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| 1872 |
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| The Reuter Concession granted the right to build future railroads from the Caspian to the south as well as irrigation projects to Baron Julius de Reuter, a German-born British subject. The agreement also gave Reuter the right to exploit all Iran's mineral wealth and the option to open a bank. The British government did not endorse the concession, which was canceled by the shah in Nov. 1873. | 1 |
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| 1876–80 |
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| I’timad al-Saltana published a four-volume work, Mir'at al-buldan, which is partly a geographical dictionary of Iranian towns and partly a chronicle of Nasir al-Din Shah's reign. | 2 |
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| 1879 |
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| First modern police force established in Tehran under the direction of an Austrian officer. | 3 |
| THE PERSIAN COSSACK BRIGADE was formed at the request of Nasir al-Din Shah, who had been impressed with the Russian Cossack forces on his trip to Russia the previous year. Russian officers organized and commanded the unit, which promoted Russian influence in Iran. The brigade, designed to protect the shah and the government, became the best-trained division in the Qajar army. | 4 |
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| 1884 |
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| Abolition of the jizya (poll tax) on the Zoroastrian minority in Iran. The tax, paid only by non-Muslims in Islamic lands, was removed by pressure on the Qajar government asserted by the Persian Zoroastrian Amelioration Fund founded in Bombay in 1854. | 5 |
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| 1887 |
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| The Qajar bureaucrat Mirza Muhammad Husayn Farahani (d. 1912) presented to Nasir al-Din Shah his Safarnameh (Book of Travels) describing his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1885–86. One of the few Muslim accounts of the pilgrimage in the 19th century, the work depicted the social and political attitudes of an educated member of the Qajar administration. | 6 |
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| 1889, Jan. 30 |
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| Reuter concession for the formation of the Imperial Bank of Persia. The collapse of the comprehensive concession of 1872 still left Reuter with the option to open a bank in Iran, which the shah granted for a 60-year period. The imperial bank had the exclusive right to issue bank notes and was hated by Iranian merchants and moneylenders. | 7 |
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| 1890–98 |
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| Mirza Malkum Khan (1833–1908), a leading proponent of constitutional reform, published in London his newspaper Qanun (Law), in which he advocated reform and criticized the tyranny and corruption of the Qajar regime. He was one of several advocates of reform, among them Fath Ali Akhundzadeh (1812–78), Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani (d. 1896), and Abd al-Rahim Talibov (1834–1911). | 8 |
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| 1890, March 8 |
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| The tobacco concession, granting a British subject, Maj. G. F. Talbot, a monopoly on the production, domestic sale, and export of tobacco. The agreement angered local growers, merchants, and shopkeepers, and aroused a series of protests, demonstrations, and boycotts of tobacco, led by major religious figures. The shah annulled the concession on Jan. 5, 1892. | 9 |
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| 1896 |
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| Assassination of Nasir al-Din Shah by Mirza Riza Kirmani, devoted Iranian servant of the Islamic activist Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897). Afghani ordered the assassination, and the Qajar government demanded his extradition by the Ottoman sultan. | 10 |
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| 1896–1907 |
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| MUZAFFAR AL-DIN SHAH was a weak ruler who attempted moderate reforms in the central treasury, but was undermined by the debt the Qajar court owed to Britain and Russia. He paid for several lavish trips to Europe by taking out new loans, which only worsened the fiscal condition of Iran. During his reign small printing presses disseminated more information about Iran and the world outside to more people. | 11 |
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| 1900–1 |
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| Agitation against the government was expressed in the form of shab-namehs (night letters). These protest leaflets were distributed at night and urged governmental reform and resistance to imperialist powers. | 12 |
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| 1901, May 29 |
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| D'Arcy Oil Concession. The mineral rights granted to Reuter were withdrawn in 1899, thus opening the way for the new grant to William Knox D'Arcy, a British citizen with experience in the Australian gold mines. D'Arcy was granted the right to drill in all of Iran, except the five northern provinces, for 60 years. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed in London in 1909 to exploit the concession, a year after the digging of the first commercial well in Iran. | 13 |
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