The Small Players of the Great Game: The Settlement of Iran's Eastern Borderlands and the Creation of Afghanistan

349 Pages·2004·1.74 MB·English

by  Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh

SMALL PLAYERS OF THE GREAT GAME
This book deals with the nineteenth-century Anglo-Russian Great Game played
out on the territorial chessboard of eastern and northeastern parts of the waning
Persian Empire. The Great Game itself has been written about extensively, but
never from a Persian angle and from the point of view of the local players in that
game. Looking at the territorial consequences of the Great Game for the local
players is a unique approach, which deserves a special place in the studies of
history, geography, politics and geopolitics of the age of modernity.
Particular attention is paid in this work to the impact of the age-old rivalries
between local dynasties such as the Khozeimehs of Khorasan (of Iran) and
Abdalis of Afghanistan on shaping the global structure of the Great Game itself
and on the political geography of West Asia. The work presents a thorough study
of the nineteenth-century Anglo-Russian games of geopolitics that have shaped
today’s political geography of West Asia and the evolution of the international
boundaries between Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asian republics. For
the first time, this study reveals how, through the agency of Britain and Russia,
the state of Afghanistan and the former Russian provinces of Central Asia were
created out of the northeastern provinces of the Persian Empire.
Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh is Professor of Geopolitics at the University of Tarbiat
Modarres in Tehran, and Chairman of the Urosevic Foundation in London. For
35 years he has been doing research in and teaching the political geography and
history of Iran and West Asia, the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. He lectures
extensively in North America, Western Europe, the Middle East and the Far East
and has published widely in English and Persian, with translations in other
languages.
SMALL PLAYERS OF THE GREAT GAME
The settlement of Iran’s eastern borderlands and the creation of
Afghanistan
Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh
First published in 2004 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY
10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of
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# 2004 Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-48027-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-33766-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-31213-2 (Print edition)
I dedicate this book to the memory of the late Amir Hussein Khan Khozeime Alam without whose
encouragement and assistance this book would not have been started let alone finished. He sadly passed
away on 30th April 2002 unable to see the completion of this work.
I can take no political step without exposing (myself) to suspicious inquiries and interference on the part of
either Russia or England. These two great powers, instead of discussing their rivalries with each other,
always made Iran the victim of their mutual jealousies.
Iranian Prime Minister Mirza Ali-Asqar Khan Amibn as-Sultan 1902—1903
CONTENTS
List of illustrations Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 The great game and its major players
2 Small players: the Khozeimeh family
3 Khozeimeh foreign relations
4 The partitioning of Khorasan and the creation of Afghanistan
5 The partitioning of Khorasan and Baluchistan and the emergence of modern
boundaries
6 The partitioning of Sistan and the evolution of boundaries with Afghanistan
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Maps
2.1 The Khozeimeh amirdom at its peak (1747—1753)
5.1 Hashtadan and Hari-rud boundaries (MacLean’s Line)
5.2 Namakzar and Qaenat boundaries (Altay’s Line)
5.3 The Goldsmid and Holdich Lines in Baluchistan
6.1 Sistan boundaries (Goldsmid’s Line)
6.2 Rough sketch of the Hirmand River and its tributaries
Plates
2.1 The Amir of Qaen and the staff of the amirdom
2.2 Major General Goldsmid and his staff with Amir Alam Khan of Qaen and Sistan
2.3 Amir Alam Khan III, Mir Tuman, Heshmat al-Molk I,
Amir of Qaen and Sistan
2.4 Amir Ali-Akbar Khan Hesam ad-Doleh II, Heshmat al-Molk II, Amir of Sistan and Tabas
2.5 Amir Mohammad Esmail Khan Shokat al-Molk I
2.6 Amir Mohammad Ebrahim Khan Shokat al-Molk II Alam as Minister for Post, Telegraph and
Telephone under Reza Shah (1939) and his son Amir Asadollah Kham Alam, Mohamma-Reza Shah’s
Prime Minister (1962-4)
2.7 Amir Ebrahim Khan Shokat al-Molk II flanked by his two nephews: Amir Masum Khan Hesam ad-
Doleh and Amir Mohammad Reza Khan Samsam ad-Doleh
2.8 Amir Mohammad-Reza Khan Khozeimeh, Samsam ad-Doleh, the last Khozeimeh governor of Sistan
2.9 Amir Masum Khan Hesam ad-Doleh II, when Amir of Qaenat and Sistan
2.10 The late Amir Hussein Khan Khozeime Alam, son of Amir Masum Khan Hesam ad-Doleh III and son-
in-law of Amir Ebrahim Khan Shokat al-Molk II, Governor General of Sistan and Baluchistan,
Undersecretary of State for Agriculture, Majlis Deputy and Senator
3.1 The former British Consulate at Sistan
3.2 Amir Mohammad Ebrahim Khan Shokat al-Molk flanked by the British and Russian diplomatic
missions at Birjand in the early twentieth century
4.1 Two views of the walls around the city of Herat in the nineteenth century
4.2 Farrokh Khan Amin al-Molk (later Amin ad-Doleh)
5.1 Amir Masum Khan Khozeimeh, deputy governor of Sistan
6.2 Satellite photograph of Hirmand, Hamun and God-e Zereh
PREFACE
When I offered my book The Amirs of the Borderlands and Eastern Iranian Borders to
RoutledgeCurzon, I was warmly invited by Mr Malcolm Campbell to take a
fresh and different look at the subject, perhaps from a more international point of
view. His suggestion opened up a new horizon for research and study into the
historical and geographical implications of the role of an important local player
in the Anglo-Russian Great Game of geopolitics in the nineteenth century. I was
inspired by the possibility that this subject for study could be re-examined from
an entirely different and perhaps more interesting perspective. I had already done
the bulk of the research work and had the opportunity of resuming consultation
with the sources that had helped me in my original work. Of these sources, the
more senior and more knowledgeable members of the Khozeimeh family were
still willing to assist me in my new undertaking in respect of the role that their
ancestors played as the small players in the Great Game.
In my discussions with Amir Parviz Khozeimeh Alam I benefited from his
insight into the power balance in the nineteenth century and how this affected the
way his ancestors ruled in Greater Khorasan. Before that, I had conducted
several months of discussions with Amir Hussein Khan Khozeime Alam who
had seen for himself the way his father Hesam ad-Doleh iii and his father-in-law
Shokat al-Molk ii had ruled parts of Khorasan, Sistan and Baluchistan in the
early twentieth century. During these conversations I learned that his forefathers
had ruled areas now shared by Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan for about thirteen
centuries. I already knew that, because of his family background and influence in
that region, he himself had acted as the governor general of the province and as
its representative in the Iranian parliament both as a Deputy and a Senator for
many years.
During my initial enquiries I noticed that no one had thus far paid any attention
to the impact on the political geography of the Iranian Plateau by the Great
Game on the one hand, and by the smaller players in that game, like the
Khozeimehs, on the other. The prospect of such a study presented a real
challenge, and one that was well worth taking on. My new discoveries included
the fact that published information on geopolitical aspects of the
Great Game and the role of Khozeimeh amirdom in it was far scantier than I had
anticipated. Yet, I had the family’s own valuable information available to me.
Furthermore, documents of British Foreign Office stored in the Public Record
Office proved to be invaluable. An abundance of unexplored British diplomatic
correspondence on the role of the family in the process of shaping political
geography of lands constituting Eastern Iran, Central Asia and Afghanistan was
there waiting to be discovered. Similarly, my access to the few unexplored
Iranian government documents that have survived made it possible for me to
appreciate the way regional entities have approached the issues that shaped the
political geography of the region.
In the course of my research works, I discovered that the role of the frontier-
keeping amirdom of Khozeimeh in the border provinces of Khorasan, Sistan and
Baluchistan constituted a significant feature of the Great Game and played a key
role in shaping the political geography of that region. My second discovery was
that this particular aspect of political geography of the Great Game in West Asia
had not been studied before, and that an attempt in that direction would amount
to a notable contribution to the knowledge of history and geography of the
region. I also discovered that the background to and evolution of boundaries
between Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Central Asian states - one of the
earliest examples of the modern creation of boundaries - had not been studied in
depth. The natural conclusion was therefore to undertake a study of the role of
the smaller players in the Great Game from a regional point of view. My hope is
that this work will contribute to the study of the role of local authorities in
shaping the political geography of the border areas of Iran, Afghanistan and
Central Asia, a useful addition to the body of knowledge of the shaping of states
and boundaries in our modern world.
Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh London