Reza Khan Founds the Pahlavi Dynasty
An army officer's coup ends the Qajars and launches a crash program of Westernization
Quick facts
- 1921 coup
- Reza Khan becomes armed forces commander
- Qajar dynasty deposed
- October 1925
- Crowned Reza Shah Pahlavi
- April 1926
- Veil ban
- 1936
What happened
Reza Khan, an army officer who had built a personal following as commander of Iran's armed forces after a 1921 coup, rose through the offices of minister of war and prime minister before pressuring parliament to depose the last Qajar ruler in October 1925. In December 1925 the Majlis, Iran's parliament, conferred the crown on Reza Khan and his heirs, and he was formally crowned Reza Shah Pahlavi in April 1926, founding the Pahlavi dynasty and soon renaming the country from Persia to Iran. He then pursued rapid, top-down modernization: building the Trans-Iranian Railway, creating a national army and secular school system, reducing the power of religious courts through a new body of secular law, and in 1936 forcibly banning the wearing of the veil as part of a broader Westernization drive.
Why it matters
Reza Shah's reign compressed decades of state-building into 16 years, creating the centralized bureaucratic and military apparatus that his son would inherit and that the Islamic Republic would later inherit in turn. His secularizing reforms, especially the reduction of clerical authority and the campaign against the veil, generated resentment among religious Iranians that resurfaced repeatedly over the following half century.
How we know
Reza Khan's rise and Reza Shah's reform program are documented in Iranian parliamentary records of the period and in a Library of Congress country study drawing on both Persian and Western historical sources.
Sources
- Library of Congress, Federal Research Division Country Studies. Iran - The Era of Reza Shah · General sourcecountrystudies.us · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- PBS NewsHour Classroom. Backgrounder: History of Iran, Late 19th Century to Present · Reputable sourcepbs.org · The domain "pbs.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineHistory of Iran27 events · A conquest that could not erase a language, a shah deposed by a CIA cable, and a revolution that replaced a crown with a clericView all →