Mirza Malkam Khan also spelled as Malkom Khan, was a prominent Iranian modernist, preoccupied with the transformation of Iran into a modern state. The most remarkable aspect of his work was his promotion of 'law', to bring about an orderly society in which royal power was subjected or 'conditioned' (mashrut) to checks and regulations. He developed these ideas in a number of works, but most importantly in his newspaper Qanun (Law), which had a wide readership among Iran's modernists. As such, he can be considered one of the fathers of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution

Iranian Constitutional Revolution

The Persian Constitutional Revolution or Iranian Constitutional Revolution took place between 1905 and 1907...

.

Malkam Khan was born to an Armenian

Armenians

Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....

 Christian

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 family in Persia and educated at the Samuel Muradian school in Paris from 1843–51. He later returned to Persia, converted to Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

, and entered government service. He was elected as instructor at the newly established Tehran Polytechnic, Dar ul-Funun, in 1852. He went to Paris in the diplomatic service in 1857.

Malkom Khan introduced societies similar to the Freemasons in Persia in 1859, and was exiled by Nasser ad-Din Shah

Nasser al-Din Shah

Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar was the King of Iran from September 17, 1848 to May 1, 1896 when he was assassinated. He was the son of Mohammad Shah Qajar and Malek Jahan Khanom, Mahd-e Olia and the third longest reigning monarch king in Iranian history after Shapur II of the Sassanid Dynasty and...

 for doing so in 1862. He was later pardoned and given a post at the embassy in Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

. He returned to Tehran

Tehran

Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...

 in 1872 as assistant to Grand Vizier Mirza Hasan Khan Pirnia, Moshir od-Dowleh, and became the chief of the Persian legation in London (and later ambassador) in 1872. He remained in the position until 1888, and lost his position in 1889 as the result of a scandal over selling a cancelled concession for a lottery.

From London, Malkam Khan attacked both the shah and Persian government, and edited the news-sheet Qanun, which was banned in Persia but read by the shah and his ministers. Malkam Khan eventually became recognised as the most important Persian moderniser of the century, and he was later pardoned and reinstated as ambassador to Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 by Mozaffar ad-Din Shah in 1898 with the title of Nezam od-Dowleh. He remained ambassador to Italy until his death in 1908.

Further reading

• Mehrdad Kia, Pan-Islamism in Late Nineteenth-Century Iran, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 30-52 (1996).