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35°35′09″N 51°26′03″E / 35.5858°N 51.4342°E | |
Location | Ray, Tehran, Iran |
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Designer | Mohsen Foroughi Keyqobad Zafar Ali Sadeq |
Type | Mausoleum, Museum (now religious school) |
Beginning date | 1948 |
Completion date | 1950 |
Opening date | 7 May 1951 |
Dedicated to | Reza Shah |
Dismantled date | April–May 1980 |
The mausoleum of Reza Shah (Persian: آرامگاه رضاشاه), located in Ray south of Tehran, was the burial ground of Reza Shah Pahlavi (1878–1944), the penultimate Shahanshah (Emperor) of Iran. It was built close to Shah-Abdol-Azim shrine.
In addition to Reza Shah, his son, Prince Ali Reza, was also buried here. The prince who was Mohammad Reza Shah's only full brother, was a pilot and crashed in the Alborz Mountains on October 17, 1954. When the mausoleum was destroyed, no one found the prince's body.
In the early days of the Islamic 1979 Revolution in April 1980, Reza Shah's mausoleum was destroyed under the direction of Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali by Revolutionary Guards; In his memoirs, Khalkhali describes how difficult it was to destroy the building due to its solid structure. Revolutionaries were unable to find Reza Shah's dead body and suggested that Mohammad Reza Shah had taken it with him while leaving Iran, a claim which was denied by Shahbanu (Empress) Farah Pahlavi in an interview. On April 23, 2018, a mummified body, possibly that of Reza Shah, was found during expansion work at Shah Abdol-Azim Shrine at the site of the former mausoleum.[1]