Farmanfarma becomes prime minister of Persia

The British chronology of the war records under 25 December 1915 that Prince Abdol-Hossein Mirza Farmanfarma had become the new prime minister of Persia. He replaced Mostowfi ol-Mamalek, who had resigned the day before. Persian lists of governments date the beginning of Farmanfarma’s term of office to 3 Dey 1294 of the Iranian calendar, that is, to 24 December, and the report of the British minister Charles Marling on his appointment bears the same date. The available sources do not explain the one-day difference. What is certain is that Shah Ahmad handed the government to a man whom the Entente trusted more than anyone else in Tehran.

A prince of the Qajar dynasty

Farmanfarma was born in 1857 or 1858. He was a grandson of the crown prince Abbas Mirza and belonged to the ruling Qajar dynasty. He married a daughter of the future Shah Mozaffar ad-Din, and in 1892 he took over the title Farmanfarma, meaning “giver of orders”, from his elder brother. In his youth he received military training in a corps run by Austrian officers. He was governor of Kerman, then of Kermanshah and Fars. In Kerman he befriended the British consul Percy Sykes, and according to the Encyclopaedia Iranica, as early as 1896 the British regarded him as one of their “two best friends in Persia”.

After Mozaffar ad-Din’s accession to the throne in 1896 Farmanfarma became Minister of War and for several months was the de facto ruler of the country. He then fell from favour and spent several years in exile, mainly in Baghdad. After the Constitutional Revolution he was Minister of Justice, of the Interior and of War, and in 1912 he commanded the troops that defeated the pretender to the throne, Prince Salar od-Dowleh. In 1915, largely under British pressure, he twice took over the Ministry of the Interior. The Democrats in the Majlis regarded him as a British tool, and the dispute over him brought down the government of Ein od-Dowleh in July.

The man who stopped the Shah

Farmanfarma owed his position above all to the night of 15–16 November. When the envoys of the Central Powers had left Tehran and were waiting for the Shah outside the city, it was he, as a prince of the Qajar dynasty, who persuaded the seventeen-year-old monarch not to follow the Germans and not to put the dynasty at risk. According to Sykes, he then kept watch until late in the night and did not allow the frightened Shah to flee on horseback to the enemy camp. Pro-German Persians did not forget this. According to the Encyclopaedia Iranica, his wheat granaries were looted in November, and the British paid him £15,000 in compensation.

Benevolent neutrality

The new government declared war on no one, but its direction was clear. Sykes wrote that over the following months Persia’s policy could be called “benevolent neutrality” towards the Entente, and that there were rumours of an alliance. Tehran stopped obstructing the Russians, who in December took Hamadan and Qom and were preparing to march on Kermanshah. Farmanfarma was, moreover, an expensive ally. As prime minister, according to British Foreign Office documents quoted by the Iranica, he took money from both the British and the Russians.

Farmanfarma’s government lasted only about two months, until the turn of February and March 1916. His successor, Mohammad Vali Khan Tonekaboni, known as Sepahdar, pursued a similar policy. In 1916, at the demand of the British, Farmanfarma himself became governor-general of Fars and for four years worked closely in Shiraz with his old friend Sykes, who commanded the South Persia Rifles raised there by the British. In 1916 he received from the British the Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George. He died in 1939. His nephew was Mohammad Mosaddegh, later prime minister of Iran.