Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, Lunch Offered to the Italian Legation. Teheran, November 1865

Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, Lunch Offered to the Italian Legation. Tehran, 18 November 1865.

135x90 mm. Menu lithographed on card printed in gold and blue, with dry-pressed outer frames. At the top, the Persian royal coat of arms. Headed on the reverse ‘Of the Cross of Dojola’.

Persian menus are considered to be of utmost rarity. Nāṣer al-Dīn Shāh Qājār (Tabriz, 16 July 1831 – Tehran, 1 May 1896) was Shah of Persia from 1848 to 1896, when he was assassinated. The son of Muhammad Shah Qajar, he was the third longest-reigning ruler in Persia after Shapur II of the Sasanian dynasty and Tahmasp I of the Safavid dynasty. Nāṣer al-Dīn Shāh Qājār was the first Persian sovereign to write and publish his own diaries. He began his reign with modernist reforms but gradually became more conservative and traditionalist over time. Despite his original reformist tendencies, his style of governance was dictatorial. He persecuted followers of the Báb and the Bahá’í, especially after an assassination attempt against him in 1852. The subsequent repression led to the execution on 31 August 1852 of thirty Bábists, including the poetess Táhirih. When the young Nāṣer al-Dīn ascended to the throne, Persia was virtually bankrupt, the central government was weak, and the provinces were almost autonomous. With the help and advice of Prime Minister Mirza Taghi Khan, the Shah initiated important reforms across all sectors of society. State expenditures were drastically reduced, and court expenses were separated from public expenses. The instruments of central administration were improved, and the Prime Minister became accountable for all areas of the bureaucracy. Economic Policy Foreign interference in Persian affairs was limited, and trade with foreign nations was encouraged, while the bureaucracy was prohibited from using the traditional baroque and pompous style in official documents, fostering the birth of a modern style in Persian prose. Many public works were also launched, such as the Tehran bazaar, but especially the first modern university in Persia, the polytechnic Dar al-Funoon. Here, all modern sciences, such as medicine and technology, were taught by foreign (mainly Austrian and French) but also Persian teachers. These reforms sparked discontent among the notables of the kingdom, who, excluded from government, viewed Mirza Taghi Khan as a social climber and a threat to their interests. With the active support of the Queen Mother, they managed to convince the Shah that the Prime Minister was usurping his power. Mirza Taghi Khan was deposed in 1851 and subsequently assassinated by the Shah’s order. Diplomacy Nāṣer al-Dīn Shāh sought to exploit the rivalry between Russia and Great Britain to his advantage, but political meddling and occupations of territories traditionally under Persian control increased. In 1856, Great Britain supported the annexation of Herat to Afghanistan, a state that the British helped establish to hinder Russian expansion in Central Asia. The Russians, on the other hand, completed the conquest of present-day Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in 1881, reaching the north-eastern borders of Iran and severing the historical ties between Persia and the cities of Bukhara and Samarkand.