Chapter 5 explores the use of political correspondence (mursalāt), in the form of petitions and firmans, during the early Qajar period. Like marriage, political correspondence had a long history in Iran, but a manuscript collection of correspondence between Qajar rulers and Kangarlu tribal khans in the Caucasus helps us see how and why the use of correspondence changed during the early nineteenth century. The manuscript collection from the Majlis Library contains correspondence dating to the eighteenth century and up to 1828, with the numbers of petitions and firmans increasing dramatically during the Russo-Persian Wars (1804–13 and 1826–28). The collection suggests that correspondence was critical to Qajar efforts to protect the ‘Guarded Domains of Iran,’ that Qajar rulers in Tehran and Tabriz were well-informed of events on the war’s front, and that local circumstances and conditions in the Caucasus influenced political decisions.

Chapter 1 describes what might be called a Qajar imperial vision – the written, visual, and auditory ways that Qajar kingship and political authority were articulated, as well the structure and institutions of Qajar government. It draws on early Qajar chronicles, political ethical literature (andarznāma), art, and architecture, among other sources, to argue that Aqa Muhammad Khan and Fath-ʿAli Shah self-consciously presented themselves as heirs to a long tradition of Iranian kingship, but especially made claims to have resuscitated a model of imperial rule. The chapter helps frame the remainder of the book’s focus on early Qajar political practices.

Chapter 3 focuses on the second major source of revenue for the Qajars: gifts and tributes. The chapter begins by highlighting the long history of political gift-giving in the Iranian world. It then demonstrates the central role of the pīshkish, a tributary gift-giving ceremony, in the political culture and economy of Qajar Iran, and its function in presenting Qajar rule as a continuation of previous Iranian royal dynasties. The chapter then discusses how gifts and honors given by Qajar rulers to society were part of an effort of presenting themselves as just and legitimate. Finally, the chapter considers the use of gifts to influence diplomacy and ease relations between Iranians and foreign envoys.

Chapter 7 is on the limits of Qajar political authority and imperial rule. The chapter focuses on the case of Khurasan in the early nineteenth century, when the Afshars, under the leadership of Nadir Mirza, a scion of Nadir Shah, repeatedly rebelled against Qajar rule and refused to send taxes and tributes. It explains how the practices discussed in prior chapters were ultimately unsuccessful in extending Qajar authority in Khurasan.

Chapter 4 argues that marriage and marital practices were central in producing and reproducing Qajar political power. While dynastic marriages had long mattered in the political history of Iran, it is difficult to find a parallel to their use during the early Qajar period. Fath-ʿAli Shah alone married over 160 women and fathered over 260 children, many of whom in turn entered into numerous marriages with notable figures. By the mid-nineteenth century, an important change with far-reaching consequences had occurred in Iran: the emergence of an entire class of Qajar ‘aristocracy,’ comprising thousands of princes and princesses, who were directly descended from or related to Fath-ʿAli Shah. This chapter draws attention to the shah’s marriages, to the social and regional background of the wives, and what the political considerations of the marriages were.

This is among the first books to study the formation of Qajar Iran. It draws on a wide array of unpublished and published primary sources and adopts a socially oriented approach to political history – an approach that examines the discourse and political practices, and the centers and peripheries, of empire. Each chapter focuses on a particular practice that was at the heart of Qajar governance – land administration, gift-giving, marriage, political correspondence, provincial diplomacy, and territorial conquest and tribal relations. Together, the book highlights three closely related themes. The first is that the Qajars were part of a long historical tradition of imperial rule in the Iranian world. The second is of early Qajar governance practices being shaped by the historical circumstances of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. And the third theme is of a dynamic and evolving empire being made and remade. This is a book not of imperial structures, but of a process of imperial formation.

The Introduction explains the scope of the book, briefly sketches the history of Iran’s eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, situates the book within the existing scholarly literature, and states its two main arguments: that the formation of Qajar Iran was grounded in political, social, and economic processes; and that the Qajars attempted to form an imperial system of governance modeled on earlier imperial systems. The Introduction then explains how those arguments contribute to the scholarship on Iranian history and the histories of imperial formation.

Chapter 6 focuses on a rebellion among Arabs in Bushehr in February 1827, and the diplomatic row that followed. Rather than providing a comprehensive account of early Qajar diplomacy – a subject that could fill volumes – this chapter zeroes in on one relatively minor affair, long forgotten in the annals of history. The choice is strategic: because it drew the involvement of the Shiraz-based Qajar governor and the British Resident in Bushehr, and because of the detailed Persian- and English-language correspondence it generated, it offers a window onto a constellation of subjects: the importance of Bushehr for both the Qajars and the British, the relationship between the Qajars and Arab tribes along the Persian Gulf coast, and relations between Qajar rulers in Fars and in Tehran. The chapter illustrates how an extremely local crisis offered an opportunity for the Qajars to articulate their sovereignty and their political authority, in the face of domestic crises and international challenges.