Iran in World History

This bronze horse bit from was made in Lorestan in the early first millennium 
bce
. The Lorestan bronzes are typically stylized human or animal figurines 
and were used to adorn weapons, horse harnesses, or jewelry such as pins and 
bracelets. 
Los Angeles County Museum of Art M.76.97.102

---

Un d e r Eu r o p e’s S h a d o w
95
act was to send an army against the so-called Jangalis (forest-dwellers), 
an anti-landowner movement that had been active throughout the lush 
southwest Caspian province of Gilan since 1914.
With the support of the newly victorious Bolsheviks in Russia, the 
Jangalis had set up a “Persian Soviet Socialist Republic” in May 1920. 
Reza Khan’s forces defeated the rebels in the summer of 1921. The bor-
der between Iran and the newly formed USSR was confirmed along the 
Araxes River, dividing the region of Azerbaijan into a Soviet Republic 
in the north and an Iranian province in the south. Reza Khan emerged 
as Iran’s most powerful political figure, overshadowing the Ghajar king 
whose rule he was charged to defend.

---

C h a p t e r 7
Modernization
and Dictatorship: The 
Pahlavi Years (1925–1979)
A
bandoned by his erstwhile Bolshevik supporters and on the run 
from Reza Khan’s reinvigorated national army, Mirza Kuchik 
Khan, fugitive leader of the short-lived Persian Soviet Socialist 
Republic, took refuge in the Khalkhal Mountains of northwestern Iran 
accompanied by a German-Russian adventurer known only as Gauk. 
On December 2, 1921, the two revolutionaries succumbed to frost-
bite. Their frozen corpses were discovered by a local landowner, who 
decapitated Kuchik Khan and sent his head to Reza Khan in Tehran as 
a show of support for the new government.
Simultaneous with Kuchik Khan’s Jangali uprising in the aftermath 
of World War I, a Kurdish chieftain named Simko Shikak managed to 
gain control of the region west of Lake Urmia near the Ottoman bor-
der. Iran’s Kurdish region maintained its autonomy until 1922, when 
Reza Shah crushed the rebellion and drove Simko into exile.
Emboldened by his success against the Jangalis and the Kurds, 
Reza Khan spent the next several years putting down revolts by 
tribal warlords throughout the country and consolidating his own 
authority. By 1923 he had become powerful enough to forcibly exile 
the country’s nominal ruler, Ahmad Shah, to Europe, leaving Reza 
free to assemble his own government cabinet. It soon became clear 
that he was now the functioning head of state, a fact confirmed in 
1925 when the parliament formally deposed Ahmad and declared 
Reza to be the new shah of Iran. He took the dynastic name Pahlavi, 
an ancient term meaning “heroic” that consciously evoked Iran’s 
pre-Islamic past.
Impressed by the modernizing changes brought about by Atatürk, 
founder of the neighboring Republic of Turkey during the 1920s, 

---

M o d e r n i z a t i o n a n d D ic t a t o r s h i p
97
Reza Shah attempted to follow the charismatic Turkish leader’s 
strong-arm model in transforming Iran into a modern nation. In ad-
dition to crushing the power of the tribes by forcing them to settle 
in villages and take up agriculture, his agenda included suppress-
ing the influence of the Shi‘ite clergy; constructing Western-style 
schools, hospitals, law courts, banks, factories, and communications 
systems; and opening up the public sphere to women. In an effort 
to create a unified national identity—so as to thwart regional and 
ethnic separatist movements among the nomads and non-Persians 
who constituted half the country’s population—he banned forms of 
traditional clothing and insisted on the use of Persian as the sole 
national language.
Most of these changes were instituted by force and were often met 
with strong resistance. Reza Shah’s relationship with the clergy was