Ahmad Shah Qajar
Ahmad Shah was the last Qajar shah of Persia, from July 1909, when the constitutionalists put him on the throne at eleven in place of his father, to October 1925, when the Majlis deposed him while he was in Paris and gave the crown to the Cossack officer who had governed in his name, Reza Khan. The sixteen years were the years in which the country ceased, for practical purposes, to be governed at all. He reigned under a regent until his majority in July 1914, through the second Majlis, the American treasurer Shuster's mission of 1911, which the Russians ended with an ultimatum and an occupation of the north, and the Majlis's own closure by the cabinet under Russian guns in December 1911. Then came the war, in which Persia declared its neutrality and was fought over anyway. There were the Ottomans and the Russians in Azerbaijan, the Germans under Wassmuss raising the tribes in the south, and the British South Persia Rifles, the famine of 1917 and 1918 that killed perhaps two million. There was the Anglo-Persian agreement of 1919, by which Curzon would have made the country a protectorate and which the Majlis never ratified. He was not a ruler. He was timid, fat, fond of Europe and of money, which he made by speculating in grain during the famine, which the country did not forget. When Reza Khan and Seyyed Zia marched the Cossacks into Tehran on 21 February 1921 he accepted the coup. He appointed the ministers it gave him, and made Reza Khan minister of war and, in 1923, prime minister. He left for Europe in November 1923 for the third and last time. The Majlis voted on 31 October 1925, eighty to five, to end the Qajar dynasty. He protested from Paris and did nothing else. He was born in Tabriz, the son of Mohammad Ali Shah. He died at Neuilly in February 1930, at thirty-two, of a kidney disease. He was buried at Karbala. The dynasty that had ruled since 1789 ended with him, in a hotel.
- Lived: 1898 CE – 1930 CE
- Nationality: Persian
- Roles: shah, monarch
