In 1909, he entered politics as a member of Majlis (Parliament), representing Tehran. He subsequently became speaker of the house and later minister in several cabinets as well as prime minister three times and once as the acting prime minister when Reza Khan resigned as prime minister to take up the crown as Reza Shah. In 1912, he became the president of the Supreme Court. Later he was appointed prime minister and dismissed in 1935 due to the father of his son-in-law’s, Muhammad Vali Asadi, alleged participation in the riot in Mashhad against the reforms implemented.
The collected essays of Mohammad Ali Foroughi not only present a portrait of the multifaceted and complex character of one of the most influential cultural, academic, and political figures of modern Iran, but also depict the cultural issues and political and social conditions of the country during the turbulent years of Foroughi’s cultural and political life—from the first Constitutional Assembly to the early years of the reign of the second Pahlavi. Mohammad Ali Foroughi was among the most brilliant figures of a generation of Iranian scholars, historians, men of letters, and researchers who emerged from the Constitutional Revolution. During the tumultuous years of that revolution, World War I, and throughout the two-decade reign of the first Pahlavi monarch, they published their works and were so rich and creative in their fields that, apart from perhaps one or two exceptions, no one in later generations managed to take their place.
