History
Shah or Shahanshah ("King of Kings") was the title of Persian emperors or kings. It includes rulers of the first Persian Empire, the Achaemenid dynasty, who unified Persia and created a vast intercontinental empire, as well as rulers of succeeding dynasties throughout history until the twentieth century and the Imperial House of Pahlavi. The title was also extensively used by emperors of the Indian subcontinent, including those of the Mughal Empire. For instance, the third Mughal emperor, Akbar the Great (1542–1605), was formally known as "Shahanshah Akbar-e-Azam".
The full title of the Achaemenid rulers was XšāyaΘiya XšāyaΘiyānām, "King of Kings" in Old Persian, corresponding to Middle Persian Šāhān Šāh, literally "King of Kings", and Modern Persian شاهنشاه (Shāhanshāh). In Greek, this phrase was translated as "βασιλεύς τῶν βασιλέων (basileus tōn basiléōn)", "King of Kings", equivalent to Emperor. Both terms were often shortened to their roots shah and basileus.
In Western languages, Shah is often used as an imprecise rendering of Shāhanshāh. The term was first recorded in English in 1564 as a title for the King of Persia and with the spelling "Shaw". For a long time, Europeans thought of Shah as a particular royal title rather than an imperial one, although the monarchs of Persia regarded themselves as emperors of the Persian Empire (later the Empire of Iran). The European opinion changed in the Napoleonic era, when Persia was an ally of the Western powers eager to make the Ottoman Sultan release his hold on various (mainly Christian) European parts of the Ottoman Empire, and western (Christian) emperors had obtained the Ottoman acknowledgement that their western imperial styles were to be rendered in Turkish as padishah.
In the twentieth century, the Shah of Persia, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, officially adopted the title شاهنشاه Shâhanshâh and, in western languages, the rendering Emperor. He also styled his wife شهبانو Shahbânu (Empress). Iran no longer had a shah after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
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