Assadollah Hosseinpoor

Colonel Assadollah Hosseinpour
Born	1882/83 Tehran, Iran
Died	1954
Allegiance	Imperial State of Iran (Persia)
Years of service	1910-1942/43
Rank	Colonel
Unit	Persian Cossack Brigade and Imperial Iranian Army
Commands held	See below

Assadollah Hosseinpour (Persian: اسد الله حسین پور) was born in 1882 or 1883 in Tehran, Iran. He was one of Ahad Agha Shirvani’s three sons, and grandson of Moustafa Khan Shirvani, governor of the Shirvan Khanate), a descendant of the Shirvan Shah who fought against Shah Esmaeil from the Persian Safavid dynasty. Following the defeat of the Shirvan Shah, the Khanate of Shirvan was annexed to Persia, but Mustafa Khan retained the governorship of Shirvan.

Hosseinpour’s grandfather Mustafa Khan was a powerful landowner and a senior military commander in Shirvan. He married a Georgian princess while the khanates of Shirvan and Georgia were both parts of Persia. Georgia, Shirvan and 15 other provinces or territories were later annexed to Russia, after three Russo-Persian wars, during the Qajar dynasty, upon which the commanders of their armies, refusing to serve under the new Russian leadership, left their command posts and immigrated with their families to Persia, remaining loyal to the Shah of Persia.

Hosseinpour graduated in 1910 from the Academy of the Persian Cossack Brigade, as one of its fourth graduating class. He was a classmate of the future General Fazllollah Zahedi (who became Prime Minister under Shah Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1953) and Colonel Mehdi Gholi Tajbakhsh. On graduation from the Academy, he performed his military duties under Rouhoullah Mirza for about two years and was then appointed Commander to the armies of the Iranian provinces of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. He was later transferred to the Cavalry Division of the Persian Cossack Army and took part in the World War I, during which he held a rank of lieutenant. At the end of the war he was promoted to major.

Along with a number of other Cossack commanders, Hosseinpour was a founding member of the new Imperial Iranian Armed Forces during the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi. He headed the Cavalry Division in the February 21, 1921, coup headed by Reza Shah. He was one of a number of officers who reached and secured Tehran. Tehran was completely surrounded by a huge canal for protection against potential military invasion and robbers. A tall wall also encircled the city, with twelve huge metal gates that were locked at night and protected by military guards. The military force headed by the coup officers left Karaj, a town about 40 km from Tehran, and arrived at the Ghazvin Gate (close to the present Mehrabad International Airport). When Hosseinpour reached the gate, he told the military officers guarding it that all the other gates had already been taken and that it was in their best interests to surrender.

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Wikipedia