# Persian Constitutional Revolution The Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911) forced Iran's Qajar monarchy to accept the country's first constitution and an elected parliament, the Majles. It made Iran one of the earliest constitutional experiments in Asia and the Middle East — and established the recurring Iranian demand for self-government that echoes through every later uprising, from the 1953 nationalist movement to the [[Iranian Green Movement]] and [[Woman Life Freedom]]. ## The Coalition The revolution grew out of the same clergy-merchant alliance that had won the [[Tobacco Protest]] a decade earlier, now joined by a rising class of liberal intellectuals influenced by European constitutionalism. Their shared grievance was a monarchy that taxed and borrowed recklessly, sold concessions to foreign powers, and answered to no law. Mass protests in 1905–06 — including a famous *bast* (sanctuary sit-in) by thousands of merchants and clerics — forced the dying Mozaffar al-Din Shah to grant a constitution and convene the first Majles in 1906. ## Backlash and Strangulation The constitutional order was fragile from birth. The next shah, Mohammad Ali, despised it; with Russian backing, he had the Majles bombarded by the Cossack Brigade in 1908, touching off a civil conflict in which constitutionalist forces eventually retook Tehran and deposed him. But the deeper threat was foreign: the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention had carved Iran into British and Russian spheres of influence, and in 1911 a Russian ultimatum effectively shut the second Majles down. The constitutional experiment survived on paper but was hollowed out in practice. ## Legacy For the vault, the Constitutional Revolution is the headwaters of Iranian self-government and a cautionary tale about how foreign intervention strangles liberal openings — a pattern that recurs catastrophically in the [[1953 Iranian Coup]]. The instability of the constitutional decades also created the vacuum that [[Reza Shah Pahlavi]] exploited to seize power in 1921, trading parliamentary chaos for centralized autocracy. The Majles itself survived as an institution, but the unfulfilled promise of 1906 — a sovereign Iran governed by law rather than by shah, cleric, or foreign embassy — remained the country's defining unfinished business. *See also: [[Iranian History Hub]], [[Tobacco Protest]], [[Reza Shah Pahlavi]], [[1953 Iranian Coup]]*