This unusual transfer order caused a huge uproar across the realm, as the Crown Prince’s ruthless and unconventional methods were already famous nationwide.
Nomadic tribal leaders and corrupt provincial officials viewed Nasser al-Din as an overly cruel tyrant, while senior religious leaders considered him a dangerous heretic.
Except for common citizens, local merchants, and a handful of enlightened scholars, the traditional upper class stood united against him.
Yet, because the royal decree came directly from the Shah himself, the local elites lacked the military power to openly defy it.
Instead, they opted for passive resistance, pressuring Nasser al-Din to relinquish his governorship, though a few ambitious turncoats secretly fed intelligence to the prince to save their own skins.
Mazandaran, the wealthiest province in Persia, was dominated by powerful landowning families who held immense influence.
Due to its strategic Caspian Sea coastline, Russian influence had quietly crept in from Astrakhan, flooding local markets with cheap foreign goods and propping up native trade compradors to dominate the economy.
The former governor had actively colluded with these Russian-backed agents to line his own pockets at the expense of the peasantry.
When the disgraced governor learned of his dismissal, he flew into a rage, complaining that squeezing a mere four million tumans out of the province was nowhere near enough.
By contrast, the Governor of Gilan stepped down quietly, recognizing that the bedridden Shah was simply clearing a political path for his royal heir.
Being a member of the Qajar royal house himself, the governor yielded his post gracefully, knowing the royal family and loyalist factions still recognized Nasser al-Din’s rightful place as successor.
Whether local bureaucrats chose to obey the prince’s fresh directives or play games with non-cooperation was now entirely on them.
Back in Tabriz, the Consultative Council gathered inside the governor’s mansion for its inaugural session.
Fearing Nasser al-Din might announce another shock reform, Ayatollah Mirza brought two of his sharpest scholars along to keep a close watch on the proceedings.
Once everyone settled into their seats, Amir Kabir gestured to Nasser al-Din and opened the floor.
“Gentlemen, while Tabriz is currently experiencing a business boom, our crumbling road network severely bottlenecks further growth,” Amir Kabir began, leaning over the table.
“Raw materials cannot reach our new factories efficiently, and finished textiles cannot be exported fast enough, which caps our revenue.” To solve this, British Minister Justin Sheil had pitched a modern solution: building an iron railway to accelerate regional freight transport.
Before Amir Kabir could even lay out the technical specs, Ayatollah Mirza raised his hand in sharp protest.
“The British minister again!” Mirza scoffed, shaking his head.
“We haven’t even finished dealing with the fallout from your new bank, and now you want to lay iron tracks across our land?” Amir Kabir politely brushed off the interruption and got straight to the point.
“Initial engineering estimates place the construction costs for a line from Tabriz to Ardabil at roughly 150 million tumans.” Several council members gasped at the astronomical figure, and their eyes widened even further when Amir Kabir added that the sum excluded routine maintenance costs.
The conservative scholars immediately pounced on the number.
“That is a fortune!
Wouldn’t that money be better spent directly improving the daily lives of our people?” Their pushback triggered an immediate counterattack from the progressive delegates, who had traveled abroad and held a far broader worldview.
“How can you call modernization a waste?” shot back Afghani, an enlightened intellectual on the council.
“Ayatollah, you should visit Istanbul and see their steamships, which leave our traditional dhows in the dust!” “Even the Russians, who used to trail behind us, have modernized, seized Yerevan, and pushed into Azerbaijan!
If Persia refuses to adapt, foreign powers will wipe us off the map!” Ayatollah Mirza bristled at the harsh tone, insisting the clergy wasn’t opposed to all progress, but rather to the reckless, wholesale adoption of Western customs.
“Watch your tongue, Afghani!” Afghani barely blinked.
“I will, but this is no time for petty political squabbling!
While Russia eyes our northern borders, the Ottomans want to make up for their European territorial losses by squeezing us!
Now that we finally have momentum, stopping halfway is suicide!” Unable to contain his frustration any longer, Mirza rounded on the young reformer.
“I understand your zeal, Afghani, but do you think we don’t care about the future of Persia?” “Is blindly copying the West really the right answer?
What about preserving our proud civilizational heritage, our language, and our faith?” “Are we just going to hand them the keys to rule us?” “How can you twist my words like that?” Afghani fired back, slamming his fist on the armrest.
“I am trying to keep foreign armies from conquering us!” “And I am trying to keep our country from losing its soul!” Mirza shouted.
What began as a straightforward debate on railway infrastructure had descended into a heated philosophical shouting match.
Nasser al-Din rang the brass bell on his table repeatedly, but the two factions kept hurling insults over the noise.
“Our survival depends on rapid industrialization within the next twenty years!” Afghani insisted.
“Twenty years?” Mirza laughed dryly.
“Look at our bureaucracy!
Who is going to execute these grand plans?
Do you even have the trained men to build and staff all this?” Mirza had hit the nail on the head: no matter how brilliant a royal decree looked on paper, it remained a pipe dream without capable administrators to implement it.
Recognizing this operational bottleneck, the Ayatollah favored slowing down the reform rollout to train a new generation of native talent first.
“Alright, gentlemen, calm down!” Amir Kabir intervened, raising his hands to restore order.
“We didn’t call this council to trade insults!
The Crown Prince created this body specifically to gather diverse perspectives, so let us return to the main topic: the railway.” Amir Kabir’s firm tone brought the room back to reality, encouraging the reformist faction to lay out their practical arguments for iron tracks.
“Your Highness, I claim no technical expertise on steam engines,” one merchant delegate offered, “But colleagues in Istanbul tell me trains move faster than the finest Arabian steeds!
If we link Tabriz to Ardabil, raw cotton and silk can reach our factory looms in hours, giving our local economy a massive boost.” Nasser al-Din nodded in agreement, then turned toward Ayatollah Mirza to hear the clergy’s final verdict.
“No money,” Mirza replied bluntly.
As Amir Kabir had noted earlier, total project costs could easily top 200 million tumans—a sum the provincial treasury simply didn’t possess.
Mirza conceded that the new state bank was a clever initiative that genuinely helped local merchants, but launching another massive, capital-intensive project so quickly would crush their fragile finances.
“My recommendation is simple,” Mirza stated, taking a more measured tone.
“We can build, but we must move cautiously and stay strictly within our financial limits.” The conservative scholars nodded in agreement with this prudent approach, but the progressive delegates fidgeted in disagreement, believing Persia needed bold, decisive moves to shake off centuries of stagnation.
Listening to both sides talk in circles, Nasser al-Din felt a slight headache coming on.
Yet, watching the clash between tradition and progress gave him a front-row seat to the messy birth of parliamentary debate.
The session yielded valuable insights: the clergy wasn’t entirely hostile to his reforms, provided he didn’t rush them, while the urban commercial class possessed genuine patriotism, even if their radical zeal needed temperance.
Seeing that further debate would yield no immediate consensus, Nasser al-Din adjourned the meeting, realizing he needed to secure full control over Gilan, Mazandaran, and Bakhtaran to fund his ambitious railway plans.