BAGHDAD — Saudi Arabia drew condemnation from Iran and its allies in the region on Saturday after putting to death a prominent Shi’ite cleric who had criticized the government’s treatment of its Shi’ite minority, in a mass execution of 47 men on terrorism-related charges.

Saudi officials said the mass execution, one of the largest in the kingdom in decades, was aimed at deterring those committed to violence against the state. But analysts said that the grouping of the cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, with hardened militants was a message to dissidents, and that it could exacerbate sectarian tensions across the Middle East.

The executions followed a year in which at least 157 people were put to death, the conservative Muslim kingdom’s highest yearly total in two decades.

They coincided with increased attacks on Saudi Arabia’s Sunni monarchy by the jihadists of the Islamic State as well as with an escalating rivalry with Shi’ite Iran that has fueled conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.

Many in the region saw the execution of Nimr as part of that rivalry, and Shi'ite leaders in different countries condemned the move. Nimr was an outspoken critic of the Saudi monarchy and was adopted as a symbolic leader by Shi'ite protesters in several Persian Gulf countries during the Arab Spring uprisings.

“It is clear that this barren and irresponsible policy will have consequences for those endorsing it, and the Saudi government will have to pay for pursuing this policy,’’ said Hossein Jaberi-Ansari, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

Criticism also came from Shi'ite politicians and clerics in Iraq, the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen, and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, which issued a statement calling Nimr’s execution an “assassination’’ of a man who had “demanded the squandered rights of an oppressed people.’’

Scores of Shi'ites took to the streets to protest near Nimr’s home in eastern Saudi Arabia, and riot police officers in Bahrain fired tear gas at about 100 protesters who carried Nimr’s photograph and chanted against the ruling families of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, witnesses said.

But Saudi officials and analysts denied that sectarianism had played any role in the executions. “This means that Saudi Arabia will not hesitate to punish all terrorists,’’ said Anwar Eshki, a retired major general in the Saudi army who is the chairman of a research center in Jiddah.

When asked about Nimr, Eshki replied: “In Saudi Arabia, there is no difference between the criminals.’’

Most of those executed on Saturday had been convicted in connection with a wave of deadly Al Qaeda attacks in the kingdom about a decade ago.

But some Western analysts said that killing Nimr along with Al Qaeda militants sought to conflate his activism with a grave national threat.

“This is indicative of the hard-line tilt the regime has taken,’’ said Frederic Wehrey, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Despite Nimr’s sometimes fiery tone, his supporters and others said he had not called for violence.