He was extensively educated at home by private tutors in traditional subjects such as poetry, literature, mathematics, Arabic, and religion, along with modern sciences and Western languages.

He was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the army and Minister of War and quickly took over the government as a self-appointed premier and emerged as the real power behind the throne.

Farmanfarma's power grab was resented by many within the court and ultimately resulted in the Shah dismissing him and assigning him to govern the province of Fars, and eventually sending him into exile in 1898.

In the same year he was appointed governor general of Azerbaijan where with considerable personal courage, he took action against an incursion of Kurdish and Ottoman forces into Iran.

In his role as Minister of Justice he introduced the Western custom of secular court trials into the Persian legal system.

In 1912, the Majlis dispatched Farmanfarma as commander-in-chief of the army to reassert the authority of the constitutional government and repel royalist forces in Kurdistan and Kermanshah.

Throughout most of the First World War period, Farmanfarma sided with the British and worked closely with them receiving numerous payments and subsidies for his activities.

In 1921 a successful coup d'état organised by Sayad Zia-al-Din Tabatabai took place effectively ending Qajar rule and bringing Reza Khan to power.

Farmanfarma was arrested with his two eldest sons, Nosrat-ed-Dowleh who was the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, and Abbas Mirza Salar-Lashgar.

[6] Among the Cossacks accompanying Farman-Farma during the 1912 campaign to Kermanshah was an officer known as "Reza Maksim" because he was good at maneuvering a Maxim gun.

His full official name and title was Hazrat Aghdas Vala Shahzadeh Abdol Hossein Mirza Farman Farma.

It was first held by his grand-uncle Hossein Ali Mirza Farman Farma, a son of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar.

The title Farman Farma then passed on to his son Prince Abdol Hossein Mirza, during the reign of Nasser-ed-Din Shah.

This applied equally to his daughters as well as his sons, and women from his family were among the very first members of the social elite to appear publicly in Western dress after Reza Shah outlawed the veil.

As a consequence the vast majority of his sons and daughters, after having obtained first class educations, went on to work in senior and key roles throughout the Iranian government from the turn of the century until the 1979 Islamic Revolution.