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

66 Stephanie Croninliving and the market value of labour. In 1810, Abbas Mirza laid down fixedrates of pay for officers and men, these rates remaining more or less unchangedthroughout the century. But in 1810 a private soldier’s pay, in silver coin(toman), was sufficient for buying food to keep a family for a month. Duringthe course of the century the toman consistently depreciated until its purchasingpower had decreased by about 80 per cent. 51 By 1900 both officersand men were actually receiving only one-fifth of the pay which Abbas Mirza’soriginal scheme intended they should have, and but even this pittance oftenremained unpaid for months or even years. With much of their pay withheld,and with their daily food alone costing more than their ration allowances,soldiers were allowed, encouraged and even obliged to find other work aslabourers, small shopkeepers and also often as money-lenders, in this wayproviding for themselves and, owing to a system of percentages, also for theirofficers.The deterioration in the conditions under which the nezam troops livedled not only to garrisons becoming shells, empty while the troops earned theirbread in the bazaars, but also to more serious breaches of discipline. Althoughduring the nineteenth century Iran had acquired various formal codes of militarydiscipline, in practice commanders punished their men entirely at theirown discretion and soldiers guilty of individual transgressions might expectbrutal treatment. However, collective disobedience, even mutiny, might occasionallybe met with negotiation and concessions from the authorities, wholacked the means to suppress bodies of armed men. Soldiers, finding theirarrears of pay intolerable and unable to make ends meet, often resorted tomass protests, taking bast in mosques and elsewhere, sacking food shops,refusing to attend parades and intimidating senior officers. The outcome ofeach protest varied according to circumstance but, although ringleaderswere often victimized, the troops were often successful in obtaining at leasta portion of what they were due. 52By the end of the century neither Iranian reformers nor the Europeanmilitary missions had succeeded in creating a professional officer corps forthe nezam regiments. 53 Although Amir Kabir had founded the Dar al-Fununwith the intention of educating a professional officer corps, its graduateswere largely prevented from finding employment in the army owing to thepersistent opposition of those who had bought their appointments. The authoritiesobserved no formal regulations for the appointment and promotion ofofficers. These were made rather on the basis of favouritism and purchase.Nor had Abbas Mirza’s creation of a European-style graded hierarchy producedan effective command structure. Before Abbas Mirza’s reforms,officers had been known simply by appellations which indicated the numberof men under their command, as chiefs of 10, 50, 100, 1,000 and 10,000men, and modern ranks with their hierarchical significance were unknown.For his nezam regiments, Abbas Mirza abolished the old nomenclatureand introduced new ranks with titles which were the exact equivalents ofEuropean usage, naib (lieutenant), sultan (captain), yavar (major), sarhang