Organizing the first committee in Tehran

Translated by Mandana Karimi

2025-2-28

A few days after arriving in Tehran, Mr. Ali Ahi, one of my scholar and eulogist friends, came to our house with one of his fellows. They asked me to be the prayer leader of Saheb Al-Zaman Mosque in Javadieh Street, in Sar Asiyab Dolab quarters. The last prayer leader, was Mr. Sehikh Javad Khorasani, who had passed away less than a year before. Anyhow, I accepted their invitation. In that mosque, a lot of people came for congregational prayer, I started leading the congregational prayer and other promotional, cultural and revolutionary activities.

One of the things that its preliminaries were provided was organizing the committee. One day on the pulpit I said, that the occurrence of the revolution in Iran is certain and we need communities that defend the families, properties and honors of the people. I did not use the word “committee”; but in that mosque, I implemented the plan of the committee that had not occurred to anyone yet. In fact, I organized the first committee in Tehran that did not carry the name of a committee. The chemical Haj Hossein, who was a good person told me: "You formed a government within the government, and that is a dangerous thing to do.”

 Another thing that I felt the necessity of, was public mobilization. During the time I was in Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq, I was introduced to public groups with the function of mobilization but with different names. In Lebanon they were called “Eshbal” and in Iraq “Al Jaysh ash Shaabi” (The Iraq Popular Army). In Jordan they called it other names as well. I was inspired by them and implemented the idea of mobilization in Iran too and gave it a public aspect.

The preparation of mobilization at the end of Shah’s reign, was the result of my activities in Sar Asiyab mosque. In addition to this, we organized some groups for protecting people and their homes and properties. I asked these groups to learn martial arts and karate. They got a large shop for this purpose. They invited a professional karateka and began training to be able to deal with dangers such as looting and arson that some were thinking about.

Source: Alireza Nokhbeh, Mohajer-e Sharif: Khaterat-e Hojjat Al-Islam va Al-Moslemin Hassan Yazdi Zadeh (The Noble Immigrant: Memoires of Hassan Yazdi Zadeh). Orooj Publishing Co. 2020. Pp. 245-246.