Farrokhi Yazdi, Muhammad

Born 1887 in Yazd; died 1935 in Tehran. Iranian poet, publicist, and public figure.

Farrokhi Yazdi attended an English missionary school, from which he was expelled for speaking out against the school authorities. In 1908 his mouth was sewn shut for criticizing the ruler of Yazd. In 1919 Farrokhi Yazdi attacked the enslaving treaty concluded by Iran with Great Britain. His newspaper Tufan (Storm), which began publication in 1921, served as a platform for the defenders of freedom.

Farrokhi Yazdi emigrated in 1930. His poems and articles exposing the injustices of the Iranian regime appeared in the Persian-language journal Peykar (Battle), published in Berlin. He returned to his homeland in 1934, where he was imprisoned and killed for insulting the throne. His sharply polemical literary works played a significant role in the development of progressive poetry in Iran.

Farrokhi Yazdi supported the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia and in 1927 visited the USSR; on his return home he published Travel Notes, which described his trip.