Abu-'l-Qāsim H̱ān Nāṣir-al-Mulk

Abu’l-Qāsem Khān Qarāgozlu , known by the title Nāṣer-al-molk , (13 July 1856 – 26 December 1927) was an Iranian politician who served as Regent, Prime and Finance Minister of Iran during the Qajar era.

Early life Naser al-Molk studied at the Balliol College, Oxford, from 1879 to 1882. Among his classmates were Sir Edward Grey, later British Foreign Secretary, and Cecil Spring Rice, later British Ambassador to Tehran and Washington, D.C..

Political career Prime minister After returning to Iran, he became an interpreter for Naser al-Din Shah. Later, he served as Finance Minister, then as Governor, and for a short time as Prime Minister during the period of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran in the reign of Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar in 1907. However, under pressure from some parliamentarians he resigned. Because he failed to ask Mohammed Ali Shah for his permission before resigning, the latter had him arrested. Naser al-Molk was released from prison only after an intervention by the British ambassador. Seeing his life threatened, he fled to England.

Regent He did not return to Iran until after the fall of Mohammed Ali Shah in the summer of 1909 where he was installed as Regent for the infant Ahmad Shah Qajar and assumed the office of prime minister once again for a short time. He held the office of Regent until Ahmad Shah came of age in 1914. In a deep political character analysis of Naser al-Molk, the American treasurer-general of Iran, William Morgan Shuster, suggested that he showed a lack of strong leadership in his office.

Life in England In 1915, Naser al-Molk left Iran and lived in England until his death. In 1919, he made another political appearance as an advisor to Lord Curzon in the drafting of the Anglo-Persian Agreement of August 1919. He died in 1927 at the age of 64.

Literary activities Naser ol-Molk translated William Shakespeare's Othello into Persian in 1916, under the title . It was published for the first time in Paris in 1917. It was staged in Tehran in 1932, with the Soviet Armenian actor Vahram Papazian playing the lead role (since Papazian did not know Persian, he said his lines in French, while the other actors spoke in Persian). Naser ol-Molk also translated Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.