Resignation of the Persian foreign minister

The British chronology of the war records under 5 March 1916 that the foreign minister resigned together with the prime minister of Persia, Farmanfarma. The chronology calls him “Mohtashim ed Douleh” and refers back to an entry of April 1915, when Hasan Esfandiari, Mohtasham os-Saltaneh, took over this ministry in Ain od-Dowleh’s government. This is a mistake. According to Persian lists of ministers, Esfandiari headed the foreign ministry only until the beginning of July 1915. In Mostowfi ol-Mamalek’s third government foreign affairs were handled by the prime minister himself, and in Farmanfarma’s cabinet, from 2 Dey to 12 Esfand 1294 in the Iranian calendar, that is, from 23 December 1915 to 2 March 1916, the minister was Ali Qoli Khan Ansari, who bore the title Moshaver ol-Mamalek. The Encyclopaedia Iranica confirms that he first held the post precisely in Farmanfarma’s government.

A career diplomat

Ansari was born in 1868 into a family of officials of the Persian diplomatic service. His grandfather, Mirza Masud Khan Ansari, had been foreign minister under Mohammad Shah in the first half of the 19th century, and his father served at Persian posts in Trebizond and Astrakhan. There the son learned French and Russian. He joined the ministry as an interpreter and in that capacity accompanied the Persian delegation to the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II in 1896. In 1902–1903 he was first secretary of the Persian mission in Moscow, and in 1911 he became deputy foreign minister. He was thus an official rather than a politician, and knew Russia better than most ministers of the day.

A short term

Ansari conducted the diplomacy of a country that formally remained neutral but on whose soil foreign armies were fighting. The ministers of the Central Powers had left Tehran in November 1915, and Farmanfarma’s government pursued a policy friendly to the Entente. In the north and west of the country the Russians were advancing, in the south the British were stationed, and in many provinces German agents and their Persian allies were active. The available sources do not credit the minister with any important independent decisions in those ten weeks. When the government fell, he left with it. His successor was Prince Akbar Mirza, Sarem od-Dowleh.

Ansari’s career was only beginning. He later headed the foreign ministry several more times. In 1919 he led the Persian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, but it was not admitted to the proceedings, and the government in Tehran, which was then secretly negotiating an agreement with Britain, gave it no support. According to the Iranica, the British disliked him. In 1921 he negotiated in Moscow a treaty with Soviet Russia, which renounced the former tsarist concessions in Persia. He died in 1940.