The Persian Constitutional Revolution (Persian: مشروطیت, romanized: Mašrutiat, or انقلاب مشروطه Enqelâb-e Mašrute), also known as the Constitutional Revolution of Iran, took place between 1905 and 1911 during the Qajar era. The revolution led to the establishment of a parliament in Iran (Persia), and has been called an "epoch-making episode in the modern history of Persia".
The revolution was "the first of its kind in the Islamic world, earlier than the revolution of the Young Turks in 1908". It opened the way for the modern era in Iran, and debate in a burgeoning press. Many groups fought to shape the course of the revolution. The old order, which Naser al-Din Shah Qajar had struggled for so long to sustain, was finally replaced by new institutions.
Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar signed the 1906 constitution shortly before his death. He was succeeded by Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar, who abolished the constitution and bombarded the parliament in 1908 with Russian and British support. This led to a second effort when constitutionalist forces marched to Tehran, forced Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar's abdication in favour of his young son, Ahmad Shah Qajar, and re-established the constitution in 1909.
The revolution ended in December 1911 when the Shah's ministers oversaw the expulsion of the deputies of the Second Majlis from the parliament "with the support of 12,000 Russian troops".
After the 1921 Persian coup d'état (Persian: کودتای ۳ اسفند ۱۲۹۹), Iran's parliament amended the constitution on 12 December 1925, replacing the 1797–1925 Qajar dynasty with the Pahlavi dynasty as the legitimate sovereigns of Iran. The 1906–1907 constitution, though not adhered to, remained until
after the Islamic Revolution, when a new constitution was approved in a referendum on 2 and 3 December 1979, establishing an Islamic republic.
The Constitutional Revolution began in 1905 with protest against a foreign director of customs (a Belgian) enforcing "with bureaucratic rigidity" the tariff collections to pay for a loan to another foreign source (Russians) that financed Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar's extravagant tour of Europe. The revolutionaries – bazaari, ulama, radicals – argued that Iran's oil industry was being sold to the British, while tax breaks on imports, exports and manufactured textiles were destroying Iran's economy (which was sustained by the bazaar merchants), and that the shah was selling assets to pay interest on the fortune in foreign debt he had accumulated.
It ended in December 1911 when deputies of the Second Majlis, suffering from "internal dissension, apathy of the masses, antagonisms from the upper class, and open enmity from Britain and Russia", were "roughly" expelled from the Majlis and threatened with death if they returned by "the shah's cabinet, backed by 12,000 Russian troops".
In between there were two different majles (parliaments), a deposed shah and a 1907 division of the country by Britain and Russia capitalizing on Iran's weak government. A new fundamental law created a parliament, giving it final approval of all loans and the budget. The majles was endorsed by the leading clerics of Najaf – Akhund Khurasani, Mirza Husayn Tehrani and Shaykh Abdullah Mazandarani.
In the late 19th century, like most of the Muslim world, Iran suffered from foreign intrusion and exploitation, military weakness, lack of cohesion, and corruption.
In the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan and the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, Iran lost "Georgia, Armenia, and their Caspian navy" to Russia, "gave up its claims to Afghanistan, and paid an indemnity of three million pounds to the tsar". In the Treaty of Paris (1857), it agreed to withdraw from Herat (formerly part of Iran) and signed a commercial treaty with Britain. The lack of a standing Iranian army was part of the problem because the forces that were raised to fight the Russians (for example) were "faction-ridden tribal contingents" and lacked modern artillery.
To compensate for his lack of an army, the Qajar Shah would use loyal tribes, putting down a rebellion by declaring a rebellious city or region open booty for the tribe, who would then appear to rape and pillage – a far more destructive means of discipline than arresting and punishing rebels. Major roads between cities that might have appeared to be investments in improving transportation, provided opportunities not for greater trade and prosperity, but for tax collectors to fleece towns along the road, and thus "encouraged the local peasants to settle in more distant regions". A survey for the British Foreign Office reported:
'There are large tracts of fertile land which remain waste owing to their proximity to the main roads, as no village having cultivators on such spots can possibly prosper or enjoy the least immunity from the pestering visits of Government officials, and thefts and robberies committed by the tribes.'
Perhaps worst of all the indignities Iran suffered from the superior militaries of European powers were "a series of commercial capitulations."
While the sales by the shah of titles, patents, privileges, concessions, monopolies, lands, ... high offices" paid for some improvements, such as a telegraph network and in Tehran a regular police force, a municipal civil service, etc., they were also spent on consumption by the shah's court.
Under the Qajar dynasty (1789–1925), foreign (Western) mass-manufactured products, "especially textiles, undermined the traditional handicrafts, and consequently presented for many bazaars a mutual enemy – the foreigner." In Isfahan at least, 10% of "the guilds in this city were weavers; not even 1/5 of those survived" competition from imported textiles. Widows and orphans were hurt, and farmers suffered: by 1894 the price they were paid for wheat harvest dropped to 1/6 what it had been in 1871; irrigation systems had fallen into ruin, "turning fields and villages into desert".
In 1872, Naser al-Din Shah negotiated a concession granting a British citizen control over Iranian roads, telegraphs, mills, factories, extraction of resources, and other public works in exchange for a fixed sum and 60% of net revenue. This concession was rolled back after bitter local opposition. Other concessions to the British included giving the new Imperial Bank of Persia exclusive rights to issue banknotes, and opening up the Karun River to navigation.
Nikki Keddie has pointed out that