'Military report on Tehran and adjacent Provinces of North-West Persia (including the Caspian Littoral)' [‎115r] (234/610)

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Sums allotted for the pay of troops and upkeep of public
buildings were embezzled, and justice was as venal as the other
functions of government.
“The governor was tax collector and assessor, treasurer
and paymaster, judge and administrator; an autocrat in his
province save for appeal to the Capital from those strong enough
or sufficiently powerful to make themselves heard there.”
Another source of impoverishment of the country was the
horde of princes.
In Persia every son of a Shah is a * *prince, and every
prince’s sons are princes and so on to infinity. Path AH Shah
alone had more than 100 sons and the Kajar family generally
has shown a “genius for paternity.” These princelings Avere
hungry drones nurtured at the public expense.
As the princes swarmed around the court and scrambled
for official appointments, so each provincial governor was
attended by numerous relatives and satellites, whose means
of livelihood were the “mudakhil ” obtainable by the great
man’s cortege.
The criterion of good governorship in the eyes of the Shah
was not the amelioration, contentment or prosperity of the
province, but the absence of brigandage and the regular trans
mission of the revenue to the Imperial Treasury. Similarly
the provincials accounted worthy of praise a governor who
was strong and maintained public Security.
Until the assassination of 2 Nasir-ud-Din Shah in 1896 a
fair state of law and order existed in the provinces and the
revenues were sufficient for the maintenance of the court and
the expenses of government conducted on these lines.
Such a system, however, could not last indefinitely, and
moreover it depended entirely on the personality of the Sove
reign and his nominees. The accession of the weak and extra
vagant Muzaffar-ud-Din Shah, and the spread of Western
ideas in the cities, caused its overthrow, and it is the fetish of
“Mudakhil” and “ Pishkash,” the tyranny, injustice and
ignorance of this regime that haA r e left such a disfiguring mark
on the Persian character, and produced the confusion and
incompetence which are prevalent to-day and threaten the
existence of Persia as a nation.[-'
* Stiahzadeh.
* Various Reforms were attempted by Nasir-ud-DIn but all proved more or
less abortive and the administration remained substantially unchanged until
the revolution of 1906.