| Abstract: | The major foreign concessions granted in the reign of Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar have received considerable attention, none more so than the Tobacco Rebellion, which is generally viewed as a watershed event in the awakening of political consciousness in Iran. Although mentioned in most of the published material on the precedents of the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, a revised narrative of the tobacco rebellion is overdue. This paper fills the gaps and revises some of the widely held assumptions on the forces that unleashed a nationwide movement that almost brought down the Qajar dynasty. The emphasis is on the incendiary protests in Tabriz and the largely neglected role of Hajj Kazem Malek-al-Tojjar. This article, which is the fifth of a series by the author on the two Malek-al-tojjar-e mamalek-e mahrusa of the Qajar era, questions the authorship of the fatwa (hokm) and re-assesses the motivation for its hasty proclamation and dissemination. In other words, were the “sensation-seekers” the heroes of reform or is there a neglected version to extricate from the truths and half-truths propounded about this watershed event? |
