Wednesday, February 11, 2009

3

Qajar dynasty that ruled Iran for more than one century were essentially of turco-mongol origins with multiples tribe ramifications in Transoxania (now Uzbekistan) and in north-eastern of Iran . Polygamy was a tradition in khananates and Sultanates , so a khan , an amir or a sultan usually had many wives and the consequences were the numerous children and grandchildren , sometimes forgotten by the grandfathers. This asian tradition in the king's palace was more refined than elswhere , and the 'Harem' was a part of the palace destinated to the wives of the king , sultan or 'shah'. For example my mother, 'Shokat-Khatoon ' , was a descendant of 'Fath-Ali-Shah-Qajar' .

Because I was a curious child and because of the historical researches of my father , I wanted to know why my parents had chosen the name of 'Teymur' for me. Finally I found out that my grand grand father 'Shahrukh-Mirza' was one of the son of the Timurid prince 'Babur-Ulugh-Beg' the ruler of 'Ferghana' (Uzbekistan ) in 16th century . Then the descendants of this prince settled in Khorassan in northeastern of today's Iran as one of the Qajar tribes who were always in conflict with the other rival khananates.

So I discovered why my name was 'Teymur' because i was a descendant of 'Timur-lenk' or 'Tamerlane the Conquerer', and also of the Qajar tribes from my father and mother lines both.

Later , after the victory of the Qajar Khans over the Zand dynasty , and after taking the power and the creation of Qajar Dynasty by 'Mohammad-Khan' ,Qajar shah , my ancestors moved to the western part of Iran and they stayed in Tabriz. Then I began asking myself that if we were from Qajar tribes , why our family name , instead of being Qajar , became Roshdi .

After the collapse of the Qajar dynasty , because of the underdeveloppment of the country , also because of the lack of administrative institutions , people did not have official civil-cards or just a citizenship-card . Usually they were called after their location. For example for some times my family's second name was tabrizi , because we were born in Tabriz. But after the creation of the first modern school in Iran by my uncle 'Mirza-Hassan' , and basically because he was educated in Anatolia in a teacher-formation school called 'Roshdiyyeh' , all our family members opted for some derivatives of that school's name , such as 'roshdiyyeh', 'roshdieh' , 'roshdi-zadeh' or quite simply 'roshdi' as their second name, and this regularity was realized after the creation of civil administrative institutions . In this way i knew why my first name was 'teymur' and my second name 'roshdi' , having timurides and qajars as ancestors.



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