Taj Saltaneh, was a Persian princess. She was the memoirist of the Qajar Dynasty, a daughter of Naser al-Din Shah, the King of Persia from 1848 to May 1896 by his wife Turan es-Saltaneh.
Taj Saltaneh was a trailblazer for women’s rights in Iran and a feminist. She was a prominent founding member of Iran’s underground women’s rights group Anjoman Horriyyat Nsevan or Women’s Freedom Association (the Society of Women’s Freedom), working for equal rights for women circa 1910. She secretly organized and attended underground women’s rights meetings telling her children and grandchildren that she was attending religious sessions. She once led a women’s rights march to parliament and was an avid supporter of Iran’s constitution revolution.
She was a writer, a painter, an intellectual, and an activist who hosted literary salons at her house once a week. She was fluent in Arabic and French and played the violin. She was the first woman in court to take off the hijab and wear western clothes. The first to write a memoir and a vocal critic of the monarchy- her father Naser el-Din Shah and brother Mozafar el-Din Shah’s rule. She blamed many of Iran’s problems then, including poverty, lack of education for masses and women’s rights, on incompetent monarchs. Her voice was a lone female voice advocating for change and democracy.
Taj Saltaneh is the first princess to take off her hijab and wear western clothes.