Zahra Khanom Tadj es-Saltaneh
Zahra Khanoum Tadj es-Saltaneh or Tāj al-Salṭanah (1883 – 25 January 1936) (Persian: زهرا خانم تاج السلطنه) was a Persian princess and memoirist of the Qajar Dynasty, a daughter of Nasser al-Din Shah by his wife Turan es-Saltaneh. She was one of the defenders of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and a prominent member of the Anjoman Horriyyat Nsevan (The Society of Women’s Freedom).
Her memoirs were published under the title of Crowning Anguish: Memoirs of a Persian Princess from the Harem to Modernity 1884-1914 (1996), edited with a preface by Abbas Amanat and translated by Anna Vanzan and Amin Neshati. They were well received, the Times Literary Supplement describing them thus: In somewhat unusual and cumbersome style, Taj's memoirs, written in 1914, cover a thirty-year span of a rapidly changing era[...] A curious blend of the reconstructive and reflective, Taj al Saltaneh's memoirs bring home the intense conflicts of a life straddling the harem and modernism. (March 4, 1994)
She was buried in the Zahir od-Dowleh Cemetery in Tajrish.
References
- Etehadieh, Mansureh (1992). Tadj es-Saltaneh. Tehran: Nashr-e Tarikh-e Iran.
External links
- Afsaneh Najmabadi. Tāj-al-Salṭana. Encyclopedia Iranica
- Shireen Mahdavi. Taj al-Saltaneh, an Emancipated Qajar Princess. Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Apr., 1987), pp. 188-193
- Crowning Anguish, Memoirs of a Persian Princess from the Harem to Modernity
- A brief history of women's movements in Iran 1850 - 2000 payvand