On July 13, 1935, thousands of civilians who had taken refuge inside the Goharshad Mosque in Mashhad, Iran, were gunned down by soldiers under direct orders from Reza Shah Pahlavi. The worshippers—men, women, and children—were protesting the Shah’s decree mandating European-style dress for all Iranians. For four days, local police and army units had refused to enter the sacred site. Then troops from Azerbaijan arrived, surrounded the mosque, positioned machine guns in the archways, and opened fire.
Dozens were killed and hundreds wounded. It was one of the bloodiest episodes in the reign of a man who sought to modernize Iran through absolute force. Reza Khan was born in 1878 in a small village in northern Iran. His father, a low-ranking military officer, died when Reza was an infant.
At 14, he joined the Persian Cossack Brigade in Tehran, an elite unit commanded by Russian officers. Tall, powerfully built, and ruthlessly ambitious, he rose through the ranks and became a brigadier general by 1918. But Iran was collapsing around him. World War I had devastated the country, the treasury was empty, and the weak Qajar Shah, Ahmad Shah, could not control his own government.
Foreign armies had fought across Iranian soil. On February 21, 1921, Reza Khan commanded a force of 3,000 Cossack soldiers stationed west of Tehran. That night, they marched on the capital. By dawn, the gates opened without resistance, and his troops seized the parliament, the war ministry, and the palace.
The 23-year-old Shah was terrified and agreed to all demands. Reza Khan became minister of war and commander-in-chief of the army. The coup was bloodless and swift. Over the next four years, Reza systematically eliminated his rivals.
His coup partner was forced into exile; other politicians were intimidated or imprisoned. In 1923, Ahmad Shah fled to Europe and never returned. In October 1925, parliament deposed him and elected Reza Khan as the new Shah. He crowned himself on April 25, 1926, at Golestan Palace, placing the crown on his own head like Napoleon.
The Pahlavi dynasty had begun, and Reza Shah now held absolute power. One of his first priorities was breaking the power of Iran’s tribal confederations, which had ruled vast territories for centuries with their own armies and taxes. Sheikh Khazal, ruler of Khuzestan for nearly 30 years, was the most powerful. British oil companies operated in his territory, and he negotiated directly with London, bypassing Tehran.
In April 1925, government soldiers surrounded his yacht on the Shatt al-Arab River, arrested him, and confiscated his estates. Sheikh Khazal spent the next 11 years under house arrest in Tehran and died in May 1936. Some said natural causes; others whispered murder. The Bakhtiari tribes faced a different strategy.
Reza Shah’s agents fomented internal rivalries, then moved in when the tribes were weakened. Leaders who submitted were forced to send their sons to the capital as hostages. Those who resisted faced military campaigns. According to historian Nikki Keddie, some tribal populations were decimated.
By 1927, no tribe in Iran maintained independent armed forces. The human cost—villages destroyed, leaders executed, families torn apart—was never officially counted. Reza Shah then turned on the clergy. In March 1928, his wife briefly went to the shrine at Qom on pilgrimage, and her face was exposed during the visit.
A religious leader publicly criticized her. The next day, Reza arrived with armored cars and 400 troops. He marched into the shrine without removing his boots, walked up to the cleric, pulled out his riding crop, and beat him in front of witnesses. The message was unmistakable: even in the holiest places, no one could challenge the Shah.
That same year, he began dismantling clerical power. Religious schools were placed under state control. Religious courts were abolished and replaced with secular courts based on French law. Religious endowments that had funded mosques and institutions for centuries were seized by the state.
By 1930, the clergy had lost their educational authority, judicial power, and economic independence. But Reza Shah was not finished. On January 8, 1936, at a graduation ceremony in Tehran, his wife and daughters appeared in public for the first time without veils, wearing Western dresses and hats. Photographs were published in every newspaper, followed by a decree: all women in Iran were forbidden from wearing the chador or any traditional head covering in public.
Police were ordered to pull veils off women found wearing them. The policy was presented as progress and modernization. The unveiling campaign was part of a broader dress code. Traditional robes and men’s headwear were banned, replaced with European-style bowler hats.
In Mashhad, a holy city and center of religious scholarship, the order sparked fury. A prominent preacher denounced the policy, and his followers gathered at the Goharshad Mosque. Thousands demanded that the Shah reverse his decrees. For four days, they occupied the mosque.
On July 13, 1935, troops from Azerbaijan arrived under direct orders from Reza Shah. They surrounded the mosque, set up machine guns in the archways, positioned artillery in the street, and opened fire on unarmed civilians. When it ended, dozens were dead and hundreds wounded. There was no remorse.
The shrine manager was later executed. Religious leaders were arrested and exiled. The dress code remained in force. By the late 1930s, nearly all organized opposition had been eliminated.
Political parties were banned, trade unions dissolved, and newspapers operated under strict censorship. Parliament existed only to approve the Shah’s decrees. In 1937, 53 intellectuals—writers, poets, teachers, students—were arrested for meeting to discuss philosophy and politics. Their leader was Taqi Arani, a chemist who had studied in Berlin.
Charged with Marxist conspiracy, Arani gave a four-hour defense speech criticizing the regime’s violations of civil liberties. He was sentenced to 10 years in solitary confinement and died in prison in February 1940. The government claimed typhus; his fellow prisoners claimed murder. When Reza Shah took power in 1925, he was not a wealthy man.
By 1941, he owned 3 million acres of land and had accumulated 3 million pounds sterling, making him the richest man in Iran. Much of this wealth came from confiscated tribal estates, which were transferred to him personally rather than to the state. When the government sold state lands, the sales were structured so only the wealthy and well-connected could participate. If Reza Shah wanted a particular property, the owner was given an offer below market value.
Refusals triggered tax inspections, court findings, and legal disputes until most owners capitulated. According to his political opponents, thousands of properties were acquired this way through coercion. The cost of modernization fell on ordinary Iranians. The Trans-Iranian Railway, Reza Shah’s proudest achievement, was funded entirely by taxes on sugar and tea—basic necessities consumed by the poor.
One-third of the national budget went to the military; 4% went to education. The Shah built his empire, and the people paid for it. Reza Shah resented British and Soviet interference in Iranian affairs and sought a partner with no imperial history in Iran. He chose Nazi Germany.
In 1936, Hitler’s government amended the Nuremberg laws to exempt Iranians, classifying them as pure-blood Aryans. That same year, an Iranian delegation visited Berlin and presented Hitler with two handwoven carpets—one featuring Hitler’s portrait, one displaying the swastika. Hitler reciprocated with a signed photograph: “Reza Shah Pahlavi, Shahanshah of Iran, with the best wishes, Berlin, 12 March 1936. Adolf Hitler.
” The photograph still hangs in Tehran’s Navaran Museum. By 1941, Germany supplied nearly 50% of Iranian imports. German engineers supervised the railway, and German advisers worked in state industries. On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
Britain and the Soviets became allies against Hitler, and Iran’s German advisers suddenly became a strategic threat. The Allies demanded that Reza Shah expel all German nationals. He refused. On August 25, 1941, British and Soviet forces invaded Iran—19,000 British and Indian troops from the south, 40,000 Soviet soldiers from the north.
The Iranian military, built over 20 years at enormous cost, collapsed in four days. Soldiers deserted; officers threw away their uniforms and fled into crowds. On August 29, Reza Shah ordered a ceasefire. On September 11, the British delivered an ultimatum: he must abdicate.
Prime Minister Mohammad Ali Foroughi negotiated a compromise. The Shah would step down in favor of his 21-year-old son, Mohammad Reza. On the morning of September 16, Reza Shah signed the abdication letter. That afternoon, his son took the oath of office before Parliament.
Reza Shah was arrested and sent into exile, first to Mauritius and then to Johannesburg, South Africa. In Mauritius, he lived under guard, confined to his house. According to historian Shaul Bakhash, he told visitors, “I am a prisoner and must behave like one. ” In South Africa, he repeatedly requested permission to move closer to Iran.
The British refused; he was too dangerous to be anywhere near his country. On July 26, 1944, Reza Shah suffered a massive heart attack and died that morning in Johannesburg. He was 66 years old. He never saw Iran again.
The vast properties Reza Shah had confiscated stayed in Pahlavi hands. His son Mohammad Reza inherited everything—3 million acres, 3 million pounds sterling, the richest fortune in Iran—as well as his father’s methods. The man who had ruled with absolute power for 16 years, who had crushed tribal leaders, beaten religious authorities, forced women to unveil, and accumulated vast wealth through coercion, died alone in a foreign land. He built railways, roads, and universities.
He centralized the state. He modernized Iran. But he did it through terror, confiscation, and violence. He believed he was saving his country.
The people he crushed believed otherwise.