people. In time, Khomeini and other Muslim religious leaders
would exercise their control to bring about a new and very
different form of government.
In 1906, the ulema were instrumental in forcing the shah to
allow a representative body of government, or parliament, called
the Majlis. The shah also consented to a constitution that
embraced Islamic law. The new arrangement was short-lived. By
the early 1910s, Persia’s internal dilemma was overshadowed by
ominous international developments. World War I broke out
in Europe. Although the Middle East was not a major theatre
of combat, it was important to the warring European nations
because of its oil reserves. During the war years (1914 –1918),
British and Russian forces occupied Persia and battled the Turks,
who were allied with Germany.
Between 1921 and 1926, a Cossack military leader, Reza Khan,
rose to power in Persia with British support. Cossacks were
famous cavalry fighters of lower Russia and the Caucasus. Khan
had joined the army as a teenager and had earned an exceptional
reputation for valiant military service. As a Cossack commander,
he helped oust the Soviets who occupied much of his homeland.
The reigning Qajar shah by this time had fled the country, and
Khan took his place. He crowned himself (literally) shah of a
new dynasty: Pahlavi.
As might be expected in such disorderly circumstances, Reza
Shah Pahlavi, who had been mild-mannered as a child, grew to
be a hard military man and a formidable ruler. He subdued
tribal leaders who posed a threat to his authority. Peasants never
forgot the time the fearsome shah, who stood six-foot-three,
ordered one of their donkeys shot because it had wandered onto
royal property. Shiite clergy never forgot the time he horse-
whipped a mullah; the clergyman had criticized the shah’s wife
after she accidentally exposed her veiled face at the holy shrine
of Fatima in the city of Qom.
The shah was poorly educated—a source of personal
embarrassment that made him determined to educate his
children well. Nonetheless, he had a progressive vision for his14 AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI
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