Bibi Maryam Bakhtiari

Bibi Maryam Bakhtiari (Luri/Persian: بی‌بی مریم بختیاری; 1874 – 1937) was an Iranian Lor Bakhtiari revolutionary and activist of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. As a military commander, she played a distinguished role when Bakhtiari forces, with the help of modern arms from the German Empire, successfully captured Tehran in 1909 as part of the revolutionary campaign to force the central government to establish democratic reforms.

Bibi Maryam Bakhtiari, a woman of the Constitutional era and the First World War, was the first Iranian woman—and the only woman in the world—to receive the highest German military decoration (the enameled and diamond-studded effigy and the Iron Cross) by order of Wilhelm II, in recognition of her protection of the life of the German chargé d'affaires during the First World War.