Page:The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909 (1910).djvu/329

 THREE PERIODS OF SIEGE OF TABRIZ 249

Three periods may be distinguished in the struggle at Tabriz. Fzrst, a short period of street-fighting when the Constitutionalists under Sattar Khan and Bagir Khan held only one or two of the thirty quarters into which Tabriz is divided, notably that of Amfr-Khiz situated by the river Aji Chay on the north-west side of the city, and when, but for the gallantry displayed by Sattar Khan, the Royalists would have secured an early and complete triumph. Secondly, a period when the Royalists, expelled from the whole or the greater part of the town, were still unable to close the roads into Tabriz and to prevent the passage of food and letters. The road to Julfa and the Russian frontier remained open longest, and was still held by Sattar Khan’s men when Mr Moore passed along it in the latter half of January, 1909, but was finally closed about February 3, when the blockade of the city was completed. Thirdly, the period of the blockade, during the latter days of which famine stared the unhappy townsfolk in the face, and many died of starvation. The last desperate sortie was made. on April 22, and four or five days later the Russian troops under General Znarsky opened the Julfa road, brought food into Tabriz, and raised the siege.

The fighting at Tabriz began on the very day of the coup @ état. On the preceding day (June 22, 1908) the muytahid of Tabriz, Hajji Mirza Hasan, the Jmdm-Jum‘a, Hajji Mirza ‘Abdu'l-Karim, Mir Hashim, and other reactionary ecclesias- tics, telegraphed to the Shah denouncing the Constitution and encouraging him to destroy it. This action infuriated the Constitutionalists, and one of them fired at, but missed, Mir Hashim, and was at once seized and killed. Thereupon the re- actionaries assembled in the Devechi (or Camel-men’s) quarter, situated immediately to the north of the Amir Khiz quarter, and seized and killed several prominent Constitutionalists, while on the other hand a bomb was thrown at the house of the mastahid, situated in the quarter of Chahar Mandar, immediately to the east of Amir-Khiz. The fighting then became general, and at one time the Constitutionalists were so hard pressed, and so despaired of holding their own, that most of them, including Baqir Khan, hoisted the white flag as a token of surrender ; but