Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831-1896

When he was assassinated in 1896, Nasir al-Din Shah had sat on the Peacock throne for nearly half a century. A colorful, complex figure, he is frequently portrayed as indolent and self-indulgent. Yet he was in many ways an effective ruler who displayed exceptional resilience in the face of dilemmas and vulnerabilities shared by most monarchs of the Islamic world in the nineteenth century.



In this book-the first in English about Nasir al-Din Shah-Abbas Amanat gives us both a biography of the ...