The real causes of the First Russo-Iranian War lay in what the re-
cently established Qajar dynasty perceived as a Russian military
threat to its hegemony and in the need of that dynasty to enhance its
legitimacy by asserting its sovereignty over the northwestern border
provinces. These reasons were not entirely the same as the ones for
which the war was continued for nine years. Once the fighting began
both sides had to reconsider their attitudes in light of unexpected
difficulties. At the same time, the conviction that royal honor de-
manded pursuit of the thwarted goals made the war itself a reason
for continuing to fight. The Napoleonic wars also affected the war in
the Caucasus, since Russia participated directly in those grueling con-
tests while France and Britain tried to manipulate Iran, at times to
keep Russia distracted by Caucasian problems, at times to end the
distraction. However, none of these concerns applied to the start of
the war.
The symbolic importance of the eastern Caucasus to the Qajar dy-
nasty becomes clear when viewed in the context of the political in-
stability from which Iran had suffered since the breakup of the Safavi
empire. In the violent power struggles that gripped Iran for the rest
of the eighteenth century, ambitious men looked for any possible as-
set that might help them defeat their rivals. Military strength was in-
dispensable but might not have been sufficient in itself. One of the
most important ways to enhance a claim to power was to appropriate
in some way the mantle of the Safavis. In narrowly legalistic terms,
no such claim was credible to a Shii Iranian, for whom the only legiti-
mate rulers could be the divinely chosen leader of the faithful, the
twelfth imam (the last in a series of descendants of 'Ali, Mohammad's
son-in-law), or the Safavis (who claimed descent from the seventh
imam). However, the devout, as well as the more secular, occasional-
ly made pragmatic adaptations. The theocratic element of Safavi
kingship began to decline during the reign of the first shah of the dy-
nasty, Ismail (who ruled from 1501 to 1524), in the wake of his
humiliating defeat by the Ottomans in 1514 and his administrative
reforms, which separated religious and secular administrative jurisdic-
tions. By the time Ismail's son inherited the throne, the tribal con-
federation (the Qizilbash) that formed the core of Safavi support "no
longer held the person of the shah in any special respect, whatever
the official myth might be."^5 The succession to the throne was often
contested during the Safavi era, but the competition was based on
secular factional rivalries without concern for the messianism of the
dynasty's official ideology.
Although the charismatic aspect of Safavi prestige was gone, the
92 Origins of the First Russo-Iranian War