1. Abdolhossein Teymourtash was an influential Iranian statesman who served as the first minister of court of the Pahlavi dynasty from 1925 to 1932, and is credited with playing a crucial role in laying the foundations of modern Iran in the 20th century.
Apart from having been elected to serve as a member of Parliament to the 2nd ; 3rd ; 4th ; 5th ; and 6th Majles of Iran, Abdolhossein Teymourtash served in the following capacities: governor of Gilan ; minister of justice ; governor of Kerman ; and minister of public works.
Abdolhossein Khan Teymourtash was born into a prominent family in 1883.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash's father, Karimdad Khan Nardini, was a major landowner with extensive landholdings in Khorasan, Iran's northern province neighbouring the then Imperial Russia's Central Asia.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash was enrolled as a cavalry cadet at the venerated Imperial Nicholas Military Academy, a preserve of the sons of the Russian aristocracy.
The curriculum of the school was predominated mainly by military and administrative studies, but allowed Abdolhossein Teymourtash to adopt a fluent command of Russian, French and German, as well as familiarity with English.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash's eleven-year stay in Russia led him to develop a lifelong passion for Russian and French literature, leading him to be the first Iranian to translate into Persian the masterful Russian literary works of Lermontov and Turgenev upon his return to Iran.
Just as the last year of Abdolhossein Teymourtash's stay in St Petersburg coincided with the uprisings and revolts that would culminate in the Russian Revolution of 1905, Iran was to find itself in the convulsive throes of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution.
However, given the sporadic convening of the Iranian Parliament, Abdolhossein Teymourtash accepted a number of political appointments during the long intervening stretches between the dissolution of each session of Parliament and the reconvening of the next.
At this juncture, Abdolhossein Teymourtash emerged as one of the main politicians to voice early opposition to the agreement by co-authoring a general proclamation signed by 41 members of parliament referred to as the "Statement of Truth" which denounced the Agreement of 1919.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash served as the governor of Gilan from 1919 to 1920.
Some Iranian historians have accused Abdolhossein Teymourtash of having used undue force in resisting the secessionists, but records that could corroborate such an account have not been presented.
Mirza Kuchak Khan's followers put on trial during Abdolhossein Teymourtash's term were court martialed by a five-member tribunal consisting entirely of Cossack officers.
In return for British financial assistance, Abdolhossein Teymourtash proposed an arrangement whereby he would assume personal command of troops to repel advances made by Mirza Kuchak Khan and his supporters.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash was not initially singled out as one of the members of Parliament to be incarcerated.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash resigned from Parliament for the balance of its term and served as Governor of Kerman for the following year and a half.
In other instances, Abdolhossein Teymourtash used his political influence to assist intellectuals and writers such as his interventions to ensure that the renowned historian Ahmad Kasravi would be spared harassment by the government apparatus while undertaking research, and his success in securing a seat for noted poet Mohammad Taghi Bahar to the 5th Majles from Bojnourd district which he had himself previously represented.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash believed that the "services of Firdawsi toward preserving Iranian nationality and creating national unity must be compared to the services of Cyrus the Great".
The Ernst Herzfeld Archives in fact reveal that Abdolhossein Teymourtash made some final changes to the decorative designs adorning the Ferdowsi mausoleum.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash's influence is ubiquitous, and his power exceeds that of the Prime Minister.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash attends all meetings of the Council of Ministers, and one might compare his position with that of Reich Chancellor, except that he has no direct responsibility.
Jacks of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company believed Abdolhossein Teymourtash to be "the mouthpiece of the Shah".
However, when Abdolhossein Teymourtash returned from his diplomatic trip of several months abroad, Clive was to report back to London that Teimurtash was instrumental in jolting Reza Shah out of his lethargy.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash impressed me as just too bright, this was because the man's gifts were so extraordinary as to appear unnatural.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash was conferred the royal title of Jenab-i-Ashraf in September 1928.
In fact by the 1960s, Dr Badri Abdolhossein Teymourtash, would assist in founding a school of dentistry at Mashhad University in Khorasan.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash assumed the intellectual leadership of Iranian reformists during this period, acting both as the principal initiator and executor of the many initiatives that followed.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash assumed the lead role in negotiating broadly on the widest range of treaties and commercial agreements, while Ministers ostensibly in charge of Iran's Foreign Ministry such as Mohammad Ali Foroughi and Mohammad Farzin were relegated mainly to administering official correspondence with foreign governments and assuming roles akin to the Court Minister's clerk.
Apart from demanding a more equitable share of the profits of the company, an issue that did not escape Abdolhossein Teymourtash's attention was that the flow of transactions between APOC and its various subsidiaries deprived Iran of gaining an accurate and reliable appreciation of APOC's full profits.
In 1931, Abdolhossein Teymourtash who was travelling to Europe to enrol Crown Prince Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and his own children at European schools, decided to use the occasion to attempt to conclude the negotiations.
Abdolhossein Teymourtash married his daughter, he put his boy to school [Harrow], he met the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, a change took place in our government, and in the midst of all this maze of activities we reached a tentative agreement on the principles to be included in the new document, leaving certain figures and the lump sum to be settled at a later date.
However, while Abdolhossein Teymourtash likely believed that after four years of exhaustive and detailed discussions, he had succeeded in navigating the negotiations on the road to a conclusive end, the latest negotiations in London were to prove nothing more than a cul de sac.
Such a precipitous drop in royalties appeared to confirm suspicions of bad faith, and Abdolhossein Teymourtash indicated that the parties would have to revisit negotiations.
Shortly thereafter, Abdolhossein Teymourtash was dismissed from office by Reza Shah.
The increasingly arbitrary Pahlavi monarch had previously meted out similar fabricated charges against other leading politicians before, a course of action which would be repeatedly resorted to against others as well after Abdolhossein Teymourtash had been removed.
Immediate members of the Abdolhossein Teymourtash family forced to endure seven years of house arrest and exile would consist of his mother and younger sister Badri Abdolhossein Teymourtash, his first wife Sorour ol-Saltaneh and her four children, Manouchehr, Iran, Amirhoushang and Mehrpour.
The Abdolhossein Teymourtash family remained in the seclusion of exile and was forbidden from receiving visitors until 1941 when Reza Shah was forced to abdicate after allied forces entered Iran during the early years of World War II.
Nonetheless, the Abdolhossein Teymourtash family regained much of its wealth and was considered among the most affluent Iranian families before the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Mehrpour Abdolhossein Teymourtash, who had been Mohammad Reza Shah's closest friend and classmate both during the period in which the two attended grade school in Tehran and subsequently at Le Rosey, was killed in a car accident shortly after the Abdolhossein Teymourtash family was released from house arrest and exile in 1941.
Manouchehr Abdolhossein Teymourtash followed in his father's footsteps and was elected a member of the Majles of Iran for several terms from Khorasan province.