The mounting disgust amidst the clergy, bazaaris, farmers, intellectuals, and other segments of the populace with respect to the Shah, policies during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century illustrates a classic example of an environment ripe for protest, as a wide array of people in society felt an increasing need to express their grievances with an oppressive and largely autocratic government.
[2] Despite initially being kept secret, the agreement for the Tobacco Règie was eventually leaked and criticized through a series of articles published in late 1890 by a Persian newspaper in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
The agreement sparked unprecedented protest due to tobacco being a widely grown product within Iran that provided the livelihood for many landholders, shopkeepers, and exporters.
[3] Moreover, the clergy viewed it as fundamentally violating Islamic law as Iranian consumers and merchants were being implicitly coerced into buying and selling tobacco from and to the monopoly.
[10] The revolution formally began in August 1906, when Muzaffar al-Din Shah signed a royal decree which called for the election of a Constituent Assembly, known as “Constitution Day” in contemporary Iran.
The Constituent Assembly, a group of delegates composed mainly of merchants, clerics, guild elders, and liberal notables, drafted the electoral law based on six classes (tabaqats) of the population, namely, Qajar princes, ulama and seminary students, nobles (a’yan) and notables (ashraf), well-established merchants, landowners with property of a certain minimum value, and guildsmen with a certain amount of income.
[12] Many professions of a lower socio-economic status, such as porters, laborers, and camel drivers, were excluded, and that the middle class guilds (who often chose members of the ulama as their representatives) were the dominant group with respect to electoral representation.
The first Majles, or National Assembly, opened in October 1906, and consisted of more than sixty bazaaris, twenty-five clerics, and fifty landlords and notables, all of whom eventually divided into two parties called the Moderates (Mo’tadel) and the Liberals (Azadikhah).
[13] The Majles was meant to be an integral part of the new constitution, as it was to have final say over various laws, decrees, budgets and concessions, while holding the authority to select cabinet ministers.
Despite all of these intentions, and regardless of any role the Majles could have played within the Qajar government under pressure from the citizenry, the Constitutional Revolution began to weaken as quickly as it had begun.
This greatly hindered the efforts of the constitutionalists as Iran’s autonomy was negated completely, and became the first factor which allowed the Shah enough room to operate and largely crush nationalist rhetoric.
[19] The protests in Qom were essential to paving the way for Constitutional reform, which in turn made the fragmentation of support amongst the ulama that much more devastating when Nuri dissented from his colleagues, as his students inevitably followed his example of rebuilding a relationship with the Shah.
[19] In June 1908, the Shah appointed the Cossack Brigade Commander, Colonel Liakhoff as the military governor of Tehran, at the same time bombarding the Majles building and placing Behbehani and Tabatabai under house arrest.
Mojahedin (holy warriors) and Feda’iyan (self-sacrificers), numbering approximately one thousand volunteers, joined forces with Muhammad Vali Sepahdar (the leading feudal nobleman in Mazanderan), who defected from helping the Shah's forces retake Tabriz and was joined by not only his men but the Bakhtiyari tribes, some of whom were legitimately seeking political reform while others simply wanted control of the government themselves.