sentences:  Clerical political influence was institutionalized during the Safavid Empire about 500 years ago.In modern times the Grand Ayatollah Mirza Shirazi intervened against Nasir al-Din Shah when that Qajar Shah gave a 50-year monopoly over the distribution and exportation of tobacco to a foreign non-Muslim.Shirazi issued the famous fatwa against the usage of tobacco as part of the Tobacco Protest.