Samsam ol-Saltaneh becomes prime minister of Persia

The British chronology of the war records under 3 May 1918 that Najafqoli Khan Samsam ol-Saltaneh, one of the leaders of the Bakhtiari, had taken the place of Mostowfi ol-Mamalek at the head of the government of Persia. Lists of Persian governments give somewhat different dates. The Persian list of prime ministers, based on Zahra Shoja’i’s study of Iran’s political elites, ends Mostowfi’s government on 5 Ordibehesht 1297 in the Iranian calendar, that is 25 April, and dates the start of Samsam’s cabinet to 18 Ordibehesht, that is 8 May 1918. English-language lists give 1 May. The country was thus without a government for a few days, or perhaps two weeks, which was nothing exceptional in the Persia of those years.

Chief of the Bakhtiari

The new prime minister was already an old man. He was born in the middle of the 19th century (sources give 1846 or a few years later), the son of the great Bakhtiari chief Hosseinqoli Khan, and after the death of his elder brother he himself became ilkhan, the supreme chief of this powerful confederation of nomadic tribes from the Zagros Mountains. During the struggle for the constitution he sided, together with his younger brother Ali Qoli Khan Sardar Asad, against Shah Mohammad Ali. At the beginning of 1909 his horsemen took Isfahan, and a few months later the Bakhtiari helped the constitutionalists enter Tehran and depose the shah. From July 1911 to January 1913 Samsam had already been prime minister. It was then that Russia demanded in an ultimatum the dismissal of the American financial adviser Morgan Shuster. The government was ready to give way, but the parliament, the Majlis, unanimously rejected the ultimatum, and the Russians advanced into the interior. In the end the demands were accepted and the Majlis was dissolved.

A government unfriendly to the Entente

This time Samsam took power at a moment when the Germans were scoring great successes in the west and resentment of foreign troops was growing in Persia. The Russians had left the country after the revolution, and the British were moving in in their place: General Dunsterville’s mission was making its way from Baghdad through Kermanshah and Hamadan towards the Caucasus, supported by the Russian Cossack detachment of Colonel Lazar Bicherakhov, while in the south the British-led South Persia Rifles were operating, which successive governments in Tehran refused to recognise. According to English-language studies Samsam was supported by the Persian Democrats. General Percy Sykes, who was then commanding the South Persia Rifles in Shiraz, described him as a politician “distinctly unfriendly to the Entente”. His government tried to force Bicherakhov to leave Persia, and Bicherakhov replied that he would leave as soon as he was allowed to by Mirza Kuchik Khan’s Jangalis, who were barring his way to the Caspian Sea.

Most dangerous was what was happening in Fars. The chief of the Qashqai, Sowlat od-Dowleh, was preparing to rise against the British. Sykes later wrote that he had read letters and telegrams showing that Sowlat considered himself to be carrying out the will of the government, and that the prime minister’s telegrams to him “were clearly intended to encourage him”. On 23 May Sowlat declared war on the British, invoking in his proclamation the orders of the Persian government and calling the South Persia Rifles a force not recognised by that government.

Resignation and return

On 31 May the British chronology records Samsam’s resignation, and under 20 June his reappointment. Persian lists do not record this break and treat his rule from 8 May to the beginning of August as a single cabinet, so it was probably a crisis and a reshuffle in the government rather than a change of prime minister. The sources do not explain its causes further. Samsam stayed in power until August. In the summer his government announced the annulment of the treaties and concessions extorted from Persia by Tsarist Russia, and then decreed the abolition of the legal privileges of foreigners. The British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign notes that British successes in Persia and the weakening of the Germans on the Western Front led Shah Ahmad to dismiss the “anti-British government”. According to Persian accounts the shah summoned Samsam to the Golestan Palace and ordered him to resign, and on 7 August the pro-British Vosugh od-Dowleh became prime minister.