 | This article or section is in a state of significant expansion or restructuring. You are welcome to assist in its construction by editing it as well. If this article or section has not been edited in several days, please remove this template. If you are the editor who added this template and you are actively editing, please be sure to replace this template with {{in use}} during the active editing session. Click on the link for template parameters to use.
This article was last edited by HistoryofIran (talk | contribs) 2 seconds ago. (Update timer) |
| Jafar Khan Moshir od-Dowleh | |
|---|---|
_at_the_Court_of_St_James%27s.png) Jafar Khan Moshir od-Dowleh (seated) at the Court of St James's | |
| Head of the Council of state | |
| In office September 1858 – November 1862 | |
| Monarch | Naser al-Din Shah Qajar |
| Preceded by | Mirza Aqa Khan Nuri (prime minister) |
| Succeeded by | Mirza Mohammad Khan Sepahsalar (prime minister) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1790s Farahan, Qajar Iran |
| Died | November 1862 (aged 63–72) Mashhad, Qajar Iran |
| Resting place | Imam Reza shrine, Mashhad |
| Children | Mohammad-Sadeq Khan Sartip |
| Relatives | Mirza Bozorg Qa'em-Maqam (cousin) |
Mirza Jafar Khan Moshir od-Dowleh (Persian: میرزا جعفر خان مشیرالدوله; 1790s – November 1862), also known as Mohandes Bashi (مهندسباشی), was an Iranian politician, who was the head of the Council of state from September 1858 until his death in November 1862. His office was similar to the prime minister office, which was vacant during his tenure.
Biography
Background and education
Jafar Khan was born in the 1790s in Farahan, a region in central Iran notable for its high literacy and proficiency in statesmanship. He was the son of Mirza Mohammad Taqi Vazir and nephew of Haji Mirza Hasan, who was the father of Mirza Bozorg Qa'em-Maqam, a bureaucrat who served as the chief minister of the crown prince Abbas Mirza. It was under Mirza Bozorg Qa'em-Maqam and his son Abol-Qasem Qa'em-Maqam that Jafar Khan received his education in the city of Tabriz. In 1815, together with four other students, Jafar Khan was sent by Abbas Mirza to study in England. Their journey to England, referred to as a wanderjahren by the modern historian Nile Green, was an interchange of ideas, which had been made by possible by the diplomatic exchanges between Iran and Great Britain. Jafar Khan is often mentioned in the travelogue one of the students, Mirza Saleh Shirazi. Each student had an area of expertise, with Jafar Khan's being centered around mathematics and engineering. He became an expert in both general engineering and military engineering, including artillery and fort construction. The students returned to Iran in 1819, becoming known as the "first caravan of enlightenment".
Tenure as Iran's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
Having returned to Iran, the goal of the students was to use their new knowledge to change Iran both internally and its relations with its neighbours. Their newly acquired information from outside was transferred into Iranian society. Jafar Khan became the nation's chief engineer and was granted the village of Varnakesh as his personal property. He spent several years in Tabriz until 1836, when he was appointed by Mohammad Shah Qajar (r. 1834–1848) as the Iranian ambassador to the Ottoman court in Constantinople. One of the events that occurred during this tenure was the attack on the Iranian town of Mohammerah by Ali Reza Pasha, the Ottoman governor of the Baghdad Eyalet. Jafar Khan protested to the Ottomans, who disregarded him, as they considered Mohammerah to be a part of the Baghdad Eyalet. As a result Jafar Khan went back to Iran, where he urged the prime minister Haji Mirza Aqasi to capture Baghdad.
To avoid these types of occurrences, Iran and the Ottoman Empire agreed to start negotiations to demarcate their borders in 1844. Jafar Khan was chosen to represent Iran in a meeting with the Ottomans in the town of Erzurum. However, Mirza Taqi Khan ended up going in his stead, as he had become severely sick upon reaching Tabriz.
Jafar Khan had one son named Mohammad-Sadeq Khan Sartip, who became a brigadier general during his father's lifetime.
References
- ^ Davud 2019.
- Ziai, p. 30.
- Amanat 2017, p. 184.
- Behrooz 2023, p. 165.
- Green 2009, p. 296.
- Green 2009, p. 297.
Sources
- Amanat, Abbas (2017). Iran: A Modern History. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300112542.
- Behrooz, Maziar (2023). Iran at War: Interactions with the Modern World and the Struggle with Imperial Russia. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-0-7556-3737-9.
- Davud, Seyyed Ali Al-i (2019). "جعفرخان مشیرالدوله". The Great Islamic Encyclopaedia (in Persian).
- Green, Nile (2009). "Among the dissenters: reciprocal ethnography in nineteenth-century Inglistan". Journal of Global History. 4 (2). Cambridge University Press: 293–315. doi:10.1017/S1740022809003167.
- Ziai, Hossein. "Hossein Ziai Genealogy" (PDF). hosseinziai.com. pp. 17–37.
Further reading
- Ateş, Sabri (2013). Ottoman-Iranian Borderlands: Making a Boundary, 1843–1914. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-03365-8.