The Qajar Dynasty in Iran: The Most Important Occurence Evented in the Qajars Monarchy
Vahid Rashidvash
Abstract
The first Iranian state was the Achaemenian Empire, established by Cyrus the Great in about 550 B.C. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in 330 B.C. The Greeks were followed by the Parthians, who ruled from 247 B.C. until A.D. 224, and the Sassanians, who ruled from A.D. 224 until the Arabs conquered Iran in A.D. 642. The Arabs brought with them Islam, which eventually became the predominant religion. In the centuries that followed, Iran was ruled by a succession of Arab, Iranian, and Turkic dynasties. In 1501 the Iranian Safavis created a strong centralized empire under Ismael I and also established Shia Islam as the official religion. In the eighteenth century, Iran was weakened by civil wars, new dynasties came to rule, and a new regional rival, Russia, arose. The Qajar dynasty in Persia (present-day Iran) spanned 130 years, beginning with Agha Mohammad Qajar in 1795 and ending with Ahmad Shah in 1925. It was a period in Persian history that saw substantial British and Russian regional influences that eventually created a backlash over time in the form of the Constitutional Revolution. In the nineteenth century, Iran, under the Qajars, lost much of its territory in the Caucasus and Central Asia to Russia.
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