ment may have been colored by the fact that those critics felt that
the shah was not spending enough on the war against Russia. The
charge is not implausible, but neither is it provable. The shah might
also have limited his contribution to the war because he was con-
cerned about the government's solvency or because he feared making
'Abbas too strong. If he was a miser, he nonetheless gave British rep-
resentatives expensive ceremonial presents, such as gold coins and
gold brocade robes.
37
Whatever his motives, Fath 'Ali did not assume primary financial
responsibility for the war. That burden was to be borne instead by
the government of Azerbaijan. The province had some important
economic assets, especially its good pasture and farm lands around
Khoi in the northwest and Ardabil in the northeast and its location
on the trade routes to the Caucasus and Anatolia. 'Abbas and Mirza
Bozorg tried to stimulate the provincial economy by curbing the
depredations of local officials and developing newly discovered
mineral resources. Despite the province's relative prosperity, there
were districts, especially around Miyaneh in the south, which were
extremely poor. Early in the war, there was an outbreak of plague
in Yerevan (then considered a part of Azerbaijan) in which many
Iranian soldiers and an unknown number of civilians died. Moreover,
when Fath 'Ali made Hosein Qoli Khan the governor of Yerevan in
1807, he separated that area from the Azerbaijani administration,
giving Hosein Qoli control of all of Yerevan's revenue. In some ways,
this change made excellent sense—Yerevan prospered under Hosein
Qoli's rule and the khanate's army was successful in opposing the
Russians. However, it weakened the war effort in other ways. The
rivalry between 'Abbas and Hosein Qoli impeded their cooperation
against the common enemy. The loss of Yerevan's revenue worsened
'Abbas economic position at a time when he was trying to strengthen
his army by having French officers organize European-style infantry
and artillery units, among other changes.^38
The resources of Azerbaijan were not equal to the demands put on
them. According to Mirza Bozorg, the provincial government taxed
as heavily as it dared but occasionally operated at a deficit. In the
years during which Fath 'Ali sent his own troops into battle, his
treasury covered the expenses, but he sometimes refused to send
'Abbas money on the grounds that Azerbaijan's revenues were suffi-
cient. The enlargement of Azerbaijan by the inclusion of some terri-
tory further south could not alleviate the serious financial problem.
After 1810, the British paid Iran an annual subsidy of 150,000 pounds
that went primarily to defray the expenses of 'Abbas's European-
TheWar, 1804-1813^119