Word: persia
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...Britain's Foreign Secretary, the suavely arrogant Lord Curzon of Kecleston, then had a lovely dream. He dreamed of extending British control from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea, thereby adding a magnificent frontier province to British India. The Mesopotamian campaign had slopped over into always neutral Persia, but in 1918 the British drove the Turks out and garrisoned Persia's strong places. The next year Shah Ahmad, even bleaker-brained than Shah Muzaffar, had no alternative but to submit to an agreement by which his country came under Britain's political and military control...
...however, Lord Curzon's lovely dream was rudely shattered. The Bolsheviks overran large chunks of northern Persia. Along the shores of the Caspian the British, assisted by the Persian Cossack Brigade, vainly tried to stop them. Those of the old Tsarist officers who were not killed, fled; the brigade started to fall apart...
...Persia into Iran. But luck intervened. The U.S.S.R. decided against sovietizing northern Persia, fearing that Britain would grab the rest of the country. The British decided against grabbing the rest of the country, fearing that the U.S.S.R. would sovietize the north. For the time being, it was a standoff. Taking advantage of the lull, on Feb. 21, 1921, Colonel Reza Khan rode into Teheran at the head of 2,000 Persian Cossacks and took over...
...Shah of Persia then was the squat, pillowy royal jerk, Ahmad (height 5 ft., 2 in.; weight 275 lb.), a member of the Kajar Dynasty which had leeched on the Persian people since the late 18th Century. Ahmad's most solemn edicts, when there were any, were not obeyed outside of Teheran. He was known as the Grocery Boy Shah because he once cornered his country's entire grain crop during a famine and sold it to his starving subjects at colossal prices...
...night boxes and gambling joints of France were Ahmad's sole passion. When he left Persia he took an alleged $200,000,000 worth of jewels with him; gave an Oriental carnival for the whole town of Nice which lasted a week, and every night banqueted a thousand guests. On every damsel who tickled his fancy he bestowed a handful of precious stones. In 1930, aged 32, Ahmad died of cirrhosis. Gossip said that he had a liver like an old Spanish saddle. Provision for eight wives was made in his will (executed by Manhattan's Guaranty Trust...