His father, Hossein Gholi Khan Ilkhani, having united the Bakhtiari tribes, had turned them into the most powerful clan in late Qajar Iran.

He was summoned to Tehran in 1881, with his father and older brother Esfandiar Khan, by Naser-Eddin Shah out of the Qajar monarch’s concerns over the growing power of the Bakhtiari clan.

After his release, Ali Gholi Khan was sent as a hostage to the court in Tehran and used as leverage against his brother, Esfandiar, who had succeeded their father as the Ilkhani [Lord Chieftain] of the Bakhtiari clan.

William Knox D'Arcy, by contract with the Bakhtiari leadership, obtained permission to explore for oil for the first time in the Middle East, an event which changed the history of the entire region.

During the reign of Muzaffar al-din Shah, he remained the commander of the Bakhtiari Cavalry entrusted with guarding the King and in 1896 was promoted to the rank of brigadier general.

However, he faced fierce competition for this title from his older brother, Najaf Gholi Khan Samsam al-Saltanah, who by tradition had the right to be the patriarch of the clan.

He returned to Iran on 16 May 1909 and, upon entering the Bakhtiari region, signed an agreement with the Qashqai chieftain, Sheikh Khazal, who represented the Arabs of Khuzestan.

With the exception of Karim Khan Bahadur of Boyer Ahmad province, Sardar Assad secured the support of all major tribal leaders in southern Iran in preparation for marching on the capital.

He one of the signatories of Sheikh Fazlullah Nouri’s death – the highest ranking Shia cleric in the country who had allied himself with the Shah in opposition to the Constitutionalists.

Arriving in Tehran in July 1912, he served as an advisor to his brother Samsam al-Saltaneh, who was now prime minister, and was pivotal in maintaining peace between the feuding factions of the Bakhtiari clan over the next year.