Asadollah Alam - Illness, Death and Legacy

Illness, Death and Legacy

Asadollah Alam was diagnosed with cancer in late 1960s. He was never told of the nature of his illness and was only informed about an 'imbalance' of blood cells in his body. In 1977, his illness worsened and he had to resign his post as the minister of court. He died in 1978, a few months before the revolution in Iran.

Alam, the Shah's best friend, wrote about every detail of his life for the last ten years of his reign. These memoirs were posthumously published several years after Alam's death. Because of the level of its detail, this book is probably the greatest source of information about the life and deeds of the Shah. Alam admired the Shah greatly and his writing is therefore not impartial, but at least he expresses the Shah's perception of the national and international politics accurately. This results in the closest possible look at the way the Shah thought and how he made his decisions.

The book is edited by Alam's friend Alikhani, who was also a minister in Alam's cabinet. Judging by the few hand-written diary pages reproduced in the book, the editor seems to have cut out numerous sentences anywhere he pleased with no apparent reason. In some cases he explains the reasons as privacy concern for the Alam family or the safety of some people who may still be living in Iran. However, such explanations are very rare and the book is filled by ellipses, not drawn from Alam's notes.

The book has another deficiency: Alam had originally enclosed drafts of the letters by the Shah to foreign heads of state and letters to the Shah from international dignitaries with his diary notes. Very few of these have been published in the diaries and the reader is therefore denied access to this great source of information.

Amir Hossein Khozeimé-Alam was a cousin of his.