Teymour Tash
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Abdolhosein Khan Teymour Tāsh (1888 - October 1, 1933) was the royal minister of Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran.
Teymour (تیمور تاش) was born in Khorasan to a family of aristocrats, and received formal education in Tsarist Russia, in Ashgabat and later in St. Petersburg. He became well versed in English, French, German, and Russian languages.
Like Seyyed Zia'eddin Tabatabaee, Teymour Tash thus had an early start in politics in his career, and on his return to Persia, which was then in the midst of a constitutional movement, Teymour entered the second Persian Majlis as a parliamentary deputy at the age of only 26.
Teymour was heavily involved in the transition of power from the Qajar to the Pahlavi dynasties, a strong supporter of Reza Shah Pahlavi. Teymour became involved in the political side of the affairs of state, running the Ministry of Public Works and governorship over several provinces. He also served as Minister for Justice and was raised to the royal title of Jenab-i-Ashraf (His Highness) in September of 1928.
All this time, and while deputy to the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Majlis and as the Royal Court Minister, he gradually came to have many powerful enemies whom perhaps out of personal jealousy resented the drastic changes that he and the Shah had implemented with the demise of the Qajar dynasty.
The vicious power struggle between him and many of Reza Shah's other close aides eventually cost him his life, particularly through the infamous Major General Mohammad Hosein Airom (Iran's head of security) who is said to have submitted fabricated accusations and reports to Reza Shah on Teymour Tash.
In 1933 he was arrested for reportedly setting up secret negotiations with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. In his last letter, he defensively wrote:
"according to the information I have received, in the eyes of His Majesty my mistake seems to have been that I defended the Company and the English (the irony of it all - It has been England's plot to ruin me and it is they who have struck me down); I have refuted this concoction which was served up by the English press; I have already written to Sardar As'ad telling him I never signed anything with the company, that our last session with Sir John Cadman and the others had broken off."
One reason for the dismissal of Teymour Tash had to do with British interventional policies in Iran.[citation needed] The sixty year concession for oil documented in the agreement that William Knox D’Arcy got from Mozzafar-al-Din Shah (1896-1907) was going to expire in 1961. The British wanted to extend the concession for another thirty years for five million pounds, change Persia’s royalties from revenue of 16% to four shillings/ton, and buy the five Northern provinces excluded from the original concession for eight million pounds. Persia would be getting a total of thirteen million pounds sterling from this deal. Britain had already made the changes mentioned above subversively through the Armitage-Smith Agreement, but they wanted to make it official. Teymourtache is quoted stating that APOC “had not begun to talk.” Teymourtache wanted to reserve the right of selling the then topical oil fields until Persia was free of the concession, so that the rights could be sold to the American company who had offered one hundred million dollars.[citation needed]
A court sentenced him to five years of solitary confinement and a total fine of 10,712 pounds sterling and 585,920 Rials on charges of embezzlement and graft. (figures are in 1933 values)
His enemies did not stop at that. General Airom refused him any visitors while in prison and Teymour died under torture in solitary confinement on October 3rd, 1933. The press announced the cause of his death as heart failure. Historians however believe murder to have been the cause of his death. According to some accounts, he was killed by lethal injection of air by the infamous Dr Ahmad Ahmadi.
[edit] References used
The following reference was used for the above writing:
- "Iran in the last 3 Centuries" by Alireza Avsati. Published Tehran, 2003. Vol1 ISBN 964-93406-6-1 Vol2 ISBN 964-93406-5-3
- Majd, Mohammad G. Great Britain and Reza Shah: The Plunder of Iran, 1921-1941. University Press of Florida, 2001.
