The origin of the Qajar Shah dynasty according to their Y-DNA

Aliev Akper ORCID: 0000-0002-3729-815X Genetic genealogist 77008, USA, Texas region, Houston, St. N Loop W, 1445 AzerbaijanDNAProject@gmail.com Bashirov Sarkhan ORCID: 0000-0002-9544-7870 Azerbaijan DNA Project Co-administrator, Family Tree DNA Lab. 77008, USA, Texas region, Houston, St. N Loop W, 1445 kabalali@rambler.ru Volkov Yaroslav J1-Z1842 DNA Project Administrator, Family Tree DNA Lab. 77008, USA, Texas region, Houston, St. N Loop W, 1445 yv-555@yandex.ru Asadov Ilgar Azerbaijan DNA Project Co-administrator, Family Tree DNA Lab. 77008, USA, Texas region, Houston, St. N Loop W, 1445 nsilqar@gmail.com

Rajabov Razzaq ORCID: 0000-0002-5335-0456 Azerbaijan DNA Project Co-administrator, Family Tree DNA Lab. 77008, USA, Texas region, Houston, St. N Loop W, 1445 razzaq.xansuvarov@mail.ru

IntroductionThe origin of the Qajar Shah dynasty, which ruled Iran for more than 120 years (1795-1925), has been the object of research up to the present time.

The documentary genealogy of the dynasty, since the accession of the first Shah Agha-Muhammad Khan Qajar (1741-1797), has been studied in sufficient detail ^[1-5]. After the death of Agha Muhammad Khan, the throne was headed by his nephew Babahan (the son of his brother Hussein-kuli), later known as Feth Ali Shah Kovanlu-Qajar (1772-1834), who called himself "Shah-i Turk" ("Turkic shah") ^[6].

Aga-Muhammad Khan Qajar himself traced the early history of his family to a legendary ancestor named Qajar, the son of Sartak-noyon from the Jalair tribe, mentor of Genghisid Argun Khan (1284-1291) ^[7-9]. However, a number of researchers point out that such "deep" legends are often very doubtful and may not reflect the true history ^{[10, 11]}. E. Yarshater calls the Qajars a Turkoman tribe that settled in Transcaucasia during the Mongol period, and later supported the Safavids among the seven Kyzylbash tribes ^[12].

The genealogy of the later period according to historical chronicles is confidently ascended to Gara Piri bek Qajar (XV century – 1513), the first beglyarbek of Karabakh with the center in Ganja (now Azerbaijan) ^{[13, 14]}.

The great–grandson of Gar Piri bek - Khalil Khan, the son of the then beglyarbek of Ganja Shahverdi-Sultan Ziyadogly Qajar (1508-1568) – at the end of the XVI century. He was appointed Shah Abbas I beglyarbek of Astrabad (now Gorgan, Iran), from whose descendant the future shah dynasty descended two centuries later ^{[15, 16]}. Other descendants of Shahverdi Sultan were later Karabakh Beglyarbeks, Ganja and Yerevan khans until 1829. Thus, Shahverdi-Sultan Ziyadogly is a common ancestor of both the Qajar line in Ganja and the Qajar line in Astrabad ^[17].

As we can see, the given data on the early history point to the Qajar dynasty as having originally Central Asian origin. Nevertheless, the mere presence of a detailed documentary genealogy does not mean at all that the Qajars, who lived centuries later than the Turkic-Mongol conquests of Transcaucasia and Iran, really belong by blood to the tribes of Central Asia. Over a long period of historical vicissitudes, undocumented cases are not excluded when, under certain circumstances, adopted and other third parties could also be included in the tribe.

The only way to reliably confirm the origin in the direct male line is the DNA test of the Y chromosome (the so-called Y-STR / Y-SNP test). The Y-chromosome is transmitted only in a direct male line from father to son (subject?father?paternal grandfather?paternal grandfather's father? ... etc.). The coincidence of the results of the Y-STR /Y-SNP test between two men serves as confirmation of their origin from a common paternal ancestor and allows you to assess the degree of kinship.

The search for the Y-SNP as a kind of "ancestral seal" for a group of supposed male descendants and calculating the age of their closest common ancestor is one of the classic questions of genetic genealogy. So, based on the tests of the Y-chromosome of the living Cohens, the so-called "Y-chromosomal Aaron" was genetically identified ^[18]. Using the Y-DNA of modern members of the Rurik dynasty (descendants of the ruler of Northwestern Russia in the IX century), their common Y-SNP (N-Y10931) and its age (950 years) were determined, which corresponds to the historical chronicles of the life of Rurik ^[19].

In order to clarify the paternal origin of the Qajar dynasty, in 2007, the International Qajar Studies Association, using the Family Tree DNA laboratory, conducted a Y-DNA study of two modern patrilineal representatives of the Qajar dynasty, descended from two sons of Feth Ali Shah (1772-1834) - Muhammedali mirza (d. 1821) and Huseynali mirza (d.. 1835), who had the literary pseudonym Farmanpharma ^{[20, p. 312]} (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. A fragment of the genealogy of the Qajar Shah dynasty ^[20]. The tested lines are highlighted by frames

The results were published by Leo Bargeste in the form of an article "Short Report: DNA-evidence versus the Paper Trail. Groundbreaking News on the Origin of the Qajars» ^[21].

Y-DNA tests have shown that both lines are carriers of a common 12-marker Y-STR haplotype, originate from a common paternal ancestor and belong to haplogroup J1-M267, widespread in the Middle East and the Caucasus ^[22]. The author concludes that the "Turkic origin of the Qajars" is "marginal". However, apart from the genetic confirmation of the common paternal origin of these two lines and the declaration of the marginality of the ancestral legend, there is virtually no analysis in Barjeste's work that gives a definitive answer to the question of the origin of the dynasty itself.

Problem statementFor objective reasons, at the time of the study (2007-2008), it was impossible to obtain a more accurate answer about the paternal origin of the Qajar dynasty, both due to the paucity of Y-STR databases and the limitations of the genetic study itself, which did not allow identifying deeper Y-SNPs of its modern paternal relatives.

Since 2013, Family Tree DNA has been providing a more advanced Y-DNA sequencing test called "Big Y". Project YFull.com analyzes the results of this test in more detail than the Family Tree DNA laboratory and provides a stable terminal Y-SNP, its hierarchy, ethnic environment and age.

In this regard, the purpose of this study is to obtain a definitive answer about the origin of Qajars through the identification of their terminal Y-SNP and the nearest paternal environment using new generation Y-DNA sequencing methods.

Materials and methods

The object of the study is the Y-DNA of a representative of the Shah dynasty after conducting an in-depth study of the Y-chromosome by next generation sequencing (NGS) on the basis of the Family Tree DNA genetic laboratory and subsequent calculation based on the database Yfull.com and the method ^[23].

Results and their discussionAs a result of the BigY700 test, the terminal Y-SNP of a representative of the Qajar dynasty was determined as J1-Y271395 (Fig. 2), identified so far exclusively among the population of the Gabala region of Azerbaijan (Fig. 2, ^[24]), namely among the residents of S.

Nohurgyshlag, which indicates a direct paternal relationship of the Qajar dynasty specifically with this population.

Fig. 2. Subclades J-Y271395 on the tree of haplogroup J-BY152351. The Qajar sample is designated as YF86754, the sample from the Gabala district of Azerbaijan is YF88395. The parallel branch J-Y151297 is represented by samples from the Chechen and Kabardino-Balkarian Republics ^[25]

According to ^[30], the Azerbaijanis, despite being Turkic-speaking, have an obvious genetic affinity with the surrounding Caucasian populations, indicating that the spread of the Turkic language went through the assimilation replacement of local languages without a cardinal genetic contribution of the original Central Asian groups. Probably, as a result of these processes, a representative of the autochthonous environment ended up in a Turkic tribe, whose descendants eventually became the Shah dynasty of Iran.

Conclusion- As a result of the Y-DNA test of a representative of the Qajar dynasty, a new generation of sequencing methods revealed the subclades J1-Y271395, characteristic of the population with.

Nohurgyshlak of the Gabala region of Azerbaijan and having an age of 2700 years;

- The closest common ancestor of the Shah Qajars and the population of the Gabala district lived no later than the Iron Age era.

- Subclades J1-Y271395, in turn, goes back to an older one (~6200 years) strictly Caucasian subclades J1-BY152351.

- The result clearly indicates the local origin of the Shah dynasty and allows us to completely refute the information in historical sources about its Mongolian (Jalair) origin.