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Notable People:

Mirza Mehdi Khan Etemad-ed-Dowleh Monshi-ol-Mamalek Esterabadi

Mirza Abolghassem Khan Vazir

Mirza Ahmad Khan Motazed-Dowleh Vaziri

Mirza Abdollah Khan Meshkat-ol-Molk Vaziri

Mirza Ali Jaan

Mohandess Mirza Abolghassem Khan Motazed-Daftar Vaziri

Dr. Shahrokh Vaziri

Azadeh Vaziri

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In Farsi:

صفحات مربوط به خاندان وزیری در کتاب تاریخ کرمانشاهان

خاطرات علی اصغر خان از نقش خانواده وزیری در انقلاب مشروطیت

میرزا مهدی خان استرآبادی

میرزا احمد خان معتضدالدوله وزیری

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Family history

The well-founded history of the family goes back more than 300 years. The family members have mainly been notable for being the hereditary viziers of the province of Kermanshahan during the Qajar era, the descendants of the vizier and court historian of Nader Shah Afshar, Mirza Mehdi Khan Esterabadi, and important figures in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905. They bore the honorific titles of Mirza and Khan from the seventeenth century onwards and received individual titles of nobility from 1736 until 1925 from the Afshar and Qajar dynasties.

Around 400 years ago, during the reign of the Safavid dynasty (1501–1736), the family’s ancestors resided in Esterabad (current day Gorgan), a formerly prominent city located in north-eastern Iran. The oldest ancestor whose information is available is Mirza Nassir Khan Esterabadi, a bureaucrat who lived in the seventeenth century.

His son Mirza Mehdi Khan Monshi-Mamalek Etemad-Dowleh Esterabadi grew up as a scribe in the Safavid court. He defended Nader Shah Afshar when the Afghans invaded Persia and became the latter’s official chief secretary, court historian, biographer, and advisor when Nader was the king from 1736 to 1747. He is known to be a prominent intellectual and author of his era. In 1747, Mirza Mehdi Khan was appointed as the Persian ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. In the same year, Nader Shah was assassinated, and Esterabadi went back to Persia with an army in an attempt to put a Safavid prince on the throne, but the army was defeated by Karim Khan Zand. Esterabadi spent the rest of his life writing books and poetry. He wrote the best-known history of the Afsharid era, Târikh-e Jahângoshây-e Nâderi, which was translated into French in 1770 as Histoire de Nader Chah, Empereur de Perse by Sir William Jones on behalf of King Christian VII of Denmark. The book was later translated into English as The History of the Life of Nader Shah, King of Persia. Mirza Mehdi Khan died sometime between 1759 and 1768.

The Qajar dynasty took power in Persia, or Iran, in 1794. At that time, Persia was divided into five provinces (Hokmrani) and twelve governments (Hokoomat). The administration changed during the reign of Nasereddin Shah Qajar (who ruled from 1848 to 1896), and Iran was then divided into four provinces (Iyalat) and twenty-three governments (Velayat).

Kermanshahan was part of the second-largest and most important province after Azerbaijan which included Kurdistan, Kermanshahan, Persian Irak (Isfahan, Ray, Qazvin, Kashan), and Lorestan. Kermanshahan itself was an important government of western Persia and was affluent thanks to its fertile soil and advantageous geographical position, serving as the main border with the Ottoman Empire and Baghdad.

The three sources of power composing each government were the royal leadership, represented by a Qajar prince (who was the governor); the finance and administration, headed by the hereditary viziers (and managed by the hereditary mostowfis); and the armed forces, ruled by the local tribes. The three main families representing each of these institutions in Kermanshahan were the Dowlatshahis, the Vaziris and the Zangenehs.

At the beginning of the Qajar era, the Zangeneh family came to power in Kermanshahan, and in an effort to bring in notable intellectual forces from the other regions of the Empire, the chieftains contacted Esterabadi's son Mirza Bozorg Vazir, who moved from Shiraz to Kermanshahan and became the vizier of the government.

Mirza Bozorg’s sons were Mirza Ahmad Mostowfi and Mirza Mohammad Naami. Mirza Mohammad Naami is better known as Naami Kermanshahi, and he was one of the famous poets of his era in Persia. He received the title Malek-ol-Shoara (meaning “King of the Poets”) when Mohammad Ali Mirza Dowlatshah became the governor of Kermanshahan.

Mirza Abolghassem Vazir, Mirza Ahmad Mostowfi’s grandson, became the vizier of the government of Kermanshahan, and his brother Mirza Abdolbaghi became the lawyer of Emam Qoli Mirza Emad-ed-Dowleh (the governor of Kermanshahan) in the Qajar court in Tehran. Emad-ed-Dowleh’s secretary wrote extensively about the four brothers (Mirza Abolghassem, Mirza Hashem, Mirza Abdolbaghi, Mirza Abdolmohammad) and praised their moral values.

Mirza Abolghassem Vazir’s son, Mirza Ahmad Khan Motazed-Dowleh Vaziri (1869–1924), followed his ancestors’ path and became the vizier of the government of Kermanshahan. He also was one of the great figures in the Constitutional and Freedom movement that occurred in Persia at the beginning of the twentieth century. He founded the first private school of Kermanshah called “National Sherafat School”, under the direction of Mirza Mohammad Khan Vaziri. In 1905, he founded the School of Law of Kermanshah and appointed Prince Mohammad Bagher Mirza Khosravi as its principal.

He also created the first printing office of Kermanshah, Sherafat Ahmadi. He imported the printing presses from India. It was one of the first printing offices in Persia and it led to the creation of the first newspaper of Kermanshah in 1906, Rooznaameye Kermanshah (“the Newspaper of Kermanshah”), which was under the direction of Seyyed Hedayatollah Fasih-ol-Motokallemin. The newspaper had modern content and promoted democratic values; as a result, it was later forbidden by Salar-ed-Dowleh. Motazed-Dowleh published and helped in the development of important books such as Shams o Tagra, Ghassed e Soltani, Divaane Mohammad Bagher Mirza Khosravi, Makhsane Laali, Shabaabe Kermanshahi, and Shahnameye Laahooti.

Because of his fight for freedom and democracy against the existing absolute monarchy, Motazed-Dowleh's estates were often attacked. When the anti-constitutionalist King Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar sent Salar-ed-Dowleh to Kermanshah to fight against constitutionalists, Vaziri went to Tehran with Mirza Ali Khan Sartip and other important constitutionalists of Kermanshah to form an alliance with the constitutionalists and liberals of Tehran. Salar-ed-Dowleh closed the printing office and newspaper of Kermanshah, but Motazed-Dowleh went back from Tehran to open the office again.

Motazed-Dowleh’s brother Mirza Ali Akbar Khan, a.k.a. Mirza Ali Jaan (d. 1909), was well-known for his courage: he stayed in Kermanshah to fight for the Constitutional revolution but was assassinated by Salar-ed-Dowleh in 1909.

In 1914 during the First World War, there was a famine in Iran, and Motazed-Dowleh donated 500 tons of wheat to the people of Kermanshahan and opened a bakery that would distribute bread to people. He also purchased people’s properties for high prices and gave them back to their former owners.

Motazed-Dowleh was elected as a deputy of the first parliament of Persia during its fourth term. He died of an infarct in 1923.

The Barzeh Damagh district in Kermanshah was renamed Vaziri, and a square named Vaziri Square (Meydoone Vaziri) was built. Motazed-Dowleh’s mansion is now classified as a national monument. During the end of the nineteenth century, as well as in the beginning of the twentieth century, the family became closely related to the ruling dynasty by intermarrying with the Qajar families as well as with other families present in the royal court of Tehran.

Motazed-Dowleh’s eldest son, Mirza Mehdi Khan Motazed-Dowleh II Vaziri, was the chief tax inspector of Kermanshah and Hamedan and a controller in the Ministry of Finance. He died in 1963. His second son, Mirza Abolghassem Khan Motazed-Daftar Vaziri, was born in 1908. He completed his education at the American University of Beirut in 1918 and graduated with a degree in electronic engineering from the University of Grenoble in France in 1937. He was among the first university-educated engineers in Iran. Today, the family mostly resides in Tehran, Europe, and North America.

*: « We must stress the importance of these socio-economic classes from urban backgrounds, and their impressive presence in the device of the Qâjâr power. The stability of the dynasties of vazir (vizier), through the waltz of the Safavid, Afshâr and Zand dynasties already testified of their importance. », Pouvoir et succession en Iran: les premiers Qâjâr, 1726-1834  by Hormoz Ebrahimnejad 

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3876051
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3691893

Vaziri Square in Kermanshah

Sources

"History of Nader Shah" (Taarikhe Jahangoshaaye Naaderi), 1759, Mirza Mehdi Khan Esterabadi

"ASTARABADI, MIRZA (MOHAMMAD) MAHDI KHAN B. MOHAMMAD-NASSIR" in Encyclopaedia Iranica, by J.R. Perry

"Sword of Persia" by Michael Axworthy

"The Cambridge History of Iran" by P. Avery, G. R. G. Hambly and C. Melville

"Vaziri Family" in "Historical Geography and Comprehensive History of Kermanshahan" (Tarikhe Mofassale Kermanshahan), 1994, Mohammad-Ali Soltani

"Political Parties and Secret Societies in Kermanshah", 1999, Mohammad-Ali Soltani

"A History of Journalism in the Persian-Speaking World ", 1998, Nassereddin Parvin

"La Perse d'Aujourd'hui", 1908, Eugène Aubin

Archives of the American University of Beiruth and the University of Grenoble

Website of the Municipality of Kermanshah: http://kermanshahcity.ir/index.aspx?siteid=1&pageid=1382

"Motazed-Dowleh, from the creation of the printing office to the foundation of school", 2015, Farzaneh Karami, Hamshahri newspaper