Unlike the other students, Naser al-Din had a more tailored mission for Abdullah: he would lead a private delegation through Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Austria before settling in London for his studies.
Accompanying him were fifteen people, including the religious scholar Hariri and Hussein, the newly promoted Deputy Minister of Finance, who would report back to Naser al-Din once Abdullah officially began his studies in London.
British Minister Justin Sheil also began hunting for the specialized talent Naser al-Din requested; as ambassador, his network ran deep across Europe.
On top of that, Naser al-Din offered these foreign experts a lucrative salary of £300 a year, ensuring plenty of qualified applicants would make the trip.
With fresh capital injected, the local armory expanded into full-scale production, which Naser al-Din formally renamed the Tabriz Military Factory.
Factory workers here earned four to six times the standard local wage, turning out modern rifled muskets and ammunition on an annual budget of roughly 200.000 tumans.
Meanwhile, local carpet mills began upgrading to modern British looms—equipment originally ordered by the Ottomans before the deal fell through, leaving Persia to reap the benefits.
“This is incredible, these machines move so fast,” Ahmed, the carpet factory manager, beamed while inspecting a freshly woven piece.
He noted that since installing the imported looms, output had already surpassed what his entire workforce used to produce by hand in a year.
With demand soaring across Britain, France, and Russia for authentic Persian carpets, cutting production time meant profit margins were about to skyrocket.
“Manager, the British buyers are asking for double our current output, and traders from other countries want in too,” an assistant reported.
“Should we hire more weavers?” “No need for extra hands just yet,” Ahmed replied.
“Let’s buy another batch of looms first, since one of these machines easily outworks a hundred men.” As British trading houses racked up massive machinery orders, Russian merchants saw their local influence slip.
Russia had long dominated Persia’s market by exporting cheap textiles, but as Azerbaijan’s local industry upgraded, that competitive edge evaporated.
Despite holding onto ultra-low import tariffs, Russian goods struggled to compete with Tabriz’s recovering textile sector, where Naser al-Din’s streamlined administrative reforms had slashed domestic transport costs.
The Russian consul burned to lodge an official protest, but without a clear legal violation, throwing his weight around risked a diplomatic headache.
His best move was egging Russian merchants on to pressure local Persian traders, giving him an excuse to step in later and demand commercial concessions.
Naser al-Din hardly had a moment to catch his breath, juggling statecraft, economic policy, and his obsession with firearms design.
Though he lacked a formal military background, he understood the key technological leaps of the nineteenth century better than anyone in the region.
Setting up a makeshift laboratory right next to the governor’s mansion, Naser al-Din spent hours tinkering alongside local blacksmiths, pouring over European gunsmithing manuals imported via British merchants.
“Let’s see, it should work like this,” he muttered, adjusting a metal mold on his workbench.
Recalling a clever British design for improving muzzle-loaders, Naser al-Din sought to fix a major headache with black powder firearms: fouling.
Standard gunpowder left thick, greasy soot inside the barrel after a few shots, making it a nightmare to ram a round lead ball down a rifled barrel without using a heavy mallet.
To fix this, he replaced the old round lead balls with a smaller, conical bullet featuring several hollow ring grooves along its base.
After casting a few prototypes, Naser al-Din prepared for live-fire testing, feeling a slight sting of hesitation over using his own guards as test subjects.
The soldiers had never seen a pointed bullet before and were visibly spooked by the strange design, but the governor’s explicit command—and a fat cash bonus of 500 tumans—convinced one nervous guard to step up.
The soldier loaded the conical round, took aim at a target wooden post, and squeezed the trigger.
Crack!
The musket kicked hard, sending the bullet straight through the bullseye before it zipped out of sight.
“Reporting back, sir!
No bullet found near the target!” the soldier called out after checking the dirt where ricochets usually landed.
Widening his search radius, the soldier finally spotted the flattened lead round embedded in a tree trunk 150 meters behind the target—triple their standard combat range.
The onlookers gasped in disbelief, and even Naser al-Din breathed a quiet sigh of relief; the fact that the barrel hadn’t ruptured in the soldier’s face was a blessing from Allah.
He immediately handed the prototype to his master gunsmiths, ordering them to replicate the design for mass production.
Thank goodness I remembered how the Minié ball was shaped and how it worked, Naser al-Din thought to himself, or I’d have spent months running blind tests.
Before leaving the workshop, he handed the engineers a far tougher assignment: finding a way to build a weapon capable of firing hundreds of rounds a minute, promising a staggering reward of 10.000 tumans to whoever cracked the code.
Drawn by the massive prize money, the craftsmen threw themselves into sketching ideas right away.
Back in Tehran, negotiations between the Ottoman delegation and the royal court reached a standstill, even with the Russian ambassador poking his nose into the room.
Desperate to avoid getting cornered by his empire’s arch-rival, Mustafa Reşid Pasha looked for a quick exit to wrap up the treaty.
Grand Vizier Haji Mirza Aghasi earned his bribe, successfully coaxing the bedridden Mohammad Shah into signing off on concessions and ordering Persian merchants in Trabzon to fall in line.
“Your Imperial Majesty, I shall take my leave,” Aghasi bowed politely, backing out of the royal bedchamber.
The moment the door clicked shut, Mohammad Shah’s calm facade shattered as he hurled a heavy book across the room.
“Does he think I’m blind?” the Shah wheezed, his face red with anger.
“Mustafa has been visiting his estate every night, hauling cartloads of gifts through his front gate!
The man sold us out for a handful of silver!” Seeing the king work himself into a frenzy, his wife Malik Jahan Khanum gently helped him lean back against his silk pillows.
The Shah’s health was deteriorating by the day, and he knew time was running out to secure the dynasty’s future.
“Your Majesty,” Malik whispered, “my informants confirm the British ambassador recently made a private trip to Tabriz.” “Tabriz?
What business does Sheil have up north?” Mohammad Shah sat up abruptly, only to groan and slump back as a sharp pang of gout shot through his limbs.
“Things have changed in Azerbaijan,” she explained softly.
“The Crown Prince recently executed over forty tribal chieftains and seized their entire estates.” Malik initially refused to believe the reports, convinced her mild-mannered son lacked the stomach for such bloodshed.
“It is true, Your Highness,” an attendant chimed in.
“The news is already confirmed across the northern provinces.” Hearing this, Mohammad Shah let out a dry, raspy laugh.
His once-timid heir was finally using iron and blood to assert his authority, a sign of growth that filled the dying Shah with sudden pride.
“If that’s the case, I can finally rest easy,” the Shah murmured, gesturing toward his writing desk.
“Bring me parchment and the royal seal.
I’m drafting a decree.” Bypassing the cabinet entirely, Mohammad Shah issued a royal decree granting Naser al-Din full administrative and military authority over the wealthy provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran, and Bakhtaran, giving his son the land, power, and revenue needed to secure the crown.