“They brought down two cannons, and they opened fire from the rooftop at the andaruni [the inner section of a house, where the family women lived] and the courtyard. When I looked, I saw Cossacks standing all around the rooftop and firing on the andaruni for no reason at all. Just as I was going to see what was going on, around 200 Cossacks burst from the other door of the dining hall into the hall facing the garden. We wanted to escape through the stairway but the savage soldiers, perhaps a thousand of them, were in the stairway, the porch and the courtyard, looting the halls and the rooms. One Cossack dragged off my chador. I grabbed his gun. I was holding the barrel and he was holding its butt. Then they fired the cannons and destroyed the dormitory and the winter room.”
This is an eyewitness account of an attack on a home, or rather a mansion, by government forces on June 23, 1908, in Tehran. On that day, Iran’s king, the shah Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar, who was opposed to the constitutional monarchy ratified two years earlier by his father Mozaffar ad-Din Shah, had ordered troops to bombard the new Iranian parliament and other locations affiliated with the constitutional movement. He paid for it by losing his throne after two years of civil war.
The eyewitness quoted here was not just anybody. She was Touran Agha, Mohammad Ali Shah’s own aunt, and daughter of his grandfather Nasser al-Din Shah. Touran Agha was an intellectual as well as a princess, and an outspoken critic of her royal relatives. It was because she had sided with the constitutional revolutionaries that she was being punished with the destruction of her home.
Touran Agha was born and grew up in the royal harem. Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar (1831-1896) had around 85 wives and concubines and Touran, daughter of the concubine Khazen ol-Dowleh, who was a handmaid to the shah’s mother Mahd-e Olia, and was the shah’s twenty-first child. After Mahd-e Olia’s death Naser al-Din Shah married Khazen and tasked her with managing the harem. He later entrusted her to be his personal treasurer. Her competence made her influential with the shah as well as the harem’s own internal hierarchy. But Khazen died after giving birth to her second. Nasser al-Din Shah placed Touran and her sister in the care of another of his wives, Khojasteh Khanoum Taj ol-Dowleh.
Taj ol-Dowleh was the mother of Crown Prince Moin ad-Din Mirza, who had died when he was five. Still grieving her lost son, she cared for the two orphaned girls like their own mother, and hired teachers to educate them. The shah also gave them titles: The older sister, Touman Agha, was titled Fakhr-ol-Dowleh (“Pride of the Realm”) and the younger sister, Touran Agha, was styled Forouq ol-Dowleh (“Light of the Realm”).
Both sisters proved to be highly talented students. Fakhr ol-Dowleh, the elder, played piano and wrote poetry. Forouq ol-Dowleh, Touran Agha, excelled at calligraphy and sometimes also wrote poetry.
When Touran Agha turned 16, the shah chose Ali Zahir o-Dowleh, two years her younger, as her husband. Ali Zahir belonged to a family trusted by Nasser al-Din Shah: the shah appointed him as his chief of protocol, a position previously held by his father Ebrahim Khan, now deceased.
Ali Zahir later met Safi Ali Shah, a dervish and the guru of the Nematollahi Sufi Order, and became one of his followers. He dedicated his life to his new teacher. His wife Forouq ol-Dowleh – who after marrying had chosen the title “Queen of Iran” for herself – also joined this order.
After the death of the guru Safi Ali Shah, it was Ali Zahir o-Dowleh was elevated to lead the Sufi order. He founded the Society of Brotherhood, a freemason-like society in Iran, which aside from embracing Sufi tenets also pursued newer ideals regarding freedom. The groupsociety played an important role in the constitutional movement and, after the new constitution was signed in 1906, by Mozaffar ad-Din Shah, it continued to promote equality and freedom. Many of its members held high offices and most prominent musicians at the time were also members.
The home of the “Queen of Iran” was one of the places where these activists gathered to discuss issues and exchange ideas. Famous musicians performed there and pantomime plays on the subject of freedom in Iran were also staged.
At the same time, however, Ali Zahir o-Dowleh had fallen into financial difficulties. In 1901, Forouq ol-Dowleh, Touran Agha, wrote a letter to her brother Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar – the father of Mohammad Ali Shah, who would later bombard his aunt Touran Agha’s home – informing him of their distress. Mozaffar ad-Din Shah appointed Ali Zahir governor of Mazandaran province in response. He was appointed to several other governorships until the 1906 constitution was signed.
Ali Zahir o-Dowleh “had an enlightened mind, a good nature and good moral values,” wrote the historian and biographer Mehdi Bamdad. “He was an advocate of modernity and supported equality and a constitutional government. In his Society of Brotherhood, the high and the low sat together as equals.”
Payback for Supporting Democracy
Ali Zahir o-Dowleh was not in Tehran, but in Gilan province as its governor, on the 1908 day when Mohammad Ali Shah bombarded the parliament and other locations affiliated with supporters of the constitution. But Touran Agha, as well as Zahir o-Dowleh’s mother, daughter and several other relatives, were all at home. An hour before the attack, Touran Agha received the news that her son, Zahir ol-Soltan, who had joined the constitutionalists in the parliament building, had been beaten badly and arrested. The family was going about its business when the attack began.
In a letter to her husband, Touran Agha described how she and the other women in their home had saved themselves. The Cossacks had ignored the fact that she was the king’s aunt and had forcibly removed her chador. When the cannons opened fire, her daughter was taking a bath, and none of the other women were wearing their traditional coverings. The women and the servants rushed to the roof only to witness the looting of valuable items in the house.
Touran Agha led the other women to neighboring homes but none of their neighbors would allow them to take shelter. They escaped to another alley, banging on the doors, but again they were turned away. Finally, the servants at the home of Mirza Ali Asghar Khan Amin al-Soltan, a prime minister under both Nasser al-Din Shah and Mozaffar ad-Din Shah, let them in the house and, after short while, they were given a carriage to travel somewhere safer.
Touran Agha and her daughter Forouq ol-Molk went to the home of her married daughter, Malek al-Moluk. From there, she wrote a letter to Mohammad Ali Shah, sharply protesting against how she and her household had been treated. The king profusely apologized in his reply and promised that he would order the release of her son. Kamran Mirza, the shah’s father-in-law and Touran Agha’s brother invited her and her daughter to stay at his home. But she did not accept until he sent his wife who persuaded her to accept.
However, during the whole time that she spent at her brother’s home, she stayed alone in a single room. Then, to show good faith, the shah gave her Saheb Gharaniyeh Palace in Tehran to live in until her own home was repaired.
A year later, in 1909, the revolutionaries conquered Tehran and Mohammad Ali Shah took refuge in the Russian embassy, later going to Odesa in Ukraine which was then part of the Russian Empire. After this momentous event, a celebration was held for three days at the ruins of the home of Forouq ol-Dowleh and Ali Zahir o-Dowleh. They called it the National Victory Celebration and gathered money to help the families of members of their society that had been injured or killed when Mohammad Ali Shah bombarded the parliament and other locations. Touran Agha and her husband did not take any of the money for themselves.
The couple also left Saheb Gharaniyeh Palace for the use of Ahmad, the 12-year-old son of Mohammad Ali Shah, who was to ascend to throne after parliament deposed his father.
“Iran’s Queen” died in 1917. Little is known about her death, except that she died before her husband who passed away in 1924.
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