War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and ... - Oguzlar.az

Consolidation of Iran’s frontier 141repercussions, as the British supported the Shaikh of Sharjah’s contentionthat Sirri belonged to the Qawasim and was only administered by theShaikh of Bandar Langeh on their behalf. The Persians maintained, to thecontrary, that Sirri had paid taxes to their government since 1878 and, likeLangeh, was part of Persia that was only temporarily being governed by theArabs. Similar Persian claims would be made for the Tunbs in 1877 and AbuMusa in 1888. As the protector of the Arab shaikhdoms on the southernshore, Britain later upheld their claims to these islands.CONCLUSIONAs is often the case in Iranian history, when the central government is weakthere is a pronounced trend toward local autonomy, and this was true alongthe Persian Gulf littoral under the early Qajars. During the long reign ofNasser-edin Shah, however, the government increasingly consolidated itscontrol over the whole country and brought the Gulf ports directly underits authority. Between 1850 and 1887 Tehran progressively took control ofthe Arab principalities strung out along her southern coast from Bushehr tothe border with India. It was left to Reza Shah to retake Khuzestan, the final,most powerful province, in 1924.As mentioned at the outset, Persian control over the Gulf was never continuousbut waxed and waned over the centuries. The long period betweenthe fall of the Safavids in the early eighteenth century and the rise of thePahlavis in the early twentieth century was one in which a weak governmentin Tehran was not able to fully control its Gulf littoral. However, startingin the middle of the nineteenth century there is an unmistakable trend toretaking the ports whose outcome was never in doubt. Persian sovereigntyover its littoral was never challenged by the British, the main externalpower, while the presence of Arabs governing there, such as the Qawasimin Bandar Langeh or Omanis in Bandar Abbas, was regulated by agreementswith and tribute paid to the Persian government. Only in Bahrain did Persiamaintain a pretence of sovereignty it could not enforce.A key problem for the Qajars was that they lacked a navy, and repeatedrequests to the British to loan them vessels were refused out of fear that Iranwould make trouble in Bahrain. However, while this prevented the Persiangovernment from projecting its power across the Gulf, it did not prevent Tehranfrom exerting pressure on the ports. The real vulnerability of the port cities,as noted by Grummon, was from land and not sea. A city was dependentupon its hinterland, in an area where food and water were in short supply.If a city lost control of this hinterland, as Bushehr did in the 1840s, it waseasy for Persian forces to sweep down from Shiraz.There were various ways in which Iran was able to retake the ports. Tehranoften took advantage of inter-Arab strife and local disorder to imposeitself, as happened at Langeh. A quarrel between the local ruling family and