>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC.

>> Mary-Jane Deeb: And Welcome, welcome to the Library of Congress. Welcome to the African Middle East division. I'm Mary-Jane Deeb, chief of the division and I can't tell you how happy I am to see or hear what promises to be a very exciting program. Today this division is hosting Dr. Fereydoun Ala. And it's very special. And it's different from many of the other programs we've had. We always have people who are great scholars and historians. Who are specialists in different fields. But we rarely have, and almost never in fact, have a great man of science. And today we have brought to the Library really a major figure in medicine and science. But a very modest person or so who has sent just a little paragraph on his bio, and so I had to go online to find more about him to be able to speak more extensively about him. But before I go into the introduction, I want to say something about this division. We always do, this program is be webcast. And so I have to do a little commercial about our division. And this is a division which is responsible for serving, collecting, serving the publications from 78 different countries. In the content of Africa, in the Middle East, and central Asia. And it includes three sections, the Hebraic section, which deals with Hebraic and Judaic worldwide. The Near East section, which is one of the most expansionist sections which goes from Morocco through the Arab world, Iran, Turkey, central Asia, the [inaudible], and section is also responsible for publications that go as far as China. And then Africa, which is the entire subcontinent of Africa. Our specialists speak the languages, know the culture, often come from those countries, and we do different things. Not only do we collect, serve those collections to our scholars, but we do exhibits. We do displays. We have, we show films. We have music entertainment. We provide different ways to present those countries, their languages, their culture, to the public. Iran is one of the most important regions. Iran and beyond the Iranian world where Persian, the Persian language is spoken. And it's part of the culture. Is one of the pillars of the Near East section. We have a wonderful specialist, [inaudible], who has been responsible for expanding the collection, for making the first totally... Persian exhibit a couple of years ago and many of you were there. It was hundred years of the Persian book. And he has brought great scholars. But Dr. Fereydoun is very special. And I'm going to read to you some of the... achievements that he's, that his whole career is filled with. So Dr. Ala started in Iran. He went to Dabestane Nezami primary school, he went to Laraziste school, he went to the Community School in English, then he went to Harrow in England. And the Milton Academy. And he went to Harvard, where he took a degree in history. He seems not to mention the historian in him but we have brought the historian back. He was then admitted to the Edinburgh University school of medicine in Scotland, where he obtained his medical degree, that interned at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary where he received a Wellcome Trust research grant under Professor Ronald Girdwood when he investigated megaloblastic anaemias associated with gastrointestinal malabsorption. He passed examination for membership of the Royal College of Physicians, both internal medicine and Hematology, and he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and a follow of the Royal College of Pathologists. He returned to Iran soon after his father, Hossein Ala died. He was appointed assistant professor at the Tehran University School of Medicine. And was instrumental in established the first clinical hematology department in Iran equipped with its own modern laboratories. He also established a mitosis laboratory to diagnose inherited blood coagulation disorders, such as hemophilia and von Willebrands disease. Another first was the introduction of hepatitis B surface antigen testing. Hepatitis B was a common cause of chronic liver disease in Iran. Most particularly among hemophiliacs. In 1971, Dr. Ala organized the seventh congress of the World Federation of Hemophilia in Tehran. The first such meeting held outside Europe and the Americas. The proceedings of the meetings were edited by F. Ala and published by Eleviers Excepta Medica in Amsterdam in '73. In 1972, Dr. Ala proposed the creation of a centralized, state-funded national blood service for the recruitment of healthy, voluntary non-immune related donors and the subsequent collection, testing, and processing and distribution of blood and blood products for hospitals free of charge in accordance with modern technical and ethical standards. The object was to make these vital services out of the commercialism of the marketplace and bring them into the realm of altruism and science. The Iranian National Blood Transfusion Service was established in 1974 and remains the best developed service in the eastern Mediterranean region and has recently been nominated the Regional World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Blood Transfusion. Dr. Ala became a member of the World Health Organization for the Eastern Mediterranean and Adversary Committee on Medical Research in 1979 as well as a member of the WHO Expert Adversary Panel on Blood Products and Related Substances. In 1981, Dr. Ala moved from Iran to the UK and was appointed medical director of the National Blood Service, West Midlands Region, he was also appointed senior lecturer at the Birmingham University Medical Faculty, Consultant Hematologist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. And he was appointed two different organizations. His appointment as Councillor to the International Society of Blood Transfusion was renewed in 1998. And he was the co-editor of "Transfusion Today," the ISBT Journal. During this period, he acted as WHO Short-term Consultant on blood transfusion in Byelorussia, Cyprus, Djibouti, Egypt, India, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, and so on. In 1999, Dr. Ala returned to Iran to organization the biannual WOH East Mediterranean Blood Transfusion Directive meeting in Tehran. He has spent a significant part of this year working on the newfound Iranian Comprehensive Hemophilia Care Center at the Iranian Hemophilia Society in 2001, dedicated diagnosis and management of inherited [inaudible] disease. And has been affiliated with World Hemophilia. Anyway, why did we invite him? He's such a great scientist and we have a National Library because he also is a historian. And he's going to say no, but he is. He has written. And Dr. Fereydoun Ala is also the son of the late Hossein Ala, diplomat, sometime minister of court, and prime minister of Iran. He is the grandson of Mohammad-Ali Ala' oh-Salteneh, foreign minister and prime minister. His maternal grandfather was Abolqasem Khan Gharagozlou Naser ol-Molk, who was regent while Ahmad Shah Qajar was still a minor. He has brought to the library some of the translations of his grandfather, who was, who translated Shakespeare and some of Shakespeare's plays for the first time in Persian. And these are precious translation that we hold. Very, very important. And it is also important that we bring the history of Iran to the American public so that they understand the whole span, the complexity of Iranian history. We just had a major conference on the [inaudible]. We brought scholars from all over the United States to speak about it. And the emphasis of this division is to bring the culture, the history, the people, to the forefront. So that Americans and others understand that the history of the country is made up of many, many stages of many people and it extremely rich. And we know that Dr. Ala is going to give us another dimension, which we have not talked about. And it in his talk that we are very much looking forward to learn about that period of Persian history through his own family. So I know I've talked a great deal, but I'm going to stop now and introduce Dr. Ala.

[ Applause ]

>> Fereydoun Ala: Well first and foremost, Welcome first of all. I'm overwhelmed by this large audience. 
First and foremost, I must thank Dr. Deeb and Dr. Dinavari very warmly for the privilege of giving this talk today, although I have absolutely no claim to being a scholar of Qajar history, as the poster announcing my talk indulgently claims.
This is a rather personal, rambling family memoire, which nevertheless does span both Qajar and Pahlavi eras, and which I hope will be of some interest to you.

My maternal family, of the Qaragozlou tribe, originated as a section of the Qara-qoyunlou (the Black Sheep) at the mouth of the Syr Darya  River (inaudioble) in Turkestan, and was probably settled in Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana of the Medes, by Amir Teymour Gourkani (Tamerlane),	sometime towards the end of the 14th Century. This was the founder of the Teymourid Dynasty - great warriors and patrons of the arts, and rulers of what is today, Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It was his descendant Babur, who established the brilliant 16th Century Mughal Dynasty in India.
My oldest known maternal ancestor, Mohammad Hossein Khan Qaragozlou,(governor of Luistan?, second from the right, with the white beard) grandfather of my great, great grandfather, was something of a king-maker, helping Fath-Ali Shah to the Qajar throne in the 18th Century.
The family of my paternal grandfather, Mohammad Ali Khan Ala'o-Saltaneh, was also of Central Asian extraction. It is thought that the family was descended from Uzun (tall) Hassan of the Aq-qoyunlou (another Oghuz Turcoman tribal federation which ruled in present-day Iraq, Turkey, Azarbaijan and Armenia - the White Sheep, who were the precursors of the Safavid Dynasty), a great ally of 15th Century Venice against the Ottoman Turks, who married Despina Khatoun, daughter of the last Komnenius Byzantine Emperor. One's heart goes out to Despina, sent away to a barbarian prince from her sophisticated, luxurious home in Constantinople - a last-ditch alliance to save the once-great Byzantium, as it crumbled before Ottoman onslaughts, and finally foundered in 1453, when Mohammad the Conqueror took the city by storm.
Mohammad Ali Khan's father was Mirza Ibrahim Khan, from an old and prominent Azarbaijani family, who was a graduate of the Military School In Tabriz, founded in 1808 by the French General de Gardane, the envoy of Napoleon Bonaparte, sent to train Persians in the arts of modern warfare - a part of Bonaparte's grand design going far beyond the confines of Europe, to exploit British vulnerabilities in India, and to foil Russian ambitions in the region.
Ibrahim Khan was subsequently appointed Aide-de-Camp (Adjudan-bashi) to Fath-Ali Shah's fourth son (one of his 108 offspring!), the combative Crown Prince Abbas Mirza Qajar. Later, as Consul-General in Baghdad, Ibrahim Khan became a close friend of the influential political figure and writer, Majd ol-Molk Sinaki, one of whose daughters was soon to marry Ibrahim Khan's only son, Mohammad Ali Khan, my grandfather.
My paternal great grandfather, Mirza Mohammad Khan Majd ol-Molk Sinaki, whom I've mentioned, must rank among the most influential, reform-minded members of the social elite during the reign of Naser ed-Din Shah Qajar, well before the Constitutional Revolution of 1906. His hand-written, satiric manifesto inveighing against the prevailing Court culture of corruption, patronage and hand-outs; the cruelty and self-seeking, backward nature of society, was the first among such protests at the time. It could not appear in print, for obvious reasons, and was covertly circulated, hand-to-hand among the most influential members of society. This was long before 'shab-namehs' (literally night letters of protest) or Malkam Khan's influential newspaper "Qanun", promoting modernity, constitutional government and limitation of royal power.
My father Hossein, was born in Tiflis in 1882, while his father Mohammad Ali Khan was Persian Consul-General in the Caucasus. His mother, one of five daughters of Majd ol-Molk Sinaki, was Homa Khanom, titled Azemat od-Dowleh, a sister to the one-time Grand Vizier Amin od-Dowleh, and aunt of two future Prime Ministers, Vosouq od-Dowleh and his brother Qavam os-Saltaneh.
And here is a sketch by my father of his mother.
Late in the summer of 1889, Naser ed-Din Shah visited Tibilisi on his way back from his third European tour, and was entertained by Mohammad Ali Khan, whose three eldest offspring greeted the Shah in fluent French and English - an unusual accomplishment among young Iranians, at the time. This proved to be a crucial visit, as the Shah was so impressed by the hospitality and competence of his host, that he granted him the title of Prince Ala'os-Saltaneh, and soon after appointed him Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James, in place of Mirza Malkam Khan, who had held the post for the previous thirteen years.
Although his mother Homa Khanom, decided to return to Iran with her youngest son Jamshid (who was a bit of a mother's boy), Hossein and his older brothers, accompanied their father to England in 1890. Hossein was sent to Westminster School as a day student, but he also received the ministrations of parades of tutors.
Hossein was a gifted cartoonist, who drew often irreverent sketches of the dignitaries visiting his father in his spare time. Indeed, it is unlikely that, apart from Naser ed-Din Shah (here's a sketch by Naser, a portrait of one of the courtiers) and his brother Ezz ed-Dowleh's often excellent drawings and water-colours, there were any other contemporary artists producing drawings or caricatures of the social elite at the time.
This is a rather unkind sketch by my father of Zahra Khanom Taj os-Saltaneh, daughter of Naser ed-Din Shah, showing off her magnificent embonpoint. Zahra Khanom wrote a very frank memoire, a vivid, first-hand account of the Shah's intimate life and his harem, and the corruption and dissipation of the members of Court.
In spite of being brought up be wet-nurses and servants in the stifling gilded cage of royal privilege, she became an unexpectedly liberal-minded, well informed individual, familiar with the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo and Cervantes; with European political philosophy, the French Revolution, and the policies of leading contemporary statesmen, such as Bismarck.  She was considered to be one of the most beautiful women of her day, and was an accomplished lutenist and piano player, much sought after by Court suitors and poets.
In her memoire, she is highly critical of the pleasure-seeking Shahs, particularly her brother, Mozaffar ed-Din Shah, who do nothing to improve the lot of their people, or to foster the progress of their backward country, while indulging themselves in useless and expensive trips to Europe with a large entourage, funded by vast loans from the Russians.
After leaving Westminster School in July 1900, Hossein qualified in London, as a Barrister at the Inner Temple, like his eldest brother Mehdi, and was called to the Bar in November 1906. (Here's another sketch by my father showing the senior judge at the top in what was called the full bottomed wig. And then Mehdi and himself at the bottom.).
Ala'os-Saltaneh was nominated as Minister for Foreign Affairs soon after his return to Iran at the outset of the Constitutional Revolution, and designated Hossein as his chef de cabinet . In 1917, Mohammad Ali Khan Ala' os-Saltaneh became Prime Minister, but retained the portfolio of the Foreign Ministry, which had effectively been administered by Hossein (now titled Mo'in ol-Vezareh) for almost ten years.As a Foreign Minister constantly brow-beaten and bullied by either Russian or British envoys, each vying for yet further privileges and concessions, Mohammad Ali Khan perfected a most effective 'stone-walling' expedient for temporizing and avoiding confrontation with representatives of these super-powers. When faced with their impossible demands, he would simply feign deep sleep in his ministerial chair. The diplomat would sit, clearing his throat from time-to-time, in the hope that His Excellency would wake. Eventually, exasperated, he tip-toed out of the room, and the matter would be deferred to some indefinite future - the last refuge of a weak and impotent government.
In 1919, Ala attended the Paris Peace Treaty Conference, as a member of the Iranian delegation, which included Moshaver ol-Mamalek, the Foreign Minister, and Zoka' ol-Molk Foroughi. After World War I Iran, which had suffered more than any other non-belligerent country, sought redress. Heartened by Woodrow Wilson's impossibly utopian ideas, asserting the rights of small nations, Iran even dared to hope that, now that the invading Russian and Ottoman empires had ceased to exist, the provinces of Azarbaijan, Georgia and Armenia, which had been lost to the Russians by force of arms, might be regained. The delegation unfortunately failed to be officially recognized, despite America's sympathetic support, due to Lord Curzon's machinations. Indeed, what passed for the Iranian government at the time, ignored their increasingly desperate telegraphic pleas for instructions and funding, leaving them marooned in Paris with little sustenance but macaroons and tea.
In 1920, just before Reza Khan's coup d'etat of February 1921, Hossein Ala was appointed as Minister to Spain - his first diplomatic  post abroad. There is still a fading studio photograph of him lounging on a couch in oriental costume, smoking a hookah at the Alhambra Palace. Alas, I don't have it here.
The period between 1921 and 1933 represented a high-point in Reza Khan, later Reza Shah's twenty-year reign, which ended so abruptly in 1941. This was a period of extraordinarily rapid change, authoritarian reform and modernization, largely supported by most sectors of society, but for the clergy of course. To the intelligentsia, it represented a restoration of national dignity, and an end to the humiliation, fragmentation, chaos and supine passivity of the Qajar period, when Iran, although nominally independent, had become a mere buffer, between the British and Russian empires. Like Mustapha Kamal Ataturk's regime in Turkey, all the apparatus of a modern state was laid down during those few years.
Reza Shah's most controversial measure was probably the emancipation and forcible unveiling of women (kashfe hejab), which caused as much dismay and resentment as Peter the Great's arbitrary decree banning beards among the Russian boyars.
Not everyone was able to accept this edict. Indeed, traditional women in families of modest means  felt unable to leave the house in order to go shopping, or attend the hammam (the bath-house), and resorted to the most ingenious strategies in order to by-pass the unveiling rule. Some adopted the hazardous policy of walking across the flat roofs of neighbouring houses at night. In one family, it was related that the ladies of the household, climbed into large sacks, which were transported under cover of darkness to the local hammam in a wheel-barrow, in order to escape the attention of the police.
It was not until after the early 1930s, that Reza Shah's hitherto benign and dynamic dictatorship became increasingly absolute, repressive and harsh, alienating the political elite, and losing the support of the public.
One of Reza Shah's very first programmes was to establish the authority of the state throughout Iran, and to put down rebellious tribal uprisings. Having successfully dealt with the political danger posed by these tribal confederations, he proceeded to a less judicious policy of forcibly settling the nomadic pastoral tribes, banning the traditional seasonal transhumance, and endeavouring to turn nomads into sedentary agriculturalists. The ruthless enforcement of this poorly thought-out, coercive policy aimed at changing an entire way of life, led to considerable hardship, loss of livestock and impoverishment among the tribes.
Further to the detriment of the pastoral way of life and the influence and social structure of the tribes, the great khans and tribal leaders, gradually became alienated from their own peoples; migrated to the capital, and instead of acting as advocates of their tribes, adopted dissolute urban ways, facilitating Reza Shah's dominion, just as Louis XIV was able to draw the teeth of his provincial grandees, by drawing them into a futile, ceremonial existence at Versailles. 
In 1921, Mirza Hossein  Khan Ala was appointed as Minister Plenipotentiary to Washington DC, where he made every effort to awaken American interest in Persian history and culture, as well as the opportunities it presented for US investment, following the Constitutional Revolution, the abolition of the Qajar dynasty, and the accession of Reza Shah Pahlavi to the throne. To this end he traveled tirelessly all over the United States, delivering lectures about modern Iran and her ancient historical past, to universities, business associations, political and press clubs. His cardinal objective however, was to negotiate with Standard Oil of New Jersey and Sinclair, for an alternative oil agreement, more favourable to Iranian interests than the dreadful 1901 D'Arcy agreement with the British and, despite the profoundly depressed financial markets throughout Europe and the United States, to obtain a national loan which would enable the new government to undertake desperately needed reform and development.
Another important task was the recruitment of a financial and taxation expert with the help of Morgan Shuster, a much-admired American idealist, and friend of Iran, who had been Administrator of Finance a decade before, Dr. Millspaugh, trained as an economist, was formally appointed to the task in 1922.
Alas, the tragic murder of Major Robert Imbrie, the US Vice-Consul in Tehran, by a fanatical mob in 1924, put an end to any hopes of consummating a deal with American oil companies.
The diplomatic colleagues of Hossein Ala in Washington, Abdollah Entezam and Soltan Mahmoud Amerie, were also bachelors, and they all lived together at the Legation, in the interests of economy. They recalled with wry humour that His Excellency was a stickler for punctuality and discipline. If they turned up late for work, he would ostentatiously consult his pocket watch, murmuring that it must be running fast. When the junior Attaches wanted a night out with an American girl-friend, they would leave a ground-floor window off the latch, so that they could creep in late, without attracting the Minister's opprobrium.
In September 1927, Hossein Ala married Fatemeh, daughter of Abolqassem Khan Qaragozlou Naser ol-Molk, formerly Prime Minister and later Regent, between 1910 and 1914, while Ahmad Mirza was still a minor. Abolqasem Khan was among the first Moslems and certainly the first Iranian to attend Oxford University at Balliol College, where his youngest son Hossein-Ali followed him many years later. Naser ol-Molk only reluctantly allowed his only daughter to marry, for she ran his large household smoothly and with an iron hand.
After his four-year tenure as Regent, while the Crown Prince was still a minor, Abolqasem Khan organized the coronation of Soltan Ahmad Shah in 1914, left public life for good, and departed for Europe.
While in London one evening, and in the course of a wide-ranging conversation with a number of close friends, the discussion touched upon William Shakespeare. One of those present, held that to translate the works of this celebrated poet and playwright into Persian was an impossible task; that the genius of the two languages and the underlying cultures of the two countries were simply too different. Abolqasem Khan disagreed, and to prove his point, he began to translate a few lines from Othello, a play which he had chosen entirely at random.
This is a painting by Kamal ol-Molk by the way of Naser ol-Molk.
Thus, in his retirement, it was an evening's light-hearted literary conversation which led him to translate the entire play, followed a few years later, by his translation of 'The Merchant of Venice', which he copied out in 1917 after several revisions, in his own fine hand. The final version was expertly bound and illustrated with little water-colour vignettes, by his daughter Fatemeh, my mother.
And this is the cover of the 'The Merchant of Venice' printed in Iran but includes one of the water colors that I mentioned.
There is a widespread and unjust public perception that translation is not a creative process. These magisterial translations of Shakespeare, clearly demonstrate the opposite. Quite apart from the considerable merits of the original plays, the sheer elegance, freshness and simplicity of these rendering into Persian, marks them as ageless "belles-lettres" in their own right.
While the language employed over a thousand years ago by the Persian poets Roudaki or Ferdowsi has remained entirely current and accessible to present-day readers in Iran, the English language has evolved and changed radically in the 450 years since Shakespeare's time, and calls for special study. Words and expressions have either acquired a different meaning, or have fallen into disuse over the years, and the large number of classical or biblical allusions utilized by Shakespeare, compound the difficulties of the translator. Only an exceptionally profound mastery of Persian, as well as the complex nuances of Shakespeare's language could have produced the clarity and beauty of Abolqasem Khan's prose - qualities not normally associated with an active political career.
Abolqasem Khan Qaragozlou was born in Sheverin, near Hamadan, in July 1856. Even as a child, he was passionate about acquiring knowledge, and he spent his time as a youth, learning all that could be learned in those days, such as philosophy, Arabic, mathematics, syntax, Islamic jurisprudence (Fiqh), and no doubt a little French and English. Later, he came to Tehran where he had the benefit of being taught by the foremost teachers of the day - Mirza Jelveh, a philosopher, and Mirza Seyed Mohammad-Ali Qa'eni, a prominent mathematician. Indeed, he attained the status of 'ejtehad' in Islamic jurisprudence and theology.
His father Ahmad Khan Sartip, died relatively young, and it was his grandfather Mahmoud Khan Naser ol-Molk Farmanfarma who brought him up. Mahmoud Khan noticed his grandson's aptitude and zeal for acquiring knowledge, and having perceived these qualities, he requested Naser ed-Din Shah (whom he was to accompany to Europe on his second journey abroad in 1878), to permit his grandson to travel with them to Europe in order to learn English, so that he could translate the foreign newspapers for the Shah in the future.
This is a painting actually of Mahmoud Khan when he was minister in London.
Abolqassem was already 22 when he reached London, and he was therefore much too old to go to Public School. Instead, Mirza Malkam Khan Nazem od-Dowleh, an ardent nationalist, and one of the fathers of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution movement, who longed for a modernized Iran, and had been the Iranian Minister in London since 1873, was charged with the task of finding him a tutor, and acting as the young man's guardian, while he was in England. The tutor agreed to provide tuition, board and lodging for one Pound Sterling a day. Mahmoud Khan had arranged that his grandson should receive 300 Pounds a year, so that he was not only 65 Pounds short in the year, but he could only allow himself a very frugal life.
By working sixteen hours a day for a very austere six months, Abolqasem was able to master English, Greek and Latin, in order to gain entry to Balliol College at Oxford in 1879.
Balliol was then at the height of its fame, with the remarkable Reverend Jowett as Master, who took an immediate liking to him. He was the first specimen of a Persian (and one of the first Moslems) to be seen at the University, and the Master guided him through his studies. Rather than taking an Honours degree, which would have confined him to one subject, he determined to acquire knowledge in as varied a number of subjects as he could possibly manage. Thus, not only did he devote himself to perfecting his English, but he dedicated himself so thoroughly to Greek and Latin, that he could translate Plato or Thucydides as easily as he could read Shakespeare, Virgil or Tacitus, many years after he left the College. He had mastered them so fluently that he could recite Euripides' Medea in Persian by simply glancing at the Greek text, when he retired from public life forty years later.
In the past, most particularly in the East, knowledge was considered to be comprehensive and indivisible, as it was in scholastic times a hundred years before. If one pretended to knowledge, one had to know Arabic, exegesis, jurisprudence, prosody, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, cosmology and music. When asked to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies, one could not very well say that he had only studied political economy.
Jowett's regard for Abolqassem Khan was such that he often invited him to his famed Sunday evening suppers at the Master's Lodge, which were always attended by the foremost personalities of the time. He recalled meeting Swinburne, Tennyson, and many of the well-known statesmen and writers of the day. He remembered Oscar Wilde as well, but those with whom he kept a lifelong friendship were Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, Lord Grey, and most particularly Lord George Curzon, the future Foreign Secretary. 
Abolqasem Khan's nickname Abol Curs'im Can was a wry tribute by his fellow undergraduates to his mental stamina and academic achievements, who said of him: "There's nothing Abol Curs'im can't"
Of course, the most famous limerick from Balliol was about Jowett himself:
"I am the Reverend Benjamin Jowett.
All that's worth knowing, I know it;
I am the Master of Balliol College.
All that I don't know is not knowledge."
Although Abolqasem longed to be given one of the rooms in his college, where he could quietly devote himself to his studies, his subsequent life in Iran was anything but quiet.
He was given a number of assignments after returning to Iran in 1883, and following the death of Mahmoud Khan, he assumed his grandfather's title of Naser ol-Molk, and was nominated chief of the Qaragozlou tribe - the last to be so appointed by royal decree. In 1888, Naser ed-Din Shah undertook his third and last journey to Europe. Naser ol-Molk accompanied him and had the task of interpreting for the Shah, writing his speeches, and organizing his official engagements.
After Naser ed-Din Shah was assassinated in the Shah Abdol Azim mosque shrine at Rey, Abolqasem Khan was sent as roving ambassador, to all the various Courts of Europe, in order to announce the accession of Mozaffar ed-Din Shah to the throne in 1896. And here is a photograph of him in St. Petersburg.  He subsequently accompanied the new Shah on his first official journey to Europe in 1900. When they reached London, the Cockney barrow-boys made up a little rhyme to commemorate the visit of this exotic potentate: 
"Have you seen the Shah?
Smoking his cigar.
Two black eyes,
Forty wives,
Have you seen the Shah?
Growing public unrest and dissatisfaction with the Qajar Regime, forced the reluctant Shah to grant the country a Constitution in 1906. However, old and gravely ill with renal failure, he died soon after, and was succeeded by his turbulent son Mohammad-Ali Mirza, who was bitterly opposed to the Constitution, but had to temporize for a while in order to assuage public disgust with government by fiat. Knowing that Naser ol-Molk favoured constitutional government and enjoyed the support of the Majles, the Shah insisted that he accept the post of Prime Minister. Not long after his nomination however, the Shah ordered him to bombard the upstart Majles, which was cramping his liberty. Abolghassem Khan reminded the Shah that he had taken an oath to do nothing against the interests of the Crown, and that he was convinced such an arbitrary action was against the interests of the Shah. Instead of taking heed, the Shah ordered him to obey or go to hell. Naser ol-Molk replied that under the circumstances, he would prefer the latter, and abruptly left the Court. The following day, he was summoned to Court and placed under arrest. Indeed, it was intimated that he might be put to death for his defiance.
His carriage was sent away with the ominous suggestion that he would not be needing it again. His devoted coachman Mehdi Beyg Sheverini was alarmed and hastened to the British Legation, in order to report the situation to George Churchill, the Oriental Secretary. Mr. Churchill was away on a shooting expedition at the time, but Mehdi Beyg was so acutely anxious that he insisted upon seeing Mrs. Churchill, who promised to report the news to her husband as soon as he returned. Naser ol-Molk was confined at the Golestan Palace until well after dark. He was offered coffee, almost certainly poisoned (the infamous Qajar coffee) on several occasions but was allowed to refuse. Soon a threatening message was brought to him from the Shah. He replied that the Shah could do with him whatever he wished, but begged His Majesty to spare him any personal indignities. By nightfall, Churchill arrived at the Palace still dressed in his hunting clothes, and requested an immediate audience with the Shah. He then informed him that he could not be he could not be treated in this arbitrary manner, someone who had the highest British decorations, the KCMG. And that he shouldn't be treated in this bad way. Eventually, one of the courtiers, Amir Bahador Jang, came to the room where Naser ol-Molk was detained, to tell him that His Majesty had been gracious enough to allow him leave to go to Europe. He returned to the family home at Sar Cheshmeh, where he was greeted with transports of joy and relief. At dawn the next day, he took a ship for Baku and hence to Europe.
The Shah did bombard the Majles after all, which resulted in uprisings against him  throughout the country, forcing him to seek refuge at the Russian Legation. He ignominiously abdicated in favour of his son Ahmad Mirza, the Crown Prince, who was still a child. Naser ol-Molk's name was put forward by popular acclaim as Regent. However, he was understandably reluctant to return to Iran and resume any kind of political activity. Under pressure from the Majles Deputies, he did eventually return and took up the Regency in 1910, after much heart searching. Immediately after the coronation of Ahmad Shah in 914, he definitively left active political life and departed for Europe once more with his family. He only returned to Iran for the last time shortly before his death in December 1927.
Reza Shah may not have benefitted from a formal education, and the opportunity to broaden his mind through travel, but he was blessed with even more important attributes: intelligence and common-sense. He was conscious of his dependence upon many of the most able grandees of the Qajar era, and he made use of them early in his reign. Abolqasem Khan Naser ol-Molk was accordingly invited to lunch every Wednesday for consultation, and on one of these occasions, Reza Shah had apparently asked him what he considered to be the most pressing and significant reform he should introduce among the myriad other urgent matters he had to attend to. In reply Abolqasem Khan had said: "The creation of an independent judiciary to provide security for the citizenry". Advice which would be highly relevant even today.
Abolqasem Khan married relatively late in life, and Roqiyeh Khanom, my maternal grandmother, was only 12 when she was betrothed to him.
Years later, while she was visiting us in Washington, where my father was  Ambassador, she used to say that as a young woman, she traveled to Hamadan for the summer months, in a 'kedjaveh'. This was a diabolical contraption resembling two small, cushioned cubicles, straddling the back of a mule. The two ladies who were passengers, naturally had to be well-matched for weight, otherwise the wretched mule would keel over!
The ladies travelled in a party for one 'manzel' each day - that is as far as a caravan could travel in one day. The attendants and cooks rode on ahead to pitch tents, prepare the dinner, and even to create a little lawn in front of the main tent, with turf they rolled up and brought with them. 
Yet here she was, thousands of kilometers away in America, having been transported there by an airplane powered by thousands of horsepower, rather than by the single mule of her 'kedjaveh'!

My time is rapidly coming to a close, but I cannot end without some mention of my father's crucial role in the so-called Azarbaijan Crisis of 1946.
So, we must travel fast-forward in time to the early years of World War II, when Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in favour of the Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, under pressure from the Allies, Britain and the Soviet Union.
Iran was occupied by the Allied Forces in August 1941. Armaments and Lend Lease aid to the hard-pressed Soviets began immediately, using Reza Shah's beloved railway - the so-called Bridge of Victory.
At this point, the Iranian government was in total disarray, impotent economically and politically, beset by hyperinflation and famine, and unable to maintain order among its rebellious tribes, especially the Qashqai.
Over 300,000 refugees - mostly Jews from Eastern European stetls, were hospitably received by Iran at this time, who were suffering from the usual afflictions of war - malnutrition, misery and infection, especially louse-borne typhus, which reached epidemic proportions, and killed two of my Czechoslovakian classmates at the Community School.
There was an acute shortage of wheat because the Russians had requisitioned grain. Hoarding and black-marketeering were rife. I clearly remember being shown an example of the coarse, gray bread on sale in bakeries, which contained bits of tarred sacking, and even the remains of a cockroach.
In breach of the 1942 Tripartite Agreement, and the Tehran Conference Declaration of 1943, which Marshal Stalin had reluctantly signed, guaranteeing the departure of Allied Forces after the cessation of hostilities, and the independence and territorial integrity of Iran, the Red Army stayed on in Azarbaijan and Kordestan, fostering armed insurrection by separatists - Pishevari's Republic of Azarbaijan, and Qazi Mohammad's Free Kurdish Republic.
The Soviet NKVD dismantled the administrative apparatus of the Iranian government; Iranian troops and gendarmes were disarmed; landowners were dispossessed; judges were arrested, and an Azari militia in Russian uniforms were armed and trained.
Protests by the Iranian government were portrayed to the world as a minor disagreement between neighbours, and the secessionist movements in Azarbaijan and Kordestan were said to represent the "legitimate aspirations of the down-trodden peoples of these provinces, for freedom and self-determination".
Hassan Taqizadeh, Iran's Ambassador in London, and Ala, now appointed by the new Prime Minister Qavam os-Saltaneh, as Ambassador to the United States, and Iran's representative at the new-found United Nations Organization and Security Council, realized that bilateral negotiation with the Soviet Union would not get anywhere, particularly since Premier Qavam had already spent three fruitless weeks in Moscow, discussing the issue with Stalin and Molotov, the Foreign Minister. The dispute had to be internationalized, if there was to be any hope of success against Marshal Stalin, who had already achieved most of the post-war concessions he wanted from the US and Britain, at the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences. 
In March 1946, Prime Minister Qavam instructed Ala to prosecute the case against the Soviet Union at the UN Security Council..
His task was a difficult one:
First of all, 'Uncle Joe' Stalin, as he was fondly known at the end of the war, did everything he could to prevent a hearing of Iran's complaint at the international forum of the fledgling Security Council. Britain and the US, even including Trygvie Lie, the UN Secretary General, were not inclined to alienate the prestigious victor of Stalingrad, who had broken the back of the Wehrmacht, and they were agnostic about the chances of Iran achieving any success.
Secondly, in Iran, Prime Minister Qavam, was under intense pressure from the new Soviet Ambassador Satchikov, to withdraw the case from the Security Council agenda, and to sign an oil concession with the USSR, giving them exclusive rights to exploit oil resources in northern Iran.
However, despite the prevarications of his cousin Qavam, who actually contemplated withdrawing Ala, as well as the Security Council case; the intrigues of Qavam's Deputy and spokesman Mozaffar Firouz, and in the face of much bluster and aggression from Gromyko, the Soviet delegate, Ala was able to marshal the support of the US media, especially James Reston of the New York Times, Harry Truman and Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes, together with envoys of smaller nations, who saw this as a crucial issue, involving the rights of weak countries against a super-power, and was finally given the opportunity of stating Iran's complaint at the horse-shoe table of the Security Council at Hunter College in the Bronx, and to passionately argue that the continued presence of Soviet Forces in northern Iran, constituted a breach of their commitment, and an immediate threat to world peace.
In protest, Gromyko and his entire delegation left the Security Council in a huff - a red-letter day for the assembled world press corps!
Although Ala was comprehensively reprimanded for his persistence by Prime Minister Qavam, and accused by the Soviet delegate, of exceeding his brief, and failing to represent his government's true instructions, Ala courageously and relentlessly persevered in pursuing the Iranian complaint, which by then, had become an international cause celebre.
In the end, Soviet forces did leave northern Iran on May 6th, 1946, and without the support of the Red Army, the Azari and Kurdish Republics collapsed. The only occasion when the Soviet Union ever released one of the victims in its clutches.
As a consequence, the United Nations Organization was immensely strengthened by the peaceful resolution of this first, highly significant case, it's first case, but this also presaged the start of a near fifty-year Cold War, which persisted until the USSR foundered in 1991, essentially for economic reasons.
Now I hope Dr. Dinavari you were able to show us a video clip, dating back to March 1946. Which had to be shortened, I think it's after the Soviet delegation stormed out. 

[ Speaking in a Foreign Language ]

>> Mr. President, and honorable members of the consult, I consider it an honor to be innovated to the counsel table. It is I assure you with emotion that I take my seat before the highest tribunal on earth, wherein lie the hopes and aspirations of mankind. I wish you success in your arduous labor for the restoration of harmony and security and respect for international [inaudible] in a destructive world. Iran firmly believes in the principles underlying the charter. And [inaudible] to abide by them. She has faced in the United Nations and desires to the utmost of her ability to strengthen its hand. She confidently expects on the other hand to have her rights upheld by the consult. Our case is down before you. And we want it to remain there until a just settlement has been reached within the spirit of the charter. I realize that the question of whether to proceed at once or the delay is a matter for the counsel to decide. For my part, I am prepared according to my instructions to proceed with the presentation of the disputes which unfortunately have divided by country and its northern neighbor. I consider it necessarily to do so at the earliest opportunity. Of course, I am not unaware of the [inaudible] reporting [inaudible] of the reb army from certain [inaudible] of Iran. In history, we heard the same announcement made by the honorable delegate of the Soviet Union. Nor am I unaware of the press news of this morning reporting an official announcement by my government denying that the [inaudible] activation of troops had resulted from any [inaudible] entered into between the Iranian government and the Soviet Union. I do not know whether any conditions are being attached to the withdrawal of these troops and may I say once for all that I know of no agreement or understanding, secret or otherwise, having been entered into between my government and the Soviet Union with respect to any of the matters involved in the disputes now referred to this counsel. No one would welcome more warmly than a just settlement of our difficult case. On the basis of respect for Iran's complete independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. The prime minister of Iran has in his instructions to me, particularly requested me to emphasize the [inaudible] that the bringing of a dispute by one member of the United Nations before the security council should not be interpreted by the other party as an [inaudible] act. We are members of the same family is this is a sort of family counsel where we can freely air our troubles and reach satisfaction [inaudible]. The delegate of the Soviet Union bases his proposal for delay first on alleged [inaudible] and second on the continuation that negations [inaudible] of the resolution of January 30th.

>> Yes. And by the way, the person glaring at my father there was Oskar Lange, the representative of Poland, who gave him a really hard time and of course Poland was already one of the satellite countries of the Soviet Union by then. There's one more, sorry. Oh.

>> My apologies.

>> And the next--

>> I'm just going to go, hold on one second. From here?

>> Yes.

>> Let me try and slide-- wah-la.

>> Yes, I mean this is actually my last slide, you'll be happy to hear. And showing Bessie Truman, Harry Truman, the young Shah, and my father on the right who was still ambassador of Iran. And really culminating the happy resolution of the Azerbaijan Crisis was president Truman's formal invitation extended to the youthful [inaudible] Shah [inaudible] of Iran to visit the USA in 1949. His very first trip to the United States. By some happy chance, the son of counsel retained by the Iranian delegation to advice them in conducting this crucial case against the Soviet Union was the father of David Leland, who is sitting here in the front row. And I'm so happy that he's been able to be here. John Leland was a very distinguished international lawyer who might have become Secretary of State expect that he was a bit brusque to his critics. And so that never happened. But he was a great family friend as his children were. Thank you very much for your attention.

[ Applause ]

>> Thank you, thank you so much. And I know we are running out of time. But I think we will leave the session as is. I think it was a wonderful covering of the events and a very important part of the history of Iran. And I want to thank you all for being here and for having come joined us today. So again, let us thank Dr. Ala for all he has done. And I hope, I hope with have a chance to see him again and see his wonderful wife who has been a partner in all this project and for all of us, thank you.

>> There was one more slide.

>> Yes, please show it.

>> The very last one. Yes, this is really, my wife and I at [inaudible]. And of course I owe my thanks to my wife who is the great archivist in the family, actually. So. Thank you.

>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov.