Maryam Farman Farmaian

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Princess Maryam Farman Farmaian was born in Tehran. She was the a daughter of Prince Abdol Hossein Mirza Farmanfarma and of Batoul Khanoum.

She had a liberal education for a Persian woman of her time, but was married off and did not attend university. Always a strong and independent thinker, she began to believe in the leading theories on communism, much to the dismay of much of her family. She married Noureddin Kianouri, one of the hard liners of the Tudeh party, in Moscow, Russia. Kianouri was the grandson of sheikh Fazllollah Nouri a leading 19th century Shiite cleric and a major opponent of the Persian constitutional revolution (on the grounds that all law should come from god).

Following the attempted assassination of Mohammad Reza Shah on 4 February 1949, the Tudeh party was blamed and her husband was imputed to have been one of the masterminds of the operation. Overnight she, her husband, and her friends were forced into hiding.

She founded the women's section of the Tudeh (communist) party in Iran.