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The days of the Qajar dynasty were now numbered. The torpor of the national consciousness had vanished. The reign of Nasiri'd-Din Shah's successor, Muzaffari'd-Din Shah, a weak and timid creature, extravagant and lavish to his courtiers, led the country down the broad road to ruin. The movement in favor of a constitution, limiting the sovereign's prerogatives, gathered force, and culminated in the signature of the constitution by the dying Shah, who expired a few days later. Muhammad-'Ali Shah, a despot of the worst type, unprincipled and avaricious, succeeded to the throne. Hostile to the constitution, he, by his summary action, involving the bombardment of the Baharistan, where the Assembly met, precipitated a revolution which led to his deposition by the nationalists. Accepting, after much bargaining, a large pension, he ignominiously withdrew to Russia. The boy-king, Ahmad Shah, who succeeded him, was a mere cipher and careless of his duties. The crying needs of his country continued to be ignored. Increasing anarchy, the impotence of the central government, the state of the national finances, the progressive deterioration of the general condition of the country, practically abandoned by a sovereign who preferred the gaieties and frivolities of society life in the European capitals to the discharge of the stern and urgent responsibilities which the plight of his nation demanded, sounded the death knell of a dynasty which, it was generally felt, had forfeited the crown. Whilst abroad, on one of his periodic visits, Parliament deposed him, and proclaimed the extinction of his dynasty, which had occupied the throne of Persia for a hundred and thirty years, whose rulers proudly claimed no less a descent that from Japhet, son of Noah, and whose successive monarchs, with only one exception, were either assassinated, deposed, or struck down by mortal disease.
(70:1)
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