Tadj ol-Molouk


Tâj ol-Moluk Âyromlu was Queen of Iran as the wife of Reza Shah, founder of the Pahlavi dynasty and Shah of Iran between 1925 and 1941. The title she was given after becoming Queen means "Crown of the Kings" in the Persian language. She was the first Queen in Iran after the Muslim conquest in the 7th century to have participated in public royal representation and played a major role in the Kashfe hijab in 1936.

Biography

She was the daughter of Brigadier General Teymur Khan Ayromlou. Her marriage was reportedly arranged and proved an advantage in the military career of Reza Shah at the time, due to the connections of her father, enabling him to advance in the Cossack hierarchy.
On 23 February 1921, Reza Shah took power in a coup in Tehran.

Queen

On 15 December 1925, her spouse declared himself Shahan-Shah, and she was granted the title Maleke.
Privately, Tadj ol-Molouk did not live with Reza Shah at this point, as he reportedly devoted his time on his other wives, Touran Amir Soleimani, and, from 1923, Esmat Dowlatshahi. Neither did she involve herself in politics on her own initiative. However, it was she who was given the position of Queen during his reign, which signified an important role in his policy on women. She was the first Queen of Iran to have played a public role, and to have performed an official position out in public society.
Her role as a queen participating in public representational duties had a great importance within the new policy of women's role in Iran, as it was the policy of her husband to increase women's participation in society as a method of modernization, in accordance with the example of Turkey. She played an important part in the abolition of the veil in Iran during the reign of her husband. The unveiling of women had a huge symbolic importance to achieve this, and the shah introduced the reform gradually so as not to cause unrest: while women teachers where encouraged to unveil in 1933 and schoolgirls and women students in 1935, the official declaration of unveiling were made on 8 January 1936, and the queen and her daughters where given an important role in this event. That day, Reza Shah attended the graduation ceremony of the Tehran Teacher's College with the queen and their two daughters unveiled and dressed in modern clothes, without veils. The queen handed out diplomas, while the shah spoke about half the population being disregarded, and told women that the future was now in their hands. This was the first time an Iranian queen showed herself in public. Afterwards, the Shah had pictures of his wife and daughters published, and unveiling enforced throughout Iran.
Tadj ol-Molouk continued to participate in public representation in this fashion when obliged to by her husband and thus played an indirect role in his policy, but she never made any initiatives of her own and stayed out of political involvement. In 1939, she attended the wedding of her son to Fawzia of Egypt. The relationship to Fawzia was not, however, described as a good one.

Later life

On 16 September 1941, Reza Shah was deposed and exiled. She did not follow him to his exile in South Africa, instead choosing to remain at the court of her son in Iran.
She held significant influence over her son and reportedly dominated the royal household. The conflict between Tadj ol-Molouk and her daughter-in-law Queen Fawzia attracted attention at the time, and reportedly participated in the factors which lead to the departure of Fawzia to Egypt and the dissolution of the royal marriage in 1945. She was acknowledged to have had a deeply devoted relationship to Princess Shahnaz.
In 1950, Tadj ol-Molouk participated in arranging the marriage between her son the shah and Soraya Esfandiari-Bakhtiari. She left Iran with most of the members of the royal house during the tenure of Mossadegh, and returned to Iran after the fall of Mossadegh in 1953.
During the reign of her son, Tadj ol-Molouk normally did not participate in royal representation, in contrast to her daughters and daughter-in-law, nor did she participate much in charity. She did not fully attend the coronation of the shah in 26 October 1967, attending only the reception following it rather than the coronation itself. She did arrange two receptions in her palace annually: one to celebrate the birthday of her eldest grandson, and one to celebrate the fall of Mossadegh. When the health of the shah was beginning to deteriorate in 1971, this was not admitted, and the official reason for physicians to visit the palace was for the sake of the elderly Tadj ol-Molouk.
Before the 1979 revolution, Tadj ol-Molouk was sent by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the house of Shams Pahlavi in Beverly Hills. She arrived in Los Angeles on 30 December 1978 aboard an Imperial Iranian Air Force Boeing 747. Soon after her arrival, on 2 January 1979, Iranian students in the city attacked the house and attempted to burn it. Then she and her daughter took refuge at the Palm Springs estate of Walter Annenberg, former US ambassador to the United Kingdom.
She died in Acapulco, Mexico, on 10 March 1982 after a lengthy battle with leukemia seven days before her 86th birthday.

Issue

Queen Nimtaj had four children: Shams, Mohammad Reza, the last Shah of Iran, and his twin sister Ashraf, and Ali Reza.

Honours

National