The Qajar Great Game and the Henna of Narmashir

Over the 1880s and 1890s, the Qajar Empire increased patrols along its eastern frontiers in Baluchistan in response to Anglo-Russian expansion in Central Asia in what has been termed the “Great Game.” In Bam, the site of an important frontier military outpost, Ibrahim Khan Saʿd al-Dawla gradually consolidated his control over local tribal forces during these decades and established his family, the Bihzadis, as the major players among the local elite. In the process, the Behzadis pushed out several important local notable families in Bam, including a dominant administrative and landholding household, the Mirzaʾis and began to consolidate their control over the lucrative henna crops of nearby Narmashir. Using a recently published 1894 travelogue from the governor of Kirman, ‘Abd al-Husayn Mirza Farman Farma, and the writings of provincial elites from the late 19th and early 20th century, this paper will discuss the Bihzadis as an example of a frontier military household that successfully navigated the politics of the Great Game along Iran’s eastern frontiers and utilized Qajar attention to Anglo-Russian advances to their own advantage. The case of the Bihzadis is an important contribution to the ongoing debate over Iranian agency in the Great Game, while also reconciling this with the low level of political and economic integration of the Qajar state, by shifting the focus of historians to the exercise of power at the local level. The economic activities of the Behzadis, in expanding commercial agriculture along the frontier and expanding the administrative control of Kirman’s governor-general, was as an important part of the integrative process on the margins that accompanied Qajar imperial ambitions in the Great Game.