Story of Ebraahim Khan Jorjani

Last updated: 2020-11-26

My paternal grandmother was a good storyteller. She, like many of the women of her generation, was called by a thousand names, except for her real name: Faatemeh Seddiq. Soleimaan Khan called her “Maar Ebraahim”, Maar being the local word for mother, and Ebraahim being the name of her first child, my beloved uncle. “Maar Ebraahim”! As if this woman had no identity before the birth of her first child, and had no other identity afterwards.

Maar Ebraahim! That’s it.

My mother (Mahindoxt Jodarvi (probably Chowdhury would be more correct)) used to tell that after her marriage (with my father, of course), and contact with her husband’s family, realized that everyone used to call Faatemeh Seddiq by a different name. My mother, who was not happy with any of those names, decided to call her mother-in-law as “Maadar”, that is the respectful pronunciation of the word “mother”. Years later, I could hear many people, at least in my presence, call Faatemeh Seddiq as Maadar.

Oh yes, I was telling. Maadar was a good storyteller, and had a story up in her sleeves about everything. From the Prophet and Imams to Jinn and fairies, from old volcanoes to the strange and weird floods, from the price of samovar in her childhood to the murder of Soleimaan Khan’s father.

The story is that Soleimaan Khan’s father, whose name was also Ebraahim, had helped Mohammad Ali Shah on his escape route to Russia. The king rewarded him by a horse with a golden tack (saddle, stirrups, bridles, halters, reins, bits, harnesses, martingales, breastplates, yes the whole bunch that are attached to the horse; or in modern Farsi “zin o barg”).

[There is a very bad habit in many writers in the sense that they suddenly start to diverge into some useless details that does not add anything to the story. It would be like describing the shape, function, and variations of saddles, stirrups, bridles, etcetera, etcetera, at this point of story. Sometimes, it seems that the writer has done a small “ad hoc research” for the purpose of writing those useless pages. I, for example, can go on and write page after page, and babble about each and every one of the horse equipments. But it does not add anything to our story. I guess this “habit” may have started in a good way by Tolkien. It is at least how I have perceived it. He goes into more details than anyone else before him. However, I never thought that Tolkien’s lengthy sidetracks are excessive. He does that to create a feeling in the reader. One example of a writer who babbles long pages about “nothing” is Dan Simmons, who is otherwise a most wonderful writer. He can write three pages about how you should handle ropes and carbines. Dan: Drop it!]

Where was I? Yes. The stupid king-dictator escaped to Russia, and two years later tried to return from Russia through Gorgaan to seize the power. He was eventually unsuccessful, but it was, apparently, a part of his campaign to reward those who had been loyal to him, like Ebraahim Khan, with gifts. [Now, wait a moment, …, I am thinking that the story as told by Maadar might actually explain a little bit more than she had realized: A person receiving a gift from a deposed king gets killed? Why? Let’s continue.] Yes, the King gave a horse with Golden tack to Ebraahim Khan during his attempts to regain the crown and the throne.

[You see, again at this stage, I am resisting the temptation to go into the details. I don’t need to fully describe Iranian Constitutional Revolution; and why Mohammad Ali shah was against it, and why did he order the bombardment of the house of parliament (in Farsi: Majles), and how the militia of Sardar Asäd, Sattar Khan, Bagher Khan, …, defended the constitution, and many more things. Do I? As exciting as these may be, they do not add any important element to the story of killing of Ebraahim Khan Jorjani. I am really trying very hard not talk about these unrelated matters. You can Google them for yourself. However, if YOU, the readers, insist, I can, at a later occasion come back and, write about these matters. OK?]

Ebraahim Khan had apparently been a big landowner in that area. “They say” that he, in addition to several castles, among others, the Mohammad Aaqaa castle and probably the No [New] castle, was the owner of several villages, and a sizable part of Abr forest between Shaahrood and Gorgaan. However, as you will see, he had little political or military power.

Maadar continued the story as follows. One late summer afternoon, life was passing by as normal, Ebraahim Khan was overseeing the construction of a new canal in the courtyard of the Mohammad Aaqaa castle.

Understanding Maadar was, at times, very difficult. For example, at this point, all of a sudden, she interrupted her story, lowered the dark, dark glasses that she wore all the time, looked me in the eyes and told me: “At that time your father was 13 years old”. Of course, seeing my dropped jaws, she realized something was wrong. I exclaimed: “My father?”, to which she responded: “Yes, yes, your grandfather”. Phew!

Maadar turned away her head from me, pushed up her dark, dark glasses, and resumed the story. [What? Oh yes, she had troubles with her eyelids and covered them with dark glasses. This is not her story. I will explain this when we come to her story, later]. Yes, while men were at work with the canal, and children were running around, a group of Prince Azodi’s horsemen rushed into the courtyard, started beating Ebraahim Khan with clubs, lifted him up, put him on back of one of the horses, and rushed out of the castle, while still beating him. The lifeless corpse of Ebraahim Khan was returned to castle the next day.

Apparently, and I don’t know who could have been a witness or given a testimony on this, upon arrival of the horsemen at Prince Azodi’s castle with Ebraahim Khan’s dead body, the prince shouts at his men: “Why did you kill him? I just wanted to talk with him.” Maadar, shaking her head, said it seemed that Prince Azodi had heard about the King’s gifts, and wanted to see them or somehow “acquire” them. But prince’s men miss-interpreted the instructions and did what they did.

This was the story of Ebraahim Khan, as told by my Maadar. Of course, Maadar continued the story. But I don’t see why I should include the rest under the “Story of Ebraahim Khan Jorjani”. The rest must be told in the “Story of Soleimaan Khan Jorjani”.

Now, when you listen to your grandma or grandpa you should be very careful. You never know what you hear is a reflection of truth or it has been embellished a little bit (or a lot, depending on the subject!). There are also a lot of holes in the story. While she was telling the story, I tried to avoid interrupting her as much as I could. Now, more than 50 years after hearing this story from Maadar, I wonder if I can make any sense of the short story that she told me.

I had heard bits and pieces of this story from many people, especially from my mother, but never from my father! As trivial as it may seem, I have a feeling that this story has had a deep impact on all near and distant relatives of Ebraahim Khan, and not only the Jorjanis. Otherwise, why would Mehdi Fallaahi, a distant cousin of my father, be willing to spend time and resources on the re-acquisition of Ebraahim Khan’s properties? [Oh! No! I am not going to spend time on opening a new can of worms here. Maybe later.]

I any case, let’s return back to the reason for the murder of Ebraahim Khan. In short, helping Mohammad Ali Shah meant that he was in opposition to the Constitutional Revolution. On the other hand, Prince Azodi (Nossratollaah Amir Aäzam, grandson of Fat’h Ali Shah) not only was an ardent supporter of the Constitutional Revolution, he also has had his own ambitions of becoming king.

If that is the case, then the gift of a horse with golden tack has been something that the grownups had told my paternal grandparents in their childhood, and this must have been what they told to their children and grandchildren.

So, after all, Ebraahim Khan stood on two wrong sides of history. He was an ally of the losers, and he was an advocate of immoral type of government.

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