Hassan Taqizadeh

Sayyed Hasan Taqizadeh (27 September 1878 – 28 January 1970) was an Iranian politician, diplomat and scholar from Tabriz whose seventy-year career ran from the Constitutional Revolution to the presidency of the Senate, and whose studies of the old Iranian calendars remain reference works. ^{1 2}

He was born at Tabriz on 30 Ramadan 1295 (27 September 1878), son of Sayyed Taqi Ordubadi, a Hosayni sayyed and noted cleric who had studied at Najaf under Shaikh Mortaza Ansari and served for years as a prayer leader at Tabriz. The son finished reading the Qur'an at five, progressed through the traditional religious schools to the point of no longer needing taqlid, and turned to the rational sciences: from 1893 to 1901 he studied classical and modern medicine, physics and anatomy, studied Shaikh Ahmad Ahsai's books under a Shaikhi scholar, learned French secretly against his father's wishes, and studied English for two years at the American school in Tabriz. ^{2 1}

From 1898 he taught physics, ran a pharmacy and a lithographic press with Mohammad-Ali Tarbiat, founded the Tarbiyat bookshop and school ventures with his circle, published the magazine Ganjineh-ye Fonun in 1903-04, and in 1904-05 travelled through the Caucasus, Istanbul, Egypt and Beirut before publishing his treatise on Iran's condition in the Cairo newspaper Hekmat. ^{2 1}

Elected by the merchants of Tabriz to the First Majles in 1906, he became one of its most forceful speakers. When Mohammad Ali Shah's coup closed the Majles in June 1908 he took refuge in the British legation and reached England, where he worked with Edward Granville Browne to lobby for the constitutionalists. In 1909 he guided the founding of the Democratic Party of Iran (Ferqeh-ye Demokrat-e Iran) and led its faction in the Second Majles, where his defence of separating religion from politics drew a decree from the seminary of Najaf pronouncing him "politically corrupt", as the Iranica entry records and the Persian article confirms in its account of the fatwa against the Democrats and their leader. ^{2 3 1}

He left Iran in 1910 for Constantinople and Europe, spent nineteen months in New York from June 1913, and in January 1915 reached Berlin, where with fellow exiles he published the influential periodical Kaveh (1916-1922), which emphasised national independence and secular and educational reform. In 1922 he negotiated in Moscow, in 1923 married a German citizen, and returned to Iran in July 1924. ¹

Under Reza Shah and Mohammad Reza Shah he served as deputy in successive Majleses, governor-general of Khorasan (1928), minister plenipotentiary in London (1929), minister of Roads and Transport (1930) and of Finance (1930-1933), when he took part in the 1933 oil-concession extension he later described in the Majles as a matter in which his signature had been unavoidable. He taught at the School of Oriental Studies in London and at Cambridge, was ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1941, chaired Iran's delegation at the United Nations over the Azerbaijan question in 1946, and from 1949 sat in the Senate, long serving as its president; the Persian article notes he remained a senator until withdrawing from work in 1967. His scholarly output ran alongside: Old Iranian Calendars (1938), editions and studies of Manichaeism and chronology, and the autobiography he titled Zendegi-ye Tufani, "A Tempestuous Life". ^{1 3}

He died at Tehran on 28 January 1970; his funeral left the Sepahsalar mosque and he was buried in the Zahir al-Dawla cemetery. ^{3 2}

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