EMĀMVERDĪ MĪRZĀ ĪL-ḴĀNĪ

 

EMĀMVERDĪ MĪRZĀ ĪL-ḴĀNĪ (b. 14 Šawwāl 1211/ 9 March 1796, date of death not known), the twelfth son of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah Qajar; his mother was Begom Jān Qazvīnī (Solṭān-Aḥmad Mīrzā, pp. 35, 206). When only eleven years old, he received the title īl-ḵānī and was made chief of the royal guards (sarkešīkčī-bāšī), a post he held from 1222/1807 until the death of his father in 1250/1834 (Montaẓáam-e nāṣerī III, p. 1487). In 1238/1822 he was appointed governor of Qazvīn but returned to his previous post within a year.

Upon the death of his father, Emāmverdī joined the camp of his brother ʿAlī Mīrzā Ẓell-al-Solṭān, who had laid claim to the throne of the crown prince Moḥammad Mīrzā. Emāmverdī led a force of 15,000 strong against the crown prince’s army at Sīāh-dahan (present-day Tākestān), but his army disintegrated and he joined the camp of the new king Moḥammad Shah. In 1252/1836, ten days after the shah had his grand vizier Abu’l-Qāsem Qā’em-maqām killed, Emāmverdī and other princes who had opposed Moḥammad Shah were arrested and exiled to Ardabīl. In 1253/1837 Emāmverdī and his brothers ʿAlī-Naqī Mīrzā Rokn-al-Dawla and ʿAlī Mīrzā Ẓell-al-Solṭān escaped from the fortress where they had been imprisoned and took refuge in Russia. They were not well received because the tsar’s court maintained good relations with the reigning monarch in Tehran (Jahāngīr Mīrzā, pp. 256-61). The three princes therefore left Russia for the Ottoman empire, where they settled.

 

Bibliography (for cited works not given in detail, see “Short References”):

Alīqolī Mīrzā Eʿteżād-al- Salṭana, Eksīr al-tawārīkò, ed. J. Kayānfar, Tehran, 1370 Š./1991, pp. 183, 420-27, 450-53.

Bāmdād, Rejāl I, pp. 162-63.

Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, Montaẓam-e nāṣerī III, pp. 1487, 1557, 1622, 1628-29.

Jahāngīr Mīrzā Qājār, Tārīḵ-e now, ed. ʿA. Eqbāl, Tehran, 1327 Š./1948.

Mīrḵᵛānd (Tehran), X, pp. 113, 141, 145-48, 170, 192-95.

Solṭān-Aḥmad Mīrzā ʿAżod-al-Dawla Qājār, Tārīḵ-e ʿażodī , ed. ʿA.-Ḥ. Navāʾī, Tehran, 1355 Š./1976, pp. 168, 184, 294.

(Ḥosayn Maḥbūbī Ardakānī)

Originally Published: December 15, 1998

Last Updated: December 13, 2011

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Vol. VIII, Fasc. 4, pp. 394-395