Agha Baji Javanshir (Persian: آغابیگم جوانشیر) was an Iranian poet and public speaker, who was the twelfth wife of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar (r. 1797–1834), the Qajar shah (king) of Iran. She was the daughter of Ibrahim Khalil Khan, the governor of the Karabakh Khanate.
| Agha Baji Javanshir | |
|---|---|
 A 1956 imaginary drawing of Agha Baji Javanshir in the Zanan-e sokhanvar | |
| Died | 1832 Qom, Qajar Iran |
| Burial | Qom |
| Spouse | Fath-Ali Shah Qajar |
| Dynasty | Qajar (by marriage) |
| Father | Ibrahim Khalil Khan |
| Mother | Tuti Begum |
| Occupation | Poet |
Biography
editAgha Baji was the daughter of Ibrahim Khalil Khan, the governor of the Karabakh Khanate and member of the Turkic Javanshir tribe.[1][2] Her mother was Tuti Begum, the daughter of Javad Khan, the governor of the Ganja Khanate.[3] According to Richard Tapper, Agha Baji was married to the Qajar shah (king) Fath-Ali Shah Qajar (r. 1797–1834) in 1797 after Ibrahim Khalil Khan had sent the body of the previous Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar (r. 1789–1797) to the Iranian capital of Tehran.[4] However, the Iranian historian Parisa Sanjabi states that the marriage took place in 1779/1800, after the death of Fath-Ali Shah's wife Asiya Khanum.[1] By marrying Fath-Ali Shah, she became his twelfth wife.[4] She arrived at the court of Fath-Ali Shah with a retinue of more than 200 servants belonging to the nobility of Karabakh.[1] She was also accompanied by her brother Abu'l-Fath Khan Javanshir. Despite being well-liked at court, she continued to be a virgin for unknown reasons.[4] It has been suggested this was because Fath-Ali Shah considered her father to have had a hand in Agha Mohammad Khan's death.[1] Agha Baji received payment from the profits of Qom and its surroundings and resided in a palace next to the Imamzadeh Qasim with her family.[1]
Agha Baji died in 1832 in Qom, where she was buried. A poet and public speaker, she left a couple verses in Persian and one in Azerbaijani Turkish, demonstrating her fluency in these two languages.[1]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f Sanjabi 2019.
- ^ Bournoutian 2021, pp. 261–262.
- ^ Bournoutian 1994, p. 108 (see note 336).
- ^ a b c Tapper 1997, p. 123.
Sources
edit- Bournoutian, George (1994). A History of Qarabagh: An Annotated Translation of Mirza Jamal Javanshir Qarabaghi's Tarikh-e Qarabagh. Mazda Publishers. ISBN 978-1-56859-011-0.
- Bournoutian, George (2021). From the Kur to the Aras: A Military History of Russia's Move into the South Caucasus and the First Russo-Iranian War, 1801–1813. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-44515-4.
- Sanjabi, Parisa (2019). "احمدخان مقدم". The Great Islamic Encyclopaedia (in Persian).
- Tapper, Richard (1997). Frontier Nomads of Iran: A Political and Social History of the Shahsevan. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-52158-336-7.
Further reading
edit- Davis, Dick (2019). The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women. Mage Publishers. ISBN 978-1949445053.