'Military report on Tehran and adjacent Provinces of North-West Persia (including the Caspian Littoral)' [‎202r] (408/610)

none of them are of any calibre, and a brother Sardar Leader of a tribe or a polity; also refers to a military rank or title given to a commander of an army or division. Kabir,
a nonentity. He is head of a family which have been feudal lords
of Tunakabun from the end of the 18th century, when Agha
Muhammad Khan, Kajar, granted governorship and estates to
Mehdi Khan Tunakabuni, the founder of the family.
Their influence increased and during the life-time of
Habibullah Khan, Sa id-ud-Dauleh, father of Sipah Salar, the
districts of Kalaristaq and Kalardasht and subsequently of
Kujur were grouped with the governorship of Tunakabun, which
remained within this family. Habibullah Khan and more
especially Sipah Salar acquired property in these districts. The
Khwajahvand tribe and others resented this land grabbing.
Disturbances started in 1914 and in 1918-19 the Kujuris under
Salar Fatih (No. 61) Shuja’-i-Nizam and his brother (No. 63)
twice reached Khurramabad in Tunakabun and looted Sipah
Salar’s estates. The sons of Sipah Salar by their intrigues
against each other and their father for the management of the
estates fostered these troubles.
Sipah Salar inherited practically the whole of his father’s
property to the exclusion of his relatives. He is possessed with
a mania for the acquisition of land and is considered the biggest
landowner in Persia. In addition to his Tunakabun estates
with parks at Khurramabad and Shahsavar, he owns property
in Gilan, most of which has been confiscated by Jangalis and
Bolsheviks, in Rudbar and in other parts of Kazvin province,
which produce much grain, in Tehran, ’Iraq and elsewhere.
Owing to losses sustained at the hands of Kujuris, Jangalis
and Bolsheviks, and the slump in rice owing to impossibility
of export to Russia, he is said to be short of cash. He commenced
his career in military service and then held many offices including
the governorship of Talish 1877-78, of Astarabad 1889, of
Gilan from 1899 to *1903, of Ardabil in 1904, of Gilan in 1907,
of Astarabad in 1907.
In August 1908 he was sent by Muhammad Ali Shah to
command the Royalist troops beseiging the Revolutionaries in
Tabriz but fell into disagreement with ’Ain-ud-Dauleh (No. 6)
and with the Shah and abandoned his command, appeared before
Enzali in February 1909, when the revolutionaries killed the
Governor, and chose him Governor in defiance of the Shah.
In April 1909 he proceeded to Kazvin as nominal commander
of the revolutionary army of which Yeprim the Armenian is
generally supposed to have been the leading spirit, and entered
* During this period he constructed the Rudisar-Lahijan-Rasht-Kasma road.