerie set off for the shrine of Shah Abdol-Azim at Rey, south of the city, and then further on to the holy city of Qom. Persian historiography calls this exodus the mohajerat, or “emigration”. The Prime Minister, Mostowfi ol-Mamalek, who had earlier negotiated with the Germans, was inclined to move the capital to Isfahan and advised the deputies to leave. According to Iranica the Shah even issued orders to that effect. The German historian Ulrich Gehrke wrote that on 10 November Reuss signed a draft secret German–Persian alliance under which Persia was to declare war on Russia and Britain. The document, however, lacked the Shah’s signature.

A night of hesitation

According to Percy Sykes, a British officer and historian of Persia, 15 November was a day of trial of strength. The Central Powers’ envoys waited for the Shah at Shah Abdol-Azim, and the seventeen-year-old monarch could not make up his mind for a long time. The British minister, Charles Marling, and the Russian minister, Nikolai von Etter, warned him that if he broke neutrality and joined the representatives of the hostile powers he might lose his throne. They also assured him that the Russians would not enter Tehran. He was urged to stay by influential princes of the Qajar dynasty as well, above all the pro-British Abdol-Hossein Mirza Farmanfarma. In the end the Shah decided to stay. Sykes describes how late at night he panicked again and wanted to ride off to join the Germans, but Farmanfarma was on watch and prevented it. The American periodical Current History reported a month later that on 16 November the Shah received the British and Russian ministers and assured them of his goodwill towards the Entente.

A government in exile

The German plan to draw Persia into the war had failed for the time being. Only the secretary of the German legation, Rudolf Sommer, remained in Tehran. The Central Powers’ envoys, the deputies and the gendarmes settled in Qom, where they formed a Committee of National Defence and, with the help of the German military attaché, Count Georg von Kanitz, raised bands of volunteers. Reuss, who refused to return to the capital, was soon recalled. In December General Baratov’s troops advanced on Hamadan and Qom, and the emigrants withdrew to Kashan and then further west. In 1916 a pro-German provisional government was set up at Kermanshah, occupied by the Turks. In Tehran, meanwhile, Mostowfi failed to bring the deputies back and resigned at the end of December, and Farmanfarma became Prime Minister.