Ahmad Shah Qajar

Ahmad Shah Qajar (21 January 1898 – 21 February 1930) was the seventh and last shah of the Qajar dynasty, reigning from 16 July 1909 until the dynasty's deposition on 31 October 1925. Placed on the throne as a child after his father Mohammad Ali Shah was deposed by the constitutionalists, he reigned under regents, through the First World War occupation of his country and the 1921 coup that brought Reza Khan to power, and spent his last years in Europe attempting in vain to hold his crown. ^{1 2}

He was born at Tabriz, the son of Mohammad Ali Shah and Malekeh Jahan. When the constitutionalists deposed his father in July 1909, the parliament placed the boy on the throne — eleven years old by the English article's count, twelve by the Encyclopaedia Iranica's — under the regency first of Azod-al-molk and then of Naser-al-molk. He was crowned on 21 July 1914, days before the outbreak of the First World War, in which Iran declared neutrality and was occupied anyway. ^{1 2}

His government accepted the Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919, which the Majlis never ratified; the coup of February 1921 made Reza Khan first commander and then prime minister, and real power passed to him. Ahmad Shah left Iran on 5 November 1923 and did not return. From Paris he tried to turn the anti-republican agitation of 1924 against Reza Khan, wiring instructions to suppress the republican movement and then a vote of no confidence in the prime minister, but he would not himself sail for home. On 31 October 1925 the Majlis voted to depose the Qajars — eighty deputies for, twenty abstaining, five against — and on 12 December a constituent assembly conferred the crown on Reza Shah and barred any Qajar from the throne for ever. ^{2 1}

The deposed shah settled permanently in France. He died on 21 February 1930 at Neuilly-sur-Seine — the English article says of influenza, at the American Hospital of Paris — at the age of thirty-two, leaving, by French newspaper reports, a considerable fortune; as his will directed, he was buried in the family crypt at Karbala. ^{1 2 3}

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