Mirza Mohammad Farrokhi Yazdi, also known by his nickname “Taj al-Sho'ra” (lit. Crown of Poets), was a journalist, poet and activist who died in prison on October 18, 1939.

He was also editor-in-chief for the Communist Party of Iran, overseeing all of the party’s publications including its newspaper Toofan. He was elected during the Seventh Iranian National Assembly (1928-1930) to be a representative for the city of Yazd but was later imprisoned in Qasr Prison and executed on the orders of Reza Shah Pahlavi. His burial place remains unknown.

At the age of 15, Farrokhi Yazdi was expelled from school for writing poems about his teachers and the directors of school. Later in life, he would be killed because of the poems he wrote. 

Mirza Mohammad Farrokhi Yazdi was an ardent supporter of the Democratic Party (one of the two major parliamentary parties during the 1905-11 Constitutional Period in Iran, composed of middle class intellectuals, standing for the separation of church and state) in Yazd and, for example in his ghazals, writing and praising the value of freedom in his poems:

That inspiration of the world, whose name is freedom, I swear to the honor, magnitude and  authority of freedom.
He who has respected freedom from the bottom of his heart and soul, is respected by the whole world. He that 
does not believe in an ideology of freedom, is only able, at the invitation of the sheikh,
to eat the dinner of freedom with his hands and feet bound. They have been tyrannical a thousand times since morning,
but the oppressed will rise up in the cause of freedom, as those who will rise up on the day of Judgment. That day
I will be a reactionary against those who try to take revenge on freedom, if God gives me a chance, one day
I will no longer be “Farrokhi”, I will be a warrior slave of freedom, freed from the bondage of the wealthy men, I will be free. 

On Nowruz 1918 (March 22, 1918), Farrokhi, unlike other poets from Yazd who usually composed poems in praise of the governor of Yazd and his government of the time, composed a poem in the form of Masmat and recited it in the Yazd Freedom Assembly. It read:

Go get your thread, go and kiss their feet, you yourself know that I am not one of the servile poets like
Bahman, Kaykhosrow, Jamshid and Afridon, but I say if you follow the law of these lawmakers
It is for this reason that the governor of Yazd has ordered that my mouth be sewn shut with needle and thread and that I be imprisoned. 

In response to the news of Farrokhi Yazdi’s imprisonment, citizens from Yazd staged a sit-in in the city’s telegraph office in protest against his arrest. These protests led to the National Assembly of Iran impeaching the Minister of Interior. However, the Minister of Interior completely denied Farrokhi Yazdi's imprisonment. About two months later, Farrokhi escaped from Yazd Prison and said: “I have grieved that you have grieved for me, that you have listened to the story that I have weaved from my lips.”

In early 1920, Farrokhi Yazdi fled Yazd and moved to Tehran. While living in the capital, he began publishing articles and poems about freedom in a number of the city’s newspapers.

During Hassan Vossug ed Dowleh’s Prime Ministership of Iran (1918-1920), Farrokhi Yazdi opposed the infamous Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919, which would have given Britain complete access to all of Iran’s oil fields if it had not been later denounced by the Iranian Majlis in 1921, and he was arrested for his opposition. In August 1921, Farrokhi Yazdi composed a poem addressed to Lord Curzon, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at the time, in which he criticised the rejected Anglo-Persian Agreement and the British foreign policy towards Iran:

He is writing a lament;
Lord Curzon is enraged
We don't obey the orders of an embassy;
We don't exchange our dignity for humiliation
You can't exploit the country of Jamshid;
Finally, O’ Lord Curzon give up on us
Tell us that you will abolish the treaty
Despite our grief and tears

In 1921, Farrokhi established the Toofan newspaper in Tehran. Over the course of its run as a newspaper, Toofan was suspended and temporarily shut down more than 15 times, before being granted license to publish once again. Likewise, on a number of occasions, the newspaper’s publication was interrupted due to Farrokhi's repeated imprisonment. While the Toofan newspaper was banned, Farrokhi Yazdi wrote and published his articles and poems in other newspapers, with the permission of their editors, such as Peykar, Qayam, Talieh, Ayneh Afkar and Setareh Shargh.

Farrokhi Yazdi wrote about the repeated suspension of his newspaper, saying: “Not every letter exposes the traitors, just as not every crowd describes the individual / That letter was confiscated by the oppressors, that crowd was broken by the insistence of oppression.”

In 1928, Farrokhi Yazdi was elected to the National Assembly as the representative of the people of Yazd and he became a member of the minority faction during that parliament. As the majority of the representatives in the National Assembly were supporters of Reza Shah's government, Farrokhi was often insulted by the other representatives and, once, the representative of Mahabad even physically assaulted him. Realising that he would be unable to continue working as a representative in the National Assembly due to the hostile conditions, Farrokhi Yazdi secretly left Tehran.

Yazdi subsequently travelled to Germany via the Soviet Union and, whilst in Germany, he continued to publish his revolutionary ideas in the Peykar magazine. However, eventually, he was tricked into returning to Tehran via Turkey and Baghdad after having received a promise that he would be allowed to meet with Abdolhossein Teymourtash, the First Minister of Court of the Pahlavi Shah from 1925 to 1932. On his return to Tehran, he was immediately placed under surveillance by the police. 

Shortly after his return, Farrokhi Yazdi was imprisoned by the police on the pretext of owing money to a paper businessman. However, once he was imprisoned, a legal case was filed against him on the charge of “insulting the monarchy.” He was initially sentenced to 27 months imprisonment on this charge, which was later increased to 30 months imprisonment, and was transferred to Qasr Prison in Tehran.

According to statements from the Prosecutor General of Iran, Mirza Mohammad Farrokhi Yazdi was executed in the Qasr Prison hospital by Doctor Ahmadi by means of a lethal air injection. 

However, the testimony of the Head Warden of Qasr Prison indicates that Farrokhi Yazdi died of malaria and nephritis. Mirza Mohammad Farrokhi Yazdi’s burial place is still unknown, but he was reportedly buried in the Mesgar Abad Cemetery in Shahr Ray, Tehran.