Resignation of Farmanfarma

A British chronology of the war records under 5 March 1916 that the prime minister of Persia, Prince Abdol-Hossein Mirza Farmanfarma, resigned. He had headed the government since the end of December 1915. The exact day is hard to establish. Persian lists of governments end his term on 10 Esfand 1294 in the Iranian calendar, that is 29 February 1916. Reuters’ correspondent in Tehran reported the resignation in a dispatch dated 7 March, and the London weekly The Near East carried the news on 10 March. All the sources thus place the fall of the government at the turn of February and March.

Ten weeks

Farmanfarma, a prince of the Qajar dynasty, was prime minister and at the same time minister of the interior. He was regarded as Britain’s most reliable friend in Tehran, and his position had already been under threat. In December 1915, while he was still minister of the interior, Reuters’ correspondent reported a foiled plot against his life, said to have been prepared by pro-German émigrés. A British commentator in The Near East praised him at the time as a “strong man” who knew when to take off the velvet glove.

During his brief government the military situation changed. General Nikolai Baratov’s Russians took Hamadan and Qom in December, and in February, after the fall of Erzurum in the Caucasus, they entered Kermanshah. The pro-German Persians who had left the capital in November fell back towards the border with Ottoman Iraq. In the north and west of the country the Russian army was now the main force.

Why he went

The available sources do not explain the reasons for the resignation unambiguously. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says only that Farmanfarma was prime minister for “less than three months” and that as head of government he took money from both the British and the Russians. Short-lived cabinets were the rule in Persia: this was already the fifth government since the beginning of 1915. The Near East presented the change as a “fresh start” for the Persian government and stressed that the successor, Mohammad Vali Khan Tonekaboni, known as Sepahdar, was a supporter of friendly relations with Russia. The change at the head of the government thus coincided with Russian victories, but the sources do not say outright that the Russians forced it.

The course of policy did not change. Percy Sykes, a British officer and former consul in Persia, later wrote that his “friend Farmanfarma did not long remain in office”, but that his successor’s cabinet also maintained a “benevolent neutrality” towards the Entente. Farmanfarma himself did not lose the confidence of the British. Later in 1916, according to the Iranica at Britain’s express demand and against the reluctance of Ahmad Shah, he became governor-general of Fars and governed the province for four years in close cooperation with the British.