His father always wrote to him as ‘my well-beloved first-born,’ and up to 1888 he allowed him great power and freedom of action.  He was fond of ‘playing at soldiers,’ and he went to work at this amusement with such energy and will that he formed a numerous and very efficient army under well-trained officers, too good, the Shah thought, to be quite safe.  Nasr-ed-Din sent an officer whom he could trust to Isfahan to bring back a true report on the army there; and such was the Zil’s self-assurance, that he went out of his way to show him everything, and to make the most of his force.

The Shah, on learning all, became jealous or suspicious, and ordered the reduction of the troops to the moderate limits really required for provincial purposes.  As affairs then stood, the Zil, with his well-appointed army, was master of the situation, but he was constrained to submit.  He singled out the Amin-es-Sultan (now the Sadr Azem) as his enemy at Court, and regarded him as the strong adviser who influenced the Shah.  His relations with Tehran then became so strained that the Shah summoned him to his presence to have his wishes clearly explained to him.  The meeting of father and son did not tend to smooth matters, and the latter, allowing his temper to carry him to extreme lengths, tendered his resignation of the various governments he held, asking only to retain the governorship of Isfahan.  His request was granted, and from that time he made no secret of his enmity to the Prime Minister.

Two or three years later the Shah restored to him some of the provinces which he had resigned in 1888, and this enabled, him to carry out more successfully the task which he had set himself, viz., that of amassing money, after his army was broken up.  The warlike Bakhtiari tribe form the most important part of the military strength under the nominal command of the Zil-es-Sultan, but he alienated them entirely by his cruel and treacherous murder of their popular chief, Hussein Kuli Khan, in 1882, and the long imprisonment of his son, the equally popular Isfendiar Khan.  Now that he has promised allegiance to his brother, Mozuffer-ed-Din Shah, we may regard the peace of the South as assured.

The Naib-es-Sultaneh, Kamran Mirza, as Minister of War, Commander-in-Chief, and Governor of Tehran, who was in constant attendance on his father, was also regarded by foolish partisans as a likely successor to the throne, but he himself never entertained the idea.  His position as head of the army gives him no real power—­in fact, it rather takes from his influence as Governor of Tehran; for the soldiers look upon him as a costly appendage, for whose pleasures and palaces their pay is clipped.