In June 1910 the Russians sent cossacks to Tabriz, in Northern Persia. This was allowed under the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907 in which Britain and Russia agreed to divide Iran into northern and southern spheres of influence. By 1914 a full cavalry division had been established on Persian soil at Ardabil and Mashhad that included the Poltava, Krukovskii Mountain-Mozdok, Black Sea, Sunzha-Vladikavkaz, and Kolpakovskii's Semireche Cossack Regiments as well as a couple Turkestani infantry battalions. The Russians supported the Persian Shah and even provided officers for his own cossack brigade of bodyguards. They fought rebellious tribes, demonstrators and bandits on the Shah’s behalf and served the greater Russian political good in the region.
August 1914 brought World War One. In October, casting their lot with the Germans, Turkey declared war on Russia and promptly invaded. On the border of the Ottoman Turkish empire was neutral Persia. Persia was invaded first by the Turks who had penetrated the county in the north as far as Tabriz. In 1915 German agents were inciting Persian tribes to revolt against Britain. The British landed in the south and advanced towards Tehran. In the north the Russian force was led by General Baratov which landed at Bandar-e Pahlavi in November 1915. Baratov's unit marched rapidly to Tehran where the Shah (Ahmet) was in hiding at the Russian Legation after being forced out in a coup. The Russian force reinstalled the Shah and then marched to the Hamadan to scatter the pro-German tribes and small units of Turkish troops.
General Nikolai Nikolayevich Baratov (Baratashvili) was an Ossetian, from the Caucasus mountain regions around Chechnya and had served for almost twenty-five years in various Caucasian units. He was given command of this new unit, the 1st Caucasian Cavalry Corps, a force of some 14,000 men. The corps, as its name implies, was formed of almost two-thirds horse mounted units but did have some artillery (38 guns) and infantry attached. It was composed of the cossacks already in Persia mentioned above and reinforced by such exotic units as the Georgian Cavalry Legion (which Colonel Kaikhosro Cholokashvili, later a white partisan leader in the Russian Civil War served in), Omansky Cossack Regiment, the Katerinadraski Cossack Regiment, a unit of Armenians, and Shkuro's Kuban Special Cavalry Detachment (under Andrey Shkuro who would also lead white partisans in the Civil War). This assemblage of units was as colorful and interesting as any that graced the battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars. It would fight the Ottoman Turks and their German allies across the deserts of modern day Iraq and Iran for the next four years and survived to be the last of the Tsar’s armies.
This left a legacy of cossack bodyguard units in Iran (the last Shah of Iran served in one), Syria, and Jordan where the Circassian Royal Guard of Honor of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan still wears cossack uniforms and arms today. Persian Colonel Reza Khan (later known as Shah Reza Pahlavi, founder of the Pahlavi dynasty), assumed leadership of the Iranian Cossacks Brigade in November 1918 which became the nucleus of the Iranian Army.
Sources:
Valeri Claving, Civil war in Russia : White Army. 2003.
Footman, David. Civil War in Russia. Faber and Faber, 1961.
Kenez, Peter. Civil War in South Russia, 1919-1920: Defeat of the Whites. University of California Press, 1977.
Mawdsley, Evan. The Russian Civil War. Allen & Unwin, 1987.
AI Deryabin The Russian Civil War (four volumes) by, AST Moscow, Translated by Thomas Hillman.
Wollenberg, Erich. The Red-Army: 1937
Radek, Karl. Trotsky and the Red Army 1923
S.N.Shishkin. "Civil War in the Far East" Military publishing house of the Defense Ministry OF THE USSR, Moscow, 1957.
Bennigsen Broxup ,Marie The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance towards the Muslim World. . New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992
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