Difference between revisions of "Ardeshir XI of Parthia"

Latest revision as of 18:58, 26 February 2007

Shahanshah Ardeshir Narseh Bahram Sassani

Sucession	72nd Shahanshah of Parthia
Reign:	2nd February, 1950 - 30th July, 1979
Predecessor:	Shahanshah Narseh III
Successor:	Shahanshah Khosru III
Birthdate	30th March, 1914
Place of Birth:	Tehran, Parthia
Marriages	Shahbanu Anahita Sardarizadeh
Languages spoken	Persian, English, Avestan, French

Shah Ardeshir Narseh Bahram Sassani 30th March, 1914 – 30th July, 1979, styled His Imperial Majesty, Shahanshah Aryamehr Mazdayasni (King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, Worshipper of Ahura Mazda), is the previous Shah of Persia.

Youth, Education, and Family Background

Ardeshir Narseh Bahram Sassani was born to Shahanshah Narseh III and his favorite of ten wives, Soraya Golzari, his family was large, with 25 half siblings from the other nine wives of the Shah, and three full sisters from his mother. Unlike his siblings, he was groomed for the throne, recieving education from a series of European and American tutors, before going off to school first at Institute Le Rosey, and then the Sorbonne.

In his days as Crown Prince when he returned to Parthia, he was known for being a vigorous supporter of reform, often advising his father on Western models and methods, but was continuously annoyed by the noncompliance of the Majlis to willingly accept the Shah's plans. When Narseh III died in 1950, Ardeshir was crowned as Shahanshah Ardeshir XI, and began to put his plans into action

From Constitutional to Absolute Monarchy

In the opening days of his reign, the Shah issued a decree, which the 1906 Constitution had permitted him to do, declaring the Shah had the authority to force Parliament to pass a law on pain of dissolution and early elections. When the Parliament protested, the Shah threatened to launch a coup, which forced the Parliament to back down. In 1954, Social Democratic and Leftist Parties gained a small majority in the Parliament, causing the Shah to intiate a coup. Military units quickly seized the Parliament Building, arresting the Leftist congressmen for treason, and executing them within 6 hours. Protests broke out in Persepolis, which the Shah responded to by rolling tanks on demonstrators and opening fire upon crowds of protestors. Military units moved through cities in conjunction with royalist citizens, arresting leftists and democrats en masse, then executing the vast majority. Special military units were also created, designed to extract information, they had recieved some secret training from ex-German intelligence and Gestapo agents who had fled to Parthia after World War II. These units, set upon the Leftists, were organized under the name of the Organization for Intelligence and National Security (in Persian: Sazeman-e Ettelaat va Amniyat-e Keshvar, or SAVAK), they were the forerunners of the modern incarnation of SAVAK, designed to oppress and terrorize enemies of the Parthian monarchy. Within a few weeks, the protests had died down, and thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, were dead. Continuing with his campaigns of political oppression, the Shah shut down all political parties, centralized all power in the national government, and abolished the constitution, ruling entirely by decree. By 1958, there were few protests, and by 1960, with an increasingly strong economy, few besides the Tudeh complained of the Shah's absolute rule.

Operation Yazdegird

One of the most controversial acts of the Shah was undertaken in 1955, when protests against the Shah's absolutism and oppression still occurred. Ethnic revolts by the Ahwazi Arabs erupted, resulting in the Shah declaring a simple order: that no Arab would ever be welcome in Parthia again. A military operation quickly started, seizing Khuzestan along the Iraq border, then pushing the entire population of Arabs north-westward, creating a stream of refugees which were slowly hunted down while death squads annihilated the Arabs who did not flee. Finally, the remaining mass of people were forced into the Dasht-e Kavir, which Parthian forces surrounded, preventing the Arabs from escaping. There, the extremely xeric climate slowly murdered the Arabs, where, trapped in the desert, they were forced to dehydrate, until every Arab in Parthian territory was annihilated.

In the end, the entire population of Arabs in Parthia, 2.5 million people, was utterly annihilated. Only the 120,000 who escaped to Iraq or Kuwait was saved, while the bones of the rest littered the Dasht-e Kavir.

Restructuring the State

Once the violent resistance had been crushed totally and without any mercy, the Shah went to work quickly, continuing the reforms of the previous two Shahanshahs, modernizing the state, but rather than follow the democratic, liberal model of his father and grandfather, he charted a new course, choosing instead Absolute Capitalism, and readily imported or gave asylum to thousands of ex-Fascists and Nazis to assist him. In 1955, he passed the National Security Act of 1955, formally establishing SAVAK as a secret police force, and authorizing many Ex-Gestapo forces to train them. Politically, the act made the Parthian National Party the only legal political party in Parthia and required everyone to join, while also abolishing all elections in the nation and relying on a pyramid type of appointment scheme, where the Shah appointed regional governors, who appointed other officials. Dissidents who complained dissappeared in the middle of the night, never to be seen again, while hundreds of newspapers were shut down. The press, eventually, was forced into self-censorship, which reduced all dissenting opinions to writing in illegal publications for pamphlets, which were quickly becoming increasingly dangerous to read, and impossible to find as SAVAK gained power.

Economically, the Shah eschewed any populist urges his father had felt, privatizing the virtual entirety of the state sector, while also removing virtually all restrictions on buisness practices. Foreign investment skyrocketed as the Shah slashed taxes, resulting in unprecedented economic growth, of such high a degree that the Rial was put on the gold standard to prevent inflation. In 1961, growth topped 12%, before slowly leveling downwards again. GDP per capita soared, rising from 5600 in 1950 to 18,000 in 1965. By 1979, the per capita GDP stood at an impressive 25,000. At the same time, the infrastructure network was overhauled, with the entirety of the nation, down to some of the smallest villages, connected to the electricity grid and sewer systems by 1968, while a massive autobahn system began to connect the nation together.

Military Reforms

More than anything else, the Shah modernized the military, buying weapons from the United States under the auspices of defense against Communists, the Shah's army became the largest force in the Middle East, and exceptionally well equipped. Government grants to domestic arms manufacturers helped to create an indigenous arms manufacturing capability, which slowly began to rival even the quality of American goods. In 1975, the military was first tested in a small border skirmish with Iraq, which resulted in heavy casualties for the Iraqis, but no major territorial gains besides the entirety of the Arvandrud. Parthian troops suffered few casualties in the conflict.

Death

On July 30th, 1979, Ardeshir XI died from heart failure in his sleep at the age of 65. At his death, the country mourned for days as Parthian flags were lowered to half mast. The funeral procession from Persepolis Palace to Pasargadae, where the tomb of Cyrus the Great stood over the smaller mausoleums of the Parthian Shahs, was flanked with mourners, tossing tulips and flowers along the path of the motorcade. In accordance with his last wishes, the only monument to him beyond his resting place was a statue in Persepolis, though conceived as simple by Shah Ardeshir, Shah Khosru constructed a 150 foot bronze statue of him, centered on a roundabout in central Persepolis, a tribute to what some have called one of the greatest Shahs of Parthia.