Russians occupy Qasr-e Shirin

On 7 May 1916 units of General Nikolai Baratov’s Russian expeditionary corps occupied Qasr-e Shirin, the last Persian town on the road from Kermanshah to Baghdad. This date is given by the British chronology of the war, the British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign and the Iranian historian Iraj Nasseri, who drew on Persian sources. According to W.E.D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, authors of a history of the Caucasian wars, Baratov reached the town a few days earlier, around 2–3 May. R.P.P. Rowe’s British chronicle of the events of the war records the occupation of Qasr-e Shirin only under 10 May. The town lay right by the border with Ottoman Iraq, about 30 kilometres from the Turkish base at Khanaqin.

The march through the Zagros

Baratov set out from near Kermanshah on 20 April with no more than 5,000 men: the Caucasian Cavalry Division, one frontier guard regiment, horse artillery and howitzers. Grand Duke Nicholas, Viceroy of the Caucasus, ordered him to do what he could to draw the Turks away from besieged Kut. He received no fresh forces. General Yevgeny Maslovsky, a staff officer of the Caucasus Army, later wrote that the whole march was “extremely unfavourable” for the Russians, and that its sole purpose was to rescue the besieged British. At Kerend on 29 April the Russians drove four Turkish battalions under Şevket Bey from their positions. That same day, however, brought the capitulation of Kut. According to Maslovsky the news arrived soon after the capture of Kerend; according to Allen and Muratoff Baratov received it by wireless only at Qasr-e Shirin.

Şevket Bey’s force, pursued from the front and outflanked by a dragoon brigade advancing through Sarpol-e Zahab, fell back through Qasr-e Shirin to Khanaqin and halted there. Nasseri dates the occupation of Sarpol-e Zahab to 3 May. He also writes that the defenders of the Pa Tak pass, especially the Kurdish horsemen of the Sanjabi tribe, held up the Russians for a long time, but without reinforcements and ammunition they had to give way.

The end of the national government

Since March Qasr-e Shirin had been crowded with Persian nationalists who had fled from Kermanshah together with gendarmes and German officers. Food was short, and quarrels between the factions went so far that an attempt was made to kill the leader of the émigrés, Nezam os-Saltaneh. As the Russians approached, panic broke out in the town. According to Nasseri the tribesmen left for the mountains, the gendarmes dispersed, and the entire national government, its administration and army ceased to exist. The leaders, members of parliament and the most endangered nationalists fled to Baghdad, where the Turks had promised them hospitality and financial help. Maslovsky noted that Nezam os-Saltaneh also fled to Baghdad.

Thus ended almost five months of Turkish presence in the town. In December 1915 it had been occupied by the Turks, so that from here they could support the Persian nationalists and the Germans against the Russians.

Heat and disease

The Russians went no further. Their only aim, the relief of Kut, had ceased to exist, and the corps was in a bad position. Supplies travelled hundreds of kilometres, mainly on the backs of pack animals. The Mesopotamian summer was beginning, and there was a shortage of fodder and good water. Maslovsky writes that first dysentery and then cholera spread among the troops, and the regiments began to melt away. Baratov remained at Qasr-e Shirin with the Caucasian Cavalry Division and the frontier guard regiment and decided to give his men a rest and to put his supply in order.

The Russians were also worried about their rear. According to the British official history, on 10 May they asked General Percy Lake, commander of the British forces in Mesopotamia, to send a detachment from the Tigris to keep the Turks off the mountain road from Badra to Kermanshah. Lake considered such a Turkish move unlikely, and in any case had no forces to spare. He promised only to watch that direction and keep Baratov informed. The Russians then estimated the Turkish forces at Khanaqin at 2,000 horsemen and six to eight battalions, with more battalions on the way from Baghdad. In a few weeks it would be the Turks who went over to the attack.