The Qájár dynasty: “Násiri’d-Dín Sháh, a selfish, capricious, imperious monarch”

Násiri’d-Dín Sháh, a selfish, capricious, imperious monarch, succeeded to the throne, and, for half a century, was destined to remain the sole arbiter of the fortunes of his hapless country. A disastrous obscurantism, a chaotic administration in the provinces, the disorganization of the finances of the realm, the intrigues, the vindictiveness, and profligacy of the pampered and greedy courtiers, who buzzed and swarmed round his throne, his own despotism which, but for the restraining fear of European public opinion and the desire to be thought well of in the capitals of the West, would have been more cruel and savage, were the distinguishing features of the bloody reign of one who styled himself “Footpath of Heaven,” and “Asylum of the Universe.” A triple darkness of chaos, bankruptcy and oppression enveloped the country. His own assassination was the first portent of the revolution which was to restrict the prerogatives of his son and successor, depose the last two monarchs of the House of Qájár, and extinguish their dynasty. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

The Qájár dynasty: “the bigoted Muhammad Sháh” – “refused to interview the Báb and imprisoned Him in Ádhirbayján”

As to his successor, the bigoted Muhammad Sháh, one of his earliest acts, definitely condemned by the pen of Bahá’u’lláh, was the order to strangle his first minister, the illustrious Qá’im-Maqám, immortalized by that same pen as the “Prince of the City of Statesmanship and Literary Accomplishment,” and to have him replaced by that lowbred, consummate scoundrel, Hájí Mírzá Aqásí, who brought the country to the verge of bankruptcy and revolution. It was this same Sháh who refused to interview the Báb and imprisoned Him in Ádhirbayján, and who, at the age of forty, was afflicted by a complication of maladies to which he succumbed, hastening the doom forecast in these words of the Qayyúm-i-Asmá: “I swear by God, O Sháh! If thou showest enmity unto Him Who is His Remembrance, God will, on the Day of Resurrection, condemn thee, before the kings, unto hellfire, and thou shalt not, in very truth, find on that day any helper except God, the Exalted.” 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

The Qájár dynasty: “the uxorious, philoprogenetive Fath-‘Alí Sháh” – “a vain, an arrogant, and unscrupulous miser, notorious for the enormous number of his wives and concubines”

The successor of Áqá Muhammad Khán, the uxorious, philoprogenetive Fatḥ-‘Alí Sháh, the so-called “Darius of the Age,” was a vain, an arrogant, and unscrupulous miser, notorious for the enormous number of his wives and concubines, numbering above a thousand, his incalculable progeny, and the disasters which his rule brought upon his country. He it was who commanded that his vizir, to whom he owed his throne, be cast into a caldron of boiling oil. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

The Qájár dynasty: Áqá Muhammad Khán, the eunuch Sháh and founder of the dynasty – “an atrocious, avaricious, bloodthirsty tyrant”

The Qájárs, members of the alien Turkoman tribe, had, indeed, usurped the Persian throne. Áqá Muhammad Khán, the eunuch Sháh and founder of the dynasty, was such an atrocious, avaricious, bloodthirsty tyrant that the memory of no Persian is so detested and universally execrated as his memory. The record of his reign and that of his immediate successors is one of vandalism, of internal warfare, of recalcitrant and rebellious chieftains, of brigandage, and medieval oppression, whilst the annals of the reigns of the later Qájárs are marked by the stagnation of the nation, the illiteracy of the people, the corruption and incompetence of the government, the scandalous intrigues of the court, the decadence of the princes, the irresponsibility and extravagance of the sovereign, and his abject subservience to a notoriously degraded clerical order. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

Divine retribution on the Qájár dynasty

This hope, however, was to remain unfulfilled. It was indeed shattered by a reign which had been inaugurated by the execution of the Báb, and the imprisonment of Bahá’u’lláh in the Síyáh-Chál of Tihrán, by a sovereign who had repeatedly instigated Bahá’u’lláh’s successive banishments, and by a dynasty that had been sullied by the slaughter of no less than twenty thousand of His followers. The Sháh’s dramatic assassination, the ignoble rule of the last sovereigns of the House of Qájár, and the extinction of that dynasty, were signal instances of the Divine retribution which these horrid atrocities had provoked. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)