Any discussion of the degree and extent of governmental authority in early Qajar Iran involves an examination of the basic administrative structure as well as the more important restraints imposed by the nature of traditional society on the exercise of such authority. This study will focus, therefore, on the development and functioning of administration at the central and provincial levels, including the methods and machinery employed by the early Qajar state in the collection and distribution of taxable revenues. In addition, the problem faced by the first two Qajar monarchs in obtaining popular concensus with regard to the legitimacy of their rule and acceptance of their edicts will be examined.

One of the more pervasive implicit assumptions about Amīr Kabīr in both Persian and Western sources is that he was an innovator who wished to transform Iranian society. Not unrepresentative of such an assumption are comments like the following: “If Amīr Kabīr had not been killed at the hands of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh's executioners, how much he would have entangled the fate of Iran in a significant transformation.” In the same vein there is a tendency to view Amīr Kabīr as a visionary of political freedom. This tendency is perhaps most evident in two rather popularized Persian accounts of his life and career, that of Hāshimī Rafsanjānī and that of Ḥusayn Makkī. But with the advantage of hindsight, many less exaggerated accounts, also, attribute more to the intentions of Amīr Kabīr than can perhaps stand up under scrutiny. It is not uncommon, as Algar points out, for Amīr Kabīr to be reckoned among the precursors of the Constitutional Revolution.

Political systems which are able to develop share two general characteristics: first, they show an ability to assimilate political demands, and second, they sustain a dynamic integrity. The study of bureaucracy derives its importance from the essential role it plays in this dual process through its functions of recruitment of new elements on one hand, and socializing the new recruits and providing for the functioning of the system on the other.

The sale of offices as a part of this system—maintenance mechanism will be studied here through its functions of recruitment and socialization. I will attempt to study the problem as a subsystem within the larger context of a patrimonial state, and as a natural extension of the concept of an office as a piece of property. Then, I will discuss the reasons for the increase of the sale of offices during the second half of the nineteenth century in Iran, the nature of the sale itself, and finally the effect of it on the Iranian political system.