Bahman Mirza

Bahman Mirza (Persian: بهمن میرزا, romanized: Bahman Mīrzā; 1810 – 1883/84) was a Qajar prince, literary scholar, and writer who lived in Iran and later the Russian Empire. The fourth son of the former crown prince Abbas Mirza, his career in Iran was marked by several governorships, including the province of Azerbaijan (1841–1847). In 1845, riots and other disturbances started occurring in Iran as its unstable state and the illness of Bahman Mirza's full brother and sovereign Mohammad Shah Qajar (r. 1834–1848). In 1846, the Qajar Hasan Khan Salar started a rebellion in Khorasan. He and his father Asef al-Dowleh (Bahman Mirza's uncle) planned to capture the capital of Tehran and install Bahman Mirza on the throne. It is uncertain if Bahman Mirza was part of this scheme or not. He was ultimately granted sanctuary by Mohammad Shah in Tehran, but was treated in a hostile manner by him, and also continued to be worried by the schemes of the grand vizier Haji Mirza Aqasi. Bahman Mirza thus fled to the Russian Empire in November 1847. He had been granted asylum there, since the Russians considered sheltering an Iranian prince as a crucial component of their foreign policy with Iran. He spent the rest of his life there, dying in 1883 or 1884. He was survived by over 100 children and grandchildren, with many of them serving in the Russian government and military. Bahman Mirza was a patron of literature and a man of letters. He commissioned the first Persian translation of the Arabic Alf layla wa layla (One Thousand and One Nights), which was completed in 1835. With the encouragement of Mohammad Shah, he also composed the Tazkera-ye Mohammad Shahi in 1841, a Persian tazkera (anthology of poets). The tazkera is full of poetry, including 4,500 verses from Ferdowsi...