Iran's 1905–1911 uprising beat the Young Turks to a constitution
The Persian Constitutional Revolution from 1905 to 1911 under the late Qajar dynasty produced Iran's first constitution—the earliest such upheaval in the Islamic world, preceding the 1908 Young Turk revolt. Mozaffar ad-Din Shah signed the 1906 charter shortly before dying.
It began with a customs dispute. In 1905 protesters targeted a Belgian customs chief who rigidly squeezed tariffs to service a Russian loan, money that had paid for Mozaffar ad-Din Shah's lavish European tour. Bazaar merchants, clerics and radicals charged that the oil industry was being handed to Britain, that tax breaks on imported textiles were wrecking local trade, and that the shah was selling national assets to meet interest on mounting foreign debt.
Their pressure produced a fundamental law and a parliament, the Majlis, with final say over loans and the budget, blessed by three senior clerics based in Najaf, Mirza Husayn Tehrani, Shaykh Abdullah Mazandarani and Akhund Khurasani. The shah signed the 1906 constitution just before he died. His son Mohammad Ali Shah reversed course, scrapping the charter and shelling parliament in 1908 with Russian and British backing. Constitutionalist forces then marched on Tehran, forced him to abdicate in favour of the boy Ahmad Shah, and restored the constitution in 1909. Meanwhile, in 1907, Britain and Russia exploited Tehran's weakness to divide the country into spheres.
The experiment collapsed in December 1911. The Second Majlis, weakened by infighting, public indifference, upper-class hostility and open antagonism from London and St Petersburg, saw its deputies thrown out and warned of death if they returned, with 12,000 Russian soldiers standing behind the shah's ministers.
Yet the charter outlived its makers in form. After the 1921 coup, parliament amended it on 12 December 1925 to replace the Qajars, who had reigned since 1797, with the Pahlavi dynasty. The 1906–1907 constitution, often ignored in practice, stayed on the books until voters approved an Islamic republic's constitution on 2 and 3 December 1979. Observers have called the revolution an epoch-making episode, one that also opened space for a lively new press.
Source: Persian Constitutional Revolution
