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( Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar)
Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar,[1] (July 16, 1831 - May 1, 1896) (Persian ????????? ??? ????? transliteration Nas?iri’d-Din Shah Qajar) was the King and Shah of Persia from September 17, 1848 to May 1, 1896 when he was assassinated. He was the son of Mohammad Shah Qajar and the longest reigning monarch king in Persian history. He had sovereign power for close to 50 years and was also the first Persian monarch to ever write and publish his diaries. He was in Tabriz when he heard of his father's death in 1848, and he ascended to the Peacock Throne with the help of Amir Kabir. He tried to recover the part of eastern Persia (especially Herat) that had come into the British sphere of control but after the British attack on Bushehr, he had to retreat. Herat is today a part of Afghanistan. Nasser-al-Din Shah was forced to sign the Declaration of Paris granting Afghanistan supremacy over the former Persian territories. Though Nasser al-Din had early reformist tendencies, he was dictatorial in his style of government. He persecuted Bábís and Bahá'ís, and this increased when a deranged Bábí attempted to assassinate him in 1852. He was the first modern Persian monarch to visit Europe in 1873 and then again in 1878 (when he saw a Royal Navy Fleet Review), and finally in 1889 and was reportedly amazed with the technology he saw there. During his visit to the United Kingdom in 1873, Nasser al-Din Shah was appointed by Queen Victoria a Knight of the Order of the Garter, the highest English order of chivalry. He was the first Persian monarch to be so honoured. In 1890 he met British Gerald Talbot and signed a contract with him giving him the ownership of Iranian Tobacco Industry, but he later was forced to cancel the contract after Mirza Reza Shirazi issued a Fatwa that made farming, trading and consuming tobacco as Haram (forbidden). It even affected the Shah's personal life as his wives did not allow him to smoke.
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