201-476: Farah Pahlavi ( Persian : فرح پهلوی ; née Diba [ دیبا ]; born 14 October 1938) is the former Queen and last Empress ( شهبانو , Shahbânu ) of Iran and is the widow of the last Shah of Iran , Mohammad Reza Pahlavi . She was born into a prosperous Iranian family whose fortunes were diminished after her father's early death. While studying architecture in Paris , she was introduced to Mohammad Reza at
402-846: A de facto embassy, a move that offended many in the Islamic world. When Eisenhower visited Iran on 14 December 1959, Mohammad Reza told him that Iran faced two main external threats: the Soviet Union to the north and the new pro-Soviet revolutionary government in Iraq to the west. This led him to ask for vastly increased American military aid, saying his country was a front-line state in the Cold War that needed as much military power as possible. The Shah and Soraya's marriage ended in 1958 when it became apparent that, even with help from medical doctors, she could not bear children. Soraya later told The New York Times that
603-643: A " Great Civilization " ( تمدن بزرگ ) in Iran led to his leadership over rapid industrial and military modernization, as well as economic and social reforms. During World War II , the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran forced the abdication of Reza Shah and succession of Mohammad Reza Shah. During his reign, the British-owned oil industry was nationalized by the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh , who had support from Iran's national parliament to do so; however, Mosaddegh
804-661: A "Muslim sovereign and a Catholic princess", the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano , considered the match "a grave danger", especially considering that under the 1917 Code of Canon Law a Roman Catholic who married a divorced person would be automatically, and could be formally, excommunicated . In the 1960 U.S. presidential election , the Shah had favoured the Republican candidate, incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon , whom he had first met in 1953 and rather liked, and according to
1005-450: A "progressive" Shah, a reformer who would modernise Iran, who attacked in his speeches the "reactionary" and "feudal" social system that was retarding progress, bring about land reform and give women equal rights. Determined to rule as well as reign, it was during the mid 1950s that Mohammad Reza started to promote a state cult around Cyrus the Great , portrayed as a great Shah who had reformed
1206-564: A 1957 study compiled by the U.S. State Department , Mohammad Reza was praised for his "growing maturity" and no longer needing "to seek advice at every turn" as the previous 1951 study had concluded. On 27 February 1958, a military coup to depose the Shah led by General Valiollah Gharani was thwarted, which led to a major crisis in Iranian-American relations when evidence emerged that associates of Gharani had met American diplomats in Athens, which
1407-753: A British company won a contract with the Iranian government that was suddenly cancelled and given to Siemens instead. An investigation by the British embassy soon uncovered the reason why: Mohammad Reza wanted to bed the wife of the Siemens sales agent for Iran, and the Siemens agent had consented to allowing his wife to sleep with the Shah in exchange for winning back the contract that he had just lost. On 24 July 1959, Mohammad Reza gave Israel de facto recognition by allowing an Israeli trade office to be opened in Tehran that functioned as
1608-638: A Dari dialect. In the 19th century, under the Qajar dynasty , the dialect that is spoken in Tehran rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule, numerous Russian , French , and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology. The first official attentions to
1809-524: A Soviet invasion. In January 1959, the Shah began negotiations on a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, which he claimed to have been driven to by a lack of American support. After receiving a mildly threatening letter from President Eisenhower warning him against signing the treaty, Mohammad Reza chose not to sign, which led to a major Soviet propaganda effort calling for his overthrow. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev ordered Mohammad Reza assassinated. A sign of Mohammad Reza's power came in 1959 when
2010-453: A boy, Mohammad Reza was often spoiled by his mother and sisters. Mohammad Reza was very close to his twin sister Ashraf, who commented, "It was this twinship and this relationship with my brother that would nourish and sustain me throughout my childhood ... No matter how I would reach out in the years to come—sometimes even desperately—to find an identity and a purpose of my own, I would remain inextricably tied to my brother ... always,
2211-887: A ceremonial role. In 1961 during a visit to France, the Francophile Farah befriended the French culture minister André Malraux , leading her to arrange the exchange of cultural artifacts between French and Iranian art galleries and museums, a lively trade that continued until the Islamic revolution of 1979. She spent much of her time attending the openings of various education and health-care institutions without venturing too deeply into controversial issues. However, as time progressed, this position changed. The Queen became much more actively involved in government affairs where it concerned issues and causes that interested her. She used her proximity and influence with her husband Mohammad Reza, to secure funding and focus attention on causes, particularly in
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#17330935609142412-459: A coup by ignoring the Shah's decree. Zahedi's son Ardeshir acted as the contact between the CIA and his father. On 19 August 1953, pro-Shah partisans—bribed with $ 100,000 in CIA funds—finally appeared and marched out of south Tehran into the city centre, where others joined in. Gangs with clubs, knives, and rocks controlled the streets, overturning Tudeh trucks and beating up anti-Shah activists. As Roosevelt
2613-953: A coup. In June 1946, Mohammad Reza was relieved when the Red Army pulled out of Iran. In a letter to the Azerbaijani Communist leader Ja'far Pishevari , Stalin wrote that he had to pull out of Iran, as otherwise the Americans would not pull out of China , and he wanted to assist the Chinese Communists in their civil war against the Kuomintang . However, the Pishevari regime remained in power in Tabriz , Azerbaijan, and Mohammad Reza sought to undercut Qavam's attempts to make an agreement with Pishevari as way of getting rid of both. On 11 December 1946,
2814-508: A daughter who, under agnatic primogeniture , could not inherit the throne. The pressure for Farah was acute. The shah himself was deeply anxious to have a male heir as were the members of his government. Furthermore, it was known that the dissolution of the Mohammad Reza's previous marriage to Queen Soraya had been due to her infertility. The couple had four children: The exact role the new queen would play, in public or government affairs,
3015-418: A dictionary called Words of Scientific Association ( لغت انجمن علمی ), which was completed in the future and renamed Katouzian Dictionary ( فرهنگ کاتوزیان ). The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name Academy of Iran . It was established by the initiative of Reza Shah Pahlavi , and mainly by Hekmat e Shirazi and Mohammad Ali Foroughi , all prominent names in
3216-812: A diplomat serving as the Persian Ambassador to the Romanov Court in St. Petersburg , Russia. Her own father was an officer in the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces and a graduate of the French Military Academy at St. Cyr . Farah wrote in her memoir that she had a close bond with her father, and his unexpected death in 1948 deeply affected her. The young family was in a difficult financial state. In their reduced circumstances, they were forced to move from their large family villa in northern Tehran into
3417-500: A language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Farsi , which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more often to refer to Iran's standard Persian. However, the name Persian is still more widely used. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has maintained that the endonym Farsi is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that Persian
3618-463: A lifelong love of all things French. In articles he wrote in French for the student newspaper in 1935 and 1936, Mohammad Reza praised Le Rosey for broadening his mind and introducing him to European civilisation . Mohammad Reza was the first Iranian prince in line for the throne to be sent abroad to attain a foreign education and remained there for the next four years before returning to obtain his high school diploma in Iran in 1936. After returning to
3819-417: A literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time. This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary Standard Persian". There are three standard varieties of modern Persian: All these three varieties are based on the classic Persian literature and its literary tradition. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from
4020-547: A loving, if possessive and superstitious, mother and an overbearing martinet father was to make Mohammad Reza "a young man of low self-esteem who masked his lack of self-confidence, his indecisiveness, his passivity, his dependency and his shyness with masculine bravado, impulsiveness, and arrogance". This made him into a person of marked contradictions, Zonis claims, as the Crown Prince was "both gentle and cruel, withdrawn and active, dependent and assertive, weak and powerful". By
4221-426: A matter that had not much interested him before. Mohammad Reza was determined to copy Mosaddegh, who had won popularity by promising broad socio-economic reforms, and wanted to create a mass powerbase as he did not wish to depend upon the traditional elites, who only wanted him as a legitimising figurehead. In 1955, Mohammad Reza dismissed General Zahedi from his position as prime minister and appointed his archenemy,
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#17330935609144422-506: A meeting to discuss how best to surrender. When Reza Khan learned of the meeting, he flew into a rage and attacked one of his generals, Ahmad Nakhjavan , striking him with his riding crop, tearing off his medals, and nearly personally executing him before his son persuaded him to have the general court-martialed instead. The collapse of the Iranian military that his father had worked so hard to build humiliated his son, who vowed that he would never see Iran defeated like that again, foreshadowing
4623-529: A period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed toward a fully accepted language of literature, and which was even able to lexically satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%. In the Ottoman Empire, Persian was used at the royal court, for diplomacy, poetry, historiographical works, literary works, and
4824-716: A series of reforms aimed at transforming Iran into a global power and modernizing the nation by nationalizing key industries and redistributing land . The regime also implemented Iranian nationalist policies establishing Cyrus the Great , the Cyrus Cylinder , and the Tomb of Cyrus the Great as popular symbols of Iran . The Shah initiated major investments in infrastructure, subsidies and land grants for peasant populations, profit sharing for industrial workers, construction of nuclear facilities, nationalization of Iran's natural resources , and literacy programs which were considered some of
5025-515: A shared apartment with one of Farideh Ghotbi's brothers. The young Farah Diba began her education at Tehran's Italian School , then moved to the French Jeanne d’Arc School until the age of sixteen and later to the Lycée Razi . She was an athlete in her youth, becoming captain of her school's basketball team. Upon finishing her studies at the Lycée Razi , she pursued an interest in architecture at
5226-580: A speaker of Persian. Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages , which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision . The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which Kurdish and Balochi are
5427-504: A teenager. Reza Khan always addressed his son as shoma ("sir") and refused to use the more informal tow ("you"), and in turn was addressed by his son using the same formality. The Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński observed in his book Shah of Shahs that looking at old photographs of Reza Khan and his son, he was struck by how self-confident and assured Reza Khan appeared in his uniform, while Mohammad Reza appeared nervous and jittery in his uniform standing next to his father. In
5628-480: A university student in 1950s France about being asked where she was from: When I told them Iran ... the Europeans would recoil in horror as if Iranians were barbarians and loathsome. But after Iran became wealthy under the Shah in the 1970s, Iranians were courted everywhere. Yes, Your Majesty. Of course, Your Majesty. If you please, Your Majesty. Fawning all over us. Greedy sycophants. Then they loved Iranians. From
5829-583: A wide selection of Iranian artifacts from foreign and domestic collections. This was achieved with the help of the brothers Houshang and Mehdi Mahboubian, the most prominent Iranian antiquities dealers of the era, who advised the Empress from 1972 to 1978. With these artifacts she founded several national museums (many of which still survive to this day) and began an Iranian version of the National Trust . Museums and cultural centres created under her guidance include
6030-410: A year, the couple searched for permanent asylum. Many governments were unwilling to allow them within their borders because the revolutionary government in Iran had ordered the Shah and Shahbanu's arrest and death and it was not known how much it would pressure foreign powers. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat , who had maintained close relations with Mohammad Reza for years (and whose wife Jehan Sadat
6231-644: Is a continuation of Middle Persian , an official language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian , which was used in the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE). It originated in the region of Fars ( Persia ) in southwestern Iran. Its grammar is similar to that of many European languages. Throughout history, Persian was considered prestigious by various empires centered in West Asia , Central Asia , and South Asia . Old Persian
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6432-610: Is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian. Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language but also states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian. Ludwig Paul states: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian." The known history of
6633-765: Is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan , as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran . It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet , a derivative of the Arabic script , and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet , a derivative of the Cyrillic script . Modern Persian
6834-654: Is attested in Old Persian cuneiform on inscriptions from between the 6th and 4th century BC. Middle Persian is attested in Aramaic -derived scripts ( Pahlavi and Manichaean ) on inscriptions and in Zoroastrian and Manichaean scriptures from between the third to the tenth centuries (see Middle Persian literature ). New Persian literature was first recorded in the ninth century, after the Muslim conquest of Persia , since then adopting
7035-425: Is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the language have remained relatively stable. New Persian texts written in the Arabic script first appear in the 9th-century. The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious, and literary language of
7236-455: Is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 AD) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, in the 6th or 7th century. From the 8th century onward, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with
7437-468: Is one of Afghanistan's two official languages, together with Pashto . The term Dari , meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capital Ctesiphon , which was spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects of Parthia ( Parthian ). Tajik Persian ( форси́и тоҷикӣ́ , forsi-i tojikī ),
7638-570: Is one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages. According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in Southwestern Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called Parsuwash , who arrived in the Iranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province. Their language, Old Persian, became
7839-486: Is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater , founder of the Encyclopædia Iranica and Columbia University 's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology , rejecting
8040-436: The Encyclopædia Iranica notes that the Iranian, Afghan, and Tajiki varieties comprise distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist. The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects: More distantly related branches of the Iranian language family include Kurdish and Balochi . The Glottolog database proposes
8241-502: The Kalila wa Dimna . The language spread geographically from the 11th century on and was the medium through which, among others, Central Asian Turks became familiar with Islam and urban culture. New Persian was widely used as a trans-regional lingua franca , a task aided due to its relatively simple morphology, and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century. In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on
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8442-460: The 1973 Sale and Purchase Agreement . These reforms culminated in decades of sustained economic growth that would make Iran one of the fastest-growing economies among both the developed world and the developing world . During his 37-year-long rule, Iran spent billions of dollars' worth on industry, education, health, and military spending and saw economic growth rates exceeding the United States,
8643-605: The Baháʼí Faith , allowing the chief Baháʼí temple in Tehran to be razed in 1955 and bringing in a law banning the Baháʼí from gathering together in groups. A British diplomat reported in 1954 that Reza Khan "must have been spinning in his grave at Rey . To see the arrogance and effrontery of the mullahs once again rampant in the holy city! How the old tyrant must despise the weakness of his son, who allowed these turbulent priests to regain so much of their reactionary influence!" By this time,
8844-651: The British colonization , Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent . It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors . The Bengal Sultanate witnessed an influx of Persian scholars, lawyers, teachers, and clerics. Thousands of Persian books and manuscripts were published in Bengal. The period of
9045-695: The Imperial Iranian Air Force than any branch of the armed forces, and his favourite uniform was that of the Marshal of the Imperial Iranian Air Force. Marvin Zonis wrote that Mohammad Reza's obsession with flying reflected an Icarus complex , also known as "ascensionism", a form of narcissism based on "a craving for unsolicited attention and admiration" and the "wish to overcome gravity, to stand erect, to grow tall ... to leap or swing into
9246-448: The Indo-European languages . Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran , Afghanistan , and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties , respectively Iranian Persian (officially known as Persian ), Dari Persian (officially known as Dari since 1964), and Tajiki Persian (officially known as Tajik since 1999). It
9447-538: The Iranian Army , led by the Shah in person, entered Iranian Azerbaijan and the Pishevari regime collapsed with little resistance, with most of the fighting occurring between ordinary people who attacked functionaries of the Pishevari that had treated them brutally. In his statements at the time and later, Mohammad Reza credited his easy success in Azerbaijan to his "mystical power". Knowing Qavam's penchant for corruption,
9648-527: The Iranian embassy , and they were married in December 1959. The Shah's first two marriages had not produced a son—necessary for royal succession —resulting in great rejoicing at the birth of Crown Prince Reza in October of the following year. As a philanthropist, she progressed Iranian civil society through many charities, and founded Iran's first American-style university , enabling more women to become students in
9849-534: The Iranian petroleum industry controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) (formerly the Anglo-Persian Oil Company , or APOC). Under the leadership of Mosaddegh and his nationalist movement, the Iranian parliament unanimously voted to nationalise the oil industry, thus shutting out the immensely profitable AIOC, which was a pillar of Britain's economy and provided it political clout in
10050-563: The Islamic government ). After formally abolishing the Iranian monarchy, Muslim cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini assumed leadership as the Supreme Leader of Iran . Mohammad Reza Shah died in exile in Egypt , where he had been granted political asylum by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat . Following his death, his son Reza Pahlavi declared himself the new shah of Iran in exile. Born in Tehran , in
10251-535: The Marble Palace in 1936 if he believed Perron was his son's lover. One of the main initiatives of Iranian and Turkish foreign policy had been the Saadabad Pact of 1937, an alliance bringing together Turkey , Iran, Iraq , and Afghanistan , with the intent of creating a Muslim bloc that, it was hoped, would deter any aggressors. President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk of Turkey suggested to his friend Reza Khan during
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#173309356091410452-541: The Marble Palace . Perron lived in Iran until his death in 1961, and as the best friend of Mohammad Reza, was a man of considerable behind-the-scenes power. After the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979, a best-selling book was published by the new regime, Ernest Perron, the Husband of the Shah of Iran, by Mohammad Pourkian, alleging a homosexual relationship between the Shah and Perron. Even today, this remains
10653-461: The Royal Palace of Niavaran , designed by Mohsen Foroughi, and completed in 1968: it mixes traditional Iranian architecture with 1960's contemporary design. Nearby is the personal library of the Empress, consisting of 22,000 books, comprising principally works on Western and Eastern art, philosophy and religion; the interior was designed by Aziz Farmanfarmayan. Historically a culturally rich country,
10854-406: The Sublime State of Iran , to Reza Khan (later Reza Shah Pahlavi, first Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty ) and his second wife, Tadj ol-Molouk , Mohammad Reza was his father's eldest son and third of his eleven children. His father was of Mazandarani origin and born in Alasht , Savadkuh County , Māzandarān Province . He was a Brigadier-General of the Persian Cossack Brigade , commissioned in
11055-455: The Sultanate of Rum , Turkmen beyliks of Anatolia , Delhi Sultanate , the Shirvanshahs , Safavids , Afsharids , Zands , Qajars , Khanate of Bukhara , Khanate of Kokand , Emirate of Bukhara , Khanate of Khiva , Ottomans , and also many Mughal successors such as the Nizam of Hyderabad . Persian was the only non-European language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai Khan and in his journeys through China. A branch of
11256-459: The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is considered to be one of the most significant outside Europe and the United States. The vast collection has been tastefully showcased in a large coffee table book published by Assouline titled Iran Modern According to Parviz Tanavoli , a modern Iranian sculptor and a former Cultural Adviser to the Empress, that the impressive collection was amassed for "tens, not hundreds, of millions of dollars". As of 2008,
11457-414: The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art . Using funds allocated from the government, the Shahbanu took advantage of a somewhat depressed art market of the 1970s to purchase several important works of Western art. Under her guidance, the museum acquired nearly 150 works by such artists as Pablo Picasso , Claude Monet , George Grosz , Andy Warhol , Jackson Pollock , and Roy Lichtenstein . The collection of
11658-439: The Turkic , Armenian , Georgian , & Indo-Aryan languages . It also exerted some influence on Arabic, while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages. Some of the world's most famous pieces of literature from the Middle Ages, such as the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi , the works of Rumi , the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám , the Panj Ganj of Nizami Ganjavi , The Divān of Hafez , The Conference of
11859-423: The ezāfe construction, expressed through ī (modern e/ye ), to indicate some of the relations between words that have been lost with the simplification of the earlier grammatical system. Although the "middle period" of the Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century BC. However, Middle Persian
12060-426: The École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris, where she was a student of Albert Besson . Many Iranian students who were studying abroad at this time were dependent on State sponsorship. Therefore, when the Shah , as head of state, made official visits to foreign countries, he frequently met with a selection of local Iranian students. It was during such a meeting in 1959 at the Iranian Embassy in Paris that Farah Diba
12261-479: The " Persianized " Turko-Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries. Persian during this time served as lingua franca of Greater Persia and of much of the Indian subcontinent . It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including the Samanids, Buyids , Tahirids , Ziyarids , the Mughal Empire , Timurids , Ghaznavids , Karakhanids , Seljuqs , Khwarazmians ,
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#173309356091412462-404: The 1930s, Reza Khan was an outspoken admirer of Adolf Hitler , less because of Hitler's racism and anti-Semitism and more because he had risen from an undistinguished background, much like Reza Khan, to become a notable leader of the 20th century . Reza Khan often impressed on his son his belief that history was made by great men such as himself, and that a real leader is an autocrat . Reza Khan
12663-435: The 2016 wedding of Prince Leka of Albania , the 2023 funeral of Constantine II of Greece , and the 2023 wedding of Crown Prince Hussein of Jordan . In 2003, Farah wrote a book about her marriage to Mohammad Reza entitled An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah . The publication of the former Empress's memoirs attracted international interest. It was a best-seller in Europe, with excerpts appearing in news magazines and
12864-457: The 7th Savadkuh Regiment, who served in the Anglo-Persian War in 1856. Mohammad Reza's mother was a Muslim immigrant from Georgia (then part of the Russian Empire ), whose family had emigrated to mainland Iran after Iran was forced to cede all of its territories in the Caucasus following the Russo-Persian Wars several decades prior. She was of Azerbaijani origin, being born in Baku , Russian Empire (now Azerbaijan ). Mohammad Reza
13065-433: The American students beat him up, and he swiftly learned to accept that people would not respect him in Switzerland in the way he was accustomed to at home. As a student, Mohammad Reza played competitive football , but school records indicate that his principal problem as a player was his "timidity", as the Crown Prince was afraid to take risks. He was educated in French at Le Rosey, and his time there left Mohammad Reza with
13266-421: The Americans to support a coup he was planning, which greatly increased the Shah's fears about Kennedy. On 2 May 1961, a teacher's strike involving 50,000 people began in Iran, which Mohammad Reza believed was the work of the CIA. Mohammad Reza had to sack his prime minister Jafar Sharif-Emami and give in to the teachers after learning that the Army probably would not fire on the demonstrators. In 1961, Bakhtiar
13467-416: The Asiatic Institute; the Civilisations Discussion Centre; the Pahlavi University; the Academy of Sciences. Farah worked long hours at her charitable activities, from about 9 am to 9 pm every weekday. Eventually, the Queen came to preside over a staff of 40 who handled various requests for assistance on a range of issues. She became one of the most highly visible figures in the Imperial Government and
13668-572: The Birds by Attar of Nishapur , and the miscellanea of Gulistan and Bustan by Saadi Shirazi , are written in Persian. Some of the prominent modern Persian poets were Nima Yooshij , Ahmad Shamlou , Simin Behbahani , Sohrab Sepehri , Rahi Mo'ayyeri , Mehdi Akhavan-Sales , and Forugh Farrokhzad . There are approximately 130 million Persian speakers worldwide, including Persians , Lurs , Tajiks , Hazaras , Iranian Azeris , Iranian Kurds , Balochs , Tats , Afghan Pashtuns , and Aimaqs . The term Persophone might also be used to refer to
13869-452: The British minister that Foroughi "hardly expected any son of Reza Shah to be a civilized human being", but Foroughi successfully derailed thoughts by the Allies to undertake a more drastic change in the political infrastructure of Iran. A general amnesty was issued two days after Mohammad Reza's accession to the throne on 19 September 1941. All political personalities who had suffered disgrace during his father's reign were rehabilitated, and
14070-406: The Communists staged massive demonstrations to hijack Mosaddegh's initiatives, and the United States actively plotted against him. On 16 August 1953, the right wing of the Army attacked. Armed with an order by the Shah, it appointed General Fazlollah Zahedi as prime minister. A coalition of mobs and retired officers close to the Palace executed this coup d'état. They failed dismally and the Shah fled
14271-399: The Crown Prince at the time, noting, "As his father's now constant companion, the two men consulted on virtually every decision". Later that year, British and Soviet forces occupied Iran in a military invasion , forcing Reza Shah to abdicate. On 25 August 1941, British and Australian naval forces attacked the Persian Gulf while the Soviet Union conducted a land invasion from the north. On
14472-655: The Crown Prince was due to the efforts of Mohammad Ali Foroughi. Suffering from angina , a frail Foroughi was summoned to the Palace and appointed prime minister when Reza Shah feared the end of the Pahlavi dynasty once the Allies invaded Iran in 1941. When Reza Shah sought his assistance to ensure that the Allies would not put an end to the Pahlavi dynasty, Foroughi put aside his adverse personal sentiments for having been politically sidelined since 1935. The Crown Prince confided in amazement to
14673-855: The Egyptian Princess Fawzia were married on 15 March 1939 in the Abdeen Palace in Cairo . Reza Shah did not participate in the ceremony. During his visit to Egypt, Mohammad Reza was greatly impressed with the grandeur of the Egyptian court as he visited the various palaces built by Isma'il Pasha , aka "Isma'il the Magnificent", the famously free-spending Khedive of Egypt, and resolved that Iran needed similarly grandiose palaces to match them. Mohammad Reza's marriage to Fawzia produced one child, Princess Shahnaz Pahlavi (born 27 October 1940). Their marriage
14874-534: The French style. The Empress wrote in 1978 that her duties were: I could not write in detail of all the organizations over which I preside and in which I take a very active part, in the realms of education, health, culture and social matters. It would need a further book. A simple list would perhaps give some idea: the Organization for Family Well Being-nurseries for the children of working mothers, teaching women and girls to read, professional training, family planning;
15075-411: The Iran of the 1960s had little to show for it. Many of the great artistic treasures produced during its 2,500-year history had found their way into the hands of foreign museums and private collections. It became one of Farah's principal goals to procure for Iran an appropriate collection of its own historic artifacts. To that end, she secured from her husband's government permission and funds to "buy back"
15276-483: The Marble Palace and did not allow the Shah's bodyguards to be present, with the Red Army alone guarding them. Despite his public professions of admiration in later years, Mohammad Reza had serious misgivings about not only the coarse and roughshod political means adopted by his father, but also his unsophisticated approach to affairs of state. The young Shah possessed a decidedly more refined temperament, and amongst
15477-612: The Middle Ages, and is because of the lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The standard Persian of Iran has been called, apart from Persian and Farsi , by names such as Iranian Persian and Western Persian , exclusively. Officially, the official language of Iran is designated simply as Persian ( فارسی , fārsi ). The standard Persian of Afghanistan has been officially named Dari ( دری , dari ) since 1958. Also referred to as Afghan Persian in English, it
15678-718: The Negarestan Cultural Center, the Reza Abbasi Museum , the Khorramabad Museum with its valuable collection of Lorestān bronzes , the National Carpet Gallery and the Glassware and Ceramic Museum of Iran . Aside from building a collection of historic Iranian artifacts, Farah also expressed interest in acquiring contemporary Western and Iranian art. To this end, she put her significant patronage behind
15879-1055: The Organization for Blood Transfusion; the Organization for the Fight Against Cancer; the Organization for Help to the Needy, the Health Organization ;... the Children's Centre; the Centre for the Intellectual Development of Children ... the Imperial Institute of Philosophy; the Foundation for Iranian Culture; the Festival of Shiraz, the Tehran Cinema Festival; the Iranian Folklore Organization;
16080-532: The Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as Sultan Selim I , despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia Islam . It was a major literary language in the empire. Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are Idris Bidlisi 's Hasht Bihisht , which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the Salim-Namah , a glorification of Selim I. After
16281-568: The Pahlavi family and longing to return to Egypt. In his 1961 book Mission For My Country , Mohammad Reza wrote that the "only happy light moment" of his entire marriage to Fawzia was the birth of his daughter. Meanwhile, in the midst of World War II in 1941, Nazi Germany began Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union , breaking the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact . This had a major impact on Iran, which had declared neutrality in
16482-521: The Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods: As a written language , Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid inscriptions. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscription , dating to the time of King Darius I (reigned 522–486 BC). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran , Romania ( Gherla ), Armenia , Bahrain , Iraq , Turkey, and Egypt . Old Persian
16683-476: The Persian language, a language historically called Dari, emerged in present-day Afghanistan. The first significant Persian poet was Rudaki . He flourished in the 10th century, when the Samanids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved. Among his lost works are versified fables collected in
16884-401: The Persian model: Ottoman Turkish , Chagatai Turkic , Dobhashi Bengali , and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian. "Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language of medieval Persia used in literature and poetry . This is the language of the 10th to 12th centuries, which continued to be used as literary language and lingua franca under
17085-848: The Perso-Arabic script. Persian was the first language to break through the monopoly of Arabic on writing in the Muslim world , with Persian poetry becoming a tradition in many eastern courts. It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as the Ottomans in Anatolia , the Mughals in South Asia, and the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. It influenced languages spoken in neighboring regions and beyond, including other Iranian languages,
17286-404: The Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency in the 1940 election who was now on a world tour to promote his "one world" policy. Willkie took the Shah flying for the first time. The prime minister, Ahmad Qavam , had advised the Shah against flying with Willkie, saying he had never met a man with a worse flatulence problem, but the Shah took his chances. Mohammad Reza told Willkie that when he
17487-479: The Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīk , commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan , known as Dari. The region, which comprised
17688-575: The Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Persian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date. "New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian)
17889-508: The Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum , took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia. They adopted the Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans , who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of
18090-449: The Shah had no choice but to divorce her, and that he was heavy-hearted about the decision. However, even after the marriage, it is reported that the Shah still had great love for Soraya, and it is reported that they met several times after their divorce and that she lived her post-divorce life comfortably as a wealthy lady, even though she never remarried; being paid a monthly salary of about $ 7,000 from Iran. Following her death in 2001 at
18291-476: The Shah used that issue as a reason to sack him. By this time, the Shah's wife Fawzia had returned to Egypt, and despite efforts to have King Farouk persuade her to return to Iran, she refused to go, which led Mohammad Reza to divorce her on 17 November 1948. By now a qualified pilot, Mohammad Reza was fascinated with flying and the technical details of aeroplanes, and any insult to him was always an attempt to "clip [his] wings". Mohammad Reza directed more money to
18492-455: The Shah used to demand that henceforward no American officials could meet with his opponents. Another issue in Iranian-American relations was Mohammad Reza's suspicion that the United States was insufficiently committed to Iran's defense, observing that the Americans refused to join the Baghdad Pact , and military studies had indicated that Iran could only hold out for a few days in the event of
18693-506: The Shah's Western allies state that there was no feasible way to save the Iranian monarchy from being overthrown. The Shah ultimately left Iran for exile on 17 January 1979. Although he had told some Western contemporaries that he would rather leave the country than fire on his own people, estimates for the total number of deaths during the Islamic Revolution range from 540 to 2,000 (figures of independent studies) to 60,000 (figures of
18894-480: The Shah's marriage was under strain as Queen Soraya complained about the power of Mohammad Reza's best friend Ernest Perron, whom she called a " shetun " and a "limping devil". Perron was a man much resented for his influence on Mohammad Reza and was often described by enemies as a "diabolical" and "mysterious" character, whose position was that of a private secretary, but who was one of the Shah's closest advisors, holding far more power than his job title suggested. In
19095-630: The Soviets and British insistent that the Germans Reza Khan had hired had to be sacked at once. As his father's closest advisor, the Crown Prince Mohammad Reza did not see fit to raise the issue of a possible Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, blithely assuring his father that nothing would happen. The Iranian-American historian Abbas Milani wrote about the relationship between the Reza Khan and
19296-476: The United Kingdom, and France. The Iranian national income rose 423 times over, and the country saw an unprecedented rise in per capita income —which reached the highest level of any point in Iran's history—and high levels of urbanization . By 1977, the Shah's focus on defense spending, which he saw as a means to end foreign powers' intervention in the country, had culminated in the Iranian military standing as
19497-479: The aftermath of the 1953 coup d'état, Mohammad Reza was widely viewed as a figurehead monarch, and General Fazlollah Zahedi , the Prime Minister, saw himself and was viewed by others as the "strong man" of Iran. Mohammad Reza feared that history would repeat itself, remembering how his father was a general who had seized power in a coup d'état in 1921 and deposed the last Qajar shah in 1925, and his major concern in
19698-462: The age of 69 in Paris, an auction of the possessions included a three-million-dollar Paris estate, a 22.37-carat diamond ring and a 1958 Rolls-Royce. Pahlavi subsequently indicated his interest in marrying Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy , a daughter of the deposed Italian king, Umberto II . Pope John XXIII reportedly vetoed the suggestion. In an editorial about the rumours surrounding the marriage of
19899-533: The air, to climb, to rise, to fly". Mohammad Reza often spoke of women as sexual objects who existed only to gratify him, and during a 1973 interview with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci , she vehemently objected to his attitudes towards women. As a regular visitor to the nightclubs of Italy, France, and the United Kingdom, Mohammad Reza was linked romantically to several actresses, including Gene Tierney , Yvonne De Carlo , and Silvana Mangano . At least two unsuccessful assassination attempts were made against
20100-493: The area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III . The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian pārsa itself coming directly from the older word * pārćwa . Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language, Median , according to P. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before
20301-450: The areas of women's rights and cultural development. Farah's concerns were the "realms of education, health, culture and social matters" with politics being excluded from her purview. One of Farah's main initiatives was founding Pahlavi University (now Shiraz University ), which was meant to improve the education of Iranian women, and was the first American-style university in Iran; before then, Iranian universities had always been modeled on
20502-755: The army from the Majlis . Given the situation, alongside the strong personal support of Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden for covert action, the American government gave the go-ahead to a committee, attended by the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles , Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles , Kermit Roosevelt Jr., Henderson, and Secretary of Defense Charles Erwin Wilson . Kermit Roosevelt Jr. returned to Iran on 13 July 1953, and again on 1 August 1953, in his first meeting with
20703-483: The author appearing on talk shows and in other media outlets. However, opinion about the book, which Publishers Weekly called "a candid, straightforward account" and The Washington Post called "engrossing", was mixed. Elaine Sciolino , The New York Times 's Paris bureau chief, gave the book a less than flattering review, describing it as "well translated" but "full of anger and bitterness". But National Review's Reza Bayegan , an Iranian writer, praised
20904-695: The beginning of her royal life, Farah took an active interest in promoting culture and the arts in Iran. Through her patronage, numerous organizations were created and fostered to further her ambition of bringing historical and contemporary Iranian Art to prominence both inside Iran and in the Western world. In addition to her own efforts, Farah sought to achieve this goal with the assistance of various foundations and advisers. Her ministry encouraged many forms of artistic expression, including traditional Iranian arts (such as weaving, singing, and poetry recital) as well as Western theatre. Her most recognized endeavour supporting
21105-399: The center of my existence was, and is, Mohammad Reza". After becoming Crown Prince, Mohammad Reza was taken away from his mother and sisters to be given a "manly education" by officers selected by his father, who also ordered that everyone, including his mother and siblings, were to address the Crown Prince as "Your Highness". According to Zonis, the result of his contradictory upbringing by
21306-457: The code fas for the dialects spoken across Iran and Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languages Dari ( prs ) and Iranian Persian ( pes ). It uses tgk for Tajik, separately. In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods: namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras of Iranian history ; Old era being sometime around the Achaemenid Empire (i.e., 400–300 BC), Middle era being
21507-512: The collapse of the Sassanid state, Parsik came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in the Arabic script . From about the 9th century onward, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called Pahlavi , which was actually but one of the writing systems used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by
21708-524: The conflict. In the summer of 1941, Soviet and British diplomats passed on numerous messages warning that they regarded the presence of Germans administering the Iranian state railroads as a threat, implying war if the Germans were not dismissed. Britain wished to ship arms to the Soviet Union via Iranian railroads, and statements from the German managers of the Iranian railroads that they would not cooperate made both
21909-467: The country and built an empire with obvious parallels to himself. Alongside this change in image, Mohammad Reza started to speak of his desire to "save" Iran, a duty that he claimed he had been given by God, and promised that under his leadership Iran would reach a Western standard of living in the near future. During this period, Mohammad Reza sought the support of the ulema , and resumed the traditional policy of persecuting those Iranians who belonged to
22110-561: The country to Baghdad , and then to Rome . Ettelaat , the nation's largest daily newspaper, and its pro-Shah publisher, Abbas Masudi, criticised him, calling the defeat "humiliating". During the Shah's time in Rome, a British diplomat reported that the monarch spent most of his time in nightclubs with Queen Soraya or his latest mistress, writing, "He hates taking decisions and cannot be relied on to stick to them when taken. He has no moral courage and succumbs easily to fear". To get him to support
22311-468: The country's ability to receive more favourable returns from oil extracted from the country. Mohammad Reza expressed concern for his exiled father, who had previously complained to the British governor of Mauritius that living on the island was both a climatic and social prison. Attentively following his life in exile, Mohammad Reza would object to his father's treatment to the British at any opportunity. The two sent letters to one another, although delivery
22512-1025: The country, the Crown Prince was registered at the local military academy in Tehran where he remained enrolled until 1938, graduating as a Second Lieutenant. Upon graduating, Mohammad Reza was quickly promoted to the rank of Captain, a rank which he kept until he became Shah. During college, the young prince was appointed Inspector of the Army and spent three years travelling across the country, examining both civil and military installations. Mohammad Reza spoke English, French, and German fluently, in addition to his native language of Persian . During his time in Switzerland, Mohammad Reza befriended his teacher Ernest Perron , who introduced him to French poetry , and under his influence, Chateaubriand and Rabelais became his "favorite French authors". The Crown Prince liked Perron so much that when he returned to Iran in 1936, he brought Perron back with him, installing his best friend in
22713-778: The country. She also facilitated the buying-back of Iranian antiquities from museums abroad. By 1978, growing anti-imperial unrest fueled by communism , socialism , and Islamism throughout Iran was showing clear signs of impending revolution , prompting Farah and the Shah to leave the country in January 1979 under the threat of a death sentence. For that reason, most countries were reluctant to harbour them, with Anwar Sadat 's Egypt being an exception. Facing execution should he return, and in ill health, Mohammad Reza died in exile in July 1980. In widowhood, Farah has continued her charity work, dividing her time between Washington and Paris. Farah Diba
22914-482: The coup, his twin sister Princess Ashraf —who was much tougher than him and publicly questioned his manhood several times—visited him on 29 July 1953 to berate him into signing a decree dismissing Mossaddegh. In the days leading up to the second coup attempt, the Communists turned against Mosaddegh. Opposition against him grew tremendously. They roamed Tehran, raising red flags and pulling down statues of Reza Shah. This
23115-575: The couple departed for Contadora Island in Panama . Both Mohammad Reza and Farah viewed the Carter administration with some antipathy in response to a lack of support. Speculation arose that the Panamanian government was seeking to arrest Mohammad Reza in preparation for extradition to Iran. The Shah and Shahbanu again made an appeal to President Anwar Sadat to return to Egypt (Empress Farah writes that this plea
23316-491: The couple was allowed into the United States for medical treatment, inflaming already tense relations between the US government and the revolutionaries in Tehran . The tensions ultimately led to the attack and takeover of the American embassy in Tehran in what became known as the Iran hostage crisis . The Shah and Shahbanu were not permitted to remain in the United States, and shortly after the Shah's surgical treatment on 22 October 1979,
23517-576: The diary of his best friend Asadollah Alam , Mohammad Reza contributed money to the 1960 Nixon campaign. Relations with the victor of the 1960 election, the Democrat John F. Kennedy , were not friendly. In an attempt to mend relations after Nixon's defeat, Mohammad Reza sent General Teymur Bakhtiar of SAVAK to meet Kennedy in Washington on 1 March 1961. From Kermit Roosevelt , Mohammad Reza learned that Bakhtiar, during his trip to Washington, had asked
23718-469: The difficulties you face and that, despite all the troubles, you will emerge from this ordeal with honour. Not a moment passes without my thinking of you and yet the only thing that keeps me happy and satisfied is the thought that you are spending your time in the service of Iran. You must remain always aware of what goes on in the country. You must not succumb to advice that is self-serving and false. You must remain firm and constant. You must never be afraid of
23919-497: The elite to assert himself as the nation's leader. The very fact that Mohammad Reza was considered a coward and insubstantial turned out be an advantage as the Shah proved to be an adroit politician, playing off the factions in the elite and the Americans against the British with the aim of being an autocrat in practice as well as in theory. Supporters of the banned National Front were persecuted, but in his first important decision as leader, Mohammad Reza intervened to ensure most of
24120-429: The events that come your way. Now that you have taken on your shoulders this heavy burden in such dark days, you must know that the price to be paid for the slightest mistake on your part may be our twenty years of service and our family's name. You must never yield to anxiety or despair; rather, you must remain calm and so strongly rooted in your place that no power may hope to move the constancy of your will. In 1945–46,
24321-632: The extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especially Hindi - Urdu (also historically known as Hindustani ), Punjabi , Kashmiri , and Sindhi . There is also a small population of Zoroastrian Iranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious execution in Qajar Iran and speak
24522-510: The first of his many acts of "magnanimity" towards the National Front, Mohammad Reza intervened to have them reinstated. Mohammad Reza tried very hard to co-opt the supporters of the National Front by adopting some of their rhetoric and addressing their concerns, for example declaring in several speeches his concerns about the Third World economic conditions and poverty which prevailed in Iran,
24723-470: The first of three "regime change" operations led by CIA director Allen Dulles (the other two being the successful CIA-instigated 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état and the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba ). Under the direction of Roosevelt, the American CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) funded and led a covert operation to depose Mosaddegh with the help of military forces disloyal to
24924-469: The following phylogenetic classification: Mohammed Reza Pahlavi Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (26 October 1919 – 27 July 1980), commonly referred to in the Western world as Mohammad Reza Shah , or simply the Shah , was the last monarch of Iran (Persia) . In 1941 he succeded his father Reza Shah and ruled the Imperial State of Iran until the 1979 Iranian Revolution overthrew him, abolished
25125-554: The forced unveiling policy inaugurated by his father in 1935 was overturned. Despite the young king's enlightened decisions, the British minister in Tehran reported to London that "the young Shah received a fairly spontaneous welcome on his first public experience, possibly rather [due] to relief at the disappearance of his father than to public affection for himself". During his early days as Shah, Mohammad Reza lacked self-confidence and spent most of his time with Perron writing poetry in French. In 1942, Mohammad Reza met Wendell Willkie ,
25326-562: The formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe, Central Asia , and South Asia . Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia , Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. For five centuries prior to
25527-471: The formation of the Achaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE. Xenophon , a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like
25728-490: The funeral of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan in Washington, D.C. She supports charities, including the International Fund Raising for Alzheimer Disease gala in Paris. Farah continues to appear at certain international royal events such as the 2004 wedding of Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark , the 2010 wedding of Prince Nikolaos of Greece and Denmark , the 2011 wedding of Albert II, Prince of Monaco ,
25929-416: The future Shah's later obsession with military spending. On 16 September 1941, Prime Minister Mohammad Ali Foroughi and Foreign Minister Ali Soheili attended a special session of parliament to announce the resignation of Reza Shah and that Mohammad Reza was to replace him. The next day, at 4:30 pm, Mohammad Reza took the oath of office and was received warmly by parliamentarians. On his way back to
26130-439: The government became an all-consuming concern. These concerns were later dismissed as "paranoid" in retrospective commentary on the coup from U.S. government officials. Shortly prior to the 1952 presidential election in the United States, the British government invited Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Kermit Roosevelt Jr. , to London to propose collaboration on a secret plan to force Mosaddegh from office. This would be
26331-464: The government. Referred to as Operation Ajax , the plot hinged on orders signed by Mohammad Reza to dismiss Mosaddegh as prime minister and replace him with General Fazlollah Zahedi , a choice agreed on by the British and Americans. Before the attempted coup, the American Embassy in Tehran reported that Mosaddegh's popular support remained robust. The Prime Minister requested direct control of
26532-446: The king. A car picked him up at midnight and drove him to the palace. He lay down on the seat and covered himself with a blanket as guards waved his driver through the gates. The Shah got into the car and Roosevelt explained the mission. The CIA bribed him with $ 1 million in Iranian currency, which Roosevelt had stored in a large safe—a bulky cache, given the then-exchange rate of 1,000 rial to 15 US dollars . Meanwhile,
26733-461: The language of the Persians. Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was Avestan , the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts. The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed
26934-464: The latter's visit that a marriage between the Iranian and Egyptian courts would be beneficial for the two countries and their dynasties, as it might lead to Egypt joining the Saadabad pact. Dilawar Princess Fawzia of Egypt (5 November 1921 – 2 July 2013) was daughter of King Fuad I of Egypt and Nazli Sabri and sister of King Farouk I of Egypt . In line with Atatürk's suggestion, Mohammad Reza and
27135-466: The life of Farah Pahlavi in exile. In the play Liz Snoijink acted as Farah Diba. Empress Farah Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of
27336-417: The main influences on him were his mother, his older sister Shams, and his twin sister Ashraf, leading the American psychoanalyst and political economist Marvin Zonis to conclude that it was "from women, and apparently from women alone" that the future Shah "received whatever psychological nourishment he was able to get as a child". Traditionally, male children were considered preferable to females, and as
27537-523: The main issue in Iranian politics was the Soviet-sponsored separatist government in Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan , which greatly alarmed the Shah. He repeatedly clashed with his prime minister Ahmad Qavam , whom he viewed as too pro-Soviet. At the same time, the growing popularity of the communist Tudeh Party worried Mohammad Reza, who felt there was a serious possibility of them leading
27738-441: The members of the National Front brought to trial, such as Mosaddegh himself, were not executed as many had expected. Many in the Iranian elite were openly disappointed that Mohammad Reza did not conduct the expected bloody purge and hang Mosaddegh and his followers as they had wanted and expected. In 1954, when twelve university professors issued a public statement criticising the 1953 coup, all were dismissed from their jobs, but in
27939-509: The memoir as "abound[ing] with affection and sympathy for her countrymen." In 2009 the Persian-Swedish director Nahid Persson Sarvestani released a feature length documentary about Farah Pahlavi's life, entitled The Queen and I . The film was screened in various International film festivals such as IDFA and Sundance . In 2012 the Dutch director Kees Roorda made a theatre play inspired by
28140-432: The middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism . Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian. The native name of Middle Persian was Parsig or Parsik , after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars ", Old Persian Parsa , New Persian Fars . This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following
28341-602: The monarchy and established the Islamic Republic of Iran . In 1967, he took up the title Shahanshah ( lit. ' King of Kings ' ), and also held several others, including Aryamehr ( lit. ' Light of the Aryans ' ) and Bozorg Arteshtaran ( lit. ' Grand Army Commander ' ). He was the second and last ruling monarch of the Pahlavi dynasty . His dream of what he referred to as
28542-547: The monarchy. Pahlavi wrote in her memoirs that "there was an increasingly palpable sense of unease". Under these circumstances most of the Shahbanu's official activities were cancelled due to concerns for her safety. Riots and unrest grew more frequent and culminated in January 1979. The government enacted martial law in most major Iranian cities and the country was on the verge of an open revolution. Mohammad Reza and Farah departed Iran via aircraft on 16 January 1979. For more than
28743-443: The most effective in the world. The shah also instituted economic policy tariffs and preferential loans to Iranian businesses which sought to create an independent economy for the nation. Manufacturing of cars, appliances, and other goods in Iran increased substantially, creating a new industrialist class insulated from threats of foreign competition. By the 1970s, the Shah was seen as a master statesman and used his growing power to pass
28944-411: The most widely spoken. The term Persian is an English derivation of Latin Persiānus , the adjectival form of Persia , itself deriving from Greek Persís ( Περσίς ), a Hellenized form of Old Persian Pārsa ( 𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿 ), which means " Persia " (a region in southwestern Iran, corresponding to modern-day Fars ). According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the term Persian as
29145-411: The nationalist movement of the time. The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the collapse of the Qajar dynasty. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace the many Arabic , Russian , French , and Greek loanwords whose widespread use in Persian during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created
29346-448: The necessity of protecting the Persian language against foreign words, and to the standardization of Persian orthography , were under the reign of Naser ed Din Shah of the Qajar dynasty in 1871. After Naser ed Din Shah, Mozaffar ed Din Shah ordered the establishment of the first Persian association in 1903. This association officially declared that it used Persian and Arabic as acceptable sources for coining words. The ultimate goal
29547-414: The next period most officially around the Sasanian Empire , and New era being the period afterward down to present day. According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language" for which close philological relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent one and the same language of Persian; that is, New Persian
29748-549: The northern part of Greece). Vardar Yenicesi differed from other localities in the Balkans insofar as that it was a town where Persian was also widely spoken. However, the Persian of Vardar Yenicesi and throughout the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary. The difference was apparent to such a degree that the Ottomans referred to it as "Rumelian Persian" ( Rumili Farsisi ). As learned people such as students, scholars and literati often frequented Vardar Yenicesi, it soon became
29949-414: The official interpretation of their relationship by the Islamic Republic of Iran . Marvin Zonis described the book as long on assertions and short on evidence of a homosexual relationship between the two, noting that all of the Shah's courtiers rejected the claim that Perron was the Shah's lover. He argued that the strong-willed Reza Khan, who was very homophobic , would not have allowed Perron to move into
30150-418: The official language of the Achaemenid kings. Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE, Parsuwash (along with Matai , presumably Medians) are first mentioned in
30351-431: The palace, the streets filled with people welcoming the new Shah jubilantly, seemingly more enthusiastic than the Allies would have liked. The British would have liked to put a Qajar back on the throne, but the principal Qajar claimant to the throne was Prince Hamid Mirza , an officer in the Royal Navy who did not speak Persian, so the British were forced to accept Mohammad Reza as Shah. The main Soviet interest in 1941
30552-408: The patron of 24 educational, health and cultural organizations. Her humanitarian role earned her immense popularity for a time, particularly in the early 1970s. During this period, she travelled a great deal within Iran, visiting some of the more remote parts of the country and meeting with the local citizens. Farah's significance was exemplified by her part in the 1967 Coronation Ceremonies, where she
30753-405: The performing arts was her patronage of the Shiraz Arts Festival . This occasionally controversial event was held annually from 1967 until 1977 and featured live performances by both Iranian and Western artists. The majority of her time, however, went into the creation of museums and the building of their collections. As a former architecture student, Farah's appreciation of it is demonstrated in
30954-524: The present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted Parthian language , which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use. New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including from eastern northern and northern Iranian languages such as Sogdian and especially Parthian. The transition to New Persian
31155-477: The region during the following centuries. Persian continued to act as a courtly language for various empires in Punjab through the early 19th century serving finally as the official state language of the Sikh Empire , preceding British conquest and the decline of Persian in South Asia. Beginning in 1843, though, English and Hindustani gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent. Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in
31356-488: The region. At the start of the confrontation, American political sympathy with Iran was forthcoming from the Truman Administration . In particular, Mosaddegh was buoyed by the advice and counsel he was receiving from the American Ambassador in Tehran, Henry F. Grady . However, eventually American decision-makers lost their patience, and by the time the Republican administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower entered office, fears that communists were poised to overthrow
31557-441: The reign of Sultan Ghiyathuddin Azam Shah is described as the "golden age of Persian literature in Bengal". Its stature was illustrated by the Sultan's own correspondence and collaboration with the Persian poet Hafez ; a poem which can be found in the Divan of Hafez today. A Bengali dialect emerged among the common Bengali Muslim folk, based on a Persian model and known as Dobhashi ; meaning mixed language . Dobhashi Bengali
31758-414: The second day of the invasion, with the Soviet air force bombing Tehran, Mohammad Reza was shocked to see the Iranian military simply collapse, with thousands of terrified officers and men all over Tehran taking off their uniforms in order to desert and run away, despite having not yet seen combat. Reflecting the panic, a group of senior Iranian generals called the Crown Prince to receive his blessing to hold
31959-554: The site of a flourishing Persianate linguistic and literary culture. The 16th-century Ottoman Aşık Çelebi (died 1572), who hailed from Prizren in modern-day Kosovo , was galvanized by the abundant Persian-speaking and Persian-writing communities of Vardar Yenicesi, and he referred to the city as a "hotbed of Persian". Many Ottoman Persianists who established a career in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul ) pursued early Persian training in Saraybosna, amongst them Ahmed Sudi . The Persian language influenced
32160-452: The standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as Tajik ( тоҷикӣ , tojikī ) since the time of the Soviet Union . It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia in general. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa for the Persian language, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses
32361-458: The standard Persian. The Hazaragi dialect (in Central Afghanistan and Pakistan), Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan), Basseri (in Southern Iran), and the Tehrani accent (in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility . Nevertheless,
32562-406: The technocrat Hossein Ala' as prime minister, whom he in turn dismissed in 1957. Starting in 1955, Mohammad Reza began to quietly cultivate left-wing intellectuals, many of whom had supported the National Front and some of whom were associated with the banned Tudeh party, asking them for advice about how best to reform Iran. It was during this period that Mohammad Reza began to embrace the image of
32763-509: The time Mohammad Reza turned 11, his father deferred to the recommendation of Abdolhossein Teymourtash , the Minister of Court, to dispatch his son to Institut Le Rosey , a Swiss boarding school, for further studies. Mohammad Reza left Iran for Switzerland on 7 September 1931. On his first day as a student at Le Rosey, the Crown Prince antagonised a group of his fellow students by demanding that they all stand to attention as he walked past, just as everybody did back in Iran. In response, one of
32964-450: The time, Reza Khan did not have a surname. After the 1921 Persian coup d'état which saw the deposal of Ahmad Shah Qajar , Reza Khan was informed that he would need a surname for his house. This led him to pass a law ordering all Iranians to take a surname; he chose for himself the surname Pahlavi, which is the name for the Middle Persian language, itself derived from Old Persian . At his father's coronation on 24 April 1926, Mohammad Reza
33165-421: The unsavory developments that "would haunt him when he was king" were the political disgrace brought by his father on Teymourtash , the dismissal of Foroughi by the mid-1930s, and Ali Akbar Davar 's suicide in 1937. An even more significant decision that cast a long shadow was the disastrous and one-sided agreement his father had negotiated with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) in 1933, one which compromised
33366-422: The use of Farsi in foreign languages. Etymologically, the Persian term Farsi derives from its earlier form Pārsi ( Pārsik in Middle Persian ), which in turn comes from the same root as the English term Persian . In the same process, the Middle Persian toponym Pārs ("Persia") evolved into the modern name Fars. The phonemic shift from /p/ to /f/ is due to the influence of Arabic in
33567-498: The value of these holdings are conservatively estimated to be near US$ 2.8 billion. The collection created a conundrum for the anti-western Islamic Republic which took power after the fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty in 1979. Although politically the fundamentalist government rejected Western influence in Iran, the Western art collection amassed by Farah was retained, most likely due to its enormous value. It was, nevertheless, not publicly displayed and spent nearly two decades in storage in
33768-421: The vaults of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art . This caused much speculation as to the fate of the artwork which was only put to rest after a large portion of the collection was briefly seen again in an exhibition that took place in Tehran during September 2005. By early 1978, dissatisfaction with Iran's imperial government was pronounced. By the end of the year, citizens were holding demonstrations against
33969-448: The world's fifth-strongest armed force. As political unrest grew throughout Iran in the late 1970s, Mohammad Reza Shah's position in the country was made untenable by the Jaleh Square massacre , in which the Iranian military killed and wounded dozens of protesters in Tehran , and the Cinema Rex fire , an arson attack in Abadan that was erroneously blamed on the Iranian intelligence agency SAVAK . The 1979 Guadeloupe Conference saw
34170-564: The years 1953–55 was to neutralise Zahedi. American and British diplomats in their reports back to Washington and London in the 1950s were openly contemptuous of Mohammad Reza's ability to lead, calling the Shah a weak-willed and cowardly man who was incapable of making a decision. The contempt in which the Shah was held by Iranian elites led to a period in the mid-1950s where the elite displayed fissiparous tendencies, feuding amongst themselves now that Mossadegh had been overthrown, which ultimately allowed Mohammad Reza to play off various factions in
34371-413: The young Shah. On 4 February 1949, he attended an annual ceremony to commemorate the founding of Tehran University . At the ceremony, gunman Fakhr-Arai fired five shots at him at a range of about three metres. Only one of the shots hit the king, grazing his cheek. The gunman was instantly shot by nearby officers. After an investigation, Fakhr-Arai was declared a member of the communist Tudeh Party , which
34572-402: Was a deeply scared and insecure boy who lacked self-confidence, according to Iranian-American historian Abbas Milani . Reza Khan believed if fathers showed love for their sons, it caused homosexuality later in life, so to ensure his favourite son was heterosexual, he denied him love and affection when he was young, though he later became more affectionate toward the Crown Prince when he was
34773-399: Was a dunce—I knew next to nothing of the geography, the legends of my country, nothing of its history, nothing of Muslim religion". By the early 1950s, the political crisis brewing in Iran commanded the attention of British and American policy leaders. Following the 1950 Iranian legislative election , Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected prime minister in 1951. He was committed to nationalising
34974-402: Was a large, muscular man who stood at over 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m), leading his son to liken him to a mountain. Throughout his life, Mohammad Reza was obsessed with height and stature, wearing elevator shoes to make himself look taller than he really was, often boasting that Iran's highest mountain Mount Damavand was higher than any peak in Europe or Japan, and proclaiming that he
35175-416: Was already complete by the era of the three princely dynasties of Iranian origin, the Tahirid dynasty (820–872), Saffarid dynasty (860–903), and Samanid Empire (874–999). Abbas of Merv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the New Persian tongue and after him the poems of Hanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time. The first poems of
35376-506: Was also very superstitious. She believed that dreams were messages from another world, sacrificed lambs to bring good fortune and scare away evil spirits, and clad her children with protective amulets to ward off the power of the evil eye . Tadj ol-Molouk was the main emotional support to her son, and she cultivated a belief in him that destiny had chosen him for great things, which the soothsayers she consulted had interpreted her dreams as proving. Mohammad Reza grew up surrounded by women, as
35577-401: Was always most attracted to tall women. As Shah, Mohammad Reza constantly disparaged his father in private, calling him a thuggish Cossack who achieved nothing as Shah. In fact, he almost airbrushed his father out of history during his reign, to the point of implying the House of Pahlavi began its rule in 1941 rather than 1925. Mohammad Reza's mother, Tadj ol-Molouk, was an assertive woman who
35778-462: Was arrested and tried, with the king intervening and commuting his sentence to three years, to be followed by life in internal exile. Zahedi was installed to succeed Mosaddegh. Although Mohammad Reza returned to power, he never extended the elite status of the court to the technocrats and intellectuals who emerged from Iranian and Western universities. Indeed, his system irritated the new classes, for they were barred from partaking in real power. In
35979-417: Was born on 14 October 1938 in Tehran to an upper-class family. She was the only child of Captain Sohrab Diba (1899–1948) and his wife, Farideh Ghotbi (1920–2000). In her memoir, Farah writes that her father's family were natives of Iranian Azerbaijan while her mother's family were of Gilak origin, from Lahijan on the Iranian coast of the Caspian Sea . In the late 19th century her grandfather had been
36180-420: Was born with his twin sister, Ashraf ; however, he, Ashraf, his siblings Shams and Ali Reza , and his older half-sister, Fatimeh , were not royalty by birth, as their father did not become Shah until 1925. Nevertheless, Reza Khan was always convinced that his sudden quirk of good fortune had commenced in 1919 with the birth of his son, who was dubbed khoshghadam ("bird of good omen"). Like most Iranians at
36381-425: Was congratulating Zahedi in the basement of his hiding place, the new Prime Minister's mobs burst in and carried him upstairs on their shoulders. That evening, Henderson suggested to Ardashir that Mosaddegh not be harmed. Roosevelt gave Zahedi US$ 900,000 left from Operation Ajax funds. After his brief exile in Italy, the Shah returned to Iran, this time through the successful second coup attempt. The deposed Mosaddegh
36582-444: Was crowned as the first shahbanu (empress) of modern Iran. It was again confirmed when the Shah named her as the official regent should he die or be incapacitated before the Crown Prince's 21st birthday. The naming of a woman as regent was highly unusual for a Middle Eastern or Muslim monarchy. The great wealth generated by Iran's oil encouraged a sense of Iranian nationalism at the Imperial Court. The Empress recalled of her days as
36783-401: Was designed by Yves Saint Laurent , then a designer at the house of Dior , and she wore the newly commissioned Noor-ol-Ain Diamond tiara . After the pomp and celebrations associated with the imperial wedding, the success of this union became contingent upon the queen's ability to produce a male heir. Although he had been married twice before, the Shah's previous marriages had given him only
36984-417: Was dismissed as chief of SAVAK and expelled from Iran in 1962 following a clash between demonstrating university students and the army on 21 January 1962 that left three dead. In April 1962, when Mohammad Reza visited Washington, he was met with demonstrations by Iranian students at American universities, which he believed were organised by U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy , the President's brother and
37185-431: Was first presented to Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. After returning to Tehran in the summer of 1959, Mohammad Reza and Farah Diba began their courtship. The couple announced their engagement on 23 November 1959. Farah Diba married Shah Mohammed Reza on 20 December 1959, aged 21. The young Queen of Iran (as she was styled at the time) was the object of much curiosity and her wedding received worldwide press attention. Her gown
37386-457: Was flying that he "wanted to stay up indefinitely". Enjoying flight, Mohammad Reza hired the American pilot Dick Collbarn to teach him how to fly. Upon arriving at the Marble Palace, Collbarn noted that "the Shah must have twenty-five custom-built cars ... Buicks , Cadillacs , six Rolls-Royces , a Mercedes ". During the Tehran conference with the Allied forces in 1943, the Shah was humiliated when he met Joseph Stalin , who visited him in
37587-412: Was friends with Farah), allowed them to stay in Egypt. They also spent time in Morocco , where they were guests of King Hassan II , and in the Bahamas . When their Bahamian visas were not renewed, they went to Mexico and rented a villa in Cuernavaca near Mexico City during the summer of 1979. After leaving Egypt, Mohammad Reza's health further declined from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma . In October 1979,
37788-498: Was introduced to the Shah by Forough Zafar Bakhtiary, a close relative of Soraya's, via a photograph taken by Goodarz Bakhtiary, in London, per Forough Zafar's request. They married on 12 February 1951, when Soraya was 18, according to the official announcement. However, it was rumoured that she was actually 16, the Shah being 32. As a child, she was tutored and brought up by Frau Mantel, and hence lacked proper knowledge of Iran, as she herself admitted in her personal memoirs, stating, "I
37989-580: Was made through a conversation between herself and Jehan Sadat). Their request was granted and they returned to Egypt in March 1980, where they remained until the Shah's death four months later on 27 July 1980. After the Shah's death, Farah spent two years in Egypt, where President Anwar Sadat allowed her and the children to stay in the Koubbeh Palace . She was the regent in pretence from 27 July to 31 October 1980. A few months after President Sadat's assassination in October 1981, Farah and her family left Egypt. President Ronald Reagan informed her that she
38190-463: Was not a happy one, as the Crown Prince was openly unfaithful, often being seen driving around Tehran in one of his expensive cars with one of his girlfriends. Additionally, Mohammad Reza's dominating and possessive mother saw her daughter-in-law as a rival to her son's love, and took to humiliating Princess Fawzia, whose husband sided with his mother. A quiet, shy woman, Fawzia described her marriage as miserable, feeling very much unwanted and unloved by
38391-484: Was often delayed, and Mohammad Reza commissioned his friend, Ernest Perron, to hand-deliver a taped message of love and respect to his father, bringing back with him a recording of his voice: My dear son, since the time I resigned in your favour and left my country, my only pleasure has been to witness your sincere service to your country. I have always known that your youth and your love of the country are vast reservoirs of power on which you will draw to stand firm against
38592-403: Was overthrown in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état , which was carried out by the Iranian military under the aegis of the United Kingdom and the United States. Subsequently, the Iranian government centralized power under the Shah and brought foreign oil companies back into the country's industry through the Consortium Agreement of 1954 . In 1963, Mohammad Reza Shah introduced the White Revolution ,
38793-484: Was patronised and given official status under the Sultans of Bengal , and was a popular literary form used by Bengalis during the pre-colonial period, irrespective of their religion. Following the defeat of the Hindu Shahi dynasty, classical Persian was established as a courtly language in the region during the late 10th century under Ghaznavid rule over the northwestern frontier of the subcontinent . Employed by Punjabis in literature, Persian achieved prominence in
38994-479: Was proclaimed Crown Prince . Mohammad Reza described his father in his book Mission for My Country as "one of the most frightening men" he had ever known, depicting Reza Khan as a dominating man with a violent temper. A tough, fierce, and very ambitious soldier who became the first Persian to command the elite Russian-trained Cossack Brigade, Reza Khan liked to kick subordinates in the groin who failed to follow his orders. Growing up under his shadow, Mohammad Reza
39195-462: Was rejected by conservative clerics like Kashani and National Front leaders like Hossein Makki , who sided with the king. On 18 August 1953, Mosaddegh defended the government against this new attack. Tudeh partisans were clubbed and dispersed. The Tudeh party had no choice but to accept defeat. In the meantime, according to the CIA plot, Zahedi appealed to the military, claimed to be the legitimate prime minister and charged Mosaddegh with staging
39396-430: Was subsequently banned. However, there is evidence that the would-be assassin was not a Tudeh member but a religious fundamentalist member of Fada'iyan-e Islam . The Tudeh were nonetheless blamed and persecuted. The Shah's second wife was Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary , a half-German, half-Iranian woman and the only daughter of Khalil Esfandiary-Bakhtiary , Iranian Ambassador to West Germany, and his wife Eva Karl. She
39597-488: Was taught in state schools, and was also offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas . Persian learning was also widespread in the Ottoman-held Balkans ( Rumelia ), with a range of cities being famed for their long-standing traditions in the study of Persian and its classics, amongst them Saraybosna (modern Sarajevo , Bosnia and Herzegovina), Mostar (also in Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Vardar Yenicesi (or Yenice-i Vardar, now Giannitsa , in
39798-406: Was to ensure political stability to ensure Allied supplies, which meant accepting Mohammad Reza's ascension to the throne. Subsequent to his succession as king, Iran became a major conduit for British and, later, American aid to the USSR during the war. This massive supply route became known as the Persian Corridor . Much of the credit for orchestrating a smooth transition of power from the King to
39999-425: Was to prevent books from being printed with wrong use of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully printed books. Words coined by this association, such as rāh-āhan ( راهآهن ) for "railway", were printed in Soltani Newspaper ; but the association was eventually closed due to inattention. A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in
40200-404: Was uncertain with her main role being simply to give the Shah a male heir. Within the Imperial Household, her public function was secondary to the far more pressing matter of assuring the succession. However, after the birth of the Crown Prince, the Queen was free to devote more of her time to other activities and official pursuits. Like many other royal consorts, Farah initially limited herself to
40401-494: Was welcome in the United States. Farah first settled in Williamstown, Massachusetts and later bought a home in Greenwich, Connecticut . After the death of her daughter Princess Leila in 2001, she purchased a smaller home in Potomac, Maryland , near Washington, D.C. to be closer to her son and grandchildren. Farah divides her time between Washington, D.C. and Paris and makes an annual July visit to Mohammad Reza Shah's mausoleum at Cairo's al-Rifa'i Mosque . Farah attended
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