Mohamed Mossadegh poses as Governer of Fars Province during Qajar Era. The Future Prime Minister of Iran under Pahlavi rule, was already a major political figure who had studied law and philosophy in Europe.
Mosaddeq was born in 1882 in Tehran to an Ashtian Bakhtiari finance minister, Mirza Hideyatu’llah Khan (d.1892) and a Qajar princess, Shahzadi Malika Taj Khanum (1858–1933). By his mother’s elder sister, Mossadeq was the nephew of Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar. When his father died in 1892, he was appointed the tax collector of the Khorasan province and was bestowed with the title of “Mossadegh-ol-Saltaneh” by Nasser al-Din Shah. Mossadeq received his Bachelor of Arts and Masters in (International) Law from University of Paris (Sorbonne) before pursuing a Doctorate in Law from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1914 following a Bachelor of Economics in 1916. Mossadeq also taught at the University of Tehran before beginning his political career.
Mossadeq started his career in Iranian politics with the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, when at the age of 24, he was elected from Isfahan to the newly inaugurated Persian Parliament, the Majlis of Iran. In 1920, after being self-exiled to Switzerland in protest at the Anglo-Persian Treaty of 1919, he was invited by the new Persian Prime Minister, Hassan Pirnia (Moshir-ed-Dowleh), to become his “Minister of Justice”; but while en route to Tehran, he was asked by the people of Shiraz to become Governor of the “Fars” Province. He was later appointed Finance Minister, in the government of Ahmad Ghavam (Ghavam os-Saltaneh) in 1921, and then Foreign Minister in the government of Moshir-ed-Dowleh in June 1923. He then became Governor of the “Azerbaijan” Province. In 1923, he was re-elected to the Majlis and voted against the selection of the Prime Minister Reza Khan as the new Shah of Persia.
More on Mossadegh’s life here
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