Fathollah Minbashian

Once in Iran again, he devoted his career to building up a modern army. According to several officers' testimonies reported in the Nima monthly journal in August 2007 (including the Shah's former Chief of Staff General Fereydoun Djam), two objectives guided his military thinking throughout his life: the defence of the Persian Gulf because he rightly feared invasion of Iran by Iraq, and the provision of a decent life for the army's soldiers and NCOs, usually from very modest backgrounds. He has also been acknowledged for having contributed to the modernisation of Iran's ground forces. In 1954, he was promoted to colonel at the head of Iran's Military Academy where he developed new methods of instruction, based especially on "management by motivation". He reorganised the academy and student discipline, and having become a brigadier general in 1958, he was appointed to the command of the First Brigade of Tehran. In 1961, he was appointed commander of the Mashhad Army with the rank of major general. He was therefore stationed in the holy city of Mashhad during the 1963 demonstrations. According to French Wikipedia, these protests were critical of the Shah's reformist White Revolution which in particular ended feudal landownership in Iran as part of a land reform programme, and gave women the right to vote. In Part 2 of his military memoirs (Section 35), Minbashian recounts the arrest of Ayathollah Qomi who was responsible for disorders in Mashad. According to Minbashian's…

Fathollah Minbashian came from a family of military musicians, who contributed to the emergence of classical music in Iran. His grandfather Gholam Reza Minbashian (Salar Mo'azez) was a pioneer in the history of classical Western music in Iran. He is recognised as the first Iranian to have received an education in classical music, and to have studied music abroad, and whose work was published in Europe. He was also the first Iranian to have taught classical music in Iran, and he created Iran's first string orchestra. Among other compositions, Gholam Reza Minbashian wrote the music of the national anthem of Iran's Constitutionalist Revolution, entitled "Sublime State of Iran" (Dowlat-e 'Aliyye-ye Irān - دولت علیّه ایران). Fathollah Minbashian's father, Nasrollah Minbashian, entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory at 13, for a period of seven years. On returning to Iran, he joined the Persian Cossack Brigade, in which he served throughout is career, finally reaching the rank of Brigadier General. Nasrollah succeeded his father (Gholam Reza) at the head of the army's musical orchestra, while also directing its music school. Nasrollah Minbashian held these posts until 1935, while teaching several instruments which he had mastered: the piano, the violin, the cello. Fathollah Minbashian's uncle Gholam-Hossein Minbashian (1907–1980) studied at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin and Geneva. He was a pupil of Robert Mendelsohn. On returning to Iran in 1932, he joined the Military…

Fathollah Minbashian attended a Zoroastrian school until the age of 14. In Part 1 of his military memoires, he describes his patriotic fervour, which in 1930 led him to volunteer to go to the military high school (Madrasseh Nezam), against his father's wishes. He remained there until 1936. From high school onwards and throughout this period he played football, becoming the first goalkeeper of Iran's national team "Tadj", for ten years and so acquired great popularity.