Manucher Mirza Farman Farmaian

Prince Manucher Mirza (1917–2003) was born in Tehran in 1917. He was the sixth son of Prince Abdol-Hossein Farman Farma and of Batoul Khanoum.

He studied petroleum engineering at Birmingham University in England before returning to Iran. On his return he joined the military rising to the rank of second lieutenant and left in the weeks surrounding January 1943.

He went on to work in the Ministry of Finance until he was appointed to become the director general of Petroleum, Concessions, and Mines in April 1949.

In 1958, he became the director of sales for the National Iranian Oil Company. A key signatory in the 1959 Cairo Agreement that resulted in OPEC, he was Iran's first ambassador to Venezuela. In 1979, during the Iranian Revolution, Manucher escaped across the Iran-Turkey border with the help of Kurdish smugglers. After fleeing from Ayatollah Khomeini's regime in the 1979, revolution, Manucher Mirza permanently relocated to Venezuela, establishing a new life and a new business (potato crisp manufacturer) for himself. In his later life he co-authored Blood and Oil: Memoirs of a Persian Prince with his daughter Roxane Farman Farmaian, which was published in 1997.

In 2003, Manucher died in Caracas and was buried in Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor, New York next to his brother Abol-Bashar Mirza Farman Farmaian.

Publications

 * Travels to Persia
 * Considerations of the Problems of Oil
 * Blood and Oil: Memoirs of a Persian Prince, Random House, New York, 1997.

Government positions held

 * Director of Sales for the National Iranian Oil Company
 * Ambassador to Venezuela