Reza Shah Pahlavi

Reza Khan was an officer of the Cossack division. In the 1921 coup he took Tehran with Sayyed Zia, then became minister of war and, in 1923, prime minister.

In 1924 he tried to declare a republic, but the ulama opposed it and he withdrew. In October 1925 the Majles deposed the Qajars, and in December a Constituent Assembly made him shah.

The sources disagree on Britain’s role: the Iranica chronology reports Ironside discussing the coup with Reza Khan, and Ferrier does not accept official British support. We leave the question open.

Sheikh-ol-Islami, in the article “Army”, writes that unlike earlier dynasties the Pahlavis’ power rested not on a tribe but on the institutions of the state.

This is our reading: the parliament created by the constitution itself chose the new dynasty; the four deputies who objected show that the step was contested even on the day.

In his sixteen-year reign new courts were built, the capitulations were abolished, the Trans-Iranian Railway (1927–1938) was laid with money from taxes on sugar and tea, and the University of Tehran opened in 1935.

Sheikholeslami (article “Administration”) writes that the railway cost a sum nearly equal to a decade of oil revenue.

Yarshater judges his record very large. The same author writes that the shah’s dictatorial behaviour subverted the results of the Constitutional movement. We give both judgements under the author’s name.

This is our reading: many institutions Iranians know today, such as the University of Tehran and the north–south railway, were built in this period; but the state that built them did not ask the people.

Teymurtash (1933) was murdered in prison on the shah’s orders and Modarres (1937) in police custody. In 1935 a protest against the dress law in the Gowharshad Mosque in Mashhad ended with troops firing and heavy casualties.

In 1936 the queen and the shah’s daughters appeared unveiled at a public ceremony, and the chador was banned.

Even Yarshater, who praises his record, writes of the “autocratic arbitrariness” that stifled free criticism in his later years, when fear of him replaced the earlier admiration. Our sources give no death toll for Gowharshad; we do not invent one.

This is our reading: unveiling and the dress law are still among the most argued-over acts of the period; to some a sign of women’s freedom, to others of state force over private life.

Yarshater writes that the shah acquired large estates in Mazandaran and that the price his agents paid “proved little short of confiscatory”. The Iranica chronology records that from 1951 Mohammad Reza Shah returned most of these lands to their original owners at a low price.

Sheikholeslami writes that the bureaucracy stood within the framework of the Majles on the surface, but in practice was an extension of the Pahlavi household.

This is our reading: in this period the line between the state’s property and the shah’s property grew faint. The same state that ended foreigners’ privileges let the shah take peasants’ land at a nominal price.

This is our reading: the question “whose is the state’s property?” outlived him and returned again and again in later periods.

In 1941 Britain and the Soviet Union occupied Iran. Reza Shah abdicated in favour of his son on 16 September, was exiled to Mauritius and then Johannesburg, and died in 1944.

His body was brought back to Iran in 1950. The Iranica chronology records that his mausoleum was demolished after the revolution of 1979.

Ferrier calls the principal cause of the abdication “disputable”, but does not see it as premeditated British policy. The army that was the base of his power did not hold against the invasion.

This is our reading: judgement of Reza Shah is still divided today; we have set out both sides with their sources and leave the final verdict to the reader.