Chasing Aziz Khan: Slavery, Intimacy, and Archival Traces in the Nasseri Court

This presentation examines the archival traces of enslaved people who resided in the Gulistan harem during the reign of Nasser al-Din Shah (1848–1896). I argue that these figures who are either ignored or treated as marginal in the historiography of the period were in fact central to the social, political, and intimate life of the Nasseri court. Focusing on one court eunuch who appears across disparate sources, the paper explores the methodological challenges and possibilities of reconstructing the lives of minor figures in nineteenth-century Iranian history. By centering such figures, the presentation intervenes in Qajar historiography through examining how gender, sexuality, intimacy and enslavement structured both lived experience and archival visibility. Although there are abundant references to enslaved figures within the Qajar archives, these traces are often fragmented, uncatalogued, or rendered legible only through their affiliation with elite subjects. As a result, enslaved people and eunuchs appear in the archive most often at the moments when intimacy, sexuality, and familial relations intersected with political power and intrigue. The paper suggests that attending to minor figures not only revises our understanding of the Nasseri period, but also illuminates how gender and sexuality emerge in the archive through the intimate and coercive entanglements of slavery and family. It is these very entanglement of slavery and family within the Qajar harem which profoundly shaped not only social relations, but power and politics within this elite institution.