Sattar Khan and Baqer Khan

Culture of origin: Azerbaijani · Historical

Holiday sources: Azerbaijani

Sattar Khan, the Sardar-e Melli ("national commander"), and Baqer Khan, the Salar-e Melli ("national chieftain"), led Tabriz's armed defence of the Constitution. On 23 June 1908, the day Mohammad Ali Shah's Cossack Brigade under Colonel Vladimir Liakhov shelled the parliament in Tehran, Tabriz's resistance began; as white flags of surrender went up on the city's rooftops, only the Amirkhiz quarter under Sattar Khan held out, and his men tore the white flags down. By October 1908 the whole city was in the constitutionalists' hands, and it held out through a royalist siege and famine; in April 1909 the parliament gave the two men their titles. In August 1910, in Tehran's Atabak Park, government forces under Yeprem Khan surrounded and disarmed Sattar Khan's men after he refused to disarm; between 30 and 300 were killed by different accounts, and a bullet broke both bones of his leg, leaving him disabled for the rest of his life. He died in Tehran on 25 Aban 1293 (November 1914). Baqer Khan and his companions were murdered near Qasr-e Shirin in November 1916 by their host, Mohammad Amin Talebani.