Ottoman forces take Hamadan

Before noon on 10 August 1916 the leading units of Ali Ihsan’s Ottoman XIII Corps entered Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana and one of the largest cities of western Persia. The Russian corps of General Nikolai Baratov had left the city during the night, without fighting for the streets themselves. The British chronology of the war gives this date with the caveat that it is approximate, but it is confirmed unanimously by three independent works: F. J. Moberly’s British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign, the history of the Caucasian wars by W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, and the study by General Yevgeny Maslovsky of the staff of the Russian Caucasus Army, who writes of 28 July according to the Julian calendar, that is, precisely 10 August according to the Gregorian. Some of the Western press of the time recorded the news a day later.

Five weeks’ halt

Hamadan had been in Russian hands since December 1915, when Baratov’s corps took the city and routed the Persian gendarmes and volunteers who sympathised with the Germans. In the summer of 1916 the roles were reversed. After the loss of Kermanshah on 1 July Baratov concentrated his forces near Hamadan. He left two Cossack regiments as a rearguard near Bisotun and Kangavar, and set up his main defensive position on the Asadabad pass, two days’ march west of the city.

Ali Ihsan was slow to move on. According to Allen and Muratoff, for five weeks he stood on the line Bijar – Senneh – Kermanshah. The distances of the Iranian Plateau daunted him, supplies from Baghdad came through with growing difficulty, and his soldiers were decimated by disease. In the end politics prevailed. The Minister of War, Enver Pasha, and the German General Otto von Lossow hoped that a march into the interior of Persia would stir up a rising there against the Russians and the British. At the end of July Ali Ihsan received an explicit order to advance from Senneh and Kermanshah on Hamadan, and from Kangavar on Burujerd, where an armed revival of the Persian national movement was expected.

Fighting on the Asadabad pass

The Turks set off on 3 August, simultaneously with the great offensive of the Ottoman Second Army in Turkish Armenia. Maslovsky, and Allen with Muratoff, list successive clashes of the Russian forward detachments: on 5 August at Bisotun, then at Sahneh and Senneh, and on 7 August at Kangavar. On the right flank the Cossacks fell back towards Salasat, on the left from Nahavand towards Dowlatabad.

Baratov knew he could not hold the city. Disease had ravaged his corps: according to Allen and Muratoff, 2,000 men lay in hospital and several hundred had died. On the Asadabad pass he had fewer than 6,000 soldiers fit for combat. He therefore began evacuating Hamadan as early as 7 August, since he had only one line of retreat, to the north. On 9 August fighting was going on along the whole line. Ali Ihsan did not waste men on frontal attacks but outflanked the Russian positions on both sides. During the night of 9–10 August the Russians came down from the pass, marched through Hamadan and continued north. In the morning Turkish units entered the city, and on the same day other columns appeared at Dowlatabad and Bijar. Maslovsky adds that the Turks pushed an advance guard about 15 versts (16 kilometres) east of the city.

Alarm in Tehran

Baratov fell back towards Qazvin, his main intermediate base on the road to the port of Enzeli on the Caspian Sea. After about ten days his troops took up a strong position on the Sultan Bulagh pass, through which they themselves had marched on Hamadan in December 1915. In a report to Stavka Baratov stated that he had only about 7,000 men fit for combat, and he estimated the Turkish forces in Persia at 25,000. Allen and Muratoff consider this figure exaggerated: in their view Ali Ihsan’s two infantry divisions numbered no more than 12,000 men at the end of August, to which perhaps 5,000 horsemen, mostly irregulars, should be added.

The fall of Hamadan opened the road for the Turks to Tehran, a few hundred kilometres away. Moberly writes that Baratov suggested to the Russian minister in the capital that it might be necessary to evacuate Tehran and Isfahan, and that the Russian and British legations began to prepare for departure. The Commander-in-Chief in India warned London of the far-reaching consequences of such a step, and the British Foreign Office instructed its legation not to leave Tehran until the last moment. The small Russian garrison of Isfahan, about 600 Cossacks with two guns, found itself threatened by the Bakhtiari, supported by Turkish soldiers and German officers.

Ali Ihsan, however, went no further. He judged his forces too weak to conquer Persia and reported that the soldiers needed a long rest. He confined himself to patrolling north of Hamadan. News from Armenia, where the Second Army’s offensive had stalled, cooled even Enver’s plans in August. The Turks held Hamadan until the beginning of March 1917, when, faced with the British offensive on Baghdad, XIII Corps had to withdraw from Persia.