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The story is told that a British colonel at Kazvin, whither the anti-Bolshevik forces had retreated, spotted among the Cossack Brigade's remaining officers a striking six-foot Persian with hard grey eyes. His name was Reza Khan. The colonel knew him for a brave man and, in a last desperate attempt to keep the brigade together, he put him in command. Had he not done so, the future King of Kings might have died an unknown old horse bully.
Persia into Iran. But luck intervened. The U.S.S.R. decided against sovietizing northern Persia, fearing that Britain would grab the rest of the country. The British decided against grabbing the rest of the country, fearing that the U.S.S.R. would sovietize the north. For the time being, it was a standoff. Taking advantage of the lull, on Feb. 21, 1921, Colonel Reza Khan rode into Teheran at the head of 2,000 Persian Cossacks and took over.
Shah of Persia then was the squat, pillowy royal jerk, Ahmad (height 5 ft., 2 in.; weight 275 lb.), a member of the Kajar Dynasty which had leeched on the Persian people since the late 18th Century. Ahmad's most solemn edicts, when there were any, were not obeyed outside of Teheran. He was known as the Grocery Boy Shah because he once cornered his country's entire grain crop during a famine and sold it to his starving subjects at colossal prices.
The night boxes and gambling joints of France were Ahmad's sole passion. When he left Persia he took an alleged $200,000,000 worth of jewels with him; gave an Oriental carnival for the whole town of Nice which lasted a week, and every night banqueted a thousand guests. On every damsel who tickled his fancy he bestowed a handful of precious stones. In 1930, aged 32, Ahmad died of cirrhosis. Gossip said that he had a liver like an old Spanish saddle. Provision for eight wives was made in his will (executed by Manhattan's Guaranty Trust Co.), but two more turned up whom he had apparently mislaid.
Of such kidney was the ruler of Persia when Colonel Reza Khan took over. The treasury was empty, the Army little more than an armed rabble. Brigandage and tribal disaffection were rampant. The country's roads were hardly better than camel tracks, and so dreadful was transportation that fields of surplus wheat and barley might rot in one section while 600 miles away a bread famine would rage. The citizenry was saturated with corruption, ignorance and disease.
Through this horrible mess Reza Khan swept like God's wrath: first as War Minister, then as Premier, finally (1925) as Shah in Shah. He reorganized the Army on western lines, put down brigandage, overthrew rebel chieftains, stripped the mullahs of their judicial and political powers, drew up a code of civil law, hobbled child marriage by raising to 15 the age at which a girl might marry, removed the veils from the womenfolk and bettered their status in life, ran the royal Grocery Boy out of the land, fostered education, set up schools and colleges, tore down slums, erected beautiful buildings, updated agriculture, improved medical service and public health, founded Boy and Girl Scout movements, reconstructed roads and fomented trade and industry with all his being. His greatest accomplishment (next to getting Persia up on its feet) was the 870-mile railroad, which took eleven years to build, cost $160,000,000 and runs from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian.†