Early Years
Abdolhossein Khan Teymourtash was born to an aristocratic family in 1883. His father, Karimdad Khan Nardini (Moa’zes al Molk), was a major landowner with extensive landholdings in Khorasan, Iran's northern province neighbouring the then Imperial Russia's Central Asia (now Turkmanistan and Afghanistan). To provide his son with the best educational opportunities available to affluent Iranians of the late 19th Century, Teymourtash's father dispatched him at the mere age of 11 to Tsarist Russia to receive a formal education.
After enrolling for a year of preparatory school in Eshghabad in Russia, Teymourtash was sent to Saint Petersburg to pursue further studies. He was enrolled as a cavalry cadet at the venerated Imperial Nikolaev Military Academy, a preserve of the sons of the Russian aristocracy. The curriculum of the school was predominated mainly by military and administrative studies, but also allowed Teymourtash to adopt a fluent command of Russian, French and German, as well as familiarity with English. Teymourtash's eleven year stay in Russia also led him to develop a lifelong passion for Russian and French literature, leading him to be the first Iranian to translate into Persian the masterful Russian literary works of Lermontov and Turgenev upon his return to Iran.
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