[custom_adv] Mohammad Reza was born along with his twin sister, Ashraf. However, Shams, Mohammad Reza, Ashraf, Ali Reza, and their older half-sister, Fatimeh, were not royalty by birth, as their father did not become Shah until 1925. [custom_adv] Nevertheless, Reza Khan was always convinced that his sudden quirk of good fortune had commenced in 1919 with the birth of his son who was dubbed khoshghadam (bird of good omen). [custom_adv] Like most Iranians at the time, Reza Khan did not have a surname and after the 1921 Persian coup d'état which deposed Ahmad Shah Qajar, he was informed that he would need a name for his house. [custom_adv] This led Reza Khan to pass a law ordering all persians to take a surname; he chose for himself the surname Pahlavi, which is the name for Middle Persian (language) that itself is derived from Old Persian. At his father's coronation on 24 April 1926, Mohammad Reza was proclaimed Crown Prince. [custom_adv] Mohammad Reza described his father in his book Mission for My Country as "one of the most frightening men" he had ever known, depicting Reza Khan as a dominating man with a violent temper. [custom_adv] A tough, fierce, and very ambitious soldier who became the first Persian to command the elite Russian-trained Cossack Brigade, Reza Khan liked to kick subordinates in the groin who failed to follow his orders; growing up under his shadow, Mohammad Reza was a deeply scarred and insecure boy who lacked self-confidence. [custom_adv] Reza Khan always addressed his son as shoma ("sir") and refused to use more informal tow ("you"), and in turn was addressed by his son using the same word.The Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński observed in his book Shah of Shahs that looking at old photographs of Reza Khan and his son, he was struck by how self-confident and assured Reza Khan appeared in his uniform while Mohammad Reza appeared nervous and jittery in his uniform standing next to his father. [custom_adv] in the 1930s, Reza Khan was an outspoken admirer of Hitler, though this was less because of any racism and anti-Semitism on his part, but rather because Reza Khan saw Hitler as someone much like himself, namely a man who had risen from an undistinguished background to become a notable leader of the 20th century. [custom_adv] Reza Khan often impressed on his son his belief that history was made by great men such as himself, and that a real leader is an autocrat. Reza Khan was a huge barrel-chested and muscular man towering at over 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m), leading his son to en him to a mountain, and throughout his life, ... [custom_adv] Mohammad Reza was obsessed with height and stature, for example wearing elevator shoes to make himself look taller than he really was, often boasting that homeland's highest mountain Mount Demavand was higher than any peak in Europe or Japan, and he was always most attracted to tall women. [custom_adv] Mohammad Reza's mother, Tadj ol-Molouk was an assertive woman who was also very superstitious. She believed that dreams were messages from another world, sacrificed lambs to bring good fortune and scare away evil spirits, and clad her children with protective amulets to ward off the power of the evil eye.
