Pahlavi dynasty

The Pahlavi dynasty (Persian: خاندان پهلوی, romanized: Xândâne Pahlavi) is an Iranian royal dynasty that was the last to rule Iran before the country's monarchy was overthrown by the Iranian Revolution in 1979. It was founded in 1925 by Reza Shah Pahlavi, born Reza Khan, a non-aristocratic Iranian soldier of Mazanderani origin, who took on the name of the Pahlavi scripts of the Middle Persian language from the Sasanian Empire of pre-Islamic Iran. The dynasty largely espoused this form of Iranian nationalism rooted in the pre-Islamic era (notably based on the Achaemenid Empire) during its time in power, especially under its last Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The dynasty replaced the Qajar dynasty in 1925 after the 1921 coup d'état, beginning on 14 January 1921 when 42-year-old soldier Reza Khan was promoted by British General Edmund Ironside to lead the British-run Persian Cossack Brigade. About a month later, under British direction, Reza Khan's 3,000–4,000 strong detachment of the Cossack Brigade reached Tehran. The rest of the country was taken by 1923, and by October 1925 the Majlis agreed to depose and formally exile Ahmad Shah Qajar. The Majlis declared Reza Pahlavi as the Shah of Iran on 12 December 1925, pursuant to the Persian Constitution of 1906. Initially, Pahlavi had planned to declare the country a republic, as his contemporary Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had done in Turkey, but he abandoned the idea in the face of British and clerical opposition.

The dynasty ruled Iran as an autocratic monarchy, with a pluralistic period from 1941 to 1953, when Mohammed Mossadegh was overthrown, returning to authoritarianism, with a brief one party state period until the dynasty was removed from power in 1979.