Word: reza
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...summer palace outside Teheran, tough old Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran listened intently to his radio. In London a BBC announcer was reading a famous Persian ballad, and through the spitting of static the Shah could hear an old story: how in the Middle Ages a heroic blacksmith named Kahveh killed a Persian tyrant. The poem ended, the announcer asked: "Where is Kahveh today...
Next day a special session of Iran's pliant Parliament cheered at the news that Boss Reza had abdicated "for reasons of health." Parliament promptly sat his eldest son, 21-year-old Mohammed Shah Pahlavi, on the throne...
...Reza, a choleric old man, admitting officially to 65 years, probably closer to 75, had for 16 years fought to keep control of Iran. Now he well knew that, beaten by the British and Russians, he could not deal with the domestic turmoil that his defeat would produce. By abdicating he at least saw his son to the throne...
...young Shah faced more disturbing changes at home. Iran's tribesmen, whose tradition leans as much to polite banditry as it does to husbandry, knew that Reza's Army had been captured and his tiny Navy sunk. The Lure, the Tangistani, the Bakhtiaris the Kamseh and the Khashgais had a long score to settle. Reza had stopped their raids and ambushes, imprisoned or killed their chiefs, forced them to live in villages, made them wear hats. Many a tribesman hoped that with a new Shah the good old days of unguarded roads and no punitive expeditions might return...
...Since the 80-hour war ended three weeks ago, old Reza Shah Pahlavi, many of whose political theories seem to be concentrated in his good right toe, had locked himself in his palace at Teheran and put to shame the classic sulk of Achilles. It was reliably reported that a Cabinet Minister who ventured to pay a call on the Shah was flogged with the flat of the royal saber, then punted off the premises by the royal boot...