Mostowfi ol-Mamalek prime minister of Persia again

The British chronology of the war records under 19 January 1918 that Mostowfi ol-Mamalek had become prime minister of Persia in place of Ain od-Dowleh, and Moshaver ol-Mamalek foreign minister, succeeding Ala al-Saltaneh. Lists of Persian governments give different dates for this change. Mostowfi’s biography in the Persian Wikipedia says that his cabinet was formed on 28 Dey 1296 in the Iranian calendar, that is 18 January 1918, which almost agrees with the chronology. The Persian list of prime ministers, based on an official publication on the governments of Iran, gives 17 Dey, however, that is 7 January, and English-language lists 16 January. All that is certain is that Ain od-Dowleh’s government, appointed in November 1917, lasted less than two months.

In power for the fourth time

Mirza Hassan Khan Ashtiani, Mostowfi ol-Mamalek, was heading the government for the fourth time. Shah Ahmad had last entrusted him with the office in August 1915. At that time he had tried to steer between the Entente and Germany, and in December of that year he resigned, when the Russians were approaching Tehran and some of the deputies had fled to Qom. He was regarded as an honest, popular politician independent of the foreign powers, and the Persian Democrats, who had fought Ain od-Dowleh’s cabinet, were well disposed towards him, as in 1910, when they had backed his candidacy for regent. The head of diplomacy was Ali Qoli Khan Ansari, Moshaver ol-Mamalek, a professional diplomat who had already run that ministry in the winter of 1915–1916 and knew Russia well.

A country in ruins

The new government took over a country in a catastrophic position. The Majlis had not sat since the autumn of 1915, Tehran’s authority in the provinces was weak, and the western and northern provinces, through which Russian and Turkish armies had been passing for three years, were devastated and stricken by famine. After the Bolshevik revolution the Russian troops were disintegrating and moving off to the north, selling their weapons and plundering villages along the way. In their place the British were coming in from the west; they had just occupied Qasr-e Shirin and were preparing the passage of a military mission across Persia to the Caucasus. Persian radicals demanded an end to all foreign intervention and the withdrawal of all foreign troops, but the country had no army that could compel respect for its neutrality.

Mostowfi stayed in power for about three and a half months. At the end of April 1918 he was replaced by one of the leaders of the Bakhtiari, Najafqoli Khan Samsam os-Saltaneh, while Moshaver ol-Mamalek remained in charge of diplomacy until June. Mostowfi’s Persian biographers stress that during the great famine of 1917–1919 he helped the starving from his own fortune.