Ottoman troops retake Qasr-e Shirin

The British chronology of the war records under 20 June 1916 that Turkish troops occupied Qasr-e Shirin, a border town in western Persia. This date should be treated as approximate. According to W.E.D. Allen and Paul Muratoff’s history of the Caucasian wars, General Nikolai Baratov’s corps began to withdraw from Qasr-e Shirin as early as 6 June, and the Ottoman XIII Corps crossed the Persian frontier two days later. General Yevgeny Maslovsky of the staff of the Russian Caucasus Army dates the Turks’ entry into Persia to 26 May by the Julian calendar, that is 8 June. The British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign notes that by mid-June London already knew of Baratov’s retreat to Kerend. The Turks may therefore have entered the abandoned town as early as the first half of June. The sources do not give the exact day.

Qasr-e Shirin was changing hands for the third time in half a year. It lay at the mouth of the main pass through the Zagros mountains, on the road from Baghdad through Khanaqin to Kermanshah and Tehran. In December 1915 the Turks had taken it in order to support the Persian nationalists and the Germans from here, and in May 1916 Baratov’s cavalry had entered it, having come to the relief of Kut when it was already too late. Now, after the failed Russian attack on Khanaqin and the concentration there of the whole XIII Corps of Colonel Ali Ihsan Bey, the town again became the base for an expedition deep into Persia.

According to Allen and Muratoff, the main Turkish force, the 2nd Division, advanced from Qasr-e Shirin along the main road, which was then a poor caravan track. Other units, with irregular horsemen, approached Kerend from the north and from the south, from the Mandali area. Still further north, three battalions with a thousand horsemen and eight guns crossed the frontier from the direction of Sulaymaniyah, and Maslovsky writes of a composite Turkish division that set out from there towards Senneh, today’s Sanandaj. Ali Ihsan wanted to use his numerical superiority to encircle the Russians. He advanced slowly, however, because his soldiers suffered from the heat and bad water just as much as their opponents.

Baratov halted on the high plateau near Kerend, about 1,575 metres above sea level, where it was cooler and healthier than on the frontier lowland. He brought up two Cossack regiments from the reserve at Kermanshah and, according to Allen and Muratoff, had 2,500 infantry, 2,000 dragoons, 2,000 Cossacks, twelve mountain guns and two howitzers for the defence. General Percy Lake, the British commander in Mesopotamia, could not help him. His troops on the Tigris were exhausted by disease and heat, and London had agreed that he should not attack for the time being.

The Turks attacked Kerend only on 28 June. The defence held throughout the day, but after his right flank was turned Baratov withdrew during the night, and during the night of 30 June to 1 July he abandoned Kermanshah, which the Turks occupied the next day. The Persian nationalists returned in their wake. According to the Encyclopaedia Iranica, in July 1916 a provisional government headed by Nezam os-Saltaneh was again set up in the territory occupied by the Turks. In August the Ottoman forces reached Hamadan. Qasr-e Shirin remained in their hands until the spring of 1917, when after the fall of Baghdad the Turks had to withdraw from Persia.