SAEDNEWS: After the assassination of Naser al-Din Shah, the women of the royal Naserian harem were worried about what would happen to them with the passing of Naser al-Din Shah and the arrival of the new king, and what changes their lives would undergo.
According to the Saed News Agency, after the death of Naser al-Din Shah, there was no longer any music, singing, joy, or celebration in the royal harem. In the words of Taj al-Saltaneh herself:
“Days and nights passed, and this magnificent and splendid palace, which at all hours of the day and night was filled with joy and happiness, was imprisoned in a terrifying and painful silence. Nothing could be heard except the sound of crying and lamentation.”
However, in the meantime, there were those who took advantage of this silence and mourning in the harem and the absence of a king, and filled their own pockets with coins.
The story of these acts of enrichment after the death of Naser al-Din Shah and before the arrival of the new king is a subject that should be addressed separately. What is noteworthy, however, are the accounts written by Taj al-Saltaneh in her memoirs.
According to these memoirs, a few days after the king’s death, Amin al-Molk, the brother of the Prime Minister (Amin al-Sultan), who was the treasurer at the time, entered the inner palace with the Prime Minister and went to the treasury. They removed a large amount of money—in fact, everything that was in the treasury—under the pretext that the new king, Mozaffar al-Din Shah, was in debt and the funds needed to be sent to Tabriz, where he was residing at the time.
The details of how such a large amount of money was taken are also remarkable. Taj al-Saltaneh writes that for eighteen consecutive days, thirty-four servants carried sacks of money from morning until evening and delivered them out of the treasury. The money taken out was then collected at the treasurer’s house (Amin al-Molk), and part of it was eventually delivered to the Prime Minister’s household.
This was not the end of the looting of the treasury. The money and jewels of Etemad al-Saltaneh, one of Naser al-Din Shah’s close associates and a very wealthy man who had died a few days before the king, had been entrusted to a woman named Fatemeh, his servant.
Before the Prime Minister and his associates fully took over the storage room from Fatemeh, they would bring her dinner at night. After the dishes were emptied, they would fill the empty containers with gold coins, seal them, and then hand them over to Fatemeh’s brother at the door. In this way, the money was smuggled out.
Taj al-Saltaneh also notes: “Fatemeh herself also managed to take a sufficient share of the gold coins in the meantime.”
