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This paper explores the impact of Qajar-Ottoman diplomacy on issues of identity and sovereignty during the late nineteenth century as addressed in the Treaties of Erzurum of 1828 and 1848. Through these treaties, the Qajars and the Ottomans introduced notions of imperial identities, extraterritoriality, and extended their imperial spheres of influence. The Treaties of Erzurum defined subjecthood and sovereignty over subjects based on place of origin, not current location. This radical change in international politics created a new, bureaucratic method of identification. Focusing on the Qajar perspective, this paper proposes that although Qajar subjects had always travelled to the Ottoman Empire for religious or economic reasons, the Treaties of Erzurum in 1828 and 1848 changed Middle Eastern geopolitics by legally allowing the Qajar government to exercise sovereign rights over its subjects. To better understand the consequences of these new imperial identities and labels, this paper looks at different communities in the Ottoman Empire that shared special relationships with the Qajars. Each of these chapters focuses on their affiliation with the Qajars and how the Treaties of Erzurum affected them: first, the Qajar travelers, second, the Qajar expatriates, and third, the Ottoman Shi’is. The examination of Qajar government documents, Persian travelogues and newspapers reveals complicated relationships between the Qajars and these communities. Analysis of each provides insight on the Qajar Empire’s efforts in fostering a relationship with these communities, as made possible by the Treaties of Erzurum. This study contributes to a number of narratives involving the Qajar Empire. First, it challenges the weak imagery surrounding the Qajar government and shows the Qajar extension of power outside its borders. Furthermore, this paper engages in the issue of identity, a crucial concept for understanding nascent, pre-nationalist sentiments. Discussion of the Treaties of Erzurum in conjunction with nationalism or imperial power remains overwhelmingly neglected. Although previous scholars have alluded to extraterritoriality in their research, the discourse on subjecthood and identity beyond imperial borders has been ignored in the Middle Eastern context. This study serves as a starting point for future research on the subject. / text

Bloodless Battles argues for multiplicity of claims to imperial sovereignty contested by the empires of the Ottomans, the Qajars (in Iran), and the British in the space of Ottoman Iraq in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It considers the imperial assertion of sovereignty on space in the dialectic relationship between knowledge production and law. It focuses on how the space of Ottoman Iraq was contested through knowledge production in the four different disciplines of geography, archaeology, history, and medicine beyond the border as a marker of the beginning and end of territorial sovereignty. Through comparative analysis of sources from the Ottoman, Iranian, and British archives, I examine how the whole space was mapped, photographed, and written about in order to understand the discourses shaping law and jurisdiction over specific corridors and enclaves of imperial sovereignty within Ottoman Iraq. In this way Bloodless Battles contributes to histories of empire, international relations, science and technology, Ottoman Empire, Qajar Empire, British Empire, and Iraq.

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This dissertation conducts the first systematic study of illustrated Shahnama manuscripts from Qajar Iran (1789-1925). The Shahnama is a Persian epic, composed by the poet Firdawsi (940-1020 or 1025) in the eleventh century. Over time, the Shahnama became the most frequently illustrated Persian text and manuscript copies of the epic continued to be made in nineteenth-century Iran. However, rather than studying the continued production of illustrated manuscripts, scholarship on Qajar Iran has thus far privileged monumental oil paintings, photography, and lithography. I propose that in nineteenth-century Iran, illustrated Shahnama manuscripts were a potent tool for the ruling class and other ambitious individuals to express and build their identity, lineage, and power, despite the availability of other—and more public—ways to communicate the same message. A vibrant network of manuscript painters, who also worked in other media, produced these illustrated Shahnama copies in dialogue with novel forms of cultural production. Specifically, I argue that illustrated manuscripts and lithographed editions of the epic were created by overlapping circles of artists and they demonstrate how Iran and India were part of a shared cultural zone. By explaining how these two media existed in a dialogical relationship, affecting one another, this project challenges the narrative of teleological progression from one medium to the next. I center my discussion around eleven illustrated Shahnama examples and examine the manuscripts both as individual units and as interrelated parts of a group. I focus on their contexts of production, including patronage, intended audience, and artist workshop and pedagogical relationships. In Chapter 1, I study two early-nineteenth-century illustrated manuscripts (Or. 4906 in the British Library and Lewis O.58 in the Free Library) and explain how each underscored the Qajars’ royal identity and dynastic legitimacy during a period of intense competition for the throne and territorial instability. Chapter 2 explains that military leaders and elite administrators were key drivers of illustrated Shahnama manuscript production. I anchor my discussion around MS 535 in the Matenadaran Library in Armenia to outline how non-royally-commissioned manuscripts mirror the patrons’ political aspirations. Chapter 2 also traces the shared motifs that link one manuscript to another and shows that Shiraz was a major production center for illustrated Shahnama manuscripts. The visual repetitions and adaptations I identify in these manuscripts show that the period’s landscape of artistic production was a tightly woven network of artists’ pedagogical and working relationships. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the Shahnama books from the latter half of the nineteenth century, including lithographed editions printed in Bombay and illustrated manuscripts made in Iran. Images in these books display the flexibility of the artists as they began to work on both manuscripts and lithographed books; developed unique compositions rooted in the cultural and economic ties connecting Shiraz and Bombay; and expressed artistic agency and authorship as they produced for a speculative market. The four chapters together offer a fresh perspective on the Qajar dynasty’s imperial and ideological usages of the epic, the period’s active non-royal patronage and vibrant workshop practices, and Qajar society’s cultural connections to India, all of which distinctively contributed to building a visual language unique to nineteenth-century Iran.

Unlike in the Ottoman world, the exercise of judicial power in nineteenth century Qajar Iran was not contingent upon formal appointment by the political authority. In accordance with the dominant Ṣūlī theory, it derived from the perceived intellectual ability of a cleric to infer the ruling of God (Ḥukmullāh) from the sources of Twelver Shī'ī law through deductive effort (ijtihād). Like the Ottoman qāḍī, the Qajar Uṣūlī jurist or mujtahid known as Ḥākim-i shar' in a judicial context had both notarial and adjudicative powers. The Qajar jurist could thus authenticate, register, annul legal documents and act as an arbiter in lawsuits. The Qajar jurist could also, however, issue a legal opinion. This was the role of the muftī – a separate judicial office in other parts of the Islamic world. Qajar jurists exercised their extensive judicial powers through a network of informal sharī'a courts, which they came to operate in most Iranian towns and cities largely independent of direct state control. While the notarial aspects of the Qajar sharī'a court have received some scholarly attention, this study aims to investigate the role of the jurist and his ruling (Ḥukm-i shar') in sharī'a litigation (murāfa'a pl. –āt).

This thesis is a study of the attempts made in the last four decades of Naser ad-Din shah's reign to reform the government and the administration in Persia.

The purpose of this study is to examine the position of the Persian ulama toward the idea of constitutionalism and the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, as exemplified in the life and politica1 thought of Mirza Muhammad Husayn Na'ini (1860-1936).

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