Mīrzā Taqī Khān

Mīrzā Taqī Khān (born c. 1807, Farahān, Qājār Iran—died January 9, 1852, Kāshān) was the prime minister of Iran in 1848–51, who initiated reforms that marked the effective beginning of the Westernization of his country.

At an early age Mīrzā Taqī learned to read and write despite his humble origins. He joined the provincial bureaucracy as a scribe and, by his abilities, rapidly advanced within the hierarchy of the administration. In 1829, as a junior member of an Iranian mission to St. Petersburg, he observed the power of Russia, Iran’s great neighbour. He concluded that important and fundamental reforms were needed if Iran was to survive as a sovereign state. As a minister in Azerbaijan he witnessed the inadequacies of Iranian provincial administration, and during a tenure in Ottoman Turkey he studied the progress another Islamic government had made toward modernization.

Upon his return to Iran in 1847, Mīrzā Taqī was appointed to the court of the crown prince, Nāṣer al-Dīn, in Azerbaijan. With the death of Moḥammad Shāh in 1848, Mīrzā Taqī was largely responsible for ensuring the crown prince’s succession to the throne. Out of gratitude, the young monarch appointed him chief minister and gave him the hand of his own sister in marriage. At this time Mīrzā Taqī took the title of Emir Kabīr.

Iran was virtually bankrupt, its central government was weak, and its provinces were almost autonomous. During the next two and a half years the emir initiated important reforms in virtually all sectors of society. Government expenditure was slashed, and a distinction was made between the privy and public purses. The instruments of central administration were overhauled, and the emir assumed responsibility for all areas of the bureaucracy. Foreign interference in Iran’s domestic affairs was curtailed, and foreign trade was encouraged. Public works such as the bazaar in Tehrān were undertaken. A new secular college, the Dār al-Fonūn, was established for training a new cadre of administrators and acquainting them with Western techniques. The emir issued an edict banning ornate and excessively formal writing in government documents; the beginning of a modern Persian prose style dates from this time.

These reforms antagonized various notables who had been excluded from the government. They regarded the emir as a social upstart and a threat to their interests, and they formed a coalition against him, in which the queen mother was active. She convinced the young shah that the emir wanted to usurp the throne. In October 1851 the shah dismissed him and exiled him to Kāshān, where he was murdered on the shah’s orders.